The Laravel Podcast

Matt Stauffer:
Hello and welcome back to Laravel Podcast Season Seven, the final episode of season seven. I'm your host, Matt Stauffer CEO of Tighten. This season I'm joined every day, every episode by a member of the Laravel team. And today I'm talking to my friend Two Time. we'll learn about that in a second. Two time Laravel employee Sam Sappenfield senior field marketing manager at Laravel. Sam, can you say hi and share a little bit about what you do at Laravel?

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah, so hey, I so I work at Laravel and I've been here now for two years. Matt, you kind of mentioned how there might have been I don't know, there's a two time situation in there. There's

Matt Stauffer:
There's a blip Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
a little blip, but but yeah, I've been at Laravel for two years.

Kind of some backstory on how I got here in the first place is Hank Taylor. So I actually worked for Hank

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

Sam Sappenfield:
Taylor years ago at another developer-friendly company. And we just worked really well together. He's really good at staying in contact. So we have over the years. And then when he joined Laravel, he's like, my gosh, this is so exciting. I would love to have Sam Sappenfield here. So thankfully he gave me a call and it was just the right timing.

I did a lot of research actually, thankfully Taylor Otwell and even Tom Crary. I I did some research online about both of them and they both seem like

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

Sam Sappenfield:
excellent human beings and people I wanted to work for. So I joined. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
That's cool. Okay. So

yeah, so so right now your job is the field market senior field marketing manager, which we will talk about in a second. But you know,

Sam Sappenfield:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
like the first thing I want to dive into is the origin story of like who were you before and what actually brought you here in the first place. So let's not even focus on what you do right now, because that's I feel like that's the whole second half of the podcast. So

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
who were you? What were you doing? What kind of work and what led you to be in the type of work? And I would say that you're doing today, but I think what you're doing today is different than when you did the first time around at Laravelle. So let's let's let's

Not

worry about that right now and just say,

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
who were you, what was your kind of past in your story that led up to the point where doing the work that you originally did at Laravel kind of made the most sense? What was your, what did you study in school? Were you interested, you know, like kind of what what was your journey up to there?

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

No, it's a it's a great question. So I was an athlete my entire life. and then

Matt Stauffer:
Not surprised at all.

Sam Sappenfield:
Volleyball, basketball, soccer. I did all those things. and then when I got to college, I kind of was burned out, and then I also had some injuries that kind of led to the end of that athletic career. And so I went to college and I just had no idea what I wanted to do. Because I always wanted

Matt Stauffer:
Mm.

Sam Sappenfield:
to play in the Olympics. That was kind of always what I wanted. so I struggled in college. I think I tried every major under the sun.

and then eventually I

Matt Stauffer:
Had you even thought you were

gonna go to college or had you been like, Yeah, I'm gonna college, but I'm just gonna basically do sports at college.

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah, exactly. I I knew I would go. but I just didn't really have a plan for what was I going to study. Cause studying was never

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
really my first priority. but yeah, when I got there, I had to kind of figure that out and I didn't. I honestly didn't at all. And then I got to a point where I had so many credits, but no defined major. So I

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
I talked to a school counselor and he was just like, you know, if you just major in journalism, you'll be done in a semester. Cause that's yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I was like, okay, let's let's do it. So

Matt Stauffer:
It's like the best way to use the credits that you have towards something. Okay. Great.

Sam Sappenfield:
I studied journalism.

Matt Stauffer:
Right.

Sam Sappenfield:
and in that last semester that I had

A friend's a friend's brother-in-law of mine happened to be looking for a marketing intern and he thought Sam would be really fun to work with. So he hired

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Sam Sappenfield:
me and it was right when social media came out and I mean, yeah, not to date myself too far, but social media was becoming a thing and executives at companies didn't know what to do with it, so they kinda hired me to figure it out.

And that's how I got into marketing. And I started in social

Matt Stauffer:
Wow.

Sam Sappenfield:
media. That snowballed into content marketing. That snowballed into marketing ops. And then I became somehow the CMO at a small startup. And then I was running every aspect of marketing there. And I was experimenting with events. So I think that's why Hank Taylor ended up calling me, is because I had

kinda started dabbling in events and in the Laravel ecosystem, there's a lot of Laravel events going on all around the world. So

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, and I don't

I don't want to speak negatively of anybody else, so I'm sorry if I'm misremembering, but I can't remember there ever being someone who was like actually just the events person at Laravel. Like it it took the longest time for us to even have Laravel itself be in charge of Laracon, let alone

Sam Sappenfield:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
in charge of all the other things. Cause like when Taylor first started, I mean he was always super, super, super involved, but he also like he had external people helping him. Sometimes he would, you know, assign a person and they would come in just for the the span of Laracon.

And so having somebody

Sam Sappenfield:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
other than Taylor at Laravelle who actually worked on event stuff, am I right that you were maybe the first person to do that? Okay, okay, Hank too. Okay, got it. All right. So you

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah, me and Hank. Yep. That's correct. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
guys had worked together in a space where you were doing marketing. And

Sam Sappenfield:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
when Hank came on, he said, I need, you know, my marketing buddy, were you brought on specifically to do events or were you events and other stuff at the time?

