Andrew and Sean are back for Season 3!! Andrew's onboarding his first users to MetaMonster, and as alpha user #1 Sean has lots of thoughts. Meanwhile Sean actually took some time off??? And he used it to start writing. The guys talk MetaMonster, product design, and personal branding.
Links:
Sean
I'll lie down for a second. Happy New Year.
Andrew
Yep.
Sean
How you doing?
Andrew
ah Perfect. No, that's not the perfect metaphor.
Sean
ahhu
Andrew
This isn't going to be a year of lag. This is going to be a year of getting shit done and moving fast.
Sean
Hell yeah. Yeah.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
Who's in three, baby?
Andrew
Season three. Oh, are we going to start a new season?
Sean
I'm going to, I call it any season. Did you see me create the show, delete the show and recreate it and slack? Yeah.
Andrew
No, I miss that.
Sean
Yeah. It is not season two ah episode It is season three, episode one, 2025.
Andrew
Love it.
Sean
Um, how you doing?
Andrew
Fuck yeah. I'm good, man.
Sean
How's your. Yeah.
Andrew
My holiday was great. It was super, super chill. We stayed here in Detroit, um just... hung out with family and friends and relaxed through a kind of a quirk.
Andrew
Maddie's little sister got COVID a few days before Christmas. So we had to delay Christmas and do like kind of a second Christmas.
Sean
Okay.
Andrew
And so on Christmas day, we were just home, just the two of us with the cats. And we were like, oh shit, we really like this.
Sean
Sweet.
Andrew
Like don't get me wrong, love family, love friends, wanna see them as much as possible. But there's something really nice about just have just being you and your partner on Christmas morning, like drinking mimosas, being lazy, not getting out of bed right away, eating some some yummy pastries.
Sean
Hell yeah.
Andrew
um We unwrapped some things for the cats and like a couple of things for each other and it's just super chill. It was really nice.
Sean
Nice. Sweet.
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then the other thing from this break was I just found myself like for the first time in recent memory, wanting to work.
Sean
Sweet.
Andrew
Like I didn't want to take more than a week off because no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Sean
Hell yeah. You're becoming me. I like it. and like I'm rubbing off on you.
Andrew
I just like, I'm feeling drawn to work right now and it's a season. It'll pass. Um, I'm, I know that I'm okay with that, but. But yeah, I'm feeling really hyped about Meta Monster. I really want to get going on it, do more with it.
Andrew
um get it off the ground. So I'm feeling really excited. And um small update there, this week, as you well know, we started to bring on our first outside users.
Sean
Mhm.
Andrew
So not, we're calling, I'm thinking of this as like a friends and family round of alpha testing.
Sean
Hell yeah.
Andrew
So it's not a, these aren't, potential customers really. they're They're people who we just trust to get in and start finding bugs and edge cases and giving us good honest feedback on how the product feels. um While we wrap up a couple of last features that I think are really important for giving our first potential customers the real full experience. Like right now, bulk generation doesn't work. So you have to generate things one at a time. And so to me, we're not fulfilling the promise of MetaMonster until we have bulk generation done.
Andrew
um But yeah, we've we've started to onboard our first couple of users, ah friends and family users. I think I created three accounts yesterday. I'll hopefully create two or three more today. um And yeah, so what do you think? You've been in the product now.
Sean
Yeah, I mean, you know, as alpha user number one, um just so everyone's aware, alpha user number one, ah president yeah president of MetaMonster fan club.
Andrew
Yeah. Got to give you your props. I'm sorry for not not mentioning that.
Sean
ah I like it. I mean, I like it. It's buggy. It's toss you a bug early on. those I mean, I don't think anything's like, like, I think core functionality, everything's working great. um It's like more very basic, like UX things.
Sean
Good found value out of it pretty quickly. um I ran worth driving through it. I honestly ran some client sites through it as well um You know, I think like ah I mean worth driving is pretty large now too But even like some client sites like it's an easy way to spot like oh shit that meta tag is actually wrong We should just go switch it
Andrew
Love to hear that. Hmm.
Sean
um And yeah, i mean instead of like arbitrarily writing meta descriptions and and whatever, I think it's nice to... I actually didn't mind that I couldn't do bulk generation, only because um I only cared about clicking through the ones that I cared about. um That being said though, I do kind of wish it was sorted a little bit better. um
Andrew
oo Okay.
