Mark Moeykens, aka Big Mountain Studios

Mark created Big Mountain Studios with a reason. A lifestyle business. At some point he discovered his lifestyle and his business didn't match anymore. So he decided to change up a few things in his business. You will also learn a lot about what motivates Mark and how/why he started Big Mountain Studios.

You can find Mark online on:

• Twitter
• https://www.bigmountainstudio.com/

As discussed in the episode, this year Mark moved all his paying subscribers over to the service of Coding with Chris.

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Transcript

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:45

Hi, and welcome to another special edition of my podcast. I'm sitting here with Mark mercans. He is in the United States right now. And you might know him from big mountain studios. So, Mark, first of all, welcome to my podcast. How are you doing today?

Mark Moeykens: 1:00

Thank you very much for having me. I'm doing just fine. Thank you.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:04

So what have you been doing today? Because I have video when I'm talking to you. And there's like this big old screens, green screen behind you. So what's up?

Mark Moeykens: 1:14

This is the, this is my recording studio. My wife and I actually use it. I you know, I record videos for big mount studio. And I put some on YouTube. And she uses it because she does voiceover acting. But she did I mean, she doesn't need the video for that. But she uses this for geez, she does like tick tock YouTube. Instagram lives. She interviews people.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:41

Pretty much anything with audio. Yeah, that's right. Okay, um, for people who are not familiar with big mountain studios, because that's your main activity. Right now. What does big mountain studios do?

Mark Moeykens: 1:57

Well, you know, we used to create books, specifically when swift UI came out. So I started creating swift UI books. And then I had video courses. And then I had a membership, where I produced a bunch of video that people could have access to. But as of like, just last week, I sold the membership to code with Chris. And a lot of you know, Chris Christian code with chris.com. Yeah, him and I had been friends for many years. And I, I don't know if a lot of people know this, but I actually still work a full time job. Which is pretty, it's pretty sweet, because I work four days a week. So I have a three day weekend. That allows me to work on big mount studio. And with a membership, it's a lot of like, constant attention, like constant creation of videos, and I just didn't have the time right now. And I really enjoy working with the books, the books have been successful. So I talked with Chris, and we talked for a few months. And I said, Hey, you know, what, if, you know, we just What if you take over the membership part, you already are running a successful membership? I said, What if you just take my mind over. And so we arranged to work together where I'm actually going to put his 14 day course on my website. And he's going to put my free book on his website. And if we're going to cross promote that way.

Jeroen Leenarts: 3:29

So that's a very interesting experiment that that will, hopefully, hopefully work out. But you mentioned that you and Chris, go back, you know each other for a long time already. So how did that happen? And where did you meet? Initially?

Mark Moeykens: 3:45

Yeah, very interesting. So, you know, as you know, I first got started as a YouTuber, quite accidentally. And once I was on YouTube, people liked the video. So I just continued doing it. And then one person wanted to give me money. And he said, You should open up a Patreon account. So I did open up a Patreon account. And people were signing up and Chris signed up, Chris said, he liked my work, and he wanted to support me. And I was like, so flattered. Because here's this guy who's been in the industry, you know, he's got, like, half a million subscribers on his YouTube channel. It's crazy. And then he, he comes to me, and he turns out to be the nicest guy ever. And so he's been a really long term supporter of mine. And one of the things that I do is, I totally opened up on Patreon, and I shared everything, my whole journey, my experience, what worked, what didn't work, you know, how I was going to start big mount studio, going into like book publishing, and he really enjoyed that. And so we've been in communication for a long time. And then he had me do some collaborations with him. And, and we just, over the years, we just talk more and more, and then we set up like a, we have a Slack group together. So we share marketing tips all the time. You know, we've read a lot of the same books and tried a lot of the same things. So it just from there, it just grew and we talk probably like once a week, you know, more or more than that. And so since then, you know, I really like his teaching style. And I think, you know, he said he really likes my teaching style, and we're very, very similar. So we just, you know, we just got along as friends and We were actually my wife and I were actually going to go out and visit him and his wife and his family. But COVID happened. And so we never got out to Toronto to visit them.

Jeroen Leenarts: 5:55

Yeah. Yeah. Because it's been long ago for two years. Now, the whole Corona thing. But but it looks of things. It's moving in the right direction at least. So hopefully soon, right? Yeah,

Mark Moeykens: 6:06

yeah, I heard actually, in the Netherlands, they lifted the, the mask policy.

Jeroen Leenarts: 6:12

Yeah, it's in the Netherlands, right now, you can pretty much do anything you want. Except when you have an event that's 500 people or more. And still, there's like two general guidelines of you know, if you have any symptoms, stay at home, get yourself tested, and everything. And if you then test positive, you still have to self isolate for five days, which is mandatory, but at least society has opened up to some level again. And of course, you immediately see that the infection rate goes up a little bit, but it's not concerning yet. So let's hope that it stays that way. But you started YouTube, that's something that you mentioned there, but let's just put like a stake in the ground. Well, what year was that?

Mark Moeykens: 6:56

That was the end of 2015.

Jeroen Leenarts: 7:00

So that's quite a while ago, actually. And so all these years, you've been in contact with Chris. And you mentioned that you are assigning over your subscribers from your big mountain studios efforts to to Chris, it, does that also include his membership? Or how does that work?

Mark Moeykens: 7:21

So it's, he's basically, I have a probably, I think about six or eight products, video products, courses, huge video reference library. So all of his members will now have access to about 200 250 videos of mine, not they'll now have access to that. And then my members who had access to all my videos, now have access to all of his videos now, too. So it was it was pretty simple procedure. With the platform I used, I could export a spreadsheet of all the current members, and I just calculated their expiration date, because they can, you know, a lot of memberships, you can pay monthly or pay annually. Yeah, so I just created the column, and I did a calculation for the expiration date. And I gave him that. And then his team started contacting these people, and started creating accounts for them. So now they could all like, log into his account with their new membership, X still access my videos that they had paid for. And now they can access his videos.

