Andrew Wonders How Fast Is Too Fast, And Sean’s Cold And Stressed In LA Small Efforts

1:02:16

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: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/ For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ .…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
Sean goes to MicroConf 54:30

hace 14 días54:30

54:30

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: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/ For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:00.78 Sean What's up man? Why are you late? Just 00:02.85 Andrew but gonna call me out like that 00:06.12 Sean helping segue. 00:09.45 Andrew so i just went to what might be my new favorite like old school business ever and i'm so excited about it it knife sharpening 00:16.40 Sean Okay. 00:22.54 Sean Okay. Say more. 00:24.27 Andrew Okay, 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. 00:35.90 Andrew I 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. 00:47.67 Andrew And 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. 00:58.03 Andrew Like 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. 01:34.21 Andrew And 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? 01:55.69 Andrew But 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. 02:05.84 Andrew He sharpened my knives in like under five minutes, not even like under two minutes. It cost me three dollars a knife. He took card. 02:16.93 Andrew He 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? 02:27.91 Andrew Yeah, 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. 02:39.10 Andrew Like, 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. 02:58.00 Andrew And 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. 03:13.15 Andrew Like 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. 03:18.57 Sean Twice a year, yeah. 03:19.84 Andrew Yeah, 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. 03:30.70 Andrew And 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. 03:39.12 Sean Is this now your favorite, this is now your favorite and store, like, shop in Michigan? 03:42.87 Andrew Absolutely. Favorite, favorite, like, like brick and mortar, like, 03:44.62 Sean Okay. 03:48.01 Sean Do we do classes? 03:49.84 Andrew I don't think so. like they Because they they sharpen things on like grind like machines. like They've got grinders. 03:56.09 Sean I see. 03:56.68 Andrew And 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. 04:08.14 Andrew They're not trying to offer classes or anything like that. 04:10.56 Sean Yeah. 04:10.74 Andrew they'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 forever 04:28.58 Sean I love it. 04:33.75 Sean Yeah, I mean, sick. no Now I want to come to Michigan and get my knife sharpened. I could take it away TSA. 04:41.74 Andrew There's got to be a million places in New York that are that are very similar vibes. 04:44.91 Sean Yeah, they're like $10 a knife. Williams-Sonoma. I think people go there. 04:49.64 Andrew Yeah, but that's not the same as going to Bunnell Brothers. 04:50.05 Sean I don't know any lik...…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
Choosing to delay the launch 1:09:07

hace 27 días1:09:07

1:09:07

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: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/ Stacked cookbook: https://www.amazon.com/Stacked-Perfect-Sandwich-Owen-Han/dp/0063330652 For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:00:00.85 Sean Yo, yo. 00:00:02.06 Andrew Yo! 00:00:03.42 Sean How was... 00:00:03.58 Andrew How are you? 00:00:04.54 Sean I'm good. I'm tired. I'm good. I'm gonna hop in on a flight to New Orleans. New Orleans. 00:00:13.79 Andrew Nolens? 00:00:13.76 Sean Next. New Orleans in 48 hours. 00:00:17.25 Andrew Sick. 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. 00:00:24.46 Sean Next year. 00:00:24.73 Andrew Although, I guess if I keep doing robotics and it's always during robotics season, then maybe I won't ever make it. 00:00:29.86 Sean Yeah, that's... 00:00:30.05 Andrew I could go to the Europe one. 00:00:31.77 Sean Yeah. yeah 00:00:32.79 Andrew That would make no sense. That would be so much more expensive. 00:00:35.73 Sean and But don't they have like... Oh, so Rob Walling. Rob Walling. Rob Walling. But... 00:00:41.58 Andrew Hey, Rob. 00:00:42.78 Sean Hey, Rob. Don't they have a... Do they only have a Europe and Americas one? For some reason I felt like they 00:00:50.68 Andrew Yeah, I think they just have two. 00:00:51.62 Sean Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. 00:00:54.88 Andrew Two per year. 00:00:56.38 Sean I'm excited. and 00:01:00.18 Sean I 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. 00:01:01.88 Andrew Mm-hmm. 00:01:05.52 Sean So I'm like a little bit nervous about it. 00:01:06.35 Andrew Whoa, yeah. 00:01:08.86 Sean Yeah. 00:01:09.38 Andrew You're not going trying to get work. You're just trying to meet people and learn and have a good time. 00:01:12.04 Sean Yeah. 00:01:16.25 Sean I know. That feels so wrong. Yeah, 00:01:18.70 Andrew Yeah, they've that's like not Sean at all. how Sean going somewhere and not trying to make money? 00:01:22.02 Sean hu 00:01:24.87 Andrew What? What? 00:01:27.47 Sean yeah I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Make friends is crazy. 00:01:35.75 Sean yeah and Yeah, no, I, and then, and then, and then I'm going to RSA. 00:01:41.10 Sean in well one month right after that so i'll be back to my normal self afterwards 00:01:47.39 Andrew Gotcha. How many conferences are you going to be at this year? 00:01:54.19 Sean like 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 might 00:01:51.71 Andrew Total. By the end of the year, you think? 00:01:56.20 Andrew No. 00:02:00.94 Andrew Weren't you just at ShmooCon and like... Did you go DistrictCon? 00:02:10.09 Sean try to sneak into ChinaCon. 00:02:12.74 Andrew Oh. 00:02:13.42 Sean Small conference for like to talk about like like Chinese APTs and all that stuff. 00:02:13.82 Andrew What's ChinaCon? 00:02:20.27 Andrew Hmm, neat. 00:02:20.38 Sean Anyway, yeah. 00:02:23.04 Andrew Are 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? 00:02:28.75 Sean Oh, 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. 00:02:41.70 Sean Because... 00:02:43.10 Andrew It sounds like someone who has disposable income. 00:02:43.84 Sean Yeah, 00:02:47.87 Andrew Someone who has has a business card they can put things on. 00:02:48.36 Sean that's weird. 00:02:51.51 Andrew and 00:02:51.75 Sean That's true. That's true. The $100 difference doesn't make a that make good significant difference, I guess. Well, after taxes are involved. 00:02:57.64 Andrew Yeah. 00:02:59.44 Sean Speaking of which, my taxes are horrendous this year. Oh, yeah. 00:03:02.01 Andrew Oh, fuck. Mine are going to be terrible, too, because I didn't pay any like estimated taxes last year. 00:03:06.33 Sean Yeah. yeah 00:03:09.78 Andrew Do you have a good accountant? and 00:03:12.42 Sean we 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...…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
Sean built a new product 41:19