Sean
Because I don't care about my slash privacy policy page, and that doesn't have a description or something.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
So I wish it was prioritized by like slash blog or slash something like like that. um
Andrew
Yeah, so this is a big thing that we're going to have to figure out is there's a lot of pages on a website that you don't even think about being there that when you start looking at them like a crawler, you realize they're there.
Andrew
um And, you know, I don't necessarily want to
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
like hide those pages. by So one of the things that Austin and I very quickly were like, oh, we need the ability to like hide a page from future crawls.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
um So we'll have like at some point a button you can click to just like hide this page or hide this subdirectory or something like that. And then it'll disappear from that crawl, and it'll disappear from future crawls.
Andrew
But you'll be able to like go to a hidden section or something and find the hidden pages in case you need to yeah reverse something. So that's like one solution we've thought of.
Andrew
um But you're right that like the very first experience you get is, oh, yay, it found that my privacy policy doesn't have a meta description. I don't give a fuck.
Andrew
um And so it seems makes the tool seem kind of dumb.
Sean
Your star.
Andrew
um And so I've been trying to think about how to solve that because we don't necessarily want to like hide those by default, because maybe there's some weirdo who wants their privacy policy to have a meta description.
Sean
For sure.
Andrew
And if you hide it by default, then they're like, why didn't you find my privacy policy? um so ah But yeah, sorting is interesting. If we could more intelligently sort it so that the important stuff like rose up to the top or um or something like that, maybe there's there's something there.
Sean
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Andrew
um
Sean
Yeah, or even like folders, right? Like, I mean, my blogs are ready all in a subdirectory. So just let me expand um and click through that, and click through it that way. I will say my biggest frustration with the platform, and this is a good thing.
Sean
is that I could not publish the Webflow directly.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
I had to go and click on optimize and copy and paste and all that sort of stuff.
Andrew
yeah
Sean
I did like the export button.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
I thought it was, you know, as ah as someone who's like who's trying to like delegate things more like I liked, I could go in there, click optimize, change the description, hit export and send that to like a dev and go, you go change it.
Sean
But um Putting the like the solo printer had back on like fuck I need a publish button so badly after like yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah
Andrew
I know I want to publish button. I haven't actually replaced any of the stuff on my personal site um yet because I know we're building integrations soon. And I'm like, I'm just gonna wait because I don't want to I don't want to sit here and do all this shit by hand. I don't want you to do it for me.
Andrew
um Now, it'll be interesting once we get some actual SEOs in who are using spreadsheets as part of their workflow already to find out how many of them want to publish directly versus want to manage things in a spreadsheet.
Sean
Hmm. Hmm.
Andrew
um That'll be really interesting because like You know, we're gonna have some solopreneurs on the platform, I want it to be accessible to them, I, ah I've even been thinking a little bit about like what solopreneur pricing looks like. um But I don't, they're not our ICP, and I'm trying to keep that in mind and keep that really, really solid. And so,
Andrew
um
Sean
For sure.
Andrew
Yeah, i'm I'm excited to get some SEO feedback soon.
Sean
Nice.
Andrew
I've got one of the one of the three alpha users that I've got in there right now runs an SEO agency.
Sean
yeah
Andrew
It's my friend Nigel. So we'll see what he says.
Sean
Yeah, yeah, I think I fell in there. Nice. um Yeah, but just for the record, I would pay good money to have a publish button. Like, if I it just from a pure PLG experience, if I logged in, scraped the thing, and it's like, here's the optimized thing, that was the free version, and then it was like a link your site, continuously monitor, link your site, and hit publish, I would pay for ah pay for that experience.
Sean
um Hands down, I think.
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. That's almost exactly what we're thinking. The one caveat to that is like we might limit you to like 10 generations or something before um in the like the trial, the free trial, because otherwise, I mean, people could rack up a pretty hefty, ah a pretty hefty bill for us without paying anything and then just copy and paste everything.
Sean
For sure.
Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You may lose your shirt, yeah.
Sean
Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you want to talk about this live, but like, what are the cogs?
Andrew
What are the costs looking like?
Sean
What's more expensive, AI generation or scrolling?
Andrew
AI generation, for sure.
Sean
AI generation? Oh, okay, okay.
Andrew
Yeah, yeah. It's still, it's been very reasonable. um ah We're using 4.0 Mini right now as as our model.
Sean
okay
Andrew
um i i I did a bunch of prompt engineering testing a couple of weeks ago when we talked about prompt engineering, and I was using a platform ah this like third party platform to like manage all of my tests.
Andrew
And I did a couple of tests with 01 and or 01 mini even.
