Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

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. and00:00:23.11AndrewHell 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.00:03:54.53Louissee00:03:57.23LouisI 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 now00:04:47.20LouisYeah, I know that feeling. I know that00:04:49.12AndrewYeah. 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...

Sean survives on 1.5 hours of sleep while juggling Black Hat submissions and client launches! 😴 Andrew discovers a new MetaMonster content strategy and shows off the new grid UI that's generating page titles and scoring them for engagement. Plus: should you delegate your therapy homework to Claude (hint: no), auth provider decision paralysis, and why internal linking breaks the table concept.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:00:00.81SeanOh, you stopped.00:03.40AndrewYeah, that would be the most obnoxious sound in the world. I was doing the, like, little kid exasperated sound.00:10.45SeanYeah, yeah. What is that? What do you, what do you, how do you, like, what is the English phrase for that?00:16.64Andrewhave no fucking clue.00:17.80SeanIt's not like rolling your R's, but it's like blubbering.00:21.54AndrewIt's like flapping your lips. I don't know.00:23.97SeanI guess.00:23.99AndrewI was doing this. Pfft.00:26.94SeanThat's a thumbnail.00:28.02AndrewOh, God.00:28.21SeanThat's good.00:28.89AndrewJesus.00:32.72SeanThat's a good thumbnail. I'm going to have Jonah try that out. We'll see how it performs.00:36.82AndrewTry what?00:37.93SeanYou just blubbered.00:40.08AndrewPlease no.00:40.97SeanOkay.00:43.70SeanHow you doing? how's how's How's it going?00:48.00AndrewI'm good. I just pushed out a YouTube video, LinkedIn video for Metamonster.00:54.94SeanNice.00:55.68Andrewi I think this is maybe going to be a ah new tactic is I saw um like an SEO influencer type share something about how AI overviews really like structured schema.01:12.35AndrewAnd so I was like, dope. I'm going to go write a prompt to create structured schema in the new MetaMonster UI, record myself doing it, tag this person in the post,01:22.19SeanCool.01:24.43SeanSick.01:24.60Andrewand like shout them out in the video. And then did comment on my post. i don't yeah know They didn't share it or anything, but they commented on my post.01:30.77SeanSick.01:33.39AndrewAnd so that was kind of cool. And I'm like, I think this is probably a good tactic to follow is just like take the things that people are talking about and just record short videos showing how you can use MetaMonster to execute on them.01:38.71SeanYeah, 100%.01:47.17SeanYeah, all all of that makes perfect sense. that like01:49.42AndrewYeah.01:50.67Seanthat That feels like exactly what to do to grow Metamonster.01:54.27AndrewYeah. Yeah.01:55.81SeanIn fact, I would not be surprised if that was the way grew your user base to your first 500 to 1,000 this point. Yet, yet, to to ah thousand at this point so02:06.85AndrewMaybe. i mean, no one is watching, like, our videos aren't getting any, yeah, any views.02:09.98Seanyes yet yeah02:12.87AndrewAnd, like, my like LinkedIn, most of the people liking my LinkedIn posts about Metamonster have been, like, my friends. So I haven't gotten, yeah.02:22.08Seanyet yeah i think you need you need one you know ah ah you need like02:26.86AndrewYeah, you need one to go viral-ish in the SEO world. And you need, yeah, I just need to stick with it and...02:33.43Seanyeah plus i mean the content just gets reused so for the blog anyway or or the website anyway so yeah um i absolutely yeah but that sounds perfectly correct to me that's02:45.76AndrewYeah. I also, um i so I recorded this one today with Screen Studio, was fun to play around with. I like some parts of it a lot. I found myself really wishing, though, that it would generate a transcript like Loom does.02:59.46Andrewcan probably use, like, a transcript generator. I can just find something like that. But the reason is, i have gotten alex from like Lex like Lex.page set up pretty well.03:12.97Andrewprobably do it in Claude too. But I've got it generating pretty good marketing emails based off of video transcripts. And so it's been like a really nice way to like just, you know, reuse content as I record the video.03:30.97AndrewAnd then I upload the transcript to Lex and I have Lex generate a, generate a marketing email, I edit that email, and then I copy it over to loops and send it out to the Metamonster list.03:47.74AndrewSo I've also been thinking about playing around with some of the automation tools to see if I could actually automate that whole flow.03:50.05SeanCool.03:56.02AndrewAnd it would still be, like, human in the loop because I want to edit it before it goes into loops.04:00.35SeanYeah.04:00.43AndrewBut, like, even if it created it as a draft in loops, I could then go to loops and edit it there.04:04.58SeanYeah. 100%. 100.04:08.89Seanhundred percent and04:10.32AndrewSo...04:12.64SeanYeah, 100%. um I always, well, okay. Sorry, 100%, you can do that. I always struggle with the idea of doing that because I feel like the time it takes to like do that is sometimes not worth the just doing it manually. I feel like I could be automating Okay, one of the things I could definitely be automating is sending you the link to this Zencaster thing. But every single every single time I do it, I'm like, yeah but it's just so easy to just make it.04:42.92SeanAnd it's so much more work to go figure out how to do it in N8N and like increment the number by one.04:48.73AndrewSuper fair.04:50.98SeanWhich...04:51.09AndrewThis is the classic problem with delegation in general, right? Whether it's automation or delegation, it's just you've got to get over that hump of it's easier to do it myself.04:57.56SeanYeah.05:00.78SeanYeah. Yeah. Well... Okay, well, that's that's a different way to think about it. That's kind of like death by a thousand. I'll do it myself until you can't do it yourself anymore.05:12.62SeanI'm not going automate it.05:12.73AndrewYeah.05:13.46SeanIt's not going to happen. I'm just going to send you.05:14.86AndrewYeah, I'm probably not going to automate this for a while either.05:15.60SeanYeah. yeah cool okay uh on to another productive topic that we didn't talk about before the show but now i want to know last time we had a call or two times ago we were talking about uh that you were writing down the story of why you would be pushing something off and procrastinating05:22.29AndrewOkay.05:26.80AndrewYeah.05:37.62AndrewOh, shit. You just made me realize ...

