Software Social

Colleen shares the secret to her recent productivity.

Show Notes

Colleen shares the secret to her recent productivity.

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters
 

Creators & Guests

Host
Colleen Schnettler
Co-Founder of Refine, Founder of Simple File Upload
Host
Michele Hansen
Co-Founder of Geocodio & Author of Deploy Empathy
Editor
Cory Stine
Audio Editor
Writer
Meghan Coleman

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.

Colleen Schnettler 0:00
Hey, Coleen. Hey, good morning, Michelle.

Michele Hansen 0:03
How are you?

Colleen Schnettler 0:04
I'm doing well.

Michele Hansen 0:07
So, as I mentioned last week, we've been reading or I've been reading, I don't know if you were but I was obviously awesome by April Dunford, which I thought I read years ago. And I don't know if I actually did and I either forgot all of it. Or I just thought I read it because it's been on my shelf for so long. First of all, so good. Everybody should read obviously. Awesome, because it is obviously awesome. And I was reading it with an eye towards your company. Refine. Okay, Hammerstone. I think we're just calling it refine. Now.

Colleen Schnettler 0:49
Let's call it redefine, redefine,

Michele Hansen 0:52
redefine, oh, I've been seeing it wrong. Okay, refine. Okay. So, anyway. Um, so I was reading it thinking about that. And the one question that popped into my head, as you're having all these conversations, is like, yes, we could do that, you know, the position exercise, and she has all these great worksheets and stuff for you to go through. But I think, as I was reading it, my big question was, what, like, who are your competitors? What are your competitors? And what are people doing now? Or are they doing instead, and I love how she frames competitors, not just as companies, but also very much from a jobs to be done perspective, even though she doesn't use that language, I could definitely see that shining through of, you know, a competitor is not just, you know, a competitor to, you know, Trello, or Basecamp, for example, is not just Trello or Basecamp. It's also writing out a to do list on paper or sending somebody an email with something, right. Like, there's all these sort of, quote, unquote, manual things that we do that are not handled by a software provider. And, and that was a question that I realized, as I was reading that I, I don't really know what your competitors are, aside from somebody building it themselves, like or.

Colleen Schnettler 2:25
Yeah, so it, it seems that in, I don't know, 10 ish calls that we've had so far, our competitors are, in fact, somebody built it, building it themselves. And it not working that well.

Michele Hansen 2:40
Oh, so not working that well, in terms of like, it took them a lot of time, like there was like opportunity cost, right, which I feel like is what your site speaks to right now. It's like, Oh, your developer could be pulling this report for you. Or they could be doing this, you know, higher value revenue thing for you? Or is it that they get that thing built, and then it doesn't work very well.

Colleen Schnettler 3:04
It's actually, I think, more option B, they build it, and it doesn't work very well. Or they, yeah, or they build it. And they realize they can't do all of these things that they would like to do. So a big problem in building SQL queries is grouping things appropriately with or conditions. So that's like a perfect example of someone, like we were on a call with me, like, oh, we can search by xy and z. But we also want our customers to be able to search using an oral condition. And so what we do is we enable them to do those searches so easily, and that's what they get excited about. But we also have potential customers who say we have the problem where they're doing it, they've already done it, most people who come to us, maybe 80% have already done something, and the something they're doing is not powerful enough. Some people feel like they need this, and they feel overwhelmed by trying to build it. I would say some people have built it in jQuery and feel like it's just a really kind of kludgy solution and they want something that feels a little bit more stable and more durable. So I'd say that's our primary competitor. There's not. This is both. You know, it's interesting, Michelle, because you hear so much when you're trying to start a business that the smart thing to do is go into a proven market. We don't seem to have a lot of competitors that are doing this exact thing. So it's kind of an interesting question of how big is this market? Is this a real market?

Michele Hansen 4:46
And that's something that April Dunford also talks about in her book of the danger basically, of trying to self fund a company in a New Market because it takes a lot of money and time to convince people that they need something that they're not currently directly paying for. And that that can be somewhat challenging.

