¶ Welcome and Past Conversation
Everybody, welcome to the Unscheduled CEO Podcast, a podcast for entrepreneurs who are sick of business podcasts and want something a little bit different. Or the same. You know, whatever you want, as long as you listen to it. I don't care. I am here with a very good f old friend of mine. And I don't mean old in age, I mean in amount of friendship years.
Hehehe
And that is the amazing Jake Knapp. Welcome back to the pod, man.
¶ Jonathan's Business Shift
Hey thanks for uh having me on for a chat.
Yeah, man. It's a pleasure.
We really don't get to chat as much as as we should. So
No.
It's like been looking forward to this.
I send you a message a couple of weeks ago. We were we were supposed to do we were supposed to do an episode like three or four weeks ago. Um, and just before the recording, I was like, Hey, before the recording, can we have a quick chat? Because I actually wanted some advice from you. And what ec what ended up happening is we just ended up chatting for like two hours or something instead of recording. And uh that was really good because I
ended up changing a lot after that conversation with you. So fucking thank you, Jace. Yeah.
Yeah, but I'm glad that that was useful. You know, that was uh that was pretty fun. That was a fun chat.
It was.
You you're you know, you're trying to like figure out some pretty challenging stuff with How you spend your time, how you spend your energy and It's fun to give someone else advice about that. It's a very hard thing to figure out for oneself. I w I wouldn't want necessarily want the spotlight turned on me. Now I spend my time, but uh but that was good times.
Yeah, I mean I think a lot of people listening to this show probably understand the idea. So I I call basically The thing I asked Jake was like, Hey man, uh I don't really know I I think it was the the general idea was I've been spending the last sixteen years working on AJ and SmartFacilitator.com. It's sort of in this I guess what I s what I probably said to you is it's kind of comfortable but not
stimulating or not creatively exciting for me at the moment. And the thing I'd like to pursue is the unscheduled this whole unscheduled podcast thing, just see where it goes. But it didn't really Wa what I told you is I kept getting sucked back into uh the main business. So every time I wanted to focus on this thing, the podcast, it always got thrown to the side uh because, you know, an interesting thing would come up on the facilitator.com or whatever, and then I go do that instead.
Um and you had you basically said something along the lines of You just have to you just have to stop you just have to stop doing the facilitator thing. And you you need a you need like a separation, like a physical separation of the unscheduled company, the unscheduled brand, and the AJ and Smart thing. Um and so that What I basically did immediately to so right after that call I sat down with Laura. I asked her if she would want to take over a Jane Smart facilitator as CEO.
We chatted about that over a space of two weeks and eventually she accepted and was excited about it. And today we're sitting here and Laura is running AJ and Smart and I'm only doing unscheduled and my my job as part of facilitator sort of ended last week with the like release of our final kind of content thing that I was working on. So yeah, man. Uh I basically just did exactly what you said.
¶ The Power of Physical Space
Dude, congratulations. That's I didn't realize all that. That some of that is news to me. Like I'd we you said you were starting some of it. I didn't know the details. Uh psh that's awesome.
Yeah, I'm all in on it. I'm all in on trying to make this Stupid show uh or what this is I guess the show is sort of the central asset of this unscheduled thing that I'm trying to figure out.
It's like the most obviously stupid thing.
It's the most obviously.
It's amazing.
Visible. It's the most pure form of the thing. Uh and then there's like other ploppy bits farting out of it. You know what I mean? Yep.
यप यप
You know about it, you know what I'm trying to say with the plot.
Yeah, I feel you. Well, so let's do you mind if we talk for a second about the physical space?
Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people could benefit from that.
Yeah, there's a tremendous amount of neurological research on the effect of a physical space. Probably there should be research on that.
No, that's not Let's just pause for ten minutes and search on the interview.
Yeah, yeah. Look it up. Maybe there is. I don't know.
There's no.
like a huge deal. No. I if where you are, if if you're going to the same place where you do like thing X for like and you've been doing it f you know for any amount of time, but like especially for a long amount of time. And then especially, especially if there's other people around who you
talk to about that thing or like have habits around that thing. The brain just like the habits in the brain are like, okay, this is where we do that thing. Or like this is where we don't do that other thing. Or this is where we get into this kind of mindset or work pattern or whatever. And I think to disrupt those brain patterns, you like you physically you have to be in a different space. Yeah.
Yeah.
And you you know, you just your brain like then your brain's like, oh, you know, it's like you're on vacation and then, you know, you feel different or you do different things. You can't in the same location, for me, like that's just too hard to do like a bit, okay, now I'm gonna ship. I'm gonna like shift into this creative mode where I'm gonna like come up with new ideas. I'm gonna, I'm gonna like stop thinking about this thing. Like
Forget it.
I cannot do that.
Or is the thing you you so you have basically you have your real job? And then you have your creative project. You you told me, could you just tell like the audience how you split those, how do you use that physical space thing to to split those things up and actually work on your creative stuff?
Yeah. So what I do now and it's it's changed over time, but like the setup now is I have an office at home. That's where I am right now. So home office, really well set up for all the work stuff. You
Yeah.
The computer is set up for that. The you know, the microphone, all that stuff is set up for that. It's for video calls. This is where if I'm designing new sprints or evaluating companies or whatever, this is all where I do my character capital stuff.
Professional Jake.
Professional Jake. Right. And it's and it's like totally primed for that. And then I have this little office that I rent in the small town where where we live or where we that we live near, as we're kind of in the in the country and kind of the the sort of middle of nowhere. And then this little town, and I have this little office, and it's like, it's it, you know, it has it's just this tiny office.
And I shut off the internet access there and like there's there's basically just a desk and I, you know, bring my laptop and and like plug it into a monitor. And so I can't even get online to do anything. And that's where I do writing, like creative writing, whatever. And right for right now, like that's where I wrote, did a lot of the writing on uh click. That's but it's also where I just do creative writing. And so it's like
That's if I walk in the door there, I just my I'm just used to it. Like that's what happens there. Also, there's like nothing else I can do there that helped me establish that habit. But that that place is separate, and uh man, I just I step in there and I
If I'm there for I just feel like a recharge. And it's interesting because, you know, for me, like the creative writing that I'm doing now, it's not like I have a plan for that going anywhere. That's not meant to be like, oh, this is gonna be this great. you know, novel or like that I'm gonna publish or whatever. It's
It's like
It's just I know that that is really important for me energy wise. And when I do that, that recharges. a creative battery. And then actually I bring more creative energy to my like real job work. So that's been an interesting thing to see. And I kind of see this cycle of where like I spend more time in the in the writing office. I I do more writing. I kind of charge up the energy. I come up with a new project idea.
Then I s end up spending more time in the home office, like doing that thing. And then that runs its course. And then I kind of shift back. I'm just about to like do one of those shift backs. Like I just finished a big work project and I'll go back. It's been like maybe three months since I've been really into the routine in town. I'll go back to But uh yeah, that's that's how I do it.
¶ Techniques for Creative Flow
So the physical location of going into that small office puts you in Jake creative mode and when you're in your home office you're in Jake professional mode. Yeah. Like na do you use the same laptop? Is it the same laptop coming with you?
You know, I did I have used the same like the laptop that I use for work and That it can be fine, I think. I mean, I use a variety of other tricks to separate it. There have been times when I've used like a dedicated computer for that. I have like a Mac Studio here in the office, so I technically it is a different computer, but For me the bigger deal is
Yeah.
The internet access actually.
That's a huge.
thing that really flips the switch. I also have sometimes used uh an iPad, taking an just an iPad in to to do the writing. And the iPad's really great for editing or like reviewing stuff that I've already read. You know, you so I use pages. uh on just like the plane, you know, comes with the Mac app and like you can like write on top of it and like skim through it feels like reading on paper. And that's kind of good for getting in the zone when I've been away for a while.
And then uh the other cool thing about the iPad is that, I mean, it sort of has window management now, but it's a little bit more like
It's still not yeah, you can't be as power user y with it.
Yeah. And you can connect it to a display so that it's nice and big, but you still get that you do get that feels less power user, exactly. So that's that's kinda helpful. I also use music. Music's another really important trigger for okay, this is the playlist I'm listening to right now for writing.
Like on spot well you have no internet or well I guess you have your phone internet.
You have my phone. You have my phone.
Yeah. Okay. So you have like a you go into a physical space, you have a specific playlist, you're getting you're basically telling your brain, Hey, now I'm in this Jake mode, creative Jake mode, and this is what I do when I'm in this place.
Exactly. And if I there have been times like I c I do have to say I had to kind of build up the the like strength almost to be able to do it, like even with my phone there. Because the phone is like a a potential leak in the bucket.
Yeah, it's a portal back to work.
Totally. And it and you can tether your laptop to your phone if even if you don't have internet. So there's There have been times when I like couldn't even do that. Yeah. Or would use the Freedom app to like shut off access to the network for, you know, some fixed amount of time. It I I I have it's it's a bit easier for me now, uh but um but not it's still not like super easy.
But I can I can at least handle the phone there. Yeah. And then I have like my you know, right now it's like this metal playlist that's just like, okay, I listened to that. I know that's it's time to write. So you
You're listening to heavy metal while writing? Yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah. I would that would d that would distract me so much I would j I wouldn't be able to do it.
I wouldn't have thought that that would work well for me. like wasn't into heavy metal growing up, but I got kinda got more into it and then it's yeah, it's like The thing about it is, especially if you get something with like that, I think it's called like a blast beat where it just has that like
Oh, yeah.
It's like I don't know, it just kinda it's almost meditative. Like it just I'm just like going and then it part of my brain that I think of it as like a dog that just needs like something to chew on, like to be distracted. Yeah. Otherwise it's gonna be like messing with me trying to to create. And so the music like distracts that part of the brain. It just like gives it something to like just just draw it away and then I can kind of sneak in underneath.
Yeah, I I get that. I yeah, I I'm definitely less disciplined and well Over the years, I've had a lot of different ways of doing these things. For example, I also used the Freedom app. I used Block. I don't know if you've seen it. It's like a physical block. And if you don't have the physical block, then your phone doesn't have access to things. And the only way to Yeah, it's kinda cool. I don't work for me for like one month, but generally I've kind of come to terms with the fact that
I always find my way through these things and eventually I guess because at a certain point I'm like, but but I know how to I know how to break this system. Like I'm going to break it now. And so for me, what's most important I think is
¶ Focus and Breakthroughs Through Separation
actually just being interested in the thing and in the thing that I'm doing and also having sort of one clear focus thing to work on. So for example, with the with with this podcast I didn't have any goals. I didn't have any ideas besides I'm just doing it occasionally. Then eventually I was like, it's coming out every Tuesday. That gave me a bit more focus again. And then now finally I have this focus of all I do is grow this.