Pre-Black Hat crunch time hits Miscreants hard as brand audits pile up and Webflow goes down for half a day. Andrew's new MetaMonster grid shows AI's bipolar nature - brilliant one moment, baffling the next. 🤖 Plus: positioning challenges, category creation in the AI era, and why Poboy the cat makes a terrible hide-and-seek player.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:00:01.03SeanWhat's up?00:02.39AndrewYour energy is different after we hit record than it was before.00:06.79SeanI know, I gotta turn it on I gotta turn on for the podcast.00:10.99AndrewWhat's going on, man?00:12.23SeanI can't believe we both just went like double peace signs on an audio podcast, by the way.00:12.40Andrewyou're a00:17.63AndrewWe have video now, Sean.00:19.07SeanWe do, we do, and do. We have great intros.00:20.91AndrewIf if somebody would ever approve the latest videos to go live, then we would have even more video.00:27.34SeanYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. that sounds like That sounds like a job for someone.00:33.60AndrewOh, hey, we have a new episode up.00:34.09Seanand00:36.53AndrewSomeone finally approved something.00:36.57SeanYeah. Yeah. I'm working on it.00:40.65AndrewAll right.00:40.64SeanI'm doing it. It just sounds like a job for someone who doesn't have 30 hours of meetings a week right now. So...00:46.70AndrewJesus Christ. Yeah, I'm not going to lie I've been trying to meet with you and JJ at the same time lately and trying to find overlap where neither of you has a meeting is almost impossible.01:00.43Seanit is It is pretty much impossible.01:00.69AndrewOh, boy, you sure you want to go out? Can we pause real quick?01:05.95SeanYeah, sure. OK, we'll come back. No problem.01:09.12AndrewThank you, thank you. Po'boy wanted out of the office, but also Wally, guy who works on our house, over. And so then Po'boy was immediately terrified and regretted his choice to leave the office and ran and hid under the covers of the bed.01:26.62SeanGotcha.01:27.14AndrewIt's pretty funny and kind of adorable. Like when our cat wants to hide from something, he just hides under the covers and it's like the most obvious lump in the entire world. So it's a completely ineffective hiding place, but he feels safe because he can't see anything.01:42.68SeanLook, man, if I can't see you, you can't see me. That's how it works.01:45.72AndrewHe's an adorable, dumb little fuckhead and I appreciate him.01:46.52SeanThat's01:52.19Seanthe...01:53.48AndrewYeah. Yeah, yeah. Trying to get time on your calendar right now is tough.01:58.27Seanyeah Yeah, same. Me too. It's like you start the day with yesterday's to-do list, you have a bunch of meetings, and you end the day with a new compounded to-do list, and then02:11.16AndrewSo what's going on? I thought i thought you were like removing yourself from a lot of client work. And yeah, what are all these meetings?02:18.30Seanah so i am ish but i also am not because it's pre-blackhat crunch time and i really have like i think i need to be there like to help you just get things across the finish line we launched a site last week we just launched a site that today we launched a site like the week before we're another monthly sprint to launch like two more sites02:45.30SeanYeah. Plus every single client wants a brand audit because, you know, they work with us at the early stage. We built, we built them a brand. It works really well for the first phase and they all reach a point where like they need to advance it, which is fine. It's normal. It happens with every single client. They just all consolidated onto the same last couple of weeks.03:07.59AndrewInteresting.03:07.84SeanSo03:08.03AndrewSo you're actually doing a brand audit of your own branding work?03:11.43Seanyes.03:12.20AndrewHuh. That's kind of cool.03:13.24SeanYes. Yeah. Well, it's because like...03:18.53AndrewSort of seems like a racket, but...03:22.74SeanFair. Fair. I mean, it's not like we're charging for them. So it's part of the retainer.03:26.12AndrewWait, why are you not charging for them?03:27.78SeanIt's part of the retainer. It's part of...03:29.03AndrewOh, okay, okay, okay, okay.03:29.02SeanIt's, its you know...03:30.39Andrewokay03:30.35SeanYeah, yeah, yeah.03:30.90AndrewYeah, yeah, yeah.03:32.56SeanIt's like it's time to evolve.03:33.04AndrewYou're charging for them, but you're not charging separately for them.03:36.84SeanYeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.03:37.60AndrewOkay. Okay.03:38.75SeanSo it's like half a racket. No, it's, it's ah a you know, when you are in early stage company, you are asking for very specific things to get you up and running, right?03:48.30AndrewYeah.03:49.09Seanand And over, you know, a year or so as you grow, like, lore gets built about your company more meaning.03:56.03AndrewHmm.03:56.18SeanYour product changes, your content strategy changes, and all this sort of stuff. And, like, it at some point it evolves past that. what the branding that we did in the beginning can support and honestly what the branding they paid for can support, which is totally fine because it's like, you know, there's no reason that we start off and you pay us a bunch of money to do all this thinking about your brand for you to like possibly never even use it because you are still in that PMF stage, like finding PMF stage.04:09.70AndrewMm-hmm.04:25.49SeanBut yeah, a bunch of brand and and also competitors exist and the competitors copy you and it's like, and now, you know, At this point, we should just build invoices to some security companies because every time we do something, shows up on their site.04:38.04SeanI'm just like, dude.04:38.96AndrewDang. Shots fired.04:41.55SeanYeah, yeah, yeah.04:42.03AndrewYou to call names?04:43.42SeanNo, absolutely not. No, security companies, we love you all oh equally. and But if you would like someone to just do, if you like work from the source, you might just, you know, hit us up.04:54.89AndrewWe love the ones that pay us money more. I think that's fair to say.04:58.44SeanYeah, that's fair. That's fair. We do love the ones that pay us money more.05:03.82AndrewYou can buy our love.05:03.86SeanYeah.05:04.68AndrewYeah.05:05.48

Fresh from a techno festival, Andrew's planning an escape to Lion's Head National Park in Canada while working through therapy insights about procrastination. 🏕️ Plus he's thinking about how to reposition MetaMonster away from tools that might be seen as cheap. Meanwhile Sean's juggling multiple client launches and working on mapping the security operations of a bank to help other people on the Miscreants team understand what it's like to work in a security org. Also: Ferrari shots, cognitive distortions, and landing new clients!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:00:01.05Andrewnot much got a got a new haircut went to a rave this weekend not really a rave the movement festival the like big techno festival that happens in detroit every year was this weekend so uh we last year went for the first time got a one day ticket one day is all my old man old man ass can handle so00:04.76SeanYeah, what's fresh? How was that? Who did you see?00:14.70SeanCool.00:25.98SeanAre you a techno guy? Are you?00:27.81AndrewNo, not really. I like house better than techno, but Detroit is the birthplace of techno.00:28.71SeanOh, okay. Gotcha. I00:34.22AndrewSo yeah.00:35.31Seani didn't know that. And yeah also the birthplace of Eminem.00:38.87AndrewAnd i'm a I'm a Detroit guy. So big Detroit guy.00:40.85SeanYeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.00:44.76AndrewYeah, it was fun.00:45.52SeanYeah.00:46.53AndrewI could not tell you who we saw. I have no fucking clue what any of their names were.00:50.17SeanOkay.00:51.79Andrewi was just there vibing and dancing.00:54.88SeanCool. you Did you partake like many techno folks tend to?00:59.05AndrewNot this year. No.01:00.38SeanI see. I see.01:01.08AndrewNah, we were just... I had... I, you know, sipped on a few seltzers. Had a...01:06.13SeanNice.01:07.04AndrewHad a Ferrari shot before we left.01:09.49SeanWhat is a Ferrari shot?01:10.94AndrewA Ferrari shot is equal parts for Nett and Campari. For... Ari.01:16.49SeanCool. like01:17.37AndrewYeah. It's like...01:20.58SeanDo you like Frenet?01:20.71Andrewi feel... I don't know.01:21.50SeanAre you a Frenet person?01:24.71Andrewi01:25.07SeanOh. Interesting.01:25.68AndrewI want to be a Furnette person. i love Amari. And my cocktail nerd friends generally like Furnette. And it's a Furnette shot is called a bartender's handshake because it's apparently a big like industry thing where you're like, you know, start, start your shift or something with a shot of Furnette.01:35.35SeanInteresting.01:42.16SeanMm-hmm. Mm-hmm.01:46.36AndrewAnd so I feel like, like that just sounds so cool. Like a bartender's handshake. Like that sounds so cool. And like, I'm never going to be a real bartender, but I can at least learn to like for net.01:57.22AndrewI like it better.01:57.21SeanOh,01:59.49Andrewit it just, it can overpower things and tastes like toothpaste. So I like, I prefer it with other things. I really want to try the I found out the most popular cocktail in like Argentina is a for net and Coke.02:17.32Seanoh interesting.02:18.68AndrewSo yeah, it sounds really weird.02:18.85SeanNow want02:21.05AndrewI want to try it.02:22.31Seanyeah i hear uh i hear fernet was like popular in sf for a bit it's a big sf people drink yeah yeah i don't mind it it's not bad yeah i would like to try fernet and diet coke that feels yeah well fernet diet coke break with the the cigarette02:26.88AndrewI can see that. It seems like a SF hipster thing.02:39.81AndrewYeah. Yeah.02:44.25AndrewKind of like a Calimocho. Have you ever heard of that?02:48.67SeanNo, no, you know more about cocktails than I do.02:49.83AndrewCalimocho is like the... My friends in Spain told me it's like kind of a college kid drink, but it's red wine and Coke.03:02.87SeanYou know what's really good that people are going to think is this guy? Red wine and Sprite.03:07.24AndrewOh, yeah, yeah. They call that Tinto de Verano. Yeah.03:09.90SeanOh, no, none of my ideas are original.03:11.03AndrewYeah.03:12.70SeanI see.03:12.87AndrewYeah, red wine and either like some sort of citrus soda.03:13.06SeanOkay.03:16.34AndrewSo often it's like a sparkling lemonade or a Sprite or something like that.03:17.18SeanHmm.03:21.28AndrewIt's kind of like, you know, poor man's sangria. If you don't have like fruit and don't want to do a whole like put all the work into making a sangria, just have a Tinto de Verano.03:25.45SeanYeah.03:32.24SeanYeah. Nice.03:34.34AndrewWe drank a bunch of them on the Camino.03:34.38SeanCool. Speaking of the Camino, you're going on your next trip.03:41.14Andrewyeah uh if i can get this fucking newsletter out then i will be leaving to go up to canada for a three-day backpacking trip with maddie at lion's head national park it looks beautiful it's like cliffs that are stick out it's a peninsula that sticks out into lake huron these like big cliffs and crystal clear water03:50.95SeanNice.03:53.69SeanCool. Cool, cool.04:05.29AndrewBut the high is like 55 and it's supposed to be cloudy and like maybe rain a little bit. So little nervous, but really excited to be getting on trail.04:10.79SeanOkay.04:16.66AndrewI am like having a little bit of tech overload and04:21.55SeanYeah, it was just i I was just saying to JJ other day that like Andrew's going to go on a trip any one of these days. like It's been a while. He hasn't hasn't left to to go touch grass in a minute.04:34.22SeanYeah.04:35.01Andrewyeah i've been craving it i was gonna try while i was uh in between miscreants projects i was gonna just take off in the middle of the week one week but the weather just wasn't cooperating the trail i wanted to do the two times that i looked to like get ready to go it was gonna be rainy the whole time and i was like fuck that rainy and cold so04:45.46SeanNice.04:54.89SeanNice. Nice. Well, glad you glad you get to do it now.05:00.01AndrewYeah. One of my goals is five backpacking trips this year.05:00.58Seanhope it's05:03.05AndrewSo this is number one and we'll see if I can get all five.05:04.06Seancool. OK.05:09.80Se...

