Michele: Hey, welcome back to Software Social.
A couple months ago, I did two interviews with Jesse Hanley, founder of Bento.
You probably remember his incredible story of going from bodybuilder to SaaS founder,
and the heartbreak that he and his wife experienced last year with their daughter,
Leah, but we didn't talk too much about what his company, so let's fix that.
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You might say it's friendly developer- friendly email marketing, and Jessie's
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Just go to bento now.com, and hit book a demo and mention Software Social.
Hey Colleen.
Colleen: Hey Michelle.
Michele: We just got back from and amazing week in beautiful San
Diego, California visiting you.
Colleen: Yep.
Michele: So much to like talk about after that, I feel like we have so
much like, we have so much wind in our sails after that, um, have some kind
of big things happening for both of us.
That, to a certain extent, we kind of like haven't done before
or like really need to focus on.
I'm kinda excited to talk about that a lot.
Colleen: Yeah.
me too.
It was so amazing to have you here and see you in person.
And there's just something you can not replicate about
seeing your friends in person.
Michele: Yeah.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Um, okay, so the first one, and so we've been talking about
how you have now four months,
Colleen: oh, wait, what did I lose,
wait.
Michele: April now, so far, you know, till till August right to get Hammer
stone, which is actually called Refine, or is it, is it Refine or Refine?
Colleen: I mean, I, I say.
Michele: Refine.
Okay.
Colleen: Cause you're refining.
Michele: Monies, you don't have to go back to consulting.
Um, and so that's four months from now.
And so we were walking in beautiful San Diego, and you mentioned how there is
a Refine plugin thing for Laravel Nova, so like we could use it, which like Nova
is like the admin basically for Laravel.
And I like didn't even know about it.
And honestly, I'm kind of mad like that.
Like, I, you had this thing, I didn't even know about it and I
like could have bought it from you.
And I'm like, dude, tell people about
Colleen: Yeah.
Um, it did not even occur to me that we should be telling people about
it, which sounds so ridiculous, now that I say the words out loud.
Michele: If you want to sell stuff, you have to tell people about it.
Colleen: Oh my goodness.
It's so bad.
Yeah.
I think because some of our front end, some of our, like other products, like our
Laravel of EHL product, not in Nova, we're still working on the front end and our
Rails product is not ready to ship yet.
That, I almost forgot that in all of these products we have, we have one
that is actually done and that we can actually sell to you right now.
Michele: And I already bought it.
Colleen: And you already bought it.
That is in fact amazing.
Michele: We haven't actually installed it yet.
I think we're still kind of catching up from
Colleen: Right.
Michele: Being away for a week, but I'm super excited to give it a try.
I think we even talked about maybe doing like a video, um,
like hybrid episode where like you and Erin, walk me through it, I
guess maybe like, I think we have it on our like, test environment.
So like we could do something like that.
Colleen: Yes,
Michele: would be really fun.
Colleen: I think that'd be fun.
And it'd be great for us.
We can maybe use that as marketing material.
Michele: Yeah.
Colleen: I think that'd be awesome.
I'd love to onboard you guys.
Yay.
Michele: But also when we were talking about as like, you know,
you've been saying, okay, well, we've got, you know, the Laravel side
and then we've got this rail side.
And like, you guys are like building like all of the features, but I'm
like, you could just sell this as a thing for Laravel Nova to start.
You don't have to start with like, It has to be usable by the entire world.
It could just for the foreseeable future, be something that is just a,
you know, an add on feature to Nova and like there's certainly enough
people in the Laravel world and enough people running sites with Nova like
Colleen: Yeah.
Michele: that, that could be a good little business.
If not just something like to get you going.
Colleen: Yeah.
I mean, I can't believe it didn't occur to me until you said something.
Absolutely.
We should be talking about and selling the Nova integration.
And I think what had happened with the Nova integration, um, Aaron
could speak to this more, but I think it was like, he just made it real
quick because someone wanted it.
Cause it's just the front end that we had to get, get working.
We already had all the backend stuff, so yeah, we haven't pushed that at all.
We're not talking about that enough.
We're not on our site.
There's nothing like specific about that.
We still have on our, our main site is still like sign up to
hear about when Refine launches.
So I feel like that's a super high priority is still
that people know about that.
And to start selling Nova.
Michele: Yeah.
Yeah.
Colleen: Yeah.
