Defcon, apparel sales, and Google ads

In this episode, Sean gives a recap on shirt sales, his annual Korean BBQ dinner, and more from DEF CON. Andrew shares some feedback he got from the client project he's been working on, and dives into the early results he's seeing from running Google Ads for ChartJuice. Andrew reveals his latest mile times from his half marathon training, and the guys talk about how much impact you could make in congressional elections with some basic digital marketing chops.

Links:
For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:00:00.75
Sean
What up, what up? Long time no see.

Andrew
Yeah, how's it going? Can't wait to hear all about Defcon.

Sean
Good. I can't wait to tell you all about DEFCON. A little sniffly. Definitely have conflu.

Andrew
Concrud.

Sean
Yeah, a couple friends. A couple friends I've also got in COVID. There's, I think, all that stuff.

Andrew
Ouch.

Sean
um I'll test again later. So far, so good. But ah yeah, we'll see. um Yeah, yeah, it's been, it's been hectic.

Sean
Got back yesterday at 5am because my plane got delayed, and that was brutal. But it's the first time I've ever used my priority pass for a lounge. So that was kind of cool. um But before we get into Defcon, what have you been up to?

Andrew
pun What?

Sean
What's been, what's been going on?

Andrew
what No, no, no, no, no. We got to start with Defcon.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
and Defcon is is the big news here.

Sean
All right, fine.

Andrew
I've got i've got some some little tattoo stuff to talk about, but ah yeah no you I want to start with Defcon.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
and

Sean
All right, okay, fine, fine, fine, fine. Defend was good, Black Hat was good, Black, I'll start with the Black Hat. I went to the, shout out to Lucas Nelson, and he handed me to the Investors and Innovators Summit. um So first I'm going to like a summit at Black Hat.

Sean
um

Andrew
Huh.

Sean
ah ah like I got to go that to that basically like for free which is cool and so I just decided not to pay for an expo pass this year terrible idea by the way like I really want to pay for an expo pass it's 800 bucks and like I don't really like it's not like I go for sales so I kind of just go to meet our clients but probably should have paid a hundred bucks to just go like like go to a booth

Andrew
Oh no.

Andrew
Why? Why do you say that?

Sean
Um, I think I felt, okay, one, I think I felt a little bit of FOMO not seeing stuff at Black Hat and the expo floor. Um, I mean, in part didn't have like that much time to walk the floor.

Sean
Definitely met people outside of the expo floor. So it was fine overall. I think it was just felt very weird not to like go do the whole expo thing that I always done every year. Um,

Andrew
You all have never set up like a booth at Black Hat, have you?

Sean
No, not for us, only for our clients.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um But I think it's just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we would never we would never like be black hat booth wise, that would be, actually, that would be very, very interesting.

Andrew
Yeah. That shit is expensive, right?

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
I don't think black hat would ever let us do that, now that I think of that.

Andrew
Oh really?

Sean
I mean, we're not a security vendor, so it'd be very weird to do it.

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
I don't know, it'd be weird. i like That's not that's not like a terrible idea. actually it'd be very interesting i wonder if there's something we could do there but anyway we like uh uh i didn't get to wander it which means i didn't get to like i think i think one of the things i missed out on and what's kind of sad about it is i didn't get to get them i didn't get to go pick up merchandise that we made for our clients that they printed and that was probably the biggest thing i was bummed out about

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
Uh, but the innovator summit was super cool.

Andrew
That's a bummer.

Sean
Uh, shout out to Mike Privet and Ross. Uh, you know, they were, they were both on a panel together. That was super good.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
Um, um, and that was fun. Def Con was Oh, so very fun. A lot of good pictures. We ah including me brought six people out this year.

Andrew
Tick.

Sean
um More like extended team members rather than like team core team members. It's been kind of like extended team members slash friends basically coming to help.

Sean
It's just a lot cheaper than flying out our design staff um from from a like

Andrew
Oh, because so that design staff can keep like doing design work for clients.

Sean
doing yeah yeah um yeah exactly um which is like i don't know it's something i like it's something it's been always the biggest issue of this like agency plus merchandise model right they're two separate businesses so flying out one like staff from one business to support the other one doesn't make a lot of sense so flying out folks that are dedicated to to just the you know merchandise side makes more sense but

Andrew
Who do you have now who's dedicated to just the merchandise side?

Sean
No one, no one that's no one.

Andrew
Oh, OK.

Sean
Yeah, yeah. um Like, ah in this case, like our intern for the summer, um ah you know, Ben's friend, who was helping us out, basically, designer that was helping us out, stuff like that.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
um Very much like extended family.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
um um

Andrew
How did how did the merch go like for people stoked?

Sean
But it was cool it was like, yeah, go ahead.

Andrew
Like how how did sales go?

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. So I don't have any t-shirt left except a single medium dragon critical vulnerabilities t-shirt for you.

Andrew
Fuck yeah. Awesome. I was about to say if you didn't save me.

Sean
Every single.

Sean
Every single a thing was sold off, um even a ball.

Andrew
Nice. Are you going to do another run of stuff like post Defcon of the shirts you had?

Sean
Uh, Ben's signaling me, signaling me about it like right now. but We're talking about it. I don't know. Uh, okay. So, so reprints are an incredibly difficult. Okay. Hold on. Let me start from the beginning.

Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean
Let me talk about Defcon and then I would love to get your thoughts on like this idea of reprints.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Cause it's a, it's a headache.

Andrew
Okay.

Sean
Uh, we sold more day one than we had ever sold. Like. In an entire like, oh, sorry, sorry. into Like last, last year we sold like probably 25 K or 24, I don't know, some, some like 20 small, 20, maybe 23 K.

Sean
I don't know. In, in total sales, we made all of that in the first day. Um, um, the, by the second day we had like.

Andrew
Awesome.

Sean
Like we had ah probably 18 plastic, 96 quart, like plastic bins. um And ah ah by the way, that were like overflowing with shirts by the second day, they were all probably like a quarter full.

Sean
And we we basically we finished. We sold out by my Saturday night. um Yeah.

Andrew
Awesome. That's fantastic. Were people stoked on the designs? like

Sean
Yeah, people.

Andrew
what What were you hearing from people?

Sean
Yeah, I think people were stoked i think we people were stoked. I think we actually had more designs. but so We also flew in we also like sorry enough fluent we shipped all of our existing merchandise from that we that's on the shop and we cleared our inventory on the site to to the um to the to the event.

Sean
um So people were so, people were stoked to see some like older designs. We had some like man in the middle coffee shirts that we had reprinted.

Andrew
Oh, fun.

Sean
So we put them in there. I think that like scarcity really also does help sales. I was like, yeah, we're never reprinting this war driving shirt ever again.

Sean
I know you guys love it, ah love it, but we've reprinted it three times now. So, ah I don't know. I don't want to do it again. I want to do new designs. um But i mean like people I think people reacted really well to it.

Sean
um shirts that i like There were definitely shirts that like I knew would sell and and did, but the I did not expect that many people to really love the Critical Vulnerability shirt.

