Michele Hansen (00:01.848)
Hey Colleen. It's been a minute.

Colleen (00:03.182)
Hey Michelle!

Colleen (00:08.053)
It certainly has.

Michele Hansen (00:10.946)
yeah. Hi. We're, we're back on the mic.

Colleen (00:16.708)
So you know that song the boys are back and there's good I feel like we need that for girls for us That should be our intro music the girls are back and there's gonna be trouble or something like that

Michele Hansen (00:25.07)
my gosh, and we're on video is the other thing. I don't know if I told you this that we're going to do video.

Colleen (00:32.461)
Yeah

You didn't tell me, fortunately I got dressed today. So we, I was ahead of the game telling me now.

Michele Hansen (00:36.598)
Okay, well I'm telling you now. Yeah, no, so I feel like this really matches my vibe lately, which, okay, whatever, we're just gonna, so I'm working on a new talk and I decided that I only wanna give talks to developer audiences if it's gonna be fun, right? I don't know if I probably told you, I feel like when I...

Colleen (01:00.024)
Yeah, love that.

Michele Hansen (01:04.822)
I did a bunch of deploy empathy talks, right? And I got a lot of invitations conferences, which was really, really nice. But man, getting up there at a developer conference as a woman, giving a soft skills talk about how they should listen to people more. And it's such a take your vitamins talk. it's just like, I always had super positive feedback from organizers and from most attendees. But like,

Colleen (01:07.256)
Mm-hmm.

Colleen (01:26.809)
Yeah.

Michele Hansen (01:32.92)
from enough attendees that it was like, I don't know, I didn't like being in the box of being the woman who was giving a talk about feelings at developer conference and people making comments about it not being as substantial as the other talks, right? And it's just exhausting to give the take your vitamins talk. So I decided that I'm only gonna give them if they're fun. And I gave a fun talk at Microconf in Europe in October that

Colleen (01:56.132)
I love that.

Michele Hansen (02:01.538)
I had all these little bits and stuff in it. And honestly, it was just me entertaining myself, but I think it was fun. It went well. And so I wanna do that for this new talk I'm developing, right? And so I uploaded the transcript of that to Claude, and Claude described my style as warm chaos. Which, given this whole setup right now, I feel like...

Colleen (02:22.455)
love that!

Michele Hansen (02:30.774)
warm chaos like really, really encapsulates it. Like I think the longer thing it said was, genuinely enthusiastic and slightly out of control, but actually in control the entire time. And I was like, yes, I give the appearance of chaos. Anyway, so this is slightly chaotic in the fact that, hello, we're here. we're not going to edit this. not that we were very heavily edited before, but we're not.

Colleen (02:43.979)
I love that. That's amazing.

Ha

Colleen (02:57.101)
Mm-mm.

Michele Hansen (02:58.146)
I'm gonna say and it's gonna happen and whatever, you can just deal with it. And we're gonna be on video. So I talked to somebody actually at Lyricon EU the other day who was telling me how she watches podcasts. like, do you watch podcasts? No, and I was like, same. Okay, I'm like, who has the time? Like, who is sitting down with like a bowl of popcorn watching a podcast? Like.

Colleen (03:13.345)
Nope. Don't get it.

Colleen (03:20.035)
That's what I wanted to know. Watching funny.

Michele Hansen (03:25.224)
What? And anyway, this woman was telling me how she watches mostly technical. And I was like, why? Like, can I ask you? And she's like, well, there's only so many Laracast, you and you run out of them to watch during lunch. And I was like, that's interesting. OK, you watch technical talks during lunch. OK. And then so it's filling the hole of that. But then she's also saying, you know, she has a hearing aid and it's much easier for her to understand the podcast when she can watch people. And I was like, OK, that's.

Colleen (03:33.442)
Yeah.

Colleen (03:51.681)
Watch people.

Michele Hansen (03:54.796)
That's fair. so, yeah, think there are some weird people out there though who just get a bowl of popcorn and watch podcasts. I still don't understand you, but whatever, this is for you. We appreciate you. Here's us on video, even though my lighting situation is permanently weird. I don't know. How are you?

Colleen (03:56.013)
Mm-hmm.

Colleen (04:07.683)
But we appreciate you. This is for you.

Colleen (04:20.707)
Such a complicated question, Michelle. Okay, I'm actually amazing. I am working all the time and I am loving it. Like, I don't know how else to describe it. Like, I don't want to say I'm working all the time, but I'm just working a lot more because I was wandering in the desert for quite a while.

Michele Hansen (04:24.802)
How are you? Tell me. I'm so happy to hear that.

Michele Hansen (04:43.089)
You, I mean, I don't, feel like we should, maybe we should like pull back a second and talk about like our lives since December of 2022 when we, you know, stopped doing this regularly. Like we did one a year later or was that like a year ago or two years ago? Like there was one or two, like, like I kind of like strong armed you into doing one at one point and like, but like both of us went through burnout and like,

Colleen (04:59.851)
I feel like we did one like tag up.

Colleen (05:08.062)
You kinda did, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Michele Hansen (05:12.49)
Now I feel like you're totally back to your like, I was actually thinking about this in the car. Are you a golden retriever or a Labrador? I couldn't decide. I feel like you're more a Labrador, right? Because Labradors, they're like, they're a working dog. Like they will like chase birds into a pond. Does that make any sense? you know, like they were like, they're like waterfowl hunting dogs, right? Like from Labrador in Canada, right? You know, like, but they will like, you could throw a tennis ball for a Labrador like.

Colleen (05:21.251)
You couldn't decide.

Colleen (05:34.637)
I don't have a dog, so.

Michele Hansen (05:42.264)
and they'll swim or whatever like forever and I feel like that's you.

Colleen (05:45.749)
Okay, I will defer to your expertise as I do not have a dog and I don't really know about that.

Michele Hansen (05:47.234)
and they're super smart, but maybe you're a golden retriever. You're one of those. But I feel like you're, I was listening back to the podcast we did, again, what is time? I don't know, a year or two ago? I don't know. And you were not golden retriever, Labrador retriever Colleen. You were not chasing the tennis ball. You were just, I don't know, the equivalent of like,

Colleen (05:59.3)
Like a year ago? I know! What is time? Yes.

Colleen (06:09.571)
Mm-mm.

Michele Hansen (06:17.07)
flopped in front of the fire and just, you know, this dog analogy is going way too far. This is like, I have, you may not be able to exhaust a golden retriever, but you can exhaust an analogy about a golden retriever and I have just done that.

Colleen (06:22.211)
It's really good. I appreciate you.

Colleen (06:32.067)
yes, I would say that was a, challenging period and it did take me a while to come full circle and like come back.

Michele Hansen (06:42.262)
Yeah, I mean, and I think that show is like, you know, I went through burnout too from like, gosh, January 23 to, I don't think I, I didn't come out of it till like September, October of 24. And then I had like six months where I was like a golden retriever puppy and like probably exhausting for everybody around me because I had so much energy. But like, you know, I like,

described like you going through burnout to people not like I didn't use your name obviously, but I was like I was like I know somebody who is like literally the most emotionally healthy person I have ever met to the point where it confuses me and They are going through burnout like and so it's like I feel like if you went like, know, like, okay Yeah, fine. Like again, we've just gone over like I'm warm chaos like, you know, whatever there's chaos like, know me going through burnout, right? Like, okay that tracks right, you know

Colleen (07:23.107)
Right.