Sam Sappenfield:
It was events and other stuff. I mean, I was

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Sam Sappenfield:
Hank was the first and then he hired me along with two others to kind of go do marketing stuff. And so the field is green. Like there is a billion

Matt Stauffer:
Uh-huh. Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
things that we could have done. And so my focus was events, but I also was doing emails, automations, launches. So I kinda was dabbling everywhere when I first started at Laravelle. So

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

we'll go to other places in a second, but you said marketing ops, and I'm not a marketing savvy enough person to fully understand what that means, but what I think it means is all the systems and processes that lead towards marketing not just being an idea but actually being implemented. Is that right? Okay.

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So

using using tools like HubSpot, for example,

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Sam Sappenfield:
we store the data, we use that data to use, you know, market stuff. So

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. So

I know that that's not kind of where you live right now, but I can imagine that there may be a conversation for us to have about what AI has done to that industry and kind of how you've been following those things. So I want to like put a pin in it as they say

Sam Sappenfield:
Yep.

Matt Stauffer:
and just kind of like, I betcha there's some fun stuff there. But okay, so you your story of coming to Laravel was kind of working your way from I don't know what I'm doing because I've had an injury or I've had injuries all the way through to getting an internship, doing social media in the earlier days of social media, all the way through to being a CMO.

To being recruited by Hank over to come to Laravel to do events and other things. And you,

Sam Sappenfield:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
that's how you and I met, and that's how I think you met a lot of folks, is that you were helping really be kind of our main point of contact for things like Laracon and and some of the other events that were going on. so what was I guess like during your first round of work at Laravel, what was the biggest thing where you were learning for yourself? And then what was the biggest thing where cause you said it's greenfield, right? So like what was your if if

If I was talking to you and you had left Laravel and never come back, what would you say is like your biggest legacy from that first round?

Sam Sappenfield:
Ooh, so I because I was kind of the first ever in Laravel person to do events for Laravel, I was the first ever person to pop up a booth at a Laravel conference.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
so I kind of got to define what that looked like. I got to work closely with all the organizers for all the Laracons, Laravel Lives, which, like you said, Matt, like I I got an opportunity to meet like so many really cool people in the ecosystem. and they just knew me.

As the events girl. So I I that was probably my the happiest, proudest thing that I had is that I had friends all over around the world. And

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
I got to, you know, preach, preach Laravel wherever I was, and and

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
pop up a little booth, hand out some swag, create swag. so that that was the most fun that I had for sure in that first little

Matt Stauffer:
That's very cool.

Sam Sappenfield:
round there.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. So we've gotten to the end of the first little round. at some point for various reasons, you end up working

Sam Sappenfield:
Mm.

Matt Stauffer:
somewhere else. And were you still doing marketing when you were there, or were you kind of pivoting,

Sam Sappenfield:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
or are you still doing events? Were you pivoting to something different at that point?

Sam Sappenfield:
So I think it might be kind of interesting on the reason why I decided to jump to that company. Yeah. No, yeah,

Matt Stauffer:
Great. I did I didn't know if it was appropriate to ask, so thank you for offering.

Sam Sappenfield:
of course. So it's I actually when AI this year it I definitely became a doomer. I was terrified of it.

Matt Stauffer:
Mm. Hm.

Sam Sappenfield:
there's especially I was more active on LinkedIn.

Earlier this year. I've now switched to X. I know it's superior now.

Matt Stauffer:
There you go. Yes.

Sam Sappenfield:
but there was a lot of doom and gloom on.

LinkedIn about it. And so I kind of had this weird shift where I was like, I think I need to like shift outside of the software space because this isn't really good for my health kind of thing. Like

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
I'm just feeling gloomy all the time. So that was like one reason why I I was like, maybe I need to shift it up and see some sun, see some sunlight, you know?

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
So that's that's a big driver behind why I went and worked again back in the K through 12 space.

And they were doing curriculum, so very outside of software. and while I was there, I missed it. I missed being on the cutting edge of technology. And then the narrative started

Matt Stauffer:
Wow.

Sam Sappenfield:
shifting. people started posting more about the bloom versus the gloom. And I

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
started feeling like, my gosh, I'm really missing out not being in this space.

So that's like a big reason why I panicked and I was like, I need to come back to Laravel. I

Matt Stauffer:
What am I?

Sam Sappenfield:
don't know how. Yeah, what have I done? So thankfully the Laravel team was willing to have me back. So I came right back and I am having more fun than I've ever had ever in my career now. So yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Amazing. Okay, so

you came back, and when I heard I I read it Laracon this year, I think it was is Sam is back and everyone's just delighted and you're there and like, my

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
God, what's going on? I was like, so Sam's gonna do events again, and I was curious like how that played out. And then I saw

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
you on Twitter, and I'm sorry, I'm old, so it's still Twitter for me, but I you know, translate that to X for for the newbies. I saw you in Twitter, I was like, this is not events, Sam. And I again I didn't know that your job at the at the beginning was about this kind of like field marketing. So what's the before we even talk about what you're doing?