Jeroen Leenarts: 8:31

So and what was the what was the response? Which are now old? Members?

Mark Moeykens: 8:39

Yeah, they're, they're totally fine with it. Because, you know, for the, for the price, like my membership is a little bit cost a little bit less than Chris's. So they were getting like, you know, they paid for a certain amount of content, which now like, tripled? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they, they got a sweet deal out of it. And then as well as there are only like, we did have some crossover, where we had members that are paying for Chris's and mine. Yep. So, you know, it was it was, there weren't very many. And it was just really easy to calculate, you know, like, oh, yeah, six minutes left,

Jeroen Leenarts: 9:18

I just made that Jake got an extension on there running account with with Chris, I saw that they were compensated for the loss of access to your content library, which they still have access to. But it's a very lenient deal that way, and everybody stays happy, which is always what you want to do with an audience. So and you got rid of the constant pressure of having to produce content, because you had like an existing audience. Of course, this audience is still there. But in what way, does that change the dynamic for you then?

Mark Moeykens: 9:51

Well, with the books, it's a lot easier because I can produce the content, turn it around, and then ship out updates. With video, it's a longer process, where you might only have like one page in a book. And that might be created within like, 10 minutes, 1015 minutes, say, depending on how much research I have to do. Whereas the video, it might be a six minute video, but it takes me about an hour to edit every six minutes of video. Yeah. So it's, it's a long process and even I'm not even that's just video editing, right? Because, you know, like, as a podcaster. There's also the setup time, you got to make sure everything's set up. You gotta tell your family to be quiet. He got yet to find the time when it's going to be quiet, you know? And so there's a lot of setup even around that to get the space ready to do the recording. Yeah. So it and it was like, there's so many so many topics, like, you know, that books with UI views mastery is like it's over 900 pages now. And if I were to record a video on, like, all those topics, it would just be never ending.

Jeroen Leenarts: 11:11

Yeah, it will be constant. Yeah. Yeah. So but are you still going to produce videos? Or what's your plan? Is it like something that you just add, basically going to create video that ties in with your book content, so that it's more like an an avenue to entice people to look into your book library and engage with you in that way?

Mark Moeykens: 11:31

Exactly. And that's, so that that was like what I want to do like how to prioritize, I'm like, Okay, I still need to create videos for my paying customers, but I also want to create videos, and, you know, publish on YouTube, and promote the books. So, you know, that became now I have two stacks of video recording tasks that I had to do, you know, one for the business, the paying customers and one for promotion. And it just, you know, teaching others things that I want to teach on YouTube. So that was another consent, that was actually a huge consideration. I'm like, Okay, now, not only do I have to record all these videos, but I still want to promote. And you know, what I mean, you see, there's, there's like a balance there. It's like, do I put time and effort in promotion, or retaining the customers that I have. And with a full time job already, and a family, it was like, very hard. So

Jeroen Leenarts: 12:26

it's like book writing is something if you have the odd half an hour or hour, you can just sit down, you have something in your mind, you can type. And then once you're done, you just kind of close off and do other things again.

Mark Moeykens: 12:37

That's right. And it also like book writing, too. So you know, there's a project that it starts with a swift UI project. And whenever I research something, and it might be for work, or it might be like a question that someone asked me on Twitter, I open up the project, and I'll just create a new file, and I'll do some experiments. And I'll just leave it there. And then I add, either I'll just leave it there. Or if someone asked me a question, or if I learned something new, I'll add it to my Reminders app. And then like, when it comes to the weekend, I'm like, Okay, what I look at my last commit on the project, and like, I actually I don't commit it, I look at it and see what's pending. And, um, that has to go into the book. And then I can just take, you know, like an hour, and add those items to the book, where I go through my reminders list. It's like, I have four different categories of reminders, one for each book. And every time I hear something or see something, or someone asked me a question, I just add it to the reminders list. Otherwise, I'm just going to forget about it.

Jeroen Leenarts: 13:39

Yeah, it's just too much, right? Yeah. But but on the technical level, what's the what's the technical stack that you use? For the actual book writing, of course, you're typing, but you're typing it into something. And at some point, it ends up in PDF weapon, other formats. So what do you use for that process?

Mark Moeykens: 13:59

That, you know, when I first started this, I tried a bunch of different apps, and I was very disappointed in in what's out there. You know, in this day and age, with eBooks, you think there would be like a really easy way to do this. But there isn't, it's, there's so many problems with all different methods. And I ended up going with, you know, I reviewed paid products, and I ended up going with a free product, which is just Apple's Apple Pages, you know, that there's two different types of documents you can create, you create a fixed layout document, or a flowing document, and flowing document, you know, the words and, and pictures will shift depending on the device that you're reading it on. And I needed fixed, because, you know, my books are very visual, right? There's a picture for for every piece of code, there's a picture that goes with it. So people can quickly, you know, see the picture and say, Oh, this is what I want, and then grab the code. But still, still, it's not perfect, though. Like, if you try to copy code, you know, out of books, it adds annotation to it, you know, this is from, you know, Swift UI views mastery, or, you know, this is a mastering combine and swift UI, written by Mark Mohicans, you know, and you're pasting that into Xcode, and you're like, Oh, now you gotta like trim it and get all that stuff out. And so, you know, I've written tons of feedback to Apple like, like, Hey, can you give authors the option to turn on or turn off? Annotations? Like, give us the ability to do that for our, our readers? I want it to be

Jeroen Leenarts: 15:35

Yeah. So you use pages and you export PDF from that.

