Hi Sinclair! (and recapping Laracon EU)

Aaron

Hello, Colleen.

Colleen

Hey, Aaron. Good to see you again.

Aaron

Yeah. I am, I am back from my travels and, almost over my jet lag, but good good glad to be back. It was a good trip.

Colleen

Good. So before we talk about your trip, I wanted to give a shout out to our very good friend's daughter, Sinclair, who is a listener of our podcast.

Aaron

Hello, Sinclair. I've heard, I've heard you're a big Colleen fan. And so, I'm sure that I'm sure that Colleen's shout out means a lot to you, but we wanted to say thanks for listening.

Colleen

Yeah. Thanks. I can't get my own kids to listen, so I super appreciate that someone listens.

Aaron

Well, I did, I did just get back. So I was in Lisbon, Portugal last week for Laracon EU, and it was awesome.

Colleen

Tell me.

Aaron

So we went PlanetScale went as a sponsor, and so I got to meet, I got to meet my coworker or, actually, my boss, Holly, for the first time in person, and I got to see my other coworker, Taylor, in person. I had met her once in Austin, actually. But the 3 of us got to hang out at the booth, which was fun. And I got to meet a ton of my, Laravel Internet friends in person for the first time, which was super fun. And I got to give, I got to give a talk.

I was I closed out the conference. I was the last speaker. So

Colleen

Yeah. Can we talk about how you mentioned you were gonna speak, and then I saw on Twitter that you were closing out the conference? I was like, you're basically keynoting. That's a huge deal.

Aaron

Yeah. It, it it turned out it the scheduling turned out really good, I will say. So I gave the same talk that I gave at the faded GitHub Universe conference, if you'll remember, which was fine because if I recall correctly, I think maybe 5 people had heard the talk before. So it was pretty fresh for everybody. But it worked out great because the content of the talk is basically, like, kinda like, rah rah, you know, put yourself out there.

Good things will happen. Like, go forth and conquer. And so it works it works really well at the end of a at the end of a conference, like, leave on a high note. You know, everybody's everybody's kinda tired at the end. We don't necessarily need another technical deep dive, but we do need a little bit of, like, a, like, a kick out the door to go conquer the world kinda thing.

And that's what I gave him, and it worked.

Colleen

That's amazing. So were there more than 3 people there this time?

Aaron

There were more than 3 people there, fortunately. Yeah. There were, I think there were 550 attendees, and so I know that some people did leave early to catch flights back to their their home cities and countries. So, there were probably 500 people in attendance, for my talk. And Wow,

Colleen

that's amazing.

Aaron

Yeah. It went really, really well. I'm really proud of how it went. I got a lot of I got a lot of good feedback, but I think the coolest part was it, like, you could tell that it resonated emotionally with a lot of people. And a lot of people came up after afterwards and were, like, thanking it for me, asking if they could give me a hug, and I was just like

Colleen

Aw. Oh, this must have worked.

Aaron

So, yeah, it felt really good. I was I totally redeemed the less than ideal situation. And I was and it was great because, like, you know, I had practiced it so much for GitHub Universe that I only had to practice it a couple times for Lyricon EU, and I still got to, you know, do it just as well because it was all still in my memory. So it worked out great.

Colleen

That's awesome. I'm really happy for you.

Aaron

Yeah. Thanks. What a relief.

Colleen

I bet.

Aaron

So, that was good. I'm back working on I think we've talked about the micro pivot, which we can talk about more, but I kinda wanna hear, you've been you've been looking to hire people. So how's that been going?

Colleen

Yes. You left for a week, and I decided to restructure our whole business. You're welcome. That,

Aaron

that seems to happen, by the way.

Colleen

It's the thing I do. Just FYI.

Aaron

I'm just glad to be along for the ride.

Colleen

Yeah. So while you were gone, I did some deep dive deep thoughts on the future of our relationship with our enterprise customer, and a theme of both of my podcasts has been about how I need to get out of the consulting role, and so we are now in a position to make that happen. So in order to make that happen, I am looking to hire someone to kinda fill that support role and also be technical. Yeah. So last week, I made a lot of progress.