Andrew and Sean talk about hiring tools, positioning MetaMonster, and Andrew's struggles to increase his publishing velocity. Meanwhile, Sean is slammed with inbound after RSA, is putting project management systems in place for Margins, and just got a pool table!  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/Apply to Miscreants: https://tally.so/r/nrWOlNFor more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:01.27SeanWhat's up?00:02.35AndrewNot much, just digging through job applications for this senior product designer role.00:07.89SeanYeah. Yeah.00:09.34Andrewit00:09.45SeanHow's that going? Do you like it?00:10.30AndrewIt really makes me want to build an ATS.00:12.75SeanYeah.00:14.07Andrewi I looked at Home Run again, and00:15.97SeanUh-huh.00:20.47Andrewit's gone up to, like, their base price starts at, I think, $90 a month or something like that. and JJ has essentially built a, an Excel Google sheets, ATS, uh, which is solid.00:34.46AndrewIt's, it's not bad at all.00:34.71SeanMm-hmm. Mm-hmm.00:36.55AndrewI think the email automation stuff she's been trying to do isn't working yet. then I have spent a chunk of today trying to figure out how to run a script inside of Google sheets that'll,00:50.78Andrewintegrate with an AI detection API because so many of these applications are so clearly just copy and pasted from ChatGPT and not actual applications.01:00.49SeanI see. I see.01:02.97AndrewYeah.01:03.27SeanYou can use GPT for sheets.01:03.42AndrewWhich01:06.08SeanAnd then...01:07.03Andrewdo you think how how good is ChatGPT at detecting itself?01:12.38SeanI think if you give it a rubric, it it's good. Because, like...01:15.84AndrewI don't know if I know enough to give it a good rubric.01:18.86Seancan give you my, like... You know, it's not a rubric. It's just like, hey, generate this blog post. Don't use these words. Don't use this phrasing. Don't...01:27.51AndrewYeah, and you could try to kind of reverse that rubric.01:30.27SeanYeah, yeah.01:30.85AndrewYeah.01:31.58SeanGod, that's funny.01:33.39AndrewYeah. And, like, there's there's, like, a small part of me that is, like, well, you know, I don't...01:35.17SeanYeah.01:42.50AndrewI don't have a problem with you using ChatGPT to help you write your application. But if you're clearly just like, if it's 100% copy and pasted from ChatGPT, then I have no way of knowing if it's legit information or not, or if you're just completely bullshitting.01:53.80SeanYeah.01:58.15AndrewLike, I got several answers to the same question that seemed almost identical.01:58.74SeanYeah.02:04.19AndrewAnd I was like, hmm, okay, so this isn't a real life experience you had then probably.02:08.60SeanYeah, I bet. That's so funny. I bet there's like apps now also like apply with AI like one click and then it just generates that stuff.02:16.65AndrewOh, I'm sure there are. yeah Yeah, so I mean, I think part of it is...02:20.17SeanHow would you build an ATS differently? Let's build a bit sauce.02:27.31AndrewLike, I think it's an area where I would try to compete on price because ATS systems tend to be pretty fucking expensive. And so I think if you tried to be a fairly minimal, simple version that was at more of an entry level price, I think that's like step one.02:43.52AndrewNow, the shitty part is to build even a simple ATS. You're basically building a CRM, an email marketing system, and a form builder all in one. and like kind of a website builder too.02:54.26SeanYeah. Yeah.02:56.31AndrewSo it's it's not a simple product.02:59.09SeanHmm.02:59.43AndrewSo I totally understand why they're expensive. But I still think ah ah most of that is sunk cost, not like ongoing cost.03:10.24SeanYeah. Definitely03:10.80AndrewI don't think they're that expensive to operate. Just you know there's a high barrier to entry to build you the base features you need.03:14.24Seannot.03:20.98SeanHmm.03:22.20AndrewSo I think I'd do some of that. i think I would also, think it could be really interesting. Like I've always been interested in salary transparency and stuff like that.03:31.98AndrewSo I think it could be interesting to try to do some like, try to talk people into doing some data sharing around salaries and stuff like that.03:40.80SeanMm-hmm.03:41.87Andrewon both sides of the equation. i think it would be cool to build in, know, some, I remember when we, I know,03:52.68Andrewwhen we were trying to care about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and like learn about it, part of what people said you should do is like serve like conduct anonymous surveys to determine you know try to determine if there's what bias there is in your application process and like you know some people say you should hide names from applications and stuff like that and i yeah that kind of stuff04:25.09SeanYou could do a lessannoyingATS.com. Yeah.04:27.83AndrewYeah, like I think, and that kind of stuff was often hidden behind like really high enterprise prices.04:28.44Seancome04:33.54AndrewAnd so just making that stuff more widely available, offering good rubrics, like good default rubrics for like, here are good application questions. Like here's some templates you can choose from and here's a good rubric to like help you reduce bias in your process and doing some different stuff like that.04:49.85Seanyeah04:51.78Andrewthen just trying to make it balance that with also making it reasonably quick to eliminate people who clearly aren't a good fit and then like narrow your list down because those are the two kind of competing priorities for good hiring managers. is like On the one hand, you have a massive stack of applications to get through normally.05:11.51AndrewAnd on the other hand, you want to be respectful of people and like you you want to get through those in a reasonable amount of time while also giving people their due.05:15.57SeanMm-hmm. Mm-hmm.05:21.64AndrewAnd so trying to walk that balance with thoughtful tools.05:21.73Seanand05:24.68Seanyeah maybe like hard filters and soft filters as you're going through applicants it'd be cool like you i mean if it's cheaper it's better for smb and then the templates make a lot of sense because i mean hiring is hard your first hundred times i'm pretty sure especially because there's differ...

Whoops! Our last recording got botched halfway through and only Andrew's audio was saved. So we recapped what we talked about in the last podcast and got into some new stuff in today's episode. Sean is back from his busiest RSA yet and growing Miscreants like crazy! In fact, they're growing so fast that Andrew is hiring a full-time product designer to join the Miscreants team. Meanwhile Andrew is also rebuilding MetaMonster from the ground up (well, Austin is) and thinking about how to build products with AI at the core instead of just tacking it on. The guys talk about the Vercel AI SDK, the value of time in market when growing an agency, Sean's progress on his new Margins product, and more. 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:00:00:01.81AndrewYo, so funny reason that I was late to this podcast recording. I was distracted trying to write a job description for the miscreants product designer role that we're trying to fill.00:00:13.82Seanyeah.00:00:17.66SeanThat's true. You want to write the other ones, by the way? trying to hire like three more roles at this point. Yeah.00:00:24.94AndrewThat's nuts, man. Hey, actually, i was going to put in here.00:00:26.23SeanI'm00:00:28.46AndrewHow many people have you hired in the last year?00:00:31.76SeanI don't fucking know. I don't know, man. I can't.00:00:34.90AndrewIf you had to guess, like, give me give me a number.00:00:37.42SeanIn the past year,00:00:41.08Seanfive, six.00:00:42.96AndrewI guess six. So I'm just going to leave it as six.00:00:44.50SeanYeah. Okay. to fire Yeah, we've hired so many full-time.00:00:50.71AndrewOr should I say, like, we've grown the team by 50% or something like that?00:00:55.02SeanSure. Yeah, we've grown the team by 50%. It sounds way better.00:00:58.97AndrewYeah.00:00:58.92SeanWe've doubled in size. we're about to double the fucking team again at this point i think i like said on a call that jj heard where i was like yeah like we're trying to be like you know 25 30 people by the end of the year and she so yeah that was her reaction don't know00:01:10.57AndrewYeah.00:01:15.03AndrewI'm sorry. What?00:01:19.88AndrewI wonder why. i wonder why your COO would be is shocked to hear you want to triple it in size by the end of the year.00:01:27.88SeanYeah, yeah, but this was, you know, it's not triple in size. It's six times in size because just kind of said it00:01:36.66Seanlast year. ah home or or like the beginning. I think I said in the beginning of the year. i mean, I don't know. Inbound has been good. Inbound has continued to be really good.00:01:47.89SeanRSA was really good. So it just has kind of kept growing. and It was i was kind of said not in jest, but in hyperbole.00:01:59.66SeanIt was hyperbolic. I feel a little less hyperbolic at the moment.00:02:00.98AndrewYeah. I will say...00:02:06.94AndrewI will say always thought that like 20 to 30 people would be kind of the perfect size for an agency because at least for us, it was big enough that we could have enough clients to that.00:02:14.82SeanMm-hmm.00:02:22.91AndrewLike if we lost a client or two, it wouldn't be like 20% of our revenue, 30% of our revenue.00:02:27.42SeanYep.00:02:28.04AndrewLike it would be a smaller chunk. It would be,00:02:30.23SeanYeah.00:02:30.70AndrewYou know, we could have a good manageable number of clients. It was still small enough that you wouldn't have a whole lot of process or red tape. It would still be pretty flexible, pretty collaborative.00:02:40.12SeanYeah.00:02:41.74Andrewand And also big enough that, like, if you lose an employee, like if ah if an employee takes a new job, you weren't losing, like, you know, when we sold Crit, we were six full-time people, 10 including part-time.00:02:47.89SeanMm-hmm.00:02:53.71AndrewAnd so if we lost one person, like one full-time person, that was, you know,00:02:54.21SeanMm-hmm.00:02:58.47SeanIt hurts.00:02:59.71Andrew20% of our full-time workforce.00:03:01.87SeanYeah.00:03:03.66AndrewThat's brutal.00:03:05.33SeanYeah.00:03:06.87AndrewSo I do think that's a good size. Now, would you want to stop there? Because you are more ambitious than I am, probably.00:03:14.82SeanI am i am greed personified. Yeah. I mean, when when the years started, i like one of the exercises I did with JJ was that we sort of mapped out what a 20-5 to 30-person agency would look like.00:03:30.21AndrewYeah, I remember this.00:03:30.53Seanyou know with yeah yeah and Yeah, I think maybe I showed you as well that org chart.00:03:34.35AndrewYeah.00:03:36.49SeanI mean, I think agency-wise, I'd probably stop there. I'm saying probably, i don't know, give it like six more months, I'll let you know.00:03:46.79SeanI can't, i think i i I think I can't fathom like more.00:03:51.38AndrewRunning a 50-person agency or something.00:03:53.54SeanYeah, yeah, like that, like I can, I think at that point it's just, like, I00:03:54.31AndrewYeah.00:04:01.50Seani think, I mean the market is huge for sure.00:04:06.89SeanI think I would just, I think my shiny objectpreneurism would just want to do other, like even in that 30, right? There was still like two people were doing merch. other There was like a developer on a product and I think those things would grow.00:04:19.97SeanI think mysteries as a whole, I can see becoming larger and larger, but like pure client services, I don't know. I think it's, I think quality of work still matters and I still worry about getting too large in that way.00:04:31.97AndrewIt's definitely like possible to scale while maintaining quality, but it is fucking hard.00:04:36.95SeanYeah, I mean, we've won deals because people are unhappy with killer agencies because ultimately, you're large, even now, can't even now we can't like even now when a creator comes to us and they're like hey i only have like this much money to do it like like i have three thousand dollars to do something right it's like dude we can't like we can't take that but like at this point we'd rather just do it for you as a like here's a free creator program and like you know ultimately like you have to know that you're not going to get like00:04:55.63AndrewMm-hmm.00:05:11.23Seancreative director bends time on every single part of it, you're gonna get, it's gonna be a training project for ah junior. It's still gonna be go...