Mark Moeykens: 15:40

Yeah, export PDF and ePub okay, because I wanted to Yeah, I want to add video in there too. Especially when I started the animations book. I'm like, Hey, I'm not going to use pictures to describe animation. I want a video for every type of animation that I show. And the current tool that I was using, which only published in PDF, couldn't handle, it couldn't handle video, embedded videos. It couldn't. It couldn't create ePubs. And there's some that do create ePubs. But the video doesn't work. Yeah,

Jeroen Leenarts: 16:15

yeah. Yeah. It's like either this or that. You can't have cake and eat it. Right? Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's challenging to get like the end result just right, I guess. But you have to do some tricks to get around that. So. But you mentioned 10 minutes if you do an edit. So you edit something in a Pages document, and then you export it, and then just for like, maybe like add a page, or maybe do some corrections in the book? Is that literally the 10 minutes that it takes to process the content to the finished product? Or is it including the editing?

Mark Moeykens: 16:57

Well, I would say, it's so hard, 10 minutes is, is pretty simplistic, right? I just open up the document, I go to the chapter where I want to add new page. And when you add a new page, like pages, they have templates. Yeah, so I have a preset template. And I just, you know, add new pages in that template. The code is already in the project. So I literally I set it up. So I could just copy the code from the project, paste it onto the page. And a lot of people don't know this. But when you copy code from Xcode, it says one of the things I like about pages and other documents didn't have is they couldn't, it wouldn't retain the color of your code, you know, wouldn't return retain the theme and the syntax highlighting. So pages does, but it also includes the background. So if I copy it, it copies the dark background or the white background that Xcode has. So my page colors have to be exactly the same as my theme in Xcode. So I just literally just paste it in there. And then I run it, you know, so just in Xcode run it so comes up in the simulator, I take a screenshot, you know, literally like command Das, right. And I take that screenshot is one of the things I didn't used to do was I just use it, take that screenshot and stick it in the book and resize it, the book is getting big. So now I resize it, make it smaller. And then I run it through another tool, which compresses it even more, makes the image even smaller, but still retains the resolution. And then I add it to the book. And so each page, yeah, each page can be like 10 minutes. Sometimes once it's in the book, I look at it. And I'm like, nah, this doesn't look right, the reader can't see the solution they're looking for right away. And so I might adjust it a little bit. Or I add what are called like annotations, where I might add an arrow, you know, this code produces this on the screen. So I showed, you know, it points to the screenshot. Or I might add a box around the relevant code or add some notes to it.

Jeroen Leenarts: 19:10

So yeah, and that's like, the book writing that you do, and you got rid of the subscriber content that you had to produce. So that's the videos. So are you now with big mountain studios only focusing on on book writing, or, and of course, sort of like YouTube videos to help you bring your product to market. But what are the other things that you do is pick mountain studios nowadays?

Mark Moeykens: 19:36

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I really wanted to focus on books. Because you know, every time there's a new, you know, WWDC comes out, and then that there's a string of betas that come out until about September. Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of work to update the books. And then to have to update the all the video courses to, you know, I didn't want to do that. So instead, I'm working with other course creators, and creating partnerships with them. Because my books are more like video reference guides, right? You could use them to learn Swift UI, but they're not tutorial based on their quick references. So you did a bunch of courses, and now you're producing your app. And when you want a quick answer, you don't go through the video courses that you just did. You can just use my book and quickly find the answer that you need. So I'm looking to more do like what I do with Chris, where I partner up with video creators, and, you know, using the affiliate system, they get like 20% of any books that They sell, you know or recommend. So that is the direction I'd like to go. I like I like the books, I like creating the books. And I have, I got a long list of things I'd like to do with them. And books I like to create. But at this point, big mount studio is still small. So this year, I'm going to work on expanding and growing big mount studio. So that's one thing that I'm currently working on.

Jeroen Leenarts: 21:17

And do you think it makes a big difference that big mount Studios is something you do on the side next to a day job? Or is it something that because it's not your main stream of income? I would guess? Is that something that has a very big impact on how you approach your work for big mouth studios?

Mark Moeykens: 21:36

Yeah, it's definitely, you know, at this point, like, I could quit my job right now, my full time job. And, like, last year, I haven't told anyone this. I told Chris, Chris and I, we tell each other everything. Yeah, but big mount studio actually made more than my full time job. So I could quit at this point. But that one of the reasons why big mount studio made more than my full time job last year was because I came out with a new product. Yeah, so I don't want to have to keep coming out with new products to grow. So what I want to concentrate on is growing the user base, like really, I only have about 14,000 customers, I believe, like last I look. And that's that's really small number. It's really small number of the entire development population, you know, so I want to start like reaching, you know, more developers, basically.

Jeroen Leenarts: 22:40

Yeah, because imagine if you could double that number of customers, then you would be at 28,000, which is, in the grand scheme of things is still a reasonably small group, but it's put actually double your company in size, in in revenue that's going through the company. So kind of mind boggling that this, of course, 14,000 people is not nothing. It's still a really big group if you want to reach them. But if you then just think about it, yeah, if you can get 14,000 You should be able to get twice that number, right?

Mark Moeykens: 23:12

Yeah. And a lot of people, you know, they got to know me through YouTube. So that's why I want to start working on YouTube. Again, I took a break. Like, I think I kind of got burnt out, you know, just creating videos, and editing videos, and doing that all time. I totally did get burnt out. And so I didn't publish on YouTube for you know, like, a year and a half. Yeah, like, last year, I think only published, maybe four videos, you know, for the whole year. So I want to start doing it more regularly. Just but not, like go into like, get one of my problems that I have is I want to create a small course. And then it turns into like a huge course.