hace 6 weeks41:19

41:19

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: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/ Stacked cookbook: https://www.amazon.com/Stacked-Perfect-Sandwich-Owen-Han/dp/0063330652 For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:01.01 Sean How you doing? 00:02.26 Andrew I'm good, man. 00:03.31 Sean How's South Carolina? 00:04.58 Andrew South Carolina was great. Had... 00:09.01 Andrew but Sorry. 00:10.00 Sean we'll start recording again. 00:11.53 Sean No, keep it rolling, keep it rolling, keep going. 00:13.18 Andrew You don't want to leave that? You don't want to leave my my hacking? 00:15.76 Sean Hmm. 00:18.03 Andrew Yeah. 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. 00:29.79 Andrew Took my parents to Korean barbecue for the first time ever. They'd never never tried Korean barbecue and they loved it. 00:32.22 Sean Whoa. 00:36.68 Andrew I made some butter chicken for my mom's birthday for her and some of her friends. 00:39.84 Sean Nice. Happy birthday your mom. What is your... 00:43.39 Andrew My mom got a new kitten. 00:45.25 Sean Whoa. 00:46.19 Andrew So that was fun. 00:46.48 Sean Big updates. Uh-huh. 00:47.60 Andrew her name's Her name's Ruthie. 00:49.57 Sean Nice. 00:50.30 Andrew Full name RBG. 00:51.66 Sean are Okay. 00:52.46 Andrew She's my mom's resistance kitten. 00:54.48 Sean Very good. i love it. I love it. 00:57.66 Andrew Yeah. 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. 01:11.63 Andrew Congrats to the Dreadnought team. Their website's now live. 01:14.42 Sean Absolutely. 01:14.58 Andrew Super cool to see. it wasn't It absolutely was not that I was procrastinating on my promise to finish the onboarding flow for Metamonster. 01:21.95 Sean Right. Right. Right. Convenient story. 01:24.77 Andrew Yeah, that had nothing to do with it. 01:26.24 Sean Your 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. 01:37.38 Andrew Allison. Allison had a great birthday. 01:39.39 Sean Happy birthday, Allison. Cool. Or Miss Askins. Miss Askins. Miss Askins. 01:45.00 Andrew Allison's fine. We are we are adults. 01:49.54 Sean And 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. But 02:03.35 Andrew It was. Yarek is a beast, man. 02:05.70 Sean I know. 02:05.75 Andrew Yarek, like, just... 02:06.73 Sean Yeah. 02:08.61 Andrew There 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 awesome 02:17.91 Sean Yeah. Yeah. 02:26.24 Sean yeah 02:41.42 Sean Yeah, he's, yeah. yeah. um do think And the guy's a part-time professor. 02:48.22 Andrew And he's a part-time professor. 02:49.76 Sean That's crazy. He's out here teaching kids design things. 02:50.68 Andrew Yeah. 02:54.93 Sean Yeah, 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. 03:03.72 Sean For 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. 03:16.04 Sean It has been, we missed an episode, so technically this is the new episode. so so is it see it? are like can we see it 03:24.48 Andrew Define done. 03:28.78 Sean you find time I don't know. I don't know what you had in mind. 03:33.06 Andrew Okay, so I would say the the we're over 50% of the way there. 03:40.07 Sean Can I reset my password? Because I forgot it. and he can't like 03:42.15 Andrew No, no, that's that's one of the things that I still need to do. 03:43.06 Sean gosh 03:46.98 Andrew So you can sign up for an account. As part of the signup flow, you have to pick...…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
Life changing sandwiches 35:15

hace 8 weeks35:15

35:15

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: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/ Stacked cookbook: https://www.amazon.com/Stacked-Perfect-Sandwich-Owen-Han/dp/0063330652 For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:01.41 Sean Oh, I'm like that for me. Oh, there it is. Okay. 00:03.89 Andrew Hey, there we are. 00:03.96 Sean How you doing? 00:05.100 Andrew I'm good. 00:06.84 Sean Good to see. 00:06.90 Andrew Dude, I just made the best fucking sandwich. 00:09.78 Sean Okay. about 00:12.87 Andrew uh 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. 00:39.11 Andrew It 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. 00:51.55 Sean Okay. 01:00.70 Andrew Really, really good. Like maybe the best sandwich I've had in the last at least six months. 01:10.24 Sean okay I've never heard of this guy in my life, but yeah, yeah, I thought of him. 01:13.81 Andrew Did you find him? What's his what's his name? 01:16.50 Sean Owen Han. Owen hahn on Han, the sandwich king. 01:17.52 Andrew Oh, Owen Han. 01:22.24 Sean Interesting. 01:23.23 Andrew What a great niche, right? 01:23.43 Sean Interesting. 01:25.22 Andrew Like I want to be the sandwich king. 01:25.77 Sean Yeah. 01:27.09 Andrew Like that's such a fun place to live in and play in. 01:29.79 Sean Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just gotta be like a chiseled Asian guy. 01:33.15 Andrew Yeah, I mean, he is he is jacked and very attractive. 01:33.90 Sean Great hair. 01:36.98 Sean Yeah. 01:38.15 Andrew But 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. 01:55.09 Sean I don't know. I feel like you might run out of sandwiches. I mean, I guess not, but... 02:01.08 Sean I don't know. I mean... What am I to say? I don't know shit about content creation. 02:08.27 Andrew Yeah, what do you do when when making sandwiches is no longer fulfilling for you? 02:09.84 Sean It just... 02:11.79 Andrew You've got to got elevate your game somehow. 02:14.06 Sean Yeah. It's only filling, not fulfilling. I don't know. Switch the wraps. There we go. 02:21.23 Andrew What's going on with to you? 02:21.23 Sean yeah 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 um 02:33.05 Andrew God damn. Yeah. It's just, you know, you can get that stuff out of the tap in your kitchen, right? Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Uh 02:47.01 Sean I 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. 02:54.95 Andrew Yeah. 02:55.69 Sean There's like a lime seltzer one. That's really good. 02:58.05 Andrew Unfortunately, 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. 03:04.24 Sean Oh, 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. 03:15.29 Sean They say two grams of sugar and then a fuck ton of Stevia. 03:17.90 Andrew yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 03:18.42 Sean but oh 03:20.44 Andrew I noticed that I've been drinking some of the, the fair life protein shakes. 03:21.68 Sean yeah 03:25.61 Andrew And 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? 03:31.39 Sean Right. 03:33.99 Sean Right. 03:34.41 Andrew and then afterwards I was like, I know that aftertaste. 03:38.16 Sean I see. 03:38.31 Andrew So they're like, they're yeah, they're doing the same thing. 03:39.74 Sean Microplastics. Nice. 03:41.03 Andrew Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, it's like number one microplastic thing or whatever. 03:42.49 Sean Yeah. Yeah. 03:45.59 Andrew It has more microplastics ...…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
Sean's building a SaaS! 54:15

