Andrew's dealing with bugs, and Sean is slammed with job applications

Season 2: Episode 3

It's a Small Efforts Double Header! We were late getting this episode out, so we decided to go ahead and publish two weeks of episodes at once. In this episode Andrew is coming straight from a tattoo session, and talks about fighting bugs with ChartJuice. Meanwhile, Sean has gotten over 300 APPLICATIONS to his open job post, almost all from Dribbble. And he previews the consumer SaaS/community he's building on the side. Andrew and Sean discuss the strategy behind the new ConvertKit rebrand, and finally debate whether AI-generated book notes can be a good growth strategy for Andrew's personal blog.

Differences between serverless functions and edge functions according to Claude:
  1. Execution Location: Serverless functions run on the cloud provider's servers centralized in large data centers, while edge functions run on edge servers distributed across multiple locations closer to the user.
  2. Latency: Edge functions have lower latency compared to serverless functions due to their proximity to the user.
  3. Scalability and resource constraints: Serverless functions scale automatically based on demand, while edge functions have a more limited scalability. Edge servers generally have less compute power and storage compared to cloud servers.
  4. Use Cases: Serverless functions are better suited for compute-intensive tasks, while edge functions are more efficient for data processing and content delivery near the user.
Links:
For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:00:00.69
Sean
What's up?

Andrew
Not much, just got back from a little tattoo session, got some fresh ink.

Sean
Very cool. What did what you get?

Andrew
Uh, got a piece of flash. So I was at a fundraiser for, um, a friend's, a friend was organizing the fundraiser. He's part of this group called prism, um, that raises money to support, uh, GSAs in schools, which used to stand for gay straight alliances.

Sean
Cool.

Andrew
Now I think stand for gender sexuality alliances.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
Um, so he's part of this group prism. They were doing a fundraiser and they had a raffle as part of the fundraiser.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
And they were raffling off three flash tattoos. Um, so it was like a design and you could put. ticket in, and if you won, you would get that tattoo. And um I like two of them. And so I put a ticket in each one and was like, well, let fate decide. And I got picked. And so I went and got this cool vase with, it's like kind of an abstract vase with monstera leaves sticking out.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And it's my first leg tattoo, got it on my thigh. um it will be very visible when I wear shorts.

Sean
Hell yeah.

Andrew
um So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean
Five inch the blue velvet shorts.

Andrew
When I wear my short shorts, which is all I wear.

Sean
Nice.

Andrew
So, um yeah, I'm pretty into it.

Sean
Nice.

Andrew
It was cool. This was my first, I guess it was my second flash tattoo. um But the artist, she was great. Her name was Ali Gostella, I think. Super chill, super welcoming, had a great time, made the experience fantastic.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
And one of the cool parts was she really was stoked about this design, which was so much fun because she was having fun tattooing it and was really hyped and excited about it. And that made it more fun and made me more excited about getting it. And so it was just like just good energy.

Sean
Nice.

Sean
I like it. Congrats.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah, congrats on waiting.

Andrew
Thanks. I'm I'm stoked. i'm I'm really excited about it.

Sean
Cool.

Andrew
I will show you after the podcast because it will not get podcast content.

Sean
That's true. That's true. We are, we are not a video podcast yet. We tried, but yeah.

Andrew
We can be. I guess whenever we just got to commit to doing another thing, which is not like us.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Well, and is also like us. You know what I mean?

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure.

Andrew
Yeah. So what's up with you?

Sean
Um, last week was brutal. Last week was a couple, a couple of our folks are out on like PTO and then some folks got sick.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Um, uh, yeah. Uh, so I didn't sleep much and that was, that was exciting, but we're back to it.

Andrew
Oh, that's rough.

Sean
You know, I'm on eight hours, so extra energetic today. Um, I mean, Oh,

Andrew
How is hiring going?

Sean
dribble is not dead.

Andrew
Oh, really?

Sean
dribble not that hot take dribble like yeah yeah hiring our type form

Andrew
For hiring designers specifically? Yeah.

Sean
So we were going to do we're going to do like an online, we're going to put a form on our website at first and then I was like, I don't i like this. This was me committing to something and then not actually and doing not following through, I guess. I told JJ I was going to go and put the form up um and she's like, OK, I'm just going to make a type form and she made the type form. And then I think 30 minutes later, they're like three hundred times like I'm going to shut the type form off. It's not and it's.

Andrew
Damn. And all you did was publish it on dribble.

Sean
Yes, because a bunch of other job boards grab from dribble so we get certain other places and that's um so that happened.

Andrew
Ah, this reminds me of a business idea.

Sean
um I. ah

Andrew
I have pitched you before, but I want to pitch you again.

Sean
Yeah, you should totally you totally should. um We haven't gone through all the applications. We shut off the type form for now, but because it's all over the Internet now, which I'm actually very curious to see how our backlink screw. This might be a very interesting way to just grow backlinks. um

Andrew
Half of my Twitter followers came from job postings. Like I would tweet out job postings.

Sean
i

Andrew
The job postings would go viral and people would follow me who were applying to the job.

Sean
Right. Right.

Andrew
So I swear like job postings are kind of a weird growth hack.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Um, just not with the people who are going to buy things from you.

Sean
Okay.

Sean
Sure, sure. But it's going to look cool to the people who are going to buy things from me. and I have a bunch of people following me.

Andrew
Just all that matters. Looking cool.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah. um Okay, good to know. Well, anyway, it's all over the internet. I'm getting like DMs on LinkedIn and and ah Instagram like, hey, is this still open? um ah Definitely some good portfolios. um There's a lot to sort through.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
so um

Andrew
Yeah. Sorting through resumes and portfolios is so time consuming. Like you always forget how time consuming it is until you're doing it again.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
And all of a sudden like hiring just consumes your life.

Sean
Yeah, absolutely. um

Sean
It's cool, in a way, it also makes me think about all the times I've thought about like how stupid AI recruiters were, and how maybe wrong I was on just like frontline screening of people of like, like, but for example, um Um, the way, like, the way we have to do it now is like, like we have someone who's like, like JJ is going to be the frontline person. She's going to go through all the things and like anything that has like a red flag, she will well and drop. And then we're going to keep on just going through like things that don't trigger any sort of like immediate red flags. Right. Which I absolutely frustrated to do that and to do her job, but she has a fuck ton to go through.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um and ultimately she is also a human being and different on different days she will feel differently about different people I'm not saying that this will happen and like this will be the case about her but yeah it's really hard and I think like you know I might I might try to feel have feel like biased towards a person who whose name is something I whose name is someone I know and and like either choose them or completely put them in the reject pile so

Andrew
No, it's hard.

