Andrew moved to Atlanta and is going all-in on MetaMonster while Sean drowns in Miscreants sales calls! 🚀 They dive into repositioning struggles, the push vs pull dilemma, and why lead magnets might be the answer. Plus: DEF CON madness, Webflow disasters, and someone made an AI review of MetaMonster.

Links:

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

Transcript:
00:00.50
Sean
What's up?

00:02.12
Andrew
What up, man?

00:02.99
Sean
Long time. Yeah.

00:04.19
Andrew
Has been a long time. When was the last one of these we did? Like, at least six weeks ago.

00:08.07
Sean
The last... I think the last one we did, you interviewed someone else. I was replaced.

00:12.88
Andrew
Oh, with Louie. OK.

00:14.20
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. That was good one. That good.

00:16.73
Andrew
Yeah, that was fun.

00:17.87
Sean
Yeah.

00:19.34
Andrew
It has horrible ah ah stats on Transistor. I haven't checked the YouTube stats.

00:24.88
Sean
Oh. but They just like me. You know? They...

00:28.93
Andrew
Let's see.

00:30.81
Andrew
Let's see, let's see. What? Has anyone listened to this?

00:36.56
Sean
You know we got 51.

00:36.86
Andrew
Oh, wow.

00:37.08
Sean
Uh-huh.

00:38.26
Andrew
oh wow. Our latest videos are not doing well. But to be fair,

00:44.08
Sean
Internally.

00:44.66
Andrew
yeah that episode, lol, I heard heard our autoplay video.

00:45.51
Sean
Mm-hmm.

00:49.74
Sean
Oh.

00:51.90
Andrew
43 whole views on on that that episode.

00:55.21
Sean
Not bad. Yeah.

00:58.62
Andrew
We're we're killing it.

01:00.08
Sean
Yeah. ah But we got 51 subscribers, so, like, i don't know.

01:05.20
Andrew
Do we really?

01:06.10
Sean
Yeah, 51 subscribers on YouTube.

01:08.78
Andrew
This is not going to be interesting to anyone listening. Like, we're the only ones who give a fuck how many YouTube subscribers we have.

01:11.100
Sean
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sorry everyone.

01:15.36
Andrew
Also, 50 is such a silly number.

01:17.60
Sean
Yeah.

01:19.98
Andrew
Yeah.

01:20.46
Sean
Can't wait for my 50 subscriber YouTube play button.

01:23.16
Sean
It's a cardboard with a little poop stain on it.

01:30.36
Andrew
Yeah, a lot has changed since we last chatted and also not a lot has changed.

01:33.88
Sean
Mm-hmm.

01:35.94
Andrew
I am now living in Atlanta.

01:39.28
Sean
And you're leaving me.

01:41.66
Andrew
and Well, just like we're not breaking up.

01:43.04
Sean
We're breaking up.

01:45.78
Andrew
We're going on a break. It's different.

01:47.22
Sean
wow Can I see other people?

01:50.18
Andrew
Yeah, sure.

01:52.08
Sean
We're breaking up. We're broken up. It's okay. It's okay. I'm happy for you. Anything I'm jealous.

01:57.43
Andrew
yeah so I'm living in Atlanta. I was, I working with scout last time we talked. to

02:03.08
Sean
Not on the podcast, I think.

02:05.94
Andrew
Okay.

02:06.60
Sean
Yeah.

02:07.80
Andrew
I have a new client. it's been a lot of fun. They're in, uh, you an AI agent platform for sales teams.

02:15.37
Sean
Yeah.

02:16.28
Andrew
and, uh, I'm basically a fractional CMO, which has been really fun. So I'm like, you hiring agencies and contractors and building marketing processes and trying to figure out how to, how to drive leads.

02:30.29
Andrew
got to bring in a friends agency. That's going super well. metamonster like, it's not like not going at all. Like I'm having it a couple of conversations a week probably, but, uh, they are not turning into customers. So,

02:49.04
Andrew
gotta figure some shit out there which is why i'm talking about taking a break from miscreants work for a little while to focus on metamonster yeah i don't know where do you want to start

03:02.24
Sean
Let's start, I mean, I don't know, let's talk about MetaMonster. Let's talk about like i feel like, I feel like we're chatting on Slack about like, you know, lead magnets and whether or not you have to nurture folks, you know, it feels like the people that are but you're speaking to are like interested but not ready to like buy or try.

03:20.75
Sean
are they Are they like, are you giving them a trial or

03:24.94
Andrew
Yeah, so

03:27.06
Andrew
we... Okay, so since we last spoke, we updated the Metamonster positioning. So we were calling ourselves like an SEO web crawler and sort of a ah ah site audit tool.

03:34.32
Sean
Mm-hmm.

03:42.18
Andrew
We've tried to move away from that to more of like an SEO automation platform. our new so our new h one um scale on page seo optimization with ai and we're trying to sort of position ourselves against like chat gpt and manual processes and you know we didn't we didn't go for like a category because i don't know that ah seo automation platform is like an established category today so i wasn't i wasn't sure that would be widely recognized enough to resonate with people so we

04:18.45
Sean
Yeah.

04:19.95
Andrew
sort of just have this like use case positioning and then we talk you know ah try to position ourselves against like doing seo work manually in with like just chat gpt or claude and then we've been working on totally revamping the product so know when we started it was like push button get meta descriptions and now

04:34.47
Sean
yeah

04:48.14
Andrew
We're, in the next week or two, going to be like phasing out the old UI and phasing in the new UI, which is all like, it's basically like a spreadsheet with AI superpowers.

04:59.62
Andrew
so you get a

04:59.100
Sean
you know

05:02.65
Andrew
you can crawl your site, get all of your site data in a table, and then run prompts, run prompts against like every page on your site.

05:14.35
Andrew
And we give you a bunch of prompt templates out of the box to let you do all sorts of things like page titles and meta descriptions, but also generate H1s and image alt text and structured schema and a bunch of other things.

05:30.18
Andrew
We also have like now have like site-wide chat. So you can use that for like site-wide analysis and one-off tasks like the blog post I just published for you last night about how to generate an LLMS.txt file, which by the way, you don't need, but you know, whatever.

05:48.41
Sean
Mm-hmm.

