Software Social Transistor (https://transistor.fm) https://feeds.transistor.fm/software-social Two indie SaaS founders—one just getting off the ground, and one with an established profitable business—invite you to join their weekly chats. 2022, Software Social 694c8f96-832e-5812-b640-9ae2a53b7dc5 yes Michele Hansen Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Colleen Schnettler en Tue, 21 Apr 2026 10:05:56 +0200 Tue, 21 Apr 2026 10:06:03 +0200 https://softwaresocial.dev https://img.transistorcdn.com/w0JlQs0mxyw5bNZ72iXnYuDFDWdNBtitOqyHHsMBeI4/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:1400/h:1400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzEyNzk2LzE1OTYw/MTgzNjItYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.jpg Software Social https://softwaresocial.dev episodic Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Two indie SaaS founders—one just getting off the ground, and one with an established profitable business—invite you to join their weekly chats. Two indie SaaS founders—one just getting off the ground, and one with an established profitable business—invite you to join their weekly chats.. SaaS, bootstrapping, software Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler No No Don't listen to this podcast for breaking AI news 148 148 Don't listen to this podcast for breaking AI news full 4f0058e7-d6d9-4efb-baea-a297e6eed029 https://share.transistor.fm/s/9280a24a Colleen shipped the Geocodio CLI (with a Claude Code agent skill!) and Michele had a nightmare about Figma. That's kind of the vibe this week. We also talk about what it's like building AI tools, when Claude decides to stop working, and which AI tools we reach for day to day. Plus, Michele's organizing a Larabelles event at Laracon US to help more women and non-binary folks feel welcome at tech conferences, and Colleen has some strong opinions about what actually works. Also discussed: Ghosts (BBC version), Ted Lasso, and going to the gym. You know, our normal weird stuff.

]]> Colleen shipped the Geocodio CLI (with a Claude Code agent skill!) and Michele had a nightmare about Figma. That's kind of the vibe this week. We also talk about what it's like building AI tools, when Claude decides to stop working, and which AI tools we reach for day to day. Plus, Michele's organizing a Larabelles event at Laracon US to help more women and non-binary folks feel welcome at tech conferences, and Colleen has some strong opinions about what actually works. Also discussed: Ghosts (BBC version), Ted Lasso, and going to the gym. You know, our normal weird stuff.

]]> Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:16:44 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2292 Colleen shipped the Geocodio CLI (with a Claude Code agent skill!) and Michele had a nightmare about Figma. That's kind of the vibe this week. We also talk about what it's like building AI tools, when Claude decides to stop working, and which AI tools we reach for day to day. Plus, Michele's organizing a Larabelles event at Laracon US to help more women and non-binary folks feel welcome at tech conferences, and Colleen has some strong opinions about what actually works. Also discussed: Ghosts (BBC version), Ted Lasso, and going to the gym. You know, our normal weird stuff.

]]> SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Guardrails, Guts, and AI at the Pool 147 147 Guardrails, Guts, and AI at the Pool full d68b6df2-82dc-4cb0-ae4e-725a49a60918 https://share.transistor.fm/s/118f4c1e We get into the messy reality of putting guardrails around AI tooling across a team: shared skills repos, documenting design decisions, and why Claude still needs to be managed like a very smart intern. We swap stories about AI taking over every conversation (yes, even bachelorette parties in Austin), debate whether junior devs should learn without AI first, and Colleen talks about hiring a sales coach who teaches her exactly what she teaches others. Plus: why we're so bullish on in-person events right now, and Michele talks about the why they waited 8 years to hire anyone, and why you can't separate feelings from good decision-making.

]]> We get into the messy reality of putting guardrails around AI tooling across a team: shared skills repos, documenting design decisions, and why Claude still needs to be managed like a very smart intern. We swap stories about AI taking over every conversation (yes, even bachelorette parties in Austin), debate whether junior devs should learn without AI first, and Colleen talks about hiring a sales coach who teaches her exactly what she teaches others. Plus: why we're so bullish on in-person events right now, and Michele talks about the why they waited 8 years to hire anyone, and why you can't separate feelings from good decision-making.

]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:01:01 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 3683 We get into the messy reality of putting guardrails around AI tooling across a team: shared skills repos, documenting design decisions, and why Claude still needs to be managed like a very smart intern. We swap stories about AI taking over every conversation (yes, even bachelorette parties in Austin), debate whether junior devs should learn without AI first, and Colleen talks about hiring a sales coach who teaches her exactly what she teaches others. Plus: why we're so bullish on in-person events right now, and Michele talks about the why they waited 8 years to hire anyone, and why you can't separate feelings from good decision-making.

]]> SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler We're baaaaaack! And more chaotic than ever 146 146 We're baaaaaack! And more chaotic than ever full b916d733-b11c-472f-91e3-01543c6e65a7 https://share.transistor.fm/s/09bc64df Michele and Colleen are back on the mics! We talked about our recent lives, burnout recovery, AI tooling, and the evolving landscape of content creation and marketing automation. Oh, and Colleen lets the power guy in halfway through.

]]> Michele and Colleen are back on the mics! We talked about our recent lives, burnout recovery, AI tooling, and the evolving landscape of content creation and marketing automation. Oh, and Colleen lets the power guy in halfway through.

]]> Thu, 05 Mar 2026 21:40:32 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 3719 Michele and Colleen are back on the mics! We talked about our recent lives, burnout recovery, AI tooling, and the evolving landscape of content creation and marketing automation. Oh, and Colleen lets the power guy in halfway through.

]]> SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Colleen & Michele are back on the mics! (For today, at least) 145 145 Colleen & Michele are back on the mics! (For today, at least) full a4891537-28e1-4210-bbd2-dae4527928c5 https://share.transistor.fm/s/53465ca1 After two years off-air, Michele and Colleen finally sit down together in front of the mics.

Links:

SaaS Marketing Gym

TinySeed Tales with Colleen are being released every Thursday on Startups for the Rest of Us!

]]> After two years off-air, Michele and Colleen finally sit down together in front of the mics.

Links:

SaaS Marketing Gym

TinySeed Tales with Colleen are being released every Thursday on Startups for the Rest of Us!

]]> Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:47 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2143 After two years off-air, Michele and Colleen finally sit down together in front of the mics.

Links:

SaaS Marketing Gym

TinySeed Tales with Colleen are being released every Thursday on Startups for the Rest of Us!

]]> SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Side Projects as Insurance Policies 141 141 Side Projects as Insurance Policies bonus 7e4a11f5-7838-4f59-8559-081dedba5811 https://share.transistor.fm/s/7682e9fd Michele chats with Kevin Griffin about how she sees side projects not only as a way to earn extra money but as insurance policies against losing your job or other unexpected life events.

Subscribe to Multithreaded Income! 

]]> Michele chats with Kevin Griffin about how she sees side projects not only as a way to earn extra money but as insurance policies against losing your job or other unexpected life events.

Subscribe to Multithreaded Income! 

]]> Tue, 05 Dec 2023 16:55:46 +0100 Michele Hansen, Kevin Griffin Michele Hansen, Kevin Griffin 3179 Michele chats with Kevin Griffin about how she sees side projects not only as a way to earn extra money but as insurance policies against losing your job or other unexpected life events.

Subscribe to Multithreaded Income! 

]]> SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen ADHD + Entrepreneurship: A Conversation with Jesse J. Anderson, aka ADHD Jesse 140 140 ADHD + Entrepreneurship: A Conversation with Jesse J. Anderson, aka ADHD Jesse full e53ca63c-f8fc-4ca9-9949-3d30121ad32b https://share.transistor.fm/s/2772c921 Michele chats with Jesse J. Anderson, aka ADHD Jesse, about finding out one has ADHD as an adult, entrepreneurship as people with ADHD, parenting an ADHD child, and more.

Get Jesse's book "Extra Focus: The Quick-Start Guide to Adult ADHD" and join his newsletter: https://adhdjesse.com/

+ Recommended book on parenting kids with ADHD: ADD Superparenting

]]> Michele chats with Jesse J. Anderson, aka ADHD Jesse, about finding out one has ADHD as an adult, entrepreneurship as people with ADHD, parenting an ADHD child, and more.

Get Jesse's book "Extra Focus: The Quick-Start Guide to Adult ADHD" and join his newsletter: https://adhdjesse.com/

+ Recommended book on parenting kids with ADHD: ADD Superparenting

]]> Tue, 21 Nov 2023 09:38:42 +0100 Michele Hansen, Jesse J. Anderson Michele Hansen, Jesse J. Anderson 3045 Michele chats with Jesse J. Anderson, aka ADHD Jesse, about finding out one has ADHD as an adult, entrepreneurship as people with ADHD, parenting an ADHD child, and more.

Get Jesse's book "Extra Focus: The Quick-Start Guide to Adult ADHD" and join his newsletter: https://adhdjesse.com/

+ Recommended book on parenting kids with ADHD: ADD Superparenting

]]> ADHD, ADHD entrepreneurship No Michele Hansen Cory Stine What 2023 Brings for Colleen, Michele, and This Show 133 133 What 2023 Brings for Colleen, Michele, and This Show full b8208259-0fa9-4d84-8451-240721a0d228 https://share.transistor.fm/s/3f3e8f2e Colleen and Michele talk about their hopes and plans for 2023, and make an announcement about this show.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who became Software Socialites and supported our show! We genuinely appreciate your enthusiasm and support.

]]> Colleen and Michele talk about their hopes and plans for 2023, and make an announcement about this show.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who became Software Socialites and supported our show! We genuinely appreciate your enthusiasm and support.

]]> Tue, 03 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2207 Colleen and Michele talk about their hopes and plans for 2023, and make an announcement about this show. Colleen and Michele talk about their hopes and plans for 2023, and make an announcement about this show. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman The Forcing Function Episode: Launch Christian Genco's New SaaS 132 132 The Forcing Function Episode: Launch Christian Genco's New SaaS full ebddcb97-7932-4bdd-90a1-494fd560325c https://share.transistor.fm/s/b4d679cd Michele talked to Christian Genco on December 1 about what he needed to do to launch his new SaaS, TheVideoClipper, with a deadline of having it done before this episode was released. So... did he do it?

Follow Christian! https://twitter.com/cgenco
Check out TheVideoClipper: https://thevideoclipper.com/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show!

 

]]> Michele talked to Christian Genco on December 1 about what he needed to do to launch his new SaaS, TheVideoClipper, with a deadline of having it done before this episode was released. So... did he do it?

Follow Christian! https://twitter.com/cgenco
Check out TheVideoClipper: https://thevideoclipper.com/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show!

 

]]> Tue, 27 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen, Christian Genco Michele Hansen, Christian Genco 2311 Michele talked to Christian Genco on December 1 about what he needed to do to launch his new SaaS, TheVideoClipper, with a deadline of having it done before this episode was released. So... did he do it? Michele talked to Christian Genco on December 1 about what he needed to do to launch his new SaaS, TheVideoClipper, with a deadline of having it done before this episode was released. So... did he do it? SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Reflecting on 2022 131 131 Reflecting on 2022 full 0166350d-6768-4f45-bdfe-2b33b2a1ed8a https://share.transistor.fm/s/a4e8c251 Michele and Colleen reflect on the year. 


Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show <3

 

]]> Michele and Colleen reflect on the year. 


Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show <3

 

]]> Tue, 20 Dec 2022 08:44:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2133 Michele and Colleen reflect on the year. Michele and Colleen reflect on the year. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Culture + Feedback = ??? 130 130 Culture + Feedback = ??? full 253d6000-92e5-4e87-a0c0-70ed56c9e469 https://share.transistor.fm/s/d4bdf0af Michele shares her takeaways from the book The Culture Map and what it might mean for getting product feedback and building products across countries.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 

 

 

 


]]> Michele shares her takeaways from the book The Culture Map and what it might mean for getting product feedback and building products across countries.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 13 Dec 2022 10:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1822 Michele shares her takeaways from the book The Culture Map and what it might mean for getting product feedback and building products across countries. Michele shares her takeaways from the book The Culture Map and what it might mean for getting product feedback and building products across countries. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman TinySeed, TinyConf 129 129 TinySeed, TinyConf full e6e1964e-da1f-43ff-87f3-f52e5b3bdaa0 https://share.transistor.fm/s/f68bf479 Colleen recaps her learnings from her first TinySeed meetup/MicroConf: Local Austin.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

]]> Colleen recaps her learnings from her first TinySeed meetup/MicroConf: Local Austin.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

]]> Tue, 06 Dec 2022 09:38:33 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1601 Colleen recaps her learnings from her first TinySeed meetup/MicroConf: Local Austin. Colleen recaps her learnings from her first TinySeed meetup/MicroConf: Local Austin. SaaS, TinySeed, MicroConf No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Listing on MicroAcquire 128 128 Listing on MicroAcquire full 1328ef13-72f3-4fd0-831f-bb3783634db1 https://share.transistor.fm/s/782f8840 Colleen is ready to go all-in on Refine... and that means moving on from Simple File Upload.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

New supporters!

 

 

 

 

 


]]> Colleen is ready to go all-in on Refine... and that means moving on from Simple File Upload.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

New supporters!

 

 

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 29 Nov 2022 10:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1739 Colleen is ready to go all-in on Refine... and that means moving on from Simple File Upload. Colleen is ready to go all-in on Refine... and that means moving on from Simple File Upload. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman The Hammerstone Podcast is back 127 127 The Hammerstone Podcast is back full 2403913b-f6c3-4e50-9975-ee789cb28618 https://share.transistor.fm/s/38659489 Colleen and her business partner Aaron give an update on Hammerstone (Refine) in this crossover episode.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Colleen and her business partner Aaron give an update on Hammerstone (Refine) in this crossover episode.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 22 Nov 2022 09:45:00 +0100 Colleen Schnettler & Aaron Francis Colleen Schnettler & Aaron Francis 1723 Colleen and her business partner Aaron give an update on Hammerstone (Refine) in this crossover episode. Colleen and her business partner Aaron give an update on Hammerstone (Refine) in this crossover episode. SaaS, TinySeed No Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Qualitative and Quantitative Data 126 126 Qualitative and Quantitative Data full 9fe3e667-4ff0-450e-ad18-4889f22f0be4 https://share.transistor.fm/s/428eaeff Talking to other entrepreneurs made Michele realize that she hasn't talked about interplay of qualitative *and* qualitative data enough. Michele and Colleen talk about what that means in the context of feature requests and high-touch sales.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

New supporters!

 

 

 

 


]]> Talking to other entrepreneurs made Michele realize that she hasn't talked about interplay of qualitative *and* qualitative data enough. Michele and Colleen talk about what that means in the context of feature requests and high-touch sales.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

New supporters!

 

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 15 Nov 2022 10:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2085 Talking to other entrepreneurs made Michele realize that she hasn't talked about interplay of qualitative *and* qualitative data enough. Michele and Colleen talk about what that means in the context of feature requests and high-touch sales. Talking to other entrepreneurs made Michele realize that she hasn't talked about interplay of qualitative *and* qualitative data enough. Michele and Colleen talk about what that means in the context of feature requests and high-touch sales. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman TinySeed! 125 125 TinySeed! full e5a159c0-7d35-49fc-810b-fd2db727f7dd https://share.transistor.fm/s/17866dcb Colleen's company was accepted to TinySeed, which means she now gets to work on Refine full time. That means she can finally make some hard decisions and push. (Note: Colleen and Michele were actually in the same place last week, so that's why the audio quality is different than normal!)

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 
Special thanks to our new supporters! 

]]> Colleen's company was accepted to TinySeed, which means she now gets to work on Refine full time. That means she can finally make some hard decisions and push. (Note: Colleen and Michele were actually in the same place last week, so that's why the audio quality is different than normal!)

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 
Special thanks to our new supporters! 

]]> Tue, 08 Nov 2022 11:01:53 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1931 Colleen's company was accepted to TinySeed, which means she now gets to work on Refine full time. That means she can finally make some hard decisions and push. (Note: Colleen and Michele were actually in the same place last week, so that's why the audio quality is different than normal!) Colleen's company was accepted to TinySeed, which means she now gets to work on Refine full time. That means she can finally make some hard decisions and push. (Note: Colleen and Michele were actually in the same place last week, so that's why the audio q SaaS, TinySeed, charge more No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Getting Into Public Speaking as a Developer 124 124 Getting Into Public Speaking as a Developer full d2c38c53-1874-48ab-adff-b192ff0132d4 https://share.transistor.fm/s/98547596 Michele chats with indie developer Benedicte Raae about getting into public speaking through streaming. 


Follow Benedicte on Twitter! https://twitter.com/raae

Benedicte's website: https://queen.raae.codes/

StreamYard: https://streamyard.com/

A couple friends of this pod have launched their own shows for entrepreneurs lately! Check them out:
Ship SaaS Faster (Simon Bennett + Volkan Kaya): https://shipsaasfaster.com/
Marketing Retro (Adrienne Barnes + Josh Ho): https://marketingretro.substack.com/
The Weekly Build (Marie Ng + Jesse Anderson): https://www.theweeklybuild.com/
This Indie Life (James McKinven + Dagobert Renouf): https://indielife.fm/
The Non-Tech Founders Podcast (Laura Elizabeth and Nathan Powell): https://nontechfounders.transistor.fm/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Michele chats with indie developer Benedicte Raae about getting into public speaking through streaming. 


Follow Benedicte on Twitter! https://twitter.com/raae

Benedicte's website: https://queen.raae.codes/

StreamYard: https://streamyard.com/

A couple friends of this pod have launched their own shows for entrepreneurs lately! Check them out:
Ship SaaS Faster (Simon Bennett + Volkan Kaya): https://shipsaasfaster.com/
Marketing Retro (Adrienne Barnes + Josh Ho): https://marketingretro.substack.com/
The Weekly Build (Marie Ng + Jesse Anderson): https://www.theweeklybuild.com/
This Indie Life (James McKinven + Dagobert Renouf): https://indielife.fm/
The Non-Tech Founders Podcast (Laura Elizabeth and Nathan Powell): https://nontechfounders.transistor.fm/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 01 Nov 2022 10:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen, Benedicte Raae Michele Hansen, Benedicte Raae 2419 Michele chats with indie developer Benedicte Raae about getting into public speaking through streaming. Michele chats with indie developer Benedicte Raae about getting into public speaking through streaming. GatsbyJS, public speaking, streaming No Michele Hansen Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Sick Leave for Indie Founders? 122 122 Sick Leave for Indie Founders? full 5c14a52d-dbc6-4051-93c7-303c711b3502 https://share.transistor.fm/s/655a23ba Should indie founders take sick leave? Michele and Colleen discuss.

A couple friends of this pod have launched their own shows for entrepreneurs lately! Check them out:
Ship SaaS Faster (Simon Bennett + Volkan Kaya): https://shipsaasfaster.com/
Marketing Retro (Adrienne Barnes + Josh Ho): https://marketingretro.substack.com/
The Weekly Build (Marie Ng + Jesse Anderson): https://www.theweeklybuild.com/
This Indie Life (James McKinven + Dagobert Renouf): https://indielife.fm/
The Non-Tech Founders Podcast (Laura Elizabeth and Nathan Powell): https://nontechfounders.transistor.fm/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Should indie founders take sick leave? Michele and Colleen discuss.

A couple friends of this pod have launched their own shows for entrepreneurs lately! Check them out:
Ship SaaS Faster (Simon Bennett + Volkan Kaya): https://shipsaasfaster.com/
Marketing Retro (Adrienne Barnes + Josh Ho): https://marketingretro.substack.com/
The Weekly Build (Marie Ng + Jesse Anderson): https://www.theweeklybuild.com/
This Indie Life (James McKinven + Dagobert Renouf): https://indielife.fm/
The Non-Tech Founders Podcast (Laura Elizabeth and Nathan Powell): https://nontechfounders.transistor.fm/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 25 Oct 2022 09:02:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1783 Should indie founders take sick leave? Michele and Colleen discuss. Should indie founders take sick leave? Michele and Colleen discuss. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Competitive Advantage and Moats for Small SaaSes, Part 2 121 121 Competitive Advantage and Moats for Small SaaSes, Part 2 full 35fe4535-4ead-4534-a780-11f13f11f717 https://share.transistor.fm/s/f91dc1ad Michele continues her chat with Summit founder Matt Wensing about ways indie SaaS founders can think about moats and competitive advantages. This episode: cost advantages, size advantages (big and small), and false moats.

Recommended reading on competitive advantages: The Little Book That Builds Wealth

A couple friends of this pod have launched their own shows for entrepreneurs lately! Check them out:
Ship SaaS Faster (Simon Bennett + Volkan Kaya): https://shipsaasfaster.com/
Marketing Retro (Adrienne Barnes + Josh Ho): https://marketingretro.substack.com/
The Weekly Build (Marie Ng + Jesse Anderson): https://www.theweeklybuild.com/
This Indie Life (James McKinven + Dagobert Renouf): https://indielife.fm/
The Non-Tech Founders Podcast (Laura Elizabeth and Nathan Powell): https://nontechfounders.transistor.fm/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Michele continues her chat with Summit founder Matt Wensing about ways indie SaaS founders can think about moats and competitive advantages. This episode: cost advantages, size advantages (big and small), and false moats.

Recommended reading on competitive advantages: The Little Book That Builds Wealth

A couple friends of this pod have launched their own shows for entrepreneurs lately! Check them out:
Ship SaaS Faster (Simon Bennett + Volkan Kaya): https://shipsaasfaster.com/
Marketing Retro (Adrienne Barnes + Josh Ho): https://marketingretro.substack.com/
The Weekly Build (Marie Ng + Jesse Anderson): https://www.theweeklybuild.com/
This Indie Life (James McKinven + Dagobert Renouf): https://indielife.fm/
The Non-Tech Founders Podcast (Laura Elizabeth and Nathan Powell): https://nontechfounders.transistor.fm/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:08:00 +0200 Michele Hansen, Matt Wensing Michele Hansen, Matt Wensing 2091 Michele continues her chat with Summit founder Matt Wensing about ways indie SaaS founders can think about moats and competitive advantages. This episode: cost advantages, size advantages (big and small), and false moats. Michele continues her chat with Summit founder Matt Wensing about ways indie SaaS founders can think about moats and competitive advantages. This episode: cost advantages, size advantages (big and small), and false moats. Competitive advantages, moats No Michele Hansen Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Talking Competitive Advantage and Moats for Small SaaSes, Part 1 120 120 Talking Competitive Advantage and Moats for Small SaaSes, Part 1 full 12634801-5ac0-49c6-bb6b-fa0c823edd0c https://share.transistor.fm/s/dd8de38c Michele chats with Summit founder Matt Wensing about intangible assets, switching costs, and network effects, and how they apply to indie software companies.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Michele chats with Summit founder Matt Wensing about intangible assets, switching costs, and network effects, and how they apply to indie software companies.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 11 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 3256 Michele chats with Summit founder Matt Wensing about intangible assets, switching costs, and network effects, and how they apply to indie software companies. Michele chats with Summit founder Matt Wensing about intangible assets, switching costs, and network effects, and how they apply to indie software companies. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Refine Update with Aaron and Colleen 119 119 Refine Update with Aaron and Colleen full af4aaf43-bb99-4012-8d9d-cecc3149337a https://share.transistor.fm/s/a2bff138 Aaron Francis, Colleen's co-founder, swings by to chat about Refine. 


Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Aaron Francis, Colleen's co-founder, swings by to chat about Refine. 


Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 04 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2103 Aaron Francis, Colleen's co-founder, swings by to chat about Refine. Aaron Francis, Colleen's co-founder, swings by to chat about Refine. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Super Pumped (aka The Saturday Edition) 118 118 Super Pumped (aka The Saturday Edition) full 5667ed8c-2cac-4ea2-b8ec-6d17d0999059 https://share.transistor.fm/s/8437dcda Four things Colleen is super pumped about... and one thing she's not.
 
Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Four things Colleen is super pumped about... and one thing she's not.
 
Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 27 Sep 2022 11:28:06 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2287 Four things Colleen is super pumped about... and one thing she's not. Four things Colleen is super pumped about... and one thing she's not. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Sprinting a Marathon 117 117 Sprinting a Marathon full d6d380ac-d8d8-4915-ad9a-51b6da7859e5 https://share.transistor.fm/s/89602d3b Colleen and Michele both have a lot going on.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

]]> Colleen and Michele both have a lot going on.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

]]> Tue, 20 Sep 2022 09:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 3123 Colleen and Michele both have a lot going on. Colleen and Michele both have a lot going on. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Hairy Projects and Heat Waves 116 116 Hairy Projects and Heat Waves full c428564a-1a02-4b92-9dab-fd72feb00016 https://share.transistor.fm/s/d7225069 Michele's trying to figure out how to approach charging sales taxes, and Colleen finally pushes to prod.


Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Michele's trying to figure out how to approach charging sales taxes, and Colleen finally pushes to prod.


Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 13 Sep 2022 09:26:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1942 Michele's trying to figure out how to approach charging sales taxes, and Colleen finally pushes to prod despite a challenging week. Michele's trying to figure out how to approach charging sales taxes, and Colleen finally pushes to prod despite a challenging week. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Distribution vs Marketing 115 115 Distribution vs Marketing full 53731115-640e-4e7e-815f-05ba37189a7d https://share.transistor.fm/s/20acf645 Colleen's in go mode for Refine. 

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Colleen's in go mode for Refine. 

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 06 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 3407 Colleen's in go mode for Refine. Colleen's in go mode for Refine. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman One Weekly Win 114 114 One Weekly Win full 29c30573-16b3-4ca3-b759-89da53af6fff https://share.transistor.fm/s/f3dac58d Colleen shares the secret to her recent productivity.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

]]> Colleen shares the secret to her recent productivity.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

]]> Tue, 30 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2707 Colleen shares the secret to her recent productivity. Colleen shares the secret to her recent productivity. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman The One Where Colleen Goes to LA and Michele Looks at Haybales 113 113 The One Where Colleen Goes to LA and Michele Looks at Haybales full 495cb3f8-e357-4b87-bc20-060a94bd22c3 https://share.transistor.fm/s/e8d77250 Should indie entrepreneurs take advice from VC-track folks?

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Should indie entrepreneurs take advice from VC-track folks?

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

 

 


]]> Tue, 23 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2948 Should indie entrepreneurs take advice from VC-track folks? Should indie entrepreneurs take advice from VC-track folks? SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman That's the Job 112 112 That's the Job full 545cfb67-2d91-4898-b23e-9502007127bc https://share.transistor.fm/s/17e93992 Learning new things, feeling like you're a bit out of your depth, pushing to the next level: that's the job of being an entrepreneur, and Colleen and Michele are both experiencing that in different ways.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

]]> Learning new things, feeling like you're a bit out of your depth, pushing to the next level: that's the job of being an entrepreneur, and Colleen and Michele are both experiencing that in different ways.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

]]> Tue, 16 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2268 Learning new things, feeling like you're a bit out of your depth, pushing to the next level: that's the job of being an entrepreneur, and Colleen and Michele are both experiencing that in different ways. Learning new things, feeling like you're a bit out of your depth, pushing to the next level: that's the job of being an entrepreneur, and Colleen and Michele are both experiencing that in different ways. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Work vs Life vs Everything Else 111 111 Work vs Life vs Everything Else full f4d4b5ea-f390-4a04-ab08-af37f105631a https://share.transistor.fm/s/1b144789 Michele and Colleen catch up on Michele's conference talks... and try to figure out how to make her life work. 

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

]]> Michele and Colleen catch up on Michele's conference talks... and try to figure out how to make her life work. 

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

]]> Tue, 09 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2654 Michele and Colleen catch up on Michele's conference talks... and try to figure out how she can get more balance. Michele and Colleen catch up on Michele's conference talks... and try to figure out how she can get more balance. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Bonus: Pre-Episode Banter for 8/9/22 110 110 Bonus: Pre-Episode Banter for 8/9/22 bonus f0a12712-9c0c-4316-ade6-529700ef2b37 https://share.transistor.fm/s/4ce25339 Folks seem to love our casual banter, so here's what Zoom captured on our backup recording before we started the actual recording for next Tuesday's episode. 

]]> Folks seem to love our casual banter, so here's what Zoom captured on our backup recording before we started the actual recording for next Tuesday's episode. 

]]> Thu, 04 Aug 2022 13:47:31 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 352 Folks seem to love our casual banter, so here's what Zoom captured on our backup recording before we started the actual recording for next Tuesday's episode. Folks seem to love our casual banter, so here's what Zoom captured on our backup recording before we started the actual recording for next Tuesday's episode. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Colleen vs the Cliff 109 109 Colleen vs the Cliff full a2de8b3e-d8b3-4b2a-a573-b259880473ad https://share.transistor.fm/s/36b3af26 It's finally August, and Colleen is coming up on the deadline for Refine to support her working full-time... or is it?

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

]]> It's finally August, and Colleen is coming up on the deadline for Refine to support her working full-time... or is it?

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

 

]]> Tue, 02 Aug 2022 10:05:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1811 It's finally August, and Colleen is coming up on the deadline for Refine to support her working full-time... or is it? It's finally August, and Colleen is coming up on the deadline for Refine to support her working full-time... or is it? SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Cory Stine Meghan Coleman Starting a Business - Even When Your Family Doesn't Want You To 108 108 Starting a Business - Even When Your Family Doesn't Want You To full cc5a37a3-0b54-4883-a5af-a7c21909af8d https://share.transistor.fm/s/b5ed1a21 Follow Lucie! https://twitter.com/LucieBaratte

Check out Logology: https://www.logology.co/

See her husband Dagobert's memes: https://twitter.com/dagorenouf

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Follow Lucie! https://twitter.com/LucieBaratte

Check out Logology: https://www.logology.co/

See her husband Dagobert's memes: https://twitter.com/dagorenouf

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Tue, 26 Jul 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen, Lucie Baratte Michele Hansen, Lucie Baratte 2195 Ever had friends or family question your decision to start a business or discourage you from going full-time? Michele and Lucie Baratte dive into that in part 2 of their conversation. Ever had friends or family question your decision to start a business or discourage you from going full-time? Michele and Lucie Baratte dive into that in part 2 of their conversation. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Meghan Coleman Vision and Empathy with Lucie Baratte of Logology 107 107 Vision and Empathy with Lucie Baratte of Logology full 34e23239-2620-4dc1-b244-2605ba98b325 https://share.transistor.fm/s/96696c42 Follow Lucie! https://twitter.com/LucieBaratte

Check out Logology: https://www.logology.co/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Follow Lucie! https://twitter.com/LucieBaratte

Check out Logology: https://www.logology.co/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Tue, 19 Jul 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen, Lucie Baratte Michele Hansen, Lucie Baratte 2468 Michele chats with Lucie Baratte, co-founder and art director of Logology. Michele chats with Lucie Baratte, co-founder and art director of Logology. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Meghan Coleman What's Hammerstone? A Broadcast of the Hammerstone.dev Podcast with Colleen and Aaron 106 106 What's Hammerstone? A Broadcast of the Hammerstone.dev Podcast with Colleen and Aaron full f8649cf7-19b3-41b9-b755-c75e4ff632ba https://share.transistor.fm/s/1e7c528f Check out Hammerstone here!

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Check out Hammerstone here!

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Tue, 12 Jul 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Colleen Schnettler, Aaron Francis Colleen Schnettler, Aaron Francis 2853 Colleen and Aaron chat about all things Hammerstone. Colleen and Aaron chat about all things Hammerstone. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Meghan Coleman From Side Project to Full Time with Damon Chen and Michael Rouveure 105 105 From Side Project to Full Time with Damon Chen and Michael Rouveure full 89ae4bd9-5d22-4f13-b71d-0d4d0ceae7d7 https://share.transistor.fm/s/f8c52c54 This episode was sponsored by Calm Fund, an ecosystem of founders and funders of profitable, sustainable, calm businesses. Calm Fund invests early in profitable businesses that want to maximize their chances of success and build for the long-term. Calm Fund was founded by an exited indie SaaS founder, Tyler Tringas. Michele Hansen is one of the many indie SaaS founders who are investors/mentors in Calm Fund.

You can learn more about Calm Fund at https://calmfund.com/ and apply for funding at https://apply.calmfund.com/, no warm intro needed.

Follow Damon: https://twitter.com/damengchen

Follow Michael: https://twitter.com/MichaelRouveure

Follow Calm Fund: https://twitter.com/calmfund

]]> This episode was sponsored by Calm Fund, an ecosystem of founders and funders of profitable, sustainable, calm businesses. Calm Fund invests early in profitable businesses that want to maximize their chances of success and build for the long-term. Calm Fund was founded by an exited indie SaaS founder, Tyler Tringas. Michele Hansen is one of the many indie SaaS founders who are investors/mentors in Calm Fund.

You can learn more about Calm Fund at https://calmfund.com/ and apply for funding at https://apply.calmfund.com/, no warm intro needed.

Follow Damon: https://twitter.com/damengchen

Follow Michael: https://twitter.com/MichaelRouveure

Follow Calm Fund: https://twitter.com/calmfund

]]> Tue, 05 Jul 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen, Damon Chen, Michael Rouveure Michele Hansen, Damon Chen, Michael Rouveure 2821 Michele chats with Damon Chen and Michael Rouveure about how taking funding from Calm Fund allowed them to go from working on their businesses on the side to full-time. Michele chats with Damon Chen and Michael Rouveure about how taking funding from Calm Fund allowed them to go from working on their businesses on the side to full-time. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Meghan Coleman When Should You Let People Pay You? 104 104 When Should You Let People Pay You? full 005b6943-288e-4b06-97e2-04ca7faf66d8 https://share.transistor.fm/s/29c7b6e0 Follow Vic! https://twitter.com/VicVijayakumar

EveryOak, Vic's preschool communications SaaS: https://www.everyoak.com/

Try out HeyTexting: https://www.heytexting.com/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Follow Vic! https://twitter.com/VicVijayakumar

EveryOak, Vic's preschool communications SaaS: https://www.everyoak.com/

Try out HeyTexting: https://www.heytexting.com/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Tue, 28 Jun 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen, Vic Vijayakumar Michele Hansen, Vic Vijayakumar 2420 Michele chats with longtime listener Vic Vijayakumar about how to get to the point where he feels comfortable letting people pay for his new shared SMS inbox SaaS, HeyTexting. Michele chats with longtime listener Vic Vijayakumar about how to get to the point where he feels comfortable letting people pay for his new shared SMS inbox SaaS, HeyTexting. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Meghan Coleman Q&A! 103 103 Q&A! full b12bbb5c-e7e3-47ba-a595-96e1249bdf38 https://share.transistor.fm/s/02bfab28 Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Tue, 21 Jun 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2413 How would Michele and Colleen change each others' businesses? Why is Geocodio hiring now? And more on our Q&amp;A episode! How would Michele and Colleen change each others' businesses? Why is Geocodio hiring now? And more on our Q&amp;A episode! SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Meghan Coleman Sales Mode 102 102 Sales Mode full fd751bab-702b-4d44-bed4-1b5125aedab6 https://share.transistor.fm/s/234381ed Check out The Art of Product Podcast and Default Alive.

And of course, Colleen's favorite twitter thread by Nathan Barry. Also mentioned, Y Combinator CEO and Partner Michael Seibel on what makes the top 10% of founders different.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Check out The Art of Product Podcast and Default Alive.

And of course, Colleen's favorite twitter thread by Nathan Barry. Also mentioned, Y Combinator CEO and Partner Michael Seibel on what makes the top 10% of founders different.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Tue, 14 Jun 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1913 Colleen shifts into sales mode for Refine. Colleen shifts into sales mode for Refine. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Meghan Coleman 101 Episodes! 101 101 101 Episodes! full 0d38a20d-5fc2-4a8e-8c56-539bd819b658 https://share.transistor.fm/s/39b9d440 Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Tue, 07 Jun 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2199 Michele and Colleen reflect on where they’ve come from and where they’re going. Michele and Colleen reflect on where they’ve come from and where they’re going. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Meghan Coleman The One Where the WiFi Goes Out 100 100 The One Where the WiFi Goes Out full 1851f9ae-9b0f-4143-9618-68d845f69a81 https://share.transistor.fm/s/edac5509 Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.


]]> Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.


]]> Tue, 31 May 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1408 Colleen and Aaron gave their workshop at RailsConf! Well, a version of it. Colleen and Aaron gave their workshop at RailsConf! Well, a version of it. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Meghan Coleman Betting on Multiple Horses with Dan Rowden and James McKinven 99 99 Betting on Multiple Horses with Dan Rowden and James McKinven full c88bd02f-1ae0-44b8-ac67-4c2db5dc12a4 https://share.transistor.fm/s/7d7f07da Follow Dan! https://twitter.com/dr

See all of Dan's businesses: https://danrowden.com/

Follow James! https://twitter.com/jmckinven

See all of James' businesses: https://jamesmckinven.com/


Listen to No More Mondays: https://nomoremondays.fm/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Follow Dan! https://twitter.com/dr

See all of Dan's businesses: https://danrowden.com/

Follow James! https://twitter.com/jmckinven

See all of James' businesses: https://jamesmckinven.com/


Listen to No More Mondays: https://nomoremondays.fm/

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Tue, 24 May 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen, James McKinven, Dan Rowden Michele Hansen, James McKinven, Dan Rowden 2327 Michele chats with Dan Rowden and James McKinven, hosts of the No More Mondays podcast, about how they each manage a portfolio of indie businesses. Michele chats with Dan Rowden and James McKinven, hosts of the No More Mondays podcast, about how they each manage a portfolio of indie businesses. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen The Water Bowl of Sorrow 98 98 The Water Bowl of Sorrow full f550176e-c947-47c3-8a28-bb736f213865 https://share.transistor.fm/s/1c470723 Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Tue, 17 May 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2116 Colleen's launch doesn't go quite as hoped. Colleen's launch doesn't go quite as hoped. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Be a Champion with Zuzana Kunckova, Founder of Larabelles 97 97 Be a Champion with Zuzana Kunckova, Founder of Larabelles full 15ef877f-5f53-4ba1-a282-5a9a0d313020 https://share.transistor.fm/s/387e2ae6 Follow Zuzana on Twitter. Zuzana's website.
Check out Larabelles.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Follow Zuzana on Twitter. Zuzana's website.
Check out Larabelles.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Tue, 10 May 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen, Zuzana Kunckova Michele Hansen, Zuzana Kunckova 3074 Michele chats with Zuzana Kunckova, self-taught developer and founder of Larabelles. Michele chats with Zuzana Kunckova, self-taught developer and founder of Larabelles. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Launching, Back to the Future Style 96 96 Launching, Back to the Future Style full ee320e76-7dbb-4d55-a0d2-f8bed56c5fbb https://share.transistor.fm/s/4405c163 Check out Colleen's new product, Refine: https://hammerstone.dev

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Check out Colleen's new product, Refine: https://hammerstone.dev

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters.

]]> Tue, 03 May 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2128 Colleen's new company finally launches its first product. Colleen's new company finally launches its first product. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Positioning for Maximum Impact with Zach Goldie 95 95 Positioning for Maximum Impact with Zach Goldie full 83bf4153-6c79-4a6a-8fac-f13ce821d0ba https://share.transistor.fm/s/55b10ac5 Check out Zach's website: https://www.zachgoldie.com

]]> Check out Zach's website: https://www.zachgoldie.com

]]> Tue, 26 Apr 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Colleen Schnettler, Zach Goldie Colleen Schnettler, Zach Goldie 1849 Colleen chats with Zach Goldie, positioning consultant, about how to better pitch her product, Simple File Upload. Colleen chats with Zach Goldie, positioning consultant, about how to better pitch her product, Simple File Upload. SaaS, positioning, copywriting No Colleen Schnettler Founding, Selling, and Starting Anew with Adam Pallozzi, Exited Founder of Junior Rockers and Co-Founder of SleepHQ 94 94 Founding, Selling, and Starting Anew with Adam Pallozzi, Exited Founder of Junior Rockers and Co-Founder of SleepHQ full a54c0544-1c8c-4455-9f0f-48e2112424e4 https://share.transistor.fm/s/f980b8ce Follow Adam: https://twitter.com/adampallozzi
Check out Adam's new business, SleepHQ: https://sleephq.com

]]> Follow Adam: https://twitter.com/adampallozzi
Check out Adam's new business, SleepHQ: https://sleephq.com

]]> Tue, 19 Apr 2022 09:26:00 +0200 Michele Hansen, Adam Pallozzi Michele Hansen, Adam Pallozzi 3084 Michele chats with Adam Pallozzi about the highs and lows of selling a business during the pandemic. Michele chats with Adam Pallozzi about the highs and lows of selling a business during the pandemic. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Don't Forget to Sell What You Have 93 93 Don't Forget to Sell What You Have full ce4f22e1-cc2e-4a77-9242-9fa94b66d072 https://share.transistor.fm/s/c7c55be2 This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Bento. Bento is an email marketing and automation company for more technical-minded marketers. If you're using drip MailChimp or Active Campaign, but wish it was a bit more developer-friendly, Bento's the email product for you. With libraries for Ruby, Laravel, Node, and JavaScript, Bento can help you create your dream customer journey.

Plus, you get access to an amazing community on Discord where you'll get direct access to Jesse and his team. You might say it's friendly developer-friendly email marketing, and Jesse's happy to help anyone tighten up their marketing in a free session. Just go to bentonow.com, hit book a demo, and mention Software Social. 

]]> This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Bento. Bento is an email marketing and automation company for more technical-minded marketers. If you're using drip MailChimp or Active Campaign, but wish it was a bit more developer-friendly, Bento's the email product for you. With libraries for Ruby, Laravel, Node, and JavaScript, Bento can help you create your dream customer journey.

Plus, you get access to an amazing community on Discord where you'll get direct access to Jesse and his team. You might say it's friendly developer-friendly email marketing, and Jesse's happy to help anyone tighten up their marketing in a free session. Just go to bentonow.com, hit book a demo, and mention Software Social. 

]]> Tue, 12 Apr 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2274 Colleen and Michele discuss Colleen's marketing to-do list, and all things conference workshops. Colleen and Michele discuss Colleen's marketing to-do list, and all things conference workshops. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Sales for Founders with Ben Orenstein, Co-Founder of Tuple 92 92 Sales for Founders with Ben Orenstein, Co-Founder of Tuple full a868a3fd-53fc-4017-af10-e4941b8da800 https://share.transistor.fm/s/9493ebd8 Follow Ben: https://twitter.com/r00k
Check out Tuple: https://tuple.app

Did your latest AWS bill give you a heart attack?

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Start a 30-day free trial today! No credit card is required to get started at CloudForecast.io. 

]]> Follow Ben: https://twitter.com/r00k
Check out Tuple: https://tuple.app

Did your latest AWS bill give you a heart attack?

CloudForecast sends you daily transparent reports that help you understand your AWS costs, find any overspends, and promote opportunities to save costs. CloudForecast takes complicated data and produces accurate, presentable reports so you can share stats quickly and make strategic decisions swiftly. With communication integrations like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and email to share insights, you can go from managing your AWS spend in hours to seconds.

Start a 30-day free trial today! No credit card is required to get started at CloudForecast.io. 

]]> Tue, 05 Apr 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen, Ben Orenstein Michele Hansen, Ben Orenstein 3319 Ben Orenstein shares his hard-earned tactics for navigating enterprise sales as a technical founder. Ben Orenstein shares his hard-earned tactics for navigating enterprise sales as a technical founder. SaaS, sales, tuple No Michele Hansen From Learning to Code to Llamas 91 91 From Learning to Code to Llamas full af4e2665-ecd4-49d2-a6b7-bacdf881df0d https://share.transistor.fm/s/45f84ab1 Follow Marie: https://twitter.com/threehourcoffee
Check out Llama Life: https://twitter.com/llamalifeco

Check out Marie's learn to code YouTube recommendations:
JavaScript 30 by Wes Bos
Dev Ed
Traversy Media

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

]]> Follow Marie: https://twitter.com/threehourcoffee
Check out Llama Life: https://twitter.com/llamalifeco

Check out Marie's learn to code YouTube recommendations:
JavaScript 30 by Wes Bos
Dev Ed
Traversy Media

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

]]> Tue, 29 Mar 2022 09:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen, Marie Ng Michele Hansen, Marie Ng 3233 Michele chats with Marie Ng, founder of to-do list SaaS Llama Life. Michele chats with Marie Ng, founder of to-do list SaaS Llama Life. learn to code, SaaS, ADHD No Michele Hansen Less Codesy Stuff, More Salesy Stuff 90 90 Less Codesy Stuff, More Salesy Stuff full b7a1e7d4-9bdc-443c-b667-cf3bec225536 https://share.transistor.fm/s/ef628d49 This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

]]> This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

]]> Tue, 22 Mar 2022 09:01:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1975 Colleen has 5 months until Hammerstone runs out of client funding. What to do, what to do. Colleen has 5 months until Hammerstone runs out of client funding. What to do, what to do. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Raising a Business and Family with Anna Maste 89 89 Raising a Business and Family with Anna Maste full 60ef0378-068c-4be8-b069-05013d27c42f https://share.transistor.fm/s/43979579 Follow Anna: https://twitter.com/skulegirl

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

]]> Follow Anna: https://twitter.com/skulegirl

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

]]> Tue, 15 Mar 2022 09:01:00 +0100 Colleen Schnettler, Anna Maste Colleen Schnettler, Anna Maste 2433 Colleen chats with Anna Maste, founder of Boondockers Welcome, about growing a business to exit while raising a family. Colleen chats with Anna Maste, founder of Boondockers Welcome, about growing a business to exit while raising a family. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Colleen Schnettler Finding Your Career Niche with Nate Berkopec 88 88 Finding Your Career Niche with Nate Berkopec full 598f4d02-5887-4bbd-b1d2-141d896121dc https://share.transistor.fm/s/b7a8feff Nate's website: speedshop.co

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

]]> Nate's website: speedshop.co

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

]]> Tue, 08 Mar 2022 09:01:00 +0100 Colleen Schnettler, Nate Berkopec Colleen Schnettler, Nate Berkopec 2076 Colleen chats with Nate Berkopec, Ruby on Rails performance expert, about mindset and creating your own career path. Colleen chats with Nate Berkopec, Ruby on Rails performance expert, about mindset and creating your own career path. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Colleen Schnettler Special episode: Two additional ways you can help Ukraine 87 87 Special episode: Two additional ways you can help Ukraine bonus b93ab3e8-0a89-4b29-876d-b356631727c6 https://share.transistor.fm/s/0447a40a List of Ukrainian indie businesses/OSS contributors/creators to support: https://ukrainianweb.biz/

Donate to World Central Kitchen: https://donate.wck.org/ and let Michele know your donation is part of her matching campaign (michele@deployempathy.com)

This is intended as *additional* help in addition to the many other places to donate to help Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, rather than instead of those efforts.

Michele Hansen  0:00 
Hey, everyone, it's Michele here with a, yeah, I guess a special message on the Ukraine situation. So, like everyone around the world, we have been horrified by what is going on there, and trying to do whatever we can to help.

And so I just wanted to update you on two really quick things that that are ways that you can help as well.

So the first one is, is pulling together a list of Ukrainian indie businesses. As we know, there's a lot of developers and designers and people in our community, not not not just in our sort of global human community, but really in our world and our community in Ukraine, and want to want to support them as much as we can. And so pulling together a list on Twitter, but also my friend, Matt Nunogawa, he turned this into a website now. So you can go to Ukrainian web dot biz, and you can see a list of all of these businesses created and run by Ukrainians. Everything from a, you know, open source contributors to figma icons to morning pages app, coming soon pages, builder, databases, test management systems, Mac utilities, like clean my Mac, data for SEO purposes. There's also a personal finance money tracker app called Five Cents, which the story of that one just really hit me particularly hard, because the the developer just launched it a month ago. And he posted an update on the other day that saying that, you know, his his his feed for the last month is all sort of our normal, you know, building public kind of updates when we've just launched something. And then he said that he had to stop working on it and spend his time trying to keep his family safe from the attacks. So, um, lots of good businesses here. I hope we can all help support them. And so that's Ukrainian web dot biz, but also if you if you have friends in Ukraine, I mean, so many of us have staff and contractors and everything else. And friends in Ukraine. So if you know if people who are creators are running a SAS are infoproducts, open source, you know what, whatever, right? Like, you know, definitely just reply to the tweet, and let's build that list. 

The other thing is that so we on on behalf of Geocodio, we are are trying to raise $20,000 for World Central Kitchen. And so we will donate $10,000, we'll match $10,000. We've already donated $1,000. So this is on top of that, we're going to donate that $10,000 no matter what, but we would really love to make it more. And I'd love for you to help with that. Even if it's like five or $10 that that helps. Right World Central Kitchen is an amazing, nonprofit run by Chef Jose Andres who is a proud son of Washington, DC where I used to live, who goes around the world whenever there is a crisis to feed people. And his organization is truly wonderful. I volunteered with it myself during the US federal government shutdown couple of years ago when government employees you know, weren't getting paychecks and we're feeding them and so I've seen from my own eyes how wonderful giving of an organization it is, but also how well run it is. And Jose Andres himself is on the Polish border feeding people who are coming across.
 
Of course, there's many other ways to help as well. So I say this not as you should only help these efforts, but these are in addition to whatever else you might be doing. And yeah, so I hope you can help whether that's UkrainianWeb.biz or donating the World Central Kitchen and sending me receipts. 

But also, if you have people in Ukraine that you're supporting your I know, Harris Kenny, for example of IntroCRM. He has a staff member in Ukraine who is working with a group to buy groceries for people in Kyiv that you can also reach out to him about, but like if you know of efforts going on please let me know happy to use whatever platform we have to, to share that and and try to help people. 

So we'll be back to our normal programming this week. And sorry, next week. And yeah, thank you. Thank you for thank you for helping. Slava Ukraine.

]]> List of Ukrainian indie businesses/OSS contributors/creators to support: https://ukrainianweb.biz/

Donate to World Central Kitchen: https://donate.wck.org/ and let Michele know your donation is part of her matching campaign (michele@deployempathy.com)

This is intended as *additional* help in addition to the many other places to donate to help Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, rather than instead of those efforts.

Michele Hansen  0:00 
Hey, everyone, it's Michele here with a, yeah, I guess a special message on the Ukraine situation. So, like everyone around the world, we have been horrified by what is going on there, and trying to do whatever we can to help.

And so I just wanted to update you on two really quick things that that are ways that you can help as well.

So the first one is, is pulling together a list of Ukrainian indie businesses. As we know, there's a lot of developers and designers and people in our community, not not not just in our sort of global human community, but really in our world and our community in Ukraine, and want to want to support them as much as we can. And so pulling together a list on Twitter, but also my friend, Matt Nunogawa, he turned this into a website now. So you can go to Ukrainian web dot biz, and you can see a list of all of these businesses created and run by Ukrainians. Everything from a, you know, open source contributors to figma icons to morning pages app, coming soon pages, builder, databases, test management systems, Mac utilities, like clean my Mac, data for SEO purposes. There's also a personal finance money tracker app called Five Cents, which the story of that one just really hit me particularly hard, because the the developer just launched it a month ago. And he posted an update on the other day that saying that, you know, his his his feed for the last month is all sort of our normal, you know, building public kind of updates when we've just launched something. And then he said that he had to stop working on it and spend his time trying to keep his family safe from the attacks. So, um, lots of good businesses here. I hope we can all help support them. And so that's Ukrainian web dot biz, but also if you if you have friends in Ukraine, I mean, so many of us have staff and contractors and everything else. And friends in Ukraine. So if you know if people who are creators are running a SAS are infoproducts, open source, you know what, whatever, right? Like, you know, definitely just reply to the tweet, and let's build that list. 

The other thing is that so we on on behalf of Geocodio, we are are trying to raise $20,000 for World Central Kitchen. And so we will donate $10,000, we'll match $10,000. We've already donated $1,000. So this is on top of that, we're going to donate that $10,000 no matter what, but we would really love to make it more. And I'd love for you to help with that. Even if it's like five or $10 that that helps. Right World Central Kitchen is an amazing, nonprofit run by Chef Jose Andres who is a proud son of Washington, DC where I used to live, who goes around the world whenever there is a crisis to feed people. And his organization is truly wonderful. I volunteered with it myself during the US federal government shutdown couple of years ago when government employees you know, weren't getting paychecks and we're feeding them and so I've seen from my own eyes how wonderful giving of an organization it is, but also how well run it is. And Jose Andres himself is on the Polish border feeding people who are coming across.
 
Of course, there's many other ways to help as well. So I say this not as you should only help these efforts, but these are in addition to whatever else you might be doing. And yeah, so I hope you can help whether that's UkrainianWeb.biz or donating the World Central Kitchen and sending me receipts. 

But also, if you have people in Ukraine that you're supporting your I know, Harris Kenny, for example of IntroCRM. He has a staff member in Ukraine who is working with a group to buy groceries for people in Kyiv that you can also reach out to him about, but like if you know of efforts going on please let me know happy to use whatever platform we have to, to share that and and try to help people. 

So we'll be back to our normal programming this week. And sorry, next week. And yeah, thank you. Thank you for thank you for helping. Slava Ukraine.

]]> Wed, 02 Mar 2022 09:15:24 +0100 Michele Hansen Michele Hansen 468 A quick special episode on two efforts we're involved in to help Ukraine A quick special episode on two efforts we're involved in to help Ukraine SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen The Business of This Podcast 86 86 The Business of This Podcast full 86b2b8e6-fe75-4671-9f79-df7cf8261519 https://share.transistor.fm/s/4ca897bd This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

]]> This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

]]> Tue, 01 Mar 2022 09:01:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2460 Colleen and Michele chat about the business of this podcast. Colleen and Michele chat about the business of this podcast. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler How to Use Twitter Effectively (feat. Arvid Kahl) 85 85 How to Use Twitter Effectively (feat. Arvid Kahl) full 5477dbff-b9af-46d0-91b7-14fd7540dd1e https://share.transistor.fm/s/990bb662 Follow Arvid: https://twitter.com/arvidkahl
Arvid's Twitter course: https://www.findyourfollowing.com/

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

]]> Follow Arvid: https://twitter.com/arvidkahl
Arvid's Twitter course: https://www.findyourfollowing.com/

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

]]> Tue, 22 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen, Arvid Kahl Michele Hansen, Arvid Kahl 2328 Michele chats with Arvid Kahl about how to grow your Twitter presence. Michele chats with Arvid Kahl about how to grow your Twitter presence. twitter strategy No Michele Hansen Workshopping Pay-As-You-Go Failed Payments 84 84 Workshopping Pay-As-You-Go Failed Payments full bfe7aed1-eed5-4029-9da3-07caee5168b5 https://share.transistor.fm/s/8dc58c4b This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

]]> This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

]]> Tue, 15 Feb 2022 10:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2264 Colleen helps Michele work through a challenge with failed payments. Colleen helps Michele work through a challenge with failed payments. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Selling a Business and Scaling Another Amidst Tragedy 82 82 Selling a Business and Scaling Another Amidst Tragedy full 9405a333-3ea2-429a-9ff5-f364642a418a https://share.transistor.fm/s/d31906b2 Read the post Jesse mentions about his daughter Leia: https://jessehanley.com/blog/2021
Follow Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessethanley
Check out Bento: https://bentonow.com/

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

Michele Hansen  0:03  
Hey, welcome back to software social.

Hey, everyone, just a quick note before today's episode. So today's episode is a continuation of the conversation that I had with Jesse last week. And it's quite a bit heavier than our episodes normally are. And I want to give you a heads up in case this is a sensitive topic for you. So as many of you may know, from following Jessie on Twitter, his first daughter was born last year, and she was born with trisomy 13, which is a usually fatal condition. And his daughter died soon after being born. And so we, we talked about that in any episode. And what it's like to be a founder throughout all of that. And I mean, it's, it's, it's certainly not a topic that we normally talk about here. But I think it's an it's an important one and in many ways I feel like this is maybe the most important episode we've ever done. Because you know, we are business people and but we are we are people right like all of those things are happening at the same time. And and people don't really talk about death nevermind death of a child. And so I feel like this is this is really important to talk about. At the same time. I also want to stress that it was fully Jesse's decision to talk about this, we. So we actually didn't plan out last week's episode. Colleen was sick, and I was supposed to be talking to a guest and they ended up having to reschedule which is totally fine. But then I needed somebody else to come on and had to record that day. And I was like, who I wanted to have on that is online right now. And reach out to Jesse and so he hopped on with 20 minutes notice, and he had published a blog post about this about a month back, but I wanted to leave it entirely up to him whether we talked about his daughter, Leah, and it didn't end up coming up in that conversation we had and it was really fun conversation. And then we kind of you know, we stopped recording and then Jesse was like, You know what, let's but let's talk about it. So, so that's what we dive into. And, and it was also important to to you know, Jesse and I talked about whether we should publish this episode and how we should publish it. And so it's important to him that there be this sort of content warning in advance knowing that many people do struggle with infertility and miscarriage and and the loss of a child. And it's also extremely important to me, I think, to both of us really to show that it's okay to be open about that. And that if you are open about it, you'll receive compassion and that it's okay to talk about it. So without further ado, here is the second part of my conversation with Jesse. You may remember we've recently had Jesse on talking about his incredibly fascinating background as a bodybuilder turn marketer turned developer who now runs a SAS called bento and lives in Japan and is if you missed that episode, go listen to it. It was so fun for me and so fascinating. He's incredible founder.

But something really struck me from that conversation was how his life for the past like seven or eight years has just been a series of changing major stresses from working at the small company to moving abroad and starting an agency and then having to scale it down and then scaling it up and starting bento and everything else so much else going on. And so I have Jesse with us again today. And we're going to talk about we're like the personal side

Jesse Hanley  5:30  
of all of that. So welcome back, Jesse. Thanks. Good to come back.

like that thread, the yeah, there, there is a lot of stresses, I think, especially towards like the end of last year,

which we can go into last year, they had has been a pattern of that, there's also been a pattern of me, putting myself in those stresses or overreaching a lot. And then kind of, I don't know, not burning out, maybe burning out. But kind of like reaching the end of like, whatever amount of gas that I had in me for whatever that venture was, and then just trying to, you know, regain myself take a breather, and then kind of go back out there and overreach again, and I still don't really know. Maybe we can dig into it on this a little bit. But I still don't know really where that comes from. Basically, it's been present, I think, since after after school, you know, even like during the bodybuilding shows and stuff, that was a pretty insane thing to do at 1818. I think 19 was when I stepped on stage. But yeah, it's been, it's been interesting, but it's definitely been a pattern. It's been a pattern of constantly putting myself in, like difficult situations, burning out trying again, so a lot of stresses.

Michele Hansen  6:56  
It seems like you're either running like full health, like sprinting, or resting. Yes, that's exactly new. There's two Jessi modes. And most of those, it seems like have been sort of like work related. But but if you want to sort of start with it, I guess the end of last year, you had a major personal stress.

Jesse Hanley  7:23  
Yeah, around the star Molossia. Things were looking pretty, pretty great. Bento was like Stein to come into itself, the product was developing in a really good direction, like, we haven't really found in quite like product market fit. But the direction was going in a way where like, you're starting to click with people, mainly, we're going down the marketing automation route, which people are really excited about. And I felt my skills are getting better and like so from that business perspective, things are going good in terms of the agency, things are also going really good at that we like survived the pandemic. And we grew actually quite significantly over the pandemic, which was mostly related to having really good friends and people like, yeah, just basically doing all my work online as well, because all of our clients are either an E commerce or they're an affiliate. So as those industries boomed, we basically kept hiring writers to support those businesses. So that was pretty good. So the SATA last year, things were all looking good businesses, MRR all that stuff was nice, we're just moving into this, like, beautiful two story house in South Japan, right in the city, which, if you've been to Japan, or you know much about Japan, it's hard to find housing like we do. And the amazing thing was because the place was on the market for a bit, just because during COVID, or even the year before COVID, people weren't really moving. It's quite expensive to move in Japan. I think like all that for us to move from our apartment to this house. It was like, over over $10,000 that you don't really see back and that's just like key money and a whole bunch of stuff. So it's it's expensive. And but we did it we found this like beautiful house. It has a garden so like our dog and our cat. But don't tell the landlord like a dog and cat can li...

]]> Read the post Jesse mentions about his daughter Leia: https://jessehanley.com/blog/2021
Follow Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessethanley
Check out Bento: https://bentonow.com/

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

Michele Hansen  0:03  
Hey, welcome back to software social.

Hey, everyone, just a quick note before today's episode. So today's episode is a continuation of the conversation that I had with Jesse last week. And it's quite a bit heavier than our episodes normally are. And I want to give you a heads up in case this is a sensitive topic for you. So as many of you may know, from following Jessie on Twitter, his first daughter was born last year, and she was born with trisomy 13, which is a usually fatal condition. And his daughter died soon after being born. And so we, we talked about that in any episode. And what it's like to be a founder throughout all of that. And I mean, it's, it's, it's certainly not a topic that we normally talk about here. But I think it's an it's an important one and in many ways I feel like this is maybe the most important episode we've ever done. Because you know, we are business people and but we are we are people right like all of those things are happening at the same time. And and people don't really talk about death nevermind death of a child. And so I feel like this is this is really important to talk about. At the same time. I also want to stress that it was fully Jesse's decision to talk about this, we. So we actually didn't plan out last week's episode. Colleen was sick, and I was supposed to be talking to a guest and they ended up having to reschedule which is totally fine. But then I needed somebody else to come on and had to record that day. And I was like, who I wanted to have on that is online right now. And reach out to Jesse and so he hopped on with 20 minutes notice, and he had published a blog post about this about a month back, but I wanted to leave it entirely up to him whether we talked about his daughter, Leah, and it didn't end up coming up in that conversation we had and it was really fun conversation. And then we kind of you know, we stopped recording and then Jesse was like, You know what, let's but let's talk about it. So, so that's what we dive into. And, and it was also important to to you know, Jesse and I talked about whether we should publish this episode and how we should publish it. And so it's important to him that there be this sort of content warning in advance knowing that many people do struggle with infertility and miscarriage and and the loss of a child. And it's also extremely important to me, I think, to both of us really to show that it's okay to be open about that. And that if you are open about it, you'll receive compassion and that it's okay to talk about it. So without further ado, here is the second part of my conversation with Jesse. You may remember we've recently had Jesse on talking about his incredibly fascinating background as a bodybuilder turn marketer turned developer who now runs a SAS called bento and lives in Japan and is if you missed that episode, go listen to it. It was so fun for me and so fascinating. He's incredible founder.

But something really struck me from that conversation was how his life for the past like seven or eight years has just been a series of changing major stresses from working at the small company to moving abroad and starting an agency and then having to scale it down and then scaling it up and starting bento and everything else so much else going on. And so I have Jesse with us again today. And we're going to talk about we're like the personal side

Jesse Hanley  5:30  
of all of that. So welcome back, Jesse. Thanks. Good to come back.

like that thread, the yeah, there, there is a lot of stresses, I think, especially towards like the end of last year,

which we can go into last year, they had has been a pattern of that, there's also been a pattern of me, putting myself in those stresses or overreaching a lot. And then kind of, I don't know, not burning out, maybe burning out. But kind of like reaching the end of like, whatever amount of gas that I had in me for whatever that venture was, and then just trying to, you know, regain myself take a breather, and then kind of go back out there and overreach again, and I still don't really know. Maybe we can dig into it on this a little bit. But I still don't know really where that comes from. Basically, it's been present, I think, since after after school, you know, even like during the bodybuilding shows and stuff, that was a pretty insane thing to do at 1818. I think 19 was when I stepped on stage. But yeah, it's been, it's been interesting, but it's definitely been a pattern. It's been a pattern of constantly putting myself in, like difficult situations, burning out trying again, so a lot of stresses.

Michele Hansen  6:56  
It seems like you're either running like full health, like sprinting, or resting. Yes, that's exactly new. There's two Jessi modes. And most of those, it seems like have been sort of like work related. But but if you want to sort of start with it, I guess the end of last year, you had a major personal stress.

Jesse Hanley  7:23  
Yeah, around the star Molossia. Things were looking pretty, pretty great. Bento was like Stein to come into itself, the product was developing in a really good direction, like, we haven't really found in quite like product market fit. But the direction was going in a way where like, you're starting to click with people, mainly, we're going down the marketing automation route, which people are really excited about. And I felt my skills are getting better and like so from that business perspective, things are going good in terms of the agency, things are also going really good at that we like survived the pandemic. And we grew actually quite significantly over the pandemic, which was mostly related to having really good friends and people like, yeah, just basically doing all my work online as well, because all of our clients are either an E commerce or they're an affiliate. So as those industries boomed, we basically kept hiring writers to support those businesses. So that was pretty good. So the SATA last year, things were all looking good businesses, MRR all that stuff was nice, we're just moving into this, like, beautiful two story house in South Japan, right in the city, which, if you've been to Japan, or you know much about Japan, it's hard to find housing like we do. And the amazing thing was because the place was on the market for a bit, just because during COVID, or even the year before COVID, people weren't really moving. It's quite expensive to move in Japan. I think like all that for us to move from our apartment to this house. It was like, over over $10,000 that you don't really see back and that's just like key money and a whole bunch of stuff. So it's it's expensive. And but we did it we found this like beautiful house. It has a garden so like our dog and our cat. But don't tell the landlord like a dog and cat can li...

]]> Tue, 08 Feb 2022 09:04:00 +0100 Michele Hansen, Jesse Hanley Michele Hansen, Jesse Hanley 3565 A raw conversation between Michele and Jesse Hanley about how he sold his first business and scaled up his SaaS last year all while dealing with the death of his infant daughter Leia from Trisomy 13. A raw conversation between Michele and Jesse Hanley about how he sold his first business and scaled up his SaaS last year all while dealing with the death of his infant daughter Leia from Trisomy 13. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen From Bodybuilder to SaaS Founder 81 81 From Bodybuilder to SaaS Founder full 2d9589b5-67a1-4857-b70a-b053991750a0 https://share.transistor.fm/s/d42ff3df Follow Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessethanley
Check out Bento: https://bentonow.com/

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Michele Hansen  0:00  
Hey everyone, I'm so excited. I have our friend Jesse Hanley from bento here with us today. Good, bro. So, Jesse, you have, you're such an interesting founder. So you were a digital nomad for a long time as a marketer, right? Um, and for the past four years, you have been running bento, which is like, it's like email automation, like, kind of like you like compete with like, drip, right?

Jesse Hanley  0:31  
Yeah, I mean, the easiest comparison for most people is like, customer IO and drip, those type of tools. But we've got a good product suite that also serves e comm. So if people are in E commerce, then there's another tool called Klaviyo. So kinda like a put ourselves in the middle of those two tools. But yeah, it's it's interesting bento has also been kind of like my passion project over the past like four years, which we can like, dig into a bit. But it's been all the things that I've wanted, as I've been working in marketing, and I just kind of like built the tools myself. Put them in a nice little package. And then yeah, no, I just flog them online.

Michele Hansen  1:06  
Yeah. Love that. So. So you were a nomad for a long time as a marketer, running this agency. And then you put down roots in Japan. Like last year, two years ago,

Jesse Hanley  1:20  
whenever a little bit before COVID. Like I, yeah, I made the decision to settle in, I met a friend down south, that friend is now my wife ran down south of Japan. And after like traveling for, I think, since 2015, or so, like, I'd spent half a year in Asia, half the year in Europe. And I was running all my stuff. And honestly, it's just it's not efficient. It's like quite a romantic lifestyle, because you're leaving out of hotels, and you're seeing cool parts of the world. But it's very fatiguing. And I think as my business is just starting to like kind of kick up just before COVID or the year before COVID. I, when I got the offer to move into this friend's apartment, I kind of just took it and it just felt like the right move at the time. And then then yeah, then the world shut down. Definitely was the right move, they're going to be locked in in Japan, because Japan is actually being quite nice during COVID to kind of like staying because I don't I love Asia, out of all the places I've been in the world. I love Asia as a region. And I really like Japan. So being kind of locked down here for the last two and a bit years is actually being quite nice.

Michele Hansen  2:26  
That's really interesting. I feel like there's this we kind of talked about this a little bit last week of like, there's this as you said, romantic vision of like, what being a nomad is like, and you know, for those of us who do run our own businesses, but like, have kids, that's kind of not something we I mean, I guess I do know some people who are nomads with kids, but it's a little more challenging, but like, I like I've heard that like, you know, moving from place to place, like there's all this like, mental overhead of like, you have to figure out like, where to buy groceries and where to live. And like all this kind of stuff that like living in one place, you don't really have to think about like, like, how was your experience of that. Um,

Jesse Hanley  3:08  
I mean, that's kind of like some of those problems like all the romantic problems. So like, not knowing where groceries are is like a fun Saturday adventure and like, knowing, you know, the good cafes, to work out is like another fun adventure or, you know, finding apartments can be an adventure, it could be like a horrible adventure. But it's, yeah, I don't know, moving around, it's, I don't know, all those problems, if you have the right perspective, are quite enjoyable. And they do kind of make things interesting, because when I was traveling, I was working Monday to Friday, 40 hours a week, if not sometimes, like, more, or sometimes less, just depending. And the way that I would do is just try and like live out my life normally. And then a lot of my exploring would be like on Saturdays and Sundays, and I would just go out and meet friends or whatever. But at the time, I was also trying to, you know, I was staying in apartments and staying in hotels. I did have a lot of friends that were also staying in hostels and stuff. But for me, it was really important that like, I tried to have as much of a stable life as I could. Yeah, it does get pretty expensive, though. Yeah, it was actually really offensive when I kind of look back on it, but it was worth it. And also, there was like a pretty interesting trade off a lot of the long term relationships and even like some of my best customers now all of them like I met on the road. And I reckon, yeah, I think about it. Like, I had a return from the people that I met on the road even though it's a really expensive way of life, if that makes sense. So, so yeah, you just meet a lot of communities like traveled around the US travel around Europe or Asia and you just meet so many wonderful, amazing humans that um, yeah, even during COVID and stuff like a lot of these humans were either clients, so we worked together or we did in our joint venture projects. Yeah, it made sense. For me at least

Michele Hansen  5:00  
Yeah, that's all it was like an investment in your I don't know, entrepreneur community, which I think for, it's like, it's so important, right? Because like most of us don't really know people in our normal daily lives who do this weird internet job thing. And having that community but also globally is I mean, it's so valuable. I mean, I mean, I'm here in Denmark, and you're in Japan. Like, I think that's that's Case in point enough. And so. So you started.

Jesse Hanley  5:29  
Yeah, sorry to interrupt you. But like on that note, we have like spoken a lot in Slack and stuff. And I think previous Jesse, like pre COVID, when I would have traveled to Europe, because we're chatting online, if your game like we probably would have met up or something. Because we have chatted a bit online, like it would have been easy for me to kind of go to Denmark and just kind of hang out. So that was how I was making a lot of relationships, I meet people online, meet people on Twitter or whatever, you chat. And you'd be like, alright, like, I mean, the country kind of close during a catch up, and then would kind of catch up that way. So a lot of my travels were guided, kind of like that, like I would meet people online, and then kind of catch up, which kind of sounds weird.

Michele Hansen  6:11  
Like, there is this kind of like quick, like fast friendships sort of quick intimacy that comes especially if it's like someone you've been tweeting with for like, a couple of years, like there was someone that I think I had met them, like, once at a conference, and we didn't even real...

]]> Follow Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessethanley
Check out Bento: https://bentonow.com/

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Michele Hansen  0:00  
Hey everyone, I'm so excited. I have our friend Jesse Hanley from bento here with us today. Good, bro. So, Jesse, you have, you're such an interesting founder. So you were a digital nomad for a long time as a marketer, right? Um, and for the past four years, you have been running bento, which is like, it's like email automation, like, kind of like you like compete with like, drip, right?

Jesse Hanley  0:31  
Yeah, I mean, the easiest comparison for most people is like, customer IO and drip, those type of tools. But we've got a good product suite that also serves e comm. So if people are in E commerce, then there's another tool called Klaviyo. So kinda like a put ourselves in the middle of those two tools. But yeah, it's it's interesting bento has also been kind of like my passion project over the past like four years, which we can like, dig into a bit. But it's been all the things that I've wanted, as I've been working in marketing, and I just kind of like built the tools myself. Put them in a nice little package. And then yeah, no, I just flog them online.

Michele Hansen  1:06  
Yeah. Love that. So. So you were a nomad for a long time as a marketer, running this agency. And then you put down roots in Japan. Like last year, two years ago,

Jesse Hanley  1:20  
whenever a little bit before COVID. Like I, yeah, I made the decision to settle in, I met a friend down south, that friend is now my wife ran down south of Japan. And after like traveling for, I think, since 2015, or so, like, I'd spent half a year in Asia, half the year in Europe. And I was running all my stuff. And honestly, it's just it's not efficient. It's like quite a romantic lifestyle, because you're leaving out of hotels, and you're seeing cool parts of the world. But it's very fatiguing. And I think as my business is just starting to like kind of kick up just before COVID or the year before COVID. I, when I got the offer to move into this friend's apartment, I kind of just took it and it just felt like the right move at the time. And then then yeah, then the world shut down. Definitely was the right move, they're going to be locked in in Japan, because Japan is actually being quite nice during COVID to kind of like staying because I don't I love Asia, out of all the places I've been in the world. I love Asia as a region. And I really like Japan. So being kind of locked down here for the last two and a bit years is actually being quite nice.

Michele Hansen  2:26  
That's really interesting. I feel like there's this we kind of talked about this a little bit last week of like, there's this as you said, romantic vision of like, what being a nomad is like, and you know, for those of us who do run our own businesses, but like, have kids, that's kind of not something we I mean, I guess I do know some people who are nomads with kids, but it's a little more challenging, but like, I like I've heard that like, you know, moving from place to place, like there's all this like, mental overhead of like, you have to figure out like, where to buy groceries and where to live. And like all this kind of stuff that like living in one place, you don't really have to think about like, like, how was your experience of that. Um,

Jesse Hanley  3:08  
I mean, that's kind of like some of those problems like all the romantic problems. So like, not knowing where groceries are is like a fun Saturday adventure and like, knowing, you know, the good cafes, to work out is like another fun adventure or, you know, finding apartments can be an adventure, it could be like a horrible adventure. But it's, yeah, I don't know, moving around, it's, I don't know, all those problems, if you have the right perspective, are quite enjoyable. And they do kind of make things interesting, because when I was traveling, I was working Monday to Friday, 40 hours a week, if not sometimes, like, more, or sometimes less, just depending. And the way that I would do is just try and like live out my life normally. And then a lot of my exploring would be like on Saturdays and Sundays, and I would just go out and meet friends or whatever. But at the time, I was also trying to, you know, I was staying in apartments and staying in hotels. I did have a lot of friends that were also staying in hostels and stuff. But for me, it was really important that like, I tried to have as much of a stable life as I could. Yeah, it does get pretty expensive, though. Yeah, it was actually really offensive when I kind of look back on it, but it was worth it. And also, there was like a pretty interesting trade off a lot of the long term relationships and even like some of my best customers now all of them like I met on the road. And I reckon, yeah, I think about it. Like, I had a return from the people that I met on the road even though it's a really expensive way of life, if that makes sense. So, so yeah, you just meet a lot of communities like traveled around the US travel around Europe or Asia and you just meet so many wonderful, amazing humans that um, yeah, even during COVID and stuff like a lot of these humans were either clients, so we worked together or we did in our joint venture projects. Yeah, it made sense. For me at least

Michele Hansen  5:00  
Yeah, that's all it was like an investment in your I don't know, entrepreneur community, which I think for, it's like, it's so important, right? Because like most of us don't really know people in our normal daily lives who do this weird internet job thing. And having that community but also globally is I mean, it's so valuable. I mean, I mean, I'm here in Denmark, and you're in Japan. Like, I think that's that's Case in point enough. And so. So you started.

Jesse Hanley  5:29  
Yeah, sorry to interrupt you. But like on that note, we have like spoken a lot in Slack and stuff. And I think previous Jesse, like pre COVID, when I would have traveled to Europe, because we're chatting online, if your game like we probably would have met up or something. Because we have chatted a bit online, like it would have been easy for me to kind of go to Denmark and just kind of hang out. So that was how I was making a lot of relationships, I meet people online, meet people on Twitter or whatever, you chat. And you'd be like, alright, like, I mean, the country kind of close during a catch up, and then would kind of catch up that way. So a lot of my travels were guided, kind of like that, like I would meet people online, and then kind of catch up, which kind of sounds weird.

Michele Hansen  6:11  
Like, there is this kind of like quick, like fast friendships sort of quick intimacy that comes especially if it's like someone you've been tweeting with for like, a couple of years, like there was someone that I think I had met them, like, once at a conference, and we didn't even real...

]]> Tue, 01 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen, Jesse Hanley Michele Hansen, Jesse Hanley 2579 Michele chats with Jesse Hanley, founder of Bento. Michele chats with Jesse Hanley, founder of Bento. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Redefining Success with Chris Spagnuolo of Jetboost 80 80 Redefining Success with Chris Spagnuolo of Jetboost full 5d7180ed-263e-4f4a-a3bd-c76df3646793 https://share.transistor.fm/s/1bac1782 Follow Chris: https://twitter.com/c_spags
Check out JetBoost: https://www.jetboost.io/
Listen to Default Alive: https://www.defaultalive.fm/

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

]]> Follow Chris: https://twitter.com/c_spags
Check out JetBoost: https://www.jetboost.io/
Listen to Default Alive: https://www.defaultalive.fm/

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

]]> Tue, 25 Jan 2022 12:25:00 +0100 Michele Hansen, Colleen Schnettler, Chris Spagnuolo Michele Hansen, Colleen Schnettler, Chris Spagnuolo 2054 Colleen and Michele chat with Chris Spagnuolo of Jetboost. Colleen and Michele chat with Chris Spagnuolo of Jetboost. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler January Blues and easy wins 79 79 January Blues and easy wins full f75f4940-7005-4d7c-925e-4e546c267c42 https://share.transistor.fm/s/050a15bb This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

]]> This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

]]> Tue, 18 Jan 2022 05:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1981 This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

]]> SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Learning How to Interview Customers: A Conversation with Jonathan Markwell 75 75 Learning How to Interview Customers: A Conversation with Jonathan Markwell full 05241706-8f80-44dc-8151-478ac8977d8d https://share.transistor.fm/s/4101e741 Listen to Empathy Deployed! https://empathydeployed.com/
Follow Jonathan! https://twitter.com/jot

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 


TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 


See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Michele Hansen  0:01  

Hey, everyone, I am super excited to have a guest with me today. Jonathan Mark Well, he is a strategy consultant, and also the host of empathy deployed a new podcast about customer interviews, or rather, I should say of customer interviews. So he's doing example, customer interviews, so you get to be along for the ride as he improves his customer interviewing skill. He is also a longtime listener of this show, and was one of the people I interviewed about my book when I was drafting it. So you could sort of say this is a new episode. It's like longtime listener first time caller, sort of episode. So welcome, Jonathan.

Jonathan Markwell  1:49  
Thank you, Michelle. It's great to be on. Yep. It's wonderful to, to join you after, after listening for so long.

Michele Hansen  1:58  
I'm really excited to have you. And, you know, so one thing that we have talked about a lot, and it was a very big focus for you is the podcast that you're doing. But I think if you if you could kind of pull us back to like, how did you even get interested in the concept of customer interviewing? And like, like, how did you start working with that in your work with with your clients?

Jonathan Markwell  2:28  
Um, I think, you know, I've been aware of interviewing customers for many, many years, maybe 15. I actually did a postgraduate degree I didn't finish, but it was in human centered computer systems. And so an element of the user or customer research would have been customer interviews, or the star I think was quite different from, from from, from your style. And, and so it's kind of in the back of my mind, but it's not, it's nothing, something I've been particularly comfortable with. So admittedly just avoided it a lot. But then, as I've worked with more and more software businesses, I found actually some of the the biggest aha moments for us. In the end, the biggest chunks of progression that those businesses have made are actually as a result of what we're effectively customer interviews, although accidental ones. And so the more I realized that actually, maybe if we were doing this more formal and more systematically, like I probably know, we should have been doing all along, we might have, you know, made may progress significantly faster, and spent a lot less money, figuring out how to make these different businesses work.

Michele Hansen  3:53  
Yeah, it sounds like you sort of had these moments where things kind of sort of unexpectedly learned things that were helpful to you. And you kind of became hungry to get more of that.

Jonathan Markwell  4:08  
Yeah, yeah, hungry. But then still not. Not enough to get into the habit of really doing it. Every every time the opportunity came up, where it's like, you know, maybe if we did lots of customer interviews here, we might get us past this, this problem that we that we currently have. And I you know, I guess it's sort of only from listening to the, this, this podcast, and subsequently reading drafts of your, your book that I'm like, you know, it really, it's not that hard. I just need to get into the habit of doing it. I mean, not to say it's not hard. It's just that come on, John, you need to do Just get in the habit of doing it and learn this stuff. Because all the materials that you've got no excuse now, it's all laid out in front of yours is the is the how you can do it. And, and by doing it often, maybe I'll be more comfortable doing it when I need to do it.

Michele Hansen  5:19  
So I'm curious, so when. So So you started listening to the podcast, you sort of heard me extolling the virtues of talking to customers as I am wanting to do. And so from that point where you started reading the newsletter in the draft, like, like, at what point did you start interviewing people again?

Jonathan Markwell  5:44  
I'm not sure I know, I, it was definitely earlier this year, I need to look at my calendar. I didn't do very many. But I did a few here and there, using the the some of the early interview scripts that that you shared. And, and there were people that I already knew, but I really wanted to dig into some of the their approaches to solving their problems, which are customer interviews, things be very simple to fit fit well, with, they weren't my customers, they're people that I was interested in, if there was a product, maybe for them that I could help them with. So it's kind of like I used it, use it there. And then it wasn't until I had one client where that I started working with earlier this year, to May, June time where it was like, you know, to really understand what's happening here with this, you know, pretty successful, profitable product, but there's not growing so well, we need to need to really understand customers and start talking to them more. So then we got a bit more rigorous. And, and we interviewed over the course of a month, I think six or seven people.

Michele Hansen  7:04  
So what were some learnings that came out of those interviews.

Jonathan Markwell  7:11  
The I think the main thing, I did most of these interviews with the founder of that product on the call with me, so he was observing. And the best part of it was really him hearing firsthand just how happy his customers were with, with the product. And so you know, not having much of that feedback loop. Because it's a developer tool that he provides great support for, and as a lot of conversation with people via chat, and email, but very rarely. voice or video communication. And so hearing that those those people read it get a lot of value out of that it was a great product, I knew it to be as well, because I happened to be a customer of his in in the past. That was as pretty wonderful. And then hearing how they described the situation that they were in without the tool before and the experience that they went through to, to come to the conclusion that they needed his product and the you know, in settled on it long, long term.

Michele Hansen  8:33  
You know, I think when you're like when you have a product like this can be one of the most sort of rewarding parts about doing interviews is you know, you get a lot of support requests every day, you're used to hearing about bugs, you're used to hearing what feature requests and all these kinds of things. And rarely do you get an email and sometimes it had does happen but rarely do you get an email from someone that's simply just them effusively praising the product and talking about what they use before and how this is so much better than what they were doing before. And, and I think for us, who are you know, founders who were, you know, wearing a lot of hats ourselves, it can just be just so motivating, to too, and rewarding to hear wow, like, we really are helping people and they, wh...

]]> Listen to Empathy Deployed! https://empathydeployed.com/
Follow Jonathan! https://twitter.com/jot

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AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Michele Hansen  0:01  

Hey, everyone, I am super excited to have a guest with me today. Jonathan Mark Well, he is a strategy consultant, and also the host of empathy deployed a new podcast about customer interviews, or rather, I should say of customer interviews. So he's doing example, customer interviews, so you get to be along for the ride as he improves his customer interviewing skill. He is also a longtime listener of this show, and was one of the people I interviewed about my book when I was drafting it. So you could sort of say this is a new episode. It's like longtime listener first time caller, sort of episode. So welcome, Jonathan.

Jonathan Markwell  1:49  
Thank you, Michelle. It's great to be on. Yep. It's wonderful to, to join you after, after listening for so long.

Michele Hansen  1:58  
I'm really excited to have you. And, you know, so one thing that we have talked about a lot, and it was a very big focus for you is the podcast that you're doing. But I think if you if you could kind of pull us back to like, how did you even get interested in the concept of customer interviewing? And like, like, how did you start working with that in your work with with your clients?

Jonathan Markwell  2:28  
Um, I think, you know, I've been aware of interviewing customers for many, many years, maybe 15. I actually did a postgraduate degree I didn't finish, but it was in human centered computer systems. And so an element of the user or customer research would have been customer interviews, or the star I think was quite different from, from from, from your style. And, and so it's kind of in the back of my mind, but it's not, it's nothing, something I've been particularly comfortable with. So admittedly just avoided it a lot. But then, as I've worked with more and more software businesses, I found actually some of the the biggest aha moments for us. In the end, the biggest chunks of progression that those businesses have made are actually as a result of what we're effectively customer interviews, although accidental ones. And so the more I realized that actually, maybe if we were doing this more formal and more systematically, like I probably know, we should have been doing all along, we might have, you know, made may progress significantly faster, and spent a lot less money, figuring out how to make these different businesses work.

Michele Hansen  3:53  
Yeah, it sounds like you sort of had these moments where things kind of sort of unexpectedly learned things that were helpful to you. And you kind of became hungry to get more of that.

Jonathan Markwell  4:08  
Yeah, yeah, hungry. But then still not. Not enough to get into the habit of really doing it. Every every time the opportunity came up, where it's like, you know, maybe if we did lots of customer interviews here, we might get us past this, this problem that we that we currently have. And I you know, I guess it's sort of only from listening to the, this, this podcast, and subsequently reading drafts of your, your book that I'm like, you know, it really, it's not that hard. I just need to get into the habit of doing it. I mean, not to say it's not hard. It's just that come on, John, you need to do Just get in the habit of doing it and learn this stuff. Because all the materials that you've got no excuse now, it's all laid out in front of yours is the is the how you can do it. And, and by doing it often, maybe I'll be more comfortable doing it when I need to do it.

Michele Hansen  5:19  
So I'm curious, so when. So So you started listening to the podcast, you sort of heard me extolling the virtues of talking to customers as I am wanting to do. And so from that point where you started reading the newsletter in the draft, like, like, at what point did you start interviewing people again?

Jonathan Markwell  5:44  
I'm not sure I know, I, it was definitely earlier this year, I need to look at my calendar. I didn't do very many. But I did a few here and there, using the the some of the early interview scripts that that you shared. And, and there were people that I already knew, but I really wanted to dig into some of the their approaches to solving their problems, which are customer interviews, things be very simple to fit fit well, with, they weren't my customers, they're people that I was interested in, if there was a product, maybe for them that I could help them with. So it's kind of like I used it, use it there. And then it wasn't until I had one client where that I started working with earlier this year, to May, June time where it was like, you know, to really understand what's happening here with this, you know, pretty successful, profitable product, but there's not growing so well, we need to need to really understand customers and start talking to them more. So then we got a bit more rigorous. And, and we interviewed over the course of a month, I think six or seven people.

Michele Hansen  7:04  
So what were some learnings that came out of those interviews.

Jonathan Markwell  7:11  
The I think the main thing, I did most of these interviews with the founder of that product on the call with me, so he was observing. And the best part of it was really him hearing firsthand just how happy his customers were with, with the product. And so you know, not having much of that feedback loop. Because it's a developer tool that he provides great support for, and as a lot of conversation with people via chat, and email, but very rarely. voice or video communication. And so hearing that those those people read it get a lot of value out of that it was a great product, I knew it to be as well, because I happened to be a customer of his in in the past. That was as pretty wonderful. And then hearing how they described the situation that they were in without the tool before and the experience that they went through to, to come to the conclusion that they needed his product and the you know, in settled on it long, long term.

Michele Hansen  8:33  
You know, I think when you're like when you have a product like this can be one of the most sort of rewarding parts about doing interviews is you know, you get a lot of support requests every day, you're used to hearing about bugs, you're used to hearing what feature requests and all these kinds of things. And rarely do you get an email and sometimes it had does happen but rarely do you get an email from someone that's simply just them effusively praising the product and talking about what they use before and how this is so much better than what they were doing before. And, and I think for us, who are you know, founders who were, you know, wearing a lot of hats ourselves, it can just be just so motivating, to too, and rewarding to hear wow, like, we really are helping people and they, wh...

]]> Tue, 11 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen, Jonathan Markwell Michele Hansen, Jonathan Markwell 2490 Michele chats with Jonathan Markwell, business consultant and host of the new Empathy Deployed podcast. Michele chats with Jonathan Markwell, business consultant and host of the new Empathy Deployed podcast. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen From Side Project to $6M ARR 78 78 From Side Project to $6M ARR full 2435e059-45b2-4d6e-a558-238c1db83662 https://share.transistor.fm/s/2d161dad Tue, 04 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen, Colleen Schnettler, Nick Zadrozny Michele Hansen, Colleen Schnettler, Nick Zadrozny 2693 Colleen and Michele chat with Nick Zadrozny, Founder and CEO of Bonsai. Colleen and Michele chat with Nick Zadrozny, Founder and CEO of Bonsai. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler It's Been a Year 77 77 It's Been a Year full d0153e17-c36b-49e4-9fc3-1a63706f3fe4 https://share.transistor.fm/s/e6bc4ee8 Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


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AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Colleen Schnettler  0:02  
Hey, Colleen, hey, Michelle. Good morning.

Michele Hansen  0:43  
It's been a year. Oh,

Colleen Schnettler  0:45  
it has been a year. Yes.

Michele Hansen  0:48  
2020. Part Two. Okay. 2021. Part two is coming to a close

Colleen Schnettler  0:56  
eye. That is hard to believe, isn't it?

Michele Hansen  0:59  
Yeah. And so I thought maybe this would be a good time to reflect on the year that has been and think about the year to come.

Colleen Schnettler  1:13  
I love this idea. Wow, that's so cool that we've been doing the podcast long enough that we can have a yearly reflection. We've been doing it more than a year. I know as to how a year and a half. I love it.

Michele Hansen  1:26  
No. So okay, so let's start out with simple file upload. And I feel like it's been a while since we've like actually talked about simple file upload. So you know, as, again, if this was a professionally edited, produced podcast, this is where the heart noises would be. Coleen, can you take us back to where you were in January of 2021. With your business,

Colleen Schnettler  1:55  
so in January of 2021.

So in January of 2021, simple file upload was in alpha, I believe in the Heroku add on store. And so that means it was not yet available for sale. You have to get 100 users, maybe it's beta, you have to get 100 users of your product in the app store before you're allowed to list it for sale. I've my years Right, right. Yeah, yeah, no, that was okay. It was that was 2020 2020. I launched it. Yep. It was January

Michele Hansen  2:35  
of 2020. That it was in beta.

Colleen Schnettler  2:38  
Right. It December, January, it was in beta. Right? Yeah, because I have the date as of February 4 2021, I was able to make it available for sale. So the product has been available for sale since February of 2021. Wow. And this is December. And since that time, it has grown to I'm not 1200 MRR, which is very exciting. And it has been a I mean, this year has been a wild ride professionally if I look back on it, because launch simple file upload. Learned a lot while doing that. And almost even bigger than that in August of 2021. I quit my job to join the Hammerstone team. And you took

Michele Hansen  3:25  
a job and then you quite registered like because you were clear Soltan starting out the year. Okay, the next couple years like,

Colleen Schnettler  3:33  
yeah, I basically went on this roller coaster up, I'd been consulting for years, then one of the companies I consulted for for years, convinced me to come on full time with them. And I had every intention of that being like a long term gig. It's a wonderful company. And then I think I announced on Twitter or on the podcast that I took a job and I got inundated with offers, which was pretty cool. And good to know if you're job hunting, you should probably hunt before you just take one. But then a couple months later, I had this really unique opportunity to join Hammerstone Hammerstone stone is the company co founded with my buddies, Aaron and Shawn that's building the Query Builder component and get paid to build that out and keep the IP so I had to quit the full time job in order to do Hammerstone full time and right now I'm doing Hammerstone full time paid. Yeah, so that's what that's what's going on.

Michele Hansen  4:40  
I mean, that's a such a journey for you to go from consulting. And then like this sort of like how much consulting do I need to do like and there's kind of period of time where you're trying to go kind of full time or, like more time on simple file upload. Then kind of Just life necessitated taking a job.

Colleen Schnettler  5:05  
Yeah, I think that's accurate. And I think a lot of people who are trying to build their own businesses can appreciate this. Like, I am super, super excited for those people that can go all in on their business. But I have a lot of bills. And I moved. Oh, I also moved from Virginia to California this year, gradually, Geez, what a year, man. Yeah, so I think the decision thing for me was I launched simple file upload, and the consulting the thing about what I was doing with consulting as I had more than one client, so it was just this incredible overhead of context switching. And the full time job offered me the opportunity, I had negotiated a four day workweek. So it had offered me offered me the opportunity to only have the two things I was working on. And that would have worked out great. I think, if I had stayed there, that would have been, that would have been a great choice, too. But the Hammerstone opportunity just felt too exciting and too big. It's literally exactly what I want to do to turn down. And so I want to say join them in August, and I've been working full time for the client that is funding the development of the product, it actually gives me less time on simple file upload, which is a constant, again, everyone with a job and a side project can appreciate this. It's like a constant balance, trying to find the time for all the things I want to do. But if you think about Michelle, if we go back to 2020, I don't have any products, and I have so many products, like I don't even have time for the ball. Like it's amazing, right? multiple things, right? So it's been, it's been really, really, really exciting and spectacular. And one of our friends, Pete, he's written a couple books. And he uses this phrase, expanding your luck surface area. And the concept is, like, really successful guys will always say, Oh, I just got lucky. How many times have you met someone who's running a, you know, half 1,000,002 million ARR business? It's like, Oh, we got really lucky. It's like, Yeah, but luck played a part. But this concept, I really love this concept of luck, surface area. Luck played apart, but you did all the things to position yourself to take advantage of the opportunity when it presented itself. Yeah. And so all these things we do honestly, like the podcast and launching products, and speaking at conferences, all of those things, I think, really increase the luck surface area. And so I feel incredibly lucky. But also, I also took a lot of steps to put myself in the position Hammerstone, I think is going to be the thing, Michelle, like, it's we feel the poll. I mean, it is exciting. So, you know, we feel the poll,

Michele Hansen  7:53  
that's interesting, like so, I mean, being on something that's like moving and people are like customers are really excited about it. I guess how do you like contrast that with the response that you get from simple file upload? Like, does that feel like a contrast?

Colleen Schnettler  8:11  
Oh, yeah. And I think simple file upload meets a very pressing need people have on Heroku. But outside of that, it feels like pushing, right? Like it feels like and this is this is part of growing a business like I'm not, you...

]]> Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you


Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Colleen Schnettler  0:02  
Hey, Colleen, hey, Michelle. Good morning.

Michele Hansen  0:43  
It's been a year. Oh,

Colleen Schnettler  0:45  
it has been a year. Yes.

Michele Hansen  0:48  
2020. Part Two. Okay. 2021. Part two is coming to a close

Colleen Schnettler  0:56  
eye. That is hard to believe, isn't it?

Michele Hansen  0:59  
Yeah. And so I thought maybe this would be a good time to reflect on the year that has been and think about the year to come.

Colleen Schnettler  1:13  
I love this idea. Wow, that's so cool that we've been doing the podcast long enough that we can have a yearly reflection. We've been doing it more than a year. I know as to how a year and a half. I love it.

Michele Hansen  1:26  
No. So okay, so let's start out with simple file upload. And I feel like it's been a while since we've like actually talked about simple file upload. So you know, as, again, if this was a professionally edited, produced podcast, this is where the heart noises would be. Coleen, can you take us back to where you were in January of 2021. With your business,

Colleen Schnettler  1:55  
so in January of 2021.

So in January of 2021, simple file upload was in alpha, I believe in the Heroku add on store. And so that means it was not yet available for sale. You have to get 100 users, maybe it's beta, you have to get 100 users of your product in the app store before you're allowed to list it for sale. I've my years Right, right. Yeah, yeah, no, that was okay. It was that was 2020 2020. I launched it. Yep. It was January

Michele Hansen  2:35  
of 2020. That it was in beta.

Colleen Schnettler  2:38  
Right. It December, January, it was in beta. Right? Yeah, because I have the date as of February 4 2021, I was able to make it available for sale. So the product has been available for sale since February of 2021. Wow. And this is December. And since that time, it has grown to I'm not 1200 MRR, which is very exciting. And it has been a I mean, this year has been a wild ride professionally if I look back on it, because launch simple file upload. Learned a lot while doing that. And almost even bigger than that in August of 2021. I quit my job to join the Hammerstone team. And you took

Michele Hansen  3:25  
a job and then you quite registered like because you were clear Soltan starting out the year. Okay, the next couple years like,

Colleen Schnettler  3:33  
yeah, I basically went on this roller coaster up, I'd been consulting for years, then one of the companies I consulted for for years, convinced me to come on full time with them. And I had every intention of that being like a long term gig. It's a wonderful company. And then I think I announced on Twitter or on the podcast that I took a job and I got inundated with offers, which was pretty cool. And good to know if you're job hunting, you should probably hunt before you just take one. But then a couple months later, I had this really unique opportunity to join Hammerstone Hammerstone stone is the company co founded with my buddies, Aaron and Shawn that's building the Query Builder component and get paid to build that out and keep the IP so I had to quit the full time job in order to do Hammerstone full time and right now I'm doing Hammerstone full time paid. Yeah, so that's what that's what's going on.

Michele Hansen  4:40  
I mean, that's a such a journey for you to go from consulting. And then like this sort of like how much consulting do I need to do like and there's kind of period of time where you're trying to go kind of full time or, like more time on simple file upload. Then kind of Just life necessitated taking a job.

Colleen Schnettler  5:05  
Yeah, I think that's accurate. And I think a lot of people who are trying to build their own businesses can appreciate this. Like, I am super, super excited for those people that can go all in on their business. But I have a lot of bills. And I moved. Oh, I also moved from Virginia to California this year, gradually, Geez, what a year, man. Yeah, so I think the decision thing for me was I launched simple file upload, and the consulting the thing about what I was doing with consulting as I had more than one client, so it was just this incredible overhead of context switching. And the full time job offered me the opportunity, I had negotiated a four day workweek. So it had offered me offered me the opportunity to only have the two things I was working on. And that would have worked out great. I think, if I had stayed there, that would have been, that would have been a great choice, too. But the Hammerstone opportunity just felt too exciting and too big. It's literally exactly what I want to do to turn down. And so I want to say join them in August, and I've been working full time for the client that is funding the development of the product, it actually gives me less time on simple file upload, which is a constant, again, everyone with a job and a side project can appreciate this. It's like a constant balance, trying to find the time for all the things I want to do. But if you think about Michelle, if we go back to 2020, I don't have any products, and I have so many products, like I don't even have time for the ball. Like it's amazing, right? multiple things, right? So it's been, it's been really, really, really exciting and spectacular. And one of our friends, Pete, he's written a couple books. And he uses this phrase, expanding your luck surface area. And the concept is, like, really successful guys will always say, Oh, I just got lucky. How many times have you met someone who's running a, you know, half 1,000,002 million ARR business? It's like, Oh, we got really lucky. It's like, Yeah, but luck played a part. But this concept, I really love this concept of luck, surface area. Luck played apart, but you did all the things to position yourself to take advantage of the opportunity when it presented itself. Yeah. And so all these things we do honestly, like the podcast and launching products, and speaking at conferences, all of those things, I think, really increase the luck surface area. And so I feel incredibly lucky. But also, I also took a lot of steps to put myself in the position Hammerstone, I think is going to be the thing, Michelle, like, it's we feel the poll. I mean, it is exciting. So, you know, we feel the poll,

Michele Hansen  7:53  
that's interesting, like so, I mean, being on something that's like moving and people are like customers are really excited about it. I guess how do you like contrast that with the response that you get from simple file upload? Like, does that feel like a contrast?

Colleen Schnettler  8:11  
Oh, yeah. And I think simple file upload meets a very pressing need people have on Heroku. But outside of that, it feels like pushing, right? Like it feels like and this is this is part of growing a business like I'm not, you...

]]> Tue, 28 Dec 2021 12:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2619 Michele and Colleen reflect on 2021 and look ahead to 2022. Michele and Colleen reflect on 2021 and look ahead to 2022. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Enterprise Sales as an Indie SaaS featuring Josh Ho, Founder of ReferralRock 73 73 Enterprise Sales as an Indie SaaS featuring Josh Ho, Founder of ReferralRock full 48ea3d4f-cb4d-40c5-9e69-54fc2b75f7ce https://share.transistor.fm/s/9626f85a Follow Josh! https://twitter.com/jlogic

Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you


Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com


Michele Hansen  0:36  
Hey, everyone, welcome back to software social, Colleen and I have a friend joining us today. We have Josh whoa here with us. Josh is founder of Referral Rock, which is referral software. They've been around since 2015. Also in the north, a million air club and have 16 employees. And Josh is also co host of the podcast searching for SAS, which actually kind of a similar concept to our show with a sort of an experienced entrepreneur and then somebody who's transitioning from consulting. So welcome, Josh.

Josh Ho  1:20  
Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, we're been a longtime listener and obviously have known you too for a while and are definitely our podcast that Nate and I have or was totally inspired by you guys. So it is extremely similar. But we've sort of diverged and done different things since then. But the concept was,

Michele Hansen  1:39  
so we're so excited to have you here. So about Gosh, what was this like a month or so ago when we were chatting with Twitter on everyone about like, what, what should we even talk about on this show? And what do you find interesting. And something that came up was people were interested to hear more about some of the challenges and struggles and operations of running a larger business. And so we're gonna kind of dive into one of those areas today, which is something that I spend a lot of my time on actually more time than I do customer research, which is sales. And we're specifically going to talk about enterprise sales, since I feel like that can be kind of this like, I don't know, sort of like a scary topic for people to think about. And so we thought it'd be kind of interesting to sort of talk about how you do sales, how we do them. And then Coleen can kind of ask us questions about it. That sounds good. So too, so I guess I'll kick us off calm? Or do you? Do you have a question you want to start with? No, go ahead. Um, so can you just like, give us a sense, like, in a, like, like, how does an enterprise deal for you usually starts? Like, are you guys doing cold outreach at all?

Josh Ho  3:08  
No, we don't do any cold outreach. And maybe it'd be helpful. How do you define enterprise sales? Because I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing as well. Are you talking like, like, sighs of customer size of kind of deal or, because like, we do all kinds of sales, and I would segment a certain area that I consider more enterprise than our some of our other types of sales as a SaaS business that has, like, the two three plan. Normal thing on the pricing page plus the

Michele Hansen  3:38  
Yeah, I guess I define it and skipping to define it, because people define it really different ways. For me, it's when there's a custom contract involved, which usually means it's at least $10,000 a year, but usually a lot more. I know, you know, if you're talking, you know, venture back startup, like enterprise deal is like, you know, minimum 50 100 $200,000. We're not usually in that range. Most of our what I what I term an enterprise agreement, which is, you know, when you're dealing with, you know, five different departments on the customer side, they're a huge company, you're doing extended contract negotiation, like there's, you know, it's not just somebody goes to the website, clicks it and buys it, and then they use it. Right, there's more involved on our side. And usually those are in that 10 to 50,000 range for us for annual revenue.

Josh Ho  4:42  
Okay, yeah, yeah. So when I classified that so it is that ask us where it's outside normal rails have the quick, you know, click to buy.

Michele Hansen  4:51  
Yeah, like not self service. Basically, there's something special that has to go on

Josh Ho  5:00  
Sure. So yeah, to answer your first question we, we don't do outbound. So we do all inbound, we have a strong SEO footprint. So we a lot of inbound requests that fall into two camps, we usually take them if you these are, quote unquote, are like lead magnets, you can either sign up for an account, or you can request a demo, at this point in our lifecycle. We are we attract people onto our site. And then essentially, there's like a 5050 split, we kind of, we have a philosophy on it now, which is saying, like, let a buyer by how they want to buy. Because you typically see product lead growth, like everyone funneling people to, you know, trials or to sign up. But we try to clearly say you have two paths. Because once someone determines that they do want to talk to someone, you know, it can easily get into the enterprise space, or it might just be like you were saying, a person that requires more of a relationship based sale, where they are talking to their internal champions they need to convince, they still need to go through procurement and all of those things. So for today, we can mostly talk about once they get into that demo track for us. And what happens is they can for us, some of those customers can fit into a standard offering. So like our, it might be an $800, or the $1,200 a month type of thing, usually paid annually. And on the first level, we sort of try to standard out bits of it, where it's like, and we can probably get into more detail of this. So is it our contract? Or is it their contract? That's like usually the first type of thing. And usually, if it's a scoped plan, we try to keep them. And in a regular price plan that isn't like, Hey, I have, you know, I have a million people I want to add to your form versus the 50,000, or the 100,000 kind of ones that are

Michele Hansen  7:00  
a little interesting. So you actually you will start out at the point of using their contract because like, I mean, yeah. Okay, okay. I'm gonna start like, I mean, yeah, sort of count the number of times we have relented and use the customers contract with an extensive, you know, Addendum and scope of work on our side. Yeah.

Josh Ho  7:27  
Right. Yeah, we try to keep them on rails of our stuff as much as possible, right, like whether, like first level one is just click checks to our checkbox, the checkbox that says I, your terms of service, on our website, level two is our standard contract. And then level three is like, they might have some alterations, our standard contract to which we already know, in scope, like, these are the things we're willing to bend on. So it's almost you have to build in or you know, what stuff you're going to be like, yeah, we'll give you that one type of things. And then yeah, level, I think I was on level three, level four is, okay, bear contract, but it is, like you, that has only happened a handful of times over the course of our of our existence, we and we fight like a lot, try to keep it in our other stuff, just to make it faster, because we don't have a large team, we don't have a I don't want to waste, you know, half of their contract on lawyers to try to get this out or get myself into into trouble agreeing to something that I clearly don't know. And I might have...

]]> Follow Josh! https://twitter.com/jlogic

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Michele Hansen  0:36  
Hey, everyone, welcome back to software social, Colleen and I have a friend joining us today. We have Josh whoa here with us. Josh is founder of Referral Rock, which is referral software. They've been around since 2015. Also in the north, a million air club and have 16 employees. And Josh is also co host of the podcast searching for SAS, which actually kind of a similar concept to our show with a sort of an experienced entrepreneur and then somebody who's transitioning from consulting. So welcome, Josh.

Josh Ho  1:20  
Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, we're been a longtime listener and obviously have known you too for a while and are definitely our podcast that Nate and I have or was totally inspired by you guys. So it is extremely similar. But we've sort of diverged and done different things since then. But the concept was,

Michele Hansen  1:39  
so we're so excited to have you here. So about Gosh, what was this like a month or so ago when we were chatting with Twitter on everyone about like, what, what should we even talk about on this show? And what do you find interesting. And something that came up was people were interested to hear more about some of the challenges and struggles and operations of running a larger business. And so we're gonna kind of dive into one of those areas today, which is something that I spend a lot of my time on actually more time than I do customer research, which is sales. And we're specifically going to talk about enterprise sales, since I feel like that can be kind of this like, I don't know, sort of like a scary topic for people to think about. And so we thought it'd be kind of interesting to sort of talk about how you do sales, how we do them. And then Coleen can kind of ask us questions about it. That sounds good. So too, so I guess I'll kick us off calm? Or do you? Do you have a question you want to start with? No, go ahead. Um, so can you just like, give us a sense, like, in a, like, like, how does an enterprise deal for you usually starts? Like, are you guys doing cold outreach at all?

Josh Ho  3:08  
No, we don't do any cold outreach. And maybe it'd be helpful. How do you define enterprise sales? Because I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing as well. Are you talking like, like, sighs of customer size of kind of deal or, because like, we do all kinds of sales, and I would segment a certain area that I consider more enterprise than our some of our other types of sales as a SaaS business that has, like, the two three plan. Normal thing on the pricing page plus the

Michele Hansen  3:38  
Yeah, I guess I define it and skipping to define it, because people define it really different ways. For me, it's when there's a custom contract involved, which usually means it's at least $10,000 a year, but usually a lot more. I know, you know, if you're talking, you know, venture back startup, like enterprise deal is like, you know, minimum 50 100 $200,000. We're not usually in that range. Most of our what I what I term an enterprise agreement, which is, you know, when you're dealing with, you know, five different departments on the customer side, they're a huge company, you're doing extended contract negotiation, like there's, you know, it's not just somebody goes to the website, clicks it and buys it, and then they use it. Right, there's more involved on our side. And usually those are in that 10 to 50,000 range for us for annual revenue.

Josh Ho  4:42  
Okay, yeah, yeah. So when I classified that so it is that ask us where it's outside normal rails have the quick, you know, click to buy.

Michele Hansen  4:51  
Yeah, like not self service. Basically, there's something special that has to go on

Josh Ho  5:00  
Sure. So yeah, to answer your first question we, we don't do outbound. So we do all inbound, we have a strong SEO footprint. So we a lot of inbound requests that fall into two camps, we usually take them if you these are, quote unquote, are like lead magnets, you can either sign up for an account, or you can request a demo, at this point in our lifecycle. We are we attract people onto our site. And then essentially, there's like a 5050 split, we kind of, we have a philosophy on it now, which is saying, like, let a buyer by how they want to buy. Because you typically see product lead growth, like everyone funneling people to, you know, trials or to sign up. But we try to clearly say you have two paths. Because once someone determines that they do want to talk to someone, you know, it can easily get into the enterprise space, or it might just be like you were saying, a person that requires more of a relationship based sale, where they are talking to their internal champions they need to convince, they still need to go through procurement and all of those things. So for today, we can mostly talk about once they get into that demo track for us. And what happens is they can for us, some of those customers can fit into a standard offering. So like our, it might be an $800, or the $1,200 a month type of thing, usually paid annually. And on the first level, we sort of try to standard out bits of it, where it's like, and we can probably get into more detail of this. So is it our contract? Or is it their contract? That's like usually the first type of thing. And usually, if it's a scoped plan, we try to keep them. And in a regular price plan that isn't like, Hey, I have, you know, I have a million people I want to add to your form versus the 50,000, or the 100,000 kind of ones that are

Michele Hansen  7:00  
a little interesting. So you actually you will start out at the point of using their contract because like, I mean, yeah. Okay, okay. I'm gonna start like, I mean, yeah, sort of count the number of times we have relented and use the customers contract with an extensive, you know, Addendum and scope of work on our side. Yeah.

Josh Ho  7:27  
Right. Yeah, we try to keep them on rails of our stuff as much as possible, right, like whether, like first level one is just click checks to our checkbox, the checkbox that says I, your terms of service, on our website, level two is our standard contract. And then level three is like, they might have some alterations, our standard contract to which we already know, in scope, like, these are the things we're willing to bend on. So it's almost you have to build in or you know, what stuff you're going to be like, yeah, we'll give you that one type of things. And then yeah, level, I think I was on level three, level four is, okay, bear contract, but it is, like you, that has only happened a handful of times over the course of our of our existence, we and we fight like a lot, try to keep it in our other stuff, just to make it faster, because we don't have a large team, we don't have a I don't want to waste, you know, half of their contract on lawyers to try to get this out or get myself into into trouble agreeing to something that I clearly don't know. And I might have...

]]> Tue, 21 Dec 2021 11:04:00 +0100 Michele Hansen, Colleen Schnettler, Josh Ho Michele Hansen, Colleen Schnettler, Josh Ho 1920 Michele and Colleen chat with Josh Ho, Founder of ReferralRock, about doing enterprise sales as indie founders. Michele and Colleen chat with Josh Ho, Founder of ReferralRock, about doing enterprise sales as indie founders. enterprise sales, enterprise saas, bootstrapping No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Marketing for SaaS Founders with Corey Haines of Swipe Files 76 76 Marketing for SaaS Founders with Corey Haines of Swipe Files full 0bd591fb-ef6c-48c4-8b27-f1db6cf800c1 https://share.transistor.fm/s/9c7ef41d Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


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Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

]]> Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


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- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you


Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

]]> Mon, 13 Dec 2021 23:00:00 +0100 Colleen Schnettler, Corey Haines Colleen Schnettler, Corey Haines 3409 Colleen and Corey talk Swipe Files, marketing for SAAS founders, and shooting your shot. Colleen and Corey talk Swipe Files, marketing for SAAS founders, and shooting your shot. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Colleen Schnettler Using Atomic Habits to Get Through Burnout 74 74 Using Atomic Habits to Get Through Burnout full 5707743f-509e-420a-9d82-4535c0189de8 https://share.transistor.fm/s/fb4ea60a Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


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Michele Hansen 
Hey, Colleen, 

Colleen Schnettler
good morning, Michelle.

Michele Hansen  0:45  
How are you?

Colleen Schnettler  0:47  
I'm doing great. How are you?

Michele Hansen  0:49  
I am I'm working working through stuff.

Colleen Schnettler  0:52  
Okay, can I start with the funny story? Sure. Our listeners. Okay. So if you listen to our podcast about Michelle's burnout, you might remember that I suggested some very dramatic things, like quit your job or move to a different country. So the next morning, Michelle texted me and told me she went for a walk. I made me laugh, because I was like, yes, you know, that's a good first step going for a walk.

Michele Hansen  1:22  
Yes, I actually, I did go for a walk that day, because it was sunny for once in Scandinavia in the wintertime. So you got to take advantage of that. So yeah, so I, I just want to start by saying I like I've gotten so much support from so many people and so many stories from people about their burnout, or their spouses burnout, or just feeling really, really supported and appreciating it. So much. How much other people have been sharing with me and how vulnerable they have been with me. It's been, it's been kind of amazing, I guess I didn't really know what to expect, going going into it, like recorded that episode. And I was kind of like, ah, like, I don't have any advice for people like is, right, is that going to be like useful for people. And it turns out, I guess, sort of just feeling seen, and knowing that other people go through it was helpful. And I think for me, like, just saying, like, sort of raising my hand and saying I have a problem, like, for me is often the first step in getting through it. Like, absolutely, um, so so that was really helpful for me. And just being open about it, and then all of the support from people. As has kind of given me like a little bit of motion on it. I mean, so many people reached out to me offering to, like, have a phone call or something about it. And, um, I haven't taken anyone, because, like, I don't have enough time. But I really appreciate it. And I'm just kind of like, I don't know, I'm like marinating and everyone's stories, like, like, I kind of feel like, I don't know if you ever do this, but like, you know, you get like a steak and then you put it in the fridge with salt on it, and for a couple of days, and then it gets really tender. And I feel like I'm just a piece of steak sitting in the fridge. And like every story and and sort of encouraging word people have sent to me as sort of, you know, their each one little piece of Maldon salt that's just kind of working its way in and tenderizing me and this is a little bit of a weird metaphor, but like people who take their seriously know what I'm talking about. Like, I'm just kind of, you know, I'm sort of like, yeah, I don't know, something marinating is like totally the wrong word for that. But you know, I'm just kind of absorbing, I guess all of that. Okay. Um, that's great. And yes, I have started to try to try to make some changes, but I think something that really helps crystallize for me, in hearing so many stories about burnout was like, there's kind of it feels like there's kind of like two different categories of burnout. There's like, work burnout, and then there's life burnouts. Okay. And work burnout is, you know, that's like your, your burnout from your work situation, right. And then life is like, you know, everything else going on, right? I have life burnout. It turns out and so that has been helpful for me in framing this because then it's kind of like a sort of, like, it feels like sort of like the first direction sign. You know, it's like, do I turn left? Do I turn right? Is it work burnout, is it life burnout, okay, now we know which way to go. Okay. And then that's like a, you know, sort of like another step to go down. like researching how people get through this. So I think that that was really key and helped me start, I think start even just like thinking about changes to make, because it's one, it's like everything possibly that you have going on that you might need to change. Like, that's a little bit overwhelming. But at least knowing which domain to think about is helpful, I think.

Colleen Schnettler  5:27  
So how do you know it's life burnout and not work burnout, what's the distinguishing characteristics?

Michele Hansen  5:32  
So I think it's that, you know, for me, like, like, I really enjoy work to the point where, like, you know, most of my life, I have found work easier than life, quite frankly, like, I tend to escape into work or school or, you know, whatever that is. And I think actually, the, the fact that I was like, one of my initial stressors couple weeks ago was like, I don't have enough time to work was not actually a sign that I was burning out from work, it was a sign that I was going into one of my oldest tried and true stress responses, which is trying to disappear into work. And then the fact that I didn't have enough time to do so was stressing me out. And that like that that outlet was not available. So it's not that I didn't have enough time to work. It's that like, I didn't have enough time to neglect the rest of my life and just disappear into work.