Sean
um

Andrew
Also just like, as you become more or less tired as you're going through candidates, you become more or less tolerant to typos and to certain types of answers and things.

Sean
Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew
And, you know, you try your hardest to be conscious of that bias and to remove it and like,

Sean
Yeah. Hmm.

Andrew
be structured about it, but sometimes you get to a point where you kind of break and you just start like throwing out things faster than you did at the beginning of of the process.

Sean
It's literally how my inbox like me clearing my inbox works. like I'm really good about the first 100 of like archiving and and like labeling correctly. And then I just like select all, archive all of it, inbox zero. And there's 2,000 messages I haven't read. um Granted, you know most of them are trash, but whatever. um So that's how hiring is going.

Andrew
Yeah. What's, what's like next, where are y'all in the process and what are, what are your next steps?

Sean
So, um, we're hiring for a couple of different things right now, uh, different, different people right now. Um, we want like, uh, like a demand gen marketer who, uh, more senior more can take sort of like, you know, it can be client facing that we're working.

Andrew
Yeah. Where are you posting that one out of curiosity and how many, how many applicants have you gotten for that post?

Sean
ah That one we haven't actually posted anywhere that one we're doing we're trying market marketer hire again for it.

Andrew
Okay, cool.

Sean
I tried them in the past but um You know, I did not I tried them in the past and I just could not meet someone I had the budget for to be perfectly honest Like I i don't have in the past when I started like I didn't have 100 plus K a year to pay someone um So marketer hire we haven't posted anywhere um Job descriptions are also like really

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
feel like feel kind of awkward to write to be honest with you that's been that's been a new fun challenge um we we post the designer one on dribble we did try to post the digital marketing specialist one on linkedin we just really didn't get that many great hits and linkedin caps you at 50 on the free plan um and we just haven't like we haven't explored other other places um

Andrew
Yeah, they're tough.

Sean
Yeah, we've been looking at a couple other job boards at the same time. But after this experience, I think we have to we have to think about our strategy a little bit better besides but get spammed. But yeah, I don't know. and You have any thoughts? You mean you hired people to things.

Andrew
yeah um lots of thoughts so On the process thing, there there are things you can do to try to help reduce bias and help when you're tired and exhausted, you keep things as is clean and like organized as possible.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
Big one being rubrics, like developing a rubric um for how you're going to evaluate applications and then evaluating all applications through that rubric. um Of course, creating those rubrics is a lot of work in and of itself. like Writing a good job description is a lot of work. and like a lot of kind of emotional work because you have so much emotion tied up in your feelings about the business.

Sean
Mmhmm.

Andrew
um And then creating rubrics is a lot of work to ah harder in some ways I think then then creating job descriptions. um Also really annoyingly a pet peeve that I have is that like Applicant tracking systems are generally expensive. um There are a couple of more affordable ones out there, but the affordable ones don't offer any of the features that are traditionally associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion. So things like hiding names, ah things like creating rubrics, things like creating anonymous surveys.

Andrew
Those features are typically associated with big enterprise plans. And um one business idea that I have around hiring an HR is a better diversity focused applicant tracking system with reasonable pricing. Because there's no reason those features should cost more. They don't cost more to the business. They just are associated with enterprise companies more who are willing to pay lots of money.

Sean
Mm.

Andrew
And so I think ah a small business focused applicant tracking system with good modern and DEI features built in. from the start, I think it would do well. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe fewer small businesses care about those things than I think. um But yeah, rubrics can help. um But yeah, it's just hard. ah you know People say this is why they end up going to recruiters because recruiters do a lot of this initial screening work for you and it ends up

Andrew
you're really paying them for their time like to save you time more than you're paying them to find like the perfect candidate in some cases.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
um We just never had the budget to hire recruiters, so we always had to just suck it up and and spend the time ourselves.

Sean
um Yeah.

Andrew
And you try to train people and like get other people involved with what you're doing. so

Sean
I mean, to a degree. um I like the di the DEI idea. I think it makes sense. um I mean, I think, you know, there's more and more, there's probably more and more minority owned businesses every day. And I feel like for just from that, um there's probably a growing market there.

Andrew
And more and more people are realizing that building diverse teams is part of what helps you build a more successful product.

Sean
Right.

Andrew
And so paying attention to these things, even at an early stage matters.

Sean
For sure.

Andrew
And the earlier you pay attention to it, the better your setup for success in the future.

Sean
for sure. So you're going to do it higher juice.

Andrew
ah I mean, to be perfectly blunt, I'm not sure I'm the perfect person to lead the charge on a DEI applicant tracking system. Like I kind of feel like someone who comes from a minority background would be better to be at least the face of a product like that.

Sean
Sure.

Andrew
um You know, I would be happy to partner up with someone potentially on something like that, but I don't think it should entirely come from me.

Sean
Sure.

Sean
Yeah, that's fair. I wonder if like backstage capital has any startup like that. I'm curious. I'll check later, but, um, yeah, that's fair.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
That's like, I appreciate that level of self-awareness. I mean, you know, um, yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, hiring's hard.

Sean
Yeah. What else is going on with you? How's, how's, how's your actual, ah you know, your actual company that you are the face of?

Andrew
Wait, before we get to that, can I pitch you on my other ah HR hiring business idea?

Sean
Yeah. Okay. Are you sure you don't want to be? Okay.

Andrew
The DEI applicant tracking system wasn't even the one I was talking about. That just came up came to mind when I started thinking about rubrics.

Sean
Okay. Okay. Okay.

Andrew
um The other thing, um so you mentioned like Dribble and the success of Dribble and part of it being that like other job boards pull from it. I've wanted to know for a while which job boards are worth a damn. It's really hard to figure out which ones are actually worth the money because so many you post and you get nothing. You get crickets and sometimes that's okay because you really only need the right one, right person to find you through a job board and then it becomes totally worth the 200 bucks or 500 bucks or whatever.

Andrew
Um, but I've always been curious, like wanted more transparency around job boards and like,

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
It would be interesting to see better advertising numbers and get a better sense of. the results that different job boards could drive. So that's, that's part of it. The other part of it is typically to get good results. You have to post to multiple job boards because one is not going to be enough in today's world. Maybe dribble is enough for designers, but for most positions, especially the engineering positions we were hiring for, there was no like perfect one job board we could post to.

Sean
Mm.

Andrew
And that was all we ever had to do. um So that's that's another part of this is like posting to multiple job boards as part of the hiring process for a lot of small companies who can't afford to hire recruiters. And posting to multiple job boards is just a pain in the ass. And so the idea is basically to build a productized service around advertising job postings. um And I think you'd start with a directory of job boards, and then you'd have a productized service to post to

Andrew
multiple job boards for one fee. So, you know, you pay us 1000 bucks we post to three job boards each of those job boards cost $200 and the $400 left is our fee for the time and work, or, you know, maybe four job boards I feel like you probably don't want to charge a 40% fee. um And then if you did that, you could start to actually track the results and you could start to ask for feedback from your clients and see which job boards drive traffic and which job boards drive results.