05:49.78
Andrew
okay. So we, so I've been updating the site to like include lots of screenshots and, and descriptions of the new ui try to update the positioning to be more use case focused, like scale on page SEO,

06:05.86
Andrew
as the sort of the use case and then we removed we didn't remove our pricing but we removed we changed our pricing to credit based instead of page based and then we we removed the the sign up link and so now we have uh we just have a call to action to book a demo and i tried to run ads for like

06:23.90
Sean
Mm-hmm.

06:33.70
Andrew
I only ran them for like a week, but I tried to run some Google ads for a week to see if people would book demos. No one booked demos. We, interestingly enough, are having a small trickle of people signing up for the product because they're like, I think they're going to the login page and like digging around to find the sign up link, which is kind of interesting.

06:53.80
Sean
Cool. Okay. yeah

06:57.64
Andrew
And then

07:00.47
Andrew
i you know have been, haven't been doing a whole lot of cold outreach, but I've been sort of leveraging my network a little bit, and have been getting like one or two intros a week, talking to SEOs, asking for feedback.

07:18.06
Andrew
I think like one small learning is when I do a sales call, I need to get people to sign up for the product on the call and then schedule a followup with them on the call.

07:25.24
Sean
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

07:28.80
Andrew
I did that with a new prospect this week and they've been much more engaged and like actively trying to use the product versus I have several people who like friends or people I met who I would be like, yeah, sign up for the product. Let me know when you signed up. I'll give you access to the new features. They're behind a feature flag right now.

07:46.52
Andrew
Give you access to the new stuff. I'll extend your trial and then like just give me your feedback. And, and those people have like all used the product, but it's been much more slow,

07:57.27
Andrew
like they'll get to it when they get to it uh some of them actually still haven't signed up and actually used the product so it's been it's been just really kind of it's felt like pulling teeth to get people onboarded activated so

08:15.53
Sean
what do what do your sales calls look like because I feel like there's one version of it where you just say like why don't you sign up show your screen the best way to sort of show you is to literally show you and then they basically get forced through like the flow and walk through yeah walk through the demo

08:31.68
Andrew
yeah Yeah. So typically a sales call, I ask them like how they're using AI today and ask them to talk me, tell me a little bit about like the type of SEO work they do, how many clients they have, how often they're onboarding new clients and how often those clients, like how much work are they spending on on-page stuff?

08:59.35
Andrew
on-page like grunt work kind of stuff and then from there i will switch over to a demo and i will i just use my account to demo and i have always crawled their site part of why i don't think like just having them do the optimizations on their side would work very well is because

08:59.38
Sean
Yeah.

09:24.20
Andrew
There is a little bit of a learning curve. Like, I don't think it it's that hard to figure out how to do things in the product, but there's a little bit of a learning curve with like how to get the AI to behave the way you want it to.

09:31.85
Sean
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

09:38.07
Andrew
And AI is just kind of slow. And so it helps if I've run a couple of optimizations beforehand so that I have something to show them versus like if you're just sitting there waiting for the AI to run, especially depending on how many pages your site is like it can take a while to like just sit there and like let this stuff run

10:00.00
Sean
I mean, assuming it's not like 15 minutes long, like it could be during that little time. It could be cool for for you to ask them those questions. Like you can combine, you know, like in the meantime, while it runs and crawls everything.

10:12.77
Andrew
that's pretty high risk without ah i don't yeah i don't i don't think that's a good idea sorry like i just

10:16.13
Sean
see.

10:19.46
Sean
i'll get and fun

10:22.71
Andrew
Because like AI still sometimes like the models still sometimes don't behave the way you would expect them to.

10:27.43
Sean
i say

10:29.40
Andrew
And so like it's better if I can do a couple of run throughs ahead of time just to like make sure things are and then every now and then someone's site will be like kind of funky and

10:33.36
Sean
Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. yeah

10:40.10
Sean
gotcha and yeah Yeah, I mean, for for what it's worth, it's not like people, like, I've always been trained on demo and then let them try it.

10:42.12
Andrew
yeah.

10:49.61
Sean
And then on the trial, on like the day where you set up their trial, you still walk them, like then you walk them through what you've prepared a lot more for that rather than like the initial sales call demo.

10:59.92
Sean
So makes sense. I'm just curious just because.

11:04.40
Sean
I mean, you know, when I run it, it works on the sites that we scan and it's fine.

11:10.06
Andrew
you haven't used the new features at all yet.

11:10.38
Sean
So yeah, I haven't tried the, that's fair.

11:12.02
Andrew
You just, you didn't know that they existed until, until last night.

11:17.03
Sean
That's fair. Yeah.

11:18.24
Andrew
And this is one of the other things, right. That I, that I am like feeling is just like, we're getting some traction.

11:20.27
Sean
Yeah.

11:24.55
Andrew
People are talking to us. There's a little bit of interest here, but it definitely doesn't feel like market pull, right. It, it's not overwhelming.

11:30.97
Sean
Hmm.

11:33.55
Andrew
And like, you having to like, having to really think about how to get people engaged and activated they're not and so i don't know if that means we're just solving a vitamin sort of problem my hunch is we're going to need to get into more like content more content creation flows like content gap analysis and then like content creation content refreshes serp analysis which

11:40.00
Sean
Yeah. Mm. Mm.

11:59.98
Andrew
we can technically do within the product today. I haven't tried to do much of it, so I don't know how well it'll work yet, but, but like we can technically do some of that today. I just haven't, yeah, I haven't tried much.

12:13.62
Andrew
but yeah, like it, it just, it does feel a little bit like, you know, every now and then we'll get someone and it'll seem like they really get it and it'll feel like,

12:24.77
Andrew
like okay, maybe we just need to do more marketing. Maybe we just need to push harder and like keep pushing and keep nudging the product along until it's got you know all the capabilities we want it to have.

12:38.38
Andrew
But then there are other days where it's like, oh man, it really feels like we're having to push this thing versus, you know people talk about like feeling the pull of the market.

12:45.14
Sean
Right.

12:48.95
Sean
um I mean, I think that is what, like, that is the pain of, like, category creation, right? There's a lot of, like, education of showing, like, this is a better way to do it. This is, like, this is how you can do it with MetaMonster. This is what's important, all that stuff. So probably not alone in some of that.

