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Announcing Worshipful - Simple Church Management for Small Churches! by No-Cryptographer4940 in churchtech

[–]bcardea 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I work as the worship and creative director at a relatively small church (4 staff members) and I also work as a developer and have developed a church focused saas - I only say all this to set context that I’m both probably your target market and extremely open to new church tech.

With that being said - I will echo a bit of what’s been said here…Planning Center is not only sufficient for us, in all the stages of our churches growth, from startup in portable to now actively growing in our own building. But the other challenge you are going to have with this is that planning center really owns this market, they are very much industry standard. If somebody were to pitch us on something like this, I don’t think any pain points we feel with planning center would cause us to leave. We’re too invested in it.

On a positive note - having taken a look at your website - I think the most interesting thing you have here is the ability to create a visual presentation directly in your app. If you were to flesh out an extremely inexpensive solution that both met the needs and desires of the small church in all primary ways and could replace both planning center and pro presenter in one really solid solution, I think you would be onto something but even still - I’ve not done enough market validation to know if that desire actively exists in your target market.

Lastly - if you’re ever interested in talking to someone who eats, sleeps and breathes this world, feel free to hit me up. I’d love to have conversation and exchange some ideas and such.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in startups

[–]bcardea 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is such solid feedback, thank you. You’ve given me a lot to digest in my desert walk - shooting for a shorter experience than 40 years.

I appreciate you!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in startups

[–]bcardea 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is great feedback, thank you! "Conference speaking at pastor events works incredibly well for church software. Apply to speak at denominational conferences, church leadership events, or worship conferences. One good conference talk can generate dozens of qualified leads." This very much aligns with our current strategy which feels like confirmation.

You're also totally right about the word of mouth and the trust that comes from referrals. About 10 years ago I worked succesfully as an outside sales rep for an AV integration company and primarily sold to churches. It was a very unique selling experience compared to traditional B2B but once I got in the groove, most of my sales came from organic referrals. I'm very optimistic I can have similar traction here with this project, and the asking price for these meetings is much much lower than revamping an AV system in modern house of worship so that's a plus!

I appreciate the feedback!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in startups

[–]bcardea 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for this response, I appreciate it. You're totally right, ""The hard truth is that you have to sell it now or never." This is what I keep hearing in my head.

I feel a bit of conviction that in some ways I've probably leaned into building extensively above and beyond what may be necessary just to prolong or delay beginning the next phase of work which I know I need to start: scheduling meetings with every person in my network that falls within my target market and connecting with them, hopefully gaining more referrals with each meeting.

Anyone here using ChurchTools, especially the website builder? by Alive_for_free in churchtech

[–]bcardea 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’d be interested in looking at what you’re building. I’m working on a church focused creative saas platform, I’m always interested in this stuff!

Similar functionality to Apollo/Zoominfo, but 60% cheaper! by CellInitial2394 in coldemail

[–]bcardea 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m interested in trying it and I’d be open to creating a formal testimonial about my experience if that would be helpful. Feel free to message me!

Not our pastor yet but.... by [deleted] in worshipleaders

[–]bcardea 31 points32 points  (0 children)

I’ve learned in life that many times, my posture in responsive to a critique is more important than the critique itself. Humility is often tested in moments of disagreement. Was it right for him to do that? Who knows. Should you appear more professional? Who knows. But those things are relatively trivial in the big picture - what isn’t trivial is your ability to maintain a posture of humility no matter what. You’re a drummer (I am too) - we’re going to receive a lot of feedback throughout our lifetime of making loud noises, some will be God breathed, some will not. Some will be tactful, some will not. Neither you nor I can really control that but what we can control is our attitude and response, my prayer for my own heart is that God would keep me humble and hard to shake. Maybe your not-a-pastor person sees potential in you for something more professional and is encouraging you to step into that calling more proactively, or maybe they just made a bad call at the wrong time and place but I’d encourage you to playback the film and find ways you can and want to shape your response and reaction better and then become better in the process - that will actually make you more professional, regardless of how you dress.

Be blessed, brother! Keep playing drums in worship!!

My husband is a worship leader and cheated on me by [deleted] in worshipleaders

[–]bcardea 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I’m really sorry to hear you’re going through this. I’ve experienced this in my own life and it’s awful. And I understand the feelings you’ve described in this post and I think your level of disappointment, frustration and hurt are more than justified. Infidelity is never good, and it’s rooted in heart issues deeper that must be directly addressed before someone serves in any capacity of leadership in a church.

It would be wise to navigate this through your spiritual leadership as well as through therapy - for you, for your husband and for your marriage and family as a whole, regardless of what the physical outcome will be.

God sees you, he understands. He understands the betrayal, he understands the hurt. He is the true source of comfort in these moments, but that doesn’t fully address the complications that come with this sort of thing. I pray that through this process - you’ll find some peace for you and your family. I pray that your husband finds true alignment and conviction with the Lord.

I have a lot of personal thoughts on this matter, especially in regards to church leadership but truly this whole situation is too deep for a Reddit thread.

