Pay podcast listener before we get started.
I just wanted to forewarn you that the audio on my side is not very
good because I forgot to plug in my microphone when I recorded with Brian.
Yes.
Uh, season 12 year plus podcaster makes mistakes from time to time.
I threw the world's weight in AI processing at it.
I don't know how good it did, but, uh, it's making it.
Decent.
Anyway, some surprises in this episode.
Thanks for listening.
Matt: We're back breaking content.
Brian, it's been a while.
How you doing?
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Yeah, been a little while.
yeah, doing good, Matt.
I'm, I'm back from a couple trips.
I've had, I've had some weird health issues that I've been
battling, but I'm, I think I'm on the, on the other side of that now.
And just getting back in the swing of things.
Matt: last time we chatted, we were sort of going our separate ways on
focusing the, one of the tasks that I was working on was, you know, really
getting focused on, using LinkedIn a little bit more to drive traffic.
We had a bit of a therapy session on both sides.
My therapy session was should I continue to do this content?
You were just getting started with publishing your first
few videos to YouTube.
So we'll catch the listeners up on that and then we have another
special surprise that we'll chat about roughly halfway through.
I'll kick it off with the LinkedIn stuff that I was working on.
It's been, it's been working and I haven't really ever focused in or dialed
in on LinkedIn as much as I have here in the last, you know, month or so.
I've been just looking at my, I use Fathom.
from my website stats, and there is a definite uptick in the incoming
traffic to the WP minute through LinkedIn as a refer much more so than
it has been for the previous months.
And then LinkedIn sort of gives you this, I don't know, boost of encouragement.
It tells you, which I'm sure everyone listening to this who
uses LinkedIn has seen, but it will tell you in your updates.
The impressions, and the comments and, you know, just your weekly reach.
I think I get an email about that, you know, and it's up like 9,
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: are you doing on
Matt: percent because I'm actually using it now.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: just, are you just posting your, like
your latest content from WP Minute?
Matt: Yeah, I am, and I'm just putting a much more personal message in it.
or for it on LinkedIn.
Stuff I don't do on Twitter as much.
The Twitter engagement is just awful.
Awful.
And, you know, it's I think we
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: And on LinkedIn it's a bit more long form, or?
Matt: I mean, for me anyway, like, long form for me on LinkedIn is
like three to four paragraphs.
Like I open.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: that's like still like a normal post
that people would do on LinkedIn.
It's not like Twitter where, even though they have longer posts
now, people still do short tweets
Matt: Yeah.
but I'm just getting and I'm not like putting this stuff in an Excel
spreadsheet or anything like that.
And really measuring it.
But I mean, people are engaging more.
They're talking.
They're leaving comments more much more than, you know, across
the board on on Twitter and yeah, it's really been working.
I just feel like I don't want to be.
This is my problem with all social media is.
I start to say, well, I don't want to be just another person
pitching things on social media.
How can I make this experience on just LinkedIn a little bit more special?
Like with Twitter, like you get to really know who I am, what I do, and
you know, there's a personality there that I think people know and understand
where it might be less so in LinkedIn because it's a mixture of, you know,
local professionals that I know and then my friends on the internet,
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Yeah, that's what I, that's what I want
to know is like, all right, is there, there's probably a difference in the,
like the, the people or the types of people that it's probably people, people
that probably never see your Twitter stuff because they're not Twitter people.
They're LinkedIn people.
Matt: Yeah, and, so I've been trying to, bridge that, bridge that gap a little
bit because I still do get, you know, again, local community having, you
know, run an agency locally and a car dealership for that and just being, you
know, more present in my local community over the last, you know, 15, 20 years.
it was weird for me to go and start using LinkedIn a lot for my WordPress and
the podcasting stuff that I talk about.
Oh, Gravity Forms WordPress Podcasting.
those are the three main silos of things that I'm talking about.
And something
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Do you find it's people who are like
really, engaged in those things?
Like they
Matt: Oh, yeah.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: either they are podcasters or
they are running WordPress sites.
Matt: I feel like LinkedIn does a much better job at At hitting, yeah, at, way,
and I think that might be the actual, like in the back of my head, I feel like
I'm, what is it when you're not ghosted?
what is it when you're pulled out of, you, when you're pulled out of the algorithm
and people don't see you as much?
Yeah,
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I know what you're talking about.
Yeah, there's, there's like a, a word for that.
I forgot what it
Matt: there's a word for it.
I can't think of it right now, but I really think Twitter doesn't know
what to do with me algorithmically.
Because I do talk about WordPress.
I do talk about podcasting in two very different ways.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: This is my, that's been my biggest
complaint of, of using Twitter and it's, but I still, Twitter is still the only one
that I ever actually use on a daily basis.
I really don't use anything else.
Nowhere near as frequently as I'm on Twitter.
so I don't know, maybe I should, I really probably should get into LinkedIn.
I haven't touched it in years.
I tried to get into threads, but it's just not sticking.
It just feels like there's not enough people there yet.
I never touch Facebook.
But with Twitter, yeah, the thing that I've always wanted on
Twitter is like some way to sub sub group my father for followers.
So if I could, if I could say you could subscribe, you could follow me on Twitter.
But sometimes I talk about politics, or sometimes I talk about
technical
web programming, or sometimes I'm talking about bootstrapping in business.
And if you, and if, and if you are into prop politics, and you want to
hear my opinions on that, subscribe to, to my politics type tweets.
