Laravel Creator Spotlight

Welcome back to the Laravel community

spotlight with me today is Jack McDade.

Welcome to the show, Jack.

And why don't you tell us a

little bit about yourself?

Thanks, Eric.

Yeah.

Uh, my name is Jack McDade and I think

that explains it all.

Uh, no, uh, so I'm

the creator of Stadimik.

That's what I do for, you know, kind of

my, my full main time, uh, gig.

Uh, it's a CMS built on Laravel.

Been around for 12 years and our team is

like up to five or six people now.

Um, so yeah, we're just kind of trying to

build like the best possible CMS ever.

And, um, when I'm not doing that, cause I

always have to scratch an itch, uh, um,

you know, I'm a designer and a developer,

so I've, um, released a design course

called radical design and most kind of

tinkering with some like silly ideas

on the side or whatever, but, uh, yeah,

between Stadimik and my side projects,

that's pretty much, uh, at least the

internet version of me.

Nice.

Um, so my, my first question, um,

is all about Stadimik like I want to, I

don't think I've ever heard this.

So I would love to hear

sort of the origin story.

Like how did you decide, Hey,

I'm going to create Stadimik.

Yeah.

So it was like 2000 end of 2011.

And I had been working on, uh, I kind of

had like a one, one or a one man

design studio sort of thing.

And then sometimes I had a second person,

we could tag team projects and I was

building, designing and building client

websites, uh, using at the time

expression engine, but always trying to

like find a CMS that, you know, was more

efficient or faster to, you know, just to

get stood up the way I wanted.

And I was just so frustrated by the, how

hard it was to maintain multiple

client sites when they all had databases

with the content in it.

So you'd have, so you have five clients

and one client would be like, oh yeah,

I need you to like add a blog to my site.

And you're like, well, I told you you

wanted one and you're

like, yeah, whatever.

Uh, I want it now.

And so like you'd work on the blog on, on

dev, but then they'd be updating

the content on the site.

And so the databases

aren't in sync anymore.

So what do you do?

You like, please stop editing the site or

you have to like recreate some of the

stuff in production or like copy it, like

custom SQL exports, whatever.

It was just always so painful.

And like, this is just 95%

of this is just the text.

It's literally HTML that's

like stuck in a database.

Why can't we put that stuff in a file and

then version control it that way I can

just do a get merge

and just like keep going.

So that was the idea.

Like, is it possible to build a CMS that

relied mostly on flat files instead

of a database for the content?

And, uh, yeah, I started hacking on the

idea and realized like, this is a little

bit, this is gonna

take forever by myself.

I found a buddy who wanted to hack on it

with me for a little while.

And we got a 1.0 out in

early, like June, 2012.

And, uh, yeah, it was, man, dude, the

internet was a different place.

12 years ago.

And just, I'm just laughing at how it was

built, how we sold it and everything.

But that's, that is the

origin story in a nutshell.

I love that.

I love that.

Yeah.

Cause so that was going to be actually,

you kind of let into it.

My next question is like, why did you

decide on the flat files versus, you

know, more of the sort of traditional

approach where it's just like, um, you

know, some sort of database.

Um, so, so you sort of

answered that already.

So that's pretty cool.

So you, you basically, you know, in those

early days, you wanted a better way to

like work with your clients and just pull

stuff down and not have to like sync

databases and do all that headache.

Even a two, when I had two people, me and

another guy, like the two of us trying

to sync on, uh, you know, a CMS build

with the database was like, you had to

have a remote database server and you're

both connected to it.

And like, it just, it just felt so janky.

Like, how is this so awkward in what felt

like the super modern 2012 is like the

internet, like we're not, we don't have

to use gifts to round

our corners anymore.

That we should be able to solve this.

And, uh, yeah, that, I mean, that is,

that is the reason why.

And, um, the problem with it though, is

like it hadn't been done before.

Like right around the same time, there

was like one or two others that came out,

uh, with, you know, totally different

approaches are built on different

frameworks or whatever, but kind of like

doing the flat file thing.

And it was a long road

of like educating people.

Like, uh, is this only for

tiny sites and the scale?

Like, where, what, how does it work?

And, you know, the early versions of

statemic didn't scale.

There was no caching.

There was no, like, it was

just raw, like PHP scanning, like

globbing file directories and stuff.

Um, but over the years, 12 years, there's

a lot of intelligence built in.

And I'm probably answering future

questions, but like it no longer

is a flat file only CMS.

Now we have drivers.

So you can do a database, you can use

Firebase, you could push it all into,

I don't know, Oracle, if you wanted to or

something, but like you can, you can

do whatever you want to now.

Um, but it still starts out of the box as

flat file, because in my

opinion, it is the easiest way to stand

up the one.o of a site.

And then we have a one, one command, you

run it and it like creates all your

migrations and like imports all your data

in the database and you could just

run on my suit, got to that.

