We didn't break up!

May 4, 2023

Refine: https://hammerstone.dev/
Aaron: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis
Colleen: https://twitter.com/leenyburger
Learn more →

Transcript

Aaron
00:00:00 – 00:00:00
Hello, Colleen.
Colleen
00:00:01 – 00:00:01
Hey, Aaron.
Aaron
00:00:02 – 00:00:25
We are back and we are not broken up. I think we, so last week's episode, we titled it micro comp recap, and everybody that listens to it, which is like our 8 friends were like, dude, you should not have titled this micro comp recap when you buried the lead about you guys breaking up. So sorry about that.
Colleen
00:00:26 – 00:00:31
Yep. That was funny. I got a couple of DM's about that. People were like, what? What's going on?
Colleen
00:00:31 – 00:00:33
It's like you have to listen to the whole episode.
Aaron
00:00:33 – 00:00:34
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Keep going. Yeah.
Aaron
00:00:34 – 00:00:45
I actually got some too that were like, wait, what's happening? And then the next message was, I haven't gotten all the way through the episode yet. I'm like, okay. Well, just keep keep listening. We we do explain everything.
Aaron
00:00:46 – 00:00:52
So seems like, people love the drama, but here we are, much less drama filled this week.
Colleen
00:00:52 – 00:00:54
That's right. All execution this week.
Aaron
00:00:54 – 00:01:00
Yeah. You're free now. So what the heck have you been doing? You're just, like, walking on the beach every day?
Colleen
00:01:01 – 00:01:09
Not quite. Although, I do live only a mile from the beach. I know. So, relatively easy to walk on the beach every day. This so this is really it.
Colleen
00:01:09 – 00:01:20
This has been my 1st week where I have been completely able to focus on the business part of building a business. And I have to tell you, it has been amazing.
Aaron
00:01:20 – 00:01:25
Good. I was I thought that's what was coming, but yes, that's that's good to hear.
Colleen
00:01:25 – 00:01:47
I mean, it just feels like when you're trying to fit a side project slash business into the nooks and crannies of your day, when your day is already really full, especially with work and family, it's exhausting. Like, you know, it's exciting because you're working on something you believe in, but it's exhausting. I feel like I can breathe. Like, I'm just swimming in time. It is glorious.
Aaron
00:01:48 – 00:01:50
I am so happy for you.
Colleen
00:01:51 – 00:01:53
Meanwhile, you're out there at 5 AM.
Aaron
00:01:53 – 00:02:01
Yeah. Yeah. Tell me more about how it's exhausting to fit it into the nooks and crannies. Good. That was the whole that was the whole point.
Aaron
00:02:01 – 00:02:11
That's why we took the money. That's that's what we're doing here. So I'm glad to hear that that it has lived up to your expectations or your hopes, I guess.
Colleen
00:02:11 – 00:02:31
Yeah. I have always heard about all the stuff you should do to grow your business, and that kind of stuff when you're building a product always feels secondary. Like, we have a friend who has been advising us on marketing, and he was always asking us to make these weekly spreadsheets of marketing numbers. And I remember we were like, we we just we don't we can't. Like, you can't it was too much.
Colleen
00:02:31 – 00:02:40
Right? It was like, we just don't have time to care about page views. Well, now I have time to care about page views. Yeah. So that has been really interesting.
Colleen
00:02:40 – 00:02:46
So for my 1st week of deep dive, I've actually been doing quite a bit of cold outreach. And
Aaron
00:02:46 – 00:02:53
Like a real business thing to do. I know. Not just hiding behind the computer screen. You're actually trying to talk to humans.
Colleen
00:02:54 – 00:03:02
I talked on the phone to 2 humans that I have never met, never talked to, never interacted with in my life.
Aaron
00:03:02 – 00:03:06
Incredible. Incredible. Just from a from a LinkedIn DM.
