Getting to 100
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 Schnettler 0:00
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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 Schnettler 7:20
56. So people are using
Michele Hansen 7:24
Last time we talked to someone paid you $10 outside of Heroku. Have you gotten paid anything else since then?
Colleen Schnettler 7:34
Nope. I've had a couple other people I want to say to additional people sign up for the free trial. So we'll see if they convert. It's funny, though, because all those people aren't emailing me back.
Michele Hansen 7:47
Interesting.
Colleen Schnettler 7:47
So yeah, but they're using it. So I guess they're happy. Maybe.
Michele Hansen 7:53
So how many credit cards on file Do you have right now then outside of Heroku? Six, six. And that's a one month free trial, right? Yes. Okay. And so when does that when are we coming up on the first charge for most of those people,
Colleen Schnettler 8:11
like February 6 through 10th ish, people will have to turn out by then if they don't want to pay.
Michele Hansen 8:17
Okay, so by the middle of February, then we will have a little bit of a sense of whether people want to pay for it or not.
Colleen Schnettler 8:29
So I did some interesting things, which, which is basically the story of this whole thing of this whole product, I just do things. So I am about to become really busy with some consulting work. And I'm really looking forward to it, because it'll be kind of a nice break to just dive into doing something I know how to do. But because of that I was working on this like, three, three days a week, I'm gonna have one day a week to work on this. And so I did a few things. I raised the prices quite a bit, because I don't,
Michele Hansen 9:00
Yeah, taking some patio11 advice there!
Colleen Schnettler 9:04
Why not? I mean, I might as well come out of the gate high. And if no one signs up, then that that's, you know, that's a lesson learned. But I'd rather have five users at $40, then, you know, 50 users at $8. Exactly right, because I am one human like, and now I have a job that's going to pay me money that's going to take up most of my time. So I'm not gonna have a ton of time to spend on the uploader. So yeah, I'd rather have fewer customers at a higher price point. So I raised my price from I think was 10 to 35 for the intro tier. So that's pretty significant. So it'll be interesting to see if anyone signs up at that price point. And what else did I do? So I tried to do a little marketing work since I last spoke to you. So I actually hired someone from people per hour to make me a react application using my uploader.
Michele Hansen 9:57
Oh, interesting.
Colleen Schnettler 9:59
And that was Whole thing like people for hours, like a race to the bottom, have you guys ever used that? I know, it was, it was a weird experience. Maybe because like, I just didn't spend enough money. But it was like, I felt like, I don't know, like people were just sending me messages, I must have gotten like 50 messages from these people and like the people started working on it before I had agreed to pay them. And it was just, it was a really interesting experience, to try to hire someone to do to get
Michele Hansen 10:28
something usable out of it.
Colleen Schnettler 10:31
ish. It's mostly usable. I think it's not kind of what I would like it to be. But it's I think it's good enough that with my teensy, tiny minimum react skills, I can make it good enough. It wasn't good enough to put out there on my documentation page yet. But I feel like I can get it there. If I spent a little time on it, but that was a weird experience.
Michele Hansen 10:56
That -- yeah, I mean, I think there's when you use services like that, you know, you get what you pay for.
Colleen Schnettler 11:09
And yeah, that's what I think, too.
Michele Hansen 11:13
yeah, it's just it's just, it's just tricky. And I think if we ever needed something that we didn't have in house, we would just, you know, see who our friends are in our network could do it. And probably pay more, but you know, have a have a good result that you can use from the get go.
Colleen Schnettler 11:32
Yeah, I definitely think so. And I absolutely think it's because I'm not making any making $10. So I'm not making any money. So I'm really hesitant to put money into that. And I absolutely think that's that was part of the issue. It was like, I think I paid 200 bucks. So what do you expect to get for 200? bucks Colleen? Like, really? It was interesting. So that marketing, that's such an interesting
Michele Hansen 11:57
point, though, I just want to ask you. So you said you spent $200 on that, aside from your time, which actually has a cost that you can pretty clearly calculate because you do consulting work. I'm curious, what is your Do you know what your total investment in? The product is? so far?
Colleen Schnettler 12:19
So I don't really want to know, because I think it'll freak me out. In terms of the opposite leg. If I include opportunity cost. It's ginormous. So if I, I mean, without opportunity cost is low, maybe 500 bucks. But if I include the opportunity cost of my time as a developer, it's kind of a scary number. I don't know a lot.
Michele Hansen 12:41
Yeah, this is it's just interesting, because I think we were talking about this a while ago, right about how much it cost us to get off the ground. Because it's a big thing about bootstrapping, right is like you're you're funding yourself. And I want to say it was in about that, like, four to $500 range, not taking into account, you know, free AWS credits and stuff that we got, and of course, the opportunity cost of your time, which is not free. So I think this will be really interesting when you are forced to only spend one day a week on this, you know, you've talked a lot about how you have a tendency to read as a substitute for doing or to avoid doing, right reading about entrepreneurship and marketing. As a way to procrastinate on actually doing that task, though you may we'll be learning things. And I think it might be interesting, because if you only have one day a week, you only have one day a week to get stuff done. I know, it might be good for you.
