Hey Colleen.
Hey, Michelle.
Hey Aaron.
Hey, Michelle.
Aaron is this first time, you've actually like, come on here, with me here. Like I
Yeah. I've heard the last, yeah, the last two or three weeks, y'all have said my name a whole lot and I've wanted to talk back, but yeah, this is the first time.
That's how I feel when I'm listening to the hammer stone podcasts. Like I was listening to it while I was working the other day. And like, there's something she's like, Michelle had this great idea. And I was like, Ooh, I had a great idea. Like, um, so we are all at the edge of our seats. How did it go at rails?
Well, what is Aaron's favorite phrase? Not ideal. He says that a lot. It was not ideal.
It was definitely not ideal.
Oh, no.
I've picked that up from Aaron which is, I feel like a phrase, that you can, um, co-op to me, not terrible, but not perfect.
Let's, uh, let's get detailed here. In what ways was it not.
So, as we had talked about, I think on the last episode we did together, I had built the workshop in such a way where you had the stepped branches. So the idea was they would check out a branch, they would do the work, they would get the solution. And I thought I was quite clever by getting the cloud IDE set up on git pod, which was wonderful. And Aaron and I get up there and there must've been 180 people in that room. I
Well.
Yeah, it was.
It was huge.
People were sitting on the floor, they were standing on the walls.
Dude, sold-out crowd.
It was a sold-out crowd. And we get up there and we started strong cause I had made some slides beforehand. So I had plenty of slides like before the workshop was like the intro. I feel like we started really strong. And then we get to the part where they have to open the repo and git pod. And there was no internet. Like The wifi just straight up did not work.
Wait, so it like, had it been working the rest of the conference and then it died at this point, or like, had it been spotty the whole time as conference wifi kind of tends to be.
I have no idea.
It was working fine when no one was in the room. So when we were in the room beforehand, we were getting Colleen's computers set up and it was working just fine. And then when it was time to do it live, not only would it not work for other people, it wouldn't work for Colleen.
Oh, right.
Colleen's up there telling everyone to go to git pod and she's trying to do the same thing. And meanwhile, I'm like standing off to the side and watching her computer and it is not loading. Like not even slow, it's just not loading at all.
So, what did you do? Like
So what did we do? So it was good. We were there together because.
Moral support
I was about to just be like, okay, we're done, throw up your hands. I wasn't really, but I did cross my mind for a minute and Aaron was like, we just have to keep. He's like, we're just going to keep going. We're just not going to do the exercises.
Somebody from the audience shouted, do it live.
That's right. So it was super, I had it locally and I was eventually able to get it up and running mostly locally. So I basically, our two hour workshop turned into An hour long talk. Um, It was not good.
An hour long improv
Improv with live coding. That's
With live coding, because suddenly, at one point, Colleen was like, okay, so now do this and we'll give you 10 minutes to do this part. And I said, no, we got to keep moving that, nobody has it open. We can't give them 10 minutes to do anything. Cause people are just going to leave. There's nothing for them to do. And people are just going to leave. And so I kept saying to Colleen, while I'm miced so everyone can hear it. Right. I kept saying, Nope, keep going. Nope. Forget about it.
Keep moving. Nope. Move on. Just move on.
Is there a video.
What I was saying. No praise the Lord, no.
Not ideal for those of us who would like to relive this.
Not ideal.
God. I mean, did you like, could you get a person from the conference in and be
Dude, Get this. Okay. So.
I have wifi?
The person who was supposed to be overseeing the workshop track, just, I don't know the details, but he didn't show up to the conference. So we didn't have like an advocate. So Ernesto was giving a workshop in the room next door. So in the middle of his workshop, he got on the speaker slack and was like, we can't do anything. The wifi is out. We cannot like no one can upgrade rails. So he tried to reach out in the middle of his workshop, but like no one was able to do anything. So
Ah.
It was, it was really. I told Aaron so after it happened, I was really mad and I was like, I'm gonna give myself 24 hours to be pissed and then I'm gonna let it go. Clearly retelling you the story right now. I haven't quite let it go.
I think that's understandable, cause you have been working on this for months.