What's the the directive that you've been giving? What does field marketing even mean? Or what was the pitch as you came back? Like kind of what's what's you know, does that make sense? Like

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah, so field marketing Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
what were you told on day one or what did you pitch them on day one?

Sam Sappenfield:
On my second day one, you mean? Yeah, okay.

Matt Stauffer:
Second day one. Yes, thanks. Day whatever, two one,

one one.

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah,

yeah, yeah exactly. So I I happen to have a couple calls with Aaron Francis. I knew he was coming in as VP of marketing com and community and he was like, We want you back, so what do you want to do? And I was like, you know, I just wanna do what I was doing 'cause I loved it. so the pitch was I just come back and I head up Laracon US and I'm in the field again. So

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

Sam Sappenfield:
going to all the Laravel events, having a booth and then

other events within the developer space will pop up a booth kind of thing. and then working alongside Abby Gilson, who also does similar stuff. So that was the pitch. My first week back was Laracon US Boston.

And I saw all my friends, it was super fun. Everyone was confused why I was there. I was like, no, I'm back, I'm really back, yeah. Hopefully.

Matt Stauffer:
And delighted. Yes.

Sam Sappenfield:
and then a lot of the conversations that I had at Laracon US and a lot of the talks at Laracon US were about agentic programming. And I've been wanting to dabble into it because I've kind of always secretly been a builder, but without directly calling it that. Like I'm always doing weird side stuff, and it felt like

Through those talks and conversations, that my gosh, this could actually be a way for me to build. so when Abby and I got back from Laracon US, I we had like a bunch of photos, right? So Dave Hicking took a bunch of photos, we had a photographer, and they shared those photos with us through Google Drive. And I was we gotta share this with the community, Abby. Like, how should we do that? So we're kind of talking it through, and

We were like, okay, well, we could ask engineering to build us something, but that doesn't feel like a good use of their time. And then historically, you know, marketers, we love to buy things. So we could have bought a tool that could do that for us. But again, because of those conversations we were having at Laracon US and the talks, I was like, Abby, why don't we just try and build something ourselves? and we did. So we built Laracon.us slash photos.

got it live on Laravel Cloud, shared it with the world. And that's kind of what ignited this new version of myself. And in just in two months, I've gone from being the field marketing Sam to builder Sam, even internally within Laravel. So anytime there's an opportunity for get my hands into an agent and just start building something, I'm the first one to raise my hand. and yeah, so it's been super fun.

Matt Stauffer:
That's

amazing. And that's what I saw on Twitter. I was just like, wait a minute, like this is a and and you it's not as if you're building out of nowhere. You're absolutely, you know, saying, I'm learning this, and you're kind of live tweeting it. So for somebody who has not followed your journey of, you know, of learning to be a builder publicly, of seeing all of a sudden people over the internet kind of like following you and looking into what you're doing, building the sambrain and everything, can you kind of just tell the story of like what it was like? 'Cause you're talking about building and you are building and you're making things, but

There's also the public aspect of it, which I think is really fun because it's brought people to follow and comment on what you're doing far outside of our normal circle of influence. So what kind

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
of what's the story about building publicly?

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah,

When Abby and I pushed that photos app live and then we shared it with the world, we shared it with the Laravel team, everyone was just like super amped. So I felt super amped. Like I want to do more of this. And then it was the Saturday right after we launched it. I was really restless all night because I was like, man, I could build this, I could build that, I could build this. And so I woke up really early on a Saturday morning, 6 AM, and I was supposed to do a bunch of yard work that day. And I thought, you know.

know what I'm instead I'm just gonna try and build some of these ideas that I had. And then I posted that on Twitter. I was just like, hey, instead of doing some yard work, I'm gonna try and build something. And I don't know why, but some people were really interested in that and they started engaging with me on Twitter or X or whatever you want call it.

And what I ended up happening is it started making me feel accountable to actually continue to go do that. I very easily could have been like, okay, this is harder than I thought it was gonna be. I'm gonna go mow the lawn now. But I had people following me. So I was like posting as I was going. And people were really interested, so I felt like I owed it to them and owed it to myself to keep posting, keep building. And it just has kind of snowballed from there.

And I think what I what I said, which is a it's made me accountable to keep going. And what I found is it's actually super fun. And people will comment on my my posts and tell me like, Sam, that's your workflow. You're not doing it right. Do this. And it's actually been super helpful because I just don't know anything. Like I don't know how to read or write code. I don't know about proper architecture. so

the agent does all that for me, but there's like ways you can have it do better, spend less tokens, all this stuff. So having the developer community engage with me on Twitter has been

I don't know, just it's it's it's made me accountable, it's made me keep building, it's made me excited, it makes me feel like I have cheerleaders, I guess, which

Matt Stauffer:
Mm.

Sam Sappenfield:
it pushes puts me right back into that athlete state of mind where I've got some fans. I don't know if they're fans, but I've got a crowd and I've gotta

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
I've gotta perform, you know? So that's kind of what it feels like.

