Software Social

Michele Hansen  00:00

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Colleen Schnettler  01:17

Hey, Michele, it's so good to talk to you. 

Michele Hansen  01:19

I feel like it's been forever.

Colleen Schnettler  01:22

It has. I think it's been three weeks since we've recorded together. 

Michele Hansen  01:26

So I'm not gonna lie. I am dying to know how things are going.

Colleen Schnettler  01:35

Sure. So as I have mentioned several times on this podcast, the past couple of weeks have been really busy for me. We have moved and work has been just very intense. And so I honestly didn't even check my numbers for like three weeks, which sounds ridiculous, but I just wasn't in the mental space for it. So in preparation of today's podcast, I did check. And I'm now at $515 MRI. 

Michele Hansen  02:04

Dude!

Colleen Schnettler  02:06

Right? Yes, I think the beautiful thing about this - 

Michele Hansen  02:10

Wow. 

Colleen Schnettler  02:10

Yeah, no, I just feel like the beautiful thing about this is just, I was able to just let it sit. Now to be fair, I always check my email. So even when I was on, I don't have time for this mode, like I always check my email just in case of you know, someone and my match, not my metrics, but like my stats to make sure everything is up. So it wasn't that I was neglecting the product. But I was definitely neglecting, like even checking how many people were signed up. And so that was like a great surprise. Like, just really cool to see. 

Michele Hansen  02:43

Last time we talked you were at like, three something. Right? And you were like, kind of like some right? 

Colleen Schnettler  02:51

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think I think this shows that getting too obsessed with like, checking every week. Like, I like to check. I mean, I check every week usually, but becoming too obsessed with it really can swing, you know, emotionally high and low. So it was actually kind of nice to just like, sit on it. And then see it increase. 

Michele Hansen  03:12

That's pretty awesome. Wait a year, like six weeks into this now? What was it?

Colleen Schnettler  03:21

It was February fourth.

Michele Hansen  03:22

Feburary fourth you were able to start having paying customers. 

Colleen Schnettler  03:25

Yep. So it's two months. I'm over 500 MRR in two months. 

Michele Hansen  03:28

That's faster than we grew.

Colleen Schnettler  03:31

Oh, wow. That's cool to hear. 

Michele Hansen  03:32

Yeah, I think it took us like, I don't know, five or six months to break 500.

Colleen Schnettler  03:38

Oh, my gosh. And now you make all the money. There's hope for me.

Michele Hansen  03:46

That's insane. 

Colleen Schnettler  03:47

So that's really cool. Yeah, I'm feeling really good about it. Yeah, so I think it's kind of also, you know, when you're stressed about other things, this is all - self doubt always creeps in. And so last week I was I was kind of in a little bit of a self doubt spiral, not spiral. That's the wrong word. But like, kind of in a self doubt, place, thinking that this like, again, was like, I don't know if this is going to work. But then I checked my numbers and things are going really well. And I haven't even implemented any of those amazing ideas you shared in your last deploying empathy newsletter. 

Michele Hansen  04:25

So your revenue grew without you adding any new features.

Colleen Schnettler  04:31

Yeah, how about that?

Michele Hansen  04:34

Isn't that interesting? 

Colleen Schnettler  04:36

It's like someone said that might happen. Who would have given that great advice to stop adding features. 

Michele Hansen  04:44

But you're also like you were doing customer support during this time? It sounds like.

Colleen Schnettler  04:48

Yeah, I'm always - well, no one emailed me because no one ever emails me.  Wait, hold on. So your revenue increased and nobody needed to talk to you.

Michele Hansen  04:58

That's exactly correct.

Colleen Schnettler  05:01

Right, like it's pretty cool. I feel pretty cool about it. So, yeah, so I'm feeling good. And I'm like kind of reenergized once I'm back at work next week to really focus on some of these marketing tasks and, and to start asking people to do customer interviews again. Because I still feel like I have momentum.

Michele Hansen  05:23

 It sounds like it.

Colleen Schnettler  05:25

Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's what I've been up to. 

Michele Hansen  0:00  

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Michele Hansen
Hey, everyone, so we're gonna do something a little bit different this week, Colleen is moving. And so we decided that was an opportunity to bring on one of our listeners to workshop their business challenges this week, and hear all about what they're working on. So I am so excited to have a guest with us today. Do you want to introduce yourself?

Rosssveth Lopez  1:29  

Yes. Hello, everyone. I'm Rossveth with. I'm from the Philippines. So I'm really, really excited to be here. And it's an honor to be on your podcast.

Michele Hansen  1:45  

I'm so excited to have you. So can you tell us a little bit about what you're working on?

Rosssveth Lopez  1:50  

Okay, so actually, it's been just the several weeks that I've started. So I've had this idea, or maybe a little bit of a background. I've always wanted to bootstrap a business. And I, like, signed up for blogs, you know, the money making bags, and I stumbled across selling, selling printables, like digital designs on Etsy. And so I ventured in that. And being a non graphic designer, like art is not my main thing. So I can come up with designs, but it really, it takes me a while to even select fonts. So it's one of my pain points. And I, and I figured you know, this could be improved or my process could be more efficient. So I researched, like, font viewer tools. I guess some of you have seen, like, the famous ones, web apps, but I feel like there's something more that could be done. So I've used those tools, actually. So I select the fonts that I like, but then when I go back to my design, I still think that I need to do, or I need to select a few more. So, I keep going back and forth, and, and that's, that's when I thought of this idea. Like I could do a font viewer, but it would be more. So it would be you could preview the fonts, but it would be against your background. So you would have your, your background or your design and you have the selected fonts already, like five or 10 of these. And you can see it in one place. So, and then in like, in an instant, or just for a few seconds, you can already see how the font, like, would look with your design. And then you can select from there. So all the tools I'm saying, Oh, it's only been, like, plain texts.

Michele Hansen  4:03  

Gotcha. So just to recap, so you, you had an Etsy store where you were selling printables, like custom printables. I think we were talking about this earlier, and I bought some Christmas ornaments, for example for family members who had lost pets last year. And I was able to customize them with the text on it, but I wasn't able to see what it looked like. And so basically your idea is that if Etsy store owners can have a tool on their shop to show customers or themselves just what one of those custom pieces would look like before they purchase it that maybe people would buy more from their shops or it would simply be easier for Etsy store owners to make proofs for their customers. Is that right? 

