The No CS Degree podcast is out now! You can listen to an interview with Kenneth Cassel about how he switched working in the trades and toiling away in the Texas heat on the roof of a gas station to being a work at home software developer making six figures.
Kenneth was able to achieve a six figure salary after just three years of becoming a developer and he didn't need a CS degree to do it either! Kenneth has very recently quit his job to go full-time on his own project Slip, which allows developers to sell their own interactive programming courses. It was a real pleasure chatting with Kenneth and I hope you enjoy the podcast!
You also now check out the interview on YouTube!
Transcript
Pete: Okay, welcome to the No CS Degree show. This is a show for developers who are self-taught or have been to coding bootcamps. And it's where I talk to them by how they become successful in their jobs or how they've made their own startups. I'm joined today by Kevin Cassel, who is a developer working at Fort worth, Texas.
Kenneth works remotely, has paid off credit card that is working on slip, where developers can sell their own courses. So it's really great to have Kenneth on the show today. So yeah, why did you start learning to code in the first place?
Kenneth: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's kind of like, you know, like a lot of people have this like meandering path into tech and I as well did too.
Um, so like, straight out of high school. I thought I wanted to be a high school band director. So I thought I wanted to like teach music to high school students. And I played music in high school and I had no interest in tech at all. Zero, 0%. I wasn't like a person that coded or really even played online games or anything like that.
And so I went to school for a couple of years for music education. And then I, I found out that field is not the best, like, especially if you like value like your time or like you ever want, if you have like big financial goals. Um, so like the average pay for like a band director in Texas is probably somewhere around $40,000 a year and you have to get a five-year music degree to get that job.
So you're going to spend five years in college and, you know, probably $150,000 in student loan debt to make 40,000 a year. And so I did that for two years and I decided I didn't really want to continue down that path. And so I dropped out and I, uh, I had my first son and I started working in a gas station.
Um, so, so at this gas station, I was like a night clerk. So I like, you know, cleaned the bathrooms and swept the floors and stock the coolers and like dealt with all the crazy drunk people. And I did that for about six months. And then I got into the maintenance department. And so that was like the biggest like career that I did before, um, tech was, I worked in the trades, so I fixed like electrical equipment, plumbing, air conditioning.
I pulled like submersible, gas, motors out of the ground. Um, you know, all that kind of stuff. Like pretty much anything and everything that could break at a gas station, like it would fix it. And I did that for six years. Oh my God. That's a long time. Yeah. So it was pretty cool. It was an interesting job.
I've made pretty good money. I made anywhere between like 50,000 and. Uh, probably close to 80,000 a year, depending on how many hours of work. But I worked holidays, the work was hard. I worked at like on the roof and the Texas heats like 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
Pete: Um, I'd be dead
Kenneth: Tons of hours. We need to overnight/ holidays.
I mean, you name it. Um, so I missed out on a lot of stuff, you know, and I started realizing that it wasn't really the greatest, like a career for someone that has a family. And I started like looking around for like how I could, um, you know, get into different career. And I was like generally interested in some kind of engineering, but I, I still wasn't even interested in tech.
So like, I, I remember one time I looked back at my email inbox and for like a couple of years in a row, I was emailing like a different engineering department at like my local university. Like asking them for like, Hey, how can I get into electrical engineering or, Hey, how can I get back started in mechanical engineering or whatever, and, uh, no reply, which is,
Pete: Oh my God. That's so horrible.
Kenneth: Yeah. Yeah. So I just kind of like stumbled into tech by accident. Um, I've always been like a pretty like handy person, like doing stuff with my hands and like building projects and stuff like, you know, like physical things, like tables and desks, chairs, shelves, things like that. And I was like browsing, uh, Reddit one day and I saw people were building these cool kegerators.
So a kegerator is like, someone takes like a, like a, like a refrigerated chest or whatever, like a freezer chest or, or like a. Or refrigerator basically. And they, uh, stick a keg in it and put a tap on it. And so like, you could like, you know, store a couple of kegs in there, add like a couple of taps or whatever, and people build them like as a do it yourself project.
