The Calls are Happening

Aaron

Okay. Colleen, you you're telling me that you're excited about life. So tell me why you're excited about life today.

Colleen

I'm just feeling great. Like, I feel so optimistic. And after that so we had a customer interview last week, and it went so well.

Aaron

It did go well.

Colleen

I mean

Aaron

I I will agree with that. That went really well. And it was a customer interview with somebody, I guess, customer, who has already paid, which is helpful.

Colleen

I don't know.

Aaron

Like value his feedback a little bit higher.

Colleen

Like, I don't need drugs when I have dopamine from customer interviews. That's literally what I was thinking this morning as I was walking back

Aaron

from somewhere. I hope you told Michelle that.

Colleen

Yeah, Eric. I am just What

Aaron

what do you think went so well about that? Because you said that right when we got off last week. You said that went amazing.

Colleen

So I think one of the things that has been an interesting challenge is our very first Rails client, who is our enterprise client, who is basically paying me as a consultant to integrate this into their application. They are using Query Builder in all of these really amazing creative ways. But also, it wasn't really designed to be used in all these very creative ways. So they're hitting a lot of edges. And that is so great for product development because every time they hit an edge, they reach out to me and I can figure it out.

Mhmm. The person it's designed for or the the company it's designed for seemed to be a really good fit with the customer interview we had last week. What he wants to do is he wants to use it as basically a tool to build, dynamic reports. And, man, his implementation, like, I cannot wait. I'm actually, like, it'll be really soon, guys, who have already purchased it.

I can't wait to get it in these guys' apps because they're using it in the way it was designed, and I feel like it's gonna be an awesome experience. Whereas with client, they're like, we wanna do all this crazy stuff and and it's great. But also, there's never that moment of, like, pure bliss when everything just works exactly as designed at the same time.

Aaron

Right. I agree with that. His use case seemed right down the middle. Like, the things he wants to do are the reason we built this, and the way that he was talking about, like, the pains of not having Refine was super encouraging to me. Because he was like, yeah.

This is really painful, and I read your landing page and your docs, and this is the thing that will fix it, and I want it. It's like, oh, thank you. Yeah. That's great.

Colleen

Yes. So, yeah, it was just super encouraging. I loved it, and I feel really good about it.

Aaron

So what's next for him?

Colleen

As soon as we get the validations the way I want them to be, we're ready to go, man.

Aaron

Can you start without those? Like, could you start now and then tell him validations are coming in a week or 2 or 3 or 4?

Colleen

Yeah. I don't know that that's the best plan because you're gonna have to you're gonna have to I mean, maybe the problem is right now, if you forget to fill in a field, you're just gonna get stuck.

Aaron

Right.

Colleen

And you're not gonna know why unless you look at the error logs. No. But he's a developer, so he would probably look at the error logs, and then he could just send me a message and be like I can be like, this error always means this. Because I do throw an error on the server side. It's just not it's not rolled up to the front yet.

Aaron

Putting it back out to the front. Yeah. I mean, could you could you schedule a start date with him now And between now and the start date and the date that he wants to go live,

Colleen

could ship validations? Here here's my thought. So this is my my initial thought on how to approach this. So I have gotten the gem and the MPM package, pulled out a client Mhmm. And put in a clean bullet train app.

Aaron

Cool.

Colleen

So integrating it, my next step was gonna be integrated in an app I own. Like, my consulting client, this will be perfect for them. So I can smooth out some more edges. Because there's some stuff with the bullet train integration that's very bullet train specific.

Aaron

Sure.

Colleen

So that was gonna be my next step. And then once I get it on their app, then I was gonna go, to our 2 our 2 first customers that have purchased it. That was kinda my thought. I I don't think, both of those people and I can reach out to the first guy again just to confirm. They they didn't have a super hard timeline.

Like, I know they need it. Yeah. But it wasn't like I have to have it by this date. So I think the smart move is to wait until it's a lit I mean, I could. But, yeah, I would feel better if I put it in my own app first just to make sure the bullet train versus other people's application integration steps are a little bit more clear.

Aaron

Okay. I buy that. I buy that a little bit.

Colleen

I mean, I think it's fair to have this conversation again in 2 weeks, because I think there's no you're right. Everything is good besides validations. Like, you know, there's no, there's no big issues at this point. And both the guys are willing to help kind of, like, they're they're beta customers. Right?

