Aaron Francis

Tech time is over, it's time to business.

Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/refine/laravel/docs/main
Refine Nova: https://github.com/hammerstonedev/refine-nova
Torchlight: https://torchlight.dev
Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis
Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburger

Learn more →

Transcript

Aaron

00:00:00 – 00:00:02

Okay. We're recording. Welcome back.

Colleen

00:00:02 – 00:00:04

So, Aaron, how was your trip to Boston?

Aaron

00:00:05 – 00:00:18

Yes. I went to Boston. I think it's technically Somerville or Cambridge. I don't really know, to meet all the tuplers or most of the tuplers. And it was amazing.

Colleen

00:00:18 – 00:00:19

Yeah.

Aaron

00:00:19 – 00:00:37

Yeah. It was a lot of fun. It was good. I think it was good on, like, a work level to, you know, meet everyone and kind of get, like, a sense of how everyone interacts and the vibe of everything. But it was also just it was a lot of fun.

Aaron

00:00:37 – 00:00:56

Like, actually getting to hang out with all these new people was a lot of fun. So we did, they planned it really well. There were a lot of like, everything was everything was planned. So we had lunches. We went, have you ever heard of, I think it's candle pen bowling?

Aaron

00:00:56 – 00:01:07

Nope. Or candlestick bowling? I think it's candle pen bowling. It's basically, like, imagine what bowling would be if it was in the 1800, and that's basically what this is.

Aaron

00:01:07 – 00:01:08

Okay.

Aaron

00:01:08 – 00:01:31

Apparently, it's like a Boston thing. The it's like a a ball that's, you know, maybe 40% the size of a bowling ball, and the pens are all super narrow and it's extremely hard. So we went candle pen bowling and it was fun. It was a whole lot of fun. And then we went to, like, kinda like an escape room, but it was different.

Aaron

00:01:31 – 00:01:49

It was like Dave and Buster's meets escape room. So it was like this giant, like this giant room full of other kind of like puzzles, games, escape rooms, and, you know, did team building exercises, which is basically just like hang out and have fun.

Aaron

00:01:49 – 00:01:51

So Yeah. It was great. Yeah. I had

Aaron

00:01:51 – 00:02:04

I had a blast. I forgot how far away it is. It was like a 4 hour flight. So coming home, you know, coming home. And I think I left there like 6 o'clock was delayed and got home at by like midnight.

Aaron

00:02:04 – 00:02:16

So that part was not super fun. But it was great. And now I just, I feel much more comfortable and confident, like interacting with everyone having, you know, met most of them face to face now.

Colleen

00:02:16 – 00:02:20

Absolutely. Well, that's great. I'm glad you had a good a good time.

Aaron

00:02:20 – 00:02:23

Yeah. Thanks. What did you get up to the past week?

Colleen

00:02:23 – 00:02:27

Oh, man. So exciting. I'm so excited.

Aaron

00:02:28 – 00:02:32

I've seen a lot of stuff coming. I'm getting a lot of GitHub notifications from you.

Aaron

00:02:32 – 00:02:36

Dude, I crushed last week. It was Tell me.

Colleen

00:02:36 – 00:02:44

It was beautiful. So we published the front end package to MPM. Did I tell you this yet? I think maybe I No. Yeah.

Colleen

00:02:44 – 00:02:55

I don't think we talked. This only happened last week. So great news. So everything is extracted from client. We have a private Ruby Gem that has all of the back end.

Colleen

00:02:55 – 00:03:04

And we have a public MPM package that provides the visual interface for the query builder.

Aaron

00:03:04 – 00:03:08

And it this is the Hotwire one? Correct. Got it.

Colleen

00:03:08 – 00:03:27

So the challenging part I mean, that part was not insignificant, but the really challenging part was then taking both of those pieces and putting them in a clean install. So the first thing I did was I put both of the pieces in a clean bullet train. Now that bullet train's open source, I can use it for my workshop. Yay.

Aaron

00:03:27 – 00:03:29

Oh, that's right. That's helpful.

Colleen

00:03:29 – 00:03:52

Because I couldn't use it before because it was a private repo. So step 1 was getting those pieces back in a clean Bullet Train repo, and I think it was really good because of the way we're doing Hotwire. There's a lot of things. It it it feels like there's a lot of additional things you have to do. And, you know, I was making notes to myself.

Colleen

00:03:52 – 00:04:04

I was like, maybe we should include this this part. For example, the way Hotwire works is every all of the state is handled on the client side, and we publish a stable ID. So you have to stabilize.