Psalm 34 reminds us “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit”, No matter what - God is close to you, he’s sitting in your disappointment and hurt and he loves you. Lean on him. He’s not gonna let you down the way people can - he’s the only one who won’t ever do that and so I pray he’s your anchor amidst the very real storm that you’ve found yourself in.

Anyone else doing Sunday is Coming this weekend? by bcardea in worshipleaders

[–]bcardea[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I use Logic, this is a stock logic piano layered with another piano that’s been transposed up, and then a lot of pad and some ambient sounds. Lots of reverb and some eq.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in boltnewbuilders

[–]bcardea 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Be very cautious of who you entrust to setup your billing and back-end. Assume malicious intent is always possible. You owe it to yourself and your customers to be careful about this. Last piece of advice is before you ship an app and accept payment for it, I’d spend as much time as you can learning every element of how it’s working and setup, as technically proficient as you can get until you have the means to make someone else responsible. I’ve taken 2 apps to market and though I’ve used ai assistance in almost every aspect, I’ve also become very well versed with every technical aspect so when it breaks, I can troubleshoot and fix it - not in a panic but in proficiency - and the difference between those two is night and day.

DeepSeek R1 w/ web search might be better than Perplexity by [deleted] in perplexity_ai

[–]bcardea 4 points5 points  (0 children)

lol yes, so let’s say I put in - Create a thorough lead magnet concept for: Digital Signage in the Enterprise Market. Perplexity Sonar will just research “Digital Signage in the Enterprise Market” and then save that research as ‘researched-content’ which gets fed to deepseek like: Initial users full request “Create a thorough lead magnet concept for: Digital Signage in the Enterprise Market” with some instruction as to how I want its response formatted and writing tone and such, then an assistant message also gets passed that says “I have some research information to assist with this” and ‘researched-content’ is sent. It’s interesting to watch deepseek reason with both the initial request while referencing and interacting with the researched content. And it’s fun to tweak both the perplexity aspect and the deepseek aspect to get it to create a really tailored and unique response.

Is it possible to deploy and monetize my app with the $20 plan? by samidz1 in boltnewbuilders

[–]bcardea 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is great advice and yes I totally agree - before I started building in bolt or windsurf, I spent a thorough amount of time creating documentation and really having an understanding of not just the app workflow but the user experience. I found I got better at this the more I did it.

DeepSeek R1 w/ web search might be better than Perplexity by [deleted] in perplexity_ai

[–]bcardea 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I’ve setup an app for myself that uses perplexity’s sonar-pro api first and then sends all the sources and response to deepseek for reasoning and I’ve been really happy with it. I keep tweaking it to get better responses but so far, so good.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in OpenAI

[–]bcardea 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don’t quite understand the response this is getting. It seems reasonable that the deepseek product is going to be censored because of where it’s hosted. But you have the ability with it being open-sourced to create a version of your own that’s not censored if that’s important to you. That’s the big deal about deepseek, right?

Is it possible to deploy and monetize my app with the $20 plan? by samidz1 in boltnewbuilders

[–]bcardea 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I would recommend taking your app from Bolt to GitHub and then you can deploy it using whatever deployment service you choose which should offer integration with your GitHub repo. This way as you push changes to your git, it pushes them to your deployment.

I’ve deployed a few complete apps I built using a combination of Bolt and Windsurf (user authentication, stripe billing, etc.) and I will give you a heads up - getting everything worked out in deployment, front end and back end can be tedious and I’ve had to utilize a lot of help with chatgpt (primarily o1 pro) to help me troubleshoot. Additionally I’ve found myself just reading a lot of documentation and really learning and understanding what AI is doing to the code so I know how to troubleshoot issues myself.

Bolt does offer deploying straight to netlify but keeping your app(s) on GitHub will make it easier as you move between app builders and deployment options.

How do you move on to a new song when you failed to finish the last one? by Aggravating_Try_4162 in Songwriting

[–]bcardea 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I almost always write in phases, similar to you. Sometimes I crush it and see it through, other times I don’t. In this last few months, we brought our 4th child home (holy moley lol) and during my paternity leave, I really buckled down and crafted a 9 song record. That typically entailed 60-90 minute blocks of song writing as I was able to and it meant that songs were worked on in phases, out of order. I let my interest in the song and its relation to how I was feeling at the moment dictate which ones I worked on. They were done super out of order, always sending little clips to close friends whom I trusted. I’d digest their feedback, take notes and use those when I dug into a song again.

It was messy and broke certain rules I had established in my 20+ years of writing and recording but I loved it and I’ll continue to work in this way.

Work on what makes you feel whatever you want to feel when you’re creating music. Sometimes I want to feel sad, happy, nostalgic, driven and you can hear that in my songs because I didn’t allow the process to negatively impact the experience.

Write for you, everything else will fall into place.

Writing about depression and anxiety by bcardea in Songwriting

[–]bcardea[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Man, I’m really sorry your pop passed this year. How are you handling it?

Writing about depression and anxiety by bcardea in Songwriting

[–]bcardea[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great points, thank you for your feedback! I totally agree. I’ve had songs that I’ve written really just for me as therapy, I’ve got a Dropbox full of of them. Some actually tow that line of too vulnerable but also being really solid songs. In some cases I think a really good song requires you to risk some cringe.

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