Raising a Business
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.
Colleen Schnettler 0:00
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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'm trying to do, what I'm focusing on, or what I'm just trying to do mentally is not attach my personal happiness to whether people sign up or not. Oh, god,
Michele Hansen 6:53
oh, that's such a, that's such a hard one. And like not attaching your I don't know, self-worth
Colleen Schnettler
Self worth
Michele Hansen
to like somebody cancelled and you're like, just stab me through the heart. Like, you know, like, it's that that is a normal feeling to feel like take it personally, when people aren't signing up, or they're canceling like, it is. I think it's okay to like, make space for yourself to like, take that personally. But like, put that feeling in a box, keep it somewhere safe, put it off to the side, and then say, Okay, what am I doing that like I could have more people signing up? or Why are these people canceling? Let me attack this objectively, but making space for those feelings of like rejection and hurt that come with that. That's, that's totally fair.
Colleen Schnettler 7:44
Yeah, I mean, I found myself the other day, I was just kind of in a blah mood. So I was like, Oh, well check my signups and someone had signed up. So I got this dopamine boost. I was like sweet, it was great. But just as easily someone could have churned or I could have had no signups. And what I have internalized that and like exactly the opposite way, so I'm trying not to obsessively check my signups. I'm trying not to do the funny thing though, right? Like, Oh, my gosh, Michelle, take from it. To your point. Like, I can't, I mean, there's so much work to do. But Holy crap, look where I am, people are paying me money for this thing. Like, I have a real product, that people are paying me real money. It's very exciting.
Michele Hansen 8:27
It's amazing. I mean, like, so you should you allow yourself to enjoy those dopamine hits, too, right? Like you have earned that, you have worked for it. But I think the you know, yeah, the hard thing is, is the reverse of the dopamine hit whatever that is called. And, and not letting that get you to down and, and taking everything, both when good things happen. And when bad things happen. Both of those are learning opportunities. And to your point that, you know, raising a business has challenges on the level of parenting.
Colleen Schnettler 9:07
You said raising a business, did you realize that? It's amazing.
Michele Hansen 9:13
If I ever write a book about business,
Colleen Schnettler 9:14
that's going to be called raising a business.
Michele Hansen 9:16
Yeah. You that, like that's one of the hard things is to say, Okay, how do I learn from this? And you know, so one of the things to say about parenting is like the things that are hard now, like you will figure them out, but then you will have new hard things to figure out.
Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.
Michele Hansen
And someone said that much better than me, and I just completely butchered it. But I think you know what I mean? Like, you know, getting your child to sleep is a problem that you eventually solve and then is replaced by another problem, right?
Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.
Michele Hansen
And, and I think that's very true. But if you are able to respond to those challenges as opportunities for growth that will serve you well.
So you have this revenue. And this is also recurring revenue too, right? Like, this is the amazing thing about SaaS. Right?
Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.
Michele Hansen
And once but it will theoretically recur in the future.
Colleen Schnettler 10:15
Yes. As long as you know, again, we'll have to see if people stick around. It's only been a week, so they could be trying it out. But yeah, this is recurring revenue. So I feel like I've achieved a really exciting for me level of success in these, like, 10 days since it's been live. And something interesting happened. I'm a casual internet acquaintance, which is pretty much all my friends these days. I mean, like, if we have one Talk, I'm like, true friends.
Michele Hansen 10:46
It's COVID. It's true. Like we have a conversation on Twitter and
Colleen Schnettler 10:49
Twitter,
Michele Hansen 10:50
like mutual follow up to that. And I'm like, Oh, my God, we're best friends.
Colleen Schnettler 10:52
So a casual Twitter acquaintance, sent me a DM with some interesting information. And he said, he said something that that I am actually a little not uncomfortable to share. But whatever. He said, Colleen, you know, congratulations, like you've had so much. It seems like you're having so much success. In the last episode of the podcast, Michele said, quote, obviously, you found a hole in the market, and quote, and he told me a story about how years ago, he had a podcast, and about his business, and someone copied his business, like, word for word. And he was just kindly trying to like, give me a heads up that, you know, you're not that far ahead. You don't really have an established business yet. If someone wanted to fill this hole, especially someone with a team, they could catch up to you in like two months. And it reached me out.
Michele Hansen 11:52
That sounds like that really scared you.
Colleen Schnettler 11:55
Well, I mean, it's going so well, I almost don't want to tell people, it's going well, because any of these not that any of these big companies know anything about me. But you know, anybody could just build one of these things and be a direct competitor. And they know what I mean, because of the podcast, like there's this huge benefit of building and public. But because of the podcast, they literally know exactly what my service does and what it doesn't do. And so yeah.
Michele Hansen 12:24
So I think you're justified in being freaked out by that. And I think the person who brought this to you It sounds like they're being very well intentioned, and trying to be helpful to you, but this has understandably freaked you out.
Colleen Schnettler 12:37
Yes.
Michele Hansen 12:38
And I would like to remind you that you have something that those big companies do not have. The thing about big companies is that they are extremely difficult to turn, you are a the equivalent of a little Sunfish, you know, those little tiny sailboats that have like one person on them, at these large companies you're competing with, they're a cruise ship, they may be able to throw a team of 20 people at something, they could put 20 developers on something and launch something into two months if they wanted to. They have bureaucracy to go through, they have departments to go through, they have department heads who all want to weigh in on things. Big companies do not move quickly, even if they have the bodies. And they also only pivot that giant cruise ship for big opportunities, like we compete with Google and Microsoft, and now Amazon, like all of these huge companies. And yes, that's a little bit scary. But also, I know that we have so much less bureaucracy than they do. We also have way lower overhead. So like, you know, I think I think one of those companies, someone told me once, they will only pursue a new opportunity, if it will create at least a billion dollars in business. And wow, your product is awesome, and it's making money. I don't think you're gonna make a billion dollars anytime soon. I'm sorry to break it to you. I don't know if you want it to be the female Elon Musk.