Michele Hansen (07:36.866)
goes with the chaos. But like you being like Miss super emotionally, mentally stable and healthy and you know, perky little golden retriever going through burnout and not wanting to chase the tennis ball. that was like, I think that just shows that it can, it can hit anybody.

Colleen (07:59.78)
Totally.

Michele Hansen (08:03.628)
Yeah, and it's such a weird, I don't know. mean, it's just such a weird thing too. I was talking to somebody else about it today and like, it's also this like Ritvan Winkle kind of experience. don't know if you've, I don't know if we really talked about your process of coming out of burnout. Like I know we talked throughout it, just a little side note for the listener here. Colleen and I talked to each other like outside of podcasting. Like we didn't stop doing a podcast because like we,

Colleen (08:03.853)
Did you want me to expand on that?

Michele Hansen (08:30.54)
weren't friends anymore. I had people come up to me at conferences and be like, are you and Colleen still friends? And be really worried about us. And it was like, no, we have a group chat. We're fine. We still talk. But it's a weird process to come out of it. And for me, I was like, my god, I have a personality again. This is so weird. But for you, what was it like?

Colleen (08:36.291)
Are you serious?

Colleen (08:56.771)
I don't know that it was like a discrete event or a discrete series of events. And I would like to kind of like talk a little bit about the term burnout, because I feel like when I was going through that period, that's just how some people live their lives. They're kind of mediocrely happy and they work a job that they kind of don't like. And I just have always existed on a plane.

Michele Hansen (09:16.59)
Hmm.

Michele Hansen (09:23.246)
Some like office space vibe. Yeah.

Colleen (09:24.885)
Yeah, I mean, I know people who their lives like that. So I feel like people like us, live on a different plane, right? We expect more. We want more. We go after more. If you work, this is going to sound, if you get a job at a big company, you'll see all these other people. you will find that having the kind of mindsets that we have and the kind of ambitions that we have is not a normal thing. So I feel like that's kind of an important thing to point out.

Michele Hansen (09:51.009)
No.

Right.

Colleen (09:55.18)
And for me, was really like, I'm a very like mission-driven person or like purpose-driven person. So what happened to me, I think, is I shut down the business, a couple like key relationships in my life, like friendships because of, I don't wanna say because of the fallout of that, but like things were weird with a, not ours, obviously. Not ours. Like it just.

Michele Hansen (10:13.056)
Not ours. Not ours.

Good, additional clarification, we're fine.

Colleen (10:22.005)
There were just some key professional relationships that suffered from the fallout of that business shutting down. And everything is fine now, but it was just kind of like, so it was kind of like, felt like a lot of things fell down at the same time. And I was never depressed or anything. It was just like, what am I doing? This is stupid. It was just kind of a lack of intrinsic motivation would be a better way to describe it.

Michele Hansen (10:48.174)
I think that's the big thing. And again, I was literally talking to a founder earlier today who kind of made a sort of a joke off the side of like, oh, know, maybe I'm burned out, huh, whatever. And we talked about something else and I was like, hold on, we need to come back to that. We need to drill in on that. And talking about the difference between depression and burnout.

Colleen (11:02.211)
Mm-hmm.

Michele Hansen (11:09.59)
Yeah, burnout is like just not having that spark, not having that fire and just feeling like you're walking through mud every day. the things that used to excite you before like feel overwhelming or you're just and you're just not excited about them. And like and you don't have that space to like have a growth mindset and be learning. Right. And versus but it's but I feel like I guess in my experience, it's

Colleen (11:33.761)
Yes.

Michele Hansen (11:38.51)
There's also this fear of having an anvil over your head and it's often some sort of external stressor that is causing that experience and until you have that stressor removed, you can't, do you need to? Okay, again, warm chaos. Y'all know I can just keep talking. Like, I'm fine. Okay.

Colleen (11:52.675)
I'm so sorry, someone is ringing my doorbell.

Colleen (11:59.35)
It's the... Can you wait one second? It's the power company. Hold on. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

Michele Hansen (12:19.266)
Do do do do do.

Michele Hansen (12:41.934)
Maybe now is a good time for you to go get some water, know, use the bathroom, let the power company in at your own house. It's a good time to do that. Check your email, pull out your phone, you know. Go get some more popcorn if you're watching us.

Colleen (13:24.749)
Okay, we can cut this section.

Michele Hansen (13:26.488)
You're good. We've just been hanging out without you. We're fine. The person watching, they just went to get more popcorn. They went to the bathroom. They got some water. They checked their phone. They're good now. They also let the power company in at their house. So everybody is good now. I guess we're talking about burnout, right? the difference between burnout and depression, right? So burnout is like having this anvil over your head, like a stressor, like some sort of external stressor, right?

Colleen (13:30.725)
my gosh, I'm so sorry.

Colleen (13:37.571)
Okay, I'm back.

Colleen (13:45.887)
We are, yes. Yes.

Michele Hansen (13:54.966)
And until you have that anvil removed, you can't get out of the burnout. Depression, I feel like it is also like, you know, waking up and feeling like you're walking through mud and not having motivation. But to me, it's more of a like a chemical situation rather like, and I guess it can be caused by a situation, but like burnout is very specifically caused by a situation versus I guess as I have experienced them, like.

Colleen (13:59.482)
Mmm.

Colleen (14:16.569)
Mm.

Michele Hansen (14:21.294)
Depression didn't necessarily have that like external stressor piece and it was kind of all the areas of my life turned gray rather than just kind of Really losing motivation like work wise. I don't know. I Don't know that's just my experience not a psychologist just play one on TV

Colleen (14:31.363)
I see.

Colleen (14:37.432)
Yeah, that seems accurate to me. Yeah, yeah. I think for me, was like, I started to be very concerned about how I was going to make money. And so to your point, it's like, you have a stressor and it's not until that stressor removes itself that you kind of are able to recover. And so it took me being like, yeah, I know how to make money. Like, it will be okay that things changed.

Michele Hansen (15:05.048)
I mean, think you, I mean, you also had so much, I mean, I don't know how much we want to talk about it, but like you had so much stress, like going into it too. Like, I don't think it helped per se that like, not only do you have to shut down your company, like you had to do it in public because you were podcasting through it. And like, so you very publicly,

Colleen (15:24.617)
I know, because I was podcasting.

Colleen (15:30.084)
man.

Michele Hansen (15:31.534)
had this failure, right? Like, and that was hard.

Colleen (15:38.212)
Well, even worse, Michelle, is I felt the mantle of being the only technical female founder that had ever been on that podcast. And I was the only one who didn't work. Oh my God, don't want to talk about it. No, it's fine. I mean, that's just how it is.

Michele Hansen (15:48.643)
Yeah.

Yeah, should we just like, wait, we've started out, the first 15 minutes, we've talked about how I don't like giving talks at technical conferences because, you know, I'm like the token woman and telling people to take their vitamins, and how you didn't like being the one technical female founder on, yeah. Okay, this is...

Colleen (16:01.784)
Yep. Yep.

Michele Hansen (16:09.966)
Really uplifting, really good start. Colleen and I actually are both really doing well now. Like I think that we're kind of burying the lead here. Should we tell them how you're making money now? Do you want to tell them or should I tell them?

Colleen (16:14.564)
We're doing great.

Colleen (16:21.623)
Yes?