And, and then, and then I know that if I'm ever doing some, any sort of
political rant, only the people who
are
actually interested in that are going to see it, you know, and I'm
not going to annoy the, the people who want to tune politics out.
You know, not that I and that's actually why I almost never tweet about politics.
It's because I know most people don't want to hear about it.
you know, or like, or like New York sports, right?
there's so much I want to tweet,
Matt: I
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: but I know that, yeah, like 99 percent
of Twitter does not want to hear me talk about the Knicks, you know?
so
Matt: So I started to think about.
So.
So there's that like that experiment.
of uncovering new social media, investing in it, at least from what I'm doing
right now, I'm definitely seeing a positive with, and spending a little
bit of time, a little extra time.
It's all it is a little extra time of I'm not running it through chat GPT.
I'm just, here's the hook and here's the summary.
Here's the value, you know, and I'm the only, and the other
thing that I'm doing is like.
Air quotes strategy is I don't link it in the original post.
I put the link in the comments.
Why do I do that?
I don't know because I see other people do it, right?
So
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Yeah.
And I wonder if LinkedIn, because that's the other thing that's really
annoying about Twitter is that it's, it's like a known fact now that
if your tweet has a link in it, it's going to be demoted, right?
Like they just, they just downplay links for whatever reason.
I, I wonder if that's the case on LinkedIn.
Matt: they even downplay Twitter.
They even downplay video.
Like I'll do a three text, a three sentence text update,
like whatever it is I'm doing.
I'm either showing you something in podcast world, WordPress
world, gravity forms world.
I'll write a little paragraph and I'll upload a video.
And then I'll put the rest of it in like the thread of whatever, I'll tag.
I won't even tag Gravity Forms, I won't tag my own website.
And even the videos don't, you know, I'm talking like two
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I have noticed that about videos.
I think that images tend to do better on, on Twitter though.
They seem to promote.
I mean, you know, there's no like hard and fast rule.
It, it, yeah.
It's not going to, it's not if you put an image on every
tweet, it's going to do better.
But I do notice that, and this could just be people's behavior to
like people just might react faster and easier when they see an image
rather than having to read the text.
But, yeah,
Matt: So I did another
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I, but yeah, that, that like
concept of and this has been, I've had this like in theory for,
for months, years at this point.
And I've never been able to actually put it into practice, which is yeah.
Every week I want to have, a big new post, whether that be a video or a
newsletter, and then I want to turn that into X number of tweets and
linkedin posts and whatever else.
and it never works that way.
I, you know, I just,
Matt: has always been, you know, reactionary to me, for me.
Like dynamic and reactionary.
I don't know, and I'm sure you've had this.
Discussion with others.
And, you know, I, I know when I left my, my last job in podcasting, I
talked to other, like podcast hosting companies, you know, interviewing me
or whatever, like for these roles.
And even afterwards, people, you know, not to toot my own horn, but
people were like, Hey, you know, are you, you looking for a job?
We'd love to have you, like social media.
And just too many people look at this stuff as a task and I get it, I get
it like I get that you want to like optimize and you want efficiency and
you think about the content marketing wheel and you start with the cornerstone
content, you slice and dice it and then you broadcast it everywhere,
but the best social media YouTube.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: it's like personality.
Matt: the best way you're going to get represented on social media is
personality and somebody who's living and breathing that industry and that
customer mindset for your brand.
I don't know how the hell else you'll do it effectively, because at the end
of the day, you're going to, a year is going to go by, you're going to
look at a spreadsheet, and it's going to say you had 13, 000 impressions,
and you're not going to be happy.
Right, so having somebody in the seat that is experienced and
good at this stuff is, is tough.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: For sure.
Matt: I did some,
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Yeah.
I mean, I, I don't know.
I, I, I, I do still want to, I want to produce and publish more
content this year, but I haven't been able to actually do it yet.
That's been a, that's been a big, challenge, just literally, time in the
day and energy wise, Most of my tweets and part of the thing is like when I
don't tweet very often, it's usually because I just have these like quick,
not even half formed thoughts of, of, of some thing I want to share and then I'm
just like, I haven't thought that through enough and I'm just not going to tweet it.
And then that's it.
Um, and, and then I'm just quiet tweets.
More, more weeks at a time,
Matt: for more weeks.
so I did something else from our last time that we connected.
I, I won't say the, the person's name because it wasn't a negative experience.
It was just a very flat experience.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: let's call him out.
Come on.
Matt: I'll tell you off, off air.
YouTuber, very good size audience, helps other YouTubers.
Has an offer to, sit, sit with him on a one on one.
it was 300 bucks for 30 minutes.
Now, I've been doing YouTube since 2010.
I'm not like, brand new to this stuff, but I always have questions
like, should I be tagging?
Should I be doing SEO?
Should I be doing this?
You know, all these things run through your head.
And I know at the end of the day is, for YouTube, it's creating more content.
That's just what that machine wants.
And I hate it.
I hate it because of that.
But I also know that that's how it works.
So whatever.
Set up the time.
It's all, you know, I go sign up, get the automated emails, you know, he has this
process where it says, Hey, share your stats with me, through Google's account
settings, share your stats with me.
That way I can go and dive in and look at your stats.
So man, I'm sitting there ready.
Like this is, this is great professional.
This is 600 an hour.
this is what I expect.
Right.
You know, so he's going to look at my stats, let's get into it.
Hey, then he's 10 minutes late, you know, you know, to the, to the call
and I'm messaging him trying to be like, okay, I get it sending the
DMS and I'm replying to an email.
