Breakeven Brothers

Bennett Bernard (00:00.489)
I'm

Bradley Bernard (00:01.316)
Yeah, I feel that.

Bennett Bernard (00:03.048)
Yeah. Cool. Well, welcome to the sixth episode of the Breakeven Brothers podcast. I am Bennett Bernard. Joined by me is Bradley Bernard, co -host. How are things going, Brad?

Bradley Bernard (00:16.402)
pretty good. Had a decently chill weekend, just been kind of preparing for interviews and doing a few life things. So not too bad. but definitely the whole interview process has been a bit taxing. So trying to recover and not study too hard because it can be a

Bennett Bernard (00:33.684)
Mm -hmm. Yeah and for those who yeah for those who've been tracking our Posting schedule you'll notice that we were a little bit late on the last episode just because our lives were very busy the last week week and a half so But happy to kind of get back in the in this regular schedule that we normally do. Yeah. No my my weekend was good Had the kids solo parent for a night Wife was out doing something having a night

Bradley Bernard (00:34.734)
How about you?

Bennett Bernard (01:02.538)
Out of town so me and the kids held it down and had some fun, but then yeah pretty uneventful today, so It was good. It's good to have a quiet

Bradley Bernard (01:13.742)
Yeah. I was scrolling through YouTube shorts after kind of doing a study session. I'll study for like an hour or two. That's just practicing programming questions or doing system design. So looking up some good YouTube videos on how people walk through some system design. And yeah, while I was scrolling YouTube shorts, I found this really funny short that was talking about this video game we used to play oblivion. And in this game, it's a role playing game.

And you can talk to all these characters, do all these side quests. One of the characters in the game allows you to actually order pizza. So it's a mod that you add to the game. What this does is you talk to the character in the game. You go through a few series of dialogue questions. And at the end of that, it places an order through Domino's official website. And then the pizza comes to your house. So you're playing the game. You're not distracted at all. You go talk to this guy real quick and a pizza comes in, you know, 20 or 30 minutes later.

I had sent it immediately to Ben because I was like, we played this game so much growing up and it was a staple. And like this was a super sick mod. So what did you think of that video?

Bennett Bernard (02:24.554)
Yeah, and I thought it was super cool. I mean, right away I was super excited about it because, I haven't, you full disclosure, I haven't tried it yet to see if it actually works or like how good of experience it is. But, you know, we used to sink hours, days into that game. And, you know, just, I mean, for those who have played that game, you know, but for those that have not ever played those games, especially in the time that it came out, it was probably like 2003, I would guess, 2004.

It was such like an experience like the whole soundtrack, like the world building, the characters had the right level of like campiness where it kind of funny and silly, but it's also like pretty like challenging sometimes and just phenomenal storytelling. So that game, you and I probably spent days of game time playing that game, if not more. And what immediately stood out to me about it

In a game like that where you're like immersed, cause not all games are like that. I think like if you're playing, you know, fall guys or you're playing, you know, chained together, like we've been playing recently, like it's just a different experience. Like the love and like attention to detail isn't there. If you play a game like Red Dead Redemption, play a game like GTA, you play a game like Skyrim or Oblivion, like that, like world building and attention to detail or like Elden Ring, I know it's super popular right now.

Like those games are becoming more and more of like an experience. And so when you showed, when you sent me that short, was like immediately like, this is huge because I feel like you're almost like layering in a bit of real life into the game a bit more. And I think from like, from a game developer standpoint too, like you're keeping people on the game too. Like instead of having to like, I got to go order some pizza. Let me go out and go to my phone, get my phone and type in all my pizza details and order.

or my pizza, like you're kind of keeping people in their eyeballs, like on your game, you can make it interactive and almost build out like a point of sale within the game. So I thought it was super cool. And it was like, when he sent it, it was almost like kind of silly, but I merely was like, this could be like a really big thing in the future. Like that's where my mind went right away, but I know. How did you feel about

Bradley Bernard (04:34.436)
Yeah. Yeah. My first thought was, I really want to try this out. And then my second thought was how the heck is this working? So I took a look at the code and I think it's eight Python files, literally just hitting like dominoes .com, pasting in this order. I forgot what the exact order was, but it was like two or three pizzas with a side and then some drink. And it's, it's like kind of a cute little mod to add, you know, probably wouldn't be my order of choice, but it would be so cool just to go talk to this character in the game and have all that happen. So.

Yeah, I think it definitely opens up a lot of opportunity. again, it's definitely more of a joyful, like playful mod. But as you were saying games these days, I don't know. I definitely agree that the detail is not like it used to be. I've seen making Elder Scrolls Oblivion. I think they have a full documentary on how they built the game and just walking through all the roles of these folks building the game, how many years it took to build. It's honestly insane. Like I don't

game studios do that anymore. And it's kind of a lost art. So yeah, I, I really want to try it. I'll probably try it. I don't know, maybe in the next like two weeks and report back. Cause I don't know, just, it sounds super fun and it just nice to see, like I'm playing in the game of pizza comes. I'm going to go eat it and jump right back into the game. Minimal time. You do have to type in your credit card in plain text in the Python script. And yes, I've checked. It's nothing crazy. So it's totally fine.

I think it's your credit card, your expiration, security, zip, and your address. And so all that just goes to Domino's directly. And yeah, the rest is history.

Bennett Bernard (06:07.784)
Yeah, I think you know, that's just like pizza. I feel like You know, you could almost like take it to like a whole nother ridiculous level But like so Bethesda studios thing is Bethesda something I don't know if it's studios or whatever, but they're the ones who make the oblivion Skyrim You those those that series of games I think they most recently came out with one that was like a space themed one I don't remember what it was called like starlink or something like

Bradley Bernard (06:34.392)
Yeah, star or something, I can't remember either. Wasn't that good. I think it crashed when it first started.

Bennett Bernard (06:38.538)
Yeah, but I think I think it got yeah. Yeah, I got mixed reviews, but usually they produce pretty pretty quality stuff, but I know for sure like Rockstar with like Red Dead Redemption is like my favorite like game as like an adult for sure. And the the Red Dead Redemption 2 story building like environment building is like nothing I've ever experienced. And but you could almost like take that. And if you were to apply it to like Red Dead,

You know, there's different like environments that you could be like in like a Tavern or like a saloon like in the game and like wanna order some like mashed potatoes I don't know like something that like is like a period for the time, you know, like I want to order some like, you know, I Can't think of like a good example, I guess like chicken nuggets. I want to order some chicken nuggets Whatever like you could do other things other than just like pizza I think it'd be super interesting to like be able to like almost layer

Maybe a better example is like GTA like GTA 5 or GTA 6 where like you're driving by and you see like a burger place in the game like want a burger like I'm gonna go to that burger place and like order an actual burger and that somehow it will sync up to like an in -and -out or a what a burger or like a Carl's jr. That's nearby you and someone you know with grub hub or door dash will You fulfill that order for you. I feel like that's a Could be a very interesting space in the future

Bradley Bernard (08:04.9)
Yeah. And I think there's also like NFT games. I've played a few of those where you play the game, you get this reward. It's in the crypto space. It kind of brings a different dynamic to the game where usually when you're playing the game, you're in the rank system. You're trying to, you know, climb higher with your friends in a competitive way. But it feels like gaming gets a little stale. I think in our generation at our age, like we're looking for a little bit more like on top of socialize, like what else is new? Because, you know, I've game

Bennett Bernard (08:05.322)
because yeah, I

Bradley Bernard (08:33.594)
10 plus years like how can we make it fun and exciting? I think the NFT games came out, you know, in the crypto craze and was a little bit of a different take where, you can play the game and earn money. Like kind of sounds cool, you know, but it's a little bit niche. It's not that much money. It's the game tactics, the game tactics that suck you into that aren't that great. So you're, you have this like dynamic of, I'm playing to get better and I'm playing for money

the best games that I've ever played. I'm not playing for money. I really dive into it and enjoy it. And I feel like this is a different take on it where you could integrate with a real world. There's also been AI games. So you can think of this role -playing game where each of these characters don't have hard -coded scripts that they're speaking based on a decision tree, but more dynamic responses based on your character's level, based on all these actions you've taken in the game.

