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Colleen is stuck in a bubble rut.
Creators and Guests
What is Software Social?
Two indie SaaS founders—one just getting off the ground, and one with an established profitable business—invite you to join their weekly chats.
Michele Hansen (00:01.304)
Hey, Colleen. No, it was just as we start recording, my dog started pawing at the door of what we call the Zoom Room. And this happens whenever I am on a call, because I think he has learned that if he does that while I'm on a customer call, I will quickly run. in the drawer here, I have pig ears.
Colleen (00:02.481)
Good morning. What's so funny? Why are you laughing? We haven't even started.
Colleen (00:13.34)
Nice.
Michele Hansen (00:28.91)
And so he's basically learned that if he hears me talking in here and then he paws on the door, that he's gonna get a treat. And then he'll like come in and who was I on a call with the other day? And I was on a call with another founder and this happened. And I was somebody from Tiny Seed and he like just came in and laid on the rug and just like looked at the treat. Like, and I was just like, what was all that about? Like, why? Anyway, that's just, that's why I started laughing.
Colleen (00:35.724)
Michele Hansen (00:58.701)
How are you?
Colleen (00:59.992)
I'm good.
I don't really know. I think I'm fine. I think I'm go-
Michele Hansen (01:08.172)
That was equivocated.
Colleen (01:10.215)
don't really know. I feel like the correct response, I always say the same thing. We've been doing this podcast for five years and I always say the same thing. I'm always like, I'm great. How are you? I'm not bad.
Michele Hansen (01:18.798)
What's so funny is like, you know, I hear from like Europeans or it's like Americans are always asking, how are you? How are you? You know, and like you ask a European that and like you're basically asking to hear about, know, how their grandmother's cat surgery went. You know, it's like a very deep.
Colleen (01:33.725)
different. It's like.
Michele Hansen (01:35.54)
Like, it's like, well, here's how this is going and that is going. And it's like a long answer. And it's not the like, kind of like, hello, this is signaling that we are having a conversation now. Like, you know, it's not that same kind of like social, social function as it is. God, I was evil to myself today. I've just been in meetings all day. Like, I've just had calls.
Colleen (01:56.019)
What does that mean? Be evil to yourself? sounds...
Ugh.
Michele Hansen (02:02.343)
all day, which is not bad, but it's like a mix. So there was a customer call, there was an internal call, there was a founder friend call, there was a vendor call, there's this one now. And yeah, I'm just like, wait, I've had like random bursts of like 15 minutes at my desk to get stuff done. And it's not normally like that. It's like, I think that's what makes it weird. It's like, but man, I'm like...
Colleen (02:03.643)
Yeah, customers or work? mean.
Colleen (02:15.826)
Yeah.
Colleen (02:28.413)
How do you
Okay.
Michele Hansen (02:31.949)
I've just been evil to myself. Like, why did I do this to myself?
Colleen (02:35.367)
And how do you feel about all those meetings? Do you hate doing that many in a day? Is it draining?
Michele Hansen (02:40.813)
I think I wish I had gotten some time to be outside. Honestly, I like talking to people. Surprising no one. But it is a little hectic. yeah, at lunchtime, like an ideal workday for me is I can get out for like 30 minutes at lunch and I go for a walk, you know, while I eat my lunch.
and I put on like a comedy podcast or a history podcast or something and I just kinda like chill for like 30 minutes. Now, most work days these days, like I don't even get around to eating lunch until two o'clock, like I'm eating at my desk. Thankfully since we got our new website out, that's happening less and less and I've actually been able to go for walks during the day.
Colleen (03:07.633)
You walk any...
Colleen (03:21.565)
Yeah.
Michele Hansen (03:29.485)
Side note, we got a new website and it's gorgeous and I'm so happy about it. And our whole website was so awful and I take complete responsibility for how awful looking it was. No designers were involved in that, I can assure you. That wasn't obvious. I feel like it was a big step in us graduating from being mom and pop bootstrapped company to like...
Colleen (03:32.029)
Yay! It is gorgeous. I love the new website.
Colleen (03:43.389)
you
Michele Hansen (03:59.662)
You know, we're like a, we have like a team now. Like we're like, we're bigger. Like we're like, yeah, right. But it's not just kind of like, you know, the two of us anymore. We are seven right now, soon to be eight in June. Plus contractors. So we're actually, yeah, we're actually plus, I guess with contractors, we're at four, 12, seven.
Colleen (04:03.857)
Yeah, you're a real company. You've been a real company for 12 years, but like you have a pretty big team, right? mean.
Colleen (04:17.861)
Mm-hmm, yeah. Plus contractors.
You have three?
Michele Hansen (04:29.023)
math. Can I math? We're at like 11, 12 with contractors, I guess.
Michele Hansen (04:36.683)
Yeah. Yeah. my god, remember when I was afraid to hire people because I thought it would be the worst boss ever? Yeah. Yeah. Look at me.
Colleen (04:41.821)
I do, I do. And now look at you, it's amazing. I love it. I agree the new website's amazing. Although in your LinkedIn post you'd said something mean about the old website, like it was really red and garish. And I was like, that's a, it wasn't that bad. I mean, it wasn't that bad. That's true, I didn't look at it every day.
Michele Hansen (04:56.457)
It was. I mean, I guess you didn't look at it every day. Like, I thought it was an eyesore. But I had to look at it all the time and see there was like these bright red banners. And I'm like, we don't even like the color red. Why was it everything red? Also, red means warning. Like, why were our call to action buttons red? It was just like, seems really dumb in retrospect. But then we...
Colleen (05:05.533)
And you're like, why?
Colleen (05:11.653)
Yeah, there's that.
Colleen (05:17.521)
you
Michele Hansen (05:21.151)
We're just committed to it at a certain point and busy doing other things. And I guess that's how it gets, right? You get things that are just not updated because there's so much else to do, right? You only have so much time. That's how it always is.
Colleen (05:34.107)
Yeah, and it took a long time, right? As advanced and as much content as you guys had, like, it didn't take, it took a year from start to finish to get the new website launched. So it's not like a simple process.
Michele Hansen (05:45.678)
Yeah, mean, think we, so we did most of the copy first. Like it started last May, actually. I looked at my email and I had emailed Jess, the designer, May 5th of last year. First, we had to rewrite all the copy. Then we gave that to the designers. The design process, I think, was basically done in November, maybe early December. And then,
Colleen (05:55.921)
Okay. Yeah.
Colleen (06:08.507)
Okay.
Michele Hansen (06:13.205)
We kind of had some fits and starts with getting it implemented. Like we ended up using Stutamic for the first time and we had to, we basically are having to like scrap a lot of stuff that was done at first or like sort of redo it. And then there was, I mean, there's just other stuff comes up, right? Like it wasn't like, it should not.
