Aaron Francis

HelloQuery: https://helloquery.com
Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis
Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburger

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Transcript

Colleen

00:00:00 – 00:00:00

Hi, Aaron.

Aaron

00:00:00 – 00:00:05

Oh, hello, Colleen. It's so weird being on the receiving end of, of the greeting.

Colleen

00:00:05 – 00:00:08

That's right. Usually, I say good morning, Aaron, so I'm getting crazy today.

Aaron

00:00:09 – 00:00:10

Yeah. This is wild.

Colleen

00:00:10 – 00:00:20

So before we get into today's content, I wanted to ask all of our listeners, if you struggle with internal reporting okay. Now this sounds like an infomercial. Sorry. Which is yeah.

Aaron

00:00:20 – 00:00:23

Change your tone. There's gotta be a better way.

Colleen

00:00:23 – 00:00:24

There's gotta be a better way.

Aaron

00:00:24 – 00:00:27

Try that again. Seriously. Take it out. If you

Colleen

00:00:27 – 00:01:04

listen to this podcast and you have a problem at your job where people who don't write sequel are constantly asking you for reports, whether that's one off, you're getting interrupted, or whether that's routinely, or whether that's they don't understand the data, please, please, please reach out to me. Aaron and I are the very beginning stages of, you know, tearing down our old business and building a new business from the ground up. And so we really wanna build this product, existing customers in mind. And so please, you can you can reach me at colleen, 2l'sand2e's@helloquiry.com, or you can DM me on Twitter. I'm leanyburger.

Colleen

00:01:05 – 00:01:12

And if you hate phone calls or you don't like people, we can just talk over DMs. So Leanie Burger on Twitter.

Aaron

00:01:12 – 00:01:16

Yeah. Back up. What is say it again. I'll need to say it again. What's your what's your Twitter username?

Colleen

00:01:17 – 00:01:18

Leanie Burger.

Aaron

00:01:18 – 00:01:22

Leanie Burger. There you go. DM her at Leeny Burger.

Colleen

00:01:23 – 00:01:30

Burgers, and Leeny sounds kind of like Colleen, but it's cool and hip, unlike your Twitter username, which is what, your name? So pedestrian.

Aaron

00:01:30 – 00:01:32

Imagine. Can you believe it?

Colleen

00:01:32 – 00:01:34

So pedestrian, Aaron.

Aaron

00:01:34 – 00:01:53

Also, because I like burgers, it's like the it's like the most I wanna say, like, 7th grade or 6th grade way to pick a screen name. It's like, hey. You're signing up for AIM for the first time. AOL, it's a Messenger, and you're like, man, I like burgers. I like cheerleading.

Aaron

00:01:53 – 00:01:56

I'm gonna be no. I'm gonna be leaning burger. I love burgers.

Colleen

00:01:57 – 00:02:01

You know, that's literally where it came from. It was my AIM username from 17th. I knew it.

Aaron

00:02:01 – 00:02:03

I freaking knew it.

Colleen

00:02:03 – 00:02:04

You called it. You nailed it.

Aaron

00:02:05 – 00:02:18

Man, it was either yeah. I felt like everyone was, you know, leanie burger or, like, x o cheer girl o x. And, you know, they would, you know, they would, like, decorate it in the username. Yeah. You want a different route saying I love burgers.

Aaron

00:02:18 – 00:02:19

Good for you.

Colleen

00:02:20 – 00:02:23

Yeah. You just gotta lean in. Just gotta commit to it.

Aaron

00:02:23 – 00:02:25

I guess so.

Colleen

00:02:25 – 00:02:29

So we didn't record last week because you were moving.

Aaron

00:02:30 – 00:02:37

Yes. I have now moved. Gotta say, 0 stars. Don't recommend it. Moving is the worst.

Aaron

00:02:37 – 00:02:37

It is

Colleen

00:02:37 – 00:02:38

Moving is the worst.

Aaron

00:02:38 – 00:02:55

It is it's bad. And we didn't even do most of the move ourselves. So we did all the packing, and then we hired movers to come move everything, and now we're doing all the unpacking. So, like, the hard, you know, manual labor part, we didn't do. And it still sucked.

Aaron

00:02:56 – 00:03:10

I think one of the problems is it's an in town move. Like, we're moving 10 or 15 minutes away. And so there's this whole set of things. It's like, ah, I'll just go back and get that. Like, the shed like, the, the outdoor part of the shed.

Aaron

00:03:10 – 00:03:30

So I had the shed quarters, which was the office, and then there was, like, a a yard storage part of the shed where I kept all, like, the tools and, you know, paint and fertilizer, that sort of stuff. And I was just like, I don't wanna pack all of that. I'll go back and get it, you know, after the move because we had a little bit of an overlap. Huge mistake. I think I probably made 7 trips.

Aaron

00:03:30 – 00:03:49

You know, maybe maybe 8 or 9. I borrowed a truck from a friend, made several with that, and then threw a bunch of the stuff in the 4 runner and made several with that. And it's like, this I should've just I should've just packed it all and made them move it because I thought it's easier to grab it all and throw it in the car. That was stupid. So, yeah, that was fine.

Aaron

00:03:49 – 00:04:09

I've got, as you can see, the office set up a little bit in here. No longer no longer in a separate building, which has already proven to be worse. Just because just because, you know, I'm literally right off the dining room, and I can you know, as much as I've tried to soundproof everything, I can just hear everything.

