Software Social

Pre-order Michele's book! deployempathy.com/order/ 

Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. Oh Dear does everything they can to help you avoid downtime like scheduled task monitoring, SSL certificate expiration notifications and more. But downtime happens. When it does, it's how you communicate in times of crisis that make the difference. Oh Dear makes it easy to keep your customers up to date during critical times. You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

Colleen Schnettler  00:35

So Michele, do you have a, 

Michele Hansen  00:38

Hey, 

Colleen Schnettler  00:38

Good morning. Do you have a numbers update for us on your book?

Michele Hansen  00:43

I do. So my presale went live about a week and a half ago, when our episode with Sean went live. That was my deadline. And, I've sold 43 copies right now. Yeah, it's kind of exciting. Um, it's not all people I know, which is exciting.

Colleen Schnettler  01:06

That's very exciting.

Michele Hansen  01:08

I love how supportive people have been. And it also, it makes me, it's just reassuring that people I don't know are buying it. But yeah, so that puts it right now, just, and this is just the raw, you know, number of times $29, which is $1,247.

Colleen Schnettler  01:30

That's amazing. Congratulations.

Michele Hansen  01:33

Yeah. Thank you. And I got my first payout yesterday, which after, like, taxes, and everything else, was $912.

Colleen Schnettler  01:41

Wow.

Michele Hansen  01:42

Which was kind of exciting, and gives me a little bit of budget to work with, with, like, you know, hiring a proofreader, and using some, like, layout tools, but, you know, so I was pulling these numbers, and because, you know, everybody loves numbers and whatnot. And I was thinking about it. So, so I got this, this message from someone yesterday, who had started reading the book, and it was actually someone I don't know. And if I can just kind of read what they, what they said. 

Colleen Schnettler  02:25

Yes, please.

Michele Hansen  02:26

And so I had a personal aha moment reading distinction between sympathetic, empathetic and solution based responses. My sympathetic conclusion based responses are leaving no space for empathetic, something I need to address. I'm an engineer and an architect by trade, and I'm looking to do a better job interviewing the humans attached to our work. But I'm also thinking about your book from the sense that a better balance of empathy will help me be a better teammate as well. And, like, getting that was so moving for me because it made me think about how, you know, I'm not writing this book for the money. Like, yes, the book needs to make money, because I've been working on it for four months now and have, you know, there's a lot of time I haven't spent working on Geocodio. Oh, like, I've been a pretty bad Geocodio employee the past couple of months, like, full honesty, right? So like, I have to, like, it has to have been, you know, worth my time. But like, I am not, I'm not motivated by that, like, I am motivated by this, by like, you know, like, I have this like, secret dream goal. Well, I mean, it's not a secret cuz I've, like, tweeted about it, but like, whatever. You know, Mathias sometimes says to me, he's like, I know you were thinking about something because you tweeted about it. And I’m like, oh, I forgot to, like, verbalize that. Anyway, um, I have this dream that through the process of learning this for interviewing, and, like, product development and marketing reasons, people will understand how to be more empathetic and use that in their daily lives. Like, everyone has a capacity for empathy. Everybody can learn it, not everybody is taught it or shown it so they don't really learn it. But everyone has a capacity for it. And, but also, like, very few people, you know, put like, be more empathetic, like, learn how to learn how to use empathy, like on their to do list every day. But they put write a landing page, get more customers, build a feature, like, reply to all of those customers and intercom like, those are the things that end up on a to do list. And so I have this like, kind of, I don't know, like, naive dream that like people will read this and apply these skills to the things they're already doing, but in doing so, learn how to be more empathetic in their daily life or you know, as a as a team member or whatnot. And just getting this message really, it was so motivating, but also so soul-nourishing because it really made me feel like, like the book has done what I wanted it to do. Like, this is what I set out to achieve and, like, this message makes me feel like the book is a success, regardless of how many copies it sells. Like, so it was just like, it was kind of a, it was kind of a, like a moment, like it was, it also sort of like if you're having this effect, like you can, like, stop rearranging it, like, you know, I feel like I've done a rewrite every week for, like, the past eight weeks. Yeah, time to time to ship the gosh darn thing.

Colleen Schnettler  05:57

That is wonderful. So what I just heard you say is, this book is secretly teaching us how to be better humans, wrapped up in a book about customer interviews.

Michele Hansen  06:09

Yes, wrapped up in a book about which features you should prioritize, and how to, you know, pick a pricing model based on what people's usage patterns are, and, like, how to understand what people want and write better landing pages. All that stuff they're already trying to do. But then yeah, there's, there's this kind of bigger message. Like, I feel like so much of good UX practice is good human being practice. 

Colleen Schnettler  06:35

Yeah. 

Michele Hansen  06:36

Um, and, I mean, I, I really learned about empathy by doing interviews myself. So this, I mean, it's, it's, it's very personal for me in a way that, like, the book is, I don't know, it is very, very personal for me. And it's not just about showing empathy to other people. It's also about showing empathy to yourself, too, which is just as important.

Colleen Schnettler  07:06

So I have not read the book yet, unfortunately. Can you tell me briefly, what the difference is between empathy and sympathy that that writer wrote into you? Because we talk about it a lot, but we've never defined it, really.

Michele Hansen  07:22

Yeah, that's true. So empathy is when you, basically when you, when you try to understand the other person's context without judgment, and it doesn't mean that you agree with what they're saying. You're just trying to find the context...

Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear.

If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that I'm passionate about customer service and listening to customers.

A few months ago, we noticed something wasn't working on the Oh Dear dashboard. We reported it to them, and they fixed it almost immediately. Everybody has bugs occasionally, but not every company is so responsive to their customers, and we really appreciate that.

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Colleen Schnettler  00:35

So Michele, I'd love to hear about how things are going with the book. 

Michele Hansen  00:40

They're going. Um, so after our episode with Sean last week, I realized that I kind of, I have to launch this thing eventually, right? 

Colleen Schnettler  00:54

Yes. 