Colleen
00:03:07 – 00:03:26
Yeah. So let me tell you about this. So first of all, which I'm sure business people know, but it's a whole crazy wild world out there with cold outreach. Like, it's a whole thing. And so I won't get super into the details, but I talked to some people who had done it, watched some, like, cheesy YouTube videos on LinkedIn, how to use Sales Navigator.
Colleen
00:03:26 – 00:03:45
Got Sales Navigator and spent quite a lot of time trying to find the people we're initially targeting. And then, you know, but the whole all the tools to do the cold outreach are so shady because it's like this Google Chrome extension that scrapes LinkedIn, but you gotta keep LinkedIn open because it's pulling your session key from your your LinkedIn
Aaron
00:03:46 – 00:03:50
session. That is so shady. I love it. That's amazing.
Colleen
00:03:50 – 00:04:04
They're like, don't close LinkedIn because we need your session key. So it goes in. I found this tool, and it, like, goes in and it scrapes LinkedIn. And then there's another tool, and these are paid tools, so it's kind of like glue. You know, you're trying to put these pieces of glue together.
Colleen
00:04:04 – 00:04:42
There's another tool that you have to pay for that will try to scrape specifically to find email addresses. And then there's another tool that I was using called lavender.ai to help me write cold ish emails. Mhmm. And what I I didn't get super Like, I've talked to people who have sent thousands of cold emails, and I don't think that is the way I'm gonna go mainly because I myself despise, despise cold email. So I am not gonna be a cold email sender, but what I do think is going to work really well is LinkedIn outreach.
Aaron
00:04:42 – 00:04:43
Mhmm.
Colleen
00:04:43 – 00:04:47
And I had a phenomenal response rate on LinkedIn.
Aaron
00:04:47 – 00:04:49
God. That just blows my mind.
Colleen
00:04:50 – 00:05:10
Yeah. Well, here's what I did. Let me tell you, though. I think it's important to get a little bit of context in there, because the people I mined on LinkedIn responded to comments from I'm gonna use the term influencer, but, like, a highly followed person in their field. So if it were Twitter, let's say, Taylor Otwell commented or tweeted, and then you get
Aaron
00:05:10 – 00:05:16
Love it. A 100 people that This is context I understand. Talk to me more about Taylor Otwell. Yes. Keep going.
Colleen
00:05:17 – 00:05:21
Taylor Otwell tweets about his car, and you can't knock it.
Aaron
00:05:21 – 00:05:21
But he tweets
Colleen
00:05:22 – 00:05:25
I see those sometimes, and I'm like, wait. This guy
Aaron
00:05:25 – 00:05:29
They're so yeah. This guy for real. Yeah. They're awesome. Alright.
Aaron
00:05:29 – 00:05:30
So he he tweets about Laravel.
Colleen
00:05:30 – 00:05:41
About Laravel. Right? Let's say I'm trying to I'm trying to attract I'm trying to talk to Laravel developers. So he tweets about Laravel, but I don't DM him, because it's Taylor Otwell. He doesn't sit around responding to DMs.
Colleen
00:05:41 – 00:05:41
Right?
Aaron
00:05:41 – 00:05:42
Right.
Colleen
00:05:42 – 00:06:12
So then I I see the 100 people that have responded to his tweet. Those people I now know are interested in Laravel, and they are active on the platform. So I scrape so that so I scrape those people's information and then reach out to them, and I didn't go so for the first reach out, and this is within the platform, so it's not like, through email because, again, I just hate cold email. It's within the platform. I know they're interested in the topic, and I know that they're active on the platform.
Colleen
00:06:12 – 00:06:23
So that was the first group of people. Now that was automated. I used a tool to do the, scraping and the automatic requests. But I had over 50% of the people responded to me.
Aaron
00:06:23 – 00:06:25
That is so many people.
Colleen
00:06:26 – 00:06:28
It's so many people. Like, I wish
Aaron
00:06:28 – 00:06:33
I am I am shocked by that number 50%. That is shocking to me.
