Advertise on podcast: Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

How do you decide whether to go all-in on your SaaS or hedge your bets with side income? "If you're not full-time on MetaMonster, no one is full-time on MetaMonster." In this episode of Small Effort (Season 4, Episode 16), Sean and Andrew get into the career fork Andrew is actually standing at: stay all-in on MetaMonster or carve out two days a week for side income. They cover the 2-year growth model Andrew built with Claude, why part-time founders quietly stall, the box-rental business a Las Vegas regulation accidentally created, and why four months of burn is really a $20K bet on the business. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/

What if the point of AI wasn't to make more, but to work less? This is the thing everyone said AI should do that nobody's actually doing. All the capitalists want to use AI to make more money, not work less. In this episode of Small Effort (Season 4, Episode 15), Sean and Andrew dig into the team that used AI to move to a four-day week instead of squeezing out more, and the WordCamp pivot it mirrors: Andrew walking away from SEO autopilot to build content you're actually proud to publish. They cover why platform risk still burns big companies, the four pillars of content that survive after the AI tricks stop working, and why "what stays stable" beats every AEO hack. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ Transcript:00:00.95SeanHello. 00:02.69AndrewHello, my friends. 00:04.02SeanHow you doing? How was WordCamp? 00:04.96AndrewGood. WordCamp was... F*****g awesome. um interesting like This is my first WordCamp ever. WordCamp is definitely in decline. 00:14.91Seanah 00:17.37AndrewAt least Recamp US is in decline. 00:17.52SeanOh. uh-oh 00:19.76AndrewDone. ah 00:21.27Seanis there Is there other WordCamp? Is that like WordCamp Belgium? 00:23.90AndrewThey're all over the world. 00:24.30Seanor 00:25.14AndrewThere's like WordCamp Europe, my... uh my one of my new friends that i made at the conference is going to word camp manila next week Um... It's ah yeah, they have them all over the world. And I think they're. 00:38.38AndrewThey're still bigger. They're actually now bigger overseas than they are in in the US. which is interesting 00:45.15SeanThat's it. 00:45.09Andrewum we 00:46.87SeanSense. 00:47.60AndrewYeah. 00:47.49SeanIsh. Maybe. 00:48.39AndrewYeah. 00:48.20SeanI don't know. 00:48.90Andrewissue. Um, 00:49.85SeanYeah. 00:50.63AndrewI think. we're from the the cheesemade that i got from people who our repeat attendees is that WordCamp US has been in decline since something happened two years ago. What what might have happened two years ago? I can't remember. 01:06.94AndrewAmen. any Any big drama in the in the WordPress space? that you can remember? 01:13.39SeanNo. I block that out. 01:15.00Andrewfifty 01:15.04SeanFrom my memory. Um, Yeah, there was a, you know, there's... For some reason, a lot of people who are on WordPress. Um, complaining about something. 01:25.31SeanAnd it brought us a lot of Webflow customers. so 01:27.59AndrewHell yeah. Let's go. 01:29.99SeanUm, uh, 01:33.65SeanYeah. i'm I'm kind of curious. like like The shockwave that must have been across. I didn't realize there were so many word camps. So I wonder if like... 01:45.34SeanWhat happens in all those WordCamps, all the same, like... throughout that entire year that feels 01:51.35Andrewno I know. 01:51.62SeanYou know? 01:52.74Andrewum I mean, I got a little bit from my my friends who've been going for years. Okay. 01:57.64Seanahha 01:58.98AndrewUh, But. Yeah, like WordCamp US used to be like 2 ,000 to 2 ,500 people. They also they scheduled it in Phoenix in August this year, which I think. a lot of people were like i think that's part of the reason it's not doing well although At the same time, in the back of my head, I was like Black Hat and Def Conner in August every year and f**k tons of people go. 02:18.45AndrewUm. 02:19.80SeanYeah. 02:20.06AndrewSo I don't know that that really impacted it. But yeah, this year was like. I think. one of my friends saw the registered attendee list, and it was 900 people. down from like 2 ,500 a few years ago. 02:33.16SeanOh shit. God damn. 02:34.28AndrewYeah. 02:35.81SeanUm. 02:36.57AndrewNot a great sign. 02:37.93Seanfor For those not in. the web space. Um, Um, 02:46.43AndrewHe's... 02:46.39SeanThe... Do you want to, I don't know. 02:48.63AndrewI got, I got. 02:48.83SeanYou're the expert now, so. 02:50.72AndrewSo I got, I'm not an expert, but. All right. So one of the... original co-creators co-founders of wordpress um I got. 03:01.61AndrewI got yelled at by a friend, not yelled at, but like I got chastised by a friend for calling him the founder of WordPress. Someone was like. More like the forker of WordPress. um 03:10.74SeanHell yeah. 03:14.01AndrewUm, Uh, Matt. Mullenweg? Is that his name? um Uh... Anyway. WordPress mat. um a couple years ago went Like, got really... pissy at at a Word can. 03:30.22Andrewduring a keynote. Um, at WP Engine, who's like one of the largest WordPress hosts. and a competitor so like it's all complicated because like WordPress is WordPress is... 03:45.18Andrewa free open source tool. that is owned by a nonprofit. um and the WordPress trademark is owned by a nonprofit. Matt also owns... automatic which is a for-profit business that offer that owns wordpress .com a for-profit WordPress hosting service um and a bunch of other WordPress tools including WooCommerce and Pressable and some others. 04:08.67AndrewUm, and Um, Automatic. has a like perpetual license from WordPress .org, the nonprofit, to use the WordPress trademark. 04:20.96AndrewUm, And a couple years ago, he got mad at WP Engine, who's one of their biggest competitors, um who basically built their entire reputation on... 04:32.11AndrewHey, your product kind of sucks. We're going to do it better and charge more for it. And people loved them for years and years. Um, I think some people have started to leave WP Engine. I don't know. 04:43.08Andrewwhat the state of the things is right now. But like for years and years, people loved WP Engine because they were just like rock solid. Awesome support. And like they charged a premium for it. 04:53.56SeanAnd WP Engine also owns... um the custom field the advanced custom fields plugin All right. 05:00.36AndrewYes, they own a couple of like very successful WordPress plugins as well. And that got all pissy that they were like, using WP in their name. um that they even though like everyone in the wordpress community uses wp in their name Um, 05:16.26AndrewThey were using WP in their name, and he was like, you're not contributing enough to open source. You're not contributing enough to WordPress .org. and 05:24.72SeanOpen source. Oh, so the name. What I what i call my wallet. 05:28.52AndrewYes. 05:29.19Sean...

Can AI actually write, or is it just remixing what humans already think? A human has to be involved. Right now, robots can't go out and have their own experiences. That's not how LLMs work. In this episode of Small Effort (Season 4, Episode 14), Sean and Andrew cut through the AI-writing hype and land on the uncomfortable truth: good writing is good thinking, and good thinking still comes from humans. They cover where AI writing genuinely helps, where it quietly fails, and why the "AI will replace writers" panic gets the whole thing backwards. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Sean and Andrew stop by to chat about what happens when you build a client website live on a sales call 20 minutes into the presentation. We get into Andrew's cold outreach restart for MetaMonster, the report card angle they are testing with SEO agencies, and somehow end up debating whether Astro or Next.js is the right call for a SaaS marketing site. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/. Transcript: 00:01.20SeanWhat's up? 00:01.85AndrewThree, two, Oh, shit. Sorry. ah Awkward. 00:05.68SeanAll good. 00:06.14AndrewEmbarrassing. 00:07.26SeanAll good. Jesus. ah 00:12.34AndrewDude, every day that goes by without Metamonster closing a new customer, i just get more and more insecure about my abilities to be a SaaS founder. 00:25.30SeanIs that like... 00:27.14SeanLike every day, like you have a sales call and they don't buy right away or like, I see. 00:31.78AndrewI'm not even like having sales calls is the problem. Yeah, I we we do actually like you know, we've been working on the product when I when I started like breaking it down. 00:43.58SeanYeah. 00:44.04AndrewI'm like, okay, it makes sense. um It's not like that shocking, but I'm still just like, ah like, is there demand for this thing? Are we wasting our time? What's going on? 00:55.96Andrewah um but 01:00.21AndrewLike, so what we're doing right now, I do think the product has gotten a lot better. 01:06.46SeanYeah. 01:06.55AndrewIt still, like, has rough edges, but it is, like, it is way better than it used to be. 01:06.56SeanOK. 01:15.31Andrewum And um I think it's, like, in a sellable place now. What we're doing right now um is we're trying to spin up cold outreach again and start doing cold outreach. 01:33.04Andrewum And i think we've gotten clearer on our ICP. I think we've gotten clearer on like the problem we're trying to solve. um And so hopefully clearer on like the kind of signals we can look for to find good fit customers. 01:52.44Andrewum and so and'm like cautiously optimistic about this round of outreach that like and then jade's also almost officially on board so like i will have her to work with and to like help hold me accountable and i think we make a good team bouncing ideas off of each other and just like pushing building momentum together yeah um they 02:04.33SeanNice. 02:13.65SeanYeah, wait, didn't last time when we spoke, didn't Jade have like 25 demos lined up though or something like that? 02:23.19AndrewThey haven't really been converting. um She's only done, i think she's done eight or so, and one may turn into a customer. 02:34.04Andrewum But she also hasn't really been pitching and because they're it's largely just like friends of hers, and so she didn't want to come in pitching too hard. 02:38.21SeanYeah. 02:42.84AndrewIt was more like more approaching them from a feedback standpoint. 02:43.16SeanRight, right. but Yeah, I meant like how is how's the feedback going? 02:49.49AndrewFeedback has been good, I think. i think But it's it's again, it's that like kind of mom test. it's the kind of It's a lot of feedback that kind of fails the mom test where it's like it's like people like the tool, but they're not adopting the tool. 03:01.93SeanHmm. 03:07.44Andrewum And I think there's like a million reasons that can be. so like one of the one of the simple things that Jade's starting to do is um when people tell her like hey i'm interested in using this she's going to start scheduling a follow-up meeting to be like great why don't you use it for two weeks and then we'll talk again in two weeks and like create some accountability create a little bit of social pressure um and then in that second call i think we can more think she'll feel more comfortable asking for a sale 03:36.05SeanRight. Right. 03:44.02SeanYeah, I mean, that makes sense. 03:45.17AndrewYeah, because like at that point, they've shown interest. 03:45.69SeanYeah. 03:47.29AndrewAnd it's like, OK, now it's time to ask for a sale. 03:47.81SeanRight. 03:50.23Andrewum 03:50.31SeanRight. Right. I mean, at that point, they've like actually, if they've actually used it and found it useful, and if they haven't, it's also useful to just know. 03:57.68AndrewFigure out why. Try to figure out why. 03:58.76SeanYeah. 03:59.50AndrewYeah. 04:00.44SeanYeah, 04:00.47Andrewum And then we're trying to, like, it's like, OK, we also need to prove we can get demos outside of her network. And so let's... 04:12.30Andrewbut scale up cold outreach, get that going again. We're doing it manually. When I say scale it up, I just mean, i basically just mean turn it on. I mean, start doing it. 04:22.26Seanyeah yeah 04:22.96Andrewum We're not like worried about scale. We're trying to do it very manually, very personably do it. My friend also challenged me to do not just like email or LinkedIn, but cold call people. 04:39.08SeanOh, cool. 04:40.31AndrewWhich, which is terrifying, which probably means I should try it. 04:45.20Seanah Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I have a cold call video video to send you. like 04:49.72AndrewOkay. Send it to me. 04:50.52Seanyou know there's a lot of scammy like this is how you cold call people and whatever i forget his name he's now with like a cold calling sas product but like he like live records his cold cold calls about like sas apps or like trucking whatever and like you you hear the guys go like no you or like whatever um like he's using it a demo the platform but like 04:50.76AndrewMm-hmm. 04:54.92AndrewMm-hmm. 05:01.25AndrewMm-hmm. 05:15.12SeanIt's probably one of the better, like repeatable sales motion type things that he follows. And it's, yeah, I want to say the app is called Glen Coco, but I don't remember if I'm just making Uh, 05:29.70AndrewIsn't Glen Coco like some pop culture reference? 05:33.96Seansure. Uh, maybe. I don't know. I don't know. Oh yeah. Glenn Coco for, for you, Glenn Coco, you go Glenn Coco. All right. Uh, uh, Mean Girls. 05:43.98AndrewWhat's that from? Mean Girls. Okay, that's right. 05:47.04SeanUm, yeah, it is, it is, it is, it is from, it's yeah, it's Glenn Coco. 05:47.58AndrewThat's right. That's right. 05:53.72SeanUm, 05:54.35AndrewWell, he named his app after a Mean Girls reference. 05:56.98SeanI guess so. I don't know if if it's his app or if he's just, it probabl...

