Michele Hansen  0:01 This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.Here's how Reform is different:- Your brand shines through, not Reform's- It's accessible out-of-the-box... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a timeJoin indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.Colleen: Welcome back software, social listeners, Colleen here, and I am super excited to bring you a special guest today. Today on the podcast we have Nadia the founder of story graph. Story graph is a site that helps you track your reading and choose your neck next book based on your mood, mood, and your favorite topics and themes.Nadia, thank you so much for coming on.Nadia: Thank you so much for inviting me. Colleen: I would love to start with a little bit about your background. You are an economist by trade, right?Nadia: Right. So my degree was philosophy politics and economics, and I focused, I focused mainly on the economic side, I was moving to the math mathematical side of things and I was heading into investment banking, post university. Colleen: Wow.Nadia: Yeah. And I was just lucky with the people I met in my final year of uni. I'd done a summer internship in the banking world and I was just very, not very enthused with it.It just felt, I felt like there was more to life and I'm in my final year of uni, I met so many young entrepreneurs and people running social enterprises and charities, and I just felt like I've always felt entrepreneurial. And I just thought, you know, I want to go into that feels more like. And I'd also started a creative writing online publication called the story graph. Colleen: Oh, I didn't know that.Nadia: yeah. That had given me the first taste of running my own thing. And so I, yeah, and I was lucky to meet people who were in the tech space as well. And that's when I started to be familiar with, oh, maybe I should learn how to code. And yeah, essentially, I, I got, I want a couple of places on coding courses and that's how I got into software post universe. Colleen: So, did you go work at all in investment banking or did you go right from college or university to learning how to code? Nadia: So I had a graduate offer for bank and I turned that down and then I wasn't sure what I was going to do. And I'd applied for this entrepreneurship scheme and it got to the final round. And I remembered that when I was filling out the form, there was a checkbox that said we may be piloting a new coding course for women.Do you want to be considered for this? And I was just like, why not check the box? I wasn't really interested. And I thought, why not? You know? And so when I remember I got the call from the, one of the people who run the program and they said, we've got good news and bad news. And I was like, I immediately knew I didn't get into the main program.So I said, well, what's the, what's the bad news. And I was like, yeah, you didn't quite make it. And I was like, Okay.what's the good news. And she said we're going to give you, we're going to do this program. It's called code first girls, and we're going to give you a place. And I remember at the time I was just so disappointed and not getting a place in this entrepreneurship program because it was meant to be my ticket out of not going into the bank.That I just thought, what do I want with this coding course? And then I remember thinking about it and realizing that I was also. Like the next day, I was offered a summer internship at my college at Oxford where I was. And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to come to work at Oxford for a bit after uni, I'm going to travel to London twice a week.I was from London, but I was at, I was in Oxford and and I'm going to learn to code and then figure it out from there. And it's so, I'm so glad I did that. And then while I was. Twice a week coding course, I saw a tweet saying we're doing a competition for someone to win a free place at makers academy, which was a new software boot camp in London at the time.And I had a taste of this coding thing. I saw how powerful. It was. And so I said, I'm going to apply for this scholarship free place. And I got the scholarship. And so then I did a three month bootcamp at the beginning of 2014, immediately after. Well, at the end of 2013, rather immediately after the two months that I spent at Oxford traveling twice a week to do the part-time cutting costs.So that's how I Colleen: Wow.Nadia: into software from being like all along since I was like 12, 13, I was going down the investment banking. Colleen: Wow. Did you get pushback from yourself or from your family to have invested so much time at Oxford? No less. And then be like, I'm going to go do this coding bootcamp.Nadia: Yes. So it was actually quite funny. I come from a poor background and I remember that, you know, the reason why I was going down the investment banking route since I was young is because when I was at school, you know, it was always this typical doctor, lawyer and your banker or something like that.And I remember we had this day where you could go with your parents or a parent to work with them. And I remember trying to go with my dad who's an accountant or like, um, my mom worked for herself at home and, and my dad was like, no, you should find someone who acts in a bank or something like that.And so I went with my best friend at the time her dad worked at. And, you know, when you're 14, everything looks so amazing. And like I, so I remember going and seeing the trading floor and seeing all these, like men and women dressed up in their suits and carrying their blackberries. And I remember at the time thinking I want to be like them.And it wasn't until I was doing the internship when I was in between my second and third year of uni that I was just disillusioned. And I was like, oh, like, this is not very fulfilling. This is not like, I feel like there's more I can do and give. And, and so that's when I got disillusioned when I was like about 18 and I was thinking.This isn't really exciting. I'm not sure of the value that I'm bringing while doing this work. And I also just thought there must be more cause I was working so hard at, it was quite academic. I was working so hard at my studies and I thought, is this it? And so when this whole entrepreneurship software thing came up, it was very, yeah, it was so much more appealing and. Colleen: Wow. So after you did the bootcamp, did you then get a job, your rails background, right? Nadia: Ruby Rails So back then the, the main focus was Ruby rails and it was funny because I went to that was this jobs, fair tech jobs fair. And it was during during the course, the point of the courses you do the 12 weeks, and then they help you get a job. And I just thought I didn't plan to get a job.I just said, let me go to this job fair and see what's out there. Even when I started the bootcamp in my mind, I still thought, oh, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I didn't know what that meant. I was just like, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. But you know, since I'll know about coding, I'll know how to talk to developers.Like I had just, you know, stereotypes in my head of, you know, developers, don't talk to people, and I can never be a good developer anyway, cause I'm starting, you know, 19. But Colleen: at like 32 Nadia: like 2...

