Software Social

Listen to Empathy Deployed! https://empathydeployed.com/
Follow Jonathan! https://twitter.com/jot

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. 

TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. 

See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Michele Hansen  0:01  

Hey, everyone, I am super excited to have a guest with me today. Jonathan Mark Well, he is a strategy consultant, and also the host of empathy deployed a new podcast about customer interviews, or rather, I should say of customer interviews. So he's doing example, customer interviews, so you get to be along for the ride as he improves his customer interviewing skill. He is also a longtime listener of this show, and was one of the people I interviewed about my book when I was drafting it. So you could sort of say this is a new episode. It's like longtime listener first time caller, sort of episode. So welcome, Jonathan.

Jonathan Markwell  1:49  
Thank you, Michelle. It's great to be on. Yep. It's wonderful to, to join you after, after listening for so long.

Michele Hansen  1:58  
I'm really excited to have you. And, you know, so one thing that we have talked about a lot, and it was a very big focus for you is the podcast that you're doing. But I think if you if you could kind of pull us back to like, how did you even get interested in the concept of customer interviewing? And like, like, how did you start working with that in your work with with your clients?

Jonathan Markwell  2:28  
Um, I think, you know, I've been aware of interviewing customers for many, many years, maybe 15. I actually did a postgraduate degree I didn't finish, but it was in human centered computer systems. And so an element of the user or customer research would have been customer interviews, or the star I think was quite different from, from from, from your style. And, and so it's kind of in the back of my mind, but it's not, it's nothing, something I've been particularly comfortable with. So admittedly just avoided it a lot. But then, as I've worked with more and more software businesses, I found actually some of the the biggest aha moments for us. In the end, the biggest chunks of progression that those businesses have made are actually as a result of what we're effectively customer interviews, although accidental ones. And so the more I realized that actually, maybe if we were doing this more formal and more systematically, like I probably know, we should have been doing all along, we might have, you know, made may progress significantly faster, and spent a lot less money, figuring out how to make these different businesses work.

Michele Hansen  3:53  
Yeah, it sounds like you sort of had these moments where things kind of sort of unexpectedly learned things that were helpful to you. And you kind of became hungry to get more of that.

Jonathan Markwell  4:08  
Yeah, yeah, hungry. But then still not. Not enough to get into the habit of really doing it. Every every time the opportunity came up, where it's like, you know, maybe if we did lots of customer interviews here, we might get us past this, this problem that we that we currently have. And I you know, I guess it's sort of only from listening to the, this, this podcast, and subsequently reading drafts of your, your book that I'm like, you know, it really, it's not that hard. I just need to get into the habit of doing it. I mean, not to say it's not hard. It's just that come on, John, you need to do Just get in the habit of doing it and learn this stuff. Because all the materials that you've got no excuse now, it's all laid out in front of yours is the is the how you can do it. And, and by doing it often, maybe I'll be more comfortable doing it when I need to do it.

Michele Hansen  5:19  
So I'm curious, so when. So So you started listening to the podcast, you sort of heard me extolling the virtues of talking to customers as I am wanting to do. And so from that point where you started reading the newsletter in the draft, like, like, at what point did you start interviewing people again?

Jonathan Markwell  5:44  
I'm not sure I know, I, it was definitely earlier this year, I need to look at my calendar. I didn't do very many. But I did a few here and there, using the the some of the early interview scripts that that you shared. And, and there were people that I already knew, but I really wanted to dig into some of the their approaches to solving their problems, which are customer interviews, things be very simple to fit fit well, with, they weren't my customers, they're people that I was interested in, if there was a product, maybe for them that I could help them with. So it's kind of like I used it, use it there. And then it wasn't until I had one client where that I started working with earlier this year, to May, June time where it was like, you know, to really understand what's happening here with this, you know, pretty successful, profitable product, but there's not growing so well, we need to need to really understand customers and start talking to them more. So then we got a bit more rigorous. And, and we interviewed over the course of a month, I think six or seven people.

Michele Hansen  7:04  
So what were some learnings that came out of those interviews.

Jonathan Markwell  7:11  
The I think the main thing, I did most of these interviews with the founder of that product on the call with me, so he was observing. And the best part of it was really him hearing firsthand just how happy his customers were with, with the product. And so you know, not having much of that feedback loop. Because it's a developer tool that he provides great support for, and as a lot of conversation with people via chat, and email, but very rarely. voice or video communication. And so hearing that those those people read it get a lot of value out of that it was a great product, I knew it to be as well, because I happened to be a customer of his in in the past. That was as pretty wonderful. And then hearing how they described the situation that they were in without the tool before and the experience that they went through to, to come to the conclusion that they needed his product and the you know, in settled on it long, long term.

Michele Hansen  8:33  
You know, I think when you're like when you have a product like this can be one of the most sort of rewarding parts about doing interviews is you know, you get a lot of support requests every day, you're used to hearing about bugs, you're used to hearing what feature requests and all these kinds of things. And rarely do you get an email and sometimes it had does happen but rarely do you get an email from someone that's simply just them effusively praising the product and talking about what they use before and how this is so much better than what they were doing before. And, and I think for us, who are you know, founders who were, you know, wearing a lot of hats ourselves, it can just be just so motivating, to too, and rewarding to hear wow, like, we really are helping people and they, wh...

Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help

- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you

Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Colleen Schnettler  0:02  
Hey, Colleen, hey, Michelle. Good morning.

Michele Hansen  0:43  
It's been a year. Oh,

Colleen Schnettler  0:45  
it has been a year. Yes.