I'm not getting
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: And does he really need to be
invited to your Google analytics?
You can't just show him or
Matt: Yeah.
I mean, but I actually like, I was like, Hey, this is cool
because now you'll, you'll look at this stuff prior to the meeting.
And that's kind of what I expect for 600 bucks an hour.
Like you're ready to go.
I'm ready to go.
We're professionals.
Let's do this.
And then he like shows, you know, a couple, whatever.
Yeah.
you know, 10 minutes late, a couple of excuses, automation, yada, yada.
So we just dive in and he's just okay, where do you want, where do you want help?
so I kind of like tell him, you know what I'm looking for him like, Hey,
I know this is a therapy session, but I need here's my competitors.
Here's how they're growing.
Here's how I'm not growing, like where you think I'm like really missing the gap.
But the short of it is he didn't even look at my account dashboard.
And it was everything I've always heard him say in his videos.
It was the same thing.
It was thumbnail,
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: of a personalized thing should be like,
he should be asking you questions so that he can give you personalized feedback.
Matt: So it was just one of those things where it was like, never
meet your heroes kind of moment, especially when you're paying for it.
and, you know, I mean, he, what it was, was he did you know, hey, Don't
worry so much about the, you know, SEO in the description tagging.
you know, all this other stuff, which was good because at least that silenced
that part of my brain a little bit.
Cause that's always like on my mind, you know, but then it was kind of like,
well, look, you know, we pulled up one of my competitors and I was just like,
well, you know, that your competitors thumbnails are better than yours.
And I was like, that was at that moment where I was just like, no, I was like,
nah, it's not like his thumbnails aren't.
Blowing my thumbnails away.
this is, I'm like, I think that that's kind of not really anyway.
So we moved on and, and then it got like towards, like towards the end.
I'm like, all right, well, I have another question.
So this is like 20 minutes in.
So I was like, all right.
So I got one more question on the technical and like audience retention.
you know, how important is that?
And then he said something like, oh, he's like, all right, yeah,
just like one or two more questions and then we got to wrap it up.
I'm just like, I just man,
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: like, why are you even offering
Matt: yeah, like if, if, if I was doing a 300, for 30 minutes, I would
probably give that person an hour as long as they're not a maniac.
You know, it's as long as you're not crazy and you're not like,
this is not a weird thing.
I'm giving you an hour.
I'm not like boom, boom, 30 minutes.
And then as we,
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: thing.
I, I mean, I've, I've dabbled in some coaching, some of it recently.
And then others going back a couple of years ago, I was
doing that with productize.
I always, if I do any sort of coaching, I really spend, first
of all, half an hour is like too short in my opinion for anything.
I feel like you, you can't even do it unless it's like an hour, because
a half, cause, cause I, I spent the first 20 minutes just asking questions.
You know, and then and then the rest of it is okay, now that I understand
where you're coming from and you're and sometimes just there's just
the act of asking the questions asking hard questions is like.
That's part of the value.
It's like somebody, somebody kind of like grilling you on hard questions, right?
But it's also a way for me to get an understanding of where you're coming from.
And then I can spend 30, 40 minutes, giving my thoughts on it.
The other, the other thing I used to do years ago was website teardowns.
And this was totally async, where the person would send me.
I think just, I think it was like, they just sent me the, their
website and I would record like a 15 minute, 15, 20 minute first
reaction walkthrough of their website.
And it's totally me looking at their website and giving them feedback.
And, and that was that.
and then recently I was doing, I, I sort of stopped this for now, but I, doing
some like product strategy coaching where We'd start with a big one question, we
would sort of go back and forth for a half an hour, and then we would have
async follow up for three or four days.
and, and that would be like a one time price, but it's ask one big question.
I give you my big feedback.
And then we have a, there's always going to be like, oh, all right.
So now that you've given me that feedback, I've got 1 or 2
follow up questions off of that.
Let's, let's cover those in the next 3, 4 days.
And then we wrap it up.
Matt: Yeah.
And you know, basically what that whole, Oh yeah.
So then, then like the kicker was, it was like, he had a, whether he rehearsed
it or it wasn't in front of him, he had a two minute, like outro of Fill out
this survey on G2 or whatever it was.
Like if you're really, you know, happy with this consultation,
fill out this survey.
And oh, by the way, like I also have if you want to get my, if
you want to get like my starter pack, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Like you can get it now for 50 percent off.
I really appreciate the time we spent together today.
Yada, yada, yada.
And I was just like, ah, right, dude.
God, it was just.
Such a deflating experience.
And, you know, I still really appreciate his content, but it did two things.
One, it encouraged me to have the same kind of offer.
Well, the first part it was, what it did is it made me realize like on
YouTube anyway, the upload cadence, the thumbnail, the title, and once the
algorithm knows you for a specific thing.
Like you kind of lean into that until you start maybe shifting the algorithm again.
And for me, it's that like right now anyway, I'm living in the 2024 theme,
which is the default theme for WordPress.
That's where I'm getting a lot of traffic and I can understand
that I can double down on that.
And that's what he was telling me.
He's you, he's you got to make 12 videos on 2024 and it's just
going to compound and you're just going to see like massive growth.
And I don't think he's wrong with that because I've seen him do that.
So that kind of put that frame that for me and then two is
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Yeah, I feel like the thing
with the, with the, yeah.
Publishing frequently on YouTube.
