Half a million followers. $323 a month. That’s the average.

In this episode, we down why fame is one of the worst goals you can chase — and why the people getting rich aren’t the ones you see on your feed. They’re the ones solving hard problems you’ll never hear about.

We get into:

• Why the right tools in the wrong hands are worthless
• The “aspiring entrepreneur” trap (and how to escape it)
• Why your phone is enough to start — and proof from creators doing it
• The real reason famous people spiral while engineers thrive
• What a study of nuns’ brains taught us about staying sharp
• Why hiding behind the camera is killing your content
• How constraints (not gear) actually make you better

If you’ve been waiting for the right setup, the right camera, the right moment — this one’s for you. Stop buying. Start making.

Leave us a voicemail to be featured on the show: call.show/usefulnotfamous

Chapters

00:00 The right tools in the wrong hands
01:15 We built a call-in platform (call.show)
03:30 Infinite tools, zero skill
05:45 Why “aspiring entrepreneur” is a trap
07:20 500K followers, $323/month
09:40 Hiding behind the camera kills content
12:15 Wrong tools, right hands beats the opposite
14:30 The gear is the easy part
17:00 Why most people get stuck on the wrong problem
19:45 The nun study and why you need other people
23:00 Why famous people spiral and engineers don’t

Transcript

Jeff Sarris: The right tools in the wrong hands are less valuable than the wrong tools in the right hands.

Amara Andrew: I just realized I don’t have the intro.

Jeff Sarris: Welcome back Explorers. This is Useful Not Famous, the show where we, uh, something, something and strive to be the most useful people, you know? I’m Jeff Sarris.

Amara Andrew: No, we changed it.

I’m a Amara Andrew. I literally, I always have my phone here for that exact thing, blank one today. I was just like, ah, I don’t need it. And then as I was like, I was looking at something on my nail and then I was like. Oh no.

Jeff Sarris: Anyway, so real quick before we get started, we now have a call in, so if you wanna leave us a message to be featured on the show, go to call.show/usefulnotfamous.

It’ll be in the description. And that’s actually a platform that we, I have built for podcast. I’ve literally done Podcast, nothing. Podcast. Yeah. All the shows that I manage. It makes it so much easier. It is. I’m actually super proud of this, uh, little web app, so if you have a podcast too, call that show and you can, uh, get one for your show.

Amara Andrew: It’s a very cool app and it’s beautifully designed and everything. What? Thank you. Like I’m excited. I’m like very proud of you for it, which I know sounds so stupid, but like I know how. Hard. You’ve worked like that sounds like diminutive, but like you’ve worked really well on making it something and it looks absolutely stunning.

’cause I know what it looked like before and then what it looks like now and it’s just, I don’t know, it’s like it’s really cool to see what comes outta your, outta your little noodle.

Jeff Sarris: We had started as like, can I make this actually. Work. So it basically works like a voice memo on your phone, like, like as though you’re using the voice memo app, but it’s just a website specifically for the show.

That’s very cool. So, I dunno. Yeah, I’m, I’m proud of it.

Amara Andrew: And it has like, all the features of like, uh, like how long it is and if this person’s called, I don’t know. It’s like, it’s actually really cool. I didn’t. Know what to expect. Well, yeah, so, but like, I knew you were doing it obviously, so I knew it was gonna be cool.

Jeff Sarris: So we’ve recorded hundreds of episodes, like for ourselves and other shows of podcasts. Hundreds, like literally probably around 500 episodes of podcasts

Amara Andrew: at least.

Jeff Sarris: Um, let alone the ones that we’ve sort of been connected to elsewhere. But everything we like. On so many of the shows you like to have in call-ins, because it’s nice to have listeners voice on the show.

It doesn’t mean it’ll be every episode or even frequent at all. Maybe it’s just once in a while.

Amara Andrew: Yeah, because you have like a whole backlog for one of your shows.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. For Kidney Stone Diet, there’s so many callers. Yeah. Um, but even with the minimalists, like that’s something that’s a big Oh yeah. Anchor.