Colleen

00:04:09 – 00:04:10

Yeah.

Aaron

00:04:10 – 00:04:26

But, fortunately, the kids can't see in. I've put up curtains. The kids can't see in, and they know that you know, it used to be, like, dead at working, and I would walk outside. And so they're familiar with the concept of dad has to leave and go to work, and now I just walk into this room. So it's been fine.

Aaron

00:04:26 – 00:04:43

You know, it's been fine so far considering. But, yeah, moving is the worst. It's exhausting. Getting everything set up at the new place is exhausting, and the transaction costs are really high. Like, not only do you have to pay for movers and stuff, but then you're like, oh, I need to buy this little thing.

Aaron

00:04:43 – 00:04:53

Like, I need to buy something for the sink here. I need to buy something for, you know, the counter or like an organization for this closet. Man, I'm just buying stuff everywhere. So

Colleen

00:04:54 – 00:04:54

Yep.

Aaron

00:04:54 – 00:04:55

Yeah. Don't move.

Colleen

00:04:57 – 00:05:00

TLDR. Don't move. Good advice. Good advice.

Aaron

00:05:00 – 00:05:03

Not for sure yet. Because you're gonna stay in San Diego forever.

Colleen

00:05:03 – 00:05:04

Fingers crossed.

Aaron

00:05:04 – 00:05:05

Since you live in Paradise.

Colleen

00:05:06 – 00:05:21

I do. So since we're telling personal stories, so we live next to someone that has a, like, $6,000,000 house. It is on the it takes up yeah. It takes up the entire block. And this is a really expensive place to live, and their house is ginormous.

Aaron

00:05:21 – 00:05:26

Must be embarrassing since yours is 4,000,000 and, you know, there's a there's a 6. Right?

Colleen

00:05:28 – 00:05:40

No. It is not. And so yesterday, I'm at work and my eldest child gets home, and he comes home alone, and he was playing lacrosse outside, and he bounces the ball against, like, one

Aaron

00:05:40 – 00:05:42

of their walls, like their garage wall. They don't care.

Colleen

00:05:43 – 00:05:57

And he broke a window of the $6,000,000 house. And he sends me this text. So we just set him up with Apple Pays to send and receive money. That's how we give him his allowance. And he sent me this text yesterday at, like, 4:30 PM just as I'm about to leave work, and it was $30.

Colleen

00:05:58 – 00:06:01

And it was, mom, I hope this covers the window I just broke.

Aaron

00:06:01 – 00:06:05

Oh, he sent it to you? Yeah. That's really sweet.

Colleen

00:06:06 – 00:06:09

It was it was pretty it was pretty sweet and hilarious.

Aaron

00:06:09 – 00:06:10

Possible of him.

Colleen

00:06:10 – 00:06:25

And, and anyway, so that that's what happened yesterday. But, to conclude that story, so I'm like, okay. We broke the rich people's window. Like, obviously, we're gonna offer to pay for it. So I got to chat with my neighbors yesterday after my son broke their window.

Colleen

00:06:25 – 00:06:37

Turns out I live next to the owner of Ballast Point Brewery, which is why he has a $6,000,000 house and super classy. Like, they were like, it's fine. Like, they didn't care. It was

Aaron

00:06:37 – 00:06:46

amazing. No. Super classy. Has any, if he has any trouble accessing internal data at his company. Just curious for no reason that he's popular.

Colleen

00:06:46 – 00:06:50

Be like, so. You guys probably have trouble with reports. Right? Yeah. It's cool.

Colleen

00:06:50 – 00:07:00

Now we're friends. So we've bonded over this window situation. So if you could, talk to me about your reporting needs, that would be great. Anyway, so brewery?

Aaron

00:07:00 – 00:07:01

Must be pretty successful.

Colleen

00:07:02 – 00:07:05

It is. It's a huge deal out here on the on the West Coast. Like, it's a huge brewery.

Aaron

00:07:05 – 00:07:06

Interesting.

Colleen

00:07:06 – 00:07:11

Anyway, this is my day yesterday. But before that, while you were moving

Aaron

00:07:11 – 00:07:11

Yes.

Colleen

00:07:12 – 00:07:14

Let's talk about what happened the week you were moving.

Aaron

00:07:14 – 00:07:21

Yeah. You've got all the energy, which I was I was, feeding off of because I had none of the energy. So

Colleen

00:07:21 – 00:07:33

I was, like, bouncing off the walls. I had the most amazing week last week. So first of all, it I don't know. It's just it feels like the wind is at our back. Like, things are

Aaron

00:07:33 – 00:07:35

just Instead of in our face again.

Colleen

00:07:35 – 00:07:48

Which it was for a long time. The wind was in our face for a long, long, long time. It just feels like the wind's at our back. I think that, man so I had 3 calls yesterday, inbound leads I'm sorry. Not yesterday.

Colleen

00:07:48 – 00:07:56

So excited. I can't remember when this was. Inbound leads last week. Those calls went really, really well. 1st, they were inbound.

Colleen

00:07:56 – 00:08:14

So super much higher quality leads as opposed to what has been happening when I've been doing outbound. And they all need some version of Hello Query. It was really exciting. I was super man, I was just, like, flying high last week. I almost I didn't do it, but I should have in retrospect.