You are nimble. And the other thing that you have, which is often missing in big companies, is that you intimately understand what the user is trying to do, and why they would use you and why they are not satisfied with current options. And not only do you have that personal experience with it, but you're also going out and talking to other people and building your understanding and building understanding of other use cases related to this. And, I mean, that's where our advantage comes from is that we care about use cases that other companies don't care about. Like there are things we purposely don't go after that are compelling that our competitors go after. Yeah, it's it's scary thinking about competitors. And it's scary thinking somebody could copy you in, you know, two months. Like, that's, that's scary. And I mean, we've had people completely copy all of our website, but also they don't have other things going into it. You know, that they can't see that we have, but Yeah, dude, like, I totally understand why you would be scared by that.
Colleen Schnettler 15:25
Yeah, it's definitely like, building in public has been such a benefit to me I mean us in this podcast and being online, that has been nothing but good. But now, you know, it was just an interesting kind of other side of the coin of how well maybe it could be kind of bad. Down the road, I don't know, I guess we'll find out.
Michele Hansen 15:49
I mean, like what we'll find out, I mean, you know, somebody could already be working on something and they happen to find the podcast and but the thing is, like listening to the podcast is not going to give them the technical skills to build this, it's not going to give them the level of empathy and concern that you have for the user that drives how you make pricing decisions and strategic decisions and marketing decisions. Like, you know, I often see things floating around on Twitter of, you know, people offering ideas for projects, or whatever. And, you know, I do this occasionally, myself, because I was very frustrated about faxing the other day. But the thing that you that doesn't come from just having like a list of ideas, what doesn't turn those into good businesses, is all of those things that you have, like that level of concern about a problem, right, because like, if you're not deeply concerned about solving a problem, you're not going to get up and work on it every day. Like, I think that's what led you to work on this for six months was that you were building something for yourself that frustrated you so much, that you're willing to work on it in the dark and launch it even if you were the only person who had ever used it because it bothered you so much. And yes, somebody listening could be like, Oh, well, I could go hire a team of 20 developers and build this in two months, but they are not going to have that level of feeling about the problem. And that level of empathy for the user. And I think that's such a powerful thing that you shouldn't undercount.
Colleen Schnettler 17:29
Yeah, okay, you're right. And they're not going to go after my, you know, $100 a month, or whatever it is. It's low, low hanging fruit for people who have a team. So
Michele Hansen 17:42
you don't have to sit here and tell me I'm right. And act like you're not freaked out by it. Like, it's
Colleen Schnettler 17:46
I am though, like, cuz I've come to so. And it's not really big companies. It's I'm worried, gosh, this sounds so bad. It's not that I'm worried. But it's, it's not big companies, because you're right, like, they're not going to go after my tiny little slice of the market. It's like other other people like me, like other indie hackers who are searching for an idea who are like, oh, I'll just take Kelly's idea. Anyway,
Michele Hansen 18:10
I'm probably those people who have maybe thought about that, I would encourage them to be introspective about their problems as you have about the different processes they go through every day as part of their work. And notice when they are frustrated, and direct their energy towards that, because I think it will be a much more productive endeavor. If you go around just trying to copy people all of the time. That's very, that's very frustrating. And you'll be spinning your wheels, and maybe you find something once in a while that sticks, but start with solving your own problems.
Colleen Schnettler 18:46
I like it. I like it. All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna put that somewhere else in my brain, I'm not going to worry about that, that becomes a problem. I'll handle it when it becomes a problem. So something else I want to talk about was distribution. So you had you had a tweet this morning, maybe about? What did I tweet? It was something you were just explaining how you got customers. And I think you said SEO was was the number one thing. So I'm kind of wondering. I'm getting a lot of customers through Heroku. Like just through their, their marketplace. But I am always I have a lot of people asking me about that. Like, I have a lot of friends in the rails community who have built products. And now they want to know how to sell their products. And they're trying to figure out if they should buy ads, if they should write content. And I'd love to talk a little bit about if you remember like, I mean, I was thinking of you because you guys just launched into the like regular internet. I mean, if I had launched into the regular internet, I would have like zero signups. So do you remember like how that got started? And how people find you now?
Michele Hansen 19:57
Yes. And I will caveat this because the way our launch went, I don't think was very typical. So we launched and we basically just threw it on Hacker News. So when we launched like Product Hunt didn't exist, like, I don't know, if IndieHackers was around, maybe it was I didn't know about it. So we just put it on Hacker News, and then asked a couple of our friends who are located in different places to upload it. And then, to our huge surprise, it, like took off and was on the front page, sometimes in the number one position for a whole day. That was really unusual. Now, there's a combination of luck there. There's also that we clearly launched something that people really needed. And so you know, how much of that was luck? And how much was that? You know, launching a product with genuine demand. But that traffic fell off, like right away. Like, actually, people want to see the graphs on this. Mathias and I gave a talk at Laracon like three or four years ago, we talked about launching it as a side project. And you can see the Google Analytics chart like this massive spike on the first day, and then it just like drops off. And whenever I look at our Google Analytics, I have to filter out our launch because it distorts everything so much, we had so much traffic, and then it was all gone, like a week later. Okay, so. So I'll sort of start with that. But really how we get customers. And this is basically been this way from beginning like, like our first month, for example, you said that you have hit what you define as success. So I remember when we launched, I defined different levels of success. And a, like a baseline success was we launched it, we can use it, we can keep our projects going that we needed this for a like, I don't know, I don't remember what I called it, but like a sort of a next level of success was that we launch it and some people pay us for it. And it covers the server costs so that we don't have to pay to maintain the servers, which were to DigitalOcean servers. So that definition of the second level of success was $20 a month. And a wild success was that it more than pays for its servers, not like to go full time The next day, or like anything like that it was it pays for it servers. And so we made like $31 our first month with $20 in expenses. And so we were over the moon because we never expected to be that successful. But our revenue was I mean, pretty, pretty low, like like under $1,000 for a long time.