Andrew is in Atlanta visiting friends and continuing to think about how to best integrate more AI features into MetaMonster to make the product stickier. Sean had his first demo of Margins and... everything broke! But that's okay!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:00:00.93SeanThis is a new background. Where are you?00:07.44AndrewOh, you can tell how well my brain is working today. Good Lord.00:11.24SeanYeah.00:12.58Andrewi am staying with one of my college roommates in Atlanta. And after four years away from the South, my body has apparently completely forgotten how to function in a land of like pollen and pollinators. Every time I come to the South now, it's like the first three days I'm here.00:30.46AndrewMy nose is just like, fuck you, dude. So... Yeah, that's where I am. Check out my sweete my suite setup. I've got my suitcase with a couple books on it.00:38.71SeanAmazing.00:41.60SeanAmazing.00:42.00AndrewLittle, know, who needs a fancy stand-up desk when you've got a suitcase desk?00:46.59SeanYeah.00:49.28SeanYou can just record things. You can just do things.00:52.52AndrewYou know, don't have the fancy mic today.00:52.93SeanYeah.00:55.88SeanYep.00:56.28Andrewknow, the MacBook microphone is shockingly decent, maybe.01:03.40SeanYeah, your audio level is better than mine for what it's worth. So maybe should just swap. Maybe I should just... Yeah.01:11.52AndrewDude, it's all it's all an illusion. It's all just, like, stuff.01:14.81SeanExactly.01:16.03AndrewAnd you don't need the stuff to do things. You can just do the things without the stuff.01:21.45SeanYeah. You just record it your vlog and on an iPhone and put on the internet. You might get a couple hundred thousand subscribers that way.01:28.08AndrewWas it...01:29.24SeanThat's the Jackie Cho way.01:30.69AndrewI just heard the other day that... Dude, do you remember Call Me Maybe?01:36.79AndrewThe song? The, like, pop song?01:38.33SeanYeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right.01:40.12AndrewThat was recorded on a MacBook.01:43.03SeanWhoa.01:44.15AndrewBut yeah, that was recorded on a MacBook, like on iMovie.01:44.89SeanThat's sick. That's I didn't know that. but That's crazy.01:48.59AndrewIt was just like them holding a MacBook.01:51.86SeanI think have you heard Here With Me by David?01:58.63AndrewNo.02:00.87AndrewUh-huh.02:02.46SeanI think that guy did it on his like iPhone. With like an iPhone like digital audio workstation and just cut it up.02:10.33AndrewThat's sick.02:11.29SeanIt's pretty crazy.02:12.11AndrewThat's wild.02:12.22SeanI don't know. Kids these days, man.02:14.27AndrewThere really are no excuses. Yeah. yeah I think we might have a little bit of lag.02:18.70SeanYeah.02:20.30AndrewIt feels like we're lagging a little bit.02:22.62SeanOh, definitely. We definitely are lagging a little bit. Yeah.02:25.65AndrewOkay.02:26.21SeanOh, well, all right, if you're listening, we're sorry.02:26.53AndrewWell.02:29.21SeanWell, we'll do better.02:29.98AndrewYeah.02:30.48Seannot Not this week or next week. I'm traveling next week, so I will also have, I'll be on hotel Wi-Fi.02:34.68AndrewYeah. Also...02:39.24AndrewYeah. Zincaster's pretty good, though, at, like, cutting out pauses, so maybe there will be no lag to the user.02:40.21SeanYeah.02:45.18AndrewIt's just lag to us.02:47.08SeanMaybe, yeah.02:48.11AndrewUser, listener, what call this? Yeah. Okay.02:51.26SeanI don't know, people, friends.02:51.45AndrewAlright. What's going on with you? what's What's going on in Miscreants land?02:56.98SeanI don't know, man. Giant tax bill.03:00.15AndrewOh, yeah.03:01.44SeanThat's...03:01.85AndrewYeah. Sucks making money, huh?03:03.93SeanI know. It's the worst. i03:06.12Andrewthe03:06.64SeanLife is so much easier.03:06.85AndrewIt's so hard to be profitable.03:08.97SeanYeah. yeah Especially if all of our profits just went into last year's taxes. No, it's it's it's like...03:14.28Andrewnot all of your ta Not all of your profits went into last year's taxes.03:17.34SeanAll all of our profit this year so far are paying off the taxes from last year.03:24.24AndrewOkay, that's very different. This year so far is a quarter of the year.03:26.02SeanFor sure.03:28.38SeanFor sure. For sure. For sure. For sure. Yeah. and it's it's It's good. It's fine. We will just have more taxes to pay next year. And it'll just be this.03:36.53AndrewYeah.03:37.43SeanYeah.03:38.44AndrewOkay, wait.03:39.24AndrewControversial topic.03:40.69SeanYeah.03:41.17AndrewDo you pay estimated taxes?03:43.81SeanI would like to. hi03:46.39AndrewSo, no.03:46.59SeanYeah. I would like to. We don't.03:49.77AndrewI don't pay estimated taxes, and I don't currently have plans to start paying estimated taxes.03:55.40Seanwhy don't you have like a don't you get fined i'm not a cpa i don't okay yeah yeah03:56.97AndrewBecause... Yeah, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you pay a penalty if you don't pay estimated taxes, which kind of bullshit.04:08.09AndrewLike... Okay, government, I'm not gonna go there. I don't wanna be the anti-tax guy. I actually think it's good to pay your taxes. I want the government to have money and exist, and I want social services to exist and national parks to exist.04:21.30AndrewSo I don't wanna be the anti-tax guy.04:22.12Seanagreed04:24.51AndrewBut, you know, at the same time, as much as I want all of the national, you know, public services to exist, I also don't, like, love, like, giving the government an interest-free loan if I don't have to. Yeah.04:39.67SeanRight, or getting fined for it if you don't. For sure.04:42.19AndrewYeah, well, I'm fine with getting fined for it if I don't. that's i'm I mean, yeah I don't know. but But yeah, so basically my thought is the penalty that I pay is relatively small.04:54.75SeanYeah.04:55.56AndrewAnd I don't know what my income is going to be quarter...