Sean
like People fought over it. like The last medium, it was or sorry, not the last medium, but like the last, there were there were times where like it would get down to the last bit of the sizes and there would be someone that basically would

Andrew
Dang, I called it.

Sean
like effectively cart snipe someone in front of you not like they would like it was just like someone wanted it and they would watch the last one in their size get bought up um because there isn't one other person ahead in line um which you know selling out is a really great signal that we're doing well but is is like really bad yeah it means that exactly

Andrew
Yeah. Mm hmm.

Andrew
frustrating because you're, you, especially if you sell out too early, it's like, oh fuck, we could have printed more of these and yeah.

Sean
Exactly. Exactly. Um, so.

Andrew
I was on a call with ah Vincent from Treadnode yesterday and he had the um the Tomb Raider, not Tomb Raider, but um what's the, I forget the name of the shirt, but but the one where the like video game looking one where the guy's going up against like the two-headed dragon and there's like the the big gates and everything.

Sean
Yeah. but

Sean
Oh.

Sean
oh Oh yeah yeah, the Hydra, the Hydra, like brute force one, yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean
Gotcha. Wait, you're saying Vincent was wearing one?

Andrew
Yeah, yeah, he he went and bought one from you all.

Sean
Oh, I didn't even see it. I think there were multiple people that came to the booth that I didn't realize came to the booth because I like there were a couple of times where I walked away.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
And I think every time I walked away it was when those people like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew
When the people you knew showed up to buy shirts, of course.

Sean
oh Yeah, damn. OK. Well, that's a that's a shame.

Andrew
He was stoked though.

Sean
OK, awesome.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah.

Sean
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, that was a popular one. I mean, they were all I think they all did super well. But yeah, I mean, there were there were just ones that I just didn't think like would sell that well and like.

Andrew
You doubted critical vulnerabilities.

Sean
I just it's.

Sean
I didn't, I guess I did not, having never played DND, um, which now makes, yeah, DND no errors go hard.

Andrew
D&D nerds go hard.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Um, just for the record, if everyone's listening is wearing the shirt and it feels cheated because I haven't played DND. The other staff members have played and they're the people that designed that shirt. So I'm not, I'm not a fraud. Um, but it does make me feel like I want to play DND now.

Andrew
To be fair, I've only played D and&D like twice. i But I have watched a good bit of D&D content, which is maybe nerdier, I'm not sure.

Sean
Okay. Nice.

Sean
That's fair. I think I've also I've also watched D&D content um like like a little bit I've watched like highlights of things especially like, you know, the like I forget like Brandon something Brandon Mulligan.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
I don't know what his name is Yeah.

Andrew
Brennan Lee Mulligan. Yeah.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah a lot of that.

Andrew
Yeah. Dimension 20.

Sean
Yeah Nice nice ah Yeah, yeah, um and then yeah, go ahead

Andrew
Yeah. I started off a critical role fan and then kind of transitioned over to a Dimension 20 fan. Yeah. Cool, man. I'm glad everything went went so well. That's awesome. So talk to me about reprints.

Andrew
What were you going to say about reprints?

Sean
Oh, um obviously, our online sales are not as good as our in-person sales. um But there's a number of factors to that.

Andrew
Right.

Sean
right One, we do like zero social media. um ah we We are incredibly unacted inactive, like updating our site. um you know We don't do un we don't do like not well when it's um We don't do not well once it's like Black Friday and people will buy things that are on sale and all that sort of stuff. And that's cool as well. But, um you know, the feedback that we get every single week is like, oh, we weren't even sure if you were coming to Defcon because you haven't posted.

Sean
in a year. um And you guys are always like super silent until like a day before DEF CON, basically.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
I'm like, yeah, that that's about correct.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
um Because we just don't we don't have dedicated I mean, we don't have dedicated staff um and service revenue is is more shiny than than product revenue. um um We

Sean
So, reprints are hard to justify because the people that know who we are are the people that we meet at DEFCON. It's not like net new customers online find us. Occasionally, they do, right? um Especially because we've been like, like we SEO-wise, we have it hooked up to like Google's Merchant Center.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
So, every now and then, we get posted online or or we get like a show up on, you know, something on Google Shopping and people will buy things.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
We've gotten to a point leading up to Defcon where leading up to jefffcon where we would get like maybe one sale every single week, um you know which is like two t-shirts.

Sean
But leading up to Defcon is because people want clothing to wear to Defcon, so they remember us and they ah they buy stuff ahead of time for it. um But if all of our audience is at DEFCON and they purchase all of our stuff at DEFCON, there's only a small segment of the Saturday crowd that didn't get what they originally wanted.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
um There's only like a very small handful, I would say maybe 10% of the cost like customers didn't get what exactly all the shirts that they wanted. But we have no perfect way of knowing that, and and we have no way to incentivize them to buy it.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
They're also coming like not all from the US, so so shipping for them is expensive, which leads those to those abandoned checkouts, abandoned carts on on checkout. So reprints are hard to justify because It's very, like, like, we just don't see as many purchases of things we reprint.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
To me, I think our the way we're shifting our strategy is we will probably do some level of reprints of the new stuff, um also because, like, I reserve the one for you, but

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
like We don't have any for our team, for example. um um So at the very least, we'll print stuff for our team. It's also hard to justify because reprints are in smaller quantities, so they're more expensive shirts to do it that way.

Andrew
yeah

Sean
um um Although, now that I think of it, um maybe maybe the answer is to start just like... Actually, I have an idea. um Okay, anyway. um ah

Andrew
but What were you going to say? What was the thought you had?

Sean
was to print more and then ship them to our fulfillment center so that they're online right after so people could buy it. But then in my head, I was like, that doesn't make any sense. Why would we just print more and bring them to the booth to sell it at the booth?

Andrew
yeah yeah

Sean
um the The right answer should be we should print so much more that we don't sell out of almost every single design so we could ship it back to the center in all in one box, get them to listen online, and then we can do new designs that way and that way.

Andrew
yeah

Sean
Yeah, so the new strategy is it's supposed to be drops more frequently, probably one every two months at the least, um and use Defcon as our warehouse clearing ah event, basically.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
And anything that doesn't sell will get slashed in pricing for Black hat oh sorry for black for black Friday, not Black Hat.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
that should be the way we do it um but it requires way more of like a investment up front and it also so again doesn't leave a lot of room for reprints because it just like it never makes sense for us to do it um besides just kind of you know for our fans yeah yeah anyway that's that's my thought i would love to be sort of challenged on it though or if you have thoughts

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Andrew
Yeah, cool. I don't know nearly enough about the apparel business to to really challenge you on it. The only thing that I i was going to ask, do you get email addresses from people who buy shirts at Defcon?

Sean
We did last year, not this year. um Yeah.

Andrew
Was there a reason for that?

Sean
yeah

Sean
or maybe we didn't do it last year either. I think we did it one year. um It's very difficult for us to get email addresses. um This is also like a problem with like how we design our booth, by the way.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
like our if you If you look at our booth and you look at everyone else's booth, we're very, very bare bones. And it's part of the brand, right? It's kind of just like, I don't know, it's mysteries. We're just fucking here to give you Like like we were on a call with the Defcon guys.

