Glimmers of Hope

Colleen

Hey, Aaron.

Aaron

Hey, Colleen. How's it going?

Colleen

Good. I would love to hear what has been going on with refined front end stuff.

Aaron

Yeah. So I picked it up from our 2 contractors. So one's been working on Vue, and one's been working on React. And I picked up the Vue 1 because it's, you know, the only one I know, and started playing with it. And the first thing that went through my head was, oh, man.

I don't know how any of this works. I should just rewrite it all. And then I thought, no. Don't do that. Please please don't do that.

So I kept pushing. And after about, I don't know, an hour of, like, trying to figure out, okay, where are these files? What is going on here? What what am I even looking at? I, like, I found my footing and started actually using it, and it's amazing.

It's really, really good. So the place we got hung up with or or or the place we got hung up the first time when we onboarded Neil was just like, this is great. I wanna be able to customize the look and feel of all of this. And that's what sent us off on this, you know, death march.

Colleen

Right.

Aaron

And now it's all customizable. So the the thing that I think Sean envisioned and then, Dave and Robin carried out is this, like, flavoring system. Okay. So it's it's a totally, totally made up concept. So there it don't go look up, like, react flavoring, because it's not a real thing.

It's just, like, that's what we call it. And it's really cool. It it wraps everything in, like, our own kind of, like, higher order components, and then applies the styling there. So we have, like, this dictionary that says, you know, this component is styled with these classes and this component with these. And then in our query builder package itself, it looks it up in that dictionary.

So what that means is with all of the same components and 2 different JSON files, we could have a Tailwind version, and we could have a Bootstrap version. And with another flavor, we could have a Material UI version. And with another flavor, a Nova version, which is gonna be my first thing. And then finally, like, a Neil's special app version. So it it, like, it gives you complete control without having to, you know, resort to, ejecting completely, and you can customize everything about the look and feel.

So it's pretty great.

Colleen

So does that mean if I have, like, a custom theme, and so all of my drop downs are styled this way and all of my inputs are styled this way, there's some kind of JSON file I can write with the name of those styles, and that will automatically style refine in the same way.

Aaron

Yes. Mostly.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

So that that's mostly true.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

Actually, that may be fully true. Additionally, if you need to eject and, like, input your own, let's say, date picker

Colleen

Yeah.

Aaron

Like, we ship an optional date picker. But if you already have 1, you can still control which component gets rendered.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

So you could use our date picker or you could pass your own. But for the most part, I think 90% of people are gonna use what we have and just want it to look like their app, and this gives them that ability.

Colleen

That's amazing.

Aaron

Yeah. So the thing I have been working on is getting like a fresh Laravel app, with the Laravel back end and the Vue front end, and just trying to iron out every little sticking point along the way there. And that's it's been it's been going great. I need to I still need to get, it all published to NPM Mhmm. Because now we're in this, like, one massive mono repo.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

But, yeah, I was super encouraged because I think for a long time, the front ends have been this dark. Like, I don't know what's going on there. It's not really my area of expertise, and I really haven't had to manage it too much. Yeah. And so it's always been this this scary unknown, but now playing with it, it's like, yeah, this is gonna work.

So I'm super pumped about it because I think this is it. Like, I think this is there are no more roadblocks. This is awesome. So my plan yeah.

Colleen

That's awesome.

Aaron

My plan is to meet with Neil next week. He's got it working in Nova, but he also wants it on his like, in his app. Right. So Nova is his, like, back end for his staff, and he wants it in the front end for his customers. And so I told him, you know, give me a week to, like, iron out this front end stuff.

And then next week, we can get it in your app, and you can start playing with it.

Colleen

Nice.

Aaron

So next week, he's gonna be the first, he's gonna be the first one to, like, use the the new fully customizable UI. And then beyond that, that's when we can start scheduling one off people from our email list.

Colleen

Awesome. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty great.

Amazing.

Aaron

I'm super I'm I'm feeling really encouraged. If every you know, if the last 10 podcasts have been like, wow. This sucks and is really hard. This one I feel this one I feel like, hey. This is some good news.

I'm feeling good about this.

Colleen

This is amazing. Yeah. I love it. So that is view.

Aaron

That is view. React is, from what I can tell, in the exact same place. It uses the flavor system. Dave has a tailwind flavor and a base flavor already defined, And even the 2 libraries even share a little bit of, boilerplate code.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

So we will probably need do you know React?