Jeroen Leenarts: 23:57

Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's the typical process of content creators, right. Yeah. So far, you're getting ideas like nice and small and condense. And yeah, but let's add this Oh, and if I add that, and I need to add this as well. And it starts expanding and ballooning. And at some point, it's like this, this huge course Zilla that you want to tackle. And that's like, at some point impossible even. Or you would need a team like Chris has. But yeah, then he's like, content wise, in producing it. He's like, way ahead of of what you're able to do. Yeah. But would you say that having the day job and doing big mountain studios, simultaneously? Is there like some synergy going on? Because a lot of the learnings that you have from the job, you can apply to the content of big mount studio, I guess. And it's a good way to keep your hands into code and keep yourself engaged with actual practical problems, right?

Mark Moeykens: 24:56

That's right. Yeah. And you can see a direct result of that, like, I'm coming out with a five part series on YouTube for just the searchable modifier and swift UI. And that there's three, there's three parts out right now. But that was a direct result of spending, like a whole day of research at work, you know, where we had to do. It was filtering that we had to do. And that was one of the things I learned. I'm like, oh, okay, we have searchable. And I had it in my book. But you know, like very, very quick overview, like this value. This is how you implement it this way use it for but then the more and more I dug into it, I started seeing like, oh, there's actually two different patterns. There's searching and filtering. And the more I researched it, I found out that yeah, Do these two things differently? And then it was like this hump that you had to get over. And then once I learned it, I'm like, Okay, this is easy. Now, I want to teach other developers how to do this as well.

Jeroen Leenarts: 25:57

Because the best way to learn something is through teaching, right? Yeah, yeah. So um, but you mentioned that you started doing YouTube videos in 2015. You said, Was that also when the brand's Big Mouth studio got created? Or is that been? Has that been in existence for a longer duration?

Mark Moeykens: 26:19

No, it was, the YouTube channel started first. And then big mount studio started after. And it was. It was it was very slow going, because like I said, I started it, it was kind of an accident. What happened was, we have like tech talks at work. And there's only three of us iOS developers, and there's three Android developers. And that in the iOS developers, we'd switch every, I think it was every two weeks, we'd have a tech talk. And it was my turn. And I had something I'll present it, but like, one guy got sick, and another guy went out of town. So I'm like, You know what, I'm just going to put it on YouTube, then that way, it's always there. And if they want to watch it, or refer to it later, or if I want to refer to it later, you know, I can't. So YouTube was like my notebook. So I put it on there. And I sent them the link. But then other people started watching it, commenting on it. And they loved it. They're like, like, I like the way you explain things. And like, I didn't even know I had disability until I started getting feedback from other people.

Jeroen Leenarts: 27:25

Ever. Feedback is always good, right? Yeah.

Mark Moeykens: 27:29

So I'm like, Well, if that's something they like, you know, I had a good time doing it. And I just used QuickTime on my laptop and use the internal Mac microphone. And then I used iMovie. To edit it. I put it on YouTube.

Jeroen Leenarts: 27:44

But sometimes it's not much that you need. So that's a really good way to experiment, really, but just the tools that you have available right then and there. But what did you do before 2015? Then? So when did you get started with software development? Because I reckon that's a little bit before 2015, right?

Mark Moeykens: 28:05

Yeah, yeah, a lot before. It was. I think it was 1995. When I graduated high school in 1989, I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I grew up in a very small town in Vermont, and my sisters lived in Boston. So I said, you know, I want to see what a big city is like, I'll go to Boston. And I was also in the military at that time to us, and then the National Guard. So that's what I was doing. And I still didn't know what I want to do. And so the, the military ended. And you know, and the whole reason why I joined the military was to go to college and get, I could get some funding to help pay for college. I never went to college during that time. And it wasn't until, like years later, where, you know, I worked a ton of different jobs, just to try different things. I worked for a temp agency, and they sent me out to all kinds of different types of companies to try all different things. And I think that was really good. I really liked that, because I got a ton of exposure in a very short amount of time. And I'm like, I like computers. I was using computers a lot, because I also started a screen printing business, you know, printing T shirts, and sweatshirts and selling those. And I use the computer a lot for the design. And so I started using more computers more and more. And I'm like, I really liked this, but I wish I could change that. I wish I could change that. And that's when I started thinking about actually programming. So it wasn't until, like 1995 You know, now I'm like 22 or 23 year. Yeah, like 23. And I'm like, I don't want to spend four years in college. So I just went for I got my associates degree. And I could go straight through the summer and work on my, my credits to graduate. So it all it really only took about 15 months. Yeah, a year, a year and four months it took to get my associate's degree. And then I got my first programming job. And that's how it started. I was a Microsoft developer. And then I did web development. When Microsoft had ASP active server pages

Jeroen Leenarts: 30:16

were said like, there was like pre dotnet, right, like, ASP with Visual Basic. I think it was Steven.

Mark Moeykens: 30:23

Yeah, that's right in Visual Studio. And that was like 1998 nine now. I was like 2000, I think is when I started it. Yeah, it's about 2000 When I started it, yeah, it came out

Jeroen Leenarts: 30:39

because it's because I could start it professionally in 2002 and I Like to half year dare I also did like my graduation and there was some ASP 1.1 certification that I did back then. So it must have been like, around the 2001 timeframe that eight that that dotnet actually came out of Microsoft. So yeah, I also did some HP dotnet back in the day.

Mark Moeykens: 31:07

Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So yeah, I did that. I started with Visual Basic dotnet. And then, and then I went to C sharp dotnet. And I liked it. I really liked doing web development. Most of my career was contract. Yeah, almost all my career was contract work.

Jeroen Leenarts: 31:28

So contract work. So you were like employed and they contracts? You're out? Or you were like freelancing?

