Transcript 0:00 Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Honey and Hustle. Today, I am sharing the recording from my Substack Live with Daniel Hunter, who is the founder of Indie Thinkers. 0:12 Indie Thinkers is kind of like a sister platform to Indie Hackers, and it's for people who are writing and sharing ideas with words. 0:20 I've really been enjoying doing Substack Live sessions this year, and I really would love it if you guys join me in a future Substack Live. 0:28 If you're unfamiliar with when they're happening, subscribe to our newsletter, Please Hustle Responsibly, to get notified in advance of each time I'll be going live. 0:37 I've gone live with Daniel, I've gone live with some other friends, and who knows? We may do a special Q&A episode in the future. But for now, let's dig into this conversation with Daniel Hunter. 0:48 [upbeat music] I think it might be helpful to just start out with maybe a quick origin story. I love the name of your publication, 1:05 Please Hustle Responsibly. I think it's brilliant. I'm big on names. I think names are incredibly important. And so yeah, maybe take us back to, I think you, you said you started this in 2023. 1:20 Maybe take us back to that year. Why did you start the newsletter, and what do you hope to see for the rest of this year, in 2025? I didn't immediately start a newsletter in 2023. Okay. 1:35 I was like, "What is the lowest lift version of this that I can do to try to hone in on a format or a writing style that I think I could be consistent with?" So I actually started by posting on Medium, 1:49 and that just felt super easy. I didn't have to really think of a publication name. I could post whatever, and two people would read it, and I'd be like, "Great." [laughs] That was the beauty of it. 2:01 I didn't want a lot of people seeing it. 2:03 I wanted to be able to have the space to just get used to hitting publish, writing something, putting it out there, seeing how I liked it, seeing how I felt about it in the wild, and reiterating and going from there. 2:17 So I did that for a couple of posts, and then I said, "Okay, I've had one person who's read this and decided to subscribe, so I can see one person's email out of the very small amount of people who are actually reading anyway." 2:30 [laughs] And I was like, "I would like more of that, actually. I would like more of a connection with the people that are reading, 2:37 and to have more of a conversation with them that doesn't feel connected to any one app", which is really stupid reason to go to Substack if we're being honest, but here we are. So [laughs] 2:50 in November, that's when I was like, "Okay, like, what's the name for this gonna be? I wanna start to make this transition", and I pulled in the post from Medium, which I hope nobody goes back to try to find. 3:01 They weren't that great anyway. But my podcast is called Honey and Hustle, and I wanted a name that would complement that. 3:09 And at the time, as you can probably tell by the name, I drank, and I was like, "What is a fun iteration of this?" 3:15 And I s- was just watching TV, as one does, and saw a commercial that ended with, "Please drink responsibly", and I was like, "What if we said, 'Please hustle responsibly'? What if we put a positive spin on that?" 3:27 So good, Angela. It's so good. It's one of those names where you're just like, "Man, I wish I would've [laughs] come up with that." It's brilliant. Yeah. I love it. I love it. 3:38 I should really do something to get a trademark, 'cause nobody else has thought... There is a podcast- Mm-hmm... 3:43 called Please, but I don't think they even put out more than, like, 10 episodes, so I wanna trademark it and take it back. [laughs] But- I think you could. I think you could. 3:50 I think you have enough evidence, enough body of work to challenge. [laughs] I hope so. I hope so. I own the domain, so either way, they can't take that. Damn, that's awesome. And so 4:01 you're working through Substack, and you, a while ago, decided to move over to Beehiiv and, which, you know, I'm not a Substack maximalist. I think Beehiiv is an incredible product. 4:14 I've used it in the past, and I've seen the video that you did, which I thought was phenomenal, which I'll share it with everyone, explaining your rationale and why you made the move. 4:24 But before we dig into that, I am curious, it appears you're using Substack more so like a replacement for Twitter, and I'm curious if you agree or disagree, and have you noticed other people operating in a similar way that you are? 4:40 I have. I would even say I use it in, as a healthier version of Twitter. When I first started writing daily online, I did start writing on Twitter. 4:50 This was in September of 2021, so we're talking almost four years ago now. Uh, and I did that, I think, almost daily on Twitter, maybe three years, so maybe into 2024. 5:03 So that was right at the pinnacle where I was like, we were all trying to see what was gonna happen with, like, Elon Musk when he bought it. Yeah. 5:09 And I stayed for a really long time until I was just like, "This just is not a great use of my time anymore." And so coming here, it was so much less about gamification. 5:19 When I was on Twitter, it was about writing to gain an audience, to gain traction, to gain whatever, conversions, all that. 5:28 With Substack notes, I don't feel any sort of pressure to write daily, to show up daily, to do 10 notes a day to gain 4,000 subscribers in 30 da- Like, I'm done playing that game. 5:41 And I think that is also just a testament to really putting a lot of effort into long form creativity. So yes, writing the newsletter multiple times a week like a maniac. Yes, doing a podcast. 5:54 Yes, trying to do a YouTube video when I have two seconds of time. Those, to me, at this point, are higher- Forms of return than writing a post on Substack Notes that's still only gonna be seen by a handful of people. 6:09 We're not chasing virality here. We're chasing community, and so that's why I choose to use Substack Notes. Yeah. I love that framing, a healthier version of Twitter. 6:21 I love that you can't see the number of followers you have, how many people someone is following. Twitter and traditional social media does create these components that incentivize certain behavior. 6:34 And so when you can see someone's follower count, right, when you're hovering over, uh, someone's avatar, it anchors their reply in your mind differently. 