Like, they're willing they're they're in it. They're excited. They're willing to help work on those rough edges. So I guess I could.

Aaron

Yeah. So here here's here's my pushing.

Colleen

Okay. Tell me.

Aaron

It's obviously transparent that I'm pushing you to do it now versus later. But here's here's what I'm thinking. These guys have signed up for beta. They're friendly. They love you.

They love us. They wanna help. I feel like we could start as soon as your schedule allows

Colleen

Yeah.

Aaron

And learn probably a ton more from them than you implementing it in your own app. Because you implementing it in your app, you're gonna see maybe a little bit of stuff, but it's the same perspective. Like, it's you again versus an outsider looking at it and saying, oh, this doesn't make any sense. Where in your head, it does make sense. You know?

Colleen

Yeah. I'm kind of

Aaron

And I think, I think, like, it's gonna take a little bit of time to implement. And I think once there's somebody using it, validations are gonna come a lot faster because they're gonna say, alright. I'm using it. I'm ready to ship it I'm ready to, you know, push it to production, but I can't do that until we have validations. And you're gonna be like, okay.

I can because I don't I really don't think validations will take that long. I just don't wanna wait. I don't want it to be like an artificial hang up. You know what I mean?

Colleen

Yep. No. I totally get it. And I am open to this plan.

Aaron

K.

Colleen

Yeah. I'm open to I'm open to scheduling a date with them to, like, get get started. That's Yeah.

Aaron

And you can

Colleen

That seems reasonable.

Aaron

I think that's a good first step even if the date the start date is, like, a week or 2 out or 2 or 3 out.

Colleen

Yeah. Just to pick a date on their calendar. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good idea.

I am open to that idea. Yeah. No. I'm not open to it. I'm gonna do it.

I like it. Okay. Let's do that.

Aaron

That was wishy washy. I was gonna Nope.

Colleen

It was. Yeah. That's see what that meant. No. No.

I'm looking

Aaron

at anything.

Colleen

I'm looking at my calendar. Yeah. I'll reach out to them and get a date probably end of June. It's probably 2 or 3 weeks. 2 weeks.

And, you're right. I mean, they're both Rails developers too. So Yeah. It'll be great to figure out, like, those sticky edges that as they perceive it as well.

Aaron

Right.

Colleen

Mhmm.

Aaron

Yeah. Okay.

Colleen

Yeah. Okay.

Aaron

That's exciting.

Colleen

That's exciting. I'm gonna write that down, actually. Schedule. Yeah. And so in other, like, really good news for us, but, like, a little scary personally, is I was having a conversation with our contact over at the client.

And, originally, we had talked about the original plan was we had talked about, like, pulling me in and having me basically be super in their app and be the filter person for every section of their app. And I think as as we have mentioned, their app is huge.

Aaron

Huge. Like, 50 engineers working on it right

Colleen

now. Engineers working on it. So what was happening is I didn't have any time to work on the product because, I I mean, I will I will just wake up, because I'm on the West Coast, all these DMs from the different teams. Right? So I don't even have context, and I told you they're trying to use they're doing all kinds of cool, crazy stuff with it, but, again, kind of outside of the scope of how it was originally defined.

So it felt a lot like people were just throwing stuff at me from all these different teams and and the complicated way they were using the filter. So every time, it was, like, trying to get contacts with, like, long, you know, calls, and I didn't have any time to actually work on the product and make it better.

Aaron

Bummer.

Colleen

So, talking to our guy yesterday, we think we're gonna kinda change that strategy a little bit. K. And, yeah, it's good. We're gonna change that strategy and instead pull me out a little more so I have time to work on the upstream stuff like the documentation different ways they're using it. So they'll have people in the company that can actually the different ways they're using it.

So they'll have people in the company that can actually help all of these teams, and that person already has more context of the app. And I can actually work on the upstream stuff to, like, improve the product and get them what they need.

Aaron

Are you getting a team? Is that what's happening?

Colleen

I mean, like, kind of.

Aaron

I mean, you are.

Colleen

Yeah. Yeah. And it's gonna be great because it's gonna I'm super excited. Like, I just think this is the right move just because, like, I think you and I even talked the other day about one of the teams, like, trying to do something with query builder. And I was, like, it just doesn't feel right.