Sean
there ah or like ah not the call like They called with the with the people organizing the event. They were like, we don't want it to look like a swap meet. But like to me, like a swap meet is cool as hell.

Sean
like i want I wanted to feel like a swap meet.

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
um So it's very bare bones. We put the t-shirts out. We sell all of them. We optimize for order volume. And we we we optimize for like as fast as possible. We can get our shirt in your hands, get the cash or the card, and you just leave because there's so many people um at the vendor hall all the time.

Andrew
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Sean
um And getting them to stop and put in their email is ah really like, it just takes so much time.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um

Andrew
What about like once a shirt sold out, could you have like just I mean, do it old school sheet of paper. You want this shirt. Write your email address down.

Andrew
um And so that way we have like a rough idea of how many people

Sean
yeah yeah

Andrew
would buy a reprint and and we have a direct way to contact them and say, hey, the reprint is here. Come buy it.

Sean
Yeah, no, it's a good idea. um I was thinking about that too. So um it once we sell out, or like even during the the entire event, we have this thing called SideQuest.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
And we've done this for the past three years. But SideQuest basically follows on Twitter, will give you a sticker, follows on Instagram, follow, sign up for our newsletter, sign up for our friends newsletter, et cetera.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
We'll give you stickers for free and it's a great incentive ah for them to do that.

Andrew
Nice.

Sean
um Often they've always signed up for like the news they'll sign up for the newsletter in our footer. That doesn't do it per style or anything. So we get emails that way. um We had a site quest in the past, which was like, hey, if you so give us your email after you've purchased with your credit card, like we'll also give you a sticker. And that's how we used to collect emails.

Sean
um that's a good idea doing the doing the sign up thing I will say people who sign up and ask for and say they want to reprint do not actually like yeah like I would say 30% of them actually go and buy um because the amount of people that have like told

Andrew
Bye. I mean, a 30% conversion rate on most things is pretty good.

Sean
That's fair. That's fair. That's a good point. um Yeah, I just think it's like, I mean, I think e-commerce is more difficult um at that scale.

Sean
I think the other, um and think the other like um ah i I don't know because I don't know because I don't pay attention to it.

Andrew
how How big is your mailing list? for the apparel brand. but Cause the other thing is like, I think you're right to optimize for speed at

Sean
and

Andrew
the, um, at the event, um, doing a side quest or like having a different channel that doesn't clog things up. Um, calling it a side quest is cool.

Sean
Thanks.

Andrew
That, that, that fits with y'all's branding, um, trading stickers for, for emails, if it works as cool. Um, and then, yeah, like finding a way to like not clog it up makes a lot of, not clog up the lines makes a lot of sense.

Andrew
Cause like, yeah.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
That what people really care about there at the event is just getting in and out fast.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
But the other thing is just like, if you all are trying to convert to this, this more regular drop based business um social media, I'm sure will like.

Andrew
you know, and sc Instagram and ship I'm sure will, will be a factor. But also I would just think that like the more emails you can get from people at Defcon, like those people are probably the most likely to buy drops throughout the year too.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And so just finding a way to, you know, get in front of them outside of Defcon.

Sean
Yeah. I mean, I think you're right. um Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. There's seven hundred customers inside Shopify.

Andrew
Okay.

Sean
um That doesn't mean seven hundred emails. um Supposedly we have a Clavio somewhere that exists.

Andrew
Wait, you don't know where your newsletter like sign up form goes?

Sean
Listen, you don't understand how little time we get to spend on Russian dice. We, um, ah for some reason I have a record.

Andrew
Sean.

Sean
I have like a feeling that there's a Clavio somewhere with 1300 signups. There's also technically some other mailing lists that I have that like, I don't know, man, I'm going to be collecting the email and and getting them to sign up and like doing, things like doing things for us way harder than doing things for our clients.

Sean
Um.

Andrew
Yeah. Yeah, that's all it always is.

Sean
um Yeah. ah But yeah, we have like 700 customers. I guess there's some like, I would say like 90% of them are probably so like, are subscribed to the email list. um And that's just through Shopify. um From what I understand, Clavio, there's like another Clavio that, again, we don't do anything with. um um and And we don't have like, per-shirt separation of those emails.

Sean
We don't have like, saw you at death pond sort of things yet.

Andrew
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure.

Sean
um Yeah, we'll probably like, you know, we're we're doing a debrief. I think one of the things is like, like I have an iPad, I might as well just put it in the kiosk mode and say like, give us your email and sign up for this thing.

Sean
Like even like, if you sign up, you'll literally get a discount on the spot or something, or I don't know, or yeah.

Andrew
I think stickers. a good move. If people, if that worked in the past, then sticker seems like.

Sean
Yeah, definitely.

Andrew
um Cool, man.

Sean
Definitely.

Andrew
um any Any like new screens leads ah come out of of Defcon Black Hat yet or or more just ah networking and, you know, face to facing and expecting stuff to come out later?

Sean
Yeah. Um, yeah, a little bit, I think one or two. Um, it just really wasn't a focus for me this year.

Sean
Um, and, and I don't think it's ever like, Defcon is never a place where we go for leads anymore.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Um, like they'll come in, if they come in, um, black hat has always been a, uh,

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
Way to you know meet current customers see other people and from there They'll just like because they see I'm there. They'll make an intro so some leads from that um Just inevitably um But yeah wasn't wasn't a focus this year um But I have a cool little bit extra tidbit

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
So this is the second year that we've hosted a Korean barbecue event.

Andrew
What's that?

Andrew
Oh, sick.

Sean
It's called buffet overflow.

Andrew
Love that.

Sean
Last year there was like 40 people that came. This year was like 60 people.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
I called I called ahead to make the reservation and the staff are like Do you, do you meant 16, 16 people? Like, no, no, no, no, no. I don't know if you remember me from last year, but I'm saying like, probably like 70 ish.

Andrew
Who?

Sean
Anyway, it'd be like 58 people. But you know who showed up to the, to my goddamn event?

Andrew
who

Sean
Do you know who Marcus Hutchins is?

Andrew
ah Oh fuck yeah, the the guy um who like got arrested and everyone had that big movement to like free him sick Cool

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The water cry guy showed up. um That was cool. And then some other new faces as well. And people got to I think people were more comfortable this year.

Sean
So they spent like try to like shoot ah video there as well. and And I mean, it was largely as a creator event. It's a great time for like influencers and creators and also just friends of our ah slash clients that come and like mingle and stuff.

Andrew
Sick.

Sean
And then and i don't know some guy, you know, some of our friends invited Marcus Hutchins and he was like, oh,

Andrew
That's cool.

Sean
That's crazy.

Andrew
The last, the last Defcon that I went to, um, we went and got Korean barbecue, but there was no name for it.

Sean
Uh-huh.

Andrew
It was just you, me, uh, some of your friends from Excel. I feel like, I feel like Morris came like maybe Josh.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean
I don't even remember, to be honest with you.

Andrew
Uh, I can't, I can't remember, but there were like eight of us.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
Um, so that was the start of buffet overflow.

Sean
ah That was, which DEFCON were you at?

