I wrote a guest post for Girl Scouts on hosting a virtual meeting during the Covid-19 crisis. I think we underestimate how much children pick up and how much they are capable of understanding. My co-leaders and I felt like this was an important thing to discuss with them and dovetailed nicely with the Responsible for What I Say and Do petal. The pandemic is going to be a major
March 26, 2020
Guest Post for Girl Scouts: “I Held My First Virtual Meeting and My Daisies Earned a Petal. Here’s How We Did It.”
March 19, 2020
Washington Post Highlights Maywood Response
In early March of 2020, I started organizing my neighborhood to help prepare for Covid-19. We ended up building a group of volunteers to get groceries, medications, and other supplies for high-risk neighbors. The effort was highlighted in the Washington Post: The brigadier general in the Virginia operation is Michele Hansen who moved into Maywood two years ago and runs a geocoding software company with her husband. Her sister is a nurse
March 12, 2020
Using Customer Portfolio Analysis to Weather the Storm as a Bootstrapper
It’s been a hell of a week. I will not mince words: the news is all-consuming right now. And if your brain is like mine, when it takes a break from thinking about our public health emergency it jumps to the next big risk: the economy. And our business. And how things will go. And it’s scary to think about. We all knew the risks of working for ourselves. But
March 3, 2020
Interview: Build Your SaaS Podcast
Talking about the reality of bootstrapping a SaaS while juggling a full-time job, marriage, and family. Listen: Build your SaaS
October 23, 2019
Interview: Bright & Early Podcast
Interview on the Bright & Early podcast about how we started Geocodio and how entrepreneurs can use customer interviews to grow their business.
March 28, 2019
Tips for Getting Useful User Feedback
On Monday, I gave a short attendee talk at MicroConf Growth on how to conduct user interviews and usability sessions. It was only twelve minutes, though, so I had to focus it on the key point: Getting useful user feedback is all about how you act. To find your user’s pain points (and in turn opportunities for your business), you need to make them feel comfortable being open and vulnerable with you. This means you
March 25, 2019
Conference Talk: MicroConf Growth 2019
Gave a 12 minute talk on customer interviews at MicroConf 2019. Notes Slides
January 21, 2019
Bootstrapping a Business: 5 Years In
Retrospective on 5 years of Geocodio at IndieHackers in January 2019. Read the original post on IndieHackers On January 21, 2014, Geocodio was officially launched into the world. By some miracle of luck, we landed on the front page of Hacker News for almost the whole day. In the pre-Product Hunt era, this was about as good as a launch could possibly go. The traffic surge quickly faded and not everyone had
November 12, 2018
Interview: Conquering the Glass Ceiling with Dr. Cortney Baker
In this episode of Conquering the Glass Ceiling, I sat down with Co-Founder of Geocodio, Michele Hansen. Michele and her husband created a software-as-a-service company that provides geocoding services. Michele has started many businesses and products over the years with friends and her husband. Her family has helped her throughout her entrepreneurial journey and start her current business. She has learned to figure out what customers really want and how to