Rosssveth Lopez  4:55

Exactly. So, so my plan is the basic one would be it would be for the sellers, for the sellers themselves, the ones who do the design, it would help in their process with the designing. And then that would be the added feature when you can share that design or share your customized designs with your, your customers, your clients, so they could see that, so they could see it themselves. I actually came across several sellers who had experiences where their customers wanted a refund, because they did not like how it turned out. And yeah, so it, that's one, one, like, problem that that can be solved. And I, I’ve tried to research. They, some stores, each had their own websites, just to put the, their designs and with the fonts that they like, that they were offering. So they created their own. And I thought like why not, you know, offer this as a service. I've seen services like you do the designs on their platform. And you could share that, the links, but this, what I'm thinking of would be different. It would be your designs, you can create them from anywhere. And then you just display the fonts that you offer. So, yeah.

Michele Hansen  6:30

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess we should probably back up a little bit and talk about your, your background a little back. So you're a developer, right? 

Rosssveth Lopez  6:38

Yes, yes I am. So.

Michele Hansen  6:38  

Yeah, how did this come about? 

Rosssveth Lopez  06:45

Okay. Well, I've been in the software industry for like, 14 years or something. I recently resigned from my corporate job about three years ago, after I had my third son. So it's, it's been a goal that we had as a couple that we would, like, we would stay at home, take care of the kids, but then pursue also a business. So I've just been stuck with finding that idea, that $1 million idea to start to work on. And it was only like very recently that I learned about indie hacking and bootstrapping. And so the blogs that I signed up for, those were just like the ways I wanted to get ideas how to, how to start my own business. And, and that's, I've never heard of Etsy before. And like you could sell printables as a passive income you created once, and then you can sell it forever. And so I was like, amazed with the idea. And, but when I, like I, I also stumbled across tech Twitter and how the people left and right, were creating businesses, like simple projects, and they were making money. So that really, really amazed me.

Michele Hansen  8:16  

It sounds like that was really like a lightbulb moment for you.

Rosssveth Lopez  8:19  

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't know, growing up, I've always wanted to start a business. But you know, you compare it with, like, tech giants, like, like the big companies being famous all around, having these great ideas impacting the world. But I never really know, or maybe I did not come across it in my, like, experiences or with my colleagues about just, you know, starting a busines...

Listen to The Customer Interview: Part 1 https://softwaresocial.dev/episodes/customer-interview-part-1-the-interview

Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
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Michele Hansen  0:31  
Last week, we interviewed a user of Colleen's product, Simple File Upload. And this week, we are going to talk about that interview. So, Colleen, to help me What do you think you're after that?

Colleen Schnettler  0:48  
Oh, my gosh, it was so much fun. It was so hard for me. So I turned off my video, and I muted myself, which was good, because I got very excited during the interview. And like, it was like, I was like sitting on my hands. I was like, Colleen, you have no lines. You have no, you may not speak. I just thought it was it was really great. Some of the things I noticed that he talked about that kind of surprised me, was actually one thing that surprised me a lot was he was struggling with his current storage solution for three days.

Michele Hansen  1:27  
Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler  1:28  
And then when offered, offered when when he remembered I guess, like that I have a thing. He didn't it was almost like there was an emotional attachment to the struggle that he had already put in that he didn't want to throw that work away right away.

Michele Hansen  1:43  
Yeah. sunk costs. Absolutely.

Colleen Schnettler  1:46  
That really surprised me. Yeah, yeah. I was really surprised about that. I didn't see that coming. You know, there were several times I thought to while you were doing the interview, where if I had been doing the interview, I would have been like, Okay, great. Like the end. I feel like you were able, I think the interview was about 2030 minutes. I feel like if I had been interviewing him, it would have been about seven. Because I would have been like, hey, do you like simple file upload? And he would have been like, Yeah, it's great. Like, okay, cool.

Colleen Schnettler  2:20  
Like, that's how I I mean, even writing down these questions. I I still just it's I usually, I don't know, I struggle with like the the circling back. Like, there was one point where you like circle back, I think to something he had said earlier, like re asked the question, and you got more information from him? Yes. That was solid work.

Michele Hansen  2:47  
Yeah. So that is something we do to basically like, rephrase what someone said, and then just say, like, do I have that? Right?

Colleen Schnettler  2:55  
Yeah.

Michele Hansen  2:57  
I actually know people who will do this, they will purposefully mistake what someone said so that they correct them and add more detail on

Unknown Speaker  3:04  
interesting. Yeah,

Michele Hansen  3:06  
yeah. And actually, when I first started interviewing, basically, I would think of this as effectively playing dumb, which I think was in some context was effective. Like, for example, especially when I was interviewing, you know, if I was interviewing, say, 80, or 90 year old men about their retirement, most of them didn't take me very seriously in the first place. And so I could use that to my advantage. And basically like, oh, like, what do you mean by that? I don't even know what you're talking about. Yeah. And it like it worked really well. But then being a founder, like you don't want to, like, you don't want people to think you're, you're done. Really well, like, I sort of like matured out of that strategy. But yeah, but it's saying like, Oh, so I just heard us like, you just said that you struggle with that for three days. And then you just say that, and then they add things to it.

Colleen Schnettler  4:06  
Yes. I mean, things we've talked about before, but what I really noticed in this interview is you were very, you were very call and very quiet and slow. Which is I mean, I don't mean that in a bad way. But like, it seems like you're very you're you're you're almost monotone in your tone of voice. And you left huge gaps, which we're not going to edit out so you can get the full experience everyone listening, but like huge gaps. And I'm like over here, like she gonna say something like, Is he gonna say something? Giving him really the opportunity, I think, to expound on whatever it was he was talking about.