Colleen (06:36.858)
Yeah, of course.
Michele Hansen (06:38.441)
In a vacuum, shouldn't have taken a year, right? But we just had so much other stuff going on, and that's just how it is. Right.
Colleen (06:43.258)
Right, but no one lives in a vacuum. Right? Unless you're very, very early. Like you have a mature, successful business. So I think, you know, that makes sense.
Michele Hansen (06:51.693)
Yeah, was other stuff that happened and now it's out and oh my God, I swear to God, I felt my stress level go down like 90 % once it was out. Like, I was working way too many nights and weekends on it. Everybody else was working too, like too hard on it basically. And made it very clear that we are not gonna.
Colleen (07:02.788)
Wow. my gosh.
Michele Hansen (07:18.461)
keep that kind of pace up. like literally I was so I didn't realize how much adrenaline I had built up. like this last Monday, two Mondays, last Monday, I guess, like 10 days ago, we launched it. And so we're you know, we're getting everything deployed that morning, getting all the content out like last like finishing touches. And like three o'clock comes around, which for me is 9am Eastern. And so like this is like
go time, like customers are waking up, like, you know, the US is waking up basically, and that is just always means things get busier. And I think the fact that like, you know, everything was basically everything was ready, everything was good, come like, you know, one o'clock, everything was fine. At the moment when I should have been like the most hyped and like ready to go, I just felt all of that adrenaline that was just building up for months.
Colleen (08:10.47)
Mm-hmm.
Michele Hansen (08:15.019)
just like completely dropped through the floor and I had to go take a nap for half an hour at like literally the most critical moment. I was like, I'm just, I was like, all of a sudden I couldn't keep my eyes open. I was like, I literally think the stress level just like the stress just dropped. It was wild. It was wild. Yeah.
Colleen (08:20.572)
my goodness no
Colleen (08:28.582)
Whoa.
Like left your body, just like whoosh. That's wild. That's kinda crazy. Did you even realize you were carrying that much stress? You did, Okay. Okay.
Michele Hansen (08:42.143)
yeah, I knew I was way too stressed out. Yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I think when you're in the middle of something really stressful, it's hard to see out of it. It's hard to see the end of that and what that's going to feel like.
and
Yeah, it was a long process. So now I've at least gotten a few days where I got to go for a walk at lunch and eat lunch at a semi reasonable time. Yeah, which is good. Yeah, but we've got our UK launch coming up. So it's not like we're taking a break. Yeah, and there's a lot of stuff. yeah, OK. So we're.
Colleen (09:17.11)
Okay, excellent. So recovering. Yeah, recovering from the high stress.
Colleen (09:26.202)
That's pretty big. What did you joke? What did you call it? Laravel... What did you call
Michele Hansen (09:32.686)
So we have to launch it in early June because we are sponsoring Laravel Live UK, which is in mid-June in London. so the thing is, it's like, OK, no more Laricon-driven development after this. That's the joke, right? Especially for a long time, it would be like, oh, what's the new thing that Taylor is going to announce at Laricon this year, right? And kind of this joke that it was Laricon-driven development.
Colleen (09:37.691)
was it.
Colleen (09:45.968)
That was it, Lericon-driven development. Yeah.
Michele Hansen (10:00.971)
And so we've been saying, yeah, no more Lericon driven development after this, by which we mean after Australia, because we're launching in Australia this year and the deadline for that is October. So no more Lericon driven development after the next time we do Lericon driven development. Next year, there will be no Lericon driven development. Hold me to it. Somebody said a reminder.
Colleen (10:08.636)
This.
Colleen (10:19.546)
after the, right, after the next time.
Colleen (10:25.052)
Ha ha ha!
Michele Hansen (10:30.231)
Play that back. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot, cause there's a lot of details going on there. But at least we have the website out now. That's really good. So, yeah.
Colleen (10:38.96)
Yes, that's huge and it looks amazing. So that's a super win.
Michele Hansen (10:43.213)
Yeah, I'm so happy and we had such a great team working on it. That's me. Let's talk about you.
Colleen (10:45.744)
Good. Good. Yeah. I just, I think it turned out great.
That's you.
Let's talk about me. You know, that's a song. I think it's a country song by Toby Keith. No, no, it's a country song by Toby Keith. Let's talk about me. Let's talk about I. Let's talk about something, something I don't know the words. No? Nothing?
Michele Hansen (10:56.895)
Is it? I thought you were like quoting...
I thought you were riffing on like an early 90s rap, hip hop song that's about something else and is definitely not a country song. I'll just leave it at that. Just moving on. OK. You sent me a list.
Colleen (11:10.946)
could also be true.
Colleen (11:19.078)
Let's just move on from that anyway. Move on from that. Moving on.
Michele Hansen (11:32.767)
of random things the other day that you want. Can I just read this list and like.
Colleen (11:34.437)
I did.
Colleen (11:39.088)
There's one thing in there, yeah, you can read the list. I don't wanna call out anyone. So maybe filter over if I send something about someone else.
Michele Hansen (11:44.736)
Okay, I will edit appropriately as I read this. People can get a flavor for what Colleen and I talk to each other about. This is what we talk to each other in Slack about, by the way. Our text messages are a whole nother category. Random things on my mind for the pod. Again, I'm quoting Colleen here. I feel like I've seen at least...
Colleen (11:48.858)
Yeah, okay, go. Okay. Okay.
Colleen (11:58.951)
whole other category.
Colleen (12:04.88)
Yes. That's me.
Michele Hansen (12:09.793)
three posts recently from founders along the lines of, I'm struggling, I'm stuck, I need a co-founder to save me in the last couple of months. I never remember seeing that a few months back. Parentheses, probably not much to say here because I don't want to doom and gloom on AI killing SAS, but it's interesting. Number two, turns out I love meetings? Question mark, question mark, question mark, exclamation mark, LOL. Number three.
Colleen (12:26.748)
Ha ha!
Yeah.
Michele Hansen (12:39.339)
I can't get excited about any ideas. Am I broken or are all the ideas lame or is my bar just exponentially higher?
Colleen (12:48.634)
Yeah, there it is. That's what's on my mind.
Michele Hansen (12:53.037)
Yeah, I think the, mean, I don't know, did we talk about this last time? Like the thing about people feeling really overwhelmed because of AI, like on the one hand, it feels like the world is your oyster. You can do anything, which creates that problem of like, I could be doing anything.
Colleen (13:05.125)
Yes.
Michele Hansen (13:12.661)
I could be doing everything. I need to have Claude running constantly, otherwise I'm losing time. And also all of my competitors have Claude running constantly. so it's like people... We all feel like we are just on this hamster wheel that we can't get off of. And there's all this... The pressure of possibility is so high. And then also just the code review burden on everyone is so high too.