Michele Hansen  0:48  
2020. Part Two. Okay. 2021. Part two is coming to a close

Colleen Schnettler  0:56  
eye. That is hard to believe, isn't it?

Michele Hansen  0:59  
Yeah. And so I thought maybe this would be a good time to reflect on the year that has been and think about the year to come.

Colleen Schnettler  1:13  
I love this idea. Wow, that's so cool that we've been doing the podcast long enough that we can have a yearly reflection. We've been doing it more than a year. I know as to how a year and a half. I love it.

Michele Hansen  1:26  
No. So okay, so let's start out with simple file upload. And I feel like it's been a while since we've like actually talked about simple file upload. So you know, as, again, if this was a professionally edited, produced podcast, this is where the heart noises would be. Coleen, can you take us back to where you were in January of 2021. With your business,

Colleen Schnettler  1:55  
so in January of 2021.

So in January of 2021, simple file upload was in alpha, I believe in the Heroku add on store. And so that means it was not yet available for sale. You have to get 100 users, maybe it's beta, you have to get 100 users of your product in the app store before you're allowed to list it for sale. I've my years Right, right. Yeah, yeah, no, that was okay. It was that was 2020 2020. I launched it. Yep. It was January

Michele Hansen  2:35  
of 2020. That it was in beta.

Colleen Schnettler  2:38  
Right. It December, January, it was in beta. Right? Yeah, because I have the date as of February 4 2021, I was able to make it available for sale. So the product has been available for sale since February of 2021. Wow. And this is December. And since that time, it has grown to I'm not 1200 MRR, which is very exciting. And it has been a I mean, this year has been a wild ride professionally if I look back on it, because launch simple file upload. Learned a lot while doing that. And almost even bigger than that in August of 2021. I quit my job to join the Hammerstone team. And you took

Michele Hansen  3:25  
a job and then you quite registered like because you were clear Soltan starting out the year. Okay, the next couple years like,

Colleen Schnettler  3:33  
yeah, I basically went on this roller coaster up, I'd been consulting for years, then one of the companies I consulted for for years, convinced me to come on full time with them. And I had every intention of that being like a long term gig. It's a wonderful company. And then I think I announced on Twitter or on the podcast that I took a job and I got inundated with offers, which was pretty cool. And good to know if you're job hunting, you should probably hunt before you just take one. But then a couple months later, I had this really unique opportunity to join Hammerstone Hammerstone stone is the company co founded with my buddies, Aaron and Shawn that's building the Query Builder component and get paid to build that out and keep the IP so I had to quit the full time job in order to do Hammerstone full time and right now I'm doing Hammerstone full time paid. Yeah, so that's what that's what's going on.

Michele Hansen  4:40  
I mean, that's a such a journey for you to go from consulting. And then like this sort of like how much consulting do I need to do like and there's kind of period of time where you're trying to go kind of full time or, like more time on simple file upload. Then kind of Just life necessitated taking a job.

Colleen Schnettler  5:05  
Yeah, I think that's accurate. And I think a lot of people who are trying to build their own businesses can appreciate this. Like, I am super, super excited for those people that can go all in on their business. But I have a lot of bills. And I moved. Oh, I also moved from Virginia to California this year, gradually, Geez, what a year, man. Yeah, so I think the decision thing for me was I launched simple file upload, and the consulting the thing about what I was doing with consulting as I had more than one client, so it was just this incredible overhead of context switching. And the full time job offered me the opportunity, I had negotiated a four day workweek. So it had offered me offered me the opportunity to only have the two things I was working on. And that would have worked out great. I think, if I had stayed there, that would have been, that would have been a great choice, too. But the Hammerstone opportunity just felt too exciting and too big. It's literally exactly what I want to do to turn down. And so I want to say join them in August, and I've been working full time for the client that is funding the development of the product, it actually gives me less time on simple file upload, which is a constant, again, everyone with a job and a side project can appreciate this. It's like a constant balance, trying to find the time for all the things I want to do. But if you think about Michelle, if we go back to 2020, I don't have any products, and I have so many products, like I don't even have time for the ball. Like it's amazing, right? multiple things, right? So it's been, it's been really, really, really exciting and spectacular. And one of our friends, Pete, he's written a couple books. And he uses this phrase, expanding your luck surface area. And the concept is, like, really successful guys will always say, Oh, I just got lucky. How many times have you met someone who's running a, you know, half 1,000,002 million ARR business? It's like, Oh, we got really lucky. It's like, Yeah, but luck played a part. But this concept, I really love this concept of luck, surface area. Luck played apart, but you did all the things to position yourself to take advantage of the opportunity when it presented itself. Yeah. And so all these things we do honestly, like the podcast and launching products, and speaking at conferences, all of those things, I think, really increase the luck surface area. And so I feel incredibly lucky. But also, I also took a lot of steps to put myself in the position Hammerstone, I think is going to be the thing, Michelle, like, it's we feel the poll. I mean, it is exciting. So, you know, we feel the poll,

Michele Hansen  7:53  
that's interesting, like so, I mean, being on something that's like moving and people are like customers are really excited about it. I guess how do you like contrast that with the response that you get from simple file upload? Like, does that feel like a contrast?

Colleen Schnettler  8:11  
Oh, yeah. And I think simple file upload meets a very pressing need people have on Heroku. But outside of that, it feels like pushing, right? Like it feels like and this is this is part of growing a business like I'm not, you...

