How do you know when to quit?

In this episode, Andrew talks about his upcoming trip to Mexico City, which started as a potential plan to live there but has evolved into a working vacation. Sean talks about recent challenges in his agency, including team members getting sick after conferences and some project misfires with smaller clients.

Andrew then gives an update on the lukewarm progress he's seeing with ChartJuice (complete with raw metrics) and again ponders a freemium pivot. He's grappling with the question - how do you know when to give up on a SaaS product?

They wrap up by debating whether shelling out big bucks for 15 minutes with a big shot is worth it or just a fancy way to burn cash.

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

Transcript:
00:00:01.34
Sean
but what up what up

Andrew
Not much, just ah trying to get a full week of work done for the first time in what feels like weeks um in part because I am headed to Mexico City next week.

Sean
yeah well

Andrew
um And I'll be working from there, but the first week I'm only going to have like two days because um Maddie gets in like midday Thursday.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
I'm traveling Monday. um We've got plans Friday um and Thursday afternoon. So it's like, yeah, I'm i'm not getting shit done.

Sean
are you Are you going, like, is there a reason you're going or are you just going to hang out because you like.

Andrew
So.

Andrew
um It started with like Maddie and I had kind of talked about like this pipe dream of maybe living in Mexico City one day.

Sean
Oh.

Andrew
um Part of me really wants to live in a Spanish speaking country at some point um so that I can become properly fluent because I've been taking Spanish lessons um almost every week for the last like year and some change.

Sean
OK.

Andrew
um and so And I've just always wanted to be fluent in Spanish. So this was kind of supposed to be a test run. It was a goal I set for myself this year. I was like, all right, I'm taking this year off. I'm focusing on startup shit. But I also want to make sure I still get in at least one long backpacking trip, which I did with my dad. And then I want to go to Mexico City for a couple weeks.

Sean
Oh yeah.

Andrew
um So, um yeah, the plan is to kind of work from there and try to like, try to spend some time.

Andrew
We're going to, again, take some days, have some fun, explore, but then also have some days where it's like go to a working space ah and just like live a normal life.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
um I think that like the odds of moving to Mexico City are not very high anymore, like it just doesn't feel like it's probably going to fit into like our life plan.

Sean
Mm

Andrew
um But I think that I um would still strongly consider going for a longer stint at some point.

Sean
-hmm.

Andrew
So like the school I take lessons from is based in Puebla, which is, like I think, like two hours from Mexico City. So if I like it a lot and you this continues to be a goal, then I might, at some point, go spend a couple months at the school to try to become fluent.

Sean
Nice, nice. Have I ever told you that I have a pipe dreamer living in Vegas?

Andrew
Yeah, yeah, we've talked about it.

Sean
good Okay, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. Because I want to be fluid in losing all my money at the casino.

Andrew
yeah

Sean
That's cool.

Andrew
You just want DEFCON year round, huh?

Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. um

Andrew
DEFCON's a lot of fun. That sounds awful. DEFCON year round sounds like the worst thing in the world.

Sean
You know, there's a new there's a new conference now that's like going to be the new new big thing, um supposedly.

Andrew
Really?

Sean
Yeah, it goes. It's the Monday right after DEFCON and Black Hat. It's called A.I. 4. It's like the new hotness because it's all like A.I. stuff. It's a corporate event. um

Andrew
Hotness outside of cybersecurity.

Sean
No, like in in cybersecurity as well.

Andrew
But but like it has broader reach than cybersecurity?

Sean
I think so. I think so.

Andrew
OK.

Sean
I think so. I haven't looked so much into it. I just know that, like, yeah. I just know that. Well, my guess is it's going to be like the black hat, but for AI, basically. um

Andrew
What was the old hotness?

Sean
Black hat.

Andrew
But like outside of cybersecurity, what was the old hotness?

Sean
Black hat artist thing. Oh, I have no idea. I don't know.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
ah yeah um Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew
Not your job.

Sean
Not my area of expertise. um That's cool. I didn't know you were taking Spanish lessons lesss that regularly. I had no idea.

Andrew
Yeah, although I actually haven't taken a lesson in like the past three weeks because I've been traveling so much. And um I'm not going to be able to take them while I'm in Mexico City because I have reservations during various places the during my normal time slot.

Sean
Right.

Andrew
So like it will have been six weeks before I take another Spanish lesson.

Sean
Gotcha. do you Do you feel like the regression has happened already?

Andrew
ah Hard to say. I don't think so.

Sean
I could do the podcasts in, in Spanish.

Andrew
yespan this my mallo ah so no yeahre his sister my I feel like my Spanish isn't that great.

Sean
let's See.

Sean
see

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
um And so like, somehow I feel like that makes it harder to lose. I don't know. That doesn't really make sense, but like, um, Yeah, I feel reasonably confident. We'll see when I get there, um but I feel reasonably comfortable like carrying a conversation. i cannot like My biggest weakness is um comprehension,

Andrew
like when someone is speaking quickly.

Sean
but

Andrew
So, and like, I'm still very slow responding as well.

Sean
makes sense yeah

Andrew
Cause I'm, I'm often doing like two layers of translation. I'm like translating what I want to say to like how a toddler would say it, because that's what my vocabulary is like.

Sean
Right, right, right.

Andrew
And then I'm translating that to my Spanish vocabulary. So it's like kind of this like awkward double translation.

Sean
Got

Andrew
And so I'm just like very slow. um And then yeah like when someone's speaking to me rapidly, I'm like um so still at the point where I'm translating in my head.

Sean
it.

Andrew
And that's just a very slow process. So yeah.

Sean
That's cool. That's cool, though. where did you um promise I promise this is going to be about ah about like a SAS thing, but where did you go to find a teacher? like Was there a marketplace online for it?

Andrew
Nope. um A friend of mine has been taking lessons from this teacher for several years um to the point that they've become like good friends.

Sean
Oh, cool.

Andrew
ah And so I just happened to mention to him that i i was I think I was telling him about the Camino and told him I wanted to start improving my Spanish.

Sean
OK.

Sean
Nice.

Andrew
And I kind of wanted to like find a Spanish tutor.

Sean
Yep.

Andrew
And he was like, oh, I've got the perfect person. You need to talk. You have to work with Vanya.

Sean
Nice.

Andrew
And Vanya is fucking dope. She's awesome. so um they Her family, her sister started the school. um And so they're just an independent immersion school, liveitspanish.com, I think, um L-I-V-I-T.

Sean
Got it. OK. OK.

Andrew
um And so it's just a small family-run business. um They do a mix of in-person immersion programs and then online classes. um And, yeah, it's super affordable classes are like 20 bucks a class, I think something like that.

Sean
Very cool.

