The Value of Creating Opportunities [Jerome Rand]

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
- I do every once in a whilehave those, those nightmares of
where, you know, I get up on stage
and then the, the video'sgone and I forgot my computer
or something, and I'm, Iwake up flustered in a panic.
The heart is just like, whoa,
- God.
I, I really always appreciated
and admired that your NorthStar is I am sharing something
of myself, and that has to be authentic.

(00:21):
You know, the guy comes out,he goes, well, you, you know,
you were getting paid $200 andyour boy drank $300 worth of
- Beer.
No, no, no. One, one
of the absolute perks aboutbeing an adventurer is the more
weathered you look, the moreauthentic you really, uh,
are projecting yourself tobe so wrinkles, bring 'em on.

(00:41):
You know, that's just gonnabe higher speaking fees,
as far as I'm concerned.
- Welcome to BuildingValue. I'm Jason Nellis.
Today, I bring you a guest weheard from a few months ago.
Jerome Rand, who has sailedthe world by himself,
hiked the Appalachian Trail,
and keeps asking me for advice on how
to be a content creator, whichis pretty funny since he's

(01:02):
been one, technically alot longer than I have.
One thing I love about Jerome,his energy is infectious.
I've known Jerome for over 15 years,
and I am always taken abackby his spirit of adventure.
He's just the kind of person who knows
that when he's got an itch,he's gotta scratch it.
And sometimes that meanssailing around the world
for over 270 days by himself.
Jerome and I caught up onhis progress as a creator.

(01:24):
Talked a little bit abouthow he's now got an agent
for public speaking and howthat's helped his business.
We talked about my ownprogression as a content creator
and podcast host,
and we look to the futurein about what we each wanted
to build for our channels.
We also took a deepdive into the operations
of being a content creator
and podcast host, thinking aboutthe consistency of posting,
when to bring in outside help,

(01:45):
and most importantly, how you think
about engaging your guests.
If you like what you seeand you like what you hear,
check him out over on theSailing Into Oblivion podcast.
And if you like what yousee in hear here, be sure
to follow, like, and subscribe.
And here he is, Jerome Rand
Jerome. Uh, good to see you, buddy.
- Well, thank you, Jason. Uh, you know,

(02:05):
two podcasts come together,so I, I should say, Jason,
it is great to have youback on the show once again.
- You know, it's nice to beback on each other's shows.
I, yeah, this is, uh, this is,
this is becoming something of a bromance.
I dig it. I, I'm, I'm a fan.
- I'm, I'm really enjoying,and, you know, it's fun
because there's always about amonth in between us reuniting

(02:26):
and, and you put some showsout and I put some shows out,
and I, you know, I'm just loving 'em.
And, and that was what sortaspawned me to reach out
to you this time is
because the, the guests thatyou have are really starting
to fill you with some topinformation when it comes
to building a platform,building a social media

(02:46):
empire, if you will.
Because I mean, the guywho did the iPhone stuff,
he's got a huge channel, huge.
He does millions, right? Yeah,
- Yeah, yeah.
That's, uh, Michael Fisher, uh, the MR.
Mobile for those, those of youwho want to go check him out,
he's, uh, he's top notch.
He and I have been buddiesfor coming up on a decade,
and he's, uh, he's a good dude.
And not only that, he's incredibly sharp.

(03:08):
So whenever I get a chance tointerview him, whether it's
for my stuff or some of theother platforms I've worked on
in the past, it's always rifewith just awesome information
and, and a really, um, strong perspective,
which you don't always see in some folks.
So, I've always appreciated that.
Uh, I appreciate you listening.
I'm glad that, I'm gladit resonated for you.
- Oh, it absolutely did.
And I, besides how distractedI was by the beautiful sets

(03:32):
of hair that you two have, I'm jealous.
You're not really. I, youknow, oh, holy smokes, .
And it did distract me a little
bit because it was difficult.
'cause as soon as that questionwas posed in the beginning,
I sat and pondered it fora while, and I went back
and forth, and then I hadto rewind and re-Listen.
- Sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. You'renot the only one. I get it.
.

(03:52):
- So I guess, you know,if we wanna just kind
of kick things right off Yeah.
And into this wholeidea of let's, I guess,
should we set up under the guiseof you're a person like you
or me, and we want togrow a channel, we want
to grow a platform.
Yeah. How the heck do we do that? ,

(04:15):
- It's a, I mean, I think it's, it's,
it's the thing I talkabout the most, right?
You know, my, my podcastis really about helping
to educate creators, particularlyearlier in their journey
around, you know, you've got this idea,
you've got this concept,how do you bring it to life?
And bringing a lot of differentfolks into that ecosystem.
Um, with you

(04:35):
and I, you know, we've hadthese conversations at length,
but I think one of the thingsthat I really love about
what you've done, and I'lluse this as an example,
is you've been superconsistent about your, uh,
content, about the things you talk about,
and about the fact that you are, you're,
you're always putting content out.
It's a hustle, right? It is that hustle.

(04:55):
Um, I think in a lot of ways,
thinking first at the beginning,
if I was gonna startover again from scratch,
the first thing I'd bethinking about isn't,
what's the stuff I want to talk about?
I think the first thing I'dbe thinking about is who do I,
who do I wanna speak to?
Who is an audience to whom Ireally want to have an impact?
Which I think is actually moreimportant than what I have

(05:16):
to say, and who I want tosay it, you know, to, uh,
that was mostly English.
Sorry, it's a littlelater where I am here.
Um, but, but I think a, I Ithink a lot of it has to do
with the idea that, thatyou're gonna build anything.
You have to start with a solid foundation,
and knowing to whom it's gonna be valuable
and applicable is themost important thing.
So, so for yours, I mean, you'respeaking to other sailors.

(05:36):
You're talking to people whoare interested in all things
nautical, you're thinkingto, you know, really even
to broaden out to peoplewho just have that spirit
of adventure, even if it's, you know,
more fantastic than not.
Um, did, do you think I've,
I've sort of nailed your audience.
Does that feel like the rightfolks that you're speaking to?
- Uh, I think so. I think so.
I, you know, I've, I've slowly been trying
to open myself up a littlebit more into not just

(06:00):
the adventure stories and otherpeople's adventure stories,
but just my story in general as I try
and punch my way throughlife, if you will.
And I, I've recently found, uh,
the people are pretty receptive to that.
They, they, they email
and they're like, Hey, youknow, it's, it's nice to see
and hear about the struggles
and how you're getting through those

(06:21):
and all that sort of stuff.
I wouldn't wanna say I everwant to be a total, like,
motivational genre type channel.
Um, but I like the tidbits.
I like, you know, if I findsomething that works for me,
I wanna share it with my audience.
- Well, and I've noticedtoo, you know, you've,
since we spoke the first time,uh, I think it was by now,
by the time this launch isprobably a couple months ago, um,

(06:43):
when we reconnected, you
and I had a long conversationabout this virtual setup
and the studio, and the way that
that's made things easier for me.
It's very clear you've taken that
and you've, you've launcheda whole new thing with that.
You now, a lot of yourpodcasts are on video.
I see them doing well on YouTube.
We were talking before, you'regetting good engagement.
The, you know, the view time is deep,

(07:04):
and that's hugely valuablein terms of both monetization
as well as just broadlyacquiring new audience members.
Um, talk me through sort ofhow that's been working for you
and what you've discovered.
- Well, it, it really,it, it's been eye-opening
because I always shied awayfrom this due to the fact
that I just couldn'tproduce the audio quality

(07:25):
that I was looking for.
And I didn't reallyconsider the whole idea
of throwing these things on YouTube,
especially in thebeginning, back, you know,
three years ago whenI started the podcast.
And so, from that pointthough, with the help of,
of yours truly, uh, it, it,it was able to, I was able
to up the game to the point
where it didn't sound like Iwas under a professional mic.

(07:48):
My guest was on a cell phone somewhere.
And all of a sudden it's like, holy cow.
And then you have that dynamicof the video quality as well.
And, you know, yes, it issomething that I have to pay for.
I have to make an investment to be able
to utilize this platform.
But the results are amazing.
And then if you, if you can get the views

(08:08):
and the interaction with theaudience, then all of a sudden,
because it's monetized,you can actually make back
or make profit on whatyou're actually doing.
And so it's been, it's been huge,
but it, it's, you know, it, it hasn't, it,
it didn't all happen in one shot.
I mean, it's, I don't know
how many video podcasts I've done now,
but we're easily closingin on 10 or more, I think.

(08:32):
- And, and remind me again,
how long have you been doingthe podcast in terms of,
uh, years of investment?
- Uh, I think the firstshow dropped in October
of 2020,
after I returned from 88 daysout in the Atlantic Ocean.
- So 30, uh, sorry, uh,
I was gonna do the months,but three and a half years.

(08:54):
Yep. You, you had a following before.
Um, clearly this is a new direction.
Um, we were talking a little bit about
before, you know, I, I'd, I'dlove for you to touch on sort
of what are the real worldinvestments you're making
beyond platforms, right?
Because you're investing inRiverside, that's a, you know,
whatever, 15, 20 bucks a month.
Um, yeah. You know, you'veupped your mic game.