Colleen

00:08:14 – 00:08:16

I almost did a solo podcast without you.

Aaron

00:08:16 – 00:08:19

Oh, man. That would have been a superpower move. You should have.

Colleen

00:08:19 – 00:08:23

I know. I should have. And then I I didn't feel like getting my microphone out.

Aaron

00:08:23 – 00:08:23

Yeah.

Colleen

00:08:23 – 00:08:32

But it was great. Man, last week, things were just clicking into place. It felt really, really good. I feel like what do you call it? Reticular activation?

Aaron

00:08:33 – 00:08:34

That's right. Yeah.

Colleen

00:08:34 – 00:08:35

Look at me so

Aaron

00:08:35 – 00:08:38

You got it. I can take the SATs. That's right.

Colleen

00:08:39 – 00:08:53

So when you and I first started this is kind of a fun story. When we first started down this path, it we started doing a competitor deep dive, and we are finding competitors everywhere. And that didn't feel great. Like, we want competitors, but we won't we don't want competitors everywhere.

Aaron

00:08:53 – 00:08:55

And we want them to be worse than they are.

Colleen

00:08:55 – 00:08:58

Yeah. Because because there's some really nice some good ones out there.

Aaron

00:08:58 – 00:08:59

Good ones. Yeah.

Colleen

00:09:00 – 00:09:15

And now I feel like I'm seeing this everywhere, only I'm seeing the need for this. It's like it's flipped to, oh, everybody needs this in some fashion or form. So it's really exciting. It just it just felt great. It felt like, man, it just feels good.

Colleen

00:09:15 – 00:09:23

It feels like we are onto something. People are interested. People are talking to us. Like, we're headed in the right direction.

Aaron

00:09:23 – 00:09:48

Yeah. That was really good because you were having all these calls. I was doing all this work, and you would message me and just you were you were just so excited. And I think I think at one point maybe it was, like, a Saturday or something we talked on the phone. By the way, speaking of power moves, most most devastating diss ever when I was like, why don't you just call me on my cell phone and you said, what's your number?

Aaron

00:09:49 – 00:10:05

As if It's depressing. You absolutely said, what's your number? As if as if we've talked on the phone multiple times, but you've never bothered to save my number. Like, maybe you did, maybe you didn't, but the mere fact that you were like, man, I don't have your number. Come on.

Aaron

00:10:05 – 00:10:20

Are you kidding me? Like, man, I gotta use that on my worst enemy someday. Anyway, yeah, we talked on the phone, and you were just like, you were buzzing. You were so amped, and that was that's really good for me because I'm not talking to all these people. Right?

Aaron

00:10:20 – 00:10:34

I'm just over here either building product or, you know, staying up late organizing and unpacking boxes. And so right now, I'm like, the the all the energy is on your side, and I'm feeding off of that, and that's quite nice.

Colleen

00:10:34 – 00:10:41

Yeah. Yeah. That's why especially last week, I wanted to talk to you because I was like, he's probably in the depths of despair over there in his boxes.

Aaron

00:10:41 – 00:10:57

You were correct. I think one of the times we talked on the phone, I was driving a load of junk from house to house, and the other time I was in the new garage building garage shelves to store all the junk. So Yeah. Yep. Needed that.

Colleen

00:10:58 – 00:11:00

Awesome. Yeah. I We talked

Aaron

00:11:00 – 00:11:07

we talked last time. I think we talked about scoping it down to SQL to CSV. Right? I don't know. Did we talk

Colleen

00:11:07 – 00:11:12

about that on the podcast? I don't know. Probably not. I don't think we did. I don't think we talked about it on the podcast.

Colleen

00:11:13 – 00:11:26

So in an effort to be even crispier and clearer and super clearly identify a pain, we have our h one now, I think, is the fastest way to get from SQL wait. From SQL to CSV.

Aaron

00:11:26 – 00:11:27

I think that's right.

Colleen

00:11:27 – 00:11:29

So what's interesting okay. Go ahead.

Aaron

00:11:29 – 00:11:30

No. You go.

Colleen

00:11:30 – 00:11:43

What's interesting about this is I spoke to 4 people who are, like, we need this. Of those 4 people I talked to, none of them said they just need the sequel to CSV.

Aaron

00:11:43 – 00:11:47

K. So what parts did they need? The thing that seemed to so, so

Colleen

00:11:47 – 00:11:49

this is interesting. So I have, you know, my secret plan.

Aaron

00:11:49 – 00:11:49

Right.

Colleen

00:11:49 – 00:11:52

Should I tell you my secret plan? Or I just I'm trying to drip it to you.

Aaron

00:11:52 – 00:12:01

You should you should tell me. Yes. Definitely. I would love to know your secret plans. Whether you wanna say it on the podcast is an open question.

Aaron

00:12:01 – 00:12:13

But, yeah, anytime you have secret plans, I would I would love to know them, Especially if it's like apply for an accelerator or anything like that, you know, get more funding. Yeah. Please clue me in.

Colleen

00:12:13 – 00:12:20

So my secret plan is I think what this is gonna end up because something like this this concept of reporting

Aaron

00:12:21 – 00:12:21

Mhmm.

