Colleen Schnettler
===

Brian: [00:00:00] You're about to hear my chat with Colleen Schnettler, where she and I bat around different ideas and strategies and thoughts around choosing the right product idea to build a business around and sustaining it as a bootstrapped or mostly bootstrapped founder. Let's get into it.

So I'm about to roll my interview with Colleen Schnettler, the founder of HelloQuery. We had a really great conversation where we talked all about choosing the right product idea to build a business around and to sustain ourselves as entrepreneurs. And Colleen actually sort of turned the tables on me earlier in this interview, where she interviewed me about this kind of stuff, which I was not expecting, but it was still a great conversation.

Always great to catch up with Colleen. So here it is. Here's my conversation with Colleen Schnettler. Enjoy.

Colleen Schneller, welcome to the show. Great to connect with you again.[00:01:00]

Colleen : Thanks, Brian. I'm happy to be here.

Twitter, Conference, and Podcast friends!
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Brian: Yeah. You know, it was really cool to actually hang out with you in person a few months back at at MicroComp. And you know, like just like so many other people who, who come through this podcast and on Twitter and everything, it's like we have these like weird like podcast relationships with each other and, and a little bit of like Twitter and then like occasionally we actually speak live face to face. It's kind of fun.

Colleen : I know. I really love that too. 'cause I think it gives so much more context to the relationship.

Brian: Yeah,

Colleen : so nice to like have someone on your podcast and then meet them in real life. Like it's, you're already friends, so that's always nice.

Brian: you know, it, it is nice like when, when you've talked to each other on the podcast, but like, I'm sure this ha has happened to you where, you know, you meet a lot of people in this industry who, and like they know everything about you from following your podcast, but you're meeting them for the first time.

You know,

Colleen : Yes.

Brian: I

Colleen : That, that has happened to me.

Brian: sO, you know, I think probably like most episodes here this is gonna be kind of like a wide weird veering conversation here, but [00:02:00] what I'm, honestly, what I'm most interested in when I talk to anyone, and especially on this show, is transitions, like entrepreneurial transitions. I, I just, something about that like really fires me up when, when we just say like. Here's, here's where I've been, here's here's what's happening this year. I think I wanna do something totally different next year. I don't know if that's even the case for you or not. We can get into it. It's sort of the case for, for where I'm at, where, where we're recording this right now. But, um, just the idea of like redefining what success looks like and assessing different products and, and how things are going and. The viability of, of things. Anyway, let's, let's get into it.

Colleen : Cool.

Yeah.

Transitioning between between ideas
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Brian: you, how do you describe, um, where you're currently at? I mean, maybe we can go back into your story in, in a bit, but like, how do you, like, so we're recording here in November of 23. What do, what do you do, Colleen

Colleen : So I am in a transition [00:03:00] period right now. I had a startup that was funded, lightly funded, bootstrap, funded tiny seed. And I had that with my friend Erin, who I'm sure your listeners know from Twitter. I. And he decided to leave the business. And so I am going through a transition right now. So I'm trying to figure out, I think what you just said is really poignant.

Like how do you define success? What do you really want and what are the steps to get there?

Joining TinySeed
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Brian: Yeah. So, so you guys were in tiny seat. I guess you're, you're still in tiny seat, of

course.

Colleen : I'm still in tiny scene.

Brian: Yeah. What, when, what was the timing of that? Like? You were in like one of the earlier batches, right?

Colleen : November, 2022. So we've only been in, this is Mar one year, this November, so we've only been in a year.

Yeah,

Brian: reason I thought it was longer than that. That's cool. And so, and, and like I also took funding from Com company

Fund, which is, it's different in some ways, but it's like the same sort of idea. It's like a bootstrap [00:04:00] friendly type of fund. aNd I took some funding for, it was called Zip Message at the time, which is now Clarity Flow, and I, I took that in late 2021.

Colleen : So about two years ago.

Brian: yeah, yeah, I started

the business about three years ago and then I took that in like almost a year in. Yeah,

Colleen : so I know that you have had, you've had Bootstrap the web, your other podcast for like eight years or something, right?

Brian: I think even more than that. I think we're going on like 10 years. It's kind of crazy.

Colleen : Wow.

the ZipMessage to Clarityflow story (as of Nov 2023)
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Colleen : So I'm a new-ish listener, 'cause I'm kind of still new to this community. But I really want to talk about zip message and clarity flow because I have been listening to your podcast for probably a year, and then two weeks ago you said that you were going, you were thinking about getting a job

You were thinking about doing creator,

Brian: Yeah, I. I, I'm, I'm trying really hard not to get a job that's,

Colleen : Okay. No jobs.

Brian: No. No, but what I'm doing is essentially [00:05:00] where I'm at in, in this phase of my career, I, I'm now coming up to the end of like three full years of full-time focus on zip message,

which which became clarity flow during that time and. Now as, as we end 2023, I'm looking into 2024. I very much want to keep running and keep trying to grow clarity flow,

but it's it's going to have to get demoted to a side project for me

Colleen : Brian, you're crushing my dreams here, man. You're supposed to be like the sass like ninja. Tell me more about this.

Brian: one of the things that I was saying on the podcast on, on Bootstrap Web is that like,

just the fact of like having a podcast makes it sound a lot bigger than it actually is. Like this is, this is still very much a bootstrapped like

SaaS product that is not profitable. You know, it's, it's working on a financial runway. And and that runway is, it was partially funded from Com company fund.

I put in a lot more of my own money from, from savings to self-fund for the last three years. And

[00:06:00] I sold, you know, I had a previous exit in, in 2021 of audience ops. So that that helped to pad the runway a bit. But now, now we're three years in and we still have some runway.

It's gonna extend into 2024, but the, it's pretty clear that like we would need to really grow, like close to hockey, stick growth to To, to make it through that runway and, and really sustain this thing on its own and become profitable and support like my salary and along with the team and everything. So, so the, the decision that I'm coming to now is, um, just back off on the idea of like full-time, all in no other businesses, no other focus.

Just put it all on clarity flow and that's gonna change in 2024. I'm, I'm literally starting up a new Business to, to be sort of like the main thing, the the profit engine, the, the, the revenue [00:07:00] self-funded profit first. That's the thing. And then like clarity flow is the SaaS product that I sort of run on the side.