I wrote up a proper job description and posted on some job boards. I reviewed applicants. And this week, I have already interviewed 4 people in one day, which I would not recommend.

Aaron

Sounds

Colleen

good. It was it was exhausting. Probably, we'll do that smarter next time. That many people in one day is really hard to maintain the level of focus you need. Yeah.

But, moving in that direction, I'm finding it's very hard to hire for a startup because it's I cannot give anyone any guarantees about, well, anything. So, you know, I have been asked, can you hire full time? Like, no, not now. I have no idea if that will change. You know, things like that, which make it hard.

And I think it's also harder to hire on a contract basis versus hiring in the US at least a w two, like, kinda full time employee because people want a little more security than I can provide with a 3 month contract. That being said, I had over 30 applicants, so I I think, there's I've like I said, I interviewed a bunch of people, and and the people who have applied seemed great. I could see any of the people I interviewed today being a good fit, to be honest with you. So for me, the next step is really to figure out like, to even drill down even further in terms of what I want and what I need for this role. And so I had the basic job description that I put up on the job boards, but now I am writing a much more detailed one just to make sure that expectations are set between me and whomever I do hire.

Aaron

What job boards did you post this on?

Colleen

I posted it on, the rails job board that Chris Oliver has, the Go Rails job board. Oh, nice. But what was really surprising to me was I posted it for free, so I didn't pay to have it bumped or boosted or anything. And I started getting applicants right away. And then I also signed us up for, that rail rails devs?

Rails devs?

Aaron

Yep. I saw that.

Colleen

I signed us up for that, and that's a reverse job board. So you don't post your job. You actually reach out to independent contractors and people looking for employment. Mhmm. And so those are the only 2 channels I used, and I have had more than plenty, more than plenty.

I've had plenty of qualified applicants. Like, well, I'm a 100% sure I will be able to select someone from the people that have applied.

Aaron

Well, that's pretty great then.

Colleen

Yeah.

Aaron

For us to be able to have several people to choose from is that's kinda awesome.

Colleen

Yes. I think the next step so I've interviewed 4. I think I have 3 more. I think I asked 7 people to interview. The next step is I do want to do some kind of paid coding project, something short, something small.

I think in the past, I you know, some people like to hire really quickly and then fire really quickly if that's what works for them. I'd rather do a little more work up front to evaluate if someone is the a good fit. And so tomorrow, hopefully, I'll come up with some just kinda basic coding challenge, nothing too hard, and then I'll probably ask them to pair for an hour, and that'll be paid. Because this is someone I'm gonna be working with quite a lot, so I need to make sure that they're available to pair, that we can do that, that they communicate well, things like that.

Aaron

Yeah. That makes sense to me. And where is this person gonna slot in in terms of so you you've mentioned getting out of consulting. Is this going to be the new you at the client, or is this some other role, or how are you thinking about this?

Colleen

So my ideal would be that they're basically me, like, the new me. They do and, of course, someone has to work up to this, but they would be the person responding in Slack. They would be the person attending the meetings and giving status updates. So it's it's a interesting role because it is both very technical, because they need to be able to push code, and they need to be able to fix bugs, but, also, I need someone who can communicate well. And that's that's a lot of different skill sets.

Right? We as founders, like, we have a lot of different skill sets. And so to look for a developer who is comfortable both, like, really, really doing deep technical work and going to a meeting and giving a status update or, respond you know, working with the other developers in Slack, like, that's that's that's a very well rounded developer. And so that is ideally what I would like to find. And I think I think I can find that.

It's just, can I find that within our budget is the real I mean, that's that's the real the real question? And and the other thing that, like, I've been talking to people about is I also need someone who really executes. I don't need a deep thinker, which is kind of a funny, like, juxtaposition, because usually you wanna get the most senior person you can afford. But I'm literally telling people on these interviews. I was like, you're gonna come in, and the first thing I'm gonna ask you to do is write a set a set of integration tests, like system tests.

And so I do that so I can set the expectation that I don't want you to come in and tell me how you want to refactor. There will be no refactoring. Yeah.

Aaron

There will be be able to rewrite it from scratch. We've done that.

