[Music] I usually just tell people I'm a web developer and then occasionally, you know, I'll
tell people I'm a YouTuber or whatever but I usually just try to keep it somewhat
ambiguous. It's mostly my personality, I think I'm just very much a kind of introvert
type person. Don't, you know, don't like being the center of attention so I try to just stay out
of the spotlight I guess. Basically I don't want to be known so it's nice to just, you know, not
have any kind of like recognition for it I guess. [Music] We originally came out here to go to Arizona State University. My plan was to become a pilot. After flying for a while I realized that it was more of a hobby
than a career kind of thing. I wanted something more creative, more yeah just yeah something more
creative I guess and ended up just kind of staying out here. We don't have any like direct family
out here or anything we just uh I don't know we kind of like it as more of a long-term
place to live more so than California I guess. [Music] I kinda went through college not knowing what I
was doing just like trying a bunch of different random stuff and I ended up
doing accounting and thought I was going to be like a certified public accountant,
like a CPA, and just eventually realized that accounting is extremely boring and
wasn't a great career choice for me. Shortly after that that's when I discovered
programming which is in some ways kind of like accounting but just far more far more creative,
you know, there's a lot more you can do with it. My parents had a little bamboo nursery out
of their backyard and they needed a website. That's how I originally got into programming. I
was like I'm gonna make a little website which is HTML and CSS, watch some tutorials online uh
bought Dreamweaver for like 400 bucks and ended up just making a a really bad little website but
learned a ton in the process. And that basically gave me the momentum to get into more advanced
programming like with PHP and my Sequel and a whole bunch of other stuff. Going back to the
first website, the thing that always attracted me to programming in the first place was the ability
to create things that other people couldn't. Even though I always kind of grew up thinking
that I wasn't smart enough to do it. I thought programming was probably not like within my skill
set but then once I tried it, I realized that a lot of the things they're a lot, you know, not
nearly as complicated as you would think at first glance. That's not to say programming is like
easy or anything, it's extremely hard but the more I did it like you know just in baby steps
I felt like it was something I could actually do All right. Well this is where the magic happens!
This is my old desk. I recently upgraded to one of these fancy standing desks over here, basically
now I just use this to mine Monero. And then over here is where I make all my videos. Just a
very, you know, kind of minimal setup, not anything fancy. I don't really need you know
tons of fancy gear to do what I do. Some of the biggest upgrades I made is the microphone
here, I got like a better microphone than I used to have. The most important stuff are
like you know the things my kids make me. Down here we've got all my like YouTube Awards. Yeah uh to be honest I'm not.. I'm not
big on the award thing. Actually these were sitting in a cardboard box before you
got here and I put them up just for this but for me I kind of like just keep my head down
and continue to do what I do. I don't focus too much on on these but it's definitely an
awesome thing that I never really would have expected to get to like say the first 10.000
subscribers, I never thought I'd get there, never thought I'd get to a hundred thousand and
never thought I'd get to a million. So it's, you know, it's pretty cool to uh
just have that progression. [Music] Um yeah I guess I'm not sure exactly where to
start. I started a YouTube channel originally just as an experiment. I had been doing some consulting
work with Angular and Firebase prior to that and it was just a really great set of
technologies that I thought there needed to be more content out in the world. And I always
wanted to experiment with video content so I figured that'd be a a good place to start and
I actually didn't even give the channel a name at first. The channel was just called Angular
Firebase because I didn't expect it to get any more than just a few videos and it was just a very kind of random experiment for me. I had no video experience prior to
that and that shows in the early works, you can see if you go back to my first
video, you know, it's a piece of garbage. Welcome to Angular Firebase, step one
create two Firebase projects, Step two. Step three. Thanks for watching I'll see you
on the other side. Audio jungle. I've developed a very unique style over the years
and I think a lot of it actually comes out is me being an introvert more so than someone that can
just like speak off the cuff and like you know talk for an hour in front of the camera. I'm kind
of the opposite of that. So what I always try to do is: I always ask myself how much can I cut
out of this video and still teach the concept effectively so I try to like you know distill
the concepts down to like a very you know like a very potent shot of whiskey or something. My workflow is like sort of a you know a combination of balancing between writing code and producing
videos. So usually what I do is like you know I get in here first thing in the morning and the
first thing I typically want to do is record. So let's see I'll do something here like: previous.js
a next-gen web framework inspired by next.js that doesn't use server components just like
the old nexj.js. Or: Brawndo.js, a JavaScript, a JavaScript framework produced, or a JavaScript
framework that produces the big bundles websites crave to mutilate the user experience. Yeah it's
kind of like a I guess a broadcast voice that I've developed like over the years. It's just different
than my normal speaking voice a little bit and so basically as I'm recording I'll have
like a lot of pauses in between and I'll go in here and Premiere and just use like
the cut tool to like kind of like smash everything together and then from there I'll go
back and do all the visual editing after that and I've just found that to be kind of the
most most efficient way to do things. As the channel grew larger I eventually realized that
that Angular Firebase name wasn't going to scale, so I had to come up with some different kind
of brand name and at that point I had realized I'm probably going to be doing this for a while
and trying to you know push the channel forward I was still going to be doing Firebase
content so I came up with the name Fireship, which has an interesting backstory because
