What's up, everyone? This is Cortland from NDHackers.com, and you're listening to the
ND Hackers podcast. On this show, I talked to the founders of profitable internet businesses,
and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes. How did they get to where they
are today? How do they make decisions at their companies? And what exactly makes their businesses
tick? And the goal here, as always, so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and go
on to build our own successful internet businesses. Today, I am excited to sit down with Rosie Sherry.
I've had the pleasure of working with Rosie for the past several months and her role as the
community manager for ND Hackers. So if you're active in the community, you've certainly seen
Rosie leaving comments, making posts and introductions, and just helping people out
in general over the past few months. In addition to helping me out with ND Hackers, Rosie is the
founder of her own community. It's called Ministry of Testing. It's a global community of software
testers. Rosie got started working on this in 2007 as a side project, really, but she eventually
turned into a business. And since then, she has bootstrapped it to over $1.2 million in annual
revenue. Rosie, welcome to the ND Hackers podcast. And thanks for joining me.
Thanks, Gordon. It's great being here.
$1.2 million in revenue. That is a lot further than I ever got with ND Hackers.
ND Hackers doesn't make money anymore. But before it was acquired, I was experimenting with all
sorts of business models. I tried affiliate marketing. I sent a lot of cold emails for
sponsorships and podcast ads. So I'm pretty curious about all this kind of stuff.
Can you explain to us how your community makes over $1 million a year and where that money comes from?
So basically, most of it comes from events at the moment. So we run conferences across a lot of
countries at the moment. So we started out basically in 2007, we started out just as a forum.
And as it grew bigger and bigger, I felt like it was kind of sucking the time out of me.
And I was feeling not great about all the time it was taking and not having that financial reward
for it so that I could give it my focus. And so after about four years of it running as
an online community, I decided that I needed to figure out a way for it to make money.
I had dabbled in some advertising stuff, some online ads and in the promotions for companies.
But to be honest, I never really enjoyed that angle of it as so much. I didn't feel like it
was like a sustainable way to build up community. And there's also the fact that these companies
always want to kind of push things in front of people's face and they have different goals from
what I had with the community. Fast forward, going to like 2011, 2012, I basically decided
that the community needed events in a way to physically come together. That's what I started
with. So 2012, we hosted our first conference. It was in Cambridge. We call it Test Bash.
We did like one training course beforehand as well. Basically, that was the start of it. We had
65 people turn up. Everyone paid for a ticket. I didn't charge a whole lot for it. I made like
some money, but it wasn't really making money compared to the amount of time I spent on it.
There's money in the bank, a little bit of cash there to decide what to do next.
But the whole idea of running the conference for me was that basically for me, I was a tester
and I knew that there was nothing else out there for testers. There's nowhere where testers would
gather and speak openly about the industry and the only other events that were out there were
completely corporate focused or they were full of sales vendors just like shoving tools and
marketing tiny ways. I was like, this is not us. Testers deserve to have something better than
what they had. So that's like the event side of it. As we grew now, we do some marketing for
companies as well. That's a fair chunk of cash, I guess you would say. Then around 2015,
we started a professional membership where people would gain access to benefits, mostly content.
Most of the content was based on the conference talks that we had recorded from the beginning.
The way forward was to include all those conference talks in an annual payment package.
As we did more and more conferences, the first year we did a conference, it was
like nine talks. But now that we're doing like something like nine conferences in the year,
that ends up adding up to 80 or 90 talks and that becomes really valuable within itself.
Then on top of that, we do online masterclasses, AMAs, and we're doing courses as well
that testers create.
Nine conferences a year. You sound like a crazy person. That's ridiculous.
I remember selling sponsorships from many hackers and I had the same feeling that it sounds like
you had when you were doing a little bit of sales for Ministry of Testing before it became
an in-person community. That was the feeling that it pays the bills, it kind of works,
but it's the exact opposite of what's best for your community in most cases.
It's not like your community members are ever asking you for more advertising.
No one's ever like, hey, can you put an ad on this page? This podcast will be much better with
more ads. And so you spend a lot of time working to actually make your community worse when that's
your business model.
Exactly. And it takes away a lot of energy from you as someone just trying to run the community.
And a lot of these companies are really hard to work with. Marketing people are notoriously
difficult to communicate with and actually get something kind of signed off and agreed.
By the time you agreed to something, the amount you end up getting for me,
it wasn't worth the hassle and the stress.
So I went back and I counted this morning. I look back through the old IndieHackers interviews
and you were actually the 17th person that I ever interviewed after launching IndieHackers.
So this was September 2016, almost three years ago. Do you remember doing that interview?
Yes. It feels like it's just so long ago and where we were as a business,
it's just not where we are now. And it's crazy to think about because I haven't planned,
I literally haven't planned for where it is now. I didn't sit out to start a community and
do global conferences. It's kind of like I followed the community. I followed what the
community were wanting and asking for, and then this is kind of what it is. But I've also learned
that doing that means that this is a whole different beast. And then it's one thing doing
one conference a year and running a website and keeping in touch with people throughout the year
and running a forum. And then all of a sudden there's all these multiple conferences happening.
I think it was like 2015 or 2016 that we did our first conference outside of the UK,
and that was New York. And I just got really stressed out about it. And it did fine. It had
like 180 people or something like that. So financially it did fine. All our conferences
have done okay. They've never lost money. Some have, over the years, produced a lot more than
others. But it's just like the whole idea of bringing conferences to another country is
filled up with so many unknowns. And sometimes I can't understand why I just said yes to doing it.
I'm like, what was I thinking? It all seems like a great idea at the beginning of it.
But then it's like, oh my God, what am I thinking?