Andrew and Sean have a bet to see who can write the best cold email copy for MetaMonster, and early results are in. Sean has a name and domain for his new product - Margins and is letting the Miscreants team handle the branding. 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:00:01.15SeanWhat up, what up, what up?00:02.64AndrewI got some stats for you.00:04.12SeanYeah, tell me. Hit me. but yeah We should probably give some context first.00:08.26AndrewAll right. So Thursday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, some night, there was a night last week when, I lured Sean into giving me a bunch of free consulting advice, in under the pretense of let's cowork and like work on things side by side.00:11.90SeanI don't know. I can't remember. One of the nights. Uh-huh.00:26.76AndrewAnd instead I just like for three hours was like, what do you think about this cold email idea? What do you think about this cold email idea?00:34.37SeanWe co-worked. We co-worked on your cold emails. You didn't lie to me.00:41.45AndrewFair, fair. I'll take it. I'll take it. So got some cold emails spun up. I knew this was something I wanted to do again now that the product was live. And it's early, early days, but i have, I've sent 200 emails.00:57.98AndrewAnd so I have some early results and01:00.84SeanDo we want to tell everyone what the five different emails were?01:05.39AndrewYeah, I narrowed it down to four after day one. I just canceled. There were two that were almost identical. And so I just killed one of them.01:12.61SeanOkay.01:13.75AndrewProbably shouldn't have, but like I'm incredibly impatient and no, no, it wasn't one of the ones that affects your bets.01:16.85SeanDoes it affect my bets? Oh, good, good, good. Sweet. That's what matters.01:22.88AndrewOkay.01:23.01SeanOkay, go.01:24.34AndrewYeah, yeah, yeah. So we've got four cold email templates. going these are meta monster cold email templates if that isn't blatantly obvious first one is just like classic sales email the uh the subject line is ai powered screaming frog and then it's just like hey i built this thing do you want to demo it i want to sell it to you classic sales uh sales pitch second one01:45.84SeanYep. Yep.01:52.92Andrewis almost the exact same, only instead of presenting it as a sales pitch, presenting it as, hey, I'm looking for feedback, which is true. i At this stage, I just want feedback and information, especially on our pricing, which I want to talk about later. Third one is one of your ideas that you pitched me, which is kind of like Try to write... i think your your pitch was try to write your cold email like you're writing a newsletter.02:25.14AndrewSo try to write it so that you're teaching the recipient something and then just also happen to be have to have this product that is connected to the thing you're teaching that you want but to try to sell.02:39.34AndrewAnd then the the fourth one was more of like a... Classic kind of growth hacky play, which is, hey, I want to interview you for our blog.02:55.21AndrewAnd so you and I placed a bet on this. Your bet, what did you bet?02:57.76SeanYep.02:59.95SeanSo I bet that the AI powered Screaming Frog, the first one, the traditional sales email would have the most opens because not because I believe in those, but because specifically AI powered Screaming Frog alternative is just a great subject header.03:04.78AndrewYep.03:07.11AndrewYep.03:09.83AndrewYeah.03:16.15Seanand then i also bet that the one that would bring you the most value quote unquote whatever that however we want to define that and is the newsletter one value isn't like you know someone actually demos most qualified leads basically you bet uh that the interview one would have the most opens and replies but the most valuable responses would come from the feedback yeah the feedback letter and whoever wins the other person to buy that the other person the up03:23.39AndrewYes. Yeah.03:37.69AndrewYes.03:44.46SeanThe loser has to buy the winner on Chick-fil-A.03:46.44AndrewYep.03:47.24SeanSo the stakes are high.03:47.32AndrewAll right. are you03:48.38SeanIt depends.03:48.87Andrewwhen are When are we cutting off the results, by the way? What's...03:51.67SeanWhat are the results that?03:54.65AndrewSo, currently, in fourth place in open rates, and tied for lowest response rate, I think.04:03.73Andrewoh i There's an asterisk on response rates that I'll explain later.04:06.58SeanOK.04:09.17AndrewNewsletter.04:10.39SeanOh, damn.04:11.29AndrewBut all of these have gotten crazy good open rates for cold email.04:16.19SeanOK.04:16.80AndrewThat is the lowest open rate at a 42% open rate so far.04:20.22SeanWhat's the highest?04:21.26AndrewHighest, I'm sorry to say, is the interview. Is the interview request at a 62% open rate.04:27.67Seanpretty good.04:30.75Andrew62 is pretty damn good. No replies on that one, though. No replies, no clicks that I can tell. no No interest coming out of that. So my guess is people are, like, opening it and then going, this is some no-name company that's trying to, you know, sell me something.04:45.44SeanRight, right.04:46.35Andrewi don't care about this.04:48.41SeanOkay.04:48.85AndrewThat would be my guess. I have booked two demos.04:57.58SeanOkay.04:58.43AndrewAnd have gotten direct feedback on our pricing from a third person who may still has expressed interest in booking a third demo.05:06.39SeanAnd this is from what? Which email?05:08.61AndrewSo here's the thing. One of them I don't know.05:12.15SeanOkay.05:12.74AndrewWhich sounds dumb. It's like, how could you not know? It seems like instantly missed the tracking. And I have had a... damn hard time figuring out i know the email but i've had a damn hard time figuring out which version they got sent uh in instantly software i think maybe if i paid for their crm version i'd be able to like track all of the the activity in more detail but i'm not paying for their crm right now and so it's like it yeah05:24.81SeanYeah.05:30.07SeanGotcha.05:36.24SeanProbably, yeah.05:40.51Seanand Unless, unless Incidentally wants to sponsor us, because we're both users.05:45.04AndrewTrue.05:45.50SeanYeah.05:46.06AndrewSo all I see ri...

Andrew just launched MetaMonster! Andrew and Sean dig into how the launch is going so far (spoiler alert: not great), whether the product is overpriced, and what to try next. Then the guys talk about the demo for Sean's new product and what to name it. Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00:00.75SeanWelcome back. How is robotics?00:00:02.92AndrewRobotics was good and bad. Bad good? Good bad?00:00:07.35SeanOkay.00:00:08.00AndrewSo we got our butts kicked. Like, plain out, got our butts kicked.00:00:10.85SeanOh.00:00:12.28AndrewWe got there. The robots were insanely good, all of them. We played well. Like, there's this crazy advanced stats thing in robotics.00:00:22.25AndrewSome probably, like, 20-year-old or something.00:00:22.12SeanYeah.00:00:26.42Andrewbuilt a website called StatBotics that pulls the live data from... All the live data is published through the site called the Blue Alliance from every match.00:00:36.61AndrewAnd he runs that through some sort of equation, statistical...00:00:40.43SeanCool.00:00:41.28Andrewthingy and creates he calls it EPA estimated points added which is supposed to because like robots always compete in teams of three and so EPA is like how much of your total score did you actually contribute to the the team estimated points added so anyway this is a long rambly way to say that like throughout the competition so we were00:00:47.18SeanOK.00:00:56.35SeanOh, what what does what does EPA stand for?00:01:00.84SeanOK, OK, gotcha. OK.00:01:09.00AndrewThere were 40 robots in on our field. 160 robots at the competition total, by the way. Four fields going simultaneously all right next to each other. So it's like pure chaos. It's wild. It's really fun and interesting and crazy.00:01:22.28SeanYeah. Sweet. sweet00:01:23.97AndrewWe go into the the weekend ranked top 20 in EPA, like maybe 17 or something like that. And our goal was to end up like around that range at the end of qualifiers like if we had ended up around that range gotten picked for playoffs we would have been a lock for worlds uh our epa stayed around that range like we were at one point as high as like 11 we finished 22 in epa and then like fluctuated kind of between that range so we were playing well our driver was driving well00:02:00.39AndrewBut we just got our butts kicked in the actual matches. And EPA is definitely not perfect. It's not everything. like you know It has a bunch of obvious flaws. And so like you know just because our EPA was good didn't mean we were doing well. but But like we had some hiccups here and there.00:02:12.63SeanYeah.00:02:15.77AndrewBut like objectively, I think the team, like the kids drove well. I think they played well. But we ended up ranked out 40th. so we just got whooped we hit we won one match the entire weekend00:02:25.28SeanDamn.00:02:30.61SeanBut out of the top 40. Yeah.00:02:34.09Andrewuh well top 160 like top 40 we there were 40 in our field 160 robots there total and most of the robots never play each other so you don't really know who the top 40 are00:02:37.13Seanokay00:02:46.33SeanI just meant like of the state.00:02:48.19Seancause00:02:48.29AndrewYeah.00:02:48.68Seanbecause00:02:49.17AndrewWe were top 160. sixty Again, what I'm saying is like, 160 the state.00:02:51.79SeanYeah.00:02:54.51Seangod i Got it, got it, got it.00:02:55.25Andrewyeah00:02:55.52SeanMakes sense.00:02:57.41AndrewAnd so like that part sucked. like It sucked to lose a bunch of matches. it really You could tell it was like wearing on the kids. After a while, we had a little bit of drama that we had to work through with the team. like some you know you know it It was sort of getting to people, and it was causing some conflict and tension and stuff.00:03:15.63AndrewBut the good side of it is we worked through all of that. We got our first win. We celebrated the heck out of that.00:03:25.17AndrewCelebrated the heck out of the seniors, you know, just, you know, making it to states and their senior season and all of that. And then really cool on Saturday.00:03:35.58AndrewSo that we didn't get picked for playoffs. so we just had Saturday to chill, which was honestly really nice and fun. And like, just got to spend a lot of time. Like the team got spend a lot of time bonding and hanging out and watching robots do cool robot shit.00:03:49.53Andrewand then we were one of four teams who won an award called the rising all-stars award which is given to a team that is like has grown drastically and is on an upward trajectory which is exactly what we are and so that was really cool it was it was really cool to get that and so like00:03:55.32SeanSick. I love it.00:04:03.57Seanlove it00:04:10.31AndrewFinal rankings in the state, which again are imperfect in the same way that stats are imperfect and all this stuff, but final ranking in the state, we finished 91st in the state out of like 600 teams. So still objectively an incredible season, drastically overperformed where we thought we were going to be,00:04:29.92AndrewThe bar like just keeps getting raised every season. you know i think clearly our goal you know our goal for this season was to get to States. And now our goal for next season is pretty clearly get to Worlds.00:04:43.00AndrewWhich is just a crazy thing to say. Because like four years ago, 2020 season, this team was down to one kid.00:04:44.94SeanYeah, absolutely.00:04:51.22AndrewAnd like barely getting a robot a functioning robot to competitions. Yeah.00:04:55.84SeanYeah.00:04:56.24AndrewAnd now we're like, no, we think we can realistically compete for Worlds within the next few years.00:05:03.07SeanI mean, that's awesome. Like, I hope everyone is super proud of all all of that. So that's pretty sweet.00:05:08.54AndrewYeah, I think they are. like Once they got over the initial losing streak, and then like we got the win, and then we got the award, and I think that the team was able to like feel really proud and really excited.00:05:44.08SeanNice.00:05:20.89AndrewAnd yeah, a bunch of the kids are like excited for the offseason. They want to take on offseason projects, and they're like really excited for next season. Some kids who we might have lost because they were going to other schools want to come back and be part of the team, even if they go to another school. So like vibes were really good, even if we objectively got our butts kicked.00:05:44.94SeanWell, nice. Good job. Good job. Good stuff.00:05:47.71An...