Andrew is back from two weeks of Spanish immersion in Puebla, and the conversation picks up right where it always does. We get into MetaMonster's 100-demo sprint with their new co-founder, why AI keeps producing bad content for founders (and what Sean shipped to fix it), and somehow end up deep in a conversation about outcome-based agency pricing and why it is a finance nightmare in practice. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/. Transcript:00:00.41SeanWelcome back to Mexico City. 00:02.26AndrewWhat a 00:06.90SeanAnd let's get 00:07.11Andrewup? I still can't remember how, I still don't know how to say, can never remember how to say like, good to see you. I think it's like, mucho gusto verte, or like, con gusto. 00:20.02AndrewI think con gusto is like the the simplest way to say it, but... um 00:24.79Seancon gusto my friend um me amigo um 00:30.58AndrewAsking Claude, how do I say nice to see you in Mexico? 00:37.71AndrewI've been using Claude a bunch for, did i have I talked about this in a past episode? 00:40.96Seanyeah yeah yeah but no it's it's it's good it's like um 00:42.08AndrewOkay, my bad. 00:46.01AndrewQue bueno verte, me da gusto verte. Que gusto verte, que gusto verte is the most natural way. Literally, what a pleasure to see you. Que gusto verte. 00:58.77SeanI feel like that's not a thing people say. I feel like. 01:02.84AndrewI don't know how often how often people say it yeah 01:08.67SeanYeah. Interesting. um how was How was your trip? 01:14.97AndrewIt was awesome. um Just going from using Spanish maybe anywhere from half an hour to like two or three hours a day to using Spanish from 9 nine am until like five every day and then sometimes for another couple hours at night. 01:34.68Andrewdepending on what plans I had with friends and stuff, um was definitely like much needed. Like I felt my vocabulary improving. i felt myself building some confidence, speaking Spanish, getting a little bit more comfortable. 01:50.14Andrewum Also underscored how much I still don't know and like how far I am from where I actually want to be, which is like kind confusing. good and frustrating at the same time. 02:03.32Andrewum But overall, really fun and also just nice to see a new part of Mexico. Like, Puebla is really beautiful. um It's a smaller city, a little bit more chill. 02:16.06Andrewum but has a really beautiful historic center with porticos that reminded me of like the porticos in Bologna in Italy. um And really good food. 02:29.66Andrewum I ate something and like f****d up my stomach for like a week. So that was a bummer, but also just part of being a gringo living in Mexico. um So it comes with the territory. 02:44.76SeanYou were going for, I want to say it was two weeks, but it feels like it's been a very long time since we've talked. 02:47.10AndrewJust two weeks. 02:50.35Seanyeah, I miss you as well. 02:50.68AndrewOh, I miss you too. Nah, it was just two weeks. Yeah, but super fun. 02:58.52SeanGood. Good, good, good. Yeah. That was a good picture from your group. 03:03.93AndrewOh, of the of the class. 03:05.53SeanYeah, yeah. That's good. 03:06.56AndrewYeah, the school does a really good job of like, so you take classes from nine to one every day, and then you have lunch with the other students. um And you're strongly encouraged to speak only in Spanish while you're at the school. 03:21.82Andrewum So you're you're speaking to other students who are at different levels, but speaking in Spanish. 03:21.96SeanNice. 03:28.48AndrewAnd then in the afternoons, Monday through Wednesday, you're paired one-on-one with a guide who's just a local. um And you walk around Puebla and go visit museums and tour different parts of the city with your guide. um ah The second Monday I was there, i got two of the other students and their guides to come with me to a board game store and we just played board games and talked in Spanish and it was super fun. 03:57.64AndrewMuy lindo, very cute. 03:59.72SeanNice. 03:59.77Andrewum And, ah but yeah, so you get like a lot of one-on-one time with your guide. And then on Thursday, you do like a bigger expedition with the group to a city, you know, a small town or city nearby to Puebla. Yeah. 04:15.04AndrewAnd then, ah yeah, Friday afternoons you get off. 04:15.40SeanNice. 04:18.78AndrewSo, 04:19.82SeanIt's like a full immersion type of thing. I like it. 04:22.43Andrewyeah, exactly. 04:23.14SeanYeah. Cool. 04:24.44Andrewum Yeah, super fun. 04:25.43SeanYou feel like you are drastically better at speaking the language now? 04:31.52AndrewNo, I would not say drastically better. um I would say... 04:36.90Andrewmarginally better. Like definitely, like i like I said, like definitely improved my vocab and my confidence, but like still two weeks just isn't enough to like for a drastic change. 04:46.47SeanRight, right. 04:47.76AndrewI, um yeah, i I need, I wish I could have spent 04:49.21SeanGotcha. 04:55.55Andrewyou know, two months there, because I think that would have been the kind of time I need to, like, really take a step forward. um Although I found this funny thing. i've I've spent some time on the language learning subreddit over the last, like, six months or whatever. 05:11.77AndrewAnd I found this funny joke where like every level thinks they're six months away from being fluent. Like every level of speaker is like, yeah, with like six more months of study, I'll be fluent. 05:21.25SeanYeah. 05:23.68AndrewAnd it's like, you also just realize the more you learn, like, and Fluent is not easy to define and is kind of a shifting goalpost. um There's like true native speaker fluency. And then there's like, you know, understanding scientific terms. And um so like, you know, I think my goal is just conversational fluency, like be able to meet people who speak with a slightly different accent and not panic and like ah be able to like hang out in a crowd of like, you know, locals and like carry a conversation without being super stressed or watch a movie in Spanish and understand it without subtitles. 06:12.37SeanCool. 06:15.19SeanCool. 06:19.13SeanMy brain's going into, like I forget what it's called, but there's like, a I don't know this is like i don't know if this is for like all languages, but like there's something like from what I understand, but Japanese, there's like an N1 or N2. 06:31.96Andrew...

