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How do world-class agencies continue to grow profitably and hit their goals, even through the choppy waters and challenges of agency life?
How do leaders like Tiffany Sauder, Marcus Sheridan, Jay Acunzo, Shama Hyder, David C. Baker, Nikole Rose, and Zeb Evans think?
Join Agency Journey host Jakub Grajcar as he interviews agency operators and leaders to share insights, actionable tips, and hilarious stories from the builders who live in the agency trenches.
Each episode focuses on crucial aspects of growing an agency like building the right team, delegation, project management, client success and retention, and operating frameworks like EOS.
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All right. Welcome back to agency journey. This
is your host, Gray MacKenzie from ZenPilot.
And this week I've got the pleasure of bringing
on Jay Acunzo. Jay is the founder of creator
kitchen, which we're going to be talking about
more and more throughout the podcast here today.
We'll talk about the membership program, his
work with his podcast, unthinkable, a whole
bunch of awesome experiences in the background
from being HubSpot to next to you to ESPN in
the startup space and the VC space you're all
over the place. Jay. So talk about all that,
but really you're an excellent storyteller.
Like one of the best storytellers that I know.
And so I'm excited to dig into and learn from
you here today around that scene, but welcome
to the podcast. I appreciate being here. Thanks.
I really appreciate it. You have on the, I
should have actually looked up what pages is
on, but you've got a couple of things on there
from Jesse Cole, um, with the Savannah bananas.
Yeah. And so I've been on like multiple wait
lists. At some point I will make it to a Savannah
bananas game. I think it's hard to get tickets.
Yeah. Have you been? I have not, no. And you
know, the context for people listening is they're,
they started as a Meyer league team, then our
Meyer league baseball team. Uh, they, I would
say that they're known as the world's most entertaining
baseball team today and Jesse Cole in his yellow
tuxedo and yellow top hat is the sort of chief
banana. They go hard at the banana puns, but
he's kind of the PT Barnum of baseball right
now, and he's on a mission to make baseball
more fun, uh, which I really appreciate. I love
baseball. I'm a huge fan, started as a sports
journalist. wrote about baseball in my senior
thesis as an English literature major back
in college. And a lot of baseball purists don't
love what they're up to, but I can see, I see
the forest and I think what they're building
is really important. I love it. I think there's
so many quirky things that they do. I have this
conversation probably like a couple times a
month where people ask me about, I grew up playing
baseball, coached high school baseball and
have been around that for a while. And I would
describe myself in most aspects as a purist,
but man, I love the, hey, let's get people excited
about it. And then, hey, we can expose them
to the whole sport of baseball. How did you
get connected with Jesse? So I run a podcast
called unthinkable and we just crossed 200 episodes.
And the premise of the show is unconventional
choices made by creative people and the remarkable
things they make as a results and the agenda
of the show, it's related to the premise of
course, but the mission. is to help people
question best practices and conventional wisdom
and trust themselves more. It's ultimately
a show about, and even the cover art evokes
this now. We just did a refresh, which I'm
really excited about, but the trusting of yourself
and your intuition and your craft more than
best practices and blueprints. And with that
word unconventional, it's hard not to notice
the Savannah bananas, because a lot of people
who either pitch me or who we notice just in
planning, we look under the hood and there's
nothing real there. They're just pulling a
stump. That's pretty hollow. to then try and
trick you into selling something or coerce
you into doing something or, you know, they're
self-aggrandizing and they're pulling a stunt
to get attention. What Jesse's doing is very
mission driven, very craft driven and quality
focused. And so while he's not necessarily himself
a content creator, although I guess he would
consider himself one, he is, I shouldn't say
that he is. He's written multiple books. Um,
you know, they're very, very highly followed
on. TikTok and elsewhere, they have more followers
on TikTok than any major league team. Now, if
you don't know baseball, that is, I literally
almost said this without meaning the pangrei.
I almost said that is bananas. Yeah. So that
is wild that a minor league team that almost
nobody usually ever cares about, except for
the people right around the stadium, would have
more followers on any social platform, let
alone, I think, you know, most of them that
involve video anyway, than a major league team,
than the New York Yankees, my team. So... What
they're doing is exceptional. And I honestly
just reached out to him. I said, listen, this
is the show and you know, I have a way I like
to pitch the show to people and he agreed to
come on and he showed up to the audio only
interview wearing his yellow tux and yellow
top hat. And we did this amazing interview
together, which by the way, was full of interruptions.