In this episode Sean is finally ready to reveal the new product Miscreants is building! Meanwhile Andrew's robotics team is getting dangerously close to qualifying for the World Championships, and the guys debate marketing new products. This episode was originally supposed to go out a couple weeks ago, but we're playing with our publishing schedule a bit. Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00:01.03SeanHow you doing?00:00:01.98AndrewI'm good.00:00:02.68SeanHappy Wednesday.00:00:03.55AndrewHappy Wednesday. Things are hectic. My entire life is robotics and also trying to launch a product on Monday. But yeah, I'm kind of delighted that I don't have, no offense, but I'm delighted I don't have any miscreants clients right now.00:00:09.88SeanHell yeah.00:00:16.49SeanFor yet, you know I got two product inbounds in like one day.00:00:21.53AndrewOh, I knew about one. I didn't know about both.00:00:24.39Seani got another Well, i actually, technically, Osuja's got another.00:00:28.53AndrewSo we're up to three. Great.00:00:29.56SeanYeah.00:00:29.65AndrewCool. Cool.00:00:30.24Seanyeah00:00:30.41AndrewCool.00:00:31.14SeanI can just not close them.00:00:31.22AndrewOkay.00:00:32.71SeanYou know?00:00:33.75AndrewI mean, I do like being able to pay my bills.00:00:35.38SeanCash.00:00:37.32AndrewSo yeah, I probably will tell them I can't start on anything until May though. All right, good.00:00:44.47SeanThat's fine. That's what we're telling everyone right now. We're all inbound that comes in. We're swamped for RSA at the moment. We can kick things off and start like loosely, but it's like hands-on keyboard stuff.00:00:57.38SeanEveryone's tied up.00:00:58.19AndrewNice. When is RSA?00:00:59.99SeanApril 28th. 26th is when Gyside starts.00:01:01.61AndrewOkay, cool.00:01:01.81SeanYep.00:01:03.19AndrewSo the reason that I can't start anything until May is, one, we're launching Metamonster, the beta, on Monday, and I need to like ramp all of our marketing back up, like start up Google Ads, start doing cold outreach, all that stuff again.00:01:17.34SeanHell00:01:18.56AndrewBut two... There is now a non-zero percent chance that my robotics team makes it to Worlds and has to raise $10,000 and figure out how to get 15 high schoolers to Houston in like two weeks.00:01:28.86Seanhe yeah. That's awesome. 10K. Okay.00:01:32.02AndrewYeah, I don't actually know what it will cost. That's just like kind of a number I'm pulling out of my ass. But like we need to pay for like 15 flights, hotel rooms, and to transport a robot across the country.00:01:36.40Seanokay00:01:43.57AndrewYeah.00:01:44.78Seanjust have them take the pieces apart, put it in a suitcase, and rebuild it. And then you...00:01:51.04AndrewYeah, that is that sounds like an idea from someone who has never touched a first robotics robot in their life.00:01:56.15SeanI've done Legos and failed at the at the tech whatever it's called, the kinetic Legos.00:01:57.97AndrewYeah, same thing. Same thing.00:02:03.14AndrewThe, like, robo-LEGO thing?00:02:04.71SeanYeah, yeah, yeah.00:02:05.70AndrewYeah.00:02:05.81SeanI tried once was over.00:02:07.62AndrewYeah, so...00:02:07.79Seanwent back. Yeah.00:02:09.30Andrewwe crushed our second competition again and what that means this is i'll try not to get too into the weeds because first robotics is so incredibly convoluted but basically we have racked up 112 district ranking points between our first two competitions you need about 70 to qualify for the state championships00:02:11.88SeanCongrats.00:02:21.21SeanNice. Overqualified.00:02:29.05Seannice00:02:34.30Andrewwhich, so we have officially qualified for states. I leave at 6.30 tomorrow morning to go to the state championship for the first time ever.00:02:37.49Seanoverqualified00:02:43.78AndrewOur team has never been. And then district rank points are also how you qualify for worlds. So generally speaking, if you get 150 state rank points, then you qualify for worlds.00:02:58.55AndrewAnd points at states count for triple what normal points count for so if we finish kind of middle of the road and make it into playoffs and like win a playoff match we will almost definitely qualify for worlds Which would be absolutely bonkers because then we, as I mentioned, have to raise a bunch of money, figure out how to get a bunch of kids to Houston, and compete against the best robots in the world as a tiny scrappy team that has never even been to States before.00:03:33.77AndrewAnd it gets crazier. I've been doing some research. I don't think a Detroit public school from like our school district has ever made it to Worlds.00:03:46.99AndrewThere's only one team from DHDC that's ever made it. And I think they might have been like a private team, a private school or a charter school or something. There are a ton of teams from the Detroit metro area who make it, but they're all in the suburbs.00:04:00.99AndrewI think we'd be the first Detroit public school from, at least from our school district, to ever make it to Worlds if this happens.00:04:08.93Seanthis is This is like a real like Mr. Shushita moment.00:04:11.87AndrewIt's crazy.00:04:12.81SeanThis is awesome. This is cool.00:04:14.19AndrewIt's like total Cinderella story vibes.00:04:16.66SeanYeah. was going to work.00:04:17.56AndrewNow, if we make it to Worlds, we are going to get obliterated.00:04:18.25SeanGlee.00:04:21.47Andrewwe are like I've been watching videos of some of the top robots, and they're insane.00:04:25.80Seanyeah00:04:28.59AndrewThere's a robot from San Francisco that is like, it can put up three or four X the points that we can put up in a given match by itself.00:04:37.99SeanGotcha.00:04:38.84AndrewIt's stupid.00:04:39.98SeanI see.00:04:40.96AndrewBut...00:04:40.98SeanWhat makes their robots so good? I see.00:04:43.63AndrewSo actually really, really fucking clever strategy.00:04:48.36Seani see00:04:49.24AndrewSo you have to know a little bit about the game to understand this, but basically like one of the core mechanisms of the game is, you get these like foot-long PVC pipes, and you have to deliver them to a station in the middle of the field and place them on a rung of this ...