Andrew and Sean dig into Clawdgate, the growing developer complaints that Anthropic has been quietly throttling Claude's default thinking power after locking in enterprise deals. They also get into Sean's Salvo orchestration system, why waterfall specs do not work even with AI, and why scope creep is the silent killer hiding inside every AI coding workflow. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/. Transcript: 00:00.76SeanWhat is up? My phone is gigantic. 00:02.84AndrewI want to throw Claude out of the window. 00:06.04SeanWhy? What's going on? How dare you speak about my boy, Claude? 00:13.07AndrewHave you seen all the chatter online? Like there, I don't know if it's like just my feed or what, but I'm seeing a bunch of people complaining about Claude getting worse. 00:15.63SeanYeah. 00:23.62AndrewLike, uh, and like the, the hypothesis I've seen is that, that, um, 00:23.98SeanTotally. 00:30.65Andrewis that Anthropic has been kind of throttling down Claude's default thinking power, or like like basically how much time and resources it spends thinking to save money. 00:45.99Andrewlike they The theory is that they like used the masses to get people excited and build hype for Claude so they could sell enterprise deals. And now that they've got the enterprise deals, they're like throttling down how good Claude is for the masses by default. 01:03.27Andrewbut But I think you can still like adjust the settings to get it back to where it was. i haven't really tried to tinker with it. 01:10.37SeanYou gotta make an ultra think, man. You gotta turn on ultra think. 01:15.65AndrewWait, is that a thing? Is that a setting, UltraThink? Or is this... 01:21.16SeanIf you type in ultra think, something will happen. But I think it's just called slash effort max now, not ultra think. 01:26.29Andrewyeah, yeah, yeah. 01:27.67Andrewyeah 01:28.95Seanmaybe ultra think is still a thing though I'm not super sure I know that all of Facebook uses ultra think do you see that Facebook's and internally has a competition of like how like they're all token maxing because there's a leaderboard of how many tokens you're burning and one guy's burnt like 01:44.88AndrewIs this why people are like making fun of, I've seen a bunch of people talking about how stupid it is to like reward people for like maximizing tokens. 01:52.34Seanyeah 01:53.92AndrewIs this where this is coming from? 01:55.41SeanYeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. 100% it is. Yeah. But have you turned on your Claude buddy? Do you have your Claude buddy yet? 02:05.24AndrewSo no, is this, is this like a default cloud thing or is it something you have to install? 02:08.36SeanYeah. Yeah, yeah. No, Claude code, just type in slash buddy. You got like a random buddy. I got a common turtle. his name is His name is Flukish, but I like to call him fuckish. 02:23.08Seanhe' He's kind of an a*****e. Like, it tells you, like, a personality rating, and it's, like, everything else is not helpful. Like, ability to debug, like, zero. Ability to whatever, zero. Snarky, 95. Yeah. 02:36.12AndrewSo sounds like you, they they cloned you. 02:37.69Seanyeah I know. 02:39.68Andrewthey somehow just interpreted you. 02:42.32SeanI'm just a common turtle, man. 02:43.62SeanHmm. 02:44.22Andrewand So I use i exclusively use Claude inside of Conductor. And so I've never actually like looking directly at the Claude metal. Like I'm not and the Claude code interface. 02:55.56AndrewI'm always seeing it inside of just the sort of conductor wrapping. 02:58.95SeanYeah. Yeah. 03:02.35AndrewAustin was just showing me a version, like an yet another 03:07.92SeanYeah. 03:08.88Andrewuh one of these things it's called superset which is apparently like conductor but you're more you're getting more of the direct cloud code experience which i don't know if i need or want 03:13.18SeanOh, I saw that. Yeah, yeah. 03:23.47SeanYeah. 03:25.69AndrewBut yeah, what i have also i have not tinkered with my like default fault Clawed settings at all. 03:25.81SeanYeah. 03:35.42Andrewlike i I haven't done the EffortMax thing yet. I haven't messed around with my ClawedMD file. I've just been like just been rolling with with what I get out of the box. Austin also raves about a set of skills called superpowers that I heard Ian Lanceman talking about some recently too. 03:56.24SeanHave you seen people talk about like impeccable? Okay. 03:59.16AndrewOh, is this the is this kind of like the UI? 03:59.36SeanU-I-S-H. 04:02.80AndrewWell, I still don't, yeah, so no one knows what UiASH is going to actually be, but it seems like similar vibes. 04:03.00SeanYeah. yeah 04:10.84SeanYeah, someone... i saw a post yesterday about someone talking about how, like, a before and after they got to use UISH. 04:19.21AndrewOh, sick. Yeah, I guess maybe they've started rolling out some invites, but it's still pretty small. 04:20.21SeanYeah, yeah. 04:24.92SeanYeah, it just looks like it knows how to use Tailwind. 04:29.41AndrewIt's, yeah. I'm curious how they're going to charge for it, how they're going to charge for UISH, because if it is just a set of skills, it seems like that's going to be a hard thing to charge an ongoing subscription for, because like once people have the skills and 04:30.51SeanYeah. 04:33.07SeanYeah. 04:46.68AndrewUnless the skills the skill files, unless you never actually get access to the skill files, it's like all remote. 04:53.42SeanThat's terrible. I would not use, I would not use that. That's like, I would just, yeah. 04:57.49AndrewYeah, it seems like it would be really slow. 05:00.10Seanoh So I don't know how you would stop it from like just me going or just me going rebuild yourself, you know? 05:02.79AndrewDownloading the files. 05:08.24AndrewYeah. 05:08.53SeanYeah. yeah 05:10.96Andrewi It seems like there's gonna be a piece beyond, because I've also heard them talking about it kind of like a tool, so I'm wondering if there's more to it than just skill files. 05:21.94SeanMaybe it's like, you know how like a lot of those like styled component libraries have like theme creators. I mean, you can download it. Maybe it's like you get access to that. You get to like theme tailwind and you download it as like a specialized skill just for you. 05:36.66AndrewMaybe.

Andrew ditched Cursor for Claude Max and the economics made it an easy call. In this episode they get into the Meta Monster pivot toward content optimization, why Claude hallucinated an entire Wix API, and what the switch to Conductor actually looks like day to day. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/. Transcript: 00:00.47SeanCool. Thanks. What's up? 00:03.03AndrewNot much. I haven't seen you in like three f*****g months. 00:06.58SeanYeah. 00:06.74AndrewHow are you? 00:08.06Seanah I'm good. Q1 is finally over. RSA is finally over. So now it's time to worry about Black Hat. 00:15.45AndrewJesus. 00:17.14Seanum But. 00:19.03AndrewQ1 being finally over means we're like even closer to the death day for Metamonster. 00:19.26Seanah 00:25.67SeanOh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. 00:27.03AndrewHave I told you this, that like Austin and I were like, if if it's not working by the middle of the summer, we're gonna, we need to like pull the plug. 00:34.90SeanYou have. You have. yeah What would you do if you pulled the plug? Would you start a new thing, or can I finally hire you again? 00:43.25AndrewDude, i I have, I don't know, is the short answer, but I have lots of thoughts. Like part of me wants to to buy a trad business, which is what I've been calling brick and mortar businesses lately. 00:53.78AndrewAnd every time I say it, it makes people cringe, which is why I continue to say it. 00:56.04SeanThat's horrible. du't That's disgusting. Mexico City is changing you. i can't believe you'd say that. 01:02.13AndrewWhoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. 01:03.16Seanforpin 01:05.14AndrewNo, that's just me having a stupid sense of humor. You can't blame Mexico City for that. 01:07.90SeanNo, no, it's good. 01:09.10AndrewMexico City way too beautiful a place to blame for that. 01:09.88SeanIt's good. Speaking, speaking of trad related things, have you seen the documentary? 01:14.26AndrewOh God, where is this going? 01:18.45SeanHave you been, ah have you been, ah did you watch the Manosphere documentary on Netflix with Louis Thoreau? 01:24.79AndrewNo, but my little sister did and she was like, you have to watch it. 01:28.22SeanIt's so good. 01:28.28AndrewAnd i I haven't watched it yet. Yeah. 01:30.15SeanIt's so good. It's all Ben and I could talk about at RSA. 01:34.26AndrewNice. 01:34.32SeanSorry. 01:35.00AndrewHave you seen Project Hail Mary yet? 01:37.11SeanNo, I hear it's good, but i don't know what it's about. 01:38.71AndrewI hear it's really good. Yeah. Oh, you didn't read the book? 01:42.21SeanNo, I don't read. 01:43.86AndrewI forgot. 01:44.73Seanyeah i think I think if all books were in AI chat bubbles, I would read all of it, but they're not. so that's 01:52.77AndrewThat's the lamest thing you've ever said to me. It's almost as bad as trad businesses. 01:59.32Seanit's It's probably worse. 02:02.68Seanum How you been? 02:03.89AndrewDude, I've been good. 02:04.43SeanHow's life? 02:06.32Andrewum We are working on a pivot for Metamonster. i am becoming, I'm embracing the fully AI-pilled by boy life. 02:10.74SeanOK. 02:18.71SeanOK. 02:18.81Andrewum i still love Mexico. Yeah. 02:23.66SeanGood. 02:26.68Andrewyeah 02:28.11SeanOK, can you tell me, can you just tell me what you're pivoting to before I like rip my hair out? Because I really need you to build some features at the moment. 02:35.48AndrewSo it's I call it a pivot part somewhat facetiously. um 02:39.31SeanOK. 02:40.45Andrewwe're We're not really pivoting, like the tool is still going to work the same way it does now, um but we're going deep on content optimization. 02:46.03SeanCool. 02:51.03AndrewSo we're building we're building a single page view where you can still update metadata, but we also do SERP analysis and content recommendations for you and help you auto apply them. 03:04.79Andrewum And so we're we're going to be adjusting our positioning to more directly take on ClearScope and Surfer. um 03:15.96Seanand air ops. 03:16.09AndrewSo the Yeah, air ops a little bit. I think of air ops as a little bit different. I think of air ops more as content orchestration, um like generate content at scale, whereas we're more content optimization. 03:30.78AndrewSo like take your existing content or like new pieces of content and help you optimize it. Yeah. 03:38.01SeanSick. 03:39.39AndrewYep. 03:40.43SeanCool. 03:40.44Andrewum 03:41.18Seanis Is this like a like like an editor that I'm writing in? And then, OK, cool. And then you can publish the web flow. 03:49.05Andrewah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 03:50.40SeanOh, good, good, good, good. 03:50.74AndrewTotally, totally. 03:52.44SeanYou should do it. You should do it so I can use it. i don't I don't care. 03:55.22AndrewYeah. 03:56.00SeanNo. What? 03:56.73AndrewSo, the um I, did you see my LinkedIn post by chance? Dude, I spent like half of last week vibing with Claude on a Wix integration, and then I finally go to test it. 04:13.21Andrewit It shouldn't have taken me a a whole week to test it. I just got distracted by like three other things. um And I finally go to test it, and I'm like, huh, it's not working. Why isn't it working? 04:23.70AndrewAnd Claude goes, oh yeah, the Wix API I was using was purely speculative. Like, I just made it up. I was like, m**********r Are you f*****g kidding me? um And it turns out like Wix, like Squarespace does not support us updating SEO metadata for anything except blog posts. So I just scrapped the whole thing and was like, f**k this. 04:48.31Andrewum 04:49.72SeanWell, but you could do like cloud code browser use types of things to like manually. 04:55.80AndrewI could and I did and it took for f*****g ever. It took like two hours to update 30 pages. It was painfully slow and eventually ran out of context. 05:04.43SeanGotcha. 05:07.72SeanGotcha. 05:07.77Andrewum 05:08.57SeanDamn. 05:08.92AndrewAnd I was just like, this is horrible. um So ah yeah, my hope is that like Wix and Squarespace wake the f**k up and realize what century they're living in and build a decent hal...

Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/. Transcript: 00:00.85AndrewDude, your notifications are non-f*****g-stop. 00:04.50SeanYeah, they are. I know. It's terrible. 00:08.08AndrewBefore you muted it, it was just like, what's... Your Slack noise is like a click clack. It's like a... Okay. 00:13.94SeanYeah, the knock, the Slack knock. 00:15.92Andrewdid it did 00:16.09SeanYeah. 00:16.75Andrewokay I don't ever have noises turned on for anything. It drives me crazy. 00:22.67SeanYeah, I mean, don't know. You used to it, I guess. What are you going to and You know what notifications does drive crazy? 00:27.94AndrewSicko. 00:32.16SeanMessages. Yeah, 00:34.98AndrewMessages, like iMessage or like Facebook Messenger or... 00:36.68Seanyeah, yeah. No, sorry. 00:40.30AndrewiMessage. 00:40.84SeaniMessage. Yeah, iMessage. 00:41.87AndrewYeah, yeah. 00:42.99SeanNoises drive me insane. Slag is okay. 00:46.20AndrewIt's kind of like a little like bubble burst, right? It's like a bubbly thing, sounding thing. 00:52.18SeanOh, mine is a ding. 00:54.12AndrewNo, maybe maybe the bubble is something else. 00:54.20SeanMine is like a shark. 00:56.16AndrewI don't know. 00:56.88SeanThe bubble is like when you send a message. 00:56.97Andrewsome Somebody. Oh, maybe. Yeah. 01:00.56SeanYeah. Yeah. 01:01.36AndrewYeah. Dude, did you get any sleep last night? We were chatting at like 1.30 a.m. 01:09.48AndrewSecret pod. 01:13.37SeanYeah. I still have like three hours. It's not that bad. 01:17.44AndrewMan, that's so much sleep. what You must be wide awake f*****g alert. 01:21.96Seanyeah Well, I was going to ask you if you had any sleep last night, but you know. 01:33.12AndrewI actually didn't fall asleep until like 3, 4 a.m., something like that. 01:33.70SeanYeah, 01:38.72AndrewI have a new favorite Dropout show. can't you You know Dropout, right? We've talked about Dropout.tv, best streaming service the internet. 01:44.46Seanyeah, yeah. Yeah, college humor. 01:49.32Andrewon the internet 01:52.82SeanOh, 01:52.96Andrewuh they have a it's not a new show i've but i i was finally catching up uh what is it called the parlor room where it's like a they played board comedians played board games and you watch so it's like right up my f*****g alley i'm cursing a lot today sorry 02:05.75Seancool. 02:07.93SeanNice. It's okay. It's because don't have any sleep. I get it. 02:13.93SeanUnlike me, who slept a lot. 02:18.89Andrewuh have you ever heard of blood on the clock tower 02:21.94SeanNo, no, no, 02:22.83AndrewIt's like a deception game, kind of like mafia kind of vibes, but more complicated and there's, it looks really fun. The thing that makes it, I think, complicated is like the players, the roles that players get can change every time. 02:37.96AndrewAnd you, there are multiple players who can have roles where they think they're one thing, but they're actually something else. They're getting, false information. 02:44.69Seanno. 02:46.28AndrewSo you can be the marionette, which is like you're controlled by like the big bad. You can be a drunk. You can also like get poisoned or something. And then there's like so there's all this stuff where you're like trying to piece things together, but you have to also consider the fact that you might have incorrect information. 03:08.46Andrewlike the stuff you think you know about yourself might be wrong. It's chaotic as hell. 03:12.93Seanthat's pretty cool that's pretty yeah that's pretty cool interesting okay that's it every time i hear deception game and i hear like mafia i kind of roll my eyes and internally just because i can't like there's there's just so many you know there's just so many of this like but but i think i think that's a nice that's like a 03:14.95AndrewSuper fun. Yeah. 03:25.54AndrewSure. 03:29.61AndrewI know. 03:35.68Seanan Actually, interesting spin on it. 03:35.71Andrewyeah Some of them are a lot better than others. 03:37.95SeanYeah. 03:37.98Andrewlike kuup is pretty fun. Secret Hitler is pretty fun. Generally I don't love deception games though because I like i hate lying, I'm a terrible liar. 03:47.70AndrewBut my strategy is usually just to be as chao like as chaotic and suspicious as hell even when I'm not the the like person so that that way if I do get the like big bad, everyone's just like Andrew's just being Andrew, he's just an idiot. 03:55.67SeanI see. 04:02.77Andrewlike Ignore him. 04:03.10SeanNice. Nice. 04:05.49Andrewi have to like access access because i know i'm going to access when i'm uh actually in trouble 04:13.25Seanit's like It's like the opposite of like just always pretending you're bad at lying. So everyone thinks always telling the truth. 04:22.08Andrewit's kind of the same thing it's kind of the same thing right yeah 04:22.31SeanAnyway. you have you yeah okay anyway do you have do have a favorite game? 04:29.48AndrewUh, yes, but it's like kind of niche. I think my favorite board game is Everdell. 04:33.68SeanOK. 04:36.62SeanI've heard of that. 04:36.95Andrewit it's It's an engine builder where you're living in like kind of like a Redwall-esque world where you've got you're playing as little forest creatures and you're building your little forest like forest kingdom machine thing. 04:51.88AndrewAnd and and it's fun because it's like you can't be that cutthroat with the other players. You're kind of playing your own game and there's a little bit of like sabotage and stuff. 04:58.23SeanMm. 05:01.71Andrewbut For someone who's very competitive, and it you know my friends tend to get pissed off at me when we play like really cutthroat games, like Settlers or you know something. 05:11.80SeanGotcha. 05:13.03AndrewAnd so it's nice because it keeps keeps everybody happier. Also a big fan of, oh, what's the haunted house on the hill? Betrayal at the house on the hill. 05:25.57AndrewSo much fun. Campy, kitschy, good vibes. 05:31.24SeanNice. The PvE one doesn't sound fun at all. Just saying. As as also as Everdell. 05:37.77AndrewThe which one? 05:40.20Seanlike you You just completely sold me again...

We found a cheat code for learning Spanish using Claude and Anki (without studying grammar). Plus, the Cult Brand marketing framework that turns customers into superfans. In this episode, Andrew reveals why he is moving to Mexico City and going all in on his startup. Sean breaks down how he scaled his agency to 18 employees and the specific Positioning Strategy he uses to charge premium prices. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Shipletter: https://shipletter.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/. Transcript: 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,200I've had several situations where I just like make stupid mistakes. I feel very envious of the 00:00:05,200 --> 00:00:10,800ability to like, spend all your time and energy on like one thing, we kind of made a mistake that I 00:00:10,800 --> 00:00:15,200think I've seen a lot of people make. Ever felt like you're stuck making the same mistakes or on 00:00:15,200 --> 00:00:20,480the verge of something big but held back? Today we explore founder struggles, mistakes, burnout, and 00:00:20,480 --> 00:00:25,239focusing on real growth. We'll discuss creating content for people, not algorithms, and staying 00:00:25,240 --> 00:00:29,640grounded in what matters. I'm Andrew Askins, founder of meta monster, and I'm Sean's son 00:00:29,640 --> 00:00:34,000founder of miscreants. Let's dive into the journey. Like I think a lot of founders like, identify that 800:00:34,000 --> 00:00:38,559by accident and build a product around that. I don't give it. AI thinks I'm stupid. AI already 900:00:38,560 --> 00:00:43,199knows I'm stupid. You are selling a methodology where your solution is the only product that 1000:00:43,200 --> 00:00:47,240actually fits said methodology. Learning a language is a lot of work. Demand is a fluid 1100:00:47,240 --> 00:00:52,600substance. My biggest thing is like social anxiety of picking up and making mistakes. Every small 1200:00:52,600 --> 00:00:54,400move is how we can. 1300:00:59,970 --> 00:01:06,489How's your Spanish going? Pretend I was in Spanish. Um. 1400:01:07,050 --> 00:01:13,769Not something smart. So menos lento is is muy, uh. Muy Modesto. 1500:01:13,809 --> 00:01:20,729Muy, muy Modesto. Um, I, uh, I have been texting a lot in Spanish lately, so, like, my 1600:01:20,730 --> 00:01:27,449reading and writing has been getting a lot better. Faster than my speaking and listening. Um, 1700:01:27,449 --> 00:01:33,009I still, I was just hanging out with a bunch of friends last night. Um, and to be fair, uh, four of 1800:01:33,010 --> 00:01:39,650my friends, um, were were ganging up on one of their boyfriends. And so it was, 1900:01:39,809 --> 00:01:46,689uh, there was a lot of very rapid Spanish, um, and a lot of, like, g. Longo slang flying around, so, 2000:01:46,730 --> 00:01:51,089like, not the easiest to understand, but I was just, like, I was just sitting back laughing, like, I 2100:01:51,089 --> 00:01:55,929don't understand any of this. Although, interestingly enough, understood everything at the 2200:01:55,929 --> 00:02:02,830same time. You know, like the universal language. It was pretty obvious what was happening. Nice. 2300:02:03,550 --> 00:02:10,470Also, I heard you have a new, uh, nickname in Mexico City. Yeah, we don't need to go into that. 2400:02:10,470 --> 00:02:17,270That's fine. I feel like. Yeah. Okay. All right. Fine. Am I? My friends, Rosa and Wyatt. Uh, 2500:02:17,270 --> 00:02:23,710Rosa's from here. Um. Uh, and, uh, she's dating my my good friend Wyatt. Um, 2600:02:23,750 --> 00:02:30,629and one night, I may have had a little too much fun, and, uh, they had to take care of me a bit, 2700:02:30,630 --> 00:02:37,630and I got got dubbed El Polito clause. Um, which means, uh, the little colored chick. 