I think I had a big package delivered to the
door and I had to apologize and excuse myself
halfway through. And. You know, I have a Beagle
who barks all the time and I think he was going
crazy. Jesse was very gracious and appreciative.
And after the interview went live or the, I
shouldn't say the interview, but the story
went live, you know, we do a lot of post-production
on the show, narrative, um, sound music, all
this stuff. And he sent me a video and he was
like, that was the most well-produced pie.
I said it to my dad. I said it to Pembers of
the theme and he was, it was great. So can't
get a better testimonial than the PT Barnum
of baseball shooting a video while standing
at his home field. in a yellow tuxedo and top
hat. So yes, on my website, wherever you find
my show, you find a video testimonial from the
great Jesse Colt. That's amazing and an awesome
story. So I want to give you, I want to tee
you up to tell another story, which is, uh,
you're doing sports journalism. That's kind
of, it sounds like a big passion, um, going
through college and you kind of wind up in the
tech space. And now today here we are, you
mentioned one of the things that you're up to
with the podcast. What's the story arc from
this English lit major to today? I mean, today
I can say it with confidence and clarity. Like
I, I am on a mission to help people make what
matters to their careers, to their companies
and to their communities. There is just so much
copycat thinking out there and AI is just pushing
the, we shouldn't say AI, we should say generative
AI because AI is much different as a whole.
But generative AI is pushing the value of commodity
content to zero. But I think it's pretty much
always been close to zero to create things that
anyone could create. And the only way to win
there is you got to shout louder, hype harder,
run faster, rank higher, because I can get
this anywhere and you happen to be anywhere.
You know, it's, it's this transaction. It's
very hollow approach to content. And as a sports
journalist, I wanted to tell stories like Jesse's.
I want to tell stories that were feature focused,
that were human focus. Cause I saw sports as
this awesome, like microcosm of humanity. I
mean, I was inspired growing up by Rick Riley,
who wrote the back page column on Sports Illustrated
in the print edition, or Bill Simmons, when
he came on the scene, moving from a Boston area
sports blogger, the Boston sports guy, to becoming
just the sports guy on a subsection of ESPN.com,
known as page two at the time, to one of the
biggest columnists on the planet there, to then
spinning out and well first running Grantland
under ESPN and then the Ringer, two different
sites that uphold what I would call like, colloquial
intelligence, like it's your smartest friend
at the bar or over coffee. It very accessible,
very fun, like tone of voice forward while getting
romantic about what they cover while covering
it like a fan would. And I love that about both
of them and especially Simmons, you know, I'm
not alone, very popular writers, the both of
them. So I kind of came up with this lens of
like, when I get into the workforce after college,
I want to write like that. And so I did everything
in my power to do that. Internships at print
papers. worked for the Hartford Current, the
biggest state paper in Connecticut, interned
at ESPN. When I graduated, I got a job at Google
in sales because print was not doing well, it
was 2008. And I ended up in ad sales and, Cray,
I gotta tell ya, I was miserable. It was a very
valuable moment, very valuable lesson that
like, just because everybody thinks a brand
is great to work for, it doesn't mean it's
great for you. Like we go about our days, especially
as students who are about to enter the workforce,
but I think all of us as professionals experience
this too, kind of writing someone else's script.
And I had not yet learned how to write my own,
but I switched from Google to a tiny little
startup into content marketing and I have not
looked back. So in-house roles or independent
work, like writing books, giving speeches, making
shows, and now running a membership for quality
and craft-driven storytellers and content creators.
The only way I can summarize all of that is
I am on a mission to help people make what matters
because there's a lot of stuff out there that
is being shipped at high volumes that doesn't.
What's the, so you said two things that like,
I'm just trying to square my head. One is make
what matters, but who it matters to, you know,
you mentioned your community, kind of your audience,
like external, but earlier you said follow
your gut and don't do like unconventional is
the, is the theme here. And so is your underlying
thesis that we have a better intuition for what
people, what matters to people than them getting
lost and following best practices? Or how do
you connect those two ideas? I think, I mean,
this is happening in the world right now. There's
a very bright line dividing types of communicators,
content creators. On the one hand, you have
people who think the job is to create content.
And on the other, you have the people who know
the job is to create connection. And I want
more people to be on that side. The content
is for connection. It's not about 10xing your
volume, 10x the speed. It's about creating things
that have an impact. And so we're getting so
obsessed with being visible that we've forgotten
the job is to be memorable. Reach is how many
see it, but resonance is how much they care.
And no amount of reach guarantees that people
will care. We need to master this discrete skill,
which is to resonate with others. Because when
we resonate with others, they take actions.
