The episode, in writing
by Richard Lovatt · from the episode above, checked against what was said
I'm back, and just when you thought your onboarding process was absolutely spot on and there couldn't possibly be something else to add or make easier, one of the people who joined pointed out something to me, a tutorial of me going through the actual onboarding process itself. I was like, how did I not think of that? But here we are.
So, as you can see on my screen, we have the simulation device. I'm going to log in here for you, and I'm going to walk you through, literally, from downloading the app or being on the web app itself, logging in online. This is what you're going to see, and I'm going to add this to YouTube.
This is the first page you're going to see, and I tried to make it systematic. You're going to go through in sections and feel like you're completing things. So really, really simple, you're just going to give us your name, your company, project, or brand. That's the name of your series. What are you documenting. Then your website. With these things you don't have to do it, it's optional, as it says, but I would recommend giving it as much as you can in terms of information, because Underway can be very, very intuitive and clever, and it only becomes clever because you connect it to the things that you work with every day. The basics are connecting it to your website, so it can read it, scan it, understand the issues that you solve, understand your marketing message, your brand, your fonts, your colours, et cetera. How do you see yourself making this, whether you want to be on camera mostly, your voice mostly, or a bit of both. For me, it's mostly on camera. And then we save.
Step one is saved, and now you can see at the top we've got a bit of a brand card. It pulled through my branding colours, and it will for yours. It'll have your goal on there, made with Underway.
Now we're going to go through a marketing brief, and this is more so to give the AI co-host, who you're going to chat with on your first episode, a foundation of knowledge, and from here onwards it builds on this foundation. It knows who you are, what you do, where you're at right now, what your goals are, what moves you, what drives you, your branding message, your marketing message. And from there everything you record builds on it. It's like your personal assistant, your executive assistant with you all the time. That's how good it is.
Now we're going to enter these. Again, this is optional. If you're brand new and you've only just opened these, it's not going to read much, there's not much context to get there, but I would still do it because it will have it. You're going to have to do it at some point anyway. And if you set this up properly and you want to do it properly, I would recommend you take a few minutes to do this. So you tick that there, and then we want to save and continue.
Then we're going to get asked again. This is really going to come down to similar to the social media profiles. If you haven't connected your Google Search Console, you're not pulling in data from that, but you can still just connect it, you can still set it up, or you can do it later. That's because you're going to set a baseline for your domain, and we're going to start to see what you're ranking for, how much traffic, what keywords we're ranking for, and so on. Then this Google Analytics comes up, kind of similar, and we want to see a baseline of visitors, how many people we attract. Then we can measure that, we can track milestones, and Underway is then going to know you've just passed ten thousand visitors, let's record a moment of how you feel.
So now it's writing the marketing brief. You can see it actually working here. It's reading your website, looking at what else people turn to, your competitors, you might not even know who they are right now, but this is going to help you. It's reading where you post and your Google connections, writing you a brief. Three of four done, and we can see it here, writing who it's for, your positioning, your messaging, where to spend the effort, and your next thirty days. You don't have to wait here, because at the bottom, number five is your marketing brief, so we can go next and see how it works whilst it works in the background.
Step two is where I've designed this for anyone who's really new to take some time to look around. You've got a few options here. You've got show me around my app, which is one of those where a few stops come over your own tab. I personally hate these things, but I think they're needed for some people. It will take you on a tutorial around the app, show you, hey, this is this button, it'll have a big tab above it and explain what this is, then you'll click next, and it'll walk you through it in that way. I personally don't like those things, I like to just go around myself.
Then you've got look around a real account. This is actually looking around a mirrored version of mine. So as you can see, it's my account now, and you'll see what an account looks like that's mature, that has loads of episodes, that has all of the features you might want to look at. You can click show me around or just look. With show me around, you'll be able to speak to an AI co-host, it will jump in on your screen, say hello, know where you are, what page you're on, and start to explain things on the screen. They'll say, hey, do you want to look around, and if you want me, just shout. Or they'll show you around and say, click up here, I'll explain this, click on today, this is what this does, now click on contacts, this is what this does.
As you can see on mine, you've got your progress, people following you, what's worth doing now. Should the first message lead on loss, is the priority now paid acquisition. It's just asking me things that I need to get answered and done. I can click on context and see where I'm connected to, I can click on vault and see all my episodes here, and so on. Once we've had enough looking around, we're done.
Then we've got watch the welcome film, if we want to watch an animated guy talk about what you're seeing and what you're going to do. So you've got a few options there, and I did all three, because everyone enjoys learning in a different way. Maybe you could say it's overkill. I personally think looking around the real account and having the AI person jump in and walk you around is really well done.
