Transcription
HARNESS & HONE | 1000 ROUTES | JAY ACUNZO
Episode Transcript
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Nick Bennett [00:00:01]:
Hey, listener. Welcome to 1000 Routes. I'm your host, Nick Bennett. In each episode, we explore the uncommon paths of solopreneurs who have bet on themselves and the reality of what it takes to build a business that serves your life. And if you want to change your own route, you can check out Full Stack Solopreneur, our 90 day group coaching program that has helped dozens build clear, compelling offers that you can market and sell with confidence. You can join now at fullstacksolo.com that's Fullstack S O L O dot com. Enjoy the episode. Jay Acunzo, you are the final boss of podcast guests.
Nick Bennett [00:00:51]:
I hope you know that. And I have to.
Jay Acunzo [00:00:54]:
You're trying to defeat me. Is that what's going on?
Nick Bennett [00:00:56]:
I don't know. But it was like, I thought about this. I was like, when I originally planned the show, I wanted. I had a list of people I wanted to have on the show. You were on that list. And I was like, number 1000. Like J Godzilla. Because the whole your.
Nick Bennett [00:01:10]:
So much of your platform is about podcasting. I've learned a ton about podcasting from you.
Jay Acunzo [00:01:14]:
Thanks.
Nick Bennett [00:01:14]:
I am a huge fan of the original unthinkable and we'll get into a bunch of this stuff, but. And I was like, I'm gonna have jay as number 1,000. And I was like, I have a long way to go. Let's run this now. So maybe you'll come back for number for episode 1000.
Jay Acunzo [00:01:29]:
If you hit a thousand episodes, I would love to celebrate that milestone with you. Yes.
Nick Bennett [00:01:33]:
All right, done. Lock it in. I have many weeks to go. It's interesting because the first time I heard of you, this is going to be a very bizarre story, but the first time I came across you and your work was the agency I worked at you. I onboarded onto this team as like the equivalent of a. A marketing intern. And they were doing some level of work with you. And they were.
Nick Bennett [00:02:00]:
And they just said, here's this. Here's Jay Acunzo. This is unthinkable. Here's a thing that.
Jay Acunzo [00:02:05]:
And we.
Nick Bennett [00:02:06]:
We help him do something. And I wasn't. I wasn't super privy. I wasn't like a part of any of those things. They were like. And you know Jay Acunzo. And I was like, I have no.
Jay Acunzo [00:02:14]:
Idea who this is.
Nick Bennett [00:02:15]:
And I was like. And they looked at me, and they looked at me like I was crazy.
Jay Acunzo [00:02:19]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:02:20]:
It was at that moment that I realized that I was, like, way out of my element because I was like, oh, okay. Like, I'm not the inner circle of marketers. But I was having fun prepping for this episode because I went to the Wayback Machine and I pulled up your site from that time period and one thing it said that made me feel like you are the most unapologetic. You are still unapologetically Jay. You can see the premise like that you do. I want to read you your own site. It says J acunzo found an unthinkable media to make it refreshingly entertaining. Shows about work with B2B brands today, too many shows about career and business are commodity programs, easily replicated, easily forgotten.
Nick Bennett [00:03:04]:
B2B companies can create more resident, more differentiated programs than yet another glorified talking topics with experts show doing so can create super fans, increase loyalty, claim a theme in the market and spark a movement in the industry. And then Wayback Machine shit the bed and it got clipped off. But I got that segment. I was like, you can see the premise 10 years ago or almost 10 years ago now. I think that was from like 2017, 2018, that that wayback was able to produce that.
Jay Acunzo [00:03:36]:
Thank you for that. I was narrowly focused on shows. It's funny because everything I do now, helping people find clarity on their message and develop a premise, you know, people might call that a big idea they own in the market. That all comes out of me a being a petulant content marketer and being like, why is this all a volume game? Mediocrity pushed harder and harder doesn't work. Why are we doing this? That was like 2012. And then these other two things that happened to me. The other was I started making podcasts for my employer. And on the side you mentioned unthinkable.
Jay Acunzo [00:04:07]:
That was my show for many years. And I was like, oh wait, premise development, format development. Like, you know, starting a movement around all the things about making a show that applies way beyond just making a show. And then the third thing was I became a public speaker. Like an author and a public speaker. That was my profession, that was my source of income for many years. And the roll up of all that is especially the latter two things. It's all about creating what I would what I've started calling a platform of impact.
Jay Acunzo [00:04:33]:
You know, you meet those authors or speakers and they have that really big idea, that well honed premise that's like the premise of their book. But they don't stop there. They use the premise and the IP in the book to go and create yet more IP in their content. And then their platform is like just a coherent circle with the center of that circle being the premise. So you got their podcast, their newsletter, yes, the book, the courses, the free online assessments or quizzes, the consultations and the audits. But everything those people build you're like, jealous of or it's. For me, anyway. I was always frustrated by it because it feels so high impact and coherent at the same time.
Jay Acunzo [00:05:11]:
So for lack of a better phrase, I've started calling that a platform of impact and the premise is the starting point. So thank you for pointing that out because it does. I totally forget that I sort of draw on these fields that I moved around and moved through. And I'm trying to borrow from what they do to have an impact and apply it to the world of soloists and, and entrepreneurs.
Nick Bennett [00:05:33]:
You've been beating this drum forever. There's a through line here, right? Like, you've told the story a thousand times about how you went from like Google to HubSpot to Next View. Like, and it's interesting to see how you saw the problem that you are still working to solve today. And it shows up in all of your work, even back then. Can you walk me through the moment though that you decided you were going to go all in on what was more public? Like, unthinkable Media is still a thing, but it's not.
Jay Acunzo [00:06:02]:
It's my llc. It's not a front facing.
Nick Bennett [00:06:05]:
Right. I'm the brand point in time. It was right back then. It was unthinkable Media as more of like, as more of the company. But either way, regardless, can you walk me through the moment where you were like, I'm not doing this anymore and I'm going to. Because. Because going solo now versus 27, 2018, I think is kind of when you made the leap out of Next View. Like, it's a different thing.
Jay Acunzo [00:06:27]:
It's a good question. I have a really specific take on this and I want to be clear because you use the phrase that like, causes my ears to perk up, which is make the leap. I didn't make the leap. I worked really, really hard to make sure there was no leaping to be had. And I think our culture kind of lionizes entrepreneurs broadly and then narrowly. There's this moment of making the leap that people talk about, but it mostly is lore and myth and not true. Or if it was true, it was not smart.
Nick Bennett [00:06:53]:
So I'll change the question. How'd you move the boat closer to the dock?
Jay Acunzo [00:06:56]:
Yeah, that's what it is. Eventually you do have to burn the boats. Right? It's like I left the day job eventually, but not by trying to run and, you know, long jump onto the, the ship as it sails away the way it happened for me. So I'd moved through tech and saw it from all angles. Enormous global company at Google, I was in sales at Google, a pre IPO HubSpot. I was their head of content, then a startup in between those two big brands that was really, really tiny, about 12 people. I was also their head of content and then a venture capital firm. So I kind of saw the like 30,000 foot view, or maybe sideline view if you want to call it that, the observation of tech as an industry in venture.
