The simple way to stop procrastinating

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Welcome back to What is MAVEN, the show where I stare at Jeff Sarris for about 20 to 25 minutes. I'm your host and fellow student Amara Andrew.

You're doing my intro from Denny's Stone Diet. You're the host Amara Andrew and I'm the host Jeff Sarris.

And together we're co-hosts.

Jafara.

Amef.

Okay, so what is What is MAVEN? What is this show?

What is MAVEN? We're still trying to figure it out. However, it's mostly just trying to help entrepreneurs or real estate agents or just small business owners how to do it.

How to-

It's mostly to help how to do it. Hello, I help how to do it.

Yes, that is our philosophy. But no, we're trying to help people. We're trying to help inspire people to work on creating their brand, make video content creation easy and quick to do, which is the whole thing about today, and just yeah, how to do it all.

Welcome.

Well, yeah, build a successful business.

I had a little spit bubble that was stuck between my teeth if you if you zoom in later, you can see it. Anywho, welcome back to the show. This is episode 4,922.

Yeah, what number is it? We don't even know.

I think it's 11 or 10. No, we're 10. Happy 10th birthday!

Is it 10 or nine?

I think we're on 10.

I don't know.

We're not counting. Someone is, hopefully.

I don't know. If you're out there counting, let us know in the comments. But yeah, so today we're talking about friction.

And friction is something that gets in the way of us achieving our goals and habits and building habits, and we're talking about friction and the importance of reducing friction in any area where you find it. And you had a smirk on your face when I started talking, and I felt like you were going to give me a hard time.

No, I should have grabbed the balloon from our thumbnail.

Thumbnail.

We should just do that randomly in the middle.

Oh, and then that's the thumbnail.

That would be so annoying. Just be silence for like two minutes.

So, anyway.

So yes, friction. However-

Friction. Oh, yeah, we got to talk about your little apparel that you're wearing there.

Oh, this old thing? Just kidding, it's brand new and I'm debuting it today. This is totally going to be reversed, so it's going to show up perfect, right?

No, the video shoots it normal, but the shirt is meant to be for yourself when you look in the mirror.

Yes, it's supposed to be you look in the mirror and it's a It's supposed to motivate you. I don't know, I find it motivating when I see it. I'm like, "Damn right, asshole, you do keep going." And then I'm on my merry little way.

So, what does it say?

Keep going, asshole! Or keep going, A-star-star-hole. But yeah, and then it's in the mirror.

When you look in the mirror, you see it, so it's reversed. I wanted to wear this to a client shoot so bad, but A, I don't want to get kicked out of the venue for obscene shirts. B, I think it would be funny, but I don't quite know if everybody would find it as funny.

And D, I ran out of things. I just wanted to say D.

I know you did.

Anyway, friction. I cause you a lot-

Oh, this shirt has no friction. It's nice and smooth and soft, and eventually we'll sell-

It's very soft. Go to whatismaven.com/shop. Just kidding, that's not a link yet, so don't go there.

No, we don't have a shop, no. At some point we'll set up a shop, because there's a lot of merch, but yeah.

We can Etsy. Let's talk about friction.

Anyway, so friction. So the one thing that made me think about this and this topic for this week is of all things, our vacuum, because-

Which he never touches. No, actually he does now, but there's a reason why.

Well, yeah, because just friction in general is what stops us from doing the things we would otherwise be doing. And for example, when it comes to vacuuming, like it's not like we would never vacuum, except it was a pain in the ass to get our vacuum out. So it was in the closet, it had to be plugged in, it had like the canister and the push thingy, and that would be an ordeal where neither of us would want to grab it.

So we would be more likely to sort of wipe, like pick things up off the floor instead of vacuuming.

Well, I would always pull it out. However, this is just about you.

You would, except not as frequently as we otherwise would have. Where now if there's anything anywhere, we have a cordless, wireless Dyson that is the most convenient thing possible.

It's fucking amazing.

And it's just right in the closet, easily accessible, just grab it, lift it, pull the trigger, and go. And that just had me thinking about friction and how that extra friction to grab the vacuum, to plug it in, and lug it around the house, re-plug it in different areas, was holding us back from doing something we otherwise do.

