Q&A!

And so I thought this was like a name I would never use that would fall into obscurity and it was not going to be a big deal. So I just, do you remember, you're probably too young, but, uh, do you remember aim for those of us

So we have a company, both in Denmark and in the U S we joke that we are the world's smallest multinational corporation, though I do know somebody who was a one person multinational corporation as well. And they were at, and they're actually a corporation. We're just, uh, well, I guess we're technically, this is the thing, we're technically a corporation in Denmark, a work company in the U S because we're an LLC. Um, so that gets kind of complicated.

There's no real complications in terms of like citizenship and so far as I have to have permission to live in Denmark, and to work here. So that was a little bit complicated, at the beginning. But it does make it a little bit tricky, but like, you know, when dealing with things like taxes, for example, like I'm the person who would sort of run points on getting everything ready for tax prep.

But I can't really navigate, the Danish tax system quite as adeptly as I can in English for the U S system. But then, you know, time zones are also the biggest challenge. I mean, in this calling, this is something we talk about all the time that like, you know, my whole work day is like pretty shifted. And that stuff I have to be doing, you know, nine, 10:00 PM calls with California and stuff like that, that definitely wears on you.

Sometimes people are early risers and they, they do, 2:00 PM, which is 8:00 AM for them. But it's pretty, it's pretty common that I would, you know, work from, like we work at our desks without too many phone calls. Unless I have to record something with somebody in the UK or something or elsewhere in Europe, but that's pretty unusual.

And then if I have a phone call, it said like, you know, it's, in that three to four o'clock block, which is really tough because those are like the hours when, you know, customers are waking up. So my inbox is filling up, I'm on forgotten, I'm on calls and our daughter's getting home from school and it's just like, everything is like really busy. Um, and then of course can't work through dinner hours.

The couple of times I've had stuff at, you know, 6:00 PM, it's 7:00 PM, it's really a challenge. And then, any calls that can't be fit into three and four have to be at 8, 8 30, 9, 10 o'clock at night. Um, so I try not to do phone calls every day of the week, because it's just like logistically, so conflict.

But yeah, this is a shared struggle, with no good solution. So, okay. So, this one's for both of us, how do you switch between work mode and mom mode, when the work is never really done as a founder, unlike a traditional nine to five. You want to take that one first?

So this weekend is a good example because I have been really busy as listeners of this podcast will know working a lot. And so I worked for like four hours this morning. And I'm sorry, this was Saturday. This was Saturday morning. But what happened was we had scheduled out this time that we'd blocked this time for me to work and I was going to be done at like, I don't know, 10:00 AM, but I hadn't solved the, and it was a technical problem.

So I was really, really annoyed that I had to stop working at 10:00 AM. And so for the first, like from like 10 to 11, I'm like trying to figure out if we can reorganize the day so I can get more work time in. And then, you know, I was thinking to myself and I was like, this is silly. Like. I have time, right? This is, again, this, we talk about a lot though, but like, this is my life, right? I don't have to solve this problem today, Saturday or tomorrow, Sunday, this is a self-imposed deadline.

It's something I want to do. But right now I'm just going to let it go and be with my family and we're going to do family stuff. And so that, although I'm doing the same physical thing, the mental shift. Now his work time, now is not work time. That helps me a lot, not stress about not doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

And that's something that is, is just a constant thing, I'm working on, like, I think it's just really, I both really enjoy my work, and really like the sense of relief I get of seeing, you know, an empty inbox or whatever. I like feeling that everything is all squared away and I just, I just love the kinds of things I get to do. So, I find it really hard to turn that off. It's been something I've been working on a lot over the past year. But for a long time, there really were no lines.

And that was, that was difficult. Like I was never fully out of work mode. I think for us turning off live chat, which we did last winter, that was really important because otherwise we were getting live chat stuff at all hours. And so whether it was dinner time, or you know, 10 o'clock at night and you're sitting in bed, we were always replying to stuff cause we just wanted it to be like cleared out. And I think that was pretty unhealthy. And we were pretty scared about turning off live chat.

But it had, no, it actually had no impact on the business. We still grew last year despite turning it off. So, yeah, I guess that's a challenge for me and especially with the time zones, right. Because all of my customers are aware.

If every night at 8:00 PM, I'm like, I'm going to go work for two hours. He's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like this is not, you know, this is not what we're doing here and he's right. And so I think that that really helps in the evenings for me. You know, so I think I've told you, we pick, I work like one or two nights a week right now, which is a good balance. But you, in that time zone problem, man, I mean, that is like, what can you can't do anything about that?