Colleen Schnettler 22:51
I remember how long, I'm just trying to get like realistic benchmarks. I mean, one month, three months, so I think it was like,
Michele Hansen 23:00
four or five months later, quite a while, okay, broke 1000. But then it took a really long time to like, you know, break 5000 right, like, and it would like have months where it was kind of felt like it was stagnating. So, but how we have grown basically since then is you know, the, the just the rod distribution and acquisition angle has been has been SEO like, we also did a lot of things like you know, we'd post on StackOverflow, or Quora, or other places where people were asking about geocoding, we don't really do that as much anymore. But it basically just comes down to, you know, having landing pages that speak to the problem and then tweaking the words we're using on those landing pages and improving them to match what people are typing in, paired with a freemium model. And I think that's a really important piece for us, because people can try it for free. So there's less legwork that we have to do to convince them to sign up.
Colleen Schnettler 24:01
So I have been working in my marketing power hours this week, every every day, I've been working on my landing page, I tried to improve the copy. And you just said, tweaking our landing pages based on what customers put in or something. So how do you two questions? What do you mean? And how do you know that your landing page is actually resonating?
Michele Hansen 24:26
So one of the tools I use for that I use Ahrefs a lot these days, but for a long time, what I use was Google Search Console, which is totally free and you can set up on your site, and it tells you the keywords that are leading people to you. And so if I would find that the words people were using were not the words we were using. So for example, like we use the term reverse geocoding a lot which is turning coordinates to addresses and like what I found from Using Google Search Console, for example, was that people were typing in GPS coordinates to address. Like, I would never describe it as GPS coordinates, or address to GPS coordinates, like I would not use that term on my own. And so that's, that's an example of something that we would have how we would change it.
Colleen Schnettler 25:22
Got another question there?
Michele Hansen 25:23
Did I answer that other question?
Colleen Schnettler 25:25
How do you know it's working? I mean, do you do so I'm Oh, I don't so.
Michele Hansen 25:28
So this is this is the thing, like, I mean, I check in on these things like, maybe once a month or so like there are people who are much more attuned to their metrics than I am. Like, I fundamentally know whether it's working like are there more people reaching out to me about these specific things. So for example, last year, we had someone, someone in one of my feedback, emails mentioned that they were using as not forgetting coordinates, but to find the county for an address. And I was like, Oh, that's really interesting, because this is a feature that we support. But we've never really talked about it very much like we were turned that with all of our results, but we don't, we don't really talk about it too much. And so then I made a landing page, that was a step by step guide to how to add the county to addresses. And then I noticed the next month when I had people reaching out to me for feedback of new customers, like a whole bunch of them, were saying, Oh, I needed to add the county to addresses and I was like, okay, that page worked.
Colleen Schnettler 26:30
Got it?
Michele Hansen 26:31
Yeah, I tend to not look at the numbers too closely. Like, I know that we're doing the right things, if our revenue is stable, or increasing, if we're, you know, still getting new customers, but like, I'll look at stuff on on h refs, but I, I am not the person who sort of, you know, spends a lot of time looking at those numbers and trying to get them to move.
Colleen Schnettler 27:02
Okay, because I so I'm trying to rewrite the my landing page, kind of in a different tone, more value proposition focused. And I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole by accident where like, these ABX testing websites, they're like, Oh, you could do this landing page and this landing page. I was like, Whoa, should I be doing that? Is that should i and i think not where I am. I'm so early. And I'm just getting going. I think I don't I don't want to I was just wondering if if you were doing anything like that.
Michele Hansen 27:30
I think for testing a value proposition, I don't think I would be doing a B testing like that, because AV testing is really great for when you're only testing one thing, so that you can determine which is right like so it's really great for for submit buttons if you have an order form and you want to change that button to submit versus purchase versus I'm in versus You know what, like, whatever you want to test a different version there and see if it has a higher conversion rate, or you want to specifically test the headline, or you specifically want to test only the subhead copy, or you specifically only want to test like several like paragraphs of copy. Like I think that's really good in those scenarios. But if you're trying to test an entirely different approach, and like a different layout, and like there's like there's so many variables going on that you can't, like, if it worked? How would you know which variable was it
Colleen Schnettler 28:28
was? Yeah, if you change the whole diet, it doesn't do you any good? I get it.
Michele Hansen 28:32
I think for for testing a value proposition I would more so just put that in front of someone and have two options like have two options completely mocked up and say, okay, narrate, look at this page, tell me what you think you can do here, narrate your thoughts out loud, as you're going through it? What questions do you have? What does this have? You know, does this sound like something that would work for you? And then do the exact same with the same person? Do the other landing page with them? And then ask them? So which one of these Do you like more? Why? Like,
Colleen Schnettler 29:03
what?