Andrew
um And, like, I genuinely enjoy talking to my Spanish teacher. She's like 27, super cool.

Sean
Nice.

Andrew
um

Sean
Give a podcast with her.

Andrew
No.

Sean
Like me. Sorry.

Andrew
But, yeah, yeah, she's like, and the way it's structured, she gives me homework ah via Google Docs.

Sean
Cool, man.

Andrew
I do the homework and then we spend like, we have an hour long lesson and we spend 30, 45 minutes just sort of shooting the shit in Spanish. um And it's a lot of, como se dice?

Sean
Oh yeah, yeah.

Andrew
Um, and like, you know, I usually have my notes open at the same time and like sometimes we'll type something into Google translate too, but, um, yeah, so it's, um, and it's a lot of just like, we just talk for 45 minutes and then check the homework and yeah, it's cool.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
cool. um I was looking into taking lessons every once in a while i I think about like taking like singing lessons. i I feel like we might have spoken about this a long podcast that ago but um yeah I think like one of the things I've always wanted to get good at is singing just I think like singing in in like a performance sort of sense because I think I'm very

Andrew
Oh, cool.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
muted personality wise in a you know in like I don't know it's like a That

Andrew
You were you were I would call it more like chill laid back like you're um

Sean
is the same they're the same meaning to me they're the same

Andrew
but But the thing is, you're not at all chill under the hood. like you were like Obviously, you're building an agency and have like an insane work ethic.

Andrew
So you're kind of like your actually running hot all the time.

Sean
It.

Andrew
I feel like you're just your outward persona is very chill, relaxed.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean
Right, right. Someone has described my personality to to a duck in water in the sense that like very chill up top and then frantically.

Andrew
Yep, yep.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Whereas mine is like the opposite.

Sean
ah

Andrew
I'm like super like ball of energy on the outside. And then I'm just kind of lazy on the inside.

Sean
No, you do call me when we have conversations about things. it does yeah when i when i like ah yeah When I'm freaking out, I feel like you you you will tell me things. like oh yeah I guess that's a good point.

Sean
um Well, anyway, ah there's a website called takelessons.com. I found it a long time ago.

Andrew
Okay.

Sean
Microsoft bought it a long time ago. but Anyway, they're shutting down um and there's an interesting opportunity here because take lessons is actually the the biggest group of people that are complaining about it are all the music teachers on there from guitar to singing to whatever because it had probably the largest largest repository I don't think there actually is a there has been a better options than then take lessons to that level. like I think there's a specific guitar niche one, but anywhere like I don't know where else I would go online to learn how to sing. That isn't that would be in the same way of like finding an independent instructor. like there's you know there's There's schools that you can go, and then they're way more expensive. they's And then there's like Fiverr, which has a very small selection. so

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um

Andrew
If you were actually going to take lessons, would you want to do it online or would you find somebody in New York?

Sean
um I've thought about I've thought about doing I think like the convenience of doing it or ah The internet seems fine. I also think like something to build up to I would prefer the nice amount take lessons as you could see remote teachers and online teachers and you could sort by remote in New York teachers and then they have time slots of like, you know, I'm okay to teach 9 at 9 p.m.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
To 12 a.m. Which is like the only time I have and Um, and I really don't want to drive to someone's house somewhere in New York to like take their class until midnight and then come home.

Sean
Just seems brutal.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
So, um, yeah, I mean, online is fine. Um, yeah, you, you, um, I,

Andrew
What do you know why it's shutting down? Just like not worth it to Microsoft?

Sean
I think probably not worth it on Microsoft. I think there has already been like issues with the platform. I think they don't pay, give it that much attention. I think Microsoft has a tendency to, you know, like, did you know that Microsoft like, like has like an insane suite of products?

Sean
Like there are things that we could just never heard of because people just built random ass things and some, you know, the joke is that like an artist, ah like, like someone who wants to like be a creative actually becomes a PM at Microsoft launches a thing.

Andrew
Oh, yeah.

Sean
And then they, you know, some Microsoft PMs are all kind of like LA wait, LA like serving staff who all want to be actors.

Andrew
Weird.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
That does not fit with what i my mental image of Microsoft at all.

Sean
I have a friend who works there. b It's very, it really I think it depends on team culture, but there's definitely a large segment of Microsoft that are that treat it like a software engineer retirement home.

Sean
um

Andrew
Sounds nice.

Sean
Yeah, yeah.

Andrew
That sounds lovely.

Sean
Giant salary, don't do anything, yeah. um Every time, yeah.

Andrew
That sounds wonderful. Can I sign me up?

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
That's what I'm trying to build. Why am I trying so hard? I just need to get a job at Microsoft.

Sean
You should, you should do that. There's no reason you don't. You can launch your pet project there too, and then it'll serve one customer. But anyway, I think it's shutting down because like not enough attention.

Sean
There's people who report like payment issues through it as well and refund issues, you know, standard like two-sided marketplace issues. and um But.

Andrew
ah Building a two-sided marketplace sounds like the worst thing in the world. Although I have i do have a friend um from Colombia where I grew up whose whole like professional niche is building two-sided marketplaces.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
He tried to build a Craigslist competitor while we were in school and shortly after school um raised a little bit of money.

Sean
Oh really? Wow.

Andrew
Eventually had to shut it down, went and worked in VC for a little while, and is now trying to build another two-sided marketplace. And I'm just like, dude, you are choosing hard mode.

Sean
yeah Yeah. I think uh... But you only have to be right once, I guess, yeah. and wonder I wonder if there's a, um like like, per niche, if there's a specific number or how you calculate.

Sean
Like, if you're Airbnb, you need everyone who has a home in the world to supply homes and and people to use Airbnb over hotels. And I'm sure they have like a number to, like, I wonder if like critical, sorry.

Andrew
What do you mean?

Sean
What I mean is like, I wonder how you calculate critical mass for a two-sided marketplace. Because that's the whole point, right? A two-sided marketplace flourishes once it hits like critical mass and and ah like gets to like the network effect concept.

Sean
um

Sean
you know

Andrew
I mean, it's probably like calculating product market fit for any startup. It's like more a vibe than a ah ah firm calculation.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I guess so.

Andrew
Yeah. What's going on in Miss Greensland?

Sean
Well, a bunch of us got sick after um after after not after COVID,

Andrew
Oh, right. Concord.

Sean
after after the conferences. So last week was pretty brutal, um covering for some folks. I mean, we're still hiring, so looking for people inbound, you know, keeps growing. I keep thinking about like,

Sean
like it feels like a war zone it's a good problem to have it makes me feel it makes me very anxious about like like how precarious some of our contracts could be um we've definitely had ah like at least two misfires over the past month which is

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
two more than we ever have. um And I'm trying to figure out like how to deal with that. um You know, luckily, it it isn't really with like any of our larger customers.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
It's with like people trying us out and they're already really kind of antsy about it. So they had little budgets and it was already like a weird relationship to start with. But regardless.