Andrew
And so you could use that data to better inform

Sean
Mm

Andrew
which job boards you post to for different types of jobs.

Sean
hmm.

Andrew
And then you could also, I think, expand to advertising jobs on Facebook and LinkedIn through like, you know, pay-per-click ads, um which I think is something that most small businesses don't do and could be really successful and really viable.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
um But it would require someone with some good pay-per-click experience ah especially experience around promoting jobs. So yeah, the idea is basically product I service for promoting jobs if you're not, that's like less expensive than a recruiter, um but still saves people money and introduces more transparency into the effectiveness of different job boards.

Sean
I like it. I do think I don't know because I've never been a recruiter, but I feel like we have worked with a recruiting agency once, which I do think part of what their services offered were to post your jobs on various job boards and sort of collect folks like that. But that being said, I mean, Yeah, it makes me think about like, it would be a very like an MVP of that would be a very interesting sort of like directory business like the way like Sam has like Sam's list for her accountants.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
um There's like a very interesting sort of. Yeah, there's a there's like an MVP there. I mean, I think one of the problems we ran into was like, like, you want to know how I found job boards to post on? I went to tiny dot.com and looked at the ones that he owned.

Andrew
yeah The ones they've bought.

Sean
Yeah, the ones they've bought like, okay, I'll pick like, and and frankly, that was like, what? Three different job boards and I didn't didn't know where else to go. And I had to like think through my head, like, where have I seen job listings?

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
At that point, we just gave up. It's like, okay, we're just going to post it in dribble and see what happens. But yeah, a hundred percent, I would love to know where to even go to find talent. um Yeah, yeah, yeah, I I think it's interesting it kind of makes me think of like all the other sort of like talent Related companies that are popping up recently like there's a lot of like this is a complete segue now But like there's a bunch of like global talent ah staffing orgs Yeah, yeah

Andrew
Oh yeah, like all the overseas i outsourcing firms, yeah.

Sean
For sure. For sure. um Which I have feelings about, but whatever. um um Yeah, I like it. I like it. You should do it.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
You should do it. Yeah. Or someone should do it. If you're listening.

Andrew
One thing at a time.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
um It's, it's on my like on deck list of ideas. If I get to a point where I get frustrated with chart juice and I'm like, all right, I just need to do something else for a little while. That's one of my ideas. That's near the top of my like on deck list.

Sean
sure

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um Speaking of which, um speaking of our listeners, shout out to Jonathan Crenn, who hit me up the other day.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Oh, Hey, is, is Jonathan still listening?

Sean
Yeah, some guy we both know.

Andrew
That's dope.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jonathan jonathan hit me up on LinkedIn. He was, ah and, you know, said some nice words. So, yeah, now we have, yeah, we got Greg, Jay Crenn, and Rob Walling.

Andrew
Ah, what's up, Jaykran?

Andrew
We just got to keep mentioning Rob Walling in every episode so that he he gets notified.

Sean
Right. That's how we get blocked from everybody. Yeah.

Andrew
Cool. oh So yeah, moving away from my million hypothetical businesses to the actual business I'm trying to get off the fucking ground. um So, churches is live. I mentioned that last time.

Sean
Yep.

Andrew
it's it I quietly pushed it live. um But I had a sales call last week. um And as I was getting ready for the sales call, I was like, you know what? I haven't actually tested the flow all the way through yet. like I've tested rendering charts, but I haven't tested rendering a chart in email.

Sean
Mhm.

Andrew
And so I was like, I should probably do that. That feels like a good thing to do before this call.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
um Did not render because Gmail does not like SVGs.

Sean
Mhm.

Andrew
And I had only bothered to implement SVG rendering so far. um So I was like, ah, fuck, OK. Got to get some other file types in there, um which has turned into maybe the biggest pain in the ass I've had developing chart juice yet. um Converting the SVG that each chart generates on the back end to a PNG. Just doing that has turned into a massive pain in my ass.

Sean
Brutal.

Andrew
um It all started with like, I've been using Superbase for my backend and Superbase uses edge functions as their extendable way to um add API endpoints that aren't auto-generated for you. um Edge functions run with Deno. There's only like one or two run times that support Edge versus serverless functions.

Andrew
Didn't know there was a difference between Edge and serverless functions until last week. that's That was new for me. um So found out that there's a difference there. Still can't totally

Sean
what is What is the difference?

Andrew
I can't totally explain it to you to be honest.

Sean
ah

Sean
i see

Andrew
um Okay, my best understanding. God, I'm such a front end guy. um My best understanding. Serverless basically just means a managed server. It's just a a virtual machine running on a server in the cloud where all of the spin up of the machine and everything is is managed for you. So you just push files and it just handles the serving part part for you.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
You don't have to manage a server, but it's still running on a virtual machine on a server in the cloud.

Sean
Yep.

Andrew
um Edge functions, similarly, are still involving servers, but it's a ah smaller, I think it's like a smaller machine that is part of like a globally distributed network um that is, and they sort of farm traffic to the closest machine so that In theory, your response times are super fast. um And I believe one of the differences is that like people talk about cold starts with serverless all the time because if you hit a serverless function and no one has hit that function recently, then the system in the background like spins up a new virtual machine.

Andrew
with your code on it, and that takes a second. um And edge functions, in theory, don't have cold start problems. I don't totally know why. I guess they just keep them running. I'm not sure. um

Sean
This is a great time where if we did ever edit this podcast, we can, like, ah get chatgbt to answer the question and then rock.

Andrew
I have asked chat GPT, and I have just forgotten what it said. But there's apparently a difference between edge functions and serverless.

Sean
Cool.

Andrew
Because Superbase uses edge functions, not serverless functions, um then ah they're using the dno runtime. And the dno runtime, dno is like this new version of node built by like one of the creators of node that's supposed to be like, it's like he got annoyed with node and was like, all right, I'm going to go start something that fixes all the problems that I have with node.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
except that Nothing fucking works with Dino, because it's like not super widely adopted and so none of the libraries that I wanted to use worked with Dino. And like the super based Dino environment seems to be even more tightly locked down than like the regular Dino environment. And so like, just none of the modules I tried to use would work. And like a lot of them would sort of kind of work. And I would spend a lot of time testing it and trying to figure out, is it the environment or is it the library? Am I just installing something incorrectly? So I've lost like so many days to fighting with Dino. And I finally gave up and have started spinning up a

Sean
Microservice.