Because growing this gives me lots of options to do more interesting things later. For example, if this podcast is ten thousand listeners, then if I want to do an interesting creative retreat and charge for it and make it profitable. Uh, I can just do that whenever I want. But uh that focus now has given my brain like I think my brain does like to have, even though I want a lot of variety and and I I want a lot of novelty, if I sort of have one thing that I know that I'm doing in a day.
then what I notice is that even though I haven't cleaned up my messy habits and I I'll I'll like have YouTube open on one screen. So after this spot after this episode. This is how my brain is very uh needs a lot of stimulation. So after this episode, after we stop recording. I'm going to drag this video file into YouTube, think of the name, make the thumbnail, you know, s uh upload it to the other platforms, whatever, uh write the description, all of that while at the same time in another tab.
Uh I'm watching a YouTube video about a video game I'm interested in at the moment. And uh while I'm also like probably texting someone and all of that is happening, but That makes me feel really bad when I don't have a clear thing to do and when I'm kind of in a blurry, like, what's my job at the moment? You know, that which was happening a lot of at AJ and Smart, where there's just loads of downtime between stuff.
You know what I mean? Like loads and loads. And then then I feel really bad about all of that messy multitasking. But when I know my thing, which is grow podcast, measurable. I can look at number go up. Then then I actually don't I care a lot less about
Um, being productive. That's actually what it is. I actually don't care about being productive at all when I know what I actually want to do. And I really care about being productive. And I'm really good with having nice notebooks and tracking stuff and
optima like my room right now where I'm recording this is a fucking absolute mess. It's it's disgraceful. No one should ever like Laura look looks in here and she just laughs at how bad it is. But actually that's a sign that I am getting more done than usual. because I don't care actually, because my focus is is clear. Um but yeah, I do think the the thing that was important though for me was when you said
Ever it do it doesn't matter if you wanna work on the podcast. If you go to the office, you're gonna work on AJ and Smart stuff because that's what people are talking about. And that's exactly what that's exactly what I did. So what I actually changed now, um, and people who are watching the YouTube edition of this can see this, is that I've kind of made a mini office in this room.
And so in some episodes you can actually see like people behind me in the episode, uh, because we're making the episode, we're we're producing it here and then doing the thumbnails and doing all of the work here. Um, and so this has become now purely the podcast zone where I'm not doing any other AJ and smart work. And then when I go to the office, that's sort of the the AJ and smart zone.
And it's definitely made a big difference. A really very, very big difference. So tha that was really important for me to g I think I think the thing you said basically was If I don't make like some sort of clear delineation between AJ and Smart and Unscheduled, it'll always just be me. blurrily not knowing what to focus on every week. And it's been really nice just my job is grow unscheduled, Laura's job is grow AJ and smart. These things happen in different physical locations. The end.
Totally. Yeah. There's two like threads of things that I I saw kind of poking out of that word tapestry just now that I want to.
My world tapestry.
Well one of them is the this idea of like when you're for me, when I'm away when I can get away from the space where I do my work normally. It I kind of mentioned this earlier, but like it it's it's a really big deal. I don't want to overly focus on just the create like the creative work that happens in the town office as like the only goal of that. The other thing that happens is when I have that space and I I kind of can clear my head.
the the other s the insights I have about the other work get so much better because I'm separated from it. And then when I come back to it, even if it's even in the same day, but I just spend a lot of times I just spend half the day in one place and half the day in the other. When I come back, it's like It can't I can have these big breakthroughs. And I this time it was looking at what we do in character labs, which is where we we invest in like, you know, 10-ish startups at once.
and we lead them through a series of sprints. And I realized like, oh my God, like I have all these ideas that I could redesign all of those sprints, could create these new sprint formats, could just totally redo how that structure works.
And
The more I had that like space away and then came back, the more the more and more clear that became until it became that kind of project you were just describing where it's like so consuming that I don't care if I'm being productive. I don't have to make myself do it. It's like No, this is the thing. Like I'm just doing it. And my desk gets like progressively messier.
And you have less and less systems for being productive. Yeah.
Yeah. And like it doesn't matter if I'm like you said, like watching a key and peel video or like texting somebody while I'm doing something else doesn't matter because the the force of that idea is like so powerful. It's like this is gonna happen. And especially if it has a deadline, which you know it did, right? We have like the next group or you have like the launch of the the course and you're like, Oh, I actually have to do it.
Yeah.
¶ The Power of High Stakes
But that that's one thing. The other thing was a another powerful mm forcing function for me and I think we talked about this when we chatted a couple of weeks ago was The for me it's like if there's not a risk of failure for the thing, then it's not really gonna get my best attention and I'm actually not gonna enjoy it. So that was something it took me a long time in my life to realize. But if you're working for a big company, it's it it's hard to have that feeling of like
Real stakes.
Mistakes. Yeah. And I guess I had it earlier in my career because I thought, oh, you know, like maybe I'll lose my job or like whatever. But you can get to a point in a large company where you at least have the perception that it's there's not stakes. And you I mean, there always are stakes. And of course, you know, I mean, as we see now, like
You might be working at this really highly regarded tech company and they do a round of layoffs. So it it there are stakes everywhere. And sometimes what you do has no
control over that. And actually that's part of the thing that's so frustrating about I think a larger organization. Yeah. But when you're doing something on your own, And like the for me that that tension of oh my gosh, if I don't make this work, like this has to work, like the the the edge of this thing succeeding or not is really in to whatever degree it's on me. That's really powerful. I love that. Actually, that's really helpful for me to to feel alive and also to feel like
Okay, I know what I'm doing. I gotta do this thing. Yeah. And and so you have to give if when there's when you but if you're gonna shift from one thing to another thing to make that shift, you'd somehow have to like create for me, I kinda have to create that pressure of like now this is the thing.
And it it has to survive. So you're talking about doing a thing where you're like shifting and it's the creative thing and it's gonna be the thing that's like the the financial thing, or like it's gonna become like the thing. Like that's It to make it really work, it does require a huge shift because it's both like like shifting the financial thing sort of like presumably ign sort of in like ignites this fun.
Fire. Definitely. It's funny. So the stakes thing is a really big deal for me. Uh, and I always want to bring everything back to video games, but I haven't I haven't played a multiplayer video game for more than a couple of hours since I was basically fourteen. And uh maybe I think it was 2021, a friend and I started playing a game called Valheim. Really amazing game. You guys should check it out. It's like a
Survival game where you're dropped into this world, you have to just survive. There's no map Look at this fucking fly just landed on my nose. Whoa.
That's the whole video here. You're gonna do a little clip of that.
Like.
It's gonna go viral.
Lieheim. But the the thing that about the the interesting thing about this game, right? Um so again I I'm uh I after about the age of fourteen, I just sort of fell off video games. Um because I started a band. the stakes of going up on stage and trying to entertain an audience.
um, overtook the video game thing immediately. I was like, I don't care about games. That doesn't matter to me. Then I started the company, way more stakes than video games. Every time I I wanted to go back to video games, but every time I tried, I was like, What I would always say to people and I've heard this from other entrepreneurs, it's like yeah, but but like my life
is kind of like a video game. Like my work is kind of like a video game. And I played this game twenty twenty called Valheim and it was the first time I felt that sensation again since I was younger that a video game captured my attention. And it was because if you die in this game so you could you could spend let's say you're sp you spend like t ten hours building up your your home, your character, your weapons, all of this stuff.
Then your you and your friend, me and my friend Paul were playing this, you get out on your boat that took you fucking five hours to build. Uh you go out, there's a storm and And uh you the the ship sinks and now both of your bodies are basically there where the boat sank with every single upgrade and characteristic that you've built up over the last ten, twenty, whatever amount of hours.
And so you have to do something called a corpse run, which is a video game thing, where you actually have to go back and get go to your body and get your stuff back. It doesn't just revive with you like Zelda or something like that. So this for me created a level of st and and the chances of you not ever being able to make it back there because it's just too dangerous, whatever, is also high. So there's like real stakes there that you could lose so much
uh like progress in this game world that you actually just either have to give up or you have to go through with like a potentially three to four hour rescue mission of your own dead body. Um And that game really captured myself and my friend Paul. I played it for sixty hours, which was like sixty times more than anything I played till since I was fourteen. Then there was another period of nothingness. And three months ago a game came came out called Marathon.
Um it's based on like a very old game and it's from the company that made Halo, which is an amazing game.
I was gonna say I I feel like that's not a new game.
Yeah, it's an old nineties game. Yeah, it's a it's an old nineties game. But this is the genre of this one is called an extraction shooter. Um and I was like a friend of mine, Amher, he was like, You should try it out. I tried it out and It the in this game, if you die you b the basically the concept is that you jump into a level with two friends.
you have like a mission to do. Uh other players are also in that world. They also have stuff to do. You can kill each other. You can, you know, do your mission. You can do whatever you want, but you have to get in and out in 20 minutes. If you die, every single thing you bring in with you, you lose it. And the things you bring in with you, again, might have taken hours to procure. And so the the tension level is so insanely high that it keeps me what what Laura has said is she
has never seen me she's never seen two things. She's never seen me more focused in my entire life when I than when I'm playing this. She sits next to me and we and we watch it together, but she watches the games. And she's also never seen me um like actually looking worried and stressed in a high stakes environment.
And in this game I'm sitting there and I'm like, because I don't want to let the team down. That's the thing. I don't want to let the the people I'm in there with. I don't want to make a mistake that makes them lose all of their stuff. Even though no one's gonna be angry or whatever, it's very disappointing when when you lose your stuff. And so everyone's focused, the communication levels have to be insanely tight and really good.
And I realized while playing this, the reason I don't really can't really connect with most video games is because if there's no stakes, if I just die and go back one chapter, this does not matter to me. I can't get interested in it. And 100% the same thing was happening with the podcast. I was bringing it out every week. There was no real like the money was coming from AJ and Smart because I could just go in and out and pop in and out and generate revenue there.
But now I am saying to the A I've told the AJ and smart team. Hey, I'm doing this podcast now. And if I can't get this into a viable business, then I will just say this has failed. Like this will actually be if I won't just let it kind of you know, slowly, slow burn, whatever for another year. If it doesn't grow, if it doesn't show, you know, revenue, success, whatever, then I'll kill it. And so now I'm starting to feel the stakes. I'm actually starting to feel
Oh, there's actually, you know, quite a lot of expenses. There's a lot of people relying on on scheduled to work at this point. So even though it is a silly creative project, you're right. That wasn't holding my attention. And and the other reason is like You know when I would make music or I'd make art.
