What to Work On Next

Colleen Schnettler  0:00 
This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Balsamiq, makers of Balsamiq Wireframes, everyone's favorite low-fidelity wireframing tool. 

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Because they're already well known in our community, Balsamiq have decided to donate their airtime to YOU, listeners of this show, starting with the next episode.

If you want a promo code for Balsamiq, visit balsamiq.com/go/software-social/

Michele Hansen  0:43  
So as you may have just noticed, we have a sponsor now. So exciting. I mean, we, even we so we got we got reached out to you by balsalmic in October, to our official podcast email address, which I actually never checked, because I didn't expect anyone to email us and I found this email sitting there in December. And I was like, Oh my God.

Colleen Schnettler  1:10  
That's funny. I had no idea that they they did that. Yeah, I've never checked our email address either.

Michele Hansen  1:15  
We check it now.

Colleen Schnettler  1:17  
Yeah, it's really it. You know what I'm really happy it was balsamic because I do use them. And I just think it's really cool to have a sponsor. Although now my podcast about my product is making more money than my product.

Michele Hansen  1:29  
You'll get there. It's okay. I don't

Colleen Schnettler  1:32  
get there. I did have one more person sign up. stripe paid me $10 I know $10 I went That's awesome. Wait.

Michele Hansen  1:42  
We straight paid you $10? Is that the first money you've gotten for it? Yes, ma'am.

Colleen Schnettler  1:47  
It sure is.

Unknown Speaker  1:48  
That's a huge moment. Oh my gosh,

Colleen Schnettler  1:50  
it is a huge moment. It's It's exciting.

Michele Hansen  1:54  
I wish you could tape $1 bill to your terminal like

Colleen Schnettler  2:00  
I should ask like, can you like send me like $1 bill from this? tape it up on my wall.

Michele Hansen  2:07  
So this is really exciting. We're really excited to have a sponsor. But you know, this reminds me of something else, which is, it's really hard times right now in the world. Like there's, there's just no getting past that. And if you're listening to this show, you're probably interested in running a bootstrap company, or you're trying to start a side project yourself. And, and I, and I just want to say for a second how, like, yes, this is amazing. And we just got a sponsor. But I also don't want to add to this perception that sort of that I pick up sometimes it's sort of everybody else is doing well, except for oneself. Right? Like, I feel like, you know, on Twitter and everywhere else where the, the community kind of congregates. Like, we tend to share positive things more than we do. things we're struggling with. Right? Yeah. And and I've noticed in a couple of smaller communities I'm in and sort of private places. This this past couple weeks that I've seen more people saying like, Wow, it feels like everybody's killing it except for me.

Colleen Schnettler  3:16  
Yeah, I agree. I think there, there's so much when we share publicly, you know, we're protecting ourselves, and we're protecting our ego. And so we share the good things, and we don't share the challenging things. And it isn't really challenging time. And, and I agree with you, it's important to remember that things are hard. And everyone's coping with the situation differently. Like, just three days ago, I was lamenting how much I missed my full time job because it was so low stress, like it was so much easier than this. And, and you know, some of my friends were able to give me a pep talk. But I was just like, this is a terrible idea. I'm wasting my time. So So I think those emotional highs and lows are, are normal. And I think they're exacerbated right now because of external stresses.

Michele Hansen  4:01  
Absolutely. And, and so I just kind of want to say that, like, if you're finding yourself, not able to focus and are feeling like you're spinning your wheels and things aren't working, like that's okay. And you're okay. And you will be okay. And also at the same time that if you find yourself working compulsively and unable to stop working to the point of, you know, working instead of being your friends and family or things like like like that is also a trauma response in the same way that not being able to do anything is as well. And we all respond to trauma and stressors differently. And no matter how you're reacting, you're okay. And other people aren't sharing the full story of what's going on in their life. So it's not just you that struggling. Other people are too but this is not a current events podcast. It's not a mental health podcast. We're not gonna go into that too much more. But I did just want to make a note of that since I mean, like the last few weeks have been just really hard. But you do have good news, right? amidst all of this, there are somehow good things happening to which is also just mentally confusing.

Colleen Schnettler  5:21  
Yes, so I, you know, I just did mention that emotional swing I had this week, I was like, this was a terrible idea. But, um, things my signups have been pretty steady. And I did get one more customer who has signed up, put a credit card down outside of Heroku. So that makes four or five now. And I have 89 Heroku users. So anticipate being ready to start charging in the Heroku marketplace in a couple weeks. Since I'm averaging. so far. It's been about Yeah, it's pretty exciting. Like I think we're super excited. So of those 89 people or teams, I 40 have actually uploaded files. So for me, what makes it sticky is using it right. So considering how easy it is to sign up, I'm not upset. I feel like that's actually a pretty good number. I'm trying to take each week and focus on one technical thing and one marketing thing.

Unknown Speaker  6:18  
So

Colleen Schnettler  6:20  
because I'm just really struggling with like, I feel like we talked about this every week now that I've launched something is how to prioritize my time, I have to actually figure out what to charge because I'm going to be charging people. Hopefully in two weeks,

Michele Hansen  6:31  
you said you had to the stripe signups for those people who added their credit cards, but they don't have they haven't incurred a charge yet.

Colleen Schnettler  6:38  
No, they had I mean, it's $10. But some one of my friends recommended I changed, I changed the price significantly. His argument was that I'm not really a commodity, I'm acting like a commodity when I talk to you when I think of it in my head. But I'm not really a commodity, because I'm not just providing storage, I'm providing all of this architecture, around storage to help you deal with your files. Like I'm not just reselling AWS buckets, there is someone who does this, by the way. It's you know, and his point was my closest competitor is charging $89. So I should have he his su...