Colleen

There will be there will be none of that. There will be execution. So it's kind of hard to find someone I don't know. It seems like the people who have, like, the complete skill set are are a little more senior. In in my experience, those people like to take a leadership role within the code base, but I already have I already have senior I already have those kinds of people, so I just really need someone who can execute.

So, yeah, it's been a whirlwind. I mean, last time I talked to you, I wasn't even serious about hiring, and here I am interviewing people. So welcome back.

Aaron

And I miss a 110 Telegram messages while I'm on a flight, and I I land

Colleen

sure did.

Aaron

Yeah. We're doing interviews. So awesome.

Colleen

I think there really were a 110. Like, it was

Aaron

There really were. I saw them. My notification badges is

Colleen

100.

Aaron

A 110 between you, me, and somebody else. And I was like, well, seems like they had a lot to say because I was I was on an airplane. Yeah.

Colleen

I think and, you know, the conversation we had with that that person, I think also just, it, it's good to get that outside perspective sometimes because it's so easy to get, like, sucked into the weeds of tasks. I saw this tweet. I don't remember who it was, but he said, startups don't fail. They drown, like, drown.

Aaron

That's all bad.

Colleen

Yeah. You're overwhelmed with all these tasks and and figuring out I mean, this person said to us, he said, neither of you are spending the majority of your time trying to find product market fit, and that concerns me. And I was like, oh, yeah. I guess you're right.

Aaron

Yeah. So

Colleen

That's a

Aaron

good point. Yeah.

Colleen

Yeah. So that's what I've been up to. We also, while you were gone, got a really big up like, technical update, pushed to the gym, pushed the engine into the client, which was a big deal. It was our our saved filters and our our on the fly filters were actually in the same controller. So we actually separate oh, they weren't really in the same controller.

But the way the state was managed with them, it was all very closely intertwined. And so we were able to kind of we were able to separate them within the code base, which is just gonna make future stuff so much easier. And I work with the designer who came into my office. I love that he's local. That's been super fun.

Oh, cool.

Aaron

I didn't know he was local.

Colleen

Oh, you didn't? No. Yeah. He lives here. So he comes to my office, like, once a month, and we design stuff.

Aaron

Well, that rules. The one that made that incredible UI?

Colleen

Yep. That's the one.

Aaron

Wow. That's pretty cool.

Colleen

It is really cool. And so he came in, so we were able to kind of it's really fun when he comes in because we just kinda hack away at stuff. Right? We're like, what what should I don't design. Right?

He's like, what should this look like? And he can mock stuff up so fast. And so and then I can just kinda play around with, oh, like, can we use that with our architecture? Like, what would we have to change? And so it's kind of fun to just play in that space a little bit.

Yeah. So, been doing that and working with him to work towards our new, like, kind of vision for what we want filters to look like and moving forward. Just moving forward on product stuff.

Aaron

Well, that's one heck of a week.

Colleen

Oh, yeah. It was it was, like, crazy busy.

Aaron

That's good.

Colleen

Yeah. It was really fun.

Aaron

Well, hold on. I'm sorry. I missed all of the excitement. So, on my side, I've been working on that, you know, the pivot that we've talked about and getting a UI in place that can represent more clearly reporting. And I think I told you about this, but I was on a call with somebody who wanted to buy Refine, and I was showing it to him and asking him, you know, what what are you doing with it?

He's like, oh, I'm building out, you know, reporting. And I was like, oh, imagine that. And so I showed him I showed him the UI that I was working on, and I was like, this is kinda what we're working towards. And he, you know, stuck his hand out into the camera and said, this is me offering you my money. This I want this.

This is what I'm building, and I don't want to build it. I was like, Uh-huh.

Colleen

That's awesome. That's

Aaron

great. And then you were there for the other one when we were on the call with that guy the other day, and he was trying to buy Refine, and asked him why, and he was like, I'm building reporting. And I said, okay, well, look at this. And he said, yeah, this is this is what I want. Is this ready?

I was like, no, but that's great. So that's 2, you know, 2 for 2 since we've started working on, you know, reporting that people have said, I actually just want reporting. I just am doing refine to, like, build it myself. So that feels really good.