Work Michelle, right. The other thing that was really cool is, the interesting thing about Aaron and I having a business together is like, we know each other pretty well, but we have not been to a conference together. We've never tried to speak together before, so you didn't really know how that was going to go. It was going really well. We had, I feel like, we were doing really good. It felt like very natural and like, it felt really good.
And then we got to that point and it was just like, oh, I just felt like the whole thing was ruined. So yeah.
God. I mean, so like, how did the people in the workshop react to it? What did they say about the workshop afterwards or while it was going on?
Well actually people were really gracious and kind. Several people, even we were having dinner that night and some guy stopped by us at the dinner table and was like, was he the audio guy, Aaron? Didn't he say he used to be in theater or
Yeah. He said he used to be like in audio production for, I think like proper bands and stuff. And he stopped by, he was Colleen and I were eating in the hotel lobby and he stopped and said, Hey, I used to do audio production. I know that stuff goes wrong. And I've seen people totally freeze and crumble. And I just want to say that you guys did amazing. I was like, wow, thank you for saying that because it felt pretty horrible.
That's it, you know, to have people and he wasn't the only one, but to have people stop and say, Hey, I just want to tell you, we were all feeling the pain and you guys did incredible, like way to go. So some comfort.
Yeah. A lot of people, no one said anything, mean like a lot of people were very kind and said, you know, it was great. And you did the best you could with a crappy situation and, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
So for all the people listening, who run developer conferences with spotty, wifi, Colleen and Aaron, they just, they are a lock. They can handle it when your wifi goes out. Because, like, honestly, I feel like the wifi is usually, I feel like you get thousands of people in one, like concentration of rooms, all of them trying to use the internet. And it very often goes through.
Yeah. And it's kind of a catch 22 because no one, what I have learned from workshops of time passed is you can tell people how to get the stuff locally, but like almost no one's going to do it. We had one guy who had it locally. He sat in the front row. So I appreciated that.
And he was giving us life. He was the only one that had it and he was just making eye contact and thumbs up the whole time we, we relied on.
You always need somebody who's sitting in the front row who's smiling at you. Like if they're giving any kind of talk or workshop, that just goes so far.
He was great, but I don't know. I was incredibly frustrated because you know, the thing about conference speaking and conference talks is you're given a stipend that does not even cover your travel. You are not paid. There's a huge opportunity cost to building these things. Like it's tremendous. And as both of, you know, this was time away from my family, on top of my job, like on top of my product business, like it was just, it was just, yeah. Yeah. I dunno.
I dunno if the cost benefit analysis of this, if the benefit was worth the cost.
Did you guys sell anything? Did you wait, hold on, did you get the, the pre-order landing page up before the conference that we talked about? Oh, okay. Did you sell it?
No. Well, let me tell you.
Okay.
No, we didn't sell anything at the conference.
Okay. You're burying a lead here. Like I feel like there's something else behind this. You just sitting there sipping your seltzer, like just looking at me.
I don't know. Right. We have sold two licenses to presales since we have gotten back yes, to rails.
Are they from people you knew previous.
One person. I know one person I don't know at all.
money.
Yes.
Strange or money.
And Michelle, what I wanted to talk to you about, as well, as aaron and I, while we were at rails conf, we had a big talk about sales. Cause last time you and I talked, we talked, you were like, okay, marketing is one thing, but sales is another thing. So we had a big talk about how we're going to be making a sales push going forward here.
So what are you going to do? What does that look like?
Uh, We're going to ask. We, I mean, I, I think it was good, Colleen and I had many talks after our terrific workshop. Um, and I think it was good cause I think we've both realized that we're kind of hiding behind, I think first maybe development and then marketing. Because with marketing, you can just like, oh, I'm going to, you know, do a landing page and send an email. And I never really have to talk to anybody. And that feels like progress, right? That feels like I'm doing marketing.
I'm so proud of myself. Which is good. But I think one step further is we've decided the only thing that matters is sales and the only way to do that is to talk to people, one-on-one and I think there's been some, like maybe fear on both of our parts about doing that, but the new plan is reach out. We have this whole list of people and, you know, we've been sending them an email being like, Hey, come buy the thing that you don't really know anything about.