You know, that's, that's where it's going. At least for the foreseeable future, I think.

Colleen : Don't you have employees for clarity flow?

Brian: I currently have two developers in India and one one va. She's more than a va, more like a marketing assistant, I think. Yeah.

Colleen : Okay, so I'm, I'm curious about the decision instead of letting those people go and continuing to work on it full-time, you're going to expand your income stream. Can you tell me a little bit about like why you made that decision?

Brian: Yeah. So, first of all, I think that I. Okay, so like, like I, I considered so many options and I did not expect this

podcast to become an interview about me, but

Colleen : mean, sorry. I don't know. I've been really curious about this, so,

Brian: this is, this is great. And I, and I really want to hear everything about where you're at with, with Hello Query and, and everything.

Colleen : oh, yeah.

Brian: but okay, so I went through this whole. [00:08:00] Process internally I got some, some advice from friends and advisors. I also work with a coach and ran, ran it by him. And, and so, I assessed all the different options that I have on the table. It was like, okay, we're our MRR is here. And I have a spreadsheet where I project out like, okay, here's like a great scenario hockey stick growth.

Like this is what that projects out to be. Here's, here's a more likely scenario where we just have like Slow, like painfully slow, almost plateaued but maybe 5% growth that as we, as we move forward, that's where we end up in July or September of 2024. And then there's a scenario where like maybe these growth projects really don't pay off and we fully plateau and, and we

just sort of stay where we're at. Then our runway, you know, runs out a bit, a bit sooner than that. So. With that picture in mind, I started to come to the conclusion that like, I cannot just expect that we're gonna knock it outta the park with these growth projects that we have [00:09:00] al always running at, at all times. Right. So, and I also, also, where I sit now, like I still have eight to 10 months of runway left, like in the

bank account.

So, so that still gives me some space now to operate. So like I, I have a window to figure out what I wanna do next year. I don't wanna just keep focused and not consider other options and then wake up sometime next year and say like, oh, we're like a, a one month away from running outta money. And, and then,

then it's like, okay, finding a job or go do consulting as quickly as I can.

And I want to avoid that situation at all costs. So I'm. Making these decisions now when I'm like eight to 10 months out from that point. So then even, so even that being said, I looked at all the different options. Like one is, um, one would be like what you're saying is like, just let everyone go and just run the thing completely [00:10:00] solo. I'm a full stack developer. I could, I could like build and maintain the product myself. There are some areas of the product that my developers are frankly just better at supporting than, than I am just in terms of like, they're stronger on the backend. I'm more of a front end person. But I do build full stack and rails on the marketing front, like almost everything on marketing, especially in clarity flow. My approach to marketing is like I create the systems and processes and then I delegate it to someone else. Like I'm not writing SEO blog posts myself. I'm not, you know, we're running cold email outreach campaigns and I did a lot of work on the processes for that, but I have a VA who does the admin work on, on a weekly basis and like, so that kind of stuff, like I, and I certainly can't just maintain the product and. Be a full-time mark marketing person. And by that I mean like executing marketing myself. Like I, that's, you know, [00:11:00] so I, I, my approach is generally like I build the most important parts and then I delegate the, the, the legwork to, to my team.

Colleen : That makes sense.

Brian: it's, and, but even if I were to take, you know, let them all go and stay and go solo, it would, it would still not be profitable.

'cause we still have. Server costs. We, we still have some marketing expenses and tools and things, so like, I would still be looking for something to supplement the income and support my, like I haven't, I haven't taken a salary up until this point. Like,

Colleen : Really?

I didn't know that.

Brian: what I mean when I self fund, you know?

Colleen : Oh, I didn't, I didn't realize that. Okay.

Brian: I mean it's, it's not it's not profitable yet, you know?

Colleen : Yeah.

Brian: and look, profit, like people have very different. Definitions of, of profit, of profitability for a SaaS, right. But like,

I don't, I don't know what your situation is, but we're probably somewhat similar. You know, we, we have families. We're not like young and single in a, in a cheap apartment.

Colleen : living in our Van[00:12:00]

Brian: you're like living in like, you know, Vietnam or something like that. Like, we, like Li cost of life is not cheap. you know, I'm,

I'm in the suburbs here. Like, it's, it's not like, so, like. A SaaS to 10 KMRR is not profitable. Like

you're very, you're very far away from having like a sustainable, viable business. So that's what, that's sort of, so then the other options that I looked at were like, sell the business. I'm not interested in selling the business. I, I still think it's valuable. I think it'll be a lot more valuable in the future. Raise more is another option that I looked at. Decided not to go that route because, it's not a great climate to raise more money right now. Also I don't, I I don't really see it as like a wonderful investment for, or like, I, I can't really get behind like trying to sell an investor on like, hey, like, like, 'cause, you know, three years and it hasn't become profitable. That's, That's,

a pretty slow [00:13:00] track record for, for a sa for like what people would consider a successful SaaS.

Right.

Colleen : Yeah.

Brian: Then, and then, but it's more personal. It's more about I'm three years in on this. I'm, I, my, my calculation has changed. Like, I'm not, I'm not willing to, to, to give it more years of my career to say like,

this, this singular SaaS product idea is gonna be the one that takes me to where I want to go. I'm,

I'm willing at this point to say like, I really like this product. I think it has a future. But it can't be, I I can't be all in on it anymore, you know, so I'm just gonna keep hacking on it. But aside, so, so what I would love for clarity flow is, um, and this is where it's like, is the SaaS dream dead? I, I don't, I actually don't think it is. I think that it's like for, for me, where I'm at in my career and I've had multiple attempts at getting a SaaS business to work at this point, I think that [00:14:00] this SaaS can work, but I, I just can't depend on it for income and like, I, I need to build something else to get back to like a state of, of having like a solid business and then have like SaaS product ideas happening on the side, you know?

Colleen : That makes sense.

Yeah.

Brian: mean, you know, it's, I was in this place, I don't know how far back you were listening on Bootstrap Web, but from the years, 2015 ish to 2021. I had audience ops and I was also

selling a course called Productize.

Colleen : Okay.

