
Episode #76
Use AI To Work Less (Not Do More)
What if the point of AI wasn't to make more, but to work less? This is the thing everyone said AI should do that nobody's actually doing. All the capitalists want to use AI to make more money, not work less. In this episode of Small Effort (Season 4, Episode 15), Sean and Andrew dig into the team that used AI to move to a four-day week instead of squeezing out more, and the WordCamp pivot it mirrors: Andrew walking away from SEO autopilot to build content you're actually proud to publish. They cover why platform risk still burns big companies, the four pillars of content that survive after the AI tricks stop working, and why "what stays stable" beats every AEO hack. Links: Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/ Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/ Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/ Margins: http://margins.so/ Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/ For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/ Transcript: 00:00.95 Sean Hello. 00:02.69 Andrew Hello, my friends. 00:04.02 Sean How you doing? How was WordCamp? 00:04.96 Andrew Good. WordCamp was... Fucking awesome. um interesting like This is my first WordCamp ever. WordCamp is definitely in decline. 00:14.91 Sean ah 00:17.37 Andrew At least Recamp US is in decline. 00:17.52 Sean Oh. uh-oh 00:19.76 Andrew Done. ah 00:21.27 Sean is there Is there other WordCamp? Is that like WordCamp Belgium? 00:23.90 Andrew They're all over the world. 00:24.30 Sean or 00:25.14 Andrew There's like WordCamp Europe, my... uh my one of my new friends that i made at the conference is going to word camp manila next week Um... It's ah yeah, they have them all over the world. And I think they're. 00:38.38 Andrew They're still bigger. They're actually now bigger overseas than they are in in the US. which is interesting 00:45.15 Sean That's it. 00:45.09 Andrew um we 00:46.87 Sean Sense. 00:47.60 Andrew Yeah. 00:47.49 Sean Ish. Maybe. 00:48.39 Andrew Yeah. 00:48.20 Sean I don't know. 00:48.90 Andrew issue. Um, 00:49.85 Sean Yeah. 00:50.63 Andrew I think. we're from the the cheesemade that i got from people who our repeat attendees is that WordCamp US has been in decline since something happened two years ago. What what might have happened two years ago? I can't remember. 01:06.94 Andrew Amen. any Any big drama in the in the WordPress space? that you can remember? 01:13.39 Sean No. I block that out. 01:15.00 Andrew fifty 01:15.04 Sean From my memory. Um, Yeah, there was a, you know, there's... For some reason, a lot of people who are on WordPress. Um, complaining about something. 01:25.31 Sean And it brought us a lot of Webflow customers. so 01:27.59 Andrew Hell yeah. Let's go. 01:29.99 Sean Um, uh, 01:33.65 Sean Yeah. i'm I'm kind of curious. like like The shockwave that must have been across. I didn't realize there were so many word camps. So I wonder if like... 01:45.34 Sean What happens in all those WordCamps, all the same, like... throughout that entire year that feels 01:51.35 Andrew no I know. 01:51.62 Sean You know? 01:52.74 Andrew um I mean, I got a little bit from my my friends who've been going for years. Okay. 01:57.64 Sean ahha 01:58.98 Andrew Uh, But. Yeah, like WordCamp US used to be like 2 ,000 to 2 ,500 people. They also they scheduled it in Phoenix in August this year, which I think. a lot of people were like i think that's part of the reason it's not doing well although At the same time, in the back of my head, I was like Black Hat and Def Conner in August every year and fuck tons of people go. 02:18.45 Andrew Um. 02:19.80 Sean Yeah. 02:20.06 Andrew So I don't know that that really impacted it. But yeah, this year was like. I think. one of my friends saw the registered attendee list, and it was 900 people. down from like 2 ,500 a few years ago. 02:33.16 Sean Oh shit. God damn. 02:34.28 Andrew Yeah. 02:35.81 Sean Um. 02:36.57 Andrew Not a great sign. 02:37.93 Sean for For those not in. the web space. Um, Um, 02:46.43 Andrew He's... 02:46.39 Sean The... Do you want to, I don't know. 02:48.63 Andrew I got, I got. 02:48.83 Sean You're the expert now, so. 02:50.72 Andrew So I got, I'm not an expert, but. All right. So one of the... original co-creators co-founders of wordpress um I got. 03:01.61 Andrew I got yelled at by a friend, not yelled at, but like I got chastised by a friend for calling him the founder of WordPress. Someone was like. More like the forker of WordPress. um 03:10.74 Sean Hell yeah. 03:14.01 Andrew Um, Uh, Matt. Mullenweg? Is that his name? um Uh... Anyway. WordPress mat. um a couple years ago went Like, got really... pissy at at a Word can. 03:30.22 Andrew during a keynote. Um, at WP Engine, who's like one of the largest WordPress hosts. and a competitor so like it's all complicated because like WordPress is WordPress is... 03:45.18 Andrew a free open source tool. that is owned by a nonprofit. um and the WordPress trademark is owned by a nonprofit. Matt also owns... automatic which is a for-profit business that offer that owns wordpress .com a for-profit WordPress hosting service um and a bunch of other WordPress tools including WooCommerce and Pressable and some others. 04:08.67 Andrew Um, and Um, Automatic. has a like perpetual license from WordPress .org, the nonprofit, to use the WordPress trademark. 04:20.96 Andrew Um, And a couple years ago, he got mad at WP Engine, who's one of their biggest competitors, um who basically built their entire reputation on... 04:32.11 Andrew Hey, your product kind of sucks. We're going to do it better and charge more for it. And people loved them for years and years. Um, I think some people have started to leave WP Engine. I don't know. 04:43.08 Andrew what the state of the things is right now. But like for years and years, people loved WP Engine because they were just like rock solid. Awesome support. And like they charged a premium for it. 04:53.56 Sean And WP Engine also owns... um the custom field the advanced custom fields plugin All right. 05:00.36 Andrew Yes, they own a couple of like very successful WordPress plugins as well. And that got all pissy that they were like, using WP in their name. um that they even though like everyone in the wordpress community uses wp in their name Um, 05:16.26 Andrew They were using WP in their name, and he was like, you're not contributing enough to open source. You're not contributing enough to WordPress .org. and 05:24.72 Sean Open source. Oh, so the name. What I what i call my wallet. 05:28.52 Andrew Yes. 05:29.19 Sean...