A big sort of cornerstone of that show is answering listener questions in, in various ways. There’s different mechanisms in place for that, but Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so

Amara Andrew: call that. Yeah. Tell us a joke. Tell us a tip. Ask us a question, leave the raunchy voicemail.

Jeff Sarris: Okay. Like this is not, this is not what this is for, but call show call.show/usefulnotfamous.

Amara Andrew: You are like, don’t soil the brand new tech.

Jeff Sarris: But yeah. So the right tools in the Ron hands are less valuable than the wrong tools in the right hands. So this is something that I think is. Pretty apt for today with AI and today,

Amara Andrew: what day is it?

Jeff Sarris: But we’re all trying, we’re all looking at all these brand new tools like call show.

No, real quick. Like, I made this because Please. But no, but I made that because exactly what we needed didn’t exist. So now it does. Which it’s, it’s very specific in what it’s offering and nothing else, which makes it exciting. It’s why we’re doing highway, why we’re doing all these other tools to be useful to us, and then other people who do things like we do.

Amara Andrew: Oh yeah.

Jeff Sarris: But with AI now we have infinite tools available, like all the chat bots for every different AI that’s out there can do anything for us. It can answer any questions it could. Answer our phone, reply to emails. It can make photos, make videos, make music. It can do everything. We have all the tools we ever wanted, but the issue is sort of the right tools in the wrong hands is not really valuable.

Like we need to build our skillset around how to create something worth creating.

Amara Andrew: So that’s what I was gonna ask you, like what’s your interpretation of like the wrong hands? So like, let’s say. Now you have access. I

Jeff Sarris: have a list of names and I was kidding.

Amara Andrew: Lemme go grab my phone. Yeah, it’s so weird not having it, but I was just like, yeah, I don’t need it.

I’m trying to just have my phone around me less and less. And I do feel so much better. Like, even if it’s just like a, a, the hell, is it called

Jeff Sarris: EMFs?

Amara Andrew: No, the um,

Jeff Sarris: psychological,

Amara Andrew: yeah. Where it’s like a fake out kind of thing.

Jeff Sarris: Placebo.

Amara Andrew: Thank you.

Jeff Sarris: A applicable

Amara Andrew: placebo. Anyway. Um. The hell did you just say? Oh yeah.

So what’s your, what’s your definition of like the wrong hands? ’cause you can have access to basically anything now. Mm-hmm. So is that somebody then, who’s like, not, well, I’m not gonna put words in your mouth. What’s your, what’s your take?

Jeff Sarris: Well, I don’t think there’s a concrete anything. It’s that we need to be capable because then no matter what tools we’re using.

We can achieve greatness, we can do so much more. And this isn’t just ai, it’s anything, anything.

Amara Andrew: So is that even like a character sort of thing, like, uh, being motivated or like disciplined or looking for certain things or being an entrepreneur?

Jeff Sarris: So I, I think those can be characteristics of the person. But like these microphones, these are very nice microphones.

Amara Andrew: We have microphones,

Jeff Sarris: these are tools. Now anyone can have this tool like it’s the right tool for recording audio specific versions of audio, but in the wrong hand, someone who has absolutely nothing to say, there’s no reason for them to be recording audio because they haven’t developed anything worth.

Sharing like that sounds like harsh, but I feel like it’s a good, just an example. There’s two cameras here recording this. These are very nice cameras. Anyone can buy them E. Everything is accessible in the world now. We can buy anything. We can get anywhere in the world within 23 hours. I think no matter where you live, you can get anywhere on a plane in less than 24 hours, I believe.

But. That doesn’t mean you, you should

Amara Andrew: call in if you wanna fact check him,

Jeff Sarris: but it doesn’t mean you should. You know what I mean? Like we can do anything. We can buy anything. Yeah, we can use any tools, but is that actually doing anything for us or anyone else?