Michele Hansen 29:05
With you? What other information? might you be looking to find that you can't find here? If you had a magic wand, and you could change anything about this page? What would you change? Like? Questions like that? Okay. Yeah. Because what you're really trying to figure out is, why does someone want this? And how can I take why they would want it into language that would communicate to them why they want it, if that made any sense? Yeah, and I don't think AV testing will tell you that but I think talking to people well.
Colleen Schnettler 29:35
Yeah, cuz, so this last week on my regular page, so not my Heroku page, so my regular page is a lot harder to find because it doesn't pop up in the Google search results. I had 95 visitors and three people signed up. But all of those people bounced when they saw they had to enter a credit card. So I had zero signups this week, from that page, so I'm just wondering If 95 people visit it, only three are interested enough to try it. I feel like maybe I'm not communicating well enough.
Michele Hansen 30:09
Yeah, I mean, that could be possible, it could be possible that for people specifically working with Heroku, like they experienced this problem more acutely than these are that's true, they definitely come across the landing page. And so there is a danger to focusing on Heroku. And this is something we've talked about. And yeah. You know, one of my, something I find myself saying is, don't build your house on someone else's lawn? I don't know if I've ever said that to you before.
Colleen Schnettler 30:39
No, but I like it,
Michele Hansen 30:40
it causes a lot of problems for people when you're overly reliant on one marketplace, or one channel or one vendor. And like, this is really common with people who build their product off of somebody else's platform. And then Yep, they make an API change, and boom, like, bam, you're out of business, or your business is significantly curtailed. So that's a long term problem, though. Yeah, you don't need to think about long term problems right now. Like, okay, I think when you're at, you know, 1015 $20,000 a month in revenue from Heroku. And you still have zero from other sources. That's when we might be like, okay, like, let's really think about diversifying into other markets or other marketplaces or, yeah, but I think as long as you have a website that is professional, that speaks to the same problems as the Heroku page, like even sends people to their Heroku page, like, don't necessarily need to focus too much on that right now. Because you do have a choice. Okay, it's working. And it's okay, it's okay to you know, build your tent on someone else's lawn, not the house.
Colleen Schnettler 31:57
Got it? I like it. Okay, I like this. This is this is great advice. For where I am now. Like, I'll focus on on the Heroku traction channel, because that's the one I'm using. And yeah, when I get to $20,000 a month. Okay,
Michele Hansen 32:11
I gotta be there. We're talking about where you're gonna be a year from now. Like, you may not be there a year from now, but you you might be like, get
Colleen Schnettler 32:17
there. It does seem it seems
Michele Hansen 32:23
like if you had told me that I would be working on this business full time, in a matter of three and a half years from when we launched it. I would have thought that was utterly absurd. Like, wrong. Amazing. Like,
Colleen Schnettler 32:36
I love it. Yeah.
Michele Hansen 32:39
I think you can do it, though. But yes. What's the I think that is a future calling problem? And let's
Colleen Schnettler 32:45
Yeah, okay. Got it. That's what I need to problems right now. Okay. And, okay. So I think for this week, for my marketing stuff, I think emailing people personally has really been good. Because I've gotten I got another guy on the phone. another segment. I did. It was a another 10 minute conversation. But it was good, though. Like it was, I feel like I know, on the free, the free tier at least, like I kind of know how people are finding me, and I know how they're using me. And this was exciting, because he's using node. So the two people I have talked to are not neither of them are using a language that I have specific documentation for. But both of them sorted it out. Yeah. And he was like, it was super easy. And I was like, sweet. So that's really good. So yeah, so I'm gonna keep keep pounding the pavement on trying to get people to talk to me. I think that's, that's where I am.
Michele Hansen 33:34
Yeah. And, and one more, I feel like I keep like trickling out these pieces of advice to you about interviews. And I promise at some point, I will tell you everything, and I'm not doing it intentionally. When you talk to someone on the phone, especially in these early days, it is so powerful if you can send them a handwritten thank you note. Now, you may not have time for this, you may not have good handwriting, like you, you know,
Colleen Schnettler 34:02
I do a reading.
Michele Hansen 34:04
people listening may not you know, I don't want to make them feel bad. We receive such little mail lately that is meaningful, right? Like it's bills or it's junk mail or catalogs, like getting something in the mail that somebody else like personally, hand wrote to you, thanking you for doing something is so powerful, and I think it'll be really powerful for you at this stage. We started doing that when we like finally had stickers made and I would include stickers in it and like people would excitedly like, send us pictures of, you know, our sticker on their laptop, which is just the coolest thing. That's so cool. But I think it's really, really powerful. If you can just send someone I think you know,
Colleen Schnettler 34:49
okay,
Michele Hansen 34:50
cool. At the very least, and email is good.
Colleen Schnettler 34:54
Yeah, that's a that's a great idea. And it's such an obvious thing. It didn't I'm kind of surprised. It didn't occur to me until You just told me so I'm going to do that immediately. That's a great idea.
Michele Hansen 35:03
Yeah. And then if you later like make any changes based on what they said, whether that was, hey, like, thanks for talking to me six months ago, I just wanted to know that I added documentation for installing this and node and I really appreciate you taking the time to share that suggestion with me. Like, people really appreciate that.
Colleen Schnettler 35:24
So that's gonna wrap us up for this week's episode of the software social podcast. We love to hear from you. You can reach us on Twitter at software slash pod. And if you enjoyed this something that would help us a lot would be leaving us a review on iTunes.