So it's really, really flexible.

That's awesome.

So, so that is sort of, uh, that's sort

of your recommendation.

You know, when you first start with

statimic, just go with the flat files,

learn the system and

kind of go from there.

And if you, if you do feel like flat

files aren't the answer, then you can

always, you know, push it out to a

database if you needed to.

Yeah.

I mean, we've got it all

scripted out and automated.

It's like a really quick process.

So in my opinion, like when you are

building out a site and there are no

pages, when you're making your first

ones, but being able to find all and

find and replace in your content, being

able to just like version control,

all the changes is great.

And like, once you go to production,

depending on like why you might need

a database or why you not, like it's not

necessarily like speed, but it's.

If you have millions of entries, well,

now we're talking, that's like

a bottleneck for flat files, or if you

have, um, you know, really, really

huge entries with like, I don't know,

like hundreds of like chapters of books

or like something that's like really,

really, really long, you know, or, uh,

highly relational and you want to

actually use like

eloquent models and stuff.

Yeah.

There's like a number of reasons why you

wouldn't want to go flat file, but, um,

yeah, especially just the dev

workflow is the best workflow.

And it's, it's probably what 95% of

people using Stadimac can get away

with just using flat files that, you

know, I feel like you're talking

about more edge Casey stuff, um, where

most people aren't going to need that.

85 to 90, I'd say, but the ones that need

it, like need it, need it.

And it doesn't make sense for us.

Uh, you know, as a customer focused

product, you'd be like, well, sorry,

you gotta like, technically it does

everything you need it to accept

run fast, you know, like, yeah, but we

love the control panel.

We love the template and we love like how

it all is organized.

You're like, yeah, but

sorry, it's going to be slow.

Like, no, we had to solve it.

And that was Stadimac three was like,

when we rewrote it with, you know,

drivers for a data storage and yeah, I

think we still probably struggled

to like tell people that story, like

Stadimac can, like, it's not like it can

scale, like it can scale.

Don't worry about it.

You know, that's sad.

Yeah.

Well, and to, um, you sort of mentioned

that, but I think wasn't it

Stadimac four where y'all just, y'all did

a whole lot of improvements

on performance across the

board on Stadimac, right?

That was five.

Yeah.

What you came up with.

Five.

Yeah.

This April.

Yeah.

Like massive, massive

performance improvements.

Um, yeah, we have a, we have a secret

wizard who like works part time who

would just like, just built out all these

crazy pro like, you know,

black fire profiling charts and like, got

stuff optimized down to, you know,

like it was 80, 90%

faster for some people.

And it was already pretty quick for the,

like, it is awesome.

I love that kind of stuff.

Uh, that is sweet.

Um, so of course

Stadimac is built on Laravel.

It uses Laravel.

Um, you know, how, how has, you know,

adapting Laravel or, you know,

basically starting with Laravel.

How has that helped you grow Stadimac?

Oh, I mean, it's been, it's been huge.

Like Stadimac one was built on slim PHP.

I don't know if you or

anybody remembers slim.

Oh, I remember it.

I don't remember using

it, but I remember it.

Yeah.

I knew like 90% of the app was all

enclosures, like in a single file.

Like it was like the

routes file was the whole app.

Uh, it's just hysterical.

Um, then in version two, we rebuilt it as

a Laravel app, like as if you would build

your own app and then you'd have it.

Um, but that meant like you're running a

Laravel app, so you can't drop a Laravel

app into a Laravel app if you have a

Laravel application and you want to add

content management, like, well, you can

put it on a subdomain and like put your

blog there or something, right?

So like, okay, that was a

little bit of a swing and a miss.

Um, and so for version three, we rewrote

it as a composer package and, you know,

work through all the being able to defer

logic and make sure we're binding it

late and all this kind of stuff so that

you can drop it into apps and use it for

the marketing pages or

for whatever you want.

Just use the API and pull stuff, you

know, into your app and

like people use it for

iOS apps and like, uh, so people are

using like Apple TV apps.

Like it can do all sorts of stuff.

Cause it's, it can run headless and just

provide you an API and

at a good place to edit your content.

Um, I now don't remember what the

question started as.

I think you answered it.

I was just asking, you know, like what,

what, you know, what

Laravel brought to the

table by you picking that.

Yeah.

So like, once we finally like made it to

Laravel as a composer package, now we

kind of like slot into the ecosystem of

tools available to

you for any Laravel app.

And then that also led us, you know,

building compatibility with other Laravel

packages and take advantage of, um,

being, being able to

let people extend it.

And really comfortable Laravel like ways,

uh, being able to bound stuff in the, you

know, that the app service provider and,

you know, do all that kind of stuff.

So yeah, it just, it gave us convention.

It gave us, uh, a wider audience with

which, you know, to, to reach people with

just, oh, like I'm looking for a Laravel,

see, most I can drop in that, you know,

there's a few options.