Do that.
Right.
Michele: do that
Colleen: I do that now.
Michele: Okay.
Um,
Colleen: Oh,
Michele: I feel like that's some movie reference and I
don't even know what it is.
It's probably some movie like 20 years ago starting Will Ferrell or whatever.
Okay.
So yes, do that now.
Um, sell it to people, tell them about it.
Colleen: Yeah, we should be doing that.
Like, this is just so obvious.
I
Michele: like this, like this cannot be like, you know, a sort of stereotypical,
like developer thinks about marketing conversation, that's like, yes, we
should mark it that, and then there's
like, crickets, like, you gotta like, do it.
Colleen: Let's talk about, oh no, I'm ready.
I'm all in Michelle.
I am like, ready.
Aaron uses this term all the time, eat glass.
I'm ready to eat the glass.
It means, it means just grind out the hard stuff.
Like just do it.
Michele: I have never heard
Colleen: He
Michele: this.
Some like Austin specific slang.
Colleen: I don't know, maybe it's a Texas thing.
Um, uh,
Michele: Okay.
That sounds pretty unpleasant, unpleasant, like
Colleen: but the point is, instead of talking about
doing things, you need to just
Michele: Pedal to the metal, right?
Colleen: So my take on this, the first thing to do would be either, would to
be, to make a Nova specific landing page.
I don't know if we have one because with three of us working on this, like
there's a lot of, I don't have a lot of visibility and this is my own fault.
And I'm literally going to fix this tomorrow.
I don't actually know all of the moving pieces, cause we have so
many moving pieces in this business, like, cause we have contractors
and then we have three front ends.
And then I have my client, which is technically a Hammer stone
client, not a Colleen client.
And so tomorrow I'm like, I am going to get organized and
that's where I'm gonna start.
And, um, yeah, figure out, like, make an actionable plan.
Stuff we can actually do not just talk about to let people know
about Nova and start selling it.
Michele: Do you guys have like a shared Trello or git like canvan,
like some sort of centralized system for seeing what all the tasks are
and what everybody else is working.
Colleen: Yeah, that's what we need.
We have a Trello board, but we don't it's it's not really being
used in an effective manner.
So, um, that is literally tomorrow.
I'm going to take a couple hours because I'm doing a long day.
So I've tried, I'm trying to do like one long day a week, which really helps
give me more time for side projects.
Not that this is a side project, but I'm going to take that time and spend a
couple hours and really get us organized.
That is my plan.
And we have a Trello board.
You know, I might spin up Notion, I don't want to overly complicate it, but
we have a lot of moving pieces and I need to make sure everyone knows what's
going on with all of those moving pieces.
Michele: So it's actually something we're dealing with too.
Yeah, it's like just what are all the pieces.
What are the priorities?
You know, what is the visibility and, you know, at various points, I
think we've, we've had Trello boards.
I think at one point we had a private Trello, and then a public
Trello that didn't last very long.
Um, but we've also used Base Camp.
We've used Notion.
And I think where we actually settled on a couple of weeks ago, but have not
acted only acted on a little bit, but not fully is using the git hub projects, beta,
because we tend to just kind of throw everything product related, into git hub
issues and they made it so that you can have one project across all organizations.
I don't know if it was always like that.
And I didn't know that or like, it's a new thing.
Well, it says projects beta.
So like, it used to be like, they'd like git hub, git hub, uh, Kan Ban boards.
Right.
Um, and what we like about that is like, it's just directly
integrated with all of the issues.
Um, but yeah, this is not a problem that like goes away.
Um, But it is worth spending the time of like, okay, what
are we actually working on?
Or the things we're working on the most important things.
And especially where, I mean, like we have this coordination problem,
and we literally work not five feet from each other and live in the same
house and like, most days, you know, we're the only other adult, like, you
know, the other one sees very often.
So, we still have this coordination problem, and you guys are,
you know, halfway across the country from one another.
So it seems like an important thing to like, kind of get sorted out, but also
not, you don't want to spend too much time fussing over this because it's going
to evolve as you and the company do.
So like, you still want to be flexible with it.
Like, You know, don't go off and buy a license for some super enterprise, easy,
um, project management software right now.
Right.
But yeah, you at least need to spend time, keeping things organized,
whether you're early days or whatever days we are at this point.
Colleen: Yeah, I totally agree.
I think that, I agree.