Sean
Okay.
Andrew
And it was like, oh, nope, nope, nope, can't afford that.
Sean
Oh, really? Let's see.
Andrew
It was like, you know, um on a 150 page site, it was costing like ten dollars to do all of the generations with 01 mini.
Sean
yeah yeah
Andrew
um So um but on a normal site, it's like You know, it's pretty, I can't remember off the top of my head what it is, but it's pretty negligible.
Andrew
The really interesting thing to be to see again is like SEOs or ICP, how many sites are they going to load in per month and how many pages are those sites going to have?
Sean
Damn. Yeah. yeah
Andrew
For most of the people we talked to in the interviews we've done so far, it sounds like they've got a lot of like A couple hundred page sites, maybe even like under 100 pages, and those are going to be negligible cost.
Andrew
But then where this thing starts to become really valuable is on the 10,000 page site, the 100,000 page site. um And so what do those look like?
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew
So it'll be really interesting. I can't wait to start getting some actual data.
Sean
Yeah, absolutely. I i mean, but this is actually going to lead into another question, but like, I really wish it would. um I'm sure this is on the roadmap, but like I i would love for it to integrate with Search Console. I would love for it to integrate with Google Analytics, like going back to the sorting thing, right?
Sean
ah telling me which pages get actually like the most traffic or the most SEO impressions and which pages don't and also even saying like hey since you optimize it the traffic went up by X amount would also be cool um I don't know how much of the you know well we'll have I guess you'll you have to see but and um yeah yeah yeah I mean know
Andrew
Are this the main things you're looking for from like analytics and search console is prioritization and then like results.
Sean
um
Sean
Is that the main thing I'm looking for like in this topic or just in general for the platform?
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. When you, when you think about like, Oh man, I want to integrate search console and Google analytics, what you just said.
Sean
Oh, gotcha.
Andrew
Yeah. Talk to me about the why behind that. What's, what are you looking to do with that? It sounds like one, you would love to see, use it to like prioritize the pages that you're looking at.
Andrew
Um, and, and then to like, see results from.
Sean
Yeah, I mean,
Andrew
You know, between crawls, um but yet what are there other things you're looking to do with that when.
Sean
ah So Nigel if you're listening correct me if I'm wrong on this but from my understanding like SEO is very much Pareto principle like just a few number of key content pages is is what makes up for most of your SEO traffic or like 20% is what makes up for 80% of the traffic. um So being able to kind of just like take a look at those but also being able to take a look at like ah being able to take a look at so so there are definitely pages they're very likely pages that get high impression accounts that could probably use a better ah that could use like a better meta description right because high impression count means it's ranking but it doesn't have click through so I want to work on those
Andrew
better title in particular. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Sean
um otherwise i mean i think it's just nice to have it all on one platform i would even love like okay i'm just gonna like like i would love if you could have like some sort of like wordpress integration with ah so there's a section on when you go and generate each optimization there's like a keyword thing where it's like this is the keyword that it's gonna optimize for but like if i had write a bunch of blog posts when i when i when those blog posts are getting written there are keywords in mind but i wish there was a way to pull that out into the platform rather than
Sean
it just assumes certain things maybe you can match it with like you know as you said SEOs use spreadsheets that's something that they use spreadsheets on um or even I don't know I don't know if there's like a way to do it with rank math or something like that but um ah rank math just rank math to be honest yeah yeah
Andrew
Yeah, which which of WordPress plugins have you used for like worth driving?
Andrew
Rank math. Okay. And does rank math have a section where you specify the the keyword for each page?
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. You put the primer. It's because it tells you like how good you are are at using that keyword throughout it.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
um So.
Andrew
Yeah, cool.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
Yeah. um So WordPress integration is going to be the very first integration we work on. um And we were largely thinking about it as publish, right? Like a push, a one directional thing.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
um But that's awesome. I somehow it hadn't even occurred to me that we could pull data from WordPress too and get, you like one that might be an interesting thing to do instead of crawling what if we just pulled the pages and posts then we you know we leave out a bunch of the crap you don't care about and we just pull the stuff in that you do care about because that's the stuff that's in wordpress um so that's that's interesting but then two like
Sean
True.
Sean
true
Sean
True. True.
Andrew
Yeah, one of the big things I'm worried about is like how do we get do we make it as easy as possible to get those primary keywords in? um And right now, we're just having the AI guess at the primary keyword, um which is working relatively well from what I've seen. I don't know if that's been your experience. It guesses decently well.
