Conferences and First Revenue 💸

February 15, 2022

Laracon is over, Colleen is speaking at a conference in March. We got paid!
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Transcript

Aaron
00:00:00 – 00:00:04
Okay. We're recording. Lyricon is over.
Colleen
00:00:05 – 00:00:08
Awesome. What success?
Aaron
00:00:09 – 00:00:33
It went great. So I am just thrilled to death with how it went. So that was, I guess, last Wednesday. Today's Tuesday. And, man, I I practiced so much, that when the time came, it just felt like another practice session.
Aaron
00:00:34 – 00:00:51
I did everything that I wanted to do, and the people seems to like it. So just completely thrilled to death and quite proud of myself for putting in all of the work and having it pay off. So pretty freaking pumped about that.
Colleen
00:00:52 – 00:01:00
Yeah. It was it was amazing. I mean, the whole thing was just so amazing and the response you got, so great. Nicely done.
Aaron
00:01:00 – 00:01:09
Yeah. There's, like Thanks. There were thousands of people watching you, which has been the weirdest feeling. Like, you're just sitting in your shed like normal and Uh-huh. Talking to 2,000 people.
Aaron
00:01:09 – 00:01:27
Yeah. It was it was extremely weird because I didn't obviously, I didn't have any of the live chat going. I couldn't see anything. But I did watch it back with the live chat because YouTube does chat replay and I watched it back and I was like, man, this is pretty cool. I was so freaking pumped.
Colleen
00:01:28 – 00:01:35
It was super cool. And so when I went in to watch it, like, I was a little worried because, like, live chat, I was like, you know, you don't know what people are gonna say.
Aaron
00:01:35 – 00:01:35
Yeah.
Colleen
00:01:35 – 00:01:39
I'm like time. So so I went and I saw the chat, and I was, like, this is awesome.
Aaron
00:01:41 – 00:02:07
Yeah. Everybody thought, like I I think everybody thought it was super cool and they were pleased. I think they were pleased with my excitement and my energy. And I I feel like, that was something I'd purposed to do was, like, be excited about the thing. And because, you know, sometimes conferences can get a little can get a little plodding, a little slow if, you know, you're just sitting there for hours.
Aaron
00:02:07 – 00:02:28
And so I think my excitement rubbed off and people were excited about it. So, yeah, it was great. I'm so I'm just I'm super pleased it went well, but I'm also super pleased it's over. So now having watched it, Colleen, are you gonna build it in Ruby for hammer stone? Are you gonna build it for rails?
Colleen
00:02:28 – 00:02:33
I mean, honestly, I'd love to not right now. It's super cool.
Aaron
00:02:34 – 00:03:00
Yeah, that is cool. Yeah. So and I've got it. One of the big reveals was I got it working on Vercel, which I think is gonna be super fun, because now I can get it on Vercel and maybe get some of their, you know, maybe get some attention from Vercel, and then I can get it on Google Cloud Functions. And I think there's just a lot of there's a lot of cool stuff that can be done with it.
Aaron
00:03:00 – 00:03:15
Somebody's already working on a queue driver that executes all the queues on Lambda instead of in your local app, so you get, like, infinite scalability. So people are doing some cool stuff with it, and I'm very, very pleased. So that's my Laracon update.
Colleen
00:03:16 – 00:03:30
Yeah. I'm speaking at Sin City Ruby at the end of March and talking to you about Laracon and everything you went through to prepare that presentation was also a good reminder that I need get on it and build out a talk.
Aaron
00:03:30 – 00:03:32
Do you know what you're talking about?
Colleen
00:03:32 – 00:03:50
I don't know. I think I wanna use the same talk. I wanna submit the same talk that I talk about. It's in Citi to RailsConf. And so I'm trying to build a talk that is hammerstone adjacent, but also fits the tracks they have put out at RailsConf.
Aaron
00:03:50 – 00:03:50
Mhmm.
Colleen
00:03:50 – 00:04:11
So I have to go I have to do some deep thinking about it. I think last week we talked I had thrown out the idea of doing a, like, advanced active record workshop. So I need to think about if I wanna do a workshop or if I wanted to do a talk, which is then more reusable, but a workshop is, like, super cool and could be a whole course. So that's kind of my what I'm trying to work through.
Aaron
00:04:12 – 00:04:21
Yeah. I guess I didn't realize, Sin City, Ruby, you were already speaking at. I thought we were talking about just RailsConf or whatever. So you have one on the books already.
Colleen
00:04:22 – 00:04:25
Right. I have one on the books at the end of March.
Aaron
00:04:26 – 00:04:26
Cool.
Colleen
00:04:26 – 00:04:27
Yes.
Aaron
00:04:27 – 00:04:28
Coming up soon.
Colleen
00:04:29 – 00:04:32
Yeah. I mean, your 80 hour comment reminded me, like, I also
Aaron
00:04:32 – 00:04:36
You don't you don't have enough time to do a workshop between now and then.
Colleen
00:04:36 – 00:04:44
I'm just saying if I switched my so I could do 2 things. Right? I could do a talk for Sin City and build out a workshop for RailsConf or
Aaron
00:04:44 – 00:04:44
Oh, yes.