Amara Andrew: Yeah, because just because you have the tools, it doesn’t mean that you have the like creativity or even the drive to make something like how you were saying with having the mics like we all buy gear all the time.

That. Well, not all of us maybe, but some of us will buy gear and then it’ll just sit there. But it’s because you have the intention of starting something or you really wanna start something, but then it’s like, oh, but what do I actually do with this? Mm-hmm. Because like I know that that’s sort of a thing that we’ve heard from a couple people where it was like, oh, okay, cool.

I like bought all these things. And then it just sits in their office or in their living room, or, well, yeah,

Jeff Sarris: not even a couple. Like I’m, I’ve been doing this since 2009 and I’ve talked to so many aspiring. Entrepreneurs,

Amara Andrew: but then it’s

Jeff Sarris: like, but the, well, I just wanna say real quick the, yeah. The problem is aspiring, an aspiring entrepreneur is never an entrepreneur ’cause they’re always aspiring.

It’s like you have to start my podcast if I ever bring it back, has been, was called starting now. Mm-hmm. Because it was all the origin stories of people actually starting not aspiring to start

Amara Andrew: Yeah, I forgot what I was gonna say.

Jeff Sarris: Sorry. But that was the big thing. So with the deer, so there’s so many people that.

Over the last 17 years that I’ve talked to that I know that like I want to do well. Mm-hmm. Like I’m, I’ve pushed so as hard as I can as a friend or coach, consultant, whatever. Without being like, I can’t make anyone do anything. You can leave. It’s a horse to water. We can’t make a drink.

Amara Andrew: We can drown it in the pool.

I think I said that one day and I was like, oh, that was dark. No, I like horses, but like, that’s something that we talk about a lot where it’s like, is it the want of the actual product and like the, the act of like doing it, like doing the the creative act or is it purely just having the end product? So just having it out there and having it finished, but then also wanting.

What people see, other people who do things get and receive. Does that make sense? So

Jeff Sarris: like I think you’re saying the outcomes like money.

Amara Andrew: Exactly. Yeah. Like, or what they perceive is money, but really it’s the core tenet of useful, not famous where yeah, they have fame, but they’re probably not making money from it, or they’re making money from something completely different.

And then this is the platform, but they have the two things in place.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. Statistically. The famous people, quote unquote famous, that you see on social media. Statistically, they’re not making more money than you, but I wish I could remember the stat right now ’cause I had it like a year ago or whatever that.

I think it was people with 500,000 and more followers.

Amara Andrew: Oh, I remember that.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. On average, they made $323 a month.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: It was like with half a million followers.

Amara Andrew: Nothing.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. And over a million on average, they made something like,

Amara Andrew: it was like $2,000 a month or something. Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: And it’s

Amara Andrew: like, it was like nothing.

Jeff Sarris: And that’s, that is average. So you have, you have a Mr. Beast, he’s over a million followers. He makes. His company’s valued at almost $5 billion and he has 500 employees and he does 20 hour a day work days, seven days a week. Like it’s a different level. But then you have most people who are like, I am, I’m a food influencer.

I go around the whole world and I hide behind the camera ’cause I’m scared. At least they started and now I film things and it gets all these views. I have 453,000 followers, but I can’t make any money, so I actually need to go back and get a job. I’ve done this full time for 16 months and I can’t even pay rent anymore.

And that’s a problem because we think that’s what it is. That fame is everything.

Amara Andrew: How you were just saying about somebody hiding behind the camera, I noticed that with myself this week. I saw something. I like literally don’t remember what it was, but it was someone that I know and I follow, but I didn’t know it was their content.

’cause I never watched my videos with sound on if I’m like watching something. I didn’t know it was their content and it didn’t have them in it. And I just like swiped away. But then I saw their name at the bottom and I was like, oh wait, it’s like this person, I should watch it. But it was really funny because that was my immediate reaction where like if I don’t see a face immediately, I don’t really wanna watch it.