Michele Hansen  4:47  
Yeah, I think, like, I like to think that. You know, I see the interviews aren't like acting. They're not a conversation. Rise. You almost want the other person Forget that you're a person like that you have opinions that you have thoughts about things like you are just there to absorb whatever it is they have to say and to help bring that out. And it's it's so funny that you say I was so calm and like, because I mean, like, you know me like, I'm not like that, like, if you get me at my most truly relaxed, like I am, like, bouncing off the walls, like I'm interrupting people. I'm excited. I'm making puns all the time. Like, I am very much not sitting there like quietly listening, which is, which is why I think that if I can learn how to do this, anybody can learn how to do this.

Colleen Schnettler  5:42  
Yeah, I think and I think I mean, I think for me, it's just gonna take practice. But like, one of the things he said, that really struck me, and there were so I think it would have been hard for me because he said so many things, which were literally the reason why I built it. So I would have been like, so excited. Like when he was like I just he said something like, I just wanted to build my product. I didn't want to, you know, waste any more time on file uploading, I want to be like, yes, that's why I built it. You know, like, actually, I was fortunately I was on mute. So you guys couldn't hear me. Real noisy over here. So, you know, that, I think is a founder. And then and I wonder too, like, you're almost an impartial third party here. I wonder at when you do interviews as a founder, do people treat you differently? Because I know it's your product?

Michele Hansen  6:39  
Yes, and no. I mean, so obviously I haven't I haven't had the experience you've just had of having somebody interview one of my customers while I'm there and seeing how differently they take it. Yeah, um, I don't I don't think it's been a detriment. Like, you know, to what I was saying earlier about, like, people not taking me seriously, like, I don't run into that issue anymore. Right. Like, I don't I, I have been in scenarios where I was treated dismissively, or even insulted. Thankfully, it's not that many like that, like, the actual number of interviews where I've been truly insulted was l...

Michele Hansen  0:00
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Michele Hansen
Hey, everyone. So we're doing something a little bit different this week. We've had a lot of conversations lately about doing customer interviews. And so we thought that it might be helpful to do a demo of one so that you can all understand what goes into one. So we have someone who has agreed to be interviewed. Who is using Colleen's product, Simple File Upload. And so I'm going to interview them today. 

Alright, so here we go. We're gonna get started. 

Michele Hansen
Hi, Is this Drew?

Drew  1:24  
Yep, this is Drew.

Michele Hansen  1:26  
Hi, Drew, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I really appreciate it.

Drew  1:30  
No problem. Thanks for having me.

Michele Hansen  1:33  
So before we get started, I just want to ask if you had any questions for me?

Drew  1:38  
I'm not off the top of my head. I'm sure I'll find some along the way.

Michele Hansen  1:42  
Okay, feel free to ask any questions that might come up. 

Drew  1:45  
Okay. 

Michele Hansen  1:47  
And just before we get started, I just want to make sure that it's okay, we record this interview.

Drew  1:51  
Yeah, absolutely.

Michele Hansen  1:53  
Okay, so um, so just to get started, Could you just tell me a little bit about like, how you came to even needing something like Simple File Upload in the first place?

Drew  2:05  
Well, I'm, I'm building a product that is going to play currently has a, it's a job listing platform. So we wanted companies to be able to upload their logo, you know, to sit next to their listing. But our stage two of that we're actually adding in some more verbose user accounts, where users will have avatars, they'll be able to upload resumes and stuff like that. So we just really, we really saw that we were gonna need something that would allow us to upload all the files and handle them easily.

Michele Hansen  2:42  
Yeah, that makes sense. Um, I'm curious, have you tried anything else to do this?

Drew  2:51  
Yeah, we were using Firebase Storage, because we were using firestore as our database. So we started using Firebase Storage. Just because, you know, they, they were right next to each other seemed like an easy enough fit. And it was working at first. But we recently started going through a big migration to next js, which has, which is you know, some things are just handled a little differently from a code perspective. And Firebase Storage just did not work as easily. As it was, we found ourself running into a lot of walls, jumping through a lot of hoops just to make the simplest things work.

Michele Hansen  3:36  
Can you tell me a little bit more about those hoops and, and walls that you ran into?

Drew  3:44  
I'm trying to think a specific case. So we were we're really just trying to load the image before the component was loaded. You know, so it would be there when, when the page did load. But because of because of how they give you access to it with promises, and you know, all that fun stuff. I don't know if it's because we were implementing it wrong. Or maybe they just weren't ever really meant to work hand in hand, but we would get we were getting errors that, you know, it couldn't it couldn't do what we were asking because the data it needed, wasn't there yet when it was asking for it. And we really started to feel like we were just putting band aids on things to make something work. And this was really kind of our big push to make the platform more stable, not less. That was probably the biggest one.

Michele Hansen  4:45  
Sounds like that was like frustrating. A lot of like, fits and starts for you guys.

Drew  4:51  
Yeah, it really was because there we had it working. And it you know, it took a little bit of work to get it working that first time and Most every other piece of the code kind of just transferred one to one for the most part. And this, this part just did not. And we already had, you know, we had a decent amount of files in the stores that we wanted to get to, but for whatever reason, be it user error or stored there. It just wasn't happening.

Michele Hansen  5:24  
Yeah, I'm going to do remember, like how long it was, like from from the time when you just started, decided to start using Firebase Storage? And then until you decided, like, wasn't going to work? Like, how long was that?

Drew  5:42  
Oh, we started, we started using it around a year ago, the it was working fine. We started, we started working on this big rebuild about maybe a month and a half ago. And that was probably when we started realizing that it wasn't gonna work. And I think it was, I think I spent probably three days trying to wrestle it before I've just relented.

Michele Hansen  6:08  
Oh, man.So it took six weeks of try of trying to get it to work, and then you intensely worked on it for three days, and then it still wouldn't work.

Drew  6:21  
Well, the six weeks wasn't fully working on trying to get it to work six weeks was, you know, getting all the components moved over. And all that other stuff set up for the new environment. And then, but you are correct, it was three intense days of trying to make it work.

Michele Hansen  6:37  
Man, there must have been super frustrating.

Drew  6:41  
It was and I was I was at my wit's end.

Michele Hansen  6:48  
So when did you start thinking like that, maybe use something else.

