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Good morning, Michele.

 

Hey, how are you?

 

Good. How are things in Denmark today?

 

Well, this week was kind of a challenge, um, because on, I had a super productive writing day on Monday. So I read Kathy Sierra's Badass over the weekend.

 

Oh yeah, I've heard of that book.

 

I don't know, have you read that? 

 

I have not.

 

Okay, you've read that. Oh, you have not read that. 

 

I've not read that. 

 

It's really good. So in so many ways, it's, I think of it as, like, jobs to be done for people who don't know what Jobs To Be Done is and have never heard of that. Like, it's basically like figuring out like, you're not just building a thing for the sake of it. You're building it because somebody wants to do something, and they don't buy it for the sake of it. Like, they want to do something better. And so it's, it's kind of aligned with StoryBrand in that regard. It's like, you know, your user is the hero, not the product. But it's a little bit more, um, it's, I think it's just a different perspective than StoreBrand. It's very, very practical. And it, the whole thing is kind of written like a PowerPoint. There's like, lots of like pictures and comics. Actually my seven year old, like, while I was reading it, she came over and she was like, oh, what are you reading? Like, pictures. So, you know, she wants to learn how to make a product. I'll leave that one laying around. Um, it's really good. Um, but, so I was reading it because some people had mentioned it in the interviews I did as a book that they liked. 

 

Okay, great. 

 

And yeah, and, and so I read it just sort of as like, reference material. Um, but actually, it ended up like, helping me kind of have a breakthrough with the book on Monday. Um, and so I spent like, the whole day. Uh, yeah, no, all day Tuesday, actually. I spent the whole day Tuesday writing. I didn't get any writing time on Monday, really. And then Tuesday, at like, four o'clock, I was, um, like, signing on to a Zoom, and then my computer crashed. 

 

Oh, no.

 

Like, died, and crashed and like, gone to join the choir invisible like, is now an ex-laptop, like, just totally got like, it was just restarting itself for like, three days. And, 

 

Oh.

 

So, it is now embarking on a lovely journey to the Czech Republic to be repaired, um, and I did not get a lot done the rest of the week, because it was like, trying to figure stuff out with using the, like, the iPad. Like, it was just, yeah. So, you know, but that's real life, right?

 

Yes, that is real life. So true.

 

Oh, so how's it, how's it going for you?

 

So I got a lot of time, I blocked out a lot of time this week to work on Simple File Upload, and it gave me great joy. Like, I have to say, you know, it's funny because people are always talking about self-care, and in the mom space, like you always see things like go get a pedicure, and I'm like, my self care is like, six hours alone with my laptop with no one to bother me. Is that weird? 

 

Heck yes.

 

Like, I love that. So like, on Monday, such a weirdo. 

 

It's so true. Like, it's so true. Like, so much of self-care is like, people just wanting to sell you stuff, and like, reality is it's sometimes it's just leave me alone.

 

Right? Just leave me alone. So it was, I really had a great week. I got to spend a good chunk of time implementing this feature request, which was something that I thought would be easy, and ended up taking way longer than I thought. So basically, my uploader uses the default styling that comes with drop zone, DropzoneJS, and so I got a request to allow it to be smaller, like 50 pixels by 50 pixels, which I thought would be no big deal. But it turns out once I started digging into the source, the styles are all pinned to 120 pixels by 120 pixels. So it was like, a huge thing to change this because I basically had to rip out all of the static, you know, statically defined CSS and put in, um, flexible CSS, and it was fun. I mean, it was, it was so cool because it was something I enjoy doing, um, something I don't do a lot. I think one of the huge benefits to building your own product is you get exposed to things you wouldn't do in your day job. Like, every job I've had, I have a front end guy, and I have a CSS guy, and I don't really do that very much. Um, it's not a core skill set of mind. So it was kind of fun to get to dive into it and like, learn some new stuff and, and uh, and to ship it. So that made me happy. That brought me great joy.