Jay Acunzo [00:07:32]:
I was their VP of content community. And then as I was, I think, entering year three of working for that VC here in Boston, I had two things happen to me. So one was I was running this side organization, it was probably three years old at the time called Boston Content, which was purely me and a friend, Arista Rosenberg, who came out of the agency world trying to figure out this new thing called content marketing. And we were both very creative minded and we really didn't like how most of content marketing was like over promote mediocre crap. So we wanted to like steward the field a little bit, help people, you know, advance in their careers. But we had a perspective. So I was running that organization of like meetups and panels and occasional talks, which kind of helped me cut my teeth on the speaking front and also build a little bit of a name for myself locally. And I reached out to, through old Twitter RIP to Andrew Davis, who's a marketing author and speaker.
Jay Acunzo [00:08:30]:
And he, I think is one of the best living public speakers in the business world. Andrew Davis. And I was like, hey, we have this organization. Would love to get coffee sometime. He's like, yeah, let's get a beer in Charlestown. I live here. So I was like, okay, awesome. I'm going to convince this guy to come and speak at my organization.
Jay Acunzo [00:08:46]:
But he ended up convincing me to become a guinea pig in this agency of his, which was emerging at the time, where he wanted to run a management company. It didn't last very long. I was an experimental client along with a few others, and it never got past that, but it worked for me. The management company was to help emerging business authors and speakers break in, figure out the field, figure out the business, launch a couple projects. That's where my podcast Unthinkable came from. And at the time I keep saying Unthinkable, I don't host that show anymore. But that's what I was doing at the Time. And so he kind of broke me into paid speaking a little bit while I was still at the vc.
Jay Acunzo [00:09:22]:
So now I'm doing like, I'm averaging like less than one paid speech a month if you average it out. So it's not a business. It's just a side thing. As Andrew's agency was getting off the ground and I still had a day job. So that was one thing. The other thing that happened was after launching Unthinkable, I now had two shows. I hosted, one, which was called Traction for Next View, the VC firm. And then the other, Unthinkable, which was about kind of countercultural or atypical approaches to growing a business and a career.
Jay Acunzo [00:09:52]:
And I started getting inbounded by all these companies. Like, Drift was big at the time. They, the CEO was on the show, David Cancel, and he asked me if I could make a show for their brand. And I was like, oh, oh, okay. Like, I'd never considered doing something like that. The CEOs of Wistia and Help Scout were both on the show. They were interested in talking to me about making a show. So I was reacting while I was being proactive to the speaking thing.
Jay Acunzo [00:10:14]:
I thought that'd be a nice little side chunk of change. The show development and show hosting for brands. I was like, that's kind of interesting. Like, most people really stink at making shows, but they're all doing it for their brands. This is back in 2015 or so. I can help with that. I have a method that's emerging. I have skills that I can use.
Jay Acunzo [00:10:32]:
I have a desire to do this better. And so I started to make a little bit of money on that too, too. And then right as it was getting too much to do on the side, this was pre kids. I went to my bosses and I told them what was going on. I said, I love it here, but I'm moving towards something. And they convinced me to stay, but moved me down to four days a week, no change in compensation. And I was like, done. Absolutely.
Jay Acunzo [00:10:56]:
I've never been my own entrepreneur. I always thought you had to start a SaaS business because that's the world I came out of. I never wanted to. So what else could I possibly do as an entrepreneur? Maybe the speaking thing. That seems like a lottery ticket. Not a smart move. Turns out, nope, that's a business you can build. But they told me, I'll give you Fridays and you work for us Monday through Thursday.
Jay Acunzo [00:11:16]:
And so I did that for about nine months. And at the end of it all, I'd built Enough traction on the revenue side and enough interest in the mechanics of these, like, two pronged things like these two revenue streams, that I went once again, went back to them and I was like, listen, I. However we message this publicly, I need to go full time now on my own thing. So I did not leap at any point. I tiptoed very, very carefully, sometimes reacting.
Nick Bennett [00:11:39]:
And sometimes strategically, sometimes in the beginning. Some of the smallest things make you question whether or not you're doing the right thing. What were some of those things for.
Jay Acunzo [00:11:49]:
You early on, you mean? Yeah, yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:11:51]:
Like when. When you had that Friday, with the first few Fridays, we were like, okay, like, be business, Jay. Now try to go in, figure something out, like, go find a show to host or go find someone to talk to or whatever the thing was. What was that for you?
Jay Acunzo [00:12:08]:
I coughed just now, but it was me trying to laugh as a toddler parent. That's what that was. Because. Because I was like, guffaw. That's the word. I guffawed. Because you were like, be business, Jay. And I was like, no, my friend.
Jay Acunzo [00:12:19]:
It took me years to be business, Jay. Early on, I was a mercenary. I was a project, you know, freelancer, which, by the way, freelancers are businesses in some sense. But, like, I was just selling my time. I was just like, I'll make a bunch of shows for brands. That's cool. I'll give a bunch of speeches for a fee. That's cool.
Jay Acunzo [00:12:34]:
I had no understanding of, like, sustainability, repeatability, how not to burn out, because I had all the time in the world and all the energy in the world, and I didn't know what I didn't know. So I would just summarize that as I threw myself at it. So I would make up for a lot of mistakes where, to your point, I wasn't doing the right things, and I can describe a few in a second, but I would make up for not doing the right things, you know, nine to five by the fact that I could get up early and write and felt energized to do it. I could work late at night and often did. I could work weekends at the time and could. I could have a ramen noodle year, you know, because I basically cut my salary in half. Year one, I was only able to recoup 50% of my salary year one in 2017. 16, 17, something like that.
Jay Acunzo [00:13:17]:
And I could because I didn't have a mortgage and two kids like I do now. So, you know, I would spend time doing all the things that made me look like an Entrepreneur. I think this is what we do a lot. I would create like, you know, assets for or language for my website, you know, updating my social profiles, posting on social, like doing things that like projected outwardly that like, I do this but didn't really build the business. Right. Certainly not the back end accounting and back office type stuff and certainly not the sales and marketing stuff that actually worked. Now the only thing that saved me was I did have in my corner Andrew and a couple of his teammates at the time building this agency around me. So I had this source of advice and this guy who had been building his agency but also before that his own speaking business.
Jay Acunzo [00:14:00]:
After selling an advertising or a marketing agency, he went out to become an author and speaker and been doing it for nine years. So I wasn't totally feeling around in the dark, but earning a living on your speaker fees, that takes a while to get the flywheel going. So I needed that secondary income stream of making shows for brands. And although I was winning clients, every single project was burning me out. Like I was doing too much for too little. I wasn't really clearly articulating my, you know, value to them. I was kind of positioning it publicly. But people didn't quite get it, which by the way, is still a problem that plagues me in some sense.
Jay Acunzo [00:14:36]:
Right? So I think, like, I was doing a lot of stuff that I look back and I'm like, right, you were trying to show others that you're good at this instead of just being good at this. So there's like a great metaphor from my days playing basketball. Like, I used to play a ton of pickup basketball around Boston. And I remember there was this like, if you play basketball, you know, this character, there's like this guy I'm picturing who'd always come and play, like right after work hours. And he'd come with this gym bag full of gear. He had the energy drinks, he had the headband, he had the arm sleeve because that was an emerging trend at the time. He had fresh new sneakers from some, you know, whatever, LeBron or Jordan or whoever. He looked like a kick ass basketball player.