Colleen Schnettler 5:16
Right. So that's an interesting thing I've thought of. And so what is kind of instructive here, interesting here. So our client, which is a big company, they have will have these calls, and they have, you know, accounts and all like intercom and all these other companies that do filtering. And so they'll show me on the calls, like what all these other companies are doing. So this is a thing everybody needs. It just seems like the big companies seem to be building it themselves. Because there's no existing solution. I think there's no existing solution, because the tech is so complicated. So So yeah, so it's an interesting, it's not like we're trying to build the market, like software and filtering and searching is a market for sure. It is interesting that there are no, as far as we can tell, outside of building it themselves. There's no direct competitors selling a similar product.

Michele Hansen 6:10
I just realized something that really ties together both of your products that maybe you've probably thought about this, but I haven't that both of them are essentially something that you pop in that a developer would otherwise spend a lot of time building. That seems like it should be simple, is actually somewhat complicated and pretty annoying. And wouldn't it be nice if you had someone to just you could just plop that element basically into your app? Like because I'm able to like picture right now, for example? You know, the the filtering in intercom? Or? But yeah, I almost see this little like, this, like, personal mission for you like creeping through this of like building basically developer happiness tools.

Colleen Schnettler 7:01
I never thought about that till you said it. But yeah, I kind of and you know, this could actually you could even tie that back to my personal mission of wanting to help more people get into software. Like, as you make developer happiness as you make these tools that enable people to move more quickly. It enables people to build whatever they want, but businesses, clients, sites, whatever, more quickly. Oh, I love that insight. It's like full circle.

Michele Hansen 7:28
Yeah, it is. It is full circle.

Colleen Schnettler 7:30
It's really fun. So I'm building out the refined demo. So I'm building out a full site, it's not going to be like have real data. Well, it might we'll see. I'm building out this full site for refine. And it's super fun, because I'm using refine, and I'm using simple file upload and has, like all everyone's together in one application. We're also happy,

Michele Hansen 7:51
who is uh, what are you doing that? That? How do they work together?

Colleen Schnettler 7:54
It's a real estate site. So I was looking for I was looking at a lot of different domain model ideas, because I wanted something where you have a lot of data, where it would be super useful to filter that data. And everyone understands real estate, and I think real estate's fun, a lot of us secretly want to be real estate investors, because, you know, I don't know why. Maybe we don't. But anyway,

Michele Hansen 8:16
I, personally secretly wants to be arrived. Personally, I personally feel no desire for it. Okay, just, I'm happy investing in a REIT. And, you know, an index fund and calling you today.

Colleen Schnettler 8:29
So I secretly love looking at houses. And so it's fun. So what I'm building out is I'm building up a site. And so all the searching so if you go in, when you think of properties, I mean, you can search on 1015 different attributes. And it makes sense to save those filters and get if you think of Zillow or Trulia, they send you an email every time a new listing that meets your, your specific search criteria shows up like that's actually kind of hard to do. But with refine, that's easy to do. And so I'm using refine for all of that. And then if you are the agent, uploading the properties and all the images, I'm using simple file upload for that.

Michele Hansen 9:12
I kind of love that. And I mean, real estate websites like that, like, you know, searching for apartments or houses or whatnot. They have so much data to like, like real estate websites like that are also big customers of ours as well. I mean, so they've got, you know, not just like 1000s, but millions of locations that they are, they have data for, and they have tons of data about all of those locations. And so to try to filter all of that is probably a very weighty SQL query.

Colleen Schnettler 9:47
Yeah. And so for this demo, right, because this is just a demo. I don't have all like everything sorted out but on terms of what I'm gonna allow them to filter on. But yeah, the idea is to show that you know, Oh, you can build this, you can throw in this filtering solution. And you can do these really detailed nested, or like specific filters. Really quickly.

Michele Hansen 10:10
That's exciting. So that's what you've been working on mostly this week.

Colleen Schnettler 10:14
Yeah, I'm super excited. I, it's not an insignificant task, right? It's different than throwing. I'm literally building out an entire application, just to be clear. You know, Aaron, and I were talking about it. And we could just put up an index view, right, and let you search, like on tasks or something. But I was like, this will just be, this will be cool. Like, I want this to be cool. And I want it to be like, Oh, wow, like, I kind of want an OH, WOW factor. And so I'm trying, that's what I'm trying to achieve. So it's not going to be an insignificant, like I said, it's a hard thing to do. It's going to take some time. With the you know, I've been working full time right now for the client. And so this is something I can only work on in the extra time that I have, but I'm getting there.

Michele Hansen 11:04
And well, so it doesn't sound like you have a lot of time because I was gonna ask, Have you done anything with simple file upload lately, but I'm gonna guess that's a no.