That's kind of the... It comes with the territory of running a community where you can't just set
out a roadmap and do everything that you want to do because your community members have kind
of a stake. What you do is necessarily going to be somewhat reactive in terms of what they want.
Yeah. That's been tough. And I don't think that people kind of see that from my perspective.
It's a lot of pressure to think about these things, let alone act on them. And just like
everything that's involved around every decision we make is quite kind of overwhelming. And then
again, it's like doing one conference in one country doesn't mean you can just pick it up
and copy and paste it and bring it to another country. But you don't know until you try.
And it's like, we're trying things and it's hard and it's frustrating. And there's lots of work
that's really not a lot of fun. Really not a lot of fun. And I feel fortunate that my husband
came on board midway to help out. But he's kind of really kept me sane with tech and management
of the business because there's lots of things with events that are just tedious.
I'm trying to say by some that if they had known how hard it would be to be a founder,
they never would have gotten started. And they're saying that in a way they had to be
naive to have made that initial decision to start. Do you think that applies to you? What
was your mindset like in the early days? So naive, but at the same time, it's like,
why not? And when you think sometimes you have the back end of the community,
you think it'll be okay. But in reality, you are kind of alone in that position of
trying to make things happen. Yeah, I mean, totally. It's like,
you know, I don't know if it's naive to your stupidity or a little bit about I don't I can't
like pinpoint it. It's like, what what makes me make those decisions and the looks my husband
gives me. When I say we're doing something, he's like, Oh, my God. And you know, since New York,
I kept saying I'm not doing another test batch in another location. And that was like the second
location. And like, what now we're at nine, we keep saying that as a team, we're like no more
trespasses, no more new locations, but we keep, we just find it so hard to say, say no, sometimes.
So let's go back to the beginning of this story. Before you got on this treadmill,
that made it so hard to say no. And so hard to stop. I would think that to be someone who starts
a community for software testers, you probably need to be someone who has experience as a
software tester yourself, and ideally experience running communities. And you actually had both.
So tell us about the years that you spent learning these things and picking up the skill sets
that you used to eventually build such a successful community.
Yeah, so I started testing, like, I got my first job in testing in 2001. I was like 21 at the time.
So I was young, didn't know what I was doing. And I had no qualifications or anything like that,
I kind of just managed to get this job that wasn't very well paid, like as a testing job,
but it was better paid than the job that I had at the time, which was working in a bank.
I was like really desperate to get out of that position. And to be honest, it's like once you
get a job in testing, it's so easy to just like, get another job in testing further down the line.
So within six months, I'd gotten another job that paid even more. I was like, so happy about that,
even though it still wasn't that much, you know, it gave me a taste of what testing was all about.
And I enjoyed it, you know, it did interest me. And then the company that I was working for,
when I'm doing the dot com boom and bust. So after that, I freelanced and I contracted for a bit,
but it was kind of tough to get work at that stage. Especially like I had like two years
experience. And I just felt like any job that was out there is like, there's loads more people with
experience. And I just had challenges there. And then it wasn't too long after that, that I managed
to get a job and then I had my first job in 2003. But when I was pregnant with him, you know, that
my boss was not very nice to me. So that's had an impact on me as well. He wasn't nice about the
fact that you were pregnant. Yeah, basically, as soon as he found out I was pregnant, he completely
changed his attitude towards me and was really not nice to me and just was out there to make
my life as difficult as possible. So I was really stressed about that. And I decided just to get
myself signed off sick and not go back. Because I didn't want to deal with it. You know, people
don't tell you this or you know, society doesn't tell you this. It's like, you know, as a mother
or as parents, you know, they like to say, yeah, you can have it all. You can have a job and you
can have a career and you can have a family and it'll be fine. But actually, it's not fine. And
there's all these hurdles that no one ever talks about. And the reality of going back to work
after you have kids is really hard. And childcare is really expensive. And then even when I tried
getting jobs after my first child, like a few months after, they were taught to me. But then
as soon as they found out I had kids, they would stop communicating. So I was like, okay,
this is how it's going to be. It's really bad. It really is. It's like everywhere I went. It's
out of. What kind of companies were these? Were these like tech startups or? All kinds,
to be honest. And a lot of them were recruiters as well. So sometimes at that point, you know,
we're going back to like 2004. It was hard to apply directly to companies. A lot of the jobs
posted were jobs via recruitment agencies, who they would pick, who to put forward.
And I think because recruiters are just generally motivated by money, they would
be very selective in who they would put forward. And if that person is a woman with kids,
they would see that person as not having the best chance in getting a job, I guess. I don't know.
So, you know, it's hard to pinpoint it.
So how did you get out of this rut from, you know, going from this point where it was easy for you
to find jobs as a software tester to the point where now your mother and nobody wants to hire you?
Mostly I freelance, so I did some contract. I often found like work from home. And I also worked
with my husband for a while on his company. Partly he's like a tech guy as well. So I did some
testing stuff there, but also just generally helping out with running the business. I was there
for probably a couple of years helping out. And then I kind of decided to move on to other stuff.
I got sucked into the local geek world of co working and building up the co working community.
Yeah, I know you started hosting a meetup as well. I think it was called Girl Geek
Dinners. Tell us about how you got involved with that.
Yeah, I saw this Sarah who used to run them in London. And I saw that she was doing them.
And I thought, Oh, that's a great idea. I'd love to, I'd love to run one down in Brighton.