We started our business because we couldn't afford daycare. So there's no, like we started, you know, the company, we launched when our daughter was like four months old. So like these things are just there. It's just so intertwined to me that really hard to, to have a time when we pull it off and to not talk about work at dinner, we're we're not good at that, honestly.

Like physically removing myself from my computer and like doing something physical really helps me. Cause the kid, my kids are old enough that they're really into that too. So it's something, you know, now that the kids are old enough that we share the same interests, it makes it more fun for everyone.

So the first, um, answer to that is first as we are hiring employee, not employees, uh, it's not like we're, it's kind of embarking on this of like, yeah, now we're going to be a huge company and have 500 employees and an office building in some tower, right? This is we're hiring one person. So it was not a super, it wasn't like we went into 2020 saying we're going to hire somebody this year. It was more just kind of happened.

So, there's somebody that, uh, Mathias used to work with, who, he saw on LinkedIn had recently completed, Flatiron school, coding bootcamp, and he's like, oh, that's like, that's really interesting. You know, he, uh, so this, the person we're hiring was a customer support manager where Matias used to work. And apparently he was just, he was such an awesome guy, like, and I'm really good at handling customers.

And he said there were times, you know, if there was a really hard call, it would be handed to him and then like the whole office would be huddled around his desk, listening to the call and then like start cheering when he like talked the person down off, you know, off of a cliff and like got it calmed down. And, and he was kinda like, you know, if we were gonna hire someone to help us with support, you know, it would be, it would be like him because I know that he has the same approach to it.

And so we, we like kind of thought about it. We also thought about how I think it really, really hit us that like, to what we were just talking about. Like, we have not had a work free vacation in over eight years. In fact, vacations used to be our time to get more, do geocodio work time.

So it was like, you know, it'd be nice if we could even just like somebody covering the support queue, we can like actually take, so, uh, we ended up connecting with him and had a chat with him and we're like, you know what, maybe he can do some freelance work for us.

Maybe he can do some support as a consultant, just to kind of, you know, basically help him out as he's trying to build up his resume as it develops, transition out of being in, exclusively support roles, get his feet wet, and being a developer and, um, and also see, you know, just how does it work? You know, like remotely, cause he's in the U S and we're here. And it was just working really, really well.

And then we kind of had a thought a couple weeks ago, it's like, okay, like we've spent this time, like training him and kind of getting him on board with things, and, but we know he's looking for a full-time job. So like, what if he goes to get a full, and so, one thing that made it that easier for us to hire him I'll say is, is using, deal, which is what's called a PEO, which is basically a company that they, you basically pay them to hire somebody for you.

So it's like deal is technically, his employer, employer of record, they call it. But it means that we don't have to have a company set up in Maryland. You know, they go out and they get health insurance. We just pay for it, which is just so complicated. Just getting health insurance as, as one person or as a one person, like a small organization is really complicated and expensive.

So, um, between the fact that, it was really easy for us logistically to hire him, and that it seemed like a really good fit. We decided to make him an offer. And so, he's going to be doing a combination of contents and like technical content and technical support. So basically helping one, you know, people have, questions about using the API, writing tutorials, writing sample projects. He already has one up on our GitHub.

You know, basically creating sort of developer focused content, and support. But so that's kind of that, and it's not like a big, formal strategic thing. It's more, it's like, Hey, like this is actually somebody who's just a really right fit, in terms of how we want to treat our customers and what we think would be useful for them. And also, you know, something that, you know, that takes some work off of Mathias's his plate.

Cause I've gotten help with bookkeeping and my VA and like, I have a little, group of contractors that help me, but so, this is a way to really lighten the load for him, but also, for me.

And I don't know for you, if we want to do it for both refined slash hammer stone and simple file upload or one of those, I don't know if you have thoughts on that. Just hammer stone.

A part of that is you're, you know, you haven't been able to take a vacation for eight years. So if it were my business, I would buy a house in California because I could afford one. That's the first thing I would do. And then I would try to get a highly technical person in. And try to start deliberately structuring the business in a way that enabled me to and my family to go on vacation for a week and be able to actually disconnect.

And that's probably more than one person and that's probably like, that's a long game, right? That's not going to happen in a month. That's probably a six month to a year process, but I would start tweaking the business to structure it in a way that I had to be less involved, that I could step back.