hace 10 weeks54:15

54:15

In this episode Andrew talks about his recent struggles with ADHD and feeling like MetaMonster is moving too slowly. Meanwhile, Sean is planning to build a new SaaS product within Miscreants. The guys talk about the challenges of maintaining focus on a new product while running an agency, and how to set up the project for the best chance of success. Sean gets deeply uncomfortable, it's great! Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/ For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:00.79 Sean Do you play Starcraft? Have you played Starcraft? 00:03.15 Andrew No, I've never played Starcraft. I'm not a big gamer. 00:04.71 Sean and 00:06.24 Andrew Like the most time I've ever spent on video games, like my top games are like Pokemon, like Crystal. 00:13.03 Sean That's true. You're like an actual sports like healthy touch grass person. I forget that. 00:17.74 Andrew i I'm not an there I'm a watch sports and then touch grass in like nerdy hiking ways, not like Boy Scout touch grass. 00:27.01 Sean Yeah, but I'm like, ah ah I'm like, a you know, watch eSports and touch Minecraft grass sometimes, every guy. 00:34.57 Andrew Why do you ask about Starcraft? 00:35.44 Sean I've been I may have gotten really into stuff. It's been like two days, but I may have spent a lot of hours into Starcraft over the weekend. But it's because, well, first of all, it's really interesting because like, 00:48.14 Sean I see how it's like a groundwork for a lot of other games that have been really bad at and I see the difference between people who are good at like played Starcraft and then we're good at other games like League of Legends versus not. More importantly, it's because my brain has been on like like agents, agent systems, Starcraft is like RTS where you manage a bunch of little tiny things and that move around the map. 01:06.11 Andrew Huh. 01:08.75 Sean and And like, so for some reason, my brain has that connection. 01:11.48 Andrew Yeah. 01:11.58 Sean Oh, so it's because I've always been really bad at it. And like my best, one of my but best friends is like, was top 200 in the US. So, it's, it's not that impressive. 01:19.07 Andrew whoa Whoa. 01:21.89 Sean I'm i'm pretty sure it, I think it's like, you know, top 200 snapshot in time, never went pro. 01:22.08 Andrew Oh. 01:26.65 Sean Oh, so it's in the US. So he's Korean, but. 01:28.07 Andrew I mean, I mean, it's so impressive. Like why you gotta, why you gotta hate on your friend? Like your friend sounds, that's cool. 01:33.85 Sean that's what we do okay okay fine fine fine he's pretty good he's pretty good at it anyway he's been rolling me constantly it's but maybe I'm just salty that he's been fucking destroyed like cool 01:42.52 Andrew I played Civ three for a while. Is that like similar vibes where you like, you send all your little people to go do things and you have to constantly like be like, okay, do this. 01:50.93 Sean yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah 01:52.07 Andrew Now do this. Now do this. Now you, you guys build this and you guys build this and okay. Cool. Yeah. I could get hooked on some, some Civ three back in the day. 02:02.67 Sean Nice, nice. Yeah, some Age of Empires, some Fred Alert. 02:06.05 Andrew Yeah, I never got beyond Civ III. 02:06.19 Sean and um Okay. 02:08.67 Andrew Again. 02:08.70 Sean Alright, alright. I mean, I need discovered football. That was my weekend. um um Amongst like some other random things, but how about you? How you doing? 02:18.77 Andrew I'm all right, man. i I am feeling a little stressed because I feel like the last couple of weeks, we just have not made much progress on MetaMonster at all. 02:29.67 Sean Hmm. 02:31.04 Andrew So there's a handful of of things at play here. Austin was trying to buy a house. Yeah, which just sort of consumes your life while you're doing it. 02:36.98 Sean Oh, sick. 02:41.38 Andrew And it all happened like way faster than he was expecting. 02:41.66 Sean Sure. 02:44.48 Sean sure 02:45.51 Andrew It ended up falling through, like they decided to pass on it. 02:44.87 Sean Sure. 02:47.47 Andrew So he's he's not buying the house, but he was going through the motions. 02:48.03 Sean Okay. 02:53.13 Andrew And I think it was just eating up all of his like attention as it would. 02:58.84 Sean right 03:00.29 Andrew So that was going on. And then I've talked about robotic season. The build season of robotic season like takes up a lot of my free time. like you know, one to two weeknights and all day Saturday basically are spent at robotics and that eats up a lot of time. we've been having to fight with our landlord ah like getting our heater worked on. He keeps saying there's not a problem. We try to tell him there's a problem. We have been fighting with him on that. and then I just think for the past like two or three months, I've been in a season of like 03:42.79 Andrew higher ADHD, like my ADHD feels like it is has been harder to manage for the past couple months. And so I have had more days where I'm just like, 03:55.63 Andrew staring at a screen, trying to get started, trying to get over that initial hurdle, and then just like not getting anywhere with my day, other than like to get the most urgent things done. 04:08.02 Andrew Client work is great at like kind of forcing you to get over that ADHD hurdle, because there are deadlines. 04:12.14 Sean For sure. 04:13.37 Andrew And so there's like that added pressure. So my client work, I'm i'm getting done. My MetaMonster work, not so much. And so like the result is that I feel like I'm just crawling on the marketing side. And then, yeah, Austin has also been been busy the last couple weeks, so we haven't gotten, and we're just like dealing with some crawler issues too. trying to We've made the decision to switch to a paid crawler service, but like we're trying to get a couple features out before we make that switch, because we don't know how long that switch is going to take. and so 04:50.04 Andrew i just i I'm feeling a little discouraged. I'm feeling a little like we're just moving more slowly than I would like. 04:58.08 Sean Yeah, i mean we missed our first episode in a long time last week. 05:01.06 Andrew yeah Yeah. Also, my cat got into the basement and hid under a pile of insulation in the crawl space. So I had to spend like two hours one afternoon like tearing apart the house, finding him. So that kind of derailed derailed my day last week too. 05:17.58 Sean Yeah, yeah. Oh, Paul is okay, which is good. 05:18.37 Andrew so But boy is fine. But boy is totally fine. I was pretty pissed off at him, but he's cats are curious. 05:21.66 Sean Yeah. 05:26.21 Andrew And if you leave a...…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
When should you charge your first customers? 41:07

hace 12 weeks41:07

41:07

In this episode, Sean's Shmoocon trip got spicy 🌶️ 🥵 and Andrew is riding the high of a great prospect call for MetaMonster. Sean gives feedback on the experience of using MetaMonster, and Andrew debates when (and how) to start charging early customers. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/ Worth Driving: https://worthdriving.com/ For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:00.38 Sean How's your poop? 00:01.58 Andrew Oh, fuck you. yeah 00:05.86 Sean I'm sorry, we can cut this out. 00:06.93 Andrew No, no, no, it's all good. Everybody poops, man. I didn't actually poop this time, but I do poop. 00:10.21 Sean yeah oh I hope so. 00:13.46 Andrew Poops are great. 00:17.43 Andrew Poops are great. Well, I that was not expecting that. Okay. 00:22.77 Sean Sorry, sorry, how's robotics? 00:26.27 Andrew Robotics is great. Yeah, we're I think two weeks into the season. And this is going to mean nothing to anybody who hasn't been involved with first robotics, but we're making a big switch from tank drive to swerve drive this year and from time based to command based robot programming. 00:46.76 Andrew So. 00:46.34 Sean Whoa. 00:47.88 Andrew Yeah, pretty cool. Pretty cool. Tank-based is kind of what it sounds like. you know If you imagine how a tank moves, it's like two tracks moving at the same time. um And so it's simple, but it's also like not very precise. Whereas swerve drive, you have four wheels that can all move independently, and so they can and they can rotate. So you can move forward, backwards, left, right. 01:14.66 Sean Hmm. 01:15.53 Andrew diagonal you know you become a queen instead of a ah ah rook and it's uh does that metaphor make sense it's nerdy as fuck but it makes sense 01:27.02 Sean Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it does, it does. It was just not, it was just not the metaphor. Like, it just took me a second. and I was like, I didn't, my brain did not go to chess. I was like, what is it? 01:42.87 Andrew And then, yeah, but the the flip side is it's just way more complicated. So Swerve Drive, you have because you have you go from like four motors that are basically doing the same thing you have to control and to eight motors that can all operate independently. And there's a lot of like tuning and. 02:04.02 Andrew PID controllers, which are this like math thing that you use to like set a location on within like robotics. So you have to tune like your PID controllers and set your like encoder offsets and just get everything be very precise about everything. And then it's also like strongly encouraged that you use command based code which is like a little things are a little more like obfuscated away from you versus like in timer based you're like there's a timer running throughout a match and you're just constantly getting 02:41.44 Andrew hitting the same function over and over again. And then in command-based, it's a little more abstracted. And so it can be like just a tiny bit trickier to debug things. So we've just like we have taken a big step up in complexity of our electronics and programming. And guess who's the electronics and programming mentor on the team? 03:02.00 Sean Austin. 03:03.27 Andrew yeah 03:05.38 Sean You, you. 03:05.70 Andrew I wish. Dude, I wish Austin was on the team. 03:06.88 Sean That'd be crazy. 03:07.90 Andrew That would be a blast. 03:09.98 Sean That'd be the coolest robot there. That'd be cheating for the kids. 03:14.81 Andrew Yeah. But yeah, it's been super fun. And I you know finished up workday and then went and spent two and a half hours at the robotics center yesterday and spent that whole time trying to tune our surf drive. And it is still not doing what I want it to do. So I'll be going back tomorrow night. 03:35.90 Sean How many kids do you have to work with? Like just on your team? 03:38.99 Andrew Yeah, so our team, the first year I did it, we had three kids. The like most competitive teams often have 40 or 50 kids. so And they often have tens of thousands, if not six figures of funding. 03:48.64 Sean Whoa. 03:53.94 Andrew And we had our first year like two grand. So that gives you an idea of like scale. This year, we're up to, I think, 15 kids. 04:00.80 Sean Yeah. 04:06.77 Andrew We've got a handful of eighth graders who were having them build a separate robot so that they can get a as much hands-on experience as possible. 04:15.39 Andrew then we have a couple of seniors and like a junior who were who are super involved. And so I've got one senior who is interested really interested in programming and electronics. 04:28.12 Andrew And so usually he and I are working together with a random eighth grader. 04:33.22 Sean Nice. 04:34.05 Andrew Yeah. 04:34.64 Sean Nice. 04:35.16 Andrew Yeah, it's fun. 04:35.57 Sean Cool. 04:36.45 Andrew It's cool. Also, our team's all like Hispanic, and like half of them don't speak English. Well, not half. yeah This year, we've only got a couple who aren't very comfortable speaking English. 04:48.20 Andrew But like everyone on the team speaks Spanish, a couple of them like prefer to speak Spanish over English. And so yeah. 04:56.65 Sean Sweet. 04:56.81 Andrew I get to try to practice my Spanish, and they get to make fun of me for how bad my Spanish is. 05:00.37 Sean Sweet. 05:02.81 Sean cool nice nice i was thinking about going back...…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
Sean's first impressions of MetaMonster 42:07