I think it would go down. Well, I've been, I've been to a few meetups,
just general like geek tech meetups in Brighton. And I just, you know, given my experience I had,
and I just wanted a chance to meet people and network with people. But when I started,
it was, I didn't again, you know, I don't really think about why I do things. I just like do them
because I think it's a good idea. So I did them and like for a year, like, it was amazing. It was
kind of completely like fully booked without any effort to put them on. I just had to like reserve
a space and people would turn up people reserve their space. What exactly were they? It was just
a talk and then like drinks afterwards. And we would invite people, people to talk about
something related to what they were doing. Or, you know, just like, you get these days, lots of
kind of talks just related to tech or whatever the new town might be about. So, and I don't think
people necessarily went for the talks. It was just the idea of like, there was this
meetup that was just for women. And we had this rule that, well, it wasn't just for women.
So I lie there. We had this rule that guys could come, but they had to be invited by a woman.
And so some guys would like scramble for invites to come along. So that was kind of fun.
But yeah, I think that that for me is that I had never done anything like that.
And it just kind of opened my eyes to the fact that I can make stuff happen. And it's fun and
I enjoy it. And from those days, I became known as like Rosie Shea. It's like, I realized that
people in Brighton started, you know, they knew who I was just by the things that I was doing.
And then I took that to the next level with a co-working stuff where I helped start,
I co-started a co-working space with someone else. And again, for me, that experience was
similar, but obviously lots of responsibility. And again, I question why, why I did it because
it was a lot of stress as well. But I just had lots and lots of fun doing it. And I met so many
great people and, and it just boosted my whole, my confidence in everything that I was doing,
like going from, you know, like a mother, not really sure what she wanted to do to, you know,
running local events and creating a space for people and being recognized for that. That's,
that for me was a real confidence booster.
One thing I've noticed from working with you and talking to you is that you're in general,
just a super helpful person. Even in your interview, three years ago, you talked about
putting others first being one of your core values, and how you care more about the experiences
of your community members than you do with generating revenue. Maybe that's why you kept
finding yourself in these situations where you're running these very social businesses,
providing spaces for people and talks for people and communities for people,
because you just end up wanting to help and you get sucked in.
Yeah, I think it is. And I can't quite pinpoint why I like doing that. But I'm kind of like,
well, if I can help people and then why not? And, and I could see opportunities to help all these
people when I was doing these meetups and co-working. And then when I got into creating
an online community for testing, you know, that kind of started taking it to kind of a different
space and a different level. But there's something in me that just kind of keeps pushing me forward
saying, well, if I can help you, I'm going to help you. And I'll point you to the right place.
And it's not that I expect anything in return, it just feels like the right thing to do.
Well, the good thing is if you orient yourself that way, you end up probably hitting on a lot
better business ideas, because you're actually doing things that you see that people need,
because you're talking to people first rather than sort of sitting in isolation and just thinking
about what might potentially be a good business idea, you're actually out there and think of it
talking to people and sort of being pulled in the direction where you can be the most helpful and
provide the most value to people. Yeah, I mean, I say to a lot of people say,
when people are trying to figure out what to build, I encourage people to build communities
as a way to build a business. Because it's like, with me, you say, you're in there every single
day, at least, you know, say, if you build any kind of community, as I'm sure you know,
Kotlin, you're speaking to your audience, day in, day out, you're understanding the
struggles of the high points and the low points and so much goodness in the people just don't
pay attention to those kind of things. I don't do customer research or anything like that,
because like my community is my customer research is like, I know who they are. I know
what triggers them. I know what this is. And based on that, as I end up making decisions
that I believe are good for them, I don't ask them their permission. Because sometimes I think
they don't know what they want. And we have to make it before they realize they do. And I think
I think if I had asked people whether they wanted a conference and whether we should take it around
the world, they would have said, Are you stupid? It's the reality is I, you know, say, I just,
you know, believe so much and just get into know people. Not enough people do it.
So at some point, you found yourself in a situation where you had worked as a software
tester, you had started the girl geek dinner for Brighton and brought together speakers and
attendees for over a year, you had started a co working space, we had tons of experience
bringing people together, tons of experience in software and around other geeks in general.
How did you decide to create an online forum for software testing? Because that's how ministry of
testing was born, really this online community. Yeah, to be honest, it's like this tool came out
and I thought, Oh, that's kind of cool. I could probably do something with that. And it was ning,
I don't know if you know ning, that was basically a hosted online community forum, which was great
at the time, it was like, you know, better than anything else that was out there. And I thought,
well, I'm a tester, you know, I could, you know, I think testers need to come together, maybe I could
do something around that. And it was really easy to set something up, you know, and so I just
set something up, I knew a few testers, I had like been in contact with quite a few
kind of well known testers, you know, in that day and age, they weren't a lot out there,
they weren't a lot of people blogging. And it was probably, you know, maybe 20, 30 people reliably
blogging at the time. But I just started it and I let them know about it. And that's really how
it started. And it was small to begin with. And I carry on about getting to like, I don't know how
long it took me. But when I got to the first 100 people, I was like, wow, this is amazing. 100
people. Well, maybe it is I don't know, I had nothing to measure it against. And this is the
thing is, I say when I when I do things, I don't really measure myself against how other people do
it. But you know, to me, I was kind of thinking to myself, I was like, Yeah, it's good. But you know,
how good is it? I don't know. But it was making me happy. And I think that's, for me, that's the
most important thing is like, I was doing something and people were talking about things.
And we were starting to create this little community. And I just built on that. And we
stayed on Ning. It took us ages to get off it. Ning got bought out shortly afterwards. And then
they never did anything to improve it, which was really annoying. But I think it was we stayed on
it until 2016, maybe. I just couldn't be bothered to move away. At that point, we moved the whole
discussion forum over to ministry testing, and under discourse platform.
Do you remember strategically, or maybe tactically, the journey to get these first
100 users, you said that you knew a few of the bigger names and software testing at the time.