Andrew
Uh, this would have been like, I'm trying to remember my first one was like 2018 or 2019.

Sean
27, 28.

Andrew
I think, I think I went like 2018, 2019.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
And like, then like maybe one of the post COVID ones, I went to like 2021 or something like that.

Sean
gotcha. Anyway, yeah, yeah, it was like, that's where it started um was basically that sort of like, it like, it's just always been tradition that we get it.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
So yeah, now there's a name.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
Now it's a thing. ah Yeah, hopefully we'll make it even bigger.

Andrew
That's sick. That's really cool.

Sean
And then just, you know, buy them out for that day or something. But yeah.

Andrew
Yeah. Yeah, that's rad. That's really cool. um So I talked to to Vincent and the Dreadnought team, cleared it with him that i could I could chat about it on the podcast.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
So the project that I've been working on, the miscreants project that I've been working on for the past month was for the Dreadnought team um to get them ready for GRT2, which is their big, like, try to break the LLMs competition that they were We're helping to organize they were um a co organizer with several other groups bug crowd. um ah AI safety Institute um Allen Institute, a bunch of bunch of groups um within the AI village.

Andrew
um And it went super well. They they seemed really, really happy um with how everything went, which was really cool.

Sean
Awesome.

Andrew
um Vincent sent me some some stats. So they had 200 total submissions um to the the competition, 48 individual submitters, 54 bounties given out,

Andrew
for a total of $7,850. And the top earner was got $2,300 in bounties and and ah second highest was like $1,600. And he said that um it sounds like there were at least a couple of bounties that will actually like lead to updates in the model card the model card like describes the limitations of the model and everything so there are a couple of bounties that were a couple of submissions that are actually going to lead to like serious like research changes and like improvements in the model which is really rad.

Sean
Cool.

Andrew
um And another like really cool little point, they had, I think he said, a 10 or 12-year-old kid get a bounty. um So they had like a 12-year-old um like sit down, use the platform, interact with the models.

Sean
Whoa.

Andrew
um We gave them some warnings that there's some not totally kid-friendly content that could come up because you're trying to like make these models say horrible, toxic, racist things.

Sean
Great.

Andrew
Um, and the kid actually won a, uh, one of the, um, so the bounties ended up, they started off, they were doing like, I think $200 and $350 bounties. Um, and they ended up, there was like.

Andrew
They got some feedback halfway through the competition on like how the judging was playing out. like And the judges changed judging midway through the competition to make it more accessible to everyone.

Andrew
So they ended up giving out $50 bounties for anything just interesting that people found, and then $500 bounties for anything that could like meaningfully impact the model. um And so this kid won a $50 bounty, which is which is really rad.

Sean
That's sick.

Andrew
um

Sean
and

Andrew
And then Vincent said the coolest thing was like by day two, they had to start they had like stations set up and then people could bring their own laptops and stuff. Of course, they had to start limiting time at the stations because people didn't want to get up.

Andrew
They wanted to just like keep playing.

Sean
That's awesome.

Andrew
So that was really exciting to hear.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
That's cool.

Andrew
Yeah, so the work we did to help, um you know, We were just a small part of that. like We were just helping with with a little bit of UX and UI, trying to make things look good, be be intuitive.

Sean
For sure.

Andrew
yeah Vincent, Brian, Rob, Brad, Nick, Will, like the whole dread node team, they put in some late hours to pull everything together and get everything implemented in time.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
for defcon um so So all the credit goes to them, but it was a really fun project to be a part of.

Sean
For sure.

Andrew
They've been a blast to work with. um And so I just wanted to ah shout them out and also just thought you'd find those stats cool.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. um That's very, okay, so the biggest difference between this DEFCON and the previous two or three or four DEFCONs is that this is the first time in a long in a while that DEFCON has all been under one roof, because it's always been in multiple hotels.

Andrew
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean
so like It's always been hard to get people to go, I assume it's hard to get people to go from you know one place to the other, one casino to the other, because like like hotel or something.

Andrew
Yeah, that was always a challenge, yeah.

Sean
but the um The fact that people stayed, I think is a really good signal. um it's it's like the so It's like being sold out, you know? It's like, damn. Should've just had a bigger bigger spot.

Andrew
yeah Yeah, needed more more stations.

Sean
DevCon should've just given them. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
um Yeah, yeah, really, really cool to hear.

Sean
That's cool. Yeah.

Andrew
um And so, yeah, if, if, if anyone's listening to this and wants to check them out, dreadnode.io um crucible is, is their platform, um where they have challenges,

Sean
Mm-hmm.

Andrew
um which is an interactive way to learn how to use and attack models. um And then they're working on some really cool features for the future. They'll continue to have events like GRT2 and similar types of events that they'll host throughout the year. um And well we're working with them on on making all that stuff look super polished. And um yeah, so it's been a fun project and really excited to hear how well that went.

Sean
Yeah, cool. Well, thank you for your efforts in supporting that, too. um Now that like, you know, this has happened, you may has been doing design stuff, you know, how's your life? How's charge use and all you like that obligation?

Andrew
Yeah. um and so Bringing Chinmay on has immediately like alleviated my workload, so i'm my role has become very chill.

Sean
Nice.

Andrew
I just get to like shoot the shit with Chinmay and Vincent and like give Chinmay feedback and like try to provide some direction and you support, answer any technical questions, stuff like that, um help out.

Andrew
so um yeah have been able to shift the focus back to to chart juice, which is feeling good. um and um yeah so

Andrew
I have been super ADHD this month, so it's been I haven't been as productive as I'd like to be. like It's been a bit of a grind to make myself sit down and focus and just like get some of the nitty-gritty work done that I need to do to push the product forward. um So that's been a bit of a challenge. I don't know exactly why.

Andrew
I've been that way, you know, I think part of it is just because the project isn't new and when that newness wears off my brain starts going, this is boring. We don't want to do this anymore. um So I'm trying to fight that a little bit, but I i got payments implemented so um uh you know all the little tiny intricacies that come with that even even when you're using as much off-the-shelf stuff as as you can um got that feeling pretty smooth i think um had a funny day where like i went to test the production version and so

Andrew
bought subscriptions and then would immediately refund myself and had to do that like 10 times. And so I went to look at my credit card statement and it was like, chart juice, chart juice, chart juice, chart juice, chart juice, chart juice, like payment, refund, payment, refund, payment, refund.

Andrew
So that was a little like silly. And it's also like kind of surreal just to see a thing you made show up on like a credit card statement because it's like, it just feels so official.

Sean
For sure. Yeah.

Andrew
And it's like, how did some silly code I wrote like get into Chase banks system and like get treated as a real transaction.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
Um, so that's, that was kind of funny, but got, got payments integrated. Um, and I was dragging my feet on, on pushing on marketing, um, until I had that done.

Andrew
So, um, Once I got that done, I spun up some Google Ads again. um One campaign directed at just like trying to get app users, and then one campaign directed at ah the service landing page. um And so I can talk through some of the results I've seen from that. um Let's see. OK. So the last within the last week, I've been running things for about a week. Here I'll update to.

Andrew
OK, nope, hold on one second.