Michele Hansen  0:01  This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.Here's how Reform is different:- Your brand shines through, not Reform's- It's accessible out-of-the-box... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a timeJoin indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.Colleen Schnettler  0:51  So Michelle, how are things going with your book tour?Michele Hansen  0:54  So the book tour itself is going well, I did indie hackers build your SAS searching for SAS one end product? I just recorded another one. yesterday. No, no, no, today? No, that was I feel like I'm doing a lot with it. Because that's what says because I had I love it. Let's see yesterday, no Tuesday, I did a session with founder summit. And then I also had a call with someone about being on their podcast yesterday. That'll be in November, and then I've scheduled another one for October. And then I did another group session today. And then yeah, actually, it was when I got off of that and Mateus was like, you know what you just did? And I was like, What? Like, he was like, you just did consulting? And I was like, No, I did. Like cuz it was Yeah. No, I did. I was like, it wasn't personalized. It was just like a workshop and people asked like questions, like, I just, I just talked about the book. And I was like, No, it wasn't he was like, yeah, it wasn't like that. No, it wasn't. Um, yeah, I think I actually kind of need to like, Cool it a bit on the promotion stuff. Like dude, like, this week, I spent like two days this week, creating a Google Sheets plugin for geocoder Oh, it was so nice to like, be playing around with spreadsheet functions again, like, after doing all this like writing and then talking about this stuff I wrote like, it was very comfortable. It was much more comfortable than talking about.Colleen Schnettler  2:42  Like, I don't know, it was your happy was when you went Excel.Michele Hansen  2:46  It really is. Um, but actually, so I have another spreadsheet that doesn't have any fun functions in it is the number of books I have sold, adding up, you know. Okay. For 490 400Colleen Schnettler  3:03  my gosh, that's amazing.Michele Hansen  3:07  I know, it's so close to 500. And it's been so close to 100 500 for like days. And like, the other day, I was like, maybe I'm, like, tapped out the market for this at 490. Like, that's really good. Like the average book sells like 300. So like, that's really good. Um, and, yeah, so so I'm going to do like, I'm going to be on some other podcasts and whatnot. And like, I remember seeing once. Rob Fitzpatrick once, I think actually, it's in his new book. He has a graph of the revenue of the mom test and like, the growth of that book is I mean, a case in compounding.Colleen Schnettler  3:52  Okay, so, right. SoMichele Hansen  3:54  you know, it's not all like in the beginning, and like, there's really positive signs, like people are recommending to other people, people are writing reviews, like, so. So yeah, I feel good. But man, I really want to get to 500. I don't know, I haven't been thinking about the numbers very much. I mean, it's only six but like, I really, I really want to get to 500. I don't know why, like it's like getting to like, you know, 1000 or what it like that's that's not even like remotely like a possibility to me, like I don't even really think about it. But now it's like so close. And like that would be so awesome.Colleen Schnettler  4:25  I wager a guess that by the time this podcast airs on Tuesday, you will be at 500.Michele Hansen  4:31  That's only six more books. Maybe Maybe. And by the way, if people want a free copy of this of the book, so if you are listening, when it comes out on on Tuesday or Wednesday, transistor.fm is running a little giveaway on their Twitter account. I think Justin saw my like, I think 490 is all I'm ever gonna sell. Okay. And I was like, no. So they're giving away five copies of the book. You just have to go retweet the tweets about the book. So yeah, nice. Yeah. If you just go to the deploy wonderful,Colleen Schnettler  5:05  that'll help expand your reach.Michele Hansen  5:07  Yeah, it was interesting hearing that I was like helping you interview people on podcast. I'm like, Yeah, I guess you could. I mean, it doesn't have to just be for. for customers.Colleen Schnettler  5:19  Anyway, oh, yeah, your book applies to so much. So that's where the,Michele Hansen  5:23  that's that's where the book is. But I gotta say, I think I think I need to give myself a little break on promotion. Otherwise, I'm gonna, I'm gonna burn out on thatColleen Schnettler  5:33  for right now. Yeah, I was thinking about that when you were talking about like, how you're hitting it so hard. I was like, wait, Isn't this what happened with writing the book? And then afterwards, you're like,Michele Hansen  5:43  Yes, I have a pattern. Yes. way overboard. And then I exhaust myself.Colleen Schnettler  5:53  So maybe we should approach it like a marathon instead of a sprint? Yeah,Michele Hansen  5:57  I think so. I haven't scheduled anything for next week. So I don't have anything scheduled until the first week of October. So okay. Yeah, kind of just, yeah. So so you know, hopefully by the, you know, yeah. Bye. By the time I'm on again, because I'm off next week. I vacation. Yeah. Oh my god, dude, I'm going to American, I'm so excited. So happy for you. Okay, um, I can't wait to just go to Target and Trader Joe's anyway.Colleen Schnettler  6:34  So if you're not have target, and then we do notMichele Hansen  6:36  have target, we have a story that's inspired by target or like more like, inspired by Walmart. But like, it's just like, there's just nothing like getting a Starbucks and walking around target. You know, it's just true story. Anyway, um, what's going on with you?Colleen Schnettler  6:52  So I did quite a bit of work on simple file uploads. Since we last talked, I actually spent a good chunk of time doing some technical work, some cleanup work that needed to be done. But I have gotten the demo on my homepage. Oh, it's really exciting. Yeah,Michele Hansen  7:10  the like, code pen demo thing that we've been talking about for a while, right? Correct.Colleen Schnettler  7:15  Okay, instead of putting a code pen up, I actually just put a drop zone. So you can literally, if you go into my site, it just says drop a file to try it. And you can drop a file. Wait, so that is something I know. Right? So that's something I've been talking about doing for a long time, which I finally got done. So that's exciting. Yeah. And there was some other stuff with like the log on flow, that wasn't really quite correct. It wasn't wrong, it just wasn't really right. So I just spent a lot of time kind of getting that cleaned up. Oh, and the API for deleting events. So that was a real hustle for me, because I have someone who reached out to me, and they were like, Hey, we totally want to use your thing. But we have to be ab...

Send Cam some love and support! https://twitter.com/SloanCamCheck out Hopscotch: https://hopscotch.club/ Michele Hansen  0:01  This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.Here's how Reform is different:- Your brand shines through, not Reform's- It's accessible out-of-the-box... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a timeJoin indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.Michele Hansen  0:01  So today, I'm so excited we have a friend joining us, Cam Sloane. Hello, Cam. So we invited you on today because you had tweeted the other day about how you're kind of feeling stuck right now. And we're like, you know what? Maybe we like we can chat about it and help you get unstuck.Cam Sloan  1:17  Yeah, that was, I guess, shout out to Aaron Francis, who kind of like just was like, Hey, bring him on. And, and I was like, Yeah, let's do it. That'd be awesome. And I think that, you know, just speaking that tweet, it really seemed to resonate with a lot of other people, like other founders who are trying to do this. And because I had an outpouring of, you know, comments and support, and DMS, from people I don't know, and people that I do know and invite stuff like this show and stuff to just like, it's amazing, the community that has reached out to kind of say, like, well, all sorts of things I'm sure we'll get into today. So it's been really nice to it's always nice to have that because sometimes you're just going at this and you feel like super alone. So for context, I just feel kind of stuck in like, you know, do I keep going do I switch to something else? Or do I? You know, yeah, like, I've contemplated like just doing contract work. And you know, just make money that way, because it's a bit easier. So all sorts of stuff that is going through my head over the past few months? Because it's just slow, slow going.Colleen Schnettler  2:32  Yeah, Cam to get us started. Could you give us a little background about your product? And how long you've been working on it?Cam Sloan  2:40  Yeah, definitely. That would be helpful for listeners. So yeah, I am working on hopscotch. It's a user onboarding tool, specifically focusing on product tours, and kind of in app messaging and guides to kind of, you know, when a user signs up for your product, sometimes you want to kind of hold their hand a bit to show them what their next step should be, in order to help prevent them from churning by actually showing them to the thing that they want to do. And so yeah, I mean, product tours, to be honest, like, it's not the right fit for every every business. But sometimes, there are really good use cases, like if you have a complex product that has, like you get in like a CRM, or like an analytics tool that has like 10 options on the top menu and 10 on the side, and your users just get dumped, or, you know, Landon, this page with no idea what to do next, then a really good way to show them is to guide them, you know, and kind of say, you know, here's, here's what your next step should be, so that you can see value out of the product. So I've been working on this for, I mean, about a year since the inception of like, actually like the idea, but really kind of steadily since January of this year in 2021. And kind of focusing most of my time on it. Because outside of that I do freelancing contract work for you know, larger companies just doing web development work for them. And that kind of helps me to stay self funded to do my projects like this and, and hopefully grow my own software business.Michele Hansen  4:28  Yeah, so. So I kind of want to propose a structure for this conversation. So I've mentioned a little bit in my book, how the sort of core questions that you're trying to answer when you talk to a customer can also be used when maybe you're helping somebody think through