Jay Acunzo [00:15:19]:
And then a funny thing would happen. We'd start the game and the guy couldn't play. And I'm going, but playing basketball is what basketball is, right? And we see this everywhere. It's like, I want to project that I'm a good entrepreneur. I want to project that I have a good podcast. Let me invest in the gear, me invest in the studio, let me do all these things right now. My Most of my business comes from message design services helping you clarify your message, or public speaking services helping you take that message out publicly in the highest impact way I think you can. A speech.
Jay Acunzo [00:15:52]:
Right. A lot of people, let's just take speaking. They think they have to have, like, beautifully designed slides or whatever it is in your thing. It's trying to look the part and. And then you get sucked down doing the work to look the part instead of actually playing the actual game and mastering that skill. Because it's not glamorous to do that part, but that's what works. Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:16:13]:
You're always talking about the work that looks like work and it's not.
Jay Acunzo [00:16:16]:
Yeah. My biggest fear, because I have a little bit of a public platform, is that people use my work, and I know some do, as a convenient place to hide where they feel productive. Reading my newsletter, listening to my current shows called How Stories Happen. Because it's really cool to. Whatever. Listen to an exceptional entrepreneur dissect their story that they tell everywhere. Right. Like, it's really fun.
Jay Acunzo [00:16:40]:
You feel like, this, you know, sense of achievement in your head, this dopamine hit, and you feel productive, you know, consuming my show or any other things that I put out. But I want you to produce. Like, I want you to go and do the work. And that is a huge gap for a lot of people, you know, and that's. It's different when you hire me as a consultant, then I'm holding you accountable and I'm working through it with you, and I'm collaborating with you and doing the work alongside you. Like, for the vast majority of any audience in a client services business, they aren't hiring you. So my question is always, so what am I doing for those people? Am I a convenient place to hide, or am I actually sparking real work? And that's, you know, kind of. You're not here for my therapy session, but welcome to it, my friend.
Nick Bennett [00:17:24]:
Well, I think there's a lot to be said. There's a false sense of productivity by consuming a bunch of content.
Jay Acunzo [00:17:30]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:17:31]:
Reading things on LinkedIn, listening to the show, reading the newsletter, whatever. The thing is, it's a trap. It's a trap that we've all fallen into because you're like, if I just learn this next thing, this will be the thing that helps me do. Helps me get out of where I'm at.
Jay Acunzo [00:17:46]:
Yes.
Nick Bennett [00:17:46]:
And it's. And it's weird because we're both in this similar place where I was like, we create the content about doing a thing, and you need People to read it, to want to do it, but then you're like, at some point, please stop reading it and just go do something.
Jay Acunzo [00:18:00]:
Yeah, like I have two very simple observations I've been making lately about the world of soloists and entrepreneurs more broadly, which is we're doing a lot of things that actually push us further from having clarity in what we're trying to say and do and from developing ideas that have an actual impact because we're just sort of like sharing more and more content or consuming it more. So, like these two observations, I actually wrote this down right before I, I started this interview with you because I'm working on my kind of comprehensive methodology. Like I feel ready after a couple of years to like have the method, teach the method, sell different parts of it, put it to the book, all that stuff. You know, I like to say things like don't market more, matter more. And then I look at the behavior of people and they're just marketing more. And it doesn't, none of it matters and none of it works. And you know, so it's like the two observations I wrote down. Clarity creates clients.
Jay Acunzo [00:18:49]:
The conciseness and crispness and the resonance with which you communicate creates clients. And the other thing I wrote down was big ideas, despite what you might have been told, can still have a big impact on your business and first, furthermore on the world. But what do we do? We create a lot of commodity stuff. We shove more and more and more into our day. So we push ourselves further from clarity, so we don't create clients. We share a lot of our expertise and advice, but all of it's commodified so you can get it anywhere. There's no real big idea driving it, there's no real premise to it. So it hits weaker.
Jay Acunzo [00:19:21]:
It's not going to actually stand out. It's not going to connect deeply, it's not going to spark action in others. So we're pushing ourselves further from clarity and we're also not putting forth our biggest and best ideas. And these are, I think partly our fault, but also very much the places we show up, these social networks understand how to make sure that you continue to play that game because it benefits their business. And then the gurus who come along to teach you stuff, they also make sure they prey on your baser instincts. They pummel you with these, you know, guilt trips and over promised simple secrets which don't exist. So there's a lot of friction and a lot of investment behind from very large companies and well known people too, pushing you in the wrong direction. And so I think that's where that rant of mine came from.
Jay Acunzo [00:20:06]:
Like, I don't want to be one of those people pushing you in the wrong direction. I don't want to be one of those people who's trying to help you do better work, but all you end up doing is reading about doing better work.
Nick Bennett [00:20:18]:
Yeah. Getting people out of their own way is, in that respect, is a much larger percentage of the job than I think we give it credit for.
Jay Acunzo [00:20:30]:
Oh, totally. Oh. Every business author realizes that eventually, no matter what topic you talk about, you are in the business of helping people trust themselves more.
Nick Bennett [00:20:37]:
Yeah. Like that is. I think you said that to me, I don't know, maybe a year ago.
Jay Acunzo [00:20:42]:
Yes. If you do this long enough, what you realize is that is the linchpin. That is the fundamental starting point. That's why a lot of business authors end up going the self help route eventually. Because they realize that's actually a big, big problem. And now there's bad ways to do it. Sure.
Nick Bennett [00:20:57]:
But I got out of my own way. And you can too.
Jay Acunzo [00:21:00]:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:21:02]:
One thing, I think you glazed over this, but it seems like it's a really massive part of the process here, which was you reached out to Andrew Davis. Did you? You just knew him as a speaker.
Jay Acunzo [00:21:16]:
No. Oh, yeah. Distantly.
Nick Bennett [00:21:18]:
You knew of him as a speaker and you were like, I'm going to try and connect with this person and see what happens. Yeah, that right there, first of all, sounds like he made a massive impact on your life.
Jay Acunzo [00:21:28]:
Oh, there's few others I could cite. Probably zero other people who did who had a bigger impact.
Nick Bennett [00:21:34]:
I cannot emphasize enough how. How many shots people don't take. Like, I've had a few people on this show in the past that have said a very similar story, which is, yeah, I just knew this person was kind of in the area and I just figured, why the hell not? And I sent them a dm and then we end up getting coffee and this person changed my life.
Jay Acunzo [00:21:54]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:21:55]:
And like, being willing to go out and start conversations with people is the number one thing that people are so afraid to do. Like, how did you decide, fuck it, I'm just gonna go do this and see what happens.
Jay Acunzo [00:22:08]:
Oh, I mean, I don't wanna look, partly, I'm sure it's because I'm a straight white male living in the northeastern United States and grew up in an affluent community. Like, the door was slightly a jar for me, if not wide open when I was born. Like, I had to run Hard.
Nick Bennett [00:22:21]:
But Andrew Davis, if you're. If your message to him sucked, he didn't. You know what I'm saying? It wouldn't have.
Jay Acunzo [00:22:27]:
Yeah, but what I'm saying is, like, I got the confidence through just my circumstances. Like, it was unearned privilege.
Nick Bennett [00:22:32]:
I get what you're saying.