I don't think that it's the, it's the act of frequently publishing on YouTube.
that, that does it's, it's by, by publishing frequently, you're covering
lots of topics and then you can see which ones hit and then you can go do
more of those like the 24 or theme, you know, it's, it's more of that,
like you gets you into the habit of publishing and, and that's been,
that's been a big challenge for me.
I'm just trying to.
Yeah.
Get into the I'm trying to figure out the systems to outsource editing so that
I can publish more and that's been a huge pain Maybe we can get into that but
Matt: so put that it sort of ease that and bolstered me on that side of it.
And then two is like just coming up with a similar offering.
because one, yeah,
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: so you're offering now is basically
its membership and its sponsors
Matt: so it's membership and sponsors for the content and
then it's Google ads, which is.
You know, whatever.
It's just a few hundred, a few hundred bucks a month that comes in on that
until, you know, views go up, et cetera.
But, training and education is, is something that will always, has
always existed, existed in WordPress.
And it's something that I think is still going to be like a thing that is still
needed for, you know, years to come.
Especially as WordPress changes dramatically, the admin's going to change.
The way we're building these sites are going to change and having that
as, as a product, or a service is something that I'm also interested in
because that's something that I can, you know, really sink my teeth into
and I think could be a moneymaker for, you know, for the business and
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Like personalized training or like
Matt: either personalized or, Either personalized or like
a more corporate setting.
I think, I got paid really well when I ran my agency actually by, Rutgers University.
we went down there a few times, to train their staff on just how to build pages.
And they paid us a lot of money.
They paid us a lot of money to just
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Yeah, like corporate workshops kind
Matt: And it was, and back then they were using like.
WP bakery or whatever it was before that I can't remember the name of it page
builder like before page builders were a thing it was like what they were building
was just like a complete disaster but they wanted us to show them how to do it
the way they had it and we did and we got paid really well for it so that's a thing
and with the YouTube content like that's where because that's how I see my YouTube
is is tutorials and education and then.
The news product is for like the 1 percent of wordpressers.
That's the sponsors of Pressable, Bluehost, you know, OmniSend.
Those are the folks that really want to support that kind of content.
And then on the YouTube side, it's how do I use this wordpress thing?
And if I just land in front of the right folks who want to get educated,
through one on one calls or a corporate environment, corporate environment
with air quotes, that's something that's really interesting to me.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: yeah, I like that I could see that I
guess that working well because it's
Matt: And I need to figure out how to use Clarity
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: be like a lead
Matt: yeah, and I want to, my next step literally, right now I just have a Gravity
Forms to, to book a time, I literally only have one call to action that went
out the other day, but I want to set it up through, through Clarity Flow so that I,
that I can serve more at scale, basically.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Totally.
I mean, that's, I mean, not to promote my own product here,
but I, but I will anyway.
The, the, I mean, I use, I use it for asynchronous.
What happens is I push almost everything to asynchronous.
And because I'm right now, I'm doing a consulting project with a company.
it's like a two week sprint.
I've been doing these where it's two weeks and I help you strategize and
plan a big new product or a big new feature in your product and, and I kick
it off with a live call on on day one.
But then the rest of the two weeks, it's just like all asynchronous.
Like me going and thinking and writing stuff up a notion and then sending them a
video on here's what I think about this.
And here's some questions for you.
And then they send it back to me.
And then we go back and forth a sink.
And I think what quickly happens is, they start to realize,
I, and I firmly believe this.
And I, and I think that clients see this pretty quickly is It's actually
more useful, more productive, higher quality back and forth when it's
async versus being live, like live is good for like a kickoff call.
Maybe a welcome or maybe a sales call or something like that.
But once you're in the engagement and you're getting it and you're digging
into the details, the asynchronous aspect is it's not just that it's more
convenient, it's It's, I have space to go think about it and prepare my thoughts
and write up some notes and then send you a tight five minute thing of here,
here, what do you think about this?
And then they can go digest it, think about it, sleep on
it and then come back to me.
You know, like that's such a more productive way of going
back and forth on the details.
I find,
Matt: Do you ever feel like, how do you bridge the, urgency gap?
don't send me anything urgent through this.
Like, how do you bridge that gap at all?
Does that ever come up?
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: well, in this engagement, yeah.
And most of the engagements, it's like, we're working on one project, so it's
not like I'm here to give you generalized support on whatever might come up.
It's more like you brought me in to for 1 specific goal, and we're going to work on
Matt: Got it.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: for 2 or 3 weeks.
Um, so, so it's almost in both of our best interests to, let's take
our time and think through to make every every video sort of count.
Or every message sort of like, let's, let's move the
ball forward toward our goal.
At the end of this 2 weeks, we want to have a clear plan in
place for what we're building.
but I do, I do experience some of that, with my team, right now, I'm going back
and forth with my assistant and trying to, this could be like, probably a whole
other episode of this podcast is Trying to get her set up to be able to edit
my videos on on my YouTube videos, but just the setup getting her to get access
to the right Dropbox folder and sharing DaVinci Resolve projects and all this
crap is literally, it's literally taking us like 2 weeks just to get her to be
able to open up a project and edit it.
and there's lots of fast, like, all right, wait, are you seeing this on your screen?
I'm seeing it on my screen, like.
You know, and we're in two completely different time zones, and she's on
Windows, and I'm on Mac, and it's it's just been so that's where, throughout
one day, we'll have a lot of fast back and forth messages on clarity flow,
sometimes within within minutes or within an hour or so, but those are
just like quick to teammates working together on something, you know,
Matt: And you wanted to go just to, let me just bookend
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: then, sometimes, even even then,
it's like, it's still better than, hopping on a call, because, right,
literally right now, as we speak.