Colleen
00:06:33 – 00:06:50
I was shocked. Now, not all of that now, to be clear, only one person scheduled an actual call, but the other people chatted with me on LinkedIn, at least 1 or 2 messages, and some just they went further. They just, like, were chatting with me, kind of like like if you were on Slack in
Aaron
00:06:50 – 00:06:50
Weird.
Colleen
00:06:51 – 00:06:53
The LinkedIn Connect. Yeah.
Aaron
00:06:53 – 00:06:54
These LinkedIn people, man.
Colleen
00:06:54 – 00:07:03
Weird. Super cool. Right? So one of the things that someone I don't know how much detail we wanna get into into who I was targeting. I don't know if we're ready for that yet.
Colleen
00:07:03 – 00:07:18
But I was telling a friend this story, because everyone is shocked I had this crazy high response rate. And I was not targeting developers. And one of my friends pointed out, as he said, maybe that means these people aren't used to getting cold outreach. Yeah.
Aaron
00:07:18 – 00:07:18
Totally. Like,
Colleen
00:07:18 – 00:07:21
maybe they're a great target because no one is selling to them.
Aaron
00:07:21 – 00:07:21
Yeah.
Colleen
00:07:21 – 00:07:24
I was like, yeah, maybe. Yeah.
Aaron
00:07:24 – 00:07:36
So Man, yeah. That's crazy. I just cannot I get cold DMs on Twitter all the time, but they're always very poorly done, and it's always like, hello, sir. Are you in need of copywriting help? But I'm like, no.
Aaron
00:07:36 – 00:07:57
I don't I've never heard of you in my life. This DM sucks, but I guess LinkedIn and maybe this audience is maybe it's just a different world. And I'm sure I'm sure sure they look at your profile and are like, oh, this is a real this is a real person. This is, like, an actual professional, and I'm sure I'm sure that helps.
Colleen
00:07:57 – 00:07:59
Right. I'm not in sales. I'm not a recruiter.
Aaron
00:08:00 – 00:08:02
Yeah. Yeah. That's true.
Colleen
00:08:02 – 00:08:26
And what I did is so I had the automated message. If they responded to that with a real message, then I took 10 seconds to read their profile. And then the next message, I said, I see that as an x, y, z person, or I see that you have x, like, specific to them, like, you have this experience. And to be fair, this is very, very much customer discovery. I am not trying to sell anyone anything.
Colleen
00:08:26 – 00:08:33
So, I was never like I didn't open with, hey, I'm building a thing. I opened with, hey, I'm trying to learn about your field.
Aaron
00:08:33 – 00:08:34
Mhmm.
Colleen
00:08:34 – 00:08:40
Can I ask you a few questions about what you do in a day? Like, I think that was my opening cold message.
Aaron
00:08:40 – 00:08:41
It's a pretty good message.
Colleen
00:08:41 – 00:08:43
Thanks. I'm getting better at it.
Aaron
00:08:43 – 00:08:46
Yeah. That's a pretty good that's that's pretty compelling.
Colleen
00:08:46 – 00:08:58
This, Lavender AI tool is and this tool is not just for cold. It's for, like, cold anything, not just email. But the big thing in this tool is they're like what are they like 50 words?
Aaron
00:08:58 – 00:09:00
Yeah. It's like 30 to 50 words.
Colleen
00:09:00 – 00:09:05
Yeah. I mean so I tend to be very verbose in my writing. This tool is not
Aaron
00:09:06 – 00:09:07
Only only in your writing, though.
Colleen
00:09:09 – 00:09:11
There's a reason I had multiple podcasts.
Aaron
00:09:11 – 00:09:12
Yeah. Exactly.
Colleen
00:09:13 – 00:09:19
Got a lot to say. So this tool was basically like, yeah, you need to cut out, like, 80%.
Aaron
00:09:19 – 00:09:20
Most of it.