Um, but stat to make

is a really good one.

So, um, yeah, it's been, it's been great.

And to have like a stat to make be this

micro, uh, you know, many subset of the

greater Laravel community,

it's just, it's fantastic.

Like it's like the same Laravel vibe, but

like kind of even better.

Cause it's a smaller, like more familiar

crew, which is really cool.

Yeah, it is awesome.

And, you know, it's, it's great to sort

of see stat to make grow, you know, from,

from those really, really early days, I

sort of remember when it was first

announced, um, and, you know, now you've

actually, you know, you've, I

think this is your third year running a

stat to make conference, but it's not

really a conference it's, uh, you just go

hang out with your buddies, right?

I mean, yes, yes, pretty much

depends on who you're talking.

If it's a boss who's ready to write the

check, you know, pull

the credit card out.

There is for sure training and education.

Um, but it is like in the context of like

hanging out on

vacation with like 50 buddies.

Um, so yeah, it's, uh,

we've done two so far.

So I'm currently working on and

researching and

finding the right venue for

2025 and, uh, that'll be our third one.

It's called stat to make flat camp.

Why camp?

Yes.

And, uh, so I believe the first one was

in like Boone, North Carolina, just

out in the middle of the mountains.

Um, the second one was in what Rome or

somewhere like that.

Yep.

Which was amazing.

I mean, like the, yeah, being in the

mountains was beautiful.

We had five or six cabins, like big, big

cabins on top of a mountain.

We just, it was just us up there.

Uh, we had to bring like caterers in.

They like had to drive up the mountain

and bring us our food.

I'm like, I hope they show up.

I don't have a plan B.

It was kind of nerve wracking because of

how, how like rustic the setting was.

Uh, then in Rome or outside of Rome, uh,

it was like this, it used to be an

Olympic training facility that's now like

a private resort for like private

corporate events and like retreats.

And so we showed up and it's

like, Hey, you're home now.

Like welcome.

Everything is yours.

If you see it, you can eat it.

You can wander around in the kitchen.

We have like a games

room full of equipment.

They had like sneakers and socks and

tennis gear and like anything you could

need to like play any of the sports they

had on the grounds, like soccer

balls and cleats and whatever, like help

yourself to the wine cellar.

And you like go down this like spiral

staircase into the basement and it's

hundreds of bottles of wine and it's like

beautiful, like it was grand

piano, take whatever you want.

Just don't waste anything.

Grab a bottle of wine, go to the bar,

make some cocktails.

It was like all set up.

And then they had like,

uh, like private chefs.

They like came in or like on site and

they just had three meals a day.

Just insane.

Like, yeah, it was great.

Like octopus and, uh, you know, steak and

lasagnas and like pastas.

And also, I mean, it

was like, it was insane.

It was like, it exceeded, like, yeah,

here, I'm just gushing about it.

It was like exceeded every expectation

and everyone I think had a good time.

Um, but we learned a lot too.

There was a really, really good amount of

knowledge transfer and

it was, it was fantastic.

Yeah.

I mean, I was going to say, you know, I

made that comment half jokingly, but you

having it that small and so intimate, you

probably actually learn more than you

would at a traditional conference because

all you're doing is listening to somebody

speak for an hour where here you're

actually making those

connections and you,

you know, you're, you're not only getting

the friendships out of

it, but you're able to then

ping those people that, you know, that

were there and they're

super smart with statimic.

So when you run into a problem later,

you're like, oh yeah, hey,

remember when we were in Rome?

Uh, let me ask you this

question that I'm running into.

And I feel like that's just something you

can't mimic from a

traditional conference.

That, uh, that was really sweet with the

way you're doing that flat camp.

Yeah.

A hundred percent.

Like we had a daily

like round table session.

We'd have, you know, we all get in a room

and have, you know, a

couple of things we want to

talk and share and then would chat with

each other, like would

have a Q and a session.

And then from that Q and a session, like

the number one or two

topics that came up,

like people want to talk about more like,

all right, three o'clock by the pool,

we're going to talk

about enterprise statimic.

And so it was like 15, 20 guys, like in

our bathing suits

talking about enterprise,

like, and then, you know, the next day we

were talking about, you know,

Vue JS upgrade and people like stayed up,

like pulled it all night.

You're trying to like upgrade statimic to

like the new version of view.

Like it was, it was, it was super fun.

Like it was a great time.

That's awesome.

Yes.

Super cool.

Cause you know, it is funny cause like if

you, you know, as a normal, you know,

person, when you go on vacations, even if

you go with friends, you don't have that

connection of, or at least I don't have

that connection with

anybody that knows anything

that I do.

So it's, it's gotta be pretty wild having

a, you know, a house full of people that

all do the same thing and have that

shared, shared bonding

and shared connection.

So that's, yeah, that's, I think, I think

you're on to something here.