Andrew
A microservice, fuck me. I hate microservices. I'm a monolith guy through and through, but in this case, it made sense because I didn't want to port my entire backend over and move off of Superbase just yet. So um yeah, so I'm building out a little node.js serverless function that will run on Netlify's serverless functions offering.

Sean
Right.

Andrew
um and

Andrew
I've got that running now, um but I'm still dealing with issues with the image transformation and server stuff on back-end stuff is just so much harder to debug than front-end stuff, IMO. Maybe to people who are really good at back-end, it's not, but for me, it feels so much harder to debug. um so like I can't figure out right now why this thing isn't working. It's just not working. and

Sean
Gotcha.

Andrew
um so yeah i am still I managed to get a version of this working on Superbase Functions last week. um So I can render images as PNGs now. They will show up in Gmail. um but And this is super fucking annoying. The one library I got to work, they would like render text. And also, I discovered that rendering text from SVGs is apparently really hard. And the fact that these libraries can do it at all is kind of magic and amazing. So that was interesting.

Sean
like editable text or just like, oh, okay.

Andrew
No, not editable text, just like rendering text, because like SVGs are XML. This is going to be so boring to listen to for anyone who's not super technical, but SVG.

Sean
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right, right. Good thing good thing our three listeners are so.

Andrew
Yeah. SVGs are represented as XML and like, and so the text in those is just like an XML text.

Sean
Mm-hmm.

Andrew
element. And so like to render that you have to like, you have one fonts are weird and just font sizes and ah stuff is weird.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
So you have to like, understand the font, you have to understand the CSS to position the font and like get it all right.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
So while I can technically render PNGs from super base, a super base function right now, and it's like showing up in Gmail and everything, all of the text is like two pixels too high.

Sean
Oh, I see.

Andrew
And so it just looks ugly.

Sean
I see.

Andrew
And so I'm still fighting with image processing libraries so that I can, one, support more file types than just PNG, and two, so that I can render PNGs where the text is in the correct place. And it is driving me up the fucking wall.

Sean
So how did the demo go?

Andrew
so

Sean
What happened?

Andrew
demo Demo actually went great because I just hand-waved over that part.

Sean
Okay.

Sean
how yeah

Andrew
um Demo was great. um This was with a friend who um had reached out way back in like February when I was first exploring this idea and express interest, so um but wasn't ready to implement yet, which was good because we didn't have a product yet. um And so I posted something on LinkedIn and he ah hit me up and was like, Hey, I'm i'm interested in a demo. um so So a friend of mine from Charleston who has worked with several startups, he and his co-founder are um more on the non-technical side. So like having a no-code solution to something like this is really appealing to him. And they they don't really have email automation set up yet. So one of the things I pitched him on was

Andrew
chart juice, uh, productized service like, Hey, sign up for chart juice and then pay.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Um, I'm testing out a $3,000 set up fee and for $3,000 I'll come in and like build out your email template. Um, and you know, work with your dev team to get all of the necessary integrations or web hooks or whatever set up to to call that email template and get it. get it firing um in your transactional email service or in something um like customer.io. I'm still trying to figure out if you can do this stuff without having to go full code.

Andrew
um um And yeah, he was super excited about that. That was really, really interesting to him. And he even pitched me on, he was like, I think you should consider having a managed service after the fact too for like, you know, double the cost of your subscription fee. um Also, he thought I was charging too little, which was fascinating.

Sean
I didn't think you were going to say 3,000. I thought you were going to say like 10,000. yeah

Andrew
Oh, no. He thought i I was charging too much just for the monthly subscription of chart juice. He thought chart juice should be more expensive.

Sean
Oh, sick.

Andrew
Yeah, that, that was exciting to hear.

Sean
Cool.

Andrew
Um, and so he was telling me that like, you know, right now the two plans I have on the website are 50 a month and 150 a month. He's like, you should also have a $300 a month option where when I want to make changes, you'll just make them for me. And I was like. easy to make, but sure. Yeah, sure. Fine.

Andrew
And I think he just liked the idea of if there was having someone who is like a transactional email expert so that if there were any problems in the email pipeline, having someone to help debug those was really a feeling.

Sean
and

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Dude, I wonder what metrics you can get like, that are ah like, for example, um um like a before and after of like, like, you like you can see open rate for transactional email, but also like, I wonder how correlated open rates slash whatever rate slash click through or whatever the transaction email like the effect of transactional email has on retention or turn, or, you know, any of that sort of stuff, like, um because I feel like

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
And this is the central idea of chart juice, right? Is chart juice is, yes, it's a chart designer, but like the the use case that I'm focused on, the value prop is really let's reduce your churn and let's like improve your expansion rate and your renewal rates.

Sean
Right.

Sean
right

Andrew
Um, because the idea is to keep your product front of mind with buyers when the buyer isn't using your product all the time.

Sean
Right.

Sean
Mm

Andrew
And the best way to do that is email.

Sean
hmm.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. um I mean, I think it's a huge, like... Understandably, it's the last 20 percent of something you want to worry about if you're building ah a SaaS product, but it definitely has some really injured like people. I don't think people send that many variations of of transactional emails at all. um And I like the idea that because they're staying in their inbox, it's sort of a glance rather than like I have to click into credit, like credit karma or I have to click into the SaaS app I'm paying for.

Sean
to look at the thing which you know may or may not make me reconsider whether how much i actually want this thing um versus like i don't know just things at a glance so yeah yeah yeah

Andrew
Yeah. And I'm, I'm really hyped about this productized service idea, which you you were excited about in our first episode back as well. I'm excited about it because one it's revenue and I need, you know, it gets me to a point where I'm maybe Robin profitable way, way, way faster.

Sean
yeah yeah

Andrew
um Two, it's a chance to work really hands on with clients dog fooding the product. um So that's really exciting for me.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Three, it's a chance to like manually do things that I could eventually do it software. Eventually chart juice could

Sean
Mm

Andrew
um could send emails for you. Eventually, chart juice could plug into your analytics tools automatically.

Sean
-hmm.

Andrew
Eventually, chart juice could um you manage ah frequency of those emails and provide a nice little dashboard where people can turn the emails off and on.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
um I could do all those things eventually, but if I could do them manually right now and get people to pay me to do that, that would be great for figuring out what's actually worth it and what's not.

Sean
Yeah, much like Nathan Mary, you can also of one day become just juice.

Andrew
the

Andrew
what's your What's your take on the on kit rebrand? Convert kit to kit real quick.

Sean
um I am super excited that ConvertKit is going to be free for up to 10,000 email subscribers.