Colleen Schnettler  6:40  
Okay, I understand, I think, did we

Michele Hansen  6:43  
did we ever talk about like the four archetypes of like, stress and trauma responses, we were talking about that. Okay, so we're talking about that. So there's like four main categories of these. And it's just worth sort of noting and it's like, not any of them are better or worse than others. It's just intended to be descriptive, and like, help you understand how you respond to stressful situations. And so the first one is anger, which is, you know, respond with anger, whether that's verbally or physically, you know, with violence against yourself against other people, against objects, right. And so like, if something really stressful happens, and you really want to punch a pillow, or a punching bag, like anger might be one of your primary stress, or trauma responses, most people are a combination of a couple. The next one is flight, which is you are leaving the situation that can that that can be physically or it can also be sort of mentally, but that often takes the form of workaholism so disappearing into work. Hello, me raising hand. Um, that can be exercise, like, so I was a competitive gymnast growing up. So that's also in the flight response. You know, it can be physically moving places, like, you know, like, when, like, COVID got really bad, I decided to move country. So that is also a flight response. Like, hello, all the bells are going off here. Right? Um, so that's like the flight response. I think especially like, in our community, like, I come across a lot of people with the like, workaholic flight response. And the thing like, is like, though, the thing about flight responses is that like, they can often be sort of extreme versions of h...

]]> Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you


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Michele Hansen 
Hey, Colleen, 

Colleen Schnettler
good morning, Michelle.

Michele Hansen  0:45  
How are you?

Colleen Schnettler  0:47  
I'm doing great. How are you?

Michele Hansen  0:49  
I am I'm working working through stuff.

Colleen Schnettler  0:52  
Okay, can I start with the funny story? Sure. Our listeners. Okay. So if you listen to our podcast about Michelle's burnout, you might remember that I suggested some very dramatic things, like quit your job or move to a different country. So the next morning, Michelle texted me and told me she went for a walk. I made me laugh, because I was like, yes, you know, that's a good first step going for a walk.

Michele Hansen  1:22  
Yes, I actually, I did go for a walk that day, because it was sunny for once in Scandinavia in the wintertime. So you got to take advantage of that. So yeah, so I, I just want to start by saying I like I've gotten so much support from so many people and so many stories from people about their burnout, or their spouses burnout, or just feeling really, really supported and appreciating it. So much. How much other people have been sharing with me and how vulnerable they have been with me. It's been, it's been kind of amazing, I guess I didn't really know what to expect, going going into it, like recorded that episode. And I was kind of like, ah, like, I don't have any advice for people like is, right, is that going to be like useful for people. And it turns out, I guess, sort of just feeling seen, and knowing that other people go through it was helpful. And I think for me, like, just saying, like, sort of raising my hand and saying I have a problem, like, for me is often the first step in getting through it. Like, absolutely, um, so so that was really helpful for me. And just being open about it, and then all of the support from people. As has kind of given me like a little bit of motion on it. I mean, so many people reached out to me offering to, like, have a phone call or something about it. And, um, I haven't taken anyone, because, like, I don't have enough time. But I really appreciate it. And I'm just kind of like, I don't know, I'm like marinating and everyone's stories, like, like, I kind of feel like, I don't know if you ever do this, but like, you know, you get like a steak and then you put it in the fridge with salt on it, and for a couple of days, and then it gets really tender. And I feel like I'm just a piece of steak sitting in the fridge. And like every story and and sort of encouraging word people have sent to me as sort of, you know, their each one little piece of Maldon salt that's just kind of working its way in and tenderizing me and this is a little bit of a weird metaphor, but like people who take their seriously know what I'm talking about. Like, I'm just kind of, you know, I'm sort of like, yeah, I don't know, something marinating is like totally the wrong word for that. But you know, I'm just kind of absorbing, I guess all of that. Okay. Um, that's great. And yes, I have started to try to try to make some changes, but I think something that really helps crystallize for me, in hearing so many stories about burnout was like, there's kind of it feels like there's kind of like two different categories of burnout. There's like, work burnout, and then there's life burnouts. Okay. And work burnout is, you know, that's like your, your burnout from your work situation, right. And then life is like, you know, everything else going on, right? I have life burnout. It turns out and so that has been helpful for me in framing this because then it's kind of like a sort of, like, it feels like sort of like the first direction sign. You know, it's like, do I turn left? Do I turn right? Is it work burnout, is it life burnout, okay, now we know which way to go. Okay. And then that's like a, you know, sort of like another step to go down. like researching how people get through this. So I think that that was really key and helped me start, I think start even just like thinking about changes to make, because it's one, it's like everything possibly that you have going on that you might need to change. Like, that's a little bit overwhelming. But at least knowing which domain to think about is helpful, I think.

Colleen Schnettler  5:27  
So how do you know it's life burnout and not work burnout, what's the distinguishing characteristics?

Michele Hansen  5:32  
So I think it's that, you know, for me, like, like, I really enjoy work to the point where, like, you know, most of my life, I have found work easier than life, quite frankly, like, I tend to escape into work or school or, you know, whatever that is. And I think actually, the, the fact that I was like, one of my initial stressors couple weeks ago was like, I don't have enough time to work was not actually a sign that I was burning out from work, it was a sign that I was going into one of my oldest tried and true stress responses, which is trying to disappear into work. And then the fact that I didn't have enough time to do so was stressing me out. And that like that that outlet was not available. So it's not that I didn't have enough time to work. It's that like, I didn't have enough time to neglect the rest of my life and just disappear into work.

Colleen Schnettler  6:40  
Okay, I understand, I think, did we

Michele Hansen  6:43  
did we ever talk about like the four archetypes of like, stress and trauma responses, we were talking about that. Okay, so we're talking about that. So there's like four main categories of these. And it's just worth sort of noting and it's like, not any of them are better or worse than others. It's just intended to be descriptive, and like, help you understand how you respond to stressful situations. And so the first one is anger, which is, you know, respond with anger, whether that's verbally or physically, you know, with violence against yourself against other people, against objects, right. And so like, if something really stressful happens, and you really want to punch a pillow, or a punching bag, like anger might be one of your primary stress, or trauma responses, most people are a combination of a couple. The next one is flight, which is you are leaving the situation that can that that can be physically or it can also be sort of mentally, but that often takes the form of workaholism so disappearing into work. Hello, me raising hand. Um, that can be exercise, like, so I was a competitive gymnast growing up. So that's also in the flight response. You know, it can be physically moving places, like, you know, like, when, like, COVID got really bad, I decided to move country. So that is also a flight response. Like, hello, all the bells are going off here. Right? Um, so that's like the flight response. I think especially like, in our community, like, I come across a lot of people with the like, workaholic flight response. And the thing like, is like, though, the thing about flight responses is that like, they can often be sort of extreme versions of h...

]]> Tue, 07 Dec 2021 09:38:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2282 Colleen recommended Michele read Atomic Habits, and she finally did. They talk about how it's giving Michele ideas to make 1% improvements in her life to get through burnout. Colleen recommended Michele read Atomic Habits, and she finally did. They talk about how it's giving Michele ideas to make 1% improvements in her life to get through burnout. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Solving Your Spouse's Problem: A Conversation with Jordan O'Connor, Founder of Closet Tools 71 71 Solving Your Spouse's Problem: A Conversation with Jordan O'Connor, Founder of Closet Tools full fa158bc8-87e1-4335-b732-6252ada8c3b2 https://share.transistor.fm/s/b9bcb93b Follow Jordan! https://twitter.com/jdnoc

Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you


Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT
Colleen Schnettler  0:02  
Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs. But a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care. And Hey check it is here to help. Hey check it is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool. It goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users a happy experience. It includes AI generated SEO data, accessibility scanning, and site speed checks, with suggestions on how to improve and a number of various other tools to help you start a free trial today at Hey, check it.com

Welcome back to the software social podcast. I'm your host today, Colleen. Today I am super excited to have a special guest on the pod. Jordan O'Connor, the founder of closet tools is today's guest. Thanks for showing up today. Jordan, I appreciate it. 

Jordan O'Connor  0:56  
Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. 

Colleen Schnettler  0:58  
So I specifically wanted to ask you here because your Indie hackers interviews was one of my favorites. And I'm sure you hear that a lot. Do you hear that? A lot? 

Jordan O'Connor  1:07  
I've heard it a few times. 

Colleen Schnettler  1:08  
Yeah. Yeah. So for those who have not heard your Indie hackers interview, could you tell us a little bit about what closet tools is? 

Jordan O'Connor  1:17  
Yeah, so closet tools, I started closet tools almost almost four years ago now. It's basically an automation. It's software automation for Poshmark. So Poshmark is a retail selling platform. So it started out as mostly just people selling used women's clothes, it was mostly women selling used clothes on there.

And the way they built the platform is more like social media than it is like, you know, like, you know, like what you would think of ecommerce is like a storefront or something like that. And so the way to get exposure to your closet, your profile, you have to do things like sharing and liking and commenting and all these different social engagement signals. And that's how you get exposure. That's how you get followers. That's how you get, you know, eyeballs on your stuff, so that you can sell stuff. And so that takes a ton of time. And my particular customer, which would be like a reseller, they don't really have time to be on social media all day engaging and stuff like that, like they just want to sell clothes. Most of them sell on eBay, they sell, you know, on their own storefront. So they just want to sell stuff. And so that's what causes tools does, it does a lot of those engagement things for them, it'll share their items throughout the day, it'll automatically respond to different events that happen if somebody likes an item, it'll automatically send that person an offer with a discount stuff like that. So it kind of automates a little bit of the sales process for them. So yeah,

Colleen Schnettler  2:46  
so Poshmark is like eBay, but fancy, right, like higher high end.

Jordan O'Connor  2:52  
It's no, it's definitely it's definitely I would say it's not that eBay is high end, but Poshmark scales, low end to high end, you can you know, you can find, you know, you can find like really nice purses or whatever on there and stuff. Or you can buy, you know, a $5 You know, screenprint t shirt, like you can buy, you know, anything you want on there, most of the appeal is that most of the items on there are like used. So you're getting get a discount on some item that's lightly used that you would normally pay a lot more for. So that's kind of, you know, the the corner of the market that they tackled, there's also a lot of new items on there and things like that, too. So, but yeah, the thing that's weird about it. So like you have like a closet, it literally is like like Instagram, so you have your closet, and it has like all the images of like your items and stuff that you're selling. And each post has, you know, a common section, people can like it, they can share it themselves to their followers. And when you share to your followers, your item, they're basically when you share to your followers, that item shows up in their main feed. So like you can go into the app and you can like search specifically for like, hey, I want like Nike shoes, or whatever. And then I'll just come up with Nike shoes. But if you just kind of like go into the app, and you have like the main feed, just like any social media platform, whatever people are sharing is what's going to show up there. And so if you're not constantly sharing, then you're not going to show up in that main feed, and people aren't going to randomly stumble onto your profile. But you literally have to physically click like two buttons for every item you want to share. And a lot of my customers are actual, you know that this is their business and they have 2000 3000 4000 items. And it would take them an hour or two just to go through and click click, click, click click. So it and that could be time there's been doing other things like even literally just like packaging items to sell send out and stuff like that. So So yeah, it saves them a ton of time, and it ends up making them more money in the long run just because you know it's doing things for them. So it's pretty, it's a win win. It's pretty cool.

Colleen Schnettler  4:48  
So how did you get that idea? Were you selling stuff on? Poshmark?

Jordan O'Connor  4:52  
Yeah, so my wife started selling things on Poshmark at the time. We kind of need some extra income and she was like no One of her friends actually introduced her to Poshmark. And so she jumped on and she was starting to sell stuff. But then right away, I kind of was like, Whoa, you're spending a lot of time, you know, night sharing and doing a bunch of stuff on there. I was like, and it was right around the time I was kind of learning web development, things like that. I had already knew how to code and stuff. But I had never really done much web development. And I said, Hey, I think I can write like a little script that kind of like automates that for you. Like, you just press a button, and it just rifled through and shares all of your stuff. And so that's what I did. And so that's how I made the first, you know, like, kind of the first version. And for a while, I just, um, let her and her friends use it. And they thought it was awesome there was that it was really cool. And all it was was a bookmarklet. So like in, you know, browsers, you can just embed JavaScript code right in the bookmark, and you just click it and execute it. And it just like, yeah, you went through, it wasn't smart, or anything, had no GUI or anything like that. I just did it. And they thought it was great. And they were doing well with it. And then I blogged about it on my personal blog. And over the course of like, six months, I started getting like a hand few handful of emails from people saying, like, Hey, I found this, you ...

]]> Follow Jordan! https://twitter.com/jdnoc

Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you


Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT
Colleen Schnettler  0:02  
Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs. But a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care. And Hey check it is here to help. Hey check it is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool. It goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users a happy experience. It includes AI generated SEO data, accessibility scanning, and site speed checks, with suggestions on how to improve and a number of various other tools to help you start a free trial today at Hey, check it.com

Welcome back to the software social podcast. I'm your host today, Colleen. Today I am super excited to have a special guest on the pod. Jordan O'Connor, the founder of closet tools is today's guest. Thanks for showing up today. Jordan, I appreciate it. 

Jordan O'Connor  0:56  
Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. 

Colleen Schnettler  0:58  
So I specifically wanted to ask you here because your Indie hackers interviews was one of my favorites. And I'm sure you hear that a lot. Do you hear that? A lot? 

Jordan O'Connor  1:07  
I've heard it a few times. 

Colleen Schnettler  1:08  
Yeah. Yeah. So for those who have not heard your Indie hackers interview, could you tell us a little bit about what closet tools is? 

Jordan O'Connor  1:17  
Yeah, so closet tools, I started closet tools almost almost four years ago now. It's basically an automation. It's software automation for Poshmark. So Poshmark is a retail selling platform. So it started out as mostly just people selling used women's clothes, it was mostly women selling used clothes on there.

And the way they built the platform is more like social media than it is like, you know, like, you know, like what you would think of ecommerce is like a storefront or something like that. And so the way to get exposure to your closet, your profile, you have to do things like sharing and liking and commenting and all these different social engagement signals. And that's how you get exposure. That's how you get followers. That's how you get, you know, eyeballs on your stuff, so that you can sell stuff. And so that takes a ton of time. And my particular customer, which would be like a reseller, they don't really have time to be on social media all day engaging and stuff like that, like they just want to sell clothes. Most of them sell on eBay, they sell, you know, on their own storefront. So they just want to sell stuff. And so that's what causes tools does, it does a lot of those engagement things for them, it'll share their items throughout the day, it'll automatically respond to different events that happen if somebody likes an item, it'll automatically send that person an offer with a discount stuff like that. So it kind of automates a little bit of the sales process for them. So yeah,

Colleen Schnettler  2:46  
so Poshmark is like eBay, but fancy, right, like higher high end.

Jordan O'Connor  2:52  
It's no, it's definitely it's definitely I would say it's not that eBay is high end, but Poshmark scales, low end to high end, you can you know, you can find, you know, you can find like really nice purses or whatever on there and stuff. Or you can buy, you know, a $5 You know, screenprint t shirt, like you can buy, you know, anything you want on there, most of the appeal is that most of the items on there are like used. So you're getting get a discount on some item that's lightly used that you would normally pay a lot more for. So that's kind of, you know, the the corner of the market that they tackled, there's also a lot of new items on there and things like that, too. So, but yeah, the thing that's weird about it. So like you have like a closet, it literally is like like Instagram, so you have your closet, and it has like all the images of like your items and stuff that you're selling. And each post has, you know, a common section, people can like it, they can share it themselves to their followers. And when you share to your followers, your item, they're basically when you share to your followers, that item shows up in their main feed. So like you can go into the app and you can like search specifically for like, hey, I want like Nike shoes, or whatever. And then I'll just come up with Nike shoes. But if you just kind of like go into the app, and you have like the main feed, just like any social media platform, whatever people are sharing is what's going to show up there. And so if you're not constantly sharing, then you're not going to show up in that main feed, and people aren't going to randomly stumble onto your profile. But you literally have to physically click like two buttons for every item you want to share. And a lot of my customers are actual, you know that this is their business and they have 2000 3000 4000 items. And it would take them an hour or two just to go through and click click, click, click click. So it and that could be time there's been doing other things like even literally just like packaging items to sell send out and stuff like that. So So yeah, it saves them a ton of time, and it ends up making them more money in the long run just because you know it's doing things for them. So it's pretty, it's a win win. It's pretty cool.

Colleen Schnettler  4:48  
So how did you get that idea? Were you selling stuff on? Poshmark?

Jordan O'Connor  4:52  
Yeah, so my wife started selling things on Poshmark at the time. We kind of need some extra income and she was like no One of her friends actually introduced her to Poshmark. And so she jumped on and she was starting to sell stuff. But then right away, I kind of was like, Whoa, you're spending a lot of time, you know, night sharing and doing a bunch of stuff on there. I was like, and it was right around the time I was kind of learning web development, things like that. I had already knew how to code and stuff. But I had never really done much web development. And I said, Hey, I think I can write like a little script that kind of like automates that for you. Like, you just press a button, and it just rifled through and shares all of your stuff. And so that's what I did. And so that's how I made the first, you know, like, kind of the first version. And for a while, I just, um, let her and her friends use it. And they thought it was awesome there was that it was really cool. And all it was was a bookmarklet. So like in, you know, browsers, you can just embed JavaScript code right in the bookmark, and you just click it and execute it. And it just like, yeah, you went through, it wasn't smart, or anything, had no GUI or anything like that. I just did it. And they thought it was great. And they were doing well with it. And then I blogged about it on my personal blog. And over the course of like, six months, I started getting like a hand few handful of emails from people saying, like, Hey, I found this, you ...

]]> Tue, 30 Nov 2021 10:56:00 +0100 Colleen Schnettler, Jordan O'Connor Colleen Schnettler, Jordan O'Connor 2915 We talk a lot about solving your own problems as a way to find good business ideas. But solving your spouse's problems can be a good source of ideas, too. That's what Jordan O'Connor did with his Poshmark automation software, Closet Tools. We talk a lot about solving your own problems as a way to find good business ideas. But solving your spouse's problems can be a good source of ideas, too. That's what Jordan O'Connor did with his Poshmark automation software, Closet Tools. poshmark, ecommerce software, closet tools No Colleen Schnettler So This Is Burnout 72 72 So This Is Burnout full cc320dc4-02d9-433d-8d1f-d9cb0cacc813 https://share.transistor.fm/s/6bb26d6c Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you


Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Colleen Schnettler  0:00  
Good morning, Michelle. Hey, Colleen, it's early here in California. But I am here for you.

Michele Hansen  0:42  
It's late here in Denmark, it is dark. It is not even five.

Unknown Speaker  0:47  
My goodness.

Colleen Schnettler  0:48  
So I think this week, I would like to talk to something I talk about something a little more serious. And I want to talk about you. Because you have been going through some stuff.

Michele Hansen  1:02  
Yeah, I have. It kind of occurred to me this week that I I don't I don't know, I might be going through burnouts. Or at least I have, like, way too much stress. Like, like, I feel like I'm DDoSing myself.

Colleen Schnettler  1:22  
I love that line, by the way. So first of all, I guess your best friend and podcast host has been telling you this for like eight months.

Michele Hansen  1:33  
Like, we're like you're gonna burn out. I'm like, I'm fine. And then our friends of ours were like, you know, after like, I launched something like, you know, especially infoproduct people, they're like, I went through like a depression after that I really burned out like, and I was like, I hear you but like, I'm special. I'm not gonna that's not gonna happen to me. You know, all think we're special. We all think we're special. And we all are special. But there are also things that everyone goes through. Um, yeah, I have so much going on in my life right now. And, and I think this, I mean, I Okay, so you've known this for a long time. But like, I I think it really started to become apparent to me that like, given everything I'm doing I have really like down prioritized taking care of myself. That was something I got really thinking about at founder Summit. And it's not just like a work life balance problem or a, you know, need to like join a gym problem. Like, I think it's like, bigger than that. But I don't really know, like, how do you unburn out? How do you do though?

Colleen Schnettler  2:43  
Let's take a step back. When you say you haven't deprioritize taking care of yourself, what did you use to do that? You don't do like you have stopped doing over the past year. And like what led to that. I'm curious how you got to where you are.

Michele Hansen  3:00  
I mean, so I really don't first of all, like I really don't work out as much like and I used to be someone who was like super active, like, I used to run to work, bike to work, play tennis, do gymnastics, soccer on top of that, like super, super active and have really become less active. And I don't know if that's the pandemic or like moving countries and my habits like change, you know, you have to establish entirely new habits. As I was talking to people about it founder summit who are nomads, they were saying that they didn't realize until COVID and they were forced to stay in one place. how stressful it had been to like, move places every couple of months and have to like refigure it all over again. Like oh, like where's the grocery store that I like? And like, can I get the food I like and you know, where's the gym that I like? Where can I work? Like all those kinds of like basic everyday questions become sort of stressful. Like I definitely feel like that like I didn't go to the dentist for 18 months. Mostly because it's like so like hack I have a package I've been trying to mail for three months and I'm just so overwhelmed by the idea of like figuring out the Danish postal system that it's still sitting at my desk. So like basic everyday things become really overwhelming when you're abroad. Yeah, I think like one of my habits changed but then I think I just have so much going on also that like you know I think the great thing about working for yourself is like if you want to take an hour lunch break and read a book like you can do that but like I have been feeling like I don't even have time to eat I don't have time to make myself healthy food like the idea of just like even cooking a piece of salmon or whatever like seems overwhelming and so like I have really allowed my health to like totally slip because I just feel like I don't have time for it but I also don't have those like sort of habit triggers I guess that I used to have you know if I was in my environment I was in you know, do Two years ago, for sure. And I think with everything that I have going on, that's like become really acute.

Colleen Schnettler  5:09  
So and you would lump. I mean, that's your physical health. But also you said you don't read books for pleasure. I mean, I think that's what you just said. So that's not that's your whole, not just do it like I do. Okay. Yeah. I mean, have you also, like, what about your, your mental health are you also are you still not having time to do the things you used to love that brought you joy.

Michele Hansen  5:33  
So I differentiate that, and I think this is like I've been, you know, so I'm obviously not an expert in this, I'm just somebody who's going through differentiating between burnout and depression, where, like, I actually feel like my mental health is pretty good. Like I've done I've done a lot of work on my mental health the past couple of years. Um, and, you know, depression is like, when you try to, you know, you try to get the energy to do the things that you liked, and then you don't get any enjoyment out of it, it's like the dopamine just doesn't even fire. Or if it does, it only lasts for a second. So whereas you know, a non depressed person, maybe you can go for a walk, and, and then you or you see a friend, and it kind of brightens you for the rest of the day, and at least helps you get through it. You know, when I've gone through depression, it's like, that enjoyment you get from that, like, you get like 30 seconds of enjoyment out of it, and then it's just gone. And you even feel worse than you did before, because you were expecting to make you feel good. And then it didn't, and then it just like spirals. I'm not in that state right now. It's more just like this constant feeling of stress. And like, I don't have enough time for anything. And feeling exhausted by that constant stress. But it's also not anxiety, either. Because an idea I guess I'm not I don't really know how to explain this. But like it's, it's not like worrying. And it's not like a tension, or No, I don't, I don't know how to explain it. But yeah, it's kind of it's gotten me to Google X. It's like, I don't know what this feeling is. And then I kind of, you know, I mentioned it to some friends of ours. And they're like, that's, that's the burnout. We were telling you was going to happen. And I'm like, oh, and then I'm like, so like, what is like the plan to like, get out of this? Like, is there like, what does your schedule look like when you were getting out of burnout? They're like, yeah, that's kind of like, you're trying to, like, make a schedule of it. Like, right. And one of our friends was, like, I Googled, you know, how to be a type B personality when I was...

]]> Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you


Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Colleen Schnettler  0:00  
Good morning, Michelle. Hey, Colleen, it's early here in California. But I am here for you.

Michele Hansen  0:42  
It's late here in Denmark, it is dark. It is not even five.

Unknown Speaker  0:47  
My goodness.

Colleen Schnettler  0:48  
So I think this week, I would like to talk to something I talk about something a little more serious. And I want to talk about you. Because you have been going through some stuff.

Michele Hansen  1:02  
Yeah, I have. It kind of occurred to me this week that I I don't I don't know, I might be going through burnouts. Or at least I have, like, way too much stress. Like, like, I feel like I'm DDoSing myself.

Colleen Schnettler  1:22  
I love that line, by the way. So first of all, I guess your best friend and podcast host has been telling you this for like eight months.

Michele Hansen  1:33  
Like, we're like you're gonna burn out. I'm like, I'm fine. And then our friends of ours were like, you know, after like, I launched something like, you know, especially infoproduct people, they're like, I went through like a depression after that I really burned out like, and I was like, I hear you but like, I'm special. I'm not gonna that's not gonna happen to me. You know, all think we're special. We all think we're special. And we all are special. But there are also things that everyone goes through. Um, yeah, I have so much going on in my life right now. And, and I think this, I mean, I Okay, so you've known this for a long time. But like, I I think it really started to become apparent to me that like, given everything I'm doing I have really like down prioritized taking care of myself. That was something I got really thinking about at founder Summit. And it's not just like a work life balance problem or a, you know, need to like join a gym problem. Like, I think it's like, bigger than that. But I don't really know, like, how do you unburn out? How do you do though?

Colleen Schnettler  2:43  
Let's take a step back. When you say you haven't deprioritize taking care of yourself, what did you use to do that? You don't do like you have stopped doing over the past year. And like what led to that. I'm curious how you got to where you are.

Michele Hansen  3:00  
I mean, so I really don't first of all, like I really don't work out as much like and I used to be someone who was like super active, like, I used to run to work, bike to work, play tennis, do gymnastics, soccer on top of that, like super, super active and have really become less active. And I don't know if that's the pandemic or like moving countries and my habits like change, you know, you have to establish entirely new habits. As I was talking to people about it founder summit who are nomads, they were saying that they didn't realize until COVID and they were forced to stay in one place. how stressful it had been to like, move places every couple of months and have to like refigure it all over again. Like oh, like where's the grocery store that I like? And like, can I get the food I like and you know, where's the gym that I like? Where can I work? Like all those kinds of like basic everyday questions become sort of stressful. Like I definitely feel like that like I didn't go to the dentist for 18 months. Mostly because it's like so like hack I have a package I've been trying to mail for three months and I'm just so overwhelmed by the idea of like figuring out the Danish postal system that it's still sitting at my desk. So like basic everyday things become really overwhelming when you're abroad. Yeah, I think like one of my habits changed but then I think I just have so much going on also that like you know I think the great thing about working for yourself is like if you want to take an hour lunch break and read a book like you can do that but like I have been feeling like I don't even have time to eat I don't have time to make myself healthy food like the idea of just like even cooking a piece of salmon or whatever like seems overwhelming and so like I have really allowed my health to like totally slip because I just feel like I don't have time for it but I also don't have those like sort of habit triggers I guess that I used to have you know if I was in my environment I was in you know, do Two years ago, for sure. And I think with everything that I have going on, that's like become really acute.

Colleen Schnettler  5:09  
So and you would lump. I mean, that's your physical health. But also you said you don't read books for pleasure. I mean, I think that's what you just said. So that's not that's your whole, not just do it like I do. Okay. Yeah. I mean, have you also, like, what about your, your mental health are you also are you still not having time to do the things you used to love that brought you joy.

Michele Hansen  5:33  
So I differentiate that, and I think this is like I've been, you know, so I'm obviously not an expert in this, I'm just somebody who's going through differentiating between burnout and depression, where, like, I actually feel like my mental health is pretty good. Like I've done I've done a lot of work on my mental health the past couple of years. Um, and, you know, depression is like, when you try to, you know, you try to get the energy to do the things that you liked, and then you don't get any enjoyment out of it, it's like the dopamine just doesn't even fire. Or if it does, it only lasts for a second. So whereas you know, a non depressed person, maybe you can go for a walk, and, and then you or you see a friend, and it kind of brightens you for the rest of the day, and at least helps you get through it. You know, when I've gone through depression, it's like, that enjoyment you get from that, like, you get like 30 seconds of enjoyment out of it, and then it's just gone. And you even feel worse than you did before, because you were expecting to make you feel good. And then it didn't, and then it just like spirals. I'm not in that state right now. It's more just like this constant feeling of stress. And like, I don't have enough time for anything. And feeling exhausted by that constant stress. But it's also not anxiety, either. Because an idea I guess I'm not I don't really know how to explain this. But like it's, it's not like worrying. And it's not like a tension, or No, I don't, I don't know how to explain it. But yeah, it's kind of it's gotten me to Google X. It's like, I don't know what this feeling is. And then I kind of, you know, I mentioned it to some friends of ours. And they're like, that's, that's the burnout. We were telling you was going to happen. And I'm like, oh, and then I'm like, so like, what is like the plan to like, get out of this? Like, is there like, what does your schedule look like when you were getting out of burnout? They're like, yeah, that's kind of like, you're trying to, like, make a schedule of it. Like, right. And one of our friends was, like, I Googled, you know, how to be a type B personality when I was...

]]> Tue, 23 Nov 2021 10:56:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2462 Michele's done a lot this year... and is finally feeling burnout. She and Colleen talk it through. Michele's done a lot this year... and is finally feeling burnout. She and Colleen talk it through. startup burnout, burnout, burnout vs depression Yes Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Using Jobs to Be Done to Build a Whiteboard That Does Math: A Conversation with Matt Wensing, Founder of Summit 69 69 Using Jobs to Be Done to Build a Whiteboard That Does Math: A Conversation with Matt Wensing, Founder of Summit full ce1dd6c6-b027-4eb3-b0f6-4ea1a594bbd5 https://share.transistor.fm/s/37820c32 Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you


Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Michele Hansen  0:00  
Hey, welcome back to software social, I am super excited to have a guest with me this week. It is Matt wensing, who is founder of Summit, which is a tool for financial modeling. Previously, he was founder of risk pulse, which was acquired in 2019, which was an enterprise SAS. I'm also the co host of out of beta. Matt, welcome. Thanks, Michelle.

Matt Wensing  0:31  
I'm really excited to be here, too. I'm a listener. And I just love it. So this is fun.

Michele Hansen  0:37  
So I have been wanting to talk to you for a really long time. And there is one tweet that you sent out in particular, that made me really want to talk to you. So in January, you tweeted out some notes you had taken from customer research that you did for Summit. And you were working with what the jobs to be done world calls the forces diagram, which is basically this diagram we use to show the different pushes and pulls and anxieties and habits people have around the tools they use, and why they might be looking for something new, but also why they might stay with what they're doing right now. And I am so curious to hear kind of like how this came about, and how you have been using customer research as you explore summits. So can you kind of like take us back in time to when you first started researching Summit?

Matt Wensing  1:52  
Yeah, absolutely. So it's funny that there's actually an overlap here between even knowing what jobs be done enforces progress is and that initial research. So I attend the business of software conference each year in the States, so there's one in Europe and the States, but every October, in Boston, folks get together, at least pretty COVID and cross fingers soon. And Bob molesta is a regular speaker there as well, who is not sure the godfather of the forces of progress framework in a lot of ways. And I just remember being this is probably Oh, man, time's flying, right. So let's just say five years ago, I wanted to say three and like now, it's not three, it's probably five years ago, I listened to him interview, an audience member, kind of a mock customer interview, live about purchasing a car. And the way that they were able to take a dialogue and really parse it into a framework that you could then take away from that, and then keep doing that with more and more conversation. It just was like, Okay, this is definitely a tool that I need to add to my tool belt like this is, this is amazing. What's interesting is then fast forward into Summit, like by that time in the history of my previous company, I was doing sales, enterprise sales, mostly it wasn't doing a lot of customer research, at least in terms of the early sort of genesis of the product. So I don't know that I got to use it a lot. Back then it was mostly just listening to like we did do enterprise deals where there were custom features involved. But really, I got to use it fresh, you know, when you're second time founder, a lot of times you're like, Oh, I'm gonna do this the right way, this time around and actually use more tools and framework things I've learned. And forces progress is one of those. So I wanted to build this tool to do financial modeling. But that is such an ambiguous target that I knew I needed to figure out the value proposition. What does that really mean? What do people want? So funny enough, I gave a talk at business a software as a lightning talk in 2019. And I kind of use that as a launching point. I didn't frame it as, hey, I'm selling a product. I didn't even have a product. I had a little prototype, basically. But I use that talk to share. Really, the problem, socialize the problem space, if you will talk about, hey, this is this is a challenge, isn't it? Like this is a pain. Here's a little tool I made to kind of deal with that pain. And I really tried to draw some business lessons out of it. But really, at that same time, I started to have conversations with potential customers and prospects. And as they talked to me, I started cataloger file their feedback into these different kind of buckets, right, kind of the tool that I had learned previously and yeah, I just kind of did that every you know a few months would kind of refresh my understanding of what they were saying and built up this. This list organized list of feedback which I guess I'll put a bow on it and say it really think helped me understand the product strategy, like what did the product strategy need to be, for me to go into this space that was otherwise very nebulous? Like, how do I have opinion? Like what should my opinions be about the tool and what it needs to do? Right?

Michele Hansen  5:19  
Mm hmm. It's really it's really interesting that you use basically that talk as sort of a, I guess, sort of, in a way, sort of what Patrick McKenzie would call a friend catcher, to attract people to you to talk about the problem. But then because you had that experience with the forces of progress and with seeing Bob Maestas speak who, by the way, his his book, demand side sales actually has real customer interviews in it that are all broken down by the forces. And it's like, it's so good, like it should be on everybody's shelf. And then, but you you were able to process that. And I think that's so important, because sometimes there can can feel like there's this gap between for people who are new to research of how do I go from talking to people to actually designing value? And how do I figure out okay, I've talked to these people, I know what these problems are, I know what I'm interested in. But then what is the product? And it sounds like you were able to bridge that? So I'm curious if you can kind of dive into when you went from this point of understanding the problem space socializing the problem space, you kind of had a prototype, but like, how did the prototype sort of snowball with that? And how did you figure out where it was valuable?

Matt Wensing  6:48  
Yeah, so to put a timeline on this, this was, what you're describing now is essentially the journey from late 20, October 2019, through probably April, May of this year, so you know, almost almost two years, essentially. And during that time, I've released multiple versions of the products, really knowing that this was not going to be it. Now I'm a developer, a full stack developer who can build full, I can build applications top to bottom, not as strong as they used to be on the front end, but like it works. And what I was essentially trying to do was understand, okay, so there are few risks of the business. And funnily enough, Patrick McKenzie was one of the first people I pinged about this idea, because was his work at stripe Atlas and stripe. And just in general, I knew that he would have interesting opinion. And his thoughts were okay, financial modeling is interesting. But it sounds like it could be transactional, like, somebody has a need, they do it. And then they're gone. And I knew I wanted to build a SAS. And so that was like, Okay, that's a great point. Because a lot of times, the use cases that would come up when I talked ...

]]> Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


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- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

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Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Michele Hansen  0:00  
Hey, welcome back to software social, I am super excited to have a guest with me this week. It is Matt wensing, who is founder of Summit, which is a tool for financial modeling. Previously, he was founder of risk pulse, which was acquired in 2019, which was an enterprise SAS. I'm also the co host of out of beta. Matt, welcome. Thanks, Michelle.

Matt Wensing  0:31  
I'm really excited to be here, too. I'm a listener. And I just love it. So this is fun.

Michele Hansen  0:37  
So I have been wanting to talk to you for a really long time. And there is one tweet that you sent out in particular, that made me really want to talk to you. So in January, you tweeted out some notes you had taken from customer research that you did for Summit. And you were working with what the jobs to be done world calls the forces diagram, which is basically this diagram we use to show the different pushes and pulls and anxieties and habits people have around the tools they use, and why they might be looking for something new, but also why they might stay with what they're doing right now. And I am so curious to hear kind of like how this came about, and how you have been using customer research as you explore summits. So can you kind of like take us back in time to when you first started researching Summit?

Matt Wensing  1:52  
Yeah, absolutely. So it's funny that there's actually an overlap here between even knowing what jobs be done enforces progress is and that initial research. So I attend the business of software conference each year in the States, so there's one in Europe and the States, but every October, in Boston, folks get together, at least pretty COVID and cross fingers soon. And Bob molesta is a regular speaker there as well, who is not sure the godfather of the forces of progress framework in a lot of ways. And I just remember being this is probably Oh, man, time's flying, right. So let's just say five years ago, I wanted to say three and like now, it's not three, it's probably five years ago, I listened to him interview, an audience member, kind of a mock customer interview, live about purchasing a car. And the way that they were able to take a dialogue and really parse it into a framework that you could then take away from that, and then keep doing that with more and more conversation. It just was like, Okay, this is definitely a tool that I need to add to my tool belt like this is, this is amazing. What's interesting is then fast forward into Summit, like by that time in the history of my previous company, I was doing sales, enterprise sales, mostly it wasn't doing a lot of customer research, at least in terms of the early sort of genesis of the product. So I don't know that I got to use it a lot. Back then it was mostly just listening to like we did do enterprise deals where there were custom features involved. But really, I got to use it fresh, you know, when you're second time founder, a lot of times you're like, Oh, I'm gonna do this the right way, this time around and actually use more tools and framework things I've learned. And forces progress is one of those. So I wanted to build this tool to do financial modeling. But that is such an ambiguous target that I knew I needed to figure out the value proposition. What does that really mean? What do people want? So funny enough, I gave a talk at business a software as a lightning talk in 2019. And I kind of use that as a launching point. I didn't frame it as, hey, I'm selling a product. I didn't even have a product. I had a little prototype, basically. But I use that talk to share. Really, the problem, socialize the problem space, if you will talk about, hey, this is this is a challenge, isn't it? Like this is a pain. Here's a little tool I made to kind of deal with that pain. And I really tried to draw some business lessons out of it. But really, at that same time, I started to have conversations with potential customers and prospects. And as they talked to me, I started cataloger file their feedback into these different kind of buckets, right, kind of the tool that I had learned previously and yeah, I just kind of did that every you know a few months would kind of refresh my understanding of what they were saying and built up this. This list organized list of feedback which I guess I'll put a bow on it and say it really think helped me understand the product strategy, like what did the product strategy need to be, for me to go into this space that was otherwise very nebulous? Like, how do I have opinion? Like what should my opinions be about the tool and what it needs to do? Right?

Michele Hansen  5:19  
Mm hmm. It's really it's really interesting that you use basically that talk as sort of a, I guess, sort of, in a way, sort of what Patrick McKenzie would call a friend catcher, to attract people to you to talk about the problem. But then because you had that experience with the forces of progress and with seeing Bob Maestas speak who, by the way, his his book, demand side sales actually has real customer interviews in it that are all broken down by the forces. And it's like, it's so good, like it should be on everybody's shelf. And then, but you you were able to process that. And I think that's so important, because sometimes there can can feel like there's this gap between for people who are new to research of how do I go from talking to people to actually designing value? And how do I figure out okay, I've talked to these people, I know what these problems are, I know what I'm interested in. But then what is the product? And it sounds like you were able to bridge that? So I'm curious if you can kind of dive into when you went from this point of understanding the problem space socializing the problem space, you kind of had a prototype, but like, how did the prototype sort of snowball with that? And how did you figure out where it was valuable?

Matt Wensing  6:48  
Yeah, so to put a timeline on this, this was, what you're describing now is essentially the journey from late 20, October 2019, through probably April, May of this year, so you know, almost almost two years, essentially. And during that time, I've released multiple versions of the products, really knowing that this was not going to be it. Now I'm a developer, a full stack developer who can build full, I can build applications top to bottom, not as strong as they used to be on the front end, but like it works. And what I was essentially trying to do was understand, okay, so there are few risks of the business. And funnily enough, Patrick McKenzie was one of the first people I pinged about this idea, because was his work at stripe Atlas and stripe. And just in general, I knew that he would have interesting opinion. And his thoughts were okay, financial modeling is interesting. But it sounds like it could be transactional, like, somebody has a need, they do it. And then they're gone. And I knew I wanted to build a SAS. And so that was like, Okay, that's a great point. Because a lot of times, the use cases that would come up when I talked ...

]]> Tue, 16 Nov 2021 10:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen, Matt Wensing Michele Hansen, Matt Wensing 2397 Michele chats with Matt Wensing, founder of Summit (and exited founder of RiskPulse). Michele chats with Matt Wensing, founder of Summit (and exited founder of RiskPulse). SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Founder Summit Takeaways 70 70 Founder Summit Takeaways full fe9bb8c4-18b4-49bf-b3f4-d9049f6413a5 https://share.transistor.fm/s/2a011f89 Follow the speakers we mentioned!
David Sherry: https://twitter.com/_brandswell
Itamar Marani: https://twitter.com/itamarmarani

Colleen Schnettler  0:00  
Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you


Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com


AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT 

Michele Hansen  0:35  
Hey, Colleen.

Colleen Schnettler  0:37  
Good morning, Michelle.

Michele Hansen  0:39  
It's so nice to see your face again, after seeing it in person. Last off at founder Summit.

Colleen Schnettler  0:45  
I know that was such a wonderful trip. And just amazing that we got to spend that time together.

Michele Hansen  0:51  
I keep thinking about how awesome it was like, I feel like they've set the bar really, really high for conferences in general as but especially post COVID.

Colleen Schnettler  1:04  
Yeah, I also think I will be impressed if they can replicate that experience next year, because everyone I know now wants to go. And I think part of what made that conference so special was that there were it was capped at 150 people. And I'm sure they're gonna get a flood of applicants to go next year. So I don't know what they're going to do how they're going to handle that.

Michele Hansen  1:28  
Yeah, actually, so Tyler tweet that he was like, oh, like, what if we did this in other cities? Oh, like to a year? Yeah. And I was like, Oh, that would be really cool. Yeah, good. Maybe we should talk about like, what made it so awesome. And like, kind of what are like, what are takeaways from it?

Colleen Schnettler  1:44  
Oh, yeah, girl, I have so many takeaways, all the takeaways. Okay. What were what? What would you lead with? What made it so special for you? Besides me? Of course. It's too easy.

Michele Hansen  2:01  
You know, so I mean, yeah, this is really hard thing to like, summarize. So I think it was, I mean, it was just so nice being in the same place with other people who are doing the same thing. You know, I think we've talked about how, you know, we initially connected one of the reasons was like, You're the only person I knew in my regular everyday life, who also did this, like weird internet business thing. And there's just like, aren't that many people in this world doing that. So it's just like, so nice to be around other people who are doing this. And you're not only not only do you feel normal, but like, it's such a good environment for like, throwing around ideas. And like, there was at one point when we were talking about, like, multiples for SaaS companies like making a couple $1,000 a month at one point, like on a on the bus to do the hot air balloon ride over to t Wuhan like, and I hope I'm pronouncing that right. I'm practicing so much. And we're like, you know what, we should just like, ask the bus, like this bus full of people would know the answer to this question and have a perspective on this. And like, and so that was really, really awesome. And I feel like there's so many people who introduce themselves. And then and then we like, you know, I'm so and so Oh, and I'm so and so on Twitter, and I'm like, oh my god, like, I've been tweeting with you for the past, you know, like, couple of years, and I finally meeting you in person. And. And so that was really awesome. And I mean, just getting so many ideas going about things. And also, you know, we had talked on our meta episode about how I want to talk more about negotiation, because that's something I do a lot of, and sales, but don't really talk about. And then a speaker was sick on the second day, and Tyler was like, Hey, can anybody give a talk this afternoon? And like, fill the spot and I was like, Yep, alright, I can do negotiation, talk and workshop. And, and, you know, just kind of kind of jumped at it. And it was, it was super fun. And I think I think the big thing I'm really thinking about that, you know, that activity did was like the, the, the, like the wheel where you had to, like rate different areas over your life from like, one to 10 like how they're going. So there was I think it was like occupational fulfillments like one to 10 which is work, right work. Yep. spiritual, emotional, environmental. Physical. Did I already say social? I don't think so. Social. Yeah, there was like five or six different things. Yeah, that's

Colleen Schnettler  4:49  
six. Um,

Michele Hansen  4:52  
and I think we both had really interesting results from that. Like they're very different like ours were like, Oh, yes, opposite one. And yeah, and really thinking about how like, you know, I like I gave like physical health like a one on that, right. And the goal of this activity was, you know, you give each area a score of one to 10. And then you set a goal of getting up to spots in the next 90 days. So not going from one to 10, which is often how I two things, just like totally like, balls to the wall focusing on something. But going, you know, from like, one to three, and so it's like, how can you have a plan to go from one to three or three to five? Or, or what have you in the next 90 days. And I remember you saying, when I was writing the book, you were like, Dude, you're like, moving so fast, like you're gonna run headfirst into a wall. And I did, and I haven't talked about that too much, but kind of like privately, I've talked to some people who definitely had this had a similar feeling after launching things. Yeah. Um, and yeah, just really, really thinking. I mean, like, literally even like today, like I got hiccups. 30 seconds before we got on recording, and I was doing literally everything I could to get them to go away, rather than being like, hey, maybe let's record another day instead, right? Like I make work happen no matter what. Even if it's at the the sacrifice of my physical health. And so I think that's something you know, I really need to focus on and I think, something Natalie from wild bit said on stage was like, you know, if the founder isn't happy, if the founder isn't healthy, then the company can't flourish. And so I think that's, that's, I mean, that's something I really, really need to work on. And it's like, kind of like work related, but it's like, it's not, but it also like it is in every sense of the word. So I think that's kind of been a thing I'm thinking about, but I don't I still don't really know exactly where I go with that.

Colleen Schnettler  7:07  
Like actionable steps. That's what you're still trying to figure out. Because if you want a warning, pretty bad, so

Michele Hansen  7:12  
yeah, it is. Yeah. I mean, I did order atomic habits, which is like one of those books that like I've never read before, never read a tie. No, it's like one of those books. I feel like that. And like Ray Dalio, his book, or like, books that everybody around me read and like, told me about, and I read about, so I felt like I read them. But I didn't, you know, like, I just didn't feel like I needed to, because it just everybody read it. And I'm like, No, I should probably like, sit down and think about like, not doing a whole sca...

]]> Follow the speakers we mentioned!
David Sherry: https://twitter.com/_brandswell
Itamar Marani: https://twitter.com/itamarmarani

Colleen Schnettler  0:00  
Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help


- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you


Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com


AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT 

Michele Hansen  0:35  
Hey, Colleen.

Colleen Schnettler  0:37  
Good morning, Michelle.

Michele Hansen  0:39  
It's so nice to see your face again, after seeing it in person. Last off at founder Summit.

Colleen Schnettler  0:45  
I know that was such a wonderful trip. And just amazing that we got to spend that time together.

Michele Hansen  0:51  
I keep thinking about how awesome it was like, I feel like they've set the bar really, really high for conferences in general as but especially post COVID.

Colleen Schnettler  1:04  
Yeah, I also think I will be impressed if they can replicate that experience next year, because everyone I know now wants to go. And I think part of what made that conference so special was that there were it was capped at 150 people. And I'm sure they're gonna get a flood of applicants to go next year. So I don't know what they're going to do how they're going to handle that.

Michele Hansen  1:28  
Yeah, actually, so Tyler tweet that he was like, oh, like, what if we did this in other cities? Oh, like to a year? Yeah. And I was like, Oh, that would be really cool. Yeah, good. Maybe we should talk about like, what made it so awesome. And like, kind of what are like, what are takeaways from it?

Colleen Schnettler  1:44  
Oh, yeah, girl, I have so many takeaways, all the takeaways. Okay. What were what? What would you lead with? What made it so special for you? Besides me? Of course. It's too easy.

Michele Hansen  2:01  
You know, so I mean, yeah, this is really hard thing to like, summarize. So I think it was, I mean, it was just so nice being in the same place with other people who are doing the same thing. You know, I think we've talked about how, you know, we initially connected one of the reasons was like, You're the only person I knew in my regular everyday life, who also did this, like weird internet business thing. And there's just like, aren't that many people in this world doing that. So it's just like, so nice to be around other people who are doing this. And you're not only not only do you feel normal, but like, it's such a good environment for like, throwing around ideas. And like, there was at one point when we were talking about, like, multiples for SaaS companies like making a couple $1,000 a month at one point, like on a on the bus to do the hot air balloon ride over to t Wuhan like, and I hope I'm pronouncing that right. I'm practicing so much. And we're like, you know what, we should just like, ask the bus, like this bus full of people would know the answer to this question and have a perspective on this. And like, and so that was really, really awesome. And I feel like there's so many people who introduce themselves. And then and then we like, you know, I'm so and so Oh, and I'm so and so on Twitter, and I'm like, oh my god, like, I've been tweeting with you for the past, you know, like, couple of years, and I finally meeting you in person. And. And so that was really awesome. And I mean, just getting so many ideas going about things. And also, you know, we had talked on our meta episode about how I want to talk more about negotiation, because that's something I do a lot of, and sales, but don't really talk about. And then a speaker was sick on the second day, and Tyler was like, Hey, can anybody give a talk this afternoon? And like, fill the spot and I was like, Yep, alright, I can do negotiation, talk and workshop. And, and, you know, just kind of kind of jumped at it. And it was, it was super fun. And I think I think the big thing I'm really thinking about that, you know, that activity did was like the, the, the, like the wheel where you had to, like rate different areas over your life from like, one to 10 like how they're going. So there was I think it was like occupational fulfillments like one to 10 which is work, right work. Yep. spiritual, emotional, environmental. Physical. Did I already say social? I don't think so. Social. Yeah, there was like five or six different things. Yeah, that's

Colleen Schnettler  4:49  
six. Um,

Michele Hansen  4:52  
and I think we both had really interesting results from that. Like they're very different like ours were like, Oh, yes, opposite one. And yeah, and really thinking about how like, you know, I like I gave like physical health like a one on that, right. And the goal of this activity was, you know, you give each area a score of one to 10. And then you set a goal of getting up to spots in the next 90 days. So not going from one to 10, which is often how I two things, just like totally like, balls to the wall focusing on something. But going, you know, from like, one to three, and so it's like, how can you have a plan to go from one to three or three to five? Or, or what have you in the next 90 days. And I remember you saying, when I was writing the book, you were like, Dude, you're like, moving so fast, like you're gonna run headfirst into a wall. And I did, and I haven't talked about that too much, but kind of like privately, I've talked to some people who definitely had this had a similar feeling after launching things. Yeah. Um, and yeah, just really, really thinking. I mean, like, literally even like today, like I got hiccups. 30 seconds before we got on recording, and I was doing literally everything I could to get them to go away, rather than being like, hey, maybe let's record another day instead, right? Like I make work happen no matter what. Even if it's at the the sacrifice of my physical health. And so I think that's something you know, I really need to focus on and I think, something Natalie from wild bit said on stage was like, you know, if the founder isn't happy, if the founder isn't healthy, then the company can't flourish. And so I think that's, that's, I mean, that's something I really, really need to work on. And it's like, kind of like work related, but it's like, it's not, but it also like it is in every sense of the word. So I think that's kind of been a thing I'm thinking about, but I don't I still don't really know exactly where I go with that.

Colleen Schnettler  7:07  
Like actionable steps. That's what you're still trying to figure out. Because if you want a warning, pretty bad, so

Michele Hansen  7:12  
yeah, it is. Yeah. I mean, I did order atomic habits, which is like one of those books that like I've never read before, never read a tie. No, it's like one of those books. I feel like that. And like Ray Dalio, his book, or like, books that everybody around me read and like, told me about, and I read about, so I felt like I read them. But I didn't, you know, like, I just didn't feel like I needed to, because it just everybody read it. And I'm like, No, I should probably like, sit down and think about like, not doing a whole sca...

]]> Tue, 09 Nov 2021 10:29:06 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2527 We share our takeaways from Founder Summit. We share our takeaways from Founder Summit. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler A Conversation with Kevin Sahin, Co-Founder of ScrapingBee 67 67 A Conversation with Kevin Sahin, Co-Founder of ScrapingBee full 3cbec100-b54a-476b-a627-364385caf032 https://share.transistor.fm/s/0401203e Follow Kevin! https://twitter.com/SahinKevin
Check out ScrapingBee: https://www.scrapingbee.com/

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Hey Check It. Does your website performance keep you up at night? The creators behind Hey Check It started it for this very reason—peace of mind about their sites and the sites they manage. Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and suggestion tool focused on SEO, accessibility, uptime, site speed and content. It includes AI-generated SEO, data, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of other tools. If you're managing multiple websites, check their agency plans with public facing dashboards to meet your clients' needs. Start a free trial today at HeyCheckIt.com

Michele Hansen  0:39  
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. We're doing another interview this week. I am so excited to have Kevin Sahin with me. He is co-founder of ScrapingBee. Kevin, welcome to software social.

Kevin Sahin  0:57  
Well, thank you, Michele, I'm excited to be here.

Michele Hansen  1:01  
So this kind of came about because I was on Twitter, as I often am. And I noticed, I think it was actually someone tweeted about MicroConf Europe, which I had been really wanting to go to, but conflicted with a friend's wedding. So we couldn't go. So I was just sort of following and watching everything unfold on Twitter and tweeted about how peer your co founder was, was giving a talk. And he mentioned how scraping DEA offered free API credits to customers who are willing to jump on a 15 minute call with them. And you guys ask them questions like, what else have you tried, and my interest immediately perked up. And really wanted to talk to you about those calls you had and what you learned from them, and what that added for the business. But before we jump into that, perhaps you should say for a moment, just what scraping be. Is and, and whatnot. And?

Kevin Sahin  2:09  
Sure. So um, so basically scraping the is an API for web scraping. When you are extracting data from the web, you often have the two same problems, which are, there are more and more websites that are using JavaScript frameworks like Vue js, react, etc. And so you have to render the page inside a web browser. And this is kind of, it's a pain to manage, especially at scale. Because you have to, you know, there are lots of DevOps skills that you need. You need big servers, you need lots of things. And it's really handy to have, you know, a headless browser accessible with a simple API call. The other thing that you have to do when you scrape the web at scale, is to manage proxies. So you can you probably need proxies for many different reasons. For example, let's say that you are extracting data from ecommerce website. Well, most ecommerce websites are internationalized, meaning that if you access the website from an IP address in Europe, you will have the prices in euro if you access the IP address or the website from an IP address in the US you will have prices in dollars. So you need some kind of proxy management system. The other thing is IP rate limit. Some websites are limiting the number of pages you can access per day from a single IP address if you need to access more pages, you need more IP addresses etc, etc. And so we bundled this inside a single API which is scraping

Michele Hansen  4:04  
so I love how you're solving that because we have felt that pain personally. So I've kind of talked a little bit in the past about how my husband dies first project that was what so the one well, not at first, but the one right before geocoder that basically funded Juco was this mobile app called what's open nearby where you could open it up and see grocery stores convenience stores and coffee shops that were open near you. And how we ran that in the back end was we had a ton of scrapers running of like grocery store, you know Starbucks, whatever like their websites, scraping the hours off of them and we like just all the time there's issues you know, the parsers breaking or you get blocked or actually the the sort of recent side project we did Keren, which allowed people to get an alert when a grocery pick slot opened up on a on a grocery stores website because of COVID and everything that was also powered by scrapers basically and the back end. And so I have I have personally felt the pain of, you know, the impacts when when when, you know, scraping goes wrong or you know it can get frustrating at times.

Kevin Sahin  5:29  
Yeah, that's I mean, there are the, the story behind scraping is that we, we personally experienced some of those frustrations, because p&i like before launching scraping beam, we started our career in two different startups that were heavily relying on web scraping. In the business, I was working on a startup in France, which is kind of a mix between mint.com in the US and plaid.com. So for those who don't know, it's a bank account aggregation software's sublet, that comm is an API that allows third party to access your bank account. And means that comm is a bank account aggregation, personal finance management app. And so at this startup, I was really exposed to all of these issues. And Param, he was working for a real estate startup, a real estate data startup in France. And so there will relying on scraping lots of real estate portals. So we both, you know, experienced lots of these issues regarding how to handle headless browsers, how to handle proxies, how to, you know, handle blocks, etc, etc. So that was something we, we knew a little about,

Michele Hansen  7:16  
I love how you started with a pain that you had. But also as, as you've run the business, you're also actively reaching out to your customers to understand what they were trying to do, what problems they were having, and how they were solving those problems. So I wonder if you can kind of take us back to when you like, how did those emails come about where you were reaching out to people like, like, what what kind of prompted that?

Kevin Sahin  7:47  
Yeah. So that we quickly realized that we really knew when I say that we knew a little about it, it's not an a few million. Because we really knew a little about the different web scraping use cases each time. I mean, from the beginning, when we launched the API we like from day one, I'd say, we realized that some users, we're scraping, have had some use cases that we never imagined. So we quickly realized that we had to get them on the phone and knew more about about it, understand their businesses, what kind of data they they needed, what frequency for what we use case, etc, etc. But the problem that we had is that at the beginning, so we had we had the banner on the dashboard, covering that, if they had any question, they could schedule a call with me. But nobody was scheduling any call. So maybe, maybe the banner was wasn't, I mean, the copy wasn't great, maybe. The CTA wasn't clear, I don't know. But the fact is, nobody was getting any call with me. And we also had an email sequence where we, we had a few links to my county. But it wasn't working. I mean, sometimes we had a trial scheduling a call, but it was not very, not a lot. And and then we we had this idea of offering more 10x more free API calls. Then the trial offered. And then instantly, we started to get a lot of calls. So many that I had to, you know, delete some availability in my week, because I was just doing calls every day all day. And, and it was great because we will learn so much we, I mean, we will learn so many different use cases that we never thought about. For example, I don't know, we, we, we had so many diverse people. So for example, university resea...

]]> Follow Kevin! https://twitter.com/SahinKevin
Check out ScrapingBee: https://www.scrapingbee.com/

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Hey Check It. Does your website performance keep you up at night? The creators behind Hey Check It started it for this very reason—peace of mind about their sites and the sites they manage. Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and suggestion tool focused on SEO, accessibility, uptime, site speed and content. It includes AI-generated SEO, data, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of other tools. If you're managing multiple websites, check their agency plans with public facing dashboards to meet your clients' needs. Start a free trial today at HeyCheckIt.com

Michele Hansen  0:39  
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. We're doing another interview this week. I am so excited to have Kevin Sahin with me. He is co-founder of ScrapingBee. Kevin, welcome to software social.

Kevin Sahin  0:57  
Well, thank you, Michele, I'm excited to be here.

Michele Hansen  1:01  
So this kind of came about because I was on Twitter, as I often am. And I noticed, I think it was actually someone tweeted about MicroConf Europe, which I had been really wanting to go to, but conflicted with a friend's wedding. So we couldn't go. So I was just sort of following and watching everything unfold on Twitter and tweeted about how peer your co founder was, was giving a talk. And he mentioned how scraping DEA offered free API credits to customers who are willing to jump on a 15 minute call with them. And you guys ask them questions like, what else have you tried, and my interest immediately perked up. And really wanted to talk to you about those calls you had and what you learned from them, and what that added for the business. But before we jump into that, perhaps you should say for a moment, just what scraping be. Is and, and whatnot. And?

Kevin Sahin  2:09  
Sure. So um, so basically scraping the is an API for web scraping. When you are extracting data from the web, you often have the two same problems, which are, there are more and more websites that are using JavaScript frameworks like Vue js, react, etc. And so you have to render the page inside a web browser. And this is kind of, it's a pain to manage, especially at scale. Because you have to, you know, there are lots of DevOps skills that you need. You need big servers, you need lots of things. And it's really handy to have, you know, a headless browser accessible with a simple API call. The other thing that you have to do when you scrape the web at scale, is to manage proxies. So you can you probably need proxies for many different reasons. For example, let's say that you are extracting data from ecommerce website. Well, most ecommerce websites are internationalized, meaning that if you access the website from an IP address in Europe, you will have the prices in euro if you access the IP address or the website from an IP address in the US you will have prices in dollars. So you need some kind of proxy management system. The other thing is IP rate limit. Some websites are limiting the number of pages you can access per day from a single IP address if you need to access more pages, you need more IP addresses etc, etc. And so we bundled this inside a single API which is scraping

Michele Hansen  4:04  
so I love how you're solving that because we have felt that pain personally. So I've kind of talked a little bit in the past about how my husband dies first project that was what so the one well, not at first, but the one right before geocoder that basically funded Juco was this mobile app called what's open nearby where you could open it up and see grocery stores convenience stores and coffee shops that were open near you. And how we ran that in the back end was we had a ton of scrapers running of like grocery store, you know Starbucks, whatever like their websites, scraping the hours off of them and we like just all the time there's issues you know, the parsers breaking or you get blocked or actually the the sort of recent side project we did Keren, which allowed people to get an alert when a grocery pick slot opened up on a on a grocery stores website because of COVID and everything that was also powered by scrapers basically and the back end. And so I have I have personally felt the pain of, you know, the impacts when when when, you know, scraping goes wrong or you know it can get frustrating at times.

Kevin Sahin  5:29  
Yeah, that's I mean, there are the, the story behind scraping is that we, we personally experienced some of those frustrations, because p&i like before launching scraping beam, we started our career in two different startups that were heavily relying on web scraping. In the business, I was working on a startup in France, which is kind of a mix between mint.com in the US and plaid.com. So for those who don't know, it's a bank account aggregation software's sublet, that comm is an API that allows third party to access your bank account. And means that comm is a bank account aggregation, personal finance management app. And so at this startup, I was really exposed to all of these issues. And Param, he was working for a real estate startup, a real estate data startup in France. And so there will relying on scraping lots of real estate portals. So we both, you know, experienced lots of these issues regarding how to handle headless browsers, how to handle proxies, how to, you know, handle blocks, etc, etc. So that was something we, we knew a little about,

Michele Hansen  7:16  
I love how you started with a pain that you had. But also as, as you've run the business, you're also actively reaching out to your customers to understand what they were trying to do, what problems they were having, and how they were solving those problems. So I wonder if you can kind of take us back to when you like, how did those emails come about where you were reaching out to people like, like, what what kind of prompted that?

Kevin Sahin  7:47  
Yeah. So that we quickly realized that we really knew when I say that we knew a little about it, it's not an a few million. Because we really knew a little about the different web scraping use cases each time. I mean, from the beginning, when we launched the API we like from day one, I'd say, we realized that some users, we're scraping, have had some use cases that we never imagined. So we quickly realized that we had to get them on the phone and knew more about about it, understand their businesses, what kind of data they they needed, what frequency for what we use case, etc, etc. But the problem that we had is that at the beginning, so we had we had the banner on the dashboard, covering that, if they had any question, they could schedule a call with me. But nobody was scheduling any call. So maybe, maybe the banner was wasn't, I mean, the copy wasn't great, maybe. The CTA wasn't clear, I don't know. But the fact is, nobody was getting any call with me. And we also had an email sequence where we, we had a few links to my county. But it wasn't working. I mean, sometimes we had a trial scheduling a call, but it was not very, not a lot. And and then we we had this idea of offering more 10x more free API calls. Then the trial offered. And then instantly, we started to get a lot of calls. So many that I had to, you know, delete some availability in my week, because I was just doing calls every day all day. And, and it was great because we will learn so much we, I mean, we will learn so many different use cases that we never thought about. For example, I don't know, we, we, we had so many diverse people. So for example, university resea...

]]> Tue, 02 Nov 2021 09:02:00 +0100 Michele Hansen, Kevin Sahin Michele Hansen, Kevin Sahin 3501 Michele chats with Kevin Sahin, co-founder of ScrapingBee. Michele chats with Kevin Sahin, co-founder of ScrapingBee. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen A Conversation with Rosie Sherry 68 68 A Conversation with Rosie Sherry full 23621b91-0617-459f-882c-cd267b5eb8de https://share.transistor.fm/s/74f0c332 Follow Rosie! https://twitter.com/rosiesherry
Check out Rosieland: https://rosie.land/

Michele Hansen  0:01 
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Hey, welcome back to software social. I am so excited this week to have with us the woman the myth, the legend, Rosie Sherry. Hello. So excited to have you. So you were I founder of Ministry of Testing, lead community at Indie Hackers, which is probably how many people listening know you, currently leading community for Orbit. Also have your own thing going on Rosieland, which is a community about community. So excited to talk to you.

Rosie Sherry  1:30  
Thank you, thank you. It's good to be here.

Michele Hansen  1:33  
So I want I want to start out with something something I noticed when I think about your background is how you've kind of gone between being a founder yourself, and intentionally working for other people also having sort of other things going on. And, you know, on the show in the past, we've kind of talked a little bit about how sometimes there's this perception that there's this sort of like staircase of an entrepreneurs career where you start out working for other people, and then maybe you have an info product, and then maybe you do consulting, and then you do an info product, and then you have a SAS and then I don't know, and it's like this sort of like staircase. And there's this sort of like implied increase in virtue throughout all of that. And then if you're taking backwards steps, that's seen as like, literally like a step backwards. And it's like this ladder rather than being this kind of what I'm more see in people's actual careers, which is kind of moving between different things as their interests lead them and as their life leads them. I feel like I see that in your career. And I'm kind of curious how you think about these shifts you've made between working for yourself and working for other people? And like, like, kind of all of that.

Rosie Sherry  2:45  
Yeah, it's kind of like steps going up and down, right? Or going up and down or left, I guess, an elevator? Yeah, I mean, I have like, no idea what I'm doing. But I guess like, I kind of go with the flow. When I when I stepped back from Ministry of testing, I had been doing that for 10 years. And I thought, like, as I was stepping back, I thought I'd never work for someone else's, like my plan was to take some time off and just like, take it easy for it. And just, I don't know, see what I wanted to do. And I knew I kind of wanted to, like focus in on community, but I wasn't sure how. And then, like, the opportunity with indie hackers came up. And I was like, Oh, you know, this could be fun. This could be interesting. I think I could learn a lot from how courtland has built community there. It's similar to ministry testing, in some ways, but yet, it's, it's really different. So I kind of just jumped on that, like, you know, earlier, earlier than I had planned. I was I was a contractor there for the whole time. And I was there for two years as a contractor. And basically, we just kept renewing the contract, like every three to six months. So it wasn't like it was the plan, stay there. And apparently surprised that I stayed there for two years, I thought I wouldn't last I thought I wouldn't be able to kind of work for someone else after like doing my own thing for 10 years. That was interesting. There's a lot of benefit, especially, I think, perhaps more these days where everything just seems I just feel like there's so much opportunity out there. And there's a lot of things that I didn't like about running a business. I didn't necessarily want to manage people, I didn't want to do the accounts, I didn't want to worry about money or worry about, you know, the future of, of the business. So yeah, I mean, this, you know, loads of things about running a business that I think people try to glorify, they try to hide, they try to not talk about it. But you know, it can be stressful. And I think my realization after running the Ministry of testing, is actually I don't, I don't want to run a company and employ people. I don't want to be responsible for someone's wages at the point of life that I that I am in at the moment. might might change over time, but right now Yeah, I'd rather like I guess, do something more for me something more, you know, focusing on, like my interest in things that that I need. And yeah, and I guess like contracting, bringing home a paycheck, that's great. But you know, for me, it's been, you know, it was great, I saved up a bunch of money, I didn't actually spend any of the money that I made in the hackers. So that was like a nice, consistent income for me to like, you know, get our family more and more of a safety net. Now, my Uber and I never, ever considered working for a startup people have it. Yeah, it's, it's new. For me, it's different from me. But this negative, there's a lot of pros as well. So I try to kind of be mindful of all of that. And, you know, there's days, I just want to pack it all in and say, I can't be bothered, I should just go back to being independent. But there are other days where I'm just like, no, this is actually really good. I'm enjoying what I'm doing this, you know, there's a great team that I'm working with. And again, you know, I get paid well, I don't have to worry about money, I don't have to invoice people the money every month in my bank account. And I'm like, Oh, this is nice. This is, you know, this nice not just to show up and do the work.

Michele Hansen  6:11  
You mentioned how it was stressful, being responsible for people's paychecks. And I totally relate to that. I think it's one of the reasons why we haven't really, you know, formally hired here, right? Like, I have a VA, but you strike me as someone who you know, and this comes through so much in your work for indie hackers in your work on community who like deeply cares about other people, and supporting them and encouraging them and helping them reach their goals, and you know, and be that person they want to be. And I wonder if that almost made it harder to be running a company and responsible for people's income when you felt so responsible for those outcomes and really invested in them as people?

Rosie Sherry  6:57  
Yeah, I mean, it's actually interesting, because I still own in ministry, testing, or co owner, when you're founded, you kind of like, I guess, the foundation of everything that comes later, to a certain extent. So like, the fact that I worked when I wanted, the fact that I had five kids, the fact that I just like took time off when I needed to the fact that I defined, you know, decided my own hours, all of those things, ended up becoming how things were done administrator testing, and it's become more apparent, I guess, as the team, I think about eight or nine people at the moment, at first, you know, I was only one with kids. And, you know, I was very much family friendly person, I would support, you know, everything about me is like, we need to live our own lives as well. We need to have flexibility, you know, work shouldn't stop us having having a family and ...

]]> Follow Rosie! https://twitter.com/rosiesherry
Check out Rosieland: https://rosie.land/

Michele Hansen  0:01 
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Hey, welcome back to software social. I am so excited this week to have with us the woman the myth, the legend, Rosie Sherry. Hello. So excited to have you. So you were I founder of Ministry of Testing, lead community at Indie Hackers, which is probably how many people listening know you, currently leading community for Orbit. Also have your own thing going on Rosieland, which is a community about community. So excited to talk to you.

Rosie Sherry  1:30  
Thank you, thank you. It's good to be here.

Michele Hansen  1:33  
So I want I want to start out with something something I noticed when I think about your background is how you've kind of gone between being a founder yourself, and intentionally working for other people also having sort of other things going on. And, you know, on the show in the past, we've kind of talked a little bit about how sometimes there's this perception that there's this sort of like staircase of an entrepreneurs career where you start out working for other people, and then maybe you have an info product, and then maybe you do consulting, and then you do an info product, and then you have a SAS and then I don't know, and it's like this sort of like staircase. And there's this sort of like implied increase in virtue throughout all of that. And then if you're taking backwards steps, that's seen as like, literally like a step backwards. And it's like this ladder rather than being this kind of what I'm more see in people's actual careers, which is kind of moving between different things as their interests lead them and as their life leads them. I feel like I see that in your career. And I'm kind of curious how you think about these shifts you've made between working for yourself and working for other people? And like, like, kind of all of that.

Rosie Sherry  2:45  
Yeah, it's kind of like steps going up and down, right? Or going up and down or left, I guess, an elevator? Yeah, I mean, I have like, no idea what I'm doing. But I guess like, I kind of go with the flow. When I when I stepped back from Ministry of testing, I had been doing that for 10 years. And I thought, like, as I was stepping back, I thought I'd never work for someone else's, like my plan was to take some time off and just like, take it easy for it. And just, I don't know, see what I wanted to do. And I knew I kind of wanted to, like focus in on community, but I wasn't sure how. And then, like, the opportunity with indie hackers came up. And I was like, Oh, you know, this could be fun. This could be interesting. I think I could learn a lot from how courtland has built community there. It's similar to ministry testing, in some ways, but yet, it's, it's really different. So I kind of just jumped on that, like, you know, earlier, earlier than I had planned. I was I was a contractor there for the whole time. And I was there for two years as a contractor. And basically, we just kept renewing the contract, like every three to six months. So it wasn't like it was the plan, stay there. And apparently surprised that I stayed there for two years, I thought I wouldn't last I thought I wouldn't be able to kind of work for someone else after like doing my own thing for 10 years. That was interesting. There's a lot of benefit, especially, I think, perhaps more these days where everything just seems I just feel like there's so much opportunity out there. And there's a lot of things that I didn't like about running a business. I didn't necessarily want to manage people, I didn't want to do the accounts, I didn't want to worry about money or worry about, you know, the future of, of the business. So yeah, I mean, this, you know, loads of things about running a business that I think people try to glorify, they try to hide, they try to not talk about it. But you know, it can be stressful. And I think my realization after running the Ministry of testing, is actually I don't, I don't want to run a company and employ people. I don't want to be responsible for someone's wages at the point of life that I that I am in at the moment. might might change over time, but right now Yeah, I'd rather like I guess, do something more for me something more, you know, focusing on, like my interest in things that that I need. And yeah, and I guess like contracting, bringing home a paycheck, that's great. But you know, for me, it's been, you know, it was great, I saved up a bunch of money, I didn't actually spend any of the money that I made in the hackers. So that was like a nice, consistent income for me to like, you know, get our family more and more of a safety net. Now, my Uber and I never, ever considered working for a startup people have it. Yeah, it's, it's new. For me, it's different from me. But this negative, there's a lot of pros as well. So I try to kind of be mindful of all of that. And, you know, there's days, I just want to pack it all in and say, I can't be bothered, I should just go back to being independent. But there are other days where I'm just like, no, this is actually really good. I'm enjoying what I'm doing this, you know, there's a great team that I'm working with. And again, you know, I get paid well, I don't have to worry about money, I don't have to invoice people the money every month in my bank account. And I'm like, Oh, this is nice. This is, you know, this nice not just to show up and do the work.

Michele Hansen  6:11  
You mentioned how it was stressful, being responsible for people's paychecks. And I totally relate to that. I think it's one of the reasons why we haven't really, you know, formally hired here, right? Like, I have a VA, but you strike me as someone who you know, and this comes through so much in your work for indie hackers in your work on community who like deeply cares about other people, and supporting them and encouraging them and helping them reach their goals, and you know, and be that person they want to be. And I wonder if that almost made it harder to be running a company and responsible for people's income when you felt so responsible for those outcomes and really invested in them as people?

Rosie Sherry  6:57  
Yeah, I mean, it's actually interesting, because I still own in ministry, testing, or co owner, when you're founded, you kind of like, I guess, the foundation of everything that comes later, to a certain extent. So like, the fact that I worked when I wanted, the fact that I had five kids, the fact that I just like took time off when I needed to the fact that I defined, you know, decided my own hours, all of those things, ended up becoming how things were done administrator testing, and it's become more apparent, I guess, as the team, I think about eight or nine people at the moment, at first, you know, I was only one with kids. And, you know, I was very much family friendly person, I would support, you know, everything about me is like, we need to live our own lives as well. We need to have flexibility, you know, work shouldn't stop us having having a family and ...

]]> Tue, 26 Oct 2021 09:03:00 +0200 Michele Hansen, Rosie Sherry Michele Hansen, Rosie Sherry 2352 Michele chats with Rosie Sherry, founder of Ministry of Testing, mama bear of indie hackers (used to be upper case, now lower case), creator of Rosieland, and community lead at Orbit. Michele chats with Rosie Sherry, founder of Ministry of Testing, mama bear of indie hackers (used to be upper case, now lower case), creator of Rosieland, and community lead at Orbit. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Getting Meta 66 66 Getting Meta full cb8ea656-9ef3-479a-ada0-1b17f0e0b2bc https://share.transistor.fm/s/2be5efd9 MIchele: This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Colleen: Hello, Michelle. 

MIchele: I feel like it's been awhile.

Colleen: It has been a while. It's been a few weeks. I 

MIchele: Yeah. But like, so we haven't really liked formally talked or not formally, but, you know, but we have been like, I feel like we have been talking constantly about this podcast for the past couple of weeks at the same time.

Colleen: I would agree. There's been a lot of discussion about that. 

MIchele: And we've been meaning to do like kind of a catch-up episode for a while too. And so it kind of felt this kind of feels like a good time to sort of pause and have a little bit of a meta episode where we sort of, I guess, talk about where we've come from and why w why do we do this in the first place and, and where are we going?

Colleen: Okay. I like it. 

MIchele: So let's let's rewind. So if, if this were a fancy produced podcast, this is when you would insert harp noises. So just imagine that there's a harp playing in your head. So let's rewind back to July of 20, 20, Colleen. What were you doing in July of 2020?

Colleen: Oh, geez. Well, let's see July. So we were a couple months into the pandemic. I believe I was working a full-time job and I had a desire, a strong desire to launch a product. 

MIchele: Were you consulting full time for one client or I thought you were consulting.

Colleen: Maybe I was still, yeah. Good thing. We have

MIchele: I feel like you can 

Colleen: to. 

MIchele: I feel like I remember sometime I think it was right around when COVID was heading. And I feel like I remember standing on your, like your like porch or your steps like talking through whether you should take a job and like, yeah. Like that was like right around that time.

But, and I think you didn't. 

Colleen: I think 

MIchele: And I, 

Colleen: The first time they offered it to me, I think I said, 

MIchele: And then I think you were consulting, 

Colleen: I believe you're correct. I believe I was consulting for one client. So it was kind of that cadence of a more permanent job. But at that time I was not a quote full-time employee. I had not launched a 

MIchele: I think you're like compromise with them. Was that like you would work for them. Four days a week as a consultant, and then you would get one day a week to work on like your stuff. But actually it had been like that for a while. Like, I feel like you would have this sort of, this is my phrasing here, this like Friday fun day where you got to just like do your own projects for a while.

Colleen: Yeah. that sounds right. 

MIchele: Yeah. Yeah. But that was very much, I mean, now looking back on it, I guess that was like, The end of what I term your wandering through the forest period. Wondering. 

you know, you know, if this was, if this is frozen too, for all the parents out there, this is when your power ballad of lost in the woods is playing.

Colleen: Lost in the woods. Yes. would be my lost in the woods. Power ballad period. Indeed. Agree. 

MIchele: It was a pivotal moment. And then I think. I don't know if it was like August. Oh, so of 2020 that you were kind of on, I mean, I guess we could listen to our own show and figure this out. Again, this worry, fancy produced podcast with harp noises. We would know that and there would be a clip of it right now.

But I think it was like in August that you were like F like, I need to just. Decide, unlike one of these things. Cause like we had been meeting for a while. So like just context is like we were, we were meeting up every week for coffee for a long time. At a, so we used to live in the same place. We now live on opposite sides of the world, but we used to live in the same place, like a neighborhood over you were the only person I had ever like met in my daily life who was also doing this weird internet.

Business thing who was like in that world. And also like our kids went to the same school and we lived like two minutes from each other and it was like just perfect. Yeah. So, and then we started meeting up at a coffee shop called Northside social, which is actually how we ended up getting the name for this show.

And the show basically was, you know, I moved to Denmark to Denmark. then for us this year, you moved to California. So now we're really all over the place to keep us talking to each other, to keep those conversations happening. for a long time, we had been meeting up and you were playing around with like all of these different ideas and, and playing as like you were, you were taking it very seriously.

Like it wasn't play. There was some con like there's like a content analytics idea. I feel like, like, there's a one point. It was like, you were thinking about some sort of like, Competitor to H refs that was like for SEO consultants to like measure the value of their work. There was the, the, there was the stay at home moms doing babysitting and daycare for other the childcare thing.

And then, but like, so August of 2020, I feel like there was kind of this moment in early. Like I just gotta like pick something and go for it. And it's going to be this file upload thing, which annoys me.

Colleen: that's, that's pretty accurate. And I remember. Why was it in that stage of back to lost in the woods? It felt like every time we met, you would draw me that pain frequency graph. And, and I just, I was like, I don't know, like I just don't know where any of these ideas fall on the pain frequency graph.

So I'm going to take what feels like the smallest lift, which is a JavaScript widget, right. Something I feel like I can make in a constrained period of time. And I'm just going to do. I'm going to do everything wrong, but I'm just going to do it.

MIchele: And then you did it and then so 

Colleen: yeah, But we launched the podcast before I had a product. So part of the McColl was like, oh man, now I'm telling the world about this. So I better freaking do it like a podcast with never having launched a product would not be. 

MIchele: And so then last fall to goes through. You building it and balancing that with consulting and with parenting too, was all of the like, cause I guess your kids were in school, like part like the whole co COVID

school, like 

Colleen: some COVID school, situation. 

MIchele: And then, I think it was, was it December that simple file upload.

I remember you gave me that you gave me like a walkthrough of it in like September or October of last year, but then it was available in the Heroku marketplace and alpha in like October or so November. And then it went into beta in November, December, right? 

Colleen: Betas when you can start charging. Oh no. You're right. Cause You have to do out. No, 

MIchele: had to get like a. 

Colleen: So you have to do alpha and then you have to do beta. 

MIchele: it's like one thing where you had to get like 10 people, then...

]]> MIchele: This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Colleen: Hello, Michelle. 

MIchele: I feel like it's been awhile.

Colleen: It has been a while. It's been a few weeks. I 

MIchele: Yeah. But like, so we haven't really liked formally talked or not formally, but, you know, but we have been like, I feel like we have been talking constantly about this podcast for the past couple of weeks at the same time.

Colleen: I would agree. There's been a lot of discussion about that. 

MIchele: And we've been meaning to do like kind of a catch-up episode for a while too. And so it kind of felt this kind of feels like a good time to sort of pause and have a little bit of a meta episode where we sort of, I guess, talk about where we've come from and why w why do we do this in the first place and, and where are we going?

Colleen: Okay. I like it. 

MIchele: So let's let's rewind. So if, if this were a fancy produced podcast, this is when you would insert harp noises. So just imagine that there's a harp playing in your head. So let's rewind back to July of 20, 20, Colleen. What were you doing in July of 2020?

Colleen: Oh, geez. Well, let's see July. So we were a couple months into the pandemic. I believe I was working a full-time job and I had a desire, a strong desire to launch a product. 

MIchele: Were you consulting full time for one client or I thought you were consulting.

Colleen: Maybe I was still, yeah. Good thing. We have

MIchele: I feel like you can 

Colleen: to. 

MIchele: I feel like I remember sometime I think it was right around when COVID was heading. And I feel like I remember standing on your, like your like porch or your steps like talking through whether you should take a job and like, yeah. Like that was like right around that time.

But, and I think you didn't. 

Colleen: I think 

MIchele: And I, 

Colleen: The first time they offered it to me, I think I said, 

MIchele: And then I think you were consulting, 

Colleen: I believe you're correct. I believe I was consulting for one client. So it was kind of that cadence of a more permanent job. But at that time I was not a quote full-time employee. I had not launched a 

MIchele: I think you're like compromise with them. Was that like you would work for them. Four days a week as a consultant, and then you would get one day a week to work on like your stuff. But actually it had been like that for a while. Like, I feel like you would have this sort of, this is my phrasing here, this like Friday fun day where you got to just like do your own projects for a while.

Colleen: Yeah. that sounds right. 

MIchele: Yeah. Yeah. But that was very much, I mean, now looking back on it, I guess that was like, The end of what I term your wandering through the forest period. Wondering. 

you know, you know, if this was, if this is frozen too, for all the parents out there, this is when your power ballad of lost in the woods is playing.

Colleen: Lost in the woods. Yes. would be my lost in the woods. Power ballad period. Indeed. Agree. 

MIchele: It was a pivotal moment. And then I think. I don't know if it was like August. Oh, so of 2020 that you were kind of on, I mean, I guess we could listen to our own show and figure this out. Again, this worry, fancy produced podcast with harp noises. We would know that and there would be a clip of it right now.

But I think it was like in August that you were like F like, I need to just. Decide, unlike one of these things. Cause like we had been meeting for a while. So like just context is like we were, we were meeting up every week for coffee for a long time. At a, so we used to live in the same place. We now live on opposite sides of the world, but we used to live in the same place, like a neighborhood over you were the only person I had ever like met in my daily life who was also doing this weird internet.

Business thing who was like in that world. And also like our kids went to the same school and we lived like two minutes from each other and it was like just perfect. Yeah. So, and then we started meeting up at a coffee shop called Northside social, which is actually how we ended up getting the name for this show.

And the show basically was, you know, I moved to Denmark to Denmark. then for us this year, you moved to California. So now we're really all over the place to keep us talking to each other, to keep those conversations happening. for a long time, we had been meeting up and you were playing around with like all of these different ideas and, and playing as like you were, you were taking it very seriously.

Like it wasn't play. There was some con like there's like a content analytics idea. I feel like, like, there's a one point. It was like, you were thinking about some sort of like, Competitor to H refs that was like for SEO consultants to like measure the value of their work. There was the, the, there was the stay at home moms doing babysitting and daycare for other the childcare thing.

And then, but like, so August of 2020, I feel like there was kind of this moment in early. Like I just gotta like pick something and go for it. And it's going to be this file upload thing, which annoys me.

Colleen: that's, that's pretty accurate. And I remember. Why was it in that stage of back to lost in the woods? It felt like every time we met, you would draw me that pain frequency graph. And, and I just, I was like, I don't know, like I just don't know where any of these ideas fall on the pain frequency graph.

So I'm going to take what feels like the smallest lift, which is a JavaScript widget, right. Something I feel like I can make in a constrained period of time. And I'm just going to do. I'm going to do everything wrong, but I'm just going to do it.

MIchele: And then you did it and then so 

Colleen: yeah, But we launched the podcast before I had a product. So part of the McColl was like, oh man, now I'm telling the world about this. So I better freaking do it like a podcast with never having launched a product would not be. 

MIchele: And so then last fall to goes through. You building it and balancing that with consulting and with parenting too, was all of the like, cause I guess your kids were in school, like part like the whole co COVID

school, like 

Colleen: some COVID school, situation. 

MIchele: And then, I think it was, was it December that simple file upload.

I remember you gave me that you gave me like a walkthrough of it in like September or October of last year, but then it was available in the Heroku marketplace and alpha in like October or so November. And then it went into beta in November, December, right? 

Colleen: Betas when you can start charging. Oh no. You're right. Cause You have to do out. No, 

MIchele: had to get like a. 

Colleen: So you have to do alpha and then you have to do beta. 

MIchele: it's like one thing where you had to get like 10 people, then...

]]> Tue, 19 Oct 2021 17:38:41 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2711 In this episode Colleen and Michele look back at their 14 months on podcasting to see how far they've come, and look forward to see where they want to go. In this episode Colleen and Michele look back at their 14 months on podcasting to see how far they've come, and look forward to see where they want to go. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Deploy Empathy Audiobook Podcast Preview 65 65 Deploy Empathy Audiobook Podcast Preview full 78b2b0c8-a7f2-49f9-ad48-41564ab5087f https://share.transistor.fm/s/25f947e3 Go to deployempathy.com to buy the audiobook private podcast, physical book, or ebook!

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Michele Hansen  0:01  
Hey, everyone, Michele here. Colleen is at a conference this week. So doing something a little bit different this week and wanted to give you a preview of the audio book podcast for Deploy Empathy. So as I've kind of mentioned on previous episodes, I am releasing the audio book every week as a podcast as I record it. Part of the idea of this was kind of to sort of sort of do like I did with the newsletter with the book and sort of you know, do it and you know, sort of chapters at a at a time. And so I didn't have to spend you know, two weeks recording which is just, I didn't didn't really have two weeks, you know, of full workdays to sort of lock myself in a closet and record it. So this is allowing me to record it as I have time. Which is kind of a challenge as I say this right now, my desk is literally surrounded and pillows from the last time I recorded which was like two weeks ago. So So yeah, it's been it's been kind of an interesting challenge. But I have been enjoying it. And it's also allowed me to get feedback on it as well. This is my first time recording an audio book. So if anything sounds weird, or whatnot, like people can, you know, give me feedback, and I get a chance to re record as I go. So, so yeah, so it started in I want to say the end of August. And currently, it's on Part Six, which is the how to talk so people will talk section of the book, which is maybe my favorite section of the book. I admit I was a little bit nervous going into recording these chapters because the tone of voice is so important. And I wanted to make sure that I got that right. And I think I got a little bit in my head about that. But I think it I think it came out Okay, so I think I think I'm happy with it. But so yeah, so So this week you're gonna get a chance to preview the the the private podcast, there are still spots in it if you want to join so it's limited to 500 people and right now I think there's about a little under 200 so there's quite a few spots left if you wanted to, to join along, but also you know what, once the full thing is recorded, which I don't really I guess it'll be sort of end of the year early next year. You know, it'll also be available as a regular audio book not quite sure what I'm going to do with the podcast I'm actually kind of curious to hear if people want that to stick around or whatnot. I don't I wonder if it makes it more digestible to get through but maybe that value is on the you know that it's coming out every week, right now. So yeah, hope you enjoy and Colleen and I will be next back next week.

Part Six, how to talk So people will talk. This is the most important part of this book. The tactics you'll learn build toward one goal, creating a bubble of suspended judgment, where the person feels comfortable being open. Throughout this part, you'll also find ways to practice these skills before using them in customer conversations. We'll go into each of these in depth one, use a gentle tone of voice to validate them. Three, leave pauses for them to fill for, mirror and summarize their words. Five, don't interrupt, six, use simple wording. Seven asked for clarification, even when you don't need it. Eight. Don't explain anything. Nine. Don't negate them in any way. And let them be the expert. Love it. Use their words and pronunciation 12 asked about time and money already spent. Lastly, you'll learn how to pull it all together by picturing yourself as a rubber duck. Trust me, it'll take you some time and some practice. But I think you'll notice a difference even in your personal life. By using these phrases and tactics. I want you to make me a promise, you'll only use what I'm about to teach you for good, you won't be manipulative, and you won't use what people say against them. deploying the tactics in this chapter can make someone open up to you much more than they otherwise would. Someone's confidence is a sacred gift. And it should be handled gently, respectfully and ethically. That respect should continue after the interview to I expect you to carry through the empathy you build for the customer well beyond the interview, and use empathy as part of your decision making process. Before we get into the tactics and phrases, it's important to understand just how much these tactics can transform a conversation. I got my start doing proper customer interviews in the personal finance industry. In America, people are generally very private about their personal finance decisions and situations. It's an extremely delicate topic. And because of this, I had to learn interviewing in a rigorous way. I didn't realize how much the techniques outlined in this chapter had woven themselves into my everyday conversation habits until I was at the grocery store a few years ago, I was in line with a dozen items and notice that the cashier hugged the woman in front of me, and they interacted with one another in a heartfelt way. I must have just finished an interview because I found myself asking the cashier about it. me with a smile. Oh, I noticed you hugged her. Is that your sister? cashier? No, she's just a longtime customer. I've worked here for a long time. me. Oh, you have? cashier? Yeah, almost 20 years. I'm due to retire soon. Companies changed a lot in that time. me. Oh hasn't. cashier proceeds to tell me about how the store chain was bought out by another chain 10 years ago, how they changed the retirement plan how she's worried about having enough income from Social Security, her 401k her old pension and retirement and how she's making extra 401k contributions. This was all in the span of less than five minutes. As she rang up the dozen or so items I had in my basket. It's important to note that this cashier wasn't just a particularly chatty person. This was my local grocery store. And I had been there a few times per week. For several years at this point. I'd been in this woman's line many many times. And we had never had more than a simple polite conversation about the weather, or how busy the store was that day. I went home and told a former co worker about it and joked Do I have Tell me about your retirement planning written on my forehead. I was amazed that a stranger had told me that kind of information in such a short amount of time. My former co worker pointed out that it was a sign of just how much interview skills had worked themselves into my everyday conversation style. And how I become so much more effective at digging into the heart of an issue without too much effort. For someone who's only negative mark in their first professional performance review was that I was abrasive and was diagnosed with a DD it'll 11 years old, it came as quite a shock to realize I now had an active listening conversation style without even realizing it. That experience taught me how we need to be careful with these skills, and to know when to hit the brakes. It's a person's decision what to reveal. But I always keep that story in mind and remind myself to back off or shift topics. When it seem...

]]> Go to deployempathy.com to buy the audiobook private podcast, physical book, or ebook!

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Michele Hansen  0:01  
Hey, everyone, Michele here. Colleen is at a conference this week. So doing something a little bit different this week and wanted to give you a preview of the audio book podcast for Deploy Empathy. So as I've kind of mentioned on previous episodes, I am releasing the audio book every week as a podcast as I record it. Part of the idea of this was kind of to sort of sort of do like I did with the newsletter with the book and sort of you know, do it and you know, sort of chapters at a at a time. And so I didn't have to spend you know, two weeks recording which is just, I didn't didn't really have two weeks, you know, of full workdays to sort of lock myself in a closet and record it. So this is allowing me to record it as I have time. Which is kind of a challenge as I say this right now, my desk is literally surrounded and pillows from the last time I recorded which was like two weeks ago. So So yeah, it's been it's been kind of an interesting challenge. But I have been enjoying it. And it's also allowed me to get feedback on it as well. This is my first time recording an audio book. So if anything sounds weird, or whatnot, like people can, you know, give me feedback, and I get a chance to re record as I go. So, so yeah, so it started in I want to say the end of August. And currently, it's on Part Six, which is the how to talk so people will talk section of the book, which is maybe my favorite section of the book. I admit I was a little bit nervous going into recording these chapters because the tone of voice is so important. And I wanted to make sure that I got that right. And I think I got a little bit in my head about that. But I think it I think it came out Okay, so I think I think I'm happy with it. But so yeah, so So this week you're gonna get a chance to preview the the the private podcast, there are still spots in it if you want to join so it's limited to 500 people and right now I think there's about a little under 200 so there's quite a few spots left if you wanted to, to join along, but also you know what, once the full thing is recorded, which I don't really I guess it'll be sort of end of the year early next year. You know, it'll also be available as a regular audio book not quite sure what I'm going to do with the podcast I'm actually kind of curious to hear if people want that to stick around or whatnot. I don't I wonder if it makes it more digestible to get through but maybe that value is on the you know that it's coming out every week, right now. So yeah, hope you enjoy and Colleen and I will be next back next week.

Part Six, how to talk So people will talk. This is the most important part of this book. The tactics you'll learn build toward one goal, creating a bubble of suspended judgment, where the person feels comfortable being open. Throughout this part, you'll also find ways to practice these skills before using them in customer conversations. We'll go into each of these in depth one, use a gentle tone of voice to validate them. Three, leave pauses for them to fill for, mirror and summarize their words. Five, don't interrupt, six, use simple wording. Seven asked for clarification, even when you don't need it. Eight. Don't explain anything. Nine. Don't negate them in any way. And let them be the expert. Love it. Use their words and pronunciation 12 asked about time and money already spent. Lastly, you'll learn how to pull it all together by picturing yourself as a rubber duck. Trust me, it'll take you some time and some practice. But I think you'll notice a difference even in your personal life. By using these phrases and tactics. I want you to make me a promise, you'll only use what I'm about to teach you for good, you won't be manipulative, and you won't use what people say against them. deploying the tactics in this chapter can make someone open up to you much more than they otherwise would. Someone's confidence is a sacred gift. And it should be handled gently, respectfully and ethically. That respect should continue after the interview to I expect you to carry through the empathy you build for the customer well beyond the interview, and use empathy as part of your decision making process. Before we get into the tactics and phrases, it's important to understand just how much these tactics can transform a conversation. I got my start doing proper customer interviews in the personal finance industry. In America, people are generally very private about their personal finance decisions and situations. It's an extremely delicate topic. And because of this, I had to learn interviewing in a rigorous way. I didn't realize how much the techniques outlined in this chapter had woven themselves into my everyday conversation habits until I was at the grocery store a few years ago, I was in line with a dozen items and notice that the cashier hugged the woman in front of me, and they interacted with one another in a heartfelt way. I must have just finished an interview because I found myself asking the cashier about it. me with a smile. Oh, I noticed you hugged her. Is that your sister? cashier? No, she's just a longtime customer. I've worked here for a long time. me. Oh, you have? cashier? Yeah, almost 20 years. I'm due to retire soon. Companies changed a lot in that time. me. Oh hasn't. cashier proceeds to tell me about how the store chain was bought out by another chain 10 years ago, how they changed the retirement plan how she's worried about having enough income from Social Security, her 401k her old pension and retirement and how she's making extra 401k contributions. This was all in the span of less than five minutes. As she rang up the dozen or so items I had in my basket. It's important to note that this cashier wasn't just a particularly chatty person. This was my local grocery store. And I had been there a few times per week. For several years at this point. I'd been in this woman's line many many times. And we had never had more than a simple polite conversation about the weather, or how busy the store was that day. I went home and told a former co worker about it and joked Do I have Tell me about your retirement planning written on my forehead. I was amazed that a stranger had told me that kind of information in such a short amount of time. My former co worker pointed out that it was a sign of just how much interview skills had worked themselves into my everyday conversation style. And how I become so much more effective at digging into the heart of an issue without too much effort. For someone who's only negative mark in their first professional performance review was that I was abrasive and was diagnosed with a DD it'll 11 years old, it came as quite a shock to realize I now had an active listening conversation style without even realizing it. That experience taught me how we need to be careful with these skills, and to know when to hit the brakes. It's a person's decision what to reveal. But I always keep that story in mind and remind myself to back off or shift topics. When it seem...

]]> Tue, 12 Oct 2021 12:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1904 This week's episode is a preview of the Deploy Empathy audiobook private podcast. This week's episode is a preview of the Deploy Empathy audiobook private podcast. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen To Freemium, or Not to Freemium 64 64 To Freemium, or Not to Freemium full dedaea3b-d543-4857-81e2-92a117c01fbb https://share.transistor.fm/s/e36b1a65 Michele Hansen  0:01
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Colleen: 

So Michelle, last time we spoke, you were rapidly approaching selling 500 books. So we'd love an update on the status of the book.

Michele: Drum roll, please. As of today 567 copies, 

Colleen: Wow. That's amazing. Congratulations.

Michele: I'm, I'm pretty pretty excited about. 

Colleen: Yeah. That's spectacular.

Michele: So I was thinking about this and, and talking about it with some friends because on my trip to the us last week and you know, talking to people about it and I realized like, why, why was the number 500? So big to me and I think it's because when I first started writing this, like, you know, the newsletter and everything else, I was like, okay, only the people on the newsletter are the only ones who are ever going to buy this book.

Right? Like, you know, worst case scenario, I'm writing this just to have a central place to send people when they ask me about doing customer research. And then as I sort of I don't know, admitted to myself that it was becoming a book then I was like, So only the people on this list are going to buy it.

Maybe like a quarter of them are like half, you know, that's like, it's going to sell like 5,000 copies, maybe like 200, like lifetime, like ever. But it's really only going to be people who have heard me talk about it, like, you know, who are basically doing this because I have implored them to do so, you know?

Cause I've been like, it's been really helpful for geocoding, so you should do it and they're taking my word for it. But 500 or 567, you know, that's like way more than, you know, the 30 odd newsletter readers that I interviewed as part of the writing process. That's more people than subscribed to the newsletter.

That's I guess about as many people listened to this podcast, as of right now on a, on a weekly basis, that's this way more than I thought. And that's only in the first two months And I mean, I feel like I keep quoting him so much that we really need to have him on, or just get a clip of him saying it.

But as our friend, Mike Buck B says that is stranger money. That is people who don't know me, who don't care about me, who, you know, aren't just buying the book to be nice. Because they're my friend, right? Like that's people who recommended it to other people who were bought it because somebody recommended it to them.

And that kind of feels like massive validation for like the concept of customer research to me, when, you know, I feel like there's all these stereotypes about, you know, developers not wanting to talk to people. And there's so many old school ways of doing business where people think that the only ideas come from, you know, sort of inside the building or that they're above talking to customers.

Right? Like it feels like repudiation of all of that for the concept. 

Colleen: You've definitely reached outside your one degree of separation network 

Michele: Yeah. 

Colleen: in terms of the reach the book has had.

Michele: Yeah. That's super. I don't know. I guess when you set your expectations very low, you're always going to be pleasantly surprised. So I feel like, even when I had five people subscribing to the newsletter even I was like, wow. Even my friends are tolerating me on, like, that was even a surprise.

So, so yeah. Yeah. 

Colleen: It's amazing. I don't know if you've had a chance yet to listen to the podcast with Nadia, but she talked about, she was on last week. I had her on while you were out. She did three months of customer research. So for three months. So before she built her alpha. I interviewed customers for three months. I was like, yes, that's amazing.

And she talked a lot about how that was. So she's been incredibly successful. She has 500,000 users and she talked about how that was the critical, like the critical piece to her building. Her business was taking that time out. And of course this is before your book existed, but like taking that time out to do that customer research, and she used this term called synthesis, which I loved.

So she would do. was like, she had read your book, even though your book didn't exist, she would videotape her customer interviews and then she would go back and she would said, and then I would go back and I would, I would, I think she said she would synthesize them, but basically what she meant is she would watch the whole interview over and really try to absorb and hear what they were saying.

It was really, it was fascinating. But to your point, the importance of customer research is becoming more and more evident. To all of us, especially developers who just want to build buildings and not.

Michele: I mean, I guess I want to clarify that, like, I, you know, I didn't invent any of this stuff. You know, it's been around 

for 

yeah, 

Colleen: feel like, sorry to interrupt. I feel like the key is there's a hole, there's a hole in the market because we don't know how to do 

Michele: yeah. 

Colleen: mean that, that's the thing we know this is a thing we know this is important, but most of the. I don't know, literally what do you do? And I think your book meets such a need, cause it's like, literally, if you don't know what to say, say these words here are the words you can say when you get confused or lost or scared,

Michele: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like, there's a, there's an amazing, wonderful body of. Work on, on customer research and yes. So I always, I, I hear what you're saying. I always want to be very clear, like I did not invent this concept. And I've referenced a lot of that in the book and I'm more so I guess I'm, I'm re phrasing it and sort of, I'm reminded of a quote from GOTA that I'm going to garble, which is basically that all brilliant thoughts have already been thoughts and. Merely have to rethink them in our, our own experience and our own words. And I guess that's sort of what I have tried to do is to, to Yeah, Bring my own kind of voice and perspective to it for, for that, for that level of, of here is if you, if you truly do not know what to say, then here's what you can say. I mean rides we've went what Sean did too. Didn't he say that he did like hundreds of hours of research

before 

Colleen: lot. I 

Michele: he launched his stuff to, 

Colleen: my head, but it was quite a lot of hours.

Michele: I wonder how you feel about hearing that, because you have said a couple of times in the past, how you wished you could just. I don't know if you wished it, but like you, you felt like you needed to like go in a cave for like three months and then just research. And I have been like, no, like do it alongside, which are already doing, like, you don't have to go quote unquote in the cave, you know, to to, to figure this out and see, but it sounds like you were her story left a really strong impression on you.

And I'm curious how that changes your. 

Colleen: so her story left a really strong impres...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:01
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

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Colleen: 

So Michelle, last time we spoke, you were rapidly approaching selling 500 books. So we'd love an update on the status of the book.

Michele: Drum roll, please. As of today 567 copies, 

Colleen: Wow. That's amazing. Congratulations.

Michele: I'm, I'm pretty pretty excited about. 

Colleen: Yeah. That's spectacular.

Michele: So I was thinking about this and, and talking about it with some friends because on my trip to the us last week and you know, talking to people about it and I realized like, why, why was the number 500? So big to me and I think it's because when I first started writing this, like, you know, the newsletter and everything else, I was like, okay, only the people on the newsletter are the only ones who are ever going to buy this book.

Right? Like, you know, worst case scenario, I'm writing this just to have a central place to send people when they ask me about doing customer research. And then as I sort of I don't know, admitted to myself that it was becoming a book then I was like, So only the people on this list are going to buy it.

Maybe like a quarter of them are like half, you know, that's like, it's going to sell like 5,000 copies, maybe like 200, like lifetime, like ever. But it's really only going to be people who have heard me talk about it, like, you know, who are basically doing this because I have implored them to do so, you know?

Cause I've been like, it's been really helpful for geocoding, so you should do it and they're taking my word for it. But 500 or 567, you know, that's like way more than, you know, the 30 odd newsletter readers that I interviewed as part of the writing process. That's more people than subscribed to the newsletter.

That's I guess about as many people listened to this podcast, as of right now on a, on a weekly basis, that's this way more than I thought. And that's only in the first two months And I mean, I feel like I keep quoting him so much that we really need to have him on, or just get a clip of him saying it.

But as our friend, Mike Buck B says that is stranger money. That is people who don't know me, who don't care about me, who, you know, aren't just buying the book to be nice. Because they're my friend, right? Like that's people who recommended it to other people who were bought it because somebody recommended it to them.

And that kind of feels like massive validation for like the concept of customer research to me, when, you know, I feel like there's all these stereotypes about, you know, developers not wanting to talk to people. And there's so many old school ways of doing business where people think that the only ideas come from, you know, sort of inside the building or that they're above talking to customers.

Right? Like it feels like repudiation of all of that for the concept. 

Colleen: You've definitely reached outside your one degree of separation network 

Michele: Yeah. 

Colleen: in terms of the reach the book has had.

Michele: Yeah. That's super. I don't know. I guess when you set your expectations very low, you're always going to be pleasantly surprised. So I feel like, even when I had five people subscribing to the newsletter even I was like, wow. Even my friends are tolerating me on, like, that was even a surprise.

So, so yeah. Yeah. 

Colleen: It's amazing. I don't know if you've had a chance yet to listen to the podcast with Nadia, but she talked about, she was on last week. I had her on while you were out. She did three months of customer research. So for three months. So before she built her alpha. I interviewed customers for three months. I was like, yes, that's amazing.

And she talked a lot about how that was. So she's been incredibly successful. She has 500,000 users and she talked about how that was the critical, like the critical piece to her building. Her business was taking that time out. And of course this is before your book existed, but like taking that time out to do that customer research, and she used this term called synthesis, which I loved.

So she would do. was like, she had read your book, even though your book didn't exist, she would videotape her customer interviews and then she would go back and she would said, and then I would go back and I would, I would, I think she said she would synthesize them, but basically what she meant is she would watch the whole interview over and really try to absorb and hear what they were saying.

It was really, it was fascinating. But to your point, the importance of customer research is becoming more and more evident. To all of us, especially developers who just want to build buildings and not.

Michele: I mean, I guess I want to clarify that, like, I, you know, I didn't invent any of this stuff. You know, it's been around 

for 

yeah, 

Colleen: feel like, sorry to interrupt. I feel like the key is there's a hole, there's a hole in the market because we don't know how to do 

Michele: yeah. 

Colleen: mean that, that's the thing we know this is a thing we know this is important, but most of the. I don't know, literally what do you do? And I think your book meets such a need, cause it's like, literally, if you don't know what to say, say these words here are the words you can say when you get confused or lost or scared,

Michele: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like, there's a, there's an amazing, wonderful body of. Work on, on customer research and yes. So I always, I, I hear what you're saying. I always want to be very clear, like I did not invent this concept. And I've referenced a lot of that in the book and I'm more so I guess I'm, I'm re phrasing it and sort of, I'm reminded of a quote from GOTA that I'm going to garble, which is basically that all brilliant thoughts have already been thoughts and. Merely have to rethink them in our, our own experience and our own words. And I guess that's sort of what I have tried to do is to, to Yeah, Bring my own kind of voice and perspective to it for, for that, for that level of, of here is if you, if you truly do not know what to say, then here's what you can say. I mean rides we've went what Sean did too. Didn't he say that he did like hundreds of hours of research

before 

Colleen: lot. I 

Michele: he launched his stuff to, 

Colleen: my head, but it was quite a lot of hours.

Michele: I wonder how you feel about hearing that, because you have said a couple of times in the past, how you wished you could just. I don't know if you wished it, but like you, you felt like you needed to like go in a cave for like three months and then just research. And I have been like, no, like do it alongside, which are already doing, like, you don't have to go quote unquote in the cave, you know, to to, to figure this out and see, but it sounds like you were her story left a really strong impression on you.

And I'm curious how that changes your. 

Colleen: so her story left a really strong impres...

]]> Tue, 05 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1779 Michele's book breaks 500 copies sold and Colleen considers whether to add a free plan. Michele's book breaks 500 copies sold and Colleen considers whether to add a free plan. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Taking on Amazon...and winning? 63 63 Taking on Amazon...and winning? full fd09c5c0-ba2b-42b3-9f9b-03fd057f7f03 https://share.transistor.fm/s/5125ace7
Michele Hansen  0:01
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

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- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

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Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Colleen: Welcome back software, social listeners, Colleen here, and I am super excited to bring you a special guest today. Today on the podcast we have Nadia the founder of story graph. Story graph is a site that helps you track your reading and choose your neck next book based on your mood, mood, and your favorite topics and themes.
Nadia, thank you so much for coming on.
Nadia: Thank you so much for inviting me. 
Colleen: I would love to start with a little bit about your background. You are an economist by trade, right?
Nadia: Right. So my degree was philosophy politics and economics, and I focused, I focused mainly on the economic side, I was moving to the math mathematical side of things and I was heading into investment banking, post university. 
Colleen: Wow.
Nadia: Yeah. And I was just lucky with the people I met in my final year of uni. I'd done a summer internship in the banking world and I was just very, not very enthused with it.
It just felt, I felt like there was more to life and I'm in my final year of uni, I met so many young entrepreneurs and people running social enterprises and charities, and I just felt like I've always felt entrepreneurial. And I just thought, you know, I want to go into that feels more like. And I'd also started a creative writing online publication called the story graph. 
Colleen: Oh, I didn't know that.
Nadia: yeah. That had given me the first taste of running my own thing. And so I, yeah, and I was lucky to meet people who were in the tech space as well. And that's when I started to be familiar with, oh, maybe I should learn how to code. And yeah, essentially, I, I got, I want a couple of places on coding courses and that's how I got into software post universe. 
Colleen: So, did you go work at all in investment banking or did you go right from college or university to learning how to code? 
Nadia: So I had a graduate offer for bank and I turned that down and then I wasn't sure what I was going to do. And I'd applied for this entrepreneurship scheme and it got to the final round. And I remembered that when I was filling out the form, there was a checkbox that said we may be piloting a new coding course for women.
Do you want to be considered for this? And I was just like, why not check the box? I wasn't really interested. And I thought, why not? You know? And so when I remember I got the call from the, one of the people who run the program and they said, we've got good news and bad news. And I was like, I immediately knew I didn't get into the main program.
So I said, well, what's the, what's the bad news. And I was like, yeah, you didn't quite make it. And I was like, Okay.
what's the good news. And she said we're going to give you, we're going to do this program. It's called code first girls, and we're going to give you a place. And I remember at the time I was just so disappointed and not getting a place in this entrepreneurship program because it was meant to be my ticket out of not going into the bank.
That I just thought, what do I want with this coding course? And then I remember thinking about it and realizing that I was also. Like the next day, I was offered a summer internship at my college at Oxford where I was. And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to come to work at Oxford for a bit after uni, I'm going to travel to London twice a week.
I was from London, but I was at, I was in Oxford and and I'm going to learn to code and then figure it out from there. And it's so, I'm so glad I did that. And then while I was. Twice a week coding course, I saw a tweet saying we're doing a competition for someone to win a free place at makers academy, which was a new software boot camp in London at the time.
And I had a taste of this coding thing. I saw how powerful. It was. And so I said, I'm going to apply for this scholarship free place. And I got the scholarship. And so then I did a three month bootcamp at the beginning of 2014, immediately after. Well, at the end of 2013, rather immediately after the two months that I spent at Oxford traveling twice a week to do the part-time cutting costs.
So that's how I 
Colleen: Wow.
Nadia: into software from being like all along since I was like 12, 13, I was going down the investment banking. 
Colleen: Wow. Did you get pushback from yourself or from your family to have invested so much time at Oxford? No less. And then be like, I'm going to go do this coding bootcamp.
Nadia: Yes. So it was actually quite funny. I come from a poor background and I remember that, you know, the reason why I was going down the investment banking route since I was young is because when I was at school, you know, it was always this typical doctor, lawyer and your banker or something like that.
And I remember we had this day where you could go with your parents or a parent to work with them. And I remember trying to go with my dad who's an accountant or like, um, my mom worked for herself at home and, and my dad was like, no, you should find someone who acts in a bank or something like that.
And so I went with my best friend at the time her dad worked at. And, you know, when you're 14, everything looks so amazing. And like I, so I remember going and seeing the trading floor and seeing all these, like men and women dressed up in their suits and carrying their blackberries. And I remember at the time thinking I want to be like them.
And it wasn't until I was doing the internship when I was in between my second and third year of uni that I was just disillusioned. And I was like, oh, like, this is not very fulfilling. This is not like, I feel like there's more I can do and give. And, and so that's when I got disillusioned when I was like about 18 and I was thinking.
This isn't really exciting. I'm not sure of the value that I'm bringing while doing this work. And I also just thought there must be more cause I was working so hard at, it was quite academic. I was working so hard at my studies and I thought, is this it? And so when this whole entrepreneurship software thing came up, it was very, yeah, it was so much more appealing and. 
Colleen: Wow. So after you did the bootcamp, did you then get a job, your rails background, right? 
Nadia: Ruby Rails So back then the, the main focus was Ruby rails and it was funny because I went to that was this jobs, fair tech jobs fair. And it was during during the course, the point of the courses you do the 12 weeks, and then they help you get a job. And I just thought I didn't plan to get a job.
I just said, let me go to this job fair and see what's out there. Even when I started the bootcamp in my mind, I still thought, oh, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I didn't know what that meant. I was just like, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. But you know, since I'll know about coding, I'll know how to talk to developers.
Like I had just, you know, stereotypes in my head of, you know, developers, don't talk to people, and I can never be a good developer anyway, cause I'm starting, you know, 19. But 
Colleen: at like 32 
Nadia: like 2...

]]>
Michele Hansen  0:01
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Colleen: Welcome back software, social listeners, Colleen here, and I am super excited to bring you a special guest today. Today on the podcast we have Nadia the founder of story graph. Story graph is a site that helps you track your reading and choose your neck next book based on your mood, mood, and your favorite topics and themes.
Nadia, thank you so much for coming on.
Nadia: Thank you so much for inviting me. 
Colleen: I would love to start with a little bit about your background. You are an economist by trade, right?
Nadia: Right. So my degree was philosophy politics and economics, and I focused, I focused mainly on the economic side, I was moving to the math mathematical side of things and I was heading into investment banking, post university. 
Colleen: Wow.
Nadia: Yeah. And I was just lucky with the people I met in my final year of uni. I'd done a summer internship in the banking world and I was just very, not very enthused with it.
It just felt, I felt like there was more to life and I'm in my final year of uni, I met so many young entrepreneurs and people running social enterprises and charities, and I just felt like I've always felt entrepreneurial. And I just thought, you know, I want to go into that feels more like. And I'd also started a creative writing online publication called the story graph. 
Colleen: Oh, I didn't know that.
Nadia: yeah. That had given me the first taste of running my own thing. And so I, yeah, and I was lucky to meet people who were in the tech space as well. And that's when I started to be familiar with, oh, maybe I should learn how to code. And yeah, essentially, I, I got, I want a couple of places on coding courses and that's how I got into software post universe. 
Colleen: So, did you go work at all in investment banking or did you go right from college or university to learning how to code? 
Nadia: So I had a graduate offer for bank and I turned that down and then I wasn't sure what I was going to do. And I'd applied for this entrepreneurship scheme and it got to the final round. And I remembered that when I was filling out the form, there was a checkbox that said we may be piloting a new coding course for women.
Do you want to be considered for this? And I was just like, why not check the box? I wasn't really interested. And I thought, why not? You know? And so when I remember I got the call from the, one of the people who run the program and they said, we've got good news and bad news. And I was like, I immediately knew I didn't get into the main program.
So I said, well, what's the, what's the bad news. And I was like, yeah, you didn't quite make it. And I was like, Okay.
what's the good news. And she said we're going to give you, we're going to do this program. It's called code first girls, and we're going to give you a place. And I remember at the time I was just so disappointed and not getting a place in this entrepreneurship program because it was meant to be my ticket out of not going into the bank.
That I just thought, what do I want with this coding course? And then I remember thinking about it and realizing that I was also. Like the next day, I was offered a summer internship at my college at Oxford where I was. And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to come to work at Oxford for a bit after uni, I'm going to travel to London twice a week.
I was from London, but I was at, I was in Oxford and and I'm going to learn to code and then figure it out from there. And it's so, I'm so glad I did that. And then while I was. Twice a week coding course, I saw a tweet saying we're doing a competition for someone to win a free place at makers academy, which was a new software boot camp in London at the time.
And I had a taste of this coding thing. I saw how powerful. It was. And so I said, I'm going to apply for this scholarship free place. And I got the scholarship. And so then I did a three month bootcamp at the beginning of 2014, immediately after. Well, at the end of 2013, rather immediately after the two months that I spent at Oxford traveling twice a week to do the part-time cutting costs.
So that's how I 
Colleen: Wow.
Nadia: into software from being like all along since I was like 12, 13, I was going down the investment banking. 
Colleen: Wow. Did you get pushback from yourself or from your family to have invested so much time at Oxford? No less. And then be like, I'm going to go do this coding bootcamp.
Nadia: Yes. So it was actually quite funny. I come from a poor background and I remember that, you know, the reason why I was going down the investment banking route since I was young is because when I was at school, you know, it was always this typical doctor, lawyer and your banker or something like that.
And I remember we had this day where you could go with your parents or a parent to work with them. And I remember trying to go with my dad who's an accountant or like, um, my mom worked for herself at home and, and my dad was like, no, you should find someone who acts in a bank or something like that.
And so I went with my best friend at the time her dad worked at. And, you know, when you're 14, everything looks so amazing. And like I, so I remember going and seeing the trading floor and seeing all these, like men and women dressed up in their suits and carrying their blackberries. And I remember at the time thinking I want to be like them.
And it wasn't until I was doing the internship when I was in between my second and third year of uni that I was just disillusioned. And I was like, oh, like, this is not very fulfilling. This is not like, I feel like there's more I can do and give. And, and so that's when I got disillusioned when I was like about 18 and I was thinking.
This isn't really exciting. I'm not sure of the value that I'm bringing while doing this work. And I also just thought there must be more cause I was working so hard at, it was quite academic. I was working so hard at my studies and I thought, is this it? And so when this whole entrepreneurship software thing came up, it was very, yeah, it was so much more appealing and. 
Colleen: Wow. So after you did the bootcamp, did you then get a job, your rails background, right? 
Nadia: Ruby Rails So back then the, the main focus was Ruby rails and it was funny because I went to that was this jobs, fair tech jobs fair. And it was during during the course, the point of the courses you do the 12 weeks, and then they help you get a job. And I just thought I didn't plan to get a job.
I just said, let me go to this job fair and see what's out there. Even when I started the bootcamp in my mind, I still thought, oh, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I didn't know what that meant. I was just like, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. But you know, since I'll know about coding, I'll know how to talk to developers.
Like I had just, you know, stereotypes in my head of, you know, developers, don't talk to people, and I can never be a good developer anyway, cause I'm starting, you know, 19. But 
Colleen: at like 32 
Nadia: like 2...