Andrew and Sean are trying different AI tools to vibe code/write more. Andrew's considering other features for the MetaMonster roadmap and his next steps with consulting.Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

In this episode Sean recaps his first ever trip to MicroConf, spoiler: he loved it. Meanwhile Andrew has a new favorite brick and mortar business, and has a date for the MetaMonster launch! Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00.78SeanWhat's up man? Why are you late? Just00:02.85Andrewbut gonna call me out like that00:06.12Seanhelping segue.00:09.45Andrewso i just went to what might be my new favorite like old school business ever and i'm so excited about it it knife sharpening00:16.40SeanOkay.00:22.54SeanOkay. Say more.00:24.27AndrewOkay, so there's this this little business I found on Google google Maps. I was like looking for knife sharpening locally. like There are a bunch of services. My knives have gotten dull as hell.00:35.90AndrewI cook a lot. I need to take better care of them. I was like, I need to find someone to sharpen them. And there's all these services online that like you pay like $60 or something and they nail you a thing. But I just hate dealing with snail mail.00:47.67AndrewAnd so one day I was like, all right, let me just search Google Maps and see if there's a local business. And I found this company called Bunnell Brothers Cutlery Inc. or something like that.00:58.03AndrewLike classic old school business name. And they had. 4.9 stars on google like all of the reviews were like holy shit these guys are amazing it costs like three dollars to sharpen a knife they do it in five minutes the guy is so so friendly will answer all your questions and so i was like okay i gotta go to this place and it's a little out of the way so it took me a while to get there but this morning i put it on my to-do list i'm like i'm finally going to go and get our knives sharpened And I show up, it's this like, warehousey squat looking building, it was hard to find the door like the front door is painted over.01:34.21AndrewAnd there's just a sign that says like, all deliveries go to side door. And so I'm like, It was hard to even figure out how to get in. I walk in and like when I first opened the door, I just see like a bunch of people at like grinders, like three or four people at grinders. And it feels like I'm stepping into a warehouse and I'm like, am I like allowed to come in here?01:55.69AndrewBut then I saw like the counter and like two people were immediately like friendly and like, yeah, come on in. You're in the right place. And the I mean, just amazing.02:05.84AndrewHe sharpened my knives in like under five minutes, not even like under two minutes. It cost me three dollars a knife. He took card.02:16.93AndrewHe I asked him like three or four questions and he was super happy to chat with me. I was like, I was like, you know, how often should I be using a honing rod? He's like, every time I'm like, I have a cheap shitty honing rod. Is that okay?02:27.91AndrewYeah, that's fine. i was like admiring some like really nice expensive knives he had and he did, instead of trying to like push a sale on me, he was like, honestly, for the money, yours are just as good.02:39.10AndrewLike, I love the knives you've got. And I was like, man, this guy is awesome. He told me, like, he's I was like, how often should I, like, get them resharpened? He's like, I tell people, like, twice a year, like, Christmas and Fourth of July. That way you've got them for the holidays. But, like, you know, just whenever you feel like they're starting to get dull and, like, the honing isn't isn't doing its job.02:58.00AndrewAnd so, like, this is just classic old school business. And... I imagine most of their business is actually sharpening knives for local restaurants and like this, like, you know, personal knife sharpening service.03:13.15AndrewLike they can't make much money on it. They're doing it's $3 a knife. They can't be making much money off of this.03:18.57SeanTwice a year, yeah.03:19.84AndrewYeah, but I feel like, you know, either they make enough or they just don't care and it's like kind of a public service that they'll just do this for people just because.03:30.70AndrewAnd so I was just like blown away. Like this, it just, it was one of those like businesses that just made me feel good. It felt like community.03:39.12SeanIs this now your favorite, this is now your favorite and store, like, shop in Michigan?03:42.87AndrewAbsolutely. Favorite, favorite, like, like brick and mortar, like,03:44.62SeanOkay.03:48.01SeanDo we do classes?03:49.84AndrewI don't think so. like they Because they they sharpen things on like grind like machines. like They've got grinders.03:56.09SeanI see.03:56.68AndrewAnd so that's why it takes them no time at all. They just go, choop, choop. So yeah, I don't think. And again, like they're not trying to be modern.04:08.14AndrewThey're not trying to offer classes or anything like that.04:10.56SeanYeah.04:10.74Andrewthey're just They do what they do. like All of the knives for like the businesses were stacked in these like wooden boxes that looked like they were 50 years old and just had written in sharpie like the name of the business and whatnot so yeah i just i love this and i want them to continue to exist forever04:28.58SeanI love it.04:33.75SeanYeah, I mean, sick. no Now I want to come to Michigan and get my knife sharpened. I could take it away TSA.04:41.74AndrewThere's got to be a million places in New York that are that are very similar vibes.04:44.91SeanYeah, they're like $10 a knife. Williams-Sonoma. I think people go there.04:49.64AndrewYeah, but that's not the same as going to Bunnell Brothers.04:50.05SeanI don't know any lik...

Andrew and Sean talk about the high robotics team Andrew mentors, choosing to delay the MetaMonster launch, hiring updates from Miscreants, and muse on the pros and cons of adding a custom prompts feature to MetaMonster. Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/Stacked cookbook: https://www.amazon.com/Stacked-Perfect-Sandwich-Owen-Han/dp/0063330652For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00:00.85SeanYo, yo.00:00:02.06AndrewYo!00:00:03.42SeanHow was...00:00:03.58AndrewHow are you?00:00:04.54SeanI'm good. I'm tired. I'm good. I'm gonna hop in on a flight to New Orleans. New Orleans.00:00:13.79AndrewNolens?00:00:13.76SeanNext. New Orleans in 48 hours.00:00:17.25AndrewSick. I am so fucking jealous you're going to microconf before me, but I'll make it there one of these days. It'll happen.00:00:24.46SeanNext year.00:00:24.73AndrewAlthough, I guess if I keep doing robotics and it's always during robotics season, then maybe I won't ever make it.00:00:29.86SeanYeah, that's...00:00:30.05AndrewI could go to the Europe one.00:00:31.77SeanYeah. yeah00:00:32.79AndrewThat would make no sense. That would be so much more expensive.00:00:35.73Seanand But don't they have like... Oh, so Rob Walling. Rob Walling. Rob Walling. But...00:00:41.58AndrewHey, Rob.00:00:42.78SeanHey, Rob. Don't they have a... Do they only have a Europe and Americas one? For some reason I felt like they00:00:50.68AndrewYeah, I think they just have two.00:00:51.62SeanOkay. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool.00:00:54.88AndrewTwo per year.00:00:56.38SeanI'm excited. and00:01:00.18SeanI don't know what to expect. I feel like this is the only time I've been to a conference that wasn't a security conference.00:01:01.88AndrewMm-hmm.00:01:05.52SeanSo I'm like a little bit nervous about it.00:01:06.35AndrewWhoa, yeah.00:01:08.86SeanYeah.00:01:09.38AndrewYou're not going trying to get work. You're just trying to meet people and learn and have a good time.00:01:12.04SeanYeah.00:01:16.25SeanI know. That feels so wrong. Yeah,00:01:18.70AndrewYeah, they've that's like not Sean at all. how Sean going somewhere and not trying to make money?00:01:22.02Seanhu00:01:24.87AndrewWhat? What?00:01:27.47Seanyeah I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Make friends is crazy.00:01:35.75Seanyeah and Yeah, no, I, and then, and then, and then I'm going to RSA.00:01:41.10Seanin well one month right after that so i'll be back to my normal self afterwards00:01:47.39AndrewGotcha. How many conferences are you going to be at this year?00:01:54.19Seanlike three just rsa black hat i mean you have to if if like i count rsa and b-sides as one conference and oh shit yeah you're right oh no what going i think i think i might00:01:51.71AndrewTotal. By the end of the year, you think?00:01:56.20AndrewNo.00:02:00.94AndrewWeren't you just at ShmooCon and like... Did you go DistrictCon?00:02:10.09Seantry to sneak into ChinaCon.00:02:12.74AndrewOh.00:02:13.42SeanSmall conference for like to talk about like like Chinese APTs and all that stuff.00:02:13.82AndrewWhat's ChinaCon?00:02:20.27AndrewHmm, neat.00:02:20.38SeanAnyway, yeah.00:02:23.04AndrewAre you gonna go to any of the, we have like multiple clients who are throwing their own conferences this year. Are you gonna go to any of those?00:02:28.75SeanOh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You are reminding me of all the travel that is... You know, I don't think about these things until, like... I didn't book my travel... I didn't book my plane ticket for MicroConf until two nights ago.00:02:41.70SeanBecause...00:02:43.10AndrewIt sounds like someone who has disposable income.00:02:43.84SeanYeah,00:02:47.87AndrewSomeone who has has a business card they can put things on.00:02:48.36Seanthat's weird.00:02:51.51Andrewand00:02:51.75SeanThat's true. That's true. The $100 difference doesn't make a that make good significant difference, I guess. Well, after taxes are involved.00:02:57.64AndrewYeah.00:02:59.44SeanSpeaking of which, my taxes are horrendous this year. Oh, yeah.00:03:02.01AndrewOh, fuck. Mine are going to be terrible, too, because I didn't pay any like estimated taxes last year.00:03:06.33SeanYeah. yeah00:03:09.78AndrewDo you have a good accountant? and00:03:12.42Seanwe just got a new accountant or we stopped working with our previous one because like well he stopped working with us i think we outgrew sort of all the services...