Colleen (13:34.3)
Mm-hmm. Yeah
Colleen (13:40.475)
I've been thinking about that a lot. I mean, you know that, because I brought that up yesterday. I've been thinking about the code reviewer. Anyway, we don't have to branch off on that. So this is really interesting. So I really have been feeling a lot about that, because all we're talking about when we talk about developer productivity is we're like, lines of code shipped. So I'm literally before we got on this call, because I'm super interested in this concept of background coding agents.
Michele Hansen (13:46.517)
We can talk about the code review burden, because I think everybody feels that.
Colleen (14:06.108)
I'm watching the YouTube video Ramp did about their background coding agent that is doing 50 % of their claiming, is doing 50 % of their PRs. But I'm like, a human being has to review those PRs. And then the human being, so I think before AI, there was this inherent high bar of trust on teams, right? So if I am reviewing your, if we are on an engineering team together, we've been working together for more than six months, I'm reviewing your PR. I already in my head,
know what kind of developer you are. I tend to know where you tend to maybe miss things. I tend to know where you're strong. We've been working together long enough. I already have a quality bar for Michelle's development skills. So when I review your PR, even if I don't intentionally do it, I'm coming in with a bias. Like, she's junior, she's senior, she's great at infrastructure, she's not as good as auth, whatever it is. Whereas now,
We're trying to review PRs from people that are not really from people, they're from Claude. And I think there's just, I always worry about like these little details getting missed because again, we just had this conversation yesterday where I wanna push this 4,000 line of code PR. And you really have to, I think you really have to step back and be like, we need to do a risk assessment because some, I need a human to look at this, cause this is touching a database. This is touching, it's touching.
all parts of our application. Anyway, so I just think the burden of PR reviews is, I don't know, is shifting.
Michele Hansen (15:37.003)
Yeah, and there's just so much more of it too now.
Colleen (15:40.028)
Yeah, there's just so much more of it. there's some, I don't know. So I don't know what the answer is, but like we look at code quality and like PR reviews. I've thinking about that a lot because I, with these, I don't know. don't know, Claude is making us so much faster, but you also need to have a human in a loop still.
Michele Hansen (15:58.456)
So what do you think about companies that are only doing AI code review? Like, I don't know if you saw the GitHub, no, GitLab, sorry, GitLab announcement last week about how they were laying off, or maybe it two weeks ago, they're laying off a bunch of people. And I mean, a lot of companies sort of blame me on AI and saying it's, but it's basically restructuring. But in that, they said that humans are basically only architecting.
Colleen (16:08.955)
Mm-mm.
Colleen (16:18.875)
Yeah.
Michele Hansen (16:24.653)
and that AI will code, review, and deploy.
Colleen (16:30.99)
Whoa. Wow. Wow. I'm horrified by that. I think, I mean, I've, I know, right? Let me feed you the answer. No, same, because like, so right, we've all been, I mean, at your company, me, most of the people we know have been early cloud adopters, right? Early AI adopters. I am all in, I freaking love cloud code, but it still makes really stupid mistakes.
Michele Hansen (16:34.133)
Yeah. Yeah, I was kind of horrified. Not to bury the lead on my answer to that, your question. yeah.
Colleen (16:58.564)
And sometimes those really stupid mistakes are like auth mistakes, right? Really important stuff. So that makes me uncomfortable. Like I think using AI as a partner in reviewing a PR is the way to do it right now, but I just don't think it's good enough to capture the nuance of some of these code bases when you're looking at these complicated workflows, when you're looking at complicated auth scenarios, stuff like that. And then AI tends to nitpick on the stupid stuff that doesn't really matter.
They're like, code quality. And you're like, well, that's kind of a waste of my time because this doesn't really matter. But this huge thing you missed. And we all know if you tell Claude, if you're then like, hey, Claude, you forgot to actually include the, I have actually a good example I can use, is I had Claude work on some OAuth stuff for me. And Claude, the first time around, neglected, it made the refresh token, but it neglected to expire it.
So like it basically was like, here's our expires at in the database, but it neglected to actually use that when authenticating a token, which is like a huge deal, right? Like if your token is expired, you should not be able to use it. Claude missed that. It just missed it. And then when I pointed it out, it was like, yeah, that's my mistake. know, I just feel like you have to still have humans. Like I can't believe you could do this completely without humans yet.
Michele Hansen (18:23.085)
I think sometimes we have an assumption going into it, then perhaps because it's a computer, right?
Michele Hansen (18:33.793)
I think we want the quality to be on the level of a very senior developer. We want the code to be at that level, and maybe we even think that we can get it to that level if we give enough guardrails and teach it about patterns and all this kind of stuff.
And it almost seems like it's more surprising when it makes sort of junior developer level mistakes that are not necessarily a coding mistake per se, but they are a lack of foresight, lack of thinking through the problem.
problem, which makes sense because it cannot think through a problem even though it appears to, right? It can only think through it as much as we have told it to. But given like compared to the sort of speed and, you know, relative quality of of like the output itself, I don't know how I'm describing this correctly, right? It's like if you got a
You know, it's like, if it was like writing, like it's getting a grammatically perfect paragraph that actually doesn't address the main point of what you wanted to talk about in the first place, right? and sometimes, and I think sort of early with AI coding, like the quality of the output was more like, you know,
Colleen (19:56.09)
Right.
Michele Hansen (20:08.033)
Duolingo sentences, if we're continuing that analogy, right? The quality would sometimes more be in the category of, I don't know, my blue dog is eating lasagna. it's like, why am I learning how to say that in German? It was clearly making errors in the code it was producing. And now it's more those oversight issues.
Colleen (20:26.321)
Mm-hmm.
Colleen (20:34.118)
Mm-hmm.
Michele Hansen (20:34.985)
that you have to be the senior developer in order to be able to recognize. And but it's like, is that an architecting problem? But also, like you said that you would have, like when you were reviewing someone's code before, like you would know what their experience level is, right? And I think
If you were working with a junior colleague on this, you'd be like, OK, they haven't worked with OAuth before, so I'm going to need to make sure that I check this, this, and this. Versus I think sometimes when we're dealing with AI, even when we know that it's going to miss things, I think we just assume that the output is going to be higher than it would be from, say, a junior colleague. Does that make sense?
Colleen (21:24.718)
Yes, I think so.
Michele Hansen (21:26.455)
Like I think we, even if we are distrustful of it, like we sometimes just kind of hope it's going to be better than it actually is and we're like, why did you do that stupid thing? Like that doesn't make any sense.