Andrew
I don't know about you, but I feel like some of those

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
some of those situations like create themselves.

Sean
Sure.

Andrew
like ah There was a client that we had who we really wanted to work with because they were a relatively big name, had a had a big following.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
um But like the way they wanted to work with us was just very different from how we like to work. They were pretty price sensitive.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
They were um they you know wanted to have a lot of control over the order of operations and stuff. um And we were, you know, slammed at the time.

Andrew
um And so we we took on the project and like had a misfire and um the client understandably was unhappy about it.

Andrew
I think they kind of overreacted and like I think we could have fixed it in a week or two and it would have been things would have been fine.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
But like they were like absolutely not. We're shutting this down. It was it was all weird. um And like not trying to shake ownership, like we definitely had some gaps in our process that that helped us identify. um We solidified those, basically built a stronger um process of doing creative direction to make sure that like work passed a certain bar before it got out the door to the client. um And ah so like we definitely messed up, but also

Andrew
It always seems to be that like the biggest problems are with the clients with like, who are antsy and like one, you know, wants you to do things a different way versus like.

Sean
Right.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
For sure. For sure. um I mean, regardless, you know, I think I have like a personal principle of like never drop the illusion um and mistakes as an agent.

Andrew
Hmm.

Sean
I don't know. It's something about like making a mistake as an agency feels very different than like like a software bug, you know?

Andrew
It's definitely not fun. like It sucks.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
It feels feels bad.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew
um But also, like it's going to happen.

Sean
I know.

Andrew
No agency grows without fucking up a project at some point. The yeah the key is just to make it right when you do.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
And then like yeah keep improving your processes so it happens doesn't happen often.

Sean
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, I mean, we we definitely never like have blown in that budget or anything like that, but like, um anyway, that's what's happening in, you know, that's what's happening in, in mystery and swirl.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Like I think growing a lot, having good inbound, definitely have like key man risk. ah And we, something I keep toying with in my head is,

Sean
whether or not we should finally hire someone full-time for clothing stuff again.

Andrew
Mm.

Sean
um And kind of, you know, we've been working with this contractor for a while.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
He's awesome. I think he gets it. So we saw him at DEF CON again this year. Like we, part of me, yeah, yeah, he's a designer.

Andrew
He's someone he's a designer who. Yeah.

Sean
He's a designer. Like,

Andrew
Would he be able to do more than just design work? Would he be able to do like marketing and and, you know, but social media marketing um and like build out the brand that way?

Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean
Yeah, I think so. I think with like guidance, I mean, I think he can definitely do the social media aspect and like the photography is like one of his strong suits, which balances out well.

Andrew
Mm-hmm. That's cool. Yep. Yep.

Sean
um You know, in terms of like growth strategy and stuff, I don't think it's a thing he like thinks about, but that isn't to say, you know, Ben is 10K followers in Sierra and he's built his own, you know, brand on there.

Andrew
He couldn't learn.

Sean
So he knows more about that world than I do.

Andrew
Oh, wait, this is the cunt bin is who you're talking about.

Sean
Um, yeah, we, this is the kind of, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just saying like our contractor can probably produce a lot of the creative, like Ben just knows more about Instagram growth things because that's like, he's done it before.

Andrew
Oh, okay. Okay.

Andrew
Gotcha.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Um. So yeah, anyway, it's it's but regardless, it's still a couple, you know, tens of thousands of dollars of a commitment and it's some and something to think about at the moment. um We're trying to figure out what our budget is. um And JJ had a good reminder for me this morning that like we need to factor in like a client loss percentage of like

Andrew
Turn basically.

Sean
before we just hire. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Because we've we typically have very, very little churn, but still, who knows?

Andrew
yeah Yeah.

Sean
um Anyway, that's my that's my headache at the moment, just doing all that stuff.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Good to plan for worst case scenarios, not just best case scenarios.

Sean
na

Andrew
Otherwise you get yourself in hot water.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um But yeah, part of me wants to kind of find people for the agency, do that and then kind of focus black back on building the brand.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
Dan Miesler gave me a very good suggestion of like, you ever watch those videos with Nathan Barry from ConvertKit, where he's like consulting with a creator and he's like, you should use like, you already do that on the side.

Sean
So you should just do that as a video and also like do it as a service where you charge. you know 30k to our creators i don't know which creator is gonna pay me 30k for a session like that but you know um it would be it would be it'd be awesome um that's it what's going on in chartreuse world

Andrew
Be dope if they did.

Andrew
Um, continuing to see like mediocre progress, mediocre signals. So, um, I've been playing, looking at analytics, but tweaking ads, tweaking copy. Um, so I think I talked about last time on the pod, I was seeing like hundreds, like I was seeing like a 10% conversion rate from people landing from ads on the homepage and clicking.

Andrew
to clicking the like primary call to action to create an account. But only a fraction of those were actually creating accounts. And so I think what I was looking at today is like I'm seeing 10% to 12% conversion to like for the CTA, but only like a 2% conversion for actual signups.

Andrew
um and And signups are costing me somewhere between $20 and $30 a signup, and that's for a free trial user. um No conversion to paid yet. And I was doing some digging and um in my database today.

Andrew
um like to try to get a better sense of usage. I've got some product analytics set up, but because the key usage that I want is on the back end, I haven't set that piece of my product analytics up yet. um And so I'm just, I was just looking at the database and it's pretty bleak. Like um of the 25 users I've got on the platform, like only

Andrew
two that aren't me have created more than one chart, and ah the other one is a good friend of mine. and um And then he's the only one who seems to have created any chart images yet.

Andrew
um so like ah Which actually I actually need to double check those numbers, because that doesn't make a ton of sense to me, because there's there are other

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
ways to create images just by using the app. um like I use the image API in the app. um So I need to double check those numbers. But the story is pretty clear that like there's not yeah There's not much usage there.

Andrew
None of these people look like they're going to convert to paid users, um which makes sense.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
They're probably people who, you know, the majority of my search terms. This was always the fear. The majority of my search terms are very generic there.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
bar maker, graph maker, pie chart maker. um you know These general search terms where if you use common sense, most of the people searching those are probably looking more for like free tools or a Canva-style tool than they are you know an API ah to power their emails.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
um the The question was always just, is there a percentage of of API users buried in those, and so far it's looking like probably not, um which again, kind of to be expected.

Andrew
um So i'm I've tweaked my ads and my homepage to be more API focused to try to like um you know make sure it's really clear when people land what they're signing up for and like what the use case is um with the goal of like if even if it means hurting conversion rate, like try to get more qualified signups.

