Transcript
Amanda Palmer Quote on Seeing Versus Looking
00:00:00 Jeff Sarris
Not everybody wants to be looked at, but everybody wants to be seen.
Welcome back to Useful Not Famous. This is a show where we explore topics we find the most interesting, and strive to be the most useful people you know. I'm Amara Andrew.
And this week I have a last name!
I like how you turned to the camera. You did a…
I'm trying a little sassy bit.
I'm not even feeling sassy, I just felt like it would have dramatic effect.
So, "Not everybody wants to be looked at, everybody wants to be seen." That's from The Art of Asking, that's from Amanda Palmer. It's a very good book, but—
It feels sort of trippy. We don't all want to be looked at, we want to be seen.
I feel like that's the main thing we struggle with people—or not even struggle with, but we hear from people sort of in a way, is, "Well, I want to be on social media, but I don't want to be on social media." And not even like the act of like scrolling or anything, but purely being seen. Like, that it is scary, because it's like, "Wow, people actually like saw me who are either immediately in my area, or it's like friends and family" is kind of the thing that most people are sort of stressed out about.
It's like, "My friends and family are going to see this video, and I know they're going to give me shit for it." Like, it is—it is hard, because you have to sort of—I'm just going on eight different tangents, but essentially like as humans, we want to fit in as much as possible. It is that like biological function of if you get thrown out of your community or your tribe, you're on your own, or you need to find another tribe, but probably not going to accept you.
And that's just biologically seated in our brains, is the want to belong and be part of something. So, it's even more magnified, I feel, with social media.
Well, and to be seen is great. We want to be known. We want people to know we're there, but we don't like to be looked at.
We don't want to be seen—we don't want to be looked at and judged. That's what we're afraid of. But somehow being seen feels like, "You see me." Like, "You see me, and you see me in me." Like, being seen is somehow different than being looked at.
It's really funny because actually in school, like grad school and undergrad, in art history, which is what I studied, we do talk about very heavily the difference between looking and seeing. 'Cause looking is sort of the passive experience. So, it's like, "Well, yeah, you're looking at something, but you're not really like actively engaged in it." Where to see and like to be seen and to like see something, you're looking for something, whatever that is, and it's much more engaged.
And it actually is— like as a woman, it could actually be a little intimidating and a little scary.
Well, we want to be seen for who we are, but we don't want to be looked at for critique and judgment and negativity, and all these things that'll hold us back from doing the things. I mean, maybe John Cena had it right.
You can't see me! Or you can't look at me! He was onto something there, Cena.
Cena? See-na? See me, see no!
I don't know. Anyway! That is a very interesting quote.
I feel like actually, when was that written, do you know?
Like, approximate? Like 2010s?
Isn't that interesting? 'Cause it's so insightful, and it's—it feels like it's so ahead of its time, especially now.
Well, especially for her because she is an artist, musician, all these things, and she—
She was Dresden Dolls, right?
Okay, I love Dresden Dolls.
And she would do— what did she call it? The Bride. That was her thing.
So, she was like a street performer who would be a statue there posed, and her character was the bride. And it was—it sort of going back to all of this, the book is called "The Art of Asking," and it's all about how she built her entire career on asking. Asking for help, asking for the things that she wanted out of life, and sort of how it all ties together.
I don't know, it's a really interesting book. It's been a long time since I read it. But if anyone's curious where we—how we get these quotes, these are quotes from everything we've read ever that come up, and we're like, "Oh, that'll be a great top—topic to talk about." And we use Readwise, which is a phenomenal app.
We have a link in the description, I think, or somewhere.
I like "or somewhere." You go find it.
It should be in the description of the podcast.
It's actually tattooed in my belly button, good luck finding it!
But yeah, we love Readwise, and if you want to check it out, there's a link where you get like a discount. You'll see our little faces at the top when you click it, and everything. But anyway, that's where that comes from.
And I think it's very interesting. But also, we thought of something for us this week, 'cause you always hear "all bark, no bite."
Balancing Bark and Bite in Business Marketing
And we realized we're "all bite, no bark."
-huh. That was really funny. It was like our morning, where we just sit and read, and then we just talk about basically do a podcast, but we don't record it.