Andrew is slowly crawling towards a beta release for MetaMonster, he's almost done with the signup/checkout flow and then has a few more things he wants to check off the list before launch. Sean has been playing with Lovable again, and has built a proof of concept for a Webflow changelog he wants for Miscreants (and is thinking about selling). The guys get a little technical talking through the challenges with Supabase edge functions and building with AI. Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/Stacked cookbook: https://www.amazon.com/Stacked-Perfect-Sandwich-Owen-Han/dp/0063330652For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:01.01SeanHow you doing?00:02.26AndrewI'm good, man.00:03.31SeanHow's South Carolina?00:04.58AndrewSouth Carolina was great. Had...00:09.01Andrewbut Sorry.00:10.00Seanwe'll start recording again.00:11.53SeanNo, keep it rolling, keep it rolling, keep going.00:13.18AndrewYou don't want to leave that? You don't want to leave my my hacking?00:15.76SeanHmm.00:18.03AndrewYeah. Yeah, picked up a little bit of, i don't know, crud. not Not even a cold necessarily, just like got super congested for a few days. But had a great time with my family.00:29.79AndrewTook my parents to Korean barbecue for the first time ever. They'd never never tried Korean barbecue and they loved it.00:32.22SeanWhoa.00:36.68AndrewI made some butter chicken for my mom's birthday for her and some of her friends.00:39.84SeanNice. Happy birthday your mom. What is your...00:43.39AndrewMy mom got a new kitten.00:45.25SeanWhoa.00:46.19AndrewSo that was fun.00:46.48SeanBig updates. Uh-huh.00:47.60Andrewher name's Her name's Ruthie.00:49.57SeanNice.00:50.30AndrewFull name RBG.00:51.66Seanare Okay.00:52.46AndrewShe's my mom's resistance kitten.00:54.48SeanVery good. i love it. I love it.00:57.66AndrewYeah. Yeah, things are good. i Cancelled last week's podcast because i was trying to get some work done on client project that we just we just shipped.01:11.63AndrewCongrats to the Dreadnought team. Their website's now live.01:14.42SeanAbsolutely.01:14.58AndrewSuper cool to see. it wasn't It absolutely was not that I was procrastinating on my promise to finish the onboarding flow for Metamonster.01:21.95SeanRight. Right. Right. Convenient story.01:24.77AndrewYeah, that had nothing to do with it.01:26.24SeanYour mom's birthday kitten. i don't believe any of those things. Yeah. Just kidding. Happy birthday to your mom. I don't know her name, but okay.01:37.38AndrewAllison. Allison had a great birthday.01:39.39SeanHappy birthday, Allison. Cool. Or Miss Askins. Miss Askins. Miss Askins.01:45.00AndrewAllison's fine. We are we are adults.01:49.54SeanAnd you might be an adult. You can make butter chicken. I can't. Cool. Cool. But that that was a fun, was that was a fun, hectic launch to get everything live. But02:03.35AndrewIt was. Yarek is a beast, man.02:05.70SeanI know.02:05.75AndrewYarek, like, just...02:06.73SeanYeah.02:08.61AndrewThere were so many things that he just took and ran with. And, like, the, the like, image... generator app that he built to apply like one of the the effects that we created for the website like without anyone asking him to build it was sick the client loves that uh yeah he's he's a beast i i feel i am a little worried that he hates me because i was constantly like hey all right can we change this can we change that like got another request for you but but no he's awesome02:17.91SeanYeah. Yeah.02:26.24Seanyeah02:41.42SeanYeah, he's, yeah. yeah. um do think And the guy's a part-time professor.02:48.22AndrewAnd he's a part-time professor.02:49.76SeanThat's crazy. He's out here teaching kids design things.02:50.68AndrewYeah.02:54.93SeanYeah, yeah, he's pretty good. We're very lucky to have him, so. Cool. health so So, okay. So we skipped. It's just for context.03:03.72SeanFor people that missed the last episode, two weeks ago on our weekly episode podcast, Andrew promised that for the next podcast, he would have his onboarding flow for his SaaS app done.03:16.04SeanIt has been, we missed an episode, so technically this is the new episode. so so is it see it? are like can we see it03:24.48AndrewDefine done.03:28.78Seanyou find time I don't know. I don't know what you had in mind.03:33.06AndrewOkay, so I would say the the we're over 50% of the way there.03:40.07SeanCan I reset my password? Because I forgot it. and he can't like03:42.15AndrewNo, no, that's that's one of the things that I still need to do.03:43.06Seangosh03:46.98AndrewSo you can sign up for an account. As part of the signup flow, you have to pick...

Andrew just made a life changing sandwich and is finally using Cursor (and it's living up to the hype). Meanwhile Sean has been working on cutting SaaS costs for Miscreants and gets nostalgic about Flask (the Python framework). Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/Stacked cookbook: https://www.amazon.com/Stacked-Perfect-Sandwich-Owen-Han/dp/0063330652For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:01.41SeanOh, I'm like that for me. Oh, there it is. Okay.00:03.89AndrewHey, there we are.00:03.96SeanHow you doing?00:05.100AndrewI'm good.00:06.84SeanGood to see.00:06.90AndrewDude, I just made the best fucking sandwich.00:09.78SeanOkay. about00:12.87Andrewuh so we we just bought a cookbook this guy he's like a sandwich influencer i don't know he makes he makes youtube videos and like clips something Han i think and his whole thing is like sandwiches like he he's made like 300 sandwiches or something so he finally came out with a cookbook i love a good sandwich bought the cookbook First recipe, pretty fucking good.00:39.11AndrewIt was like a so homemade pesto on sourdough with like a chili crisp mayo and turkey parmesan crisps where you like fry parmesan until it becomes like a crunchy wheel of cheese, red onion, banana pepper.00:51.55SeanOkay.01:00.70AndrewReally, really good. Like maybe the best sandwich I've had in the last at least six months.01:10.24Seanokay I've never heard of this guy in my life, but yeah, yeah, I thought of him.01:13.81AndrewDid you find him? What's his what's his name?01:16.50SeanOwen Han. Owen hahn on Han, the sandwich king.01:17.52AndrewOh, Owen Han.01:22.24SeanInteresting.01:23.23AndrewWhat a great niche, right?01:23.43SeanInteresting.01:25.22AndrewLike I want to be the sandwich king.01:25.77SeanYeah.01:27.09AndrewLike that's such a fun place to live in and play in.01:29.79SeanYeah, yeah, yeah. You just gotta be like a chiseled Asian guy.01:33.15AndrewYeah, I mean, he is he is jacked and very attractive.01:33.90SeanGreat hair.01:36.98SeanYeah.01:38.15AndrewBut yeah, I mean, he just makes videos of himself making sandwiches and eating them, which is like. I'm sure it has its own ups and downs and pressure and whatnot, but as content creation niches go, it seems like a pretty decent one.01:55.09SeanI don't know. I feel like you might run out of sandwiches. I mean, I guess not, but...02:01.08SeanI don't know. I mean... What am I to say? I don't know shit about content creation.02:08.27AndrewYeah, what do you do when when making sandwiches is no longer fulfilling for you?02:09.84SeanIt just...02:11.79AndrewYou've got to got elevate your game somehow.02:14.06SeanYeah. It's only filling, not fulfilling. I don't know. Switch the wraps. There we go.02:21.23AndrewWhat's going on with to you?02:21.23Seanyeah take over another um um well speaking of food i've gotten really into liquid death i've probably drank at least 50 worth of liquid death in like the past week yeah multiple in no no the flavored ones the flavored yeah there's like tea there's like some that have tea but they're like low sugar so um02:33.05AndrewGod damn. Yeah. It's just, you know, you can get that stuff out of the tap in your kitchen, right? Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Uh02:47.01SeanI got like a tall boy here that's like green tea. made like a so flavored soda sparkling water, which is like two grams of sugar. They're not very good to be honest with you. The other ones are better.02:54.95AndrewYeah.02:55.69SeanThere's like a lime seltzer one. That's really good.02:58.05AndrewUnfortunately, sugar is like part of what makes things taste good. So when you do the low sugar stuff, it just doesn't taste as good usually.03:04.24SeanOh, I think it doesn't taste good because, I think it actually, they lie about it or so they're not, they're not, they don't lie about it. They're, they're. being intellectually dishonest about it.03:15.29SeanThey say two grams of sugar and then a fuck ton of Stevia.03:17.90Andrewyeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.03:18.42Seanbut oh03:20.44AndrewI noticed that I've been drinking some of the, the fair life protein shakes.03:21.68Seanyeah03:25.61AndrewAnd I was at first, I was like, holy fuck, how do they get 42 grams of protein into this thing and make it not taste like butt?03:31.39SeanRight.03:33.99SeanRight.03:34.41Andrewand then afterwards I was like, I know that aftertaste.03:38.16SeanI see.03:38.31AndrewSo they're like, they're yeah, they're doing the same thing.03:39.74SeanMicroplastics. Nice.03:41.03AndrewOh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, it's like number one microplastic thing or whatever.03:42.49SeanYeah. Yeah.03:45.59AndrewIt has more microplastics ...