 

It sounds like it did, despite the, the frustration. I'm curious, why did the person need it to be 50 by 50? 

 

Avatars. So, so many people are using it as avatars, and using it for avatars, and it's pinned to 140 by one, or 120 by 120, which is big. I mean, you look at it, and you're like uh, it's kind of big for a, um, um, a form factor. So, yeah, that's what that was for

 

So are we talking about when someone uploads a file, it's turned into that size, or the actual size of the upload, or when they put it on their site?

 

The actual size of the uploader to fit into, so he actually sent me his form, like, sent me a video of his form, which is really cool. So I could see exactly what he was doing. But his product, um, uses like, avatars, and so he has a small little square where he wants, he wants to enable his users to drop in an avatar, and his form was designed in such a way that that had to be a small square, and the styles I had at the time, like, couldn't support that.

 

Oh, so he wanted the uploader to be the actual size of the sort of finished image that would go up.

 

Yeah, a little bit more like that. Okay. Yeah, so it would, it would be more seamless. 

 

Right, so it implies to his user that the image going there should be 50 by 50, because if he had a huge box, they might think that they could upload a huge image. 

 

Yeah. So that was fun. 

 

Gotcha. 

 

I enjoyed that. I also, like, came to this epiphany, as I've been talking to people, and when I say it, everyone is gonna be like, that's so obvious. But it just occurred to me yesterday, actually, and I've been a little bit frustrated when I've been talking to people because the things people are looking for, and one are all over the map. I mean, it's, it's completely inconsistent.I haven't been able to find a lot of consistency. But what I realized is, front end developers want all of the direct uploading, and the AWS integration, and all of the magic on the back end. Backend developers do AWS all the time, so they don't really care, but they hate doing design. I don't wanna say hate, that's a strong word, but they don't really like design. So they want the pixel-perfect UI on the front end, which makes sense now why front end developers are asking me like, oh, are you gonna make a headless component? And, you know, am I gonna get my images sized perfectly? And then the backend developers are asking me for theming and things like that. So it's two different, like, it makes sense, but like, for some reason this just clicked. So I kind of need to decide, I think, like, which direction I want to go, because it seems like, like I said, the feature set is not the same, and I'm, there's only one of me, so I can't, I, yeah, of course, I'd like to build out all of these things, but I can't do that right now. Um, so I kind of need to decide which direction I want to go as I continue to build out this feature set.

 

Yeah, so I'm, I'm curious. It, it sounds like you've heard a lot of different things, uh, from people, which by the way, is like, is totally normal, especially at this point where your reach is, is pretty broad, and you don't you don't have a defined focus. It's, it's normal that you would hear a lot of different things. It doesn't mean you're doing something wrong, like, that's, that's totally expected. But it sounds like if you know you have these two broad categories with different sets of needs, have you like, like, I'm wondering how you might categorize the feedback and suggestions and, and processes you've heard about so far, into those different user types. And then, and then it would be interesting to see if, if one of those groups has a higher propensity to pay versus another or like, I mean, and it might be too broad of a group, like, like, front, like, frontend developers and backend, like, those are those are pretty broad groups, right? Um, but it might, like, like, it might be interesting, or just to think about like, whose needs do you currently serve better?

 

Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely, yeah, I definitely have to dive more into this, um, and think about it. I like the idea of kind of trying to, uh, kind of box the feature set based on the skill set of the user because I really liked the idea of, of who is more likely to pay for it. I mean, that seems relevant for sure, right? That's why I'm here.

 

It's always a good thing to know, right? 

 

It's a good thing to know.

 

Did you ever get in touch with that, uh, the customer we, I think we have called the whale? The, uh, the one that was like, what was it, like, two or three hundred.

 

This guy is paying me 250 bucks a month, or person, I don't know, I don't want to, but um, this person is paying me 250 bucks a month, and this person has still not cancelled and it's still not using it. I don't, like, I don't know what to expect here. 

 

Alright.