Colleen

No. I mean, really poorly.

Aaron

Okay. So we'll probably need to get together with Dave. Yeah. And have him walk us through it again now that I have a full understanding of it, but I think I think it's in the exact same spot.

Colleen

Okay. So yeah. Because I am pre selling this for rails, but it has occurred to me it has occurred to me. Like, this flavoring system is sounds amazing. And right now, our rails views, if you use Hotwire, are tied to Tailwind.

Aaron

Sure.

Colleen

So that is just something that has come up in my brain that, like, oh, that might be an issue.

Aaron

It might be. I wouldn't touch it until it is.

Colleen

Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron

I mean, it might be. I my my guess is that most people are gonna want to use React. I I just don't think that many people are gonna wanna use Hotwire.

Colleen

I think I think it'll be great. I mean, well, this is why I'm trying okay. So I'm doing this concept of, like, founding customers. I'm trying to do this concept of I'll accept 5 founding customers. So I as we talked about, I had 2 people that have already purchased it and, 2 people that are very interested that I'm gonna schedule calls with, both of us.

I'm gonna schedule us, calls with them in the next couple weeks and just hands on with those people and see what they need. And I think that's gonna be really instructive in terms of what we need to do there.

Aaron

Yeah. I think that's the ticket. I wouldn't even think about flavors for Hot Wire. I just don't even see I don't see how that would be possible.

Colleen

Yeah. Like, you're talking about it. I'm thinking about it. I'm like, how how would

Aaron

that work? Don't worry about it.

Colleen

Yeah. I'm not gonna worry about it until it becomes a problem. Especially since we have React and that covers I mean, that that covers rails for not I don't wanna say most people, but, you know, we'll see we'll see what we run into. We'll see what we come across, and we will modify as we go. So how do you feel about, like, selling this?

Are you ready to do you wanna do a presale? Do you like this idea of founding customers? Should we accept people, like, 5 people on the Laravel side, and those people get, like, really personal attention from you? What do you think?

Aaron

Yeah. I think I think that sounds great. I think the first step is going to be get it working in Neil's app because I've been in that app already, you know, 4 or 5 months ago. Okay. And he is interested in getting it working.

Like, he really needs it.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

He likes it. He's been using it on Nova. He likes the concept. And so I count him as, like, founding customer number 1.

Colleen

Right.

Aaron

So next week, getting it working in his app is going to give me I'm gonna learn a lot from that. And then beyond that, yeah, I I really don't think there's anything like, there's nothing left to do except get people to start using it. Yeah. So, yeah, that sounds great. I mean, we'll get it in Neil's app, and then we can either email 1 on 1, like we talked about, and try to schedule calls, or I saw you tweeted today about, you know, finding 5 people.

I could do either one of those.

Colleen

Yeah. I think and we'll talk again next week. But my my gut is that tweeting about it is more effective and, like, DM ing people on Twitter. At least for me, I found that's strangely more effective than email. Like, people ignore email, but not Twitter DMs.

I don't know what that's about, but

Aaron

Yeah.

Colleen

Maybe just because it feels more like like you're chatting. But I think that'll be the move after you work with Neil next week. That's really exciting. I'm super pumped. Yeah.

Aaron

This is great. I I, like, ironed out a few bugs in the front end and then was like, okay. So if this works like, I I still need to publish it to NPM, and we all know that that's gonna be a nightmare. But once this works, what's left? And I was thinking, nothing.

There isn't there's nothing left. This is it. Yes. Like, sure, the front end doesn't have documentation. I don't really care about that because the first, you know, few people I'm gonna be talking to directly anyway.

And you know what this you know what else this does is the view front end is, both view 2 and view 3.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

And Nova 4 is view 3.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

And Nova 3 stay with me. Nova 3 is view 2.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

So what this does is this allow now that this is, like, fully working, this lets us do Nova 4 with our new front end.

Colleen

Awesome.

Aaron

And so we can quickly once I get this up, we can quickly spin up Nova 4, so then we'll have Nova 3, Nova 4, and then, you know, regular Laravel, Rails, all of

Colleen

that. Awesome. Mhmm. Nice. That's phenomenal.

Aaron

I know. So I'm feeling much, much better about this.