So. Whether you're like me and you love talking
about creativity as an ideal, or you're a cold
hard calculating capitalist, or anyone in between
to master the skill of resonating with other
people, which is a masterable skill, it is
a craft, is good for business and good for you
and those receiving your work. So when I talk
about things like your intuition or craft or
quality, I'm looking hard at that divide and
I'm saying, okay, the object of our work is
to connect, is to resonate. to inspire reflection
and action in others with our words. How do
we do that? Well, first we have to master our
craft, whether you're a writer, public speaker,
a podcaster, all the above, a multimedia creator,
a marketer, whatever you're doing, there's a
craft to it. And unfortunately, I think a lot
of us have over-indexed on one narrow interpretation
of craft, which is process. That's like the
workflow techniques and tools that you use to
guide the work. And unfortunately, increasingly,
You are not guiding the work. It is the workflow
that someone said, do it this way. Cause I'm
the guru. I'm the best practice giver and they
are guiding your work or the tool is guiding
your work, which is even more dangerous. So,
but that's still just a narrow view. It's the
process. It requires you the least, the workflow
techniques and tools that you use to guide
the work. There's two other elements that we
forget are part of our mastery of craft, which
is our posture and our practice. So really quick
definitions on both. Your posture is how you
see yourself and the world. It is your confidence.
It is your quirks. It is the messy bag of humanity
that you haul with you to anything you create.
And when we create, I think all of us would
admit we affect the work somehow, but historically
we just left that to chance. We can do that
no longer. What is your personal vision for
the work, for where you're leading your audience?
Are you a leader? Like visionaries don't have
some gift and nor are they some like hollow
guru like tweeting out fortune cookies. Visionaries
are people who have vision. So what's yours?
What is your vision for where this is all going
for your audience? Where are you taking us
away from? Cause that's what leaders do, move
us away from something. And where are you taking
us towards? What's the mountain peak in the
distance that you're marching us towards? So
being, having a posture is not just puffing
yourself up. It's you have a vision. You, you
see yourself and the world and the work that
you put out into it in a certain way. Another
way of phrasing this, it's your creative fingerprints.
Can you get that all over the work? If I white
label it, it's unmistakably your own. That's
powerful. That's how you have impact. The other
is, is practice. Now do you do this consistently?
Is it more than just a stunt or a one-off thing?
Is it more than the big story on the agency
homepage? Is it more than a big story, uh,
to a bunch of prospective clients in a room?
Is it every Friday I ship? Why? Cause it's
Friday. I have a practice. I'm getting better
and better and better. I'm honing my craft,
not just the process, but also my posture. because
I have a practice. And when you do that, when
you throw yourself into the practice of it all,
what happens is you develop a process that's
more tailored to you. So the thing we start
with and obsess over, process, what's the best
practice? How do we actually execute it? And
that's really what we're looking for, not best
practice, but best process. When we are obsessed
over that, we're obsessing over something that
honestly could be a byproduct of you just bringing
your posture to the practice consistently,
right? Like my writing process. is honed based
on years and years and years of shipping every
single week, multiple times per week actually.
And I have a better process than I could prescribe
to anybody else for my own purposes. And it
brings out work that only I can do. So anyways,
I think the point is we're losing sight of the
fact that the job is not to create content,
the job is to create connection. The depth of
the connection that you have is the most important
thing you can build with an audience, with clients,
with prospective clients, with partners, with
team. with friends, with family, doesn't matter
with people. And the way we do that is to learn
to resonate. It's a craft you can learn, but
if you keep interpreting craft as process,
that's the thing that requires you to lease.
And thanks to all this technology being developed
right now, very soon you might not be required.
And that's what has been worried. That's awesome.
I've got two threads I want to pull on from
that. The first one is how do I, as an agency
owner, get better at resonating and building
that connection? I think you can start very
small. Like when you're telling stories, a lot
of people think you have to be someone who
does what I do, where you have to have a massive
audience, where you have to have something
groundbreaking that you've lived through or
found. And so you get a lot of kind of hollow
storytelling attempts. You know, you repurpose
a Steve Jobs story for the millionth time.
Where are you in all that? Or you tell your
end-to-end biography and alienize your own
hero's journey. That's pretty limiting. Even
if you had something groundbreaking happen
to you. There's a lot of biases there that are
unrelated in the minds of your audience. But
if you think about like, there are four ways
you could communicate each with like an ascending
array of power in this order, it starts to get
more concrete. So the four are one, like, let's
say you wanted to teach, um, a really easy example
is let's say you want to teach other people
that take more risks and you also love to skydive,
like the hesitancy we feel is I'm not going
to pull from my love of skydiving. By the way,
this is a real example. This is from Brian.