Aaron

00:04:04 – 00:04:05

Mhmm.

Colleen

00:04:05 – 00:04:40

And then what we do is we publish a stable ID, and we send events, filter unstable, while the stable ID is being computed, and filter stabilized. So then you have to respond to those JavaScript events. And what actually happens is there's other pieces. Like, for example, we don't we don't include in our package an apply button and a cancel button because those are something we don't know how if people want those. But if you do want those, you have to, you know, listen for the events, disable the apply button, enable the apply button at the appropriate times.

Colleen

00:04:40 – 00:04:57

And then, you know, there's a fair amount it's not a it's not a fair amount of work. But, you know, there you do have to do something. It's not like react, Right? Or view where you just drop it in because then you have to add another stimulus controller to respond to the event. So once you get the stable ID on the client side, what do you do with it?

Colleen

00:04:57 – 00:05:23

Do you submit it with a form? Do you like, what we do with fully trained is we push it to the URL, and then it comes in through the form, and then we calculate it. But there's there's a lot of, like, little nuance stuff. Like, when it comes in as a param, you have to, you know, extract the class, and you have to destabilize the filter to get that's not the right word. You have to, you know, get this the filter from the stable ID to apply the filter, and you have to send in the initial query.

Colleen

00:05:24 – 00:05:44

So it was really instructive for me to walk through, like, the clean repo. And I think when we launch it in bullet train, I think we should just include all of that stuff. Like, I don't think for, like, for bullet train implementation, we'll just include all of it. So that was super great to do that. And, Did

Aaron

00:05:44 – 00:05:54

you learn a bunch of stuff? Like, it sounds like you ran into a bunch of sharp corners. So I did. Did you learn a bunch of stuff that needs to be changed or stuff that needs to be documented or both?

Colleen

00:05:55 – 00:05:57

I feel like it was mostly documentation.

Aaron

00:05:57 – 00:05:58

Colleen

00:05:58 – 00:06:25

And and still thinking about I mean, when I think about how I'd wanna use this, I think maybe we wanna ship with, like, optional stimulus controllers, like this filter link controller that I use in bullet train to disable and enable your buttons, stuff like that. Like, I think it might be worthwhile. Or maybe, you know, as we're onboarding people, we'll get more we'll get more exposure to that. But, like, it'll be nice it'd be nice to have those as options.

Aaron

00:06:26 – 00:06:26

Mhmm.

Colleen

00:06:26 – 00:06:34

So, yeah, the only thing I'm I'm I think is important because this is different from the reactive view. Like, you have to use a stable ID to do this.

Aaron

00:06:35 – 00:06:35

Mhmm.

Colleen

00:06:35 – 00:06:39

And that's different than what's happening in reactive view, isn't

Aaron

00:06:39 – 00:06:40

it? Correct. Yeah.

Colleen

00:06:40 – 00:06:47

Yeah. Yeah. So, it's not a problem. I think people are gonna love the stable ID because you can bookmark it. Like, you can return to it.

Colleen

00:06:47 – 00:06:50

I think it's great. But conceptually, I think it's like a little confusing at first.

Aaron

00:06:50 – 00:06:52

It's a little bit of misdirection. Yeah.

Colleen

00:06:53 – 00:07:00

Right. So that was great. I gave that to Andrew. So he's super pumped. And then so that's step 1.

Colleen

00:07:00 – 00:07:35

And so step 2 is now for building out the workshop. How do you take your repo, pull out the gem, so only have the NPM package because that is the open source component, and rebuild it that way. And this has been quite challenging because so much of our front end code is dependent on things like our conditions class. Like like, there's so much inter it is so intertwined. So right now, the struggle is what is the appropriate amount of code of ours that we're gonna provide during this workshop?

Aaron

00:07:36 – 00:07:38

Right. Don't wanna give the whole thing away. Right.

Aaron

00:07:39 – 00:07:40

But I was hoping,

Colleen

00:07:40 – 00:08:22

you know, and I knew this would happen, but it was like there's it's just so tightly integrated with our back end, like, with, you know, with methods the whole thing was really great because, like, I found an error in the client stuff because the client when the client implemented this, and to be fair, they did not work super tightly with us outside of the scaffolding. So they implemented this in a different part of the app, and, they didn't quite understand the filter unstabilized stabilized event thing. So I was able to fix that for them this week. So that's been really good. I think this it it's just been great.

