Transcription
[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 MySQL 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 Next.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 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 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. 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 has 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 inspiration from some of the stuff they did when I was a kid. This is a picture back in '95 of some plans my dad made to build this like giant treehouse based on the Swiss Family Robinson, like an old Disney movie from the '60s. He really enjoyed being outside and like, you know, was super creative and ended up building this massive treehouse, which was an awesome thing to have as a kid. I don't really like share 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, my dad 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. So it just made me kind of realize that life is short and that I want to, uh, you know, do something creative and something impactful with my time.
[Music] 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, 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. Our lifestyle hasn't really changed with success either. We're basically living the same exact life we were prior to this, so 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 my own world, and then when I kind of pop out of that, I'm like doing completely different stuff, like focused on family, trying to take the kids out into nature to go camping and do stuff like that.
My hopes for the future mostly center around providing a good 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 created enough of a base with my business 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] [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. 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 feel like I need to take advantage of it. It's not easy to to get to this point, so to just stop at this point would be kind of foolish.
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