Colleen Schnettler 13:48
I think it will. So I have a plan. Do you wanna hear my plan I do want to hear. So here's the thing is, like all developers everywhere, all I want to do is add more features. We talked about this every week,
Michele Hansen 14:01
you want to do engineer, I only if
Colleen Schnettler 14:03
I want to do engineering, I only have one day a week to work on this. So here's the deal, it works great. It doesn't have all the features I'd like it to have. But it works. So my plan is to spend that one day a week, only on marketing. And it's going to be really challenging for me. But I spent these past two weeks there were just like a couple little bug fixes I had to get through security stuff, and things like that. So I spent these and like email stuff. I spent these past two weeks, like just knocking that the tech stuff out. So now it works well for what it does. So my plan is that those Fridays are just going to be marketing days. And that's a little bit scary for me. But there's no point in me spending another you know, 100 hours or however long to implement new features if no one's buying it in the first place.
Michele Hansen 14:53
Right. If a feature is launched in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, was it really launched?
Colleen Schnettler 15:00
Yeah, that's amazing. By the way, I love that. So, like, that's so good. So I'm really, really kind of struggling, but also excited about this decision. It's like, I'm going to stop half assing marketing because like, everyone, I've been half assing marketing, I'm like, Oh, this landing page is fine. When it's not really like people are giving me suggestions, and I'm just ignoring them, because I don't really want to do it. So Fridays are gonna be marketing days for me marketing, sales, whatever you want to call it.
Michele Hansen 15:32
They're different. They're two different things. They're
Colleen Schnettler 15:35
different. Oh,
Michele Hansen 15:36
should we talk about how they're different? shirt, or different? Okay, so for So, so marketing is this the kind of stuff you've been doing, like SEO, writing landing pages, you know, working on the design, writing your documentation, you know, running ads, but you're not doing but those those are kind of like marketing things. Sales, people would usually conceptualize as sort of a direct one to one interaction with a customer to try to convert them. So that might be like, you know, some people do cold emailing, for example, like that would be sales, or having a phone call with a potential customer about, you know, trying to pitch them on an on a contract, or whatever it is, negotiating on a contract, those would be sales functions. And, you know, kind of like going back to what Danielle Simpson was saying last week about the system they built at feedback panda with what was it like 50, something 52 rolls in there to company, like marketing and sales, you know, they might sort of, you know, feed up to the same VP, but they're different functions.
Colleen Schnettler 16:53
Okay, so at this point, where I am now I'm getting a good number of signups through the Heroku traction channel, which has been great, but I am going to start charging. So I expect that number to go down. What are your thoughts? I have a lot of ideas about how to spend my next Friday my sales slash marketing day, like what are your thoughts on how to maybe approach this or what's a good way to get started?
Michele Hansen 17:17
You mentioned that people have given you feedback on your landing page and other places, lots of feedback,
Colleen Schnettler 17:25
and lots of feedback.
Michele Hansen 17:27
any criticism like is it actionable? Or is it like your landing page sucks? Like, is it?
Colleen Schnettler 17:33
No, no. Okay, super. It's super actionable. I am scared of Okay, here's the thing. I am scared of landing pages. This is this is truth telling. here's, here's how I do a landing page, I go find a template, I copy the template and I put my words and images in the template. So when if you ever tell me like, Oh, you should do this. So let me let me give you some step one. Okay.
Michele Hansen 18:00
Copies Stripe's homepage, step 1.
Colleen Schnettler 18:06
Me and everyone else. So here's some feedback I got, which is really good. And I'm really want to implement it. But it's funny how I don't even know how. So yesterday I was introduced to this concept of pain, Dream fix. And it's this concept of like, what is the customer's pain? What is their dream about how their life would be better if they and what is your Fix? It's a lot you know, about what we've talked about?
Michele Hansen 18:35
It sounds consistent with Storybrand.
Colleen Schnettler 18:37
Yeah, it's very consistent with everything we've talked about. But it's a lot like here's the real so everyone's giving me this great feedback on Oh, you could do this pain dream fix. And that's really good. But like, I literally don't know how to put that on a on a webpage without it looking terrible. Because it's so many words. I mean, it's like basic, like design stuff. And I'm just like, wait, there are three blocks. Wait, what I don't know what to do.
Michele Hansen 19:01
That's not a design problem. That is a copywriting problem. And okay. And I think you also might be running into something that I think is pretty common. When you hear things like that. They're like, Oh, yeah, of course, that's so obvious. Like, yeah, I'll do that. When you're, I think especially working in this space, we're in of b2b SaaS, which is, honestly, like, pretty boring. You know, we've talked about how we're not building, you know, businesses that are going to take over the world and everyone's going to use them and like, you know, talking about the dream when it comes to making business processes faster. It requires a little bit of creativity. And I think, you know, releasing ourselves from the idea that people are, you know, accomplishing all of their dreams with us, right. But I also think it's, I think it's probably possible and you also but you don't have to, like hit them all within like, the top of your homepage. Like I think it's pretty common to you know, just like speak to the pain first. And then as someone keeps you know, you, you kind of show them what it is and then you introduce the the dream and and the pain further down contextually like it doesn't have to be everything crammed above the fold.
