Software Social

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Follow Anna: https://twitter.com/skulegirlThis episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

Nate's website: speedshop.coThis episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

List of Ukrainian indie businesses/OSS contributors/creators to support: https://ukrainianweb.biz/ Donate to World Central Kitchen: https://donate.wck.org/ and let Michele know your donation is part of her matching campaign ([email protected])This is intended as *additional* help in addition to the many other places to donate to help Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, rather than instead of those efforts.Michele Hansen  0:00  Hey, everyone, it's Michele here with a, yeah, I guess a special message on the Ukraine situation. So, like everyone around the world, we have been horrified by what is going on there, and trying to do whatever we can to help. And so I just wanted to update you on two really quick things that that are ways that you can help as well. So the first one is, is pulling together a list of Ukrainian indie businesses. As we know, there's a lot of developers and designers and people in our community, not not not just in our sort of global human community, but really in our world and our community in Ukraine, and want to want to support them as much as we can. And so pulling together a list on Twitter, but also my friend, Matt Nunogawa, he turned this into a website now. So you can go to Ukrainian web dot biz, and you can see a list of all of these businesses created and run by Ukrainians. Everything from a, you know, open source contributors to figma icons to morning pages app, coming soon pages, builder, databases, test management systems, Mac utilities, like clean my Mac, data for SEO purposes. There's also a personal finance money tracker app called Five Cents, which the story of that one just really hit me particularly hard, because the the developer just launched it a month ago. And he posted an update on the other day that saying that, you know, his his his feed for the last month is all sort of our normal, you know, building public kind of updates when we've just launched something. And then he said that he had to stop working on it and spend his time trying to keep his family safe from the attacks. So, um, lots of good businesses here. I hope we can all help support them. And so that's Ukrainian web dot biz, but also if you if you have friends in Ukraine, I mean, so many of us have staff and contractors and everything else. And friends in Ukraine. So if you know if people who are creators are running a SAS are infoproducts, open source, you know what, whatever, right? Like, you know, definitely just reply to the tweet, and let's build that list. The other thing is that so we on on behalf of Geocodio, we are are trying to raise $20,000 for World Central Kitchen. And so we will donate $10,000, we'll match $10,000. We've already donated $1,000. So this is on top of that, we're going to donate that $10,000 no matter what, but we would really love to make it more. And I'd love for you to help with that. Even if it's like five or $10 that that helps. Right World Central Kitchen is an amazing, nonprofit run by Chef Jose Andres who is a proud son of Washington, DC where I used to live, who goes around the world whenever there is a crisis to feed people. And his organization is truly wonderful. I volunteered with it myself during the US federal government shutdown couple of years ago when government employees you know, weren't getting paychecks and we're feeding them and so I've seen from my own eyes how wonderful giving of an organization it is, but also how well run it is. And Jose Andres himself is on the Polish border feeding people who are coming across. Of course, there's many other ways to help as well. So I say this not as you should only help these efforts, but these are in addition to whatever else you might be doing. And yeah, so I hope you can help whether that's UkrainianWeb.biz or donating the World Central Kitchen and sending me receipts. But also, if you have people in Ukraine that you're supporting your I know, Harris Kenny, for example of IntroCRM. He has a staff member in Ukraine who is working with a group to buy groceries for people in Kyiv that you can also reach out to him about, but like if you know of efforts going on please let me know happy to use whatever platform we have to, to share that and and try to help people. So we'll be back to our normal programming this week. And sorry, next week. And yeah, thank you. Thank you for thank you for helping. Slava Ukraine.

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Flightcontrol. You can save up to 80% of your hosting costs by switching to Flightcontrol. Flightcontrol is a new deployment platform by the creator of Blitz.js that solves the age-old Heroku vs AWS tradeoff by bringing the Heroku-style developer experience natively to AWS. The beauty of Flightcontrol is that it doesn’t require any AWS skills, but since it deploys to your AWS account, you have the ability to inspect and tweak anything should the need arise. Flightcontrol works with any language or framework. It supports servers, static sites, and databases. Sign up at Flightcontrol.dev and use the code SoftwareSocial to get 20% off your first 3 months.