something, which are what are they trying to do overall? Why? What are the steps in that process they're going through what if they already Tried, and where are they stuck? And so I feel like you've kind of you've started to give us a little bit of overview on the what you're trying to do. And why. I'm curious what led you to be interested in building an onboarding tool?Cam Sloan  5:23  Yeah. So the, you know, like, as I don't know, if you did this as well, when you were coming up with, you know, what business to go into you like make a list, you're trying to make a list of ideas, and like, most of them are pretty terrible. And, like, I had maybe 50 ideas. And this was kind of one of them that I didn't really think too much about until I actually I met someone who I, who wanted to hire me to build to work on their software company, and just doing web development for them. And we actually ended up, I didn't work for him, it wasn't the right fit for taking on that contract. But we ended up like really getting along well, kind of both having founder ambitions. And he was almost like, in the position that I'm at right now where he was feeling a bit stuck. And so we ended up saying, Hey, we should like try and work on something together. And, and we were thrown, like, what ideas have you been having, and, and we both checked kind of our lists. And, and this was one of them. So for him, he was actually experiencing, like, the pain point more than I had previously. So really, he was searching around for tools. And like came across intercom product tours and other app cues and realizing like, you know, he's a bootstrap founder cannot justify the price at like, $300 plus a month, and was looking for a tool that was maybe affordable that that could get them up and running. And we kind of ran with that together. In like, just real quick summary. Like he ended up going and building another business. So I kept going on hopscotch. And, yeah, like, as soon as I dove into the problem, like I really enjoyed it, both technically, because like you're you're kind of embedding your yourself into another SAS product by default, like by the definition of what these tools do. And so there's a lot of like, really interesting technical learnings that I've had to had to go through with that, like anytime you're dealing with like widget, embed scripts and other people's code, it's, it's a lot of interesting stuff on the technical side. But then also just realizing like that, there's a lot of interesting stuff in the human and business side of this as well. Like, I started soaking in resources from Samuel Kulik, and like the user less team and, you know, anywhere that I could find people who are talking about onboarding and realizing like how crucial it can be to a business's success. Because, you know, if you can reduce that initial churn in the first month or two, then then it can have a wild impact on the like, lifetime value of customers and how your product retains users. And so it just kept me interested From then on, which is why I didn't like end up going work on something else. After, after he, like my co founder went to do something else.Michele Hansen  8:23  So let's talk a little bit about where you are now. So you launched in April. Is that right?Cam Sloan  8:30  or me? Yeah. So I think so. Time is a blur? Yeah, like I because I've kind of been doing, like, I did a lot of stuff with early access of just onboarding one on one, like peo...

Listen to the latest from Michele's podcast book tour! Searching for SaaS: https://searchingforsaas.com/podcast/ep25-local-restaurant-app-to-geocoding-as-a-service-michele-hansen-from-geocodio/One Knight In Product: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/michele-hansen/Indie Hackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/224-michele-hansenMichele Hansen  0:01  This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.As a business owner, you need forms all the time for lead capture, user feedback, SaaS onboarding, job applications, early access signups, and many other types of forms.Here's how Reform is different:- Your brand shines through, not Reform's- It's accessible out-of-the-box... And there are no silly design gimmicks, like frustrating customers by only showing one question at a timeJoin indie businesses like Fathom Analytics and SavvyCal and try out Reform.Software Social listeners get 1 month for free by going to reform.app/social and using the promo code "social" on checkout.Hey, Colleen,Colleen Schnettler  0:51  hey, Michelle.Michele Hansen  0:54  How are you?Colleen Schnettler  0:56  I'm good. I'm good. How about you?Michele Hansen  0:58  How goes week three now of doing Hammerstone and simple file upload.Colleen Schnettler  1:08  It's going well, today, I'm going to dedicate most of the day to simple file uploads. So I'm pretty excited about that. I'm finally back into my theoretical four days client work one day, my own thing and never really works out that way. Because I make myself way too available. But I have a lot of plans. But I do want to talk to you about something. Okay. I am I have not had any new signups in six weeks. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not in the pit of despair, because I'm just generally pretty happy about everything else. But I haven't been really on top of I know, six weeks. Right. That's really. I mean, IMichele Hansen  1:54  I hate to say it, but that does give me a little bit of like trough of sorrow vibes.Colleen Schnettler  1:58  Yeah. I mean, I honestly, I hadn't even really noticed, which is a different a different thing. Has anybody been canceled? I don't know. Because I, yeah, so I don't track that as well as I should. And I think with everything that's been going on, I have been so busy that I haven't. Honestly, I've just been letting it run itself. I checked my email every day, but no one ever emails me, which is nice, by the way. So I hadn't checked it in a while a and I checked it in preparation to do this podcast with you. And I was like, Oh, crap. I haven't had a sign up since July. This is September 2.Michele Hansen  2:39  So have I mean, has your revenue gone down? Like?Colleen Schnettler  2:44  No, actually, it hasn't. So I've been pretty consistent. So without doing a full churn analysis, I don't think people are churning. But they're not signing up. Okay, that's not okay. Let me stop. That's not entirely true. People are putting their email address in and then bouncing. So people are still finding my website. But yeah,Michele Hansen  3:12  I feel like it was like the people who are paying you is that mostly people from Heroku? or from your website?Colleen Schnettler  3:19  It's mostly people from Heroku.Michele Hansen  3:21  So are you still getting that like you had this problem where people were like, signing up on Heroku, but then not actually activating it? And like starting to use it, like, Are people still doing that first step on Heroku.Colleen Schnettler  3:37  So people are using it. I actually had one person respond with what he's doing. So that was cool. In terms of like a new signup. So people are using it that sign up on Heroku, which is good. It's just a lack of new signups is really confusing to me.Michele Hansen  3:55  Did you ever get that work done on the homepage like and Roku site like we were talking about the code pen and improving the documentation? And like, did did all that happen?Colleen Schnettler  4:10  So I have a whole list of great things I'm going to do so what I have done this week last week is I actually started writing a piece of I wrote an article right, it didn't take that long. I should have what it doesn't matter what I should have done. I did it. So that's good. So I have seen on Google Analytics said that is getting a decent amount of traffic. Today, literally today. I'm going to get that freakin try it now on the homepage. That is my plan to do that today. Nice. I'm speaking it into existence. The documentation is a whole different animal because I don't think I mean, I really need to redo the documentation. But that's like a whole thing. Like it's not I need to add some things. I think I need to take it in baby steps because I added some things to the tech side that are not reflected in the documentation that are kind of cool. So I think, but of course, instead of just adding that to my existing documentation, which I don't really like the way it presents, like, I just don't like the way it looks. I want to tear that all down and make a new app just for documentation, which I will do someday, butMichele Hansen  5:17  so it kind of sounds like you need to put away your laundry. But you don't want to do that. So instead, you're going to completely build yourself a new closet, butColleen Schnettler  5:26  my closets gonna be so pretty, and so organized.Michele Hansen  5:33  Yeah, I'm sensing a theme where like, you have a task that you don't want to do, or it seems overwhelming to you or you don't feel like it plays into your strengths. And so your way to do it is to make it something that is one of your strengths, which is actually just throwing more hurdles in front of you actually doing the task.Colleen Schnettler  6:00  Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, that's, like, it's funny, because before we got on this podcast, my plan was still to rewrite the whole documentation and make it its own site, blah, blah, blah. And as soon as I spoke those words to you, as I do, I've really is that really a super high priority, like, the higher priority should be getting the fact that like, I emit events on, you know, successful uploads, that's cool. People can use that. It's literally nowhere in my documentation that I do that. So I'm probably the priority should just be getting it out there with what I have. And then someday, when I have more time, I can rewrite the whole documentation site.Michele Hansen  6:39  This is your problem with the documentation that it's ugly, or that people email you telling you that it's janky. And, like, difficult to use documentation specifically, or is it just an eyesore? It'sColleen Schnettler  6:53  a it's an eyesore. I don't like the way it looks. I don't like the way I navigate with tabs. I don't like the tabs. Like I think you can still find everything no one has emailed me saying I don't understand how to use this. Hold on.Michele Hansen  7:05  I need to like I'm I'm pulling look at it. So nowColleen Schnettler  7:08  Yeah, pull it up. Okay, so if you go to simple file, upload.com, and then click on Doc's documentation,Michele Hansen  7:15  you got that calm, like,Colleen Schnettler  7:17  I know, I win it names. So if you look at it, I was like so I also bought unrelated simple file. Wait, what did I buy? I bought simple image upload calm. Hmm, I ha...

