How much inbound is TOO much inbound?

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

Sean is exhausted because he has so many inbound emails from prospective clients he doesn't have time to answer them all. Meanwhile, Andrew is trying to buckle down and get Stripe built into ChartJuice so he can start advertising and collecting payments. Sean and Andrew talk about how the consulting project is going, and Sean has to rain Andrew in as he contemplates repositioning ChartJuice again. As a bonus, find out how fast Andrew can run a mile and why he needs to run faster.

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/
• StackWise: Coming soon...
• FigTree: Coming soon...

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

Transcript:
00:00.90

Andrew

What's up, friend?

00:00.81

Sean

Not so much. How are you?

00:04.17

Andrew

Good, we haven't talked other than Slack in like two weeks.

00:07.87

Sean

Yeah. You've been traveling.

00:11.38

Andrew

Yeah.

00:11.84

Sean

How have your trips been multiple?

00:14.99

Andrew

um Montana is fucking beautiful. Oh my god. um Glacier in particular is stunning. Was there for a friend's wedding. um And then I think right before that, my sister was in town visiting. Have we talked since then? I can't remember.

00:34.15

Sean

we talked i think i think the last time we talked was the day you i think you went to pick up your sister from the airport or yeah something like that yeah yes

00:42.08

Andrew

Okay. Cool. Cool. Yeah. So, okay. Great. Time makes no sense, but that was the week before. And then there was a week. I think. I don't know. Anyway, my sister came to visit. That was a blast. It was great to see her. Got to meet her new boyfriend. So that was fun. And then went to Glacier for one of my best friend's weddings. His name is Alex. His now wife's name is also Alex. So that was very entertaining.

01:15.17

Andrew

um We love her. We've known her for a long time. It's kind of the novelty is kind of worn off, to be honest, but but she is taking his name.

01:21.51

Sean

Got it.

01:24.95

Andrew

So they are going to be Alex Drake and Alex Drake, which is like absurd. Um, but we did a lot of hiking, did some white water rafting. Um, I saw, uh, mountain goats and big horn sheep. Um, and yeah, Glacier is just absolutely stunning. I, it reminded me that like, there's so much of this country that I have not seen that I want to see. Um, so I think next year I might. Maddie and I might make it a point to do like some sort of national park road trip or something, but we'll see.

02:04.04

Sean

nice um i've always dreamed of just going and like driving to go cross-country trip in either like an rv or just with multiple motels and just driving around and staying like a like 52 weeks in 50 52 weeks in 52 states something like that and then you're right sorry it's been a long it's been a long since you've been gone it's been a war zone here

02:18.26

Andrew

There are 50 states, but

02:31.01

Andrew

Oh no, what's happening? Why are you so tired?

02:36.01

Sean

um i count california as two states just for the record and porta rico just just before but i'm not yeah i am not smarter than a fifth grader for what it's worth so um anyway uh i don't know just like you

02:43.80

Andrew

Puerto Rico should be a state, but yeah.

02:55.44

Sean

and You know that thing where they're like, you'll know when you have product market fixed or bang on your door. It's like, have feeling like you have service market fit and people are banging on my door and we say yes to things. and We say no to some things, but like whenever, you know, just, we have a lot of clients and I don't have, we have.

03:12.22

Andrew

I understand.

03:17.00

Sean

Barely amount the amount of people to get all of it done with all the things that are going on.

03:20.77

Andrew

Yeah.

03:23.63

Sean

um um

03:26.14

Andrew

So you're in, you're fully in one of the agency peaks where there's just like too much work and you're happy that there's too much work.

03:34.68

Sean

Yeah.

03:36.60

Andrew

So you're finally not stressed about like paying the bills and making ends meet, but instead that's replaced with doing the work and making sure the work is done to a high standard because, you know, when there's lots of work to go around, it's easy for things to slip through the cracks and yeah.

03:42.32

Sean

Right.

03:49.41

Sean

Yeah. Yeah.

03:52.74

Sean

Yeah. But there's more money in our bank account than ever.

03:54.51

Andrew

Yeah.

03:56.04

Sean

So, you know, that's, that's really cool.

03:59.49

Andrew

Yeah, it really is.

03:59.93

Sean

Um, yeah.

04:00.84

Andrew

This is the thing about agencies is it does feel like you're always trading one type of stress for another. It's either you're like, fuck, I need to find clients. Or it's like, fuck, I need to get this work done for clients. um

04:13.50

Sean

Yeah. I do really think like,

04:18.39

Sean

Like I think I think creative agencies also like creative service providers are also an extra level of like because it's objectives right it's not like I have a friend who runs an MSP or an it's MSP sort of shop, but it's very like those that sort of work is very like oh you get the green checkmark because because the scanner no longer detects an issue so you're good, it's good to go.

04:41.89

Andrew

Yeah, the flip side is like people don't usually call us in the middle of the night because they're like design got hacked into.

04:41.82

Sean

you can like

04:48.71

Sean

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

04:50.45

Andrew

So that's, that's like, Oh yeah, that's.

04:50.52

Sean

We do manage websites. We do. Weflo did go down the other day, and that was my nice slide blew the fuck up.

04:54.91

Andrew

hu