Colleen Schnettler 11:12
So I did actually have a customer interview yesterday. Really? Yeah. I think I did good until the very end when she was like, Oh, I thought I saw this error. So I was like, oh, let's just debug it right now. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to have a separate meeting for that. But we were already there.

Michele Hansen 11:31
Like, if you're going to be a purist about it, yes. But also, if this is the time that you had, and it's at the very end, like I think that's fine. And also people love it. When you fix you know, a bug with them while you're on the phone with them. Like yeah, when Mateus would have to so everybody at the company he used to work for before he was full time on geocoder to everybody would have to take a shift on customer service once a month so that they could have their team meetings. And some of his most memorable times doing that were like when somebody called in with a bug and be like, yeah, let me just fix that for you like right now on the phone. And then people would be like, what? Oh, that's magic. Oh, wait, why wait, sorry, I'm getting off track. You had it goes for interview. And I did aside from everything at the end about the bug. What did you learn? How did it go?

Colleen Schnettler 12:24
I think it went really well. I learned that when you're and this is appropriate to Hammerstone as well. When you're selling to developers, developers, always I mean, this happened to you guys. I think when you posted on Hacker News all those years ago, developers always say Oh, I can just build that myself.

Michele Hansen 12:43
Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, like this is the that happened to Dropbox. I literally just wrote a limerick about this yesterday.

Colleen Schnettler 12:51
I love that you're writing limericks, by the way. That's why not

Michele Hansen 12:55
just everyone myself,

Colleen Schnettler 12:56
here for them. Yes, so she said what all developers say, they see a product and they say I can just build that myself. And then she ended up needing a solution quickly. And so she dropped in simple file upload. And she said she was really pleased and impressed by how easy it was to get set up. She said it was actually easier than she thought it would be. But she still keeps telling herself that one day she's going to go back and use blob storage through Azure, and stop paying for simple file upload. But it's been a year and a half. I think she's one of my oldest customers. And so I was like, Oh, really? And she's funny. She was like, Well, you know, now I probably won't, because it's all set up. But I think selling to developers, you know, it almost makes me wonder if simple file upload should be positioned differently, and not be sold to developers, but maybe sell it to designers or people who are like wireframing. And, you know, developers just always think they can do everything faster and better. And even though they're wrong most of the time, it's hard to fight that mentality.

Michele Hansen 14:10
Yeah, yeah, there's a really strong, I can just do it myself. And, but it's hard to sell into a market when your your customers think they're better than you. Which I wonder if this is kind of the same. A little bit of the same problem you're up against with refine or refine.

Colleen Schnettler 14:32
Yeah, no, you're right.

Michele Hansen 14:35
And, and so you have to find the other people to sell that to you. And whether that's the product owners or the project managers or you know, whoever that is, that is actually like, no, the developers need to spend their time on these other things. We can just buy this off the shelf.

Colleen Schnettler 14:54
Right. And so that's another thing. I think that's important to keep in mind. who you're trying to sell it to? And how you speak to those people like? Yeah, I mean, you know, I've been, we've actually put a lot of work into simple file upload recently. And there's a lot more we can do there. So that's exciting. But it's also frustrating to actually do stuff and not see any movement.

Michele Hansen 15:21
Yeah. Are you still at basically the same MRR? You've been at? For?

Colleen Schnettler 15:24
Yeah, a year now once? Yeah, maybe a year? Yeah. Yeah. So so, you know, we're I ideating. Is that a real word? Ida

Michele Hansen 15:33
ideating. I think ideating anyway, have decided it is it's like it's like synergy. It's just a word like

Colleen Schnettler 15:39
synergy. It's a fake real word meaning. So it's, I mean, you know, I have Caitlin working for me on that. And she's really excited. And so I am excited about that. I don't talk about it quite as much on the podcast, but I am really excited about that we are thinking a little bit bigger. Thinking about other markets, we could go after, like paths forward with that. So it's good. It's like all good things. I have a list, you know, a mile long. But I've started doing this thing with my friend where we do these Monday morning meetings, and we pick one actionable thing that we're gonna get done to win the week, and I love it.

Michele Hansen 16:17
No. What did you do last year?