(09:15):
Uh, what other things doyou have working for you,
broadly speaking, to help sortof put this engine together?
- Well, I think, uh, you know,I think the, the real key is
beyond just the socialmedia stuff, which, which
for all intents and purposes,
unless you are, uh, pumpingmoney in for the advertising,
you know, so that it's showing stuff like
boosting posts and stuff.

(09:36):
I, I've never had to do that. Yeah.
- Which doesn't always work. Anyway.
- I, yeah, I've, I'vealways, I don't know, I'm,
I'm gonna leave that onealone, but I've never done it.
Um, you know, I think havinga personal website is a must
have, um, especiallywith the speaking stuff
and everything else that I do.
Um, so there's the website.
Then you've got the actual platform,

(09:56):
because Zoom, zoom just doesn't cut it.
You really need something that'sgonna give you the quality.
I mean, sorry, to the folks at Zoom.
Zoom's great for a quickchat, quick meeting,
nice. And free. Zoom's
- Not sponsoring anything,man. Don't worry about it.
- It's definitely not .Yeah. Um, the platform.
And then, yeah, thepodcast, I use Podbean,
and that's, I think it'snine or $10 a month.

(10:18):
Um, and you know, I suppose youcould throw Patreon in there
because they're taking apretty, what do they take?
8% or something like that?
- Nine, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Nine. Oh, they've uppedtheir game. . They
- Have,- They have.
Um, but you don't have to pay for it.
So, you know, those, thoseare really the virtual things
that I'm having to sort of pay for.

(10:39):
Um, and then, like you said,the hardware really is the,
the camera and the actual,
the quality recorder, the microphones.
And, you know, I was lucky, Ifound that you, you suggested
that ring light, and I, I was able
to find an inexpensive one,but, uh, I'm still blotchy
and red, but I've always been that way.
I, you know, my skin's,uh, Irish baby Irish

(11:00):
- .
Yeah. But you're a sailor man.You gotta take care of that.
I mean, you're puttingyourself out there. I do.
- Well, I think, you know, honestly, no.
I, I, I just get so excited
and I've put sunscreenon already today, which,
which reddens my skin.
But hey, you know, I've beenliving with it for 45 years,
and, uh, I'm used to it.It's all good, , you
- Know, but it's never toolate to dive into the, uh,

(11:20):
into the, well, that is, um,uh, makeup and beauty, TikTok.
And I will say there's a lotof really good advice for men
as well as for women justsaying, you know, if you look,
if you're, you look clearup your skin tone, oh shit,
it's not the worst thing in the
world, you know? Wow. Give in,
- It's okay.
Why not? Wow. The next,
- And I'm clearly not doing it myself.
That's not, that's not happening here.
But, you know,
if your concerned aboutit, that's my suggestion.

(11:43):
- No, no, no, no. One, one
of the absolute perks aboutbeing an adventurer is the more
weathered you look, the moreauthentic you really, uh,
projecting yourself to be.
So wrinkles, bring 'em on.
You know, that's just gonnabe higher speaking fees,
as far as I'm concerned.
- , I like it. I hopeputting that on a T-shirt.
Yeah. Seriously. . I dig it.

(12:06):
What about, um, so,
so you talked about the speaking
engagements you've been doing.
How's, how's that been? Has that been,
uh, progressing for you?
- Uh, yes. It definitely has.
Uh, after, after the bigevents this past March in the
Caribbean, which were,
were technically thefirst big corporate sort
of conference style, uh,engagements, uh, pretty much as far

(12:27):
as the speaking agency thatgot me to that spot, uh, as far
as they're considered, Iknocked it out of the park,
which was the biggest weightlifted off my shoulders.
I've never been as nervous,uh, about getting on stage
as I was down there.
And the, the rooms were big.
I mean, 300, 400 people,but there's huge screens

(12:49):
and there's a clockthat's staring you down
and it's ticking down,and you really gotta end
everything right at zero.
And it was just next level.
But, you know, I put the work in
and thankfully it all paidoff and I didn't screw it up.
Um, you know, I do, I do everyonce in a while have those,
those nightmares of where,you know, I get up on stage
and then the, the video'sgone and I forgot my computer

(13:12):
or something, and I'm, Iwake up flustered in a panic.
The heart is just like, whoa, God.
So, you know, um, didn'tdo that thankfully.
And, uh, yeah, thenended up getting signed
by the speaking agency, um,for a year long contract.
We're sort of reworking thepresentation as we speak,
and I still have otherbookings that I need

(13:33):
to fulfill outside of that.
But, um, it's sort of the keyto me being able to focus on
the stage presence anddoing what I do best
and sort of let them do what they do best,
which is find the bookings,negotiate the fees,
and get everything sorted sothat I can just get out there

(13:54):
and do it, which is a huge relief.
Oh, I can hear the, thesirens of Old Perry.
- Uh, well, okay, so I'm not in Paris,
but it's, I know ,it sounds, I mean, um, yeah.
That's funny. I didn't knowthat was coming through.
Um, we'll, we'll swing backto my stuff in a second,
but I want to FI wanna follow
along with this though for a second.
So you have representationnow? Yes. It's been going well.

(14:18):
Yep. I would argue that's areally important step to really,
you know, focus on for a second
because you're kind of starting
to move towards the big times, right?
Like this is, this is, you know,
when you have representationand somebody's getting you gigs
and you're sharing the revenue on that,
and now you've got one less thing on your
plate that lets you scale.
That's huge. I mean, that's not, you know,

(14:39):
that's not minor leagues at all.
- No, for sure. I, it, it, uh, it was sort
of the culmination of literallythe last, uh, six years,
essentially since I got back
from that Voyager around the world.
The push has always been to get there
and, you know, having tosort of grind it out and,
and do, do presentations at schools

(15:00):
and yacht clubs and places.
You know, the first littlespeaking tour that I set up,
I had no idea what I was doing,
and I literally lost moneyon, on a few of the gigs.
'cause I just didn't know what to charge.
I didn't consider the travel costs.
And like, I'd literally,I remember walking out
of one being like, holy cow,
that just cost me like50 bucks to do that.

(15:21):
And I'm like, oh, that wassupposed to be, and they paid me.
I just, you know, I didn'tconsider the travel.
And, but you have to do those things.
You have to go and justbust it through there
and make all the mistakes,just like learning how to sail.
And then you, as long as you're able
to keep the persistenceup and you keep going
and you don't give up, whereI definitely got very close a

(15:42):
few times to being like, you know what?
I'm done with this. I'mgonna go get a regular job
and we'll just call it a day.
I had my shot. But yeah, thankfully that,
that never came to fruition.
And, um, and yeah, so nowwe're, we're at this point
and yeah, we're gonna seehow things go into the, uh,
into the fall and stuff.
But there might be one small hiccup.

(16:03):
Uh, you know, I, I do get those itchy feet
and I, that sense of adventure starts
to boil up inside of me. So yeah,
- Man, I get that. We, we
- Can, we can talk about thepossibilities, uh, you know,
towards the end of, of Yep.
What goes on this winter.
But, um, yeah, as far as thespeaking stuff goes, it's been
an amazingly difficult ride.

(16:23):
Uh, but it does seemlike we are at the top
of the Ferris wheel right now.
And, uh, the view is nice,
and I'm just hoping it'lljust pause up there for, uh,
a couple of years and let meenjoy, if you know what I mean.
- Kudos to you. That'snot Thank you. Thank you.
You know, that's notan insignificant step.
And most importantly, I thinkit's also, I think it's a sign

(16:43):
of strength when yourecognize a weakness, right?
You talk about, you know,the first time you did it,
you didn't have enough,you know, wherewithal
to know how much you weregonna end up spending.
You lost money on. Itreminds me of, uh, scene
of the Blues Brothers whenthey, they go to perform
and, you know, the guy comes outta
and goes, well, you, you know,you were getting paid $200
and your boys drank $300 worth of beer.
And they were like, well,

(17:03):
after the first roundwe didn't get charged.
We just assumed it was free.And the guy goes, ha no.
Alright, we'll go get the checkbook. Yeah.
, I, uh, I, I, I love that for you.
Are you, but you're still doing the rest
of your work yourself right now, right?
In terms of like, you'redoing your recording,
you're doing yourediting, you're doing your
thumbnails, you're doing your titles.
Are you finding those to be

(17:26):
challenges you're,you're comfortable with?
Are those things you're looking to
eventually offload to somebody else?
Like where are you with all that?
- Well, so yeah. I mean, what,what I'm hoping is to kind
of keep growing the knowledge base.
And, you know, it seemslike each time that you
and I get together, I, I geta takeaway that I go then
and I start working on it.
So, you know, the firstthing was the virtual podcast

(17:49):
and getting the audioand everything, right.
And that took a fewtries, but we got there.
So now I can sort of shelf that
and now move on to makeup,obviously next, uh,
after that we'll see where we go.
But yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I, that's sort ofthe thing that I'm trying
to figure out is, is
what are those superimportant things that,

(18:11):
that really take prioritywhen you are trying
to develop that growth?
And, and I guess it, itshould be noted probably that,
that we're under theassumption that the goal
of growing any platform is not only to
to monetize and make money,
but also to enjoy doing it, Isuppose not treat it like a,

(18:34):
I'm digging ditches, whichyeah, I've done that for years.
And, and it has its benefits.
It's, you know, your armsget pretty big and all that.
But, um, I have,
- Have very fragile hands.I don't think I'd be
- Right for it.
, it's not really my get
that man some gloves, .
Um, but yeah, so the the goalyeah, is to, to monetize,
but also to enjoy what we're doing.