We don't want to, I don't want to sink a lot of time into it, but it's
important to have visibility to all of the projects we have going on.
So we know what the highest leverage activities are.
Michele: Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Okay.
So you're going to make a Nova landing page.
What else are you gonna do?
Colleen: Um, Well, okay.
First of all, I'm going to get us organized.
Then goal two is Nova landing.
And
Michele: on the landing page.
Colleen: I don't know, go buy this.
It's awesome.
Michele: Is it like, are we doing.
Colleen: I haven't
Michele: Is there going to be like a sample of it somehow?
Like, Is there going to be a video of you walking through it?
Is there going to be like a GIF of somebody clicking through it?
Colleen: I Like, gifts.
I
Michele: is there going to be like code samples of some or something?
Like, is there like,
Colleen: I don't
Michele: like what have you learned from simple file upload that
people like on a landing page that makes them want to buy something?
Colleen: Ooh.
that's such a good question.
Um, my experience has been, people like videos, people
like gifs, they like visuals.
They like code samples.
They like, I mean, we're selling to developers, so we're going to want
a developer focused landing page.
So our focus here is on results and developer happiness.
So testimonials from people who have purchased it, there are two
people, now, if we include you, who haven't, who have purchased the Nova.
So the way I envisioned this is maybe a gif, maybe a video showing you what it
does, a code sample of how to integrate it, testimonials from people who have used
it and then schedule a call or buy now
Michele: Yeah, why do they, why do they need a phone call?
Do you need a phone?
Colleen: Do I, I don't, well, I think.
I don't know if they don't need a phone call, maybe the option to schedule a call.
Michele: Well, I feel like when I see schedule a call on a landing page, I'm
like, oh, this is some enterprise thing.
Colleen: You're right.
Okay.
So just buy now.
Michele: Yeah.
I mean, or it could be, you know, like email us or whatever,
if you have questions, but
Colleen: Right?
I mean, our license is a thousand dollars, so I don't think people are just going to
cough up a thousand dollars without one.
The reason I was thinking schedule a
Michele: Well, they, they do for do Geocodio all the time.
They go cough of a lot more than that without ever talking to
Colleen: Without talking to you.
Okay.
So go ahead and buy it.
and
then
Michele: SaaS for the win.
Colleen: for the win.
So yeah, I think that landing page schedule, no, we're
not with no call to action.
Buy it
Michele: Yes, so, okay.
So this video and like, I feel like you've had success with videos in the past.
Like I remember you saying that, like, there's some videos
that you had on YouTube of like talks and stuff you've done.
I thought, I don't know if that was like, learned to code stuff or whatnot,
but I got the sense that you have some amount of following on YouTube or at
least that people like watching you talk about code things on YouTube is that
Colleen: Yeah, I think that's accurate.
Michele: Let's use that.
Colleen: Okay.
So I, I mean, it's interesting because different people like different
things, you are always very adamant about how you don't like videos.
You want texts.
I know.
And it's because I understand it's because you can read faster
than you can watch a video.
So I think
Michele: but like, I'm not necessarily your customer here.
Well, I
Colleen: well, you kind of are.
You're literally our
Michele: But yeah, no, but like don't, you know, I'm, I think I'm
in the minority of like, not liking.
Colleen: Well, I think you do both.
So I think, I think there's a video.
What I like what my thought is, you have a link to the docs.
You have a short snippet of how you integrate it quickly.
You have maybe a short video or a GIF, and then you have the option
for them to watch a full, like, longer how to install it video.
Okay.
Michele: Yeah, I think, yeah, the short video is like, here's all
the awesome stuff that this can do.
Don't you wish you could do it.
It's so easy.
You just have to drop in those code and then you're good.
Colleen: Right.
Michele: And then there's the longer video if they need it.
Colleen: Yeah.
Um, yeah.
Okay.
Absolutely.
That sounds great.
That's a lot of work, but I got it.
I got it.
Michele: So the other thing we talked about that both of us are going to be
doing, you are going to be leading a workshop related to Refine and Sequel.
And what is it?
Active record.
Colleen: Active record and ARL.
Oh, you listen to me when I
Michele: I did listen, um, at Ruby conf, which
is S sorry,
why is it not gonna, it's not called Ruby
Colleen: Ruby conf is in the fall rails conference in the spring.
Michele: Oh, there are two.
Okay.