But yeah, we realized that because I forget which book I was reading, but one of the books, it was the way that they phrased something, and I thought that was so interesting. And then I was like, "Well, we're the exact opposite," because like if you haven't heard the quote, or you don't necessarily know what it means, "all bark, no bite" means you're yapping, and you're like all talk, but…
I just feel like—and anyone who listens is like, "Why are they laughing?" I don't know why that's just funny. It's like, "Oh, you—oh, your hands going around yapping, yapping!" It just feels like a thing like a very—
"You know what you do, you just yap and yap."
It feels like a like a 1950s like guy talking to his guy friend. Like, that I don't know why I just had that in my head.
"His hands are just yapping!"
I don't know why. It's not even like we were in like the East Coast this week. We're in the West Coast this week!
But anyway. Yeah. So, "bark" is just you're all talk.
Like you're puffing yourself up, and you're talking about, "Oh, I'm this, and I'm that, and I do this, and I do that."
Yeah. Or like, "I'm the head of a company." Like, feeling like you need to talk about all of your accomplishments and all of your achievements that you perceive you have, because you have nothing to back it up, and because you have no bite, like nothing to show for it.
Yeah, which is a classic sort of idiom or phrase or whatever it is. And then we realized we're the exact opposite, 'cause we don't talk about anything we do.
We have no bark, and we're just all bite.
Only on this podcast, like that's that's it. Even though we should talk about ourselves a lot more on social media, which is something I've sort of been dabbling in, but it is hard because I'd rather just work on all the things instead of just talking about it, and it's it's sort of like an overinflation of the self, where it's trying to make yourself seem more important or like you're doing a lot more than maybe you actually are.
So, the opposite we were discussing is we're all bite, no bark. So, we're constantly working on everything, but almost maybe to a detriment, maybe not. It's—it's all perspective.
We don't promote it. So, it's like we're working on all these really cool things and ideas that I'm so excited for, but we don't talk about it at all, which is a problem, because you do need like —it's not even sales, but that would be more just marketing, yeah.
What's that thing we do again? Oh, yeah.
I know! What's the—some video, something?
What's the thing we do for everyone else except us?
Yeah, marketing! Attention! Marketing!
All the things, all the things we should be doing for ourselves! But yeah, it's just—it is it's just such an interesting thing, because it feels like the most successful people are that, where like some of the wealthiest people in the country, you wouldn't even know their names. Like, there are two billionaires or three billionaires that you actually know their names, where all of the other billionaires in the world, you have no idea who they are.
And the three are just because they've started building personal brands. But then they're not going around like, "I'm a CEO! I do this, I do that!" It's very much like, "Well, no, I'm just work—" Like, that's a whole other bag of hammers.
I shouldn't have even brought that up. But just people who—and not that money is necessarily the metric for success, but people of various different income levels or economic profiles—I don't even know what words I'm looking for! I'm like, "Where are the words?
Digging, trying to find them!" But people at various different economic points or income levels, they're not talking about, "Oh, I'm doing this, or I'm doing that." It's just purely focusing on the business and how do you make it better. And I think that's the most important thing, focusing on your bite versus your bark.
Personal Branding Lessons From Elon Musk
Yeah, I think there's a balance. So, like an Elon—'cause you do need bark.
An Elon is getting building a civilization on the moon. That's sort of the new thing where it's like, okay, Mars, there's these windows to get literal, like you can only launch in these very certain times because of the rotation of the Earth, rotation of Mars, all the gravity, everything that goes into getting there. You can get to the moon all the time.
So, it's easier, it'll be a shorter path to create a colony on the moon. So, like Elon has talked about. Like that is sort of step one is to do that.
So, that is the bark. But the bite is still happening. That's—the bark isn't the end of the line.
And it almost feels like with that, with the bark, he needs to win us over in order to not have it seem like he's some crazy—
Yeah! 'Cause like, could you imagine if we had never heard from him and kind of know who he is? Like, he has built a per- a personal brand.
So, it is like, "Oh, okay. I guess we can like trust this guy that he isn't, yeah, going to fucking ship us off to the moon, and then it's like, 'Bye! Never going to see us again.'" so he has worked really diligently on that.