I will tell them. So I have exciting news listeners. I am now working for Michelle at Geocodeo.

Michele Hansen (16:32.565)
Yay! As a contractor for six months, not because I'm limiting to that, but because calling wants to go on to bigger and brighter things, and I fully support that.

Colleen (16:43.844)
I you do, I appreciate it. And can I also, mean, since we're talking about it, I love it. Like I think there is something as an independent person or like, I'm serious. Like I think there's definitely, there's just something that's so refreshing about having been independent and be independent. Whenever I come into a company, I usually have to be the expert, right? And so there's...

Michele Hansen (16:53.484)
I paid her to say that.

Colleen (17:11.244)
It's really refreshing to like work on a team and have other people that help prioritize things and have other people that care about the business. I don't know, I'm really enjoying it. It's been great, so.

Michele Hansen (17:25.336)
I'm really enjoying it too. It's been really, really fun and...

Colleen (17:26.936)
Good.

Michele Hansen (17:29.582)
It's also super fun for me as, okay, so not only working with your best friend is really great, but you're doing a lot of marketing dev stuff. And for a long time, whenever you need marketing dev stuff, it's me kind of being like, okay, well, we've got this critical infrastructure work, I've got this product work, I've got all this other stuff that engineering is working on. And I would really love this little thing to help us automate this sales floor, this marketing floor, whatever that is.

Colleen (17:39.715)
Yes.

Michele Hansen (17:59.82)
I just didn't ask for that stuff because I was like, there's so many other things going on and they feel so much more important. Like that I was like, I'm just I'm just not going to ask for it. And then we would have like a random day every three or six months when like.

you know, the schedule actually kind of wasn't super packed and I'd like, hey, so there's this thing I've been really wanting. Like, do you think we could do it today? You know? And it's like really awesome to be like, my God, like you're actually getting us set up with the CRM and like doing all of the work to like.

Colleen (18:19.694)
Hahaha

Michele Hansen (18:35.372)
have everything docked to each other. And like, yes, by the way, okay, I got completely roasted at my mastermind a couple months for this ago. Like, so we did not have a CRM until like two weeks ago. Somehow we got to, you know, multi millions with our sales process being me having tags in my email that say follow up, like, and a Google Doc. actually, we didn't even have the Google Doc until October.

Colleen (18:47.14)
I still think that's funny.

Colleen (18:52.14)
without a CRM.

Colleen (18:59.32)
I love that so much.

Colleen (19:04.984)
Yeah.

Michele Hansen (19:05.154)
That's new. That's like...

Colleen (19:07.8)
feel like that's a really interesting, and we can talk about the article you just published too, but I think that's a really interesting study on product market fit because for example, you have a multimillion dollar company and until three months ago, you were managing customers in your Gmail, which just shows, versus like other founders who are setting up all these systems and they're pushing so, so, so hard and they have like,

a couple thousand or 10, 20,000. It's just, it's kind of interesting to see like

Michele Hansen (19:39.95)
And I'm not recommending my approach here.

Colleen (19:41.75)
No, but I'm saying if you really have product market fit and if the product really is a good fit in the market, you don't need, like think there's this like overhead of all these things you need to set up and like maybe you don't need to set all those up.

Michele Hansen (19:53.038)
I guess if the product is good enough, you can be bad at other stuff basically. I feel like there's just so much table stakes stuff that we didn't have. I realized last year that we have 150,000 users and most of them we've only ever sent them one email.

Colleen (19:56.928)
Yeah, kind of. And people want it.

Colleen (20:04.355)
Mm-hmm.

Colleen (20:12.683)
I

Michele Hansen (20:13.002)
Like we didn't even have like, you know, any sort of life cycle email. And it's not because I hadn't heard of life cycle email. Like I wrote a ton of it when I was a product manager. Like it just didn't have time. There was so many other things going on, but it's like super table stakes. Like it's like really, really freaking basic. And the same as like, I feel like having a CRM is like kind of basic, like in terms of stuff you need. like, I'm not necessarily recommending this approach per se, but it...

You know, we we got, you know, along limped along perhaps with that for for long enough. But it's like it actually is kind of nice to to sort of be having those things. But I guess I mean, I guess it is a sign of pull from the market if you're able to. I mean, the fact that we got to where we are without having like true, like truly like honestly, basically like basic table stakes, lifecycle email like, you know.

I think this is why I'm investing in this now and having you doing work on getting everything super streamlined in Bento and like, we're using a proper email platform now. We didn't have a proper ESP until three months ago. was literally like, was a self-hosted thing that was very, very, very basic. It worked, but it was very, very basic. so it's really awesome because I see all these opportunities now.

Like, it's like, if like we actually just like did the table steak stuff, like we could be, you know, doing so much more. And yeah, like having you is like amazing. Cause like, you can do all that stuff. And I'm not like, I don't have to pull from like, okay, do I choose between servers on fire or not? No, Matthias is gonna be very upset with me. No, it's more like doing the work.

Colleen (21:59.566)
You

haha

Michele Hansen (22:06.734)
10 steps down the line that prevents the servers from ever lighting on fire, right? We're not in those situations, right? It's like, actually it's very stable. Oh yeah, actually I should probably note now that we're hiring engineers and our servers are not regularly on fire. I'm so good at my job. So, still recruiting people thing and making the company sound like a great place to work for. A plus. Like, yeah, you know, it's just like, it's just hard to, I just.

Colleen (22:10.936)
Right.

Colleen (22:19.4)
Hahaha!

Colleen (22:26.614)
Woo.

Michele Hansen (22:35.086)
I guess for me, I would just always down prioritize the marketing stuff over product and infrastructure and that kind of stuff. So it's really awesome. We're getting all these systems set up and I have a marketing manager now. it's like, I'm not a marketing person. I don't know if that's become clear by my lack of investment in marketing, it's really, really awesome. And it's been so awesome having you and you're on a call with me today. It was so great.

Colleen (22:43.116)
Yeah.

Colleen (22:59.469)
Good.

I know, it will be interesting. So, you know, I want to turn this AI consulting pipeline building essentially into a full consultancy. And it will be interesting to see if we feel like the value, like all of these things are great and I'm so happy that you are happy, but like if the value is there to do high value consulting, cause I'm still unsure whether...

Michele Hansen (23:11.82)
Mmm.

Michele Hansen (23:28.12)
Right.

Colleen (23:30.581)
Am I just a marketing ops person who knows how to code or can I turn this into like a high value like pipeline building consulting thing? So I'm super curious to see how this all plays out in the world of AI and go to market and all that stuff.

Michele Hansen (23:41.677)
Yeah.

Michele Hansen (23:49.142)
Yeah, think something I'm super bullish on right now is AI tooling. I don't know if it did you see that Harvard Business Review article that came out a couple days ago about the headline of it was that AI doesn't reduce work in organizations. Actually, now people are doing more work that they weren't doing before.

Colleen (23:55.521)
Mm-hmm.

Michele Hansen (24:12.99)
Which is which is often how technological change goes, but I think what the the interesting bit about it, you know to me was how You have a lot of people who are not engineers doing engineering now which is a nightmare for engineers and And I think the like a really like something I'm really bullish on is the importance of having AI tooling and and basically having

Colleen (24:28.642)
Yeah.