The only time that's ever worked is when I had to perform in front of people and when the actual performance mattered and if I didn't do a good job, people wouldn't be happy and then I'd let the whole team down. And for me Uh i y it's exactly that. I cannot I I cannot force myself to be interested in things. that have absolutely no stake.
Even our creative retreat that is all you know was all about just unplugging, disconnecting, all of that. For me the stakes are extremely high because people have traveled from all over the world and they wanted this experience that I'd promised to them. And if I don't deliver it, I feel it I it w it would be a huge problem for me. So the stakes thing. I guess we're not saying whether it's healthy or not, but there's definitely some intrinsic element there that if the stakes aren't there,
If if the stakes are there, you can be as messy as you want, you can be as unproductive as you want. It doesn't actually matter, you'll actually still do it. If the stakes aren't there, you have to like will power yourself into it. And that doesn't work well for me at all.
¶ Behind the Podcast Costs
Right. That's when uh I need like productivity to
Tricks.
And you know And there's times in life when there are those things, like.
Sure.
have to do this whatever and you're just grinding through and you know I that sucks to be in that world though. That it's just
In my twenties I I used to do.
Yeah.
A lot of that, but yeah. Yeah. And it was helpful.
Yeah. Yeah. So I I always have that kind of Infrastructure of tracking those things that must get done that are not part of the the black hole of intensity that's just bending space time around it and and exciting me and making the desk messy and requiring some kind of like
Special energy management to keep it going with all that stuff. The there is the basics that have to get accomplished and and you have to track that stuff too, but So do you t have you already talked on the podcast and other episodes about what goes into making the podcast?
I don't think so. I don't know.
a little bit about it. That's kind of interesting. You you just sort of you touched on like, yeah, there's expenses, there's because I think you could somebody could have the impression because it's you record it. I know you record it. We were just talking before we started, you record it live. Like record it and like don't edit it.
Yeah.
And, you know, we see this little window if people are on YouTube and they see like, Okay, I see your wall, I see oh you've got this you got a nice mic, but there's no
This is the only expense.
Like yeah, like you know, anybody can post something on YouTube, post podcast. What goes into it and what could go into it as you grow it? H like what is that world? Can you just illuminate that a bit?
¶ Ellie Joins the Team
Yeah, I think the biggest expense in the beginning um is just me not running AJ and Smart. You know, one uh one client booking or something, uh or m me doing me doing Something uh for one week in AJ and Smart could bring us in a hundred, a hundred and fifty thousand euro. Um and me. Me doing this podcast means that that's not happening. So that's the that's the first and most significant expense, I would say, is me personally and my
um lack uh lack of doing something for the business that's generating the most revenue. Um secondly, there is actu actually quite a lot of expensive equipment around me now. Um just the I don't know, couple of thousand euro worth of camera equipment. And d to actually do it in this live format that I'm doing, um, there's more equipment than we ever had to use for the edited format we did for Jake and Jonathan.
Um, although that can you know, it doesn't have to be it w it doesn't have to be that expensive. We just happen to have um we like all like the live broadcast. Like this camera alone Which we were testing out last week. I'm holding it up to the Yeah. I d I think this one costs it. Yeah.
Like it cried costs a lot of money.
six K. I don't know what it actually costs. I think this and the lens you're talking like I don't know, fifteen thousand or something.
Yeah.
Other cost is that now so up until the point where I was like switching on the seriousness of unscheduled, it was basically just me and some equipment. So pretty low cost. And then like, you know, hosting costs and all of that stuff. Now Ellie has joined the unscheduled, so a member of the AJ and Smart team. Yeah. So basically the legend Ellie. So basically his full time salary gets now attributed to unscheduled.
Um, and so, you know, and a certain percentage of my salary now because actually I still want to be able to get paid uh for doing what I'm doing. So um it's it's just it's hard to put an exact number on it. It's more the labor and opportunity cost thing um than any.
Wait, so that that you you skim past that.
Yeah, what was he doing before this?
What's he no, what's he doing for the podcast? Like how does that make the podcast happen? Oh
Yeah, so as of last week, um, Ellie will be doing all the clips basically. So clips are are one of the best ways to grow a podcast. Okay. And so if you go on our channel and you look at the shorts or you look at any clip that's not longer than, you know, that's around ten minutes long. What Ellie is doing, he's looking for the snippets from the podcast that could
Entice people to come and listen to it. And it is one of the best ways to grow it. And last week, when I did my like first LinkedIn post in nine months,
Um, I launched it with a clip that Ellie had edited. Actually, really he did a really good job of it, like where he progressively revealed who was in the room with me in a very comical way. Um and so what he's doing is mainly looking for and highlighting moments from the podcast that we think if someone were to see that they might be interested in watching the whole thing.
Um and that's what we haven't had so far. And that'll be his main main job. Also, he set up this camera now. Like if if you go back two episodes ago, the ep episodes looked much worse than they do now. He set up the camera. So he's uh and also set up this like switcher. So as the podcast begins to look better and better, that'll be attributed to having a full time
uh cameraman slash editor. It also just makes it feel more serious. That's it. The other thing is him him being part of it just makes it feel more serious to me, I guess, as well.
¶ Podcast Monetization Strategy
Yeah. But that's a tremendous cost. Yeah. Too. So so now when you think, Okay, well I've I've I've got now like a bunch of Ongoing cost associated with this. How do you plot out like what do you do to to start to counteract that?
I am weird when I think about money. Um I don't have a really strong connection to numbers at all. Um so I kind of don't really think about it. So the okay, the way I think about a pod uh like this type of business, a podcast. I think that the amount of engaged listeners equals the amount of monetization possibility. So, and we've already tested it with some events. So, right now, for example, so it's it's all potential, is what I'm saying. So, right now, if I was like,
Actually, everybody, Jake and I are going to be running a fucking whatever workshop next month. Um
We've talked about run running a fucking
whatever. Fucking whatever workshop next one. Then I would be able to guess how much money that would make before announcing it. And that allows me to calmly lose money for months. While building it up. So that got it. The way I look at it is if we can get to 10,000, then there's, you know, 600 to 700,000 euro per year revenue possibility. Just because of the engaged audience and in because you're basically bringing together people who would be weird enough to listen to this specific thing.
Yeah, right. You get like minded people too.
Cool. And we we have like are I feel confident in my ability to monetize things like this. Um and so yeah, the honest answer is what I've told Ellie and what I've told Kyle, our finance guy, this is simply going to lose money for another six to eight months. and the money will come from client projects at AJ and Smart, which I will be doing some of. So I'll be actually delivering a couple of client projects this year for the first time in a while. Because I also
What does that mean? What that sounds very jargony. What's
Yeah, I literally will get on a flight and go to a client in New York and I'll do a facilitation training for them. Um or uh someone wants us to do a strategy sprint, which I would usually not be part of, but I'm like, okay. Um I'm gonna be burning maybe one hundred and fifty K over the next three months. So let me just do a project that brings that in so that everyone in the company doesn't feel worried about me doing this project. Uh so yeah, I'm trying to f I'm funding it, I guess.
while uh while running it using AJ and Smart, but with some confidence that this in itself can be a pretty nice like a nice enough small business, I guess. Which is also the most important thing is that I enjoy. That's the that's the important part. Otherwise I would just keep doing the facilitator stuff on repeat. Right.
¶ Daily Growth and New Shows
What's the plan? to the extent that there is one for building up the audience, uh it
Yeah.
Yeah, I remember when we were doing our podcast and we Some of the strategies that you used were I mean, whenever we would have guests would uh sorry to say for us in our in our own uh dynamic and charisma. But I remember when we had guests, that was really when you'd see like a a
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Growth. And and then and then you you also had some luck with advertising. Uh
Yeah.
We ran out on daring fireball.
That was good. That worked well. So okay, someone is drilling. I don't know if you can hear that.
I can't, so hopefully nobody can except you.
It du people who are wearing headphones might hear, but I know there's drilling. So okay, growing this podcast is The so okay. This is a this is an important element of this. Uh especially because a lot of entrepreneurs listen to this. I think an entrepreneur's day should be split into The so you know like the idea of having your focused work at the start of the day or something, this general idea. Yeah. I think promotion I think as a CEO or an owner, your main job is promotion.
So your main thing you should be doing and my main thing I will be doing, you know, ten AM to two PM every single day is just thinking about what am I doing to grow this show today. And then there's what is it? Promotion, uh, building and delivery. Building for me is just thinking about the show ideas, uh, consuming
stuff on the internet that gives me ideas to to build it out and also, you know, actually building the set and thinking about how I want to do it. Um and then the last tiny percentage is delivery, which is right now. uh doing the podcast. Literally, doing the podcast. And I wanna also do a live show on Wednesdays. This might be fun for you to join me. Um it's gonna be called Video games, so video games with a B
And it's gonna be me and whoever wants to join playing some video games like Valheim, but I'm also gonna be answering business questions from entrepreneurs in real time. Uh so that's something I'm also gonna be doing to try to build
¶ Podcast Promotion Tactics
uh the show. So all of that stuff. So basically then the literal things that I will be doing. So tomorrow for example I'll get up. This episode will be ready to go. Normally I actually record on a Tuesday, but tomorrow I'll get up and because it's release day for the podcast, which is like religiously has to be on a Tuesday just so I stick to it.
Um
I'm going to be thinking about what is the name of this episode? What is the thumbnail that's going to get the most people to click? Then I'm going to be thinking, what is the one what's like the punchiest moment that happened here? And I'm probably right.
Yeah.
And then I'm gonna be um asking Ellie to put that into a clip. you know, uh and uh maybe a couple of different clips around that. Then I'll be thinking, okay, so uh where am I going to share this podcast that uh in a way that will grow it? So one is obviously I'll do like a post on LinkedIn. Number two is um I'll maybe look for a moment where or or at the same on the same day I might be looking at other podcasts I've been on. So for example, I've been on Greg Eisenberg's podcast a few times.
I'll make a clip of that. Maybe I'll post that on X because that might work for that audience better. Again, pushing people back here. Maybe I'll think of um Um a podcast that I could go on this week that would draw more people into my podcast. And I could just ask the person if they're looking for a guest and I can suggest a theme. Um
And yeah, that i a lot of it is just that. It's like Optimizing the name of the episode, um, optimizing the thumbnail for the YouTube version of it, uh, and then thinking what are the moments within this episode that are universally interesting. for an audience that might say w'cause cause you know, a certain type of person, this is a slow burn podcast. It's like a not one you're gonna instantly like. It's kinda like um
Probably not ever. You probably won't ever like it.