Colleen Schnettler 20:29
Yeah, so I think something I have never done before is like really pay attention to landing pages, like I just don't pay attention. So there's a couple like Twitter threads people sent me of everyone's favorite landing pages. So I think part of my work as starting something new here, which is, you know, learning about marketing, is to actually look at landing page examples and try and get some ideas. And it feels so much like starting from scratch. And I'd put more time and put two hours into my landing page, like it's okay. But I just threw up a template and threw some words and got some stock images and called it a day. So I really think that's a good place to start. And I think next week for my first marketing Friday, I'm going to work on that.
Michele Hansen 21:18
Yeah, so I think something else that you could do is, if you, you mentioned that it's hard to get people to reply to you, but you have had some people reply to you and give you feedback. And I wonder if those people who have given you feedback on the landing page, if you could reach out to them and basically do a usability test with them, where you're on a screen share with them, and they are narrating their internal thoughts as they look at your landing page. And you say, okay, like, that's what the copy is, can you like, tell me why you use this product, like what, like what excited you about it, and like have a conversation like that, you might even want to record it. So you can listen to it later and use those words for your copy later. But I think that can help you like if you have people who are willing to give you feedback, and willing to help you improve that, right because like, if you make this into a real business and keep supporting it. And they prefer to use it over the other options out there, they're going to benefit from it too. And so maybe if you can see if you could get one or two people just be willing to do a screen share with you for half an hour each. And just go down to just narrate what they see and just ask them questions about it. Ask them Why did you choose this over other things? Like, you know, this is what it says but like, let's have a conversation with him about it.
Colleen Schnettler 22:44
Okay. Okay, I did one person I asked over email. And I guess it wasn't landing page relevant. But he said, he picked my product, because it seems fast and easy. Which is kind of what I'm, that's great. Going for good. Yeah. So that's kind of what I'm going for. Okay, that's a great idea. You think I should do that with people that are using it?
Michele Hansen 23:04
Yeah, I think you know, like this guy who said, he picked it because it's fast and easy. Like, see if he'll do a call with you. And just say, you know, as can be, or even just say 1520 minutes, you may not even need a full half hour, I find it's pretty easy to get people on the phone for the most part. Especially in that kind of a scenario. Like I have been amazed with how generous people have been with their time when you are building a product that truly does make things faster and easier for them. People appreciate that.
Colleen Schnettler 23:36
Okay, it's interesting. Another thing while I was having this little two weeks of self reflection, something I realized is you keep telling me to talk to people, and I keep emailing people. But I haven't actually asked any of these people to get on a call with me yet. Oh, and I keep saying I'll do that, but I'm lying. So and you just lied to you, my dear friend, Michelle. It's so funny because I thought this would be something like I'd be good at but, and I think I will be but it's just interesting to like discover your own hesitations. I'm sure it's like a fear of rejection or something that has that has prevented me from actually asking people to get on the phone. But I'm going to do that too. For real.
Michele Hansen 24:18
He was what we were talking about earlier about having a lot of this sort of pent up stress around like learning marketing and, and all of these other functions that go into making something a full fledged business that can support you full time. It makes sense to me that you would have hesitations about that. And it's like it's so common that people are afraid to talk on the phone with other people and ask them these kinds of questions that you know, I think we've talked about, you know, it's you're, you're asking for somebody's pain points, right? And first of all, you can't say what are your pain points, but second of all, Just we don't have vocabulary around talking about pain and struggle, really, like we don't say, Hey, how are you struggling today as a normal conversation topic, like it just doesn't happen. And so it's totally understandable that you would have hesitations about that. And, and something I want you to remember, is that what you say? And the specific questions you ask, I think people get really worried about that about having the right script, those are less important than how you treat the other person. Because if you treat them in a way, that shows them that they can trust you, and that you're going to respect what you're saying, you know, respect what they are saying, you know, if you simply just listen to them, like, remember that with all of these, as I said earlier, boring business processes that we are solving. These are things that people are doing every day or every week, and they have probably never talked to anyone about, like, they have probably never sat down and had a conversation with their spouse, or their roommate, or whomever it is about, like, tell me about, like how you're struggling with file upload. Like, they have probably never been asked that question. But if somebody had asked you that question a year ago, you would have said, Oh, my God, let me tell you, because I have so much to say about this. And like you would have never realized you had something to say about that. But you never had someone sit there and say, tell me about this, and then just listen to you.
Colleen Schnettler 26:43
Yeah, you know, you're so
Michele Hansen 26:44
powerful, right? And so you don't need to have a million questions. And you don't need to, you know, I mean, maybe you feel like you need to somehow impress them or show them that you're a real business or something about this. Leave all of that at the door. The most important thing is just to listen to them about something that nobody has probably ever listened to them about. And that is really powerful. Okay, okay. I'm on my soapbox. I'm sorry.
Colleen Schnettler 27:16
It's funny, because like, you keep going to your soapbox and I keep pretending that I'm going to do it and then not doing it. So. So I'm gonna what's uh, what are you? I don't know. I don't know, Michelle, this whole experience is you know, a weird psychological introspection.
Michele Hansen 27:35
Leaving your comfort zone.