Colleen
00:04:44 – 00:05:09
Ditch the workshop idea and make one talk about advanced active record and use it in both places. So I think the Sin City Ruby crowd is gonna be very senior compared to RailsConf when you get a more diverse level of experience. So just trying to figure out, like, what the best what the best move is. But I have to do I haven't had time to do deep thoughts on it. I will be doing deep thoughts on it very soon, probably this weekend.
Aaron
00:05:09 – 00:05:21
Well, you're gonna have a busy March. If client is trying to do something by, you know, March 11th, and now you have a talk or I guess always had a talk at the end of March, you're gonna be pretty busy.
Colleen
00:05:21 – 00:05:28
March is gonna be crazy, and February has been very, very busy. So, I I mean, at least I'll have my spouse back, so that'll be good.
Aaron
00:05:29 – 00:05:30
When does when does he come back?
Colleen
00:05:30 – 00:05:44
The end of the month. I mean, you forget. I've done this before, but, like, you forget how hard it is to single parent. Like, it's like you work all day, you come home, and then you have to have all of this emotional energy to, like, do all these other things.
Aaron
00:05:44 – 00:05:45
No freaking way.
Colleen
00:05:46 – 00:05:56
So March will be busy, but I think it will be it will be good because I'll be able to get long stretches of focus, which it's really hard to get right now.
Aaron
00:05:56 – 00:05:58
Is that why you're at the co working space more often?
Colleen
00:05:59 – 00:06:01
Yeah. Yeah. Sure is.
Aaron
00:06:02 – 00:06:17
Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Jennifer went out of town one time for, like, 2 days, and she came back and I said, I I don't know how you do this. Like, I knew, like, I knew in my mind that she worked harder than I do, but then I had to actually do it myself.
Colleen
00:06:17 – 00:06:18
And I
Aaron
00:06:18 – 00:06:27
took 2 I had to take 2 days of PTO because she was gone for Thursday Friday. And at the end, I was like, I really don't I don't know how you do it. Like, I, I can't, I can't
Colleen
00:06:27 – 00:06:28
do it.
Aaron
00:06:28 – 00:06:35
So yeah, I can't imagine trying to work and obviously yours are a little older, but still sounds exhausting.
Colleen
00:06:36 – 00:06:36
It is.
Aaron
00:06:39 – 00:06:40
Well, you wanna keep going? What else is going on?
Colleen
00:06:40 – 00:06:47
Yeah. So you were just there. We had a great meeting with, our client representative. Can I call him our client representative?
Aaron
00:06:47 – 00:06:49
That sounds very official. Yeah.
Colleen
00:06:49 – 00:07:11
Sounds very fancy, doesn't it? I think I feel really good about that meeting. I feel like things that are working now are gonna slot well into this concept of filter conditions, and it's gonna be cleaner than the way I have safe filters working right now. Because right now, safe filters as you and I have discussed around the filter level, not the condition level. So I feel good about, like, building out these filters and having a path forward.
Colleen
00:07:12 – 00:07:21
And Sean is gonna help with some of the UI shenanigans, clean up, whatever you wanna call it. So that's gonna be great. Yeah. So that's kinda what's going on.
Aaron
00:07:22 – 00:07:25
And then there's a new deadline or launch date?
Colleen
00:07:26 – 00:07:34
Yeah. March 11th. Yeah. That'll be an internal launch, but there's a lot of people at this company, so an internal launch needs to be good.
Aaron
00:07:34 – 00:07:34
Pretty big deal.
Colleen
00:07:34 – 00:07:48
We don't want. Yeah. It's it's a big deal. It's, yeah, exactly what I'm saying. And, oh, one of the senior engineers at client who does not know me built out a filter without asking me.
Colleen
00:07:48 – 00:08:08
He asked me to review his PR, but outside of that, he didn't ask. I mean, he has no he has no documentation. Like, he just built it. And, at the meeting, we have, meetings every other week, he said really nice things about it. He said it was easy to get up and running, and he was able to send in the scopes that he wanted, and he was using it.
Colleen
00:08:08 – 00:08:21
It was so cool. Like, so he did his demo, and they're using, like, the multi select feature, and they're using ors and ands, and he did his demo using our filter. It was really cool because it's been in the app in some of the models.
Aaron
00:08:21 – 00:08:21
Mhmm.
Colleen
00:08:21 – 00:08:25
But to see him implement it himself was legit.
Aaron
00:08:25 – 00:08:27
Oh, what a good sign.
Colleen
00:08:27 – 00:08:31
It was so exciting. I was like How
Aaron
00:08:31 – 00:08:36
nervous were you when he was demoing it? And then once it was over, how on top of the world were you?
Colleen
00:08:36 – 00:08:47
Right. Well, I didn't even know. Like, I didn't even know this was coming. I didn't know it was such a critical part of what he was. So his whole, like, t you know, his team, like, it's a critical part of their workflow, and I didn't even know that.
Colleen
00:08:47 – 00:08:58
So when he said query builder, you know, there's a lot of people at these meetings. And so, you know, you just kinda sitting there. And he said query builder, and I'm like, what? Uh-oh. What's happening?