hace 13 weeks42:07

42:07

Andrew and Sean are back for Season 3!! Andrew's onboarding his first users to MetaMonster, and as alpha user #1 Sean has lots of thoughts. Meanwhile Sean actually took some time off??? And he used it to start writing. The guys talk MetaMonster, product design, and personal branding. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/ Worth Driving: https://worthdriving.com/ For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:00.98 Sean I'll lie down for a second. Happy New Year. 00:02.47 Andrew Yep. 00:03.08 Sean How you doing? 00:03.53 Andrew ah Perfect. No, that's not the perfect metaphor. 00:06.47 Sean ahhu 00:07.40 Andrew This isn't going to be a year of lag. This is going to be a year of getting shit done and moving fast. 00:09.32 Sean Hell yeah. Yeah. 00:12.99 Andrew Yeah. 00:13.56 Sean Who's in three, baby? 00:14.79 Andrew Season three. Oh, are we going to start a new season? 00:18.12 Sean I'm going to, I call it any season. Did you see me create the show, delete the show and recreate it and slack? Yeah. 00:25.17 Andrew No, I miss that. 00:25.14 Sean Yeah. It is not season two ah episode It is season three, episode one, 2025. 00:30.50 Andrew Love it. 00:32.13 Sean Um, how you doing? 00:32.18 Andrew Fuck yeah. I'm good, man. 00:33.85 Sean How's your. Yeah. 00:35.55 Andrew My holiday was great. It was super, super chill. We stayed here in Detroit, um just... hung out with family and friends and relaxed through a kind of a quirk. 00:48.82 Andrew Maddie's little sister got COVID a few days before Christmas. So we had to delay Christmas and do like kind of a second Christmas. 00:55.36 Sean Okay. 00:55.52 Andrew And so on Christmas day, we were just home, just the two of us with the cats. And we were like, oh shit, we really like this. 01:00.74 Sean Sweet. 01:05.02 Andrew Like don't get me wrong, love family, love friends, wanna see them as much as possible. But there's something really nice about just have just being you and your partner on Christmas morning, like drinking mimosas, being lazy, not getting out of bed right away, eating some some yummy pastries. 01:13.30 Sean Hell yeah. 01:25.46 Andrew um We unwrapped some things for the cats and like a couple of things for each other and it's just super chill. It was really nice. 01:32.65 Sean Nice. Sweet. 01:33.39 Andrew Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then the other thing from this break was I just found myself like for the first time in recent memory, wanting to work. 01:36.36 Sean Sweet. 01:44.30 Andrew Like I didn't want to take more than a week off because no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. 01:44.50 Sean Hell yeah. You're becoming me. I like it. and like I'm rubbing off on you. 01:51.84 Andrew I just like, I'm feeling drawn to work right now and it's a season. It'll pass. Um, I'm, I know that I'm okay with that, but. But yeah, I'm feeling really hyped about Meta Monster. I really want to get going on it, do more with it. 02:06.89 Andrew um get it off the ground. So I'm feeling really excited. And um small update there, this week, as you well know, we started to bring on our first outside users. 02:18.15 Sean Mhm. 02:20.94 Andrew So not, we're calling, I'm thinking of this as like a friends and family round of alpha testing. 02:27.01 Sean Hell yeah. 02:27.54 Andrew So it's not a, these aren't, potential customers really. they're They're people who we just trust to get in and start finding bugs and edge cases and giving us good honest feedback on how the product feels. um While we wrap up a couple of last features that I think are really important for giving our first potential customers the real full experience. Like right now, bulk generation doesn't work. So you have to generate things one at a time. And so to me, we're not fulfilling the promise of MetaMonster until we have bulk generation done. 03:02.96 Andrew um But yeah, we've we've started to onboard our first couple of users, ah friends and family users. I think I created three accounts yesterday. I'll hopefully create two or three more today. um And yeah, so what do you think? You've been in the product now. 03:20.06 Sean Yeah, I mean, you know, as alpha user number one, um just so everyone's aware, alpha user number one, ah president yeah president of MetaMonster fan club. 03:23.71 Andrew Yeah. Got to give you your props. I'm sorry for not not mentioning that. 03:33.07 Sean ah I like it. I mean, I like it. It's buggy. It's toss you a bug early on. those I mean, I don't think anything's like, like, I think core functionality, everything's working great. um It's like more very basic, like UX things. 03:53.81 Sean Good found value out of it pretty quickly. um I ran worth driving through it. I honestly ran some client sites through it as well um You know, I think like ah I mean worth driving is pretty large now too But even like some client sites like it's an easy way to spot like oh shit that meta tag is actually wrong We should just go switch it 04:02.22 Andrew Love to hear that. Hmm. 04:14.46 Sean um And yeah, i mean instead of like arbitrarily writing meta descriptions and and whatever, I think it's nice to... I actually didn't mind that I couldn't do bulk generation, only because um I only cared about clicking through the ones that I cared about. um That being said though, I do kind of wish it was sorted a little bit better. um 04:40.62 Andrew oo O...…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
Prompt engineering and reflecting on 2024 1:05:03

