Colleen: Hey Joe, good morning.
Joe Masilotti: Good morning, Colleen. How's it going?
Colleen: I am doing great. Living the dream, man. What about you? I know, right? I'm just in a good mood.
Joe Masilotti: Alright. Honestly? Yeah, that's good. That's good. Honestly, feeling the same. I feel like some pieces fell into place last week, and the week before, I guess, since we recorded, and feeling good about that. So, excited to share today. Yeah. Okay. Should we dive right in? Alright, I'm not going to. ⁓ Okay, so, updates on two fronts. One, my consulting business, and two, Ruby Native.
Colleen: Yeah, well, let's do it. Don't bury the lead. Dive right in.
Joe Masilotti: ⁓ Let's do Ruby Native first, because I feel like that's more top of mind right now. I officially launched Ruby Native for iOS yesterday. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Exciting. I was like, it's my birthday. I'm going to do something fun. So I launched with a huge discount code, like a 33 something percent discount code, which was really cool.
Colleen: I know. Congratulations. I saw your email.
Joe Masilotti: And it feels good to be like, okay, this thing is live. This thing is launched. ⁓ However, I didn't really receive much reception on it. Like not a lot of feedback. I think I got one reply. The posts didn't do great. And I'm okay with that because the launch to me was more of my own milestone of this isn't pre-launch anymore. Like this thing is launched, it's live, everyone can use it. It's not in beta.
Colleen: Yes.
Joe Masilotti: and it was more like a mental shift for me. Now it's not about building the MVP, it's about improving this product, which is where I've wanted to be with this for like a long time. And I'm excited about that from a product standpoint.
Colleen: Yes. Yeah. Okay.
Joe Masilotti: which means Android, working on Android for a while. I have a beta list set with like 15 people already looking to try the beta, which I've only promoted I think once. ⁓ And today I woke up to a very exciting email that the first Ruby native app that I didn't build is live in the app store as of today. Yeah, yeah. So this person I think is in Turkey.
Colleen: Ooh, that's very exciting!
Joe Masilotti: is building a personal finance app and has it on Rails, it, you know, had it on Rails, like the little side project thing for a while now and built a Ruby native app for iOS, never opened Xcode, never ⁓ wrote a line of Swift and now has their app in the app store that you can download. And I downloaded it and it looks great. He's even using some features that I didn't know you could use them in a certain way, which is really cool to see. Like his tab bar doesn't have text on it, it's just icons, which I didn't even know you could do. And it's just supported with Ruby Native, which is awesome. ⁓ Live, he's getting users already. ⁓ We've been chatting a little bit over email to like figure out the last couple of bugs with screenshots, but yeah, it's real. Paying customer, like the whole nine yards, it's awesome.
Colleen: Congratulations, that's an amazing feeling.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, thanks. I'm very excited and the homepage right now for Ruby Native has like, you know, example apps. And I very purposely was like, I'm going to put only the apps that are launched in the app store here. And I'm going to be honest. So since the website landed, it's only been my app that I built with Ruby Native. And that was intentional to put like a fire under my butt to get other people there. And now there's two. Now there's like my app and then...
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Joe Masilotti: Someone who people don't know app like stranger app, just feels so real that not only is this a proof of concept, but apps are getting approved by Apple. Two now, right? And this person didn't have to go through like, ⁓ I'll download the code and like make this change. It's like, no, they are using the platform for the intended purpose and are now in the app store. And that is just freaking wild to me. So. Very, very excited about all of that.
Colleen: That's amazing. Especially like, so many people, one, don't even launch their products, and two, never get paying customers. You are already so far ahead.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, it's, think Ruby Native has made like a thousand dollars already in terms of, cause it's like it's annual subscriptions and even with the discount code, it's 200 bucks a person. So like that's not many people needed to make a thousand bucks. ⁓ Got my first payout on the first two, cause I technically launched payments in April. So it just feels like it's really coming together and it's in a really good spot now for improving on.
Colleen: awesome.
Joe Masilotti: the platform, not just like, okay, well, I won't promote it until X gets built or Y gets built. It's like, no, you can do everything. And there are now two apps with like push notifications, in-app purchases, natives, like all this native features. And it's like, these are real. These are real apps that are now perfect showcases. They're not white paper level apps yet, cause they're not businesses. They're just kind of like apps, if that makes sense.
Colleen: Yes.
Joe Masilotti: but I have someone who I'm working with which will be the white paper and I'm very excited about that too. And that's just coming.
Colleen: And also, you know, I wonder when we think about who is really gonna buy, who's your best customer. I wonder if hobby developers will be your best customer because it's cheap enough that it's, what's it, how much are you charging? 250 a year? 300 a year? It's cheap enough that it's super accessible. And then if I am a developer and I'm trying to get a job, if I am a developer and I'm trying to launch a side project, I'm trying to show anything I'm trying to do, this seems like such.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. 300 a year, 299. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: a great product for like the aspirational SaaS founders for people just trying to showcase what they can do for side projects. Like they could be a really good market for you as opposed to the very, I mean, you can do both, but I wonder if you're really going to get a foothold in this market.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't know. I really don't know. I'm very curious to see which market ends up being the one that brings the most money, the one that has the most users and the people that get the most out of it because I have it tiered, it's $2.99 or $9.99 a year. And the $9.99 right now, it just adds in-app purchases. And it's like, okay, if you're making money, you can pay more money. That's how I'm looking at it. And I feel like that split is pretty good right now.
Colleen: Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: But I also have this kind of, not kind of, but a white label service for five grand. I will just like do everything for you. I will set up your Rails app. I'll integrate Ruby native. I'll give me your credentials. Like I'll sign into App Store Connect. I will do everything for you. And for five grand, you can wake up in like two weeks and have an app in the App Store built on Ruby native. And I'm very curious if a anyone will pick that versus doing it themselves. And if they do,
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Joe Masilotti: Is that the target? Like, do I lean into those folks or is that really just the lead for my consulting business? It's like, okay, I'll get all the hobbyists and all the prosumers at the 299, maybe 999 a year, but the folks that like the business businesses, they're going to work with me in a consulting effort because they need something custom. And Ruby Native doesn't offer custom native implementation yet and probably ever. So...
Colleen: Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Yeah. Right.
Joe Masilotti: That's kind of cool because I do have this very distinct line when I talk to my consulting business potential leads. It's like, do you need custom native code? And if you don't, Ruby native is a great fit. But if you do, I can also offer you something. It's not like, sorry, do it your own. It's like, no, I can actually do that for you too. So we talked a lot about like this, is it going to cannibalize my business? And I'm actually hoping that it is a good lead gen. The opposite of cannibalizing.
Colleen: with this one person who has launched an app in the app store, can you get like over time, as we think about case studies too for this business, can you, do you think this person would share their like users with you, downloads with you, things like that so you can build out a case study? If we look at this, I agree with you about this isn't gonna cannibalize your business. This is gonna be Legion. But I also think there's like a whole very profitable layer of these.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Colleen: solo developers. as we get, you could gather case studies as you have more and more people put their apps in the app store to show how effective it is.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have been holding out on kind of the showcase case study, if you will, because I'm working with a business right now that is shaping Ruby Native. Like I am I'm doing an advisory retainer for them and they are building their product on Ruby Native. So they need a floating action button. Cool. Now it's in Ruby Native. You know, like it's like that type of consulting or advisory. And when they launch a their product itself is is freaking wide.
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Joe Masilotti: So it's going to create a splash in the AI space on its own. But when it launches with an iOS app and potentially even Android, it is going to be the perfect case study of like, here is how awesome and real Ruby native apps can be. So I'm saving the first case study for that. But I do think that you're onto something with this existing app and for like the hop to target the hobby folks. And, and that I think the angle is more of a, ⁓
Colleen: splash. Yep. Okay. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: a technical deep dive. Like looking at a screen and saying, here's how this developer built these native components with Ruby native. And like breaking that down. Cause it shows, okay, here's a real world example app. And here's like the two lines of Ruby that they needed to make this thing work. And it's almost a showcase. It's almost the white paper, but it's more of like a how to guide, like not disguise, but like wrapped up in a real world scenario. You're not, I'm getting bad vibes from your look right now. I'm getting bad vibes. Tell me what's on your mind.