I didn't just like, make that.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
Sorry, not my world.
When is rails?
Colleen: Oh, M G May 15th, I think May 16th really
Michele: Okay.
So then the other thing going on is I am also leading the first all day deploy
empathy masterclass workshop, um, at the go-to conference, which is a B2B
enterprise uh, SaaS conference, uh, Orca software in general, um, in Aarhus Denmark
in June, and doing a couple of other talks and another workshop in the Fall too.
But anyway, so I have never led a longer workshop, I've only
done one to two hour workshops.
So both of us need to figure out how to lead a great workshop
in the next few months as well.
Um, how long has your work.
Colleen: hours.
Michele: Okay, so that's yeah, this is not, this is more than
like a meetup talk, right?
Or like meet up kind of workshop where it's like half an hour
or 30 minutes or 60 minutes.
Um, We kind of led our first introduction to workshops while I was in California.
Led a tie dying workshop with six children under the age 10 and under, which was an
experience, um, and mostly successful.
Colleen: mostly successful.
Michele: Um, But I feel like both of us are kind of feeling like we need to
double down on putting together a great workshop and making that a good experience
for us and for the participants.
Um, so I bought a couple of books about workshops, which is whenever
I don't know how to do something.
I, as we sit, as we discussed, I do not watch videos, I read books.
Um, so I have those two books sitting on my desk here.
So it's kind of like my homework assignment, once I get over my
jet lag and everything to start reading those and share that with
you on what makes a workshop great.
And what makes them terrible and like how we should think about that.
And I'm also doing a bunch of talks too, like shorter talks over the
next couple of months, leading up to that two or three of which are mini
versions of what this workshop will be.
So we've kind of also got that.
I feel like we've got these like big things coming up in
the next couple of months.
Colleen: Yeah.
I'm, I'm sweat in the workshop.
And the reason I'm sweating the workshop is because I promised, in my pitch
that the audience would leave with a query builder that actually works.
So I like to do this when I give talks, like I over, like I get really
ambitious and then it forces me to hustle to fill in the details.
And so this requires, I mean, this is, there's a fair amount of technical
work required on my side to get our open source front end component working
with basically that the plan for me is we have a front I'm sorry, front end,
open source component that we haven't hooked up to the rails back end yet,
so this requires me to hook this up to a skeleton of the rails backend.
Select a portion of our query builder that we can build into ours.
So technically from a technical perspective, like there's just a crap
ton of work I have to do on top of the desire you just stated, which is make
sure no one is bored and falls asleep.
Um, Software workshops can be really dry.
And so how do you, oh, so, so I'm kind of sweating it because it's
two months and it's a lot of work.
So that just is.
Michele: Yeah.
So is this work that you have to do for the workshop?
Like, stuff you can repurpose elsewhere or like that feeds into
the broader product, or is that work that only goes into this workshop?
Colleen: So I have a couple of thoughts on this and I own the content.
So I could put this together and use this.
I mean, I could use it as a free course Hammerstones or stones site
that's lead gen for the product.
Like it's like, oh, you can build one 16th of this, one 32nd of this,
a tiny portion of this in two hours.
And I'm going to show you how to do it.
You can spend, you know, a month, two months, five months, six months building
out the rest and hope you get it right.
Or you can just buy our product, but I could do it.
I mean, I can package this workshop.
So typically workshops aren't recorded.
Aaron and I are talking about, paying hammer stone paying to
have this re workshop recorded.
So we, that can then repurpose that content, like I said, as lead
gen or as a free course about how query builders work or something.
Yes.
But the whole purpose is to be able to repurpose this content, whether we start
giving it at other places or whether we just, I mean, obviously we'll just
put it on our website in some way.
Michele: Yeah.
I almost wonder whether it might be better to not record this specific
instance since an in-person workshop, people might like raise their hand and
ask questions and like, like it could, like, I think it applies it's less,
repurposable the, the exact workshop itself then like a talk is right.
Cause there's no real interactive element of a talk, but once you have the
content, then you can use that wherever.
Right.
So like, you know, the, the mini workshops I'm giving in the next
couple of weeks, like I'm doing the practice interview workshop,
I think in three different places.
This is a workshop I've given several times before, and I
feel like the content is down.
I know how to run the activity.
I have a really good sense for how that runs.
And so now I can just give that over and over again.