Colleen (21:37.694)
Well, I think the problem is it's not consistent, right? 93 % of the time, know, some duration of time, it is like a senior developer, but that 10 % or 5%, but because you are not like mentally queued up to look for it as aggressively, because 90 % of the time it freaking crushes, right? You're like, this is the most, this is great. And so it's almost like being a security guard, right? Like 95 % of your time, you're just sitting there bored. Like, what am I doing here?
Michele Hansen (21:40.471)
Yeah.
Colleen (22:07.345)
But that 10 % of the time when something goes wrong, you have to be, I guess you have to be alert to that, or you have to be like on your guard for that, which makes you, I mean, working with Claude, like it slows you down a little bit because you actually want to look at the code it writes and things like that. But that's the tension, right? Especially if you take a job at one of these places that clearly is measuring your success as an employee by lines of code or PRs opened or whatever it is.
Michele Hansen (22:37.032)
or tokens used.
Colleen (22:38.763)
yeah, that's so funny. Okay, have you seen all the discourse about like measuring quality of engineers by how many tokens they're using?
Michele Hansen (22:45.931)
Yeah, I was at a dinner last week where that came up and it was like, is that a valid way of measuring developer productivity? And I was like, no, that is not. Like we should not be doing that. I mean, I think it's probably worth, you know, checking like, are they using any of their tokens? Like, because if they're not using Claude, then like, are they also like...
Colleen (22:54.887)
No.
Michele Hansen (23:08.597)
logging into the infrastructure monitoring services that they should be using? Like, are they doing their job, basically? Like, are they, like, have they logged into Linear recently? Like, you know, or does this person have two jobs? No, I don't, it's ridiculous.
Colleen (23:24.541)
That's so funny to me. Like, it's ridiculous.
Michele Hansen (23:29.771)
Yeah, I just realized we're not talking about anything on your list and I think we should talk about the meatiest one, which is, I broken or are all the ideas lame?
Colleen (23:33.147)
You've... Okay, what's the meatiest one? Okay, I've been thinking about this all morning. I mean, I've only been up for like an hour, but for the hour that I was awake, I was thinking about...
Michele Hansen (23:45.042)
You are such a morning person and I am such a morning person, which is why this doesn't work, is because it is 5pm here and I'm just like bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 8am and so are you. I just had a piece of chocolate. That's how I'm getting through this. Do you know that I have a piece of chocolate every afternoon?
Colleen (23:48.669)
I know, because it's so late for you.
Colleen (23:57.404)
It's true, it's true. But you look, I mean, you're doing great. You're hanging in there like a champ. good. That's good.
know what kind of chocolate.
Michele Hansen (24:08.103)
usually dark chocolate, and it's usually at three o'clock, but I'm behind schedule today because I had meetings. But it's like I literally have bars of dark chocolate in my desk and at three o'clock every day, I have a square of it and it's called Choc O'Clock. And if I have an internal meeting at three o'clock, it's like everybody knows that I'm going to be eating a piece of chocolate at the beginning of it. Because I use all my energy in the first part of the day.
Colleen (24:21.696)
Clock?
Colleen (24:27.421)
That's amazing!
That's amazing. I love that. I love that for you. No, no. So I've been thinking about this and I think like all of the ideas, know, SaaS idea, product ideas, like I just can't really get excited about any of them. Like people have come to me and they're like, you should product. Like I built the Google ads MCP server, which a lot, not a lot, but like a handful of my friends are using and like getting a lot of value out of them. People are like, you should productize this. And I'm like.
Michele Hansen (24:37.229)
Sorry.
Michele Hansen (24:59.213)
Was that not a thing before you built it?
Colleen (25:01.447)
So Google has an MCP server, but it's read-only and it's not very good. So I built one that'll read, write, like it'll manage. I haven't talked about it on socials yet because Google hasn't approved it yet. So you still have to go this scary, like, do you trust this developer thing? Go to unsafe, add wizard.
Michele Hansen (25:15.394)
right, it's in like the equivalent of like test flight or whatever, right? Yeah, OK.
Colleen (25:18.673)
Correct, yeah. But I'm using it with a couple people are using it, and it's great. You can run your Google Ads from Cloud Code. It works really well. But I have no interest in productizing it.
Michele Hansen (25:34.367)
You're not really an ads person.
Colleen (25:36.359)
Well, and also, I have this new, it's not new, I think I've said it before, but I have this, there's a lot of go-to-market, because I'm building go-to-market automations for people, right? I'm building these integrations. Theoretically, so I built that content generation system for one company, their blog traffic has doubled in the past three months. They're thrilled. They're like, this is amazing. This is the best thing ever. But I don't know, because anything that's an AI wrapper can just be copied in,
Michele Hansen (26:05.43)
Mmm.
Colleen (26:05.98)
so quickly. So like I just don't think I think it's it's two factor. Right? Like all of both of these like any developer could could copy them in a week, either if they were incentivized to do so. Right. So I think that's why I think it's just the things I'm building right now don't feel product and even some of the things my friends are working on. I'm like, oh man, that just sounds like that sounds like a tough slog you got going on there. Right. Like I just the AI wrapper space. I know you can make it work, but like
Michele Hansen (26:08.555)
Yeah, it's the don't build your house on someone else's lawn.
Colleen (26:36.048)
I don't know, I'm just, I don't have any fire to productize anything in that space.
Michele Hansen (26:41.485)
think you've got to find something that you love where you have domain expertise. You don't ever really talk about this. People don't know this. Colleen is actually an electrical engineer, has a freaking master's in electrical engineering.
Colleen (26:46.0)
That's what... Yeah.
Colleen (26:56.572)
I don't talk about that.
Michele Hansen (27:04.061)
you must like it a little bit. I wonder, OK, so the software space is pretty busy, right? But I think where I am seeing people succeeding and new founders coming out with stuff and it working and taking off is where it's something where they have
Colleen (27:06.428)
I guess. Yeah.
Michele Hansen (27:25.035)
domain experience and connections and care about the problem and really get it themselves. And rarely are those ideas serving other developers. And I think you're kind of...
Michele Hansen (27:48.406)
I don't know if it's the orbit you're in what, but you're kind of stuck in the software for software world. And then you kind of went off in this marketing direction, which, well, guess, mean, kind of last couple of years, you've done stuff that wasn't really you, right? You were doing the database stuff for a while, and you were doing that because you wanted to work with your friends, and that was what they were working on, and that made sense until it didn't.
Colleen (27:54.801)
Yes.
Colleen (28:07.676)
Mm-hmm.
Colleen (28:14.14)
Mm-hmm.
Michele Hansen (28:16.193)
But I remember you saying, you're like, I'm not a sequel person. I am not passionate about sequel queries. And you just kind of ended up in that. I'm not a geography person, but I ended up really enjoying it. I ended up finding a lot of things I really, really enjoy about it. But I think you never really got that like,
fire in your belly for databases or for SQL. And even though you try to get a lot of stuff going and then you've been doing the marketing stuff, which I think you like, but like you weren't a marketer at any point. You weren't a salesperson. It's not, no, of course people can change and find new things interesting, but I think for you, I guess I don't see anything that you have worked on that really came out of...