Andrew
Yo, I'm stoked. I'm trying to figure out how to transfer over to that.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
I'm a little worried they're gonna like eat up a lot of their revenue, like like undermine themselves, but.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. um I mean, I think it's cool. I don't, you know, like,

Sean
I think it makes sense. I think it's okay. You know what? Let me take that back. I think it's smart.

Andrew
I've seen a lot of people hating on it, are you yay or nay?

Sean
The rebrand or the mission.

Andrew
Three brand, convert kit to kit, start there.

Sean
I don't care. I think everyone is. I think it's overblown. If there's hate for it, I don't think it's bad. I mean, I think.

Andrew
There's not hate, no one's being a dick, but but there's a lot of like, I don't really like it, it's so bland, what does kit mean?

Sean
Okay. I see.

Sean
Gotcha.

Andrew
Maybe I'm just a domain nerd. I thought it was fucking cool. I was like a three letter domain. You got kit.com.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Also Loki like was for a split second, tempted to reach out to Nathan and be like, do you want to buy crit dot.com? Not that it has anything to do with kit dot.com, but beautiful.

Sean
I mean, or it's their new show where they critique of things that creators are doing to give them feedback, crit.com, crit, yeah, crit kit.com. Um, well, I mean, they're, they're like a pretty large company now, though. So just buying the, like not having like someone squat, you know, misspellings is also good in general.

Andrew
Oh yeah, they have.

Andrew
Yeah, maybe. I i i want to keep crit.com for reasons hopefully we'll talk about in ah in a minute if we have time.

Sean
for sure yeah yeah absolutely um okay well anyway uh like i think what they're doing is exciting i like you know i think that frankly

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
I think when a platform comes out to make something incredibly easy, you end up having a lot of shit versions of the thing. Point being is like Shopify comes out and you have a bunch of, you know, e-commerce stores and a lot of them sort of, you know, start because it's really easy and then kind of like play the internet with really kind of. not great e-commerce stores. um And I think it's the same with like AI, and sorry, with newsletters, for example, like AI generated newsletters, and I think Beehive made that really easy, and I think it's good that they did that sort of stuff. But I think that, um so this idea of like ConvertKit just giving away 10,000 subscribers um is cool. I think going larger makes a lot of sense so that they're out of just like the pure newsletter game. um Because I think it's going to be like,

Sean
I think if Beehive is the Shopify of newsletters, um I think it makes sense for ConvertKit to go for a larger, like yeah over or more use cases. um

Andrew
Gotcha. So you you're looking at this much more strategically thinking, how are they positioning themselves with this move against again so the other newsletter players? And you're seeing it as they're sort of removing themselves from the newsletter game and saying, we'll give you the newsletter for free. And then when you're ready to either build a really big creator newsletter or build more sophisticated marketing automation for a business of some kind, that's when when we really want you as a ah customer.

Sean
I think that's a smart point that I didn't really think about. I just like, sure. Yeah, totally.

Andrew
That's what it sounded like you were saying.

Sean
For sure. ah ah

Sean
I think, I mean, I think it was tangential. I think um um the the only real thinking I've done um around it is the fact that like, um i I forget which podcast I heard this on. And like, I also think this is like the general consensus, right? Because I think B I've made making newsletters like very, like almost free and easy to do. um And I think ConvertKit has always been sort of like, it's to me, at least it's always seemed like a more premium option with a lot more features.

Andrew
Yes.

Sean
And ah like, honestly, like, I feel like from the folks that use ConvertKit, plenty of them have continued to stay loyal to ConvertKit just purely because of how much better it was at a bunch of other things. I've never used it. I don't know. um Okay.

Andrew
It's more powerful, for sure, than most other email tools. So you have your like massive like active campaign clavio, your massive folks who are going after the enterprise.

Sean
Right.

Andrew
And those are powerful in probably a different way. um But in within the creator space, the creator bootstrapper space, um ConvertKit is definitely the premium option, at least now it might not have started off that way but now it is definitely the premium option it's a good bit more expensive than most of the other things out there.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Mm-hmm.

Andrew
um and it

Andrew
significantly more powerful, which I have realized more and more recently as I've been trying out a bunch of different tools.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Mm

Andrew
So like it's not as powerful as maybe customer.io, um but that's really in kind of a different niche of newsletter tools, of email tools, I mean.

Sean
-hmm.

Andrew
um Within the creator bootstrapper space, Kimberkit is the most powerful option.

Sean
I think, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think, um I think Ray Geisenberg said on a podcast, like, if you want to take email seriously, use ConvertKit, not Beehive. um And I think it had to do with the fact that like ConvertKit just has some better options in terms of if you're selling like info products or something.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
um you know I've always kind of seen ConvertKit as like the ability to kind of use email to drive revenue versus email to drive sponsorships and um and and an audience, which I think is the beehive route right now with their sponsorship network and all that sort of stuff, which makes me think it makes even more sense that they've kind of gone larger because you know ultimately email is just the thing that gets you to the thing, which is,

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah. i I saw this, I looked at this and thought less about Beehive and thought more about HubSpot. And to me, this felt like ConvertKit trying to to become the next HubSpot um because they introduced, I forget, Kitboard or something like that.

Sean
Gotcha.

Sean
Oh,

Sean
really?

Andrew
um BoardKit, Kitboard, BoardKit.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
one of the two, I don't remember, they introduced a CRM and they introduced an app store.

Sean
um Okay.

Andrew
And so they're making ConvertKit even more powerful and even more flexible um and trying to start to enter a space where it can compete for a larger section of your marketing budget and can be used

Sean
Gotcha.

Sean
Mhm.

Andrew
across a larger spectrum of your business, um which I thought was was interesting and kind of logical.

Sean
Mhm.

Sean
Mhm.

Andrew
right like This is the path that so many tools take. They start off trying to be good at doing one thing, and then as they grow, they expand. And that creates opportunity for new entrants into the market, and it also you know helps them to further establish the position that they have.

Sean
Yeah, I like it.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Makes sense to me. I think I think that makes sense.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
I think going back to the whole like what you what you said slash what you thought I said sort of thing like, yeah, I i think if the thesis is be the hub spot for creators, then you should totally go like it makes.

Andrew
Distancing yourself from beehive also makes place into that strategy.

Sean
Right.

Sean
For sure, for sure.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um And yeah, giving away cover gift for free for 10K subscribers is like a no brainer.

Andrew
Yeah, Beehive always felt to me like they, I feel like they came out of nowhere.

Sean
um

Andrew
Maybe they've been around longer than I ah have been aware of them. But to me, they were like a response to sub stack where Beehive was just like, run your own sub stack.

Sean
Right, right.

Andrew
Whereas ConvertKit was always more like, more own your marketing, your like creator marketing funnel.