 

I keep expecting a nasty email like, I didn't know I was paying that money. But it's been like, almost six weeks now, I think. So this person has paid that bill at least once. So yeah, no idea. I got nothing. But what I have noticed, so something else we talked about last week was changing my onboarding flow. So I did change the onboarding flow. And, um,

 

Oh, you had all those people who were like, it like, wasn't clear to them that they would have to pay for the free trial, so they were,  Right. Getting through to the email setup, but then bouncing, and it's like, why hold on to their emails if it's not worth anything?

 

Yes, yes. So, I changed that. So, now the signup link dumps you to the pricing page, and then on the pricing page, like, the wording is still kind of rough, but it basically says a credit card is required to sign up for the trial. Um, so that should help me I think get less like, kind of emails I don't need in terms of onboarding.

 

Oh, you did change that this week.

 

Again, I did that yesterday, so it's too soon to say if, um, what difference that'll make. Like, it might take my signups, but at this point, I mean, it's, it's funny, because like, there's so many things I want to do, and there's just one of me, one of me who has a job. So, um, I, I think I have to let this one go. I have to let the extra email addresses, like, I looked at, this morning before our podcast, and saw all the email addresses of people who bounce at sign up, and I'm like, man, like, someday I might be able to, I realize it's like 15, I mean, just from couple days, it's like 15 people. It's like, I have those email addresses, but I'm just gonna let them go because where I am right now in trying to build this, like, I just don't have the bandwidth to try and hunt down people who might never want to pay me at this point. I need to serve, I think I need to serve the people that are paying me and, like, really focus in, you know, on those, on those folks.

 

Hmm. I think we, you know, we've talked about it a couple of times how it is just you, and you are one person with a job, and a family, and everything else going on, and you have so many ideas, and I'm curious how you are keeping track of all of those different things that you want to work on. Because it, because it sounds like that, like, mental load of carrying around all of your own ideas and the feedback you're, like, that, like, that, that is a mental load.

 

Yeah, so right now I keep track of all of that in Notion. But you know, I've gone back and forth in Notion. I know, some people love it, and some people hate it, and like, I don't know, like, a couple years ago, maybe a year ago, I really spent a couple days getting a setup I liked and I used it really, really diligently, and then when things get really busy, that's when you should rely on your tasks, you know, on that the most. But yet, I tend to just let it go because you have so many competing priorities. So I do have a list, but do I actually look at that list? No. I mean, I just, I just am like, I should do this thing next. And then I do the thing. But I do have a list so I don't lose like, these ideas.

 

I think I, like, it might be helpful to try to like prioritize those. And also I remember when we were talking about this last time, you had to do that was like, you know, improve the landing page. And it was something that was actually like, 10 steps deep and it like, wasn't one task, and I want I wonder if that would help.

 

Yeah, being more specific. Um, I do. I do think that would help. I also think,, like, this thing with the, the small styles I mentioned, that ended up taking way longer than I anticipated. So, that's why, like, task management can be challenging, I think because you just, as you know, in software, you just want to have that, you just want to block out like, three days to do whatever you want to do, and it's just sometimes hard to know how long these tasks are going to take. But generally speaking, yeah, breaking them down is, is good. But like, so here's a problem I'm having. Okay, and here's a business idea for anyone listening. You know how Stripe, I know, business idea. Maybe I shouldn't share it, I should just build it. But I don't have time to build anything else. Um, so you know how Stripe provides really cool analytics, like, you log on to Stripe, and I know there's like many, many analytic platforms built on top of Stripe, but even Stripe is nice because you can log on, you can, you know, see what your churn rate is, you can see the lifetime value, you can see all this information about your customers. Heroku has none of that. Like, so I'm not even really tracking people who churn on Heroku. So if you asked me, like, how many people have signed up and then cancelled, I can't even tell you. Like, I mean, if I tried really hard, I could figure it out, but I love how when you sign on to Stripe you, like, get that dashboard right there, like, here's all your information. That would be super cool for Heroku. So, I'm at the point where I'm not even exactly sure because if you churn, I delete your account, so I have to like, go find that information. And of course, of course I say this and every software developer listening is like, yeah, that's so easy to build. Yes, it's so easy to build. So are the other 5000 things I want to do. So to me, like, I know if I was listening to this, I'd be like, well just write that. That's so easy. But um, yeah, I mean, it's such competing priorities. So like, that's something I want to know but not something I have time to build, and what I have, what do I have 20, 20ish, 25ish paying users. With such a low percentage, with such a low number of paying users, it just doesn't seem worth my time right now to really care about that. 

