We didn't break up!

Aaron

Hello, Colleen.

Colleen

Hey, Aaron.

Aaron

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

Yep. That was funny. I got a couple of DM's about that. People were like, what? What's going on?

It's like you have to listen to the whole episode.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Keep going. Yeah.

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.

So seems like, people love the drama, but here we are, much less drama filled this week.

Colleen

That's right. All execution this week.

Aaron

Yeah. You're free now. So what the heck have you been doing? You're just, like, walking on the beach every day?

Colleen

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.

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

Good. I was I thought that's what was coming, but yes, that's that's good to hear.

Colleen

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

I am so happy for you.

Colleen

Meanwhile, you're out there at 5 AM.

Aaron

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.

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

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.

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.

So for my 1st week of deep dive, I've actually been doing quite a bit of cold outreach. And

Aaron

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

I talked on the phone to 2 humans that I have never met, never talked to, never interacted with in my life.

Aaron

Incredible. Incredible. Just from a from a LinkedIn DM.

Colleen

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.

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

session. That is so shady. I love it. That's amazing.

Colleen

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.

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

Mhmm.

Colleen

And I had a phenomenal response rate on LinkedIn.

Aaron

God. That just blows my mind.

Colleen

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

Love it. A 100 people that This is context I understand. Talk to me more about Taylor Otwell. Yes. Keep going.

Colleen

Taylor Otwell tweets about his car, and you can't knock it.

Aaron

But he tweets

Colleen

I see those sometimes, and I'm like, wait. This guy

Aaron

They're so yeah. This guy for real. Yeah. They're awesome. Alright.

So he he tweets about Laravel.

Colleen

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.

Right?

Aaron

Right.

Colleen

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.

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

That is so many people.

Colleen

It's so many people. Like, I wish

Aaron

I am I am shocked by that number 50%. That is shocking to me.

Colleen

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

Weird.

Colleen

The LinkedIn Connect. Yeah.

Aaron

These LinkedIn people, man.

Colleen

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.

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

Totally. Like,

Colleen

maybe they're a great target because no one is selling to them.

Aaron

Yeah.

Colleen

I was like, yeah, maybe. Yeah.

Aaron

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.

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

Right. I'm not in sales. I'm not a recruiter.

Aaron

Yeah. Yeah. That's true.

Colleen

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.

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

Mhmm.

Colleen

Can I ask you a few questions about what you do in a day? Like, I think that was my opening cold message.

Aaron

It's a pretty good message.

Colleen

Thanks. I'm getting better at it.

Aaron

Yeah. That's a pretty good that's that's pretty compelling.

Colleen

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

Yeah. It's like 30 to 50 words.

Colleen

Yeah. I mean so I tend to be very verbose in my writing. This tool is not

Aaron

Only only in your writing, though.

Colleen

There's a reason I had multiple podcasts.

Aaron

Yeah. Exactly.

Colleen

Got a lot to say. So this tool was basically like, yeah, you need to cut out, like, 80%.

Aaron

Most of it.

Colleen

Most of it. So that super helped to run it through the tool, because the tool was just like, nah. Try again.

Aaron

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

It was incredibly cool. I am excited, and I'm learning a lot.

Aaron

Yeah. So you got on a call with 1 of them.

Colleen

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.

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.

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

And did he feed the pain point back to you unprompted? Did he say exactly No. No? Okay.

Colleen

No. His pain point so I think we've said on here, like, we're focusing on internal reporting for teams.

Aaron

Mhmm.

Colleen

And his pain point was still external facing reporting for customers.

Aaron

Got it. Okay. Oh, that's right. Because they ended up embedding some stuff. Yeah.

Colleen

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

I can I can do that? I can do iframe.

Colleen

Do that this day.

Aaron

I can

Colleen

figure that out,

Aaron

I think.

Colleen

I'm confident we could figure that out, like, in a day. Like, it was just it was funny.

Aaron

Don't widen the scope on me, though, please. I'm barely barely hanging on as it is.

Colleen

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

Yeah.

Colleen

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

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.

So why are we not saying the new name, the new product, all of that? Just so our our 5 friends understand.

Colleen

You said we had 8 friends at the beginning of the

Aaron

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

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

very good domain. I'm very happy with it.

Colleen

I'm very happy with it.

Aaron

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

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

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

Yeah. Yeah. So not intentionally being coy. Just don't want to. You know, we're still maybe a day up.

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

What else? Anything else on your side?

Colleen

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

Mhmm.

Colleen

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

I know.

Colleen

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

Right.

Colleen

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

Yeah.

Colleen

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.

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

Yes.

Colleen

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.

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

Yeah.

Colleen

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

It is a lot of talking.

Aaron

Yeah. So anything else on your side? Nope. Okay. So I thought myself in a circle, as I mentioned.

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.

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.

And so one morning, I think it was maybe was it yesterday that we talked?

Colleen

I think it was yesterday.

Aaron

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.

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.

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

Yeah. Well, that's why we have each other.

Aaron

Yeah. We're not usually down at the same time, which is helpful. Sometimes

Colleen

more. Sometimes, but

Aaron

That is fantastic.

Colleen

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.

It's like, oh, is this the right thing?

Aaron

Yeah.

Colleen

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

Yeah. That's

Colleen

Super awesome.

Aaron

Bad. Yeah. That's actually pretty good. So beyond that, I have been building some stuff, because that didn't last terribly long. Yeah.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

I'm

Colleen

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?

So I did the first few people That's

Aaron

the point. Yeah.

Colleen

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

It does feel like the dish, doesn't it?

Colleen

Does feel now that it's May 4th, I'm like, oh,

Aaron

yeah. Yeah.

Colleen

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.

I think we can do it. I think we can do it. I think

Aaron

we can do it.

Colleen

I think we can do it. Yeah. I think we

Aaron

can do it. I think, I think it's gonna be dramatically easier once we have something people can play with.

Colleen

I do too. I think that's gonna make a huge difference.

Aaron

So that's on me.

Colleen

Yeah. But we'll get there. Yeah. I think we'll get there. Like, I think I feel good about it.

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.

Right? So I spent last week really, really deep in outbound, outbound, outbound, and then I was like, we don't even have

Aaron

a site. We don't even have a way to get inbound right now. Mhmm.

Colleen

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

Yeah. Yeah. Inbound is way better. It's also way easier.

Colleen

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

It's not really.

Colleen

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

Right.

Colleen

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

Right.

Colleen

Yeah. I mean, we have

Aaron

We're right in the middle of it, man.

Colleen

Yeah. We are. We have people on our mailing list,

Aaron

but We do. I forget we do have that mailing list.

Colleen

We do have I was I was in Mailchimp yesterday, and I was looking at it.

Aaron

We should send them a bunch of email.

Colleen

Maybe. Let me do it. I should be pulling from that list.

Aaron

Yeah. For sure.

Colleen

That's why I'm gonna, like, do that today.

Aaron

Yeah.

Colleen

I

Aaron

should be pulling geniuses. No one can stop us.

Colleen

We're on fire.

Aaron

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

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.

It's just customer's product.

Aaron

Alright. Well, anything else we need to cover?

Colleen

I don't think so. I think I'm good.

Aaron

I think I'm good too. Okay. We'll give this one a real clickbaity title to make up for

Colleen

our I know to make up

Aaron

for my feed. Foibles last time. Yeah. Alright. I'll talk to you later.