6:47 And you're like, "Oh," like, "This person is important, and so I should value what they said even more." And I love that stuff is stripped away from Substack, and I am curious to see the evolution of the app. 7:03 It's not really that fully functional across platforms. [laughs] They need to work on that. But I do 7:14 wonder, what does a world look like if Substack, if the application, the social media notes component is, like, as big as Twitter, right? Fast-forward a year maybe, and 7:25 are these lives, like, as fully featured on desktop? Can you, like, share your screen and, like, really engage an audience with a chat similar to how Twitter functions? And does that draw more people to Substack not to 7:42 manage a newsletter, but as a traditional social platform that doesn't have advertising, it doesn't have all these kind of calls to action to behave in a certain way? 7:53 A couple things about the app and maybe just my perspective on Substack as a whole. I genuinely believe that Substack has been successful on accident. I don't think they planned for any of this. 8:06 [laughs] So to say that they have plans for this app feels like a dream. [laughs] Let's just say that. [laughs] I think that... 8:14 And this, and that's the craziest thing is, like, some people just fail forward, and Substack as an app is just, like, a testament to that. 8:21 Like, I feel that if they really cared about creators, we wouldn't be asking if they're gonna do more about giving us more live capabilities on desktop. 8:30 We wouldn't be asking if they're gonna make the experience equal across Android and Apple. 8:35 We wouldn't be asking if they're gonna consider new ways to incorporate paywalls, like paying per article, having publication networks that are able to form. 8:46 Like, you can already add in guest writers and things like that. Why is it so hard? I don't know. I don't know. 8:52 But my thing about the Substack app is, again, like, the platform, even on desktop, because you can see notes on desktop, and I believe you can watch livestreams on desktop. You just can't go live on desktop. 9:04 You can now. They just released that last week, I believe. [laughs] Oh, that's lovely. That's lovely. 9:09 But it just feels the writers and the readers and the lovers of great reading have really taken over this, and they are making Substack Notes and Substack a place where people want to be as consumers and as creators, 'cause they're like, "Yo, I don't have to pay for this." 9:27 And while the little bestseller badge looks cute, it's very orange and bright, most people are never gonna have that. 9:34 And that's okay, because it decreases that hierarchy between the creator and the consumer, which I think a lot of people like. They like that this feels very unstructured. It feels very organic. 9:46 It feels very like, "Who am I gonna meet today? What positive little thing am I gonna read that's gonna just shake up my perspective?" And they love that, and I think they're gonna keep some version of that. 9:57 I did hear through a little birdie that they are looking to try to incorporate, like, an ad network in the way that Beehiiv has, and that's what they're raising their next round of capital to do, is to hire ad and sales team to come in and do that. 10:11 Will that flow over to the Notes app where a lot of people are spending their time? I have no idea, but we definitely will see that more in articles. There's that to consider, which I personally wouldn't be mad at. 10:25 I'm still gonna read. I don't care. And if ad-supported helps people to depend on the paywall less, who are we to, who are we to- Right... argue? [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. 10:36 That's where the biggest upside is from an economic perspective for them, right? It's, it makes too much sense. If you think about Packy McCormick, he has, I think last time I checked, over 250,000 subscribers. 10:48 He's not paying Substack anything because he doesn't have paid subscriptions on. He's making all of his money 10:55 via the newsletter through sponsors, and then he has his own fund on the side and a bunch of other stuff going on. But how much would he pay Beehiiv per month for that many subscribers? And so 11:07 it, it feels like they're missing out on a lot of money by not having this ad network, and it would be crazy if they don't roll that out within the next year or so. Yeah. I also think it's, 11:19 it was a bold proposition for them to assume that people would want to make 90-plus percent of their income from paid subscribers, and so I think they're facing the reckoning of that lack of reality for most writers. 11:33 [both laughing] So... Agreed. They're like, "Wait a second." Yeah. 11:41 And maybe companies like Beehiiv have put a fire underneath of them where they're realizing, like, "Oh, wait," like, "people value this, and we should maybe think twice about it." 11:50 I- What would be fascinating is if, what if, like, Beehiiv is, "We like Twitter," like, "we're cool with Twitter," but, you know, what if they're just like, "Why don't we create our own little notes platform? 12:02 And we're not gonna have this kind of, like, splashy launch. We'll just drop in and see what happens." Do you think other- Newsletter platforms like Kit and Beehiiv might feel compelled to get into the short-form game. 12:17 I'll be honest, I don't, and I think there's multiple reasons for that. 12:22 And this is also coming from me, like, being in the Beehiiv Slack channel and kind of seeing the conversations that, like, my friends are having that are on Kit and other newsletter hosting platforms. 12:33 I think one of the main hindrances to creating something like a Substack Notes is the moderation and the curation, right? None of us know how our Substack Notes feeds are curated. None of us do. 12:46 And Substack has already faced significant backlash over their unwillingness to, I don't know if censor is the right word, but address hate speech on the platform. 12:58 So you're adding another layer of complexity when you're asking a company that does one thing to now do five to 10 other things that really, on some level, don't really affect how they do their main thing, right? Like, 13:12 curating my Notes feed doesn't necessarily affect how my newsletter grows, in essence, right? 13:19 What I'm being rewarded for when I participate in Notes is the time spent on the app, and that is true for any platform, right? So I think there are some hindrances there. 13:30 I think there's also some concern about the stickiness and maybe the quality of people and subscribers and potential bots here on Substack that Beehiiv at present does not have to deal with because they're like, "When somebody subscribes, baby, that's between you and Gmail. 13:48 That ain't got nothing to do with me." [chuckles] Yeah. Yeah. Yep. We ain't got nothing to do with that. If you don't want the- More, more problems. Yes, correct. So I, I think they're just like, "Nah, we're good. 14:01 We really think we can make a better email hosting platform than Substack, bar none, and that's what we're gonna focus on." And I do think that they are doing a pretty decent job at that right now. Yeah. 14:13 Uh, I don't disagree. I do feel that ambition can get the best of anyone, and I know Tyler is very ambitious. I don't know him personally. But 14:32 if S- Substack, objectively, is growing like a weed, and it's gotta be hard to 14:44 have this competitor, like, growing at the rate that they're growing, having a lot of success with short-form, and not feel drawn to it a little bit. And I do wonder if 14:59 Substack does figure out this advertising play, and they raise at some stupid valuation that isn't deserving, right- [chuckles]... of, of like, their revenue, but they get it anyway. 