And so I think once you have the content together and then you kind of learn how,
like what snags people might have to in person, then you could just record that
as a, a version that is intended for YouTube or intended for the landing page.
It just might be a little bit cleaner and then you'll have more control
over how the content appears as well.
Right?
Because like, what if there's like a technical issue or what if like the camera
doesn't pan to like the right place?
And like, you're doing a code example, but it's on your face.
And like, you don't have any control over that.
But I think if you can structure the workshop in a way that
makes it repurposable, then, then that's really valuable.
So that it's not just all this effort going into this one specific work.
Colleen: Well, and I was talking to my friend who gives workshops at rails conf
and he said he got like 20 to 30 people.
So it's got for the amount of work that's going to go into it
on my side, I've got to make that content repurposable like absolute.
Michele: Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
So then there's like the content side of it, and then there's the,
I'm thinking a lot about, is like the UX of attending a workshop.
Especially for me, like the, the one I'm doing an all hosts is from nine to four.
Yeah.
So, and I was reading something earlier today saying that like, you know,
even like a 60 minute talk, you should imagine that it's in four 15 minute
episodes, because otherwise you're going to lose people's attention span.
And so like basically plan to have some sort of shift or break or, uh, whatever
that is like every 15 minutes or so.
So like, I feel like I'm going to have to really like, make a script
for this, or like, like an agenda.
But that reminded me today that I really need to read those books and figure out,
how do you structure this, but bearing in mind that you have all of this work
to do, to like create your content.
I at least already have all of my content.
It's just kind of a matter of repackaging it.
Um, I will take on the heavy lifting of reading all the books about the UX of a
workshop and just share that with you.
Colleen: Yay.
Thank
Michele: So then you can, uh, yeah, you can do that.
I almost wish I could like demo the workshop, like the whole thing,
but that, that seems like difficult, it's not like practicing, uh, you
know, half hour or 45 minute talk.
I can't, you know, go talk
Colleen: Yeah, for eight hours.
Michele: eight hours.
Colleen: Matias, I need eight hours of your time.
We're going to sit down and I'm going to give you this whole workshop.
Michele: Lunch will be included.
Uh, actually I have to figure that out.
I guess I'm not responsible for like the sandwiches and whatever, but I
like, is there a lunch break in there?
I need to, um, it's just all these details.
Colleen: Yeah, that's a whole, I mean, a whole day is intense.
Michele: Yeah, yeah, I am.
I'm pretty excited actually.
So I have like kind of an intensive week too, because I'm
going to be that conference, which is in, the middle of June.
I think it's like June 13th or 14th or something.
And so then I'll drive there and then I'm going to drive down to Hamburg,
Germany after that and give a talk at Mind the Product Hamburg, which
I'm super excited for, I don't know if I've ever ranted to you about
the hair, the Henry Ford analogy.
Do you know this?
Colleen: No, it's
Michele: That people say that um, what was it that if Henry Ford had
asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.
Have you ever heard someone say that?
Colleen: I feel like you ranted about it on Twitter once.
Michele: it.
Oh my God.
It's just so like, like anyone who has ever tried to do any amount of
customer research has gotten this sort of retort from someone back.
It's just, it is like the, uh, fastest way to make a product or
a UX research person's skin crawl.
Um, And so I'm going to spend a whole talk, just tearing it to
shreds and being like, what if, what if he actually had done research?
What would that have looked like?
And like, where can you go with this?
And apparently people also say that, like, Steve Jobs never did research either.
Colleen: That is a big Steve Jobs thing.
I read his biography.
That's a big thing.
Michele: Yeah.
I, you know, maybe it worked for jobs, but I don't think most of
us have the amount of like hubris.
Right.
Um, yeah.
I mean, oh yeah.
There's so much myth around him too.
Colleen: it's like he just wheeled this into existence.
You're like
Michele: Right.
But it's also, I feel like when people repeat things like that, it's like it
kind of like saying that you're just as, you know, sort of special as like
Steve Jobs, like I think he's kind of a, you know, a once in a S yeah, yes,
very much an outlier and i, I recognize like I'm not as brilliant as Steve Jobs.
So I have to do research like, and mate, maybe other people are
as brilliant as he is and are undiscovered, but I think a little bit
of humility is required for most of us.
Um, so I'm going to have an absolute ball tearing that apart, but that's
going to be like a whole week of talks.