Sean
The only one that it had a problem with was um the homepage for Worth Driving because it's a blog so it has a bunch of articles and it just picks whichever one.
Andrew
um
Andrew
ye Yep. Yep.
Andrew
yeah pages with low content or with lots of variable content like uh sort of collection pages it it definitely struggles with um so yeah thinking about how to get those primary keywords make that as easy as possible to get those in get those set is is something and so yeah if we can pull them from wordpress if we can have a csv upload where you can configure them you've already got them in a csv so cool just upload that and we'll match the slugs to the
Sean
Yeah.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
to it and as best we can and and try to get those keywords in. um And then Search Console is the other big thing we were thinking there, where if we have a Search Console integration, then we can you know pull the keyword that is performing best from Search Console for that page.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
um or even suggest a different keyword, like get to a point. I don't know what this looks like yet, but if you've got a primary keyword and we see in Search Console that a different keyword is performing better for that page, we can suggest that you change your primary keyword, which would be really cool. um
Sean
Yeah, you can also, I mean, you can even go so far as to integrate with the AH reps in SEMrush instead.
Andrew
um
Sean
So skip the search console part, and grab keywords off of SEMrush or yeah, AH reps or SEMrush, then you get like more keyword data rather than just what search console tells you about your site.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
um Yeah.
Andrew
Yeah, potentially, yeah. um For some reason, integrating with Simrush and Ahrefs makes me more nervous. um I feel like like Search Console and like crawlers
Sean
Sure.
Andrew
are feel different than Simrush and Ahrefs because they're looking at real data, not projections. um and And I kind of like keeping that distinction of like we're focused on truth um and like go to Simrush and Ahrefs for your projections and your keyword research and stuff and like we're focused on optimizations and
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
looking at reality, not guessing at potential, not to not to dig at Ahrefs or SimRash, they're an important part of the process, but.
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's fair. That's fair.
Andrew
But I'll definitely think about that. um I'm sure we'll have more people ask for it.
Sean
Nice. So I have a question for you.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
how are you defining like good enough to launch? Is it just the bulk optimization thing? Is it ah like how much also like how much stuff do you want me to start reporting?
Sean
Is it like little things like, hey, like the back button doesn't really work or is it?
Andrew
Yeah, pur report anything that anything that's annoying.
Sean
um
Andrew
or in Or honestly, right now, I want all feedback. i don't There's nothing I can think of that's not helpful unless it's something I've already heard before.
Sean
Okay.
Andrew
And then I'll just file it away as like, oh, cool, hearing that again.
Sean
Mm hmm.
Andrew
um So um yeah, when I think about good enough, to this is it's hard for everyone, right? And it's so easy for us sometimes when we're working with clients to be like, it's good enough.
Andrew
It's obvious. Come on. But then when it's your thing, it is it is so much harder. um And yeah, I think for me, it's about like, do I feel like we have something that fulfills the promises that we make in the marketing materials? um And like, I'm okay with the publish integrations not being there because people know we're working on those and we're going to get them out as soon as possible. um I feel like for a big site, not having bulk generation is like,
Andrew
goes against the promise we make, because if you're having to sit here and click things one by one by one by one, then like, are we saving you time? Are we doing this? Are you having this magical experience that I want you to have with like, cool, it's all done for me. Um, but if I, this is why we're also like bringing a few friends and family on now. Cause if we hear from people like, I don't know, I don't really need that.
Andrew
like bulk generation, I'm proud um finding that I'm probably going to do individual generations more anyway, then cool. I'll i'll be like, all right, let's just bring people on now. Let's not wait anymore. um So I think it's it's really coming down to just like, are we fulfilling the promises that we're making in our marketing? um Are we getting reasonably close to those? And then, yeah. like one of the first bugs you found is that we're not doing any yeah URL validation in the new site flow.
Andrew
And so if you don't add HTTPS, it just doesn't work. um So I'm obviously going to fix that before I bring on actual potential users so that they don't have to run into that and so that we don't have to keep hearing the same feedback over and over again.