Colleen: I'm not feeling that. ⁓ You are getting bad vibes from me. I think hobby developers, hate to say, let's say independent developers, because I don't like to use the term hobby, are launching side projects because they're trying to make money, right? Everyone is trying to make money. That is always our end goal. And so what you're saying is certainly something you can do and is certainly interesting, but that is going to appeal to a very, very narrow slice of
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: technical people who find themselves to be craftsmen, right? We talked about like the whole theory with AI. You have the craftsman people and you have the builder people. And that's good, but I think you're gonna catch more people if you talk about how they can make money using your server, using Ruby Native. Like I feel like the market is bigger to say you can have your Rails app, which you could vibe code.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: Right? If you're just trying to make like that kid who did cal.ai or whatever and made a bazillion dollars. I think you should try and hook into that hype cycle. That's what I would do. I'd be like, hey, you want to make money while you sleep? Like that sounded really clickbaity. I didn't mean it quite that clickbaity, but I mean it more like, like there's this whole group of people and they are technically competent and they're launching side projects and their side projects have no users.
Joe Masilotti: Hmm. Yeah. I don't know what you're saying. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: and their side projects make $0.0. Now we can all work so much faster. All these things we've always been told won't work, like B2C, you can just do that. You can just try that. And a Ruby native subscription enables them to do what they love, which is code in Rails, Vibe code in Rails, and then just pay you a very small amount of money to have anyone in the world buy it for 99 cents or whatever. I just think there's more, there's more pull.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Right.
Colleen: when you help people make money, very directly, very obviously, and that is a marketing angle you should explore as opposed to your technical angle, which just feels very developer-focused, but I think you can pull in other people is what I'm trying to say. You can expand the TAM on this. You can expand the total addressable market on this.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah, I... It was funny that the one, the client that I'm working with who will be the showcase was like, don't lean into making money. I don't need Ruby native to make money. Our business makes money. Ruby native is an enabler for the business. So I want it to save me time, not make me money. So they are on, but they're not what you're talking about. That is like the business, the enterprise essential client. You're talking about the hobbyist. It's like,
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Correct.
Joe Masilotti: you want to get simple file upload in the iOS app store. It doesn't make sense to be in the app store, but let's say you did. You want to, I would market to you by saying you could capture some B2C money from app store acquisition. So you're expanding like the customer's reach.
Colleen: But yes. Yeah. You're expanding. Correct. And these are two different things because you have your enterprise clients, you have your five thousand dollar thing, which is a upsell to your consulting. That's one thing which does, I think, you know, need to be focused on like the technical details and the care you've put into the software. But I do think there's this whole other market, ⁓ you know, of people who
Joe Masilotti: That makes sense. Yes, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: are ambitious and they want to make money and they need help finding more leads essentially. And like the iOS App Store, right? That is a good way to find more leads.
Joe Masilotti: It's the acquisition of... yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I like that. It also really leans into the pricing model of Ruby Native because they can play with Ruby Native for free and like run the app on their phone, like literally run the app on their phone through TestFlight, but they can't share it with anyone outside of their company because of... that's how App Store works. But to get in the App Store and get the actual acquisition, they have to pay...
Colleen: customer acquisition, right? Mm-hmm.
Joe Masilotti: for a Ruby Native account, which like makes sense. So they can actually get to the point of, oh wow, this is good. I have had the aha moment for free and then only have to pay me when they're ready to go into the app store to actually acquire the customers.
Colleen: And can I do, let's use just the simple file upload example, because that's a real product. Can I pay you 300 bucks, put it in the app store, can I then choose to upgrade to the $1,000 if I wanna now sell it, do in-app purchases? So that's just such a great pipeline in my opinion, because I can pay a nominal fee of 300 bucks annually, so it's very small, I would say. I'm in the app store, so now my customer acquisition, my reachable addressable customer base has quad.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Colleen: quadrupled at least, quintupled. And then let's say if I was building a new app, I get 100 users, then I'm like, ⁓ here's the way I could monetize this app. And then I can just upsell. I'm like, ⁓ I'm ready to monetize. By then I see that I have something. So it's an obvious you win, I win kind of thing.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah, yeah. It's a really good point. It's a really good point. I like that a lot. ⁓ Thinking about selling to two different markets or personas, whatever, is something I've never done before. Outside of like strictly marketplace style apps, like Rails Devs was very obvious. It's like hires and hiring. ⁓ So having the same product sell to two different markets or personas or whatever means different content for those people.
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I think, here's my opinion, you tell me what you think. Like I think maybe your first play should be the higher ticket companies, like the white paper you're working on and finish that and very highly technical because you are the leading expert. I was in a, I'm in a paid Discord group, Discord group of AI builders and someone who does not know you, like surface your name when someone was asking about. ⁓
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: you know, how do I do an iOS app? They're like, ⁓ go look at Joe Mazzolatti's content. So you are already the expert. So it makes sense for you to lean into the highly technical, well-crafted software for your higher ticket, right? Because you can charge those people so much more. But I do think there, I'm saying I think there's another path here, which I mean, I think it'd be like almost more fun. I guess it depends on your definition of fun, but ⁓ almost more fun to market to, which is like, like, let's go, let's make some money. Like, let's put some apps in the app store. Let's...
Joe Masilotti: Sweet. Yeah. Yeah.
Colleen: Look at all these apps. So I think you do have two different ways to market this product.
Joe Masilotti: Totally. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I've really thought about that as this just like whole other... Keep using the word Book Persona.
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: before and makes a lot of sense. ⁓ So exciting, which is, this is kind of cool. I'm looking it up right now in the background, ignore my clicking, but the Birvana app, the one that I built with Ruby native and launched on my own has an app purchases in it, right? And it has a 99 cent per year in that purchase, right? The lowest you can charge that without
Colleen: Amazing. The lowest you can do.
Joe Masilotti: getting like over-scrutinized by Apple. And I did that because I wanted folks to test the flow and not feel like they were investing a lot of money. And it's very interesting because I got an email the other day that two people have bought it. So technically, Birvana has made me $1.40 after the Apple tax. So I only have another $298 left before that becomes break even.
Colleen: Ha Amazing.
Joe Masilotti: It was fun to see that email and be like, ⁓ wow, people are actually, people are using this. That's pretty cool. And speaking of purchases, you know, Revenue Cat, are you familiar with that company? Yeah, so they do, they make in-app purchases easier for native iOS and native Android apps. They're like not really well known in the Rails space because Rails subscriptions are very different than in-app purchases. But the CEO, Jacob, whose last name I, E-Tig, I don't know how to pronounce the last name.
Colleen: Very cool. Yeah, yes.
Joe Masilotti: apologies. He quote posted me on X not Twitter ⁓ and asks very generally like should we support this in revenue cat meaning Ruby native which is which is pretty cool because it's like I didn't know he followed me first of all and two he saw an app in the app store that doesn't have in-app purchases so there's an opportunity for them to capture another market through Ruby native
Colleen: Nice. I know. That's pretty cool.
Joe Masilotti: and it could be a really cool partnership opportunity.
Colleen: I was about to say, I love partnerships for you. That is such a good idea.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, because a partnership is really cool with Revenue Cap because in-app purchases for them are totally free. You can use their full service for free up to like $1,000 a month. And then they take 1 % of purchases after the $1,000. So for this hobby tier of developers that we're talking about, they will most likely never leave that free tier, right? And if they do, they're very excited and they're like happy to give away another 1%. ⁓
Colleen: Then they're, yeah. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: So the partner show opportunity there could be huge. And I'm really excited to send him a bunch of cold DMs asking him to work together. That's true, that's true. Yeah. Hot DMs. Yeah.