]]> Tue, 28 Sep 2021 06:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 3322 Colleen interviews Nadia Odunayo, the founder of The StoryGraph. Now with over 500,000 users, The StoryGraph is an app that helps you track your reading and choose your next book based on your mood and your favorite topics and themes. Colleen interviews Nadia Odunayo, the founder of The StoryGraph. Now with over 500,000 users, The StoryGraph is an app that helps you track your reading and choose your next book based on your mood and your favorite topics and themes. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Colleen Schnettler Software Social University? 62 62 Software Social University? full 9dcdff0c-7d14-454a-b175-ce960baf5b34 https://share.transistor.fm/s/8da8bc0a
Michele Hansen  0:01 
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Colleen Schnettler  0:51  
So Michelle, how are things going with your book tour?

Michele Hansen  0:54  
So the book tour itself is going well, I did indie hackers build your SAS searching for SAS one end product? I just recorded another one. yesterday. No, no, no, today? No, that was I feel like I'm doing a lot with it. Because that's what says because I had I love it. Let's see yesterday, no Tuesday, I did a session with founder summit. And then I also had a call with someone about being on their podcast yesterday. That'll be in November, and then I've scheduled another one for October. And then I did another group session today. And then yeah, actually, it was when I got off of that and Mateus was like, you know what you just did? And I was like, What? Like, he was like, you just did consulting? And I was like, No, I did. Like cuz it was Yeah. No, I did. I was like, it wasn't personalized. It was just like a workshop and people asked like questions, like, I just, I just talked about the book. And I was like, No, it wasn't he was like, yeah, it wasn't like that. No, it wasn't. Um, yeah, I think I actually kind of need to like, Cool it a bit on the promotion stuff. Like dude, like, this week, I spent like two days this week, creating a Google Sheets plugin for geocoder Oh, it was so nice to like, be playing around with spreadsheet functions again, like, after doing all this like writing and then talking about this stuff I wrote like, it was very comfortable. It was much more comfortable than talking about.

Colleen Schnettler  2:42  
Like, I don't know, it was your happy was when you went Excel.

Michele Hansen  2:46  
It really is. Um, but actually, so I have another spreadsheet that doesn't have any fun functions in it is the number of books I have sold, adding up, you know. Okay. For 490 400

Colleen Schnettler  3:03  
my gosh, that's amazing.

Michele Hansen  3:07  
I know, it's so close to 500. And it's been so close to 100 500 for like days. And like, the other day, I was like, maybe I'm, like, tapped out the market for this at 490. Like, that's really good. Like the average book sells like 300. So like, that's really good. Um, and, yeah, so so I'm going to do like, I'm going to be on some other podcasts and whatnot. And like, I remember seeing once. Rob Fitzpatrick once, I think actually, it's in his new book. He has a graph of the revenue of the mom test and like, the growth of that book is I mean, a case in compounding.

Colleen Schnettler  3:52  
Okay, so, right. So

Michele Hansen  3:54  
you know, it's not all like in the beginning, and like, there's really positive signs, like people are recommending to other people, people are writing reviews, like, so. So yeah, I feel good. But man, I really want to get to 500. I don't know, I haven't been thinking about the numbers very much. I mean, it's only six but like, I really, I really want to get to 500. I don't know why, like it's like getting to like, you know, 1000 or what it like that's that's not even like remotely like a possibility to me, like I don't even really think about it. But now it's like so close. And like that would be so awesome.

Colleen Schnettler  4:25  
I wager a guess that by the time this podcast airs on Tuesday, you will be at 500.

Michele Hansen  4:31  
That's only six more books. Maybe Maybe. And by the way, if people want a free copy of this of the book, so if you are listening, when it comes out on on Tuesday or Wednesday, transistor.fm is running a little giveaway on their Twitter account. I think Justin saw my like, I think 490 is all I'm ever gonna sell. Okay. And I was like, no. So they're giving away five copies of the book. You just have to go retweet the tweets about the book. So yeah, nice. Yeah. If you just go to the deploy wonderful,

Colleen Schnettler  5:05  
that'll help expand your reach.

Michele Hansen  5:07  
Yeah, it was interesting hearing that I was like helping you interview people on podcast. I'm like, Yeah, I guess you could. I mean, it doesn't have to just be for. for customers.

Colleen Schnettler  5:19  
Anyway, oh, yeah, your book applies to so much. So that's where the,

Michele Hansen  5:23  
that's that's where the book is. But I gotta say, I think I think I need to give myself a little break on promotion. Otherwise, I'm gonna, I'm gonna burn out on that

Colleen Schnettler  5:33  
for right now. Yeah, I was thinking about that when you were talking about like, how you're hitting it so hard. I was like, wait, Isn't this what happened with writing the book? And then afterwards, you're like,

Michele Hansen  5:43  
Yes, I have a pattern. Yes. way overboard. And then I exhaust myself.

Colleen Schnettler  5:53  
So maybe we should approach it like a marathon instead of a sprint? Yeah,

Michele Hansen  5:57  
I think so. I haven't scheduled anything for next week. So I don't have anything scheduled until the first week of October. So okay. Yeah, kind of just, yeah. So so you know, hopefully by the, you know, yeah. Bye. By the time I'm on again, because I'm off next week. I vacation. Yeah. Oh my god, dude, I'm going to American, I'm so excited. So happy for you. Okay, um, I can't wait to just go to Target and Trader Joe's anyway.

Colleen Schnettler  6:34  
So if you're not have target, and then we do not

Michele Hansen  6:36  
have target, we have a story that's inspired by target or like more like, inspired by Walmart. But like, it's just like, there's just nothing like getting a Starbucks and walking around target. You know, it's just true story. Anyway, um, what's going on with you?

Colleen Schnettler  6:52  
So I did quite a bit of work on simple file uploads. Since we last talked, I actually spent a good chunk of time doing some technical work, some cleanup work that needed to be done. But I have gotten the demo on my homepage. Oh, it's really exciting. Yeah,

Michele Hansen  7:10  
the like, code pen demo thing that we've been talking about for a while, right? Correct.

Colleen Schnettler  7:15  
Okay, instead of putting a code pen up, I actually just put a drop zone. So you can literally, if you go into my site, it just says drop a file to try it. And you can drop a file. Wait, so that is something I know. Right? So that's something I've been talking about doing for a long time, which I finally got done. So that's exciting. Yeah. And there was some other stuff with like the log on flow, that wasn't really quite correct. It wasn't wrong, it just wasn't really right. So I just spent a lot of time kind of getting that cleaned up. Oh, and the API for deleting events. So that was a real hustle for me, because I have someone who reached out to me, and they were like, Hey, we totally want to use your thing. But we have to be ab...

]]>
Michele Hansen  0:01 
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Colleen Schnettler  0:51  
So Michelle, how are things going with your book tour?

Michele Hansen  0:54  
So the book tour itself is going well, I did indie hackers build your SAS searching for SAS one end product? I just recorded another one. yesterday. No, no, no, today? No, that was I feel like I'm doing a lot with it. Because that's what says because I had I love it. Let's see yesterday, no Tuesday, I did a session with founder summit. And then I also had a call with someone about being on their podcast yesterday. That'll be in November, and then I've scheduled another one for October. And then I did another group session today. And then yeah, actually, it was when I got off of that and Mateus was like, you know what you just did? And I was like, What? Like, he was like, you just did consulting? And I was like, No, I did. Like cuz it was Yeah. No, I did. I was like, it wasn't personalized. It was just like a workshop and people asked like questions, like, I just, I just talked about the book. And I was like, No, it wasn't he was like, yeah, it wasn't like that. No, it wasn't. Um, yeah, I think I actually kind of need to like, Cool it a bit on the promotion stuff. Like dude, like, this week, I spent like two days this week, creating a Google Sheets plugin for geocoder Oh, it was so nice to like, be playing around with spreadsheet functions again, like, after doing all this like writing and then talking about this stuff I wrote like, it was very comfortable. It was much more comfortable than talking about.

Colleen Schnettler  2:42  
Like, I don't know, it was your happy was when you went Excel.

Michele Hansen  2:46  
It really is. Um, but actually, so I have another spreadsheet that doesn't have any fun functions in it is the number of books I have sold, adding up, you know. Okay. For 490 400

Colleen Schnettler  3:03  
my gosh, that's amazing.

Michele Hansen  3:07  
I know, it's so close to 500. And it's been so close to 100 500 for like days. And like, the other day, I was like, maybe I'm, like, tapped out the market for this at 490. Like, that's really good. Like the average book sells like 300. So like, that's really good. Um, and, yeah, so so I'm going to do like, I'm going to be on some other podcasts and whatnot. And like, I remember seeing once. Rob Fitzpatrick once, I think actually, it's in his new book. He has a graph of the revenue of the mom test and like, the growth of that book is I mean, a case in compounding.

Colleen Schnettler  3:52  
Okay, so, right. So

Michele Hansen  3:54  
you know, it's not all like in the beginning, and like, there's really positive signs, like people are recommending to other people, people are writing reviews, like, so. So yeah, I feel good. But man, I really want to get to 500. I don't know, I haven't been thinking about the numbers very much. I mean, it's only six but like, I really, I really want to get to 500. I don't know why, like it's like getting to like, you know, 1000 or what it like that's that's not even like remotely like a possibility to me, like I don't even really think about it. But now it's like so close. And like that would be so awesome.

Colleen Schnettler  4:25  
I wager a guess that by the time this podcast airs on Tuesday, you will be at 500.

Michele Hansen  4:31  
That's only six more books. Maybe Maybe. And by the way, if people want a free copy of this of the book, so if you are listening, when it comes out on on Tuesday or Wednesday, transistor.fm is running a little giveaway on their Twitter account. I think Justin saw my like, I think 490 is all I'm ever gonna sell. Okay. And I was like, no. So they're giving away five copies of the book. You just have to go retweet the tweets about the book. So yeah, nice. Yeah. If you just go to the deploy wonderful,

Colleen Schnettler  5:05  
that'll help expand your reach.

Michele Hansen  5:07  
Yeah, it was interesting hearing that I was like helping you interview people on podcast. I'm like, Yeah, I guess you could. I mean, it doesn't have to just be for. for customers.

Colleen Schnettler  5:19  
Anyway, oh, yeah, your book applies to so much. So that's where the,

Michele Hansen  5:23  
that's that's where the book is. But I gotta say, I think I think I need to give myself a little break on promotion. Otherwise, I'm gonna, I'm gonna burn out on that

Colleen Schnettler  5:33  
for right now. Yeah, I was thinking about that when you were talking about like, how you're hitting it so hard. I was like, wait, Isn't this what happened with writing the book? And then afterwards, you're like,

Michele Hansen  5:43  
Yes, I have a pattern. Yes. way overboard. And then I exhaust myself.

Colleen Schnettler  5:53  
So maybe we should approach it like a marathon instead of a sprint? Yeah,

Michele Hansen  5:57  
I think so. I haven't scheduled anything for next week. So I don't have anything scheduled until the first week of October. So okay. Yeah, kind of just, yeah. So so you know, hopefully by the, you know, yeah. Bye. By the time I'm on again, because I'm off next week. I vacation. Yeah. Oh my god, dude, I'm going to American, I'm so excited. So happy for you. Okay, um, I can't wait to just go to Target and Trader Joe's anyway.

Colleen Schnettler  6:34  
So if you're not have target, and then we do not

Michele Hansen  6:36  
have target, we have a story that's inspired by target or like more like, inspired by Walmart. But like, it's just like, there's just nothing like getting a Starbucks and walking around target. You know, it's just true story. Anyway, um, what's going on with you?

Colleen Schnettler  6:52  
So I did quite a bit of work on simple file uploads. Since we last talked, I actually spent a good chunk of time doing some technical work, some cleanup work that needed to be done. But I have gotten the demo on my homepage. Oh, it's really exciting. Yeah,

Michele Hansen  7:10  
the like, code pen demo thing that we've been talking about for a while, right? Correct.

Colleen Schnettler  7:15  
Okay, instead of putting a code pen up, I actually just put a drop zone. So you can literally, if you go into my site, it just says drop a file to try it. And you can drop a file. Wait, so that is something I know. Right? So that's something I've been talking about doing for a long time, which I finally got done. So that's exciting. Yeah. And there was some other stuff with like the log on flow, that wasn't really quite correct. It wasn't wrong, it just wasn't really right. So I just spent a lot of time kind of getting that cleaned up. Oh, and the API for deleting events. So that was a real hustle for me, because I have someone who reached out to me, and they were like, Hey, we totally want to use your thing. But we have to be ab...

]]> Tue, 21 Sep 2021 08:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2321 Where do you send people who want to start an online business but don't know how to code or use no-code tools? Where do you send people who want to start an online business but don't know how to code or use no-code tools? SaaS, bootstrapping, software Yes Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler A Tour Through Struggle: Cam Sloan, Founder of Hopscotch Product Tours 61 61 A Tour Through Struggle: Cam Sloan, Founder of Hopscotch Product Tours full edd41712-bbab-4726-92d0-4a8fd4c2fd20 https://share.transistor.fm/s/0a83fa76 Send Cam some love and support! https://twitter.com/SloanCam
Check out Hopscotch: https://hopscotch.club/

Michele Hansen  0:01 
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Michele Hansen  0:01  
So today, I'm so excited we have a friend joining us, Cam Sloane. Hello, Cam. So we invited you on today because you had tweeted the other day about how you're kind of feeling stuck right now. And we're like, you know what? Maybe we like we can chat about it and help you get unstuck.

Cam Sloan  1:17  
Yeah, that was, I guess, shout out to Aaron Francis, who kind of like just was like, Hey, bring him on. And, and I was like, Yeah, let's do it. That'd be awesome. And I think that, you know, just speaking that tweet, it really seemed to resonate with a lot of other people, like other founders who are trying to do this. And because I had an outpouring of, you know, comments and support, and DMS, from people I don't know, and people that I do know and invite stuff like this show and stuff to just like, it's amazing, the community that has reached out to kind of say, like, well, all sorts of things I'm sure we'll get into today. So it's been really nice to it's always nice to have that because sometimes you're just going at this and you feel like super alone. So for context, I just feel kind of stuck in like, you know, do I keep going do I switch to something else? Or do I? You know, yeah, like, I've contemplated like just doing contract work. And you know, just make money that way, because it's a bit easier. So all sorts of stuff that is going through my head over the past few months? Because it's just slow, slow going.

Colleen Schnettler  2:32  
Yeah, Cam to get us started. Could you give us a little background about your product? And how long you've been working on it?

Cam Sloan  2:40  
Yeah, definitely. That would be helpful for listeners. So yeah, I am working on hopscotch. It's a user onboarding tool, specifically focusing on product tours, and kind of in app messaging and guides to kind of, you know, when a user signs up for your product, sometimes you want to kind of hold their hand a bit to show them what their next step should be, in order to help prevent them from churning by actually showing them to the thing that they want to do. And so yeah, I mean, product tours, to be honest, like, it's not the right fit for every every business. But sometimes, there are really good use cases, like if you have a complex product that has, like you get in like a CRM, or like an analytics tool that has like 10 options on the top menu and 10 on the side, and your users just get dumped, or, you know, Landon, this page with no idea what to do next, then a really good way to show them is to guide them, you know, and kind of say, you know, here's, here's what your next step should be, so that you can see value out of the product. So I've been working on this for, I mean, about a year since the inception of like, actually like the idea, but really kind of steadily since January of this year in 2021. And kind of focusing most of my time on it. Because outside of that I do freelancing contract work for you know, larger companies just doing web development work for them. And that kind of helps me to stay self funded to do my projects like this and, and hopefully grow my own software business.

Michele Hansen  4:28  
Yeah, so. So I kind of want to propose a structure for this conversation. So I've mentioned a little bit in my book, how the sort of core questions that you're trying to answer when you talk to a customer can also be used when maybe you're helping somebody think through something, which are what are they trying to do overall? Why? What are the steps in that process they're going through what if they already Tried, and where are they stuck? And so I feel like you've kind of you've started to give us a little bit of overview on the what you're trying to do. And why. I'm curious what led you to be interested in building an onboarding tool?

Cam Sloan  5:23  
Yeah. So the, you know, like, as I don't know, if you did this as well, when you were coming up with, you know, what business to go into you like make a list, you're trying to make a list of ideas, and like, most of them are pretty terrible. And, like, I had maybe 50 ideas. And this was kind of one of them that I didn't really think too much about until I actually I met someone who I, who wanted to hire me to build to work on their software company, and just doing web development for them. And we actually ended up, I didn't work for him, it wasn't the right fit for taking on that contract. But we ended up like really getting along well, kind of both having founder ambitions. And he was almost like, in the position that I'm at right now where he was feeling a bit stuck. And so we ended up saying, Hey, we should like try and work on something together. And, and we were thrown, like, what ideas have you been having, and, and we both checked kind of our lists. And, and this was one of them. So for him, he was actually experiencing, like, the pain point more than I had previously. So really, he was searching around for tools. And like came across intercom product tours and other app cues and realizing like, you know, he's a bootstrap founder cannot justify the price at like, $300 plus a month, and was looking for a tool that was maybe affordable that that could get them up and running. And we kind of ran with that together. In like, just real quick summary. Like he ended up going and building another business. So I kept going on hopscotch. And, yeah, like, as soon as I dove into the problem, like I really enjoyed it, both technically, because like you're you're kind of embedding your yourself into another SAS product by default, like by the definition of what these tools do. And so there's a lot of like, really interesting technical learnings that I've had to had to go through with that, like anytime you're dealing with like widget, embed scripts and other people's code, it's, it's a lot of interesting stuff on the technical side. But then also just realizing like that, there's a lot of interesting stuff in the human and business side of this as well. Like, I started soaking in resources from Samuel Kulik, and like the user less team and, you know, anywhere that I could find people who are talking about onboarding and realizing like how crucial it can be to a business's success. Because, you know, if you can reduce that initial churn in the first month or two, then then it can have a wild impact on the like, lifetime value of customers and how your product retains users. And so it just kept me interested From then on, which is why I didn't like end up going work on something else. After, after he, like my co founder went to do something else.

Michele Hansen  8:23  
So let's talk a little bit about where you are now. So you launched in April. Is that right?

Cam Sloan  8:30  
or me? Yeah. So I think so. Time is a blur? Yeah, like I because I've kind of been doing, like, I did a lot of stuff with early access of just onboarding one on one, like peo...

]]> Send Cam some love and support! https://twitter.com/SloanCam
Check out Hopscotch: https://hopscotch.club/

Michele Hansen  0:01 
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Michele Hansen  0:01  
So today, I'm so excited we have a friend joining us, Cam Sloane. Hello, Cam. So we invited you on today because you had tweeted the other day about how you're kind of feeling stuck right now. And we're like, you know what? Maybe we like we can chat about it and help you get unstuck.

Cam Sloan  1:17  
Yeah, that was, I guess, shout out to Aaron Francis, who kind of like just was like, Hey, bring him on. And, and I was like, Yeah, let's do it. That'd be awesome. And I think that, you know, just speaking that tweet, it really seemed to resonate with a lot of other people, like other founders who are trying to do this. And because I had an outpouring of, you know, comments and support, and DMS, from people I don't know, and people that I do know and invite stuff like this show and stuff to just like, it's amazing, the community that has reached out to kind of say, like, well, all sorts of things I'm sure we'll get into today. So it's been really nice to it's always nice to have that because sometimes you're just going at this and you feel like super alone. So for context, I just feel kind of stuck in like, you know, do I keep going do I switch to something else? Or do I? You know, yeah, like, I've contemplated like just doing contract work. And you know, just make money that way, because it's a bit easier. So all sorts of stuff that is going through my head over the past few months? Because it's just slow, slow going.

Colleen Schnettler  2:32  
Yeah, Cam to get us started. Could you give us a little background about your product? And how long you've been working on it?

Cam Sloan  2:40  
Yeah, definitely. That would be helpful for listeners. So yeah, I am working on hopscotch. It's a user onboarding tool, specifically focusing on product tours, and kind of in app messaging and guides to kind of, you know, when a user signs up for your product, sometimes you want to kind of hold their hand a bit to show them what their next step should be, in order to help prevent them from churning by actually showing them to the thing that they want to do. And so yeah, I mean, product tours, to be honest, like, it's not the right fit for every every business. But sometimes, there are really good use cases, like if you have a complex product that has, like you get in like a CRM, or like an analytics tool that has like 10 options on the top menu and 10 on the side, and your users just get dumped, or, you know, Landon, this page with no idea what to do next, then a really good way to show them is to guide them, you know, and kind of say, you know, here's, here's what your next step should be, so that you can see value out of the product. So I've been working on this for, I mean, about a year since the inception of like, actually like the idea, but really kind of steadily since January of this year in 2021. And kind of focusing most of my time on it. Because outside of that I do freelancing contract work for you know, larger companies just doing web development work for them. And that kind of helps me to stay self funded to do my projects like this and, and hopefully grow my own software business.

Michele Hansen  4:28  
Yeah, so. So I kind of want to propose a structure for this conversation. So I've mentioned a little bit in my book, how the sort of core questions that you're trying to answer when you talk to a customer can also be used when maybe you're helping somebody think through something, which are what are they trying to do overall? Why? What are the steps in that process they're going through what if they already Tried, and where are they stuck? And so I feel like you've kind of you've started to give us a little bit of overview on the what you're trying to do. And why. I'm curious what led you to be interested in building an onboarding tool?

Cam Sloan  5:23  
Yeah. So the, you know, like, as I don't know, if you did this as well, when you were coming up with, you know, what business to go into you like make a list, you're trying to make a list of ideas, and like, most of them are pretty terrible. And, like, I had maybe 50 ideas. And this was kind of one of them that I didn't really think too much about until I actually I met someone who I, who wanted to hire me to build to work on their software company, and just doing web development for them. And we actually ended up, I didn't work for him, it wasn't the right fit for taking on that contract. But we ended up like really getting along well, kind of both having founder ambitions. And he was almost like, in the position that I'm at right now where he was feeling a bit stuck. And so we ended up saying, Hey, we should like try and work on something together. And, and we were thrown, like, what ideas have you been having, and, and we both checked kind of our lists. And, and this was one of them. So for him, he was actually experiencing, like, the pain point more than I had previously. So really, he was searching around for tools. And like came across intercom product tours and other app cues and realizing like, you know, he's a bootstrap founder cannot justify the price at like, $300 plus a month, and was looking for a tool that was maybe affordable that that could get them up and running. And we kind of ran with that together. In like, just real quick summary. Like he ended up going and building another business. So I kept going on hopscotch. And, yeah, like, as soon as I dove into the problem, like I really enjoyed it, both technically, because like you're you're kind of embedding your yourself into another SAS product by default, like by the definition of what these tools do. And so there's a lot of like, really interesting technical learnings that I've had to had to go through with that, like anytime you're dealing with like widget, embed scripts and other people's code, it's, it's a lot of interesting stuff on the technical side. But then also just realizing like that, there's a lot of interesting stuff in the human and business side of this as well. Like, I started soaking in resources from Samuel Kulik, and like the user less team and, you know, anywhere that I could find people who are talking about onboarding and realizing like how crucial it can be to a business's success. Because, you know, if you can reduce that initial churn in the first month or two, then then it can have a wild impact on the like, lifetime value of customers and how your product retains users. And so it just kept me interested From then on, which is why I didn't like end up going work on something else. After, after he, like my co founder went to do something else.

Michele Hansen  8:23  
So let's talk a little bit about where you are now. So you launched in April. Is that right?

Cam Sloan  8:30  
or me? Yeah. So I think so. Time is a blur? Yeah, like I because I've kind of been doing, like, I did a lot of stuff with early access of just onboarding one on one, like peo...

]]> Tue, 14 Sep 2021 06:01:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 3279 Cam's SaaS has been struggling. Michele and Colleen try to help him think things through. Cam's SaaS has been struggling. Michele and Colleen try to help him think things through. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Just Tell People About The Thing You Made 60 60 Just Tell People About The Thing You Made full e70b4a1f-4913-4e64-8efd-dc62ffdb4bd7 https://share.transistor.fm/s/72f178ab Listen to the latest from Michele's podcast book tour!
Searching for SaaS: https://searchingforsaas.com/podcast/ep25-local-restaurant-app-to-geocoding-as-a-service-michele-hansen-from-geocodio/
One Knight In Product: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/michele-hansen/
Indie Hackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/224-michele-hansen

Michele Hansen  0:01 
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.

Here's how Reform is different:

- Your brand shines through, not Reform's

- It's accessible out-of-the-box

... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a time

Join indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.

Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.

Hey, Colleen,

Colleen Schnettler  0:51  
hey, Michelle.

Michele Hansen  0:54  
How are you?

Colleen Schnettler  0:56  
I'm good. I'm good. How about you?

Michele Hansen  0:58  
How goes week three now of doing Hammerstone and simple file upload.

Colleen Schnettler  1:08  
It's going well, today, I'm going to dedicate most of the day to simple file uploads. So I'm pretty excited about that. I'm finally back into my theoretical four days client work one day, my own thing and never really works out that way. Because I make myself way too available. But I have a lot of plans. But I do want to talk to you about something. Okay. I am I have not had any new signups in six weeks. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not in the pit of despair, because I'm just generally pretty happy about everything else. But I haven't been really on top of I know, six weeks. Right. That's really. I mean, I

Michele Hansen  1:54  
I hate to say it, but that does give me a little bit of like trough of sorrow vibes.

Colleen Schnettler  1:58  
Yeah. I mean, I honestly, I hadn't even really noticed, which is a different a different thing. Has anybody been canceled? I don't know. Because I, yeah, so I don't track that as well as I should. And I think with everything that's been going on, I have been so busy that I haven't. Honestly, I've just been letting it run itself. I checked my email every day, but no one ever emails me, which is nice, by the way. So I hadn't checked it in a while a and I checked it in preparation to do this podcast with you. And I was like, Oh, crap. I haven't had a sign up since July. This is September 2.

Michele Hansen  2:39  
So have I mean, has your revenue gone down? Like?

Colleen Schnettler  2:44  
No, actually, it hasn't. So I've been pretty consistent. So without doing a full churn analysis, I don't think people are churning. But they're not signing up. Okay, that's not okay. Let me stop. That's not entirely true. People are putting their email address in and then bouncing. So people are still finding my website. But yeah,

Michele Hansen  3:12  
I feel like it was like the people who are paying you is that mostly people from Heroku? or from your website?

Colleen Schnettler  3:19  
It's mostly people from Heroku.

Michele Hansen  3:21  
So are you still getting that like you had this problem where people were like, signing up on Heroku, but then not actually activating it? And like starting to use it, like, Are people still doing that first step on Heroku.

Colleen Schnettler  3:37  
So people are using it. I actually had one person respond with what he's doing. So that was cool. In terms of like a new signup. So people are using it that sign up on Heroku, which is good. It's just a lack of new signups is really confusing to me.

Michele Hansen  3:55  
Did you ever get that work done on the homepage like and Roku site like we were talking about the code pen and improving the documentation? And like, did did all that happen?

Colleen Schnettler  4:10  
So I have a whole list of great things I'm going to do so what I have done this week last week is I actually started writing a piece of I wrote an article right, it didn't take that long. I should have what it doesn't matter what I should have done. I did it. So that's good. So I have seen on Google Analytics said that is getting a decent amount of traffic. Today, literally today. I'm going to get that freakin try it now on the homepage. That is my plan to do that today. Nice. I'm speaking it into existence. The documentation is a whole different animal because I don't think I mean, I really need to redo the documentation. But that's like a whole thing. Like it's not I need to add some things. I think I need to take it in baby steps because I added some things to the tech side that are not reflected in the documentation that are kind of cool. So I think, but of course, instead of just adding that to my existing documentation, which I don't really like the way it presents, like, I just don't like the way it looks. I want to tear that all down and make a new app just for documentation, which I will do someday, but

Michele Hansen  5:17  
so it kind of sounds like you need to put away your laundry. But you don't want to do that. So instead, you're going to completely build yourself a new closet, but

Colleen Schnettler  5:26  
my closets gonna be so pretty, and so organized.

Michele Hansen  5:33  
Yeah, I'm sensing a theme where like, you have a task that you don't want to do, or it seems overwhelming to you or you don't feel like it plays into your strengths. And so your way to do it is to make it something that is one of your strengths, which is actually just throwing more hurdles in front of you actually doing the task.

Colleen Schnettler  6:00  
Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, that's, like, it's funny, because before we got on this podcast, my plan was still to rewrite the whole documentation and make it its own site, blah, blah, blah. And as soon as I spoke those words to you, as I do, I've really is that really a super high priority, like, the higher priority should be getting the fact that like, I emit events on, you know, successful uploads, that's cool. People can use that. It's literally nowhere in my documentation that I do that. So I'm probably the priority should just be getting it out there with what I have. And then someday, when I have more time, I can rewrite the whole documentation site.

Michele Hansen  6:39  
This is your problem with the documentation that it's ugly, or that people email you telling you that it's janky. And, like, difficult to use documentation specifically, or is it just an eyesore? It's

Colleen Schnettler  6:53  
a it's an eyesore. I don't like the way it looks. I don't like the way I navigate with tabs. I don't like the tabs. Like I think you can still find everything no one has emailed me saying I don't understand how to use this. Hold on.

Michele Hansen  7:05  
I need to like I'm I'm pulling look at it. So now

Colleen Schnettler  7:08  
Yeah, pull it up. Okay, so if you go to simple file, upload.com, and then click on Doc's documentation,

Michele Hansen  7:15  
you got that calm, like,

Colleen Schnettler  7:17  
I know, I win it names. So if you look at it, I was like so I also bought unrelated simple file. Wait, what did I buy? I bought simple image upload calm. Hmm, I ha...

]]> Listen to the latest from Michele's podcast book tour!
Searching for SaaS: https://searchingforsaas.com/podcast/ep25-local-restaurant-app-to-geocoding-as-a-service-michele-hansen-from-geocodio/
One Knight In Product: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/michele-hansen/
Indie Hackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/224-michele-hansen

Michele Hansen  0:01 
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

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Hey, Colleen,

Colleen Schnettler  0:51  
hey, Michelle.

Michele Hansen  0:54  
How are you?

Colleen Schnettler  0:56  
I'm good. I'm good. How about you?

Michele Hansen  0:58  
How goes week three now of doing Hammerstone and simple file upload.

Colleen Schnettler  1:08  
It's going well, today, I'm going to dedicate most of the day to simple file uploads. So I'm pretty excited about that. I'm finally back into my theoretical four days client work one day, my own thing and never really works out that way. Because I make myself way too available. But I have a lot of plans. But I do want to talk to you about something. Okay. I am I have not had any new signups in six weeks. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not in the pit of despair, because I'm just generally pretty happy about everything else. But I haven't been really on top of I know, six weeks. Right. That's really. I mean, I

Michele Hansen  1:54  
I hate to say it, but that does give me a little bit of like trough of sorrow vibes.

Colleen Schnettler  1:58  
Yeah. I mean, I honestly, I hadn't even really noticed, which is a different a different thing. Has anybody been canceled? I don't know. Because I, yeah, so I don't track that as well as I should. And I think with everything that's been going on, I have been so busy that I haven't. Honestly, I've just been letting it run itself. I checked my email every day, but no one ever emails me, which is nice, by the way. So I hadn't checked it in a while a and I checked it in preparation to do this podcast with you. And I was like, Oh, crap. I haven't had a sign up since July. This is September 2.

Michele Hansen  2:39  
So have I mean, has your revenue gone down? Like?

Colleen Schnettler  2:44  
No, actually, it hasn't. So I've been pretty consistent. So without doing a full churn analysis, I don't think people are churning. But they're not signing up. Okay, that's not okay. Let me stop. That's not entirely true. People are putting their email address in and then bouncing. So people are still finding my website. But yeah,

Michele Hansen  3:12  
I feel like it was like the people who are paying you is that mostly people from Heroku? or from your website?

Colleen Schnettler  3:19  
It's mostly people from Heroku.

Michele Hansen  3:21  
So are you still getting that like you had this problem where people were like, signing up on Heroku, but then not actually activating it? And like starting to use it, like, Are people still doing that first step on Heroku.

Colleen Schnettler  3:37  
So people are using it. I actually had one person respond with what he's doing. So that was cool. In terms of like a new signup. So people are using it that sign up on Heroku, which is good. It's just a lack of new signups is really confusing to me.

Michele Hansen  3:55  
Did you ever get that work done on the homepage like and Roku site like we were talking about the code pen and improving the documentation? And like, did did all that happen?

Colleen Schnettler  4:10  
So I have a whole list of great things I'm going to do so what I have done this week last week is I actually started writing a piece of I wrote an article right, it didn't take that long. I should have what it doesn't matter what I should have done. I did it. So that's good. So I have seen on Google Analytics said that is getting a decent amount of traffic. Today, literally today. I'm going to get that freakin try it now on the homepage. That is my plan to do that today. Nice. I'm speaking it into existence. The documentation is a whole different animal because I don't think I mean, I really need to redo the documentation. But that's like a whole thing. Like it's not I need to add some things. I think I need to take it in baby steps because I added some things to the tech side that are not reflected in the documentation that are kind of cool. So I think, but of course, instead of just adding that to my existing documentation, which I don't really like the way it presents, like, I just don't like the way it looks. I want to tear that all down and make a new app just for documentation, which I will do someday, but

Michele Hansen  5:17  
so it kind of sounds like you need to put away your laundry. But you don't want to do that. So instead, you're going to completely build yourself a new closet, but

Colleen Schnettler  5:26  
my closets gonna be so pretty, and so organized.

Michele Hansen  5:33  
Yeah, I'm sensing a theme where like, you have a task that you don't want to do, or it seems overwhelming to you or you don't feel like it plays into your strengths. And so your way to do it is to make it something that is one of your strengths, which is actually just throwing more hurdles in front of you actually doing the task.

Colleen Schnettler  6:00  
Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, that's, like, it's funny, because before we got on this podcast, my plan was still to rewrite the whole documentation and make it its own site, blah, blah, blah. And as soon as I spoke those words to you, as I do, I've really is that really a super high priority, like, the higher priority should be getting the fact that like, I emit events on, you know, successful uploads, that's cool. People can use that. It's literally nowhere in my documentation that I do that. So I'm probably the priority should just be getting it out there with what I have. And then someday, when I have more time, I can rewrite the whole documentation site.

Michele Hansen  6:39  
This is your problem with the documentation that it's ugly, or that people email you telling you that it's janky. And, like, difficult to use documentation specifically, or is it just an eyesore? It's

Colleen Schnettler  6:53  
a it's an eyesore. I don't like the way it looks. I don't like the way I navigate with tabs. I don't like the tabs. Like I think you can still find everything no one has emailed me saying I don't understand how to use this. Hold on.

Michele Hansen  7:05  
I need to like I'm I'm pulling look at it. So now

Colleen Schnettler  7:08  
Yeah, pull it up. Okay, so if you go to simple file, upload.com, and then click on Doc's documentation,

Michele Hansen  7:15  
you got that calm, like,

Colleen Schnettler  7:17  
I know, I win it names. So if you look at it, I was like so I also bought unrelated simple file. Wait, what did I buy? I bought simple image upload calm. Hmm, I ha...

]]> Tue, 07 Sep 2021 08:48:28 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1866 Colleen wants to rebuild her documentation instead of improving it. Michele finally gets going on that podcast book tour that Colleen challenged her to go on. Colleen wants to rebuild her documentation instead of improving it. Michele finally gets going on that podcast book tour that Colleen challenged her to go on. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Everything Is Happening 59 59 Everything Is Happening full 348e1576-cfa0-42c0-a53c-375f254f2abd https://share.transistor.fm/s/644654da Michele Hansen  0:00  
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/

When you’re bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you’re spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don’t pay?

Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. 

And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. 

Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.

Colleen Schnettler  0:52  
Michele, it's so good to talk to you. So I have been following some of the things you've been tweeting about recently, and I saw that you did a Product Hunt launch for the book.

Michele Hansen  1:05  
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  1:06  
Tell us about that was quite a roller coaster. Yeah, I am fascinated. I want to hear all about it. 

Michele Hansen  1:14  
So um, gosh, I don't even I don't even know where to start. Because it was it was kind of it was kind of a spur of the moment thing. Like I've been planning to do a Product Hunt launch for a long time, but I didn't really know exactly when. And I think it was a we've talked about how my, like, original deadline for the book was before I started Danish language classes, right. I feel like we I don't know. But yeah, okay. So I actually started them last Monday. So you know, even though like, when I finished my MBA, I was like, I am done with school forever, like, never again. And you know, here I am again. Um, so I started Monday of this week. And so the 20th I was like, I saw I was starting, you know, the in a couple of days. And I was like, You know what, I just need to do this. Now I want to get this launch done. Before I'm like thinking about school again, cuz I'm not gonna have as much time. So that's basically like, why I did it on Friday morning. Now, apparently, when you launch on product time, you're supposed to get someone like, well known to basically hunt the product for you and submit it for you. And then I guess it notifies all of that person's followers, and then it helps with your ranking and stuff like that. I did not do that. I just submitted it myself.

Colleen Schnettler  2:46  
Wait, okay. pause, pause, pause. Okay, so let's back up a little bit. So you were on Friday morning, you woke up and you're like, I should put the book on Product Hunt today? Is that like, what happened? No. No, I

Michele Hansen  2:57  
needed to send out a newsletter that morning. Because I had I had something I wanted to send out. And I was like, you know, why don't I just throw it up on product time. Like, let's just get that over with and do it and like, so like, I just like wrote up a post, I took a couple of screenshots of like the book and the table of contents. And like, I like put it up, like, apparently people hire like consultants and pay them like 1000s of dollars to try to get a good ranking on on product ton. And they spend all this time recruiting someone to hunt it for them. And like there's this whole, like product launch a Product Hunt launch strategy that I was completely oblivious to. So

Colleen Schnettler  3:37  
yeah, I've heard that. That's a hole that if you there's like so many articles about how to properly do product on and there's consultants, yes. Okay, so tell us what you did. Yeah,

Michele Hansen  3:47  
I guess it didn't. I don't know. I it didn't occur to me to research it first. Because I don't know. I just didn't so I just threw it up there. And then I sent it out to the newsletter and was like, hey, like, you know, Product Hunt today. And so it was like going pretty well. Like I sent it out like first thing in the morning European time. And by like lunchtime or so here it had like 30 or 40 upvotes which was like way more than most of the other products on the homepage. And I started being like in the people started being like I can't find your product like I searched for it. It doesn't show up like it's not on the homepage like like she usually like reach out to them or something because something is wrong. And this is somebody on Twitter who jumped in and they're like, Oh, they shadow ban info products, because there's so many of them that they shadow ban them by defaults, if you're submitting it and you're not like a you know a sort of name brand person submitting it.

Colleen Schnettler  4:47  
What is shadow ban mean?

Michele Hansen  4:48  
Oh, so shot. Shadow banning is when you post it and it looks normal to you and you can send people the link, but it doesn't show up on the homepage and it doesn't show up in search.

Colleen Schnettler  5:00  
Oh, wow.

Michele Hansen  5:01  
So basically you don't know you're banned from the homepage. So, so weird, but I guess there's like so many that I currently the logic is that there's so many info products that like, they basically want to cut down on the number of them going to the front page of product on. So and then I kind of like started tweeting about this and I'm not really sure what happened. But I like reached out to their support on their website and on Twitter. And then I think some other people also backchannel that to community people at Product Hunt. And then yeah, it was on the the front page. Like it just appeared at number four. And it was like, Oh, this is kind of fun. Like, we went from being like, completely invisible and thinking this was a huge waste of time. to like, now it's ranked number four. That's pretty amazing. And I just woke up and did this this morning. Like, this is fun. And that's all and then it kind of just kept going. Wonderful. Yeah. And I was actually I was getting like, last minute, like, you know, sort of, like, play by play advice from Arvid call in my DMS. I'm like, okay, like, here's what you do, like, make sure you reply to everybody, like, you know, all this stuff. And I was like, okay, okay, okay. Like, I was like, such like totally green at this. Um, and, yeah, it was it was wild. And then it ended up going up to number one. And oh, that's exciting day. And I just checked it a 512 up votes.

Colleen Schnettler  6:36  
That's amazing. Wild.

Michele Hansen  6:40  
Super wild. I've never really done a, like a Product Hunt launch. Like, we I mean, we didn't launch geocoder one Product Hunt. Like we actually launched before Product Hunt had their show h n launch, which when geocoder launched a show h n launch was like, what a Product Hunt launches now. I guess. Yeah. It was so funny. I remember coming across it in our refers for geocoder to and I was like, What is this product on thing and like, signed up? Um, so yeah, anyway, so that was, that was pretty crazy. Um, that's

Colleen Schnettler  7:20  
really cool. Yeah, it

Michele Hansen  7:21  
was it the whole thing about it, like, not showing up and like what was wrong and like, all these people kind of like rallying around it too. And like so many people tweeting out the the posts and commenting and like, I just felt like I was collectively being lifted up by people all over the world simultaneously. And it was, it was lovely. It was pretty, it was pretty surreal. It was it is

Colleen Schnettler  7:49  
as bad. It's awesome. So have you seen the Product Hunt success? increase the number of sales of the book?

Michele Hansen  8:00  
Yeah, so I actually did get a little bit of a nice little bump ou...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:00  
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/

When you’re bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you’re spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don’t pay?

Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. 

And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. 

Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.

Colleen Schnettler  0:52  
Michele, it's so good to talk to you. So I have been following some of the things you've been tweeting about recently, and I saw that you did a Product Hunt launch for the book.

Michele Hansen  1:05  
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  1:06  
Tell us about that was quite a roller coaster. Yeah, I am fascinated. I want to hear all about it. 

Michele Hansen  1:14  
So um, gosh, I don't even I don't even know where to start. Because it was it was kind of it was kind of a spur of the moment thing. Like I've been planning to do a Product Hunt launch for a long time, but I didn't really know exactly when. And I think it was a we've talked about how my, like, original deadline for the book was before I started Danish language classes, right. I feel like we I don't know. But yeah, okay. So I actually started them last Monday. So you know, even though like, when I finished my MBA, I was like, I am done with school forever, like, never again. And you know, here I am again. Um, so I started Monday of this week. And so the 20th I was like, I saw I was starting, you know, the in a couple of days. And I was like, You know what, I just need to do this. Now I want to get this launch done. Before I'm like thinking about school again, cuz I'm not gonna have as much time. So that's basically like, why I did it on Friday morning. Now, apparently, when you launch on product time, you're supposed to get someone like, well known to basically hunt the product for you and submit it for you. And then I guess it notifies all of that person's followers, and then it helps with your ranking and stuff like that. I did not do that. I just submitted it myself.

Colleen Schnettler  2:46  
Wait, okay. pause, pause, pause. Okay, so let's back up a little bit. So you were on Friday morning, you woke up and you're like, I should put the book on Product Hunt today? Is that like, what happened? No. No, I

Michele Hansen  2:57  
needed to send out a newsletter that morning. Because I had I had something I wanted to send out. And I was like, you know, why don't I just throw it up on product time. Like, let's just get that over with and do it and like, so like, I just like wrote up a post, I took a couple of screenshots of like the book and the table of contents. And like, I like put it up, like, apparently people hire like consultants and pay them like 1000s of dollars to try to get a good ranking on on product ton. And they spend all this time recruiting someone to hunt it for them. And like there's this whole, like product launch a Product Hunt launch strategy that I was completely oblivious to. So

Colleen Schnettler  3:37  
yeah, I've heard that. That's a hole that if you there's like so many articles about how to properly do product on and there's consultants, yes. Okay, so tell us what you did. Yeah,

Michele Hansen  3:47  
I guess it didn't. I don't know. I it didn't occur to me to research it first. Because I don't know. I just didn't so I just threw it up there. And then I sent it out to the newsletter and was like, hey, like, you know, Product Hunt today. And so it was like going pretty well. Like I sent it out like first thing in the morning European time. And by like lunchtime or so here it had like 30 or 40 upvotes which was like way more than most of the other products on the homepage. And I started being like in the people started being like I can't find your product like I searched for it. It doesn't show up like it's not on the homepage like like she usually like reach out to them or something because something is wrong. And this is somebody on Twitter who jumped in and they're like, Oh, they shadow ban info products, because there's so many of them that they shadow ban them by defaults, if you're submitting it and you're not like a you know a sort of name brand person submitting it.

Colleen Schnettler  4:47  
What is shadow ban mean?

Michele Hansen  4:48  
Oh, so shot. Shadow banning is when you post it and it looks normal to you and you can send people the link, but it doesn't show up on the homepage and it doesn't show up in search.

Colleen Schnettler  5:00  
Oh, wow.

Michele Hansen  5:01  
So basically you don't know you're banned from the homepage. So, so weird, but I guess there's like so many that I currently the logic is that there's so many info products that like, they basically want to cut down on the number of them going to the front page of product on. So and then I kind of like started tweeting about this and I'm not really sure what happened. But I like reached out to their support on their website and on Twitter. And then I think some other people also backchannel that to community people at Product Hunt. And then yeah, it was on the the front page. Like it just appeared at number four. And it was like, Oh, this is kind of fun. Like, we went from being like, completely invisible and thinking this was a huge waste of time. to like, now it's ranked number four. That's pretty amazing. And I just woke up and did this this morning. Like, this is fun. And that's all and then it kind of just kept going. Wonderful. Yeah. And I was actually I was getting like, last minute, like, you know, sort of, like, play by play advice from Arvid call in my DMS. I'm like, okay, like, here's what you do, like, make sure you reply to everybody, like, you know, all this stuff. And I was like, okay, okay, okay. Like, I was like, such like totally green at this. Um, and, yeah, it was it was wild. And then it ended up going up to number one. And oh, that's exciting day. And I just checked it a 512 up votes.

Colleen Schnettler  6:36  
That's amazing. Wild.

Michele Hansen  6:40  
Super wild. I've never really done a, like a Product Hunt launch. Like, we I mean, we didn't launch geocoder one Product Hunt. Like we actually launched before Product Hunt had their show h n launch, which when geocoder launched a show h n launch was like, what a Product Hunt launches now. I guess. Yeah. It was so funny. I remember coming across it in our refers for geocoder to and I was like, What is this product on thing and like, signed up? Um, so yeah, anyway, so that was, that was pretty crazy. Um, that's

Colleen Schnettler  7:20  
really cool. Yeah, it

Michele Hansen  7:21  
was it the whole thing about it, like, not showing up and like what was wrong and like, all these people kind of like rallying around it too. And like so many people tweeting out the the posts and commenting and like, I just felt like I was collectively being lifted up by people all over the world simultaneously. And it was, it was lovely. It was pretty, it was pretty surreal. It was it is

Colleen Schnettler  7:49  
as bad. It's awesome. So have you seen the Product Hunt success? increase the number of sales of the book?

Michele Hansen  8:00  
Yeah, so I actually did get a little bit of a nice little bump ou...

]]> Tue, 31 Aug 2021 11:18:37 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2356 Colleen finally gets co-founders! Michele's book goes to #1 on Product Hunt! Everything is happening! Colleen finally gets co-founders! Michele's book goes to #1 on Product Hunt! Everything is happening! SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Struggle and Sponsors: A Conversation with Adam Hill, Creator of Django Unicorn 58 58 Struggle and Sponsors: A Conversation with Adam Hill, Creator of Django Unicorn full 7552f662-f3d9-462b-b841-5d705be8c6fe https://share.transistor.fm/s/d9e2c5c5 Check out Django Unicorn! https://www.django-unicorn.com/

Follow Adam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamghill

Michele Hansen  0:00 
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/

When you’re bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you’re spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don’t pay?

Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. 

And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. 

Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.


Hey, everyone, welcome back to software social. So as you heard last week, Colleen joined the Hammerstone team. And she also just started a job recently. And she just moved California. So Colleen has a lot going on this week. And so for the benefit of her mental health, we decided that she should just take the week off. And I'm super excited because that meant that I got to bring a friend on the show this week. So I have Adam hill with us, Adam and I actually used to work together. He was the CTO at a place I used to work at. And he also has some projects going. So welcome, Adam. Hey, it's been a long time since we've caught. Yeah, it's weird. I should do this more often. No, no, when we had I had Murray pulling on a couple of weeks ago, the notion expert. And we like had that exact same conversation at the beginning of it was like, This is so weird. I talked to you online all the time. But we haven't actually spoken in a very long time.

Adam Hill  2:04  
Right. talking over Twitter is a little bit different than hearing someone's voice.

Michele Hansen  2:08  
Yeah. Yeah, it is. So so actually speaking of one of those conversations we are having so we were talking the other day about podcasts, and you were kind of thinking about maybe you start your own show or whatnot. But you said something in particular that I wanted to talk about? Because I think it is I think it's will strike a chord with a lot of people. And you said, I'm tired of hearing podcasts from people who don't struggle.

Adam Hill  2:41  
Yes. Oh, all right. So no offense to you. And thank Colleen, because I think you guys do a great job of talking through the things that you're, you know, having problems with. And maybe this is just the podcast that I tend to listen to. But there seem to be a couple of categories. There's like, advice, podcasts, there are interview podcasts. And then there are kind of like two co founders, like talking through their last week sort of podcasts. And the advice podcasts seem to be more like, I'm an expert, I know what I'm doing. Here's 10 ways to get more traffic to your landing page, or whatever. The interview podcasts are more like, I just made a million dollars in the last year, like, asked me how I did it. And then the two co founders on a journey. Maybe that's the closest to like, these are the things that we're working through. And I'm having trouble with this or that. But even like, even Colleen, she's making $1,000 a month, which to me is like, That's crazy. Like that's, that's, you know, she's like having so much success. And, you know, maybe some of this is sort of like, everything is relative. I'm, I've tried a bunch of little side projects and startups over the years, and I've never gotten to $1,000 a month, but like, maybe she's looking at you and being like, well, Michelle is like Michelle and Mathias are supporting their family, you know, on their startup. So like, maybe it's just everyone is able to look at someone who is above them, quote, unquote, and see someone who is like, doing more of what they want to be doing.

Michele Hansen  4:40  
I think what you're saying is is something that a lot of people feel, and I think that there's kind of this undercurrent of loneliness to a certain extent behind the sort of indie hacker indie SAS kind of world where you know if it's just your one person And working on something or maybe you have a co founder, like me, like, don't really have a lot of people in your daily life to talk to you about these kinds of things. And we're already sort of a lonely pursuit to like, try to start your own SAS on the weekend to then like, hear other people who are doing it, but to hear that they're like having the success that that seems elusive to you. Like that could reinforce that kind of feeling of loneliness. And I could understand how that might make you want to, you know, scream at your phone that like $1,000 is actually amazing. What are you talking about?

Adam Hill  5:40  
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, Can you talk a little bit about, you know, I assume that it was very helpful for you and Mateus to be working on things together throughout the years, like when you were starting geocodes Oh, so like, was that your sort of like support system? Because there was no mic or cough at that point. And there was, you know, indie hackers, I don't think was around. Yeah. Can you just elaborate on on how that worked for you?

Michele Hansen  6:08  
You know, we actually, we didn't go to micro conference till 2019. And we didn't go for so long. Because we didn't feel like legit enough to be there. Like, and I guess I didn't know that. Like the micro con growth side was a thing. But still, like, we didn't feel like we were, like, legit enough to be there even after we had gone full time.

Adam Hill  6:35  
So when did you go full time? Was it 2017? So you didn't think that you belong to that community?

Michele Hansen  6:44  
No, it existed really like so I remember actually, when I was when we started it like the only people we I don't think we knew anyone with side projects, really. And like we had friends were developers. And like, they gave us feedback on it. But like we didn't really know any, like, we knew people who were like freelance developers, who were like, you know, contracting, but like we didn't, I didn't know anybody who had like, started their own SAS and then ran it as like a one two person show. But so when I went full time in 2017, I remember really wanting community. And I actually started a meetup for like, people to work together from Whole Foods, I think, in DC. Yeah. Well, like it. Yeah, it was, I think I did like three, two or three times, like the first time nobody showed up. The second time. This, like other woman, who was a marketing consultant showed up and like, that was cool. And then we like sat next to each other at a table at Whole Foods. Yeah, didn't really talk. And I guess it was fine. And then and then the last time this like, got older guy showed up on like, pitched me how he could like we needed to get our business into China and how. And it was like, I don't know. And after that, I was like, this may, I don't know, maybe this isn't gonna work. And I shut down. And then I actually joined a co working space for I remember half a year but actually only went for like, the first three months, because then I really wanted to, like meet people and like, make friends and find other people in a similar situation. And like going to a co working space in DC there just really wasn't anybody doing that. Like, it wasn't 1776, right? No, it was actually so Okay, so, so context for the people who are not from DC. So 1776 I don't even know if it still exists, but it was like this, like, incubators, slash like co working space in downtown dc 1776 is actually where we did our buco to prototype testing. So we had friends who had a start up at 1776. And one da...

]]> Check out Django Unicorn! https://www.django-unicorn.com/

Follow Adam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamghill

Michele Hansen  0:00 
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/

When you’re bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you’re spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don’t pay?

Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. 

And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. 

Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.


Hey, everyone, welcome back to software social. So as you heard last week, Colleen joined the Hammerstone team. And she also just started a job recently. And she just moved California. So Colleen has a lot going on this week. And so for the benefit of her mental health, we decided that she should just take the week off. And I'm super excited because that meant that I got to bring a friend on the show this week. So I have Adam hill with us, Adam and I actually used to work together. He was the CTO at a place I used to work at. And he also has some projects going. So welcome, Adam. Hey, it's been a long time since we've caught. Yeah, it's weird. I should do this more often. No, no, when we had I had Murray pulling on a couple of weeks ago, the notion expert. And we like had that exact same conversation at the beginning of it was like, This is so weird. I talked to you online all the time. But we haven't actually spoken in a very long time.

Adam Hill  2:04  
Right. talking over Twitter is a little bit different than hearing someone's voice.

Michele Hansen  2:08  
Yeah. Yeah, it is. So so actually speaking of one of those conversations we are having so we were talking the other day about podcasts, and you were kind of thinking about maybe you start your own show or whatnot. But you said something in particular that I wanted to talk about? Because I think it is I think it's will strike a chord with a lot of people. And you said, I'm tired of hearing podcasts from people who don't struggle.

Adam Hill  2:41  
Yes. Oh, all right. So no offense to you. And thank Colleen, because I think you guys do a great job of talking through the things that you're, you know, having problems with. And maybe this is just the podcast that I tend to listen to. But there seem to be a couple of categories. There's like, advice, podcasts, there are interview podcasts. And then there are kind of like two co founders, like talking through their last week sort of podcasts. And the advice podcasts seem to be more like, I'm an expert, I know what I'm doing. Here's 10 ways to get more traffic to your landing page, or whatever. The interview podcasts are more like, I just made a million dollars in the last year, like, asked me how I did it. And then the two co founders on a journey. Maybe that's the closest to like, these are the things that we're working through. And I'm having trouble with this or that. But even like, even Colleen, she's making $1,000 a month, which to me is like, That's crazy. Like that's, that's, you know, she's like having so much success. And, you know, maybe some of this is sort of like, everything is relative. I'm, I've tried a bunch of little side projects and startups over the years, and I've never gotten to $1,000 a month, but like, maybe she's looking at you and being like, well, Michelle is like Michelle and Mathias are supporting their family, you know, on their startup. So like, maybe it's just everyone is able to look at someone who is above them, quote, unquote, and see someone who is like, doing more of what they want to be doing.

Michele Hansen  4:40  
I think what you're saying is is something that a lot of people feel, and I think that there's kind of this undercurrent of loneliness to a certain extent behind the sort of indie hacker indie SAS kind of world where you know if it's just your one person And working on something or maybe you have a co founder, like me, like, don't really have a lot of people in your daily life to talk to you about these kinds of things. And we're already sort of a lonely pursuit to like, try to start your own SAS on the weekend to then like, hear other people who are doing it, but to hear that they're like having the success that that seems elusive to you. Like that could reinforce that kind of feeling of loneliness. And I could understand how that might make you want to, you know, scream at your phone that like $1,000 is actually amazing. What are you talking about?

Adam Hill  5:40  
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, Can you talk a little bit about, you know, I assume that it was very helpful for you and Mateus to be working on things together throughout the years, like when you were starting geocodes Oh, so like, was that your sort of like support system? Because there was no mic or cough at that point. And there was, you know, indie hackers, I don't think was around. Yeah. Can you just elaborate on on how that worked for you?

Michele Hansen  6:08  
You know, we actually, we didn't go to micro conference till 2019. And we didn't go for so long. Because we didn't feel like legit enough to be there. Like, and I guess I didn't know that. Like the micro con growth side was a thing. But still, like, we didn't feel like we were, like, legit enough to be there even after we had gone full time.

Adam Hill  6:35  
So when did you go full time? Was it 2017? So you didn't think that you belong to that community?

Michele Hansen  6:44  
No, it existed really like so I remember actually, when I was when we started it like the only people we I don't think we knew anyone with side projects, really. And like we had friends were developers. And like, they gave us feedback on it. But like we didn't really know any, like, we knew people who were like freelance developers, who were like, you know, contracting, but like we didn't, I didn't know anybody who had like, started their own SAS and then ran it as like a one two person show. But so when I went full time in 2017, I remember really wanting community. And I actually started a meetup for like, people to work together from Whole Foods, I think, in DC. Yeah. Well, like it. Yeah, it was, I think I did like three, two or three times, like the first time nobody showed up. The second time. This, like other woman, who was a marketing consultant showed up and like, that was cool. And then we like sat next to each other at a table at Whole Foods. Yeah, didn't really talk. And I guess it was fine. And then and then the last time this like, got older guy showed up on like, pitched me how he could like we needed to get our business into China and how. And it was like, I don't know. And after that, I was like, this may, I don't know, maybe this isn't gonna work. And I shut down. And then I actually joined a co working space for I remember half a year but actually only went for like, the first three months, because then I really wanted to, like meet people and like, make friends and find other people in a similar situation. And like going to a co working space in DC there just really wasn't anybody doing that. Like, it wasn't 1776, right? No, it was actually so Okay, so, so context for the people who are not from DC. So 1776 I don't even know if it still exists, but it was like this, like, incubators, slash like co working space in downtown dc 1776 is actually where we did our buco to prototype testing. So we had friends who had a start up at 1776. And one da...

]]> Tue, 24 Aug 2021 10:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2692 Michele talks with Adam Hill, creator of Django Unicorn, about the struggles of launching side projects and his own side project, Django Unicorn. Michele talks with Adam Hill, creator of Django Unicorn, about the struggles of launching side projects and his own side project, Django Unicorn. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Decisions, Decisions Part 2: Colleen Takes the Plunge 57 57 Decisions, Decisions Part 2: Colleen Takes the Plunge full 15f290bd-4d07-4a6d-a3df-63573d7f477b https://share.transistor.fm/s/41adc662 Check out Hammerstone! http://hammerstone.dev/

Michele Hansen  0:00   
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/

When you’re bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you’re spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don’t pay?


Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. 


And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. 


Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.

Hey, everyone. So you may remember a couple of weeks ago, Colleen was facing a big decision about whether she should join an exciting project that some of her friends had started. So I'm here to tell you today that Colleen did decide to join that project. And we thought that you should hear about it from her and the team she's joining. So she is joining Hammerstone with our friends, Aaron and Sean. And you may remember Shawn from our episode a few months ago, where he was helping me learn how to market a book. So we thought we would let you listen to the episode that Colleen did on the Hammerstone podcast recently, where she's talking about joining the team. And after you listen, make sure to go subscribe to the Hammerstone podcast to get more updates about that really exciting project.

Unknown Speaker  1:54  
All right, we are recording. And we have three people here with us today. So the third person you want to introduce yourself.

Colleen Schnettler  2:03  
Hello, everyone. My name is Colleen and I have been working for Shawn and Aaron for about six months now. And this is my debut appearance on the Hammerstone podcast.

Unknown Speaker  2:14  
Welcome to the show. Thanks. So Colleen has been working, she said for us. But now Colleen is working with us. Colleen is a part of the Hammerstone team now. She's the third partner.

Colleen Schnettler  2:29  
Yes, I am super pumped. Super excited to join the team.

Unknown Speaker  2:34  
Yeah, so I guess we've been talking about this client for like, a year or more. And we've mentioned Colleen several times, I don't think it's been a secret. And she's the one that's been doing. She's the one that's been doing the rails side of the Refine product. And so, Shawn and Colleen have been working on this client for a long time. And the client has kind of been like, hey, what if we just keep doing this for a long, long time, we're like, great, we, that sounds good to us. And so Colleen is gonna continue working. But this client for they just, they just love Colleen, they just can't, they can't get enough of you. So, yeah, she's coming on as a partner and Hammerstone and she's gonna own the rails side of things. And I own the Laravel side of things. And Sean owns basically everything else. Kind of kind of a huge change, you know, in a whirlwind the past couple of weeks, but welcome.

Colleen Schnettler  3:41  
Thanks.

Unknown Speaker  3:43  
Yes, super cool. So speaking of owning all the other things, actually, can you guys hear me the sound just cut out weirdly for a second? We're good. You're okay. Yep. Yeah, so we, since there's three of us now, Aaron, and I have been, as I put it on the call with the lawyer yesterday, just yoloing it for the last year with our sort of like, operating agreement. So we got to hammer that out, you know, and actually do that properly given there's three of us, and that's an extra level of complication. So, the, the thing that we talked about with the lawyer, which I wanted to bring up with you guys was so first of all, I brought on my lawyer, Dalia who's awesome, and the best lawyer that I know. And I was like, Oh, yeah, I definitely want dahlias represent Hammerstone that Dalia immediately brought up that it's a conflict of interest of her because she's representing me. I'm planning for aliens. And I was like, Oh, well, I'll just find another lawyer for planning for aliens. And that's when I realized like last night, I was like, do I want to do that? Like it's, I want Dalia to represent Hammerstone but I also like kind of still want to have Dalia around for other shit for me. So I think that she had mentioned this as a possibility where like, she could represent us both. And then if there's a conflict of interest step aside, and it would go to me by default, I think is what she said. And then Hammerstone would have to find another lawyer. How does that sound to you guys?

Colleen Schnettler  5:18  
Yeah, so what I took from that conversation was exactly that, like, she can represent you, she can represent Hammerstone. But if the three of us as Hammerstone have a problem, she would then have to step back and then all of us would, like, if we're at the point where we all need our own attorneys, like something has gone terribly wrong, right? Like, we're probably just gonna want to Anyway, when we're talking about attorneys, that's all we're talking about is these horrible situations, right. So that is what we're talking about right now is a horrible situation that, you know, potentially could happen in the future. Get it? I'm not putting anything out of possibility. Like, I'm fine with that. I don't know, she had said something about how someone has to wait, like waive the conflict of interest. So you can ask her what that means. But I mean, I have no issues with this, because I just, I know, no one ever sees themselves in these situations, but I just cannot imagine a situation where that would happen. And if it did, then, I mean, you're so far gone by that point that, you know, I'm okay.

Unknown Speaker  6:29  
Yeah, I think I think I understand the same thing. So she'll represent planning for aliens, which is your holding Corporation. Shawn, shall represent planning for aliens shall represent Hammerstone. And should, Shawn Colleen and Aaron ever need representation against each other not as Hammerstone against each other as individuals, then that's when we have to say conflict of interest, or, you know, Colleen, and I get our own lawyers or whatever. Does that seem right? That's exactly it. Yeah. Yep. I'm on board with that. That's fine.

Colleen Schnettler  7:02  
Yeah, I'm totally fine.

Unknown Speaker  7:03  
She'll give us whatever papers to sign about that. And then Alright, cool.

Colleen Schnettler  7:07  
Sure. What I didn't understand from that call was the accountant thing. At the election, yeah, way into some tax law with a vesting schedule. For me, and that was kind of Whoosh. So

Unknown Speaker  7:24  
So you got to talk to our accountant, like, so this is what we're talking about. We have our accountant, you could you could have your own, or you just use Aaron, I'm like, pushing, we just use the one accountant for all the stuff. I mean, it's not. He's an accountant. So I don't know if there's like, there's not like a conflict of interest, right? He's just gonna tell you like, what's the optimal thing to do?

Colleen Schnettler  7:43  
Right? This is how you should structure it. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  7:46  
Yeah. And, and my understanding, I never thought about this before, I guess, because it's gonna be like a taxable event, that you could decide, take the taxes now or take the taxes later. And I think that'll probably all depend on...

]]> Check out Hammerstone! http://hammerstone.dev/

Michele Hansen  0:00   
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/

When you’re bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you’re spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don’t pay?


Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. 


And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. 


Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.

Hey, everyone. So you may remember a couple of weeks ago, Colleen was facing a big decision about whether she should join an exciting project that some of her friends had started. So I'm here to tell you today that Colleen did decide to join that project. And we thought that you should hear about it from her and the team she's joining. So she is joining Hammerstone with our friends, Aaron and Sean. And you may remember Shawn from our episode a few months ago, where he was helping me learn how to market a book. So we thought we would let you listen to the episode that Colleen did on the Hammerstone podcast recently, where she's talking about joining the team. And after you listen, make sure to go subscribe to the Hammerstone podcast to get more updates about that really exciting project.

Unknown Speaker  1:54  
All right, we are recording. And we have three people here with us today. So the third person you want to introduce yourself.

Colleen Schnettler  2:03  
Hello, everyone. My name is Colleen and I have been working for Shawn and Aaron for about six months now. And this is my debut appearance on the Hammerstone podcast.

Unknown Speaker  2:14  
Welcome to the show. Thanks. So Colleen has been working, she said for us. But now Colleen is working with us. Colleen is a part of the Hammerstone team now. She's the third partner.

Colleen Schnettler  2:29  
Yes, I am super pumped. Super excited to join the team.

Unknown Speaker  2:34  
Yeah, so I guess we've been talking about this client for like, a year or more. And we've mentioned Colleen several times, I don't think it's been a secret. And she's the one that's been doing. She's the one that's been doing the rails side of the Refine product. And so, Shawn and Colleen have been working on this client for a long time. And the client has kind of been like, hey, what if we just keep doing this for a long, long time, we're like, great, we, that sounds good to us. And so Colleen is gonna continue working. But this client for they just, they just love Colleen, they just can't, they can't get enough of you. So, yeah, she's coming on as a partner and Hammerstone and she's gonna own the rails side of things. And I own the Laravel side of things. And Sean owns basically everything else. Kind of kind of a huge change, you know, in a whirlwind the past couple of weeks, but welcome.

Colleen Schnettler  3:41  
Thanks.

Unknown Speaker  3:43  
Yes, super cool. So speaking of owning all the other things, actually, can you guys hear me the sound just cut out weirdly for a second? We're good. You're okay. Yep. Yeah, so we, since there's three of us now, Aaron, and I have been, as I put it on the call with the lawyer yesterday, just yoloing it for the last year with our sort of like, operating agreement. So we got to hammer that out, you know, and actually do that properly given there's three of us, and that's an extra level of complication. So, the, the thing that we talked about with the lawyer, which I wanted to bring up with you guys was so first of all, I brought on my lawyer, Dalia who's awesome, and the best lawyer that I know. And I was like, Oh, yeah, I definitely want dahlias represent Hammerstone that Dalia immediately brought up that it's a conflict of interest of her because she's representing me. I'm planning for aliens. And I was like, Oh, well, I'll just find another lawyer for planning for aliens. And that's when I realized like last night, I was like, do I want to do that? Like it's, I want Dalia to represent Hammerstone but I also like kind of still want to have Dalia around for other shit for me. So I think that she had mentioned this as a possibility where like, she could represent us both. And then if there's a conflict of interest step aside, and it would go to me by default, I think is what she said. And then Hammerstone would have to find another lawyer. How does that sound to you guys?

Colleen Schnettler  5:18  
Yeah, so what I took from that conversation was exactly that, like, she can represent you, she can represent Hammerstone. But if the three of us as Hammerstone have a problem, she would then have to step back and then all of us would, like, if we're at the point where we all need our own attorneys, like something has gone terribly wrong, right? Like, we're probably just gonna want to Anyway, when we're talking about attorneys, that's all we're talking about is these horrible situations, right. So that is what we're talking about right now is a horrible situation that, you know, potentially could happen in the future. Get it? I'm not putting anything out of possibility. Like, I'm fine with that. I don't know, she had said something about how someone has to wait, like waive the conflict of interest. So you can ask her what that means. But I mean, I have no issues with this, because I just, I know, no one ever sees themselves in these situations, but I just cannot imagine a situation where that would happen. And if it did, then, I mean, you're so far gone by that point that, you know, I'm okay.

Unknown Speaker  6:29  
Yeah, I think I think I understand the same thing. So she'll represent planning for aliens, which is your holding Corporation. Shawn, shall represent planning for aliens shall represent Hammerstone. And should, Shawn Colleen and Aaron ever need representation against each other not as Hammerstone against each other as individuals, then that's when we have to say conflict of interest, or, you know, Colleen, and I get our own lawyers or whatever. Does that seem right? That's exactly it. Yeah. Yep. I'm on board with that. That's fine.

Colleen Schnettler  7:02  
Yeah, I'm totally fine.

Unknown Speaker  7:03  
She'll give us whatever papers to sign about that. And then Alright, cool.

Colleen Schnettler  7:07  
Sure. What I didn't understand from that call was the accountant thing. At the election, yeah, way into some tax law with a vesting schedule. For me, and that was kind of Whoosh. So

Unknown Speaker  7:24  
So you got to talk to our accountant, like, so this is what we're talking about. We have our accountant, you could you could have your own, or you just use Aaron, I'm like, pushing, we just use the one accountant for all the stuff. I mean, it's not. He's an accountant. So I don't know if there's like, there's not like a conflict of interest, right? He's just gonna tell you like, what's the optimal thing to do?

Colleen Schnettler  7:43  
Right? This is how you should structure it. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  7:46  
Yeah. And, and my understanding, I never thought about this before, I guess, because it's gonna be like a taxable event, that you could decide, take the taxes now or take the taxes later. And I think that'll probably all depend on...

]]> Tue, 17 Aug 2021 11:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2227 Follow-up to the Decisions, Decisions episode: Colleen decided to join that exciting new project! Follow-up to the Decisions, Decisions episode: Colleen decided to join that exciting new project! SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Breaking 200 56 56 Breaking 200 full 50a6ed90-b3ff-4f77-998a-d5ca1b5e4bfa https://share.transistor.fm/s/89868564 Buy Michele's book! https://deployempathy.com/

Michele Hansen  0:00 
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/

When you’re bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you’re spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don’t pay?


Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. 


And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. 


Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.

Colleen Schnettler  0:51  
So Michele, how are things going with the book? 

Michele Hansen  0:55  
They're going? Um, so I checked the numbers the other day and between the PDF and the paperback and Kindle editions, sold 210 copies so far. Wow.

Colleen Schnettler  1:09  
Don't most books don't most self published books only sell 250 copies over their lifetime.

Michele Hansen  1:16  
So Miss, like, I happened to like, slack that the other day.

Colleen Schnettler  1:22  
Like you set me up for that one. So we could talk about how awesome you are?

Michele Hansen  1:26  
Yeah, I was actually kind of like, I was like, okay, you know, that's good. Like, because I think I kind of went into this. And it was like, worst case scenario, like, everybody on the newsletter list buys it. Right. Like because other people are interested in what I'm saying. So that adds about like, 300 people on that list. So I was like, okay, like, you know, that's that's good. That's solid. And then yeah, and then I was, someone kind of prompted me to like they were they were like, that's really good. And I was like present. And it turns out the average self published book only sells like 250 copies total lifetime. And then the average published book, like publisher published book sells 3000 copies, two to 300 of which would be in its first year. Okay, wow. Consider that we're a month into this. I guess. It's pretty good.

Colleen Schnettler  2:16  
Yeah, you're already you're already killing that record. That's amazing.

Michele Hansen  2:22  
And if anything, is, I feel like I haven't really, like done anything. Um, I mean, no, I feel like I you know, I've been tweeting about it probably incessantly. And I sent out a couple of newsletters where I mentioned that. I think you challenged me to be on what like

Colleen Schnettler  2:39  
1020 I feel like it was 20

Michele Hansen  2:41  
podcast. Oh, I was hoping it was 10. But I think so I just, I've I've recorded two so far. None of them are okay yet. But which ones have you done? So I've done two so far. I have another one. I have two more on the calendar. Oh, okay. And then I was just someone was just like, dming me this morning about being on there's and there's one that I like I need to do my own recording. Like there's some things in the hopper, like, basically, when I like dm with people about this, then I like I've been emailing myself, the link to the DMS because I always lose my DMS and can't ever find anything. So I email it to myself with the link to the DMS and then I've been tagging them as podcast. And then I okay folder in my email. So it's about like, I have a list of like 10 ish so far.

Colleen Schnettler  3:36  
That's great tennis a lot. Michelle, good for you.

Michele Hansen  3:39  
So I feel like I haven't really started to promote it. Yeah. So you were saying the other day? How? Like you were trying to get some content out? And how you're, like struggling to get it out for like three months. Yeah. And one of our mutual friends said, Colleen, like, get it together. Michelle just published a whole book in five months.

Colleen Schnettler  4:02  
That's literally what happened. It was hilarious. We were chatting. And I was complaining. I don't know if complaining is the right word, you know, lamenting the fact that I was struggling to write a piece of content, he very tactfully pointed out that you managed to write an entire book. Like I think you can write a piece of content. But on

Michele Hansen  4:21  
that note at like, I think the rate at which I got the book out was I think it was so fast because first of all, I had all of it in my head like and it was just a matter of like I need to go find the reference for this thing. It's not like I needed to go find new references and find like I didn't really have to find any new content for it. But the other thing is, is I think I was kind of in a like hyper focus black hole but like a very extended one for like five months where basically all of my free time was getting spent on this and It's kind of I know like, last night, all of a sudden, I felt exhausted, like and not like physically exhausted. But I was like, Oh my god, like I'm, I'm, I'm tired, like I have been running full tilt at this. And now I'm tired. And it was, I mean, it's good timing right. So because out but like it was weird I had this moment where I was like, you know i, one of my favorite things to do is just like, while I'm eating lunch or whatever, just to like sit down with the New Yorker. And I usually read it. As soon as I get it, I even get it shipped overseas. And I have a stack of them a foot high still in the packaging that I have not read. And I like had this and I looked at it. And I was like, that's not like me, like that's really unlike me to hate. And I have like just like a stack of books I really wanted to read. And I haven't read a not a fiction book in like six months. I was like, This is all very unlike me, like and I was like, I think I'm like really close to getting burned out actually like, I'm like, I just didn't realize how fast I was going. I think my might sound kind of weird. But But yeah, I just I didn't realize it. And then so on. And all of a sudden last night, I was like, I'm exhausted. Oh my gosh, I'm yeah. And so I don't think the pace at which I wrote the book. I don't think it should be used as the standard. Because I don't think it was very healthy. And also, I already had all of it in my head. And I just

Colleen Schnettler  6:24  
need so it was interesting to get it out. While you were saying that I was thinking about the episode you did with marine. And you both talked about how you had these tendencies to go into something Full Tilt, with no breaks. And I remember there was one part where you talked about like, someone would be talking to you like maybe your husband, and you'd be still be thinking about your book in your head. Yeah. And, and so that's really interesting. So for you it's like, the way it seems to be like this has been like such a sprint for you. And now your body's just like, Huh, like, what do they call it adrenaline fatigue, where your body's just like, Whoa, yep. So do you feel? I mean, how are you feeling about it? Now? Do you want to take a break from it? Do you just want to sleep for a month? Like, where's your headspace?

Michele Hansen  7:08  
I'm a parent. So I can't sleep for a month. Yes, not not allowed. I mean, so I like going into this like in June, I was kind of like, oh, and I'll you know, I'll do the audio book in the fall. Like when school starts again, like I have a little more time like, well, we'll do that in the fall. And now I think with everything coming out, I've been li...

]]> Buy Michele's book! https://deployempathy.com/

Michele Hansen  0:00 
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/

When you’re bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you’re spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don’t pay?


Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. 


And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. 


Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.

Colleen Schnettler  0:51  
So Michele, how are things going with the book? 

Michele Hansen  0:55  
They're going? Um, so I checked the numbers the other day and between the PDF and the paperback and Kindle editions, sold 210 copies so far. Wow.

Colleen Schnettler  1:09  
Don't most books don't most self published books only sell 250 copies over their lifetime.

Michele Hansen  1:16  
So Miss, like, I happened to like, slack that the other day.

Colleen Schnettler  1:22  
Like you set me up for that one. So we could talk about how awesome you are?

Michele Hansen  1:26  
Yeah, I was actually kind of like, I was like, okay, you know, that's good. Like, because I think I kind of went into this. And it was like, worst case scenario, like, everybody on the newsletter list buys it. Right. Like because other people are interested in what I'm saying. So that adds about like, 300 people on that list. So I was like, okay, like, you know, that's that's good. That's solid. And then yeah, and then I was, someone kind of prompted me to like they were they were like, that's really good. And I was like present. And it turns out the average self published book only sells like 250 copies total lifetime. And then the average published book, like publisher published book sells 3000 copies, two to 300 of which would be in its first year. Okay, wow. Consider that we're a month into this. I guess. It's pretty good.

Colleen Schnettler  2:16  
Yeah, you're already you're already killing that record. That's amazing.

Michele Hansen  2:22  
And if anything, is, I feel like I haven't really, like done anything. Um, I mean, no, I feel like I you know, I've been tweeting about it probably incessantly. And I sent out a couple of newsletters where I mentioned that. I think you challenged me to be on what like

Colleen Schnettler  2:39  
1020 I feel like it was 20

Michele Hansen  2:41  
podcast. Oh, I was hoping it was 10. But I think so I just, I've I've recorded two so far. None of them are okay yet. But which ones have you done? So I've done two so far. I have another one. I have two more on the calendar. Oh, okay. And then I was just someone was just like, dming me this morning about being on there's and there's one that I like I need to do my own recording. Like there's some things in the hopper, like, basically, when I like dm with people about this, then I like I've been emailing myself, the link to the DMS because I always lose my DMS and can't ever find anything. So I email it to myself with the link to the DMS and then I've been tagging them as podcast. And then I okay folder in my email. So it's about like, I have a list of like 10 ish so far.

Colleen Schnettler  3:36  
That's great tennis a lot. Michelle, good for you.

Michele Hansen  3:39  
So I feel like I haven't really started to promote it. Yeah. So you were saying the other day? How? Like you were trying to get some content out? And how you're, like struggling to get it out for like three months. Yeah. And one of our mutual friends said, Colleen, like, get it together. Michelle just published a whole book in five months.

Colleen Schnettler  4:02  
That's literally what happened. It was hilarious. We were chatting. And I was complaining. I don't know if complaining is the right word, you know, lamenting the fact that I was struggling to write a piece of content, he very tactfully pointed out that you managed to write an entire book. Like I think you can write a piece of content. But on

Michele Hansen  4:21  
that note at like, I think the rate at which I got the book out was I think it was so fast because first of all, I had all of it in my head like and it was just a matter of like I need to go find the reference for this thing. It's not like I needed to go find new references and find like I didn't really have to find any new content for it. But the other thing is, is I think I was kind of in a like hyper focus black hole but like a very extended one for like five months where basically all of my free time was getting spent on this and It's kind of I know like, last night, all of a sudden, I felt exhausted, like and not like physically exhausted. But I was like, Oh my god, like I'm, I'm, I'm tired, like I have been running full tilt at this. And now I'm tired. And it was, I mean, it's good timing right. So because out but like it was weird I had this moment where I was like, you know i, one of my favorite things to do is just like, while I'm eating lunch or whatever, just to like sit down with the New Yorker. And I usually read it. As soon as I get it, I even get it shipped overseas. And I have a stack of them a foot high still in the packaging that I have not read. And I like had this and I looked at it. And I was like, that's not like me, like that's really unlike me to hate. And I have like just like a stack of books I really wanted to read. And I haven't read a not a fiction book in like six months. I was like, This is all very unlike me, like and I was like, I think I'm like really close to getting burned out actually like, I'm like, I just didn't realize how fast I was going. I think my might sound kind of weird. But But yeah, I just I didn't realize it. And then so on. And all of a sudden last night, I was like, I'm exhausted. Oh my gosh, I'm yeah. And so I don't think the pace at which I wrote the book. I don't think it should be used as the standard. Because I don't think it was very healthy. And also, I already had all of it in my head. And I just

Colleen Schnettler  6:24  
need so it was interesting to get it out. While you were saying that I was thinking about the episode you did with marine. And you both talked about how you had these tendencies to go into something Full Tilt, with no breaks. And I remember there was one part where you talked about like, someone would be talking to you like maybe your husband, and you'd be still be thinking about your book in your head. Yeah. And, and so that's really interesting. So for you it's like, the way it seems to be like this has been like such a sprint for you. And now your body's just like, Huh, like, what do they call it adrenaline fatigue, where your body's just like, Whoa, yep. So do you feel? I mean, how are you feeling about it? Now? Do you want to take a break from it? Do you just want to sleep for a month? Like, where's your headspace?

Michele Hansen  7:08  
I'm a parent. So I can't sleep for a month. Yes, not not allowed. I mean, so I like going into this like in June, I was kind of like, oh, and I'll you know, I'll do the audio book in the fall. Like when school starts again, like I have a little more time like, well, we'll do that in the fall. And now I think with everything coming out, I've been li...

]]> Tue, 10 Aug 2021 06:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1558 Michele and Colleen discuss Michele surpassing the 200 mark for books sold and how Colleen is in a bit of a rut on her product. Michele and Colleen discuss Michele surpassing the 200 mark for books sold and how Colleen is in a bit of a rut on her product. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Decisions, Decisions 55 55 Decisions, Decisions full e9b7d558-fc7d-4cbf-96ef-a76023cb4e83 https://share.transistor.fm/s/a731b86b Buy Michele's book! deployempathy.com

Michele Hansen  0:00 
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. When you're bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you're spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product has time sings that just don't pay. Here's one way to find out. Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data to you can even log time directly from your GitHub commit messages. Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan forever. Visit NokoTime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.

Colleen Schnettler  0:50  
So Michele, I went to purchase your book yesterday on Amazon. And I saw that it is the number one new release in business books.

Michele Hansen  1:04  
Is this research and development. But yes. And I The crazy thing is is you were the first person to notice like I didn't know that until you tweeted.

Colleen Schnettler  1:15  
Yes, that makes me so happy. So I was gonna text you but like my number one Google searches What time is it in Denmark? It was like 4am or something. So I was like, Okay, I'll just tweet about it. And she'll see it when she wakes up.

Michele Hansen  1:29  
Thanks. I remember seeing that. And I was like, oh my god. Um, yeah, that was really, really, really unexpected. It's been, it's been such a week.

Colleen Schnettler  1:42  
Yeah. So how many copies Have you sold? Okay, so

Michele Hansen  1:46  
on Amazon, including paperback and Kindle 47. And then I also closed the pre sale on Monday. And so that was 127 copies there. Wow.

Colleen Schnettler  2:07  
Yeah, that's a lot.

Michele Hansen  2:09  
Yeah. So yeah, like over 150. which feels, which feels pretty good.

Colleen Schnettler  2:16  
Um, and,

Michele Hansen  2:20  
but, yeah, I mean, and it's kind of fun seeing the orders from around the world, like, you know, like us, Germany, Japan, UK, Canada, Australia. Like, I mean, I know, there's a lot of places where Amazon isn't. And I don't have that data for the PDF version out in Brazil, too. But, you know, I mean, this. I feel like this whole book was, like people from around the world, most of whom I have never met and had never met before. were part of making this book happen of encouraging it and sharing the newsletters and replying to them and sharing their own stories with me about their experiences with talking to customers and what they've struggled with and what's worked for them. And I'm just, I'm just so moved. Like, it's just, yeah, it's been. It's been quite a week.

Colleen Schnettler  3:21  
Yeah, that's wonderful. I'm so happy for you. And I'm happy the launch has gone so well.

Michele Hansen  3:27  
Yeah, and I think it's not like a like a sort of a big bang launch. here because it is kind of summer and you know, things are moving a little slowly. And also doesn't, doesn't have to be it'd be a huge thing. But so right now, kind of focusing on trying to get reviews of the book on Amazon before I tried to do a Product Hunt launch. I think that's kind of like, I feel like good right now with like launching it with the people who have been along for the journey and supporting it. And, you know, someone actually sent me some like, little, like, formatting quirks they noticed in their version. And so I kind of want to get those ironed out. Before you know, bring the book to people who may not be so understanding of, you know, yeah, seeing that. Some stray formatting or whatnot. Um, yeah. Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  4:27  
Does Amazon have analytics built in to their book publishing platform? Because you mentioned you could see where people were coming from?

Michele Hansen  4:34  
Yeah, actually, I can pull it up right now. So the whole that the KDP or Kindle Direct Publishing is what they call it. They have this little dashboard, so I can see that. Um, so yeah, there's been orders from US, UK, Germany, Japan, and Canada, and Brazil. And it tells me like, what day they're ordered on and then also the Kindle reading percentage. Which I guess they use to determine the quality of the book. So like when you did on a Kindle, Amazon is kind of creepily like tracking that and basically, you know, but like, basically people buy this book, and then they read 10 pages of it, and then they don't ever open it again. Amazon takes that as a signal about the quality of the book. Oh, yeah, I mean, so maybe like, people buy it just to like, have it just in case. But so but it can show me for example, that super creeped out by that,

Colleen Schnettler  5:31  
by the way, like gender weird. And

Michele Hansen  5:35  
65 pages have been read. Total. And then I think it can also show me like the there's been 24 pages read today.

Colleen Schnettler  5:47  
So Wow, that's wild. I didn't know that.

Michele Hansen  5:51  
I feel a little so.

Colleen Schnettler  5:52  
Yeah, a little bit. So tell me about the feedback you've been getting from people have a lot of people have been reaching out to you to tell you, you know, give you feedback on their experiences with the book.

Michele Hansen  6:01  
Yeah, people have been so nice. Um, as I mentioned, a bunch of people were posting reviews, but I feel like you need more before I launch it on product times are kind of go on some big podcasts to promote it. Because like those people, they don't know me, they haven't been listening. They haven't been following along. Like, why the, you know, why the heck should they care who I am and what I wrote about, right. So, um, so yeah, people have been just so generous with their time and their energy of helping to get the word out about the book. And any, I've gotten nice emails from people, it's actually been kind of funny to get texts from my friends about it, because I haven't really talked about it much with like, my friends and family because it's not relevant to most of them. Like, I feel like, you know, I feel like I describe it. And I'm like, well, it's like, super nice. It's like how to, like, create software products and sell them and stuff like that. And Mathias is always like, no, everybody should have this book. It's so relevant. Everyone, like, you know, I there's like this little like group of like real estate agents in Canada who are really excited about it, for example. Um, and, um, but so like, even just getting texts from friends of mine, who I haven't really talked to about, it has been such a nice surprise, like, one of my friends sent me a picture of her two year old son flipping through it when it arrived. And apparently, he loves the duck on the cover. Totally warms my heart. But actually, oh, negative, um, there was somebody who tweeted something negative at me, like, what was it? They're like, like my first tweet, where I like tweeted out about how it was available on Amazon, this person that doesn't follow me, and I don't follow and tweeted that. They replied to me, and they said, aka manipulation for Dummies. And I like looked at it. I was like, really? Like, you come to like, somebody's like celebration of this, and you show up with negativity like that. And then I thought they made the wise decision and deleted it...

]]> Buy Michele's book! deployempathy.com

Michele Hansen  0:00 
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. When you're bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you're spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product has time sings that just don't pay. Here's one way to find out. Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data to you can even log time directly from your GitHub commit messages. Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan forever. Visit NokoTime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.

Colleen Schnettler  0:50  
So Michele, I went to purchase your book yesterday on Amazon. And I saw that it is the number one new release in business books.

Michele Hansen  1:04  
Is this research and development. But yes. And I The crazy thing is is you were the first person to notice like I didn't know that until you tweeted.

Colleen Schnettler  1:15  
Yes, that makes me so happy. So I was gonna text you but like my number one Google searches What time is it in Denmark? It was like 4am or something. So I was like, Okay, I'll just tweet about it. And she'll see it when she wakes up.

Michele Hansen  1:29  
Thanks. I remember seeing that. And I was like, oh my god. Um, yeah, that was really, really, really unexpected. It's been, it's been such a week.

Colleen Schnettler  1:42  
Yeah. So how many copies Have you sold? Okay, so

Michele Hansen  1:46  
on Amazon, including paperback and Kindle 47. And then I also closed the pre sale on Monday. And so that was 127 copies there. Wow.

Colleen Schnettler  2:07  
Yeah, that's a lot.

Michele Hansen  2:09  
Yeah. So yeah, like over 150. which feels, which feels pretty good.

Colleen Schnettler  2:16  
Um, and,

Michele Hansen  2:20  
but, yeah, I mean, and it's kind of fun seeing the orders from around the world, like, you know, like us, Germany, Japan, UK, Canada, Australia. Like, I mean, I know, there's a lot of places where Amazon isn't. And I don't have that data for the PDF version out in Brazil, too. But, you know, I mean, this. I feel like this whole book was, like people from around the world, most of whom I have never met and had never met before. were part of making this book happen of encouraging it and sharing the newsletters and replying to them and sharing their own stories with me about their experiences with talking to customers and what they've struggled with and what's worked for them. And I'm just, I'm just so moved. Like, it's just, yeah, it's been. It's been quite a week.

Colleen Schnettler  3:21  
Yeah, that's wonderful. I'm so happy for you. And I'm happy the launch has gone so well.

Michele Hansen  3:27  
Yeah, and I think it's not like a like a sort of a big bang launch. here because it is kind of summer and you know, things are moving a little slowly. And also doesn't, doesn't have to be it'd be a huge thing. But so right now, kind of focusing on trying to get reviews of the book on Amazon before I tried to do a Product Hunt launch. I think that's kind of like, I feel like good right now with like launching it with the people who have been along for the journey and supporting it. And, you know, someone actually sent me some like, little, like, formatting quirks they noticed in their version. And so I kind of want to get those ironed out. Before you know, bring the book to people who may not be so understanding of, you know, yeah, seeing that. Some stray formatting or whatnot. Um, yeah. Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  4:27  
Does Amazon have analytics built in to their book publishing platform? Because you mentioned you could see where people were coming from?

Michele Hansen  4:34  
Yeah, actually, I can pull it up right now. So the whole that the KDP or Kindle Direct Publishing is what they call it. They have this little dashboard, so I can see that. Um, so yeah, there's been orders from US, UK, Germany, Japan, and Canada, and Brazil. And it tells me like, what day they're ordered on and then also the Kindle reading percentage. Which I guess they use to determine the quality of the book. So like when you did on a Kindle, Amazon is kind of creepily like tracking that and basically, you know, but like, basically people buy this book, and then they read 10 pages of it, and then they don't ever open it again. Amazon takes that as a signal about the quality of the book. Oh, yeah, I mean, so maybe like, people buy it just to like, have it just in case. But so but it can show me for example, that super creeped out by that,

Colleen Schnettler  5:31  
by the way, like gender weird. And

Michele Hansen  5:35  
65 pages have been read. Total. And then I think it can also show me like the there's been 24 pages read today.

Colleen Schnettler  5:47  
So Wow, that's wild. I didn't know that.

Michele Hansen  5:51  
I feel a little so.

Colleen Schnettler  5:52  
Yeah, a little bit. So tell me about the feedback you've been getting from people have a lot of people have been reaching out to you to tell you, you know, give you feedback on their experiences with the book.

Michele Hansen  6:01  
Yeah, people have been so nice. Um, as I mentioned, a bunch of people were posting reviews, but I feel like you need more before I launch it on product times are kind of go on some big podcasts to promote it. Because like those people, they don't know me, they haven't been listening. They haven't been following along. Like, why the, you know, why the heck should they care who I am and what I wrote about, right. So, um, so yeah, people have been just so generous with their time and their energy of helping to get the word out about the book. And any, I've gotten nice emails from people, it's actually been kind of funny to get texts from my friends about it, because I haven't really talked about it much with like, my friends and family because it's not relevant to most of them. Like, I feel like, you know, I feel like I describe it. And I'm like, well, it's like, super nice. It's like how to, like, create software products and sell them and stuff like that. And Mathias is always like, no, everybody should have this book. It's so relevant. Everyone, like, you know, I there's like this little like group of like real estate agents in Canada who are really excited about it, for example. Um, and, um, but so like, even just getting texts from friends of mine, who I haven't really talked to about, it has been such a nice surprise, like, one of my friends sent me a picture of her two year old son flipping through it when it arrived. And apparently, he loves the duck on the cover. Totally warms my heart. But actually, oh, negative, um, there was somebody who tweeted something negative at me, like, what was it? They're like, like my first tweet, where I like tweeted out about how it was available on Amazon, this person that doesn't follow me, and I don't follow and tweeted that. They replied to me, and they said, aka manipulation for Dummies. And I like looked at it. I was like, really? Like, you come to like, somebody's like celebration of this, and you show up with negativity like that. And then I thought they made the wise decision and deleted it...

]]> Tue, 03 Aug 2021 11:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2120 Colleen is considering adding a new project and Michele and Colleen talk it through. Colleen is considering adding a new project and Michele and Colleen talk it through. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler It's Happening! 54 54 It's Happening! full edaf6b27-cc27-4c0e-a5ea-3aa1a33b62a9 https://share.transistor.fm/s/5b087a17 Buy Michele's book!
Paperback and Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/173744660X (or search Deploy Empathy on Amazon)
PDF/ePub: deployempathy.com/pdf

Michele Hansen  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Orbit. Orbit is mission control for your community, grow and measure your community across any platform with Orbit. Find out more at orbit.love.

Colleen Schnettler  0:14  
Good morning, Michele. Hey,

Michele Hansen  0:17  
Hey, how are you?

Colleen Schnettler  0:19  
Great. So I hear that you have some new book updates.

Michele Hansen  0:24  
Yeah. So we finalized the cover this week. And I just saw, like just today just submitted it to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and Ingram Spark, which is another self publishing print on demand platform and filed for the copyright. So things are happening.

Colleen Schnettler  0:47  
That's exciting.

Michele Hansen  0:51  
Yeah, you know, I was thinking about our conversation last week, and how you were talking about how you felt like you weren't getting anything getting anything done? And I was like, man, I feel the same way.

Colleen Schnettler  1:03  
Really? Has it just felt like for weeks,

Michele Hansen  1:07  
yeah, like, I feel it? Well, you know, it's kind of it's like this weird in between liminal space where like, the copy has basically been final for a month now. And it's just sort of been kind of waiting on other things. And, and then there's also the, there's sort of the fact that it's summer here. And like summer camps aren't really as much of a thing here as they are in the US. Which, you know, I guess if like, most people who work for other people get four weeks of vacation, and they have kids, it's not really a big deal. But if you're self employed, it kind of is sure. Um, and so I, you know, I'm just sort of working at night and whatever. Or maybe I wake up early and get a couple hours in and like, man, I don't I don't know how parents in Europe who are self employed, do it. Like, I really, I really don't know. And like, just for weeks now I've been I mean, like, yeah, like, today's the day, I'm going to start recording the audio book, private podcast, I'm super excited about doing that. Now that the copy is finalized, I'm, like, ready to go. And it just like that time just keeps not happening. And I feel like I'm not making any progress. Um, but this morning, I did submit it and then not now it has to be reviewed. And I wanted to get a proof copy. But I think I might have done something wrong when I configured that option. And it just says your book might be published in 72 hours.

Colleen Schnettler  2:44  
That's fast. Okay.

Michele Hansen  2:45  
I haven't even like I wanted to, like, look at it and make sure the, you know, the cover looked right. And like, you know, the pages aren't upside down and whatnot. So okay, so I'm alone? I don't know. So maybe if you search on Amazon next week, you'll actually find it even though I'm not gonna tell anybody.

Colleen Schnettler  3:01  
But it won't be a physical copy yet. That's just

Michele Hansen  3:04  
so that'll be that the physical copy? Yeah, who would be a physical copy on Amazon, Amazon printed like, book to Amazon. I know, they could upload a book to Amazon. And then they print it whenever somebody buys it. Really? I know I was going, I was like, they let just anybody do this, like this? Wait, this is so

Colleen Schnettler  3:25  
easy. This is crazy. I had no idea. So so you submit to them your cover art and your book. And then when someone buys it, they print it on demand?

Michele Hansen  3:34  
There's some other stuff that happens. But basically, yes, that's cool. So I don't have to like go out and you know, buy, like, basically pay for a printer to print 500 copies or whatever, then mail them out myself, which I think is what you had to do before. Things like kind of KDP or Kindle on demand or Kindle on it was what they call it? Or, you know, sort of like Do you remember like cafe press in the 90s? Like, yes, people could make t shirts and then printed it whenever you bought one. It's basically like that for books. And then there's also in Ingram Spark, which is also print on demand. But I guess there's a lot of countries that Amazon doesn't serve. And also, I guess bookstores are more willing to work with Ingram spark than they are with Amazon because they can return books to Ingram spark because Ingram spark distributes a lot of non self published books to I'm learning all about this. So So yeah, so I uploaded it to them, and then they have to review it and like, I guess, make sure it looks good. Before it'll actually, I don't know, I don't know what's gonna happen next. So we're just, we're all going to find out together. I didn't really publish the ebook. I like, you know, Barnes and Noble and whatnot, like ebook platforms. I don't know. We will find out.

Colleen Schnettler  4:58  
That's exciting. So you are telling me in a matter of maybe five days, maybe less people will be able to purchase a physical copy of your book. I don't know, theoretically, probably, maybe we're gonna find out cheaper than this before. So

Michele Hansen  5:15  
I, originally I was like trying to give people estimates. And I was like, Yeah, it looks to me, like end of June. And then I just realized, I have no idea what I'm doing. Well, I knew that all along. But I realized that I have no idea what I'm doing. And therefore I should not try to predict what is going to happen next. Because that is just an exercise in folly to try to predict a process that I have no past experience with.

Colleen Schnettler  5:41  
Sure. So does that mean from you will come out when it comes out? Does that mean from your perspective that it's finished? Like you're done?

Unknown Speaker  5:51  
Ah,

Michele Hansen  5:52  
I mean, yeah, like, like yesterday Mateus looks at me, he goes, you know, this is just the beginning. Right? What does that mean? It's like Kunkle in his I

Colleen Schnettler  6:01  
started,

Michele Hansen  6:02  
because, I mean, after the book is like officially out, then there's there's the, the audio book to record, right. Like, I'm super excited about doing that as a podcast and recording it myself. You know, because then I can really make sure that the, the tone of voice is coming through and everything. And I just, you know, right. Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  6:25  
Can I just say I'm super disappointed when authors don't read their own books.

Unknown Speaker  6:30  
Yeah,

Colleen Schnettler  6:30  
yeah. Like, that makes me sad. Like, there's a prominent bootstrapping book, which was great. But it was not read by the author. And I was sad. I don't know why. Like, I understand why people don't want to read their own books. Maybe they don't like to talk that much. Maybe they have an accent. And then yeah, me with it. I don't know.

Michele Hansen  6:45  
Yeah, exactly. I think people have different reasons for not recording their own book. But I am personally really excited to do it. And to do it as a podcast, too. Because, again, I feel like I never would have gotten the book out had I not written it as a newsletter, because for me, writing an email is a lot lower pressure and stress and just mentally, like cognitively easier than like si...

]]> Buy Michele's book!
Paperback and Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/173744660X (or search Deploy Empathy on Amazon)
PDF/ePub: deployempathy.com/pdf

Michele Hansen  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Orbit. Orbit is mission control for your community, grow and measure your community across any platform with Orbit. Find out more at orbit.love.

Colleen Schnettler  0:14  
Good morning, Michele. Hey,

Michele Hansen  0:17  
Hey, how are you?

Colleen Schnettler  0:19  
Great. So I hear that you have some new book updates.

Michele Hansen  0:24  
Yeah. So we finalized the cover this week. And I just saw, like just today just submitted it to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and Ingram Spark, which is another self publishing print on demand platform and filed for the copyright. So things are happening.

Colleen Schnettler  0:47  
That's exciting.

Michele Hansen  0:51  
Yeah, you know, I was thinking about our conversation last week, and how you were talking about how you felt like you weren't getting anything getting anything done? And I was like, man, I feel the same way.

Colleen Schnettler  1:03  
Really? Has it just felt like for weeks,

Michele Hansen  1:07  
yeah, like, I feel it? Well, you know, it's kind of it's like this weird in between liminal space where like, the copy has basically been final for a month now. And it's just sort of been kind of waiting on other things. And, and then there's also the, there's sort of the fact that it's summer here. And like summer camps aren't really as much of a thing here as they are in the US. Which, you know, I guess if like, most people who work for other people get four weeks of vacation, and they have kids, it's not really a big deal. But if you're self employed, it kind of is sure. Um, and so I, you know, I'm just sort of working at night and whatever. Or maybe I wake up early and get a couple hours in and like, man, I don't I don't know how parents in Europe who are self employed, do it. Like, I really, I really don't know. And like, just for weeks now I've been I mean, like, yeah, like, today's the day, I'm going to start recording the audio book, private podcast, I'm super excited about doing that. Now that the copy is finalized, I'm, like, ready to go. And it just like that time just keeps not happening. And I feel like I'm not making any progress. Um, but this morning, I did submit it and then not now it has to be reviewed. And I wanted to get a proof copy. But I think I might have done something wrong when I configured that option. And it just says your book might be published in 72 hours.

Colleen Schnettler  2:44  
That's fast. Okay.

Michele Hansen  2:45  
I haven't even like I wanted to, like, look at it and make sure the, you know, the cover looked right. And like, you know, the pages aren't upside down and whatnot. So okay, so I'm alone? I don't know. So maybe if you search on Amazon next week, you'll actually find it even though I'm not gonna tell anybody.

Colleen Schnettler  3:01  
But it won't be a physical copy yet. That's just

Michele Hansen  3:04  
so that'll be that the physical copy? Yeah, who would be a physical copy on Amazon, Amazon printed like, book to Amazon. I know, they could upload a book to Amazon. And then they print it whenever somebody buys it. Really? I know I was going, I was like, they let just anybody do this, like this? Wait, this is so

Colleen Schnettler  3:25  
easy. This is crazy. I had no idea. So so you submit to them your cover art and your book. And then when someone buys it, they print it on demand?

Michele Hansen  3:34  
There's some other stuff that happens. But basically, yes, that's cool. So I don't have to like go out and you know, buy, like, basically pay for a printer to print 500 copies or whatever, then mail them out myself, which I think is what you had to do before. Things like kind of KDP or Kindle on demand or Kindle on it was what they call it? Or, you know, sort of like Do you remember like cafe press in the 90s? Like, yes, people could make t shirts and then printed it whenever you bought one. It's basically like that for books. And then there's also in Ingram Spark, which is also print on demand. But I guess there's a lot of countries that Amazon doesn't serve. And also, I guess bookstores are more willing to work with Ingram spark than they are with Amazon because they can return books to Ingram spark because Ingram spark distributes a lot of non self published books to I'm learning all about this. So So yeah, so I uploaded it to them, and then they have to review it and like, I guess, make sure it looks good. Before it'll actually, I don't know, I don't know what's gonna happen next. So we're just, we're all going to find out together. I didn't really publish the ebook. I like, you know, Barnes and Noble and whatnot, like ebook platforms. I don't know. We will find out.

Colleen Schnettler  4:58  
That's exciting. So you are telling me in a matter of maybe five days, maybe less people will be able to purchase a physical copy of your book. I don't know, theoretically, probably, maybe we're gonna find out cheaper than this before. So

Michele Hansen  5:15  
I, originally I was like trying to give people estimates. And I was like, Yeah, it looks to me, like end of June. And then I just realized, I have no idea what I'm doing. Well, I knew that all along. But I realized that I have no idea what I'm doing. And therefore I should not try to predict what is going to happen next. Because that is just an exercise in folly to try to predict a process that I have no past experience with.

Colleen Schnettler  5:41  
Sure. So does that mean from you will come out when it comes out? Does that mean from your perspective that it's finished? Like you're done?

Unknown Speaker  5:51  
Ah,

Michele Hansen  5:52  
I mean, yeah, like, like yesterday Mateus looks at me, he goes, you know, this is just the beginning. Right? What does that mean? It's like Kunkle in his I

Colleen Schnettler  6:01  
started,

Michele Hansen  6:02  
because, I mean, after the book is like officially out, then there's there's the, the audio book to record, right. Like, I'm super excited about doing that as a podcast and recording it myself. You know, because then I can really make sure that the, the tone of voice is coming through and everything. And I just, you know, right. Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  6:25  
Can I just say I'm super disappointed when authors don't read their own books.

Unknown Speaker  6:30  
Yeah,

Colleen Schnettler  6:30  
yeah. Like, that makes me sad. Like, there's a prominent bootstrapping book, which was great. But it was not read by the author. And I was sad. I don't know why. Like, I understand why people don't want to read their own books. Maybe they don't like to talk that much. Maybe they have an accent. And then yeah, me with it. I don't know.

Michele Hansen  6:45  
Yeah, exactly. I think people have different reasons for not recording their own book. But I am personally really excited to do it. And to do it as a podcast, too. Because, again, I feel like I never would have gotten the book out had I not written it as a newsletter, because for me, writing an email is a lot lower pressure and stress and just mentally, like cognitively easier than like si...

]]> Tue, 27 Jul 2021 11:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2554 Michele's book finally launches, and Colleen commits to making progress happen. Michele's book finally launches, and Colleen commits to making progress happen. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler When Is It Time to Move On? 53 53 When Is It Time to Move On? full 685b91cd-5c8d-43dd-919d-14bb6be3da92 https://share.transistor.fm/s/405a9a88 Michele Hansen  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Orbit. Orbit is mission control for your community, grow and measure your community across any platform with Orbit. Find out more at Orbit.love. 

Michele Hansen 
Hey, Colleen.

Colleen Schnettler  0:15  
Hey, Michele. Good morning.

Michele Hansen  0:18  
It's been a while.

Colleen Schnettler  0:19  
Oh, I know. I've missed your face.

Michele Hansen  0:22  
I've missed your face and your voice too.

Colleen Schnettler  0:26  
Yeah, I think we haven't recorded in almost a month now.

Michele Hansen  0:29  
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  0:31  
Crazy.

Michele Hansen  0:32  
It's been it's an every year in California now.

Colleen Schnettler  0:35  
Yes.

Michele Hansen  0:37  
And I guess we should catch people up. So the other day we were emailing about what time we should be recording since there is now a nine hour time difference between us. And it occurred to me as we were sort of trying to figure out scheduling and whatnot. I had this sort of thought for a moment of You know what, we've done this for almost a year. That's a really solid run. Like apparently, like, I think most 90% of podcasts only make it to like, what, three episodes or something like that. Maybe, maybe we've maybe we're done. Maybe we did what we did what we set out to do, and maybe we should walk out on a high note.

Colleen Schnettler  1:21  
Yeah.

Michele Hansen  1:23  
And then I said that to Mateus. And he was like, No, you can't stop the podcast, it's your thing.

Colleen Schnettler  1:29  
By the way, thank you. saving the day. It's funny, you should mention that, Michelle, because a lot has changed in my life in the past month. And I had a similar thought, but not because of the time zones more because I'm like, sick of hearing my voice. I feel like I've been, I feel like I get on this podcast every week. And I just complain about how hard it is to start a business. And I'm not actually doing anything. Like, I feel like I've lost my bias to action. Like you aren't doing things, I guess I don't know, I just like colleagues, just do the thing. Stop talking about doing the thing and just do the thing.

Michele Hansen  2:08  
It's so interesting that you listen back to it and you hear that you're not doing anything. When I feel like if you were to you know, I like I imagine you listen to some audio books on your long road trip from Virginia to I did California rather than listening through our entire catalogue.

Colleen Schnettler  2:30  
That would have been funny, though.

Michele Hansen  2:32  
Yeah, I imagine you celebrate our entire catalog. But I feel like I hear you did not have a side project going last summer. Like you spent the late summer in fall. And I guess it wasn't really until the fall you like decided to go all in on this. And then by December, right, you had something launchable. And you got it out there. You got into the training wheels phase of the Heroku marketplace. And then you were finally led out into the world in February. And last we spoke you were at like right, right around 1000. Mr. That sounds like a lot to me.

Colleen Schnettler  3:19  
When you say it like that sounds really great. Go me. I just feel like for the past couple months. And to be fair, I have been single parenting three kids separated from my spouse, right in a pandemic. So it's been a little crazy. But for the past three months, I feel like I've just gotten on, and we've been recording, and I'm just like, Oh, I want to do this thing. And you'll say something brilliant. And I'm like, Yeah, I should totally do that. And then it takes me like, a month to do something.

Michele Hansen  3:47  
But I think so make sense, given all of that. And maybe we should clarify that you were away from your spouse not separated. Like, Oh, right. That utilitarians? Yeah,

Colleen Schnettler  3:56  
totally separate. Yeah.

Michele Hansen  3:57  
But like you I feel like you have gotten so much done. But also I think what you're saying of kind of, you know, when you're working on a product, especially in the early days, I feel like it's very normal to kind of look at everything that has to be done and be like, Oh, my God, there is so much to be done. This product sucks. Why is anyone paying for it? I have so much to do. Is this ever going to be like a real business Never mind something that I'm proud of? How am I possibly going to get all of the time to do all of these things and like beating yourself up for not having all of that time because you are a human being that not only needs to sleep and eat but has other other real life commitments like child rearing. Like I think what you're saying is totally normal.

Colleen Schnettler  4:50  
Okay. Like I've been doing a lot of whining, like, Oh, it's hard to do these things or just shut up and do the

Michele Hansen  4:59  
way like, you know, People ever do acquire us and then and then people like you, and then you can go start a business, another business and I'm like, Yeah, dude, that's hard. Like I have one that works. Like, I don't want to do that again. It is hard.

Colleen Schnettler  5:13  
Oh, it's good to hear you say that. I just feel like I'm moving slowly. I think that's a better way to put it. I feel like I'm moving at glacial speed here. And it's a little frustrating.

Michele Hansen  5:23  
Yeah, of course it is.

Colleen Schnettler  5:25  
So speaking of having calls with people who want to acquire you, someone reached out to me, a small company that acquire small sasses. And we had a call. Oh. So that was very flattering, I guess is the right word. Hmm. I mean, I know that happens to you all the time. But it does not happen to me all the time. And he did not find out. He did not find out about me from the podcast, or any of the heat, even though I had a podcast, which is always funny when someone is like, Oh, I didn't even know that. He's like, what made you want to start the business? I was like, Oh, well, if you have 52 hours, you can go listen to my podcast. I didn't say it like that I was much more professional.

Michele Hansen  6:09  
So you could put it on to x, and it would be half of that. But

Colleen Schnettler  6:15  
I was pretty cool. To have someone reached out about buying the business. And just to kind of start the dialogue. We had a very casual, we did not talk valuation. We didn't talk specifics, but we did have a very casual chat. So that was kind of cool, I guess.

Michele Hansen  6:32  
But you're you're, you didn't leave that like committing to sell it to them? Like, are you gonna go there call with them?

Colleen Schnettler  6:39  
Yeah, so the plan is, I mean, I'm not commit, I didn't commit to anything. Okay. I feel like I should say that. We kind of did the get to know the situation chat. And let's have another call if you're interested in a couple months deal.

Michele Hansen  6:56  
And a couple months. Okay. But it's not like right now.

Colleen Schnettler  7:00  
No, there it was. It was no pressure. Like we were just, we were just you know, he flattered me, of course, like you were saying he's like, Oh, you know, you started this thing. I'm sure you're gonna start a lot of things. And I thought of you when he said that.

Michele Hansen  7:16  
And you'd be lik...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Orbit. Orbit is mission control for your community, grow and measure your community across any platform with Orbit. Find out more at Orbit.love. 

Michele Hansen 
Hey, Colleen.

Colleen Schnettler  0:15  
Hey, Michele. Good morning.

Michele Hansen  0:18  
It's been a while.

Colleen Schnettler  0:19  
Oh, I know. I've missed your face.

Michele Hansen  0:22  
I've missed your face and your voice too.

Colleen Schnettler  0:26  
Yeah, I think we haven't recorded in almost a month now.

Michele Hansen  0:29  
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  0:31  
Crazy.

Michele Hansen  0:32  
It's been it's an every year in California now.

Colleen Schnettler  0:35  
Yes.

Michele Hansen  0:37  
And I guess we should catch people up. So the other day we were emailing about what time we should be recording since there is now a nine hour time difference between us. And it occurred to me as we were sort of trying to figure out scheduling and whatnot. I had this sort of thought for a moment of You know what, we've done this for almost a year. That's a really solid run. Like apparently, like, I think most 90% of podcasts only make it to like, what, three episodes or something like that. Maybe, maybe we've maybe we're done. Maybe we did what we did what we set out to do, and maybe we should walk out on a high note.

Colleen Schnettler  1:21  
Yeah.

Michele Hansen  1:23  
And then I said that to Mateus. And he was like, No, you can't stop the podcast, it's your thing.

Colleen Schnettler  1:29  
By the way, thank you. saving the day. It's funny, you should mention that, Michelle, because a lot has changed in my life in the past month. And I had a similar thought, but not because of the time zones more because I'm like, sick of hearing my voice. I feel like I've been, I feel like I get on this podcast every week. And I just complain about how hard it is to start a business. And I'm not actually doing anything. Like, I feel like I've lost my bias to action. Like you aren't doing things, I guess I don't know, I just like colleagues, just do the thing. Stop talking about doing the thing and just do the thing.

Michele Hansen  2:08  
It's so interesting that you listen back to it and you hear that you're not doing anything. When I feel like if you were to you know, I like I imagine you listen to some audio books on your long road trip from Virginia to I did California rather than listening through our entire catalogue.

Colleen Schnettler  2:30  
That would have been funny, though.

Michele Hansen  2:32  
Yeah, I imagine you celebrate our entire catalog. But I feel like I hear you did not have a side project going last summer. Like you spent the late summer in fall. And I guess it wasn't really until the fall you like decided to go all in on this. And then by December, right, you had something launchable. And you got it out there. You got into the training wheels phase of the Heroku marketplace. And then you were finally led out into the world in February. And last we spoke you were at like right, right around 1000. Mr. That sounds like a lot to me.

Colleen Schnettler  3:19  
When you say it like that sounds really great. Go me. I just feel like for the past couple months. And to be fair, I have been single parenting three kids separated from my spouse, right in a pandemic. So it's been a little crazy. But for the past three months, I feel like I've just gotten on, and we've been recording, and I'm just like, Oh, I want to do this thing. And you'll say something brilliant. And I'm like, Yeah, I should totally do that. And then it takes me like, a month to do something.

Michele Hansen  3:47  
But I think so make sense, given all of that. And maybe we should clarify that you were away from your spouse not separated. Like, Oh, right. That utilitarians? Yeah,

Colleen Schnettler  3:56  
totally separate. Yeah.

Michele Hansen  3:57  
But like you I feel like you have gotten so much done. But also I think what you're saying of kind of, you know, when you're working on a product, especially in the early days, I feel like it's very normal to kind of look at everything that has to be done and be like, Oh, my God, there is so much to be done. This product sucks. Why is anyone paying for it? I have so much to do. Is this ever going to be like a real business Never mind something that I'm proud of? How am I possibly going to get all of the time to do all of these things and like beating yourself up for not having all of that time because you are a human being that not only needs to sleep and eat but has other other real life commitments like child rearing. Like I think what you're saying is totally normal.