2800:02:37,830 --> 00:02:44,589Um, the the backstory is in Mexico City. Like, I don't know, 10 or 20 years 2900:02:44,589 --> 00:02:49,550ago. Uh, there used to be markets everywhere where you could get these little baby chicks that had 3000:02:49,550 --> 00:02:55,710been dyed like neon colors. And the dye was very bad for the chicks. And so, um, you would, like, buy 3100:02:55,710 --> 00:03:01,319them for your kid, and they would inevitably die within two weeks. Um, and so they were like, just 3200:03:01,320 --> 00:03:08,240very hard to keep alive. And so, Polito declares, is a, uh, is a joke you 3300:03:08,240 --> 00:03:14,720make about someone when they can't take care of themselves, when they when they need, need help. You 3400:03:14,720 --> 00:03:20,319know, I don't think you told me. Did I not give you the context? No, that was way more morbid than I 3500:03:20,320 --> 00:03:27,320thought. I thought it was just like. Like it meant, like ugly duckling or like. I mean, it kind of does. 3600:03:27,320 --> 00:03:33,640It has a morbid start, but it basically just means, like, are you dumb little thing you need, like, 3700:03:34,440 --> 00:03:40,839we got you. It's okay. Um, 3800:03:41,600 --> 00:03:48,159sorry. I'm just. I'm trying to imagine I got it all in neon, baby chick. Oh. 3900:03:49,240 --> 00:03:56,179Um. Oh, that's. Did you find them? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're kind of like peeps, you know? they're 4000:03:56,179 --> 00:04:02,979like poop colored. Yeah, but, like living beings. Yeah. So very, very. Oh, wow. Okay. They 4100:04:02,979 --> 00:04:09,899got. All right. Next topic. Um. One thing I've been doing, though, that's been fun. Um, 4200:04:10,099 --> 00:04:15,499so to try to work on my Spanish, I there's this app that all the, like, language learning nerds use 4300:04:15,500 --> 00:04:22,499called Anki. Um, it's a spaced repetition flashcard app. So basically you practice words and then like 4400:04:22,499 --> 00:04:26,858when you get them right, it's depending on how easy or hard it was. It'll like space out how 4500:04:26,859 --> 00:04:30,859often it shows it to you. So like as you learn words you see them less often. The new words 4600:04:30,859 --> 00:04:36,699you're struggling with. You see them more often. Um, and so I've been wanting to use Anki for a really 4700:04:36,700 --> 00:04:41,379long time. Um, but like, their interface is atrocious. It's a great app. It's all open source, 4800:04:41,379 --> 00:04:46,339but it's like the most painful thing to enter stuff. And they have this, like, incredible 4900:04:46,339 --> 00:04:53,299community of, um, of like pe...

A two-hour feedback session with the SEO Gets founder changes MetaMonster's direction. Meanwhile, Andrew realizes he's burnt out on AI and capitalism and Sean defends Spider-Man Magic cards against gatekeepers. Also: surfing vs hiking debates, fractured ankles, the three C's of career satisfaction, and why JetLag's Magic episode was terrible. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/. Transcript:00:00:01.15SeanWhat's up? 00:00:02.51AndrewI miss you It's been too long. 00:00:03.76SeanI miss you 00:00:05.97Andrewi did that Long time. Been a long time. 00:00:09.78Seantoo. Long time. Yeah. 00:00:13.45zAndrewWhen did we last like actually talk other than a couple of quick Slack messages? 00:00:17.87SeanLike last year, pretty much. 00:00:19.81Andrewdon't think it was that long. 00:00:20.14SeanThis one. My brain's in 2026 already. It's it's cold. i i look outside at like four o'clock. It's already dark. 00:00:28.96AndrewMy three of my best friends in Atlanta and I have a group chat that we started when I moved here. And it's it's titled See You in 2026, which like started as a joke because like my one friend quit his job and had a little bit of travel planned. And like I had a little bit of travel planned and they, the couple in the group chat had some travel planned. And so it was just kind of a joke. And now our friend who started the group chat, who quit his job, 00:00:56.88Andrewhe is currently in seoul south korea he he is actually like we're actually not going to see him until 2026 pretty much he did 00:00:59.48SeanWhoa, cool. 00:01:05.52SeanSorry, did you say he was in Seoul, South Korea or Seoul? 00:01:10.83Andrewseoul i said seoul south korea did did f**k that up okay did i say south k-kir-olina no i maybe i did that would be wild 00:01:13.50SeanOh, I don't know why heard South Carolina. That's okay. We'll go back to the tape. We'll see if I was crazy or if you were crazy. No, i've definitely misheard you. I definitely. 00:01:24.85SeanWe'll go back to the tape later. 00:01:25.18AndrewHe's in South Korea right now in Seoul. 00:01:26.62SeanCool. 00:01:27.26AndrewApparently it's cold. 00:01:29.54SeanYeah. 00:01:30.14AndrewI forget how far north it is, but he's... 00:01:32.06Seanyou should You should ask him how crazy things were when Korea won the League Legends finals again. Yeah, kind of curious. 00:01:40.80AndrewOoh, okay, will do. Yeah, he's been... But dude's been traveling all f*****g over the place. I'm so happy for him. 00:01:48.26SeanNice. 00:01:49.12AndrewYeah, he seems like... lighter and happier which is good to see yeah yeah 00:01:52.72SeanNice. That's good. That's good. Do you feel lighter and happier with less hair on your head? 00:02:01.66AndrewI am uh okay the I am no is the answer I feel like I'm a bit in a uh phase that I feel like I end up in every few years where I'm like questioning and trying to rediscover my personal style. And that often starts with trying to find a haircut that I like. 00:02:24.41Andrewmy My typical haircut is just like the very standard white guy, like a little bit short on the sides, a little bit slicked over on top. 00:02:24.10Seanmean, 00:02:33.51AndrewAnd I just, know I always come back to it and then I go, this doesn't feel like me. And then I try something else and I'm like, well, this also doesn't feel like me. 00:02:43.31AndrewSo... yeah i don't know i i'm trying i'm trying a messy fringe this time thanks 00:02:48.07Seanit looks good. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. I think it looks good. I think i like it looks good. You got you got like your oversized, boxy, drop shoulder t-shirt, the haircut. 00:03:00.87SeanVery trendy. Very trendy. 00:03:02.34Andrewi just watched a youtube video where like three people roasted a guy for wearing a uniqlo erism like boxy t-shirt and i was like f**k i thought that 00:03:08.64SeanHaters. Haters. Haters. They're so comfortable. Haters. 00:03:12.39Andrewthey are so comfortable yeah 00:03:12.84SeanGet over themselves. Haters. oh Yeah. Don't take me back to skinny jeans, you know? was terrible time. 00:03:21.28Andrewi feel like they weren't they weren't advocating for skinny but they were also like they were basically saying if you're gonna go boxy you need to it needs to look intentional like you're intentionally trying to be boxy like if you have like one boxy thing and then one more skinny thing it can look weird And like fit still matters. And that like the most timeless look is something kind of in between. It's not like crazy baggy, but also not crazy skinny. 00:03:49.69AndrewBut then that's also kind of boring. I don't know. 00:03:52.68Seani think I think there's ways to make all of it work. 00:03:52.83Andrewdon't know. 00:03:56.37SeanIt just kind of depends on silhouette and whatnot. I like this look, by the way. I actually think this is this is a very nice like haircut on you, especially with the with the earrings. 00:04:06.02SeanYeah. 00:04:07.38AndrewThanks, dude. I appreciate that. 00:04:08.23SeanYeah. Yeah. 00:04:09.50AndrewI only got like two words of it because you're breaking up for me a little bit right now. 00:04:13.48SeanOh, really? Okay. 00:04:15.39AndrewBut 00:04:15.50SeanWe'll try that again. 00:04:16.02SeanI actually think it it looks really good. I think it, yeah, especially with the earrings and whatnot. 00:04:21.82Andrewthanks. Appreciate it 00:04:23.75SeanYou look like five years younger. That's cool. 00:04:26.49Andrewit. I don't know if I want to look five years younger as part of this. i'm like I want to own being in my 30s. 00:04:31.01SeanI see. 00:04:32.59AndrewAnd I'm OK. 00:04:34.21SeanYou still look like you're in your 30s. 00:04:35.90Andrewokay 00:04:35.93SeanYou still, just like, 00:04:37.38AndrewSo you're saying before I looked like I was approaching 40. I 00:04:41.06Seanjust like your late thirty s I guess that business means approaching for... I don't know. I haven't seen you in so long that I... My image of you is just your, like, 20-something-year-old profile picture in Slack at this point. So, I don't know. 00:04:55.90Andrewi i jumped on a call with a friend earlier today who I hadn't talked to in a long time. And we hadn't had like a video call in at least six months, if not longer. And he was like, whoa, because I ju...