Colleen
00:09:20 – 00:09:27
Most of it. So that super helped to run it through the tool, because the tool was just like, nah. Try again.
Aaron
00:09:27 – 00:09:35
Yeah. That's awesome. Man, that is I'm just shocked by the number of people that responded to you. That is incredibly cool.
Colleen
00:09:35 – 00:09:40
It was incredibly cool. I am excited, and I'm learning a lot.
Aaron
00:09:40 – 00:09:42
Yeah. So you got on a call with 1 of them.
Colleen
00:09:42 – 00:09:56
I did. Dude, this guy was so it went great. So he was a developer turned founder, but he's had his business for like 15 years. And it was just super cool. Like, it was super nice.
Colleen
00:09:56 – 00:10:10
And, yeah, we just talked about I mean, just about his business. And and, you know, again, I'm I'm very much in customer discovery. So I'm just we have our hypothesis of the pain point, but I am not feeding it to people. Right. And I knew he was using one of our competitors.
Colleen
00:10:10 – 00:10:19
That's how I found him. So I was trying to understand more what he was doing with their software, and, he was happy to share. It was great.
Aaron
00:10:19 – 00:10:27
And did he feed the pain point back to you unprompted? Did he say exactly No. No? Okay.
Colleen
00:10:27 – 00:10:34
No. His pain point so I think we've said on here, like, we're focusing on internal reporting for teams.
Aaron
00:10:34 – 00:10:34
Mhmm.
Colleen
00:10:34 – 00:10:40
And his pain point was still external facing reporting for customers.
Aaron
00:10:40 – 00:10:45
Got it. Okay. Oh, that's right. Because they ended up embedding some stuff. Yeah.
Colleen
00:10:45 – 00:10:56
But, I mean, not to get off topic or we're not, you know, widening the scope, but embedded BI looks so easy. I I thought they were doing something clever. They're just loading it in an iframe. Yeah.
Aaron
00:10:56 – 00:10:57
I can I can do that? I can do iframe.
Colleen
00:10:57 – 00:10:59
Do that this day.
Aaron
00:10:59 – 00:10:59
I can
Colleen
00:10:59 – 00:10:59
figure that out,
Aaron
00:10:59 – 00:11:00
I think.
Colleen
00:11:00 – 00:11:05
I'm confident we could figure that out, like, in a day. Like, it was just it was funny.
Aaron
00:11:05 – 00:11:09
Don't widen the scope on me, though, please. I'm barely barely hanging on as it is.
Colleen
00:11:10 – 00:11:16
We're not doing it. We're not doing it right now, but it is, like, oh, this is such an easy theoretically easy, you know?
Aaron
00:11:16 – 00:11:16
Yeah.
Colleen
00:11:17 – 00:11:37
But I think, you know, we're trying to do this, air quotes, the right way, and everyone knows the right way is to customers. And so there's this great tweet I saw the other day, and it was basically like, all you should be doing in the early days is product and customers, like, nothing else. And I was like, exactly. That's exactly where we are.
Aaron
00:11:37 – 00:11:56
That sounds that sounds like a Matt Wintzing tweet. He's been on fire recently, but I don't know if it was, but that sounds exactly like something he would say. Okay. So why are so we're being a bit coy about what we're doing, and I think we should we should call that out. We're not we're not being totally transparent on that yet.
Aaron
00:11:56 – 00:12:02
So why are we not saying the new name, the new product, all of that? Just so our our 5 friends understand.
Colleen
00:12:02 – 00:12:04
You said we had 8 friends at the beginning of the
Aaron
00:12:04 – 00:12:12
And last episode, it was 12. So I don't know why I think we're losing listeners as we're going. But, yeah, that that just became clear to me as well.
Colleen
00:12:12 – 00:12:21
The only reason I don't want to say the name yet is because I wanna have a website at the domain before That's right. We announced it on the podcast. And so
Aaron
00:12:21 – 00:12:24
very good domain. I'm very happy with it.