Oh, I know I am.

Yeah.

It's for sure.

It's it's amazing.

And to have the whole place to ourselves

is like anybody, even

if you don't know them,

you can walk up, Hey,

I'm, I'm Jack, I'm Eric.

And, uh, you know, like what kind of

projects do you work on?

We have this, we already have

commonality between like we do

statemic and probably Laravel too.

And you can just like strike up a

conversation and then you're

talking about your kids and

your family and like, then you're just

friends and you're

grabbing a beer and whatever.

Yeah.

That's sweet.

So to change gears a little bit.

So version five just came

out the, did you say February?

April.

Yeah.

April.

So are you, are is statimic running on

sort of a yearly release cycle like

Laravel itself or do

y'all just more sort of when

stuff gets done, it comes out.

Yeah.

So we, we synced up with the Laravel

release set schedule

along with static force.

So we trail about four to six weeks

behind just to make sure

we have, you know, like,

all right, things are locked in.

We want to, we have to, we're currently

supporting the last two

versions of Laravel so that

everybody doesn't have to do

a Laravel upgrade every year.

If they want to upgrade statimic, because

like for people who

are running Laravel apps

and they want to do that, it's great.

But if you're just using statimic as a

CMS and you're, you quote,

don't care about Laravel,

it's kind of a bummer to have to do a

Laravel upgrade

alongside like every year.

Right.

So we're trying to solve that story.

Like we've been

talking with Jason McCreary.

Maybe we can do like a

shift specific to statimic.

But so we, we bridge two versions, which

means we need a little

extra time when there's like

a hard dependency change between one

version to the next.

We have to bridge support for, you know,

taking advantage of new stuff,

but still making the old way work.

So it's a little bit of a, you know,

complex problem, but

that's what we're kind of on the

framework side of a problem.

Like we solve the problem so

other people don't have to.

And yeah, and so we just, we just trail a

little bit behind and,

but that way we have,

we have a major release every year and

that, that lags behind Laravel.

Yeah.

Sweet.

Well, so it's, it's

might be a little too early.

Any, any big V six things you you're

willing to talk about yet?

Yeah.

So interestingly, like we don't, we don't

like build features

for the major release.

Right.

So like six point out, like we might, but

like we don't, if

we're working on a feature,

whenever it's done, we ship it, whether

it's we're two weeks from

V six or like if it's ready

and it can work on the last version in

the current version or

whatever, we'll ship it because

our audience can take

advantage of it today.

Why hold it back?

I don't, I don't love marketing features

for big version numbers.

We did that for a long time.

We did that for like

seven or eight years.

And it was, it ended up with like long

running feature branches because

you had all these different things that

were codependent on the marketing date.

And then you're like, oh, we got to

redesign the brand and blah, blah, blah.

And like, you've got all

this stuff just sitting there.

Yes, we went somewhere.

And, and, but so, but I, but I can't

answer like the spirit of the question,

which is what cool

stuff are we working on?

Right.

And so we're working on the forms module.

So we want, you know, this, this year we

want our forms to be more powerful,

more end user friendly.

So like a non-technical person could like

whip up a form and do

landing pages and click

funnels and all that kind of stuff.

We're working on two way

relationships right now.

All the static

relationships are kind of one way.

So they're not, they don't like reverse.

You can't reverse the relationship out.

So we want to solve that problem.

There's some add-ons that do it, but we

want it to be like really tightly core

coupled.

We're working on some pretty big SEO

specific features using

open AI and LLMs and vector

embeddings and stuff to like essentially

create like automatic linking,

like cross-linking opportunities and

track, you know, all the linking,

like internal and external links between

all the content in your site,

being able to automate all of that.

And it's come along pretty nice.

What else?

What else?

Let me pull up my board.

See if there's anything

interesting I can say.

Working on, so the statimic control panel

currently is still

running view two because

I think it's the best version of view,

but it's pretty deprecated at this point.

So we're also pursuing view three for

statimic six, which I

honestly, I'm still reluctant of.

I just prefer view two.

Actually, I prefer view one. But yeah, it's time.

So we're doing that as well.

Sweet.

And just to sort of, you know, expand on

the view side with

statimic, the back end,

the admin panel is written in view.

But if you're using statimic, you don't

have to use view on your front end.

You can use whatever you want.

I just don't make sure nobody's, you

know, thinking, oh, well, I have to,

I'm stuck with view now if I'm choosing statimic, but that's not the case at all. You can use whatever you want. Thank you, Eric.

Yeah.

In fact, we have the case.

If you want to build a custom field type

for statimic, currently

it would be a view two.

You know, you have a view two

component that would do that.

But yeah, so that's, that's where the

difference, it really doesn't matter for

like 99% of the users.

But yeah, it's for those out on

developers who want to take advantage of view through packages,

like, oh, we love to drop in this. I don't know, whatever. Like custom field and

use this new cool thing.