Colleen: Well, they're not cold anymore. They're not cold. I'd love that for you. I love, love, love that idea. That's such a good idea.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, I'm excited about that. it was cool to like tweet it or sorry, post it and then immediately have him be in my notifications. I was like, whoa, I recognize that avatar. Yeah. But yeah, that's the updates on Ruby Native. It feels like maybe things are starting to work. got obviously like there's proof that it is working, but maybe there's some traction building. And I have a...
Colleen: That's awesome.
Joe Masilotti: a post that's coming out in a couple of weeks that's like React Native versus Hotwire Native versus Ruby Native. And it's really cool because the CTA is like choose your own adventure. Like I can push Ruby Native as just by linking to it. I can push Hotwire Native by linking to my website. And if you're not sure, book a consultation with me and we can help decide together. So really I kind of am starting to see how my ecosystem
Colleen: Nice. Okay. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: is building off of each other for the first time, which is really cool. It's not just like, ⁓ are you doing how are native? Cool. Not can't talk to you. I don't do anything else. It's like, no, now there's like this whole mobile thing opens up so much more space.
Colleen: Nice. Yeah, I love that. think that's that's all good news. And you just technically launched this yesterday and you already have a thousand ARR. Like you're basically crushing it as products go. This is amazing.
Joe Masilotti: Technically, yeah. Yeah, it feels like it's got some legs, which is cool.
Colleen: I was just thinking it's like, hopefully in a year when this is wildly successful, it'll be like, overnight success, 10 years in the making, right? Because this is working, because you've spent 10 years building up this personal brand of integrity and like being the guy and knowing the things. Like, it's just cool to see. It's awesome.
Joe Masilotti: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, I'm technically at 900 ARR right now.
Colleen: ⁓ my goodness, someone go buy it right now. People listening, go buy it right now.
Joe Masilotti: What's 900 times 3, right? That's the, uh, could buy right now for $3,000.
Colleen: ⁓ anyway, that's great. This is all good news. This is all good news. ⁓ can we talk a little bit more about you led with this? You sent out an email yesterday and any response from that email? Not really. You said that it had a huge discount, but you didn't get a big response.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah. I got one... Yeah, no one used the discount code yet. One person replied and was like, can you clarify some things for me? I'm not really, I don't really get something. And the discount code I think expires in two weeks. So I'll send another email the day or two before and it's like, by the way, this is expiring. You if you want to use it now is the last chance. And every newsletter leading up to that will probably mention the discount code in the bottom.
Colleen: Okay, yet. Okay, great.
Joe Masilotti: No. So yeah, that's Ruby Native. ⁓ I heard to the grapevine that you built an MCP server that I want to hear about because I just started using my first MCP server, like using one, and now I'm very curious about them.
Colleen: I did. Yes. So I have been deep in MCP. You know, I'm working at, ⁓ I'm building one for Geocodeo that's going to be public facing, but I also built an MCP server to manage your Google ads. And I did this for one of the companies I'm working for, but I own the MCP server. I just did it to make managing ads easier. And essentially what it is, is it, I mean, that's literally what it does. It's an MCP server that manages your Google ads. So what's so great about it,
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. No.
Colleen: Like you can use the Google Ads has their own MCP server, but it will surprise no one that it's not very good. It doesn't do like I don't like the analysis. It only does read like it only has a couple tools. So I built one that is both read and write. And I actually ⁓ it's actually kind of cool because you can ask it things like compare what Google is telling me to do to what this paid ad skill tells me I should be doing. And they do not line up.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Colleen: Yeah, so you can actually try it. It's at tryadwizard.com. It is not yet verified by Google. So if you sign up for it, it will give you a scary like, this is, you know, danger, danger, danger. But hopefully verification, like verification from Google, I had to make a YouTube video. Like they've really gotten strict about that because ⁓ ads is a, it's not a restricted scope, but it's a sensitive scope.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah.
Colleen: So I had to like make them a YouTube video about what it does. was a whole thing. But hopefully in three to four weeks it'll be verified so it won't have that scary error message. But basically like you just add it to Cloud Code and then I pair it with, know, Corey Haynes has that marketing skills repo. So he has a paid ad skill. So I pair the MCP server with Corey's paid ad skill and then basically like make me an ad. And then every week I come in and I'm like, review my ads, how am I doing? How can I make them better?
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Hmm.
Colleen: So, cool. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: Wow. And these are, these are text based ads.
Colleen: Yeah, I'm only doing, well, I'm doing this ⁓ for a client and he's only doing tech space ads right now. It could theoretically, I'm sure, be expanded to any kind of ad you want, but right now it's tech space ads, yeah.
Joe Masilotti: No, no. Yeah, this is super exciting. Site looks great. Also, love the, I mean.
Colleen: That was alright. I mean for a quick like, Claude,
Joe Masilotti: Yeah. ⁓ But yeah, I think that I see that the main call to action is sign in with Google, which is great. Like I want to just click that button and start having it manage my ads. I've always I've been looking for an excuse to run ads for something in a long time. And I feel like the price point, I feel like the price point of Ruby Native and versus the reach could be a good opportunity for that.
Colleen: I was the same. I was like, I just want to try it.
Joe Masilotti: Like it never made sense for me to run ads for my consulting business because I don't know, I just like never got into it. But for Ruby Native, it feels like the market is potentially there. You said that Google already has an MCP server for ads, but it's read only. How are you getting around that by having write access?
Colleen: Yeah. No, so I don't use their MCP server, I just use their API. So you can write to their API, the API lets you write campaigns, add negative keywords, all the things you'd wanna do. Just the MCP server they published doesn't let you do any of that stuff. So, I mean, they may change that, this is, I mean, I'm not charging for it, I'm not gonna productize it. So it's just such a more pleasant way to deal with and manage your ads.
Joe Masilotti: ⁓ Hmm. Mm-hmm. I see. So why did you publish it and make it for free?
Colleen: Okay, so, you know, I have been in this transition period. I am doing Fractional Head of AI work. I am growing a consultancy. I am on LinkedIn. I am doing coaching. Like I do such a wide variety of odd things. I realized I really need to focus on the things that I love, the things that give me energy or else I'm drained. I'm drained by all these different things that I'm doing. I'm doing two podcasts. Like who does that?
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm.
Colleen: ⁓ so what I love is I love shipping things. I have enough business and startup experience now that I can I'm very very discerning when I look at business ideas. So in my opinion a anything that wraps Anthropic or any rapper is not going to make it like I am not trying to build an AI rapper. You have no moat and you're going to get crushed by the big dogs when they come in with their 50 million dollars. I mean those people spend a hundred thousand dollars a month on ads.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: Like people who have ad spend have crazy ad spend. So I am not interested in a product that is wrapping ⁓ an AI tool in any way. And that's essentially what this is, right? Anyone can build a Google Ads MCP server. Like this is not rocket science. Like I've been using it internally on my client's ads for two months. ⁓ But I decided just to make it free because it's really just lead gen for me.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓
Colleen: Right? Like it's really just something I can talk about. It's lead Jen for the consulting. ⁓ my gosh. Did I bury the lead in that long answer? Yeah. It's lead Jen for my consulting. That's the answer, Joe. ⁓ my gosh.
Joe Masilotti: Okay, there we go. It's Lead Gen. Okay, so if it's leadgen, why can I, does it not link to your website anywhere?
Colleen: I should do that, yeah. I should probably do that. Yeah, made by Colleen. Here's how you hire me. Here's how I can come and implement AI in your business. Good call. I should definitely do that.
Joe Masilotti: Let's probably do that. Yeah, yeah, let's do that. Yeah, also your copyright is Bitmap Designs, which love the name, doesn't say anything about you. I think that should just be Colleen Schneller and linked to you.
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah, I totally think you're right. I'll just I yeah because the whole purpose of this is Lee Jenn like I have no intent to productize it so
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, an about page that's actually about you, not the product. ⁓ yeah, cool. If it's Legion.
Colleen: Yeah, not the product. That's an excellent point. Like all of this is just gonna be Legion. I mean, I wish it could be a product. I just don't think it's a thing. I don't really want it to be. Or I just don't think there's enough there to make it a good product.