Colleen
00:12:24 – 00:12:25
I'm very happy with it.
Aaron
00:12:25 – 00:12:34
It is a dot com. It is pronounceable. We bought it aftermarket, so it cost a little bit of money, but I'm pretty happy with it.
Colleen
00:12:34 – 00:12:46
I I am also quite happy with it. I think it's an excellent name. Yeah. I just wanna get a website up because I don't want I don't know if you're gonna release this today. And so, I don't want people to be like, oh, let me check out their website and sign up
Aaron
00:12:46 – 00:12:54
for that. And then everyone and then everyone come to us and be like, hey, your website's not Your website's not I know. I freaking know that.
Colleen
00:12:55 – 00:13:00
Yeah. Yeah. So not intentionally being coy. Just don't want to. You know, we're still maybe a day up.
Colleen
00:13:00 – 00:13:07
Honestly, it'll be probably up by this afternoon. But just in case it's not, I'd rather wait, hold off a beat on that. Yeah.
Aaron
00:13:07 – 00:13:09
What else? Anything else on your side?
Colleen
00:13:09 – 00:13:21
I'm trying to think if there's anything I wanna talk about more about customer development. I think the yes. I know what I wanted to say. So Reuben was on the above board podcast. Did you hear that one?
Aaron
00:13:21 – 00:13:21
Mhmm.
Colleen
00:13:22 – 00:13:40
And I just loved how he he just takes this super non dramatic, pragmatic approach to everything. Mhmm. And one of the things I hadn't really thought about till he was on this podcast is, 1, with SignWell, he literally took on DocuSign, a bazillion dollar company.
Aaron
00:13:40 – 00:13:41
I know.
Colleen
00:13:41 – 00:14:02
And so that's always encouraging when you're like, okay. Even if there are huge competitors in the space, we can find our slice. Where I'm going with this is is he just talked about this really pragmatic approach to building a product. And we're in this weird state where we don't actually have any customers, So we don't really know what our ideal customer looks like.
Aaron
00:14:02 – 00:14:03
Right.
Colleen
00:14:03 – 00:14:18
And so what I'm doing is I'm making a best guess, and that's this first group of people I have gone after. And I'm trying to narrow the aperture by making a best guess, talking to as many people in that field as I can, and say, yeah, These are our people, or probably not.
Aaron
00:14:18 – 00:14:18
Yeah.
Colleen
00:14:18 – 00:14:32
And so I'm only one and a half weeks into talking to this first group of people, but I don't know. I mean, this is the hard part. Right? Like, I don't know if they are our customer. After talking to them, I'm like, maybe you guys aren't our customer.
Colleen
00:14:32 – 00:14:40
And so I just feel like you can't I guess what I'm saying is you have to just make a guess and go after it and see what you learn instead of trying to think your way
Aaron
00:14:41 – 00:14:41
Yes.
Colleen
00:14:41 – 00:14:47
Out of an answer. Right? Instead of just sit here, let's think more. Let's think more. It's like, let's just guess, try it, see what happens.
Colleen
00:14:47 – 00:15:07
So Yes. I don't know. I'm gonna talk to some more people, like, follow-up some on some of the LinkedIn conversations that I've started with this first group of people. I don't know that they are our ideal customer. And, you looked at the initial landing page copy that I wrote, and that's clearly not geared at this first group of people.
Aaron
00:15:07 – 00:15:08
Yeah.
Colleen
00:15:08 – 00:15:18
So I think maybe give this one more week with this group, and then do the whole thing again with a different group of people, and see if I can start narrowing down who really, really, really wants this thing.
Aaron
00:15:18 – 00:15:33
Which is hopefully somebody. Yeah. I think that sounds that was a very good episode that Reuben was on. He is just so I like how you call it non dramatic. Like, he just has an idea and tests it, and then has another idea and tests it.