hace 16 weeks1:05:03

1:05:03

In this episode, Andrew talks about his recent deep dive on prompt engineering and the way the AI product landscape is shaking out. Sean talks about his recent trip to Philly for a cybersecurity marketing conference. Then the guys reflect on 2024 and their goals for 2025. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/ Worth Driving: https://worthdriving.com/ For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:00:00.00 Sean two, one, happy birthday Austin, yay. 00:00:02.11 Andrew Happy birthday, Austin! 00:00:05.29 Sean How was your recording last week? How'd it go? 00:00:09.74 Andrew I thought it went really well. um guess you tell me, have you had a chance to listen to it yet? 00:00:13.54 Sean Yeah, my train from Pennsylvania, from Philadelphia to Virginia last week got very delayed, so. 00:00:20.11 Andrew Oh no, I'm sorry. 00:00:21.26 Sean said in the terminal and listened to it. was good. It was, yeah, thought he was super insightful. 00:00:28.35 Andrew Yeah, Alex was awesome. 00:00:28.63 Sean I feel like he's beginning, you were a little, what is it like? like like starstruck felt like i was like wow didn't see me like this so before it was good i thought he gave you like really good feedback i thought but i mean there were things i learned from it being someone who's never looked at the stack in the brick stuff and yeah i think it was it was helpful and then i saw the new meta monster update today or that you sent down i was like wow it is way better than before 00:00:36.26 Andrew Oh, that's funny. Yeah. 00:00:57.50 Sean and 00:00:59.34 Andrew Well, that's good. At least I'm taking what I'm being taught and internalizing it and not it's not just going in one ear and out the other. 00:01:05.30 Sean Yeah. 00:01:07.62 Sean Right, right. 00:01:08.30 Sean Like our podcasts usually do. 00:01:09.72 Andrew Yeah, I tried to also do some of the pulling the slingshot back, as Alex says, some of the anticipation building with the actual release of the podcast episode. So tried to like hype that up. Austin said it worked on him. I'm not sure it made a big difference on our analytics, I think. Yeah. 00:01:33.43 Andrew You know, I think we had. You know, it's performing better than our average podcast episode, but I think that's as much about like Alex retweeting it as it is anything else. So, you know. 00:01:46.91 Sean Well, the real magic is, let's see how many people isn't today is right. So hello, new listeners. Austin is Andrew's co-founder, or I'm going to last name. 00:01:51.97 Andrew Hey, that'd be cool. 00:01:57.22 Andrew Yep. Austin's my co-founder on MetaMonster. He's the one responsible for making the product look great and function. Well, I'm just the guy who talks about it and is trying to talk about it better, trying to talk about it more good. 00:02:13.12 Sean Yeah, hell yeah. 00:02:14.59 Andrew Yeah. How was Philly? 00:02:16.99 Sean It was good. I went to, so I went to cybersecurity marketing, the cyber marketing conference or cybersecurity marketing conference held by the cybersecurity marketing society. was good. A lot of, mean, no, this is the third time actually. 00:02:27.82 Andrew Is this their first time doing an in-person conference? Oh, wow. I thought they were all virtual before. 00:02:34.02 Sean The society, sorry, this is their, this is their third conference. They've done a bunch of like in-person events. Yeah. The society's grown. There's like 500 people at this conference. 00:02:42.76 Andrew Cool. 00:02:43.91 Sean yeah, I get to hang hang out with people that I don't usually get to see. And it's weird. It's, it's like the only conference I've ever been to. That's, I think that's i've ever, ever really been to that's not a security conference. 00:02:54.04 Andrew Hmm. 00:02:54.63 Sean So it's a whole other sort of vibe. 00:02:56.73 Andrew Wait, but isn't it, I mean, it's still a security adjacent conference, right? 00:03:01.68 Sean For sure. 00:03:01.98 Andrew But it's not hackers talking about like the new vulnerabilities they discovered and like how they reverse engineered some crazy low level protocol or something. 00:03:02.04 Sean For sure. For sure. But it's not like, you know, it's not like RSA. It's not like i can not be solid. It's yeah. Yeah. 00:03:10.97 Sean Right. 00:03:14.32 Sean right right exactly exactly and and it's not like it's also it's also not cyber security vendors trying to sell you on their product 00:03:24.38 Andrew Right. 00:03:24.67 Sean like RSA and Black Hat. 00:03:26.34 Andrew Okay. 00:03:27.48 Sean And it's also, it's a society it's like a society conference, so it's not, I guess it's almost like the DEFCON, like in that case, like the DEFCON of cybersecurity marketing, like you don't really go to sell anything there, you're not, your customers, I mean, I guess my client customers are there, but I also try not to do any of that. 00:03:32.18 Andrew What does that mean? 00:03:38.60 Andrew Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. 00:03:48.90 Sean yeah There's obviously vendors and sponsors and stuff. We're a sponsor as well. i I literally was just like, I don't want to, like I also would like to attend the conference. So I gave up my booth and switched it out with a 360 camera and just let people use a 360 camera there. 00:04:02.45 Sean And then went ahead and hung out with people there, but it was good. 00:04:01.81 Andrew Oh, that'...…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
Alex Hillman: How your identity impacts your marketing 1:13:17

hace 17 weeks1:13:17

1:13:17

In this week's special guest podcast, Alex Hillman (of Stacking the Bricks and 30x500) joins Andrew to coach him on early stage marketing at MetaMonster. They talk through Andrew's recent failed launch (and why not to worry about it too much), what he's doing differently now, and how your identity as a founder can impact your marketing. Plus, what pro wrestlers get right about identity and storytelling and how to create great content when you aren't an expert in your niche. There's so much great info packed into this discussion, enjoy! By the way, check out Alex's description of 30x500 at the 12:11 mark for a masterclass in positioning. Links: Follow Andrew on BlueSky: @andrewaskins.com Andrew's writing: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ Follow Sean on BlueSky: @seanqsun.com Sean's writing: https://seanqsun.com/ Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ Follow Alex on BlueSky: @alexhillman.com Jumpstart your product empire in 12 weeks with LaunchFTW For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:00:01.42 Andrew All right, so we've got a little bit of a different type of podcast episode. Usually it is me and Sean riffing on the things that we are building, but I'm super excited today because Alex Hillman is here to join us. So Sean is at a conference, so unfortunately couldn't be here today. But as I mentioned on the last episode, Alex very kindly took time out of his day to roast the shit out of my half-assed launch attempt. And then was even more generous and said, hey, I'll take an hour out of my day to come talk to you some more. Let's talk about this in public so that people can learn from this as we work through it together, is super cool. And for anyone who doesn't know Alex's background, Alex has been partnered with Amy Hoy on stacking the bricks and 30 by 500. They've been working on that for, you said 15 years? 00:00:58.53 Alex Hillman 15 years, yeah. 00:01:00.15 Andrew 15 years. I've been reading Stacking the Bricks for ages and really, really love all the content that you all have put out, have looked up to you and Amy for a long time. Still apparently didn't learn anything from from all of that reading, but i'm I'm trying to learn it now. 00:01:15.29 Andrew So yeah, we're gonna get into it. But Alex, thanks so much for for being here. Just so appreciate you, man. 00:01:22.85 Alex Hillman Yeah, i'm I'm happy to. This is going to be a good time. And, you know, I think the the common theme through all of this is and there's a lot of folks that read our stuff like our stuff and then willfully do the opposite or think that they did. what We told them and I go, I don't know where you got that from because those words never came out of my mouth. So I say all of that with, you know, with love and, you know, the the roast. 00:01:47.38 Alex Hillman came from, from that point of view as well. You know, I think that there's, there's cool people doing cool things on the internet. And I know you're, you're a fan of the build in public, trying to eat those and mindset. 00:01:59.19 Alex Hillman I'm a fan of the help in public. And so that's my thought here is if I can help you, whether it's through a roast on blue sky or a podcast, and there's other folks that that benefit from that perspective, then that's a, 00:02:08.00 Andrew yeah 00:02:13.34 Alex Hillman and at least three-way win. I win, you win, and and whoever listens wins. So really, really stoked to get into this. 00:02:18.10 Andrew Awesome. 00:02:19.52 Alex Hillman I think you're working on stuff that is common and and easy to get wrong. 00:02:25.03 Andrew Yeah, appreciate that. Yeah, so to give folks some context, because I imagine there might be people who will listen to this episode who who don't typically listen to small efforts. So a few weeks ago, I sort of kind of launched a alpha-y type thing. Like I'm having trouble even describing it because it was so like half formed. But I basically like got in my head, 00:02:53.09 Andrew we're okay I'm building this mailing list, I'm getting people on this list, I need to convert these people to you know potential paying users and we don't have a product yet so I need to like kind of pre-sell them but I don't want to actually ask them for money yet so I'm gonna pitch them on being a founding user and I sent out this this one email and basically said like Hey, I want you to be a founding user. You'll get a couple of things. And in return, I want a lot of your time. Click here to sign up. And I'm sort of being facetious, partially to protect my ego, because I candidly was like, once I realized like, kind of how bad I messed up, I was a little embarrassed. Like I had this feeling of like, 00:03:44.44 Andrew I have run a business before. I thought I knew how to do content marketing and knew how to do some of this stuff. I've been reading your content for years and so um so um realizing that I was making a lot of rookie mistakes was a little embarrassing and so even now as I'm describing it, I'm catching myself using self-deprecating humor as a little bit of a shield. 00:04:04.73 Alex Hillman that cushion 00:04:05.14 Andrew hello But but i mean that's kind of that's that's the basic context. I tried to pitch people on being early adopters of some sort. It was a very half-formed ask. 00:04:17.85 Andrew and and unsurprisingly, the result was kind of crickets. I got one person who responded to me and said, hey, I'd be interested. other than that, no responses. And so I tried to share about this on Blue Sky in that building public mindset and just be like, hey, anyone what what do you all see when you make these kinds of asks early on? And that's when Alex jumped in and was like, hey, tell me more. like what What was the context here? How much did you email these people and And so, yeah, why don't I kick it over to you and you can kind of give that initial context from your side and, you know, we can talk about some of the advice you got and then we'll get into what we're doing next. 00:04:57.12 Alex Hillman yeah Yeah, I mean, ah you you know first of all, first of all like congrats on shipping anything. like for like to to not Not to backpedal the mistakes that were made, but you know the the making mistakes is is the result of of doing things and trying things. And one of the beautiful things about launches is that there's you know I think there's a myth of a single launch, a single chance. 00:05:22.14 Andrew Mm hmm. 00:05:23.16 Alex Hillman And the trut...…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
Andrew got roasted and Sean built a new website 48:08