Colleen Schnettler 16:21
Last week, my one actionable thing was figure out the dome, figure out what I wanted to do the refined demo, like because I had a bunch of ideas. It's outside of real estate, and build out the domain model. So like, get the app up and running and build out all the models and controllers, etc. Like build out the domain model for the app.

Michele Hansen 16:40
And it sounds like you did that?

Colleen Schnettler 16:42
Yeah. Like, it's nice, because it's super actionable. And I, you know, I think all of us when we have a job, and side projects, it's so easy to get distracted or be like, like, I really want to build a Zapier integration for simple file upload, like, Should I do that? I don't know. But I really want to, like, I just want to do it. And so, you know, it's really nice to on Monday, say, this is what I'm going to do. This is how I win the week. And we don't talk about real work, like we both have jobs. But that's just normal job stuff. For side projects, like we just focus on our side projects, like for your side project, what do you have to do to win the week. So last week, for me, it was the domain model, and it was scheduled this custom for refine, and it was scheduled this customer interview for simple file upload. So they're very actionable. They're very, you know, as developers, we always think we can get more done than we can. So they're very constrained. And it's been good. We've been doing it for like four ish weeks now. And I totally dig it. Because I have so many ideas. And I have a list of 100 things I could do at any given time. And so the hard thing is to filter through that and stay focused, as you you know, as you have these little bursts of energy or you have time outside of your regular job.

Michele Hansen 17:56
And what's this week's when this week's when

Colleen Schnettler 17:58
is get the sample data and refine on A Public Index page. So last week, I got the app up and running this week, it'll be there will be a page that I could give you. And it will have sample real estate data and it will have the refund filter in it on it. It's very actionable, right? That that's what we're talking about, like stuff that is just super, you know, he was like, so you can literally send me a link. And if it's not there, I'll know you didn't do it. Like, yes, that's where we are. So I like it, because it's very constrained. It's very actionable. I'd like working that way. I like I like disk, you know, it's this interesting concept of I get one of those, you know, one of the newsletters I get, he talks about. Sometimes it's hard to focus on what you're doing if you're still trying to decide what you should be doing. Like if you start something, and then you'll go Oh, but I should be doing this. Oh, but I should be doing this. It's really hard for you to focus and get in a flow state on the thing you have decided to do. So deciding what to do. And doing the thing are two independent entities, huh?

Michele Hansen 19:14
Yeah. And you have to sort of clear out the brain first of all those other things you could do.

Colleen Schnettler 19:19
Exactly. So like I was working last night. And as I told you, I feel this completely irrational pull to build this happier integration just because it would be fun and I want to do it and you just this

Michele Hansen 19:28
thing for like serving no coders for simple file upload or like in general for like a long.

Colleen Schnettler 19:34
I'm gonna do it. I'm doing okay, then just like do it. I'm doing it. We're doing it. And part of that is the Zapier integration. But, you know, I actually did I did like a 12 week plan because I got a bunch of conferences like you in the fall. And so I was like, how am I going to build all these talks and be prepared for all these conferences? So I like worked backwards. Like where do I want to be in whatever that is? 12 weeks. So I have a schedule each week of what I'm supposed to be doing. And this week it is not building Zapier integration. This week, it is the refined demo with data. So,

Michele Hansen 20:08
Tam, you're so organized.

Colleen Schnettler 20:10
I mean, today. Yeah. You know what else? I was thinking, though. So did you listen to out of beta at all this week? Peter is talking about his task management system.

Michele Hansen 20:21
Yeah. So I'm like three quarters of the way through it. I was listening to it to and from language school on Monday.

Colleen Schnettler 20:29
Okay, so Peter is talking about his task management system and how he's using his working hours to get organized because it's so important. And I have like a super complicated notion setup, which mostly works, but man, I'm writing stuff down everyday again, and I like to physically write things down in a notebook. See, notebook. Nice, Michelle, my notebook nice. Like I make little check mark.

Michele Hansen 20:55
I think you're on mute. I think you muted yourself.

Colleen Schnettler 20:58
I did.

Michele Hansen 21:01
But I saw you gesticulating with your notebook. So you know, I think I got the sense of it. Loosely YaSM. For

Colleen Schnettler 21:09
I'm just like diggin writing stuff down. And I still have my notion documents. And I do like long term planning and notion. But for me, there's some kind of benefit to like, physically putting pen to paper, I just like it.