Brian: those were like great years, to be honest. Like I had a, I

had a, I had a super profitable self-funded business that got to a point where I was running almost entirely without me. I had, I also had an info product that made a, a, a pretty good chunk of my income every year. And so I used all of that to like self-fund. I did a SaaS called Process Kit, and then I started zip message. I Self-funded a year of learning Ruby on Rails. [00:15:00] Like,

Colleen : Cool.

Brian: I, I sort of just need to get back to that of like having like a profitable core thing and that, that I can then use to reinvest in like little product ideas on the side.

You know, it rather than the idea of just going all in on one product idea in the name of like the, like just focus on one thing. like, I sort of have to like pen, you know, swing the pendulum back to like, all right, I, I think I need to be in a, a couple different things and then see, see what works from there. I dunno.

Colleen : have a founder friend. Yeah, so this is a good segue. I have a founder friend who has raised VA couple million dollars, so they have significantly more investment than I do. And we talk a lot about this concept of emotional runway, where it's like there's a point in this journey where this can be what you want to do with your life, but you.

Brian: Yeah.

Emotional Runway
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Colleen : Are exhausted and you need to figure out like doing something, whether it's, [00:16:00] whether it's content or whether it's consulting or whether it's getting a job to kind of ramp up your emotional runway to take another swing. Kind of made me think of, of your story a little bit.

Brian: that, that's so true. I mean, there, there really is an emotional runway, but I also think that it's like, it, this is really difficult, but at a certain point you also need to, um, look at your own business. you're an investor, like

unemotional, you know,

because, 'cause we are all, we, we absolutely are really emotional about our own business, our own creations, right?

Like,

like, I created this. And then the other thing that plays into it is like, I do have customers you know, like,

Colleen : Yeah. Right, right.

Brian: literally like today and yesterday, like somebody came to the website and signed up and started paying. Like,

and and it's hard to like emotionally be like. That's a person who I just created something and sold something to, and they got value from it. So that fire that like, I wanna keep pushing on that. But then you step back and it's like, [00:17:00] look, the numbers just don't play out

Like you need so many more of them in, in a, in a urgent window of time. That is just like you, you just gotta be realistic, you know? At least that's where, where I'm at, right?

I mean, I don't even know if I'm right or wrong about that, but that's where the, the gut. Points to at this

point, you know?

Colleen : Yeah.

Choosing a product idea
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Brian: So, all right, let's hear about your, your journey and where, where you're how I'm, I am curious about like, how you think about product ideas in general and choosing the right idea and committing your time and your investment and, and all that too.

Colleen : Yeah, this is such an interesting, I mean, I know everyone has super strong opinions about this, but it is such an interesting topic, right? So . For your listeners, some background. As I started a business with a friend, we raised the tiny seed money. He decided to leave the business about two months ago, so we didn't have a, we don't have a product.

We didn't have a product, so it wasn't like we were making [00:18:00] revenue and he decided to do something else. It was like, we don't have a product. So I am,

Brian: about that. 'cause I,

I sort of started following you and Aaron. I, I guess it was shortly after. After you took the tiny seed money

and it, and I wasn't totally clear on what your initial product was when, when you joined Tiny Seed.

Colleen : Yeah, so we got the funding based on this product that we had, which is was a drop in filter builder. Filter builder for Rails and Laravel, and we started the company, or when I joined the company, he had already started it. It felt like a sure thing. 'cause we had this enterprise level contract, so we were making, we were super profitable, actually

But it turns out that what that contract ended up turning into was productize consulting. I. So basically the, the trajectory was we were productized consulting. I was able, so I had two or three developers working for me[00:19:00] at one point. And then we raised the money, which then enabled us to eventually turn off the consulting, right?

So we were like, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna cancel this consulting contract. We actually sold the IP of that product to the company we built it for. So that was kind of nice and we decided to make a go of it. Without consulting, like full product. Like if I turn this into full product, can we do that?

And so we were actually working on that pivot, like that transition from product, like drop in filter builder to what we were, our vision was, it was essentially like a customer report builder. So it would load in your app as an iframe, kind of like a meta base for people who are familiar with that. And your customers could come in and filter, sort, and export their data.

So we are working on that when everything kind of imploded or exploded, I guess.

Brian: Got it.

Colleen : puts me, yeah. So I'm in a position now. Go ahead.

Brian: and, [00:20:00] and also you have, do, do you still run simple file upload? Is that like.

Colleen : Yes I do. I still have that.

Brian: So, so that, so you have like a bit of like a portfolio and then like, did, did you have like other stuff going on too? Besides that you were doing like a,

a couple different things.

Colleen : I mean, at this exact moment in time, you can buy three different products from me, which is kind of funny because like I'm not the small betts person. Like I'm the all in on one thing person.

But yes, right now, today you can buy three different products from me should you be so inclined.

sImplify, upload I kept because it's just easy.

I mean, I don't know a lot about what you were doing with audience ops, but Simple File upload runs itself and it's, it's making money, so it's like, why would I turn it off?

Brian: You know, one thing that I, that that I heard there and, and I was just thinking about this before our call, was like, do we assess ideas or, or maybe a better way is like, how, what's the premise for each idea? Right. And you, you were talking about [00:21:00] how you sort of had like a productized service. You're turning it into, uh, a SaaS. I,

Colleen : yes, that's

Brian: I

Converting a service into a SaaS
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Brian: sort of had that with audience ops or that was like, one of my first attempts at SaaS was, so audience ops was a productized service, just content as a service. And it grew to

like a team of like 25 people and, and just

very process oriented. Like we powered the blogs for a lot of SaaS companies. And I I sold that in 2021, but, but back in, so I started in like 2015. Then by 2017, like before I learned Rails, I, I hired some developers to to essentially turn a lot of what we did into a SaaS. We, we wanted to build a, uh, like a, like a content calendar kind of tool. And some posting to Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook kind of tool.

Colleen : Okay.

Brian: that was the concept, but it, but. That idea was like, let's see if we can take what we do as a service for clients [00:22:00] and turn it into a software that people can use on their own. And that just did not work. Like it, it gained almost no traction in, in the beginning. And I, I spent a ton of money on hiring developers which led me to go learn rails myself from that point forward. But then, then like looking at other ideas, like, then I went into process kit. Then eventually zip message. And then I started to like change my mindset around like, choosing ideas based on like, don't try to, don't like the idea of like converting a service into a, into a SaaS generally for me doesn't work because

it's like, it's a different premise.