So I wanted to talk about friction in terms of content creation and building a business and everything today and where that friction might be coming into play in your life, in your life as well.

Absolutely.

And, but in your life, the our dear listener or viewer-

How do you know they're not human? Why do you assume they're deer?

Thank you! That's it for What is MAVEN. Goodbye!

Have a nice-

I'll be here all day, and night, and maybe the rest of my life. Who knows? We'll see if he keeps me, or if he returns me to the puppy pound.

Anyway, so yes, we want to talk about friction in terms of creating video content specifically, but we'll talk about like so all social media sort of things, so like from recording, maybe even pre-recording, we'll see how wild we get, to recording, to editing, to posting. We're going to talk about some of those pain points and how you can solve them, or we'll solve them, you just do it.

So, what's some of your friction?

Oh, God. I have a lot. Hi, I'm Amara.

I have a lot of friction. Well, it depends. I mean there's a lot of different friction.

Something that I was doing, which I'm still doing it, obviously, but I have an Etsy shop and I sell stickers on it. But something that I was running into was I was hand-cutting, yes, hand-cutting with scissors, a very nice pair of scissors by the way, but I was hand-cutting every single fucking sticker. It took a lot of time.

Now, it was really nice because at the time I didn't want to spend the money on a Cricut because I didn't know how long I was going to do this and if it was anything I liked, and I know Cricuts aren't super expensive, but we're minimalists, obviously, so-

Why obviously?

Because he has a documentary all about minimalism. He likes to keep minimalist. No, I'm just teasing.

But yeah, so he does a lot of things with The Minimalists and blah, blah, blah. Check out his channel at Jeff Sarris everywhere streaming now.

Minimal- Minimalism, the documentary, is now free for everyone on YouTube if you haven't seen it when it was on Netflix.

Go check it out. He's in it, and he produced it, so go look.

Yeah, but keep going.

So we're super minimalist, so we don't buy things we don't need unless it's like an absolute necessity, just because-

If someone's watching this for the first time, it's like, "Oh, so they own no chairs. That's why they're sitting on the floor." Oh, actually, there's a chair behind the couch, isn't there?

I was going to say! You can see it. But we don't use that, that's our that's our special occasion chair.

That's our sculpture chair.

And this couch, we don't sit on it. Yeah, all of these are just sculptural items. Anyway, but we don't-

We do have chairs.

We have we have a lot of chairs. We have a lot of seating, but we like the floor. Anyway, but yeah, so we don't want to have a lot of extra things, and then like a Cricut, it's not huge, but it does take up space, and we have a cute little 1950s home, so not a lot of things.

So anyway, TL;DR, Jesus, going on forever. Where the fuck was I going? Oh, but then it was taking so much time to hand-cut stuff, and then like obviously the quality wasn't there, so I ended up investing money in a Cricut and it has saved so much time, cost a little bit of money up front, but now I'm making even more money.

This is going to sort of touch on the friction though, to-

Yes, we're getting to it, I promise.

No, no, no, but the friction was you would be actually bothered or annoyed when you would get an Etsy sale.

I hated it.

Which that's the friction. So the friction-

'Cause I loved creating it, but then when it came down to the actual labor of it, I was like, "Why the fuck am I doing this?"

Well, yeah, and you're making money. Like, obviously, it's not a ton of money for stickers-

Now I'm making way more because I systematized it, which we're all about systems. Jeff's system Sarris.

But that's the big thing, is you had that pain point. You had that friction point that you had to get rid of, so then you wouldn't dread making a sale, because that is ridiculous to dread.

Just like grocery shopping, too. Like, yeah, I was dreading making money, which is so silly. But like, even just something like you brought up vacuuming, grocery shopping for me sucks.

I hate it. I hate every single part of it. There's literally nothing I like about it.

So, now I have our groceries delivered. Everything's fine, everything's good. People are like, "You can't pick your garlic." And I'm like, "I don't give a fuck as long as there's garlic in there and it's fresh.

It could look like the Rock for all I care."