Michele Hansen  0:00  Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/When you’re bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you’re spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don’t pay?Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.Colleen Schnettler  0:52  Michele, it's so good to talk to you. So I have been following some of the things you've been tweeting about recently, and I saw that you did a Product Hunt launch for the book.Michele Hansen  1:05  Yeah.Colleen Schnettler  1:06  Tell us about that was quite a roller coaster. Yeah, I am fascinated. I want to hear all about it. Michele Hansen  1:14  So um, gosh, I don't even I don't even know where to start. Because it was it was kind of it was kind of a spur of the moment thing. Like I've been planning to do a Product Hunt launch for a long time, but I didn't really know exactly when. And I think it was a we've talked about how my, like, original deadline for the book was before I started Danish language classes, right. I feel like we I don't know. But yeah, okay. So I actually started them last Monday. So you know, even though like, when I finished my MBA, I was like, I am done with school forever, like, never again. And you know, here I am again. Um, so I started Monday of this week. And so the 20th I was like, I saw I was starting, you know, the in a couple of days. And I was like, You know what, I just need to do this. Now I want to get this launch done. Before I'm like thinking about school again, cuz I'm not gonna have as much time. So that's basically like, why I did it on Friday morning. Now, apparently, when you launch on product time, you're supposed to get someone like, well known to basically hunt the product for you and submit it for you. And then I guess it notifies all of that person's followers, and then it helps with your ranking and stuff like that. I did not do that. I just submitted it myself.Colleen Schnettler  2:46  Wait, okay. pause, pause, pause. Okay, so let's back up a little bit. So you were on Friday morning, you woke up and you're like, I should put the book on Product Hunt today? Is that like, what happened? No. No, IMichele Hansen  2:57  needed to send out a newsletter that morning. Because I had I had something I wanted to send out. And I was like, you know, why don't I just throw it up on product time. Like, let's just get that over with and do it and like, so like, I just like wrote up a post, I took a couple of screenshots of like the book and the table of contents. And like, I like put it up, like, apparently people hire like consultants and pay them like 1000s of dollars to try to get a good ranking on on product ton. And they spend all this time recruiting someone to hunt it for them. And like there's this whole, like product launch a Product Hunt launch strategy that I was completely oblivious to. SoColleen Schnettler  3:37  yeah, I've heard that. That's a hole that if you there's like so many articles about how to properly do product on and there's consultants, yes. Okay, so tell us what you did. Yeah,Michele Hansen  3:47  I guess it didn't. I don't know. I it didn't occur to me to research it first. Because I don't know. I just didn't so I just threw it up there. And then I sent it out to the newsletter and was like, hey, like, you know, Product Hunt today. And so it was like going pretty well. Like I sent it out like first thing in the morning European time. And by like lunchtime or so here it had like 30 or 40 upvotes which was like way more than most of the other products on the homepage. And I started being like in the people started being like I can't find your product like I searched for it. It doesn't show up like it's not on the homepage like like she usually like reach out to them or something because something is wrong. And this is somebody on Twitter who jumped in and they're like, Oh, they shadow ban info products, because there's so many of them that they shadow ban them by defaults, if you're submitting it and you're not like a you know a sort of name brand person submitting it.Colleen Schnettler  4:47  What is shadow ban mean?Michele Hansen  4:48  Oh, so shot. Shadow banning is when you post it and it looks normal to you and you can send people the link, but it doesn't show up on the homepage and it doesn't show up in search.Colleen Schnettler  5:00  Oh, wow.Michele Hansen  5:01  So basically you don't know you're banned from the homepage. So, so weird, but I guess there's like so many that I currently the logic is that there's so many info products that like, they basically want to cut down on the number of them going to the front page of product on. So and then I kind of like started tweeting about this and I'm not really sure what happened. But I like reached out to their support on their website and on Twitter. And then I think some other people also backchannel that to community people at Product Hunt. And then yeah, it was on the the front page. Like it just appeared at number four. And it was like, Oh, this is kind of fun. Like, we went from being like, completely invisible and thinking this was a huge waste of time. to like, now it's ranked number four. That's pretty amazing. And I just woke up and did this this morning. Like, this is fun. And that's all and then it kind of just kept going. Wonderful. Yeah. And I was actually I was getting like, last minute, like, you know, sort of, like, play by play advice from Arvid call in my DMS. I'm like, okay, like, here's what you do, like, make sure you reply to everybody, like, you know, all this stuff. And I was like, okay, okay, okay. Like, I was like, such like totally green at this. Um, and, yeah, it was it was wild. And then it ended up going up to number one. And oh, that's exciting day. And I just checked it a 512 up votes.Colleen Schnettler  6:36  That's amazing. Wild.Michele Hansen  6:40  Super wild. I've never really done a, like a Product Hunt launch. Like, we I mean, we didn't launch geocoder one Product Hunt. Like we actually launched before Product Hunt had their show h n launch, which when geocoder launched a show h n launch was like, what a Product Hunt launches now. I guess. Yeah. It was so funny. I remember coming across it in our refers for geocoder to and I was like, What is this product on thing and like, signed up? Um, so yeah, anyway, so that was, that was pretty crazy. Um, that'sColleen Schnettler  7:20  really cool. Yeah, itMichele Hansen  7:21  was it the whole thing about it, like, not showing up and like what was wrong and like, all these people kind of like rallying around it too. And like so many people tweeting out the the posts and commenting and like, I just felt like I was collectively being lifted up by people all over the world simultaneously. And it was, it was lovely. It was pretty, it was pretty surreal. It was it isColleen Schnettler  7:49  as bad. It's awesome. So have you seen the Product Hunt success? increase the number of sales of the book?Michele Hansen  8:00  Yeah, so I actually did get a little bit of a nice little bump ou...