13:11.53
Andrew
Yeah, but that's category creation for exactly that reason has typically not been a path to success for bootstrappers. So it worries me.

13:18.58
Sean
Yes. Yes. I mean, kind of work for Banner Bear for what it's worth, right? Like, it's kind of a very, like, image.

13:27.65
Andrew
yeah There are definitely like bootstrapped companies that have been successful at building things that don't fit neatly into an existing category.

13:29.43
Sean
like Mm-hmm.

13:37.75
Andrew
The Fletch team would say that like you need to position that to a use case. And I think, you know our use case is still ah little fuzzy, like on-page SEO optimization.

13:51.94
Andrew
Sort of a use case, but I'm not i'm not sure we've... got that exactly right yet

14:01.77
Sean
On the other hand, I hear things at Scout are going great.

14:06.54
Andrew
yeah so before we move on to scout real quick a couple of hypotheses for metamonster a couple of things that we're thinking about and working on there um

14:14.37
Sean
Sure.

14:19.54
Andrew
So one, we're going to be switching back to a free trial. but this time it'll be no credit card required. you get a certain number of credits for free, um, and free, um, and you can come use the product right away.

14:36.04
Andrew
And so I'm really curious to see how that works to see if the product can maybe sell itself a little bit.

14:36.52
Sean
Yeah.

14:41.82
Andrew
My hunch is that the product's not quite there yet. Like all these things that I've been saying, it takes a little bit of learning to figure out how to massage it, to get it to do things exactly the way you want.

14:48.58
Sean
yeah

14:53.02
Andrew
Um, Um, although that's been getting a lot better, but, um, um, But yeah, so my hunch is the product isn't there, but we're going to try it. um We're also, think we just need more traffic.

15:05.39
Andrew
And ah so I'm going to be trying to scale up the amount of content we're creating and hopefully using Metamonster for that a little bit.

15:05.47
Sean
Mm-hmm.

15:16.52
Andrew
Also potentially running some experiments with like Claude code. and then the last thing that we want to do is we want to sell some consulting services so we want to really like and i think the offer i'm narrowing in on is like content engineering as a service so you know come in with metamonster clog code other off-the-shelf tools we will build a like content generation system for you that you can use to like really scale content for organic search rankings and hopefully use that process to really get in our customer's shoes and like learn what works and what doesn't doesn't um and figure out um um you know where the product needs to go and where the marketing needs to go and like see if

15:52.25
Sean
Yeah.

16:10.73
Andrew
you if content generation, content creation is is maybe, um maybe, um if there's more pull there.

16:18.52
Sean
yeah

16:19.56
Andrew
So, and then like on the marketing side too, the other question I'm asking is like, yeah, do I just need to nurture people a little bit more before driving them into the product?

16:31.32
Andrew
um um And so the question I asked you in Slack was like, how often are you all creating lead magnets and driving traffic to lead magnets versus trying to drive direct like signups or demos or conversions you know

16:46.65
Sean
yeah i mean with the early stage like ish i think it's like case by case uh we don't always get to own sort of what that dimension like what dimension looks like in a company especially if they have a head of marketing or some marketer that we're working with like they own they own that like so every once in a while we're helping sort of create things like that for them most folks have like a monthly email newsletter that has a little bit of nurture but there's no it's something we like if i had full reign of of something right uh

17:26.35
Sean
like we would probably have, and okay, sorry, two thoughts. The things that work the best on a lot of websites that we've done are having a signup, but then having a test drive.

17:39.51
Sean
And the test drive is just the lead magnet. or It doesn't have to be a test drive. It could just be some sort of lead magnet. And we see way more signups for the lead magnet

17:44.95
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

17:49.98
Sean
like you get to experience a very small portion of the product like you get to download a report or something customized because they're like for drop zone you forward a phishing email drop zone sends your email back but it also subscribes you to their email newsletter like can't get lot information but information about it

18:09.65
Andrew
Are you mostly doing engineering as marketing type lead magnets where it's like kind of a little micro product experience?

18:17.83
Sean
No, that's the that's that would be kind of. like With Drop Zone, yes. With some other ones that are test drives, it's more just like download a sample report. But it just feels nice. and And like with Prime, you get to like select which one you download. So...

18:33.80
Sean
it feels better than like give email get ebook or give email get whatever but regardless like the point is like those still perform like really well and they're not ready to buy but they're interested and i think that's why like folks are signing up for that um because of that those should go into a nurture sequence of like having a step-by-step like you know i guess in this case you know uh like what like actually i don't know what what the what the flow would be but like a flow of like four to seven yeah you know that you send every other every other day or every day that just kind of teaches them something about it like like how we use uh something that's more value prop driven something that's more technical you know i think email marketing is still great i think it reminds people to use the product as well um like

19:28.83
Sean
remember to use metamonster when i get slack message from you about so at scale i think that's just email um yeah

19:41.05
Andrew
Cool. So what I'm hearing is you all don't necessarily make building that nurture list your primary call to action.

19:52.49
Andrew
Like your primary call to action, you're still trying to capture people who are ready to convert right away to either product signups or demos like sales calls.

19:57.64
Sean
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

20:01.64
Andrew
But you you have a secondary call to action that is some sort of some sort of lead capture, ideally in kind of a nice experience that feels a little more interactive.

20:10.11
Sean
yeah

20:17.01
Andrew
And are you all doing any like, do you all do campaigns where you drive try to drive traffic just to those lead captures?

20:28.23
Andrew
Like do more lead capture like campaigns?

20:28.27
Sean
ah

20:31.70
Sean
yeah yes not the test just traditional like we've helped someone build an ebook or a white paper and then it's landing page and then we're helping drive some traffic there with like social media ads or um um you know whatever whatever it is so yes um so yes um in terms of like visibility into whether or not our clients are running like nurture sequences in their hubspot it's like pretty limited but i hope they are i think it's you know i still think I think it's, I think it is more impactful than my hunch is that that it's more impactful than what some other folks might think.

21:07.82
Sean
It is interesting that like it often, I feel like it's deprioritized or forgotten about in like very early stage startups. But

21:16.04
Andrew
Because it's time consuming. It's a lot of effort to like create all of that content to and continually nurture new people and yeah.

21:18.66
Sean
for sure, for sure.