Aaron
00:15:33 – 00:15:48
It's like, oh, yeah. That that kinda makes sense. Like, I I kinda think of him as, like, almost like bootstrap dad. Like, you can just be like, dad, what should I do? I'm like, well, did you try this thing?
Aaron
00:15:48 – 00:15:55
Oh, no. That's a good idea. I should just do that, shouldn't I? He's just, like, so even keeled, and he's Yeah. He's just good at it.
Aaron
00:15:55 – 00:16:10
So thanks, bootstrap dad. Yeah. I like that. I kind of agree that I this it seems like this first batch of people might not be the right set. But thinking ourselves in a circle is not gonna get us anywhere.
Aaron
00:16:11 – 00:16:34
And boy, did I think myself in a circle this week and had to call you for to bail me out. But, yeah, it's, I think we wanna do this the right way, not to do it the right way, but to get to, like, to get rich. Like, we want to do this one the right way so that it works. And I think this is the right way. We just gotta talk to I wish we had customers we could talk to, but that's, you know, one step away.
Aaron
00:16:34 – 00:16:41
So I'm on board with that. I am glad that you are enjoying it because that sounds like a lot of talking to people.
Colleen
00:16:41 – 00:16:42
It is a lot of talking.
Aaron
00:16:42 – 00:16:50
Yeah. So anything else on your side? Nope. Okay. So I thought myself in a circle, as I mentioned.
Aaron
00:16:51 – 00:17:20
Yeah. So I'm building, you know, I'm building this this product based on our first hypothesis, like, our our point of view, and we will change it and adapt it as we go, but we gotta start somewhere, and so I'm building it based on what we think is correct. And I spent a bunch of time this past week, like, looking at all of these competitors that are just literally everywhere. Like, they just keep popping up. Every time I'm on Twitter, I'm like, oh, never heard of you before.
Aaron
00:17:20 – 00:17:38
You've got $15,000,000 in funding, and you're a competitor, and you're one of many. And so, I think at some point I just lost, I just like lost my mojo and I was like, I don't know what we're doing here. Like, I don't know what we're doing. I don't know how we're different. I don't know what we can do to compete with these people.
Aaron
00:17:39 – 00:17:43
And so one morning, I think it was maybe was it yesterday that we talked?
Colleen
00:17:43 – 00:17:44
I think it was yesterday.
Aaron
00:17:44 – 00:18:03
I think it was yesterday. So I got out here early. I got out to the shed quarters early to do my my side work, and I just sat here for, like, an hour and a half. It was like 6 o'clock, and I had my coffee, and I was just like, I don't know what to do. And so then I messaged you and was like, hey, whenever you start your day, please call me.
Aaron
00:18:05 – 00:18:21
And it was great. It was super helpful. Like you called and we talked through it all, and I got, I got my mojo back and was like, okay, great. I know exactly what I'm supposed to do here. I know exactly what I'm gonna build, and I have a path forward.
Aaron
00:18:21 – 00:18:29
And man, if I were a solo founder at that point, I don't know what I would have done. I think I would have been stuck in the doldrums for quite some time.
Colleen
00:18:29 – 00:18:32
Yeah. Well, that's why we have each other.
Aaron
00:18:32 – 00:18:35
Yeah. We're not usually down at the same time, which is helpful. Sometimes
Colleen
00:18:35 – 00:18:36
more. Sometimes, but
Aaron
00:18:37 – 00:18:37
That is fantastic.
Colleen
00:18:37 – 00:18:51
Frequently. I mean, that is one of the really nice things, though, about doing this with someone else, because it's like, wait, what are what are we doing? And that goes both ways. Right? Like, after I talk to 15 people, and they're all like, you you're like, oh, they don't need this thing at all.
Colleen
00:18:51 – 00:18:53
It's like, oh, is this the right thing?
Aaron
00:18:53 – 00:18:53
Yeah.
Colleen
00:18:53 – 00:19:01
So I am glad we were able to pull you out of the doldrums so quickly. Right? That was in and out in 2 hours.