Check out Django Unicorn! https://www.django-unicorn.com/Follow Adam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamghillMichele Hansen  0:00 Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/When you’re bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you’re spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don’t pay?Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.Hey, everyone, welcome back to software social. So as you heard last week, Colleen joined the Hammerstone team. And she also just started a job recently. And she just moved California. So Colleen has a lot going on this week. And so for the benefit of her mental health, we decided that she should just take the week off. And I'm super excited because that meant that I got to bring a friend on the show this week. So I have Adam hill with us, Adam and I actually used to work together. He was the CTO at a place I used to work at. And he also has some projects going. So welcome, Adam. Hey, it's been a long time since we've caught. Yeah, it's weird. I should do this more often. No, no, when we had I had Murray pulling on a couple of weeks ago, the notion expert. And we like had that exact same conversation at the beginning of it was like, This is so weird. I talked to you online all the time. But we haven't actually spoken in a very long time.Adam Hill  2:04  Right. talking over Twitter is a little bit different than hearing someone's voice.Michele Hansen  2:08  Yeah. Yeah, it is. So so actually speaking of one of those conversations we are having so we were talking the other day about podcasts, and you were kind of thinking about maybe you start your own show or whatnot. But you said something in particular that I wanted to talk about? Because I think it is I think it's will strike a chord with a lot of people. And you said, I'm tired of hearing podcasts from people who don't struggle.Adam Hill  2:41  Yes. Oh, all right. So no offense to you. And thank Colleen, because I think you guys do a great job of talking through the things that you're, you know, having problems with. And maybe this is just the podcast that I tend to listen to. But there seem to be a couple of categories. There's like, advice, podcasts, there are interview podcasts. And then there are kind of like two co founders, like talking through their last week sort of podcasts. And the advice podcasts seem to be more like, I'm an expert, I know what I'm doing. Here's 10 ways to get more traffic to your landing page, or whatever. The interview podcasts are more like, I just made a million dollars in the last year, like, asked me how I did it. And then the two co founders on a journey. Maybe that's the closest to like, these are the things that we're working through. And I'm having trouble with this or that. But even like, even Colleen, she's making $1,000 a month, which to me is like, That's crazy. Like that's, that's, you know, she's like having so much success. And, you know, maybe some of this is sort of like, everything is relative. I'm, I've tried a bunch of little side projects and startups over the years, and I've never gotten to $1,000 a month, but like, maybe she's looking at you and being like, well, Michelle is like Michelle and Mathias are supporting their family, you know, on their startup. So like, maybe it's just everyone is able to look at someone who is above them, quote, unquote, and see someone who is like, doing more of what they want to be doing.Michele Hansen  4:40  I think what you're saying is is something that a lot of people feel, and I think that there's kind of this undercurrent of loneliness to a certain extent behind the sort of indie hacker indie SAS kind of world where you know if it's just your one person And working on something or maybe you have a co founder, like me, like, don't really have a lot of people in your daily life to talk to you about these kinds of things. And we're already sort of a lonely pursuit to like, try to start your own SAS on the weekend to then like, hear other people who are doing it, but to hear that they're like having the success that that seems elusive to you. Like that could reinforce that kind of feeling of loneliness. And I could understand how that might make you want to, you know, scream at your phone that like $1,000 is actually amazing. What are you talking about?Adam Hill  5:40  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, Can you talk a little bit about, you know, I assume that it was very helpful for you and Mateus to be working on things together throughout the years, like when you were starting geocodes Oh, so like, was that your sort of like support system? Because there was no mic or cough at that point. And there was, you know, indie hackers, I don't think was around. Yeah. Can you just elaborate on on how that worked for you?Michele Hansen  6:08  You know, we actually, we didn't go to micro conference till 2019. And we didn't go for so long. Because we didn't feel like legit enough to be there. Like, and I guess I didn't know that. Like the micro con growth side was a thing. But still, like, we didn't feel like we were, like, legit enough to be there even after we had gone full time.Adam Hill  6:35  So when did you go full time? Was it 2017? So you didn't think that you belong to that community?Michele Hansen  6:44  No, it existed really like so I remember actually, when I was when we started it like the only people we I don't think we knew anyone with side projects, really. And like we had friends were developers. And like, they gave us feedback on it. But like we didn't really know any, like, we knew people who were like freelance developers, who were like, you know, contracting, but like we didn't, I didn't know anybody who had like, started their own SAS and then ran it as like a one two person show. But so when I went full time in 2017, I remember really wanting community. And I actually started a meetup for like, people to work together from Whole Foods, I think, in DC. Yeah. Well, like it. Yeah, it was, I think I did like three, two or three times, like the first time nobody showed up. The second time. This, like other woman, who was a marketing consultant showed up and like, that was cool. And then we like sat next to each other at a table at Whole Foods. Yeah, didn't really talk. And I guess it was fine. And then and then the last time this like, got older guy showed up on like, pitched me how he could like we needed to get our business into China and how. And it was like, I don't know. And after that, I was like, this may, I don't know, maybe this isn't gonna work. And I shut down. And then I actually joined a co working space for I remember half a year but actually only went for like, the first three months, because then I really wanted to, like meet people and like, make friends and find other people in a similar situation. And like going to a co working space in DC there just really wasn't anybody doing that. Like, it wasn't 1776, right? No, it was actually so Okay, so, so context for the people who are not from DC. So 1776 I don't even know if it still exists, but it was like this, like, incubators, slash like co working space in downtown dc 1776 is actually where we did our buco to prototype testing. So we had friends who had a start up at 1776. And one da...