Michele Hansen 21:24
Yeah, I love the like, scratchiness of my pencil against paper, like, I'm very specific about the paper that I use for us to do lists and like calendars. And like, it was actually it's so. So I was listening to that yesterday. And I was like, any who's talking through everything about notion versus to do us and I was, like, you know, I should really give like to do is to try because yesterday, I found myself sending myself an email with all this stuff I needed to do. And I also used to use Wunderlist, like Peter, and then was very sad when Microsoft bought it. And some people say that they folded it into Microsoft to do but like, you know, that's not true. And, and one of those things was like, oh, like, just download to do us like, you know, what, if like, Peter, so excited about it, I should give it a try. I had the most, this this whole thing I realized it later was like the most add cycle that I went through. So I sent myself an email to remind myself to download this to do list app that I was excited about, because obviously a new to do list app will solve all of my all your problems. Totally. Okay. So I'm looking at this in my inbox today, which I use my inbox also as a to do list. And I see, okay, download Todoist is on here. In addition to all this other stuff, I downloaded it. And then I started setting up an account. And I don't know why. But for whatever reason I got distracted in the middle of setting up the accounts. Oh, I think it was because one password wasn't prompting to auto generate the password when I was going through it. So I was like, oh, you know what, let me just do this on my desktop. And then somewhere between looking at my phone and like there was a disconnect and it never made it up to my desktop. Anyway, I only realized this like half an hour later as I went into to factor for something else that I had just logged into. But because I didn't want to forget that task that I was currently locked, like working on. I just you know, close out the the to do list app and then started doing on that other thing. But then because I had emailed myself the reminder to do this and then when I went to do it I archive that so now this is like completely disappeared from my to do list so I had this like super ADHD cycle about a To Do Lists app and it feels so meta. Whoa, I still haven't created the account. This was hours ago. Like I tried to like make this happen. Like it was not a lack of will and it just like I don't know, maybe you're like talking about having all these goals and everything and I'm like, Dude, my goal is to just like survive the week like I feel like we're both standing on home base with you know, balls coming at us at 90 miles an hour. And you're like you're trying to get a home run out of one of them and I'm like yeah, I just want to get like not hit by the ball. That would be great like

Colleen Schnettler 24:39
yeah, how how are you? Let's talk about that because we Yeah,

Michele Hansen 24:42
I am actually bruised not from getting hit by baseballs cuz actually because we went ziplining the other day which was super

Colleen Schnettler 24:49
fun. You're actually bruise not metaphorically bruise No. Yes, physically I am physically

Michele Hansen 24:55
but in a good way, you know. So Oh, yeah, I'm yeah, just just had a No Yeah, going back and forth on the whole, I just try to like survive the next four months or like, I don't know, because yeah, I'm having to yesterday actually tried to not work yesterday afternoon. So I get home for context at like 230, after well, but I actually had to run some errands because our daughter's birthday parties this week and so I didn't get home until like 330. And then, and then she was already home at that point. And I was like, Okay, let's try to you know, spend some time together and pick some raspberries, and you know, all this kind of stuff. And then before you know it, it's like dinner and everything else. And I was like, I'm not going to take my laptop home, I'm going to like, I'm going to just try to like relax. That didn't happen. I didn't bring my laptop home. But like, I ended up with just this. The problem is I end up with this massive pile of stuff to do on Tuesday morning. And if I have stuff to do on Tuesday morning, which I did today, because my last day to do anything was last Thursday. So like now it's like all of my, you know, appointments or like dog grooming or like, whatever, like everything gets, like clustered into those three days. And so I didn't actually get to sit down at my desk until one o'clock today. So I oh my goodness, I actually Yeah, I actually have not like been working until, like, five o'clock on Thursday. So man, yeah. Um, so it's, it's, it's really, really problematic when it gets to that point, because it's like, I'm trying to have good work life balance, like I'm trying to not work on the weekends, or at night because I end up really tired. But then if I put it off that long, then I don't like I'm such. I'm just like such an anxious stress ball like

Colleen Schnettler 26:52
so it doesn't sound like it's working for you. I know you should not work. Yeah, clearly not working. I mean, maybe that's the move is you take four hours on Sunday to do all this stuff that you missed on Friday or something.