Aaron
00:19:01 – 00:19:01
Yeah. That's
Colleen
00:19:02 – 00:19:02
Super awesome.
Aaron
00:19:02 – 00:19:13
Bad. Yeah. That's actually pretty good. So beyond that, I have been building some stuff, because that didn't last terribly long. Yeah.
Aaron
00:19:13 – 00:19:30
I think we're still I think we're still, like, on track to have a payable MVP by the end of this month, by the end of May. Okay. And I saw I saw another tweet somewhere. I think I may have sent it to you or may have just bookmarked it. I don't remember.
Aaron
00:19:30 – 00:20:01
But it was, like, something about and this is something I've told you a bunch of times. Like, we don't wanna be a half assed version of a better product, like, that has all the same features, just everything done worse. We wanna have the one thing that we do differently. Like, we want that thing to be pretty good and maybe not even have the other features. And that has been that has been encouraging to me because it's like, I just can't compete with 10 people that have $15,000,000, but they're not doing the same thing that we're trying to do.
Aaron
00:20:01 – 00:20:07
So that's what I'm trying to keep in mind when I when I hit the low points of, like, what is going on here?
Colleen
00:20:07 – 00:20:24
Yeah. Yeah. I think that is an excellent way to approach it. Let's pick the one thing we do, do it extremely well, and we're not gonna do all those other features. I mean, there's some big ones that are not gonna be in our MVP that every other I don't wanna say every other, but a lot of the other products that are similar ish have.
Colleen
00:20:24 – 00:20:32
I'm like, that's not that's not our differentiating feature. So let's lean into what our differentiating feature is and do that really, really well.
Aaron
00:20:33 – 00:20:50
Oh, man. It's not easy, but I will say it is a lot of fun. It is a lot of fun to be building software and being able to do whatever I want without the without the product being the code. That part is a nice change. Because with Refine for so long, the product was the code.
Aaron
00:20:50 – 00:21:02
And so, like, now it's it's just not. I can do whatever I want, and I don't have to, like, I don't have to think of every edge case for every app that's gonna implement it. So that's quite freeing.
Colleen
00:21:02 – 00:21:09
Yeah. End of May is ambitious, though. Like like, you said that again. I was like, oh, man. Where am I gonna find a paying customer before the end of May?
Aaron
00:21:10 – 00:21:10
I'm
Colleen
00:21:10 – 00:21:19
not saying ambitious. Like, I think we should continue to have that as our goal. I've just gotta find someone who is like, yes, I wanna pay for this right now. And that's what I'm trying to do. Right?
Colleen
00:21:19 – 00:21:21
So I did the first few people That's
Aaron
00:21:21 – 00:21:21
the point. Yeah.
Colleen
00:21:22 – 00:21:29
Finish them up, see see if there's anything there. If not, I have some other ideas of who else it could be. So, yeah. I am
Aaron
00:21:30 – 00:21:32
It does feel like the dish, doesn't it?
Colleen
00:21:32 – 00:21:34
Does feel now that it's May 4th, I'm like, oh,
Aaron
00:21:34 – 00:21:35
yeah. Yeah.
Colleen
00:21:35 – 00:21:44
I haven't found a single person who is like, this is the thing. I found a lot of people that have pain points in this space. Yeah. But I don't yeah. We'll see.
Colleen
00:21:44 – 00:21:46
I think we can do it. I think we can do it. I think
Aaron
00:21:46 – 00:21:46
we can do it.
Colleen
00:21:46 – 00:21:48
I think we can do it. Yeah. I think we
Aaron
00:21:48 – 00:21:54
can do it. I think, I think it's gonna be dramatically easier once we have something people can play with.
Colleen
00:21:54 – 00:21:56
I do too. I think that's gonna make a huge difference.
Aaron
00:21:56 – 00:21:58
So that's on me.