Me and Aaliyah are in the middle of trying to figure out this big technical problem.
But at two o'clock, I had a call with you.
So it's I probably have a message from her, waiting in my inbox now,
and I'll get back to her later.
You know, there's no urgency.
It's just like we, we go back and forth every 15 minutes for a couple hours.
And then and then 1 of us gets busy.
Maybe she goes to dinner or I go into a call or something.
And then and then, you know, then then suddenly there's like a delay and then
and then we're kind of back at it.
And it's, You know, and she's literally like on the other side of the world.
So, we, we, we expect there's going to be like these random delays that
come up and that's just part of the, part of the dynamic, you know?
Matt: So, I'll bookend, that's, those are my updates, those are the things
I'm, you know, I've gone through.
We'll transition to you because we've buried the lead a bit about the
limited series of breaking content.
So, we'll transition to some of the stuff you're working on.
But let me just throw a monkey wrench at you.
Did you not want to use, I mean, I know you were heavily
invested in DaVinci Resolve.
You probably like it from like the effects and color grading workflow.
But if you use an app like Descript, then you'd actually have native
collaboration built right in.
The file is just shared and she can edit.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I think she and I both have become really
frustrated with Descript and we've stopped using it, even on podcasts.
I think, I don't think it's great for, I know that it can do video
and stuff, but it's not, it's not like a professional video editor,
for YouTube videos and stuff.
But then.
I thought that I was going to use it for a while, but honestly, like
Descript, I don't know how much I know.
I know you're a big Descript guy, but I find it incredibly buggy and slow to to,
open up and start projects to a point where it's it took so long to, load this,
30 minute podcast conversation that that resulted in, shifting the whole time,
the whole thing by By 20 seconds, and then that screwed up the whole thing.
And then, I love it in theory, especially editing the text file
edits the video or edits the audio.
I love that concept.
But, yeah, no, it's, it's just not going to work.
Matt: Yeah, I mean it, you have to be really dialed in with knowing
what you want out of Descript.
and I am 100 percent there with you.
Like it's not, you know, I did a pretty in depth edit for what I normally do for
YouTube on DaVinci Resolve the other day.
Tiles, transitions, sound effects, just operating the timeline alone
in DaVinci Resolve is way faster and more efficient than Descript.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: and I got good with the
Matt: Keyboard
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I customized some keyboard shortcuts on
the, on video editing in, in resolve.
And then, and then I have some like text titles that fly in and some audio, some,
some, some like audio effect, you know, whoosh sound effects and stuff like that.
Um, um, you know, I, I did, I did start to look at like other options
because I'm, I am finding it really difficult to share a project with
an editor using DaVinci resolve.
Matt: Yeah.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: and so they're on DaVinci Resolve
version 18 and with the version 18, like their big new feature is this
like cloud collaboration feature.
It's like they're basically their version of what Descript has.
It's like a supposed to be a pretty slick, like cloud based, like
collaborate with other people.
And I tried it out and it just did not work.
Like the thing that that their demo thing is showing me like I'm trying
it and no, it doesn't, it doesn't function the way that you it's just,
it's a version one really more like a beta, cloud feature and I tried it.
I banged my head against the desk and I was like, this is just not going to work.
So instead, I'm still resorting to a Dropbox based
approach to sharing projects.
And that, too, has been a huge headache.
yeah, like sharing the sharing the Dropbox folder and then DaVinci has
its own sort of like project database system, which is like different from an
actual folder on your on your computer.
And yeah, it's a it's it's tough.
And I actually had a tweet about this the other day.
I was like, somebody should really.
And I've I've seen all the YouTube videos that try to cover on how to,
collaborate with a with a remote editor, and none of them really cover it well.
And none of them get into the nuance that you have to figure out, but there are
so many little problems, like somebody should come out with a course or a
guide or a really good YouTube video on this, and it's not going to be me
because we're having trouble with it.
but the,
Matt: Can't solve
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: somebody should cover like how,
because, because video editing, it's, it's easy to outsource anything, but
video editing is especially difficult to outsource technically, you know,
because, because the files are so big.
Matt: I saw you tweeting about it the other day.
Yeah, about finding one
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: that's the thing.
It's it's not just so and there's so many little problems with it because
most, most remote video editors, they are freelancers, so they probably have their
own Dropbox account and they've got other clients and they've got their own stuff.
I have a Dropbox account and I need to be able to share this huge, each individual
video project is going to have multiple gigabytes of media files to share.
I got to make sure that, A, we could actually share the project and both access
the project and I can go back into it and make more edits after she's done.
But also, I need to make sure that I'm not going to, overload her computer
and her storage with my stuff.
And and she can't be paying for drop off.
it's my project.
So I need to be paying for all this story.
Not her.
it's just such a mess, you
Matt: yeah, I mean, I think for freelancers, they're
just dealing with raw files.
So hey, Mr.
Mrs.
Customer, you just send me your footage.
I do the rest.
They're not, they're not trying to collaborate across a
DaVinci project where you are.
And that's really where probably the crux of this comes in.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: because that's the thing.
That's what I want to do with with any video editor is like,
I, I will give her the raw stuff.
To start it off and then she will do all the all the cuts.