Follow Arvid: https://twitter.com/arvidkahlArvid's Twitter course: https://www.findyourfollowing.com/This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.

Read the post Jesse mentions about his daughter Leia: https://jessehanley.com/blog/2021Follow Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessethanleyCheck out Bento: https://bentonow.com/This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.Michele Hansen  0:03  Hey, welcome back to software social.Hey, everyone, just a quick note before today's episode. So today's episode is a continuation of the conversation that I had with Jesse last week. And it's quite a bit heavier than our episodes normally are. And I want to give you a heads up in case this is a sensitive topic for you. So as many of you may know, from following Jessie on Twitter, his first daughter was born last year, and she was born with trisomy 13, which is a usually fatal condition. And his daughter died soon after being born. And so we, we talked about that in any episode. And what it's like to be a founder throughout all of that. And I mean, it's, it's, it's certainly not a topic that we normally talk about here. But I think it's an it's an important one and in many ways I feel like this is maybe the most important episode we've ever done. Because you know, we are business people and but we are we are people right like all of those things are happening at the same time. And and people don't really talk about death nevermind death of a child. And so I feel like this is this is really important to talk about. At the same time. I also want to stress that it was fully Jesse's decision to talk about this, we. So we actually didn't plan out last week's episode. Colleen was sick, and I was supposed to be talking to a guest and they ended up having to reschedule which is totally fine. But then I needed somebody else to come on and had to record that day. And I was like, who I wanted to have on that is online right now. And reach out to Jesse and so he hopped on with 20 minutes notice, and he had published a blog post about this about a month back, but I wanted to leave it entirely up to him whether we talked about his daughter, Leah, and it didn't end up coming up in that conversation we had and it was really fun conversation. And then we kind of you know, we stopped recording and then Jesse was like, You know what, let's but let's talk about it. So, so that's what we dive into. And, and it was also important to to you know, Jesse and I talked about whether we should publish this episode and how we should publish it. And so it's important to him that there be this sort of content warning in advance knowing that many people do struggle with infertility and miscarriage and and the loss of a child. And it's also extremely important to me, I think, to both of us really to show that it's okay to be open about that. And that if you are open about it, you'll receive compassion and that it's okay to talk about it. So without further ado, here is the second part of my conversation with Jesse. You may remember we've recently had Jesse on talking about his incredibly fascinating background as a bodybuilder turn marketer turned developer who now runs a SAS called bento and lives in Japan and is if you missed that episode, go listen to it. It was so fun for me and so fascinating. He's incredible founder.But something really struck me from that conversation was how his life for the past like seven or eight years has just been a series of changing major stresses from working at the small company to moving abroad and starting an agency and then having to scale it down and then scaling it up and starting bento and everything else so much else going on. And so I have Jesse with us again today. And we're going to talk about we're like the personal sideJesse Hanley  5:30  of all of that. So welcome back, Jesse. Thanks. Good to come back.like that thread, the yeah, there, there is a lot of stresses, I think, especially towards like the end of last year,which we can go into last year, they had has been a pattern of that, there's also been a pattern of me, putting myself in those stresses or overreaching a lot. And then kind of, I don't know, not burning out, maybe burning out. But kind of like reaching the end of like, whatever amount of gas that I had in me for whatever that venture was, and then just trying to, you know, regain myself take a breather, and then kind of go back out there and overreach again, and I still don't really know. Maybe we can dig into it on this a little bit. But I still don't know really where that comes from. Basically, it's been present, I think, since after after school, you know, even like during the bodybuilding shows and stuff, that was a pretty insane thing to do at 1818. I think 19 was when I stepped on stage. But yeah, it's been, it's been interesting, but it's definitely been a pattern. It's been a pattern of constantly putting myself in, like difficult situations, burning out trying again, so a lot of stresses.Michele Hansen  6:56  It seems like you're either running like full health, like sprinting, or resting. Yes, that's exactly new. There's two Jessi modes. And most of those, it seems like have been sort of like work related. But but if you want to sort of start with it, I guess the end of last year, you had a major personal stress.Jesse Hanley  7:23  Yeah, around the star Molossia. Things were looking pretty, pretty great. Bento was like Stein to come into itself, the product was developing in a really good direction, like, we haven't really found in quite like product market fit. But the direction was going in a way where like, you're starting to click with people, mainly, we're going down the marketing automation route, which people are really excited about. And I felt my skills are getting better and like so from that business perspective, things are going good in terms of the agency, things are also going really good at that we like survived the pandemic. And we grew actually quite significantly over the pandemic, which was mostly related to having really good friends and people like, yeah, just basically doing all my work online as well, because all of our clients are either an E commerce or they're an affiliate. So as those industries boomed, we basically kept hiring writers to support those businesses. So that was pretty good. So the SATA last year, things were all looking good businesses, MRR all that stuff was nice, we're just moving into this, like, beautiful two story house in South Japan, right in the city, which, if you've been to Japan, or you know much about Japan, it's hard to find housing like we do. And the amazing thing was because the place was on the market for a bit, just because during COVID, or even the year before COVID, people weren't really moving. It's quite expensive to move in Japan. I think like all that for us to move from our apartment to this house. It was like, over over $10,000 that you don't really see back and that's just like key money and a whole bunch of stuff. So it's it's expensive. And but we did it we found this like beautiful house. It has a garden so like our dog and our cat. But don't tell the landlord like a dog and cat can li...