Michele Hansen (24:42.252)
boundaries around how the organization outside of engineering and within engineering as well like uses AI because I think at this point, you know, like people are gonna use it. You can't tell them not to, you can't hold them back. And so you might as well do the equivalent of, you know, taking little kids to a bowling alley, right? And you put bumpers on the side of the lane to prevent them from throwing the ball all the way over into someone else's lane, which

Colleen (24:54.018)
Mm-hmm.

Michele Hansen (25:12.078)
You know, I mean, like if you're a terrible bowler like me, you still do that anyway. But like, you know, for most people, right, like that is enough safety to keep them from causing chaos. And I think that's honestly what I need to name this episode is chaos because that we just keep coming back to it. Warm chaos, warm chaos. Yeah.

Colleen (25:28.898)
Chaos. Wait, what did you say? Controlled chaos or something? Whatever. Warm chaos. Yeah, that's what it should be named. Warm chaos.

Michele Hansen (25:37.758)
genuinely enthusiastic and slightly chaotic. So, but actually in control the entire time. And so like having, you know, in the same way that like, in your dev pipelines and stuff, like you need to have, you need to really be guiding the AI, right? Like it needs to know what your development principles are. needs to know what your patterns are. It needs to like, there is a lot of tooling necessary so that it's not creating slop.

Colleen (25:57.441)
Yes.

Michele Hansen (26:06.434)
And, but I think you also need that for the non-developers, right? As like somebody I know, Ed Grossfrenner, like he was saying that they're doing a lot of those projects right now, like in his consultancy. And they basically like jokingly call it like, you know, keep the head of marketing from deleting prod. Because that is a really serious issue. And so I think that that is gonna be.

Colleen (26:12.792)
Yes.

Michele Hansen (26:35.896)
I think there's always things shifting with AI, right? just based on the conversations I'm having the last couple of months, this seems like a very clear direction of something that is going to be a problem. It is becoming a problem. And even those of us who are in organizations or in social circles where everybody's using AI all the time and people know what Ralph loops are and they're using them and all this kind of stuff, that's a bubble. That's the AI bubble if you're using AI on a daily basis and using it like...

Colleen (26:59.298)
Yes.

Michele Hansen (27:05.226)
at that level. Most people aren't, most organizations aren't, most organizations don't have shared tooling. Most organizations don't have these kind of guardrails on the engineering side, nevermind on the non-technical side. So I am like super bullish on you creating this consultancy out of it. And this is also why it's, know, intended to be a short-term engagement so that, you know, you hang out with us for a bit.

And you know, you're like in our little nest and then you're you're my little birdie You're my little birdie and then you know six months or now or whatever that is like, you know, you can just you know

Colleen (27:36.771)
A little, I was gonna say, are we doing that? I was thinking that too. Fly over.

Michele Hansen (27:47.968)
It's so good we're doing a video. Like how did we not do, were we just like pantomiming stuff before? Like the amount that I talk with my hands, like I mean you can't even really see it because of like where the camera is, right? I talk with my hands constantly. Like and so like if people couldn't see me doing my little birdie thing, like you know, they're just missing out. Like they're totally missing out. I don't know, I've been on a soapbox about AI and you're actually the one who wants to create a consultancy about AI. So do you want to say something?

Colleen (27:51.459)
I've before. I think so.

Colleen (28:03.234)
That's pretty good. They're totally missing out.

Colleen (28:13.442)
That's a win-win. No, no, that's, that's, no, I think, I think here's what we're seeing. Here's what I'm seeing. There's a lot of hype. And so separating from the signal from the noise is the hard part. Cause you'll see on Twitter, these things that are like, replaced my $250,000 go-to-market engineer with AI. And then they'll have this pipeline that seems really complicated. I know how to build those. So I'll literally build it for like one of my coaching clients. The human problems are still human problems. Like it's not,

Michele Hansen (28:41.998)
Mmm.

Colleen (28:42.39)
Just cause you can, like here's an example of one that they're like, you get early signals from LinkedIn and you put them into clay.com to enrich. And then you put them in instantly and you kick off an email campaign. Yes, you can do all of that with AI, but cold email is still cold email. And you know what I mean? Like the human problems, like how do you connect with people? How do you get people to respond are still human problems that are not solved by AI. So.

I don't know. think there's a lot out there like on the go-to-market side, but also the thing that I'm really interested in is kind of what you just said where how do you bring this into teams? Like Stripe had that article about their minions. Did you see that? It was a couple of weeks ago. Okay, I'll send it to you or we can put it in the show notes, but this is Stripe. Yeah, of course. This is a podcast. I forgot. So Stripe had this article about these internal AI agents they've built called minions and

Michele Hansen (29:21.006)
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ha ha!

Colleen (29:35.618)
They're basically like little coding agents you can kick off in their own dev sandboxes, like warm dev sandboxes that will open pull requests. But the thing that I thought was really interesting is they said they have 400, 400 internal MCP servers on all of their processes and all of their documentation that these little minions access. So it's like really that shared repo. I know, right? It's like, so that is where I think the real...

Michele Hansen (29:59.671)
Yeah.

Colleen (30:02.913)
the really like step functions are gonna help us out both on the marketing and the dev side, exactly what you said where it's like, how do you use this as a team? So we are standardized on our processes, on our voice, know, whatever it is.

Michele Hansen (30:15.916)
Right, but on our patterns, what are our code standards? What are our, you know, because I had this blog post a month or two ago that had this really interesting reaction, and it was basically about how engineering projects are not only a lot shorter now because of AI, but also the percentage of where you're spending your time has changed. So there's more time spent on scoping, on creating the PRD, Way, way, way less time on coding. That's like...

Colleen (30:19.009)
Yes.

Michele Hansen (30:42.318)
something that was previously a month of coding is now an hour of Ralph loops. But then 70 % of that project is now on QA because you have to go through things. And I think it was a really interesting reaction to the post. First of all, I had a ton of engineers roasting me in the comments, so that was great. But then I kind of realized, Matias has sort of talked about how there's kind of two types of engineers. There's craftsmen and there's builders. Craftsmen are the people who really, like they,

Colleen (30:46.627)
crazy.

Colleen (30:58.231)
Hehehehehe

Michele Hansen (31:11.414)
are engineers because they love the act of coding. They love the actual, that part of the process, the actual writing the code. That is where they get their enjoyment. And then the builders are the people who, they are in it because they wanna build something that solves a problem for somebody, and they're in it because they wanna have that feeling of, just made somebody's life easier. And so the people who are the builders, like,

Colleen (31:34.424)
Yes.

Michele Hansen (31:37.912)
they're having a time in their lives right now. The people who are the craftsmen are miserable and crying and hating everything because the part of their work that they loved is going away and I really feel for them, right? And they're genuinely and justifiably very, very upset about how that's changing. And so as a lot of the like craftsman type people who were not super thrilled about my graphic.

Colleen (32:02.157)
Yeah.

Michele Hansen (32:02.626)
but also how the role is changing towards doing a lot of QA. And let's be real, that was never anybody's favorite part of the job. But what I also noticed is that there's a lot of people who they didn't seem to have any sort of shared tooling in the organization. There didn't seem to be a lot of those guardrails that we're talking about around the actual, the output of the code and making sure it was following good patterns and making sure it was following their development principles. like,

having that infrastructure around it so that you're getting good outputs from Claude or whatever it is you're using, right? Like you need that. And you don't wanna be in this situation where, okay, your marketing person is now like vibe coding all this stuff and then your engineer has to spend all this time QA-ing it and it's totally slop and it like doesn't follow any of your practices. Like, and so I think there's a lot of opportunity.

around that because some of that reaction I got from people are like, projects are not faster now. We're just spending way more time on QA and leadership thinks it's faster because we're not coding. then it was like, but if you don't have that tooling, you're not going to see those productivity gains. And I think organizations are very, very slowly starting to realize this.