Colleen Schnettler  4:50  
Okay. Like I've been doing a lot of whining, like, Oh, it's hard to do these things or just shut up and do the

Michele Hansen  4:59  
way like, you know, People ever do acquire us and then and then people like you, and then you can go start a business, another business and I'm like, Yeah, dude, that's hard. Like I have one that works. Like, I don't want to do that again. It is hard.

Colleen Schnettler  5:13  
Oh, it's good to hear you say that. I just feel like I'm moving slowly. I think that's a better way to put it. I feel like I'm moving at glacial speed here. And it's a little frustrating.

Michele Hansen  5:23  
Yeah, of course it is.

Colleen Schnettler  5:25  
So speaking of having calls with people who want to acquire you, someone reached out to me, a small company that acquire small sasses. And we had a call. Oh. So that was very flattering, I guess is the right word. Hmm. I mean, I know that happens to you all the time. But it does not happen to me all the time. And he did not find out. He did not find out about me from the podcast, or any of the heat, even though I had a podcast, which is always funny when someone is like, Oh, I didn't even know that. He's like, what made you want to start the business? I was like, Oh, well, if you have 52 hours, you can go listen to my podcast. I didn't say it like that I was much more professional.

Michele Hansen  6:09  
So you could put it on to x, and it would be half of that. But

Colleen Schnettler  6:15  
I was pretty cool. To have someone reached out about buying the business. And just to kind of start the dialogue. We had a very casual, we did not talk valuation. We didn't talk specifics, but we did have a very casual chat. So that was kind of cool, I guess.

Michele Hansen  6:32  
But you're you're, you didn't leave that like committing to sell it to them? Like, are you gonna go there call with them?

Colleen Schnettler  6:39  
Yeah, so the plan is, I mean, I'm not commit, I didn't commit to anything. Okay. I feel like I should say that. We kind of did the get to know the situation chat. And let's have another call if you're interested in a couple months deal.

Michele Hansen  6:56  
And a couple months. Okay. But it's not like right now.

Colleen Schnettler  7:00  
No, there it was. It was no pressure. Like we were just, we were just you know, he flattered me, of course, like you were saying he's like, Oh, you know, you started this thing. I'm sure you're gonna start a lot of things. And I thought of you when he said that.

Michele Hansen  7:16  
And you'd be lik...

]]> Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:57:58 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2221 Colleen makes a big decision and considers another. Colleen makes a big decision and considers another. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Growing an Early Stage SaaS: A Conversation with SavvyCal Founder Derrick Reimer 52 52 Growing an Early Stage SaaS: A Conversation with SavvyCal Founder Derrick Reimer full add0b54b-4dcb-4edc-b1c5-a275980cbb15 https://share.transistor.fm/s/cf7ae8a4 Follow Derrick on Twitter: https://twitter.com/derrickreimer

Check out SavvyCal (which Michele uses and loves, btw): https://savvycal.com/

Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Orbit. Orbit is mission control for your community. Grow and measure your community across any platform with Orbit. Find out more at orbit.love. 

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Software Social Podcast. I'm your host today Colleen Schnettler. Today I'm very excited to host a special guest, Derrick Reimer. Derrick is a serial maker and has successfully built many products. He's now building SavvyCal. Hey, Derrick, thanks so much for being here. I'm really happy to have you on today. 

Derrick Reimer  0:34  
Thanks for having me. Yeah, I've been a fan of your guys's podcast since it came out and have enjoyed following along with your respective journeys, and especially as you've been getting simple file upload off the ground. It's pretty exciting stuff.

Colleen Schnettler  0:47  
So in a little bit of a change of the traditional podcast guest format, I actually invited you here because I want to talk about me instead of your product. You know, I would really like to talk to you because you are a technical founder. And I feel like you've done this five times now. 

Derrick Reimer  1:12  
Something like that. Yeah, 

Colleen Schnettler  1:13  
something like that. Quite a few companies. So I just kind of wanted to get your opinion on, like my product and my growth trajectory. And if this thing is gonna work, and I have so many questions like when to bail, right? Yeah. 

Derrick Reimer  1:30  
Yeah, no, it's, it's good. I'm happy to dive into this stuff. I love kind of strategizing. And, and, you know, talking shop with with other folks. So yeah, happy to have to dive in on some of those questions. 

Colleen Schnettler  1:41  
Awesome. So one of the things when I started simple file upload is I kind of made a lot of the mistakes, I think traditional or first time founders make in that I just built something I wanted to build. And I just wanted to ship a product, right? Like my first goal was literally make something that people could buy. And so that was like a really exciting time just learning how to create a piece of software I could sell to more than one person. 

Derrick Reimer  2:08  
Hmm, I think I remember when you were kind of just getting started on this and kind of talking about it. And, you know, Michelle would grill you a little bit on like, well, you talk to customers. But if I recall, like you do have, like some this intuition for the need for this came out of your own experience a bit, right, which is like, yes, that can be a dangerous place to start. But it's also I feel like one of the more like, it kind of sets you off on a good foot. In one sense, if you have a really good understanding of kind of the the problem like you've felt the problem deeply yourself. And so I feel like you were starting, maybe you didn't do all the customer interviews right out of the gate, but like you sort of had this intuitive sense, like as a as a consultant, and you've built this stuff many times before that, like, Oh, this is kind of I'm spending repeated effort on this problem. And I'm seeing other people doing that, too. Is that is that kind of characterize? Like, how the genesis of it came about? 

Colleen Schnettler  3:07  
Yes, definitely. 

Yeah.

That's Yeah, that's really why I built it. And there's a lot of excitement in the beginning, right, just like getting your first product to market. And I think I made a really good choice to put it in the Heroku marketplace. And it seems to be meeting a need, I think I kind of Accidentally on Purpose found a hole, right? Because Heroku has the ephemeral file storage. So this is a problem. Literally, everyone who uses her Roku has, right. I don't really know, though. I mean, it's just fancy file storage. I don't really know, if it's a product that can even replace my job. Like, I don't know, if the How do I like even determine if it can get there?

Derrick Reimer  3:56  
Mm hmm. Well, I think so part of that is, so you're kind of speaking to like market size, like how many, you know, how many dollars are flowing through this industry of people wanting to to solve this problem. And I did, I did a little bit of like, just scoping around before coming on here because I wanted to do do a little bit of my homework and it seems like there are quite a few, like, companies that there are kind of big name players like cloud Neri right that have sort of been around a while people use them for image storage like image manipulation or like optimization, right. But also like in looking at kind of their their marketing it seems like they're they've gone a little bit up market like they're they seem a little enterprise II to me from the looks of them, you know, like it's, I look at it as an as an independent software builder and I don't know if I'm perfectly in the target market for your product, but like when I look at Cloud Neri To me, it's like this looks a little long in the tooth like they like it's not something I would want to jump into putting into my stack because it looks a little bit too Little bit to enterprise. And like, like, I would want a fresher take on that. But it seems like it seems like there is there's a pretty decent sized market for, you know, file storage, image storage, image manipulation, CDN, like putting things on CD ends, and like making that whole side of things smoother. So I guess like my initial take is like, I think there is something here. Now the question is, which we can kind of talk through more like, is there? Is it something you're interested in? Like, really going after, you know, and like, and? Yeah, but I think there's, I think there is something there.

Colleen Schnettler  5:40  
So what do you mean? Is it something I'm interested in really going after?

Derrick Reimer  5:45  
I guess, like, it's gonna take, I think you're at that point right now where like, you've got some initial traction, you're in the Heroku marketplace. And actually, it's, it's really cool. I looked, I just searched upload in the marketplace. And you're like, ranked number one or number two, which is pretty amazing. Right? Yeah, that's a really good. That's a really good spot to be in. I was I was shocked that there was not more options there. Right? Yeah. Yeah, me too. And honestly, this is, this is a problem that I have, every time I build this app, I kind of go through this, this phase of like, relying on gravatar, only for avatars, because I don't want to build in the upload part. And then it's annoying. Yeah. And then like, gradually, I've gotten, I've actually pushed more and more towards just being on Heroku. And, like, I used to, like drip was on AWS and we just had like custom instances. So we already had s3 there. And it was sort of part of our tool chain already. But this time around, like I don't, I've been trying to stick to like a pure Heroku stack, keep things really simple. And it was definitely an awkward place when I needed to add this, like the ability for people to upload their own Avatar and like, Okay, so now I have to go like create an AWS account, like I ideally didn't want to do that. So I don't know. Yeah. all that to say like, it seems like there's a there's an interesting gap here. Now, it remains to be seen if there's a ton of people, you know, like me and like you who, who are like not wanting practically like not wanting to spin up a raw AWS account and start, like getting in there and manipulating buckets and doing all...

]]> Follow Derrick on Twitter: https://twitter.com/derrickreimer

Check out SavvyCal (which Michele uses and loves, btw): https://savvycal.com/

Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Orbit. Orbit is mission control for your community. Grow and measure your community across any platform with Orbit. Find out more at orbit.love. 

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Software Social Podcast. I'm your host today Colleen Schnettler. Today I'm very excited to host a special guest, Derrick Reimer. Derrick is a serial maker and has successfully built many products. He's now building SavvyCal. Hey, Derrick, thanks so much for being here. I'm really happy to have you on today. 

Derrick Reimer  0:34  
Thanks for having me. Yeah, I've been a fan of your guys's podcast since it came out and have enjoyed following along with your respective journeys, and especially as you've been getting simple file upload off the ground. It's pretty exciting stuff.

Colleen Schnettler  0:47  
So in a little bit of a change of the traditional podcast guest format, I actually invited you here because I want to talk about me instead of your product. You know, I would really like to talk to you because you are a technical founder. And I feel like you've done this five times now. 

Derrick Reimer  1:12  
Something like that. Yeah, 

Colleen Schnettler  1:13  
something like that. Quite a few companies. So I just kind of wanted to get your opinion on, like my product and my growth trajectory. And if this thing is gonna work, and I have so many questions like when to bail, right? Yeah. 

Derrick Reimer  1:30  
Yeah, no, it's, it's good. I'm happy to dive into this stuff. I love kind of strategizing. And, and, you know, talking shop with with other folks. So yeah, happy to have to dive in on some of those questions. 

Colleen Schnettler  1:41  
Awesome. So one of the things when I started simple file upload is I kind of made a lot of the mistakes, I think traditional or first time founders make in that I just built something I wanted to build. And I just wanted to ship a product, right? Like my first goal was literally make something that people could buy. And so that was like a really exciting time just learning how to create a piece of software I could sell to more than one person. 

Derrick Reimer  2:08  
Hmm, I think I remember when you were kind of just getting started on this and kind of talking about it. And, you know, Michelle would grill you a little bit on like, well, you talk to customers. But if I recall, like you do have, like some this intuition for the need for this came out of your own experience a bit, right, which is like, yes, that can be a dangerous place to start. But it's also I feel like one of the more like, it kind of sets you off on a good foot. In one sense, if you have a really good understanding of kind of the the problem like you've felt the problem deeply yourself. And so I feel like you were starting, maybe you didn't do all the customer interviews right out of the gate, but like you sort of had this intuitive sense, like as a as a consultant, and you've built this stuff many times before that, like, Oh, this is kind of I'm spending repeated effort on this problem. And I'm seeing other people doing that, too. Is that is that kind of characterize? Like, how the genesis of it came about? 

Colleen Schnettler  3:07  
Yes, definitely. 

Yeah.

That's Yeah, that's really why I built it. And there's a lot of excitement in the beginning, right, just like getting your first product to market. And I think I made a really good choice to put it in the Heroku marketplace. And it seems to be meeting a need, I think I kind of Accidentally on Purpose found a hole, right? Because Heroku has the ephemeral file storage. So this is a problem. Literally, everyone who uses her Roku has, right. I don't really know, though. I mean, it's just fancy file storage. I don't really know, if it's a product that can even replace my job. Like, I don't know, if the How do I like even determine if it can get there?

Derrick Reimer  3:56  
Mm hmm. Well, I think so part of that is, so you're kind of speaking to like market size, like how many, you know, how many dollars are flowing through this industry of people wanting to to solve this problem. And I did, I did a little bit of like, just scoping around before coming on here because I wanted to do do a little bit of my homework and it seems like there are quite a few, like, companies that there are kind of big name players like cloud Neri right that have sort of been around a while people use them for image storage like image manipulation or like optimization, right. But also like in looking at kind of their their marketing it seems like they're they've gone a little bit up market like they're they seem a little enterprise II to me from the looks of them, you know, like it's, I look at it as an as an independent software builder and I don't know if I'm perfectly in the target market for your product, but like when I look at Cloud Neri To me, it's like this looks a little long in the tooth like they like it's not something I would want to jump into putting into my stack because it looks a little bit too Little bit to enterprise. And like, like, I would want a fresher take on that. But it seems like it seems like there is there's a pretty decent sized market for, you know, file storage, image storage, image manipulation, CDN, like putting things on CD ends, and like making that whole side of things smoother. So I guess like my initial take is like, I think there is something here. Now the question is, which we can kind of talk through more like, is there? Is it something you're interested in? Like, really going after, you know, and like, and? Yeah, but I think there's, I think there is something there.

Colleen Schnettler  5:40  
So what do you mean? Is it something I'm interested in really going after?

Derrick Reimer  5:45  
I guess, like, it's gonna take, I think you're at that point right now where like, you've got some initial traction, you're in the Heroku marketplace. And actually, it's, it's really cool. I looked, I just searched upload in the marketplace. And you're like, ranked number one or number two, which is pretty amazing. Right? Yeah, that's a really good. That's a really good spot to be in. I was I was shocked that there was not more options there. Right? Yeah. Yeah, me too. And honestly, this is, this is a problem that I have, every time I build this app, I kind of go through this, this phase of like, relying on gravatar, only for avatars, because I don't want to build in the upload part. And then it's annoying. Yeah. And then like, gradually, I've gotten, I've actually pushed more and more towards just being on Heroku. And, like, I used to, like drip was on AWS and we just had like custom instances. So we already had s3 there. And it was sort of part of our tool chain already. But this time around, like I don't, I've been trying to stick to like a pure Heroku stack, keep things really simple. And it was definitely an awkward place when I needed to add this, like the ability for people to upload their own Avatar and like, Okay, so now I have to go like create an AWS account, like I ideally didn't want to do that. So I don't know. Yeah. all that to say like, it seems like there's a there's an interesting gap here. Now, it remains to be seen if there's a ton of people, you know, like me and like you who, who are like not wanting practically like not wanting to spin up a raw AWS account and start, like getting in there and manipulating buckets and doing all...

]]> Tue, 13 Jul 2021 12:00:00 +0200 Colleen Schnettler, Derrick Reimer Colleen Schnettler, Derrick Reimer 3148 Colleen asks SavvyCal founder Derrick Reimer for growth advice. Colleen asks SavvyCal founder Derrick Reimer for growth advice. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Colleen Schnettler Shutting Down and Opening Up: A Conversation with Marie Poulin, Creator of Notion Mastery 51 51 Shutting Down and Opening Up: A Conversation with Marie Poulin, Creator of Notion Mastery full f9e3ac66-47dd-4bea-b69d-8f409cb6768a https://share.transistor.fm/s/8df40165  Pre-order Michele's book on talking to customers! https://deployempathy.com/order 

Marie's course, Notion Mastery: https://notionmastery.com/
Marie's Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariepoulin
Marie's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKvnOhqTeEgdNt1aJB5mVng
Marie's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariepoulin/ 

 

Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Approximated.

If you need to connect custom user domains to your app, Approximated can help. It can route any domain or subdomain to any application, all easily managed with a simple API or web dashboard.

You can have unlimited connected domains automatically secured with SSL certificates for one flat rate.

Website builders, communities and marketplaces all happily use Approximated every day to manage thousands of custom domains for their users.

And it was built by an indie founder just like you, so every support request is handled by a developer who will personally help you out.

Head over to Approximated.app today and mention Software Social when you sign up to get an extra month for free. 

Michele Hansen
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. We have another guest with us this week. I am so excited to have my friend, Marie Poulin, here today. She is the creator of Notion Mastery, which is this amazing Notion course that has over 1200 students, averaging $45,000 MRR. Pretty amazing business that she has built up. Welcome to Software Social, Marie.

 

Marie Poulin  01:18

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:21

So um, people listening may know you from all of your YouTube videos and courses with Notion, which have been crazy successful, and only, only, since October 2019, since you launched it, but I actually want to talk about something else. So you had another business, a course business called Doki, and actually, the last time I spoke, like, like, like, actually spoke with you like, internet friend is so funny. Like, I feel like I talk to you all the time, but actually, like talk to you, talk to you, was you and your husband, Ben, were thinking about what to do with Doki and whether you should sell it or shut it down.

 

Marie Poulin  02:15

Yes, and you very kindly reached out with some suggestions on how we might handle that. And it, it sort of wasn't, I don't want to say it wasn't our passion anymore, but yeah, you know, Ben got offered a full time gig. So for anybody listening, my husband and I teamed up back in 2014 to, to run our company together. We built a software and we ran it for I mean, five-ish years or so, and I think neither one of us was, it was definitely our first software project. And it was that build a giant software project that does all of the things and, you know, kind of wishing that we had done something smaller when we learned about the whole software building all of the different pieces. And so when we first went to MicroCon, that was, it was just so eye opening how many things we had done wrong, and it was it was a really wonderful learning experience. But I think it kind of showed us that there were parts of that, that just, I don't know that either of us was super excited to go 100% all in on it. I liked the working with people side of online courses and actually shipping and working on their websites, and just all of, all the other pieces of it other than the software. And so the burden was really on Ben to build all the features and do customer support, and, you know, he was pretty much like the solo founder handling all of those parts of the software, and I was handling more of the consulting side of it. And it was a huge burden on him. It was huge. And so when he got offered a full time job, it was a chance for him to step into more of a leadership role, be challenged, be working with other people, and it just, he really flourished. And I think it was something he was missing. Like, when you're a solo founder, you're just, you know, you're wearing every single hat. You're making all the decisions. And if you're bumping up against stuff you've never seen, it's pretty tough. It's a tough life to be, to be solo founder. So I was really encouraging him to, to kind of explore this new venture, but it sort of meant that Doki got left in the dust a little bit. And so we kind of took our foot off the gas, and just in this year in January 2021 we decided what if we just kind of shut down signups and, and just kind of let it do its thing and just kind of keep supporting the clients that were still using it, more like our consulting clients and not really market at widely. And so we did and I was like, how do you feel about this? And he's like, oh, I feel I feel so relieved. And I think that was really important that it didn't feel sad. It didn't feel like oh no, we're shutting this thing down. Like he felt like no, this is a chapter of my life that was great. And now it's over. So it's been a journey.

 

Michele Hansen  04:54

So, I mean on, you know, on this podcast, you know, we talk a lot about like, getting a SaaS off of the ground, or I guess, in my case now, like, getting an info product off the ground, and then also running those companies. But there's this other phase of it, which is exiting, and sometimes exiting means selling a company, or, you know, being acquihired by someone, or it means shutting it down. And I'm wondering if you can kind of talk through that a little bit about how you guys decided to sunset it, rather than sell it.

 

Marie Poulin  05:37

Yeah, because we had gone through this conversation back and forth. And we even had, you know, several people who had made offers to buy, and it felt actually pretty close, like, that was something we were really seriously considering. And again, you're, it was just really, really valuable to get your, your insights on that, and to have somebody that, you know, not attached to it just kind of as an outsider giving us perspective on that. And so we, we had some meetings, and we definitely considered it, and I think the burden of what would have needed to happen to be able to make that handoff happen in a way, such that it could actually be successful for those who are taking it over, felt too big for Ben. I think it was, again, given that his attention was elsewhere, it there was just such a cognitive load associated with all of that cleanup work, and just, just kind of the whole process of that transition. And it's possible that it may not have actually been that much work. It's kind of hard to know, in hindsight, but I think the anticipation of that, and just, you know, when Ben does something, he wants to do it properly, and he wouldn't have felt good, I think to just kind of pass it off as is knowing how much legacy work needed to be rebuilt. And he, he just didn't feel comfortable with it. And I was like, you know, I don't know this stuff as well as you do. And if you feel really confident and happy to just kind of say, you know, what, we're totally cool to just, like, the, the amount just kind of doesn't match up with, with what it would be wort...

]]>  Pre-order Michele's book on talking to customers! https://deployempathy.com/order 

Marie's course, Notion Mastery: https://notionmastery.com/
Marie's Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariepoulin
Marie's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKvnOhqTeEgdNt1aJB5mVng
Marie's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariepoulin/ 

 

Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Approximated.

If you need to connect custom user domains to your app, Approximated can help. It can route any domain or subdomain to any application, all easily managed with a simple API or web dashboard.

You can have unlimited connected domains automatically secured with SSL certificates for one flat rate.

Website builders, communities and marketplaces all happily use Approximated every day to manage thousands of custom domains for their users.

And it was built by an indie founder just like you, so every support request is handled by a developer who will personally help you out.

Head over to Approximated.app today and mention Software Social when you sign up to get an extra month for free. 

Michele Hansen
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. We have another guest with us this week. I am so excited to have my friend, Marie Poulin, here today. She is the creator of Notion Mastery, which is this amazing Notion course that has over 1200 students, averaging $45,000 MRR. Pretty amazing business that she has built up. Welcome to Software Social, Marie.

 

Marie Poulin  01:18

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:21

So um, people listening may know you from all of your YouTube videos and courses with Notion, which have been crazy successful, and only, only, since October 2019, since you launched it, but I actually want to talk about something else. So you had another business, a course business called Doki, and actually, the last time I spoke, like, like, like, actually spoke with you like, internet friend is so funny. Like, I feel like I talk to you all the time, but actually, like talk to you, talk to you, was you and your husband, Ben, were thinking about what to do with Doki and whether you should sell it or shut it down.

 

Marie Poulin  02:15

Yes, and you very kindly reached out with some suggestions on how we might handle that. And it, it sort of wasn't, I don't want to say it wasn't our passion anymore, but yeah, you know, Ben got offered a full time gig. So for anybody listening, my husband and I teamed up back in 2014 to, to run our company together. We built a software and we ran it for I mean, five-ish years or so, and I think neither one of us was, it was definitely our first software project. And it was that build a giant software project that does all of the things and, you know, kind of wishing that we had done something smaller when we learned about the whole software building all of the different pieces. And so when we first went to MicroCon, that was, it was just so eye opening how many things we had done wrong, and it was it was a really wonderful learning experience. But I think it kind of showed us that there were parts of that, that just, I don't know that either of us was super excited to go 100% all in on it. I liked the working with people side of online courses and actually shipping and working on their websites, and just all of, all the other pieces of it other than the software. And so the burden was really on Ben to build all the features and do customer support, and, you know, he was pretty much like the solo founder handling all of those parts of the software, and I was handling more of the consulting side of it. And it was a huge burden on him. It was huge. And so when he got offered a full time job, it was a chance for him to step into more of a leadership role, be challenged, be working with other people, and it just, he really flourished. And I think it was something he was missing. Like, when you're a solo founder, you're just, you know, you're wearing every single hat. You're making all the decisions. And if you're bumping up against stuff you've never seen, it's pretty tough. It's a tough life to be, to be solo founder. So I was really encouraging him to, to kind of explore this new venture, but it sort of meant that Doki got left in the dust a little bit. And so we kind of took our foot off the gas, and just in this year in January 2021 we decided what if we just kind of shut down signups and, and just kind of let it do its thing and just kind of keep supporting the clients that were still using it, more like our consulting clients and not really market at widely. And so we did and I was like, how do you feel about this? And he's like, oh, I feel I feel so relieved. And I think that was really important that it didn't feel sad. It didn't feel like oh no, we're shutting this thing down. Like he felt like no, this is a chapter of my life that was great. And now it's over. So it's been a journey.

 

Michele Hansen  04:54

So, I mean on, you know, on this podcast, you know, we talk a lot about like, getting a SaaS off of the ground, or I guess, in my case now, like, getting an info product off the ground, and then also running those companies. But there's this other phase of it, which is exiting, and sometimes exiting means selling a company, or, you know, being acquihired by someone, or it means shutting it down. And I'm wondering if you can kind of talk through that a little bit about how you guys decided to sunset it, rather than sell it.

 

Marie Poulin  05:37

Yeah, because we had gone through this conversation back and forth. And we even had, you know, several people who had made offers to buy, and it felt actually pretty close, like, that was something we were really seriously considering. And again, you're, it was just really, really valuable to get your, your insights on that, and to have somebody that, you know, not attached to it just kind of as an outsider giving us perspective on that. And so we, we had some meetings, and we definitely considered it, and I think the burden of what would have needed to happen to be able to make that handoff happen in a way, such that it could actually be successful for those who are taking it over, felt too big for Ben. I think it was, again, given that his attention was elsewhere, it there was just such a cognitive load associated with all of that cleanup work, and just, just kind of the whole process of that transition. And it's possible that it may not have actually been that much work. It's kind of hard to know, in hindsight, but I think the anticipation of that, and just, you know, when Ben does something, he wants to do it properly, and he wouldn't have felt good, I think to just kind of pass it off as is knowing how much legacy work needed to be rebuilt. And he, he just didn't feel comfortable with it. And I was like, you know, I don't know this stuff as well as you do. And if you feel really confident and happy to just kind of say, you know, what, we're totally cool to just, like, the, the amount just kind of doesn't match up with, with what it would be wort...

]]> Tue, 06 Jul 2021 10:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 3711 Notion expert Marie Poulin and Michele to talk about the decision to shut down Marie's first SaaS, Doki, running a course business, and what it's like to be a founder with ADHD. Notion expert Marie Poulin and Michele to talk about the decision to shut down Marie's first SaaS, Doki, running a course business, and what it's like to be a founder with ADHD. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Getting Started with Customer Interviews: A Conversation with Nicole Baldinu, Co-Founder and COO of WebinarNinja 50 50 Getting Started with Customer Interviews: A Conversation with Nicole Baldinu, Co-Founder and COO of WebinarNinja full 72d9b8dd-1e26-44e4-b994-caef3f874067 https://share.transistor.fm/s/f8a02cd4  Pre-order Michele's book! https://deployempathy.com/order

Follow Nicole on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NicoleBaldinu 


Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Recut.

If you make videos or screencasts, Recut could help you cut your editing time by half or more.

Recut removes the awkward pauses, the gaps and the silent parts so you can stop spending hours slicing and dicing with the razor tool.

Recut makes a cut list that you can import into your favorite Mac-based editor, like Adobe Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut, or ScreenFlow.

You can get 10% off with the code SoftwareSocial, or download the free trial at GetRecut.com. 

Michele Hansen 
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. I am so excited about what we have going on today. We have Nicole Baldinu, Co-Founder and COO of WebinarNinja joining us. Welcome, Nicole. 

 

Nicole Baldinu  00:51

Hey, Michele. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. 

 

Michele Hansen  00:54

I'm so excited to have you on. First of all, I mean, you guys have built such an incredible company. Just to give a little bit of background. So, WebinarNinja was founded in 2014. You also produce the $100 MBA Show, which won Best of iTunes in 2014. 23 full-time team members, 100% customer-funded, an amazing business. I am so excited that you're joining us today.

 

Nicole Baldinu  01:24

Aw, thank you. That's, that's really nice. It's almost like sometimes you forget, you know, where you've been. You just keep going and charging forward. It's like, yeah, we've been around since 2014. Must be doing something right. Some days, it doesn't feel like you're doing anything right, you know.

 

Michele Hansen  01:43

When in 2014 did you guys launch? Because we were also 2014.

 

Nicole Baldinu  01:47

Oh, WebinarNinja, like, around April. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:51

Okay.

 

Nicole Baldinu  01:52

It was around April, yeah. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:53

Wow. 

 

Nicole Baldinu  01:54

I know. It's crazy.

 

Michele Hansen  01:56

It's kinda, so, we launched in January of 2014, and we are still just the two of us. And you guys have like, 23 people, and I mean, it's so interesting how many, like, different paths you can take.

 

Nicole Baldinu  02:14

Yeah, and the number of iterations, I think, like, yeah, I don't even remember version one, you know. It feels so long ago. But that's true. Like, I don't think we in, like, even intentionally set out to just grow, grow, grow. You just kind of take one, one step forward, and you just keep moving. It's like, yeah, we need help, like, you know. You're answering all your customer support queries in the beginning, and then it's like, no, you need some help. And then you hire your first teammate, and then it just, just keeps growing.

 

Michele Hansen  02:47

So, let's fast forward a little bit to, I guess, would be five years into it for both of us. We met at MicroCon in 2019 and were basically instant friends. Um, and I remember what, I think, I think you might have come up to me, and you were really interested in learning how to do customer interviews, which is, like, my jam.

 

Nicole Baldinu  03:17

Yeah, I loved that conference so much. It was, it was such a, I think for me, that was the first time, it was kind of the first SaaS-focused conference. I think a lot of the conferences I'd been to before were very, I don't know about you, if you've attended like, other conferences outside the SaaS space, but a lot of podcasting conferences, you know, I remember the first, do you remember NMX? New Media Expo?

 

Michele Hansen  03:45

The name sounds familiar, but I didn't, I've never been a huge conference attender, so I haven't been to a lot.

 

Nicole Baldinu  03:52

That was my first conference, and that was January of 2013. And that was literally when I, you know, that was my first kind of foray into entrepreneurship, and so meeting bloggers and podcasters, and it was all just such a new unknown, like world. But I remember like, MicroCon being just really special because I just felt like, that it was, it was kind of like, I felt people were really honest and vulnerable and authentic when it came to talking about, you know, the pitfalls and the challenges of SaaS. businesses. And yeah, and I remember I loved your talk because I just felt like, you did, what was it like a chat, like it was a 10 minute tactic or something, or? 

 

Michele Hansen  04:41

Yeah, it was an attendee talk. 

 

Nicole Baldinu  04:43

Yeah.

 

Michele Hansen  04:44

Yeah. 

 

Nicole Baldinu  04:45

And, and I still have your notes. I shared this with you last time we spoke. I still have your notes because I just thought it was so helpful, so practical, and the, the crazy thing is though, when was that? So that was MicroCon 2019, right? 

 

Michele Hansen  04:59

Yeah.

 

Nicole Baldinu  05:00

That's the first time I heard, I think that's the kind of the first time I really thought, oh, you can do, like, you can talk to your customers. You can do, like, this kind of user research. And I've only done my very first customer user research this year, three years on, but I still have your notes. And it was, yeah, it was just super inspiring. I just thought it just seems like such a cool thing to do. And, yeah, so I finally, finally took the plunge.

 

Michele Hansen  05:28

So, let's dive into that plunge a little bit because I think it's, I think it's totally normal that it would take you some time from from like having that moment of being oh wait, I can talk to customers, to then sort of, not just like, sort of working up the courage for it, but also the time and, like, fitting it into your schedule and thinking it really, really through and so, like, could you kind of take us back to earlier, I guess, earlier this year, when you really started to hit the ground on it?

 

Nicole Baldinu  06:03

Yeah, and I mean, I should, I should also say that we had done user research and customer interviews, but it wasn't me that had done it. So Omar, who's my Co-Founder, the CEO, also my husband, business and partner in life and business, he had done the first user interviews, and kind of, because he's more customer has been always more customer-facing. He had done user interviews, but it was s...

]]>  Pre-order Michele's book! https://deployempathy.com/order

Follow Nicole on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NicoleBaldinu 


Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Recut.

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Michele Hansen 
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. I am so excited about what we have going on today. We have Nicole Baldinu, Co-Founder and COO of WebinarNinja joining us. Welcome, Nicole. 

 

Nicole Baldinu  00:51

Hey, Michele. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. 

 

Michele Hansen  00:54

I'm so excited to have you on. First of all, I mean, you guys have built such an incredible company. Just to give a little bit of background. So, WebinarNinja was founded in 2014. You also produce the $100 MBA Show, which won Best of iTunes in 2014. 23 full-time team members, 100% customer-funded, an amazing business. I am so excited that you're joining us today.

 

Nicole Baldinu  01:24

Aw, thank you. That's, that's really nice. It's almost like sometimes you forget, you know, where you've been. You just keep going and charging forward. It's like, yeah, we've been around since 2014. Must be doing something right. Some days, it doesn't feel like you're doing anything right, you know.

 

Michele Hansen  01:43

When in 2014 did you guys launch? Because we were also 2014.

 

Nicole Baldinu  01:47

Oh, WebinarNinja, like, around April. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:51

Okay.

 

Nicole Baldinu  01:52

It was around April, yeah. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:53

Wow. 

 

Nicole Baldinu  01:54

I know. It's crazy.

 

Michele Hansen  01:56

It's kinda, so, we launched in January of 2014, and we are still just the two of us. And you guys have like, 23 people, and I mean, it's so interesting how many, like, different paths you can take.

 

Nicole Baldinu  02:14

Yeah, and the number of iterations, I think, like, yeah, I don't even remember version one, you know. It feels so long ago. But that's true. Like, I don't think we in, like, even intentionally set out to just grow, grow, grow. You just kind of take one, one step forward, and you just keep moving. It's like, yeah, we need help, like, you know. You're answering all your customer support queries in the beginning, and then it's like, no, you need some help. And then you hire your first teammate, and then it just, just keeps growing.

 

Michele Hansen  02:47

So, let's fast forward a little bit to, I guess, would be five years into it for both of us. We met at MicroCon in 2019 and were basically instant friends. Um, and I remember what, I think, I think you might have come up to me, and you were really interested in learning how to do customer interviews, which is, like, my jam.

 

Nicole Baldinu  03:17

Yeah, I loved that conference so much. It was, it was such a, I think for me, that was the first time, it was kind of the first SaaS-focused conference. I think a lot of the conferences I'd been to before were very, I don't know about you, if you've attended like, other conferences outside the SaaS space, but a lot of podcasting conferences, you know, I remember the first, do you remember NMX? New Media Expo?

 

Michele Hansen  03:45

The name sounds familiar, but I didn't, I've never been a huge conference attender, so I haven't been to a lot.

 

Nicole Baldinu  03:52

That was my first conference, and that was January of 2013. And that was literally when I, you know, that was my first kind of foray into entrepreneurship, and so meeting bloggers and podcasters, and it was all just such a new unknown, like world. But I remember like, MicroCon being just really special because I just felt like, that it was, it was kind of like, I felt people were really honest and vulnerable and authentic when it came to talking about, you know, the pitfalls and the challenges of SaaS. businesses. And yeah, and I remember I loved your talk because I just felt like, you did, what was it like a chat, like it was a 10 minute tactic or something, or? 

 

Michele Hansen  04:41

Yeah, it was an attendee talk. 

 

Nicole Baldinu  04:43

Yeah.

 

Michele Hansen  04:44

Yeah. 

 

Nicole Baldinu  04:45

And, and I still have your notes. I shared this with you last time we spoke. I still have your notes because I just thought it was so helpful, so practical, and the, the crazy thing is though, when was that? So that was MicroCon 2019, right? 

 

Michele Hansen  04:59

Yeah.

 

Nicole Baldinu  05:00

That's the first time I heard, I think that's the kind of the first time I really thought, oh, you can do, like, you can talk to your customers. You can do, like, this kind of user research. And I've only done my very first customer user research this year, three years on, but I still have your notes. And it was, yeah, it was just super inspiring. I just thought it just seems like such a cool thing to do. And, yeah, so I finally, finally took the plunge.

 

Michele Hansen  05:28

So, let's dive into that plunge a little bit because I think it's, I think it's totally normal that it would take you some time from from like having that moment of being oh wait, I can talk to customers, to then sort of, not just like, sort of working up the courage for it, but also the time and, like, fitting it into your schedule and thinking it really, really through and so, like, could you kind of take us back to earlier, I guess, earlier this year, when you really started to hit the ground on it?

 

Nicole Baldinu  06:03

Yeah, and I mean, I should, I should also say that we had done user research and customer interviews, but it wasn't me that had done it. So Omar, who's my Co-Founder, the CEO, also my husband, business and partner in life and business, he had done the first user interviews, and kind of, because he's more customer has been always more customer-facing. He had done user interviews, but it was s...

]]> Tue, 29 Jun 2021 09:05:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 3067 The WebinarNinja co-founder stops by to chat about her recent foray into customer interviews and what it's been like to get started. The WebinarNinja co-founder stops by to chat about her recent foray into customer interviews and what it's been like to get started. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Holy Forking Sportsballs 49 49 Holy Forking Sportsballs full ade3a66f-7495-45cb-961c-0cb47fe3d067 https://share.transistor.fm/s/7db4c7bc Pre-order Michele's book on talking to customers! https://deployempathy.com/order 


Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Fathom Analytics.

Fathom is trusted by thousands of businesses to power their privacy-first website analytics like GitHub, FastMail, Buffer, Tailwind, and so many amazing small businesses, too. For the longest time, website analytics offer was seriously bad.  It was hard to understand, time consuming to use, and worse, and exploited visitor data for big tech to profit.

Fathom is website analytics without compromise, easy to use, respectful of digital privacy, and fully compliant with GDPR.

Plus, Fathom's script loads faster than Google Analytics, meaning it's better for SEO. With Fathom, you can see all of your visitors, not just half, because they've pioneered the method to bypass ad blockers without invading privacy.

Fathom also doesn't chase venture capital or need investors. Like my company, Geocodio, they are customer-funded, and customers are the only folks they answer to.

Try a free seven day trial or check out Fathom at UseFathom.com/ssp. 

Michele Hansen
So, the other day, I totaled up how much I have made from my book so far, and all the expenses. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:19

Okay. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:20

So, as of that point, $1363 in presales, which is just, like, the number of copies times 29. That's not my actual payouts. It's just, like, the gross revenue. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:34

Okay. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:34

And then, so the expenses. So, first one, for the formatting, I have to use the software called Vellum, which is $250. I had to buy ISBNs, like, the little, like, numbers on the back of the book that identify it. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:49

Yeah.

 

Michele Hansen  01:50

So, and I had to, you can either buy one, or like 10, and since I'm going to do an audio book, you need an ISBN for that, and like, a hardcover needs zone ISBN. And so anyway, that was $295. A barcode is $25. Proofreading $800, which is a lot of money, but I feel like that's the price of like, not being embarrassed that it's full of typos and you know, I feel like if I want to, like, have a book that, like, a manager could buy for their team, or like, people would recommend to their clients, like, it has to be professional.  And so having, like, professional proofreading is the cost of that.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:24

Yeah.  I didn't know that was something. I didn't know that was a thing.

 

Michele Hansen  02:30

Yeah. Yeah, I spent, I think last week I mentioned how I was fighting with Grammarly a lot, and, 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:35

Yeah. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:36

I just, I was like, I have spent like, two days fighting with Grammarly, just trying to get it to work, and like, and I was like, this is just, my time is more expensive than this.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:47

Yeah.

 

Michele Hansen  02:47

So, I'm just gonna hire a proofreader. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:50

Good choice.

 

Michele Hansen  02:50

And then, of course, you know, don't include hundreds of hours of my time over the last couple of months. But, so, the total for expenses so far is $1370.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:01

That's wonderful.

 

Michele Hansen  03:02

So, when you deduct $1363 minus $1370. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:11

Oh.

 

Michele Hansen  03:12

You get negative seven.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:16

Yeah, I see. I misunderstood what you were saying. Got it. So you're in the hole seven bucks and hundreds of hours of your time.

 

Michele Hansen  03:25

Yes. Yeah. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:26

Alright. Well, good thing it;s a labor of love.

 

Michele Hansen  03:28

So, I looked at that number, though, and I just had this moment where I was like, holy, forking shirtballs, like, I need to market this thing. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:39

Yeah. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:40

Umm, and actually, so like, I sold another two since then. So now, I am actually at positive $51. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:51

Whoo. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:52

Yeah, whoo. Umm, and of course, you know, we're only like, only in presale, and like, a ton of people have today said they want the hardcover or they want the audio book. So they haven't, they haven't purchased it yet, or they just simply want the finished version. Umm, But yeah, that was kind of a wake up call for me that, like, I've been, you know, we talked about with Sean like, I, like marketing a info product feels very different for me than marketing a SaaS. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:19

Yes.

 

Michele Hansen  04:19

And also requires a lot more self-promotion, which I'm not comfortable with. Like, it makes me like, deeply uncomfortable to like, reach out to people and be like, hey, like, would you consider, like, you know, reviewing my book like, or, you know, can I be on your podcast and, like, talk, like, it makes me super uncomfortable. Umm so, so but I got to do it because like, negative $7, man, for like, four months worth of work is, you know, basically half of my time the last four months, certainly, last two months, has been on this book. And so I feel like I owe it to myself just for that, like, time to like, sell the gosh darn thing.

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:07

Definitely.

 

Michele Hansen  05:09

Yeah. So I like spent, you know, this week I was kind of working on, you know, like, I went through all of the newsletter issues and I, like, put in a link at the top to, like, buy the book because I've noticed that people are sharing the scripts around. Like, I can see the analytics that they're getting shared in people's Slack channels, or, you know, Trello, or Asana, which is a good sign that those maybe have some staying power. So, and just kind of thinking through a little bit more, a little bit more of the marketing and trying to arrange, you kn...

]]> Pre-order Michele's book on talking to customers! https://deployempathy.com/order 


Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Fathom Analytics.

Fathom is trusted by thousands of businesses to power their privacy-first website analytics like GitHub, FastMail, Buffer, Tailwind, and so many amazing small businesses, too. For the longest time, website analytics offer was seriously bad.  It was hard to understand, time consuming to use, and worse, and exploited visitor data for big tech to profit.

Fathom is website analytics without compromise, easy to use, respectful of digital privacy, and fully compliant with GDPR.

Plus, Fathom's script loads faster than Google Analytics, meaning it's better for SEO. With Fathom, you can see all of your visitors, not just half, because they've pioneered the method to bypass ad blockers without invading privacy.

Fathom also doesn't chase venture capital or need investors. Like my company, Geocodio, they are customer-funded, and customers are the only folks they answer to.

Try a free seven day trial or check out Fathom at UseFathom.com/ssp. 

Michele Hansen
So, the other day, I totaled up how much I have made from my book so far, and all the expenses. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:19

Okay. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:20

So, as of that point, $1363 in presales, which is just, like, the number of copies times 29. That's not my actual payouts. It's just, like, the gross revenue. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:34

Okay. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:34

And then, so the expenses. So, first one, for the formatting, I have to use the software called Vellum, which is $250. I had to buy ISBNs, like, the little, like, numbers on the back of the book that identify it. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:49

Yeah.

 

Michele Hansen  01:50

So, and I had to, you can either buy one, or like 10, and since I'm going to do an audio book, you need an ISBN for that, and like, a hardcover needs zone ISBN. And so anyway, that was $295. A barcode is $25. Proofreading $800, which is a lot of money, but I feel like that's the price of like, not being embarrassed that it's full of typos and you know, I feel like if I want to, like, have a book that, like, a manager could buy for their team, or like, people would recommend to their clients, like, it has to be professional.  And so having, like, professional proofreading is the cost of that.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:24

Yeah.  I didn't know that was something. I didn't know that was a thing.

 

Michele Hansen  02:30

Yeah. Yeah, I spent, I think last week I mentioned how I was fighting with Grammarly a lot, and, 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:35

Yeah. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:36

I just, I was like, I have spent like, two days fighting with Grammarly, just trying to get it to work, and like, and I was like, this is just, my time is more expensive than this.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:47

Yeah.

 

Michele Hansen  02:47

So, I'm just gonna hire a proofreader. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:50

Good choice.

 

Michele Hansen  02:50

And then, of course, you know, don't include hundreds of hours of my time over the last couple of months. But, so, the total for expenses so far is $1370.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:01

That's wonderful.

 

Michele Hansen  03:02

So, when you deduct $1363 minus $1370. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:11

Oh.

 

Michele Hansen  03:12

You get negative seven.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:16

Yeah, I see. I misunderstood what you were saying. Got it. So you're in the hole seven bucks and hundreds of hours of your time.

 

Michele Hansen  03:25

Yes. Yeah. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:26

Alright. Well, good thing it;s a labor of love.

 

Michele Hansen  03:28

So, I looked at that number, though, and I just had this moment where I was like, holy, forking shirtballs, like, I need to market this thing. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:39

Yeah. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:40

Umm, and actually, so like, I sold another two since then. So now, I am actually at positive $51. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:51

Whoo. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:52

Yeah, whoo. Umm, and of course, you know, we're only like, only in presale, and like, a ton of people have today said they want the hardcover or they want the audio book. So they haven't, they haven't purchased it yet, or they just simply want the finished version. Umm, But yeah, that was kind of a wake up call for me that, like, I've been, you know, we talked about with Sean like, I, like marketing a info product feels very different for me than marketing a SaaS. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:19

Yes.

 

Michele Hansen  04:19

And also requires a lot more self-promotion, which I'm not comfortable with. Like, it makes me like, deeply uncomfortable to like, reach out to people and be like, hey, like, would you consider, like, you know, reviewing my book like, or, you know, can I be on your podcast and, like, talk, like, it makes me super uncomfortable. Umm so, so but I got to do it because like, negative $7, man, for like, four months worth of work is, you know, basically half of my time the last four months, certainly, last two months, has been on this book. And so I feel like I owe it to myself just for that, like, time to like, sell the gosh darn thing.

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:07

Definitely.

 

Michele Hansen  05:09

Yeah. So I like spent, you know, this week I was kind of working on, you know, like, I went through all of the newsletter issues and I, like, put in a link at the top to, like, buy the book because I've noticed that people are sharing the scripts around. Like, I can see the analytics that they're getting shared in people's Slack channels, or, you know, Trello, or Asana, which is a good sign that those maybe have some staying power. So, and just kind of thinking through a little bit more, a little bit more of the marketing and trying to arrange, you kn...

]]> Tue, 22 Jun 2021 09:54:15 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2169 Michele has a wake-up call after running the numbers on her book, and Colleen drops some wisdom from legendary coaches. Michele has a wake-up call after running the numbers on her book, and Colleen drops some wisdom from legendary coaches. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Sympathy, Empathy, and Solving Problems 48 48 Sympathy, Empathy, and Solving Problems full 2876b1d4-d9b1-4f98-b500-6e3d3db7f9ae https://share.transistor.fm/s/29ff920e Pre-order Michele's book! deployempathy.com/order/ 

Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. Oh Dear does everything they can to help you avoid downtime like scheduled task monitoring, SSL certificate expiration notifications and more. But downtime happens. When it does, it's how you communicate in times of crisis that make the difference. Oh Dear makes it easy to keep your customers up to date during critical times. You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:35

So Michele, do you have a, 

 

Michele Hansen  00:38

Hey, 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:38

Good morning. Do you have a numbers update for us on your book?

 

Michele Hansen  00:43

I do. So my presale went live about a week and a half ago, when our episode with Sean went live. That was my deadline. And, I've sold 43 copies right now. Yeah, it's kind of exciting. Um, it's not all people I know, which is exciting.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:06

That's very exciting.

 

Michele Hansen  01:08

I love how supportive people have been. And it also, it makes me, it's just reassuring that people I don't know are buying it. But yeah, so that puts it right now, just, and this is just the raw, you know, number of times $29, which is $1,247.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:30

That's amazing. Congratulations.

 

Michele Hansen  01:33

Yeah. Thank you. And I got my first payout yesterday, which after, like, taxes, and everything else, was $912.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:41

Wow.

 

Michele Hansen  01:42

Which was kind of exciting, and gives me a little bit of budget to work with, with, like, you know, hiring a proofreader, and using some, like, layout tools, but, you know, so I was pulling these numbers, and because, you know, everybody loves numbers and whatnot. And I was thinking about it. So, so I got this, this message from someone yesterday, who had started reading the book, and it was actually someone I don't know. And if I can just kind of read what they, what they said. 


Colleen Schnettler  02:25

Yes, please.


Michele Hansen  02:26

And so I had a personal aha moment reading distinction between sympathetic, empathetic and solution based responses. My sympathetic conclusion based responses are leaving no space for empathetic, something I need to address. I'm an engineer and an architect by trade, and I'm looking to do a better job interviewing the humans attached to our work. But I'm also thinking about your book from the sense that a better balance of empathy will help me be a better teammate as well. And, like, getting that was so moving for me because it made me think about how, you know, I'm not writing this book for the money. Like, yes, the book needs to make money, because I've been working on it for four months now and have, you know, there's a lot of time I haven't spent working on Geocodio. Oh, like, I've been a pretty bad Geocodio employee the past couple of months, like, full honesty, right? So like, I have to, like, it has to have been, you know, worth my time. But like, I am not, I'm not motivated by that, like, I am motivated by this, by like, you know, like, I have this like, secret dream goal. Well, I mean, it's not a secret cuz I've, like, tweeted about it, but like, whatever. You know, Mathias sometimes says to me, he's like, I know you were thinking about something because you tweeted about it. And I’m like, oh, I forgot to, like, verbalize that. Anyway, um, I have this dream that through the process of learning this for interviewing, and, like, product development and marketing reasons, people will understand how to be more empathetic and use that in their daily lives. Like, everyone has a capacity for empathy. Everybody can learn it, not everybody is taught it or shown it so they don't really learn it. But everyone has a capacity for it. And, but also, like, very few people, you know, put like, be more empathetic, like, learn how to learn how to use empathy, like on their to do list every day. But they put write a landing page, get more customers, build a feature, like, reply to all of those customers and intercom like, those are the things that end up on a to do list. And so I have this like, kind of, I don't know, like, naive dream that like people will read this and apply these skills to the things they're already doing, but in doing so, learn how to be more empathetic in their daily life or you know, as a as a team member or whatnot. And just getting this message really, it was so motivating, but also so soul-nourishing because it really made me feel like, like the book has done what I wanted it to do. Like, this is what I set out to achieve and, like, this message makes me feel like the book is a success, regardless of how many copies it sells. Like, so it was just like, it was kind of a, it was kind of a, like a moment, like it was, it also sort of like if you're having this effect, like you can, like, stop rearranging it, like, you know, I feel like I've done a rewrite every week for, like, the past eight weeks. Yeah, time to time to ship the gosh darn thing.

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:57

That is wonderful. So what I just heard you say is, this book is secretly teaching us how to be better humans, wrapped up in a book about customer interviews.

 

Michele Hansen  06:09

Yes, wrapped up in a book about which features you should prioritize, and how to, you know, pick a pricing model based on what people's usage patterns are, and, like, how to understand what people want and write better landing pages. All that stuff they're already trying to do. But then yeah, there's, there's this kind of bigger message. Like, I feel like so much of good UX practice is good human being practice. 


Colleen Schnettler  06:35

Yeah. 


Michele Hansen  06:36

Um, and, I mean, I, I really learned about empathy by doing interviews myself. So this, I mean, it's, it's, it's very personal for me in a way that, like, the book is, I don't know, it is very, very personal for me. And it's not just about showing empathy to other people. It's also about showing empathy to yourself, too, which is just as important.

 

Colleen Schnettler  07:06

So I have not read the book yet, unfortunately. Can you tell me briefly, what the difference is between empathy and sympathy that that writer wrote into you? Because we talk about it a lot, but we've never defined it, really.

 

Michele Hansen  07:22

Yeah, that's true. So empathy is when you, basically when you, when you try to understand the other person's context without judgment, and it doesn't mean that you agree with what they're saying. You're just trying to find the context...

]]> Pre-order Michele's book! deployempathy.com/order/ 

Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. Oh Dear does everything they can to help you avoid downtime like scheduled task monitoring, SSL certificate expiration notifications and more. But downtime happens. When it does, it's how you communicate in times of crisis that make the difference. Oh Dear makes it easy to keep your customers up to date during critical times. You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:35

So Michele, do you have a, 

 

Michele Hansen  00:38

Hey, 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:38

Good morning. Do you have a numbers update for us on your book?

 

Michele Hansen  00:43

I do. So my presale went live about a week and a half ago, when our episode with Sean went live. That was my deadline. And, I've sold 43 copies right now. Yeah, it's kind of exciting. Um, it's not all people I know, which is exciting.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:06

That's very exciting.

 

Michele Hansen  01:08

I love how supportive people have been. And it also, it makes me, it's just reassuring that people I don't know are buying it. But yeah, so that puts it right now, just, and this is just the raw, you know, number of times $29, which is $1,247.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:30

That's amazing. Congratulations.

 

Michele Hansen  01:33

Yeah. Thank you. And I got my first payout yesterday, which after, like, taxes, and everything else, was $912.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:41

Wow.

 

Michele Hansen  01:42

Which was kind of exciting, and gives me a little bit of budget to work with, with, like, you know, hiring a proofreader, and using some, like, layout tools, but, you know, so I was pulling these numbers, and because, you know, everybody loves numbers and whatnot. And I was thinking about it. So, so I got this, this message from someone yesterday, who had started reading the book, and it was actually someone I don't know. And if I can just kind of read what they, what they said. 


Colleen Schnettler  02:25

Yes, please.


Michele Hansen  02:26

And so I had a personal aha moment reading distinction between sympathetic, empathetic and solution based responses. My sympathetic conclusion based responses are leaving no space for empathetic, something I need to address. I'm an engineer and an architect by trade, and I'm looking to do a better job interviewing the humans attached to our work. But I'm also thinking about your book from the sense that a better balance of empathy will help me be a better teammate as well. And, like, getting that was so moving for me because it made me think about how, you know, I'm not writing this book for the money. Like, yes, the book needs to make money, because I've been working on it for four months now and have, you know, there's a lot of time I haven't spent working on Geocodio. Oh, like, I've been a pretty bad Geocodio employee the past couple of months, like, full honesty, right? So like, I have to, like, it has to have been, you know, worth my time. But like, I am not, I'm not motivated by that, like, I am motivated by this, by like, you know, like, I have this like, secret dream goal. Well, I mean, it's not a secret cuz I've, like, tweeted about it, but like, whatever. You know, Mathias sometimes says to me, he's like, I know you were thinking about something because you tweeted about it. And I’m like, oh, I forgot to, like, verbalize that. Anyway, um, I have this dream that through the process of learning this for interviewing, and, like, product development and marketing reasons, people will understand how to be more empathetic and use that in their daily lives. Like, everyone has a capacity for empathy. Everybody can learn it, not everybody is taught it or shown it so they don't really learn it. But everyone has a capacity for it. And, but also, like, very few people, you know, put like, be more empathetic, like, learn how to learn how to use empathy, like on their to do list every day. But they put write a landing page, get more customers, build a feature, like, reply to all of those customers and intercom like, those are the things that end up on a to do list. And so I have this like, kind of, I don't know, like, naive dream that like people will read this and apply these skills to the things they're already doing, but in doing so, learn how to be more empathetic in their daily life or you know, as a as a team member or whatnot. And just getting this message really, it was so motivating, but also so soul-nourishing because it really made me feel like, like the book has done what I wanted it to do. Like, this is what I set out to achieve and, like, this message makes me feel like the book is a success, regardless of how many copies it sells. Like, so it was just like, it was kind of a, it was kind of a, like a moment, like it was, it also sort of like if you're having this effect, like you can, like, stop rearranging it, like, you know, I feel like I've done a rewrite every week for, like, the past eight weeks. Yeah, time to time to ship the gosh darn thing.

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:57

That is wonderful. So what I just heard you say is, this book is secretly teaching us how to be better humans, wrapped up in a book about customer interviews.

 

Michele Hansen  06:09

Yes, wrapped up in a book about which features you should prioritize, and how to, you know, pick a pricing model based on what people's usage patterns are, and, like, how to understand what people want and write better landing pages. All that stuff they're already trying to do. But then yeah, there's, there's this kind of bigger message. Like, I feel like so much of good UX practice is good human being practice. 


Colleen Schnettler  06:35

Yeah. 


Michele Hansen  06:36

Um, and, I mean, I, I really learned about empathy by doing interviews myself. So this, I mean, it's, it's, it's very personal for me in a way that, like, the book is, I don't know, it is very, very personal for me. And it's not just about showing empathy to other people. It's also about showing empathy to yourself, too, which is just as important.

 

Colleen Schnettler  07:06

So I have not read the book yet, unfortunately. Can you tell me briefly, what the difference is between empathy and sympathy that that writer wrote into you? Because we talk about it a lot, but we've never defined it, really.

 

Michele Hansen  07:22

Yeah, that's true. So empathy is when you, basically when you, when you try to understand the other person's context without judgment, and it doesn't mean that you agree with what they're saying. You're just trying to find the context...

]]> Tue, 15 Jun 2021 10:18:34 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2493 What is exactly is the difference between empathy and sympathy and why should people building products care? What is exactly is the difference between empathy and sympathy and why should people building products care? SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Michele's First Numbers Update 47 47 Michele's First Numbers Update full cd41b8bd-0081-4dba-a38e-96e5f3f629a5 https://share.transistor.fm/s/97add27c Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear.

If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that I'm passionate about customer service and listening to customers.

A few months ago, we noticed something wasn't working on the Oh Dear dashboard. We reported it to them, and they fixed it almost immediately. Everybody has bugs occasionally, but not every company is so responsive to their customers, and we really appreciate that.

You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:35

So Michele, I'd love to hear about how things are going with the book. 

 

Michele Hansen  00:40

They're going. Um, so after our episode with Sean last week, I realized that I kind of, I have to launch this thing eventually, right? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:54

Yes. 

 

Michele Hansen  00:55

And, you know, for, you know, I mean, for months I've been hearing that advice of, you know, do a, do a presale and like, start selling it beforehand, And, and I was like, yeah, I mean, you know, I, that's the best practice. That makes sense. And then just kind of be like, but that doesn't apply to me, right? Like, I couldn't make, um. It's, you know, it's funny, because it's almost, I feel like the way people feel about when they hear about customer interviewing, they're like, that sounds really valuable and like the right thing to do, and I'm just gonna act like that doesn't apply to me. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:29

Yep. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:30

So that's kind of how I was, and talking to Sean really kind of got me to be like, okay, okay, fine. I should actually sit down and do this. So I got a very simple website together, and then I actually did end up launching the presale. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:46

Oh, congratulations. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:48

Yeah, that was super scary. Like, because the book 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:50

I bet.

 

Michele Hansen  01:53

And, like, random places where it says like, insert graphic here.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:01

So tell us how many books have you sold? 

 

Michele Hansen  02:03

Okay, yeah, so I guess I get to do, like, a numbers update for the first time. This is fun. Um, so I have sold 34 copies. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:15

Wow. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:16

Presale.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:17

That's a lot. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:18

So, and that's not including for like, you know, platform fees and whatever. Just like, you know, $29 times 34, basically. $986. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:32

That's amazing. Congratulations! 

 

Michele Hansen  02:35

So close to that, like, 1000 mark, which, I was talking about this with Mathias earlier, and he's kind of like, I feel like that's like a, you know, that's like, the legit threshold, is 1000. Like, and I don't know why, but it's like, yeah, it's like that feels like, that feels like the, the, like, the first big hurdle. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:55

I totally agree. That's wonderful news. Congratulations. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:00

You know, I expected to feel excited, or relieved, or something positive after releasing it, or the presale, at least. And I gotta tell you, like, I just feel pressure. Like, I'm really glad I didn't do this sooner. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:25

Really? 

 

Michele Hansen  03:27

Yeah. Because now I have, you know, at least 34 people I can't disappoint.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:32

Right. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:32

And I feel like, just like, the pressure to make something that is a quality product, like, I already had that pressure on myself to put something out there that I'm proud of. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:44

Yeah.

 

Michele Hansen  03:46

Now I have all these other people who are expecting that, and not that anyone has emailed me and said anything to that effect, but that's how I feel. And I was thinking about this earlier. And I was like, man, like, writing and selling this book has like, brought out all of these, like, vulnerabilities and, and self-doubt and everything, like all of this stuff that I like, thought I had dealt with and then it's, like, sort of like bursting out of the cabinet, being like, hey, I'm still here. So it's, you know, I mean, I have tools to, like, deal with that, but it's been like, oh my gosh, like, I thought I had dealt with, like, I never feel this way about anything about Geocodio, like, so. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:33

So, this is interesting, because I, when I was feeling a similar way, many months ago, I don't actually know if I talked about it on the podcast, but I had a very high value client that I had a great relationship with that needed a file uploader, and mine wasn't quite done, and I had this moment of terror, panic, I don't know, where I was like, I shouldn't use mine because, because if I put it on my client's site, like, it has to work, right? There's no get out of jail free card, Kind of like, you've now sold this book. Like, you have to finish it. 

 

Michele Hansen  05:07

Right. It's not just like, throwing it in a PDF and then like. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:09

Yeah. 

 

Michele Hansen  05:10

Oh, whatever, nobody paid for it. Like, it's not a big deal. Like, it's like, no, this is, like, this is serious now. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:17

Yeah. And I think something that, that I'm thinking of as you're talking about this, I remember at the time, Alex Hillman had a really great tweet thread about you're not scared of failure, maybe you're secretly scared of success. 

 

Michele Hansen  05:32

Mm hmm. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:33

It was really interesting. Like, just when you think about, like, the psychology and all of these new insecurities coming to light for you, like, maybe you're scared of success. 

 

Michele Hansen  05:42

]]> Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear.

If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that I'm passionate about customer service and listening to customers.

A few months ago, we noticed something wasn't working on the Oh Dear dashboard. We reported it to them, and they fixed it almost immediately. Everybody has bugs occasionally, but not every company is so responsive to their customers, and we really appreciate that.

You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:35

So Michele, I'd love to hear about how things are going with the book. 

 

Michele Hansen  00:40

They're going. Um, so after our episode with Sean last week, I realized that I kind of, I have to launch this thing eventually, right? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:54

Yes. 

 

Michele Hansen  00:55

And, you know, for, you know, I mean, for months I've been hearing that advice of, you know, do a, do a presale and like, start selling it beforehand, And, and I was like, yeah, I mean, you know, I, that's the best practice. That makes sense. And then just kind of be like, but that doesn't apply to me, right? Like, I couldn't make, um. It's, you know, it's funny, because it's almost, I feel like the way people feel about when they hear about customer interviewing, they're like, that sounds really valuable and like the right thing to do, and I'm just gonna act like that doesn't apply to me. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:29

Yep. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:30

So that's kind of how I was, and talking to Sean really kind of got me to be like, okay, okay, fine. I should actually sit down and do this. So I got a very simple website together, and then I actually did end up launching the presale. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:46

Oh, congratulations. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:48

Yeah, that was super scary. Like, because the book 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:50

I bet.

 

Michele Hansen  01:53

And, like, random places where it says like, insert graphic here.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:01

So tell us how many books have you sold? 

 

Michele Hansen  02:03

Okay, yeah, so I guess I get to do, like, a numbers update for the first time. This is fun. Um, so I have sold 34 copies. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:15

Wow. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:16

Presale.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:17

That's a lot. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:18

So, and that's not including for like, you know, platform fees and whatever. Just like, you know, $29 times 34, basically. $986. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:32

That's amazing. Congratulations! 

 

Michele Hansen  02:35

So close to that, like, 1000 mark, which, I was talking about this with Mathias earlier, and he's kind of like, I feel like that's like a, you know, that's like, the legit threshold, is 1000. Like, and I don't know why, but it's like, yeah, it's like that feels like, that feels like the, the, like, the first big hurdle. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:55

I totally agree. That's wonderful news. Congratulations. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:00

You know, I expected to feel excited, or relieved, or something positive after releasing it, or the presale, at least. And I gotta tell you, like, I just feel pressure. Like, I'm really glad I didn't do this sooner. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:25

Really? 

 

Michele Hansen  03:27

Yeah. Because now I have, you know, at least 34 people I can't disappoint.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:32

Right. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:32

And I feel like, just like, the pressure to make something that is a quality product, like, I already had that pressure on myself to put something out there that I'm proud of. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:44

Yeah.

 

Michele Hansen  03:46

Now I have all these other people who are expecting that, and not that anyone has emailed me and said anything to that effect, but that's how I feel. And I was thinking about this earlier. And I was like, man, like, writing and selling this book has like, brought out all of these, like, vulnerabilities and, and self-doubt and everything, like all of this stuff that I like, thought I had dealt with and then it's, like, sort of like bursting out of the cabinet, being like, hey, I'm still here. So it's, you know, I mean, I have tools to, like, deal with that, but it's been like, oh my gosh, like, I thought I had dealt with, like, I never feel this way about anything about Geocodio, like, so. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:33

So, this is interesting, because I, when I was feeling a similar way, many months ago, I don't actually know if I talked about it on the podcast, but I had a very high value client that I had a great relationship with that needed a file uploader, and mine wasn't quite done, and I had this moment of terror, panic, I don't know, where I was like, I shouldn't use mine because, because if I put it on my client's site, like, it has to work, right? There's no get out of jail free card, Kind of like, you've now sold this book. Like, you have to finish it. 

 

Michele Hansen  05:07

Right. It's not just like, throwing it in a PDF and then like. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:09

Yeah. 

 

Michele Hansen  05:10

Oh, whatever, nobody paid for it. Like, it's not a big deal. Like, it's like, no, this is, like, this is serious now. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:17

Yeah. And I think something that, that I'm thinking of as you're talking about this, I remember at the time, Alex Hillman had a really great tweet thread about you're not scared of failure, maybe you're secretly scared of success. 

 

Michele Hansen  05:32

Mm hmm. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:33

It was really interesting. Like, just when you think about, like, the psychology and all of these new insecurities coming to light for you, like, maybe you're scared of success. 

 

Michele Hansen  05:42

]]> Tue, 08 Jun 2021 13:54:34 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1958 Michele finally opens the pre-sale for her book, and Colleen gets some help. Michele finally opens the pre-sale for her book, and Colleen gets some help. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Marketing an eBook 46 46 Marketing an eBook full 684a28bf-7fcb-4cf3-bc61-a1c666e98d68 https://share.transistor.fm/s/9ad40466 Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. We use Oh Dear to keep track of SSL certificates. If an SSL certificate is about to expire, we get an alert beforehand. We have automated processes to renew them, so we use Oh Dear as an extra level of peace of mind. You can sign up for a ten day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app. 


Michele Hansen  00:28

Hey, welcome back to Software Social. So today we're doing something kind of fun. We're leaning on the social part of Software Social, and we have invited our friend, Sean Fioritto, to join us today.


Sean Fioritto  00:44

Hey guys. Thanks for having me. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:47

Hi Sean. Thanks for being here.

 

Michele Hansen  00:48

So, and the reason why we asked Sean, in addition to being a great person, is that Sean wrote a book called Sketching With CSS, and as you all know, I am writing a book and figuring it out. And there is a lot of stuff I haven't figured out, especially when it comes to, like, actually selling the book. Like, I feel like that, I feel like the, writing the book is, like, I feel like I kind of got a handle on that. The whole selling the book thing, like, not so much. Um, so we thought it would be kind of helpful to have Sean come on, since like, he's done this successfully.

 

Colleen Schnettler  021:36

So Sean, I would love to start with a little bit of your background with the book. What inspired you to write it? How did you get started? Where did that idea come from? 

 

Sean Fioritto  01:50

Yeah, so I wanted to quit my job. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:53

Don't we all?

 

Michele Hansen  01:55

Honest goal.

 

Sean Fioritto  01:56

I always wanted to go on my own, be independent, run my own business. That's been a goal for a very long time. So, I tried various things, you know, in my spare time, with limited to no success for years and years before that, and I was just getting sick of, the plan was, you know, I'm like, okay, I have this job. And in my spare time, I'm gonna get something going and then, and that just wasn't working. So I was getting impatient. Anyway, I ended up signing up with Amy Hoy's 30x500 class. This was seven or eight years ago. So, I signed up for that class. Actually, wait, I'm getting my timeline a little mixed up. So, I started reading stuff by Amy Hoy. It's funny, I'd actually bought another book that she wrote, and she used her sort of process for that book. And I bought that for my, for my job earlier. And I was like, oh, this Amy Hoy person is interesting. And so I started reading her blog, and then she has these things she writes called ebombs. You guys are probably familiar with that term. But they're basically content that, it's educational content directed at her target, you know, customer, which she would call her audience. So I was just, she, at that point, she had started 30x500. I think it was actually called a Year of Hustle at that point. And so she had all this content, and I was just devouring it, because I was like, she gets me. She knows my problem, and this is awesome. So I was just reading everything that she could write, that she wrote, and, you know, finding any resource that she'd ever written about, like, what's her process, because she was talking about this mysterious process that she has, she, she would talk about it. And I was able to sort of reverse engineer part of her course, the main thing called Sales Safari. So I'm not, I'm at my job, coasting, doing a half-assed job, spending a lot of time doing Sales Safari, trying to figure out what, what product I should do. Not product, but that's not the way to think about it with Sales Safari, but trying to figure out like, what, who, what audience should I focus on? And what problems do they have, and what's the juiciest problem that makes sense for me to tackle? And then, and she would call them pains, by the way, not, not problems. So what's the juiciest pain that they have, for me, that was like, be the easiest for me to peel off, and, and work on. So I started digging, and it was like, alright, well, what audience makes sense for me? This is kind of the process, and it was like, you know, like web designers, web developers, because I was a web developer. And so like, what are the, you know, audiences that are close to audiences that I'm in is kind of ideal. So I started there, and then I just read and read and read. I probably put like, 80 hours of research time into that process. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:05

Wow.

 

Michele Hansen  05:06

That's a lot.

 

Sean Fioritto  05:06

Of just reading and reading and reading and reading, and taking notes. And really understanding and whittling down and figuring out my audience, and figuring out, so the thinking, the benefit of that amount of time spent deliberately going through a process like that is that at some point, I became so in-tune with the audience that I could identify, and this is gonna pay off for you, Michele, this, this little story, because this feeds into like, how do you sell it. At some point, it meant that I could tell when a thing that I was, like a piece of content marketing that I was working on, was going to resonate very strongly with my audience and be worth the effort, if that makes sense. And it didn't really take much. Like, after I got done with that much amount of research, it was sort of, like, pretty trivial for me to come up with ideas for content that I could write that I knew people were gonna just eat up. And so that's, that's how I started building my, building my mailing list. And then that's how I eventually, Colleen, to your question, I came up with Sketching With CSS, which it was a solution to a pain point that I'd identified in my audience, which at that point was web designers.

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:37

How big did your mailing list grow?

 

Sean Fioritto  06:39

I have 20,000 people on my mail list.

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:41

20,000?

 

Michele Hansen  06:42

Holy guacamole. 

 

Sean Fioritto  06:46

Yeah. So like I said, I got really good. No, no, no.

 

Michele Hansen  06:51

I've got like, 200 people on my mailing list, or like, 220. And like, for context, that's like, 200 more people than I ever expected to have on the mailing list, and hearing, like, 20,000 feels very far from, from 200.

 

Sean Fioritto  07:10

Yeah, well, let me say something that will hopefully be more reassuring. The, Amy and Alex, for example, they've been running 30x500, for years, and I think their mailing list is just now approximating, like 20,000 or so. And like, the, they have been making so much money with that ...

]]> Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. We use Oh Dear to keep track of SSL certificates. If an SSL certificate is about to expire, we get an alert beforehand. We have automated processes to renew them, so we use Oh Dear as an extra level of peace of mind. You can sign up for a ten day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app. 


Michele Hansen  00:28

Hey, welcome back to Software Social. So today we're doing something kind of fun. We're leaning on the social part of Software Social, and we have invited our friend, Sean Fioritto, to join us today.


Sean Fioritto  00:44

Hey guys. Thanks for having me. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:47

Hi Sean. Thanks for being here.

 

Michele Hansen  00:48

So, and the reason why we asked Sean, in addition to being a great person, is that Sean wrote a book called Sketching With CSS, and as you all know, I am writing a book and figuring it out. And there is a lot of stuff I haven't figured out, especially when it comes to, like, actually selling the book. Like, I feel like that, I feel like the, writing the book is, like, I feel like I kind of got a handle on that. The whole selling the book thing, like, not so much. Um, so we thought it would be kind of helpful to have Sean come on, since like, he's done this successfully.

 

Colleen Schnettler  021:36

So Sean, I would love to start with a little bit of your background with the book. What inspired you to write it? How did you get started? Where did that idea come from? 

 

Sean Fioritto  01:50

Yeah, so I wanted to quit my job. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:53

Don't we all?

 

Michele Hansen  01:55

Honest goal.

 

Sean Fioritto  01:56

I always wanted to go on my own, be independent, run my own business. That's been a goal for a very long time. So, I tried various things, you know, in my spare time, with limited to no success for years and years before that, and I was just getting sick of, the plan was, you know, I'm like, okay, I have this job. And in my spare time, I'm gonna get something going and then, and that just wasn't working. So I was getting impatient. Anyway, I ended up signing up with Amy Hoy's 30x500 class. This was seven or eight years ago. So, I signed up for that class. Actually, wait, I'm getting my timeline a little mixed up. So, I started reading stuff by Amy Hoy. It's funny, I'd actually bought another book that she wrote, and she used her sort of process for that book. And I bought that for my, for my job earlier. And I was like, oh, this Amy Hoy person is interesting. And so I started reading her blog, and then she has these things she writes called ebombs. You guys are probably familiar with that term. But they're basically content that, it's educational content directed at her target, you know, customer, which she would call her audience. So I was just, she, at that point, she had started 30x500. I think it was actually called a Year of Hustle at that point. And so she had all this content, and I was just devouring it, because I was like, she gets me. She knows my problem, and this is awesome. So I was just reading everything that she could write, that she wrote, and, you know, finding any resource that she'd ever written about, like, what's her process, because she was talking about this mysterious process that she has, she, she would talk about it. And I was able to sort of reverse engineer part of her course, the main thing called Sales Safari. So I'm not, I'm at my job, coasting, doing a half-assed job, spending a lot of time doing Sales Safari, trying to figure out what, what product I should do. Not product, but that's not the way to think about it with Sales Safari, but trying to figure out like, what, who, what audience should I focus on? And what problems do they have, and what's the juiciest problem that makes sense for me to tackle? And then, and she would call them pains, by the way, not, not problems. So what's the juiciest pain that they have, for me, that was like, be the easiest for me to peel off, and, and work on. So I started digging, and it was like, alright, well, what audience makes sense for me? This is kind of the process, and it was like, you know, like web designers, web developers, because I was a web developer. And so like, what are the, you know, audiences that are close to audiences that I'm in is kind of ideal. So I started there, and then I just read and read and read. I probably put like, 80 hours of research time into that process. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:05

Wow.

 

Michele Hansen  05:06

That's a lot.

 

Sean Fioritto  05:06

Of just reading and reading and reading and reading, and taking notes. And really understanding and whittling down and figuring out my audience, and figuring out, so the thinking, the benefit of that amount of time spent deliberately going through a process like that is that at some point, I became so in-tune with the audience that I could identify, and this is gonna pay off for you, Michele, this, this little story, because this feeds into like, how do you sell it. At some point, it meant that I could tell when a thing that I was, like a piece of content marketing that I was working on, was going to resonate very strongly with my audience and be worth the effort, if that makes sense. And it didn't really take much. Like, after I got done with that much amount of research, it was sort of, like, pretty trivial for me to come up with ideas for content that I could write that I knew people were gonna just eat up. And so that's, that's how I started building my, building my mailing list. And then that's how I eventually, Colleen, to your question, I came up with Sketching With CSS, which it was a solution to a pain point that I'd identified in my audience, which at that point was web designers.

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:37

How big did your mailing list grow?

 

Sean Fioritto  06:39

I have 20,000 people on my mail list.

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:41

20,000?

 

Michele Hansen  06:42

Holy guacamole. 

 

Sean Fioritto  06:46

Yeah. So like I said, I got really good. No, no, no.

 

Michele Hansen  06:51

I've got like, 200 people on my mailing list, or like, 220. And like, for context, that's like, 200 more people than I ever expected to have on the mailing list, and hearing, like, 20,000 feels very far from, from 200.

 

Sean Fioritto  07:10

Yeah, well, let me say something that will hopefully be more reassuring. The, Amy and Alex, for example, they've been running 30x500, for years, and I think their mailing list is just now approximating, like 20,000 or so. And like, the, they have been making so much money with that ...

]]> Tue, 01 Jun 2021 11:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 3376 Sean Fioritto, author of Sketching with CSS, joins to talk Michele through how to market an ebook. Sean Fioritto, author of Sketching with CSS, joins to talk Michele through how to market an ebook. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler The Real Life Episode 45 45 The Real Life Episode full 3c76fca4-4e55-4082-bca8-e15142b1a73d https://share.transistor.fm/s/aa314e06 Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. We recently refreshed the Geocodio website, and it was really helpful how Oh Dear alerted us to broken links and made it clear what we needed to fix. Broken links are bad for SEO, and so I really appreciate those alerts from Oh Dear. You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:28

Good morning, Michele.

 

Michele Hansen  00:30

Hey, how are you?

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:32

Good. How are things in Denmark today?

 

Michele Hansen  00:36

Well, this week was kind of a challenge, um, because on, I had a super productive writing day on Monday. So I read Kathy Sierra's Badass over the weekend.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:52

Oh yeah, I've heard of that book.

 

Michele Hansen  00:53

I don't know, have you read that? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:54

I have not.

 

Michele Hansen  00:54

Okay, you've read that. Oh, you have not read that. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:56

I've not read that. 

 

Michele Hansen  00:57

It's really good. So in so many ways, it's, I think of it as, like, jobs to be done for people who don't know what Jobs To Be Done is and have never heard of that. Like, it's basically like figuring out like, you're not just building a thing for the sake of it. You're building it because somebody wants to do something, and they don't buy it for the sake of it. Like, they want to do something better. And so it's, it's kind of aligned with StoryBrand in that regard. It's like, you know, your user is the hero, not the product. But it's a little bit more, um, it's, I think it's just a different perspective than StoreBrand. It's very, very practical. And it, the whole thing is kind of written like a PowerPoint. There's like, lots of like pictures and comics. Actually my seven year old, like, while I was reading it, she came over and she was like, oh, what are you reading? Like, pictures. So, you know, she wants to learn how to make a product. I'll leave that one laying around. Um, it's really good. Um, but, so I was reading it because some people had mentioned it in the interviews I did as a book that they liked. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:05

Okay, great. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:06

And yeah, and, and so I read it just sort of as like, reference material. Um, but actually, it ended up like, helping me kind of have a breakthrough with the book on Monday. Um, and so I spent like, the whole day. Uh, yeah, no, all day Tuesday, actually. I spent the whole day Tuesday writing. I didn't get any writing time on Monday, really. And then Tuesday, at like, four o'clock, I was, um, like, signing on to a Zoom, and then my computer crashed. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:35

Oh, no.

 

Michele Hansen  02:36

Like, died, and crashed and like, gone to join the choir invisible like, is now an ex-laptop, like, just totally got like, it was just restarting itself for like, three days. And, 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:51

Oh.

 

Michele Hansen  02:51

So, it is now embarking on a lovely journey to the Czech Republic to be repaired, um, and I did not get a lot done the rest of the week, because it was like, trying to figure stuff out with using the, like, the iPad. Like, it was just, yeah. So, you know, but that's real life, right?

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:15

Yes, that is real life. So true.

 

Michele Hansen  03:19

Oh, so how's it, how's it going for you?

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:23

So I got a lot of time, I blocked out a lot of time this week to work on Simple File Upload, and it gave me great joy. Like, I have to say, you know, it's funny because people are always talking about self-care, and in the mom space, like you always see things like go get a pedicure, and I'm like, my self care is like, six hours alone with my laptop with no one to bother me. Is that weird? 

 

Michele Hansen  03:44

Heck yes.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:45

Like, I love that. So like, on Monday, such a weirdo. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:50

It's so true. Like, it's so true. Like, so much of self-care is like, people just wanting to sell you stuff, and like, reality is it's sometimes it's just leave me alone.

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:01

Right? Just leave me alone. So it was, I really had a great week. I got to spend a good chunk of time implementing this feature request, which was something that I thought would be easy, and ended up taking way longer than I thought. So basically, my uploader uses the default styling that comes with drop zone, DropzoneJS, and so I got a request to allow it to be smaller, like 50 pixels by 50 pixels, which I thought would be no big deal. But it turns out once I started digging into the source, the styles are all pinned to 120 pixels by 120 pixels. So it was like, a huge thing to change this because I basically had to rip out all of the static, you know, statically defined CSS and put in, um, flexible CSS, and it was fun. I mean, it was, it was so cool because it was something I enjoy doing, um, something I don't do a lot. I think one of the huge benefits to building your own product is you get exposed to things you wouldn't do in your day job. Like, every job I've had, I have a front end guy, and I have a CSS guy, and I don't really do that very much. Um, it's not a core skill set of mind. So it was kind of fun to get to dive into it and like, learn some new stuff and, and uh, and to ship it. So that made me happy. That brought me great joy.

 

Michele Hansen  05:27

It sounds like it did, despite the, the frustration. I'm curious, why did the person need it to be 50 by 50? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:35

Avatars. So, so many people are using it as avatars, and using it for avatars, and it's pinned to 140 by one, or 120 by 120, which is big. I mean, you look at it, and you're like uh, it's kind of big for a, um, um, a form factor. So, yeah, that's what that was for

 

Michele Hansen  05:56

So are we talking about when someone uploads a file, it's turned into that size, or the actual size of the upload, or when they put it on their site?

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:05

The actual size of the uploader to fit into, so he actually sent me his form, like, sent me a video of his form, which is really coo...

]]> Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. We recently refreshed the Geocodio website, and it was really helpful how Oh Dear alerted us to broken links and made it clear what we needed to fix. Broken links are bad for SEO, and so I really appreciate those alerts from Oh Dear. You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:28

Good morning, Michele.

 

Michele Hansen  00:30

Hey, how are you?

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:32

Good. How are things in Denmark today?

 

Michele Hansen  00:36

Well, this week was kind of a challenge, um, because on, I had a super productive writing day on Monday. So I read Kathy Sierra's Badass over the weekend.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:52

Oh yeah, I've heard of that book.

 

Michele Hansen  00:53

I don't know, have you read that? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:54

I have not.

 

Michele Hansen  00:54

Okay, you've read that. Oh, you have not read that. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:56

I've not read that. 

 

Michele Hansen  00:57

It's really good. So in so many ways, it's, I think of it as, like, jobs to be done for people who don't know what Jobs To Be Done is and have never heard of that. Like, it's basically like figuring out like, you're not just building a thing for the sake of it. You're building it because somebody wants to do something, and they don't buy it for the sake of it. Like, they want to do something better. And so it's, it's kind of aligned with StoryBrand in that regard. It's like, you know, your user is the hero, not the product. But it's a little bit more, um, it's, I think it's just a different perspective than StoreBrand. It's very, very practical. And it, the whole thing is kind of written like a PowerPoint. There's like, lots of like pictures and comics. Actually my seven year old, like, while I was reading it, she came over and she was like, oh, what are you reading? Like, pictures. So, you know, she wants to learn how to make a product. I'll leave that one laying around. Um, it's really good. Um, but, so I was reading it because some people had mentioned it in the interviews I did as a book that they liked. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:05

Okay, great. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:06

And yeah, and, and so I read it just sort of as like, reference material. Um, but actually, it ended up like, helping me kind of have a breakthrough with the book on Monday. Um, and so I spent like, the whole day. Uh, yeah, no, all day Tuesday, actually. I spent the whole day Tuesday writing. I didn't get any writing time on Monday, really. And then Tuesday, at like, four o'clock, I was, um, like, signing on to a Zoom, and then my computer crashed. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:35

Oh, no.

 

Michele Hansen  02:36

Like, died, and crashed and like, gone to join the choir invisible like, is now an ex-laptop, like, just totally got like, it was just restarting itself for like, three days. And, 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:51

Oh.

 

Michele Hansen  02:51

So, it is now embarking on a lovely journey to the Czech Republic to be repaired, um, and I did not get a lot done the rest of the week, because it was like, trying to figure stuff out with using the, like, the iPad. Like, it was just, yeah. So, you know, but that's real life, right?

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:15

Yes, that is real life. So true.

 

Michele Hansen  03:19

Oh, so how's it, how's it going for you?

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:23

So I got a lot of time, I blocked out a lot of time this week to work on Simple File Upload, and it gave me great joy. Like, I have to say, you know, it's funny because people are always talking about self-care, and in the mom space, like you always see things like go get a pedicure, and I'm like, my self care is like, six hours alone with my laptop with no one to bother me. Is that weird? 

 

Michele Hansen  03:44

Heck yes.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:45

Like, I love that. So like, on Monday, such a weirdo. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:50

It's so true. Like, it's so true. Like, so much of self-care is like, people just wanting to sell you stuff, and like, reality is it's sometimes it's just leave me alone.

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:01

Right? Just leave me alone. So it was, I really had a great week. I got to spend a good chunk of time implementing this feature request, which was something that I thought would be easy, and ended up taking way longer than I thought. So basically, my uploader uses the default styling that comes with drop zone, DropzoneJS, and so I got a request to allow it to be smaller, like 50 pixels by 50 pixels, which I thought would be no big deal. But it turns out once I started digging into the source, the styles are all pinned to 120 pixels by 120 pixels. So it was like, a huge thing to change this because I basically had to rip out all of the static, you know, statically defined CSS and put in, um, flexible CSS, and it was fun. I mean, it was, it was so cool because it was something I enjoy doing, um, something I don't do a lot. I think one of the huge benefits to building your own product is you get exposed to things you wouldn't do in your day job. Like, every job I've had, I have a front end guy, and I have a CSS guy, and I don't really do that very much. Um, it's not a core skill set of mind. So it was kind of fun to get to dive into it and like, learn some new stuff and, and uh, and to ship it. So that made me happy. That brought me great joy.

 

Michele Hansen  05:27

It sounds like it did, despite the, the frustration. I'm curious, why did the person need it to be 50 by 50? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:35

Avatars. So, so many people are using it as avatars, and using it for avatars, and it's pinned to 140 by one, or 120 by 120, which is big. I mean, you look at it, and you're like uh, it's kind of big for a, um, um, a form factor. So, yeah, that's what that was for

 

Michele Hansen  05:56

So are we talking about when someone uploads a file, it's turned into that size, or the actual size of the upload, or when they put it on their site?

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:05

The actual size of the uploader to fit into, so he actually sent me his form, like, sent me a video of his form, which is really coo...

]]> Tue, 25 May 2021 11:17:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1993 Michele's laptop died and Colleen has churn. It's the real life episode. Michele's laptop died and Colleen has churn. It's the real life episode. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Valuable, Usable, Viable, Feasible 44 44 Valuable, Usable, Viable, Feasible full 40e66241-8ea0-485a-aace-1b4e1369d1c0 https://share.transistor.fm/s/0444a618 Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Oh Dear, the website monitoring app. As an Oh Dear customer myself, I particularly like how easy it is to make SLA reports with Oh Dear. They're professional and sleek, and they make it easier for us to service enterprise customers. And I actually requested this feature myself last year, and I'm so delighted with how open to suggestions they are. You can sign up for a free 10 day trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:32

So Michele, how has your week been? 

 

Michele Hansen  00:34

It's good. It's good. You know, I was, I was doing some writing this morning, which is funny, I've realized it's, like, my reward work. Like, you know, when I get through all the other stuff, like it's like, oh, like, now I have some writing time. And,

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:47

That's amazing because I remember being in high school and, like, English, like whenever I had to write a paper, it was literally my least favorite thing to do. So I find that fascinating that, for you, writing is your reward work.

 

Michele Hansen  00:59

I, five paragraph essays are, I don't think anyone looks forward to writing those. Like, this is very different than, than that. Um, but so I was, I was writing and I started thinking about this framework that I know we've talked about, and it occurred to me that I have a very tangible example of that.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:20

Which framework? StoryBrand, or something else?  

 

Michele Hansen  01:22

No, so it's a Marty Cagan framework. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:25

Okay.

 

Michele Hansen  01:26

So, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna back up first. So, there's this misconception, I think that people sometimes have or fear about customer research that if they start listening to their customers, then they have to do everything the customers ask them for. And they're basically, like, giving up control over the vision of the product to the customer. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:47

Okay.

 

Michele Hansen  01:48

And that's not true, right? Like, you'll always have to weigh it against, um, what makes sense for you to do. And so, there's this one framework that I particularly like that was developed by Marty Cagan, who is kind of, like, the the product guru, like, he's the head of this consultancy called the Silicon Valley Product Group. Like, he is like the product guy, and in order for a product to be successful, he says how it needs to be valuable, viable, usable, and feasible.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:26

Wow, valuable, viable, usable, feasible. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:30

So let's, let's break it down a little bit. So first, it has to be valuable for the customer. Like, it has to be something that is, you know, accomplishes something for them and helps them do something, right. Because if it's something that doesn't help them do something that they would want to do, then they wouldn't use it. Like, the example I kind of think of for this is what was that startup that would, like, squeeze a bag of pureed fruit for you? Like Juicero, or, like, it was some, like, they raised like billions of dollars or whatever, for, like, a smoothie machine, and everyone is like, why? Like, not really very valuable to people. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:04

Right. Okay. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:05

I'm sure they had wonderful ideas, and they were great people. It has to be viable, which means it has to be, like, commercially viable, like people have to be willing to pay for it. So like, I could make something that's super awesome and useful, but if no one is willing to pay for it, then it's not a viable product, right? Like, if I'm solving a problem that no one experiences painfully enough to, to pay someone to solve it, then it's not going to work out. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:30

Okay.

 

Michele Hansen  03:30

It has to be usable, which may be the easiest of all these words, to understand that, like, they have to be able to figure out how to use it. So, 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:39

Okay.

 

Michele Hansen  03:39

You may have heard this in the context of usability testing, which is basically, like, if I make a website that you can do something on, but you can't actually figure out how to do that, and it's confusing, then it doesn't matter if what the product does is something that's valuable to you. If you can't figure out how to do it, you're going to move on to something else. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:57

Right. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:57

And then the last one is it has to be feasible, like, it has to be possible for you to produce this product. So,  So this would be the equivalent of being, me being like, Colleen, I really need a spaceship. And you being like, that's awesome. I can see that's valuable for you. Maybe you have the ability to pay for that. I don't, but you know, let's go with it. I can build it in a way that, that you can use it. You know, you're an engineer, right? Any kind of engineer can build any kind of thing, right? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:05

Oh, okay. Sure. 

 

Michele Hansen  04:25

Yeah. Like, you could build a bridge. No, I'm, I'm, for all the certified engineers out there, I'm aware that they're not all transferable. But it wouldn't be feasible for you to build that. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:37

Right. 

 

Michele Hansen  04:38

So, so this framework of valuable, viable, usable and feasible is something that I always keep in mind when we're getting feedback from people because you don't necessarily act on every single problem and every piece of advice that you hear, and, like, and that's okay. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:55

Yeah, okay. 

 

Michele Hansen  04:56

And so, a specific example of this that relates to the book and to something we have been talking about quite a bit is consulting and whether I should do consulting related to the book. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:10

Right. 

 

Michele Hansen  05:10

It's something we've talked about, and I've gotten quite a few requests from people about. And, you know, as I thought about it, okay, so clearly, this would be valuable for people. Like they, they feel like they need...

]]> Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Oh Dear, the website monitoring app. As an Oh Dear customer myself, I particularly like how easy it is to make SLA reports with Oh Dear. They're professional and sleek, and they make it easier for us to service enterprise customers. And I actually requested this feature myself last year, and I'm so delighted with how open to suggestions they are. You can sign up for a free 10 day trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:32

So Michele, how has your week been? 

 

Michele Hansen  00:34

It's good. It's good. You know, I was, I was doing some writing this morning, which is funny, I've realized it's, like, my reward work. Like, you know, when I get through all the other stuff, like it's like, oh, like, now I have some writing time. And,

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:47

That's amazing because I remember being in high school and, like, English, like whenever I had to write a paper, it was literally my least favorite thing to do. So I find that fascinating that, for you, writing is your reward work.

 

Michele Hansen  00:59

I, five paragraph essays are, I don't think anyone looks forward to writing those. Like, this is very different than, than that. Um, but so I was, I was writing and I started thinking about this framework that I know we've talked about, and it occurred to me that I have a very tangible example of that.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:20

Which framework? StoryBrand, or something else?  

 

Michele Hansen  01:22

No, so it's a Marty Cagan framework. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:25

Okay.

 

Michele Hansen  01:26

So, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna back up first. So, there's this misconception, I think that people sometimes have or fear about customer research that if they start listening to their customers, then they have to do everything the customers ask them for. And they're basically, like, giving up control over the vision of the product to the customer. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:47

Okay.

 

Michele Hansen  01:48

And that's not true, right? Like, you'll always have to weigh it against, um, what makes sense for you to do. And so, there's this one framework that I particularly like that was developed by Marty Cagan, who is kind of, like, the the product guru, like, he's the head of this consultancy called the Silicon Valley Product Group. Like, he is like the product guy, and in order for a product to be successful, he says how it needs to be valuable, viable, usable, and feasible.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:26

Wow, valuable, viable, usable, feasible. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:30

So let's, let's break it down a little bit. So first, it has to be valuable for the customer. Like, it has to be something that is, you know, accomplishes something for them and helps them do something, right. Because if it's something that doesn't help them do something that they would want to do, then they wouldn't use it. Like, the example I kind of think of for this is what was that startup that would, like, squeeze a bag of pureed fruit for you? Like Juicero, or, like, it was some, like, they raised like billions of dollars or whatever, for, like, a smoothie machine, and everyone is like, why? Like, not really very valuable to people. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:04

Right. Okay. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:05

I'm sure they had wonderful ideas, and they were great people. It has to be viable, which means it has to be, like, commercially viable, like people have to be willing to pay for it. So like, I could make something that's super awesome and useful, but if no one is willing to pay for it, then it's not a viable product, right? Like, if I'm solving a problem that no one experiences painfully enough to, to pay someone to solve it, then it's not going to work out. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:30

Okay.

 

Michele Hansen  03:30

It has to be usable, which may be the easiest of all these words, to understand that, like, they have to be able to figure out how to use it. So, 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:39

Okay.

 

Michele Hansen  03:39

You may have heard this in the context of usability testing, which is basically, like, if I make a website that you can do something on, but you can't actually figure out how to do that, and it's confusing, then it doesn't matter if what the product does is something that's valuable to you. If you can't figure out how to do it, you're going to move on to something else. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:57

Right. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:57

And then the last one is it has to be feasible, like, it has to be possible for you to produce this product. So,  So this would be the equivalent of being, me being like, Colleen, I really need a spaceship. And you being like, that's awesome. I can see that's valuable for you. Maybe you have the ability to pay for that. I don't, but you know, let's go with it. I can build it in a way that, that you can use it. You know, you're an engineer, right? Any kind of engineer can build any kind of thing, right? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:05

Oh, okay. Sure. 

 

Michele Hansen  04:25

Yeah. Like, you could build a bridge. No, I'm, I'm, for all the certified engineers out there, I'm aware that they're not all transferable. But it wouldn't be feasible for you to build that. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:37

Right. 

 

Michele Hansen  04:38

So, so this framework of valuable, viable, usable and feasible is something that I always keep in mind when we're getting feedback from people because you don't necessarily act on every single problem and every piece of advice that you hear, and, like, and that's okay. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:55

Yeah, okay. 

 

Michele Hansen  04:56

And so, a specific example of this that relates to the book and to something we have been talking about quite a bit is consulting and whether I should do consulting related to the book. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:10

Right. 

 

Michele Hansen  05:10

It's something we've talked about, and I've gotten quite a few requests from people about. And, you know, as I thought about it, okay, so clearly, this would be valuable for people. Like they, they feel like they need...

]]> Tue, 18 May 2021 12:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1947 Michele talks about applying a product framework to her book, and Colleen passes a milestone. Michele talks about applying a product framework to her book, and Colleen passes a milestone. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Real Internet Money 43 43 Real Internet Money full d1ae3fce-d120-4a70-a65c-fe850a84abdc https://share.transistor.fm/s/afa07210  

Colleen Schnettler  00:00

This week's episode of the Software Social Podcast is brought to you by Hopscotch Product Tours. Hopscotch Product Tours allows you to improve user onboarding with helpful product tours that guide your users to success. Also reduce frustration by helping users learn how to use your product without the need for demo calls, visit Hopscotch.club today and start delighting your users with Hopscotch Product Tours.

 

Michele Hansen  00:28

Hey, Colleen.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:29

Hey, Michele. 

 

Michele Hansen  00:31

How you doing? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:32

I'm doing pretty well. I had a pretty uplifting week over here in the Simple File Upload world. 

 

Michele Hansen  00:38

You know what? That's good to hear. Because I feel like last week you were, we talked about how you were kind of feeling like you were in the void. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:44

I totally was. And, you know, I still feel that but I'm trying to, two things happen that changed my perspective. One, I got another check from Heroku. So that always helps. That doesn't hurt. And I'm kind of just trying to focus on my mindset as I approach this business. I have to say the check from Heroku because unlike Stripe, where you just get paid randomly when people, you know, when people pay, you only get paid once a month. So I've been telling you I have $800 MRR for like three weeks, and I haven't seen that money. So I just saw that money yesterday. So that was pretty exciting.

 

Michele Hansen  01:21

Nice

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:22

Yeah, I think I remember telling you my very first check. I got like I had enough leftover to buy a bagel. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:28

Yes. The bagel, the $20 bagel.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:30

The $20 bagel. Well, this time it was it was quite a bit more so I could could have bought quite a few bagels. So that was pretty exciting. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:37

And I saw you tweeted out earlier this week that the Stripe payouts, I was just like payout, payout, payout.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:45

I think what must happen is like people must have signed up, there were, like, four or five people who signed up like one day apart. And so the all of their invoices hit like right after each other. So I like signed on to my email every day, and it was like payout payout payout. It was awesome. It's very exciting. It was a lot of excitedness in terms of actually seeing the fruits of my labor on this product this week. So that was fun. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:10

Yay. Internet money. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:12

Yay, internet money. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:13

So where is your MRR at now? So I just checked and I'm at $975. I know. What? Oh my god, you're almost at the $1,000 MRR mark, and it's been, like, three months. Yeah, I guess it's, yeah, three, oh my god. Like, 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:35

Yeah. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:36

That's, that's not common. Like, just for everybody else kind of like, listening like that is, that is very uncommon. Like, you're you're not like ending up on $1,000 after three months like Coleen like that's, that's normal. Like, I think it took us like six months, and even then that was kind of fast for a little project. Dude, 975. Yeah.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:57

That's real money. It's real. That's why my last check. Because if you look at my checks from Heroku, and once again, I only get those once a month. It's not like Stripe. It was like the first one was like 150. The second one was like 250. This last one was like $570. I was like, that's like, real money. Like I could do something with that money. That's cool. Yeah, so, so from a monetary perspective, it's going great. I think I, I was struggling a lot. And I still am kind of struggling because I don't have a good feedback loop. I have been kind of unsure what to do next, and how to push the product forward. And it's funny because I like I think mid last week, I was just in a funk. And I was like, You know what, I'm just gonna build it the way I want to build it. I'm gonna develop all these features. I don't care what anyone tells me. Like, I'm just gonna do what I want to do. And you know, of course, everyone I talked to is like, that's a terrible idea. And the best way someone phrased it to me, they were like, what if you do go and you spend a couple months and you build all these features you feel like you need, you're still not going to know who your customer is. Like, I was complaining because I don't know who my customer is. And she was like, even if you spend this time to build that out, you'll be three months down the road, and you still won't know who your customer is. So have you made any progress? And I was like, oh, that's a good way to put it. So, I did a few interviews this week, which was really great. I'm really gonna take a pause on any kind of development work, and just talk to people. I mean, talk talk, talk. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:01

Colleen.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:02

I know, I know.

 

Michele Hansen  03:04

You're done putzing around in the code garden and like, you're out there in the town square. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:29

I'm convinced. Like, between the, I mean, I probably five different people had to tell me this. But like you guys have convinced me that I just need to talk to more people. I just need, I don't know. Like, if you ask me who my ideal customer was, like, is, or who this provides value to, I can't identify that person, and casting a net of all developers is way too broad and too vague. So, that's really what I am focused on. In the next couple months, I think another thing is I need to calm down a little bit and slow down and be a little bit more patient. 

 

Michele Hansen  05:21

You said that you could go off and build something for three months, and it sounds like this person you were talking to, kind of helped you realize basically, like, you wouldn't know who you were building for and why you were building it and how they needed any of that to work. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:39

Yeah. And I think that's exactly the thing. So, so this week has been great. I spoke to three consultants, I have another one today, and I'm trying to get to five consultants, which I'm sure I can find one more person. Here's the thing, Michele, they all want different things. 

 

Michele Hansen 

]]>  

Colleen Schnettler  00:00

This week's episode of the Software Social Podcast is brought to you by Hopscotch Product Tours. Hopscotch Product Tours allows you to improve user onboarding with helpful product tours that guide your users to success. Also reduce frustration by helping users learn how to use your product without the need for demo calls, visit Hopscotch.club today and start delighting your users with Hopscotch Product Tours.

 

Michele Hansen  00:28

Hey, Colleen.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:29

Hey, Michele. 

 

Michele Hansen  00:31

How you doing? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:32

I'm doing pretty well. I had a pretty uplifting week over here in the Simple File Upload world. 

 

Michele Hansen  00:38

You know what? That's good to hear. Because I feel like last week you were, we talked about how you were kind of feeling like you were in the void. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:44

I totally was. And, you know, I still feel that but I'm trying to, two things happen that changed my perspective. One, I got another check from Heroku. So that always helps. That doesn't hurt. And I'm kind of just trying to focus on my mindset as I approach this business. I have to say the check from Heroku because unlike Stripe, where you just get paid randomly when people, you know, when people pay, you only get paid once a month. So I've been telling you I have $800 MRR for like three weeks, and I haven't seen that money. So I just saw that money yesterday. So that was pretty exciting.

 

Michele Hansen  01:21

Nice

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:22

Yeah, I think I remember telling you my very first check. I got like I had enough leftover to buy a bagel. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:28

Yes. The bagel, the $20 bagel.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:30

The $20 bagel. Well, this time it was it was quite a bit more so I could could have bought quite a few bagels. So that was pretty exciting. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:37

And I saw you tweeted out earlier this week that the Stripe payouts, I was just like payout, payout, payout.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:45

I think what must happen is like people must have signed up, there were, like, four or five people who signed up like one day apart. And so the all of their invoices hit like right after each other. So I like signed on to my email every day, and it was like payout payout payout. It was awesome. It's very exciting. It was a lot of excitedness in terms of actually seeing the fruits of my labor on this product this week. So that was fun. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:10

Yay. Internet money. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:12

Yay, internet money. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:13

So where is your MRR at now? So I just checked and I'm at $975. I know. What? Oh my god, you're almost at the $1,000 MRR mark, and it's been, like, three months. Yeah, I guess it's, yeah, three, oh my god. Like, 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:35

Yeah. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:36

That's, that's not common. Like, just for everybody else kind of like, listening like that is, that is very uncommon. Like, you're you're not like ending up on $1,000 after three months like Coleen like that's, that's normal. Like, I think it took us like six months, and even then that was kind of fast for a little project. Dude, 975. Yeah.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:57

That's real money. It's real. That's why my last check. Because if you look at my checks from Heroku, and once again, I only get those once a month. It's not like Stripe. It was like the first one was like 150. The second one was like 250. This last one was like $570. I was like, that's like, real money. Like I could do something with that money. That's cool. Yeah, so, so from a monetary perspective, it's going great. I think I, I was struggling a lot. And I still am kind of struggling because I don't have a good feedback loop. I have been kind of unsure what to do next, and how to push the product forward. And it's funny because I like I think mid last week, I was just in a funk. And I was like, You know what, I'm just gonna build it the way I want to build it. I'm gonna develop all these features. I don't care what anyone tells me. Like, I'm just gonna do what I want to do. And you know, of course, everyone I talked to is like, that's a terrible idea. And the best way someone phrased it to me, they were like, what if you do go and you spend a couple months and you build all these features you feel like you need, you're still not going to know who your customer is. Like, I was complaining because I don't know who my customer is. And she was like, even if you spend this time to build that out, you'll be three months down the road, and you still won't know who your customer is. So have you made any progress? And I was like, oh, that's a good way to put it. So, I did a few interviews this week, which was really great. I'm really gonna take a pause on any kind of development work, and just talk to people. I mean, talk talk, talk. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:01

Colleen.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:02

I know, I know.

 

Michele Hansen  03:04

You're done putzing around in the code garden and like, you're out there in the town square. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:29

I'm convinced. Like, between the, I mean, I probably five different people had to tell me this. But like you guys have convinced me that I just need to talk to more people. I just need, I don't know. Like, if you ask me who my ideal customer was, like, is, or who this provides value to, I can't identify that person, and casting a net of all developers is way too broad and too vague. So, that's really what I am focused on. In the next couple months, I think another thing is I need to calm down a little bit and slow down and be a little bit more patient. 

 

Michele Hansen  05:21

You said that you could go off and build something for three months, and it sounds like this person you were talking to, kind of helped you realize basically, like, you wouldn't know who you were building for and why you were building it and how they needed any of that to work. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:39

Yeah. And I think that's exactly the thing. So, so this week has been great. I spoke to three consultants, I have another one today, and I'm trying to get to five consultants, which I'm sure I can find one more person. Here's the thing, Michele, they all want different things. 

 

Michele Hansen 

]]> Tue, 11 May 2021 10:43:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1944 Colleen nears a big milestone, and Michele rethinks a growth tactic that they've outgrown. Colleen nears a big milestone, and Michele rethinks a growth tactic that they've outgrown. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler No Longer "Bootstrapped" 42 42 No Longer "Bootstrapped" full 37ad9c3a-2dcb-4fa8-9612-fae9be819dc6 https://share.transistor.fm/s/903d4e24  Michele Hansen  00:00

Hey, welcome back to Software Social.

This episode is sponsored by Oh Dear. Oh Dear makes it easy to monitor uptime, SSL certificates, broken links, scheduled tasks and more. They send out notifications when something is wrong. All of that is paired with a developer friendly API and great documentation. And I can back them up on that because we use Oh Dear for Geocodio and are happy customers. You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

Michele Hansen
So I have kind of an announcement to make. 


Colleen Schnettler  00:35

Oh, I love announcements. Do tell. 


Michele Hansen  00:38

We are no longer a bootstrapped company.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:42

What does that mean?

 

Michele Hansen  00:44

So, I've been getting more feedback on my, on my book, and, and I’m getting so much amazing feedback from, because I ended up sending it out to like, 200 people last weekend. And I decided to open it up to some friends of mine who are, like, like, work in tech, but not in kind of, like, bootstrap world or in VC world. So that, so, they like, aware of what's going on, but also kind of outside of this little bubble, because I want to get their, their perspective on things. And there was one comment in particular that I got that really made me reconsider things. And in the intro to the book, I'm describing how, you know, we're this, you know, bootstrapped B2B SaaS. And they said, that was complete jargon, and also consider using a less racially-loaded term.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:44

Oh.

 

Michele Hansen  01:45

Yeah. And I had this real moment of sort of looking in the mirror and realizing, oh, wow, like, people outside of this bubble, have a very different definition of this word, and a very different meaning from that word, than we do. And I've had reservations about it for a long time, and like, wanted to switch to a new word, but didn't really have one that I felt like worked, because everyone kind of recognizes what that means. But this was kind of shocking to me of, like, you know, getting outside of my bubble and seeing how people outside of it react to that.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:27

I honestly didn't know there were negative connotations around the word because I've only heard the word used in our little context, you know, people that are in tech starting businesses.


Michele Hansen  02:40

Yeah, I imagine you're not the only one who is surprised by this. So, I kind of dug into the phrase a little bit. And the problem comes from the fact that the phrase pull yourself up by your bootstraps is where it comes from. Now, historically, apparently, when this, this word, the phrase first came around, it was actually intended to imply that something was impossible, because if you can just sort of picture someone wearing old fashioned boots with, with loops on them, and then trying to stand up while holding their own bootstraps, like, they would fall. So it was, so it's kind of a funny image, if you can sort of picture that. But then it sort of, in specifically American political discourse, where, the phrase is originally American, it came to sort of be combined with all of these sort of self reliance and sort of the rugged individual American man who doesn't need help from anyone, and kind of all of these connotations. And as I sort of dug into people with outside, who are outside of the community, they all had this very negative reaction to it, that was very politically tinged, and to them, felt like we were sort of making this like, political statement. And I was like, whoa, like, that is not the intention at all. But you know, the sort of, the politics of it aside, I realized that within the community, we're not even clear on what it means. Like, 


Colleen Schnettler  04:14

Yeah, I guess that's a good point.


Michele Hansen  04:16

Like, I was emailing with a customer a few weeks ago. And, and for some reason, I happened to ask them if they were bootstrapped company. I had just gotten the sense from their website. And their reaction back to me, that I've been thinking about was they're like, I wouldn't say we're bootstrapped because we're growing. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, when they heard bootstrapped, they thought that it meant a company that doesn't grow. And then, and I did some polls on this a while ago. You know, some people think that it can mean that a company doesn't take any funding at all. But what do you like, what about debt? What about using credit cards? Is that funding? What if you take funding from something like TinySeed or Earnest, which aren't like the big VCs, but like, you're still taking money and maybe giving away equity, like, is that bootstrapped? But then also like when we started out, you know, part of our funding capital was $1,000 in AWS credits for the first six months. Now, that technically showed up as a marketing expense for AWS and not as an investment, but to us, it was the same thing. And so, I think it's this broader point that none of us are truly self-reliant. Like, we all have a community that's holding us up and helping us at every step of the way. And seeing how people outside of this world react to that world react to that world was a really kind of shocking moment for me. And I was like, you know what, maybe, you know, maybe there's another word that I can use that is both more descriptive and less potential for offending people outside of this little bubble.

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:01

Okay, so what did you settle on? 


Michele Hansen  06:03

Customer funded?

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:05

Oh, that's good. 


Michele Hansen  06:06

But then somebody pointed out to me that people might think that it meant that we did crowdfunding, or like one of those Regulation CF campaigns that, like, Gumroad did.

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:16

When you said that, like, it is a little confusing. Customer-funded is a little confusing to me, too. And then what about people who don't like, people in the beginning, like what word? I mean, if you think about language, which I think is, this is really good that you're bringing this up. But we don't really have a word for people who aren't making enough yet, you know, like, 


Michele Hansen  06:35

Right, yeah. 


Colleen Schnettler  06:37

Self-funded, I guess?


Michele Hansen  06:45

Yeah. I mean, I guess self-funded is another word. I mean, I, I've been thinking about this, and I don't really have an answer to this. So I'm kind of curious what other people think. There is, like, we as a community, feel an importance to note that we are not VC-funded SaaS. We're also not all SaaS, right? Cuz there's people doing courses, there's like, like, there's all sorts of other things...

]]>  Michele Hansen  00:00

Hey, welcome back to Software Social.

This episode is sponsored by Oh Dear. Oh Dear makes it easy to monitor uptime, SSL certificates, broken links, scheduled tasks and more. They send out notifications when something is wrong. All of that is paired with a developer friendly API and great documentation. And I can back them up on that because we use Oh Dear for Geocodio and are happy customers. You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

Michele Hansen
So I have kind of an announcement to make. 


Colleen Schnettler  00:35

Oh, I love announcements. Do tell. 


Michele Hansen  00:38

We are no longer a bootstrapped company.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:42

What does that mean?

 

Michele Hansen  00:44

So, I've been getting more feedback on my, on my book, and, and I’m getting so much amazing feedback from, because I ended up sending it out to like, 200 people last weekend. And I decided to open it up to some friends of mine who are, like, like, work in tech, but not in kind of, like, bootstrap world or in VC world. So that, so, they like, aware of what's going on, but also kind of outside of this little bubble, because I want to get their, their perspective on things. And there was one comment in particular that I got that really made me reconsider things. And in the intro to the book, I'm describing how, you know, we're this, you know, bootstrapped B2B SaaS. And they said, that was complete jargon, and also consider using a less racially-loaded term.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:44

Oh.

 

Michele Hansen  01:45

Yeah. And I had this real moment of sort of looking in the mirror and realizing, oh, wow, like, people outside of this bubble, have a very different definition of this word, and a very different meaning from that word, than we do. And I've had reservations about it for a long time, and like, wanted to switch to a new word, but didn't really have one that I felt like worked, because everyone kind of recognizes what that means. But this was kind of shocking to me of, like, you know, getting outside of my bubble and seeing how people outside of it react to that.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:27

I honestly didn't know there were negative connotations around the word because I've only heard the word used in our little context, you know, people that are in tech starting businesses.


Michele Hansen  02:40

Yeah, I imagine you're not the only one who is surprised by this. So, I kind of dug into the phrase a little bit. And the problem comes from the fact that the phrase pull yourself up by your bootstraps is where it comes from. Now, historically, apparently, when this, this word, the phrase first came around, it was actually intended to imply that something was impossible, because if you can just sort of picture someone wearing old fashioned boots with, with loops on them, and then trying to stand up while holding their own bootstraps, like, they would fall. So it was, so it's kind of a funny image, if you can sort of picture that. But then it sort of, in specifically American political discourse, where, the phrase is originally American, it came to sort of be combined with all of these sort of self reliance and sort of the rugged individual American man who doesn't need help from anyone, and kind of all of these connotations. And as I sort of dug into people with outside, who are outside of the community, they all had this very negative reaction to it, that was very politically tinged, and to them, felt like we were sort of making this like, political statement. And I was like, whoa, like, that is not the intention at all. But you know, the sort of, the politics of it aside, I realized that within the community, we're not even clear on what it means. Like, 


Colleen Schnettler  04:14

Yeah, I guess that's a good point.


Michele Hansen  04:16

Like, I was emailing with a customer a few weeks ago. And, and for some reason, I happened to ask them if they were bootstrapped company. I had just gotten the sense from their website. And their reaction back to me, that I've been thinking about was they're like, I wouldn't say we're bootstrapped because we're growing. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, when they heard bootstrapped, they thought that it meant a company that doesn't grow. And then, and I did some polls on this a while ago. You know, some people think that it can mean that a company doesn't take any funding at all. But what do you like, what about debt? What about using credit cards? Is that funding? What if you take funding from something like TinySeed or Earnest, which aren't like the big VCs, but like, you're still taking money and maybe giving away equity, like, is that bootstrapped? But then also like when we started out, you know, part of our funding capital was $1,000 in AWS credits for the first six months. Now, that technically showed up as a marketing expense for AWS and not as an investment, but to us, it was the same thing. And so, I think it's this broader point that none of us are truly self-reliant. Like, we all have a community that's holding us up and helping us at every step of the way. And seeing how people outside of this world react to that world react to that world was a really kind of shocking moment for me. And I was like, you know what, maybe, you know, maybe there's another word that I can use that is both more descriptive and less potential for offending people outside of this little bubble.

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:01

Okay, so what did you settle on? 


Michele Hansen  06:03

Customer funded?

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:05

Oh, that's good. 


Michele Hansen  06:06

But then somebody pointed out to me that people might think that it meant that we did crowdfunding, or like one of those Regulation CF campaigns that, like, Gumroad did.

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:16

When you said that, like, it is a little confusing. Customer-funded is a little confusing to me, too. And then what about people who don't like, people in the beginning, like what word? I mean, if you think about language, which I think is, this is really good that you're bringing this up. But we don't really have a word for people who aren't making enough yet, you know, like, 


Michele Hansen  06:35

Right, yeah. 


Colleen Schnettler  06:37

Self-funded, I guess?


Michele Hansen  06:45

Yeah. I mean, I guess self-funded is another word. I mean, I, I've been thinking about this, and I don't really have an answer to this. So I'm kind of curious what other people think. There is, like, we as a community, feel an importance to note that we are not VC-funded SaaS. We're also not all SaaS, right? Cuz there's people doing courses, there's like, like, there's all sorts of other things...

]]> Tue, 04 May 2021 11:28:57 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2047 Michele makes some changes. Colleen, meanwhile, feels like she's building into a void. Michele makes some changes. Colleen, meanwhile, feels like she's building into a void. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Surprises 41 41 Surprises full 8590ac8f-b89d-42e3-9d17-7d12cb9febae https://share.transistor.fm/s/f8c22c7a Colleen Schnettler  00:00

This week's episode of the Software Social Podcast is brought to you by Hopscotch Product Tours. Hopscotch Product Tours allows you to improve user onboarding with helpful product tours that guide your users to success. Also, reduce frustration by helping users learn how to use your product, without the need for demo calls. Visit Hopscotch.club today and start delighting your users with Hopscotch Product Tours.

 

Michele Hansen  00:28

So Colleen. Cloudflare.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:33

Oh, Cloudflare.