 

I think you just hit on something really important, which is that sometimes building something is much easier than more marketing it and figuring out who needs it and why and pricing it. And, you know, building is not easy in its own right, but there there is a real, like, you're going through this challenge right now, and I mean, to me, it makes sense where that's where your comfort zone is that now you have something going but there are definitely some frustrations with that. That the prospect of going to build something else is sort of a shiny ball that jumps out at you.

 

Oh, totally. And I've given myself a little more permission to do that now that I have paying users, so I know that is a thing. You know, even doing these customer interviews, like, I like people. I like to talk. But before every customer interview, like, I get a little nervous, you know, because it's someone you don't know. You're basically like, cold calling someone asking them for their time and then try not to talk over them. Like, I have just found it to be a really interesting exercise to try and, and do all of those marketing activities. But like I said, this week, when I had my couple days of just coding, like, that's definitely sparks joy. That's my sparks joy place. Like, I love talking to people and meeting people, but I do find that that is harder, and requires a totally different skill set and energy level.

 

Absolutely. And, and I notice that you said you, you find yourself nervous beforehand. You said you were nervous, and, but there's different reasons for that, like, you're sort of partly afraid that, you know, they're not going to want to talk to you, sort of like a cold calling sense, but also that you're going to talk too much.

 

Okay, this is my thing. So I think that I'm like, if anyone who has met me in person, like, I think I'm good in-person with a one, one-on-one. Like, I think I'm good with, like, getting to know someone and like, developing a connection with someone. But I do that by echoing what you say and by like, just getting excited about whatever you're saying. And when I'm doing these customer interviews, something you and I've talked about a lot is like, don't get overly excited and be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that, or oh, you're totally right. But I like to agree. I don't want to say I like to agree with people, but if I agree with you about whatever you're talking with, my natural inclination is to be, is to, uh, fusibly agree with you, right? That forms our bond as friends, as people, and, you know, I agree with you. And um, so what's hard for me is if you're like, oh my gosh, I hate setting up buckets on AWS. That's a good example, because that has happened. I want to be like, I know, it's the worst, like, CORS configuration. Everyone forgets that. But I'm not supposed to do that in a customer interview. So like, me just being like, oh, tell me more about why you hate setting up buckets on AWS or whatever it is, um, is a challenge.

 

Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. And, you know, I almost sometimes find myself having double tracks of thinking in my head, like, when someone says something that gets me really excited, like, um, I'll have, I'm like, oh my god, yes. So good. And then you have to be like, can you tell me more about what you find difficult about working with those buckets? Because the thing that you want to find out in the interview is not just that they think it's difficult, but why it's difficult from their perspective, and it's going to be difficult for different reasons from your perspective. And the point is not to build a shared bond over the fact that it's difficult. It's to understand their perspective on it, which may be similar to yours, but is different. But I mean, but it's also, it's normal to get excited, you know, I was, I was listening to an episode of Hidden Brain a couple of weeks ago, where the linguist Deborah Tannen was being interviewed, and she was talking about how people from different regions in the US have different conversation styles. So, people from the Northeast, which includes me, we will talk over other people as a way of showing excitement and engagement with what they're saying.

 

Yeah. 