Um, but I saw on Reddit, people are building some like cool ones with like a raspberry PI, which is like, yeah, it's like the small microcomputer and they were putting like these cool displays that showed like how much beer was left in the keg. And I thought like that was like the coolest thing. And, uh, so I, so I bought a raspberry PI and I decided I was going to build this kegerator and, uh, I didn't know anything, anything about like tech or how to do it. I just figured like, you know, I'll figure it out, whatever. And so I get the raspberry PI and I start having to learn Python to do the kegerator project. And so I started learning Python and, um, I never did the kegerator project, but I got, uh, I definitely got bit by the programming bug.
So I get the raspberry PI startling Python, and then I started figuring out like the tech field is actually like, you know, pretty amazing. Like I always heard through the grapevine, like it was good, but I thought it was like for other people, you know, like people who were like, Super computer nerds and like really good at computers. Nothing. I never really felt that way. Like I, I barely ever use computers and stuff. And so. But after I started learning Python, you know, it kind of changed.
It started building like these little tiny projects and like, I automated some stuff for my dad's business. And ultimately I ended up deciding to go back to college for computer science. And the long story short there is I went for a couple years part-time while I kept working full-time and I dropped out after I got the job.
Pete: Nice. So you got a job, you got hired without a degree.
Kenneth: Yeah. I mean, I, I was like super time constraint because I had a family that was working like 50 plus hours a week. I was going to school part-time and so like, my ultimate goal was like, how can I like most quickly get a job?
So I don't have to keep doing this like grind. And so I decided like, yeah, to start going to like hackathons and I joined like a programming club on campus that was like, you know, Matt, one time a week. So. I basically use those to like, like pad my resume and I was able to get a job after going to school, like part-time for two years.
I guess like most people would still be like, you know, sophomore level or lower than that, like after two years. And, you know, they might be struggling to find an internship, but if you have a goal and you can like figure out like ways to get there I feel like you don't have to go the same speed that other people do.
Pete: Yeah, absolutely. I know a lot of entrepreneurs that say it's actually great having kids cause it kind of lights a fire and it's like, okay, got a family to provide for.
There's a notion and for some people, I guess, at least in business that it's like, Oh no, go to work hard, got to like work for years and then I'll have kids, but kids can actually help you. You have a sense of hard work as well. Yeah.
Kenneth: I love that. Like framing, because like a lot of people would think like, cause I had my first son when I was 20. And so a lot of people would think like, that's like probably going to be like a financially like ruining decision and stuff because I'm like young and broke. But uh, like you said, honestly, it gave me something like more to strive for.
Like, I dunno if I would have ever even left that trade job if I didn't have kids because you know, it paid pretty good. And it had like decent benefits, but it just like, wasn't ideal for like a family. So like, you know, I'm very grateful that, you know, having kids definitely has affected me in that way.
So, and I I've seen other people, you know, kind of mentioned that same thing, which is really cool.
Pete: Yeah. That's awesome. so in terms of getting the first job, what was the interview process, like ?
Kenneth: Yeah, sure. So. I, like I said, I had been going to like these hackathons and, you know, my team won like a couple and I also had like some side projects that had on my resume because like, you know, at someone who was like super busy and had kids and a job, like, I couldn't like say like, Oh, you didn't, I was part of this research lab or, you know, I, you know, volunteered at this place over the summer or whatever.
So I had to find other ways that like, kind of fit with my lifestyle. And I think, you know, like depending on your lifestyle, you could probably find like, whatever's the best way to like, demonstrate your skills. Um, but how I got that job was, um, I was looking for like an internship or some kind of a job, and I actually landed a interview at Facebook for an internship.
And so my idea there was that I would go work there for the summer cause they pay like really high in the U S I think it's something like. Between nine and 11 grand a month. So like you could work there for a summer and make like, almost the same pay like that music teacher would've made for them whole year.
Pete: Oh, that's depressing. Well depressing for the teacher.