You're, you're, you're doing it for the client rather than asking the client to do it themselves. bUt then I moved toward this idea of like, It's actually better to go into a crowded market or where there's, where there's competitors where, where there's proven demand, like proven customer activity.

They, they buy tools like this. So ship a tool that's like this, but different or better in some way. And I think that has [00:23:00] some pros and cons as well, but I, I'm curious to hear your thought on like, like, you know, choosing a, a product idea based on like, it, this could be like the only one of its kind in its market. Versus like, this could be one of many in the market, you know?

Colleen : Yeah, I have strong feelings on this because the way we approached the product was called Refine. So we had this quarter million dollar contract, so we were like, we are in the, this is gonna work. Everyone's gonna want this. Obviously that didn't work out because of what you just said. I think.

People do it all the time. Right. Consulting to like consulting to productize service. But I also know a lot of people who have tried it and it hasn't worked. And for us, we tried it and it didn't work. Like we could have sustained and grown that business. But we were clearly in productize consulting and I did not want to do consulting.

I was trying to get out of that. I am also, another mistake I think we made is rails, developers in general don't have a high propensity to pay for gems. Like they expect. Sure. [00:24:00] There's, there's always your outliers, right? You've got, everyone wants to tell me about Sidekick. I know. But generally that is an outlier.

Like it is not a,

Brian: that is like, it's free for mo wait,

Colleen : free for most people.

Yeah. And so I think we were trying to build a market, we were trying to come into this market and say of Rails developers, who are my people, right. And say, you should pay for this thing. That's just not a thing that developers were like, what? No, we don't, we don't pay for gems.

Like maybe we'll pay you for extra support. Or there could have been another way to build a business model there, but it was not a SaaS, right? Because it was a piece of software. And so all of that to say, one of the things Aaron and I realized, you know, maybe in the summer we were like, we're trying to

Teach these people that the market should be different and we don't have the money or the time to teach people that the market should be different. So I'm a big proponent, like as I, so I'm in this position now where I'm deciding [00:25:00] what to do next. I have a little bit of time and so do I start something new?

Do I, you know, I'm, I'm evaluating business ideas and I'm a big believer in the crowded market. Like I, I think that is the move. It can be really . Depressing when you think you're starting something and you find a competitor who has raised $20 million and their product's way better. But I think you need to be in a established market as a solo developer.

Brian: I mean, that, that's also where I landed. And I, I think I, I'm still sort of like in that camp, if you will, but there, there are trade offs everywhere. Right.

Colleen : Sure.

Riding a wave
---

Brian: you

know, I think the thing that I, that really started to like, I. Make it sink in for me is, is, is a lot of what Justin Jackson was talking about in the last couple of years around, like, you sort of need to find this existing wave of demand and, and come into that market and, and meet customer like, and, and what I, what I get really interested in is like talking to customers and doing these research interviews and jobs, job to be done, interviews [00:26:00] hearing them describe. All right, well, I pay for this tool, and this tool does that for me, and then I pay for that tool, and that tool does that for me. And so, like what I'm hearing is like these are commonly used tools that pe, that people in this market frequently actually pay for. Like there, there's evidence of that happening, so that's exciting. But it, but the trade off is they need a really, really strong reason to switch from those tools.

Colleen : Mm-Hmm.

Brian: Or, or even if they're not switching still, like they'd need a really good reason to choose your new tool over the, well-known, well-established options out there, you know,

Colleen : yes.

Brian: and it's not like, it's not just a race for parody.

Like there is that, like you do have to like ship a lot of features just to be pa like just to be compared to like the, the players in the space. But there's also like a credibility gap. And even

once you shift the features, it's still relatively [00:27:00] new. So it, it needs a level of polish. Like it's it, it's a slower, it's a slower grind to like, I, 'cause I do see natural demand, like with, with clarity flow.

There definitely is natural demand. People just finding it. They don't know me, they don't know my podcast. They're just Googling it and they're, and they're finding it. Or, or even like word of mouth in, in the coaching space is starting to like sort of trickle in now. But it's still like a slow process.

They, they still need to like onboard and get active and feel comfortable to use it with their clients. And so then, so then I still question the whole idea of like, how in 2023 and 2024, how realistic or how viable is it to take a, an idea, no code yet. Just an, just a concept for a potential product. from zero to profitable SaaS business like in a year or a year and a half, right?

Like I like, [00:28:00] honestly, like I'm really questioning Obviously companies do it. Obviously companies find that level of success in that timeframe, but I just feel like there are so many factors that make it difficult, like more difficult now than ever before. And may, maybe this is overly negative, but like. To be, to be pro, especially for folks like in our, like, you know, we're not in our twenties, like with, with like no

expenses, like to go from zero to 25 KMRR in a, in 18 months. Like you, you gotta nail product market fit like fast, you know, and,

and deliver the product in that time, you know?

Colleen : I think it's exceptionally rare and I think . We, I, you know, and that's, that's part of like the, I don't wanna say like on Twitter or the content you consume. It was interesting 'cause I was at a conference last week and on the internet it seems like everyone's doing it. I'm like, what's wrong with me?

Like, why can't I, why isn't it working for me? But when you actually start to talk to people, um, [00:29:00] and people are honest, which is another problem people have, you'll find, I think what you said is really true. I think it's exceptionally rare. , and I do think it's a grind, like it doesn't happen overnight for 99.9% of the people trying to do this.

Brian: Yep. How do you think about that? Like, obviously, you know, you, you had tiny seed and I took some funding from from Com

fund. But like, how do you think about like the, the runway or the transition from going? So you're, you're in exploration mode right now. You're looking at ideas,

Colleen : Yep.

Yep.

Evaluating potential ideas
---

Brian: How are you even evaluating ideas, but also how are you like planning your next 12 to 18 months of like, okay, I have, or however long your, your window of time is. Like, there's this time I can choose an idea that I think I has, has a high likelihood of success of getting to profitability. But then there's also the question of like, how do I fund this time? How do I, you know, give it the, the resources that it needs and all that.