How do you go from a complete ghost town where it's pretty much just you and maybe these few
people that you know, to 100 people talking to each other and helping each other out online?
Mostly talking to myself and a few other people. I think that's, you know, and based on that,
it's like mostly about showing up, you know, every day or every week and consistently trying
to do something interesting to capture people's attention. I struggle to remember the exact
conversations we had. But yeah, I don't know. I think people just like knew me and like through
word of mouth, people started signing up and finding out about the things we were doing.
And I think that the other aspect is that even though like I look back and like the design was
like in the logos that we had were pretty horrible. I always tried to make it fun.
And the whole reason I remember when I started out was I was so bored with testing. It was a
horrible kind of world to be in. I mentioned earlier, it's all corpority. It was all
certification based and all people seem to care about was talking about these, you know, how to
pass an exam and stuff like that. And as I said, my whole focus was to try to move away from those
kind of conversations and start talking about real issues faced around testing. And I think
that's kind of what kind of clicked with most people that came in. They saw that like genuine
conversation was happening. It wasn't like a marketing gimmick. There's like people here who
were interested in talking about testing and improving themselves and the craft.
I think most people see the world as essentially unchangeable. If they enter some industry and
it's drab and gray and boring, they think that's just how it has to be. And, you know, maybe if
they don't like it, they leave. Whereas what's fascinating about what you did and what I think
a lot of founders do is you see the world as something that can be changed. If software
testing is not as exciting as some other fields, you don't think, well, I need to get out of
software testing. You think, what can I do to brighten this up? What do you think it is about
you and maybe your experiences that led you to see things this way? I don't know. I just knew,
you know what it is. I went to some conferences around the same time or within a year or two of
setting up. And I got really, they were like local web tech conferences. And I just got really
inspired by the things that people were doing. And I would go to these conferences and have
great conversations, but I would always be the only tester there. And if I introduce myself as
a tester, they'd be like, what? What do you actually do? And it really made me think about
the whole testing world and what we had. And that kind of inspired me to just take those ideas
basically into the testing community and say, how can I inspire the next generation of testers?
Because we need it. There's so much bad software out there. I still wholeheartedly believe that
testers need to be there to help produce better software. But I could basically see that the
testing world needed an injection. And I don't know why, but I thought I could maybe make a
little dent into that somehow. And that's how I started the community as well, thinking that
I'll just do a little thing for fun and see what happens. And I would browse the web seeing what
other people were doing. And I'd take ideas from that and see if they would work on our community.
I would steal conversation ideas, all sorts of things. And really, it's just experimenting with
ideas consistently and seeing what sticks. There's a lot of good stuff there that I think
can apply to almost any business. So the first one has been kind of a theme on the NDS podcast
for the last month or two. I talked to Daniel Baskin, who started 23 companies. And every one
of them has been this creative, eye-catching, remarkable stuff that people just don't think
about. Most of our companies start as a result of jokes that she thinks would be funny and she
turns into companies and they get a lot of attention. And I talked to Ali Lefever, who runs
a branding agency. And their whole sort of point of differentiation is how they inject fun and
humor into your brand to make you stand out. And here you are talking about how you started a
community for software testers, which I think on its face seems like probably the least fun,
least humor, at least there's anything that you could do. And yet your entire approach was to
figure out what you could take from other areas and other spaces to actually make it inspirational,
what you could take that was fun from other tech conferences and inject into this otherwise
gray world. And based on that, one of the things that we did was create a newspaper,
like an actual physical newspaper. And again, this was kind of like I saw this company,
the newspaper club, I saw that they had launched and I was like, oh, that's an amazing idea. You
can make your own newspaper. How cool would that be? And what community can I create a newspaper
for? I was like, oh, let's do it for the testing community. Let's get people to write articles and
create games in it and have interviews and all sorts. And we did it. And it was fun. I have
really like, you know, it makes me smile when I think about that, even though it never really made
any money. You know, we did ship them off to people, you know, like a couple of hundred people.
People used to complain about the price. It was too expensive and stuff like that. But we created
an online version as well. And those still exist. And I still have some physical copies in my garage.
One of them has had like a lean article on the front, something about lean testing. And on it,
there was a picture of a guy who was not fit and then a guy next to it really kind of muscled up.
It's a perfect example of doing something different because how many online communities
are you a part of or how many products do you love that actually have a physical newspaper
that they will ship to you? Pretty much none. And when you get that, then you want to talk to
people about it and share it because it's just so remarkable because it's so different.
And one of my favorite things about your community is that probably directly related to this kind of
stuff is that your members are absolutely fanatic. Like you've had not one, not two, but I think nine
different Ministry of Testing members who've gotten tattoos on their bodies of the Ministry
of Testing logo. They literally have the words Ministry of Testing permanently inked onto their
forearms and legs and stuff. How do you get people to care so much about what you've created?
It's really, really simple is that I'm kind to people. And I think about people first. And I
think about how I can help them and how I can lift them up at every opportunity that I can.
No matter what community you create, you can change people's lives. And that's kind of what
I focused on. Going back to something like the newspapers, yes, it was fun. When I think about
it, I say we managed to get people to publish articles who would never have published articles
before. Lots of those people, that was the first article we ever published as an example.
So they will always remember that and keep that kind of memory in their heart kind of thing.