Michele Hansen  00:55

And, you know, for, you know, I mean, for months I've been hearing that advice of, you know, do a, do a presale and like, start selling it beforehand, And, and I was like, yeah, I mean, you know, I, that's the best practice. That makes sense. And then just kind of be like, but that doesn't apply to me, right? Like, I couldn't make, um. It's, you know, it's funny, because it's almost, I feel like the way people feel about when they hear about customer interviewing, they're like, that sounds really valuable and like the right thing to do, and I'm just gonna act like that doesn't apply to me. 

Colleen Schnettler  01:29

Yep. 

Michele Hansen  01:30

So that's kind of how I was, and talking to Sean really kind of got me to be like, okay, okay, fine. I should actually sit down and do this. So I got a very simple website together, and then I actually did end up launching the presale. 

Colleen Schnettler  01:46

Oh, congratulations. 

Michele Hansen  01:48

Yeah, that was super scary. Like, because the book 

Colleen Schnettler  01:50

I bet.

Michele Hansen  01:53

And, like, random places where it says like, insert graphic here.

Colleen Schnettler  02:01

So tell us how many books have you sold? 

Michele Hansen  02:03

Okay, yeah, so I guess I get to do, like, a numbers update for the first time. This is fun. Um, so I have sold 34 copies. 

Colleen Schnettler  02:15

Wow. 

Michele Hansen  02:16

Presale.

Colleen Schnettler  02:17

That's a lot. 

Michele Hansen  02:18

So, and that's not including for like, you know, platform fees and whatever. Just like, you know, $29 times 34, basically. $986. 

Colleen Schnettler  02:32

That's amazing. Congratulations! 

Michele Hansen  02:35

So close to that, like, 1000 mark, which, I was talking about this with Mathias earlier, and he's kind of like, I feel like that's like a, you know, that's like, the legit threshold, is 1000. Like, and I don't know why, but it's like, yeah, it's like that feels like, that feels like the, the, like, the first big hurdle. 

Colleen Schnettler  02:55

I totally agree. That's wonderful news. Congratulations. 

Michele Hansen  03:00

You know, I expected to feel excited, or relieved, or something positive after releasing it, or the presale, at least. And I gotta tell you, like, I just feel pressure. Like, I'm really glad I didn't do this sooner. 

Colleen Schnettler  03:25

Really? 

Michele Hansen  03:27

Yeah. Because now I have, you know, at least 34 people I can't disappoint.

Colleen Schnettler  03:32

Right. 

Michele Hansen  03:32

And I feel like, just like, the pressure to make something that is a quality product, like, I already had that pressure on myself to put something out there that I'm proud of. 

Colleen Schnettler  03:44

Yeah.

Michele Hansen  03:46

Now I have all these other people who are expecting that, and not that anyone has emailed me and said anything to that effect, but that's how I feel. And I was thinking about this earlier. And I was like, man, like, writing and selling this book has like, brought out all of these, like, vulnerabilities and, and self-doubt and everything, like all of this stuff that I like, thought I had dealt with and then it's, like, sort of like bursting out of the cabinet, being like, hey, I'm still here. So it's, you know, I mean, I have tools to, like, deal with that, but it's been like, oh my gosh, like, I thought I had dealt with, like, I never feel this way about anything about Geocodio, like, so. 

Colleen Schnettler  04:33

So, this is interesting, because I, when I was feeling a similar way, many months ago, I don't actually know if I talked about it on the podcast, but I had a very high value client that I had a great relationship with that needed a file uploader, and mine wasn't quite done, and I had this moment of terror, panic, I don't know, where I was like, I shouldn't use mine because, because if I put it on my client's site, like, it has to work, right? There's no get out of jail free card, Kind of like, you've now sold this book. Like, you have to finish it. 

Michele Hansen  05:07

Right. It's not just like, throwing it in a PDF and then like. 

Colleen Schnettler  05:09

Yeah. 

Michele Hansen  05:10

Oh, whatever, nobody paid for it. Like, it's not a big deal. Like, it's like, no, this is, like, this is serious now. 

Colleen Schnettler  05:17

Yeah. And I think something that, that I'm thinking of as you're talking about this, I remember at the time, Alex Hillman had a really great tweet thread about you're not scared of failure, maybe you're secretly scared of success. 

Michele Hansen  05:32

Mm hmm. 

Colleen Schnettler  05:33

It was really interesting. Like, just when you think about, like, the psychology and all of these new insecurities coming to light for you, like, maybe you're scared of success. 

Michele Hansen  05:42

Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. We use Oh Dear to keep track of SSL certificates. If an SSL certificate is about to expire, we get an alert beforehand. We have automated processes to renew them, so we use Oh Dear as an extra level of peace of mind. You can sign up for a ten day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app. 

Michele Hansen  00:28

Hey, welcome back to Software Social. So today we're doing something kind of fun. We're leaning on the social part of Software Social, and we have invited our friend, Sean Fioritto, to join us today.

Sean Fioritto  00:44

Hey guys. Thanks for having me. 

Colleen Schnettler  00:47

Hi Sean. Thanks for being here.

Michele Hansen  00:48

So, and the reason why we asked Sean, in addition to being a great person, is that Sean wrote a book called Sketching With CSS, and as you all know, I am writing a book and figuring it out. And there is a lot of stuff I haven't figured out, especially when it comes to, like, actually selling the book. Like, I feel like that, I feel like the, writing the book is, like, I feel like I kind of got a handle on that. The whole selling the book thing, like, not so much. Um, so we thought it would be kind of helpful to have Sean come on, since like, he's done this successfully.

Colleen Schnettler  021:36

So Sean, I would love to start with a little bit of your background with the book. What inspired you to write it? How did you get started? Where did that idea come from? 

Sean Fioritto  01:50

Yeah, so I wanted to quit my job. 

Colleen Schnettler  01:53

Don't we all?

Michele Hansen  01:55

Honest goal.