Mark Moeykens: 31:35

No, it was, it was. Yeah, I was employed with a contracting agency. Yeah. And then they sent me out to different jobs. Yeah, that's right. And I really liked that, because I got to meet a ton of different people, I get to work on a bunch of different projects. And it was all new. You know, it was always like these large companies, where you're not the single developer that has to handle everything. Like, I was pretty good at avoiding those types of jobs. I didn't want to get a job where I was the only person and they needed me on call on, you know, all throughout the week, on nights and weekends.

Jeroen Leenarts: 32:10

Yeah. Especially if you know, if you know, some details of the codebase. And you know, it's not really up to snuff, right yet. Because especially especially back in the days, it really was like with the Java and dotnet based code bases. For some reason, you just had to restart the server like, every every couple days, because memory.

Mark Moeykens: 32:33

Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, there were things that you just couldn't, couldn't figure out. You know? Yeah, yeah. And so and that's another thing, too, is I didn't want to work on public facing apps. So a lot of the apps that I worked on, were used internally, you know, whether they're desktop, desktop apps, or web apps, I worked on both. But if it was public facing, then that's again, you have to be like on call, you have to be available, something goes down on a Saturday, you got to stop what you're doing. I'm like, Yeah, I don't want to do that.

Jeroen Leenarts: 33:07

Yeah, and internal facing products. They're only used during business hours. So the problems only arise during business hours. I like your thinking and boast also a different aspect that with public facing content that obviously needs a lot more polish. So you need to spend a lot more time in the in the UX and the user interface department. And that's not the case with the internal facing tool. So you get to spend more time on like the, the integration and the database access and like more the technical aspects of massaging data, really, it was that said, like a difference that what was working for you as well, or?

Mark Moeykens: 33:47

Well, yeah, that that totally was true. Because like right now on where I work now. I've been there since 2015. You know, it was my first iOS developer job. Yeah. And these apps are there. Their public facing, but they're used by associates of the company. Yeah. You know, so they're not someone like, like you and I aren't going to go and download this app, because it's really used. It's for salespeople of the company. Yeah. So it's still it's public facing, but it's still kind of like internal. But it does go through a lot of like design and UX time. So whereas the other apps that never happened, and we had some ugly apps, you know, there's only so much a developer can do.

Jeroen Leenarts: 34:43

I like to call us, what are the colors? Yeah, it's black and blue and high contrast.

Mark Moeykens: 34:50

There's some gray in there some love gradients.

Jeroen Leenarts: 34:53

Yeah. So but what you're working on ASP dotnet, with C sharp, so those kinds of rules and what was then the transition or the avenue for you into the Mac ecosystem, because dotnet is sort of Microsoft only, right?

Mark Moeykens: 35:09

That's right. The I had looked into using Xamarin. Because Xamarin uses C sharp to create Android apps and iOS apps. So I'd looked into that a little bit. And it was at the time Microsoft didn't own it yet. So it cost a lot of money to buy that and to experiment with it. So I didn't do that. And I did get a Mac I got a Mac Mini because I had an iPhone, and I'm like it'd be great if I could create my apps and put them on here. So I got an iPhone Like when they like maybe the second version that came out, I even forgot what year was other members add a rounded back to it.

Jeroen Leenarts: 35:53

Yeah, that's the that's I think that's the iPhone 3g? I think it was. She had like, yeah, yeah, it's original iPhone, which had the the bicolor background. And then the second iPhone I think was the iPhone 3g, which had his really around back. And that and that also involved iOS three I think it was, I'm not entirely sure right now, but it was like it had this like, you call us get could get the first one with like the white background. Right. So yeah, the white case. So there was like this big debate on whether you should get the black or the white phone, I think.

Mark Moeykens: 36:33

Yeah. So I got a Mac Mini. And I started to learn how to do iOS development. And I actually, I have a history with just Apple development in general. Like when I went to college, I had a powermac. And I tried to like my dream was to create Macintosh apps. And it was so dang hard to do it back then. I had this, I just booked codewarrior This thick book. And while I was in college, I could not create I could not I couldn't even get a window to show up. You know, it was like a steep learning curve, let alone, you know, program. I couldn't. I didn't know how to program. Yeah, at that time. So I gave up on that. And I went into Microsoft, because it was like, I had a class for like Visual Basic. And in the first week, I had a window show up. I'm like, it only took me one week to do this. And I've been working out a year, I still couldn't get a window to come up on the Mac. So I tried it and I gave up. And then when I got the iPhone, my first iPhone, I tried it again. And I gave up because I still couldn't like wrap my head around Objective C is so different from C sharp, and Visual Basic, that I'm like, This doesn't make any sense to me. You know, everything is so separated and so broken apart, and yet to connect five parts to show one screen, like, I can't do this. So I gave up on it. And then it wasn't until swift came out that I started looking at it again. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, this is so much easier than my previous experience with Objective C.

Jeroen Leenarts: 38:11

Yeah. Yeah. Because Swift is language. Also, it's not the same as C sharp. But if you're familiar with C sharp code, well, at least swift doesn't scare you away, like Objective C can do with some people.