Colleen
00:08:58 – 00:09:09
You didn't warn me that you were gonna talk about the query builder. And he loved it and said really great things about it. And again, like, he's not biased because he has never met me. He doesn't even know who I am. So it was awesome.
Aaron
00:09:09 – 00:09:11
What a good freaking feeling.
Colleen
00:09:11 – 00:09:19
Feeling. Because I do feel like I mean, I feel like I'm behind you, Aaron, and I'm in you're like in the DevRel part, which is the fun part. Right?
Aaron
00:09:19 – 00:09:19
Mhmm.
Colleen
00:09:19 – 00:09:41
You get to talk Totally. And talk about how amazing we are and use it with clients and immediately get that instant gratification. I do not feel like that. I feel like I am sitting in a sea of changing requirements and change no one really knows what they want, and no one's really using it, or at least no one's telling me if they're using it. So it was so cool to see it in action.
Colleen
00:09:41 – 00:09:47
It's pushed up. I mean, it's in the, you know, it's in the app. It's live, and they're loving it. That was really, really great.
Aaron
00:09:48 – 00:09:51
Amazing. That's incredible. How many people are proud of yourself?
Aaron
00:09:52 – 00:09:55
The meeting got over from me. It's only 50 still. Okay.
Colleen
00:09:56 – 00:10:09
You're welcome. But the what but what has happened is now there are more teams, so it went an hour and a half last week. Oh. Oh my god. Last.
Aaron
00:10:09 – 00:10:10
Oh my god.
Colleen
00:10:11 – 00:10:13
I told Andrew, I was like, I'm not gonna last anymore.
Aaron
00:10:13 – 00:10:15
You gotta get a better slot. Yeah. Yeah.
Colleen
00:10:15 – 00:10:25
I was like, dude, I'm the only first, I mean, I'm the only woman, and there's 50 people in this meeting, and I have to go last. Like, no, dude. I'm not going last anymore. Next time we get.
Aaron
00:10:25 – 00:10:32
They don't make you take notes. Do they? That's the ultimate. Okay. Yeah.
Aaron
00:10:32 – 00:10:35
That's brutal. You gotta lobby for a better slot.
Colleen
00:10:36 – 00:10:42
I did. I did. After the meeting, I was like, yeah. We're not especially when they go an hour and a half. I mean, it's okay for me because I'm Pacific time.
Colleen
00:10:42 – 00:10:49
But people on the East Coast, it's like 4:30 in the afternoon on a Friday. They're probably just like, get me out of here.
Aaron
00:10:50 – 00:10:57
Brutal. Well, that's super exciting. I'm glad. It's nice. It's nice to get a win.
Aaron
00:10:57 – 00:10:58
I mean, it's so hard.
Colleen
00:10:58 – 00:10:59
To get a win.
Aaron
00:10:59 – 00:11:14
It's so hard to just be building something that, you know, with 99% confidence is right and cool, but have nobody use it. And the 1% is like, man, what am I doing here? And then to have somebody pick it up with no docs and implement it. Yeah.
Colleen
00:11:14 – 00:11:15
That was pretty cool.
Aaron
00:11:15 – 00:11:18
That was pretty great. Yeah. It's pretty awesome.
Colleen
00:11:18 – 00:11:56
We did find so we did find that it's challenging for the guys to implement it straight Hotwire. So if they have to build we so we have that guy who had a really great experience, but, like, the Hotwire stuff was already fixed for him solved for him. So I have someone else who's trying to build it trying to, build it out in a different workflow path, and his whole UI is different. And so he tried to build his own, say, an apply filter button, and there was a lot of challenge there, I think. And so Sean's gonna write up some docs, but
Aaron
00:11:57 – 00:12:00
in the beginning rethink the API for, like,
Colleen
00:12:00 – 00:12:17
a code. I I really think you should, Sean. Like, I know you don't have a ton of time, but, like, it is very they need, like, 3 stimulus controllers, because with these unstable, stabilized events, I think you should if you have time for that, I think that would be really added because that part was was very confusing to them.
Aaron
00:12:18 – 00:12:23
Yeah. Because to them, they're seeing the, like, apply filter button as, like, part of refine.
Colleen
00:12:23 – 00:12:24
That's exactly.
Aaron
00:12:24 – 00:13:12
And and so, like, we got we'll just have to bundle some stuff with it versus, like, if we're selling a component and it's in reactor view, it's like like okay. Like, the the reason that this is weird is because in reactor Vue, like, in Vue, you would pass in your blueprint object as, like, a v model prop, and it just gets updated, And then you do whatever you want with it. And then in React, you know, it'll be a similar idea, except it'll probably be just like an on update callback or, you know, something like this. It'll be something that is straightforward and obvious to React developer, and then you know that as a React or Vue developer, I'm just gonna add a add a button and do the thing that I need to do with it. Like, the query builder is just responsible for building and updating this query, and then it's up to me to, like, build the UI for, like, applying it and, you know, doing all this stuff.
