Just Tell People About The Thing You Made

Name: Goodpods
Rating: 4.8 (3721 reviews)

09/07/21 • 31 min

1 Listener

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-hansen

Michele Hansen 0:01
This episode of Software Social is brought to you by Reform.

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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, I

Michele 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 si...

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 time

Join 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.

Michele Hansen 1:54
I hate to say it, but that does give me a little bit of like trough of sorrow vibes.

Michele Hansen 2:39
So have I mean, has your revenue gone down? Like?

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 3:55
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?

Previous Episode

Everything Is Happening

Michele Hansen 0:00
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. This episode of Software Social is sponsored by Noko. https://nokotime.com/

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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, I

Michele 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. So

Colleen 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 d...

Next Episode

A Tour Through Struggle: Cam Sloan, Founder of Hopscotch Product Tours

Send Cam some love and support! https://twitter.com/SloanCam
Check 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 time

Join 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 terrib...