Sean
for sure, for sure.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
I think bulk generation is important. I think um that would be my expectation. I think after clicking like 10 of them, right, I was like, you know, it's worth thriving. It's like 80 pages. I'm like, dude, i don't um I don't want to click on it.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
Like, I don't care if you like generate something for like an empty tag page that I'm never going to use, but I don't want to click on all the other ones. um That being said, though,
Sean
that's because I'm not paying for any of it. So just give me the do all of them button. um The other thing is like I do like I did like single generation where when I clicked on it, like like I I found myself
Sean
at least 50% of the time not always perfectly agreeing with the meta description that was created like it was good it was just like it wasn't contextual right it wasn't like um you know I would I would click on three four five of them and they might all say like uncover XYZ so then I would go back and like change a little bit of it um So going one by one was fine that way, and that's where I found the annoyance of like, oh, I really don't want to see, like I like, I really just don't want to see my slash privacy policy page there or like a random tag that someone created on WordPress that isn't going to be a real page as I was going through it.
Sean
um But yeah, I mean, overall, I think solid, solid alpha version.
Andrew
Sweet.
Sean
I'm just kind of, yeah.
Andrew
yeah Yeah, I think I want to get the HTTP thing fixed.
Sean
um
Andrew
um Also, if you just go to met a monster app.metabunster.ai but like while you're already logged in, um it doesn't currently redirect you to your sites page.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
And so it's just like an ugly blank page.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
i'm like So we've got to get that fixed.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
and So there's like a couple of little like quality of life things like that.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
um um And then i think I think I do want bulk generation and would love if we have hide pages before we start bringing more people in.
Andrew
But I'm also OK if we're not quite there with that one. um And I think we'll have bulk generation for sure by early next week. um So that's what I'm targeting, starting to let a few more folks in.
Sean
Nice.
Andrew
And then um and then um Hiding pages will be kind of next up and then probably from there running hard at like the WordPress integration and some of the other integrations, I think, but we'll see.
Andrew
um One thing that you just hit on that I think is going to be really important and then we can, we can kind of move on.
Sean
nice
Andrew
um I want people. to, I don't want people to worry about cost when they're using this. And so i'm I'm really trying to make sure whatever pricing model we pick, people don't mind clicking bulk generate or clicking generate three times on one description If they get a description they don't like, I want them to be able to click, click, click and get new ones and play with it.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
And um I don't want them thinking about like, ah I'm going to hit my limit. um So as much as possible, we're going to try to separate out like at least in their first round of pricing generations from the pricing, it's going to be like more pages, sites focused and then do as much editing as you want.
Sean
Yeah, yeah.
Andrew
Um, inside the thing and just like use it and have at it. Um, because I want people to feel free. So.
Sean
Um. I think if you can figure out that the feel where people aren't worried about it, that should just be like value prop on the homepage to be honest with you. Because like the amount of times I try I use bolt and I use um I use runway like i I started using runway for a client um this week. And fuck I burned through so many credits, but I don't have it like I don't have a choice because I have to use it and it's fine but like I can I watch the the credits take down right I buy 2250 and I watch every generation kill 500 credits at a time um and I'm just generating the same thing and I'm getting like bad results the audience like 80% of the time and it's killing me
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
um So yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it'd be a nice, like, um, speaking of, like, pricing and stuff, um, are you gonna try any of, like, the AppSumo, Micros, Launch, or whatever, like, lifetime deals stuff?
Andrew
Yeah.
Andrew
Not right away, for sure.
Sean
Okay.
Andrew
um At some point, maybe. i I think the two things that could lead us down that road are you know if we're hitting roadblocks with customer acquisition and we just need to get some people on the thing so we can get more feedback.
Sean
Okay.
Sean
Mmhmm.
Andrew
um Then I would look at it as like, OK, we're going to do this, but it's a short term thing. We're doing it. But like for us in particular, I just don't feel like it's going to make sense, like a lifetime deal when we have costs, real costs associated with usage.
Andrew
I don't see that working. I don't see it making economical sense. um And unless we could like I think it works best when you have a real free tier.
Sean
I mean,
Sean
I disagree.
Andrew
um And I just, okay.
Sean
I disagree. um Because, so Job Boardly does like a great version of this, um where it's a lifetime deal for it to be like a hosted job board, where you have like a limited number of users, you can buy tier one, tier two, tier three for more users or more job boards or whatever. But the turbo back filler like the AI goes out into the website scrapes job things and puts it in your ah job board automatically that you get a set amount of credits on the lifetime deal and if you want more credits you can top up I know you're talking about like the whole like credit thing and and trying to figure that out but like regardless um that's how it works and
Andrew
Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. If I could separate out the usage, then it could be more viable for sure. um Where like you get a certain number of credits and then, yeah. Okay. Yeah, i I would look into it, um but I think I want to try to get users more organically first.
Sean
Fair. Yeah, I agree.