Colleen

00:12:21 – 00:12:32

You can go in so many different directions with it. And I think the highest leverage is eventually gonna be something that you can use internally for teams, or you can use this embedded BI for customers.

Aaron

00:12:33 – 00:12:33

Colleen

00:12:33 – 00:12:51

So it is my thought because once again, it's not that big of a leap to go from internal to external. So that's where I think we're gonna end up. Now I don't want to, you know, for you and I to plan for that and and you to be building for 6 to 8 months and then find out if it's gonna work. That's not gonna that's not what we're doing here. Right?

Aaron

00:12:51 – 00:12:52

Been there.

Colleen

00:12:52 – 00:13:11

So when I if you take that internal, let's say, embedded BI, if you're like, that's where I wanna I wanna be able to offer that and you step it down, you go from embedded BI. Now we're going backwards in terms of complexity of product. Mhmm. Embedded BI backwards a step is internal for teams because you don't have any tenancy. Backwards a step there is well, no.

Colleen

00:13:11 – 00:13:18

It's internal for teams with filters. Backstep from there is internal for teams no filters, and a backstep from there is SQL to CSV.

Aaron

00:13:18 – 00:13:19

Colleen

00:13:19 – 00:13:35

So what I think we're doing here is we're starting with SQL to CSV and we, excuse me, and then we just show the people who said, hey. I want, you know, internal reporting for teams. Like, okay, we're starting with this. How does this this user experience feel? And then we build a little and then we ship a little and then we build a little.

Colleen

00:13:35 – 00:13:52

Of the 4 people I talked to who are like, yeah, I would buy this today. 2 wanted it internally for teams, and 2 wanted it for customer facing like embedded BI. And I and I told the the people we spoke I spoke with about embedded BI. I was like, we don't know what that timeline is yet because we're just getting started.

Aaron

00:13:53 – 00:13:53

Mhmm.

Colleen

00:13:53 – 00:14:00

But, that's kind of my that's how I think this is gonna go. That's my initial my initial gut feeling on this.

Aaron

00:14:00 – 00:14:02

Okay. That doesn't terrify me.

Colleen

00:14:02 – 00:14:02

Okay.

Aaron

00:14:02 – 00:14:03

Yeah.

Colleen

00:14:03 – 00:14:19

Good. And so what's happening now is in order to do that first stair step, SQL to CSV, like, that's our h one. Those are the people we're trying to attract right now. But like I said, of the the people who are like, I would buy this, none of them it was unclear because I think we made this decision after I talked to some of them, and

Aaron

00:14:19 – 00:14:19

Mhmm.

Colleen

00:14:19 – 00:14:26

It was unclear that value prop is meaty enough to warrant, like, payments, like, see you know, per seat fee.

Aaron

00:14:26 – 00:14:36

Right. How about that? I do I do like the the way that we're doing it this time. By the way, I don't think much of that was secret. I feel like I'm we've talked about most of that.

Aaron

00:14:36 – 00:14:40

So Okay. Good job. Yeah. Thanks for telling me. You're welcome.

Aaron

00:14:40 – 00:14:57

Anytime. Yeah. Well, sometimes. Sometimes. I do like the the, approach of building the simplest thing first rather than, like, the complete vision because I do think we built the complete vision last time, and it was a 100% complete, and then people didn't buy it.

Aaron

00:14:57 – 00:15:05

I was like, that kinda sucks. So doing the smallest thing possible as fast as possible, I'm super into.

Colleen

00:15:06 – 00:15:13

Yeah. I think it's I think it's a good move. I think that's that's a good move. And so I think it's gonna work. I mean, I'm feeling really good about it.

Aaron

00:15:13 – 00:15:15

Yeah. I do too. I feel so much better.

Colleen

00:15:16 – 00:15:21

Good. Yeah. I'm like, oh, so you were talking about my energy last week. I remember I wanted to say. I'm like full obsessive mode.

Colleen

00:15:21 – 00:15:31

Right? Like, I have gone and I was never, like, really full obsessive mode with refine because it felt like we were just running into a wall over and over and over. Mhmm. I'm full obsessive mode. Yeah.

Colleen

00:15:31 – 00:15:34

Because we were yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wind to the face, wind to the back.

Aaron

00:15:34 – 00:15:37

So what is what is full obsessive mode look like?

Colleen

00:15:37 – 00:15:51

I'm just thinking about it all the time. Like, what are some I love playing the game. Our buddy, Mike, is always telling us, and we've known him for years, and he's kind of our marketing buddy. And he's like, what would you do to market if your product was completely done? Like, do that now.

Colleen

00:15:51 – 00:15:59

And we've never really listened to him before. We're always like, that seems hard. I don't know. And, now I'm

Aaron

00:15:59 – 00:16:06

Sinclair, if you're if you're listening, Sinclair, your dad is very smart. Sometimes we also don't listen to him. So sorry, Mike.

Colleen

00:16:07 – 00:16:29

And so that's what I'm doing, and it has been interesting because freeing up your brain space, especially as a developer to only be able to do marketing and sales of a product is a really weird mental shift. And at times, it has been very frustrating. I have that Alex Hillman article, how to begin again. I read it all the time. Let me talk about it again.