So much more detailed and realistic story experience. I think as looking forward, specifically in the role playing games genre, there's so much innovation going on. I'm excited to see what the next iteration in Elder Scrolls looks like. But at the same time, these games take like 10 years. So you always expect, when it comes out, it's going to use all this awesome technology when

probably is being worked on before AI was super popular and you know, probably won't have that and needs to depend on Xbox to deliver and you know, windows to catch up. So it's like, you know, you gotta be careful with how much you expect at the end of the day. It's like the raw storytelling is the best part. All these additions of like rewards or dynamic language, those are nice to haves, but I haven't really seen a game flip completely to like AI a hundred percent. Like there's a normal platform.

with guardrails and then AI can take it all the way. But I have seen some folks try to do that on Twitter. Not super successful yet, but just kind of like a build in public of a game that's very focused on like AI storytelling from the ground up. So kind of cool.

Bennett Bernard (10:33.332)
Hmm. Yeah, I feel like you and I have played games since we were kids and we still play pretty regularly, you know, when outside of work, of course. And, you know, for me, it almost feels like there's like camps now of like certain games. Like there's like the like experience games where I think of like oblivion, but more modern. I think of Red Dead. I think of Elden Ring. That's why others I'm not thinking of. But then

Outside of the experienced ones, there is the competitive ones. So Rainbow Six Siege, Halo, stuff that does e -sports in. And then there's also this third category, which I don't know what to call it. But I would say the game that we were playing that was like this, I guess maybe it's like Social is what I'd call it. And Lethal Company is a game that we were playing a while back. That's completely unlike any of the other games that we were just listing off.

And it's almost like it's an experience in a different way. Cause it's like, is super unique or was really unique when the time we started playing it. but it also didn't come with all the like the negative things that came with games over the last like five or six, seven years with like the micro transactions and like the separate logins. Like you just boot up lethal company. just starts. And like, you know, that was like almost a new experience in a weird way, even though it was like reverting back

how it used to be, but like there's more social element of that. So I think in any of those, maybe less so for the competitive ones, but I think like on the social and on the more like environment, like experience, know, Elden Ring RPG type stuff, the like layering in of like real life or like blending in of like being able to order transactions, like order things directly from the game, I think has some potential for it to kind of develop further,

Yeah, we'll see. I'm definitely interested to try that one out and see if it works myself. I'm like scared to put my credit card stuff in there because I'm not like, you know, I don't know. It just feels weird, but maybe I'll just use like a prepaid card or something at the store and just just to be careful.

Bradley Bernard (12:39.734)
Hahaha

Yeah, you never know. I was gonna say my video keeps freezing. Are you getting

Like, I'm freezing massively, like, you're talking and then I can only hear you for like 10 seconds and I can't tell if it's me or you.

Bennett Bernard (12:57.714)
Yeah, yeah the same thing happened when you were talking and there was like there was times where I lost you completely But then you came back. Yeah Hopefully we're not just staring at each other Yeah, no, I mean We'll see how it turns out. But yeah, I don't know why I would do that and that doesn't I

Bradley Bernard (13:02.506)
Yeah, I'm like, I'm like shit.

Bradley Bernard (13:12.26)
It's so weird.

Bradley Bernard (13:16.57)
Yeah, because I think the past few times you were talking, it was at least like a 10 second break where I'm sitting there like, should I say something? And then you connect and you're still talking. So I'm like, well, hopefully, you know, I'm, I'm not like a frozen frame on the other side.

Bennett Bernard (13:29.16)
Yeah, can we know who it is or we have no idea?

Bradley Bernard (13:35.066)
Well, I see on both of our sides it says 99 % uploaded. So I think we're fine.

Bennett Bernard (13:35.54)
like whose internet it is.

Yeah, I think it's probably be okay. Yeah, I might have to just grit through it a little bit and just, you know.

Bradley Bernard (13:47.226)
Yeah, I just want to let it sit because right now it's not doing it, but I swear, like, if you said something in those 10 seconds where, like, you know, I needed to pick up on it, I would not be able to pick up on

Bennett Bernard (13:51.966)
Yeah, I had it too, yeah.

Bennett Bernard (13:58.394)
Yeah, it's like when you're on a zoom call and it's like, what do think about that Bennett? It's like, what was the question? Yeah.

Bradley Bernard (14:00.591)
That sounds like...

Bradley Bernard (14:06.234)
Yeah, it's weird that it's not happening now, but I mean...

Bennett Bernard (14:14.226)
Maybe it's stabilized. don't know. My kids' are on, I think. They're just sleeping. I don't know if that has anything to do with it. Taking up bandwidth.

Bradley Bernard (14:21.156)
Yeah, okay, we'll keep an eye on it. But I think the last thing was talking about games and yeah, we'll put a cut there and then we can continue. yeah, definitely think the social gaming is a new category. like, I feel like I play it. I'm more of a competitive gamer to be completely honest and scratching that itch. Like I played Halo, played League of Legends, you know, got into these things pretty deeply and cared a lot about rank.

but yeah, the social one, it's like, cause you get older, you care less about being high ranked. It's just like, Hey, hop online, have fun with friends. So that's the new category. And chain was super fun. you know, being chained to each other, it's in essence, it's a game where you have four people, they're all chained to each other in a way that creates a square. So you're connected to two people. then you need to traverse the map from start to finish. And it's all these obstacle courses. And if you

Bennett Bernard (15:00.465)
Yeah.

Bradley Bernard (15:15.962)
you basically lose all this progress. as you yelling at your teammates, which your friends, getting very upset about how your friend missed a jump because they didn't time it correctly. But yeah, those are a lot of fun. And they, I think they cost like five or 10 bucks on steam and you play it maybe for a few hours, but the satisfaction of doing that together is great. It's kind of like overcooked. You know, I'm sure a lot of people have heard of overcooked and participate in that where it's, very fun. And then when you get in serious mode, then it's, you know, relationships are tested

You know, people are yelling and that makes it fun too.

Bennett Bernard (15:48.274)
Yeah, yeah, it was those are some tense moments for sure. Yeah, chained together as one. I we played Phasmophobia, which was pretty it wasn't. Yeah, it was like you're working together, but it's just silly. But, know, yeah, those are always nice to have a good time and blow off some steam. But I think from, you know, a developer standpoint, you know, whatever keeps people in the game longer, you know, keep keep your eyeballs kind of on the game and in in that environment is always a good thing.

Bradley Bernard (15:57.611)
It's hard.

Bennett Bernard (16:17.322)
I'm interested to see how that all I should say is Well, as I say I'm interested to say Like how that all plays out, but when I looked at the mod It looked like it came out in like 20 21 or something or 20 20 so it's almost like it's it's not like a new thing It's just something that hasn't really been At least to my knowledge, you know, maybe I'm missing something but has not been like super Popular like in games we play I don't see that ever

Bradley Bernard (16:19.364)
It's a land of... go

Bennett Bernard (16:45.608)
I wonder why or what the trick is. Yeah, I'm curious why it's not out there more now.

Bradley Bernard (16:51.706)
What a, what a genius idea. When I saw that video, I was like, gosh, what a genius. Cause I, all the games these days are free to play. And then they ding you on every micro transaction for every skin, either on a gun or on a character or whatever. And, know, I do miss the old days of just paying $60, having that game, buying, you know, downloadable content in the future, which maybe it's 10 or $20, but now it's like, you're getting bombarded by a season pass or all these like skins when you're in the game. It's kind of a lot,

I guess that's the revenue model games are looking at these days to be profitable, where they just have this forever game that they keep adding skins to. Don't really change the core game, but are pushing pretty far on the art and creative side where that's, I guess, how they make their money.

Bennett Bernard (17:36.68)
Yeah. And I was just looking last thing on this, guess, before we move on, but it looks like the mod uses like Domino's has like a pizza API and node, like written in node JS. So it looks like that is just taking a high level look at it now, but it looks like that's what's being used. So I guess to the extent that any other restaurants, you know, wing stop pizza hut.