Colleen

00:08:22 – 00:08:36

Like, it's been so productive, and it required a few other people to help me. Pascal did the helped me with the MPM package, and Andrew helped me with the gem. And so it just felt Amazing. It felt really good, man. Like, it was I mean, it's it's out there.

Colleen

00:08:36 – 00:08:42

Like like, we can't quite sell it, but we're really close to having this being, like, a full like, the product is there.

Aaron

00:08:42 – 00:08:45

Man, you did that in no time.

Colleen

00:08:45 – 00:08:47

I was so inspired. I mean, I

Aaron

00:08:47 – 00:09:03

did I was I was getting GitHub emails, like, you know, whatever it's called, rails refine rails and the open source front end. I was getting emails, like, over and over and over all last week while I was in Boston. I was like, damn. Colleen and Pascal are doing some work here.

Colleen

00:09:03 – 00:09:04

It was awesome. We it

Aaron

00:09:04 – 00:09:05

was great.

Colleen

00:09:05 – 00:09:16

It was great. I think I told you. There was one night, like, I gave it a good work at night, and I thought of you. Because I was like, if Aaron can work till midnight, I can too.

Aaron

00:09:16 – 00:09:17

I can work till midnight. I can't close it.

Aaron

00:09:17 – 00:09:22

That is totally up to you. I mean, do it. Do whatever you want. We don't yeah.

Colleen

00:09:22 – 00:09:32

No. It was good. Like, I just really wanted to you know, I think when we talked last week, I was, like, really sweating the workshop. And this was the piece. The because I did not know how hard this was gonna be.

Colleen

00:09:32 – 00:09:39

And Yes. It was a lot of work, and I had to wrap my head around, like, a lot of JavaScript, which I talk

Aaron

00:09:39 – 00:09:43

a lot of trash about JavaScript. And, like, I'm a I'm a mediocre JavaScript developer.

Colleen

00:09:44 – 00:09:56

So it was nice to, wrap my head around all that works and excuse me. Wrap my head around how all that works. And like I said, it's obviously having great implications for the client because now I'm like, oh, now I can quickly see

Aaron

00:09:56 – 00:09:56

Yep.

Colleen

00:09:56 – 00:10:04

What's wrong here and fix it. And so I feel way I feel there's still a ton of work to do for the workshop, but I feel so much better about it now.

Aaron

00:10:04 – 00:10:29

Good. I have I I think I've recently come to a realization, about myself. You were talking about how much work something was gonna be. I think the sooner I can start something, the better. Because I think in my head, I don't know what it's like the it's like the energy required to overcome inertia builds up the longer I let something go.

Aaron

00:10:30 – 00:10:54

And so if I haven't started something every day that passes, I feel like the weight of it gets more and more and more to where eventually it's like, well, I can never I can never do that thing. And then I'll, you know, sit down with it for even a trivial amount of time, like 2 hours, and I'll get something done and then just be like, oh, oh, this isn't so bad. Yeah. I can totally do this. It's like Totally.

Aaron

00:10:54 – 00:10:54

Good thing

Aaron

00:10:54 – 00:11:10

I good thing I just stressed for a month about it instead of sitting down for 2 hours and doing it. Like, that's really healthy. So I totally I totally feel I totally feel what you're saying there. Yeah. I'm trying to, like, counteract that now that I know that about myself.

Aaron

00:11:10 – 00:11:25

I'm trying to be like, okay. It doesn't matter how you feel. Just start on it, and then you can finish it later because it's the starting that seems to, like, unlock this mental emotional relief for me. So, yeah, just more thoughts with Aaron.

Colleen

00:11:26 – 00:11:33

Thoughts with Aaron. So, yeah. So last week was big. All that stuff happened last week. So that was super good.

Colleen

00:11:34 – 00:11:35

How about you?

Aaron

00:11:36 – 00:11:51

So I've talked to, Dave and Robin, our, front end developers. Robin has a branch ready for me to review. That's all the Vue flavoring stuff. Yeah. So Exciting.

Aaron

00:11:52 – 00:12:12

They both independently, reached out to me and were like, hey. I'm working on this part, and this is almost done. So it seems like, oh, man. We're getting super close. So this week, I'm gonna try to, go over that PR with Robin and get that merged in, and then we'll take an assessment of the landscape and and see what's left.

Aaron

00:12:12 – 00:12:50

I don't think very much is left after that, honestly. I will need to kinda implement it in a clean app myself just to see how, like, see how this whole flavoring theming system works, and then we can we can go from there. But as far as, like, the contractors in the front end, it sounds like we're reaching, a pretty good version 1 or, you know, 0.1 or whatever. So that's good. I updated the updated our website, to break out to break out.