That's like the most time consuming part is like cut like cut up like turn my
25 minute footage of me sitting at the desk talking about something like cut
it down to 8 minutes, you know, cut out all all my bad takes and and do all the
all the cuts get that taken care of.
And then, and then she can, put in the titles, but then I can go in at the end
and maybe, we need a screencast to cover this part, or we need to, you know,
or I need to make some final edits.
I should be able to go into the project and, finish it up, you know.
Matt: We have about 18, we have about 18 minutes left.
I want to frame it up.
This is going to be the last episode that we do.
You messaged me and said, Hey, I don't think I have the bandwidth for this.
We both, we both truly don't.
We both truly don't.
and you, you obviously have a lot going on.
You have the software business, and then you have this new business.
And you're doing a little bit of consulting.
We've been doing this in one hour increments.
We're going to let this episode go out, We've been doing it in one hour
increments and then slicing it up into two episodes for the month.
two thirty minute parts.
We'll let this run as, the full episode through, through this episode.
I'd imagine you did some, exploration, some internal thinking and said I've
really got to dial in on the stuff that I have in front of me now so
that you can be as successful as possible with those few things at hand.
Fair statement?
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I'm, I'm trying to do that there.
There's still going to be.
So I just came back from 2 trips, which are a big snow tiny comp.
I call them.
they're sort of like mastermind trips with with a lot with
a bunch of founder friends.
We go skiing and snowboarding and we talk about business and.
It's a good like annual retreat where I spend some time and get
feedback, but also do some thinking on what are the priorities?
in some ways, like my priorities haven't changed a whole lot, but in other ways.
They sort of are.
So I am, I, I, I am still interested in growing my YouTube channel and, and
doing more content this year for sure.
But I think that before the trips, like in the, in the, during the, the previous
episodes we were doing, I was much more, I was thinking more in the mindset
of I'm going all in on this YouTube content, audience growth treadmill.
And I'm committing to that for 2024.
And, and now I'm backing off of that to say, I still want to do it, but it's
just going to be more of a side hustle.
alongside the, the businesses that I'm working on.
Um, uh, but, but I, I'm talking about, one of the things that's enabling it
to be a side thing is I'm outsourcing the editing, hopefully once we
get that Dropbox shit figured out.
but the, yeah.
Once we get her set up for, for doing the editing, then I should, in theory, be
able to once or twice a month sit down and write a script and create a video and send
it off and maybe we can publish one or or two a month instead of One or two a week.
so that's number one.
but the, you know, I'm still spending roughly half of my
time working on clarity flow.
it's starting to tick up right now.
And I just hired someone to work on customer success on clarity flow.
that's like roughly half of my time.
And then the other half is now I'm doing, a bit more
consulting on product like, Okay.
Building products for clients and consulting on product
strategy with clients.
Um, and, and I'm working on, like a, a new website to promote my consulting work.
and, but I think that that's sort of a little bit ties in with the
stuff that I want to do on YouTube.
YouTube is still under the name of full stack founder.
That's still about teaching people how to code, how to design,
how to build your own products.
I still want to sort of like water that plant a little bit
and and keep those videos going.
But I think that that could also generate some interest in working with me as a,
as a product, builder product consultant
Matt: Do you think you're getting more traction in the consultancy side now?
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I wouldn't call it like a lot of traction.
I have a couple of clients that I'm, I mean, I work with one at a time.
I, I just wrapped up one and then I'm working on a second one right now.
I'm I have two other ones that I'm talking to about starting
up, in the next couple of weeks.
Um, uh, and these are just through my personal network.
These are mostly like friends in the industry who, who happened to need
the type of help that I'm offering.
and, so that's, that's a good start.
I think, it's, it's nice, like having friends who run SAS companies who happened
to have a need for some product work.
but, what I'm actually working on right now, like today is, writing up
a new, landing page to really promote this as like a consulting offer.
Not really productized, but, but, kind of just writing it up in terms of
trying to, you know, the sales pitch for why it makes sense to bring me in.
and, and then I'll probably do more of an active effort to pass
that out to more people who could.
Generate some lead flow this year, you know,
Matt: I was listening to your last episode with Jordan.
And you were saying something about, like that slow growth that, that like
any SaaS business, you know, is going to have, I forget how you framed it, or
like a bootstrap person is going to have.
I think you said something like growing clarity flow at this point
is just going to take all these like bigger time consuming aside from you
know, bringing in a bunch of cash and throwing it at like pay per click
and just like injecting traffic.
doing these slower moving, more organic content engagements, whether that's,
you know, you host the pod, you have your podcast that points to clarity flow
now, but you could be on more podcasts and guest appear on these podcasts.
You could create more videos like, but all this stuff is a lot slower.
It doesn't inject traffic right away.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: everything in clarity flow is slow.
It's growing, but it's just slow.
And I think, and I think that the, the big takeaway that I have going from
2023 to 2024 is I tried to throw money at, at the marketing funnel machine.
let's like, this thing basically works.
We have customers who come and they really like it and they convert.
We just need a lot more of them to come more frequently
Matt: right?
Yeah.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: you should be able to like, spend dollars
and get more customers, especially if you have a product that fits that
honestly, I just don't believe that that is the case and there might be people
listening who are just like, okay, Brian, you're just bad at marketing.
And there's probably a lot of truth to that.
But I have a, I don't know, like a working theory that In 2024, you can't just spend
money and generate more demand if it's, if it's not there naturally, you can't like,
buy your way to a distribution channel.
There's a lot of companies who do really well because they have a
really good distribution channel.