And as we grew, that kind of philosophy continued to grow in everything we did. So it's like a lot
of conferences, for example, these days, there's a lot of pressure on them to be ethical. But for
us, we were ethical from the beginning because that's the right thing to do. We always paid
speakers expenses for all the speakers. We've never done keynotes. We've tried to keep everything as
affordable as possible. We've done scholarships for people. And there's some great stories that
Emma will probably hate me, but we're good friends now. Every year, she gets a bit emotional with me
when we hook up at Test Bash Writing because she applied for a scholarship a few years back to
attend a week's worth of training and attend the conference. And she was probably 33, 34 at the time,
working a not very good job, really wanting to get into testing, but couldn't find her way in.
So I gave her a scholarship. And by the end of the week, she had a job offer. And she was just
like completely blown away. But I struggled to kind of take credit for that because really,
it's like the whole community was behind that was they were all supporting Emma as well.
So it's like somehow it's like just by kind of continually trying to support these people
and do positive things and do the right thing and just like kind of create a business in a very
human kind of way. People have really, really like gotten behind it in a way that I can't believe,
you know, and it's kind of sad that there's not as many examples as there should be for
it running a business like this. The more I do it, the more I just don't understand why people can't
run businesses in a human in an ethical way, you know, paying forward with kindness and
doing things because they can. It's like, for us to say offering a scholarship doesn't really
cost us money. So sure, there's a space of a training place and a conference space. But
really, it doesn't cost us like the money or food. And usually we wouldn't like completely
sell out our tickets. So, you know, really, it's like, it was a no brainer for me. It's like,
why can't we do this? And for me, it's like the amazing thing is, it's like, I've done this and
people see that and they kind of take a step back when I just say yes to stuff. Or I see,
I see an opportunity online or someone asking for help. And I'll offer my help. And for some
reason is that when I do that, I say now everybody does it. So it's like the whole idea of the
scholarship that we started is now like taken on a new level where quite often members of the
community just buy tickets for other people and they raffle them out or they try to find people
to support. So it's like the whole, the whole like kindness thing is like replicating itself,
multiplying itself. And it's showing that, you know, people can be really nice to each other.
And it really does make a difference to people's lives. And when other people get those tickets
and then become a part of the community and they then get blown away by all the support that they
get. They're like, Oh my God, I've good credit to the whole community because it really isn't,
it isn't just me. I think a lot of people do so much behind the scenes that they don't get
credit for. I feel a bit, a bit guilty for trying to take any kind of credit.
But at the same time, it starts with you because you're the one who founded the community. And I
think, you know, it's fascinating about communities in particular, but really any sort of group of
people or any sort of businesses that people kind of, for lack of a better word, enjoy copying each
other. Like we don't know what to do. It's pretty much a safe bet to do what the people around us
are doing. And so if you're the founder of a community and you have a personality quirk,
for example, you really believe in kindness and it's the core of your value system and you always
do things for other people, even not expecting other things in return. And you set that example
and you can kind of expect other people in your community to copy what you do. And now it's taken
on a life of its own. And even if you're not the one responsible for all these acts of kindness,
like you kind of lit that initial match, you got the spark started.
It's true.
One of the challenges with being a community leader on the flip side of this is that
whatever your community is, you can bet that by the time your community started growing,
you're no longer doing that thing. If you're starting a community of software testers,
at some point you were a tester yourself, but eventually you're a full-time community
organizer and you get away from what it means to be a software tester. If you found that
to be a problem with you and if so, how did you handle that transition?
Yeah, a bit to be honest, especially in the past couple of years,
which I think is a really positive thing that testing has moved so much forward with the whole
kind of DevOps and continuous delivery. When I look at talks of missions now, I'm like,
I don't really know what this is about. So over the past couple of years, I've definitely felt like
I'm not the right person to lead in the company or making certain decisions.
I felt it was important to try to find a way to get support in that because it literally has
been years since I've done any proper testing. So that's hard. So based on that, it's interesting
because you kind of feel like you want to get stuck in conversations, but you can't because
you've got nothing valuable to add.
You could talk about running the community, but you can't talk about the software testing
on the ground. That's kind of the loneliness of being a founder. I think it might be true
for almost any company. You're the only person in your shoes. There's really not that many other
people you could talk about, about what you're doing, except for other founders.
Yeah, that's true.
What was it like going from an online-only community to deciding, you know what,
I need to get paid for this. I'm going to start doing real world events because I've done a lot
of real world events with any hackers and you're right. It's not easy. How did you get your very
first conference, your very first events off the ground?
I think for me, it's like I made the decision to do it. And when I make a decision,
I tend to try to follow through on it. Part of me, I think I probably lack confidence a bit,
so I was looking for support from other people. I partnered up with someone to take the whole
testing community forward, but then that didn't end up working out, which was frustrating.
Previous to that, I had done the co-working stuff and I had partnered with a couple of
other people and that didn't work out. I had to walk away. That aspect of it was personally,
for me, was really tough. But I decided after that, I was like, I'm not going to bother anymore
trying to work with other people. I'm just going to go ahead and do things. And I think,
in a sense, that made it easier going forward. I just made decisions and I lived with the results
of that and I didn't have to have conversations with anyone to try to agree about what to do.
So in a sense, I felt like being a solo founder was the right thing for the first few years.
And really, just to get the event off the ground, I basically put a venue and told people about it
and said, this is how much it costs. And we didn't ask people to apply to speak for that first one.
We had just invited people that we knew that we thought would be good for a first conference.