But I don't have enough context on what you're doing to to advise you on what you should be doing instead. Mhmm. So yeah. So we're basically I guess, like, I'll get my little team. They're basically gonna funnel up to Yeah.

Aaron

That's amazing.

Colleen

Yeah. It's gonna be great because then I'll just have a few points of contact, people that are gonna get trained up. And it will this is gonna be really good in 2 ways, Aaron. It's gonna be really good because it's gonna enable me to focus on the product more and the documentation, which, is super important. I mean, we need more documentation.

And it's gonna eventually make it easier for me to extract myself.

Aaron

Of course. Yeah. You're no longer the only person who holds the knowledge.

Colleen

Right. Like, when they were pulling me in, it was just I I mean, and they they're asking me all the like like any SQL question comes up, it feels like they they're like, Colleen, where did this query come from? I'm like, we did not make that query.

Aaron

Yeah. I know that we didn't write that.

Colleen

I know I didn't write that query. I don't know where it came from, but it wasn't me. It wasn't the query builder. Mhmm. But you know, they're pulling me into that and every time and I get it because they're like, oh, this is a weird query.

Like, the query builder build this?

Aaron

Right. Yeah.

Colleen

And I totally get why they're doing that. But then it it's it's so much of my time because I'm like, I know I didn't do that, but let me try and help you figure out like what is going on here. Because someone built somewhere, it got built. So this is good. So

Aaron

This is great.

Colleen

Yeah. It's really good. It's it's gonna be really good. I think it's the right move. It's gonna you know, I was worried with getting pulled in.

I was like, it will be so hard to extract myself. So it's a little scary because it's nice to just get a consistent paycheck and know I can work 40 hours a week, etcetera, etcetera. But this is what I wanna do. So it's good.

Aaron

Well, congratulations. Did you push for that or did he come to you with that?

Colleen

No. He came to me with that, like, totally independent.

Aaron

Amazing.

Colleen

I know. It's like, great.

Aaron

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Well, congratulations. I see why you're so excited.

Colleen

Yeah, man. Feeling good.

Aaron

Yeah. That's great. When does that start? Do you know?

Colleen

I don't know exactly. We're just we're just working out the details of of how we wanna do that. And we're still having a lot of meetings with their teams to kind of, you know, figure out how we can facilitate it. But I think it's gonna be really good.

Aaron

Good. Right on time too.

Colleen

Yes. Indeed.

Aaron

Because it's hard to hard to scale up sales if you don't have any time to even think about the product.

Colleen

Right. I can't even work on the product. Yeah. Oh, man. Okay.

So that's all my good news. So I'm feeling good. Things are good over here.

Aaron

Good. My turn.

Colleen

Your turn. Tell me.

Aaron

I'm feeling pretty good.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

I'm so I've been working pretty hard on the front ends. Yes. I'm excited. Okay. View 23.

So I spent all weekend this weekend, this past weekend working on them, and then stayed up super late last night working on them again. And I feel really good about them.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

They are they are complete. There's nothing I mean, they're they're I still need to write tests, but I'm not worrying about that right now. They are functionally complete, and I think more importantly, I feel like I understand them. So if so if something goes wrong, which something will, there will be bugs, I'll be able to fix them more confidently. So I spent a ton of time just battling with JavaScript packaging and, like, all the renderless components and stuff.

So it wasn't, like, it wasn't super fun, but in a way, it was very fulfilling because I feel like this has been such a roadblock for us.

Colleen

Yes.

Aaron

And it's, like, it's hardcore it's hardcore programming. I you know, tracking all of this state throughout these renderless components and injections and all of that. It's been it's been it's been kinda hard. This is also not my area of expertise. So that has compounded it.

But we're at a spot now where last night, I wrote a little script to release, dev versions to NPM. And so I can release a dev version, hop to a fresh Laravel app, and NPM install the front end and composer install the back end, and it just works. And so

Colleen

That's amazing.

Aaron

I know. I have the app set up down. So when people are using Vue, I can tell them, like, you know, how to get it all set up and how to plug it into their app. And so that feels great. That's really, really I feel like huge progress.

And so on Thursday, I'm meeting with Neil, to get it into his app. So we have the first he's been using it, in his, back office using Nova. He's been just using, the Nova plug in. But the the reason he originally bought it was for his front end. Like, he needs it for his users.

Colleen

Okay.