You know, maybe they started off with a huge audience, or maybe they,
they're plugged into some app store that's sending them a lot of traffic.
Or they have a really key, close integration partnership, and that's
been really, beneficial for them.
but if you don't, if you don't have one of those, inroads or one of those, built
in advantages, I just, the only other way to grow fast, I think, would be if, if,
if the world happens to be throwing a huge wave of demand at you, if right now you
just have the type of product where there is just a sudden surge in, in demand.
I mean, I think WordPress saw this maybe 5 or 10 years ago, where,
where it's just like every year there are millions and millions of more
people building WordPress sites.
And It just floated like every, every WordPress company just
felt this wave of demand, give them a rush of momentum, right?
that's the kind of thing that, that, so it's either you have this distribution
channel or you have this unusually high demand for your, for your thing.
But if you're in like the other 90 percent of startups that that don't
have this distribution channel and yeah, there's I see demand for clarity flow.
We literally get, you know, hundreds of signups a month and, and, and, and
like a lot of them convert into paying customers, but we're doing things
that just slowly inch that up month after month, but it's, it's not going
to see a hockey stick growth in 2024.
It's just not, you know, so like the only thing that actually, Okay.
And then I spent a lot of time looking at like Where do our
actual customers come from?
Right?
we, you know, we get people googling like googling for like
asynchronous coaching or asynchronous communication and stuff like that.
And that that leads to our homepage.
that's one chunk of our customers.
And then the other big chunk is like literally just coaches talking about it.
They word of mouth.
They tell they tell other coaches about it.
Or there's sort of a viral loop, like they see it from another coach.
I spent thousands on pay per click.
It drove no customers.
I, I spend, I do some cold email outreach that sort of works a little bit.
It adds a handful of more customers a month.
It's not huge.
and then, and I've, I've, I've done pay per click.
I've done integrations.
I've done, we have an affiliate program.
I've, I've paid for sponsorships, like I've done all these things
and nothing moves the needle, like just plain old word of mouth.
You know, like somebody using the product.
They like it.
They tell someone
Matt: Yeah.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: and so that's the only thing that we
can do at this point is I keep making the product better and keep helping
customers be successful with the product.
And so that's that's the only investment that I made in clarity for this year
is hiring a customer success person.
And she's just starting up right now.
And, and the idea is to have her give more personalized attention to every customer
who comes in, that I'm able to give.
And that should that should have the effect of.
Improving our conversion rate, like converting more trials to customers and
because they get better help, they are, they stay, they stay around a lot longer.
So that reduces churn rate and because they had such a great
experience, they will tell their people more readily than they do now.
And that should, that should help, you know, grow it a little bit.
But I'm sort of done with Spending big on these like big funnel experiments that are
going to grow the top of funnel, you know,
Matt: I mean, from the out, I think when people listen, you know, even when
I'm listening to your other podcasts, it almost sounds Don't take this the
wrong way, but it sounds like you're almost like, it feels like it just, just
that the, I'm going to give up on like putting all of my effort into this, but
then I'm getting email updates from you.
You're, you're launching new features.
And I think, you know, for the folks listening to this, who also follow
Brian's stuff, on his other channels is.
Hey, it's a, it's, it's just a more organic way of growing this product.
I think I see this a lot more in the WordPress space where people are
launching plugins, but they're still doing their services like they still
have, like they still plug in service and there's a, there's a fine balance there.
And I think, you know, to
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I think you're right about that.
Matt: yeah,
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I think you're I think you're reading
it correctly and I and I it's it's I'm not giving up on clarity flow.
Like I said, I just hired somebody to work on clarity flow and
I still have a developer who works on it every single day.
And I work on it every day,
Matt: yeah, right.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: in 2024, it has come to a point
where I, I can't give it 100 percent of my hours anymore.
I, it, it just, I can't afford to do that.
It doesn't, it doesn't pay for that.
so I've come to the conclusion that, this is how that business survives is if.
If, if I can still give it some resources and, and I have to do, I have to be
working on other things that can not only just generate income, but I'm trying to
build other stuff, like other assets, like the YouTube channel and stuff like that.
Um, you know, and that's the hard thing about having a podcast and being
public about stuff is that, I think, I think most listeners, even I, I
love my listeners, but I, and, and it's just the nature of the medium.
It has this effect of making things sound like bigger than
they actually are like businesses.
and also, it's almost if I'm talking about my business clarity flow or
whatever it is, it's just, just the act of talking about it makes it sound
like I'm 100 percent all in on this thing or, or if I'm talking about
something else, it's oh, then I must not be touching clarity flow at all.
But there's a lot more nuance to it.
I'm literally spending half my hours on one thing and half my hours on another.
and it's that's hard to come across in a, you know, because people like
to hear people tune into the podcast because they're hoping to hear like
a story and a, and a rocket ship that starts on the ground and then, and
then it keeps going up and up and up.
But that's not reality, you know?
Matt: yeah, yeah.
And it's hard for people to, you know, you know, I listen to it, well, because
I've been listening to you guys for, you know, forever, and, you know, same
thing, like the story, and, like to just hear you guys talk about stuff.
And, but I think there might be a, just a healthy set of other folks who
are listening, okay, when they run into that problem, how do I solve it
on, on my side, they did a thing in marketing, how can I do it on, on my side?
you know, and I think that, you know, that's, that's the benefit that
the audience gets from, you know, listening to both of your experiences.