I think we had about seven or eight talks for it. And it was great. My only regret is
promoting it three months beforehand. I don't think it really was enough time to get a first
event off the ground. We have a rule of six months these days of we announced an event six
months in advance. But it was a great event and everyone there was from the community. So
seeing those people meet up in real life and actually meeting them for the first time,
for me, it was great. And it was a real situation of connecting the dots with people,
bringing that humanity to the community. And yeah, some of the people, I look back at the photos and
there's a good handful of people that are there and still with us today. And that's a great thing
to see. I've had a similar experience with indie hackers where I will know somebody by their
username from the online community. And then a year and a half, two years later, I'll see them
at an in-person event. And it's so weird. It's like, I've talked to you numerous times, but we've
never actually really talked. And so I think events are, it's kind of a magical feeling to go
to a room full of people and see just how much energy that can be in a room with like 15 people
who are actually co-located and how that differs from even an online community of many thousands
of people. The great thing for me is like, what I've also like realized in hindsight is like,
when you organize an event, everybody knows you. So that makes it really easy to network from my
perspective is that I don't need to introduce myself to people and things like that. And
naturally, I'm just like really kind of like introverted. And I just love the idea that
people come to me to talk. I realized in a lot of events, that's not always the case. But
it's a really nice feeling to have that, to experience that.
I think you're the fifth introvert that I've interviewed who is running a community.
Running a community is just a hack for introverts to be able to meet people easily.
It is, it's the best way to do it. I totally recommend it to anyone. It's like,
if you're introverted, just start a community. And you can do so many things and you can get
known by so many people. And you can just stand at the side and people will naturally float to you
because, you know, why wouldn't they? That's amazing.
I can hear all the introverts in the audience groaning like,
ugh, why would I want people to walk up to me? So at this point, you've run multiple communities,
including Ministry of Testing. You are the community manager for Andy Hackers.
Are there any lessons that you've learned that might be helpful to people listening in
who might want to start communities of their own?
I think the best thing people can do is see like a community as a very long-term plan.
You know, it sounds really cheesy, but it's like you plant the seed,
but you can't expect something to happen straight away.
I think like these days, I get really kind of frustrated.
Kind of frustrated. I just feel like so many conversations and interactions are
really kind of transactional. It's like, I'll give you this if you give you that kind of thing.
If you're building a community, I just wouldn't do that. It's like when you're speaking to people,
trying to get to know people, it's, you know, you should really be thinking about what you can do
for them, how you can make them feel. You know, generally, it's kind of really sad that not a lot
of communities get off the ground. I think that's why it is, is that there isn't this long-term
interaction between people. It's all like quick. You want results quick. If you don't get them
really quick, then it's not working. But like you forget that humans are behind
the scenes and humans have lives that they're getting on with and they might disappear for a
few months and come back for whatever reason. But it doesn't mean they're not important or valuable.
It doesn't mean that they don't belong. So, you know, I've spent so much with my head
so down in like Ministry of Testing and I haven't really come across many other communities who kind
of have that heart within them. And the only one that ever stood out to me was indie hackers. I
see so many similarities between the two communities in the kind of kindness angle and trying to do
the best thing for the community and not trying to do these quick hacks just to increase engagement.
You're genuinely trying to do the best for indie hackers. And I've not seen a lot of that.
And it's like, if you compare the two, it's like these to me are like prime examples of
how to build a community. Even if I'm a bit jealous that you don't have to sell tickets and
sell loads to make sure that we can pay the bills. There's obvious differences.
But I think the roots of them are very similar.
So this is actually a good segue to I think one of the big differences between
the interview that I did with you three years ago and today. You had a lot of things going
through your head at that time in 2016. And one of them was that you wanted to focus
on your goal of not always having to be thinking about work. And more specifically,
you said that you were super keen on setting up Ministry of Testing so that it could run without
you. I know a lot of aspiring founders who are the opposite. They want to spend all day every day
on their business. They want to be completely integral to their business. Why wasn't that the
case with you? And why were you focused on trading something that could sort of outlive you?
So 2015, I had my third child. No, no, sorry, fourth child. I've had so many kids that I've
forgotten how many children I have. 2015, I had my fourth child. It was a really kind of first
year. It was a really intense experience for me. And then pretty much soon after she was born,
my husband had some health issues with his hips. And it was just really chronic pain. It was not
a lot of fun. My daughter wouldn't sleep without me for a full year. So she was basically attached
to me. She didn't like strangers. She would cry at anyone else who would come near her
and stuff like that. So that year was like really, really intense for me. And I was still,
I think 2016, I did my first conference outside of the UK. And we brought the family,
which was interesting. So there's four kids and my husband and I all crammed into this
mini apartment hotel. I wouldn't do that again, personally. But, you know, I would just sit in
before Tespace, New York thinking this is not where I want to be. This is not the kind of
work I want to do. I don't want to be traveling the world. I've got kids, I home educate as well,
which is a whole other story. So we just like, you know, do things as a family a lot. And if we go
traveling, we just bring them along with us generally. But it was just like too much for
me. I was like, personally, this is not where I want to be. So at that point, I made myself a
promise that I would work towards moving, removing myself as a bottleneck, as the person who ran
things. I had no idea how I was going to do it. I just knew that in my heart, this is not the work
I wanted to do. I'd start a community that's getting big, going to places and trying to
manage the finances and everything in between. I was like, this is just not me. It's not where
I want to be. And I find it kind of really hard to say that because I do love the whole community
behind it. But I felt like I generally felt like I was not the right person to take it forward,
that where it was going was not what was not for me. So I started trying to figure out how to do
that. I had tried to hire a couple of people. And that didn't happen, which was a really
frustrating one, I had literally said yes. And then the last minute back down. And like at that
point, I was so overwhelmed with everything. And then having that happen, I was like, it just made
everything so much worse. And it's gone back to square one. But also around that time, Richard,
who's now the CEO, we had started working together and he's UK based. And he was doing Test Bash
Manchester, which is further up north in the UK. And we just started building a strong relationship
and we kind of worked really well together. He was focused on just doing Test Bash Manchester to
begin with. During our conversations, I kind of said to him, you know, I told him honestly and
openly like what I wanted. And I would love for someone to take on more stuff. And I didn't want
to do certain things. And then he just started taking on more and more responsibilities kind of
each month or each six months went on. He took responsibility of the conferences. We started
doing, we did like test virtually after New York. So he took responsibility for that. You know,
I guess the rest was that his history is, it's three years it's taken me. So it's not like it
has been a long three years. I won't lie about that. But, you know, I've been very patient
with everything I've done. And, you know, I've tried to make decisions that are obviously like
beneficial to me in the long term. I obviously feel like I deserve that to some extent,
but also trying to think about what's best for the community. And so like everything,
every decision we make is based on that. And basically over the past three years,
I worked closely with Richard to teach him everything I knew. He's probably been competent
mostly on his own for the past year. But then he's, we've also been hiring people as well.