Sean Fioritto  01:56

I always wanted to go on my own, be independent, run my own business. That's been a goal for a very long time. So, I tried various things, you know, in my spare time, with limited to no success for years and years before that, and I was just getting sick of, the plan was, you know, I'm like, okay, I have this job. And in my spare time, I'm gonna get something going and then, and that just wasn't working. So I was getting impatient. Anyway, I ended up signing up with Amy Hoy's 30x500 class. This was seven or eight years ago. So, I signed up for that class. Actually, wait, I'm getting my timeline a little mixed up. So, I started reading stuff by Amy Hoy. It's funny, I'd actually bought another book that she wrote, and she used her sort of process for that book. And I bought that for my, for my job earlier. And I was like, oh, this Amy Hoy person is interesting. And so I started reading her blog, and then she has these things she writes called ebombs. You guys are probably familiar with that term. But they're basically content that, it's educational content directed at her target, you know, customer, which she would call her audience. So I was just, she, at that point, she had started 30x500. I think it was actually called a Year of Hustle at that point. And so she had all this content, and I was just devouring it, because I was like, she gets me. She knows my problem, and this is awesome. So I was just reading everything that she could write, that she wrote, and, you know, finding any resource that she'd ever written about, like, what's her process, because she was talking about this mysterious process that she has, she, she would talk about it. And I was able to sort of reverse engineer part of her course, the main thing called Sales Safari. So I'm not, I'm at my job, coasting, doing a half-assed job, spending a lot of time doing Sales Safari, trying to figure out what, what product I should do. Not product, but that's not the way to think about it with Sales Safari, but trying to figure out like, what, who, what audience should I focus on? And what problems do they have, and what's the juiciest problem that makes sense for me to tackle? And then, and she would call them pains, by the way, not, not problems. So what's the juiciest pain that they have, for me, that was like, be the easiest for me to peel off, and, and work on. So I started digging, and it was like, alright, well, what audience makes sense for me? This is kind of the process, and it was like, you know, like web designers, web developers, because I was a web developer. And so like, what are the, you know, audiences that are close to audiences that I'm in is kind of ideal. So I started there, and then I just read and read and read. I probably put like, 80 hours of research time into that process. 

Colleen Schnettler  05:05

Wow.

Michele Hansen  05:06

That's a lot.

Sean Fioritto  05:06

Of just reading and reading and reading and reading, and taking notes. And really understanding and whittling down and figuring out my audience, and figuring out, so the thinking, the benefit of that amount of time spent deliberately going through a process like that is that at some point, I became so in-tune with the audience that I could identify, and this is gonna pay off for you, Michele, this, this little story, because this feeds into like, how do you sell it. At some point, it meant that I could tell when a thing that I was, like a piece of content marketing that I was working on, was going to resonate very strongly with my audience and be worth the effort, if that makes sense. And it didn't really take much. Like, after I got done with that much amount of research, it was sort of, like, pretty trivial for me to come up with ideas for content that I could write that I knew people were gonna just eat up. And so that's, that's how I started building my, building my mailing list. And then that's how I eventually, Colleen, to your question, I came up with Sketching With CSS, which it was a solution to a pain point that I'd identified in my audience, which at that point was web designers.

Colleen Schnettler  06:37

How big did your mailing list grow?

Sean Fioritto  06:39

I have 20,000 people on my mail list.

Colleen Schnettler  06:41

20,000?

Michele Hansen  06:42

Holy guacamole. 

Sean Fioritto  06:46

Yeah. So like I said, I got really good. No, no, no.

Michele Hansen  06:51

I've got like, 200 people on my mailing list, or like, 220. And like, for context, that's like, 200 more people than I ever expected to have on the mailing list, and hearing, like, 20,000 feels very far from, from 200.

Sean Fioritto  07:10

Yeah, well, let me say something that will hopefully be more reassuring. The, Amy and Alex, for example, they've been running 30x500, for years, and I think their mailing list is just now approximating, like 20,000 or so. And like, the, they have been making so much money with that ...

Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by the website monitoring tool, Oh Dear. We recently refreshed the Geocodio website, and it was really helpful how Oh Dear alerted us to broken links and made it clear what we needed to fix. Broken links are bad for SEO, and so I really appreciate those alerts from Oh Dear. You can sign up for a 10 day free trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

Colleen Schnettler  00:28

Good morning, Michele.

Michele Hansen  00:30

Hey, how are you?

Colleen Schnettler  00:32

Good. How are things in Denmark today?

Michele Hansen  00:36

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

Colleen Schnettler  00:52

Oh yeah, I've heard of that book.

Michele Hansen  00:53

I don't know, have you read that? 

Colleen Schnettler  00:54

I have not.

Michele Hansen  00:54

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

Colleen Schnettler  00:56

I've not read that. 

Michele Hansen  00:57

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

Colleen Schnettler  02:05

Okay, great. 

Michele Hansen  02:06

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

Colleen Schnettler  02:35

Oh, no.

Michele Hansen  02:36

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

Colleen Schnettler  02:51

Oh.

Michele Hansen  02:51

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

Colleen Schnettler  03:15

Yes, that is real life. So true.

Michele Hansen  03:19

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

Colleen Schnettler  03:23

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

Michele Hansen  03:44

Heck yes.

Colleen Schnettler  03:45

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

Michele Hansen  03:50

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

Colleen Schnettler  04:01

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

Michele Hansen  05:27

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

Colleen Schnettler  05:35

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

Michele Hansen  05:56

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

Colleen Schnettler  06:05

The actual size of the uploader to fit into, so he actually sent me his form, like, sent me a video of his form, which is really coo...

Michele Hansen  00:00

Welcome back to Software Social. This episode is sponsored by Oh Dear, the website monitoring app. As an Oh Dear customer myself, I particularly like how easy it is to make SLA reports with Oh Dear. They're professional and sleek, and they make it easier for us to service enterprise customers. And I actually requested this feature myself last year, and I'm so delighted with how open to suggestions they are. You can sign up for a free 10 day trial with no credit card required at OhDear.app.

Colleen Schnettler  00:32

So Michele, how has your week been? 