Follow Jesse: https://twitter.com/jessethanleyCheck out Bento: https://bentonow.com/This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPTMichele Hansen  0:00  Hey everyone, I'm so excited. I have our friend Jesse Hanley from bento here with us today. Good, bro. So, Jesse, you have, you're such an interesting founder. So you were a digital nomad for a long time as a marketer, right? Um, and for the past four years, you have been running bento, which is like, it's like email automation, like, kind of like you like compete with like, drip, right?Jesse Hanley  0:31  Yeah, I mean, the easiest comparison for most people is like, customer IO and drip, those type of tools. But we've got a good product suite that also serves e comm. So if people are in E commerce, then there's another tool called Klaviyo. So kinda like a put ourselves in the middle of those two tools. But yeah, it's it's interesting bento has also been kind of like my passion project over the past like four years, which we can like, dig into a bit. But it's been all the things that I've wanted, as I've been working in marketing, and I just kind of like built the tools myself. Put them in a nice little package. And then yeah, no, I just flog them online.Michele Hansen  1:06  Yeah. Love that. So. So you were a nomad for a long time as a marketer, running this agency. And then you put down roots in Japan. Like last year, two years ago,Jesse Hanley  1:20  whenever a little bit before COVID. Like I, yeah, I made the decision to settle in, I met a friend down south, that friend is now my wife ran down south of Japan. And after like traveling for, I think, since 2015, or so, like, I'd spent half a year in Asia, half the year in Europe. And I was running all my stuff. And honestly, it's just it's not efficient. It's like quite a romantic lifestyle, because you're leaving out of hotels, and you're seeing cool parts of the world. But it's very fatiguing. And I think as my business is just starting to like kind of kick up just before COVID or the year before COVID. I, when I got the offer to move into this friend's apartment, I kind of just took it and it just felt like the right move at the time. And then then yeah, then the world shut down. Definitely was the right move, they're going to be locked in in Japan, because Japan is actually being quite nice during COVID to kind of like staying because I don't I love Asia, out of all the places I've been in the world. I love Asia as a region. And I really like Japan. So being kind of locked down here for the last two and a bit years is actually being quite nice.Michele Hansen  2:26  That's really interesting. I feel like there's this we kind of talked about this a little bit last week of like, there's this as you said, romantic vision of like, what being a nomad is like, and you know, for those of us who do run our own businesses, but like, have kids, that's kind of not something we I mean, I guess I do know some people who are nomads with kids, but it's a little more challenging, but like, I like I've heard that like, you know, moving from place to place, like there's all this like, mental overhead of like, you have to figure out like, where to buy groceries and where to live. And like all this kind of stuff that like living in one place, you don't really have to think about like, like, how was your experience of that. Um,Jesse Hanley  3:08  I mean, that's kind of like some of those problems like all the romantic problems. So like, not knowing where groceries are is like a fun Saturday adventure and like, knowing, you know, the good cafes, to work out is like another fun adventure or, you know, finding apartments can be an adventure, it could be like a horrible adventure. But it's, yeah, I don't know, moving around, it's, I don't know, all those problems, if you have the right perspective, are quite enjoyable. And they do kind of make things interesting, because when I was