We've got a special guest on the pod today! Louis from Sparkloop joins to share how they evolved from referrals to recommendations and sold to Kit! 🚀 Meanwhile Andrew gets Louis's take on MetaMonster's positioning struggles and they debate how and why the SaaS landscape is changing. Plus: the most detailed rom-com ranking you've ever heard, featuring hidden gems and heated debates about classics.

Links:

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

Transcript:
00:00:01.03
Andrew
Hey, what's up, man?

00:00:02.44
Louis
Hey man, how's it going? It's been a while.

00:00:04.43
Andrew
It has. Astute listeners might notice that you are not Sean Sun, founder of Miscreants. Do you want to introduce yourself real quick?

00:00:13.90
Louis
Yeah, my name Louis. I am the co-founder of Sparkloop. I'm a huge rom-com enthusiast, which I think we're going to get to later. and

00:00:23.11
Andrew
Hell yeah.

00:00:24.25
Louis
I guess I'm a probably more of like a reformed indie hacker. People might know me from that, but more likely nowadays, if you're a newsletter nerd in the newsletter space, you probably have come across Sparkloop or maybe seen me online or something like that.

00:00:41.21
Andrew
Reformed. Does that mean you don't identify as an indie hacker anymore?

00:00:44.76
Louis
Oh, no, no, I do. I just don't hang out in the as much in like the IndieHack bootstrap founder space anymore. my My Twitter and LinkedIn have been taken over by self-interested business interests of talking about newsletters, which is a lot more lucrative.

00:00:51.89
Andrew
Yeah.

00:00:59.73
Louis
Yeah.

00:00:59.94
Andrew
Yeah. So, okay. How long ago now did you sell Sparkloop? How long has it been?

00:01:06.67
Louis
We sold just over two years ago. We were bought by then ConvertKit, now Kit, which I think we...

00:01:10.16
Andrew
Okay.

00:01:14.78
Louis
Did we talk about this shortly before or shortly? Maybe we met shortly after, actually, I think.

00:01:19.18
Andrew
I think both.

00:01:20.17
Andrew
I think we, you and i met in New York. I was working for Grey Noise at the time. And you told me, i don't remember if you actually told me it was ConvertKit. I think you told me you were like considering an acquisition and that there was some stuff in the works.

00:01:31.86
Louis
Hmm.

00:01:33.80
Andrew
And then I think we hung out again, last year sometime after you'd sold to ConvertKit, when I was like starting to, oh yeah, because like last December, you and i were actually talking about like maybe collabing on some stuff.

00:01:48.50
Louis
Yeah.

00:01:49.80
Louis
Yeah, yeah,

00:01:50.82
Andrew
I quoted you some ridiculously high number to do something. I don't even remember what exactly. like I think some of the like personal brand stuff that you've started doing, was going to help with some of that maybe.

00:02:01.79
Louis
yeah. Mm-hmm.

00:02:03.39
Andrew
And then then, yeah, I think I probably talked to you to just like ask you for some startup advice at some point, which I'm now doing again under the guise of having you on as a podcast guest.

00:02:15.33
Louis
It's the the best way to do it. i yeah I remember we were, i think the last time we properly talked was actually not about about this startup at all. It was about the in-email charts thing, I think, was the last time we had like a proper long conversation.

00:02:33.24
Andrew
Yeah, good memory. I'm impressed that you remember what it even was. Yeah, that was ChartJuice. was I think at the time it was probably ChartKit.

00:02:42.64
Louis
Mm-hmm.

00:02:43.87
Andrew
And then had a co-founder, he left, and he owned the domain, so I bought chartjuice.com. And then...

00:02:54.82
Andrew
Built it, probably shouldn't have ever built it. Like, I don't think it was like ever really a great market. But I did the classic indie hacker thing where I was like, I kind of just want to build something and I wanted to learn to code again.

00:03:08.23
Andrew
And Chart Juice felt very like not intimidating. It felt easy to build. And so I spent a few months building it, launched it to Crickets and then was like, all right, I need to actually build something that I think people will buy now And so, yeah.

00:03:22.97
Louis
Always a oh it a good idea. I wish you had, with a name like Chart Juice, it wasn't called Chart Juice at the time, but a name like Chart Juice, that deserves to be a podcast growth agency.

00:03:30.27
Andrew
Yeah.

00:03:35.87
Louis
There should be a podcast growth agency called Chart Juice out there.

00:03:39.11
Andrew
Honestly, that is so true. Someone has like a, someone has a oh, it's, it's a productized service that will submit your startup to a bunch of directories.

00:03:54.29
Andrew
And it's called like submit juice or something like that.

00:03:54.53
Louis
see

00:03:57.23
Louis
I don't like that one so much.

00:03:58.44
Andrew
no, no.

00:03:58.79
Louis
That's... No. Gotta be careful with juice.

00:04:01.82
Andrew
Yeah, you do got to be careful with juice. Yeah, honestly, Podcast Curse Agency makes a ton of sense. I love that. I still like... I still have the the site up. like I have like sort of pipe dreams of you know spinning it out into a little like ah ah a little like plug-in for Webflow or you know ah maybe a kit app or something someday.

00:04:28.10
Andrew
But yeah, keep I have like ah ah recurring have like a use Todoist. And so there is a to-do in Todoist to...

00:04:38.11
Andrew
to like revamp chart juice and I just keep punting it out like two months every time it comes up because I'm like this is not the best use of my time right now

00:04:47.20
Louis
Yeah, I know that feeling. I know that

00:04:49.12
Andrew
Yeah. So what what has happened in the last like year? what's What's life like at Spark Loop? and Last we talked, you were pretty happy with the acquisition. like Things were going pretty well. And you all were really running independently, for the most part, under Kit.

00:05:06.00
Andrew
I imagine helping them build their kind of internal network and powering that, I would imagine. but then like really just sort of focus, you still running the business as the business is what I remember.

00:05:21.42
Louis
Yeah, spot on. It's been a very unusual acquisition, I would say, in that we have kept running separately from Kit for the most part. We do work with them very closely behind the scenes on overlapping tech that we have.

00:05:33.29
Andrew
Yeah.

00:05:33.63
Louis
like We power their paid recommendations network. They're much bigger company than we are, of course.

00:05:38.38
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

00:05:38.68
Louis
But we actually have we function as a separate company that's owned by Kit. We have the same team, a bit bigger now. we think we're 14 people at the moment, so still small, but...

00:05:49.48
Louis
like a real team, like when we do a team retreat, we all can't fit into the same van. We need to get or like to order the special big van that takes us to places, which is fun.

00:05:57.03
Andrew
Yeah.

00:05:59.71
Louis
Yeah, no, we things are going well. We are, you know,

00:06:02.62
Andrew
I think last we talked, you were hiring a bunch of people. You were hiring like five or six people at a time. So it sounds like you got to kind of a steady state where you were like, OK, we've got like we grew a bunch.

00:06:14.72
Andrew
Are you still like trying to add people really fast or are you have you kind of like steadied out a little bit and you're like, we're at a good size. We can like rock with this for a little while.

00:06:24.26
Louis
Yeah, no, I think we're pretty happy with where we are. We've added two people this year, I think, there's potential to add maybe a couple more this year, but they're going to be in like expanding the same role into like two or three people as capacity requires.

00:06:40.53
Louis
So like on sales, for example, uh, or customer support or something like that.

00:06:42.61
Andrew
Cool.

00:06:44.24
Louis
Yeah, no, we, I think we're, we're about where we should be, but that could all change. We do have some stuff that I can't really talk about today, but we have some product stuff coming in like the next few months. And then, Who knows? So maybe we'll need to to hire a bunch more for that. But yeah, no, it's it's honestly, it's pretty like the product we have now we've been doing for just over three years.

00:07:08.66
Andrew
Yeah.

00:07:09.14
Louis
And it's pretty steady and we know what we're doing and we know the, like, it's a very small like niche in the internet, right? Newsletters. So we know what we're doing and we're just, I think, just enjoying it and just trying to like incrementally improve rather than necessarily like bring out like whole new products and have things be completely crazy.

00:07:17.98
Andrew
yeah

00:07:28.66
Andrew
Super cool. i I feel like for a while, i remember you all had, so the the recommendation engine, like recommendation platform was, felt like a big inflection point for you all. Like that felt like it it really like leveled up.

00:07:45.38
Andrew
how like your growth but i remember seeing for a while that like the home page of sparkloop was still the original feature set was like the focus of like build uh like uh like kind of referral pages that encourage people to like sign up and get rewards uh sort of thing

00:08:05.57
Louis
Yeah.

00:08:09.56
Andrew
Just curious because I just jumped to your website and saw that you you are now focused on like recommendations. And I guess like the two are were always related. They're both ways to like grow and recommend.

00:08:21.19
Andrew
But yeah, like when did you all make that switch? and like I imagine it happened a while ago now. And I probably missed it.

00:08:27.94
Louis
Yeah, it's honestly, there are still parts of the site where you would think that we were still referral first. I guess it kind of shows how much we as a company care about like that kind of marketing.

00:08:40.50
Louis
It's not really been a big thing for us. We're more sales, for sales led and word of mouth led rather than,

00:08:45.44
Andrew
okay. that's what it was.

00:08:46.85
Louis
yeah

00:08:47.00
Andrew
it just like wasn't worth it to spend a bunch of time revamping the website.

00:08:51.17
Louis
I wouldn't say that. I would say it was more we... So we were all in on referrals, like the referral product that we had for two years, the first two years of Sparkloop. And then after two years, we started bringing out this recommendations product.

00:09:00.17
Andrew
Yeah.

00:09:04.18
Louis
And at the time... Like obviously our revenue was 100% from referrals. That's what people knew us for.

00:09:10.38
Andrew
Okay.

00:09:11.74
Louis
We had just after two years, finally, like the big, big media companies, like referrals had filtered through to them and we were just becoming a thing.

00:09:20.48
Andrew
Cool. Mm-hmm.

00:09:20.70
Louis
So what we found was we could get people in through the door for referrals and go, hey, so it's great that you found out about this after all this time. We've actually invented something else that works a lot better. And the people who, like you were excited to use referrals because of the hustle three years ago.

00:09:35.21
Louis
Well, what the hutle hustle is using today is this new thing that we've invented. So you should try that out. And so it actually worked pretty well marketing wise for us because people knew us and our reputation for referrals.

00:09:46.79
Louis
We could get them through the door for a conversation that they weren't ready to have about recommendations because they had no idea what that was.

00:09:52.59
Andrew
Damn.

00:09:52.72
Louis
But then we could talk to them about that and say, hey, there's this thing. It's easier. It's less risky. easier. is better for you and it makes us more money, blah, blah, blah, blah. blah We should go in and try this as well or instead. So it took us a while and took us until I think we, it didn't actually take us very long to eclipse the referral revenue with the recommendations revenue. I think it took us maybe four or five months from launching that for it to become more than 50% of our monthly revenue.

00:10:19.77
Andrew
damn

00:10:19.72
Louis
And I think maybe two or three months after that, we finally had time to to switch it out. But it was a crazy couple of months because we were like closing the the acquisition at the same time and hiring a bunch of people.

00:10:29.44
Andrew
Yeah.

00:10:30.56
Louis
And it was a completely new product that we didn't have any support or anything for. So yeah, it was part of it was just laziness, to be honest, like low priority.

00:10:38.58
Andrew
Yeah, I mean, i went through a much smaller, simpler acquisition because, we had like very minimal due diligence and everything. And I remember just how much it like ate up my mind share. And so I can only imagine yeah hiring, going through a proper acquisition with due diligence and everything, and like trying to revamp your positioning.

00:11:01.62
Andrew
I have always found it really interesting. I feel like you're one of the few bootstrap startups that I can point to that really, really like managed to invent something totally new and make that work, like not just go into an existing product category and like slightly tweak that category, but it really felt like you guys like kind of created a new, like kind of category creation, like recommendations platform was not a thing.

00:11:33.31
Andrew
This like recommendation sort of system wasn't really a thing in newsletters before you all, I don't think, was it?

00:11:40.69
Louis
No, it wasn't. the free recommendation side, we came out with ours at roughly the same time as Substack.

00:11:45.79
Andrew
Okay.

00:11:46.03
Louis
I don't think of it as inventing it. like It felt very obvious to me. Before Sparkloop, I'd actually spent six months with two friends building basically the same recommendations thing, but for sort of premium D2C brands.

00:12:00.63
Louis
like Back then, we didn't even have like the name D2C. was just like e-commerce brands, right?

00:12:04.30
Andrew
Yeah, yeah.

00:12:05.71
Louis
And that worked super well where it was like, you go and buy a candle for $50.

00:12:11.15
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

00:12:11.25
Louis
We are going to show you, we're going to give you a coupon for a pair of expensive cashmere socks, right?

00:12:17.07
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

00:12:17.05
Louis
From a brand. And they would do these trades and we would make a percentage of the sale.

00:12:18.37
Andrew
Yeah.

00:12:21.79
Andrew
Interesting.

00:12:21.74
Louis
We should have done as a percentage a sale. we should have just done it as a lead, but we didn't know any better.

00:12:24.99
Andrew
Yeah.

00:12:25.92
Louis
We did as a percentage a sale. And it was working really well. We got that to over 10K a month in revenue in like three months from like

00:12:31.75
Andrew
Was that the venture-backed thing that you worked on?

00:12:34.13
Louis
No, no, no. That was ages ago. That was before the Google call.

00:12:35.79
Andrew
OK, OK.

00:12:36.69
Louis
It was called Post Perk.

00:12:38.23
Andrew
Yeah.

00:12:39.06
Louis
And we we didn't know each other, all three of us as a team, but we just completely sort of like disintegrated. One of us, our main job, they got acquired and they like got rich and didn't have to do it. The other one to go and work on something more technical.

00:12:48.50
Andrew
wild

00:12:50.79
Louis
I was not super like into the D2C space. I didn't really want to keep doing it. And it kind of fell apart just because no one really cared about it enough. But the idea was really good.

00:12:58.43
Andrew
damn yeah yeah yeah interesting

00:12:59.61
Louis
So when we when we came into, when I came into Spark loop with the referral program, which... We didn't invent referral programs. We were just the first ones who made it easy to do for newsletters. i like The first thing I looked at was like, why is nobody doing recommendations?

00:13:14.86
Louis
And I was kind of new to the newsletter space. i was like, oh, well, there's going to be a reason. i'm just I just don't know the reason yet. like I'm not going to go in and tell how to do things.

00:13:22.72
Andrew
Yeah.

00:13:22.87
Louis
And I kept trying to like discover why it didn't work and like who tried it. And it just turned out that like Nobody had really like had the authority to like claim that this might be a good idea.