21:23.88
Sean
I mean, it's like it's like seven high-value blog posts, you know, like it takes time to make. and then you got to keep And then you got to keep looking at whether or not, you know, if people fall off by nurture six or so seven.

21:30.69
Andrew
Yeah.

21:38.83
Sean
Mm-hmm.

21:39.59
Andrew
And ideally, it's not just like an automated campaign, too. Ideally, you have like some sort of ongoing newsletter or something so to send to them once that that nurture campaign is over, too.

21:45.81
Sean
Mm-hmm.

21:50.31
Sean
Yeah.

21:51.91
Andrew
Huh. Okay. All right. Food for thought. Yeah.

21:56.84
Sean
what are their What other things are you thinking trying?

21:57.14
Andrew
Yeah.

22:01.27
Sean
Now you have some time back for Metamonster.

22:04.66
Andrew
um

22:06.05
Andrew
So if we set aside the the consulting work, I do want to try to build out a lot more content.

22:14.64
Andrew
And that's going to mean leaning pretty heavily on AI-generated content because it's the only way we're going to be able to do stuff fast.

22:21.51
Sean
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

22:21.69
Andrew
And um And um yeah, I'm just such a slow writer if I'm doing it all by hand.

22:21.79
Sean
Mm-hmm.

22:28.24
Andrew
um um so

22:30.78
Andrew
I do want to try to generate some content, do some organic, try to capture some some organic traffic. And Scout has had some success with like long tail keywords keywords um and ah to capture some organic traffic.

22:48.93
Andrew
I don't think it's converting very well, but but it's driving traffic with like super AI generated content that hasn't been edited much at all.

22:59.87
Andrew
Um, Um, so, uh, yeah, try to generate some more content. I still haven't done any like LinkedIn outreach, cold outreach. I want to try some of that and specifically try,

23:14.80
Andrew
um um some like competitor campaigns, like go after people who are following aerops, following innate following GPT for sheets, um, sheets, um, and try to capture those folks in the hopes that they may be a little bit more solution aware, like maybe a little bit farther along in the education process.

23:18.31
Sean
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

23:25.92
Sean
yeah

23:39.13
Andrew
Um, Um, and might be more primed to try something like metamonster out. So that's that's one thing I want to try.

23:50.11
Andrew
um um Once we have the the free trial back, I will probably try to run some Google ads again. And then once I have a good lead magnet, I will probably try to run some sort of ads to that lead magnet and and test that out.

24:08.37
Andrew
um um I haven't done any engineering as marketing and I feel like ah Meta Monster is begging for it. Like, you know, free meta description generator, free page title generator, free structured schema generator.

24:20.25
Sean
FreeLLMs.txt generator.

24:22.10
Andrew
Huh?

24:25.63
Andrew
Free LLMs.text generator. Although that one's actually, like, kind of hard to do well with just... I mean, I can i can do a shitty LLMs.text generator for free, but, like, the reason that Metamonster is really good at doing that is because, like, to do it well, you want context of your entire site.

24:48.49
Andrew
So you want to have, like, all of your pages...

24:51.89
Sean
yeah no

24:53.38
Andrew
crawled and you know that context given to the llm which i'm not going to crawl people's entire site for free absolutely fucking not

25:02.36
Sean
yeah yeah i mean listen if if it doesn't if it's all for naught anyway it doesn't even have to be that good you know

25:13.69
Andrew
yeah yeah yeah i mean probably what i would do if like the it would probably be more of like an ad lib template sort of thing where it's just like into your, your website URL and like, you know, five of your most important articles or five of your most important pages or something.

25:23.73
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

25:26.90
Sean
no

25:37.29
Sean
yeah

25:39.10
Andrew
And I just put that lift on the person, to do, and then, and then just do a little bit of LLM summarization around that. So and image alt text generator, know, all this stuff is like begging to be to be built.

25:56.26
Andrew
I just need to need to sit down and crank some of these things out and then just figure out how to neatly integrate them into the site.

26:00.77
Sean
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Nice.

26:06.29
Andrew
i I'm less regretting our decision to use Astro these days for our marketing site because the LLMs have gotten so good that it is like, know, the agentic development experience has gotten so good that it is like in a lot of ways faster to build out a page just by working with cursor than it is to, you know, it would be to do it in Elementor or Webflow or whatever, i think.

26:25.38
Sean
nice

26:28.46
Sean
Yeah.

26:34.68
Andrew
And then to, I haven't actually tried this yet, but I i want to generate a bunch of optimizations for the Metamonster site and then give Cursor the CSV and see how it does at implementing them.

26:49.19
Sean
yeah that's interesting. yeah i don't i don't I feel like an actually useful Webflow MCP is still light years away at the moment.

26:59.33
Sean
We did have a client we had a client that we signed on who like

26:59.58
Andrew
How...

27:05.15
Sean
as much as the marketer is in agreement that we should use Webflow, and I think they were like, no, I think we still want it in Hugo just so we can cloud code the thing.

27:09.14
Andrew
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

27:17.14
Sean
which i still think it's like the wrong decision because I don't understand how Like, and don't understand how they're going to use Cloud Code to build out like nicer designs, for example,

27:29.65
Sean
um um like that are that are on brand based on what we have, but we'll see. I don't know. Hmm.

27:42.20
Andrew
Yeah, the the Scout site uses Sanity as the CMS, and we have and it's all, like I think, Next.js. And it's pretty tedious. to i mean, we've been working on updating the homepage for a month, and i I'm like, this should be a two-day task.

28:01.96
Sean
Fun.

28:04.77
Andrew
But yeah.

28:04.80
Sean
Yeah. Yeah.

28:08.38
Sean
Fun. like Exciting. Good times.

28:11.39
Andrew
yeah So, yeah, I think it's kind of just like more cold outreach, more content, you know, the YouTube stuff was starting to work a little bit.

28:21.78
Andrew
So like, you know, I think the flow of like YouTube video from that video generate a blog post, an email, uh, a LinkedIn post, and,

28:38.02
Sean
Do you know Dan Thorne?

28:40.67
Andrew
Dan Thorne.

28:42.12
Sean
If you look up Metamonster on YouTube, this guy is Metamonster AI Review, 7 Crucial Things You Need to Know. Best just released AI software.

28:54.09
Andrew
What?