Mark Moeykens: 38:25

That's right. Yeah. So I started looking into it again. And it was, it went a lot easier. And at the same time, you know, like, this is around 2013 2014. Like the web development, market or area started to really take off in all different directions. I mean, we had, like, you know, there were like four main tools that most of the websites could use, right. But now that it was like, it was growing exponentially, you had like 12 different tools that you could use, and not only like development environments, but now you had all these different frameworks that you could use, and then all these different, like, ways to like host and test. And it just started like growing out of control on like, I can't learn all these things. And I thought I'm like, I think it'd be easier if I just could stay in one ecosystem, because I was like a full stack developer too. So not only was the web tools really exploding and, and growing. But, you know, now we have the database side of it, too, which I did. And then you know, the REST calls and Well, it started liquid soap calls, Web Services, SOAP calls. And then it started growing so much, I'm just like, you know, I think I want to, you know, take this huge field and narrow it down again, and stick with like one ecosystem and, and be an iPhone developer. So I started looking into it. And one of my friends, Rod liberal, he, like just came in at the perfect time and said, Hey, our company is hiring. And I know you're like I was living this. I was in Boston at the time. And he says, I know you're coming out to Utah, in a month. He says, Why don't you study, you know, more on like creating iPhone apps, and then come interview with us. When you come out here on vacation. You know, come meet the team. So I did that. And I met with them and I really liked the people. And I really like Salt Lake City and the whole surrounding area. Because Boston is very, very congested and crowded. And Utah is more like spread out. It's a smaller city and they had He's like huge, beautiful mountains. There's a lot of lot of nature. Yeah, I'm like, I think this is what I'm ready for. And my brother had lived out here for over 20 years, too. So that's why I was coming on vacation.

Jeroen Leenarts: 40:58

Yet some solid references about the area. Yeah.

Mark Moeykens: 41:03

And so I came out, I liked them a lot. They liked me. And so I started working there. And I've been there since.

Jeroen Leenarts: 41:09

So you actually made a career move from a variable living in Boston into Utah. And that's also when you really packed up your entire family and went cross country to live in a different state even.

Mark Moeykens: 41:24

Yeah, well, I was. I was single. moved to Utah. Okay, cool. And then the first year I was here. My friend who got me the job. We've known each other for over 20 years. He's from Brazil. Yeah. But he's been in the United States more than longer than he's been in Brazil now, you know? So he says, Hey, I'm going down for a family reunion. Do you guys want to come with me? And there were like, six of us that all went down. Like, yeah, we'll check out Brazil. That's where I met my wife. She, she was great. You know, like, went down there. I met her. And then we kept seeing each other. And she was like, also kind of like our tour guide. She grew up there. She's familiar with the cities, the beaches. And so she, like, we all loved her, you know, she was like, so friendly to all of us, and so helpful. And, and we stayed in touch, and she came to visit, you know, a few times, and I went down to visit and we're like, hey, you know, let's, let's get married.

Jeroen Leenarts: 42:29

Let's make a thing out of this. Yeah, that's sometimes seeing things just happen in a way that you can't predict when you actually go on this trip, for example, which is really cool. Yeah, just that's just life happening. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So in just a short duration, we talked about you being like a dotnet. Developer. In, right. Like, when you got your associate's degree in? I think you said 1980, in 1998. Ish, somewhere around there.

Mark Moeykens: 43:03

Yeah, 96, I graduated. Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 43:06

So then, and then you started on the whole Microsoft train, wound up into dotnet. Did that for quite a long duration, like, all the way up till like, 2015? If I'm correct. And in the meantime, of course, iPhones became a thing. And mobile computing became a thing. And that, of course, caught your attention. So at some point, you wants to get away from the framework of the month thing that was really a thing with, with web development, because it's now not as intense as it was back then. But I still remember that, like, there was like, this ongoing joke, like, okay, somebody started our project, okay, what's the, what's the framework of this month that it should be using? And, and there was like, a new one, like, every month. And I think at some point, you also had like, these build tools that it was like, Yeah, should I use like, yarn or some other thing, and somebody was even using make files at some point, just because they could. And it was, and then also, node package manager became a thing, but that time, I think, and then, yeah, it did, the amount of dependencies that you were pulling in was even worse than compared with Java, which still is, nowadays, it's still blows my mind that people work can can work like that. But as all these websites that all these properties they work, and then 2015 through your network, you got like an opportunity in Utah, you moved over there. And yeah, and that's when I your IRS career basically started and all kinds of other life things happened as well. And you've been living in that area of the United States ever since or?

Mark Moeykens: 44:48

Yes, yep. Still here.

Jeroen Leenarts: 44:50

So and your, your, your, your brand big mountain studios, is that something that basically came up when you were living in Utah, because because of the natural environment there?

Mark Moeykens: 45:03

Exactly. There's, at the time, I was living up in the mountains, and there's this this huge mountain like called Mountain tip ANOVA. And it's, it's beautiful. It's like it reminds me of Switzerland reminds me of the Alps. And, and I love the mountains. Personally, my wife is a beach person, I'm a mountain person. So I suicide. I'm like, I'm gonna go with big mountain studio. Because that's the environment I'm in right now.

Jeroen Leenarts: 45:33

And is the is the mountain in your logo extend representation of an actual mountain range, or is it a more freeform interpretation of something? mountainy

Mark Moeykens: 45:45

Yeah, yeah, exactly the ladder, had to get it to fit, you know, in there and still look like mountains.

Jeroen Leenarts: 45:51

Yeah, that can be a challenge, especially if you want to have some wide peaks in there as well. So, but big mountain Studios is something that you do on the side, by the looks of things, you will keep on doing that on the side next to your day job. Your day job, it sounds like you work in a more of a agency type surroundings, or you're being contracted out or you work on projects. So there's a lot of different code bases that you see if I, if I'm correct.