Check out Hammerstone! http://hammerstone.dev/Michele Hansen  0:00   Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/When you’re bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you’re spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don’t pay?Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.Hey, everyone. So you may remember a couple of weeks ago, Colleen was facing a big decision about whether she should join an exciting project that some of her friends had started. So I'm here to tell you today that Colleen did decide to join that project. And we thought that you should hear about it from her and the team she's joining. So she is joining Hammerstone with our friends, Aaron and Sean. And you may remember Shawn from our episode a few months ago, where he was helping me learn how to market a book. So we thought we would let you listen to the episode that Colleen did on the Hammerstone podcast recently, where she's talking about joining the team. And after you listen, make sure to go subscribe to the Hammerstone podcast to get more updates about that really exciting project.Unknown Speaker  1:54  All right, we are recording. And we have three people here with us today. So the third person you want to introduce yourself.Colleen Schnettler  2:03  Hello, everyone. My name is Colleen and I have been working for Shawn and Aaron for about six months now. And this is my debut appearance on the Hammerstone podcast.Unknown Speaker  2:14  Welcome to the show. Thanks. So Colleen has been working, she said for us. But now Colleen is working with us. Colleen is a part of the Hammerstone team now. She's the third partner.Colleen Schnettler  2:29  Yes, I am super pumped. Super excited to join the team.Unknown Speaker  2:34  Yeah, so I guess we've been talking about this client for like, a year or more. And we've mentioned Colleen several times, I don't think it's been a secret. And she's the one that's been doing. She's the one that's been doing the rails side of the Refine product. And so, Shawn and Colleen have been working on this client for a long time. And the client has kind of been like, hey, what if we just keep doing this for a long, long time, we're like, great, we, that sounds good to us. And so Colleen is gonna continue working. But this client for they just, they just love Colleen, they just can't, they can't get enough of you. So, yeah, she's coming on as a partner and Hammerstone and she's gonna own the rails side of things. And I own the Laravel side of things. And Sean owns basically everything else. Kind of kind of a huge change, you know, in a whirlwind the past couple of weeks, but welcome.Colleen Schnettler  3:41  Thanks.Unknown Speaker  3:43  Yes, super cool. So speaking of owning all the other things, actually, can you guys hear me the sound just cut out weirdly for a second? We're good. You're okay. Yep. Yeah, so we, since there's three of us now, Aaron, and I have been, as I put it on the call with the lawyer yesterday, just yoloing it for the last year with our sort of like, operating agreement. So we got to hammer that out, you know, and actually do that properly given there's three of us, and that's an extra level of complication. So, the, the thing that we talked about with the lawyer, which I wanted to bring up with you guys was so first of all, I brought on my lawyer, Dalia who's awesome, and the best lawyer that I know. And I was like, Oh, yeah, I definitely want dahlias represent Hammerstone that Dalia immediately brought up that it's a conflict of interest of her because she's representing me. I'm planning for aliens. And I was like, Oh, well, I'll just find another lawyer for planning for aliens. And that's when I realized like last night, I was like, do I want to do that? Like it's, I want Dalia to represent Hammerstone but I also like kind of still want to have Dalia around for other shit for me. So I think that she had mentioned this as a possibility where like, she could represent us both. And then if there's a conflict of interest step aside, and it would go to me by default, I think is what she said. And then Hammerstone would have to find another lawyer. How does that sound to you guys?Colleen Schnettler  5:18  Yeah, so what I took from that conversation was exactly that, like, she can represent you, she can represent Hammerstone. But if the three of us as Hammerstone have a problem, she would then have to step back and then all of us would, like, if we're at the point where we all need our own attorneys, like something has gone terribly wrong, right? Like, we're probably just gonna want to Anyway, when we're talking about attorneys, that's all we're talking about is these horrible situations, right. So that is what we're talking about right now is a horrible situation that, you know, potentially could happen in the future. Get it? I'm not putting anything out of possibility. Like, I'm fine with that. I don't know, she had said something about how someone has to wait, like waive the conflict of interest. So you can ask her what that means. But I mean, I have no issues with this, because I just, I know, no one ever sees themselves in these situations, but I just cannot imagine a situation where that would happen. And if it did, then, I mean, you're so far gone by that point that, you know, I'm okay.Unknown Speaker  6:29  Yeah, I think I think I understand the same thing. So she'll represent planning for aliens, which is your holding Corporation. Shawn, shall represent planning for aliens shall represent Hammerstone. And should, Shawn Colleen and Aaron ever need representation against each other not as Hammerstone against each other as individuals, then that's when we have to say conflict of interest, or, you know, Colleen, and I get our own lawyers or whatever. Does that seem right? That's exactly it. Yeah. Yep. I'm on board with that. That's fine.Colleen Schnettler  7:02  Yeah, I'm totally fine.Unknown Speaker  7:03  She'll give us whatever papers to sign about that. And then Alright, cool.Colleen Schnettler  7:07  Sure. What I didn't understand from that call was the accountant thing. At the election, yeah, way into some tax law with a vesting schedule. For me, and that was kind of Whoosh. SoUnknown Speaker  7:24  So you got to talk to our accountant, like, so this is what we're talking about. We have our accountant, you could you could have your own, or you just use Aaron, I'm like, pushing, we just use the one accountant for all the stuff. I mean, it's not. He's an accountant. So I don't know if there's like, there's not like a conflict of interest, right? He's just gonna tell you like, what's the optimal thing to do?Colleen Schnettler  7:43  Right? This is how you should structure it. Yeah.Unknown Speaker  7:46  Yeah. And, and my understanding, I never thought about this before, I guess, because it's gonna be like a taxable event, that you could decide, take the taxes now or take the taxes later. And I think that'll probably all depend on...

Buy Michele's book! https://deployempathy.com/Michele Hansen  0:00  Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/ When you’re bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you’re spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product have time sinks that just don’t pay?Here's one way to find out: Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data, too — you can even log time directly from your Github commit messages. Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan, forever. Visit  Nokotime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.Colleen Schnettler  0:51  So Michele, how are things going with the book? Michele Hansen  0:55  They're going? Um, so I checked the numbers the other day and between the PDF and the paperback and Kindle editions, sold 210 copies so far. Wow.Colleen Schnettler  1:09  Don't most books don't most self published books only sell 250 copies over their lifetime.Michele Hansen  1:16  So Miss, like, I happened to like, slack that the other day.Colleen Schnettler  1:22  Like you set me up for that one. So we could talk about how awesome you are?Michele Hansen  1:26  Yeah, I was actually kind of like, I was like, okay, you know, that's good. Like, because I think I kind of went into this. And it was like, worst case scenario, like, everybody on the newsletter list buys it. Right. Like because other people are interested in what I'm saying. So that adds about like, 300 people on that list. So I was like, okay, like, you know, that's that's good. That's solid. And then yeah, and then I was, someone kind of prompted me to like they were they were like, that's really good. And I was like present. And it turns out the average self published book only sells like 250 copies total lifetime. And then the average published book, like publisher published book sells 3000 copies, two to 300 of which would be in its first year. Okay, wow. Consider that we're a month into this. I guess. It's pretty good.Colleen Schnettler  2:16  Yeah, you're already you're already killing that record. That's amazing.Michele Hansen  2:22  And if anything, is, I feel like I haven't really, like done anything. Um, I mean, no, I feel like I you know, I've been tweeting about it probably incessantly. And I sent out a couple of newsletters where I mentioned that. I think you challenged me to be on what likeColleen Schnettler  2:39  1020 I feel like it was 20Michele Hansen  2:41  podcast. Oh, I was hoping it was 10. But I think so I just, I've I've recorded two so far. None of them are okay yet. But which ones have you done? So I've done two so far. I have another one. I have two more on the calendar. Oh, okay. And then I was just someone was just like, dming me this morning about being on there's and there's one that I like I need to do my own recording. Like there's some things in the hopper, like, basically, when I like dm with people about this, then I like I've been emailing myself, the link to the DMS because I always lose my DMS and can't ever find anything. So I email it to myself with the link to the DMS and then I've been tagging them as podcast. And then I okay folder in my email. So it's about like, I have a list of like 10 ish so far.Colleen Schnettler  3:36  That's great tennis a lot. Michelle, good for you.Michele Hansen  3:39  So I feel like I haven't really started to promote it. Yeah. So you were saying the other day? How? Like you were trying to get some content out? And how you're, like struggling to get it out for like three months. Yeah. And one of our mutual friends said, Colleen, like, get it together. Michelle just published a whole book in five months.Colleen Schnettler  4:02  That's literally what happened. It was