hace 18 weeks48:08

48:08

In this episode, Andrew discusses feedback he received from Alex Hillman on his marketing efforts for MetaMonster, and how he plans to adjust his approach going forward. He's now focusing more on creating content and building anticipation rather than rushing to convert customers. Sean shares his thoughts on personal branding and how he's reworking his online presence. They also touch on the pros and cons of starter packs for growing following on BlueSky and the value of being an authentic, relationship-based creator versus optimizing for algorithms. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/ Worth Driving: https://worthdriving.com/ For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:00.01 Sean Happy Thanksgiving, or Happy Post Thanksgiving. 00:03.75 Andrew Hey, happy post Thanksgiving. 00:04.77 Sean Hey. Yeah. Did you pick anything up for a Black Friday? 00:09.25 Andrew Oh my God. I spent too much money. I, I got sucked into a die work where, Twitter thread on, uh, links to black Friday deals. 00:16.04 Sean Oh, sweet. 00:22.53 Andrew a couple of the links I was like, Oh, this looks really cool. That's $1,200 for a jacket. I cannot do that. I'm sorry. so I just can't bring myself to do that. 00:30.68 Sean We gotta invest in yourself, man. 00:36.16 Andrew I'm trying. 00:36.68 Sean Okay, 00:36.92 Andrew I'm trying to like push myself to slowly start buying some nicer pieces. I've got my eye on like a leather jacket. That's more in like the 300 360 range that I might 00:46.87 Sean not bad. 00:48.08 Andrew Pull the trigger on at some point in the next year in the next sorry in the next few months but yeah, but entirely too much clothing tend to like just buy nothing and then buy Everything in like one or two goes and then not buy anything for a long period of time And then I bought a bunch of gifts for people so it was actually like normally I don't do shit on Black Friday, but this time I was actually pretty 01:03.52 Sean Yeah. 01:09.18 Sean Nice. Sweet. 01:14.74 Andrew Pretty active on the interwebs, on the, the e-commerce sites. 01:17.08 Sean three 01:19.45 Sean well i bought a humidifier so it has an app i haven't downloaded the app yet i know on weekends on weekends when i go to my computer when i'm in front of my computer i always feel like my eyes are really dry and i think it's because of a week of staring at the screen and then i turn on humidifier and it tells you how like dry your room is and it's like i think the like it was it was saying that the healthy range is 30 to 50 and when i turned on it was like 01:22.51 Andrew Whoa. 01:25.08 Andrew Welcome to your seventies. 01:36.73 Andrew High strain. 01:47.95 Sean 15 uh like 1828 something like that it's like cool put that sucker on eyes not dry anymore life hack yeah 01:51.12 Andrew Damn interesting. 01:55.44 Andrew I get pretty dry in the winter around here. And then we have radiators. And so if we don't have the windows open, it gets so dry. But usually we have the windows open because our heating system is horribly inefficient. 02:09.12 Andrew And so you're either like cold as shit or you are sweating. So we have to open the windows to like let excess heat out because we can't just like turn it down. It's old houses. 02:20.83 Sean Got it. Yeah, sounds fun. 02:22.24 Andrew It's pain. yeah 02:23.47 Sean I also bought into, uh, detailed, which is Glenn Alsup's, uh, uh, SEO private group. 02:29.54 Andrew Oh, Oh, interesting. 02:32.86 Sean And, yeah, there was no sale. It was just like, here's the option to purchase it, which is kind of badass of him to do on a Black Friday, but. 02:39.65 Andrew Yeah. It's like, cards against humanity always does the hilarious black Friday stuff. Like one, didn't they ah ah raise prices one year for black Friday? They were like, you can buy cards against humanity for double what it normally costs. 02:48.81 Sean there 02:52.63 Sean It's kind of sick. 02:53.77 Andrew this year they sold a potato with diamonds stuck in it. 02:56.76 Sean oh cards The original mischief, just saying. 02:56.93 Andrew Like fucking weird. 03:01.39 Andrew they They totally are the original mischief. That's very true. Is mischief still kicking? Are they still doing shit? 03:08.22 Sean Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They also have Black Friday sale. They're making shoes. I mean, whatever. I feel like they kind of fell off after the big but look big red boot moment. 03:19.61 Andrew It's hard to like, when your business model is go viral, it's just hard to do that consistently, I think. 03:27.45 Sean No. I disagree. I disagree. I disagree. I think it's hard to do that consistently and be ethical around how you do it. oh but I don't think ah they had a whole thing where that like, you know, every two weeks they would release a project and like, I'm pretty sure 70% of the projects were all sweepstakes. 03:40.89 Andrew That might be true. 03:48.93 Sean They were all like, sign up for things, share it, again, a chance to win in different flavors. 03:49.16 Andrew Yeah. 03:54.46 Sean And then with different like creators as well. So, 03:57.62 Andrew Yeah, that checks out. I mean, fucking Mr. Beast has built yeah the largest YouTube following in the world, basically turning his channel into a lottery. 04:06.87 Sean Yeah. Yep. Yep. Are you? Yeah. 04:09.00 Andrew Gambling, gambling and porn. 04:10.69 Sean Yeah. Hell yeah. 04:11.75 Andrew So all the Internet's good for. 04:14.21 Sean I agree. And this podcast, what else have you been up to the past two weeks? 04:20.50 Andrew So I got roasted last week by Alex Hillman on Blue Sky. 04:22.14 Sean Yes, you did. I'm Blue Sky. 04:25.75 Andrew Very, very positively roasted. I I went to Blue Sky looking for feedback on I think I talked about it on the podcast last recording. 04:27.80 Sean Yeah. 04:30.70 Sean Mm-hmm. 04:34.84 Andrew a Like I did this like kind of mini launch and trying to get, of what were we calling them, founding users, get people to convert to founding users. 04:43.58 Sean Yeah. 04:47.12 Andrew And we were talking about just like only one person replied. And yeah, it just was kind of a flop. so I was just trying to do the building public thing and talking about it on Blue Sky and asking you know people what what their experience had been with pre-sales and that sort of thing. 05:05.33 Andrew And Alex Hellman was basically like, bro, you You like half asked this thing, what did you expect? but And I was like, oh, yeah, you're right. 05:14.06 Sean Uh-huh. 05:16.21 Andrew Yeah. 05:16.78 Sean Yeah.…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
Early stage validation and the PMF spectrum 54:31