Michele Hansen 27:06
Right. And like I almost did that on Sunday, like I was I was like I shouldn't really spend like two hours. Actually, no, I did come to think of it. I spent two hours scheduling emails to go out on Monday morning on Sunday, and you were still underwater today. And I was despite all on I was still underwater. That was from not working Monday. And yeah, Tuesday. Yeah. So I don't I don't know. I feel like I was less stressed when I had a full time job and do Kodos a side project. That is so interesting. And maybe it's just like, I think I was I think I was you know, I was doing more. But I didn't feel the stress as much if that makes sense. Like I also I didn't work out yesterday. So I worked out on Friday after going to language school, and that really reenergized me. Yeah, though, I'm really out of shape. And after 10 minutes on the elliptical and 500 meters of rowing, I was dying. And felt like my heart was going to jump out of my chest. And so I decided that was enough for one day. But yeah, I was actually way more tired yesterday. And like when I was working full time, I used to bike five miles to and fro to work and like, you know, I had that break in the day, which I don't have any more. So that helped, like I did at least join the gym and go to the gym was a great step in the right direction. Oh, and I did start doing that journaling thing. So my true journaling. Yeah, the moment the things that were like kind of frustrating or not super great. And and the things actually were great. Or, like nice. Um, so I realized actually an issue I've had with journaling in the past that I tend to journal for, like future me. So I tend to add a lot of context in so it's like, oh, and I read this. Two years from now, I'm not going to what all these things are. So I have had all of this context, like for the reader who is me. And it's really tiring when you just want to, like get something out to like have to build in all of that padding around it. So I was like, whatever. Like I'm just gonna write in like, you know, like, frustrating thing. Paperwork, and I'm gonna have no idea what this paperwork was six months from now, but like, that's not the point. The point is me like speaking into, you know, the world that like this paperwork frustrated me, right. So I think that's actually been good that it's like so short. That's like, just a little list. And then the way I've been getting myself to do it most nights I think I actually forgot last night but I was super tired and kind of distressed after watching the new Game of Thrones was I slip it into my Sudoku book so Oh, I actually you're gonna make fun of me for this. So I do Sudoku every night before I go to bed. Like just to like calm down seems like a good idea. Yeah, okay, you're gonna call me for doing that. Okay? No, I feel like that makes sense. So I tend to do Sudoku, like every night before I go to bed. And I've been actually been doing that for like, nine months now, and it's really good. helps me calm down. And so I put the journal for the bullet point, the six bullet points in my Sudoku book. So when I open it up at night, it's like, Okay, let me just do this first, and then I can do my Sudoku. That seems good. That's actually working, that's working. And I, I did at least go to the gym once last week.

Colleen Schnettler 30:39
That's great.

Michele Hansen 30:40
Yeah, it's better than we were. And I felt better. Yeah, just the problem is like that, you know, our including driving and everything that I'm going to like devote at the gym, like, that's time I'm not working. And so then it's like, okay, so then if I do that, I don't get home until four. And then I somehow have to find time to work before dinner, bedtime, etc. Or I have to work after bedtime, which like might not, kid might not start until like 930. So like, that's, like, really late at that point. And I'm trying to go to bed earlier. So I don't know, I wonder why I had a better sense for this, or better flow for this when I was working full time you

Colleen Schnettler 31:28
think? Okay, so that's interesting to me, you found that you had a better flow when you were working full time and doing it as a side project? Do you think because back then it felt like an adventure?

Michele Hansen 31:42
I think it was because there were things I wanted to do. And I think that makes a big difference in how you feel,

Colleen Schnettler 31:47
do you mean things you wanted to do? Well,

Michele Hansen 31:50
I loved my full time job. It was actually it was really hard for me to leave it. Like I really enjoyed it. And I loved working on geocoding as my little like, sandbox, where I got to, you know, play around and explore and run experiments and learn things, right. Like, I really enjoyed both of those things. And I had that nice, like those nice breaks in the day of biking, or it was on the company soccer team, like, you know, like, there was like, there was a lot of like, activity built in for like, kind of processing things. Versus now like, you know, I'm doing language because I have to write like, it's almost like jury duty, but I get a new language out of it. Like, yeah, so. And yes, it's very beneficial for me, but it's also like, it's just something feels a little bit different when it's, you know, something's a government requirement versus a project or something that you have elected to do, right. Like, there's a difference between those. Um, you know, there's worse requirements to have on your head, but like, it's better than I don't know, court ordered volunteer work or something, which I hope I never have to do. But like, Yeah, I think that like, because, you know, my, like, my teacher is actually great. And I learned a lot. It's very helpful for my daily life and blah, blah, blah, and all of those things, but like, it's still a like, black hole of time that I don't have.