Dominoes birking whatever I guess if they have any kind of similar System then yeah, you could in theory make the same kinds of requests so Very interesting interesting a little Mod there that's completely random Yeah, I wonder how much

Bradley Bernard (18:16.858)
Yeah, we'll report back soon. One of us has to do it. One of us really has to do it. And honestly, just record a video of like being in the game, talking to that person, and then having just like a normal conversation and then just 20 minutes later, hopefully something pops up and just the magic. I feel like it's the magic that gets people excited about things. And that is like a touch of magic that yeah, it hasn't really existed before. I, know, me or Ben will do it and we'll report back on just the raw feeling.

the amazing feeling we're gonna get.

Bennett Bernard (18:47.358)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I won't even if I end up doing it and I want to, so I'll look into like how to install and everything, but just the idea of like ordering something in the game, I won't believe it is real until the dude shows up at the pizza at my house. I'll be like, this is still like, I don't know what I bought. You know, if I even am I going to get anything for this? You know, it has reviews on like a little website that it's hosted on. But yeah, I still I'm like,

Until it's actually on my front door, and it's been delivered, I'm skeptical it's going to work for some reason. So yeah, it's pretty cool.

Bradley Bernard (19:24.216)
Yeah. It's nice looking at the code, but yeah, I agree. It's, I think if there's an error message thrown in any of the Python code that it runs to hit the API, I'm pretty sure there's going be no debugger or any error message popping up. So you're going to have that conversation and wait if it never comes. And I guess the mod doesn't work. Time to move

Bennett Bernard (19:36.874)
Yeah.

Bennett Bernard (19:43.114)
Yeah, exactly.

Bradley Bernard (19:46.49)
Cool. Definitely wanted to talk about a different topic now. I do love oblivion, but haven't played it in a while. We'll queue it up soon. One thing I want to talk about is being authentic online. So it's been a little bit of a Twitter debate recently on as someone on Twitter, on the X platform, the algorithm changes a lot. And as someone trying to grow themselves as an individual or business, you usually have to cater to that algorithm.

But the algorithm is crazy. Like it really respects things that, you know, hot takes things that stir the conversation, stir the pot a little bit. it's, very hard to stay up to date because there had, there was long tweets that came out that people said, Hey, you have to have a long tweet. It has to be, you know, 280 plus. Then there was, you have to have an image. You have to have a video. Then it was, Hey, if you post a link in your first tweet, that's going to get killed by the algorithm and it's going to go nowhere. So all you see is I've launched this product.

Go look at the link in the second tweet. So essentially this algorithm is changing a ton. You want to be growing as an individual on these platforms because it creates so much opportunity for you to market yourself and market your products. But how do you approach it effectively? How do you be yourself and how do you still move the needle at the end of the day when it feels like there's so many people out there? it's been tough. So it's been something that I've been working on myself, especially when I started my business 12 months ago. I went straight out of the bat.

You know, build in public and I had watched people do it on the side. didn't know exactly how it was done. I don't think I have the perfect recipe for it now. but one thing I would say is definitely do things you love and share about it because I dove deep in the technical side, wrote tons and tons of tweets as, as I was building out both my chatty Butler, my AI app on the app store, and then both split my expenses. And yeah, I wrote so many tweets that I had so much fun to

I would post it on X and get like no engagement like that. That's kind of the sad truth of some of these things is what I'm interested in might be a much smaller audience and the algorithm might not reward that. But at the same time, you know, I'm being myself, there are some people who like it. And I think over time you'll really get a much larger following that's authentic and natural versus having these, you know, quick hitter algorithm feeders

Bradley Bernard (22:06.01)
Yeah, maybe you got 500 followers, but they're going to unfollow you. They only followed you for this meme that you posted on one random day. so it's yeah, my, my, my advice would be definitely be yourself, but I'm curious. You've been on Twitter, probably not posting as much as I've had. what's been your

Bennett Bernard (22:23.986)
Yeah. I mean, I can't stay on Twitter to be honest with you. I, I try with the best intentions to, you know, use it. can't stand it as like a user posting things. I am on Twitter and I follow people and I think it has a, good source of information as long as your, your list is curated and with intent and like, I follow people from real estate Twitter. I follow people from tech Twitter. I follow people from finance Twitter. I think, and I get lots of good information from them. So like, I think that part is valuable,

For me personally, I've posted things out there. Nothing really, I'm not running a business. I'm not a solopreneur, so I'm not selling anything really. But as far as networking or sharing thoughts or being a thought leader, it's shouting into the void. And for me, being authentic online, I don't want to convince the algorithm to promote my stuff if it's not fitting.

You know what mean? It's like, I wouldn't act differently in person. Like I wouldn't say something controversial in person just for engagement. You know what mean? I wouldn't say something or do something that isn't me, like in the real world, just to get like attention. So like, why would I do that online? Like I get there's so much value in having eyeballs on you and this really competitive space online. But, you know, I think, like you said, there will be a smaller niche of people.

or niche of people that will like your content. And maybe that's only like 200 versus like 2000 like so -so followers that only followed you for the memes. Like that 200 is probably such better quality. They probably care about like the content you produce. They probably care about like you as a person too. And then some sense of like, you know, wanting to see your success. So I think the right quality over quantity is something that I've probably come to try and appreciate more.

Posting online because yeah, you you can't you can try and please everyone but I don't think you're gonna get like the quality relationships or quality connections that You would want really to run your business or to build your brand

Bradley Bernard (24:33.932)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. And speaking of Twitter, I'm with you in the fact that it's hard to do well. And again, you want to build your following, but at the same time, it feels so hard to fit your content into the algorithm. But on the other side, being a consumer is so much easier. You open up your feed, you follow these people that you find value from. And then the algorithm does a decent job at finding other people. I wouldn't say great because sometimes I look at something that's interesting or catches my eye.

Then the algorithm changes and gives me more of that, but I don't want it. So it's not perfect, but there are times where, you know, I've looked at some AI tweet and then, you know, I log in the next day, open up my phone, scroll my feed and see other cool information. So I think Twitter, like the maximum value that I get out of it is creating this curated list of communities, exactly as you mentioned, kind of the cross -section of things that you're interested in, to build up this like kind of alpha online where, you know, people are posting about things that they're working

And doing it in real time and usually, you know, working on bleeding edge technology. So I've curated like my following list to find these awesome people that are sharing their thoughts that are being vocal about it. And that's like, that's what brings me back to Twitter. And then for me building my own, you know, Twitter following, that's me trying to provide value to others. And again, you see these viral tweets, you see, you know, 1 million views. And it's like, I really want that because that can help out so much,

I don't want to write content like that. Like there's the thread boys, there's the hot takes, there's the memes and it's like, yeah, I could do that. And like, maybe that would work out well, but for me, I'm like, I just, kind of write as I talk and yeah, maybe it's not the best delivery method. I've used other tools to like rewrite with AI. So there's like type fully, which says scheduling AI rewriting all this stuff and a disclaimer, I do have a subscription. I kind of like it,

I don't want to be too attached to it. Like there's things where I want to be able to write from my own brain, get it out there and see how that affects the community.

Bennett Bernard (26:37.268)
Yeah, I have type fully too. And I think, I think I've used it like once, you know, so everything I post on LinkedIn is completely me. You know, I just, I, yeah, I don't like the AI rewriters. I feel like it loses you a little bit. You know, it kind of, it almost like washes away, you know, those, those imperfections and those, that weird cadence that you might talk with, like that's part of who you are. You know, like I speak in a very like dry way, I think a lot. And I write very dry. Like I know

Bradley Bernard (26:42.963)
Okay.

Bradley Bernard (26:51.257)
Yeah, it does.

Bennett Bernard (27:06.206)
Like I'm definitely not like the best copywriter in the world. Like I couldn't like sell something like that. But, you know, I feel comfortable with what I write and like what the intent of the, know, audience is for. But one thing that you were saying, or as you're talking about, you know, the algorithm kind of doing its work, I was going to ask you something I've noticed and it's funny because I noticed it and I go, that's super weird. Like what are the odds? But then I'm like, well, that's exactly what happened to you, Bennett. So basically like I have like my real estate.