Follow Josh! https://twitter.com/jlogic

Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help

- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you

Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

Michele Hansen  0:36  
Hey, everyone, welcome back to software social, Colleen and I have a friend joining us today. We have Josh whoa here with us. Josh is founder of Referral Rock, which is referral software. They've been around since 2015. Also in the north, a million air club and have 16 employees. And Josh is also co host of the podcast searching for SAS, which actually kind of a similar concept to our show with a sort of an experienced entrepreneur and then somebody who's transitioning from consulting. So welcome, Josh.

Josh Ho  1:20  
Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, we're been a longtime listener and obviously have known you too for a while and are definitely our podcast that Nate and I have or was totally inspired by you guys. So it is extremely similar. But we've sort of diverged and done different things since then. But the concept was,

Michele Hansen  1:39  
so we're so excited to have you here. So about Gosh, what was this like a month or so ago when we were chatting with Twitter on everyone about like, what, what should we even talk about on this show? And what do you find interesting. And something that came up was people were interested to hear more about some of the challenges and struggles and operations of running a larger business. And so we're gonna kind of dive into one of those areas today, which is something that I spend a lot of my time on actually more time than I do customer research, which is sales. And we're specifically going to talk about enterprise sales, since I feel like that can be kind of this like, I don't know, sort of like a scary topic for people to think about. And so we thought it'd be kind of interesting to sort of talk about how you do sales, how we do them. And then Coleen can kind of ask us questions about it. That sounds good. So too, so I guess I'll kick us off calm? Or do you? Do you have a question you want to start with? No, go ahead. Um, so can you just like, give us a sense, like, in a, like, like, how does an enterprise deal for you usually starts? Like, are you guys doing cold outreach at all?

Josh Ho  3:08  
No, we don't do any cold outreach. And maybe it'd be helpful. How do you define enterprise sales? Because I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing as well. Are you talking like, like, sighs of customer size of kind of deal or, because like, we do all kinds of sales, and I would segment a certain area that I consider more enterprise than our some of our other types of sales as a SaaS business that has, like, the two three plan. Normal thing on the pricing page plus the

Michele Hansen  3:38  
Yeah, I guess I define it and skipping to define it, because people define it really different ways. For me, it's when there's a custom contract involved, which usually means it's at least $10,000 a year, but usually a lot more. I know, you know, if you're talking, you know, venture back startup, like enterprise deal is like, you know, minimum 50 100 $200,000. We're not usually in that range. Most of our what I what I term an enterprise agreement, which is, you know, when you're dealing with, you know, five different departments on the customer side, they're a huge company, you're doing extended contract negotiation, like there's, you know, it's not just somebody goes to the website, clicks it and buys it, and then they use it. Right, there's more involved on our side. And usually those are in that 10 to 50,000 range for us for annual revenue.

Josh Ho  4:42  
Okay, yeah, yeah. So when I classified that so it is that ask us where it's outside normal rails have the quick, you know, click to buy.

Michele Hansen  4:51  
Yeah, like not self service. Basically, there's something special that has to go on

Josh Ho  5:00  
Sure. So yeah, to answer your first question we, we don't do outbound. So we do all inbound, we have a strong SEO footprint. So we a lot of inbound requests that fall into two camps, we usually take them if you these are, quote unquote, are like lead magnets, you can either sign up for an account, or you can request a demo, at this point in our lifecycle. We are we attract people onto our site. And then essentially, there's like a 5050 split, we kind of, we have a philosophy on it now, which is saying, like, let a buyer by how they want to buy. Because you typically see product lead growth, like everyone funneling people to, you know, trials or to sign up. But we try to clearly say you have two paths. Because once someone determines that they do want to talk to someone, you know, it can easily get into the enterprise space, or it might just be like you were saying, a person that requires more of a relationship based sale, where they are talking to their internal champions they need to convince, they still need to go through procurement and all of those things. So for today, we can mostly talk about once they get into that demo track for us. And what happens is they can for us, some of those customers can fit into a standard offering. So like our, it might be an $800, or the $1,200 a month type of thing, usually paid annually. And on the first level, we sort of try to standard out bits of it, where it's like, and we can probably get into more detail of this. So is it our contract? Or is it their contract? That's like usually the first type of thing. And usually, if it's a scoped plan, we try to keep them. And in a regular price plan that isn't like, Hey, I have, you know, I have a million people I want to add to your form versus the 50,000, or the 100,000 kind of ones that are

Michele Hansen  7:00  
a little interesting. So you actually you will start out at the point of using their contract because like, I mean, yeah. Okay, okay. I'm gonna start like, I mean, yeah, sort of count the number of times we have relented and use the customers contract with an extensive, you know, Addendum and scope of work on our side. Yeah.

Josh Ho  7:27  
Right. Yeah, we try to keep them on rails of our stuff as much as possible, right, like whether, like first level one is just click checks to our checkbox, the checkbox that says I, your terms of service, on our website, level two is our standard contract. And then level three is like, they might have some alterations, our standard contract to which we already know, in scope, like, these are the things we're willing to bend on. So it's almost you have to build in or you know, what stuff you're going to be like, yeah, we'll give you that one type of things. And then yeah, level, I think I was on level three, level four is, okay, bear contract, but it is, like you, that has only happened a handful of times over the course of our of our existence, we and we fight like a lot, try to keep it in our other stuff, just to make it faster, because we don't have a large team, we don't have a I don't want to waste, you know, half of their contract on lawyers to try to get this out or get myself into into trouble agreeing to something that I clearly don't know. And I might have...

Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help

- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you

Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help

- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you

Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

Michele Hansen 
Hey, Colleen, 

Colleen Schnettler
good morning, Michelle.

Michele Hansen  0:45  
How are you?