Jeff Bezos kind of has a personal brand. I guess Mark Zuckerberg is like definitely working hard—harder on building that.
Or had been last year. He's making his appearances on shows, cut his hair, and stuff different.
Yeah, it feels like he kind of stopped. Didn't look like such a nerd.
I feel like it was to be like he can't be seen as exactly what he was seen as.
Right, looked at versus seen. He was looked at as this sort of crazy, eccentric, unrelatable billionaire.
Exactly, that's what I was going to say. It's just like a little odd, but not like good odd. Where like Elon is pretty odd, but it's like charming odd.
Well, and again, everyone has their political things. This is completely apolitical. We are only talking about business and like the engineer Elon, and all the crazy things that he does.
Yeah, it's very impressive, especially from a business perspective.
And the balance between the two is hard, because we go so heavy. Again, this is useful, not famous. We want to be as useful as possible, because that's how we've found that the more useful you are, the more successful you become.
The more famous you are, maybe you can turn that into success, like monetary success, but most people who go after fame never turn it into anything other than more eyeballs and more attention. And attention can be valuable if you know how to make that attention valuable to an advertiser, to a business, to whatever it is.
But going in fame-first never works, because your end goal has zero value, zero usefulness to anyone with money. So, it's a that's sort of what we're talking about regularly, because we might have a few new listeners now 'cause it's people are starting to share the show and talk about it a little bit more, which is really fun.
But just to give context for why we call it Useful Not Famous, and why it is so key to who we are, and the people we've worked with who have been at many different levels of fame, some quite known, but then you learn, okay, what's the extent that the fame is valuable? And, yeah, we can all be useful. It doesn't matter if anyone knows who you are, you can be useful and become successful.
Well, and like we've talked about in previous episodes, you typically have a three-year window with fame, unless you choose—
Iron Law of Stardom and Viral Fame Limits
It's called the Iron Law of Stardom.
No, that's fine. Thank you, though. My little my little supplement.
But basically you have a three-year window where like you start, and then by year three, you do kind of just fade, unless you choose to reinvent yourself or just keep iterating. Like Taylor Swift has done that. Like, I don't know much about her, but we watched that one documentary and I'm like, "I know a lot now." but she's done that.
Like Gaga has done that a lot. Like anybody who's been around for longer than that three-year window, they've unless they're like a movie star, actress, celebrity, whatever, like that's a different thing. But like specifically actually thinking about like music, 'cause that feels like such a different animal, they've had to reinvent themselves.
That's why like I think Beyonce went country for an album or something. Or like Post Malone! He went from rap to in like hip-hop to now super country.
So, just constantly reinventing yourself to fit and like survive. So, I forgot where I was going with this.
Well, and this is related to fame. Like you have your window. Like if you get to a level of fame, there tends to be this Iron Law of Stardom, which it's been studied, and it was written about in the '90s.
And now we see it even more because everything has accelerated to breakneck speeds. So, so many people can get famous, but it's—you'd be hard-pressed to find someone whose fame lasts more than 3 years unless they reinvent themselves, like you were saying.
And that is the key. I think with actors, you said, "Music is easier," but I think actors, too, because you think about it, how many actors even matter that we care about?
And that's what I mean, like it's easier to see. So, yeah, music isn't easier at all. Music is easier to see the three-year chunks, or even like shorter than that.
But I think the actors, too, when we really think about it. 'Cause as soon as you take out a George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, like there's only a few actors who've made it for decades. But then it's like, okay, there's what?
Timothée Chalamet? He's in his window. I don't know when he started, but it was less than three years ago, and it feels like he might be dying off.
There's Sydney Sweeney. When did she start and become famous? Within the last couple years.
She's going to have her falloff. Then you have the little viral sensations, like Hawk Tuah.
She didn't even have 3 years.
Like, she had months. But she—she tried to capitalize as much as she could. But yeah, it's like interesting to—and it's—it's consistent across the board.
So, are you going to put all the effort into becoming famous while also figuring out how am I going to put this effort towards building a business, building something for someone else to give me money? Right. Because if you don't do that going in, you can't get your fame and then hope to figure it out in that window of time before your fame fizzles.