00:13:36.61
Andrew
yeah

00:13:36.62
Louis
And so when we were at that point of like, okay, people trust us enough, we have enough newsletters on the platform for the SaaS product. like Why would we not do this? And it yeah, we're fine.

00:13:46.17
Andrew
So this is kind of what I wanted to ask. Like, do you think it would have worked without the referral product? Like, do you think you needed that like customer base and like kind of critical mass in order to get...

00:13:58.25
Andrew
the recommendation because the recommendation platform is like kind of a two-sided marketplace right which like usually is again so it's like kind of category almost like business model creation and it's a two-sided marketplace like it kind of goes against all of like the bootstrapped best practices and it worked and like do you think yeah do you think the like referral product being like an easy to understand like established thing to get you in the door was necessary or do you think it could have worked without that

00:14:14.91
Louis
Yeah, it did.

00:14:27.79
Louis
I think it could absolutely have worked without that. I think you, to do a marketplace, I think you need some kind of unfair advantage, right?

00:14:34.96
Andrew
Yeah.

00:14:35.94
Louis
So we didn't have absolutely any in that space when we started. So having the referral product and having those customer connections and their trust and every, like all of the users already in the platform, that definitely became the unfair advantage that allowed us to do this without having to spend years and years and years trying to do it.

00:14:48.59
Andrew
Yeah.

00:14:55.59
Andrew
Yeah.

00:14:56.15
Louis
But yeah, absolutely. Like if I had spent a year working at one of the really big newsletter success stories and then came out of that and said, Hey, everybody should be doing this.

00:15:03.76
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

00:15:06.48
Andrew
Or if you'd had a big audience of like newsletter writers already or something like that, you just needed something to get over that chicken and then egg problem.

00:15:07.02
Louis
That would have worked.

00:15:10.76
Louis
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or if I was willing to spend a million dollars and say, hey, everyone who signs up gets a hundred dollars guaranteed.

00:15:18.91
Andrew
Yeah.

00:15:19.38
Louis
Like, yeah, absolutely. Other people could have absolutely done this and probably could have done it faster than we did. I guess you never know because when you're the first ones doing it, you make all the mistakes that people don't have to do the second time around.

00:15:26.72
Andrew
Sure.

00:15:28.70
Louis
But yeah, i think I think even now, like especially with like AI and how that's going to make...

00:15:29.13
Andrew
Yeah.

00:15:36.92
Louis
Just like generic SAS, probably a lot more difficult to charge for, and you're going to have to have a lot more features and do a lot more for the money and getting visibility is going to be harder.

00:15:48.29
Louis
I think you can, like you probably, most products probably need some sort of like marketplace or network, or they need some sort of value that comes from the other users rather than just from the actual lines of code.

00:16:00.08
Andrew
Network effects.

00:16:01.56
Louis
Yeah.

00:16:01.66
Andrew
Yeah.

00:16:02.18
Louis
Some kind of network effect and.

00:16:05.23
Andrew
Interesting.

00:16:05.86
Louis
that I think people come to it from scratch.

00:16:06.26
Andrew
I don't know if I agree with that.

00:16:08.01
Louis
No? Okay.

00:16:08.34
Andrew
don I don't know if I agree with that.

00:16:09.25
Louis
Interesting.

00:16:10.34
Andrew
Yeah, like, I feel like... Maybe it's a little bit of an aversion of, like, being running a dev shop during, like, the peak social media era where everyone was, like, obsessed with network effects and, like, all anyone wanted was to figure out how to build the next social network.

00:16:21.03
Louis
Mm-hmm.

00:16:26.99
Andrew
And i was like, guys, can we stop this? So maybe there's just, like, some some bias there and, like, aversion to the idea. Yeah. But yeah, i I mean, don't get me wrong. Network effects are like an amazing thing to have if you can find a natural way to integrate them into your product. Like, it's just such a fucking moat.

00:16:47.04
Andrew
Like, look at Elon Musk cannot kill Twitter no matter how hard he tries right now because like the network effects are too strong. know. I don't know about like we DM over Twitter to set this up and like I tried to quit it for a while and I'm back because like my friends are there and I can't stay away.

00:17:05.72
Louis
Yeah. I mean, i there are probably some exceptions. Like, I think if you have, like, ConvertKit actually is a pretty good example of this, where you could literally, with one prompt, build most of the core functionality of ConvertKit.

00:17:22.95
Louis
But the deliverability would be terrible. the emails would be bad.

00:17:25.68
Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:17:27.06
Louis
I'm like, that's kind of their moat, in a sense. At least, like, or that's email companies like ConvertKit's moat.

00:17:34.25
Andrew
Yeah.

00:17:34.82
Louis
And then...

00:17:34.99
Andrew
And more and more, they're building ah ah brand mode as well, feel like, in the space. I don't know if you agree with that or not, but it feels like that's there's an intentional push there.

00:17:45.07
Louis
I think so. I think as those tools become more and more similar and you get more and more increasingly you go with the one that you like and that you identify with. Right. I think that that definitely is true.

00:17:53.98
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

00:17:56.52
Louis
think data is the other big thing, right? Like na and network effect doesn't have to necessarily be connecting you with other users, but you have to be, if you're ConvertKit, for example, like you have

00:18:02.54
Andrew
Yeah.

00:18:09.00
Louis
all the data on when to send emails, what kind of emails to send, what subscribers are interested in clicking on and what they're buying, which creators should be working together.

00:18:19.98
Louis
There is a lot that you can do where you can say, hey, even if somebody could go and build this platform in three months and give them all the same functionality and offer it for a 10th of the price,

00:18:28.86
Andrew
yeah

00:18:29.24
Louis
Because we have all of these users and all of this data going back years, we can add enough incremental value for people who are important that they're going to be happy to pay more for what we have. Right. I do think that's something that if you look at like, where where do you host the podcast?

00:18:40.86
Andrew
Yeah. Rehosted on transistor.

00:18:45.19
Louis
You're on Trisister, okay. So they're trying really hard to figure out some kind of network effect, right?

00:18:46.19
Andrew
Yeah.

00:18:48.82
Louis
Because they're going have the same thing. Like soon, I think podcast hosting is probably going to go to zero cost. or if I mean, it already is in a lot of cases, but it's going to go more and more that way, right?

00:19:00.17
Andrew
Yeah, I'm a little skeptical again.

00:19:00.75
Louis
I think.

00:19:01.97
Andrew
Like, I feel like in general, like people talk about like SaaS dying out because of vibe coding and like everyone's going to be able to like one prompt, one shot at, you know most of the functionality.

00:19:13.04
Andrew
But I think like with transistor, like with kit, you know, most of the challenge in transistor is the like DevOps side of like maintaining the infrastructure and stuff.

00:19:25.91
Andrew
And like, that stuff is so tedious and awful to do that maybe we get agentic systems that can do it for you and like, it becomes not awful. I don't know. But yeah, I'm, and then too, I think like distribution is always the hard part, which I guess goes back to your like kind of network effects, like kind of help create distribution a little bit.

00:19:47.02
Andrew
I do also think that like, you know, as we're riding out this wave of like what the hell's happening with SEO, like, The smart people I know are talking about the value of data in marketing too, like unique data sets or how you like kind of cut through the noise in marketing because you like produce something that like an LLM can't produce without it.

00:20:07.89
Andrew
So yeah, I think I like agree and disagree with some of this.

00:20:12.29
Louis
Yeah, I mean, who knows? i don't know exactly where we're going to go with all this, but I do think that the having that data is going to become more and more valuable, partly because everything else becomes less defensible.

00:20:27.67
Andrew
Yeah, that is.

00:20:28.24
Louis
Even if there is some defense, there's less defense, I think.

00:20:29.97
Andrew
Yeah. yeah

00:20:32.11
Louis
And because we're now getting to a place where With AI or AI assisted, you can actually start to do interesting stuff with that data that you couldn't necessarily do before, or it becomes more useful.

00:20:43.22
Andrew
I wonder if some of this is also just like the stages we're at. Like I'm i'm at a stage where I'm like, I just got to get someone to give a fuck long enough to like try my product. And like, I can't think about network effects and like data motes and shit right now. I just need someone to like try my product. Whereas you're living in like, I have a successful product and I need to figure out how to defend it and like keep it going land.

00:21:06.33
Andrew
I don't know if you if if there's any of that going on or if this is something you've thought about from day one.

00:21:11.58
Louis
No, no, it's it's a little bit of that. And it's a little bit of like thinking about what my next product would be. And like, would I go into a SaaS again? And like, I definitely wouldn't go into a, like a, yeah, I wouldn't do like a straight up paid SaaS, I don't think.

00:21:19.45
Andrew
Ooh.

00:21:21.59
Andrew
Really? Interesting. OK, why not? Tell me, is it just for the reasons we've been talking about, you feel like like it's just going to become too easy to replicate the functionality? There's not enough moat there?

00:21:36.35
Louis
I think partly it's just probably that I just don't have a really, really good idea. Maybe I could be just super con convinced if I was like super into it and knew exactly what I wanted to do.

00:21:46.66
Andrew
Yeah.

00:21:46.84
Louis
But I think a big part of it is not really like the long-term defensibility.

00:21:46.91
Andrew
There.

00:21:49.71
Louis
It's just when i so when we started Sparkloop a bit more than five years ago, we were like the best people around at the time in SaaS had had maybe 10 years, but most companies had had four or five years to build out their feature sets.

00:21:55.80
Andrew
Yeah.

00:22:07.28
Louis
on average, they're now at like nine years of building out feature sets, right? So someone I'm competing with now has had twice as much time to compete, like to get better than me as someone, as like when I first started Sparkleap, right?

00:22:13.35
Andrew
yeah

00:22:20.08
Louis
Like it's, I'm now like a, I'm five-year-old who is fighting against 15-year-old versus a five-year-old who's trying to like fight against a nine-year-old.

00:22:27.84
Andrew
Yeah.

00:22:27.99
Louis
So yeah, that that's yeah a little bit, yeah.

00:22:29.32
Andrew
but has Hasn't the market always kind of gone through these like bundling and unbundling cycles and like you kind of had to like find a wedge? Like there were always going to be people with like way more functionality than you and you had to like figure out like, okay, what's our wedge? What can we do differently that's better?

00:22:45.11
Andrew
And then like land and expand, like start there and then grow until we become the bundled thing that is slow and crusty and then someone comes in and replaces us. like I guess I've always looked at it as cyclical.

00:22:55.85
Louis
Yeah, I guess so.

00:22:58.07
Andrew
Yeah.

00:22:59.83
Louis
Maybe.

00:23:00.09
Andrew
yeah

00:23:00.67
Louis
I'm thinking about it more now as like, people, I've definitely seen, ah ah I don't know if you've seen this, I definitely feel like I've seen a change in B2B buyer mentality from like, oh, cool, another exciting tool to even now when there's like a genuinely exciting tool, it's like, oh, not another tool that I'm going to have to log into and use. Like, can I just pay you to do this for me?

00:23:25.49
Andrew
Yeah.

00:23:25.55
Louis
And I feel like that is the big unlock with AI is like, the next thing I would do would probably be like a productized service.

00:23:26.48
Andrew
No, that's real.

00:23:32.39
Louis
But like, basically, I built the SaaS and I'm the only one who gets to use it.

00:23:36.29
Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've heard some people think about, talk about that. i as someone who built a service business for a long time, you've also built a service business before, so, like, I'm like, I don't want to build another service business.

00:23:50.14
Andrew
ah

00:23:51.18
Louis
Yeah.

00:23:51.42
Andrew
But, know, I also have never built a truly productized service. I was always doing custom services, so it was always super hard to like,

00:23:57.70
Louis
Yeah. I mean, yours, you would you were delivering output, but not necessarily, like, you weren't delivering outcomes, right?

00:24:03.69
Andrew
outcomes.

00:24:05.85
Louis
And I think if you have one where you're just on the hook for delivering the outcomes, and you can take a percentage of that, I think that, at least in the short term, yeah.

00:24:06.28
Andrew
Yeah, 100%.

00:24:11.98
Andrew
You got to divorce yourself from time. like that's That's the thing that SaaS enables us to do that we all want is like I want to be able to make good money while not having to like

00:24:14.84
Louis
Yeah.

00:24:24.48
Andrew
you know not having to worry about, like oh, if I take two weeks off, it's like my income dips or something.

00:24:29.79
Louis
Yeah.

00:24:30.40
Andrew
Yeah.

00:24:30.53
Louis
And I think that's what a productized service like with software powering it does enable you to do.

00:24:36.00
Andrew
Yeah.

00:24:36.09
Louis
You pay like it's okay. This would take you a hundred hours to do. You don't know if it's going to take me five hours or 20 hours, but I can charge you for 50 hours because it would take you a hundred hours. Right.

00:24:46.16
Andrew
yeah

00:24:47.13
Louis
yeah, I, I think there's, there's likes there, but anyway, you, I think last I was listening to your, this podcast in preparation, I think you said you're at three, four customers.

00:24:56.57
Louis
No, not blanking on that.

00:24:56.81
Andrew
Yeah, yeah.

00:24:57.78
Louis
Yeah.

00:24:58.35
Andrew
Yeah, so I'm doing exactly what ah you would not do. I'm trying to build a SaaS business. And yeah, so we're at, just had a customer convert today. They ah didn't cancel their trial. They're not using the product as much as I would like. So that makes me nervous. But, and then we've got another one who I think is going to,

00:25:20.14
Andrew
convert so i think we're gonna be at like about five with like a mix of usage like not incredible usage definitely have some people paying just because they like me which is like great and touching and i love it but like not a business not a rep like a repeatable way to grow a business so uh-huh

00:25:23.02
Louis
Nice.

00:25:39.75
Louis
Oh, I'm going to disagree there. I think it's a very repeatable way to grow a business. It's a terrible way to start a business because you in the in the early days, you need a complete stranger to actually like desperately need this so much they put up with all the nonsense and talk to you and get through it.

00:25:55.92
Andrew
yeah

00:25:56.40
Louis
But I think once you once you have something that you're sure works, just being the provider that people like is actually a really good way to do it. I mean, a lot of Transistor FM was kind of...

00:26:08.22
Andrew
Oh, it's 100% like, yeah, yeah.

00:26:08.47
Louis
in the early days, at least just Justin, right? Yeah.

00:26:10.85
Andrew
It's like, I like Justin and like, I don't really give a fuck about ah ah podcast hosting. So as long as you make it relatively easy and you're Justin Jackson, like, yeah, I'm going to pick you.