Michele Hansen
This week, Cloudflare introduced their images beta to simplify your image pipeline, a simple service to store, resize, optimize, and deliver images at scale.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:54

Yeah, I saw that. So that's a big disappointment for me because I really, when I had been thinking about how this was going to go, in my mind, I was gonna launch in Heroku, which I've done, and kind of get my product exactly where I want it to be, and then launching Cloudflare. Because I have launched a small free app in the Cloudflare marketplace before, and they have millions of users. So the distribution channel there is spectacular. So I'm a little disappointed because I felt like I had a really, really good opportunity in that marketplace. And now that they've launched their own service, like, I don't think I'm going to be able to compete with that.

 

Michele Hansen  01:37

So this came out, and you know, I saw this, this blog post, and I thought of you immediately and it's interesting. The post they have on it, they outline the difference, they call them the four fundamental questions you might answer: Where do we store images? How do we secure, resize and optimize the images for different use cases? How do we serve the images to our users reliably? How do we do all of these things at scale while having predictable and affordable pricing, especially during spikes? And what strikes me about that is there are some similarities with what you've been solving, but also there are differences. Like, 


Colleen Schnettler  02:12

What do you mean? 


Michele Hansen  2:!4

So, I remember you talking about images and whether you wanted to go in this whole direction of resizing and optimizing images. And your product is called Simple File Upload. It's not Simple Image Upload. And so this is like, part of what you're solving, but at the same time, you're doing other stuff, too.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:40

Right. And when I originally launched the product, that was a big reason, is because all of the big players predominantly handle media files, and I kept running into this problem where I needed PDFs, or I needed Word docs because we were doing resumes. So that is part of the reason I started focusing on files in general. But as more and more people use it, I see pretty consistently, most people are using it predominantly for images. So I really did feel like my growth trajectory was going to be in the image space. So I am different from Cloudflare in that I would, I do multiple files, but they even have good pricing. Like, they even have, they're going to, this is going to be incredibly successful for them because they even have straightforward pricing is what it looks like. And so it doesn't make, mean I'm not gonna have a thing, right? It means maybe when I launch in Cloudflare, I focus more on the file aspect than the image aspect because they currently offer all the things I want to add, but have not yet added, right? Like it'd be, it is so frustrating as a developer to read their blog post and be like, oh, my gosh, it'd be so easy for me to add these few things they offer. And man, if I had just beaten them into the market. But you know what, it's a big market. Like, there's literally millions of people, I believe, who use CloudFlare. So, it doesn't mean there's not space for me. But I do think it means when I write my CloudFlare app, I focus more on other types of files, since they will now have, you know, this easy to implement solution that fits right in with their existing CDN’s and stuff.

 

Michele Hansen  04:16

I think that's such an important point that there are space for multiple companies in it for any given thing, you know, and I don't know if this is a result of kind of the, the sort of narrative that we're living in around companies, and especially what, you know, venture capitalists might look for in a company is they want the company that is going to become the monopoly that can charge the highest prices and have, you know, the highest profits and just eat everybody else in that industry. And that is, you know, in so many ways, the opposite of what we bootstrappers try to do and believe in and, you know, also now the US government has kind of onto tech, and all of that sort of monopoly-building. And, but I think living in that environment, we forget that like, it's okay to have a big company come into your space, or to already have big companies competing against you, and there can still be space for a small, successful company there. And, you know, I offer us up as evidence. Like, we've been competing at Google since day one.

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:31

Yeah, and I think that's one of the best decisions I made when I finally launched this product. As we've talked about before, I've been coming up with ideas and trying to launch MVPs of different things. And a lot of the things I was trying to do were like, big, cool new ideas. And as a single founder, like, in an untested market, I could not get a big cool new idea off the ground, like props to you, if you can, that's awesome. But people looked at me like I, like, they looked at me sideways when I was like, I told people, like developers what I was making, they were like, so you're making what? And they list like five other companies that do the same thing. And I was like, yes, I am. And now they're all really surprised at how successful it's been. And I think that just goes to show, like, the market was already proven for what I was doing. I focused on a really small group of people. And so far, that's been working for me. And again, I don't know, like, how that'll grow or scale or whatever. But I don't know, it's working for me right now, going into a tested market, even with big players, because the big players, if you have a customer support request to a big player, they're gonna send you to their forums, right? I know, because it's happened to me. You're like, oh, I have this problem. Can I do this thing? They're like, first thing is you get the automated chat widget that says, ‘Go look in the forums,’ and you're like, nah. And I had my first support request this week, by the way, which is kind of fun. And the person was like, it was so great. I think they were so surprised that I responded so quickly. And I, like, literally fixed the problem in a day. I think, I think the person left with like, a really positive, I mean, they told me they had a really positive experience with me. And so, kind of what you talk about what Geocodio, I think, by focusing on a small group of people, and by keeping my customer support high, hopefully I can still find a place, a spac...

]]> Colleen Schnettler  00:00

This week's episode of the Software Social Podcast is brought to you by Hopscotch Product Tours. Hopscotch Product Tours allows you to improve user onboarding with helpful product tours that guide your users to success. Also, reduce frustration by helping users learn how to use your product, without the need for demo calls. Visit Hopscotch.club today and start delighting your users with Hopscotch Product Tours.

 

Michele Hansen  00:28

So Colleen. Cloudflare.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:33

Oh, Cloudflare.

Michele Hansen
This week, Cloudflare introduced their images beta to simplify your image pipeline, a simple service to store, resize, optimize, and deliver images at scale.

 

Colleen Schnettler  00:54

Yeah, I saw that. So that's a big disappointment for me because I really, when I had been thinking about how this was going to go, in my mind, I was gonna launch in Heroku, which I've done, and kind of get my product exactly where I want it to be, and then launching Cloudflare. Because I have launched a small free app in the Cloudflare marketplace before, and they have millions of users. So the distribution channel there is spectacular. So I'm a little disappointed because I felt like I had a really, really good opportunity in that marketplace. And now that they've launched their own service, like, I don't think I'm going to be able to compete with that.

 

Michele Hansen  01:37

So this came out, and you know, I saw this, this blog post, and I thought of you immediately and it's interesting. The post they have on it, they outline the difference, they call them the four fundamental questions you might answer: Where do we store images? How do we secure, resize and optimize the images for different use cases? How do we serve the images to our users reliably? How do we do all of these things at scale while having predictable and affordable pricing, especially during spikes? And what strikes me about that is there are some similarities with what you've been solving, but also there are differences. Like, 


Colleen Schnettler  02:12

What do you mean? 


Michele Hansen  2:!4

So, I remember you talking about images and whether you wanted to go in this whole direction of resizing and optimizing images. And your product is called Simple File Upload. It's not Simple Image Upload. And so this is like, part of what you're solving, but at the same time, you're doing other stuff, too.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:40

Right. And when I originally launched the product, that was a big reason, is because all of the big players predominantly handle media files, and I kept running into this problem where I needed PDFs, or I needed Word docs because we were doing resumes. So that is part of the reason I started focusing on files in general. But as more and more people use it, I see pretty consistently, most people are using it predominantly for images. So I really did feel like my growth trajectory was going to be in the image space. So I am different from Cloudflare in that I would, I do multiple files, but they even have good pricing. Like, they even have, they're going to, this is going to be incredibly successful for them because they even have straightforward pricing is what it looks like. And so it doesn't make, mean I'm not gonna have a thing, right? It means maybe when I launch in Cloudflare, I focus more on the file aspect than the image aspect because they currently offer all the things I want to add, but have not yet added, right? Like it'd be, it is so frustrating as a developer to read their blog post and be like, oh, my gosh, it'd be so easy for me to add these few things they offer. And man, if I had just beaten them into the market. But you know what, it's a big market. Like, there's literally millions of people, I believe, who use CloudFlare. So, it doesn't mean there's not space for me. But I do think it means when I write my CloudFlare app, I focus more on other types of files, since they will now have, you know, this easy to implement solution that fits right in with their existing CDN’s and stuff.

 

Michele Hansen  04:16

I think that's such an important point that there are space for multiple companies in it for any given thing, you know, and I don't know if this is a result of kind of the, the sort of narrative that we're living in around companies, and especially what, you know, venture capitalists might look for in a company is they want the company that is going to become the monopoly that can charge the highest prices and have, you know, the highest profits and just eat everybody else in that industry. And that is, you know, in so many ways, the opposite of what we bootstrappers try to do and believe in and, you know, also now the US government has kind of onto tech, and all of that sort of monopoly-building. And, but I think living in that environment, we forget that like, it's okay to have a big company come into your space, or to already have big companies competing against you, and there can still be space for a small, successful company there. And, you know, I offer us up as evidence. Like, we've been competing at Google since day one.

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:31

Yeah, and I think that's one of the best decisions I made when I finally launched this product. As we've talked about before, I've been coming up with ideas and trying to launch MVPs of different things. And a lot of the things I was trying to do were like, big, cool new ideas. And as a single founder, like, in an untested market, I could not get a big cool new idea off the ground, like props to you, if you can, that's awesome. But people looked at me like I, like, they looked at me sideways when I was like, I told people, like developers what I was making, they were like, so you're making what? And they list like five other companies that do the same thing. And I was like, yes, I am. And now they're all really surprised at how successful it's been. And I think that just goes to show, like, the market was already proven for what I was doing. I focused on a really small group of people. And so far, that's been working for me. And again, I don't know, like, how that'll grow or scale or whatever. But I don't know, it's working for me right now, going into a tested market, even with big players, because the big players, if you have a customer support request to a big player, they're gonna send you to their forums, right? I know, because it's happened to me. You're like, oh, I have this problem. Can I do this thing? They're like, first thing is you get the automated chat widget that says, ‘Go look in the forums,’ and you're like, nah. And I had my first support request this week, by the way, which is kind of fun. And the person was like, it was so great. I think they were so surprised that I responded so quickly. And I, like, literally fixed the problem in a day. I think, I think the person left with like, a really positive, I mean, they told me they had a really positive experience with me. And so, kind of what you talk about what Geocodio, I think, by focusing on a small group of people, and by keeping my customer support high, hopefully I can still find a place, a spac...

]]> Tue, 27 Apr 2021 13:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2218 A major competitor enters the same space as Colleen's SaaS, and Michele gets new ideas about how to market her book from talking to early readers of her forthcoming book on talking to customers. A major competitor enters the same space as Colleen's SaaS, and Michele gets new ideas about how to market her book from talking to early readers of her forthcoming book on talking to customers. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Approaching Nebulous Tasks 40 40 Approaching Nebulous Tasks full 6b0a721a-95e7-47ff-8f95-b0895aa32ed8 https://share.transistor.fm/s/acee4e1e Michele Hansen  00:00

The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by KB Clip. So much institutional knowledge transfer happens in Slack. KB Clip is a magic shortcut to turn a conversation into an FAQ entry, a wiki page, or a Knowledge Base article. If your team is asking the same questions over and over again in chat, KB Clip may be a great solution to keep your people better informed. KB Clip is looking for early access alpha and beta customers. If you'd like to move your company knowledge out of Slack and into the hands of your people, sign up at KBclip.com.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

And this is our last ad with Balsalmiq, so I just want to take a second to thank them for taking the risk on us. They were our first advertiser, and they have been so awesome to work with it. We genuinely appreciate you, Balsalmiq. So thanks.

Michele Hansen
So, last time we talked about the numbers for Simple File Upload was about two weeks ago, and you hadn't really looked at it much for a few weeks because you had been moving. Um, and it was at $515 in MRR, and it's been, like, two weeks since then. So where, where ya at?

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:46

So, I checked this morning and I am at 800. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:50

Whoa. Dude. No, I am like almost 1000. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:52

I know. MRR. I know. that feels like almost 1000, and like 1000 feels like a real business.

 

Michele Hansen  02:02

Holy buckets of guacamole, Batman, like 800 dollars!

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:06

Yeah, it was it was um, it's exciting. Now, like, the caveat here is the reason I had such a jump because I'm averaging about a customer a week, which is a wonderful growth rate for me. But someone signed up for my custom plan, which is $250 a month.

 

Michele Hansen  02:23

Hey, oh.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:25

So

 

Michele Hansen  02:26

What is your custom plan?

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:27

So my custom plan is basically like, whatever you want. I don't actually even remember if I put like, what the limits I put on it. I should probably check to make sure this person is set up properly. But basically, the custom plan is, is the idea that I will set it up for you. Um, so that person is signed up, and I have, I'm sure it's a company at that, you know, it's through Heroku. So I'm sure it's a company. I have reached out, but I haven't heard anything back yet. So they're just paying me. So hopefully, I can help them out. Yeah, hopefully I can help them out. So yeah, that, that's that plan. So that's why there's been such a big jump over the two weeks, because that really made a difference. But it’s very exciting. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:10

That's so exciting. And I really hope that you can, you know, get in touch with these folks, and figure out why they bought that so you can sell a lot more of that. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:22

So I can sell more. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:23

Like, let's do that. Like, let's sell more of that. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:26

This plan.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:28

I want everyone on this plan. So yeah, so that was a nice surprise. I have, as I said, I finally have a little more time to work on it. So this week, I pushed through like, just a few small things, a few email onboarding changes. I wasn't getting a very good response rate to my email. So I just tried to make a few changes. I just pushed them through this week, so I won't know if they work for a little while to see if I could get some more responses. And I think, you know, I'm still, I'm still in this weird place where I'm really busy, and I don't have quite the time I thought I would. So I'm really just trying to focus on small, persistent, small, consistent effort over time. And I was reading a tweet by Paul Graham, and I know a lot of people have like, mixed feelings on Paul Graham. Okay, but I still like his tweets. Anyway, someone was, was talking about when Y Combinator started, and they were talking about how the thing with Paul Graham is, he used to like, intensely focus on one thing. So if you were in his Y Combinator batch, and you were supposed to do this one thing, like, every time he saw you, that's all he would ask you about. And I like that because I think in this stage, there's just so many things, right? There's so many things pulling my attention. Like for example, I went to do these emails, which should have taken 30 minutes, and I ended up spending four hours because I was like, well while I'm in here, I'm gonna fix this thing and while I'm in here, I'm gonna write some more, I'm going to get these tests passing and, and while I'm in here, you know, and then it was like, the half day I had, I had set aside to do this stuff got taken up with, like, all those little things. And those are all good things to get done. But Michelle, it's been like, three weeks since, or four weeks since our interview with Drew, and I still have not taken the feedback we discussed, and put it on my freakin homepage. Like, I just haven’t done it.

 

Michele Hansen  05:28

That’s okay. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:28

I know, but I, I think that should be my number one, I think that should be like my number one thing to do. So until I get that done, I should stop getting distracted by oh, but my email copy could be better. Oh, but this thing could be better.

 

Michele Hansen  05:43

So, can we talk about your email copy for a second? So I'm curious, like do you have what the copy was before? And then I'm just curious what you changed it to.

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:54

Oh, you know what, I'm only saving the ones that I have now. So I didn't save the old ones. 

 

Michele Hansen  06:01

Can you read us the new one? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:03

The new one says, “Hi, I just wanted to personally reach out and thank you for trying Simple File Upload. Would you mind replying and let, letting me know two things? One, are you working on a business client or personal website? Any links you want to share are encouraged. Two, what are you hoping to accomplish with Simple File Upload? I read and respond to every re...

]]> Michele Hansen  00:00

The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by KB Clip. So much institutional knowledge transfer happens in Slack. KB Clip is a magic shortcut to turn a conversation into an FAQ entry, a wiki page, or a Knowledge Base article. If your team is asking the same questions over and over again in chat, KB Clip may be a great solution to keep your people better informed. KB Clip is looking for early access alpha and beta customers. If you'd like to move your company knowledge out of Slack and into the hands of your people, sign up at KBclip.com.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

And this is our last ad with Balsalmiq, so I just want to take a second to thank them for taking the risk on us. They were our first advertiser, and they have been so awesome to work with it. We genuinely appreciate you, Balsalmiq. So thanks.

Michele Hansen
So, last time we talked about the numbers for Simple File Upload was about two weeks ago, and you hadn't really looked at it much for a few weeks because you had been moving. Um, and it was at $515 in MRR, and it's been, like, two weeks since then. So where, where ya at?

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:46

So, I checked this morning and I am at 800. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:50

Whoa. Dude. No, I am like almost 1000. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:52

I know. MRR. I know. that feels like almost 1000, and like 1000 feels like a real business.

 

Michele Hansen  02:02

Holy buckets of guacamole, Batman, like 800 dollars!

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:06

Yeah, it was it was um, it's exciting. Now, like, the caveat here is the reason I had such a jump because I'm averaging about a customer a week, which is a wonderful growth rate for me. But someone signed up for my custom plan, which is $250 a month.

 

Michele Hansen  02:23

Hey, oh.

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:25

So

 

Michele Hansen  02:26

What is your custom plan?

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:27

So my custom plan is basically like, whatever you want. I don't actually even remember if I put like, what the limits I put on it. I should probably check to make sure this person is set up properly. But basically, the custom plan is, is the idea that I will set it up for you. Um, so that person is signed up, and I have, I'm sure it's a company at that, you know, it's through Heroku. So I'm sure it's a company. I have reached out, but I haven't heard anything back yet. So they're just paying me. So hopefully, I can help them out. Yeah, hopefully I can help them out. So yeah, that, that's that plan. So that's why there's been such a big jump over the two weeks, because that really made a difference. But it’s very exciting. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:10

That's so exciting. And I really hope that you can, you know, get in touch with these folks, and figure out why they bought that so you can sell a lot more of that. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:22

So I can sell more. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:23

Like, let's do that. Like, let's sell more of that. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:26

This plan.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:28

I want everyone on this plan. So yeah, so that was a nice surprise. I have, as I said, I finally have a little more time to work on it. So this week, I pushed through like, just a few small things, a few email onboarding changes. I wasn't getting a very good response rate to my email. So I just tried to make a few changes. I just pushed them through this week, so I won't know if they work for a little while to see if I could get some more responses. And I think, you know, I'm still, I'm still in this weird place where I'm really busy, and I don't have quite the time I thought I would. So I'm really just trying to focus on small, persistent, small, consistent effort over time. And I was reading a tweet by Paul Graham, and I know a lot of people have like, mixed feelings on Paul Graham. Okay, but I still like his tweets. Anyway, someone was, was talking about when Y Combinator started, and they were talking about how the thing with Paul Graham is, he used to like, intensely focus on one thing. So if you were in his Y Combinator batch, and you were supposed to do this one thing, like, every time he saw you, that's all he would ask you about. And I like that because I think in this stage, there's just so many things, right? There's so many things pulling my attention. Like for example, I went to do these emails, which should have taken 30 minutes, and I ended up spending four hours because I was like, well while I'm in here, I'm gonna fix this thing and while I'm in here, I'm gonna write some more, I'm going to get these tests passing and, and while I'm in here, you know, and then it was like, the half day I had, I had set aside to do this stuff got taken up with, like, all those little things. And those are all good things to get done. But Michelle, it's been like, three weeks since, or four weeks since our interview with Drew, and I still have not taken the feedback we discussed, and put it on my freakin homepage. Like, I just haven’t done it.

 

Michele Hansen  05:28

That’s okay. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:28

I know, but I, I think that should be my number one, I think that should be like my number one thing to do. So until I get that done, I should stop getting distracted by oh, but my email copy could be better. Oh, but this thing could be better.

 

Michele Hansen  05:43

So, can we talk about your email copy for a second? So I'm curious, like do you have what the copy was before? And then I'm just curious what you changed it to.

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:54

Oh, you know what, I'm only saving the ones that I have now. So I didn't save the old ones. 

 

Michele Hansen  06:01

Can you read us the new one? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  06:03

The new one says, “Hi, I just wanted to personally reach out and thank you for trying Simple File Upload. Would you mind replying and let, letting me know two things? One, are you working on a business client or personal website? Any links you want to share are encouraged. Two, what are you hoping to accomplish with Simple File Upload? I read and respond to every re...

]]> Tue, 20 Apr 2021 11:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2078 Colleen and Michele both work through making big tasks less scary. Colleen and Michele both work through making big tasks less scary. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Doing Different Things, Doing Things Differently 39 39 Doing Different Things, Doing Things Differently full cce9a106-ca6f-4772-874d-554fa4e9ecf0 https://share.transistor.fm/s/e7bc864e Michele Hansen  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Homeschool Boss. Homeschool Boss offers NWA MAP growth assessments to homeschoolers in the US. These are untimed online tests and math reading science and language usage that adapt to the child's performance as they test. In this challenging year. Homeschool Boss makes it easy for parents to learn what their kids know and what they are ready to learn next. They offer group rates and are happy to work with pods and tutors. Check it out at Homeschool Boss.com.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

Colleen Schnettler  0:58 
So Michele, this week, I had a prospective customer interview, which was a new experience and a lot of fun.

Michele Hansen
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah. And so what in order to prep for that interview, I had to search through all of my emails to find all of your customer interview scripts.

Michele Hansen 
I know it wasn't too hard to search.

Colleen Schnettler
Well, the problem is, is you also email me as Michele the human so it was like I was like how do I feel? Sure, like human turtle shell the robot was like how where's my Deploying Empathy, Michele's Customer Research filter. But you know what I was thinking as I was sorting through my emails trying to isolate all of your scripts.

Michele Hansen  1:41 
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  1:43 
I was thinking it'd be sure be nice if I had this in a book format.

Michele Hansen  1:49 
You aren't the first person to say that, Colleen.

Colleen Schnettler  1:52 
So tell me your thoughts on it.

Michele Hansen  1:54 
So you know, it's kind of funny how the newsletter came about, because I think I had just gotten off of a mentoring call with a founder. And I realized as I was sort of sending them, they wanted to know about doing customer interviews. And I was typing up this email to them. And it's like, 10, paragraphs long. And it's like, this book is really good. But like, only these chapters are relevant for you. And like, this book doesn't go in enough detail. So like, listen to this podcast, but then also like, here's this worksheet, and it was like, so disorganized. And I also felt like I was writing the same email over and over and over again. And I was like, You know what, this is this, maybe this is a book. And then it was like, but everyone who has ever written a book has told me not to write a book, and that it's very lonely and difficult and, like, sounds like an awful experience. So maybe I shouldn't write a book like, and, and then I grant it, like, tweeted out, and everyone's like, Oh, my God, write a book. And I was like, okay, so I was like, You know what, I'll read it as a newsletter. If people like it, it becomes a live rough draft. If not, it's just a newsletter, and like, I can stop doing it. And like, no one's paying me for anything. And so as it's gone on, I have accepted the fact that maybe it is a book. But I've never written a book before. I've never marketed a book before. I've read a lot of them. I have not read books about writing or selling a book. Um, so it's been it's been kind of an interesting experience. It's a whole new world for me.

Colleen Schnettler  3:33 
Yeah. Because you don't have any other informational products. Right?

Michele Hansen  3:39 
Okay, like, I guess this podcast is technically an info product. I mean, but really, it's just forces us to, like keep up our weekly meetings. Like, I mean, like, I guess we have advertisers like technically but you know, it's like, really, that's why we're doing this, like, we love you, listeners. But truly, this is just for Colleen and I.

Colleen Schnettler  4:01 
So it seems like so I obviously subscribe to your newsletter when you started it. You have more content that I can read? Like, it seems like there's a there's just so much in your brain that you want to get out about this.

Michele Hansen  4:14 
I feel like I'm Marie Kondo in my head, like I'm just getting it all out. You know, like it's just like cleaning out my closet and it's like all of these things have been just like sitting there marinating for years now and kind of coming out sporadically as as necessary. And of course, he like sort of use them and build on them in my work. But yeah, it just feels like I just have all of this stuff. And it's like alright, here is like Michele's mental yardsale, my book about customer research.

Colleen Schnettler  4:45 
So how do you feel about turning all of this information into a book like how's the process been and how are you feeling about it?

Michele Hansen  4:55 
So if I tell myself that I'm just writing a newsletter and not a book, great. If I tell myself that I'm writing a book, and then I open the Google Doc and I see that blinking cursor, terrified.

Colleen Schnettler  5:10 
Too much pressure.

Michele Hansen  5:11 
I don't know, it just feels like a lot. Like and it's just something I haven't done before. I'm probably way under estimating how long it's going to take to go from like, newsletter rough draft to actual finished product, nevermind even having something that's just like a straight PDF, right of without any illustrations or any like, they're like, there's so many steps to this.

And I've been trying to read about it. Like Alex Hillman published a lot of great stuff after writing his book, Tiny MBA last year, that's been really helpful for me. But yeah, I mean, it feels overwhelming, and kind of like we were talking about last week, but I think having ADD sort of plays into this, because like, you know, partly, like I love having multiple projects at a time, like, I can't just have one thing I'm working on. And so that's partly where the newsletter comes from. But also then staring down a huge task that I have never done before is really, really intimidating to me.

Colleen Schnettler  6:13 
Yeah, and I assume, like the mechanics of writing and selling a book is totally different than the mechanics of building and selling a SaaS or selling.

Michele Hansen  6:24 
Yeah. Like, you know, like, with a SaaS, I feel like, you know, all people are googling for what they need, right? Like, they're like, how do you do this. And then as long as you have a landing page that says, Here's how you can do this, like, and then you do that, and then they pay you like, and it's very straightforward in terms of like delivering the value to someone.

I feel like with a book, it's a lot harder, like, I feel like I have to convince people that they need it. I mean, especially like, this is a hard thing that I'm trying to get, like doing interviews is, you know, to how I feel about it being you know, writing this book being this huge, monumental task that I don't know how to do that feels scary. A lot of people feel that way about interviews. So I can definitely, you know, empathize with my own reader about...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:00 
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Colleen Schnettler  0:58 
So Michele, this week, I had a prospective customer interview, which was a new experience and a lot of fun.

Michele Hansen
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah. And so what in order to prep for that interview, I had to search through all of my emails to find all of your customer interview scripts.

Michele Hansen 
I know it wasn't too hard to search.

Colleen Schnettler
Well, the problem is, is you also email me as Michele the human so it was like I was like how do I feel? Sure, like human turtle shell the robot was like how where's my Deploying Empathy, Michele's Customer Research filter. But you know what I was thinking as I was sorting through my emails trying to isolate all of your scripts.

Michele Hansen  1:41 
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  1:43 
I was thinking it'd be sure be nice if I had this in a book format.

Michele Hansen  1:49 
You aren't the first person to say that, Colleen.

Colleen Schnettler  1:52 
So tell me your thoughts on it.

Michele Hansen  1:54 
So you know, it's kind of funny how the newsletter came about, because I think I had just gotten off of a mentoring call with a founder. And I realized as I was sort of sending them, they wanted to know about doing customer interviews. And I was typing up this email to them. And it's like, 10, paragraphs long. And it's like, this book is really good. But like, only these chapters are relevant for you. And like, this book doesn't go in enough detail. So like, listen to this podcast, but then also like, here's this worksheet, and it was like, so disorganized. And I also felt like I was writing the same email over and over and over again. And I was like, You know what, this is this, maybe this is a book. And then it was like, but everyone who has ever written a book has told me not to write a book, and that it's very lonely and difficult and, like, sounds like an awful experience. So maybe I shouldn't write a book like, and, and then I grant it, like, tweeted out, and everyone's like, Oh, my God, write a book. And I was like, okay, so I was like, You know what, I'll read it as a newsletter. If people like it, it becomes a live rough draft. If not, it's just a newsletter, and like, I can stop doing it. And like, no one's paying me for anything. And so as it's gone on, I have accepted the fact that maybe it is a book. But I've never written a book before. I've never marketed a book before. I've read a lot of them. I have not read books about writing or selling a book. Um, so it's been it's been kind of an interesting experience. It's a whole new world for me.

Colleen Schnettler  3:33 
Yeah. Because you don't have any other informational products. Right?

Michele Hansen  3:39 
Okay, like, I guess this podcast is technically an info product. I mean, but really, it's just forces us to, like keep up our weekly meetings. Like, I mean, like, I guess we have advertisers like technically but you know, it's like, really, that's why we're doing this, like, we love you, listeners. But truly, this is just for Colleen and I.

Colleen Schnettler  4:01 
So it seems like so I obviously subscribe to your newsletter when you started it. You have more content that I can read? Like, it seems like there's a there's just so much in your brain that you want to get out about this.

Michele Hansen  4:14 
I feel like I'm Marie Kondo in my head, like I'm just getting it all out. You know, like it's just like cleaning out my closet and it's like all of these things have been just like sitting there marinating for years now and kind of coming out sporadically as as necessary. And of course, he like sort of use them and build on them in my work. But yeah, it just feels like I just have all of this stuff. And it's like alright, here is like Michele's mental yardsale, my book about customer research.

Colleen Schnettler  4:45 
So how do you feel about turning all of this information into a book like how's the process been and how are you feeling about it?

Michele Hansen  4:55 
So if I tell myself that I'm just writing a newsletter and not a book, great. If I tell myself that I'm writing a book, and then I open the Google Doc and I see that blinking cursor, terrified.

Colleen Schnettler  5:10 
Too much pressure.

Michele Hansen  5:11 
I don't know, it just feels like a lot. Like and it's just something I haven't done before. I'm probably way under estimating how long it's going to take to go from like, newsletter rough draft to actual finished product, nevermind even having something that's just like a straight PDF, right of without any illustrations or any like, they're like, there's so many steps to this.

And I've been trying to read about it. Like Alex Hillman published a lot of great stuff after writing his book, Tiny MBA last year, that's been really helpful for me. But yeah, I mean, it feels overwhelming, and kind of like we were talking about last week, but I think having ADD sort of plays into this, because like, you know, partly, like I love having multiple projects at a time, like, I can't just have one thing I'm working on. And so that's partly where the newsletter comes from. But also then staring down a huge task that I have never done before is really, really intimidating to me.

Colleen Schnettler  6:13 
Yeah, and I assume, like the mechanics of writing and selling a book is totally different than the mechanics of building and selling a SaaS or selling.

Michele Hansen  6:24 
Yeah. Like, you know, like, with a SaaS, I feel like, you know, all people are googling for what they need, right? Like, they're like, how do you do this. And then as long as you have a landing page that says, Here's how you can do this, like, and then you do that, and then they pay you like, and it's very straightforward in terms of like delivering the value to someone.

I feel like with a book, it's a lot harder, like, I feel like I have to convince people that they need it. I mean, especially like, this is a hard thing that I'm trying to get, like doing interviews is, you know, to how I feel about it being you know, writing this book being this huge, monumental task that I don't know how to do that feels scary. A lot of people feel that way about interviews. So I can definitely, you know, empathize with my own reader about...

]]> Tue, 13 Apr 2021 10:13:24 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2099 Colleen digs into Michele's feels about writing a book. They also talk about why Michele won't take meetings with potential acquirers. Colleen digs into Michele's feels about writing a book. They also talk about why Michele won't take meetings with potential acquirers. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Good Problems 38 38 Good Problems full 1b07d38e-2588-47d5-b6bc-025297d2e231 https://share.transistor.fm/s/22acff14 Michele Hansen  00:00

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This episode is sponsored by Leave Me Alone. Leave Me Alone makes it super easy to unsubscribe from unwanted emails, simply connect your email account, and they'll show you everything you're subscribed to. And you can unsubscribe with a single click. Leave Me Alone works with all email providers, Gmail, Outlook, AOL, Yahoo, and many more. The best part is that you can connect all of your different email accounts and unsubscribe from everything in one place. Leave Me Alone uses credits to unsubscribe, one credit is one unsubscribe, you get five free credits to try out unsubscribing. And you can earn more credits by referring your friends or completing milestones in the app. If you need more credits, the low cost pricing starts at $2.50 for 50 credits. Plus Leave Me Alone is a privacy focused service. They will never sell your data. Check it out at LeaveMeAlone.app.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:17

Hey, Michele, it's so good to talk to you. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:19

I feel like it's been forever.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:22

It has. I think it's been three weeks since we've recorded together. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:26

So I'm not gonna lie. I am dying to know how things are going.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:35

Sure. So as I have mentioned several times on this podcast, the past couple of weeks have been really busy for me. We have moved and work has been just very intense. And so I honestly didn't even check my numbers for like three weeks, which sounds ridiculous, but I just wasn't in the mental space for it. So in preparation of today's podcast, I did check. And I'm now at $515 MRI. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:04

Dude!

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:06

Right? Yes, I think the beautiful thing about this - 

 

Michele Hansen  02:10

Wow. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:10

Yeah, no, I just feel like the beautiful thing about this is just, I was able to just let it sit. Now to be fair, I always check my email. So even when I was on, I don't have time for this mode, like I always check my email just in case of you know, someone and my match, not my metrics, but like my stats to make sure everything is up. So it wasn't that I was neglecting the product. But I was definitely neglecting, like even checking how many people were signed up. And so that was like a great surprise. Like, just really cool to see. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:43

Last time we talked you were at like, three something. Right? And you were like, kind of like some right? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:51

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think I think this shows that getting too obsessed with like, checking every week. Like, I like to check. I mean, I check every week usually, but becoming too obsessed with it really can swing, you know, emotionally high and low. So it was actually kind of nice to just like, sit on it. And then see it increase. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:12

That's pretty awesome. Wait a year, like six weeks into this now? What was it?

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:21

It was February fourth.

 

Michele Hansen  03:22

Feburary fourth you were able to start having paying customers. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:25

Yep. So it's two months. I'm over 500 MRR in two months. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:28

That's faster than we grew.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:31

Oh, wow. That's cool to hear. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:32

Yeah, I think it took us like, I don't know, five or six months to break 500.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:38

Oh, my gosh. And now you make all the money. There's hope for me.

 

Michele Hansen  03:46

That's insane. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:47

So that's really cool. Yeah, I'm feeling really good about it. Yeah, so I think it's kind of also, you know, when you're stressed about other things, this is all - self doubt always creeps in. And so last week I was I was kind of in a little bit of a self doubt spiral, not spiral. That's the wrong word. But like, kind of in a self doubt, place, thinking that this like, again, was like, I don't know if this is going to work. But then I checked my numbers and things are going really well. And I haven't even implemented any of those amazing ideas you shared in your last deploying empathy newsletter. 

 

Michele Hansen  04:25

So your revenue grew without you adding any new features.

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:31

Yeah, how about that?

 

Michele Hansen  04:34

Isn't that interesting? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:36

It's like someone said that might happen. Who would have given that great advice to stop adding features. 

 

Michele Hansen  04:44

But you're also like you were doing customer support during this time? It sounds like.

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:48

Yeah, I'm always - well, no one emailed me because no one ever emails me.  Wait, hold on. So your revenue increased and nobody needed to talk to you.

 

Michele Hansen  04:58

That's exactly correct.

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:01

Right, like it's pretty cool. I feel pretty cool about it. So, yeah, so I'm feeling good. And I'm like kind of reenergized once I'm back at work next week to really focus on some of these marketing tasks and, and to start asking people to do customer interviews again. Because I still feel like I have momentum.

 

Michele Hansen  05:23

 It sounds like it.

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:25

Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's what I've been up to. 

 

]]> Michele Hansen  00:00

The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Leave Me Alone. Leave Me Alone makes it super easy to unsubscribe from unwanted emails, simply connect your email account, and they'll show you everything you're subscribed to. And you can unsubscribe with a single click. Leave Me Alone works with all email providers, Gmail, Outlook, AOL, Yahoo, and many more. The best part is that you can connect all of your different email accounts and unsubscribe from everything in one place. Leave Me Alone uses credits to unsubscribe, one credit is one unsubscribe, you get five free credits to try out unsubscribing. And you can earn more credits by referring your friends or completing milestones in the app. If you need more credits, the low cost pricing starts at $2.50 for 50 credits. Plus Leave Me Alone is a privacy focused service. They will never sell your data. Check it out at LeaveMeAlone.app.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:17

Hey, Michele, it's so good to talk to you. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:19

I feel like it's been forever.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:22

It has. I think it's been three weeks since we've recorded together. 

 

Michele Hansen  01:26

So I'm not gonna lie. I am dying to know how things are going.

 

Colleen Schnettler  01:35

Sure. So as I have mentioned several times on this podcast, the past couple of weeks have been really busy for me. We have moved and work has been just very intense. And so I honestly didn't even check my numbers for like three weeks, which sounds ridiculous, but I just wasn't in the mental space for it. So in preparation of today's podcast, I did check. And I'm now at $515 MRI. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:04

Dude!

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:06

Right? Yes, I think the beautiful thing about this - 

 

Michele Hansen  02:10

Wow. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:10

Yeah, no, I just feel like the beautiful thing about this is just, I was able to just let it sit. Now to be fair, I always check my email. So even when I was on, I don't have time for this mode, like I always check my email just in case of you know, someone and my match, not my metrics, but like my stats to make sure everything is up. So it wasn't that I was neglecting the product. But I was definitely neglecting, like even checking how many people were signed up. And so that was like a great surprise. Like, just really cool to see. 

 

Michele Hansen  02:43

Last time we talked you were at like, three something. Right? And you were like, kind of like some right? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  02:51

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think I think this shows that getting too obsessed with like, checking every week. Like, I like to check. I mean, I check every week usually, but becoming too obsessed with it really can swing, you know, emotionally high and low. So it was actually kind of nice to just like, sit on it. And then see it increase. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:12

That's pretty awesome. Wait a year, like six weeks into this now? What was it?

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:21

It was February fourth.

 

Michele Hansen  03:22

Feburary fourth you were able to start having paying customers. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:25

Yep. So it's two months. I'm over 500 MRR in two months. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:28

That's faster than we grew.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:31

Oh, wow. That's cool to hear. 

 

Michele Hansen  03:32

Yeah, I think it took us like, I don't know, five or six months to break 500.

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:38

Oh, my gosh. And now you make all the money. There's hope for me.

 

Michele Hansen  03:46

That's insane. 

 

Colleen Schnettler  03:47

So that's really cool. Yeah, I'm feeling really good about it. Yeah, so I think it's kind of also, you know, when you're stressed about other things, this is all - self doubt always creeps in. And so last week I was I was kind of in a little bit of a self doubt spiral, not spiral. That's the wrong word. But like, kind of in a self doubt, place, thinking that this like, again, was like, I don't know if this is going to work. But then I checked my numbers and things are going really well. And I haven't even implemented any of those amazing ideas you shared in your last deploying empathy newsletter. 

 

Michele Hansen  04:25

So your revenue grew without you adding any new features.

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:31

Yeah, how about that?

 

Michele Hansen  04:34

Isn't that interesting? 

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:36

It's like someone said that might happen. Who would have given that great advice to stop adding features. 

 

Michele Hansen  04:44

But you're also like you were doing customer support during this time? It sounds like.

 

Colleen Schnettler  04:48

Yeah, I'm always - well, no one emailed me because no one ever emails me.  Wait, hold on. So your revenue increased and nobody needed to talk to you.

 

Michele Hansen  04:58

That's exactly correct.

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:01

Right, like it's pretty cool. I feel pretty cool about it. So, yeah, so I'm feeling good. And I'm like kind of reenergized once I'm back at work next week to really focus on some of these marketing tasks and, and to start asking people to do customer interviews again. Because I still feel like I have momentum.

 

Michele Hansen  05:23

 It sounds like it.

 

Colleen Schnettler  05:25

Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's what I've been up to. 

 

]]> Tue, 06 Apr 2021 11:11:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1928 Colleen leaves her SaaS alone for a few weeks, and Michele talks about being a founder with ADD. Colleen leaves her SaaS alone for a few weeks, and Michele talks about being a founder with ADD. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Applying the Five Steps to Finding an Audience 37 37 Applying the Five Steps to Finding an Audience full 976941ce-4496-434f-8149-eead74d494da https://share.transistor.fm/s/4e4d549f Michele Hansen  0:00  

The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.


This episode is sponsored by Bella Scena.

Are you making the best use of time in your meetings?  Do you ever feel like your meetings are groundhog day where you talk about the same things week after week? Bella Scena helps you get a handle on your meetings to make the best use of your time.  With Bella Scena, meetings are a process.  Bella Scena make it easy and visual to:

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Michele Hansen
Hey, everyone, so we're gonna do something a little bit different this week, Colleen is moving. And so we decided that was an opportunity to bring on one of our listeners to workshop their business challenges this week, and hear all about what they're working on. So I am so excited to have a guest with us today. Do you want to introduce yourself?


Rosssveth Lopez  1:29  

Yes. Hello, everyone. I'm Rossveth with. I'm from the Philippines. So I'm really, really excited to be here. And it's an honor to be on your podcast.


Michele Hansen  1:45  

I'm so excited to have you. So can you tell us a little bit about what you're working on?


Rosssveth Lopez  1:50  

Okay, so actually, it's been just the several weeks that I've started. So I've had this idea, or maybe a little bit of a background. I've always wanted to bootstrap a business. And I, like, signed up for blogs, you know, the money making bags, and I stumbled across selling, selling printables, like digital designs on Etsy. And so I ventured in that. And being a non graphic designer, like art is not my main thing. So I can come up with designs, but it really, it takes me a while to even select fonts. So it's one of my pain points. And I, and I figured you know, this could be improved or my process could be more efficient. So I researched, like, font viewer tools. I guess some of you have seen, like, the famous ones, web apps, but I feel like there's something more that could be done. So I've used those tools, actually. So I select the fonts that I like, but then when I go back to my design, I still think that I need to do, or I need to select a few more. So, I keep going back and forth, and, and that's, that's when I thought of this idea. Like I could do a font viewer, but it would be more. So it would be you could preview the fonts, but it would be against your background. So you would have your, your background or your design and you have the selected fonts already, like five or 10 of these. And you can see it in one place. So, and then in like, in an instant, or just for a few seconds, you can already see how the font, like, would look with your design. And then you can select from there. So all the tools I'm saying, Oh, it's only been, like, plain texts.


Michele Hansen  4:03  

Gotcha. So just to recap, so you, you had an Etsy store where you were selling printables, like custom printables. I think we were talking about this earlier, and I bought some Christmas ornaments, for example for family members who had lost pets last year. And I was able to customize them with the text on it, but I wasn't able to see what it looked like. And so basically your idea is that if Etsy store owners can have a tool on their shop to show customers or themselves just what one of those custom pieces would look like before they purchase it that maybe people would buy more from their shops or it would simply be easier for Etsy store owners to make proofs for their customers. Is that right? 


Rosssveth Lopez  4:55

Exactly. So, so my plan is the basic one would be it would be for the sellers, for the sellers themselves, the ones who do the design, it would help in their process with the designing. And then that would be the added feature when you can share that design or share your customized designs with your, your customers, your clients, so they could see that, so they could see it themselves. I actually came across several sellers who had experiences where their customers wanted a refund, because they did not like how it turned out. And yeah, so it, that's one, one, like, problem that that can be solved. And I, I’ve tried to research. They, some stores, each had their own websites, just to put the, their designs and with the fonts that they like, that they were offering. So they created their own. And I thought like why not, you know, offer this as a service. I've seen services like you do the designs on their platform. And you could share that, the links, but this, what I'm thinking of would be different. It would be your designs, you can create them from anywhere. And then you just display the fonts that you offer. So, yeah.


Michele Hansen  6:30

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess we should probably back up a little bit and talk about your, your background a little back. So you're a developer, right? 


Rosssveth Lopez  6:38

Yes, yes I am. So.


Michele Hansen  6:38  

Yeah, how did this come about? 


Rosssveth Lopez  06:45

Okay. Well, I've been in the software industry for like, 14 years or something. I recently resigned from my corporate job about three years ago, after I had my third son. So it's, it's been a goal that we had as a couple that we would, like, we would stay at home, take care of the kids, but then pursue also a business. So I've just been stuck with finding that idea, that $1 million idea to start to work on. And it was only like very recently that I learned about indie hacking and bootstrapping. And so the blogs that I signed up for, those were just like the ways I wanted to get ideas how to, how to start my own business. And, and that's, I've never heard of Etsy before. And like you could sell printables as a passive income you created once, and then you can sell it forever. And so I was like, amazed with the idea. And, but when I, like I, I also stumbled across tech Twitter and how the people left and right, were creating businesses, like simple projects, and they were making money. So that really, really amazed me.


Michele Hansen  8:16  

It sounds like that was really like a lightbulb moment for you.


Rosssveth Lopez  8:19  

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't know, growing up, I've always wanted to start a business. But you know, you compare it with, like, tech giants, like, like the big companies being famous all around, having these great ideas impacting the world. But I never really know, or maybe I did not come across it in my, like, experiences or with my colleagues about just, you know, starting a busines...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:00  

The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.


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Michele Hansen
Hey, everyone, so we're gonna do something a little bit different this week, Colleen is moving. And so we decided that was an opportunity to bring on one of our listeners to workshop their business challenges this week, and hear all about what they're working on. So I am so excited to have a guest with us today. Do you want to introduce yourself?


Rosssveth Lopez  1:29  

Yes. Hello, everyone. I'm Rossveth with. I'm from the Philippines. So I'm really, really excited to be here. And it's an honor to be on your podcast.


Michele Hansen  1:45  

I'm so excited to have you. So can you tell us a little bit about what you're working on?


Rosssveth Lopez  1:50  

Okay, so actually, it's been just the several weeks that I've started. So I've had this idea, or maybe a little bit of a background. I've always wanted to bootstrap a business. And I, like, signed up for blogs, you know, the money making bags, and I stumbled across selling, selling printables, like digital designs on Etsy. And so I ventured in that. And being a non graphic designer, like art is not my main thing. So I can come up with designs, but it really, it takes me a while to even select fonts. So it's one of my pain points. And I, and I figured you know, this could be improved or my process could be more efficient. So I researched, like, font viewer tools. I guess some of you have seen, like, the famous ones, web apps, but I feel like there's something more that could be done. So I've used those tools, actually. So I select the fonts that I like, but then when I go back to my design, I still think that I need to do, or I need to select a few more. So, I keep going back and forth, and, and that's, that's when I thought of this idea. Like I could do a font viewer, but it would be more. So it would be you could preview the fonts, but it would be against your background. So you would have your, your background or your design and you have the selected fonts already, like five or 10 of these. And you can see it in one place. So, and then in like, in an instant, or just for a few seconds, you can already see how the font, like, would look with your design. And then you can select from there. So all the tools I'm saying, Oh, it's only been, like, plain texts.


Michele Hansen  4:03  

Gotcha. So just to recap, so you, you had an Etsy store where you were selling printables, like custom printables. I think we were talking about this earlier, and I bought some Christmas ornaments, for example for family members who had lost pets last year. And I was able to customize them with the text on it, but I wasn't able to see what it looked like. And so basically your idea is that if Etsy store owners can have a tool on their shop to show customers or themselves just what one of those custom pieces would look like before they purchase it that maybe people would buy more from their shops or it would simply be easier for Etsy store owners to make proofs for their customers. Is that right? 


Rosssveth Lopez  4:55

Exactly. So, so my plan is the basic one would be it would be for the sellers, for the sellers themselves, the ones who do the design, it would help in their process with the designing. And then that would be the added feature when you can share that design or share your customized designs with your, your customers, your clients, so they could see that, so they could see it themselves. I actually came across several sellers who had experiences where their customers wanted a refund, because they did not like how it turned out. And yeah, so it, that's one, one, like, problem that that can be solved. And I, I’ve tried to research. They, some stores, each had their own websites, just to put the, their designs and with the fonts that they like, that they were offering. So they created their own. And I thought like why not, you know, offer this as a service. I've seen services like you do the designs on their platform. And you could share that, the links, but this, what I'm thinking of would be different. It would be your designs, you can create them from anywhere. And then you just display the fonts that you offer. So, yeah.


Michele Hansen  6:30

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess we should probably back up a little bit and talk about your, your background a little back. So you're a developer, right? 


Rosssveth Lopez  6:38

Yes, yes I am. So.


Michele Hansen  6:38  

Yeah, how did this come about? 


Rosssveth Lopez  06:45

Okay. Well, I've been in the software industry for like, 14 years or something. I recently resigned from my corporate job about three years ago, after I had my third son. So it's, it's been a goal that we had as a couple that we would, like, we would stay at home, take care of the kids, but then pursue also a business. So I've just been stuck with finding that idea, that $1 million idea to start to work on. And it was only like very recently that I learned about indie hacking and bootstrapping. And so the blogs that I signed up for, those were just like the ways I wanted to get ideas how to, how to start my own business. And, and that's, I've never heard of Etsy before. And like you could sell printables as a passive income you created once, and then you can sell it forever. And so I was like, amazed with the idea. And, but when I, like I, I also stumbled across tech Twitter and how the people left and right, were creating businesses, like simple projects, and they were making money. So that really, really amazed me.


Michele Hansen  8:16  

It sounds like that was really like a lightbulb moment for you.


Rosssveth Lopez  8:19  

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't know, growing up, I've always wanted to start a business. But you know, you compare it with, like, tech giants, like, like the big companies being famous all around, having these great ideas impacting the world. But I never really know, or maybe I did not come across it in my, like, experiences or with my colleagues about just, you know, starting a busines...

]]> Tue, 30 Mar 2021 13:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2349 Software Social listener Rossveth Lopez joins the show. Michele and Rossveth workshop her business together, exploring where she decided on an idea and what she's working through. Software Social listener Rossveth Lopez joins the show. Michele and Rossveth workshop her business together, exploring where she decided on an idea and what she's working through. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Customer Interview Part 2: The Debrief 36 36 Customer Interview Part 2: The Debrief full cdb0b4f8-418d-482d-aa8f-21cb2fe6c74f https://share.transistor.fm/s/3311be61 Listen to The Customer Interview: Part 1 https://softwaresocial.dev/episodes/customer-interview-part-1-the-interview

Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by POW!, usepow.app. POW! is a privacy-first menstrual cycle journal for people with periods and those who care about them. Whether it's for health, productivity, or part of trying to conceive, POW! is a flexible way to privately track periods. Check it out at usepow.app.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

Michele Hansen  0:31  
Last week, we interviewed a user of Colleen's product, Simple File Upload. And this week, we are going to talk about that interview. So, Colleen, to help me What do you think you're after that?

Colleen Schnettler  0:48  
Oh, my gosh, it was so much fun. It was so hard for me. So I turned off my video, and I muted myself, which was good, because I got very excited during the interview. And like, it was like, I was like sitting on my hands. I was like, Colleen, you have no lines. You have no, you may not speak. I just thought it was it was really great. Some of the things I noticed that he talked about that kind of surprised me, was actually one thing that surprised me a lot was he was struggling with his current storage solution for three days.

Michele Hansen  1:27  
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  1:28  
And then when offered, offered when when he remembered I guess, like that I have a thing. He didn't it was almost like there was an emotional attachment to the struggle that he had already put in that he didn't want to throw that work away right away.

Michele Hansen  1:43  
Yeah. sunk costs. Absolutely.

Colleen Schnettler  1:46  
That really surprised me. Yeah, yeah. I was really surprised about that. I didn't see that coming. You know, there were several times I thought to while you were doing the interview, where if I had been doing the interview, I would have been like, Okay, great. Like the end. I feel like you were able, I think the interview was about 2030 minutes. I feel like if I had been interviewing him, it would have been about seven. Because I would have been like, hey, do you like simple file upload? And he would have been like, Yeah, it's great. Like, okay, cool.

Colleen Schnettler  2:20  
Like, that's how I I mean, even writing down these questions. I I still just it's I usually, I don't know, I struggle with like the the circling back. Like, there was one point where you like circle back, I think to something he had said earlier, like re asked the question, and you got more information from him? Yes. That was solid work.

Michele Hansen  2:47  
Yeah. So that is something we do to basically like, rephrase what someone said, and then just say, like, do I have that? Right?

Colleen Schnettler  2:55  
Yeah.

Michele Hansen  2:57  
I actually know people who will do this, they will purposefully mistake what someone said so that they correct them and add more detail on

Unknown Speaker  3:04  
interesting. Yeah,

Michele Hansen  3:06  
yeah. And actually, when I first started interviewing, basically, I would think of this as effectively playing dumb, which I think was in some context was effective. Like, for example, especially when I was interviewing, you know, if I was interviewing, say, 80, or 90 year old men about their retirement, most of them didn't take me very seriously in the first place. And so I could use that to my advantage. And basically like, oh, like, what do you mean by that? I don't even know what you're talking about. Yeah. And it like it worked really well. But then being a founder, like you don't want to, like, you don't want people to think you're, you're done. Really well, like, I sort of like matured out of that strategy. But yeah, but it's saying like, Oh, so I just heard us like, you just said that you struggle with that for three days. And then you just say that, and then they add things to it.

Colleen Schnettler  4:06  
Yes. I mean, things we've talked about before, but what I really noticed in this interview is you were very, you were very call and very quiet and slow. Which is I mean, I don't mean that in a bad way. But like, it seems like you're very you're you're you're almost monotone in your tone of voice. And you left huge gaps, which we're not going to edit out so you can get the full experience everyone listening, but like huge gaps. And I'm like over here, like she gonna say something like, Is he gonna say something? Giving him really the opportunity, I think, to expound on whatever it was he was talking about.

Michele Hansen  4:47  
Yeah, I think, like, I like to think that. You know, I see the interviews aren't like acting. They're not a conversation. Rise. You almost want the other person Forget that you're a person like that you have opinions that you have thoughts about things like you are just there to absorb whatever it is they have to say and to help bring that out. And it's it's so funny that you say I was so calm and like, because I mean, like, you know me like, I'm not like that, like, if you get me at my most truly relaxed, like I am, like, bouncing off the walls, like I'm interrupting people. I'm excited. I'm making puns all the time. Like, I am very much not sitting there like quietly listening, which is, which is why I think that if I can learn how to do this, anybody can learn how to do this.

Colleen Schnettler  5:42  
Yeah, I think and I think I mean, I think for me, it's just gonna take practice. But like, one of the things he said, that really struck me, and there were so I think it would have been hard for me because he said so many things, which were literally the reason why I built it. So I would have been like, so excited. Like when he was like I just he said something like, I just wanted to build my product. I didn't want to, you know, waste any more time on file uploading, I want to be like, yes, that's why I built it. You know, like, actually, I was fortunately I was on mute. So you guys couldn't hear me. Real noisy over here. So, you know, that, I think is a founder. And then and I wonder too, like, you're almost an impartial third party here. I wonder at when you do interviews as a founder, do people treat you differently? Because I know it's your product?

Michele Hansen  6:39  
Yes, and no. I mean, so obviously I haven't I haven't had the experience you've just had of having somebody interview one of my customers while I'm there and seeing how differently they take it. Yeah, um, I don't I don't think it's been a detriment. Like, you know, to what I was saying earlier about, like, people not taking me seriously, like, I don't run into that issue anymore. Right. Like, I don't I, I have been in scenarios where I was treated dismissively, or even insulted. Thankfully, it's not that many like that, like, the actual number of interviews where I've been truly insulted was l...

]]> Listen to The Customer Interview: Part 1 https://softwaresocial.dev/episodes/customer-interview-part-1-the-interview

Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by POW!, usepow.app. POW! is a privacy-first menstrual cycle journal for people with periods and those who care about them. Whether it's for health, productivity, or part of trying to conceive, POW! is a flexible way to privately track periods. Check it out at usepow.app.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

Michele Hansen  0:31  
Last week, we interviewed a user of Colleen's product, Simple File Upload. And this week, we are going to talk about that interview. So, Colleen, to help me What do you think you're after that?

Colleen Schnettler  0:48  
Oh, my gosh, it was so much fun. It was so hard for me. So I turned off my video, and I muted myself, which was good, because I got very excited during the interview. And like, it was like, I was like sitting on my hands. I was like, Colleen, you have no lines. You have no, you may not speak. I just thought it was it was really great. Some of the things I noticed that he talked about that kind of surprised me, was actually one thing that surprised me a lot was he was struggling with his current storage solution for three days.

Michele Hansen  1:27  
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  1:28  
And then when offered, offered when when he remembered I guess, like that I have a thing. He didn't it was almost like there was an emotional attachment to the struggle that he had already put in that he didn't want to throw that work away right away.

Michele Hansen  1:43  
Yeah. sunk costs. Absolutely.

Colleen Schnettler  1:46  
That really surprised me. Yeah, yeah. I was really surprised about that. I didn't see that coming. You know, there were several times I thought to while you were doing the interview, where if I had been doing the interview, I would have been like, Okay, great. Like the end. I feel like you were able, I think the interview was about 2030 minutes. I feel like if I had been interviewing him, it would have been about seven. Because I would have been like, hey, do you like simple file upload? And he would have been like, Yeah, it's great. Like, okay, cool.

Colleen Schnettler  2:20  
Like, that's how I I mean, even writing down these questions. I I still just it's I usually, I don't know, I struggle with like the the circling back. Like, there was one point where you like circle back, I think to something he had said earlier, like re asked the question, and you got more information from him? Yes. That was solid work.

Michele Hansen  2:47  
Yeah. So that is something we do to basically like, rephrase what someone said, and then just say, like, do I have that? Right?

Colleen Schnettler  2:55  
Yeah.

Michele Hansen  2:57  
I actually know people who will do this, they will purposefully mistake what someone said so that they correct them and add more detail on

Unknown Speaker  3:04  
interesting. Yeah,

Michele Hansen  3:06  
yeah. And actually, when I first started interviewing, basically, I would think of this as effectively playing dumb, which I think was in some context was effective. Like, for example, especially when I was interviewing, you know, if I was interviewing, say, 80, or 90 year old men about their retirement, most of them didn't take me very seriously in the first place. And so I could use that to my advantage. And basically like, oh, like, what do you mean by that? I don't even know what you're talking about. Yeah. And it like it worked really well. But then being a founder, like you don't want to, like, you don't want people to think you're, you're done. Really well, like, I sort of like matured out of that strategy. But yeah, but it's saying like, Oh, so I just heard us like, you just said that you struggle with that for three days. And then you just say that, and then they add things to it.

Colleen Schnettler  4:06  
Yes. I mean, things we've talked about before, but what I really noticed in this interview is you were very, you were very call and very quiet and slow. Which is I mean, I don't mean that in a bad way. But like, it seems like you're very you're you're you're almost monotone in your tone of voice. And you left huge gaps, which we're not going to edit out so you can get the full experience everyone listening, but like huge gaps. And I'm like over here, like she gonna say something like, Is he gonna say something? Giving him really the opportunity, I think, to expound on whatever it was he was talking about.

Michele Hansen  4:47  
Yeah, I think, like, I like to think that. You know, I see the interviews aren't like acting. They're not a conversation. Rise. You almost want the other person Forget that you're a person like that you have opinions that you have thoughts about things like you are just there to absorb whatever it is they have to say and to help bring that out. And it's it's so funny that you say I was so calm and like, because I mean, like, you know me like, I'm not like that, like, if you get me at my most truly relaxed, like I am, like, bouncing off the walls, like I'm interrupting people. I'm excited. I'm making puns all the time. Like, I am very much not sitting there like quietly listening, which is, which is why I think that if I can learn how to do this, anybody can learn how to do this.

Colleen Schnettler  5:42  
Yeah, I think and I think I mean, I think for me, it's just gonna take practice. But like, one of the things he said, that really struck me, and there were so I think it would have been hard for me because he said so many things, which were literally the reason why I built it. So I would have been like, so excited. Like when he was like I just he said something like, I just wanted to build my product. I didn't want to, you know, waste any more time on file uploading, I want to be like, yes, that's why I built it. You know, like, actually, I was fortunately I was on mute. So you guys couldn't hear me. Real noisy over here. So, you know, that, I think is a founder. And then and I wonder too, like, you're almost an impartial third party here. I wonder at when you do interviews as a founder, do people treat you differently? Because I know it's your product?

Michele Hansen  6:39  
Yes, and no. I mean, so obviously I haven't I haven't had the experience you've just had of having somebody interview one of my customers while I'm there and seeing how differently they take it. Yeah, um, I don't I don't think it's been a detriment. Like, you know, to what I was saying earlier about, like, people not taking me seriously, like, I don't run into that issue anymore. Right. Like, I don't I, I have been in scenarios where I was treated dismissively, or even insulted. Thankfully, it's not that many like that, like, the actual number of interviews where I've been truly insulted was l...

]]> Tue, 23 Mar 2021 10:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2028 Colleen and Michele talk about last week's customer interview and what Colleen learned from it. Colleen and Michele talk about last week's customer interview and what Colleen learned from it. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Customer Interview Part 1: The Interview 35 35 Customer Interview Part 1: The Interview full 5f920338-c7d6-4ad2-95cf-26c8cc6e4aed https://share.transistor.fm/s/249a6d27 Michele Hansen  0:00
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by RosieLand. RosieLand is going meta and building a community for community builders through a newsletter community of course and soon to launch podcast. RosieLand brings together community builders for conversations wherever we can have them. And Rosie Sherry would love to chat with anyone who is building a community. Check it out at Rosie.Land.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

Michele Hansen
Hey, everyone. So we're doing something a little bit different this week. We've had a lot of conversations lately about doing customer interviews. And so we thought that it might be helpful to do a demo of one so that you can all understand what goes into one. So we have someone who has agreed to be interviewed. Who is using Colleen's product, Simple File Upload. And so I'm going to interview them today. 

Alright, so here we go. We're gonna get started. 

Michele Hansen
Hi, Is this Drew?

Drew  1:24  
Yep, this is Drew.

Michele Hansen  1:26  
Hi, Drew, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I really appreciate it.

Drew  1:30  
No problem. Thanks for having me.

Michele Hansen  1:33  
So before we get started, I just want to ask if you had any questions for me?

Drew  1:38  
I'm not off the top of my head. I'm sure I'll find some along the way.

Michele Hansen  1:42  
Okay, feel free to ask any questions that might come up. 

Drew  1:45  
Okay. 

Michele Hansen  1:47  
And just before we get started, I just want to make sure that it's okay, we record this interview.

Drew  1:51  
Yeah, absolutely.

Michele Hansen  1:53  
Okay, so um, so just to get started, Could you just tell me a little bit about like, how you came to even needing something like Simple File Upload in the first place?

Drew  2:05  
Well, I'm, I'm building a product that is going to play currently has a, it's a job listing platform. So we wanted companies to be able to upload their logo, you know, to sit next to their listing. But our stage two of that we're actually adding in some more verbose user accounts, where users will have avatars, they'll be able to upload resumes and stuff like that. So we just really, we really saw that we were gonna need something that would allow us to upload all the files and handle them easily.

Michele Hansen  2:42  
Yeah, that makes sense. Um, I'm curious, have you tried anything else to do this?

Drew  2:51  
Yeah, we were using Firebase Storage, because we were using firestore as our database. So we started using Firebase Storage. Just because, you know, they, they were right next to each other seemed like an easy enough fit. And it was working at first. But we recently started going through a big migration to next js, which has, which is you know, some things are just handled a little differently from a code perspective. And Firebase Storage just did not work as easily. As it was, we found ourself running into a lot of walls, jumping through a lot of hoops just to make the simplest things work.

Michele Hansen  3:36  
Can you tell me a little bit more about those hoops and, and walls that you ran into?

Drew  3:44  
I'm trying to think a specific case. So we were we're really just trying to load the image before the component was loaded. You know, so it would be there when, when the page did load. But because of because of how they give you access to it with promises, and you know, all that fun stuff. I don't know if it's because we were implementing it wrong. Or maybe they just weren't ever really meant to work hand in hand, but we would get we were getting errors that, you know, it couldn't it couldn't do what we were asking because the data it needed, wasn't there yet when it was asking for it. And we really started to feel like we were just putting band aids on things to make something work. And this was really kind of our big push to make the platform more stable, not less. That was probably the biggest one.

Michele Hansen  4:45  
Sounds like that was like frustrating. A lot of like, fits and starts for you guys.

Drew  4:51  
Yeah, it really was because there we had it working. And it you know, it took a little bit of work to get it working that first time and Most every other piece of the code kind of just transferred one to one for the most part. And this, this part just did not. And we already had, you know, we had a decent amount of files in the stores that we wanted to get to, but for whatever reason, be it user error or stored there. It just wasn't happening.

Michele Hansen  5:24  
Yeah, I'm going to do remember, like how long it was, like from from the time when you just started, decided to start using Firebase Storage? And then until you decided, like, wasn't going to work? Like, how long was that?

Drew  5:42  
Oh, we started, we started using it around a year ago, the it was working fine. We started, we started working on this big rebuild about maybe a month and a half ago. And that was probably when we started realizing that it wasn't gonna work. And I think it was, I think I spent probably three days trying to wrestle it before I've just relented.

Michele Hansen  6:08  
Oh, man.So it took six weeks of try of trying to get it to work, and then you intensely worked on it for three days, and then it still wouldn't work.

Drew  6:21  
Well, the six weeks wasn't fully working on trying to get it to work six weeks was, you know, getting all the components moved over. And all that other stuff set up for the new environment. And then, but you are correct, it was three intense days of trying to make it work.

Michele Hansen  6:37  
Man, there must have been super frustrating.

Drew  6:41  
It was and I was I was at my wit's end.

Michele Hansen  6:48  
So when did you start thinking like that, maybe use something else.

Drew  6:57  
Almost immediately, I wanted to use something else, but I didn't know what else would be out there at the pricing model that they provide. Um, but I guess, free free always comes with caveats. And I found those caveats early on.

Michele Hansen  7:12  
Oh, so Firebase Storage was free if you were using firestore.

Drew  7:17  
Yeah, they have their, they have this whole platform set up where it's, it's free up until X amount of requests, but that number is like really high. So it's really, it's really enticing when you're trying to just, you know, when you just want to get something up and moving. The widget, we just kept hitting brick walls with the storage.

Michele Hansen  7:38  
Yeah, it sounds like it. So. So you were, you had like three days of intensely trying to work on this. You wanted to use something else? And then you you didn't know what oth...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:00
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

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Michele Hansen
Hey, everyone. So we're doing something a little bit different this week. We've had a lot of conversations lately about doing customer interviews. And so we thought that it might be helpful to do a demo of one so that you can all understand what goes into one. So we have someone who has agreed to be interviewed. Who is using Colleen's product, Simple File Upload. And so I'm going to interview them today. 

Alright, so here we go. We're gonna get started. 

Michele Hansen
Hi, Is this Drew?

Drew  1:24  
Yep, this is Drew.

Michele Hansen  1:26  
Hi, Drew, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I really appreciate it.

Drew  1:30  
No problem. Thanks for having me.

Michele Hansen  1:33  
So before we get started, I just want to ask if you had any questions for me?

Drew  1:38  
I'm not off the top of my head. I'm sure I'll find some along the way.

Michele Hansen  1:42  
Okay, feel free to ask any questions that might come up. 

Drew  1:45  
Okay. 

Michele Hansen  1:47  
And just before we get started, I just want to make sure that it's okay, we record this interview.

Drew  1:51  
Yeah, absolutely.

Michele Hansen  1:53  
Okay, so um, so just to get started, Could you just tell me a little bit about like, how you came to even needing something like Simple File Upload in the first place?

Drew  2:05  
Well, I'm, I'm building a product that is going to play currently has a, it's a job listing platform. So we wanted companies to be able to upload their logo, you know, to sit next to their listing. But our stage two of that we're actually adding in some more verbose user accounts, where users will have avatars, they'll be able to upload resumes and stuff like that. So we just really, we really saw that we were gonna need something that would allow us to upload all the files and handle them easily.

Michele Hansen  2:42  
Yeah, that makes sense. Um, I'm curious, have you tried anything else to do this?

Drew  2:51  
Yeah, we were using Firebase Storage, because we were using firestore as our database. So we started using Firebase Storage. Just because, you know, they, they were right next to each other seemed like an easy enough fit. And it was working at first. But we recently started going through a big migration to next js, which has, which is you know, some things are just handled a little differently from a code perspective. And Firebase Storage just did not work as easily. As it was, we found ourself running into a lot of walls, jumping through a lot of hoops just to make the simplest things work.

Michele Hansen  3:36  
Can you tell me a little bit more about those hoops and, and walls that you ran into?

Drew  3:44  
I'm trying to think a specific case. So we were we're really just trying to load the image before the component was loaded. You know, so it would be there when, when the page did load. But because of because of how they give you access to it with promises, and you know, all that fun stuff. I don't know if it's because we were implementing it wrong. Or maybe they just weren't ever really meant to work hand in hand, but we would get we were getting errors that, you know, it couldn't it couldn't do what we were asking because the data it needed, wasn't there yet when it was asking for it. And we really started to feel like we were just putting band aids on things to make something work. And this was really kind of our big push to make the platform more stable, not less. That was probably the biggest one.

Michele Hansen  4:45  
Sounds like that was like frustrating. A lot of like, fits and starts for you guys.

Drew  4:51  
Yeah, it really was because there we had it working. And it you know, it took a little bit of work to get it working that first time and Most every other piece of the code kind of just transferred one to one for the most part. And this, this part just did not. And we already had, you know, we had a decent amount of files in the stores that we wanted to get to, but for whatever reason, be it user error or stored there. It just wasn't happening.

Michele Hansen  5:24  
Yeah, I'm going to do remember, like how long it was, like from from the time when you just started, decided to start using Firebase Storage? And then until you decided, like, wasn't going to work? Like, how long was that?

Drew  5:42  
Oh, we started, we started using it around a year ago, the it was working fine. We started, we started working on this big rebuild about maybe a month and a half ago. And that was probably when we started realizing that it wasn't gonna work. And I think it was, I think I spent probably three days trying to wrestle it before I've just relented.

Michele Hansen  6:08  
Oh, man.So it took six weeks of try of trying to get it to work, and then you intensely worked on it for three days, and then it still wouldn't work.

Drew  6:21  
Well, the six weeks wasn't fully working on trying to get it to work six weeks was, you know, getting all the components moved over. And all that other stuff set up for the new environment. And then, but you are correct, it was three intense days of trying to make it work.

Michele Hansen  6:37  
Man, there must have been super frustrating.

Drew  6:41  
It was and I was I was at my wit's end.

Michele Hansen  6:48  
So when did you start thinking like that, maybe use something else.

Drew  6:57  
Almost immediately, I wanted to use something else, but I didn't know what else would be out there at the pricing model that they provide. Um, but I guess, free free always comes with caveats. And I found those caveats early on.

Michele Hansen  7:12  
Oh, so Firebase Storage was free if you were using firestore.

Drew  7:17  
Yeah, they have their, they have this whole platform set up where it's, it's free up until X amount of requests, but that number is like really high. So it's really, it's really enticing when you're trying to just, you know, when you just want to get something up and moving. The widget, we just kept hitting brick walls with the storage.

Michele Hansen  7:38  
Yeah, it sounds like it. So. So you were, you had like three days of intensely trying to work on this. You wanted to use something else? And then you you didn't know what oth...

]]> Tue, 16 Mar 2021 09:48:40 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1537 Michele interviews one of Colleen's customers. Next week, Colleen and Michele will debrief on the interview. Michele interviews one of Colleen's customers. Next week, Colleen and Michele will debrief on the interview. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Communication, Empathy, and Flexibility 34 34 Communication, Empathy, and Flexibility full 81b2f5e7-e807-41a3-9b17-ade0a503042f https://share.transistor.fm/s/259595ff Get Michele's free newsletter on customer research: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mjwhansen

Michele Hansen  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Koody. Koody helps under 35 in the UK make the most of their money. Koody's website houses free money management tools, expert guidance and financial advisors. Koody's online community is the place to be if you need help with your finances, or are a finance expert, check out their website at www.Koody.co.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

So you remember a couple of weeks ago how I was reading the Jobs to Be Done Playbook?

Colleen Schnettler  0:59 
Yes, I sure do.

Michele Hansen  1:01 
I'mstill reading that book. But I'm also reading another book. And I want to talk about that other book.

Colleen Schnettler  1:07 
Okay.

Psychology of Money

Michele Hansen  1:09 
So I finally started reading the Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.

Colleen Schnettler  1:15 
Okay.

Michele Hansen  1:16 
Which has been on my to-read pile for about, I don't know, about six months or so now, since it came out early last fall. And it's such a good book, like I mean, even if you're not a finance person are particularly interested in personal finance, like, it's a book about money that's not about money. And it's and it's so good. So but there's just one quote and that reminded me of stuff that we talk a lot about together. So I'm just gonna read it to you.

"In a world where intelligence is hyper competitive, and many previous technical skills have become automated, competitive advantages tilt toward nuanced and soft skills, like communication, empathy, and perhaps most of all, flexibility."

Colleen Schnettler  2:08 
Hmm, interesting.

Michele Hansen  2:10 
And this reminded me a lot of what we talk about, because it's kind of like we've been talking about as it relates to your business. The one of the like, the biggest challenges for you is not the engineering side, it's like, knowing when you should, you know, change directions, or be flexible with with like, what your image of what the business and what the product is. And also like communicating with people about what it does and what it is and pulling that information out of them. And then and then how do we use empathy to figure all of those things out, which is, which is a really big focus for me, and I read this and, like, grabbed the nearest writing utensil near me, which normally I only write in pencils in books, like I will underline things, but I only had a pen, and I was like, This is so amazing, I'm gonna underline it and pen because I'm not gonna regret that, like. That just really stuck with me.

Colleen Schnettler  3:09 
Interesting. Why was that in your psychology of money book?

Michele Hansen  3:13 
Oh, I mean, so I don't know if you've ever read Morgan's writing.

Colleen Schnettler  3:16 
No.

Michele Hansen  3:16 
He writes a lot about the sort of psychology of business. He's a very different business writer. And I used to work with him so I've sort of been been around a lot of his thinking for a while. And I'm really sort of grateful for that, because he has a very unique perspective on things. And you know, it's not very often that you read in a best selling business book that the key is empathy. Right?

Colleen Schnettler  3:42 
Yeah.

Michele Hansen  3:42 
Running a good business. Right.

And it reminds me a lot of something that I have been working on lately, too. So you know, we've talked about like getting people to reply, when you are trying to talk to them about the reasons why they use your product, which can be difficult.

Colleen Schnettler  4:02 
Yeah.

Michele Hansen  4:03 
And I think I mentioned a couple weeks ago, how we like so on our NPS survey like that, that pops up, I think, you know, relatively soon after someone uses the product, but not the first time and it's, you know, just rank us one to 10. And normally, we just look at this just to make sure we're getting mostly nines and 10s. But then it also has a question that asks as a follow up, and that survey and the question have a really high response rate. And we were previously asking, 'what can we do to improve?' And I changed this question. First of all, we were you know, we're getting a lot of like, boosts out of it. Like people were saying, like, no, you're awesome, and like, that makes us feel great. And like as -- you know, it feels nice. But also, we were kind of like asking people to do our work for us by telling us what we should improve. And so I changed it instead to 'What did you use before you used Geocodio?' And this is just reminding me about how we, you know, you know, competitors, at first blush, they seem like other companies, but in so many scenarios, and I think this applies to your business a lot too, competitors are people figuring something out for themselves or like some, like manual process where they're patching things together. And it is so fascinating to see the variety of responses I get from people. And how many of them say 'nothing' like that they used no tool and that they were like, hunting and pecking, or they had something internal, or they were like stringing together different solutions. I mean, our approach to competitors is so much more like relaxed than this, I think for, like, the traditional kind of business approach is like, you know, you should know everything that your competitors are doing and like, you know, know exactly when they have new features and like, be copying their features and everything. And I'm like, Nah, dude, like, I'm going to talk to my customers, because my competitors are all the time that they spend doing it themselves.

Colleen Schnettler  5:59 
It's this, it kind of the same thing with my business where a lot of people in the beginning, they were just weren't really doing it, or they weren't, you know, they were just, they were just putting, like piecemealing kind of half a half usable open source solutions with with, with other things. So So to your point, like your competitors, really not the other people offering the same service, but what the user was doing before.

Michele Hansen  6:26 
Yeah, I mean, there's so much space in software to have products that do things that are similar to somebody else's product, because so many people are just doing things themselves.

Colleen Schnettler  6:40 
So one of the things from that quote, you read from the book that I thought was interesting was flexibility. And what do you think that means in a business context? Does that mean pivot? Does that mean, let go of your idea that you're super passionate about because it's not working?

Michele Hansen  6:55&...

]]> Get Michele's free newsletter on customer research: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mjwhansen

Michele Hansen  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Koody. Koody helps under 35 in the UK make the most of their money. Koody's website houses free money management tools, expert guidance and financial advisors. Koody's online community is the place to be if you need help with your finances, or are a finance expert, check out their website at www.Koody.co.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

So you remember a couple of weeks ago how I was reading the Jobs to Be Done Playbook?

Colleen Schnettler  0:59 
Yes, I sure do.

Michele Hansen  1:01 
I'mstill reading that book. But I'm also reading another book. And I want to talk about that other book.

Colleen Schnettler  1:07 
Okay.

Psychology of Money

Michele Hansen  1:09 
So I finally started reading the Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.

Colleen Schnettler  1:15 
Okay.

Michele Hansen  1:16 
Which has been on my to-read pile for about, I don't know, about six months or so now, since it came out early last fall. And it's such a good book, like I mean, even if you're not a finance person are particularly interested in personal finance, like, it's a book about money that's not about money. And it's and it's so good. So but there's just one quote and that reminded me of stuff that we talk a lot about together. So I'm just gonna read it to you.

"In a world where intelligence is hyper competitive, and many previous technical skills have become automated, competitive advantages tilt toward nuanced and soft skills, like communication, empathy, and perhaps most of all, flexibility."

Colleen Schnettler  2:08 
Hmm, interesting.

Michele Hansen  2:10 
And this reminded me a lot of what we talk about, because it's kind of like we've been talking about as it relates to your business. The one of the like, the biggest challenges for you is not the engineering side, it's like, knowing when you should, you know, change directions, or be flexible with with like, what your image of what the business and what the product is. And also like communicating with people about what it does and what it is and pulling that information out of them. And then and then how do we use empathy to figure all of those things out, which is, which is a really big focus for me, and I read this and, like, grabbed the nearest writing utensil near me, which normally I only write in pencils in books, like I will underline things, but I only had a pen, and I was like, This is so amazing, I'm gonna underline it and pen because I'm not gonna regret that, like. That just really stuck with me.

Colleen Schnettler  3:09 
Interesting. Why was that in your psychology of money book?

Michele Hansen  3:13 
Oh, I mean, so I don't know if you've ever read Morgan's writing.

Colleen Schnettler  3:16 
No.

Michele Hansen  3:16 
He writes a lot about the sort of psychology of business. He's a very different business writer. And I used to work with him so I've sort of been been around a lot of his thinking for a while. And I'm really sort of grateful for that, because he has a very unique perspective on things. And you know, it's not very often that you read in a best selling business book that the key is empathy. Right?

Colleen Schnettler  3:42 
Yeah.

Michele Hansen  3:42 
Running a good business. Right.

And it reminds me a lot of something that I have been working on lately, too. So you know, we've talked about like getting people to reply, when you are trying to talk to them about the reasons why they use your product, which can be difficult.

Colleen Schnettler  4:02 
Yeah.

Michele Hansen  4:03 
And I think I mentioned a couple weeks ago, how we like so on our NPS survey like that, that pops up, I think, you know, relatively soon after someone uses the product, but not the first time and it's, you know, just rank us one to 10. And normally, we just look at this just to make sure we're getting mostly nines and 10s. But then it also has a question that asks as a follow up, and that survey and the question have a really high response rate. And we were previously asking, 'what can we do to improve?' And I changed this question. First of all, we were you know, we're getting a lot of like, boosts out of it. Like people were saying, like, no, you're awesome, and like, that makes us feel great. And like as -- you know, it feels nice. But also, we were kind of like asking people to do our work for us by telling us what we should improve. And so I changed it instead to 'What did you use before you used Geocodio?' And this is just reminding me about how we, you know, you know, competitors, at first blush, they seem like other companies, but in so many scenarios, and I think this applies to your business a lot too, competitors are people figuring something out for themselves or like some, like manual process where they're patching things together. And it is so fascinating to see the variety of responses I get from people. And how many of them say 'nothing' like that they used no tool and that they were like, hunting and pecking, or they had something internal, or they were like stringing together different solutions. I mean, our approach to competitors is so much more like relaxed than this, I think for, like, the traditional kind of business approach is like, you know, you should know everything that your competitors are doing and like, you know, know exactly when they have new features and like, be copying their features and everything. And I'm like, Nah, dude, like, I'm going to talk to my customers, because my competitors are all the time that they spend doing it themselves.

Colleen Schnettler  5:59 
It's this, it kind of the same thing with my business where a lot of people in the beginning, they were just weren't really doing it, or they weren't, you know, they were just, they were just putting, like piecemealing kind of half a half usable open source solutions with with, with other things. So So to your point, like your competitors, really not the other people offering the same service, but what the user was doing before.

Michele Hansen  6:26 
Yeah, I mean, there's so much space in software to have products that do things that are similar to somebody else's product, because so many people are just doing things themselves.

Colleen Schnettler  6:40 
So one of the things from that quote, you read from the book that I thought was interesting was flexibility. And what do you think that means in a business context? Does that mean pivot? Does that mean, let go of your idea that you're super passionate about because it's not working?

Michele Hansen  6:55&...

]]> Tue, 09 Mar 2021 08:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2140 Michele and Colleen discuss some lessons for bootstrapped entrepreneurs from Morgan Housel's Psychology of Money. Plus, a numbers update on how Colleen's new SaaS is doing. Michele and Colleen discuss some lessons for bootstrapped entrepreneurs from Morgan Housel's Psychology of Money. Plus, a numbers update on how Colleen's new SaaS is doing. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler MicroConf On Air + Software Social Crossove‪r‬ 33 33 MicroConf On Air + Software Social Crossove‪r‬ bonus 5b09cc40-b33a-453e-8801-fd33f176e523 https://share.transistor.fm/s/aa627082 Transcript below. Watch the video: https://youtu.be/cfeXNzWwAEc

The hosts of the SaaS Podcast Award nominated Software Social Podcast join Rob to chat about all things SaaS, early stage marketing strategies, and more. https://microconfonair.com


MicroConf Connect ➡️  http://microconfconnect.com

Twitter ➡️  https://twitter.com/MicroConf

E-mail ➡️  support@microconf.com


MicroConf 2021 Headline Partners


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TRANSCRIPT

Rob Walling  0:00  
Welcome to this week's episode of MicroConf On Air. I'm your host, Rob Walling. And as always, every other Wednesday at 1pm Eastern 10am Pacific we live stream for about 30 minutes, we cover topics related to building and growing ambitious SaaS startups that bring us freedom, purpose, and allow us to maintain and value healthy relationships. We know that Silicon Valley way to raise buckets and buckets of money and go big or go home. But we believe in bootstrapped and mostly bootstrapped founders who are making a change in their lives, maybe not changing the world, but at least changing their little corner of it. Thanks for joining me. Welcome back. 

I am excited today to talk about the talk about Software Social, it's a podcast if you're not listening to it, you should be it got nominated for the Best podcast in the best podcast category in the MicroConf SaaS podcast awards. And I have the pleasure of having the co-hosts of that podcast on the show today. And we'll be talking about have some questions for them about getting started and the benefits they receive from podcasting and that kind of stuff. But if you are watching this, please chime in with your own questions. We'd love to have the listener engagement. And that's why level level and your engagement. And that's why we do live events like this, instead of just doing them asynchronously through a podcast feed. Before we dive in, I want to mention MicroConf remote, which happens at the end of the month, March 23rd 24th 25th. It's gonna be pretty amazing event producer Xander is really outdoing himself on this one, MicroConfremote.com if you want to get on the list for that, and we'll be putting tickets up for sale here in the next few days. It's an early stage event. And it's aimed at folks trying to get their really their first 100 customers and it's going to dive deep into four specific early stage marketing tactics. We're going to have folks on who have done a specific tactic to get early stage traction and example App Sumo or posting on Producthunt. And we're gonna have a founder or subject matter expert on who has done that very thing and we'll share as many numbers with us as they can. So it's going to be a real barnburner especially if you're early stage. I look forward to seeing you there here towards the end of the month. 

With that, let's dive into Software Social. My two guests today are Michele Hansen. She's a co founder of Geocodio. And you might remember her from Startups for the Rest of Us Episode 524 called Bootstrapping a Commodity SaaS when she and her husband Mathias came on and spoke to me about their journey of growing Geocodio to a pretty amazing bootstrap business. They started that company in 2014 as a side project, she went full time in 2017. And as I've said, she's cohost of the software social podcast, which was nominated in several categories for 2020 SaaS podcast awards. She also recently launched a free newsletter about customer research for bootstrappers. So check her out at mjwhansen on Twitter, if you want to link to that. 

And her co host is calling Colleen Schnettler who is @Leenyburger on Twitter. She's a Ruby on Rails consultant. She's spoken at both Rails Comp and RubyConf and loves being part of the dev community. She recently launched her first product, Simple File Upload, excuse me, which is in the Heroku app marketplace. If you haven't been following their story, it's super cool to hear this going from zero to $360 MRR in the span of about a month with this file uploader app. So again, software social podcast if you want to check that out. Colleen is a mother and a military spouse and loves chatting about all things software and business. Ladies, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me today.

Colleen Schnettler  3:45  
Hi, thank you for having us. Yeah, it's great to have --

Rob Walling  3:49  
issues are great had issues. Anders, it's great to have you here, as I read the outline where Xander says the internet is causing causing issues. So let me start with this before I try to figure out if I have to troubleshoot my internet or whatever it is. But I want to start with this question of when did you start your podcast? And what made you decide to do it?

Colleen Schnettler  4:12  
So I have actually been on Michele for a while, like I had been asked gel for a while if she was interested in starting a podcast. Because Michele and I used to always casually meet about once a week to talk business and I was in that really hard idea generation phase where it just feels like you're just slamming up against brick walls like you have a great idea and then you just can't get any traction or you can't ship it or you can't find someone to purchase it. And so we were already meeting and that was great. But then COVID hit and she moved across the ocean.

Rob Walling  4:53  
You want to take it from there, Michelle? 

Michele Hansen  4:55  
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it came out of it because we wanted to stay connected to each other. And we had some friends in the bootstrap community who had prodded us about it and had said, Hey, you guys should have you should have a podcast. And so we're like, you know, we'll just take the conversations we were already having. And worst case, it just like forces us to keep meeting every week. And I think during COVID, that's been really helpful to have to schedule in interaction with other people. And so it really just started as something that we were doing for ourselves. And I think we've joked that we expected that we would just have a couple of pity listeners, like our husbands and some friends of ours, and it would just sort of just be this thing we did for each other. So it's been really fun. 

Colleen Schnettler  5:47  
Yeah, I think for me, what happened was, I was trying to stay motivated. And I was searching the internet for bootstrapped founder podcast, and there's 1000s of bootstrapped founder podcasts. But I was listening to one show, and I distinctly remember, the guy was talking about, like, how he got in his car and drove to California. And he was just such a different place in his life. Like, I was like, where the parents like the mothers and the people who are trying to build sustainable businesses, while raising a young family? And while working a job like I was looking for an approach that was would fit more like in our life, and I didn't feel like a lot of people were podcasting about that.

Yeah, love it. And that's really why a lot of us I think started is we started podcast or even why we started MicroConf was that we looked around for other people trying to do what we wanted to do in the way we wanted to do it. And I like calling you just s...

]]> Transcript below. Watch the video: https://youtu.be/cfeXNzWwAEc

The hosts of the SaaS Podcast Award nominated Software Social Podcast join Rob to chat about all things SaaS, early stage marketing strategies, and more. https://microconfonair.com


MicroConf Connect ➡️  http://microconfconnect.com

Twitter ➡️  https://twitter.com/MicroConf

E-mail ➡️  support@microconf.com


MicroConf 2021 Headline Partners


Stripe

https://stripe.com

Twitter ➡️ https://twitter.com/Stripe


Hey

https://hey.com

https://twitter.com/@heyhey

TRANSCRIPT

Rob Walling  0:00  
Welcome to this week's episode of MicroConf On Air. I'm your host, Rob Walling. And as always, every other Wednesday at 1pm Eastern 10am Pacific we live stream for about 30 minutes, we cover topics related to building and growing ambitious SaaS startups that bring us freedom, purpose, and allow us to maintain and value healthy relationships. We know that Silicon Valley way to raise buckets and buckets of money and go big or go home. But we believe in bootstrapped and mostly bootstrapped founders who are making a change in their lives, maybe not changing the world, but at least changing their little corner of it. Thanks for joining me. Welcome back. 

I am excited today to talk about the talk about Software Social, it's a podcast if you're not listening to it, you should be it got nominated for the Best podcast in the best podcast category in the MicroConf SaaS podcast awards. And I have the pleasure of having the co-hosts of that podcast on the show today. And we'll be talking about have some questions for them about getting started and the benefits they receive from podcasting and that kind of stuff. But if you are watching this, please chime in with your own questions. We'd love to have the listener engagement. And that's why level level and your engagement. And that's why we do live events like this, instead of just doing them asynchronously through a podcast feed. Before we dive in, I want to mention MicroConf remote, which happens at the end of the month, March 23rd 24th 25th. It's gonna be pretty amazing event producer Xander is really outdoing himself on this one, MicroConfremote.com if you want to get on the list for that, and we'll be putting tickets up for sale here in the next few days. It's an early stage event. And it's aimed at folks trying to get their really their first 100 customers and it's going to dive deep into four specific early stage marketing tactics. We're going to have folks on who have done a specific tactic to get early stage traction and example App Sumo or posting on Producthunt. And we're gonna have a founder or subject matter expert on who has done that very thing and we'll share as many numbers with us as they can. So it's going to be a real barnburner especially if you're early stage. I look forward to seeing you there here towards the end of the month. 

With that, let's dive into Software Social. My two guests today are Michele Hansen. She's a co founder of Geocodio. And you might remember her from Startups for the Rest of Us Episode 524 called Bootstrapping a Commodity SaaS when she and her husband Mathias came on and spoke to me about their journey of growing Geocodio to a pretty amazing bootstrap business. They started that company in 2014 as a side project, she went full time in 2017. And as I've said, she's cohost of the software social podcast, which was nominated in several categories for 2020 SaaS podcast awards. She also recently launched a free newsletter about customer research for bootstrappers. So check her out at mjwhansen on Twitter, if you want to link to that. 

And her co host is calling Colleen Schnettler who is @Leenyburger on Twitter. She's a Ruby on Rails consultant. She's spoken at both Rails Comp and RubyConf and loves being part of the dev community. She recently launched her first product, Simple File Upload, excuse me, which is in the Heroku app marketplace. If you haven't been following their story, it's super cool to hear this going from zero to $360 MRR in the span of about a month with this file uploader app. So again, software social podcast if you want to check that out. Colleen is a mother and a military spouse and loves chatting about all things software and business. Ladies, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me today.

Colleen Schnettler  3:45  
Hi, thank you for having us. Yeah, it's great to have --

Rob Walling  3:49  
issues are great had issues. Anders, it's great to have you here, as I read the outline where Xander says the internet is causing causing issues. So let me start with this before I try to figure out if I have to troubleshoot my internet or whatever it is. But I want to start with this question of when did you start your podcast? And what made you decide to do it?

Colleen Schnettler  4:12  
So I have actually been on Michele for a while, like I had been asked gel for a while if she was interested in starting a podcast. Because Michele and I used to always casually meet about once a week to talk business and I was in that really hard idea generation phase where it just feels like you're just slamming up against brick walls like you have a great idea and then you just can't get any traction or you can't ship it or you can't find someone to purchase it. And so we were already meeting and that was great. But then COVID hit and she moved across the ocean.

Rob Walling  4:53  
You want to take it from there, Michelle? 

Michele Hansen  4:55  
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it came out of it because we wanted to stay connected to each other. And we had some friends in the bootstrap community who had prodded us about it and had said, Hey, you guys should have you should have a podcast. And so we're like, you know, we'll just take the conversations we were already having. And worst case, it just like forces us to keep meeting every week. And I think during COVID, that's been really helpful to have to schedule in interaction with other people. And so it really just started as something that we were doing for ourselves. And I think we've joked that we expected that we would just have a couple of pity listeners, like our husbands and some friends of ours, and it would just sort of just be this thing we did for each other. So it's been really fun. 

Colleen Schnettler  5:47  
Yeah, I think for me, what happened was, I was trying to stay motivated. And I was searching the internet for bootstrapped founder podcast, and there's 1000s of bootstrapped founder podcasts. But I was listening to one show, and I distinctly remember, the guy was talking about, like, how he got in his car and drove to California. And he was just such a different place in his life. Like, I was like, where the parents like the mothers and the people who are trying to build sustainable businesses, while raising a young family? And while working a job like I was looking for an approach that was would fit more like in our life, and I didn't feel like a lot of people were podcasting about that.

Yeah, love it. And that's really why a lot of us I think started is we started podcast or even why we started MicroConf was that we looked around for other people trying to do what we wanted to do in the way we wanted to do it. And I like calling you just s...

]]> Fri, 05 Mar 2021 21:44:06 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1781 ICYMI: Colleen and Michele talked with Rob Walling of MicroConf On Air on March 3. ICYMI: Colleen and Michele talked with Rob Walling of MicroConf On Air on March 3. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler To Take Funding, or Not to Take Funding 32 32 To Take Funding, or Not to Take Funding full 188c24bf-bfd2-4990-a17c-bfb3252b60df https://share.transistor.fm/s/6f9af04e Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Intro CRM. There's a new simple sales tool built just for freelancers and early stage founders called Intro CRM. Add details in one click and know what you're earning next month. Quickly log next steps for every deal and integrate with Basecamp, Trello or Asana for managing tasks. Check out their website at introcrm.com.

Thanks again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners in this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

Michele Hansen  0:46 
So Colleen, you launched your SaaS, Simple File Upload, in December. And for the past couple of months now, we have been tracking how it's doing, how many people are signing up, your revenue, all those things. So last time we talked, you were on track for $325 in MRR and I think the previous time we had talked about before that which is maybe like two weeks before that. You're at $120 MRR. And so I'm curious, like, where are we now?

Colleen Schnettler  1:29 
So since we last spoke, I had one additional signups.

Michele Hansen
Nice.

Colleen Schnettler
So that puts me at $360 MRR. And I really I mean, I feel like I've won the lottery, Michele, like it feels amazing.

Michele Hansen  1:39 
Isn't SaaS great?

Colleen Schnettler  1:41 
So I mean, it was so hard to get to this point. But right now it just feels good. I think it's important to note that I couldn't charge for it until February 4, which was three weeks ago. So in three weeks, I've gone from zero MRR to $360. That's why I feel like I've won the lottery, like it's just.

Michele Hansen  1:59 
That's amazing. Have you annualize that yet? like have you let yourself like multiply that by 12. And just like think about that for a second?

Colleen Schnettler  2:05 
Too much. It's too much dreaming. I'm not quite ready to dream that big yet. But it feels really great. I mean, I am kind of floored --

Michele Hansen
$4,000 a year, by the way --

Colleen Schnettler
I could fly to Europe someday with that money when it's safe to fly. Yeah, so it feels really amazing to see this growth. And I have mentioned that I've been really busy the past couple weeks with with real paid work. And so I haven't put a lot of time or energy into this and people are still signing up.

Michele Hansen  2:43 
So this is real paid work the differences.

Colleen Schnettler  2:47 
Yeah, I shouldn't call --

Michele Hansen  2:50 
You don't have to be sort of like a like button chair, in order to make that revenue and make those sales, right like cuz whenever you get a consulting client, this is where these are so different. You have to work for every single customer in order to make that happen. Like you have to be out meeting people and making contacts and landing each client. But when you have customers, and they can just sign up whenever they need it. And they don't have to talk to you or do anything with you at all, before paying you, it's a huge shift.

Colleen Schnettler  3:30 
Yes, I mean, it's it's ultimately, you know, right now I trade my time for money. And as a consultant, I'm very, very aware of my time almost to my own detriment. And with this, yeah, I mean, of course, I put a ton of time in upfront, but people just sign up in the middle of the night and sweet. Like, that's awesome, I didn't have to do anything!

Michele Hansen  3:52 
So I'm curious. When you were when you had a you know, sort of we call them corporate jobs like were you? I wonder if were you a consultant like were you time tracking?

Colleen Schnettler
No.

Michele Hansen
Oh, okay.

Colleen Schnettler  4:05 
So I've done them. All right. I've done the salaried not time track to time tracking as what I do now. And now the product. So it's exciting.

Michele Hansen  4:14 
Yeah, it is exciting. I just remember when I went from working at an agency and having to, you know, time track three minutes spent replying to an email to then working in a product company and not having to time track and it was like, Oh, my God, this is -- this is amazing.

Colleen Schnettler  4:34 
Yeah, it feels totally different. So I'm, you know, I'm trying to enjoy it. And I'm also trying to think about, like, how I can continue to try and find -- I don't really feel like I found any kind of real product market fit. Like I've definitely found a pain point because people are signing up. But, I mean, I think that that there's a lot of opportunity to find deeper pain points in more specific niches. Because not everyone is this is the weirdest thing I know I keep bringing this up, but like people are signing up, but only about 50% of the people who sign up and they have to pay me when they sign up, are using it. And I'm emailing them. And I'm trying to see if I can help them. But if they don't use it, they're going to churn. So I feel like I'm a little I don't want to say concerned, but I'm cognizant of the fact that I think I'm going to have a high churn rate this first month, because people are going to be like, why am I paying for this thing I don't use?

Michele Hansen  5:27 
Yeah, I think that's something worth diving into. And you mentioned that you're emailing people. And we've talked a little bit about different approaches, you've taken to those emails, in terms of copy and subject lines, and all those sorts of things. And so I'm curious, if you've been, like trying anything differently, or if you've had any more people get back to you. And you've kind of gotten any more insight into why that might be happening?

Colleen Schnettler  5:53 
Nope. I mean, I can't get anyone...

Michele Hansen
That sounds frustrating.

Colleen Schnettler
It is it's frustrating. So in the beginning, I had a free tier, which I no longer have, there's no free free option. And the people in the free tier would would engage with me a lot more and and they seemed it was seemed like because they were very grateful. I mean, most of them expressed gratitude that I had solved this problem for them for free. No one emailed me back who was paying me money. Now to be fair, it's only what 1012 people that are paying me money, they don't want to talk to me. So I'm right. Have you been

Michele Hansen  6:30 
Like, can you like look at their email addresses and see like, are they Gmails that are signing up? Or like people at companies?

Colleen Schnettler  6:38 
There are Gmails? It's both. It's a combination of Gmail and custom domains. And it you know, I haven't even been looking to see if they're, you know, what, it just occurred to me, I haven't even been checking to see if those emails are opened. So there could be something else going on, or they just don't want to talk to me, which is is what it is, I think, though, like why I just I don't want to stress about it. But like, why would you sign up for something you have to pay for and not use it? Like did i know.

Mic...

]]> Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Intro CRM. There's a new simple sales tool built just for freelancers and early stage founders called Intro CRM. Add details in one click and know what you're earning next month. Quickly log next steps for every deal and integrate with Basecamp, Trello or Asana for managing tasks. Check out their website at introcrm.com.

Thanks again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners in this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

Michele Hansen  0:46 
So Colleen, you launched your SaaS, Simple File Upload, in December. And for the past couple of months now, we have been tracking how it's doing, how many people are signing up, your revenue, all those things. So last time we talked, you were on track for $325 in MRR and I think the previous time we had talked about before that which is maybe like two weeks before that. You're at $120 MRR. And so I'm curious, like, where are we now?

Colleen Schnettler  1:29 
So since we last spoke, I had one additional signups.

Michele Hansen
Nice.

Colleen Schnettler
So that puts me at $360 MRR. And I really I mean, I feel like I've won the lottery, Michele, like it feels amazing.

Michele Hansen  1:39 
Isn't SaaS great?

Colleen Schnettler  1:41 
So I mean, it was so hard to get to this point. But right now it just feels good. I think it's important to note that I couldn't charge for it until February 4, which was three weeks ago. So in three weeks, I've gone from zero MRR to $360. That's why I feel like I've won the lottery, like it's just.

Michele Hansen  1:59 
That's amazing. Have you annualize that yet? like have you let yourself like multiply that by 12. And just like think about that for a second?

Colleen Schnettler  2:05 
Too much. It's too much dreaming. I'm not quite ready to dream that big yet. But it feels really great. I mean, I am kind of floored --

Michele Hansen
$4,000 a year, by the way --

Colleen Schnettler
I could fly to Europe someday with that money when it's safe to fly. Yeah, so it feels really amazing to see this growth. And I have mentioned that I've been really busy the past couple weeks with with real paid work. And so I haven't put a lot of time or energy into this and people are still signing up.

Michele Hansen  2:43 
So this is real paid work the differences.

Colleen Schnettler  2:47 
Yeah, I shouldn't call --

Michele Hansen  2:50 
You don't have to be sort of like a like button chair, in order to make that revenue and make those sales, right like cuz whenever you get a consulting client, this is where these are so different. You have to work for every single customer in order to make that happen. Like you have to be out meeting people and making contacts and landing each client. But when you have customers, and they can just sign up whenever they need it. And they don't have to talk to you or do anything with you at all, before paying you, it's a huge shift.

Colleen Schnettler  3:30 
Yes, I mean, it's it's ultimately, you know, right now I trade my time for money. And as a consultant, I'm very, very aware of my time almost to my own detriment. And with this, yeah, I mean, of course, I put a ton of time in upfront, but people just sign up in the middle of the night and sweet. Like, that's awesome, I didn't have to do anything!

Michele Hansen  3:52 
So I'm curious. When you were when you had a you know, sort of we call them corporate jobs like were you? I wonder if were you a consultant like were you time tracking?

Colleen Schnettler
No.

Michele Hansen
Oh, okay.

Colleen Schnettler  4:05 
So I've done them. All right. I've done the salaried not time track to time tracking as what I do now. And now the product. So it's exciting.

Michele Hansen  4:14 
Yeah, it is exciting. I just remember when I went from working at an agency and having to, you know, time track three minutes spent replying to an email to then working in a product company and not having to time track and it was like, Oh, my God, this is -- this is amazing.

Colleen Schnettler  4:34 
Yeah, it feels totally different. So I'm, you know, I'm trying to enjoy it. And I'm also trying to think about, like, how I can continue to try and find -- I don't really feel like I found any kind of real product market fit. Like I've definitely found a pain point because people are signing up. But, I mean, I think that that there's a lot of opportunity to find deeper pain points in more specific niches. Because not everyone is this is the weirdest thing I know I keep bringing this up, but like people are signing up, but only about 50% of the people who sign up and they have to pay me when they sign up, are using it. And I'm emailing them. And I'm trying to see if I can help them. But if they don't use it, they're going to churn. So I feel like I'm a little I don't want to say concerned, but I'm cognizant of the fact that I think I'm going to have a high churn rate this first month, because people are going to be like, why am I paying for this thing I don't use?

Michele Hansen  5:27 
Yeah, I think that's something worth diving into. And you mentioned that you're emailing people. And we've talked a little bit about different approaches, you've taken to those emails, in terms of copy and subject lines, and all those sorts of things. And so I'm curious, if you've been, like trying anything differently, or if you've had any more people get back to you. And you've kind of gotten any more insight into why that might be happening?

Colleen Schnettler  5:53 
Nope. I mean, I can't get anyone...

Michele Hansen
That sounds frustrating.

Colleen Schnettler
It is it's frustrating. So in the beginning, I had a free tier, which I no longer have, there's no free free option. And the people in the free tier would would engage with me a lot more and and they seemed it was seemed like because they were very grateful. I mean, most of them expressed gratitude that I had solved this problem for them for free. No one emailed me back who was paying me money. Now to be fair, it's only what 1012 people that are paying me money, they don't want to talk to me. So I'm right. Have you been

Michele Hansen  6:30 
Like, can you like look at their email addresses and see like, are they Gmails that are signing up? Or like people at companies?

Colleen Schnettler  6:38 
There are Gmails? It's both. It's a combination of Gmail and custom domains. And it you know, I haven't even been looking to see if they're, you know, what, it just occurred to me, I haven't even been checking to see if those emails are opened. So there could be something else going on, or they just don't want to talk to me, which is is what it is, I think, though, like why I just I don't want to stress about it. But like, why would you sign up for something you have to pay for and not use it? Like did i know.

Mic...

]]> Tue, 02 Mar 2021 08:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2160 With the new crop of bootstrapper-focused funds, taking funding is possible for bootstrappers in a way that it just wasn't even a few years ago. Colleen and Michele work through whether it make sense for Colleen to take funding. With the new crop of bootstrapper-focused funds, taking funding is possible for bootstrappers in a way that it just wasn't even a few years ago. Colleen and Michele work through whether it make sense for Colleen to take funding. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Giving Up On An Idea 31 31 Giving Up On An Idea full e1bb6ea9-f70a-4503-9aa7-022a3269c122 https://share.transistor.fm/s/fe5139c8 Michele Hansen  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Domain Mapper. Domain Mapper gives you a single place to see all of your domains from multiple registrars and their DNS settings. Automated tracking for domains includes a MX and txt records. Plus, you can get domain renewal reminders, so you never lose one of your domains. Check it out at domainmapper.app.

Thanks again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners in this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

Colleen Schnettler  0:42 
So Michele, I saw a tweet you had the other day where you just casually dropped that you were quoted in Adam Grant's new book, what is that about?

Michele Hansen  0:54 
Yeah, it's kind of a funny story. So Adam Grant, who wrote Originals, has a new book out called Think Again. And a vignette from my application to my old job, actually is in the book. It's kind of crazy.

Colleen Schnettler  1:15 
So how did that happen?

Michele Hansen  1:17 
So he gave a talk at the place I used to work. And the talk was on sort of unexpected findings and learnings. And there was just one particular story he told that prompted me to go ask him a question and talk to him afterwards. And I love that story, if I can just tell it for a second. So he was saying how there was this startup that was pitching some venture capitalists for funding. And in addition to all of the slides, you would expect about, you know, the problem they're solving and how they're doing it, and why they are the team to do it, and how they're taking over the world and all those kinds of things. They also had a slide in there, that straight up said all of the reasons why their company may not work.

Colleen Schnettler  2:08 
Hmm. Okay.

Michele Hansen  2:10 
Yeah. And it's not something that people normally put in a slide deck. And what really stuck out to me was he said that instead of the VCs going, Yeah, you're right, like, this idea sucks, your company's never going anywhere, your team isn't qualified, like, all right. Instead, the VC started problem solving with them, and talking about how they could help the company overcome these problems and avoid these pitfalls. And it went from this kind of, I don't want to describe it, like pitching as an adversarial relationship, but it's definitely like a weird, icy dance. To one that was really collaborative, and they were diving in together and and those sort of veneers were dropped. And, and he was talking about how, you know, they they said that it wasn't going to work out. And then that made people more interested in and talking to them and helping them.

And so I went up to talk to him afterwards, because that that kind of reminded me of the application that I had written to the company. Because I had written in the application, basically, that I was probably not the candidate that they were envisioning, and that I didn't meet the qualifications they were asking for, but that I had other things that I was bringing to the table. And so he, you know, tells that story. In the book, I was also on his Work/Life podcast a couple of years ago telling that story.

Colleen Schnettler  3:50  
It's so cool. Yeah, it's,

Michele Hansen  3:51  
it's kind of

Colleen Schnettler  3:52  
weird. You're like secretly famous, and you never told us? Like you should have.

Michele Hansen  3:57  
I don't I don't know if I'm, I'm sorry, Colleen. Yeah, it's, it's it's pretty wild seeing my own name in print. But anyway, so since I'm in this book, and also I just enjoy his books in general. I figured he should read it. Yes, choice choice. He did send me a free copy of it. So and I absolutely loved it. 

Actually, there was some the part in it that kind of reminded me of something that you've been going through, and is something that's really common that I see in entrepreneurs, people who are starting out and also people who've been doing it for a long time.

Colleen Schnettler  4:39  
Which is...

Michele Hansen  4:40  
So I'm going to if you'll bear with me for a moment, I am just I'm going to read from the book. I have it in front of me here and it's a couple of paragraphs, so just bear with me here. 

So he's talking about if you can train people to think more like scientists and do they end up making smarter choices. And so, he says:
 

A quartet of European researchers ran a bold experiment with more than 100 founders of Italian startups in technology, retail furniture, food, healthcare, leisure and machinery. Most of the founders businesses had yet to bring in any revenue, making it an ideal setting to investigate how teaching scientific thinking would influence the bottom line. The entrepreneurs arrived in Milan for a training program and entrepreneurship. Over the course of four months, they learned to create a business strategy interview customers build a minimum viable product and refine a prototype. 
What they didn't know was that they had been randomly assigned to either a scientific thinking group or a control group. The training for both groups was identical except for that one was encouraged to view startups through scientists goggles. From their perspective, their strategies a theory, customer interviews help develop hypotheses, and their minimum viable product and prototype are experiments to test these hypotheses. Their task is to rigorously measure the results and make decisions on whether their hypotheses are supported or refuted. 
Over the following year, the startups in the control group average under $300 in revenue, the startups in the scientific thinking group averaged over $12,000 in revenue. They brought in revenue more than twice as fast and attracted customers sooner too. Why? The entrepreneurs in the control group tended to stay wedded to their original strategies and products. It was too easy to preach the virtues of their past decisions, prosecute the vices of alternative options and politic by catering to advisors who favored the existing direction. The entrepreneurs who had been taught to think like scientists, in contrast, pivoted more than twice as often, when their hypotheses weren't supported. They knew it was time to rethink their business models. 
What's surprising about these results is we typically celebrate great entrepreneurs and leaders for being strong minded and clear sighted. They're supposed to be Paragons of conviction, decisive and certain. Yet, evidence reveals that when business executives compete in tournaments to price products, the best strategies actually slow...<...]]> Michele Hansen  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Domain Mapper. Domain Mapper gives you a single place to see all of your domains from multiple registrars and their DNS settings. Automated tracking for domains includes a MX and txt records. Plus, you can get domain renewal reminders, so you never lose one of your domains. Check it out at domainmapper.app.

Thanks again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners in this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

Colleen Schnettler  0:42 
So Michele, I saw a tweet you had the other day where you just casually dropped that you were quoted in Adam Grant's new book, what is that about?

Michele Hansen  0:54 
Yeah, it's kind of a funny story. So Adam Grant, who wrote Originals, has a new book out called Think Again. And a vignette from my application to my old job, actually is in the book. It's kind of crazy.

Colleen Schnettler  1:15 
So how did that happen?

Michele Hansen  1:17 
So he gave a talk at the place I used to work. And the talk was on sort of unexpected findings and learnings. And there was just one particular story he told that prompted me to go ask him a question and talk to him afterwards. And I love that story, if I can just tell it for a second. So he was saying how there was this startup that was pitching some venture capitalists for funding. And in addition to all of the slides, you would expect about, you know, the problem they're solving and how they're doing it, and why they are the team to do it, and how they're taking over the world and all those kinds of things. They also had a slide in there, that straight up said all of the reasons why their company may not work.

Colleen Schnettler  2:08 
Hmm. Okay.

Michele Hansen  2:10 
Yeah. And it's not something that people normally put in a slide deck. And what really stuck out to me was he said that instead of the VCs going, Yeah, you're right, like, this idea sucks, your company's never going anywhere, your team isn't qualified, like, all right. Instead, the VC started problem solving with them, and talking about how they could help the company overcome these problems and avoid these pitfalls. And it went from this kind of, I don't want to describe it, like pitching as an adversarial relationship, but it's definitely like a weird, icy dance. To one that was really collaborative, and they were diving in together and and those sort of veneers were dropped. And, and he was talking about how, you know, they they said that it wasn't going to work out. And then that made people more interested in and talking to them and helping them.

And so I went up to talk to him afterwards, because that that kind of reminded me of the application that I had written to the company. Because I had written in the application, basically, that I was probably not the candidate that they were envisioning, and that I didn't meet the qualifications they were asking for, but that I had other things that I was bringing to the table. And so he, you know, tells that story. In the book, I was also on his Work/Life podcast a couple of years ago telling that story.

Colleen Schnettler  3:50  
It's so cool. Yeah, it's,

Michele Hansen  3:51  
it's kind of

Colleen Schnettler  3:52  
weird. You're like secretly famous, and you never told us? Like you should have.

Michele Hansen  3:57  
I don't I don't know if I'm, I'm sorry, Colleen. Yeah, it's, it's it's pretty wild seeing my own name in print. But anyway, so since I'm in this book, and also I just enjoy his books in general. I figured he should read it. Yes, choice choice. He did send me a free copy of it. So and I absolutely loved it. 

Actually, there was some the part in it that kind of reminded me of something that you've been going through, and is something that's really common that I see in entrepreneurs, people who are starting out and also people who've been doing it for a long time.

Colleen Schnettler  4:39  
Which is...

Michele Hansen  4:40  
So I'm going to if you'll bear with me for a moment, I am just I'm going to read from the book. I have it in front of me here and it's a couple of paragraphs, so just bear with me here. 

So he's talking about if you can train people to think more like scientists and do they end up making smarter choices. And so, he says:
 

A quartet of European researchers ran a bold experiment with more than 100 founders of Italian startups in technology, retail furniture, food, healthcare, leisure and machinery. Most of the founders businesses had yet to bring in any revenue, making it an ideal setting to investigate how teaching scientific thinking would influence the bottom line. The entrepreneurs arrived in Milan for a training program and entrepreneurship. Over the course of four months, they learned to create a business strategy interview customers build a minimum viable product and refine a prototype. 
What they didn't know was that they had been randomly assigned to either a scientific thinking group or a control group. The training for both groups was identical except for that one was encouraged to view startups through scientists goggles. From their perspective, their strategies a theory, customer interviews help develop hypotheses, and their minimum viable product and prototype are experiments to test these hypotheses. Their task is to rigorously measure the results and make decisions on whether their hypotheses are supported or refuted. 
Over the following year, the startups in the control group average under $300 in revenue, the startups in the scientific thinking group averaged over $12,000 in revenue. They brought in revenue more than twice as fast and attracted customers sooner too. Why? The entrepreneurs in the control group tended to stay wedded to their original strategies and products. It was too easy to preach the virtues of their past decisions, prosecute the vices of alternative options and politic by catering to advisors who favored the existing direction. The entrepreneurs who had been taught to think like scientists, in contrast, pivoted more than twice as often, when their hypotheses weren't supported. They knew it was time to rethink their business models. 
What's surprising about these results is we typically celebrate great entrepreneurs and leaders for being strong minded and clear sighted. They're supposed to be Paragons of conviction, decisive and certain. Yet, evidence reveals that when business executives compete in tournaments to price products, the best strategies actually slow...<...]]> Tue, 23 Feb 2021 10:29:20 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2232 When should you give up on an idea, and what does "giving up" mean? Michele and Colleen talk about Colleen's ideas that didn't pan out. When should you give up on an idea, and what does "giving up" mean? Michele and Colleen talk about Colleen's ideas that didn't pan out. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Raising a Business 30 30 Raising a Business full fe8b09aa-ccb9-4f45-9d40-bd878cf60c2a https://share.transistor.fm/s/3dad5534 Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Diversify Tech. Diversify Tech helps companies reach candidates from underrepresented communities in tech. Their job board reaches 7,300 members. They have a free talent directory, and they have a newsletter for companies to learn about diversity, equality and inclusion. Please check them out at DiversifyTech.co

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners in this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

Michele Hansen  0:44 
Colleen, can I ask you a question that you're not supposed to ask people?

Colleen Schnettler  0:50 
Are you going to ask me how old I am?

Michele Hansen  0:52 
No, I'm not going to ask you how old you are. I am going to ask you how much money you have made on your side project.

Colleen Schnettler
Ohhh!

Michele Hansen
Because we had talked about this a couple weeks ago, right? Like you had said that somebody had paid you $10 yet and that you had a bunch of people who would sign up on your free trial, and that their first charge was coming through in the middle of February. And now we are in the middle of February. And so I was curious if you would share with us what it is looking like, from a revenue perspective right now.

Colleen Schnettler  1:29 
Okay, sure. So to customers were up middle of February, one churned and one paid the $10.

Michele Hansen
Nice.

Colleen Schnettler
So that's always exciting. Yeah. But the real exciting boost for me is, as of I think about a week ago, maybe 10 days ago, it's been live on the Heroku App Store. And I've had a couple people sign up and there's no free trial. So they're signing up at $35 a month.

Michele Hansen
Sweet.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah, it's actually really exciting. I'm trying to not get too excited. But um, I think the important thing to remember about Heroku though, it's not like Stripe, I don't get paid up front, you're pro-rate build. So if they sign up to try it out, and then they deprovision it or, you know, cancel it, essentially, I only get $1 or whatever, you know, the 35 amortized over the number of days in the month.


Michele Hansen  2:21 
Oh so it's month after? so if I say...

Colleen Schnettler
yes

Michele Hansen
February 1, for example, I would be billed March 1 for it. And if I cancel February 15, I'm billed on February 15, for two weeks worth of usage. Is that right?