Colleen Schnettler  0:47  
I'm doing great. How are you?

Michele Hansen  0:49  
I am I'm working working through stuff.

Colleen Schnettler  0:52  
Okay, can I start with the funny story? Sure. Our listeners. Okay. So if you listen to our podcast about Michelle's burnout, you might remember that I suggested some very dramatic things, like quit your job or move to a different country. So the next morning, Michelle texted me and told me she went for a walk. I made me laugh, because I was like, yes, you know, that's a good first step going for a walk.

Michele Hansen  1:22  
Yes, I actually, I did go for a walk that day, because it was sunny for once in Scandinavia in the wintertime. So you got to take advantage of that. So yeah, so I, I just want to start by saying I like I've gotten so much support from so many people and so many stories from people about their burnout, or their spouses burnout, or just feeling really, really supported and appreciating it. So much. How much other people have been sharing with me and how vulnerable they have been with me. It's been, it's been kind of amazing, I guess I didn't really know what to expect, going going into it, like recorded that episode. And I was kind of like, ah, like, I don't have any advice for people like is, right, is that going to be like useful for people. And it turns out, I guess, sort of just feeling seen, and knowing that other people go through it was helpful. And I think for me, like, just saying, like, sort of raising my hand and saying I have a problem, like, for me is often the first step in getting through it. Like, absolutely, um, so so that was really helpful for me. And just being open about it, and then all of the support from people. As has kind of given me like a little bit of motion on it. I mean, so many people reached out to me offering to, like, have a phone call or something about it. And, um, I haven't taken anyone, because, like, I don't have enough time. But I really appreciate it. And I'm just kind of like, I don't know, I'm like marinating and everyone's stories, like, like, I kind of feel like, I don't know if you ever do this, but like, you know, you get like a steak and then you put it in the fridge with salt on it, and for a couple of days, and then it gets really tender. And I feel like I'm just a piece of steak sitting in the fridge. And like every story and and sort of encouraging word people have sent to me as sort of, you know, their each one little piece of Maldon salt that's just kind of working its way in and tenderizing me and this is a little bit of a weird metaphor, but like people who take their seriously know what I'm talking about. Like, I'm just kind of, you know, I'm sort of like, yeah, I don't know, something marinating is like totally the wrong word for that. But you know, I'm just kind of absorbing, I guess all of that. Okay. Um, that's great. And yes, I have started to try to try to make some changes, but I think something that really helps crystallize for me, in hearing so many stories about burnout was like, there's kind of it feels like there's kind of like two different categories of burnout. There's like, work burnout, and then there's life burnouts. Okay. And work burnout is, you know, that's like your, your burnout from your work situation, right. And then life is like, you know, everything else going on, right? I have life burnout. It turns out and so that has been helpful for me in framing this because then it's kind of like a sort of, like, it feels like sort of like the first direction sign. You know, it's like, do I turn left? Do I turn right? Is it work burnout, is it life burnout, okay, now we know which way to go. Okay. And then that's like a, you know, sort of like another step to go down. like researching how people get through this. So I think that that was really key and helped me start, I think start even just like thinking about changes to make, because it's one, it's like everything possibly that you have going on that you might need to change. Like, that's a little bit overwhelming. But at least knowing which domain to think about is helpful, I think.

Colleen Schnettler  5:27  
So how do you know it's life burnout and not work burnout, what's the distinguishing characteristics?

Michele Hansen  5:32  
So I think it's that, you know, for me, like, like, I really enjoy work to the point where, like, you know, most of my life, I have found work easier than life, quite frankly, like, I tend to escape into work or school or, you know, whatever that is. And I think actually, the, the fact that I was like, one of my initial stressors couple weeks ago was like, I don't have enough time to work was not actually a sign that I was burning out from work, it was a sign that I was going into one of my oldest tried and true stress responses, which is trying to disappear into work. And then the fact that I didn't have enough time to do so was stressing me out. And that like that that outlet was not available. So it's not that I didn't have enough time to work. It's that like, I didn't have enough time to neglect the rest of my life and just disappear into work.

Colleen Schnettler  6:40  
Okay, I understand, I think, did we

Michele Hansen  6:43  
did we ever talk about like the four archetypes of like, stress and trauma responses, we were talking about that. Okay, so we're talking about that. So there's like four main categories of these. And it's just worth sort of noting and it's like, not any of them are better or worse than others. It's just intended to be descriptive, and like, help you understand how you respond to stressful situations. And so the first one is anger, which is, you know, respond with anger, whether that's verbally or physically, you know, with violence against yourself against other people, against objects, right. And so like, if something really stressful happens, and you really want to punch a pillow, or a punching bag, like anger might be one of your primary stress, or trauma responses, most people are a combination of a couple. The next one is flight, which is you are leaving the situation that can that that can be physically or it can also be sort of mentally, but that often takes the form of workaholism so disappearing into work. Hello, me raising hand. Um, that can be exercise, like, so I was a competitive gymnast growing up. So that's also in the flight response. You know, it can be physically moving places, like, you know, like, when, like, COVID got really bad, I decided to move country. So that is also a flight response. Like, hello, all the bells are going off here. Right? Um, so that's like the flight response. I think especially like, in our community, like, I come across a lot of people with the like, workaholic flight response. And the thing like, is like, though, the thing about flight responses is that like, they can often be sort of extreme versions of h...