Twitter folks I have like tech Twitter folks I follow and then I have like just completely random like accounting people and like and just all other kind of people and like every now and then I'll see like someone who I would consider like completely like outside of like real estate like maybe like in the accounting space like a really obscure 200 follower account that I follow just because I really think they have like a really cool unique perspective I'll see them interact with like another real estate account that I follow

That's also like pretty obscure but they're like interacting and it's like almost like a weird like Avengers moment where I'm like these two like this crossover of like these different Twitter groups like shouldn't happen But I think the algorithm like the same reason that I followed both of them like they must follow each other But like it was and every time I see that happen this happened a few times I'm always like why would they like know each other but it's like or why would they like talk online like they're completely different worlds But you know, that's probably how I ended up following them because it was like you should follow blah blah blah Or they probably were promoting

you know, that obscure accounts tweets and I went and followed it. But yeah, it was like this weird like crossover where I was like, you know, these, these worlds are colliding. They seem like they should be separate online. But yeah, it was interesting when I would see that

Bradley Bernard (28:42.788)
Mm

Bradley Bernard (28:46.842)
Yeah, I've seen that with Laravel, the PHP community and the JavaScript community. There's a whole bunch of debates. I think we touched on it a little bit, but I had that moment where, you know, I had my list of 40, you know, Laravel folks that had my, you know, 20 or 10 TypeScript, JavaScript, full stack devs. And they kind of got into a battle of, know, what's the best framework JavaScript versus PHP, all this kind of nonsense. And yeah, it was cool. It's like you follow these people and you see their content in specific light.

And then you see these other people interact with them. You're like, you I'm logging on to get insights from each separate group, but seeing them come together, you know, for the drama and kind of the entertainment is great, but also, you know, there's useful conversations that come out of it for the most part. so, so I felt that too. And back to your AI writing point, I felt that a hundred percent where I write something, I write it, or I send it through tight fully, which says the rewrite with AI and they have a whole.

set of options to choose. The one that I went to, you know, 99 % of the time was make it more punchy. essentially it was kind of delivering a bit of wowness or a bit of almost like clickbait. Honestly, it was like, how could it transform the text to be more showy and flashy, delivering the same sentences, but in a more like click baby manner. So I used to write my tweets and then run it through this rewrite, make it punchier.

And it was great because the interface made it really easy to retry. So I'd have my original tweet. I'd have my AI tweet and I could just go through iterations. So retry, retry, retry. Usually I'd done something good and post it. But then in the back of my head, I'm thinking, well, if I'm relying on this tool to come out with content that modifies my content, like if I ever post something off the cuff without using this, people are going to be like, this sucks. You know, this isn't what I followed this guy for. And I don't like this content. And maybe it's not to that extreme,

It felt like I was being dependent on it. I think the tight fully product not sponsored, but it has a ton of other tools like analytics and scheduling. but the one that I leaned on the most was AI rewriting because in the days of, like you said, trying to get more eyeballs, how can you deliver something that just has the storytelling aspect? kind of reminds me of one time I wrote a really long thread, essentially telling this debugging story. And in my head, I thought, this story is great.

Bradley Bernard (31:11.29)
I have developers that follow me. This is going to blow up on Twitter because I'm going to write kind of a jokey funny storytelling of me just kind of fumbling through what should have been a 30 minute fixed, you know, be a 10 hour ordeal. So I wrote the whole thing, publish it and was like, feeling really good about it. No AI rewrites or anything. And then I think I got like five likes and like two comments and I spent maybe an hour writing the thread, maybe even more than that hour and a half writing it. And I'm just thinking.

Bennett Bernard (31:32.532)
Hmm.

Bradley Bernard (31:39.756)
It's crazy because you spend all this time writing and you have a goal in your head. Like you're sharing it to share it, but you're also sharing it to grow your audience and do that. And it received no positive feedback. Didn't blow up. And I see all these other threads that seem stupid or mean to me. I don't know how long it took, but then they blow up and I'm like, you know, maybe I shouldn't try so hard. I, you know, maybe just post. So I like posting about don't think twice. Don't hit an AI tool.

and just see what happens because I think that's a valid way to do it. Although the fast track of getting all these eyeballs and followers does feel like, you know, go write a meme, go write a thread, go use AI. It's like, I don't think that long -term holds up unless you're, you know, gung -ho on doing that all the

Bennett Bernard (32:22.728)
Yeah, and just in case you're hearing any background noise we have a thunderstorm going on right now So if that's coming through then you're enjoying an Arizona thunderstorm ambiance with the podcast But yeah, I mean I think what you're saying makes total sense and you know with It's a weird way because I think a lot of times on LinkedIn, especially I don't know as much about Twitter I'm sure this happens a lot, but you can clearly see it on LinkedIn and in my opinion where

someone's writing something with AI and there's like AI responses and it's almost like if it's just to like if AI is writing it and then like half the people that are responding are just like AI like auto reply people then like it's almost like this weird thing of like the computer is just we're just posting it for the computer to read and like we don't even really care about the content and you know there's a lot of that I feel like where it's just like you know if we are taking something that's like a succinct

But it doesn't sound punchy or it doesn't sound as like, you know thread doesn't make a nice Twitter thread But we're like expanding it to make it like be a Twitter thread like we're losing like we're losing ourself just for the algorithm almost, you know, and it's like Yeah to me. I just that it's almost like a hypocrisy. I guess I just I struggle with that because I just feel like I'm not being genuine and you know, it might be the shortcut to do something but you know, there's like

Morality is not the right word, but there's like I said authenticity issue that comes with taking those shortcuts if it's not being True to yourself or true to the content that you're trying to promote and you're trying to make it more Extravagant or more, you know viral the one thing I would say that I've done that was actually really helpful was I did then we talked about like continuous improvement and like continuous learning and a previous podcast One of the courses I took from you to me was like a copywriting

so like how to like write effective copy because that's something that like I definitely desperately need and for me that that's way different from like You know you put in the effort like you're learning how to write copy like you as like a human being or learning how to write copy and Wanting to apply it to your you whatever you're trying to sell or just your own writing for like a business situation like that's different to me than just

Bennett Bernard (34:47.208)
letting the machine do it and not like understanding it. You know what mean? Like there's a psychology behind those, like behind how you copyright and do that well. And I think people, it's one thing to use AI, but then like also understand that philosophy or that psychology. But you know, a of times people are just doing it, like you said, as a shortcut. Like you remember when Grammarly came out years and years and years ago, I was not a fan of it. Cause I'm just like, it's gonna like just, you know, like that's the word.

your own writing, you know, because you're just gonna be too reliant on it. Yeah, so yeah, I'm not a fan of those Shortcuts, I guess.

Bradley Bernard (35:21.902)
Yeah, I think, yeah, I, I've definitely dipped my toes in using a lot of the AI rewriting, but probably moving forward. And as I write more, like I want to get it out there. want to tell people what I'm working on, but at the same time, you know, not go through the lens of kind of the ultra filter, because I have an objective. I have a strategy. have like, you know, a direction. And then I feel like the algorithm points me in a different direction and AI also points me in a different direction. And it's

Yes, that can work, but it doesn't feel long -term sustainable. And also it doesn't feel like me. I'd rather have, like you said, spelling mistakes or, you know, maybe a more boring presentation, but some people will like it. I think my most popular tweet I've ever had, which really got me the taste of, like this is what life would be like if I wrote these crazy, you know, popular tweets was there's this guy who had quit meta, started his indie hacker journey on Twitter and posted about it. And so I

you know, the TLDR of his long tweet was like, Hey, I was making 300k meta. I quit my job. I'm starting to create like content for developers that can help them teach AI using next JS. And I had thought about writing this tweet so many times because I had also quit my job at meta also making similar amounts of money, but it just felt like so click baby. And like, you know, just like getting people to look at your content. so I didn't write

But he wrote it and so I jumped in the comments, of, you know, said, Hey, nice to meet you. also, you know, started the same journey. like yada yada. then. Like right after I posted that tweet, didn't think anything of it. And I think over the next 24, 48 hours, I got like at least 250 followers. think the tweet had like 12 K views. bunch of people were following me from that one single reply.