Sean
For sure, for sure. Yeah, I definitely, I definitely think, I think that's a good read. Um, I mean, I do think Beehive came out of nowhere. It was just, I mean, the guys who, who founded it are like ex morning brew and, uh, the hustle guys.

Andrew
Oh, interesting.

Sean
So they, they just had like immediate, uh, yeah, immediate audience and immediate, um, um, uh, like backing, like there were employees who worked.

Andrew
I didn't know that audience and a lot of knowledge. Yeah.

Sean
Yeah, exactly.

Andrew
A lot of knowledge of how the industry works.

Sean
Um, um

Andrew
Cool. Interesting. I didn't know that.

Sean
you

Sean
Um, so I've been working on something.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
We haven't, we've talked about it, but we haven't talked about it on this podcast in a, yeah, we've talked about it in like our lost tapes that we'll never see the light of day now, but, um, so I've been working on a SAS product, um, not B2B, um, mainly because like, I dunno, I just kind of need to stretch my brain in a, in a different direction.

Andrew
Tell me about it.

Andrew
Love it.

Sean
And speaking of brain stretching, um, it is a like. If anyone's listening to this who's into, like, new tropics, um this is just me outing myself as a druggy, possibly, but... um Yeah.

Andrew
Adding you yourself is like a ah hashtag hustle culture grind bro.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Okay, well, it comes with the territory, I guess. Anyway, um if anyone's into new tropics at all, like you you probably take more than one thing, and you probably look for like other things to take, and and then you eventually end up having like a stack. And if you look at like r slashing tropics, that's like 400k, but even recently, after I've been working on this, like they've launched a new one called r slash stack advice. um Which is a lot of people posting, you know, here's all the things I'm taking. Can you give me advice? Why isn't this working? I feel this affects all this sort of stuff. And to me, this feels like ah ah r slash build a PC and then r slash build a PC sales and then and then all the other sort of like, like passion things that have come out of it.

Sean
um so um One of the types of businesses I've always admired, this is gonna be a long run up to what it is. um One of the businesses I've always admired has been like PC Part Picker, as well as Letterboxd, as well as like Goodreads and all these sort of like curation ah businesses where they're just websites, they have a bunch of traffic.

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
I don't really know if all of them monetize as well as PC part picker, but ah they're just like a tool for the passion community and I was racking my brain of like what hasn't actually been like build or or at least built with an audience and it has become relatively large. um And then I was like, an art slash shop basic like oh, this is the thing. After finding a bunch of like um ah ones for other sort of passion communities. Anyway, so the product's called Snackwise.

Sean
I don't know if, by the time this podcast comes out, it'll be live, but it'll be at stackwise.ly, so stackwisely.

Andrew
Love it.

Sean
The value here is you get to curate your stack, share your stack, just like PCPartBigger, but also if you like PCPartBigger, it also tells you the sort of interaction dangers you might be getting he yourself into of like, um ah you you you're taking, you know, I actually don't know. one You're taking, you know, drug A and drug B and therefore you probably don't want to do that because you'll kill yourself. um There's two levels to it. Hopefully one is listed known interactions. Others are like, hey, you're taking like something that elevates your heart rate, but then you're taking something else that elevates your heart rate.

Sean
You probably don't want to stack those two things together.

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
I also just think it's like a good sort of health tool. But grabbing a data of supplements is so goddamn hard.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
There's no standard classification for them. Information is everywhere. And I can't, like, it's not like I can already trust the effects that exist because some of those supplements are straight up just placebo things. And figuring out how to classify all that data has been brutal. Getting that data in the first place has always been brutal.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
But, yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
I mean, I guess that's your whole value prop, though, right? you're You're curating and organizing things and taking the stuff that's out there in a bunch of different places and kind of all over the place and trying to give people a really nice interface, which, by the way, it does look great.

Sean
For sure. and sure

Sean
Thanks.

Andrew
I've seen it.

Sean
thanks

Andrew
It looks really nice. um Give people an easy way to manage there manage and personalize their stack, and then also but also providing that service of like, We have gone and found the information and organized it in a way that actually makes sense.

Sean
for sure. um Cool, thank you.

Andrew
Easier said than done though.

Sean
I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely been um alternative drug names has been slowly killing us. I'm also unlike you, I am not i am not touching the code whatsoever, hopefully. um ah or Found a dev that I really liked off of acquire.com because I just browse that like millennials browse Zillow and we were We were chatting. um I didn't want to buy his company, but he seemed like a really cool guy, and we just kind of have been working together.

Sean
um So slowly getting there, making progress.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
I know we talked about it a little bit offline last week. Some of the the things you were thinking about with design. any Any updates there? Any breakthroughs over the last week? Or still just fighting with scraping data and and getting it organized?

Sean
so

Andrew
You can also say you don't really want to go into it if you don't want to.

Sean
So... No, no, um'm I'm finally going to do it. um um

Sean
I think the the biggest, so we have a set of data. We have a set of data. We have a set of supplements. um we have We have the effects grabbed from like WebMD as ah paragraphs and strings. um We'll probably cross-reference it against something else to get other sort of effects. um um One of the things I've been

Sean
racking my brain about is like, I know we're supposed to be embarrassed of the MVP that we launch. Um, but part of me keeps thinking about, okay, like what are the things I can actually sacrifice for lunch? And what are the things we have to have? Like, do I have to have interactions on there or. but like Right now, you can log in and you can create a stack. We have to fix the bug where you can't really save it yet, but you can like we're we're very close to, you can build a stack, you can share a link to it.

Sean
And I think that's great for R slash stack advice. right But then like i don't like part of me really wants to get to that next step of interactions.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um um

Andrew
It's hard. It's hard to figure out where to draw that line.

Sean
For sure.

Andrew
i've I've been fighting with it. I'm still fighting with it. Like, you know, is it acceptable that. The text is two pixels too high on on the PNG version of these graphs.

Sean
Right.

Andrew
To me, no. But maybe I should just say, fuck it.

Sean
Right.

Andrew
It's hard.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Um, but we're close. We're close. Hopefully I think by episode, I'm going to say before episode 10, it will be live.

Andrew
Oh, no way. I'm going to make you make you pick a way more aggressive goal than that.

Sean
Okay.

Sean
Fine, fair enough.

Andrew
That's that is two months from now, almost.

Sean
That's fair.

Andrew
um You can have episode five or six.

Sean
That's fair.

Sean
OK, thanks. Thanks, thanks. I'll take it. I'll take it. If we include the lost tapes, it's about the same. Yeah, if we include the three or four that we've done as practice runs for this.