Colleen Schnettler 33:15
I mean, it's a black hole of time, but it's not a lot of time.

Michele Hansen 33:19
Like I just don't have like a spare, you know, yeah. Got a lot in driving and online exercise and everything, like a spare like 20 hours a week, just like laying around like, but yeah, actually, I guess, working out helps. Okay, so that's a positive. And I think it'll help right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I

Colleen Schnettler 33:41
think the journaling helped. Okay. I

Michele Hansen 33:43
think it helped. I still feel underwater with stress. But

Colleen Schnettler 33:47
well, it's not a it's not a binary thing, right? I mean, it's not just gonna go away, but you just have to manage it until it'll go away after you take your language exam in December. And I pass, you'll pass it.

Michele Hansen 33:59
And then I have to start studying for the next exam. So that's fun. Are you

Colleen Schnettler 34:03
serious? How many of these are there?

Michele Hansen 34:06
At least two that I know of, because I'll have to take a permanent resident exam. And that one actually downloaded the book for it. And it's like 150 pages. So that will be fun. And then there's also a citizenship exam. And I'll have to remember like, for example, when the last time Denmark was in a handball World Championship, I think it was 1992 I'm not it maybe 93 Watch. Yeah, plots to like TV shows like all this, all this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So it's never ending, but I need to I need to find a way to like,

Colleen Schnettler 34:40
I feel like you live through all. Absolutely. You made progress. I mean, I know you still feel totally overwhelmed, but take a smaller world view of it. You've made progress this week. You did two things that were really good for you that helped you decrease your stress level.

Michele Hansen 34:56
Yeah. And I was also I was talking to my team So that are about about like geocoding. and stuff. The problem with all my work getting compressed into three days a week is that I'm only doing the like, most mission critical stuff, which is very often, like operational stuff, you know, and it's not it's like stuff I, I'm good at or I don't mind doing or like has to be done. You know, that, you know, contracts, invoicing, playing to customer stuff like that. But like, I find it's, it's, I don't get any sort of, like, play time or explore time, or like product development time at all. Like, there's none of that time when it's kind of like sitting at my desk, it's like, you know, like, you have like, I love it. When I have like, I'm, I'm working on something, and I'm not in a particular rush. And I have a question popped into my head about something. And I'm like, Oh, I wonder about this. And then I kind of go like putz around in our data for a little bit. And I or I looked through some things, and I kind of, or I'm like, oh, you know what? Yeah, like, they're right. Like, that really didn't work that well, like, maybe spend some time thinking of like, Where should we put this button instead? Or like, what like, what is how does this flow work, like the fun, challenging, but like, for me really fun and rewarding product work. I'm like, I don't get to do any of that. And so that ends up being super draining, because when I am working, it's just like, bang through the to do list get through my inbox, I just Yes, they a floats. And it's not doing the stuff that makes me really enjoy working on a product, which is improving that product, and, you know, talking to the customers of that product, right, and understanding that and making it better for them and improving the business. Like I don't get any of that. And I think, for me, I need a certain amount of like mental food and actual free space and time to like, be able to get into that kind of a creative space. Because it it is, you know, very challenging work, you know, for me to, you know, think through sort of all of the different possible edge cases of something or whatever. Like, I feel like that's, that's sort of my functional specialty. And I don't really get to do much of that. And so Matias and I were kind of talking yesterday of or the other day of like, what are like some really like small things that are just like small wins that we could do that are kind of give us a little bit of that. I don't know, it's not Jawad, Aviv, or Vive or whatever. It's like, you ought to product or whatever. You know, back into it. Because I think it's important to carve that out. I don't know how though. I like this idea, though, that you have of the weekly goal, like you have like one

Colleen Schnettler 37:50
weekly going for simple file upload and one for boat, one for refine. I feel like that's something I

Michele Hansen 37:55
should do. That's like, just pick like, one thing. That's not something I want to do. It's something I want to achieve. Like I like the way you frame that. It's like if I get that one thing done, then like this week, you went was a success. And it's not just like, reply to this email, file this government paperwork like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, what is the thing that I want to have done? Not that other people or, you know, the business or whatever need me to have done? Like, there's, there's lists for that those are already on my list. Those are already tickets, those are already issues those like they're already to dues? What is the thing that I want done?