Drew  6:57  
Almost immediately, I wanted to use something else, but I didn't know what else would be out there at the pricing model that they provide. Um, but I guess, free free always comes with caveats. And I found those caveats early on.

Michele Hansen  7:12  
Oh, so Firebase Storage was free if you were using firestore.

Drew  7:17  
Yeah, they have their, they have this whole platform set up where it's, it's free up until X amount of requests, but that number is like really high. So it's really, it's really enticing when you're trying to just, you know, when you just want to get something up and moving. The widget, we just kept hitting brick walls with the storage.

Michele Hansen  7:38  
Yeah, it sounds like it. So. So you were, you had like three days of intensely trying to work on this. You wanted to use something else? And then you you didn't know what oth...

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Michele Hansen  0:00 
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So you remember a couple of weeks ago how I was reading the Jobs to Be Done Playbook?

Colleen Schnettler  0:59 
Yes, I sure do.

Michele Hansen  1:01 
I'mstill reading that book. But I'm also reading another book. And I want to talk about that other book.

Colleen Schnettler  1:07 
Okay.

Psychology of Money

Michele Hansen  1:09 
So I finally started reading the Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.

Colleen Schnettler  1:15 
Okay.

Michele Hansen  1:16 
Which has been on my to-read pile for about, I don't know, about six months or so now, since it came out early last fall. And it's such a good book, like I mean, even if you're not a finance person are particularly interested in personal finance, like, it's a book about money that's not about money. And it's and it's so good. So but there's just one quote and that reminded me of stuff that we talk a lot about together. So I'm just gonna read it to you.

"In a world where intelligence is hyper competitive, and many previous technical skills have become automated, competitive advantages tilt toward nuanced and soft skills, like communication, empathy, and perhaps most of all, flexibility."

Colleen Schnettler  2:08 
Hmm, interesting.

Michele Hansen  2:10 
And this reminded me a lot of what we talk about, because it's kind of like we've been talking about as it relates to your business. The one of the like, the biggest challenges for you is not the engineering side, it's like, knowing when you should, you know, change directions, or be flexible with with like, what your image of what the business and what the product is. And also like communicating with people about what it does and what it is and pulling that information out of them. And then and then how do we use empathy to figure all of those things out, which is, which is a really big focus for me, and I read this and, like, grabbed the nearest writing utensil near me, which normally I only write in pencils in books, like I will underline things, but I only had a pen, and I was like, This is so amazing, I'm gonna underline it and pen because I'm not gonna regret that, like. That just really stuck with me.

Colleen Schnettler  3:09 
Interesting. Why was that in your psychology of money book?

Michele Hansen  3:13 
Oh, I mean, so I don't know if you've ever read Morgan's writing.

Colleen Schnettler  3:16 
No.

Michele Hansen  3:16 
He writes a lot about the sort of psychology of business. He's a very different business writer. And I used to work with him so I've sort of been been around a lot of his thinking for a while. And I'm really sort of grateful for that, because he has a very unique perspective on things. And you know, it's not very often that you read in a best selling business book that the key is empathy. Right?

Colleen Schnettler  3:42 
Yeah.

Michele Hansen  3:42 
Running a good business. Right.

And it reminds me a lot of something that I have been working on lately, too. So you know, we've talked about like getting people to reply, when you are trying to talk to them about the reasons why they use your product, which can be difficult.

Colleen Schnettler  4:02 
Yeah.

Michele Hansen  4:03 
And I think I mentioned a couple weeks ago, how we like so on our NPS survey like that, that pops up, I think, you know, relatively soon after someone uses the product, but not the first time and it's, you know, just rank us one to 10. And normally, we just look at this just to make sure we're getting mostly nines and 10s. But then it also has a question that asks as a follow up, and that survey and the question have a really high response rate. And we were previously asking, 'what can we do to improve?' And I changed this question. First of all, we were you know, we're getting a lot of like, boosts out of it. Like people were saying, like, no, you're awesome, and like, that makes us feel great. And like as -- you know, it feels nice. But also, we were kind of like asking people to do our work for us by telling us what we should improve. And so I changed it instead to 'What did you use before you used Geocodio?' And this is just reminding me about how we, you know, you know, competitors, at first blush, they seem like other companies, but in so many scenarios, and I think this applies to your business a lot too, competitors are people figuring something out for themselves or like some, like manual process where they're patching things together. And it is so fascinating to see the variety of responses I get from people. And how many of them say 'nothing' like that they used no tool and that they were like, hunting and pecking, or they had something internal, or they were like stringing together different solutions. I mean, our approach to competitors is so much more like relaxed than this, I think for, like, the traditional kind of business approach is like, you know, you should know everything that your competitors are doing and like, you know, know exactly when they have new features and like, be copying their features and everything. And I'm like, Nah, dude, like, I'm going to talk to my customers, because my competitors are all the time that they spend doing it themselves.

Colleen Schnettler  5:59 
It's this, it kind of the same thing with my business where a lot of people in the beginning, they were just weren't really doing it, or they weren't, you know, they were just, they were just putting, like piecemealing kind of half a half usable open source solutions with with, with other things. So So to your point, like your competitors, really not the other people offering the same service, but what the user was doing before.

Michele Hansen  6:26 
Yeah, I mean, there's so much space in software to have products that do things that are similar to somebody else's product, because so many people are just doing things themselves.

Colleen Schnettler  6:40 
So one of the things from that quote, you read from the book that I thought was interesting was flexibility. And what do you think that means in a business context? Does that mean pivot? Does that mean, let go of your idea that you're super passionate about because it's not working?

Michele Hansen  6:55&...

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TRANSCRIPT

Rob Walling  0:00  
Welcome to this week's episode of MicroConf On Air. I'm your host, Rob Walling. And as always, every other Wednesday at 1pm Eastern 10am Pacific we live stream for about 30 minutes, we cover topics related to building and growing ambitious SaaS startups that bring us freedom, purpose, and allow us to maintain and value healthy relationships. We know that Silicon Valley way to raise buckets and buckets of money and go big or go home. But we believe in bootstrapped and mostly bootstrapped founders who are making a change in their lives, maybe not changing the world, but at least changing their little corner of it. Thanks for joining me. Welcome back. 