Colleen Schnettler 27:36
It's I know, in my comfort zone was so warm and cozy. It's a nice in here. Nice in his comfort zone. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's just such a different skill set. I mean, you're literally cold emailing someone asking them to get on a phone call with you. I mean, it's 2021. People don't talk on the phone. So it's just a lot of things. I don't know why I just put it off. Like, every time this week, I thought about reaching out to someone. I was like, oh, but I got to finish. I got to fix this part. First, I got to fix this part first. I think it's like a fear of perfectionism. I'm sure right? Because there's gonna be negative feedback, presumably at some point. And so it's just just learning how to not internalize that in a personal way.
Michele Hansen 28:19
There's always going to be negative feedback. There's always going to be mean people like, but I mean, of the probably 1000s of interviews I've done like, I can really only think of like, two or three that made me uncomfortable, and only one where someone straight up insulted me.
Colleen Schnettler 28:47
Oh, wow.
Michele Hansen 28:48
Yeah. And actually, that one where the woman insulted me. She ended up giving me the most amazing information in that interview, because she thought I was stupid. And so she explained things to me about how she thought about things on the most basic levels. And it was so good. Like, and I actually when she, she, she, she basically called me stupid, and I was doing it with a co worker. And and I heard that and I was like, oh, now she's gonna she's gonna say everything. Like, she's going to over explain everything. And I you know, I threw out basically like a touchdown sign to my coworker. I was sitting there when I was like, here comes the good stuff. And I was so excited. Um, you know, I mean, don't take it personally. Right? Like, it's just business like, they're, yeah, they're not insulting you. Like if they're saying there's stuff you need to work on, then. You know, you say, okay, thank thank you so much, can you can you tell me why that would work better for you? Like, everything is an opportunity for you to learn more about what their process is so that you can make the assumptions that you have made in your product better fit, whatever their process is?
Colleen Schnettler 29:56
Yeah, I definitely. And it's not even that. I'm worried. People be mean, per se, like, I assume people that get on the phone, you know, we'll be fine that get on the phone with me, we'll be fine. It's just, I don't really know. But I think I just need to rip the band aid off and start getting people on the phone. And so this is part of like you said, I'm, this is way out of my comfort zone. And so here's a growth opportunity for me, and I'm never going to be successful if I don't do it. So now I'm telling you today, like when we talk next week, I will have made a real attempt to get at least one person on the phone who's using my product to talk to them about their pain points around file upload. That's like my small but but still important weekly go.
Michele Hansen 30:41
So when does you're only working on Fridays, or one day a week? I guess I just assumed Friday, one day a week start.
Colleen Schnettler 30:50
Next week,
Michele Hansen 30:51
what day of the week, is it going to be?
Colleen Schnettler 30:54
Well, it was going to be Friday, I think I'm I think Friday. Okay,
Michele Hansen 31:00
it's a good day. Okay. And I think I think this could be really good for you, because it'll also force you to time box things. Like you could say, okay, like, this is the marketing hour. And this is the hour when I'm going to slot in my customer interviews. And this is the hour when I get to have, you know, fun playing around in the magical forest of new feature development. And yes, you know, like, our building in time for those things so that you know, it's going to happen and that you know, that you don't have to sit in that discomfort for very long, right. Like, if
Colleen Schnettler 31:36
you love that only
Michele Hansen 31:38
an hour, like it's only an hour of torturing yourself with new things that you don't know how to do, that are mentally exhausting, because they are new like that, that is totally normal. That is a well documented psychological phenomena that doing new things, and learning new things is more mentally taxing than something that's familiar. And, and I will also, I think it could be good for you too. Because this tendency of reading instead of doing the work, like you have the whole week to plan out that work. And so if you're like, I want to work on the landing page, and so maybe at night, or whatever that is like during the week, it's like, Okay, I'm going to scroll through Harry's marketing examples on Twitter, and look at landing pages or whatever, like just like small things to build yourself up to it.
Colleen Schnettler 32:33
Okay, that's a great idea. It's funny, because you just, you just totally called me out for not doing the work. And I'm doing the same thing with you. Like, I'm asking you every week about customer interviews, and I'm, I'm internalizing all this great knowledge You're giving me but I have yet to actually do the work and it's so weird, but it's okay. Like,
Michele Hansen 32:51
it's a thing. It's not something you have any background or training or anything. And like, that's okay to be scared by it and procrastinate, because you don't even know what the work is to do like that. That's
Colleen Schnettler 33:08
okay. The problem is, when you're, you're entering kind of these new these new fields or these new areas, it's like you don't even know what the work is.
Michele Hansen 33:15
And you're a solo founder to like you don't have somebody else who is bringing in that kind of experience, like, you know, Mateus and I had that advantage because we both come at it from from largely different disciplines Now, like I was a product person so I also had to learn marketing and and sales though. And accounting but but it like it was there, you know, I had time to explore those things because because because that was just falling in my domain.
Colleen Schnettler 33:53
Yeah. Okay, I love the time boxing idea. Before we record again, I will pick a day and I will time box out some hours to actually do this. Let's start doing it.
Michele Hansen 34:04
Let's do it. Yeah. All right.
I guess I guess that'll wrap us up for this week. Thanks so much for listening to software social, we, by the way we seriously love when people tweet out about you're listening to an episode and you liked it or it just it just makes my day when those things come through. So if you liked the show or our show, definitely tweet at us and let us know or post a review on iTunes. Thanks so much.