Michele Hansen  00:34

It's good. It's good. You know, I was, I was doing some writing this morning, which is funny, I've realized it's, like, my reward work. Like, you know, when I get through all the other stuff, like it's like, oh, like, now I have some writing time. And,

Colleen Schnettler  00:47

That's amazing because I remember being in high school and, like, English, like whenever I had to write a paper, it was literally my least favorite thing to do. So I find that fascinating that, for you, writing is your reward work.

Michele Hansen  00:59

I, five paragraph essays are, I don't think anyone looks forward to writing those. Like, this is very different than, than that. Um, but so I was, I was writing and I started thinking about this framework that I know we've talked about, and it occurred to me that I have a very tangible example of that.

Colleen Schnettler  01:20

Which framework? StoryBrand, or something else?  

Michele Hansen  01:22

No, so it's a Marty Cagan framework. 

Colleen Schnettler  01:25

Okay.

Michele Hansen  01:26

So, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna back up first. So, there's this misconception, I think that people sometimes have or fear about customer research that if they start listening to their customers, then they have to do everything the customers ask them for. And they're basically, like, giving up control over the vision of the product to the customer. 

Colleen Schnettler  01:47

Okay.

Michele Hansen  01:48

And that's not true, right? Like, you'll always have to weigh it against, um, what makes sense for you to do. And so, there's this one framework that I particularly like that was developed by Marty Cagan, who is kind of, like, the the product guru, like, he's the head of this consultancy called the Silicon Valley Product Group. Like, he is like the product guy, and in order for a product to be successful, he says how it needs to be valuable, viable, usable, and feasible.

Colleen Schnettler  02:26

Wow, valuable, viable, usable, feasible. 

Michele Hansen  02:30

So let's, let's break it down a little bit. So first, it has to be valuable for the customer. Like, it has to be something that is, you know, accomplishes something for them and helps them do something, right. Because if it's something that doesn't help them do something that they would want to do, then they wouldn't use it. Like, the example I kind of think of for this is what was that startup that would, like, squeeze a bag of pureed fruit for you? Like Juicero, or, like, it was some, like, they raised like billions of dollars or whatever, for, like, a smoothie machine, and everyone is like, why? Like, not really very valuable to people. 

Colleen Schnettler  03:04

Right. Okay. 

Michele Hansen  03:05

I'm sure they had wonderful ideas, and they were great people. It has to be viable, which means it has to be, like, commercially viable, like people have to be willing to pay for it. So like, I could make something that's super awesome and useful, but if no one is willing to pay for it, then it's not a viable product, right? Like, if I'm solving a problem that no one experiences painfully enough to, to pay someone to solve it, then it's not going to work out. 

Colleen Schnettler  03:30

Okay.

Michele Hansen  03:30

It has to be usable, which may be the easiest of all these words, to understand that, like, they have to be able to figure out how to use it. So, 

Colleen Schnettler  03:39

Okay.

Michele Hansen  03:39

You may have heard this in the context of usability testing, which is basically, like, if I make a website that you can do something on, but you can't actually figure out how to do that, and it's confusing, then it doesn't matter if what the product does is something that's valuable to you. If you can't figure out how to do it, you're going to move on to something else. 

Colleen Schnettler  03:57

Right. 

Michele Hansen  03:57

And then the last one is it has to be feasible, like, it has to be possible for you to produce this product. So,  So this would be the equivalent of being, me being like, Colleen, I really need a spaceship. And you being like, that's awesome. I can see that's valuable for you. Maybe you have the ability to pay for that. I don't, but you know, let's go with it. I can build it in a way that, that you can use it. You know, you're an engineer, right? Any kind of engineer can build any kind of thing, right? 

Colleen Schnettler  04:05

Oh, okay. Sure. 

Michele Hansen  04:25

Yeah. Like, you could build a bridge. No, I'm, I'm, for all the certified engineers out there, I'm aware that they're not all transferable. But it wouldn't be feasible for you to build that. 

Colleen Schnettler  04:37

Right. 

Michele Hansen  04:38

So, so this framework of valuable, viable, usable and feasible is something that I always keep in mind when we're getting feedback from people because you don't necessarily act on every single problem and every piece of advice that you hear, and, like, and that's okay. 

Colleen Schnettler  04:55

Yeah, okay. 

Michele Hansen  04:56

And so, a specific example of this that relates to the book and to something we have been talking about quite a bit is consulting and whether I should do consulting related to the book. 

Colleen Schnettler  05:10

Right. 

Michele Hansen  05:10

It's something we've talked about, and I've gotten quite a few requests from people about. And, you know, as I thought about it, okay, so clearly, this would be valuable for people. Like they, they feel like they need...

Colleen Schnettler  00:00

This week's episode of the Software Social Podcast is brought to you by Hopscotch Product Tours. Hopscotch Product Tours allows you to improve user onboarding with helpful product tours that guide your users to success. Also reduce frustration by helping users learn how to use your product without the need for demo calls, visit Hopscotch.club today and start delighting your users with Hopscotch Product Tours.

Michele Hansen  00:28

Hey, Colleen.

Colleen Schnettler  00:29

Hey, Michele. 

Michele Hansen  00:31

How you doing? 

Colleen Schnettler  00:32

I'm doing pretty well. I had a pretty uplifting week over here in the Simple File Upload world. 

Michele Hansen  00:38

You know what? That's good to hear. Because I feel like last week you were, we talked about how you were kind of feeling like you were in the void. 

Colleen Schnettler  00:44

I totally was. And, you know, I still feel that but I'm trying to, two things happen that changed my perspective. One, I got another check from Heroku. So that always helps. That doesn't hurt. And I'm kind of just trying to focus on my mindset as I approach this business. I have to say the check from Heroku because unlike Stripe, where you just get paid randomly when people, you know, when people pay, you only get paid once a month. So I've been telling you I have $800 MRR for like three weeks, and I haven't seen that money. So I just saw that money yesterday. So that was pretty exciting.

Michele Hansen  01:21

Nice

Colleen Schnettler  01:22

Yeah, I think I remember telling you my very first check. I got like I had enough leftover to buy a bagel. 

