Speaker 1: Hey everybody and welcome to the Friday Wrap on Streamline Solopreneur. A short episode where I talk about
Speaker 1: three things, what's on my mind, recommended reading and recommended media. This is the show that
Speaker 1: helps you automate your business so you can take time off worry-free and hopefully this
Speaker 1: curation will help you think more about your systems. I'm your host Joe Casabona and here's
Speaker 1: what's on my mind. The first thing I want to talk about today, the thing that's been on my mind
Speaker 1: all week really is, are we beholden to an algorithm or is content creation worth it? See,
Speaker 1: I left social media except for LinkedIn completely about six months ago. I left Twitter
Speaker 1: over a year ago. I... And to say, I...
Speaker 1: I left means I deleted my accounts. I've actually been off of social media for a lot longer than that.
Speaker 1: And it's been nearly two years since a social media app has been on my phone for more than 10 minutes.
Speaker 1: And it's because I didn't want to feel like I was beholden to some algorithm. But this week,
Speaker 1: I've been working on my SEO strategy for my search engine optimization strategy. What key words?
Speaker 1: I want my website and my podcast and my YouTube channel to rank for.
Speaker 1: I've been back and forth on whether or not I should start a new YouTube channel from scratch
Speaker 1: or just rebrand the current one.
Speaker 1: And it got me thinking that even not being on social media,
Speaker 1: how much of what I'm doing is to appease an algorithm.
Speaker 1: Part of this too is I've been using vid IQ.
Speaker 1: I signed up for vid IQ.
Speaker 1: That's VID and then IQ,
Speaker 1: which is a service to help you do keyword and competitor analysis specifically on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I've been using it and I can't help but wonder if I'd actually be better off with an actual YouTube coach because I want YouTube to work.
Speaker 1: Now that I'm not on social media, I need some way to be discovered.
Speaker 1: And so I'm going back to these kind of pre-social media ways.
Speaker 1: Not that YouTube is like really pre-social media, but it felt different, right?
Speaker 1: It felt like it was recommending videos that, you know, it thinks I would like.
Speaker 1: And with search engines, right, Google has been around for a very long time,
Speaker 1: nearly 30 years, 30 years this year maybe. And it's still an algorithm I need to appease. And with
Speaker 1: AI, now we're talking about GEO, right? Generative engine optimization. So is content
Speaker 1: creation worth it? And are we always going to be behold into an algorithm? And the truth is, yes,
Speaker 1: to both of those questions, right? Is content creation still worth it? Absolutely. There's a ton of
Speaker 1: slop, which means that if you make good content, you will stand out. But yes, we will always be
Speaker 1: beholden to an algorithm because there is so much content that something needs to surface
Speaker 1: our stuff to the right people.
Speaker 1: And so as long as you keep making good content, content that you're actually putting time into,
Speaker 1: it should behoove Google and YouTube and even large language models, even social media,
Speaker 1: to show us stuff that we will eat.
Speaker 1: engage with that we will like, that will help us. Because if it just keeps showing a
Speaker 1: slop, we're going to leave. So it's something, you know, I don't, I don't really have a good
Speaker 1: solution for this. It's just a thought I've been having a lot this week. Because as I
Speaker 1: revamp my content strategy, I keep thinking, how is my stuff going to get found? Some people
Speaker 1: people will tell you that search engines are useless because they're just going to clip the
Speaker 1: important part and show it to people right on their site, right? Google's AI summaries or
Speaker 1: Google's snippets so that people don't have to go to your website or watch your video.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that's true. I think that people, especially more now, want to connect with
Speaker 1: the people that they are learning from or that they're being entertained by.
Speaker 1: So I don't, again, I don't have an answer. It's just been on my mind a lot this week.
Speaker 1: I'm going to move forward with optimizing my website for keywords, actually making good content
Speaker 1: that people are searching for. I think I've adopted a personal social media strategy for my
Speaker 1: content sites. I'm just like, yeah, I'm feeling this way, so I'm going to write this way.