I am excited today to talk about the talk about Software Social, it's a podcast if you're not listening to it, you should be it got nominated for the Best podcast in the best podcast category in the MicroConf SaaS podcast awards. And I have the pleasure of having the co-hosts of that podcast on the show today. And we'll be talking about have some questions for them about getting started and the benefits they receive from podcasting and that kind of stuff. But if you are watching this, please chime in with your own questions. We'd love to have the listener engagement. And that's why level level and your engagement. And that's why we do live events like this, instead of just doing them asynchronously through a podcast feed. Before we dive in, I want to mention MicroConf remote, which happens at the end of the month, March 23rd 24th 25th. It's gonna be pretty amazing event producer Xander is really outdoing himself on this one, MicroConfremote.com if you want to get on the list for that, and we'll be putting tickets up for sale here in the next few days. It's an early stage event. And it's aimed at folks trying to get their really their first 100 customers and it's going to dive deep into four specific early stage marketing tactics. We're going to have folks on who have done a specific tactic to get early stage traction and example App Sumo or posting on Producthunt. And we're gonna have a founder or subject matter expert on who has done that very thing and we'll share as many numbers with us as they can. So it's going to be a real barnburner especially if you're early stage. I look forward to seeing you there here towards the end of the month. 

With that, let's dive into Software Social. My two guests today are Michele Hansen. She's a co founder of Geocodio. And you might remember her from Startups for the Rest of Us Episode 524 called Bootstrapping a Commodity SaaS when she and her husband Mathias came on and spoke to me about their journey of growing Geocodio to a pretty amazing bootstrap business. They started that company in 2014 as a side project, she went full time in 2017. And as I've said, she's cohost of the software social podcast, which was nominated in several categories for 2020 SaaS podcast awards. She also recently launched a free newsletter about customer research for bootstrappers. So check her out at mjwhansen on Twitter, if you want to link to that. 

And her co host is calling Colleen Schnettler who is @Leenyburger on Twitter. She's a Ruby on Rails consultant. She's spoken at both Rails Comp and RubyConf and loves being part of the dev community. She recently launched her first product, Simple File Upload, excuse me, which is in the Heroku app marketplace. If you haven't been following their story, it's super cool to hear this going from zero to $360 MRR in the span of about a month with this file uploader app. So again, software social podcast if you want to check that out. Colleen is a mother and a military spouse and loves chatting about all things software and business. Ladies, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me today.

Colleen Schnettler  3:45  
Hi, thank you for having us. Yeah, it's great to have --

Rob Walling  3:49  
issues are great had issues. Anders, it's great to have you here, as I read the outline where Xander says the internet is causing causing issues. So let me start with this before I try to figure out if I have to troubleshoot my internet or whatever it is. But I want to start with this question of when did you start your podcast? And what made you decide to do it?

Colleen Schnettler  4:12  
So I have actually been on Michele for a while, like I had been asked gel for a while if she was interested in starting a podcast. Because Michele and I used to always casually meet about once a week to talk business and I was in that really hard idea generation phase where it just feels like you're just slamming up against brick walls like you have a great idea and then you just can't get any traction or you can't ship it or you can't find someone to purchase it. And so we were already meeting and that was great. But then COVID hit and she moved across the ocean.

Rob Walling  4:53  
You want to take it from there, Michelle? 

Michele Hansen  4:55  
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it came out of it because we wanted to stay connected to each other. And we had some friends in the bootstrap community who had prodded us about it and had said, Hey, you guys should have you should have a podcast. And so we're like, you know, we'll just take the conversations we were already having. And worst case, it just like forces us to keep meeting every week. And I think during COVID, that's been really helpful to have to schedule in interaction with other people. And so it really just started as something that we were doing for ourselves. And I think we've joked that we expected that we would just have a couple of pity listeners, like our husbands and some friends of ours, and it would just sort of just be this thing we did for each other. So it's been really fun. 

Colleen Schnettler  5:47  
Yeah, I think for me, what happened was, I was trying to stay motivated. And I was searching the internet for bootstrapped founder podcast, and there's 1000s of bootstrapped founder podcasts. But I was listening to one show, and I distinctly remember, the guy was talking about, like, how he got in his car and drove to California. And he was just such a different place in his life. Like, I was like, where the parents like the mothers and the people who are trying to build sustainable businesses, while raising a young family? And while working a job like I was looking for an approach that was would fit more like in our life, and I didn't feel like a lot of people were podcasting about that.

Yeah, love it. And that's really why a lot of us I think started is we started podcast or even why we started MicroConf was that we looked around for other people trying to do what we wanted to do in the way we wanted to do it. And I like calling you just s...

Colleen Schnettler  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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Michele Hansen  0:46 
So Colleen, you launched your SaaS, Simple File Upload, in December. And for the past couple of months now, we have been tracking how it's doing, how many people are signing up, your revenue, all those things. So last time we talked, you were on track for $325 in MRR and I think the previous time we had talked about before that which is maybe like two weeks before that. You're at $120 MRR. And so I'm curious, like, where are we now?

Colleen Schnettler  1:29 
So since we last spoke, I had one additional signups.

Michele Hansen
Nice.

Colleen Schnettler
So that puts me at $360 MRR. And I really I mean, I feel like I've won the lottery, Michele, like it feels amazing.

Michele Hansen  1:39 
Isn't SaaS great?

Colleen Schnettler  1:41 
So I mean, it was so hard to get to this point. But right now it just feels good. I think it's important to note that I couldn't charge for it until February 4, which was three weeks ago. So in three weeks, I've gone from zero MRR to $360. That's why I feel like I've won the lottery, like it's just.

Michele Hansen  1:59 
That's amazing. Have you annualize that yet? like have you let yourself like multiply that by 12. And just like think about that for a second?

Colleen Schnettler  2:05 
Too much. It's too much dreaming. I'm not quite ready to dream that big yet. But it feels really great. I mean, I am kind of floored --

Michele Hansen
$4,000 a year, by the way --

Colleen Schnettler
I could fly to Europe someday with that money when it's safe to fly. Yeah, so it feels really amazing to see this growth. And I have mentioned that I've been really busy the past couple weeks with with real paid work. And so I haven't put a lot of time or energy into this and people are still signing up.