Jay Acunzo [00:22:32]:
I can't. I can't discredit that. But then there's this other big part, which was the. I had no stakes. Like, I was. It was. I was working at a day job, and then I had, like, the side project, and I was, like, gonna ask him to come and speak for the side project. And I thought, like, the worst case scenario is he'll say no.
Jay Acunzo [00:22:50]:
And so, like, by the way, there were actual stakes in that. Not as big as if you're reaching out to somebody to transform your career with that intention. That was not my intention. So I just want to be completely honest with you on those two fronts. I was naturally confident and also had no stakes in that moment. But to your point, what's the worst that's going to happen? Like, I'm always thinking about that. I'm always like, what's. I told you before we recorded, I have a note card on my desk.
Jay Acunzo [00:23:14]:
Every so often I'll be like, what's the most important thing that I'm not doing right now? And I'll write it on a note card and I'll either pin it next to my screen, like, tape it there, or I'll just put it on my desk. This one reads Book five coffees with solopreneurs from. I have this list of people I trust and admire. Book two. In real life, coffees, like, in my area, actually go out of my office and out of my home to do that. And I was telling you, like, I'm not. I'm not doing that. Why am I not doing that? And I think it's because I'm tying too many stakes to it.
Jay Acunzo [00:23:45]:
I think it's because I'm thinking to myself, oh, if I book these five or seven coffees, then what's going to happen is they're going to hire me someday. They're going to introduce me to a mastermind owner, and I can go and speak to them. And it's full of my clients. Like, I'm attaching too many. Too much risk and. Or too high stakes or value to that. Which, by the way, it might be true, but in that moment, that's not what's actually happening. All I'm doing is asking to get coffee and, like, swap notes.
Jay Acunzo [00:24:11]:
With another entrepreneur. That's low stakes and also fun. And so I go through this with, you know, I had a friend who came to me agonizing over the fact that she wanted to write, she wanted to write a substack, she wanted to write a newsletter in support of her business, whatever. But Jay, what if people in my comments are mean or take this out of, you know, out of context or, you know, what if I go viral and get put in front of these crowds? I didn't intend to. And I said, that's future Mia's problem. Like, you're talking about brilliance problems. Like, you're so good that that's happening, that you have an audience that you're getting shared, that people are debating you. You have a momentum problem, not a brilliance problem.
Jay Acunzo [00:24:46]:
So solve the problem that you have. Right. Can you hit publish once a week for six weeks. Start with that. Right. So it's not can I close seven clients right now? It's can I send, Can I hit send on a request to get coffee and catch up to seven people, 10 people, 20 people? Like, that's it. You just like, it's so easy just to over think things by imbuing them with undue stakes. So can we lower the stakes to take that next step forward? You know, as my friend Michelle Warner says, you don't need a strategy, you don't need the playbook, you need a sequence.
Nick Bennett [00:25:21]:
Right.
Jay Acunzo [00:25:21]:
What's the next right action to take? Just do that.
Nick Bennett [00:25:24]:
It reminds me, our mutual friend John Benini, I had him on, he shared a story about how he got Brian Holiday and Seth Godin on his podcast in like 2012 or something.
Jay Acunzo [00:25:36]:
Yeah, right.
Nick Bennett [00:25:37]:
When no one was podcasting. And I was like, how'd you do it? He goes, I just emailed Seth Godin and asked and he said, okay. Like, part of it is just being willing to do the thing. It's like someone told him, you're never going to get Ryan Holiday. He's on all these shows, he's so busy, he's got all this stuff going on. And he was like, well, all right, maybe. And I emailed him and he said, sure, I'll come on your show.
Jay Acunzo [00:26:00]:
Yep.
Nick Bennett [00:26:01]:
Because it was, it was that part of the process. I mean, look, today it's a different world, but like, it doesn't change the fact that being willing to start conversation with somebody, whether it's get a coffee or whatever the thing is, and coming to the table with like a genuine request, like people can sniff it out.
Jay Acunzo [00:26:17]:
Yes.
Nick Bennett [00:26:18]:
If you're not being Genuine. Like, I can't tell you how many DMS I have in LinkedIn. I'm sure your LinkedIn inbox looks worse than mine. That's because people go, hey, Jay, I cannot. I just want to connect with some like minded entrepreneurs. And then you accept it. And they're like, so this is what I do. Would you like to jump on a 30 minute call? And you're like, that was not.
Nick Bennett [00:26:37]:
Your request, was not authentic.
Jay Acunzo [00:26:41]:
Yeah, there's this guy in my inbox right now and he sent me this really nice connection request, talking about my work. Now, I've been around the block long enough to know that a compliment is usually like, how these people are taught to templatize their outreach. But I accepted it. You know, give him the benefit of the doubt. You know, it's like he seemed genuine. Great. And then he immediately follows up with like, hey, Jay, I don't know if you saw I sent you an email and I was like, cool me see, you know, if I can find it. And I said, but in the meantime, we're exchanging dms here.
Jay Acunzo [00:27:14]:
How can I help? And he goes, well, inside there's an offer you can't refuse. And he sent me the Godfather gift. And I was like, oh God. So let me read you the last two dms in this exchange before I marked it at spam. Here, here's, here's. I dug it up for you. I said, ah, okay, you are trying to sell me on something. No thanks.
Jay Acunzo [00:27:32]:
I thought this was a friendly greeting or maybe a request for support in ways I can help you. But now I understand this was a tactic. Feels icky. Now. Here, here's the thing. This is, it's like, it's like playing whack a mole. It doesn't matter if you do that once, because they'll all crop up a million other times. This is what kills me.
Jay Acunzo [00:27:47]:
Sorry you feel that way. Could have still made a good chat, but I see where you stand. In other words, he's like, screw you, Jay. That's your, that's a you problem. I'm like, what the hell? And maybe you have to wire yourself that way. But I, I like. My entire philosophy is antithetical to that. My entire.
Jay Acunzo [00:28:07]:
Like, if you're a speaker, you're kind of wired this way, or you should be if you're an author. If you're a service provider. I think it's just a person thing, not necessarily like a niche thing. It's transformation over transaction. If I now me, Jay, get a whiff that someone is Trying to transact me, I'm gone. I don't care what you have on offer. I don't care how you, you know, good your intentions are because you're ignoring the context of everybody trying to transact everybody on the Internet. Right? So it's like just be a human, be like, Nick, I, I, I would generally just like to have coffee and learn, by the way.
Jay Acunzo [00:28:40]:
Then you don't follow it up with, you know, spam. This is what drove me out of HubSpot. I was only there for a year. It was all letter of the law helpfulness, not genuine helpfulness because it was very much like, we are going to provide you a blog post. At the end of the blog post, here's an ebook, the ultimate guide to the topic of the blog post. If you like the blog post, download the ebook. It's free, but it's not free. We're going to ask for every bit of information possible and then we're going to quote, lead, nurture you, meaning bludgeon you with spam.
Jay Acunzo [00:29:08]:
Spam is not something that's, that's meant to, whatever, get your bank account and like, you know, like the phishing scams. That's not what spam is. Spam is when your expectations and what's being delivered are so far apart that you feel actively repelled by it. The same email can be spammed to one person and very welcome to the other. So this is like what we're living in, this era, everyone wants to transact. And if you're the type of person that genuinely wants to transform, I don't know, man. I think you win. Or very, very least I want to talk to you more.