28:54.93
Sean
Yeah. I think it's like a faceless YouTube, 11 labs generated video given.

29:00.15
Andrew
Oh, it totally is.

29:01.59
Sean
um um But kind of cool.

29:04.31
Andrew
oh that's so funny.

29:05.94
Sean
Yeah.

29:07.11
Andrew
What?

29:08.58
Sean
Yeah.

29:09.66
Andrew
Oh, I'm not signed in, so I was like, like why am I getting ads?

29:09.64
Sean
Kind of cool.

29:14.31
Andrew
Oh, yeah, this is 100% AI generated. It

29:16.65
Sean
Yeah.

29:20.03
Sean
Kind of cool.

29:20.99
Andrew
it has one view.

29:22.51
Sean
Yeah. Well, now has three, so you're welcome, Danthorne.

29:28.15
Andrew
ah ah Okay, yeah, this is just...

29:32.04
Sean
Yeah.

29:32.85
Andrew
Yeah, it looks like this is just someone trying to get like affiliate clicks.

29:37.90
Sean
Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Right.

29:40.32
Andrew
Wow, fascinating. Huh. That's funny. um um We could also try affiliate. like the affiliate I've had like a couple of people ask me if we do affiliate deals like in my like cold outreach and stuff over the last like few months.

29:56.56
Sean
right

29:56.75
Andrew
So I think it probably is a big part of the SEO world is like affiliates and like influencer marketing.

30:02.68
Sean
Yeah, definitely.

30:04.04
Sean
Why?

30:04.07
Andrew
But it feels too early for that to me.

30:04.18
Sean
definitely

30:08.07
Sean
why

30:09.53
Andrew
Because

30:12.10
Andrew
i feel like i why does it feel too early for that? I feel like I don't know that we have our messaging and everything dialed in enough for it to be effective.

30:25.17
Andrew
Like if I can't convert people on my own, why would an affiliate, why would I have enough information to help an affiliate convert people?

30:35.20
Sean
Depends on the but of the partner, I guess. I'm sure they're...

30:38.58
Andrew
like I understand a good affiliate might be able to do some, like, know, put their spin on it.

30:45.12
Sean
Mm-hmm.

30:45.27
Andrew
And also they might have more trust built up with their audience than and then I do.

30:49.66
Sean
Mm-hmm.

30:50.66
Andrew
But I still feel like it's going to be hard to really arm an affiliate with what they need to know to convert people without until we have like at least an okay funnel.

31:02.03
Sean
Yeah. Yeah, fair. Fair, fair. Mm-hmm. yeah fair

31:06.05
Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. It's just a hunch. I also should probably be doing some like Reddit outreach and and like Facebook outreach stuff. I haven't been doing any of that.

31:17.51
Andrew
and um um I do a tiny bit of stuff in a like a Slack group that I'm in, but but um I should probably be doing way more community outreach type stuff to try to build...

31:32.28
Sean
Yeah.

31:32.31
Andrew
build connections and um um get people trying the product and just like get some awareness out about the product.

31:38.20
Sean
Yeah.

31:40.29
Andrew
So I am going to the Brighton SEO conference in ah ah September, the one in San Diego.

31:44.29
Sean
Oh, cool. Cool.

31:47.86
Andrew
So um um yeah.

31:51.18
Sean
when When in September?

31:54.32
Andrew
the something like that. second or twenty third twenty fourth something like that

31:59.98
Sean
Mm-hmm.

32:00.22
Andrew
so I'm going to be in San Diego from the 21st to the 25th. It's cool.

32:03.90
Sean
Cool.

32:05.46
Andrew
They have a bunch of networking events all around it. So I think it'll genuinely be a good place to meet people.

32:13.05
Sean
I am.

32:15.05
Sean
I thought it was in your area. Hold on. Where is.

32:19.31
Sean
ah ah Going to a friend's wedding. now I don't know. It's one of the sands is all I know.

32:26.93
Andrew
Oh, like San Francisco, San Diego, San Antonio.

32:28.72
Sean
Yeah, yeah. yeah uh it's in san jose it's in san jose all right it's the 27th anyway so we're not gonna see you there or won't be in the same place yeah so close so close yeah

32:34.75
Andrew
Okay. Yeah.

32:39.94
Andrew
Bummer.

32:42.65
Andrew
Yep. Yeah. And then, yeah, the fractional CMO stuff is going well. That's been super fun. It's been really fun to have a budget to play with.

32:54.54
Andrew
And am about to start focusing on a lot of content stuff for them. So that'll be a good chance to just sort of test ideas and test tools and learn more about, you what it feels like to try to do, know, SEO as an in-house marketer.

33:04.74
Sean
no

33:12.69
Andrew
So, yeah.

33:13.71
Sean
Cool.

33:14.70
Andrew
Yeah, yeah. All right. That's, Lord, we've already talked for 35 minutes just about Metamonster and all my shit. Yeah.

33:22.16
Sean
That's a good catch Yeah.

33:25.19
Andrew
What's going on with you? You are like just your calendar is a solid block of like sales calls.

33:31.24
Sean
yeah

33:31.61
Andrew
It feels like all the time.

33:33.89
Sean
All I do is sit here, Andrew. I don't and don't move. I don't and don't do shit. I don't go outside. i um just got back from DEF CON, Black Hat, and the HOPE conference as well.

33:46.70
Andrew
What's the hope conference?

33:47.99
Sean
It's like one of the oldest, I think it's one of the oldest conferences in security. Like they've been around forever. It's called Hackers on Planet Earth. uh so old head hacker sort of thing very very like laid back and chill like they're i think they scale down significantly now too uh so it's like a very very laid back sort of conference it's at like a university near me uh you know like there's more like makerspace stuff there anti like privacy stuff like that that happens at that conference

33:57.33
Andrew
Cool. Mm-hmm.

34:02.09
Andrew
yeah

34:19.21
Sean
but yeah uh july was insane barely slept then went straight to blackhead and defcon uh blackhead was cool like it was cool uh defcon we had like seven people at the stand this year which is so like uh and sales sales were great we brought like way more stock than we ever have have um we didn't so We didn't technically sell out.

34:46.03
Sean
We sold out of most items in most sizes, but we had some sh stragglers at the end that we had to ship back.

34:49.83
Andrew
Interesting.

