Epic Bets: Practical Tips For Betting on Yourself
This talk delivers actionable strategies, not formulas, to dramatically increase your odds of success and build that resilience. You'll learn the surprisingly simple power of "becoming known for a thing" by consistently talking about your interests, leveraging the availability bias to make opportunities materialize.
Aaron talks about the importance of "asking for what you want," taking incremental steps to build proof of your abilities and confidently pursue your goals. Crucially, you'll understand how to "operate in the world as it exists," recognizing and using systemic patterns to your advantage rather than fruitlessly railing against them.
Finally, he also made emphasis to "act like you belong" once you're in the room, fostering a quiet confidence that allows you to contribute effectively and seize new possibilities.
These strategies Aaron shares were born from real-world experience including navigating a layoff with a young family, empower you to take control, stay in motion, and build a career where you're not just surviving, but thriving.
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Transcript
Okay. We don't have a lot of time, so I'm gonna skip some of my normal intro, except for this. I am, like Taylor said, dad to four kids. They are weirdly both twins, all twins. Everyone's a twin. We have two sets of twins.
So we have two three year olds and two one year olds, if you can believe that. This is my beautiful and perfect family.
I don't normally share pictures of my kids' faces on the internet. But since we're all friends, I wanna show you the nice, beautiful, cohesive family. Don't we all look alike? Just absolutely wonderful. All jokes aside, I do need to thank my wife. My wife is a stay at home mom. And
all of what I do would not be possible without her. So thanks to Jennifer. She's at home with four kids and I'm here with you goofballs.
Okay. I have updated the title of my talk a little bit. To be more precise, there's no formula. I can't give you a formula. I can't give you a short pass. I can't give you something that is foolproof. But what I can give you are strategies.
So I'm going to give you strategies for increasing your odds of success. I cannot tell you, what we're optimizing for here because I don't know. But I can say, you are here right now. This is your timeline. And in the future, something will happen. I don't know what it is.
I don't know what it is, but we need to prepare right now. We need to lay the groundwork for an uncertain future. For me, something will happen. What happens with that arrow? I got laid off. I got laid off when I had two one month old babies. I was on paternity leave. Two one month old babies.
Two two year olds. And I'm the sole breadwinner in the family. So you gotta prepare before it happens. We're not, I'm not gonna These strategies won't make you invincible. I got laid off. Even I am not invincible. But these strategies will hopefully make you resilient. They will hopefully make you robust.
Because this is a bad time to prepare. When the thing happens, when you get laid off, it's a bad time to think, I should start making some connections in my industry. That's gonna be rough. We'll come back to my story. My first strategy for you, become known for a thing. This is actually very easy.
This is incredibly easy. You can become known for a thing in your little corner of the Internet just by talking about it. Just by talking about it a lot. And what happens is when you become known for a thing in your corner of the Internet, people start to associate you with that thing.
They'll tag you into conversations on social platforms. They'll say, oh hey, Aaron look at this. They'll tag you in. People will start to think of you when they think, I need conference speakers. I need meet up speakers. I need I need guests for my podcast. Hey. Turns out we're hiring.
That person's always droning on about the thing that we need to hire for. Let's see what they're up to. How do you become known for a thing? You talk about it. It's very easy. I am in the Laravel ecosystem. Love that ecosystem dearly. And I started talking a lot about databases.
I don't have a formal computer science education. Like Taylor said, I'm a CPA. Thankfully I've left that life behind me. But I don't have I don't have a computer science education. What I do have is a curiosity about databases. I like them. They're awesome. And so I started reading a lot of books about them.
And as I was reading books, I was thinking, well, I should be writing about this. So I started writing about it. And then I started tweeting about it. And then suddenly everybody thinks, oh, Aaron's the database guy in the Laravel ecosystem. Just because I talked about it a lot.
So what's happening here is this is an example of something called the availability bias. The more you hear about something, the more common you think it is. Right? So in the news recently, we've been hearing a lot about planes crashing, rolling upside down. We all flew here, so probably a good example.
We've been hearing a lot about planes. Right? And so we think, oh, traveling. Traveling via plane is not very safe. Still, 3,500 times safer than riding a motorcycle. But because we hear about it all the time, we think, oh, I don't know. I don't know about those planes. Right? You can use that same bias to your benefit.