Kenneth: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, no, I, I got that interview and I decided that I wanted to like, get some practice cause they do those like algorithm type interviews. And I was part of this like local Slack group for developers in my area. And I saw they were hosting a like mock interview practice.
So I decided to go there. So I went to it and I met this guy, David, and he was the owner. He he's the owner of the company I work at now. Um, but he did a mock interview with me and he offered me a job the next day, but it wasn't really a software job. He, he was working on this like IOT project and it was basically like a sensor that.
Told you how much ice was left in a ice chest, like at a gas station. And he really liked my maintenance background and he wanted me to like, go install them and, you know, and I told him like, you know, I'm like really more interested in getting to the software side and he's like, okay, you know, that's fine, whatever.
So we stay connected. I connect with him on LinkedIn and, uh, he keeps seeing in our like, you know, hackathon projects cause I'm like actively posting and stuff like that. And he reaches out and he tells us that he wants to hire our whole hackathon team, which we were very skeptical about. We were like, why does this dude that owns a software company, want to hire like a bunch of like college kids for a project, but it kind of fit because he had a client that, um, They, they wanted to explore like chatbots and like I kind of technology and they didn't really need anyone to like, build anything like super crazy.
They just needed like a bunch of like small proof of concept projects. So really kind of like a hackathon team was like the perfect like fit. Um, so we ended up talking to him and he hired four of us. So, um, and he hired the other three without ever interviewing them, which was pretty crazy.
It was like part-time and I, I kept going to school and I work part-time for a couple of months and then I converted to full-time and I dropped out and I've been there ever since.
Pete: That's awesome. That's really great, man. I think it's something really important for people that are learning to coach realized that networking can have a really powerful effect in your career.
Like I'm still in touch with. Developers that I met at meet ups. Like I know like five years ago and like became good friends, snare thing, lots of people like yourself find jobs through meetups. Um, so yeah, I guess like of say when COVID kind of goes away or go, everything goes, uh, back to normal a bit more than yeah.
I think meetups are pretty awesome. And they're like, kind of like also, also if you think of like the whole like hiring funnel, like you want to like get some place at other people or not so that you stand out.
Kenneth: So like, submitting your resume online is probably like the lowest effort thing you can do. So, I mean, you're competing against like everybody. Whereas, like if you like go to meet up and you like have an interesting conversation with like someone who owns a company or like someone who's like a manager or whatever, like your chances of getting seen are like way, way better.
So , you might have the same skills and like either situation, but you know, getting past that filtering process, like you using your networking can definitely do that. And then with like the whole COVID thing, I actually think like, uh, Twitter's like a great place to like, replace that.
So like, you can build in public on Twitter. I've met so many, incredible people have had some really cool, interesting, people reach out, like asking me to apply for really cool jobs. just from billing on Twitter. It is something that I see a lot nowadays as well.
Pete: As you know, we met on Twitter I think. I find it an awesome tale and I think it's really great for people, especially learning to code. That's sort of like a really supportive community. If you're listening to this, like get a Twitter account and start tweeting that you're learning to code.
Can you go through any of like the resources that you use to learn Python?
Kenneth: Oh man. So it's been awhile. So I've been programming for about five years. So I've been a software engineer for two years professionally.
I think some of the stuff I use early days, I remember, watching this YouTube channel from a guy who's actually, I think pretty local to me, his name is Harrison, on YouTube. He's got like a million subscribers, but I just remember binge watching so many of his videos and like, I didn't know anything about full stack web development.
And I was following along his Django tutorials and , anytime he gets stuck, I would be like a hundred percent stuck because I didn't know any of this stuff. Yeah. And so, you know, that was like one of the biggest ones I started off with. I took a couple of the intro to CS courses. So the Harvard CS 50 is like an intro to computer science course.
It's free, it's online. And it's, it's probably like one of the best intro to computer science courses out there. Like it does a really good job of like, explaining why and giving like a high level overview of you know, what is programming and things you can do. And it gives you lots of practical practice or like hands-on practice too.
So those two and I don't know if I did free code camp right away. Or if that was like more like a year end, but I did get a bit of free code camp as well. That's fun.