I don't know, I was just trying to think what it could look like. The Rock looks fine. Anyway, but yeah, that's something that it spends like it's $10 for delivery and then plus a tip, so whatever that is depending on how much we spend, totally worth it for me, which is about 20 bucks every other week.

Well, yeah, and we focus on our health and wellness and what we eat, also. So a friction point, if we didn't have food in the house, we would-

We'd have to eat out all the time.

Yeah, which then costs more money than delivery and all the things. And so, yeah, it's just one more friction point that has been alleviated. I mean, things like lawn maintenance and things like that, like maybe you don't like mowing the lawn.

I don't, so someone does that. And it's not to be like, "Hey, we pay for everything to be done," but we get rid of the points I almost was going to say points of contention, but the things that get in the way of us living the life we want to lead.

So, I mean, which ties back to minimalism, the whole documentary is basically about that. But-

Well, then something recently that I did, which we're getting to content creation in a second, which this is going to tie into it, thumbnails are the bane of my existence. I will do them. I can do them.

However, recently I enlisted you to help alleviate that pain for me.

Alleviate?

A- I was moving at the same time. I was like, "A- " To alleviate that pain for me, because design is something that you do as part of SPYR. So you have the design eye, you have all of the 10,000 hours and everything.

Yeah, look at that eye. So you have all of the I was going to make an eye of the tiger joke for his other eye, and then I was like, "No, we're just going to breeze past it." Anyway, but you have all the experience and the know-how to make it go very quick, whereas for me, I'm just sitting there like I went to school for design for a little bit and I still don't know what I'm doing.

So I wouldn't say quick, but it's a little less friction.

Yes.

Because it's less painful, because it's what we've done, what I have done, what Dave has done, my business partner, for 14 years now.

Yeah, so you guys know what you're doing. So anyway, we're going to tie this into content creation. Or what are What do you have any content creation pain points?

Editing Bottlenecks and Content Creation Challenges

'Cause you're not out there posting regularly, Mr. Sarris.

I know, my pain point is that I never do it.

Why?

So I record-

This is your therapy session.

But this is what I do. Aw, you can't be my therapist.

So I record things. For example-

Hi, I'm Jeff Sarris and I record things.

I mean, for example, if you noticed last week if you watched, we were in the car wearing our Chicago Bears t-shirts because we came from training camp. I shot on my phone a bunch of stuff at training camp that was going to be a vlog. And now we are a week later, and there is no vlog, and nothing has been touched.

I just realized that. Do you want me to edit it?

You could if you want. But, see, the friction point for me is the edit, because I want to edit and I like editing, but it gets in the way of all the other things I'm doing. So like, like maybe if you don't really know, we both do a lot of different things.

We've diversified our-

Portfolio.

-our lives and what we create, where she has Etsy, she has YouTube, she has her podcast, she has her business, MAVEN, like everything. Like with SPYR, there's I mean, if You can ask if I do it and the answer is yes, probably. So it's SPYR for our business, which is design and branding.

We have Built, which is where we build websites and sell pre-existing websites. We have Kidney Stone Diet, where we help reduce people's risk for kidney stones. I co-host a podcast there.

Like, there are myriad things that I do, and to edit the video, even though I want to, it gets in the way of me doing more, because I always want to do more.

Yes.

So that's what slows me down. That's my friction point is I might even have sort of a story in mind, but it will slow me down to do the edit.

So, what would help you be able to edit?

So I could say I could hear someone saying, "Do less stuff. You're doing too much stuff." But my whole-

No!

My whole thought is that we do more until more is too much, and then less until less is too little, and that's life is back and forth and back, because there is no perfect sweet spot. Nothing is constant. The only constant in life is change, that's it.

It's we're always changing, everything's adapting, and that's how life stays interesting and worth living. So I'm not going to do less stuff, but I could hear someone saying, "Just stop doing all these other things." But it's also why we are so stable in our revenue and our business and everything that we do. So, if I had more time, I would be able to dedicate it to editing and creating it.

And that's what I was just going to say, is something I hear from my clients is either, "I don't have enough time," or, "I don't have enough money," or just random people that I'm talking to, also, is those are two of the main pain points besides self-doubt.