Michele Hansen  01:28

Yes. The bagel, the $20 bagel.

Colleen Schnettler  01:30

The $20 bagel. Well, this time it was it was quite a bit more so I could could have bought quite a few bagels. So that was pretty exciting. 

Michele Hansen  01:37

And I saw you tweeted out earlier this week that the Stripe payouts, I was just like payout, payout, payout.

Colleen Schnettler  01:45

I think what must happen is like people must have signed up, there were, like, four or five people who signed up like one day apart. And so the all of their invoices hit like right after each other. So I like signed on to my email every day, and it was like payout payout payout. It was awesome. It's very exciting. It was a lot of excitedness in terms of actually seeing the fruits of my labor on this product this week. So that was fun. 

Michele Hansen  02:10

Yay. Internet money. 

Colleen Schnettler  02:12

Yay, internet money. 

Michele Hansen  02:13

So where is your MRR at now? So I just checked and I'm at $975. I know. What? Oh my god, you're almost at the $1,000 MRR mark, and it's been, like, three months. Yeah, I guess it's, yeah, three, oh my god. Like, 

Colleen Schnettler  02:35

Yeah. 

Michele Hansen  02:36

That's, that's not common. Like, just for everybody else kind of like, listening like that is, that is very uncommon. Like, you're you're not like ending up on $1,000 after three months like Coleen like that's, that's normal. Like, I think it took us like six months, and even then that was kind of fast for a little project. Dude, 975. Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  02:57

That's real money. It's real. That's why my last check. Because if you look at my checks from Heroku, and once again, I only get those once a month. It's not like Stripe. It was like the first one was like 150. The second one was like 250. This last one was like $570. I was like, that's like, real money. Like I could do something with that money. That's cool. Yeah, so, so from a monetary perspective, it's going great. I think I, I was struggling a lot. And I still am kind of struggling because I don't have a good feedback loop. I have been kind of unsure what to do next, and how to push the product forward. And it's funny because I like I think mid last week, I was just in a funk. And I was like, You know what, I'm just gonna build it the way I want to build it. I'm gonna develop all these features. I don't care what anyone tells me. Like, I'm just gonna do what I want to do. And you know, of course, everyone I talked to is like, that's a terrible idea. And the best way someone phrased it to me, they were like, what if you do go and you spend a couple months and you build all these features you feel like you need, you're still not going to know who your customer is. Like, I was complaining because I don't know who my customer is. And she was like, even if you spend this time to build that out, you'll be three months down the road, and you still won't know who your customer is. So have you made any progress? And I was like, oh, that's a good way to put it. So, I did a few interviews this week, which was really great. I'm really gonna take a pause on any kind of development work, and just talk to people. I mean, talk talk, talk. 

Michele Hansen  03:01

Colleen.

Colleen Schnettler  03:02

I know, I know.

Michele Hansen  03:04

You're done putzing around in the code garden and like, you're out there in the town square. 

Colleen Schnettler  03:29

I'm convinced. Like, between the, I mean, I probably five different people had to tell me this. But like you guys have convinced me that I just need to talk to more people. I just need, I don't know. Like, if you ask me who my ideal customer was, like, is, or who this provides value to, I can't identify that person, and casting a net of all developers is way too broad and too vague. So, that's really what I am focused on. In the next couple months, I think another thing is I need to calm down a little bit and slow down and be a little bit more patient. 

Michele Hansen  05:21

You said that you could go off and build something for three months, and it sounds like this person you were talking to, kind of helped you realize basically, like, you wouldn't know who you were building for and why you were building it and how they needed any of that to work. 

Colleen Schnettler  05:39

Yeah. And I think that's exactly the thing. So, so this week has been great. I spoke to three consultants, I have another one today, and I'm trying to get to five consultants, which I'm sure I can find one more person. Here's the thing, Michele, they all want different things. 

Michele Hansen 

 Michele Hansen  00:00

Hey, welcome back to Software Social.

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Michele Hansen
So I have kind of an announcement to make. 

Colleen Schnettler  00:35

Oh, I love announcements. Do tell. 

Michele Hansen  00:38

We are no longer a bootstrapped company.

Colleen Schnettler  00:42

What does that mean?

Michele Hansen  00:44

So, I've been getting more feedback on my, on my book, and, and I’m getting so much amazing feedback from, because I ended up sending it out to like, 200 people last weekend. And I decided to open it up to some friends of mine who are, like, like, work in tech, but not in kind of, like, bootstrap world or in VC world. So that, so, they like, aware of what's going on, but also kind of outside of this little bubble, because I want to get their, their perspective on things. And there was one comment in particular that I got that really made me reconsider things. And in the intro to the book, I'm describing how, you know, we're this, you know, bootstrapped B2B SaaS. And they said, that was complete jargon, and also consider using a less racially-loaded term.

Colleen Schnettler  01:44

Oh.

Michele Hansen  01:45

Yeah. And I had this real moment of sort of looking in the mirror and realizing, oh, wow, like, people outside of this bubble, have a very different definition of this word, and a very different meaning from that word, than we do. And I've had reservations about it for a long time, and like, wanted to switch to a new word, but didn't really have one that I felt like worked, because everyone kind of recognizes what that means. But this was kind of shocking to me of, like, you know, getting outside of my bubble and seeing how people outside of it react to that.

Colleen Schnettler  02:27

I honestly didn't know there were negative connotations around the word because I've only heard the word used in our little context, you know, people that are in tech starting businesses.

Michele Hansen  02:40

Yeah, I imagine you're not the only one who is surprised by this. So, I kind of dug into the phrase a little bit. And the problem comes from the fact that the phrase pull yourself up by your bootstraps is where it comes from. Now, historically, apparently, when this, this word, the phrase first came around, it was actually intended to imply that something was impossible, because if you can just sort of picture someone wearing old fashioned boots with, with loops on them, and then trying to stand up while holding their own bootstraps, like, they would fall. So it was, so it's kind of a funny image, if you can sort of picture that. But then it sort of, in specifically American political discourse, where, the phrase is originally American, it came to sort of be combined with all of these sort of self reliance and sort of the rugged individual American man who doesn't need help from anyone, and kind of all of these connotations. And as I sort of dug into people with outside, who are outside of the community, they all had this very negative reaction to it, that was very politically tinged, and to them, felt like we were sort of making this like, political statement. And I was like, whoa, like, that is not the intention at all. But you know, the sort of, the politics of it aside, I realized that within the community, we're not even clear on what it means. Like, 

Colleen Schnettler  04:14

Yeah, I guess that's a good point.