Cause I'm actually, I'm doing the workshop at GoTo and then I'm
doing a talk the following day.
Then I have a one day break and then I do the talk in Hamburg, so it will be busy.
But I think that also means that like, you know, I'm not one
to do unplanned talks, right.
But like, I really need to get all of this ironed out well in advance.
Like I don't want to be, you know, furiously making slides
like the day beforehand.
Right.
Because I can't, I can't go into that week tired.
Like I need to have all of this.
Down pat.
So I need to start planning that out now.
And I mean, I feel like May is going to be here before we know it.
Colleen: Oh, Yeah.
I can't believe it's April.
Yeah.
I can't believe it's April.
Like what I'm actually, like I said, I'm, I'm kind of sweating
my timeline on this workshop.
So I also need to hit the ground hard running with this.
Michele: I mean, I wonder what you're going to do with like
simple file upload in this time.
Colleen: Oh man.
Okay.
This is so funny.
You bring this up because I launched a free plan as we discussed.
Yeah.
And can I tell you what happened
Michele: what happened?
Colleen: in two weeks?
I had like 75 signups.
Michele: Really?
Colleen: I usually get like 15, maybe 15 a month.
Yeah, so it's
Michele: Okay.
So you were afraid that it would cause this like massive increase
in customer support requests.
Colleen: No one has emailed me.
Michele: Really
Colleen: One person emailed me to ask me how to upgrade
to a free or to a paid plan.
Michele: Really?
That is the only email you got from 75 people.
Did they actually upgrade?
Colleen: I, like, they just emailed me today or like 30 minutes ago,
so I didn't email them back yet.
But, um, yeah.
So speaking of that, I, um, I got, let go.
I just gotta make, make it through the workshop.
I think it's just funny, like how the timing of all these things has collided,
Michele: When it rains, it pours.
Colleen: I mean, it's, it's amazing.
I'm not upset, but it's, it's also like, wow, I, um, I just have a lot going on
and it's really exciting, but my simple file upload does all of these things.
I've added all these features that are not even on my landing page.
And I was feeling kind of down on the product.
Cause you know, you're on Twitter and you see other people's like MRR
growth and you're like, mm, mine is pales in comparison to this guy.
And then I was talking um, so I'm going to have Zach Goldie on the
podcast to talk about positioning.
And I was talking to him.
I know I'm super pumped about that by the way.
And I was talking to him about my product and he was, so he was looking,
we're looking just at Heroku right now.
And he was talking about all the competitors and he's like, oh, well,
these people do something similar.
And I'm like, actually, no, they don't.
They're just giving you a AWS S3 bucket.
I do all these other things.
So as I was telling him how awesome my product is, I
realize my product is awesome.
So that was a good feeling.
And also.
Michele: Heck.
Yes, it is.
Colleen: Like, I'm not even communicating that.
So I don't know what to do with this information.
I'm just sharing it Like there's just a lot
Michele: Well, it sounds like you should have like a competitor,
a competitor comparison landing.
Colleen: Yeah.
So he, he and I are going to talk about all that stuff, like how to.
How to do well.
I mean, I should start with putting the stuff that I do on my own
land, like my initial page, right?
I don't even say on my side, if you got a simple file, upload.com, you wouldn't
even know I do image resizing or image tagging, or you can limit, like you don't,
I don't have any of that stuff on there.
The pages from over a year ago when I launched this product
without any of these features and it literally just uploaded files.
Now it does all these other things.
Michele: I feel like there's a theme here of like,
tell
people about the thing you made.
But I think that was also a title of an episode, like a year or two ago.
So I feel like, I feel like we have a, a running theme.
I guess I'm just curious how you're going to like balance that.
I know that there's been times when, you know, like when you move to
California, for example, you basically didn't touch simple upload for like two
simple file upload for like two months.
Um, and I wonder if you're going to go back in that state or.
Colleen: Well, I don't know because this workshop, if I look at all
of these things, this workshop is super high priority because there's
a ton of work I have to get done.
And the Laravel of ELs, the Nova stuff we were just talking about, to me if I had
to list these in order of priority right now, first week of April would be the
workshop because that's six weeks away and I don't have anything done for it.
I have a ton of work to do the Nova stuff.
Wait, the workshop, get organized.
That hardly counts because that takes like two hours.
The Nova landing page.
The simple file upload.
Michele: I would put the Laravel Nova stuff first.