(18:55):
Um, and yeah, I mean,
that's always gonna be a big question is
where do the priorities,
where do you think the priorities lie?
And, and it can be somethingas specific as like thumbnails
and titles, or maybe it's moreabout content and clickbait
- Well, yeah, I mean, I think you have
to be careful, as we've talked about.
You know, you don't wanna,there's, there's a difference

(19:17):
between clickbait for thesake of being competitive
with other people in terms ofyour title and your thumbnail.
It's another, when you're throwing,
you know, trash out there.
I, I've really always appreciated
and admired that your NorthStar is, I am sharing something
of myself, and that hasto be authentic, right?
Like, none of this is, youknow, I I, I've seen lo loads
of channels now across multiple platforms

(19:39):
where it's clearlysomebody who's just like,
they're using some, you know,platform to spit out thousands
of pieces of content, andit's all AI generated,
and they don't care thatit's incredibly low quality.
They're just trying toget their numbers up so
that they can monetizeand turn it into a thing.
And, you know, that is an easy path.
It's an automated path, butit is not a valuable path.

(19:59):
It is not one that thatprovides, um, meaning
for other people, which is
what you've sort of always put out there.
It's what I'm trying to do too.
It's, and it's a, it's aharder and lonelier road,
but at least, at least youprovide for me, let me just say,
uh, uh, a light to follow,okay, if I do this long enough,
if I put in the work longenough, people will respond
and there might be somethingvaluable for me to start to,

(20:20):
uh, you know, do something with.
- Well, and and do youthink that those, those sort
of approaches where it's like AI generated
and it's just flood thesystem, get the numbers,
do you think that's sustainable at all?
Or are we just going tohit like a, a, you know,
a high watermark here soonwhere, where literally the unique

(20:42):
and authentic become, you know,
these treasured little thingsthat, that everybody's trying
to find and those get all the attention?
- No, I think it's a subsetof, I think it's a subset
of people who are looking to make money.
I don't see it as being amajor threat in the long term.
It's, it's there, it's not going away,
but it's not, it's a plurality at best.

(21:03):
You know, in the early daysof Instagram and Tumblr
and, you know, some of the,the, the very early days of,
you know, social media platformsgoing from being, you know,
a big way to stay in touchwith friends and family
and starting to become somethingthat you could monetize,
you know, I'm reminded of,
of the aggregate accountsthat used to exist.
I don't wanna say the name here,but the, you know, f Jerry,

(21:23):
uh, fill in the f with yourfavorite four letter word.
You know, who, whose whole thing was, I,
I don't actually create content.
I just steal, really stealother people's content
and throw it out into the world.
And only un until they werecalled out on it 99,000 times.
Did they even startattributing it to other people,
let alone sharing in the revenue?
Was that everybody? Of course not.
Was it a couple of reallysmart people who had an idea

(21:45):
and they knew they couldtake advantage of it
before they got called on it?
Sure. I think we're in the same space.
I think there's a number oflow quality content producers
who are just looking for eyeballs,
but I don't think they'reever gonna be, become the
bigger thread.
What I am interested in,
and I I should preface bysaying, um, the company I'm about

(22:05):
to mention, I, I am a very,very tiny minority investor in,
but I think that they'rethe example of a company
that I would say is doing this well.
There's a company I, I,I'm a little bit of a part
of called Magic Hour ai,
and they basically let you take content
and do a lot of AI effects with them.
So you can take a, youknow, a basketball clip
that you've produced and turnit into characters from Star

(22:25):
Wars or, um, you know,
if you're doing a talking Head interview
and you want it to be Supermanin the Flash, you can do
that back and forth kind of a thing.
Like I, and, and the idea isthat they've simplified it,
and their AI engine lets youdo it in such a way as that
what you're really doingis taking your own content
and re rendering it with ai.
So it's not, uh, you know, uh,I want a video of, of Jerome,

(22:46):
you know, uh, flipping over a Hobie.
Um, but instead if you have that video
and you wanted to turnit into some sort of, um,
AI generated anime, right?
That's what they do. I thinkit's gonna be a lot more of
that that we're gonna see assort of flooding the network,
um, more remixes of, you know,
somebody does somethingoriginal and 50 people put it
through, uh, AI filters.

(23:07):
I think that's what's coming more
frequently, but I don't think that's bad.
I think it's gonna end upbeing a platform for expression
that early on, everybody'sjust gonna try the same thing
until one person comesup with something unique
and that's gonna open the floodgates,
but for a while it's gonnakinda look, it's gonna kind
of look a little bit ubiquitousin that way, I think.
- Right? Well, and, and wewould see those a lot on TikTok,

(23:27):
uh, even, even like two years ago
or a year ago, where all ofa sudden you would go to,
you'd get some app, and I can'tremember what it's called,
but they're the oneswhere the, the screen,
you take a picture of yourself
and the screen goes
and then all of a sudden it's animated.
And yeah, those have been,those have been around
for quite some time,and all of a sudden it,

(23:48):
it turns into a little theme.
Everybody does it real quick,
and then it sort of disappears.
And yeah, I mean, I, I don't know.
Um, yeah, I, not exactlywhat I would call authentic
or anything like that, unlessyou're the first person
that grabs it and goes,but, uh, yeah, I don't know.
My, my hope is that, is thatplatforms like, like mine

(24:10):
and like yours, that, that you're trying
to produce something that's, that's more,
a little more thoughtful andyou're investing yourself into
it a little bit more are,are gonna stick around and,
and go the distance.
- I, I mean, honestly, I, I think
that's always gonna be the case.
I really find that most ofthe people who are doing
the best, most successfulwork are the ones

(24:31):
that are being original,taking risks, doing things
that are, um, out of boundsfor some of the stuff that,
that other people intheir space are doing.
That doesn't always mean it works well.
And sometimes it also turnsout that those people,
there's things outside oftheir stuff that, you know,
they do terrible thingsto, uh, uh, .
I don't really know whereI'm going with this one

(24:53):
- For a second,- , you get what I'm saying?
Like, like there's, there's the person
that's presented on camera
and then it turns out, uh,that they, you know, uh,
threw a puppy over a bridge,
you know, I mean, terrible stuff that
- Right.
- I think the point I was going for there,
and I should point out I'm very tired.
Um, but the, I think thepoint I was going for there is
- You're doing great- , uh, you're very kind.
I think the boundary pusherswill continue to do interesting

(25:15):
and innovative stuff that willthen, for folks who follow
behind, they'll put up the scaffolding.
Yeah. They'll do the work offiguring out like what's the
actual right space here forus to build and monetize
and have maybe a little bitof that creative tension,
but also not so much
that we can't actually find somebody
who's willing to pay us for it.
And I think that's, it'sa capitalistic thing
that's always gonna be the,the, the progression, right?

(25:37):
Somebody will break, break aboundary, the people who follow
behind will do the work
to figure out how to make that make money.
But that initial person, CaseyNyack comes to mind, right?
The original YouTubevlogger of 12 years ago. Mm.
He was just making a movie every day
and then suddenly he blew up.
And then there were 20,000people following right
behind a week later who wereall suddenly like, Hey guys,

(25:57):
today I'm going down to thebeach, let's go check it out.
And they've all got these weirdwhip pan editing techniques
that I still can't do.
- . Well, it, it is,
it's always an interestingsort of progression.
And, and yeah, I mean,there's, there's the people
who have the insightand they just go for it,
and they're the firstones through the gate,
and then the huge flood sort of follows.

(26:19):
And yeah, I mean, I guess youcould, you could sort of just
really try and become, becomethe next, uh, the next person
to find the newest thing.
But again, it's not asthough you are trying
to produce something that's unique
and inventive and all that.
It's like you're looking for some other
avenue and, and yeah.

(26:40):
I mean, we're talking aboutour own stuff, I guess.
- Yeah. Well, I, I, I'dlove to know, you know,
as you think about theopportunities you're gonna get from
the speaking experience
and, you know, talkingto your agent about what,
what possibilities mayopen up for you, does
that give you pause to reassess what kinds
of content you produce, right?