Aaron
00:13:13 – 00:14:02
And then in Stimulus, there's the way that I'm handling that is via event publishing. So and and and added complexity of, like because of the way the Hotwire thing works, we have to do a round trip, to to update the blueprint. So, So, I mean, like, the blueprint gets updated, but then we create a stable ID, and there's this sort of awkward round trip that we have to do in order to get that stable ID for them to use it. And it's it's awkward because, you know, it's like just because the way turbo works and all this, and it's not a great fit for, like, our thing. So I tried to get around it with this, like, event publishing thing, which then means if you wanna have, like, a an apply filter button, you have to when you click apply filter, you have to have been listening to the blueprint updated events and have the most recent, and then apply.
Aaron
00:14:02 – 00:14:26
So there's, like, a bunch of JavaScript that has to happen. With the new stable ID and then apply. So there's, like, a bunch of JavaScript that has to happen. So, anyway, that stuff's weird, and I will just I don't think I can necessarily eliminate that complexity, but I can maybe hide it behind, like, some controller that I give them that does a lot of that. Like, here's your button controller for applying a filter.
Aaron
00:14:27 – 00:14:42
But maybe. I I mean, because it just pushes them the complexity to, like, well, what do you wanna do with it? And, like, how do you anyway, yes. It requires thinking, and I'll I'll at very least, we could do better docs. But, yeah, I'll I'll figure something out.
Aaron
00:14:42 – 00:14:45
That's I gotta do this cleanup, and then I'm planning on and making that better.
Colleen
00:14:46 – 00:15:02
Yeah. I think that would be great because I think the way it ships now is complicated and confusing. And you're absolutely right. They they thought that's exactly what happened, is they thought the apply button was part of the hammerstone component. And so they just added one when they saw it wasn't there, and they didn't know they're supposed to be listening for events and all that.
Colleen
00:15:02 – 00:15:05
So awesome. That's awesome that you're gonna look at that.
Aaron
00:15:05 – 00:15:22
Yeah. Yeah. The Hotwire thing is a hot mess. Like, I don't even I don't even know what the theming story is gonna be for that. Like, I kinda have that sorted out with React and Vue, but, like, on the Hotwire side, and I know now because we've had a few clients and customers that that's gonna be, like, a thing we need.
Aaron
00:15:23 – 00:15:33
So it's gonna be I don't know. That that thing is that may just be a one off, like, for them forever. I don't know if we are able to pull that out and support it, or if it even makes sense for us.
Colleen
00:15:33 – 00:15:36
You're woah. Woah. Woah. You're talking about Hotwire? Hotwire?
Colleen
00:15:36 – 00:15:38
You don't know if we can pull that out and support it?
Aaron
00:15:38 – 00:15:39
Yeah.
Colleen
00:15:39 – 00:15:40
Interesting. Okay.
Aaron
00:15:40 – 00:15:43
Yeah. I don't know if it's worth it for us now.
Colleen
00:15:44 – 00:15:47
So you would have all your Rails people using React?
Aaron
00:15:47 – 00:15:51
Yeah. Or Vue. They could use either. Both of those will will work. Yeah.
Colleen
00:15:51 – 00:15:52
Okay. Which, you
Aaron
00:15:52 – 00:15:55
know and then most I think most apps that are gonna need a query builder will have a
Colleen
00:15:55 – 00:15:59
Will already have a one of those dependencies. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
Aaron
00:16:00 – 00:16:36
I mean, I think that it could expand the number of people that would buy a new user component to have the Hotwire option because there are definitely rails places that don't have those things in their stack. Like and, you know, there's a kind of move towards doing less and less of that in the culturally in the community. And so I think that it makes sense, but we got reactive view, and there's plenty of people that are using reactive view, and it's enough to support those 2. And then the Hotwire thing to even get it to where it is, like, yep. We can actually, like, offer this as, like, a a thing that works for lots of people and not just a one off.
Aaron
00:16:36 – 00:16:48
That is not a light lift. I'll just say that, like, based on everything we just talked about. You kinda get the idea. Like, it's it requires significant thinking and work. So, yeah, I don't know.
Aaron
00:16:48 – 00:16:51
We don't have to think about it now, but just just the thought.
Aaron
00:16:51 – 00:16:57
Okay. Colleen, what's your first potential client? What's their, I guess, second potential client? What are they using?
Colleen
00:16:58 – 00:16:59
You run that call with me.
Aaron
00:16:59 – 00:17:00
I know. I don't remember.
Colleen
00:17:01 – 00:17:03
It was Hotwire. He was using Hotwire.
Aaron
00:17:03 – 00:17:04
Shoot. Okay.
Colleen
00:17:04 – 00:17:08
I didn't ask him if he had React added, but he was using Hotwire.
Aaron
00:17:08 – 00:17:15
That's true. Okay. Yeah. I kind of agree. It seems like Hotwire may be a very implementation specific thing.
Aaron
00:17:16 – 00:17:20
And I just I don't know enough about it to say for sure, but it does seem hard to generalize.
Aaron
00:17:21 – 00:17:24
Yeah. Sorry, Collin. You look like you're gonna say something, so I'm waiting for it.