Then it's connect what you already use. This is Underway's brain. This is where you connect the things that you use daily, whether it's GitHub, your email, your calendar, your Zoom, your Fathom, or your social profiles. It might take you literally a few seconds to connect each one, but I do recommend that you take some time to do this properly, because if you want this to be like your executive assistant who just knows everything you do and asks you the best questions and helps you create the best content, this is really where you put in a bit of effort. You go through this, you connect each one. There's loads of different ones here, you can recognise them and click, and it pulls in. There's also search, I can search pay, and then I've got Stripe, Wop, et cetera.
So your marketing brief is now finished, and I can read it over and correct it or take it out. In one line, Underway reads your working day, interviews you out loud about it, and hands back a finished short video or podcast episode numbered like a show. Spot on. What it is, building public app for people making something, it connects to the tools you work in, asks you a question out loud. Spot on. Who's it for, online or small business maker, shop, CEO. Spot on. The problem it solves, everyone needs to keep a record of building their business, the bank pays, you edit, the fear prints well, so episode none ever exists. What they do instead, who else they look at, they've got it spot on. Where it stands apart, Underway is the only build in public tool that reads your actual day and turns talking about it into a finished episode. Every time I go through something like this I'm thinking, that's really good.
At the bottom we've got things only you can answer. Episode zero may ask about these in its own words, take out any you'd rather it didn't. Which group should the marketing lead with, software founders or small business making something, I'm fine to be asked that. Should the private vault and stealth recording be the opening message or the no editing promise, I don't really know that, so we've clicked don't ask this. Is the founder's own series the main marketing channel or proof point beside it, I think that's a good point to talk about. It didn't read these, so search console and analytics, we skip those.
And now we're on to episode zero. This, for me, is the foundation, and it says right here, a private chat with your co-host, the AI co-host, the foundation for everything after it, what you're building and your goals. You get up to ten minutes. The main message I have here with episode zero is you don't have to be worried about how it's going to come out, you don't have to be worried about confidential things. This is all private, everything that happens on this app is private until you choose to publish.
I had a founder yesterday who did episode zero, and the AI co-host, because I'm not in control of them, asked a question maybe about numbers, actual figures, and the guy emailed me and said, we don't talk about those kind of numbers online. My message is, that's fine, you can choose not to put that out, this can just stay private. Episode zero isn't really about creating something perfect, it's about giving the co-host as much info as possible as that foundation. So it's got your marketing brief, your message, your problem you solve, your customers, your competitors, and then you've got episode zero on top where you're just talking about it, just like a normal conversation talking to your friend. For me, that's you done with the foundation, and episode one is then a bit more tactical.
I can click start episode zero or practice, and I put practice here because sometimes people get here and they're like, ooh, this is all really good, but I'm not ready yet. Well, cool, have a practice, just talk to it, see what it's like and how it functions. You can even put not ready yet and go to today. Then it finishes that whole setup, and it comes to today.
We've still got start episode zero, I can watch how Underway works, and it'll say what to film here, and this'll build up as you film, as you record more things. It was loading, it was reading the brief. So now we've got left open, software founders or any small maker, your own brief leaves the lead audience undecided and the answer changes every page, so I can actually click that and answer it myself. Card at sign up, nothing until day fifteen, nine objections answered on film. These are things and ideas from your setup for after episode zero.
I can look around, click in context, then add and connect more tools if I want, GitHub, Fathom, Stripe, Plausible, there's so many things in here, WhatsApp, Slack, LinkedIn, Upwork, it's all there. The vault is where all the episodes will go, and account. There's lots of things in account, like setting up your series, you'll see some of the questions here we saw before that we can change if we want, the interviewer's voice, who you want to speak to each time, your episode label and how it looks. There's so many things, connections, account, rhythm, it's kind of like when it asks each day, how the day is read, what the questions use.
This is a really cool one, you've got the ability of the director, which is the internal AI system. The director's going to choose what is worth an episode, what's going to be entertaining, it's going to read everything you're doing each day as it pulls through your meetings, your transcripts, your GitHub, and it's going to put it all together and come up with an episode that'd be good. I keep the director on because it's intuitive, but you can also do it manually and choose me, every time you want to record an episode, you can click on me, look at the things you've done each day, there's a list there, and you can choose one of them and go manual.
There's brand, you can set up your brand, there's so many things there, but this video isn't really about that. So I think we're good today. Hopefully that was very helpful, it was a bit longer than expected, but getting started on Underway. Finito.