Colleen

00:12:50 – 00:12:52

All week, so I was, I

Aaron

00:12:52 – 00:12:52

was Yeah.

Colleen

00:12:52 – 00:12:53

Wasn't sure.

Aaron

00:12:53 – 00:13:03

You're going easy on me. This is the second time in a row. You haven't, like, I know, held my feet to the fire in any way. That's good. I keep I keep delivering so you don't have to.

Aaron

00:13:03 – 00:13:22

Right. So, yeah, pretty basic. I just did the stuff that we had talked about. And then if you click read the docs, there's also now a Nova section in the docs. And so I took the I took the read me and brought it in here and then spruced it up and, like, made it a little more thorough.

Aaron

00:13:23 – 00:13:35

So in hopes that I think tomorrow we're meeting with, Colleen and Matthias and watching them work through it. Is that right?

Colleen

00:13:35 – 00:13:37

You met Michelle and Matthias. But, yes, I'm Colleen.

Aaron

00:13:37 – 00:13:38

Who did I say?

Aaron

00:13:38 – 00:13:40

You said Colleen and Matthias.

Aaron

00:13:40 – 00:13:41

Well, that's technically true because

Aaron

00:13:41 – 00:13:41

you will be

Colleen

00:13:41 – 00:13:42

I'll be there.

Aaron

00:13:42 – 00:13:42

All 3

Colleen

00:13:42 – 00:13:43

of all 4 of us.

Aaron

00:13:43 – 00:13:53

And Michelle, of course. Yes. Yeah. So hopefully, this will give them a better starting place that they can, you know, then tear apart. But hopefully, this will give them a better starting place.

Colleen

00:13:54 – 00:13:57

Yes. So I'm super pumped about that, by the way.

Aaron

00:13:57 – 00:14:13

Yeah. So tell me tell me backstory on that. So they bought they bought it for Nova, and you're gonna I think you and Michelle had talked about using this as some sort of, like, you know, customer research or whatever. So tell me.

Colleen

00:14:13 – 00:14:47

Right. So I thought the reason I wanted all 4 of us there, because Michelle and I were talking about it, is I would like to video it, and we're gonna publish on the software social feed, and we can publish it on this feed. But I think that, you know, we'll just go through it and hopefully maybe not, but hopefully, we'll get some kind of marketing material from it. Like, we can cut the video to just showing how we integrate it. And even if we don't, I think it's gonna be really beneficial for me because I haven't actually seen you help anyone integrate it yet, and I would love to get I mean, Michelle and Matthias is like power couple.

Colleen

00:14:47 – 00:14:55

Like, he's gonna be like integrating. She's gonna be like talking about, like, what we could say. It's gonna be so amazing. Yeah. So I am so excited for this.

Colleen

00:14:55 – 00:15:03

I think I mean, it was hard to get on, you know, the 4 of us time zones. It's like 9 o'clock their time. So we're gonna have to bring the energy because they're gonna

Aaron

00:15:05 – 00:15:05

be tired. They have a crazy week.

Colleen

00:15:05 – 00:15:18

But I think it's gonna be great. I think it's I'm really excited to see what they both think of the product and the positioning of the product. And from there so my thought on this, hear me out on this, is we do that fence tomorrow.

Aaron

00:15:18 – 00:15:18

Mhmm.

Colleen

00:15:18 – 00:15:24

And then once we get feedback from them, we can send out an email, tell people go buy it. Okay.

Aaron

00:15:24 – 00:15:25

I love it.

Colleen

00:15:25 – 00:15:27

Okay. I have another thought on that.

Aaron

00:15:27 – 00:15:27

Tell me.

Colleen

00:15:28 – 00:15:36

So Corey Hanes has a podcast, default default I heard of it. Yep. Default Alive with Chris.

Aaron

00:15:36 – 00:15:36

Mhmm. Have you

Colleen

00:15:36 – 00:15:45

heard that one? I have. So so Corey is launching a SaaS right now, which is really fun because I'm like, oh, we'll just do everything Corey does because he's a marketing guy.

Aaron

00:15:45 – 00:15:47

K. Easy enough.

Colleen

00:15:47 – 00:16:16

And he was talking about and you and I and Sean have all talked about this, the benefit of, like, the personal calls and the personal onboarding and watching people. Like, he was really extolling the benefits of the stage he's in now where he's watching people integrate his stuff, integrate his SaaS, like, use his SaaS and see where they fall out or where they get confused. And so I think when we send out this email, we should offer to do calls with everyone who purchases.