Colleen (28:55.59)
That's right. That's right.
Michele Hansen (29:11.697)
some sort of intrinsic interest or experience that you have. mean, the closest you got with that was Simple File Upload.
But I think that's really where opportunities are, is where people are finding opportunities outside of serving other developers. Because it is so crowded.
Colleen (29:42.096)
Yes, I agree. I agree. I am in a bubble and I have to figure out how to break outside my bubble.
Michele Hansen (29:49.751)
You're in a bubble and in a rut.
Colleen (29:51.908)
Yes, correct. Both of those are true.
Michele Hansen (29:53.326)
Your bubble is like it's like stuck in a divot in the grass and you just your bubble is it's a very durable bubble at that. Like this is not like a soap bubble. It's like one of those like you ever seen people playing like bubble soccer or something where they're like in a in a bubble. OK, I'm glad you know what I'm talking about. So that was going to be weird. Or like the bubble boy move, right? Like you're like in a bubble, right? And then you're just you're just like our robot lawnmower. Just keep getting stuck in ditches in the lawn.
Colleen (29:56.358)
Yes, my bubble's stuck in a divot.
Colleen (30:08.123)
Yes, in a bubble. I know what you're talking about.
Colleen (30:16.327)
stuck in a rut. Yes.
Colleen (30:21.691)
You know what's interesting about this is though, like, I have been stuck in a bubble rut. Bubble rut. my god.
Michele Hansen (30:29.719)
Say that five times fast.
Colleen (30:34.001)
think the problem is I don't know how to get out of my bubble rut. So let me tell you what I'm doing to try to get out of my bubble rut. Because I've been in this, I'm going say it one more time and then I won't say it again, I promise. Been in this bubble rut for a minute. I know, right? Been here for a minute.
Michele Hansen (30:44.429)
Yes.
Michele Hansen (30:49.451)
TOO!
We are five years old. Okay. Everybody who's listening to this in the car with their kids on the way to like school drop off, you're welcome for your kids giggling in the backseat. Okay.
Colleen (31:02.683)
Yeah, so I have tried. I'm trying two things to get out of this this situation. But but I don't don't know how to. I like this visual.
Michele Hansen (31:12.353)
I'm just picturing you in a bubble, like in like a divot in a lawn, just like furiously like trying to get your bubble to rotate over and it won't. Like, and you're just, you're just like pushing and it's just like keeps rocking back and forth in the little divot in the grass. my God, I'm crying now. Okay. Okay. I know I actually.
Colleen (31:22.108)
Livia!
Colleen (31:28.509)
To do.
Colleen (31:34.509)
my gosh, you're actually crying. I see a tear.
Michele Hansen (31:39.405)
Okay, okay. Things you're doing to get out of the bubble rut.
Colleen (31:42.674)
right. Yeah. I have things I'm doing. Okay. So I'm doing, I'm doing a lot more in-person events. I'm trying to go to one in-person networking event. I, right. Cause it turns out I love people and I love meetings all of a sudden. And I have spent my whole life hating meetings, but now I'm like, you guys want to hang out and chat? Like, what's up? How's every, like yesterday morning.
Michele Hansen (31:51.099)
yeah, you love meetings.
Michele Hansen (32:02.081)
Maybe you just hate corporate meetings. Maybe you just like hated meetings when you were an electrical engineer and like, cause you worked in like big companies, right?
Colleen (32:08.573)
I worked at a Fortune 500 company, several of them, big, big companies. And at those meetings, it was like you would have meetings so people could sit around and act like they were smart. It was like the meetings were performative. You were just having meetings to, well, you worked at a big company, didn't you? Did you guys do this? Our meetings were like, it felt performative, like you were just having meetings because you were supposed to, and people would just say words that didn't make any sense.
Michele Hansen (32:11.019)
Yeah. Yeah.
Colleen (32:36.977)
to try and look smart in front of their boss, because there's a lot of politics at these huge companies. So that gave me a deep ingrained hatred of meetings. Do you remember successories?
Michele Hansen (32:47.073)
No.
Colleen (32:48.359)
You don't remember successories? Successories were like the funny motivational posters that were actually like, like not motivational but funny.
Michele Hansen (32:49.997)
No.
Michele Hansen (32:56.461)
Oh, the ones that were like, sort of like passive aggressively depressing about corporate life. Like, yeah, that were like very like they're supposed to be funny, but actually like really defeatist and like 90s depressing, like like office spacey kind of like depressing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like Rocco's modern life, you know, kind of like this is the worst day of your life.
Colleen (33:02.589)
Yes, yes, those.
Colleen (33:10.855)
There's.
Yes, yes, very office face. Yes. Anyway, there's one of those. Yes.
So anyway, there's one of those about meetings which cracks me up. I don't remember what it was. was something like, none of us is as stupid together. I don't know. Something about how these corporate meetings are huge waste of time. So I've always hated meetings, but apparently I now love them. So yeah, I... Accessories?
Michele Hansen (33:38.701)
I'm Googling this. What does it say? It says, meetings, none of us is as dumb as all of us. Profound words. Profound words.
Colleen (33:44.785)
That's it. That was it. Profound words. So yeah, I like meetings now. It's a new thing.
Michele Hansen (33:55.862)
Okay, so I guess do you feel like the meetings you're having are... Do you feel like your bubble is getting some momentum? No. But you're just enjoying the bubble more.
Colleen (34:06.139)
Nope. But I feel like if I don't do something, no, I think. So here's the thing. I'm in my bubble rut and I've got to break out. So how do you break out? I love that you find that is so funny. I'm just going to say that to you like every time I see you. my gosh, I'm going to bring it up in our next 7 a.m. meeting. I'm going be like, how's everyone doing in their bubble rut? And everyone's going to be like, my God, Colleen, who is this crazy person?
Michele Hansen (34:27.08)
Hahahaha
Colleen (34:33.009)
So here's the thing is I don't know how to get out. can see that I'm here, right? But I don't know how to get out. And I feel like to get out, need to do, I need to try crazy things. I got a career coach.
Michele Hansen (34:45.697)
Did you?
Colleen (34:46.773)
Yeah, we've only met once, so TBD? I don't know if it's gonna work out because... I don't know. But I'm trying. I'm trying to get a career coach. I'm trying weekly, trying to get out of my house. I'm trying to have coffee with people like also like in person. Like I had coffee with an in-person rev ops person last week in the AI space and that was cool. Like I don't- so nothing is working yet, but I think you have to do things, right? Sitting home in my office just doing work and-
Thinking deep thoughts is not gonna break me out of this. So don't really know. That's what I'm trying to do. Get out in the real world, figure out new things I can try. I feel like I've gotta figure out, like, I just don't know how to get unstuck right now.