Colleen (33:19.979)
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right.

Michele Hansen (33:23.722)
And as you said, it doesn't solve the people problems. I saw something earlier on LinkedIn. I want to say it was from Martin Erickson, is the founder of Mind the Product. was like, speed was never the problem. It was the people, it's the organization, it's the prioritization. I think I was on another podcast a couple months ago and saying how like,

Colleen (33:41.421)
Hmm, interesting, yeah.

Michele Hansen (33:53.194)
If you add AI into an organization that already has a clear product roadmap, already has a clear idea of what they're doing, who they're solving it for and why, and then they just needed more resources, they're gonna start shipping like crazy. Like, know, humble brag, but like us. And...

But then if you put it into an organization, which is like some organizations I've heard about or seen or been in, like that doesn't have a clear product roadmap or the CEO has shiny ball syndrome and is just chasing different things left and right. There's no clear vision. There's no clear sense of who are we? Why are we doing this? Who are we solving it for? And the organization isn't around like aligned around that. And you were already kind of just sort of running in circles. Like if you add AI into that, you're just going to run in circles faster.

Colleen (34:45.271)
More circles.

Michele Hansen (34:45.346)
Like you're not still gonna be making forward progress, right? So like you need all of those other pieces to be working together as well.

Colleen (34:48.93)
Yeah.

Colleen (34:55.127)
Yeah, that sounds right to me.

Michele Hansen (34:59.581)
Yeah. As it does to me, that's why I just said it. I feel like I keep getting on a soapbox. Yeah, I mean, I mean, but you're not working for me full time, right? Like you're. You're doing other stuff.

Colleen (35:02.723)
That's why he said it.

Colleen (35:12.851)
Right, so I'm working for you, I'm doing the coaching and I'm just experimenting. So this is why, not a lot, two people. Yeah, a couple people from SaaS Marketing Gym just rolled off to do individual coaching. And I, well, this is what I love, right? So I, man, I mean, I went through this whole thing where I thought I needed to get a job. So I did this whole...

Michele Hansen (35:20.13)
How much coaching are you doing? Is it like people that you did marketing gym, the SAS marketing gym with? OK.

Michele Hansen (35:29.727)
nice.

Colleen (35:40.675)
looked for a job thing, which was terrible by the way. Anyway, but I mean, should we talk about that?

Michele Hansen (35:45.836)
Well, okay, I feel like we have to pull back on that. Like, because it kind of explains. Well, it kind of explains why we ended up here that like you were reached out to by a fang and and then you let the fang that shall not be named or a fang like organization, I guess that shall not be named and reached out to you very, very positive. then so you

Colleen (35:57.163)
Yes, right, the fang that shall not be named publicly in case

Colleen (36:09.548)
Well, this is the crazy thing is I wasn't looking for a job.

Michele Hansen (36:12.918)
You weren't looking for a job, you had your consulting clients, and then because this seemed like a sure thing, because they were so enthusiastic about you, you let the consulting clients drop off. And then after what, three months into this process, they finally got back to you and told you the team had been eliminated?

Colleen (36:27.436)
Three, mm-hmm.

Colleen (36:33.25)
Yes. OK, can you I like I haven't told this story publicly and I don't they might they said it might come back. So I don't want to like roast them too hard in case they if they are going to offer me a lot of money, I would probably still take the job. But yeah, it was just this crazy thing where I know, right? They come back to me and offer me a crazy amount of money that I'm going to say is. But no, it was just it was this crazy situation where I was doing the consulting. But but I was emotionally still kind of like

Michele Hansen (36:47.49)
We'll delete this off the internet in that case. It's never happened.

You

Colleen (37:02.306)
Like, what am I going to do? How am going to turn this into a sustainable thing? And they reached out. And we had 11 interviews. 11. I mean, it was like, felt like such a sure thing for them to then eliminate it. Like, it wasn't like you didn't get the job. It was like, we're eliminating the job. But it might come back in three months. So we'll let you know. I was like, oh, god. This is ridiculous.

Michele Hansen (37:03.659)
Yeah.

Michele Hansen (37:12.832)
It goes to 11.

Michele Hansen (37:30.018)
You can't plan your life around that.

Colleen (37:32.431)
anyway, yeah, so it's been it's been lots of exciting things happening.

Michele Hansen (37:33.868)
Yeah, and anyway, we had a call and you're like, what should I do? And I was like, I don't know, I've got stuff you can do.

Colleen (37:42.851)
So where I want to go with this though is like having having the position with you has taken off like I didn't even realize The stress I was caring about how am I going to make money until we signed a contract now that that has been lifted I have found that the the non work days I have so much energy to explore other things right so like I am deep because I'm like how right we all know my goal is to be wealthy

Michele Hansen (37:55.182)
Hmm.

Colleen (38:10.54)
so I can buy this house that I'm currently renting, which is insanely expensive. I know right in California. thanks California. So, wait, where was I going with that? goal is to be wealthy. So I have all this energy now, which is.

Michele Hansen (38:14.338)
So you can afford a $10 million, 800 square foot house on the beautiful California island you live on.

Michele Hansen (38:30.539)
Your goal is to be wealthy and on your non-work days, okay.

Colleen (38:36.788)
amazing because it's not existential crisis of like, my gosh, how am I going to pay my bills? It's like, okay, I have this time. I'm going to use it. I'm really motivated after that interview shenanigans too. So I'm like, how can I use this to build something that is that is an asset, whether it's a consultancy or it's a, really think it's going to be productized consulting because I think starting a lots of that we could have a whole nother podcast about starting a SAS from scratch and how to do that. But I think I'm going to go productize.

Michele Hansen (39:04.782)
I think we did a whole podcast about that, like for like two years. It was like two, we kind of did, yeah. Yeah, if anyone wants to know that, listen to the podcast about starting a SaaS from scratch, just go back to August of 2020. Not that anybody wants to go back to August of 2020, but you know. Yeah.

Colleen (39:07.266)
Well, that was like a year ago. So I feel like we should, we could do it again. I mean, we just do it every.

Colleen (39:21.954)
2020?

gosh, that was crazy times. Anyway, so there's a lot now. See, when I podcast with you, I get totally off topic, which is super fun because we're so close, but this is definitely chaotic.

Michele Hansen (39:34.52)
I'm sorry, I have ADHD. So, like, okay, so you wanna do productized consulting, which I think is smart, also because every organization is gonna have their own level of weird, right? Like, again, this is the, and I think this is like a frustration I hear from engineers all the time, that like, you can't fully systematize and organize how weird people and organizations of people are. Like, they are all so different and so weird in their own ways, and you can't like,

Colleen (40:00.514)
They're all so different. Yeah.

Michele Hansen (40:03.864)
put one set of things on all of them and this seems to be like deeply, existentially frustrating to like every engineer. Like, you know, it's like, why can't everybody just pay with a credit card? Why do we have, know, like just, you know, all of those things. Like, so I think of productized consulting, especially when everything is moving so fast and so like, there's just so many moving pieces and so many personalities and like just so many different pressures too on them.

that I think it really makes sense to deproductize consulting. Like have some sort of like your own tooling or whatever it is to like, that people can deploy and then build off of to, you know, reach that goal of people shipping things faster, but also the head of marketing, not taking down prod.