15:12 Like, how does that influence other platforms? I hope Substack does change course, and I think the main way they will change course and listen to their, 15:28 I would say, I wanna say customers, 'cause I'm not paying them anything. Listen to their users, I should say, is competition, right? 15:35 So I maybe selfishly want Beehiiv or want other, some other thing to get into this space real way to push Substack to be better than they are currently. 15:47 I think it's actually, and I hate this, there's somebody on Substack who actually just wrote about this. 15:54 They wrote an article titled, "Maybe It Is All About the Money," but I think what's gonna push them is less about Substack Notes and more about how much money platforms are paying to creators. 16:04 Because I don't know if you've noticed- Hmm... 16:06 but every time that, like, Substack hits a new million number of people paying for publications, they're, like, bragging about it 'cause they're like, "Oh, we're paying out X amount of money to creators now." Yeah. 16:19 Beehiiv, "We're paying out X amount of money to creators now." Kit, "We're paying out X amount of money through paid recommendations to people now." YouTube, "We're paying out X..." You know what I mean? 16:31 All the bigger ones that have some sort of artist or creator payout are bragging about they wanna be the top one where people know, "I can come to this platform to make money." 16:41 And I think that is part of Substack's push into, "Oh, we can do ad... If Beehiiv is doing it, we can do it." Mm-hmm. 16:49 And I think Beehiiv is gonna continue to push them in that direction of thinking about, how can we satisfy creators? 16:56 And I'm hoping that results in better features for creators in a way that it [chuckles] historically has not. Um, [chuckles] so. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I wanna touch on community a little bit more. 17:08 How are you managing your community? What's hard? What feels like work? What would you like to improve with how you're running things, how you're engaging with your community? Yeah. A couple of things. 17:24 One, what's hard is not having the capacity to maybe do all of the things that I dream about. The main one being, like, this month, I'm definitely taking some time away from going to events to just 17:35 sit in one place, write, and not just write the newsletter, but also write, finish writing my first digital product, which is ironically titled Community OS, so community operating system. 17:48 I feel like in the model that is audience community products, I am slacking on the products end of things. Um- [chuckles]... so I probably need to focus on that if I want to continue to make this sustainable. 18:01 So- Don't we all? Don't we all? And then on the community side of things, like I just am always inspired by what other people are doing, and have had a lot of requests from within the community to do events. 18:13 I am an introvert's introvert. Like, it really takes a lot of- Energy for me to even go to events that I didn't create. 18:21 Putting in the time, energy, effort, money, of course, to create my own events for the community is something that I want, and I do feel like I have good ideas, but right now it's about capacity. 18:32 I do feel like I could be creating more unique moments for the community that I think would spark a lot of more engagement online, not just between me and the community, but between community members, which is always a key goal. 18:48 That feels difficult, but it feels promising. Like, it doesn't feel impossible. It feels like something that's achievable within the next 6 to 12 months. 18:56 It's just about potentially empowering some people within the community to help us create some of these events and not feeling like I have to do everything, 'cause that's the whole point of community. 19:06 What else feels hard? I think at times, I wrote about this, like, I had to cancel some of my presence at some events. I was just like, "I can't do this and do client work and write and do all these other things." 19:17 Like, I could spend less money to create more and be a little less stressed from traveling so much. So sometimes there, there are trade-offs. It's, you know, what can I really do well? 19:30 What experiences can I really give my best at? And if I can't show up my best in person, then I try not to. I try to, whatever I'm gonna do, just give my all in that. And so that, that was hard. 19:40 I really did wanna go to those events, but I just was not able to do that in a way that I felt like was gonna be meaningful. I think it's one thing to go to an... 19:48 I think it's another thing to maybe leverage that event to create an experience for people. So right now, because I'm not creating my own events, I do try to do something special for people when I go to events. 19:59 I think I did that really well at Podcast Movement Evolutions in Chicago. Mm. I created a poster/pamphlet that I gave away. Yeah. Had stickers. Attended a lot of meetups. Just had a really great time. 20:10 My, my goal is always, what can I do that makes people feel special, that surprises and delights people? And right, it's almost like I use events as, like, a testing ground for- Mm-hmm... 20:20 a certain thing, uh, that I might incorporate into my own live event. So that's what I'm struggling with now. [laughs] Yeah. I love that, man. I need to do more live events. 20:32 I was so jealous when I saw you went to that conference. I had no idea that was, it was happening, and it's something that I would love to do next year. I think you, you mentioned it's in San Diego. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. 20:49 So you're based in, in, in Durham, North Carolina, Bull City. I have some friends there. What is community like in, like, local events look like in North Carolina? What is it like being a creator in 21:05 maybe a part of the country that doesn't get a lot of love, not a lot, not enough attention, and maybe isn't a region that people think about when they think about the creator economy? Yeah. 21:17 So those are two different questions. Mm-hmm. So what does community feel like in Durham? Mm. It feels vibrant. It feels beautiful. It feels Black. It feels inclusive. I love that. 21:28 I think that is a large reason why it's been so intoxicating for me as a creative entrepreneur. Like, I really feel like, for me, it was a perfect environment for me to bloom as a creator. Mm. 21:40 Experience being a creator in Durham, it's almost like this understated experience, right? I meet people that are creators, but a lot of them are not creating original media. They are freelancers. 