hace 20 weeks54:31

54:31

In this episode, Andrew talks about the rapid audience growth he's seeing on Bluesky and the challenges he's running into finding Founding Users for MetaMonster. The guys talk about the idea of product market fit as a spectrum and validation as a way to uncover where you might be on that spectrum, but without ever getting to 100% certainty. Then Sean talks through trying to find his next side project idea. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ ChartJuice: https://www.chartjuice.com/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ CopyWork: https://copy.work/ Wordpress to Webflow-ready CSV: https://contentgobl.in/ For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:00.01 Sean This is a full Andrew podcast with Sean does a support character today Mainly because I was late before this call 00:08.75 Andrew Uh, I was also kind of late. I was chatting with a friend and it took me a while. Yeah. what's up, man? How are you? 00:17.09 Sean I'm good. um I'm busy. um Yeah, I'm busy. A lot of things happening with miscreants, Q4, trying to get a lot of things wrapped up before the holidays and and just so much inbound. 00:31.44 Sean So much inbound. 00:31.83 Andrew That's great. 00:32.67 Sean Yeah, it is. It's amazing. You know, partially 00:34.65 Andrew you see You sound exhausted by it. but 00:36.91 Sean I'm so tired. Yeah. Well, partially thanks to you for for doing some really good work as well. So I appreciate it. 00:43.48 Andrew Cool. I'm glad it's been helping. 00:45.98 Sean Yeah, absolutely. What's up with you? What's going on? 00:49.78 Andrew So two things I want to talk about today, a small one and then a bigger one that I want to work out some thoughts with, with you and our, our 12 listeners. 01:01.03 Sean Yeah. 01:02.70 Andrew so the small one real quick blue sky is popping off right now. It is wild. I've been, I've had an account for like two weeks now and I'm up to 1200 followers. 01:16.59 Andrew starter kits are this like magical growth hack, uh, where 01:16.28 Sean he yeah 01:20.44 Sean Are starter kits just lists but people can auto follow everyone in the list? 01:25.31 Andrew Basically, yeah, yeah, a starter kit is basically like a Twitter list. 01:26.99 Sean okay 01:30.65 Andrew But so in Blue Sky, you have three concepts that that fulfill part of the responsibility of lists um in Twitter. So you have starter kits, which are a way to curate a list of people that you think others should follow most often around the topic. So like, I'm in a couple of like indie hacker, indie founder, bootstrap founder, starter kits. and you can, when you open a starter kit, you can follow individual people or you can just click follow all. 02:01.31 Andrew and And so that's how I found people to follow. I'm following like 360 people. It's almost all from like a handful of starter kits. And then and it's a really great mechanism for people to very quickly build a little network. 02:18.09 Andrew And it's if you get added to a couple of these, it's an awesome growth mechanism. 02:22.54 Sean Hell 02:22.64 Andrew So I'm up to 1,200 followers. very, very quickly, which is cool. 02:28.21 Sean yeah. 02:29.29 Andrew And we'll see how that correlates to engagement. wasn't seeing much engagement for the first like maybe 400 or 500 followers, but now I feel like I'm starting to see some pretty solid engagement. 02:41.50 Andrew I think engagement is naturally going to lag behind followers on the platform while people are still building a habit of checking and using Blue Sky, because it's still like A lot of people are switching over right now or like signing up and trying it for the first time, and so they're not going to have that usage habit right away. But I'm now seeing more engagement there than I am on tweets, and I have like 2700 Twitter followers. 03:09.80 Andrew So there's there's starter kits, then there's lists. they do have lists that work exactly like Twitter lists, which are like a non-algorithmic way to curate a list of people whose content you want to view without following them. And then they have feeds, which are custom algorithms that developers can write and publish. 03:31.61 Andrew so there's like 50,000 feeds. So there's essentially 50,000 different algorithms you can choose to subscribe to and follow. So there's a default discover algorithm. There's a default like following algorithm, where it's just everyone you follow. 03:46.88 Andrew then you can subscribe to lots of different feeds and customize your algorithm work the way you want to, which is a really cool idea. 03:59.56 Andrew Yeah. 03:57.79 Sean that is a really cool idea i wonder i wonder if there's like a secret like if your feed is used a lot you know how like you know plug-in like places that like have that you do upload plugins and stuff will pay out a certain amount if you have like a cool 04:13.36 Andrew Maybe. Yeah. I don't think they've started doing revenue sharing on blue sky yet. and they very openly said they're going to try to stay away from advertising and sell premium features, which is interesting. sort of Also the blue sky team is only 20 people. There are 20 people on the team. 04:34.05 Sean So you're saying Musk didn't fire enough people when he joined Twitter. That's what you're telling me. 04:39.64 Andrew I'm saying it's really cool what they're doing. And they're they're being very open and like chatting with and interacting with the community. Overall, the vibes are just, it I think because it's new, like this won't last forever, but because it's new, people are looking for people to follow. They're looking for content to engage with. therere They're just more open and and curious than where people have more set patterns of behavior that they fall into. 05:11.07 Andrew So the vibes are really good right ...…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
How to replace yourself in your agency 57:55