Pete: Yeah. That's awesome. I mean, I think there's so many resources. It's just not, if people learn to code, like, I feel. Really sore for people that learn like 20 years ago before YouTube or anything like that, because, or like, do you have any courses
yeah, there's so much online. Just go on YouTube. Some of the favorite people from me, or like, Net Ninja. Do you know that guy? Uh, he's the guy from the UK. Like maybe that's why I like him more, but uh, he's like this really enthusiastic guy. He's just does, like, he's done playlist for like so many stuff. Every language or framework you can think of and it's all free. It's all YouTube. So it's awesome.
Pete: You're earning like six figures, now as a developer. Is that right?
Kenneth: Yeah. Yeah. So right now my salary is $115,000 a year, which is like, kind of like double what I was making in the trades.
And, and honestly like our work much less hours. And I worked in the trades and I worked from home, so I don't even have a commute. So it's like, that's probably like more than two times as good as like my last job. I was working in the trades.
I was making probably between like 60, 80,000 a year. And then I quit for a intern position, at my current job and I was making 27, 50 an hour. So I guess that's like 50,000 a year roughly. So I took a pay cut and you know, it's kind of risky .
No, no one told me I was going to like, be able to convert to full-time or anything. Like, it was just kind of like a calculated risk. I figured, you know, I'll go do this and. If I can't convert to full-time, I'll just go find another job, like whatever. Yeah. Um, so I mean, taking that leap and I'm sure like lots of listeners and stuff, like you're feeling that, like, how do I actually like, leave my current like good job and like, do I have to like move backwards?
And, you know, it's kind of scary for sure, but it turned out amazing for me. So I got paid 27, 50 an hour for about three months. And then, I got a full-time contract position with that company. And so that doubled to 55 an hour, which is like, I guess about like a hundred thousand a year. And then I converted a full-time like employee.
So I dunno how it is like in the UK, but like in the U S like there's two different employment types, there's contractor, like full-time employee. So full-time employee like have more benefits and that kind of stuff. So it's like, like if you make the equivalent pay, like if you're a hundred grand contractor, a hundred grand, like.
Employee the employees like a much better deal. So I converted the employee and then about a year later I got another raise. So now I'm at 115,000 a year, which is like a fantastic salary yeah.
Pete: Like something it'd be good to talk about is the fact that you're making six figures, but you're not in San Francisco or New York where.
You know, the rents are all sky high highs, these cost a fortune, you know, you're living somewhere that's a lot more affordable and you can also work for mostly. You don't have to commute. You don't have spent like an hour or two go into work every day. So, yeah. So another really awesome reason to get into tech.
Kenneth: Yeah. So I'm in, Fort worth, Texas and it's, you know, pretty reasonably priced. Like we were talking before the podcast, like in San Francisco, like you might get like a place for, like, it might be a million dollars to get, like what, what would be like a house over here for like maybe $150,000?
And like, if you had that million dollars and you spent it over here, you would get like a, Oh man shin or like our ranch. Yeah. You can buy the block. Yeah. No, my horse around your property around here with a million dollars, like it's, it's pretty crazy.
Pete: I think that should be the next benchmark instead of owning a Tesla, like riding a horse around your property. That's the benchmark for earning a little money now
Kenneth: I've been seeing some like, more like, Profile like Twitter accounts say they're like leaving Twitter to go like start a ranch somewhere, or like buy a bunch of land. And I'm like, well, you guys, like this has been the dream.
Like, this is what a lot of people, really want. You know, I think that's kind of a goal for us too, is like, we want to buy a little bit of land, nothing too crazy. But, just somewhere like further out from the city from where we live and it's cool. Cause like remote work is enabling that .
Before, COVID I was already working remote, but only three days a week. And the other two days a week, I was commuting an hour to work. I work at like a consulting firm. So we like, you know, build custom software for other people. So more of our clients are like remote friendly and we've like started getting like clients out of state and stuff.
And so like at this point, like I don't think I'll ever go back into an office at my current job. So that gives us like more freedom to like, okay, well, what if we want to like, move further out from like the city and get some land or whatever, which is really cool.