I think that's even more important than getting organized, right.
Is like start being able to sell
Colleen: Yeah.
Yeah.
You're right.
We need to, we need to sell some stuff.
I mean, you'd still put it below the workshop though.
Michele: No, no, I think that's your top priority, right?
Colleen: Okay.
That's interesting.
I mean, I could whip out a landing page and I mean, not that
will be excellent, but
Michele: Right.
It doesn't have to be
perfect.
It
just needs to be
like, we just talked about doing two videos.
Just launch it with one that just tells, shows people what it does.
Right.
Like, you don't need the longer one.
Like, Just start with the minimum you need.
And once we get it installed, we'll give you a testimonial.
And you know, then you can write, this is awesome, michelle Hanson, do your
Geocodio, or maybe you just quote Matias.
So it's not like, you know, it's a little bit distant.
Um, um, right, but like, just start with that and then.
And then I think if you also get that going, like you get that out there and
people know about it, then after the workshop, then you can be like, okay,
like, what are some, like other Laravel places where we can start promoting this
and like, maybe get you on some podcasts or like, all that kind of, you know, kind
of like a press blitz, um, around it too.
And you're also not doing the workshop alone.
So like that's not all on you.
Colleen: Well, I mean, I'm taking Erin and he doesn't know
rails, so it's mostly all on me.
Michele: But he also is part of building the product.
So,
And he is like the, he's like the ringmaster for Sequel like
people really like hearing him talk about sequel and queries.
And I, I mean like of all of like the unique talents to have, it is a very,
very relevant one, um, for what you're doing, but like you're not alone in that.
Colleen: That's true.
No, he can, absolutely, and he will be, I have to figure out how to do
that, but absolutely can work with me to figure out the content and how
we want to structure it and how much we want to expose and all of that.
A hundred percent.
Wow.
Okay.
Cool.
Michele: Maybe getting organized, like you'd need like mini organizing, not like
Colleen: Oh, yeah, let's
Michele: full, like mini
organizing first
Colleen: Mini first.
I'll do that this week, like tomorrow
Michele: landing page for Nova, Refine plus Nova.
Um, and then work.
Colleen: Okay.
This sounds like a great plan.
Michele: I just like planning out the workshop.
So at least, you know, what the work is to be done.
Like I find that just planning something out helps with knowing what the work
is and that reduces some of the, like the stress going into something like,
I always need at least like a mental outline for something which I actually
don't even have for my own workshop.
So I think for me, like over the next week, once I get over my jet lag and,
you know, finish taking a machete through my various, very clogged inboxes.
I need to like read one of those books by the time we talk again and
share something of value to you.
I can help with your workshop and maybe have my own like, My own, I don't know.
I think I need like a sketch or like an agenda.
And I guess I also need to make sure that all of my talks are
together because my first talk of this little road show is the 19th.
It's an online talk for a UI breakfast.
So I have something on the 19th and I'm doing a practice
workshop, the 25th for CPH UX.
And then I'm doing a another practice interview workshop.
No, no, it's not practice here.
See, I'm getting this all confused.
I'm doing okay.
Oh, I am doing a practice interview workshop for the calm fund
portfolio companies in early may.
And then I'm also doing a troubleshooting interviews workshop in like early mid may.
So I also need to make sure that like all of my ducks are in a row and my outlines
and everything for all of those, because I, I need to be able to keep myself.
Colleen: Yup.
Michele: then somehow get all of my other ones.
Colleen: And still do our
Michele: Done.
Right, exactly.
Like, I know someone reached out to me like that they had been, like,
someone had recommended me to do like a UX, research consulting for them.
And I was like, sorry, like, you know, I just don't have the bandwidth to take
this on like a to to take consulting on.
And then they were like, well, what about a full-time job?
And I was, no, like I already run a company, like, I'm sorry.
Like, this book thing was supposed to be like this fun little side
project for a period of time and then it would go away, I guess.
Um, Yeah, man got to have the full-time job and the side
projects and all the things.
Colleen: all the things.
Michele: Oh, the things.
Okay.
Good chats.
Colleen: Good
chat.
Michele: guess we should get back to.
Colleen: All right.
Goal oriented, execute.
Michele: See yah.
Just want to say, thanks again to Bento for sponsoring today's
episode, head to bento now.com to book a demo and see what developer-
friendly email marketing looks like.