Aaron

And I think he and Sean worked on getting it in his app a long time ago and then ran into all of the customization things. And that's what led us down this horrible road of, like, customizing the front ends, because he got it installed in his app, and it just it looked it stuck out like a sore thumb. So now after, you know, talking to customers and figuring out what they need, we have these customizable front ends, and so I'll be meeting with him on Thursday to get it going in his app. And, hopefully, that will be the first of many who can, like, get it installed, not in Nova Yeah. And customize it to their heart's content.

So

Colleen

So after your meeting with Neil, will you be ready will we be ready to start selling it to our Laravel friends?

Aaron

Mhmm.

Colleen

Yes. That's so exciting.

Aaron

Yep. Yeah. I I mean yeah. I I think, you know, to turn it back around on myself, I think we're ready now. I mean, it just so happens that a meeting with Neil in 2 days.

So what's the point? But, yeah, we're we're ready now. And so I could start

Colleen

You could start DM ing people and telling them we're ready.

Aaron

DM ing people and emailing people

Colleen

Okay. And

Aaron

telling them we're ready. If I'm

Colleen

gonna set a start date, then I want you to do that. At least

Aaron

No. No. No. No. This only flows one way.

Nope.

Colleen

I used to tell you what to do. At least 2 people before Friday. Deal? And try to set up a call.

Aaron

What's what's what oh, try to set up a call. Okay.

Colleen

Yeah. I would just I would just like, people that have expressed interest. I'd be like, it's ready. Let's set up a call and, like, do it, I guess.

Aaron

K.

Colleen

Okay. 2 people.

Aaron

2 people before Friday.

Colleen

2 people before Friday? Okay. Cool.

Aaron

Yeah. So I think this is progress.

Colleen

Oh, it's definitely progress. There's nothing to think about.

Aaron

It's okay.

Colleen

Sure progress. It's amazing progress, Aaron.

Aaron

Yeah. It is. It doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like, I don't feel like a sense of euphoria. I think that will that will happen once people actually start using it.

Colleen

Yeah.

Aaron

I think we've just been here for so long that it I don't wanna get my hopes up. But this does feel different because there are no there are no, well, we need to do one more thing. Like, there's nothing else.

Colleen

Yeah.

Aaron

I know it's not perfect, which is fine, but I know that it's functional, which is the only thing that really matters. So

Colleen

Awesome. So I was I was talking to my friend, Chris, and I was making this analogy. Have you seen Lord of the Rings?

Aaron

Yes.

Colleen

Okay. What's the little Hobbit guy's name? I forget. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Photo.

So, you know from the beginning of this epic 3 and a half hour movie it's really 9 hours because there's 3 movies.

Aaron

True.

Colleen

You know he's gonna get the ring to Mordor. Like, we all know it. But watching him, you're just like, it's so freaking hard.

Aaron

It's so freaking hard.

Colleen

And that I was like, that's what I was saying. I was like, I feel like that's me and Aaron. Like, I know we're gonna get there, but that does not mean it's easy. No. Like, it still feels really, really hard, and there's still so many points where we can get knocked down.

But I know we're going to get there.

Aaron

I know we're going to get there but boy. Right? Why does it feel hard? Yeah.

Colleen

Oh, man. Oh, well, that's awesome news. Okay. That's super good. Do okay.

Do we need to talk about how we're gonna name this thing and set up our website? You think that is value added? Because we have gotten a lot of feedback on that.

Aaron

Yes. We can talk about that.

Colleen

Let's talk about that. So do we need to switch domains?

Aaron

I don't know, Colleen. Here's the thing. I so the vibe that I've gotten from, Michelle on software social is Hammerstone is an insane name, which fine. I'm I'm open to that.

Colleen

Dude, she's totally the vibe.

Aaron

She hates it. She hates it. That's fine. I'm not tied to that. The thing that confuses me is, like, having a product.

The thing that confuses me is that people are confused that a company can be named one thing and a product can be named another thing.

Colleen

Yes. People are clearly confused.

Aaron

I'm totally open to that being our fault and not, like, differentiating the 2. I'm open to that possibility. But the thing that confuses me is, like, why don't you name the company Refine? Well, Refine is the name of the product, and we've got, admittedly, the other, you know, products are all open source.

Colleen

Right. Under the hammer stone.