Like, yeah, you can't do that right now.

So let's solve that.

Gotcha.

All right.

This one's I got a, I

got a hard one for you.

So, you know, you know, every founder

makes mistakes along the way.

So, you know, in the last 12 years of

running statimic, you know,

is there a particular failure

or anything, you know, that shaped your
approach to the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the,

or anything, you know, that shaped your

approach to now, you

know, made you improve,

made you do anything differently?

Oh, gosh, where to start.

So, so many mistakes.

So you want to talk about today or since

the beginning, I would say,

Does any stand out, I guess, is the

better, better wording.

Yeah, I would say like the, probably the

biggest mistake we made is not making it,

at least not making the repo open source

from the very beginning.

So, static one and two

were both private repo.

And it was one was like, we hadn't, as a

community, as a PHP

community, hadn't really

adopted composer yet.

So like, that was reasonable.

You would buy static and you would

download a zip file.

That's how it worked.

Static to composer was kind of standard.

It was built on composer, but we would

get archive or composer

archive, like a bundle.

And you would still download a zip file,

which is just hilarious now to think that

even did that through a phrase, someone

would steal the code base

and like not give us money.

Because like trying to get it going and

being able to find time to work on it

when you're like a one,

two or at some time, like three person

company and you have

this your only money.

Like I can't work on it

if you're not buying it.

But by having that repo closed, we just

missed out on so much

opportunity for people who were

willing to collaborate, who would solve

the problem because

they're just in there hacking

around because they

need to launch a project.

And just didn't build trust in a way that

just having an open repo does.

So now like, static core is free.

It's open source.

It's not MIT like you can't resell it,

but like you don't have to pay for it.

You can install it.

You can use it for free.

You get one user and one contact form,

but otherwise you have

all the other feature,

most of the other

features and you can just use it.

And so like we have a huge open source

community now around it.

People like we have PRs come in almost

faster than we can

review them at this point.

So I think that's a good problem to have.

I don't see that as a problem.

Some people like PRs.

Like I was talking to, I

think it was, it was Caleb Porsy.

I was like, do you

hate when people send PRs?

I'm like, no, PRs are amazing.

It's literally

someone doing my job for me.

And all we need to do is like read the

code instead of solve the problem.

Right.

And say like, oh, it works.

Tested.

Like we just tinker with it.

Anyway.

So that was a mistake that I would say

really slowed our growth.

Like not having a free to try or free to

use simpler version and having it closed

source, like until we

opened it, we didn't really grow.

Like it was five years of

like not getting anywhere.

And then I'm like, I don't know.

Like, let's just try opening the repo.

And like, if you look at our, like our

revenue, like that's where it ticks and

starts heading in a direction that most

people generally prefer,

which is up and to the right.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and it shows, you know, more, um, I

don't want to say

before it was very isolated,

but it just shows how big, you know, it

just, it has more of a

community feel maybe,

maybe is the right wording, you know, as

you come in and look at

it and you're like, oh,

well, all these people are, you know,

contributing and helping.

And then, you know, from there, then it

builds up your, um, you

know, your, uh, support through,

I think y'all are using discord.

Yeah.

We have this community side.

Yeah, exactly.

But like GitHub issues are where people

submit bug reports and we have

discussions and, you know,

all that stuff.

So yeah, having the standard set of tools

like, oh, you work in

Laravel, like it's, you know,

we kind of have the same set of tools for

the community and code.

And it definitely makes a big difference.

Like, oh, you guys have, I don't know,

whatever it is, like

287 issues closed in the last 30 days.

Like you clearly, this is an actively

maintained project, right?

If you come to a site and you download in

a zip file, like is,

are you guys working on stuff?

Like you can look at all our branches.

Like it's, we try to be

as transparent as possible.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, I do.

It just reminds me, you know, you're

bringing back old ancient history.

You know, I remember when I first

started, it was like,

you would go to hot scripts

and you would find something and you

would either pay like $2

and you download a file

or, or you would just go to PHP classes

and like download this

random code that somebody put out there.

Code River right on Invana, right?

Download some whatever, like, yeah.

Well, the problem is you never knew what

you were going to get either.

It would could be like

the most horrible code ever.

And it's like, but

I've already paid for it.

I guess I'll just stick it in there all

with the security issues.

Every day.

All right.

So one final thing on the statemic topic

and, um, um, you know, this was,

this one's more for, I guess the

community side and from

you personally, but what, um,

what advice would you give developers

that are wanting to create

their own little products,

you know, within the Liverpool ecosystem,

you know, as far as like, um, you know,

getting started

marketing, things like that.

I mean, um, cause it seems like we have a

very, um, you know, I

guess you would call

it bootstrapper or entrepreneurial spirit

within the community itself.

But those that are wanting to sort of get

started on that route, how would you,

you got any tips or advice for them?