Colleen : And it's super [00:30:00] hard, right? Because you're trying to find the balance between do I wanna move fast and like hire a couple people and just burn the boats and give it three to four months and see what happens? Or do I want to not do that and just have me, and I'll be a little bit slower, but then I have more time?

And I think that's tricky. I think since I don't have, I'm still ideating, like I don't have an idea that I'm like, this is the thing. I am slow rolling, burning through that runway right now. Yeah, I think, but you know, I have this, I have this theory, right? I think any idea can work. That is my theory is any idea can work given enough time, dedication doesn't mean it's a good idea, but.

I do think any idea can work. So you have to, so when I evaluate the quality of an idea, so the thing, one of the great things I took away from my year in Tiny Seed and doing Hammer Stone was I'm gonna build a product that people will pay like [00:31:00] $200 a month for. I'm not gonna be selling a product at,

Brian: not a

$19 problem.

Colleen : yeah, simple file upload is $35 a month.

And even that, I'm like, that's kind of cheap. Like, I won't do that again.

So when I evaluate, I, so I have this one idea that I kind of like love but I don't actually think I can charge a high enough premium for it. And so I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna go after that or not. And, and so when I evaluate idea, obviously you wanna think about, you know, you wanna talk to people and demand is this thing people are asking for.

But I am now looking at like, what is this? What is real, the real value I can add to someone's business? Can I sell this to, I don't, can I sell this to real businesses? Like. It's great if I can sell it to my friends, but that's not what I'm trying to do.

so That's a big thing for me now.

Brian: That was a big factor in my transition from, from zip messages to clarity flow. Not, not just the rebrand, but like changing the product and how we price and niching down to coaches. Like a big driver of that was like, get us away from [00:32:00] $19 a month. We had like a 19 and a $39 plan and, and we were doing freemium for the first like year and a half

of, of it to no freemium. Starts at 49, goes to 99 and 1 99.

Colleen : Yeah.

Brian: but like we're, you know, we've built a much more, like a much bigger product, but a more essential pro. Like it runs their a coach's entire business, whereas

zip message was like just a Loom competitor. And this is intended to be like, you can take payments, you can sell courses through it, you can have group coaching on it, like. So they like a coach, like depends on it. And that, that was like the, as I did all this research, it was like they're duct taping two or three tools that they're paying 50 to $150 a month for, um, to, to run their business. And if we cover all of that ground, then, then then it can be a, a viable business.

Colleen : Yeah.

Brian: just sort

of wish I'd, I didn't learn [00:33:00] that in year three and instead I learned it on year one.

But

Colleen : Right.

Brian: yeah.

Validating ideas before building
---

Colleen : And you know, something else about this whole, like how do you validate idea is there's so much survivorship bias

Brian: Yeah,

Colleen : for every person that tells you you should talk to 50 customers before you launch anything. You'll have your, Jason, have you seen read that Jason Freed article? Validation is a myth.

Brian: probably sounds like,

Colleen : it's great. But it's basically like . It's a myth. You gotta ship and see what happens. And then the other day, one more point is like Derek's whole why levels failed. I don't know if you've read that one recently, but I was reading that Derek Rimer has this, so remember how he started? Maybe

Brian: yeah, yeah,

Colleen : started levels.

He worked on it for a year and he shut it down. But he had like,

Brian: the other guy levels on, on Twitter.

Colleen : oh, oh no, no. Derek

Brian: yeah,

yeah, yeah. I remember his whole story with levels. Yeah.

Colleen : But he had like a thousand plus people sign up for early access or something

and it failed. Right. . [00:34:00] So no one knows guys, you just gotta do stuff.

Brian: That is the hardest thing. And I actually tend to I do remember that Jason Freed article, and I also Dan Norris wrote a very similar article. I think it was called like Validation is Bullshit or something like that.

Colleen : Okay.

Brian: and I. I. agree with that because

in my experience, I, I in, I've had so many past pro, way too many past products in my career now, and I, I tried the pre-selling valid, like literally taking money from people before I built the thing.

And almost none of those customers became long-term customers. They were just along for the ride.

Colleen : Yeah.

Brian: and then I also. I, there, there, I've had plenty of products where like, I have amazing conversations with, with customers. They tell me that they're super interested and then they're, they're just not like, I, I, I don't think that you can really, truly validate a product until, until it's in their hands and they're actually faced with a [00:35:00] decision of like, am I going to use this today? Like, am

I actually going to put it to use today? Like, not theoretical. But I'm actually gonna put my, not only, and not even just paying for it, like, a lot of people will say that they'll, they'll pay for it, but then they end up not using it and they'll churn in three months,

Colleen : Right. So we actually pre-sold. We thought we were doing everything right, Brian, like, I need to write a book about this, because we did everything right. We pre-sold it. I pre-sold, refined. I was so proud of myself. That was a product I had. Hammer, stone, it didn't matter. Like when, when we were really in there trying to build the business.

It was wonderful to have those people's early support, but like ultimately it didn't pan out.

So,

Brian: probably thought that they were going to use it. Like they,

they probably legit thought like, oh, this is interesting, this, this could solve a problem for me. But then for one reason, whether they get busy or the the need changes or, or whatever it might be, when it comes down to it, like, no, actually it's not quite product market fit, you know?

Colleen : Yeah. So when I approach this problem, something I'm doing differently, [00:36:00] um, I think because my co-founder and I had raised a little money, we had this vision and I now keep this quote from Paul Graham about vision on my, on my desk. I'll just read you the first line. What you will get wrong is that you will not pay enough attention to users.

You will make up some idea in your own head that you call your vision and you'll spend a lot of time thinking about it by yourself,

Brian: Yeah.

Colleen : And so we had this vision, right? 'cause people were paying thousands of dollars a month for Power bi and they all hated it. And we were like, this is it.

And we didn't ship anything.

Like, we didn't ship anything, right? We just talked to people about our vision , and so

I think what I'm trying to do this time,

Brian: other way, like

Colleen : correct. Exactly. That's exactly what we did. We overcorrected in the other way. So we were here, then we went here and so now that I'm going at it alone, I'm trying to like, I think six weeks, but like I'm trying to ship things in like four to six [00:37:00] week cycles to get it in front of people.