Nick Bennett [00:29:37]:
You do the human thing. It blows my mind how often I have to reinforce the concept of just be a human. People are like, well, what am I supposed to say to somebody? I'm like, say I. If you read their newsletter, say I read your newsletter and I did the thing.
Jay Acunzo [00:29:54]:
Yeah, that you said and say thank you. Like, here's what's worked for me. Hey, Nick, I don't know if you know me. I've been following your work for a little while. I have recently shifted from selling B2B to selling to entrepreneurs. I'm trying to get to know more entrepreneurs in this space. You know, can, can we chat now? These are the people that are somewhat familiar with me. That's great because I'm like, listen, I don't know this space.
Jay Acunzo [00:30:14]:
Like, you know, this space. Do you mind having coffee? That great. Like I, I never, you know, I never get emails that are like, jay, I know you have this distinct premise to your podcast on How Stories Happen. You do this with your episode formats. I think here's an example of what we might do together. Would you consider bringing me on your show? I don't get that. I get very templated PR pitches. Like, here's what I'm trying to say.
Jay Acunzo [00:30:39]:
The bar is so low. It's so low that it's, like, offensive to me when people still somehow slide under it.
Nick Bennett [00:30:47]:
Well, because I. I mean, I get. I get these pitches all the time. We think X Person would be a really great fit for 1,000 routes with Nick Bennett.
Jay Acunzo [00:30:57]:
You're emailing Nick Bennett, first of all. Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:30:59]:
Do you want to high know that this is a contact token in your CRM is because you referred to a show that was 1000 Routes with Nick Bennett?
Jay Acunzo [00:31:07]:
You know what I did on my. On my contact form? Man, this is turning into a rant. I might have changed it, but a while ago on my contact page on my website, I put the policy at the top that I don't accept pitches of services or products or pitches to appear on my podcast. And at the bottom, I say, please confirm this is not a solicitation or pitch of any kind and it's a checkbox. And I wrote something that's like, I confirm this, and if I'm lying and I made some kind of, like, I admit to being a complete and total fool, that's about to email Jay, who's going to just delete this and mark it as spam, Whatever. Now I've made it positive, which is, I confirm this isn't a solicitation or pitch while I'm at it. By checking this box, I also agree to trust myself creatively more often and stop holding back from sharing my ideas and stories all the darn time. Thanks, Jay.
Jay Acunzo [00:31:52]:
You've helped me change my life through a tiny checkbox on a website form. So that's what I have now. But it very much started as, like, how do I make these people see what they're doing? And you know what I've realized? You can't. You just can't. So you have to ring the bell for what you believe in and bring the right people to you and just ignore the rest.
Nick Bennett [00:32:08]:
That's such a wonderful example of, like, what you're getting into, like, very unapologetically, Jay, on that one little checkbox, like, you have found a way to make filling out a website form part of the J experience. Whereas, like, mine's like, how did you hear about us? And it's like, I don't know. There's something. There's something to that. That the way you break the fourth wall, I think, is basically the. The thing that I'm trying to get at here.
Jay Acunzo [00:32:37]:
That's the problem. You know, we're all mature. I only sell to mature adults anyway. Like, we know what's going on here, so just be honest. Yeah, there's a lot of bait and switch. This goes on with public speaking, too. It's like every event organizer wants you to customize your talk. And some of them ask if it's a new talk or you've given it elsewhere and it's performative.
Jay Acunzo [00:32:59]:
Like, when you're hired as a speaker, you're like, I'm bringing the best material possible. You don't want brand new, never before given, because it's going to be the worst thing you've ever seen from me. Like, you want the best. So, like, can we drop the act? Like, my serving you means custom, not new. But for some reason in the sales process, people ask for, you know, is this new or not? Right. Then they have to come up with a kind of polite way of saying it. Or. I gave a workshop on message design for entrepreneurs, and it was about, like, how do you stand out? How do you convey quickly and concisely what you're about? To separate, but also to convey something positive.
Jay Acunzo [00:33:33]:
Not just like, I'm not them, but here's what I am. And there was one guy who came up to me. He's like, this is so refreshing. And then he broke my heart. He's like, because I just left the business where, you know, all the examples you use, Jay, were entrepreneurs. I just left a business that was larger, where all my bosses would have hated your examples. And I was like, why? Because they're entrepreneurs? He's like, no, because they spoke in plain English. He's like, all our communication was dense and corporate and all this stuff.
Jay Acunzo [00:33:58]:
It's like that. Okay. Yeah, great. That's why. That's why I like this crowd is because more and more solopreneurs are going. We're people helping other people. Like, making friends as marketing. What a good feeling.
Nick Bennett [00:34:08]:
Yeah. Well, I think the other reason that people want the. The new talk is because they can say, Jay Acunzo's new talk.
Jay Acunzo [00:34:15]:
I am not that well known. Nope.
Nick Bennett [00:34:17]:
I mean, whatever. Whoever's new talk, like Seth Godin's new.
Jay Acunzo [00:34:21]:
Talk, maybe Malcolm Gladwell.
Nick Bennett [00:34:22]:
Yeah. They want that on their marketing mater. But, like, I'm with you that I don't think anyone is going to think about it that hard. They're going to go, oh, Seth Godin's there. Like that's, that's the layer of, of care.
Jay Acunzo [00:34:36]:
Well, I'm not a Phil Seats speaker. I'm a Phil Minds Phil notebook speaker. There's, there's different types. Phil seats is like you see them on the agenda, you buy a ticket. And maybe Seth is that. I'm definitely not that. So I appreciate the compliment. Brendan Hufford, who you also know, another solopreneur, he says that I'm your favorite marketer's favorite marketer, which I love because what he's saying very gently is like Jay is better than his notoriety.
Jay Acunzo [00:35:02]:
Fine, I'll take it. I'll take it.
Nick Bennett [00:35:04]:
Brendan's hilarious. Brendan has. There is no filter. There is no filter. He is a wonderful human. I absolutely love Brendan. Okay. I'm very open about how this show is a product of the creator kitchen.
Nick Bennett [00:35:20]:
And it hurt my heart to know, to see that creator kitchen that you. You ended it.
Jay Acunzo [00:35:26]:
Yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:35:27]:
Ending things is never easy, even if it is the right thing to do. Talk to me about your decision to wrap that up and just kind of how you navigated that one. I think that's something that people don't really realize know how to. How do you land the plane?
Jay Acunzo [00:35:42]:
I hope we did it well. I mean, you would know better being on the receiving end as a former member. But I feel like. So Melanie Diesel and I. Melanie's another marketing author and speaker. We, we both got punched in the mouth in the pandemic. We both have little kids, both relied heavily on paid speaking to earn an income. And the pandemic wrote those businesses down to zero in a week and then to claw back.
Jay Acunzo [00:36:06]:
I lurched around for many years and one part of that lurching that felt more strategic than just reactive was at the beginning of or at the end of 2022, Melanie and I were talking about ways we were clawing our businesses back. She wants to rely a little more on travel based speaking than I do, but not the volume she used to do. And I want to stay home as much as possible. Neither is better or more noble is just what we prefer. I said, I'm going to. I have this URL creator kitchen. I'm thinking of building a membership. It's going to be education forward, maybe with a slack community, but I'm not a community builder.