From Magic addiction to Margins updates - Sean finally talked to a customer! Andrew tried Claude Code and wasn't impressed, then gets into product ideas around workflows and flexible tables for MetaMonster. Surprise twist: the guys accidentally design a $699 productized service for MetaMonster and close the deal live on the call. Also: type 2 fun, hiking debates, and why slabbing a kid isn't what it sounds like. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/. Transcript:00:00:00.82SeanWhat's up? 00:00:02.45AndrewNot much. Just hanging out. What's up with you? 00:00:05.69SeanCool. I have blown so much money this week. and Last week. 00:00:12.87AndrewOh yeah? 00:00:13.75SeanYeah, yeah, yeah. 00:00:15.24AndrewOn something fun, I hope? 00:00:16.73Seanactually Magic the Gathering. Magic the Gathering. 00:00:22.28Andrewis Are you like building a deck to play? Is this investing? Are you like trying to buy collectibles? 00:00:29.29Seananyone anyone that tells you they're investing in Magic the Gathering is lying to you and themselves. 00:00:29.64AndrewWhat's the... 00:00:33.17SeanNo one no one invested this in cardboard. No one invested in Magic the Gathering. let me I'm sure baseball cards are are profitable in whatever way. and Yeah, I'm bill building a deck to play and also just like spending money opening packs. and i got really into it in high school. 00:00:54.33Seanand I think I was like fairly okay at it. And this is my like latest like obsession, indulgence, addiction, all that stuff. 00:01:05.22AndrewFor whatever reason, I never got into magic. 00:01:05.37SeanYeah. 00:01:06.86AndrewI was super into Pokemon, and like I was you know collected Pokemon cards like crazy back in the day, but I never... 00:01:13.89SeanPokemon is huge now, by the way. 00:01:15.58AndrewYeah, I know. 00:01:16.30SeanYeah. 00:01:16.41AndrewI i like have a couple of creators I follow on YouTube, and it is really addicting watching people open packs. and then 00:01:25.44SeanIt really is. 00:01:25.71AndrewI also follow, you know Coop's Collections? 00:01:28.70SeanNo. No. 00:01:30.08AndrewHis whole MO is just that he's like really stupid, nice to people, like mostly little kids. 00:01:34.08SeanOkay. 00:01:35.28AndrewAnd so like little kids, he pretty openly says he doesn't make that much money selling. 00:01:35.34SeanOkay. 00:01:42.13AndrewHe makes most of his money from content. And so like little kids will come up to him at shows and he'll just give away cards and stuff. 00:01:44.60SeanRight. and Nice. 00:01:50.93AndrewThere's a, he live streams himself at shows. 00:01:53.19SeanUh-huh. 00:01:54.49AndrewAnd so people will just like watch him interact. 00:01:57.25SeanI see, I see. 00:01:57.79AndrewAnd there's, there's someone in his community who goes by the name Sweaty Booger. That's their username. And like Sweaty Booger is famous on Goof's collections because he will often like, 00:02:05.26SeanOkay. 00:02:12.57Andrewdonate money so that Coop can slab a kid. There's, it's, it's pretty slab a kid, which means give them a, give them a graded card in a slab. 00:02:17.17SeanWait, so he can what a kid? Slab a kid. 00:02:21.67SeanSlab a kid. bla 00:02:25.70Andrewyeah 00:02:25.91SeanSlab a kid. Okay. Okay. 00:02:27.67AndrewSlab a kid. 00:02:29.37SeanThat's, uh, 00:02:30.04AndrewThere's like all this funny, like, yeah, I feel like even more than some of the other YouTube shows I watch. it has very quickly, because I think he's only been doing it for a year or two, it has very quickly developed lore and, sort you know, it's its own terminology and everything. 00:02:47.77SeanSure. 00:02:52.03AndrewIt's funny. 00:02:53.33SeanCool. Slab a kid. Okay. That is not what I thought you said. It's like sweaty boogers f****d up, man. It's almost as bad as as that Twitch streamer shocking his dog. 00:03:08.04SeanOkay. 00:03:05.09AndrewOh, f**k. I don't want to know about that. Don't don't tell me. i I would rather not. 00:03:08.96SeanOkay. All right. 00:03:10.83AndrewFuck that person is all i all I have to say. 00:03:14.57AndrewI don't even know, but I don't need to know. 00:03:17.61Seanokay yeah this is this is whoever's listening this is just a this is just an internet culture magic the gathering podcast now 00:03:26.06AndrewOh, dude. If you want to just go deep on, like, our latest YouTube obsessions, I can i can do that any day. I've been getting really into, like, 00:03:33.32Seanoh my latest youtube what is that what is 00:03:35.26Andrewthe Caleb Heron world lately. He's a comedian based out of l a who's like, he is super progressive, but is from Kansas City and like grew up evangelical. And so I think he does a good job of making fun of like progressives and like the right and Caleb Heron I think is how you pronounce it h-e-a-r-o-n 00:04:04.03Seanhow do you How do you spell it? cure 00:04:11.85Seanoh Oh, okay. I know who this is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this is cool. 00:04:15.08Andrewyeah bigger dude who's like 00:04:16.02SeanI've never heard his name read out loud. Yeah. 00:04:19.43AndrewYeah, it's, I never know if I'm saying it right, but I've been listening to his podcast a bunch and watching clips. 00:04:26.24SeanNice. 00:04:28.77SeanCool. Sweet. 00:04:29.88AndrewYeah. 00:04:30.73SeanYeah, i so I think I've seen some of his clothes. It's pretty funny. He also does stand up, right? 00:04:35.11AndrewYeah, I think he does stand-up. I think he's working on a movie. Was writing for... 00:04:39.09SeanNice. 00:04:40.51AndrewHe wrote for some TV show i I had watched. A pretty big one, I think. I can't remember what it was. Yeah. He seems like... 00:04:49.32SeanCool. 00:04:51.90AndrewIt's interesting. I feel like the more I get into like the dropout world and and then some of these... creators. 00:05:02.40AndrewOh, he also blew up the other day because, uh, Rolling Stones ranked him higher on most influential creators than Mr. Beast and Mr. 00:05:09.91SeanI saw that. 00:05:09.95AndrewBeast got like butthurt about it. 00:05:12.02SeanI saw that. 00:05:12.29Andrewand it was really funny. 00:05:13.09SeanYeah. Yeah. 00:05:15.56AndrewSo he's he's definitely not small. H...

Andrew saw Saturn through a telescope and launched MetaMonster's new UI, but users won't activate! 🔭 Getting 1-2 daily signups with zero engagement while testing Phantom Buster for LinkedIn scraping. Sean presents his Michelin star agency framework and they debate reviving Chart Juice as a ChatGPT app. Plus: why web design agencies might be better customers than SEO agencies. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/. Transcript:00:01.07SeanHowdy. 00:02.27AndrewHi, hi, hi. 00:03.52Seanand We've had so many false starts of season four, think. 00:08.60AndrewYeah, is this not season eight? I thought we were on season eight now. 00:11.73SeanYou're right, you're right, you're right. It was a limited series for the first but past four seasons. 00:16.07AndrewOne, two episodes. 00:17.93SeanYeah, yeah, yeah. It's like those those like which TV shows did in the middle of COVID, and you know? It's like, yeah, season's over. We'll just, yeah. 00:25.89AndrewYeah. I feel like I haven't talked to you in forever, and you're... so busy now that you don't even respond to my slack messages 00:35.68SeanSorry. Hold on. I don't like that you said those things together because you made it sound like I'm the reason we haven't talked in forever. 00:43.15Andrewyou are no no no it's like 25 true i was gallivanting in the woods for two weeks so i was away from atlanta for a month uh i was 00:43.93Seanwhich Which is 75% true. didn't realize you were going for two weeks. I thought you were and that you're only... how How was it? Whoa. 00:59.42Seanwell 01:00.47AndrewYeah, I went in cat sit for my parents for a week. I went to Washington for two weeks, hung out with friends, went backpacking, then rented a car and drove around the Olympic Peninsula by myself, which was f*****g awesome. 01:13.33SeanNice. 01:14.15AndrewJumped in the Pacific Ocean, jumped in Alpine Lake, climbed some sketchy mountains, saw a ton of beautiful views, walked in the rainforest, saw Saturn through a telescope. 01:25.43SeanWhoa. Whoa. 01:26.43AndrewIt was, yeah! 01:26.92SeanWhat? 01:28.38AndrewI feel like that's the one I always mention last, and that's the one that people get most excited about. 01:28.45SeanYou've been like on 01:32.82SeanYeah. You've had like a whole secret life of Walter Mini situation in the past. 01:33.96AndrewOne night, dude, it was great. 01:37.56SeanUh-huh. 01:38.45AndrewI made a friend hiking down a trail one day, and she was telling me that she'd just come from this campsite and was checking the little board at the campsite and saw that the rangers were doing a telescope night. 01:51.67SeanRight. 01:51.74AndrewAnd so she said it was great. It was super fun. So I went and stayed at that campsite the next night. and they were doing it again and it was awesome there were like 50 or 60 people who drove up to the top of the mountain and parked and were just like walking around in the dark because you can't have white light it ruins the ability to see through the the telescope and everything it you know dampens your night vision so there were like 50 or 60 strangers 02:11.72Seanright 02:19.55Andrewmilling around in the dark, just quietly chatting with each other, waiting in lines to look through telescopes. And they had four huge telescopes trained at different things in the night sky. And one of the things we got to see was Saturn. 02:31.90AndrewIt was like a little little tiny little tiny Saturn. it was you know these These telescopes were not big enough to blow it up. yeah We weren't looking through the James Webb Space Telescope, but it was still really cool. 02:39.31SeanSure. 02:42.07SeanRight. 02:43.74AndrewYou could see the rings. 02:43.91SeanYeah. 02:44.78AndrewIt's like, holy shit, that's planet. 02:45.19SeanWhoa. 02:48.54SeanCool. Nice. 02:49.75AndrewYeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And then I was in San Diego for a week. So fully, fully my fault. there's There's at least a month in there that was fully my fault. 03:01.06AndrewI'd had kind of aspirations of like, maybe I'll drive to a coffee shop and we should do like a podcast episode from a coffee shop on the Olympic Peninsula. 03:01.41SeanOkay. 03:10.62AndrewAnd yeah, no way that was happening. 03:13.08Seanwe can We can split it fifty fifty It's both our faults. 03:17.92SeanThat's cool. You ever think about like how like crazy it is that when human... like you know I understand, like okay, like you're like, oh, hey, there are things in the sky. I want to go look at things in the sky and tell magnifying glass exists. We keep stacking them. We can start to see things in the sky. 03:33.30SeanAnd then just like the realization of, like oh, shit, there's more like giant balls of things out there. 03:40.80AndrewThe thing that the always gets me is when I start thinking about how you're looking back in time because of how light travels and everything. 03:50.64SeanRight, right, right. 03:52.07Andrewyou Light can only travel so fast. And so when something's 100 light years away, And you're seeing it. You're literally looking back in time 100 years. 04:04.85SeanYeah, that doesn't make sense in my head. 04:06.99AndrewIt's f*****g batshit. 04:07.19SeanBut yeah, that is pretty cool. 04:08.39AndrewIt's so cool. Space is wild. 04:12.38SeanYeah, yeah. 04:12.59AndrewHot take. 04:13.39SeanPhysics is... 04:16.09AndrewThe coldest take possible. 04:16.81Seanphysics Physics is so is wild. 04:20.00AndrewYeah. 04:22.19SeanAnyway, how doing? 04:23.62AndrewHow... 04:23.84SeanHow's it been? 04:25.86Andrewuh how am i doing but but good and bad and medium and all the things uh the hiking and being in the woods was fantastic brighton seo was a lot of fun i made a bunch of new seo friends uh there were a couple of times where i didn't 04:33.18SeanOkay. 04:48.95Andrewwant to be an extrovert. I didn't want to talk to strangers and I made myself do it and i had a lot of fun doing it and yeah, mean made a bunch of friends. Hasn't turned into leads or customers yet, which is to be expected. 05:05.80Andrewyou know I wasn't really going there expecting this time to get a bunch of customers. It was more about let me build relationships, let me make friends because then 05:12.14SeanSorry. 05:18.01Andrewyou know, those are more, those are people I can lean on to amplify content a...

