We're so back

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

Andrew and Sean are back for Season 2! In Season 2 they'll get transparent about the highs and lows of building their businesses (with plenty of goofing around too). Same concept, new businesses.

In this episode we recap WHERE THE HELL WE'VE BEEN FOR TWO YEARS. Plus we talk about the projects we're working on now, how to market and validate Andrew's new startup, and Sean's search for founder friends.

Links:

• Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins
• Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/
• ChartJuice: https://www.chartjuice.com/
• Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun
• Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/

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

Transcript:

00:00.73
Sean
All right? don't scream this time. Maybe I'll cut that front part out. Um, okay, take 4 episode 1 season 2 small efforts like no see oh yeah, me too.

00:11.35
Andrew
Ah, but what's up man Glad to be back. Ah back on the pod with you.

00:18.76
Sean
Too I'm excited to be doing this again. It's been a fun 6 ones of a dry run. Um, so ah.

00:22.92
Andrew
It wouldn't be us if we didn't record for six months and then finally describe decide to scrap all of those recordings and just say fuck it. Let's go live or as close to live as we can get.

00:32.53
Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's literally how I've built the michigans website every single iteration actually I spent months on it and then I'm like fuck. And I just do it in the black in my hotel room right? before blackhead starts in a day like yeah, good enough I don't care if it's not perfect. Um, what's been going on. Why have we disappeared what happened you know what happened to season 1 I'm sure everyone wants to know.

01:02.54
Andrew
Ah, yeah, um, yeah, it's been 2 years almost to the day like pretty close to it. So um, we were running the podcast before and had set it up in a way to be like.

01:05.75
Sean
Our 11 listeners.

01:22.00
Andrew
Fairly highly highly produced and um in a way that required as little involvement from us after recording as possible so we had an awesome producer and an editing team who would take care of everything for us. Um, but that also meant it was. A little bit expensive to create um and then I went and sold my business and that meant that half of our funding disappeared. So I sold crit almost two years ago exactly um, sold the company to.

01:47.45
Sean
Hell yeah, a girl. Yeah, he did.

01:58.77
Andrew
Of our longtime clients grayyno which was an awesome experience. I still haven't really written about the experience of going through this sale process. It might be hard to do now I've I'm sure I've already forgotten a lot. Um, but it was it was a really. Really fascinating experience to go through I think our sale was really pretty easy and pretty fast compared to a lot of people because we already knew each other really well um, and structured it in a way that that due diligence was pretty simple. So um, yeah, sold crit two years ago

02:23.90
Sean
A 5

02:36.57
Andrew
Then went to work at graynoy for a year um so learned a ton in that time about security and technology and what it's like to be part of a larger team as hilarious as it is a 50 person team is like by far the biggest team I'd ever been a part of.

02:53.75
Sean
Yeah.

02:55.78
Andrew
Um, and ah learned about management and it was like a year of speed learning. Um, it was really interesting. Had a lot of fun. Um, and then ultimately got fired which was kind of. Ah, shock and kind of not a shock. Um, ultimately I think it just wasn't as good a fit on either side as either of us were were hoping for um, still have a ton of friends there and still am rooting for them all to be successful. Um, you know it's funny I've mentioned that I got fired to. Entrepreneur friends and to like non-onpreneur friends and non-onreneur friends are generally like oh my god are you? okay like what's ah, what's wrong. What can I do to help and then all my entrepreneur friends are like yeah I kind of expected that we're just ah.

03:46.18
Sean
Yeah, yeah, it makes sense.

03:52.10
Andrew
I Guess once you're like an entrepreneur through in through you kind of become unhireable but not in the way you thought just unhireable in the sense that like you become a bad employee or don't want to don't want to work for anyone? Um, so um.

03:56.64
Sean
Um, yeah, yeah.

04:00.33
Sean
Yeah, yeah.

04:10.71
Andrew
Yeah, shocking and not a shock. Um, but ultimately like 2 really good things came out of bad experience which were um one when I was at crit my fear. The thing that kept me up at night. Was often this idea of like what if our clients all disappear and we run out of money and we have to lay off the entire team that was like the failure mode that that was constantly eating away at me constantly like this pit of stress in the middle of my stomach. Um, and then once I sold the company and joined grey noise. Thought that fear would go away. It didn't it just morphed and the new fear. The new failure mode was what if I get fired. Um, and so when I ultimately did it was this kind of positive forcing function to face this deep fear of failure that I had. Um, and you know went through it and was like oh shit I'm okay and the people around me don't actually think any worse of me. In fact, they all are being super supportive and kind and like are very understanding and and then I had time to make a podcast to get.

05:20.70
Sean
So yeah, and then you had time to do a podcast again. So it's been great.

05:28.17
Andrew
Um, and and that actually was the second positive thing. So the the second really positive thing was that it gave me the nudge to take a long extended sabbatical. Um, so after that I went and fulfilled a lifelong dream and walked across Spain on the camino de santiago. Um. Spent two months over in Europe um, that was incredible I've written about that on my on my website a little bithitteraskins dot com um, and then I I came back from that and had time to sit down and just think about what I really wanted to do and um. Decided that I wanted to get back into startups and wanted to try to build a new product and do do it the way that I had always wanted to do it which was bootstrapped calm slow growth. Um, and ah, you know, but do something that. You know, high margin. Um, try to basically build my perfect job. My dream job my my dream business. Um, so I started working on ad at the beginning of this year worked with a partner for a little while who um, ultimately had to step away for some personal reasons. Um. Which then launched me into the process of learning to code again which has been really cool. Um, kind of surprised myself with how much I have enjoyed that and liked that. Um and so that was a few months ago that I I started learning to code and and building the product.

07:05.74
Andrew
Myself and I'm now ah at a point where I've got a functional prototype and I'm you know probably going to be launching in a week or 2 probably 2 two weeks would be my guess. So um, yeah.

07:19.46
Sean
I Hell yeah.

07:24.27
Andrew
Last time we recorded I was running an agency and now I am getting ready to launch a new Saas company. So yeah, and so now that's ah now we're on season 2 Um, so yeah, tell me tell me ah tell me and tell our 3 listeners.

07:29.51
Sean
Yeah, act...