Michele Hansen  2:43 
So this is real paid work the differences.

Colleen Schnettler  2:47 
Yeah, I shouldn't call --

Michele Hansen  2:50 
You don't have to be sort of like a like button chair, in order to make that revenue and make those sales, right like cuz whenever you get a consulting client, this is where these are so different. You have to work for every single customer in order to make that happen. Like you have to be out meeting people and making contacts and landing each client. But when you have customers, and they can just sign up whenever they need it. And they don't have to talk to you or do anything with you at all, before paying you, it's a huge shift.

Colleen Schnettler  3:30 
Yes, I mean, it's it's ultimately, you know, right now I trade my time for money. And as a consultant, I'm very, very aware of my time almost to my own detriment. And with this, yeah, I mean, of course, I put a ton of time in upfront, but people just sign up in the middle of the night and sweet. Like, that's awesome, I didn't have to do anything!

Michele Hansen  3:52 
So I'm curious. When you were when you had a you know, sort of we call them corporate jobs like were you? I wonder if were you a consultant like were you time tracking?

Colleen Schnettler
No.

Michele Hansen
Oh, okay.

Colleen Schnettler  4:05 
So I've done them. All right. I've done the salaried not time track to time tracking as what I do now. And now the product. So it's exciting.

Michele Hansen  4:14 
Yeah, it is exciting. I just remember when I went from working at an agency and having to, you know, time track three minutes spent replying to an email to then working in a product company and not having to time track and it was like, Oh, my God, this is -- this is amazing.

Colleen Schnettler  4:34 
Yeah, it feels totally different. So I'm, you know, I'm trying to enjoy it. And I'm also trying to think about, like, how I can continue to try and find -- I don't really feel like I found any kind of real product market fit. Like I've definitely found a pain point because people are signing up. But, I mean, I think that that there's a lot of opportunity to find deeper pain points in more specific niches. Because not everyone is this is the weirdest thing I know I keep bringing this up, but like people are signing up, but only about 50% of the people who sign up and they have to pay me when they sign up, are using it. And I'm emailing them. And I'm trying to see if I can help them. But if they don't use it, they're going to churn. So I feel like I'm a little I don't want to say concerned, but I'm cognizant of the fact that I think I'm going to have a high churn rate this first month, because people are going to be like, why am I paying for this thing I don't use?

Michele Hansen  5:27 
Yeah, I think that's something worth diving into. And you mentioned that you're emailing people. And we've talked a little bit about different approaches, you've taken to those emails, in terms of copy and subject lines, and all those sorts of things. And so I'm curious, if you've been, like trying anything differently, or if you've had any more people get back to you. And you've kind of gotten any more insight into why that might be happening?

Colleen Schnettler  5:53 
Nope. I mean, I can't get anyone...

Michele Hansen
That sounds frustrating.

Colleen Schnettler
It is it's frustrating. So in the beginning, I had a free tier, which I no longer have, there's no free free option. And the people in the free tier would would engage with me a lot more and and they seemed it was seemed like because they were very grateful. I mean, most of them expressed gratitude that I had solved this problem for them for free. No one emailed me back who was paying me money. Now to be fair, it's only what 1012 people that are paying me money, they don't want to talk to me. So I'm right. Have you been

Michele Hansen  6:30 
Like, can you like look at their email addresses and see like, are they Gmails that are signing up? Or like people at companies?

Colleen Schnettler  6:38 
There are Gmails? It's both. It's a combination of Gmail and custom domains. And it you know, I haven't even been looking to see if they're, you know, what, it just occurred to me, I haven't even been checking to see if those emails are opened. So there could be something else going on, or they just don't want to talk to me, which is is what it is, I think, though, like why I just I don't want to stress about it. But like, why would you sign up for something you have to pay for and not use it? Like did i know.

Mic...

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.

This episode is sponsored by Domain Mapper. Domain Mapper gives you a single place to see all of your domains from multiple registrars and their DNS settings. Automated tracking for domains includes a MX and txt records. Plus, you can get domain renewal reminders, so you never lose one of your domains. Check it out at domainmapper.app.

Thanks again to Balsamiq for generously supporting our listeners in this way. If you'd like to receive a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social

Colleen Schnettler  0:42 
So Michele, I saw a tweet you had the other day where you just casually dropped that you were quoted in Adam Grant's new book, what is that about?

Michele Hansen  0:54 
Yeah, it's kind of a funny story. So Adam Grant, who wrote Originals, has a new book out called Think Again. And a vignette from my application to my old job, actually is in the book. It's kind of crazy.

Colleen Schnettler  1:15 
So how did that happen?

Michele Hansen  1:17 
So he gave a talk at the place I used to work. And the talk was on sort of unexpected findings and learnings. And there was just one particular story he told that prompted me to go ask him a question and talk to him afterwards. And I love that story, if I can just tell it for a second. So he was saying how there was this startup that was pitching some venture capitalists for funding. And in addition to all of the slides, you would expect about, you know, the problem they're solving and how they're doing it, and why they are the team to do it, and how they're taking over the world and all those kinds of things. They also had a slide in there, that straight up said all of the reasons why their company may not work.

Colleen Schnettler  2:08 
Hmm. Okay.

Michele Hansen  2:10 
Yeah. And it's not something that people normally put in a slide deck. And what really stuck out to me was he said that instead of the VCs going, Yeah, you're right, like, this idea sucks, your company's never going anywhere, your team isn't qualified, like, all right. Instead, the VC started problem solving with them, and talking about how they could help the company overcome these problems and avoid these pitfalls. And it went from this kind of, I don't want to describe it, like pitching as an adversarial relationship, but it's definitely like a weird, icy dance. To one that was really collaborative, and they were diving in together and and those sort of veneers were dropped. And, and he was talking about how, you know, they they said that it wasn't going to work out. And then that made people more interested in and talking to them and helping them.