Colleen
00:17:24 – 00:17:40
I'm thinking yeah. I'm just thinking about this. I mean, your comment you're right. We don't have to solve this today, and we don't really need to waste time. But but I don't know that like, I I mean, I feel like there's a there's a fair amount of purists who don't wanna pull in a React or Vue.
Aaron
00:17:40 – 00:17:45
I agree. There's also a fair amount of Vue and React users in Rails.
Colleen
00:17:45 – 00:17:52
Right. You're saying don't we don't have to go after everyone who has a Rails app. We can go after those who already have a React or okay. Cool. Yeah.
Colleen
00:17:52 – 00:17:55
We can we can totally, iterate more on this in the future.
Aaron
00:17:55 – 00:18:17
I the only the only place where that doesn't make sense is if our if we're when we're doing the positioning and branding and marketing and, like, how we talk about it, like, it's much more powerful to have the Hotwire option in that case, I think. I think it Yeah. Dovetails much more into the current, like, conversation that they're having over there in the red plan.
Colleen
00:18:17 – 00:18:24
Okay. You just got me really excited, obviously. That's why I raised my hand. I'm sorry for interrupting. So listen.
Colleen
00:18:24 – 00:18:57
Part of my plan here and why I'm speaking at this conference in March and back up. When I had Corey Haines on software social, we were talking about developer marketing, and he was talking about this whole concept that he thinks people are underutilizing, which is basically get kind of what Aaron is doing. Right? Get the people that are high profile in the community to support your product. And so the people as you just said, Sean, like, the people who are high profile in the community are gonna be all in on Hotwire because it's the new it's the new thing, and you wanna be in the stack, etcetera, etcetera.
Colleen
00:18:57 – 00:19:14
So I think even if that even if we could pull away from it and just do React, it's gonna be better from a marketing perspective to get the big names to do you know, to support this. And I think we're gonna get closer to getting there if it's Hotwire.
Aaron
00:19:14 – 00:19:20
Yeah. Totally agree. That's the that's the wave. That's the trend that we could ride.
Colleen
00:19:20 – 00:19:26
Okay. Cool. Anyway, we don't need to dwell, but definitely something to think about.
Aaron
00:19:26 – 00:19:30
Sean, do you wanna keep talking about what you're up to besides client feedback?
Aaron
00:19:31 – 00:19:55
No. I mean, I that's it. Like, it's on I'm gonna be helping Collin with the Hotwire thing and then trying to script the others some time to, like, close some of the loops. And I think the priority I'm gonna make it is, like, to close the the view loop and make sure that that's working because that's a big blocker for everything. So but Hotwire stuff and, like, helping Colleen out be my number one priority, and then I'll and I'm just gonna sweep up that remaining stuff.
Colleen
00:19:55 – 00:20:06
And by the way I was just gonna say, by the way, Sean helped me out, like, before the demo with some refinement blueprint stuff, and that went beautifully at the demo if I didn't tell you that. So thank you for that.
Aaron
00:20:06 – 00:20:06
Oh, so
Colleen
00:20:06 – 00:20:07
it was awesome.
Aaron
00:20:07 – 00:20:09
Last minute. Last minute right there.
Colleen
00:20:09 – 00:20:19
It was last minute. It sure was. I always see you. Okay. I feel like we need to make it a a team rule, guys, because I'm on Pacific time, and I can see you guys being green on Slack.
Colleen
00:20:19 – 00:20:33
And I wanna message you because you're green. And, Sean, you are always green. You were green until, like, midnight last night. So what are what are our Slack our Slack rules to do you guys just never you want me to always schedule them for the next morning?
Aaron
00:20:33 – 00:20:35
Do you want me to do that for you.
Colleen
00:20:35 – 00:20:38
Okay. I know you will. Aaron won't ignore me
Aaron
00:20:41 – 00:20:51
no. Send it whenever you want. I I will, if I can help where I'm at, I will. And if not, I'll just tell you I can't help or I'll ignore you. But yeah.
Aaron
00:20:51 – 00:20:55
But yeah. Send send it whenever you want. I won't feel I won't feel obligated to help.
Colleen
00:20:55 – 00:21:02
Okay. I've been working a lot more at night. And so I'm like, oh, I don't wanna be a jerk and send them this at 11 o'clock their time. I'll just send
Aaron
00:21:02 – 00:21:09
I think that green button lies. Like, I I don't I wasn't maybe I was, like, had my laptop open or I don't know. That that doesn't make sense.
Colleen
00:21:09 – 00:21:17
It was not working last night. Yeah. You weren't working last night? Okay. Because I I saw you were green, and then I was like, it's, like, 11 o'clock in Chicago.
Colleen
00:21:17 – 00:21:19
I should not send him a message.
Aaron
00:21:19 – 00:21:22
Oh, no. I wasn't working. I was. Yeah. But not that late.
Aaron
00:21:22 – 00:21:26
Like, what the hell? Not till 11. I went to bed at, like, 10 o'clock. That's weird. I don't know.
Aaron
00:21:26 – 00:21:27
Bizarre.
Colleen
00:21:27 – 00:21:29
Maybe it's just open on your phone or something.