34:52.13
Andrew
So was that, what, why do you think that was like, uh, do you think that these are just not your most popular designs or is it, were they like weird sizes?

35:02.86
Andrew
Was it, did you do something different this year?

35:05.29
Sean
I think, yeah,

35:06.57
Andrew
Like, cause last year did you sold out? Right.

35:09.72
Sean
Last year we brought way less stock.

35:11.60
Andrew
Okay.

35:12.13
Sean
This is like a difference of 500 shirts.

35:14.43
Andrew
Okay.

35:14.55
Sean
900 versus 1,400. We sold way more year. I think last year we sold it really early, which was kind of nice for what it's worth. We just kind of left and went to go hang out with people.

35:25.11
Andrew
Yeah, I got to chill.

35:26.44
Sean
yeah um um but uh i mean you know things things we would have done differently like we started later than ever this year and had like ben base probably had like in total three actual working days to do to work on merchandise i probably had like four or five

35:43.35
Andrew
Mm-hmm. Did you even put these, like, up on the shop at all?

35:46.95
Sean
No, not yet. Not yet. Yeah, we were so disorganized this year. um um I think ever since RSA this year, things have just not slowed down.

35:59.08
Sean
Sloan?

36:00.35
Andrew
Slowed.

36:00.42
Sean
Slowed it down? Sloan is a, Sloan should be a word. Things have just not slowed You know, in part also thanks to you um and

36:11.03
Andrew
What did I do?

36:11.07
Sean
Yeah, just good work. Just work that people like. I don't know, like good stuff. Yeah, and then and then things just like will not slow down at the moment. and Like I'll be, inbound is crazy at the moment. I'm doing like two to three sales calls a day.

36:31.76
Sean
and like JJ is in like contract hell at the moment because it's just, it's just SOWs and MSAs and proposals over and over again.

36:42.40
Sean
think we're probably going like to hire like an EA at this point, help like, like there's no reason I should, I should be the one literally writing the email to respond to a web form submission every single time.

36:45.71
Andrew
Hell yeah.

36:54.54
Sean
um

36:55.72
Andrew
No, that should be automated.

36:57.40
Sean
Yes, yes, yes. I agree. agree. Well, it's like a little bit. It's like a, like, there's a little bit of extra stuff I had, but yes, agreed. It could totally be automated.

37:08.39
Sean
In fact, and I think that we're just going to put the Calendly booking form after they sign up and just like, just book it. Like, I don't want like, otherwise you're just going to get an email back asking to book something anyway.

37:16.31
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

37:21.89
Sean
yeah. But, yeah, it would be nice to have an EA to help us, like, schedule and, like, at least, like do some of the proposal work and things like that.

37:32.92
Sean
but is good, I don't know. know. um Good problems to have, I guess. I think still looking for like full-time folks to join us. us. um We had an offer that we sent out ah for a contractor.

37:47.45
Sean
um um Really great contractor we were using, but he can't start for like three months, because he's in the UK and he's got notice periods and stuff, which sucks.

37:52.84
Andrew
damn

37:55.34
Sean
But we're still excited to have him. Yeah. i think I think we just have the week we we have to get good at like recruiting and like actually sort of doing things.

38:05.08
Sean
Yeah.

38:05.99
Andrew
yeah i feel like the two like the weird dichotomy as an agency is you have to master inbound you you have to be constantly doing

38:18.38
Sean
Yeah.

38:21.22
Andrew
running two marketing funnels a recruiting marketing funnel and a services marketing funnel and if you slack on either then you end up in trouble because you either end up like with too much work and not enough people to execute or too many people and not enough work and so you have to let people go and so it's just like yeah you have to run two marketing funnels at the same time in addition to just running a business and executing on the work and doing all the work and

38:21.28
Sean
Yeah.

38:26.94
Sean
yeah

38:38.63
Sean
Yeah.

38:44.70
Sean
Yeah.

38:50.30
Sean
Yeah. I know. What a shitty business. i just want to I just want to take one long nap and then play video games. just want

38:59.14
Andrew
At least you'll have pretty good retention, right? Like you don't, people don't leave miscreants all that often.

39:02.80
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty rare people leave miscarians.

39:08.98
Sean
Yeah.

39:10.57
Sean
Yeah. They leave when they get acquired or, you know. Yeah. I think rarely do we ever see someone like redesign the site.

39:21.54
Sean
Like, even if it was just a project, like.

39:23.45
Andrew
Oh, I meant, I meant, uh, yeah, client retention is even better. I meant employee retention, uh, because that gets really stressful when you have employees, employee churn, because then you have to hire people roles you weren't expecting to hire for.

39:28.80
Sean
Oh. Yes. Yes.

39:39.71
Andrew
Uh, but yeah, client retention also huge, obviously.

39:39.72
Sean
Yeah.

39:42.70
Sean
Yeah. I think we have pretty good employee retention. Yeah. I think we've only had like one or two people leave in the past four years, pretty much so. But we also, you know, i think I think we invest, yeah.

39:55.31
Sean
I mean, we invest a lot into them. So it is oh so stressful if they leave for what it's worth. But we just gave a bunch of people, right we just gave everyone like a bonus to after black after the Black Hat craziness.

40:04.35
Andrew
Nice.

40:05.48
Sean
So now they don't get to leave.

40:07.31
Andrew
That had to feel good.

40:07.99
Sean
So yeah yeah i wasn't there for it i was at black cat it was the one that told them but i hear it's recorded somewhere so gotta go dig it and dig it up and yeah yeah thanks thanks thanks um um on the other hand margins is on pause at the moment which is sad yeah

40:16.24
Andrew
you should You should go watch that recording. I guarantee you it'll make you feel better.

40:30.93
Andrew
Oh yeah yeah, have you found a new developer yet?

40:33.92
Sean
I have. It's just a matter of, like um um like, yeah, we just have so many other things.

40:37.39
Andrew
Having enough time to devote?

40:40.31
Sean
And JJ wants to, like, both JJ and I want to sit down and, like, talk about the project and instead of it just being, like, a thing that lives there. i think there was a lot of, like, we probably wasted about a week and a half of dev time just kind of going back and forth of, like,

40:50.33
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

40:57.58
Sean
what are we going to do for auth? What is next? right like i think you When you took a look at the linear, like you were like, why are you doing any of these things? None of these things seem useful for v1.