Which is interesting and like so many people I think forget that like

Jeff Sarris: so many. What

Amara Andrew: P

Jeff Sarris: You’re like, just lemme get past this. So many.

Amara Andrew: I was like, just play my accent. I am French today. So many people. So many people, it’s like, it’s hard to think of that ’cause the easiest thing to record, which, like you said, I’m glad that people are actually like making something like that’s like, good job.

Jeff Sarris: It is. So, and the problem is this is in. Uh, opposition to sort of where we started too. ’cause we want people to start, but also the wrong tools.

Amara Andrew: Exactly.

Jeff Sarris: Like, so there’s two sides that we’re talking about here. Knowingly. That they’re conflicting.

Amara Andrew: That’s why like, it’s tricky but like just starting, but then also having yourself in it.

I know it’s really scary for a lot of people, but like once you get over that hump, it’s like the easiest thing possible and it has so much more value with your face in it. And that’s how you stand out. ’cause like. Think about your favorite celebrities or even like the favorite shows or influencers that you like to watch.

Like you have a connection with the person. Otherwise, if they’re not in the actual content, you’re not used to seeing them. And then it’s just kind of like, well you can replace them with whoever. ’cause there’s like no personality or like facial recognition.

Jeff Sarris: That’s PBS. PBS sort of conventionally is sort of a voiceover with B roll of history.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Sarris: So you have no.

Amara Andrew: Except for a couple travel shows like Rick Steves and

Jeff Sarris: Samantha Brown. I think a few people think, yeah. Who made sure they put themselves in it?

Amara Andrew: Uhhuh.

Jeff Sarris: But like you think of all reality tv, sort of maybe the most successful media, pre TikTok, social media type stuff, infinite scroll stuff.

It is purely human driven story. Mm-hmm. It has nothing to do with anything else. We’re not. Following a group of cars that are being driven in races, right? Like it’s not that, it’s the person driving the car. Mm-hmm. It’s the person shopping for clothes. Exactly. It’s not the clothes. No one cares about the clothes, like you care about it because the person wants it.

Amara Andrew: Well, yeah, we all love watching human things because it’s so interesting to actually get to see like the inside, whatever, like I don’t even know what the psychological function of that is, but it is very interesting to watch how other people move through space, do things like what they say. Think even if you don’t agree, like at all.

It’s still interesting.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. So the, the wrong tools, right hands. So you need to start, but that doesn’t mean you need to buy microphones and lights and cameras and editing software. Like you can grab your phone and start.

Amara Andrew: Exactly

Jeff Sarris: like there’s YouTubers who have never graduated beyond their phone. It shows, but they also, some of ’em are full-time YouTubers and.

You might see a, a video pop up. Like we saw one recently that the guy is, uh, it’s

Amara Andrew: so passionate.

Jeff Sarris: You see how much he loves it, which is great. And it, the videos are doing very well, but at the same time it’s like, oh wow, this, this could be so much better.

Amara Andrew: But he still did a really good job. Exactly. Because I still watched it and I was like, oh, this is fun.

’cause again, it’s all about the concept and the premise. Mm-hmm. Like it had a really good premise. Could have used a little bit of refinement in the storytelling and everything, but that’s fine. But like, yeah. His passion and his want to do it. He was like, I’m doing this. I can have the shittiest microphone, the shittiest camera, but like, I’m going to make this happen.

And he’s doing really well.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. So like, like we critique it, but like he should have one of these cameras like we have.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. But I

Jeff Sarris: also

Amara Andrew: love that he doesn’t,

Jeff Sarris: but that’s the thing, his, the level of what he’s doing now warrants it, yet he doesn’t have it. ’cause he, he is the right hands.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: With the wrong tools currently, but that’s fine.

Mm-hmm. Like he’s built something successful, profitable, like full-time career out of it.