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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 Schnettler 7:20
56. So people are using
Michele Hansen 7:24
Last time we talked to someone paid you $10 outside of Heroku. Have you gotten paid anything else since then?
Colleen Schnettler 7:34
Nope. I've had a couple other people I want to say to additional people sign up for the free trial. So we'll see if they convert. It's funny, though, because all those people aren't emailing me back.
Michele Hansen 7:47
Interesting.
Colleen Schnettler 7:47
So yeah, but they're using it. So I guess they're happy. Maybe.
Michele Hansen 7:53
So how many credit cards on file Do you have right now then outside of Heroku? Six, six. And that's a one month free trial, right? Yes. Okay. And so when does that when are we coming up on the first charge for most of those people,
Colleen Schnettler 8:11
like February 6 through 10th ish, people will have to turn out by then if they don't want to pay.
Michele Hansen 8:17
Okay, so by the middle of February, then we will have a little bit of a sense of whether people want to pay for it or not.
Colleen Schnettler 8:29
So I did some interesting things, which, which is basically the story of this whole thing of this whole product, I just do things. So I am about to become really busy with some consulting work. And I'm really looking forward to it, because it'll be kind of a nice break to just dive into doing something I know how to do. But because of that I was working on this like, three, three days a week, I'm gonna have one day a week to work on this. And so I did a few things. I raised the prices quite a bit, because I don't,
Michele Hansen 9:00
Yeah, taking some patio11 advice there!
Colleen Schnettler 9:04
Why not? I mean, I might as well come out of the gate high. And if no one signs up, then that that's, you know, that's a lesson learned. But I'd rather have five users at $40, then, you know, 50 users at $8. Exactly right, because I am one human like, and now I have a job that's going to pay me money that's going to take up most of my time. So I'm not gonna have a ton of time to spend on the uploader. So yeah, I'd rather have fewer customers at a higher price point. So I raised my price from I think was 10 to 35 for the intro tier. So that's pretty significant. So it'll be interesting to see if anyone signs up at that price point. And what else did I do? So I tried to do a little marketing work since I last spoke to you. So I actually hired someone from people per hour to make me a react application using my uploader.
Michele Hansen 9:57
Oh, interesting.
Colleen Schnettler 9:59
And that was Whole thing like people for hours, like a race to the bottom, have you guys ever used that? I know, it was, it was a weird experience. Maybe because like, I just didn't spend enough money. But it was like, I felt like, I don't know, like people were just sending me messages, I must have gotten like 50 messages from these people and like the people started working on it before I had agreed to pay them. And it was just, it was a really interesting experience, to try to hire someone to do to get
Michele Hansen 10:28
something usable out of it.
Colleen Schnettler 10:31
ish. It's mostly usable. I think it's not kind of what I would like it to be. But it's I think it's good enough that with my teensy, tiny minimum react skills, I can make it good enough. It wasn't good enough to put out there on my documentation page yet. But I feel like I can get it there. If I spent a little time on it, but that was a weird experience.
Michele Hansen 10:56
That -- yeah, I mean, I think there's when you use services like that, you know, you get what you pay for.
Colleen Schnettler 11:09
And yeah, that's what I think, too.
Michele Hansen 11:13
yeah, it's just it's just, it's just tricky. And I think if we ever needed something that we didn't have in house, we would just, you know, see who our friends are in our network could do it. And probably pay more, but you know, have a have a good result that you can use from the get go.
Colleen Schnettler 11:32
Yeah, I definitely think so. And I absolutely think it's because I'm not making any making $10. So I'm not making any money. So I'm really hesitant to put money into that. And I absolutely think that's that was part of the issue. It was like, I think I paid 200 bucks. So what do you expect to get for 200? bucks Colleen? Like, really? It was interesting. So that marketing, that's such an interesting
Michele Hansen 11:57
point, though, I just want to ask you. So you said you spent $200 on that, aside from your time, which actually has a cost that you can pretty clearly calculate because you do consulting work. I'm curious, what is your Do you know what your total investment in? The product is? so far?
Colleen Schnettler 12:19
So I don't really want to know, because I think it'll freak me out. In terms of the opposite leg. If I include opportunity cost. It's ginormous. So if I, I mean, without opportunity cost is low, maybe 500 bucks. But if I include the opportunity cost of my time as a developer, it's kind of a scary number. I don't know a lot.
Michele Hansen 12:41
Yeah, this is it's just interesting, because I think we were talking about this a while ago, right about how much it cost us to get off the ground. Because it's a big thing about bootstrapping, right is like you're you're funding yourself. And I want to say it was in about that, like, four to $500 range, not taking into account, you know, free AWS credits and stuff that we got, and of course, the opportunity cost of your time, which is not free. So I think this will be really interesting when you are forced to only spend one day a week on this, you know, you've talked a lot about how you have a tendency to read as a substitute for doing or to avoid doing, right reading about entrepreneurship and marketing. As a way to procrastinate on actually doing that task, though you may we'll be learning things. And I think it might be interesting, because if you only have one day a week, you only have one day a week to get stuff done. I know, it might be good for you.