Michele Hansen  04:16

Like, I was emailing with a customer a few weeks ago. And, and for some reason, I happened to ask them if they were bootstrapped company. I had just gotten the sense from their website. And their reaction back to me, that I've been thinking about was they're like, I wouldn't say we're bootstrapped because we're growing. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, when they heard bootstrapped, they thought that it meant a company that doesn't grow. And then, and I did some polls on this a while ago. You know, some people think that it can mean that a company doesn't take any funding at all. But what do you like, what about debt? What about using credit cards? Is that funding? What if you take funding from something like TinySeed or Earnest, which aren't like the big VCs, but like, you're still taking money and maybe giving away equity, like, is that bootstrapped? But then also like when we started out, you know, part of our funding capital was $1,000 in AWS credits for the first six months. Now, that technically showed up as a marketing expense for AWS and not as an investment, but to us, it was the same thing. And so, I think it's this broader point that none of us are truly self-reliant. Like, we all have a community that's holding us up and helping us at every step of the way. And seeing how people outside of this world react to that world react to that world was a really kind of shocking moment for me. And I was like, you know what, maybe, you know, maybe there's another word that I can use that is both more descriptive and less potential for offending people outside of this little bubble.

Colleen Schnettler  06:01

Okay, so what did you settle on? 

Michele Hansen  06:03

Customer funded?

Colleen Schnettler  06:05

Oh, that's good. 

Michele Hansen  06:06

But then somebody pointed out to me that people might think that it meant that we did crowdfunding, or like one of those Regulation CF campaigns that, like, Gumroad did.

Colleen Schnettler  06:16

When you said that, like, it is a little confusing. Customer-funded is a little confusing to me, too. And then what about people who don't like, people in the beginning, like what word? I mean, if you think about language, which I think is, this is really good that you're bringing this up. But we don't really have a word for people who aren't making enough yet, you know, like, 

Michele Hansen  06:35

Right, yeah. 

Colleen Schnettler  06:37

Self-funded, I guess?

Michele Hansen  06:45

Yeah. I mean, I guess self-funded is another word. I mean, I, I've been thinking about this, and I don't really have an answer to this. So I'm kind of curious what other people think. There is, like, we as a community, feel an importance to note that we are not VC-funded SaaS. We're also not all SaaS, right? Cuz there's people doing courses, there's like, like, there's all sorts of other things...

Colleen Schnettler  00:00

This week's episode of the Software Social Podcast is brought to you by Hopscotch Product Tours. Hopscotch Product Tours allows you to improve user onboarding with helpful product tours that guide your users to success. Also, reduce frustration by helping users learn how to use your product, without the need for demo calls. Visit Hopscotch.club today and start delighting your users with Hopscotch Product Tours.

Michele Hansen  00:28

So Colleen. Cloudflare.

Colleen Schnettler  00:33

Oh, Cloudflare.

Michele Hansen
This week, Cloudflare introduced their images beta to simplify your image pipeline, a simple service to store, resize, optimize, and deliver images at scale.

Colleen Schnettler  00:54

Yeah, I saw that. So that's a big disappointment for me because I really, when I had been thinking about how this was going to go, in my mind, I was gonna launch in Heroku, which I've done, and kind of get my product exactly where I want it to be, and then launching Cloudflare. Because I have launched a small free app in the Cloudflare marketplace before, and they have millions of users. So the distribution channel there is spectacular. So I'm a little disappointed because I felt like I had a really, really good opportunity in that marketplace. And now that they've launched their own service, like, I don't think I'm going to be able to compete with that.

Michele Hansen  01:37

So this came out, and you know, I saw this, this blog post, and I thought of you immediately and it's interesting. The post they have on it, they outline the difference, they call them the four fundamental questions you might answer: Where do we store images? How do we secure, resize and optimize the images for different use cases? How do we serve the images to our users reliably? How do we do all of these things at scale while having predictable and affordable pricing, especially during spikes? And what strikes me about that is there are some similarities with what you've been solving, but also there are differences. Like, 

Colleen Schnettler  02:12

What do you mean? 

Michele Hansen  2:!4

So, I remember you talking about images and whether you wanted to go in this whole direction of resizing and optimizing images. And your product is called Simple File Upload. It's not Simple Image Upload. And so this is like, part of what you're solving, but at the same time, you're doing other stuff, too.

Colleen Schnettler  02:40

Right. And when I originally launched the product, that was a big reason, is because all of the big players predominantly handle media files, and I kept running into this problem where I needed PDFs, or I needed Word docs because we were doing resumes. So that is part of the reason I started focusing on files in general. But as more and more people use it, I see pretty consistently, most people are using it predominantly for images. So I really did feel like my growth trajectory was going to be in the image space. So I am different from Cloudflare in that I would, I do multiple files, but they even have good pricing. Like, they even have, they're going to, this is going to be incredibly successful for them because they even have straightforward pricing is what it looks like. And so it doesn't make, mean I'm not gonna have a thing, right? It means maybe when I launch in Cloudflare, I focus more on the file aspect than the image aspect because they currently offer all the things I want to add, but have not yet added, right? Like it'd be, it is so frustrating as a developer to read their blog post and be like, oh, my gosh, it'd be so easy for me to add these few things they offer. And man, if I had just beaten them into the market. But you know what, it's a big market. Like, there's literally millions of people, I believe, who use CloudFlare. So, it doesn't mean there's not space for me. But I do think it means when I write my CloudFlare app, I focus more on other types of files, since they will now have, you know, this easy to implement solution that fits right in with their existing CDN’s and stuff.