Colleen

00:16:29 – 00:16:55

I'll send it to you after. It's great. It's basically this concept he talks about in 30 to 500, why so many people who are at the top of their field fail to launch a product and market a product because you have people who are experts, and we we've spent years becoming experts in one field. So to start over just feels like and be a neophyte again just feels incredibly it can feel, like, kind of demoralizing, and that's why they see, a lot of people quit. And, like, it's it's a it's a good article.

Aaron

00:16:55 – 00:16:59

Yeah. Send it to me. Quick follow-up question. What's a neophyte?

Colleen

00:17:00 – 00:17:03

New person. Really? I well, now you're making me doubt it, but I'm pretty sure

Aaron

00:17:04 – 00:17:11

This it wasn't like a it wasn't like a challenge. It was like, I have no idea what that word means. Yeah. Yeah. Define neophyte.

Colleen

00:17:12 – 00:17:13

Google it for me.

Aaron

00:17:13 – 00:17:17

A person who is new to a subject, skill, or belief.

Colleen

00:17:17 – 00:17:18

Victory.

Aaron

00:17:19 – 00:17:27

Wow. Well, again, it wasn't a competition. Yeah. I wasn't the decision. We've got reticular activation and neophyte.

Aaron

00:17:28 – 00:17:28

So And

Colleen

00:17:28 – 00:17:31

just listen to this podcast to get ready for your kids' SATs.

Aaron

00:17:32 – 00:17:32

That's right.

Colleen

00:17:32 – 00:17:33

You'll be ready to go.

Aaron

00:17:33 – 00:17:45

So Yeah. I'm I'm glad you're in obsessive mode. I think the you got you got pretty obsessed with the refine problem. Yes. You really enjoyed that, so did I.

Aaron

00:17:45 – 00:17:51

But you never I don't think you know I don't think you ever got into obsessive mode about the business itself.

Colleen

00:17:51 – 00:17:52

I I think that is a great way.

Aaron

00:17:52 – 00:18:03

And I think it was in like, the the tell there was it was always like, wow. I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna onboard these people. I've got one more thing to fix. I don't wanna sell it. I've got one more thing to fix.

Aaron

00:18:03 – 00:18:12

And that to me and I I did that too. That to me is always like, I don't I don't know if this business is gonna work, but this time it feels different.

Colleen

00:18:12 – 00:18:17

It does. It feels different. I, yep. I think so. Feel good about it.

Aaron

00:18:17 – 00:18:26

Can we talk do you have anything else to say about that? Mm-mm. Can we talk about your triumphant return to Twitter? Yeah. I got You're Jack, baby.

Aaron

00:18:26 – 00:18:27

I love it.

Colleen

00:18:27 – 00:18:33

Twitter. Yes. I have re reactivated or whatever my Twitter account.

Aaron

00:18:33 – 00:18:34

How's it feel?

Colleen

00:18:34 – 00:18:47

It's been great. I forgot I think when Elon bought Twitter, my feed started getting really weird, so I just stopped stopped doing the Twitter. And that was a couple months ago. Right? And, I got back on, what, last week?

Colleen

00:18:47 – 00:18:53

The week before? Sometime recently. I was like, oh, this is great. Like, this is there's a lot of Great. It's great.

Colleen

00:18:53 – 00:18:54

Yeah.

Aaron

00:18:54 – 00:19:09

Yes. I just Yeah. It the feed actually got weird. Like, he he mucked about with some settings, but the feed also got, Twitter's gonna die in 10 minutes. Like, Elon is ruining it.

Aaron

00:19:09 – 00:19:18

And I was like, I just don't I'm sorry. I just don't wanna hear about that. Like, I do not wanna hear. And I feel like people have mostly given up on caring that Elon owns it now, and somehow it's back to normal. So

Colleen

00:19:18 – 00:19:25

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's been great. I was really happy to get back on and start interacting with people there. Mhmm.

Aaron

00:19:25 – 00:19:36

So I saw you I saw you tweet out something. What was the one? Oh, you were looking for a a CMS for Rails or Ruby. I was like, yes. That that's what I'm talking about.

Aaron

00:19:37 – 00:19:38

Engaging with the people.

Colleen

00:19:38 – 00:19:44

Oh, CMSs. Man, this is don't get me started on this whole landing page stuff.

Aaron

00:19:44 – 00:19:51

Well, that was actually I was getting you started. Like, that was my intro to get started. So yeah. I've already done it. Take it away.

Colleen

00:19:51 – 00:20:10

Gonna go way long if I have to complain about CMSs. The thing so I have done this a few times. Right? I did it with simple file upload, doing it again with hello query. This should be a solved Everyone has a different opinion, and, like, this should not be so hard.

Colleen

00:20:10 – 00:20:36

This whole this whole CMS thing should not be such a pain. So the first time I did it with simple file upload, I had a Jekyll site and a Netlify CMS. And that brought about a whole host of issues because my marketing person slash sister couldn't modify my landing page, and she could only add items to the CMS. But then if she wanted anything custom like the wait list sign up form, which I was doing through Mailchimp, not through Netlify. Right?

Aaron

00:20:36 – 00:20:36

Mhmm.

Colleen

00:20:36 – 00:20:38

I had to go in and inject that, that kind of stuff.

Aaron

00:20:38 – 00:20:38

That was

Colleen

00:20:38 – 00:20:44

a pain. We moved to Webflow. Webflow's a pain if you're a developer. I do not wanna use oh, no. No Webflow.