Colleen Schnettler 13:48
I think it will. So I have a plan. Do you wanna hear my plan I do want to hear. So here's the thing is, like all developers everywhere, all I want to do is add more features. We talked about this every week,
Michele Hansen 14:01
you want to do engineer, I only if
Colleen Schnettler 14:03
I want to do engineering, I only have one day a week to work on this. So here's the deal, it works great. It doesn't have all the features I'd like it to have. But it works. So my plan is to spend that one day a week, only on marketing. And it's going to be really challenging for me. But I spent these past two weeks there were just like a couple little bug fixes I had to get through security stuff, and things like that. So I spent these and like email stuff. I spent these past two weeks, like just knocking that the tech stuff out. So now it works well for what it does. So my plan is that those Fridays are just going to be marketing days. And that's a little bit scary for me. But there's no point in me spending another you know, 100 hours or however long to implement new features if no one's buying it in the first place.
Michele Hansen 14:53
Right. If a feature is launched in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, was it really launched?
Colleen Schnettler 15:00
Yeah, that's amazing. By the way, I love that. So, like, that's so good. So I'm really, really kind of struggling, but also excited about this decision. It's like, I'm going to stop half assing marketing because like, everyone, I've been half assing marketing, I'm like, Oh, this landing page is fine. When it's not really like people are giving me suggestions, and I'm just ignoring them, because I don't really want to do it. So Fridays are gonna be marketing days for me marketing, sales, whatever you want to call it.
Michele Hansen 15:32
They're different. They're two different things. They're
Colleen Schnettler 15:35
different. Oh,
Michele Hansen 15:36
should we talk about how they're different? shirt, or different? Okay, so for So, so marketing is this the kind of stuff you've been doing, like SEO, writing landing pages, you know, working on the design, writing your documentation, you know, running ads, but you're not doing but those those are kind of like marketing things. Sales, people would usually conceptualize as sort of a direct one to one interaction with a customer to try to convert them. So that might be like, you know, some people do cold emailing, for example, like that would be sales, or having a phone call with a potential customer about, you know, trying to pitch them on an on a contract, or whatever it is, negotiating on a contract, those would be sales functions. And, you know, kind of like going back to what Danielle Simpson was saying last week about the system they built at feedback panda with what was it like 50, something 52 rolls in there to company, like marketing and sales, you know, they might sort of, you know, feed up to the same VP, but they're different functions.
Colleen Schnettler 16:53
Okay, so at this point, where I am now I'm getting a good number of signups through the Heroku traction channel, which has been great, but I am going to start charging. So I expect that number to go down. What are your thoughts? I have a lot of ideas about how to spend my next Friday my sales slash marketing day, like what are your thoughts on how to maybe approach this or what's a good way to get started?
Michele Hansen 17:17
You mentioned that people have given you feedback on your landing page and other places, lots of feedback,
Colleen Schnettler 17:25
and lots of feedback.
Michele Hansen 17:27
any criticism like is it actionable? Or is it like your landing page sucks? Like, is it?
Colleen Schnettler 17:33
No, no. Okay, super. It's super actionable. I am scared of Okay, here's the thing. I am scared of landing pages. This is this is truth telling. here's, here's how I do a landing page, I go find a template, I copy the template and I put my words and images in the template. So when if you ever tell me like, Oh, you should do this. So let me let me give you some step one. Okay.
Michele Hansen 18:00
Copies Stripe's homepage, step 1.
Colleen Schnettler 18:06
Me and everyone else. So here's some feedback I got, which is really good. And I'm really want to implement it. But it's funny how I don't even know how. So yesterday I was introduced to this concept of pain, Dream fix. And it's this concept of like, what is the customer's pain? What is their dream about how their life would be better if they and what is your Fix? It's a lot you know, about what we've talked about?
Michele Hansen 18:35
It sounds consistent with Storybrand.
Colleen Schnettler 18:37
Yeah, it's very consistent with everything we've talked about. But it's a lot like here's the real so everyone's giving me this great feedback on Oh, you could do this pain dream fix. And that's really good. But like, I literally don't know how to put that on a on a webpage without it looking terrible. Because it's so many words. I mean, it's like basic, like design stuff. And I'm just like, wait, there are three blocks. Wait, what I don't know what to do.
Michele Hansen 19:01
That's not a design problem. That is a copywriting problem. And okay. And I think you also might be running into something that I think is pretty common. When you hear things like that. They're like, Oh, yeah, of course, that's so obvious. Like, yeah, I'll do that. When you're, I think especially working in this space, we're in of b2b SaaS, which is, honestly, like, pretty boring. You know, we've talked about how we're not building, you know, businesses that are going to take over the world and everyone's going to use them and like, you know, talking about the dream when it comes to making business processes faster. It requires a little bit of creativity. And I think, you know, releasing ourselves from the idea that people are, you know, accomplishing all of their dreams with us, right. But I also think it's, I think it's probably possible and you also but you don't have to, like hit them all within like, the top of your homepage. Like I think it's pretty common to you know, just like speak to the pain first. And then as someone keeps you know, you, you kind of show them what it is and then you introduce the the dream and and the pain further down contextually like it doesn't have to be everything crammed above the fold.