Mark Moeykens: 46:19

Oh, it's, this is actually, like a full time job. It's not a contract. So, you know, because it was I wanted to get my foot in the door, you know, and I always thought, like, Oh, I'll get my foot in the door, I'll gain some experience, and then maybe I'll go back to contracting. But I liked this group so much. I become like, really close friends with a lot of them. Yeah. And one of the perks that we have at this company, you know, back in 2015, was it was 100% remote. And, and we worked for tents. So we only really had to work four days a week. And you know, when you look around you, like, you get job offers from other companies, you're like, do I want to go back to five days a week. Because a lot of us, you know, we want to start side projects, and side hustles to, you know, make some extra money, but also maybe with the hopes of like it becoming your full time income. Yeah. And you want to do it, because you can control what you work on. And maybe have a little bit more free time, you know, in the end, but it's like, until that point, you have like way less free time. Like I saw this joke, you know, someone says, I wanted to become an entrepreneur. Because I didn't want to do the nine to five. And now I do 24/7 As an entrepreneur.

Jeroen Leenarts: 47:43

Now, that's a big difference there. Because because it's your thing, the engagement that you have with the work that you're doing is so high. It's it's a media trap that you can fall into as well. But, um, so but for the foreseeable future, what do you think will happen, you of course, will stay working in your day job, and you will be focusing on the book writing, again, with big mouth studios. So what do you have like a plan that's, like, longer than three months into the future right now? Or is it mostly? Okay, let's keep let's get going with the books and then see what happens.

Mark Moeykens: 48:17

Yeah, the How much do I want to share?

Jeroen Leenarts: 48:23

That depends on you. Yeah, that's

Mark Moeykens: 48:25

the question. Yeah, well, I'll just tell you like, like what I've told, you know, my family and friends and in Chris, my, my plan, like the whole plan, the whole reason why I even got into this was because my wife and I, she's never been to Europe. And I've been to Europe, maybe like five or six times, and I love it. And I always want to take her to Europe. And so her daughter, My stepdaughter, turns 18, or is 18 now, and she graduates high school this year. And so our plan was when she graduates, and she goes to college or not, we would get up and go traveling. And I know from my own experience, like, you know, United States, the vacations are very short. If you start a company, you only get two weeks, right? And Europe, it's a little bit different, right? Like, how much vacation Do you have a year?

Jeroen Leenarts: 49:23

Pool? I have to national holidays? That's not too many in the Netherlands, it's like five or six days, I think. And then on top of that I have I think it's 28 days that I can that's like discretionary time I can I can take for like my own time. And that's, that's paid leave. So

Mark Moeykens: 49:46

yeah. So for us paid leave usually starts starts at 14 days, plus holidays. And there's about five, five or six holidays depending on where you work. If you work for a bank, you have like 12 holidays. So when we go on vacation, when I go on vacation, it's usually like 10 days, you want to get both of the weekends. And then you know the week in between. And when you go you want to see as much as possible in the shortest amount of time. And I don't I don't like that experience. Because I don't. It's not very immersive. And I feel like I'm just kind of like on a train being zipped through something and then I get off and I'm back at home. And so one time I went to Italy with no plan. Because before I went to Italy and I had a plan and I was with some other people and like we want to see things but we're like, oh we can't we don't have time we have to get to the next place. And then as we're driving we're like well we want to see this but we don't have time, we have to get to the next place. So I went to Italy with no plan. And I rented a car and I just, I went wherever I want, if I saw something I liked, I just went there. And I and that was like the best kind of vacation I've ever had. And I was told, so I told my wife, I'm like, when we go to Europe, I don't want it to be for a fixed amount of time, I want us to be able to, you know, find something we want to go see. And we stay there as long as we want. And then if we see something else, we can go there. If we are interested in going to France, you know, we can go there. And then if we want to go to a beach, you know, in Spain or Ibiza, for example, Mediterranean, we can do that. So that was the whole point was behind big mount studio was to create and sell something that I could do from my phone, or from a laptop that didn't require a lot of attention to run. And if I wanted to, like, like right now, you know, I don't have to work on big mount studio this weekend, if I don't want to, you know, it reflects in how much he's, you know, you're flexing your sales every time, you you know, you post something or you share something or, you know, it helps every little bit helps. But if I don't want to I don't have to. And that's the way I want it to be. Unfortunately, you know, the lot of things have changed. And, you know, with COVID and everything that we probably, we probably won't go to Europe this year. It'll probably be next year. So we developed some other plans to do inside of the United States. Like, you know, what entrepreneurship is one thing, like the goal is to like, make money, you know, and do what you love. And I'm at that point right now. But now we're like, what do we do with the extra money. So we've changed our plans a little bit, and we're going to start investing in real estate. So we can have more like a continual cash flow, yeah, with minimal amount of work. So like, that's our plan, like, we're not going to be the landlords or we might be at first, but we want to buy places where a property management firm can can step in and manage it for us. Like one thing that my wife does right now, she runs a Airbnb out of her house. And she loves it. She loves, you know, working with it. So loves meeting new people working with them, giving them tips and things to see around if they want. And it's that's been like, successful, because you know, when COVID came out, there's been a lot more, I guess you could say, like digital nomads, where now people are working remotely and they're traveling, they want to see Utah, or they want to ski in Utah, or they want to hike in Utah, so they come here. So business has been good in that respect. So we're thinking about doing the same thing where before, you know, we're talking about just living in one place. But you know, like I said, I like the mountains. And she likes the mountains too. But she really likes the beach to sort of think about like, get to properties and Airbnb them, you know, the one that we're not in. So it's just we're trying to keep things like more flexible. And then when we want to, we can go we can get up and go to Europe. Airbnb is already in place, and functioning. And then so we just make it full time, Airbnb, you know, where people can rent the house while we travel. So that's, that's our plan. And with big mount studio, I have like a longer, long term plan. Like I actually have an exit strategy for big bounce studio, which is I don't know when I'm going to get there. But it involves like selling the company. And there's some things there's, there's a lot of things I had to put into place. But I want functioning and kind of like more policies in place so people can come in and start, like taking over and running the company for me. And then it gets up to a point where I sell it. I also want to expand into other technologies. A friend of mine, he's working on a book for jetpack compose, which is Android. And so I find I found out this is another cool thing where I work. my boss's boss's boss was an entrepreneur too. And we have this thing at work that's like a mentorship program. So you can pick a mentor and so I picked him as my mentor because he was an entrepreneur. And he suggested he says you know you're books have a very definite visual style to it, that is uncommon. He says, he says you should get a patent on that. And then, you know, he gave me a lot of these ideas. He says, Get a pen on it. And he says, it's not necessarily that you'll use that patent, you know, to like sue people. But he says, what it does is it gives your business more value. So if you have a patent system, on how you write your books, and you know, if you've seen any of my books, they're all the same pattern, you know, they're all the same visual style. So it's pretty consistent, so I could get a patent on that. And then once it has that, then I can grow it and have that intellectual property in place, and then sell it. I do have dreams beyond development, you know, more in the future. That's outside of software development.