(27:00):
Is it gonna be less like, hereI am sailing in the Caribbean
and here's a great shotof us skimming the water.
Uh, is it gonna be more interpersonal
relationship type stuff?
I mean, what's, what's interesting
to you versus what's interesting to, uh,
potential paying audience, I guess,
is something you're gonna have to address
in the coming months?
- Absolutely. Uh, and,
and I have to admit long agowhen I first opened, you know,

(27:23):
an Instagram accountor all that stuff, or,
or at least got back into it, um,
after the trip around theworld when the speaking stuff
started, I did sort ofalways have the thought.
'cause I didn't, I didn't really,
and I still don't a hundredpercent really enjoy
posting a lot of stuff.
And I, I've, I've alwayshad a lot of trouble

(27:44):
with the whole like, Hey,look at me, look what I did.
Um, but I know that I have to do that.
You have to do some semblanceof self-promotion now.
I always figured I would get to a point
where I'd uploaded enough, sothere was like a catalog of
interesting things on,let's say Instagram, so
that if a potentialspeaking engagement came up,
I could flick 'em that, that link

(28:06):
and they can look through it
and they can be like, okay, wow,
this guy did all this,Liz is pretty interesting.
And then I could sort of be done with it.
I don't think you everreally done with it anymore.
I think it's one of thosethings where you don't have
to upload every single day by any means,
but like we were saying
before, there has to be alittle bit of an update now

(28:26):
and again, just to makesure everybody knows,
it's almost like a,uh, a a wellness check.
Like, oh, you're still alive,
he's still putting stuff out there.
Uh, but on, on sort of anothernote really quick, I do,
I thank my lucky stars that I always,
since the very beginning ofany of this stuff, always tried
to keep my content, uh,as clean as possible.

(28:49):
And, you know, the swearing
and the super controversial stuff
and da da da, I always steered clear that.
And even when I look at mypodcasts, like the listener notes
and all that sort of stuff, uh,
or the listener score,it's marked down as clean.
And I'm like, yeah,that's good. That's good.
- That's important. I appreciate that.
I do drop an occasional f-bomb on mine,

(29:11):
but I think, I think myaudience will tolerate it.
Um, at least. At least nobody'scomplained about it yet.
Yeah, I started this lastyear. I had 10 episodes.
I was still sort of findingmy way, life got in the way.
I got distracted starting this up again.
This year has opened up awhole new set of invitations
and opportunities, and I'm just
excited to see where it goes.
So again, you know, as Isaid earlier, like your,

(29:34):
your progression is my North star,
not necessarily thepart about the sailing.
That's not really my
- Thing.
I've tried. Yeah, I've really tried.
We've gone over, yeah, ,
- We have, it's that poor ensen will never
recover that poor boat.
But, um, yeah, I, uh, I dothink that, uh, when I look at
how much work you've put in
and ic sort of thedirection that you've taken,
it gives me inspiration.

(29:54):
So, you know, I just wannasay it, uh, you know,
for the listeners outthere, um, I really admire
what you've done and I, I hopeto achieve it one day myself.
- Well, Jason, I honestly,after, after listening to and,
and watching and seeinghow well you produce your,
your podcast, I, it's only amatter of time before it goes

(30:14):
and just, uh, which is great.
It's, it's exactly what I want.
'cause then I can rideyour curtails buddy.
It's gonna be, it's gonna be awesome. But
- No, no twin engines buddy, twin engines.
It's not one draggingthe other. It's the two
- Working together.
There we go. There wego. Yeah. Well, I guess
to pose one question to you.
Yeah. So if, if you were, if you were
to start everything all over again Yeah.
How would you make the choice between

(30:36):
what I've always thought ofas sort of the big three,
either doing YouTube, doing a podcast,
or just focusing on likesocial media, IE Instagram,
TikTok, that sort of thing.
- If it's purely amonetization play, I think, um,
YouTube is by far yourbest bet for starting
to build something there.
I mean, you can do it with Instagram.

(30:57):
Uh, there's a lot more noiseon every platform than there
was two years ago, letalone five or 10 years ago.
So you are always gonna be battling that.
But if I were gonna start over again
and I was, you know, let'stake it a step further.
Let's say I'm 25, I've gota particular point of view.
We talked earlier aboutlike, I have a clear sense
of who I wanna speak to.
You know, I love YouTube.I do. I'm, I'm a video guy.

(31:19):
I, I've been a TV fan my whole life.
I've been a movie fan my whole life.
I love seeing visual video content.
Part of what I love aboutthe podcast format is that,
you know, I kind of get to have my cake
and eat it too byproducing a video podcast
and then later putting outthe audio version of it.
And, you know, I, I get to see
how those sometimes videosdo better than they do on
podcast and vice versa.

(31:40):
And that teaches me a lot of stuff.
So, um, I guess my thing would be try
and find what speaks to you the most.
If I had to pick one, I'd say YouTube.
'cause it gives you a lotmore flexibility in that way.
And it is the only platformthat does revenue sharing.
You'd really, you don'tget that with Instagram
or some of the other short form content.
You definitely don'tget that with a podcast.
You're really starting from theground up there in terms of,

(32:03):
you know, building something sustainable.
Um, but it's also amazing, we'vetalked about like, in order
to be competitive, you haveto have an investment, right?
Like, you have to have awebcam, maybe even one like mine
that's got a, a crispier lens
and a crispier, you know, body.
You gotta get the good mic.
Like, it, it does take something
of a financial investmenttoo, which you have

(32:23):
to be conscientious of ifyou want to be competitive.
On the other hand, you know, there's a lot
of people out there who'vegot, uh, their phone
and they use their phoneto incredible success
and they build followingsway larger than mine.
So, you know, yeah, I mean,
I think it really just depends on
what it is you wanna put out there
and what you're willing to
invest in when the timing is right. So,

(32:44):
- Well, it, that's interesting.
'cause Yeah, I mean, whenI think about it now,
YouTube literally, yeah,if you've got your phone
and you've got some interesting content
that you wanna startpumping out there, uh,
you can essentially do it for free.
You don't really need, ifyou've got, you know, a laptop
or whatever, or youdon't even need a laptop,
all you need is your phone really.
'cause you can upload right with it.

(33:06):
- I was just speaking, uh, oneof the episodes I produced,
I guess by the time this airsa couple weeks ago, um, was
with, uh, Lauren de Georgi, who is, um,
you can look him up on TikTok.
He's got a phenomenalfollowing across multiple
short form platforms.
And his whole thing isthat he is a piano tuner
and a piano player, and he does a bunch
of silly comic content with music

(33:29):
and he edits all of iton a little app on his
phone, and he doesn't, like, I
- Haven't watched that one. Oh, wow. Okay.
- You should, you should.How dare you. Um, sorry,
- , but what I think- I No, it's fine.
But what I think you'llappreciate about that one, uh, is
that what he really talks about is
exactly what we've been talking about.
He gets up in the morning,he sits down with a notepad,
he has a cup of coffee,he puts on some music,

(33:50):
and then he just starts ideating
and he's writing on aphysical piece of paper,
all the things that hehas thoughts about, uh,
for his content and for the,
the stuff that he wants to produce.
Right. And then he goes, andhe, he films it on his phone,
and then he edits it on, you know,
a little 99 cent app on hisphone, and then he produces it
and boom, it's out into the world.
And he's got something likehalf a million followers on

(34:10):
Instagram, a couplehundred thousand on TikTok,
I think 55,000 on YouTube.
You know, it's not, um,it's, it's, it's not
that it's not difficult,but it doesn't have to be,
as you pointed out, itdoesn't have to be this setup.
It does not have to be this fancy camera.
- Exactly. Exactly. Well,
and I think that's, yeah,that's sort of the point
that I'm looking at is,you know, if you're,
if you're starting right off

(34:31):
and yes, again, the goalis to, to sort of get
to monetization and get there,you know, as fast as you can,
I suppose, you know,um, then yes, YouTube.
'cause yeah, with thepodcast to really be able
to have the audio quality
and have all that, you're,you're definitely gonna have
to invest and you're, you aregoing to have to actively work
to either get Patreonsubscribers to, uh, support you

(34:55):
or have the kind of content where yeah,
you've got people sniffing to do their ads
and all that sort ofstuff, sponsors right away.
- Well, and I think too, you know, there's
probably good reason toinvest in good audio equipment
across the board, not justfor your content creation,
but I find that thisreally helps make sure
that I'm well received on business calls.

(35:17):
Right. I mean, it's a littlesilly when you're on a work
call, but like, the reality isI come through more crisply,
nobody complains about, you know,
there's hissing in yourbackground kind of stuff.
Like, it's just reallyeasy to communicate. You
- Can dominate the meeting Oh.
- Every time. Um,
but yeah, I mean, like youpeople will be, I mean, so,
so one of the things thatI always appreciated, uh,

(35:38):
learning at Hulu in itsearly days was, you know,
we had sometimes videosthat would be delivered
where the video qua the video itself,
the quality was a little bit not great,
but as long as the audio was still sharp
and high quality viewers weremuch more forgiving of it.
But the moment that youdelivered crappy audio
didn't matter how good the video was.
They're tune, they're tuningout, they're moving on.