00:26:20.85
Louis
yeah What's the Chris, do you know Chris Lehmer? He has a really good, yeah, has really good quote, which is something like, all things equal, people prefer to buy from friends.

00:26:23.80
Andrew
Yeah, yeah.

00:26:30.09
Louis
So make all things equal, then make a lot of friends. I really like that, that quote.

00:26:34.22
Andrew
I love that, man. That's kind of how I always like treated grit, like growing the agency was, I was like, I'm not great at marketing or demand gen, but I'm good at making friends.

00:26:49.41
Andrew
So I'm just going to try to like build, like have like solid positioning and like a good argument for like why we're, you know, who we're a good fit for. And then I'm just going to try to make a bunch of friends and then hope that those people will eventually tell someone about us.

00:27:04.44
Andrew
And it got us to like a million in annual revenue. So not super profitably, but it was kind of lumpy revenue, but.

00:27:08.16
Louis
Yeah.

00:27:13.71
Louis
Lumpier revenue. That's a good one. That should be a t-shirt. Yeah, so you're struggling. Well, not struggling, but you're up at five. You said some people aren't using it necessarily as much as you would like.

00:27:23.31
Louis
Is it the kind of product where you have a magic moment, an aha moment, where people get some sort of result or some sort of output, and they go, oh, this is like, I'm hooked.

00:27:23.74
Andrew
Yeah.

00:27:32.14
Louis
I'm in now. Or is it more of like a habit-forming thing where they have to keep coming back and using it? And you just have to get them to to use it rather than to see initial value and be in.

00:27:44.57
Andrew
good question transparently i don't know yet my hunch would be it's probably going to be more of a habit forming thing where it's going to take some time to like get people get people in and like get them coming back so the product uh it's called metamonster um

00:28:00.69
Andrew
is, and this is part of the problem, is I'm still struggling to figure out how to position it. And partially because like I kind of think we don't fit into an existing category. And so we're going to, like, it terrifies me, but like we're maybe going to play in a new category that's like, I don't think we're creating it, but I think it's kind of emerging because of changes in AI and like how people are working with AI. Yeah.

00:28:26.88
Andrew
So I would describe it as like an SEO automation platform. So it uses AI to automate parts of an SEO analyst's like workflow and SEO manager's workflow.

00:28:40.32
Andrew
And yeah we started our like kind of initial MVP was like, let's just build like ah ah tool that can crawl a website and then with a single button click generate page titles and meta descriptions.

00:28:55.93
Andrew
And what we heard from people was like, this is cool. Like, I think there's something here. got, you know, our first one or two customers, but we were really struggling to get anyone to give a shit. Like, you know, we had someone like sign up and use it and then like churn right away and like had a bunch of people who it do this? Does it do that? It's not really enough. and And this kind of jived with what we were feeling.

00:29:21.35
Andrew
Like we always felt like that was just a starting point.

00:29:23.27
Louis
Thank you.

00:29:24.41
Andrew
And then at the same time, we were also just like, it' it was our first time building a product with like AI as a core part of the value prop. And we just felt like we were kind of like,

00:29:37.03
Andrew
handicapping the AI by hiding it away behind this button. Because it's like the power of LLMs is their flexibility. Like, they're not accurate. They're not fast. The thing they're great at is being flexible and adaptable.

00:29:49.63
Andrew
And we were just taking all of that away and being like, the AI can now do this one thing when you push a button. And that makes it super easy to use, but it also just like takes all of the power out.

00:30:01.94
Andrew
And we started talking and we we read this great article from like one of the new Y Combinator guys talking about like AI horseless carriages just making this argument that you like need to expose the prompt to the users because that's the magic.

00:30:17.80
Andrew
And so we we've been doing the work to basically like rebuild, refactor the product. So you can still sign up and use it to generate meta descriptions.

00:30:28.75
Andrew
But like the stuff that I'm really excited about is essentially a set of tools that SEOs can use to work with AI. And so that means like,

00:30:40.13
Andrew
We crawl your site, we generate vector embedding so that even if your site is too big to just like shove into a single  LLM call, you can still like run prompts and queries against it. then we give you spreadsheet like interface and a bunch of like ah ah SEO specific prompt templates so that you can quickly start like doing tasks.

00:31:00.91
Andrew
And then either customize those, write your own, expand from there. And now, the like, I think we're building something that will be useful and valuable.

00:31:14.80
Andrew
Obviously, there's questions about, like, are people going to want to work this way? Are they just going to want to use, like, ChatGPT and MCP server that connects to, like, Google Sheets?

00:31:25.14
Andrew
I don't know. But, like, I think that this is

00:31:26.99
Louis
Are people already doing that?

00:31:29.07
Andrew
So this is the cool thing. ah ah SEOs, like there are a lot of people who are being slow to adopt AI. ah ah SEOs are not. SEOs are adopting AI really fast and they have been for the last year or longer.

00:31:42.97
Andrew
So like most of the SEOs I talked to are at a minimum, using chat GPT to generate page titles and meta descriptions to like ask questions and like generate ideas of like what should I fix here what should I improve next on this page like and then like doing a bunch of copying and pasting between spreadsheets some of them are also like taking the time to try to set up there's a cool tool called GPT for sheets that lets you like

00:32:13.48
Andrew
run prompts inside of google sheets and so some of them are starting to like set up tooling in that the feedback i've been getting is like the qualities kind of shit of the output of like the like someone i just talked to someone who has spent some time setting up a g uh sheet with gpt for sheets that will generate titles and descriptions and she's like they're terrible we can't use them um

00:32:23.40
Louis
The quality of, okay.

00:32:41.39
Andrew
And then there are, there's like on the other end of the spectrum, there's this tool called Aerox that is gaining a lot of traction in the SEO space that is like, like really complex workflow builder with like knowledge bases, sales led growth motion, selling to more like enterprise companies.

00:33:06.43
Andrew
And they're like, you know, uh you know helping you do like really complex seo workflows so and so like i'm seeing user behavior in the space and then my current hypothesis is let's fill the gap between like gpt for sheets and air ops but yeah it's definitely like an emerging market an emerging product category and like

00:33:29.42
Louis
Got it.

00:33:34.73
Andrew
may cease to be a category at all. It may just get absorbed into other tools. I'm not sure yet.

00:33:40.42
Louis
Yeah, I mean, it's, what's always surprising to me about using like ChatGPT and AI for this kind of stuff is it is all about the prompts, right?

00:33:50.55
Louis
Like the quality of the prompt is the quality of the output and having to invent that all, yeah.

00:33:53.56
Andrew
Yep. And like context in general, like being able to pull in context, which is essentially just like

00:33:57.09
Louis
Mm-hmm.

00:34:01.18
Andrew
feeding the prompt. But I think that like for a lot of people, like they think prompt and they think the instructions. But i a really important part of getting a better prompt is like shoving a bunch of context into that prompt as well.

00:34:13.00
Louis
Yeah, and your own context, but also if you can provide context from others or just like best practice context and stuff like that is super useful.

00:34:21.12
Andrew
Data sources, like other data, like corroborating data, sort of.

00:34:22.73
Louis
Yeah.

00:34:24.56
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.

00:34:25.88
Louis
Yeah. And a lot of people don't do that. a lot of people talk to it in the same way they would. Like something we have on our team a lot is people who are just starting to adopt AI now. And weirdly, it's, well, not weirdly, actually, unsurprisingly, it's the ah ah growth team that we have who are,

00:34:39.26
Andrew
Yeah.

00:34:40.51
Louis
less used to having to figure out how to tell a computer to do what they want and get the right answer. like The product team gets that pretty quickly. The growth side is like, they just assume contextual knowledge of Sparkloop or of our customers or of like what they're saying that obviously ChatGPT cannot have.

00:34:57.62
Andrew
yeah

00:34:57.68
Louis
And then they're surprised by the quality, like the the lack of quality of the answer. And is's like, yeah, well, if you you went to a random smart person in the street and said, hey, here can you go and do this? But you don't tell them anything about Spark Blue or anything like that. They don't know anything about newsletters. Then of course the the answer you're going to get is going to be pretty bad.

00:35:16.09
Andrew
Yeah.

00:35:16.61
Louis
So yeah, that's that's definitely a thing.

00:35:18.42
Andrew
Yeah. So, like, the first thing that I think we were doing, like, the first level up in quality was just, like, scraping the site and so that you can easily feed the page content into the prompt.

00:35:29.84
Andrew
Because, like, and then also we've spent a bunch of time testing our prompts to try to make them good. So, yeah, like, I think a lot of the value here is, like, prompt library we're developing. And that's like maybe where a network effect can come in for us if we can enable people to share prompts and stuff eventually. like Maybe we can build a it's a light network effect. It's not a super strong one.

00:35:50.27
Andrew
But like maybe there's a little so something there.

00:35:50.95
Louis
is Is SEO stuff heavily agencyed? Like to but to people, does your ideal customer do this in-house or are they are you selling to an agency that will do this for people?

00:35:56.29
Andrew
Yeah.

00:36:01.08
Andrew
Our current hypothesis is that we want to go after agencies because there are in-house SEO people and there are agencies. agencies to me have like, they're experiencing the problems on a much faster like loop.

00:36:18.79
Andrew
So they're, know, they're having to do the same things over and over again. Whereas an in-house person might move from like one stage of the, like they might not do a certain stage of the process.

00:36:23.41
Louis
Yeah.

00:36:30.09
Andrew
Like

00:36:32.49
Andrew
it's for a year or two, or they might be doing it at such a small scale that it's like still not that hard to do manually. Like, you know, there aren't many people cranking out so much content that they can't write titles and descriptions for that content.

00:36:39.74
Louis
Got it.

00:36:46.12
Andrew
Like they might not like doing it, but they can do it.

00:36:49.48
Louis
Yeah. So is this something they'll upsell as like an extra and a bonus and something on top? Or is this saving them time internally?

00:36:59.49
Andrew
I think it's going to be a cost, unfortunately. And well, okay.

00:37:02.93
Louis
Okay.

00:37:05.35
Andrew
So I think it's something that they'll use internally. I think it'll be an internal agency tool rather than something they sell. I've had like one or two people say like, oh, I'd actually be interested in recommending this to the people who are like not ready to work with me yet as like, use this to get started.

00:37:22.29
Andrew
Kind of like Yoast, you might recommend Yoast or something.

00:37:22.58
Louis
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

00:37:25.13
Louis
yeah

00:37:27.39
Andrew
And then interestingly, like one of the friends I talked to who runs a web design agency, so they do SEO often for clients, but they're not like an SEO agency.

00:37:38.31
Andrew
His immediate thing was like, okay, the meta description stuff is interesting and like, yeah, that would save me time, but like, it's not that valuable.

00:37:49.69
Andrew
you know, I would maybe pay on like a usage base for it, but I'm not gonna pay 50 bucks a month for it.

00:37:54.96
Louis
Mm-hmm.

00:37:56.26
Andrew
But, and again, you always got to take this stuff with a grain of salt. But if if I can start to, like, generate content ideas or something, like, basically, if I can use this, I'm not going to upsell this, but if I can use this to help me upsell the client on additional services or would empower those services, then, like, that's valuable.

00:38:19.52
Andrew
Yeah.

00:38:20.83
Louis
Mm-hmm. Okay, okay.

00:38:23.10
Andrew
Yeah.

00:38:23.66
Louis
Yeah. It's a, it's not like, is there a different group of people who are going to look at like, I this is more of like a personal preference, but I really hate working on anything where people don't know if they want to spend $50 a month on it.

00:38:33.53
Andrew
yeah.

00:38:40.91
Louis
Like and I just, struggle I struggle with the, the motivation.

00:38:42.04
Andrew
that's fair yeah

00:38:44.42
Louis
Like if I'm like, okay, so you're my ideal customer and like, with all the excitement that I can like get and all the motivation I can get out of you, you still don't think this is worth two coffees a week?

00:38:56.43
Louis
like

00:38:57.74
Andrew
So there have been plenty of SEOs we've talked to who have been very price insensitive.

00:38:57.88
Louis
Yeah, I struggle with that.

00:39:03.28
Andrew
There are plenty of SEOs we talked to who are very price sensitive.

00:39:04.02
Louis
Okay.

00:39:06.11
Andrew
And so I'm still sorting out like, how do we tell who's who?

00:39:06.47
Louis
Mm-hmm.

00:39:09.34
Andrew
i don't know the answer to that yet. like the person I talked to who's messing around with GPT for Sheets, she was like, yeah, 50 bucks a month is nothing. She was telling me about another like AI SEO tool she just signed up for.

00:39:22.86
Andrew
and I was like, how much did it cost? And she's like, I don't even remember. I didn't really care. Or like, you know, did you put a credit card in first? And she was like, yeah, that's, yeah. So she, she seemed very like chill about.

00:39:32.47
Louis
I mean, 50

00:39:36.66
Andrew
yeah

00:39:37.64
Louis
bucks a month is in that category of like, you either want it or you don't.

00:39:42.34
Andrew
Yeah.

00:39:42.61
Louis
And it doesn't matter if it's 50 or five, really.

00:39:45.00
Andrew
Yeah. And I have, for that reason, i have been really hesitant to reduce the pricing at all. I think that there's like, you maybe we'd get a couple more people if we reduced our, had like a cheaper tier.

00:39:56.41
Andrew
This is also part of why I'm struggling with this positioning problem. We were initially trying to position ourselves against web crawlers like screaming frog sight bulb i don't know if you're familiar with these and like the general impression i got was that like people just look at those as cheap they expect them to be cheap screaming frog like yes it can get expensive if you're buying licenses for a bunch of people but like people still think of it as costing 20 bucks a month and like

00:40:04.47
Louis
Mm-hmm.

00:40:08.57
Louis
Yeah.

00:40:24.97
Andrew
Ahrefs gives you their like basic crawling for free. And Sitebulb is like 200 bucks a month for their cloud offering, but that gets you like 2 million yeah URLs crawled or something insane.

00:40:38.08
Andrew
And so relatively, it's dirt cheap. And so I think that that is part of why I'm also trying to position this more around like automation and like workflow sort of stuff and creation and less around like the crawling and analysis a little bit.

00:40:56.20
Louis
Got it. What's your like...

00:40:59.11
Louis
when you When you think of urgency or timeline, Where do you need to be with this? Like, where does this need to go to for you? What do you need to see in the next few months to like, want to continue this?

00:41:10.02
Andrew
Ooh. That's a great question.

00:41:14.41
Andrew
The urgency isn't super high.

00:41:18.19
Andrew
My partner and I are both bootstrapped. We're not working on this full-time. I'm consulting part-time. He's still working a full-time job. And so, like, there's no, like, runway problem, really. The...