Michele Hansen  04:16

I think that's such an important point that there are space for multiple companies in it for any given thing, you know, and I don't know if this is a result of kind of the, the sort of narrative that we're living in around companies, and especially what, you know, venture capitalists might look for in a company is they want the company that is going to become the monopoly that can charge the highest prices and have, you know, the highest profits and just eat everybody else in that industry. And that is, you know, in so many ways, the opposite of what we bootstrappers try to do and believe in and, you know, also now the US government has kind of onto tech, and all of that sort of monopoly-building. And, but I think living in that environment, we forget that like, it's okay to have a big company come into your space, or to already have big companies competing against you, and there can still be space for a small, successful company there. And, you know, I offer us up as evidence. Like, we've been competing at Google since day one.

Colleen Schnettler  05:31

Yeah, and I think that's one of the best decisions I made when I finally launched this product. As we've talked about before, I've been coming up with ideas and trying to launch MVPs of different things. And a lot of the things I was trying to do were like, big, cool new ideas. And as a single founder, like, in an untested market, I could not get a big cool new idea off the ground, like props to you, if you can, that's awesome. But people looked at me like I, like, they looked at me sideways when I was like, I told people, like developers what I was making, they were like, so you're making what? And they list like five other companies that do the same thing. And I was like, yes, I am. And now they're all really surprised at how successful it's been. And I think that just goes to show, like, the market was already proven for what I was doing. I focused on a really small group of people. And so far, that's been working for me. And again, I don't know, like, how that'll grow or scale or whatever. But I don't know, it's working for me right now, going into a tested market, even with big players, because the big players, if you have a customer support request to a big player, they're gonna send you to their forums, right? I know, because it's happened to me. You're like, oh, I have this problem. Can I do this thing? They're like, first thing is you get the automated chat widget that says, ‘Go look in the forums,’ and you're like, nah. And I had my first support request this week, by the way, which is kind of fun. And the person was like, it was so great. I think they were so surprised that I responded so quickly. And I, like, literally fixed the problem in a day. I think, I think the person left with like, a really positive, I mean, they told me they had a really positive experience with me. And so, kind of what you talk about what Geocodio, I think, by focusing on a small group of people, and by keeping my customer support high, hopefully I can still find a place, a spac...

Michele Hansen  00:00

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Michele Hansen
So, last time we talked about the numbers for Simple File Upload was about two weeks ago, and you hadn't really looked at it much for a few weeks because you had been moving. Um, and it was at $515 in MRR, and it's been, like, two weeks since then. So where, where ya at?

Colleen Schnettler  01:46

So, I checked this morning and I am at 800. 

Michele Hansen  01:50

Whoa. Dude. No, I am like almost 1000. 

Colleen Schnettler  01:52

I know. MRR. I know. that feels like almost 1000, and like 1000 feels like a real business.

Michele Hansen  02:02

Holy buckets of guacamole, Batman, like 800 dollars!

Colleen Schnettler  02:06

Yeah, it was it was um, it's exciting. Now, like, the caveat here is the reason I had such a jump because I'm averaging about a customer a week, which is a wonderful growth rate for me. But someone signed up for my custom plan, which is $250 a month.

Michele Hansen  02:23

Hey, oh.

Colleen Schnettler  02:25

So

Michele Hansen  02:26

What is your custom plan?

Colleen Schnettler  02:27

So my custom plan is basically like, whatever you want. I don't actually even remember if I put like, what the limits I put on it. I should probably check to make sure this person is set up properly. But basically, the custom plan is, is the idea that I will set it up for you. Um, so that person is signed up, and I have, I'm sure it's a company at that, you know, it's through Heroku. So I'm sure it's a company. I have reached out, but I haven't heard anything back yet. So they're just paying me. So hopefully, I can help them out. Yeah, hopefully I can help them out. So yeah, that, that's that plan. So that's why there's been such a big jump over the two weeks, because that really made a difference. But it’s very exciting. 

Michele Hansen  03:10

That's so exciting. And I really hope that you can, you know, get in touch with these folks, and figure out why they bought that so you can sell a lot more of that. 

Colleen Schnettler  03:22

So I can sell more. 

Michele Hansen  03:23

Like, let's do that. Like, let's sell more of that. 

Colleen Schnettler  03:26

This plan.

Colleen Schnettler  03:28

I want everyone on this plan. So yeah, so that was a nice surprise. I have, as I said, I finally have a little more time to work on it. So this week, I pushed through like, just a few small things, a few email onboarding changes. I wasn't getting a very good response rate to my email. So I just tried to make a few changes. I just pushed them through this week, so I won't know if they work for a little while to see if I could get some more responses. And I think, you know, I'm still, I'm still in this weird place where I'm really busy, and I don't have quite the time I thought I would. So I'm really just trying to focus on small, persistent, small, consistent effort over time. And I was reading a tweet by Paul Graham, and I know a lot of people have like, mixed feelings on Paul Graham. Okay, but I still like his tweets. Anyway, someone was, was talking about when Y Combinator started, and they were talking about how the thing with Paul Graham is, he used to like, intensely focus on one thing. So if you were in his Y Combinator batch, and you were supposed to do this one thing, like, every time he saw you, that's all he would ask you about. And I like that because I think in this stage, there's just so many things, right? There's so many things pulling my attention. Like for example, I went to do these emails, which should have taken 30 minutes, and I ended up spending four hours because I was like, well while I'm in here, I'm gonna fix this thing and while I'm in here, I'm gonna write some more, I'm going to get these tests passing and, and while I'm in here, you know, and then it was like, the half day I had, I had set aside to do this stuff got taken up with, like, all those little things. And those are all good things to get done. But Michelle, it's been like, three weeks since, or four weeks since our interview with Drew, and I still have not taken the feedback we discussed, and put it on my freakin homepage. Like, I just haven’t done it.

Michele Hansen  05:28

That’s okay. 

Colleen Schnettler  05:28

I know, but I, I think that should be my number one, I think that should be like my number one thing to do. So until I get that done, I should stop getting distracted by oh, but my email copy could be better. Oh, but this thing could be better.