Andrew doubles MetaMonster customers in one week and is launching credit-based free trials! 🚀 Sean's still drowning in Miscreants growth (by the way Miscreants is hiring). Plus: LinkedIn strategy shifts, AI acquisition dynamics, and Sean just figured out what "I have to charge" actually means. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/. Transcript:00:00.83Seanwhats up? 00:01.73AndrewHey, we back. 00:01.83SeanWhere are you? 00:03.17Andrewis this Is this the start of season? What season are we on? Season four? 00:06.65SeanYeah, this is... 00:06.70AndrewThis is season four, episode two. 00:07.29Seanthis is 00:08.18AndrewAre we going to bury episode one forever and make it our new Lost Tapes? Or are we going to, do you want me to release it? Make a decision right now? 00:17.64Seanfeel like... It seems like you want to bury it so we can bury it. 00:20.54AndrewYeah, kind of. 00:21.32SeanYeah. Okay. 00:22.37AndrewI feel like I just rambled for 30 minutes. 00:22.55SeanYeah. We can bury it. 00:24.88AndrewAnd I was also like, You definitely caught me on the downturn of the startup roller coaster like mental cycle. And i'm I'm feeling more positive this week. 00:33.35Seanand 00:35.37AndrewSo let's start on a good note. 00:35.99SeanCool. There was no such thing as everyone. Cool. Done. Easy. Yeah. Great. How you doing? Where where are you? This is not the usual background. 00:45.64AndrewI am it no, no. I'm in Columbia, South Carolina, cat sitting for my parents. My parents are jet setting around Europe, living their retired life to the fullest. 00:52.21SeanNice. 00:56.16SeanCool. 00:57.40AndrewMy German aunt is getting remarried this week. 01:01.31SeanSweet. 01:01.43AndrewSo there went to London and then Amsterdam and then Germany. And then they're going to Denmark on a joint honeymoon with my aunt and her new husband. 01:11.16SeanOkay. 01:12.08AndrewYeah. 01:14.89SeanJoint honeymoon. Cool. Okay. 01:17.32Andrewyeah 01:17.56SeanI've never heard that term like used before, but that makes sense. 01:20.53AndrewIt's not real. Like they, they actually got married a few months ago and this is just like the wedding celebration. 01:22.25SeanCool. 01:25.98AndrewAnd so they just wanted to go on a weekend trip with my parents. And so I've been joking with my mom that she's going on Giese's honeymoon with her, but that's not really what's happening. 01:30.24SeanCool. 01:39.13AndrewI'm cat sitting, hanging out with Ruthie. 01:38.82SeanCool. 01:41.76SeanNice. Nice, nice. 01:42.69AndrewYeah. My cat's got it. 01:44.03SeanI'm going to a wedding. 01:45.87AndrewHuh? 01:46.59SeanI'm going to a wedding. 01:47.80AndrewOh, fun. 01:49.23SeanYeah, but tell about your cat first. What what about Ruthie? 01:51.29AndrewOh, I was just going to say earlier this year, my mom got a, what she calls her resistance cat. cat's name is RBG, uh, and we call her Ruthie. 01:58.81SeanOh, nice. Nice. 02:00.38AndrewSo she's adorable. Big fan. 02:02.45SeanCool. Oh, cool. Hope she also lives to like 90 something. 02:06.11AndrewI hope so too. 02:08.05SeanYeah, i'm going I'm going to like my first wedding ever because it's not even a wedding. 02:12.32AndrewOh my God. How is this your first wedding? I've, I feel like I've been going to weddings nonstop for the last 10 years. 02:21.16Seanmaybe this is the start to that. 02:21.12AndrewMaybe this is like, maybe, yeah, we are different ages, which I forget often. 02:24.29SeanYeah. 02:28.09AndrewI'm old and getting older every day. 02:29.42SeanYeah. 02:32.45SeanYou don't look a day over 40, my friend. 02:38.06Andrewi also wonder if it's partially a New York thing versus a like growing up in the Southeast thing. If my friends got married young. 02:42.58SeanNo, just my a*****e friends just don't like there's like f**k a wedding. We just got married and didn't tell you. And then and then like that's that's all. 02:50.31AndrewTo be fair, that's kind of what I want to do. I think I i want to elope with just like parents and then and then throw a big ass party because I do not want to pay the wedding markup. 02:53.65SeanSee. This is. 02:58.78SeanNice. 03:01.40AndrewI'm not about that life. 03:01.77SeanYeah, fair. I think um fair. I think um this, these friends, he's a summer camp friend from like high school and just always kept in touch for years. 03:09.81AndrewOh, no way. That's cool. 03:12.25Seanloosely, loosely. They also got married in middle of COVID and they just never actually had like a wedding-esque party. So this isn't even, technically I've never been to it. 03:22.42SeanWell, think my cousin got married when I was really young. So I think I've been there, but outside of like, actually as a brain functioning adult, like I've never seen people consummate their marriage or whatever the that's not what that means. 03:36.78Andrewi Yeah, I don't think I have either. 03:38.47Seanas an Okay. 03:38.54Andrewi don't i don't think that's like a thing anymore, Sean. 03:39.62SeanSorry. 03:42.08SeanNot what I'm, I've never seen people publicly like make vows to each other in the, in a wedding setting. Not consummate does not mean what I, 03:49.86AndrewOkay, fair. 03:51.64Seanthought of me you know what's crazy we're gonna go on a tangent really quickly guess what i just realized yesterday after like 18 years you know the song my milkshake brings on the boys of the yard okay this is the this is like 03:58.37AndrewWhat's that? 04:02.17AndrewYep. 04:05.51AndrewAre you just now realizing that's about boobs? 04:08.60Seanno i'm just realizing that when she says i have to charge she meant i have to like charge you money ever since i was a kid ever since i was a kid like when i first heard that song 04:14.92AndrewOh! 04:21.06SeanI thought she meant like, i don't know, I have to like charge the machine or I'm out of milkshake. I have to like recharge it. And I always thought that song made no f*****g sense. But now it's trending because of the whole Cat's Eye Gap commercial. 04:34.45AndrewI have no idea what commercial you're talking about. And to be honest, have never heard that line or never noti...