. Instead of having just like big, some big, huge, I still have a vision, I'm gonna be honest, but I'm trying to parse it down into like shippable segments to see what happens.

Brian: You know, I, one of my, I think. And I'm doing a lot of reflecting back on like, where did I actually make some mistakes or, or, or decide, um, in certain ways that I, that I should have done differently. And I was looking back on my liter, like the initial idea for zip message when I first started it. And I was very much in, in what you're doing right now, which was like, I, I actually remember talking about this on Bootstrap Web at the time.

It was, it was around January of 20, I guess 2021, January, 2021 was when I, like, so I had, I had this idea of start these experiments like, like quick shippable product ideas.

And I think I was talking about like launching like a product studio where I would have like a portfolio of products [00:38:00] and zip messages was like one of the very first, one of ones of these. I think I did one like Twitter idea that went nowhere and then, and then zip message. And the idea was to do like five, seven more after that. Zip

messages. Sort of had some, some, some quick traction when I, when I showed it to people and I was able to build a, like a V one within like two or three months with that, and then I just kept running with, with that one. You know,

and it, it did get customers pretty quickly in the first few months. And then, and then just a few months later, I took some funding from Comm Fund and I sold audience ops. And then I was like, all right, I'm all in on, like,

forget, forget the product studio idea. Forget the small betts idea. I've got one.

It's, it's off and running. Let's just go. And, and now like three years later, I'm back to this point of like. I still, I like, I'm, I'm sort of circling back around to the small betts idea, but even when small betts start to work, just let them [00:39:00] work for a while. But they're still small side projects. They don't have like, it, I, I think, I think my bar for taking like a SaaS idea and saying like, this is ready to become my full-time focus is much higher now.

Like I have

to see, I have to see it succeed. Against all odds, against all like it has to be. So it has to fit the market and, and get so much traction and raise to a level of MRR despite me not working full-time on it, or, you know, or despite it not being perfect like that, that's a sign that like, all right, this thing is really like, you have to give it focus 'cause it's demanding focus at this point.

Whereas like with, with zip messages, it was like, all right, it, it grew. Customer's fast. It's on a pretty good trajectory, but it's nowhere near a profitability, you know? So I, I,

looking back, I maybe I like went all in on it too quickly. Or too

early.

Colleen : Yeah.

Brian: Hard to say.

Colleen : [00:40:00] So with with your, 'cause I know you said you're gonna be doing more content creation and what else are you doing? You're doing something else. Consult, not consulting. You're

Brian: Yeah.

Colleen : coaching.

Brian: yeah, that the coaching is sort of like a first offer. So I started up this. This domain that I'm calling instrumental products and

Colleen : That's right.

Brian: it's, yeah, I think primarily I'm getting back to this idea of like, basically like a creator style business. Like in, in the next couple weeks I'm gonna start to really invest in audience growth again.

And YouTube and this podcast is coming back.

Colleen : Right.

Audience growth vs. not
---

Brian: So like the audience thing has been something that I really backed off on in in the last couple years. I just haven't really cared about it. I've had Bootstrap Web and we just do that for fun, but like, I never really took it seriously to like try to grow my email list or try to grow my audience. I was just trying to do SaaS. So now going forward, I think I need to just get back to grow the audience. Get to a point where [00:41:00] I can have that distribution channel really built up, like in, in a really serious way. Like if I can get, get like a year from now and have like a, a, really decent audience.

Colleen : YeAh,

Brian: that's a really great jumping off point to then do there, there's so many different ways to be successful in business.

It doesn't have to be SaaS. It could, it could be courses, it could be community events, sponsorships on a YouTube channel. That's sort of where my head's at it is gonna be product like, product strategy and product design focused. So maybe as like a byproduct of creating that kind of content. I'm, I'm also hacking on little product ideas, but again, like those and clarity Flow is gonna continue to run as like a side project going forward.

So like those are gonna just be little things on the side, but the main thing is reestablish, income and like a profitable business. anD. It, but it's not enough to just go do consulting or go get a job. Like that solves the short term income thing, [00:42:00] but it's not investing for the long term. You know?

So I, I need to be investing in an asset which would be an audience in a distribution channel. So that, you know, that just makes everything easier. And, and I, and I really kind of took my eye off the ball on that for the last, like four or five years, like on purpose. 'cause audience wasn't as important to me, but. That's where

I need to get back to. Yeah,

Colleen : Okay. Wow.

Brian: I mean,

I'll throw it back to you. Like, how do you,

Colleen : Yeah,

Brian: so, you know, you've, you've been through this, this this, this past year or so of like, you know, working on this one thing and now you're exploring new product ideas. Are you, how do you define success going forward in as, as an entrepreneur, as you know, a, a product person? Are, are you still like, like, searching for a single product to sort of say like, that's, that's gonna be the winner. I'm gonna, I'm gonna focus all attention on that.

Colleen : Yes, I would [00:43:00] absolutely like, which again, it's funny 'cause I have three right now, but I would like a single product that I really believed

Brian: Yeah.

Colleen : could be, could be the product. But I think, you know, it's interesting being in this early stage again and starting over. Something you said about zip message. Is I, I'm, I'm actively trying to take the pressure off, um, of these ideas, right?

I'm like, this might be a crappy idea, but I think I'm just gonna do it anyway and see what happens. I think I. If you go into the situation being like, I've got six months and this has to be the one product to rule them all, like, you're just doomed to be disappointed.

Brian: Yep.

Colleen : And, and so I, I think the fact that I haven't sold Simple file upload is indicative of the fact that I don't really know what's gonna work.

And it's funny, I was talking, I have a tiny seed investor . A friend and you know, we were talking about it and he was like, the most interesting thing about Tiny Seed is I can't tell from the list of [00:44:00] ideas what's gonna be successful and what's not. He's like, I will hear an idea that sounds awesome.

And they'll have all this early traction and then they'll just fizzle out and then you'll hear this other idea that sounds terrible. And they're making $500 a month and they'll just be really, really successful. So, I'm trying to take that mindset. I think . I've been on a bit of a rollercoaster recently, and so, I mean, mindset is such a word people throw around, right?