Andrew
OK, nope, I don't know. i Sorry, I don't know what's going on with the Google Ads ah UI is kind of abysmal. OK, so these numbers are don't have today's numbers in them.

Andrew
But they'll, they'll be pretty close so I've been running ads for about a week, I've gotten, it looks like, about 900. Yeah, about right about 900 clicks.

Andrew
So, 900 people coming to the website.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
um Interestingly, the service page ads, which the ads are pretty similar, slightly different copy, um and then different keywords. It's like the main thing.

Andrew
you know um The service page ads, um the cost per click is way lower, like a third.

Sean
Interesting.

Andrew
So it's like 32 cents per click versus a dollar per click.

Sean
Nice.

Andrew
um So that's that's interesting. I need to dig into that and try to figure out what that means. um And so then if i jump into um if I jump into my Fathom Analytics panel, I can see and I look at um look at the last week.

Andrew
Yeah, I can see Fathom Analytics. There's always a slight difference between between the two. But Fathom Analytics is showing me like 657 people for the last week.

Andrew
Yeah, about six, 700 people for the last, uh, last seven days for that same period.

Sean
nice that's

Andrew
And within that group, 110 people have clicked start free trial, which is a 10% rate. So like that's fucking awesome.

Andrew
But here's, here's the new problem that I'm running into.

Sean
dope uh-huh

Andrew
I have nine signups. in the last week. So nine people who have actually created an account. So for some reason, only about 10%, if that, like less than 10% of the people who are clicking through to the like account signup page are actually following through and signing up and creating an account. um And at first I thought it was just a mobile optimization problem. I hadn't optimized the site at all for mobile. And so the signup page was like abysmal.

Andrew
But I went in and fixed that ah on Monday and started running ads again. And I've seen pretty similar results the last couple of days. um So I'm not sure.

Andrew
what to do with that. I need to ask around to some like ad experts and see if they ah see if that's normal or if if that's abnormal. I might need to do some stuff to like reduce the friction or better better explain the like reasons for signing up on the signup page. I'm not sure, but it's it's surprising to me. It feels really low, and I'm i not sure exactly what's going on.

Sean
I'm shaking out your sign up. Your flow. Curious. Hmm.

Andrew
Yeah, so the sign up flow is like, there's several places on the website where you click start free trial, or the other call to action I have is um create your first chart or something like that.

Andrew
um And then from there, um it takes you to just email password. I do have like kind of strict password requirements just because working in security has impacted me.

Andrew
So I have

Sean
Yeah, I don't I don't think that matters though. um Can you change? ah So, OK, the only thing the.

Andrew
Yeah. Hit me with your thoughts. What do you, what's standing out to you?

Sean
The only thing that immediately stands out to me is I kind of wish it didn't stay, start your free trial, but create your free account. or um like it's gonna be a free trial regardless but i I feel like for some reason start your free trial feels very off-putting like one I don't know how many days that is um and two free trial means it's gonna be paid it just reminds me that it's gonna be paid later whereas like get started for free or you know or something like that makes me yeah yeah um I mean and but for what it's worth like how much did you spend on ads so far

Andrew
Hmm.

Andrew
create your account, I can try it.

Andrew
Let's see. Um, I have spent about $400 on ads, $430.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
Um, and I've gotten, you know, yeah, 400 by nine.

Sean
So you paid like 50 bucks per signup.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah. 40, 45, yeah. About 50 bucks per signup.

Sean
Yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, for, well, your pricing is like 300 a month, right?

Andrew
Is it?

Sean
So as

Andrew
ah Pricing is 50 a month. It starts at 50 a month and then pumps up to 150 a month.

Sean
Okay, I don't know why I thought your scale was the range of month. Um, I don't know.

Andrew
I would love for my scale to be 300 a month.

Sean
You know, me too.

Andrew
that Yeah.

Sean
Um, yeah, I don't know. That's pretty good still. Like, but like I'll pay 50 bucks for a paid user.

Andrew
ah These aren't paid users, though. We got to see what the what the free trial to paid conversion rate is, which we'll find out within the next two weeks.

Sean
No.

Sean
For sure.

Andrew
My guess is it's going to be pretty low, because I'm also looking at like how much usage I'm i'm seeing, and like I'm not seeing a ton of repeat usage yet.

Sean
For sure.

Sean
Mm-hmm.

Andrew
um All this shit's early stage.

Sean
Mm-hmm.

Andrew
right

Sean
Mm.

Andrew
you know it's it's early you know It's a small sample size, small amount of data. um One other thing that I like I'm going to tweak i'll try to tweak the ah copy on the sign up page. um One other thing that I am going to try to tweak, I'm going to turn off the service page um ads for right now for like a few days and see what numbers I see. Probably I'm doing all of this wrong. I imagine I should be letting stuff run for like a week at a time or something, but I just don't want to burn that much money.

Sean
I mean, is the service like are the service ads converting?

Andrew
um

Sean
Or or sorry are people signing up for the service?

Andrew
um I can't tell very well. um I think

Andrew
No, i haven't I haven't had anyone reach out about the service yet.

Sean
OK. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Andrew
So one thought I had was like, and I haven't seen this in my analytics, but I might need to like, I think I might need to go in and tweak the service ads so that I'm getting the the search terms coming through better.

Andrew
Like I might have like a ah UTM problem with those ads.

Sean
and say

Andrew
um But one thought I had was like,

Andrew
If there's a bunch of people coming through on the service ads, like more people coming through on those ads and they're clicking. they're somehow thinking that like start free trial will take them to like a service signup page or something instead of, you know, I don't know exactly, but maybe there's some confusion about like what they're signing up for.

Sean
I see.

Andrew
So I'm going to try to pause those for a few days um and see if like the percentage improves um so that even if it's like a little more expensive to acquire people, they're yeah more aligned with

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Right. Right.

Andrew
what I have to offer.

Sean
Right.

Andrew
um So going to try that. I have also thought about like there's a lot of stuff I could do. like I could push sign off up off until you've actually had a chance to like play with the chart designer.

Andrew
And like you know I could re-architect the app a little bit so that you can you just get dropped into the chart designer by default. And then you don't sign up until you need to save or export or something like that.

Andrew
Um, could do something like that, but yeah, my hope is I kind of want to just test the more traditional flow right now. Cause it would be nice to have emails of people and like be able to better, it makes the analytics a little easier.

Sean
yeah i think um I think you should you should just stick with the truth like traditional flow. I think it's a good idea to do the the reverse if you were more of help you create pretty charts like low mart like like high volume, five bucks a month sort of thing or free tool online.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um Because I think the amount of people that will just screenshot your chart and use it for the presentation, if it's a free tool like that, like I would do it that way.

Andrew
Yep.

Sean
um But cool.

Andrew
Yeah. um the other thing is So the next thing I'm going to be working on, I've i've been adding and a little bit of content to the website. So you know just a couple of like feature pages and blog posts and stuff. So I'm going to keep doing a little bit of that. um And then the big thing I want to try to get rolling as is an outbound email campaign. um So I want to try to send some outbound emails um and see you know what results I see from that, you know, maybe ads just aren't the right channel for this. um Maybe outbound is better, you know, get in front of people, explain the value a little more directly.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
so

Sean
who How are you going to um like who are you? Who are you going to outbound to? Where are you goingnna going to get that list from?