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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'm trying to do, what I'm focusing on, or what I'm just trying to do mentally is not attach my personal happiness to whether people sign up or not. Oh, god,
Michele Hansen 6:53
oh, that's such a, that's such a hard one. And like not attaching your I don't know, self-worth
Colleen Schnettler
Self worth
Michele Hansen
to like somebody cancelled and you're like, just stab me through the heart. Like, you know, like, it's that that is a normal feeling to feel like take it personally, when people aren't signing up, or they're canceling like, it is. I think it's okay to like, make space for yourself to like, take that personally. But like, put that feeling in a box, keep it somewhere safe, put it off to the side, and then say, Okay, what am I doing that like I could have more people signing up? or Why are these people canceling? Let me attack this objectively, but making space for those feelings of like rejection and hurt that come with that. That's, that's totally fair.
Colleen Schnettler 7:44
Yeah, I mean, I found myself the other day, I was just kind of in a blah mood. So I was like, Oh, well check my signups and someone had signed up. So I got this dopamine boost. I was like sweet, it was great. But just as easily someone could have churned or I could have had no signups. And what I have internalized that and like exactly the opposite way, so I'm trying not to obsessively check my signups. I'm trying not to do the funny thing though, right? Like, Oh, my gosh, Michelle, take from it. To your point. Like, I can't, I mean, there's so much work to do. But Holy crap, look where I am, people are paying me money for this thing. Like, I have a real product, that people are paying me real money. It's very exciting.
Michele Hansen 8:27
It's amazing. I mean, like, so you should you allow yourself to enjoy those dopamine hits, too, right? Like you have earned that, you have worked for it. But I think the you know, yeah, the hard thing is, is the reverse of the dopamine hit whatever that is called. And, and not letting that get you to down and, and taking everything, both when good things happen. And when bad things happen. Both of those are learning opportunities. And to your point that, you know, raising a business has challenges on the level of parenting.
Colleen Schnettler 9:07
You said raising a business, did you realize that? It's amazing.
Michele Hansen 9:13
If I ever write a book about business,
Colleen Schnettler 9:14
that's going to be called raising a business.
Michele Hansen 9:16
Yeah. You that, like that's one of the hard things is to say, Okay, how do I learn from this? And you know, so one of the things to say about parenting is like the things that are hard now, like you will figure them out, but then you will have new hard things to figure out.
Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.
Michele Hansen
And someone said that much better than me, and I just completely butchered it. But I think you know what I mean? Like, you know, getting your child to sleep is a problem that you eventually solve and then is replaced by another problem, right?
Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.
Michele Hansen
And, and I think that's very true. But if you are able to respond to those challenges as opportunities for growth that will serve you well.
So you have this revenue. And this is also recurring revenue too, right? Like, this is the amazing thing about SaaS. Right?
Colleen Schnettler
Yeah.
Michele Hansen
And once but it will theoretically recur in the future.
Colleen Schnettler 10:15
Yes. As long as you know, again, we'll have to see if people stick around. It's only been a week, so they could be trying it out. But yeah, this is recurring revenue. So I feel like I've achieved a really exciting for me level of success in these, like, 10 days since it's been live. And something interesting happened. I'm a casual internet acquaintance, which is pretty much all my friends these days. I mean, like, if we have one Talk, I'm like, true friends.
Michele Hansen 10:46
It's COVID. It's true. Like we have a conversation on Twitter and
Colleen Schnettler 10:49
Twitter,
Michele Hansen 10:50
like mutual follow up to that. And I'm like, Oh, my God, we're best friends.
Colleen Schnettler 10:52
So a casual Twitter acquaintance, sent me a DM with some interesting information. And he said, he said something that that I am actually a little not uncomfortable to share. But whatever. He said, Colleen, you know, congratulations, like you've had so much. It seems like you're having so much success. In the last episode of the podcast, Michele said, quote, obviously, you found a hole in the market, and quote, and he told me a story about how years ago, he had a podcast, and about his business, and someone copied his business, like, word for word. And he was just kindly trying to like, give me a heads up that, you know, you're not that far ahead. You don't really have an established business yet. If someone wanted to fill this hole, especially someone with a team, they could catch up to you in like two months. And it reached me out.
Michele Hansen 11:52
That sounds like that really scared you.
Colleen Schnettler 11:55
Well, I mean, it's going so well, I almost don't want to tell people, it's going well, because any of these not that any of these big companies know anything about me. But you know, anybody could just build one of these things and be a direct competitor. And they know what I mean, because of the podcast, like there's this huge benefit of building and public. But because of the podcast, they literally know exactly what my service does and what it doesn't do. And so yeah.
Michele Hansen 12:24
So I think you're justified in being freaked out by that. And I think the person who brought this to you It sounds like they're being very well intentioned, and trying to be helpful to you, but this has understandably freaked you out.
Colleen Schnettler 12:37
Yes.
Michele Hansen 12:38
And I would like to remind you that you have something that those big companies do not have. The thing about big companies is that they are extremely difficult to turn, you are a the equivalent of a little Sunfish, you know, those little tiny sailboats that have like one person on them, at these large companies you're competing with, they're a cruise ship, they may be able to throw a team of 20 people at something, they could put 20 developers on something and launch something into two months if they wanted to. They have bureaucracy to go through, they have departments to go through, they have department heads who all want to weigh in on things. Big companies do not move quickly, even if they have the bodies. And they also only pivot that giant cruise ship for big opportunities, like we compete with Google and Microsoft, and now Amazon, like all of these huge companies. And yes, that's a little bit scary. But also, I know that we have so much less bureaucracy than they do. We also have way lower overhead. So like, you know, I think I think one of those companies, someone told me once, they will only pursue a new opportunity, if it will create at least a billion dollars in business. And wow, your product is awesome, and it's making money. I don't think you're gonna make a billion dollars anytime soon. I'm sorry to break it to you. I don't know if you want it to be the female Elon Musk.