It's like it's like I always say it's kind of like um an you know, an album that you maybe didn't like or or book you didn't like. Yeah. And then it became your favorite one. So that's what I'm trying to do with this one. But the the only way you ever listen to one of those albums or uh read that book or play that game is if a friend keeps telling you over and over again and you're like, Yeah, but I keep starting it and it fucking sucks.
And it's just not my thing. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, no, you have to or like a series, you have to just get through season one. Um, and so what I'm trying to be is that piece of content where people have to just get through season one so that they can actually enjoy it. Um and the the only way to do this is keep reminding people that it exists.
and giving my fans as well or listeners the ammo with these clips that they can say, Look at look at this moment. This is like this is an interesting moment that you could share. And so at the end of every week then I'm looking at uh to be honest, I'm doing this every day at the moment. I'm looking at the stats. I'm seeing how many new people listen this week? What platform is it doing well on? Um, where are people having the most where are people listening to it the most? Um
¶ LinkedIn's Content Dilemma
And which activities am I doing that brings in the most listeners every week? And unfortunately, LinkedIn works really well. Um, I really
Yeah.
Really dislike LinkedIn. Yeah. Um Yeah it it is and look I'm gonna do it.
Escape velocity from LinkedIn. Maybe you only have to do it for a while.
That's the th the idea is I'm gonna just milk LinkedIn until everyone on there is listening to this show who who could find me and then I'll go dark on there again. Cause I you know for another year. I do not after one week back on LinkedIn, I'm like, no, there's no there's no way That this is gonna make not make my life worse.
I wanna precisely characterize what I find so difficult about LinkedIn.
Go for it.
Or myself, which is that there is a Different. kind of thing that works there. Like the expectation for the audience when you when we all anybody goes onto LinkedIn and you get stuck in the feed, w what it is that you're looking for, it's like it's different. than what you you know, you would would look for elsewhere. I mean, and this is obvious. Like every every platform like this has its
It's native thing that is working at the meta that's working right now.
Yeah. And and that like doing that thing. is like kind of I haven't found a thing that's like Thanks.
Like.
like it doesn't sort of break my soul a little bit that is also in that like is that thing.
You have to write in poetry format. Yeah.
You have to write in poetry format, iambic bentameter. And that's the expectation on LinkedIn is that you're gonna do that.
You you the the here's the here's the hack for winning at LinkedIn. You look at the news, you find the worst thing that's happened today, the worst thing that is the worst shit you can possibly find. Then you take a screenshot of that and you make that about you. And you you do a post about how this connects to you and your career.
Um, and so you get a double win. You get the, you know, oh wow, this person is so such a good person for bringing up this. Oh, and I didn't realize that that's how it connects to their fucking tattoo studio. Um and so yeah, the the the way to win on LinkedIn is is a bit depressing. I
I have been trying I'm trying to so last week I had two very viral posts. One in particular. It was about this fucking Ferrari. I I text you and I was like, Do you want to talk about this Ferrari thing? And to be honest.
No, that's the whole purpose of the
It was literally gonna be the I literally text Jake and I was like, There's this thing that has happened. It's a design thing. I had a viral LinkedIn post. This is the kind of stuff we used to talk about on Jake and Jonathan. It's perfect. But you know what? I woke up this morning, dude. Listen, here's what happened. Here's what happened, right?
I went to bed last night, I was still excited about talking about this. I went to sleep and at two AM a fucking mosquito f bit my face here. Look. Wait, here. Look at that. You see that weld.
Yeah, you can see that.
So and look, there I he fifteen times. So from two AM until like 7 a.m. I was trying to hunt this piece of shit and I was even like Laura's like we maybe we should move rooms tonight and go to like honestly, we can't find him and I I'm doing all the thing. I was on ChatGPT at like four AM. How do you and they leave the light off when it's
f goes by your ear, then you turn back on the lights, it's gonna land near your bed, et cetera, et cetera. Put a fan on your bed. All of these things. Nothing worked. It ki it I'm covered in fucking welts. It nothing bit Laura. Uh just me. And I woke up I got up to the end of the day.
Actually could it have been Laura?
It could have been Laura. It w you know what it was? It was it was the embodiment of LinkedIn flying around my room, biting me. And listen, I woke up this morning tired and annoyed and I was like, I don't want to talk to Jake about this fucking Ferrari thing, even though it will be popular.
Even though this shit will fucking bang and loads of people will listen to it and I can connect it with the post last week that went viral. I honestly I just don't give a fucking shit. I o I I couldn't care less about talking about it. Cover the mosquitoes fucking bye.
¶ Ferrari Backlash and Creative Risk
You know what I mean?
You know, I I knew there was some Ferrari thing and I actually I don't I'm uh I'm I'm like it's it sears the driven snow on it. I have no idea what it even is.
Here's w here's the br basic idea, right? Johnny Ive, we love Johnny Ive. He and his team designed a new electric car for Ferrari. And oh my God, what a surprise. Everyone hates it. Can you believe it, Jake? It's like a repeat of every single episode of Jake and Jonathan. I think the the thing that I used to get irritated about when this used to happen is like
Okay, first of all, of course it will get you a lot of engagement if you say you don't like the stuff that people make. Um, especially if it's something popular or whatever. And of course there's th you're just gonna you're just gonna be able to look smart if you kind of Talk about how You gotta criticize stuff. And I'm not saying I don't I d the criticism could be right, I don't care. It's just the general knee-jerk vibe of people being like, Johnny Ivers fucking shit actually.
Uh the the love from company they don't know what they're doing. They're all blah blah blah blah blah. And I'm like you guys you don't you don't know what it's like to work on stuff and the amount of conversations that happen and the amount of like shit that goes down and just fucking shut up unless you've worked on things, unless you've actually worked on products and you know that maybe what gets out there in the world is not the exact thing you
uh envisioned or maybe there was conversations behind the scenes where everyone and it looks like there was where everyone in the company was like, Yeah, we know people are not gonna like this, but we wanna do something different. We wanna do something like this. But no, you just gotta you just gotta say it's shit. Just gotta say it's shit.
And also sometimes you Do your best, you do all that hard work, you make something in the way and it comes out the way you wanted. And it's just not like it's just not right for people or whatever. Like it could
Yeah.
But just doesn't connect. But the nature of doing work that's novel and on the edge and creative and generative. Is that sometimes it won't work. Yeah. Yeah, and we d we see examples of people or companies or musicians or whatever for for whom like maybe like almost every time it works. And so we're like, Oh, well, you know, it should be possible for every time for it to work and I think
But like it just sometimes it just doesn't work, even if it's great. Like even if it was really well crafted and really well thought through and you did all the hard work. Like sometimes yeah if you Take a chance, it's not gonna work. And if you do stuff that is a hundred percent going to work every time, it's like, well, that's not fun. And that's not really gonna add that much to the world. And I like I'm gonna bring this back actually to the podcast because
You talked about in tactics that you're using, some tactics that are the tactics where if I, you know, went on to Claude and was like, Hey, how do I grow a podcast? Some of these things would probably
Postgre.
Clips. Yeah. The thumbnail really matters. The name really matters. You know, think about that. And and so there's some category of like patterns that work. And then
You know, then then there's like a level of energy you put into those patterns that work. Right. And like you're putting in one thing that you're doing that's really different is you're saying, I have a framework that I'm trying or using. Maybe you already know it works. Maybe it's something you're experimenting with, but you're like, The the first bulk of my effort has to go to growth. And so all of those patterns that work, I'm gonna like. focus like massive
energy, creative energy on doing a tr like a ridiculously good job on those. Not just
As much as I can, yes.
As much as you can, right? As much yeah, as much as you can. You're Johnny I. Ferrari. And then and then there's like but then there's also things where you're like, you know, I'm you're you're not following the the normal path, right? You're saying like also. I'm gonna do we're we're doing video games on Wednesday and like nobody's asking for people to Play video games and answer business questions.
Definitely nobody's asking for this.
No, you know, you're not like, Oh, look at these other podcasts that played video games and answered business questions. That seems to work well. I'll do that. And I think that's like super cool because I mean that might that also might be a Johnny Eye Ferrari. That might not work.
Easily not work. This podcast could easily not work.
¶ Unscheduled Podcast: Authenticity and Depth
But I you know, I just think that I r remembering d doing the podcast and knowing that having guests was like uh like a clear like
One hundred percent. Yes.
But like I didn't want to anything you didn't want to you didn't want to have a podcast where you're just like interviewing people all the time.
N never. I I hate to do that. That's also why it's like basically you are you ha you are one of the only people who's been on this podcast. Yeah.
Right.
Yeah. I mean it's like it's it if you do that, if you follow the the growth pattern for a podcast, yeah, you're going to be constantly recruiting guests. And then if you want to do a good job, you're going to be preparing to interview them. Yeah. But you're probably going to get most people, if you peek that out.
You're going to get like high quality guests and they're going to be talking about the same thing that they talk about on all the other podcasts that they do. Or you're going to be getting people who are on other podcasts or who like have other podcasts, cross, you know, it's just this like formula that exists in a lot of different
slightly different forms around. And there's a few people who break out of that and they have like such a different interview style or vibe or whatever that it's like, oh, even though that person is on every other is been interviewed on every other show right now. I wanna hear how Adam Buxton interviews. Yeah. Like whatever.
But most most of the time you go after that like known mega pattern, you're just lucky if you end up at like the seventy-fifth percentile of it. And it's just boring. It's just
Very boring.
And it's like now like now your life is wrapped around this thing that's still really time consuming and really hard to do, but it has no personal flavor.
Yeah.
You're just following a script. And to me, like that would be that would be doom. And that would just be like I'm now I'm trying to use productivity hacks to get myself to
I I would die. Uh honestly the idea of I one of the things I'm I was really specific about for this podcast in the beginning is no guests and no like If there's gonna be a guest, it's just gonna be a hangout with someone I already know. Um because I really yeah, I remember back in the Jake and Jonathan days.
So actually I did look at the stats recently. The most popular episodes of Jake and Jonathan are episode one and the final episode. So it was just you and I. But then of course the pot the guest episodes are always the most popular. Same with mine. Um I do not wanna be doing that. I just don't like the activity of it. I don't like messaging back and forth and scheduling with people. The whole fucking thing is called unscheduled.