And so I went up to talk to him afterwards, because that that kind of reminded me of the application that I had written to the company. Because I had written in the application, basically, that I was probably not the candidate that they were envisioning, and that I didn't meet the qualifications they were asking for, but that I had other things that I was bringing to the table. And so he, you know, tells that story. In the book, I was also on his Work/Life podcast a couple of years ago telling that story.

Colleen Schnettler  3:50  
It's so cool. Yeah, it's,

Michele Hansen  3:51  
it's kind of

Colleen Schnettler  3:52  
weird. You're like secretly famous, and you never told us? Like you should have.

Michele Hansen  3:57  
I don't I don't know if I'm, I'm sorry, Colleen. Yeah, it's, it's it's pretty wild seeing my own name in print. But anyway, so since I'm in this book, and also I just enjoy his books in general. I figured he should read it. Yes, choice choice. He did send me a free copy of it. So and I absolutely loved it. 

Actually, there was some the part in it that kind of reminded me of something that you've been going through, and is something that's really common that I see in entrepreneurs, people who are starting out and also people who've been doing it for a long time.

Colleen Schnettler  4:39  
Which is...

Michele Hansen  4:40  
So I'm going to if you'll bear with me for a moment, I am just I'm going to read from the book. I have it in front of me here and it's a couple of paragraphs, so just bear with me here. 

So he's talking about if you can train people to think more like scientists and do they end up making smarter choices. And so, he says:
 

Colleen Schnettler  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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Michele Hansen  0:44 
Colleen, can I ask you a question that you're not supposed to ask people?

Colleen Schnettler  0:50 
Are you going to ask me how old I am?

Michele Hansen  0:52 
No, I'm not going to ask you how old you are. I am going to ask you how much money you have made on your side project.

Colleen Schnettler
Ohhh!

Michele Hansen
Because we had talked about this a couple weeks ago, right? Like you had said that somebody had paid you $10 yet and that you had a bunch of people who would sign up on your free trial, and that their first charge was coming through in the middle of February. And now we are in the middle of February. And so I was curious if you would share with us what it is looking like, from a revenue perspective right now.

Colleen Schnettler  1:29 
Okay, sure. So to customers were up middle of February, one churned and one paid the $10.

Michele Hansen
Nice.

Colleen Schnettler
So that's always exciting. Yeah. But the real exciting boost for me is, as of I think about a week ago, maybe 10 days ago, it's been live on the Heroku App Store. And I've had a couple people sign up and there's no free trial. So they're signing up at $35 a month.

Michele Hansen
Sweet.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah, it's actually really exciting. I'm trying to not get too excited. But um, I think the important thing to remember about Heroku though, it's not like Stripe, I don't get paid up front, you're pro-rate build. So if they sign up to try it out, and then they deprovision it or, you know, cancel it, essentially, I only get $1 or whatever, you know, the 35 amortized over the number of days in the month.

Michele Hansen  2:21 
Oh so it's month after? so if I say...

Colleen Schnettler
yes

Michele Hansen
February 1, for example, I would be billed March 1 for it. And if I cancel February 15, I'm billed on February 15, for two weeks worth of usage. Is that right?

Colleen Schnettler  2:34 
I think that's correct.

Michele Hansen
Okay

Colleen Schnettler
So I haven't actually seen any of that money yet. And so but it is really exciting. Like, I wasn't sure once I made it, you know, paid if anyone would sign up for it. And I've had a handful of people sign up. So it's really exciting. Yeah, it is, um, it is very exciting. And I kind of don't know what I should be tracking. I'm kind of struggling with that. Because I'm not actually tracking churn right now. I don't know if that's important to track, like I see if someone cancels, but I don't not like tracking that metric over time.

Michele Hansen  3:14 
I think more important than then the numbers and percentages right now is why did they churn, right?

Colleen Schnettler
I know. I emailed them.

Michele Hansen
Okay, good, good. That's what you should have done, right? So right now you say, okay, 50% of the people cancelled, which looks really bad on the surface. But that number, knowing that one out of two people canceled, those numbers will never tell you why that happened. And so, yes, it's a good idea to be attuned to those numbers. But at this stage, the most important thing is to try to figure out why.

Colleen Schnettler  3:50 
That's what I figured is like, the goal here is to talk to people, so I am

Michele Hansen
Oh, my God. Finally,

Colleen Schnettler
Oh, my goodness. Lately, I've come around to it.

Michele Hansen  4:00 
It's fluttering hearing you say that!

Colleen Schnettler  4:02 
I mean, you know, I was thinking about something this morning. So if none of these people churn and they probably went, like I said, people are trying it out. But like, I'm at 120 MRR. I mean, that's amazing, right? Like, a lot of people never even launch a product. I've launched a product and that's amazing. 10 days, I met 120 MRR. So I'm trying like,

Michele Hansen  4:25 
Dude, you have been working towards this for like, so like, I feel like there's so many milestones that you've gone through. And, you know, people like listening right now. Right? Like, like you're hearing Oh, my God, like Colleen, like got this thing launched. And she got it in the marketplace. And then she went through all these hoops and now she has people paying her like -- it has taken you years to get to this point.

Like, like a year ago, when we were still having our in person, weekly business chats before the pandemic and we were both in the same place and all of that, like you were trying, whatever you could even find a product find a problem you could solve, like the idea of like, if I had told you one year from now, you will have you know, 100 and something people using your product paying you 100 and something dollars for. Like, I think I don't know what you would have said you either wouldn't have believed me, or it'd be like, Can we just like fast forward to that?

Colleen Schnettler  5:28 
Right, can we fast forward?

Michele Hansen  5:30 
This is like this has this is the culmination of years worth of work for you like, yes, it looks like it's only been in the last three months. But you have been working towards this for such a long time.

Colleen Schnettler  5:42 
Yeah, and I think that's super important to remember. Because I was thinking about, like, I was trying to in my head, I was fast forwarding to a year from now. And probably when I tell my hopefully success story, it'll be Oh, I launched it, you know, February 4 2021. But to your point, like, that's totally a lie, I have been working on ideas and talking to people for years. I mean, the whole reason I learned to code was so I could have a product business. So this is, this is really a lot, you know, a long adventure in the making.

Michele Hansen  6:14 
I'm so happy for you.