Colleen

Yeah. I think that's great. I'm excited about that. I think what was funny about that second call too is he was like, what else do people use this for? Like, isn't everyone using this for reporting?

Aaron

Yeah. He was so he was so confused. He was like, do you have other use cases for this? It's like, well, yeah. But I guess not as many.

So

Colleen

I I did have a customer call while you were gone with a rails shop, and they did want it more as an engine. I like just using that term, like, more as a layer. So they did kinda just want the component. But, yeah, overall, I think reporting is is gonna be such a good move.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see if, once the reporting thing is is live, if we sell both separately, because I could, like, I there are valid use cases for just the query builder outside of, like, this reporting interface, but I just don't know if many people clear clearly, not that many people see it that way. We'll see. Why not?

This is my my point of view.

Colleen

Well, okay. I have a proposal for you. Let's talk about reporting. Okay. You really wanna sell this as an engine that they plug into their own application, a package.

Right?

Aaron

I don't know if engine has technical terms in rails, and so I can't say for sure. But, like, yeah, something they drop into their own application. Yeah.

Colleen

So I was on a mentor call with someone experienced in product stuff last week. Uh-huh. And she made the point I think her exact words were, why would I pay a lice annual fee for something that you're just gonna give me and it's a one time thing? Have you thought about us doing a hosted version of reports?

Aaron

I have thought about it, and I have thought that that sounds terrible.

Colleen

Yeah. I just wonder about if I sell you like, even with you know, we're in our 1st year, so we'll see how renewals go. But even with the package, when you sell a package, are people gonna pay for updates? Because there aren't gonna be that many updates. It's almost like a licensing fee.

Right?

Aaron

Yeah. It's like a licensing fee. It is, you know, there are gonna I think there are gonna be a fair amount of updates, especially with especially with a reporting interface. You can continually there's a lot more surface area where you can continually add stuff.

Colleen

It's true.

Aaron

So, like, I would imagine scheduled reports would be in the first release, but if it's not, like, huge features like that can be added. And then stuff like Laravel 10 support come you know, Laravel 10 drops in in February. And so, like, ongoing maintenance updates like that, I think, I I I feel I feel fine about the the licensing fee. Where I feel terrible is doing a hosted version, because then, 1, we're competing with Metabase, which sounds real hard, and 2, then we have to navigate connectivity to their database and all of that stuff, which sounds less than ideal as well.

Colleen

Yeah. I agree with you. I don't really wanna I do not not really. I don't wanna have a hosted version. I'm just wondering

Aaron

Yeah. I also don't wanna be, uptime. Can you imagine having to worry about uptime for all that kind of stuff?

Colleen

No. No. Thank you. Yeah. I prefer not.

It'll just be interesting to see how the licensing fee thing works out.

Aaron

Totally. Yeah. Totally. I think think it'll be on us to continue to I don't know. I was gonna say it'll be on us to continue to add stuff, but I don't know.

Like, licensing fees are pretty normal.

Colleen

Yeah. Like, that's I feel like they're pretty normal. Thing. It's a common thing for for

Aaron

We'll see.

Colleen

Reasonable sized businesses.

Aaron

Yeah. That's like the that's like the Sketch model back before Figma took over everything. Sketch was like, you pay once and you get you retain access to this version forever, but we do a new version every year. Yeah. So

Colleen

Oh, no. I'm I'm We'll find out. We'll find out. I just want to see what you yeah. See what you thought about that.

Aaron

Yeah. The only the only thing I feel super strongly about this is I feel as strongly about this as you feel anti open source

Colleen

as I'm not doing a hosted version. Okay. Fair enough.

Aaron

So between the 2 of us, we've eliminated eliminated open source and hosted versions, so we don't have too many options left.

Colleen

I love it. We're building the business we want. That's exactly what we're doing. Right?

Aaron

Alright. What else? Anything?

Colleen

I I don't think so. I have been yeah, I've just been super productive the past couple weeks. I feel like I have done a really good job taking a, whatever they call it, 10,000 foot view, like stepping back from the task list and evaluating, like, is this the right thing for the business? And so I think as long as I can continue yeah. I just wanna make sure I continue to do that, like, because it's hard not to get sucked into the tasks.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. I feel the same way. It's that whole that hustle culture mindset, man. I feel like I'm just knocking stuff out.