00:41:33.48
Andrew
the But I don't want to you throw good money after bad, right? like So I think what it comes down to is

00:41:43.01
Louis
Thank

00:41:43.57
Andrew
I want to start, you know, this this rebuild has been a pretty big shift. And, like, you know, we've taken a couple months to build a bunch of new features. And we this is going to make the tool a lot more flexible, a lot more powerful, able to do a lot more very quickly.

00:42:01.62
Andrew
And so I think what I want to see is, like, it doesn't need to be, like, oh, I've got that magical growth hockey stick. But I want to see... like the message resonating with people.

00:42:16.32
Andrew
And I want to see that like, when I find the right person, they're willing to sign up and, and give it a a good earnest try. And like, you know, and if I'm still not seeing that,

00:42:32.31
Andrew
that's a concern to me. Like this person, Jade, I talked to, she seems like the perfect fit. and I've been trying to get her to sign up and try it. And she hasn't yet.

00:42:44.09
Andrew
to be fair, like I told her like, Hey, these new features are in development. They're not coming out. Like I wasn't like here, it's ready. Go use it.

00:42:51.48
Louis
what What does it mean to try it? Like what what do you have to input as a user? How much work is it?

00:42:59.57
Andrew
you have to,

00:43:02.06
Andrew
you have to input a URL to crawl a site. and then you have to, uh, select a prompt template and run that prompt template.

00:43:16.88
Andrew
so the prompt templates are called like, you know, generate templates. titles or something. And then you've got to like open that up and click Run. And that's technically all you need to do But obviously, like that's not all it is in a user's mind. like I think, oh, and you have to put a credit card down.

00:43:33.25
Andrew
we We don't have, that's like a big one. we We did not do a no credit card free trial. We did a credit card required free trial to try to introduce friction, actually.

00:43:43.50
Louis
Got it. Okay. But so then to actually get the results and then are those, you plug into like WordPress or something to update the stuff or they have to then copy paste it or like upload a CSV file or something?

00:43:57.35
Andrew
Great point. For the original like page titles and meta descriptions, we did build a WordPress plugin so you could integrate with WordPress. So like Jade told me she was waiting for like a WordPress client to to try that out.

00:44:09.68
Andrew
That was like one of the things for her. Yeah, good point. For the new stuff, we don't have a way to integrate it with your CMS yet because like the flexibility makes that a lot trickier to figure out to do like because you can generate kind of anything.

00:44:24.34
Louis
Mm-hmm.

00:44:24.68
Andrew
So it'll probably be like CSV export and then like manually uploading it to your CMS, which is how people are mostly doing things today.

00:44:35.61
Andrew
it is still, that's a lot of work for sure. And then also I think there's just like, I've heard some things. anxiety express like kind of to your point like one person was just like as soon as they found out that there was a credit card required they were like and too much work like i've got enough tools and like i think there is a little bit of like just you know i gotta learn something new

00:45:02.21
Louis
Got it. Yeah. Have you ever thought about doing it as a managed surface?

00:45:06.08
Andrew
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I've been trying to figure out exactly what that managed service is. Like, do ah ah SEOs give us client?

00:45:17.84
Andrew
Like, give us, like, do they give us a spreadsheet or a site that they want us to optimize and we give them back a CSV? Like, are we... didn't Is it like one, one thought is like, maybe it's actually like an AI automation service. It's like, Hey, like tell me what you're trying to automate with AI and I'll,

00:45:41.13
Andrew
Maybe I'll use MetaMonster for it. Maybe I'll use innate in. Maybe I'll build something custom, like whatever. And that would be a little bit more exploratory, not like, is this product valuable? But like, what where are people trying to solve things? Like, what problems are people trying to solve? Yeah.

00:46:01.67
Andrew
With the page titles and meta descriptions, again, it just kind of felt like no one was going to pay for like just generate a bunch of page titles and meta descriptions for me. One off.

00:46:13.92
Louis
yeah mean, maybe they would, will people pay for you to actually do the work of uploading and like having it fixed?

00:46:20.68
Andrew
Possibly. Yeah. That's a good one.

00:46:22.91
Louis
Yeah.

00:46:24.12
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. yeah Yeah, i think I think I need to try that again. you You suggest it's been on my mind for a long time. And then Alex from Stacking the Bricks also was like pushing me to do that. And so I i think it is a good call. I probably should try test that again to yeah see where the where the sticking points are.

00:46:51.18
Louis
I think it's a is a really useful thing if you're in that early those early days.

00:46:57.62
Louis
Most of the products that I've worked on that have turned into something that made money, least on the B2B side, where it's a theoretically illogical decision, like it's a revenue-making thing, they've mainly been situations where I've done something, or like I've had to figure out a way to do something myself, or I've helped someone do something and then I've like productized it slowly.

00:47:23.42
Louis
And so I think if you're coming at it almost from the opposite angle of like, okay, i have this product, like let's try and get people to use it.

00:47:29.53
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

00:47:29.71
Louis
The more you can just do that work for them yourself to figure out what the product should be. I think the... the the easier it will be for you to arrive at like what the right feature set is and like how to pitch and how to confidently talk about the the value of it and who should be using it and how.

00:47:48.27
Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Love that. Cool.

00:47:52.59
Andrew
Yeah, that's super interesting. i think I will do some work on that. I'm testing some different outbound messaging right now. try to test some different positioning ideas.

00:48:03.41
Andrew
And so immediate thought is like, cool, let's spin up a landing page for a product-ized service, you include this as another outbound variant to test, maybe run some paid ads towards it, and then you try to talk about it a little bit in my network and see if anyone anyone bites.

00:48:26.28
Louis
Yeah, I mean, I think with that kind of thing, sometimes it's easier to go with people who will already know and trust you because For me, there's always like, I always hate if you don't like, you know, you failed, but you don't know why you failed.

00:48:42.68
Louis
Right. And is it like, is it that I couldn't pitch the thing or is it.

00:48:43.31
Andrew
Yeah.

00:48:46.66
Andrew
Yeah.

00:48:46.80
Louis
I couldn't pitch thing correctly. Or is it that the thing actually wasn't worth anything in the first place, like to them, like which one of, where am I failing? kids So I would, if you go with a friend, you can go and do the work and you can be like, okay, I can see that this is obviously driving value for them.

00:48:58.50
Louis
Now I just need to figure out how to like get more people like this to actually want to go and use it themselves.

00:49:00.52
Andrew
Yeah.

00:49:04.84
Andrew
The tough part is I don't have ton of friends in this space. Like we're kind of going into a space where we don't have an incredible network, which is always challenging.

00:49:13.69
Louis
what What drove you into it in the first place then? How did you up here?

00:49:17.77
Andrew
I've always been interested in SEO and I've always liked content marketing.

00:49:19.71
Louis
Okay.

00:49:22.31
Andrew
I did content marketing for our agency. And it started with, I knew internal links were important and I could never be bothered to insert them into my content manually.

00:49:35.74
Andrew
And I was like, man, I wish there something that would just do this for me. And then as Gen.AI got better, I was like, oh, this is the obvious thing to do this problem, like solve this problem.

00:49:45.18
Louis
Yeah.

00:49:45.69
Andrew
And then, yeah, but I don't, I'm not in... I've never been in SEO, never sold SEO services, never worked in an SEO agency. So I have a few friends the space, but not a large network. and So yeah, I'll definitely try to reach out to the the folks I know and see, give it a shot.

00:50:10.100
Andrew
Yeah. But, yeah, like with this person who I've just met, I should definitely tell her like, hey, you know, if there's another site you want to try this on, like I'll, you know, pay me some amount of money and I'll, you know, handle the upload for you.

00:50:36.98
Louis
Yeah.

00:50:38.23
Andrew
Cool. Sweet.

00:50:39.67
Louis
Nice.

00:50:40.48
Andrew
Yeah. You want to about rom-coms?

00:50:44.27
Louis
All day, every day. It's pretty much my my favorite thing.

00:50:48.04
Andrew
Sweet, man. I thought it'd be super fun if we wrap. So this is this is everyone's warning. If you want to, you don't care about rom-coms, one, you suck, and I don't want to be friends with you.

00:50:58.73
Andrew
But two, you can bounce now. yeah, I thought it'd be fun to count down our top five rom-coms and just, yeah, react to each other's lists.

00:51:10.67
Andrew
This is the precursor for... the podcast I really want to run, which is a rom-com podcast with you. that's That's my dream, is to not have to do any of this dumb sass bullshit and just run a rom-com podcast with you.

00:51:17.80
Louis
Of course. Yes.

00:51:24.06
Andrew
And who cares if it gets three subscribers? Yeah.

00:51:26.90
Louis
I think we would get many more. And I think, especially if we had like genni ah Gen Gen AI creating new, we could create the prompt that would just create new rom-com plots like that. That would be the, that's the moneymaker.

00:51:42.04
Louis
The rom-com's coming back.

00:51:43.32
Andrew
Yeah. Have you ever, before we get into this, have you ever read rom-coms?

00:51:44.44
Louis
Yes.

00:51:47.46
Andrew
Like, do you ever read, have you gotten into like the romance genre reading at all? Or are you purely a ah ah movie rom-comer?

00:51:56.17
Louis
I am a movie and series, like TV series, TV romcomer, would say more of a TV romcomer than a movie romcomer nowadays.

00:52:00.12
Andrew
TV.

00:52:06.48
Louis
I don't have a lot of, I don't know, I feel like I like the longer story arcs of a TV show as opposed to like the one and done movie.

00:52:16.28
Andrew
Cool.

00:52:16.34
Louis
But yeah, no, I never, i i like, if I read, it tends to be classics. I don't have a lot of time to read fiction, so I don't have a lot of time to read.

00:52:24.38
Andrew
and

00:52:25.72
Louis
So if I do, it tends to be like very old, depressing books from like 1850 rather than fun stuff.

00:52:30.23
Andrew
nice

00:52:32.10
Louis
Yeah.

00:52:32.64
Andrew
I I ah feel like I exhaust the world of like television and and movie rom-coms so fast, and then I still have that itch. And so I started a few years ago like reading rom-coms and like diving into like the romance subgenre.

00:52:47.68
Andrew
you ever want an entertaining read, just go spend 20 minutes on the the r slash romance subreddit. Hilarious jargon like terminology and stuff. And just...

00:53:00.02
Andrew
Yeah, a bunch of people being very open about their kinks and what they're like what kind of smut they like to read. It's super entertaining.

00:53:10.12
Louis
sounds Sounds interesting. i Yeah, I haven't. i I've seen some occasional, like one of those things that always interests me is like what are huge trends that could have like news, especially if they could have like a newsletter attached to them.

00:53:21.71
Andrew
Yeah.

00:53:24.38
Louis
like

00:53:24.78
Andrew
Yeah.

00:53:24.85
Louis
But basically where someone probably going to make millions of dollars from a newsletter that I know absolutely nothing about and didn't even realize was a thing.

00:53:30.66
Andrew
Yeah.

00:53:30.98
Louis
And romanticcy was one that kept coming off me recently.

00:53:33.29
Andrew
Oh, absolutely.

00:53:34.24
Louis
this like these these books about like like half man half bull sort of like love affairs and stuff apparently that is an absolutely huge thing that i did not realize like half the population just loves to read so yeah

00:53:39.46
Andrew
Yeah.

00:53:46.28
Andrew
There's a ton of sub-genres. There's like historical romance, there's romanticcy, there's contemporary romance. There's like, like these people have like, uh, the, have like all of the tropes, uh, like categorized.

00:53:58.73
Louis
hmm

00:53:59.28
Andrew
And so you can like request your favorite trope. And, which by the way, like my personal favorite rom-coms, which I think will show up here are the ones that kind of like bend the tropes or like play with the tropes a little bit and like get out of them.

00:54:12.90
Louis
Interesting, because I've gone for, I was trying to think, like when i was doing my list, I i had like 20 and then I narrowed it down to five, which I'm not happy with.

00:54:22.90
Louis
But I was trying to do a mix of, a mix of like my personal favorites that I would rewatch and ones that I think were maybe the most interesting.

00:54:30.80
Andrew
nice

00:54:35.34
Louis
like without, that like sort of they paved the way for other ones. like So now they don't necessarily hold up as like the one that I would go and watch, but like at the time they would have been like groundbreaking or revolutionary or like would have like led the way, paved the way for the other ones.

00:54:38.17
Andrew
nice

00:54:49.69
Andrew
I love it. I went fully. What do I want to watch? Like, what can I watch on repeat over and over and over again? What are my personal favorites? So that's, I said, screw the classics.

00:54:57.75
Louis
good.

00:54:58.98
Andrew
I, uh, I only care about what I want.

00:55:02.60
Louis
I felt like I had to throw something popular, something something like renowned in there just to to to give the the audience what they want.

00:55:12.67
Andrew
All right, so why don't we start, me what didn't make your list. Give me give me like a few of your um um of your, what are they called? you Near miss, what's the word I'm looking for?

00:55:23.19
Andrew
Not near misses.

00:55:23.68
Louis
Yeah, near misses, I guess almost almost made it.

00:55:26.69
Andrew
Oh, there's a word. Yeah, honorary mentions. That's the word I'm looking for.

00:55:29.44
Louis
Honorary mentions, yeah.

00:55:30.36
Andrew
Yeah, yeah.

00:55:31.28
Louis
Okay, I can i can go, even just picking which of the honorary mentions to mention is such a challenge. So I'll go with one that's obscure, or I guess kind of more obscure, which is called so Celeste and Jessie Forever.

00:55:45.18
Andrew
oh I don't know this.

00:55:45.21
Louis
Have you come across that?

00:55:47.44
Andrew
Okay, this is what I'm really hoping for, is that I'm just going to get new recommendations from you. Okay.

00:55:53.77
Louis
Okay. Celeste and Jesse forever. I won't give away any of the plot. It's very good.

00:55:59.40
Andrew
I feel like I've seen this, but maybe I just am thinking I know who Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg are.

00:55:59.92
Louis
One, it's with...

00:56:04.86
Andrew
like

00:56:05.42
Louis
Yeah. they They basically play themselves.

00:56:08.88
Andrew
Love it.

00:56:09.69
Louis
There's no surprise in who they are, but it's very, very good.

00:56:12.71
Andrew
Nice.

00:56:13.08
Louis
I enjoy it. It's just, a it's funny. It's sad. It's, it keeps you interested. It's, it's got everything that I want from a rom-com, which is like, want to be a little bit sad. want to be a little bit happy. want to feel something, but also laugh. That's my, my goal.

00:56:24.98
Andrew
Love it. Any other honorary mentions you want to throw out?

