Quite a few updates from me this week. I’m not sure what happened, but suddenly I’m doing a lot of things. But don’t worry, I still made time to listen to a podcast or two, and even make one myself!

Topics for this week:

• April’s Deep30

• A Return to SEO

• The Dev Sync

• A Second Brain

• Fixing the Mavs with Mark Cuban

April’s Deep30

Last week I wrapped up how my first Deep30 session went, which was quite successful! 10 websites built in Webflow was a great start, but all that work did not bring me any clients.

Since March’s Deep30 was a success, I signed up for April’s session which started yesterday. The goal this time is more serious: get 1 client for divs.design. Simple but not easy.

As part of April’s Deep30, for 2 hours everyday, I’ll be looking for leads in two main ways - SEO and social media.

For social media, I’m giving Facebook a try with the Divs Design Facebook page I created today. (let me know if that link doesn’t work, I’m out of practice with Facebook) I may look into some ads as well, but I also plan to sign up for local business sites like Yelp and Angi and a number of others to get into some other algorithms.

Apparently I won’t be using Google Business, though. I got a nice email from Google today that they disabled the Divs Design business account because online-only businesses don’t qualify. Whoops!

And the SEO approach, more on that below!

For now, I’m glad Deep30 is back. Having 2 hours everyday dedicated to work time has been a game-changer. It creates a nice foundation of focus and regular incremental progress, plus it helps anchor the rest of the day. Realizing that this schedule is really helpful, I keep thinking of this quote and book title from Jocko Willink, “Discipline Equals Freedom” which sums up the core concept of Deep30 nicely.

Next up, SEO.

A Return to SEO

The other main focus of April’s Deep30 is SEO.

I finally tried out Semflow, which I talked about a few months ago. It’s a quick and easy Webflow plugin to check pages for SEO basics once you know what keywords you’re targeting (which is another challenge).

Semflow is great for starting out. It’s a much cheaper way to access Semrush, which is normally at least $129 per month. Semflow is only $15 per month or $8 per month if you pay for the year.

But Semflow does not help you find a less competitive keyword to target, it only rates what you provide. You still need the full Semrush search (or another equally expensive SEO tool) to look for keywords with higher search volumes and less competition. I had to search around Semrush to find a phrase with a decent competitive chance of 28% difficulty and 1000 searches a month, “web design services for small business”.

With that, I would still recommend Semflow but only if you know what words you want to target, otherwise you still have the hard-work ahead of you in finding those less competitive terms.

The Dev Sync

I listen to quite a few podcasts, so it only seems natural that I’d be inspired to make one too.

A few of my old co-workers and I had a habit of hanging around the office late into the evening one a week, venting about work and talking tech. The regular conversation was already happening but it took a surprisingly long time to realize that this was the perfect setup for a podcast.

We talked about starting it for a while, but it took a few months to actually get things lined up and give it a shot. And even after recording, it took a couple months to get them edited and posted. But finally, I’m happy to present The Dev Sync podcast.

Will, Eric and I will be talking about primarily tech things, mostly software, lengthy discussions on AI naturally, and some off-topic hot-takes. If you’re not into deep tech talk, it might not be for you, but you’re welcome to check it out anyway.

Right now we’re targeting at least twice a month, once a week if we can and the first episode is below. If you do watch it, let me know what you think!

A Second Brain

NotebookLM is Google’s new “second brain” product.

What if you could talk to anything you’ve ever saved on the internet without having to remember it all?

That seems to be Google’s free and easy solution to the “second brain” concept. Upload documents and whatever else you’ve saved in the past into NotebookLM and it does a decent job of finding what you were looking for without having to remember or find it yourself.

Hopefully NotebookLM doesn’t get abandoned by Google like so many others as Wes Roth points out in one of his videos this week. Maybe they’ll just rebrand it like they did with Bard to Gemini.

Right now, NotebookLM is free to use so create your own second brain! And Wes Roth explains and demos it below if you’re curious:

Fixing the Mavs with Mark Cuban

And finally, a real podcast recommendation. Lex Fridman talked to Mark Cuban for more than 2 hours this week, digging into Cost Plus Drugs, “Woke-ism”, his business history, and the Mavs.

It’s not the first time I’ve referenced a Mark Cuban video, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. There’s a lot to learn from his grounded approach to business, and maybe a slight bias that he’s an Indiana grad, even if it’s from the wrong school.

Talking about turning around the Mavs when he became owner, rather than spending more money on PC training for the business side, he hired 15 coaches so each player had their own coach to work with individually.

From the business side, though, Cuban also realized most NBA teams were too focused on winning, pointing out that the NBA isn’t a basketball business, it’s an experience business. Most people go to games for the experience and that should be a primary focus. With that, and help from Dirk Nowitzki, Mark was able to take the Mavericks from one of the worst teams in the league to a national title.

There are plenty of other great anecdotes from the pod, including a number of Twitter/X battles with Elon and others, and a breakdown of how to make the pharmacy industry less opaque, but I’ll leave it to Mark to explain the rest. Full video below:

And that’s it for this week! Marketing, SEO, my own podcast, a second brain, and a real podcast. What else could you ask for?

Those are the links that stuck with me throughout the week and a glimpse into what I personally worked on.

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