And you're like, oh my gosh, eye rolly.

Brian: But,

Colleen : But,

but it's everything, right?

Brian: like, it, it's not about building a great product. It's not even about marketing. It's about like keeping your head on straight and, 'cause this shit is hard. you know?

What are you optimizing for?
---

Colleen : Yeah. Right. I mean, I, I, you know, my favorite question is like, what are you optimizing for? Like, what are you optimizing for in your life? If it's money, you should probably go get that $500,000 job Amazon offered you that you turned down, right? , like, what are you, are you optimizing for control, for freedom?

Like, I think it's really, really [00:45:00] important to remember. . What you're doing. Like for, I can give you a concrete example. So my kids are getting older. I have one in middle, two in elementary school, and last year I was so focused on the business. I was like, I don't have time for anything else, right? Like family, um, business, fitness, those are my three things.

That's all I can do. And. This year, so now I'm in this weird position where, yeah, I'm gonna run outta money soon. Like for full context, like I, I can't do this forever. But I was like, . This is my life and I need to live it in a way, I will look back on and be happy. So like, I'm coaching first grade basketball.

'cause I've always wanted to do that. Like I've, I've always wanted to coach my, one of my kids like sports teams. And I was like, I'm too busy. I'm too busy, I don't have time. And I was like, I better do it now because they're gonna grow up and I still might not have a successful SaaS.

Brian: I love, I love going to my daughter's basketball games and coaching her, like privately in her driveway and everything. But,

and [00:46:00] I, and I could run a business, I can go on podcasts, I could speak at conferences. I cannot coach a little kid's sports team. I don't, I, I just

don't have It in me. I

Colleen : hilarious.

Brian: Yeah.

Colleen : It's like,

Brian: are ridiculous.

Yeah. So much fun.

Colleen : chaos. Just utter chaos.

Brian: just took her to Madison Square Garden for the, her first Knicks game last week. So that was a lot of fun.

Colleen : Oh, nice.

That's cool.

Brian: Yeah.

sO, I wanted to get back to I just, now I just lost my train of thought. yOu know, this idea of like going all in on On a pro, you know, I think you were just saying about like, optimizing or what are you optimizing for? Right. And

that's, that is something that I gave, that's a big driver in my decision over this last month or two. And one, one thing that I came to was I keep using this phrase like, just remove urgency. Remove,

like with, with when you're operating on a runway, and these past three years [00:47:00] has have been the first time in my career that I was actually operating on a runway to profitability. I, I've

been self-employed for 12 years Before that, all profitable self-funded, you know, through client work and then, and then businesses that were just bootstrapped and profitable. But then it wasn't until 2021 and going forward where it was like, okay, this is unprofitable. I have money in the bank and we're going to make it out the other side at some point. But now, now it's like there's this urgency of like, we literally have an X number of months where we have to, where these growth projects have to pay off, otherwise things change. And I need to get back to this. I remember my mental state, my mindset in the years of 2015 to 2021 when I had a profitable core business. I can take as much time as I want to let these other things take their time and grow and, and take root, you know? And so what I would like to [00:48:00] get to now is like clarity flow keeps going,

but just re remove its entire runway.

Just that whole equation is remove from the picture, get

something else going, and, and then I, then I can go as slow as I want on clarity flow or whatever else. You know, that's, that's sort of the, the game for me now at this point.

Colleen : That's interesting because I think that . You will hear. I mean, that's such a personal thing I think is where I was going with this. Like, 'cause you can hear so, so many people approach that differently, right? Because I literally just read a book called Burn the Boats. I mean, and the whole premise of the book was like, the only way you're gonna succeed on your new thing is to cut off your, your safety net, right?

Because the urgency and the desperation make you better.

Brian: Yeah.

Colleen : But I also think what you just said. Like removing some of the, the stress and the like mental overhead of this has to work in six months, enables you to approach it in a more long-term sustainable [00:49:00] way.

Brian: and that's why I, I honestly, I, I feel like I say this on every episode of this podcast where it's like,

I.

I can't stand this constant debate, especially on Twitter like. You have to focus on one versus having a portfolio of small betts or, or whatever you want to call it, like it, it just completely removes or it doesn't take into account that each founder's personal situation and where they're at and like, a lot of times like focus is just not an option. you know?

Colleen : Mm-Hmm.

Brian: and and, and I agree to a certain extent that like focusing on one business does help, especially when the business demands. focus. Like if, if there are things that cannot happen in this business, unless you are giving it 40 hours a week, then then yeah, you're, you're starving the business. But if, but if it's a business that's, that that can still operate as, as a side project while, while you sustain yourself, I, I think there's a case to be made that like, [00:50:00] I mean, it's just every, every person's different. That's why I hate these like, stupid debates of like

Colleen : yes.

Survivorship bias
---

Brian: Everyone should always focus on one, or everyone should do the portfolio thing, or everyone should do the audience thing, or not the audience thing or whatever it might be, you know?

Colleen : And I think that goes back to the survivorship bias, right? Like everyone succeeded in their way, or these people who are pontificating about this,

they approached it a certain way and that's how they succeeded. So everyone should do it that way. I think you're right. It's a, it's a stupid argument to have because I.

What you just said, like, we are the founder. I mean, we have, you know, we have kids like, we're older. Our life situation is completely different. I, you know, I live in a house, like I don't, I don't, again, so, you know, the things I need for my life are completely different than what other people need. So, so, yeah, I don't know that there's the right answer.

I was, while you were saying that, I was thinking it would be funny though if I like . Like I carry the torch for like one thing, like I wanna focus on one thing, but it'll [00:51:00] be funny for me if like all this circles back and simplify upload, which has been quietly growing for three years. Like turns out to be the thing.

they just ignored it for five years and then it was the thing.

Brian: And you know,

I'm also a big believer in seasons, you know,

Colleen : yeah.

Brian: Like two or three years ago, I, I did make the conscious decision. I was like, I sold everything. I sold audience ops

Colleen : Yeah.

You were all in.

Brian: I was like, look, like for once in my career, let me actually at least try the, the one thing for a couple years and now

I'm sort of like circling back.

And, and maybe that'll be different next year. Maybe that'll be a different five years from now. And I think everyone goes through these, these seasons, you know?