You are nimble. And the other thing that you have, which is often missing in big companies, is that you intimately understand what the user is trying to do, and why they would use you and why they are not satisfied with current options. And not only do you have that personal experience with it, but you're also going out and talking to other people and building your understanding and building understanding of other use cases related to this. And, I mean, that's where our advantage comes from is that we care about use cases that other companies don't care about. Like there are things we purposely don't go after that are compelling that our competitors go after. Yeah, it's it's scary thinking about competitors. And it's scary thinking somebody could copy you in, you know, two months. Like, that's, that's scary. And I mean, we've had people completely copy all of our website, but also they don't have other things going into it. You know, that they can't see that we have, but Yeah, dude, like, I totally understand why you would be scared by that.
Colleen Schnettler 15:25
Yeah, it's definitely like, building in public has been such a benefit to me I mean us in this podcast and being online, that has been nothing but good. But now, you know, it was just an interesting kind of other side of the coin of how well maybe it could be kind of bad. Down the road, I don't know, I guess we'll find out.
Michele Hansen 15:49
I mean, like what we'll find out, I mean, you know, somebody could already be working on something and they happen to find the podcast and but the thing is, like listening to the podcast is not going to give them the technical skills to build this, it's not going to give them the level of empathy and concern that you have for the user that drives how you make pricing decisions and strategic decisions and marketing decisions. Like, you know, I often see things floating around on Twitter of, you know, people offering ideas for projects, or whatever. And, you know, I do this occasionally, myself, because I was very frustrated about faxing the other day. But the thing that you that doesn't come from just having like a list of ideas, what doesn't turn those into good businesses, is all of those things that you have, like that level of concern about a problem, right, because like, if you're not deeply concerned about solving a problem, you're not going to get up and work on it every day. Like, I think that's what led you to work on this for six months was that you were building something for yourself that frustrated you so much, that you're willing to work on it in the dark and launch it even if you were the only person who had ever used it because it bothered you so much. And yes, somebody listening could be like, Oh, well, I could go hire a team of 20 developers and build this in two months, but they are not going to have that level of feeling about the problem. And that level of empathy for the user. And I think that's such a powerful thing that you shouldn't undercount.
Colleen Schnettler 17:29
Yeah, okay, you're right. And they're not going to go after my, you know, $100 a month, or whatever it is. It's low, low hanging fruit for people who have a team. So
Michele Hansen 17:42
you don't have to sit here and tell me I'm right. And act like you're not freaked out by it. Like, it's
Colleen Schnettler 17:46
I am though, like, cuz I've come to so. And it's not really big companies. It's I'm worried, gosh, this sounds so bad. It's not that I'm worried. But it's, it's not big companies, because you're right, like, they're not going to go after my tiny little slice of the market. It's like other other people like me, like other indie hackers who are searching for an idea who are like, oh, I'll just take Kelly's idea. Anyway,
Michele Hansen 18:10
I'm probably those people who have maybe thought about that, I would encourage them to be introspective about their problems as you have about the different processes they go through every day as part of their work. And notice when they are frustrated, and direct their energy towards that, because I think it will be a much more productive endeavor. If you go around just trying to copy people all of the time. That's very, that's very frustrating. And you'll be spinning your wheels, and maybe you find something once in a while that sticks, but start with solving your own problems.
Colleen Schnettler 18:46
I like it. I like it. All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna put that somewhere else in my brain, I'm not going to worry about that, that becomes a problem. I'll handle it when it becomes a problem. So something else I want to talk about was distribution. So you had you had a tweet this morning, maybe about? What did I tweet? It was something you were just explaining how you got customers. And I think you said SEO was was the number one thing. So I'm kind of wondering. I'm getting a lot of customers through Heroku. Like just through their, their marketplace. But I am always I have a lot of people asking me about that. Like, I have a lot of friends in the rails community who have built products. And now they want to know how to sell their products. And they're trying to figure out if they should buy ads, if they should write content. And I'd love to talk a little bit about if you remember like, I mean, I was thinking of you because you guys just launched into the like regular internet. I mean, if I had launched into the regular internet, I would have like zero signups. So do you remember like how that got started? And how people find you now?
Michele Hansen 19:57
Yes. And I will caveat this because the way our launch went, I don't think was very typical. So we launched and we basically just threw it on Hacker News. So when we launched like Product Hunt didn't exist, like, I don't know, if IndieHackers was around, maybe it was I didn't know about it. So we just put it on Hacker News, and then asked a couple of our friends who are located in different places to upload it. And then, to our huge surprise, it, like took off and was on the front page, sometimes in the number one position for a whole day. That was really unusual. Now, there's a combination of luck there. There's also that we clearly launched something that people really needed. And so you know, how much of that was luck? And how much was that? You know, launching a product with genuine demand. But that traffic fell off, like right away. Like, actually, people want to see the graphs on this. Mathias and I gave a talk at Laracon like three or four years ago, we talked about launching it as a side project. And you can see the Google Analytics chart like this massive spike on the first day, and then it just like drops off. And whenever I look at our Google Analytics, I have to filter out our launch because it distorts everything so much, we had so much traffic, and then it was all gone, like a week later. Okay, so. So I'll sort of start with that. But really how we get customers. And this is basically been this way from beginning like, like our first month, for example, you said that you have hit what you define as success. So I remember when we launched, I defined different levels of success. And a, like a baseline success was we launched it, we can use it, we can keep our projects going that we needed this for a like, I don't know, I don't remember what I called it, but like a sort of a next level of success was that we launch it and some people pay us for it. And it covers the server costs so that we don't have to pay to maintain the servers, which were to DigitalOcean servers. So that definition of the second level of success was $20 a month. And a wild success was that it more than pays for its servers, not like to go full time The next day, or like anything like that it was it pays for it servers. And so we made like $31 our first month with $20 in expenses. And so we were over the moon because we never expected to be that successful. But our revenue was I mean, pretty, pretty low, like like under $1,000 for a long time.