Andrew
Yeah, so probably going to use one. Uh, there's a few different services that I've been reading about. The one that I've signed up for that I'm going to try out first is Apollo. Um, could also do, um, depending on how that works, I might also look into built with, and then, um, I just heard about one other service on Brian Castle's podcast the other day.

Sean
OK.

Andrew
He was talking a little bit about his, um, cold email.

Sean
Is it clay?

Andrew
What's that?

Sean
Is it clay or smart leads?

Andrew
It might have been smart leads. I don't think it was clay.

Sean
Okay, I think smart leads smart leads is what that crowd uses.

Andrew
Okay, smart leads is pretty good.

Sean
um

Sean
Well, I've never used this.

Andrew
Okay, cool.

Sean
I can't tell if it's pretty good or not. I just know that like, you know, the, the like Russell Branson, Branson, like click funnels, online media, and info marketing world, like, ah which, which I think like,

Andrew
Okay.

Andrew
Is this, is this like a, so smartly it looks like it's more for sending the emails.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Um, not so much for building the list. So, um, like Apollo and built with and sources like that are more data sources for finding. Although Apollo, I think, is kind of an all-in-one solution. um i saw So I started checking out Apollo because um there's a guy I follow on Twitter um who had, I thought, a really good tweet about B2B marketing, um pulling it up in my bookmarks now. Cody Schneider, have you heard of that guy?

Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, so he um he had a good.

Sean
Spoke with him.

Andrew
um

Andrew
To.

Andrew
I feel I have to like click 30 times to get bookmarks to open, it's weird.

Sean
That's what you get when you fire 90% of your engineering staff.

Andrew
Yeah, yeah.

Sean
Like your services just break every now. Yeah, I can't, half the time I can't access my bookmarks. um

Andrew
Yeah. So, so Cody Schneider had a good tweet about like B2B marketing, um, where he was like, yeah, you know, get target customers emails from Apollo built with Google maps directories, validate them with zero bounce, um, cold email them with smart leader or instantly. And then he also goes into like making a podcast and, you know, doing some other stuff that i I might eventually try if I start seeing some traction, but, um,

Andrew
But yeah, I thought, so I was like, all right, cool. I'll check out Apollo. It was a little bit cheaper to get started than built with.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
But with is pretty pricey.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
But I think there's another one, too, that is like a ah lead source. um So I might play around with a few. But yeah, I'm going to I think target like kind of marketing managers, product managers, and maybe like Maybe some sales folks, cause I, you know, I think there are some cold email, like SDR manager types who might want to use charts in their emails and their cold emails campaigns.

Andrew
Um, so it might play around with that.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
We'll see. Um, but, uh, yeah, going to try to get that spun up in the next week or two and see what I learned from, from doing that.

Sean
Nice. Yeah. Excited to hear what comes out of it. It might have been seamless. I've used seamless before.

Andrew
Seamless.

Sean
Seamless that AI.

Andrew
Yeah, that might have been it.

Sean
It felt very similar to Apollo when I first used them a long while back. so

Andrew
Oh, not the food delivery service.

Sean
no no no not the food delivery service yeah unfortunate naming cool what's your mile time nice cool

Andrew
Cool.

Andrew
ah Ran a little slower today. Well, I did four miles at 942 today um and I did seven miles this weekend at I think basically the same pace, like 930, 940, something like that. So um goal is is to get under nine. So I'm i'm inching up.

Andrew
Um, I haven't tried, I kind of want to one day just run a single mile and run as fast as I can and see what my like one mile time is.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
But, um, it's not, it's not in my training program. So maybe one day I'll just blow off the, like one of my three mile runs and just try to run one mile as fast as I can and see, see where I'm at these days.

Sean
Nice. um Yeah, I have no idea how running training programs go, but it'd be cool to like on the topic of experimenting with your, your times.

Sean
I wonder like if you were to run as hard as you could, if you timed how fast and how far you went or just like the duration of how long you were those like, uh, what is it?

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
Anaerobic, right? Or whatever. Like the, the, the fastest amount or the most amount of strain, ah highest intensity that you can run and and how long you can run for. I'd be curious, like. Yeah. What that number is.

Andrew
Like like just do an all out sprint for as long as I can maintain it and like measure that and then figure out like what it would take to extrapolate that out to some distance.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean
Yeah. I mean, I don't think it, I don't think the the math works out on the extrapolating part, but I would just, I'm just personally curious just because you're doing it and I don't have to do it.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Like I'm just personally curious, like how fast you can run for how long.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Um, yeah.

Andrew
This reminds me, i um I remember this was a few years ago, so it may have shifted by now, but um I was doing some keyword research for my personal site, like ah pre 2020.

Sean
Mm

Andrew
So like 2018, let's call it.

Sean
hmm.

Andrew
um And I was doing CrossFit and getting into running a little bit at the time. And so I looked at, I was looking at some fitness keywords and stuff, just casting a super broad net and there was a ton and a ton of search volume and pretty low keyword difficulty for things like six minute mile and seven minute mile and uh some of those keywords and so I was like it might be kind of fun to like try to do an experiment at some point to train just to break a six minute mile and and then blog about it and

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
I like the keyword difficulty was low enough that I was like, if I get three backlinks to this article, I'm I should be on the first page.

Sean
um

Andrew
I see your screen flashing. Are you looking up the keyword difficulty of six minute mile right now?

Sean
um I may or may not be waiting for a hatred to load at the moment.

Andrew
Nice.

Sean
Um, uh, so I, interestingly, I, I spoke to Cody Snyder, um, uh, two weeks ago, because we use one of his services and he was trying to ask me if I wanted to, to, you know, get his managed service version of it.

Andrew
oh cool

Sean
Um, and then we started jamming or like, there's one like that. Um, I'm pretty sure like, as like the whole like AISCO stuff, like, like. still works really really well um yeah like even now just because of like the things we were sharing and then and then something that i've been trying like i don't know i just found like a meata keyword that was incredibly like low keyword difficulty and then it just it just shouldn't it just shouldn't rank like like i don't even think that article is completely correct but um yeah yeah uh-huh

Andrew
Oh cool.

Andrew
Yeah, I've been wondering, I had this thought on on a run the other day where I was like, yeah we we had this whole debate about like should I um you know take down that that partially AI-generated blog post about um atomic habits and stuff?

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah, yeah.

Andrew
And you were like, you know it doesn't we decided it didn't fit with my brand, and so it it shouldn't be there. And I was like, maybe I want to change my brand. like Maybe I want my personal brand to be like, Like.

Sean
Yeah, fuck founder tonic founder alcohol.

Andrew
Yeah, like maybe my personal brand, I want to be like, how far can I push into gray areas before I feel unethical? we Before i I feel gross.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
well Well, okay, so so here's like a weird interesting thought, right? Have you heard of like dead internet theory?