Colleen : Well, you went all in and I don't wanna say you got burned, but it didn't turn out. It sounds like the way you had hoped, but

Brian: No.

Looking back on mistakes
---

Colleen : now, you know Right. You tried it and

Brian: yeah,

Colleen : you can

Brian: I don't, I don't

regret it. I definitely, I definitely own the decision to go all in. I think it, and I, and I think a lot of the decisions that don't end up panning out, I can still look back on them and be like, I probably would still make that same decision. [00:52:00] I. Because given, given the data that I had at the time, I think it made sense to go that way. But and I could say that about anything, like the decision

Colleen : Yeah, sure.

Brian: do freemium or not, or the decision

to niche down or not. Like, you know, we're, I, it's, it's hard to, you know, 'cause I, I was getting a lot of feedback from like mastermind buddies about all this. It's like, what would you have done differently?

Or, or what were some of the mistakes that were made? And it's like. It's not a whole lot that I would necessarily do differently. It's just like I'm in a different place now. You know? And that's,

that's where we ended up, you know?

Colleen : Yeah. Yep. That makes sense.

Brian: So, I mean, we'll start to wrap it up here. I, I am curious about this idea that you seem pretty excited about, but you didn't mention what it is.

Colleen : I have all the ideas. Okay. So the good thing about being in this world for a while is I have a lot of ideas that I'm excited about. But man, there is this cycle that I have been going through the past couple months where it's like, this is a great idea. And then you talk to people or you look [00:53:00] at the competitors and you're like, oh, this is a, this is a terrible idea.

So , I don't know, man. , I'm just, I'm just in this process right now where I am trying to think smaller. I am trying to . Build stuff. 'cause I want to, like, I'm trying to play and have fun and I'm really focused on doing that right now.

So I actually have three ideas, which I, I'm excited about, maybe excited about, I don't know.

But I. Yeah.

I, I'm just trying to have fun. I'm not, you know, why Wait, I would like to tell you why, because it's really interesting. So I'm in this weird emotional state. Okay. Like, just with everything we've been through with the business, like it's a weird state to be in and I come up with an idea that I think is good and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna build a little bit of it 'cause I wanna build stuff.

And then I tell my founder friends, and you know what founder friends do, Brian. Because they [00:54:00] love you, , they tell you

all the reasons,

Brian: validate. Yeah. Go talk to

Shipping tiny ideas
---

Colleen : and they tell me all the reasons why it's a terrible idea.

so I am not like really talking about them right now just because I need to protect my little emotional fiefdom

Brian: I

hear you.

Colleen : building something and just talking to the people that might buy it.

Brian: I, I respect that. That's, I, I'm on board. I like it. I, I did see you ship the, I guess, one of these little small small ideas. The, the podcast advertiser thing.

Colleen : yeah. So that is one of the, the ideas I'm excited about,

Brian: was funny 'cause your, your tweet came through and literally like an hour or two later, another guy that I know Joe Casabona. He like reached out to me to see if I wanted to sponsor one of his,

Colleen : sponsor.

Brian: his. I was like, I, you know, it's not in my budget right now, but I just came across this thing. Check this out.

Like you might find sponsors that way. Like you know

Colleen : Yeah. So I really like that idea that, yeah, I forgot I actually shipped that . [00:55:00] That's, I really like this podcast sponsorship idea because I think that when Michelle and I were doing software social, the sponsorship thing was more effort than it was worth. I mean, it was just such a pain. And so I don't know if I'm the right person to build that.

'cause if you look at that, is that a two-sided marketplace? I don't know, maybe. But I think there's a huge dearth of, of products in the sponsorship space, and I think as AI becomes more and more prevalent, people are gonna wanna feel a personal connection with creators, whether that's through YouTube or podcast or newsletters.

And the tools out there now, at least the ones we tried, were mostly terrible.

So I think there's, there's gonna be something in that space, whether it's me or not, I don't know.

Brian: couple years back, this is probably like 20 17, 20 18, I got, I was, I came so close to starting a SaaS around, uh, the feature that they call dynamic insertion in podcasts.

Colleen : Oh yeah, I transistor does that now. Yeah.

Brian: and I'm, I'm gonna be using it on, on this season of, of this [00:56:00] podcast where I'll do

Colleen : cool. Okay.

Brian: of like a live update as like the intro, which will go out to like the whole catalog of, of episodes. So I,

I love that concept. And, and, and

I was thinking a lot about that, like back in 2018. I think it was around, in, in, in some like early like, advertising platforms for, for podcasts. But, and I was thinking about it like in terms of podcast advertising, but also like just the ability to like announce a Black Friday sale across all of your podcasts.

Anyway, like that, that was like one of those like shiny object ideas that, like, I went down the rabbit hole for a couple months, but I didn't actually

pull the trigger and do it.

Colleen : okay. Yeah.

Brian: and, and I guess these days it's sort of a feature in a lot of the, the hosts like, like transistor. But I, I'm still pretty excited about that.

Like, I, I still think that that has, there's something there because like it's, it doesn't seem to get used that much, but I, I feel

like there is a lot of. Untapped opportunity in like, using podcasts in different ways, like dynamically,

Colleen : I do too. I think. And, and I'm [00:57:00] interested because I've had a podcast. I've been on a lot of podcasts. Like I'm very interested in the space and of course I love podcasters 'cause it's a creator space. And, and I think there's so much room for product in the podcast. It, it, maybe it's not advertising right?

Maybe it's guest scheduling. I don't know. I think it's advertising 'cause I wanna be closer to the money. But, i, I think even with like the dynamic audio insertion feature being built into platforms, I still think there's opportunity for like the human touch sponsors, high value, that whole thing. So I, I think there's something there.

So

Brian: Very cool.

Colleen : I'll report back.

Brian: Sounds good. Well, Colleen, it was great to catch up with you. It was a really good conversation. Thank you for giving me a bit of a therapy session here as well. So, good stuff.

Colleen : it was great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Brian: I'm, I'm gonna keep following along and, and especially like this, this phase of like exploring your different product ideas. I I'm excited to see where you go with this, so, pretty cool.

Colleen : Thanks. I appreciate

Brian: right.

Colleen : Bye.[00:58:00]

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