Colleen Schnettler 20:29
Yeah, so I think something I have never done before is like really pay attention to landing pages, like I just don't pay attention. So there's a couple like Twitter threads people sent me of everyone's favorite landing pages. So I think part of my work as starting something new here, which is, you know, learning about marketing, is to actually look at landing page examples and try and get some ideas. And it feels so much like starting from scratch. And I'd put more time and put two hours into my landing page, like it's okay. But I just threw up a template and threw some words and got some stock images and called it a day. So I really think that's a good place to start. And I think next week for my first marketing Friday, I'm going to work on that.
Michele Hansen 21:18
Yeah, so I think something else that you could do is, if you, you mentioned that it's hard to get people to reply to you, but you have had some people reply to you and give you feedback. And I wonder if those people who have given you feedback on the landing page, if you could reach out to them and basically do a usability test with them, where you're on a screen share with them, and they are narrating their internal thoughts as they look at your landing page. And you say, okay, like, that's what the copy is, can you like, tell me why you use this product, like what, like what excited you about it, and like have a conversation like that, you might even want to record it. So you can listen to it later and use those words for your copy later. But I think that can help you like if you have people who are willing to give you feedback, and willing to help you improve that, right because like, if you make this into a real business and keep supporting it. And they prefer to use it over the other options out there, they're going to benefit from it too. And so maybe if you can see if you could get one or two people just be willing to do a screen share with you for half an hour each. And just go down to just narrate what they see and just ask them questions about it. Ask them Why did you choose this over other things? Like, you know, this is what it says but like, let's have a conversation with him about it.
Colleen Schnettler 22:44
Okay. Okay, I did one person I asked over email. And I guess it wasn't landing page relevant. But he said, he picked my product, because it seems fast and easy. Which is kind of what I'm, that's great. Going for good. Yeah. So that's kind of what I'm going for. Okay, that's a great idea. You think I should do that with people that are using it?
Michele Hansen 23:04
Yeah, I think you know, like this guy who said, he picked it because it's fast and easy. Like, see if he'll do a call with you. And just say, you know, as can be, or even just say 1520 minutes, you may not even need a full half hour, I find it's pretty easy to get people on the phone for the most part. Especially in that kind of a scenario. Like I have been amazed with how generous people have been with their time when you are building a product that truly does make things faster and easier for them. People appreciate that.
Colleen Schnettler 23:36
Okay, it's interesting. Another thing while I was having this little two weeks of self reflection, something I realized is you keep telling me to talk to people, and I keep emailing people. But I haven't actually asked any of these people to get on a call with me yet. Oh, and I keep saying I'll do that, but I'm lying. So and you just lied to you, my dear friend, Michelle. It's so funny because I thought this would be something like I'd be good at but, and I think I will be but it's just interesting to like discover your own hesitations. I'm sure it's like a fear of rejection or something that has that has prevented me from actually asking people to get on the phone. But I'm going to do that too. For real.
Michele Hansen 24:18
He was what we were talking about earlier about having a lot of this sort of pent up stress around like learning marketing and, and all of these other functions that go into making something a full fledged business that can support you full time. It makes sense to me that you would have hesitations about that. And it's like it's so common that people are afraid to talk on the phone with other people and ask them these kinds of questions that you know, I think we've talked about, you know, it's you're, you're asking for somebody's pain points, right? And first of all, you can't say what are your pain points, but second of all, Just we don't have vocabulary around talking about pain and struggle, really, like we don't say, Hey, how are you struggling today as a normal conversation topic, like it just doesn't happen. And so it's totally understandable that you would have hesitations about that. And, and something I want you to remember, is that what you say? And the specific questions you ask, I think people get really worried about that about having the right script, those are less important than how you treat the other person. Because if you treat them in a way, that shows them that they can trust you, and that you're going to respect what you're saying, you know, respect what they are saying, you know, if you simply just listen to them, like, remember that with all of these, as I said earlier, boring business processes that we are solving. These are things that people are doing every day or every week, and they have probably never talked to anyone about, like, they have probably never sat down and had a conversation with their spouse, or their roommate, or whomever it is about, like, tell me about, like how you're struggling with file upload. Like, they have probably never been asked that question. But if somebody had asked you that question a year ago, you would have said, Oh, my God, let me tell you, because I have so much to say about this. And like you would have never realized you had something to say about that. But you never had someone sit there and say, tell me about this, and then just listen to you.
Colleen Schnettler 26:43
Yeah, you know, you're so
Michele Hansen 26:44
powerful, right? And so you don't need to have a million questions. And you don't need to, you know, I mean, maybe you feel like you need to somehow impress them or show them that you're a real business or something about this. Leave all of that at the door. The most important thing is just to listen to them about something that nobody has probably ever listened to them about. And that is really powerful. Okay, okay. I'm on my soapbox. I'm sorry.
Colleen Schnettler 27:16
It's funny, because like, you keep going to your soapbox and I keep pretending that I'm going to do it and then not doing it. So. So I'm gonna what's uh, what are you? I don't know. I don't know, Michelle, this whole experience is you know, a weird psychological introspection.
Michele Hansen 27:35
Leaving your comfort zone.