hace 21 weeks57:55

57:55

In this episode, Sean talks about getting himself out of day-to-day client work at Miscreants, and Andrew provides an update on his slow progress with customer acquisition for MetaMonster. Andrew shares an idea for a side project and they talk about Dharmesh buying the chat.com domain and "flipping" it to OpenAI. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ ChartJuice: https://www.chartjuice.com/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ CopyWork: https://copy.work/ Wordpress to Webflow-ready CSV: https://contentgobl.in/ For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:00.98 Sean All right, what is this thing, Andrew? What are you gonna tell me? even It's been 30 minutes since you told me we we're changing what we're talking about today. Now you've been, okay, go. 00:12.23 Andrew let me Let me just play this for you and I think it'll all make sense. 00:15.25 Sean Okay. 00:21.25 Andrew and 00:24.28 Andrew hoping you can so into me baby 00:28.45 Andrew Do you know what this is yet? 00:33.18 Sean Yes. I know what this is. I know what this is. This is the... I feel bad for all Asian guys in SF. I'll never outdo you, you tech bros. It's fucking over. 00:51.69 Andrew Wait, wait! graves keepki godam oh 01:02.88 Andrew I never thought I would hear Mark Zuckerberg with T paid singing sweat, drip down my balls. 01:04.84 Sean z pain that's what what what do you want to do you want to dissect the lyrics you want to 01:11.18 Andrew Oh, ski, ski motherfucker. Oh, ski, ski. God damn. 01:17.79 Andrew Oh my God. I found this and I was like, holy shit. Clear everything. This is all I want to talk about. 01:32.86 Sean honey 01:32.98 Andrew I think it's just fucking hilarious. And like, I can't decide if I like love it or hate it. Like I can't decide if it's the best thing ever or the most cringe thing ever. And I think I love it. And I think I love it in part because it is kind of cringe and he just doesn't give a fuck. 01:52.89 Sean for what it's worth though maybe this was the light at the this was the this was the one piece of uplifting news in recent times my executor the one who keeps us going 02:01.14 Andrew Right. Oh my God. 02:08.17 Andrew Yeah. So that, that is the, uh, Mark Zuckerberg collaboration with T-Pain. Uh, their group is unofficially or officially, I guess, Z-Pain. Um, they have one single, which is an acoustic version of Gitlo, which Mark recorded for his wife Priscilla because apparently it's the song they listened to every anniversary. 02:28.74 Sean Yep, and then you played it for her, and... 02:32.21 Andrew Is there a video of him playing it for her? 02:33.61 Sean Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 02:34.49 Andrew Oh my God, I gotta go watch that. i I mean, he's found something that works. Being a wife guy is working for his brand right now and he is leaning all all the way in. 02:47.07 Andrew and 02:47.21 Sean Hey, you know what they say about wife guys, though? 02:50.47 Andrew Yeah. 02:50.85 Sean on the internet. okay I just hope he doesn't. 02:53.35 Andrew Yep, it's gonna blow up at some point. 02:57.23 Sean I don't think he was on the ditty list, so we'll be okay. 02:57.61 Andrew But... 03:00.01 Sean we might or Or the FC list, so we might be okay. 03:04.72 Andrew For what it's worth, I love T-Pain so much. 03:08.46 Sean Yeah, he's great. He's great. 03:09.83 Andrew T-Pain's Tiny Desk Concert is one of my all-time favorites. It's so good. 03:13.97 Sean i I just love that he is just doing side quests at the moment. Like, the guy's a genius. 03:21.04 Andrew Zuck or T-Pain? 03:22.12 Sean No, no, T-Pain. Zuck, I guess, is also doing a side quests at the moment, but like... 03:23.46 Andrew Yeah. 03:26.12 Sean I'll just like I'll watch random youtubers and like sometimes T-Pain will just show up like like that are not related to things related to him you know I'm watching like a car guy youtuber boom T-Pain's winning a drift competition yeah I'm on twitch all of a sudden or I'm not on I'm browsing twitch and all of a sudden T-Pain's a streamer I don't know yeah 03:28.43 Andrew Mm-hmm. 03:36.42 Andrew Mm hmm. Holy shit, that's cool. 03:47.23 Andrew By the way, on the Zuck side, I just listened to the acquired episode about Metta, and it made me realize that like. I feel like public perception of Metta is changing a little bit like I feel like Elon Musk buying Twitter. 04:01.86 Sean Yeah. 04:04.11 Andrew has kind of has taken a lot of the heat off of meta. 04:06.90 Sean Yeah. 04:07.45 Andrew And so now everyone's like, Elon's elon's the evil one. 04:09.12 Sean He's almost like, it could be so much worse. 04:13.00 Andrew And yeah, Elon's like, you guys think 2016 Facebook was bad? 04:13.84 Sean Yeah. 04:19.71 Andrew Bro, hold my drink. 04:21.08 Sean Listen, when you gotta be the best at everything, you know? 04:26.64 Andrew Including being a massive fucking troll. 04:28.86 Sean Yeah. 04:30.46 Andrew Yeah, but it made me realize that like I don't hate meta as much as I used to. And I i don't know if that's like. 04:35.61...…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
Sean launches TWO free tools, and the guys brainstorm marketing ideas 57:32

hace 23 weeks57:32

57:32

In this episode, Andrew and Sean talk about Halloween plans and Sean's decision to kill Stackwise. Meanwhile, Sean has launched two new free tools in the last week! The guys talk about how he did it and what his goals are for both of them. Then they spend the rest of the episode brainstorming marketing ideas for MetaMonster. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ ChartJuice: https://www.chartjuice.com/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ CopyWork: https://copy.work/ Wordpress to Webflow-ready CSV: https://contentgobl.in/ For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ . Transcript: 00:00.35 Sean Cool. Happy Halloween. 00:02.59 Andrew Happy Halloween. 00:04.93 Sean Are you going to any parties? 00:05.11 Andrew o 00:08.27 Sean Are you doing anything? 00:09.37 Andrew Yeah, we're so normally we go to Chicago for Halloween hang out. 00:14.09 Sean Because it's extra scary there. Sorry, go ahead. 00:16.45 Andrew What? 00:17.99 Sean It's just so scary in Chicago. and i don't know that's not why that's not why i was That's not why I was going with that. 00:20.19 Andrew Wow, that's racist, John. Fuck you, dude. 00:26.99 Sean Jeez, I'm kidding. 00:29.92 Andrew fucking New Yorkers hating on Chicago. Gross. 00:33.16 Sean That's not racist. I'm just elitist. That's different. 00:38.29 Sean Yeah. 00:39.11 Andrew normally we go to Chicago because, uh, a bunch of Maddie's best friends from high school all live there and they throw a Halloween party every year. So normally early we go and we go out with them and we go to like one bar and then we go get, uh, like shitty Greek food and then we go home. 00:46.34 Sean yeah 00:56.68 Sean Nice. 00:57.84 Andrew but this year we decided to stay in Detroit, because we love Halloween and we love decorating for Halloween and. We've never gotten to be in Detroit for Halloween, we really want to pass out candy this year so tomorrow, which will probably be today by the time I get this published. 01:16.54 Andrew We're gonna hang out, pass out candy, go drink some beers with our neighbors. And then Saturday, one of our best friends is throwing a haunted carnival party. 01:27.46 Andrew It's her second year in a row throwing this like haunted carnival themed Halloween party. 01:30.91 Sean Sick. 01:32.68 Andrew So we're gonna go to the haunted carnival party and Maddie's dressing up as a ringmaster and I'm dressing up dressing up as a lion. 01:39.02 Sean Nice. 01:39.91 Andrew She's like a ringmaster lion tamer and then I'm a lion. 01:42.17 Sean Yeah, hell yeah. 01:43.56 Andrew So it's gonna be fun. 01:44.70 Sean Sick. 01:46.43 Andrew Yeah, what about you? 01:48.22 Sean I'm debating on whether or not there's this like Instagram, ah like ah ah actually been sorry. I don't even know what they are. There's just like some cool internet website thing called shell tech that they're like a band or or producer do, or I don't, I don't fucking know. 02:02.36 Sean They just make music. It's apparently dropped the new album. 02:03.90 Andrew Fun. 02:05.31 Sean They have like an album party tomorrow and I think it's for, so maybe that, or maybe I'll be in my room jamming away. 02:08.48 Andrew pun 02:16.05 Sean on whether or not stackwise has a future because i am uh-huh yeah 02:19.88 Andrew wait Wait, wait, pause before we get too far into that. Can you just tell me a little bit about like what Halloween is like in New York? I'm so curious. 02:32.57 Andrew Like Yeah. 02:33.00 Sean what is how yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like uh well in queens it's super cute it's very residential you know so everyone like especially in a lot of kids in the neighborhood they walk around and they get candy and there's like really nice areas in queens that people will go to and there's like halloween decorations and stuff yeah exactly exactly the full skies can i think it's a trap i think that's like a like 02:52.01 Andrew Got to go get the full size candy bars. I went to Costco today and I was this close to buying the full size bars, but yeah, I'm not actually sure it's better. 03:03.66 Andrew I'm not sure giving out full size bars is better. Like my plan is to give out a big old handful of candy and, and then you get a mix of candy and you get to like spread it out a little. 03:05.94 Sean Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. 03:14.05 Andrew Whereas if I give you a full size bar, you're going to eat it super fast. 03:18.14 Sean I was just gonna say, like, the expectation of being in a house that gives full-sized candy bars, that's dangerous. 03:21.100 Andrew Oh yeah. Once you go, once you go full size, you can't go back. 03:24.58 Sean Yeah. Exactly. You can't, you can't roll back the whatever. 03:27.20 Andrew Yeah. 03:30.16 Sean Yeah. But like, yeah. 03:34.39 Andrew It was 20 bucks for 30 full size bars or 20 bucks for like a five pound bag of candy. 03:40.29 Sean Yeah, see? 03:40.72 Andrew And so I was like. 03:42.09 Sean Did you see that meme of, uh, one of the fuh- uh, like, fuh in a Halloween bucket? 03:47.49 Andrew Yes, that was so good. 03:47.91 Sean And it's like, one ...…

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

1
Sean has new momentum, and Andrew gets feedback on designs 57:40

hace 24 weeks57:40