21:52 That is the predominant creator workforce in Durham. Mm. The other 10% are maybe in-house creators at universities and larger organizations that can afford in-house creators. 22:04 So a very big skew in freelance creativity and a small skew in-house creativity, not a big skew in, like, online creators. I know maybe one or two that are big online. So [laughs] it's just, it's just not our thing. 22:20 Yeah. But when you think about a New York, an Atlanta, a Chicago, an LA, probably a much bigger skew into original creators, right? 22:28 And then a, a smaller skew into freelancers that are working for other creators, and then a smaller chunk in, in, in in-house creativ- creators. 22:36 The skew is gonna look different, and that's the three buckets of creativity that I put people in. 22:40 And I'd even say in, like, your bigger cities in the South, when you think about a Nashville, a Charlotte, a Miami, I would say they probably skew more in-house creators. Yeah. 22:52 Maybe Birmingham as well a little bit, just because freelance in Birmingham does not pay. Like, they just, it just doesn't. Original media, 23:01 not really a thing, unless we're talking about the films that come to Birmingham to film. Mm. 23:06 So the piece of the pie is always different, so I try to give people that orientation when they say, "What's it like being a creator in the South?" It depends. It depends on what the industry is like there. 23:16 So for me, it's been great, I think because I didn't have any, like, perceived 23:23 competition, or even examples of original media when I lived in Durham from people that I knew personally or people that people knew personally. 23:32 It was a blessing and a curse that I didn't have expectations about what success looked like as an original media creator. And so I think I got to start messy and find my way and find my voice and find my style. Mm. 23:44 And I think that's the beauty of creativity. 23:46 I feel very blessed that my video podcast doesn't look like every other video podcast because now there is almost this, like, distinctive, prescriptive way to do an interview-style video podcast that I do not do or subscribe to, which is nice. 24:00 It feels good to be that differentiator, 'cause that also means I can iterate and try new things and be great. I feel very free and fluid in my creativity. 24:10 Like, I feel like every time I do something, I feel like I'm ahead of the curve on something, and that feels good. Even if I'm not perfect, that feels fine for me because by the time I get... close to perfect. 24:22 You'll still be catching up, and that's okay. Yeah. And I feel that way about my video podcast, I feel that way about my YouTube channel, I feel that way about my newsletter. And so that's been very nice. Yeah. 24:34 That's awesome. Okay. Angela, I could keep... 24:38 I have so many questions to get through, but I wanna pause and give you a chance to pepper me with any questions, or is there anything that you're curious about from my perspective? Yes. I am so glad you did that. 24:49 I knew about Indie Hackers when I was on Substack. That's how I think we came to know each other. And I've been, like, following your stuff and on Indie Hacker- Hacker's website a couple times. 24:58 I just made an account, so if you're watching, make an account on Indie Hackers, engage with the writing and the prompts, and ask questions. But I think 25:07 my biggest question right now, and again, this goes back to, like, really being on new forms of media and leveraging them for creative purposes, and that is vibe coding, which is a word that wasn't even in, like, my vocabulary pre-2025. 25:19 So it just shows you how fast tech is moving. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I started vibe coding because I had a lot of ideas and I was like, "I just need to see which ones stick." And some of them did not. 25:32 Let me just put that out there. Um, [both laughing] Some of them I was like, "This could be a PDF. I'm doing too much. This doesn't need to be this really big thing that I'm using AI for, and melting an iceberg for. 25:48 It's fine." But you learn, you learn. It's, we're learning. And then some things I was like, "Oh, I'm not doing enough. Like, I could really make something incredible." And that was the basis of Community OS. 26:00 That is the basis for the website that I'm building. I was really feeling limited as a web designer, web- website creator, if you will. And I've used almost all of them. 26:11 And I tried Webflow and I was like, "Yep, I've hit my max. I don't even know how to change the title on this thing. I cannot do this." Mm-hmm. And vibe coding just came about at the right time. 26:21 I was like, "I can make, I can make custom things," you said. So I would love to hear your perspective from being the code and prose guy, because the way you described it to me was like, 26:33 what you're writing into Bolt or Lovable or Cursor is the prose, what they're spitting back to you- Yes... is the code. And I thought that was an interesting way to think about that. Yeah. So yeah, so I got... So it's, 26:47 the publication I have in the site is Indie Thinkers, and then I got the inspiration from Indie Hackers. But you're good. It's, it's literally, I see Indie Thinkers as like a sister cities. 26:58 I would consider Indie Thinkers to be almost like that for Indie Hackers because, to your point about code and prose, Coraline Alan, MIT grad, brother from another mother, he started Indie Hackers years ago when you 27:14 either could go work at a venture-backed startup as a computer science grad, or maybe you could build your own bootstrap company and make a lot of money and not have to worry about investors, and you own the whole thing, right? 27:25 And then AI and ChatGPT comes along, and all these vibe coding tools hit the market, and it evolves into, if you are a clear thinker, and you can articulate your ideas through prose, you can do anything. 27:41 You can build software, you can design, you can run a marketing agency, you can optimize paid advertising. There's literally no limit to what you can build, especially as a creator, as a business of one. 27:56 And I think one of the more undervalued techniques is called meta prompting. And it's the idea of using these large language models to actually build the prompt that, that you feed into another tool. 28:09 So you could go to Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini and say, "Hey, generate a prompt based upon this idea I have for Community OS. Here's the idea I have for the website. Here's how I want to break things down." 28:24 Maybe you can upload a screenshot of inspiration from another site that you love, and then it can spit out a prompt that you would never be able to write yourself. 