Colleen

June is gonna be our month.

Aaron

I think June is gonna be our month.

Colleen

Yeah.

Aaron

Yeah. It's awesome. I think so. I think we're gonna I think we're gonna make some money this month.

Colleen

It's awesome. That is great news. I love that.

Aaron

Yeah. It's nice to have a win. Right?

Colleen

It is nice to have a win. It is. It feels really good. That is, like, really exciting news.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. It sure sure is. And our landing page is looking much much better since you and I have been working on it.

Colleen

Yeah.

Aaron

You know, for 2 weeks now or whatever.

Colleen

I love I love doing the co working, the daily co working. Yeah. It's been almost daily when we can. I think that's been great, to keep the momentum up there.

Aaron

Even if it's, like, 30 minutes, I feel like getting together for 30 minutes in the morning and knocking anything out has been really helpful.

Colleen

I agree. Like, I was talking to my sister was in town this weekend, and I was talking to her about that. And I was like, it used to be that, like, we kinda, like, everyone went to their own corner and, like, did their own thing, and then we only, like, touch base once a week. And that just didn't feel right for the pace we're trying to move at. And so, yeah, I think that, like, daily 30 minute, what are we doing?

Where are we? Has been has been really good. So we're almost done the landing page. Wouldn't you say? I feel like we're we're maybe a couple hours away from actually getting that out.

So that'll be really helpful. It'll be great to be able to point people to something that actually explains what the product is. Mhmm.

Aaron

Yeah. I saw some response to your tweet today. It was like, can you tell us can you tell us more of what's going on? And you're like, yeah, you could check here, but Yeah. We've got a better page coming.

Colleen

Don't really actually yeah. So, yeah. I'm pumped to get that up. I think that's that's gonna be really good.

Aaron

I also saw Mike Purim, quote tweeted your tweet.

Colleen

Wasn't that nice?

Aaron

No. It was so nice.

Colleen

I thought that was so nice. Yeah.

Aaron

Thanks. Thanks. Get a job, Mike. Yeah. That was really nice.

Colleen

That was nice. Yeah. Cool. Well,

Aaron

So you're making deals over there on your side?

Colleen

I'm doing my best. Yeah. I'm I'm pounding the pavement, selling the thing that doesn't exist, which is a whole interesting skill set.

Aaron

Okay. Well, it does exist.

Colleen

Okay. It totally

Aaron

exists. And it's, I'm not going

Colleen

to speak

Aaron

for you. It's totally done.

Colleen

It's like 99.9% done.

Aaron

Yeah.

Colleen

If you're using Tailwind and Hotwire. Yeah. No. It it is done. Actually.

Aaron

It is done. Yeah. I'm trying to get this out of your head that it's not done.

Colleen

I know. So every time every time you say

Aaron

it, I'm gonna say it is done.

Colleen

I think it's because, you know, there's always, like, scope creep, and the client has asked for this super, this super customized, like, segmentation stuff Mhmm. Which is not done. But that's like a super advanced feature, and it's gonna be super cool when it comes. But I don't think your average user needs that.

Aaron

No. They don't.

Colleen

And so, and we'll know as we start talking to them, and we'll start talking to them as we're able to roll it out very shortly.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Colleen

So, yeah. It's it's good. You've

Aaron

booked 2 so you've sold 2.

Colleen

Sold 2.

Aaron

And you have a you have a call booked with 1 Mhmm. This week. Right?

Colleen

Yep. And, I have 2 other people who verbally said they wanted to buy it. So, I'm gonna reach out to them. I was hoping if we finish the landing page, like because I I, you know, I haven't talked to them in a couple weeks. And so if we finish the landing page this week, I might wait to send them messages till Friday

Aaron

Mhmm.

Colleen

Till we finish the landing page just so I can be like, just to remind you, this is what it is. Mhmm. Yeah. And I'm only gonna sell 5 slots. So and one might be to my real estate clients because they desperately need this.

Aaron

So

Colleen

the 5 slots might fill up real quickly. But I think 5 is like a manageable number that I can handle, that I can so it's been great. We've been having a contractor is amazing. Our contractor is amazing. And he is starting to do more of the technical work, which has enabled me to focus a little bit more on this business work.