Colleen Schnettler 22:51
I remember how long, I'm just trying to get like realistic benchmarks. I mean, one month, three months, so I think it was like,
Michele Hansen 23:00
four or five months later, quite a while, okay, broke 1000. But then it took a really long time to like, you know, break 5000 right, like, and it would like have months where it was kind of felt like it was stagnating. So, but how we have grown basically since then is you know, the, the just the rod distribution and acquisition angle has been has been SEO like, we also did a lot of things like you know, we'd post on StackOverflow, or Quora, or other places where people were asking about geocoding, we don't really do that as much anymore. But it basically just comes down to, you know, having landing pages that speak to the problem and then tweaking the words we're using on those landing pages and improving them to match what people are typing in, paired with a freemium model. And I think that's a really important piece for us, because people can try it for free. So there's less legwork that we have to do to convince them to sign up.
Colleen Schnettler 24:01
So I have been working in my marketing power hours this week, every every day, I've been working on my landing page, I tried to improve the copy. And you just said, tweaking our landing pages based on what customers put in or something. So how do you two questions? What do you mean? And how do you know that your landing page is actually resonating?
Michele Hansen 24:26
So one of the tools I use for that I use Ahrefs a lot these days, but for a long time, what I use was Google Search Console, which is totally free and you can set up on your site, and it tells you the keywords that are leading people to you. And so if I would find that the words people were using were not the words we were using. So for example, like we use the term reverse geocoding a lot which is turning coordinates to addresses and like what I found from Using Google Search Console, for example, was that people were typing in GPS coordinates to address. Like, I would never describe it as GPS coordinates, or address to GPS coordinates, like I would not use that term on my own. And so that's, that's an example of something that we would have how we would change it.
Colleen Schnettler 25:22
Got another question there?
Michele Hansen 25:23
Did I answer that other question?
Colleen Schnettler 25:25
How do you know it's working? I mean, do you do so I'm Oh, I don't so.
Michele Hansen 25:28
So this is this is the thing, like, I mean, I check in on these things like, maybe once a month or so like there are people who are much more attuned to their metrics than I am. Like, I fundamentally know whether it's working like are there more people reaching out to me about these specific things. So for example, last year, we had someone, someone in one of my feedback, emails mentioned that they were using as not forgetting coordinates, but to find the county for an address. And I was like, Oh, that's really interesting, because this is a feature that we support. But we've never really talked about it very much like we were turned that with all of our results, but we don't, we don't really talk about it too much. And so then I made a landing page, that was a step by step guide to how to add the county to addresses. And then I noticed the next month when I had people reaching out to me for feedback of new customers, like a whole bunch of them, were saying, Oh, I needed to add the county to addresses and I was like, okay, that page worked.
Colleen Schnettler 26:30
Got it?
Michele Hansen 26:31
Yeah, I tend to not look at the numbers too closely. Like, I know that we're doing the right things, if our revenue is stable, or increasing, if we're, you know, still getting new customers, but like, I'll look at stuff on on h refs, but I, I am not the person who sort of, you know, spends a lot of time looking at those numbers and trying to get them to move.
Colleen Schnettler 27:02
Okay, because I so I'm trying to rewrite the my landing page, kind of in a different tone, more value proposition focused. And I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole by accident where like, these ABX testing websites, they're like, Oh, you could do this landing page and this landing page. I was like, Whoa, should I be doing that? Is that should i and i think not where I am. I'm so early. And I'm just getting going. I think I don't I don't want to I was just wondering if if you were doing anything like that.
Michele Hansen 27:30
I think for testing a value proposition, I don't think I would be doing a B testing like that, because AV testing is really great for when you're only testing one thing, so that you can determine which is right like so it's really great for for submit buttons if you have an order form and you want to change that button to submit versus purchase versus I'm in versus You know what, like, whatever you want to test a different version there and see if it has a higher conversion rate, or you want to specifically test the headline, or you specifically want to test only the subhead copy, or you specifically only want to test like several like paragraphs of copy. Like I think that's really good in those scenarios. But if you're trying to test an entirely different approach, and like a different layout, and like there's like there's so many variables going on that you can't, like, if it worked? How would you know which variable was it
Colleen Schnettler 28:28
was? Yeah, if you change the whole diet, it doesn't do you any good? I get it.
Michele Hansen 28:32
I think for for testing a value proposition I would more so just put that in front of someone and have two options like have two options completely mocked up and say, okay, narrate, look at this page, tell me what you think you can do here, narrate your thoughts out loud, as you're going through it? What questions do you have? What does this have? You know, does this sound like something that would work for you? And then do the exact same with the same person? Do the other landing page with them? And then ask them? So which one of these Do you like more? Why? Like,
Colleen Schnettler 29:03
what?