Joe Masilotti: Nice. I like that. Yeah. Hmm. Like it's too narrow of a use case? Yeah.
Colleen: Well, like I said, you could copy it in a week, right? Like, I mean, this is not, there's no moat. And I'm seeing friends, I'm coaching people, like I'm seeing people who are doing AI marketing tools and they're, man, they're all just doing okay. it's such a, marketing AI tools is an insanely competitive space right now. So I'd like to find something else. So yeah, right now it's Legion. And so you're right, I need to add all of the information about how people can hire me.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay.
Colleen: from that website. I will do that before I tell people about it. Or I haven't really told anybody about it besides you right now. Until this goes live. All right, there we go. Know what I'm doing for the rest of the day.
Joe Masilotti: Well, you have 24 hours until this goes live, so there's your clock. There you go. Idea. Next podcast episode, we live stream me setting this up for Ruby Native. Wanna do that? We could do like, you could walk me through it. Obviously we'll find some rough edges. I'll like pre-auth with Google and all that so like people aren't seeing me sign in, but you can walk me through like, okay, what's the goal for Ruby Native? Like what's your ad?
Colleen: ⁓ okay, I love it. I love that idea. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: number question. don't know what the questions are going to be. ⁓ And we can set up like a small ad campaign for Ruby Native together and we'll do a little YouTube and x.com live stream. Sweet. This is kind of like, I feel like this is the better idea of what we had talked about a few weeks ago of I build an app and you market it, right? And
Colleen: Yeah, I love that. Yeah, let's do it. I love that idea. Building an app.
Joe Masilotti: I just felt like we had to contrive so much. The app, the marketing around it, like if it fails, is it a bad product or is it bad marketing? This is like, ⁓ no, I have a product, you have a tool, let's just use them together. Worst case we get, yeah, worst case we have like a cool podcast episode.
Colleen: Yeah. see what happens. Yeah, no, I love that idea. I love that idea. Let's do that.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, sweet. Let's do it. Awesome. I'm excited to... It's funny because I look at the website and I still don't know what I'm going to see. I don't know if I'm going to be in a dashboard, if I'm going to be just dealing with Claude. I don't know if I'm going to be like slash MCP, know, Colleen's thing. So it's going to be fun when I click, when we hop on. Yeah, I'm going be like, so what do I go next? Do I open Claude? I'm excited.
Colleen: ⁓ happening? What's happening? do do? Yeah, totally, totally.
Joe Masilotti: I got to see that big scary warning from Google too, which will be fun.
Colleen: Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: ⁓ okay. Anything else around MCP? Stuff?
Colleen: No, no, I'm trying to think if there's anything else. No, man, I'm just, all in on MCP servers and I like it here. It's cool. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: Sweet. Good. I have a business update on my end. Yeah. So in the past seven days, I've had two different people ⁓ schedule a mobile playbook call from my website. Yeah. And yeah, and both of them have been like long time followers slash subscribers to the newsletter or whatever.
Colleen: ⁓ okay. Good. Nice! Okay, that's great!
Joe Masilotti: And we're finally, one of my last articles pushed them over the edge to call me. Which feels like a really good alignment of the type of content that I'm posting because it's, that's exactly what I want to happen. And one of my cold emails also scheduled to call. Yeah, cold email. Yeah. So I've been emailing someone, they replied and were like,
Colleen: Nice. Okay. Yes. Cold email works, woohoo! Yes, I love that.
Joe Masilotti: The cold email to the person that I sent it to was kind of a warm lead, so it's kind of cheating because I had... they had, like, done a workshop with me in the past, I had said hi to them at a conference, but they had left that company by the time I emailed them and they passed my email along and I was like, alright, that's... it's never gonna... I'm never gonna hear back from them. I followed up one more time and was like, by the way, just like, want to check in and they were like, ⁓ yeah, we meant to reach out. ⁓ What's your calendar link? And...
Colleen: Nice.
Joe Masilotti: Of course they scheduled something that I have to immediately cancel on them because I messed up my calendar link. But that's a different story. So we a call for Monday, for next Monday. Yeah. And it's like a perfect fit. They have a Rails website that wants to do an app with very specific push notifications and like a very small native enhancement. It is so just like perfectly in line with what I can help them with. And...
Colleen: hate when that happens. I hate when that happens. That's amazing, Joe, congrats.
Joe Masilotti: a level above what Ruby Native provides, that it will be a real consulting client and not just like a, ⁓ yeah, just use Ruby Native, you know, you'll be fine, type approach. ⁓ So it's encouraging because it makes me want to do more cold emailing for sure. And yeah, if I, I know last time we spoke, I was a little down on the business, you the ups and downs of consulting. If I somehow land all three of these clients, my year will be completely turned around.
Colleen: I'd love that. I'd love that that worked. You were. Yay!
Joe Masilotti: Like completely. It'll go from like a bad year to a totally normal middle of the road year for me. And that's a big change with, I don't know how I've announced this, but ⁓ baby number three coming September. Yeah, thank you. So more parental leave, know, unpaid parental leave, course, come September. End of projects, end of engagements, end of money for me for the year.
Colleen: Awesome. You haven't. Yay! Congratulations!
Joe Masilotti: come August 31st. So a lot to cram in in the next May, June, July, four months. I don't have a lot of time, but I have a lot of leads right now, which is the opposite of what it was last month.
Colleen: Yeah, I was supposed to say you don't have a lot of time. No. Yeah, it's awesome. Amazing. That's such good news. I'm so happy for you. Nice. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, feeling good about that. Feeling good about that. And hopefully I'll be able to go on leave and feel relaxed that our house will still be ours at the end of leave. It's always good. It's a nice feeling to have. I won't be homeless by the end of the parental leave. No, we're not doing that bad. But yeah, so feeling good about that. ⁓ I might pause on the cold outreach just for now because
Colleen: It's always good. Always a good thing.
Joe Masilotti: If these clients land, like they're gonna go through August, I'm then looking for clients come January, which is a long way away to start poking people in May. ⁓ But between like Ruby Native getting some traction and getting some calls booked, I'm in a much better spot than I was two weeks ago.
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah, long time. That's great news. That's really good news.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, yeah, very excited there. So yeah, that's it for me. I think no more updates on my end.
Colleen: Yeah. Cool. Okay, great.
Joe Masilotti: Anything else you want to get in before we wrap up? Before we hop on next week with our live... ⁓ live stream?
Colleen: No, I don't think so. think I'm good. It's funny what you just said. Because I have the same problem. If everyone says yes, then I'm going to have too much work. Which would be a good problem to have, but then that's a whole new set of problems. So we'll see. Hopefully I'll have a report back on... I don't know if everyone's going to say yes of all the outstanding proposals I have, but hopefully I'll have more information on that next week.
Joe Masilotti: ⁓ If it makes you feel any better, I have a few times been in that situation over the past, you know, 10 years of consulting that I've been doing. And even when I've been at the absolute like, ⁓ my God, both people said yes at this for the same time zone, time slot, moving start dates back from the, from like the client's perspective has been one of the easiest asks I've ever had to do.
Colleen: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay.
Joe Masilotti: Because they're like, cool, our timeline is flexible, like we can just spend money later. ⁓ I always get so worked up over that the few times that it's happened and it's like never even been close to an issue. Cause folks are just like, yeah, we just push back, that's fine. ⁓ we actually don't have the funding anyway for it, so we need to push back anyway. ⁓ But yeah, I'd like to have that problem again as well.
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. That you've had to ask, yeah. Okay. Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah. I mean, again, I don't know if all these people are going to say yes, but if they do, I also don't know what I'm going to do. I'll be fine. I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. Yeah. Alrighty. Well, that'll wrap up for today. We'll catch you next week. NoPermission.fm will have a link to the live stream. So if you want to check that out for next week and catch us live and join in and comment and all that good stuff, we'll have a link there and we'll of course be posting about it on the socials. But... If we catch you on the recording, talk to you next time. Bye, Colleen.
Colleen: Bye.
Joe Masilotti: Good morning, Colleen. How's it going?