traveling, I was working Monday to Friday, 40 hours a week, if not sometimes, like, more, or sometimes less, just depending. And the way that I would do is just try and like live out my life normally. And then a lot of my exploring would be like on Saturdays and Sundays, and I would just go out and meet friends or whatever. But at the time, I was also trying to, you know, I was staying in apartments and staying in hotels. I did have a lot of friends that were also staying in hostels and stuff. But for me, it was really important that like, I tried to have as much of a stable life as I could. Yeah, it does get pretty expensive, though. Yeah, it was actually really offensive when I kind of look back on it, but it was worth it. And also, there was like a pretty interesting trade off a lot of the long term relationships and even like some of my best customers now all of them like I met on the road. And I reckon, yeah, I think about it. Like, I had a return from the people that I met on the road even though it's a really expensive way of life, if that makes sense. So, so yeah, you just meet a lot of communities like traveled around the US travel around Europe or Asia and you just meet so many wonderful, amazing humans that um, yeah, even during COVID and stuff like a lot of these humans were either clients, so we worked together or we did in our joint venture projects. Yeah, it made sense. For me at leastMichele Hansen  5:00  Yeah, that's all it was like an investment in your I don't know, entrepreneur community, which I think for, it's like, it's so important, right? Because like most of us don't really know people in our normal daily lives who do this weird internet job thing. And having that community but also globally is I mean, it's so valuable. I mean, I mean, I'm here in Denmark, and you're in Japan. Like, I think that's that's Case in point enough. And so. So you started.Jesse Hanley  5:29  Yeah, sorry to interrupt you. But like on that note, we have like spoken a lot in Slack and stuff. And I think previous Jesse, like pre COVID, when I would have traveled to Europe, because we're chatting online, if your game like we probably would have met up or something. Because we have chatted a bit online, like it would have been easy for me to kind of go to Denmark and just kind of hang out. So that was how I was making a lot of relationships, I meet people online, meet people on Twitter or whatever, you chat. And you'd be like, alright, like, I mean, the country kind of close during a catch up, and then would kind of catch up that way. So a lot of my travels were guided, kind of like that, like I would meet people online, and then kind of catch up, which kind of sounds weird.Michele Hansen  6:11  Like, there is this kind of like quick, like fast friendships sort of quick intimacy that comes especially if it's like someone you've been tweeting with for like, a couple of years, like there was someone that I think I had met them, like, once at a conference, and we didn't even real...

Follow Chris: https://twitter.com/c_spagsCheck out JetBoost: https://www.jetboost.io/Listen to Default Alive: https://www.defaultalive.fm/This episode of Software Social is brought to you by TranslateCI. Translate CI is a tool for developers that helps you localize applications with high quality, human translations. It supports over 70 language pairs. TranslateCI eliminates the need to work out of spreadsheets, hire translators and manually merge language files. Instead, with TranslateCI, you just use Git. Just connect your git repo and TranslateCI will pull out phrases and, after a professional translator translates everything, they will merge into your existing codebase with a pull request. And every time you push code to your git repository, TranslateCI will pull any new phrases out, translate them, and create a PR back. See how you can turn translation from a hassle into a breeze at TranslateCI.com.