Andrew
um I'll probably try to do a little bit of outreach to people. I send a welcome email, an automated welcome email, but I haven't gotten any responses to that. um Talk to some friends about the rates of responses they get on their welcome email. That seems normal. It seems like I just need a lot more signups before I'm going to start getting meaningful responses on those.

Andrew
um But might try like a slightly more personal touch. um And then I'm going to try, I've i've started working on setting up ah the tooling to run some outbound email campaigns. So I'm playing around with Apollo and instantly dot.ai um to, I think I like Apollo's like lead database features a little bit better, even though they are still pretty clunky. And then I like Instantly's actual like campaign software better. um They have you know a nice service that'll set up a domain and an email account for you and like warm it up and then

Andrew
um Cause apparently you're not supposed to send cold emails from your primary domain. Um, yeah, just post.

Sean
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. You want to use a different one? Mm-hmm.

Andrew
Yeah. So I, I now own try chart juice.com.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
Um, and Oh, okay.

Sean
I think you can, I think subdomains are, you could just use subdomains by the way. You could just do like E dot or like, yeah, mail dot. And I think that stuff works and it, Google sees it as two different ones, but try to choose also works great.

Andrew
Okay.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, they have a, instantly has a nice service where for like 30 bucks, they'll just like set them up for you, ah set up a domain with like several accounts for you.

Sean
like and

Sean
Okay. Cool.

Sean
Nice. That's actually that's actually really nice. It's really annoying to manage that stuff.

Andrew
Yeah, so I just went went with that.

Sean
So make sense. Yeah.

Andrew
um So I've got a list of like 200 product managers that I'm gonna, as soon as those are like warmed up, um then I'm gonna do a round of outbound and see if I can get

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
any bytes um and but yeah I'm already kind of thinking like okay if I don't get bytes what then and I think the answer is do a little bit of work to like

Sean
Mm hmm.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
um

Andrew
shift the product towards the like free tier kind of model that I've talked about in the past, where you're like you more of a freemium sort of thing, where people can stumble across it, use it.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
There's a word mark. If they want to remove the word mark, they can pay per chart or something like that. um Or they can sign up for a subscription. um That's going to be a pain in the ass. It's going to be boring to, like,

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
do the work to the app to make that like rework the flow a little bit. But I think that like if I'm not seeing any traction within the next few weeks on the um on the like API side, then I won't i won't like get rid of the API side, but I will like shift my messaging and the way the the flow of the app works to be more freemium focused, and then honestly just kind of put it on the back burner. you know Maybe spend a couple weeks trying to get some extra like features and product pages out.

Andrew
um just to capture some of those long tail keywords for different types of charts and things. um But probably just put it on the back burner for a little while um and and just see if it generates any revenue that way.

Andrew
um And at that point, start start looking for a new idea.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Gotcha. Or, you know, at the very least, as a free service, it's a free thing you put online that points ah SEO juice back to see you, right?

Andrew
Yeah, that's that's the other thought is like if it's free and it can gain some traction, some free traction, um you know it's it's pretty cheap to run.

Sean
So.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
It doesn't you know it shouldn't cost much to run.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
yeah it's It's free for a year. um And then even once I have to start paying for Superbase and stuff, like the hosting costs should be really minimal.

Sean
Mm-hmm.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
um And so should be able to just like yeah let it ride as a free tool for a while and hopefully get some ah SEO benefit out of it. you It's a project.

Andrew
It's a a small bed, a property.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
So um yeah, i've I've been trying to look for content and like basically trying to find people talking about how they decide to move on from something.

Sean
Mm.

Andrew
um Someone recommended I look at some of the old episodes of Art of Product before Derek Reimer found SavvyCal. So i was I was digging through that earlier today, and I'm going to try to listen to a few of those episodes and see if I find anything that's helpful.

Andrew
But um yeah, that's kind of where I'm at. im I'm trying not to like lose hope entirely because I want to keep, I want to get a few more things done.

Andrew
I want to keep, keep pushing a little bit farther. Um, but, um, yeah, signals aren't, aren't fantastic. So, um, you know, we'll see how the, the outbound marketing, um, campaign goes and that'll, I think be a big, a big determining factor.

Sean
Mm-hmm.

Sean
Yeah, um I'm curious if, OK, well, good luck. um but I feel like you've spoken about quick charts before, right? Or quick chart?

Andrew
yeah um Yeah, so the two the two like direct competitors that I've got are quick charts and image charts.

Sean
Like the chart maker API? miss

Sean
And then are you buying like those keywords?

Andrew
Are you trying to? um ah Yeah. they don't

Andrew
They don't have like a ton. There just isn't a ton of traffic for these keywords.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
So like if i I look at keywords everywhere for quickchart.io, um you know it's a lot of like,

Andrew
I did add, just add like API chart, API charts to um

Andrew
to my um my ad campaigns. um It's a lot of this like kind of generic stuff, the chart.js donut. um

Andrew
That's interesting, mail charts. Is one I hadn't. I don't think I've got in my list. um They have they seem to be getting some traffic from y axis as a term.

Andrew
So it's like it looks like some pretty generic stuff and like

Sean
interesting

Andrew
Yeah, the air table chart, um that's kind of interesting. Chart builder, um chart image, which ah seems interesting.

Andrew
But then when you look at the SERP, it's like it looks like it's mostly people literally looking for an image of a chart to use in. like ah This is what a bar chart is, like presentation to their elementary school class.

Sean
Right,

Sean
right.

Andrew
um

Sean
Right.

Andrew
So um yeah, definitely trying to do some of those.

Sean
Mm-hmm.

Andrew
But it's also possible that I'm bad at Google Ads. But like the all of my clicks are coming from the the big generic keywords, not yeah i'm not getting hardly any impressions even on some of the keywords that

Sean
Hmm We can Yeah, we can chat after this and then just go through it.

Andrew
are a little bit more direct. I don't know if it's worth like trying to.

Sean
I feel like I feel like I take a look Yeah, maybe some interesting ideas there um Cool gotcha um ah Yeah, I mean going back to the point on well we're going back to the point on like when to quit something and

Andrew
OK, sure. That'd be cool. Yeah.

Sean
It's just like whether or not you have a better idea or get or lose the motivation to push on it right like feel like um Yeah, I don't know

Sean
and don't know how much I buy the whole like you you know that ah you know that like minecraft digging thing where like one guy keeps digging and they're just about to hit the diamond and they give up and the other person like i don't know like i think okay sorry there is a rob walling Oh shit, sorry.

Andrew
Mm-hmm.

Sean
Podscan is gonna...

Andrew
Sorry, Rob.