You can use that bias just by talking about the thing a whole bunch. Everybody's like, Aaron. Databases. Databases. Aaron. When I think of TypeScript, you know who I think of? Matt Pocock. When I think of Remix, you know who I think of? Kent C. Dodds. Matt and Kent didn't invent TypeScript and Remix.
They're just out there in public, talking about it a whole lot, and so my brain immediately goes there. If I need to learn TypeScript, which I probably will at some point, I'm gonna go to Matt. Right? Because it's just like in my brain. This works, this works out in the world. This works on social media.
This also works inside of companies. Right? So like I said, I used to be an accountant. I worked at a firm called Ernst and Young. And at Ernst and Young, I was the Excel expert. That was as close as I could get to programming. I was the I was the Excel expert and everybody knew it.
And it becomes this sort of like self fulfilling prophecy. Right? So you get pulled into one project because one partner knows, oh, that new kid Aaron knows a ton about Excel. Then everyone else thinks, oh, that new kid Aaron knows a ton about Excel. Suddenly, your aura grows and you're the Excel guy.
And so you can do this inside of your own company if you want to specialize or become known for a thing. Just start to put it out there. And then what happens is the weird thing is the opportunities just start materializing out of nowhere. The things in the universe just start conspiring and they come your way.
And then you get DMs from CEOs of database companies that say, hey, can we chat sometime? You know what this actually means? Hey, will you come work for us? That's what happened. So I'm writing about databases. I'm posting about databases. The CEO of a database company says, we need to hire someone to talk about databases.
What about that guy that talks about databases? Like, that seems pretty good, right? So that's exactly how I got my old job. Foreshadowing. Old job. But that's exactly how I got my old job. Let's talk about my friend Joe. Joe, was recently on a podcast, and he had just some great quotes.
And so he says, I was craving more people to talk shop with, so I started posting more. That's reason enough. You wanna have some friends? You wanna talk shop? Put yourself out there and it will appear before you. So he keeps going.
He says, one of the things I posted about, I was very interested in was terminal scripts. We all have our weird things, databases, terminal scripts, you can say. There's a library called Clack in JavaScript and he thought, I want to make this I want to make this for PHP. Joe's the Laravel guy. He's like Clack is cool.
Let's bring it to PHP. Out of the blue, I had like 170 followers. Side note. This is not just for famous Twitter people. Joe had 170 followers and Taylor Otwell messaged him and said, hey man, you're doing some cool stuff. That would be like having 170 followers and having D. H. H.
Or Kent, or Guillermo Rausch slide into your D. M's and be like, hey, nice work there. And what is Joe's response? Obviously, I was like what is going on? Why? Why is Taylor DMing me? What is happening here? This is what I'm talking about.
You put a bunch stuff out there, you become known for a thing and opportunities start to make their way to you. Broadly, I think there are three ways or three paths you can become known for a thing. You can become known for hating hating a thing. I do not recommend this.
I think this is poisonous and cancerous to your soul. I do not recommend this. Okay?
This is a bad plan. You will get a lot of Internet points if you do this, but this is a bad plan. And people in group chats behind the scenes are gonna say, I don't wanna work with that person. Don't do this. You can become known for loving a thing. You can be a hype person. That's great.
I love that. My favorite? Become known for doing a thing. Build something. Make something. Put something out there. Make your mark by producing something. This is my personal favorite. How do you implement this? You talk about the thing. There's no step two. That's it. You talk about the thing.
And you get to decide where you talk about it. You can talk about it on Twitter, Blue Sky, LinkedIn, Your Blog, Meetups, Lunch and Learns, if that's still a thing inside of companies, YouTubes, whatever. Doesn't matter. Just pick a thing and start talking about it. The next one. I'm gonna give you the strategy and then a caveat.
The strategy is ask for what you want. Full stop. If you want it, ask for it. That's it. Caveat. There are ways to increase the chances of hearing yes. So there are ways of asking that are more profitable than other ways of asking. But regardless, ask for what you want. Now, how do we increase the odds?
We go one step at a time. We don't skip over 10 steps on the staircase. So in my life, I was, writing this open source library, serverless functions in Laravel, just talking about it a whole lot. So I was executing on that first strategy.
And as I'm executing on that first strategy of becoming known for a thing, opportunities made their way to me and I was invited to speak at a meet up. And I thought, this is it. Like I've made it.