Colleen (40:49.538)
Yeah, there's that too. So yeah, so it's been great. So I am great. I am all in on open claw. I don't know if I told you. I have fallen down the hype cycle and I love it here. No, I love it. I love it here. So I understand why you don't trust it, but you have to understand it's only... I know, and I'm a security person too. Like I'm not a security person, but I'm a little, I'm sensitive about security.

Michele Hansen (40:57.408)
Are you? I don't trust it. I feel like it's... I am surprised. You are not a risk taker.

Yeah.

Colleen (41:16.822)
So you have to understand it's only as dangerous as you let it be. Like I'm not gonna give it access to my email, which is such a, want to, but I won't.

Michele Hansen (41:23.062)
I feel like that's what every what okay the stories I'm seeing it's like yeah I connected it to my email into my bank account and to like my phone and like now it automatically like pays my bills for me or like whatever and I'm like I What so what are you using it for if you're not being completely irresponsible?

Colleen (41:29.282)
Nah.

Colleen (41:33.238)
No, no, there's no way.

Colleen (41:40.161)
Okay, so first of all, I have these scripts to set it up on Hetzner in a locked down mode. So every time I set it up, so I'm setting it up for some people and every time I set it up for them, like I set it up with my scripts, so it's a locked down mode. So really I'm just using it for content right now, for content generation, for SaaS. And so I connect to Google search console, I connect to the SERP API, I connect to keywords everywhere. And every week I have it pull a report, do an analysis, write content for the simple file upload blog and it auto publishes it.

Michele Hansen (42:10.702)
And guess why do you need to use open claw for that? Like, why can't somebody just use clawed code to do that?

Colleen (42:14.146)
So it's, you can, but what is so, this is such an interesting question because you absolutely can do all of that with Cloud Code, but what is so nice, it seems subtle, but the way that the Cron jobs work on OpenClaw where you just come to your desk Monday morning, I'm in Telegram, which I already use. Like it's delivered to me, it's done for me. I don't have to remember to, yeah, I use Telegram sometimes with OpenClaw. I like to use Telegram.

Michele Hansen (42:37.08)
Telegram? Like the chat app?

Michele Hansen (42:43.531)
Okay, alright.

Colleen (42:43.884)
Do not use it ever. I used to use it with some of my friends. Like we had a Telegram group, so I already had it.

Michele Hansen (42:47.552)
Yeah, I've only I've used it like like for lyricon. There's a telegram group, but like that's like the only time I use it. OK, go on.

Colleen (42:54.134)
But so here's, it's such a subtle difference, but having it done for me, like I literally don't have to do anything. It's done for me and it's delivered to me where I already am. Like I have Telegram on my phone. I have Telegram on my computer. Like it's fundamentally different than finding the right repo, going into cloud code, being like, hey, kick off this job and do this thing. You don't forget to do it cause it's done for you. And I think that's the thing about this stuff is especially some of these marketing or content automations, like people don't post on LinkedIn cause they just forget.

Michele Hansen (43:14.273)
Hmm.

Colleen (43:24.288)
or they don't make the time for it. They don't post new blog articles because they know they should.

Michele Hansen (43:25.293)
Right.

or like it's exhausting to post on LinkedIn in LinkedIn format.

Colleen (43:33.066)
Yeah, so that's why I like it so much. It's not fundamentally any different than Cloud Code. It's just the done for you where you already are.

Michele Hansen (43:41.838)
Okay, and I guess you haven't connected it to, you know, like, I don't know, your grandmother's pacemaker, so it's probably not gonna destroy anything, right? Which is a lot of the use cases I feel like I see. Again, I guess we talked about all the AI hype, There's the people who are having the posts blow up online, because they're the ones who are doing just the wackiest and stuff.

Colleen (43:48.821)
Yeah.

Colleen (43:56.394)
Yeah, this.

Colleen (44:08.546)
Like that's what I'm saying is that's not really working. I think all of those people, if you look, if you click through to any of those articles, cause I have actually like read them, all of those people are trying to sell you something. Like just remember that. Like the one guy's trying to sell you his SaaS to monitor GTM and he's telling you about GTM workflows. Another guy is trying to sell you a course. Like I'm not saying they're bad people. I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying those workflows do not have the impact. People are making it sound like they do. But.

Michele Hansen (44:19.404)
Yeah.

Colleen (44:35.062)
I also believe they might someday, which is why I am investing the time and the energy into building them and learning about them and seeing what's possible because they don't today, but maybe they will someday.

Michele Hansen (44:46.882)
Have you published this anywhere? If someone is like, wait, shoot, I need that thing to automatically write me these blog posts based on all this stuff. Because I know you can publish a skill for Claude Coder. I actually did this myself last weekend for this ship score framework basically to figure out which features you should prioritize and stuff like that. We'll talk about that in another episode. But I published out a Claude code.

Colleen (44:48.395)
Ahem.

Colleen (45:12.811)
Okay, yes.

Michele Hansen (45:16.524)
or you can use anything with it, like an open skill, like skill for it so that you can, anybody can just run with it. But like, I'm just curious if anyone's listening is like, shoot, I need that marketing thing, that sounds awesome. have you published that or?

Colleen (45:29.856)
Yeah, so here's what I did. I have a YouTube video on it and I posted to LinkedIn. I had two people reach out and ask me to set it up for them, but I don't really think, so I thought about, I get in the business of setting up secure open claw and charge like two grand, but that seems like low hanging fruit, so I don't think I'm gonna do that. So not really, I guess is the answer. Not really.

Michele Hansen (45:48.622)
Hmm.

Michele Hansen (45:55.79)
But I guess somebody could just set that up, right? It's like, that's the wild thing about how it's just...

Colleen (45:58.433)
Yeah, it's...

Michele Hansen (46:03.458)
I mean, I don't wanna say just, it's really, it's like magic. Like you just like write the PRD and then it just kick off quad code or whatever, and it builds you the tool that you need. And then, you know, the code is no longer the valuable part. Like it's the thinking behind it and what it does, which is a total shift.

Colleen (46:25.548)
Well, it's the same thing with content, right? Like, so I'm deep in the, you know, content is no longer, the amount of content is no longer a differentiator. Like, I just think we're gonna have such a fundamental shift in everything. Like, I think we're gonna go back to in-person events. Like, I think we're, like, I, if I was, well, maybe I should put a stake in the ground since I'm always looking for ideas. Like, my stake in the ground would be that we are going back to in-person events because...

Michele Hansen (46:27.66)
Like, yeah.

Michele Hansen (46:40.536)
Yeah.

Colleen (46:52.002)
Like that's why I started. So I started a YouTube channel like three weeks ago and I still am terrible at YouTube But the reason I did that was because like how do you prove you're human anymore? How do you prove that you wrote the content?

Michele Hansen (47:01.358)
even still on YouTube, like you can't really prove that it was you. But yeah, like I put out a newsletter this weekend and I felt like I had to write at the bottom of it. Like every word of this was written by me personally, like the old fashioned way.

Colleen (47:04.268)
I know!

Colleen (47:14.4)
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think attention is, and can I say one more thing while we're talking about AI? If.