00:56:28.88
Louis
I'm going to go for... Yeah, I'm going to give you three more.

00:56:32.15
Andrew
OK.

00:56:32.38
Louis
I'm going to give you maybe the only Netflix, pure Netflix rom-com that was close to making the list, which is Holly Date with Emma Roberts and some random Australian guy whose name I don't know.

00:56:37.06
Andrew
OK.

00:56:44.27
Andrew
OK. Love it. I have not seen it.

00:56:46.23
Louis
It's very good. It's very, like...

00:56:47.98
Louis
It's good. It's old-fashioned, just, like, very... What's the word? Where it sort of follows, like, a like a procedural, like, very...

00:56:55.88
Andrew
Yeah, fake dating, for instance ah ah enemies to lovers, maybe, you know, like classic.

00:56:57.69
Louis
Yeah.

00:57:01.06
Louis
Exactly. It has all the tropes. It's very tropey.

00:57:03.50
Andrew
Love it.

00:57:03.69
Louis
You know exactly what you're getting, but it's just brilliantly executed and the people are very good in it. So that was my my my Netflix one, like my mom my my more modern one.

00:57:07.70
Andrew
OK.

00:57:11.24
Andrew
okay

00:57:11.58
Louis
Then the classic that I didn't put in the top list, because I don't think it's truly a rom-com, is Garden State with Zach Braff.

00:57:19.94
Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah. i I need to go back and rewatch Garden State. I feel like I've maybe only caught bits and pieces of it. I need to go back and like rewatch it start to finish at some point.

00:57:30.74
Louis
Yeah, it's probably doesn't hold up for like other generations. For my generation, it was like very much a thing and like maybe was too much because of that also just because the music is so good.

00:57:37.71
Andrew
Yeah.

00:57:42.02
Andrew
Yeah.

00:57:42.35
Louis
And then, yeah, I think so.

00:57:42.73
Andrew
we're We're like the same age pretty much, right? Like plus or minus a year or two? Yeah, I'm about to turn 32.

00:57:47.10
Louis
Probably. Yeah, I think so. Okay, yeah, I'm 33.

00:57:50.98
Andrew
Yeah, yeah, we're almost the age. Yeah.

00:57:53.74
Louis
I had to think then. I thought I was 33 last year and I went around all year really depressed that I was going to turn 34. And then I realized I was 32 turning 33, which was it amazing.

00:58:00.66
Andrew
I do the same thing all the time.

00:58:02.30
Louis
Yeah.

00:58:02.36
Andrew
It's hilarious.

00:58:03.77
Louis
Cool. And my last one is one maybe you won't have watched, which is called Harold and Maud.

00:58:08.70
Andrew
I know it. I haven't watched it.

00:58:10.65
Louis
Yes.

00:58:10.96
Andrew
Yeah.

00:58:11.54
Louis
It is very weird. It is about a a teenager who basically falls in love with a very old woman. And I won't say anything else about it.

00:58:22.61
Louis
It's just darkly funny and very weird and ridiculous, but very good.

00:58:28.08
Andrew
I feel like this is a cult classic. Like I feel i feel like yeah, this this very much fits a niche.

00:58:30.23
Louis
Yes. Yeah.

00:58:34.66
Andrew
All right, cool.

00:58:35.62
Louis
It's one of those ones where you will either love it or you will absolutely hate and you won't be able to watch all the way through. Yeah.

00:58:40.84
Andrew
Okay, and I'm really excited because I didn't have any of those on my list at all. And so I'm hoping our lists are going to be pretty different. um And yeah, very interesting.

00:58:51.48
Andrew
i I do also know that like we have talked about rom-coms on Twitter before, and we, I think, have similar tastes.

00:58:51.78
Louis
yeah

00:58:58.64
Andrew
Okay.

00:58:59.76
Louis
my My nightmare is that I've forgotten something and you're going to remind me of it and i'm going to realize it's not on my list and that I'm going to be be screwed.

00:59:06.14
Andrew
Okay.

00:59:06.29
Louis
Did you have any honorable mentions?

00:59:07.84
Andrew
Yeah. Okay. So the one that was going to be on my list until I remembered, ah ah remembered another one right before our call for weddings and a funeral.

00:59:16.54
Louis
Okay, okay.

00:59:17.63
Andrew
One of, I, I'm a sucker for some Hugh Grant sucker for some good British comedy. So that think I watched it for the first time in like seventh grade with like my best friend. And I was just like, this is hilarious. I love this.

00:59:33.15
Andrew
the first rom-com that i remember like truly falling in love with was how to lose a guy in 10 days which to me is like classic tropey very much of an era like it is it is you know i feel like that was like kind of peak rom-com era when rom-coms were like coming out all the time and that is like one of the ones that feels very iconic to me

00:59:40.80
Louis
Very good.

00:59:57.48
Louis
Yeah, that one for me, I didn't have it on my list because that one for me is like when it reached like the peak formulaic sort of like, it is a great movie.

01:00:07.96
Louis
I've watched it like probably three or four times. I could easily watch it again any number of times. Like if it was on, I would sit down and watch it. But there is nothing there that like really moves me to laughter.

01:00:18.31
Louis
There's nothing that really moves me to like, I don't ah ah get, there's no emotion with it. It's just very clearly like,

01:00:22.16
Andrew
Totally understand that.

01:00:24.77
Louis
It's a great movie. It's a great watch. You can watch it, but it doesn't it doesn't go overboard on the comedy or on like the feels for me.

01:00:32.33
Andrew
Yeah.

01:00:32.46
Louis
so Oh, yeah.

01:00:33.02
Andrew
For me, that one only came close to making the list because it was just like the first rom-com that I like really got obsessed with. And so it was like,

01:00:41.65
Louis
And it is very quotable as well. like There's a lot from it that is, yeah.

01:00:43.29
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. And so it it like it holds a special piece of nostalgia in my heart.

01:00:48.13
Louis
yeah

01:00:49.86
Andrew
Okay, I've got, like, God, I've got so many I want to talk about. This is nuts. We've got to turn this into a real thing. All right, I'm going to throw out a kind of... a little bit of a zigzag here then for my third honorable mention.

01:01:05.83
Andrew
And this is, I'm going to group two movies together, so I'm cheating here. Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead are two that I feel like get left off of people's lists all the time. And like Shaun of the Dead in particular, like pioneered the Ramzomcom. And I feel like Ramzomcoms don't get enough love.

01:01:23.34
Andrew
So yeah, I love both of them so much.

01:01:25.06
Louis
interesting yeah i i do love both movies yeah i i do i had never thought of shawn of the dead as a rom-com i guess it makes sense like it is it does have those elements so i i think we can allow it yeah i i love zombie land as well there's another one with the same who's that jesse eisenberg

01:01:41.50
Andrew
Yeah. yeah Yeah.

01:01:48.50
Louis
Yeah, there's another one with him that's called something else land, like adventure land or something like that.

01:01:53.14
Andrew
Yeah. Adventureland. Adventureland. adventure land yeah

01:01:54.46
Louis
Is it adventure land?

01:01:55.58
Andrew
Yeah.

01:01:55.84
Louis
Which is like, I always get those two, even though they're completely different, just because it's the same people, get them kind of mixed up.

01:01:59.50
Andrew
He's one of those, he's one of those people who got kind of typecast and is just like such an iconic

01:02:00.85
Louis
Yeah.

01:02:04.23
Louis
Yeah.

01:02:05.88
Andrew
like actor that yeah I get it like all of his movies sometimes blend together in my head because he's he's always himself kind of yeah even in the social network I feel like he's very Jesse Eisenberg about his portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg like yeah yeah

01:02:16.32
Louis
Yeah.

01:02:24.17
Louis
Yeah, no, I can see those together. They definitely... They're different. I wouldn't normally choose them when I'm in the mood for a rom-com because there's a little bit too much like action and excitement in them for me, but I think they're great movies.

01:02:37.72
Andrew
Yeah. I think they are representative of a subgenre of rom-com, which is rom-zom-com.

01:02:43.30
Louis
yeah

01:02:44.78
Andrew
And it's a pretty niche subgenre. There aren't many out there.

01:02:47.42
Louis
Okay, well, if you're going there for like horror romance comedy, then I think you have to include Cloverfield.

01:02:54.42
Andrew
Yeah.

01:02:57.32
Louis
Have you seen Cloverfield?

01:02:58.52
Andrew
I have not seen Cloverfield. i need i'm I'm very quickly realizing that your ah your movie knowledge, I think, goes much deeper than mine.

01:03:10.02
Louis
I do a lot of long-haul flights.

01:03:11.80
Andrew
Nice.

01:03:11.88
Louis
so It's a problem. yeah

01:03:13.50
Andrew
So you do have time to read, is what I'm hearing.

01:03:15.50
Louis
Yeah.

01:03:19.15
Andrew
Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. i i've got Man, this is great.

01:03:20.90
Louis
yeah

01:03:22.90
Andrew
This is exactly what I was hoping for. I'm ending up with a great to watch list.

01:03:26.81
Louis
cloak Cloverfield is a great is a great watch. It's like it's a good horror movie, but it's also, has a lot of the feels.

01:03:31.11
Andrew
yeah

01:03:33.62
Louis
It's it's a kind of similar story of like, won't ruin what happens, but essentially like some horrible monster thing, guy needs to find girl, does guy find girl, are they okay?

01:03:46.35
Louis
Yeah.

01:03:46.48
Andrew
I think this is going to be one of those that I watch and then I'm like, oh, I have seen this like on TV when I was 14 and don't remember.

01:03:50.69
Louis
yeah could be Yeah, it's it's one that you kind of need your full concentration for because it's film most of it's filmed as if it was shot by the people.

01:03:57.52
Andrew
okay

01:04:02.02
Louis
So it it's not really one to sort of half watch.

01:04:03.22
Andrew
Oh, OK. Found footage style.

01:04:05.32
Louis
Yeah. Yes, exactly. And it's it's done well. It's not like the Blair Witch Project, but it's actually good. But it's it's a bit of a thing.

01:04:12.96
Andrew
Shots fired at a ah horror classic.

01:04:17.67
Andrew
I've never seen Blair Witch. It's on my to-watch list. I grew up like terrified of horror movies, so I was like never a horror fan. Shaun of the Dead was as close to horror as I got. And my girlfriend is a massive horror fan, so I've slowly been dipping my toes in the water.

01:04:31.26
Andrew
But, yeah. Okay.

01:04:33.18
Louis
Yeah.

01:04:34.16
Louis
Should we do the the main list or you got you got any any left?

01:04:36.48
Andrew
No, no. I think i think if we if we keep going, we're going to be here for three hours.

01:04:40.88
Louis
Yeah. but Okay.

01:04:41.83
Andrew
so

01:04:41.88
Louis
Let's do the main list. Should we go reverse order?

01:04:44.54
Andrew
Reverse order, start with year number five.

01:04:48.78
Louis
Okay, this is because I just want to change them all up now. I'm i'm not happy with with what I have here at all, but I'm going to stick with what I originally said.

01:04:51.69
Andrew
I know.

01:04:54.94
Louis
and I'm going to come back and revise this in the future because this is this is all wrong.

01:04:58.86
Andrew
Okay.

01:04:59.61
Louis
Number five is going to be my one and only class, I guess, yeah, my one only like true classic on the list, which is the classic.

01:05:06.85
Andrew
Okay. Is it, I'm wondering if, yeah. When Harry met Sally?

01:05:11.48
Louis
Which is, yes, exactly. Yeah, it's my only one.

01:05:12.77
Andrew
Yeah.

01:05:14.76
Louis
I put it in there are at number five.

01:05:16.42
Andrew
Yeah, i I figured it had to be on one of our lists.

01:05:17.26
Louis
Love it.

01:05:20.15
Andrew
let you do the do the dirty work and take up a spot for it.

01:05:20.44
Louis
Thank you.

01:05:24.58
Andrew
But yeah, I mean, it's it's when people say rom-com, they think When Harry Met Sally.

01:05:25.46
Louis
yeah

01:05:31.19
Louis
I think it's a good benchmark to, it's like a good film to benchmark all other rom-coms by. Like if you go and watch that first, then everything else that you watch can be like, maybe it's little funnier, maybe more romance, maybe there's more sadness, more emotion, but it's, it has a really good mix of everything, I think.

01:05:39.26
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

01:05:49.19
Louis
And it's, yeah.

01:05:49.48
Andrew
Have you watched it recently? Have you rewatched it in the last like five years?

01:05:53.77
Louis
Yeah, yeah, I've not, I think like two or three years ago, I probably watched it again. Yeah, it's,

01:05:57.86
Andrew
How did it hold up?

01:05:59.80
Louis
I thought it held up really well. There's a lot in it that I didn't understand. I think when I first watched it, I was probably maybe 22, 23.

01:06:07.31
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

01:06:10.81
Andrew
Yeah.

01:06:11.10
Louis
I don't think I watched it again until I was about 30, 31.

01:06:13.92
Andrew
Oh, I like that.

01:06:14.10
Louis
And because it shows them through their life, I identified with and found funny and sort of enjoyed bits of it a lot more this time that I didn't enjoy the first time as much.

01:06:16.63
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

01:06:24.94
Andrew
I love that.

01:06:25.06
Louis
Like I didn't empathize with that.

01:06:26.60
Andrew
That's beautiful, honestly. Like, i I really want to go back and rewatch it now. It's been on my list of, like, I need to go rewatch When Harry Met Sally. Like, I'm a self-proclaimed rom-com lover, and I haven't watched it in, you know, 15 years.

01:06:41.38
Andrew
I need to go back and rewatch it.

01:06:43.73
Louis
it's It's great, I love it. it's I think they do a great job.

01:06:48.00
Andrew
Cool. Okay. number

01:06:49.25
Louis
What's your number five?

01:06:50.32
Andrew
Number five for me. And I just finished reading the second book in this trilogy. Found it at the library and was like, oh I've never read the books. And so I'll i'll get rid of the book.

01:06:58.68
Louis
Lord of the Rings.

01:07:00.40
Andrew
Crazy Rich Asians.

01:07:02.25
Louis
Okay, I didn't realize that was a book.

01:07:04.38
Andrew
Yeah, it started as a book. So there's it's a three part trilogy. ah ah believe the first book is like pretty true to the movie. I think I imagine there's a couple of things they changed based on reading the second book. I still read the first one.

01:07:17.38
Andrew
But like context clues and all. I love this movie. I think it's hilarious. I think it's romantic. I think it's, yeah, just really fun and indulgent.