Colleen Schnettler  2:34 
I think that's correct.

Michele Hansen
Okay

Colleen Schnettler
So I haven't actually seen any of that money yet. And so but it is really exciting. Like, I wasn't sure once I made it, you know, paid if anyone would sign up for it. And I've had a handful of people sign up. So it's really exciting. Yeah, it is, um, it is very exciting. And I kind of don't know what I should be tracking. I'm kind of struggling with that. Because I'm not actually tracking churn right now. I don't know if that's important to track, like I see if someone cancels, but I don't not like tracking that metric over time.

Michele Hansen  3:14 
I think more important than then the numbers and percentages right now is why did they churn, right?

Colleen Schnettler
I know. I emailed them.

Michele Hansen
Okay, good, good. That's what you should have done, right? So right now you say, okay, 50% of the people cancelled, which looks really bad on the surface. But that number, knowing that one out of two people canceled, those numbers will never tell you why that happened. And so, yes, it's a good idea to be attuned to those numbers. But at this stage, the most important thing is to try to figure out why.

Colleen Schnettler  3:50 
That's what I figured is like, the goal here is to talk to people, so I am

Michele Hansen
Oh, my God. Finally,

Colleen Schnettler
Oh, my goodness. Lately, I've come around to it.

Michele Hansen  4:00 
It's fluttering hearing you say that!

Colleen Schnettler  4:02 
I mean, you know, I was thinking about something this morning. So if none of these people churn and they probably went, like I said, people are trying it out. But like, I'm at 120 MRR. I mean, that's amazing, right? Like, a lot of people never even launch a product. I've launched a product and that's amazing. 10 days, I met 120 MRR. So I'm trying like,

Michele Hansen  4:25 
Dude, you have been working towards this for like, so like, I feel like there's so many milestones that you've gone through. And, you know, people like listening right now. Right? Like, like you're hearing Oh, my God, like Colleen, like got this thing launched. And she got it in the marketplace. And then she went through all these hoops and now she has people paying her like -- it has taken you years to get to this point.

Like, like a year ago, when we were still having our in person, weekly business chats before the pandemic and we were both in the same place and all of that, like you were trying, whatever you could even find a product find a problem you could solve, like the idea of like, if I had told you one year from now, you will have you know, 100 and something people using your product paying you 100 and something dollars for. Like, I think I don't know what you would have said you either wouldn't have believed me, or it'd be like, Can we just like fast forward to that?

Colleen Schnettler  5:28 
Right, can we fast forward?

Michele Hansen  5:30 
This is like this has this is the culmination of years worth of work for you like, yes, it looks like it's only been in the last three months. But you have been working towards this for such a long time.

Colleen Schnettler  5:42 
Yeah, and I think that's super important to remember. Because I was thinking about, like, I was trying to in my head, I was fast forwarding to a year from now. And probably when I tell my hopefully success story, it'll be Oh, I launched it, you know, February 4 2021. But to your point, like, that's totally a lie, I have been working on ideas and talking to people for years. I mean, the whole reason I learned to code was so I could have a product business. So this is, this is really a lot, you know, a long adventure in the making.

Michele Hansen  6:14 
I'm so happy for you.

Colleen Schnettler  6:15 
I'm so excited. So I'm trying not to I mean, this is really where the work begins. This is where a lot of people stop working, I think. And I think that's why I know so many software developers that can't quite get their products off the ground. For me, this is where the work begins. Like I think I made a joke the other day to my husband, I was like, I thought having children taught me patience. What's really teaching me patience is having a business. You know, I have to like, avoid. So what I'...

]]> Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Diversify Tech. Diversify Tech helps companies reach candidates from underrepresented communities in tech. Their job board reaches 7,300 members. They have a free talent directory, and they have a newsletter for companies to learn about diversity, equality and inclusion. Please check them out at DiversifyTech.co

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners in this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

Michele Hansen  0:44 
Colleen, can I ask you a question that you're not supposed to ask people?

Colleen Schnettler  0:50 
Are you going to ask me how old I am?

Michele Hansen  0:52 
No, I'm not going to ask you how old you are. I am going to ask you how much money you have made on your side project.

Colleen Schnettler
Ohhh!

Michele Hansen
Because we had talked about this a couple weeks ago, right? Like you had said that somebody had paid you $10 yet and that you had a bunch of people who would sign up on your free trial, and that their first charge was coming through in the middle of February. And now we are in the middle of February. And so I was curious if you would share with us what it is looking like, from a revenue perspective right now.

Colleen Schnettler  1:29 
Okay, sure. So to customers were up middle of February, one churned and one paid the $10.

Michele Hansen
Nice.

Colleen Schnettler
So that's always exciting. Yeah. But the real exciting boost for me is, as of I think about a week ago, maybe 10 days ago, it's been live on the Heroku App Store. And I've had a couple people sign up and there's no free trial. So they're signing up at $35 a month.

Michele Hansen
Sweet.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah, it's actually really exciting. I'm trying to not get too excited. But um, I think the important thing to remember about Heroku though, it's not like Stripe, I don't get paid up front, you're pro-rate build. So if they sign up to try it out, and then they deprovision it or, you know, cancel it, essentially, I only get $1 or whatever, you know, the 35 amortized over the number of days in the month.


Michele Hansen  2:21 
Oh so it's month after? so if I say...

Colleen Schnettler
yes

Michele Hansen
February 1, for example, I would be billed March 1 for it. And if I cancel February 15, I'm billed on February 15, for two weeks worth of usage. Is that right?

Colleen Schnettler  2:34 
I think that's correct.

Michele Hansen
Okay

Colleen Schnettler
So I haven't actually seen any of that money yet. And so but it is really exciting. Like, I wasn't sure once I made it, you know, paid if anyone would sign up for it. And I've had a handful of people sign up. So it's really exciting. Yeah, it is, um, it is very exciting. And I kind of don't know what I should be tracking. I'm kind of struggling with that. Because I'm not actually tracking churn right now. I don't know if that's important to track, like I see if someone cancels, but I don't not like tracking that metric over time.

Michele Hansen  3:14 
I think more important than then the numbers and percentages right now is why did they churn, right?

Colleen Schnettler
I know. I emailed them.

Michele Hansen
Okay, good, good. That's what you should have done, right? So right now you say, okay, 50% of the people cancelled, which looks really bad on the surface. But that number, knowing that one out of two people canceled, those numbers will never tell you why that happened. And so, yes, it's a good idea to be attuned to those numbers. But at this stage, the most important thing is to try to figure out why.

Colleen Schnettler  3:50 
That's what I figured is like, the goal here is to talk to people, so I am

Michele Hansen
Oh, my God. Finally,

Colleen Schnettler
Oh, my goodness. Lately, I've come around to it.

Michele Hansen  4:00 
It's fluttering hearing you say that!

Colleen Schnettler  4:02 
I mean, you know, I was thinking about something this morning. So if none of these people churn and they probably went, like I said, people are trying it out. But like, I'm at 120 MRR. I mean, that's amazing, right? Like, a lot of people never even launch a product. I've launched a product and that's amazing. 10 days, I met 120 MRR. So I'm trying like,

Michele Hansen  4:25 
Dude, you have been working towards this for like, so like, I feel like there's so many milestones that you've gone through. And, you know, people like listening right now. Right? Like, like you're hearing Oh, my God, like Colleen, like got this thing launched. And she got it in the marketplace. And then she went through all these hoops and now she has people paying her like -- it has taken you years to get to this point.

Like, like a year ago, when we were still having our in person, weekly business chats before the pandemic and we were both in the same place and all of that, like you were trying, whatever you could even find a product find a problem you could solve, like the idea of like, if I had told you one year from now, you will have you know, 100 and something people using your product paying you 100 and something dollars for. Like, I think I don't know what you would have said you either wouldn't have believed me, or it'd be like, Can we just like fast forward to that?

Colleen Schnettler  5:28 
Right, can we fast forward?

Michele Hansen  5:30 
This is like this has this is the culmination of years worth of work for you like, yes, it looks like it's only been in the last three months. But you have been working towards this for such a long time.

Colleen Schnettler  5:42 
Yeah, and I think that's super important to remember. Because I was thinking about, like, I was trying to in my head, I was fast forwarding to a year from now. And probably when I tell my hopefully success story, it'll be Oh, I launched it, you know, February 4 2021. But to your point, like, that's totally a lie, I have been working on ideas and talking to people for years. I mean, the whole reason I learned to code was so I could have a product business. So this is, this is really a lot, you know, a long adventure in the making.

Michele Hansen  6:14 
I'm so happy for you.

Colleen Schnettler  6:15 
I'm so excited. So I'm trying not to I mean, this is really where the work begins. This is where a lot of people stop working, I think. And I think that's why I know so many software developers that can't quite get their products off the ground. For me, this is where the work begins. Like I think I made a joke the other day to my husband, I was like, I thought having children taught me patience. What's really teaching me patience is having a business. You know, I have to like, avoid. So what I'...

]]> Tue, 16 Feb 2021 11:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2253 New signups are exciting, but how do you deal with the hurt that comes when one of your few users churn? Colleen and Michele talk about how the things that are hard now will get easier, and how both the good and bad things are opportunities for growth. New signups are exciting, but how do you deal with the hurt that comes when one of your few users churn? Colleen and Michele talk about how the things that are hard now will get easier, and how both the good and bad things are opportunities for growth. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler First on Google 29 29 First on Google full 852ebae5-f626-4ab3-b23a-f0aaf2c9d27a https://share.transistor.fm/s/f1892daa Link to the marketing to developers article Colleen mentioned

Michele Hansen  0:01 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by SnapShooter. SnapShooter helps you keep your server safe with backups for all major VPS hosting providers like Digital Ocean, AWS, Hetzner, and more. It makes it easy to take backups for MySQL, PostgreSQL and MongoDB. And you can also do super easy backups for applications like WordPress, Laravel, and Ghost. Check it out at snapshooter.io.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners in this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit https://balsamiq.com/go/software-social/.

Colleen Schnettler  0:49  
So Michele, are you at your computer right now?

Michele Hansen  0:51  
I've always at my computer.

Colleen Schnettler  0:55  
Okay, I would like you to go to Google. And I would like you to Google file uploading on Heroku.

Michele Hansen  1:01  
Okay, I'm typing right now. 

Colleen Schnettler 
Okay. 

What came up first thing?

Colleen Schnettler  1:10  
First Google result.

Michele Hansen  1:14  
Wait, is this because I've gone to it before though? Like,

Colleen Schnettler  1:17  
that's what I thought I was like, is Google biasing my response by incognito. Ok, do it again.

Michele Hansen  1:25  
Does it file upload on her while

Colleen Schnettler  1:27  
uploading on Heroku?

Unknown Speaker  1:28  
Still number one.

Unknown Speaker  1:32  
Amazing. That's

Michele Hansen  1:33  
amazing. Like,

Colleen Schnettler  1:36  
I just want to capitalize on being the number one Google response. I don't really know. Yeah. But I was super excited to see that. Yeah, that is like my exciting news for the week.

Michele Hansen  1:47  
That is really exciting.

Colleen Schnettler  1:50  
Yeah. I and you know what the best part about this is, I didn't even know. And I was having a customer interview. And I asked him how he found out about we'll talk about

Michele Hansen  2:02  
this, you're burying the lede here? Well, I don't know. It's all exciting. There's like multiple news stories here.

Colleen Schnettler  2:12  
Yes, it's all exciting. So this is exciting. I am the number one. Number one hit on Google for file uploading on Heroku. Your number one brilliant,

Michele Hansen  2:21  
your number. I

Colleen Schnettler  2:22  
know, that's awesome. Like, I just I don't want to breathe on it in case

Michele Hansen  2:27  
Google changes their mind. Okay, this means you do shouldn't work on your documentation and just don't touch it.

Unknown Speaker  2:33  
Don't touch anything.

Colleen Schnettler  2:36  
Don't breathe on the website. So I think that was really exciting to see. And I definitely want to make that landing page that you dropped to better to kind of pull in the people who are reaching me now from Google. So that's something something I'm working on. But what I alluded to is I found that out because I had a customer interview. So last week, I emailed I think I told you, I would do it ages ago. And I finally did it. Thanks to you know, the positive encouragement I received from you and friends on the internet. Thank you friends on the internet. I emailed 14 people. And as I told you with Heroku, I can get their application name. So in the subject of the email, I said, simplify, upload a end, and I put their application name. personalize it. That's smart. Yeah, I figured I'd get a better response rate, like people would actually open it instead of just saying like, simple file upload. Yeah. So of those 14 emails, I got three responses. That's great one. Yeah, I thought free for 14 isn't bad. One guy said he didn't have time to talk. But it was the best file uploader on Heroku. And I should do more marketing. Nice.

Michele Hansen  3:48  
I always love it when customers tell tell us to do more marketing. Like it's such a an unexpected kind of feedback. Because it's like, wait, you want me to be louder?

Colleen Schnettler  4:05  
So I responded to him and asked him if I could use that as a testimonial. And he said I could. So I haven't put those I haven't put the testimonial on the website yet. But that is something I want to get to do.

Michele Hansen  4:15  
That's awesome. testimonials are so good for growth, like when you like if you've got people clicking on it from Google. And then they come to and it's like not only it seems like it's what they need, but there's some other person saying this is exactly what I needed. That's so helpful for getting new signups. They've been really good for us.

Colleen Schnettler  4:36  
Yeah, I think it'll be good. So So I will add that I just haven't added that yet. So I'm going to add that to my site. And two people said they would get on the phone with me. So you'll know that this is the first time I've actually done this right.

Michele Hansen  4:51  
Yeah, that's that's so good.

Colleen Schnettler  4:54  
Yes, so it is good, but so the first person I see spoke with he was actually in Japan. So I had to do it like in the evening here, and it was morning in Japan and he was so nice, but the call lasted 10 minutes, that's okay. I feel like I totally like, I don't want to say I bungled it like it was really great. But at the same time, like I thought about you talking about how I should schedule an hour, and it was like 10 minutes, and I just ran out of things to say. So,

Michele Hansen  5:28  
like, I've had interviews that were, you know, 10 minutes, like you said, and then ones that were like, an hour and a half, I usually came for about half an hour. Okay, but like, 10 minutes is fine. Like, if you got a really good nugget of information, or you found something out about, like, how they found you why they were looking for something different, what they were using before, which may not have been another service, but like, it could have been, you know, a combination of manual things or patching things together, whatever. Like, if you got that information, and you feel like you got something out of that conversation. That can happen in 10 minutes. Like, that's okay. Okay.

Colleen Schnettler  6:12  
Because I got off the phone and my whole family. So it was dinnertime, here. So I told the kids like I have this call, I'm gonna be there for an hour. And I'm back like 10 minutes later, and they're like, Why are you back? Well, I guess I'm done. But it was like a great, it was a great interview, the person I spoke with was really kind. And I got a lot of information. As I said, that's how I found out like, he found me, because he googled file uploading on Heroku. And that's the first thing that came up. So that was exciting. Yeah. And it was also great, because he's using flask with Python. And I don't have any documentation surrounding like Pike, Python, specifically, like I have generic documentatio...

]]> Link to the marketing to developers article Colleen mentioned

Michele Hansen  0:01 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by SnapShooter. SnapShooter helps you keep your server safe with backups for all major VPS hosting providers like Digital Ocean, AWS, Hetzner, and more. It makes it easy to take backups for MySQL, PostgreSQL and MongoDB. And you can also do super easy backups for applications like WordPress, Laravel, and Ghost. Check it out at snapshooter.io.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners in this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit https://balsamiq.com/go/software-social/.

Colleen Schnettler  0:49  
So Michele, are you at your computer right now?

Michele Hansen  0:51  
I've always at my computer.

Colleen Schnettler  0:55  
Okay, I would like you to go to Google. And I would like you to Google file uploading on Heroku.

Michele Hansen  1:01  
Okay, I'm typing right now. 

Colleen Schnettler 
Okay. 

What came up first thing?

Colleen Schnettler  1:10  
First Google result.

Michele Hansen  1:14  
Wait, is this because I've gone to it before though? Like,

Colleen Schnettler  1:17  
that's what I thought I was like, is Google biasing my response by incognito. Ok, do it again.

Michele Hansen  1:25  
Does it file upload on her while

Colleen Schnettler  1:27  
uploading on Heroku?

Unknown Speaker  1:28  
Still number one.

Unknown Speaker  1:32  
Amazing. That's

Michele Hansen  1:33  
amazing. Like,

Colleen Schnettler  1:36  
I just want to capitalize on being the number one Google response. I don't really know. Yeah. But I was super excited to see that. Yeah, that is like my exciting news for the week.

Michele Hansen  1:47  
That is really exciting.

Colleen Schnettler  1:50  
Yeah. I and you know what the best part about this is, I didn't even know. And I was having a customer interview. And I asked him how he found out about we'll talk about

Michele Hansen  2:02  
this, you're burying the lede here? Well, I don't know. It's all exciting. There's like multiple news stories here.

Colleen Schnettler  2:12  
Yes, it's all exciting. So this is exciting. I am the number one. Number one hit on Google for file uploading on Heroku. Your number one brilliant,

Michele Hansen  2:21  
your number. I

Colleen Schnettler  2:22  
know, that's awesome. Like, I just I don't want to breathe on it in case

Michele Hansen  2:27  
Google changes their mind. Okay, this means you do shouldn't work on your documentation and just don't touch it.

Unknown Speaker  2:33  
Don't touch anything.

Colleen Schnettler  2:36  
Don't breathe on the website. So I think that was really exciting to see. And I definitely want to make that landing page that you dropped to better to kind of pull in the people who are reaching me now from Google. So that's something something I'm working on. But what I alluded to is I found that out because I had a customer interview. So last week, I emailed I think I told you, I would do it ages ago. And I finally did it. Thanks to you know, the positive encouragement I received from you and friends on the internet. Thank you friends on the internet. I emailed 14 people. And as I told you with Heroku, I can get their application name. So in the subject of the email, I said, simplify, upload a end, and I put their application name. personalize it. That's smart. Yeah, I figured I'd get a better response rate, like people would actually open it instead of just saying like, simple file upload. Yeah. So of those 14 emails, I got three responses. That's great one. Yeah, I thought free for 14 isn't bad. One guy said he didn't have time to talk. But it was the best file uploader on Heroku. And I should do more marketing. Nice.

Michele Hansen  3:48  
I always love it when customers tell tell us to do more marketing. Like it's such a an unexpected kind of feedback. Because it's like, wait, you want me to be louder?

Colleen Schnettler  4:05  
So I responded to him and asked him if I could use that as a testimonial. And he said I could. So I haven't put those I haven't put the testimonial on the website yet. But that is something I want to get to do.

Michele Hansen  4:15  
That's awesome. testimonials are so good for growth, like when you like if you've got people clicking on it from Google. And then they come to and it's like not only it seems like it's what they need, but there's some other person saying this is exactly what I needed. That's so helpful for getting new signups. They've been really good for us.

Colleen Schnettler  4:36  
Yeah, I think it'll be good. So So I will add that I just haven't added that yet. So I'm going to add that to my site. And two people said they would get on the phone with me. So you'll know that this is the first time I've actually done this right.

Michele Hansen  4:51  
Yeah, that's that's so good.

Colleen Schnettler  4:54  
Yes, so it is good, but so the first person I see spoke with he was actually in Japan. So I had to do it like in the evening here, and it was morning in Japan and he was so nice, but the call lasted 10 minutes, that's okay. I feel like I totally like, I don't want to say I bungled it like it was really great. But at the same time, like I thought about you talking about how I should schedule an hour, and it was like 10 minutes, and I just ran out of things to say. So,

Michele Hansen  5:28  
like, I've had interviews that were, you know, 10 minutes, like you said, and then ones that were like, an hour and a half, I usually came for about half an hour. Okay, but like, 10 minutes is fine. Like, if you got a really good nugget of information, or you found something out about, like, how they found you why they were looking for something different, what they were using before, which may not have been another service, but like, it could have been, you know, a combination of manual things or patching things together, whatever. Like, if you got that information, and you feel like you got something out of that conversation. That can happen in 10 minutes. Like, that's okay. Okay.

Colleen Schnettler  6:12  
Because I got off the phone and my whole family. So it was dinnertime, here. So I told the kids like I have this call, I'm gonna be there for an hour. And I'm back like 10 minutes later, and they're like, Why are you back? Well, I guess I'm done. But it was like a great, it was a great interview, the person I spoke with was really kind. And I got a lot of information. As I said, that's how I found out like, he found me, because he googled file uploading on Heroku. And that's the first thing that came up. So that was exciting. Yeah. And it was also great, because he's using flask with Python. And I don't have any documentation surrounding like Pike, Python, specifically, like I have generic documentatio...

]]> Tue, 09 Feb 2021 10:36:02 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2070 Colleen's committed herself to doing more marketing -- and it's already paying off. Colleen's committed herself to doing more marketing -- and it's already paying off. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Getting to 100 28 28 Getting to 100 full 629ead53-0158-44c9-893a-af261a3dc549 https://share.transistor.fm/s/d52afc63 Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Teleprompt.me. Teleprompt.me is a voice activated teleprompter service. You can write and save scripts and read them in multiple languages. Check it out at teleprompt.me.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners in this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit https://balsamiq.com/go/software-social/.

Michele Hansen  0:36 
So Colleen, the last time we talked about your SaaS, Simple File Upload, you had 89 users on Heroku 40 of which had uploaded files. And in order for your service to be released into the broader Heroku ecosystem, you have been working for months to get to 100 users. So it's been two weeks. Tell me, did you get to 100.

Colleen Schnettler  1:07 
I did 117 users. Last week I was approved for what they call general availability is when you can sell it in the marketplace. So my vendor documents are pending with Salesforce. Awesome, by the time this podcast airs, it will be available for sale.

Michele Hansen  1:27 
That's so exciting.

Colleen Schnettler  1:29 
Yeah, I'm super excited. It's really interesting though, Michelle, because this is a huge milestone, and you'd think I would get have gotten like a ton of energy and excitement about this project. But I've really been struggling the last two weeks, I have really kind of been down on myself thinking that this is a terrible idea. I need to start something new, and I need to find a new idea.

Michele Hansen  1:54 
Where do you think that feeling is coming from?

Colleen Schnettler  1:57 
I have no idea. I mean, it's, it's this really exciting time I've reached the milestone I've been trying to achieve. And so you know, I stumbled across this article by Amy Hoy called, why what's it called? Why Women Entrepreneurs Fail. Oh, and yeah, like speaks to me. And it's not just applicable to to women. But she does say in the article that she sees it a lot more in women. And let me let me pull out a few gems from this, quote, I'm tired of sitting by while you ship your thing and refuse to market it. Or you make a few sales your first time out, but it's not enough sales. So you sink into a funk and quit. Or you make it to the 90% mark, you tow up to the line of doing something, then refuse to cross it. I mean, that's like, right where I am, I'm finally getting some success. And I like want to run away and hide. And it's almost like I'm scared of my own success. It's super weird.

Michele Hansen  2:54 
So you say it's weird. But also, you know, Amy was able to write an article describing this. It makes it sound normal.

Colleen Schnettler  3:05 
She must see it all the time. And she wrote a whole article about it. I mean, I don't know her. She didn't write it for me.

Michele Hansen  3:10 
So does it make you feel better to know that this is a common feeling?

Colleen Schnettler  3:16 
Yeah, I mean, it totally, it was so weird, because I'm not kidding. Like two weeks ago, I was like, this is a terrible idea. I should shut this down. And I had just reached 100 users. And so I mean, the psychology sometimes we kind of talk a little bit about a psychology of trying to start your own thing. But, you know, I thought I was above that. sounds terrible. Like I didn't think it was going to impact me because I got my shit together. Everyone is above average. Right. And I'm above

Michele Hansen  3:45 
you. It's so interesting. Like, it's so interesting. And and as you said, I really think that does apply, you know, to both men and women. But maybe it's more acute, because the standards were held to are so much higher, you know, especially in an in a male dominated field. Right. But I think anybody could feel that way.

Colleen Schnettler  4:07 
Yeah, I think so. I don't know. So I it's been really interesting. And like I said, I really just wanted to throw the whole thing away last week. And then I found this article, and I talked to a lot of other people in the space. And those people were like, you're doing really well. Why would you walk away now? And I think it's a fear. So I think it's just a combination of a fear of failure. Like, once you start to have some success, like is that actually going to translate into something? It's a fear of learning a new skill set, there was this other great article I stumbled upon? Yeah.

So Alex Hillman has a great article called The Fear of Beginning Again. And this article is about how all of the developers that take his class, like freak out, because now they have work. We're kind of experts in our field, right? And we spent years building up, you know, this career as a developer. And so now we have to learn how to do like sales and marketing. And it's like starting from scratch, because we don't know we're doing and it's hard and it's scary. And that's where I am right now.

Michele Hansen  5:07 
That totally makes sense, especially if you're switching from going from a consultant who has a defined scope. And you know, there's a little bit of sales, a little bit of accounting involved in that. But the vast majority of your time is spent on engineering work. And now running a SaaS, engineering work is a huge percentage of that. But it's no more than 50% of the work of the business. There's marketing, there's sales, there's, there's customer support, there's all of those other things that weren't really skillsets that you would have done in a developer job or really as much in a consulting setting. So it makes sense that it's scary to to feel like you're starting from nothing in totally new fields, and that this project, unlike past projects, does not just hinge on your engineering abilities.

Colleen Schnettler  6:10 
Right. I think that's the biggest thing. I've always been able to kind of prove myself, quote, unquote, from an engineering perspective. And so this is a whole This is a whole different skill set. It's like a whole different ballgame.

Michele Hansen  6:25 
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Colleen Schnettler  6:29 
Okay, well, you're my pseudo business psychologist. So it's good. We have this podcast, so you can you can remind me not to quit when I'm like, this is a terrible idea. Probably not a terrible idea. No, I thought it like it's a great idea. Like, it's a proven market. It's like, I don't know, 100.

Michele Hansen  6:46 
People, you started out with like, zero people. And I remember when you first launched it, you're like, well, maybe I can get a couple of friends who don't actually need it. But use Heroku to use it. And like that's your first milestone was 10 people, right? or something? Yeah. And it's like, okay, like, none of them are really using it. And like they're just kind of pity users. And,

Colleen Schnettler  7:11 
and but like, nature, though,

Michele Hansen  7:12 
like so last time, we talked, you had 40 people who had actually uploaded a file. How many people have uploaded files now?

Colleen Sc...

]]> Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by Teleprompt.me. Teleprompt.me is a voice activated teleprompter service. You can write and save scripts and read them in multiple languages. Check it out at teleprompt.me.

Thank you again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners in this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit https://balsamiq.com/go/software-social/.

Michele Hansen  0:36 
So Colleen, the last time we talked about your SaaS, Simple File Upload, you had 89 users on Heroku 40 of which had uploaded files. And in order for your service to be released into the broader Heroku ecosystem, you have been working for months to get to 100 users. So it's been two weeks. Tell me, did you get to 100.

Colleen Schnettler  1:07 
I did 117 users. Last week I was approved for what they call general availability is when you can sell it in the marketplace. So my vendor documents are pending with Salesforce. Awesome, by the time this podcast airs, it will be available for sale.

Michele Hansen  1:27 
That's so exciting.

Colleen Schnettler  1:29 
Yeah, I'm super excited. It's really interesting though, Michelle, because this is a huge milestone, and you'd think I would get have gotten like a ton of energy and excitement about this project. But I've really been struggling the last two weeks, I have really kind of been down on myself thinking that this is a terrible idea. I need to start something new, and I need to find a new idea.

Michele Hansen  1:54 
Where do you think that feeling is coming from?

Colleen Schnettler  1:57 
I have no idea. I mean, it's, it's this really exciting time I've reached the milestone I've been trying to achieve. And so you know, I stumbled across this article by Amy Hoy called, why what's it called? Why Women Entrepreneurs Fail. Oh, and yeah, like speaks to me. And it's not just applicable to to women. But she does say in the article that she sees it a lot more in women. And let me let me pull out a few gems from this, quote, I'm tired of sitting by while you ship your thing and refuse to market it. Or you make a few sales your first time out, but it's not enough sales. So you sink into a funk and quit. Or you make it to the 90% mark, you tow up to the line of doing something, then refuse to cross it. I mean, that's like, right where I am, I'm finally getting some success. And I like want to run away and hide. And it's almost like I'm scared of my own success. It's super weird.

Michele Hansen  2:54 
So you say it's weird. But also, you know, Amy was able to write an article describing this. It makes it sound normal.

Colleen Schnettler  3:05 
She must see it all the time. And she wrote a whole article about it. I mean, I don't know her. She didn't write it for me.

Michele Hansen  3:10 
So does it make you feel better to know that this is a common feeling?

Colleen Schnettler  3:16 
Yeah, I mean, it totally, it was so weird, because I'm not kidding. Like two weeks ago, I was like, this is a terrible idea. I should shut this down. And I had just reached 100 users. And so I mean, the psychology sometimes we kind of talk a little bit about a psychology of trying to start your own thing. But, you know, I thought I was above that. sounds terrible. Like I didn't think it was going to impact me because I got my shit together. Everyone is above average. Right. And I'm above

Michele Hansen  3:45 
you. It's so interesting. Like, it's so interesting. And and as you said, I really think that does apply, you know, to both men and women. But maybe it's more acute, because the standards were held to are so much higher, you know, especially in an in a male dominated field. Right. But I think anybody could feel that way.

Colleen Schnettler  4:07 
Yeah, I think so. I don't know. So I it's been really interesting. And like I said, I really just wanted to throw the whole thing away last week. And then I found this article, and I talked to a lot of other people in the space. And those people were like, you're doing really well. Why would you walk away now? And I think it's a fear. So I think it's just a combination of a fear of failure. Like, once you start to have some success, like is that actually going to translate into something? It's a fear of learning a new skill set, there was this other great article I stumbled upon? Yeah.

So Alex Hillman has a great article called The Fear of Beginning Again. And this article is about how all of the developers that take his class, like freak out, because now they have work. We're kind of experts in our field, right? And we spent years building up, you know, this career as a developer. And so now we have to learn how to do like sales and marketing. And it's like starting from scratch, because we don't know we're doing and it's hard and it's scary. And that's where I am right now.

Michele Hansen  5:07 
That totally makes sense, especially if you're switching from going from a consultant who has a defined scope. And you know, there's a little bit of sales, a little bit of accounting involved in that. But the vast majority of your time is spent on engineering work. And now running a SaaS, engineering work is a huge percentage of that. But it's no more than 50% of the work of the business. There's marketing, there's sales, there's, there's customer support, there's all of those other things that weren't really skillsets that you would have done in a developer job or really as much in a consulting setting. So it makes sense that it's scary to to feel like you're starting from nothing in totally new fields, and that this project, unlike past projects, does not just hinge on your engineering abilities.

Colleen Schnettler  6:10 
Right. I think that's the biggest thing. I've always been able to kind of prove myself, quote, unquote, from an engineering perspective. And so this is a whole This is a whole different skill set. It's like a whole different ballgame.

Michele Hansen  6:25 
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Colleen Schnettler  6:29 
Okay, well, you're my pseudo business psychologist. So it's good. We have this podcast, so you can you can remind me not to quit when I'm like, this is a terrible idea. Probably not a terrible idea. No, I thought it like it's a great idea. Like, it's a proven market. It's like, I don't know, 100.

Michele Hansen  6:46 
People, you started out with like, zero people. And I remember when you first launched it, you're like, well, maybe I can get a couple of friends who don't actually need it. But use Heroku to use it. And like that's your first milestone was 10 people, right? or something? Yeah. And it's like, okay, like, none of them are really using it. And like they're just kind of pity users. And,

Colleen Schnettler  7:11 
and but like, nature, though,

Michele Hansen  7:12 
like so last time, we talked, you had 40 people who had actually uploaded a file. How many people have uploaded files now?

Colleen Sc...

]]> Tue, 02 Feb 2021 11:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2191 Colleen's been working for months to get 100 users of her SaaS so it can be released into the Heroku marketplace. Did she finally do it?! Colleen's been working for months to get 100 users of her SaaS so it can be released into the Heroku marketplace. Did she finally do it?! SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Prioritizing Features and Yourself: An Conversation with Danielle Simpson, Co-Founder of Feedback Panda 27 27 Prioritizing Features and Yourself: An Conversation with Danielle Simpson, Co-Founder of Feedback Panda full 377e0a58-c944-445f-a208-d2fab8ffd38d https://share.transistor.fm/s/3ed6bdb4 Michele Hansen  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by GetTheAudience. Every entrepreneur has the same problem. Find out who their audience of their product or service is, what they talk about a need, and when to engage with them in a fruitful conversation. Get the Audience helps entrepreneurs to understand and develop their audience much easier than before. It's a web based tool with a monthly or yearly subscription, created by a bootstrapped founder, Matthias Bohlen. You can get GetTheAudience at gettheaudience.com.

Thanks again to Balsamiq for generously sponsoring our listeners this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsalmiq, visit balsalmiq.com/go/software-social.

Colleen Schnettler  0:55 
We are super excited to have a guest on today's podcast. We are joined today by Danielle Simpson, the co-founder of Feedback Panda.

Danielle Simpson
Hi, Colleen. Hi, Michelle.

Michele Hansen  1:07 
Hey, Danielle, I am so excited to have you on today.

Danielle Simpson  1:11 
Thank you for having me.

Michele Hansen  1:13 
So, so excited. So I want to give a quick background on you. And then we're gonna dive right in.

So Danielle is the co-founder of Feedback Panda. And how this came about is Danielle is a classically trained opera singer, who moved to Berlin. And while she was singing, she started teaching English online. And part of that process for teaching the students is to provide them with feedback. And her she and her partner Arvid Kahl who many of you probably know from Twitter, figured out that the process for this feedback could be much more efficient. And there was actually a software solution in here to make that easier for teachers. And so they launched feedback panda together. And then they sold feedback panda in 2019. And so I am so excited to have you here, Danielle, because I feel like there's so much for us to learn from from you. And just so many different points, whether that's, you know, starting a company based on your own needs, scaling that company, figuring out what other people need, even you know, selling that company, and then what do you do after selling that company? There's so much in your story that I think really resonates with people. And so I'm so excited to hear your perspective on everything.

Danielle Simpson  2:38 
Thanks. Yeah, it's my privilege to be here and to share it with you.

Michele Hansen  2:44 
So my first question, you started Feedback Panda based on your own needs. And this is a recurring theme of our show, it's where Geocodio came from. It's where Colleen's Simple File Upload came from. It's where a lot of great bootstraped companies come from. And in those early days, it can be really hard to prioritize your different needs. And when you're solving something for yourself, you know, there's a million things that could be done. And so I'm really curious to hear more like, like, when you first started it, how did you even figure out what you should work on and what you should work on next?

Danielle Simpson  3:22 
So thank you so much for asking this question. Because it's definitely, you know, if you didn't bring it up, this was something I really wanted to share, about how we prioritized work. In the beginning, it was really easy to divide the different work because Arvid was the programmer and, you know, I would have the ideas, I have the knowledge about what the teachers need, what I needed. So I could tell him what to build. And then he would build it. And then so we work super closely. In this kind of like feedback loop where he would build something, I would test it out, I would give him feedback. He iterate on that. And so before we had customers -- super easy, super easy to just kind of build a prototype of a product.

And then about a year, no, sorry, about four months in when we actually had customers. And before this, like adrenaline of something needs to be done and you just are like on autopilot, you just figure out a way to do it. We actually made this pretty expansive chart of 52 roles that we thought our company had. We're a company of two, but we got really specific about different departments, different positions in each department. And then what job what responsibilities each of those, call them people or positions had. So whenever we were kind of stuck for, okay, there's a million things that need to be done today, but what role hasn't seen some attention from us? Or what role kind of gets forgotten about because there's customer service is always something that's like super prominent, because it's actually somebody on the other line that's wanting your attention. But so in that kind of part of the company for, you know, customer experience and customer success, of course, the person on the desk is getting a lot of attention. But what about, you know, who's building the knowledge base? Is that getting a priority, and then, you know, that's going to help the person on the customer desk. And so we got super specific on these different roles. And also, who was going to be responsible for them, which was important that Arvid knew what he was responsible for, I knew what my responsibilities were.

And, and so I think part of the the issue with priority is that we don't always know what the work is, we don't always have this clear understanding of what is this role? And I know, I need to work on marketing, but like, what does that mean? I don't know. So, getting really specific about what the marketing role is, or, you know, the content writer, or all of these different, who's posting to Instagram, all of these different little jobs, even, we're little roles that our company had. So we were very, we had a very clear picture, visually, to consult to when things were getting a bit overwhelming, then we could just look at this and see what needed to be done.

Michele Hansen  6:47 
That's so fascinating. I've never heard of anyone doing that for a two person company. I mean, it's it's ingenious, and, and it sounds like as much as it is defining what the roles and tasks are. Because I think that's a challenge I definitely face into a lot of other people. face too is, you know, figuring out what even needs to be done. And you're also defining what that role isn't, right, like you defined 52 roles, but not 100 roles, like -- there you are, you're scoping the company itself. It's, it sounds like, not just tasks.

Danielle Simpson  7:27 
Absolutely. And then this also became kind of the the structure of who do we want our first hires to be? You know, this role is taking up so much of our time, is it time to bring somebody in, of course, long story short, we never ended up hiring anyone. But you know, we had that layout that structure so that we knew where we could possibly, you know, substitute ourselves out and put someone else in.

Michele Hansen  7:57 
That makes a ton of sense.

Colleen Schnettler  8:00 
So when you guys were this far along, were you both full time by this point?

Danielle Simpson  8:05 
Not quite. So we did this for months after launching this big, you know, 52 person...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

This episode is sponsored by GetTheAudience. Every entrepreneur has the same problem. Find out who their audience of their product or service is, what they talk about a need, and when to engage with them in a fruitful conversation. Get the Audience helps entrepreneurs to understand and develop their audience much easier than before. It's a web based tool with a monthly or yearly subscription, created by a bootstrapped founder, Matthias Bohlen. You can get GetTheAudience at gettheaudience.com.

Thanks again to Balsamiq for generously sponsoring our listeners this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsalmiq, visit balsalmiq.com/go/software-social.

Colleen Schnettler  0:55 
We are super excited to have a guest on today's podcast. We are joined today by Danielle Simpson, the co-founder of Feedback Panda.

Danielle Simpson
Hi, Colleen. Hi, Michelle.

Michele Hansen  1:07 
Hey, Danielle, I am so excited to have you on today.

Danielle Simpson  1:11 
Thank you for having me.

Michele Hansen  1:13 
So, so excited. So I want to give a quick background on you. And then we're gonna dive right in.

So Danielle is the co-founder of Feedback Panda. And how this came about is Danielle is a classically trained opera singer, who moved to Berlin. And while she was singing, she started teaching English online. And part of that process for teaching the students is to provide them with feedback. And her she and her partner Arvid Kahl who many of you probably know from Twitter, figured out that the process for this feedback could be much more efficient. And there was actually a software solution in here to make that easier for teachers. And so they launched feedback panda together. And then they sold feedback panda in 2019. And so I am so excited to have you here, Danielle, because I feel like there's so much for us to learn from from you. And just so many different points, whether that's, you know, starting a company based on your own needs, scaling that company, figuring out what other people need, even you know, selling that company, and then what do you do after selling that company? There's so much in your story that I think really resonates with people. And so I'm so excited to hear your perspective on everything.

Danielle Simpson  2:38 
Thanks. Yeah, it's my privilege to be here and to share it with you.

Michele Hansen  2:44 
So my first question, you started Feedback Panda based on your own needs. And this is a recurring theme of our show, it's where Geocodio came from. It's where Colleen's Simple File Upload came from. It's where a lot of great bootstraped companies come from. And in those early days, it can be really hard to prioritize your different needs. And when you're solving something for yourself, you know, there's a million things that could be done. And so I'm really curious to hear more like, like, when you first started it, how did you even figure out what you should work on and what you should work on next?

Danielle Simpson  3:22 
So thank you so much for asking this question. Because it's definitely, you know, if you didn't bring it up, this was something I really wanted to share, about how we prioritized work. In the beginning, it was really easy to divide the different work because Arvid was the programmer and, you know, I would have the ideas, I have the knowledge about what the teachers need, what I needed. So I could tell him what to build. And then he would build it. And then so we work super closely. In this kind of like feedback loop where he would build something, I would test it out, I would give him feedback. He iterate on that. And so before we had customers -- super easy, super easy to just kind of build a prototype of a product.

And then about a year, no, sorry, about four months in when we actually had customers. And before this, like adrenaline of something needs to be done and you just are like on autopilot, you just figure out a way to do it. We actually made this pretty expansive chart of 52 roles that we thought our company had. We're a company of two, but we got really specific about different departments, different positions in each department. And then what job what responsibilities each of those, call them people or positions had. So whenever we were kind of stuck for, okay, there's a million things that need to be done today, but what role hasn't seen some attention from us? Or what role kind of gets forgotten about because there's customer service is always something that's like super prominent, because it's actually somebody on the other line that's wanting your attention. But so in that kind of part of the company for, you know, customer experience and customer success, of course, the person on the desk is getting a lot of attention. But what about, you know, who's building the knowledge base? Is that getting a priority, and then, you know, that's going to help the person on the customer desk. And so we got super specific on these different roles. And also, who was going to be responsible for them, which was important that Arvid knew what he was responsible for, I knew what my responsibilities were.

And, and so I think part of the the issue with priority is that we don't always know what the work is, we don't always have this clear understanding of what is this role? And I know, I need to work on marketing, but like, what does that mean? I don't know. So, getting really specific about what the marketing role is, or, you know, the content writer, or all of these different, who's posting to Instagram, all of these different little jobs, even, we're little roles that our company had. So we were very, we had a very clear picture, visually, to consult to when things were getting a bit overwhelming, then we could just look at this and see what needed to be done.

Michele Hansen  6:47 
That's so fascinating. I've never heard of anyone doing that for a two person company. I mean, it's it's ingenious, and, and it sounds like as much as it is defining what the roles and tasks are. Because I think that's a challenge I definitely face into a lot of other people. face too is, you know, figuring out what even needs to be done. And you're also defining what that role isn't, right, like you defined 52 roles, but not 100 roles, like -- there you are, you're scoping the company itself. It's, it sounds like, not just tasks.

Danielle Simpson  7:27 
Absolutely. And then this also became kind of the the structure of who do we want our first hires to be? You know, this role is taking up so much of our time, is it time to bring somebody in, of course, long story short, we never ended up hiring anyone. But you know, we had that layout that structure so that we knew where we could possibly, you know, substitute ourselves out and put someone else in.

Michele Hansen  7:57 
That makes a ton of sense.

Colleen Schnettler  8:00 
So when you guys were this far along, were you both full time by this point?

Danielle Simpson  8:05 
Not quite. So we did this for months after launching this big, you know, 52 person...

]]> Tue, 26 Jan 2021 11:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2880 Danielle Simpson, co-founder of Feedback Panda, joins Colleen and Michele for a conversation about Feedback Panda's ingenious prioritization system, the psychological side of selling your company, and figuring out what to do after selling. Danielle Simpson, co-founder of Feedback Panda, joins Colleen and Michele for a conversation about Feedback Panda's ingenious prioritization system, the psychological side of selling your company, and figuring out what to do after selling. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler What to Work On Next 26 26 What to Work On Next full c6e3014f-ca12-45c9-b24e-cc45adf46208 https://share.transistor.fm/s/fc287b3a Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Balsamiq, makers of Balsamiq Wireframes, everyone's favorite low-fidelity wireframing tool. 

 

Balsamiq is designed for founders who have great ideas for their apps, but can't afford to hire a full-time UX designer.

 

Balsamiq is as easy as using Keynote. Drag and drop elements on the page and you'll have the screens for your app designed in no time. 

 

You can then review your designs with a developer or prospective clients, before writing any code.

Because they're already well known in our community, Balsamiq have decided to donate their airtime to YOU, listeners of this show, starting with the next episode.

If you want a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social/


Michele Hansen  0:43  
So as you may have just noticed, we have a sponsor now. So exciting. I mean, we, even we so we got we got reached out to you by balsalmic in October, to our official podcast email address, which I actually never checked, because I didn't expect anyone to email us and I found this email sitting there in December. And I was like, Oh my God.

Colleen Schnettler  1:10  
That's funny. I had no idea that they they did that. Yeah, I've never checked our email address either.

Michele Hansen  1:15  
We check it now.

Colleen Schnettler  1:17  
Yeah, it's really it. You know what I'm really happy it was balsamic because I do use them. And I just think it's really cool to have a sponsor. Although now my podcast about my product is making more money than my product.

Michele Hansen  1:29  
You'll get there. It's okay. I don't

Colleen Schnettler  1:32  
get there. I did have one more person sign up. stripe paid me $10 I know $10 I went That's awesome. Wait.

Michele Hansen  1:42  
We straight paid you $10? Is that the first money you've gotten for it? Yes, ma'am.

Colleen Schnettler  1:47  
It sure is.

Unknown Speaker  1:48  
That's a huge moment. Oh my gosh,

Colleen Schnettler  1:50  
it is a huge moment. It's It's exciting.

Michele Hansen  1:54  
I wish you could tape $1 bill to your terminal like

Colleen Schnettler  2:00  
I should ask like, can you like send me like $1 bill from this? tape it up on my wall.

Michele Hansen  2:07  
So this is really exciting. We're really excited to have a sponsor. But you know, this reminds me of something else, which is, it's really hard times right now in the world. Like there's, there's just no getting past that. And if you're listening to this show, you're probably interested in running a bootstrap company, or you're trying to start a side project yourself. And, and I, and I just want to say for a second how, like, yes, this is amazing. And we just got a sponsor. But I also don't want to add to this perception that sort of that I pick up sometimes it's sort of everybody else is doing well, except for oneself. Right? Like, I feel like, you know, on Twitter and everywhere else where the, the community kind of congregates. Like, we tend to share positive things more than we do. things we're struggling with. Right? Yeah. And and I've noticed in a couple of smaller communities I'm in and sort of private places. This this past couple weeks that I've seen more people saying like, Wow, it feels like everybody's killing it except for me.

Colleen Schnettler  3:16  
Yeah, I agree. I think there, there's so much when we share publicly, you know, we're protecting ourselves, and we're protecting our ego. And so we share the good things, and we don't share the challenging things. And it isn't really challenging time. And, and I agree with you, it's important to remember that things are hard. And everyone's coping with the situation differently. Like, just three days ago, I was lamenting how much I missed my full time job because it was so low stress, like it was so much easier than this. And, and you know, some of my friends were able to give me a pep talk. But I was just like, this is a terrible idea. I'm wasting my time. So So I think those emotional highs and lows are, are normal. And I think they're exacerbated right now because of external stresses.

Michele Hansen  4:01  
Absolutely. And, and so I just kind of want to say that, like, if you're finding yourself, not able to focus and are feeling like you're spinning your wheels and things aren't working, like that's okay. And you're okay. And you will be okay. And also at the same time that if you find yourself working compulsively and unable to stop working to the point of, you know, working instead of being your friends and family or things like like like that is also a trauma response in the same way that not being able to do anything is as well. And we all respond to trauma and stressors differently. And no matter how you're reacting, you're okay. And other people aren't sharing the full story of what's going on in their life. So it's not just you that struggling. Other people are too but this is not a current events podcast. It's not a mental health podcast. We're not gonna go into that too much more. But I did just want to make a note of that since I mean, like the last few weeks have been just really hard. But you do have good news, right? amidst all of this, there are somehow good things happening to which is also just mentally confusing.

Colleen Schnettler  5:21  
Yes, so I, you know, I just did mention that emotional swing I had this week, I was like, this was a terrible idea. But, um, things my signups have been pretty steady. And I did get one more customer who has signed up, put a credit card down outside of Heroku. So that makes four or five now. And I have 89 Heroku users. So anticipate being ready to start charging in the Heroku marketplace in a couple weeks. Since I'm averaging. so far. It's been about Yeah, it's pretty exciting. Like I think we're super excited. So of those 89 people or teams, I 40 have actually uploaded files. So for me, what makes it sticky is using it right. So considering how easy it is to sign up, I'm not upset. I feel like that's actually a pretty good number. I'm trying to take each week and focus on one technical thing and one marketing thing.

Unknown Speaker  6:18  
So

Colleen Schnettler  6:20  
because I'm just really struggling with like, I feel like we talked about this every week now that I've launched something is how to prioritize my time, I have to actually figure out what to charge because I'm going to be charging people. Hopefully in two weeks,

Michele Hansen  6:31  
you said you had to the stripe signups for those people who added their credit cards, but they don't have they haven't incurred a charge yet.

Colleen Schnettler  6:38  
No, they had I mean, it's $10. But some one of my friends recommended I changed, I changed the price significantly. His argument was that I'm not really a commodity, I'm acting like a commodity when I talk to you when I think of it in my head. But I'm not really a commodity, because I'm not just providing storage, I'm providing all of this architecture, around storage to help you deal with your files. Like I'm not just reselling AWS buckets, there is someone who does this, by the way. It's you know, and his point was my closest competitor is charging $89. So I should have he his su...

]]> Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Balsamiq, makers of Balsamiq Wireframes, everyone's favorite low-fidelity wireframing tool. 

 

Balsamiq is designed for founders who have great ideas for their apps, but can't afford to hire a full-time UX designer.

 

Balsamiq is as easy as using Keynote. Drag and drop elements on the page and you'll have the screens for your app designed in no time. 

 

You can then review your designs with a developer or prospective clients, before writing any code.

Because they're already well known in our community, Balsamiq have decided to donate their airtime to YOU, listeners of this show, starting with the next episode.

If you want a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social/


Michele Hansen  0:43  
So as you may have just noticed, we have a sponsor now. So exciting. I mean, we, even we so we got we got reached out to you by balsalmic in October, to our official podcast email address, which I actually never checked, because I didn't expect anyone to email us and I found this email sitting there in December. And I was like, Oh my God.

Colleen Schnettler  1:10  
That's funny. I had no idea that they they did that. Yeah, I've never checked our email address either.

Michele Hansen  1:15  
We check it now.

Colleen Schnettler  1:17  
Yeah, it's really it. You know what I'm really happy it was balsamic because I do use them. And I just think it's really cool to have a sponsor. Although now my podcast about my product is making more money than my product.

Michele Hansen  1:29  
You'll get there. It's okay. I don't

Colleen Schnettler  1:32  
get there. I did have one more person sign up. stripe paid me $10 I know $10 I went That's awesome. Wait.

Michele Hansen  1:42  
We straight paid you $10? Is that the first money you've gotten for it? Yes, ma'am.

Colleen Schnettler  1:47  
It sure is.

Unknown Speaker  1:48  
That's a huge moment. Oh my gosh,

Colleen Schnettler  1:50  
it is a huge moment. It's It's exciting.

Michele Hansen  1:54  
I wish you could tape $1 bill to your terminal like

Colleen Schnettler  2:00  
I should ask like, can you like send me like $1 bill from this? tape it up on my wall.

Michele Hansen  2:07  
So this is really exciting. We're really excited to have a sponsor. But you know, this reminds me of something else, which is, it's really hard times right now in the world. Like there's, there's just no getting past that. And if you're listening to this show, you're probably interested in running a bootstrap company, or you're trying to start a side project yourself. And, and I, and I just want to say for a second how, like, yes, this is amazing. And we just got a sponsor. But I also don't want to add to this perception that sort of that I pick up sometimes it's sort of everybody else is doing well, except for oneself. Right? Like, I feel like, you know, on Twitter and everywhere else where the, the community kind of congregates. Like, we tend to share positive things more than we do. things we're struggling with. Right? Yeah. And and I've noticed in a couple of smaller communities I'm in and sort of private places. This this past couple weeks that I've seen more people saying like, Wow, it feels like everybody's killing it except for me.

Colleen Schnettler  3:16  
Yeah, I agree. I think there, there's so much when we share publicly, you know, we're protecting ourselves, and we're protecting our ego. And so we share the good things, and we don't share the challenging things. And it isn't really challenging time. And, and I agree with you, it's important to remember that things are hard. And everyone's coping with the situation differently. Like, just three days ago, I was lamenting how much I missed my full time job because it was so low stress, like it was so much easier than this. And, and you know, some of my friends were able to give me a pep talk. But I was just like, this is a terrible idea. I'm wasting my time. So So I think those emotional highs and lows are, are normal. And I think they're exacerbated right now because of external stresses.

Michele Hansen  4:01  
Absolutely. And, and so I just kind of want to say that, like, if you're finding yourself, not able to focus and are feeling like you're spinning your wheels and things aren't working, like that's okay. And you're okay. And you will be okay. And also at the same time that if you find yourself working compulsively and unable to stop working to the point of, you know, working instead of being your friends and family or things like like like that is also a trauma response in the same way that not being able to do anything is as well. And we all respond to trauma and stressors differently. And no matter how you're reacting, you're okay. And other people aren't sharing the full story of what's going on in their life. So it's not just you that struggling. Other people are too but this is not a current events podcast. It's not a mental health podcast. We're not gonna go into that too much more. But I did just want to make a note of that since I mean, like the last few weeks have been just really hard. But you do have good news, right? amidst all of this, there are somehow good things happening to which is also just mentally confusing.

Colleen Schnettler  5:21  
Yes, so I, you know, I just did mention that emotional swing I had this week, I was like, this was a terrible idea. But, um, things my signups have been pretty steady. And I did get one more customer who has signed up, put a credit card down outside of Heroku. So that makes four or five now. And I have 89 Heroku users. So anticipate being ready to start charging in the Heroku marketplace in a couple weeks. Since I'm averaging. so far. It's been about Yeah, it's pretty exciting. Like I think we're super excited. So of those 89 people or teams, I 40 have actually uploaded files. So for me, what makes it sticky is using it right. So considering how easy it is to sign up, I'm not upset. I feel like that's actually a pretty good number. I'm trying to take each week and focus on one technical thing and one marketing thing.

Unknown Speaker  6:18  
So

Colleen Schnettler  6:20  
because I'm just really struggling with like, I feel like we talked about this every week now that I've launched something is how to prioritize my time, I have to actually figure out what to charge because I'm going to be charging people. Hopefully in two weeks,

Michele Hansen  6:31  
you said you had to the stripe signups for those people who added their credit cards, but they don't have they haven't incurred a charge yet.

Colleen Schnettler  6:38  
No, they had I mean, it's $10. But some one of my friends recommended I changed, I changed the price significantly. His argument was that I'm not really a commodity, I'm acting like a commodity when I talk to you when I think of it in my head. But I'm not really a commodity, because I'm not just providing storage, I'm providing all of this architecture, around storage to help you deal with your files. Like I'm not just reselling AWS buckets, there is someone who does this, by the way. It's you know, and his point was my closest competitor is charging $89. So I should have he his su...

]]> Tue, 19 Jan 2021 13:21:53 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1905 Colleen gets her first paying customer! But what should she work on next, and which kinds of customers should she focus on? Colleen gets her first paying customer! But what should she work on next, and which kinds of customers should she focus on? SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Wading Through Feature Requests 25 25 Wading Through Feature Requests full 8e23859b-7836-4b93-b35c-6cb4db2adb69 https://share.transistor.fm/s/a49d6630 Michele Hansen  0:00 
So Colleen, you launched your new SaaS -- actually your first SaaS -- about a month ago, Simple File Upload. And you launched it first on the Heroku marketplace. But you also launched it off of the Heroku marketplace so that people who are not on Heroku can use it as well. And I was thinking about this. And I'm really curious if anyone has signed up off of Heroku, and how that's gone?

Colleen Schnettler  0:30  
Yes. So I got the most wonderful surprise yesterday, when I actually checked my subscriptions and saw that there were three people who have actually put their credit card. 

Michele Hansen 
Oh, my gosh!
 
Colleen Schnettler 
I know, super exciting. The funny thing is, as I think I've mentioned before, Heroku requires you to get 100 users before you can charge. So I have been so focused on getting that 100 user number. I hadn't even been checking my Stripe subscriptions. So I logged on the other day. And I have it in my admin dashboard. But I literally never check it. And I saw like three subscriptions. And I was like, That can't be right. 

Michele Hansen  1:09  
So are these people paying you or they just added their credit cards to Stripe?

Colleen Schnettler  1:14  
They've added their credit cards to Stripe, I am currently offering a free 30 day trial. And so they may cancel one of the people has already reached out to me, and we've had a pretty in depth email conversation about her needs. So I anticipate she'll stick around. But I have not actually heard from the other two people yet. So we'll see. I don't know.

Michele Hansen  1:34  
Tell me more about this email exchange you had.

Colleen Schnettler  1:37  
Yeah. So based on our conversation last week, I significantly changed the email, I changed, I got rid of all the graphics, I tried to be more concise and what I was asking and give a little more context. And you were right people like when you have more context, I think. And so I've been hearing back from people. So I've actually been spending a good part of this week, like handling email stuff and talking to people and listening to their feature requests. But there's one person who actually put her credit card in, you know, she actually shared with me her application, and there was an error. It was like a really subtle bug in the React component. And it actually worked with the bug, like it still worked most of the time. But she was running into an issue where it was not working consistently. So I was able to troubleshoot that and get that fixed. And so you know, we've kind of had had a dialogue going, it's been very exciting. 

Michele Hansen  2:34  
It sounds like you've been able to build a rapport and a little bit of a relationship with her.

Colleen Schnettler  2:40  
I'd like to think so. I'd like to think so every time someone gets beat, every time someone emails me, I get super excited. So I'm still at that phase where I'm like, tell me about your thing. Like what's going on? What are you working on?

Michele Hansen  2:54  
I'm still in that phase. Like, honestly, I mean, anytime someone replies back to one of my feedback emails, so I have them going out with after a couple of days, the first time we charge someone, and I have different emails that go out based on, you know, different plans, they're on and whatnot. But every time somebody replies to one of those, I'm always like, Oh my god, somebody replied, like, this is so exciting. And then they're giving me this feedback. And I always learn things about industries that I had just, I never even realized existed like, and they're doing things I didn't even realize was happening. And then, like, somehow we're part of that process. And it feels so magical and exciting. And I feel so you know, like privileged that they've let me into their little world and told me all about how they're, for example, need to get timezone stamped reports back from tractors and how we make that easier for them. And I'm just like, yes, this is so cool. Like I'm, I think I'm just a huge business nerd. But and and i love i think that's

Colleen Schnettler  3:59  
awesome learning about business.

Michele Hansen  4:01  
So you know that that phase has, you know, been going for? Oh, wow, seven years now. For me.

Colleen Schnettler  4:10  
Wow. Yeah.

Michele Hansen  4:11  
Oh, wow. Geocodio turns seven this month. So, so tell me tell me more about about what you talk to.

Colleen Schnettler  4:17  
Ya. So it's been great. Like I said, I changed an email copy. And some people like reached out to me on Twitter. I love I love hearing from people. Thank you. I love ideas and shared with me the email copy they use. And like I said, so people started engaging. And I got a lot of good feedback. I got one person who was like really excited, who was like, Oh my gosh, Heroku has a file system, you know, was really troublesome. And so this is just what I needed. I got a lot of feature requests, which is something we'll talk about in a minute. I got one guy who was like, Oh my gosh, thank you so much for emailing me. Okay. So it was really fun. It's still just a handful of people, right? But I love it. Like I love hearing from people. And some of them, like I said, are comfortable sharing what they're working on, which has been cool, too. And there have been a lot of suggestions for utilizing the uploader in a way I did not anticipate. Ooh, so yeah, so this is like, the next thing. And I know I remember months ago, you said something about every new feature request should sit out in the rain on the porch for three days.

Michele Hansen  5:27  
Yes, I think that is taken from one of the early Basecamp books getting real, badly adjusted adjacent free, yeah, that new features should have to stand on the porch in the rain for three days before you let them in.

Colleen Schnettler  5:44  
And so I appreciate that. But at the same time, I feel like that's more appropriate for mature products. This is just a little baby product. And I'm trying to turn it into something amazing. And I think so. So I mean, when you're only talking to eight to 10 people, I think that every feature request, you know, I should really consider now I understand, like I was preparing for this podcast, I tried to look back at what I did this week, because I had, I didn't really do many things on the list of things I wanted to do. And it's because I spent so much time like doing these emails and talking to people and looking into their feature requests. And so I don't want to just throw them out there as quickly as possible. But I do think the product really has space to grow. And I love hearing what people are asking, and some of them are not too hard, like I can do, but I don't know, it's just it's just a struggle of like balancing all that, like do I impure, I have active people. And again, it's like a people who are talking to me. And so when they request something, if it's within my ability, and I think it's going to make the product better, because then other people might want that same feature. I want to do it. But of course, I'm balancing that with trying to do marketing and trying to do documentation, which I really need to do more documentation. So it's just like the challenge of balancing Oh, and you know, my paid work, balancing all of that.

Michele Hansen  7:13  
So it sounds like you're balancing a lot right now. And I'm curious with all of those feature requests coming in? are you saving them like, like, how are you sort o...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:00 
So Colleen, you launched your new SaaS -- actually your first SaaS -- about a month ago, Simple File Upload. And you launched it first on the Heroku marketplace. But you also launched it off of the Heroku marketplace so that people who are not on Heroku can use it as well. And I was thinking about this. And I'm really curious if anyone has signed up off of Heroku, and how that's gone?

Colleen Schnettler  0:30  
Yes. So I got the most wonderful surprise yesterday, when I actually checked my subscriptions and saw that there were three people who have actually put their credit card. 

Michele Hansen 
Oh, my gosh!
 
Colleen Schnettler 
I know, super exciting. The funny thing is, as I think I've mentioned before, Heroku requires you to get 100 users before you can charge. So I have been so focused on getting that 100 user number. I hadn't even been checking my Stripe subscriptions. So I logged on the other day. And I have it in my admin dashboard. But I literally never check it. And I saw like three subscriptions. And I was like, That can't be right. 

Michele Hansen  1:09  
So are these people paying you or they just added their credit cards to Stripe?

Colleen Schnettler  1:14  
They've added their credit cards to Stripe, I am currently offering a free 30 day trial. And so they may cancel one of the people has already reached out to me, and we've had a pretty in depth email conversation about her needs. So I anticipate she'll stick around. But I have not actually heard from the other two people yet. So we'll see. I don't know.

Michele Hansen  1:34  
Tell me more about this email exchange you had.

Colleen Schnettler  1:37  
Yeah. So based on our conversation last week, I significantly changed the email, I changed, I got rid of all the graphics, I tried to be more concise and what I was asking and give a little more context. And you were right people like when you have more context, I think. And so I've been hearing back from people. So I've actually been spending a good part of this week, like handling email stuff and talking to people and listening to their feature requests. But there's one person who actually put her credit card in, you know, she actually shared with me her application, and there was an error. It was like a really subtle bug in the React component. And it actually worked with the bug, like it still worked most of the time. But she was running into an issue where it was not working consistently. So I was able to troubleshoot that and get that fixed. And so you know, we've kind of had had a dialogue going, it's been very exciting. 

Michele Hansen  2:34  
It sounds like you've been able to build a rapport and a little bit of a relationship with her.

Colleen Schnettler  2:40  
I'd like to think so. I'd like to think so every time someone gets beat, every time someone emails me, I get super excited. So I'm still at that phase where I'm like, tell me about your thing. Like what's going on? What are you working on?

Michele Hansen  2:54  
I'm still in that phase. Like, honestly, I mean, anytime someone replies back to one of my feedback emails, so I have them going out with after a couple of days, the first time we charge someone, and I have different emails that go out based on, you know, different plans, they're on and whatnot. But every time somebody replies to one of those, I'm always like, Oh my god, somebody replied, like, this is so exciting. And then they're giving me this feedback. And I always learn things about industries that I had just, I never even realized existed like, and they're doing things I didn't even realize was happening. And then, like, somehow we're part of that process. And it feels so magical and exciting. And I feel so you know, like privileged that they've let me into their little world and told me all about how they're, for example, need to get timezone stamped reports back from tractors and how we make that easier for them. And I'm just like, yes, this is so cool. Like I'm, I think I'm just a huge business nerd. But and and i love i think that's

Colleen Schnettler  3:59  
awesome learning about business.

Michele Hansen  4:01  
So you know that that phase has, you know, been going for? Oh, wow, seven years now. For me.

Colleen Schnettler  4:10  
Wow. Yeah.

Michele Hansen  4:11  
Oh, wow. Geocodio turns seven this month. So, so tell me tell me more about about what you talk to.

Colleen Schnettler  4:17  
Ya. So it's been great. Like I said, I changed an email copy. And some people like reached out to me on Twitter. I love I love hearing from people. Thank you. I love ideas and shared with me the email copy they use. And like I said, so people started engaging. And I got a lot of good feedback. I got one person who was like really excited, who was like, Oh my gosh, Heroku has a file system, you know, was really troublesome. And so this is just what I needed. I got a lot of feature requests, which is something we'll talk about in a minute. I got one guy who was like, Oh my gosh, thank you so much for emailing me. Okay. So it was really fun. It's still just a handful of people, right? But I love it. Like I love hearing from people. And some of them, like I said, are comfortable sharing what they're working on, which has been cool, too. And there have been a lot of suggestions for utilizing the uploader in a way I did not anticipate. Ooh, so yeah, so this is like, the next thing. And I know I remember months ago, you said something about every new feature request should sit out in the rain on the porch for three days.

Michele Hansen  5:27  
Yes, I think that is taken from one of the early Basecamp books getting real, badly adjusted adjacent free, yeah, that new features should have to stand on the porch in the rain for three days before you let them in.

Colleen Schnettler  5:44  
And so I appreciate that. But at the same time, I feel like that's more appropriate for mature products. This is just a little baby product. And I'm trying to turn it into something amazing. And I think so. So I mean, when you're only talking to eight to 10 people, I think that every feature request, you know, I should really consider now I understand, like I was preparing for this podcast, I tried to look back at what I did this week, because I had, I didn't really do many things on the list of things I wanted to do. And it's because I spent so much time like doing these emails and talking to people and looking into their feature requests. And so I don't want to just throw them out there as quickly as possible. But I do think the product really has space to grow. And I love hearing what people are asking, and some of them are not too hard, like I can do, but I don't know, it's just it's just a struggle of like balancing all that, like do I impure, I have active people. And again, it's like a people who are talking to me. And so when they request something, if it's within my ability, and I think it's going to make the product better, because then other people might want that same feature. I want to do it. But of course, I'm balancing that with trying to do marketing and trying to do documentation, which I really need to do more documentation. So it's just like the challenge of balancing Oh, and you know, my paid work, balancing all of that.

Michele Hansen  7:13  
So it sounds like you're balancing a lot right now. And I'm curious with all of those feature requests coming in? are you saving them like, like, how are you sort o...

]]> Tue, 12 Jan 2021 11:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2111 Once you get your customers to talk to you, how do you sort through that and make sense of it? Colleen and Michele talk about how Jobs to Be Done thinking and tactics can be used at the very beginning to guide the roadmap and later on to guide overall strategy. Once you get your customers to talk to you, how do you sort through that and make sense of it? Colleen and Michele talk about how Jobs to Be Done thinking and tactics can be used at the very beginning to guide the roadmap and later on to guide overall str SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Getting People to Reply to Those Critical Early Feedback Emails 24 24 Getting People to Reply to Those Critical Early Feedback Emails full 6fcf360d-83a6-41ce-b9fb-971298b0e7ec https://share.transistor.fm/s/3c8852c3 Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
Hey listeners, Colleen here. This week I lead off discussing the positive uptick in my signup numbers, tempered by the fact that none of those new signups responded to my welcome email, Michele and I discussed what I'm doing wrong. And we also talked about how I should be prioritizing my time, every bootstrapper's most challenging problem, at least in the beginning. Michele talks about a detailed customer feedback email that brought her great joy. And we discussed the new book she is reading called Jobs To Be Done in the context of small business. Hope you enjoy the episode.

Colleen
So I have been keeping track of my numbers every week for how many people are signing up for my service. And this week, I had quite a few signups. I had 39. Yeah. This week, I had 38 new signups.

Michele Hansen  0:48 
Whoa.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
I how many were the previous week? The previous week?

Colleen Schnettler  0:53 
I had 18.

Michele Hansen  0:56 
Okay, so then the week before that,

Colleen Schnettler  0:59 
I just started recording the past few weeks.

Michele Hansen  1:05 
hey, that's almost 100% growth week over week for two weeks. That's That's pretty good. I mean, not long ago, you had, like 18 ish users total.

Colleen Schnettler  1:16 
Yeah, I'm really happy with the number of signups I'm getting, I think part of it might be because of the holiday break. I've noticed because my service is free. And it's in the Heroku marketplace. I get a lot of hobbyists. So I'm wondering if people are like trying it out because they have downtime. But I've also done a lot to improve the documentation. And so the other thing that has happened this week is a lot more people have actually converted. I think I mentioned a week or two ago that I was getting so many signups and then only like 10% of those people were actually using the single sign on to access their custom dashboard and install the JavaScript. And this week from those 3817 made it to single sign on, which is huge compared to the numbers I was seeing before. Yeah. So I'd like to believe it's because I've added more documentation so people know what it is. And, you know, we worked out did we do it on the podcast where we worked out some of the copy on my marketing page. Yeah, yeah. So some of the things we put where we like put numbers and we're like, here's the three step process. I'd like to believe that's, that's been part of the reason this is working and more people are converting.

Michele Hansen  2:30 
So you have what you would like to believe about why it's working. Have you asked anybody about that?

Colleen Schnettler  2:37 
Why can't I just say, Oh, they converted? Can I just go with what I'd like to believe?

Michele Hansen  2:42 
Hunches are great. But that's not a substitute for going out and finding the answer.

Colleen Schnettler  2:49 
I've had this great number of signups. But something else interesting has happened. And this is not good. So I think I mentioned answer my question. No, I don't know. No---

Michele Hansen  3:04 
I have tried not to talk over you. But you did not answer my question of whether you have tried to figure out know why people are converting that answer is -- and so as much as we need to figure out why people are canceling and why they're not converting. And we ask them a million questions about why you canceling why you're not doing this, why you're not doing that. We also need to ask them about why they are doing things so we can help more people do those things and find more people like them who will do those things.

Colleen Schnettler  3:31 
So this is interesting, because I've had all these signups and I mentioned last week that I was going to start doing transactional email like a welcome email. Since I have started the welcome email zero people have responded to it. Zero before when I was hand emailing people, like maybe 10 to 20% of people responded. So my professional looking welcome email with like a footer and branding seems to be turning people off.

Michele Hansen  4:01 
You can just do a plain text email. I think that's gonna be that there. That's more likely to get caught in a spam filter if it has graphics in it.

Colleen Schnettler  4:09 
Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. Because I was really surprised. I was like, Oh, I'm getting all these signups and these people are converting, not a single person has responded to an email.

Michele Hansen  4:18 
Plaintext tends to have better open rates than graphical email like this is why that most, if you've ever had them made the mistake of signing up for a political campaign's email list, you will notice that even the most well funded campaigns will have plain text emails. This is something the Obama campaign discovered and then just proliferated throughout the industry that the fewer images and formatting and everything in an email, the better open and response rates you're going to get from it because there's just fewer barriers to people getting the email and then you know, formatting and everything else in it. I send most of our especially feedback emails, I always send those out plain text.

Colleen Schnettler  5:06 
Yeah, I'm going to, that's my next step. Because I was really surprised to see such a poor response. Now, it's kind of a little bit funny, maybe not funny. So when I went to get my transactional email set up, for some reason, I got kicked out of Sendgrid. And that was just I don't really know what happened. So I'm actually sending it from my Gmail. So I don't have open rates right now. So I can't see how many people are actually opening it. But I am going to get that sorted out. And I like the idea of going plain text because no one is responding right now. So I have no idea why more people are converting I guess I should ask them.

Michele Hansen  5:42 
I think it's a, you know, it's a, an easy thing to fall into. On a recent episode, we talked about loss aversion and how human beings are so much more motivated to try to avoid losing money, rather than making money. And I think feedback really plays into that, because most companies asked for feedback when somebody cancels, or if they give you a negative NPS score, or something like that, but not as many companies ask for feedback from people who are happy, which, you know, trying to find more people who are are happy, like your your current happy customers with similar processes and needs is much easier than trying to fix all of the people who don't like it. Like that's a tough hill to climb.

Colleen Schnettler  6:33 
Yeah, so I definitely will reach out to those people. I guess one by you know, I'll just, there's only 17 people, I can just email them and ask them.

Michele Hansen 6:43 
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  6:44 
it seems like I get better responses. If I don't ask open ended questions in email.

Michele Hansen  6:50 
What are the questions you're asking?

Colleen Schnettler  6:52 
So my first email which I was hand typing, which got maybe 10 to 20%? response was, Hey, my name is Colleen. From simple file upload. Do you need any help installing the service? Question mark? Please let me know. Thanks. And that got some responses. So then I ...

]]> Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
Hey listeners, Colleen here. This week I lead off discussing the positive uptick in my signup numbers, tempered by the fact that none of those new signups responded to my welcome email, Michele and I discussed what I'm doing wrong. And we also talked about how I should be prioritizing my time, every bootstrapper's most challenging problem, at least in the beginning. Michele talks about a detailed customer feedback email that brought her great joy. And we discussed the new book she is reading called Jobs To Be Done in the context of small business. Hope you enjoy the episode.

Colleen
So I have been keeping track of my numbers every week for how many people are signing up for my service. And this week, I had quite a few signups. I had 39. Yeah. This week, I had 38 new signups.

Michele Hansen  0:48 
Whoa.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
I how many were the previous week? The previous week?

Colleen Schnettler  0:53 
I had 18.

Michele Hansen  0:56 
Okay, so then the week before that,

Colleen Schnettler  0:59 
I just started recording the past few weeks.

Michele Hansen  1:05 
hey, that's almost 100% growth week over week for two weeks. That's That's pretty good. I mean, not long ago, you had, like 18 ish users total.

Colleen Schnettler  1:16 
Yeah, I'm really happy with the number of signups I'm getting, I think part of it might be because of the holiday break. I've noticed because my service is free. And it's in the Heroku marketplace. I get a lot of hobbyists. So I'm wondering if people are like trying it out because they have downtime. But I've also done a lot to improve the documentation. And so the other thing that has happened this week is a lot more people have actually converted. I think I mentioned a week or two ago that I was getting so many signups and then only like 10% of those people were actually using the single sign on to access their custom dashboard and install the JavaScript. And this week from those 3817 made it to single sign on, which is huge compared to the numbers I was seeing before. Yeah. So I'd like to believe it's because I've added more documentation so people know what it is. And, you know, we worked out did we do it on the podcast where we worked out some of the copy on my marketing page. Yeah, yeah. So some of the things we put where we like put numbers and we're like, here's the three step process. I'd like to believe that's, that's been part of the reason this is working and more people are converting.

Michele Hansen  2:30 
So you have what you would like to believe about why it's working. Have you asked anybody about that?

Colleen Schnettler  2:37 
Why can't I just say, Oh, they converted? Can I just go with what I'd like to believe?

Michele Hansen  2:42 
Hunches are great. But that's not a substitute for going out and finding the answer.

Colleen Schnettler  2:49 
I've had this great number of signups. But something else interesting has happened. And this is not good. So I think I mentioned answer my question. No, I don't know. No---

Michele Hansen  3:04 
I have tried not to talk over you. But you did not answer my question of whether you have tried to figure out know why people are converting that answer is -- and so as much as we need to figure out why people are canceling and why they're not converting. And we ask them a million questions about why you canceling why you're not doing this, why you're not doing that. We also need to ask them about why they are doing things so we can help more people do those things and find more people like them who will do those things.

Colleen Schnettler  3:31 
So this is interesting, because I've had all these signups and I mentioned last week that I was going to start doing transactional email like a welcome email. Since I have started the welcome email zero people have responded to it. Zero before when I was hand emailing people, like maybe 10 to 20% of people responded. So my professional looking welcome email with like a footer and branding seems to be turning people off.

Michele Hansen  4:01 
You can just do a plain text email. I think that's gonna be that there. That's more likely to get caught in a spam filter if it has graphics in it.

Colleen Schnettler  4:09 
Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. Because I was really surprised. I was like, Oh, I'm getting all these signups and these people are converting, not a single person has responded to an email.

Michele Hansen  4:18 
Plaintext tends to have better open rates than graphical email like this is why that most, if you've ever had them made the mistake of signing up for a political campaign's email list, you will notice that even the most well funded campaigns will have plain text emails. This is something the Obama campaign discovered and then just proliferated throughout the industry that the fewer images and formatting and everything in an email, the better open and response rates you're going to get from it because there's just fewer barriers to people getting the email and then you know, formatting and everything else in it. I send most of our especially feedback emails, I always send those out plain text.

Colleen Schnettler  5:06 
Yeah, I'm going to, that's my next step. Because I was really surprised to see such a poor response. Now, it's kind of a little bit funny, maybe not funny. So when I went to get my transactional email set up, for some reason, I got kicked out of Sendgrid. And that was just I don't really know what happened. So I'm actually sending it from my Gmail. So I don't have open rates right now. So I can't see how many people are actually opening it. But I am going to get that sorted out. And I like the idea of going plain text because no one is responding right now. So I have no idea why more people are converting I guess I should ask them.

Michele Hansen  5:42 
I think it's a, you know, it's a, an easy thing to fall into. On a recent episode, we talked about loss aversion and how human beings are so much more motivated to try to avoid losing money, rather than making money. And I think feedback really plays into that, because most companies asked for feedback when somebody cancels, or if they give you a negative NPS score, or something like that, but not as many companies ask for feedback from people who are happy, which, you know, trying to find more people who are are happy, like your your current happy customers with similar processes and needs is much easier than trying to fix all of the people who don't like it. Like that's a tough hill to climb.

Colleen Schnettler  6:33 
Yeah, so I definitely will reach out to those people. I guess one by you know, I'll just, there's only 17 people, I can just email them and ask them.

Michele Hansen 6:43 
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  6:44 
it seems like I get better responses. If I don't ask open ended questions in email.

Michele Hansen  6:50 
What are the questions you're asking?

Colleen Schnettler  6:52 
So my first email which I was hand typing, which got maybe 10 to 20%? response was, Hey, my name is Colleen. From simple file upload. Do you need any help installing the service? Question mark? Please let me know. Thanks. And that got some responses. So then I ...

]]> Tue, 05 Jan 2021 11:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2636 Colleen and Michele dissect why people stopped replying to Colleen's welcome emails. Later, Michele dives into Jobs To Be Done. Colleen and Michele dissect why people stopped replying to Colleen's welcome emails. Later, Michele dives into Jobs To Be Done. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Competing with Huge Companies as a Bootstrapper 23 23 Competing with Huge Companies as a Bootstrapper full 671d3e80-a5ac-43f2-a826-f7abb7afdb46 https://share.transistor.fm/s/fb579591 Michele Hansen  0:02  
So you remember a couple weeks ago how we were talking about competitors nipping at our heels?

Colleen Schnettler  0:07  
Yes.

Michele Hansen  0:09  
So, recently, we had a new competitor, enter the space. 

Colleen Schnettler
Ooh, interesting. 

Michele Hansen
Amazon.

Colleen Schnettler  0:18  
Oh, no. That's fair. 

Michele Hansen  0:22  
I mean, it's inevitable. Um, and we already compete with the likes of Google and Microsoft, and you know, all of these huge companies. So it's not, it's definitely not unexpected. Like, it's definitely been one of those. It's only a matter of time, things. But yeah, I, that that that happened, they launched their own location services. And, interestingly, they're just reselling to other providers, they're reselling s, ri, and here. And it's very focused on fleet management and asset tracking, which kind of makes sense based on what they're doing. Like, they're tracking packages and trucks and like, that's crucial to their operations. So it's almost kind of funny, because, you know, looking at that, and whenever people are asking about, you know, how do I bootstrap my own business? Like, where do I start? How do I get an idea? One of the most common pieces of advice and advice that I give is just start with something that you need yourself and go from there, which is what you have done. And it's also what Amazon has done here, too. So, so it's, like, I look at it, I'm like, Oh, this is clearly something they built for themselves, and now they're gonna have people paying for it definitely does, does a, you know, not a totally welcome surprise for us, right, because, um, fleet management and asset tracking is an important vertical for us, because it's expressly forbidden by some of the other major geocoder. So we do have an important amount of customers in those spaces, and overall, Amazon's pricing is much higher than us. But for asset tracking, it's, it's very favorable for that use case, because instead of paying per basically per ping from a GPS, imagine, like a truck might say, send back a GPS paying every 100 feet, for example, instead of paying every time for the new coordinates of that you only pay per asset. So you know, so I imagine we will lose some customers from this. But at the same time, what I think one of the great things about being in b2b SaaS, but especially the kind of space we're in, is that we're so diversified across industries, that we have tons of other verticals, in addition to fleet management and asset tracking. And it makes me really glad that I do that semi annual customer portfolio analysis, because I know exactly how much of our revenue is from that sector. And looking at this now and knowing Okay, there's this huge, well funded, competitor coming into the space. I can see pretty clearly like, how much revenue that directly puts at risk. But yes, certainly an interesting week.

Colleen Schnettler  3:33  
Yeah. So when you do your semi-annual customer portfolio, do you break up your customers by industry? Is that the purpose of that?

Michele Hansen  3:43  
Yeah. So basically, I look at our customers, as a portfolio, as an investor might look at, say, a mutual fund portfolio, for example. And I split it on a couple of different metrics. So I basically take the top 90% of revenue, and I look at the customers from it within that space. And I look at them by industry. So so there's like fleet management, but also say real estate or insurance, health care, things like that. By industry, I try to get a rough sense for company size. So that I can just kind of, you know, have a little bit more understanding there. And then just really trying to understand, okay, based on these different industries, like how much of our revenue is dependent on any one given industry, and should we think about diversifying whether we want a you know, a higher percentage of revenue in a particular category, we want new customers there, or do we want to purposefully pull back from a certain industry or simply just not emphasize it as much if we feel like there's too high of a concentration there, and also making sure that we don't have any high customer concentration and any one Given customer, so something an important metric for me is, you know, what are our largest customer, what percentage of overall revenue are there, they and basically making sure that that number is below 1%. And again, this also comes out of sort of investor style thinking where, you know, for example, if they're analyzing a company, and they see that a company has, say, 40% of its revenue coming from one particular customer, that's a huge red flag. Right? versus if it's highly diversified, then then let that's less of a risk. And yeah, that's, that's something I do about twice a year. And, and that's kind of one of those things are sort of had to create for ourselves, you know, I'm obviously not creating the concepts, but I think applying them in this way, is because, you know, as we've talked about a lot of the content out there on running a SAS is very much focused on growth and, you know, more well funded approaches to business that don't necessarily emphasize stability or profitability, or things like that. And so, rather than managing for growth, we manage for stability. And I find that this customer portfolio analysis is a really helpful tool for me. And, and matea stew in sort of like us communicating, okay, what are our priorities? And how do we create a more stable business and just kind of giving us a high level of that?

Colleen Schnettler  6:37  
So you do that as a manual process?

Michele Hansen  6:40  
Yes.

Colleen Schnettler  6:41  
So do you literally hand Google? 

Michele Hansen  6:44  
It's because I'm a I'm a glutton for punishment, apparently,

Colleen Schnettler  6:46  
I know. 

Michele Hansen  6:50  
You probably like the like the week, you know, the the week I spend on this every six months, I actually like genuinely is like

Colleen Schnettler  6:56  
your favorite. Yes.

Michele Hansen  6:58  
Making all my little pivot tables and everything and like, Oh, my gosh, I am. Yeah, it's actually really fun. Yeah, I basically just google them. And then, but a lot of them I've also had conversations with. So that's where I can fill out the rest of the picture to sort of so it's this combination of quantitative and qualitative information that we use for prioritizing. And, and this is really like kind of the first big moment I can think of where something happened. And my first thought was numbers from that analysis. And then it like made me feel better when when this happened.

Colleen Schnettler  7:39  
So when we talked about competitive analysis last week, the reason and this wasn't we were talking about Amazon, we were talking about some of your other competitors who had launched new features. And we talked about you guys competing on some very specific in some very specific areas. So with this Amazon launch, are you saying that now at least for the fleet management sector, you do not compete on price.

Michele Hansen  8:09  
So it's, it'll be it'll depend on the on the customer. So their price for pay as you go geocoding is much higher, they are $4 per 1000, versus we are 50 cents per 1000. If you want to store the data there, 50 cents per 1000, if you don't want to store the data, to anything, I read it more of a as a shot across the bow at Google than you know us. I mean, we're so small like that, you know, Amazon doesn't care about us, like, just kind of one of the nice things about being a bootstrap business. So of cour...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:02  
So you remember a couple weeks ago how we were talking about competitors nipping at our heels?

Colleen Schnettler  0:07  
Yes.

Michele Hansen  0:09  
So, recently, we had a new competitor, enter the space. 

Colleen Schnettler
Ooh, interesting. 

Michele Hansen
Amazon.

Colleen Schnettler  0:18  
Oh, no. That's fair. 

Michele Hansen  0:22  
I mean, it's inevitable. Um, and we already compete with the likes of Google and Microsoft, and you know, all of these huge companies. So it's not, it's definitely not unexpected. Like, it's definitely been one of those. It's only a matter of time, things. But yeah, I, that that that happened, they launched their own location services. And, interestingly, they're just reselling to other providers, they're reselling s, ri, and here. And it's very focused on fleet management and asset tracking, which kind of makes sense based on what they're doing. Like, they're tracking packages and trucks and like, that's crucial to their operations. So it's almost kind of funny, because, you know, looking at that, and whenever people are asking about, you know, how do I bootstrap my own business? Like, where do I start? How do I get an idea? One of the most common pieces of advice and advice that I give is just start with something that you need yourself and go from there, which is what you have done. And it's also what Amazon has done here, too. So, so it's, like, I look at it, I'm like, Oh, this is clearly something they built for themselves, and now they're gonna have people paying for it definitely does, does a, you know, not a totally welcome surprise for us, right, because, um, fleet management and asset tracking is an important vertical for us, because it's expressly forbidden by some of the other major geocoder. So we do have an important amount of customers in those spaces, and overall, Amazon's pricing is much higher than us. But for asset tracking, it's, it's very favorable for that use case, because instead of paying per basically per ping from a GPS, imagine, like a truck might say, send back a GPS paying every 100 feet, for example, instead of paying every time for the new coordinates of that you only pay per asset. So you know, so I imagine we will lose some customers from this. But at the same time, what I think one of the great things about being in b2b SaaS, but especially the kind of space we're in, is that we're so diversified across industries, that we have tons of other verticals, in addition to fleet management and asset tracking. And it makes me really glad that I do that semi annual customer portfolio analysis, because I know exactly how much of our revenue is from that sector. And looking at this now and knowing Okay, there's this huge, well funded, competitor coming into the space. I can see pretty clearly like, how much revenue that directly puts at risk. But yes, certainly an interesting week.

Colleen Schnettler  3:33  
Yeah. So when you do your semi-annual customer portfolio, do you break up your customers by industry? Is that the purpose of that?

Michele Hansen  3:43  
Yeah. So basically, I look at our customers, as a portfolio, as an investor might look at, say, a mutual fund portfolio, for example. And I split it on a couple of different metrics. So I basically take the top 90% of revenue, and I look at the customers from it within that space. And I look at them by industry. So so there's like fleet management, but also say real estate or insurance, health care, things like that. By industry, I try to get a rough sense for company size. So that I can just kind of, you know, have a little bit more understanding there. And then just really trying to understand, okay, based on these different industries, like how much of our revenue is dependent on any one given industry, and should we think about diversifying whether we want a you know, a higher percentage of revenue in a particular category, we want new customers there, or do we want to purposefully pull back from a certain industry or simply just not emphasize it as much if we feel like there's too high of a concentration there, and also making sure that we don't have any high customer concentration and any one Given customer, so something an important metric for me is, you know, what are our largest customer, what percentage of overall revenue are there, they and basically making sure that that number is below 1%. And again, this also comes out of sort of investor style thinking where, you know, for example, if they're analyzing a company, and they see that a company has, say, 40% of its revenue coming from one particular customer, that's a huge red flag. Right? versus if it's highly diversified, then then let that's less of a risk. And yeah, that's, that's something I do about twice a year. And, and that's kind of one of those things are sort of had to create for ourselves, you know, I'm obviously not creating the concepts, but I think applying them in this way, is because, you know, as we've talked about a lot of the content out there on running a SAS is very much focused on growth and, you know, more well funded approaches to business that don't necessarily emphasize stability or profitability, or things like that. And so, rather than managing for growth, we manage for stability. And I find that this customer portfolio analysis is a really helpful tool for me. And, and matea stew in sort of like us communicating, okay, what are our priorities? And how do we create a more stable business and just kind of giving us a high level of that?

Colleen Schnettler  6:37  
So you do that as a manual process?

Michele Hansen  6:40  
Yes.

Colleen Schnettler  6:41  
So do you literally hand Google? 

Michele Hansen  6:44  
It's because I'm a I'm a glutton for punishment, apparently,

Colleen Schnettler  6:46  
I know. 

Michele Hansen  6:50  
You probably like the like the week, you know, the the week I spend on this every six months, I actually like genuinely is like

Colleen Schnettler  6:56  
your favorite. Yes.

Michele Hansen  6:58  
Making all my little pivot tables and everything and like, Oh, my gosh, I am. Yeah, it's actually really fun. Yeah, I basically just google them. And then, but a lot of them I've also had conversations with. So that's where I can fill out the rest of the picture to sort of so it's this combination of quantitative and qualitative information that we use for prioritizing. And, and this is really like kind of the first big moment I can think of where something happened. And my first thought was numbers from that analysis. And then it like made me feel better when when this happened.

Colleen Schnettler  7:39  
So when we talked about competitive analysis last week, the reason and this wasn't we were talking about Amazon, we were talking about some of your other competitors who had launched new features. And we talked about you guys competing on some very specific in some very specific areas. So with this Amazon launch, are you saying that now at least for the fleet management sector, you do not compete on price.

Michele Hansen  8:09  
So it's, it'll be it'll depend on the on the customer. So their price for pay as you go geocoding is much higher, they are $4 per 1000, versus we are 50 cents per 1000. If you want to store the data there, 50 cents per 1000, if you don't want to store the data, to anything, I read it more of a as a shot across the bow at Google than you know us. I mean, we're so small like that, you know, Amazon doesn't care about us, like, just kind of one of the nice things about being a bootstrap business. So of cour...

]]> Tue, 29 Dec 2020 10:21:24 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1663 Michele talks about how the entry of a huge company into the geocoding space impacts their business strategy. Michele talks about how the entry of a huge company into the geocoding space impacts their business strategy. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Getting Really Excited 22 22 Getting Really Excited full c4673b3c-3ab2-4fb9-87f0-4df491ea105f https://share.transistor.fm/s/fc400aeb Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
Welcome to Software Social. I'm Colleen. This week, Michele and I discuss my progress getting my first product, a file uploading widget to 100 users. Why 100 because I'm going to sell it in the Heroku add on store, and I need 100 users before I can start charging. We also do a deep dive into what makes a good customer interview. And Michelle gets really excited about something called Prospect Theory. Enjoy the show. So I'm excited to share my numbers with you this week. For the past couple weeks for those that are new. I have been sharing with Michelle the numbers of signup, the number of signups I have for my new widget simple file upload. And as of this morning, I have 47 active signups.

Michele Hansen  0:45 
Oh, it was like 31. Last time, right?

Colleen Schnettler  0:50 
Yeah. So I really think using this marketing channel of the Heroku add on store has been tremendous for me. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm super pumped. So it's interesting, though, because when I first looked on, when I first signed on to my admin dashboard, it said 75 teams, but then I have to cross reference that with the people who have deprovisioned or kind of like, ditched it. So I'm still seeing a lot of people click the button to sign up. And then deprovision the add on but still 47 isn't bad. I'm pretty pumped about that. That's almost halfway to my 100. I need to get to actually make it a viable product.

Michele Hansen
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah! So that's good news. I and I also spoke with someone who has a really successful add on in the marketplace. And he showed me this somewhat convoluted way where I can get the user's email address, even if they haven't gone through the single sign on process that I've mentioned in the past. So something I want to set up this week as I want to set up a wrapper so I can get the person's email address as soon as they provision the app and send them an email right away to see you know, if they're having any trouble setting it up, I think. I think that's where I'm losing people, but not that many people are communicating with me. So that's my best guess right now.

Michele Hansen  2:10 
So you said 47 current signups?

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
Or current current user, so and then. So that's 16 new people since last time we talked. Do you have a sense for like, how many of those have have gotten to that, that crucial single sign on step and like, have actually added it to?

Colleen Schnettler  2:30 
Yes, so of those 47,34 have actually gone through the single sign on. So 34 might actually want to use it for real is how I look at that. Only 16 have actually started uploading images or not, I shouldn't say images files. So there's a pretty big gap between showing intent and actually using it. So I really want to work on closing that gap.

Michele Hansen  2:57 
Yeah, and it kind of makes sense to me that there would be a gap for that, when, in order to see how it works, people have to install it first versus services that you can see whether it works first, and then sign up for it, would have a lower drop off in that conversion.

Colleen Schnettler  3:19 
Exactly. One of the things I want to do -- I have a long list of things I want to do, but they're all small, but they are there is quite a long list. I want to put because the Heroku documentation has to be formatted in this really specific way to comply with the Heroku requirements. Once you single sign on, I have the documentation and what I consider to be a much more user friendly format. So one of the things I want to do is on my normal marketing site, I want to add the user friendly documentation. So someone can see the documentation before they install the add on to see if it's a good fit because I know I'm someone -- if I want to install like a piece of software. I want to see your docs first because I want to see how good they are. And I want to see how hard it really is and how it actually works.

Michele Hansen  4:06 
Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Colleen Schnettler  4:08 
I also -- in very like I haven't taken Amy Hoy's course but like in very I had, you know I subscribed to her email is in very Amy Hoy fashion. As we've discussed, I launched this with a lot without a lot of boilerplate things. And one of the boilerplate things I didn't have is I don't have transactional email setup. Which means what I've been doing is, every night I've been signing onto my admin dashboard, copying the email addresses of people who signed up to an Excel sheet, literally emailing each person, one by one from my support account in Gmail. So in the beginning, that was not too cumbersome. It enabled me to see exactly where they were in the process like have they added files have they not have added a lot of files and kind of customize the email but now that's getting way too cumbersome and time consuming. So one of the things I really need to get up this week is transactional email. Yeah, it doesn't even take that long. It's, I'm somewhat like I do it all the time. It's just, I find it very mundane, because it's a very boilerplate thing. But it's such a, it's not such a pain, but it's kind of a pain, right? And so I tend to procrastinate the boring things like, like maybe most people, I'm like, Oh, I want to work on this, this this other feature, that's going to be so great. Instead of set up transactional email, but I'm losing people, right? Because if I don't email if you sign up, and I don't email you for 24 hours, like your path, you're over it, you have already made that decision, like your motive when you think of like a human motivation, at least for me, if I want something I want right now. So if I sign up for your software, it's because I want to use it right now. So if I can't figure...

Michele Hansen  5:50 
So is this the welcome email?

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah, there's no welcome...

Michele Hansen
Here like this as like, here's the documentation. And here's what you've signed up for. Like, gotcha, okay. Yeah, I think I could help like, I know, our URL. Like, I don't think we had welcome emails to start. And we also, I think we manually emailed everybody who signed up. But it was so good for feedback like that early feedback was really critical for us. And it was part like, Hey, here's your documentation. But also, like, let us know if you have any questions about getting set up. Or if there was, you know, if there's anything else you're hoping that we do that we don't like, let us know. And we can see if we can add it.

Colleen Schnettler  6:27 
Yeah, that's exactly where I am. So basically, not even well, I mean, it would be a welcome email. But I want to get that as soon as they sign up. I want to fire off that email. Like, here's how you contact me, here's how I can help you. Let me know what you need. Let's let's do this. And yeah, hopefully I'll get I'll get more engagement, if I catch people early in the process of provisioning the add on.

Michele Hansen  6:52 
Yeah, that I think that sounds like a plan.

Colleen Schnettler  6:55 
Yeah. Okay. Good plan. So let's talk a little bit about the people I've talked with, I mentioned that I've been doing customer interviews, which has been super fun, I'm really enjoying it. So I did a walkthrough with a friend who's a UI/UX designer, like a very senior designer. And he gave me some tips that I really took to heart. And I thought they were great. And so actually, this week, was mostly all technical stuff. This week, when I worked on

]]> Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
Welcome to Software Social. I'm Colleen. This week, Michele and I discuss my progress getting my first product, a file uploading widget to 100 users. Why 100 because I'm going to sell it in the Heroku add on store, and I need 100 users before I can start charging. We also do a deep dive into what makes a good customer interview. And Michelle gets really excited about something called Prospect Theory. Enjoy the show. So I'm excited to share my numbers with you this week. For the past couple weeks for those that are new. I have been sharing with Michelle the numbers of signup, the number of signups I have for my new widget simple file upload. And as of this morning, I have 47 active signups.

Michele Hansen  0:45 
Oh, it was like 31. Last time, right?

Colleen Schnettler  0:50 
Yeah. So I really think using this marketing channel of the Heroku add on store has been tremendous for me. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm super pumped. So it's interesting, though, because when I first looked on, when I first signed on to my admin dashboard, it said 75 teams, but then I have to cross reference that with the people who have deprovisioned or kind of like, ditched it. So I'm still seeing a lot of people click the button to sign up. And then deprovision the add on but still 47 isn't bad. I'm pretty pumped about that. That's almost halfway to my 100. I need to get to actually make it a viable product.

Michele Hansen
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah! So that's good news. I and I also spoke with someone who has a really successful add on in the marketplace. And he showed me this somewhat convoluted way where I can get the user's email address, even if they haven't gone through the single sign on process that I've mentioned in the past. So something I want to set up this week as I want to set up a wrapper so I can get the person's email address as soon as they provision the app and send them an email right away to see you know, if they're having any trouble setting it up, I think. I think that's where I'm losing people, but not that many people are communicating with me. So that's my best guess right now.

Michele Hansen  2:10 
So you said 47 current signups?

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
Or current current user, so and then. So that's 16 new people since last time we talked. Do you have a sense for like, how many of those have have gotten to that, that crucial single sign on step and like, have actually added it to?

Colleen Schnettler  2:30 
Yes, so of those 47,34 have actually gone through the single sign on. So 34 might actually want to use it for real is how I look at that. Only 16 have actually started uploading images or not, I shouldn't say images files. So there's a pretty big gap between showing intent and actually using it. So I really want to work on closing that gap.

Michele Hansen  2:57 
Yeah, and it kind of makes sense to me that there would be a gap for that, when, in order to see how it works, people have to install it first versus services that you can see whether it works first, and then sign up for it, would have a lower drop off in that conversion.

Colleen Schnettler  3:19 
Exactly. One of the things I want to do -- I have a long list of things I want to do, but they're all small, but they are there is quite a long list. I want to put because the Heroku documentation has to be formatted in this really specific way to comply with the Heroku requirements. Once you single sign on, I have the documentation and what I consider to be a much more user friendly format. So one of the things I want to do is on my normal marketing site, I want to add the user friendly documentation. So someone can see the documentation before they install the add on to see if it's a good fit because I know I'm someone -- if I want to install like a piece of software. I want to see your docs first because I want to see how good they are. And I want to see how hard it really is and how it actually works.

Michele Hansen  4:06 
Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Colleen Schnettler  4:08 
I also -- in very like I haven't taken Amy Hoy's course but like in very I had, you know I subscribed to her email is in very Amy Hoy fashion. As we've discussed, I launched this with a lot without a lot of boilerplate things. And one of the boilerplate things I didn't have is I don't have transactional email setup. Which means what I've been doing is, every night I've been signing onto my admin dashboard, copying the email addresses of people who signed up to an Excel sheet, literally emailing each person, one by one from my support account in Gmail. So in the beginning, that was not too cumbersome. It enabled me to see exactly where they were in the process like have they added files have they not have added a lot of files and kind of customize the email but now that's getting way too cumbersome and time consuming. So one of the things I really need to get up this week is transactional email. Yeah, it doesn't even take that long. It's, I'm somewhat like I do it all the time. It's just, I find it very mundane, because it's a very boilerplate thing. But it's such a, it's not such a pain, but it's kind of a pain, right? And so I tend to procrastinate the boring things like, like maybe most people, I'm like, Oh, I want to work on this, this this other feature, that's going to be so great. Instead of set up transactional email, but I'm losing people, right? Because if I don't email if you sign up, and I don't email you for 24 hours, like your path, you're over it, you have already made that decision, like your motive when you think of like a human motivation, at least for me, if I want something I want right now. So if I sign up for your software, it's because I want to use it right now. So if I can't figure...

Michele Hansen  5:50 
So is this the welcome email?

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah, there's no welcome...

Michele Hansen
Here like this as like, here's the documentation. And here's what you've signed up for. Like, gotcha, okay. Yeah, I think I could help like, I know, our URL. Like, I don't think we had welcome emails to start. And we also, I think we manually emailed everybody who signed up. But it was so good for feedback like that early feedback was really critical for us. And it was part like, Hey, here's your documentation. But also, like, let us know if you have any questions about getting set up. Or if there was, you know, if there's anything else you're hoping that we do that we don't like, let us know. And we can see if we can add it.

Colleen Schnettler  6:27 
Yeah, that's exactly where I am. So basically, not even well, I mean, it would be a welcome email. But I want to get that as soon as they sign up. I want to fire off that email. Like, here's how you contact me, here's how I can help you. Let me know what you need. Let's let's do this. And yeah, hopefully I'll get I'll get more engagement, if I catch people early in the process of provisioning the add on.

Michele Hansen  6:52 
Yeah, that I think that sounds like a plan.

Colleen Schnettler  6:55 
Yeah. Okay. Good plan. So let's talk a little bit about the people I've talked with, I mentioned that I've been doing customer interviews, which has been super fun, I'm really enjoying it. So I did a walkthrough with a friend who's a UI/UX designer, like a very senior designer. And he gave me some tips that I really took to heart. And I thought they were great. And so actually, this week, was mostly all technical stuff. This week, when I worked on

]]> Tue, 22 Dec 2020 09:34:07 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1714 Colleen shares the findings from her customer interviews, and Michele talks about how behavioral economics influences how they think about free tier abuse. Colleen shares the findings from her customer interviews, and Michele talks about how behavioral economics influences how they think about free tier abuse. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler When Competitors Are Nipping At Your Heels 21 21 When Competitors Are Nipping At Your Heels full 2f3db1ed-db81-45e5-88bd-dd3e3e494259 https://share.transistor.fm/s/3d66d293 Michele Hansen  0:00  
So we had kind of a wake up call this week.

Colleen Schnettler  0:04  
Oh, what happened?

Michele Hansen  0:07  
So we're looking at some of our competitors websites, and we realize either their employees don't have kids, or they don't care that their employees have kids or what, but they have gotten a lot more done this year than we have.

Colleen Schnettler  0:24  
Oh, okay. 

Michele Hansen  0:26  
I mean, we feel good about what we've gotten done considering everything. But it was definitely kind of a moment of, whoa, okay. Like, you know, should you know, we have this information now, like, should we do something with this knowing that some competitors are nipping at our heels a little closer than they were a year ago?

Colleen Schnettler  0:47  
So what does it mean for them to be nipping at your heels? Are they releasing new features? Are they like, what exactly did you see that made you go, Oh, we need to up our game.

Michele Hansen  0:58  
So it's, it's partly new features, I think it's one of the most visible things, there's also some administrative type features, like, you know, certain compliance, and certifications. And you know, it with this kind of thing, though, you know, you have that first moment, it's like, oh, like, they now support something that they didn't before that we do. And so that makes us tighter competitors. But also remembering that we compete on so many different levels. And like, we have no one true one to one competitor, um, which, which I think is good for us. And it was, the other thing is like, we don't really pay much attention to our competitors, which I think is somewhat unique. Um, you know, I get the sense that that most companies, if you ask them to how they divide their mental headspace, and research time, and all of that between their competitors and their customers, I'm gonna bet that most companies are somewhere around at 20 in favor of looking at what their competitors are doing, what their features are, what their pricing is, you know, what their marketing is, like, all those kinds of things. And then 20% on the customers, and even like, really great companies that are known for focusing on their customers, which most truly great companies are, are probably more like 5050. And I think we're more like 9010 in favor of listening to our customers and letting them guide our roadmap. And then it's really maybe only once or twice a year that we really check in on what our competitors are doing.

Colleen Schnettler  2:46  
Okay, so you were checking out some of your competitor sites? And like, what's your reaction? Are you concerned? Are you worried, you're gonna start? Are you seeing, are you seeing higher customer churn? Because people are going to your competitors for these additional features?

Michele Hansen  3:01  
No, that's the thing. And our growth is, you know, perfectly healthy, it's, you know, beyond a level that that we, you know, sort of, quote, unquote, need. And so all of that is healthy, and we're really busy. So we're not worried about it. And I think that's what I have been thinking a lot about is okay, you know, we have this moment of we have this new information. And whenever we get new information, there is there's the question of, what do we do with this information? And the answer to that question can be nothing, we don't do anything different. Which I think is an under appreciated answer. In business many times, and old boss of mine was sort of famous for, you know, his do nothing approach. Because, you know, we're not going to sort of run around like chickens with our heads cut off to launch a new feature. When, you know, it turns out that oh, well, the competitors pricing model is actually not as customer friendly as ours, and based on some other things are, it's very clear, they're going after a different market segment than we are. And maybe there's a small percentage of customers that view us as a one to one comparison, but it's really very few customers who do, but it's a tricky thing, right?

Colleen Schnettler  4:34  
Yeah, I can definitely see that. So I was talking to a friend the other day about his last SaaS, which did really well, he grew it and he sold it for a good chunk of money. But he was talking about like the emotional upheaval every time a competitor launched. And I thought that was really interesting, because that's got to be like, you don't know what to do. Should you implement these features like there's got to be a lot of tension there in terms of how you approach this kind of new information you have?

Michele Hansen  5:02  
Yeah, and and what I tend to think about is, when I get those feelings, I pull it back to Okay, what what are the dimensions that we are truly competing on? And how many of those have really changed, and how many of those are present in this competitor, and how easy is it for this competitor, to replicate our model, because that's what makes a business unique is it you know, all the different things that go into it that make certain you know, price points possible for some companies that aren't possible for other ones, for example, you know, so we, we not only compete on the price itself, we also compete on the pricing model. So we have free tier daily free tier plus pays, you go plus subscription options. And then you know, all sorts of other more custom options after that. You know, some of our competitors are, for example, one of the major ones, they have a free tier per month, but you have to have a credit card on file. Some of them are much lower free tier per month, some of them have a free tier per day, but it's only for a three month period, like there's all and then like some of them have pays, you go on top of that some as we were talking about with you a couple of weeks ago, some of them maybe have paid you go on top of that, or they have subscriptions within a certain band on top of that, or they jump straight to enterprise after that. Um, and so the price and the pricing model are one way we can eat, then, of course, there's the the data itself, like so in our space, it's the coverage, you know, where US and Canada and some of our competitors are us only some of them are worldwide, but not at rooftop level. Some of them are rooftop, like some places rooftop some places not like all sorts of different things. And then also the different data appends that we have. So adding congressional districts, adding census data, all that kind of stuff, which most of our competitors don't have, only one has a couple of those things. So there's the data and the coverage. There's also things like the features. So we have an API, we also have the ability to upload spreadsheets, like massive spreadsheets, most of our competitors don't have spreadsheet upload support, most of them don't have batch geocoding support. And some of them actually expressly prohibit batch geocoding. Only one of them has some sort of spreadsheet support, but it's actually like copy paste, and it's very limited. And then there's also Terms of Service, which is probably the hardest one for anyone to replicate, which is our extremely permissive Terms of Use. And most of our competitors have very restrictive Terms of Use, and you know, you can't store the data, you can't reuse it, things like that. And so when we have a, you know, a new competitor Come on, or a new a competitor, add, you know, features or things like that, we're always thinking, Okay, like, how does this? Yes, there's that initial feeling of like, oh, oh, like, okay. But then what does that actually mean for us? And how does that change our competitive position? And usually, it's, you know, what, this, there's more competition, that's fine. We're still okay, we're ...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:00  
So we had kind of a wake up call this week.

Colleen Schnettler  0:04  
Oh, what happened?

Michele Hansen  0:07  
So we're looking at some of our competitors websites, and we realize either their employees don't have kids, or they don't care that their employees have kids or what, but they have gotten a lot more done this year than we have.

Colleen Schnettler  0:24  
Oh, okay. 

Michele Hansen  0:26  
I mean, we feel good about what we've gotten done considering everything. But it was definitely kind of a moment of, whoa, okay. Like, you know, should you know, we have this information now, like, should we do something with this knowing that some competitors are nipping at our heels a little closer than they were a year ago?

Colleen Schnettler  0:47  
So what does it mean for them to be nipping at your heels? Are they releasing new features? Are they like, what exactly did you see that made you go, Oh, we need to up our game.

Michele Hansen  0:58  
So it's, it's partly new features, I think it's one of the most visible things, there's also some administrative type features, like, you know, certain compliance, and certifications. And you know, it with this kind of thing, though, you know, you have that first moment, it's like, oh, like, they now support something that they didn't before that we do. And so that makes us tighter competitors. But also remembering that we compete on so many different levels. And like, we have no one true one to one competitor, um, which, which I think is good for us. And it was, the other thing is like, we don't really pay much attention to our competitors, which I think is somewhat unique. Um, you know, I get the sense that that most companies, if you ask them to how they divide their mental headspace, and research time, and all of that between their competitors and their customers, I'm gonna bet that most companies are somewhere around at 20 in favor of looking at what their competitors are doing, what their features are, what their pricing is, you know, what their marketing is, like, all those kinds of things. And then 20% on the customers, and even like, really great companies that are known for focusing on their customers, which most truly great companies are, are probably more like 5050. And I think we're more like 9010 in favor of listening to our customers and letting them guide our roadmap. And then it's really maybe only once or twice a year that we really check in on what our competitors are doing.

Colleen Schnettler  2:46  
Okay, so you were checking out some of your competitor sites? And like, what's your reaction? Are you concerned? Are you worried, you're gonna start? Are you seeing, are you seeing higher customer churn? Because people are going to your competitors for these additional features?

Michele Hansen  3:01  
No, that's the thing. And our growth is, you know, perfectly healthy, it's, you know, beyond a level that that we, you know, sort of, quote, unquote, need. And so all of that is healthy, and we're really busy. So we're not worried about it. And I think that's what I have been thinking a lot about is okay, you know, we have this moment of we have this new information. And whenever we get new information, there is there's the question of, what do we do with this information? And the answer to that question can be nothing, we don't do anything different. Which I think is an under appreciated answer. In business many times, and old boss of mine was sort of famous for, you know, his do nothing approach. Because, you know, we're not going to sort of run around like chickens with our heads cut off to launch a new feature. When, you know, it turns out that oh, well, the competitors pricing model is actually not as customer friendly as ours, and based on some other things are, it's very clear, they're going after a different market segment than we are. And maybe there's a small percentage of customers that view us as a one to one comparison, but it's really very few customers who do, but it's a tricky thing, right?

Colleen Schnettler  4:34  
Yeah, I can definitely see that. So I was talking to a friend the other day about his last SaaS, which did really well, he grew it and he sold it for a good chunk of money. But he was talking about like the emotional upheaval every time a competitor launched. And I thought that was really interesting, because that's got to be like, you don't know what to do. Should you implement these features like there's got to be a lot of tension there in terms of how you approach this kind of new information you have?

Michele Hansen  5:02  
Yeah, and and what I tend to think about is, when I get those feelings, I pull it back to Okay, what what are the dimensions that we are truly competing on? And how many of those have really changed, and how many of those are present in this competitor, and how easy is it for this competitor, to replicate our model, because that's what makes a business unique is it you know, all the different things that go into it that make certain you know, price points possible for some companies that aren't possible for other ones, for example, you know, so we, we not only compete on the price itself, we also compete on the pricing model. So we have free tier daily free tier plus pays, you go plus subscription options. And then you know, all sorts of other more custom options after that. You know, some of our competitors are, for example, one of the major ones, they have a free tier per month, but you have to have a credit card on file. Some of them are much lower free tier per month, some of them have a free tier per day, but it's only for a three month period, like there's all and then like some of them have pays, you go on top of that some as we were talking about with you a couple of weeks ago, some of them maybe have paid you go on top of that, or they have subscriptions within a certain band on top of that, or they jump straight to enterprise after that. Um, and so the price and the pricing model are one way we can eat, then, of course, there's the the data itself, like so in our space, it's the coverage, you know, where US and Canada and some of our competitors are us only some of them are worldwide, but not at rooftop level. Some of them are rooftop, like some places rooftop some places not like all sorts of different things. And then also the different data appends that we have. So adding congressional districts, adding census data, all that kind of stuff, which most of our competitors don't have, only one has a couple of those things. So there's the data and the coverage. There's also things like the features. So we have an API, we also have the ability to upload spreadsheets, like massive spreadsheets, most of our competitors don't have spreadsheet upload support, most of them don't have batch geocoding support. And some of them actually expressly prohibit batch geocoding. Only one of them has some sort of spreadsheet support, but it's actually like copy paste, and it's very limited. And then there's also Terms of Service, which is probably the hardest one for anyone to replicate, which is our extremely permissive Terms of Use. And most of our competitors have very restrictive Terms of Use, and you know, you can't store the data, you can't reuse it, things like that. And so when we have a, you know, a new competitor Come on, or a new a competitor, add, you know, features or things like that, we're always thinking, Okay, like, how does this? Yes, there's that initial feeling of like, oh, oh, like, okay. But then what does that actually mean for us? And how does that change our competitive position? And usually, it's, you know, what, this, there's more competition, that's fine. We're still okay, we're ...

]]> Tue, 15 Dec 2020 11:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1846 Michele reflects on competitor activity, and Colleen takes a moment to enjoy how she's finally launched a product after so time wandering through the proverbial woods. Michele reflects on competitor activity, and Colleen takes a moment to enjoy how she's finally launched a product after so time wandering through the proverbial woods. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Workshopping User Onboarding Problems 20 20 Workshopping User Onboarding Problems full 194474da-579c-4303-9067-bbd3894044f1 https://share.transistor.fm/s/92abd728 VOTE FOR US! SaaSPodcastAwards.com

Colleen's Heroku landing page: https://elements.heroku.com/addons/simple-file-upload

Michele Hansen  0:00 
So I got a pretty exciting email yesterday. We were nominated for the MicroConf SaaS Podcast Awards!

Colleen Schnettler  0:09 
That's amazing.

Michele Hansen  0:10 
In three categories.

Colleen Schnettler  0:13 
Wow, that's so funny, Michele, because when we started this podcast, I was pretty sure no one was gonna listen to it except for me. So I can't believe like people listen to it. I feel like a little uncomfortable that people listen to it actually.

Michele Hansen  0:30 
Yeah, we kind of expected it would just be like our husbands and some close business friends of ours. I'm totally floored and surprised and so honored that people are listening, and you guys nominated us and really, really, genuinely touched by that. So it's kind of a fun thing that's going on.

But there are also other fun things going on. With Colleen, because you're now in you know, the Heroku marketplace. There's people using it. And I think I saw you mentioned this week that you even got feedback from like somebody you don't know using it and they have something positive to say?!

Colleen Schnettler  1:13 
It's not my friend. Actually.

Michele Hansen 1:16 
that's always awesome.

Michele Hansen  1:19 
A total stranger using your thing. That's a milestone.

Colleen Schnettler  1:20 
That's a milestone. So I feel like this is just a really exciting time in terms of launching a product. So the product has been in beta, I think for about seven to 10 days. And as of this morning, 31 teams have signed up,

Michele Hansen  1:38 
Dude!

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah, but...

Michele Hansen
You're a third of the way there!

Colleen Schnettler  1:41 
Well, 31 teams have signed up, but they're not all right, that's true for the I have to get 100 like I'm a third of the way there. But what is interesting about this is the way the Heroku cycle works. So if you are in the Heroku marketplace, you're going to search for I don't know file upload, you see my you see my add on, you click a button to install it. Then, if you want your personalized instructions, you have to go to the dashboard for your application, and click on it again, in your application. And that's the single sign on. So they provision the application which they can use it without ever doing single sign on. But most people use single sign on because then the directions are personalized with their API key. So of those 31 people 13 have actually made it to single sign on. And of those 13. Six have actively uploaded files. So for like a week, I'm feeling really good about these numbers.