Matt Stauffer:
that's fun. Well, and and again, you're

doing this publicly, so you're putting yourself in a space where like whatever I do, y'all are gonna see it and you're I w I wish it wasn't the case, but putting something in the internet is usually kind of an inviting comment because we know that they're gonna comment. If it's there, especially if it's getting retweeted or responded to by big people, you're gonna get comments.

Sam Sappenfield:
Yep. Yes.

Matt Stauffer:
so I wanna talk about the one that I thought was

Really 'cause the photos so the photos app coming from non-builders was very impressive. And I yeah, I don't know if you know no, I didn't have her on the podcast, but Kayla, my virtual assistant, also knows Taylor personally, and he has had her building apps on Laravel Cloud, both to help her out, but

Sam Sappenfield:
cool.

Matt Stauffer:
also as a as a a space of being like a completely non programmer learning how to code through AI and then deploying Laravel Cloud. And so I talked to her quite

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
a bit about her experiences.

But she's doing it in her own little small space as a virtual assistant, building tools for her clients and building tools for herself. You're building tools, with full respect to what Kayla's doing. you're building tools that are being put on Laracon, like Laravel's website, you know, like that's that's that's a lot

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
of that's a lot of eyes. how

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
do you have anxiety around this? Are you asking other people reviewing your

Sam Sappenfield:
my gosh.

Matt Stauffer:
code or like how are you feeling?

Sam Sappenfield:
Terrified, absolutely terrified.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Okay.

Sam Sappenfield:
No, for sure. Especially me. I am more of a quiet type. I'm shy. and

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

Sam Sappenfield:
it it is scary to put myself out there. but something that actually has helped me quite a bit is having the internal Laravel slack.

and something that Aaron has done really well being here is he's taught us to just post publicly. Like let's have less Slack channels, just everybody post what they're doing in one channel so everyone can see. And

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Sam Sappenfield:
so before the Photos app even went live, I posted

about it in our Laravel Slack. And then all the engineers came out and they were like, Sam, this is amazing. Like this is so cool.

Matt Stauffer:
good.

Sam Sappenfield:
I made sure that they clicked through and if there were any bugs or anything that looked weird, they helped me, you know, find that and tweak it. So and it is terrifying, but I have I have that channel. I have those cheerleaders within Laravel pushing me to go do it. So that's kind of what what keeps me going. So

Matt Stauffer:
All right, we have to pause for just a second to thank our amazing sponsors. Thank you so much first to Laracon Australia. So Laracon Australia returns November fourth to sixth. That is coming up in less than two months. I should work on my talk some more. It's it's gonna be great, I promise. in Brisbane with deeper learning, practical insights, and ideas that will stretch how you think about building with Laravel. Get your tickets now

and Laricon.au. And I will tell you that I'm actually really excited about this talk.

I was having a conversation with some friends recently about what we think about DHH's recent is you know, should we stop worrying about code? Kind of like his whole pitch. And I made a pitch for why taste is really important for us, even if you are not writing all the code or necessarily reason reading all of it. Here's a case for why the humanity is still really important. And I was like trying to figure out how to tell them about it. I was like, Well, I'm actually writing a talk about this right now, and I shared some screenshots of the talk slides.

In that conversation. So I'm very excited about this talk. I think it's super relevant. I also know all the other speakers, and I'm very excited about a lot of talks that are happening there. So if you are able to come to Australia, I would definitely highly recommend it. And then also thank you so much to Spatie Flare by Spatie is the all-in-one error tracking and performance monitoring platform for your Laravel application. You can find them at flareapp.io. And if you want to check out their performance monitoring, can check out flareapp.io slash performance dash monitoring. So thank you so much to both of our sponsors.

so when did you decide to start putting this stuff up on Sambrain?

Sam Sappenfield:
Ooh, I I've always liked long form writing, which

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Sam Sappenfield:
yeah, so I've always liked doing that. I've always done it. It's because again, I am kind of more shy. I it's the way I process things, it's the way I learn things. you know, the whole writing is thinking, that's always been the case with me with long form writing.

so I just started long form writing as I've been building to really help me understand the concepts and the things that I am learning. Cause it actually is really easy to just tell your agent, like, build me an app that does this, and then it doesn't, and you actually have no idea what it just did. so I've been long form writing as I've been doing it to really help me understand what's going on behind the scenes.

And then I I asked Aaron for advice. I was like, hey, I I've written a lot. What do you think about me sharing that publicly? And he's all about that. So he's like, yeah, definitely,

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
Sam, you should share that. So just again, encouragement from people that I really respect and admire has gone a long way for me. So I I built the SamBrain.com and just I don't know, I'm just posting and people thankfully have been really nice.

Yeah, I don't know if I'd keep going if people were really mean to me all the time. So I haven't

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
had that yet. Maybe it will happen, but I'm just gonna keep trying. So.

Matt Stauffer:
Well, you're a great writer.

It is a really wonderfully simple interface. There's I'm not dealing with ads, and it's it's just like here's the content, you can search the content, you can filter the content, you can ex interact with content. I there's something really I haven't figured out how to put a finger on it, but there's something about thesambrain dot com. Here's a bunch of articles, click on them and read them. Where it's like this there's nothing else going here. And and it does lead me, if I don't know you, it does lead me wanting to go click on Sam and see, this is who Sam is.