Well, yeah. It's like when you have your peak fame or peak awareness, that's—which I know it's hard, because like starting a business is very difficult and it's very time-consuming, but if you have the resources, when you would sort of have your peak fame, that's the best time to start your business, because then people—'cause I think Sydney Sweeney, it's really funny, now that we're talking about it, I think she is starting a business for—I think it's like clothing for women.
Shocker! It's something for women, which I was like, "No, you have to go after your male audience!" Like… But then I guess it depends on what which has the most longevity.
Is she going for the female audience? Then it's like, "Look, you can be as popular as me with the guys," or whatever. Versus, I guess, going after the guys.
It was the soap that had her bathwater in it or whatever it was, which is like a kitchy sort of thing. It's like it's not a permanent business. That was just like a an awareness sort of thing just to get people talking about her.
Three Core Motivators That Drive All Business Sales
Well, to get paid, get laid, lose weight. So, what are you try- those are those are the things that always sell.
And you can sort of distill every business down to either it helps people get paid, get laid, or lose weight.
All of them, across the board, which is weird to say. But as you pull back, it…
…it simplifies everything, Yeah. I mean, what we do is marketing. So, we help people get paid.
Get laid. Oh, wait, woops.
But also, as they get attention, that does fold in.
Because like attention can bring a new audience of suitors, potentially, and who knows? But really the get paid is why people pay us.
It's brand marketing that then can be parlayed into more business and trust and proof. You brought up proof earlier, which is a very good word to sort of…
Yeah, that's the year—we're going into this—that's the word for this year, I feel. 'Cause with I don't know, just everything I've sort of I'm constantly analyzing and studying everything, probably to a detriment, but I find everything fascinating. Especially with AI and how prevalent it is now, there is an issue on TikTok where you'll watch a video—
Thank you. We do that all the time.
I knew that was coming, so I had to beat you to it.
But there is an issue—bless me—on TikTok, or like any platform, but TikTok's just my platform of choice, where you'll see a video, and be like, "Is this real or fake?" 'Cause now it's gotten—before you could tell where it was like, "Oh, that's like definitely fake because the arm is coming out of the forehead," or like, "This just—this doesn't make any sense.
Like it looks like a dream." Now though, it's gotten so scary good where it actually looks so real, where it's like, "I think this is AI?" Like reading through the comments, people are like, "I think it's AI, but I actually can't tell and I'm really scared." so something we've been talking about since this morning was proof.
That's going to be huge moving forward. And just thinking about how do you how do people, how do businesses survive in the age of AI? Like humans aren't going away, even though everybody thinks so.
Just read more books and learn more about technology and all these big changes that have happened consistently. It like it's AI can exist, but you do need people there to sort of —not be the facilitators. I had a better word earlier.
Leveraging AI Tools Without Sacrificing Creative Taste
No. Oh. Like, it is related to taste, but essentially, like we still use it as a tool.
So, like it could take over, but I still feel like we're so far away from that. Like it's like with computers, where people thought computers were going to take the place of everybody. Now, we just use that as a tool and it's changed what jobs we have and how we function as in society.
But, yeah, you brought up a good point where you're like, "Well, yeah, humans are…" Which is sort of along the lines of proof, 'cause another thing that I was thinking of is like, well, having your personal brand, which I'm so exhausted hearing that stupid fucking phrase, "personal brand, personal brand," 'cause so many people who talk about it have no idea what they're talking about and it's so overdone now.
But like being you on camera, like being yourself. 'Cause we work with a lot of realtors in —we do video marketing with them and small businesses. And at a lot of these real estate conferences, a lot of people are saying, "Oh, use whatever program it is, HeyGen or something, where you make an AI version of yourself." It's so creepy and so bad, and you can tell it's not a real person like immediately.
But people are trying to 1/10x their output instead of 10x, which that's another thing we've talked about.
Yeah, 1/10x what they're doing, instead of 10x-ing what they're creating, what they're able to achieve.