28:34 [laughs] Like, it would take you, like, forever to figure out the nuance of how to craft that prompt. And then you take that output and you go to Lovable, or you go to Replit, or you go to Bolt, and you dump that in. 28:50 And the... I'm telling you, Angela, the quality of the output is insane if you iterate in this way. And then y- and you don't stop there, right? 29:03 You get a result, and maybe you want to tweak some things or make a huge change, and you go back to another chat-like experience. You create another prompt. 29:13 You go back to the vibe coding tool, and it, it's like this iterative cycle that allows you to create something much faster that is actually closer to your original vision. So yeah, that's, I think, where 29:29 a lot of people could be missing out is they're trying to spend a lot of time 29:34 chatting directly back and forth with these vibe coding tools, and it, they eventually get there, but it's really inefficient, and they could be burning through a lot of tokens. 29:44 They could be spending a lot of money unnecessarily. So if you can, like, invest in creating an efficient workflow for those prompts, the actual output is gonna be better, and you'll get there faster. 29:59 That is actually helpful now that I've been doing this for a few months. I was burning through a lot of tokens [laughs] just trying to figure it out. 30:07 My best help source was when I got frustrated one time because I was burning through tokens, and it wasn't doing what I wanted it to do, and it was also, like, messing up other parts of the website that I was like, "No, I'm good with that. 30:18 Like, why are you messing- Right... with that when you're trying to do this?" And someone was like, "Why don't you try doing this?" And I'm like, "Oh, great. That would've saved me, like, 300,000 tokens. Got it." 30:26 But I- it's not even something that I would even think to do. It's like, why would I talk to AI about how to best talk to AI? It's something you don't think you need, but probably do need a lot, actually. 30:38 And you know what's wild is a lot of pricing structures are fluid and changing frequently. Cursor had to pull back some pricing changes that they made recently 'cause the internet lost their minds and flipped out. 30:51 Replit introduced some new pricing that is much more expensive, and you're penalized for, for being inefficient. 31:01 I think the honeymoon phase is over for a lot of these companies where they're just letting you do whatever and not really charging you more than 20 bucks a month. I think that's over. Even D0 from L, you can't really... 31:13 They won't even, I don't think, allow you to see a visual output without, like, buying some credits. Oh, wow. 31:23 And just a month or two ago, you could do whatever you wanted for a good while before they're like, "Hey, you need to pay us." But now it's like you can't even really do anything without paying. And so 31:34 I think there's a lot of opportunity with using pros to code, and it's a lot of fun. But I think a lot of folks are maybe going to give up soon when they realize it's gonna be really expensive. 31:49 And again, like, these tools want you to be in- inefficient because your inefficiency is their margin. Yeah. Right? [chuckles] So they're not gonna- No... 32:01 they don't really wanna help you design a better prompt or to be smarter about telling them not to touch this code, like only focus on this thing. 32:09 That's something you could add into the prompt, "Hey, like, just focus on the scope of this part of the site, or only focus on these files." 32:17 Those are things you can do, but, yeah, they're not gonna really go out of their way to help you. [chuckles] No. One thing that I have noticed, so Bolt did a hackathon for the month of June, essentially. 32:30 I signed up just 'cause I wanted the free stuff. I didn't actually plan on submitting anything that was, like, publicly u- I'm not trying to solve the world's problems with AI. Yeah. 32:38 Um, I just wanted to build some stuff. Mm-hmm. And I did. Ironically, I ended up going on a paid plan, like, right before the hackathon, so I would pay, like, $20 a month to Bolt, which I think is worth it. 32:51 It's fine with me. One thing that I'm noticing is that these AI, like vibe coding tools are not helping people sift through what's a good idea and what's a bad idea either. 33:04 So they're depending on all these people who have bought into years and years of propaganda about SaaS tools being, like, the way to go, oh, it's sustainable, it's monthly revenue. 33:16 They are benefiting from years of people feeling as though they should be able to get rich off of 10 hours of work. They are benefiting from people who just want AI to be this game-changing 33:32 tech innovation that's just gonna skyrocket the mediocre to the millionaire. 33:39 And I'm looking at some of these things people are shipping, and I'm like, "Babe, you would've maybe had a better time spent just, like, applying for a job at this company that already does what you're doing. 33:49 Maybe you would've had a better time actually talking with people about if this is something that they wanted." Like- Mm-hmm... 33:54 there also isn't that level of filtration there in terms of ideas, which they're also benefiting from. 34:00 What do you think is gonna be, like, this next wave of responsible AI use or even, like, the bell curve of people realizing that, like, those things are not true? Oh, that is so good. So a lot to unpack there. 34:17 Yeah, I do think that we're coming down the curve right now into, is it the valley of despair or something like that? I do think we are... Like, this whole movement in the past, what? 34:26 Six months, really, has been fueled by years of people believing that they're one SaaS tool away from freedom, and forgetting, we say this all the time, distribution is everything, right? Community is everything. 34:42 But people forget those things when they start to get a little greedy, or they start to see, oh, it's easier to get to this end result, which is a SaaS product. And so 34:57 I'm much closer to making a lot of money as a solopreneur, as a creator, than I was a couple years ago. And so they're, like, chasing after this 35:07 perceived in e- efficiency, this perceived opportunity to get to a destination much, much faster. The thing is, everybody can get to the destination faster. There's no arbitrage opportunity. 35:21 It's not like you're the only person that has access to these tools and to the opportunity, and so you get to build a lot faster when everyone else is still, like, not existing in the AI world. And so I think the next 35:37 phase is similar to what I'm trying to do with Anythinkers and what I think platforms like Meta Label, the opportunities that they present, where it's not a... What is it? It's a PVP, player versus player. 