Yeah.

I would say start like by planning

community upfront in the beginning,

have a place where people can access you

and be accessible in a

way that is non scalable

as for as long as you can.

Right.

So if you, if you're building, I don't

know, like a photo

gallery thing for Laravel,

I don't write like some, some dashboard

thing, like answer

questions, be available,

hop on calls with people, go do things

that like, if you added

two zeros to your revenue,

like you wouldn't do it anymore.

But like until then, uh, do those things.

Like I'll still hop on calls with people.

Well, we try to be as

personal as, as, uh, as you can.

And that makes a huge

difference in trust and people like,

because especially when you, we have

something new, it won't do everything.

The 1.0 is going to solve

like the reason why you built it.

And then like your, maybe three other

features that you think

someone might need and two of

them, actually nobody uses ever.

And so getting that feedback from the

community as early as you can,

whether it's a discord server or even

just get hub discussions,

having some place where you can chat,

especially in real time with people,

makes a huge difference

and be as helpful as you can.

Don't resent questions.

Don't resent bug reports.

That's when someone opens an issue on

your project, it's because they took,

they didn't have to do that.

They ran into a problem and like be

concerned when you don't get them,

because that means

they're just giving up.

Like the fact that they take the time to

fill out a bug report,

give you an information,

maybe a dump or whatever, uh,

try to be thankful and, um, you know,

thank them for the PRS,

thank them for the issues

and go, go that extra mile.

Yeah. It shows, it shows they care, you

know, which is huge when

you're running a business.

If you have people care

about the thing you're creating.

Yeah. Absolutely. All right.

I've made custom t-shirts for people.

They send like enough PRS of

like in a certain category.

Like there's a Jack slight as a developer

who did a bunch of

PRS for our Bard editor.

Uh, and so like I, I had a Bard shirt

like ordered for him.

It's like a dude

playing a lute or whatever.

And I was like, dude,

Bard master. Thank you.

Like, just like little things like that,

I think can go a long way.

That's awesome. Yes.

That actually kind of transitions

perfectly, but then,

um, that, I don't know,

now I'm thinking about marketing and how

great that is from a company standpoint,

you know, to make that

personal effort and, uh, you know,

show the people that you, you know, that

you really appreciate them and nothing

goes above and beyond more than making

something custom for,

for a customer like that.

And that's just, that's just

the basic good work on that.

Yeah. Like you could spend 10 times,

a hundred times that on Twitter ads or

Google ads and get

like nothing out of it.

Right. Other, other

people are your best marketers.

Someone who's not your company is

instantly more

trustworthy because they're not like

incentivized to do it mostly. I mean,

paid influencers and

that's the thing, but like,

yeah, people who are, who are talking

about your product, like notice them,

thank them for that and

like, take care of them.

Yeah. Yeah. You can't, yeah, absolutely

can't beat word of mouth. That's a

hundred percent for sure.

But so you, you talked about a custom

t-shirt. So this, this

transitions perfectly into what

I want to talk about next. Um, and we'll

just start with, I had

to print this out to make

sure I got it right, but your Twitter bio

image says you are the

Willy Wonka of the web world.

So, you know, to all that follow you or

know you, um, not

only do you love coding,

Laravel, Stadimik, but you love design

and you have a very unique

outlook on design. Um, um,

it's really sweet cause like you have,

you know, everything now

is just so standardized,

I guess, uh, where every thing Jack

design stands out and

it's like, that's a Jack,

that's a Jack joint that he made. Um, so,

so how, how did you, have you

always just been into design

as well as coding or? Yeah, really always

had been, uh, like I was

actually deciding before

I learned to code, like I would be like

as a teenager in my

bedroom on my 486 or I don't

know, whatever, whatever it was at the

time, whenever like the

first version of Photoshop,

I managed to get, uh, my hands on by

downloading 57 dot rawr files and like,

he's sharing them together, right? Uh,

you know, been doing

Photoshop tutorials and like,

I never really thought like back in the

day that I'd make money at,

I just loved it. I wanted to

see if I could make something and then,

yeah, over the years, like

didn't have a designer work on

something or didn't have a coat. Like I

just keep sharpening both sides of the

tool set until I was

pretty decent at, at both. And I don't

know if it's because I was homeschooled

or whatever. I just,

like, I don't feel comfortable like

sitting in like the

mainstream, you know, like aesthetic or

trends or like with any, like not just

with everything, uh,

sometimes to my own detriment,

but, um, yeah, when it comes to design

stuff though, I just fell

in love with making funky,

weird, wacky, especially like 80s and

90s, uh, based designs.

And not everything I do is,

is wacky. I mean, to be clear, it doesn't

always fit, uh, the need,

but whenever I can, like I will

amp up the personality on everything I

touch as much as, as is

reasonable and a little more.