So it's like that transfer knowledge to other people has also been slow. I wasn't rushed
to kind of leave. But, you know, at the same time, I knew I wanted to and, and the more I stayed
doing Ministry of Testing stuff, the more I felt like I wanted to do other things. And I couldn't
so say, you know, I stuck between two walls was like, I love the company, but I also have other
things that I'd love to get on with. And as long as I'm still tightly involved with Ministry of
Testing, I can never do these other things. And then you start thinking about, Oh, God,
I've only got one life. Can we hurry up, please? And you know, stuff like that. But yeah, three
years, and almost there. And one of the ways we transferred over knowledge was Richard would often
ask me, say, what would Rosie do? So you'd find himself in situations. And you'd ask, he would
ask me, I say, what would you do Rosie in this situation? Literally, that's been my past three
years of sharing that knowledge with the team as well, not just him. Do you think there's anything
you could have done early on with Ministry of Testing to make it easier for you to transition
out of the business later on? I probably should have hired someone to help me out earlier.
But you know, I was trying loosely, but I just find it really hard. And I didn't know where the
company is going. I didn't know what I was doing. And I was like, who am I going to hire? And I
kind of got stuck, like, in a bit of a situation of just not making a decision. And yeah, it was
tough. Now I could have hired someone, which probably I wish I do wish I had. But you know,
it's hindsight as well. It's like, I had tried, I had been looking out for people who could
potentially help me. I didn't just want to put out like a standard job ad. I felt like it had to be
the right person. But I was stuck about who that right person was and what they would do. I wasn't
sure. I was indecisive about what that role is. I just felt confused within myself. And I guess,
like, I struggled to communicate, you know, I would have struggled to communicate that to anyone
out there. And then also, it's like, I really wanted to hire someone within the community.
But actually, it's really hard to find someone who would be willing to take up that role.
Also, you know, a bunch of great testers out there is like running the community
completely different thing. Yeah, it's totally different. I mean,
people join your community for a reason. And running the community is a totally different
set of skills and perhaps even interests than being a member of the community. But at the same
time, it's really tempting to hire people from your community because they've got that domain
knowledge, you know, they're interested in the space vaguely. And it's harder to find somebody
else out in the world, but still not always going to work out. Yeah, but but saying that say where
we are now, like with nine, 10 people company, at least half of them have come from the community.
So we've got kind of like an event community person who was a tester.
We we this is Heather, for reference for anyone else, but she was just in the community every day,
anyways, doing stuff. So we were like, you know, we saw that as a great opportunity,
like that she would be perfect for the role. There's, there's Ania, who was a tester,
but really wanted to get into kind of marketing and social media kind of stuff. And I was like,
I was like, well, that's ideal, because you know, a lot about testing and what we do,
you've been to our events. How cool would that be? So we hired her. We hired a developer who
used to be a tester, which is, you know, interesting. Well, Richard, Richard was a tester.
His first speaking gig was at test bash, we helped him, you know, create his speaking career.
And he remembers that, you know, you know, was fondness, I would say. And we've got another
guy who's just focused on creating kind of content and learning materials. And obviously,
there's, you know, other people there that haven't come from a testing background. But,
you know, I think it's great that we've managed to hire people from from within the community,
I think that's, you know, a really positive thing to keep, keep certain things intact.
One of the more interesting hires, so to speak, I think you've had is that of your husband,
Graham, who's helped you run ministry of testing for, I think six or seven years now.
This really ties in with what you were talking about earlier, the fact that you
had a second child and a third child or fourth, and now you have five children
that you homeschool while running this business. I have trouble getting stuff done. I don't have
any kids. I have very few responsibilities. I feel like there's not enough time in the day.
What are your productivity tips for making it work as a founder,
when you have such an active family life as well? Timeboxing. It's amazing.
You laugh at me, but it's like, if I get like two hours to myself to do something,
I just get my head down and I do it because I know that the end of two hours,
my time is gone and I'll get nothing, nothing else done. So you know, for me, that's like,
people don't understand like how precious my time has been. But at the same time, it's like,
it's made me realize that actually, sometimes keeping really busy doesn't add value.
So it's like, you know, sometimes I don't do a lot of work. Well, you know, previously,
after having children, I wasn't doing a lot of work. I was just like, kind of staying afloat and
trying to keep things going. And that didn't stop things happening. And kind of having that
realization that things will be okay, don't do anything is really interesting. I've also
become, I guess, quite good at trying to fit everything in. So when, I guess for about five
years now, I've been running, I've been pretty committed to just like keeping a regular
running route, running two or three times a week, nothing massive, just like 5k each time just to
clear my head, it's like helped me a lot. But there were times with young kids, where the only
option for me to do that would be to run with the kids. And so, you know, I guess, you know,
it's coming up with solutions and thinking of creative ways to get things done. And not
thinking that you have to have this eight hour block in a day to get work done. It doesn't,
you know, it really doesn't have to be like that. I think Slack has been a great game changer
with the change of my role to be more supportive and not actually doing work, because I can just
hop onto Slack and help my team out, help see if they have any questions. And I don't really
check my emails much anymore at all. And I guess I was privileged in the position that I was,
and I could just say, Look, this is how I work. And that's how it's gonna have to be.