Andrew
Yeah. Cool. Enough about MetaMonster. What's going on in your world? How was how's your break?
Sean
My break was magical. Two, one and a half weeks of no client meetings um was amazing.
Andrew
We love to hear it.
Sean
I worked the whole, I did not, I did not. I played probably 36 hours of Minecraft straight, probably. um And then a bunch of like, I don't know. I played mahjong with some old grannies for Christmas parties.
Sean
That was exciting.
Andrew
We love that.
Sean
I broke even, didn't get my ass whooped. It was a good time. ah What else happened? um I spent, God, I spent, I went into a hole and just started So last time I think we talked about this, I started using Ghost for my personal site.
Sean
um Switch off with ConvertKit.
Sean
God, Ghost is so good, but it's so bad in so many ways.
Sean
Ghost is... If anyone from Ghost hears this through Podscan, please let me edit my welcome email.
Sean
I do not understand why you cannot
Andrew
Yeah, it drove me crazy too.
Sean
Your documentation telling me to use Zapier to send emails through Zapier, which is rate limited by the way, is brutal. Super annoying. um And this whole time also using MetaMonster and seeing the the issues I have on WordPress makes me want to switch worth driving to to Ghost as well because of the overall editing experience and the overall theming experience.
Andrew
Yeah. By the way, Austin has been loving using worth driving as a test case because the code is so janky that it like uncovered a ton of edge cases our crawler needed to be able to handle.
Sean
Nice.
Andrew
ah And it like loads so slowly that it it's like really stress testing how fast we can make the crawler.
Sean
Nice.
Sean
Hell yeah.
Andrew
So um yeah, it's been the perfect test case.
Sean
cool you're welcome amazing amazing i'm glad to hear it i'm glad to hear it um just for anyone who's who's uh who needs some inspiration as shitty as that website is i found out yesterday um because i was trying to export all the stuff from i was like trying i was trying to export all the posts and every and all the users subscribers um the 70 subscribers i thought i had into a ghost site and um And then I take another look and I was like, oh, that number, that 70 number is 70 pages of subscribers.
Sean
um And I started clicking through them. as I think it's some pretty legit signups, which is really cool. I guess like people, all people like cars um or me out of there or whatever.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
So it has also. I'm at a, I'm at like a standstill of whether or not to make it a better WordPress site or to search the ghost at the moment.
Sean
We'll see.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
But anyway, my.
Andrew
So officially I want you to make it a better WordPress site so that I have a test site to use for our WordPress plugin, but do what what you need to do.
Sean
I mean, I'm here for it, I.
Andrew
Ghost is is definitely better at like making things fast and reducing errors and stuff.
Sean
Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Maybe. I feel like I feel like it's a skill issue, though. I feel like, you know, there's so many great sites that are built on WordPress and they feel like I'm just um choosing the more expensive and easy way out.
Andrew
Yeah, true. two
Sean
But in the meantime, with my struggle to ghost on my personal site, I have I spent basically the past two weeks just writing. which has been cool, which has been good. nice I a newsletter, it's called Variable Type.
Andrew
I love that. Yeah.
Sean
um Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Andrew
Love the name.
Sean
i have ah i have a like i have I have a bad syndrome of I like the things I name too much and I try to do all of them. um um I started a series about like agency businesses and how they're very similar to like food businesses, like food service.
Sean
I'll get into it on a different podcast, but they, I think they have the same service DNA. I think like, you know, you can learn a lot from how a restaurant runs like a tight ship to how to run like an agency in terms of building systems and and thinking about all that sort of stuff.
Sean
um Minus the like, maybe like toxic line cook culture and and expensive overhead costs of food, but ah you know, we have no perishable inventory.
Andrew
Hmm. Mm-hm.
Andrew
Although plenty of agencies have toxic cultures. um Yeah.
Sean
True. That's also true.
Andrew
I think, I think one of the biggest differences for me is volume. Like most creative agencies are like low volume, high ticket, and most food businesses or even the expensive ones are still relatively high volume for us.
Sean
um um Yeah, well, that's sort of that's where sort of ah what I'm getting at. is like That's a good point. that's actually I'll include that in the blog post, actually. um i think that I think that's maybe my point is that um Like a Michelin star restaurant, or like a nicer restaurant, or like a bit more mon or whatever, is still maintaining a level of quality even at that volume with like, what is talented like basically creative staff.
Andrew
Mm hmm. That's true.
Andrew
Mm hmm.