Amara Andrew: Well, yeah. And he is like taking us on the journey of it, which is really fun. Yeah. So it’s not getting. I know, I feel like so many people limit themselves. ’cause they’re just like, oh, when I get a camera, or I get the right space, or I get like, we’re literally in our living room, like we have the nice equipment, but that’s because we run a video marketing agency and

Jeff Sarris: dining room,

Amara Andrew: whatever’s the thing, same room, but we don’t, like you can’t let that stop you because especially if you have the like, well, no, I need to create something.

Like, I wanna make something. And you wanna have that. Just like, yeah, we could have our phones set up right now, which I think we actually tried at the very beginning.

Jeff Sarris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. We were talking straight at them.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. Um, which obviously we had the cameras, but we were trying to figure out something else.

But yeah, you can literally use anything now, which is amazing. Like you’re, you’re sort of not hampered by anything anymore. Like even a video that we watched yesterday. Like wasn’t done very well, but it was done well in the concept like the, and we’re only critiquing the visuals of it because this is literally what we do for a living.

But like he had the idea and he just did it standing way too fucking far away from the camera. He was like all the way over there. But like I love that he did it and he was doing a really good job. Um. I forgot where I was going with that, but yeah, just not being stuck on, oh, well, when I do this, well, when I do that, because like I know I do that, not in the same respect, but in other areas of life.

It’s hard. Like,

Jeff Sarris: well, it’s like I’ll be happy when,

Amara Andrew: that’s what I was just gonna say. It’s like, oh, well I’ll be happy when X or when I live in a sunny place or when I do this, and it’s like. Why is that tied up in that? Like you can be happy anytime. I could be happy right now if I felt like it, but I’m not

Jeff Sarris: just start bawling.

Amara Andrew: That’d be so sad. I’d be like, okay, cut. End of podcast. But that’s part of my book that I’m reading right now. Psycho-Cybernetics. It’s a very good book. That has been very eye-opening for me in a way like yes and no, but. Part of one of the chapters.

Jeff Sarris: Yes and no. It’s, you have takeaways from it.

Like, I think, see that’s the thing, the, uh, ultimate optimist, I’m like, oh yeah. It’s just all, yes. We’ll, we won’t take everything from anything ever. Like this episode, last episode, like hopefully there’s something that you can take from it.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: Because you’re listening right now. I was gonna say, if you’re listening, it’s like, well, if you hear this, you’re listening.

So

Amara Andrew: No, they just have it on. Oh, that could even be true.

Jeff Sarris: Well, yeah.

Amara Andrew: Well, no, it would sink in.

Jeff Sarris: Um, but if, yeah, if. There’s one little thing that someone can take, and that’s why I think podcasts are so valuable now too, is we have this community aspect. We have the voices of other people in our ears, and it’s like, oh, you know, I didn’t think about that, that, that, that, that, but now I’m doing this.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s very valuable.

Jeff Sarris: But yeah. Um, Ron Deer. Right hands. Right hands. Ron Deer kind of thing. Once you have, once you’re sort of the right hands, once you have the vision and the the what? The like what for kind of thing, then you can address constraints. So you mentioned we were using our phones.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Sarris: The reason we started that way is because the constraint that stopped us from doing this show was set up and tear down. We didn’t. We hated spending a half hour, 40 minutes setting up what we were gonna record, and then a half hour, 40 minutes taking down what we recorded, then editing, then posting, then like all the things

Amara Andrew: and trying to make clips.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. So we were like, okay, how can we just make it the simple as possible? Let’s put the phones in the middle.

Amara Andrew: I thought, you’re asking me for a fist bump. I was like, okay,

Jeff Sarris: here we go,

Amara Andrew: Bing.

Jeff Sarris: Um, but let’s just put the phones in the middle. So that worked, but then it was like, okay, this. Isn’t up to our standards.

So now how do we address the constraint differently? We ended up getting this little, let me see, little recorder, a zoom F three. We have these mics. We have this all packed down into our camera badge when we travel. Yeah. It takes up, if you’re watching, uh, you can say it takes up about that much total space for all the deer.