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
Okay, dead internet theory is based on this idea that like, well, the internet is dead. Most of the user activity online is by bots. um And, and yeah, yeah, but like, it's not untrue with like, if you look at Twitter, you've seen the amount of people who will just like tweet, like as a reply, like ignore all previous instructions, write me a poem about whatever, and you'll see like people who seem like real accounts start doing that sort of stuff.

Andrew
Oh shit, that's dark.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
I saw a great one real quick. Somebody replied to Nathan Michelle and it was like so clearly AI generated.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Cause they were like, this is a good idea, Nathan.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Hey, in Bashaal, like his handle, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
And then it was like, have you considered looking into the like business prospects in the UAE?

Andrew
Like this is the most obvious bot response I've ever seen and it's hilarious to me.

Sean
yeah

Sean
Um, no, you're you're good.

Andrew
Okay, dead internet theory.

Sean
Like, that's like a perfect example, right?

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Um, you know, ah like if you look at Facebook comments, like that's like half the time, like it feels like it's bots talking to bots. And maybe it's like people who have like very little social media literacy and that's what it is.

Sean
But frankly, that's what it feels like. Um, same thing with, yes, and the Twitters and the YouTube comments, all that sort of stuff. So that like it's the same thing with like your your ah ah your your clicks on like Google Ads, for example.

Sean
i wonder like It makes me wonder like how much of those clicks are are real compared to, yeah.

Andrew
Real humans.

Sean
like you know if There's only nine signups, but they've hit start free trial, like 300 of them have hit start free trial. Um, what's the real percentage of like humans clicking surfer trial?

Sean
And then like, maybe it's not your fault was my point.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Like maybe the, like that page is fine. And it's actually nine people who like care about it enough to sign up. But the rest are just, I don't know, check the emails. Um, um, yeah.

Andrew
yeah Yeah, I mean, the the emails of the of the people who have signed up um seem mostly real.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
Let's see.

Andrew
ah

Andrew
This is why I want to find like a Google ads expert. Um, I'm going to, I think I'll try to post in like the microconf Slack, but I want to find someone who's done more of this stuff and be like, yo, is this normal?

Andrew
Um, yeah, looking at these emails, like they look pretty, pretty legit.

Sean
Mm

Andrew
Um, I mean, it's so hard to say email addresses can be confusing, but yeah, these look pretty real human-esque.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
so

Sean
um Anyway, like, it's just interesting. um It's more like, it's more like, it's, ah it's more just like a like a thought on, you know, what is real when it comes to ad reporting.

Andrew
So yeah, that's fascinating because like, you know, I don't want to be paying for bot clicks.

Sean
um And, you know, ah

Andrew
That's, that's annoying as hell.

Sean
Yeah, yeah. There are startups that that like offer, you know, like bot blocking and all that sort of stuff. um Like I feel like it's actually a very niche. It feels like it's a very niche sort of like solution still. And I feel like, like there there are obvious winners. I think there's a, there's like white.

Sean
had or no sorry there's a human insecurity that's that does that but it's more for a security basis there's data dome as well but i feel like an indie hacker could probably build one for the indie hacker crowd um make like a fathom version of it basically um yeah

Andrew
That's cool. That's a cool idea. Yeah, that's interesting. um Honestly, I've also thought about just like building a better Google Ads Manager because, God, it is awful.

Sean
yeah Yeah, it is, it is, it is. um Well, there's Trading Desk.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
I've never used it, but it's not something we can get access to. It's like an enterprise agency solution.

Andrew
ah Okay.

Sean
It lets you, it's like a buy side platform. It lets you you know buy anything from billboards to pay media and all that stuff.

Andrew
Gotcha.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
um ah Speaking of, I did just get access to Last Thing. I know we have to wrap up soon, but I did just get access to Hulu's Ad Manager.

Andrew
Oh, interesting.

Sean
or Disney, rather Disney's ad manager. And actually it is really cheap to get your stuff on the Hulu. And like, it kind of makes me want to just do something.

Andrew
Are you serious?

Sean
Yeah, dude. It's like, like you can choose, um, I wish.

Andrew
Like if you presumably, if you like do something more like local based, like, uh, like a so pick a small enough subs, sub so set of people, how much are we talking here?

Sean
them

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. You can, you can do it by zip code. You. Yeah. You can do it by zip code. You can do it by like shows. Okay, let me pull it up. um

Andrew
Cause I would. There is like, ah this came up the other day, I had some idea for like a billboard I wanted to buy to fuck with a friend. And Maddie was like, like, I guess, how much are you willing to pay to commit to the bit?

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
And I was like, a disturbing amount.

Sean
okay

Andrew
And so like, if this is cheap enough, I kind of want to just like buy ads on Hulu to troll people.

Sean
i'll do it I'll do it with you. Okay. The minimum you need is 500 bucks, right? Which is like way too little to know that.

Andrew
Nothing. I mean, it's money, but yeah.

Sean
Right. But to note that my ad, but okay, it's not 500 bucks to get it to like one person.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
It's 500 bucks for, okay. This is, I think in all of, this is all of New York, 500 bucks, uh, gets me 16,000 impressions on this ad, which means it's about 351 daily impressions, which means the cost per view is three cents.

Andrew
Uh huh.

Sean
That's insane. That's like, that's, I would spend 300 bucks just to get a hundred people, or sorry, I would spend 500 bucks to get, yeah, a hundred people to watch a stupid little ad I made.

Sean
And it's like a video ad, right? It's like a, like an actual sort of thing. So you have to make it, but like, I don't know.

Andrew
Yeah, dude, this slight deviation off of this. um I so Detroit just had our primaries for um like the general election coming up later this year, and I won't get too into politics, but like I'm a bleeding heart liberal.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
I'm like, you know, pretty far on the left, although I'm learning from some of my Detroit friends, there's farther to go.

Sean
Right.

Sean
Okay, got it.

Andrew
But but. Okay, so there were three candidates running for Congress, this year, Sri Thanadar is the current congressman, the incumbent who's running again and he's fucking weird. He's like a multimillionaire, ah like, who made a bunch of money doing like running a ah lab.

Andrew
um And he, like, voted Republican a bunch before and now is claiming to be a Democrat. And it kind of feels like he's just doing it to get elected in Detroit.

Andrew
um And he's like kind of a conservative Democrat if he's a Democrat at all. He's just dude's clearly had a ton of plastic surgery. He gives me the the ick.

Sean
What's his name?

Andrew
Sri Thanadar, S H R I.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
um

Sean
Okay. Got it, got it.

Andrew
ah And so there are only, last year he won and he basically won because it was a really, or not last year, last election cycle, he won. And it was largely because in this district, if you were, if you win the democratic primary, you win, um like almost guaranteed. And um there were nine, it was like a super fragmented primary, like the party couldn't agree on who should run so there were like nine people who ran and he has the most money um because he doesn't need to raise it he just has it and you know probably has some connections as well um and so he outspent everybody and won in in like a fragmented primary and now he's the incumbent and but this year there were only two other challengers um who went up against him

Andrew
And Sean, their websites were so goddamn atrocious. i was like i thought we had I thought that like political like consulting had gotten to the point where like anyone running for a United States, like a federal congress position,

Andrew
Um, would have a solid website. Like I thought the tooling and just the number of political consultants out there had gotten to the point where that would be like a done deal. But dude, the website for like the candidate I originally wanted to vote for was so bad that it made me not want to vote for them. I was like, if you can't put together something better than this in this today's world, you don't have your shit together. And I was just like,

Andrew
And so hearing to like how cheap Hulu ads and stuff are, I'm like, man, if, if someone with a shred of, of like, you know, a shred of an of digital marketing skills got involved in one of these like local Congress campaigns and it's not even local.