Sean
Sorry, sorry, sorry. um There is an episode that I was listening to. I've actually found his podcast to be really, really helpful, like way more. So thank you for the record.

Andrew
It's great.

Sean
It's so much better than his YouTube videos.

Andrew
It's so good.

Sean
I like his YouTube videos, but that's like junk food and like... Like hearing him answer questions. I just was just listening to one thing about managing managers, which is the thing I'm struggling with but I Was listening to him talk about it and he was saying that like, you know when to give up when you run out of ideas until you run out of ideas So,

Andrew
But it's tough because i I have a fuck ton of ideas.

Sean
so yeah, what is stopping you from just trying all the ideas Yeah

Andrew
I don't know that it's worth it. Like I'm not, I don't feel super confident that like I have a million ideas for like features. I could add things. I could do like stuff I could, but I'm, I'm just not sure that there's a whole lot of like much of a market at the end of the tunnel, you know?

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Um, and so it's like, like you can market, you can have incredible marketing, you know, I could write a thousand blog posts for a product.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And if no one wants to buy the product, it doesn't fucking matter.

Sean
Yeah, I mean, I think, okay, to be honest with you, I think the problem here is just that this this was never meant to be your endgame product. you're We're not gonna ever spend 10 years on this thing.

Sean
So that's why it's so easy to give up on it or to do it. So I guess the question is, like one, have you gotten everything you want in terms of learning out of it? Because this was always like a learning tool for you or like a learning project.

Andrew
Yeah, true.

Sean
um

Andrew
And not yet, right?

Sean
like do you do you

Andrew
like That's why I want to see this outbound email campaign through. I want to i want to run through the process of like sending a few hundred emails and and see what I learned from that.

Sean
Right.

Sean
Right.

Andrew
And you know i want to if if i if that doesn't work, then I want to

Sean
Right.

Andrew
at least give the freemium angle a shot um because I want to see you know Rob loves to talk about how you should never do freemium but like part of me has always felt like this thing might fit freemium better than most things and so it's like kind of want to learn from that and see what happens when you have a you know a freemium product that has some mass appeal

Sean
Great.

Andrew
um Although I will say like I was looking at like keyword volume today, um because my friend Rami has had a lot of success with a freemium approach to with his like QR code generator um software and like he's now replicating that with a couple of other things.

Andrew
And so I wanted to just like see what kind of keyword volume he was seeing for like the keywords he was ranking for. And I was like, Oh, fuck. It's like order of magnitude different.

Andrew
um Like like chart maker, graph maker gets like maybe 30 or 60,000, like tens of thousands of searches a month.

Sean
OK. OK.

Andrew
QR code generator gets like three million.

Sean
but makes i mean That makes sense. That makes sense.

Andrew
Does it? I didn't realize there were like that many more people who needed QR codes than graphs. I feel like graphs are like so fundamental to everything you fuck we do. I don't know. Maybe I just like graphs.

Sean
No, sorry. I meant, I meant like QR code generator made sense of like getting 3 million in searches. I haven't totally comprehended the size of chart maker.

Andrew
Yeah, I'm pretty sure like GraphMaker gets here.

Sean
Yeah. Okay. On Ahrefs QR code generator is 724th K in search volume.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Oh, sorry, no, no, no, that's you. that Okay, global search volume is 2.8 million. Chartmaker global search volume is 28K.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Which interestingly is significantly led by the United States, which makes sense.

Andrew
it Huh.

Sean
But second in place is the Philippines, and then it's Canada, and then it's Indonesia and India, and then the UK. QR code is United States, India, trailing behind fairly quickly, Indonesia, you know United a Kingdom, Germany, Malaysia.

Andrew
GraphMaker is a little bigger. GraphMaker is like 90,000.

Sean
Okay.

Andrew
Weirdly, the biggest, like apparently the thing that people want the most is a PyGraph because PyGraphMaker is 90,000. It's up there with GraphMaker, but then like line GraphMaker is in the 27,000 range.

Sean
Listen.

Sean
We love a, we love a pie graph.

Andrew
ah Who doesn't love a fucking PyGraph?

Sean
I don't know.

Andrew
BarGraph generator is 33,000.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
Yeah. ah Image generation is 165,000, but I think that's just AI bullshit.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, that makes I bet the trend is very hockey stick.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Ask.

Andrew
Oh, yeah. it's I'm looking at the little thing right now, and it's just like, whoop.

Sean
Yeah. I wonder if you can go through. I would love to know what other keywords exist with the same search volume as QR code generator.

Andrew
Oh, that's interesting. like Just give me a big list of of like product keywords for with this search volume rather than, yeah.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah, in, yeah, go ahead.

Andrew
And I still think that there's probably search volume inside of tools that isn't represented there, like Canva, Figma, things. like i yeah There might be some potential um for yeah for other things.

Sean
Right, right. Right.

Sean
Oh, anyway, something to troll.

Andrew
Oh no, man. that is That is one thing I think I also want to do before I give up is build integrations. like

Sean
Mm.

Andrew
um Yeah, like I haven't decided yet if like how much I want to build an integration to like HubSpot or like customer and.io. I'll probably try to reach out to some PMs there and like talk to them and just be like, Hey, is this something you think? Like surely there's the, they're big enough that they've got a PM in charge of their like app.

Sean
Mm hmm.

Andrew
marketplace or they're like integrations or something. And so I'll probably try to find that PM and be like, hey, is this something that you think is worth building? You have more data on this than I do. um and They'll probably say, yeah. And I'll be like, OK, but really?

Andrew
oh But ah but like again,

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
the like the best feeling I've had using this so far, other than like it is fun to see a chart show up in an email and like it is so easy to like add a chart to a web page and stuff like this.

Andrew
um But like the best feeling I've had is when I generated the SVG for Figma for that design project. And so I think Figma and Webflow are two things I'd want to explore in Canva.

Sean
Right.

Sean
Yeah, yeah.

Andrew
yeah

Sean
I wonder if you can, um, if you can like search, you know, do like a Google dork for Kenny IO pages. And then I don't know how you would find like email only Kenny dot IO pages.

Sean
The emails are like, but anyway, my point was like, you can do like site colon, any debt IO, and then search for a keyword like chart or craft maker or something.

Sean
yeah Like if people are asking for that integration already.

Andrew
Oh, that's interesting to look for site colon canny.io. Just doing it live. Our seven listeners are going to be so riveted by this content.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, my clothing says keep talking about fucking crabs.

Andrew
um

Sean
I'm so sick of it.

Andrew
Stacker. What is Stacker? Charts, enable the display of line, bar, and pie charts of a table's data. We've now released the updated version of charts to all customers, generally available.

Andrew
God damn it. What a stacker.

Sean
I don't know. I didn't realize they had to change log as well. Interesting.

Andrew
What a stacker.