I should shout him out. This is from Brian Piper,
who's a member of the Creator Kitchen. He's
a higher ed marketing leader and a speaker and
an author, co-authored Epic content with Joe
Polizzi. So Brian is a part of this membership
that I'm running and Brian and I talk a lot
and he's like, you know, I really love skydiving
and I teach marketers how to create better
content and develop better experiences through
data. But I never really, I don't think people
would care about skydiving. You're right. They,
they might not. They don't care about you when
you tell the story. They care about themselves.
Like your personal stories are not about you.
They're about the thing you're there to say,
which is of use to others. So what you do when
you don't use anything from your own lived experience
is you just hand out instruction, just flat
advice and prescription. It's like six simple
ways to take more risks in your work. Everybody
knows the importance of taking risks. You become
more innovative. You learn, you learn through
failure, blah, well today, here are six techniques.
It's like... That's not good enough. It's not
powerful enough. That's not going to resonate
enough. So that's instruction. It's flat advice
or prescription. There's no story. The second
way to do it, which is where I think people
get stuck is story as illustration. Now as a
speaker, I have a lot of stories that I've
collected over the years that I can tell on
stages or elsewhere that are about other people,
but as everybody communicates publicly in some
fashion, agency owners are great example. Probably
from your personal experience is useful too.
but it's pretty limiting, useful, but limiting,
to use your example, your life, your work as
illustration. It's an example or a case study.
I did it this way, you should do it this way.
I did it and you can too, and here's how I
did it. It was my blueprint, now it's yours.
Again, so back to Brian, like Brian works at
Higher Ed. You'd be like, I'm teaching a bunch
of Higher Ed marketers, and I wanna tell you
how my University of Rochester, how I approach
data, and now you can too. Lots and lots of
problems, lots of biases that are, you know,
related to the person and also related to the
people receiving your work. Very simple example
of that would be I talked to an executive who
worked for a fortune 500 brand who had a lot
of speaking gigs. And when he left that company,
he was complaining to me that his gigs had dried
up. And I said, I, that's because you keep
telling the story of your own success at that
brand. You're using your story as illustration
as a case study, but the longer you go, the
longer it has been since you worked there,
the less timely and relevant that is. And also
the different types of audiences you're trying
to reach. They might not have worked there.
They might see a white straight male and go,
uh-uh, not going to too much privilege. Like
I'm not, I'm dealing with more friction in
my life or whatever. So illustration is using
your own story as an example or a case study.
It's the next two things that we want to get
to as storytellers. Metaphor and allegory.
And they're related, but there are some differences.
So metaphor is just using something you experienced
a moment of memory of the hobby you have. even
a trauma you might've gone through, to create
a quick comparison. You're telling them. So
Brian might go like, so hey, I'm a big skydiver.
And in skydiving, you have to take the leap.
You have to leap out of the plane. So in our
work, we need to take the leap. We have to embrace
risk. Okay, so two things about that. So one
is that is a very useful storytelling device
to get somebody into the larger point, but
you still need to make the larger point and
you might've missed somebody with that quick
analogy or rather metaphor. But two, and this
is really, really dangerous, is we start pulling
from our lives, but we pull the obvious things.
We haven't interrogated our experience. Like
a writer, a storyteller, a journalist, the job
is to interrogate the lived experience. So
with Brian, he goes, take the leap. I don't
need to know that you skydive, to know that,
yeah, skydivers make the leap. And so that's
a good metaphor for me making, it's too obvious.
There's not much power there. It's not that
memorable. It's not that profound. You haven't
really helped me that much, like change the
way I see or think or execute so you can hunt
for something not obvious. So for Brian, he
might go, okay, so I skydive a lot. And there's
this moment that you might not know unless you
lived it. But when you leap out of the plane,
which is the moment most people think about
whether you skydive or not, there's a second
moment, like let's say you're tandem diving
and the person strapped to your back will tap
you on the shoulder. That's your cue to open
up your limbs so you can fall better, fall
safety, fall honestly, in a more enjoyable way.
So it's not enough when you skydive to just
make the leap. There's something else you got
to do after that, right? To have a successful
time of it. Well, in our work, it's not enough
to make the leap. You have to be open to what
happens once you do. Cause if you're just closed
off to new possibilities, even if you've decided
to make the leap to quit the jobs, to do the
new thing, if you're clinging to what came
before back in the plane of conventional wisdom
here, well, you're not going to have a successful
time of it. You're not going to enjoy it. Not
going to be open to what happens. Right? So
that's a more, that's a non-obvious. metaphor
pulled from something personal to, to Brian.