(35:59):
So, couldn't
- Agree more. Yeah, yeah,
- Yeah.
I mean, there's your content lesson
for the day, right there.
Audio trumps video every time
- I, well, I, I can remember,you know, turning on podcasts
and if it was an interview,
'cause I used to listen to a lot
of the adventure sailing onesand all that sort of stuff.
And unfortunately they,it was back in the day
and yeah, the, the guestwould be on a cell phone

(36:21):
and I wouldn't even, I waslike, I don't wanna listen
to a cell phone call.
That's, that's pretty awful. So
- I'll be honest, I havetrouble with, uh, uh, guests
that I have on the show whoused just their AirPods.
Um, the quality is really hard to solve
for in post-production.
Um, because you get a bad echo,
you get kind of a muted sound.
It sounds muddy. And

(36:42):
unless you're gonna reallyspend the time, you know, in,
in a, you know, a digitalaudio work, uh, workplace,
uh, that's not it.
daw, DAWI can't think ofwhat it actually stands for.
But if you're gonna go into Pro Tools
and really edit the hellout of their audio to try
to make it sound good, that's, you know,
you're talking about a a athree to five hour investment
for a one hour interview, it'snot worth the effort. Yeah,

(37:04):
- Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely. I mean, because then yeah,
you're spending hugeamounts of time just to try
and make it so that it's, it's,
- You know, listenable.
- Listenable, yeah. Thankyou. , that's the word.
It's early here. No, actually it's, it's,
it's two 30 in the afternoon.
I have no excuse. Um,
- Well, so, so we keep talking,
we keep talking about the time difference.
Let's, let's just put it outthere. So I, I'm in France,

(37:26):
I dunno if that matters to anybody.
I'm in Michigan, . Yeah,
they're a little farapart. Little bit. Yeah.
- I'll tell you what though. I, I recently
did the last podcast I did withsomeone in, uh, in Australia
and the one before that, Papua New Guinea,
that one, we had a little trouble.
That one dropped out afterlike 20 minutes. And then Sure.

(37:47):
We kept talking, but it stopped recording.
I didn't realize that,but oof. That's hard.
We're gonna try that one again,you know, at the next spot.
So it happens, it happens.
- Kudo kudos to you. Well, no, you were,
you were being verygenerous about my lighting.
And I've literally got,like, I'm in an Airbnb,
I've found a light thatI've been able to turn
to come over here, and I'm looking,
I'm like, I see the shine here.
The shadows are all wrong,, my brain can't help

(38:10):
but get stuck on all thestuff that doesn't make sense.
Not to mention I lugged an aa stupidly expensive camera,
6,000 miles just so that Icould do podcasting with you.
What is wrong with me, ,
- You're, you're just very passionate
and that's what is needed.
That's a huge part of it ifyou're not into the content.
And I think that's a greatsegue into what I want

(38:31):
to talk about next is, yeah,you know, what are some
of the top tip priorities that you need
to make sure you are ready to commit to
once you've launched saidpodcast, said YouTube channel.
Um, just from sort of someof my notes, I know, I know
that patience is an absolute key
because nothing is going tohappen absolutely immediately.

(38:55):
And that's sometimesvery frustrating to deal
- With it.
It definitely won't happen immediately.
You're absolutely right.The two, the two qualities,
one is patience.
You're, you're, you're spot on there.
The other is consistency.
I mean, when I started thisback up when I was talking
to a couple of different people,um, I'm lucky to know, uh,
the person who was untilrecently running all

(39:16):
of communications forRooster Teeth, which is one
of the major, you know, uh,YouTube content producers.
Uh, and she was tellingme that the big thing
for her clients always isjust like, are you consistent?
Are you on a predictable schedule
that you followers canset their time or two
and know that every day,you know, every day,
every other day, every week, every month,
whatever it's gonna be,they know to look for you

(39:39):
when you're supposed to post.
And if you don't and theystart to lose that consistency,
then they lose trust andyou don't have anything.
Um, so it really sucks becauseyou have to be both patient
and keep doing the work evenwhen nobody's watching it.
And that really sucks.
- Yeah. Well, and and Ithink going along with that,
like in the planning stages, you have
to probably be very realisticwith yourself as far as

(40:02):
how much you can put out.
Because, uh, isn't theresome stat that, that like 80%
of podcasts stop producing their show
after 20 shows or something like that?
- Oh, I think it's like10. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think like mostpodcasts don't actually, I mean,
you know, it's the same formost YouTube channels, right?
You know, there's like,you go to some, you know,
abandoned channel from four years ago

(40:24):
where some kid was like,all right guys, like,
today's my first day of college,I'm gonna vlog every week.
I'm gonna see , you know,
and then it's like, all right, week two.
And then it's like, oh man, week six,
I'm sorry, I totally forgot about this.
And it's like graduation, so Yeah. Yeah,
- Yeah. Right. Yeah,
- , I,- I think
- I, I mean, again, you could,
you could translate this intopretty much any activity ever,
any career you want to be in, there is no

(40:45):
magic shooting star you'regonna find on day one.
It's like anything elseyou've chosen to do
for work, you have to grind.
You just have to do it. Yeah.
- Right. And yeah, I mean,being honest with yourself.
'cause if you try and set yourself up
and say, okay, I'm gonna dothree podcasts every single
week, um, you know, you're, that is a lot,
a lot of time, a lot of effort.

(41:06):
And, and it, it's difficult.
And so if you say toyourself, okay, you know what,
I'm gonna do one every twoweeks way more manageable.
And you know what, it's easier, I think,
to add more shows if youwant, rather than be like, uh,
or, or no, it's easier.
Yeah, it's easier if you want
to add some more ratherthan be like, oh dude,

(41:28):
I, I don't know what to do.
I, I don't know what to talk about.
- I, I, you, you are reading my mind.
Uh, when I kicked this off, Ihad three episodes in the can.
I launched all three, youknow, one week after the other.
And then I had nobodylined up for interviews,
and so I kind of dropped off.
And so until I got to a place
where I could do everytwo weeks consistently

(41:48):
and then say, okay, now I needa buffer for every, you know,
I need to get back up to every week.
That's where I've been, you know,
recently I the same as you.
As soon as I get off this call,I gotta go finish editing,
and then I gotta go send out 10 invites.
'cause at least one of them will say yes.
And then I can sort ofbank for the future.
But that's, that's the grind.And it's hard. It's fun.
And if it's creatively engaging,

(42:08):
it's worth the effort. But it's hard.
- It definitely is. And I'lltell you though, I, I feel a,
a great sense of happinessthough when the show,
I finally, I push uploadand it's all done,
and it's out there in the world.
There's, there's just a littlebuzz that I get for the rest

(42:29):
of the day where I'm sortof just like, awesome.
All right. And then it doessink in rather quickly.
It's like, okay, what I, next one next
show, gotta do another one.
But there is that little honeymoon phase
where I'm always kindalike, yeah, that's awesome.
I put the effort in and there it is.
And it's all virtual, youknow, it's not actually there,

(42:49):
but it's, uh, it is.
- I'd love to hear what you think
about, uh, the editing process.
'cause that's actually myfavorite part of all of this.
I mean, I should say it'smy second favorite part.
My first favorite part is thispart, which the interview,
the conversation, doing something
where it feels really good inthe moment usually translates
to good content later.
But I actually really enjoy going through
and, you know, clipping things down.

(43:10):
And, you know, when you havethose awkward ums and ahs
and pauses, like cleaning those out
and getting a story togetherthat feels really cohesive,
really resonates for me.
I don't know that you go downthe rabbit hole quite as far
as I do, but your contentis still really good.
How much editing do you dowith most of your interviews?
- This is why I really lovesitting down with you, Jason,

(43:31):
because it, it, we are, we'reon, we're, we're so similar in
so many ways, but we're on opposite
sides of the whole think tank.
You know, others, like,editing is my worst nightmare.
I don't want to do it if I could literally
just press upload.
Um, you know, unless I justlike to streamline everything.
And, and like you're saying,

(43:52):
every once in a while you geta guest that pauses a lot,
says, um, a lot.
And you know that if youspend a half an hour going in
and getting most of those out,
it's gonna make the wholeepisode sound, you know,
it's gonna sound a little better.
Uh, the guest is gonna sound smarter
and less old or something like that.
, you know, just for instance,

(44:13):
- You have somebody in mindwith this, I guess. Yeah.
- Uh, yeah, there's been,there's, there's only been
maybe four or five showswhere I've had to go through
and edit through the whole thing.
Um, and, and yeah.
You know, if it's, if it'sreally gonna make a big
difference, great, I'll do it.
But, uh, for the vastmajority of what I do, no,

(44:33):
besides throwing thewhole thing through one
or two filters done.
That is it. I don't liketo, uh, I like to be able
to do a show and turnaround in 15 minutes.
It's on the internet and good to go.
- I, I admire that. I,um, I find sometimes
I really enjoy cutting things down
because I'm, I'm cutting outsome of the fat, you know

(44:55):
how it is you do aninterview with somebody
and even thinking about this interview
and what I've said in thelast, what, 40 minutes at this
- Point?
Oh, so much has gotta get track. Oh,
- I mean, just all, I mean,just be at a six minute episode,
, um, mostly talkingabout hair. Um, we pretty
- Much made a TikTok. That was about it.
- It's true. I mean, that's fine with me.
No, I just think that that part of