Andrew
I like loosely know the founder, one of the founders of Canny.

Sean
Oh, cool.

Andrew
She was a subscriber to start up watching for a while. um

Sean
Cool.

Andrew
Um, the platform powering your operations. Interesting. Stacker makes it easy to build custom CRMs, internal tools, customer portals, and other business applications for your team. Huh.

Sean
Seems like a great thing that an email with a branded, like a branded email with charts would be great for. Just saying, you know, but cool.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
How's your personal blog? How's the writing?

Andrew
ah ah Sorry, one second. I just got ah a call from Mattie.

Sean
No worries.

Andrew
um

Sean
You know, Google's helpful content update is being like reverted on a lot of blog posts.

Andrew
so

Sean
Should you know that?

Andrew
Oh, really?

Sean
Yeah, yeah. ah Jackie Chow is doing like a couple of episodes on it, like supposedly their whole theory. And I don't know how true this is, is the fact that as long as you like go viral, like complaining about it on Twitter, they'll like manually unpenalize you.

Sean
um And it's like a semi manual, like augmented by probably web scraping sort of thing. um But Yeah, it's kind of interesting. It makes me wonder like I was on flippa, and there was a there was a car blog um that went for sale because they got ruined by Google's helpful content update and after that update came out. um they just said

Andrew
That works.

Sean
Yeah. All right. Weird pause. But anyway, I was on Flipa and then some guy had a blog on there that used to make a bunch of money and then got hit by HCU.

Sean
And then now that the the reverts are back, he took it off.

Andrew
Uh, yeah.

Sean
And I wonder, it makes me think because he's selling for like twenty one hundred dollars and it's like an automotive blog. And part of me really wanted to just buy it and just the fuck with it. But yeah, anyway.

Andrew
And so now you want to buy another blog that's been hit and then make a big fuss on Twitter and try to get it, try to get the like traffic back.

Sean
No, no, no, no, no.

Sean
I don't understand. Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

Andrew
Oh, by the way, site colon canny.io chart.

Sean
Only because I can't find any more and flip it because I got taken off line.

Andrew
Actually returned like crazy good results. I'm very curious to try this for other things.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Have you done this before?

Sean
I told you, I told you about my idea. Can he, like, can he crush or can he crunch?

Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean
Yeah, yeah. Like, can he's a great place to to look for what people's pain points are? um

Andrew
This is fascinating.

Sean
Yeah, I don't know how much of this is real signal for you, though.

Andrew
and ah Yeah, I don't and don't either.

Sean
I feel like a lot of it is like giving charts.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
But I do think there's like, if you do a actually buy Uh, I bet you could do it instead of like just site colon Kenny.io. Like you could start tracking across the board, your competitors or like people in a space.

Sean
Like if you want to build a product management thing, look at it, click on Monday, et cetera. And they're all of their feature request boards. Um, take a look at that, but I don't know, something for someone to work on.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
That's not interesting to me at all, but yeah.

Andrew
um So working on a ah new blog post for my personal site, I'm trying to do one a month. I'm behind schedule right now. um If I get this one out before the end of the month, then I'll be at six of eight. So not way behind schedule, but a little bit behind.

Andrew
um My goal is 12 for the year so I might have to in December crank out like four posts.

Sean
Hell yeah.

Andrew
um

Sean
There's Miss Rainey right there.

Andrew
But ah yeah so the the blog post I'm working on is like and I'm still trying to figure out what the title is and weirdly like there wasn't much I could find much search volume for keywords around this but like it's basically what i learned building crit and i kind of want to do it as like how i would build crit over again like how i would um speed run from zero to a million dollar agency with what i know now um and so it's a lot of like what i learned about agency marketing like

Andrew
Um, agency marketing, agency sales, and then like a little bit about, um, like margins and operations, although I'm, I'm not going as deep into that. It more focused on like growth and marketing. Um, so yeah, trying to get that cranked out. Um, I had, my goal was to get a rough draft done by today. Um, I had a.

Andrew
I think on Monday I knocked out an outline and I now have an introduction and a new outline.

Sean
nice yeah

Andrew
So the outline I had before was more just like me jotting down a bunch of random thoughts and now it's like actually an outline of sections and kind of how I want to structure the post. um But now I have to do the discipline work of sitting down and filling out the outline and like actually writing all of the sections, which is always the hardest part for me. like Getting the ideas out of my head and in a bulleted list is super fun. like Turning those into a post is painful. So um hopefully I'll have that

Andrew
I was hoping to have it done by the time the podcast came out, but hopefully I'll have it done by next week's episode. And yeah, so um andrewaskins dot.com slash newsletter or foundertonic.com. Both of those work if you want to subscribe to the newsletter and get alerted to new blog posts that I write.

Sean
Hell yeah.

Andrew
Yeah, I'm excited for it. I think it'll be an interesting post. um Like I said, I, I tried to do a little bit of ah SEO research for it to figure out just like what title to use and like what keywords to sprinkle throughout and like it was pretty shockingly low search volume on things like

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
how to grow an agency, you know, service, business, marketing, I don't know. There was like, the max I saw was like 1200 searches a month or something, which I think probably just means I haven't stumbled on the right keywords or just that like agency owners aren't like searching for that kind of thing on Google. They're more like they're listening to podcasts and like referring, asking questions in private communities and stuff.

Sean
I also think that, so when when we were doing SEO work for some security companies back in the past, and they had like Google, or one of Google's like VC companies as a VC, so they had direct access to this sort of stuff.

Andrew
Uh huh.

Sean
um I think search volume traffic is just a little bit wrong.

Andrew
Uh huh.

Sean
um And more so, not just wrong, but like, I think it's like, they probably take like a sample size and not all everything and extrapolate off of that point being is that, um,

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
Like some of these I just feel are incredibly low. Like I i know that when we were working on like cloud security has keywords and I'm saying it looks like, wait, these are way too low for, for like the, cube like, but in the same vein, the keyword difficulty rating on like Ahrefs is very correct where, so I don't know if I told you it was working on this like automotive blog project with a friend, right?

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Huh.

Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean
Like we rank on NB Miata because nobody fucking writes about NB Miata or like like like the keyword difficulty zero on Ahrefs.

Andrew
Cool.

Sean
There's blog posts and stuff like but there's no reason why we should be ranking on that. he um anyway I don't know.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
It's always a little bit weird.

Andrew
Basically don't worry, don't worry too much about keyword volume, especially like I really shouldn't be worried about it because like I get less than a thousand visitors to my blog a month.

Sean
Yeah, but you have great domain authority.

Andrew
And so I have decent domain authority. I think it's like 32 or something. Um, yeah.

Sean
It's pretty good. It's pretty solid.