Aaron

But yeah. I I don't know. So what what are your thoughts?

Colleen

So I think before Postmark was sold, most people didn't even know Postmark was owned by Wild Bit. Right? Because it was like complete, complete independent branding. And I totally see the appeal of that. However, something that was interesting that happened in our customer interview last week is he casually mentioned how he found Torchlight, and then he realized that Refine was made by the and he loved it was made by the same people that made Torchlight, which was part of your original hypothesis that quality software under the brand is gonna make a difference.

I don't know enough about SEO to know, honestly. Like, it's not like we can bomb.

Aaron

I think yeah. I feel like that's jumping the gun. The problem that we're trying to address is people seem confused. I Yes. So Just to set just to set the expectations.

We're not gonna do anything about this for a little while.

Colleen

Yeah.

Aaron

Like, this is a total distraction for

Colleen

From what we're trying to do right now.

Aaron

The next 2 months for sure.

Colleen

I know. I don't feel I do think I don't feel confused either. I do feel like we need to be consistent in what we call it. So if we're gonna say, like, we could just stop using the term hammer I mean, I don't know. I don't have an answer.

I don't think we need to hustle to switch domains, though. I don't think No. What? No. No.

No. I mean, we can't I'm

Aaron

not doing that.

Colleen

It's not like refine is available as a domain. Right?

Aaron

And No. Actually, I did you know, I say I'm not doing that. I did look to see what domain domains are available. Nothing stuck out to me.

Colleen

I do see the, idea of, like, branding each. Hey. We can get refine rails.com for $9 a year.

Aaron

Well, we could until you set it on the podcast and someone snatched it from us.

Colleen

Nope. I'm gonna buy it right now. Watch me.

Aaron

Okay.

Colleen

I'm buying it on the podcast. Refine dash rails.com. Yeah. I'm just gonna book it.

Aaron

Dash rails. Oh.

Colleen

No? I don't love a dash. I don't. What? You want it to be one word?

Refine rails?

Aaron

Because then you gotta say refined dash rails.

Colleen

Oh, no. It's refined dash rails.com. Oh, did you go to refined dash rails? Weirdo. Hate that.

That's terrible. You feel really strongly. Yeah. I hate that. That's awful.

Refine rails. Whoop.

Aaron

Buy both. Okay. Refine and then dash rails.

Colleen

Anyway, I I think, like, maybe in the future, I'm moving away from my mic. I think maybe in the future, it makes sense to brand each product. So, like, to link I I get, like, refine rails, refine Laravel. That might make sense, but I don't think I don't know. I get I I don't I'm confused by the confusion, I think.

Aaron

I am too.

Colleen

Okay. Alright. So no action there. Just something to kinda think about as we continue to work on the website. Someone owns Refine Rails.

Jerks. Sorry. Should I get the dot org? No. Okay.

Anyway, distraction. Yeah. I feel like this is a distraction right now. And as we continue to iterate on the website and talk to more people, we can keep this in the back of our minds, but I don't feel like we need

Aaron

to take It's 100% not worth doing.

Colleen

Yeah. It's it's not

Aaron

right now.

Colleen

I feel, what do we need to do now? Okay. So we just need to do the sales. Think the sales That's

Aaron

the only thing we need

Colleen

to focus. That's what we need to focus on, talking to the customers and the sales.

Aaron

And I think Every yeah. Everything else is a distraction. We have a new landing page up, which hooray. We did it.

Colleen

Oh, man. I'm so proud of us. I'm not gonna lie. I'm so proud of that web page.

Aaron

And there are perhaps messaging things to fix there, but we it's, like, 5 times better than the old page. I think clearly communicates what the thing is. Is it targeting the right buyer in the right scenario? Maybe. I don't really know.

You know, the first customer interview we had, the guy was like, oh, yeah. That's totally spoke to me. And, actually, Keith DM'd me this morning. I was like, hey. Do you have a new hammer stone page up?

That is amazing. I love that.

Colleen

Nice.

Aaron

So point being, we have something that's better than it was, and it's good enough for now. And I think we can optimize that later after we learn from a bunch of people, like, what their use case is. I think we can write copy that's more targeted to that use

Colleen

case. I agree. I think forward customer interviews, product sell sales, like, this is the right path. Anything else? Anything else?

No. Nope. Okay.

Aaron

We'll cut it there.