01:07:28.13
Andrew
I think it was like part of the like change in like one of the movies that I associate with the change in Hollywood of like, we need more representation from other cultures. And I feel like it was like one of the,

01:07:43.73
Andrew
like really big hits that like prove to Hollywood oh representation can be really profitable too and like we there are a ton of great stories out there that we haven't told that we should tell and so I sort of associate it with that maybe that's giving it too much credit I'm not sure but yeah I just I love this movie

01:08:05.06
Louis
Yeah, I liked it. I actually, funnily enough, I watched it recently. I watched it sort of, I watched it twice.

01:08:11.54
Andrew
mm-hmm

01:08:12.02
Louis
And the first time I was falling asleep on a plane.

01:08:16.10
Andrew
but

01:08:16.48
Louis
And the second time I couldn't fall asleep on a plane, which is why I watched it this time. And it was it was good. it i did enjoy it.

01:08:21.34
Andrew
Yeah.

01:08:22.40
Louis
I didn't find the... It didn't feel a lot like a rom-com to me. I know it is weirdly enough, like it is very funny and the characters are great and I enjoyed it.

01:08:30.72
Andrew
Yeah.

01:08:32.60
Louis
I didn't get much romance running through it somehow.

01:08:35.68
Andrew
Sure. I do think Yeah.

01:08:36.75
Louis
It didn't feel about like they about the romance. It felt like about much more about the relationships that they had with other people rather than with each other.

01:08:46.13
Andrew
Yeah.

01:08:46.10
Louis
like There was wasn't really, there wasn't seem to be any point where they were like, will they, won't they? but I'm sorry, there is will they, won't they? But it's not about whether they want to, it's more about like,

01:08:56.06
Andrew
All of the external factors, yeah.

01:08:56.20
Louis
family and yeah. Yeah.

01:08:58.39
Andrew
So I think, one, you may find that this is a trend. I like rom-coms that stray outside, like, play with the definition of what is a rom-com, that don't fall into all of the classic tropes, but, like, you play with the tropes a little bit. So I think that's part of it.

01:09:16.86
Andrew
Yeah, no, I think that's fair. I think a lot of the story is about her and, like, focuses on her and, like, her having to overcome,

01:09:21.26
Louis
yeah

01:09:24.42
Andrew
yeah these like notions about her because of her family's background and like having to navigate this like mega-rich society. and And a lot of it is also just like fun gawking at like ultra-rich lifestyles, too.

01:09:33.44
Louis
Yeah.

01:09:37.24
Louis
Yeah.

01:09:37.33
Andrew
like That is very

01:09:37.68
Louis
Well, it's it's basically, it's just like a retelling of the story of like, it's almost Cinderella, almost. It's like someone who's not rich, finds himself in a world they don't belong in.

01:09:50.29
Louis
Like it's all in Singapore, so it's Singapore, right? So it's it's different, but yeah, it's very, I guess it's a very well-chartened ground.

01:09:53.16
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

01:09:58.34
Andrew
Yeah. yeah, I i love it.

01:10:00.16
Louis
Nice.

01:10:01.17
Andrew
So cool.

01:10:02.78
Louis
Nice.

01:10:03.29
Louis
Cool. Well, let's go to number four.

01:10:04.50
Andrew
Yeah, what's number four for you?

01:10:06.75
Louis
Number four, and I don't know how this made it only to number four, but then I'm looking at the others and I don't know necessarily what I would move down for it.

01:10:11.58
Andrew
Yeah.

01:10:17.25
Andrew
OK, love this.

01:10:17.56
Louis
I'll be interested to see if you have this on your list. One of my favorite movies of all time, 500 Days of Summer.

01:10:20.98
Andrew
OK. it was another one that just missed the list for me. Yeah, I mean, I feel like this is, i it's very high school to me. Like, it was like, I remember, yeah, the classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl movie of all Manic Pixie Dream Girl movies.

01:10:41.08
Louis
Yeah, I feel like it's almost like a personal development thing. Like I think people should go back and watch this every few years and just see how their mindset and like how their attitude changes certain like people and like situations in it.

01:10:52.75
Andrew
Ooh, okay.

01:10:53.02
Louis
Like I think it's a good It's an interesting one to see like as you grow up from being a teenager to like an adult, like how your perspective changes on it. But I still think it's just a great movie.

01:11:03.30
Louis
like it's It's incredibly funny in bits, and it's very biting and very sad in parts, and has a really good mix of both.

01:11:05.72
Andrew
Nice.

01:11:08.59
Andrew
And I remember... I remember it being unafraid to be sad, like it being kind of heavy on the sadness, which I liked.

01:11:14.33
Louis
Yeah.

01:11:17.38
Andrew
I like a rom-com that isn't afraid to be like truly sad. It's not just like that little bit of like, oh no, they broke up, but like really plays with like some sadness. I like that.

01:11:26.39
Louis
Yeah. And I quite like that it's quite ambiguous. Like it leaves it up to the audience to sort of decide, is anyone the goodie? Is anyone the baddie?

01:11:36.28
Louis
Is it sort of a mix of both? Like you you definitely came out of that movie, I think. And you talk to people and they will have very different opinions of like what they just saw and how they feel about it, which I like.

01:11:44.62
Andrew
Yeah, yeah. i need I'm going to add that one to the rewatch list as well, because I haven't seen it since like it was popular.

01:11:51.68
Louis
And great music. That's a big thing for me. Absolutely amazing music. Yeah.

01:11:54.63
Andrew
Nice, love it, love it. All right, cool. Number four for me, more recent movie. And again, this one is on there.

01:12:05.97
Andrew
One, i have realized i have a little bit of a soft spot for this niche. And then two, it's just one that made me cackle, like laugh so loudly the first time I watched it, like could not stop laughing.

01:12:23.04
Andrew
and that is Palm Springs.

01:12:26.09
Louis
Oh dear, okay.

01:12:28.26
Andrew
Okay, did Palm Springs make your list as well?

01:12:31.02
Louis
It may have been my number two.

01:12:33.55
Andrew
Oh, man, I'm sorry.

01:12:33.54
Louis
Okay.

01:12:35.18
Andrew
I'm sorry to steal it.

01:12:35.64
Louis
It's okay, it's okay, it's gonna happen.

01:12:35.94
Andrew
okay Okay.

01:12:37.16
Louis
Yeah.

01:12:37.34
Andrew
All right, tell me why you love Palm Springs.

01:12:40.32
Louis
I, so I am a sucker for, oh, what's her name? Alyssa, is it Alyssa?

01:12:46.74
Andrew
i

01:12:47.34
Andrew
the The actress, the main character, yeah.

01:12:48.93
Louis
The, yeah, the actress, yeah. Yeah. I think she is like she's just amazing. Anything she's in, she was amazing as the mother in How Met Your Mother.

01:12:56.25
Andrew
yeah

01:12:58.47
Louis
She's been in a load of other stuff as well.

01:12:59.74
Andrew
Oh, that's right. That is her.

01:13:01.76
Louis
Yeah, I think she's absolutely amazing. I like Andy Sandberg. A lot of people don't like him. I do, even when he's being silly.

01:13:06.47
Andrew
Oh, I think he's hilarious.

01:13:07.33
Louis
I think he's great.

01:13:07.47
Andrew
Brooklyn Nine-Nine is one of my all-time favorite TV shows.

01:13:08.76
Louis
Yeah. Yeah. So I like that. I liked how...

01:13:14.98
Louis
It hit all of the... It's very rare that you can do something that's completely weird and crazy and kind of sci-fi.

01:13:22.04
Andrew
Yeah.

01:13:23.98
Louis
It's easy to do that and be funny, but it's really hard to do that be funny and also be like... somehow quite sad and very emotional, which I thought the film, like the movie is very moving despite being very funny and very like, ah ah very and kind of in the same way as like Zombieland has like that action, right?

01:13:32.44
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.

01:13:41.51
Andrew
yeah

01:13:41.62
Louis
Like it has stuff going on and it's very weird and quirky, but in like a, in a good way, not in like a trying too hard way. Like it it makes sense for the story. Like, you don't, you don't care that a lot of it is obviously impossible or like unrealistic because you like, you're bought into the story.

01:13:56.96
Louis
I think like, I love that movie.

01:13:57.55
Andrew
And you just love the characters. You you get so obsessed with the

01:14:00.25
Louis
Yeah.

01:14:01.56
Andrew
And, you know, this came out during the pandemic, I think.

01:14:01.96
Louis
yeah

01:14:04.75
Andrew
And it was just like, I laughed so hard. And it was, it just was so funny to me. Yeah. And yeah, all the things that you said. i think I have a soft spot for time travel. I've realized I find time travel stories kind of interesting and the stories and lessons you draw from them really, i think they're a fun mechanic for like, you know, thinking critically about life and what's important, which is cool.

01:14:34.82
Andrew
But I, yeah, I just loved that this was like, kind of exactly like you said, it was so funny and it so easily could have slipped into being like...

01:14:45.09
Andrew
crass or like corny, or just like but it was laugh-out-loud funny and sentimental and like meaningful.

01:14:56.40
Andrew
and like I feel like you know Zombieland is funny and has action, but it's a step below in terms of in terms of like sentimentality and like meaning and everything.

01:15:02.39
Louis
Oh yeah.

01:15:07.18
Louis
Yeah.

01:15:07.94
Andrew
you know They try to do it a little bit, it's there, but it's more of just a fun... you know kind of thing. and this one this one grabs you.

01:15:15.82
Louis
yeah I'm definitely considering that like It has a lot of twists and there's a lot of shock factor, but you can still go back and watch it multiple times.

01:15:21.97
Andrew
Yeah.

01:15:25.33
Andrew
Yep.

01:15:25.92
Louis
It's like a real testament to it.

01:15:26.02
Andrew
hundred percent 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

01:15:27.10
Louis
Like it's not one of those ones that you only watch one and then go, okay, that was an amazing experience, but I don't want to repeat it.

01:15:27.72
Andrew
yeah

01:15:31.60
Louis
It's like, you can keep going back to it.

01:15:31.66
Andrew
yeah I will say i think it benefits from a little bit of time between rewatches because of some of those twists and everything.

01:15:38.62
Louis
Hmm.

01:15:39.60
Andrew
Like, I think I rewatched it like two weeks later and I enjoyed it. I i appreciated it. But then I rewatched it again a couple of years later and I was right back to the first time i had watched it.

01:15:49.64
Andrew
And I was like, I love this so much.

01:15:49.63
Louis
Yeah.

01:15:51.84
Andrew
So I think it benefits from a little bit of time, but it's still, I i totally agree.

01:15:51.79
Louis
Yeah.

01:15:55.56
Andrew
It's very rewatchable. Yeah.

01:15:57.98
Louis
Nice. Should go to, well, that was my my two, so I only have two left. i'm going to and replace my two with that with something else.

01:16:04.24
Andrew
Do it. Yeah, there you go. Okay, love that.

01:16:05.59
Louis
That's true.

01:16:06.12
Andrew
Love that.

01:16:06.10
Louis
Okay.

01:16:06.68
Andrew
well We'll caveat it with like it may not have been your true number two. It may not be worthy of the number two spot, but we'll use it as a chance to talk about another movie.

01:16:15.79
Louis
Yeah.

01:16:16.34
Louis
Okay, let's go number three then. My number three is probably the most, I would say, maybe the most like classically rom-com-y on the list.

01:16:25.66
Andrew
Okay, love it.

01:16:26.89
Louis
I think it's the only one from the... Oh no, 500 Days of Summer is from the 2000s. So it's Finding Sarah Marshall.

01:16:35.64
Andrew
so good. Yeah, damn. I can't believe that make my honorable mentions. Yeah, i love Jason Segel. I fucking love Jason Segel.

01:16:44.88
Andrew
Yeah, tell me why you love this movie.

01:16:47.59
Louis
I don't know. I just i think it has everything. it has like i like Jason Segel, I like Mia Kounis, I like... Oh, what's her name? Who plays the the ex-girlfriend.

01:16:59.84
Andrew
yes um fuck uh she's married to Dax Shepard uh Belle Kristen Bell yeah

01:16:58.83
Louis
She's also in The Good Place.

01:17:01.59
Louis
She's the voice of Gossip Girl, weirdly enough.

01:17:07.40
Louis
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think they all do a great job. I like that it lets Jason Segel be a little bit weird with his like singing and everything, which is amazing.

01:17:16.100
Andrew
so good yeah

01:17:17.10
Louis
And it's also like it's very, very, very funny. And it's like genuinely like emotional. right like it It tugs up the heartstrings, which I think is is great. like it's

01:17:27.98
Andrew
I think.

01:17:27.96
Louis
It's a very good movie to watch when you're like if you go through a breakup or if you're just feeling sad.

01:17:28.25
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

01:17:33.60
Louis
like It's a very good sort of each starter, I think it's quite unusual for, like most movie most rom-coms are like sad to happy to sad to happy again. like There's like the buildup, and this one is very unusual and that it's like the whole of the first 60% of the movie is just pure like unhappiness, and then it becomes more happiness thing.

01:18:00.94
Andrew
I think this is also nice.

01:18:01.26
Louis
Yeah.

01:18:01.98
Andrew
I feel like most rom-coms, not all, but most rom-coms, it's like there is one, you know, I'm going to use heteronormative, you know, rom-coms, which is like the, so there's usually like one guy who is after falls in love with one girl.

01:18:13.24
Louis
Yeah.

01:18:18.90
Andrew
And that's kind of it. And I think the nice thing about this is like, you see him be hung up and in love with his ex and, And then he like falls in love with this new person. And that is like so emblematic of real life when you're like getting over a relationship and you're hung up on someone and often you need to see that there's something better before you can truly move on.

01:18:37.74
Andrew
And I also just think this is like one of the few like blockbuster type, like classic blockbuster rom-coms. Like in that, I put this in the like how to lose a guy in 10 days category that is just like, it's still very much that, but just that on a different level.

01:18:50.93
Louis
yeah

01:18:56.66
Louis
Yeah, it's just like a really well done, fun rom-com experience, i think.

01:19:01.54
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. All right. My number three, i will be shocked if you have this one on your list. And this one is like barely a rom-com. If you are someone who like subscribes to like a rom-com has to have a happily ever after, like does this, it's not clear.

01:19:19.90
Andrew
It's also like not even necessarily romantic,

01:19:24.17
Andrew
in like, it's not necessarily about romantic love. It's about all sorts of love. Have you ever seen the half of it?

01:19:34.86
Louis
The half of it?

01:19:36.30
Andrew
The half of it.

01:19:37.58
Louis
I don't know. That rings a bell. I'm going to have to Google it real quick.

