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Colleen: Hello, Michelle. 

MIchele: I feel like it's been awhile.

Colleen: It has been a while. It's been a few weeks. I 

MIchele: Yeah. But like, so we haven't really liked formally talked or not formally, but, you know, but we have been like, I feel like we have been talking constantly about this podcast for the past couple of weeks at the same time.

Colleen: I would agree. There's been a lot of discussion about that. 

MIchele: And we've been meaning to do like kind of a catch-up episode for a while too. And so it kind of felt this kind of feels like a good time to sort of pause and have a little bit of a meta episode where we sort of, I guess, talk about where we've come from and why w why do we do this in the first place and, and where are we going?

Colleen: Okay. I like it. 

MIchele: So let's let's rewind. So if, if this were a fancy produced podcast, this is when you would insert harp noises. So just imagine that there's a harp playing in your head. So let's rewind back to July of 20, 20, Colleen. What were you doing in July of 2020?

Colleen: Oh, geez. Well, let's see July. So we were a couple months into the pandemic. I believe I was working a full-time job and I had a desire, a strong desire to launch a product. 

MIchele: Were you consulting full time for one client or I thought you were consulting.

Colleen: Maybe I was still, yeah. Good thing. We have

MIchele: I feel like you can 

Colleen: to. 

MIchele: I feel like I remember sometime I think it was right around when COVID was heading. And I feel like I remember standing on your, like your like porch or your steps like talking through whether you should take a job and like, yeah. Like that was like right around that time.

But, and I think you didn't. 

Colleen: I think 

MIchele: And I, 

Colleen: The first time they offered it to me, I think I said, 

MIchele: And then I think you were consulting, 

Colleen: I believe you're correct. I believe I was consulting for one client. So it was kind of that cadence of a more permanent job. But at that time I was not a quote full-time employee. I had not launched a 

MIchele: I think you're like compromise with them. Was that like you would work for them. Four days a week as a consultant, and then you would get one day a week to work on like your stuff. But actually it had been like that for a while. Like, I feel like you would have this sort of, this is my phrasing here, this like Friday fun day where you got to just like do your own projects for a while.

Colleen: Yeah. that sounds right. 

MIchele: Yeah. Yeah. But that was very much, I mean, now looking back on it, I guess that was like, The end of what I term your wandering through the forest period. Wondering. 

you know, you know, if this was, if this is frozen too, for all the parents out there, this is when your power ballad of lost in the woods is playing.

Colleen: Lost in the woods. Yes. would be my lost in the woods. Power ballad period. Indeed. Agree. 

MIchele: It was a pivotal moment. And then I think. I don't know if it was like August. Oh, so of 2020 that you were kind of on, I mean, I guess we could listen to our own show and figure this out. Again, this worry, fancy produced podcast with harp noises. We would know that and there would be a clip of it right now.

But I think it was like in August that you were like F like, I need to just. Decide, unlike one of these things. Cause like we had been meeting for a while. So like just context is like we were, we were meeting up every week for coffee for a long time. At a, so we used to live in the same place. We now live on opposite sides of the world, but we used to live in the same place, like a neighborhood over you were the only person I had ever like met in my daily life who was also doing this weird internet.

Business thing who was like in that world. And also like our kids went to the same school and we lived like two minutes from each other and it was like just perfect. Yeah. So, and then we started meeting up at a coffee shop called Northside social, which is actually how we ended up getting the name for this show.

And the show basically was, you know, I moved to Denmark to Denmark. then for us this year, you moved to California. So now we're really all over the place to keep us talking to each other, to keep those conversations happening. for a long time, we had been meeting up and you were playing around with like all of these different ideas and, and playing as like you were, you were taking it very seriously.

Like it wasn't play. There was some con like there's like a content analytics idea. I feel like, like, there's a one point. It was like, you were thinking about some sort of like, Competitor to H refs that was like for SEO consultants to like measure the value of their work. There was the, the, there was the stay at home moms doing babysitting and daycare for other the childcare thing.

And then, but like, so August of 2020, I feel like there was kind of this moment in early. Like I just gotta like pick something and go for it. And it's going to be this file upload thing, which annoys me.

Colleen: that's, that's pretty accurate. And I remember. Why was it in that stage of back to lost in the woods? It felt like every time we met, you would draw me that pain frequency graph. And, and I just, I was like, I don't know, like I just don't know where any of these ideas fall on the pain frequency graph.

So I'm going to take what feels like the smallest lift, which is a JavaScript widget, right. Something I feel like I can make in a constrained period of time. And I'm just going to do. I'm going to do everything wrong, but I'm just going to do it.

MIchele: And then you did it and then so 

Colleen: yeah, But we launched the podcast before I had a product. So part of the McColl was like, oh man, now I'm telling the world about this. So I better freaking do it like a podcast with never having launched a product would not be. 

MIchele: And so then last fall to goes through. You building it and balancing that with consulting and with parenting too, was all of the like, cause I guess your kids were in school, like part like the whole co COVID

school, like 

Colleen: some COVID school, situation. 

MIchele: And then, I think it was, was it December that simple file upload.

I remember you gave me that you gave me like a walkthrough of it in like September or October of last year, but then it was available in the Heroku marketplace and alpha in like October or so November. And then it went into beta in November, December, right? 

Colleen: Betas when you can start charging. Oh no. You're right. Cause You have to do out. No, 

MIchele: had to get like a. 

Colleen: So you have to do alpha and then you have to do beta. 

MIchele: it's like one thing where you had to get like 10 people, then...