And when you turn the pouches, it’s about that thick.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. Literally just the width of the microphone.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. So it’s about. It is so tiny.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: And it is crazy that we can do that. And this takes no time to set up. We have a light that now we have a battery on it. We don’t even plug the light in.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: We have our two cameras that are just on tabletop chart.

Like everything is just like set up, tear down, go Uhhuh. And we’re able to do that not because we worried about having the right gear first. Because if we wanted the right gear, we wouldn’t have bought this gear.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Sarris: We would’ve bought other podcast gear because this is what podcasts look like. It’s what they use, it’s how you do it.

Amara Andrew: But even like the mics, uh, like somebody recently asked us like, oh, well why do you hold the mic? And I don’t know. We just like it. Like one of my favorite podcasts. They hold the mic and I find it really funny. Mm-hmm. And then you’re just like, we should just do that.

Jeff Sarris: Well, yeah, because again, this is easy.

We don’t have to this, if I just unclip this, we’re done. This is like, I unclip this. You’re done.

Amara Andrew: I’m gonna keep talking,

Jeff Sarris: but I unclip the mic right here. Yeah. And I put it away. It’s done. I don’t have to worry about a big arm to hold it. I don’t need table to, I don’t, nothing. It’s a cord.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Sarris: It is so simple.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: Um, but constraints are the thing. Once you sort of are. Once you’ve developed who you are and what you’re doing, you can do so much more because then you’re, you’re attacking constraints and getting them outta the way as quickly as possible.

Amara Andrew: I know what it is. It’s what we talk about all the time, like off camera.

The gear is the easiest thing. So hard things are hard. The gear. You can just click buy, add to cart, whatever, have it shipped to your door. Then you have the gear. That’s the easy part. Or I can decorate the space and make it look like a podcast studio. There can be some challenges with that, but overall that is a very easy thing to do.

Especially

Jeff Sarris: now money. Money is the limiting factor.

Amara Andrew: That’s

Jeff Sarris: it. Yeah. So unlimited money you can, we should buy. If we had unlimited money, we could buy a building in any, any city in the world. Buy the best interior designer. Yeah, buy the best audio engineer, buy the best, and be like, okay, set it all up for us.

Amara Andrew: Like that’s a very easy problem to solve. You just throw money at it and then it’s done. The hard part is the ideation. It’s the, what do I talk about? It’s the what is this show? But that’s where everyone who I’ve heard say, I wanna do X. That’s where they get stuck. And I don’t blame ’em. I’m not like talking shit or anything, but like that is hard.

Like coming up with the, okay, well now what do I talk about? What do I say?

Jeff Sarris: I would say though. Usually they don’t know. That’s where they’re stuck. I know. ’cause they focus on the deer.

Amara Andrew: And that’s what I mean,

like

Jeff Sarris: it’s, yeah, it’s, I will, when

Amara Andrew: it’s easy to focus on, Ooh, well the camera, like, I’m gonna focus on that and put all my attention in that.

That’s like the easiest thing you could think of. It’s like, well, no, what is it? And then if you like, we’ve asked a couple people like, okay, well what is it? And it’s like. Well, like, I think it’ll be this, but like, or not even that. If it was even that, I’d be like, okay, cool, let’s go here. But it’s not knowing what it is, but wanting the outcome and the end product.

But because you see other people have it.

Jeff Sarris: Oh yeah.

Amara Andrew: And like this is, and again, this isn’t to be disparaging, but it’s just like do the hard thing. And that’s the most rewarding part, like hands down. Because then once you figure that out. Everything like falls into place.

Jeff Sarris: Oh, yeah. Then it’s limiting factors and how do you get those out of your way.

