Nobody Pays a Stranger (for Consulting)

Maybe I don't actually love tech?

Colleen had a weekend revelation: she doesn't love building products as much as she loves building businesses. The work doesn't matter, the industry doesn't matter, and tech might not even be the long-term home. Joe pushes back, then realizes she's been circling this for years. They float a partnership experiment where Colleen brings Joe qualified leads and he delivers the work, then dig into the harder problem underneath: how anyone builds trust at scale when cold outreach doesn't convert anymore and the real sales cycle is years long. Joe ships pingrb [https://pingrb.com], an iOS and Android app for push notifications from Stripe, GitHub, Hatchbox, or any webhook (including Claude Code). He built the whole thing without opening Xcode or Android Studio, and it's the first Ruby Native app he's used as a customer instead of a maintainer. Also covered: * Colleen's Google Ads MCP server is finally approved (took two YouTube walkthroughs) * Google Play's wild "12 users for 14 continuous days" rule for personal accounts * Joe on refusing to keep up with the AI shininess race * Colleen's background coding agent on Hetzner that runs from Slack * Ruby Native's new screenshot pipeline: simulator captures, in-browser editor, one click to App Store Connect * The funnel problem: five years of brand building, no lever to cash in on Chapters: * 00:00 May Gray and false spring * 01:20 Try AdWizard MCP server approved by Google * 04:42 Google Play's 12-users-for-14-days rule * 08:36 "Maybe I don't actually love tech" * 17:24 Threads of this going back years * 19:39 Colleen finds the leads, Joe delivers the work * 22:22 Pull, not push: trust at scale * 26:25 Refusing to keep up with AI * 27:24 Background agents on Hetzner * 32:22 Ruby Native ships Android, plus PingRB * 35:45 The new screenshot pipeline * 38:00 Which marketing channel for Ruby Native? * 42:30 Five years of brand building. Now what?

The First Ruby Native App I Didn't Build

Joe officially launched Ruby Native for iOS on his birthday with a 33% off discount code. The launch itself was quiet, but the bigger milestone landed the next morning: a developer in Turkey shipped their personal finance app to the App Store using Ruby Native, never opening Xcode, never writing a line of Swift. It's the first Ruby Native app in the store that Joe didn't build himself. Colleen pushes back on the marketing angle. The technical, craftsman framing only reaches a narrow slice of developers. The bigger TAM is indie devs trying to make money. Ruby Native unlocks B2C App Store distribution for Rails apps, and that's the pull. Joe sees how this could split the audience: hobbyists and prosumers on the $299 or $999 annual plan, businesses that need custom native code on his consulting side. The product becomes lead gen for the consulting, not a threat to it. Colleen also shipped a free Google Ads MCP server at tryadwizard.com [http://tryadwizard.com]. It's intentionally not a product. It's lead gen for her AI consulting. Next week's episode will be a live stream where Colleen sets up a real Ruby Native ad campaign with Joe, end to end. Joe wraps with a consulting update. Two inbound Mobile Playbook calls in the last week from longtime newsletter readers, plus a cold email reply that turned into a booked call. If all three close, a rough year turns into a normal one, just in time for baby number three in September. Chapters * 00:00 Introduction and Updates * 09:57 Target Market Considerations * 17:02 Partnership Opportunities * 23:24 Building and Using MCP Servers for Google Ads Management

Motion vs. Action

Colleen goes to a Claude meetup in San Diego expecting 12 people. 80 show up. She wings a presentation and watches a winery owner and a lawyer demo working software they built with no code. The most interesting builders in the room aren't developers. Joe pitches Ruby Native for the Ruby Central pitch competition being held at RubyConf, forcing him to write a real business plan for the first time. He shares why signups are converting faster than anything he's launched before, and why the next positioning shift is away from "save developers time" and toward "get your Rails business into the app stores." Colleen reframes the insight: making someone money is more powerful than saving them time. Joe sees his whole pitch differently by the end of the conversation. They also talk about motion vs. action with back-to-back discovery calls, Colleen's first cold-lead proposal going out, Joe's LinkedIn content workflow built on top of his own writing archive, and why shipping a demo video in ScreenFlow beat a week of fighting Remotion. Chapters * 00:00 First World Problems and Lipstick Fiasco * 23:26 Navigating Client Calls and Offers * 28:28 The Value of Client Calls and Networking * 36:08 Video Content Creation and Launch Strategy * 43:44 Exploring Ad Creation and Strategy

Heroku, We're Gonna Miss You

Joe's Ruby Native launch video is stuck in Remotion hell Claude + Remotion produced something mediocre after many rounds. Colleen's verdict: commit to becoming a video creator, or pay a pro. Joe admits he has a mental block around spending business money, even though he sells consulting for a living. Joe migrated 7 apps to Hatchbox over the weekend Off Heroku, Render, and Fly onto a single $25 Hetzner box + $10 Hatchbox to save ~$1,500-2,000/year. Postgres → SQLite, Solid Queue, nightly S3 backups. Heroku's still the gold standard, Fly's dashboard is unusable, and every "Heroku but better" startup ends up being Hatchbox. The dream of building their own PaaS is officially dead (again). Colleen got her first cold-ish inbound for AI consulting But the asks are vague: "I feel like I should use AI." Clients treat it like a magic lead-gen machine. Her fix: send tiered proposals ($5k / $20k / $50k) so the client picks their own budget and scope creep gets a natural guardrail. Breaking into non-tech industries (insurance, mortgage brokers) Huge opportunity, but enterprise procurement kills independent pitches. Joe floats: pitch a 6-month W2 embed to learn the institutional knowledge and build the system from the inside. Case study gold. LinkedIn 30-day challenge Colleen posted 7 days straight, impressions up 400%. LinkedIn's feedback cycle is weird and slow (posts resurface for two weeks), but it's clearly shaping social proof on discovery calls. X has plateaued, Substack feels like "X with a smaller audience." Joe commits to daily LinkedIn starting April 3. Chapters * 00:00 Challenges of Video Creation * 07:58 Migration to Hatchbox and PaaS Limitations * 36:15 Social Media Engagement Strategies

Nobody Pays a Stranger (for Consulting)

Colleen is two months into her AI automation pivot and doing the work, but cold inbound leads haven't landed yet. She's going all-in on LinkedIn for 90 days and doing discovery calls in insurance and home services. Joe got two full-price annual Ruby Native subscribers over the weekend and is building Inertia support for a well-known client headed to TestFlight. They swap conference networking strategies, debate whether there's a magic industry to target, and vent about Anthropic killing subsidized tokens on third-party harnesses. Chapters * 00:00 3D Printing Adventures * 07:02 Returning from Vacation * 14:59 Networking at Conferences * 20:04 Industry Exploration * 27:06 Deterministic vs. Indeterministic AI * 37:28 Marketing Strategy and Audience Targeting * 43:15 Engagement and Intent Signals