It's awesome. Yeah. So r r I p to the anti hustle culture, but it's it's great to just work hard and get stuff done.

Colleen

I know. It is great. Right? It just feels amazing. Like, I was It

Aaron

really does.

Colleen

Before before the pod, I was reviewing my I've started doing these weekly reviews, and I was reviewing my weekly. And I was like, wow. I really crushed it last week. That's awesome. Wait.

Wait.

Aaron

Wait to go me. Way to go, Colleen. That's awesome.

Colleen

Way to go, team. I'm so gonna become that person that, like, over overoptimizes, and then I'm like, this is ridiculous. Like, so okay. So every day every day I do I, like, make myself a loose time box schedule. And so I've started, like, color coding them based on my energy levels.

Like, where's my energy level for this? I know. I know. You're building

Aaron

a second brain and notion. Oh, no.

Colleen

It's so much fun. Okay. So this is only week 1, so I don't wanna get too ambitious about it, but it's kinda neat to see, like, how my day is like, green is something I'm super pumped to do. Yellow is, and red is, like, I really don't wanna do this task. And so it's kind of fun, and it's easy.

Right? I since I already make the list, I can just right click and assign it a color. I'll let you know how it works out.

Aaron

No. You're gonna have to sell a course soon. This sounds terrible.

Colleen

Well, I was inspired to buy, what is that book? Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell.

Aaron

Oh, yeah. Somebody was talking about that recently. Right?

Colleen

Yes. In our Slack because he was on startups for the rest of us. And I'm only in chapter 3, but I have to say it is not what I expected. I it to be really, like, just work harder, and it's not like that at all. It's I mean, it's things that everyone always says, like, make your 4 quadrants.

His are a little different than the other quadrants, but it's a good exercise, I think, to go through that.

Aaron

Interesting. Yeah. I I heard good things about that. I guess we both heard them in the same place, it sounds like, but glad to hear it's good. In terms of things that are read on your second brain Notion document, how how red is dealing with attorneys?

Colleen

Oh, it's super red.

Aaron

Yeah. I thought so. Yeah. But congratulations to us. We are officially a c corp now.

Colleen

Yes. That's very exciting.

Aaron

No longer an LLC. We're a c corp, and thank you to all of the, all of the red work on your part to deal

Colleen

with all

Aaron

of those attorneys. I also that was another thing. I got back and I looked at, you know, I looked at all the emails and it was like 30 emails from attorneys, like sign this, sign this, sign this. And I just, alright. Sounds good, man.

Colleen

Yep. Yeah. There was a lot of work to get us converted, but I think we're gonna be happy we did it.

Aaron

Yeah, I think so. What a nightmare, but it's done. And, and again, I don't think starting as a C Corp would have been the right call. I feel like

Colleen

No way.

Aaron

That is a huge amount of overhead that would have just would have been way too early. So

Colleen

I totally agree. I totally agree. I think we made the right move.

Aaron

Well, I look forward to hearing more about your second brain. I'm not super surprised, because I know you do, like, don't you do big year end review with your journaling? You're, like, you're kinda you're kinda into the whole notion, like, influence thing.

Colleen

I am. I'm into it. I like it. I like to optimize.

Aaron

Yeah. Okay. Well, keep me posted if it lasts longer than a week. I would love to hear more about it.

Colleen

I know. Right? So I'm telling you about it now, but it's only day 2. So let's see if it if it goes to next week. I only started yesterday.

I was like, oh, I should I should audit my energy levels because that's the thing I need to know. Like, what do I enjoy? What do I not enjoy?

Aaron

Audit my energy levels.

Colleen

I'm sure I read that in a book.

Aaron

I'm sure that you did or from a Thinkfluencer on Twitter.

Colleen

Yes. Yes. I'm sure I did.

Aaron

Alright. Well, anything else?

Colleen

Nope. Nothing for me. Anything from your side?

Aaron

No. I don't think so. I think we can call it there.

Colleen

Alright.

Aaron

Alright. Bye, Sinclair.