The episode, in writing
by Richard Lovatt · from the episode above, checked against what was said
Everyone talks about MVP, minimum viable product, create something that's generally just simple and works and then expand based on what people want. I get it. I get it. But I'm just adding stuff all the time. It is addictive. And I'm doing it because I'm waiting on a few people, a couple of companies, in terms of ads. I'm going to use X and I'm going to use Facebook ads. I've just onboarded with a company, and while I'm waiting on that onboarding and setup, it's like well, I've got to do something every day. So I'm talking about those today.
The email forwarding setup that we have on the Connections tab. There's so many connections now. Slack, I've connected. WhatsApp I have connected. Inbox, this is what you were sent. So instead of it reading your actual Gmail inbox, which cost me a hell of a lot of money to do, you can set up, I'm using Grokbot, a way of Grokbot basically forwarding any emails about Underway to this forwarding address that Underway gives you. So now all of these emails come through as context and help create episode topics.
One of them is about a guy I'm speaking to at X, who I'm speaking to tomorrow on a strategy call to get the first ads out there. You can see Meta have notified me of changing my account from utility to marketing. That's the WhatsApp Underway account. WhatsApp messages you promptly, and it sends you certain messages, and then Meta will decide whether that's a marketing bot or a utility bot. I'm trying to stay on the utility side because it doesn't charge me as much, but it thinks I'm marketing. So, going to war.
Rich forwarded himself an IPO notice on international trademark application. My international trademark application was accepted, and it moves to the next stage.
The two things I'm onboarding with are X, to get the ads out, because I know my audience is there, X is heavily utilized for founders, I think it'll do well, and you've got to try it. And also Meta, because it's the widest, the largest amount of volume, especially in the US. I'm onboarding with Graft, which is run by Cody Schneider. Really cool guy. I've been watching and looking at his content for a long time, so it warmed me up through the year, and ended up I just onboarded, and that sale became so easy for his company because I'd been warmed up. I hope that kind of thing works with this company as well. I think it will. He was on the onboarding call and we spoke, I was late, felt really bad.
So that's going to get up in a minute. We're going in different places, small budget, just get the message out there, get Underway out to the masses. People say it's a good idea, but I know it is, and that doesn't matter until you've got distribution, people using it, giving you feedback. I'm not scared of that.
Here's my Slack. The Underway bot here comes into my DMs, it's been improved, we've gone back and forth, it's a bit more clear now, it's condensed, you can go back and ask it to tell me more, it'll nudge you and say something shipped since your last episode, gives you all those things and it keeps nudging you. It's in your DMs, it shouldn't be too annoying, but you can go back and forth and talk to it like a human in that sense.
Here's the Underway WhatsApp bot. It's gone through a few changes, how it started was all over the place, didn't really make sense, talked about costs and stuff, so we're still playing around with it, but I think we're getting closer. If you spend a lot of time in WhatsApp it might fit right in, a bit more intuitive. Gmail asks you to confirm forwarding before it will send anything, confirm it on your account under your inbox. It's still clever, it's still figuring out, seeing little things that get pushed, you don't even have to answer it, it's all helpful at the end of the day. You don't have to use this, it's just there as a choice.
I think that's enough for today. I'm just trying to do one a day. I'm just trying to be consistent because I think algorithms nowadays reward you for it. I feel good that it's enabling me to be consistent. And I'm proud of the twenty one days that I have done, even though I've got no customers. Maybe in a year's time, when I've been so consistent, I look back, I can see this type of video and be like, yeah, look, it was definitely worth it. And other founders just need to follow in these steps.