35:55 I think it's gonna be, like, community first partnerships. You're gonna see more creators working together in order to 36:06 not just build a product, but to identify what is, like, worth building, first of all, like what matters most, and being able to leverage their collective distribution order, in order to reach customers, in order to cut through the noise. 36:22 I think it's so hard today, July 7th, 2025, for myself or you or any individual creator who has a network, who has connections, who has good ideas, to get their products out there. Very difficult. 36:36 And I think we're- Going to see more people, like, collaborate and work together to bring something to market in a different way. The company Every also is a good model for this. 36:50 They're not a collective, they're an actual company, but they have a lot of entrepreneurs and residents that kind of manage individual products, and Every leverages their 36:59 huge newsletter and community to push those products out, and they kind of bundle software into one subscription. And I think that's gonna be more common. I really do. I think I, I could totally see you working with 37:12 three of your friends to push out a product versus you s- like, trying to fight uphill to, to get it on your own. That's something I've said about media, right? 37:22 Or even with Substack, I think there's gonna be a lot more success in creators coming together to create publications, that even if they decided to do a paywall, it makes a lot more sense, 'cause you're getting access to more creators, um, versus every single creator trying to do an $8, $10 a month subscription, right? 37:40 It just doesn't stack up when you're putting it up against a Netflix or Hulu that has everything you could ever want to watch. 37:47 But if you're doing the written version of that for people who just prefer to read, I'm sure that your perspective is great, I'm sure my perspective is great, but wouldn't it be so much better if, like, we could get someone from 37:58 food and cooking, someone from tech, someone from creativity, someone from business, someone from- Mm-hmm... 38:04 pop culture all together to do something that we can uniquely do together, and that offer that almost, like, programmatic model for a media company. I think that's also gonna- Yeah... 38:15 grow as much, and I think we're gonna see more tools to allow people to collaborate. 38:20 Like, honestly, I think Instagram's best feature is your ability to create a collaboration post, and I think you're gonna see that so much more with YouTube and maybe even TikTok, Threads, like other forms of media where people are like, "Yeah, my 400 s- followers love me, but I think our 4,000 subscribers would love this thing that we're working on." 38:41 I don't necessarily see this as a threat to Beehiiv or Kit, but maybe one real threat to Substack could be a platform that's almost like a carbon copy of Substack, but is a 38:56 kind of community, like, first version, where communities are putting out posts and are bundling essays under one brand. 39:10 And not just the, the media aspect of it, but also the, like, revenue splits and handling that on the back end. That's one thing that Med- Meta Label is, like, just phenomenal at, is handling, like, all the 39:26 kind of nuance around how do people actually get paid, and what do those percentages look like, and is that transparent within the group? And I can't imagine Substack going down that path. So, [chuckles] 39:38 I asked them about this. There was someone from Substack at Podcast Movement Evolutions. I went to their session 'cause I was like, one, I need to see if you're real. Let's just start there. I need to see that you exist. 39:47 Number two, I need to ask you questions, because when am I gonna get this opportunity ever again in life? And so I asked about Substack Live, 'cause that was, like, the main thing. 39:57 But then I also asked about the revenue model. 39:59 I was like, "Hey, like, I think the paid, you know, subscriber thing is great, but do you think you could offer more variations of that, like pay per article or pay per publication that allows multiple creators who have publications on Substack to come together to create a network?" 40:14 And she's like, "We don't know how that would work for payout." And I'm like, "Babe, we'll figure it out. I just need the option, okay?" [laughs] Like, I just need the option. But again, it was like... 40:25 And I told somebody else this. 40:26 It was just very clear to me that when I spoke with, this was a woman, I spoke with her, it was just clear that Substack just does not take a lot of time to talk with writers and creat- which to me is, like, at their detriment, because they have so many writers they could talk to. 40:40 And it could be as easy as just sending a little push email saying, "Hey," that YouTube does all the time that I ignore because they're incredibly long surveys, and I don't think they actually change anything. 40:49 But it's just, "Hey, help us shape the future of Substack. Can I get your feedback on these three to five things?" 40:54 Just see if there's something that there's enough demand for, because I can't be the only one trying to talk to their little AI bot asking questions. 41:02 I just can't be, and not getting a response, because they don't know anything, 'cause they're not a person. It's just, like, low-hanging fruit for Substack at this point. 41:10 And even, like, e-books, maybe even the ability to add who you are. Are you a writer? Are you an editor? Are you a reader? Are you a media buyer? 41:20 I think there's a lot more opportunity to really elevate, if you feel generally that Substack is the place for media, and culture, and all these things. 41:29 And like, why are we not giving people the tools to really be at the forefront of media and culture? Because I was actually just listening to a podcast episode, 41:38 I forget what it's called, but it's by Semaphore, and it's on YouTube. Mm. And they were, I think they interviewed Brian Cook, I think is his name or something. 41:46 He is the, one of the podcast co-hosts of Follow Along or something like that. It's, it interviews a lot of, like, celebrities, music artists, and it's with a DJ friend of his. 41:57 But he was basically like, "Yo, Substack isn't cool. Straight up. Like, a lot of the writing on there, trash. A lot of the writing on there, use a editor, babes. And you know what? Nobody ever got clout from Substack. 42:08 I could take my weekly GQ article and make more money on Substack right now, but I won't do it." Mm-hmm. Because what? 42:14 Me having an article in GQ every week gets me more clout, gets my podcast more listens, gets more of our ad spots sold than me writing a little newsletter on Substack ever would. And I said, "You know what? 42:26 You just cooked me, but, [laughs] but you're onto something." Mm-hmm. There is this lack of clout, and I think that's also the spirit of Substack. 