Jay Acunzo [00:36:35]:
Do you want to go in on this with me? So we built this community group for two years along with that group. We had to figure out, what is our core business, what do I sell? And it was really hard to get out of my own way to figure that out for many years. And so about 18 months ago, I asked myself two questions. I don't know where these questions came from. I don't take credit or ownership over them. And if they help you, I hope you use them too. I said, I thought to myself, okay, number one, if I were in a room of a hundred, if I was one of a hundred, in a room of, like, knowledge workers on the Internet, what am I the best at doing there? Not the best in the world, but in that room. And then the second question I asked was, what are the people who are most impressive in my network, the most impressive people in my network, what are they most impressed by coming from me? And the answer was the same for both.
Jay Acunzo [00:37:24]:
It's all things public speaking. I know how to give a better speech. I know how to teach better speaking. I know how to help you drive client results like booking leads or getting invited to keep speaking through your speaking. Like, all things speaking, I could walk to the front of that room of 100. And again, I'm not the best speaker in the world, but I'm often the best speaker in the room, and I wasn't doing anything with that. And then I would give a talk. Like, I remember this one distinct moment where a CMO who's been giving talks for his different brands for years came rushing up to me, and we know each other, and he's like, jay, he came to see my talk.
Jay Acunzo [00:37:56]:
He's like, can you give my speech later today? Like, that was fricking fantastic. Like, I got to talk to you about my speaking. Oh, right. The most impressive people in my network are most impressed by that coming from me. And I was not selling anything to do with that, and I was not teaching it. It'd be like, you leave 20 years of being a copywriter for awesome brands to go start a business for marketers. And everyone goes, you're gonna teach copywriting? And you're like, no, I thought I'd teach tap dancing, right? It's like, what was I doing? So I got out of my own way, recognized where I find the overlap of what I'm really great at doing, what I love doing, and what people feel a need to do themselves and, oh, by the way, might pay for. And that started to take off.
Jay Acunzo [00:38:35]:
So eventually, I had to make the main thing the main thing and work with people on their messaging, on their story constructor, on the argument and big idea that they want to own publicly. And pressing all that into thought leadership, most notably speaking right, like, that's what I want to help people do who have substance and expertise and services that they offer without them having to quit their day jobs and go be a professional speaker full time. I want them to communicate with the same power. And so I, you know, Melanie and I looked at in the eye and her business was starting to take off. She develops frameworks, branded frameworks for entrepreneurs and for organizations. And we started getting more traction. And so it was a matter of like, okay, we first have to just let the main things be the main thing and let's go out on a high. Let's not run the restaurant.
Jay Acunzo [00:39:18]:
That gets real sad because the owner didn't know when to quit it and tried to operationalize and automate everything. So we broke the news to the, the membership at the beginning of this year and wound it down after a couple of months. Gave everybody access through the end of the year to the resource library. And it was a hard decision, but I think it was a decision we had to make both for our businesses and also for our members.
Nick Bennett [00:39:37]:
It's like hearing you tell this story and then also being a member, I can see the tension because there were so many people who enjoyed, like, they felt like they had found their people there. And I think, like, your mission and Melanie's mission to like, bring together people who give a shit about making things that people give a shit about. That whole thing brought together a whole group of people. And I mean, I've met some, some amazing people there and I've kept in touch with, with so many of them.
Jay Acunzo [00:40:06]:
That means a lot. That means a lot.
Nick Bennett [00:40:08]:
It's been fun.
Jay Acunzo [00:40:09]:
I think we have to pay attention to our energy levels more as entrepreneurs because we're always feeling. We feel so high or so low all the time, like, and then we're told, like, don't get too high, don't get too low. I actually think you need to pay attention to when you feel either extreme and calibrate. Because what I found so drained by with running a membership was unlike all the things I do now. Client services, paid speaking, boot camps, virtually and in person, corporate trainings. These are things that I'm able to develop, then deliver, and then improve them and then deliver it again. A membership is always on. There's no break.
Jay Acunzo [00:40:50]:
It's almost like being a parent where, like, there's no one thing that's exceptionally hard, you know, if your kids are healthy, especially. But everything is a little Bit harder everywhere you go, all the time. Both relating to being a parent and everything else you're doing. That's how it felt. It was like everything is a little bit harder. Executing the membership and also everything else I'm doing, I'm being kind of switched on and off too much, too much switching cost. So everything got harder. My baseline stress just went up a little bit.
Jay Acunzo [00:41:17]:
And I think that's because this always on thing with a product like a membership means you are proactively trying to develop and sell it, delivering it to existing members and then reacting to improve things for those existing members. All three of those, all the time. So you're simult processing all those things. And I realized, like, I don't like that. I'd much rather go, like, not go away, but have stations. I move through of like, I'm building the speech, I'm giving the speech, I'm improving the speech. I'm building the boot camp, I'm filling the boot camp, I'm delivering the boot camp, I'm improving the bootcamp. Same with like a client service, like consulting offer.
Jay Acunzo [00:41:52]:
Right. Like, what is the motions. We move through the phases, we move through with this client and what are the calls and the structure of that and then I finish it and I think about, how could I do it better for Nick if he hires me? Right. That's much more like energy giving than draining for me. And for someone else it might be the opposite. But I think we need to pay more attention to what drains us and what gives us energy. Because mostly we live on the extremes because of the volatile nature of what we're building or we're told don't sense those extremes, which might be a mistake.
Nick Bennett [00:42:22]:
Yeah. Emotional whiplash is a very real part of always doing this business, doing well, doing anything. But it's like extra. The volume is a much higher in this line of business or in this line of work.
Jay Acunzo [00:42:33]:
Can I step out of the interview for a second? I hope you keep this in the words you're hearing me utter. I've never uttered. Like, I've. You are asking questions. This is about a topic that I don't get asked about enough. And I love that I'm having so much fun with this. Like, I'm. You're not.
Jay Acunzo [00:42:48]:
You're not allowing me to shut off my brain and just give you a sound bite that seven other hosts have asked me. Because that's what usually these devolve into, right? They devolve into like, Jay talks about this. Come on our podcast and talk about that. Too, Jay. And here's the question you've heard a million times before. And then I have to, because I'm trying real hard not to, like, shut off my brain. I have to come up with an original thing to say so it doesn't sound like I'm turning off my brain and giving you a sound bite. Because I've been asked this seven times before, so I'm having a ball.
Jay Acunzo [00:43:13]:
Good job.
Nick Bennett [00:43:14]:
This is why I said you're the final boss of Podcast Guest, because I was like, how am I? I have to show up and ask a question to get you to say a thing that you've never said before.
Jay Acunzo [00:43:26]:
Yes.
Nick Bennett [00:43:26]:
And. And try to do it in a way and not try too hard. Yeah.
Jay Acunzo [00:43:31]:
I mean, there's only two reasons someone says that's a good question. Either one, that's a good question, or two, it's not a good question and they're buying time so they can actually think of an answer because you didn't construct it in a way where you. You knew they'd have to think, so you vamped enough. Where they do, like, that's a subtlety I love about interviewing is if I ask you a really reflect, like an introspective question, I have to vamp or give you an example, you're not going to listen to me do that. You're going to be in your head thinking about your answer. So anyways, when I say that's a great question, I mean it, man. This is great.