Andrew
Um, but yeah, so I.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
I shouldn't be worried about it. You're right.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
Just look at keyword difficulty and then like pick a long tail keyword. And just as also like, you know, the blog is I do want to grow the blog.

Sean
yeah

Andrew
I want to grow the newsletter. I want to get organic growth happening. um But I also want the blog to be just like a collection of like ideas and thoughts and like cool life experiences as much as I do.

Andrew
Like, you know, I don't want SEO optimization to be the number one thing. So ah I feel like as long as I just pick a long tail keyword and drop that in every post, then that's like, you know, kind of the extent of the optimization I want to do.

Sean
Um, right

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um

Sean
so I've also been thinking about a blog post recently.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Sean
It all started with me going on intro.co or intro.co mainly like, Oh, really?

Andrew
Okay. I hate these services, by the way. I don't know if you feel the same way.

Sean
Wait, why? Why do you hate these services?

Andrew
Because they, I don't know. They just, there's, it's like, there's too many of them for them to make sense as a business. Like there's like, I feel like there's at least 10 and you know, they all claim that these people are making like a thousand bucks a call and I just don't buy it. ah It just, I look at it and it it just feels fishy. It feels like something's off.

Andrew
Also, like if you're Alexis Ohanian, why the, I mean, I think Alexis Ohanian is doing it because he's an investor in intro.co, but like if you're half these people, why are you wasting your time?

Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Andrew
You make, you have so much money. Why are you wasting your time spending a thousand dollars talking to random people or yeah.

Sean
Oh, 100%, 100%. I think that like, they are, I don't want to say they're devaluing their time, but I think they're wrong for wanting to sell their time for money.

Sean
But I think it's like, you know, they're like, Oh, you know, why not and do the thing?

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
um Well, my, I see what you mean. I feel like I feel like the one like, you're also talking like, I'm i'm putting like cameo under the same bucket of like, you have so much money, weather why the hell?

Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of I think a lot of the people on Cameo, it's kind of it's it's not sad, but it's like. I think we we have skewed perceptions of how much money these people have. And so for some of them, it is probably like meaningful money. Then again, like. The dude from the office who like blew up, I mean, maybe he was just doing it because he thought it was funny and he I don't know.

Sean
Yeah, I don't know either. I feel like, you know, on the other hand with Cameo, it does make sense in that it does build your brand up more, right? It keeps you more relevant because, you know, people will post to you online and and like, like, hey, like I got a cameo from whatever.

Andrew
Maybe, yeah.

Sean
So it's like free social marketing in that way. I don't know. um

Andrew
I feel like Cameo died off, by the way. like I haven't heard anyone talk about Cameo or share a Cameo. and Oh, interesting.

Sean
No, you've aged out of it. You've aged, that's why. i I think two things. I think two things. One is there's a lot more B-list celebrity or D-C D-list celebrities on there. Like, you know, cause like Netflix has these reality TV shows like Love Island and that those guys will show up on there.

Andrew
Yeah.

Sean
And it's like, I don't really care about these people. Like I want, I don't know, some other famous person, but, uh, my fraternity used to use it a lot cause it's a great rush.

Andrew
You're a frat bro?

Sean
yeah yeah yeah yeah i didn't tell you like tangentially but yeah i rushed pledged i did all of that stuff i rushed by accident for what it's worth i went to like a thing my my friends took me to and then like my school didn't have like a really big Greek scene or anything like that um

Andrew
What? How did I not know this about you? Wow.

Andrew
Sure you did. I mean, if I'd gone to a smaller school or like, yeah, I i probably would have too. But anyway, your blog posts would,

Sean
Oh, it was just like arbitraging the, or or I don't, it's not even arbitrage. It's like the opportunity of like getting to speak to some people who are so in my opinion, significantly undervaluing their time. Like Nikita beer is like 2,500 a session. That's way too expensive. I'm never going to pay for that when I just tweeted him on Twitter and hopefully got any response at the 10th time. but Like the guy, Jason Tan, who founded Sift, which is a giant like $2 billion dollars or $1 billion plus company, $350.

Sean
um

Andrew
See, that's what I'm talking about. Why the fuck is he on this platform at all? but I mean, I guess if you like meeting new people who are working on shit, but I just, I can't imagine, I don't know, it confuses me.

Sean
Yeah, I don't know either. I think part of me was just like in a search for executive coaching. I mean in the same vein as like singing, I think I've been like looking for interesting like classes that teach this different level of soft skill that I can't learn in my day-to-day life and can really only practice on the job. um So I've been looking for other interesting opportunities that would Let me do this sort of stuff. um But anyway, I was on intro, there's some like really cool people in here like Sue's Dowling, if I'm saying her name correctly, she's like, partner of Jen Lane co founder partner at pattern dot.com they're like a legendary Brooklyn design agency.

Sean
that shut down to start like doing like they did sweet green stuff they did a bunch of and then they now like just launch their own link to consumer packaged good products they're kind of like mini private equity slash startup studio for like just cpg home goods sort of stuff um yeah there's some like former heads of whatever on here um

Andrew
I feel like, I don't know if you agree with this, but I don't know that there's anything anyone can like just tell me in an hour that is like worth $350 or that is like, you know, I know some people say that like, Oh, the best piece of advice advice is all kind of bullshit because if people don't know you and know your context and stuff,

Sean
Right. Right.

Andrew
So I feel like the value here that people are really paying for is like, They're hoping to impress this person enough to like add them to their network.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
Like this person then knows knows your name and will like respond to you off the platform or something like that.

Sean
Hmm.

Andrew
Is that how you feel or do you think you genuinely would learn something in like an hour with one of these people that that would make it worth it?

Sean
I think I'm approaching it differently. I think I'm approaching it from like a very like, cause I used to do a podcast where I interviewed people, right? And for me to interview someone, I always did like a giant dossier on the person and their life.

Sean
And then when I came in very pointed direct, like specific things I wanted to know. So I think that would be the same thing. Like, you know, like. what i What I don't want is, I had an opportunity to to, sorry, this is, I'm changing the topic. then I had the opportunity with a bunch of interns to go ask ah ah like Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, one question. And the person who asked, she's a fine person, but she asked, what advice do you have for young investors? And I was lost my fucking shit that day. I've never like,

Sean
hated someone so fiercely for a moment of like, I don't understand how you can just waste of this. ah um um Anyway, like, for me, I think it's like, there I think there's a lot of times where I consume media from someone, and there's a bunch of these, like, things that they say and then questions that follow my hand like, okay, I buy what you're saying, but I have very specific things that I want you to tell me because you're not you're you're avoiding Talking about them um Like and I think I would ask those questions It's not so much about like giving me advice on my life because I don't really care for that um You just want me to spend a 500 bucks that's that's what this is I Will I will I will let you know I will let you know this is part of mine mm-hmm

Andrew
Do it. I dare you. I dare you to do it and then report back. Like I want to know if you actually get anything worthwhile out of it. I genuinely is next week's podcast too soon.