Follow Jordan! https://twitter.com/jdnoc

Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help

- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you

Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT
Colleen Schnettler  0:02  
Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs. But a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care. And Hey check it is here to help. Hey check it is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool. It goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users a happy experience. It includes AI generated SEO data, accessibility scanning, and site speed checks, with suggestions on how to improve and a number of various other tools to help you start a free trial today at Hey, check it.com

Welcome back to the software social podcast. I'm your host today, Colleen. Today I am super excited to have a special guest on the pod. Jordan O'Connor, the founder of closet tools is today's guest. Thanks for showing up today. Jordan, I appreciate it. 

Jordan O'Connor  0:56  
Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. 

Colleen Schnettler  0:58  
So I specifically wanted to ask you here because your Indie hackers interviews was one of my favorites. And I'm sure you hear that a lot. Do you hear that? A lot? 

Jordan O'Connor  1:07  
I've heard it a few times. 

Colleen Schnettler  1:08  
Yeah. Yeah. So for those who have not heard your Indie hackers interview, could you tell us a little bit about what closet tools is? 

Jordan O'Connor  1:17  
Yeah, so closet tools, I started closet tools almost almost four years ago now. It's basically an automation. It's software automation for Poshmark. So Poshmark is a retail selling platform. So it started out as mostly just people selling used women's clothes, it was mostly women selling used clothes on there.

And the way they built the platform is more like social media than it is like, you know, like, you know, like what you would think of ecommerce is like a storefront or something like that. And so the way to get exposure to your closet, your profile, you have to do things like sharing and liking and commenting and all these different social engagement signals. And that's how you get exposure. That's how you get followers. That's how you get, you know, eyeballs on your stuff, so that you can sell stuff. And so that takes a ton of time. And my particular customer, which would be like a reseller, they don't really have time to be on social media all day engaging and stuff like that, like they just want to sell clothes. Most of them sell on eBay, they sell, you know, on their own storefront. So they just want to sell stuff. And so that's what causes tools does, it does a lot of those engagement things for them, it'll share their items throughout the day, it'll automatically respond to different events that happen if somebody likes an item, it'll automatically send that person an offer with a discount stuff like that. So it kind of automates a little bit of the sales process for them. So yeah,

Colleen Schnettler  2:46  
so Poshmark is like eBay, but fancy, right, like higher high end.

Jordan O'Connor  2:52  
It's no, it's definitely it's definitely I would say it's not that eBay is high end, but Poshmark scales, low end to high end, you can you know, you can find, you know, you can find like really nice purses or whatever on there and stuff. Or you can buy, you know, a $5 You know, screenprint t shirt, like you can buy, you know, anything you want on there, most of the appeal is that most of the items on there are like used. So you're getting get a discount on some item that's lightly used that you would normally pay a lot more for. So that's kind of, you know, the the corner of the market that they tackled, there's also a lot of new items on there and things like that, too. So, but yeah, the thing that's weird about it. So like you have like a closet, it literally is like like Instagram, so you have your closet, and it has like all the images of like your items and stuff that you're selling. And each post has, you know, a common section, people can like it, they can share it themselves to their followers. And when you share to your followers, your item, they're basically when you share to your followers, that item shows up in their main feed. So like you can go into the app and you can like search specifically for like, hey, I want like Nike shoes, or whatever. And then I'll just come up with Nike shoes. But if you just kind of like go into the app, and you have like the main feed, just like any social media platform, whatever people are sharing is what's going to show up there. And so if you're not constantly sharing, then you're not going to show up in that main feed, and people aren't going to randomly stumble onto your profile. But you literally have to physically click like two buttons for every item you want to share. And a lot of my customers are actual, you know that this is their business and they have 2000 3000 4000 items. And it would take them an hour or two just to go through and click click, click, click click. So it and that could be time there's been doing other things like even literally just like packaging items to sell send out and stuff like that. So So yeah, it saves them a ton of time, and it ends up making them more money in the long run just because you know it's doing things for them. So it's pretty, it's a win win. It's pretty cool.

Colleen Schnettler  4:48  
So how did you get that idea? Were you selling stuff on? Poshmark?

Jordan O'Connor  4:52  
Yeah, so my wife started selling things on Poshmark at the time. We kind of need some extra income and she was like no One of her friends actually introduced her to Poshmark. And so she jumped on and she was starting to sell stuff. But then right away, I kind of was like, Whoa, you're spending a lot of time, you know, night sharing and doing a bunch of stuff on there. I was like, and it was right around the time I was kind of learning web development, things like that. I had already knew how to code and stuff. But I had never really done much web development. And I said, Hey, I think I can write like a little script that kind of like automates that for you. Like, you just press a button, and it just rifled through and shares all of your stuff. And so that's what I did. And so that's how I made the first, you know, like, kind of the first version. And for a while, I just, um, let her and her friends use it. And they thought it was awesome there was that it was really cool. And all it was was a bookmarklet. So like in, you know, browsers, you can just embed JavaScript code right in the bookmark, and you just click it and execute it. And it just like, yeah, you went through, it wasn't smart, or anything, had no GUI or anything like that. I just did it. And they thought it was great. And they were doing well with it. And then I blogged about it on my personal blog. And over the course of like, six months, I started getting like a hand few handful of emails from people saying, like, Hey, I found this, you ...

Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help

- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you

Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Colleen Schnettler  0:00  
Good morning, Michelle. Hey, Colleen, it's early here in California. But I am here for you.

Michele Hansen  0:42  
It's late here in Denmark, it is dark. It is not even five.

Unknown Speaker  0:47  
My goodness.

Colleen Schnettler  0:48  
So I think this week, I would like to talk to something I talk about something a little more serious. And I want to talk about you. Because you have been going through some stuff.