Colleen

00:20:45 – 00:20:51

I know like, everyone's telling me, like, you gotta go WordPress. I can't do it. Like, maybe later when we're a big company and someone else but, like,

Aaron

00:20:52 – 00:20:55

oh. No. I refuse to use WordPress as well.

Colleen

00:20:55 – 00:21:10

So all I want and so people are in my, you know, in my comments like, well, why does it have to be a Rails app? And why don't you use Hugo or Jekyll? And I was like, well, I've done that and that's fine. But ultimately, I don't know what I'm gonna build as engineering as marketing, but I love the option. Right?

Colleen

00:21:10 – 00:21:19

I like having the option. I'm a proper Rails app. So if I wanna build, like Yep. Is Aaron smarter than chat GPT, which is on my list of things, by the way, so that'll be fun.

Aaron

00:21:19 – 00:21:23

Answer is yes. You could do a static site and just say yes.

Colleen

00:21:24 – 00:21:30

I like to have the option to build proper application stuff within my marketing site.

Aaron

00:21:30 – 00:21:31

Yes. A 100%.

Colleen

00:21:31 – 00:21:46

And you shouldn't and then people are like, well, just add it on, you know, just build it in something else and give it a blog subdomain. Well, that's bad for SEO. I'm trying to do this properly and, like, have good SEO. And so, man, it was just a rabbit hole of, like, what CMS should I use? What gives me?

Colleen

00:21:46 – 00:21:50

This just feels like a solved problem. It should not be this hard.

Aaron

00:21:50 – 00:21:56

So did you end up with a CMS, or did you end up with pages in a Rails app? So I did manually edit?

Colleen

00:21:56 – 00:22:01

I did add up I did end up with a CMS. I'm using butter CMS, which is headless CMS.

Aaron

00:22:01 – 00:22:02

Colleen

00:22:02 – 00:22:10

And so far, it was kind of a pain to set up. So it's a headless CMS. They have this API. Right? It's just like there's no good getting Amazing.

Colleen

00:22:11 – 00:22:28

But this shouldn't be hard. I mean, it's just so they it's an API based CMS, so it's headless, but they also offer a WYSIWYG editor. So that was a little confusing to me at first. But now that I figured out what they're doing, I'm, I'm pretty happy with it. I think it's gonna work out.

Aaron

00:22:28 – 00:22:33

And then you just consume the API from the Rails side and spit out pages?

Colleen

00:22:33 – 00:22:45

Yeah. So what they do and that's why the WYSIWYG threw me off because they have, like, this certain structure like they all do. Right? If it's a blog post, it has to be in this structure. If it's a page landing page, it has to be in a different structure.

Colleen

00:22:45 – 00:23:05

But what I like about it is I can go into their WYSIWYG editor and just instead of, like so so I would say, like, hero, content, footer, and then I just put the text in. And then in my Rails app, I can build the view. So I can still build the view with Tailwind, build the components to look however I want them to look.

Aaron

00:23:05 – 00:23:06

Yeah. It's kinda cool.

Colleen

00:23:07 – 00:23:16

And it's like at post I mean, you just pull out, you know, the post and you just do post dot body from them, and you can put it in, you know, whatever UI you design in your application.

Aaron

00:23:17 – 00:23:18

Okay. I'm kinda into that.

Colleen

00:23:18 – 00:23:42

Yeah. Like I said, it was kind of a pain because they do have a little bit of structure. So I am doing a little, like like, inserting, you know, inserting stuff, like, real time. But, overall, I think it's gonna be a win, and I'm working on spinning up a bunch of landing pages to drive ads to. And so it's nice because you can kinda set it up once, then just make a bunch of pages in their application, their hosted application, and all I have to change is the text.

Colleen

00:23:42 – 00:23:48

I don't have to rebuild the page, because the the view is all in my Rails application.

Aaron

00:23:48 – 00:23:54

Yeah. I like that. I mean, sounds like it was painful to get there, but that seems like a pretty good solution.

Colleen

00:23:54 – 00:24:06

Yeah. I think it's gonna be good. Like, I'm I'm pretty hap like I said, now that I'm almost there, like, I'm pretty happy with it. So I think it's it's this week was all about just setting this stuff up in order to enable me to move faster?

Aaron

00:24:06 – 00:24:45

Yeah. I like that. Sometimes sometimes you have to spend the time building up that infrastructure. I always, always, always feel that way with, setting up CICD for basically, like, GitHub actions because I the only thing I ever want to do to deploy is merge to to main because I feel like there are so many different ways to deploy each different app that I always forget. And so I will spend way too much time setting up GitHub actions or automations, like, based on tags in GitHub so that when I come back to it, I'm not like, how do I deploy this for my specific computer only?

Aaron

00:24:45 – 00:24:55

That's another thing is I don't ever want that to be tied to my computer only. Yeah. So, yeah, I agree setting up that infrastructure kinda sucks, but it serves us well in the long term.

Colleen

00:24:55 – 00:25:17

Yeah. And I've been more even some of the things I was, like, more deliberate about, like routing, like URLs, deliberate about how those because that stuff, like, in in my early landing page days years ago, I didn't care. If Jackal was like, oh, here's your domain backslash blog backslash 123 backslash, you know, whatever. I didn't care. I was like, I just need content.