Sean
Next week's podcast is too soon. I think I have to like have to look through a lot of these people.

Andrew
All right. Give me a, give me a date, a deadline by which you are going to do this.

Sean
ah I don't know, man. By the end of the year, you'll buy...

Andrew
No, absolutely not. No, you do not get the end of the year you're gonna forget. you You can have a maximum of four weeks.

Sean
All right. Okay. Before I go on my travels, especially because now I have time before I leave, I've been from London on the 13th.

Andrew
win When do you leave?

Sean
Cause I'm not going to Italy anymore.

Andrew
Okay, okay.

Sean
So yeah.

Andrew
You have until the 13th to do this and then talk about it on the podcast.

Sean
God damn it. I have to spend.

Andrew
You should write a case study of like, I spent $500, fuck, maybe that's a good idea for a blog post. Maybe I will do this just for the like, just for the clickbait title.

Sean
Hmm.

Sean
But, yeah.

Andrew
I spent $500 on one of those bullshit intro platforms and all I got was this lousy blog post.

Sean
Yeah. I mean, do you want to do it as well? Would you like to join me? Would you also like to spend?

Andrew
I don't want to burn money.

Sean
Why are you making me?

Andrew
You like, because you love to burn money.

Sean
You're right. You're right. You're right.

Andrew
you Also, it's your idea.

Sean
All right. You're right. You're right.

Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll, uh, I'll, uh, I'll drop a, um, it's 800 bucks.

Andrew
How much is Alexis Ohanian? I've actually met ah Alexis Ohanian before, but just at like a book signing thing that he did.

Sean
Nice.

Sean
Yeah, I generally don't think any, most of these people are like out of reach. I think there's like very specific people in different worlds. I do think, I do think that this is like, I think about that question you asked me, like, how would you speedrun getting to like know an industry as well as you can.

Andrew
yeah if you

Sean
And like, to be honest with you, like that flight I had with that Seltr CEO, that was an hour, like that in itself, I would have paid 500 bucks for.

Andrew
I could maybe see that if if there was someone who had knowledge of a specific niche and could tell you like, here are the major players in this niche. Here's like the event that the events that are worth it and that aren't worth it. Here's like, you know, something like that could I could start to see.

Andrew
um But honestly, I feel like most of these I don't know, maybe I'm being an asshole and undervaluing these people's knowledge, but I feel like most of them are like so removed like so far along in their career that they're like kind of removed from like where I am. And so like not that helpful.

Sean
Mm hmm. That's fair. That's fair. I do you think there is like a weird there's like, yeah, there.

Sean
but I think like any time I read like former director of engineering or like chief financial officer, I don't really care um because I don't think you can tell me anything that is relevant, like actionable for where I am in my life at the moment. But um Yeah, I don't know.

Sean
You could interview the XCMO of Tinder and the X of growth.

Andrew
Oh my God, this guy's a hypno guide, hypno guided coach to see.

Sean
Oh, I saw that one. I saw that one.

Andrew
Wow. That that's fucking hilarious.

Sean
Yeah. I do think there are like some like very undervalued, um, things like, uh, um, Oh, you know what? Damn, it's $300 for 15 minutes. That's.

Andrew
That's brutal.

Sean
That's insane.

Andrew
are Wait, does that mean that fucking Alexis Ohanian is charging $800 for 15 minutes?

Sean
It could be. Let's take a look.

Andrew
Okay, 100% of proceeds will be donated to his foundation. Okay, I guess that's...

Sean
Yeah, a lot of cameo guys do that too, which is...

Andrew
Yeah, it's a 15-minute session. That's stupid.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
All right, let's find the cheapest person on here and see.

Andrew
Like is the hypno guide.

Andrew
Okay. His or 90 minute sessions. I think.

Sean
gotcha Gotcha.

Andrew
I Although it still says what to expect 15 minute session, but then in his about me, it says 90 minute sessions.

Sean
Gotcha.

Sean
I think they're all based.

Sean
I think they all are 15 regardless. but Yeah, man.

Andrew
How is 15 minutes with anybody worth?

Sean
Yeah, I think it's like a meet your hero sort of thing. Like I can see someone buying as a gift for someone, you know.

Andrew
I can totally see that, although I i think I'd be almost embarrassed to use it.

Sean
Right. Hmm.

Andrew
I'd be like, hey, I don't.

Sean
Hi, someone bought me this.

Sean
You're saying that if I couldn't, if I found, um I don't know, what's a, what's a online business media guru that you, that you care about.

Andrew
The online business people that I respect are like very approachable. Like Jason Cohen responded to my email when I've like joined his mailing list and like hit reply.

Sean
That's true.

Sean
Yeah. Yeah. That's fair.

Andrew
He was like, he wrote back a response, um which is kind of wild that you can like, like Jason Cohen runs a like a hundred million dollar business or something like that.

Sean
Hmm.

Sean
Yeah.

Andrew
And he will reply to your email if you join his mailing list. That's nuts.

Sean
That's pretty nuts. Maybe it's a good signal. Maybe it's a good signal. It's like a good reverse signal. Like, if you're on here, I probably don't want to, like, don't want to talk to you.

Andrew
that might be That might be spot on.

Sean
Uh-huh. Yeah.

Andrew
But I still think you should do it and and report back.

Sean
Yeah. Who knows? I'm going to, I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll absolutely do it. um

Andrew
Yeah. But maybe pick the cheapest person you can find, because that shit is crazy. 15 minutes is stupid.

Sean
Yeah.

Sean
There is, uh, let's see the most interesting person who's on here. And, and I think we're running out of time here, but I don't know.

Sean
Like the most interesting cheapest per like, uh, SVP of design and marketing at lattice, 80 bucks a session, you know, lattice's website looks great.

Andrew
That's cool.

Sean
There's that. Um, yeah.

Andrew
Oh my God. Apparently, imagecharts.com gets keywords everywhere, estimates 650 visitors a month from cobweb chart.

Sean
what is cobweb chart oh that's hilarious that's really funny i've never heard cobweb chart before that should have been the that should have been the name of your thing cobwebs cobweb callup is a good name for like a holding company we built sticky products

Andrew
it's It's a spider chart. It's a radar graph. People just don't know what it's fucking called.

Andrew
fucking wild is it it makes me think of like dusty old shit that's like you need to throw away all right we gotta we gotta to get off this podcast we're devolving into I'll catch you later man bye

Sean
all right there's something there there's i feel like there's there's like something there um okay okay just all right i'll see you later bye