42:37 It's almost like they prefer it if you're a smaller- Unknown writer just writing your heart out into the void with all the mistakes and grammar errors to show your humanness. Like, they love that. 42:50 But there's also, like, this very real part of traditional media that's, "Yo, I would never in my life," and some of y'all need to be told your ideas aren't good. We need to bring gatekeeping back. And I'm like, "Whoa, 43:00 I hate it for that. I hate it for us." [laughs] Yeah, no. But on some level, they're not wrong. They're not wrong. [laughs] Yeah. It is, like, a weird dynamic between them allegedly paying creators to join 43:17 the platform and incentivizing big publishers to move to Substack by reducing their fees or giving them advances on paid subscription revenue. And so they are whale hunting, for sure, 43:34 in trying to bring that authenticity, that clout to the platform. But the other side of the same coin is you see a proliferation of mediocrity, for lack of better phrases, and 43:50 that is just something that I think will exist and will have to be filtered and, I would say, controlled at the user level. I can't tell you how much the past week I've been hiding 44:08 notes in my feed and saying, "Show me less of this." It's actually helped so much. I do it, like, pretty frequently now, and it has improved the feed. Yeah. That's insane. 44:21 I wanna respond to that 'cause that's honestly hilarious. But [laughs] Michelle said, "I also mentioned book publishing. These people actually read on this platform." They do. We got real readers in here. Yes, yes. 44:31 Real people above a 6th grade reading level ready to engage, and they do nothing for them. Nothing. 44:37 And it's really to the detriment of their users, honestly, because think about it, when someone like me or even someone like you or Michelle, when we take our newsletter list and we go somewhere else, those people are still gonna come with us. 44:48 Maybe there'll be a little bit of churn of, "Ugh, I don't want this in my inbox. I only wanted the Substack Notes notification." Cool. That's five people in the grand... We don't care about those people. Yeah. 44:57 Like, there are still some, like, my open rates got higher when I went off Substack. And for a lot of people, that's going to be true for them. 45:04 Like, I think they need to consider the fact that people can always leave because it is free and because there is no barrier. 45:11 Like, people can always leave, so you have just as much onus on you to, like, keep people there, both readers and writers, than you think. Yeah. 45:19 But yeah, going back to you trying to curate your Substack Notes feed, I have only ever, I think, blocked one person [laughs] 45:29 on Substack, but it's because they were, like, genuinely very rude and genuinely just not an okay person. And they are one of the bigger writers on there. 45:37 But I think, like, bigger writers on Substack have just experienced just a different relationship with Substack than we do. They have different analytics. They have different incentives that keep them using Substack 45:52 that, again, are not equal. They can't even get their app equal among Apple users and Android users, 46:00 and they still, and it's like this hierarchy that exists on the platform that I think people are gonna start to get fatigued with in terms of like, why are these people who started, some of them with the same things I started with, getting so much more out of this than what I'm getting out of this? 46:17 Mm-hmm. And able to make this such a better experience for their community than what I'm able to do with this platform. Yeah. That's real. That's real. And I think at the end of the day, 46:30 you can go all in on one platform. I, I see people that I respect talk about how you can grow your Substack on Substack. 46:38 You don't need to use any other platforms or any other form of social media, and you can just go 100 on Substack. That's fine. Not here to judge. But I think you have to consider, is that working for you? 46:50 This decision on what platforms to use is very personal. You really have to look at the data. 46:56 One of my favorite creators, Jay Clouse, was one of the first creators I discovered online that took a very analytical, data-driven, scientific method approach to growth, and I think that's really important. 47:10 You gotta look at the data. You gotta see what are you getting out of not just the platform, but the strategy you're using on the platform. Yeah. I think for, so Jay Clouse, he just joined. 47:22 I do follow him or Creator Science. Mm-hmm. I don't subscribe to his blog on Substack. Justin Welsh, Dan Koe, 47:30 Chanel Basilio, David Perell, a lot of people, again, to your point, whale hunting, some of it Substack has done, some of it other creators have done because I think they are just no longer feeling the euphoria of Twitter and LinkedIn, and they're chasing that again. 47:46 Mm-hmm. So part of my question around them coming to Substack, one, I feel like they're chasing a high that is going to very quickly dissipate. Yes. 47:54 And I think we're going to see very quickly that, oh, this is just another game I have to play. Am I interested in playing this game or do I want to think bigger? And I think that's also maybe feeding into Brian's point. 48:06 It's like the people that are attracted to Substack Notes particularly for growth alone are chasing growth in the wrong areas. This is not a long-term... This is just another social feed that you have to play into. Yeah. 48:21 Whereas he was like, "Yeah, we're angling our show for TV." Kara Swisher, "We're angling our show for TV." Like, people who come from traditional media have a different idea of what constitutes growth- Mm-hmm... 48:34 that I do not think is trickling down to the indie level in a way that is, in their mind, uplifting the media industry as a whole. They wanna be- A place where media is affecting culture. 48:46 Like, we are the place for media. The best work is on Substack, whatever. Yeah. And so I think, like, 48:53 to his point, it's like almost doing a disservice for you to think that Substack is the pinnacle, because in reality it's like it's keeping you in this smaller pool of people that are never gonna have access to some of the bigger conversations around 49:04 creating a sustainable media company or a sustainable media platform. Mm-hmm. Because you're still so, like, entrenched in this, like, indie growth, like discovery, versus, like, longevity- Mm-hmm... 49:17 sustainability, deep relationship network building that isn't built on short form at all. Yeah. It's just not. Yeah. So. Agreed. Agreed. And I wanna read, uh, Michelle's comment. 