Sean
Anyway, it's been exciting. It's been cool. It's a good sort of other way to flex my brain. um I have like inklings on how to monetize it. Just, you know, PC perpendicular to affiliate. It could be a way to do it.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um

Andrew
Although affiliate has gotten so hard recently with Google's crackdowns.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
I am worried about that.

Andrew
Although if you build the traffic more around like Reddit and Reddit culture, maybe that's a way to circumvent Google. and

Sean
So I'm worried about that, but I'm also worried about, I think Amazon, like Amazon affiliate also doesn't pay off, pay out so much for this sort of like herbal medicinal supplement sort of thing.

Andrew
Oh, it was.

Andrew
That's a challenge.

Sean
um I've thought about also selling some level of like sponsorships or display ads. It is kind of weird to be that sort of so source of truth and also to sell that sort of thing. um

Andrew
I wonder if you could work out an affiliate deal with examine.

Sean
there so they actually have an examine partner program so that will probably be that'll probably be one of the ones that we do because i think that's like super easy to sign up for apparently a lot of people in the drivers community just like actually don't really like examine um because they feel like the data is not the data set's not great um um yeah so that's been a thing i think everyone likes to use drug bank from what i hear

Andrew
That could be cool.

Andrew
Oh, interesting. Huh. Hmm.

Sean
um And effectively we're building kind of like a mini drug bank competitor, you know, nowhere to the size of all the things that they have, but but it has, um and but like drug bank also hasn' an and yeah has a as ah what is an interactions API as well, but I think drug bank charges however X amount of money and I have to wait for a um but for them to get back to me on like how much of the API is going to cost.

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
um Yeah, I don't know. It's a fun project. It's cool to slowly see it come to life and think about it every once in a while.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, I'm excited to see it go live and just it's fun, fun going through this at the same time. It's been, it's been cool.

Sean
Yeah, absolutely.

Andrew
Um, I've got one last thing I wanted to to run by you before we bounce.

Sean
Okay, go.

Andrew
I know we're running a little long. Um, so I've been doing a little bit of work to my personal site and, um, trying to figure out like what.

Sean
Mm.

Andrew
to do next or what you know how much energy to focus, what my strategy should be. um So right now, I've committed myself to writing one new post a month and sending out one newsletter a month. um And that's that's all I'm really doing. um I rebranded my newsletter so it used to be start up watching then for a while I just scrapped the name and said it's just Andrew Askin's newsletter um and then I ah was sending just like

Andrew
previews of blog posts and I was like, I kind of want to get back to my roots and send link roundups, but do it in a new way that feels more like me and give it a little bit more of a brand positioning. So um I called it Founder Tonic, um one because I drink too many cocktails and a gin and tonic was my first cocktail. that I really fell in love with um and then to the ideas it's supposed to be like a little dose of medicine or a refreshing take on bootstrap startups that is has less of the hustle porn grind culture bullshit.

Sean
Yeah, I mean, I like it.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
um um

Andrew
And so i was I was looking at the analytics I just posted the other day. um One, I'm trying in a ah little experiment um that I'm a little worried goes doesn't fit with the values that I just talked about of like trying to be different. I posted some AI generated booknotes.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
I've wanted to try to upload some booknotes for a long time. It's a growth strategy that a lot of um A lot of successful creators use Peter Kang, Nat Eliasson, a bunch of people. Derek Sivers have all uploaded booknotes. And booknotes often have good search volumes. So it can be a a nice SEO play. um And booknotes are just boring to write. I don't like writing them. um But they're really useful to people. like

Andrew
when they wanna refresh themselves on something they read. um So I generated the book notes with AI um and then added my own um my own personal review that I wrote myself and then edited the book notes to feel like a little bit more like me. um And I put a disclaimer at the top saying, these are AI generated, this part's human generated, this part is AI generated. So one that's a new experiment that I'm trying. And I'm trying to decide how I feel about it. So I'm curious your thoughts on that. And then I'm also curious to just see if, if it gets any traction if Google will pick it up or if Google is, you know, better than I think they are at detecting AI content. Maybe they're even smart enough to scan for my AI disclaimer, I don't know.

Andrew
um So I'll pause there and then I want to talk to you about about strategy a little bit going forward.

Sean
Okay, so I don't think that's true that Google's smart enough to do that. um Because Google can barely, I think, understand the site without you giving it schema. um From what I hear in SEO land is the people that are actually getting punished are the sites that are actually have like display ads from ah ah the various or displayed ad networks like Raptiv or I'm forgetting the other one but

Andrew
Mmhmm.

Sean
Oh, Mediavine. It's like affiliate links and display ads are big signals that you're a SEO-boosted um sort of thing. That's why a lot of like true SEO things have been hit as well. like um I think Jackie Cho, he...

Andrew
Which also sucks because how are people supposed to monetize without independent content sites, without affiliates and display ads?

Sean
I don't know, man.

Andrew
Like display ads are literally Google's business.

Sean
It's, yeah.

Andrew
They created like they are the biggest seller of display ads in the fucking world.

Sean
yeah i don't know man i don't know um yeah i've been watching like like so jackie chow is a guy and ah who like talks about seo does the building public thing i've been watching him just get completely owned by google left and right he like had it even like so so there's like a couple of signals one is one is or a couple are the ones that we talked about but the other thing is also

Andrew
Damn.

Andrew
sam

Sean
they They will look at it also based on what your Google Search Console, because if you're one of those like SEO agencies that is doing this sort of stuff or SEO practitioners that is doing this stuff, like your Search Console will probably have a bunch of other like sites that you verify that are also pulling the same sort of tactic. So and people's entire SEO Search Console portfolio will get wiped at a time.

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
that's pretty insane um and yeah I mean I think I've seen people um I've seen a couple of people like just get real content wiped off so point being like with Jackie

Andrew
It's an interesting theory.

Andrew
How do you feel about it from a values perspective? Like regardless, like we're going to test it and see if it can work or not. If Google will penalize me or not, but from a, from a does it vibe with the. Does it vibe with what founder tonic and my personal brand are trying to be of like, Hey, we're trying to be, you know, bootstrap startups fulfilling life, but like, you know, a more holistic balanced view on things. Does using AI generated content to create book notes as a growth strategy fit with that?

Sean
I think the big thing is just that. So to pull AI out of this purely on just booknotes in general.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
I don't care about like your like I don't care about Andrew Askins and what he has for booknotes for maybe for like especially these sort of like much larger books like Atomic Habits.

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
um That's not interesting to me like the other things you you talk about are a lot more interesting. I mean granted you've got a hiking content and and I don't go outside but um like your your experiences as a founder and your thoughts around that are a lot more interesting.