Aaron
00:21:29 – 00:21:31
Yeah. Instead of sending me
Aaron
00:21:32 – 00:21:33
oh, I do.
Aaron
00:21:33 – 00:21:36
Good for you. Had it on my phone. I will never have it on my phone.
Colleen
00:21:36 – 00:21:37
I'm impressed.
Aaron
00:21:38 – 00:21:55
Instead of sending me a late night message, you scheduled it for early morning on my birthday, And it was a, it was a tome. It was like 8 paragraphs. Yeah. It was like 8 paragraphs. And at the end it said, TLDR JK, you actually have to read all of this.
Aaron
00:21:55 – 00:21:58
You can't skim it. So.
Colleen
00:21:59 – 00:22:02
I know what's worse. I don't, I didn't know it was worse. Oh, it's
Aaron
00:22:02 – 00:22:06
fine. Send it send it whenever you want. I don't care.
Colleen
00:22:06 – 00:22:09
Okay. Good. I'm glad we cleared that up.
Aaron
00:22:09 – 00:22:09
Yeah?
Aaron
00:22:09 – 00:22:12
Yeah. Like, if you really need me, you have my phone number. Just do
Aaron
00:22:12 – 00:22:13
that.
Colleen
00:22:13 – 00:22:20
Oh, yeah. If I need like, in that situation last week, like, that worked out. But, yeah, I would have texted you otherwise because I really needed you because I needed to get that sorted.
Aaron
00:22:21 – 00:22:22
Yeah.
Colleen
00:22:22 – 00:22:27
Yeah. But, like, for Slack, I'll just I'll just send them when I feel like it, and you can just ignore me if you want. Cool.
Aaron
00:22:28 – 00:22:39
I was gonna ask with regard to Vue and React. Are we still utilizing Jeff and Dave, or are they just kinda waiting on us to do something?
Aaron
00:22:40 – 00:22:44
No. They're not waiting. They're they're still doing stuff, but just, you know, at their own pace.
Aaron
00:22:45 – 00:23:06
Okay. Cool. I do have so one of these, potential clients that's in the Slack and is, that's the one that pulled, like, 8 team members in after we switched from paid Slack to free Slack because we had a shared channel and we went free and kicked them out. And then it was like 12 people have joined. That that that that's who I'm talking about.
Aaron
00:23:07 – 00:23:23
They had need for the deferred option option condition, which is the type ahead load over Ajax. So what's what's the path here? Should I talk directly to Jeff? Should I have send that through you and have you figure that out or just boot altogether?
Aaron
00:23:24 – 00:23:28
They need that, like, ASAP. They need that like, what's the priority?
Aaron
00:23:29 – 00:23:30
I can find out. I don't know.
Aaron
00:23:30 – 00:23:49
Because, like, if they can live without it for a bit, you know, I'll I'll I have it on my list. I'll get to it, or we could, see. Because the thing is if you have Jeff do it, he's gonna have and then you're just, like, having him reprioritize and reshuffle what he was working on. He's Right. Toss away whatever mental scaffolding he's built up for the renderless stuff that he's working on and then switch over to that.
Aaron
00:23:50 – 00:23:56
So it would be better, you know, if I did it, and then that way you could just keep doing that one thing.
Aaron
00:23:56 – 00:23:58
Okay. Well, I I will ask them.
Aaron
00:23:59 – 00:24:14
But, you know, it has to be me, then it has to wait for Colleen stuff, and then it has to wait for me to get the view 3, view 2 branch finished, which is close. So, like, that's not a huge thing, but, like yeah. Then then and only then will I be able to do it.
Aaron
00:24:14 – 00:24:21
Okay. Okay. I will find out from them how close they are to absolutely needing it.
Aaron
00:24:21 – 00:24:22
Like, can they wait a month?
Aaron
00:24:23 – 00:24:27
Yeah. Okay. I can find out. Okay. The oh, sorry, Sean.
Aaron
00:24:27 – 00:24:36
I think you were still going. Did you have anything else? How are you doing in terms of not working 80 hour weeks? Have you been able to pull that back?
Aaron
00:24:36 – 00:24:44
Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was completely by choice and fun and not just get a little tired, so back off. So yeah. Good.
Aaron
00:24:44 – 00:24:46
Back to working a little bit less.
Aaron
00:24:46 – 00:24:47
Good. It's
Aaron
00:24:47 – 00:24:56
nice. But it just I just swapped it with now I have to go pick up the kid from school because Beth was, like, pinch hitting for me with with Isaac stuff. So Gotcha. Sound like I'm really working less.
Aaron
00:24:56 – 00:24:57
Just different.
Aaron
00:24:57 – 00:24:58
Yeah.
Aaron
00:24:58 – 00:25:08
Yeah. Okay. Good. Well, I know that that was the plan, so I'm glad that happened. So I don't think we've mentioned it here, and I actually don't think we've celebrated.
Aaron
00:25:08 – 00:25:13
We got paid. Neil Neil bought a license. Woo hoo. Yay.
Colleen
00:25:13 – 00:25:14
So we
Aaron
00:25:14 – 00:25:22
that. We're officially rich. Split between the 3 of us, we have $333 each to our name.