Yeah, the money is not your clients because MAVEN is not cheap.

No.

And it's not to say It's just because-

And neither am I.

But, I mean, it's just because it shouldn't be. Like, this isn't a commodity.

No, this is a full service thing that you're getting.

Yeah, and if you're curious, whatismaven.com is where you can find all the details.

Oh wait, you're wearing Keep Going, Asshole, shirt.

Yeah. Never mind, I blacked out. But those are So, not having enough money, yeah, that's not as much my clients, but it is people that I talk to where we just like to ask people questions and be like, "Hey, what are you doing?" but that is huge, like those are two really important things.

So I think let's break down the content creation, video creation process, just start to finish. So, first is recording, which I'm going to lump with pre-content kind of planning and everything.

Pre-content just sounds kind of gross.

I know, I said it and I was like, "Ew!" we're getting medical up in this bitch. Huh? My hip cut tight, ow.

Fuck.

So, are you doing this live on Twitter right now?

No, I didn't do a Twitter Space. This might be a Twitter Space in the future. I didn't do it this time.

Okay, I was like, sorry! Also sorry to you, loyal listener. So, starting with shooting, I'm just going to call it shooting.

Or filming, rather.

Although I just want to say like thank each to our to our ones of listeners. You are amazing.

We have like five.

I like ones of listeners, though.

Ones?

Yeah, ones of listeners.

We are a group of ones. Oh, that just sounds like really ugly.

What?

I mean people say hundreds or thousands of listeners, I like our ones of listeners, so thank you, we appreciate you. But anyway, keep going.

It's like more intimate. We love you, say hi if you want, no pressure, ones. We're all ones.

We need merch. Anyway, woah. So editing, how a lot of people or shooting, jumping the gun here.

Pre-content and creating content, this is what we're talking about, apparently.

I've lost it.

We are going off the rails here, but we're going somewhere, I hope.

Are we? So, something that a lot of people get hung up on is, "What do I post?" or, "What do I even make? What do people want to hear?

Does it even matter? How much should I create? How much should I post?"

So, friction could be brainstorming.

Yes.

So the friction of actually having an idea to create and edit, or shoot, edit, and post.

Yeah.

So that would be step one.

So how do you reduce the friction of, because like we are idea, brainstorm, strategy people.

Yes. So specifically for realtors, but this can go for any business profession, is what I like to tell people, just because I mostly work with realtors, but figure As something happens and you have this wild fucking story and you're like, "Nobody is ever going to believe this," or like, "What's the weirdest closing you've ever had?" or, "What's the weirdest showing you've ever had?" I had a client who they went to a house, birds were just flying around, like almost 100 or something.

It was nuts. But just Birds being non-residents of the home. In the residence of the home.

And they were just fucking flying around everywhere. There's video footage of it, which is hilarious. But just you have to have those stories.

I mean, everybody who has been in real estate has had a really weird thing happen, even if it's something as little as like, "I thought I saw a ghost, but it wasn't." Make that a story and write it down, because then in the future when you're trying to make content, then it'll just be like, "Oh, cool, got it." Like, "That was a really weird thing."

Yeah, and in the moment, so this is the thing, when something happens, even if there's only a nugget of interest, and this maybe the habit would be a really simple journal at the end of the night, but in the moment is more how we operate, and treating it like you're a stand-up comedian. Because these stories that are written and refined and perfected to engage people and entertain them, aren't happenstance.

Like, they are they are very dedicated to finding these nuggets, tracking them in some way. Or even someone like Eminem, I remember like his notes of like rhyming schemes and different things that he thought were interesting that he would just pluck out of a hat like 10 years later and then run with that and see what he comes up with.

Like, whatever the habit is, finding a way to document it, but thinking about it as, "This is my treasure trove. This is my library that I will pull from over and over and over again." But I pull it, use it, put it back, and pull it again later, because that piece, you will get better at creating that piece the more times you do it.

It's not a one-and-done.

Absolutely. And you'll find a new way to talk about it or whatever, or maybe it'll inspire you to do something else with that story or whatever it is. Something else, too, is if you have clients, think about what they constantly ask you.