And so for me, the concept of having a guest every week kill and and and the the sad thing is I will be chatting with someone sometimes and I'm like, Oh my God, I'd love to do an episode with you. But by the time it comes to that week where it's happening, I'm like, I don't wanna actually record at that time. Right.
It'd have been better to record it like when you were talking to them at the
Yeah, exactly. At the exactly and Even you know, th the the thing I said with you today, it's like I woke up in the morning and I didn't want to talk about the Ferrari thing anymore. And so this podcast has to accommodate for me to be able to do it every week, it has to accommodate what I find interesting and where the flow is. But the challen and the challenge there is that this is not an easy podcast to recommend to others.
And it's not an easy podcast to say, hey, this is what this is what this is, and this is the type of thing that it's filling in and I'm basically making the bet that sometime in the future a large amount of people, hopefully not too large, but a good a good amount of people will want to have a comforting comfort noise.
Background podcast where sometimes there's some lessons. Most of the time it's just like uh listening to someone doing almost like a radio show and it's unedited, there's few guests. the the it ba well I I'm copying another show that I watch in like format uh or or another like Twitch streamers basically do this. They do
eight hour long streams where it's just them talking and doing things. And that's what that's where it came to me where I was like, oh yeah. Like I find it very hard to have a meeting, an interview. Like later in the day, because it ruins my whole day then. You didn't ruin my day, Jake. I just mean peop you know, if I ha if I don't know the person and I have to interview them. Hey, you ruined them all.
I know what you mean.
Like nightmare. all day. Yeah, wait. And I'm not, I'm not, I've, there's no way I can fill the time well. I just do nothing. Um and so yeah, I I really want what I create in general. So the the the products that I respect the most and the art that I respect the most, and don't worry, I'm not saying this is art, are the things that grow very slowly and they creep up on you and eventually you're like, this is the best thing ever.
And I would never have seen you ba basically when you're trying to explain it to other people, they just don't like it. Um, I experienced this the first time with like Radiohead, Kid A. favorite band, one of my favorite albums of all time. And it's it's so good, but they're a band where n I used to get frustrated about, but now I understand why people don't won't give them a chance because they require a lot of patience because they they don't do choruses and they don't
give you payoffs in their songs and they don't end a song with a crescendo and sometimes they don't have the drum and the bass coming in at the same time in a satisfying way. Everything just fumbles into each other. But once you get into the vibe, you're like, oh shit, this is good. And that is actually the type of thing I want to create. I want to create something that has a lot of depth, but isn't easy.
to consume initially because you're used in this in the business podcast world, you're used to getting the preview of the episode before you watch it with all the exciting stuff. You know, this episode. And then you like all the crazy things that happen. And I couldn't believe my leg just fell off. And then, you know, and then there's all these pauses. Uh whereas this you have to listen. You have to fucking
Trudge through it. You have to you have to be trudging to get some information out of this thing. But I think there's people a large amount of people in the world who want this as a supplement to all the practical stuff as well, as an alter as an offset.
¶ Embracing Uniqueness in Creation
The thing is you are I know a lot of people. I've met a lot of people.
You have met a lot of people. Yeah. I have.
If I have, maybe.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's it. I'm done.
All right, Jake, see you then. Oh my god.
I mean you you're very different and There's really what a shame it would be if you're doing d doing your business and gotten to this point where it's kinda okay, this is the thing I do and I
I'm the kind of this YouTube personality type, you know, I'm like doing I I'm sort of the the YouTuber who draws in the audience. And then I go and I facilitate this workshop and I've facilitated it before. And like there's always some novelty in that where I'm doing the same thing, I'm doing the same thing. And your what makes you special, what makes you different, obviously will come through those things. And it's what makes those things work so well and have has built the business.
And the audience that you have. It really just scratches the surface of how weird you are. And and what's what's incredibly unique about you. And so to To continue doing that when it doesn't feel like it's It's everything to you when it doesn't feel like it's satisfying, would be really missing out on this huge opportunity. But to to really potent to have the the chance. Of maxing it out, of maxing out the weirdness into something truly transcendent, requires.
Taking a big risk. And it requires the approach you're talking about where you say, like, I'm just gonna make this thing that's like maybe really weird, maybe like very Hard for you.
Putting in some way.
But I'm going all in on on weird and I'm I'm just gonna pick out the patterns that other people use. When they're like a tactical means to expressing the weird thing. Not like one of the things that's interesting is every You talked about it's really around the delivery and the growth. It's not around changing the format. You didn't talk anything about the format.
repackaging what I'm already doing just to show it's it's almost like yeah, it's almost like I'm making weird music. But some people would need a preview of a nice part of the song so that they know well there are if you keep listening, there are some nuggets in there that are also what a normal person might want to listen to. But the other stuff's there too.
Right. It's like if you're Emily Dickinson, you know, and you like write poems all your life and you put them in a drawer, like there's a chance that somebody will discover them after you die and then be like, Well, these are great and like, you know, but like Most people th i it's not gonna work to just put put'em in a drawer. Like you do have to get them out in the world. You can't you can't count on on the the Emily Dickinson path, which also sucks'cause you're dead by the time any
That is also an issue. Yeah, we gotta get this shit out.
a tactical issue.
Sure.
I think she should...
You can't be posted on LinkedIn when you're dead, although it actually will probably get a lot of engagement, so
That's true. I mean, if Emily Dickinson had optimized her LinkedIn game like during life, I mean she could have been even huger, which is something people don't talk about enough.
People do not talk about the fact that I think the same thing with Steven Spielberg, he has a new movie coming out. And I'm looking I'm on LinkedIn and I'm like, where are the posts about it? So it's probably gonna fail. There's no post on LinkedIn about his new movie.
¶ Filmmaking Challenges and Formulas
Uh, what do you think about Steven Spielberg movies?
I don't remember the last one I've seen. What what is a What has he made recently?
I just re-watched with my son uh Tintin.
I've never seen it.
Jackson.
Never seen it.
Tintin's cool. I don't know. Did you watch Tintin or read Tintin as a kid?
No. Is Tintin a big robot or is it something else?
No, it's like a he's like a detective. They're graphic novels, but from like a long time ago.
Yeah, I haven't seen it. I think I uh it's like a 3D animated movie. Yeah. No, I haven't I haven't seen it.
It's very fun, but um but yeah, what's another Stephen?
Jurassic Park, right?
It totally ruined Ready Player One. You see the Ready Player One movie?
I watched a little bit of it and it just felt like a bad movie.'Cause yeah, the book was nicer than a lot better than that. I think like so he has a movie coming out next week. It I'm not loving the trailers, but it I do like the aliens topic and so dis disclosure day I think it's called.
I mean he's very the thing is he's a very competent filmmaker. He's like the best at just like making a movie.
Mm-hmm.
You know, but it's like but it always to me it feels like a bit like
Did he make saving private Ryan? Did he?
Probably.
I think that he he made ET. Yeah, ET. He makes them he makes satisfying movies with nice beginning, middle, and uh you're not gonna be like
He's the guy with the podcast formula who's like at the top of that.
He's really
Yeah, that's a great formula. Good job, Tim Ferris or Joe Rogan or whatever. Like but it's like I don't know. Like I don't want to hear the same person say the same like
So I have it. I I think Steven Spielberg, I haven't seen any of his stuff in a very long time, but what I do know, and again back to the Ferrari thing, it is so goddamn hard to make movies. that anyone who even manages to get something into finished format. Is ins is insane. This is not a normal and not a normal human because the level of pressure and stress to make a movie or a TV show is It's fucking insane.
¶ Funding the Podcast Vision
You have you have to be absolutely demented to be able to do this.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, I wait. There's another thing I wanted to talk about with your creation of it, of the your your structure, which is that you have figured out, okay, hey, I I'm doing this work for AJ and Smart. That's gonna finance doing this other thing. You have a you yeah, you don't have like a spreadsheet for the income and expenses. But it's like You know what the costs are and then you have the sense that this is a
like hits business or like a thing where I I don't need to have a steady income on it. I do these these big bursts of
Or yeah, that's that's one of the the other option is sponsorship, which which I'm Still I I mean, I like shows that I watch that I enjoy or Twitch streams, sponsorship is something I'm not against as long as it can be As long as yeah, no, I uh like that's another option. I just don't know if I'll be if I'll have the interest enough to actually keep up with those things, like those emails.
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
But yeah, for now it's mostly a hits business, which will be events or
Yeah, well, so...
¶ The Emotional Runway of Creative Projects
In f you're in a situation where the the the work you can do, those those bursts of work you can do for AJ and Smart that make money, yeah, can finance like a really high production level. Yeah. Like you c like you can get Ellie, right? But there's a there's an interesting pattern here that's common with Startups where if startups you know, founders are just getting started.
They might be in a situation where they say, okay, look, the the thing we're building, we can build it like pretty rapidly. And so we're going to basically burn. capital and and then with we have to grow fast. And then if we grow really fast, then we'll be able to continue to raise and we'll just do this like typical like venture capital.
Yes.
And then there's another model where still maybe you raise capital or whatever, but like you're like, you know what, this thing's gonna take a while. It's either gonna take a while to build or it's gonna take a while to build customers for it. And then you're like, okay, we got to go into. Cockroach mode or like ramen profitability.
Yeah.
You have to do the math and figure out what's the max runway I have. And we've actually just been talking about this because we're running labs right now with the startup founders. Like if you're in that mode where you're not going to be able to raise on this. On this like classic trajectory of like hockey stick.
Yeah.
That's okay, but like you you need to have a contingency plan for what that looks like. So you do need to figure out not only what your What it costs to do this thing. You also have to figure out like your emotional runway because it's hard to do a thing that's not. Taking off that's not getting outward signs of like it's hard to tell people, hey, oh, you know, oh, how's that thing you're working on going?
Two more people are listening in the last three months.
Yeah.
One guy.
And even if you can like talk around it like it doesn't feel good and those those conversations add up to like like they can chip away. Yes. And for some folks, like that runway is maybe really short because for them Status is like, oh, I'm I work for the and they're like, you know, I could stop doing this and I could work for a company people have heard of, or I could do a thing, people know what it is, and that would be much.
like clearer path to what I feel like I need to feel like good about myself. And for some people though, it's like, no, you know what? I could keep doing this forever because this is the thing and I don't care what people think. And being real about that, there's a lot of different
frameworks based on where you're at. And yours is weird because you do have this business where you can spend a little time and like create this spike of money, which is amazing. But people can do this with a diff without that.