 

And that is a way of being involved in the conversation, versus somebody from the Midwest or from California, like, they might have to wait and pause naturally before the other person stops speaking in order to share their own perspective on it. And apparently, like, you know, I was, I was talking to someone who sort of studies cross-cultural communication, and they were saying that the way you know, so, so a Californian may interpret that how someone from New York speaks is interrupting. But somebody from Japan may interpret that the way that people from California speak is interrupting. 

 

Right.

 

So all of these things are relative, but I think that kind of conversation style, like I especially find that, like, that, that took me years to tamp down. And I think for me, like, I didn't start tamping that down when I first started doing interviews. Like, that process happened, you know, once I moved from Boston to DC, and you know, that with people from, from the south and the Midwest more who are, who do not use that sort of excited, um, way of talking over people to show engagement. It's very, very different. Like, having people tell me that I was rude forced me to kind of reevaluate that. But of course, if I, if I talk to somebody from New York or whatever, like we're excited and talking over each other, and it's so fun and chaotic, in a way that I just can't do with someone from, you know, Washington State, for example.

 

Yeah, yeah, I definitely think that's true. And I definitely think it's a skill and, you know, I'm working on it and, uh, trying to learn it. But it's definitely different, like, whole different skill set and energy level than working on features, or working on code. 

 

Yeah. And sometimes I find it helpful to remind myself and other people that I'm trying to teach this to is that it's helpful to try these things out in conversations with people. Like, so you might normally start relating to someone, but to try this out just, just to get used to it, but then you don't have to change your conversation style, like, in a social setting. Like, there's nothing, there's nothing that says that one style is intrinsically more valid than another. Like, just because there might be relative differences doesn't mean that one is any better and that there's anything wrong with the way you talk, but it can be helpful to try this out in a social setting at first, just so it feels a little more natural when you're talking to a customer.

 

Yeah, that is a great idea, and I will continue to practice. It's good to practice on your kids, because they talk a lot anyway. So I feel like, at least mine do. I've been practicing on the kids.

 

One of my favorite references from my book, actually, is the book, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and How to Listen So Kids Will Talk, because it's technically a book on parenting, but really, there's so much more to it. And especially for people who find this is really, really counterintuitive and strange to them, I think it's probably because they were spoken to differently as a child, and this kind of way of just, you know, validating what someone is saying and, um, you know, it's, may not come may not come naturally, but, but it can be learned.

 

Yeah.

 

How do you try it out on your kids? I'm curious.

 

Like, when they tell me something I've tried, literally do it. Like they'll tell me something, I'm like, well, tell me more about like, why this was a problem with Jimmy, or why do you think, you know, like, I'm just trying to be like, cool, calm and collected, which I mean, I mostly am but I try not to get overexcited when they tell me about what their friends did or whatever. Like, oh, okay, tell me more about that. How did you feel about that? You know, stuff like that.

 

Yeah. So, before we wrap up for this week, I have to ask, how are the numbers?

 

So, they're flat. Um, I hit 1k. I didn't actually calculate the exact number, but I think I'm right around 1k. I didn't have any new signups this week, and, or I did, but then this is what brought up the churn discussion. I did have a new sign up, but the person on the $85 a month plan churned, which is unfortunate, um, and there's just, that's why I'm like, there's just so much I want to do. But I think right now, I think for this week, okay, all I can do is plan one thing at a, one week at a time, right. I have a long, I have a list of all the things I want to do. But in terms of staying focused, especially with my time constraints, like, this week, my goal is to get a demo on the homepage because I want to increase signups, like, that's what I want to do right now. So, um, that's my goal for this week. Like, another thing that happened was I went to go put the demo on the homepage, and, 

 

It was the CodePen thing, right? 