the guy who posted the original tweet reached out to me and we kind of chatted about meta and what he's working on. But it was, you know, zero effort. I think I did it on a car ride while I was on vacation. I was like, that's cool. Another meta guy had quit and started his own thing. Like, I'm just going to reply saying me too. Like literally is maybe I, you 200 characters, me too, but essentially nothing with any efforts. And that blew up and it worked out well for me. Gained a bunch of followers

Bradley Bernard (37:41.678)
I was like, is this what it's like? Cause I was kind of writing his fame or his coattails of all this effort he had spent to write this juicy story with a hook, just to get all these eyeballs. So I was kind of inserting myself of like, Hey, I'll take some of that, you know, kind of in the same boat, you know, more or less. And yeah, it was a interesting experience because I felt a little bad commenting on it. Cause I was like, you know, if this does do well, I'll be, you know, with him. but I don't think he really cared.

probably drew more views to his tweet, but yeah, it was the first taste that I'd ever had of like writing a low effort tweet to get lots and lots of followers out of

Bennett Bernard (38:19.41)
Yeah, well and I think now, you know, like you said clickbait like I think people are getting maybe wiser or more selective to clickbait and I know that those threads like still do well, but again, I think it's like I don't want to like curse on here, but it's like it's not it's just like trolling almost like it's not like deep it's not like authentic and I feel like there's a shift now that I've just noticed and I'd be curious if you noticed to of people that are just being more

Bradley Bernard (38:29.881)
Mm

Bennett Bernard (38:49.052)
Genuine and like putting out their work and not necessarily being clickbaity but helping others and like maybe like putting out information for free or Engaging more with people and in a way that's like not trying to be like salesy or not trying to like, know Hey, you can find the whole thing on my course you know, like there's and I think that is being appreciated

Ultimately, I think when you do that, when you have like an environment of people that like support each other and I'm not in the Laravel community, but like I follow a lot of the Laravel people because of you and just because of my like tan tangent tech interest. But you know, that's community where I feel like a lot of people like support each other and it's like, this person's doing something really cool over here. Like let's go support them or they release a new product. Like, well, we got to get that. They release it. It's almost like it's like that goodwill that you build up by being authentic, but also

kind and supportive to others, it kind of comes back around. I feel like that's almost like a movement or a trend I've seen that's almost like a reversal of the click -baity, thread boy culture.

Bradley Bernard (39:54.104)
Yeah. And I think the more value you provide for free, the more followers you get. And then that will in turn help, you know, once you have that distribution, once you release a product and you have this follower base that believes in you and trusts you, then it's, you know, you're off the races. So it's the approach that I tried building in public, sharing things. Part of me wants to share the product thinking, the technology thinking of why I these decisions. The other ones are like learning. So if I ran into

a hard area of the code base or, you know, a complex feature, how I overcame that challenge. I think there's a much smaller audience that's interested in that. So I didn't spend too much time there, but yeah, essentially giving out a ton for free to get people on your side, understanding what you work on and why. And then, you know, if you have a content course or if you have a product that comes out of that, then people are like ready to open their wallets. And I think this is a very, very long -term play.

I say play, but it's not really, I would say, you know, be yourself, be authentic and give that value. Don't do it for like, Hey, I know that I'm going to cash this out later because people can see right through that. like there's people that I follow that have tons and tons of followers still reach out and help people all the time. there's other people that I follow that, you know, do all the threads have very scheduled content that feels very AI like don't respond to anyone who comments on their tweets because it's scheduled. You know, they're not

really on their device, they're probably bulk writing tweets and scheduling that. And that's that. And it's the people that are human, the people that help others, the people that have been sharing knowledge for years, those people's reputation is, you know, 10 times higher than the thread person you see on your Twitter feed, you know, every week. like those, those are the people that I'm aspiring to be, but I think the journey to get there is much, much longer. It's kind of like putting in that routine effort week over week.

like having a posting goal or, you know, not being too tied to the numbers. Cause again, I've spent a lot of effort on tweets that really flopped in an essence and being too tied to like, how many views did I get? How many likes did I get? It just feels really bad. And so it's like, disregard that do what you think is fun. Enjoy it because if you don't, it's going to be super, you know, painful. And then just put out good content. hopefully that'll draw an audience and the stuff that you're interested in. There's at least enough people that are.

Bradley Bernard (42:16.044)
on the other side to receive that. That's the end goal.

Bennett Bernard (42:19.88)
Yeah Yeah, and I feel like you know When you set up your expectations for like this thread is so amazing. It's gonna go viral this tweets So amazing it's gonna go viral like disappointment only comes when Expectations are X and reality is why like if you don't have those expectations, you're not gonna be disappointed and I think that's something that Originally on I wasn't good about but now and almost immediately right away. I was like, okay this is like a like you said a long game like this

You're not here to go viral. You're here to like build credibility and build trust and you know who you are as a person, not just for the skills that you are able to do, but who you are as a person and like how you, how you operate. And, know, you mentioned like scheduling tweets and not, not engaging with, you know, people that reply. And it's almost like you'd think that like scheduling tweets and like being consistent and like having like an upload schedule that almost sounds.

like hard or like that sounds like it's a lot of work and it is, but I think it's harder to, you know, do that engagement constantly and like, you know, be present to people when they need your help or when they need your support and like just putting in that like extra effort. I people can tell, you know, I think you said, you made the comment of like, you know, people can tell when something is click baited. They can tell when it's AI written or they can tell when it's, you know, thread boy.

And, you know, I think people are able to identify like what takes extra work and appreciate that more versus something that like, this person just used AI to write this and I'm not going to read it. Or if I do read it, I'm not going to take it that seriously just because, you know, it's just some, you know, chat GPT thoughts that don't really apply to me as a human being, or, you know, just aren't valuable other than just generic words on a tweet, you

Bradley Bernard (44:11.544)
Yeah, I think for Twitter, there's lots of times I'll write these long tweets or I'll write a thread, but it's not really a clickbait thread. It's just like my, you know, thought process from top to bottom. But then I just never get it over to a blog post. And that is the worst feeling because I have so many good threads on Twitter and I say good, you know, subjectively, I think they're, good. And I've always wanted to build a tool or hand roll my own tool to get those onto my blog.

My blog is kind of my higher effort surface where I'll spend time to intentionally write content, review it, get images, like really an engaging article. partly storytelling, but partly like technical deep content that I think is specific to whatever I'm aiming at. But it's, you know, I've spent a lot of time on Twitter over the past 12 months sharing what I'm working on. And yeah, I think my blog would get so many more visitors, like be higher ranked in Google.

with all this content that's just sitting there on Twitter, because people see it, it's in the algorithm. After a day or two, it's gone and all that effort is gone. again, I think 80, 20, like 80 % of my tweets were minimal effort and that 20 % either I spent a lot more time with higher expectations or spent time just trying to test and see things. And I think across all those tweets I sent, at least like 30%, maybe 40 % probably could be turned into a series of articles, series of blog posts.

either connecting multiple tweets or individual tweet threads being, you know, a full on article. there's tons of AI products out there that are kind of transforming different mediums where you'll have a YouTube video during a blog post. It'll, you know, do X, Y, and Z. I don't think I've seen one for Twitter yet. And I would love to have one, just because yeah, I feel like I've written so much good content that at this point is absolutely hard to discover and more or less gone with it, which kind of sucks.