Yeah for sure.
you do the math, you just sort of like, okay, I uh you know, I'm not gonna have Ellie. I'm not gonna have somebody producing it. I'm gonna have to do this part myself or I'm gonna have to scale back that part. It's not gonna look like John's version of his creative project. But that same thing exists in both places. It's like
Yes.
the runway and what how long can I handle doing it? And like, what is my plan? What is my picture here? Because I think a lot of things that could be really great, things that people could do that would be special to them, that would be that weird, wonderful thing, they never happen partly because
Maybe it's fun to like dip your toe in it a little bit, but figuring out what is the strategy? How do I maintain this? What does it take for me to show up and do that work? Where do I need to be? What has to happen? That stuff is. It's like fuzzy and foggy and It's not a fun part to figure that out. So it's really cool that you've figured out that part will kill most cool things before they even
take shape. Well actually so this episode, I think this is episodes episode eighty-three of this show. And I've only added someone to the team to help me last week. So on episode eighty-two or or eighty-one, depending on where we are now. So I did this as a s kind of side background thing for eighty something episodes just to Feel it out and see if I'm interested in it.
I mean it seems like you were if you did eighty two episodes.
Which is crazy, like because I kind of kept taking long breaks and coming back to it and this is maybe year three of me just messing around with this format. But never I've never done a concerted effort to tell anybody about it. It was always just in the background, this is just happening. Some weirdos just like float in and find out about it and then uh they become fans. Um which is great. But Um, I do think that these weird for me, what is true and I and I and I figured it out.
For me, it doesn't matter how many, you know, I wanna make g uh I wanna make games, I wanna write, I wanna make music, all of these things, I can say them all I want, but if there's no Like st and again, it's not about money, but if there's no like thing that happens where a lot of people either rely on me to do it or, you know, people are waiting for it to happen. Like this this show, the fact that it comes out every Tuesday, I know, you know
People, not that their lives would get worse if I didn't have the show, but people are waiting for the show to come out. They listen to it, they consume it, it does something for them. That The reason for me to grow this more than the the money element is for me to keep doing it. I just find it enjoyable. I I find this process enjoyable and fun. And I want to expand it. And I want to do the live streams. I want to add more video game elements into it.
Um, but if it doesn't grow, then that that's just sort of delusional at a certain point. And so for me, I think that emotional runway thing you talked about. I think for me, what I kind of said in my own head is if I can't at least double the listenership in the next six months.
then I know I don't have something that can really click with people. As long as I really give it a go. If it doesn't double, then I think it clear that this is something that's just not making itself heard or it's not something that it it's it's just always going to be so hyper niche that it it should just go back to I just do an episode whenever and which I think is also a nice option for it.
And so for me, I do have that emotional runway where if we were chatting six months from now and I was like Yeah, it's still pretty much the same amount of people on it. I wouldn't feel I wouldn't feel good about it. I actually wouldn't feel like I was doing something valuable with my time. I always feel Excited when
Wha because then I wouldn't feel useful. I think that's a big part of it as well. I wouldn't feel like that I'm putting out something that is useful enough for people to Spread it around, talk about it. And and you know, it creates like a center of gravity that people come towards. And I've seen, I mean, with Jake and Jonathan with our old podcast.
I was looking at the numbers of that, and you know, we had episodes where like seventeen thousand people were listening in on one episode. And so it's it's crazy. And and so this is
I mean given the way we we did it, like
Yeah, totally insane. But we had we had a We were on a topic that was exciting for people. We had a combination of you and I talking about it that somehow clicked with a lot of people. And this remained useful all the way up until the final episode. And that's why it also went to like I I think we jumped from episode a hundred and eighty to two hundred as a joke, but it went like a hundred and eighty episodes or something. So it had a crazy run.
Um, and you you can tell something is useful useful also when people just start telling you, Oh, hey, I'm a big fan of that show. I listen to it all the time. This is something that I learned from it, etc., etc. And I think for me with Unscheduled, obviously a much more messy concept with a harder sell. But yeah, the emotional runway for me is If it doesn't grow, eventually it would wear me down and eventually I would stop. And that's
I actually think it's great that you mentioned it because people usually don't mention that sort of thing. People usually don't talk about that. It could it could make no money, but actually grow and be useful to people and I would still do it. But if it were to not, if the audience size were to not somehow expand, that would be a signal to me that
I've hit on something so incredibly niche that it actually can't it's just not a universal interest for a lot of people. And then maybe I try little different angles of it and whatever, but uh yeah, th that would be my limit, I think. Personally.
Yeah I think it's
It's like
Interesting to imagine that world. I think I would be surprised if you get to a point where you've been doing sort of the same thing and you're feeling like it's sort of in stasis because your approach to this is already evidently very experimental. Even just looking at the Even if we just isolated the video games idea.
Yeah.
Like I I don't remember you talking about that.
No, this only came up on like two days ago when I was driving and I texted Laura and I was like, I just thought of a really stupid name for something. That's by the way how a lot of stuff starts with me.
We talked for a long time two weeks ago about this whole thing. And like everything about how it's running now, almost everything about it, was not stuff that you talked about, like, oh, I'm just I'm dying to do to bring Ellie in and I'm dying to like spend more time focused on, you know, the thumbnails and the like none of that was happening. So Just imagining over the course of six months how many of those things that you don't know what they are now will come along. It's like
I s I s it's good to know for you, right? And this I'm just saying this for like anybody who's listening, right? Like it's good to know for yourself, hey, it feels like my emotional runway for this is like this many months. Yeah. Chances are if you're an outsider to that person, you might say, like, well, gosh, that's great. Like if you can do it for six months and even if you feel like you can keep pushing if it feels like it's kind of going nowhere.
But the chances are when you're giving enough energy to it, yeah, during that time, there's a great chance something will happen. And if I'm talking to a startup founder and they say, Oh, I have my emotional runway for this is like Twelve months or eighteen months, I'm thinking, Well, that's great because if you if you can keep it alive for that long, you just raise the chances that something really changes and
Yes.
And you know, it it's like oh, now you're like really it the dynamic of how it feels, of what you're doing, of how it's being received, everything changes. It's just a great you know, it's just a greater surface area. But yeah, that's uh I think I think it's a helpful way to look at it. And it is like so cool to see what has happened when you've created that attention and space and like urgency and stress around it, all those things coming together.
It's cool to have something to do as well. Like, you know, when I was talking to you two weeks ago, I was like, Jake, one of my problems is that I don't really know what to do with myself. That's a common I mean, it's obviously a very privileged point to be in that the company got to the point where I don't need to do it's like four hour work week or whatever. Um, but that's not satisfying to me. That's very depressing and boring to me. And I get weird and I get kind of
like fatigued by having nothing to do. And also like so many things I could do that I do nothing. Um, classic ADHD shit. And now just being like unscheduled is the thing. For now, for the next six months. And that's what I'm gonna do. Tomorrow when I get up, what am I gonna work on? I'm gonna work on unscheduled.
While also watching a thousand YouTube videos and whatever. Um, yeah, that's my that's my interest. And and it could be that six months from now there is no unscheduled weekly show, but that the Me streaming video games is actually the thing. I don't care as long as it bears some sense of uh it's a feeling of momentum and progress that I want from everything I do.
¶ Community and Authentic Connections
And I I do think like at a certain point I you we probably all know someone who sticks with something too long. Like if I was doing unscheduled if you know, three years from now and I'm like, Yeah, there's Yeah, still like 1,500 people listening, exactly same list listenership as two years ago, whatever. Then Well, unless I was delighted by that, unless I was very happy, it i for me I just know that I would be very unsatisfied because of the lack of a sensation of progress.
Um, and that's just something that I get excited about. And I and I know there's an element to this of just
Well, it's not all about growth. It's about making something a very small amount of people love, and that's what I want to do. So I don't want it to be I don't need 70,000 people watching the video or something. I am just looking for a sense that There's more and more people every week interested in this weird combination of Unedited, long form, few interviews, hang out feel ha fe the feeling you get to hang out with a some entrepreneur friends.
Um, making it less low that was what I was thinking, like what's what's the point of the show? I think like it makes you feel maybe less lonely as an entrepreneur if you hear these things. Yeah. Um because I think if you're listening to one of the other podcasts,
Like for example, the the diary of a CEO. It's more of a corporate interview style thing. It's not going to necessarily make you feel um less lonely about the journey of being an entrepreneur because there's not many doubts or anything in there. It's just here's An interview with somebody, a very good interview, but not
Diarrhea of a
CEO. The only worry I have is that, you know, someone will clip me saying the diary of a CEO because you could easily make a compilation of me doing it a hundred times. Then send it to him without any context and he thinks I'm trolling, whereas I actually just think it sounds funny. Stephen Chartlett from the Diarrhea of a CEO.
¶ Examining the New Ferrari Design
His name is Steven Barlett. Um yeah, so that's the that's it, man. F oh Ferrari. You know this could be the clip. Oh yeah, and uh so crazy with the Ferrari stuff, right? Just take a look. Take a look. Look at it, yeah, look at the Ferrari.
So I share my screen or is that even gonna show?
Um you can try and I'll see what ha yeah, you try it, try it, see what happens. I'll probably have to do some weird stuff. So yeah, look at the Ferrari uh.
Let's see here.
If you go to like Ferrari.com, it's also the car that's on the homepage. Uh Jake Knapp is requesting, yes, you can share. I don't know all the controls here, so I'll have to fuck around a bit. Tell me when you're sharing.
I mean oh, so let's see. Um share. Okay, yeah, it looks like it's gonna let me. Okay. I'm sharing.
Okay, wait, I'm zoomed so far in. I don't I should learn I should probably learn the controls here. Okay, yeah, so go to the official Ferrari website. Okay. And uh it's the first car. This is it. So this is the electric Ferrari and the
Oh no, I got into a cookie.
Oh no. Uh so the the internal the the full car inside and out was designed by Johnny Ive and his team. There's obviously like some videos and shit.
What do people not like about it?
Cool. So also if you go and con if you go to the configurator and add the black one uh turn like the try the
Yeah.
I I discover. Um so for anybody listening to the audio only version, I'll I'll start narrating Okay. So this car, look at the doors, it's cool, man. Okay, I'll tell you like so people the general vibe is that people hate it because it doesn't look like um a Ferrari and that's like a brand related thing. Um Luce. Luce, I d I think so. Why don't you watch one of the videos or something there?
Video.
You turn on your audio thing, you know the allow or
Oh, like should I reshare so you can hear the audio?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just'cause you know, most people just listen to the audio version.
Yeah, okay, yeah, hold on. I'll reshare my screen here. I think I have to stop and then share again with audio.