Michele Hansen  2:42 
Yeah,

Colleen Schnettler  2:44 
I think there's just a huge benefit to being in like using this marketplaces attraction channel, I think that is just been a huge benefit. Because I know so many people who have launched products, and they literally cannot get anyone to sign up. And that would be that would be tough. So basically, what I'm doing is I don't get a contact email until they hit single sign on. Now there's one team that never single signed on. And they're just using the documentation from the Heroku. Doc's so good for them. So I don't have contact information for them. But the other 13 I do have contact information for so I have hand emailed all 13 of those contacts of the 13. I emailed three have emailed me back. So that's pretty good. Not bad, right? I don't know. Like I myself tend to ignore emails. So

Michele Hansen  3:37 
Like my feedback emails, I think the highest I've ever gotten the open rate to know the open rate is like something like 60%. But the reply rate is usually in the eight to 10% range. So that is good.

Colleen Schnettler  3:51 
Yeah. And I was just kind of asking, like, I just have an email. It's like, hey, do you need help setting it up? Let me know. So that's like, a really exciting first week. I mean, I feel like things are are going well, I've been hustling. Hold on. Wait,

Michele Hansen  4:05 
tell us what they said though. Like, don't skip that. I want to hear what these people had to say about it.

Colleen Schnettler  4:12 
So the first person had a feature request, which is like a totally reasonable request. The second person had the same feature request. And the third person. Yeah, I mean, it's okay. It's embarrassing. I shifted. Okay, now I have to tell you, so I shipped a file storage solution without giving you the ability to delete files.

Michele Hansen  4:34 
I mean, everything is a feature. Like we shipped a product without the ability to charge people

Colleen Schnettler  4:40 
It seemed like like, everything is a feature. I'm not charging them. So you know, it's not like they're paying for it. If I was asking them to pay for it, then yeah, I would have let them I would have shipped it with the ability to delete. But since I'm not charging them it doesn't matter.

Michele Hansen  4:57 
But when really get feature requests, like explicit feature requests for something specific, are our processes always, you know, whatever it is we always capture it. And so how this works for us is we just create an issue and GitHub related to intercom, it's not the cleanest way to do it, but it works for us. And then if somebody else or like multiple people ask us for it, then we look into it. So it's pretty interesting that you've already had two people asked for the same thing. Now granted, as you say, it's a fairly table stakes kind of thing. But it's, it's always interesting when you have multiple people asking for something, because that is pretty clearly indicates interest.

Colleen Schnettler  5:38 
Yeah, so I'm obviously gonna add that. I mean, I didn't add it for a very specific reason. And the reason I didn't add it is because I'm concerned, like if a user drops up, if a user adds a file, like let's say they add their avatar, and then they add, drop it again. Now, I don't know, why would they would do that. But let's say they do. So let's say they drop the same file twice, that actually gets saved in my service as two different files, because I have no way to know that that's the same file, because the font because I don't want to overwrite file names, right? Because your file might name might be avatar, and mine might be avatar, so I'm not overwriting files. And so if that happened, the developer who's implementing it is going to be saving the most recent URL in their database, so they can access that file in the cloud. If they then go into their admin dashboard, and they see two of the same files, and they delete one, and they delete the one they have linked in their database, then they're no longer going to have access to that file. Does that make any sense? I feel like I need to like whiteboard that. But basically, there's a way where if two of the same, same images get uploaded, but the URLs are different. And they have one database URL, one URL in their database pointing to the file and they delete the wrong file, that file will then be gone.

Michele Hansen  7:05 
So you're trying to make it sort of human error? Yes, fault tolerant, right? Yeah, they would have, like a timestamp or something to help them differentiate between them, like someone who has, you know, a scren shot ...

]]> VOTE FOR US! SaaSPodcastAwards.com

Colleen's Heroku landing page: https://elements.heroku.com/addons/simple-file-upload

Michele Hansen  0:00 
So I got a pretty exciting email yesterday. We were nominated for the MicroConf SaaS Podcast Awards!

Colleen Schnettler  0:09 
That's amazing.

Michele Hansen  0:10 
In three categories.

Colleen Schnettler  0:13 
Wow, that's so funny, Michele, because when we started this podcast, I was pretty sure no one was gonna listen to it except for me. So I can't believe like people listen to it. I feel like a little uncomfortable that people listen to it actually.

Michele Hansen  0:30 
Yeah, we kind of expected it would just be like our husbands and some close business friends of ours. I'm totally floored and surprised and so honored that people are listening, and you guys nominated us and really, really, genuinely touched by that. So it's kind of a fun thing that's going on.

But there are also other fun things going on. With Colleen, because you're now in you know, the Heroku marketplace. There's people using it. And I think I saw you mentioned this week that you even got feedback from like somebody you don't know using it and they have something positive to say?!

Colleen Schnettler  1:13 
It's not my friend. Actually.

Michele Hansen 1:16 
that's always awesome.

Michele Hansen  1:19 
A total stranger using your thing. That's a milestone.

Colleen Schnettler  1:20 
That's a milestone. So I feel like this is just a really exciting time in terms of launching a product. So the product has been in beta, I think for about seven to 10 days. And as of this morning, 31 teams have signed up,

Michele Hansen  1:38 
Dude!

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah, but...

Michele Hansen
You're a third of the way there!

Colleen Schnettler  1:41 
Well, 31 teams have signed up, but they're not all right, that's true for the I have to get 100 like I'm a third of the way there. But what is interesting about this is the way the Heroku cycle works. So if you are in the Heroku marketplace, you're going to search for I don't know file upload, you see my you see my add on, you click a button to install it. Then, if you want your personalized instructions, you have to go to the dashboard for your application, and click on it again, in your application. And that's the single sign on. So they provision the application which they can use it without ever doing single sign on. But most people use single sign on because then the directions are personalized with their API key. So of those 31 people 13 have actually made it to single sign on. And of those 13. Six have actively uploaded files. So for like a week, I'm feeling really good about these numbers.

Michele Hansen  2:42 
Yeah,

Colleen Schnettler  2:44 
I think there's just a huge benefit to being in like using this marketplaces attraction channel, I think that is just been a huge benefit. Because I know so many people who have launched products, and they literally cannot get anyone to sign up. And that would be that would be tough. So basically, what I'm doing is I don't get a contact email until they hit single sign on. Now there's one team that never single signed on. And they're just using the documentation from the Heroku. Doc's so good for them. So I don't have contact information for them. But the other 13 I do have contact information for so I have hand emailed all 13 of those contacts of the 13. I emailed three have emailed me back. So that's pretty good. Not bad, right? I don't know. Like I myself tend to ignore emails. So

Michele Hansen  3:37 
Like my feedback emails, I think the highest I've ever gotten the open rate to know the open rate is like something like 60%. But the reply rate is usually in the eight to 10% range. So that is good.

Colleen Schnettler  3:51 
Yeah. And I was just kind of asking, like, I just have an email. It's like, hey, do you need help setting it up? Let me know. So that's like, a really exciting first week. I mean, I feel like things are are going well, I've been hustling. Hold on. Wait,

Michele Hansen  4:05 
tell us what they said though. Like, don't skip that. I want to hear what these people had to say about it.

Colleen Schnettler  4:12 
So the first person had a feature request, which is like a totally reasonable request. The second person had the same feature request. And the third person. Yeah, I mean, it's okay. It's embarrassing. I shifted. Okay, now I have to tell you, so I shipped a file storage solution without giving you the ability to delete files.

Michele Hansen  4:34 
I mean, everything is a feature. Like we shipped a product without the ability to charge people

Colleen Schnettler  4:40 
It seemed like like, everything is a feature. I'm not charging them. So you know, it's not like they're paying for it. If I was asking them to pay for it, then yeah, I would have let them I would have shipped it with the ability to delete. But since I'm not charging them it doesn't matter.

Michele Hansen  4:57 
But when really get feature requests, like explicit feature requests for something specific, are our processes always, you know, whatever it is we always capture it. And so how this works for us is we just create an issue and GitHub related to intercom, it's not the cleanest way to do it, but it works for us. And then if somebody else or like multiple people ask us for it, then we look into it. So it's pretty interesting that you've already had two people asked for the same thing. Now granted, as you say, it's a fairly table stakes kind of thing. But it's, it's always interesting when you have multiple people asking for something, because that is pretty clearly indicates interest.

Colleen Schnettler  5:38 
Yeah, so I'm obviously gonna add that. I mean, I didn't add it for a very specific reason. And the reason I didn't add it is because I'm concerned, like if a user drops up, if a user adds a file, like let's say they add their avatar, and then they add, drop it again. Now, I don't know, why would they would do that. But let's say they do. So let's say they drop the same file twice, that actually gets saved in my service as two different files, because I have no way to know that that's the same file, because the font because I don't want to overwrite file names, right? Because your file might name might be avatar, and mine might be avatar, so I'm not overwriting files. And so if that happened, the developer who's implementing it is going to be saving the most recent URL in their database, so they can access that file in the cloud. If they then go into their admin dashboard, and they see two of the same files, and they delete one, and they delete the one they have linked in their database, then they're no longer going to have access to that file. Does that make any sense? I feel like I need to like whiteboard that. But basically, there's a way where if two of the same, same images get uploaded, but the URLs are different. And they have one database URL, one URL in their database pointing to the file and they delete the wrong file, that file will then be gone.

Michele Hansen  7:05 
So you're trying to make it sort of human error? Yes, fault tolerant, right? Yeah, they would have, like a timestamp or something to help them differentiate between them, like someone who has, you know, a scren shot ...

]]> Tue, 08 Dec 2020 12:31:13 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2143 Colleen has people using her service...but there's a big drop-off, so Michele and Colleen workshop how to fix that. Also, some exciting news: we were nominated for Best Podcast, Best Hosts, and Best Episode in the MicroConf SaaS Podcast Awards! Vote for us: SaaSPodcastAwards.com Colleen has people using her service...but there's a big drop-off, so Michele and Colleen workshop how to fix that. Also, some exciting news: we were nominated for Best Podcast, Best Hosts, and Best Episode in the MicroConf SaaS Podcast Awards! Vote for u SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Snowballing One Project Into Another 19 19 Snowballing One Project Into Another full 647a3d3b-2e6b-469c-85cf-e0d17e520b2a https://share.transistor.fm/s/36251ff0 Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
So Michelle, I saw that you recently published a blog post a little bit about the founding of your company. And I haven't read it, because I want to hear the story fresh from you. And I, this is something I've actually wanted to talk to you about, frequently, and you've always kind of just been like, Oh, yeah, you know, we just started it. And then it just, you know, happened. So I'm super excited to dive into this with you, especially where I'm coming from, like, where it seems so far away to have a successful SaaS. So tell us a little bit about how you guys got started?

Michele Hansen  0:31 
Yeah, this is something I get questions about, all the time. And I wanted to dive into the story and the numbers a little more. Because I think that's helpful for people when they're getting started, like yourself, to see that you don't have to have success the first day, or the first month, or the first three months or four, six months, really in order to make something work. And then also that if something, you know, does okay, but not great, you can always chase that and snowball it into something else.

Colleen Schnettler  1:10 
So how did you guys get started? What was your very first product?

Michele Hansen  1:15 
Well, my very first product? Or our very first product?

Colleen Schnettler  1:18 
I don't know what gave you the bug, like, let's go back, just let's talk about about you.

Michele Hansen
Oh!

Colleen Schnettler
What was your first, like, What gave you the bug?

Michele Hansen  1:25 
So, so this actually, this isn't in the post, but my first business, if you can call it that was basically a blog that I started with friends, my freshman year of college, we called it an online magazine. And the whole idea of it was college kids from around the country, with different perspectives on politics, all writing about politics together and collaborating together. And that was really one of the first things that introduced me to running something online, in a sort of organized way, because I had little projects before, like, you know, we also started a satire blog at one point, but like, we didn't put our names on it. And it was very much for fun. And like that project, talking about how to use Blogger, and then this other one that we launched, that was a bit more serious, and like something we ended up putting on our resumes, was on WordPress, and just how it happened was I ended up being the person doing all the WordPress admin. So managing the site, and, you know, customizing templates and stuff like that, um, you know, my introduction to coding was MySpace. So HTML, you know, for a certain generation of us was a key skill as a teenager. And that carried over, but I think those projects, my freshman year of college really gave me the bug of like, you create something, and then you get a, like, a reaction from people. And you, people tell you, they enjoyed it. And then and then, you know, just kind of keeps you going like that. And then actually, a year later growing, though, so that blog actually never made any money. We had ads on it, but then I don't know, something happened. And it didn't work out. And we didn't make money. Um, but then we actually ended up turning it into a consulting firm, like a social media consulting firm. So that was when I was 20.

Colleen Schnettler  3:39 
I mean, that was 2010 ish. So that was like before, that was a big thing, right? Social media consulting wasn't the powerhouse it is now.

Michele Hansen  3:47 
Yeah, it really wasn't as well. And so what are our angle was, was reaching out to PR firms that were, you know, very experienced in PR, but didn't know how to use Facebook and Twitter. And that was really where I earned some more business chops, in terms of like, actually, like operating a business and writing proposals and pitching and doing sales and things like that. You know, I'd had a little bit of experience with that, like, you know, when I was a kid, my mom had an art business, and I would spend Saturdays as a teenager helping her sell her art at art and craft shows. But really, in a kind of, you know, a context that is the closest to now, it really wasn't until college. And then we actually made money doing that, but then shut down the business about six months later, because basically, the purpose of the business was to allow us to skip several layers of terrible internships and get to the ones we wanted, faster. So there is an exit strategy from the beginning. And, and so actually, by the time that we made the, Mathias and I made the products that ended up being the one that funded Geocodio, that was actually my third business. Okay. And I think all of those little experiences, you know, really added to just having more comfort with what it takes to launch a product, even if those other efforts were not quite as organized, or structured, as at you know, as the as the projects that Mathias and I have launched together.

Colleen Schnettler  5:38 
Yeah, yeah, well, even you were talking about, you know, back in your college days, like reaching out to ad agencies and things like that, like, for a lot of us who are just starting businesses, this is the first time we've had to do any kind of software sales or sales. Really, I was thinking about that today. Because this is just something that like, I don't do a lot, like, I'm comfortable with people, and I like to talk to people, but like, I'm basically cold emailing everyone who has signed up for my service, to be like, Hey, can I help you? And that's like, a little thing, but just, it's still outside my comfort zone. So you starting those lessons 10-15 years ago, you know, they just compound I'm sure to bring you guys to where you are today.

Michele Hansen  6:20 
Absolutely. I mean, it's totally useful, you know, on Mathias aside to his early projects, one of which was the precursor to when the first one we launched together, you know, he was funding those because he was a magician as a child. And so he had his, like, he was running his own business, like, as of the age of seven or so eight, was when he started performing magic. And so he always had that money to fund, you know, other projects that he wanted to do, or, you know, buying the latest and greatest tools and whatnot. Yeah, it's not just the most recent business, it's a history of having that, as you said that that bug of "Hey, like, this is, this is fun, and I can do it." And also, like, making a ton of mistakes in the process, like accidentally not monetizing our blog. I mean, it was or like, I think we did, but then, you know, some of our friends, like, we had ads on it. And some of our friends knew that if they clicked on them, we would get money. And so they clicked on them. I think we got shut down for having like, suspicious clicks on them or like something else going on. Like, you know, I mean, we were like 19 and idiots. And, you know, but you know, it introduced me to things like that. And it got me you know, more comfortable using a modern web tools like WordPress.

Colleen Schnettler  7:54 
Yeah. So then you guys, you and your husband decided you wanted to start something. And you just use the phrase, the thing that launched Geocodio. So can you tell us a little bit more about that? What was that?

Michele Hansen  8:06 
Yeah. And you make it sound like we just had this idea one day, and we're like, oh, like we're going to launch thing something. And the reality is, is that we were pregnant. And...

]]> Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
So Michelle, I saw that you recently published a blog post a little bit about the founding of your company. And I haven't read it, because I want to hear the story fresh from you. And I, this is something I've actually wanted to talk to you about, frequently, and you've always kind of just been like, Oh, yeah, you know, we just started it. And then it just, you know, happened. So I'm super excited to dive into this with you, especially where I'm coming from, like, where it seems so far away to have a successful SaaS. So tell us a little bit about how you guys got started?

Michele Hansen  0:31 
Yeah, this is something I get questions about, all the time. And I wanted to dive into the story and the numbers a little more. Because I think that's helpful for people when they're getting started, like yourself, to see that you don't have to have success the first day, or the first month, or the first three months or four, six months, really in order to make something work. And then also that if something, you know, does okay, but not great, you can always chase that and snowball it into something else.

Colleen Schnettler  1:10 
So how did you guys get started? What was your very first product?

Michele Hansen  1:15 
Well, my very first product? Or our very first product?

Colleen Schnettler  1:18 
I don't know what gave you the bug, like, let's go back, just let's talk about about you.

Michele Hansen
Oh!

Colleen Schnettler
What was your first, like, What gave you the bug?

Michele Hansen  1:25 
So, so this actually, this isn't in the post, but my first business, if you can call it that was basically a blog that I started with friends, my freshman year of college, we called it an online magazine. And the whole idea of it was college kids from around the country, with different perspectives on politics, all writing about politics together and collaborating together. And that was really one of the first things that introduced me to running something online, in a sort of organized way, because I had little projects before, like, you know, we also started a satire blog at one point, but like, we didn't put our names on it. And it was very much for fun. And like that project, talking about how to use Blogger, and then this other one that we launched, that was a bit more serious, and like something we ended up putting on our resumes, was on WordPress, and just how it happened was I ended up being the person doing all the WordPress admin. So managing the site, and, you know, customizing templates and stuff like that, um, you know, my introduction to coding was MySpace. So HTML, you know, for a certain generation of us was a key skill as a teenager. And that carried over, but I think those projects, my freshman year of college really gave me the bug of like, you create something, and then you get a, like, a reaction from people. And you, people tell you, they enjoyed it. And then and then, you know, just kind of keeps you going like that. And then actually, a year later growing, though, so that blog actually never made any money. We had ads on it, but then I don't know, something happened. And it didn't work out. And we didn't make money. Um, but then we actually ended up turning it into a consulting firm, like a social media consulting firm. So that was when I was 20.

Colleen Schnettler  3:39 
I mean, that was 2010 ish. So that was like before, that was a big thing, right? Social media consulting wasn't the powerhouse it is now.

Michele Hansen  3:47 
Yeah, it really wasn't as well. And so what are our angle was, was reaching out to PR firms that were, you know, very experienced in PR, but didn't know how to use Facebook and Twitter. And that was really where I earned some more business chops, in terms of like, actually, like operating a business and writing proposals and pitching and doing sales and things like that. You know, I'd had a little bit of experience with that, like, you know, when I was a kid, my mom had an art business, and I would spend Saturdays as a teenager helping her sell her art at art and craft shows. But really, in a kind of, you know, a context that is the closest to now, it really wasn't until college. And then we actually made money doing that, but then shut down the business about six months later, because basically, the purpose of the business was to allow us to skip several layers of terrible internships and get to the ones we wanted, faster. So there is an exit strategy from the beginning. And, and so actually, by the time that we made the, Mathias and I made the products that ended up being the one that funded Geocodio, that was actually my third business. Okay. And I think all of those little experiences, you know, really added to just having more comfort with what it takes to launch a product, even if those other efforts were not quite as organized, or structured, as at you know, as the as the projects that Mathias and I have launched together.

Colleen Schnettler  5:38 
Yeah, yeah, well, even you were talking about, you know, back in your college days, like reaching out to ad agencies and things like that, like, for a lot of us who are just starting businesses, this is the first time we've had to do any kind of software sales or sales. Really, I was thinking about that today. Because this is just something that like, I don't do a lot, like, I'm comfortable with people, and I like to talk to people, but like, I'm basically cold emailing everyone who has signed up for my service, to be like, Hey, can I help you? And that's like, a little thing, but just, it's still outside my comfort zone. So you starting those lessons 10-15 years ago, you know, they just compound I'm sure to bring you guys to where you are today.

Michele Hansen  6:20 
Absolutely. I mean, it's totally useful, you know, on Mathias aside to his early projects, one of which was the precursor to when the first one we launched together, you know, he was funding those because he was a magician as a child. And so he had his, like, he was running his own business, like, as of the age of seven or so eight, was when he started performing magic. And so he always had that money to fund, you know, other projects that he wanted to do, or, you know, buying the latest and greatest tools and whatnot. Yeah, it's not just the most recent business, it's a history of having that, as you said that that bug of "Hey, like, this is, this is fun, and I can do it." And also, like, making a ton of mistakes in the process, like accidentally not monetizing our blog. I mean, it was or like, I think we did, but then, you know, some of our friends, like, we had ads on it. And some of our friends knew that if they clicked on them, we would get money. And so they clicked on them. I think we got shut down for having like, suspicious clicks on them or like something else going on. Like, you know, I mean, we were like 19 and idiots. And, you know, but you know, it introduced me to things like that. And it got me you know, more comfortable using a modern web tools like WordPress.

Colleen Schnettler  7:54 
Yeah. So then you guys, you and your husband decided you wanted to start something. And you just use the phrase, the thing that launched Geocodio. So can you tell us a little bit more about that? What was that?

Michele Hansen  8:06 
Yeah. And you make it sound like we just had this idea one day, and we're like, oh, like we're going to launch thing something. And the reality is, is that we were pregnant. And...

]]> Tue, 01 Dec 2020 10:22:38 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2080 When you're bootstrapping, it can he helpful to snowball one project into another until you find something that works. Today we dive into the nitty gritty of how a mobile app funded Geocodio's launch. When you're bootstrapping, it can he helpful to snowball one project into another until you find something that works. Today we dive into the nitty gritty of how a mobile app funded Geocodio's launch. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Choosing a Pricing Model 18 18 Choosing a Pricing Model full 3fd2835a-47fd-4162-bb02-265ab7847590 https://share.transistor.fm/s/b2795424 Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
So one of the things I kind of wanted to talk about was a few weeks ago on the podcast, I sat here and I told you that what I really want is a job where I only have to work nine to five. And I bring that up.

Michele Hansen
Yeah?

Colleen Schnettler
I seems great. But my husband totally called me out on this, he pointed out that I have had jobs where I've only had to work nine to five, and I have quit them all.

Michele Hansen
Really?

Colleen Schnettler
Yes. And so it just got me thinking, you know, as I go on this journey, and I, I tried to get my mental, like my headspace aligned for what I want to do in the future, I really don't want to go back to a corporate job, I think about this side project thing that I'm doing as something that like, I'm trying, and if it doesn't work out, I'll go back to a regular job. But I don't want to do that, like ever. So I think that's just an important like mental space for me to be in like, this is what I want to do, I want to build a business. And so you know what this might be a huge failure. But that doesn't mean I'm going to give up and I'm fortunate and that I can consult like fill in the gaps until I get there. So I follow this VC on Twitter, her name is Elizabeth Yin, and she had this great Twitter thread about marketing and, you know, starting a business, and one of the things she talked about is like, if you're an entrepreneur, that that is a career and some people you know, you can get five to 10 chances to get it right. And sometimes you can be brilliant and get it wrong. And sometimes you can be not so great and get it right. So you just have to keep trying.

But for me, that's a total mental shift of how I think about this process. Like, instead of thinking of this as a thing I do in my free time that might work out, I'm changing my mindset to like, this is the thing I want to do. And right now I can't afford it to do more than I can't afford to do it more than in my air quotes free time. But long term like this is the path I want to be on. So I just wanted to share that because I thought that was like important that, you know, as we go through this process.

Michele Hansen  2:00 
I remember pre-pandemic, you were working on your consulting Monday to Thursday. And then you were devoting Fridays to side projects, getting your own business going. So it was like, like an 80-20 split between consulting and I'm curious, has that shift? I mean, shifted in the last couple of months? Since you you really started focusing on your in an image management service?

Colleen Schnettler  2:29 
Yes, it really has, I think one of the things, you know, almost all developers will say is like software is harder than everyone thinks it is. And it's just like, all of these things you have to do. And you have to do. So I would say I've almost shifted that balance. I'm doing 80% file uploader and 20% consulting, maybe, you know, probably something like that. Maybe two days a week, I'm doing consulting. But I really, the thing is, I think it's important, remember, like, I really enjoy it. Like I really like this side project, I'm really having a good time. And I'm really learning a lot. And so yeah, it's just, I've just been giving it a lot of time. And I feel like you know, that's something if I'm going to try it, I'm going to try it. So that's what I'm doing.

Michele Hansen  3:16 
Something I hear in your voice is how excited you are about what you're working on. And when you mentioned your conversation with your husband about the times you had a nine to five job and how much you hated them, it sounds like there was no passion there. And so yes, the hours are important, but it sounds like something you value is being challenged. And it sounds like you weren't getting any of that challenge or excitement or newness in those nine to five jobs or even really the responsibility maybe that that comes with running your own project, which, you know, we all know in large corporations, it's the hard thing to find.

Colleen Schnettler  4:03 
Yeah, I totally agree. And it, it really hit home for me that what I really want is -- I mean if I had to pick between being bored and being stressed, but like being challenged, I would pick stressed and challenged. I mean, for me that's that's just who I am. That's what I want. I can relatively I don't wanna say easily, but like relatively, you know, painlessly get a job and that's just not what I want, at least for now. At least, you know, for as long as I see it for the next couple years. I have time. Right there's all this internet propaganda that makes it seem like if you don't have you don't start a business and you're not successful in a year, it's never gonna work for you. And like I have time you know, I can just keep keep working on it until something works.

Michele Hansen  4:48 
I think it's really an advantage is having time and being able to be patient, and I saw that Twitter thread you mentioned as well. And you know what stuck out to me from that is that is that your first business may not be your, your business for the long haul, right? And you know, I was actually just writing about this, how we snowballed small mobile app into Geocodio and basically funded it with that. That mobile app made 20 cents its first month.

Colleen Schnettler  5:22 
Wow.

Michele Hansen  5:24 
I know. It's impressive, right. And if we had been set on quitting our full time jobs as soon as possible, we would not have had the patience to go through basically the year and a half it took to get that up going, that app making enough revenue that then we are exposed to the problems that led us to creating Geocodio and then that app funded you Geocodio and then eventually that app [was] surpassed Geocodio. Do. But if we had been impatience, that would not have happened, but at the same time, you know, sort of what you said we were excited by it.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
It was thrilling in a way that we weren't really getting from the rest of our work. And that excitement was enough to carry us through even when the revenue maybe wasn't there.

Colleen Schnettler  6:21 
Yeah. So last week, we talked about me making this software available off of Heroku. Because Heroku is going to make me wait till I have 100 users before I can start charging for it. So remember you, you told me I need to figure out if anyone's going to actually pay for it, which is great advice. Great advice. So I actually sat down. So last week, I kind of like talked in generalities about pricing, but I actually like sat down and tried to figure out how much to charge. And I have no idea like, No, I can't. So I looked at these other competitors. And there's like no consistency in their pricing. I'm -- like, I have no idea. So you have to have the people we talked about are like the big image management companies and their first tier are at $89 and $45, respectively. But there's also an add on on the Heroku marketplace now. The guy just resells S3 buckets. So he doesn't help you upload your files, he literally just gives you an S3 bucket. And he starts at $5. So I feel like there's this huge range. I have no idea like, how should I start with this?

Michele Hansen  7:35 
You have some people you've talked to who asked you if you're planning to make this available off Heroku?

Colleen Schnettler
Yes.

Michele Hansen
Have you asked them what they are currently paying for this, whether that's a service or simply a three are their time? Like, have you gotten a sense of that...

]]> Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
So one of the things I kind of wanted to talk about was a few weeks ago on the podcast, I sat here and I told you that what I really want is a job where I only have to work nine to five. And I bring that up.

Michele Hansen
Yeah?

Colleen Schnettler
I seems great. But my husband totally called me out on this, he pointed out that I have had jobs where I've only had to work nine to five, and I have quit them all.

Michele Hansen
Really?

Colleen Schnettler
Yes. And so it just got me thinking, you know, as I go on this journey, and I, I tried to get my mental, like my headspace aligned for what I want to do in the future, I really don't want to go back to a corporate job, I think about this side project thing that I'm doing as something that like, I'm trying, and if it doesn't work out, I'll go back to a regular job. But I don't want to do that, like ever. So I think that's just an important like mental space for me to be in like, this is what I want to do, I want to build a business. And so you know what this might be a huge failure. But that doesn't mean I'm going to give up and I'm fortunate and that I can consult like fill in the gaps until I get there. So I follow this VC on Twitter, her name is Elizabeth Yin, and she had this great Twitter thread about marketing and, you know, starting a business, and one of the things she talked about is like, if you're an entrepreneur, that that is a career and some people you know, you can get five to 10 chances to get it right. And sometimes you can be brilliant and get it wrong. And sometimes you can be not so great and get it right. So you just have to keep trying.

But for me, that's a total mental shift of how I think about this process. Like, instead of thinking of this as a thing I do in my free time that might work out, I'm changing my mindset to like, this is the thing I want to do. And right now I can't afford it to do more than I can't afford to do it more than in my air quotes free time. But long term like this is the path I want to be on. So I just wanted to share that because I thought that was like important that, you know, as we go through this process.

Michele Hansen  2:00 
I remember pre-pandemic, you were working on your consulting Monday to Thursday. And then you were devoting Fridays to side projects, getting your own business going. So it was like, like an 80-20 split between consulting and I'm curious, has that shift? I mean, shifted in the last couple of months? Since you you really started focusing on your in an image management service?

Colleen Schnettler  2:29 
Yes, it really has, I think one of the things, you know, almost all developers will say is like software is harder than everyone thinks it is. And it's just like, all of these things you have to do. And you have to do. So I would say I've almost shifted that balance. I'm doing 80% file uploader and 20% consulting, maybe, you know, probably something like that. Maybe two days a week, I'm doing consulting. But I really, the thing is, I think it's important, remember, like, I really enjoy it. Like I really like this side project, I'm really having a good time. And I'm really learning a lot. And so yeah, it's just, I've just been giving it a lot of time. And I feel like you know, that's something if I'm going to try it, I'm going to try it. So that's what I'm doing.

Michele Hansen  3:16 
Something I hear in your voice is how excited you are about what you're working on. And when you mentioned your conversation with your husband about the times you had a nine to five job and how much you hated them, it sounds like there was no passion there. And so yes, the hours are important, but it sounds like something you value is being challenged. And it sounds like you weren't getting any of that challenge or excitement or newness in those nine to five jobs or even really the responsibility maybe that that comes with running your own project, which, you know, we all know in large corporations, it's the hard thing to find.

Colleen Schnettler  4:03 
Yeah, I totally agree. And it, it really hit home for me that what I really want is -- I mean if I had to pick between being bored and being stressed, but like being challenged, I would pick stressed and challenged. I mean, for me that's that's just who I am. That's what I want. I can relatively I don't wanna say easily, but like relatively, you know, painlessly get a job and that's just not what I want, at least for now. At least, you know, for as long as I see it for the next couple years. I have time. Right there's all this internet propaganda that makes it seem like if you don't have you don't start a business and you're not successful in a year, it's never gonna work for you. And like I have time you know, I can just keep keep working on it until something works.

Michele Hansen  4:48 
I think it's really an advantage is having time and being able to be patient, and I saw that Twitter thread you mentioned as well. And you know what stuck out to me from that is that is that your first business may not be your, your business for the long haul, right? And you know, I was actually just writing about this, how we snowballed small mobile app into Geocodio and basically funded it with that. That mobile app made 20 cents its first month.

Colleen Schnettler  5:22 
Wow.

Michele Hansen  5:24 
I know. It's impressive, right. And if we had been set on quitting our full time jobs as soon as possible, we would not have had the patience to go through basically the year and a half it took to get that up going, that app making enough revenue that then we are exposed to the problems that led us to creating Geocodio and then that app funded you Geocodio and then eventually that app [was] surpassed Geocodio. Do. But if we had been impatience, that would not have happened, but at the same time, you know, sort of what you said we were excited by it.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
It was thrilling in a way that we weren't really getting from the rest of our work. And that excitement was enough to carry us through even when the revenue maybe wasn't there.

Colleen Schnettler  6:21 
Yeah. So last week, we talked about me making this software available off of Heroku. Because Heroku is going to make me wait till I have 100 users before I can start charging for it. So remember you, you told me I need to figure out if anyone's going to actually pay for it, which is great advice. Great advice. So I actually sat down. So last week, I kind of like talked in generalities about pricing, but I actually like sat down and tried to figure out how much to charge. And I have no idea like, No, I can't. So I looked at these other competitors. And there's like no consistency in their pricing. I'm -- like, I have no idea. So you have to have the people we talked about are like the big image management companies and their first tier are at $89 and $45, respectively. But there's also an add on on the Heroku marketplace now. The guy just resells S3 buckets. So he doesn't help you upload your files, he literally just gives you an S3 bucket. And he starts at $5. So I feel like there's this huge range. I have no idea like, how should I start with this?

Michele Hansen  7:35 
You have some people you've talked to who asked you if you're planning to make this available off Heroku?

Colleen Schnettler
Yes.

Michele Hansen
Have you asked them what they are currently paying for this, whether that's a service or simply a three are their time? Like, have you gotten a sense of that...

]]> Tue, 24 Nov 2020 11:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1808 Colleen and Michele workshop what the pricing model should be for Colleen's SaaS. Colleen and Michele workshop what the pricing model should be for Colleen's SaaS. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Raising and Setting Prices 17 17 Raising and Setting Prices full dc68ffca-de13-4792-9bc6-42754dbbd2cd https://share.transistor.fm/s/58f1ad03 Colleen Schnettler
Hey Software Social listeners! Colleen here. For their first time ever, MicroConf is putting on a SaaS podcast awards. Michele and I would be so honored if you would nominate us at saaspodcastawards.com! And here's today's show.

Michele Hansen  0:02 
So I think I already know what the title of this week's episode is going to be.

Colleen Schnettler  0:08 
Oh, that's funny, because I don't know, please tell me.

Michele Hansen  0:12 
See, normally we don't decide on the title until I've loaded everything into Transistor and cleaned up the transcript and everything else. But I think today is going to be the pricing episode.

Colleen Schnettler  0:24 
Ooh, that sounds fun.

Michele Hansen  0:27 
Because you were saying last week, do you want to talk about pricing today? Right.

Colleen Schnettler  0:30 
I did say that. But I don't know if I'm quite ready yet.

Michele Hansen  0:34 
Well, it's been on my mind a lot this week.

So there's actually can't it kind of came out of a conversation I was having on Twitter yesterday. And just talking about specifically talking about what to do when you raise prices, and and how to treat customers who would win with you for a long time versus business needs to change pricing models or, or increased prices. And then, of course, something that happened recently, which is a company that many of us use, raising their prices on us. And so all of this got me thinking about ways of dealing with prices, and how pricing model itself can be an advantage over competitors, especially entrenched competitors. And then also how there's a lot of advice about pricing. And I think all of that needs to be couched in the specifics of your own business and your own understanding of your customers. So the context here is that stripe is raising prices on their subscriptions product. So basically, you can use, you know, stripe to create your payments. And if you have products set up as subscriptions now, previously, their subscriptions API was free. And when it was announced, I think in 2018, or so the announcement they sent out was basically that it was going to be free forever, and just included in the product. And then this morning, um, this just showed up on Hacker News. I mean, maybe it was yesterday that the post actually went up. And I just saw today that they're now going to be charging a point 5% fee on any subscription, which doesn't sound like a lot. But if you extrapolate that out to making, you know, 1000 hundred thousand a million a year like that, that adds up very quickly. And I think something that's really rubbing people the wrong way is first of all, they told people at the get go that this was going to be included and that they weren't going to charge for it. And second of all, that we never even got an email about it. And we're just finding out about it on Hacker News. Yeah. And so this actually ties into a conversation I was having with Simon Bennett of snap shooter on Twitter yesterday about this sort of idea of quote, unquote, grandfathering pricing.

And I say, quote, unquote, grandfathering, by the way, so I know this is the term that people generally use. But we stopped using that term this summer. Because the concept of grandfathering, that the term comes from, after the Civil War states instituting voting policies that said you could only vote if your grandfather could vote. So which basically disqualified former slaves and their descendants from voting, and I always thought this was just like, one, like, one way the term had been used and wasn't like the origin of it. And so like, you know, once we found that out, we we change the term, how we talk about it to be loyalty discount, which I also think really more communicates what you're giving the customer and makes them feel good about themselves, rather than thinking about relatives and stuff like that.

Um, so anyway, so So Simon was talking about this, because he's saying, you know, I've left so much money on the table by by giving these loyalty discounts by by not raising prices on on old customers, and we're sort of, you know, talking about, but you can get value out of that and other ways like, like as a SaaS company, it's so valuable to have long term, customers who will reliably renew like that, you know, they're already on boarded with your product, the support volume is much, much lower. They like you, they're presumably happy with your product. You know, those are the customers we reach out to when new customers are looking for our customer reference, which especially happens with bigger companies. So, so I want to bring like two different resources that kind of helps us think about this, but then also how we think about them differently. So one of those is an article by Amy hoy, which I feel like I referenced her so much on this podcast that like we have to have her on.

Colleen Schnettler  5:09 
Aren't you guys friends?

Michele Hansen  5:11 
Like Twitter friends? Yeah, I think we like met at MicroConf. Um, yeah, through the twitterverse. So this article, such a great title, One Weird Trick to Raising your Monthly Price Without a Customer Revolt, which is basically what Stripe is looking at right now. And you know, Hacker News is full of people saying, you know, should we migrate off of stripe like up like, all this kind of stuff. So in this article basically goes through, like, you know, you see a company raised prices, there is a revolt, it scares you away from raising prices. The problem with that is that companies may need to raise prices, especially the situation you're in right now, where you may pray something right now. And then it turns out as you learn more about your customers, and what their cadence of needs are, and, and how you know how their behavior needs to be matched with a pricing model, you may need to change things in six months, or a year from now or two years from now, whether that's the actual pricing model itself, or the price levels. And so how do you do that in a way without making people revolt. And so one of the key points she makes, you know, here is that it is possible to raise prices without a revolt, like you don't have to be afraid of that. And there's a good way to do this, I think the way stripe has done it is not a good way, which is raising the prices on something people are already using for free, and then not telling them about it, those are two strikes against you.

One of the most popular ways of doing this, which I think Bugsnag is doing. I think I think we're just talked about this a couple weeks ago, and we I mean, Mathias and I, is that you basically get locked out of new features, so you can keep your price for forever. And I think Basecamp does this as well. But you don't get new features, you don't get new functionality. And so you know, eventually, you know, the percentage of their actual product that you're using is lower and lower and lower. But if you're only doing simple things with a product, and you're happy with the price you're paying, and you don't need more, that can be a really good thing. Another thing is, you know, like designing new plan levels, so you change those those different levels. And, but I think the really important thing to hear, to think about here, you know, your job as a founder, whether that's one who is just starting out or, or like me, or someone wh...

]]> Colleen Schnettler
Hey Software Social listeners! Colleen here. For their first time ever, MicroConf is putting on a SaaS podcast awards. Michele and I would be so honored if you would nominate us at saaspodcastawards.com! And here's today's show.

Michele Hansen  0:02 
So I think I already know what the title of this week's episode is going to be.

Colleen Schnettler  0:08 
Oh, that's funny, because I don't know, please tell me.

Michele Hansen  0:12 
See, normally we don't decide on the title until I've loaded everything into Transistor and cleaned up the transcript and everything else. But I think today is going to be the pricing episode.

Colleen Schnettler  0:24 
Ooh, that sounds fun.

Michele Hansen  0:27 
Because you were saying last week, do you want to talk about pricing today? Right.

Colleen Schnettler  0:30 
I did say that. But I don't know if I'm quite ready yet.

Michele Hansen  0:34 
Well, it's been on my mind a lot this week.

So there's actually can't it kind of came out of a conversation I was having on Twitter yesterday. And just talking about specifically talking about what to do when you raise prices, and and how to treat customers who would win with you for a long time versus business needs to change pricing models or, or increased prices. And then, of course, something that happened recently, which is a company that many of us use, raising their prices on us. And so all of this got me thinking about ways of dealing with prices, and how pricing model itself can be an advantage over competitors, especially entrenched competitors. And then also how there's a lot of advice about pricing. And I think all of that needs to be couched in the specifics of your own business and your own understanding of your customers. So the context here is that stripe is raising prices on their subscriptions product. So basically, you can use, you know, stripe to create your payments. And if you have products set up as subscriptions now, previously, their subscriptions API was free. And when it was announced, I think in 2018, or so the announcement they sent out was basically that it was going to be free forever, and just included in the product. And then this morning, um, this just showed up on Hacker News. I mean, maybe it was yesterday that the post actually went up. And I just saw today that they're now going to be charging a point 5% fee on any subscription, which doesn't sound like a lot. But if you extrapolate that out to making, you know, 1000 hundred thousand a million a year like that, that adds up very quickly. And I think something that's really rubbing people the wrong way is first of all, they told people at the get go that this was going to be included and that they weren't going to charge for it. And second of all, that we never even got an email about it. And we're just finding out about it on Hacker News. Yeah. And so this actually ties into a conversation I was having with Simon Bennett of snap shooter on Twitter yesterday about this sort of idea of quote, unquote, grandfathering pricing.

And I say, quote, unquote, grandfathering, by the way, so I know this is the term that people generally use. But we stopped using that term this summer. Because the concept of grandfathering, that the term comes from, after the Civil War states instituting voting policies that said you could only vote if your grandfather could vote. So which basically disqualified former slaves and their descendants from voting, and I always thought this was just like, one, like, one way the term had been used and wasn't like the origin of it. And so like, you know, once we found that out, we we change the term, how we talk about it to be loyalty discount, which I also think really more communicates what you're giving the customer and makes them feel good about themselves, rather than thinking about relatives and stuff like that.

Um, so anyway, so So Simon was talking about this, because he's saying, you know, I've left so much money on the table by by giving these loyalty discounts by by not raising prices on on old customers, and we're sort of, you know, talking about, but you can get value out of that and other ways like, like as a SaaS company, it's so valuable to have long term, customers who will reliably renew like that, you know, they're already on boarded with your product, the support volume is much, much lower. They like you, they're presumably happy with your product. You know, those are the customers we reach out to when new customers are looking for our customer reference, which especially happens with bigger companies. So, so I want to bring like two different resources that kind of helps us think about this, but then also how we think about them differently. So one of those is an article by Amy hoy, which I feel like I referenced her so much on this podcast that like we have to have her on.

Colleen Schnettler  5:09 
Aren't you guys friends?

Michele Hansen  5:11 
Like Twitter friends? Yeah, I think we like met at MicroConf. Um, yeah, through the twitterverse. So this article, such a great title, One Weird Trick to Raising your Monthly Price Without a Customer Revolt, which is basically what Stripe is looking at right now. And you know, Hacker News is full of people saying, you know, should we migrate off of stripe like up like, all this kind of stuff. So in this article basically goes through, like, you know, you see a company raised prices, there is a revolt, it scares you away from raising prices. The problem with that is that companies may need to raise prices, especially the situation you're in right now, where you may pray something right now. And then it turns out as you learn more about your customers, and what their cadence of needs are, and, and how you know how their behavior needs to be matched with a pricing model, you may need to change things in six months, or a year from now or two years from now, whether that's the actual pricing model itself, or the price levels. And so how do you do that in a way without making people revolt. And so one of the key points she makes, you know, here is that it is possible to raise prices without a revolt, like you don't have to be afraid of that. And there's a good way to do this, I think the way stripe has done it is not a good way, which is raising the prices on something people are already using for free, and then not telling them about it, those are two strikes against you.

One of the most popular ways of doing this, which I think Bugsnag is doing. I think I think we're just talked about this a couple weeks ago, and we I mean, Mathias and I, is that you basically get locked out of new features, so you can keep your price for forever. And I think Basecamp does this as well. But you don't get new features, you don't get new functionality. And so you know, eventually, you know, the percentage of their actual product that you're using is lower and lower and lower. But if you're only doing simple things with a product, and you're happy with the price you're paying, and you don't need more, that can be a really good thing. Another thing is, you know, like designing new plan levels, so you change those those different levels. And, but I think the really important thing to hear, to think about here, you know, your job as a founder, whether that's one who is just starting out or, or like me, or someone wh...

]]> Tue, 17 Nov 2020 11:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2340 Colleen and Michele talk about how to (and how not to) raise prices -- and think through how to set them in the first place for Colleen's new product. Colleen and Michele talk about how to (and how not to) raise prices -- and think through how to set them in the first place for Colleen's new product. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Who's the villain? 16 16 Who's the villain? full 8a70f3f7-aeb7-4343-ae9e-4c56d2934246 https://share.transistor.fm/s/a370f8c4 Michele Hansen  0:01 
Can I ask you an honest question?

Colleen Schnettler  0:03 
Of course, I love honest questions.

Michele Hansen  0:05 
Did you actually get any work done this week?

Colleen Schnettler  0:09 
Oh, my goodness. So it has been very challenging. For me to focus this week, I've really struggled with it. How about you?

Michele Hansen  0:19 
Between, you know, all of the checking Twitter and phone banking and everything else that has consumed this week. I have gotten some things done, though. Weirdly enough, things that require deep thinking and are complicated and less so tasks, which is really surprising because for me, as an ADD person, I tend to find that it's easier for me to churn out tasks when I'm having trouble focusing rather than thinking through something complicated, but instead, my brain is doing the opposite. And everything is just crazy this week.

Colleen Schnettler  1:01 
Yeah, I have found that I did better this week, like a deep work as well. I mean, I ended up working almost every night this week. And it was partially because I felt like it, but I think a lot of that too, was just like to give me something to focus on, so I didn't have to worry about everything else going on.

Michele Hansen  1:21 
I admit I've been spending more time on hobbies this week too. On Tuesday afternoon, I ended up spending a couple of hours sewing masks with my daughter because I just I couldn't be anywhere near a computer. Like I knew that if I was at my computer, ostensively replying to emails and everything else I would be looking at the news constantly.

But so that thinking I did do, is was working through this big, complicated thing that we're dealing with right now that some listeners have asked us about, which is this whole moving to Denmark thing.

Colleen Schnettler  1:56 
That's big. Yeah, it's a big deal.

Michele Hansen  1:58 
Yes. And a big deal of that is how it relates to the business, both how it relates to our US business, and then setting up a business here. So one of the big things to figure out is like, obviously, our business address needs to change, right. So before it was our house, it can't be our house anymore. So one of the tools we're going to use, which seems like a lot of people who are running remote companies who are US citizens, but outside the country, or even non US citizens running from outside the country, a tool called Earth Class Mail, which I hadn't heard of until six months ago and has been so awesome. And you basically just get a mailbox, you can send things to. Some of them are PO boxes, some of them look more like a real address, you know, like a suite number instead. But the big thing we're trying to figure out, which relates to the mail, too, is our incorporation in the US and whether we have to change that.

Colleen Schnettler  3:00 
Yeah, this seems like a really complicated topic. So your mail, your Earth Mail, is that a PO box in Denmark that you physically access? Or is it just like a fake address to use on business documents?

Michele Hansen  3:12 
So it's a virtual address that we use to receive mail both personally and business in the US. So we're having...

Colleen Schnettler  3:20 
But where does the actual mail go? Where does the physical mail do it?

Michele Hansen  3:24 
So it goes to a PO box in DC, and then it actually gets shipped to Earth Class Mail's facility in Beaverton, Oregon, and then they scan it. So we basically get all of our mail as email. So whenever someone sends us a letter, or even like, we can even deposit checks like that, like it'll scan the contents of an envelope and tell us when there's a check in it. And then we can deposit it. And it you know, I mean, it takes like a week or two, but it's like, other than that, what would we do? So currently, that's going to DC, but our business is registered in Virginia. And so what I've been trying to figure out is do we need to stay incorporated in Virginia? Or do we need to go through the process of dissolving our Virginia Corporation and then reincorporating in another state that is more friendly for remote businesses?

Colleen Schnettler  4:19 
Okay, first question, do you have to be incorporated in the United States at all?

Michele Hansen  4:24 
Yeah, I think for a lot of the services we use, like in our insurance and everything else, like it makes sense to probably -- what we're going to do is have a US company, and then just have a Danish subsidiary, but basically only for payroll purposes. That is at least according to our Danish accountants, though, our conversations with them have been somewhat delayed because our accountant and her entire family got COVID.

Colleen Schnettler  4:45 
Oh!

Michele Hansen  4:46 
She's doing better now. Thank God. Yeah, it's been. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't hear from her for a couple of weeks. And we're like, why? And then, oh, my gosh, and we felt like absolutely terrible for wondering why she hadn't followed up with us.

Colleen Schnettler  5:00 
So my first question not knowing a lot about taxes or business and corporations, why wouldn't you incorporate in a state like Florida that doesn't have state taxes? So that's income tax, isn't it?

Michele Hansen  5:10 
Yeah. So that's, that's personal income tax. I mean, so so this, this decision matters. What you decide to do is different based on your situation, because we're in Denmark, and we're going to be end up paying so much in taxes here that we're not going to have any US tax liability, it doesn't really matter a lot, we still have to file taxes, but you know, that the tax rate here is, you know, starts at 42%, basically. So, um, so actually was the way I looked into this, right. So, so in Virginia...Virginia has two really annoying taxes for businesses. So the first one is the business tangible property tax, where they will tax every piece of equipment that you use for the business. For us, that meant desk chairs, and desks and computers and everything else, and you have to pay sales tax on those every year. However, we won't have any physical presence in Virginia. So that won't be a problem. The other one we've been trying to figure out is, do we have to pay the what is called the B Paul tax or the business professional, an occupational licensing tax, which was instituted to pay for the war of 1812. And is still here?

Colleen Schnettler
Wow.

Michele Hansen
Yes, yeah. It's actually it's really funny. Like, looking into the into all of the rules for that tax. It lists out all the possible Aki occupations. And town crier is listed as one of the possible occupations. Wow, he just says a lot. And the most grating thing about that tax is that it's a gross receipts tax, which means it's based on total revenue, so you don't get to deduct your expenses from it. Now, of course, the tax rate is very low as because it's such a broad tax. But this is also why economists hate this tax. Because it's so broad and was supposed to be for a war 200 years ago, and it's just stuck around magically. Trying to figure out if we would still be liable for this, if we're incorporated in Virginia. Seems like maybe not. But just in case, I've been kind of running down some rabbit holes of, to your question, should we change our state of incorporation, which is a process.

And so I consulted a couple of different places for this. And one that I found kind of helpful, is the service called

]]> Michele Hansen  0:01 
Can I ask you an honest question?

Colleen Schnettler  0:03 
Of course, I love honest questions.

Michele Hansen  0:05 
Did you actually get any work done this week?

Colleen Schnettler  0:09 
Oh, my goodness. So it has been very challenging. For me to focus this week, I've really struggled with it. How about you?

Michele Hansen  0:19 
Between, you know, all of the checking Twitter and phone banking and everything else that has consumed this week. I have gotten some things done, though. Weirdly enough, things that require deep thinking and are complicated and less so tasks, which is really surprising because for me, as an ADD person, I tend to find that it's easier for me to churn out tasks when I'm having trouble focusing rather than thinking through something complicated, but instead, my brain is doing the opposite. And everything is just crazy this week.

Colleen Schnettler  1:01 
Yeah, I have found that I did better this week, like a deep work as well. I mean, I ended up working almost every night this week. And it was partially because I felt like it, but I think a lot of that too, was just like to give me something to focus on, so I didn't have to worry about everything else going on.

Michele Hansen  1:21 
I admit I've been spending more time on hobbies this week too. On Tuesday afternoon, I ended up spending a couple of hours sewing masks with my daughter because I just I couldn't be anywhere near a computer. Like I knew that if I was at my computer, ostensively replying to emails and everything else I would be looking at the news constantly.

But so that thinking I did do, is was working through this big, complicated thing that we're dealing with right now that some listeners have asked us about, which is this whole moving to Denmark thing.

Colleen Schnettler  1:56 
That's big. Yeah, it's a big deal.

Michele Hansen  1:58 
Yes. And a big deal of that is how it relates to the business, both how it relates to our US business, and then setting up a business here. So one of the big things to figure out is like, obviously, our business address needs to change, right. So before it was our house, it can't be our house anymore. So one of the tools we're going to use, which seems like a lot of people who are running remote companies who are US citizens, but outside the country, or even non US citizens running from outside the country, a tool called Earth Class Mail, which I hadn't heard of until six months ago and has been so awesome. And you basically just get a mailbox, you can send things to. Some of them are PO boxes, some of them look more like a real address, you know, like a suite number instead. But the big thing we're trying to figure out, which relates to the mail, too, is our incorporation in the US and whether we have to change that.

Colleen Schnettler  3:00 
Yeah, this seems like a really complicated topic. So your mail, your Earth Mail, is that a PO box in Denmark that you physically access? Or is it just like a fake address to use on business documents?

Michele Hansen  3:12 
So it's a virtual address that we use to receive mail both personally and business in the US. So we're having...

Colleen Schnettler  3:20 
But where does the actual mail go? Where does the physical mail do it?

Michele Hansen  3:24 
So it goes to a PO box in DC, and then it actually gets shipped to Earth Class Mail's facility in Beaverton, Oregon, and then they scan it. So we basically get all of our mail as email. So whenever someone sends us a letter, or even like, we can even deposit checks like that, like it'll scan the contents of an envelope and tell us when there's a check in it. And then we can deposit it. And it you know, I mean, it takes like a week or two, but it's like, other than that, what would we do? So currently, that's going to DC, but our business is registered in Virginia. And so what I've been trying to figure out is do we need to stay incorporated in Virginia? Or do we need to go through the process of dissolving our Virginia Corporation and then reincorporating in another state that is more friendly for remote businesses?

Colleen Schnettler  4:19 
Okay, first question, do you have to be incorporated in the United States at all?

Michele Hansen  4:24 
Yeah, I think for a lot of the services we use, like in our insurance and everything else, like it makes sense to probably -- what we're going to do is have a US company, and then just have a Danish subsidiary, but basically only for payroll purposes. That is at least according to our Danish accountants, though, our conversations with them have been somewhat delayed because our accountant and her entire family got COVID.

Colleen Schnettler  4:45 
Oh!

Michele Hansen  4:46 
She's doing better now. Thank God. Yeah, it's been. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't hear from her for a couple of weeks. And we're like, why? And then, oh, my gosh, and we felt like absolutely terrible for wondering why she hadn't followed up with us.

Colleen Schnettler  5:00 
So my first question not knowing a lot about taxes or business and corporations, why wouldn't you incorporate in a state like Florida that doesn't have state taxes? So that's income tax, isn't it?

Michele Hansen  5:10 
Yeah. So that's, that's personal income tax. I mean, so so this, this decision matters. What you decide to do is different based on your situation, because we're in Denmark, and we're going to be end up paying so much in taxes here that we're not going to have any US tax liability, it doesn't really matter a lot, we still have to file taxes, but you know, that the tax rate here is, you know, starts at 42%, basically. So, um, so actually was the way I looked into this, right. So, so in Virginia...Virginia has two really annoying taxes for businesses. So the first one is the business tangible property tax, where they will tax every piece of equipment that you use for the business. For us, that meant desk chairs, and desks and computers and everything else, and you have to pay sales tax on those every year. However, we won't have any physical presence in Virginia. So that won't be a problem. The other one we've been trying to figure out is, do we have to pay the what is called the B Paul tax or the business professional, an occupational licensing tax, which was instituted to pay for the war of 1812. And is still here?

Colleen Schnettler
Wow.

Michele Hansen
Yes, yeah. It's actually it's really funny. Like, looking into the into all of the rules for that tax. It lists out all the possible Aki occupations. And town crier is listed as one of the possible occupations. Wow, he just says a lot. And the most grating thing about that tax is that it's a gross receipts tax, which means it's based on total revenue, so you don't get to deduct your expenses from it. Now, of course, the tax rate is very low as because it's such a broad tax. But this is also why economists hate this tax. Because it's so broad and was supposed to be for a war 200 years ago, and it's just stuck around magically. Trying to figure out if we would still be liable for this, if we're incorporated in Virginia. Seems like maybe not. But just in case, I've been kind of running down some rabbit holes of, to your question, should we change our state of incorporation, which is a process.

And so I consulted a couple of different places for this. And one that I found kind of helpful, is the service called

]]> Tue, 10 Nov 2020 12:00:00 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1900 Somehow, despite a tumultuous week, Michele and Colleen still get things done. Michele talks about figuring out business incorporation from abroad, and Colleen talks through finding the "villain." Somehow, despite a tumultuous week, Michele and Colleen still get things done. Michele talks about figuring out business incorporation from abroad, and Colleen talks through finding the "villain." SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Founder/Business/Lifecycle Fit (aka "The Feelings Episode") 15 15 Founder/Business/Lifecycle Fit (aka "The Feelings Episode") full b4986fce-3805-4347-9426-e217f57f10e5 https://share.transistor.fm/s/af1979c4 Michele Hansen  0:00 
So last week, Colleen, you said something to me that really seemed to resonate and jump out at a lot of our listeners. And that was that you aspire to have a business that is in the position that our business is in, but that you don't want our lifestyle.

Colleen Schnettler  0:23 
Yeah, so I felt a little bit like a jerk when I was editing the podcast. And I heard myself say that, and I almost cut it out. But it's true. And I'd love to discuss some of that with you. Because kind of my vision is what I want as a solo founder is pretty specific. And you guys seem to be in a whole different place than what I envision my success looking like.

Michele Hansen  0:49 
Yeah, and I would love to talk about that. And I'm so glad you didn't cut it out, because it was echoing in my head all weekend. And I really appreciated your honesty about that.

Colleen Schnettler  1:02 
Okay, if you say so. Still feel mean!

Michele Hansen  1:06 
I appreciated it. And it really seems to resonate with a lot of people listening to that. The fit of founder and business and lifestyle is so important. And I think you this is something that is worth diving into, because it's not just about the founder and the business fit, having the expertise and the sort of know how and you know, environmental knowledge and whatnot to make a business happen. It's also about having a business that fits the kind of lifestyle that you have, or that you want. And you know, Lord knows I hate the term lifestyle business. Right. But that is one of the things about this is you basically get to choose in a way, what kind of life you're going to have. And I think that applies even if you have a corporate job, right? Like, do you want a lifestyle where you are flying to a client site four days a week and barely see your kids? Like, that's a lifestyle, that's a lifestyle choice. Do you want a business where you're home, but you are maybe managing email over dinner, which you may do as a solo founder, or you may do working in a corporate job somewhere. I think this is really worth diving into and the fact that like my business, and then the way we run our business may not be something that you want. And in an environment where we're conditioned to look at other people. And there's this expectation that if people are successful, everyone wants to emulate what they do. That's not always the case. And we need to leave way more space as a culture and as a group of people that one person's success is not somebody else's success, and may even from a certain perspective look like failure because of compromises they're making in order to get to that success.

Colleen Schnettler  3:20 
Sure. So my first question for you is, I feel like Geocodio kind of built up around your family. And it seems like, you know, you guys got on a trajectory where things moved pretty quickly. After you got a foothold in the market. What do YOU want? Like if you could go back and and think about how you would design your business that fit into your life that provided you the opportunities you you want, like, what would that look like for you?

Michele Hansen  3:53 
That's a really interesting question. I've never thought about that. I think partly because, you know, I wonder if we had changed something, maybe things wouldn't have worked out as they did. Like, there's certainly things along the way that were difficult. But I don't know if, if I would choose to not do those things or do things differently. I will say that we -- Yeah, we it has grown up around our family. You know, we launched the business when our daughter was four months old. A big reason why we even got started launching our side projects in the first place is because we had the bejesus scared out of us looking at the cost of daycare. I mean, it's more expensive than college in a majority of states. And you know, being pregnant and realizing that got us us supposed to be like, we can't be spending our weekends watching Game of Thrones anymore like we got to start launching stuff because...

Colleen
Yeah

Michele Hansen  4:45 
this is this is you know, we're gonna be pretty close to paycheck to paycheck without something else happening, you know, and, and I remember just like us talking to each other and being like, we can kill it at work, but we're Still not going to get the kind of raises we would need in order to comfortably afford, you know, $20-25,000 a year in daycare alone, plus all the other expenses that go with having a child. Like, it's like we knew it would be expensive, but what can we just, you know, until we started researching it, like, we just didn't have a concept for how bad it would be. And, and you know, that first year, like, I don't even know how much we made, but I think it was barely enough so that we didn't get charged a maintenance fee on our business bank account. So not very much. So we see we wasn't at the point where we're really making that, you know, quote, unquote, like, daycare level amount of money for a while. Um, yeah, our family absolutely grew up around it.

And I think I probably would have given myself more permission to not feel like things had to be handled immediately. In terms of like customer support, things like that were happening at night or dinnertime. But at the same time, for every time that there was something blowing up on Intercom that we need to deal with during dinner, there was something blowing up on Slack at our regular day jobs that was also getting in the way of family life. I don't think our business has gotten in the way of family life more than a, quote unquote, full time job would in fact, I think it's much more flexible, because it means we can take time off or you know, snow days aren't as much of a big deal, of course, I mean, lockdown was just awful for everyone. I mean, I guess now we sort of stare it down again. But I feel like I'm rambling.

Colleen Schnettler  6:45 
So try this on for size. So you've done that. And now you're in this position where you have said to me privately and on this podcast, like growth is not really a primary motivator, you don't want to be acquired, you don't really care how quickly you're growing. So what do you want now? So you kind of done the hard like trenches work to get you in a comfortable position? Like, are you are you happy with the status quo? Like, do you have ambitions to if it's not to grow to work less? Or what are you thinking now.

Michele Hansen  7:20 
So we do have goals, they're just not other people's goals that you would normally hear about, I guess. So I set some goals last year after doing my sort of semi-annual customer analysis from from a high level of our data. So basically, I, I look at all of our customers like a portfolio. And then I evaluate that based on industry and company size. And some other factors, just basically just like an investor would a stock portfolio, and try to see how it's balanced, you know, making sure that we're not getting too much of our revenue from one individual customer, or even from the top 90%, or the top 80% of customers. And so trying to manage for different risks that way, is more how I think about goals. We will have goals based around industry. So for example, this time last year, maybe like last summer, looking at our portfolio of customers, I realized, like 20% of our customers were in real estate. And I felt like that was too much. And so, no, it wasn't purposely going to try to get rid of those customers or anything like that. But instead, I was like, you know, I would like to focus on some industries that are maybe more stable than real estate and try to focus my marketing efforts and sales efforts on industries that are more stable than real estate. So we made a co...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:00 
So last week, Colleen, you said something to me that really seemed to resonate and jump out at a lot of our listeners. And that was that you aspire to have a business that is in the position that our business is in, but that you don't want our lifestyle.

Colleen Schnettler  0:23 
Yeah, so I felt a little bit like a jerk when I was editing the podcast. And I heard myself say that, and I almost cut it out. But it's true. And I'd love to discuss some of that with you. Because kind of my vision is what I want as a solo founder is pretty specific. And you guys seem to be in a whole different place than what I envision my success looking like.

Michele Hansen  0:49 
Yeah, and I would love to talk about that. And I'm so glad you didn't cut it out, because it was echoing in my head all weekend. And I really appreciated your honesty about that.

Colleen Schnettler  1:02 
Okay, if you say so. Still feel mean!

Michele Hansen  1:06 
I appreciated it. And it really seems to resonate with a lot of people listening to that. The fit of founder and business and lifestyle is so important. And I think you this is something that is worth diving into, because it's not just about the founder and the business fit, having the expertise and the sort of know how and you know, environmental knowledge and whatnot to make a business happen. It's also about having a business that fits the kind of lifestyle that you have, or that you want. And you know, Lord knows I hate the term lifestyle business. Right. But that is one of the things about this is you basically get to choose in a way, what kind of life you're going to have. And I think that applies even if you have a corporate job, right? Like, do you want a lifestyle where you are flying to a client site four days a week and barely see your kids? Like, that's a lifestyle, that's a lifestyle choice. Do you want a business where you're home, but you are maybe managing email over dinner, which you may do as a solo founder, or you may do working in a corporate job somewhere. I think this is really worth diving into and the fact that like my business, and then the way we run our business may not be something that you want. And in an environment where we're conditioned to look at other people. And there's this expectation that if people are successful, everyone wants to emulate what they do. That's not always the case. And we need to leave way more space as a culture and as a group of people that one person's success is not somebody else's success, and may even from a certain perspective look like failure because of compromises they're making in order to get to that success.

Colleen Schnettler  3:20 
Sure. So my first question for you is, I feel like Geocodio kind of built up around your family. And it seems like, you know, you guys got on a trajectory where things moved pretty quickly. After you got a foothold in the market. What do YOU want? Like if you could go back and and think about how you would design your business that fit into your life that provided you the opportunities you you want, like, what would that look like for you?

Michele Hansen  3:53 
That's a really interesting question. I've never thought about that. I think partly because, you know, I wonder if we had changed something, maybe things wouldn't have worked out as they did. Like, there's certainly things along the way that were difficult. But I don't know if, if I would choose to not do those things or do things differently. I will say that we -- Yeah, we it has grown up around our family. You know, we launched the business when our daughter was four months old. A big reason why we even got started launching our side projects in the first place is because we had the bejesus scared out of us looking at the cost of daycare. I mean, it's more expensive than college in a majority of states. And you know, being pregnant and realizing that got us us supposed to be like, we can't be spending our weekends watching Game of Thrones anymore like we got to start launching stuff because...

Colleen
Yeah

Michele Hansen  4:45 
this is this is you know, we're gonna be pretty close to paycheck to paycheck without something else happening, you know, and, and I remember just like us talking to each other and being like, we can kill it at work, but we're Still not going to get the kind of raises we would need in order to comfortably afford, you know, $20-25,000 a year in daycare alone, plus all the other expenses that go with having a child. Like, it's like we knew it would be expensive, but what can we just, you know, until we started researching it, like, we just didn't have a concept for how bad it would be. And, and you know, that first year, like, I don't even know how much we made, but I think it was barely enough so that we didn't get charged a maintenance fee on our business bank account. So not very much. So we see we wasn't at the point where we're really making that, you know, quote, unquote, like, daycare level amount of money for a while. Um, yeah, our family absolutely grew up around it.

And I think I probably would have given myself more permission to not feel like things had to be handled immediately. In terms of like customer support, things like that were happening at night or dinnertime. But at the same time, for every time that there was something blowing up on Intercom that we need to deal with during dinner, there was something blowing up on Slack at our regular day jobs that was also getting in the way of family life. I don't think our business has gotten in the way of family life more than a, quote unquote, full time job would in fact, I think it's much more flexible, because it means we can take time off or you know, snow days aren't as much of a big deal, of course, I mean, lockdown was just awful for everyone. I mean, I guess now we sort of stare it down again. But I feel like I'm rambling.

Colleen Schnettler  6:45 
So try this on for size. So you've done that. And now you're in this position where you have said to me privately and on this podcast, like growth is not really a primary motivator, you don't want to be acquired, you don't really care how quickly you're growing. So what do you want now? So you kind of done the hard like trenches work to get you in a comfortable position? Like, are you are you happy with the status quo? Like, do you have ambitions to if it's not to grow to work less? Or what are you thinking now.

Michele Hansen  7:20 
So we do have goals, they're just not other people's goals that you would normally hear about, I guess. So I set some goals last year after doing my sort of semi-annual customer analysis from from a high level of our data. So basically, I, I look at all of our customers like a portfolio. And then I evaluate that based on industry and company size. And some other factors, just basically just like an investor would a stock portfolio, and try to see how it's balanced, you know, making sure that we're not getting too much of our revenue from one individual customer, or even from the top 90%, or the top 80% of customers. And so trying to manage for different risks that way, is more how I think about goals. We will have goals based around industry. So for example, this time last year, maybe like last summer, looking at our portfolio of customers, I realized, like 20% of our customers were in real estate. And I felt like that was too much. And so, no, it wasn't purposely going to try to get rid of those customers or anything like that. But instead, I was like, you know, I would like to focus on some industries that are maybe more stable than real estate and try to focus my marketing efforts and sales efforts on industries that are more stable than real estate. So we made a co...

]]> Tue, 03 Nov 2020 08:45:45 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2082 Michele and Colleen dive into striking a balance between business, founder, and lifestyle fit, and the trade-offs of running your own business versus working for someone else. Michele and Colleen dive into striking a balance between business, founder, and lifestyle fit, and the trade-offs of running your own business versus working for someone else. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Vendor Lock-In, Heroes, and Timezones 14 14 Vendor Lock-In, Heroes, and Timezones full cb36213e-9319-4970-9ee9-d5b532691b55 https://share.transistor.fm/s/c62b0f9b Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
So for those who are just joining us, I am in the process of building my first software business.

It is a small software widget that I am trying to sell. And so right now it's invitation only in the Heroku marketplace. So I was sharing this idea I have, and it's a product, with a friend of mine. And he brought up an interesting point. And I don't think of what I'm building as a commodity, right? We all want to feel special. But at the end of the day, I am repackaging cloud storage and selling cloud storage. So we were discussing, moving to a low a more low cost storage provider. And the storage providers claimed to have S3 compatible API's, of course, like it didn't, it wasn't really compatible. So I'm trying to determine if it's worth my time to sort it out. I mean, these guys are so much cheaper than AWS. And there's two big players in this space right now, in the file management space, they can't move to a low a lower cost storage provider, right? They're like entrenched, but if I do it now, then I can just be cheaper than everyone else.

Michele Hansen  1:13 
That can be an advantage.

Colleen Schnettler
Right?

Michele Hansen
Especially in a commodity space.

Colleen Schnettler  1:17 
Right? So I again, like I don't like to think I'm a commodity, but really, it's like cloud storage with a bow on it. Right? Like, I'm like --

Michele Hansen
It's okay to be a commodity. We're a commodity.

Colleen Schnettler  1:23 
it doesn't feel special. I guess you are.

Michele Hansen  1:28 
There's some businesses that are commodities. And I think it's just knowing what you are, and then knowing how to compete in that space, right. And in a commodity business, if you have an operational cost advantage over the competitors, even if those competitors are huge companies, then that can be an advantage that you can build on.

Colleen Schnettler  1:52 
Yeah, and I think like these, these low-cost storage providers, they just released these S3 compatible API's, like last year. So I feel like this is kind of a untapped opportunity is that no one is really, as far as I can tell, no one's wrapping them up and reselling them yet. And they're much cheaper. So AWS, you're looking at point, you're looking at two cents a gig on AWS on this other provider, you're looking at .005 cents a gig,

Michele Hansen
Wow.

Colleen Schnettler
A lot cheaper. Of course, you know, when you don't have a lot of storage, like I don't right now. It's like, Oh, it's like $5 versus $3. But if I want to really be a storage provider, like this could be a cool opportunity. And I was thinking about the solutions that are already out there are very, very image heavy. And I had been thinking that way, because I approach this problem as an image problem is well, but there seems to be a hole in the market for other file types.

Michele Hansen  2:47 
Like PDFs, CSVs, and stuff?

Colleen Schnettler  2:50 
Yeah, there's doesn't seem to be anyone kind of like helping or optimizing for -- Yeah, I mean, someone, the person I was on a call with wants to host static webpages on it, custom 404 pages. So there seems like there might be an interesting hole in this space to handle non image files. And to handle image files at a cheaper price point. I've been kind of thinking is like, I'm like the Southwest of image management, the airline, like bare bones, I don't resize your images for you. I don't give you user crapping on the front end, but I deliver a simple service with no frills. And it's easy to implement.

Michele Hansen  3:27 
I think that's a good place to start. And you're kind of reminding me of where we started with Geocodio -- even when you said Southwest, you know, my first thought was not airlines. But you know, deserts and our branding from the beginning was Geocodio, rhymes with rodeo and we had all of this Southwest style branding.

If you can find a way to be cheaper than everybody else, and be easier than everybody else like that worked really, really well for us and then differentiating into other adjacent categories that are neglected by major providers. And the way someone described this to me once, you know, I was like, "Well, what if you know, one of the big companies add that adds this and then we're out of business?" If you're doing a business, that's $500,000 a year, a million dollars a year, that's not a big enough opportunity for the big companies to go after it. And if there are people in that space who have something they need, and they're not satisfied by the option, the current options, and you can build a business that makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. That is a great income for a one person company and not really big enough to be a threat to any larger company so that they might go into your space, it can be a good spot to be in.

Colleen Schnettler  4:49 
Yeah, that would be an amazing spot to be in. So the only thing I have a little bit of a psychological block here because I have worked on the technical side of this for quite a while now. And now I have to potentially learn a new API to integrate with these third party storage providers. And I'm just like, I started doing it yesterday. And I was just like, I don't want to, like I'm tired. So convince me that it's worth it. It's worth it to do now. Right? Like I should do it.

Michele Hansen  5:16 
Well, let's talk about the downsides too.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
Sounds like your brain is in downsides mode. So one of the risks here is a vendor lock in risk, right?

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
Like, if you switch vendors.

Colleen Schnettler
Yes.

Michele Hansen
Because they're six times cheaper, if they raise their prices by six times, that creates a lot of risk for you that one of these vendors, raising their prices, or changing their policies, like you are dependent on another company to make your company happen. Now, there's a lot of people who build their companies off of another company's platform. But you're, you're creating substantial risk there.

Colleen Schnettler  6:03 
But I have the same risk if I stay on AWS, and I feel like AWS is way more likely to raise their prices, because everyone is locked. Not everyone. But they have such a lock on people, right? Because they feel more reliable. I was actually looking at the stats. So my first thought was, maybe these other cloud storage providers aren't, don't have the same kind of uptime AWS does, but they do! People act like AWS has 100% uptime. And they don't always so they just have this reputation because they're the biggest player in this space. But either way, I've got a lock in, right, like I can't, I mean, I can't, I'm going to do a probably a mirror service. So I'll use two storage providers to help but ultimately, my primary storage provider is going to be locked in. I think one of the concerns, though, is these companies. I mean, they've been around for a while, like they're not materializing out of thin air. But as I mentioned, they've only had these S3 compatible API's for like a year. So I'm putting a lot of trust in a company that doesn't have the AWS level reputation.

Michele Hansen  7:02 
And that's another risk too. Like, we get this question, sometimes from customers too, right, because they're like, why would we go with you over a big company? Like, how do we know you're not just going to shut down tomorrow?

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
And when I dive deeper into that question, oftentimes something that's driving that fear is, they have integrated a critical vendor,...

]]> Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
So for those who are just joining us, I am in the process of building my first software business.

It is a small software widget that I am trying to sell. And so right now it's invitation only in the Heroku marketplace. So I was sharing this idea I have, and it's a product, with a friend of mine. And he brought up an interesting point. And I don't think of what I'm building as a commodity, right? We all want to feel special. But at the end of the day, I am repackaging cloud storage and selling cloud storage. So we were discussing, moving to a low a more low cost storage provider. And the storage providers claimed to have S3 compatible API's, of course, like it didn't, it wasn't really compatible. So I'm trying to determine if it's worth my time to sort it out. I mean, these guys are so much cheaper than AWS. And there's two big players in this space right now, in the file management space, they can't move to a low a lower cost storage provider, right? They're like entrenched, but if I do it now, then I can just be cheaper than everyone else.

Michele Hansen  1:13 
That can be an advantage.

Colleen Schnettler
Right?

Michele Hansen
Especially in a commodity space.

Colleen Schnettler  1:17 
Right? So I again, like I don't like to think I'm a commodity, but really, it's like cloud storage with a bow on it. Right? Like, I'm like --

Michele Hansen
It's okay to be a commodity. We're a commodity.

Colleen Schnettler  1:23 
it doesn't feel special. I guess you are.

Michele Hansen  1:28 
There's some businesses that are commodities. And I think it's just knowing what you are, and then knowing how to compete in that space, right. And in a commodity business, if you have an operational cost advantage over the competitors, even if those competitors are huge companies, then that can be an advantage that you can build on.

Colleen Schnettler  1:52 
Yeah, and I think like these, these low-cost storage providers, they just released these S3 compatible API's, like last year. So I feel like this is kind of a untapped opportunity is that no one is really, as far as I can tell, no one's wrapping them up and reselling them yet. And they're much cheaper. So AWS, you're looking at point, you're looking at two cents a gig on AWS on this other provider, you're looking at .005 cents a gig,

Michele Hansen
Wow.

Colleen Schnettler
A lot cheaper. Of course, you know, when you don't have a lot of storage, like I don't right now. It's like, Oh, it's like $5 versus $3. But if I want to really be a storage provider, like this could be a cool opportunity. And I was thinking about the solutions that are already out there are very, very image heavy. And I had been thinking that way, because I approach this problem as an image problem is well, but there seems to be a hole in the market for other file types.

Michele Hansen  2:47 
Like PDFs, CSVs, and stuff?

Colleen Schnettler  2:50 
Yeah, there's doesn't seem to be anyone kind of like helping or optimizing for -- Yeah, I mean, someone, the person I was on a call with wants to host static webpages on it, custom 404 pages. So there seems like there might be an interesting hole in this space to handle non image files. And to handle image files at a cheaper price point. I've been kind of thinking is like, I'm like the Southwest of image management, the airline, like bare bones, I don't resize your images for you. I don't give you user crapping on the front end, but I deliver a simple service with no frills. And it's easy to implement.

Michele Hansen  3:27 
I think that's a good place to start. And you're kind of reminding me of where we started with Geocodio -- even when you said Southwest, you know, my first thought was not airlines. But you know, deserts and our branding from the beginning was Geocodio, rhymes with rodeo and we had all of this Southwest style branding.

If you can find a way to be cheaper than everybody else, and be easier than everybody else like that worked really, really well for us and then differentiating into other adjacent categories that are neglected by major providers. And the way someone described this to me once, you know, I was like, "Well, what if you know, one of the big companies add that adds this and then we're out of business?" If you're doing a business, that's $500,000 a year, a million dollars a year, that's not a big enough opportunity for the big companies to go after it. And if there are people in that space who have something they need, and they're not satisfied by the option, the current options, and you can build a business that makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. That is a great income for a one person company and not really big enough to be a threat to any larger company so that they might go into your space, it can be a good spot to be in.

Colleen Schnettler  4:49 
Yeah, that would be an amazing spot to be in. So the only thing I have a little bit of a psychological block here because I have worked on the technical side of this for quite a while now. And now I have to potentially learn a new API to integrate with these third party storage providers. And I'm just like, I started doing it yesterday. And I was just like, I don't want to, like I'm tired. So convince me that it's worth it. It's worth it to do now. Right? Like I should do it.

Michele Hansen  5:16 
Well, let's talk about the downsides too.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
Sounds like your brain is in downsides mode. So one of the risks here is a vendor lock in risk, right?

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
Like, if you switch vendors.

Colleen Schnettler
Yes.

Michele Hansen
Because they're six times cheaper, if they raise their prices by six times, that creates a lot of risk for you that one of these vendors, raising their prices, or changing their policies, like you are dependent on another company to make your company happen. Now, there's a lot of people who build their companies off of another company's platform. But you're, you're creating substantial risk there.

Colleen Schnettler  6:03 
But I have the same risk if I stay on AWS, and I feel like AWS is way more likely to raise their prices, because everyone is locked. Not everyone. But they have such a lock on people, right? Because they feel more reliable. I was actually looking at the stats. So my first thought was, maybe these other cloud storage providers aren't, don't have the same kind of uptime AWS does, but they do! People act like AWS has 100% uptime. And they don't always so they just have this reputation because they're the biggest player in this space. But either way, I've got a lock in, right, like I can't, I mean, I can't, I'm going to do a probably a mirror service. So I'll use two storage providers to help but ultimately, my primary storage provider is going to be locked in. I think one of the concerns, though, is these companies. I mean, they've been around for a while, like they're not materializing out of thin air. But as I mentioned, they've only had these S3 compatible API's for like a year. So I'm putting a lot of trust in a company that doesn't have the AWS level reputation.

Michele Hansen  7:02 
And that's another risk too. Like, we get this question, sometimes from customers too, right, because they're like, why would we go with you over a big company? Like, how do we know you're not just going to shut down tomorrow?

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
And when I dive deeper into that question, oftentimes something that's driving that fear is, they have integrated a critical vendor,...

]]> Tue, 27 Oct 2020 13:13:30 +0100 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1964 Colleen considers the benefits and risks of changing vendors. Michele talks about a struggle they've had in the early days of their transition to being a remote company. Colleen considers the benefits and risks of changing vendors. Michele talks about a struggle they've had in the early days of their transition to being a remote company. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Bootstrapping a Company to 130 Employees 12 12 Bootstrapping a Company to 130 Employees full bb6bae58-4c82-4876-ba6b-4999877f5371 https://share.transistor.fm/s/8f561e33 Michele Hansen  0:00 
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler  0:04 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

Michelle Penczak
And I'm Michelle Penczak, the CEO of Squared Away.

Michele Hansen  0:09 
We are so excited to have Michele with us our guest, another Michelle. She. So she said she's the founder of Squared Away, which is a company that employs mostly military spouses to be virtual assistants. And they have over 130 remote virtual assistants working for them. So Colleen and I are super pumped to have us joining our virtual table today to learn more about her business and what they're working on.

Michelle Penczak  0:47 
Thank you guys for having me. I'm excited to chat with y'all.

Colleen Schnettler  0:52 
So Michelle, I have just so many questions about how you started this business and grew this business. And I would love to like kind of hear a little bit about the beginning of your story, I read some of your Medium articles about how you were a virtual assistant and you got laid off. So most people, when they get laid off, you know, they try to find another job, or they just don't find another job, but you decided to start an empire. So can you tell us a little bit about that.

Michelle Penczak  1:18 
I wish it started and found that cool. But um, I it kind of sounds like a really bad country song getting started. Um, I was a virtual assistant for zirtual in 2015. And this is where the sad country song part comes in. My husband had deployed two weeks before I was three months pregnant with my first little boy. And I was actually on a family vacation when it happened,

Michele Hansen  1:51 
Oh my gosh.

Michelle Penczak  1:52 
So literally woke up one morning, five years ago, and couldn't login to my email. And that's when I found out along with 399 other people that we did not have a job.

Michele Hansen  2:05 
Oh my gosh.

Michelle Penczak  2:07 
I still am like, Oh my god, I can't believe that happened. even five years later, it's kind of crazy. But, um, I called one of my clients who was to be honest, my favorite client at that point, and I kind of had a mini meltdown on the phone with him. And he was like, "You know what, it's going to be okay, because we're going to get you more clients, and I'm going to keep working with you." And he told me that and I was like, You know what, yes, I'm going to kick ass regardless of what's happening right now. And I'm going to do my thing. And I did that and started my own independent contractor business as a VA. And I worked literally, my husband will tell you, I worked up until the moment I got my epidural, with my four year -- now-four-year-old, but I was literally like, putting my out of office email up when I was going into labor. And I took a grand total of two weeks off. And because it was just me, at that point, supporting my clients, and worked with them with a newborn and that whole thing and becoming a new mom and all the craziness that goes into that.

And in true military fashion, Colleen, I'm sure you are familiar with the military fun, um, my husband came home one day and was like, hey, guess what, we have orders to Hawaii. And I was like, shut the front door. Get outta here. I cannot even entertain this idea right now. And, um, I can't, you know, working with my clients. Um, I told them when we were getting ready to move to Hawaii that I was taking a week off to move. And I took a week off, we moved to Hawaii, and I started working with them like normal. I just started getting up at 3am to work Eastern standard time hours with them. And still had, you know, a nine month old at that point. And I told my husband was like, I am either insane, or I have way too much of a coffee addiction to stop this. And he was like, you know what it's working. And I did that for about six months before Squared Away was kind of implanted in my brain.

Colleen Schnettler
Wow.

Michele Hansen  4:31 
Can you talk to us about how you're, you're in this state where you are waking up at 3am every day with a newborn, navigating everything that comes with having a baby and attempting to work and then you decide to create a company and -- talk to us about that. So I like I'm so excited to hear this, I have to say cuz like we started Geocodio when our daughter was four months old. And people always think we're crazy. And I don't think I've come across anyone else who started a company with a baby. And so I'm really excited to hear from you about how that came about.

Michelle Penczak  5:26 
I, so my co founder, Shane, he was one of my clients, and his company was doing really well. And he had always told people about, you know, the glory of having a virtual assistant as a resource on your team. And he was like, you know, what, I need you to scale. I need you to clone yourself. And I was like, Huh, this is as good as you get like, you get me. And he told me, he was like, you know, we need more of you. How can we do that? And I said, I told him, I was like, let me think about it. And I called him a couple days later, I said, I figured it out. We're good. We can do it with military spouses. Because I had always heard, you know, in my journey, as an assistant, how can you work? How can you have a baby and work? How can you still be able to do this as a military spouse? And you know, I would tell people, hey, I work as a virtual assistant. And they would say, Well, how will How can I do that? How can I get into this, and I didn't really have a good path for them I, at that point, I just kind of fallen into it with my circumstances. And this was a really clear cut path for me to say, this is what I did. This is how I provided help provide for my family. And this is how we can make a path forward for other military spouses as well. So yeah, it all kind of happened by circumstance. But um, my when the idea came about, I'd been in Hawaii for about six months. And my son was thriving, he was going to preschool. And I was like, You know what, because I don't get enough sleep as it is, let's take this journey. Squared Away started, was officially formed in March of 2017. And I brought on my very first assistant, who is now my director of operations, in July of 2017.

Michele Hansen  7:26 
That's amazing. And I think I think maybe, almost with both of you, it's probably worth diving in a little bit more on just what it's like to be a military spouse and how hard it is for military spouses to work. Because I think, you know, being sort of like non military, myself and not coming from a military family, like, this isn't something that that you really come across. And like the unique challenges there.

Michelle Penczak  8:00 
Yeah. And I, I can speak to the pilot side of the house, I know calling you said your husband's a Navy pilot, as well. So their schedules are so unpredictable. Like sometimes they're flying in the mornings, sometimes they're flying in the afternoon, sometimes they're flying at night, and they're just kind of all over the place. And when you have to be that constant for your family and for your kids saying, Okay, well, I'll pick you up from school, I'll do bedtime routine, and all that good stuff. That's something that's very fluid with every single day. And it's not predictable, and the following week, and being able to say I have this job or career that I'm working towards during the day and being able to support your family is huge for a military spouse, because a lot of times it's so reactive to the military members schedule that, you know, you can't typically work a regular nine to fi...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:00 
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler  0:04 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

Michelle Penczak
And I'm Michelle Penczak, the CEO of Squared Away.

Michele Hansen  0:09 
We are so excited to have Michele with us our guest, another Michelle. She. So she said she's the founder of Squared Away, which is a company that employs mostly military spouses to be virtual assistants. And they have over 130 remote virtual assistants working for them. So Colleen and I are super pumped to have us joining our virtual table today to learn more about her business and what they're working on.

Michelle Penczak  0:47 
Thank you guys for having me. I'm excited to chat with y'all.

Colleen Schnettler  0:52 
So Michelle, I have just so many questions about how you started this business and grew this business. And I would love to like kind of hear a little bit about the beginning of your story, I read some of your Medium articles about how you were a virtual assistant and you got laid off. So most people, when they get laid off, you know, they try to find another job, or they just don't find another job, but you decided to start an empire. So can you tell us a little bit about that.

Michelle Penczak  1:18 
I wish it started and found that cool. But um, I it kind of sounds like a really bad country song getting started. Um, I was a virtual assistant for zirtual in 2015. And this is where the sad country song part comes in. My husband had deployed two weeks before I was three months pregnant with my first little boy. And I was actually on a family vacation when it happened,

Michele Hansen  1:51 
Oh my gosh.

Michelle Penczak  1:52 
So literally woke up one morning, five years ago, and couldn't login to my email. And that's when I found out along with 399 other people that we did not have a job.

Michele Hansen  2:05 
Oh my gosh.

Michelle Penczak  2:07 
I still am like, Oh my god, I can't believe that happened. even five years later, it's kind of crazy. But, um, I called one of my clients who was to be honest, my favorite client at that point, and I kind of had a mini meltdown on the phone with him. And he was like, "You know what, it's going to be okay, because we're going to get you more clients, and I'm going to keep working with you." And he told me that and I was like, You know what, yes, I'm going to kick ass regardless of what's happening right now. And I'm going to do my thing. And I did that and started my own independent contractor business as a VA. And I worked literally, my husband will tell you, I worked up until the moment I got my epidural, with my four year -- now-four-year-old, but I was literally like, putting my out of office email up when I was going into labor. And I took a grand total of two weeks off. And because it was just me, at that point, supporting my clients, and worked with them with a newborn and that whole thing and becoming a new mom and all the craziness that goes into that.

And in true military fashion, Colleen, I'm sure you are familiar with the military fun, um, my husband came home one day and was like, hey, guess what, we have orders to Hawaii. And I was like, shut the front door. Get outta here. I cannot even entertain this idea right now. And, um, I can't, you know, working with my clients. Um, I told them when we were getting ready to move to Hawaii that I was taking a week off to move. And I took a week off, we moved to Hawaii, and I started working with them like normal. I just started getting up at 3am to work Eastern standard time hours with them. And still had, you know, a nine month old at that point. And I told my husband was like, I am either insane, or I have way too much of a coffee addiction to stop this. And he was like, you know what it's working. And I did that for about six months before Squared Away was kind of implanted in my brain.

Colleen Schnettler
Wow.

Michele Hansen  4:31 
Can you talk to us about how you're, you're in this state where you are waking up at 3am every day with a newborn, navigating everything that comes with having a baby and attempting to work and then you decide to create a company and -- talk to us about that. So I like I'm so excited to hear this, I have to say cuz like we started Geocodio when our daughter was four months old. And people always think we're crazy. And I don't think I've come across anyone else who started a company with a baby. And so I'm really excited to hear from you about how that came about.

Michelle Penczak  5:26 
I, so my co founder, Shane, he was one of my clients, and his company was doing really well. And he had always told people about, you know, the glory of having a virtual assistant as a resource on your team. And he was like, you know, what, I need you to scale. I need you to clone yourself. And I was like, Huh, this is as good as you get like, you get me. And he told me, he was like, you know, we need more of you. How can we do that? And I said, I told him, I was like, let me think about it. And I called him a couple days later, I said, I figured it out. We're good. We can do it with military spouses. Because I had always heard, you know, in my journey, as an assistant, how can you work? How can you have a baby and work? How can you still be able to do this as a military spouse? And you know, I would tell people, hey, I work as a virtual assistant. And they would say, Well, how will How can I do that? How can I get into this, and I didn't really have a good path for them I, at that point, I just kind of fallen into it with my circumstances. And this was a really clear cut path for me to say, this is what I did. This is how I provided help provide for my family. And this is how we can make a path forward for other military spouses as well. So yeah, it all kind of happened by circumstance. But um, my when the idea came about, I'd been in Hawaii for about six months. And my son was thriving, he was going to preschool. And I was like, You know what, because I don't get enough sleep as it is, let's take this journey. Squared Away started, was officially formed in March of 2017. And I brought on my very first assistant, who is now my director of operations, in July of 2017.

Michele Hansen  7:26 
That's amazing. And I think I think maybe, almost with both of you, it's probably worth diving in a little bit more on just what it's like to be a military spouse and how hard it is for military spouses to work. Because I think, you know, being sort of like non military, myself and not coming from a military family, like, this isn't something that that you really come across. And like the unique challenges there.

Michelle Penczak  8:00 
Yeah. And I, I can speak to the pilot side of the house, I know calling you said your husband's a Navy pilot, as well. So their schedules are so unpredictable. Like sometimes they're flying in the mornings, sometimes they're flying in the afternoon, sometimes they're flying at night, and they're just kind of all over the place. And when you have to be that constant for your family and for your kids saying, Okay, well, I'll pick you up from school, I'll do bedtime routine, and all that good stuff. That's something that's very fluid with every single day. And it's not predictable, and the following week, and being able to say I have this job or career that I'm working towards during the day and being able to support your family is huge for a military spouse, because a lot of times it's so reactive to the military members schedule that, you know, you can't typically work a regular nine to fi...

]]> Tue, 13 Oct 2020 12:13:52 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2393 We chat with the humble and impressive Michelle Penczak, CEO of Squared Away. We chat with the humble and impressive Michelle Penczak, CEO of Squared Away. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Documentation as SEO, SEO as Documentation 11 11 Documentation as SEO, SEO as Documentation full 2d63c1d0-b65c-4d83-b99f-9b912f681b94 https://share.transistor.fm/s/67c74051 Michele Hansen  0:00 
Welcome back to Software Social. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler  0:03 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

Michele Hansen  0:06 
Hey, Colleen!

Colleen Schnettler  0:07 
Hey, Michele, how are you doing?

Michele Hansen  0:10 
I'm good. I'm good. I had a pretty productive day today. Little ADD in the morning, but it was good.

Colleen Schnettler  0:16 
What does that mean?

Michele Hansen  0:19 
Well, so I was diagnosed with ADD as a kid when I was 10. And so it's always been something that I have to work with, you know, working against it is not going to happen. And you know, recognizing the procrastination of it is really just me being a perfectionist in a lot of ways. Um, you know, it can also make for a fun morning, though, I made some good memes, I think.

Colleen Schnettler
Nice.

Michele Hansen
No, actually, I actually, I got a lot of stuff done. You know, a couple weeks ago, when you asked me what I was working on, I mentioned landing pages. And then, and then I was kind of like, Ah, that actually wasn't what I was planning to talk about. And, and I feel like you were kind of disappointed. But I actually did a ton of work on landing pages this week. So we can talk about that if you want.

Colleen Schnettler  1:11 
Oh, yay! Yes, I do.

Michele Hansen  1:13 
Yeah, so this is a huge thing for us. Because we don't do any paid marketing. We don't do any outbound sales. We just do SEO.

And a couple weeks ago, we were talking to Alex Hillman. And something that really stuck out to me from his book, Tiny MBA was, you know, when done well, marketing and teaching are almost indistinguishable. And I think that's so true. Because a lot of what we do when I'm writing a like landing page, is just explaining how our service works, and how to do something, or, or how to do something in general, that happens to relate to our product.

Colleen Schnettler  1:59 
Okay, so can we take several steps back here and talk about landing pages?

Michele Hansen
Sure!

Colleen Schnettler
Because people talk about landing pages, like they're these things, they just throw up real quick. And so I kind of want to talk about strategy. And like, practically speaking, do you have? Do you always use the same template? Do you try to, you know, like, when you're marketing towards a specific group, like how do you tailor your landing page for that group?

Michele Hansen  2:25 
There's a lot of different types of landing pages. So what I'm doing is generally very product focused. There's a whole huge segment of landing pages that is sales landing pages and writing conversion copy, which is --

Colleen Schnettler  2:46 
Conversion means I convert, I buy something from you?

Michele Hansen
Exactly.

Colleen Schnettler
Yes.

Michele Hansen  2:50 
The idea is, you know, basically, you run some ads for people who are looking at a specific search term, or you or you have, you know, SEO targeted to that search term. And then you bring them into a sales page. And there's tons and tons and tons and tons of copy. And there's a story and like all of these sorts of things. And there's there's like these calls to action that are building up to it, right, like, and then they want you to convert and buy immediately from that page.

That that is a whole school on its own. And not really something that we do, because we don't really need to do a lot of convincing for people since we have a free tier and people can just try it and figure it out if they need it or not, before they even buy it.

So when I'm talking about landing pages, it's generally very product focused copy that is sort of either describing features of the product, or is like a step by step how to do something with the product, or is somehow just better describing what we do. Very often that comes out of conversations that we have with customers in Intercom where, you know, if we get the same question more than two or three times, we usually take that as a sign that either we need some more copy on that or, you know, maybe we need to fix something in the product to make something more discoverable (that is, easier for people to find it). Or add affordances, which is the ability for them to do something. That's generally where we focus when it when I talk about landing pages.

Colleen Schnettler  4:34 
Okay, so do you have specific rules like in your head, like from a design like should it only should it fit on a visible window? Should they not have to scroll? Do you even think about these things? Are they not important at all?

Michele Hansen  4:47 
Yeah, I don't really think about that, actually.

Colleen Schnettler  4:50 
Okay, I don't know. Like, that's why I'm wondering like, I've never I'm telling you for me. Like I feel like I could write a whole back end system API to do whatever but you asked me to make like marketing page and oh, my gosh!

Michele Hansen 5:02
It's scary, right? Like I blank page is very intimidating.

Colleen Schnettler  5:07 
And it's like, the whole thing, where do I put the images? What do I say?

Michele Hansen  5:15 
Like, yeah, how far it's a lot, I have so many hang ups around this because I'm so afraid of coming off as spammy or, like too heavy handed of a sale that when I'm trying to write copy, it sounds so boring. Like, it's just so so dry.

And what really helped me was thinking about marketing as education.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
And thinking about it, okay, maybe this is just, this can just be a step by step how to do something, you know, for example, how to add metropolitan statistical areas to a list of addresses, which is something that, for example, somebody who works in sales might do because they need to know which of their customers live in and around Boston, and in and around Chicago, because they're planning a trip during normal times when you go on trips... For example, and so it's just like a step by step list and and then there's, you know, the SEO tactics, bringing into that, like, you know, all of the, the list items need to be headers and saying, first, organize your spreadsheet of addresses that you want to add the Metropolitan Statistical Areas to, like, the next step, upload the list of addresses that you want the Metropolitan Statistical Areas for to Geocodio, it's like using the same words over and over and over again, so that, you know, Google or search engine will pick up on that using those terms in the URL is a really basic one. That is easy to overlook.

I actually I realized this morning, that we had someone reach out to us asking about features of our unlimited plan. And I realized, like, Oh, my gosh, I typed like the same reply multiple times a week. And we don't actually have a page on our site that is just devoted to this plan that I can send someone and the same way. We also don't have any page, specifically devoted to free geocoding or our pay as you go tier. And so now, almost seven years into doing this, we finally have a URL that is geocod.io/free-geocoding, which is the number one search term that brings people to us and it like never occurred to me until this morning, that we should have a page with the you know, h1 and URL of free geocoding. Like sometimes it's just so, so obvious.

Colleen Schnettler...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:00 
Welcome back to Software Social. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler  0:03 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

Michele Hansen  0:06 
Hey, Colleen!

Colleen Schnettler  0:07 
Hey, Michele, how are you doing?

Michele Hansen  0:10 
I'm good. I'm good. I had a pretty productive day today. Little ADD in the morning, but it was good.

Colleen Schnettler  0:16 
What does that mean?

Michele Hansen  0:19 
Well, so I was diagnosed with ADD as a kid when I was 10. And so it's always been something that I have to work with, you know, working against it is not going to happen. And you know, recognizing the procrastination of it is really just me being a perfectionist in a lot of ways. Um, you know, it can also make for a fun morning, though, I made some good memes, I think.

Colleen Schnettler
Nice.

Michele Hansen
No, actually, I actually, I got a lot of stuff done. You know, a couple weeks ago, when you asked me what I was working on, I mentioned landing pages. And then, and then I was kind of like, Ah, that actually wasn't what I was planning to talk about. And, and I feel like you were kind of disappointed. But I actually did a ton of work on landing pages this week. So we can talk about that if you want.

Colleen Schnettler  1:11 
Oh, yay! Yes, I do.

Michele Hansen  1:13 
Yeah, so this is a huge thing for us. Because we don't do any paid marketing. We don't do any outbound sales. We just do SEO.

And a couple weeks ago, we were talking to Alex Hillman. And something that really stuck out to me from his book, Tiny MBA was, you know, when done well, marketing and teaching are almost indistinguishable. And I think that's so true. Because a lot of what we do when I'm writing a like landing page, is just explaining how our service works, and how to do something, or, or how to do something in general, that happens to relate to our product.

Colleen Schnettler  1:59 
Okay, so can we take several steps back here and talk about landing pages?

Michele Hansen
Sure!

Colleen Schnettler
Because people talk about landing pages, like they're these things, they just throw up real quick. And so I kind of want to talk about strategy. And like, practically speaking, do you have? Do you always use the same template? Do you try to, you know, like, when you're marketing towards a specific group, like how do you tailor your landing page for that group?

Michele Hansen  2:25 
There's a lot of different types of landing pages. So what I'm doing is generally very product focused. There's a whole huge segment of landing pages that is sales landing pages and writing conversion copy, which is --

Colleen Schnettler  2:46 
Conversion means I convert, I buy something from you?

Michele Hansen
Exactly.

Colleen Schnettler
Yes.

Michele Hansen  2:50 
The idea is, you know, basically, you run some ads for people who are looking at a specific search term, or you or you have, you know, SEO targeted to that search term. And then you bring them into a sales page. And there's tons and tons and tons and tons of copy. And there's a story and like all of these sorts of things. And there's there's like these calls to action that are building up to it, right, like, and then they want you to convert and buy immediately from that page.

That that is a whole school on its own. And not really something that we do, because we don't really need to do a lot of convincing for people since we have a free tier and people can just try it and figure it out if they need it or not, before they even buy it.

So when I'm talking about landing pages, it's generally very product focused copy that is sort of either describing features of the product, or is like a step by step how to do something with the product, or is somehow just better describing what we do. Very often that comes out of conversations that we have with customers in Intercom where, you know, if we get the same question more than two or three times, we usually take that as a sign that either we need some more copy on that or, you know, maybe we need to fix something in the product to make something more discoverable (that is, easier for people to find it). Or add affordances, which is the ability for them to do something. That's generally where we focus when it when I talk about landing pages.

Colleen Schnettler  4:34 
Okay, so do you have specific rules like in your head, like from a design like should it only should it fit on a visible window? Should they not have to scroll? Do you even think about these things? Are they not important at all?

Michele Hansen  4:47 
Yeah, I don't really think about that, actually.

Colleen Schnettler  4:50 
Okay, I don't know. Like, that's why I'm wondering like, I've never I'm telling you for me. Like I feel like I could write a whole back end system API to do whatever but you asked me to make like marketing page and oh, my gosh!

Michele Hansen 5:02
It's scary, right? Like I blank page is very intimidating.

Colleen Schnettler  5:07 
And it's like, the whole thing, where do I put the images? What do I say?

Michele Hansen  5:15 
Like, yeah, how far it's a lot, I have so many hang ups around this because I'm so afraid of coming off as spammy or, like too heavy handed of a sale that when I'm trying to write copy, it sounds so boring. Like, it's just so so dry.

And what really helped me was thinking about marketing as education.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.

Michele Hansen
And thinking about it, okay, maybe this is just, this can just be a step by step how to do something, you know, for example, how to add metropolitan statistical areas to a list of addresses, which is something that, for example, somebody who works in sales might do because they need to know which of their customers live in and around Boston, and in and around Chicago, because they're planning a trip during normal times when you go on trips... For example, and so it's just like a step by step list and and then there's, you know, the SEO tactics, bringing into that, like, you know, all of the, the list items need to be headers and saying, first, organize your spreadsheet of addresses that you want to add the Metropolitan Statistical Areas to, like, the next step, upload the list of addresses that you want the Metropolitan Statistical Areas for to Geocodio, it's like using the same words over and over and over again, so that, you know, Google or search engine will pick up on that using those terms in the URL is a really basic one. That is easy to overlook.

I actually I realized this morning, that we had someone reach out to us asking about features of our unlimited plan. And I realized, like, Oh, my gosh, I typed like the same reply multiple times a week. And we don't actually have a page on our site that is just devoted to this plan that I can send someone and the same way. We also don't have any page, specifically devoted to free geocoding or our pay as you go tier. And so now, almost seven years into doing this, we finally have a URL that is geocod.io/free-geocoding, which is the number one search term that brings people to us and it like never occurred to me until this morning, that we should have a page with the you know, h1 and URL of free geocoding. Like sometimes it's just so, so obvious.

Colleen Schnettler...

]]> Tue, 06 Oct 2020 11:00:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1990 We continue to chew on this quote from Alex Hillman: "When done well, marketing and teaching are nearly indistinguishable from one another." We continue to chew on this quote from Alex Hillman: "When done well, marketing and teaching are nearly indistinguishable from one another." SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Something Boring, Something True, Something Alluring, Something New 10 10 Something Boring, Something True, Something Alluring, Something New full 0fc1ade0-6887-4b71-ad2b-821bd70c16ef https://share.transistor.fm/s/7fdc90f2 Michele Hansen  0:00 
Welcome back to Software Social. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler  0:03 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

Michele Hansen
Hey, Colleen.

Colleen Schnettler
Hey, Michele!

Michele Hansen
How's it going?

Colleen Schnettler
I'm doing well. I'm excited to hear what you have to share with us this week since we didn't get to share last week since we did my little video intro. So what has been going on with you and your business?

Michele Hansen  0:22 
Honestly, not a whole lot.

<laughter>

Colleen Schnettler 
Okay, fair enough!

Michele Hansen  0:28 
You know, I was thinking about this. And, and I think that's kind of one of the things when you get to the stage that you have weeks when you're just kind of doing, like, normal work, you know, dealing with invoices, and cleaning up stuff from the past and responding when customers, you know, report an issue or bug with something and answering questions. And, and, and not a whole lot happens. And that's kind of what's going on.

Colleen Schnettler  1:03 
I still think that's good for people to hear. Because I think when you, like me, as we've discussed, read a lot of like, these really exciting startup stories, it makes it sound like it's so exciting all the time. And ultimately, it's still a job, like you're still doing kind of mundane, but important work.

Michele Hansen  1:19 
Yeah, I mean, it's the big project, if you can call it that, that I was working on this week was a lot of things dealing with invoicing. And, you know, we've been migrating customers over from QuickBooks to Stripe, which is just as thrilling as it sounds, let me tell you, but it's also super necessary. And it's the kind of thing that you write really have to do when you've got a business that's going and it's working.

And so for, for a long time, we had it set up so that if customers paid us with a credit card, they paid via Stripe, but if they paid us any other way, you know, a ACH, paper check, carrier pigeon, like that was all through QuickBooks. And I don't know why we did that. I think it's because we weren't using invoices for Stripe for a long time. And but that's created all sorts of accounting issues where when we actually want to make our financial statements in QuickBooks, which, you know, things like insurance companies and whatnot want... It always made such a mess in QuickBooks, because there was like, some payments would be counted twice. And then like we didn't really have one true source of revenue numbers. And I was always like manually patching it together with spreadsheets. And so that just you know, involved a lot of thing of, you know, setting up new subscriptions and checking once and twice and three times that everything is set up. And, you know, like, it's interesting, you do a lot of things early on that don't scale. And you do that intentionally because you don't know if you're going to be successful. And then when things do start working out, you you kind of have to, you know, basically bat your own cleanup.

Colleen Schnettler
Mm hmm.

Michele Hansen
And I did a lot of that actually, in my in my first job. And I think that was such a valuable thing, because I think it's something every business goes through, especially as they grow.

Colleen Schnettler  3:14 
Yeah, I absolutely know what you mean, because I'm right in that very beginning stages where I don't know if this is going to work. And so I have absolutely made decisions that might be hard to change later if I have, if it is successful. And I can see that now. But I can see it now. But it doesn't seem like it's worth the time to put this really impressive architecture in place for you know, my three customers. So I can but I could definitely see you know where to work out down the line, I'd be like, "Alright, we got to really beef up, you know, change some of the things we made."

Michele Hansen  3:48 
Exactly, I think we're, we're looking at doing something like that pretty soon with how we handle failed payments. So I mentioned you we have most of our customers are paying us via credit card. And when those payments fail, like usually the process right now is we just go through manually and follow up with them. Like they get emails from Stripe, they get emails from Intercom. Sometimes I have to, you know, oftentimes email them personally, like from my own email, but I've had to go as far as like calling the front office and asking for the accounting department, DMing them on Twitter, like finding any random contact information, finding people on LinkedIn.

Colleen Schnettle
Wow.

Michele Hansen
And yeah, and it's always so satisfying when you finally get it paid. And you're like, wow, but I spent what, like six hours chasing that down for $150 like, was that really the best of my time? And so we've been kind of thinking through like, how we might, how we might like automate some of that and any, you know, introduce kinds of things like you know, Your Account isn't paid. Like, you can't do anything until you've paid up or, like, actually, as of right now, even if you have an outstanding balance, people have to contact us in order to pay, like, there isn't a way to do it in the dashboard. Like all of those small things, I think if you're using a product, you don't realize that like, every single one of those is a feature, there's no like real, you know, there's no just sort of out of the box that comes with every single feature that you might need, like deleting an account and changing your email address and updating your credit card and paying a past invoice. Like, every single one of those is a feature and you're prioritizing that against something that's going to get new customers or have existing customers, you know, pay you more add more features for them, right. Like there's like boring business improvements, versus things like new features, and, you know, marketing related initiatives that are shinier objects.

Colleen Schnettler  6:01 
Yeah, that's actually kind of interesting that you guys are this far along, and you're still handling all of that manually. I also think there's a way and we've talked about this quite a lot, like what do you need to ship. And there's always this, this temptation, I think, is a good word, to put everything in place before you put anything out there. So it's encouraging to me, I guess, is the right word to hear that, like you guys are still handling some of that manually, like those are things that you have been able to handle manually for quite a while.

Michele Hansen  6:32 
We didn't even have billing code when we launched!

Colleen Schnettler
That's amazing, by the way.

Michele Hansen
Like we had integrated amazing Stripe, like we literally didn't expect anyone to pay us. And then you know, and we had that sort of like monthly payment cycle. And the first of the month came a couple of weeks later, and we're like, oh, we have to charge people today. Oh, we forgot to write the ability to charge people.

Colleen Schnettler  6:59 
It's amazing.

Michele Hansen  7:01 
Yeah, I mean, all of those things are just, you know, gradual, like, like, for a long time, actually, I think in Stripe, we were the way we were creating the payments was literally as individual payments, they weren't as invoices. And so if a payment failed, we had to manually go through and recreate the payment and retry it.

Colleen Schnettler
Oh wow

Michele Hansen
And it was like that for like, three or four years.

Colleen Schnettler
Wow.

Michele Hansen
So every month, I would go through and recreate all of t...

]]> Michele Hansen  0:00 
Welcome back to Software Social. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler  0:03 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

Michele Hansen
Hey, Colleen.

Colleen Schnettler
Hey, Michele!

Michele Hansen
How's it going?

Colleen Schnettler
I'm doing well. I'm excited to hear what you have to share with us this week since we didn't get to share last week since we did my little video intro. So what has been going on with you and your business?

Michele Hansen  0:22 
Honestly, not a whole lot.

<laughter>

Colleen Schnettler 
Okay, fair enough!

Michele Hansen  0:28 
You know, I was thinking about this. And, and I think that's kind of one of the things when you get to the stage that you have weeks when you're just kind of doing, like, normal work, you know, dealing with invoices, and cleaning up stuff from the past and responding when customers, you know, report an issue or bug with something and answering questions. And, and, and not a whole lot happens. And that's kind of what's going on.

Colleen Schnettler  1:03 
I still think that's good for people to hear. Because I think when you, like me, as we've discussed, read a lot of like, these really exciting startup stories, it makes it sound like it's so exciting all the time. And ultimately, it's still a job, like you're still doing kind of mundane, but important work.

Michele Hansen  1:19 
Yeah, I mean, it's the big project, if you can call it that, that I was working on this week was a lot of things dealing with invoicing. And, you know, we've been migrating customers over from QuickBooks to Stripe, which is just as thrilling as it sounds, let me tell you, but it's also super necessary. And it's the kind of thing that you write really have to do when you've got a business that's going and it's working.

And so for, for a long time, we had it set up so that if customers paid us with a credit card, they paid via Stripe, but if they paid us any other way, you know, a ACH, paper check, carrier pigeon, like that was all through QuickBooks. And I don't know why we did that. I think it's because we weren't using invoices for Stripe for a long time. And but that's created all sorts of accounting issues where when we actually want to make our financial statements in QuickBooks, which, you know, things like insurance companies and whatnot want... It always made such a mess in QuickBooks, because there was like, some payments would be counted twice. And then like we didn't really have one true source of revenue numbers. And I was always like manually patching it together with spreadsheets. And so that just you know, involved a lot of thing of, you know, setting up new subscriptions and checking once and twice and three times that everything is set up. And, you know, like, it's interesting, you do a lot of things early on that don't scale. And you do that intentionally because you don't know if you're going to be successful. And then when things do start working out, you you kind of have to, you know, basically bat your own cleanup.

Colleen Schnettler
Mm hmm.

Michele Hansen
And I did a lot of that actually, in my in my first job. And I think that was such a valuable thing, because I think it's something every business goes through, especially as they grow.

Colleen Schnettler  3:14 
Yeah, I absolutely know what you mean, because I'm right in that very beginning stages where I don't know if this is going to work. And so I have absolutely made decisions that might be hard to change later if I have, if it is successful. And I can see that now. But I can see it now. But it doesn't seem like it's worth the time to put this really impressive architecture in place for you know, my three customers. So I can but I could definitely see you know where to work out down the line, I'd be like, "Alright, we got to really beef up, you know, change some of the things we made."

Michele Hansen  3:48 
Exactly, I think we're, we're looking at doing something like that pretty soon with how we handle failed payments. So I mentioned you we have most of our customers are paying us via credit card. And when those payments fail, like usually the process right now is we just go through manually and follow up with them. Like they get emails from Stripe, they get emails from Intercom. Sometimes I have to, you know, oftentimes email them personally, like from my own email, but I've had to go as far as like calling the front office and asking for the accounting department, DMing them on Twitter, like finding any random contact information, finding people on LinkedIn.

Colleen Schnettle
Wow.

Michele Hansen
And yeah, and it's always so satisfying when you finally get it paid. And you're like, wow, but I spent what, like six hours chasing that down for $150 like, was that really the best of my time? And so we've been kind of thinking through like, how we might, how we might like automate some of that and any, you know, introduce kinds of things like you know, Your Account isn't paid. Like, you can't do anything until you've paid up or, like, actually, as of right now, even if you have an outstanding balance, people have to contact us in order to pay, like, there isn't a way to do it in the dashboard. Like all of those small things, I think if you're using a product, you don't realize that like, every single one of those is a feature, there's no like real, you know, there's no just sort of out of the box that comes with every single feature that you might need, like deleting an account and changing your email address and updating your credit card and paying a past invoice. Like, every single one of those is a feature and you're prioritizing that against something that's going to get new customers or have existing customers, you know, pay you more add more features for them, right. Like there's like boring business improvements, versus things like new features, and, you know, marketing related initiatives that are shinier objects.

Colleen Schnettler  6:01 
Yeah, that's actually kind of interesting that you guys are this far along, and you're still handling all of that manually. I also think there's a way and we've talked about this quite a lot, like what do you need to ship. And there's always this, this temptation, I think, is a good word, to put everything in place before you put anything out there. So it's encouraging to me, I guess, is the right word to hear that, like you guys are still handling some of that manually, like those are things that you have been able to handle manually for quite a while.

Michele Hansen  6:32 
We didn't even have billing code when we launched!

Colleen Schnettler
That's amazing, by the way.

Michele Hansen
Like we had integrated amazing Stripe, like we literally didn't expect anyone to pay us. And then you know, and we had that sort of like monthly payment cycle. And the first of the month came a couple of weeks later, and we're like, oh, we have to charge people today. Oh, we forgot to write the ability to charge people.

Colleen Schnettler  6:59 
It's amazing.

Michele Hansen  7:01 
Yeah, I mean, all of those things are just, you know, gradual, like, like, for a long time, actually, I think in Stripe, we were the way we were creating the payments was literally as individual payments, they weren't as invoices. And so if a payment failed, we had to manually go through and recreate the payment and retry it.

Colleen Schnettler
Oh wow

Michele Hansen
And it was like that for like, three or four years.

Colleen Schnettler
Wow.

Michele Hansen
So every month, I would go through and recreate all of t...

]]> Tue, 29 Sep 2020 11:23:35 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1801 Michele talks about the unexciting but necessary parts of running a business, and Colleen experiences one of the most exciting things -- launch! Michele talks about the unexciting but necessary parts of running a business, and Colleen experiences one of the most exciting things -- launch! SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler The Reveal! 9 9 The Reveal! full 575a0a41-b6d4-4dca-b52b-be856d1a5d5c https://share.transistor.fm/s/45d4d6b7 See Colleen's product! Video at https://youtu.be/vdO7uFT63dw

TRANSCRIPT

Michele Hansen  0:00 
We're doing something a little bit different. Colleen's product is ready to have a little walkthrough of it. So this will be the first time I'm seeing it. So we're doing something different. This week's episode is going to be a podcast as normal, but it is also going to be a video. So you can see what Colleen's product looks like. So hopefully this is just as enjoyable as whether you're listening to the podcast, or you're watching the video, we'll put a link to the YouTube video in the shownotes. Definitely let us know what you think of the format. And hopefully, it's interesting. 