Colleen

00:25:17 – 00:25:27

I just so now I'm trying to be more deliberate about, like, what are the URLs to access the content, how does that work in a grander SEO strategy, things like that.

Aaron

00:25:27 – 00:25:31

So what you're saying is you wanna take 3 or 4 months off to build a CMS for developers?

Colleen

00:25:33 – 00:25:45

Dude, these are my 2 biggest pain points. Okay. This is again, it shouldn't be hard. A CMS for developers and freaking tailwind theme. Why can't I just get a decent tailwind theme that is just HTML?

Aaron

00:25:46 – 00:25:46

Like I know.

Colleen

00:25:46 – 00:25:56

I so while I was obsessing, so I just mentioned a minute ago, I'm gonna start running ads to different pages. But I was I was in the shower this morning, and I was like, I can't live with our homepage. I can't live with it.

Aaron

00:25:56 – 00:25:58

Like, I just can't do it.

Colleen

00:25:58 – 00:26:00

It's so awful. And I built it, so

Aaron

00:26:00 – 00:26:04

I can say that. Yeah. I can't live with it. Yeah. I kind of agree.

Colleen

00:26:04 – 00:26:12

I I just I don't wanna run ads to it. I need another day to, like, get something better. It doesn't have to be great, but it's gotta be better.

Aaron

00:26:12 – 00:26:15

Gotta it's gotta be better. It's gotta be better, man. Kind of agree. You can't

Colleen

00:26:15 – 00:26:16

you can't do it.

Aaron

00:26:16 – 00:26:43

Yeah. I wish I wish the tailwind UI, like, full site templates were not so laden with JavaScript or were laden with JavaScript that I want to use, which is map react, or Next or Nuxt or whatever it is. Who can say? But, yeah, the the the full on templates being so heavy with JavaScript is like, you know, you can't just copy and paste that Right. Which is frustrating.

Colleen

00:26:44 – 00:26:53

I was it you know, I was looking around at templates, and it is it is frustrating because I at this point, I can do like, I just want the HTML of a decent template.

Aaron

00:26:53 – 00:27:10

And I've tried I think we did this last time. I've tried just viewing the like, inspecting the element on the Tailwind UI themes and, like, copying out all the HTML, But even then, it doesn't work. You just you you end up meeting the full JavaScript.

Colleen

00:27:11 – 00:27:51

So, you know, I think I think I have this kind of what has been so great about the fact that I can't help you on the development of the actual app is it is forcing me to do all these other thing. And I think as developers, and this is a general statement, but I think it's true, we have in our in our minds, we assign, like, this moral weight to what we are doing. So if we are working on a true hardcore application, like, that is a really valuable thing, and that that gives us this sense of, like, oh, we're so brilliant because we made this thing. And and and there's, like, a weight to that the difficulty of that. And then if we're working on a marketing site, we think, oh, you know, I can make a marketing site.

Colleen

00:27:51 – 00:28:00

Like, there's a much like, you it's just not weighed the same mentally. Yeah. Side note, this is also true for child rearing, but that's a whole other conversation. We can talk about it. Wow.

Aaron

00:28:00 – 00:28:02

That sounds like a big side note. Woah.

Colleen

00:28:02 – 00:28:16

But we we assign these, like, weights of difficulty to things and think certain people do certain things and that sometimes is associated with value. And so the marketing side, I feel what where I'm going with this, I feel like it should be easy, and it should take me an hour.

Aaron

00:28:16 – 00:28:25

Oh, I see. Because you value it. As a as a developer, you value the marketing site intrinsically lower, so you're feeling like it should be a lot easier.

Colleen

00:28:25 – 00:28:25

Correct.

Aaron

00:28:25 – 00:28:25

Yeah.

Colleen

00:28:25 – 00:28:32

And so I spent, you know, an hour on it, and you see what it looks like. It's rough, man. And I was like, I really need to give you the time.

Aaron

00:28:32 – 00:28:33

It's it's there.

Colleen

00:28:33 – 00:28:41

It's up. Like, I'm not I'm not upset, but I'm just saying, like, I was like, this really is not good enough. Like, this is just it's not gonna

Aaron

00:28:41 – 00:28:47

work for me. You know, it is it it is basically just text on a page.

Colleen

00:28:48 – 00:28:59

On a page. Just text on a page. Yeah. And, again, I'm not gonna spend a week on it, but I'm gonna give it, like, a full day today and and get a template and and try to make it a little bit better. And so it's just interesting.

Colleen

00:28:59 – 00:29:10

Like, I don't know. It's just a lot of interesting learnings about about that stuff and and even setting up, like, what are we gonna do for content and, you know, the CMS stuff and all that. Yeah. Well,

Aaron

00:29:10 – 00:29:17

I'm I'm super pumped. I think I can tell I can tell you're in goblin mode, and you're just getting stuff done, And I love it.

Colleen

00:29:17 – 00:29:19

Talking. All this word vomit out here.

Aaron

00:29:19 – 00:29:24

And it's great. No. They tune in for you, not me. That's awesome.

Colleen

00:29:24 – 00:29:39

So one more thing about content. So I was talking to a content strategist yesterday, and I was commenting on the fact that so your tweet about, hey, we're rebranding drove a ton of traffic to the site, but it did not lead to any calls.