Aaron

00:16:16 – 00:16:17

Colleen

00:16:17 – 00:16:21

So the onus of that I mean, I can be there, but, like, you're gonna have to be there.

Aaron

00:16:21 – 00:16:25

Sure. That's a generous offer of you to offer calls with me.

Aaron

00:16:27 – 00:16:30

Yeah. I didn't believe it's 200 calls, Aaron. What do you got?

Aaron

00:16:30 – 00:16:33

Yeah. Oh, man. That would be ideal if it was 200 calls.

Aaron

00:16:34 – 00:16:35

Would be ideal.

Aaron

00:16:37 – 00:16:59

So agreed onboard with that question. We had, I think maybe last week or the week before talked about how I have been in the middle kind of like, I guess, metering or gating the purchase process. So this is different because we're letting anyone purchase. We're calling, you know, the CTA is buy the thing right now.

Colleen

00:17:00 – 00:17:00

Right.

Aaron

00:17:00 – 00:17:05

It just so happens that additionally, you can do an integration call with me to get started.

Colleen

00:17:05 – 00:17:19

Is that right? Yeah. Because when I talked to Michelle about it, I mean, you know, GeoCotio sells licenses for this cost this price and up, and she's like, some people just don't wanna talk to you. Like, they just Yeah. They don't don't make them talk to you, but give them the opportunity.

Colleen

00:17:20 – 00:17:37

So my thought is when we send the when we craft the email, which is, hey. You can buy this now. We can figure out exactly what it says. But basically, it'll say, you know, and do an onboarding call with Aaron if you buy it or something like that. And we should probably have that somewhere on our home page too.

Colleen

00:17:38 – 00:17:47

There's no There's well, no one's bought it since we put that link up last week, so we're good. Correct. Or you know what we can do now? Just reach out. Yeah.

Colleen

00:17:47 – 00:17:58

Exactly. Yeah. Since we don't have, you know, it's not like yeah. We'll just reach out, as people sign up for it. But, yeah, that's kind of I mean, that that's a that's a lot, but I think we'd get so much value from

Aaron

00:17:58 – 00:17:59

I agree.

Colleen

00:17:59 – 00:18:03

From doing those. So I think when we send the email, hopefully later this week, we can send the email.

Aaron

00:18:03 – 00:18:05

That'd be great. I'm into that.

Aaron

00:18:06 – 00:18:09

And the email is specifically going going to be Nova. Right?

Colleen

00:18:10 – 00:18:18

Yeah. That's what I think. I think because we're not quite ready with this other with the other stuff. So I think it's specifically Nova, and, we see how that goes.

Aaron

00:18:18 – 00:18:19

Great. I'm into it.

Colleen

00:18:20 – 00:18:20

Awesome.

Aaron

00:18:21 – 00:18:27

I will be curious to hear from Michelle and Matthias about pricing.

Colleen

00:18:28 – 00:18:28

I mean Yeah.

Aaron

00:18:29 – 00:18:38

They just, like, they bought it and didn't really ask, any questions, but they're not a, you know, they're not a perfect representation of the market.

Colleen

00:18:39 – 00:18:40

Probably not.

Aaron

00:18:40 – 00:18:56

But I am curious because I I had another person reach out to me recently, and I told him it was $1,000 a year. And he was like, ah, no. That's too expensive. Thanks, though. And so it doesn't doesn't deter me too much, but it does make me think where like, are we gonna settle here?

Aaron

00:18:56 – 00:19:03

Because $1,000 a year is $83 a month, and that just doesn't feel that expensive to me.

Colleen

00:19:03 – 00:19:08

I was just thinking it's too cheap. When you brought up pricing, I thought you were gonna say we should charge more for it.

Aaron

00:19:08 – 00:19:08

Yeah.

Colleen

00:19:09 – 00:19:13

Because if you're gonna spend $1,000, like, do you care if it's $1400? Probably not.

Aaron

00:19:13 – 00:19:20

No. I don't think so. Yeah. And I think the other thing is if a 1,000 is too expensive, 500 is probably too expensive.

Colleen

00:19:20 – 00:19:28

Right. That's just not our I think the person who thinks a 1,000 is too expensive is not our or the company that thinks that is not our target company.

Aaron

00:19:28 – 00:19:28

Yeah.