Which I think is actually good to sort of just refine it a little because Josh had, when I talked to him on the phone recently, asked about it because I said it, and then he was like, "Oh, I thought you were going to say the opposite, that people are 10x-ing the amount of things they're putting out when they should be 1/10x-ing to make what they do better." It was like a different view on it.
So, I wanted to be sure 1/10 10th-x what I'm doing is like someone texts me and then I just paste it into chat and have chat respond. That's 1/10th-x-ing.
Now, I want to achieve so much. We want to do so much with MAVEN, and there's so much opportunity, so we're utilizing AI to 10x our creative output and ability to do things 10 times better than we ever can do on our own, 10 times faster, yeah, faster and better and all of these things. Not coming down to the actual video side, the other thing like building tools, building systems, all these things that we could do if we only had 10 employees.
Well, now we do through AI.
That's literally what we would keep saying, is like, "Well, yeah, if we had people like us," because sounds kind of arrogant, but trying to find people like us is actually really, really difficult, people that we could depend on or who would be as invested and as motivated, 'cause nobody cares about your company like you do.
So, now we have that. So, it's like, "Oh, sky's the limit! Hell yeah!
Like all the things that would hold me back before, just basically time." Like 1/10th of the time, but 10x the good output, not just, "Well, I'm just going to put a bunch of stuff out there." It's like, "No, we have very specific ideas of what we want to have out there. Now we can actually do it."
Yeah, and again, that's our taste. Like our taste and directing of the creative output. I hate the phrase "AI slop" because you see people—
People say it on anything. If anything has an em dash, people comment "AI slop."
But guess what? I know a very, very good, very successful, very eloquent writer who is the one who I learned what an em dash is from. I didn't even know that was a thing, but I learned it from this person 12 years ago.
So, I use them for very specific purposes. AI isn't the only thing that uses them, but everyone loves to throw around the negativity of "AI slop." Conceptually, I get it, because even in Gmail now, you hit reply and Gmail will give you pfft an entire email reply, a random collection of ideas that it thinks you'll want to say.
Which for the work that we do is horrific, because like I'll reply to people with precise things about their business and improving it and improving the systems and this and that. If I was just to let Google decide, sort of whole-cloth, what my recommendations are now, it makes no sense. It's it's rounding off all the edges and going for the average, like the mean.
But we all know people who are doing this for every aspect of their life. So, what are we—what are we doing? There's the whole "dead internet" theory, where the internet is moving towards no humans, where it's only bots talking to bots.
That changes a lot of things when we get there, but then what does it mean sort of for us? So, that's what we're always exploring. We're always exploring these things.
Yeah, and so that is sort of what brought proof to my mind this morning, 'cause like I said, with the videos that I've seen on TikTok, where it's like, "Is this real, is this not?" You constantly have that, or like I've even seen people now like doing like talking head stuff on TikTok, and I'm like, "I don't think this is a real person." Like, there's just that uncanny valley where you see it and it's like, "Is this actually a little weird?" But the proof that you are a real person now, and you —so, we do like a lot of hyper-local marketing, like I said, because it's realtors and small businesses—proof that you actually are in your area, that you are part of the community, proof that you're a real person.
You're not just a sales person, like whatever, and that's fine, you can do whatever, but…
Well, not a bot who's trying to generate leads.
Yeah. So, like I really feel like just proof that you're a real person is going to be extremely important and powerful right now, this year. Like, I have no idea what the next years hold, but that's why like building your —I hate saying "personal brand," it feels so like tacky and like, ugh!
But like building who you are, building up your presence, now is like kind of it, it feels like. Like the gold rush of Instagram famous, like all that stuff, it feels like it's really drying up now, significantly. And because now with AI, you can just make all the same things and ideas as everybody else.
Like it's like trending content. Like everybody does the same trends. That to me is like the equivalent of AI slop, 'cause it's like, it's not contributing or making anything, and it's not creative.
It's purely —this is another thing we talked about earlier—like systematizing your content. It's good to systematize it, but don't systematize it in the wrong way.
Content Copying and Social Media Algorithm Reliance
We should start "human slop."
As a thing, because like that's exactly it. One person makes a video that does well, and then if you go to TikTok and search for that video, you'll see hundreds of that same video from different people. That's human slop.
Who think they do it better and funnier, and it's not.