Bennett Bernard (46:06.142)
Yeah and you know, it's important we didn't talk about like your target audience and like, you know wanting it to be like people that either can relate to you or like aspire to like do what you're doing at some point in their future and it reminded me of something that Jason stats said who we've talked about a lot on this podcast, but you know, he's like an accounting, you know thought leader. I'm sure he hates that title probably

You know, it gives a lot of thoughts about like this accounting space and he said something You know on a podcast or a YouTube video that I thought was like super interesting and applied to what you were saying just now Where you have all this great content like for your blog like these threads and maybe they didn't take off as like viral threads but they're probably like highly technical and like super useful to people trying to build iOS apps and You know, he said something the effect

Like the third grader isn't impressed by like the adult that has like a job and a career. The third grader is impressed by like the fifth grader because that is like, they're closer to that. Like to them, like that's more realistic and like they like, you know, can see like, once I'm two grades up from here, that's what I'll be. Whereas like an adult, it's like just too far away and almost in a weird way. And I think about it too, like in my own situation, you know, like it's one thing, like say I wanted to be the CFO of a public company, like, you

That's so far like down the road. It doesn't even like if I if I'm reading like a CFO's blog It's like not that applicable to me. I don't really care that much about it but like there's like maybe like a VP or like a know senior vice president that's like still you know ways from where I am today, but it's not as far and so it's like those are the things that like I'm more interested in and like I feel like for your own blog content like people that are building iOS apps especially like you can even niche it down even more people that are building iOS apps and

you know, payment space with split my expenses or when they're building things like in the AI space, like chatty Butler, like that content that you have, like, you know, maybe to 30 people, it's super valuable. Maybe it doesn't have 3000 views, but like to those 30 views or whatever, it's like that content is just what they needed. And it's nice to think of it that way too, because I feel like that's, it's a bit more like you're helping people just by sharing your own thoughts, you know, and it's a selfless thing to do, which I think is appreciated.

Bradley Bernard (48:28.696)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. I try to do a monthly blog post and don't look too deeply in my history. I think I've hit monthly, but probably need to write one for July. But yeah, I think when I think of the blog, I think of something that's much more polished, something that's more kind of aligned with what I want to look like and how I want to present myself. Where I think of it as Twitter and building in public. It's like raw thoughts, raw emotion. As I'm fighting the battles, you know, this is how I feel and this is...

what I'm going through. for the blog, it's like, Hey, for the past month, I've been building this feature. What can I spend a lot of my time on to help level up people who are fighting that battle, but you know, can use my experience to guide their future. So that's something that I've really liked doing, but yeah, I think just thinking about the void in Twitter and how much content I've had that isn't out there. Like, yeah, I might have to go through the tweets, you know, next weekend and kind of pull out a few nuggets and backdate a few blog posts because

There are some that I've spent a lot of time on and thinking about how it's just completely gone feels kind of bad. yeah, maybe I'll have an update of future pod episode of how that went.

Bennett Bernard (49:39.88)
Yeah, we're getting some live ideas cooking right now. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. What are your thoughts? I'm curious what your thoughts are on. You do like a monthly blog. Personally, I feel like video is like not the next frontier. That's way too dramatic. But like video is more and more important. I think being like out there and showing that you not just have a face, but like you, you know, it's easier to BS again and something posting something online like in writing it versus

Bradley Bernard (49:42.648)
Yeah, I'm thinking.

Bennett Bernard (50:09.374)
Being on video, can still BS, of course, but like it gets harder to kind of fake that I think. And I'm just curious what your thoughts are on like vlogs. Like would you ever consider doing like a vlog about the technical content you're working

Bradley Bernard (50:23.854)
I think I would, but it enters that tier of much higher effort. So I can write a tweet, you know, two minutes, three minutes. I can write a blog post hour, two hours, three hours max. and I think when it comes to video, we have the pod. It's very much a real time effort. Yes, there's slight editing here and there, but it's not, you know, it's us being humans and us chatting about things. When I think of video content, I think of very produced, very to the point.

but also a good storytelling opportunity as well. So I've done like for fun videos in the past, just on random things. I haven't done anything probably in the past 10 years on any video content, but I'm a huge video content consumer myself, like learning materials. If I have video text and audio, like I jump immediately to video. So I think I would like to do it, but sometimes I do struggle to write that monthly blog post. Like I'll be honest, it's something I want to do and I know it's valuable both

me getting down my thoughts and just to help other people. But sometimes I just feel so busy. I'm like, okay, I'll get to that, you know, maybe a month and a half, maybe two months and I'll backdate it. You know, I'll get there. but I think for video, I would even drag my feet a little bit more where I'd be like, okay, maybe a video every month and that's going to take me 12 hours and very produced. So I feel like reducing that burden to get me to post.

is a big thing. I think with video, the bar just jumped straight to the top. You're competing with people who have the perfect lighting and the perfect audio, like really good editing. And I think I lack a lot in those skills of video where you can get pretty deep and feel very professional. So I think starting out, like setting expectations correctly, but I think I would like to, I think the podcast is a good foray into the video and getting more comfortable on camera and talking about things, but I think there's a whole nother level

having a 10, 20 minute, 30 minute technical video, making it very to the point and polished and trying to find the right level of the audience to how to dig deep into these things. Because I think for me, like building Chatty Butler, I could talk about how I built WebSockets, which allows asynchronous events from server to client. Something that's a meaty topic on mobile or web and then diving deep into that, just

Bradley Bernard (52:44.868)
You know, it would be fun, but again, I think it's a lot of effort. I'm not yet there to have the perfect production workflow for video editing, but I would like to, I think it would be kind of the next key. yeah, speaking of next frontier, I think it is like it truly feels like, you know, you can be yourself. You can have something really high value. I think people really notice it. Like you can write a good blog post and people can reshare it, but sometimes they won't read it. I feel like video, can turn it on. can kind of sit back and you're not distracted.

Like you read a blog article, a text comes in, you leave, you don't come back. But for video, I'm like very dialed, you know, and I feel like it gets your full attention and you're usually like impressed that, this person put this together. I recognize the effort and I've gotten value out of it. So I think it builds a lot in terms of credibility.

Bennett Bernard (53:28.712)
Yeah, and I think yeah, it makes sense and like for me videos are come more and more important You know since we've been doing this podcast But then also just thinking about like the quality of work that I do and the type of work that I do One thing that really turned me on to it actually was and it was a bit random but I had to take my car into the dealership and I won't I won't say the car's name cuz I don't want to I don't get sued but it's a horrible car I have instant buyers regret buying this

But, know, neither here or there. So I was in the dealership, as I usually am with this car, and they did like the maintenance walkthrough and they recorded a video. I think it was just like the employee with like an iPhone, I think. But, you know, iPhone cameras are so good now. And they record like the walkthrough of like, if I was under the car, looking at, your engine belt is broken over here, your coolant's leaking over there. And as much as I hated the message of the video, I was like, this is actually

kind of cool to like see all that. And like, I'm not like a big car person myself. And I kind of thought about it in terms of like, you know, for my own work, you know, like, and if I were to ever like go off and do my own, like accounting firm, there's some firms that already do this. you know, this is definitely not revolutionary, but you know, if I were to go and do my own thing, it would be important to me to like provide like video lock throughs of like people's financials and like you're explaining just like

Power mechanics explaining what was wrong with my car like you're explaining. Hey, this is your financial performance for this month or you know This is these are areas that you need to work on, know to get revenue up blah blah blah So I think like having those recorded videos is just a better medium to communicate Things in a lot of ways like you said like you'll watch a video more likely than you're gonna read something and I think a lot of people are like that too and But even not just that like also like for my work at my current role I used to

Being on camera has always been super important to me. Like don't want to really join meetings and be off camera unless like I'm not feeling well or just like, you know, it's just a quick catch up. But I think going into video settings, we're going to be on video and whether it's like a video call or, know, you're recording a walkthrough or something that you're doing and like being present, bringing the right energy to those meetings or to that walkthrough, whatever you're recording is super underappreciated and it goes a long way

Bennett Bernard (55:53.94)
just like the quality of what you're doing, you know? And the last thing I'd say on that note is because I'm currently working on some, I won't say vlogs, but like video content about like technical programming with accounting and like how to make those things all work together. And I've been surprised at how much easier it is for me to just get on the computer and like record my screen and like just code or do stuff in Excel.