Speaker 1: But that's especially not how YouTube works. And so I'm trying to fix that. And yeah,
Speaker 1: vid IQ has been helping me. Claude has been helping me a little bit, I suppose.
Speaker 1: But again, I think going back to that algorithm versus people thought, I think a YouTube coach
Speaker 1: could actually help me. And I guess the other,
Speaker 1: maybe this is the solution, right? We need the algorithms so people discover us. We need to be found
Speaker 1: some way. And then we need to make sure that we give those people who find us a way to stay
Speaker 1: connected to us. Because one of the things I heard this week was, it doesn't even matter if you're
Speaker 1: subscribed to a YouTube channel anymore. You can't guarantee that
Speaker 1: the YouTube homepage will show you the things you're subscribed to.
Speaker 1: And even if you go to the subscriptions page now, it's like, it's not just a list of videos
Speaker 1: published in reverse chronological order. It tells you the most important ones or whatever
Speaker 1: wording it use. It's using an algorithm to figure out which one of your subscription channels,
Speaker 1: which one of the channels you're subscribed to, you'll like the best, followed by a bunch of
Speaker 1: So you want to give people the ability to connect with you once they discover you.
Speaker 1: So like a mailing list is the way to do that.
Speaker 1: My call to action always for everything is join my mailing list.
Speaker 1: It'll be at the end of this episode as well, which by the way, I'm trying something new for
Speaker 1: this episode.
Speaker 1: If you usually listen on the feed, I do have a video.
Speaker 1: of this where I have some fun lower thirds. I'm messing with e-cam a little bit. And so I'm trying this out.
Speaker 1: This is a format I probably try every six months. I think this is my favorite version of it.
Speaker 1: So if you want to see what that looks like, I'll have a link to the YouTube video in the description.
Speaker 1: But I also have this YouTube video up.
Speaker 1: So I think the solution is use the algorithm to your advantage.
Speaker 1: and then capture people by getting them on your mailing list.
Speaker 1: So that's what's on my mind this week.
Speaker 1: Moving on to recommended reading,
Speaker 1: it's really recommended listening.
Speaker 1: It is an episode by Cal Newport on his podcast, Deep Questions.
Speaker 1: He has this series called AI Reality Check.
Speaker 1: and now last week the question was, is Claude Mythos terrifying?
Speaker 1: And I really love this episode because he takes the time to tell you what's going on with Claude Mythos,
Speaker 1: which I'll let Cal catch you up, but Anthropic decided not to really really.
Speaker 1: it because the CEO of Anthropic and security quote unquote experts were saying, oh, this is
Speaker 1: dangerous. It can find vulnerabilities more efficiently than any other model before. So, you know,
Speaker 1: Cal gives you a much deeper insight into that. And then he goes into all of the studies and all the
Speaker 1: that have been done to show that no?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he started up, if you find the YouTube video,
Speaker 1: it's, he straight up tells you no in the title, which I love, right?
Speaker 1: Is Claude Mythos terrifying? No.
Speaker 1: And he has a lot of receipts for why Claude Mythos isn't doing anything
Speaker 1: any more impressive than previous models,
Speaker 1: which is, which just goes to show you that the loudest,
Speaker 1: I've said this before, but like the loudest AI voices are the ones
Speaker 1: who have the most to gain.
Speaker 1: And Cal Newport makes this point, too.
Speaker 1: The CEO of Anthropic, it would behoove him
Speaker 1: to talk about how scary
Speaker 1: and how advanced his models are.
Speaker 1: Billions and billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: Right? This is why Sam Altman talks about that too.
Speaker 1: Billions of dollars are at stake for these guys.
Speaker 1: so they have to make it seem like they are crossing the Rubicon with every release.
Speaker 1: When the truth is, there's a very definitive end to how large language models work.
Speaker 1: And I've talked about that before, but I think it's good to hear it from a computer science guy.
Speaker 1: I'm also a computer science guy, but he still is deeper into it than I am at this point.
Speaker 1: He's really smart, and he does the research.
Speaker 1: And so I would strongly recommend this episode.
Speaker 1: I'll have it in the description in the show notes over his streamline.fm.