 

Yeah, but I want to pull it off of CodePen. It, yeah, it's on CodePen, which is fine, but I want to pull it off of CodePen and literally put a fully functioning demo, like, drop your file here and I'll alert you the URL or something. But the reason I haven't done that is because I had to write, so I had to write all these monkey patches, because I am still on Rails 6.0, which doesn't support CDN serving a file, so I'm patching through it. So I go to put it on the homepage, and then I was like, well, while I'm, you know, while I'm doing this, I should just upgrade Rails, which is, like, not an insignificant task. So then I spend quite a lot of time going through the upgrade of Rails and, and that's really, I think my struggle is I do need to upgrade Rails because as soon as I upgrade, I can pull out those monkey patches, which gives me warm fuzzies, because I don't like to patch rails if I don't have to, right. And the patches are literally, like, the pull request on Rails 6.1, so I know that they're correct. But still, I'd like to upgrade and pull them out. But, um, you know, that's, that's not insignificant. So then I start, I start upgrading, and then I'm like, oh, well, if I'm going to upgrade, I need more test coverage. So then I start writing more tests. And you see how this just snowballs right? Like, until like, I'm like, oh, wait, I literally wanted to put a thing on the web page, and here I am trying to upgrade the whole application, and like, fill out the rest of the, like, write these other tests, and, oh my gosh. I mean, it's fine. If this was all I did with my life, but I have other things to do.

 

This feels like the equivalent of like, going to put away a basket of laundry. And then you're like, well, I'm here, I should just organize the sock drawer. 

 

Yes. 

 

And then before you know it, you're actually sorting out all of the winter clothes and putting them away and making a donate pile and then bringing out the summer clothes, and then you turn around two hours later, and there is still a basket of laundry sitting on the bed.

 

That's literally it, Michele, that's literally what happened to me. Like it was, I was like, Colleen, stay. And it's not that I'm not focused, like, these are all good things, and it's exactly right. I'm like, well, I'm in here. So I should fix this thing. I did that with the CSS stuff, too. I was like, well, I'm in here, so I'm just going to rewrite the whole preview template because why not, like. That is my struggle.

 

It sounds like those things, though, like, those things for you are, I feel like soul-nourishing is a little bit of a stretch, but like those are, you know, they spark joy for you. 

 

They totally do. I mean, and that's why, 

 

It's very focused, like what like, like, focused kind of attention and like, total, like, flow, right? That, like, that's the word I was looking for. It sparks flow.

 

It totally does. And like, I am amazing at focusing. Like, I can sit down for six hours, and like, not even get up, which is not good for my body, but I mean, it, I love, now I sound like a weirdo, but like, I love that. Like I've love, like, I wasn't kidding, like, give me six hours in my laptop and no Slack and no, like, none of that. Um, because it does spark joy. I can like, I really getting these flow states. And I love like, I love doing it. So I think that is relevant because I think I have been really focused on customer interviews, which is great for my business, but kind of draining for my person. So I think spending some time, like, in that flow state is really good for me because it does spark joy.

 

You have to recharge your batteries.

 

Yeah, that's exactly, that's a really good way to put it. That's exactly right.

 

You gotta have like, balance, right, like, you know, I think that's one of the things about being an entrepreneur and especially as sort of a you know, small scale entrepreneur like we are, like, there's so many different things we could be doing at any time. And some of those things will spark joy, and some of those will spark the opposite of joy, and all of them are necessary. And we have to find a balance between them. And, like, I've been talking about this lately as, like the concept of reward work, which is like wok that we let ourselves do when we've gotten through the stuff that we didn't really want to do as much or it was more draining, and it sounds like this kind of, um, I think I dubbed it putzing through the code garden for you is like, and sort of just like, weeding and, you know, cleaning things up and repainting your garden shed, like, those are the things that are like the reward work for you.

 

Yep, totally.

 

Well, I think that's probably a good place to end today. I feel like this turned into our like, Real Life Episode, like, your numbers are flat. You had somebody churn. My laptop died, and I didn't get anything done, like.  

 

Oh, one of those weeks. 

 

Yeah, that's how it goes. Alright, well, we'll talk to you next week. Thank you so much for listening, and, um, we love when you tweet out that you're listening to it, or if anything jumped out to you, so we'll chat with you on Twitter.