Michele Hansen  1:02  
Yeah, I have. It kind of occurred to me this week that I I don't I don't know, I might be going through burnouts. Or at least I have, like, way too much stress. Like, like, I feel like I'm DDoSing myself.

Colleen Schnettler  1:22  
I love that line, by the way. So first of all, I guess your best friend and podcast host has been telling you this for like eight months.

Michele Hansen  1:33  
Like, we're like you're gonna burn out. I'm like, I'm fine. And then our friends of ours were like, you know, after like, I launched something like, you know, especially infoproduct people, they're like, I went through like a depression after that I really burned out like, and I was like, I hear you but like, I'm special. I'm not gonna that's not gonna happen to me. You know, all think we're special. We all think we're special. And we all are special. But there are also things that everyone goes through. Um, yeah, I have so much going on in my life right now. And, and I think this, I mean, I Okay, so you've known this for a long time. But like, I I think it really started to become apparent to me that like, given everything I'm doing I have really like down prioritized taking care of myself. That was something I got really thinking about at founder Summit. And it's not just like a work life balance problem or a, you know, need to like join a gym problem. Like, I think it's like, bigger than that. But I don't really know, like, how do you unburn out? How do you do though?

Colleen Schnettler  2:43  
Let's take a step back. When you say you haven't deprioritize taking care of yourself, what did you use to do that? You don't do like you have stopped doing over the past year. And like what led to that. I'm curious how you got to where you are.

Michele Hansen  3:00  
I mean, so I really don't first of all, like I really don't work out as much like and I used to be someone who was like super active, like, I used to run to work, bike to work, play tennis, do gymnastics, soccer on top of that, like super, super active and have really become less active. And I don't know if that's the pandemic or like moving countries and my habits like change, you know, you have to establish entirely new habits. As I was talking to people about it founder summit who are nomads, they were saying that they didn't realize until COVID and they were forced to stay in one place. how stressful it had been to like, move places every couple of months and have to like refigure it all over again. Like oh, like where's the grocery store that I like? And like, can I get the food I like and you know, where's the gym that I like? Where can I work? Like all those kinds of like basic everyday questions become sort of stressful. Like I definitely feel like that like I didn't go to the dentist for 18 months. Mostly because it's like so like hack I have a package I've been trying to mail for three months and I'm just so overwhelmed by the idea of like figuring out the Danish postal system that it's still sitting at my desk. So like basic everyday things become really overwhelming when you're abroad. Yeah, I think like one of my habits changed but then I think I just have so much going on also that like you know I think the great thing about working for yourself is like if you want to take an hour lunch break and read a book like you can do that but like I have been feeling like I don't even have time to eat I don't have time to make myself healthy food like the idea of just like even cooking a piece of salmon or whatever like seems overwhelming and so like I have really allowed my health to like totally slip because I just feel like I don't have time for it but I also don't have those like sort of habit triggers I guess that I used to have you know if I was in my environment I was in you know, do Two years ago, for sure. And I think with everything that I have going on, that's like become really acute.

Colleen Schnettler  5:09  
So and you would lump. I mean, that's your physical health. But also you said you don't read books for pleasure. I mean, I think that's what you just said. So that's not that's your whole, not just do it like I do. Okay. Yeah. I mean, have you also, like, what about your, your mental health are you also are you still not having time to do the things you used to love that brought you joy.

Michele Hansen  5:33  
So I differentiate that, and I think this is like I've been, you know, so I'm obviously not an expert in this, I'm just somebody who's going through differentiating between burnout and depression, where, like, I actually feel like my mental health is pretty good. Like I've done I've done a lot of work on my mental health the past couple of years. Um, and, you know, depression is like, when you try to, you know, you try to get the energy to do the things that you liked, and then you don't get any enjoyment out of it, it's like the dopamine just doesn't even fire. Or if it does, it only lasts for a second. So whereas you know, a non depressed person, maybe you can go for a walk, and, and then you or you see a friend, and it kind of brightens you for the rest of the day, and at least helps you get through it. You know, when I've gone through depression, it's like, that enjoyment you get from that, like, you get like 30 seconds of enjoyment out of it, and then it's just gone. And you even feel worse than you did before, because you were expecting to make you feel good. And then it didn't, and then it just like spirals. I'm not in that state right now. It's more just like this constant feeling of stress. And like, I don't have enough time for anything. And feeling exhausted by that constant stress. But it's also not anxiety, either. Because an idea I guess I'm not I don't really know how to explain this. But like it's, it's not like worrying. And it's not like a tension, or No, I don't, I don't know how to explain it. But yeah, it's kind of it's gotten me to Google X. It's like, I don't know what this feeling is. And then I kind of, you know, I mentioned it to some friends of ours. And they're like, that's, that's the burnout. We were telling you was going to happen. And I'm like, oh, and then I'm like, so like, what is like the plan to like, get out of this? Like, is there like, what does your schedule look like when you were getting out of burnout? They're like, yeah, that's kind of like, you're trying to, like, make a schedule of it. Like, right. And one of our friends was, like, I Googled, you know, how to be a type B personality when I was...

Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help

- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you

Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT

Michele Hansen  0:00  
Hey, welcome back to software social, I am super excited to have a guest with me this week. It is Matt wensing, who is founder of Summit, which is a tool for financial modeling. Previously, he was founder of risk pulse, which was acquired in 2019, which was an enterprise SAS. I'm also the co host of out of beta. Matt, welcome. Thanks, Michelle.

Matt Wensing  0:31  
I'm really excited to be here, too. I'm a listener. And I just love it. So this is fun.