Yeah. Um, you know, if, if for everybody

that's new to sort of

new to layer of L and

liberal community, there was man, three

or four, it might've been

a little longer than that,

but Jack designed the layer con us

website in this synth

90s, 80s vibe. It was just

Miami vice. Like it had all those vibes

to me and it was, it was wonderful.

We'll have to link that one. And it

looked like Ninja turtles,

like 93. And then there was

vapor wave and like, yeah, that was at

the PlayStation theater

and, um, and times square.

And like, I got to design all these like

crazy size screens, like

it down the hallways and out

front and like times square and like did

all this like neon and like,

it was super fun. Um, I would,

I would love to time travel back and just

like walk through it

again. Cause it was so cool.

Yeah. That was a super fun event. And

then Jack, Jack had the Stata McBoo set

up with, uh, you know,

an old Nintendo with mortal combat on it.

Street fighter. Street

fighter. Are they not the same?

Or was that very offensive? What I just

said, very, very clearly clearly,

clearly, clearly. Uh,

but, uh, one of the other cool things

that came out of that was

you introduced, there was, um,

there was a, there was an album or a band

and that had the same sort

of vibe feel to it. And now I

cannot remember the name of that, but it

was like, do what the midnight. Yes.

Cause I listen to that

all the time. Now it's like a red blind

and kick drums or something. And it's

like, I don't see this

all the time. So it's been on my playlist

ever since that, that event.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm seeing them

in like two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. The

midnight's awesome. You can,

you can look at Stata McBoo,

you can, whatever we'll talk about my

design course in a minute,

but go check out the midnight.

They're the best. This is, this is that

word of mouth we were talking about.

Oh man. That's awesome. Well, so, um, I

guess I'm trying to think

of, of a right thing because

the, it seems like if you're a designer,

you're not a developer.

And if you're a developer,

you're not a designer. So are you like

this sort of like unicorn

special person that was, um, um,

you know, brought up eating like raw eggs

and now you can do all

the stuff or is it like,

you just, you're just made that way or

just hard work. Yeah. It

was, you know, I would have to

stand on an ice block for it. No. Um, I

really, I really think

anybody can do it. I think the key,

the key is you just have to want to, I

think like, if you are someone who can

teach yourself how to

code, like coding is like, like parts of

it are easy, but then like

to get really good at it is

really hard. Like there's a, there's a

lot of time you have to put

into that. If you're willing

to put in a fraction of that time into

getting better at design, I

promise like you could be as

good as me. I get, I feel like, I feel

like I forget how to do

everything every morning when I

wake up and I have to teach myself it

again, like real quick and that maybe

that's my superpowers.

Just I'm fast at learning and like a bad

at remembering. Um, but I,

I really think, and I've,

you know, I put this course together

because over the years I've

like helped people along like,

hey, I want to try and like get better

design and I would just kind

of work with someone one-on-one.

It doesn't take very long to like, it's,

you have, there's like

shackles that, that are on people.

There's like, you're, you're getting in

your own way thinking of

like what the design process

actually is. And so, uh, with my course,

I wanted to walk through

all those steps, like what it

actually takes to design and like strip

back a lot of myths and

things and show like, yeah,

as a designer, you don't have to design

every item in your

design. You just have to make a

unique composition. And so you can use

asset libraries and like

download everything and

copy stuff and change it and tweak it and

like just remix. Like if you

think of it as being like a DJ,

if designers are DJs, they're just like

remixing other people's

music. All of a sudden it gets a

lot easier than like, oh, I need to be

Taylor Swift or whatever and

like create something totally

original from scratch in my basement

without looking at the

outside world. Like that's,

yeah, that's really hard. Um, like

sketching Figma or Photoshop, these are

like, there's a lot of

things you can do, but the basics, you

only need a couple of the

basic features, layers, shapes,

text, shadows. Like it's all about, um,

just putting the time in and

knowing like what to focus on.

And, uh, yeah, I, I don't think I'm

special. I think I, I just

maybe have a special perspective

that I'm just trying to share with

people. And, uh, you know, if that means

eventually I, I won't

have to do design anymore. So be it, you

know, that's okay. Yes. Uh,

yeah. So his course is radical,

does radical design.com, right? Radical

design course.com radical design

course.com. Um, but,

you know, you know, the way you just

described that it's

almost, it's almost the same as

programming, you know, like we have all

these patterns and things

that have been passed through

the ages and now we just kind of figure

out where they should go. Um, so it's

sort of the same with

design. Like you're like, you're just

saying there, you know, you, you see

something that you kind of

like just kind of remix a little bit,

make it into your own style. And there

you go. It's very, it's

amazing how much like the same thought

pattern actually translates

and like you can learn how

to code and make stuff work. And then

like writing clean code is this skill

onto itself, right? Like

refactoring and like breaking it out into

smaller methods and things that like

picking good variable

names, like there's, there's functional

and then there's pretty, and

it's kind of the same thing.