And like this isn’t just for podcast and like you mentioned it that way, but this again, I’ve done this for 17 years. This is 80 to 90% of the people I’ve talked to. Mm-hmm. Is this conversation. Yeah. And it’s a lot of that isn’t for people. Like I’ve talked to many, many, many, many, many people over these years.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: It is. A lot of people, it’s

Amara Andrew: like every, a lot, a lot of people, just,

Jeff Sarris: everyone’s aspire and we all want something different. On the other side, the dress is always greener, is like a cliche, but cliches exist for a reason. Mm-hmm. Like it’s, it’s true. Like, oh, we think things will be better over there, or different over there, or whatever.

But we don’t always take action to. Figure out if it’s

Amara Andrew: Oh yeah.

Jeff Sarris: And that’s really what we’re all about is just action. Do it. Mm-hmm. And you’ll figure out your way. It’s stepping stones to something else, but you won’t know what the something else is until you get close enough where it’s one stone away.

Amara Andrew: Uhhuh. Well, yeah, like something I’ve wanted to do for a while is bring back my personal podcast by Amara, and it was just talking about art and history news, like weird things that happened that week and I loved doing it, and I loved. Having the clips and everything and like, just, I loved what the show was because it was stuff that I was curious about, but it was so much work that like, people don’t know, obviously, because I’m curating all these stories and trying to make it make sense for like a, a show format.

Um. So that was a limiting factor. It was time and especially, ’cause at that time too, we were traveling literally every single week for filming, which was quite a lot. So like the time was a limiting factor for me, and I just didn’t make the time for it because it wasn’t, uh. It was a lot more time than it needed to be, but maybe I’m bringing it back.

Probably not because now we’re working on another project, but

Jeff Sarris: Yeah, and all the hyperlocal stuff, so sort of what you learn doing that.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: Then went to Maven. We do it for other people now, has come full circle. We do it for them and for our hyperlocal stuff. So same idea. So doing news, doing scoops, like,

Amara Andrew: yeah, it’s really fun.

Jeff Sarris: Conceptually, it’s the same thing. It’s just everything but right hands. Like Right. Tools in the right hands.

Amara Andrew: Oh

Jeff Sarris: yeah. Ideas. It doesn’t matter what the tools are because Yeah, you’ve, you’ve done the reps to figure out what you wanna attack and go after.

Amara Andrew: Well, and I have so many ideas, but I find it easier for me to just do the ideas versus trying to translate my ideas to other people, which is a flaw of mine.

’cause it’s, it’s hard. I would that why

Jeff Sarris: that’s not a flaw.

Amara Andrew: Well, it’s hard because I have an idea of what I want it to look like and just what it should be, but I have a really, why? Why are you laughing and smiling at me and pointing in my face? Pointing. I know.

Jeff Sarris: This reminds me of a brain researcher where I just listened to him talk and he said one thing that stuck with me.

It was about Alzheimer’s. It was about avoiding dementia. How

Amara Andrew: what?

Jeff Sarris: There’s like a nunnery. Say, and they would check all the brains when the nuns would pass, and not all of them, but there was like a period of time and they found that so many had all of the hallmarks of dementia, but they never experienced it.

They had the amyloid plaque, they had all the buildup, they had everything about the physical brain said they should have had Alzheimer’s or dementia or memory loss. They never had it, but it’s because. This was the quote and what it made me think about. ’cause it’s not a flaw of you that you can’t translate this to people.

It’s the hardest thing for our brain is other people.

Amara Andrew: Mm.

Jeff Sarris: So people get dementia when they don’t interact with other people regularly because. The brain acts like a muscle, and it starts, you can think about it this way, like as though it’s atrophying, but basically if you’re not doing difficult things, there’s, I don’t remember the name of the section of the brain, but there’s a section of the brain that all that it does is handle difficult things.

So if I, if juggling is difficult and I don’t know how to do it. That part of the brain will light up as I’m trying to figure, trying to figure out. As soon as I figure it out and I keep doing it, that brain stop, that part of the brain stops lighting up, which it’s not difficult. You have to always be doing difficult things to keep your brain healthy throughout all of your life.

