Permission Not Required

Colleen Schnettler and Joe Masilotti
  • 5.0 (3)
  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Colleen Schnettler and Joe Masilotti didn't wait for anyone to greenlight their careers. Together they talk about building wealth on your own terms: finding leverage, compounding your skills, and designing careers that don't require a boss's approval. For developers, freelancers, and anyone plotting their escape from the org chart.

  1. 20H AGO

    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. 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 Updates09:57 Target Market Considerations17:02 Partnership Opportunities23:24 Building and Using MCP Servers for Google Ads Management

    39 min

  2. APR 22

    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 Fiasco23:26 Navigating Client Calls and Offers28:28 The Value of Client Calls and Networking36:08 Video Content Creation and Launch Strategy43:44 Exploring Ad Creation and Strategy

    44 min

  3. APR 15

    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 Creation07:58 Migration to Hatchbox and PaaS Limitations36:15 Social Media Engagement Strategies

    42 min

  4. APR 8

    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 Adventures07:02 Returning from Vacation14:59 Networking at Conferences20:04 Industry Exploration27:06 Deterministic vs. Indeterministic AI37:28 Marketing Strategy and Audience Targeting43:15 Engagement and Intent Signals

    46 min

  5. MAR 17

    1K ARR and Too Scared to Launch

    Colleen is overwhelmed in a good way after saying yes to everything, and Joe pushes her to stop planning and just run ads for two weeks. Joe hits 1K ARR on Ruby Native but can't bring himself to launch it. Colleen pushes back on scope creep and they land on a two-phase launch plan. Plus, the irony of AI making both of them work more, not less. Chapters 00:00 Life Updates and Overwhelm07:00 Exploring New Markets12:59 Balancing Work and Productivity21:57 Client Work and Side Projects29:48 Expanding Scope and Product Features36:21 Market Validation and Launch Strategy42:17 Planning the Product Launch47:25 Final Preparations and Launch Strategy

    49 min

  6. MAR 10

    Laravel Cloud Envy

    Colleen deploys her first Laravel app and gushes about how Rails has nothing like it, while Joe tallies up $250/month in hosting bills across three platforms. They also brainstorm a joint B2C app experiment, wrestle with Google Ads conversion tracking, and Joe shares his Ruby Native beta strategy as five client projects kick off at once. Chapters 00:00 Laravel Cloud?21:46 Product Development Mindset and Consulting33:32 Conference Talk Ideas and Strategy42:38 OpenClaw Update and Browserless API

    46 min

  7. MAR 6

    Own the Robot

    Joe reveals Ruby Native (rubynative.com), a new product that lets Rails developers get their web app into the App Store without touching Xcode, Swift, or App Store Connect. Upload a few files, configure a YAML, click a button, and download your app via TestFlight in as little as two hours. He already has a paying customer and is targeting an official launch in about two weeks. Colleen shares her growing AI consulting work, including setting up self-hosted AI agents on Hetzner for clients. Her pitch: a one-time setup fee, no recurring SaaS subscription, and the client owns their infrastructure. She walks through a real client example where she replaced a multi-step content workflow (contracted writer, SEO person, ChatGPT cleanup) with a Slack-connected agent that pulls Google Search Console data and generates content briefs automatically. They also discuss marketing strategy for Ruby Native (newsletters, podcasts, Product Hunt, Hacker News), whether building a product cannibalizes your consulting business, Joe signing a new advisory retainer focused on strategy instead of code, the surprising grief of not writing anymore in an AI world, and naming Colleen's consultancy. Chapters 00:00 Bathroom Pipe Woes08:51 RubyNative.com and App Development14:15 Product Launch and Marketing Strategy22:56 Consulting Business and OpenClaw Setup36:36 Consulting Business Naming47:11 Domain Purchasing and Management

    51 min

  8. FEB 24

    Spoons in the Pot

    Colleen is building AI-powered SEO agents and Meta ad pipelines for clients. Joe reveals a secret product that packages Rails apps into iOS apps with one click. They debate whether AI automations actually deliver business value, and why breaking out of the tech Twitter bubble might be the real moat. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Solo Work Retreat05:48 Automating Content Generation13:05 Meta Ads and Custom Landing Pages20:59 Challenges of AI Marketing Products26:04 Exploring New Markets33:44 Automating Mobile App Development39:14 Product Launch Strategy

    44 min
See All (13)

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Colleen Schnettler and Joe Masilotti didn't wait for anyone to greenlight their careers. Together they talk about building wealth on your own terms: finding leverage, compounding your skills, and designing careers that don't require a boss's approval. For developers, freelancers, and anyone plotting their escape from the org chart.

Information

  • Creator
    Colleen Schnettler and Joe Masilotti
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Colleen Schnettler and Joe Masilotti
  • Show Website
    Permission Not Required

You Might Also Like