And you know, there's no choice in the matter. I couldn't do anything about it. And they couldn't
do anything about it. So everybody kind of had to put up with that. And that's okay.
Slack is great. And the time boxing thing is so underrated. I have pretty much unbounded time.
I have no kids, I have no real responsibilities in life. I'm just sort of free floating through
the world. And I'm just less efficient because of it. Like the average hour I spend doing things
is probably not as efficient as the average hour you spend doing things. Because you've got all
these deadlines built into your life. You've got five kids, you know, you homeschool them,
you've got a lot of hard deadlines that can't really be negotiated with. And I find myself
getting into this almost like robot mode when I'm procrastinating, you know, when I've got
something do something coming up that last hour I turned into almost like a machine. But you have
many of those deadlines all day every day. Yeah, and I have no shame admitting that I'll work
while the kids are watching TV sometimes. That's fine with me. Some people would admit that, you
know, I'll go down the park and they'll be playing and I'll be on my phone. I won't necessarily be
playing with him. And you know, that's, that's me. That's the way I cope. That's how I get things
done. You know, my kids are fine and they're happy. And that's probably what some people might say,
you know, never in danger kind of thing. But you know, and at the same time, the kids understand
the situation that we're in. I've been getting out a bit more these days and not, you know, just
kind of getting out of the house to do a bit more focused work. And my younger ones look at me and
they're like, where are you going? They don't understand the concepts of me not being around
all the time. Let's say you were faced with a choice, Rosie. Let's say you had to start another
business and you have two options. Option A is you start a business that has a mission kind of like
Ministry of Testing. So you're starting a business to change other people's lives, to change the
world as they say. Option B is you start a business to change your own life, to make yourself happier,
to, you know, increase your freedom, to give yourself better habits, to improve your relationships
and stuff like that. Which of these choices would you make today if you had to pick one?
Probably change my life. Selfishly. I feel like I've given a lot to everyone.
And like, it's time for me to be a bit more selfish and do things for me. And I don't think
a lot of people realize, like, how much I've given of myself and how many other things that
I'd like to do. So definitely, you know, I feel like I need to focus on me and stop saying yes
to things which I was still a bit bad at doing. But yeah, I've got so many things that I'd like
to do, but I'm in no rush to do them. At the same time, it's like, you know, Ministry of Testing
has grown to what it is. And it's been a great experience. And it's happened over, you know,
a fairly long period of time, which has given me a lot of time to reflect and the industry has
changed as well. And there's a lot more people creating companies in different ways. There's,
you know, Paul Jarvis was on about the company of one and things like that. And I find that
interesting. And, you know, kind of jealous. I look at models like that. And then I think
Ministry of Testing and all the responsibility I have there, you know, you always want what you
don't have, I think. But, you know, I think there's a lot more options out there. But, you know, also
then thinking about the indie hacker work that I'm doing at the moment is, you know, wasn't something
that I really planned for, to be honest. I feel like it just kind of happened. I did put myself
out there, but I didn't really expect to be where I am right now, doing the indie hacker community
work. But, you know, that's to me is, you know, I'm loving it. I'm honestly, you know, really
enjoying it. And I love trying to understand how other communities work and having that flexibility
or similar work culture that we've had at Ministry of Testing. That's not always easy to come by.
So I like to be grateful for the opportunities that I have at the moment. I'm not sure. I'm always
tempted to sell another company that I don't really know what I want to do now. I'm just
happy doing what I'm doing and learning more about the indie hacking community that I had
wanted to spend a lot of time doing anyways. And just taking time to reflect on everything
and spending time with my own little thoughts in my head. Well, count me in as well as being one of
the people who's happy that you've made the choices that you've made and ended up as part of the
indie hackers community. I think you've really breathed your own version of life into things
and made the community a much nicer, more helpful place. So I appreciate having you. At this point,
you've started, you know, several businesses. You spend literally all day every day on the
indie hackers forum talking to other people who are starting businesses. Based on your
experiences so far, what advice did you have for somebody listening who's considering starting a
business of their own? A few weeks back, a few months back at Testpass in Brighton, I was having
a conversation with someone. They called me a master puppeteer. And that kind of struck me
as something really kind of interesting. And I was like, yes, that's exactly who I am. It's like,
I start stuff. I pull the strings. I make things happen. I make decisions and I make them happen.
And I don't do it for myself. I hide behind the scenes. Literally, I've never gotten up
on stage for Testpass to speak. I refuse to do it. And I love hiding behind the scenes and
just looking at everything that happens and figuring out what to do with it.
And I think it would be amazing if more people did that and had less ego in how they approached
things and kind of really focused in on what it is that people need and want.
It's great advice and very difficult to follow because, quite frankly, I think a lot of us who
choose to be founders are just big balls of ego. But God doesn't make a huge difference if we can
get out of our own way and start focusing on what other people need rather than just ourselves.
Anyway, it's been my pleasure talking to you, Rosie. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Can you tell listeners where they can go to find out more about what you're up to nowadays?
Yeah. Well, you can find me at emptyhackers, obviously, slash Rosie Sherry. I'm Rosie Sherry
on Twitter, and I'm Rosie Sherry.com as a website that I don't update too often.
All right. Thanks so much, Rosie.
No problem. Thank you.
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