Pete: Yeah. It's awesome. I think like working as developer, take so many boxes, it's intellectually interesting.
It's like high paid and you can do it from anywhere. Like on the No CS Degree website, one of my favorite stories is a guy who works in Argentina and not like living in the Capitol, he lives in like a tiny town. But he works for someone like PayPal remotely.
His salary went up 84 times. It's insane. Just making like, yeah, making a six figure salary, but living in, a town of 5,000 people and rural Argentina, it's just an amazing asymmetry in your favor.
Kenneth: It's awesome. yeah.
Pete: It's awesome. So you're a busy guy. You've got a full-time job, but be great also to talk about your side projects.
Kenneth: So it going really well. Yeah, for sure. I mean , I think another thing that I didn't mention earlier that attracted me to software was the ability to build your own business.
Cause, that's something I've always been extremely interested in like as long as I can remember, like my dad has his own business. He's nothing crazy. He's an electrician. So like goes and fixes people's lights, that kind of stuff. But, it was always cool. Like seeing him have that freedom to like, you know, oh, I don't want to work for the next
three weeks. So let me just like front load some work and I can have almost a whole month off. You know, being your own boss and stuff. And I've had my share of terrible bosses, especially in the trades, like I had some pretty awful bosses there.
In tech it's been pretty awesome actually, so it's not really the boss kind of thing, but, um, Yeah. So I'm super interested in like building my own software business. And it's something that I've been doing pretty much right. From the start. When I started learning programming, I started the first thing I did.
I mentioned earlier automated some stuff for my dad's business. And then I tried to like productize that unsuccessfully. So I've been doing like the whole indie hacking thing for about four years. And this year I've actually started making some decent revenue. So I started the year off with this course called vim.so and it was basically an interactive course that teaches developers how to learn Vim.
And I made 10 grand in my first month. That's awesome. It was pretty incredible. Yeah. I think so many people that would have just been like, Oh, I'm quitting, quitting my job, but yeah. No, that's, that's awesome. That's really cool.
Pete: You're doing also this thing Slip, well, you'll be able to explain better, but , you've made this interactive in course, and then you'd be like, Oh, I can productize this and let other people sell courses like this is that kind of the deal?
Kenneth: Yeah, exactly. So like the VIM course, I built in released in three days, which was pretty fast, but the only reason I was able to do that is because I worked for four months before that on a Python course. And, , I released that Python course, but I never put up a payment wall or anything.
So I just let people get in there and people had some good feedback and I was kinda I don't know, maybe bored or tired of it. And a lot of any hackers do that, they'll work on something for months and release it. And they're like, okay, cool. Like what can I work on next?
Like, no one paid me any money, but I didn't even give them a way to pay me money. But anyway, I saw this guy, Damon Chen, he's another indie hacker. He has a product called testimonial and he built that in three days. Or three or four days by using a bunch of code from his previous projects. And he didn't make any money from his previous projects, but he put testimonial up for one-time sale and he made something like five grand in the first week.
I was like, man, I'm going to like, copy that idea. I'm going to spend like a couple of days making this VIM thing, but I'm going to make it really easy for people to pay me. Like, I'll make it a one-time sale and I'll put it right up. And, people did. And that first payment that came through was like super awesome.
Like, you know, going in there. And it seemed, I skipped out of there and being like, I just made $8 on the internet. It's so great. It's so great. It's hard to explain, I remember the first time I've made money online and I was like, people were paying me for this stuff? It's awesome.
Pete: Yeah. The Stripe notifications and the email . Sarah Richards just sent you $29 or whatever. So, yeah, it's awesome.
Kenneth: So yeah, I mean, that was super cool, you know, and then it, it kept going. And so I made about 10 grand my first month and now it makes about a hundred dollars a day.
Pete: That's awesome. I was just going to say there's so much potential for. Selling courses for people that are learning, because I think learning to coach, you know, people know that , it's going to help them with their job and jobs and tech pay. So it just makes sense to make products that help people with the jobs and help them get a better salary and make them better developers.