Colleen

00:19:29 – 00:19:44

Yeah. I was actually thinking we should probably raise the price, but we could do I mean, we'll definitely talk to them about that. Maybe we do an intro price for the next like, when we send the email, it'll be like, for the next 2 months, you can get it, you know, before we raise prices. Oh, I kinda like that idea. I

Aaron

00:19:44 – 00:19:45

think that's pretty good.

Aaron

00:19:45 – 00:19:47

Too. Yeah. That sounds great.

Colleen

00:19:47 – 00:19:48

I like it.

Aaron

00:19:48 – 00:19:53

Before we raise it to 2,000. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Okay.

Aaron

00:19:53 – 00:20:05

Good. Well, I'm glad you're feeling that way because every time I get an email back, that's like, oh, that's too much money. It doesn't it doesn't deter me, but it is like, I wonder I wonder if this is where we're gonna settle.

Colleen

00:20:05 – 00:20:11

Well, and I think too, Aaron, like, are you getting, like, indie people? Like, who can't afford $1,000 a year?

Aaron

00:20:11 – 00:20:13

I think they're primarily hobbyists.

Colleen

00:20:14 – 00:20:27

Yeah. And that makes sense, but those are not that's not our target market. Like, the 4 people I talked to that were rails people that were interested, they didn't even blank. Like, absent Todd, they were like, whatever. So Yeah.

Colleen

00:20:28 – 00:20:29

I actually think we're gonna settle higher.

Aaron

00:20:30 – 00:20:31

Cool. I'm into that.

Colleen

00:20:31 – 00:20:32

Okay. Awesome.

Aaron

00:20:33 – 00:20:38

Alright. So we have until when when are you, full time Hammerstone? August?

Colleen

00:20:39 – 00:20:42

Yes. Theoretically. Yeah. That that is the goal.

Aaron

00:20:42 – 00:20:44

5 licenses a month at that point.

Colleen

00:20:44 – 00:20:51

Yes. That is the goal to get there. And I think we'll be ready. Yeah. I feel like we can do that.

Colleen

00:20:51 – 00:21:02

I think we're ready to start shifting from, like, we do a lot of tech talking on this podcast Right. To, like, business. Yep. And I feel like we're we're getting there. We're really close.

Colleen

00:21:02 – 00:21:06

We'll see how the Nova launch goes, but, yeah, I feel good about it.

Aaron

00:21:06 – 00:21:14

Yeah. You wanna hear something crazy? I think I'm I think I'm I think I'm about over the tech talk and ready to ready to talk business.

Colleen

00:21:15 – 00:21:17

Nice. Alright.

Aaron

00:21:17 – 00:21:42

Yeah. I obviously, there's nothing I love more than programming, but, I think I'm over it a little bit. Like, for for now in this, in this domain, like, I'm I'm ready to not talk about front ends, and I'm ready to not talk about theming systems, and I'm ready to freaking sell the thing or die. Yeah. I love it.

Aaron

00:21:42 – 00:22:04

Frankly. And it like hanging out with the the tubulars, was great because, like, what an incredible business they're running, and they're just they're just freaking doing it. And, you know, Ben was so nice. He was asking me about Hammerstone and, like, how's it going? And, you know, Colleen wants to be full time.

Aaron

00:22:04 – 00:22:19

How are y'all gonna do that? And it just gave me the sense of, like, I just gotta get over some I just gotta get over some fears and emotional hang ups and just be like, yeah. This thing is ready for sale. Buy it. And if it breaks, I'll fix it.

Aaron

00:22:22 – 00:22:37

Right. And I don't know. I just I feel like the the tide, the emotional tides are turning and it's time to just yes, no fear, no shame. This thing is ready for sale, buy it or we're closing the company down. Like, that's it.

Colleen

00:22:38 – 00:22:41

Yes. I love it. I love it. Yeah.

Aaron

00:22:41 – 00:22:42

It's I'm ready.

Colleen

00:22:42 – 00:22:44

Do you listen to My First Million podcast?

Aaron

00:22:45 – 00:22:55

You know, I don't. I listened to 1 or 2 recently because I saw Ben listening to it in his car and I listened to it and I was like, I don't know. These guys are super bro y.

Colleen

00:22:55 – 00:22:56

They're But

Aaron

00:22:56 – 00:22:58

I listened to the most recent too. Okay. So yeah.

Aaron

00:22:58 – 00:23:04

So you might have heard they're super bro y. Okay. So yeah. I'm not recommending the podcast. But No.

Aaron

00:23:04 – 00:23:05

Me either.