Versus like writing, you know, I'm just not a natural writer. So for me, it's easier to just like record and like talk and be like, is what I'm doing here. Like I haven't had to edit it yet, which I think is where a lot of the time suck comes in. But, you know, it's definitely been surprising how like low friction just getting on, turning on the camera, turning on the mic and just hitting record and like doing your process has been, it was, it's definitely even easier than I thought it'd be like on that side of things. So yeah, it's, it's interesting how.

you know, my perception of video has changed probably since we've been starting doing this podcast, to be

Bradley Bernard (56:58.382)
Yeah, I think video has the human touch too, where in the age of AI, any text, like you don't know if that's a bot, you don't know if that's a human. Like we had talked about people will chat me on my expenses website thinking I'm a bot, you know, once a week, like straight up just, you know, this is some AI bot. I'd say, Hey, no, it's me. I think when you go into the video realm, AI isn't good enough to create a video, you know, with anybody's face, animating the lips, having the same voice. We're getting there. And I think it's close

sadly almost too close because I think if that's removed, you know, for us where I can create a video taking my face, animating everything, I'm typing out the text or like AI is typing out the transcript or whatever I'm doing. Kind of a sad day, honestly, but yeah, I think for now what we have is if you can make that video and you have your face and you have, you know, a lot of the good lighting and good setup and just good flow, I think of a video, like people recognize that as high efforts

repeatedly putting in that high effort, you might not get a ton of views. you know, like I was talking about the Twitter metrics, you can get very attached to those things, especially when you're actively trying to grow. But if you can get better at the task at hand, making better videos, having better quality, like optimizing your mic, your lighting, your timing, putting all that effort in is going to pay off. And I think like there's tons of YouTubers out there who are putting out videos right now, probably don't have an audience. then, you know, three years from now, two years from

are gonna be like, yeah, I remember when I used to have 100 subs and no one used to follow me. Now I'm like, you know, making good money with video content. Like you gotta start somewhere. So, you know, hearing you talk about hitting record, I feel that, but I feel that with writing a blog article where I think about it for three weeks, what I'm gonna write about. I don't get down to it till I start writing, but once I start writing it flows. So sometimes I think, I have this in my head where I have to hit this bar for the blog.

But if I just start writing, I'll get there and I don't need to like overthink it. so maybe it's the same with video or if I started out, I would just kind of go see how that ended up being and we'll probably be fine. but yeah, probably not as good as a lot of the, you know, pretty impressive technical or like course video content out there. think people have really honed in, especially in the remote work era, getting good lighting and getting a good desk set up, having this like very presentable camera, like, you know, video meeting presentation.

Bradley Bernard (59:22.826)
is big. think like a lot of the interviews I've taken recently are on video and I'm talking to folks both like doing a coding interview, doing a design or like a behavioral interview and having people like it, you really notice like the quality of mics, the quality of lighting, and you can tell the people who are really engaged, like lots of times the people with a good equipment are very engaged and awesome people to talk to. Not to say that people with less equipment aren't, but you can really tell when people are passionate about it

spend time like having a good setup and then delivering like being, you know, very energetic and charismatic person. So I feel like it all goes hand in hand to try to look good, try to perform the best, put in all that effort. And again, hopefully it pays off. There's no guarantee. I think everything is, you know, up in the air, but spending long -term effort putting in, you know, your best work is where you're going to see hopefully the best returns.

Bennett Bernard (01:00:15.538)
Yeah, well, I feel like it's it's like compounding and I think like Einstein said like compounding is like the eighth wonder of the world like you meant it for more of like a financial perspective but You know like but learning how to you know Get your lighting right learning how to record like there's a balance where you don't want to become a full -time video editor of course but I do feel like that is you know, it's an important detail that's becoming more and more important in this age of remote work in this age

Bradley Bernard (01:00:19.086)
Mm

Bennett Bernard (01:00:43.016)
It's like a digital first impression, you and you want to make a good first impression. It's like you wouldn't show up to a job interview back in the day with like a t -shirt and jeans. Maybe, maybe you coders would, but like traditionally, you know, he wouldn't. but, know, and so now it's a little bit different. You're taking interviews, you know, via zoom and you you want to give off the best first impression that you can.

Bradley Bernard (01:00:45.284)
Mm -hmm.

Bennett Bernard (01:01:07.71)
That's actually a great segue into one thing I want to ask you about was how the interviews been. Cause I know last time we talked, you were mentioning that you were doing the interviews, had some lined up and I was curious if you wanted to share any updates on that or kind of what, how it's been so

Bradley Bernard (01:01:22.746)
Yeah, I'd be happy to. Going pretty well. There's quite a mix of companies that I'm talking to. I think the difference of being an iOS engineer and in the interview loop for a mobile engineer is that there's definitely a lot of content to cover. there's inside the iOS realm, there's Swift, the new popular programming language. There's Objective -C. Inside of Apple frameworks, there's Swift UI, which is kind of this declarative UI. And then there's UIKit.

So that's all in the mobile realm. On top of that, as a general software engineer, you're getting, you know, quizzed on algorithms and data structures. So as I approach these things, it's definitely a little challenging on how to prepare correctly because you can slice it in any, every different way. Different companies put emphasis on different parts where you can think of the big tech like the Google and the meadows of the world are putting more emphasis on general algorithms. Whereas the smaller companies, maybe like Airbnb

kind of these mobile first companies are really putting emphasis on like mobile coding or iOS coding in specifics. So they're not quizzing you on data structures, but they're quizzing you on, can you open up Xcode, the IDE? Can you code in app from scratch? Can you add a feature? So something you're doing much more day -to -day work. whereas some of the larger companies are very much like, we have a standard interview process. We'll give you some mobile questions, but it's mostly like general software engineering.

It's been a bit of a challenge this upcoming week. Definitely have a lot of interviews scheduled. as I look at the interviews, I pretty much tailor it my preparation to exactly what that interview is. So if I know the company is very iOS specific, I'll, you know, dabble in Xcode and build out a few mock apps, just various features that, you know, companies could ask me. But if I'm doing, you know, algorithms and data structures and more general approach for software, straight to leak code

LeakCode is the premier platform for having this giant set of questions. All these questions have a difficulty tags, like an easy, medium, hard. And a lot of times for these interviews, it's one or two questions, medium or above. And so they'll ask you a question. They'll say, Hey, can you code this? You have to walk through talking out loud, coding it in real time. there's tons of patterns you can apply to the questions, but then you finish one and straight to the next. And so a whole learning curve for that as well, because

Bradley Bernard (01:03:45.819)
There's so many different questions out there. It's impossible to memorize all of them. It's kind of nice when you see one you've already seen, that's great. But ideally you're learning the kind of principles and pattern matching to say for this specific problem, there's maybe three or four approaches I could take. And then in the interview, like figuring out what that looks like. So yeah, getting pretty deep into it, having good success, depending on the company that I talked to kind of dictates the interview duration cycle timing and kind

focus area where that's iOS in general, but yeah, making good progress. Don't have too much to share today, but yeah, think week over week we're getting closer talking to a great set of companies that I'm excited about. and I think it's, it's going to be turning out pretty well, but yeah, still got to get through it. There's, know, these onsite interviews that I'm starting to approach like five hour or deals, five and a half hours of just, you know, back to back talking to these folks

can definitely be pretty exhausting, but it's exciting to like, it's nice being able to talk to different companies and like have that potential future where when you do have a job, you know, you're at a company. Things are kind of as is, you know, when you're in this job seeking mode, there's so much opportunity out there and it's sometimes overwhelming to see, Hey, should I go here? Should I go there? If I have the opportunity, but other times it's so cool to get the insight into a company and see how they operate and just like meet new folks. you're just meeting people left and right. And it's so cool

you know, see people with so much passionate energy and you're like, okay, I want to join that company because, you know, the conversations that I had with this person were fantastic.

Bennett Bernard (01:05:19.69)
Yeah. Culture culture is super important and you know, it's easy to be like a jobs a job and I just want to get my paycheck. But like if you want to stick around and enjoy what you're doing, like make sure you enjoy the people that you work with for sure. One thing I was going to ask you on that real quick, cause we were talking about earlier, I'm assuming you use like your podcasting equipment and the interviews. Is that how it's been?

Bradley Bernard (01:05:41.306)
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. So if I have like only a behavioral, I kind of set up my camera, which I have right now. We'll set up the mic and do it. But a lot of times right now I'm doing like a coding interview and a behavioral interview. In that case, I usually just use my laptop and I use my external monitor. So I don't have the mic and I don't have the camera. And it's, it's not the same presentation. Like I don't have kind of the eye level camera. I'm much more like the traditional.