Michele Hansen (47:19.222)
Yeah. But yeah, I guess like I was thinking about pitching a talk like that, like me being on stage. That could not be AI unless I'm some I don't know, didn't they do like holograms of like Michael Jackson or whatever? Like, I don't know. Like, I guess you could. But like, OK, you're going to say something.

Colleen (47:26.785)
Yes.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

Colleen (47:36.344)
was just gonna say, speaking of these go-to-market automations that are terrible, I cannot tell you the number of LinkedIn. So I've been on hundreds of podcasts. We did what, 300 episodes? No, how many episodes? 500 episodes of Software Social? A million? I don't know. We did for years. But so like I am now getting, now they're trying, everyone is trying to use these tools that pick up like on personalization. That's the big thing in outbound right now.

Michele Hansen (47:48.43)
800? A thousand? I mean, how many podcasts did we do, Michael? A thousand? I don't know. Okay.

Colleen (48:05.707)
So the number of cold emails and DMs I get that will reference some very esoteric specific thing from a podcast is all of them. Every single one. It's like, I heard you on Rob Walling's podcast where you said X, Y, and Z. I think it's super interesting. And I'm like, bullshit, you didn't hear me. Your AI scraped YouTube and pulled out this social selling signal.

Michele Hansen (48:27.576)
Dude, this makes me so glad that I nuked my tweets a couple years ago and I basically only tweet now when I'm at a Larival event, because a lot of Larival people are on Twitter. But that is creepy. But meanwhile, my cold email, okay, so honestly, I'm not getting those, even though I had three and a podcast episodes, so guess people don't wanna sell me stuff that much, even though I still get a lot of cold email. You know what cold email I'm getting? It's about pianos. Are you getting the piano cold email?

Colleen (48:32.684)
Yeah!

Colleen (48:41.355)
It's so disturbing. It's so disturbing. now.

Colleen (48:53.677)
Tell me.

I don't look in my spam folder, so maybe?

Michele Hansen (48:57.984)
I found somebody else in Tiny Sea the other day who was getting the piano cold email and it is so weird. I'm gonna read it to you because honestly, if I were a reporter, I would be like, is the story behind the piano cold email? I can't even find it. I posted it in a channel somewhere. But like...

Colleen (49:01.441)
the same piano email.

Michele Hansen (49:25.92)
It's so bizarre. It's like somebody trying to sell me a baby grand piano. it's so, so, so, hold on. I have to find this. I can't find it. I, okay, hold on. Wait, am I, is it here? No, I can't find it. This is, this is great podcasting. Such a great start. Yeah, that's true. wait, I found it. Okay, okay, hold on. Okay, okay. Subject line, looking for a baby grand piano.

Colleen (49:31.683)
So weird.

Colleen (49:44.931)
I mean, I had to go let the power guy in, so the gas and electric, whatever he was. Okay, okay, okay.

Michele Hansen (49:57.112)
Hello, support. Trust you're doing fine. A friend of mine is giving away her late husband's Yamaha piano to an instrument lover. This instrument holds profound sentimental value for her, and she'd love for it to find a new home with someone who will cherish it as much as her late husband did. She'd be delighted to share its history, condition, or other details if you're curious. I'd be grateful for any thoughts or connections you might have. Respectfully, Miss Ogas.

I have received this email about pianos to multiple of my email addresses and literally, there was a podcast I listened to last year where they actually traced all those weird spam texts you get. What is the deal behind this? I need a reporter to dig into the piano cold email. Because it's not even like, we know the Nigerian Prince scam, right? But it's like,

Colleen (50:46.573)
What is it?

Colleen (50:53.985)
Right.

Michele Hansen (50:56.206)
Who in their right mind is gonna be like, oh yeah, of course this person halfway around the world is just gonna put a piano in the mail. There's some scam here and I'm just so curious about what it is, but I don't have time to follow the thread myself, so I hope someone out there does because there's probably a really great like.

Colleen (51:04.256)
Weird.

Colleen (51:14.211)
Please report back if you do.

Michele Hansen (51:18.974)
style section article about this. You know what I mean? Like, there is a like, if there was a TechCrunch style section, like this would be in it, right? Like, or like maybe Planet Money, like maybe Planet Money would do it. Anyway. Yeah, that's super creepy. Like, and I feel like people don't, again, I guess we kind of keep coming back to this, but like,

Colleen (51:21.473)
Yeah.

Colleen (51:26.659)
Yes, it would.

Colleen (51:36.919)
It's so creepy. Like we don't have time for me to read, but it's super creepy.

Michele Hansen (51:45.546)
especially as women, it's like an extra level of like, like, I really hate getting those cold emails that are like, like my coworker Dave and I were just talking about you over lunch, like, and I'm like, that's weird. Like, I don't think you realize how weird that is. And like, not a compliment. Like, I don't like this does not make me feel good about you or your company. And also, I know this conversation didn't happen. And so you're literally like,

Colleen (51:57.345)
You're like, no.

Colleen (52:04.931)
Yeah.

Michele Hansen (52:14.9)
you are lying to me about how creepy you are and just like there's so many levels of like me being like right okay this person does not have good judgment i am never buying anything from them ever

Colleen (52:27.807)
ever. Yeah. So anyway, cold outbound.

Michele Hansen (52:34.306)
But a lot of people get a lot of really good results from cold email and we shouldn't like, you know, because there's a lot of people who have a lot of success with it and blah, blah. Okay, it's just, all right, I've gotten that disclaimer out of the way.

Colleen (52:38.443)
Well, okay, so I feel like as a...

Well, I think it's this whole like social selling, trying to personalize is no longer the game. If you're doing cold email, that's not the game anymore. I think the game is you meet the person where they are with the right offer and they will respond, right? You don't need to bullshit them with, saw you. That's right, that's the basic of sales. Like, are you selling what they need at the time that they need it? Like bullshitting them with like fake, I saw you here, I saw you there. Literally, it's almost a red flag to me now.

Michele Hansen (52:51.118)
Mmm.

Michele Hansen (52:58.412)
And that's kind of the basics of sales, right?

Michele Hansen (53:12.558)
Yeah, it is a red flag. Yeah.

Colleen (53:13.505)
Yeah. Like if I read that, I'm like, you're full of shit. Excuse my language. I guess it's our podcast. We can do whatever we want. That's not FPR.

Michele Hansen (53:20.046)
We can swear this is an NPR. I know I feel like I've been Editing myself. I guess I do know I mean some people did listen to it in the car on the way to like drop their kids off at school Which you know, which I get it, you know, like we're not a murder podcast like, know, like, know what I think, you know I hope those parents who are listening to it, you know I hope their kids sitting in the backseat say what my parent, you know I would say to my parents when I was a kid whenever they would swear in front of us Which was I hear worse at school

Colleen (53:29.948)
I apologize to your kids. I forgot about that.

Colleen (53:47.875)
Ha!

Michele Hansen (53:49.934)
which is true. This is the time we had allotted for this. We did not...

Colleen (53:51.171)
Which is true, I guess. Okay.

Colleen (53:59.822)
Did this make any sense? I feel like we were just like, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. There was no.

Michele Hansen (54:02.72)
We did not, there was no plot. We literally did not prepare for this. All of the warm chaos that people have experienced was genuine warm chaos. So one of my conditions of hiring you was that you podcast with me again. So, no, it's kind of a joke. No.

