Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

Andrew moved to Atlanta and is going all-in on MetaMonster while Sean drowns in Miscreants sales calls! 🚀 They dive into repositioning struggles, the push vs pull dilemma, and why lead magnets might be the answer. Plus: DEF CON madness, Webflow disasters, and someone made an AI review of MetaMonster.Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Margins: http://margins.so/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00.50SeanWhat's up?00:02.12AndrewWhat up, man?00:02.99SeanLong time. Yeah.00:04.19AndrewHas been a long time. When was the last one of these we did? Like, at least six weeks ago.00:08.07SeanThe last... I think the last one we did, you interviewed someone else. I was replaced.00:12.88AndrewOh, with Louie. OK.00:14.20SeanYeah. Yeah. That was good one. That good.00:16.73AndrewYeah, that was fun.00:17.87SeanYeah.00:19.34AndrewIt has horrible ah ah stats on Transistor. I haven't checked the YouTube stats.00:24.88SeanOh. but They just like me. You know? They...00:28.93AndrewLet's see.00:30.81AndrewLet's see, let's see. What? Has anyone listened to this?00:36.56SeanYou know we got 51.00:36.86AndrewOh, wow.00:37.08SeanUh-huh.00:38.26Andrewoh wow. Our latest videos are not doing well. But to be fair,00:44.08SeanInternally.00:44.66Andrewyeah that episode, lol, I heard heard our autoplay video.00:45.51SeanMm-hmm.00:49.74SeanOh.00:51.90Andrew43 whole views on on that that episode.00:55.21SeanNot bad. Yeah.00:58.62AndrewWe're we're killing it.01:00.08SeanYeah. ah But we got 51 subscribers, so, like, i don't know.01:05.20AndrewDo we really?01:06.10SeanYeah, 51 subscribers on YouTube.01:08.78AndrewThis is not going to be interesting to anyone listening. Like, we're the only ones who give a fuck how many YouTube subscribers we have.01:11.100SeanYeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sorry everyone.01:15.36AndrewAlso, 50 is such a silly number.01:17.60SeanYeah.01:19.98AndrewYeah.01:20.46SeanCan't wait for my 50 subscriber YouTube play button.01:23.16SeanIt's a cardboard with a little poop stain on it.01:30.36AndrewYeah, a lot has changed since we last chatted and also not a lot has changed.01:33.88SeanMm-hmm.01:35.94AndrewI am now living in Atlanta.01:39.28SeanAnd you're leaving me.01:41.66Andrewand Well, just like we're not breaking up.01:43.04SeanWe're breaking up.01:45.78AndrewWe're going on a break. It's different.01:47.22Seanwow Can I see other people?01:50.18AndrewYeah, sure.01:52.08SeanWe're breaking up. We're broken up. It's okay. It's okay. I'm happy for you. Anything I'm jealous.01:57.43Andrewyeah so I'm living in Atlanta. I was, I working with scout last time we talked. to02:03.08SeanNot on the podcast, I think.02:05.94AndrewOkay.02:06.60SeanYeah.02:07.80AndrewI have a new client. it's been a lot of fun. They're in, uh, you an AI agent platform for sales teams.02:15.37SeanYeah.02:16.28Andrewand, uh, I'm basically a fractional CMO, which has been really fun. So I'm like, you hiring agencies and contractors and building marketing processes and trying to figure out how to, how to drive leads.02:30.29Andrewgot to bring in a friends agency. That's going super well. metamonster like, it's not like not going at all. Like I'm having it a couple of conversations a week probably, but, uh, they are not turning into customers. So,02:49.04Andrewgotta figure some shit out there which is why i'm talking about taking a break from miscreants work for a little while to focus on metamonster yeah i don't know where do you want to start03:02.24SeanLet's start, I mean, I don't know, let's talk about MetaMonster. Let's talk about like i feel like, I feel like we're chatting on Slack about like, you know, lead magnets and whether or not you have to nurture folks, you know, it feels like the people that are but you're speaking to are like interested but not ready to like buy or try.03:20.75Seanare they Are they like, are you giving them a trial or03:24.94AndrewYeah, so03:27.06Andrewwe... Okay, so since we last spoke, we updated the Metamonster positioning. So we were calling ourselves like an SEO web crawler and sort of a ah ah site audit tool.03:34.32SeanMm-hmm.03:42.18AndrewWe've tried to move away from that to more of like an SEO automation platform. our new so our new h one um scale on page seo optimization with ai and we're trying to sort of position ourselves against like chat gpt and manual processes and you know we didn't we didn't go for like a category because i don't know that ah seo automation platform is like an established category today so i wasn't i wasn't sure that would be widely recognized enough to resonate with people so we04:18.45SeanYeah.04:19.95Andrewsort of just have this like use case positioning and then we talk you know ah try to position ourselves against like doing seo work manually in with like just chat gpt or claude and then we've been working on totally revamping the product so know when we started it was like push button get meta descriptions and now04:34.47Seanyeah04:48.14AndrewWe're, in the next week or two, going to be like phasing out the old UI and phasing in the new UI, which is all like, it's basically like a spreadsheet with AI superpowers.04:59.62Andrewso you get a04:59.100Seanyou know05:02.65Andrewyou can crawl your site, get all of your site data in a table, and then run prompts, run prompts against like every page on your site.05:14.35AndrewAnd we give you a bunch of prompt templates out of the box to let you do all sorts of things like page titles and meta descriptions, but also generate H1s and image alt text and structured schema and a bunch of other things.05:30.18AndrewWe also have like now have like site-wide chat. So you can use that for like site-wide analysis and one-off tasks like the blog post I just published for you last night about how to generate an LLMS.txt file, which by the way, you don't need, but you know, whatever.05:48.41SeanMm-hmm.05:49.78Andrewokay. So we, so I've been updating the site to like include lots of screenshots and, and descriptions of the new ui try to update the positioning to be more use case focused, like scale on page SEO,06:05.86Andrewas the sort of the use case and then we removed we didn't remove our pr...

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 ...

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...

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 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...

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 ...

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 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...