So, you know, for the foreseeable future, like for example, won't be working on the geocodio engine, It'll be support type stuff that does not directly relate to working on the geo-coding engine. Of course, you know, we, we would like love for him to grow into that, but, um, it's also rare that like an issue with a geocoding engine is something that like, is like critically on fire when we're on vacation. Say more often than not. It's stuff with like servers.

I can't tell you how many theme parks Mathias has, you know, he's been standing in line for a ride, like SSH into a server. Um, it's like, like at least Sesame place, universal, um, Lego land, multiple Lego lands. Actually we like Lego land. Um, yeah, so. Yeah. That's, that's still kind of work in progress for us. Okay. So I am answering for your actually I kind of want to add, I want to talk about simple file load for a second. So you're making what, like 1400 a month, right?

So I would just, I would use the same playbook we used for geocoding basically, figure out a way to do some sort of, you know, freemium plus subscription. And really hit on SEO. Like be all over stack overflow and read it like anytime anybody is posting something that's remotely related to, um, refine, right. Wherever you can find those people like, astroTurf the hell out of it. And like posted like, Hey, like, oh, like try this thing and try that.

And just, be in all of the forums and which is also not only building eyeballs, but also building backlinks and then have some content that's like here. It's, here's how it is. Here's how you quickly get it going. Like now I know your business is different because you're targeting like managers rather than developers, but I think it's important to have the developers, um, onboard. And you could maybe even double track that with doing the, sort of more like outbound sales model.

I mean, quite frankly, I would, you're investing in content for simple file upload and given the changes in the industry and that CloudFlare is now. Um, no, it's not cloud flare it's, um, Cloudinary. No. What is it? Cloud Cloudinary is in that space. I would put that money that you're putting into content for simple file. And instead spend that money on refine.

Gives you a little base of revenue to like, basically just like, just save that money so that, you know, when you, um, want to be full-time on refine without the client, which is coming up three months from now, you have at least, you know, maybe. A month or two of salary saved up So that it's at least a little more comfortable, to be going full time. And I would probably keep consulting for longer than you're planning on.

But again, you have much better work-life balance, uh, boundaries than I do. And I, do not hesitate to sign myself up for working long days, but that's not how. So, I don't think I should advise anyone to do it. That's probably what I would actually do. But like, I'm not saying like, I would not advise you or anybody else to do that.

So not necessarily they're getting to use it in their own app, but they're just getting to see like, oh, this is what I can just play around with this and Nova, or I can play around with this in a rails backend. And then here are all of these white papers and one pagers and stuff that. They can download or that you can send, you know, it makes it super easy when you're following up with someone after a call, right? Investing in content doesn't necessarily mean SEO. It also means other things.

Like, there are a lot of states where a founder only married couple founder company can't buy company health insurance, which is, you know, way better and, you know, like orders of magnitude cheaper than buying individual health insurance. Like I think when I looked at it, it was like $4,000 a month for buying it on the individual market versus like 1300 a month. So. I think it would be a massive boon to entrepreneurship in the us, quite frankly.

Um, it it's really amazing for me, like looking around, Denmark and seeing, so many people becoming entrepreneurs and not necessarily tech entrepreneurs like us. But like, you know, people can start their own, you know, landscaping business or, you know, like doing something in trades or just having a store or. Um, with crafts or like just all sorts of things at much younger ages, and also like, with, less, um, less risk, because they don't have to worry that.

Yes, of course they have to, you know, they have to bring in money and they have to feed themselves and their families, but like, they don't immediately have a, you know, 10, 15, $20,000 bill at minimum to start with in order to start their own. I think, it would be really important. And you know, it, I mean, it feels very appropriate that the reason why, uh, health insurance is tied to employees in the U S is because of Hitler, right.

Like that's just the only way you end up with such a bad system, um, because of war II. Um, so

I'm not getting into what exactly that solution would look like, but Yeah. Okay. I think, did you get any questions directly?

But you know, our, and I know actually you kind of, uh, you kind of ripped me for this sometimes Coleen, but I feel like we have like a promise to people that like, we're going to be in their ears when they're walking their dog or mucking stalls or doing the dishes or driving their kids to school or camp, uh, every week. I think you kind of

So, I, but I feel like it might actually be higher. Okay. So huge, thanks to all of our listeners who become software socialites and support our show. You can become a supporter for $10 a month or a hundred dollars a year@softwaresocial.dev slash. Chris from chipper CI, the daringly handsome, Kevin Griffin and Mike from gently used domains who has a nice personality, Dave, from recut.

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