Aaron Francis

Welcome. I'm really glad you're here.

I'm Aaron Francis, a software developer, educator, conference speaker & emcee, content creator, and founder of Try Hard Studios.

But none of that matters compared to this: I'm husband to a wonderful wife and father to a set of four-year-old twins, and a set of one-year-old twins.

Yes, two sets of twins. Impossibly hard, impossibly wonderful.

Professionally

I do a lot of things, and I want to do even more. Mostly, I teach developers. I teach them about databases at Database School and about thoughtful AI-upskilling at faster.dev.

I also build a desktop application for developers called Solo, which is your all-in-one agentic development platform.

I got my start teaching when I was in college, where I got my master's degree in accounting. I started tutoring financial accounting as an undergrad and after I graduated I went on to make my first video course for accounting students at Texas A&M University. You can see it at acct229.com.

Since then, I've left the accounting field altogether and gone on to create several more courses:

Screencasting.com - learn how to create high quality videos quickly.
Mastering Postgres - level up your Postgres skills from beginner to advanced.
High Performance SQLite - become an expert at the world's most used database.
MySQL for Developers - become an expert at the world's most used database.

I also speak at conferences, make YouTube videos, emcee conferences, write articles, and, unfortunately, tweet a lot.

My philosophy

I have kind of a guiding principle in life and it's this: I'm going to try as hard as I can and put myself out there as much as possible.

Why? Because I don't want to reach the end of my life thinking, "Your life could have been a lot different if you hadn't been so scared." Can you imagine?

This doesn't mean sacrificing everything for work! By no means. My day starts with family breakfast and it ends with me reading bedtime stories to the kids.

The work happens in between, intense (definitely) and focused (mostly), because boundaries matter as much as ambition. I sacrifice a lot, but I won't sacrifice the childhood of my children. I don't play video games, I don't watch sports, I don't have too many hobbies. (I do have friends! I promise.)

I'm willing to sacrifice things I don't care about to gain things I do care about.

Projects

I like making things. And not just digital things! Physical too. Some are business projects, some are hobby projects. I don't really make too much of a distinction.

Digital

My courses - several of them, they have their own page.
YouTube channel - Laravel, PHP, and web development.
Mostly Technical podcast - Laravel, life, business, and more.
Open source - Mostly Laravel packages.

Physical

The Studio of Light and Sound - I turned an apartment into a YouTube Studio.
The Shedquarters - I turned a 10x20 shed into an office.
Handwriting robots - four giant robots that hand write marketing mail.
DIY walking treadmill - An old treadmill converted for my standing desk.
Indoor rock wall - I made a rock wall for my kids!

What now?

What am I doing with my life right now? I have a now page for that.

The beauty of this journey is that I don't know exactly what's next, and that's exciting. What I do know is that I'll keep building, teaching, and sharing.

Want to connect? I'm on Twitter, YouTube, and GitHub.