Colleen Schnettler 27:36
It's I know, in my comfort zone was so warm and cozy. It's a nice in here. Nice in his comfort zone. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's just such a different skill set. I mean, you're literally cold emailing someone asking them to get on a phone call with you. I mean, it's 2021. People don't talk on the phone. So it's just a lot of things. I don't know why I just put it off. Like, every time this week, I thought about reaching out to someone. I was like, oh, but I got to finish. I got to fix this part. First, I got to fix this part first. I think it's like a fear of perfectionism. I'm sure right? Because there's gonna be negative feedback, presumably at some point. And so it's just just learning how to not internalize that in a personal way.
Michele Hansen 28:19
There's always going to be negative feedback. There's always going to be mean people like, but I mean, of the probably 1000s of interviews I've done like, I can really only think of like, two or three that made me uncomfortable, and only one where someone straight up insulted me.
Colleen Schnettler 28:47
Oh, wow.
Michele Hansen 28:48
Yeah. And actually, that one where the woman insulted me. She ended up giving me the most amazing information in that interview, because she thought I was stupid. And so she explained things to me about how she thought about things on the most basic levels. And it was so good. Like, and I actually when she, she, she, she basically called me stupid, and I was doing it with a co worker. And and I heard that and I was like, oh, now she's gonna she's gonna say everything. Like, she's going to over explain everything. And I you know, I threw out basically like a touchdown sign to my coworker. I was sitting there when I was like, here comes the good stuff. And I was so excited. Um, you know, I mean, don't take it personally. Right? Like, it's just business like, they're, yeah, they're not insulting you. Like if they're saying there's stuff you need to work on, then. You know, you say, okay, thank thank you so much, can you can you tell me why that would work better for you? Like, everything is an opportunity for you to learn more about what their process is so that you can make the assumptions that you have made in your product better fit, whatever their process is?
Colleen Schnettler 29:56
Yeah, I definitely. And it's not even that. I'm worried. People be mean, per se, like, I assume people that get on the phone, you know, we'll be fine that get on the phone with me, we'll be fine. It's just, I don't really know. But I think I just need to rip the band aid off and start getting people on the phone. And so this is part of like you said, I'm, this is way out of my comfort zone. And so here's a growth opportunity for me, and I'm never going to be successful if I don't do it. So now I'm telling you today, like when we talk next week, I will have made a real attempt to get at least one person on the phone who's using my product to talk to them about their pain points around file upload. That's like my small but but still important weekly go.
Michele Hansen 30:41
So when does you're only working on Fridays, or one day a week? I guess I just assumed Friday, one day a week start.
Colleen Schnettler 30:50
Next week,
Michele Hansen 30:51
what day of the week, is it going to be?
Colleen Schnettler 30:54
Well, it was going to be Friday, I think I'm I think Friday. Okay,
Michele Hansen 31:00
it's a good day. Okay. And I think I think this could be really good for you, because it'll also force you to time box things. Like you could say, okay, like, this is the marketing hour. And this is the hour when I'm going to slot in my customer interviews. And this is the hour when I get to have, you know, fun playing around in the magical forest of new feature development. And yes, you know, like, our building in time for those things so that you know, it's going to happen and that you know, that you don't have to sit in that discomfort for very long, right. Like, if
Colleen Schnettler 31:36
you love that only
Michele Hansen 31:38
an hour, like it's only an hour of torturing yourself with new things that you don't know how to do, that are mentally exhausting, because they are new like that, that is totally normal. That is a well documented psychological phenomena that doing new things, and learning new things is more mentally taxing than something that's familiar. And, and I will also, I think it could be good for you too. Because this tendency of reading instead of doing the work, like you have the whole week to plan out that work. And so if you're like, I want to work on the landing page, and so maybe at night, or whatever that is like during the week, it's like, Okay, I'm going to scroll through Harry's marketing examples on Twitter, and look at landing pages or whatever, like just like small things to build yourself up to it.
Colleen Schnettler 32:33
Okay, that's a great idea. It's funny, because you just, you just totally called me out for not doing the work. And I'm doing the same thing with you. Like, I'm asking you every week about customer interviews, and I'm, I'm internalizing all this great knowledge You're giving me but I have yet to actually do the work and it's so weird, but it's okay. Like,
Michele Hansen 32:51
it's a thing. It's not something you have any background or training or anything. And like, that's okay to be scared by it and procrastinate, because you don't even know what the work is to do like that. That's
Colleen Schnettler 33:08
okay. The problem is, when you're, you're entering kind of these new these new fields or these new areas, it's like you don't even know what the work is.
Michele Hansen 33:15
And you're a solo founder to like you don't have somebody else who is bringing in that kind of experience, like, you know, Mateus and I had that advantage because we both come at it from from largely different disciplines Now, like I was a product person so I also had to learn marketing and and sales though. And accounting but but it like it was there, you know, I had time to explore those things because because because that was just falling in my domain.
Colleen Schnettler 33:53
Yeah. Okay, I love the time boxing idea. Before we record again, I will pick a day and I will time box out some hours to actually do this. Let's start doing it.
Michele Hansen 34:04
Let's do it. Yeah. All right.
I guess I guess that'll wrap us up for this week. Thanks so much for listening to software social, we, by the way we seriously love when people tweet out about you're listening to an episode and you liked it or it just it just makes my day when those things come through. So if you liked the show or our show, definitely tweet at us and let us know or post a review on iTunes. Thanks so much.