And the way that he framed it is the most difficult thing for the brain is other people. So the nunnery, they live there, the convent or whatever, forever. If they live there their entire lives with a group of people that hopefully they get along with, okay, they won’t get along all the time. They won’t agree all the time.

They will always have the most difficult thing for the human brain in their vicinity. They’ll always have other people. And if we wanna avoid dementia, we need to always be surrounded by other people because otherwise we don’t have like this. Why I like where the show went here is we sort of. We push on the topics like we do off camera with each other.

And I think that’s what keeps us sharp is we’re not always just like yessing everything we’re evolving together. Um, but all that to say, you said it’s a character flaw, that it’s easier to do it yourself than it is to have other people do it. And I would say that’s just pure fact, just how it works. Like it’ll always be difficult with other people.

Amara Andrew: Yeah, I just wish I could be better with it because I have grand ideas and sort of what I would want or envision for, like what would make it like really captivating on camera, but also then that’s my take on it and not the other person’s Like that isn’t true to who the person is. I don’t know. It’s just interesting.

That just made me think too, when you were talking about the nunnery of the book that I’m reading and. Uh, basically once you lose your goal and it, it’s not goal in like the traditional term of like, oh, meet your goals, but once you’ve lost essentially your reason to live and to be something

Jeff Sarris: to strive for.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. That, that’s kind of it. Like you’re, you’re gone. Like, you lose that thing where that like wakes you up every day and gets you excited and that you wanna go do, ’cause humans, like we are a goal striving people. Even if you might not think of yourself that way, like we all are, like you at least have one goal that you’re working toward, whether you realize it or not, and I find that so fascinating.

But then that’s why you can’t have everything that you want, because then as soon as you get all of it, then the goalpost keeps moving and then you either, hopefully it goes in the right way in a good territory. But a lot of times it goes in sort of a bad way. And that’s why, you know, people get addicted to really bad drugs and do all sorts of crazy cuckoo things.

Jeff Sarris: Oh yeah. When they have unlimited money, things get weird

Amara Andrew: because that was the goal was to make money. And then it just kind of like,

Jeff Sarris: you know what’s interesting though? This is actually a perfect, uh, and it’s perfect thing to, to wrap on, but sorry to end the episode on, think about the archetype of the person.

Who once they have effectively unlimited money, they spiral.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Sarris: They’re the famous people. So maybe musicians, maybe artists, they’re people who, their art, even if maybe that’s influencer or whatever is it, they no longer have something to strive for yet. The richest people in the world today, the Elon’s, the Bezos, the they’re engineers.

They’re problem solvers. They’re doing things that a hundred percent of their day is attacking new problems that are hard for their brain.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. And

Jeff Sarris: so they never lose that.

Amara Andrew: And the money wasn’t the end goal or the fame wasn’t the end goal. It was actually Okay. Like obviously we all need money. I’m not stupid, but.

That was only a byproduct in a way. It was like, okay, well no, I wanna keep, like, well, what if I did this? What if we do that? How about we push it this way?

Jeff Sarris: Mm-hmm. That

Amara Andrew: is really interesting.

Jeff Sarris: They haven’t spiraled into oblivion like a, like some pop stars and things that you can think of who really just like, wow, what happened?

They lost all purpose, all meaning, all reason to strive for anything. ’cause they had everything they could want.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. That’s interesting.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah.

Amara Andrew: I feel like that was a little unlock.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. Think like an engineer. Think like a,

Amara Andrew: I moved the mic.

Jeff Sarris: A burping. Sorry,

Amara Andrew: I was gonna play it off, but.

Jeff Sarris: Like that. Well, I heard it.

Okay. Thanks for tuning and go to call.show slash slash slash burp. call.show/usefulnotfamous to leave us a message and we’ll feature you on a future episode.

Amara Andrew: Yeah, or leave me a burp.

Jeff Sarris: No, please don’t you keep asking for these. I don’t want this. Okay. Bye.

Amara Andrew: I love you. Bye.

Jeff Sarris: Love you too.