Colleen

00:23:05 – 00:23:23

I was listening. They were talking about it. They had one episode, and they were talking about what their ideal cofounder would look like. Like, what is the ideal ideal like, if you had to pick one character trait that's ideal in your cofounder, and they settled on energy. And I loved the way they talked about it.

Colleen

00:23:23 – 00:23:40

Like, they were just talking about, like, if you go into every meeting and you feel like you have to carry the group and, like, no one's excited or they like, it's exhausting. And I just thought that was really great because I was like, yes. Like, we have a ton of energy, and I I'm with you. Like, I'm we're so close. This is, it's like we're on the precipice.

Aaron

00:23:41 – 00:24:11

I know. I know. And I just I don't I'm gonna turn this into a pop psychology pod podcast. I feel like there's just some sort of just some sort of emotional work going on in my head of getting away from, like, being afraid to be a pure not pure marketer, but, like, pure salesperson almost and just say, like, just push this thing out for people to buy and it like not have a personal reflection on me if people don't buy.

Colleen

00:24:12 – 00:24:12

Right.

Aaron

00:24:12 – 00:24:18

So just trying to trying to figure that out internally. Yeah. It's good. We're headed the right direction.

Colleen

00:24:19 – 00:24:23

Yeah. Let's, let's take a quick look at our task list here.

Aaron

00:24:24 – 00:24:24

Okay.

Colleen

00:24:24 – 00:24:35

So I've got the query builder workshop. That's all of my time and energy for the next 3 weeks in progress. Get flights. We can figure that out. Partnership agreement?

Aaron

00:24:35 – 00:24:40

Yeah. I sent that on to the attorney. I haven't heard anything back, so I will follow-up

Colleen

00:24:41 – 00:24:41

Okay.

Aaron

00:24:41 – 00:24:42

With him today.

Colleen

00:24:43 – 00:24:48

We scheduled the video call, so that's tomorrow. We got that blocked. I blocked that on your calendar.

Aaron

00:24:48 – 00:24:49

Mhmm.

Colleen

00:24:50 – 00:24:55

So set realistic deadlines for the front ends to be completed. So you did that. Yeah? Ish?

Aaron

00:24:55 – 00:25:01

I wouldn't say I did that altogether. I talked to them both, but, yes, I will set those.

Colleen

00:25:02 – 00:25:02

That's like

Aaron

00:25:02 – 00:25:02

I'll set

Aaron

00:25:02 – 00:25:03

those this week.

Colleen

00:25:03 – 00:25:12

Yeah. I wouldn't again, I think that's lower I think we're gonna be busy this week because I think what's gonna happen is we're gonna have that call tomorrow, and then we're gonna be crafting our email. So

Aaron

00:25:13 – 00:25:13

Yeah.

Colleen

00:25:13 – 00:25:23

We should do this. This doesn't feel like the highest priority. I think, like, this week, we would win it this week if we can get our email out. I feel like that should be our singular goal for this week.

Aaron

00:25:23 – 00:25:24

Okay. Then I'm not gonna do that.

Colleen

00:25:24 – 00:25:25

So don't bother this.

Aaron

00:25:25 – 00:25:26

Other thing. Yeah.

Colleen

00:25:26 – 00:25:37

I'll keep hold on. Let me add get email out to Laravel Nova users on mailing list, and that will be our, like, one goal, that and obviously meet with Michelle and Matthias.

Aaron

00:25:38 – 00:25:45

Yeah. I feel like read me Nova read me is done about Hell yeah. Podcast packages page. Those are done.

Aaron

00:25:45 – 00:25:46

Yay. K.

Colleen

00:25:46 – 00:26:00

This is awesome. Great. So, yeah, I feel like this week, like you were saying, we're ready to think business, think sales. So getting the email out and seeing the response to that is, like, a great first step. K.

Aaron

00:26:00 – 00:26:14

Are there any, I'm trying to think backing up from that. Are there any prerequisites? Obviously, having the call and tweaking any changes based on the call, But anything other than that? Like, we don't need to send out a video with it.

Colleen

00:26:14 – 00:26:25

I don't think so. I think giving them the option to schedule an onboarding call would be good. K. But I I don't think we need that, specifically.

Aaron

00:26:25 – 00:26:29

Okay. Okay. Cool. Alright. That'll be the goal for this week.

Aaron

00:26:29 – 00:26:38

So have the call with Michelle and Matthias, incorporate their feedback, send out an email, get rich. Yes. Right?

Aaron

00:26:38 – 00:26:40

That is the plan. Let's do that.