Colleen Schnettler 38:34
Yeah, you should try it.

Michele Hansen 38:38
Well, that feels actionable. I don't know if we answered my question of who your competitors are. Maybe we did. We, I mean, like, I feel like I feel like you should hunt around and see if anybody is buying anything for

Colleen Schnettler 38:49
this. Yeah. And this is what makes me. I mean, it makes me a little nervous, as I said, is that, are we trying to create a market for this thing? But everyone is doing it? Are you creating

Michele Hansen 39:02
a feature something that's a feature of something else?

Colleen Schnettler 39:04
Yeah. So I don't know. I think we need to keep dicking around in this area. And we're continuing to talk to people. So we're continuing to learn as we go. We'll see. Yeah, but but that is definitely definitely something to think about. And I think you're right, just digging around seeing what's out there. is all very instructive.

Michele Hansen 39:25
Yeah. And I mean, if people don't know that they have the problem, or they don't see it as a problem, right. Like if their developer ego is getting in the way of them seeing it as a problem, then that is a problem for you as a business. And so just, you know, speaking and, you know, positioning to somebody else in the company.

Colleen Schnettler 39:44
Yeah, yeah. And that's something we've been talking about too, is like making our landing page right now is focused on developers. We definitely we should keep it because it's good people like it, but we also need one that's focused on the product managers, because those are probably the people that are going to be pushing this for feature more than developers, we think.

Michele Hansen 40:02
And it's just a question of how aware are they that, you know, would they be Googling like that SQL queries are taking too long or something like who is the or googling things about writing a really complicated SQL query that relates to the kind of filtering you're doing? How do we reach those people? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Colleen Schnettler 40:22
How do we reach those people? Yep. So those are kind of the big, those are like the bigger picture challenges like we have a ton of work to do right now just executing on the commitments that we have. But those are the bigger picture challenges we are keeping in the back of our mind as we continue to sell this and talk to people.

Michele Hansen 40:40
I mean, you've got a list. You've got it all organized. You know what you've got to do

Colleen Schnettler 40:44
all the lists.

Michele Hansen 40:48
All right, I think it's about time for us to give some shoutouts

Huge thanks to all of our listeners who’ve become Software Socialites and support our show! You can become a supporter for $10 a month or $100 a year at softwaresocial.dev/supporters

Chris from Chipper CI
The Daringly Handsome Kevin Griffin
And Mike from Gently Used Domains, who has a nice personality
Dave from Recut
Max of OnlineOrNot
Stefan from Talk to Stefan
Brendan Andrade of Bright Bits
Team Tuple
Alex Hillman from The Tiny MBA
Ramy from Memo.fm
Jane and Benedikt from Userlist
Kendall Morgan
Ruben Gamez of SignWell
Corey Haines of SwipeWell
Mike Wade of Crowd Sentry
Nate Ritter of Room Steals
Anna Maste of Subscribe Sense
Geoff Roberts from Outseta
Justin Jackson, MegaMaker
Jack Ellis and Paul Jarvis from Fathom Analytics
Matthew from Appointment Reminder
Andrew Culver at Bullet Train
John Kostor
Alex of Corso Systems
Richard from Stunning
Josh,the annoyingly pragmatic founder
Ben from Consent Kit
John from Credo and EditorNinja
Cam Sloan

Michael Koper of Nusii Proposals

Chris from Urlbox
Caeli of Tosslet
Greg Park from TraitLab
Adam from Rails Autoscale
Lana and Alex from Recapsy
Joe Masilotti of railsdevs.com
Proud MaMa from Oplnet, LLC
Anna from Kradl
Moncef from Ruby on Mac
Steve of Be Inclusive
Simon Bennett of SnapShooter Backups
Josh Smith of Keyhero.io

Arvid Kahl
James Sowers from Castaway.fm
Nathan of Develop Your UX
Jessica Malnik
Damian Moore of Audio Audit Podcast Checker
Eldon from NodleStudios
Mitchell Davis from RecruitKit

By the way, just a little note on this week's episode, so if you notice that our sound quality was nice, not not as lovely and crisp and balanced as it has been in the last few weeks. That is because Corey who has been doing our editing is on vacation this week. Sorry if this episode sounded weird, it will be back to sounding amazing. Next week