41:08.76
Andrew
Yeah.

41:09.75
Sean
um um Yeah. It's so much easier to do for other people is when i is what I constantly learn.

41:15.73
Andrew
I was about to say, if i can't if I can't make Metamonster take off, can I run margins?

41:15.96
Sean
Yeah.

41:20.69
Andrew
Can I run margins and just hire an engineer and do marketing for margins?

41:24.93
Sean
Yeah. Yeah, I think I've asked you that, and then you turned me down. So

41:29.46
Andrew
No, i tried I pitched you on it, and you were like, I don't want you.

41:33.58
Sean
don't remember that. I believe you. i don't remember that. I apologize. Yeah.

41:39.27
Andrew
I think I pitched you on like letting me run product for margins and it was like a semi sarcastic pitch.

41:39.84
Sean
Let's

41:47.88
Andrew
I don't think I pitched you on like, let me run marketing and product everything.

41:48.42
Sean
see.

41:51.44
Sean
Let's see. Like, man, we can talk about it. I don't want to run it. oh I don't want to do anything. I want to go to sleep.

42:00.42
Sean
um um But yeah. and In all seriousness, I think i still think there's a lot of potential. I feel a little bit better about things because Webflow has not deprecated that editor, even though they said they would.

42:15.64
Andrew
Oh.

42:16.61
Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think they're slow rolling it. Yeah. Oh, oh the the worst thing was that Webflow went down.

42:20.34
Andrew
Interesting.

42:22.76
Sean
like Somebody like tried to attack the Webflow marketplace, which makes perfect sense. Very smart thinking whoever's trying to do that. Because that's the place where plugins live, right? And it's the only thing that's like external and third party and can you have read-write access to pages.

42:32.63
Andrew
Yeah.

42:38.41
Sean
Someone tried to attack that. Their thing scaled up. And I think there was some weird auto-scaling issue that like bricked Webflow for everyone for 36 plus hours the week before Black Cat.

42:47.43
Andrew
Whoa.

42:50.17
Andrew
No way.

42:51.88
Sean
Yeah.

42:52.18
Andrew
Holy shit.

42:54.73
Andrew
That's crazy.

42:56.17
Sean
Yeah. yeah

42:58.01
Andrew
What?

42:59.20
Sean
Yeah. No,

42:59.54
Andrew
So all of your client sites were down.

43:03.34
Sean
no, no. The client front end sites were up. The client back end was down.

43:06.02
Andrew
Oh, thank God. Okay.

43:07.79
Sean
I know.

43:08.21
Andrew
i thought I thought you meant like, because how many clients does miscreants have now, roughly?

43:08.47
Sean
I know.

43:15.57
Andrew
Or do you not want to say that publicly?

43:17.80
Sean
I don't want to say publicly, but I also don't have a number. i don't know. literally do not. Like 20 plus? some

43:27.01
Sean
Somewhere in the range of between 10 to 30 is what I can tell you.

43:29.85
Andrew
Okay.

43:30.81
Sean
15 to 30. id Yeah, I wish I could tell you what the number was. i cannot remember. We have like five starting next week or something like that. It's insane at the moment.

43:41.35
Sean
Yeah.

43:44.55
Sean
uh but yeah anyway all the back end went all the back ends went down which sucks because a bunch of these like there's a bunch of last like you know final touches to do beat right so that they could launch per black hat and it got pushed all the way to the last minute because And then everyone's, you know, we had a really nice cascading timeline of like, we're going to launch this and this and this, and all just got compressed into two days while scrambling to get it, make sure that was good. So that was exciting.

44:16.68
Sean
I

44:18.54
Sean
yeah but don't know. That's it. and That's life at the moment. Yeah.

44:27.29
Sean
Let's.

44:27.54
Andrew
What's the... So, I mean, right now...

44:31.66
Andrew
You all are hiring an EA and just basically hiring a lot to try to keep up with the all the work and flow, yeah? Like, that's kind of like...

44:40.33
Sean
Well, let me, let me, let me be very clear. We have not hired anyone. so We're trying to hire, but sorry, let me take us another step back. We are, we are thinking about trying to hire, like there's been no job openings that we've like sent out. We have like a JD that we've written.

45:00.73
Sean
Yeah, that's it. Like so much of the time is but like so much of my time and JJ's time is in contracts and, and sales at the moment. And then also like project management and making sure we're delivering something like closing some projects out.

45:13.07
Sean
Uh, that we just literally have not had time to sit down and even figure out, but hopefully in a week from now, we would be like hiring hardcore for Webflow people.

45:18.38
Andrew
Damn.

45:27.50
Sean
and,

45:26.78
Andrew
And I mean, do you need to hire like a salesperson? Like, do you need to hire like another project manager? I know you just brought on a PM, but like, do you need another one?

45:36.56
Sean
We'll see. We'll see. i don't know. I have no idea. um idea. um Yeah. The worst part is like, you know, holidays and stuff are coming up.

45:48.94
Sean
So, and also it's like last bits of, of summer where people are taking off.

45:49.49
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

45:54.21
Sean
Like, I don't think we're, I don't think we're going to have more than two or three weeks for the rest of the year where everyone is completely in.

46:02.48
Andrew
You've got the full team.

46:03.92
Sean
Yeah.

46:04.79
Andrew
Yeah.

46:05.70
Sean
which is cool, you know, and like taking a us step back from it's, it's kind of nice.

46:11.16
Sean
Yeah, we'll see how much we end up doing by the end of the year. But fingers crossed is that we double what we did last year. um um Yeah.

46:19.14
Andrew
That would be incredible. There aren't many agencies that grow 2x year over year.

46:26.24
Sean
Agreed. Agreed.

46:27.46
Andrew
That's like pretty rare for agency growth.

46:30.17
Sean
Agreed. Yeah.

46:31.58
Andrew
Is there like, who are your biggest competitors these days? Is there anyone else in the space that's like really a direct competitor?

46:40.98
Sean
i guess it depends on what you mean by direct competitor are there any other agencies that focus on just cyber and are primarily a web flow shop and then like cover the service like actually just between those two i literally don't think that exists like there are there other web agencies in this space uh

46:47.12
Andrew
Yes, that's what I mean.