(45:15):
what I appreciate about thestorytelling process at large,
not just with video, butwith, I mean, you've written,
you've written your own, you know,
sailing into oblivion wasyour novel, your experience
of your time on the water.
You have to edit, you have to cut,
you cannot have everything
because there are some things
that just don't contribute the way
that they did in your head.
That's okay. For me, doingthe editing on a podcast

(45:38):
is taking, let's call it anhour's worth of conversation
and just cutting out the 10
or 15 minutes where didn't quite work.
Or maybe somebodystumbled over their words
and it took them three orfour times to get it right,
or I felt like I had to summarize
what they were saying so often.
Maybe I should go back
and just recut some ofwhat they were saying
and try to solve some of that.
So I don't, it doesn't,it's not 80% me summarizing

(46:00):
their long tangents.
Like, there's some ofthat that I really enjoy,
because in some ways itfeels like I'm getting
to the essence of the conversationin a way I couldn't quite
do when we recorded, most peoplearen't as confident on Mike
and on camera as you and I are.
So when you get them on camera,
they second guess themselves.
They get nervous. I've had two
or three guests who in themiddle of an answer, pause

(46:21):
and go, this isn't going very well.
And I'm like, no, it'sgreat. God, why did you stop?
You know? Yeah. Yeah.And so, so, so for me,
it's really about giving some color
to the essence ofwhatever it is, the, the,
the person I'm interviewingwas getting to.
There's probably evenmore editing I could do.
I try, I tend to try to keep things,
the linear conversation.

(46:43):
I try to keep that intact.
But, you know, every now
and again, you're just like, oh man,
this like eight minute tangent on like,
different colored legos.
No, we can't keep that. There'sno value here to anybody
- Deciding on how muchtime you wanna spend,
how much you're gonna dedicate to that.
'cause you know, obviouslyyou have bigger priorities.
You got the family, you gotall this other stuff going on.

(47:04):
Um, is there, is that one ofthe things where you're sort
of just like, okay, well
for each show I give myself four hours
and that is my edit time,
and if I don't wrap itup in that? Well, yeah.
- My, my thing is wheneverybody's gone to bed,
that's when I do my edit.
I give myself two, two hour windows.
One to do the edit, the otherto do title and thumbnail

(47:26):
and try to get as many shortform cuts as I need to do.
Sometimes with some of thenewer episodes, I, I now film,
I take five minutes and I filmlike a preamble, you know,
Hey, it's building value with Jason Ellis.
Today I'm interviewing Jerome Rand,
like that kind of silly stuff.
But like, I, I really do tryto limit the production time
to no more than four hours in part
because once I launch the episode

(47:47):
and then I see theresponses, I then go back
and give myself permission for like 15
or 20 minutes at a time to try
to find more short formcontent I can spit out into the
internet to try to goose the numbers.
Um, and some of that is based on the edit.
Some of that is based on,um, uh, sorry, some of the,
the short form content is based on
what I thought went well in the edit.
Some of that is just whatan AI spits out at me.

(48:09):
I do use an AI tool for that.
Um, and then I move on and,
and it's, you know, untilI get a better system
where I can really work with somebody else
and do a proper edit where Iget feedback from a producer,
I kind of just have to keepmoving. You know what I mean?
- Yeah. Well, and I mean, you literally,
it's like you read my mind
because I, that was thenext sort of subject
that I wanted to jump into.

(48:29):
And I'm amazed that you,you are splitting 50 50
between editing the content of the show,
which I would've thoughtwould've been the big chunk
and the big three, thethumbnail, the title,
and the intro, which I am lacking skills
in all three of those drastically.
Uh, but you, my friend, doa phenomenal job with it.

(48:52):
And, and how, howimportant are those things?
- First of all, I think you'rebeing really generous when
the truth is there's a lotof work I need to do on,
on at least two of those three things.
I think the intro, I don't, I
- Do okay on don't, don't be humble.
Your intros are, it's not magic.
- It's not, it's nothumility, it's candor.
There's an influencer, I, I am, uh,
deeply indebted to on a number of levels.

(49:13):
A guy named Austin Evans,who's based in LA Austin,
was an advisor for astartup I was a part of.
He's been a good friendand a good coach for me on
and off for a number of years.
And the one thing that he saidto me a couple years ago when
I started to broach this ingeneral, was the idea that
before you make a video,if you can't see the title
and you can't see the thumbnail,
you're not, you're not there.

(49:33):
You haven't really, youhaven't done the work.
The reason, well, the reasonbeing, so back in the day,
what you subscribed
to on YouTube was themost heavy influence of
what would be shown to you when you
showed up on the homepage.
So recommendations would be based
primarily on the channelsthat you subscribe to.

(49:53):
That's really no longer the case.
Recommendations are basedon so many other factors.
Now that your subscribers,
and this is on YouTubespecifically of course,
let me just be clear about that, that
that subscribers arenow a very small part of
what is recommended to an individual user.
And in fact, if you lookat most content creators on
YouTube, it used to be thatthere was a, an 80 20 split, uh,

(50:15):
in a viewer, uh, uh, breakdown.
80% of their views werecoming from subscribers.
20% were coming frompeople from like the front
page or suggestions.
It's flipped. And in fact,
it's probably more like 10%subscribers, 90% other people.
And so subscribership matters.
It matters for a numberof things, not the least
of which is your ability to show a brand

(50:36):
how much influence you have.
Um, but it also matters a lot less.
And your ability to have crappy titles
or crappy thumbnails, um, uh, the,
the algorithm is a lot lessforgiving of, uh, my problem.
And by extension, Ithink your challenge is
that podcasts are also a kindof strange thing on YouTube.

(50:58):
Most YouTube contentis between four minutes
and let's say 15 minutes tops.
And, you know, we're talkingabout an hour long interview.
The YouTube is built aroundthe idea that you're churning
through videos constantly, right?
You're watching, you know, nine,
four minute videos in a giventime, not 1 35 minute chunk
of video from somebody wherethat's not even the end.

(51:18):
So, and, and, and YouTubegets more money out
of serving you more videos
because they can give you moreexpensive pre-rolls at the
beginning of a videorather than, you know,
every six minutes in apodcast jumping in to try
to give you an interstitialthat ruins the, the momentum.
All of which to say it's important
to put your content on YouTube,
because I think eventually thependulum is gonna swing a lot

(51:40):
more towards longerform content like this.
But the important thing tofocus on now more than anything
is reading up on all the current trends on
how to build a thumbnail.
Thinking about how you can,as we were joking earlier,
be click Beatty with your title.
How do you entice people to jump in?
Because that's 50% of the work.
The other 50% is the editis the time of, okay,

(52:01):
I'm presenting a smart story.
I'm presenting a cohesive video.
Is this something of value
to somebody that's still important?
But if you don't get 'emon the front end with the,
with the video and thethumbnail, it's not gonna help.
Um, my thumbnails and mytitles I think are good.
I really wish I couldafford to hire somebody
who is professional at this,who makes it their their thing.

(52:22):
'cause my Photoshop skills are limited
and I'd really love it ifsomebody could do, you know,
testing of different thumbnailsand testing different titles
and really helping me to articulate that.
Um, because I think there'smore work to be done there
to fill that top of funnel
to get more people intowatching the long form video.
- Well, and yeah, it just,I guess side question,

(52:42):
is it worth it to go back
and redo your thumbnailseven if they're on videos
that are a year old?
- Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Really? So.
Oh yeah, because just
because the videos are old does, I mean,
particularly if the content is evergreen,
there's no reason not to go back and do it
because you might noticean a significant spike
because now it's being servedto people who, who go, oh,

(53:03):
that is interesting, andthey're gonna click into it.
Some of the content I getto watch now, you know,
it's a year old, it's two years old.
Sometimes I've watched videosthat are five or 10 years old.
Um, but a number of, yeah, anumber of influencers I've,
I've, you know, both spoken to
and heard from have said, youknow, if you come up with, uh,
a thumbnail that you thinkis gonna activate something

(53:24):
better, why not go back and do it?
The worst thing you that youknow you've done is you've
practiced your thumbnail skills.
The best possible thing you could do is
that you've built anotherannuity for a video
that's now gonna inch higher up
and produce more money for you.
- Ah, right, right.
Well, and would you saythat it's that old adage
of strike while the iron ishot, if you put out a video

(53:44):
that's doing really well, it'ssort of like, well, maybe go
to the back catalog, do acouple other redos on some
thumbnails, because more than likely
that's gonna be the time thatYouTube says, well, let's,
let's throw few old ones out.
Is that, is that pretty valid?
- I think so. I, I, I went
and redid a couple of thumbnails just
because I, I've gotten intoa somewhat consistent, um,

(54:07):
template from my thumbnails as of late,
and I wanted to go back and get, uh, some
of them a little bit moreconsistent of that, that look, I,
I think it had, uh, mynumbers are so low on some
of these videos, it'shard to tell how much
of an impact it really had versus like,
it just makes me feel betterto see it all look consistent.
But, um, I do think thatthere's value in that.
And who knows, you know, ayear from now I might go back,

(54:28):
I might have a catalog of 70 or 80 videos.
I might hire somebody to go andredo all the thumbnails in a
lot of the titles andjust see what happens.
- Right, right. How much, uh,just off top of your head,
what, what does somebodylike that charge any idea?
- It, it really depends.
I mean, look, you can go on Fiverr
and find people who areinexpensive to go do it for you.
Um, you know, a lot of the people

(54:49):
that I would be looking at,they probably charge, you know,
anywhere from 50 to a hundred an hour,
or if you're doing it as a project,
it's probably gonna runyou, you know, thousands
of dollars to do that much content.
Uh, and, and to do that back catalog,
it's not a small investment.
- Right, right. Wow.Wow. But it is important.
That's, that's thetakeaway here is that's,
that's a pretty key element.