And because before, I was, like, 40 hours a week technical. Right? And so he has been incredibly helpful. So he's been working on getting it integrated in bullet train. And so he's found a couple things like CSS was purging one of our, you know, style sheets, etcetera, etcetera.

So figuring all that out has been really good. So I think the reason I only wanna take 5 is because I think each app is gonna have, like, unique challenges that we are gonna be able to sort out and learn and improve the product. And so I'm hoping, like, after this alpha round, we'll be able to open up another round. But, that's kind of the the pace, the speed at what what I want to release at least for this first release.

Aaron

Seems totally reasonable to me. I mean, each one I'm I'm hoping it's gonna I don't know what the mathematical term is, but it's gonna fall off a cliff on, like, the amount of stuff that needs to be done.

Colleen

Oh, yeah.

Aaron

The first 2, 3, 4 people, there's gonna be a huge amount that needs to be done. And then I'm hoping after that, it's just gonna be just onesie twosies here and there.

Colleen

I think so. That's what I anticipate. So it's it's exciting. It's really exciting. Like, this

Aaron

is happening.

Colleen

This is happening.

Aaron

This is like What's the, what's the timeline? August is is your 5 licenses a month date?

Colleen

Yeah. This is June. So if we start Yeah. I think we can make it.

Aaron

Get that for sure.

Colleen

I think we can hit it. I think having the Laravel stuff done is huge because I think that's gonna be a great market for us. So Yeah. I definitely think we can hit that.

Aaron

This also makes me feel a lot better about starting to do videos because now I have a front end that I can use that's not, like, directly tied to Nova. But I can, like, start showing how the front end works together with the back end and start pushing out some of that kind of content. I think it's gonna be really interesting and fun. Yeah.

Colleen

I think it's gonna be so good. Alright. I'm just gonna take a peek at our task database. Alright. Update landing page.

That's our p one right now. And that's I mean, we're we're almost done. That's that's keep on keep on keep on and on that. And then I have demo question mark. What did I mean by that?

Aaron

Demo question mark. That is a good question. Probably videos.

Colleen

I think I've done videos.

Aaron

Or or or, demo dot hammerstone.com. Like a

Colleen

Well, that's a big task.

Aaron

Something you could play with. Yeah. That's a big task.

Colleen

That's I feel like that's not a p one. No. I think by demo question mark, I meant videos for our landing page, like, just little, like, videos.

Aaron

Well, definitely don't update it, so we have to wonder next time we see demo question mark what it means.

Colleen

Demo. Videos for landing page. And we can make those now. Right?

Aaron

Sure. Yeah.

Colleen

Yeah. Okay. Cool. And then schedule one call a week for the next 20 weeks.

Aaron

Oh, wow. Yeah.

Colleen

That one. So we got one this week. I'll send a couple DMs to see if we can schedule one for next week. I'm gonna keep pushing on the rails until I sell these 5 licenses. So, like, my plan is to just keep keep pushing that until I'm ready to shut that down temporarily.

And you're having a call with Neil next week. Mhmm. Okay. Yep. So so we're kind of, like, hitting our goal.

After you have your call with Neil, we will start sending emails, tweets, etcetera, trying to keep that call call volume up Mhmm. To get started. So I have a whatever we don't have to. This is low priority. It's p 2.

Mhmm. But I do have on here, figure out where we are with the designer and what needs to be done. Did that fall off a cliff? Did we lose that?

Aaron

I did. Yeah. Okay. We completely lost that.

Colleen

Okay. I don't think that's super high priority. But Yeah.

Aaron

I don't really

Colleen

It's still on here.

Aaron

I don't care about that.

Colleen

You know? I don't care about that. I feel like that's, we'll we'll circle back. We'll circle back to that once we're we're selling licenses. Yeah.

I think we're good, Aaron. I think, like, we know what to do, and now we just have to execute on it. I mean

Aaron

And I feel I feel pretty good. I feel like we're making, we're making progress. Like, we're not just

Colleen

Oh.

Aaron

We're not just moving. We're we're moving forward. Yeah. Feels pretty good.

Colleen

No. I feel great. Like, I absolutely feel like we're making progress. Yeah. Yeah.

Great. Okay. It's like 15 minute podcast.

Aaron

Anything else? Is that it?

Colleen

Is awesome. No. I I don't have anything else. Yeah. I just execute, execute, execute.

Aaron

Okay. Well, we'll cut it there. See you.