01:19:41.18
Andrew
Yeah, so this movie was on Netflix. I don't know if it ever came out in theaters. I saw it on Netflix. It's about a young girl living with her dad, and they, like, her dad is, like, a train operator, or, like, a train station operator in, like, a small town in Canada,

01:20:00.01
Andrew
And he is deeply depressed from the death of her mother. And the whole, like, the movie is about, like, she's in love with this girl at their school.

01:20:12.58
Andrew
The, like, popular it girl in their school.

01:20:14.68
Louis
Mm-hmm.

01:20:15.40
Andrew
And this, like, kind of jock guy comes to her and pays her to start help him write love letters to the girl that she's in love with.

01:20:26.40
Andrew
and then slowly over the course of the movie, she becomes friends with him. And so it's as much about like the love triangle between the three of them and the like friendship love that forms between the two of them.

01:20:40.18
Andrew
And then like the love between her and her dad and like the mourning of their mother. So it's very much not a classic rom-com. Like you could make a compelling argument to me that it's not a rom-com, but to me it has moments of romance and comedy and sadness. And like, that's what I really look for in a rom-com.

01:21:00.30
Andrew
it's definitely not as funny. It's not as high on the comedy. as it is on the romance and sadness. So it's like, it's stretching the definition for sure.

01:21:10.68
Andrew
I just love this movie. I think it's, I think it's really, really well done and just like a very interesting, different look on the genre.

01:21:19.02
Louis
Nice. Well, I have not watched it. I think I've i think i've scrolled sort of along it in Netflix.

01:21:24.46
Andrew
Yeah.

01:21:25.02
Louis
Like, it seemed... What's the word? I've definitely come across it before, but I haven't watched it, so that's going to to go on my own my list.

01:21:31.48
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

01:21:33.92
Louis
I have one, finally. later to

01:21:35.30
Andrew
Sweet.

01:21:35.46
Louis
and you It's been a while since I've had a new one to look at, so this is exciting for me.

01:21:38.05
Andrew
Took me a while to get one that you hadn't heard of, but we got there. We got there.

01:21:42.29
Louis
Yeah. We got that.

01:21:43.01
Andrew
Yeah.

01:21:43.51
Louis
Cool. So my my second was Palm Springs, and I'm going replace it, and I...

01:21:47.29
Andrew
Yeah.

01:21:49.84
Louis
i'm really struggling with what to go for. I have like four or five still that I didn't mention that could have been one of them. And I think I'm going to go with one that's maybe slightly more obscure, which is called What If with Radcliffe.

01:22:05.13
Andrew
yes, yes, I love this movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:22:08.22
Louis
so good is yeah see it's It's a good one.

01:22:11.68
Andrew
Yeah, talk to me about why you look.

01:22:12.12
Louis
I think you might actually have recommended this to me.

01:22:14.56
Andrew
Oh, I would be so honored if I did.

01:22:14.63
Louis
It is possible.

01:22:18.63
Andrew
i have a total soft spot for this actress. What is her name? Ah, is her name? Let me find it.

01:22:29.44
Andrew
Uh... We're getting there. Zoe Kazen. Kazen? Kazen? Kazen? season I'm not sure.

01:22:36.01
Louis
I'm not sure. I know what she looks like, but I did not know her name

01:22:39.24
Andrew
She has a very like distinctive look, I think.

01:22:41.86
Louis
Yeah.

01:22:43.22
Andrew
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. tell me Tell me why you love this movie.

01:22:47.44
Louis
I don't really have a reason. It's just a great movie. like i

01:22:49.34
Andrew
Yeah.

01:22:50.20
Louis
I like it. It's it's funny. It's sad. Does what a rom-com is supposed to do. There's romance. It's like it's it's a lot of those...

01:22:56.18
Andrew
yeah

01:23:02.71
Louis
it's It's one of those sort of like, it's it's more of like an indie sort of quirky, without going too far, right?

01:23:07.06
Andrew
yeah

01:23:10.04
Louis
It's not like a Michael Cera kind of thing where it's all like too hipster and too too far. It's just like, what if tune like very two very normal people, basically? Like they both play two very normal people and I like it for that.

01:23:23.43
Louis
It's like, it feels kind of mundane. Like it feels like you're watching a real story rather than like a Hollywood story almost, which I like.

01:23:31.18
Andrew
Love it. This is so funny. My second movie feels very similar, similar vibes.

01:23:37.82
Louis
Okay.

01:23:38.72
Andrew
And I realized that's partially because it has the same leading actress. i didn't I didn't remember that until you mentioned this and I looked up her IMDb and then I was like, oh, fuck, duh, she's in my number two.

01:23:42.68
Louis
so way

01:23:49.90
Andrew
That's part of why I love her. My number two is The Big Sick.

01:23:54.24
Louis
Very good. that Of course, I was literally, up so I was going for mike from my my fake number two just then.

01:24:00.12
Andrew
Uh-huh.

01:24:00.26
Louis
I was going through between three. I was going between the big sick, what if, and and an absolute classic, which is the proposal.

01:24:03.34
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.

01:24:08.66
Andrew
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:24:09.56
Louis
which is like it's a crime that Ryan Reynolds has not made this list.

01:24:12.72
Andrew
Yeah.

01:24:14.02
Louis
But yeah, that was that was going to be my my other like potential one. That's like a classic that holds up.

01:24:19.68
Andrew
Yeah.

01:24:19.72
Louis
But yeah, that's funny that The Big Sick, yeah, definitely. i love that movie. I've seen it twice. what what like What put it the second spot for you?

01:24:27.82
Andrew
I love Kumail Nanjiani. Side note, love that he got ripped and was in a Marvel movie and like had a viral moment for his abs as like a person who came up playing a nerd and like I associated him with Silicon Valley before that and like nerd culture.

01:24:40.52
Louis
Yeah.

01:24:43.56
Andrew
And so I just like loved that he had this viral moment as a hottie. Yeah. But I think The Big Sick is another one of these that's like, it's such a real life story.

01:24:54.16
Andrew
And I mean, it is literally based on his life. Like he wrote it with his wife about their love story, which also just incredible and cool.

01:24:58.48
Louis
yeah

01:25:04.48
Andrew
Yeah. it's it's so real it is so sad it's funny their chemistry is off the charts uh their love the mom and dad like i don't love ray romano that much but i fucking love ray romano in this in this movie and like i love the like sort of sub story that you get with the mom and dad like struggling with love in their own way and like Yeah, I think this is one that like really gets you in the feels and just feels again, it felt like a an interesting story that hadn't been told before.

01:25:42.34
Andrew
It didn't feel like just a trope, a bundle of tropes, like with a slightly new setting. so I just I love this movie.

01:25:51.78
Louis
Yeah, no I love it. it's it's a weird one in that it's it's one of, i guess, a relatively few rom-coms where one of the two has very little screen time or like actual like acting screen time.

01:26:02.88
Andrew
Yeah, I hadn't thought about that, but you're totally right. Yeah, because she's sick for most of the Crazy Rich Asians.

01:26:07.80
Louis
like yeah I guess kind of. It's similar to the... The other one that you like, I think you had a, you have at number five? the the the what's it called? The wedding one in Singapore, Crazy Rich Asians.

01:26:19.84
Andrew
Yeah, yeah.

01:26:20.48
Louis
You also don't see a lot of the guy. That's basically all the ah woman.

01:26:23.84
Andrew
Yeah, that's that's a good point. Yeah, yeah, that is that is rare.

01:26:28.42
Louis
Nice.

01:26:29.01
Andrew
But they pull it off. You still like love them and are rooting for them.

01:26:30.60
Louis
They do.

01:26:33.75
Louis
Oh, definitely, yeah. No, I loved it.

01:26:34.52
Andrew
Yeah.

01:26:35.67
Louis
this is There are some, like, very good, like, it's not, it's kind of darkly funny, and it's not slapstick humor so much, but there are there are just some very, very, like, laugh out loud, awkward, funny moments in that that I i remember, like, snotting and going, like, yeah, this is, like, this actually makes me laugh out loud.

01:26:41.10
Andrew
Yeah.

01:26:51.04
Andrew
Absolutely, I love it. All right, drum roll.

01:26:53.01
Louis
Yeah. Cool.

01:26:55.84
Andrew
I don't know if it's coming through on the mic, but.

01:26:56.18
Louis
Okay, so... So, had... so i had I'm going to give you a cheat answer and I'm going to give you the real answer.

01:27:05.20
Andrew
OK. OK.

01:27:07.12
Louis
So if we're allowed to stretch the definition of rom-com,

01:27:12.60
Andrew
Obviously, like i'm I'm doing that very much. Yeah.

01:27:15.30
Louis
Okay, well, i have I haven't been doing that so much, so i'm gonna I'm gonna stretch it just once and say, I don't think that this is a rom-com.

01:27:22.64
Andrew
OK.

01:27:22.72
Louis
I would not classify it as a rom-com, but it's maybe my favorite movie of all time. And there is like a romantic, it's funny, and there is like a romantic thread that runs through it.

01:27:28.84
Andrew
Uh-huh.

01:27:30.60
Louis
So I'm gonna allow it to squeeze in as like my honorary, like fake number one spot.

01:27:36.02
Andrew
Okay.

01:27:36.38
Louis
The movie In Bruges.

01:27:37.84
Andrew
The movie In Bruges. Damn, another one.

01:27:39.62
Louis
In Bruges, have you seen that? In Bruges?

01:27:40.78
Andrew
Oh, In Bruges. In Bruges, sorry.

01:27:42.17
Louis
Yeah, In Bruges.

01:27:43.26
Andrew
No, I have not seen In Bruges. Oh, interesting.

01:27:46.06
Louis
That is just an absolutely amazing movie.

01:27:51.86
Andrew
Is it like an action-y kind of movie a little bit?

01:27:55.67
Louis
It is, and it's funny, and it has an amazing cast. It has one of my favorite actresses of all time in it, and it has go has Colin Farrell. It has, it Domino?

01:28:08.80
Louis
Is it Domino Gleeson or Brendan Gleeson, one of the two?

01:28:10.60
Andrew
Brendan. Brendan Gleeson.

01:28:11.18
Louis
can't remember if it's Brendan Gleeson, yeah.

01:28:11.92
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.

01:28:13.76
Andrew
Clemens Posey, is that your your actress that you love?

01:28:15.80
Louis
Yes, yeah. yeah She's absolutely amazing. And they have, there is like a, it's it's very funny, it's a comedy movie as well, a comedy action, but they have like a, they go on a date, there's like a recurring thing through it with them, and it's it's very, it's not a big part of the movie, it's maybe like 10% of the movie, but it's very, very good.

01:28:24.45
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

01:28:35.97
Louis
i I think it's just enough to tip it over into like potential considerations. So I'm going to put that in there.

01:28:41.53
Andrew
Love it.

01:28:42.70
Louis
But then my real number one is just, I think, just for an all-around mix of like what you want from a rom-com, no matter what mood you're in, you just want to watch a really good rom-com.

01:28:51.19
Andrew
Yeah.

01:28:51.64
Louis
My number one is Love and Other Drugs.

01:28:53.81
Andrew
so good. Yeah, totally agree that that is a rom-com through and through and it is dark and funny and really good. Yeah.

01:29:03.68
Louis
yeah It doesn't like stand out in any one particular way, but it's just a really well done thing. I think it has everything you want. has like Hollywood flesh and ridiculousness.

01:29:14.45
Louis
It has comedy.

01:29:14.73
Andrew
Yep.

01:29:15.78
Louis
It has emotions. It has romance. It has stakes. has everything.

01:29:22.19
Andrew
Yeah, yeah. To me, that movie feels very much like The Proposal. Like, they feel like a similar vibe. I don't know why, but they just, yeah, I kind of group those together in my head.

01:29:35.53
Louis
Yeah, it's a similar age. I think the proposal doesn't quite have the, it's ridiculous to say the word gravitas, but like it it it doesn't quite reach the same like emotional level as, but I think that's that's partly because of the, like Ryan Reynolds just can't be serious.

01:29:48.79
Andrew
100%. It's a little more slapstick, funny kind of, yeah.

01:29:54.49
Louis
And yeah.

01:29:54.57
Andrew
Yeah. So true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Cool. Yeah. I i love Loving Other Drugs.

01:30:01.05
Louis
Yeah.

01:30:02.83
Andrew
I think it's great. think that's a fantastic pick.

01:30:06.70
Louis
Well hit me with the the final number one

01:30:09.14
Andrew
Okay. You have probably seen me talk about this movie enough that I almost wonder if you could guess what it is.

01:30:18.45
Louis
one. Okay. I genuinely can't.

01:30:21.11
Andrew
Okay, okay, okay.

01:30:21.10
Louis
i i am I feel like I've thought of so many rom-coms right now that I... I don't know. i't

01:30:28.10
Andrew
This is the rom-com that I recommend everyone watch. Anytime like it comes up on Twitter, I'm like, have you watched this one? It's also time travel.

01:30:36.68
Louis
Oh, okay, no, I know exactly what it's gonna be, yeah.

01:30:38.85
Andrew
Yep, yep.

01:30:38.92
Louis
i found it just it It just didn't make it into, actually, i I left it off my list. I have it, it's in the, if you looked at my screenshot, it's in the number six spot, but I left it off because I did think that was the that was the one where i was like, I'm sure it's gonna be in your top five, so I'm not gonna mention it.

01:30:47.49
Andrew
Uh-huh.

01:30:52.12
Andrew
You got it.

01:30:53.22
Louis
but Okay, so yes, okay.

01:30:53.40
Andrew
Yeah. you You nailed it. You you know me well.

01:30:55.76
Louis
Yeah.

01:30:57.33
Andrew
Yeah. This is my favorite movie of all time. Just hands down favorite movie. It is. the movie is about time. It's a British time travel rom-com.

01:31:04.44
Louis
yeah

01:31:08.33
Andrew
Again, it's it stretches the definition just a tiny bit. In that it's not purely about like man chases woman. It is about the love between like a father and a son.

01:31:20.07
Andrew
man and a woman uh like their kids their kids and like it's all of these relationships kind of the brother and sister it's all of these relationships they all kind of have almost an equal amount of importance it's funny in a very quirky and offbeat way it has that poignancy uh it like it makes me like want to be more mindful and appreciate life more. And for that reason, I try to rewatch it like almost once a year and I have not gotten tired of it yet.

01:31:52.67
Andrew
I ah ah just rewatched this with my girlfriend a couple weeks ago and I loved it so much. ah ah It just like, it's very like wholesome is not quite the word I'm looking for. Earnest. It's very earnest, which is yeah, I just, I love it so much.

01:32:12.22
Louis
I do love that movie. i've I've watched it a couple of times. Always happy to watch it again. It's... I love Bill Nye in it, who plays the dad.