Well, you know, um a new chapter begins, full reveal. There's also whole episode oh wow, yeah.
I don't know how that happens.
🎵 Music
Looks like we could glass first.
🎵 Music
Thank you.
I can I can barely hear you by the way, the music.
🎵 Music
Probably that's it's just gonna be that that sound. So now I'm gonna I now I'm gonna actually turn can I turn the audio?
I'll just go. Yeah, you can just there there's the little audio thing there. Yeah, just look at it. It's fucking it's a cool look, it's a it's a cool looking car, in my opinion. Um, everyone on fucking LinkedIn is complaining about it, but they most people are just copying and pasting other people's complaints. They don't actually know what they're talking about. Um
I didn't I didn't hear the complaints, so I don't know.
It's all it's all everyone hating it. It's like
Designer, I don't know what you're supposed to say, but like this looks really
I also saw it and I was like, This looks cool and then I was sorely I was incorrect it seems. Look look at how the hood like it's fucking cool. I love that. So cool. Hey, go to the configurator and and good sh look at the black version of it. It's fucking cool.
And it reminds me of the Ferrari from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. all that long.
I don't know.
that one let's see uh uh Ferris Bueller uh Ferrari
One looks like a post about it saying the black one looks cool and also I wrote a few other things and it got Two hundred and thirteen comments. Um, by the way, I'm not like I I don't enjoy that. It had you don't feel good at LinkedIn. No, I because when I open LinkedIn, I'm like, oh no, what have I done? Uh it's it's fifty three thousand people saw and seventy eight thousand four hundred people saw it. Um and it it created a lot of a lot of discussion. Um I wrote uh
Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok
I wrote maybe I'll oh y the ch what do you think of the black one? Wait, is the black one on there somewhere? I think you just have to click into the any one of them and then you can just change the color. Yeah.
Okay, so just start with
Yeah, it's cool. The black one is fucking cool. I and for me, of course, I'm coming from the perspective of I wish my Tesla looked like this because I think the Tesla is pretty ugly. Um and I'm I'm not like I don't have a Ferrari. The thing is ninety nine point nine percent of the people complaining about it will also never have a Ferrari. So this is a cool this is a fucking cool car. And the inside there's so many cool things th about the inside of it. Like, did you see how the key works?
No. It's so cool. It's like this thing you like put down into the thing and the light goes from the thing to the thing.
How do I how do I get how do I see the the key?
¶ Status, Luxury, and Public Opinion
You'd have to go to the reveal video.
complain about this is like reminds me of a flash like
Oh, the website is the website is terrible. I guess they don't really care because they're selling cars for seven hundred thousand euro.
Have a great time. Uh yeah, w uh
I think you'll have to go to like
Don't I think I have to go to the homepage probably now to get back there. Oh there it was. Oh there it was.
I can show you uh the key
Yeah, you showed me you showed me now I'm gonna stop sharing. I usu
I'll show you the key. Oh, we're actually doing the Ferrari thing now, are we? Um where did they put the fucking key in here? Let's they're not even showing it. There's there's a lot of Johnny I videos, by the way. If you if you've been if you've been nostalgic about Johnny I videos, there's a good amount of them come out this week. Talking about the car.
Uh
This is a car. I'm too I'm too lazy.
I saw the last Johnny I video I saw was one for open AI where he was like
Oh yeah, walking along the street. Yeah.
I I would I I hadn't really seen him walk before and he really has kind of a robust he's just he's like Motorin, you know? Like I I like that.
He um yeah, he he'cause in the Apple videos you would only ever see like his head. Yeah. Yeah, it was always very carefully constructed, but he's he's he's got more movement than you'd expect. He he moves more than you would think. Yeah. Like he moves his hands and his Like he's more nervous also than you would expect, which is a nice kind of it's kinda cute.
It's n it was nice. I actually I liked it. I was like, Oh, that's a human being.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I what so so I'll tell you what I wrote here. I mean, look, my y my post I wrote it I was annoyed, so I wrote it in an angry way. Um Okay, this is word for word what I wrote. You guys posting about how bad the new Ferrari design is are embarrassing. You're the same people who love to complain anytime Apple does something weird and new, only to end up using the proje product religiously for years once everyone else accepts the design. Oh no, Boo hoo, Apple's AirPods look silly, tee hee hee.
And then look who's wearing AirPods once everyone else accepts the design. You, right? I get that you need your hit of LinkedIn engagement, but guess what? You don't know shit about car design, the car business, and you're not buying one anyway. And hey, just because you can generate an image of a car in chat GPT or PT or whatever,'cause I actually couldn't remember whether it's T P or P T and I couldn't bother Googling or checking it.
Uh doesn't mean you're a goddamn design icon, so just chill the fuck out. Guess what? I also know nothing about these things. I don't design cars and I'm also not buying one. So here's my hot take. I think the black one looks cool. The end. Um and this this caused well I mean yeah like so two hundred and thirteen comments.
Right.
I think yeah, uh I think like at least fifty percent of them were negative sentiment towards me. But and some of them were good, like some some I actually feel thought through it and and had some good points. And I I really think that's fair. Like if someone has thought it through and and is like, You know, it just doesn't really fit the Ferrari brand, and this is what Ferrari stands for. But most people are just like, it looks like a Nissan leaf.
It's like this is the same shit every w the same basic thing people talk about Apple product. I it it's just I don't know, it's just weak and I I don't appreciate Also, you j no one tried it. No one's no one's sat inside it, giving it a go. Everyone's just like it's shit. And uh I uh of course I again I'm not a Ferrari person. I don't know anything about Ferrari.
But at least the people who are posting about it should also be honest about not knowing anything about Ferrari. And then yeah, the Ferrari people, what I also wrote at the end is like if you're if uh or I wrote in one of the comments is if if you have a Ferrari, if you're a collector I'd love to know what you think. Of course the zero people uh on fucking LinkedIn all day doing this kind of content have a Ferrari. Uh because yeah, because yeah, they don't. Uh they they just want to
Would you if you let's say
Like Yes, I would accept one for free.
You would you'd accept one for free. Which you I mean, can you imagine a situation, a certain amount of money you'd have where you'd be like, I yeah, that I would buy one. I'd like prioritize buying one.
No, I I think just because that's not my thing. Like I mean that car so if I was ever to buy a Ferrari it would be that one. Yeah That's a nice so I just don't like the aesthetic of race cars at all. I think they look like gaming chairs or they're they're very like kind of boy looking things. Or like you know those alienware gaming PCs where it's like a picture of an alien that glows in the dark? That's like the vibe.
I you know, growing up there there's a Lamborghini from the 80s that I think is really cool. It's uh actually I have a little Lego model of it here. I'm gonna grab it.
I'm gonna tell you why it's shit.
It's this one. Very ratchet. Yeah, it's kind of boxy. And so this for me would be of that kind of car. I mean if this was a real car, not uh one made out of Lego, like that would be the one where I'd be like, okay, that like would I actually want that one because it's so cool. Of those like supercars. I can see Porsche, that's different. That feels a little bit more.
Porsche nine eleven is quite nice.
If you have like a if you have a
Right.
or a Lamborghini. Mike, you there's kind of I feel like it's a bit insecure.
Bye.
I if you know, where are you like pulling up in your Ferrari?
Yeah.
But I think like if you do that and you're like check me out or you like feel good about it, because you know you know like people are like looking at
Look at that shit.
know people are like, uh like we do have an idea of how much that car costs, like crazy amount. Like not like in it's not an expensive normal car.
No It's definitely a status symbol for a certain type of person who wants to do
You need that. Why do you like what's going on inside? Like to me that's like it It uh to me it actually makes you look worse because it makes you look like you need
Spike.
Like you went to such great lengths to impress people.
I think
think of those people as like inside like super low self esteem. Like it's a negative.
That's an interesting one. I think the I've thought about this before, I've talked about this in relation to Berlin. in so first of all I I I think there's two two groups of people who buy stuff like this. One is what you're talking about. One is the type of person who needs it for their self esteem and they need to show off. Yeah. I actually do believe there's a there's a type of person who buys this type of thing because they love the machine and they are like
This is awesome.
This is just such a cool machine. Yeah. And I I meet some I meet people like this sometimes with um like when it comes to watches Uh and and like I know, let's say, multiple people who have nice Porsches. Some people are in love with that product and they they absolutely could talk about it for hours. They of course are not
not unhappy that people also admire it and and that kind of thing. Um but then there's people who will buy that. They have zero idea about anything about it. They just want to show people that they have loads of money. Um even if you're
Into it. Like, I think it's like the yeah, I think you're totally right. There, I'm sure lots of folks who have, and they're just like, nah, like, I don't care what anybody thinks. This is just
This is a machine that that I love to have.
A beauty. Yeah. And but the the bar for like Pulling that off or whatever, like it just
Yeah, it's probably not easy to Yeah.
Yeah, like to to like it becomes much harder than with a Porsche, which is yeah, you know Yeah. Or like or the watch. Like even though watches can be very expensive, but like it it's a little easier probably for people to pull off like uh, you know.
Unless you have a Richard, you know the Richard Mill. Do you know these ones? I don't dude, search that. Just right now have a look. You're Richard they're like four hundred and fifty thousand
Will you will you uh spell you have to spell it for?
So just write Richard and then M I L L E as the second name. You won't like how these look. I mean I've never seen one of these that I thought looked nice, but these do you see'em? They look like race car engines. If you go to the website Richard Meal Richard Me, I don't know how to say it. These things are fucking insane.
This is like the and the the people who I mean the people who wear this know it's an extreme status symbol and they're like, look, I am so unbelievably wealthy that I can spend kind of side money on something like this.
Yeah, I have to show the image. Uh Of the watch because it's just so bonker.
It's a bonkers product, yeah.
It's like super tacky.
It's it's something I mean, I w it just I think that probably what I'm willing to admit is that this is just not in our world.
Yeah, it's just a different world.
It's just a different world and I At first glance with all of these things, I'm like, this is just a weird thing to spend money on. And then I don't know, sometimes I think I do that, but with other things that are uh I don't know. There's there's definitely things where I I I think I can I I think I can understand things like that, but it's just not it's just not me. I don't know. It's just I I want to show off in different ways.
Yeah.
I th oh yeah, the thing we were trying to say about Berlin is that uh status, for example, in some cities, in some places, status is like where I come from in Ireland, um in a small from a small town. Right.
Sorry.