I could have gone and asked for that, but I wasn't, like I wasn't brave enough, and the opportunity came my way. That's fine. But then, I spoke at the meet up, and then I had an artifact. The meet up was recorded. Right? So then I can take this proof of work.
This thing that says, look I can do the job and I can go to a conference and say, please pick me. Look I can do the job. Right? And it becomes a lot easier to say yes to me if I approach it with I can do the job. Because what do conference organizers want?
You all should ask Kent about this later. I haven't asked him, but I'm guessing. What do conference organizers want? To put on a good conference. That's what they want. And the way that they do that is they lower the risk of putting on a bad conference.
And so how can I help the conference organizer lower the risk of putting on a bad conference? I can come to them and say, I can do this. I have done this. Here's my proof. So I got accepted to a conference. So I took my meet up, went to an online conference.
Took both of those, building this body of work, took it to an in person conference, to an in person conference and we're starting to spiral. Right? Taking one step on the staircase at a time. If I've never spoken at a conference, I'm not gonna apply to be the keynote speaker at GitHub Universe.
If you wanna do that, do that. The odds of success are very low. My recommendation would be go a step at a time. So I'm doing all these conferences and then finally I think, you know what's a good next step? Let's DM Taylor Otwell. Why not?
Let's DM Taylor Otwell and say, hey, just to reshoot my shot, If you do bring back in person laricons, please do. I would happily MC if you think that makes sense. And he said, I dig it. Which in Taylor speak is just like, you have been given the universe. I dig it.
There's no higher praise from Taylor than I dig it. And that's how I got to be the MC at Laracon. I had a bunch of work. I took a few steps. And then I asked him if I could do it. You do not have to wait to get picked. You can pick yourself.
You can increase the odds of them saying yes, but you can always pick yourself. Let's go back to Joe. Joe says, I was doing all these crazy terminal experiments, mostly fooling around. People liked it and it got attention. K. We're seeing a pattern here. And then I had enough of a relationship with Taylor.
At the time, I said, if you're ever hiring, I think you should hire me. Right? And it feels scary. It feels really weird to ask for what you want. That is not my move ever, ever, ever. But the job market was rough, and I thought, If I'm going to go anywhere, I'm going to go to Laravel.
So I was like, Alright, let's go. Let's just ask for what we want and here we are. Joe works at Laravel. Right? You can just ask for what you want. This next one is a little bit hard I think for software developers, engineers, hyper logical rational people.
You need to operate in the world as it exists, not as you wish it to exist. Operate in the world as it exists, not as it should exist. There are a lot of things about the world that desperately need to be changed, and some of those, some of those are worth fighting for.
Some of those are worth sacrificing your life for. There's a lot wrong in the world. Most of what's wrong in the world is not worth your precious time and energy to fix. It is worth operating inside of the system as it exists to your advantage. You may work at a company that has very stupid rules.
I can guarantee you that you do. A stupid rule would be, hey, every Friday, you gotta go in Slack and tell me what you did. I need five bullet points. I'm a professional engineer. I will do my job. I don't need to tell you every Friday what I got done this week.
So you can spend your one wild life railing, raging against the machine, and saying, no, I'm gonna burn this system down. Or every Friday, you can go in and put a nicely formatted update and your boss will love you and you'll get a promotion.
So you have to decide what's worth fighting against, what's worth railing against, And what's worth operating within to my advantage? Is it fair that people who are more public get more opportunities? I don't know. It's true. So I'm gonna be more public. Should the world be a strict meritocracy? Probably. Is it? No. Then what do I do?
Ryan Reynolds has a great anecdote about making art. He says something like, I realized that if I wanted to make more movies, the movies had to make money. And so my movies make money. He wants to make more movies, and the system is set up such that the movies need to make money.
And he's like, great, I'll work within it. I'm gonna make the movies, but they're gonna make money. You may think, it's not fair that. And in most cases, you're right. It's not fair that the same 200, three hundred, four hundred people speak at all the conferences. Probably. It's probably not fair.
My challenge to you is to reframe that for yourself to, since it's true that. Since it's true that the same 200, three hundred, four hundred people speak at all the conferences, how do I get that for me? How do you get that for you? Well, we can work backwards.
Once you get to one conference, you're more likely to get to another. Okay. Well how do we get to one conference? What do conference organizers want? A low risk of a bad conference. How do I do that? You're in. Right? It's not fair that. Maybe true. Since it's true that. Now I can operate within this system.