Andrew moved to Atlanta and is going all-in on MetaMonster while Sean drowns in Miscreants sales calls! 🚀 They dive into repositioning struggles, the push vs pull dilemma, and why lead magnets might be the answer. Plus: DEF CON madness, Webflow disasters, and someone made an AI review of MetaMonster. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/. Transcript:00:00.50SeanWhat's up? 00:02.12AndrewWhat up, man? 00:02.99SeanLong time. Yeah. 00:04.19AndrewHas been a long time. When was the last one of these we did? Like, at least six weeks ago. 00:08.07SeanThe last... I think the last one we did, you interviewed someone else. I was replaced. 00:12.88AndrewOh, with Louie. OK. 00:14.20SeanYeah. Yeah. That was good one. That good. 00:16.73AndrewYeah, that was fun. 00:17.87SeanYeah. 00:19.34AndrewIt has horrible ah ah stats on Transistor. I haven't checked the YouTube stats. 00:24.88SeanOh. but They just like me. You know? They... 00:28.93AndrewLet's see. 00:30.81AndrewLet's see, let's see. What? Has anyone listened to this? 00:36.56SeanYou know we got 51. 00:36.86AndrewOh, wow. 00:37.08SeanUh-huh. 00:38.26Andrewoh wow. Our latest videos are not doing well. But to be fair, 00:44.08SeanInternally. 00:44.66Andrewyeah that episode, lol, I heard heard our autoplay video. 00:45.51SeanMm-hmm. 00:49.74SeanOh. 00:51.90Andrew43 whole views on on that that episode. 00:55.21SeanNot bad. Yeah. 00:58.62AndrewWe're we're killing it. 01:00.08SeanYeah. ah But we got 51 subscribers, so, like, i don't know. 01:05.20AndrewDo we really? 01:06.10SeanYeah, 51 subscribers on YouTube. 01:08.78AndrewThis is not going to be interesting to anyone listening. Like, we're the only ones who give a f**k how many YouTube subscribers we have. 01:11.100SeanYeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sorry everyone. 01:15.36AndrewAlso, 50 is such a silly number. 01:17.60SeanYeah. 01:19.98AndrewYeah. 01:20.46SeanCan't wait for my 50 subscriber YouTube play button. 01:23.16SeanIt's a cardboard with a little poop stain on it. 01:30.36AndrewYeah, a lot has changed since we last chatted and also not a lot has changed. 01:33.88SeanMm-hmm. 01:35.94AndrewI am now living in Atlanta. 01:39.28SeanAnd you're leaving me. 01:41.66Andrewand Well, just like we're not breaking up. 01:43.04SeanWe're breaking up. 01:45.78AndrewWe're going on a break. It's different. 01:47.22Seanwow Can I see other people? 01:50.18AndrewYeah, sure. 01:52.08SeanWe're breaking up. We're broken up. It's okay. It's okay. I'm happy for you. Anything I'm jealous. 01:57.43Andrewyeah so I'm living in Atlanta. I was, I working with scout last time we talked. to 02:03.08SeanNot on the podcast, I think. 02:05.94AndrewOkay. 02:06.60SeanYeah. 02:07.80AndrewI have a new client. it's been a lot of fun. They're in, uh, you an AI agent platform for sales teams. 02:15.37SeanYeah. 02:16.28Andrewand, uh, I'm basically a fractional CMO, which has been really fun. So I'm like, you hiring agencies and contractors and building marketing processes and trying to figure out how to, how to drive leads. 02:30.29Andrewgot to bring in a friends agency. That's going super well. metamonster like, it's not like not going at all. Like I'm having it a couple of conversations a week probably, but, uh, they are not turning into customers. So, 02:49.04Andrewgotta figure some shit out there which is why i'm talking about taking a break from miscreants work for a little while to focus on metamonster yeah i don't know where do you want to start 03:02.24SeanLet's start, I mean, I don't know, let's talk about MetaMonster. Let's talk about like i feel like, I feel like we're chatting on Slack about like, you know, lead magnets and whether or not you have to nurture folks, you know, it feels like the people that are but you're speaking to are like interested but not ready to like buy or try. 03:20.75Seanare they Are they like, are you giving them a trial or 03:24.94AndrewYeah, so 03:27.06Andrewwe... Okay, so since we last spoke, we updated the Metamonster positioning. So we were calling ourselves like an SEO web crawler and sort of a ah ah site audit tool. 03:34.32SeanMm-hmm. 03:42.18AndrewWe've tried to move away from that to more of like an SEO automation platform. our new so our new h one um scale on page seo optimization with ai and we're trying to sort of position ourselves against like chat gpt and manual processes and you know we didn't we didn't go for like a category because i don't know that ah seo automation platform is like an established category today so i wasn't i wasn't sure that would be widely recognized enough to resonate with people so we 04:18.45SeanYeah. 04:19.95Andrewsort of just have this like use case positioning and then we talk you know ah try to position ourselves against like doing seo work manually in with like just chat gpt or claude and then we've been working on totally revamping the product so know when we started it was like push button get meta descriptions and now 04:34.47Seanyeah 04:48.14AndrewWe're, in the next week or two, going to be like phasing out the old UI and phasing in the new UI, which is all like, it's basically like a spreadsheet with AI superpowers. 04:59.62Andrewso you get a 04:59.100Seanyou know 05:02.65Andrewyou can crawl your site, get all of your site data in a table, and then run prompts, run prompts against like every page on your site. 05:14.35AndrewAnd we give you a bunch of prompt templates out of the box to let you do all sorts of things like page titles and meta descriptions, but also generate H1s and image alt text and structured schema and a bunch of other things. 05:30.18AndrewWe also have like now have like site-wide chat. So you can use that for like site-wide analysis and one-off tasks like the blog post I just published for you last night about how to generate an LLMS.txt file, which by the way, you don't need, but you know, whatever. 05:48.41SeanMm-hmm. 05:49.78Andrewokay. So we, so I've been updating the site to like include lots of screenshots and, and descriptions of the new ui try to update the positioning to be more use case focused, like scale on page SEO, 06:05.86Andrewas the sort of the use case and then we removed we didn't remove our pr...

We've got a special guest on the pod today! Louis from Sparkloop joins to share how they evolved from referrals to recommendations and sold to Kit! 🚀 Meanwhile Andrew gets Louis's take on MetaMonster's positioning struggles and they debate how and why the SaaS landscape is changing. Plus: the most detailed rom-com ranking you've ever heard, featuring hidden gems and heated debates about classics. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Louis's Twitter: @louisnicholls_Sparkloop (newsletter recommendations platform): https://sparkloop.app/Grow your newsletter: https://www.growmynewsletter.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/. Transcript:00:00:01.03AndrewHey, what's up, man? 00:00:02.44LouisHey man, how's it going? It's been a while. 00:00:04.43AndrewIt has. Astute listeners might notice that you are not Sean Sun, founder of Miscreants. Do you want to introduce yourself real quick? 00:00:13.90LouisYeah, my name Louis. I am the co-founder of Sparkloop. I'm a huge rom-com enthusiast, which I think we're going to get to later. and 00:00:23.11AndrewHell yeah. 00:00:24.25LouisI guess I'm a probably more of like a reformed indie hacker. People might know me from that, but more likely nowadays, if you're a newsletter nerd in the newsletter space, you probably have come across Sparkloop or maybe seen me online or something like that. 00:00:41.21AndrewReformed. Does that mean you don't identify as an indie hacker anymore? 00:00:44.76LouisOh, no, no, I do. I just don't hang out in the as much in like the IndieHack bootstrap founder space anymore. my My Twitter and LinkedIn have been taken over by self-interested business interests of talking about newsletters, which is a lot more lucrative. 00:00:51.89AndrewYeah. 00:00:59.73LouisYeah. 00:00:59.94AndrewYeah. So, okay. How long ago now did you sell Sparkloop? How long has it been? 00:01:06.67LouisWe sold just over two years ago. We were bought by then ConvertKit, now Kit, which I think we... 00:01:10.16AndrewOkay. 00:01:14.78LouisDid we talk about this shortly before or shortly? Maybe we met shortly after, actually, I think. 00:01:19.18AndrewI think both. 00:01:20.17AndrewI think we, you and i met in New York. I was working for Grey Noise at the time. And you told me, i don't remember if you actually told me it was ConvertKit. I think you told me you were like considering an acquisition and that there was some stuff in the works. 00:01:31.86LouisHmm. 00:01:33.80AndrewAnd then I think we hung out again, last year sometime after you'd sold to ConvertKit, when I was like starting to, oh yeah, because like last December, you and i were actually talking about like maybe collabing on some stuff. 00:01:48.50LouisYeah. 00:01:49.80LouisYeah, yeah, 00:01:50.82AndrewI quoted you some ridiculously high number to do something. I don't even remember what exactly. like I think some of the like personal brand stuff that you've started doing, was going to help with some of that maybe. 00:02:01.79Louisyeah. Mm-hmm. 00:02:03.39AndrewAnd then then, yeah, I think I probably talked to you to just like ask you for some startup advice at some point, which I'm now doing again under the guise of having you on as a podcast guest. 00:02:15.33LouisIt's the the best way to do it. i yeah I remember we were, i think the last time we properly talked was actually not about about this startup at all. It was about the in-email charts thing, I think, was the last time we had like a proper long conversation. 00:02:33.24AndrewYeah, good memory. I'm impressed that you remember what it even was. Yeah, that was ChartJuice. was I think at the time it was probably ChartKit. 00:02:42.64LouisMm-hmm. 00:02:43.87AndrewAnd then had a co-founder, he left, and he owned the domain, so I bought chartjuice.com. And then... 00:02:54.82AndrewBuilt it, probably shouldn't have ever built it. Like, I don't think it was like ever really a great market. But I did the classic indie hacker thing where I was like, I kind of just want to build something and I wanted to learn to code again. 00:03:08.23AndrewAnd Chart Juice felt very like not intimidating. It felt easy to build. And so I spent a few months building it, launched it to Crickets and then was like, all right, I need to actually build something that I think people will buy now And so, yeah. 00:03:22.97LouisAlways a oh it a good idea. I wish you had, with a name like Chart Juice, it wasn't called Chart Juice at the time, but a name like Chart Juice, that deserves to be a podcast growth agency. 00:03:30.27AndrewYeah. 00:03:35.87LouisThere should be a podcast growth agency called Chart Juice out there. 00:03:39.11AndrewHonestly, that is so true. Someone has like a, someone has a oh, it's, it's a productized service that will submit your startup to a bunch of directories. 00:03:54.29AndrewAnd it's called like submit juice or something like that. 00:03:54.53Louissee 00:03:57.23LouisI don't like that one so much. 00:03:58.44Andrewno, no. 00:03:58.79LouisThat's... No. Gotta be careful with juice. 00:04:01.82AndrewYeah, you do got to be careful with juice. Yeah, honestly, Podcast Curse Agency makes a ton of sense. I love that. I still like... I still have the the site up. like I have like sort of pipe dreams of you know spinning it out into a little like ah ah a little like plug-in for Webflow or you know ah maybe a kit app or something someday. 00:04:28.10AndrewBut yeah, keep I have like ah ah recurring have like a use Todoist. And so there is a to-do in Todoist to... 00:04:38.11Andrewto like revamp chart juice and I just keep punting it out like two months every time it comes up because I'm like this is not the best use of my time right now 00:04:47.20LouisYeah, I know that feeling. I know that 00:04:49.12AndrewYeah. So what what has happened in the last like year? what's What's life like at Spark Loop? and Last we talked, you were pretty happy with the acquisition. like Things were going pretty well. And you all were really running independently, for the most part, under Kit. 00:05:06.00AndrewI imagine helping them build their kind of internal network and powering that, I would imagine. but then like really just sort of focus, you still running the business as the business is what I remember. 00:05:21.42LouisYeah, spot on. It's been a very unusual acquisition, I would say, in that we have kept running separately from Kit for the most part. We do work with them very closely behind the scenes on overlapping tech that we have. 00:05:33.29AndrewYeah. 00:05:33.63Louislike We power their paid recommendations network. They're much bigger company than we are, of course. 00:05:38.38AndrewMm-hmm. 00:05:38.68LouisBut we actually have we function as a sepa...