Colleen
00:21:58 – 00:22:03
Yeah. But we'll get there. Yeah. I think we'll get there. Like, I think I feel good about it.
Colleen
00:22:04 – 00:22:27
Practical stuff, website, I have the first draft. So I'll get Mailchimp hooked up, and we'll push that live just so we have something, by the time we record our next podcast. And then oh, I know what else I was gonna say. So the thing I I realized while I was doing this aggressive LinkedIn outreach everyone knows this, including myself, but I'm just gonna say it here. Like, inbound is always better than outbound.
Colleen
00:22:27 – 00:22:33
Right? So I spent last week really, really deep in outbound, outbound, outbound, and then I was like, we don't even have
Aaron
00:22:36 – 00:22:36
a site. We don't even have a way to get inbound right now. Mhmm.
Colleen
00:22:36 – 00:22:55
So I feel like this week is about let's at least set up a structure so inbound can happen. And so, that so my goal for this week was to get a website up, which it will be. And I'm hoping we get some inbound while I'm concurrently doing outbound.
Aaron
00:22:56 – 00:22:59
Yeah. Yeah. Inbound is way better. It's also way easier.
Colleen
00:22:59 – 00:23:14
Oh, yeah. For sure. And honestly, with refine, like, we know this concept is interesting to people because when we were actively talking about refine, we got a lot of interest. And, conceptually, this is refine as a SaaS. It's not really that different than our last product.
Aaron
00:23:15 – 00:23:16
It's not really.
Colleen
00:23:16 – 00:23:23
It's basically what we had before, but it's a SaaS. So mostly the same, and people were mostly excited about it before.
Aaron
00:23:23 – 00:23:24
Right.
Colleen
00:23:24 – 00:23:35
So I'm hoping they're still excited about it. And so I'm hoping we will have a good group of people to pull from to start talking to people about this specific sass.
Aaron
00:23:36 – 00:23:36
Right.
Colleen
00:23:36 – 00:23:37
Yeah. I mean, we have
Aaron
00:23:37 – 00:23:38
We're right in the middle of it, man.
Colleen
00:23:39 – 00:23:41
Yeah. We are. We have people on our mailing list,
Aaron
00:23:41 – 00:23:44
but We do. I forget we do have that mailing list.
Colleen
00:23:44 – 00:23:47
We do have I was I was in Mailchimp yesterday, and I was looking at it.
Aaron
00:23:47 – 00:23:49
We should send them a bunch of email.
Colleen
00:23:49 – 00:23:52
Maybe. Let me do it. I should be pulling from that list.
Aaron
00:23:52 – 00:23:53
Yeah. For sure.
Colleen
00:23:53 – 00:23:54
That's why I'm gonna, like, do that today.
Aaron
00:23:54 – 00:23:55
Yeah.
Colleen
00:23:55 – 00:23:55
I
Aaron
00:23:55 – 00:23:59
should be pulling geniuses. No one can stop us.
Colleen
00:24:00 – 00:24:01
We're on fire.
Aaron
00:24:01 – 00:24:08
Yeah. Took us a week and a half to remember that we have a list of people that have asked us to contact them.
Colleen
00:24:08 – 00:24:22
Yeah. So we got that list, which is, you know, it's not Corey Haines 15,000, but it's over a 1000 people. And yeah. So so I think, like you said, we're, like, right in the middle of it. Like, this is the exciting time.
Colleen
00:24:22 – 00:24:25
It's just customer's product.
Aaron
00:24:25 – 00:24:28
Alright. Well, anything else we need to cover?
Colleen
00:24:29 – 00:24:31
I don't think so. I think I'm good.
Aaron
00:24:32 – 00:24:36
I think I'm good too. Okay. We'll give this one a real clickbaity title to make up for
Colleen
00:24:36 – 00:24:37
our I know to make up
Aaron
00:24:37 – 00:24:40
for my feed. Foibles last time. Yeah. Alright. I'll talk to you later.
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.