(55:10):
- I think it's really important to know
that if you're gonna go down this road,
you can't just rely onbeing a good video maker.
You have to think aboutit comprehensively,
and you have to learn marketing skills.
And really what this boils down to is
how much can you build agood marketing mechanism
that fits this veryspecific, um, uh, activation.

(55:30):
So, uh, you know, can youthink in terms of titles
and thumbnails, can, you know, and,
and really go look atyour favorite videos.
Go look at the ones that you watch.
What is it about thatthumbnail that attracted you?
What is it about that titlethat enticed you to click?
Forget the video itself.Just do that research.
Take notes on it, figure outwhat it is that resonates
for you as a viewer,
and then see if you canapply that to your thumbnails

(55:53):
and your titles and builda kind of feedback loop
that helps improve the qualityof your, your, um, you know,
top of funnel click through.
- Right, right, right. Well, and,
and also I think knowing that, you know,
there's no shame in, inswitching your thumbnail up and,
and redoing, I mean, the,the Mr Beast, he's out there
and usually if his,

(56:13):
if his video hasn't hit ahundred million by like day two,
boom, new thumbnail, newthis, new that new title.
And those guys, andhe'll go to many of them,
- Those guys, I, I saw a videorecently, I can't remember
who produced it, but theywill actually generate between
20 to 40 initial thumbnails, ,
and then just, just on a per video basis.

(56:36):
Yeah. And then they'llstart to narrow it down.
But they will actually run,
when you get large enough on YouTube,
you can use their AB testing tool,
although there's other ways to ab test,
but they'll use your a,their AB testing tool,
and they'll run an experiment
to see which thumbnail hasthe best click through rate
after the 20 that they've built.
And then they'll pick theone that does the best,
and then they'll run another experiment
with another 15 variantsof that specific thumbnail.

(56:57):
Gee, 'cause maybe, maybearticulating his fingers from here
to here will improve theclick-through rate by 0.01%, which
for him is another million views, right?
- Yeah, yeah. Yeah. God, that's crazy.
I'm like, well, let me seewhat, what photo I have
that's less than two megabytes,
and let me open up MicrosoftPaint and put a title on.

(57:19):
You know, so I'm gonna, I,
that's something I'mdefinitely gonna work on.
I think the, my wrap up on some of this,
this sort of discussion.
'cause really, I mean, if,if you're wanting to do this,
I think that the, the keys
that we've really lookedinto are, are that, you know,
you've gotta be willingto put in the work.
You wanna put out high quality stuff.

(57:41):
There's prioritizing, um,there's things that you need
to make sure you focuson things like thumbnails
and titles and all that sort of stuff.
But I think, you know, theroot of everything, uh,
unless you want thisto be a side hustle job
and you want it to be somethingthat you actually kind
of enjoy doing, I thinkit really, you want

(58:03):
to take a good long, hard look at
what you are passionate about
and how you want to conveythat to your audience and,
and what sort of audience,like you said in the beginning,
what your audience wouldactually be looking for.
So let's say, you know, in,in my case, I like to sail.
Well, what does the SHAsailing genre audience, uh,

(58:26):
what are they eating up right now?
And is that something thatI think I can produce and,
So kind of being realistic,
and I wrote it down in mynotes, that old adage of, do
what you love and the money will follow.
And I, I think, I think,wouldn't you agree that, that
that should be kind oflike the start the base,
the soil of everything.

(58:47):
- So, you know, the, the,the old line, um, from, uh,
Harry Selden who de developed the concept
of the department story, you know,
the customer is always right,
is actually not thefull saying, which it's,
the customer is alwaysright in matters of taste.
I think to, to yourpoint, why do you know that?
Oh, yeah, yeah. No, it'sone of my favorite things.
Whenever anybody's like,customer's always, right?
I'm like, yeah, about theability to wear ugly stuff.

(59:08):
You can wear that if youwant to, that's fine.
Um, I think to your point, do
what you love and the money will flow.
There's a missing part of that.
And I agree with you inspirit and in principle,
but I do think there's a, a,an addition to that adage,
which is, do what you love
that others are willing to pay you for.
And you'll never work a day in your life.
Because, I mean, listen,I, I love, you know,

(59:30):
I love drawing in a sketch pad.
I'm not very good at it.Nobody's gonna pay me for it.
If I keep doing it, maybeeventually they'll pay me for it,
but in the end, it's notreally something that,
that I necessarily need to monetize,
but I'm gonna keep doingit because I love it.
What we're doing here, youtalked about this earlier, has
to be that fine balanceof creative love and work.

(59:50):
And I think that's the middleground that I would aim for.
So do what you love. Makesure you're doing it in a way
that others are willing to pay for it.
And that's, that's thegold mine right there.
- And just stick to it, grunt it out.
Know that it's notliterally gonna take months,
but it's probably going to take years
- If you're very good.

(01:00:10):
Maybe it won't take years.
But I think, I thinkabout it like exercise.
I can't bench, you know,two 80 if I didn't start
by benching the bar.
And you gotta work your way up.
I think sometimes people get really lucky,
they find something that works really well
and they skyrocket.
But I was speaking to a creatora little while ago who went,

(01:00:32):
you know, a couple years ago,
he went ballistic on followers.
It went from, you know,11,000 to 150,000 in no time.
And then over the last two years,
he's been completely flat on subscribers.
In fact, he started toeven lose a little bit in
that subscribership overtime, and it burned him out.
'cause it stopped being fun.It turned out it wasn't really
his passion, and it just turned into work.

(01:00:54):
So, you know, there arepeople who find that little,
um, rocket boost.
Uh, and if you're in theright place to capture it
and do something meaningful with it,
this is actually the thingI would turn back to you.
What would you do if therocket boost hit you?
What if you got that spike,what would you do with it?
And how can you use thatto further what you want
to do a year from now,five years from now?

(01:01:14):
Do you have a sense ofwhat your trajectory
might look like in the next year?
- Well, I think, I thinkfor me, essentially the,
and I, I know we've saidthis or I've said this
before, the podcast is reallythe one that I enjoy the most
because it, it interests me
to sit down and chat with people.
Now that I can do it virtually.
It's opened up the floodgates of, of

(01:01:35):
so many different people that thankfully,
and I don't, I stilldon't know exactly why,
but they, they answer my emails and,
and they're like, yeah,I'll come on your show.
Um, that is a blessing for sure.
So, uh, that, thatwould be the main focus.
I, I, I think if I became alittle more competent with some

(01:01:56):
of the video stuff,uh, that would be nice.
But I have, I, I've kindof come up with this idea
and I'm gonna run it past you
and what we're gonna see,we're gonna see what you think.
So originally, ,my, my winter plan was
to link up with thisnon-for-profit sail down
to the South AtlanticOcean where I was trying

(01:02:17):
to go the couple years ago.
Um, and do the plasticsresearch and then come back.
I get to go on this beautiful voyage.
I also get to do some,
some research into this
pollution problem they have down there.
So, you know, two, two wins.
And, and that was the game plan.
Now, if that does not follow

(01:02:38):
and everything fall into a place,
because there's a lot ofworking things that have
to come together, I stillwant to go out there.
But I had this thought the other day
and I was like, well, if I'm able to
get starlink set up, thatmeans I would have the ability
to upload daily what's going on.

(01:02:59):
So doing this daily vlog, maybeeven do some live streams.
Definitely do the podcast
because one of the things,
when you are sailing alone on an ocean,
you have a lot of time on your hands.
So I could easily aot a goodamount of time to doing video
creation, uploading onall the stuff, you know,
just need the star linkto be able to do it.

(01:03:21):
Um, but essentially treatingit as like, I am going
to bring the audience out onto the ocean
with me for five months.
We're gonna do this route, this trip,
and let's see what happens.
Not only visually around meand all the waves and storms
and calms and all that good stuff,
but also let's see whathappens to old j Rome's brain

(01:03:43):
and how he starts acting weird.
'cause you're gonna see the beard grow.
You're gonna see, you know,all these intimate parts of it
and it's, you know, callit, call it like the, the,
the Ocean Truman showor something like that.
And, um, you know,
'cause I think I could handle doing that
for four or five months.
I think it would be a welcomedistraction out on the ocean.