Aaron
00:25:22 – 00:25:28
I like how initially, though, the banks, like, rejected it because they were like, what is this shady hammerstone organization?
Aaron
00:25:29 – 00:25:29
Yeah.
Colleen
00:25:31 – 00:25:32
That's It's
Aaron
00:25:32 – 00:25:33
a good auspicious start.
Aaron
00:25:33 – 00:25:44
Yeah. So I know that to be like a real indie hacker, we have to share our MRR and public and charts up into the right and everything, but it is exciting. That's our first
Colleen
00:25:44 – 00:25:44
Very exciting.
Aaron
00:25:44 – 00:26:01
That's our first Stripe payment. We ran it through the proper way that, like, we ran it through unlock dot sh, which is connected to our Stripe account. We found out it says torchlight on the statement descriptor, so I switched that to say, hammerstone. So it works. It's great.
Aaron
00:26:01 – 00:26:19
And we did that, you know, we did that right before Laracon in case, you know, anybody found it and ran through it. We wanted to make sure that we could actually take their money. So off off to a start, we have one, like, proper paying licensed user, which is pretty exciting.
Aaron
00:26:19 – 00:26:25
And I think we have, like, 400 ish people on the Mailchimp mailing list. We picked up Oh,
Aaron
00:26:25 – 00:26:25
that's great.
Aaron
00:26:25 – 00:26:28
70 or 80 from your from your talk, I
Colleen
00:26:28 – 00:26:28
think. Wow.
Aaron
00:26:28 – 00:26:32
I haven't looked I checked kinda right after, but, yeah, that's that's decent.
Aaron
00:26:32 – 00:26:54
You know what? We're also we're also getting sign ups on our, reform list too. So we probably have even more than that, because people are signing up directly for the Mailchimp one. But then on the docs, I think I still have the early access list, so I think they're probably still signing up. Because I'm still getting emails about people that are being added to the reform list.
Aaron
00:26:54 – 00:26:58
Okay. So it's probably even more than that. I didn't think about that.
Aaron
00:26:58 – 00:27:06
Yeah. Yeah. Hey. Can you speaking of minor thing, can you add me to the Mailchimp account? I mean, I think I can't remember if you just gave me the password or whatever, but I Yes.
Aaron
00:27:06 – 00:27:07
I think I gave you
Aaron
00:27:08 – 00:27:21
I think I tried one of the accounts that I was using your login for complained, and they were like, hey. That looks suspicious. Okay. So I should probably I think it was Mailchimp. And just now, I was trying to log in, and I don't appear to have an account, so I'm guessing it was that.
Aaron
00:27:21 – 00:27:27
Yeah. I think I added both of you to unlock and to Stripe. Yes. But I I think
Aaron
00:27:28 – 00:27:28
I did both of those.
Aaron
00:27:29 – 00:27:37
I do think I shared my password for Mailchimp. So, yeah, after this, yeah, I've got it open now. So I'll add you after this, and I'll add you to Colleen.
Colleen
00:27:37 – 00:27:38
Thank you.
Aaron
00:27:38 – 00:27:41
And the reform the reform thing. Yeah.
Aaron
00:27:41 – 00:28:15
I'll add you I'll add you to reform as well. So, yeah, at the end of my Lyricon talk, I I went for it, man. I directly pitched Hammerstone, told them what we were building, told them to come sign up, told them that's where the sidecar docs live, so it was like a tie in to the thing I just presented and getting them to our site. So, yeah, I'm glad we I'm glad that worked. So for me, this past week after the Laracon talk, I just kind of crashed in a good way.
Aaron
00:28:16 – 00:28:46
Just kinda was done working for a while. Now so I have a couple of there's a lot more attention on our open source stuff now, obviously. And so there are some things that I'm having to maintain, and so I'm getting more of a look into the life of, like, open source maintainer. Because also, Laravel just released version 9, and so everybody on these packages is like, hey. Where's, you know, where's support for Laravel version 9?
Aaron
00:28:47 – 00:29:13
So I'm getting a little bit more of a taste into that. So I spent just a few hours this weekend fixing up some of the packages and releasing support for version 9 and that kind of stuff. And then there are a couple of people that have reached out directly and said, hey. I wanna try refine for Nova, either in Twitter DMs or via email. And so I have a few demos set up, and I need I need to get back to some people.
Aaron
00:29:14 – 00:29:43
So I have some people that are waiting on me. But all in all, I think the the buzz is great. Some people, you know, reaching out directly saying they wanna use it is great. So that's kinda what I'm gonna be focused on for the next little bit is getting back to these people. There are a couple of, the last time I was giving a demo, there were a couple of wacky bad spots that I ran into while I was given the demo They're easily fixable that I just need to fix.
Aaron
00:29:43 – 00:30:11
So I'll fix those as well. And then I wanted to circle back to recording a video conversation that we had last week. So last week, we talked about me recording, you know, 1 and 5 and maybe 10 minute, kinda like demo video of refine. And we nixed the idea, because we're too early. I wanna circle back to that and talk about it as marketing and not sales.