But it's like, it's sort of like how as conference speakers, we're often told, like, don't spend the first five minutes telling everybody who you are. Be a fascinating speaker, talking about brilliant stuff that leads people, if they care, to then go look you up.

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
you've done that here, right? Like this is like, here's the content. That's it, right? Like if you go to mattstauffer.com,

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
the first thing is a big picture of me that says, Hey, I'm Matt Stauffer, founder of Tighten. I do double blah blah blah. And then you've got to scroll to get down to the content. I'm like, man, am I gonna completely remake my website? inspired by the sambrain.com. It's just really fun.

I want to go down some of these angles, but because I have the website up, I did click on the girls HQ and there's nothing there yet. Is there a is is that a

Sam Sappenfield:
I

Matt Stauffer:
teaser something coming soon?

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah, it is a little bit of a teaser. I have my best friend and I we met because we both like to build stuff years and years

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Sam Sappenfield:
ago. And we've tried building a lot of businesses. So we've got something cooking.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Sam Sappenfield:
I I've been teasing it, but it's not quite ready. It will be ready soon. But yeah, I kind of used it as like a little Easter egg. I didn't I honestly didn't

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. Something for us to look forward to. I love it.

Sam Sappenfield:
I didn't know if people would actually even go to the Sambrain.com and click around on stuff. So I'm

Matt Stauffer:
yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
surprised. Yeah, surprised that you

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, and again, like there is really something stupid special about the

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
simplicity of it. And I'm not saying it's stupid. I'm just like it's it's unexpectedly

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
and almost inexplicably an enjoyable experience clicking around this website and reading content. Again, you're a fantastic writer and there's lots of fascinating, interesting things in here. and I did want to talk about one of your articles, Building Ruined HubSpot for me. because I think that what it looks like for you to be a builder.

Who

Sam Sappenfield:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
has other things going on? It's led to a couple of interesting things. I want to talk about the t shirt thing as well in a second. but this building ruined hotspot are article, basically what you're what I'm hearing from you here is like a tool that you have used and enjoyed, you're having a

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
different experience with it now that you're a builder. Can you kind of talk us through if somebody hasn't read this article before, like what's what was that transition like? Or what was the transition, I guess?

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah. Man, I

absolutely the transition just happened in the last couple months, honestly. I was like the biggest Laravel fan or sorry, I am the biggest Laravel fan, but I was the biggest HubSpot fan. because someone who doesn't know how to code,

Just HubSpot allows you to just drag and drop whatever you want to be able to make whatever automations you want. So it

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

Sam Sappenfield:
it kind of empowers you to not have to rely on, you know, an engineer to build something like that.

Matt Stauffer:
Developers to do anything. Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
Exactly. So that feels really empowering. It's difficult to wait. For me, I like to just, you know, build stuff. So HubSpot was always that for me.

But now that I understand how to build with agents, it's completely shifted what I think about HubSpot. I think it's a t well, sorry. I no, I mean, I was gonna say no shade to HubSpot was total shade to HubSpot. I th yeah. I think it's a terrible platform.

Matt Stauffer:
It kinda is shade, yeah. Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
and the reason being is because I I tend to lean towards going to companies or startups where

the field is green. So I

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

Sam Sappenfield:
get to build from nothing. So everything that's built is my brain. It's my reasoning. It's my logic. It's easy for me to find stuff. but I recently experienced what it's like to go into HubSpot not being the one that built it. And n with no documentation either. So I

There was like a hundred plus workflows in HubSpot. And you can kind of see in the article, I took like a little snapshot of what it look like a HubSpot workflow looks like. it's like kind of UI and it's got like these bubbles and if-then branches and everything. So I started like trying to figure out, get into the brain of the person who actually built all this and the way the Hubspot UI is, you have to like scroll to the side, scroll down. You can't see the full picture. So if you've got more

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

Sam Sappenfield:
than like

10 steps in there, you just can't even see it all. And you don't

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
understand why it's there. But anyway, the point is, is like building has completely shifted my mind because

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
I I also learned like the importance of documenting everything as you're building and having not just what you built, but the reason behind why you built it.

And then it's shifted like these branches, the UI, all of it is just terrible because you you just can't understand it.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
So when you're building with an agent, it's just completely different. It's cleaner, it can be cleaner. it's I don't know. I don't know if that answers your question, but like building has just come yeah. So

Matt Stauffer:
No, it's great. So and that leads

me to be curious. Are you building because we've seen what you've done publicly for a Laravel? are you building marketing automations and other stuff like that in the background that replace what you would have previously used a tool like HubSpot for? Yeah. Is it one mega tool

Sam Sappenfield:
Yep. Yeah. Yep, absolutely.

Matt Stauffer:
or is it lots of like little independent things?