And the new strategy is to email them one by one and say, the thing is. Do you want to buy it? Do you want to get on a call? Let's get on a call. Do you want to buy it? No. Why not? Tell me why not. Let's figure this out. So we had this, you know, emotional awakening, and then at rails conf, we did, we did one of those. We, tracked down well Colleen tracks down a guy who was like, I think I'm kind of interested in this. And Colleen was like, okay, I'm going to freaking do this.
And we're like followed him around and finally found him.
I did in fact follow him. Thanks Andy, if you're listening, I appreciate you. Chase this guy around. He was like casually interested and I was like, all right, let's talk. Anyway. So I chased him down and we gave him a demo slash sales pitch.
Nice.
No.
He didn't Oh, he didn't buy it.
It didn't not go well.
Better than the workshop? Did the wifi work?
Than the workshop.
I feel like that's the, that's the bar now? Like did the wifi work when you gave the demo? Anything from there is gravy.
Right. Like I was telling Aaron, I think now that we're a little bit removed from the workshop. It's good, that that happened because if the workshop had been awesome, that would have been our win and we would have been like, Oh, we're so great. We just gave this kick-ass workshop when reality would be, we still wouldn't have had sold any licenses. Right. Like the goal here is so, so I think the workshop not going so well, forced us to sit down and like, reevaluate. Like what do we do?
W what are we doing? Are we going to do this? Are we just going to do all these other things? What is it? It's the James clear thing work versus we action versus
versus motion, right? Yeah. Like what, like what feels like a sort of you're doing things, but then what is actually productive towards doing it, I guess motion is.
Motion versus
action.
I think.
Anyway, you know
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like it was like, the workshop was almost like a productive failure.
Yes, absolutely.
it was good.
It was kind of, I don't know if you guys recorded this after you came back or what, but I feel like you guys were talking on the Hammerson podcast recently about, this kind of like marketing and sales thing and how like, Aaron, I mean, I think marketing is in your job title if I remember correctly.
It is.
So, and like this kind of like shift from, from marketing to, to sales which is, it's kind of like a big shift, right. And how you're thinking about selling this.
Yeah, it's a big shift for me. I think I am prone to, one wanting to develop things, to wanting to do things in bulk. And so transitioning to like a one-on-one sales model is a huge shift for me. I think it's going to be super valid. Even the conversation we had with Andy was really helpful because he kept saying things that almost were a surprise to both of us, you would be so proud of us, Michelle.
We did the whole, we like customer interviewed and Colleen asked a question and then tried to fill some awkward silence. And I told her.
Aaron, like we was like, stop, I mean, you were.
I reached out and put my hand on her arm and I said, no, no, no, let him talk.
It's good to have an interview partner. It
It yeah.
It was great.
I thought that was good.
Yeah. So I think, I think this is going to be hugely valuable for us one, hopefully, because we make sales, obviously that would be goal number one, but it's also going to make our marketing a lot better because we're going to know what, like what words the customers are using and what pains they actually have. And Michelle, you probably are unfamiliar with all of this. I'm telling you this for the first time, um, talking to your customers is a good thing.
You didn't hear it from me. You heard it from Aaron.
Yeah, that's Right. Yeah. So, and it, I don't emotionally, it feels better, cause it feels like something new. It feels like, okay, we can try this new thing and we can make some progress because I do feel like we've been in, I don't know what it has been in motion a lot, but haven't been making a lot of progress and this feels like progress.
Um, I think it's also like, you know, if you start out on it like a one-on-one sales model, like you're not committing to that forever, like, right. You could do that for a while until, you know, you get enough feedback doing this sort of combination sales, interview type conversations, which is, you know, pretty common. You can't dive too deep emotionally, but you can get a lot of really good information from it. But like, you don't have to do that forever.
You just need to do that until the point where, you know, you're growing enough where, you know, the landing pages have the right words on them, the pricing model is right. Like, the delivery that like, you know, you've kind of ironed out all of those different barriers that people have to, to purchasing. And so like this could be, you know, a couple of months or six months or whatever, like it's not forever that you're going to have to do one-on-one.
Right.
Colleen. What are you thinking about this after doing that, I guess also unsuccessful, but productively unsuccessful sales demo in the hotel lobby, what was that like for you?
Well, I'm not gonna lie. What was that? Last week we were at rails conf. It was not awesome because we give the sh crappy workshop and then Andy's like, yeah, I'm not. Like he, he liked the product. He was like, that's cool. But his need profile didn't match up with we were trying to sell him, I guess.