Colleen: I am doing great. Living the dream, man. What about you? I know, right? I'm just in a good mood.
Joe Masilotti: Alright. Honestly? Yeah, that's good. That's good. Honestly, feeling the same. I feel like some pieces fell into place last week, and the week before, I guess, since we recorded, and feeling good about that. So, excited to share today. Yeah. Okay. Should we dive right in? Alright, I'm not going to. ⁓ Okay, so, updates on two fronts. One, my consulting business, and two, Ruby Native.
Colleen: Yeah, well, let's do it. Don't bury the lead. Dive right in.
Joe Masilotti: ⁓ Let's do Ruby Native first, because I feel like that's more top of mind right now. I officially launched Ruby Native for iOS yesterday. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Exciting. I was like, it's my birthday. I'm going to do something fun. So I launched with a huge discount code, like a 33 something percent discount code, which was really cool.
Colleen: I know. Congratulations. I saw your email.
Joe Masilotti: And it feels good to be like, okay, this thing is live. This thing is launched. ⁓ However, I didn't really receive much reception on it. Like not a lot of feedback. I think I got one reply. The posts didn't do great. And I'm okay with that because the launch to me was more of my own milestone of this isn't pre-launch anymore. Like this thing is launched, it's live, everyone can use it. It's not in beta.
Colleen: Yes.
Joe Masilotti: and it was more like a mental shift for me. Now it's not about building the MVP, it's about improving this product, which is where I've wanted to be with this for like a long time. And I'm excited about that from a product standpoint.
Colleen: Yes. Yeah. Okay.
Joe Masilotti: which means Android, working on Android for a while. I have a beta list set with like 15 people already looking to try the beta, which I've only promoted I think once. ⁓ And today I woke up to a very exciting email that the first Ruby native app that I didn't build is live in the app store as of today. Yeah, yeah. So this person I think is in Turkey.
Colleen: Ooh, that's very exciting!
Joe Masilotti: is building a personal finance app and has it on Rails, it, you know, had it on Rails, like the little side project thing for a while now and built a Ruby native app for iOS, never opened Xcode, never ⁓ wrote a line of Swift and now has their app in the app store that you can download. And I downloaded it and it looks great. He's even using some features that I didn't know you could use them in a certain way, which is really cool to see. Like his tab bar doesn't have text on it, it's just icons, which I didn't even know you could do. And it's just supported with Ruby Native, which is awesome. ⁓ Live, he's getting users already. ⁓ We've been chatting a little bit over email to like figure out the last couple of bugs with screenshots, but yeah, it's real. Paying customer, like the whole nine yards, it's awesome.
Colleen: Congratulations, that's an amazing feeling.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, thanks. I'm very excited and the homepage right now for Ruby Native has like, you know, example apps. And I very purposely was like, I'm going to put only the apps that are launched in the app store here. And I'm going to be honest. So since the website landed, it's only been my app that I built with Ruby Native. And that was intentional to put like a fire under my butt to get other people there. And now there's two. Now there's like my app and then...
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Joe Masilotti: Someone who people don't know app like stranger app, just feels so real that not only is this a proof of concept, but apps are getting approved by Apple. Two now, right? And this person didn't have to go through like, ⁓ I'll download the code and like make this change. It's like, no, they are using the platform for the intended purpose and are now in the app store. And that is just freaking wild to me. So. Very, very excited about all of that.
Colleen: That's amazing. Especially like, so many people, one, don't even launch their products, and two, never get paying customers. You are already so far ahead.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, it's, think Ruby Native has made like a thousand dollars already in terms of, cause it's like it's annual subscriptions and even with the discount code, it's 200 bucks a person. So like that's not many people needed to make a thousand bucks. ⁓ Got my first payout on the first two, cause I technically launched payments in April. So it just feels like it's really coming together and it's in a really good spot now for improving on.
Colleen: awesome.
Joe Masilotti: the platform, not just like, okay, well, I won't promote it until X gets built or Y gets built. It's like, no, you can do everything. And there are now two apps with like push notifications, in-app purchases, natives, like all this native features. And it's like, these are real. These are real apps that are now perfect showcases. They're not white paper level apps yet, cause they're not businesses. They're just kind of like apps, if that makes sense.
Colleen: Yes.
Joe Masilotti: but I have someone who I'm working with which will be the white paper and I'm very excited about that too. And that's just coming.
Colleen: And also, you know, I wonder when we think about who is really gonna buy, who's your best customer. I wonder if hobby developers will be your best customer because it's cheap enough that it's, what's it, how much are you charging? 250 a year? 300 a year? It's cheap enough that it's super accessible. And then if I am a developer and I'm trying to get a job, if I am a developer and I'm trying to launch a side project, I'm trying to show anything I'm trying to do, this seems like such.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. 300 a year, 299. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: a great product for like the aspirational SaaS founders for people just trying to showcase what they can do for side projects. Like they could be a really good market for you as opposed to the very, I mean, you can do both, but I wonder if you're really going to get a foothold in this market.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't know. I really don't know. I'm very curious to see which market ends up being the one that brings the most money, the one that has the most users and the people that get the most out of it because I have it tiered, it's $2.99 or $9.99 a year. And the $9.99 right now, it just adds in-app purchases. And it's like, okay, if you're making money, you can pay more money. That's how I'm looking at it. And I feel like that split is pretty good right now.
Colleen: Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: But I also have this kind of, not kind of, but a white label service for five grand. I will just like do everything for you. I will set up your Rails app. I'll integrate Ruby native. I'll give me your credentials. Like I'll sign into App Store Connect. I will do everything for you. And for five grand, you can wake up in like two weeks and have an app in the App Store built on Ruby native. And I'm very curious if a anyone will pick that versus doing it themselves. And if they do,
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Joe Masilotti: Is that the target? Like, do I lean into those folks or is that really just the lead for my consulting business? It's like, okay, I'll get all the hobbyists and all the prosumers at the 299, maybe 999 a year, but the folks that like the business businesses, they're going to work with me in a consulting effort because they need something custom. And Ruby Native doesn't offer custom native implementation yet and probably ever. So...
Colleen: Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Yeah. Right.
Joe Masilotti: That's kind of cool because I do have this very distinct line when I talk to my consulting business potential leads. It's like, do you need custom native code? And if you don't, Ruby native is a great fit. But if you do, I can also offer you something. It's not like, sorry, do it your own. It's like, no, I can actually do that for you too. So we talked a lot about like this, is it going to cannibalize my business? And I'm actually hoping that it is a good lead gen. The opposite of cannibalizing.
Colleen: with this one person who has launched an app in the app store, can you get like over time, as we think about case studies too for this business, can you, do you think this person would share their like users with you, downloads with you, things like that so you can build out a case study? If we look at this, I agree with you about this isn't gonna cannibalize your business. This is gonna be Legion. But I also think there's like a whole very profitable layer of these.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Colleen: solo developers. as we get, you could gather case studies as you have more and more people put their apps in the app store to show how effective it is.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have been holding out on kind of the showcase case study, if you will, because I'm working with a business right now that is shaping Ruby Native. Like I am I'm doing an advisory retainer for them and they are building their product on Ruby Native. So they need a floating action button. Cool. Now it's in Ruby Native. You know, like it's like that type of consulting or advisory. And when they launch a their product itself is is freaking wide.
Colleen: Mm-hmm.
Joe Masilotti: So it's going to create a splash in the AI space on its own. But when it launches with an iOS app and potentially even Android, it is going to be the perfect case study of like, here is how awesome and real Ruby native apps can be. So I'm saving the first case study for that. But I do think that you're onto something with this existing app and for like the hop to target the hobby folks. And, and that I think the angle is more of a, ⁓
Colleen: splash. Yep. Okay. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: a technical deep dive. Like looking at a screen and saying, here's how this developer built these native components with Ruby native. And like breaking that down. Cause it shows, okay, here's a real world example app. And here's like the two lines of Ruby that they needed to make this thing work. And it's almost a showcase. It's almost the white paper, but it's more of like a how to guide, like not disguise, but like wrapped up in a real world scenario. You're not, I'm getting bad vibes from your look right now. I'm getting bad vibes. Tell me what's on your mind.