Colleen Schnettler  6:15 
I'm so excited. So I'm trying not to I mean, this is really where the work begins. This is where a lot of people stop working, I think. And I think that's why I know so many software developers that can't quite get their products off the ground. For me, this is where the work begins. Like I think I made a joke the other day to my husband, I was like, I thought having children taught me patience. What's really teaching me patience is having a business. You know, I have to like, avoid. So what I'...

Link to the marketing to developers article Colleen mentioned

Michele Hansen  0:01 
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.

This episode is sponsored by SnapShooter. SnapShooter helps you keep your server safe with backups for all major VPS hosting providers like Digital Ocean, AWS, Hetzner, and more. It makes it easy to take backups for MySQL, PostgreSQL and MongoDB. And you can also do super easy backups for applications like WordPress, Laravel, and Ghost. Check it out at snapshooter.io.

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Colleen Schnettler  0:49  
So Michele, are you at your computer right now?

Michele Hansen  0:51  
I've always at my computer.

Colleen Schnettler  0:55  
Okay, I would like you to go to Google. And I would like you to Google file uploading on Heroku.

Michele Hansen  1:01  
Okay, I'm typing right now. 

Colleen Schnettler 
Okay. 

What came up first thing?

Colleen Schnettler  1:10  
First Google result.

Michele Hansen  1:14  
Wait, is this because I've gone to it before though? Like,

Colleen Schnettler  1:17  
that's what I thought I was like, is Google biasing my response by incognito. Ok, do it again.

Michele Hansen  1:25  
Does it file upload on her while

Colleen Schnettler  1:27  
uploading on Heroku?

Unknown Speaker  1:28  
Still number one.

Unknown Speaker  1:32  
Amazing. That's

Michele Hansen  1:33  
amazing. Like,

Colleen Schnettler  1:36  
I just want to capitalize on being the number one Google response. I don't really know. Yeah. But I was super excited to see that. Yeah, that is like my exciting news for the week.

Michele Hansen  1:47  
That is really exciting.

Colleen Schnettler  1:50  
Yeah. I and you know what the best part about this is, I didn't even know. And I was having a customer interview. And I asked him how he found out about we'll talk about

Michele Hansen  2:02  
this, you're burying the lede here? Well, I don't know. It's all exciting. There's like multiple news stories here.

Colleen Schnettler  2:12  
Yes, it's all exciting. So this is exciting. I am the number one. Number one hit on Google for file uploading on Heroku. Your number one brilliant,

Michele Hansen  2:21  
your number. I

Colleen Schnettler  2:22  
know, that's awesome. Like, I just I don't want to breathe on it in case

Michele Hansen  2:27  
Google changes their mind. Okay, this means you do shouldn't work on your documentation and just don't touch it.

Unknown Speaker  2:33  
Don't touch anything.

Colleen Schnettler  2:36  
Don't breathe on the website. So I think that was really exciting to see. And I definitely want to make that landing page that you dropped to better to kind of pull in the people who are reaching me now from Google. So that's something something I'm working on. But what I alluded to is I found that out because I had a customer interview. So last week, I emailed I think I told you, I would do it ages ago. And I finally did it. Thanks to you know, the positive encouragement I received from you and friends on the internet. Thank you friends on the internet. I emailed 14 people. And as I told you with Heroku, I can get their application name. So in the subject of the email, I said, simplify, upload a end, and I put their application name. personalize it. That's smart. Yeah, I figured I'd get a better response rate, like people would actually open it instead of just saying like, simple file upload. Yeah. So of those 14 emails, I got three responses. That's great one. Yeah, I thought free for 14 isn't bad. One guy said he didn't have time to talk. But it was the best file uploader on Heroku. And I should do more marketing. Nice.

Michele Hansen  3:48  
I always love it when customers tell tell us to do more marketing. Like it's such a an unexpected kind of feedback. Because it's like, wait, you want me to be louder?

Colleen Schnettler  4:05  
So I responded to him and asked him if I could use that as a testimonial. And he said I could. So I haven't put those I haven't put the testimonial on the website yet. But that is something I want to get to do.

Michele Hansen  4:15  
That's awesome. testimonials are so good for growth, like when you like if you've got people clicking on it from Google. And then they come to and it's like not only it seems like it's what they need, but there's some other person saying this is exactly what I needed. That's so helpful for getting new signups. They've been really good for us.

Colleen Schnettler  4:36  
Yeah, I think it'll be good. So So I will add that I just haven't added that yet. So I'm going to add that to my site. And two people said they would get on the phone with me. So you'll know that this is the first time I've actually done this right.

Michele Hansen  4:51  
Yeah, that's that's so good.

Colleen Schnettler  4:54  
Yes, so it is good, but so the first person I see spoke with he was actually in Japan. So I had to do it like in the evening here, and it was morning in Japan and he was so nice, but the call lasted 10 minutes, that's okay. I feel like I totally like, I don't want to say I bungled it like it was really great. But at the same time, like I thought about you talking about how I should schedule an hour, and it was like 10 minutes, and I just ran out of things to say. So,

Michele Hansen  5:28  
like, I've had interviews that were, you know, 10 minutes, like you said, and then ones that were like, an hour and a half, I usually came for about half an hour. Okay, but like, 10 minutes is fine. Like, if you got a really good nugget of information, or you found something out about, like, how they found you why they were looking for something different, what they were using before, which may not have been another service, but like, it could have been, you know, a combination of manual things or patching things together, whatever. Like, if you got that information, and you feel like you got something out of that conversation. That can happen in 10 minutes. Like, that's okay. Okay.

Colleen Schnettler  6:12  
Because I got off the phone and my whole family. So it was dinnertime, here. So I told the kids like I have this call, I'm gonna be there for an hour. And I'm back like 10 minutes later, and they're like, Why are you back? Well, I guess I'm done. But it was like a great, it was a great interview, the person I spoke with was really kind. And I got a lot of information. As I said, that's how I found out like, he found me, because he googled file uploading on Heroku. And that's the first thing that came up. So that was exciting. Yeah. And it was also great, because he's using flask with Python. And I don't have any documentation surrounding like Pike, Python, specifically, like I have generic documentatio...