Andrew
yeah

Sean
Um, if you had a wrap up of like, here are and like X, you know, here, here here's like, if if you have like very specific books once in a while, but I don't think that I would follow you for a large set of book notes.

Andrew
there

Sean
And I think the thing that AI is good for is that sort of repeatable, like process where you, you know, your content pillar is, is book notes.

Andrew
Yeah,

Sean
You start talking about that. That's where it gets muddy for me.

Andrew
And to be fair, i'm not I'm not necessarily thinking of this as a reason for people to subscribe to me. It's more like trying to find more ways without just like shilling on Twitter for people to find me.

Sean
For sure.

Andrew
like How do people find the site in the first place if I don't go after some of these?

Sean
For sure.

Andrew
you know, higher volume things. And then hopefully, so my, my thought is like, maybe, you know, this is a little bit of like, suck it up, do some of these growth strategies, like write some book notes, things using AI on around some popular books as a way to like, get some more people to the site and then hopefully keep them around for the content, which will still be the majority, which is like personal essays.

Sean
Mm.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
so

Sean
I think that...

Andrew
But maybe I just need to lean harder into like the personal side of it and um chill on Twitter.

Sean
so So just to like double click on the like booknotes strategy and and not so much the AI side, but I'll bring that up. I have a friend who's really in into Stoicism and he reads a lot of different Stoicism-esque books. um and And there's famous ones like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, but then there is there are like other ones if you get deep into it that people don't write so much about like and like on his blog he ranks like number three for this like book by I think Socrates or I don't know whoever but I think that the people who find him through that are people that he wants he would want for his like audience

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
And I think that if I am a person if I am a person who wants who wants to follow who who who cares for that will find the that specific niche book. I don't know how I would feel if I saw at the top this was co-written with by with AI. I feel some like. like

Sean
Not that I would feel cheated or anything, I would just sort of devalue it a little bit.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um Mainly because I guess the question is like, how much are you okay with your founder brand intermingling with that? I don't know. i don't know

Andrew
That's kind of the question. That's what I'm trying to figure out. I don't know.

Andrew
OK.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
I'll meditate on that, think on that a little bit. um Might end up pulling down the the book notes that I posted. We'll see.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
I'll probably just leave it up because I don't think

Sean
What is, well, hold on. What is the, like, what is the argument against? What is the other side? What's like the devil's advocate?

Andrew
Sorry, which side are with with which side are you asking me to argue?

Sean
Like I have, like, like if.

Andrew
Because I feel like you just gave me the devil's advocate for like why not to do it.

Sean
Yeah, but but like what is the is the why to do it just because we can follow like you can follow a specific sort of content marketing and strategy and then.

Andrew
The way to do it is that um booknotes get consistent search volume.

Sean
I see.

Andrew
um And they're something that I think makes sense to generate with AI um because, like I mean, this is what AI is good at. It's not good at novel ideas, but it's good at summarizing existing content. um And so generating booknotes makes sense. I think booknotes are genuinely helpful um because like you know

Andrew
If I read a book and I'm trying to like remember a piece of advice from that book or trying to like refresh my memory, I search for book notes every now and then um ah to when I'm trying to like remember something I read.

Sean
Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.

Andrew
um So I think they are genuinely helpful and I think that like Yeah, the main goal for me would be um would be search volume, so so get some organic traffic through these booknotes and then keep people around for the original essays. And my ah tim attempt my thought behind putting the like disclaimer was so that I wasn't trying to like pass stuff off as my own that wasn't fully mine because that doesn't feel great to me.

Sean
Really?

Andrew
um But I think you know I don't know that booknotes in general feel great to me um and that the strategy feels great to me and I think to your point like think about

Sean
Sure.

Andrew
should probably think about like the type of people I want to attract and what content will attract them the most.

Sean
Mm-hmm.

Andrew
and um But I'm trying to find the balance with this between like being authentic and like doing stuff that feels right and also like not ah not ignoring growth and then never growing.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
so

Sean
I think I wonder if there's something like I think that um I think using AI to summarize the thing is like at the level one usage of AI. I wonder if there's another way to use it where it's like more underlying on a process level point being good.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Andrew
I mean, I think the the best usage that I found so far is to use it as an editor.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
Like when you're creating original ideas and you're writing those ideas and using AI to help you make the writing more readable, I think that's the best use that I've found for it within the writing space so far.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
um ah Nathan Baskets has gone all in on that with um with his product Lex, um which I use to write a lot of times now.

Sean
Gotcha.

Sean
um So the

Sean
We can talk about it next time. yeah We can do an episode on AI. I have thoughts. I thought have thoughts.

Andrew
You have thoughts?

Sean
I have thoughts. We'll leave it as as a cliffhanger.

Andrew
Cool. Cool.

Sean
um

Andrew
We should we said dig into that more. um Last last thing that I just wanted to mention was um that I thought was really interesting. in As I was looking at the analytics for the website, um I noticed that like the

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
um pieces of content that are growing the most. And maybe this fits perfectly into what we were just saying because this is like the antithesis of AI-generated book notes.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
The things that are growing the most are the pieces I've written about hiking.

Sean
Hiking. Yes, I knew it. no

Andrew
which are very like personal, very human things that like AI can't understand and are very authentic to me and the things that I find interesting and that I love.

Sean
Right.

Andrew
and drawn like these very real, real world experiences that have nothing to do with computers and ah productivity habits and, you know, books that anyone can read.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
um So, um yeah, I should probably lean into that more. um Also, like, I'm now wondering, like, do I need to start a hiking blog?

Sean
and

Andrew
But no, no, no, no. Stay focused.

Sean
Yeah, andrewaskins.com is my new blog.

Andrew
Yeah, maybe I just need to become a hiking blogger. Just fuck this startup shit.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Just become a hiking blogger. I mean, I won't say I haven't thought about it. I i just don't know if I want to monetize my my actual hobby.

Sean
Oh, hell yeah.

Sean
I think it's a great idea. i think

Andrew
I think I'll just keep being this weird mix of like entrepreneur and hiking content, and that'll just be my niche. is like the weirdo entrepreneur guy who talks about entrepreneurship sometimes, but also talks about hiking a lot.

Sean
We can. ah You know what? We could just make the next. The next episode, because I've been working on my personal site and remaking it since it went down years ago. um We could just make an episode about personal sites.

Andrew
That would be fun, actually. I would really enjoy that.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And we try to create, help each other create a strategy for our personal site.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
yeah Yeah, 100 percent.

Andrew
That could be cool.

Sean
Cool.

Andrew
Cool. I like that.

Sean
OK.

Andrew
Sweet.

Sean
All right, I'll see you later.

Andrew
I am in.

Sean
Bye.

Andrew
Peace.

Sean
Bye.