Aaron
00:30:12 – 00:30:58
So the I think last week, we talked about it, and we talked about how we don't wanna do it as a sales crutch because we want to get the two way communication and not just me demoing it to an unknown person, and I don't get the feedback and that kind of stuff that I still buy. What I would like to do is use it more as, like, a marketing thing and not get, like, super into the weeds, but do a 1 or 2 minute video about how cool it is and some of the things you can do with it. And just kinda like show the thing in action in high fidelity with the next step being like, reach out to me for a demo, not this is your demo, but look, this is Nova. I did this, this, this, boom, it works. This is what I'm talking about.
Aaron
00:30:58 – 00:31:02
That kind of thing. So is that any different, and do you have thoughts on that?
Aaron
00:31:02 – 00:31:10
That makes sense. It's just, if you're doing that, what are you not doing? And is the thing you're not doing better? That's all. Just that thought.
Aaron
00:31:10 – 00:31:12
This seems like a good idea to me.
Aaron
00:31:12 – 00:31:21
Okay. I can navigate that trade off. Yeah. That that's fine with me. I just didn't want to have made this decision not to do a video and then turn around and do a video.
Aaron
00:31:21 – 00:31:23
So we're viewing it more as like
Aaron
00:31:32 – 00:31:49
okay, you get to do demos, so sales demos, and then also we have a very hands on approach to getting people started. And I think both of those things are the right, like, place right now. We should be doing that. And then working towards backing away from that as we understand more and more and marketing wise. Yeah.
Aaron
00:31:49 – 00:31:59
Sure. But, I mean, I guess the only thing would be we're just collecting email addresses and building up a little bit of, like I mean, because we could sell Nova. So it would just be if people are interested in just the Nova piece, we
Aaron
00:31:59 – 00:32:00
can input
Aaron
00:32:00 – 00:32:01
directly to that.
Aaron
00:32:01 – 00:32:04
Yeah. That's what I would be that's what I would be focusing on with this Yeah.
Aaron
00:32:04 – 00:32:05
That makes sense.
Aaron
00:32:05 – 00:32:06
Video is
Aaron
00:32:06 – 00:32:06
That'd be awesome.
Aaron
00:32:06 – 00:32:13
You know you know Nova here is this thing that we're building in Nova. Don't you love it? Reach out to me, and we'll get it sorted.
Colleen
00:32:13 – 00:32:15
Okay. And Okay.
Aaron
00:32:15 – 00:32:15
I
Colleen
00:32:15 – 00:32:19
have a paid to this. I have a paid Descript account if you need help editing that.
Aaron
00:32:19 – 00:32:20
Oh, cool. Yeah.
Colleen
00:32:20 – 00:32:22
Man, I think my most fave.
Aaron
00:32:22 – 00:32:23
I totally forget they do video.
Colleen
00:32:24 – 00:32:37
Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, their software's a little clunky, but it's really nice to be able to edit using text instead of edit it Right. With the video editor. So just FYI, if you're, like, don't spend hours and hours editing something, just send it to No.
Aaron
00:32:37 – 00:32:38
No. It's also Recut.
Aaron
00:32:39 – 00:32:49
Yeah. That's what we're that's what we're using for our podcast now. I run it through recut. So any long awkward pauses, we're we're trying to figure out who goes next. They're gone.
Aaron
00:32:50 – 00:32:51
We don't have to worry about it.
Colleen
00:32:51 – 00:32:52
Love it.
Aaron
00:32:53 – 00:33:04
Okay. I think that that might be all that I wanted to talk about. Yeah. I think that's that's all that I have.
Colleen
00:33:04 – 00:33:11
Cool. This is not really related, but, so have you ever heard the Product Journey podcast? It's Noah
Aaron
00:33:11 – 00:33:11
Yeah.
Colleen
00:33:11 – 00:33:16
And Ben. Did you hear this week? He had his wife on and it made me think of you guys. You heard that? Okay.
Aaron
00:33:16 – 00:33:27
Yeah. I definitely did. No. I was I was listening along and I was thinking, you know, at first she was like, this is so awkward. And I was thinking that's exactly what Jennifer would say if she was on the podcast.
Aaron
00:33:27 – 00:33:37
But, yeah, it was it was fun to listen to her talk. And she was like, I didn't realize when we got married that this was, like, gonna keep going this whole side
Colleen
00:33:37 – 00:33:42
business thing. It was Sean. Okay. Let me tell you what she said. She said, I thought you were gonna grow out of it.
Colleen
00:33:43 – 00:33:48
It was awesome. And get a real It was so fun. Laugh. Yeah. It really it was excellent.
Aaron
00:33:49 – 00:33:52
I had a good time. Yeah. Yeah. That was great. All right.
Aaron
00:33:52 – 00:33:53
Shall we call it
Aaron
00:33:53 – 00:33:54
there? Okay. Sounds good.
Me

Thanks for reading! My name is Aaron and I write, make videos, and generally try really hard.

If you ever have any questions or want to chat, I'm always on Twitter.

You can find me on YouTube on my personal channel or the Try Hard Studios channel.

If you love podcasts, I got you covered. You can listen to me on Mostly Technical.