Or just do the same thing.
…they don't think. They're literally copying it because "That worked, I'll do it. That worked, I'll do it." And but you're building nothing.
It's fame with zero substance for any way to turn that into money. Like TikTok will pay you a little bit for getting millions of views. You can't build a business around that.
No. There was a whole stat that we had last year. It was something like the levels of influencers, and it was like 1,000 to 10,000 followers earned about like $33 a month, and I think it was 10,000 to 100,000 had like $300 a month, and 1 million-plus, on average, made $6,000 a month.
And people think fame equates to lots of money. $6,000 a month is phenomenal. Like, that's a great salary, that's a great job, if you make that from being on the internet. Congratulations!
Like for just being you, but good luck getting 1 million followers—1 million to 100 million followers—who care enough that you can get that $6,000 a month in any reasonable amount of time. You're not going to do that in 6 months, 12 months. Maybe you can get that many in 5 years, 10 years, and then you can be pulling in a good 70 grand a year from your social media just for being an influencer, but good luck making that your strategy.
You can't go in with that and somehow make it long enough, because time in the market matters for becoming famous.
So, I was going to say you can make it happen quicker now, but the problem is, which we've seen this with people we know who are like well-known creators, they burn themselves out. So, it's like, "Well, I'm going to post a video a day forever." Like we know someone who's posted a video a day on platform of choice for like 2 years straight or 3 years straight, and they can't stop, because once they stop, they know they lose everything, and they've built up just this one social media platform, and that's fine.
But as soon as you get off that little hamster wheel, you're kind of fucked. Like that—that's the business, that's the whole strategy, is like, "Well, I'm just going to post every single day on this one platform." You have to grow so much past that, and figure out other ways to bring people into your business and other sort of fail-safes, because like what if that platform gets banned, or what if your account gets hacked or deleted, or whatever, blocked?
Or you do the wrong thing for the algorithm, and then it decides, "You know, this is actually a spam account. I'm not going to show it anymore."
Like that happens so easily, because all of the platforms were 100% reliant on the algorithm to serve our content, because everything is interest-based. Like, you're on TikTok, you like watches? TikTok shows you watch videos.
Like, it doesn't show you Johnny, who you followed a month ago, unless they post a watch vid—If all you engage with are watch videos, TikTok doesn't care that you follow Johnny. TikTok cares that Sally made this watch video, and you might watch it. Watch the watch, but <laughter> but that's the thing that's so difficult.
Like, fully be beholden to the algorithm, but then that's where, again, that's where the MAVEN in the Machine concept we've talked about comes from, where we're like you can build your social platform, but you need to capture people. You need them somewhere that you own that, which there's email marketing, there's all these different things you can do.
But that's part of the ecosystem that you bring people into, and then they're yours as in like warm leads that you can nurture and build a relationship with. But social is only the original attention, and then you have to do something with that.
Yeah, that is a whole bag of hammers.
You're in the bag of hammers kick today.
I just mentally went down another rabbit hole, but I was like, I'm not even going to touch it. Bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny.
Those are—all of our inside themes, inside baseball, bezball.
I always find that so funny when I'm listening to a podcast and there's just a really long pause, and I'm like, "Did it pause?" 'Cause I've had that happen where I clicked on something on accident and I was like, "Okay, it's been like 45 seconds."
Not actually 45 seconds, but… Yeah.
Yeah. Are we just fizzling out the end of this episode?
Yeah, we got to bring it back. How do we bring it back?
I mean, we're at 32 minutes.
I was going to go on a whole mini-rant.
Yeah, you had a thought and then you didn't want to go down there. But, should we just wrap and save it for next week? We were going to be on—we've been on the road.
We were going to record on the road, but we didn't have a chance. We're actually recording a little late. Today's Sunday.
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
Yeah, we had a lovely little Valentine's Day.
And this week maybe we will record on the road, we'll see. I'll bring the mic system, we'll see if there's time.
I think we're going to have to, 'cause…
Yeah, just timing-wise. But we'll see. Well, we're definitely going to record, if not this video, the next video.
We'll figure it out. But, yeah.
I think we're wrapping up.