Sean
digital marketing skills.

Andrew
It's a federal Congress seat. It's a federal house of representatives.

Sean
I mean, I think that's why Trump did so well, right? I think that's, I think that's why Trump did so well is like digital media, like social media literacy.

Andrew
What's that? Yeah.

Andrew
But like the presidential campaigns are at a different level. right like Once you get to that level, those those campaigns like on both sides are doing well.

Sean
Sure.

Andrew
and And the thing is, there are consultants in different parts of the country who have this shit figured out and people go to them and it's on lock.

Sean
Sure.

Andrew
But like the fact that there are still candidates who have, you know, are running for a federal Congress seat and don't have better digital marketing teams than this is like astounding to me.

Sean
Is this a birth of a, are you going to do something about it?

Andrew
i'm

Sean
Are you going to build, make the next car.co?

Andrew
Well, there was also like, there was the whole movement after Trump got elected. There was like a bunch of tech people signed up for like, um, this like democratic party thing. And I attended a couple of like events, um, uh, um,

Andrew
Like part of the problem is like, even if you built a car duct, like, I think it's got to be a consultant. It's got to be an agency, right?

Sean
Yeah yeah yeah.

Andrew
Because they need someone to like write content for them and take better pictures. I mean, dude, even the pictures that these people chose to put of themselves on these websites were awful.

Andrew
It's like, God damn, spend, you know, a couple grand on a decent photographer.

Sean
Yeah, this sounds like something that like ACK Blue, so I just met these guys from ACK Blue over at a Black Hat, I don't know, DEFCON, who do security there.

Andrew
Oh, cool.

Sean
And I asked them, like why why do people, because like like I didn't know this existed until I met them and they were like, you know, this.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Oh, you didn't know about active blue.

Sean
I did not know but I like I've heard of it but I've never like like I didn't know what it was for um besides like campaign donations and then I was like why why do people use act blue versus you know anything else for example and their answer is like they've just been around so much longer than anyone else right right

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Well, also, there like you've using ActBlue versus GoFundMe or something, there are like strict campaign finance laws that like the ActBlue team understands that other people don't.

Sean
I'm sure.

Andrew
um And there's ah there's a similar version.

Sean
I'm sure.

Andrew
ActBlue was the first one, I think, but then a similar version got built for the right. um And like the one of the fascinating things about building software for political like political software is like no one.

Andrew
There might be some regulatory stuff that impacts this but like, I think a lot of it is just no one trusts software that like serves both parties so you end up with like

Sean
Sure. Hmm.

Andrew
carbon copies of each other, but one is for Republicans and one is for Democrats, um which is just kind of a weird little quirk of our system.

Sean
For sure. For sure.

Andrew
um But yeah, but um yeah, so I think ActBlue would be pretty tough to compete.

Sean
Coconipsie. Mm hmm.

Andrew
Maybe not, but like you'd have to do some deep dive on like regulatory stuff and like really understand campaign finance law or else you could get yourself into serious trouble.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, I think so too. I mean, the same thing with like Hulu and and running ads on on there probably.

Andrew
Yeah, it's probably true.

Sean
There's probably.

Andrew
yeah you You definitely need to like do your homework before you started.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
But like you if you just wanted to build websites for candidates, I feel like that's a smaller level of of work.

Sean
For sure.

Andrew
um like You could probably figure out the regulations on that pretty quickly.

Sean
For sure.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
and yeah I thought that yeah there was at one point a movement for a bunch of people in tech to get involved in local campaigns and help with this kind of stuff. um But I think it was maybe just like, I think one, like so many things, there was a lot of energy right after the Trump election and and then it um and then it fizzled. And then I think too, it's just hard to organize a giant group of volunteers. And so things kind of fell apart.

Sean
Yeah, I think so um Yeah, and and like I wonder how much of it is like, I don't know like I i don't I don't know. I don't know the budgets of these guys, but like, I assume a political political consultant that can do this, which are a lot more money.

Sean
Right. Um, because like, you know, you get a Congress seat out of it.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Like the value of that is insane. Um, but I also don't think that they have, they might it may or may not have the actual funds to do something that good. Um, it's also like, I, I also just think the government's just slow.

Andrew
Yeah, if you're a fringe candidate, you probably haven't raised.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
You know, raising money is tough. It's a challenge.

Sean
I think it's also just slow.

Andrew
um Yeah.

Sean
And then, yeah, you're relying on volunteers, which are you know but maybe poli-sci students or something. They don't build websites.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Wix and Squarespace is going to bring you so far. It's all, yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, I think, I think the real takeaway here is not so much that like, I think there is one takeaway is that there is still room to be, to build a like digital marketing agency focused on political campaigns and like drive a bunch of impact.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Um, I thought that was a more soft problem by now, but it's not.

Sean
I do think it's really weird to do that, by the way.

Andrew
Um, Oh, it is.

Sean
I think it's.

Andrew
It's, it's, it gets you into like a whole weird world that I don't know that most people want to be a part of.

Sean
but Yeah.

Andrew
But I think the other like takeaway that I have that's like more innocuous maybe is that you could make a huge impact volunteering for

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
one of a campaign at this level with some digital marketing skills. like Whoever you support, if there's someone you support, like at even at the congressional level, if you you know came in and volunteered, you could make ah a pretty huge impact.

Sean
100%.

Sean
hundred percent There was there was a late night. I was think like a 3 a.m. Where I was going through like the flushing like representative and something like oh like your your website is down I think I emailed him. I think I was like yo Your website is down.

Sean
Can you can you get it back up? um I also think you didn't respond to me.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
I think um which is kind of sad, but yeah But cool

Andrew
Anyway, it's too late for this round of, but I might, I might start paying attention, try to figure out how to pay it.

Sean
small efforts, the new, small efforts, the new political consulting.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
I don't think I could do political consulting full time. I think it would be depressing, but.

Sean
I just think it's really, I think like, I don't know. um Yeah, I think as a as a agency. It's very weird. I think you should do it as a volunteer. I think there's, I think kids with more social media literacy should be helping. Oh, I can't, I can't help if they believe in a candidate. But I think it's so weird as a marketing agency to do it. Because I think it like, if you're good at your job, the feeling of like putting someone you don't really like, ah or like having to do it.

Andrew
Yeah. So you've got to get good enough that you can really pick and choose your clients or be willing to really compromise your morals.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Okay. Want to call it there?

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Cool.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
That's a good turn.

Andrew
Great to see you man.

Sean
It's okay. Yeah. Good to see you too. I'll see you next week.

Andrew
Have a good week.

Sean
Bye.

Andrew
Bye.