when I was a kid maybe like three or four years old I would go up to random strangers
and tell them that I was going to own this Fireship. My grandpa was a firefighter, he had
told me about these like you know fire ships along the coast and I wanted to have one for
myself and like you know have all these like restaurants and weird stuff on it so I would go
around telling random strangers about that and that was just kind of a funny story that my
parents would tell me as I got older. [Music] [Music] Things really started to take
off I would say around like early 2020. I think is when I started doing the 100
seconds of code series and you can kind of see like right around here there's a big, you know, a
steady like increase in the number of subscribers that were coming in. So I feel like that's
when I really hit my stride with the channel. Early 2020 that's around the time I started first
doing the 100 seconds of code series and for a few months maybe six months or so those were extremely
popular and like a huge creative outlet for me and I really enjoyed making those but then I
hit like a really bad burnout phase where uh I was like super anxious and like depressed
for a while and I I think I took a break for like two and a half months which is the longest
break I've ever taken since starting the channel and throughout that period I just felt like I
couldn't create anything and I had to make a bunch of Lifestyle Changes like I quit drinking
coffee and alcohol and it took like I don't know it took months for me to for my like brain
to get back to a baseline for whatever reason I didn't think I was going to come out of that I
was actually I looked into selling the channel I actually got a a great offer for a ton of money
from someone to buy the channel and I think at some point I'm just like all right I'm gonna make
one more video you know just see how this goes and sure enough it's like it's very momentum
based once you make one video it leads to another and another and I think a lot
of things in life in business are like that you really just have to get get the
ball rolling and then the momentum starts you do have to keep a balanced lifestyle because
if you if you try too hard to pour everything into it eventually you're going to hit some kind
of limit that's going to you know basically break your brain and give you a mental health
crisis so uh you do have to be careful with that we actually just had the best month ever last
month thanks to thanks primarily to the AI hype and stuff like that but you know we just you
know it seems like every every couple months we have another record month I guess when I say
we it's primarily a one-man show I um there's a couple people I work with like on a part-time
basis as far as like the the team and then I kind of just consider everyone that is subscribed
to the channel or that's a like a membership on my platform to be kind of part of the whole
the whole thing it just feels like I don't know the whole like Community surrounding it has been
what is actually one of the big motivators for me my parents are both very creative people and I
think I get a lot of my you know inspiration from some of the stuff they did when when I was a kid
this is a picture back in 95 of some plans my dad made to build this like giant tree house based
on the Swiss Family Robinson like an old Disney movie from the 60s he really enjoyed being outside
and like you know a super creative and ended up building this massive tree house which was an
awesome thing to have as a kid I don't really like share his his passion for being outdoors like
building that kind of stuff but I think just the idea of you know being creative is something
that I got from what he did when I was a kid um and then my dad and my dad had passed away in
2018 on New Year's Day just kind of out of nowhere um and that was kind of a wake-up call for me
um after I just initially started my channel and so it just made me kind of realize
that life life is short and that I want to uh you know do something creative
and something impactful with my time [Music] thank you thank you I don't know I didn't think too much of it
at first and then it just started really like gaining momentum and you know it's the
quality started getting better and better and it's surprising because his disposition is so much
more introverted and still not surprising in a way because he is so disciplined and hardworking and
creative or lifestyle hasn't really changed with success either we're basically leaving the same
exact life we were you know prior to this so we you know not much has changed like in the general
like day to day of our of Our Lives that's true yeah um he's always been a hard hard worker But
ultimately I know that his priority is at home and with our family when I'm working I'm very
focused in on on that like in my own world and then when I kind of pop out of that I'm like doing
you know completely different stuff like focused on family you know trying to take the kids out
into nature to go camping and do stuff like that my hopes for the future are mostly center around
providing a you know a good uh life for my kids more than anything and for my family that's what
I want to do the most and I think to do that I think you have to be able to spend a lot of
time with your family so I want to make sure that I've you know created enough of a base with my
business to to be able to spend tons of time with my family as they get older yeah I think that's
my ultimate goal like I guess the ultimate goal would be to buy a catamaran get on the
catamaran sail around the world for a few years and just not have to worry
about money or work or anything [Music] thank you [Music] when I first started the channel I never would
have expected to be anywhere near where where I am today with it or to be doing it you
know still six years later so it has been a very very surprising Journey for me it's
created so many opportunities like I've got to meet like some of my top heroes in the
programming world and you know I've had so many opportunities through this channel
that it's been crazy and you know the best thing I've ever done for my career is
starting a YouTube channel essentially I guess motivation for me to keep it going is
just seeing people get value out of the videos just seeing the comments and the feedback and
you know messages I get from various places are just extremely motivating there's still more
things to teach and there's more value that can be created with what I'm doing and I built it
up to this level that now it's like you know I I feel like I need to take advantage
of it it's uh you know it's not easy to to get to this point so to just stop at
this point would be kind of foolish [Music] thousands of developers find jobs across
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