Nick Bennett [00:44:01]:
That is the highest compliment. I greatly appreciate it. Thank you, man. That means a lot. Oh, my gosh.
Jay Acunzo [00:44:09]:
Where do we go from here? Completely.
Nick Bennett [00:44:11]:
You just threw me. Well, hey, here's a couple things as we kind of wrap up here. There's one thing I wanted to chat about very quickly that I thought was hilarious. So you posted this video to LinkedIn the other day, and he was talking about how your exit interview at Google, the person said to you, your next job, like, you be careful because you can only use this Google story once.
Jay Acunzo [00:44:36]:
Yeah. He said, you make sure this next startup, Jay, is really the job for you because you can only play the Google card once. Right.
Nick Bennett [00:44:43]:
And so, I don't know, there was like a twinkle in your eye when you said it, because I swear, it's like they. It was a. Became a personal challenge to build a make a living off of telling that story. Like, you've used the Google story. Like, that's the story that I think a lot of your platform was built off of. Maybe it's not the core signature story. Anymore. But it's one of the core stories that I've heard you tell over and over and over again about how you, how the problem that you seek to solve came into focus for you.
Nick Bennett [00:45:16]:
And I just found this hilarious that almost like did you know it at the time? You were like, like this moment, this, this, this experience here is one of the most, the, one of the demarcation points of my life. Yeah. That is going to like fuel so much of the ten years from now. Really.
Jay Acunzo [00:45:35]:
I didn't know it was going to fuel anything. I knew it was a, an import like in the map and the route you're kind of constructing that is your career. You're putting dots down on the map like stops along the way. I knew I, I knew quitting Google would be a larger dot like I will remember this forever because it was my first job out of college and it's Google. It, it's Google. It was where I met my wife. It broke me from this story that was running in my head from being a good student where like you go to a good school, get good grades, join the clubs, be the president, join the teams, be the captain, then you go work for the most famous brand you can possibly work. Lots of success because that was what previous generations thought or at least lots of people who colored my experience growing up thought.
Jay Acunzo [00:46:18]:
And I was miserable for three years and I didn't know why. It's because you're handed this box labeled career that's full of stuff other people put there. And then you get into your career and you have to learn what to keep and what to throw away and what to replace it with. So there's a lot of self awareness. Like to rewire my career would be a mistake because I like where I'm at. But if I could give my younger self advice, I'd be like, listen, you're trying to make every job the job. A, that doesn't exist really not anymore, or not for you anyway. And B, you're in your 20s, you should be picking up context and network and experiments and learning, not trying to like find the thing because you don't know what the thing is.
Jay Acunzo [00:46:55]:
And you thought that the discovery phase was school, but it's not. It's experiencing actual jobs. Like how could you pick. That's the bullshit we go through when you're little. What do you want to be when you grow up? I don't know. Why would you ask a six year old that?
Nick Bennett [00:47:08]:
My mom. Every time life and business and stuff come up in this way, my Mom's like, nick, I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.
Jay Acunzo [00:47:16]:
Okay? Everything about my being, from when I was a kid to now. Creativity has played a big role, making things writing, performance, story, all of it. There's only one truism that, you know, I'm trying to shove at the world about creativity because we're losing sight of it. Especially because of all the stuff that we talked about on social, all the false certainty and the gurus and the systems. Creativity is not the instant manufacturing of brilliance. It's the consistent pursuit of curiosity. That's what it is. And a lot of things in school push that away because we're taught you have to have the correct answer, right? You're not taught to muck around and get comfortable in the mess.
Jay Acunzo [00:47:57]:
The mess is a problem to be solved. No, it's actually in the mess that you find your best. You find your learning. You find when you're writing things, that's the turn of phrase you needed. That's the direction you want to go. Like, the analogy I use is so much of everything I do for clients or myself. Message design, writing essays, hosting podcasts, drafting and delivering speeches. Like, stuff I do, stuff clients do.
Jay Acunzo [00:48:18]:
Everything. It's like, remember those RPG video games where they'd show you a map of the world that you were exploring and you would be in the home base kingdom, and the kingdom would be lit up and everything else would be black shadows on the map until you visited that area, and then it would be lit up on the map view, too, right? That's so much of career, business creativity. Writing one damn newsletter piece, right? Like, it's. I got to. I have to be in the mess. I have to muck around. I have to visit this little thing or that little thing, because when I'm there, I find all the good stuff. I figure it out.
Jay Acunzo [00:48:52]:
And so no tool that allows you to skip the message, no simple system that someone gives you can actually replace you having to go through that murkiness and that shadow. And so to me, you know, I didn't know the Google thing would be this evergreen story I'd tell everywhere. But I did know that, like, okay, I've just illuminated something really big. Not just because of the brand name Associated, but because that, like, threw me off for many years. I didn't know why I wasn't happy. And looking back, I can now make sense of it through story. And by telling that story, I hope you say, you know, you, Nick, or you the listener. Not only is Jay Speaking clearly, but I feel a connection.
Jay Acunzo [00:49:31]:
And I think the power of combining clarity and resonance, clarity and connection, that's. That's where your ideas start to have an impact.
Nick Bennett [00:49:39]:
The smirk on your face in that video and the. I feel like you sense the great irony. And you were like, I. There was some sort of. You were. So I feel like you got what you were looking for out of that moment, which was like, you were wrong.
Jay Acunzo [00:49:52]:
Well, I'm obsessed with this idea that marketing is getting shouty. But what if you could whisper? What would you say if you had to? If you couldn't shout, if you couldn't repurpose something in a million channels, if you couldn't put it in front of a thousand people, what would you say? If all you could do was whisper, what would you say? What would you. How would you build towards that? How would you deliver it so that the person who hears it thinks about it 10 times a day and then goes and tells 10 friends? And so that story, I wanted to try my hand at that story. I'm very inspired by a storyteller named Neil Ford who does a lot of these straight to camera short stories about the business world. Neil Ford F O A R D. So I want to try it like a kind of a Ford like story. And I think I ended it with, like you said, a twinkle in my eye, a smirk and an eyebrow raise, right? Because that's antithetical to a lot of speakers either on camera or, or on a stage where they're trying to get the standing O or trying to get the likes. And so they kind of shout at you.
Jay Acunzo [00:50:49]:
They're like hunting a huge emotional reaction. But what if your reaction, that's actually the best possible reaction in that instance would be like, man, you, this guy, right? Like. Or you sit there still in the silence and you just absorb it. Like, how would I hunt for those reactions instead? So that was my attempt to start, you know, figuring that out and trying.
Nick Bennett [00:51:12]:
I appreciate it, but I like the idea of this, like the slow media, this, like, it's not like the cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. It's just, it's. And having been consuming your work for as long as I have, I felt the inside joke. I was like, oh, I get this. Like, I get why that moment mattered. I get why this person. And you ended it on like. And I replayed it.
Nick Bennett [00:51:32]:
I was like, did that just happen? And I was like, I get why this moment was so powerful. And then you, or you using it as a tool to create some power here so you know what?
Jay Acunzo [00:51:43]:
I've told that story at least 50 times, too. Like, I've told it in speeches, I've told it in conversations, I've told it on podcasts. I've written about it. Like, I've thought about it, right? This is. I think we have this delusion that this is something that a former member of the creator kitchen, such as yourself, also said this. Susan Bowles, another soloist. Susan's like, jay, I just thought people like you poop gold. And I didn't realize, like, how much work goes into delivering a story or a message or a speech that connects like that.