Colleen (54:08.014)
Clearly.

Colleen (54:15.48)
Yes it was.

Colleen (54:25.028)
I didn't know that, but I'm here for it. No, I'm kidding. Yes.

Michele Hansen (54:32.396)
So am I paying you for this? I don't know. This is a really good question to ask on air. And I don't know, we're going to try to do this like every other week. that what we said?

Colleen (54:45.924)
I like every other week. I feel like once a month is not, we didn't agree on anything. I'm just bringing it. I mean, I feel like once a month is not enough. What do you think? We can talk about it offline.

Michele Hansen (54:55.414)
Yeah, I feel like we were thinking about once a month, but I don't think, because then you just end up doing, like, what did you do last month? Like, you know, like, rather than us just being, you know, caught up and chaotic. Again, I'm all about the chaos today. It is also 9 p.m. So I think I'm getting a little bit loopy, you know, because when your workday starts at 9 a.m., your brain slips a little bit at this point.

Colleen (54:59.852)
We can do once a month.

Colleen (55:15.218)
yeah.

Colleen (55:21.358)
Yeah.

Colleen (55:25.23)
I like crazy Michelle, I'm here for it. I'm here for it. All my other podcasts are so organized. Like I'm here for this total chaos.

Michele Hansen (55:25.484)
Okay.

Michele Hansen (55:32.814)
I mean, that's what we are, right? Like we are the, you know, what you listen to while you're walking the dog or whatever. Like it's, you know, this is not your hard technical content podcast, right? We're not mostly technical. We're not even kind of technical. It's not even remotely technical. No, it's just chat. It's software social. Come for the socializing and occasionally there will be software.

Colleen (55:38.649)
Yes.

Michele Hansen (56:03.606)
Every other week-ish, every couple of weeks, that works for me. And I guess maybe some weeks we'll have more to talk about and we'll do more. But yeah, we're intentionally gonna be low commitment, because girl, we're busy. We are both busy. I've got a team of people now. Yeah, I guess we should talk about that at some point. We should do a thing about that.

Colleen (56:05.764)
Week, week.

Colleen (56:17.77)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

I know you do. I'm so proud of you for that. Yeah, we can talk about your team of people. Cause remember, okay, if we go back to early days of software social, you might remember I used to harass you about the size of your business and the zero people you had working for you. And now you have a whole freaking team.

Michele Hansen (56:40.578)
See, you know, everybody out there who's like, I wish I had founder friends. You know what you've learned from this podcast is that you have founder friends and then they just roast you all the time. Like that is like what you're signing up for. So like you are better off at just being you like walking through a field with your dog and like nobody else to roast you about your decisions. OK, I do love you, though. I do love you and I love my mastermind. So thank you for roasting me. All of you. I do need it. I do need the accountability. Yeah, we'll talk about that at some point. We've got we've got time. Not today, but we've

Colleen (56:47.94)
All the time.

Colleen (56:55.972)
Ha

Hahaha

Colleen (57:10.456)
Not today.

Michele Hansen (57:10.512)
time in general I guess I have to go set up like a YouTube channel or I don't know part of me is like I'll just have Claude do it and it's like I could just go over to YouTube and just make it again I guess I'll have to edit out that whole thing in the middle about the power guy and me just like standing here like humming to myself it's like

Colleen (57:20.1)
That's right, video.

Colleen (57:25.54)
That would be funny if you left it in. I guess you should cut that out. Yeah, it took a minute. Yeah.

Michele Hansen (57:31.68)
It just goes on though. It's not even one of those jokes that's like, know, cause there's some jokes that they keep going and the fact that they keep going and they're not funny makes them funny. I don't think it ever gets to that point. It was not, it didn't have that much potential, honestly. Yeah, and I'm just literally standing here and I'm like, da, da, da.

Colleen (57:42.436)
I don't think it was.

Yeah. And I was gone too long. I had to like walk him all the way into the house. was a whole thing.

Michele Hansen (57:53.462)
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we'll leave it in for the YouTubes. The people on the YouTubes, can enjoy that because I do tell them like it's a good time to go take a break. And everybody who's listening to this me like, what is she talking about? You'll just have to go watch it on YouTube and find the random spot where Colleen leaves to talk to the power guy. It reminds me of that time we were podcasting and there was like, was it like leaf blowers or something else? There was like a landscaping apocalypse outside that day.

Colleen (58:13.186)
And no, they, yes, yes. Yeah, I remember that. They cut the, they actually cut the cable, the landscapers. Like they just cut the cable. I lost internet in the middle of it. Yep. They literally, I was like, what are you, what is happening? They were trying to trim a tree and they just got the internet cable when they trimmed the tree.

Michele Hansen (58:23.31)
Yeah, you lost internet in the middle of it!

Michele Hansen (58:36.398)
mean, whomst amongst us? Whomst amongst us?

on that tremendous disappointment, I think that, that I think we should stop because we will just, we will just keep going like this is the problem. so, and we might exhaust people. Yeah. Thank you for listening. Did we have a sign off?

Colleen (58:50.689)
Yeah, probably.

really stop.

Colleen (58:57.486)
Thanks everyone for listening.

We used to be very organized, Michelle, because we had sponsors and we were doing it every week and it was a whole thing. We used our podcast voices. No, I did. I had a podcast voice. Would you like to hear it? Thank you everyone. Here's my podcast voice. Thank you everyone for listening to Software Social. You can find us on the web at softwaresocial.dev. Dev? I don't even remember. Is it, what's our?

Michele Hansen (59:07.266)
We did. Yeah, we're not doing sponsors again. We're not. Did we have podcast voices? Did I use podcast voice? yes. I want to hear your podcast voice.

Michele Hansen (59:25.922)
I guess maybe you can still find us there. No, I guess I do. I have like a radio voice from when I did radio in high school and college. Actually, yeah, actually when I was on Mostly Technical last year, they had me, I did a read of the Bento ad and I used my radio voice, which I don't even. This podcast is brought to you by.

Colleen (59:32.821)
yes.

Michele Hansen (59:48.002)
this bottle of water because I'm getting over a case of bronchitis and I have been muting myself and coughing and drinking water this whole time. To learn more about this bottle of water, go to my desk. Anyway.

Colleen (59:49.892)
Colleen (01:00:01.464)
That's kind of like ASMR. I feel like you could do ASMR with that voice if you want to be a YouTube star. Yeah, totally. Yep.

Michele Hansen (01:00:05.208)
Could I? Could I? I could do it. And then I could also do like the weird like nails thing that the people on the Instagrams do. Okay. I will see you on Slack and we will talk to all these lovely people at some point in the near future.

Colleen (01:00:12.142)
That's right. We should stop.

Colleen (01:00:24.579)
Bye everyone!

Michele Hansen (01:00:30.41)
I shouldn't press leave. Wait, I need to start. I can't leave. I'm stuck. is. Hotel California. can you tell that I don't? OK, so like people, you don't realize that like the first five minutes of this was me trying to figure out where the recording button is on Riverside. So we are like we this is a well-oiled machine. Like we are so not remotely at all rusty when it comes to podcasting. OK, bye.

Colleen (01:00:31.884)
You know, you can't leave. have to stop the recording and then you have to wait for it to upload. Don't leave.

Colleen (01:00:40.694)
You should have a stop recording.

Colleen (01:00:48.516)
Hahaha