And basically the reason that was is because he has a co-founder and they have a successful business, and we were leaning in, one of the things we've been leaning into is like this concept of, we enable you as the developer, no longer to have to write these custom SQL reports that your marketing, your customer success team, your co-founder is asking for. And so, andy we've said his name.
So the person we were discussing this with is the technical co-founder, and he made the interesting point that he was like, you're trying to sell this to me, but I need to know if my co-founder is going to be happy with the product. And so it was interesting. So it was really
Oh, because the end user is actually not the developer. It's the non-technical or non, you know, the non-developer right. Like the like, oh, but it's the developer who's aware of the problem that they're annoyed dealing with all of these.
Right. So the developer has the problem because they have to build the reports, but the end user of the product is the non-technical team.
right?
So it's kind of an interesting, so it was actually a really useful piece of information. Um,
I mean, cause you've kinda talked about this at like the manager, you know, that like developers don't necessarily value their time, as much as they should like, and like, oh, I could build this in a week. Whatever right. You know, we've all seen the, you know, the thing about Dropbox, like, oh, this is trivial. You just spin it up and Linux and then do these 10 steps. That'll like take you like two days and then it's easy. Right? We also got one of those comments when we launched you geocodio.
Thank you. Hacker news. Um, but like, it's, you know, it's the manager, who's like, dude, you cannot spend a week doing that. Let's just pay for something, that'll do that. And so we interestingly like re those people, especially if, I mean, a lot of your list is like people who were at lara conf on like that's the developers themselves, not their manager.
I think as we do more and more of these one-on-one calls, we're going to get better exposure to that because, okay. So I have this experience and like he's interested, but not totally sold. But then we get back and then two people buy it. So I think people like this guy we talked to at rails conf is not our customer right now. There are people out there who are excited, who are pre-buying it before it is even done. I think we need to lean into those people, and that's our first set of customers.
Talk to them first.
Right,
them
Right.
And figure out like, what is leading them to pre-buy it? What are those problems? Who is the decision maker on buying it? You know, like how did that process go internally to even say that they could pre-order it right. Set up interviews with.
Yeah. So I don't know. I feel like that was really good information. And now we can really dive into these customer interviews. Aaron and I have a goal of doing a call a week and we're going to be more aggressive about finding those people. We have 500 people on our email list, so should be able to have plenty of calls.
Yeah. But hold on before we go, we need to thank our wonderful supporters of this podcast. I guess I'll do the read today. I think you did it last time.
I did. Yes.
Okay. So we want to give a huge thanks to all of our listeners who've become software socialites and support our show. You can become a supporter for $10 a month or a hundred dollars a year at software social.dev/supporters. Chris, from chipper CI, the daringly handsome, Kevin Griffin. I still can't believe he has me reading that. But, um, Mike from gently used domains, Dave from Recut, max of online or not, Stefan from talk to Stefan, Brendan Andre of bright bits, Aaron from Tuple, who is that?
Uh, that sounds like a cool guy. Maybe we should have him on the show.
Alex Hillman from the tiny MBA, Ramy from memo.fm, Jane and Benedikt from userlist, Kendall Morgan, Ruben Gomez of signwell, Corey Haynes of swipewell, Mike Wade of crowd sentury, Nate Ritter of room steals, and Anna Maste of subscribed sense, Geoff Roberts from outseta, Justin Jackson from MegaMaker, Jack Ellis and Paul Darvis from fathom analytics, Matthew from appointment reminder, Andrew Culver at bullet train, John Koster, Alex of corso systems, Richard from stunning, Josh,
the annoyingly pragmatic founder, Ben from consent kit, John from credo and editorninja, cam Sloan, Michael Koper of nusii proposals, Chris from URL box, Caeli from tosslet, Greg park from traitlab, Adam from rails autoscale, Lana and Alex of Recapsy, Joe Masilotti of railsdev.com, Arvid Kahl, James Sowers of Castaway.fm, Nathan of develop your UX, Jessica Malnik, Damian Moore of audio audit podcast checker, and Elden from nodlestudios.
Thank you so much to all of our supporters, and Aaron, Colleen wraps us up for.
Thanks for having me on.
See yah.