Colleen: I'm not feeling that. ⁓ You are getting bad vibes from me. I think hobby developers, hate to say, let's say independent developers, because I don't like to use the term hobby, are launching side projects because they're trying to make money, right? Everyone is trying to make money. That is always our end goal. And so what you're saying is certainly something you can do and is certainly interesting, but that is going to appeal to a very, very narrow slice of
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: technical people who find themselves to be craftsmen, right? We talked about like the whole theory with AI. You have the craftsman people and you have the builder people. And that's good, but I think you're gonna catch more people if you talk about how they can make money using your server, using Ruby Native. Like I feel like the market is bigger to say you can have your Rails app, which you could vibe code.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: Right? If you're just trying to make like that kid who did cal.ai or whatever and made a bazillion dollars. I think you should try and hook into that hype cycle. That's what I would do. I'd be like, hey, you want to make money while you sleep? Like that sounded really clickbaity. I didn't mean it quite that clickbaity, but I mean it more like, like there's this whole group of people and they are technically competent and they're launching side projects and their side projects have no users.
Joe Masilotti: Hmm. Yeah. I don't know what you're saying. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: and their side projects make $0.0. Now we can all work so much faster. All these things we've always been told won't work, like B2C, you can just do that. You can just try that. And a Ruby native subscription enables them to do what they love, which is code in Rails, Vibe code in Rails, and then just pay you a very small amount of money to have anyone in the world buy it for 99 cents or whatever. I just think there's more, there's more pull.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Right.
Colleen: when you help people make money, very directly, very obviously, and that is a marketing angle you should explore as opposed to your technical angle, which just feels very developer-focused, but I think you can pull in other people is what I'm trying to say. You can expand the TAM on this. You can expand the total addressable market on this.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah, I... It was funny that the one, the client that I'm working with who will be the showcase was like, don't lean into making money. I don't need Ruby native to make money. Our business makes money. Ruby native is an enabler for the business. So I want it to save me time, not make me money. So they are on, but they're not what you're talking about. That is like the business, the enterprise essential client. You're talking about the hobbyist. It's like,
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Correct.
Joe Masilotti: you want to get simple file upload in the iOS app store. It doesn't make sense to be in the app store, but let's say you did. You want to, I would market to you by saying you could capture some B2C money from app store acquisition. So you're expanding like the customer's reach.
Colleen: But yes. Yeah. You're expanding. Correct. And these are two different things because you have your enterprise clients, you have your five thousand dollar thing, which is a upsell to your consulting. That's one thing which does, I think, you know, need to be focused on like the technical details and the care you've put into the software. But I do think there's this whole other market, ⁓ you know, of people who
Joe Masilotti: That makes sense. Yes, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: are ambitious and they want to make money and they need help finding more leads essentially. And like the iOS App Store, right? That is a good way to find more leads.
Joe Masilotti: It's the acquisition of... yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I like that. It also really leans into the pricing model of Ruby Native because they can play with Ruby Native for free and like run the app on their phone, like literally run the app on their phone through TestFlight, but they can't share it with anyone outside of their company because of... that's how App Store works. But to get in the App Store and get the actual acquisition, they have to pay...
Colleen: customer acquisition, right? Mm-hmm.
Joe Masilotti: for a Ruby Native account, which like makes sense. So they can actually get to the point of, oh wow, this is good. I have had the aha moment for free and then only have to pay me when they're ready to go into the app store to actually acquire the customers.
Colleen: And can I do, let's use just the simple file upload example, because that's a real product. Can I pay you 300 bucks, put it in the app store, can I then choose to upgrade to the $1,000 if I wanna now sell it, do in-app purchases? So that's just such a great pipeline in my opinion, because I can pay a nominal fee of 300 bucks annually, so it's very small, I would say. I'm in the app store, so now my customer acquisition, my reachable addressable customer base has quad.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Colleen: quadrupled at least, quintupled. And then let's say if I was building a new app, I get 100 users, then I'm like, ⁓ here's the way I could monetize this app. And then I can just upsell. I'm like, ⁓ I'm ready to monetize. By then I see that I have something. So it's an obvious you win, I win kind of thing.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah, yeah. It's a really good point. It's a really good point. I like that a lot. ⁓ Thinking about selling to two different markets or personas, whatever, is something I've never done before. Outside of like strictly marketplace style apps, like Rails Devs was very obvious. It's like hires and hiring. ⁓ So having the same product sell to two different markets or personas or whatever means different content for those people.
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I think, here's my opinion, you tell me what you think. Like I think maybe your first play should be the higher ticket companies, like the white paper you're working on and finish that and very highly technical because you are the leading expert. I was in a, I'm in a paid Discord group, Discord group of AI builders and someone who does not know you, like surface your name when someone was asking about. ⁓
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: you know, how do I do an iOS app? They're like, ⁓ go look at Joe Mazzolatti's content. So you are already the expert. So it makes sense for you to lean into the highly technical, well-crafted software for your higher ticket, right? Because you can charge those people so much more. But I do think there, I'm saying I think there's another path here, which I mean, I think it'd be like almost more fun. I guess it depends on your definition of fun, but ⁓ almost more fun to market to, which is like, like, let's go, let's make some money. Like, let's put some apps in the app store. Let's...
Joe Masilotti: Sweet. Yeah. Yeah.
Colleen: Look at all these apps. So I think you do have two different ways to market this product.
Joe Masilotti: Totally. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I've really thought about that as this just like whole other... Keep using the word Book Persona.
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: before and makes a lot of sense. ⁓ So exciting, which is, this is kind of cool. I'm looking it up right now in the background, ignore my clicking, but the Birvana app, the one that I built with Ruby native and launched on my own has an app purchases in it, right? And it has a 99 cent per year in that purchase, right? The lowest you can charge that without
Colleen: Amazing. The lowest you can do.
Joe Masilotti: getting like over-scrutinized by Apple. And I did that because I wanted folks to test the flow and not feel like they were investing a lot of money. And it's very interesting because I got an email the other day that two people have bought it. So technically, Birvana has made me $1.40 after the Apple tax. So I only have another $298 left before that becomes break even.
Colleen: Ha Amazing.
Joe Masilotti: It was fun to see that email and be like, ⁓ wow, people are actually, people are using this. That's pretty cool. And speaking of purchases, you know, Revenue Cat, are you familiar with that company? Yeah, so they do, they make in-app purchases easier for native iOS and native Android apps. They're like not really well known in the Rails space because Rails subscriptions are very different than in-app purchases. But the CEO, Jacob, whose last name I, E-Tig, I don't know how to pronounce the last name.
Colleen: Very cool. Yeah, yes.
Joe Masilotti: apologies. He quote posted me on X not Twitter ⁓ and asks very generally like should we support this in revenue cat meaning Ruby native which is which is pretty cool because it's like I didn't know he followed me first of all and two he saw an app in the app store that doesn't have in-app purchases so there's an opportunity for them to capture another market through Ruby native
Colleen: Nice. I know. That's pretty cool.
Joe Masilotti: and it could be a really cool partnership opportunity.
Colleen: I was about to say, I love partnerships for you. That is such a good idea.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, because a partnership is really cool with Revenue Cap because in-app purchases for them are totally free. You can use their full service for free up to like $1,000 a month. And then they take 1 % of purchases after the $1,000. So for this hobby tier of developers that we're talking about, they will most likely never leave that free tier, right? And if they do, they're very excited and they're like happy to give away another 1%. ⁓
Colleen: Then they're, yeah. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: So the partner show opportunity there could be huge. And I'm really excited to send him a bunch of cold DMs asking him to work together. That's true, that's true. Yeah. Hot DMs. Yeah.