It's something that indie hackers should definitely make products around. I guess my views, like what I try and make products for as, for people to either learn or earn or do both at the same time. So yeah, it's really great that you've tapped into that.
Kenneth: Yeah, for sure. I think like the developer market, like seems pretty great too. Like the willingness to pay is there. They're used to paying, they're very understanding of like bugs and stuff. It's been a great audience for me because before that I was trying to build software for contractors and it was like pretty bad.
Um, but, uh, I guess like the whole, the slip thing. I released them. And then people started asking me for other courses, they're like, Hey, can you make a course like this for like X technology? Can you make one for Ruby? Can you make one for like learning different command line commands and stuff?
And I initially got super excited. I was like, man, I could just make all these courses. And like soon I'll be making like, I don't know, 300 K a year. And then I had like a better idea, which was like, maybe I could just give other people the power to do this. Like the same way that I did.
And, you know, it only took me three days to make this course, like, how can I like leverage that and give other people that, because I think that's the bigger idea. So that's kind of where the idea came from. People kept asking for courses and I decided to give them a tool that lets them do it easily.
So that's what slip is. It's like a platform for developers to build and sell interactive courses so they can get on slip and use the offering tool to build courses around like Python, JavaScript, Ruby. It has in browser code execution payments set up authentication. So it basically like saves developers, the four months of work , to set up that whole full stack, like, uh, tooling.
So you can make an interactive course. And, it's been pretty cool on that. Like I launched that a week and a half ago and I'm making close to $600 a month.
Pete: Yeah, that's awesome. I think just both the, products really compliment each other.
So the more that people know about Slip, the more they'll probably buy your VIM course and vice versa. It seems really smart as well , instead of being like, okay, I'm going to take, A year to make a course for react etc.
There's loads of people that can make those courses. And it's just really efficient say, okay, I'm going to make a tool for everyone to make courses instead of, having to slow it down and make the courses yourself.
Kenneth: Yeah. And the people that are making the courses are much smarter than I am.
I've already said that. Yeah. They're like courses, you know, I have like an admin view where I can see like, you know, what they're making so far. I like the creativity. And like the content has been like pretty incredible so far. There's some people working on some killer stuff and there's a couple of people that have already released a course.
There's I think three people release a course and all of them have made sales. And, one person Catherine, she released a course on regular expressions and I think she's close to like $200 in sales already. That's pretty cool. And like, she doesn't have a big audience or anything.
Like, it's just people interested in learning regular expressions kept buying her course. You know, it's already paid for itself for her. So that's really awesome. No, that's fine. And I guess as well, are you having to do a ton of work on step or is it kind of not so much?
It's a lot of work. It's a lot. Yeah, no, that's good. It's good. Yeah. It has like some serious like legs and potential and like, I'm really trying to find a way that I can go full-time on it. But I have three kids and their significant other, and we touched on this before the podcast, but like a big thing about the whole bam.
Core sales was that it helped us pay off some credit card debt, faster than we had anticipated. So we've had this plan for two years that, my partner was going to quit her job after two or three years. And so we've been paying all of this debt off so that, we could get to a place where with the debt reduction and the pay increases I get, it would be around the same income and the VIM courses, greatly accelerated that.
We thought we would probably be able to pay off a credit card by the time she quit. So she's quitting like in the end of may. So a couple of months, so we thought we'd be able to pay off my credit card, but, we actually paid that off like way earlier. And I think now we're actually going to be able to pay off her vehicle.
So I think when she quits, like our quality of living, it's going to go up, like the total income, versus debt and stuff is going to go up versus from when she was working previous to when we paid off all our debt.
I think it's incredible. There are over a hundred developers on the No CS Degree website. And loads of people have said that they've paid off loans or paid off credit card debt. And yeah, it's another reason to learn to code because especially in the US it pay so well.
I guess you can also do lots of work remotely and get paid while working from other countries, but yeah, it's a lucrative field and. It's really awesome that you guys were able to change your financial position really quickly by making this fem course.