49:30 "Recently I've seen a very large creator on the platform sour on Substack, and that's going to be an ugly breakup based on the current comp..." Yeah. Yeah, that's gonna be another shoe to drop. I think we've seen 49:42 rumblings about Substack raising another venture round. We'll see what happens, what comes out of that, what other people potentially join the platform. But yeah, I, I think a few things are gonna happen. 49:54 One, competition's gonna heat up. Beehive's not gonna stop innovating, building, growing. Will another player enter the dance? Blue Sky got hot last year. It was, like, a comet that kind of fizzled out a bit. 50:10 Will something else pop up this year, early next year? Who knows? But I think my biggest takeaway is to look at the data. What does the data say? 50:21 What are you, what are you actually getting out of your routines on platforms that you're using? What are you doing every day on Substack, and what are you getting out of that? [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. 50:33 I think right now, like, this is the greatest ROI for Substack for me, like, showing up on Substack live with any new platform, social media platform. Once they introduce a new feature, they, like, wanna push that a lot. 50:46 I think I read something, it was either today or yesterday, that Threads has now hit the daily user count of Twitter, so. Really? That's what they say. 50:56 So yeah, I think there was, like, this skepticism of whether or not it would take off after its original kind of, like, boom, but I think it, it has, and I think it's for a couple of different reasons. 51:07 Like, they have incorporated ads into the feed, but they look like inline post, so they're not disturbing the feed in the way that they do on, like, an Instagram feed. Mm-hmm. 51:16 Which is nice, but they feel ignorable almost. And I think the other half of that is 51:25 it feels like for a lot of people, Instagram is just a known quantity, and so the product that is Threads that allows you to have this really text-based interaction and less photo-based interaction for people who are not photographers are using Threads as their daily journal. 51:41 Like, it's a great experience for them. Is there some Twitterfication of Threads? Absolutely. Do I think it is anywhere near as toxic as Threads? No. Like, the dogpiling hasn't come over quite as much. 51:56 Which I'm hoping it doesn't, but that's the nature of the internet, because people are ridiculous. But just in terms of platforms in general, I think Threads, for people who really were craving monoculture, 52:09 that's gonna be a place. I think Blue Sky was a, a place for a lot of media news outlets, 'cause they're like, "Oh, I can post links. This is open web." Mm-hmm. Love this a little bit more. 52:19 Like, people are, Blue Sky isn't gonna hinder me from posting a link to my article. I, ironically, Beehive has a huge little community on Twitter still. Yeah. Still. Oh, yeah. 52:30 So it's like people haven't completely left Twitter. It's, but where are your people? And I try to think about that, too. Where are your people? Mm-hmm. Where does it make sense for you to spend your time? 52:38 And how can we maybe balance that time IRL, too? Mm-hmm. Okay, yeah, these people exist here. How can I meet them [laughs] in real life? Yeah. Yeah. Where do these people exist in my city? Yeah. 52:53 How can I hang out with them in person? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. What are you up to next, like, next couple months? Community OS hopefully is coming out next month. 53:07 Part of the writing has already started, so I'm not, like, starting from scratch this month. 53:11 I have made significant progress on that, but I want to, one, now that I've had space away from it, edit what I've already written, and then add to some other chapters. So 53:21 I think there are about nine chapters in it, so trying to get that done. I think my goal is somewhere around 15,000 words, so we'll see. But yeah, hoping to get that out next month. 53:35 My first vibe coding attempt is gonna be the Melanin MVP website that is launching later this month as part of our one-year anniversary, so I'm super excited about that. I'm exploring doing a run on Product Hunt. 53:49 We'll see how that goes. My next vibe coding project is my Rootful Media website. That will be dropping in September as part of our nine-year anniversary. 53:57 And then I have a really fun prototype of the Please Hustle Responsibly website that will be dropping in probably December, because that coincides with our two-year anniversary. 54:08 So lots of fun little vibe coding projects. Other products, I have three ideas that I think are really good and that feel really in line with what I could provide insight on. 54:20 I don't have a timeline for writing them and putting them out. I want to be realistic [laughs] about my schedule for the rest of the year. Yeah. 54:27 But also, like, really put in a good faith effort for Community OS and making that, like, my signature product, because all of them connect back to Community OS and would be good bundles with Community OS. Mm-hmm. 54:38 But I can't make that case if I haven't actually put in the effort to make Community OS a really great product out of the gate, and really refine and iterate that to a point where I'm like, "Okay, now I'm ready to bring in other products into the lineup that complement this," and also have a good user base where I can say, "Hey, Community OS, for a very heavily discounted price, would you like these other products and to give us a review so we can keep that windmill of new people coming in?" 55:04 So that's the idea for now. But yeah, just trying to make the best products I could possibly make and, and the best experiences online that I can possibly make. And hopefully that will translate... 55:13 Not hopefully, but I believe that it will translate into the expectations people have for when we do start doing more in-person events. Awesome. I love it. I love it. Definitely keep me posted. 55:25 I'll be paying close attention. And yeah, if you ever need any help with some of the code stuff, I, I might be able to save you some tokens. Hit me up. Always needing help. [laughs] Well, thank you so much. This was fun. 55:37 Yeah. Keep hustling responsibly. That's all. I will. It's, it's great work. I love, I love what you're doing, so. Thank you. I appreciate it. 55:44 [upbeat music] If you've been getting value from Honey & Hustle, I need a quick favor. Would you take 30 seconds right now to leave a review? 55:54 Reviews help other people discover the show, and honestly, they help me know what's landing with you. Whether it's this episode or one from a few months ago that stuck with you, just share what made it worth your time. 56:07 You can leave a review wherever you're listening right now, and I appreciate it in advance. See you in the next episode. [upbeat music]