Colleen: Well, they're not cold anymore. They're not cold. I'd love that for you. I love, love, love that idea. That's such a good idea.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, I'm excited about that. it was cool to like tweet it or sorry, post it and then immediately have him be in my notifications. I was like, whoa, I recognize that avatar. Yeah. But yeah, that's the updates on Ruby Native. It feels like maybe things are starting to work. got obviously like there's proof that it is working, but maybe there's some traction building. And I have a...
Colleen: That's awesome.
Joe Masilotti: a post that's coming out in a couple of weeks that's like React Native versus Hotwire Native versus Ruby Native. And it's really cool because the CTA is like choose your own adventure. Like I can push Ruby Native as just by linking to it. I can push Hotwire Native by linking to my website. And if you're not sure, book a consultation with me and we can help decide together. So really I kind of am starting to see how my ecosystem
Colleen: Nice. Okay. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: is building off of each other for the first time, which is really cool. It's not just like, ⁓ are you doing how are native? Cool. Not can't talk to you. I don't do anything else. It's like, no, now there's like this whole mobile thing opens up so much more space.
Colleen: Nice. Yeah, I love that. think that's that's all good news. And you just technically launched this yesterday and you already have a thousand ARR. Like you're basically crushing it as products go. This is amazing.
Joe Masilotti: Technically, yeah. Yeah, it feels like it's got some legs, which is cool.
Colleen: I was just thinking it's like, hopefully in a year when this is wildly successful, it'll be like, overnight success, 10 years in the making, right? Because this is working, because you've spent 10 years building up this personal brand of integrity and like being the guy and knowing the things. Like, it's just cool to see. It's awesome.
Joe Masilotti: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, I'm technically at 900 ARR right now.
Colleen: ⁓ my goodness, someone go buy it right now. People listening, go buy it right now.
Joe Masilotti: What's 900 times 3, right? That's the, uh, could buy right now for $3,000.
Colleen: ⁓ anyway, that's great. This is all good news. This is all good news. ⁓ can we talk a little bit more about you led with this? You sent out an email yesterday and any response from that email? Not really. You said that it had a huge discount, but you didn't get a big response.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah. I got one... Yeah, no one used the discount code yet. One person replied and was like, can you clarify some things for me? I'm not really, I don't really get something. And the discount code I think expires in two weeks. So I'll send another email the day or two before and it's like, by the way, this is expiring. You if you want to use it now is the last chance. And every newsletter leading up to that will probably mention the discount code in the bottom.
Colleen: Okay, yet. Okay, great.
Joe Masilotti: No. So yeah, that's Ruby Native. ⁓ I heard to the grapevine that you built an MCP server that I want to hear about because I just started using my first MCP server, like using one, and now I'm very curious about them.
Colleen: I did. Yes. So I have been deep in MCP. You know, I'm working at, ⁓ I'm building one for Geocodeo that's going to be public facing, but I also built an MCP server to manage your Google ads. And I did this for one of the companies I'm working for, but I own the MCP server. I just did it to make managing ads easier. And essentially what it is, is it, I mean, that's literally what it does. It's an MCP server that manages your Google ads. So what's so great about it,
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. No.
Colleen: Like you can use the Google Ads has their own MCP server, but it will surprise no one that it's not very good. It doesn't do like I don't like the analysis. It only does read like it only has a couple tools. So I built one that is both read and write. And I actually ⁓ it's actually kind of cool because you can ask it things like compare what Google is telling me to do to what this paid ad skill tells me I should be doing. And they do not line up.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Colleen: Yeah, so you can actually try it. It's at tryadwizard.com. It is not yet verified by Google. So if you sign up for it, it will give you a scary like, this is, you know, danger, danger, danger. But hopefully verification, like verification from Google, I had to make a YouTube video. Like they've really gotten strict about that because ⁓ ads is a, it's not a restricted scope, but it's a sensitive scope.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah.
Colleen: So I had to like make them a YouTube video about what it does. was a whole thing. But hopefully in three to four weeks it'll be verified so it won't have that scary error message. But basically like you just add it to Cloud Code and then I pair it with, know, Corey Haynes has that marketing skills repo. So he has a paid ad skill. So I pair the MCP server with Corey's paid ad skill and then basically like make me an ad. And then every week I come in and I'm like, review my ads, how am I doing? How can I make them better?
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Hmm.
Colleen: So, cool. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: Wow. And these are, these are text based ads.
Colleen: Yeah, I'm only doing, well, I'm doing this ⁓ for a client and he's only doing tech space ads right now. It could theoretically, I'm sure, be expanded to any kind of ad you want, but right now it's tech space ads, yeah.
Joe Masilotti: No, no. Yeah, this is super exciting. Site looks great. Also, love the, I mean.
Colleen: That was alright. I mean for a quick like, Claude,
Joe Masilotti: Yeah. ⁓ But yeah, I think that I see that the main call to action is sign in with Google, which is great. Like I want to just click that button and start having it manage my ads. I've always I've been looking for an excuse to run ads for something in a long time. And I feel like the price point, I feel like the price point of Ruby Native and versus the reach could be a good opportunity for that.
Colleen: I was the same. I was like, I just want to try it.
Joe Masilotti: Like it never made sense for me to run ads for my consulting business because I don't know, I just like never got into it. But for Ruby Native, it feels like the market is potentially there. You said that Google already has an MCP server for ads, but it's read only. How are you getting around that by having write access?
Colleen: Yeah. No, so I don't use their MCP server, I just use their API. So you can write to their API, the API lets you write campaigns, add negative keywords, all the things you'd wanna do. Just the MCP server they published doesn't let you do any of that stuff. So, I mean, they may change that, this is, I mean, I'm not charging for it, I'm not gonna productize it. So it's just such a more pleasant way to deal with and manage your ads.
Joe Masilotti: ⁓ Hmm. Mm-hmm. I see. So why did you publish it and make it for free?
Colleen: Okay, so, you know, I have been in this transition period. I am doing Fractional Head of AI work. I am growing a consultancy. I am on LinkedIn. I am doing coaching. Like I do such a wide variety of odd things. I realized I really need to focus on the things that I love, the things that give me energy or else I'm drained. I'm drained by all these different things that I'm doing. I'm doing two podcasts. Like who does that?
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm.
Colleen: ⁓ so what I love is I love shipping things. I have enough business and startup experience now that I can I'm very very discerning when I look at business ideas. So in my opinion a anything that wraps Anthropic or any rapper is not going to make it like I am not trying to build an AI rapper. You have no moat and you're going to get crushed by the big dogs when they come in with their 50 million dollars. I mean those people spend a hundred thousand dollars a month on ads.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Colleen: Like people who have ad spend have crazy ad spend. So I am not interested in a product that is wrapping ⁓ an AI tool in any way. And that's essentially what this is, right? Anyone can build a Google Ads MCP server. Like this is not rocket science. Like I've been using it internally on my client's ads for two months. ⁓ But I decided just to make it free because it's really just lead gen for me.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓
Colleen: Right? Like it's really just something I can talk about. It's lead Jen for the consulting. ⁓ my gosh. Did I bury the lead in that long answer? Yeah. It's lead Jen for my consulting. That's the answer, Joe. ⁓ my gosh.
Joe Masilotti: Okay, there we go. It's Lead Gen. Okay, so if it's leadgen, why can I, does it not link to your website anywhere?
Colleen: I should do that, yeah. I should probably do that. Yeah, made by Colleen. Here's how you hire me. Here's how I can come and implement AI in your business. Good call. I should definitely do that.
Joe Masilotti: Let's probably do that. Yeah, yeah, let's do that. Yeah, also your copyright is Bitmap Designs, which love the name, doesn't say anything about you. I think that should just be Colleen Schneller and linked to you.
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah, I totally think you're right. I'll just I yeah because the whole purpose of this is Lee Jenn like I have no intent to productize it so
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, an about page that's actually about you, not the product. ⁓ yeah, cool. If it's Legion.
Colleen: Yeah, not the product. That's an excellent point. Like all of this is just gonna be Legion. I mean, I wish it could be a product. I just don't think it's a thing. I don't really want it to be. Or I just don't think there's enough there to make it a good product.