Jeroen Leenarts: 56:44

Yeah. But it's always good to dream, right. And it's always good to have like this spot on the horizon that you that you aim for. Because just having a sort of a direction with what you're doing, it really helps with making sure that you can focus on on what is actually getting you closer to that end goal. You're right. That's, that's a lot of plans that you actually still have with big mountain studios. So what do you expect for the for the for the for the rest of the year? Because you are focusing on the book writing? And, like the the partnerships with other content creators so that you get affiliate marketing going on your books? And also you on their content? I guess? Yeah. So what is your expectation for 2022? Because COVID restrictions probably are going to be relaxed a little bit.

Mark Moeykens: 57:38

Yeah. I still, I want to focus on advertising and promotion. So I've played around a little bit with advertising. But it is, it is so tricky. I tell you, like trying to use like, the Facebook, you know, ad manager is so complex. And then you have to track like, did it actually do anything? So I'm planning and I'm talking to like a friend of mine. And I'm planning on just hiring someone to do it. Because it's, it's, you know it because it's something I'm just not interested in learning. You know, I'm very focused. I know what I like, and I know what I'm good at. And advertising, isn't that. Yeah, it's not advertising.

Jeroen Leenarts: 58:22

Yeah, it's I I've run some Twitter and some Facebook campaigns. And it's, it really felt like, I got a handful of money as a big hole. And I just throw it in there. And I didn't know if it did anything, but at least my money is gone.

Mark Moeykens: 58:38

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's exactly right, man. That's That's exactly how I feel. And so I, you know, I that's what led me to go back to YouTube. I'm like, you know, that was successful. And I actually I love, like sharing things with people. Yeah, I love sharing things that I learned. So I'm going to going back to YouTube this year is part of the part of the plan. I want to produce a video every week, and have that be consistent. Okay. And then find someone to do promotion and advertising. That is more effective than the way I would do it.

Jeroen Leenarts: 59:18

Yeah, and then of course, I Yeah, and then it'll pay for itself. And you can focus on the stuff that you're good at and that you enjoy doing, right. Exactly, yeah. Cool. So um, where can people find you online? Of course, people can have guests if they know your name, Mark Boykins.

Mark Moeykens: 59:37

Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people they can search for Mark Mulligan's and big mountain Studio will come up. Twitter will come up. I'm pretty active on Twitter. I like that platform. And then you can also have my youtube channel will also come up if you search for Mark Mohicans. Yeah, or big mountain studio. So yeah, you can start at Big Mount studio.com Or just go to youtube forward slash mark Mohicans. Because that channel, that that's the one that just happened to be the one I started on, you know, big mount studio wasn't even like a concept. So it's not like Ford slash big mount studio because it didn't even exist back then. But those are the three main places LinkedIn to actually have a ton of followers on LinkedIn. So you could probably find me on there too.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:00:28

Okay, I will make sure to link up those those items in my show notes. So that's your Twitter, your YouTube, your LinkedIn and your website, because then we pretty much have everything covered and people if to look at the show notes, they can easily find you if they have trouble. Getting the spelling of your last name, right? Because that is a bit specific. It's it's not a typical spelling that you see if you hear my kids, but we'll get people to your website regardless. So with that, Mark, I think we have a pretty good understanding of where you came from and where you're aiming at, to go through. So I would like to say thanks for your time. And I really enjoyed listening to the plans and ideas and the goals that you have set yourself for this year. And also the very conscious choice to get rid of certain aspects of your business because it was just not working for you working in the sense of enjoying the work because it was working. Plus it was gaining income, but probably those people and those subscriptions are way better off with with Chris website. And he's refocused again, on your book writing that you seem to enjoy much more from what I tell. So anything that we forgot to talk about?

Mark Moeykens: 1:01:50

I think you did a fantastic job covering all the points. I feel like you guys know my whole history now. Yeah, yeah, you did a bit too. So I think we covered all the bases here.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:02:02

Cool. Then, with that, Mark, I'd say, Talk to you again next time. And yeah, let me know whenever you get to Europe, cuz it would be very nice to, to actually have you in Europe at some point in time, maybe through a conference, maybe to the big plans that you have with your family, or who knows.

Mark Moeykens: 1:02:23

Yeah, yeah, that sounds great. I, there's I always that's actually part of the dream is, you know, I have a lot of international customers. And I had this dream of like, every country I go to, you know, we go to a coffee shop and, you know, I meet someone new find out about their career, and they're like, I think that'd be super interesting.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:02:44

Probably when you're when you're on the trip. It's just a tweet away to get people in that coffee. With Yeah, I guess.

Mark Moeykens: 1:02:52

Yeah. All right. Great.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:02:54

Thanks for your time and talk to you later.

Mark Moeykens: 1:02:57

Okay, bye bye.