Kenneth: Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Like, we've been so grateful for it and it's been really cool, but I started like telling that story because I want to go full time on slip, but I'd have to make my income basically to go.
Full-time I think I would be comfortable quitting my job if I made like 10 grand a month, which, you know, it's possible, I think maybe like in a year or so, or , you know, I've applied at a couple of different like accelerators and stuff, if I raised some money, then I'd probably quit too, but yeah, ultimately that's what I want to do is just like, work on my own project and like not have a job.
Pete: Did you apply for YC?
Kenneth: I did apply for YC, so I'll see what happens there. I think that's, you know, a pretty long shot and , I'm just going to keep grinding away. And I'm sure, like if I, you know, keep putting the effort in, like, I'll probably get to a point maybe with slip, maybe it was something else, where I can earn a full-time income from things that I created instead of like my time. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Pete: So, I mean, if you were speaking to a developer, if they have the option to like sell a course on Podia or Gumroad , what's the man advantage for using Slip, for instance?
Kenneth: Yeah. So I think the difference is that slips built like directly for the developer audience. So like, Gumroad like, it'd be hard to sell something that's like interactive. So like on slip, you have a lot of optionality, you can embed videos, images, you can have code execution right. In the browser. So if you want to show somebody, like if you're teaching someone the intricacies of JavaScript or methods, I guess it's hard to really get that detail in there.
If your end user can't like execute the cone. So they're going to have to spin up their own environment and do it, whereas I can slip you just do it right in the browser. And if you get the answer wrong, then you can't go onto the next part. So it forces the students to actually interact with the course and the students themselves have been saying, like they really enjoy that format.
And then like for podia, and I've mentioned this a couple of times on Twitter, is that right? I want slip to kind of be like the podia for developers. So I put is really cool because in income or it's cool in the way that they help, like a developer monetize their own audience.
So you're not relying on the distribution of some third party to get paid, whereas like something like you to me, like a lot of the distribution for your course will actually come from Udemy. Well, because it does, they take like a insane amount of the cuts. Like you spent all this time and then like you, to me, you can take like more than 50% of your course.
So I spoke to one guy, he made like 300 K in sales and on Udemy. And he only got like, I think like 70 K or 80 K from it. It's like, you don't need to look like most of them money it's.
Udemy is ripe for competition or a takeover, because it just seems criminal.
I've seen some examples for, maybe they take 70% of the sale or something. And they discount them as well. So it's always like, you know, a $200 course but discounted to like $20. And then you make like $6 of that.
So it's just like, it's crazy.
Kenneth: Yeah. So that's the problem with like the, you know, the whole like course marketplaces that you're like price anchoring against like all the other courses on the platform. And so like right now, slip only has like a marketplace. So you can only put a course on like the slip website, but I'm working on like, prioritizing, like the ability to put a course, like on your own website.
Cause I think that's kind of where the real value lies is like the ability to make these like in-depth courses that are around like a certain like niche and like. Yeah, pick your own price and people are buying it because they're buying it from you and are like, you can like use SEO to drive traffic to your site.
And like all these other techniques that you couldn't use, like on a marketplace. So, that's coming really soon as slip and I'm pretty excited about that for sure.
Pete: Awesome. Best of luck with future plans would Slip signed this. Awesome. And I think it's really good that you're making progress in the kind of Creator Economy where.
You know, lots of people do want to monetize their knowledge. They have and make a side hustle. And it sounds like a really good path to carry on down.
So where can people find out more about you? Yeah, probably the best place is, on Twitter. So I'm @kennethcassel and castle is, C A S S E L.
Pretty active on there. I do like the whole building public thing. I probably overshare or tweet too much. No it's cool, you can never overshare tweet too much. Or that's what I say anyway. I love Twitter and, yeah, the VIM course is vim.so. Is that right?
Yep. That's right. Yeah. And slip is slip.so
Pete: So. Yep. Okay. Awesome. Well, thanks again for, being on the show. It's been great to talk to you and grit here about benefits of learning to codeHave a great day, man.
Kenneth: Yeah. Thanks Pete. Cheers, man. Bye.