(01:04:06):
Um, I think it's attainable whether
or not, you know, I would get out there
and start going crazy,
but that might be really good content.
I don't, I don't know.Um, what do you think?
- I love the idea. I have two thoughts.
The first is if let's, let's take the path
that the plastics, uh, uh,research doesn't happen.
Um, if you end up going out on your own

(01:04:28):
and do the starlinkversion, um, you should,
or perhaps your agent, dependingon whose responsibility,
and you guys would discuss this,
somebody should get you a partnership
with at least oneorganization to help elevate
and lift up what you're doing.
I think it's really important to not try
to do it on your own in terms
of just using your own placements.

(01:04:49):
I think being able to sayit, you know, make it part
of a fundraiser for anorganization, you know, team,
you know, find, find the socialmedia manager at NOAA and,
and work with, you know, workwith the US government on,
like, bringing attentionto, you know, how the, the,
you know, oceans are, are beingaffected by global warming
and what you're seeing on thewater as a result of that,
and having them elevate and,

(01:05:10):
and, you know, amplify what you're doing.
Um, that would be thefirst thing I would say.
So don't, don't solo it,
but make sure that you've gotother people amplifying it.
Um, the other, frankly,
and I know this is gonna sounda little bit capitalistic,
but like, you should find somebody
to sponsor the trip with you.
Like part of the work shouldbe like, let's go find a,
you know, even if it's a partial thing,
like let's find some brands

(01:05:32):
that are gonna put up some money.
And every time you go, you'regonna do a live once a week,
you're gonna be wearing aCoca-Cola t-shirt, you know,
you're gonna, you got UnderArmour nearby, whatever.
Like, you know, I think Fruit
- Of the loom, fruit of the Loom ,
- If, if that's the directionthat you're gonna go in terms
of like, you're gonna spendfive months on the water
and you're gonna turnit into a content farm.

(01:05:52):
There's gotta be brands thatwould be interested in that.
Not only based, you know,based on your following on,
on YouTube and TikTok,
but also you have a podcastyou're gonna be producing,
I assume, you know, ifnot daily, short form,
very regular podcast content.
Of course, they'd wanna be a part of that.
So what I would say is, I,I, again, this comes back
to my thing of like, do whatyou love, but get paid for it.

(01:06:12):
Like, I'm with you on that in spirit.
And even if you end up doing the version
that's the plastics, uh,exploration, like, you know,
the non, like talk to the nonprofit about
how you can help elevate each other
and build some lift ineverybody's socials, right?
Like thinking, thinking about
how you can build partnershipsfor something like this.
And then also building some, you know, uh,

(01:06:34):
pitches and, and, and sponsorship
and just something in thatspace, even if it's small,
getting yourself so that youcan, the next time you want
to do it a year or twoafter, you can go and say, so
and so brand sponsored me.
I've got these three tiersfor sponsorship packages.
What are you guys interested in?
And just start shoppingyourself out there.
I think that's what I would do.
- Okay. Okay. Yeah, I mean,I, I've definitely given it a,

(01:06:57):
a good amount of thought becauseyeah, any voyage like that,
especially, you know,I've already paid half
for the new sales,
but I've gotta come up with themoney for that starlink with
that package to be able to do it anywhere.
You know, on the oceans, you're,
you're looking at threegrand just for everything
and then two 50 a monthand all that sort of stuff.
But I, I think my approach,

(01:07:20):
what I was thinking isessentially there's,
there's some prettyinfluential, uh, business people
that I've, I've been ableto sort of get to know
and mingle over the years.
And I think my goal
or my game plan was to reach out to
that handful of people first.
Um, 'cause they've always,you know, said, you know,

(01:07:40):
if there's anything you ever need,
let us know if there'sanything we can do to help.
Because it'd be nice todo unnamed sponsorship,
almost like angel investorin the, in the thing.
Um, but I do see your point there where
if you have another brand thathas its social media stuff,
then it does amplify.

(01:08:00):
It's like they bounce offeach other and then boom.
- I think it's worth considering, I, and
and I hear you on there, should always,
you should always strivefor a balance between,
I don't wanna say monetization,but getting yourself funded.
You don't want to go backwards in time
to when you accidentallyspent more money than you
earned on a speaking English.
Yeah. Right? Yeah. Imean, 10% rule, right?

(01:08:20):
Everything you do, youknow, every time you do one
of these big projects, they should be 10%
better than the last one.
I, I think getting someunderwriting and support
and, you know, maybe, maybeit's not that they're, uh,
silent investors, uh,
but maybe they're your, youknow, your angel sponsors.
And at the end of every video you produce,
and at the end of everypodcast you do, Hey,

(01:08:41):
I just wanna take asecond and read the names
of all these wonderful people
who are out here supporting me.
If this is interesting to you
and you wanna support, go to Patreon,
this particular tier is set upfor you guys who wanna like,
help fund this trip directly.
And, and, you know, every time I record,
I'm gonna look at the listand I'm gonna see who's on the
list, and I'm gonna read your names.
Maybe it's just that, you know,
it's just an acknowledgement.
Um, so that that way you're not,

(01:09:04):
you're not reducing thevalue of what you're doing.
You're not cheapening it, but
you are still making the money.
You, you actually need to live.
And I think that's an importantcounterbalance to have,
- Right?
Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, it,
it's a fine line I thinkin, in some ways, for sure.
But I, I see what you're saying. Really.
The, the bare bones here is that

(01:09:24):
if I can do this tripwithout having to pay,
like I always do, I mean,
I typically come backfrom the ocean broke.
Um, I don't want to do that again.
Uh, 'cause I'm, I'm at an age now
that I can't, I can't be broke.
I can't keep doing that. Yeah.
I can't spend, I gotta start building a
a nest egg or whatever. Yeah.

(01:09:44):
- Don't, don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid to make it make money.
Like that's the advice I would have.
Don't be afraid to make it, make money.
Figure out what you'recomfortable with, figure out
what other people are willing to pay for.
Just, even if it's just like,you just want to be able
to break even so that the timethat you spend on the boat,
you know, when you come home,you're not any more in debt
than you were when you left.

(01:10:05):
Maybe even you have a littlebit more money net in the bank.
That's a hugely valuablegoal to try to hit for,
because then it meansthat when you do it again,
or you do smaller versions of it
where you've alreadyfigured out like, all right,
here's the routine,here's the rhythm, here's
where I'm comfortableputting these sponsorships.
Then you've already gotlike a package to go sell
and an idea of howyou're gonna frame it out

(01:10:25):
and that, you know, that can be lucrative.
- True, true. Yep. Lot ofstuff to process. Lot to think.
And, you know, believe it ornot, I am, I'm running out time
because essentially byJuly, beginning of July,
I'm gonna be back on Sparrow doing some
of the final prep work.
And that's, that's essentially the pro.

(01:10:47):
The only issue I have is
that boatyard tiny little place has
almost no internet at all.
So the goal right now, my short term goal,
you asked me what I see in a year.
My short term goal atthis point is to be able
to get starlink so thatwhen I'm in that boatyard,
I can still upload stuffdaily about, you know,
what projects I'm doing.

(01:11:08):
And I think, you know, generallygetting the practice in
for trying to create a littlebit more compelling videos
and, and all that sort of stuff. So
- I dig it.
Let me know how we can help.
Um, I would, uh, you know, I,I'll say this on, on camera.
Yeah. We'll, uh, let's talkoffline. Let's figure it out.
- Let's talk. Yeah. We, we'll talk, uh,
behind the, behind the curtain.

(01:11:29):
- Behind the curtain. Yeah. I love it.
- Well, Jason, this, thislike always is awesome.
I, I think it, it providesso much great information for
me, uh, but also any listenersout there who are sailors
that wanna start theirchannels, have a small channel,
but want to grow it.
Um, so I thank you for, for your,

(01:11:50):
your insight and input, man.
- I, I appreciate it.I want to thank you too
because, you know, when I'm,uh, thinking about the kinds
of people that I want toput out to an audience
to emulate their path and their growth
and the, you know, the, thenorth star of being, um,
creative without beingsellouts, you're the person I,
I think of, uh, I, it doesn'tmean we shouldn't get you more
money, but I also do think that you, uh,

(01:12:12):
provide a perspective thatthat is, uh, truly unique.
So thank you. You know, uh,
the other thing I was justthinking is we've been watching
my background slowly change color, uh,
because it's sunsethere, which is beautiful,
but it makes me realize Ireally can't edit this down.
I can't move pieces of this around.
'cause you're gonna see mybackground color change.
It's gonna not be thenatural progression from

(01:12:33):
light blue to dark blue.
It's in the middle ofit, it suddenly cuts.
And it's like, hisbackground was like, Saru,
and now it's like nighttime.
Like, what the hell was that?
So, um, I guess this isbasically gonna be the,
the like unedited. It's gonna be fun.
- Wow. Welcome to my world.
Well, and, and you know, it's real scary.
I, I think one last tidbit
to tack onto this whole thingis just remember, you know

(01:12:56):
what, it's never gonna be perfect.
- Thanks, mom. You're right,. Okay, I got it. Oh,
- Man.
Oh, well, I almost knocked overeverything. Well, thank you.
Thanks for having me on your show,
and thanks for being on my show,
- .
Anytime, brother. Let's dothis again sometime soon.
- Sounds good.- All right, man.

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