I don't like that we fizzled out at the end. Well, 'cause I was going to say something, but then it's just—it's a negative thing. I just like…
How do you make it a positive?
I know, that's what I was trying to think, 'cause I was just like, "No, like, it shouldn't just be complaining." But, how do I make it a positive?.
While you think, the "all bark, no bite," and then we're "all bite, no bark." That, we're not saying that you have to be all bite, but that is sort of expressing how that is a tough balance for us to strike, because we are all bite. We don't talk about what we do. Like, doing this is the most—the closest we get to talking about anything that we do, because we enjoy doing this.
You got it? Okay, good. I gave you a little room.
But I just wanted to say, like, when you're in the "all bark" zone, even if you know it, it's not easy to get across. We're not just like, "Oh, just—" We might be like, "Well, do the work." Like, 'cause that's the first, most difficult step, is to get started, but then the next most difficult is to keep going. So, you can't have all of your worth based on what you're saying you're going to do, which is so common.
Just everyone does that because it feels good. As soon as you say, "I'm going to film a documentary about this," everyone's like, "You'd do that? That'd be awesome!
That's so cool!" And then they're like, "How's your documentary going?" And you're like, "Oh, I'm still planning it." And then you're like, "How's it going?" It's like, "Oh, you know, it's—it's taking a lot of work, but I'm going to get there." And it's like you get reinforced and you feel good,
…but you need to start it. And I've seen that for decades, working with people that—who don't start. There's lots of lots of bark, no bite.
Yeah, which is really hard and it's unfortunate, because it's like, "I know you could make this thing and make it really well, and like do it." And then to just see it sort of fizzle out is kind of—I don't know, it's… It's just like, "I just want to help! Like, we can do it!
Like, you got it! Like, just little baby steps!"
Time Management and Long Term Business Execution
Life is time management, and that makes it sound lame. It makes it sound—it makes it feel like we're diminishing life, but life is a set amount of time on this planet.
How do you manage that time? If you want to achieve certain things, you need to start. You need to choose how you're using your time here to start the things you want to achieve, because every day that passes is one less day that you have.
And it's true. And… Like, sort of along the lines of "all bite, no bark," making sure to not put all of your eggs in one basket.
So, like I was saying how one person had built up one channel, great! Like, that's awesome! But it feels like now with the landscape changing and with AI, you do need to be sort of omnipresent now more than ever.
How are people going to find you, and how do you stand out, which that's a whole other bag of hammers. But that's just figuring out how you can stand out, and also not expecting… A lot of people are put on pedestals for having atypical results.
Like, that's why they are put on a pedestal, is because they are the anomaly. They're the ones that either did it the longest, did it the earliest, or did something totally out of left field that nobody else was doing, and they're the ones that are put on a pedestal and it's like, "Wow! Like, I should do this because look!
Sally Bob made a YouTube channel and it completely changed her business." And it's fine, but if it's already done, it's already done, it's already over. And there's just a lot of sort of misinformation out there about, "Well, no, just this one thing is going to do everything for you, and it's going to fix all your problems, and you're going to live in a magical little castle." That is not how it happens at all, and now with AI especially, like you can put out as much content as you want, and some people are, I don't know how that's working, because it is sort of AI slop.
I was trying to figure out what would be the nice way to put this, but it is just, you just have to do a lot more things and do them better than everybody else. So, it's like you really have to get the fuck to work. Like, there is no other option.
You just have to do the work. Like, we all want the magic pill of like, "Wow, if I just did this, like I'll just take Ozempic and I'm going to be so healthy." No, it's a temporary band-aid on a permanent issue. It doesn't last.
You're going to get fat again, or you're going to have other problems, like…
"You're going to get fat again!"
I hate to tell you, but like it's just like going on an Atkins diet, you're going to keep having these issues because you eat like shit, because you have no self-control.
That's a good 2006 reference right there.
I know! I'm like, what is like the keto diet? Where people are like, "I feel so great." Then why do you keep having this problem?
Why do you keep coming to this fork in the road of like, "Well, I'm gaining weight," or "I'm not feeling good," or "My business is suffering." Like, whatever it is, you need to look at the root cause of what it is, and then address that. Like, there is no—there is no temporary fix, and that's what people make money off of, is selling you a temporary fix, promising that's going to solve everything for you.