47:01.58
Sean
Yes, but I think one's more focused on Framer and the other's put more focused on WordPress. The one that's focused on Framer is mostly a product design agency who started to do more Framer sites. I'm not

47:12.74
Andrew
Who's that?

47:15.32
Sean
not going to stay on the call. I'll tell you later.

47:16.74
Andrew
What?

47:17.42
Sean
I'll tell you later.

47:20.02
Andrew
They're not as good as you, so shut them out. Who cares?

47:23.05
Sean
No, I'll tell you off the call.

47:24.90
Andrew
I'll tell you all of Metamonster's competitors and crits competitors back in the day.

47:30.34
Sean
You know what was what was a valid miscreants competitor? Crit was a valid miscreants competitor.

47:35.94
Andrew
No, we weren't. We only, because we only did product. We didn't really touch web. Like, we've referred as much web stuff to you guys as we could.

47:43.20
Sean
i was just trying to gas you up for what it's worth. um um now i'll give you i'll give you a full list of our of our there are there are folks in the space for what it's worth but but i don't think anyone covers just like design and webflow for cyber security so i think we're riding the rocket ship

47:58.24
Andrew
you Do you look at yourselves as like primarily a Webflow shop? Like, that's the core?

48:04.21
Sean
at the like at this point yes

48:06.89
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

48:08.28
Sean
Yeah, like I think at this point we pretty much just say we're primarily Webflow. Like what we'll extend, you know, like for example, this is, this project's in like Hugo and stuff, but like the budget is, makes it worth it

48:20.55
Andrew
Yeah. But I mean, like, um um like i always think of you all as, like,

48:27.28
Andrew
brand and web design.

48:29.02
Sean
Yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry.

48:30.06
Andrew
Like, that's...

48:30.48
Sean
we don't We don't want to be, actually, for what it's worth. That's also a conversation we have about development. Like, like we should we probably should be doing more HubSpot dev. We probably should be doing more, like, framer and stuff.

48:41.83
Sean
I probably will not not not, yeah, I probably will not touch WordPress ever again.

48:45.88
Andrew
Yeah. Do you agree that, like, your core competencies are brand and web design, though?

48:50.63
Sean
Yeah, and I would say, like, motion is probably the next part.

48:51.54
Andrew
Yeah?

48:53.96
Andrew
Yeah.

48:54.51
Sean
Yeah.

48:55.13
Andrew
I sort of lump motion into a web.

48:58.30
Sean
Yeah, yeah, it's probably like be under the umbrella of both like a little bit of it in brand and a little bit in web as well. But yeah, normally our motion work is for web anyway. So yeah, I think we're primarily like a brand. and I mean, that's what i tell all the sales calls people.

49:13.70
Sean
Like our bread and butter is brand and web. Yeah.

49:17.64
Andrew
Yeah.

49:18.01
Sean
Mm-hmm.

49:20.69
Andrew
But then you all also do some product and some like some advertising and like.

49:27.63
Sean
We do some product. um um I think the more we want to go upstream to like Enterprise or Series c I think Random Web becomes a non-starter, right?

49:33.99
Andrew
Mm

49:36.35
Sean
No one's like making that commitment super early on with us. So what they're looking for is more campaign based work where

49:42.77
Andrew
hmm. Mm

49:43.09
Sean
Like we take their brand extended into something that and fits for an audience and then build like landing pages for it. So like the core competency is still transferred.

49:50.46
Andrew
hmm.

49:51.69
Sean
Like it's still a transferable skill. It's just, there's an extra layer of marketing strategy strategy versus like a lot of launch support. So, yeah.

50:00.87
Andrew
But you all aren't doing as much like demand gin and stuff these days.

50:05.75
Sean
yeah, it's limited. It's like, because, because it's just me.

50:07.30
Andrew
Yeah.

50:08.45
Sean
So it's like me with up to like three clients that I can support with demand gen work. And then otherwise a lot of it is creative support, like creative stuff.

50:19.20
Andrew
Yeah.

50:19.32
Sean
Yeah.

50:20.55
Andrew
How much do you lump like swag apparel and like booths and stuff under brand, or do you all not really touch that stuff?

50:27.45
Sean
Yeah. No, we do, we do all that in underbrand.

50:31.47
Andrew
Yeah.

50:32.12
Sean
Yeah.

50:32.57
Andrew
I mean, I figured your apparel and stuff is still like a core competency.

50:37.05
Sean
Yeah, yeah. i think I think like merchandise and like, I think like merchandise and field events as a like support for those as a way for you to build awareness awareness um and like ah like ah get attention at booths, I think is has just always been a core competency of ours.

50:46.73
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

50:53.55
Andrew
Yeah.

50:53.60
Sean
I think it's honestly, it's what I started like miscreants off of. So

50:58.93
Andrew
Yeah. I mean, it I still feel like that's like kind of one of your core growth channels is just, yeah.

51:05.75
Sean
yeah.

51:07.95
Sean
Yeah, I met the CISO of legendary like motion pictures hu because gave him a t-shirt not knowing who he was. Cool.

51:16.18
Andrew
Yeah, that's cool.

51:18.40
Sean
Do you have to run?

51:19.48
Andrew
It's pretty fun.

51:22.02
Sean
Do you have hard stop?

51:24.22
Andrew
Oh, I do. Yeah.

51:25.10
Sean
Yeah.

51:25.61
Andrew
Someone's going to need the call booth.

51:27.26
Sean
Okay.

51:27.42
Andrew
All right, man. Well, um um feels good to be back. Hopefully we'll get back in a rhythm and and start doing these and have ah ah some interesting updates to talk about as maybe I'll, you know, get another customer for Metamonster by the end of the year.

51:34.49
Sean
Cool.

51:44.08
Sean
Hell yeah. We're coming to season four. We're calling it season four.

51:48.91
Andrew
I guess we can.

51:50.01
Sean
Cool. We're calling it season four. Love it.

51:51.90
Andrew
All right, fine.

51:52.72
Sean
Season four, baby.

51:54.20
Andrew
Feels silly, but whatever.

51:57.05
Sean
Cool. I'll see you later. Enjoy later.

51:58.42
Andrew
All right, man.

51:59.10
Sean
Bye.

51:59.96
Andrew
Later.