Speaker 1: The other thing I'll mention is that the main episode for this week,
Speaker 1: I talk about lessons from Ryan Holiday's discipline is destiny,
Speaker 1: specifically lessons for solopreneurs.
Speaker 1: This was something, I won't rehash the entire episode here, but I was really struck by how much it seemed he was speaking to solopreneurs.
Speaker 1: Especially like he talks specifically about delegating, which I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 1: So I would recommend Discipline is Destiny, the book.
Speaker 1: I think I would recommend the, I've read half of the Stoic Virtue series at this point, and I've liked both of them a lot.
Speaker 1: But if you want to hear my thoughts on Discipline is Destiny, that's over at streamlined.fm slash 526.
Speaker 1: And then finally, I want to wrap up with some recommended media.
Speaker 1: And so this is, I think I mentioned on last week's Friday wrap up, but Scrubs, the, I think they're calling it the revival, Scrubs season 10, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: calling it season 10 is weird because they've kind of retconed season 9 or Scrubs MedSchool.
Speaker 1: Scrubs MedSchool was supposed to be a spin-off that suddenly became season 9 of Scrubs.
Speaker 1: I thought season 8 ended so perfectly.
Speaker 1: And so for season 10 or the revival, whatever, the one that just wrapped up this year,
Speaker 1: they have retconned everything so that season 9 slash Scrubs MedS.
Speaker 1: school doesn't didn't exist. But the cool thing about the original run of Scrubs is that they shot it
Speaker 1: in an actual hospital. So everything you saw there was an abandoned hospital. It wasn't an
Speaker 1: active hospital, but they had a lot of real things to work with, real sets and real equipment
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Part of the reason why they got rid of Scrubs med school was because that season
Speaker 1: opens with them saying they knocked down the old hospital and put up a med school.
Speaker 1: And so they couldn't do this revival in the same hospital if they hadn't retcon season
Speaker 1: nine slash med school.
Speaker 1: Anyway, the video I am recommending is from Architectural Digest.
Speaker 1: And the original cast, Zach Raff, Donald Faison, and Sarah Chalk, give you a behind-the-scenes
Speaker 1: tour of how they rebuilt Sacred Heart Hospital.
Speaker 1: It is astounding because I didn't know this until I, until after I saw at least part of either the trailers or the first episode.
Speaker 1: And it completely fooled me.
Speaker 1: And I have watched Scrubs at least once a year, every year for 20 years.
Speaker 1: So I just think that it's so cool.
Speaker 1: that they took this time to recreate the hospital exactly.
Speaker 1: And the reason I'm talking about this here is because it shows what they felt was worth
Speaker 1: putting their time, effort, and money into.
Speaker 1: They knew who would be watching the show, and they wanted it to be hyper-realistic,
Speaker 1: hyper-accurate and very true to the old show.
Speaker 1: They could have phoned it in and made a few sound stages,
Speaker 1: and it probably would have looked good enough.
Speaker 1: But they weren't going for good enough.
Speaker 1: And so as a solopreneur, as you build out your systems and you think about these things,
Speaker 1: what is it worth spending time on how?
Speaker 1: What's your version of rebuilding Sacred Heart Hospital in Scrubs?
Speaker 1: It's also just a dope video.
Speaker 1: So, like, I think it's really cool seeing the behind-the-scenes stuff, but I wanted to bring it up here because I thought it was cool as a recommendation.
Speaker 1: And I like to think about the people who know how and when it's worth spending their time, because this is something I think about a lot.
Speaker 1: So I'll have that in the show notes as well.
Speaker 1: But that's it for the Friday wrapup for April 24th, 2026.
Speaker 1: If you liked this episode, if you want to get the show notes, if you want to get the rest of this podcast, head on over to streamlined.com slash wrapped.
Speaker 1: You'll also get the opportunity to join my mailing list and get my daily three task journaling method so that you know what you should be spent.
Speaker 1: spending your time on.
Speaker 1: But that's it for this episode of the streamlined solopreneur.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: And until next time, I hope you find some space in your weekend.