Michele Hansen  0:37  
So I have been wanting to talk to you for a really long time. And there is one tweet that you sent out in particular, that made me really want to talk to you. So in January, you tweeted out some notes you had taken from customer research that you did for Summit. And you were working with what the jobs to be done world calls the forces diagram, which is basically this diagram we use to show the different pushes and pulls and anxieties and habits people have around the tools they use, and why they might be looking for something new, but also why they might stay with what they're doing right now. And I am so curious to hear kind of like how this came about, and how you have been using customer research as you explore summits. So can you kind of like take us back in time to when you first started researching Summit?

Matt Wensing  1:52  
Yeah, absolutely. So it's funny that there's actually an overlap here between even knowing what jobs be done enforces progress is and that initial research. So I attend the business of software conference each year in the States, so there's one in Europe and the States, but every October, in Boston, folks get together, at least pretty COVID and cross fingers soon. And Bob molesta is a regular speaker there as well, who is not sure the godfather of the forces of progress framework in a lot of ways. And I just remember being this is probably Oh, man, time's flying, right. So let's just say five years ago, I wanted to say three and like now, it's not three, it's probably five years ago, I listened to him interview, an audience member, kind of a mock customer interview, live about purchasing a car. And the way that they were able to take a dialogue and really parse it into a framework that you could then take away from that, and then keep doing that with more and more conversation. It just was like, Okay, this is definitely a tool that I need to add to my tool belt like this is, this is amazing. What's interesting is then fast forward into Summit, like by that time in the history of my previous company, I was doing sales, enterprise sales, mostly it wasn't doing a lot of customer research, at least in terms of the early sort of genesis of the product. So I don't know that I got to use it a lot. Back then it was mostly just listening to like we did do enterprise deals where there were custom features involved. But really, I got to use it fresh, you know, when you're second time founder, a lot of times you're like, Oh, I'm gonna do this the right way, this time around and actually use more tools and framework things I've learned. And forces progress is one of those. So I wanted to build this tool to do financial modeling. But that is such an ambiguous target that I knew I needed to figure out the value proposition. What does that really mean? What do people want? So funny enough, I gave a talk at business a software as a lightning talk in 2019. And I kind of use that as a launching point. I didn't frame it as, hey, I'm selling a product. I didn't even have a product. I had a little prototype, basically. But I use that talk to share. Really, the problem, socialize the problem space, if you will talk about, hey, this is this is a challenge, isn't it? Like this is a pain. Here's a little tool I made to kind of deal with that pain. And I really tried to draw some business lessons out of it. But really, at that same time, I started to have conversations with potential customers and prospects. And as they talked to me, I started cataloger file their feedback into these different kind of buckets, right, kind of the tool that I had learned previously and yeah, I just kind of did that every you know a few months would kind of refresh my understanding of what they were saying and built up this. This list organized list of feedback which I guess I'll put a bow on it and say it really think helped me understand the product strategy, like what did the product strategy need to be, for me to go into this space that was otherwise very nebulous? Like, how do I have opinion? Like what should my opinions be about the tool and what it needs to do? Right?

Michele Hansen  5:19  
Mm hmm. It's really it's really interesting that you use basically that talk as sort of a, I guess, sort of, in a way, sort of what Patrick McKenzie would call a friend catcher, to attract people to you to talk about the problem. But then because you had that experience with the forces of progress and with seeing Bob Maestas speak who, by the way, his his book, demand side sales actually has real customer interviews in it that are all broken down by the forces. And it's like, it's so good, like it should be on everybody's shelf. And then, but you you were able to process that. And I think that's so important, because sometimes there can can feel like there's this gap between for people who are new to research of how do I go from talking to people to actually designing value? And how do I figure out okay, I've talked to these people, I know what these problems are, I know what I'm interested in. But then what is the product? And it sounds like you were able to bridge that? So I'm curious if you can kind of dive into when you went from this point of understanding the problem space socializing the problem space, you kind of had a prototype, but like, how did the prototype sort of snowball with that? And how did you figure out where it was valuable?

Matt Wensing  6:48  
Yeah, so to put a timeline on this, this was, what you're describing now is essentially the journey from late 20, October 2019, through probably April, May of this year, so you know, almost almost two years, essentially. And during that time, I've released multiple versions of the products, really knowing that this was not going to be it. Now I'm a developer, a full stack developer who can build full, I can build applications top to bottom, not as strong as they used to be on the front end, but like it works. And what I was essentially trying to do was understand, okay, so there are few risks of the business. And funnily enough, Patrick McKenzie was one of the first people I pinged about this idea, because was his work at stripe Atlas and stripe. And just in general, I knew that he would have interesting opinion. And his thoughts were okay, financial modeling is interesting. But it sounds like it could be transactional, like, somebody has a need, they do it. And then they're gone. And I knew I wanted to build a SAS. And so that was like, Okay, that's a great point. Because a lot of times, the use cases that would come up when I talked ...

Follow the speakers we mentioned!
David Sherry: https://twitter.com/_brandswell
Itamar Marani: https://twitter.com/itamarmarani

Colleen Schnettler  0:00  
Every doctor is concerned about your vital signs, but a good doctor cares about your overall health. Your website deserves the same care, and Hey Check It is here to help

- Hey Check It is a website performance monitoring and optimization tool

- Goes beyond just core web vitals to give you a full picture on how to optimize your website to give your users an optimal, happy experience

- Includes AI-generated SEO data, accessibility scanning and site speed checks with suggestions on how to optimize, spelling and grammar checking, custom sitemaps, and a number of various tools to help you

Start a free trial today at heycheckit.com

AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT 

Michele Hansen  0:35  
Hey, Colleen.