Yeah, exactly. But having a nice car actually is a very status thing in a in in like a non major city where there's maybe not so much cultural stuff going on. Having like a big if if you don't have like a big SUV now in in like some parts of Ireland, you're kinda not really keeping up with the status game. Um whereas in Berlin more status uh that's anti status, like you would get actually, you know, punished. You'd get you'd your status would reduce by having a fancy car, fancy watch.
And status here comes from more cultural things, like more art, I don't know, intellect, whatever do we Tattoo exactly. Doing a theater piece or something. F forehead piercing. So I think they I I think a lot of these things, like what what go what is status in Miami in Berlin would be Unbelievably status destroying.
Right.
Like people wouldn't even talk to you. You'd be so you'd be the most embarrassing person they've ever met.
Yeah, that's interesting. There's so much like cultural reinforcement of like this is okay or this is not okay.
And and like I know when I'm hanging around with friends from New York, a lot you c you can wear a Rolex in New York. And because people will be wearing the Richard Mill, you actually will be like the understated person.
Right.
Whereas wearing that in Berlin is just embarrassingly showing off embarrassing and and like showing yourself to be kind of like almost like a banker or something.
Yeah.
¶ Ferrari, AI, and Marketing
It's interesting. Anyway, so how many Ferraris are they gonna send us?
I mean I I think it should be two.
I want the black one for me and maybe the I think the baby blue one looks good. That one for Laura.
Yeah, I think the probably made a good call having the blue one be like the the main one they show. I'm not crazy about the Ferraris in red, you know.
I'm just not a red target.
Yeah, I think I hope that they won't be sending me any red ones.
No, I mean, Yeah, no, don't Ferrari don't send us any. Someone actually in the comments, um, because you know, people are weird on LinkedIn, wrote something like, How much are Ferrari paying you for this? blah blah blah not even in a jokey way, and I'm like Why the fuck would Ferrari be paying me? Like Yes, please. If Ferrari sends me that car, I'll talk I'll shill it all day. And this episode of Unscheduled is sponsored by
That would be an amazing gorilla campaign.
Oh my god, that'd be so cool.
Who can we find?
Yeah. What is this podcast that has like four listeners on schedule CO? That's Ferrari. That's Ferrari all over.
It's gonna
The authenticity.
Yes. I mean honestly that I just just looking at that car, the reason why I, you know, I saw it, I saw everyone complaining about the first thing I thought when I saw the video, the Johnny I video was like, Oh, that's actually very nice. But I wasn't thinking about it in the context of the Ferrari brand or anything and I didn't expect when I logged into LinkedIn that everyone was having a fucking content field day.
But they don't actually have any opinion about it. They're just copying and writing their stuff in well the the most annoying thing was people were going to chat G whatever image AI thing. And they were like, this is actually what it should have looked like. It only took ten minutes, but it took Johnny Ive like Six months and six years or whatever. It only took me ten minutes. They should have chosen this. I was just like, oh, you fucking ah.
Uh it'd be great if that F R A was like, you know what actually we should Yeah.
We get that guy. Yeah. I w I was thinking for the joke and to make my post go more viral, I was gonna put AirPods on the Ferrari and then I just got too lazy. I was like if I If I actually take too long to make this post, I'm gonna just close LinkedIn.
Mm-hmm.
¶ Crafting Clickbait Titles
So yeah, anyway, that's my now that we talked about this section, I can come up with a very clickbaity title for this episode. Perfect.
And it's at the end, so people will be like
We gotta wait for it. What what could this can you think of anything very clickbaity to call this episode?
Uh that The Ferrari Emotional Runway. It could be the the Ferrari
It's gotta be clickbait, it's gotta be it's gotta be not insider
What you don't know about AI and the Johnny Ives Ferrari design.
Uh well. Will kill you.
What what one guy on LinkedIn did with Chat GPT and the new Ferrari design that rock The industry.
Yes. Oh how about this? What the P in Chat GPT stands for? It's and then in brackets, it's not what you think. Wiki emoji, m uh Aubergine emoji. Why the fuck has haven't I used that as a title yet? That one could actually work well.
Actually I think that probably that's it.
Cause what actually does it stand for?
Uh the P
Yeah. Exactly.
I think it's prompt.
I knew that's a good idea. Yeah, chat generative prompt. Wait, Generative Prompt Transform.
Oh transformer, transformers, transform.
Actually. Yeah, but we now with the P, we learned secretly that the P stands for something else, didn't we? Yeah. Yeah. What do you would literally do? You're not allowed to talk about it.
When you're thinking of of titles, w what what does that look like?
I
Maybe like writing down a lot of ideas.
I drag the video into YouTube. And so the same way I write a LinkedIn post. I actually think this is a a hack for people. I do it natively in the for in the place where it's going to get posted. So I drag this video into YouTube. And then try to remember the episode. I d I don't go back and listen to anything. I just try to remember it. And I like start writing it out like one title.
And I just keep like changing it and and messing around with it. And then usually I'll just before I post it, I ask Laura like, What do you think of this? And she'll say, Ah, maybe you don't do all of the capitalization or this or that and she'll give me some ideas and Um that's it. Usually I'm just trying to think of um I'm actually copying uh a a YouTuber called PewDiePie where he will have like a one hour video and one tiny moment in that video he f takes that and makes that the title of it.
That's that.
title. And that's what I do but I I'm trying to remember like what's what was the most was the most hype moment? What was the moment that people will be like irresist like they they need to listen to get they're like, oh I like I have to hear this. Yeah.
You think is writing it in the place like helpful because
Is it just
Okay, that's the most efficient way to do it. Sometimes for me. Putting the thing into context, I'm like, my brain activates in a different way and it's like, oh, this has to be really good because it's gonna go on the video or whatever.
Um, I think for me it just makes it feel um Especially with LinkedIn. I it looks like how it's going to be posted. Yeah. And so for me that just feels easier to understand like what's gonna work and should this be capitalized and Uh it's in the font that it's going to be displayed to everyone else as well. I I don't do so my last two posts the two posts I did last week did really well.
But I don't do what I definitely do not do is I don't use any AI tools to generate ideas because that actually what it does for me is. I get lost in that. I'm like I I end up just type uh chatting to the fucking chatbot for like thirty minutes instead of just doing a post. It's not that I don't think the ideas are good, I just don't think that they like they kind of
feel even the titles, like w I have this tool called VidIQ and I look at the titles and it it ranks its own titles based on how well it thinks they're gonna do. And I never like any of them. I'm I just don't like I just think it's more fun and more different to just do it straight from the heart.
A I is like its writing is It's good, but it's like never amazing. Yeah.
It's never like uh it never pops.
¶ AI Content vs. Human Weirdness
that there's some kind of things, I don't know, something about like uh um It's like it's basically just like this this really good Really good average.
Yeah. I I thought uh AI would be much bigger part of my content production process, but like if I'm like, what's an idea for an episode or something and I look at all the lists and I'm like, these are all really good, but I don't really feel like doing any of it. Um but then I go on LinkedIn and I look at ninety percent of what people are posting is just fucking AI generated. And then looking at all their comments and it's all AI generated and I'm just like, oh my god, this is
This is a bad place. This is a bad thing. I need I need to I just I need to extract what I need and get the fuck out of there.
Yeah.
So everybody's like open claw commenting to one another. Yeah.
Oh my god. Like obviously a lot of people woke up in the morning and their AI tool had told them Ferrari was the trending thing and had told them that the sentiment was negative and given them like a preview post and they just say, Ah, fuck it, I'll post it.
Good.
Do it. Yeah. And that's why I think when I my post being just hey, it's not I don't think it's that bad, just fucking broke. You're like, wait, but you're not supposed to say it's good because
weird things like you're trying to create.
Here.
Yeah. Weird stuff is gonna be more and more valuable.
I think so too.
There's there's a lower barrier of entry to make common stuff. Yes. And to make it like decent quality.
But
It's still hard to be weird.
I also think and I'll maybe I'll finish with this'cause I actually need to go have dinner. Um
It's probably the our collective energy has just probably been like slow.
Yeah.
Uh how we start off talking about how like we uh yeah.
I actually want to keep going. Honestly, I could easily go for another two hours. It's just that I need to eat or I'm gonna die. Um I think one of the things that's hard for me to r remember and keep in my mind, but it's also like a theory I have that When I go on something like LinkedIn and I see a post with, you know, thousands of comments and thousands of likes, and then I look at it and I'm like, but this is just this is just trash. This is just nothing. It's like a picture of somebody
like next to a dog and it's about how they helped this dog and what it means for whatever. And I'm just this is just a fake story. It's trash. It's whatever. But Look how well it's doing. And so then in my mind I'm like, so that type of thing works well.
And it's easy to fall into the trap without realizing that all of that engagement doesn't lead to anything necessarily for that person. And so there's like this false economy builds up on these social networks where Someone with and and there was there was like also some um
YouTube documentaries about this where like the biggest influencers would launch something and like five peop five people would buy something or something. Like someone with, you know, a million followers launches a coffee brand and four people buy the coffee. And yeah, the the quality of your engagement is extremely important.
And it's definitely better to have twenty comments that are from people who are actually interested in what you're doing than thousands and thousands of responses and likes. But it is hard to remember and I do fall into the trap of being like, okay, now that I had that one viral post, I should do the same thing again. I should do the controversial post again to get more um more of that. But but then you then you know what I mean? And then I look at the the stats and that post which had
Which took up a whole day of my time mentally, just all the comments and that that got like four new subscribers into the podcast. What a fucking waste. You know what I mean? So I need to not forget the point of me going on there.
Right. And that's the challenge with creating that weird thing and you have to promote it. You have to engage with the reality of the the machine of how things spread. But you can't
Goats.
so far into that that it I mean it can become everything that you do.
Yes.
And it will dilute the weirdness and specialness. Probably sap your will to do.
That's the main thing. Sapping my w like I felt my will to use LinkedIn'cause my whole thing was like, Okay, well LinkedIn will be one of the key platforms for growth. By the end of last week I was like I post it into my in into one of my communities where it was a smaller group where where I t kinda tell people what I'm gonna do'cause they I want they they also want to grow their stuff.
And I was like, I've been on LinkedIn for two days and I'm already I'm already sick of it. Uh and so yeah, I gotta I gotta do it in a way that protects my sanity. And I don't get sucked into the false economy of like, here's what I need to do on LinkedIn to grow. I'm not trying to grow my LinkedIn. I'm trying to grow the fucking podcast.
Yeah. dude let's go let's go
Thank you, Jake. Dude, I'm glad we got to do this. Pleasure.
Have fun.
Everyone listening, you can write into mailbox at unschedule.fm if you've got a question. Fuck y'all. See ya later. Bye.