Joe Masilotti: Nice. I like that. Yeah. Hmm. Like it's too narrow of a use case? Yeah.
Colleen: Well, like I said, you could copy it in a week, right? Like, I mean, this is not, there's no moat. And I'm seeing friends, I'm coaching people, like I'm seeing people who are doing AI marketing tools and they're, man, they're all just doing okay. it's such a, marketing AI tools is an insanely competitive space right now. So I'd like to find something else. So yeah, right now it's Legion. And so you're right, I need to add all of the information about how people can hire me.
Joe Masilotti: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay.
Colleen: from that website. I will do that before I tell people about it. Or I haven't really told anybody about it besides you right now. Until this goes live. All right, there we go. Know what I'm doing for the rest of the day.
Joe Masilotti: Well, you have 24 hours until this goes live, so there's your clock. There you go. Idea. Next podcast episode, we live stream me setting this up for Ruby Native. Wanna do that? We could do like, you could walk me through it. Obviously we'll find some rough edges. I'll like pre-auth with Google and all that so like people aren't seeing me sign in, but you can walk me through like, okay, what's the goal for Ruby Native? Like what's your ad?
Colleen: ⁓ okay, I love it. I love that idea. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: number question. don't know what the questions are going to be. ⁓ And we can set up like a small ad campaign for Ruby Native together and we'll do a little YouTube and x.com live stream. Sweet. This is kind of like, I feel like this is the better idea of what we had talked about a few weeks ago of I build an app and you market it, right? And
Colleen: Yeah, I love that. Yeah, let's do it. I love that idea. Building an app.
Joe Masilotti: I just felt like we had to contrive so much. The app, the marketing around it, like if it fails, is it a bad product or is it bad marketing? This is like, ⁓ no, I have a product, you have a tool, let's just use them together. Worst case we get, yeah, worst case we have like a cool podcast episode.
Colleen: Yeah. see what happens. Yeah, no, I love that idea. I love that idea. Let's do that.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, sweet. Let's do it. Awesome. I'm excited to... It's funny because I look at the website and I still don't know what I'm going to see. I don't know if I'm going to be in a dashboard, if I'm going to be just dealing with Claude. I don't know if I'm going to be like slash MCP, know, Colleen's thing. So it's going to be fun when I click, when we hop on. Yeah, I'm going be like, so what do I go next? Do I open Claude? I'm excited.
Colleen: ⁓ happening? What's happening? do do? Yeah, totally, totally.
Joe Masilotti: I got to see that big scary warning from Google too, which will be fun.
Colleen: Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: ⁓ okay. Anything else around MCP? Stuff?
Colleen: No, no, I'm trying to think if there's anything else. No, man, I'm just, all in on MCP servers and I like it here. It's cool. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: Sweet. Good. I have a business update on my end. Yeah. So in the past seven days, I've had two different people ⁓ schedule a mobile playbook call from my website. Yeah. And yeah, and both of them have been like long time followers slash subscribers to the newsletter or whatever.
Colleen: ⁓ okay. Good. Nice! Okay, that's great!
Joe Masilotti: And we're finally, one of my last articles pushed them over the edge to call me. Which feels like a really good alignment of the type of content that I'm posting because it's, that's exactly what I want to happen. And one of my cold emails also scheduled to call. Yeah, cold email. Yeah. So I've been emailing someone, they replied and were like,
Colleen: Nice. Okay. Yes. Cold email works, woohoo! Yes, I love that.
Joe Masilotti: The cold email to the person that I sent it to was kind of a warm lead, so it's kind of cheating because I had... they had, like, done a workshop with me in the past, I had said hi to them at a conference, but they had left that company by the time I emailed them and they passed my email along and I was like, alright, that's... it's never gonna... I'm never gonna hear back from them. I followed up one more time and was like, by the way, just like, want to check in and they were like, ⁓ yeah, we meant to reach out. ⁓ What's your calendar link? And...
Colleen: Nice.
Joe Masilotti: Of course they scheduled something that I have to immediately cancel on them because I messed up my calendar link. But that's a different story. So we a call for Monday, for next Monday. Yeah. And it's like a perfect fit. They have a Rails website that wants to do an app with very specific push notifications and like a very small native enhancement. It is so just like perfectly in line with what I can help them with. And...
Colleen: hate when that happens. I hate when that happens. That's amazing, Joe, congrats.
Joe Masilotti: a level above what Ruby Native provides, that it will be a real consulting client and not just like a, ⁓ yeah, just use Ruby Native, you know, you'll be fine, type approach. ⁓ So it's encouraging because it makes me want to do more cold emailing for sure. And yeah, if I, I know last time we spoke, I was a little down on the business, you the ups and downs of consulting. If I somehow land all three of these clients, my year will be completely turned around.
Colleen: I'd love that. I'd love that that worked. You were. Yay!
Joe Masilotti: Like completely. It'll go from like a bad year to a totally normal middle of the road year for me. And that's a big change with, I don't know how I've announced this, but ⁓ baby number three coming September. Yeah, thank you. So more parental leave, know, unpaid parental leave, course, come September. End of projects, end of engagements, end of money for me for the year.
Colleen: Awesome. You haven't. Yay! Congratulations!
Joe Masilotti: come August 31st. So a lot to cram in in the next May, June, July, four months. I don't have a lot of time, but I have a lot of leads right now, which is the opposite of what it was last month.
Colleen: Yeah, I was supposed to say you don't have a lot of time. No. Yeah, it's awesome. Amazing. That's such good news. I'm so happy for you. Nice. Yeah.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, feeling good about that. Feeling good about that. And hopefully I'll be able to go on leave and feel relaxed that our house will still be ours at the end of leave. It's always good. It's a nice feeling to have. I won't be homeless by the end of the parental leave. No, we're not doing that bad. But yeah, so feeling good about that. ⁓ I might pause on the cold outreach just for now because
Colleen: It's always good. Always a good thing.
Joe Masilotti: If these clients land, like they're gonna go through August, I'm then looking for clients come January, which is a long way away to start poking people in May. ⁓ But between like Ruby Native getting some traction and getting some calls booked, I'm in a much better spot than I was two weeks ago.
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah, long time. That's great news. That's really good news.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah, yeah, very excited there. So yeah, that's it for me. I think no more updates on my end.
Colleen: Yeah. Cool. Okay, great.
Joe Masilotti: Anything else you want to get in before we wrap up? Before we hop on next week with our live... ⁓ live stream?
Colleen: No, I don't think so. think I'm good. It's funny what you just said. Because I have the same problem. If everyone says yes, then I'm going to have too much work. Which would be a good problem to have, but then that's a whole new set of problems. So we'll see. Hopefully I'll have a report back on... I don't know if everyone's going to say yes of all the outstanding proposals I have, but hopefully I'll have more information on that next week.
Joe Masilotti: ⁓ If it makes you feel any better, I have a few times been in that situation over the past, you know, 10 years of consulting that I've been doing. And even when I've been at the absolute like, ⁓ my God, both people said yes at this for the same time zone, time slot, moving start dates back from the, from like the client's perspective has been one of the easiest asks I've ever had to do.
Colleen: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay.
Joe Masilotti: Because they're like, cool, our timeline is flexible, like we can just spend money later. ⁓ I always get so worked up over that the few times that it's happened and it's like never even been close to an issue. Cause folks are just like, yeah, we just push back, that's fine. ⁓ we actually don't have the funding anyway for it, so we need to push back anyway. ⁓ But yeah, I'd like to have that problem again as well.
Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. That you've had to ask, yeah. Okay. Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah. I mean, again, I don't know if all these people are going to say yes, but if they do, I also don't know what I'm going to do. I'll be fine. I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out.
Joe Masilotti: Yeah. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. Yeah. Alrighty. Well, that'll wrap up for today. We'll catch you next week. NoPermission.fm will have a link to the live stream. So if you want to check that out for next week and catch us live and join in and comment and all that good stuff, we'll have a link there and we'll of course be posting about it on the socials. But... If we catch you on the recording, talk to you next time. Bye, Colleen.
Colleen: Bye.