What's an FAQ that you hear over and over again? Or what's something that somebody's asked that nobody's ever asked you before? Make content around that because that's huge, because if one person's asking it, 50 other people are wondering the same exact thing.

So, when they search for it, your cute little face will pop up.

And that's your conversations. So, whether it's with customers or clients or buyers or sellers, whatever it is. What was that?

Or customers.

Or customers. But any sort of conversation. So like this conversation, the "ones of listeners" thing I'm probably going to use in like coaching when I'm working with people, because-

Oh well, I'm going to put that in my bio. "Talking to ones of listeners every week."

Well, but you can have ones of customers and make a lot of You can have a six-figure business with ones of customers, and that's something I'm probably going to use now. And that just happened because we're talking, and this happens all the time. Like, it happens when I'm working with people directly, when we're just having conversations with friends, with each other, and that's the thing is realizing that there's something there.

There's someone I think it was it might have been a comedian, it might have been like a prolific writer, but there was someone that I heard about recently who, oh it was like an iconic name, but everyone in his sphere, like his friends, his family, knew they could be mid-conversation and if something struck him in that conversation-

Was it a musician?

Okay, do you know who it was?

I don't remember, exactly. I wanted to say 50, but that's who I was listening to this morning.

No, it definitely wasn't. No, but I felt like it was like a classic writer or someone, like, but no matter who it was, they would leave the conversation, they would get up, leave the room physically, not say a word, and everyone knew don't say anything to them, because they're taking that inspiration, they're going to somehow record that moment for using later.

So, creating a system like that, systems are so important, systems are something we're going to come back to on the show over and over and over again.

Oh, yeah.

But creating that system for yourself, very important to reduce your friction.

Exactly. So that's like the pre-content sort of thing way to make it easier on you, so then when you're actually going to record, you have this curated list of things that you want to record, and like you'll just constantly, like he said, you'll use them now, maybe 6 months later, you'll go back to that list. Like don't overcomplicate things, either.

So when you're recording, you want to batch record, also. So, something that we do with MAVEN is recording 2 months worth of content every time you shoot because-

Yeah, so we shoot-

Every other month.

Yeah, we shoot once every other month for 3 hours, and you get 2 months of content.

Yes, and that is hugely helpful, not only to us, because then we can go on our merry little way, but also just especially to clients, because they're really fucking busy. They don't have time to sit down every month and record stuff, and like some people do, so then there's a different service for that. Have the need to record every month, but it just it helps tremendously because then you can plan ahead of time, and then if you're focusing on evergreen content, which is something we talked about a few episodes ago, then it doesn't matter if you're on trend or whatever, because what you're talking about should just be evergreen, where it's valid now, 10 years from now, for the most part, some things change, but just keeping that in mind.

Well, and it's like I'm recording today, "Oh, but I won't put this out for 60 days. Will it still be relevant?" Yes. Like, that's the whole thing.

Yeah, that's huge.

Is worrying about like, "Okay, how will I record 2 months of content? What's everything that's trending right now on TikTok? Where are all the trending sounds?" or whatever it is.

And I'm going to record all of those today. I mean, in a week, those are going to be dated. And also just basic, those things are irrelevant, they're fleeting, they're a moment, and you can totally do it, but we're talking long-term strategy, yeah, long-term strategy for building something sustainable.

100%. Did you have something else you wanted to say before-

So it was only on the first with the preparation that we're going to have content plans, so almost like meal plans for your content. It's something that she already does with her clients, and we're going to have it so you can just have this delivered to you directly to help and reduce that friction, because-

Yes. And it's consistently updated, also, so it's focused on now, like what do people want to know, what will people also want to know in the future, so it's SEO focused and everything, but yeah, it's a whole system and delivered straight to you, so you don't even have to worry about it, which is really nice.

Basically what my business SPYR, what Amara's business MAVEN, what we do is we reduce friction for people, which I didn't think about it until right now, but that is what we do. We're building the systems for people to reduce friction to do the things that improve their life and get them where they want to be.

Yes.

As you're playing footsie under the table.

Damn right, they can't see it!