Michele Hansen (35:19.371)
Yeah, you need to get out in the real world and yeah.
Michele Hansen (35:30.252)
Yeah.
I wish I had something profound to say, I, you know, I don't, mean, I think you're doing the right things as long as...
Colleen (35:34.907)
Yeah, I gonna say, I'll report back next month.
Michele Hansen (35:46.08)
As long as it isn't motion for motion's sake, Like motion as procrastination. Like you and I have talked about how you might have a proclivity to use learning as procrastination. And you're like, well, I just need to learn more about sales. I need to learn more about this. And it's like, just go do the thing. But the problem right now is you don't know
Colleen (35:50.203)
That's always the problem. Right. Right.
Colleen (35:58.961)
might.
Colleen (36:08.017)
Yes.
Michele Hansen (36:15.729)
what the thing is. But you're not burned out anymore, at least. Like you're, you're, you're kind of, I'm not gonna say you're at peace in your bubble, cause you're not, but like, it's just a different vibe than it was like a year ago from you, right? Like you're not like, you can see out of the bubble, I guess you're in the bubble.
Colleen (36:17.914)
is.
Colleen (36:22.469)
Now I'm good.
Colleen (36:36.157)
100%.
Michele Hansen (36:42.853)
analogy is going way too far. You're in the bubble, but it is like a clear, like, like, I'm not plexiglass, like, it's like a clear fabric, not, my god, this is why we shouldn't do this at 5 30 my time, because I don't remember words. You know what I mean? Like, it's a, like, there's, everybody listening is like shouting words for like clear things, and all I can come up with is like Saran Wrap. Okay.
Colleen (36:43.778)
This analogy, we really take these analogies too far.
Colleen (36:57.649)
feel like we've lost. my gosh.
Colleen (37:11.803)
Now I'm- great, you're suffocating me. Appreciate that, Sranrap. Can't breathe in this bubble anymore.
Michele Hansen (37:13.099)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Colleen is just wrapped around in saran wrap. And just stuck in a rut in my lawn. I'm crying again. You can see out of it, right? Versus before, I think your bubble was opaque. Like you were stuck. You were in your rut. You couldn't even see out. And now it's more of like you can see out. There's all these different directions and it's just not clear which one you should go in even if you can...
what you're looking out of is clear. This is a mess of a metaphor. Do you know what I mean, though? Like, was like there was like a fog, right? And the fog is gone. But now it's instead of not being excited about anything, it's like, what's important, right? And I think making sure that, those meetings, like, you you said you had a meeting with an AI rev ops person, and I'm like, well, that's great. But like, I feel like our conversations recently have been about how like,
Colleen (37:55.473)
Yeah.
Colleen (38:06.181)
Right, it's a prior-t. Yes.
Michele Hansen (38:17.325)
And what you just said a couple of minutes ago about the Google Ads thing, like you're not really that excited about building marketing and like go to market related tools as much as you thought you would be. And building stuff with AI is not that. Like like building stuff that's like AI wrappers, like you know, you don't want to do that because I mean, there's also like the risk of like unless you're using. Their API access, which.
Claude is upping the API prices anyway in June, so now we're like, are we switching to Codex? What is happening here? What are we going to do with this? It's.
Colleen (38:49.084)
Yeah.
Colleen (38:53.629)
Yeah.
Michele Hansen (39:01.569)
I mean, you've heard me say this a million times, you know, like, don't build your house on someone else's lawn, right? Like, and you know that there's that risk there.
Michele Hansen (39:12.161)
So I guess I just wonder like these meetings that you're having.
Michele Hansen (39:18.381)
I feel like they should be helping you towards a decision, right? And at the end of each one, it should be like, do I want to go in that direction? Do I not want to go in that direction? And being honest with yourself when it's like, OK, you know what? We're ruling that one out. Now my next meeting needs to be something different. It needs to be, you and now for something entirely different in a space that you haven't looked at as much before.
Colleen (39:23.015)
I understand. Yes.
Colleen (39:48.209)
Yeah, I like that. That's excellent framing as I think about who I want to meet with and who I want to spend time with and how I want to spend my time. I think that's a good point is just meeting with all these GTM go-to-market AI folks isn't, since I don't think I want to build in that space, that's not really super relevant. So that's a good point.
Michele Hansen (40:07.213)
I think you told me you were in a group of like, yeah. Is that still ongoing or? Sorry, like an AI GTM mastermind thing.
Colleen (40:10.79)
I am.
Colleen (40:21.107)
Yes, it is still ongoing. I like it because I am still learning a lot, right? It's low, like I'm still learning. I know. Well, but that's the thing is I don't know what the thing is. That's the problem is sometimes I'm like, maybe I should just ship an iOS app that like tracks my workouts or something totally stupid just to get out of my bubble of like, I can only build this thing. You think, yes, I should do something.
Michele Hansen (40:28.077)
turning as procrastination.
Michele Hansen (40:37.749)
Yeah.
Yeah. Ship an app that tells me if I'm doing progressive overload correctly and also just yells at me to eat more protein.
Colleen (40:48.284)
I need more protein, need more protein. Yeah, I need to get, it's because I'm, here's what I think it is. And that I think it's because I think my bar is just so high now when I think about like business ideas that every little idea I have I'm killing really quickly. Cause I'm like, that's not a good business. But in order to break out of my bubble, I need to do more fun.
Michele Hansen (40:50.509)
Just just sends me a text like, you know, every three hours. That's like eight more protein
Michele Hansen (41:12.993)
Mmm.
Colleen (41:15.992)
experimental things, right?
Michele Hansen (41:17.717)
Okay, this is actionable and you and I are basically able to do this podcast like once a month. Realistically, the next time we do this is has to be before I go to London. that's gonna be a busy week, but it has to be. No, I don't have time when I get back. Yeah, I have a bunch of family visiting. Yeah, so.
Colleen (41:20.9)
It's selectionable.
Colleen (41:24.934)
Correct.
Colleen (41:30.332)
London.
We can do it when you get back.
Colleen (41:38.52)
Okay. okay. Got it.
Michele Hansen (41:45.613)
I think your challenge should be you have to build something stupid.
Colleen (41:50.545)
Okay, I love this. I love this for me. This is a great idea. I need, yes. Okay, let's do that. That's the answer. I have to build something stupid that I don't really care about. That's just something I want for myself. Okay, don't think about the business aspect. Just do it.