Like you can make a functional design and

then as you get better, you

can pretty it up and tighten

up the layer, you know, the spacing and

the type of, you know, the type flow and

picking better fonts.

And it just builds on itself over time.

Uh, you just have to

like put the time in.

Exactly. Just like everything.

Put the effort in. All right. So moving

on. So we're going to, I

will have links to all the stuff

that we're talking about in the show

notes. Um, but I want to do one more

question. Um, and then I'll

let you, uh, then we'll go from there.

But, uh, so when you're not working on

Stadimac or design or

Laravel and you're wanting to get away

from this screen, what do you go do?

What's your hobbies?

It's fishing. Usually it's fishing. Yeah.

So I live in Florida and

yeah, I mean, I love saltwater

fishing and the rivers going off shore

with my buddies catching,

you know, Mahi and tuna. And,

uh, just got like last weekend, we just

came back from upstate New York and the

Adirondack Mountains

on a fishing trip, uh, where we, a couple

of guys, we like buy like a

trophy and whoever catches the

most like inches and weight or whatever

of like bass and pike, like

gets to take the trophy. So

like, yeah, fishing is probably my number

one. Um, I like video games. I love

reading. I love, love,

like fantasy. I'm a big fantasy nerd. So

always in the middle of like

the next fantasy trilogy or

something. Um, um, yeah. That's awesome.

So I have two fishing

questions. Um, have you ever called a

sailfish and have you ever been, what's

the one where you go into

the stream and you, and you,

fly fishing, have you ever done fly

fishing? So I've got a fishing

crew that I go out with. It's

like four or five buddies. We all go out.

Uh, we're called torch

to, and we actually have a

YouTube channel that I like never talk

about because like most people

don't care about fishing. Like

the intersection is pretty small, the

Venn diagram between Laravel

and fishing. But if you actually

like fishing, go just look at the torch

tuna on, uh, on YouTube.

Anyway. Um, so I, I almost always

go out on every single outing and we've

gone out probably 50 or 60

times in the last two years,

like offshore. I've missed a couple. I've

missed two or three and one

of those three, they caught

a sailfish and I wasn't there. So it's

like, Oh man, I was so close.

I saw one, like I was on the

boat when one hit, but it didn't hook up.

Uh, and it was like jumping

out of the water, which is

pretty cool. Um, but yeah, have not

caught a sailfish yet. Um, I think

they're pretty like, I just,

to me, cause I always heard there's sort

of like this mythical

creature in the ocean that it's

really hard to catch. And then when you

catch them, it takes you

like four hours to pull it in or

something crazy. Yeah, I can. Yeah. They

can get, um, they can get

big. Like Marlin can take a

really long time. Uh, we haven't targeted

Marlin cause they're

super deep. They're down like

thousands of feet. Um, but yeah, sailfish

like to be on the surface and they're

super fast. They got

got a sword and whatnot. Um, and fly

fishing. Yes. I have fly fished, um, up

in the upstate New York.

And I used to do that quite a bit. I

would love to pick it up

again. I've been thinking about

getting to saltwater fly fishing as well,

which is a little bit

different, but it's still pretty

cool. Yeah, that is neat. Yeah. I've not,

I've not, I grew up, uh,

like more like just traditional

like bass fishing and we'd go catfishing

at night, but I've always thought fly

fishing would be cool,

but then it's like, well, then I gotta

learn how to like throw a fly rod or

whatever that's called.

It's not that hard. You can get pretty

good at it in like a day. It's not bad.

Um, tend to maybe, um,

I love fast fishing though. Like there's

something really fun about

being on a boat and just like

in a small mountain lake and just working

the shoreline. It's fun.

Yeah. Yes. Well, that's

the way I was thinking of fly fishing.

You know, you're like in the

stream in the mountains and

there's nobody around for hundreds of

miles probably. And

you're just like out here

fishing in this peacefulness of the

stream. It is therapy for

sure. You're just busy enough

that you're not thinking about work, but

it's peaceful enough that

you're like, yeah, it's great.

That's awesome. All right. So I don't

really have anything else on

my list. Um, is there anything

that I didn't mention that you want to

bring up or, um, you know,

things that I need to, um,

tell the world about? That's a really

good question. I'm, I did not come

prepared for that. No. Um,

I mean, yeah, I don't know. I went to

nineties con. Yes. Like

this weekend. That was cool.

The world doesn't need to know about a

thing that I did on the weekend. So no,

I think that's good. Thanks. Thanks for

having me here. Well, thank

you so much, Jack. This was,

it's always a pleasure talking to you and

I look forward to seeing

you at the next layer con.

Yeah, man. Yeah. Let's, uh, let's chat

again before. Let's not

like have to wait for another

podcast episode. Yeah. That sounds great.

All right. Thanks, Jack. You got it.