01:32:21.58
Andrew
Yeah, he's great.

01:32:22.33
Louis
He, I think, steals the show from me. I also love, it's funny how, it's that's Rachel, what's her name?

01:32:28.79
Andrew
Nick Adams. Yeah.

01:32:30.30
Louis
Rachel Mechanics, yeah.

01:32:31.01
Andrew
Yeah.

01:32:31.22
Louis
Which is weird, because I guess she comes up in a lot of the notebook, which isn't really a rom-com. It's more of just a romance. I didn't think of the notebook or stuff like that to put them in, but

01:32:39.38
Andrew
yeah Yeah, to me, that's more romance. There's not enough comedy there.

01:32:43.02
Louis
Yeah, exactly.

01:32:43.59
Andrew
She's also in, isn't she in Mean Girls, I think? ah ah Am I mixing that up?

01:32:48.91
Louis
I don't think I've ever seen. oh no, of course I've seen Mingos. Is she in Mingos?

01:32:53.31
Andrew
Isn't she the, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's the like main the main mean girl.

01:32:57.53
Louis
Yeah.

01:33:00.26
Louis
Oh, of course. Yeah, that's, she looks very different. Yeah, she's, yeah.

01:33:02.83
Andrew
Very different, yeah.

01:33:05.37
Louis
Yeah, no, I i love it. i The one thing that holds it back for me, weirdly enough, is coming from having grown up in the UK with family from the UK.

01:33:11.53
Andrew
Uh-huh.

01:33:15.29
Andrew
Yeah.

01:33:17.53
Louis
I really struggle to watch i think british rom-coms like there's some sort of like disconnect of like a rom-com should have american accents and sort of like american optimism and showing of emotions in a way that when a british person does it to me seems disingenuous almost as like we wouldn't talk like that or like act this way like it's

01:33:30.16
Andrew
Oh, that's funny. Yeah.

01:33:40.29
Andrew
Did you feel, that's funny because I almost feel like their portrayal of like British families is like you don't express love too much. Like it's, you kind of like, you're kind of, yeah, you're like the father is like reluctant to like hug his son or say, I love you.

01:33:56.12
Louis
Definitely, like that that is all very British, but it feels to me, and just in some very subtle ways, it's it's only a very small criticism. Like I still, I've watched the movie multiple times, I i enjoy it.

01:34:03.78
Andrew
Sure, sure, sure. Yeah. No, no. Yeah.

01:34:07.34
Louis
It's just somehow you can tell it's been, it's not a British movie for British people, because if it were made with British people in mind,

01:34:13.84
Andrew
Yeah.

01:34:16.57
Louis
there would be a lot more self-deprecation. There would be a lot... Like, it would have... It would be more grainy and less optimistic and less wishy-washy in some ways.

01:34:29.58
Louis
Like, the character of the the sister, I think, would play very differently.

01:34:33.43
Andrew
yeah

01:34:36.41
Louis
Yeah, it's it's it's a really good movie, but I think when I watch something that's set in the U.S.,

01:34:43.77
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

01:34:45.20
Louis
I can allow myself that level of like abstraction from reality because that's not necessarily my everyday.

01:34:51.05
Andrew
yeah

01:34:52.27
Louis
Whereas when I watch that in the UK, I'm like, okay, like I identify with some of these places and what they're doing, but this is very clearly you know has been made with a different audience in mind somehow.

01:34:59.02
Andrew
yeah

01:35:04.22
Andrew
Makes total sense. And I mean, like, Four Weddings and a Funeral was also on my list. Like, Notting Hill was one that I didn't mention that was, like, on my honorable mentions list. And, like,

01:35:13.99
Louis
Yeah. See, four weddings and a funeral is more for British people. If you watch that and you watch how like gray and dreary and like, yeah.

01:35:17.33
Andrew
I figured.

01:35:20.52
Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to ask, actually, you to compare the two. Like, ask if Four Weddings and a Funeral was more of that classic British, yeah, yeah

01:35:28.72
Louis
Yes, there is a lot more stuff that goes unsaid, whereas Notting Hill is almost more of like an American laughing at how repressed the British guy is and who grew up playing that, which is fine.

01:35:37.14
Andrew
Totally.

01:35:41.22
Andrew
Yeah.

01:35:42.04
Louis
It's a good movie. Like, I like them both, but it's and' slightly less... It's it's less... it's It's more difficult for me to relate to somehow.

01:35:49.52
Andrew
Yeah. Makes perfect sense. Yeah, totally. And then I'm over here, the sucker who's like, man, a British accent just makes everything feel more romantic. So

01:35:59.46
Louis
Definitely not to me.

01:36:01.58
Andrew
makes you a good co-host.

01:36:01.96
Louis
Very cool.

01:36:02.83
Andrew
Yeah.

01:36:04.65
Louis
So we we should wrap this.

01:36:04.78
Andrew
you

01:36:06.49
Louis
i

01:36:06.87
Andrew
yeah

01:36:07.75
Louis
Let's do one. do you have any one last sort of like final one we didn't mention that you think had like should have been in there?

01:36:13.54
Andrew
So the one, the the like two that I was shocked.

01:36:13.76
Louis
or Or alternatively, if you have one, worst.

01:36:20.44
Andrew
Neither of us mentioned are both like kind of holiday movies to me. Love actually, and crazy, stupid love, crazy, stupid love, less of a holiday movie. Love actually more solidly holiday. I thought for sure love actually was going to be on your list, but yeah.

01:36:33.22
Louis
Okay, okay. So I like Love Actually as a holiday movie. I don't think of it as a romance movie at all.

01:36:39.04
Andrew
Yeah. Oh, interesting.

01:36:39.78
Louis
I don't like it for that.

01:36:40.45
Andrew
it's also It's also another Hugh Grant, another British set in the UK, I'm realizing.

01:36:47.05
Louis
we We watch it more as like a holiday, sort of like family movie. Like it is about love, but it's it feels very like aromantic somehow.

01:36:50.58
Andrew
Oh, totally.

01:36:55.21
Louis
Just I think because of the context.

01:36:55.41
Andrew
I love it. I love it in part because to me it is a romantic comedy and I'm not big on holiday movies. I don't love Christmas movies the way some people do. And so it's like the one I can get people to watch at Christmas that I'm going to enjoy more.

01:37:10.01
Andrew
I think that's like kind of the niche it fills for me.

01:37:10.48
Louis
Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. And you said you had a second one?

01:37:13.58
Andrew
Yeah. Crazy Stupid Love. Yeah.

01:37:16.49
Louis
Oh, crazy stupid. I see. That's where we're going to have our falling out on crazy, stupid love. For me, crazy, stupid love has, it is, A terrible movie with 15 minutes of brilliance, I think.

01:37:31.60
Louis
Like the whole storyline of the little kid, the son, it's just creepy.

01:37:35.14
Andrew
Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:37:36.69
Louis
I don't get it. i don't like it. I don't want it.

01:37:38.11
Andrew
I will say, i think I rewatched this one recently and was like, ugh.

01:37:45.34
Louis
And

01:37:41.47
Andrew
I was cringing more than I remembered. I was like, ooh. Don't love that. Yeah.

01:37:46.52
Louis
there are bits that are amazing.

01:37:46.60
Andrew
Don't.

01:37:47.92
Louis
Like the ah fight in the garden is like one of the funniest bits of any movie.

01:37:51.14
Andrew
Yeah. The reveal of like the the boyfriend and everything, and then him turning out not to be a creepy womanizer so much, but like genuinely caring for the daughter and everything like were the redeeming parts.

01:37:53.87
Louis
Like, yeah.

01:37:57.14
Louis
Yeah.

01:38:04.54
Louis
Yeah.

01:38:05.85
Andrew
But yeah, i the more we talk about it, the more I'm glad I left it off.

01:38:10.46
Louis
But like then there are very funny bits like where he takes him out shopping and when they're in the gym together and stuff. like it's It has moments of like, you can totally watch it through and enjoy it, but there are the rewatch doesn't happen for me because I'm going to find myself skipping through bits of it.

01:38:18.54
Andrew
Yeah.

01:38:23.00
Louis
like I will skip through everything with the kid where he's following around that girl. and like There's some weird bits in that that I don't love.

01:38:26.70
Andrew
yeah there for sure are it's it's of an era it doesn't hold up as well as as others do so yeah but

01:38:34.90
Louis
But bits of it do. If I'm scrolling through and watching just bits, it's kind of like how if I watch Lord of the Rings, I don't watch any of the bits where Frodo is wandering off. i' like yeah I get it. I've seen it. I know it's happened. I don't need to like watch it happen now.

01:38:46.40
Andrew
yeah yeah any any the the last ones that you want to slide in

01:38:49.37
Louis
Cool.

01:38:53.43
Louis
If I'm looking in my list now, I think we got to most that I had on this. I mean, there's loads of others, but think we got to most on the list. The one that I'm seeing sticking out here is a relatively new one with Glenn Powell.

01:38:59.48
Andrew
Awesome.

01:39:06.10
Andrew
Oh.

01:39:07.24
Louis
So he was in two movies. There's one with Sidney Sweeney that was like a romance, but I can't remember the name of it now.

01:39:10.73
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hated that movie. The one with Sidney Sweeney.

01:39:16.65
Louis
I thought it was okay. it was it was For me, it was just like a it was of the same vein as Wedding Crashers. I give it that amount of respect. has some funny moments. It's very formulaic.

01:39:26.21
Andrew
The dialogue was just too forced and awkward to me. Like, it just felt too stilted.

01:39:29.17
Louis
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

01:39:30.65
Andrew
i couldn't do it it it.

01:39:31.48
Louis
yeah

01:39:31.85
Andrew
made me cringe.

01:39:32.37
Louis
i I don't believe any of it. No, I don't believe any of it.

01:39:33.79
Andrew
No.

01:39:34.77
Louis
But like you can watch it once and it's fine.

01:39:34.94
Andrew
No.

01:39:37.17
Louis
and

01:39:37.89
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

01:39:38.30
Louis
You cringe at bits of it, but that's that's fine, right?

01:39:39.82
Andrew
I actually didn't finish that one. i like, turned it off halfway through.

01:39:42.63
Louis
Really?

01:39:42.81
Andrew
I was like, can't do it. Yeah.

01:39:44.59
Louis
I watched it in the background because I knew like you didn't have to watch it to know what was going to happen. like you I could have watched the first five minutes and no one was going to happen.

01:39:52.06
Andrew
Was that, that wasn't actually the one you were going mention, though, was it?

01:39:54.46
Andrew
Like,

01:39:54.56
Louis
No, no, the one I was going to mention was called Hitman, which is, I think, more recent.

01:39:57.61
Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:39:59.41
Louis
And that one is, they have a lot more connection in that movie. And I think it's actually really good.

01:40:06.14
Andrew
That's been on my list, actually.

01:40:06.25
Louis
It didn't make my top list, but it was was pretty good.

01:40:09.24
Andrew
That's been on my list. It was one that i scrolled across one day, and I was like, I somehow missed it when it came out. And I was like, oh, this looks funny.

01:40:14.19
Louis
yeah

01:40:15.20
Andrew
I want to i want to watch this. Cool.

01:40:17.19
Louis
I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed it. He did a really good job in that movie and I thought they they they both did a really good job.

01:40:23.01
Andrew
Cool.

01:40:23.61
Louis
And then I'll end it with just the one that I'm surprised that neither of us brought up.

01:40:28.06
Andrew
Yeah,

01:40:28.22
Louis
Or the two that I'm surprised that I thought we would say at least one of them, which is... Do you remember in, like, 2011, there were two movies that came out at basically the same time about, like, friends with benefits?

01:40:39.86
Louis
And I think one of them's called Friends with Benefits and the other one's called...

01:40:41.58
Andrew
yeah, yeah. yeah The one with Mila Kunis and Ashing Kutcher.

01:40:45.03
Louis
Yeah, there's Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake. There's Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake.

01:40:47.49
Andrew
Oh, Justin Timberlake. It is.

01:40:49.48
Louis
And Ashton Kutcher is with... today not the problem.

01:40:55.68
Andrew
Yeah, okay.

01:40:56.74
Louis
Yes.

01:40:57.22
Andrew
Yeah, I think both of those like, kind of one-watchers for me. Like, I don't feel a need to re-watch them. They're, like, they're funny. they I enjoyed them the first time. i don't know how well they hold up. I haven't tried to re-watch them, so I'm not sure.

01:41:08.61
Andrew
But, yeah, they don't... To me, they're in a different tier from everything we talked about today.

01:41:14.31
Louis
No, I gotta say, that was my impression of them, like, in remembering them. I watched the Ashton Kutcher one more recently, and that one I was surprised by, like, I was like, damn, this is actually pretty good.

01:41:20.78
Andrew
Uh-huh.

01:41:24.81
Louis
Like, I don't remember it being that way.

01:41:25.03
Andrew
Okay.

01:41:26.78
Louis
I remember the, I think I remember the Justin Timberlake one, like, for both of them, which was very much, like, just bland, exactly what you would expect from it.

01:41:32.37
Andrew
Yeah.

01:41:35.03
Louis
But yeah, it was, on a second watch, it was pretty good.

01:41:35.24
Andrew
Okay.

01:41:37.87
Louis
I didn't didn't hate it.

01:41:39.22
Andrew
Cool. I'll have to have to give it another try.

01:41:41.96
Louis
Nice.

01:41:42.02
Andrew
Nice. I've got a long list, so this is great.

01:41:43.48
Louis
Cool.

01:41:44.09
Andrew
I'm stoked. We've also gone on for an hour and 45 minutes,

01:41:45.99
Louis
Yeah.

01:41:48.77
Louis
Yeah. Let's hope no one was recording this. I think we can.

01:41:52.30
Andrew
Awesome, man. I so appreciate you doing this. I genuinely think it would be so much fun to just do this on the reg and just watch a movie and talk about it. it would be so much fun. but

01:42:02.17
Louis
Oh, definitely. That would be a, that would be fun. we should have a community for that. And I'm, I, I'm glad that Andrew didn't have to s suffer through this. I would love to to spend some time and talk to him, but I think he made a very wise decision not to to be able to show up today because would have been tough.

01:42:15.04
Andrew
you you um I'm going to have to ask him what his list was, and I'll i'll send it along to you so you can see.

01:42:20.41
Louis
We can compare notes.

01:42:21.57
Andrew
Cool. Awesome, man.

01:42:22.52
Louis
Cool.

01:42:22.85
Andrew
Appreciate you.

01:42:23.23
Louis
Good to catch up, man. See you Bye-bye.

01:42:24.05
Andrew
This was great. Bye.