Aaron

00:26:41 – 00:26:43

Perfect. Easy enough.

Aaron

00:26:43 – 00:26:45

Easy enough. How hard could it be?

Aaron

00:26:46 – 00:26:47

Turns out pretty hard.

Colleen

00:26:48 – 00:26:58

Turns out super hard. Yeah. Let me think if there's anything else for me. So I don't think so. I think, you know, obviously, I'm still working through some tech stuff on the rails side.

Colleen

00:26:58 – 00:27:08

Lots of stuff with client right now that's going on, which is good. Like, just building them out some custom filters and and stuff like that. So so that's all going going well. How

Aaron

00:27:08 – 00:27:13

are you finding it as an application developer to build out the filters and stuff? Pretty nice?

Colleen

00:27:14 – 00:27:29

Yes. I mean, I was really impressed that based on, like, almost no documentation, 2 different 2 independent teams were able to build out the filters that they wanted and needed. That's great. So that was really cool to see that.

Aaron

00:27:29 – 00:27:30

Amazing.

Colleen

00:27:30 – 00:27:33

Yeah. And and again, I don't even have documentation. Like, I kind of don't even know

Aaron

00:27:33 – 00:27:36

how they did it. I was like Yeah. Good job, guys. I think they

Colleen

00:27:36 – 00:27:51

just use because we have the scaffolded filters in there that come as part of bullet train, but those are single, you know, those are single attribute. Those aren't nested filters or, you know, multiple attribute filters. And they picked it up real quick. So I think it's gonna be really great.

Aaron

00:27:52 – 00:27:53

Great. Love to hear it.

Colleen

00:27:53 – 00:27:55

Oh. Oh. I wanna I wanna talk about something else.

Aaron

00:27:55 – 00:27:55

Tell me.

Colleen

00:27:55 – 00:28:03

Stop me if I already told you this. So I probably did. Did we already talk about this when I went to Sin City Ruby and I realized the difference between selling to managers and developers?

Aaron

00:28:04 – 00:28:05

This is

Colleen

00:28:05 – 00:28:10

ringing about. Again. So what I wanted to say about this, speaking of the developer experience.

Aaron

00:28:10 – 00:28:11

Right.

Aaron

00:28:11 – 00:28:11

When I

Colleen

00:28:11 – 00:28:26

went to Sin City Ruby and I was talking to both managers and developers, managers immediately got the value prop, like, immediately. Developers, however, don't really value their own time Correct. Because to them, it's just it's 40 hours a week. They don't care. Right.

Colleen

00:28:26 – 00:28:53

So I couldn't really when I first was trying to, like, talk to these talk to people and, like, explain the value prop, they weren't really getting it. So I think the key to selling to developers is focusing on the developer experience as opposed to I'm gonna save you all this time and money. Because they don't think in terms of time and money because their time is just their time. I think the developer experience is a really big selling point. And so it's like you can send in the scope that you want.

Colleen

00:28:53 – 00:29:11

Like, it's it's it's a you don't have this really crazy DSL, like active admin. Anyway, that was just like a a good learning moment for me, I think. Whereas going to RailsConf in 3 weeks, when we talk to developers about this, it's like, yes. It does all of these really great things that you hate to do, but most Rails developers don't love JavaScript.

Aaron

00:29:12 – 00:29:12

Colleen

00:29:12 – 00:29:34

so I think, like, hey. We did all of the front end all of the state control on the front end, which is really exciting and great and fast, you don't have to do that. And your developer interface is really clean, and you can send in scopes, and you can do this, that, and the other, and you can send in a list of options, and it just takes care of it for you. I think those are bigger selling points.

Aaron

00:29:34 – 00:29:51

I think that's great because I could easily see myself talking to a manager and going on and on about how nice it is as a developer to use it or the other way around talking to a developer and talking about what tremendous business value it could drive. And they're like, I don't freaking care

Colleen

00:29:51 – 00:29:52

about that. Right.

Aaron

00:29:52 – 00:29:53

Yeah. Yeah. Good.

Aaron

00:29:53 – 00:29:57

That's a good word. I approve. Yeah. Keep that in mind. Okay.

Colleen

00:29:57 – 00:29:58

Alright.

Aaron

00:29:58 – 00:29:59

Anything else?

Colleen

00:30:00 – 00:30:01

Nope. Anything from your end?

Aaron

00:30:01 – 00:30:03

We will call it there.

Colleen

00:30:03 – 00:30:03

Alright.

It's Time to Business

Transcript

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