Michele Hansen 29:05
With you? What other information? might you be looking to find that you can't find here? If you had a magic wand, and you could change anything about this page? What would you change? Like? Questions like that? Okay. Yeah. Because what you're really trying to figure out is, why does someone want this? And how can I take why they would want it into language that would communicate to them why they want it, if that made any sense? Yeah, and I don't think AV testing will tell you that but I think talking to people well.
Colleen Schnettler 29:35
Yeah, cuz, so this last week on my regular page, so not my Heroku page, so my regular page is a lot harder to find because it doesn't pop up in the Google search results. I had 95 visitors and three people signed up. But all of those people bounced when they saw they had to enter a credit card. So I had zero signups this week, from that page, so I'm just wondering If 95 people visit it, only three are interested enough to try it. I feel like maybe I'm not communicating well enough.
Michele Hansen 30:09
Yeah, I mean, that could be possible, it could be possible that for people specifically working with Heroku, like they experienced this problem more acutely than these are that's true, they definitely come across the landing page. And so there is a danger to focusing on Heroku. And this is something we've talked about. And yeah. You know, one of my, something I find myself saying is, don't build your house on someone else's lawn? I don't know if I've ever said that to you before.
Colleen Schnettler 30:39
No, but I like it,
Michele Hansen 30:40
it causes a lot of problems for people when you're overly reliant on one marketplace, or one channel or one vendor. And like, this is really common with people who build their product off of somebody else's platform. And then Yep, they make an API change, and boom, like, bam, you're out of business, or your business is significantly curtailed. So that's a long term problem, though. Yeah, you don't need to think about long term problems right now. Like, okay, I think when you're at, you know, 1015 $20,000 a month in revenue from Heroku. And you still have zero from other sources. That's when we might be like, okay, like, let's really think about diversifying into other markets or other marketplaces or, yeah, but I think as long as you have a website that is professional, that speaks to the same problems as the Heroku page, like even sends people to their Heroku page, like, don't necessarily need to focus too much on that right now. Because you do have a choice. Okay, it's working. And it's okay, it's okay to you know, build your tent on someone else's lawn, not the house.
Colleen Schnettler 31:57
Got it? I like it. Okay, I like this. This is this is great advice. For where I am now. Like, I'll focus on on the Heroku traction channel, because that's the one I'm using. And yeah, when I get to $20,000 a month. Okay,
Michele Hansen 32:11
I gotta be there. We're talking about where you're gonna be a year from now. Like, you may not be there a year from now, but you you might be like, get
Colleen Schnettler 32:17
there. It does seem it seems
Michele Hansen 32:23
like if you had told me that I would be working on this business full time, in a matter of three and a half years from when we launched it. I would have thought that was utterly absurd. Like, wrong. Amazing. Like,
Colleen Schnettler 32:36
I love it. Yeah.
Michele Hansen 32:39
I think you can do it, though. But yes. What's the I think that is a future calling problem? And let's
Colleen Schnettler 32:45
Yeah, okay. Got it. That's what I need to problems right now. Okay. And, okay. So I think for this week, for my marketing stuff, I think emailing people personally has really been good. Because I've gotten I got another guy on the phone. another segment. I did. It was a another 10 minute conversation. But it was good, though. Like it was, I feel like I know, on the free, the free tier at least, like I kind of know how people are finding me, and I know how they're using me. And this was exciting, because he's using node. So the two people I have talked to are not neither of them are using a language that I have specific documentation for. But both of them sorted it out. Yeah. And he was like, it was super easy. And I was like, sweet. So that's really good. So yeah, so I'm gonna keep keep pounding the pavement on trying to get people to talk to me. I think that's, that's where I am.
Michele Hansen 33:34
Yeah. And, and one more, I feel like I keep like trickling out these pieces of advice to you about interviews. And I promise at some point, I will tell you everything, and I'm not doing it intentionally. When you talk to someone on the phone, especially in these early days, it is so powerful if you can send them a handwritten thank you note. Now, you may not have time for this, you may not have good handwriting, like you, you know,
Colleen Schnettler 34:02
I do a reading.
Michele Hansen 34:04
people listening may not you know, I don't want to make them feel bad. We receive such little mail lately that is meaningful, right? Like it's bills or it's junk mail or catalogs, like getting something in the mail that somebody else like personally, hand wrote to you, thanking you for doing something is so powerful, and I think it'll be really powerful for you at this stage. We started doing that when we like finally had stickers made and I would include stickers in it and like people would excitedly like, send us pictures of, you know, our sticker on their laptop, which is just the coolest thing. That's so cool. But I think it's really, really powerful. If you can just send someone I think you know,
Colleen Schnettler 34:49
okay,
Michele Hansen 34:50
cool. At the very least, and email is good.
Colleen Schnettler 34:54
Yeah, that's a that's a great idea. And it's such an obvious thing. It didn't I'm kind of surprised. It didn't occur to me until You just told me so I'm going to do that immediately. That's a great idea.
Michele Hansen 35:03
Yeah. And then if you later like make any changes based on what they said, whether that was, hey, like, thanks for talking to me six months ago, I just wanted to know that I added documentation for installing this and node and I really appreciate you taking the time to share that suggestion with me. Like, people really appreciate that.
Colleen Schnettler 35:24
So that's gonna wrap us up for this week's episode of the software social podcast. We love to hear from you. You can reach us on Twitter at software slash pod. And if you enjoyed this something that would help us a lot would be leaving us a review on iTunes.