Sam Sappenfield:
It's independent things and that's kind of something that I talk about in the article is HubSpot kind of defines itself as an all in one platform, which isn't necessarily bad, especially for someone who isn't a developer or an engineer, because it's nice having it all in one place. But I'm finding as I'm building it's it's actually better to have a little bit more of a modular or custom setup. because I mean

I don't know, you can make it more specific to what your company is trying to do, more specific

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
to what your pipeline looks like. So I'm finding that it's actually helpful to have different tools kind of working together versus all

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
in one because you can get lost in the features that way. So but

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

okay, so we've talked a little about the the first thing that you did publicly, which was the photos. I want to talk about the t shirts. b

Sam Sappenfield:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
for a couple of reasons. One because I think it's really fun, but second of all, because I think it was going from I'm listing something people click on to now I'm taking people's money and shipping physical products. So if somebody has not experienced it, can you talk about your generative art t shirt project?

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah. So that was the idea that I woke up that one Saturday morning after the photos app that was like, I have this idea. I want to see if you can generate art and get it actually printed on a physical t-shirt. so that weekend I built the whole thing locally, but I wasn't I actually wasn't thinking about like I'm gonna make money this way. So I didn't even like add stripe, I didn't do any of

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
that. So I had to have my agent rebuild everything. I have some post.

About how it like, I don't know, it just changed. It had to change, it took like an hour for the agent to rebuild the entire architecture to add in stripe.

So yeah, I wasn't expecting to make any money off this app. I just wanted to see if I could build it. Cause I being

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
in marketing, I have done a lot of physical product with swag and things.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Sam Sappenfield:
so I just thought it would be fun. And so yeah, I just I just did it and then I added in Stripe, which was a whole thing.

And then in I wrote an article about how that process went for me. I thought it was actually gonna be a lot easier than it ended up being.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
I didn't realize because I'm a noob, so I don't really know things, but once

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
you start adding in APIs to other products, it gets a little bit hairy. So

Matt Stauffer:
Yep. Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
that's that was my experience with it. And I wanted to abandon the project, to be honest. But again, because I was posting on X and

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
and people were curious and I I just felt like I owed it to myself and to the folks that were watching me to actually go finish it. and then also Aaron had posted in the Laravel Slack about like the importance of getting a hundred percent done, like ninety percent done isn't

Matt Stauffer:
Hmm.

Sam Sappenfield:
enough.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
so I was like, I'm just gonna push to a hundred, finish it. It's not gonna be perfect, it's not gonna look exactly how I want it to look. But I just wanna be able to prove that I can do it. So I did that and I shipped it. So that's what happened.

Matt Stauffer:
So you shipped it, and I think you said that your first kind of shirt that came through wasn't I I think I was on Twitter. You said it wasn't really kind of like what you had hoped for. Because one of the

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
things is this difficult is dealing with money, another thing that's difficult is dealing with APIs, and another thing that's

Sam Sappenfield:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
difficult is dealing with the interaction between the digital and the physical world. And you're like, let me throw all of them into my second project.

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
how how do you debug things like that when you don't know the code that's going on? Right. Cause I think the first thing I do is I go in and I just say, well.

The inches, whatever, do you just go to the agent and you're like, Hey, here's what the design said, here's the print, just fix it. Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah. Literally

just screenshots. So like

Matt Stauffer:
Ha ha

Sam Sappenfield:
and I test everything. Like I click everything, I

Matt Stauffer:
Uh-huh.

Sam Sappenfield:
read everything.

So I was like, I obviously gotta actually get this physical shirt to see if it worked before I share it with anyone. So I did. I ordered it and I talk about it in the article a little bit, but originally the preview part of this app I made where you can preview the art you made on a t-shirt, it was like showing this big block right here. But I just wanted it on like your little like chest right here. So on the preview part, I was like, okay, I hey agent, can you just

like on the preview make it go up to that little corner right here and it was like sure and it did it like that and I was like great problem solved I ordered the t-shirt it came seven days later and then it still had that big block right here in the center

And then I was like, what the heck? I thought we fixed this with the agent. So I took a picture of it and I was like, hey, agent, I got my I got my shirt back and this is what it looks like. What happened? And

Matt Stauffer:
Uh-huh.

Sam Sappenfield:
it was able to tell me pretty quickly, like, we fixed this on the preview page, but we didn't go tell printful to go do the same thing. So I was like, my gosh. So

Matt Stauffer:
Oops.

Sam Sappenfield:
I had to fix that and then order another shirt. and then it it fixed it that time. But anyway, that's kind of what my process was like. I

I didn't think about the whole like API situation doing on the preview page versus printful. I wouldn't have thought of that, but because I tested it, took pictures of it, sent it to my agent, it was able to help debug it for me. So

Matt Stauffer:
so I when somebody first launches something, there is some excitement about launching and sometimes you do and sometimes you don't want to share with the whole world how many you've sold. So I'm not gonna tell you you have to. You can just be s decide to be mysterious, but would you like to share how many shirts have actually been ordered through the website?

Sam Sappenfield:
Honestly, Matt, I haven't even looked. I don't have like

Matt Stauffer:
Ha ha.

Sam Sappenfield:
I don't have notifications or anything on. In fact, I got an email, I think, from Stripe yesterday that was like, Hey, we can't give you your payouts because you haven't finished setting up your account.

Matt Stauffer:
Set up your

Sam Sappenfield:
So I don't even know, to be honest. Probably zero.