Colleen Schnettler  0:37  
Good morning, Michelle.

Michele Hansen  0:39  
It's so nice to see your face again, after seeing it in person. Last off at founder Summit.

Colleen Schnettler  0:45  
I know that was such a wonderful trip. And just amazing that we got to spend that time together.

Michele Hansen  0:51  
I keep thinking about how awesome it was like, I feel like they've set the bar really, really high for conferences in general as but especially post COVID.

Colleen Schnettler  1:04  
Yeah, I also think I will be impressed if they can replicate that experience next year, because everyone I know now wants to go. And I think part of what made that conference so special was that there were it was capped at 150 people. And I'm sure they're gonna get a flood of applicants to go next year. So I don't know what they're going to do how they're going to handle that.

Michele Hansen  1:28  
Yeah, actually, so Tyler tweet that he was like, oh, like, what if we did this in other cities? Oh, like to a year? Yeah. And I was like, Oh, that would be really cool. Yeah, good. Maybe we should talk about like, what made it so awesome. And like, kind of what are like, what are takeaways from it?

Colleen Schnettler  1:44  
Oh, yeah, girl, I have so many takeaways, all the takeaways. Okay. What were what? What would you lead with? What made it so special for you? Besides me? Of course. It's too easy.

Michele Hansen  2:01  
You know, so I mean, yeah, this is really hard thing to like, summarize. So I think it was, I mean, it was just so nice being in the same place with other people who are doing the same thing. You know, I think we've talked about how, you know, we initially connected one of the reasons was like, You're the only person I knew in my regular everyday life, who also did this, like weird internet business thing. And there's just like, aren't that many people in this world doing that. So it's just like, so nice to be around other people who are doing this. And you're not only not only do you feel normal, but like, it's such a good environment for like, throwing around ideas. And like, there was at one point when we were talking about, like, multiples for SaaS companies like making a couple $1,000 a month at one point, like on a on the bus to do the hot air balloon ride over to t Wuhan like, and I hope I'm pronouncing that right. I'm practicing so much. And we're like, you know what, we should just like, ask the bus, like this bus full of people would know the answer to this question and have a perspective on this. And like, and so that was really, really awesome. And I feel like there's so many people who introduce themselves. And then and then we like, you know, I'm so and so Oh, and I'm so and so on Twitter, and I'm like, oh my god, like, I've been tweeting with you for the past, you know, like, couple of years, and I finally meeting you in person. And. And so that was really awesome. And I mean, just getting so many ideas going about things. And also, you know, we had talked on our meta episode about how I want to talk more about negotiation, because that's something I do a lot of, and sales, but don't really talk about. And then a speaker was sick on the second day, and Tyler was like, Hey, can anybody give a talk this afternoon? And like, fill the spot and I was like, Yep, alright, I can do negotiation, talk and workshop. And, and, you know, just kind of kind of jumped at it. And it was, it was super fun. And I think I think the big thing I'm really thinking about that, you know, that activity did was like the, the, the, like the wheel where you had to, like rate different areas over your life from like, one to 10 like how they're going. So there was I think it was like occupational fulfillments like one to 10 which is work, right work. Yep. spiritual, emotional, environmental. Physical. Did I already say social? I don't think so. Social. Yeah, there was like five or six different things. Yeah, that's

Colleen Schnettler  4:49  
six. Um,

Michele Hansen  4:52  
and I think we both had really interesting results from that. Like they're very different like ours were like, Oh, yes, opposite one. And yeah, and really thinking about how like, you know, I like I gave like physical health like a one on that, right. And the goal of this activity was, you know, you give each area a score of one to 10. And then you set a goal of getting up to spots in the next 90 days. So not going from one to 10, which is often how I two things, just like totally like, balls to the wall focusing on something. But going, you know, from like, one to three, and so it's like, how can you have a plan to go from one to three or three to five? Or, or what have you in the next 90 days. And I remember you saying, when I was writing the book, you were like, Dude, you're like, moving so fast, like you're gonna run headfirst into a wall. And I did, and I haven't talked about that too much, but kind of like privately, I've talked to some people who definitely had this had a similar feeling after launching things. Yeah. Um, and yeah, just really, really thinking. I mean, like, literally even like today, like I got hiccups. 30 seconds before we got on recording, and I was doing literally everything I could to get them to go away, rather than being like, hey, maybe let's record another day instead, right? Like I make work happen no matter what. Even if it's at the the sacrifice of my physical health. And so I think that's something you know, I really need to focus on and I think, something Natalie from wild bit said on stage was like, you know, if the founder isn't happy, if the founder isn't healthy, then the company can't flourish. And so I think that's, that's, I mean, that's something I really, really need to work on. And it's like, kind of like work related, but it's like, it's not, but it also like it is in every sense of the word. So I think that's kind of been a thing I'm thinking about, but I don't I still don't really know exactly where I go with that.

Colleen Schnettler  7:07  
Like actionable steps. That's what you're still trying to figure out. Because if you want a warning, pretty bad, so

Michele Hansen  7:12  
yeah, it is. Yeah. I mean, I did order atomic habits, which is like one of those books that like I've never read before, never read a tie. No, it's like one of those books. I feel like that. And like Ray Dalio, his book, or like, books that everybody around me read and like, told me about, and I read about, so I felt like I read them. But I didn't, you know, like, I just didn't feel like I needed to, because it just everybody read it. And I'm like, No, I should probably like, sit down and think about like, not doing a whole sca...