But yeah, so that was the thing on that. I just wanted to say, so we have the preparation and how to reduce friction by preparing, creating a system to prepare so you have a list, you're a little sponge, just take everything in. Even if you're with a client, either try to make a mental note like to write it down later, or just be like, "Sorry, one quick sec.

Okay, so what is a mortgage?" And then just save it into a notes file. Like, that's what I do whenever people ask me things and then it's like, "Okay, cool, I'll add this to the website. It's something I'm going to record, blah, blah, blah."

So, yeah, and then you already went into batching, so when you're when you're recording, the more you can batch, the better.

Especially if you have a light that you need to set up, a camera. Like, if you have to constantly put it up, take it down, put it up, take it down, which we are, but it's our job, so or part of our job.

Well, yeah, and we do this show weekly because this is practice. I know I talk about it all the time, but this is practice for us each week.

But just for yourself, it makes it easier.

Yeah, this is this is a different this is a very meta show because this isn't just-

Show about the show.

Yeah, this isn't just to help you improve. This is to help us improve in our education together. So, like everyone wins in the end.

That's really what this is.

Yay!

I don't think it hurt you. There you go.

Help!

Okay, so batching for recording. Also, friction could be gear. You could feel like you don't have the right gear.

And to be honest, you don't need anything if you can, which we can help if you need help figuring out how to shoot with just your phone and have it not look like garbage.

Yeah, we can literally help you like via Zoom, just set up your room and everything. It's super easy.

But the big thing is you find a light source. So we have and we have skylights, we have light sources all over, but we also have We set up a light here, but you can just We could be using the window. We would set up the shot differently if we were purely using window light.

I was doing that before when I first started on YouTube, because I didn't want to have to spend the time setting up the light and I didn't find the value in it. Now I do, but before I was just like, "I just want to get this out before I lose all my enthusiasm," and it was perfect. It does vary and everything, but yeah.

Yeah, that's perfect. No, but that's reducing friction, that's the thing.

Yes. But then also something another pain point, if you will, another friction is, "I don't like how I look." Holy fuck! If like if everybody just waited until they were happy with what they looked like, most people would never publish a damn thing.

I never would publish anything if I was like, " you know, I just don't look good in this. All right, delete it all." Like, literally nothing would've come out of here. This body, ever!

So, even farther too, but I just I never would've created anything, because if you're waiting on that, like weight loss, you don't like how your hair looks, you have bad skin, like I break out constantly. Not as much anymore, because I figured out dairy was leading to that, well he figured it out, so thank you, and sugar.

But I digress. But, if you're waiting on those things, you will never create anything, or if it's like, " I don't have fancy enough clothes," like whatever your self-doubt or whatever is, just provide so much value that people don't even fucking think about it or focus on it. And, people will say things if you're the hottest fucking person on the planet or if you're the ugliest motherfucker that ever roamed the earth.

Like, people will say things to you that will be made to hurt you, so just be like, "Go shit in a hat, I don't care."

Everyone wants attention. Attention is easily acquired through being negative, and it's positive it's it's it can be agreement attention and it can be disagreement, but the loudest people are the least accurate. That is always the case.

So, you need to remember people who do like you, you're going to get nasty comments, but the ones who like you, the ones who really appreciate what you're doing, will never say a word. Because no one's going Very few people are going and saying, "I like this. I like this, too.

Oh, this is also good." Most people are saying, "You suck because of these reasons." And then they're just like, "Now, let me see what happens."

I know, I'm thinking about it now. I very rarely actually like anything on social media, even though I'm on TikTok very often.

Meaning engaging, like clicking the like.

Yeah, exactly, that's what I mean. Like, literally, liking, commenting, anything like that, I never Commenting, like, fucking never. Liking, even.

Exactly, it's-

It's mostly people who want attention.

It's people who are the ones who are saying, "Get a real job," which this is my job, so but just people who have literally nothing better to do. They took the time to write that comment, to have that thought, to type it out, to hit send, and be like, "I did it." Like, that's fucking pathetic.

And now, real quick, friction. So, you don't like how you look, this is the one thing. The more relatable you are, the better you will always do, because we love underdog stories.