Michele Hansen (41:59.096)
Don't think about the business. Just build something for you. Like what is a problem that you have in your life? Don't think about it as like, other people need this? Do other developers need this? Like this is me completely going against something I might have written like a 300 page book about is screw people who might use it, okay? Like don't think about them. Just build something.
Colleen (42:20.181)
Hahaha
Michele Hansen (42:28.237)
for you that is like, I don't know, a, yeah, at least like a workout app, a grocery app, like manage your kids schedules app, like what, like some, or just something that like brings you like joy, right? Like chase your joy. Go for that.
Colleen (42:35.76)
Whatever.
Colleen (42:45.66)
Can I, quick side note, speaking of your book, how funny is it that ChatGPT took genuinely, like basically from your book and says it every day? I genuinely think that. Did I send this to you in Slack? And you were like, yeah, it's... Because it was so great before ChatGPT took it.
Michele Hansen (42:58.091)
You did, yeah, yeah, no, there was something like in a follow-up, it was like an email or like a cold email template that it has or something. that it's like, I genuinely wanna hear about your problems. And I'm like, yeah, that's from my book and chat GPT used my book as training data. Hey-o!
Colleen (43:06.244)
Yeah, it's something like that, yeah. That's what it was! You're like... Ugh. Brittle.
Colleen (43:18.928)
So sad, because now I see it in all these cold emails and I'm like, they stole that from Michelle. And now it's a chat GBT tell. Anyway, you were ahead of your time. Think of it that way.
Michele Hansen (43:26.538)
Yeah.
I mean, I'm sure other people said like used the word genuinely in emails before me. Maybe. I mean, I might be a vanguard on that one. I might have been the first. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Even now, like, you know, it's funny. So I was I mentioned I was I was at this dinner.
Colleen (43:35.118)
Maybe. Maybe not.
Michele Hansen (43:52.502)
last week. Do you know Todd Buchalk from MicroConf? MicroConf world? I might be pronouncing his last name wrong. Anyway, really nice guy. I met him MicroConf. Incredible founder story. He's a coach. Anyway, so he pulled together this group of people and made this really interesting conversation. But what surprised me was two people at the table had read my book. And I guess it surprised me because sometimes I'm like, is my book even useful anymore? Does anyone even like...
Colleen (43:55.855)
No, I do not.
Michele Hansen (44:22.247)
need it. know, when you see people coming out with like, just, you know, I mean, this has been going for like, at least a year now, like, do all your research with chat GPT, or like, you can just go in and ask Claude for if you are actually doing calls, like go in and ask it for a script instead, like, and I'm like, why is like, like, I know what's valuable in my book, right? Like, but I'm like, I why is why is anyone like, still buying it? And I guess it's kind of heartening to like,
hear someone say that they like read it recently. Like, and I'm like, like, and I kind of like, I know that, you know, people are buying copies of it. But part of me is like, surprised that that's still happening because I think I mean, I'm impacted in a very small way, like copywriters and designers and I mean, so many other creatives and I people who make their living from writing, right, are so deeply, deeply
screwed, quite frankly, with AI and have a lot of people just using that instead. And it's quite distressing. I don't know. I think as much as it feels like AI is eating the world, right? People used the old phrase, like, software is eating the world, like that AI is eating the world. There's a lot of things that it surprisingly isn't eating. And people are still buying
Colleen (45:43.206)
Mm-hmm.
Michele Hansen (45:51.159)
physical books. I mean, like, I still buy physical books, but I'm weird. Like, so hearing other people do it.
Colleen (45:54.844)
That's amazing.
Michele Hansen (46:00.415)
Yeah, I don't... I don't know. mean, I guess... guess that's... Okay, go on. I'm just rambling.
Colleen (46:04.422)
So I heard, I was gonna say, I heard something on a podcast this morning and they said, we're no longer.
Michele Hansen (46:10.743)
How long have you been awake? Like, did you get up at like four? Like, it is literally 8 a.m. for you when you start and you're like, I've already listened to a podcast and I've already... And you watched a YouTube video. Dude, it takes me like three weeks to watch a YouTube video whenever someone sends me a YouTube video. I don't know how you've done it before 8 a.m. like...
Colleen (46:13.788)
530? I know right? And watch this YouTube video.
Colleen (46:26.768)
Well, I was at my desk at 7.30, so I wasn't late to our podcast. But like, half an hour is a weird... You were late to our podcast. It's true, you were. Anyway, what was I going to say? so I heard on a podcast this morning. I thought this was really good. So if a couple years ago we always talked about living in the attention economy, we were fighting for attention, now we're living in the trust economy.
Michele Hansen (46:31.347)
But I was late to our podcast.
Colleen (46:51.654)
I thought that was really good framing and that's why people are still buying books because chat GPT or Claude can tell me all of this aggregate data, but I now want things from people I trust. So you as a real human that I know, I would much rather read your book than have chat GPT tell me how to conduct a customer interview.
Michele Hansen (47:11.073)
And I guess this kind of unintentionally brings us full circle because what we started out talking about was code reviews and trusting the output of AI. if it was a teammate, you would have a certain level of maybe not trust, but like security. And I know this person's really good at this. I know they're not as strong in this other area. And the areas where they are strong, like,
Colleen (47:19.342)
Mm-hmm. Trust.
Michele Hansen (47:40.718)
You would still review them, But you would approach that. You called it bias, but I think bias is a negative thing, right? It allows you to filter in a way, right? Context, perhaps, yeah. And.
Colleen (47:53.628)
Context? You have context? Is a better word? Yeah.
Michele Hansen (48:00.173)
But with AI, have no, there is zero trust, right?
Colleen (48:02.864)
You don't have that. Right. That's the thing, because Claude is so inconsistent. That's the problem. Is there zero trust.
Michele Hansen (48:08.233)
Yeah, it's, you know, people ask me all the time, like, like, I mean, it's just crazy how much like normal people talk about AI now, which I normally like people who don't work in software, right? yeah.
Colleen (48:18.382)
normal people. That would not be us. We are not in the normal people bucket, obviously. It's not in... it's not... and if you're listening, you're probably not in the normal people category either. Sorry. You are people.
Michele Hansen (48:23.053)
No, anyone who has listened to us for more than 20 minutes knows that we're not in the normal people category. You are our people. So I was at this dinner party on Saturday and I had several people, when I told them what I do for work, they started asking me about the impact of AI on our business.
And these are people, mean, who really don't work in software. Like one of them was like a, you know, worked for a fashion magazine. The other person worked or ran like a tools company, like physical tools company. Like, so really not in software. And they're asking you basically how like threatened are we by AI, which is so interesting that even people outside of software are asking that question now.
And I think we can't rest on our laurels and none of us can get comfortable these days. But I think one thing we do have going for us is that AI is not deterministic. And when somebody sends us an address, that needs to resolve to the correct coordinates every time. The address needs to be cleaned and spelling corrected in the same way, in a predictable way, every single
Colleen (49:30.801)
Right.