Recognize the patterns, decide which ones need to be torn down and which ones are just stupid, but you can use them to your advantage.
You've become known for a thing. You've asked for what you've wanted. You've operated in the system to your advantage, and now you're in the room where it happens. You're in the place that you've always wanted to be. You gotta act like you belong here.
Conan O'Brien says, in improv, so in improvisational acting, there's a great rule I've used in my life, and the rule is act as if. Act as if. Act as if this is completely normal. Of course I'm supposed to be interviewing President Barack Obama. Of course I am. That's very normal.
Of course I'm supposed to be playing guitar with the boss. Of course I am. That's very normal. And of course, there's a big part of me that is saying, what are you talking about? Conan O'Brien gets imposter syndrome. But the point is you have to act as if it is normal.
When you're invited to speak, when you're invited onto a podcast, you get a new job, you will feel like an imposter. Here's the good news. You deserve to be there. You did the work. You're there by your own merits. You deserve to be there. But the problem is your perception lags reality.
You get in there and you think I don't deserve to be here. But you got there by your own merits. So the good news is, you can just act like you belong there. There is no such thing as faking bravery. You can't fake bravery, because the moment you fake being brave, that's called being brave.
There's no faking it. And the same thing, you can do the exact same thing to your brain by telling yourself, I belong in this room. And what this does for you, is this gives you kind of like a, kind of like a quiet centered confidence. Right?
So you go into a room and you tell yourself before, I belong here. You go in. You're not the loudest person in the room trying to prove that you belong there. You're not the quietest person in the room hoping that nobody figures out you don't belong here. Right?
And so you're operating out of this place of confidence and you can say when someone asks you a question, I don't know. Like I've never done that before. Let me see what I can figure out. Or when your team is talking about something, you can unmute and say, hey, actually in my experience, it's kinda gone this way.
We should do it like that. Because you know, you've told yourself, I belong here. You don't have to prove it. You just get to operate within your zone of confidence. The good news is you don't have to get it all right. You don't have to get it all right from the beginning.
You want to become known for playwright browser automation, then you think, actually I just want to be known for testing. Actually I just want to That's fine. Just get in motion. You have to start somewhere. Pick a direction, and you can adjust along the way. You can do literally anything and that puts you in motion.
Write a blog post, a tweet, a video, whatever. You're in the game and you will adjust along the way. You will discover new opportunities that you could not have discovered by standing still.
This is what happens to me. You start posting about MySQL. And then, you create a video course on MySQL. And people are like, hey, yeah, yeah, databases. I don't like databases. What I do like is videos. How did you make those videos? So you're like whoop.
Let me buy screencasting.com and let's make a course on how to make videos. That seems cool. And then whoop your whole business is let's start a company about videos. What's gonna happen next? Who knows? We'll find out. My job is to stay in motion. My job is to do the best thing I can possibly do.
Put it out there and the market will tell me what is good and what is bad. I am not a good judge of what is good and what is bad. Sometimes I'll put out something and I'm like this is amazing and everybody's like I don't get it.
Sometimes I'll put out something and I'm like this is silly and everybody's like this is amazing. So what I have learned is it's my job to do the best work that I possibly can and put it out there and just keep going. If it flops, that's fine. I got more behind it. If it succeeds, that's fine.
I've got more behind it. That is what my job is. The good news is that you are solely responsible for your success. The bad news is that you are solely responsible for your success. You can just do things. You can just decide I'm fundamentally going to change my life.
It's a hard decision to make, but you can just decide. And you know what, you must do things. You're the only person who can change your life. You can and you must. These are the strategies. The way that it worked for me was, I got laid off on paternity leave,
with four kids under three at home. So I called my wife and I said, I just got laid off. And she said, it's going to be okay.
This will not make you invincible. It will make you resilient. It will make you robust. It will make you prepared for what happens next. What happens next might be your calendar fills up with interviews. Because I've been preparing for five years for this. And people reached out and said, Hey, heard about it. Sorry, that sucks.
Anyway, do you want to come work for us? This is what I'm hopefully preparing you for. And if you take all these interviews and you decide, you know what, I've been preparing my entire life for this. There's a good domain available. Let me call my buddy Steve. Let's take a risk. Let's go out on our own.
Thank you.