Matt Stauffer:
That's so funny. all right. Well,

I'm I'm gonna live. is do you know is it comfort color shirt that you're you're shipping on or what what kind of shirt is it? Okay. I love

Sam Sappenfield:
Uh-huh. Comfort colors, yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
I love the black comfort color shirt. I I'm have strongly considered just ordering like 10 of those and just wearing them every day. So I'm on your dash art dash on dash shirt dot larival dot cloud slash design. I have created a large shirt with Titan.com and

What did you call it? Memphis something, I think it was. 90s Memphis style. And I

Sam Sappenfield:
Nineties Memphis.

Matt Stauffer:
played around with the background a little bit. Got some snakes going everywhere. Hold on, actually, make sure that I I did zoom them up a little bit bigger than I should have. yeah, I think I made the snake so big that you can't see some of the other patterns quite as much as you should. So let me shrink a lot little bit more, twist it. I'm just doing this because I want to be able to order one live on on on the call. Because I'm just that's just so fun. So yeah, let's.

Let's do it. Hit preview. I wish you all could watch this. Well, hold on. You can watch this. For those who are on YouTube, let me hit share window generative art shirts. All right, so we've got my

Sam Sappenfield:
Ha ha

Matt Stauffer:
shirt on black large. I put Tighten.com Is there a is there like a border? there's a border around this. Can I change the border color?

Sam Sappenfield:
I don't I don't know. I don't think so. I didn't go crazy.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

outline.

Let's see. shoot.

Sorry, listener audio listeners, I'm sorry you're missing out on this. This is why you should watch it on YouTube. well, while we're doing this, it generates a preview of the shirt. Do you know what technology it's using for that? Because if you were a full time program, I'd be like, this is really cool. Where are you hosting this?

Sam Sappenfield:
I have no idea, Matt.

Matt Stauffer:
Wow. To have something with this level of capability and be literally don't know how this thing works. what do you think?

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah, I wish I did.

Matt Stauffer:
Should I have this big block like this?

Sam Sappenfield:
I I think you should take the block off.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

And just have it be like that.

Sam Sappenfield:
Mm-hmm. And you can do like a transparent background so it only has Tighten dot com.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. Yeah, the thing is the black the black the black border on a black shirt means you end up with just these really skinny letters. So that's why

Sam Sappenfield:
true. Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
I'm like, is there a

Might just need to just pick a different

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah. Yeah, I because it was kind of more complex of a thing, I I didn't like go into the nitty gritty of

Matt Stauffer:
Hundred percent. Yes.

Sam Sappenfield:
yeah, but but I could, you know, like and now I know how. So yeah, it is dark, huh?

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

yeah. No, we're gonna go back to this one. Okay. So I'm going to hit print and then I'm going to hide because I don't want everyone to see my credit card details. But while we continue talking, I will tell you when an order comes through. But I think to me what this is telling me is I want you so okay, so if I were to tell you, Sam, you should have a little notification come through every single

Sam Sappenfield:
Mm-hmm.

Matt Stauffer:
time you sell one.

where would you do that?

Yes. So is it are you a telegram person? Are you a Slack person? Would you try to set up a text message?

Sam Sappenfield:
I probably probably would do text. I have telegram, but I don't look at it unless it's Laracon US season. so yeah. So probably text.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. Yeah. I will tell

you that Slack and Telegram are the easiest to set up because they don't require you to set up an account with something like an SMS provider, like Twilio. so you just have to have a Slack account or a Telegram account, whereas with SMS you have to set up a Twilio account. But maybe that'd be fun. but I will

Sam Sappenfield:
Okay.

Matt Stauffer:
tell you, as a builder, there is even if it's not about making money, there is a deep joy in getting a little ping.

At the beginning, obviously,

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
if once you blow up, you don't want to ping every single time. At the beginning to get a ping for every sale or every usage, there's really something special about that. So unfortunately, you're not gonna get a ping right now, but I am clicking

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah. Okay, fun.

Matt Stauffer:
the pay button right now. And when this comes in the mail, I will go back and update the show notes and put a link of it in the show notes so all the rest of you, you know, obviously we can't see it right now, but all the rest of y'all can see it happening. So this is very exciting.

Sam Sappenfield:
That's fun. Thanks,

Matt. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
I think this

is the first time I've ever gotten to like fully use the thing. Up payment received, finalizing your order with printful. This usually takes just a few seconds. It's got all spinner. This is this is so professional.

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Cool. Thanks. My agent built it. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Yes. So so let's talk about that for a second. What's your

agent? What's your setup? How are because I know a lot of people are like, I'm using this, that, and the other, and there's all these kind of like, but but again, you're not

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
a programmer. You're not you're you're not historically a programmer. You're not, you know, like operating from

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
a space of I want to be deepest to the metal. What what was the space that made it easy for you to start interacting with these tools?

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah, so I use Claude. and

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. Is this clawed code

on in the C L I or is it clawed the desktop app or

Sam Sappenfield:
I use it in the terminal, like the Mac terminal situation. And the reason why I do it though is that's how I learned. I went to Hank Taylor's Code to Market Summit back in February this year. And he just had like a little session where he taught how to do that. And so that's just what I was taught is just I would throw Claude into a little terminal and then work with the agent that way. but I will say, since even this week,

I have significantly changed my workflow.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Sam Sappenfield:
I started using solo term or solo solo.