Yes.
Michele Hansen (49:48.618)
time, right? Like that it has to be it has to be deterministic in a way that AI to this point is not.
And that means that you can trust something that's made by people, hypothetically, as much as we would before, but not really trust something that came directly from AI. Because you don't have that context.
Colleen (50:21.436)
Right. Agree.
Michele Hansen (50:23.209)
you don't know what experience it has because it simultaneously has no experience and all the experience. I always describe it as a super, super smart intern that has absolutely no real world experience and knows nothing about your business. And so if you had this an intern who was a 2400 SAT
Colleen (50:28.188)
All right.
Michele Hansen (50:49.709)
top entrance score, I guess, for university for all of our international listeners. know, like Mensa candidate type intern, but like they don't know how to tie their own shoes. That's AI in a lot of cases. So, well, this has been such an uplifting podcast. We have talked about you.
Colleen (51:02.022)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Michele Hansen (51:14.347)
getting stuck in my lawn in a bubble, how you can't trust anybody and how AI is eating the world. But you're gonna build something fun. That's your homework.
Colleen (51:25.948)
I will, I will. That is the takeaway. That's the takeaway. My homework for this month is to build something fun just for myself because I want to. That's the homework. Me too. This is good. Michelle, you're so much better than my career coach and I pay her a lot of money. Like, can you just be my career coach? Cause this is basically what I think I wanted her to tell me was like, and she didn't. It's like, bro, this is your, I don't remember. And we've only met once. I don't see the both cases.
Michele Hansen (51:34.252)
I'm excited.
Michele Hansen (51:49.409)
What did she tell you?
I don't think you should meet with her again if like this is the vibe you have out of it like
Colleen (51:58.673)
Well, it wasn't bad. Okay, we probably don't have time to get into it, but you asked this to be 30 minutes and we're almost an hour, so I don't know what to do with that. Okay.
Michele Hansen (52:04.757)
Yeah, but it's not quite dinner. Like, it's not six o'clock yet. We can do four more minutes, and then I really should go in and sort out dinner and stuff.
Colleen (52:10.14)
I mean, I think maybe I'm giving her a couple more, like I'm going to give her a couple more tries because it was like our first meeting. No, don't tell her. Don't tell her. I mean, she was wonderful. But I think I was trying to explain the tension between everything I going on with my life, like financial responsibilities and desires to start a business, but not being excited about any business ideas.
Michele Hansen (52:17.303)
Does she know you have a podcast? Good, okay.
Colleen (52:36.956)
and seeing all my friends kind of in the muck and being like, do I wanna be in the muck? Anyway, and I feel like what you said is the correct answer. Like I need to break out of my rut. And the way to do that is to do something like chip something just for fun or just something outside of the rules. I was trying to explain to her like, I feel like because I am such a learner, I know all of the rules to start a B2B software business. And so every idea I have, I put it under this set of rules where to break out of this rut, I just need to do something.
that doesn't follow the rules.
Michele Hansen (53:08.683)
I think that's probably a bigger challenge for you too because, correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the vibe that like when you were in school, you were not pulling pranks and you were sitting there quietly and respectfully and raised your hand and you know, the comments were always, Colleen is a pleasure to have in class. Like always followed the rules. And I think, I mean, this is something for women that is a...
Colleen (53:21.402)
Right. I'm a rule follower. Good at everything. Rule follower, yes.
Colleen (53:32.636)
Yes, 100 % of the time.
Michele Hansen (53:37.909)
challenge with entrepreneurship in general is, no, you actually need to break the rules. Like you need to stop being quiet and, you know, sort of sitting there, sitting there politely and people pleasing and yeah.
Colleen (53:48.046)
Yeah, and people pleasing.
Colleen (53:53.574)
Cause I told her, I told her the thing that just really has been illuminated with me cause my sales group, it's like 25 guys and me. And the guys don't, now I don't want to say blanket. I haven't spoken to all 25 of them, but the general vibe in the group is like, they don't wait for permission to do anything. They don't know how to solve a problem before they try to sell you a solution. It is fascinating. So they're basically like, can, they go on these sales calls and they're like, I can solve this problem for you. And then like, I'll back channel them and be like,
Have you ever solved this problem? Do you have any idea? And they don't. They don't know how to solve the problem. And so with me, before I go into a sales call, I want to actually know if I can solve the problem. Before I tell them I can solve the problem. Is this making sense? Basically, they're basically like, yeah, I'll figure it. And I can figure anything out. But I don't have that same level of like, because I'm worried about like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what my issue is. I'm trying to figure that out.
Michele Hansen (54:36.407)
Yeah.
Michele Hansen (54:46.113)
You're worried about actually being able to deliver a product that's usable and solves the problem for someone.
Colleen (54:49.829)
Correct. I'm worried about selling something I can't deliver. They don't think about that. They just sell the solution without having a solution. Anyway.
Michele Hansen (54:58.847)
I mean, I don't think your concern there is not invalid. But maybe you could take like 1 % of that energy from them, know? like teeny, teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny bit of it. Not too much. But at least that little bit that's like, yeah, screw it. I can do it. right? Yeah, I think this is a good.
Colleen (55:23.461)
Yeah, totally.
Michele Hansen (55:27.511)
But this is, we have found a hopeful note. Go build something fun. I'm excited. All
Colleen (55:30.371)
Yeah, no, I love this. This is perfect. This is great. Yeah, I love it. I love it. This is great homework, and this will be fun to report back on.
Michele Hansen (55:39.349)
Amazing. Well, good chat.
Colleen (55:44.781)
Okay, bye everyone. my gosh, wait before did did you know that it still runs when you upload this software social podcast it still runs like the list of all the people that used to sponsor us? Did you know that? Okay, I was like did she do that on purpose? Okay.
Michele Hansen (55:46.87)
That was terrible. Wait.
Michele Hansen (55:57.455)
yeah, no, no, I did know that because Ben reached out to me a couple months ago and was like, hey, we actually rebranded, and I get a good amount of backlinks from it. Could you change it to be our new URL? And so then Claude and the transistor API came through for me and went through and updated it. Yeah, if anyone else has like.
Colleen (56:08.864)
okay.
Sweet, okay.
Colleen (56:19.984)
nice.
Michele Hansen (56:21.983)
a different business now and it turns out that you're actually getting backlinked traffic from the list of our old supporters who we really do appreciate you. Yeah, it's really sweet. Let me know if you need that updated.
Colleen (56:39.235)
It is sweet.
Colleen (56:46.063)
Okay, cool. All right.
Michele Hansen (56:46.975)
Alright, bye!
Colleen (56:50.351)
Have a good day.