hilarious. We were chatting. And I was complaining. I don't know if complaining is the right word, you know, lamenting the fact that I was struggling to write a piece of content, he very tactfully pointed out that you managed to write an entire book. Like I think you can write a piece of content. But onMichele Hansen  4:21  that note at like, I think the rate at which I got the book out was I think it was so fast because first of all, I had all of it in my head like and it was just a matter of like I need to go find the reference for this thing. It's not like I needed to go find new references and find like I didn't really have to find any new content for it. But the other thing is, is I think I was kind of in a like hyper focus black hole but like a very extended one for like five months where basically all of my free time was getting spent on this and It's kind of I know like, last night, all of a sudden, I felt exhausted, like and not like physically exhausted. But I was like, Oh my god, like I'm, I'm, I'm tired, like I have been running full tilt at this. And now I'm tired. And it was, I mean, it's good timing right. So because out but like it was weird I had this moment where I was like, you know i, one of my favorite things to do is just like, while I'm eating lunch or whatever, just to like sit down with the New Yorker. And I usually read it. As soon as I get it, I even get it shipped overseas. And I have a stack of them a foot high still in the packaging that I have not read. And I like had this and I looked at it. And I was like, that's not like me, like that's really unlike me to hate. And I have like just like a stack of books I really wanted to read. And I haven't read a not a fiction book in like six months. I was like, This is all very unlike me, like and I was like, I think I'm like really close to getting burned out actually like, I'm like, I just didn't realize how fast I was going. I think my might sound kind of weird. But But yeah, I just I didn't realize it. And then so on. And all of a sudden last night, I was like, I'm exhausted. Oh my gosh, I'm yeah. And so I don't think the pace at which I wrote the book. I don't think it should be used as the standard. Because I don't think it was very healthy. And also, I already had all of it in my head. And I justColleen Schnettler  6:24  need so it was interesting to get it out. While you were saying that I was thinking about the episode you did with marine. And you both talked about how you had these tendencies to go into something Full Tilt, with no breaks. And I remember there was one part where you talked about like, someone would be talking to you like maybe your husband, and you'd be still be thinking about your book in your head. Yeah. And, and so that's really interesting. So for you it's like, the way it seems to be like this has been like such a sprint for you. And now your body's just like, Huh, like, what do they call it adrenaline fatigue, where your body's just like, Whoa, yep. So do you feel? I mean, how are you feeling about it? Now? Do you want to take a break from it? Do you just want to sleep for a month? Like, where's your headspace?Michele Hansen  7:08  I'm a parent. So I can't sleep for a month. Yes, not not allowed. I mean, so I like going into this like in June, I was kind of like, oh, and I'll you know, I'll do the audio book in the fall. Like when school starts again, like I have a little more time like, well, we'll do that in the fall. And now I think with everything coming out, I've been li...

Buy Michele's book! deployempathy.comMichele Hansen  0:00  Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. When you're bootstrapping on the side, every free moment counts. But do you really know how you're spending those moments? Which days you're most productive? If your product has time sings that just don't pay. Here's one way to find out. Noko is a time tracker designed to help you learn from the time you track. And Noko makes it frictionless to give yourself good data to you can even log time directly from your GitHub commit messages. Try Noko today and save 15% off every plan forever. Visit NokoTime.com/SocialPod to start making your time work for you.Colleen Schnettler  0:50  So Michele, I went to purchase your book yesterday on Amazon. And I saw that it is the number one new release in business books.Michele Hansen  1:04  Is this research and development. But yes. And I The crazy thing is is you were the first person to notice like I didn't know that until you tweeted.Colleen Schnettler  1:15  Yes, that makes me so happy. So I was gonna text you but like my number one Google searches What time is it in Denmark? It was like 4am or something. So I was like, Okay, I'll just tweet about it. And she'll see it when she wakes up.Michele Hansen  1:29  Thanks. I remember seeing that. And I was like, oh my god. Um, yeah, that was really, really, really unexpected. It's been, it's been such a week.Colleen Schnettler  1:42  Yeah. So how many copies Have you sold? Okay, soMichele Hansen  1:46  on Amazon, including paperback and Kindle 47. And then I also closed the pre sale on Monday. And so that was 127 copies there. Wow.Colleen Schnettler  2:07  Yeah, that's a lot.Michele Hansen  2:09  Yeah. So yeah, like over 150. which feels, which feels pretty good.Colleen Schnettler  2:16  Um, and,Michele Hansen  2:20  but, yeah, I mean, and it's kind of fun seeing the orders from around the world, like, you know, like us, Germany, Japan, UK, Canada, Australia. Like, I mean, I know, there's a lot of places where Amazon isn't. And I don't have that data for the PDF version out in Brazil, too. But, you know, I mean, this. I feel like this whole book was, like people from around the world, most of whom I have never met and had never met before. were part of making this book happen of encouraging it and sharing the newsletters and replying to them and sharing their own stories with me about their experiences with talking to customers and what they've struggled with and what's worked for them. And I'm just, I'm just so moved. Like, it's just, yeah, it's been. It's been quite a week.Colleen Schnettler  3:21  Yeah, that's wonderful. I'm so happy for you. And I'm happy the launch has gone so well.Michele Hansen  3:27  Yeah, and I think it's not like a like a sort of a big bang launch. here because it is kind of summer and you know, things are moving a little slowly. And also doesn't, doesn't have to be it'd be a huge thing. But so right now, kind of focusing on trying to get reviews of the book on Amazon before I tried to do a Product Hunt launch. I think that's kind of like, I feel like good right now with like launching it with the people who have been along for the journey and supporting it. And, you know, someone actually sent me some like, little, like, formatting quirks they noticed in their version. And so I kind of want to get those ironed out. Before you know, bring the book to people who may not be so understanding of, you know, yeah, seeing that. Some stray formatting or whatnot. Um, yeah. Yeah.Colleen Schnettler  4:27  Does Amazon have analytics built in to their book publishing platform? Because you mentioned you could see where people were coming from?Michele Hansen  4:34  Yeah, actually, I can pull it up right now. So the whole that the KDP or Kindle Direct Publishing is what they call it. They have this little dashboard, so I can see that. Um, so yeah, there's been orders from US, UK, Germany, Japan, and Canada, and Brazil. And it tells me like, what day they're ordered on and then also the Kindle reading percentage. Which I guess they use to determine the quality of the book. So like when you did on a Kindle, Amazon is kind of creepily like tracking that and basically, you know, but like, basically people buy this book, and then they read 10 pages of it, and then they don't ever open it again. Amazon takes that as a signal about the quality of the book. Oh, yeah, I mean, so maybe like, people buy it just to like, have it just in case. But so but it can show me for example, that super creeped out by that,Colleen Schnettler  5:31  by the way, like gender weird. AndMichele Hansen  5:35  65 pages have been read. Total. And then I think it can also show me like the there's been 24 pages read today.Colleen Schnettler  5:47  So Wow, that's wild. I didn't know that.Michele Hansen  5:51  I feel a little so.Colleen Schnettler  5:52  Yeah, a little bit. So tell me about the feedback you've been getting from people have a lot of people have been reaching out to you to tell you, you know, give you feedback on their experiences with the book.Michele Hansen  6:01  Yeah, people have been so nice. Um, as I mentioned, a bunch of people were posting reviews, but I feel like you need more before I launch it on product times are kind of go on some big podcasts to promote it. Because like those people, they don't know me, they haven't been listening. They haven't been following along. Like, why the, you know, why the heck should they care who I am and what I wrote about, right. So, um, so yeah, people have been just so generous with their time and their energy of helping to get the word out about the book. And any, I've gotten nice emails from people, it's actually been kind of funny to get texts from my friends about it, because I haven't really talked about it much with like, my friends and family because it's not relevant to most of them. Like, I feel like, you know, I feel like I describe it. And I'm like, well, it's like, super nice. It's like how to, like, create software products and sell them and stuff like that. And Mathias is always like, no, everybody should have this book. It's so relevant. Everyone, like, you know, I there's like this little like group of like real estate agents in Canada who are really excited about it, for example. Um, and, um, but so like, even just getting texts from friends of mine, who I haven't really talked to about, it has been such a nice surprise, like, one of my friends sent me a picture of her two year old son flipping through it when it arrived. And apparently, he loves the duck on the cover. Totally warms my heart. But actually, oh, negative, um, there was somebody who tweeted something negative at me, like, what was it? They're like, like my first tweet, where I like tweeted out about how it was available on Amazon, this person that doesn't follow me, and I don't follow and tweeted that. They replied to me, and they said, aka manipulation for Dummies. And I like looked at it. I was like, really? Like, you come to like, somebody's like celebration of this, and you show up with negativity like that. And then I thought they made the wise decision and deleted it...