So, we love seeing someone rise from nothing. The moment they become superior, quote-unquote "superior" to us, we hate them. You don't want to worry about being perfect.

You want You want to be relatable. So, back to comedy, we were talking about Tom Segura. He is huge.

He has done He's thin now. But, he has done amazing things in comedy and is one of the highest paid comedians on the planet. He's not flying in economy with normal people, and the cliche is how do comedians stay funny once they're not really having the struggles of normal people?

So, they're flying private, they're doing all these things that you and I aren't doing.

Yeah, a lot of them talk about their kids now, because that's their new friction.

Well, and Tom did an amazing job with all of the stuff in his latest special where he was he was talking about meeting Brad Pitt, and it went from what could have been a gloating like, "Oh, this asshole," immediately into he was the he was the us in that scenario where he's like, "I don't even No, I'm not going to look at you." And then the story, he's like Brad Pitt's like, "Look at me!" kind of thing.

He's like, "No." And like But that's how you become relatable. So, let's like just to swing back around, if a friction point for you is that you don't like how you look, how you sound, how anything, none of us do, we all hate it. So, remember that is relatable.

So, you're going to have people who will be nasty and say things and poke at the things that you're most sensitive about.

Another comedian. Yeah, but-

-that is fine, because you will connect with people better than if you put on an air that, "Oh, look at me in my pri- private jet that I'd like fake a photo in the seat."

Or if you if you have something, call it out. Like, in one video I remember specifically, I had a huge zit right here, and I was like, "All right, don't look at Mount Vesuvius, but today we're going to talk about X, Y, and Z." That worked for me just because I like calling things out like that when I'm like, "Okay, I know that this is like a thing."

Well, that's the Eminem approach.

Yeah.

It's like you trash yourself in all the ways that the other person would in like a rap battle, then they have no ammunition.

Exactly. Or it's like, yeah, just showing self-awareness, and you're like, "No, I know all this already. Like, what do you got?" And then they're like, "Oh, well, you stink." And I'm like, "I already said that like eight bars ago."

Eight bars ago.

So, we're actually at our 30 minute time, so we got to get to posting real quick, 'cause that's another friction point.

Well, I was going to talk about editing also, just super quickly. So, editing is fucking huge. It is a big pain in the ass, I'm not even going to pretend.

I spend most of MAVEN time is when I'm not with clients, actually. It's my MAVEN time. It's my MAVEN time of the month.

No. But most of the time, people think it's, "Oh, well filming with me, we spent 5 hours together, so what else are you doing in your time?" Literally at this fucking computer, never leaving all day. Granted, we have freedom, we can do that, we have autonomy.

But that is where the bulk of the work comes from. So, when it comes to editing, how you can make it easier on yourself, use iMovie. IMovie is free if you have a Mac, which if you don't, what are you doing?

You green bubble texters. Gross! Disgusting.

But if you are smart and you buy Apple, but you get iMovie-

There goes our ones of listeners.

Hi, I don't want Android users in here. But you can get iMovie for free if you have a Mac, because then that is free, super easy to use, it's literally just the low level Final Cut, which is what I use to edit, what he uses to edit, well he uses a couple other things. That is amazing software to use, it'll get you going, get you where you need to be, and it's perfect.

You can also use phone-based apps, however, I find them a fucking nightmare to try to use, because it's like this big-

Let me just touch on that real quick. So, And another thing! The a lot of the phone apps generate slideshows for you.

Like, that's not actually what we're talking about. We're not talking about, "Here's a bunch of clips that are basically a PowerPoint that plays."

No, I'm talking about real shit, making an actual fucking video. But yeah, I hate the phone apps, which if they work for you, that's amazing. I'm not going to name any because I just personally don't use them.

I tried and I was like, "I'm just going to throw it into Final Cut and it'll take me literally a fourth of the time than it is on the phone." But, if that works for you, totally do it, and just do whatever is easiest for you.

So a friction point would be the edit.

Yes.

It is plausible, Santa plausible, Ho, ho, ho.

Green Giant.

So it is plausible to shoot for-

Yes.