Matt Stauffer:
Loves solo.

Aaron Francis is a king.

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah, I know.

Seriously. But I was using so I was using Claude in the browser to kind of like help scope and teach me how to do stuff. And then I had Claude in the terminal where my agent was actually writing the code. and then I had another terminal open that was running that local server. So just this week I completely changed it all and now I'm only running out of solo and I'm using Claude still. And it honestly

Matt Stauffer:
Very cool.

Sam Sappenfield:
as a non

developer, non-engineer. It is so stressful how every week there's like a new thing to try. I'm like, guys, I need to figure out how to just use one thing. Yeah, so yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Just trying to learn this one thing. Yes. Well, the good news is

the vast majority of the time, by the time you learn the new thing, everyone's gone back to the old one. Like literally, with everyone's like, leave Claude, go to you know, Opus. No, no, go to Codex. And they're like, come

Sam Sappenfield:
Yes.

Matt Stauffer:
back to Claude. They've got the latest. And I'm just like, just find the thing that works for you. So I love it. Okay,

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah. Yeah, that's what I've been trying to do.

Matt Stauffer:
so we are coming close on time because, like I told you, I unfortunately have less time than I wouldn't love to have to interview you.

As

we kind of talk through moving forward, Sam, is there a thing you see in the next six months of your like what you're excited about or what you're building towards, both in your personal time on your personal blog and your work at Laravel? Like kind of what is the next thing for you?

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah, I think the next thing for me is I am gonna continue to write on the sambrain.com. I

Matt Stauffer:
Love that.

Sam Sappenfield:
I just have a lot of thoughts, Matt. So I just wanna share them. and I'm actually shocked that people read them so

That's kind of crazy. It makes me want to keep doing it. and then I'm gonna just keep building. Every day, obviously, I wake up with a new idea. Now that I have these powers, I just I'm like, I just want to build stuff. Which is it's honestly never been me. I'm very much like an outside kind of gal. I I mean I have these surfboards. Like I like to be in the ocean where there's no device next to me or near me. but that's changed a little bit in the last couple months because I just feel powerful. I

feel more ambitious than I've ever felt. and I just want to build stuff. So I don't know what it looks like yet, Matt, but I know that I'm gonna be continuing to build stuff. and

I don't know. I I I'm gonna try and make some money on the side from it, just 'cause I like doing that. It's kinda fun to like you said, when you get like a little ping that says, Hey, you just made a dollar or whatever, like that sounds really exciting to me. I don't know what it looks like yet. I just know that I'm gonna keep tinkering, so

Matt Stauffer:
I love it. I'm very

excited about that. Okay. so we've already named many of these, but I still have to ask if people want to follow along with what you're doing, where is the best place for them to follow you?

Sam Sappenfield:
Probably X, yeah. Probably my X account. I usually post on there when I've

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. And the sambrain.com.

Sam Sappenfield:
yeah, in the sambrain dot com I usually like post on X when I've dropped a new article. So yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

this is totally random and you might not have an answer for this, but if is there anyone on the internet where you're like that would be a dream collaboration? A designer, a creator, an artist, a athlete, somebody in the the Twitter

Sam Sappenfield:
Who?

Matt Stauffer:
sphere, you're like, Man, if I if I could just do something fun with them, that would be really cool. And if you don't have any answers, that's fine, I didn't prep you for this, but I just was curious.

Sam Sappenfield:
Yeah, I don't think I have any answers only because I feel like I get to do that already, like within the Laravel

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Sam Sappenfield:
ecosystem. Like the fact that I'm talking to you right now is kind of crazy to me, that you had me on. So I don't specifically have an answer. I get to be in a slack workspace with the Aaron Francis, the Taylor Otwell, you know, so that I I feel like

Matt Stauffer:
And so many brilliant

people in there, right? Like yeah. Right. I love it. it's amazing. Well, thank

Sam Sappenfield:
So many brilliant people. Jason Beggs, like just so many awesome people. So I feel like I'm already living the dream in that way.

Matt Stauffer:
you so much for hanging out for a little bit. thank you for sharing what you're working on. Not just here, but also it really is fun and refreshing watching you learn. Like you've you said, you've always been a builder. So it's not that you're learning to be a builder, it's you're learning to apply your builder in a way that is unique.

i is in a way that is wasn't possible five years ago, in a way that many people with your background don't understand that they can, in a way that many of us as programmers don't have. Like programmers have the skills, but not always the ideas, right? And so it's been really fun watching that unique kind of like overlap of things. I'm also just very happy you're back in our community because like you're great. So thank you for hanging out.

Sam Sappenfield:
Thanks, Matt.

Matt Stauffer:
Thank you for sharing. It was a total pleasure having you.

Sam Sappenfield:
Thanks so much, Matt. Thanks for having me.

Matt Stauffer:
Course, and for the rest of you. We will see you all not just next time, we will see you all next season. All right, where's my button?