Sean
And I think, I think a like, you know, a phrase that's been resonating with me is that like, um you got to like create like, great systems to make even mediocre people produce good work.
Sean
um And yeah, like there's like ah there's something to be said about recruiting great talent and and and like maybe not having like C players, but still, that doesn't like but can only mean great systems make great people do like amazing work, right?
Sean
um So anyway, I've been I've been sort of jamming on that.
Andrew
Love that.
Sean
We're like a fun one on McDonald's Coke. That is sort of like an offshoot, which is just this idea that like, OK, we have like 10 minutes.
Sean
I'm just going to nerd out nerd out about this for a second.
Andrew
Sick. Let's do it.
Sean
OK.
Sean
You know how like McDonald's coke tastes better than like other coke other.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
OK.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
Or like like commonly people say that I was on Twitter.
Andrew
Mm-hm.
Sean
I saw this guy like make like McFranchise and he explains why it's better. um And it's because of like an insane obsession with it. right they they ah They keep it colder than Coke Standard of 38 degrees Fahrenheit.
Sean
They keep it in 33 and 36%. They like chill the the water and the syrup separately. They they use like wider straws than other like restaurants.
Andrew
Hm. Huh.
Sean
um
Andrew
I always thought they had their own formula.
Sean
um so
Andrew
Like I thought they were tweaking the formula to use like more syrup or something like that.
Sean
There is a New York Times article that says it's technically a little bit sweeter, but I don't think that's the case.
Andrew
Uh-huh.
Sean
I think it's all the other choices. According to McFranchise, he also says who claims that it's not true.
Andrew
Mm-hmm.
Sean
I think it's because they're the only ones that Coke delivers to in stainless steel tanks versus plastic containers.
Andrew
Oh.
Sean
So it gets cooler longer and it doesn't have like degradation or something.
Andrew
Mm-hmm.
Sean
And it's because also Um, the water that they use, you know, McDonald's uses reverse osmosis for their coffee, but then uses a separate filtered filtration system for their soda water.
Andrew
That's wild.
Sean
ha
Andrew
is This is funny because you don't think of McDonald's and you and think of quality, right? Like, although I will say, like when I think of McDonald's, I think of consistency, like it maintains a consistent low to mid quality.
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
Andrew
Like it's it's never as bad as like a bad Bojangles or something, which Bojangles is maybe not going to mean anything to you.
Sean
but For sure. For sure.
Andrew
ah
Sean
I know about it from the podcast that I listened to called Business Untitled.
Andrew
Nice, nice.
Sean
Yeah, yeah.
Andrew
Bojangles is a big chicken chain in the south, like fried chicken chain.
Sean
Gotcha.
Andrew
And Bojangles are just wildly variable.
Sean
but Interesting.
Andrew
Like you'll walk into one Bojangles and it'll be the best fast food experience you've ever had in your life. um The staff will be super friendly. It'll be clean. The food is hot and fresh and crispy and fucking delicious.
Sean
Gotcha.
Andrew
And then you walk into another one and it feels like you're like you're walking into like a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Sean
Yeah.
Sean
Yeah makes sense.
Andrew
Like it's bad.
Sean
Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
um Yeah. Yeah, I think consistency is exactly what McDonald's is really great at. Because I mean, they're the king of systems.
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
They they are the largest fast restaurant.
Andrew
Mm hmm.
Sean
um Anyway, it just got me thinking. like what is like So so like to kind of continue with the analogy and and and all that stuff, like that's cool. The other thing that's cool is the fact that McDonald's has a division inside of Coke.
Sean
So it's like 160 to 200 people work at Coke for McDonald's to just think about McDonald's Coke and then like McDonald's and Coke partnership.
Andrew
Whoa.
Andrew
That's nice.
Sean
partnership um The equivalent to agency life is like, what if you just got really fucking good as like, ah let's say you're a Webflow, let's say you're a Webflow agency and I understand that you're good at Webflow, right?
Andrew
Yeah.
Sean
But the difference is that McDonald's doesn't sell Coke as its main thing. McDonald's sells burgers and fries and Coke is like the other thing you add on.
Andrew
yeah
Sean
it's one of the important pieces so like for example as a webflow agency what if we also just got really fucking good at HubSpot or what if we just got really fucking good at like Zapier or exactly exactly like something else got yeah yeah it's like a pretty crazy differentiator
Andrew
social content or something. Yeah. It's just like this is a bonus that you get from working with us. That's just awesome.