Colleen Schnettler  0:49  
Okay, this is great. I'm super pumped to show you this. Michele, I'm going to share my screen with you so you can see it. Alright, can you see my screen? Yes. All right. So let's start from what the very beginning kind of what I'm trying to accomplish here. So this window right here that says new listing details, let's say this is your existing user interface. So your user is adding listings for I don't know, an event or a real estate site or something like that. So what you a typical kind of quick, easy implementation is just your typical HTML file tag, which is what you have right here. Now, I have found this to be like, really ugly, and I just don't care for it the way it looks. And plus, even if you're importing a file, this way, you still are responsible for setting up your cloud storage account, as we've talked about ad infinitum I know, but basically, you still have to get all the other back end stuff set up. So what you do is you would go to Heroku, you'd provision my application, and then you'd sign on to my application. And I would give you this script, like so basically, and I have not finished or like really worked out the documentation yet. But basically, I'm going to have a site, like once you've signed up for my application that says, Put this script in the head of your file of your website. So then you add this script to your site, save it, I'm running this locally, so we could see the changes kind of as they're happening. And now you get something like this. So Oh, thanks.

Michele Hansen  2:29  
Well, there's a drop file.

Colleen Schnettler  2:31  
Now there's a drop file, boxy

Michele Hansen  2:33  
way of having, right.

Colleen Schnettler  2:35  
So and I think one of the things that's really important here is I think, Heroku, I could be wrong, but like, it's mostly like Node and Rails developers. So there's people that are more focused on the back end. So anything I can do to make the UI less painful for you, is what I want to do. So So I worked for an events company at one time, so we had to deal with tons of images. And we implemented a drop zone like this, but we had so many problems with users trying to drop files that were too big files of the incorrect, you know, format, things like that. So what this does for you is if I wanted to drop some images, so if I try to drop a file, right now, I want to say I have a two Meg limit. And I'm probably going to change that I haven't worked out that detail yet. Let's say I have a two Meg limit. So if you try to drop a file that's bigger than two Meg's you're going to get this exe. And it's going to tell you the files too big. And then it's going to remove the file from the drop zone. So your user can drop a new file.

Michele Hansen  3:36  
Ah.

Colleen Schnettler  3:38  
okay. So I mean, even that I have a lot of like thoughts about like, right now you drop it, you and it's a timeout, like, I don't know if I should wait and let the user exit out. Or, you know how

Unknown Speaker  3:51  
little

Michele Hansen  3:52  
quick I didn't get to fully read read it the text until the second time. You did it, because you

Colleen Schnettler  3:59  
need to look for it the second time. Yeah, I

Michele Hansen  4:02  
didn't really know what was going to happen. But I knew there was some errors. So yeah, I would probably try to upload it twice just to see what that error was.

Colleen Schnettler  4:13  
Okay, that's good feedback. And again, I can slow it down. I mean, maybe I should slow it down a little bit.

Michele Hansen  4:20  
I also wonder about accessibility for that.

Colleen Schnettler  4:24  
Right. That is an excellent point. I will look into that, because that's definitely something I need to address. That's a really good point. So that's kind of what I have now. And those are two good comments for a bad file. But what I really have gone back and forth, and left and right about is what about a good file. So let's drop a good file in here. And so there's all kinds of things I can do here and I'm probably just overthinking it, but like how opinion Am I going to be like that little green checkmark? Should that stay? Should I go? Should I keep the reason I kept I went back and forth on keeping this dashed blue line. And the reason I kept it was to show you if you change your mind, you can just drop a new file in there, right? You can,

Michele Hansen  5:18  
yeah. And I guess, to me, a dashed line around the image implies that it's in a draft state and that they need to do something else in order for that to be saved.

Colleen Schnettler  5:29  
Okay, that is what you think. Okay. Yeah, cuz I went back and forth on that. Like, should I read, because what I had originally, is I actually removed the drop zone and just put the image on the page. But when I removed the job zone, I then had to add a button so that they could bring the drop zone back up. So it started to get more complicated.

Michele Hansen  5:53  
And I noticed that it shows the file size, even when the file size is an acceptable size. Yes, you walk me through why that is?

Colleen Schnettler  6:03  
I think that's partially like, you know, when I started this, I was just trying to kind of keep track. So I would know immediately, like, Oh, this one is one fits, this one doesn't fit. But I, you know, have no strong opinions about whether that's helpful or whether the user even cares, which probably they don't care, right. They just want to know if it's successful or not.

Michele Hansen  6:28  
Yeah, I, I would be curious to I mean, maybe there are people who get value out of that, maybe I won't discount that.

Colleen Schnettler  6:36  
So I was showing this to a friend of mine. And he has a few apps on Heroku. And he suggested accepting other file types. Because his point was, if you have a really image heavy site, you're probably already using one of the big players in the image, site market. But there's a huge problem with like, if you want to email someone a PDF, or, you know, you're collecting resumes, or all the other kinds of file types that people might want to upload. So that kind of gets interesting, because then I was thinking, Okay, let's say we want I have a PDF here for my children's school, welcome newsletter. So if I try to drop a PDF, that works, but I don't ever have any kind of preview image. So you think that I mean, should I just leave it like that? You have thoughts on that?

Michele Hansen  7:24  
Is there some sort of icon you can use for the image or file type like,

Colleen Schnettler  7:30  
like a PDF icon? Yeah, that's a good idea. pdf. And maybe like, same thing for like a Word document or something like that.
...

]]> See Colleen's product! Video at https://youtu.be/vdO7uFT63dw

TRANSCRIPT

Michele Hansen  0:00 
We're doing something a little bit different. Colleen's product is ready to have a little walkthrough of it. So this will be the first time I'm seeing it. So we're doing something different. This week's episode is going to be a podcast as normal, but it is also going to be a video. So you can see what Colleen's product looks like. So hopefully this is just as enjoyable as whether you're listening to the podcast, or you're watching the video, we'll put a link to the YouTube video in the shownotes. Definitely let us know what you think of the format. And hopefully, it's interesting. 

Colleen Schnettler  0:49  
Okay, this is great. I'm super pumped to show you this. Michele, I'm going to share my screen with you so you can see it. Alright, can you see my screen? Yes. All right. So let's start from what the very beginning kind of what I'm trying to accomplish here. So this window right here that says new listing details, let's say this is your existing user interface. So your user is adding listings for I don't know, an event or a real estate site or something like that. So what you a typical kind of quick, easy implementation is just your typical HTML file tag, which is what you have right here. Now, I have found this to be like, really ugly, and I just don't care for it the way it looks. And plus, even if you're importing a file, this way, you still are responsible for setting up your cloud storage account, as we've talked about ad infinitum I know, but basically, you still have to get all the other back end stuff set up. So what you do is you would go to Heroku, you'd provision my application, and then you'd sign on to my application. And I would give you this script, like so basically, and I have not finished or like really worked out the documentation yet. But basically, I'm going to have a site, like once you've signed up for my application that says, Put this script in the head of your file of your website. So then you add this script to your site, save it, I'm running this locally, so we could see the changes kind of as they're happening. And now you get something like this. So Oh, thanks.

Michele Hansen  2:29  
Well, there's a drop file.

Colleen Schnettler  2:31  
Now there's a drop file, boxy

Michele Hansen  2:33  
way of having, right.

Colleen Schnettler  2:35  
So and I think one of the things that's really important here is I think, Heroku, I could be wrong, but like, it's mostly like Node and Rails developers. So there's people that are more focused on the back end. So anything I can do to make the UI less painful for you, is what I want to do. So So I worked for an events company at one time, so we had to deal with tons of images. And we implemented a drop zone like this, but we had so many problems with users trying to drop files that were too big files of the incorrect, you know, format, things like that. So what this does for you is if I wanted to drop some images, so if I try to drop a file, right now, I want to say I have a two Meg limit. And I'm probably going to change that I haven't worked out that detail yet. Let's say I have a two Meg limit. So if you try to drop a file that's bigger than two Meg's you're going to get this exe. And it's going to tell you the files too big. And then it's going to remove the file from the drop zone. So your user can drop a new file.

Michele Hansen  3:36  
Ah.

Colleen Schnettler  3:38  
okay. So I mean, even that I have a lot of like thoughts about like, right now you drop it, you and it's a timeout, like, I don't know if I should wait and let the user exit out. Or, you know how

Unknown Speaker  3:51  
little

Michele Hansen  3:52  
quick I didn't get to fully read read it the text until the second time. You did it, because you

Colleen Schnettler  3:59  
need to look for it the second time. Yeah, I

Michele Hansen  4:02  
didn't really know what was going to happen. But I knew there was some errors. So yeah, I would probably try to upload it twice just to see what that error was.

Colleen Schnettler  4:13  
Okay, that's good feedback. And again, I can slow it down. I mean, maybe I should slow it down a little bit.

Michele Hansen  4:20  
I also wonder about accessibility for that.

Colleen Schnettler  4:24  
Right. That is an excellent point. I will look into that, because that's definitely something I need to address. That's a really good point. So that's kind of what I have now. And those are two good comments for a bad file. But what I really have gone back and forth, and left and right about is what about a good file. So let's drop a good file in here. And so there's all kinds of things I can do here and I'm probably just overthinking it, but like how opinion Am I going to be like that little green checkmark? Should that stay? Should I go? Should I keep the reason I kept I went back and forth on keeping this dashed blue line. And the reason I kept it was to show you if you change your mind, you can just drop a new file in there, right? You can,

Michele Hansen  5:18  
yeah. And I guess, to me, a dashed line around the image implies that it's in a draft state and that they need to do something else in order for that to be saved.

Colleen Schnettler  5:29  
Okay, that is what you think. Okay. Yeah, cuz I went back and forth on that. Like, should I read, because what I had originally, is I actually removed the drop zone and just put the image on the page. But when I removed the job zone, I then had to add a button so that they could bring the drop zone back up. So it started to get more complicated.

Michele Hansen  5:53  
And I noticed that it shows the file size, even when the file size is an acceptable size. Yes, you walk me through why that is?

Colleen Schnettler  6:03  
I think that's partially like, you know, when I started this, I was just trying to kind of keep track. So I would know immediately, like, Oh, this one is one fits, this one doesn't fit. But I, you know, have no strong opinions about whether that's helpful or whether the user even cares, which probably they don't care, right. They just want to know if it's successful or not.

Michele Hansen  6:28  
Yeah, I, I would be curious to I mean, maybe there are people who get value out of that, maybe I won't discount that.

Colleen Schnettler  6:36  
So I was showing this to a friend of mine. And he has a few apps on Heroku. And he suggested accepting other file types. Because his point was, if you have a really image heavy site, you're probably already using one of the big players in the image, site market. But there's a huge problem with like, if you want to email someone a PDF, or, you know, you're collecting resumes, or all the other kinds of file types that people might want to upload. So that kind of gets interesting, because then I was thinking, Okay, let's say we want I have a PDF here for my children's school, welcome newsletter. So if I try to drop a PDF, that works, but I don't ever have any kind of preview image. So you think that I mean, should I just leave it like that? You have thoughts on that?

Michele Hansen  7:24  
Is there some sort of icon you can use for the image or file type like,

Colleen Schnettler  7:30  
like a PDF icon? Yeah, that's a good idea. pdf. And maybe like, same thing for like a Word document or something like that.
...

]]> Thu, 24 Sep 2020 23:03:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1913 We finally get a walkthrough of Colleen's image management service in this special audio-and-video episode. We finally get a walkthrough of Colleen's image management service in this special audio-and-video episode. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Negotiations... with Customers and Oneself 8 8 Negotiations... with Customers and Oneself full ccc1dd21-46e2-406b-9114-32b789aa27b7 https://share.transistor.fm/s/8aa0f4a6 Michele Hansen 
Welcome back to software social. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler. So Michele, what's been on your mind this week?

Michele Hansen 
So after our conversation with Alex last week, which, by the way was so fun, I feel like we got to talk to him about like, a 10th of the things I wanted to talk about. I have been thinking a lot about what I got out of my own MBA, because his book, The Tiny MBA, and we talked about this a little bit about the differences between between that and and it's just made me reflect on some of the things I got out of mine. And one of those things is negotiation skills.

Colleen Schnettler 
Okay.

Michele Hansen 
I really learned in that program just how much of a wuss I was at negotiations.

<laughter>

I got to do this trip to India and the UAE and we were visiting factories and and whatnot and part of it, you know, being an India, was going to the markets. And our professor was very keen that we learn how to negotiate and I remember we would, you know, go out and buy things and our graduate assistant student in the program was from India and we would always go to him and be like, hey, like, you know, I got this scarf and you know, I got them down from from this price to this price. And he would always like, shake his head and be like, you could have done so much better than that, like you just got totally ripped off. And I remember feeling like oh my god, like and, and I realized that experience -- getting my ass kicked by India -- made me realize how little I knew about negotiation. And, and so I ended up taking a class on it.

Colleen Schnettler 
Oh, when you were getting your MBA, you took a class specifically on negotiation?

Michele Hansen 
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler 
Oh, that's awesome.

Michele Hansen
Yeah, it was awesome. And we got to do exercises, simulating negotiations and learning about different styles of negotiation, and different tactics to use.

And the really, the big thing I got out of that was that you don't have to be a hard negotiator, you don't have to be mean, in order to be a good negotiator. And, and I feel like this is something that we don't have a lot of cultural exposure to negotiation, right. You know, unlike my, you know, fellow student who grew up in India and buying groceries or buying anything involved, negotiation and haggling. I didn't really observe a lot of negotiation as a child or as a teenager, right? Like, Can you recall observing that very much?

Colleen Schnettler 
No, the price is what it is and you pay for it or you don't.

Michele Hansen 
Yeah, exactly. So, um, and so I think my understanding of negotiation was very much guided by pop culture figures who are known for being you know, hard charging and you know, screwing the other side basically right like, and so I just kind of I always shied away from negotiation. But negotiation is really, really important in running a business, especially once you start dealing with enterprise customers who pretty much always want to negotiate. They're not going to, you know, just sign up for a plan on the site and then just pay for that, especially on an annual basis and then things like that. And, and so I learned that you can be a good negotiator and get what you need out of an agreement. But you don't have to be mean and you don't have to, like bend over to them, either.

Colleen Schnettler 
Okay, so let's dive into this cuz...

Michele Hansen 
Yes!

Colleen Schnettler 
I think negotiation is a fascinating topic, especially for women. I have negotiated salaries and I remember like the first time I negotiated a salary, it was like, you should always negotiate But to your earlier point, like I have no experience in negotiating. So you just kind of pick a number. You're like, Oh, this is my number. Like, let's talk a little bit more about some of these tactics and like, how does one negotiate without being a jerk?

Michele Hansen 
Yeah, so one of the most important things to remember in negotiation is knowing your BATNA.

Colleen Schnettler 
What's a BATNA?

Michele Hansen 
Your BATNA is a best alternative to a negotiated agreement.

Colleen Schnettler 
Did you make that up?

Michele Hansen 
I did not make that up. This is actually a term that like is in every piece of negotiation literature. Basically, you know, some people think of this as leverage or as your power or but it's basically your alternative, right? Like if you don't negotiate this, like if you walk away from that job, what is your alternative? And, but you always have to think about your BATNA and then your counterparty's BATNA, and maybe way to think about this is it has The word bat in it, right? Your BATNA is what allows you to fly away.

Colleen Schnettler 
Okay, so let's use your example. I like concrete examples when I'm trying to understand this. Are you comfortable? Like you can make up numbers? But let's say you're negotiating with an enterprise client. So when you say BATNA, you mean that is your number you won't go lower than.

Michele Hansen 
That's a reservation price.

Colleen Schnettler 
That's different reservation price. Okay?

Michele Hansen 
So um, so your BATNA is basically your alternatives. So, for example, let's say that you...Okay, here, here's an example. Let's say you run a customer support platform. So these things out there like intercom and whatnot. So your customers, your customers' BATNA, right, so their alternative is are there they can use one of your competitors. But maybe they don't have all of your features like maybe, let's say, you do chat and email and knowledge management. They can use one of your competitors, but they don't have one of those features. So that's their best alternative. Or they can use three different services that will cost them a lot more money than using your one service. So that's probably the simplest example is that their alternative to using your service requires them to use three other services that end up being more time and hassle for them. By knowing what their BATNA is, or what their alternative is, you have a stronger negotiating position. You don't have to give up as much. And also you can remind them Yes, for example, let's say $5,000 a year sounds like a lot of money. But if you were to not use this service, and use x, y and z instead you would be paying $15,000 a year. So you have actually just created a net positive for them of $10,000 and you haven't moved on your price at all.

Another thing that is really important in a negotiation and part of not being mean another way to put it, it's actually a book that Alex recommended last week that really piqued my interest called Just Listen. And he had mentioned how this is a book used by hostage hostage negotiators. And that really got me interested because they are some of the best negotiators out there. And one of the concepts of it is you just listen for what is important to the other side. So for example, in your salary example, what may be important to you is the number but there may be other benefits that are really important to you, that are ancillary to the salary itself, that actually aren't very difficult for the employer to give you.

So for example, let's say that you're negotiating on a salary of $100,000, and they're only willing to give you $...

]]> Michele Hansen 
Welcome back to software social. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler. So Michele, what's been on your mind this week?

Michele Hansen 
So after our conversation with Alex last week, which, by the way was so fun, I feel like we got to talk to him about like, a 10th of the things I wanted to talk about. I have been thinking a lot about what I got out of my own MBA, because his book, The Tiny MBA, and we talked about this a little bit about the differences between between that and and it's just made me reflect on some of the things I got out of mine. And one of those things is negotiation skills.

Colleen Schnettler 
Okay.

Michele Hansen 
I really learned in that program just how much of a wuss I was at negotiations.

<laughter>

I got to do this trip to India and the UAE and we were visiting factories and and whatnot and part of it, you know, being an India, was going to the markets. And our professor was very keen that we learn how to negotiate and I remember we would, you know, go out and buy things and our graduate assistant student in the program was from India and we would always go to him and be like, hey, like, you know, I got this scarf and you know, I got them down from from this price to this price. And he would always like, shake his head and be like, you could have done so much better than that, like you just got totally ripped off. And I remember feeling like oh my god, like and, and I realized that experience -- getting my ass kicked by India -- made me realize how little I knew about negotiation. And, and so I ended up taking a class on it.

Colleen Schnettler 
Oh, when you were getting your MBA, you took a class specifically on negotiation?

Michele Hansen 
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler 
Oh, that's awesome.

Michele Hansen
Yeah, it was awesome. And we got to do exercises, simulating negotiations and learning about different styles of negotiation, and different tactics to use.

And the really, the big thing I got out of that was that you don't have to be a hard negotiator, you don't have to be mean, in order to be a good negotiator. And, and I feel like this is something that we don't have a lot of cultural exposure to negotiation, right. You know, unlike my, you know, fellow student who grew up in India and buying groceries or buying anything involved, negotiation and haggling. I didn't really observe a lot of negotiation as a child or as a teenager, right? Like, Can you recall observing that very much?

Colleen Schnettler 
No, the price is what it is and you pay for it or you don't.

Michele Hansen 
Yeah, exactly. So, um, and so I think my understanding of negotiation was very much guided by pop culture figures who are known for being you know, hard charging and you know, screwing the other side basically right like, and so I just kind of I always shied away from negotiation. But negotiation is really, really important in running a business, especially once you start dealing with enterprise customers who pretty much always want to negotiate. They're not going to, you know, just sign up for a plan on the site and then just pay for that, especially on an annual basis and then things like that. And, and so I learned that you can be a good negotiator and get what you need out of an agreement. But you don't have to be mean and you don't have to, like bend over to them, either.

Colleen Schnettler 
Okay, so let's dive into this cuz...

Michele Hansen 
Yes!

Colleen Schnettler 
I think negotiation is a fascinating topic, especially for women. I have negotiated salaries and I remember like the first time I negotiated a salary, it was like, you should always negotiate But to your earlier point, like I have no experience in negotiating. So you just kind of pick a number. You're like, Oh, this is my number. Like, let's talk a little bit more about some of these tactics and like, how does one negotiate without being a jerk?

Michele Hansen 
Yeah, so one of the most important things to remember in negotiation is knowing your BATNA.

Colleen Schnettler 
What's a BATNA?

Michele Hansen 
Your BATNA is a best alternative to a negotiated agreement.

Colleen Schnettler 
Did you make that up?

Michele Hansen 
I did not make that up. This is actually a term that like is in every piece of negotiation literature. Basically, you know, some people think of this as leverage or as your power or but it's basically your alternative, right? Like if you don't negotiate this, like if you walk away from that job, what is your alternative? And, but you always have to think about your BATNA and then your counterparty's BATNA, and maybe way to think about this is it has The word bat in it, right? Your BATNA is what allows you to fly away.

Colleen Schnettler 
Okay, so let's use your example. I like concrete examples when I'm trying to understand this. Are you comfortable? Like you can make up numbers? But let's say you're negotiating with an enterprise client. So when you say BATNA, you mean that is your number you won't go lower than.

Michele Hansen 
That's a reservation price.

Colleen Schnettler 
That's different reservation price. Okay?

Michele Hansen 
So um, so your BATNA is basically your alternatives. So, for example, let's say that you...Okay, here, here's an example. Let's say you run a customer support platform. So these things out there like intercom and whatnot. So your customers, your customers' BATNA, right, so their alternative is are there they can use one of your competitors. But maybe they don't have all of your features like maybe, let's say, you do chat and email and knowledge management. They can use one of your competitors, but they don't have one of those features. So that's their best alternative. Or they can use three different services that will cost them a lot more money than using your one service. So that's probably the simplest example is that their alternative to using your service requires them to use three other services that end up being more time and hassle for them. By knowing what their BATNA is, or what their alternative is, you have a stronger negotiating position. You don't have to give up as much. And also you can remind them Yes, for example, let's say $5,000 a year sounds like a lot of money. But if you were to not use this service, and use x, y and z instead you would be paying $15,000 a year. So you have actually just created a net positive for them of $10,000 and you haven't moved on your price at all.

Another thing that is really important in a negotiation and part of not being mean another way to put it, it's actually a book that Alex recommended last week that really piqued my interest called Just Listen. And he had mentioned how this is a book used by hostage hostage negotiators. And that really got me interested because they are some of the best negotiators out there. And one of the concepts of it is you just listen for what is important to the other side. So for example, in your salary example, what may be important to you is the number but there may be other benefits that are really important to you, that are ancillary to the salary itself, that actually aren't very difficult for the employer to give you.

So for example, let's say that you're negotiating on a salary of $100,000, and they're only willing to give you $...

]]> Wed, 23 Sep 2020 10:31:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2011 Michele talks about how she leveled up her negotiation skills, and Colleen negotiates with herself about what really needs to be ready for her launch. Michele talks about how she leveled up her negotiation skills, and Colleen negotiates with herself about what really needs to be ready for her launch. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler BONUS: Alex Hillman Joins Our Table BONUS: Alex Hillman Joins Our Table bonus e7bc7eaa-948f-4b63-ab03-c3e794b0315a https://share.transistor.fm/s/99fbfe48 Michele Hansen 
Welcome to the Software Social podcast. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

Alex Hillman
And I'm Alex Hillman.

Michele Hansen 
And we have a special guest with us today, which is very exciting. Alex has recently released a book called The Tiny MBA. Colleen and I have both read it and we are super excited to talk to you today, Alex.

Alex Hillman
Um, thank you for having me. I've been enjoying listening to this show. And I feel like I got invited to the the cool kids lunch table to hang out and and talk business. So um, thank you.

Michele Hansen  
Yeah, so let's dive in. So so the book, I really like how you structured it with a bunch of sort of a bunch of nuggets of wisdom, many of which you get the sense that those were hard won on your behalf.

Alex Hillman
Yeah, the hard won is a good way to describe it. And I think talking to folks have since read it, a lot of folks find themselves nodding along nodding long and going, "Oof, ouch. Yeah, I've been there for that one. I wish I had heard that one sooner." And so I think for folks that haven't encountered it yet, there's maybe some warning signs. 

And then on the other side, it's it's stuff that I think people do know, including myself, but don't necessarily hear or hear often. And sometimes they just need a reminder or to hear it in a new way. So one of my favorite ways I've heard this book described so far was from a friend of mine, who is a pretty storied entrepreneur and has spent time in sort of all different categories. He's done the big venture back thing. He's done small bootstrap stuff. He's done publishing, he's done software. And he really, really enjoyed he's even been involved in reading books with entrepreneurs, so he's sort of seen behind the scenes. And he, he's like, this book is so different from other business books and there's sort of three kinds of lessons: There's one third is stuff that maybe you've heard before, but it's in kind of a new way. You know, the constraints of these, you know, everything about a thing is kind of on one page. And you don't even have the whole page in really any case, it's really a couple of sentences. There's another third, that is what he called next level thinking. And I'm not super comfortable calling it that, but what he was really describing was more, you know, a different way of seeing a thing that people have a sort of a commonly held perspective. And this was an alternative that is maybe equally true, but less commonly heard. And the third part was a kick in the ass, and something that he's heard before but needed to hear or needed to hear in a different way and to challenge himself and go, why am I doing this the hard way? And, yeah, I mean, it's, I think there are books out there that do each of those things, but it's been really nice to hear from folks that are at lots of different stages of their business, that it can do one or all of those things kind of in one sitting.

Colleen Schnettler

So Alex, you talk a lot about psychology in the book. One of the quotes is the most valuable books aren't business books. They're books about human psychology. So, you know, my background is engineering and development. And I know a lot of your audience I believe, as well. And I, I was just like, man, now I gotta learn about humans? That sounds really hard.

Alex Hillman
Yeah, I'm curious, like, Why? Why does that seem hard to you? Because I hear that and I feel that and look, people are frickin weird. So I get it. But like, from your perspective...

Michele Hansen  
I love how weird they are!

Alex Hillman
I do too. I do too. From from you, like when you say? Like, what's, how does that read for you? Like, what it what actually makes it feel hard to you?

Colleen Schnettler

Well, I already feel like I'm better with humans and most developers, but still like they're just humans are tough. I mean, they're just irrational. And you know, they don't make logical decisions. And so trying to get in someone's head and find out like, like, what I took away from the book is I really need to figure out how I'm providing value to my customers. And you know, you really just want to make them happy, which is something I've talked about with Michele before too, like you, you want them to feel like they're winning. But then I just, I just really struggle with like understanding human psychology when you get people who really aren't logical thinkers.

Alex Hillman 
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think there to your point, there's, there's the rational behavior and the irrational behavior, and which one someone's gonna be deploying at any given moment is not always consistent.

One of my favorite ways to think about psychology is -- because I come from a software development background as well. I didn't explain, I kind of said that in the book, I guess. But one of the reasons I find psychology fascinating is it's kind of like having a debugger for people because people break in wildly unpredictable ways, but they do it at wildly predictable times. Or sometimes it's the other way around, they break in unpredictable times, but in relatively predictable ways. Or no, I say break. It's not always bad things, they respond positively, consistently, just not always in the exact same way. So, you know, for, for me programming kind of clicked when I realized, "Oh, this is about patterns, right patterns and, and systems." And if you start thinking about people as patterns and systems also, I don't, I mean, I think you can get pretty far into the weeds with psychology and things that are useful, but maybe not instantly deployable. If you really just think about what are people's behaviors as patterns, like it's not just what do they do. And it's, it's also why do they do it? And then is there any consistency to why they do things or is there inconsistent consistency? And if there's inconsistency is there consistency within the consistency, so you can start to see how when you sort of pull apart the layers, it really does start feel like debugging a person.

And, you know, I think one of the other pieces is sometimes you're debugging yourself. It's like, "Am I making a decision or not doing a thing because of my own psychology?" I think that in some cases is even harder. However, I also think, you know, one of my favorite books and it's recommended in in the Tiny MBA is a book called Just Listen by an author named Mark Goulston. And Mark is a clinical psychologist. But the reason he's famous for -- famous enough to write a book that I would be recommending in a business book -- is he's a lead hostage negotiator, trainer for the FBI. And in the book, he talks about sort of the neuroscience of why we, why it's hard to listen and and why it's hard to get other people to listen to us in a really, really systematic way. And he teaches you some really specific techniques for, and he uses, he teaches these techniques to hostage negotiators. And he also uses them in his private practice with, you know, husbands and partners and wives and families who aren't talking to each other. It's all the same basics, you know, brain science, but he does this, this interesting thing where, you know, it's not a good idea to teach somebody a psychology tool, and then have them go use it on their friends and family. Bad things are likely to happen. But instead he teaches you how to use these tools on yourself. And by practicing them on yourself, you start recognizing your own internal voice, your own internal conflict when you're not listening to yourself. And you get to sort of practice t...

]]> Michele Hansen 
Welcome to the Software Social podcast. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

Alex Hillman
And I'm Alex Hillman.

Michele Hansen 
And we have a special guest with us today, which is very exciting. Alex has recently released a book called The Tiny MBA. Colleen and I have both read it and we are super excited to talk to you today, Alex.

Alex Hillman
Um, thank you for having me. I've been enjoying listening to this show. And I feel like I got invited to the the cool kids lunch table to hang out and and talk business. So um, thank you.

Michele Hansen  
Yeah, so let's dive in. So so the book, I really like how you structured it with a bunch of sort of a bunch of nuggets of wisdom, many of which you get the sense that those were hard won on your behalf.

Alex Hillman
Yeah, the hard won is a good way to describe it. And I think talking to folks have since read it, a lot of folks find themselves nodding along nodding long and going, "Oof, ouch. Yeah, I've been there for that one. I wish I had heard that one sooner." And so I think for folks that haven't encountered it yet, there's maybe some warning signs. 

And then on the other side, it's it's stuff that I think people do know, including myself, but don't necessarily hear or hear often. And sometimes they just need a reminder or to hear it in a new way. So one of my favorite ways I've heard this book described so far was from a friend of mine, who is a pretty storied entrepreneur and has spent time in sort of all different categories. He's done the big venture back thing. He's done small bootstrap stuff. He's done publishing, he's done software. And he really, really enjoyed he's even been involved in reading books with entrepreneurs, so he's sort of seen behind the scenes. And he, he's like, this book is so different from other business books and there's sort of three kinds of lessons: There's one third is stuff that maybe you've heard before, but it's in kind of a new way. You know, the constraints of these, you know, everything about a thing is kind of on one page. And you don't even have the whole page in really any case, it's really a couple of sentences. There's another third, that is what he called next level thinking. And I'm not super comfortable calling it that, but what he was really describing was more, you know, a different way of seeing a thing that people have a sort of a commonly held perspective. And this was an alternative that is maybe equally true, but less commonly heard. And the third part was a kick in the ass, and something that he's heard before but needed to hear or needed to hear in a different way and to challenge himself and go, why am I doing this the hard way? And, yeah, I mean, it's, I think there are books out there that do each of those things, but it's been really nice to hear from folks that are at lots of different stages of their business, that it can do one or all of those things kind of in one sitting.

Colleen Schnettler

So Alex, you talk a lot about psychology in the book. One of the quotes is the most valuable books aren't business books. They're books about human psychology. So, you know, my background is engineering and development. And I know a lot of your audience I believe, as well. And I, I was just like, man, now I gotta learn about humans? That sounds really hard.

Alex Hillman
Yeah, I'm curious, like, Why? Why does that seem hard to you? Because I hear that and I feel that and look, people are frickin weird. So I get it. But like, from your perspective...

Michele Hansen  
I love how weird they are!

Alex Hillman
I do too. I do too. From from you, like when you say? Like, what's, how does that read for you? Like, what it what actually makes it feel hard to you?

Colleen Schnettler

Well, I already feel like I'm better with humans and most developers, but still like they're just humans are tough. I mean, they're just irrational. And you know, they don't make logical decisions. And so trying to get in someone's head and find out like, like, what I took away from the book is I really need to figure out how I'm providing value to my customers. And you know, you really just want to make them happy, which is something I've talked about with Michele before too, like you, you want them to feel like they're winning. But then I just, I just really struggle with like understanding human psychology when you get people who really aren't logical thinkers.

Alex Hillman 
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think there to your point, there's, there's the rational behavior and the irrational behavior, and which one someone's gonna be deploying at any given moment is not always consistent.

One of my favorite ways to think about psychology is -- because I come from a software development background as well. I didn't explain, I kind of said that in the book, I guess. But one of the reasons I find psychology fascinating is it's kind of like having a debugger for people because people break in wildly unpredictable ways, but they do it at wildly predictable times. Or sometimes it's the other way around, they break in unpredictable times, but in relatively predictable ways. Or no, I say break. It's not always bad things, they respond positively, consistently, just not always in the exact same way. So, you know, for, for me programming kind of clicked when I realized, "Oh, this is about patterns, right patterns and, and systems." And if you start thinking about people as patterns and systems also, I don't, I mean, I think you can get pretty far into the weeds with psychology and things that are useful, but maybe not instantly deployable. If you really just think about what are people's behaviors as patterns, like it's not just what do they do. And it's, it's also why do they do it? And then is there any consistency to why they do things or is there inconsistent consistency? And if there's inconsistency is there consistency within the consistency, so you can start to see how when you sort of pull apart the layers, it really does start feel like debugging a person.

And, you know, I think one of the other pieces is sometimes you're debugging yourself. It's like, "Am I making a decision or not doing a thing because of my own psychology?" I think that in some cases is even harder. However, I also think, you know, one of my favorite books and it's recommended in in the Tiny MBA is a book called Just Listen by an author named Mark Goulston. And Mark is a clinical psychologist. But the reason he's famous for -- famous enough to write a book that I would be recommending in a business book -- is he's a lead hostage negotiator, trainer for the FBI. And in the book, he talks about sort of the neuroscience of why we, why it's hard to listen and and why it's hard to get other people to listen to us in a really, really systematic way. And he teaches you some really specific techniques for, and he uses, he teaches these techniques to hostage negotiators. And he also uses them in his private practice with, you know, husbands and partners and wives and families who aren't talking to each other. It's all the same basics, you know, brain science, but he does this, this interesting thing where, you know, it's not a good idea to teach somebody a psychology tool, and then have them go use it on their friends and family. Bad things are likely to happen. But instead he teaches you how to use these tools on yourself. And by practicing them on yourself, you start recognizing your own internal voice, your own internal conflict when you're not listening to yourself. And you get to sort of practice t...

]]> Wed, 23 Sep 2020 02:49:00 +0200 Michele Hansen, Colleen Schnettler, and Alex Hillman Michele Hansen, Colleen Schnettler, and Alex Hillman 3276 Alex Hillman grabs a chair and joins our table for this special episode. We talk about his new book, The Tiny MBA. Alex Hillman grabs a chair and joins our table for this special episode. We talk about his new book, The Tiny MBA. SaaS, bootstrapping, software Yes Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler The Drudgery of Launching and the Difficulty of Hiring 7 7 The Drudgery of Launching and the Difficulty of Hiring full 04051ad8-91ee-4087-b3cc-5aec4a73602a https://share.transistor.fm/s/a66fa605 Michele Hansen 
Welcome back to Software Social. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

Michele Hansen 
So what's going on, Colleen?

Colleen Schnettler 
I have so many things I want to share today. Yeah. I, yes, yes, I am super excited. Because I have finally finished my image management widget. I need a better name. By the way. Image management widget is like the worst name. I need something snappy, like cool image uploader. Anyway, I'll work on that.

Michele Hansen 
Naming is one of the hardest parts honestly, like, naming and pricing.

Colleen Schnettler 
So I have finally finished what I ended up doing was, I think I was listening to a bootstrapper podcast years ago, and I remember the host said something about how he was like, Well, you know, sometimes you need to just go to a hotel for four days and finish something. And that's entirely impractical for people, you know, who are responsible for spouses and children and other things like that. So I wasn't actually able to do that, but I did manage to block out like three solid days, and I got it done.

Michele Hansen 
Nice!

Colleen Schnettler 
So I'm super pumped about that. Yeah, I'm super pumped. So that's exciting. So my next steps are, you know, kind of, not kind of my next steps. My next step is getting it deployed. And I've already deployed an app in the Heroku Store before so I know the process. So hopefully that will not be too painful.

Michele Hansen 
So when you say it's done, is it the product itself is done? Or is also like the commercialization of it done in terms of making it something people can pay for and have accounts for and stuff like that?

Colleen Schnettler 
What do you think, Michelle?

Michele Hansen 
I'm just asking!

Colleen Schnettler 
if it was funny, you say that because I was literally thinking as I was finishing up, I was like, Alright, so now the real work starts. This was like the fun work. Now I actually have to do the real work and my plan is to deploy it in the Heroku App Store. So there is some glue, I have to work with the Heroku API, and things like that to make it available to customers. So my plan is to start using it for my own projects and my client projects immediately. And, you know, maybe after I've been using it... I think the way that Heroku App Store works as you'd have to put something in the App Store, and then you know, you have to it has to be free. And you have to get like a lot of users, I forget how many, but you're just in this alpha stage.

So that's, that's kind of my plan to kind of get it out there. But like, really, the hard work behind this now is documenting how to use it and figuring out how to use it for different use cases and all of that kind of stuff. Which yeah, like I said, that's probably the real hard work, right?

Michele Hansen 
I mean, that's the work that never ends right? Like so much of marketing is here is how you use this and here's when you would use it and...

Colleen Schnettler 
I just -- and I could be wrong, but I feel like I am uniquely equipped to handle that because I think a lot of developers who do things specific like this, especially something is technically, you know, unique, I guess, they don't really do a good job of making it easy to use. They're like, Oh, here's this thing, but you also have to go get an AWS account and set up your own IAM account. And you have to, you know, put it behind a CDN, and you have to do with all this other stuff. So, so I hope and I think that one thing I am good at is I'm really good at taking complicated processes and distilling them down into simple explanations. So that's really my goal. So

Michele Hansen 
if people wanted to use this to add images to their project, would they only need to use your image management service for this? Would they also need their own AWS account or because you'd mentioned a couple weeks ago that it would just be under your AWS account?

Colleen Schnettler 
Yes. So it's one service. I thought about doing it as to services. It would have actually been easier on me to do it as to services, but I don't think that's what the customer ultimately wants. Especially as we talked about is if I put this into even less developer, you know, friendly terrain and start to try to use it in a no code tool or something like that. You've got to extract that away, because like the AWS console is a bear, especially if you don't know what you're doing. So yeah, so it's just one service right now.

Michele Hansen 
And so you said that for the time being in the Heroku marketplace, it'll be an alpha that can only be free.

Colleen Schnettler 
There's yeah, I actually don't all the details yet. Because I wanted to finish it, but it's something like that, like you put it in and it has to be free for a while. And you have to have -- I think it's a lot I forget, there's a certain number of people you have to get trying it. So I'm going to beg all of my friends who ever used a Heroku.

Michele Hansen 
Listeners...

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah, if you use Heroku, please, please, please send me an email or a tweet or I will let you know when this is in the App Store. Please download it!

Michele Hansen 
But hold on. So is there a free tier from AWS for what you are effectively reselling?

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah, so that's that's the rub. Um, there's not really.

Michele Hansen 
Oh no.

Colleen Schnettler 
So it's not it sounds bad, but like, it's not that bad because I can rate limit everything. And so what I did was I got a new AWS account. And with new AWS accounts you get -- I forget how much -- but you get a certain amount of free stuff that first year. So under my new URL, like URL, email and stuff, I got the new account, so I get X amount free. But so this is like a really interesting, this will be a really interesting kind of pain point, right is because yes, if it's required to be free, Cloud Storage generally isn't free. I don't really know how it's all gonna play out. But really, I don't actually expect to get a whole bunch of people that it's going to become a problem yet.

So I was reading this blog post by Amy Hoy, the Fine Art of Flintstoning. I don't know if you've ever heard of it or read it. And she talks about -- like so sometimes you just she talks about how it took her six years to ship something, which by the way makes me feel way better. And she also talks about how there's a point where you just you just have to ship something, right. So she uses this term "flint stoning." And she uses it to mean some stuff you're going to do manually. So she was talking about when they first launched Freckle, like, if you wanted your email reset, like you, they had to do that manually. And so there were the certain steps she had to do manually TO ACTUALLY SHIP her product. And that's kind of where I am right now. Like, there's a lot I want to do on the AWS side to monitor this and, and, you know, watch the billing, but I started to get like lost and all of that. And so at least for the first couple months, like I'm just gonna have a simple script that runs independent of the app, or I'll just look at it with my own eyeballs to kind of keep track of where I am.

Michele Hansen 
Yeah, I think that kind of custom monitoring and all of that. We were doing that all manually for quite a long time. Time I want I want to say like three plus years.

Colleen Schnettler 
Really?

Michele Hansen 
We had various services that we used, you know, for,...

]]> Michele Hansen 
Welcome back to Software Social. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

Michele Hansen 
So what's going on, Colleen?

Colleen Schnettler 
I have so many things I want to share today. Yeah. I, yes, yes, I am super excited. Because I have finally finished my image management widget. I need a better name. By the way. Image management widget is like the worst name. I need something snappy, like cool image uploader. Anyway, I'll work on that.

Michele Hansen 
Naming is one of the hardest parts honestly, like, naming and pricing.

Colleen Schnettler 
So I have finally finished what I ended up doing was, I think I was listening to a bootstrapper podcast years ago, and I remember the host said something about how he was like, Well, you know, sometimes you need to just go to a hotel for four days and finish something. And that's entirely impractical for people, you know, who are responsible for spouses and children and other things like that. So I wasn't actually able to do that, but I did manage to block out like three solid days, and I got it done.

Michele Hansen 
Nice!

Colleen Schnettler 
So I'm super pumped about that. Yeah, I'm super pumped. So that's exciting. So my next steps are, you know, kind of, not kind of my next steps. My next step is getting it deployed. And I've already deployed an app in the Heroku Store before so I know the process. So hopefully that will not be too painful.

Michele Hansen 
So when you say it's done, is it the product itself is done? Or is also like the commercialization of it done in terms of making it something people can pay for and have accounts for and stuff like that?

Colleen Schnettler 
What do you think, Michelle?

Michele Hansen 
I'm just asking!

Colleen Schnettler 
if it was funny, you say that because I was literally thinking as I was finishing up, I was like, Alright, so now the real work starts. This was like the fun work. Now I actually have to do the real work and my plan is to deploy it in the Heroku App Store. So there is some glue, I have to work with the Heroku API, and things like that to make it available to customers. So my plan is to start using it for my own projects and my client projects immediately. And, you know, maybe after I've been using it... I think the way that Heroku App Store works as you'd have to put something in the App Store, and then you know, you have to it has to be free. And you have to get like a lot of users, I forget how many, but you're just in this alpha stage.

So that's, that's kind of my plan to kind of get it out there. But like, really, the hard work behind this now is documenting how to use it and figuring out how to use it for different use cases and all of that kind of stuff. Which yeah, like I said, that's probably the real hard work, right?

Michele Hansen 
I mean, that's the work that never ends right? Like so much of marketing is here is how you use this and here's when you would use it and...

Colleen Schnettler 
I just -- and I could be wrong, but I feel like I am uniquely equipped to handle that because I think a lot of developers who do things specific like this, especially something is technically, you know, unique, I guess, they don't really do a good job of making it easy to use. They're like, Oh, here's this thing, but you also have to go get an AWS account and set up your own IAM account. And you have to, you know, put it behind a CDN, and you have to do with all this other stuff. So, so I hope and I think that one thing I am good at is I'm really good at taking complicated processes and distilling them down into simple explanations. So that's really my goal. So

Michele Hansen 
if people wanted to use this to add images to their project, would they only need to use your image management service for this? Would they also need their own AWS account or because you'd mentioned a couple weeks ago that it would just be under your AWS account?

Colleen Schnettler 
Yes. So it's one service. I thought about doing it as to services. It would have actually been easier on me to do it as to services, but I don't think that's what the customer ultimately wants. Especially as we talked about is if I put this into even less developer, you know, friendly terrain and start to try to use it in a no code tool or something like that. You've got to extract that away, because like the AWS console is a bear, especially if you don't know what you're doing. So yeah, so it's just one service right now.

Michele Hansen 
And so you said that for the time being in the Heroku marketplace, it'll be an alpha that can only be free.

Colleen Schnettler 
There's yeah, I actually don't all the details yet. Because I wanted to finish it, but it's something like that, like you put it in and it has to be free for a while. And you have to have -- I think it's a lot I forget, there's a certain number of people you have to get trying it. So I'm going to beg all of my friends who ever used a Heroku.

Michele Hansen 
Listeners...

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah, if you use Heroku, please, please, please send me an email or a tweet or I will let you know when this is in the App Store. Please download it!

Michele Hansen 
But hold on. So is there a free tier from AWS for what you are effectively reselling?

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah, so that's that's the rub. Um, there's not really.

Michele Hansen 
Oh no.

Colleen Schnettler 
So it's not it sounds bad, but like, it's not that bad because I can rate limit everything. And so what I did was I got a new AWS account. And with new AWS accounts you get -- I forget how much -- but you get a certain amount of free stuff that first year. So under my new URL, like URL, email and stuff, I got the new account, so I get X amount free. But so this is like a really interesting, this will be a really interesting kind of pain point, right is because yes, if it's required to be free, Cloud Storage generally isn't free. I don't really know how it's all gonna play out. But really, I don't actually expect to get a whole bunch of people that it's going to become a problem yet.

So I was reading this blog post by Amy Hoy, the Fine Art of Flintstoning. I don't know if you've ever heard of it or read it. And she talks about -- like so sometimes you just she talks about how it took her six years to ship something, which by the way makes me feel way better. And she also talks about how there's a point where you just you just have to ship something, right. So she uses this term "flint stoning." And she uses it to mean some stuff you're going to do manually. So she was talking about when they first launched Freckle, like, if you wanted your email reset, like you, they had to do that manually. And so there were the certain steps she had to do manually TO ACTUALLY SHIP her product. And that's kind of where I am right now. Like, there's a lot I want to do on the AWS side to monitor this and, and, you know, watch the billing, but I started to get like lost and all of that. And so at least for the first couple months, like I'm just gonna have a simple script that runs independent of the app, or I'll just look at it with my own eyeballs to kind of keep track of where I am.

Michele Hansen 
Yeah, I think that kind of custom monitoring and all of that. We were doing that all manually for quite a long time. Time I want I want to say like three plus years.

Colleen Schnettler 
Really?

Michele Hansen 
We had various services that we used, you know, for,...

]]> Wed, 23 Sep 2020 01:19:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 2017 Colleen gets closer to launching her image management service, and Michele opens up about their thinking on hiring. Colleen gets closer to launching her image management service, and Michele opens up about their thinking on hiring. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Don't Rearrange the Desks On Your Users 6 6 Don't Rearrange the Desks On Your Users full 5f57a148-1b2f-4485-bc2d-e548d7ab21fb https://share.transistor.fm/s/d1032c21 Michele Hansen 
Welcome to the Software Social podcast. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler .

Michele Hansen 
So Colleen, tell me what's going on this week.

Colleen Schnettler 
So I unfortunately have not had a whole lot of time to work on my side project this week, because life has been crazy. I've been swamped with client work and family stuff. So I didn't really do anything.

Michele Hansen 
That happens! Right? Especially during COVID times.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yes!

Michele Hansen 
How much free time does anyone really have right now, especially if you have kids?

Colleen Schnettler 
Yes. Balancing the kids and the clients and the work and the side project work has definitely been quite a lot.

Michele Hansen 
You've basically got two sets of clients because the kids themselves are, you know...

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah!

Michele Hansen 
...Pop in every 15 minutes and need things.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yes. And I'll work for three hours. And then they'll be like, Mommy, why aren't you spending any time with us? I'm like, only worked for three hours. It's because you're here all day. You're not at school where you're supposed to be! Anyway, anyway.

Michele Hansen 
So the small amount of time you didn't get to spend on your side project.

Colleen Schnettler 
So the small amount of time I did get to spend on my side project, I was chatting with a friend of mine about some of the technical challenges I'm having. And I'm having this really one specific problem where uploading multiple images is not working the way I want it to. And he suggested I ditch that -- he thought that having a multiple image upload was beyond the purview of an MVP. And I should just get it working with one image just to get something out there. Right just to get my foot in the door.

Michele Hansen 
Hmm.

Colleen Schnettler 
What do you think about that advice?

Michele Hansen 
I was gonna ask you what you thought of it first.

Colleen Schnettler 
I think it's good advice. Because one of the things I've one of the problems I always have is taking that first step and getting something out there because I just continually -- as I've been going through this, I continually want to add features, I got totally distracted with my lambda API gateway stuff last week. And that stuff is really cool, but totally beyond the initial scope of what I was trying to build. And I think for me, like I kind of got to get in the game, like, I've just got to get something out there to keep me motivated, and to get people using it and see if people want multiple image support.

Michele Hansen 
And also to get you using it right, because you've mentioned that you would use this with your clients and your time is at a premium. And so if you can start using it, that will be a form of feedback on on the product.

Colleen Schnettler 
Right? Like I am going to be hopefully my own best user of my own product, because I will get to use it and see like where the errors are. I know I want multiple image support. But what I can put out now is still better than what they're using. And I can still use it, you know, adding one image at a time, if I want, or I could use my part for the single images and use something else, a custom solution, for multiple images. I just feel like this is something that is taking me forever. And it's not really taking forever, but it's just something I need to get out there. And I was reading this article about like, what makes a good MVP and it wasn't about having a ton of features it was but it was also not about having a crappy product, like you need a tight product, you need a really good product with the minimal amount of features to make it viable.

Michele Hansen 
It's a tough concept, right? Because there there's this graphic that I I'm gonna have to share it because I'm gonna totally butcher it. But basically it's you know, the MVP of a car is not, you know, four wheels with a platform. The MVP of a car is a scooter because it still gets you from A to B like that's the the job of the product is to transport you from one place to another. But it's a very simple version of it, you know, it doesn't have features like a roof or, you know, multiple seating support, right? But it still gets you there. But there's very often when you see MVPs built, it's, you know, something that is a shell of what the product was supposed to be and isn't actually useful.

Colleen Schnettler 
Right! So that's my goal.

Michele Hansen 
So I think there definitely, there is that temptation, though, to sit on it until you've built you know, a Tesla, right? And you need to get it out there sooner than that and get feedback and I think there's also a certain pressure to not put things out there until it's perfect because I think we get afraid that it's gonna, it's gonna be criticized and people aren't gonna like it and they're gonna tell you how it's incomplete in ways that you already know. And I think it's really easy to build up a lot of fear around that, I mean. I'll tell you that like, features that people told us were boilerplate when we launched, we still haven't launched them, and we may never launch them. So...

Colleen Schnettler 
Oh, wow.

Michele Hansen 
Yeah. Like we don't have global support. And it has not been a problem for us. But that was something that people asked for on day one. And if we had waited until we had global support, we never would have launched.

Colleen Schnettler 
Right.

Michele Hansen 
We launched with just what we needed, which was coverage for the US, and honestly was not that great when we launched it either. But we launched with that, which was very simple. It was what we needed. And then we took it from there. But we didn't wait until it was totally perfect mirror image of major competitor products out there.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah, so I think for me, what I have now for these guys is single file, upload one at a time, and so I can build it as a single file upload one at a time. And I can utilize it on my existing application. And it could still be useful for people. And then I could, I mean, I could get that version out there. And then I could work on the multiple file support. And some of the other things if I decide that I need it.

Michele Hansen 
Yeah, and if there's demand for it, and, you know, of course, there's always the complication of when you build something, it's not always easy to build other things on top of it that it wasn't built for. And so, you know, something to keep in mind that you know, at some point, you're going to want batch support, and so making architectural decisions that won't inhibit that, but also not committing yourself to that and the architecture at the same time is a tricky thing to do.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah, I think I can do it with this, with this setup that I have now. So I think that'll work. So I think that's my new plan is just to finish it. Just to finish. So that's my short but sweet update for this week. So what have you been doing?

Michele Hansen 
So I've been thinking a lot about customer research which, you know...

Colleen Schnettler 
This is my favorite topic.

Michele Hansen 
This is MY favorite topic!

[laughter]

So we are going to be launching a new version of our dashboard. So our dashboard is wh...

]]> Michele Hansen 
Welcome to the Software Social podcast. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler .

Michele Hansen 
So Colleen, tell me what's going on this week.

Colleen Schnettler 
So I unfortunately have not had a whole lot of time to work on my side project this week, because life has been crazy. I've been swamped with client work and family stuff. So I didn't really do anything.

Michele Hansen 
That happens! Right? Especially during COVID times.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yes!

Michele Hansen 
How much free time does anyone really have right now, especially if you have kids?

Colleen Schnettler 
Yes. Balancing the kids and the clients and the work and the side project work has definitely been quite a lot.

Michele Hansen 
You've basically got two sets of clients because the kids themselves are, you know...

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah!

Michele Hansen 
...Pop in every 15 minutes and need things.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yes. And I'll work for three hours. And then they'll be like, Mommy, why aren't you spending any time with us? I'm like, only worked for three hours. It's because you're here all day. You're not at school where you're supposed to be! Anyway, anyway.

Michele Hansen 
So the small amount of time you didn't get to spend on your side project.

Colleen Schnettler 
So the small amount of time I did get to spend on my side project, I was chatting with a friend of mine about some of the technical challenges I'm having. And I'm having this really one specific problem where uploading multiple images is not working the way I want it to. And he suggested I ditch that -- he thought that having a multiple image upload was beyond the purview of an MVP. And I should just get it working with one image just to get something out there. Right just to get my foot in the door.

Michele Hansen 
Hmm.

Colleen Schnettler 
What do you think about that advice?

Michele Hansen 
I was gonna ask you what you thought of it first.

Colleen Schnettler 
I think it's good advice. Because one of the things I've one of the problems I always have is taking that first step and getting something out there because I just continually -- as I've been going through this, I continually want to add features, I got totally distracted with my lambda API gateway stuff last week. And that stuff is really cool, but totally beyond the initial scope of what I was trying to build. And I think for me, like I kind of got to get in the game, like, I've just got to get something out there to keep me motivated, and to get people using it and see if people want multiple image support.

Michele Hansen 
And also to get you using it right, because you've mentioned that you would use this with your clients and your time is at a premium. And so if you can start using it, that will be a form of feedback on on the product.

Colleen Schnettler 
Right? Like I am going to be hopefully my own best user of my own product, because I will get to use it and see like where the errors are. I know I want multiple image support. But what I can put out now is still better than what they're using. And I can still use it, you know, adding one image at a time, if I want, or I could use my part for the single images and use something else, a custom solution, for multiple images. I just feel like this is something that is taking me forever. And it's not really taking forever, but it's just something I need to get out there. And I was reading this article about like, what makes a good MVP and it wasn't about having a ton of features it was but it was also not about having a crappy product, like you need a tight product, you need a really good product with the minimal amount of features to make it viable.

Michele Hansen 
It's a tough concept, right? Because there there's this graphic that I I'm gonna have to share it because I'm gonna totally butcher it. But basically it's you know, the MVP of a car is not, you know, four wheels with a platform. The MVP of a car is a scooter because it still gets you from A to B like that's the the job of the product is to transport you from one place to another. But it's a very simple version of it, you know, it doesn't have features like a roof or, you know, multiple seating support, right? But it still gets you there. But there's very often when you see MVPs built, it's, you know, something that is a shell of what the product was supposed to be and isn't actually useful.

Colleen Schnettler 
Right! So that's my goal.

Michele Hansen 
So I think there definitely, there is that temptation, though, to sit on it until you've built you know, a Tesla, right? And you need to get it out there sooner than that and get feedback and I think there's also a certain pressure to not put things out there until it's perfect because I think we get afraid that it's gonna, it's gonna be criticized and people aren't gonna like it and they're gonna tell you how it's incomplete in ways that you already know. And I think it's really easy to build up a lot of fear around that, I mean. I'll tell you that like, features that people told us were boilerplate when we launched, we still haven't launched them, and we may never launch them. So...

Colleen Schnettler 
Oh, wow.

Michele Hansen 
Yeah. Like we don't have global support. And it has not been a problem for us. But that was something that people asked for on day one. And if we had waited until we had global support, we never would have launched.

Colleen Schnettler 
Right.

Michele Hansen 
We launched with just what we needed, which was coverage for the US, and honestly was not that great when we launched it either. But we launched with that, which was very simple. It was what we needed. And then we took it from there. But we didn't wait until it was totally perfect mirror image of major competitor products out there.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah, so I think for me, what I have now for these guys is single file, upload one at a time, and so I can build it as a single file upload one at a time. And I can utilize it on my existing application. And it could still be useful for people. And then I could, I mean, I could get that version out there. And then I could work on the multiple file support. And some of the other things if I decide that I need it.

Michele Hansen 
Yeah, and if there's demand for it, and, you know, of course, there's always the complication of when you build something, it's not always easy to build other things on top of it that it wasn't built for. And so, you know, something to keep in mind that you know, at some point, you're going to want batch support, and so making architectural decisions that won't inhibit that, but also not committing yourself to that and the architecture at the same time is a tricky thing to do.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah, I think I can do it with this, with this setup that I have now. So I think that'll work. So I think that's my new plan is just to finish it. Just to finish. So that's my short but sweet update for this week. So what have you been doing?

Michele Hansen 
So I've been thinking a lot about customer research which, you know...

Colleen Schnettler 
This is my favorite topic.

Michele Hansen 
This is MY favorite topic!

[laughter]

So we are going to be launching a new version of our dashboard. So our dashboard is wh...

]]> Tue, 22 Sep 2020 11:59:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1750 Colleen thinks about how to hone in on her MVP, and Michele talks about how to get into customers' heads. Colleen thinks about how to hone in on her MVP, and Michele talks about how to get into customers' heads. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler When should you give up or pivot? 5 5 When should you give up or pivot? full 3b949281-93cb-4bc4-af52-f846402657bf https://share.transistor.fm/s/3df332e3 Michele Hansen 
Welcome to the Software Social podcast where we invite you to join our weekly conversation about what's going on in our businesses. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

Michele Hansen
How's it going, Colleen?

Colleen Schnettler 
I'm doing well. It's been a pretty exciting week for me on a tech front. So I haven't had as much time this week. I'm really trying to commit to talking to more people. I mentioned that.

Michele Hansen
Yeah!

Colleen Schnettler 
And it's kind of funny, because I've been talking to more people and they don't really care about my image management solution.

Michele Hansen
Oh :(

Colleen Schnettler 
Well, it's okay. This this kind of interesting thing has happened, where they care at there. They don't care about that, but they're really excited about the work I'm doing with AWS and Arc. I'm, I'm moving my tech over to go from kind of a monolithic Rails app to like AWS, Lambda serverless functions and everyone is really interested in that?

Michele Hansen
Really?

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah, it's kind of been a funny thing where I've wanted to talk to people about image management. And they want to talk to me about how I'm using lambda functions to do manipulations on images.

Michele Hansen
Really...

Colleen Schnettler 
And so, yeah, and so I there's a few things I'm trying to be wary of here. One is, I feel like it's not a good idea to use new tech on a new idea. Because you're, it's like a double uphill battle. You have to both build something, ship it and learn some new tech. But this AWS stuff is really cool. I love learning it and the architecture with it really is better. It just feels cleaner. I'm I'm not a huge microservices person, but this particular, what I'm building really lends itself well to these lambda functions. So that's been really fun. But it has been an interesting thing to find out that people are more interested in that. So as you know,  one of the things I struggle with is jumping too quickly from idea to idea. But I'm seeing this opportunity where everyone wants to learn how to write lambda functions in the cloud with Ruby. And I'm like, Oh! Well, that's interesting.

Michele Hansen 
Did you course business at one point? I forget.

Colleen Schnettler 
I thought about it. I know that would be, that would be no, I thought about it. And I started doing video courses. I think I did like three or four. And it just got, I mean, it's kind of a slog to do that kind of thing, especially if it's not, it was I was building something that was more geared towards beginners. And so it was pretty boring for me to actually make them because you have to really go back and I felt like there was a lot of beginner course content out there already. So I never I never really gave that a good shot. But this is an interesting thing, because I am really when you hear these people who are successful, they're like, Oh, I was interested in this thing. And I blogged about it everyday for a year. And then boom, I'm the expert in this thing. And I have a product and this thing. I don't know, it's just I don't want to be jumping, right? This is I need to really focus, which is one of the things I struggle with. But I'm really tempted, I'm really tempted to like, get more into this AWS in the cloud serverless functions stuff. That seems to be more interesting to my developer friends.

Michele Hansen 
Maybe it's not jumping if you just hang out on a particular stepping stone for a little bit. Maybe there's like a mini course here or something or even if it's just a blog post and people get excited about that. But maybe there's, you know, a little a little stop along the way here.

Colleen Schnettler 
So I'd really like to get the image thing done. Because I think as we've been talking every week, I feel like I'm just so close.

Michele Hansen 
And you need it. Like for your sanity. On the projects you work on.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yes, I need it, I'm going to use it on my clients. And I just want to finish something like I just want to finish a side project. That's just where I am. It's like graveyard of abandoned side projects. So I want to finish it, and I'll use it. And I think it'll make my life easier. So that's great. But I wonder this is something I'm kind of like putting in the back of my mind and kind of tabling as people are interested in this, they want to learn more, they want to learn, you know, how you can use it. And the other thing, there's, I feel like serverless is huge, and there's so much opportunity for growth. And I don't know if there is like, I know, AWS has a marketplace, but I don't know anything about it. But so for example, this one serverless function I have all you do is if your images in my bucket, you can just send query parameters for the size you want of the image and it returns the image already resized and optimized and things like that. Wouldn't it be cool if you could have like a suite of little serverless functions that you could somehow bundle together? Like a whole bunch, I don't know, you'd have like, I don't know what it would look like you'd have like five different API endpoints you as my customer could hit that would handle all of your different image manipulation, like, or I could have one for video and one for images. I don't know. I feel like there might be something there. And I don't know what that looks like. But it's definitely like tucked away in the back of my mind, like what I'm working on. Now. I want to finish first. That's important. And it's so close. But I think after that might be a good time to start blogging about all this stuff I have learned in the AWS ecosystem. And once I don't forget it, but also, you know, to see if people are interested in that kind of information as well.

Michele Hansen 
It sounds like they are and like, I can't tell you how many projects and products come out of setting out to do something else. Like just earlier this week, Adam Wathan did a huge thread on the development of Tailwind. I don't know if you saw it. And he mentioned how they were working on another side project, but like the CSS was driving him nuts. And so they just he just made that. And then he open sourced it. And people were super psyched about it. And they were really surprised by that. And then it like led to this whole thing that is Tailwind. I mean, that happened with Geocodio too. To to like we set out to make an app that told you grocery store and coffee shop opening hours and ran into problems with geocoding. And you know, we got some good, good traction and some excited users on the grocery store app. But man, when you find a problem that developers have, and you solve it for them, people get really, really excited about that.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah. So when you guys launched Geocodio did you do that through some kind of existing marketplace, or were you just out in the free world?

Michele Hansen 
Hacker News. That was the place to launch in January 2014. Product Hunt like wasn't even a thing. Yeah. And we did a ton of, you know, posting on like StackOverflow and Reddit.

Colleen Schnettler 
And how did you know when you were ready to put it out there for other people? Had you guys been using it for your grocery store app for a while?

Michele Hansen 
Yeah, I think at least six months or so.

Colleen Schnettler 
That's quite a while.

Michele Hansen 
Yeah. And it took a good friend of ours to be like, hey, like, you should just slap a paywall in front of this and see if other people will pay f...

]]> Michele Hansen 
Welcome to the Software Social podcast where we invite you to join our weekly conversation about what's going on in our businesses. I'm Michele Hansen.

Colleen Schnettler 
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

Michele Hansen
How's it going, Colleen?

Colleen Schnettler 
I'm doing well. It's been a pretty exciting week for me on a tech front. So I haven't had as much time this week. I'm really trying to commit to talking to more people. I mentioned that.

Michele Hansen
Yeah!

Colleen Schnettler 
And it's kind of funny, because I've been talking to more people and they don't really care about my image management solution.

Michele Hansen
Oh :(

Colleen Schnettler 
Well, it's okay. This this kind of interesting thing has happened, where they care at there. They don't care about that, but they're really excited about the work I'm doing with AWS and Arc. I'm, I'm moving my tech over to go from kind of a monolithic Rails app to like AWS, Lambda serverless functions and everyone is really interested in that?

Michele Hansen
Really?

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah, it's kind of been a funny thing where I've wanted to talk to people about image management. And they want to talk to me about how I'm using lambda functions to do manipulations on images.

Michele Hansen
Really...

Colleen Schnettler 
And so, yeah, and so I there's a few things I'm trying to be wary of here. One is, I feel like it's not a good idea to use new tech on a new idea. Because you're, it's like a double uphill battle. You have to both build something, ship it and learn some new tech. But this AWS stuff is really cool. I love learning it and the architecture with it really is better. It just feels cleaner. I'm I'm not a huge microservices person, but this particular, what I'm building really lends itself well to these lambda functions. So that's been really fun. But it has been an interesting thing to find out that people are more interested in that. So as you know,  one of the things I struggle with is jumping too quickly from idea to idea. But I'm seeing this opportunity where everyone wants to learn how to write lambda functions in the cloud with Ruby. And I'm like, Oh! Well, that's interesting.

Michele Hansen 
Did you course business at one point? I forget.

Colleen Schnettler 
I thought about it. I know that would be, that would be no, I thought about it. And I started doing video courses. I think I did like three or four. And it just got, I mean, it's kind of a slog to do that kind of thing, especially if it's not, it was I was building something that was more geared towards beginners. And so it was pretty boring for me to actually make them because you have to really go back and I felt like there was a lot of beginner course content out there already. So I never I never really gave that a good shot. But this is an interesting thing, because I am really when you hear these people who are successful, they're like, Oh, I was interested in this thing. And I blogged about it everyday for a year. And then boom, I'm the expert in this thing. And I have a product and this thing. I don't know, it's just I don't want to be jumping, right? This is I need to really focus, which is one of the things I struggle with. But I'm really tempted, I'm really tempted to like, get more into this AWS in the cloud serverless functions stuff. That seems to be more interesting to my developer friends.

Michele Hansen 
Maybe it's not jumping if you just hang out on a particular stepping stone for a little bit. Maybe there's like a mini course here or something or even if it's just a blog post and people get excited about that. But maybe there's, you know, a little a little stop along the way here.

Colleen Schnettler 
So I'd really like to get the image thing done. Because I think as we've been talking every week, I feel like I'm just so close.

Michele Hansen 
And you need it. Like for your sanity. On the projects you work on.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yes, I need it, I'm going to use it on my clients. And I just want to finish something like I just want to finish a side project. That's just where I am. It's like graveyard of abandoned side projects. So I want to finish it, and I'll use it. And I think it'll make my life easier. So that's great. But I wonder this is something I'm kind of like putting in the back of my mind and kind of tabling as people are interested in this, they want to learn more, they want to learn, you know, how you can use it. And the other thing, there's, I feel like serverless is huge, and there's so much opportunity for growth. And I don't know if there is like, I know, AWS has a marketplace, but I don't know anything about it. But so for example, this one serverless function I have all you do is if your images in my bucket, you can just send query parameters for the size you want of the image and it returns the image already resized and optimized and things like that. Wouldn't it be cool if you could have like a suite of little serverless functions that you could somehow bundle together? Like a whole bunch, I don't know, you'd have like, I don't know what it would look like you'd have like five different API endpoints you as my customer could hit that would handle all of your different image manipulation, like, or I could have one for video and one for images. I don't know. I feel like there might be something there. And I don't know what that looks like. But it's definitely like tucked away in the back of my mind, like what I'm working on. Now. I want to finish first. That's important. And it's so close. But I think after that might be a good time to start blogging about all this stuff I have learned in the AWS ecosystem. And once I don't forget it, but also, you know, to see if people are interested in that kind of information as well.

Michele Hansen 
It sounds like they are and like, I can't tell you how many projects and products come out of setting out to do something else. Like just earlier this week, Adam Wathan did a huge thread on the development of Tailwind. I don't know if you saw it. And he mentioned how they were working on another side project, but like the CSS was driving him nuts. And so they just he just made that. And then he open sourced it. And people were super psyched about it. And they were really surprised by that. And then it like led to this whole thing that is Tailwind. I mean, that happened with Geocodio too. To to like we set out to make an app that told you grocery store and coffee shop opening hours and ran into problems with geocoding. And you know, we got some good, good traction and some excited users on the grocery store app. But man, when you find a problem that developers have, and you solve it for them, people get really, really excited about that.

Colleen Schnettler 
Yeah. So when you guys launched Geocodio did you do that through some kind of existing marketplace, or were you just out in the free world?

Michele Hansen 
Hacker News. That was the place to launch in January 2014. Product Hunt like wasn't even a thing. Yeah. And we did a ton of, you know, posting on like StackOverflow and Reddit.

Colleen Schnettler 
And how did you know when you were ready to put it out there for other people? Had you guys been using it for your grocery store app for a while?

Michele Hansen 
Yeah, I think at least six months or so.

Colleen Schnettler 
That's quite a while.

Michele Hansen 
Yeah. And it took a good friend of ours to be like, hey, like, you should just slap a paywall in front of this and see if other people will pay f...

]]> Tue, 22 Sep 2020 11:08:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1926 How do you know when to cut your losses or to pivot to something else? This week, Colleen learned that people are more excited about how she's building her service than the actual service, and Michele talks about a product that came back from the dead. How do you know when to cut your losses or to pivot to something else? This week, Colleen learned that people are more excited about how she's building her service than the actual service, and Michele talks about a product that came back from the dead. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Selling to Big Enterprises as a Bootstrapped Company...and Figuring Out Who to Sell to In the First Place 4 4 Selling to Big Enterprises as a Bootstrapped Company...and Figuring Out Who to Sell to In the First Place full 5af27619-664e-4d1b-a6ba-76bd67d9ce36 https://share.transistor.fm/s/fe4f3d08 MICHELE HANSEN 
Hey, and welcome back to software social. I'm Michele

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER
and I'm Colleen. 

MICHELE HANSEN
And we're inviting you to join our conversation about what's going on in our businesses.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER

Michele, do you want to get started today?

MICHELE HANSEN
Yeah, so something I'm thinking a lot about is the golden goose of software: enterprise software.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER

Oh, man. Okay.

MICHELE HANSEN
Yeah. So I mean, you had mentioned a couple weeks ago how you have this dream that if you had a SaaS business, everything would be roses, and amazing. And there wouldn't be any problems. Right?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER

Correct.

MICHELE HANSEN
And so the next level of that dream that a lot of people have is if they could just sell enterprise software, where, you know, the companies would never cancel. And they have these giant expensive contracts and like, everything is amazing, right?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER
Yep.

MICHELE HANSEN
Yeah. So I'm thinking about this a lot, because I feel like there's a lot of different ways to do enterprise and there's a lot of granularity in it that gets lost. And at a high level though, what I want to talk about first is how, one of the reasons why SaaS and especially small customer funded SaaS works and a company like ours, which only has my husband and I running it, but we have tens of thousands of customers is because our work has a one:many relationship. And so if you can picture that, every time we do work, we add a new feature, we add a landing page, you know, anytime we're doing work on our service, most of the time that work has a one:many relationship, we add a feature and it helps tens of thousands of people simultaneously, right? Or we add a new landing page and that helps us attract thousands of customers simultaneously.

COLLEEN
Sure.

MICHELE
The thing about enterprise work on the other hand, it has a one to one relationship. There's a lot of custom work that has to be done. And so in that way, it's almost a little bit more like freelance work.

COLLEEN
Okay.

MICHELE
And so that's important because when when looking at enterprise software and serving enterprise markets, there's all these different things that companies have as requirements. And very often those things can be things that maybe only that one particular customer has, or if you're doing something like on premise, that's a one:one relationship. And as a really small company, we need to maximize for work that has a one:many relationship. If I'm sure any sense at all, stop me.

COLLEEN
Yeah, no, you're making great sense. I just, I am curious why you're even thinking about enterprise software. And I say that because I used to work for a Fortune 500 company, and, man, we bought really expensive software, but you probably had to sit in 20 meetings before we agreed to buy it. So I know that there's, I guess, like, why are you even thinking of it? Is it is it just to have a different revenue stream?

MICHELE 
We reached out to buy big enterprises.

COLLEEN
Oh, I didn't know that.

MICHELE
This is my next sort of thing, that there's different ways to serve big enterprises. And so the traditional way, as you mentioned, is 20 meetings, you know, three golf outings, you know, five fancy dinners, right, like all that kind of sales cycle, right? So there's that level of it. We're not doing that level. But we do have people in large organizations who reach out to us but this has some different flavors. So one of my favorite ways of serving enterprises is basically when someone within a team has something that they need to get done as part of their everyday work. And for whatever reason, they need to do it faster or they need to do it better. They don't like the tools they have and so they go off and find something themselves. And then they make the case to their boss or to their leadership, that you should use the product. And this either gets put on that team's credit card, called a P Card in most places, which might have a say a $500 monthly limit per service, which is why people like Patrick McKenzie, recommend that price point so often, $499 or $999, because those are sign off levels for price points, actually. So enterprises have a word for this, they call it "shadow IT" which is this kind of like derisive name, because they're implying that it hasn't gone through the big procurement process and the security reviews and everything, but it's a great way to sort of shortcut into a big organization that has reliable ongoing needs, that's going to keep reliably paying you.

And then the other way that we often get it is people reach out to us and they do need to use it across the entire organization. And we have to go through security reviews and contract negotiations and whatnot. And this is all my mind because I realized the other day that I probably spend about a third of my time on this kind of work, whether that's having phone calls or negotiating contracts, or any of those other details that go into it. But that I don't think we've ever had a single customer with a custom negotiated contract cancel on us.

COLLEEN
Ah, yeah.

MICHELE
But you don't necessarily have to have a big sales force to get that kind of thing that kind of plan levels through, but it does, it does take a lot of specific work. And the thing is, is when I'm doing that, when I'm having a call with one huge customer, or I'm negotiating contract with them, that's work that's going for just that one customer. It's a one to one relationship. And so, this is where this really comes into play for a small SaaS company like us, is when we're talking about things like on premise where it's a one to one relationship. But so any work that we might do on that, or like help, we might need to give them with their installation of it, that's all one to one and needs to be priced accordingly. But the thing is, is customers who request that often have these, you know, compliance requirements, you know, whatever industries they're in, that they can't get around it. And so they have to pay a lot more for something.

So I'm thinking about all this, but there's a there's a great site that I found recently called enterpriseready.io. And it goes through a lot of the features that enterprises might require. And it was interesting looking through this, you have things like Single Sign On, audit logs, integrations, things like that, because absolutely, these are things that big companies require. But we don't have all of them. And we're selling to big companies all the time. And so my point here is that you can be selling to enterprise without necessarily doing that whole enterprise song and dance on the sales side. And you can say like, you know, we'd love to work with you, here's what we have. We don't have single sign on, or we don't have, you know, SOC2 audits, or we don't have audits of our financial statements every year. And if the buyer in the organization loves your product enough, maybe they've gotten to try it for free or on a lower plan with their boss's P Card, they can advocate to their legal department and actually get through those things. And you don't even need whatever those requirements are. Doesn't happen all the time, but I think it's really helpful to look at a list like this, and then also remember that it's not necessarily all requirements that you might need before you try to launch into that space, which I think is a headspace that people get in in a lot of different ways of, "My product doesn't have every single feature that someone could possibly ask for. So I'm not going to launch it yet."

COLLEEN
So So do you guys ever reach out to enterprise?

...

]]> MICHELE HANSEN 
Hey, and welcome back to software social. I'm Michele

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER
and I'm Colleen. 

MICHELE HANSEN
And we're inviting you to join our conversation about what's going on in our businesses.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER

Michele, do you want to get started today?

MICHELE HANSEN
Yeah, so something I'm thinking a lot about is the golden goose of software: enterprise software.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER

Oh, man. Okay.

MICHELE HANSEN
Yeah. So I mean, you had mentioned a couple weeks ago how you have this dream that if you had a SaaS business, everything would be roses, and amazing. And there wouldn't be any problems. Right?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER

Correct.

MICHELE HANSEN
And so the next level of that dream that a lot of people have is if they could just sell enterprise software, where, you know, the companies would never cancel. And they have these giant expensive contracts and like, everything is amazing, right?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER
Yep.

MICHELE HANSEN
Yeah. So I'm thinking about this a lot, because I feel like there's a lot of different ways to do enterprise and there's a lot of granularity in it that gets lost. And at a high level though, what I want to talk about first is how, one of the reasons why SaaS and especially small customer funded SaaS works and a company like ours, which only has my husband and I running it, but we have tens of thousands of customers is because our work has a one:many relationship. And so if you can picture that, every time we do work, we add a new feature, we add a landing page, you know, anytime we're doing work on our service, most of the time that work has a one:many relationship, we add a feature and it helps tens of thousands of people simultaneously, right? Or we add a new landing page and that helps us attract thousands of customers simultaneously.

COLLEEN
Sure.

MICHELE
The thing about enterprise work on the other hand, it has a one to one relationship. There's a lot of custom work that has to be done. And so in that way, it's almost a little bit more like freelance work.

COLLEEN
Okay.

MICHELE
And so that's important because when when looking at enterprise software and serving enterprise markets, there's all these different things that companies have as requirements. And very often those things can be things that maybe only that one particular customer has, or if you're doing something like on premise, that's a one:one relationship. And as a really small company, we need to maximize for work that has a one:many relationship. If I'm sure any sense at all, stop me.

COLLEEN
Yeah, no, you're making great sense. I just, I am curious why you're even thinking about enterprise software. And I say that because I used to work for a Fortune 500 company, and, man, we bought really expensive software, but you probably had to sit in 20 meetings before we agreed to buy it. So I know that there's, I guess, like, why are you even thinking of it? Is it is it just to have a different revenue stream?

MICHELE 
We reached out to buy big enterprises.

COLLEEN
Oh, I didn't know that.

MICHELE
This is my next sort of thing, that there's different ways to serve big enterprises. And so the traditional way, as you mentioned, is 20 meetings, you know, three golf outings, you know, five fancy dinners, right, like all that kind of sales cycle, right? So there's that level of it. We're not doing that level. But we do have people in large organizations who reach out to us but this has some different flavors. So one of my favorite ways of serving enterprises is basically when someone within a team has something that they need to get done as part of their everyday work. And for whatever reason, they need to do it faster or they need to do it better. They don't like the tools they have and so they go off and find something themselves. And then they make the case to their boss or to their leadership, that you should use the product. And this either gets put on that team's credit card, called a P Card in most places, which might have a say a $500 monthly limit per service, which is why people like Patrick McKenzie, recommend that price point so often, $499 or $999, because those are sign off levels for price points, actually. So enterprises have a word for this, they call it "shadow IT" which is this kind of like derisive name, because they're implying that it hasn't gone through the big procurement process and the security reviews and everything, but it's a great way to sort of shortcut into a big organization that has reliable ongoing needs, that's going to keep reliably paying you.

And then the other way that we often get it is people reach out to us and they do need to use it across the entire organization. And we have to go through security reviews and contract negotiations and whatnot. And this is all my mind because I realized the other day that I probably spend about a third of my time on this kind of work, whether that's having phone calls or negotiating contracts, or any of those other details that go into it. But that I don't think we've ever had a single customer with a custom negotiated contract cancel on us.

COLLEEN
Ah, yeah.

MICHELE
But you don't necessarily have to have a big sales force to get that kind of thing that kind of plan levels through, but it does, it does take a lot of specific work. And the thing is, is when I'm doing that, when I'm having a call with one huge customer, or I'm negotiating contract with them, that's work that's going for just that one customer. It's a one to one relationship. And so, this is where this really comes into play for a small SaaS company like us, is when we're talking about things like on premise where it's a one to one relationship. But so any work that we might do on that, or like help, we might need to give them with their installation of it, that's all one to one and needs to be priced accordingly. But the thing is, is customers who request that often have these, you know, compliance requirements, you know, whatever industries they're in, that they can't get around it. And so they have to pay a lot more for something.

So I'm thinking about all this, but there's a there's a great site that I found recently called enterpriseready.io. And it goes through a lot of the features that enterprises might require. And it was interesting looking through this, you have things like Single Sign On, audit logs, integrations, things like that, because absolutely, these are things that big companies require. But we don't have all of them. And we're selling to big companies all the time. And so my point here is that you can be selling to enterprise without necessarily doing that whole enterprise song and dance on the sales side. And you can say like, you know, we'd love to work with you, here's what we have. We don't have single sign on, or we don't have, you know, SOC2 audits, or we don't have audits of our financial statements every year. And if the buyer in the organization loves your product enough, maybe they've gotten to try it for free or on a lower plan with their boss's P Card, they can advocate to their legal department and actually get through those things. And you don't even need whatever those requirements are. Doesn't happen all the time, but I think it's really helpful to look at a list like this, and then also remember that it's not necessarily all requirements that you might need before you try to launch into that space, which I think is a headspace that people get in in a lot of different ways of, "My product doesn't have every single feature that someone could possibly ask for. So I'm not going to launch it yet."

COLLEEN
So So do you guys ever reach out to enterprise?

...

]]> Tue, 22 Sep 2020 08:08:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1920 Can you sell to very big companies as a very small company? And how do you figure out what kind of customers to target in the first place anyway? Can you sell to very big companies as a very small company? And how do you figure out what kind of customers to target in the first place anyway? SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Finding and Firing Potential Customers 3 3 Finding and Firing Potential Customers full e8152869-99a1-4972-9b50-8d0ae81f8eef https://share.transistor.fm/s/7fa91bbd Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SoftwareSocPod

Transcript

MICHELE HANSEN
Hey, Michele here. Just a quick note before this week's episode, in the second half [NOTE: starting @ 12 minutes] I talk about a controversial topic and use some strong language. So just a heads up in case there are little ears around. 

MICHELE HANSEN
Welcome to the software social podcast where we invite you to join our weekly discussion about what's going on in our businesses.

MICHELE HANSEN  
I'm Michele Hansen. 

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

MICHELE HANSEN  
So Colleen, tell me, what's going on with your business this week?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER
So Michele, last week, I told you that I am building an image management service. And you asked me if anyone wanted that service. Do you remember what I said?

MICHELE HANSEN
You said maybe but at the very least you want it [yourself]...

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER

Right. And also, I haven't really asked anyone if they want it. So I kind of think, what I want to start doing this week is in conjunction with building the service -- which is pretty much almost done -- I want to start finding out if anyone wants it. So, right, it seems like such an obvious step [Michele: Magic words!] that I should be taking. So my commitment is to spend one hour a day trying to figure this out. First problem. Who are my customers?

MICHELE
And where are they?

COLLEEN
And where are they? How do I find them? So since I'm building this as a JavaScript plugin, my customers or other developers, probably developers like me who do consulting so they want to optimize for time. I don't know how to find these people and ask them.

MICHELE
Have you looked in places yet? Like what have you explored?

COLLEEN
So here's what I've explored I put something on indie hackers literally no one okay. That's a good start. That's what I thought but literally no one responded.

MICHELE
No, I you know, I so I love any hackers but also I find that it can be very much like unless you get to one of the bigger threads there, it can be kind of a drive by with like people just putting their projects and there's just like so much and a lot of it's really good. Yeah, that it can be a bit tough to filter.

COLLEEN
Yeah, I've really I've, I've posted on Indie Hackers a few times, and I've never gotten any kind of engagement. And maybe it's if you I've noticed that the posts that are like, here's how my business was so successful, like those get a lot of engagement.

MICHELE
I wrote one of those (laughing)

COLLEEN
But there's nothing wrong with that, like, everyone loves those, right? Those are inspirational, like I love those posts, and I love getting advice from successful founders. But it feels like there's just not a lot of engagement with people who are just starting out. So that didn't work. So I tried Indie Hackers, I think I put something on Twitter and I had like three people respond, which is better than no better than no people. Right? What do you think? Like let's say I'm starting from zero and I'm also like, open into seeing what other ideas are out there as well. As we as you know, I've kind of been plugging away at idea generation for quite a while now. I'm definitely making my image management service, because I'm almost done. I'm going to use it for my clients. But I'm also open to hearing about, you know, other problems and other ideas. I like targeting developers, because I like using existing marketplaces, to try and sell what I'm building.

MICHELE
Have you looked at Reddit?

COLLEEN
So Reddit confuses me...

MICHELE
It is one of my favorite places to recruit is it really can be a little bit. Yeah. Because if you find the right niche within Reddit and Reddit has, I mean, there are so many weird corners of Reddit, right? Which I think is part of what makes it a little bit intimidating from the outside. But there's so many great niches within Reddit that are so great to recruit from. There's also some really big communities. So there's, for example, the webdev community. There, but there's also some really small ones. You know, for example, when we were launching a HIPAA compliant geocoding service couple years ago, we wanted to do some usability testing. And there was a health GIS subreddit with like, 5,000 people in it. And I posted something saying I wanted to do some testing with people. And I'd give them a $25 Amazon gift card if they participated. And I got 70 responses. Wow. Like all from our target market customers. Like it was -- I was floored.

COLLEEN
Wow! That's amazing.

MICHELE
Yeah. And so I think if you find the right, you know, the right community within Reddit, and you have, you know, a good, genuine post, explaining who you're looking for. And you have some sort of incentive there. I think even $10 to Amazon, or whatever, is, is probably good, you know, because people's time is valuable, and they're giving you something valuable, so I feel strongly that there should be something there. But you know, you really only need to talk to five people just as a baseline. So you're looking at $50 worth of investment plus your time, which could, you know, save you weeks or months of dev time that, you know, ends up getting wasted, because it wasn't what people wanted.

COLLEEN
So how would you recommend? This is like, this feels like Cold Calling Strangers like this feels very awkward, which is fine. I like people. But how would you like even recommend going about that?

MICHELE
Yeah, so if I found a community...so let's, for example, say you doing web dev, though, that might be too broad of a community and I'm not super active on it myself. So I can't really speak to community norms. Some for example, don't allow you to, to post various things, so just always check their rules. Okay. Um, but I would say something to the effect of, you know, I'm building an image management service, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah is your -- you know -- and I need feedback. That's your post. And then in your, sorry, that's your title. And then in your posts, say something effective, you know, Hi, I'm building the service, like, here's what it's aiming to do. And I'm looking for some people to give me some feedback on it. If you can give me a half an hour of your time, I'll give you a $10 Amazon gift card, just send me a PM with some details about, you know, what kind of work you do and what interests you in trying the service and, you know, and make it very clear that it's not a sales call or anything like that. It's strictly for the feedback, because people sometimes are, justifiably wary that that it's not what it purports to be, right. Also, I would recommend creating a Reddit username specifically for this, whether that's your real name or your company name or whatever. Just so some weird post you made 10 years ago doesn't mean that surfaced with your name attached to it, you know. Yeah.

COLLEEN
Okay, that's great. Okay, so that will be my, my weekly goal this week will be to actually talk to people who might be potential customers and see what they have to say.

MICHELE
Do you know what you want to ask them?

COLLEEN
Well, I guess I'd kind of want to drill down on is this really -- to me, it's a pain point. And like I said, every client minus maybe two has had this problem. And there's so many different ways to solve it. And they're all kind of none of them are super easy. So I guess the answer to your question is no, I don't know what I want to ask them.

MICHELE
It sounds like you want to find pain and frequency.

COLLEEN
Yes. Right. I mean, how big of a pr...

]]> Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SoftwareSocPod

Transcript

MICHELE HANSEN
Hey, Michele here. Just a quick note before this week's episode, in the second half [NOTE: starting @ 12 minutes] I talk about a controversial topic and use some strong language. So just a heads up in case there are little ears around. 

MICHELE HANSEN
Welcome to the software social podcast where we invite you to join our weekly discussion about what's going on in our businesses.

MICHELE HANSEN  
I'm Michele Hansen. 

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER
And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

MICHELE HANSEN  
So Colleen, tell me, what's going on with your business this week?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER
So Michele, last week, I told you that I am building an image management service. And you asked me if anyone wanted that service. Do you remember what I said?

MICHELE HANSEN
You said maybe but at the very least you want it [yourself]...

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER

Right. And also, I haven't really asked anyone if they want it. So I kind of think, what I want to start doing this week is in conjunction with building the service -- which is pretty much almost done -- I want to start finding out if anyone wants it. So, right, it seems like such an obvious step [Michele: Magic words!] that I should be taking. So my commitment is to spend one hour a day trying to figure this out. First problem. Who are my customers?

MICHELE
And where are they?

COLLEEN
And where are they? How do I find them? So since I'm building this as a JavaScript plugin, my customers or other developers, probably developers like me who do consulting so they want to optimize for time. I don't know how to find these people and ask them.

MICHELE
Have you looked in places yet? Like what have you explored?

COLLEEN
So here's what I've explored I put something on indie hackers literally no one okay. That's a good start. That's what I thought but literally no one responded.

MICHELE
No, I you know, I so I love any hackers but also I find that it can be very much like unless you get to one of the bigger threads there, it can be kind of a drive by with like people just putting their projects and there's just like so much and a lot of it's really good. Yeah, that it can be a bit tough to filter.

COLLEEN
Yeah, I've really I've, I've posted on Indie Hackers a few times, and I've never gotten any kind of engagement. And maybe it's if you I've noticed that the posts that are like, here's how my business was so successful, like those get a lot of engagement.

MICHELE
I wrote one of those (laughing)

COLLEEN
But there's nothing wrong with that, like, everyone loves those, right? Those are inspirational, like I love those posts, and I love getting advice from successful founders. But it feels like there's just not a lot of engagement with people who are just starting out. So that didn't work. So I tried Indie Hackers, I think I put something on Twitter and I had like three people respond, which is better than no better than no people. Right? What do you think? Like let's say I'm starting from zero and I'm also like, open into seeing what other ideas are out there as well. As we as you know, I've kind of been plugging away at idea generation for quite a while now. I'm definitely making my image management service, because I'm almost done. I'm going to use it for my clients. But I'm also open to hearing about, you know, other problems and other ideas. I like targeting developers, because I like using existing marketplaces, to try and sell what I'm building.

MICHELE
Have you looked at Reddit?

COLLEEN
So Reddit confuses me...

MICHELE
It is one of my favorite places to recruit is it really can be a little bit. Yeah. Because if you find the right niche within Reddit and Reddit has, I mean, there are so many weird corners of Reddit, right? Which I think is part of what makes it a little bit intimidating from the outside. But there's so many great niches within Reddit that are so great to recruit from. There's also some really big communities. So there's, for example, the webdev community. There, but there's also some really small ones. You know, for example, when we were launching a HIPAA compliant geocoding service couple years ago, we wanted to do some usability testing. And there was a health GIS subreddit with like, 5,000 people in it. And I posted something saying I wanted to do some testing with people. And I'd give them a $25 Amazon gift card if they participated. And I got 70 responses. Wow. Like all from our target market customers. Like it was -- I was floored.

COLLEEN
Wow! That's amazing.

MICHELE
Yeah. And so I think if you find the right, you know, the right community within Reddit, and you have, you know, a good, genuine post, explaining who you're looking for. And you have some sort of incentive there. I think even $10 to Amazon, or whatever, is, is probably good, you know, because people's time is valuable, and they're giving you something valuable, so I feel strongly that there should be something there. But you know, you really only need to talk to five people just as a baseline. So you're looking at $50 worth of investment plus your time, which could, you know, save you weeks or months of dev time that, you know, ends up getting wasted, because it wasn't what people wanted.

COLLEEN
So how would you recommend? This is like, this feels like Cold Calling Strangers like this feels very awkward, which is fine. I like people. But how would you like even recommend going about that?

MICHELE
Yeah, so if I found a community...so let's, for example, say you doing web dev, though, that might be too broad of a community and I'm not super active on it myself. So I can't really speak to community norms. Some for example, don't allow you to, to post various things, so just always check their rules. Okay. Um, but I would say something to the effect of, you know, I'm building an image management service, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah is your -- you know -- and I need feedback. That's your post. And then in your, sorry, that's your title. And then in your posts, say something effective, you know, Hi, I'm building the service, like, here's what it's aiming to do. And I'm looking for some people to give me some feedback on it. If you can give me a half an hour of your time, I'll give you a $10 Amazon gift card, just send me a PM with some details about, you know, what kind of work you do and what interests you in trying the service and, you know, and make it very clear that it's not a sales call or anything like that. It's strictly for the feedback, because people sometimes are, justifiably wary that that it's not what it purports to be, right. Also, I would recommend creating a Reddit username specifically for this, whether that's your real name or your company name or whatever. Just so some weird post you made 10 years ago doesn't mean that surfaced with your name attached to it, you know. Yeah.

COLLEEN
Okay, that's great. Okay, so that will be my, my weekly goal this week will be to actually talk to people who might be potential customers and see what they have to say.

MICHELE
Do you know what you want to ask them?

COLLEEN
Well, I guess I'd kind of want to drill down on is this really -- to me, it's a pain point. And like I said, every client minus maybe two has had this problem. And there's so many different ways to solve it. And they're all kind of none of them are super easy. So I guess the answer to your question is no, I don't know what I want to ask them.

MICHELE
It sounds like you want to find pain and frequency.

COLLEEN
Yes. Right. I mean, how big of a pr...

]]> Mon, 21 Sep 2020 22:24:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1580 Colleen tries to find potential customers to interview about her new product. Meanwhile, Michele gets reached out to by a controversial potential customer -- and rejects them. Colleen tries to find potential customers to interview about her new product. Meanwhile, Michele gets reached out to by a controversial potential customer -- and rejects them. SaaS, bootstrapping, software Yes Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Building What You Need & Figuring Out Pricing (Or: Our CDNs Episode) 2 2 Building What You Need & Figuring Out Pricing (Or: Our CDNs Episode) full 9c2e879a-2cc5-4f84-9588-8dc48a665240 https://share.transistor.fm/s/9d0c3b9d MICHELE HANSEN: Welcome to the software social podcast where we invite you to join our weekly conversation about what's going on in our businesses. I'm Michele Hansen.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

MICHELE HANSEN: So tell me, Colleen, what's going on with your consulting/transition-to -product business this week?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So, I have been stuck in the idea generation phase of trying to start a small business for quite a while. And I've had a lot of different ideas that I've chased down and they really have not amounted to much. So I've decided instead of continually searching for something, I'm going to build something that I want that I know I will use with my clients and throw it out in the world and hope it sticks. Exactly.

MICHELE HANSEN: Dogfooding!

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: This, really, for me like a lot of the literature, I read about startups -- and I read a lot of literature about startups -- says not to code before you have an established market. But the truth is, it's something I want, it's something I know my clients will use (because I am their developer!), and I'm sick of kind of spinning my wheels. I feel like I need to take more action.

MICHELE HANSEN: So, Colleen, what is this idea you're working on?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So I am working on an image hosting platform, I hate to use the word term platform, it's not really a platform. Basically, what I'm trying what I'm building is something that's going to be a JavaScript widget that you install into your site that's going to provide you with a drop zone UI, and then your users can drop their images into your drop zone UI. It puts them -- it's going to create cloud storage for you, and it's going to save them to the cloud, and the cloud will be under my business. I don't know if I explained that well. Well, it'll be in the cloud. I'll put them in front of a CDN. Because I think the CDN part's really important. And it's just going to return the URL. So that's my plan. And there's a lot of image management software out there. Actually, there's a ton of image management software out there. But there's nothing that's just really easy. Like when you're working on a small SaaS app, in my opinion, you just want to move forward as quickly as possible and you want to make progress and the stuff out there isn't bad... but I just want to make it dead simple, especially for like newer developers or developers who don't want to deal with a lot of image management or they don't want to figure out how to use AWS. When you're a newer developer, you're just learning how to develop, you don't want to then have to go spend hours and hours figuring out AWS, in my opinion. So it's just gonna make the process simple. It's gonna be a five minute install. You just drop the snippet in, you put the button on, and it will provide your users their drop zone and all you have to do is save the URL of the image. So now you automatically have your image hosted on the cloud. So you don't have to worry about that. Like I said, I have not yet, but my goal is to put in front of the CDN so you don't have to worry about that. And then you can use the image, you know, like you would any cloud image.

MICHELE HANSEN: So have you talked to other developers who have talked about their frustrations with other image management platforms?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: No.

MICHELE HANSEN: Colleen!

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So here's the thing I know. So here's okay. I know but like, I have come every client I have, I have this freakin problem and it really irks me that there's not a better solution.

MICHELE HANSEN: That's worth something.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: That's worth something! And so when I do talk, okay, that's not fair when I first started to talk to people, and there is -- I did talk to other people.

MICHELE HANSEN: Before the pandemic, we talked to other people, right? In general...

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Yes, before when I could TALK to people. So I have talked to people about this. And a lot of them use big. So so the people I know like they use big powerful solutions like enterprise-level solutions because they work for enterprise-level clientele, right. So a lot of my friends work for big, you know, fancy companies. And so they have these big enterprise solutions. And so I have looked at those solutions. And they're not bad, but they're a pain to set up. It's way more like there's one that's really popular in the Rails community. And it's fine, but like, it's just way more overhead when you just want your user to be able to add a couple images, right? Like it's a huge overhead to import this third party library and configure it, it's a whole thing. You got to figure out how to use it. It's a whole thing. Like, it's just too hard for what you're trying to do. So I am trying to take this thing that almost every application needs, your user usually has some kind of avatar most applicant. Most applications use some kind of images. So I'm just trying to take this thing that everyone needs and make it really, really easy. Like, just simplify the heck out of it.

MICHELE HANSEN: It sounds like this is something that you experience frequently and is pretty annoying for you, which is a great place to be for a potential product is something that a user experiences frequently. And is something painful, you know, if you had if you had an idea, and it's something that isn't very painful for people and doesn't happen very often, that's usually kind of a red flag. But if you can find something that's pretty frequent and pretty painful, that can be promising.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Yeah, so the first iteration of this I built was just for public images. So it was like for your static assets. And I built that because like images are just a pain point for me because they're just annoying, right? Users -- they take these like they have these huge files, your designers give you these huge files. And you have to, you know, compress them and resize them and all this stuff. But the first thing I kind of built, which is this, the building blocks to what I'm working on now, was just public image hosting amongst teams. And that was cool. And I like that. But like, no one was really interested in that because no one cares so much about web performance. Very few people care so much about web performance was my experience that they're actually going to, you know, resize all of their images that are just their static everyday images, or they're just going to throw them behind a CDN anyway, so they don't care. But this problem, I think the thing about this problem is, it's a common problem. And there's many, many, many different ways to solve it. And I have seen as a consultant, I work for a lot of different companies over the past years, and I have seen all these different kinds of ways to solve it. And there's just no, but it just doesn't feel like there's an easy, consistent way like you'll have one app that uses this gem then one app and you and then one app that does it this way. And I feel like we're taking this problem that doesn't have to be so hard and making it harder than it needs to be.

MICHELE HANSEN: And you know, as I hear you talk, what I what I think about is you were mentioning earlier how you consume a lot of startup literature and talks and advice on starting a business. And something that always comes across in those kinds of venues is how, you know, you should be passionate about it, you should be passionate about the business and you should be passionate about about what you're solving and whatnot. And, you know, I don't think there are any, you know, eight year old kids out there saying, "Mom and Dad when I grew up, I'm gonna solve image management software." But what does drive someone is experiencing a problem so often, that you are passionate about solving that feeling of pain, and I think...

]]> MICHELE HANSEN: Welcome to the software social podcast where we invite you to join our weekly conversation about what's going on in our businesses. I'm Michele Hansen.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: And I'm Colleen Schnettler.

MICHELE HANSEN: So tell me, Colleen, what's going on with your consulting/transition-to -product business this week?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So, I have been stuck in the idea generation phase of trying to start a small business for quite a while. And I've had a lot of different ideas that I've chased down and they really have not amounted to much. So I've decided instead of continually searching for something, I'm going to build something that I want that I know I will use with my clients and throw it out in the world and hope it sticks. Exactly.

MICHELE HANSEN: Dogfooding!

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: This, really, for me like a lot of the literature, I read about startups -- and I read a lot of literature about startups -- says not to code before you have an established market. But the truth is, it's something I want, it's something I know my clients will use (because I am their developer!), and I'm sick of kind of spinning my wheels. I feel like I need to take more action.

MICHELE HANSEN: So, Colleen, what is this idea you're working on?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So I am working on an image hosting platform, I hate to use the word term platform, it's not really a platform. Basically, what I'm trying what I'm building is something that's going to be a JavaScript widget that you install into your site that's going to provide you with a drop zone UI, and then your users can drop their images into your drop zone UI. It puts them -- it's going to create cloud storage for you, and it's going to save them to the cloud, and the cloud will be under my business. I don't know if I explained that well. Well, it'll be in the cloud. I'll put them in front of a CDN. Because I think the CDN part's really important. And it's just going to return the URL. So that's my plan. And there's a lot of image management software out there. Actually, there's a ton of image management software out there. But there's nothing that's just really easy. Like when you're working on a small SaaS app, in my opinion, you just want to move forward as quickly as possible and you want to make progress and the stuff out there isn't bad... but I just want to make it dead simple, especially for like newer developers or developers who don't want to deal with a lot of image management or they don't want to figure out how to use AWS. When you're a newer developer, you're just learning how to develop, you don't want to then have to go spend hours and hours figuring out AWS, in my opinion. So it's just gonna make the process simple. It's gonna be a five minute install. You just drop the snippet in, you put the button on, and it will provide your users their drop zone and all you have to do is save the URL of the image. So now you automatically have your image hosted on the cloud. So you don't have to worry about that. Like I said, I have not yet, but my goal is to put in front of the CDN so you don't have to worry about that. And then you can use the image, you know, like you would any cloud image.

MICHELE HANSEN: So have you talked to other developers who have talked about their frustrations with other image management platforms?

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: No.

MICHELE HANSEN: Colleen!

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So here's the thing I know. So here's okay. I know but like, I have come every client I have, I have this freakin problem and it really irks me that there's not a better solution.

MICHELE HANSEN: That's worth something.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: That's worth something! And so when I do talk, okay, that's not fair when I first started to talk to people, and there is -- I did talk to other people.

MICHELE HANSEN: Before the pandemic, we talked to other people, right? In general...

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Yes, before when I could TALK to people. So I have talked to people about this. And a lot of them use big. So so the people I know like they use big powerful solutions like enterprise-level solutions because they work for enterprise-level clientele, right. So a lot of my friends work for big, you know, fancy companies. And so they have these big enterprise solutions. And so I have looked at those solutions. And they're not bad, but they're a pain to set up. It's way more like there's one that's really popular in the Rails community. And it's fine, but like, it's just way more overhead when you just want your user to be able to add a couple images, right? Like it's a huge overhead to import this third party library and configure it, it's a whole thing. You got to figure out how to use it. It's a whole thing. Like, it's just too hard for what you're trying to do. So I am trying to take this thing that almost every application needs, your user usually has some kind of avatar most applicant. Most applications use some kind of images. So I'm just trying to take this thing that everyone needs and make it really, really easy. Like, just simplify the heck out of it.

MICHELE HANSEN: It sounds like this is something that you experience frequently and is pretty annoying for you, which is a great place to be for a potential product is something that a user experiences frequently. And is something painful, you know, if you had if you had an idea, and it's something that isn't very painful for people and doesn't happen very often, that's usually kind of a red flag. But if you can find something that's pretty frequent and pretty painful, that can be promising.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Yeah, so the first iteration of this I built was just for public images. So it was like for your static assets. And I built that because like images are just a pain point for me because they're just annoying, right? Users -- they take these like they have these huge files, your designers give you these huge files. And you have to, you know, compress them and resize them and all this stuff. But the first thing I kind of built, which is this, the building blocks to what I'm working on now, was just public image hosting amongst teams. And that was cool. And I like that. But like, no one was really interested in that because no one cares so much about web performance. Very few people care so much about web performance was my experience that they're actually going to, you know, resize all of their images that are just their static everyday images, or they're just going to throw them behind a CDN anyway, so they don't care. But this problem, I think the thing about this problem is, it's a common problem. And there's many, many, many different ways to solve it. And I have seen as a consultant, I work for a lot of different companies over the past years, and I have seen all these different kinds of ways to solve it. And there's just no, but it just doesn't feel like there's an easy, consistent way like you'll have one app that uses this gem then one app and you and then one app that does it this way. And I feel like we're taking this problem that doesn't have to be so hard and making it harder than it needs to be.

MICHELE HANSEN: And you know, as I hear you talk, what I what I think about is you were mentioning earlier how you consume a lot of startup literature and talks and advice on starting a business. And something that always comes across in those kinds of venues is how, you know, you should be passionate about it, you should be passionate about the business and you should be passionate about about what you're solving and whatnot. And, you know, I don't think there are any, you know, eight year old kids out there saying, "Mom and Dad when I grew up, I'm gonna solve image management software." But what does drive someone is experiencing a problem so often, that you are passionate about solving that feeling of pain, and I think...

]]> Sun, 20 Sep 2020 21:36:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 1829 What to build when you don't know what to build? And how do you price it? Colleen and Michele workshop these two challenges this week. What to build when you don't know what to build? And how do you price it? Colleen and Michele workshop these two challenges this week. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler Hey, why don't you join us? 1 1 Hey, why don't you join us? full 8cef1901-8a4f-4387-80b9-c4b65818d9b5 https://share.transistor.fm/s/1b704348 MICHELE HANSEN: Welcome to the Software Social podcast, where we invite you to join our weekly conversation about what's going on in our businesses. I'm Michele Hansen,

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: and I'm Colleen Schnettler.

MICHELE HANSEN: And this week we're giving you an intro to what this podcast is about and who we are and why we're doing this and why we're hoping you'll join us.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So Michele can you start by telling us a little about your software business?

MICHELE HANSEN: Yes, so I am a co-founder of Geocodio (https://www.geocod.io/) which is a software as a service company. We do geocoding for US and Canada as well as data matching, and my husband and I started it about six and a half years ago now as a side project and we have run it full-time for the past three years. 

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So you're basically living the dream, is what you're telling me?

MICHELE HANSEN: Some people would say that, I bristle at that a little bit, there's definitely a lot more dream to be had. But yeah, people do say that to me, especially people who are looking to create their own software businesses. Which is kinda the boat you're in. 

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Much like myself! I am a Ruby on Rails developer, I've kind of had a varied career. Always in tech. I started as an electrical engineer, stayed home with my kids for a few years, and then I started learning Rails and I built up a really successful consultancy. And that has been amazing, and a really wonderful journey for me, but I have always wanted to start a product business. There is just this dream of having a product business that you are in charge of your own life and your own business, you get to make your own decisions. That's something I've always wanted. And man, it's hard! 

MICHELE HANSEN: It is hard!

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Right? You know, I read a lot of startup content. I have read a lot of books and I follow a lot of successful startup founders and there's so many stories out there that make it seem like -- I mean you don't hear about it until they're successful, so it makes it seem like it's easy, and I'm at the very beginning of this journey, and you know, I'm just getting started! So part of my impetus for doing this podcast with you is obviously to learn a lot about what you can teach people who are in the early stages of their business, and also to stay inspired and to share with people what it's really like to start a business.

MICHELE HANSEN: I don't think you give yourself enough credit, Colleen, in saying that you're just at the very beginning. You have been working intently on this for over a year now -- I remember it was last summer when you came to me and you were so excited about an idea and this passion you had that was leading you to toward that idea, and you started doing user research on it, and having something that you're passionate about, and doing the work to see if there's legs to it, and then realizing that there aren't -- that is work. That is valuable productive work.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: I hope so! Because it was quite a lot of work. And so just a brief overview, I had an idea to do something with the childcare industry. And I had a founder, someone I was going to work with, and she and I interviewed quite a few people  who would have been in our target market. So we kind of took the steps you learn about with idea generation and honestly the truth is -- we put in a lot of time and effort and found out it really was not a profitable business idea. So it's hard to get really excited about something and climb that mountain and then realize -- up! no one wants to buy it. 

MICHELE HANSEN: Right

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: You know? At least we found that out before we started writing code.

MICHELE HANSEN: Right

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Didn't you guys have some side projects before Geocodio?

MICHELE HANSEN: Oh, many. And we had many projects in between that, too, that we've launched in the interim. And it's -- there's no lying that it's hard to find something that sticks, and as you said, no one cares about something until you're a success -- which is a really really lonely place to be for a very long time. You know, our first month we launched Geocodio, we made $31. We thought we were a ridiculous success because we were shocked that anybody wanted to pay us. We thought our product was pretty terrible. And we were we were truly -- we were so shocked that we hadn't even written the code that would tell Stripe to bill people. That was how surprised we were that anyone wanted to pay us. And we worked on it as a side project for a very long time. And it wasn't until just before I went full time, that people started kind of noticing what we were doing and asking us to talk at conferences or, or being a podcast. There's that was a very long time. Where Yeah, exactly like you were saying, you don't hear a lot of those stories. You only hear the stories when people are successful. And I think what we're hoping to capture here is some of that granularity that goes in week by week when you're launching something. And then also the kinds of things you face on a daily basis when you have launched something and it's gotten to the point where you can work full time on it, what what are the kinds of things that you might be facing at that point, and and how do we tackle them

 

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So you guys had the business for a few years before you went full time, right?

 

MICHELE HANSEN: Yeah. Yeah, three, it was like three and a half years until I went full time. And then my husband went part time, six months later. And then full time, six months after that, like, honestly, we were terrified of paying for health insurance on our own. And that was a big thing that kept us from going full time. We probably could have gone full time a lot sooner. But given the experience I had just a couple months ago trying to buy health insurance, I'm glad I put that off. But it's possible -- not to scare anyone. But there's a very real fears that come into it. Even when you do have something that works and you have customers and your revenue is increasing. You're going to have a whole new set of anxieties to face so -- congratulations! Yeah, no. Everything is solvable.

 

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: I think when you're where I am in this process it seems like so far away right like like it seems like "Man, if I could just make a product that people want to buy my life will be rainbows and sunshine and easy every day!"

 

MICHELE HANSEN:  I can see that and also you know our everyday is we've got something that's that's launched that, you know, has recurring revenue and you know supports us and everything and every day there's still people who are upset with us. Every day we discover things with our product that we're like, "Oh my, that is so obviously bad. Like we need to fix that. Like how is that been like that for so long? This is embarrassing." Like that, that happens to happened... today. It happened yesterday. And the same time you know some of the things you were talking about earlier that the dream so many people have for having a product business. Being able to be your own boss, getting to make decisions, getting to have that level of autonomy and authority and direction over your own work. That doesn't go away. And that definitely keeps me going. And really, what makes it worth it when not everything is rarely otherwise.

 

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Yeah, I imagine you're a parent as well as am I? And I imagine it goes both ways, right? Like I imagine the flexibility you have with running your own business is amazing to help you parent. But on the other hand, can you ever take a vacation? 

]]> MICHELE HANSEN: Welcome to the Software Social podcast, where we invite you to join our weekly conversation about what's going on in our businesses. I'm Michele Hansen,

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: and I'm Colleen Schnettler.

MICHELE HANSEN: And this week we're giving you an intro to what this podcast is about and who we are and why we're doing this and why we're hoping you'll join us.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So Michele can you start by telling us a little about your software business?

MICHELE HANSEN: Yes, so I am a co-founder of Geocodio (https://www.geocod.io/) which is a software as a service company. We do geocoding for US and Canada as well as data matching, and my husband and I started it about six and a half years ago now as a side project and we have run it full-time for the past three years. 

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So you're basically living the dream, is what you're telling me?

MICHELE HANSEN: Some people would say that, I bristle at that a little bit, there's definitely a lot more dream to be had. But yeah, people do say that to me, especially people who are looking to create their own software businesses. Which is kinda the boat you're in. 

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Much like myself! I am a Ruby on Rails developer, I've kind of had a varied career. Always in tech. I started as an electrical engineer, stayed home with my kids for a few years, and then I started learning Rails and I built up a really successful consultancy. And that has been amazing, and a really wonderful journey for me, but I have always wanted to start a product business. There is just this dream of having a product business that you are in charge of your own life and your own business, you get to make your own decisions. That's something I've always wanted. And man, it's hard! 

MICHELE HANSEN: It is hard!

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Right? You know, I read a lot of startup content. I have read a lot of books and I follow a lot of successful startup founders and there's so many stories out there that make it seem like -- I mean you don't hear about it until they're successful, so it makes it seem like it's easy, and I'm at the very beginning of this journey, and you know, I'm just getting started! So part of my impetus for doing this podcast with you is obviously to learn a lot about what you can teach people who are in the early stages of their business, and also to stay inspired and to share with people what it's really like to start a business.

MICHELE HANSEN: I don't think you give yourself enough credit, Colleen, in saying that you're just at the very beginning. You have been working intently on this for over a year now -- I remember it was last summer when you came to me and you were so excited about an idea and this passion you had that was leading you to toward that idea, and you started doing user research on it, and having something that you're passionate about, and doing the work to see if there's legs to it, and then realizing that there aren't -- that is work. That is valuable productive work.

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: I hope so! Because it was quite a lot of work. And so just a brief overview, I had an idea to do something with the childcare industry. And I had a founder, someone I was going to work with, and she and I interviewed quite a few people  who would have been in our target market. So we kind of took the steps you learn about with idea generation and honestly the truth is -- we put in a lot of time and effort and found out it really was not a profitable business idea. So it's hard to get really excited about something and climb that mountain and then realize -- up! no one wants to buy it. 

MICHELE HANSEN: Right

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: You know? At least we found that out before we started writing code.

MICHELE HANSEN: Right

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Didn't you guys have some side projects before Geocodio?

MICHELE HANSEN: Oh, many. And we had many projects in between that, too, that we've launched in the interim. And it's -- there's no lying that it's hard to find something that sticks, and as you said, no one cares about something until you're a success -- which is a really really lonely place to be for a very long time. You know, our first month we launched Geocodio, we made $31. We thought we were a ridiculous success because we were shocked that anybody wanted to pay us. We thought our product was pretty terrible. And we were we were truly -- we were so shocked that we hadn't even written the code that would tell Stripe to bill people. That was how surprised we were that anyone wanted to pay us. And we worked on it as a side project for a very long time. And it wasn't until just before I went full time, that people started kind of noticing what we were doing and asking us to talk at conferences or, or being a podcast. There's that was a very long time. Where Yeah, exactly like you were saying, you don't hear a lot of those stories. You only hear the stories when people are successful. And I think what we're hoping to capture here is some of that granularity that goes in week by week when you're launching something. And then also the kinds of things you face on a daily basis when you have launched something and it's gotten to the point where you can work full time on it, what what are the kinds of things that you might be facing at that point, and and how do we tackle them

 

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: So you guys had the business for a few years before you went full time, right?

 

MICHELE HANSEN: Yeah. Yeah, three, it was like three and a half years until I went full time. And then my husband went part time, six months later. And then full time, six months after that, like, honestly, we were terrified of paying for health insurance on our own. And that was a big thing that kept us from going full time. We probably could have gone full time a lot sooner. But given the experience I had just a couple months ago trying to buy health insurance, I'm glad I put that off. But it's possible -- not to scare anyone. But there's a very real fears that come into it. Even when you do have something that works and you have customers and your revenue is increasing. You're going to have a whole new set of anxieties to face so -- congratulations! Yeah, no. Everything is solvable.

 

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: I think when you're where I am in this process it seems like so far away right like like it seems like "Man, if I could just make a product that people want to buy my life will be rainbows and sunshine and easy every day!"

 

MICHELE HANSEN:  I can see that and also you know our everyday is we've got something that's that's launched that, you know, has recurring revenue and you know supports us and everything and every day there's still people who are upset with us. Every day we discover things with our product that we're like, "Oh my, that is so obviously bad. Like we need to fix that. Like how is that been like that for so long? This is embarrassing." Like that, that happens to happened... today. It happened yesterday. And the same time you know some of the things you were talking about earlier that the dream so many people have for having a product business. Being able to be your own boss, getting to make decisions, getting to have that level of autonomy and authority and direction over your own work. That doesn't go away. And that definitely keeps me going. And really, what makes it worth it when not everything is rarely otherwise.

 

COLLEEN SCHNETTLER: Yeah, I imagine you're a parent as well as am I? And I imagine it goes both ways, right? Like I imagine the flexibility you have with running your own business is amazing to help you parent. But on the other hand, can you ever take a vacation? 

]]> Sun, 20 Sep 2020 20:58:00 +0200 Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler Michele Hansen & Colleen Schnettler 966 Colleen and Michele move their previously-private weekly coffee shop conversation about their businesses to podcast form. Here's what you can expect from this podcast. Colleen and Michele move their previously-private weekly coffee shop conversation about their businesses to podcast form. Here's what you can expect from this podcast. SaaS, bootstrapping, software No Michele Hansen Colleen Schnettler