Aaron

00:29:39 – 00:29:39

Colleen

00:29:39 – 00:29:54

And I said to this person, I said, I think we've already I was like, oh, I got 3 calls from the podcast last week. I and, you know, between the podcast and Twitter, I got these 3 calls. I think I've tapped out that, source. And this person was advising me. It was like, no.

Colleen

00:29:54 – 00:30:04

No. No. That's not how content works. Like, especially on Twitter, when you have thousands of followers, you cannot assume that these people listen to every single podcast or these people see every single tweet.

Aaron

00:30:05 – 00:30:05

Yep.

Colleen

00:30:05 – 00:30:15

So, she was like, you should be tweeting about it. Like, don't say the same thing every time. Don't be like, oh, don't retweet your old tweet. But every week, great. No one wants that.

Colleen

00:30:15 – 00:30:21

You and I should be tweeting something in our normal living of tweets and whatnot. It's like Mhmm. Hey.

Aaron

00:30:21 – 00:30:21

Do you

Colleen

00:30:21 – 00:30:27

have problems getting your data, like, to your your your friends and family? To your nontechnical teammates? Sorry.

Aaron

00:30:27 – 00:30:30

Yeah. We can workshop the cut the coffee a little bit.

Colleen

00:30:31 – 00:30:41

Basically, every week, both of us independently should should be shooting out a tweet like, hey. We're building this thing. We'd love to hear if you have this problem. Send me a DM. And it doesn't have to be formal.

Colleen

00:30:41 – 00:30:54

It can just be in the normal, you know, normal workday of things. But but we need to constantly be reminding people, hey, I'm doing this thing because there's a good chance many people didn't see it the first time or they didn't, like, understand or it wasn't applicable or whatever.

Aaron

00:30:54 – 00:30:56

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yep. I agree with that.

Aaron

00:30:57 – 00:31:12

I also did get one DM last night that was like, hey. Can Hello query sounds great. Can we use it to send reports to customers? Because this is a huge problem that we have. So, I DM ed him back, and we're gonna set up a call.

Aaron

00:31:12 – 00:31:23

Well, actually, I'm gonna have you set up a call, with him. So, yeah, I I agree. I think, just keep just keep tweeting and making videos and doing everything I can do.

Colleen

00:31:23 – 00:31:34

So I I think that's we are in a d a good position, I think, because this is our community. Right? Developers are our people. Okay. So now that I have blabbled on for 35 minutes, what's going on in the

Aaron

00:31:35 – 00:31:38

I said a few words in there. Yeah. I said a few things.

Colleen

00:31:39 – 00:31:44

Super caffeinated this morning. I don't and I just went for a walk because I walked the kids to school, so just so much energy.

Aaron

00:31:45 – 00:32:12

Oh, honestly, not much on my side, because of the move. But we you know, you and I talked earlier this week. The goal is to get something live at, like, deployed live so that we you and I can start playing with it back and forth instead of just me on my machine. So that's the goal for this week. And then, you know, next week, I would like to have it sending, I'd like to have it sending CSVs via email.

Aaron

00:32:13 – 00:32:54

I think there's a big gap between that and having it, like, having someone log in and do it. But from listening to you and Shai on random YouTube video, whatever that was, it is possible that we could, like, schedule those things on behalf of the first customers, if that, you know, if that is something that that they want. So I don't I don't wanna I'm I'm trying to eliminate as many artificial barriers as possible and maybe having the polished login, connect to database, write your query, set up your schedule. I mean, that's an artificial artificial barrier, if I can just do it all manually either in the console or in the database or something. So that's kinda where I'm at.

Colleen

00:32:54 – 00:33:02

Yeah. That sounds great. I mean, in a yeah, I think anything that gets us in front of people faster, if people are up for that, like, I think that sounds great.

Aaron

00:33:02 – 00:33:23

I still, I you know, because we changed positions a little bit, I have a lot of that filtering and conditioning stuff done, and none of that will be lost. It's just Yeah. We're we're kinda redefining what the starting point is, and so I'm having to do a little bit of shuffling around. But the starting point's a lot easier. So

Colleen

00:33:23 – 00:33:30

Yeah. I think it's gonna be great. Even even if people even if we should go back to these people and, like, this is where we are, and they're like, wow. That's not enough. That's fine.

Colleen

00:33:30 – 00:33:35

Because we're still, you know, we're still in that first that first rung of the ladder, if you will.

Aaron

00:33:35 – 00:33:37

Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Aaron

00:33:37 – 00:33:42

That's it. I mean, you got 34 minutes, and I got 2, but that sounds about right. Yeah. My gosh. That's right.

Aaron

00:33:42 – 00:33:46

That's that's that's how it should be, though, right now. Yeah. That's exactly right.

Colleen

00:33:46 – 00:33:51

You're, like, heads down in execute mode, and I'm trying to be everywhere and and talk to all the people.

Aaron

00:33:51 – 00:34:04

That's right. Yeah. Well, anything else? Do you wanna talk about, how there are different weights in, child rearing and how certain things are deemed important, or do you wanna save that for next week? Let's save that.

Aaron

00:34:04 – 00:34:07

Okay. That sounds good. Alright. We will end it there.

Colleen is pumped

Transcript

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