Jay Acunzo [00:52:14]:
And I'm like, yeah, it looks effortless. Only because it wasn't. That's the secret. There's not really a secret. Like, we all know that, but I think we want to believe there's any other route to it. And I just. I don't believe that at all.
Nick Bennett [00:52:25]:
Normalize making the message. All right, man, looking back, what's something you would have done differently?
Jay Acunzo [00:52:31]:
I mean, it's so fresh. But it's. It's those two questions I asked. Not that I would have asked them specifically earlier or differently, but I think I've always felt too precious around my ideas where, because I was a keynote speaker, I was kind of. I forged my teeth as an entrepreneur in a way that gave me very many advantages and skills. I don't want to belittle that experience because, oh, my gosh, I loved it and I benefit greatly from it everywhere I show up. But one thing it taught me was, you know, I spoke. And this includes.
Jay Acunzo [00:53:01]:
I'm pointing to my screen here because I'm looking at my, like, LinkedIn profile here, because I was, like, looking for an old post of mine. I would share only big ideas. Like, I got away from the application of those ideas. I got away from what I call the feel of the flower. And I was trying to give you some big idea to change how you make pizza, where you were like, no, I'm just really struggling with this one step. And how do I figure that out? And so what I'm trying to do now is rewire myself to do things like you mentioned, we talked about Brendan Hufford. I posted an 11 minute video which was a snippet of a coaching call I had with him where I helped rework his signature webinar that he uses to book more clients. I helped rework that in real time and then edit it together as a resource.
Jay Acunzo [00:53:42]:
He allowed me to do it publicly.
Nick Bennett [00:53:43]:
Right?
Jay Acunzo [00:53:44]:
It's like, that's a new way of seeing me, if you've been following me, that's a new way of me showing up, which is I have all these abilities I'm grateful for, but being a keynote speaker, you are not responsible for the application layer. You might answer some questions about how to apply your ideas, but you're like, I'm here to shift your perspective, and then I'm out. And so now I really wish, looking back, that I started sooner because I always sense this tension moving past paid speaking towards services, that I wasn't doing enough to share the practice, to share the process and the practical. And only now am I like, that's what I'm excited to do in my own way, with all the big ideas and ways of speaking that I have, but so that people can actually, like, execute better, you know? So I wish I. I had done that differently. Meaning, like, a couple years ago. I wish I had sensed that tension and then quickly done something about it instead of saying, no, I don't want to do that, because everyone else does that. I wish I'd realized, like, you can play the game, but your own way.
Nick Bennett [00:54:42]:
There's an immense amount of value in people seeing you in action. So, dude, let's. Let's end here. What's next for you and what. What do you want to build that you haven't built yet?
Jay Acunzo [00:54:51]:
I'm spending most of my day in a notion file, which is me taking everything I've built over the years and putting it into a comprehensive method. Because once you have the method, that's like, the best thing about my IP that I can build right now. I know my premise for my platform. I have signature stories, I have all these visual frameworks. I have a lot of these ingredients. Now I got to put it all together into the dish or even the menu. Maybe. I'm calling it the Matter More method.
Jay Acunzo [00:55:16]:
And it's really. It's meant to help people build businesses by mattering more, because a lot of people are just marketing to exhaustion and they're not seeing traction anyway. So that's really what's next for me, is codifying everything into this one methodology. And then I can break pieces off as offers I sell. I can press it into the book. I can start to explore it through content. And so if you're on my newsletter, for example, or you listen to my show, all my essays and all my monologue episodes have been me trying to work through pieces of this method without you really knowing I was doing that. So now you and your listeners will.
Jay Acunzo [00:55:50]:
But that's what I'm most excited by is over the next couple of months, it's going to all kind of click for me and then I think the world is your oyster as an entrepreneur. When you have that system, your marketing, your public evangelism of your ideas off your platform and certainly your sellable offers, it all feels like of a piece and feels a lot more sustainable.
Nick Bennett [00:56:08]:
I love it. Jay, thank you for coming on the show. Dude, thank you for sharing your story with me. I know more people feel seen on their own route because of it, so I very much appreciate you, man. This has been a ton of fun.
Jay Acunzo [00:56:17]:
Agreed. Back at you. I'll come back anytime.
Nick Bennett [00:56:24]:
Hey, it's Nick. Thanks for listening. If you want to take part in amazing conversations like these, then you need to check out Full Stack Solopreneur, where you'll get access to bi weekly group coaching clinics, guest mini courses from legendary solopreneurs like Morgan Ingram and Max Traylor and so much more. You can join right now at fullstacksolo.com that's fullstack s o l o dot com. If you were to leave Earth tomorrow, you'd board a rocket ship headed to your planet of choice. What would be your last meal here?
Jay Acunzo [00:57:04]:
Oh, I've asked that question before. Did you steal this for me?
Nick Bennett [00:57:07]:
I think I've stolen a lot of podcasting, like, setup tips from you because.
Jay Acunzo [00:57:12]:
Wait, you know why I asked that? I asked that to loosen people up.
Nick Bennett [00:57:14]:
Yeah. Well, I think you're loose, but now it's become like a shtick where I bolt it onto the end of the episode.
Jay Acunzo [00:57:19]:
Oh, I love that. No, that's great.
Nick Bennett [00:57:21]:
So you're gonna. I'll have your. I'm gonna do a massive compilation one day.
Jay Acunzo [00:57:26]:
That's really.
Nick Bennett [00:57:27]:
I love that.
Jay Acunzo [00:57:27]:
All right. My last meal on Earth would be a Sally's Pizza or Sally's Upbeats in New Haven, Connecticut. It's got to be the New Haven one, though.
Nick Bennett [00:57:36]:
Of course.
Jay Acunzo [00:57:37]:
Yeah, that's the original. They've expanded to different locations. There's one 10 minutes from my house, which I love. But If Sally's is 100 out of 100 in quality of pizza and, you know, the memories too, then the one near me is like 92 out of 100. So I got to go with the OG Sally's abit in New Haven.
Nick Bennett [00:57:55]:
Thank you for saying Sally's. Because it is. I agree. That's New Haven is pizza capital of Earth.
Jay Acunzo [00:58:01]:
Yes.
Nick Bennett [00:58:02]:
People don't get that.
Jay Acunzo [00:58:03]:
No, you get it, though.
Nick Bennett [00:58:04]:
Yeah. And it. And thank you for not saying Pepe and not saying Modern or bar?
Jay Acunzo [00:58:09]:
Well, growing up, it was Sally's versus Pepys, like, Yankees versus Red Sox. And somebody would wander over and go, I'm a modern fan. And that was like, the Mets. Right. And then Barr would come in and be like, I guess you're a Phillies fan. I don't know. Like, there was, like, the hierarchy of baseball teams was very similar to the hierarchy of. It's like Sally's and Pepys, and I don't want to hear about anything else.
Nick Bennett [00:58:27]:
Yeah.
Jay Acunzo [00:58:28]:
And my family was a Sally's family.
Nick Bennett [00:58:30]:
I wholeheartedly agree. The office of the company I used to work for was in New Haven, and everyone always wanted to go to Modern. And it just. I was like, I can't. I can't with this. What's going on? So I feel.