Sean
um And then the other thinking was just like you know mcdonald' like the other analogy I was trying to make was McDonald's and Coke, like they they started working together when Coke was not that large.
Sean
I mean, it was still large, but it wasn't like now.
Andrew
Mm hmm.
Sean
Same thing with McDonald's. So um I think the best way to do this is actually to look at ah smaller startups who are who have something really promising, probably have like product market fit, and you can basically be an extra partner and distribution for them, but you get really good at it to a point that you get to, like, I think that's how some agencies were able to influence, maybe like influence some of Webflow's roadmap or...
Andrew
Hm.
Andrew
Yeah, yeah you're not you're not totally wrong there.
Sean
um Yeah.
Andrew
There are agencies that get in really tight with different development frameworks like Django or Rails or Ember or something like that.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
and um I'm dating myself by making an Ember reference.
Sean
Yeah.
Sean
Little bit.
Andrew
um ah But yeah, there there are agencies who kind of get in on that and become known as like an expert in that. To me, that feels a little bit different than like the Coke McDonald's thing. um i I almost think your posts might be stronger if you stay focused on the like the first analogy and don't try too hard to make the second point of like making this getting in early and making it a distribution thing because like McDonald's is a franchise and so part of the reason that works is because McDonald's had this explosive growth and like agencies don't have that same level of explosive growth although I guess you have the benefit of like working with lots of clients and so if you install a technology in lots of clients then that can be like a great growth lover
Sean
sure.
Andrew
I don't know. Interesting.
Sean
I mean, I wrote it already, so too late.
Andrew
Ah, okay.
Sean
Your feedback is, yeah. no um Yeah, I mean, I do think it is an explosive growth. I think it can be an explosive growth lever for four companies.
Sean
I think you know when we find a tool we really like, we deploy it on all our clients. And that's like 30 new customers for any ah like ah any like smaller startup at once.
Sean
um but Yeah, I think I don't know I put like a matrix in there and like how to evaluate what would be like a potential coke for you um Anyway point all all this to say like I think I just had some fun writing I think I've been struggling to figure out what like a
Andrew
That's cool. Hell yeah.
Sean
viable personal brand would be to write about things um and then i just kind of gave up on thinking about it that way i think personal brands are non are restrictive to people who care about more than like one niche you know i think like the best personal brands when you want to optimize for it is like derrick from die work wear right or like car dealership guy where you like niche down on the thing um But like, whatever.
Andrew
Yeah, the flip side of that, Nat Eliason is someone who's writing I've read for a long time. um And he made an argument one time that like, part of your moat with your personal brand can be your unique mix of interests, because it's unless you're, you know,
Sean
Yeah.
Sean
yeah
Andrew
say a tech bro who is into rock climbing and eating fast nice food.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
me um No, but like unless your interests are like super vague and um and cliche, then then like that mix of interests will differentiate you from other people.
Sean
Yeah.
Andrew
And it introduces challenges in that it keep makes it harder to um You know, yeah, people don't always know immediately what they're coming to you for.
Andrew
um But it can be a worthwhile trade off in that it also helps you stand out and then keeps you interested, which keeps you writing, which is kind of the most important thing.
Sean
For sure.
Andrew
um So yeah, is that is that where the name variable type came from?
Sean
For sure.
Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, also because like, you know, you know, like, like, variable type in design, but also type.
Andrew
Love it.
Andrew
Yep.
Sean
Okay, yeah, all right. Anyway, what was that? yeah i think i Yeah, I think I feel better about it because of that. I think giving myself permission to contain multitudes was like a very good unlock.
Andrew
Mm-hmm.
Sean
um um Anyway, my first post actually got a little bit of Blue Sky virality this week to hold 70 users off of Blue Sky because of the inboxes.
Andrew
Yeah.
Andrew
Love it.
Andrew
Sick. Fuck yeah.
Andrew
Cool, man. That's dope. um Sweet.
Sean
Thank you.
Andrew
We gotta wrap up, but ah excited to read more of your writing.
Sean
Yeah, I think we're running out of time.
Sean
Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah. I got a balance of the client work. There's so much, there's so many hours of my day that I would rather just do that than client work.
Sean
It's a struggle. It and does.
Andrew
I feel you, man. But, man, it is nice when that ah paycheck hits. it
Sean
It is. It is nice. It is nice. All right.
Andrew
Sweet. Talk to you later.
Sean
Happy season three. Happy new year. We'll see Bye.
Andrew
Happy New Year. Happy season three. Woo!
Sean
See ya.