-and thinking about that ahead of time, sort of how you approach it, so not just rambling for 90 minutes and then being like, "Okay, now how do I make that into a one minute clip?"

Yeah, do not stop and start your sentences in the middle. Do not have a break, just start from the beginning again and then go through, 'cause oh my god, that drives me nuts where like I've done that and I'm just like, "God damn it, that didn't turn out." So, just start your sentence over from the beginning, you don't have to do the whole script over, just start your sentence from the beginning, way easier to edit.

And not that you need a script, but if you if you're going to flub and be like you stumble over a word, like because this is what we train everyone we work with now, is how to do how to rewind just to that last the last pause.

Oh, yeah.

And like catch themselves, too.

And like catch themselves, too.

Yeah, and you've done that before, but this is way before MAVEN, this is when you started. But yeah, so just rewinding to that moment where then there's a little break and it's a simple cut and then you just keep going. You don't You're not worrying about an advanced edit and being like, "Oh, none of this works together.

I need to do a voiceover now, I need to fit-" No, like we want to reduce friction, so like this sentence that I'm saying right now could be a complete clip.

Clip!

And then the next one can go right up next to it.

Clip!

But, like, anyway. So yeah, so shooting for the edit, and thinking about, but you can also shoot for no edit, it's plausible, that's where what I was that's where Santa plausible came from. But it's plausible to shoot without an edit, but it does help to tighten things up when you can.

Some people will learn to speak in a way that seems like it's sped up, and they're really going to already be edited, there's no pauses, they keep going, but that's not where you're going to start. So finding a simple way to edit is valuable. Should we jump to the posting friction?

Do you say we jump to the posting friction?

Yeah.

Okay.

Cool. So, posting, once you have the piece of content, we run into this with MAVEN clients. Sometimes people aren't posting the content that we're doing together and is all done for them, because that is one more friction point.

You need a title, you need a caption, a description, depending on what platform, maybe a thumbnail, whatever it is, and when's the best time to put there's all these friction points that will come up with will like create in our own mind, that don't need to be there. So how do you get past the friction of posting?

Just again, developing your system and batching everything at once, 'cause while you're in that flow of writing descriptions for your video, then just keep going for everything else that you've batched, because you'll already be in the mindset of, "Oh, okay, this is my catchy hook, this is what I do, these are the hashtags," like I have an entire spreadsheet for myself, for clients that I post for, where it just has everything ready to go, and I take maybe like a couple hours, and I do all of that at once, because then I'm just ready to go, makes it super easy, so definitely do that for yourself, have the spreadsheet, because then also what you can do, you just copy and paste from the spreadsheet into your social media platform, whatever you're posting, you can schedule ahead of time with certain apps and things like that, whether like an outside app from the social media app or within the social media app, you can schedule ahead of time and do all that, but basically the main thing that's super easy to do is just batch, batch, batch, batch, that's all I'm talking about.

Son of a batch! But put it in your spreadsheet, you're going to thank yourself, because then even when you go to post it, you could just be like, "Oh, this actually doesn't sound quite right," and then you just edit it, copy and paste, put it in all the other ones, that's like my biggest, I think, my biggest thing to help you.

And also on YouTube, YouTube Shorts, which you need to fucking post there, do it now, I'm not kidding, you can schedule that ahead of time, so I have things scheduled out for the next month or two, because it's just easy to go, so, anyway, that's I'm just trying to get through it quick, but that's it.

Yes.

Excellent.

So, thanks for tuning in, and-

And what's our number?

The episode number?

No, the MAVEN number, hotline.

Oh yeah, there is a phone number if you want to be featured on the show. I haven't even checked, so if you have called, we'll look at it next week, but the number is 530-628-3611, that's 530-MAVEN-11, and we would love to feature you on a future episode, but before we go, did I tell you why I didn't sleep well last night?

I thought you said you slept well.

I meant two nights ago.

Why?

I stayed up all night and tried to figure out where the sun was, and then it dawned on me.

God.

Thanks for tuning into the show. This is What is MAVEN. Whatismaven.com.

We will see you next time.

This is Dawn over here. Oh, my love, silly. Bye! [39:31] [Music]