Buy Michele's book! Paperback and Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/173744660X (or search Deploy Empathy on Amazon)PDF/ePub: deployempathy.com/pdfMichele Hansen  0:00  This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Orbit. Orbit is mission control for your community, grow and measure your community across any platform with Orbit. Find out more at orbit.love.Colleen Schnettler  0:14  Good morning, Michele. Hey,Michele Hansen  0:17  Hey, how are you?Colleen Schnettler  0:19  Great. So I hear that you have some new book updates.Michele Hansen  0:24  Yeah. So we finalized the cover this week. And I just saw, like just today just submitted it to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and Ingram Spark, which is another self publishing print on demand platform and filed for the copyright. So things are happening.Colleen Schnettler  0:47  That's exciting.Michele Hansen  0:51  Yeah, you know, I was thinking about our conversation last week, and how you were talking about how you felt like you weren't getting anything getting anything done? And I was like, man, I feel the same way.Colleen Schnettler  1:03  Really? Has it just felt like for weeks,Michele Hansen  1:07  yeah, like, I feel it? Well, you know, it's kind of it's like this weird in between liminal space where like, the copy has basically been final for a month now. And it's just sort of been kind of waiting on other things. And, and then there's also the, there's sort of the fact that it's summer here. And like summer camps aren't really as much of a thing here as they are in the US. Which, you know, I guess if like, most people who work for other people get four weeks of vacation, and they have kids, it's not really a big deal. But if you're self employed, it kind of is sure. Um, and so I, you know, I'm just sort of working at night and whatever. Or maybe I wake up early and get a couple hours in and like, man, I don't I don't know how parents in Europe who are self employed, do it. Like, I really, I really don't know. And like, just for weeks now I've been I mean, like, yeah, like, today's the day, I'm going to start recording the audio book, private podcast, I'm super excited about doing that. Now that the copy is finalized, I'm, like, ready to go. And it just like that time just keeps not happening. And I feel like I'm not making any progress. Um, but this morning, I did submit it and then not now it has to be reviewed. And I wanted to get a proof copy. But I think I might have done something wrong when I configured that option. And it just says your book might be published in 72 hours.Colleen Schnettler  2:44  That's fast. Okay.Michele Hansen  2:45  I haven't even like I wanted to, like, look at it and make sure the, you know, the cover looked right. And like, you know, the pages aren't upside down and whatnot. So okay, so I'm alone? I don't know. So maybe if you search on Amazon next week, you'll actually find it even though I'm not gonna tell anybody.Colleen Schnettler  3:01  But it won't be a physical copy yet. That's justMichele Hansen  3:04  so that'll be that the physical copy? Yeah, who would be a physical copy on Amazon, Amazon printed like, book to Amazon. I know, they could upload a book to Amazon. And then they print it whenever somebody buys it. Really? I know I was going, I was like, they let just anybody do this, like this? Wait, this is soColleen Schnettler  3:25  easy. This is crazy. I had no idea. So so you submit to them your cover art and your book. And then when someone buys it, they print it on demand?Michele Hansen  3:34  There's some other stuff that happens. But basically, yes, that's cool. So I don't have to like go out and you know, buy, like, basically pay for a printer to print 500 copies or whatever, then mail them out myself, which I think is what you had to do before. Things like kind of KDP or Kindle on demand or Kindle on it was what they call it? Or, you know, sort of like Do you remember like cafe press in the 90s? Like, yes, people could make t shirts and then printed it whenever you bought one. It's basically like that for books. And then there's also in Ingram Spark, which is also print on demand. But I guess there's a lot of countries that Amazon doesn't serve. And also, I guess bookstores are more willing to work with Ingram spark than they are with Amazon because they can return books to Ingram spark because Ingram spark distributes a lot of non self published books to I'm learning all about this. So So yeah, so I uploaded it to them, and then they have to review it and like, I guess, make sure it looks good. Before it'll actually, I don't know, I don't know what's gonna happen next. So we're just, we're all going to find out together. I didn't really publish the ebook. I like, you know, Barnes and Noble and whatnot, like ebook platforms. I don't know. We will find out.Colleen Schnettler  4:58  That's exciting. So you are telling me in a matter of maybe five days, maybe less people will be able to purchase a physical copy of your book. I don't know, theoretically, probably, maybe we're gonna find out cheaper than this before. SoMichele Hansen  5:15  I, originally I was like trying to give people estimates. And I was like, Yeah, it looks to me, like end of June. And then I just realized, I have no idea what I'm doing. Well, I knew that all along. But I realized that I have no idea what I'm doing. And therefore I should not try to predict what is going to happen next. Because that is just an exercise in folly to try to predict a process that I have no past experience with.Colleen Schnettler  5:41  Sure. So does that mean from you will come out when it comes out? Does that mean from your perspective that it's finished? Like you're done?Unknown Speaker  5:51  Ah,Michele Hansen  5:52  I mean, yeah, like, like yesterday Mateus looks at me, he goes, you know, this is just the beginning. Right? What does that mean? It's like Kunkle in his IColleen Schnettler  6:01  started,Michele Hansen  6:02  because, I mean, after the book is like officially out, then there's there's the, the audio book to record, right. Like, I'm super excited about doing that as a podcast and recording it myself. You know, because then I can really make sure that the, the tone of voice is coming through and everything. And I just, you know, right. Yeah.Colleen Schnettler  6:25  Can I just say I'm super disappointed when authors don't read their own books.Unknown Speaker  6:30  Yeah,Colleen Schnettler  6:30  yeah. Like, that makes me sad. Like, there's a prominent bootstrapping book, which was great. But it was not read by the author. And I was sad. I don't know why. Like, I understand why people don't want to read their own books. Maybe they don't like to talk that much. Maybe they have an accent. And then yeah, me with it. I don't know.Michele Hansen  6:45  Yeah, exactly. I think people have different reasons for not recording their own book. But I am personally really excited to do it. And to do it as a podcast, too. Because, again, I feel like I never would have gotten the book out had I not written it as a newsletter, because for me, writing an email is a lot lower pressure and stress and just mentally, like cognitively easier than like si...