Full stack,
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I, I, yeah, sorry, go
Matt: was going to say full stack and full stack founder, like you were
thinking, all right, I might back at end of 2023, you might be thinking,
okay, I'm going to go all in with this.
This will be the.
The product, a new product, a new stream, but maybe now that
one gets slid to the side a bit.
Maybe that only takes 20 percent of your effort and consulting
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Yeah, because I think, I think that
the, the conclusion that I came to more recently is, that's fine to do some
YouTube stuff, but it's not going to pay the bills anytime soon, you know,
the thing that does pay the bills faster is consulting work and, I thought that
I, because I thought that I was going to do more, more like coaching work.
And I, I had started to do that in like December and January.
but I, I didn't find the coaching to be very effective or, or like
kind of a good use of my time.
so I actually shut that down to in favor of more traditional, like consulting work.
And now the consulting that I'm doing is sort of 2 flavors.
1 is Me being an advisor on your product, you can, it's sort of looks like
coaching, but it's, it's deeper than that.
I am diving into the detailed planning and strategic road
mapping of, of your product.
and then the other one is actually built, more longer term, multi month engagements
to, to have me and my small team, actually build a product for, for you.
Um, uh, that's, so, so there's a, those are like the two things that I'm, that
I'm kind of building out in terms of I think that's something that especially
the build like the building products as a service type of thing that that
could that is the potential to turn into an agency model, down the road.
I would say in the short term is more like me consulting.
Um, uh, so it's a way to, bring in, a decent income.
It's still me building products, which I love to do.
That's that's where I think I add the most value is.
Either advising on product or building products,
Matt: And you get to use, you get to use your own product like
while, while you're helping people.
Yeah.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I consult with
Matt: Yeah.
So I mean like they could start using it for their own teams or
like their own customers, right?
So there's, there is a little bit of a cool opportunity there to be like,
I communicate on this product and.
You can have it too, you know, if you want, you know, if
you want to engage your own,
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Yeah.
There's a little bit of that.
It's, it's, it's nice to dog food it a little bit.
Matt: Cool, man.
Anything else, that you're looking forward to for the for the rest of the year?
Any other big goal that you came up with on
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I mean, I know that the theme
of this podcast is about content and I, I really do.
I, I don't, I don't want to give up on.
I, I feel like I have, I published four videos on my YouTube channel.
I have a fifth one that I recorded a couple of weeks ago and that's
going to be the first one that.
Yeah.
My assistant will edit for me and but that's been waiting for
her to get set up as the editor.
so that's why there's been like such a delay and like I published the first four.
I have a fifth that's just been waiting and waiting before for her
to figure out this and for her and I to figure out the editing set up.
but what I want to do going forward is like.
Whenever I have a free week, yeah, right.
I never have any free weeks.
But I want to start to be able to record more videos and just put them
into Dropbox and have her edit them.
And then hopefully in the next couple of weeks and months, I'll
get back into the swing of having a regular cadence of new videos.
I will say the other thing about it is like by by taking a
step back on the YouTube stuff.
and the full stack founder stuff.
I'm also removing some pressure.
I thought that, I had to build that up as quickly as possible
to get to a point where I could start to sell courses through it.
And so my, my thought in the, in the early videos was like, let me be the teacher.
Let me show you, let me teach you how to learn how to code.
Step by step and, I still might do an educational course at some point, but
now it's I don't like I could just maybe publish more like opinion based
content, you know, or just thought pieces about my philosophy on products
or my philosophy on building stuff or design patterns and stuff like that.
and let's just see where, where that stuff goes, because it's just a side hustle.
It's just something that I'm doing to hopefully grow an audience.
the, the stuff that will make money is the consulting work
and, and growing clarity flow.
So it's like by, by not needing YouTube to necessarily make money.
I can just, kind of just go, go wherever the content or the inspiration
takes me rather than trying to Feel like I have to teach a curriculum,
Matt: yeah, yeah.
And you're, and like what you did with the podcast or do with the podcast, it's just
increasing that surface luck area, right?
Stuff, the term that we've, we've known for a while now is like, the more you're
putting it out there, if you can lessen that production overhead, you know,
once you get your editors aligned and everything, then there's less of all
that cognitive load, and then you can get those opinion pieces out faster.
you're just increasing that awareness, right?
And at the end of the day, I think that's going to unlock
some more opportunity for you.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: that's the
Matt: Fantastic stuff!
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: I, you know, I, I didn't expect to have
to cut my side of this podcast, short.
So, so quickly, but I don't know what your plans are for this thing,
but I think it would be cool, to get like another, to have maybe seasons
where you have, it's like you plus a different person each season.
You know, a different person who's, who's, who's breaking content, if you
will, right, you know, bring someone else in who's either just starting
up or they're, or they're in the swing of things with their content.
And you do a, a string of episodes with them.
Matt: We've,
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Is that, is that what
you had in mind for this
Matt: We successfully broke Fullstack Founder.
no.
no, I mean it It wasn't, it literally was like, was to really just tell your story
of getting that, that off the ground and, and also at the same time, like showing
like where I'm at with creating content.
But I think where, I think that's what I'll do next is just kind of see if anyone
else wants to co host and really share.
As intimately as we both have, for the last couple of months.
And, yeah, maybe we turn it into many seasons and whatever, pressure point
somebody's dealing with with their content creation journey at that time
will be the bookend to that season.
Right?
Instead of infinity, it's just one thing at a time.
enhanced_brian_1_02-15-2024_140342_#3: Yeah, for sure.