Yeah, that it's permanent. Yeah, the temporary fixes are temporary.
Exactly, they're selling it as, "Well, no, this is going to solve all the problems you've had for 20 years, 30 years, 50 years." No, if it already was going to help you and make you better, it already would have been found, it already would have existed. History has been around for a very long time. You're supposed to laugh at that, but okay.
I'll just laugh on my own. It would have already been a thing, and whoever found it, started it, whatever, they would be billionaires. So, I don't know where the fuck to go with that, but just nothing is easy and there is no simple fix, and the people that are selling you a simple fix are full of shit.
Well, yeah, that's their business.
Exactly, and I don't fault them, because if you can make money off of this, absolutely, go for it.
And you said the anomalies are the ones that are put on pedestals.
Annie Duke Book Thinking in Bets and Survivorship Bias
Annie Duke has a great book that I'm reading right now called Thinking in Bets, and she comes from the poker world, and the entire—the entirety of poker, just like life, is incomplete information. And I really like this phrasing, but she calls exactly what you just said "resulting." We look at Jane Doe. Jane Doe did this thing, great outcomes, the result means she made the right choice.
"I'm going to do that." But there were so many other variables and things that went into it, including certain pieces of luck. Like, I believe we make our own luck, we make our own luck by taking enough at-bats. That our statistical success is just higher than everyone else's because we did more, we didn't just hope for one thing to work.
Exactly. And, but we look at Jane Doe, who did this one thing, started a YouTube channel, and is successful. But then what about the thing that she started in 2009?
And it's 2026. She started with this angle in 2014 that no one had done yet, somehow. How did she do that?
Well, it makes sense why she's successful 12 years after that change, because she's been doing this new thing that she redefined the entire market, and it's finally kicked in, and she's finally succeeding. But you can't go back to 2009 and say this one thing, because she started that 17 years ago, is what I need to do now, and that's what's going to work, because, again, it's resulting.
You could have started at the same time, have different results, but it doesn't mean your decisions were wrong, it just means the way that your little exploratory journey went didn't give you the outcomes that you were hoping it would, but it doesn't mean you were wrong, it just means you keep adjusting until you get there.
That was a perfect encapsulation of what I was trying to say, so that was really good. I'm glad you that you're reading that book, too. And it's like investing, it's like, "Oh, well, if I had invested in Bitcoin back in 2009," or—that's probably too early—but back in whatever year, I would have had $10 million right now.
Well, coulda, shoulda, woulda, focus on—like try to find what that thing is right now that you can do, and don't expect immediate results in 1 year, 2 years, 3 years. And it's really disheartening to hear that, because it's like, "Well, I want it now! Like, I want that instant—I want the dopamine hit, I want to have all the success and all the fame and all the money now!" But it doesn't work like that, like at all at all.
So, investing in it now means that, cool, I'm 1 year closer to that, or I'm 1 week closer, or I'm 1 day closer to that. Like, that is so important to remember, just the little things that you're doing right now, it doesn't feel like a lot, but it will add up, and it is compounding over time, just like an investment. And you're going to feel like you didn't do enough.
Always, forever. Story of our lives, every day.
Yeah. Even today, I'm just like, "I have so much I still need to do."
Because we want to achieve more.
I wish I could clone us. If I could, I 100% would, as long as it didn't have a foot coming out of its head.
Oh my god. Two more of us? It'd be like, "!"
"Bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny!" It would just do all our stupid inside things.
I don't get jealous, but I feel like I'd actually get jealous of my other clone if you were just like, "Hi." I'd be like, "Don't talk to it! I am the real one!"
And then the other you was like, "It's, bitch."
I know, and I'd be like, "Shut the fuck up!" Okay, I think with that, we'll wrap.
Yeah. If you if you like this show, share it on social media, 'cause that's how we get new people. No, but it really is.
It was super—it was nice. It was shared last week by Ms. Tori.
Yeah, our friend Tori. If you need a realtor in Utah, Tori Keach.
Okay, we'll wrap here. See you next week.