Michele Hansen  05:43

So, can we talk about your email copy for a second? So I'm curious, like do you have what the copy was before? And then I'm just curious what you changed it to.

Colleen Schnettler  05:54

Oh, you know what, I'm only saving the ones that I have now. So I didn't save the old ones. 

Michele Hansen  06:01

Can you read us the new one? 

Colleen Schnettler  06:03

The new one says, “Hi, I just wanted to personally reach out and thank you for trying Simple File Upload. Would you mind replying and let, letting me know two things? One, are you working on a business client or personal website? Any links you want to share are encouraged. Two, what are you hoping to accomplish with Simple File Upload? I read and respond to every re...

Michele Hansen  0:00 
The following message is brought to you by Balsamiq. Balsamiq decided to support the Software Social community by donating their sponsored airtime to some of our listeners.

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Colleen Schnettler  0:58 
So Michele, this week, I had a prospective customer interview, which was a new experience and a lot of fun.

Michele Hansen
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah. And so what in order to prep for that interview, I had to search through all of my emails to find all of your customer interview scripts.

Michele Hansen 
I know it wasn't too hard to search.

Colleen Schnettler
Well, the problem is, is you also email me as Michele the human so it was like I was like how do I feel? Sure, like human turtle shell the robot was like how where's my Deploying Empathy, Michele's Customer Research filter. But you know what I was thinking as I was sorting through my emails trying to isolate all of your scripts.

Michele Hansen  1:41 
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  1:43 
I was thinking it'd be sure be nice if I had this in a book format.

Michele Hansen  1:49 
You aren't the first person to say that, Colleen.

Colleen Schnettler  1:52 
So tell me your thoughts on it.

Michele Hansen  1:54 
So you know, it's kind of funny how the newsletter came about, because I think I had just gotten off of a mentoring call with a founder. And I realized as I was sort of sending them, they wanted to know about doing customer interviews. And I was typing up this email to them. And it's like, 10, paragraphs long. And it's like, this book is really good. But like, only these chapters are relevant for you. And like, this book doesn't go in enough detail. So like, listen to this podcast, but then also like, here's this worksheet, and it was like, so disorganized. And I also felt like I was writing the same email over and over and over again. And I was like, You know what, this is this, maybe this is a book. And then it was like, but everyone who has ever written a book has told me not to write a book, and that it's very lonely and difficult and, like, sounds like an awful experience. So maybe I shouldn't write a book like, and, and then I grant it, like, tweeted out, and everyone's like, Oh, my God, write a book. And I was like, okay, so I was like, You know what, I'll read it as a newsletter. If people like it, it becomes a live rough draft. If not, it's just a newsletter, and like, I can stop doing it. And like, no one's paying me for anything. And so as it's gone on, I have accepted the fact that maybe it is a book. But I've never written a book before. I've never marketed a book before. I've read a lot of them. I have not read books about writing or selling a book. Um, so it's been it's been kind of an interesting experience. It's a whole new world for me.

Colleen Schnettler  3:33 
Yeah. Because you don't have any other informational products. Right?

Michele Hansen  3:39 
Okay, like, I guess this podcast is technically an info product. I mean, but really, it's just forces us to, like keep up our weekly meetings. Like, I mean, like, I guess we have advertisers like technically but you know, it's like, really, that's why we're doing this, like, we love you, listeners. But truly, this is just for Colleen and I.

Colleen Schnettler  4:01 
So it seems like so I obviously subscribe to your newsletter when you started it. You have more content that I can read? Like, it seems like there's a there's just so much in your brain that you want to get out about this.

Michele Hansen  4:14 
I feel like I'm Marie Kondo in my head, like I'm just getting it all out. You know, like it's just like cleaning out my closet and it's like all of these things have been just like sitting there marinating for years now and kind of coming out sporadically as as necessary. And of course, he like sort of use them and build on them in my work. But yeah, it just feels like I just have all of this stuff. And it's like alright, here is like Michele's mental yardsale, my book about customer research.

Colleen Schnettler  4:45 
So how do you feel about turning all of this information into a book like how's the process been and how are you feeling about it?

Michele Hansen  4:55 
So if I tell myself that I'm just writing a newsletter and not a book, great. If I tell myself that I'm writing a book, and then I open the Google Doc and I see that blinking cursor, terrified.

Colleen Schnettler  5:10 
Too much pressure.

Michele Hansen  5:11 
I don't know, it just feels like a lot. Like and it's just something I haven't done before. I'm probably way under estimating how long it's going to take to go from like, newsletter rough draft to actual finished product, nevermind even having something that's just like a straight PDF, right of without any illustrations or any like, they're like, there's so many steps to this.

And I've been trying to read about it. Like Alex Hillman published a lot of great stuff after writing his book, Tiny MBA last year, that's been really helpful for me. But yeah, I mean, it feels overwhelming, and kind of like we were talking about last week, but I think having ADD sort of plays into this, because like, you know, partly, like I love having multiple projects at a time, like, I can't just have one thing I'm working on. And so that's partly where the newsletter comes from. But also then staring down a huge task that I have never done before is really, really intimidating to me.

Colleen Schnettler  6:13 
Yeah, and I assume, like the mechanics of writing and selling a book is totally different than the mechanics of building and selling a SaaS or selling.

Michele Hansen  6:24 
Yeah. Like, you know, like, with a SaaS, I feel like, you know, all people are googling for what they need, right? Like, they're like, how do you do this. And then as long as you have a landing page that says, Here's how you can do this, like, and then you do that, and then they pay you like, and it's very straightforward in terms of like delivering the value to someone.

I feel like with a book, it's a lot harder, like, I feel like I have to convince people that they need it. I mean, especially like, this is a hard thing that I'm trying to get, like doing interviews is, you know, to how I feel about it being you know, writing this book being this huge, monumental task that I don't know how to do that feels scary. A lot of people feel that way about interviews. So I can definitely, you know, empathize with my own reader about...