Bennett Bernard (01:05:44.308)
Okay.

Bennett Bernard (01:06:00.773)
Mm, okay.

Bradley Bernard (01:06:08.74)
kind of laptop dialer where my head's at the bottom of the screen, you know, it's kind of blurred background, et cetera. But I would love to have it, you know, the full setup, but haven't perfected the full setup at home, the podcast, I whip it out, everything, you know, try my best to make it look good. But I think for interview time, I'm like much more focused on like, how can I be the utmost comfortable and like efficient? And so haven't quite gotten there, but I have taken a few behavior rules with this setup. And when I do, it feels great. I'm like, I feel like I'm comfortable in this lighting

things look better than what it looked like on the MacBook. But yeah, doing the coding ones and behavioral, there's like no way I could have this set up, unfortunately.

Bennett Bernard (01:06:46.524)
Yeah, yeah, the microphone gets in the way a little bit with your hands if it's you have that mic like that Yeah, totally Well cool. Awesome. Well, should wrap it up Brad and I guess jump into our bookmarks here and then call this one

Bradley Bernard (01:07:00.676)
Sounds good.

Bennett Bernard (01:07:03.956)
I'll let you go first on this

Bradley Bernard (01:07:06.082)
Okay. Yep. So for this week, I have bookmarked on X, kind of an exciting one. this is from RudeRankRyam and he posted a link to Apple's new developer documentation for AppIntense. So Apple and their latest WWDC released AppIntense for Apple intelligence. So AppIntense have always existed. Essentially it's a way

talk to your iPhone as a developer and say, this is behavior that my app provides. What just came out in the recent iOS 18 .1 beta was the Apple intelligence support. So now you can choose across 12 different domains. And these domains are like kind of categorizing certain actions. So this can be like, you know, working with a browser so you can open a tab, close a tab, bookmark something, clear a history. There's all these

categories, there's browser, there's camera, et cetera. What your app can do is say, I can do something in that domain. So I can open a tab to a specific URL. I can take a photo. So it's essentially providing that Apple intelligence layer to app developers. App developers work hard to create their app and then expose these AI actions and AI features. And so I've seen a blog article from a different developer saying,

App Intents as a framework on Apple platforms is like the number one framework to know because of AI and because of how much the system uses it where I think four or five years ago, one really cared about it because there wasn't shortcuts and there wasn't Apple intelligence. Now that shortcuts exist, they use App Intents. Now that Apple intelligence will exist or maybe next year sometime, that's going be a way where people can look at their phone, have your app open.

like invoke Apple intelligence and just say things. And when people say things, it'll then look at what your app can provide and what it can do, invoke some of those actions that you've provided as a developer, and then boom, things are done automatically. So a pretty big moment for developers. I think it's kind of a groundbreaking release on Apple's side for the new beta. I imagine, you know, every single app company, like literally everybody will adopt this from big company to small company because

Bradley Bernard (01:09:24.356)
The expectation is Apple's going to do well on this and people are going to want to interact and use AI for your own app. So I'll share it in the show notes, but I haven't got to play with it yet. Lots of, I think there's like so many pages to go through, but a huge release on Apple's side and pretty exciting.

Bennett Bernard (01:09:41.512)
Yeah, that's cool. It reminds me a little bit. I haven't looked at the article that you linked at all, but I think the Alexa SDK talks about like intents and like invocations and stuff like that because I think I mentioned either a podcast or two ago, I was working on like an Alexa skill with like Hello Kitty. And so the like intents and like invocations kind of reminded me of that, what you were saying. So yeah, sounds cool.

Bradley Bernard (01:10:07.438)
Yeah, it sounds similar.

Bennett Bernard (01:10:10.794)
Cool, mine is actually a bit different than usual, but I picked up a book a couple weeks ago at a recommendation from some people I work with, and it's called Being Human, but the spelling is not what you would normally consider, because it's actually the person's last name. So it was written by Judith Human, and she is a disability rights activist, so it's like an autobiography.

It's just really good. It was really good I don't normally read these kinds of books to be honest. I usually read like business books and like Like financial books so a bit different from my usual read but as I was reading through it, it was just very eye -opening You know, it's kind of talks about like her Her and then you know disability rights in general. They're pushed to getting things passed and

recognized in society. It's like the American Disability Act, I hope I'm not messing that up as I talk about this book. But there's a of really important legislation that I don't have, know, top of my notes here that she was a big part in like pushing forward and not just like on like the law side of things, but then also just like societal and acceptance and all that. So super good book. It's amazing, you know, how far things can come

one person's lifetime, especially with like diligent work that she was doing. she and then her whole team of like -minded folks. So yeah, really good book. It's not too long. I usually am always really good. 75 % through a book and that last 25 % is like pulling teeth for me to get through. But this one was really good all the way through. I think it was like 220 pages, I wanna say. Yeah, and I read on my phone like Kindle app. So I don't know if that like changes the pages at all, but yeah, it was just a great,

Bradley Bernard (01:11:46.298)
So how long was it? How many pages?

Okay, that's not too bad, yeah. That's not too bad at

Bennett Bernard (01:12:01.201)
open my phone up, just read it, read a chapter two at a time. Yeah, just a great book. So highly recommend, it's just a really cool story. Pretty impressive human, I think she's no longer with us. I she passed away a few years ago. Let me look that up, don't wanna, let me just look that up. I don't wanna be fact checked on that. Pretty sure, yeah, yeah.

Bradley Bernard (01:12:24.826)
I, yeah, I really should read more. The book that I have open on my nightstand is The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F -U -C -K. That one I think I'm a few chapters in, but yeah, that one, I really should finish that one. Thanks for the reminder.

Bennett Bernard (01:12:35.004)
Yeah, yeah, I that book.

Bennett Bernard (01:12:41.834)
Yeah, yeah reading it and yeah, she did pass away last year. I thought I Thought I had that right. I want to make sure Yeah, I know that book. I haven't read that book, but I got a big shelf in this closet here of books and More than I'd like to admit a lot of them are 80 a lot of them are 80 % read. So Yeah, I hey being authentic online baby. Here it is. Yeah Yeah, there's a one that I one that I want to finish I almost want

Bradley Bernard (01:13:01.078)
better than zero.

Bennett Bernard (01:13:10.954)
Reread it cuz I started reading it I put it down and it's been a long time. So I'm like I should probably read it but it was How to never split the difference I think is what it's called. It's by Chris Voss who's like an ex -fbi like hostage rescue person so it's about like negotiating and it's like Yeah, it's a really good book like really good. I just yeah, it's just 70 % through

Bradley Bernard (01:13:29.98)
I think I've heard of

Bennett Bernard (01:13:36.746)
I'm like, okay, I got it. I feel like I get all the good ideas from it. Then I'm like, okay, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go put this in the place. I don't need to finish this. But then I just have all these books with like either a folded corner or like a bookmark that are like three quarters of the way through. I hate that for myself, but you know, it's just a habit. but yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I got a, that's funny. Cause I was like, after I finished this book and I read it all the way through it, cause was, it was just, again, a great book.

Bradley Bernard (01:13:42.03)
Yeah,

Bradley Bernard (01:13:52.442)
Hey, that's authentic, you know, it is what it is.

Bennett Bernard (01:14:03.656)
But after I finished this one, was like, what book should I read next? And my wife's like, well, you have a bunch that you haven't finished that you could finish. And I was like, I was thinking of something new. But yeah, that's a fair point too. yeah, hey, accountability. Yeah, I'll go drop money on books and read half of them all day. Cool. All right, well, good stuff. Yeah.

Bradley Bernard (01:14:09.562)
Hold him back.

Bradley Bernard (01:14:25.888)
Awesome, awesome. Cool.

Bennett Bernard (01:14:30.846)
We'll wrap this one up good stuff Brad and yeah, we'll publish what this one on our usual channels and Cool. Have a good rest of your evening and do us all again next

Bradley Bernard (01:14:42.178)
Awesome, sounds good. See

Bennett Bernard (01:14:47.402)
Alright, cool. I'm going stop recording now.

Bradley Bernard (01:14:48.666)
Boom. Nice. We're at 114.