And I won't belabor the point, but lastly, allegory,
the difference is it's not a comparison to
arrive at a lesson. It's a story to arrive at
a lesson. So you'd still have that punchline
I just gave you, but for Brian, he would detail
his 500th jump and he flew to Arizona and he
met these characters. There's a sense of character
and setting and chronology and some tension.
You'd sort of raise the stakes with like how
he was feeling. Was he nervous? Describe that.
Did he have open ended questions? list them,
it's much more of a tail to arrive at the lesson
than a quick comparison, so you're showing rather
than telling. So really quickly, all four again,
you can give out instruction, which is flat
prescription without story. You can share illustration,
which if you pull from your own life, that is
useful, but rather limiting of it's an example
that looks like what my audience wants to do,
it's a case study, you can offer metaphor,
which is a comparison to arrive at a lesson,
or you can offer allegory, which is a story.
to arrive at a lesson. And those four things
have ascending orders of power when we communicate.
Whether you're communicating about something
that you love, but you find the lesson others
could care about, or you're talking about somebody
you found and someone you observed. But either
way, you're communicating with a lot more power.
And I think that, Matt, I think that's how
we resonate. Don't just think about the volume
of your work, think about its power. Yeah,
that's awesome. That's a great breakdown. I
think to try and take that. And that applies
everywhere. I think obviously we think of that
in a sales context or marketing context. Let's
go tell a story, but that applies to how you're
recruiting for your team and how you're leading
an internal team and how you're communicating
on a day to day basis with everybody. Yeah,
it can be very performative. I kind of just
perform it myself, right? Or it could be very
kind of like stripped down, you know, like in
a sales interaction or client interaction,
you know, like Yeah, like I totally hear your
objection. I mean, this is what we adore in
the movies or on TV, like well-written scripts
will do this and I don't see it showing up
enough in our lives, but it's like, yeah, like
point taken, you know, very important client
that remind me. So I'm a skydiver. Right. And
when you tell a quick story and you get good
at this, like as an author, you take your stories
with you on the road, like literally onto stages,
but also virtually when you do things like this.
And you have a short bag of stories that go
a small bag that you can dip into. And I think
like every professional communicator, which
if you're a business owner, that's part of the
job. And certainly if you're an agency owner,
but I think every communicator would benefit
from having like a short list of stories that
each have slightly different purposes to them,
that we know how to tell different ways. And
the only way that happens is if we decide to
do it. Like no one is gonna ask you while interviewing
you for your expertise, can you tell me about
like, how should marketers seek to grow demand
for their... client services business. How can
owners of agencies grow pipeline? And if I
may, please respond in personal story, Gray.
Like no one's gonna say that. You just have
to decide to. And our favorite storytellers,
our favorite thinkers, our favorite communicators,
they just do it. And we just take it for granted.
It's like, cause they're amazing or we don't
even notice that they do it, but we're like,
wow, we walk away going, Gray is awesome. Like
he really taught me a ton of stuff. But the
reason was, is because you decided to show
up as a storyteller and to try and inspire people
to reflect on something. Right. Or even maybe
take an action. And so that's on us to decide
to do that. I want to talk about some examples
of who's done this well. And I think basically
like, where can people go who want to go, who
want to do this more? So following your work,
I think is a great example. I think the creator
kitchen is a natural, Hey, here's an avenue
to go. I remember 2014 seeing Seth Godin talk
in person for the first time and he had, I don't
know how many slides he went through, probably
50 or 60, but what was different was there were
no words on any slide. Everything was a picture
and he has a perfectly crafted story for every.
Here's this totally random graphic that has
no connection to the prior one if you just looked
at him, but he's such a master storyteller
and has such a powerful, like still a memorable
moment here nine years later. Who are some
other folks or brands who are doing this well?
I mean, I follow mostly people who are not
marketers because I don't want to anchor to
things that look like at all similar to my
work, but mostly I think the best in the world
are not marketers. Now I make a lot of podcasts
for, I coach and have a membership. That's my
business. And so the coaching clients I have
are authors and business owners and speakers
and people that have a body of work and they're
looking to create like that really awesome special
project, a podcast, a speech, you know, just
their overall. creative platform and personal
brand. And what's so interesting is when we
talk, almost never is Acme Inc coming up as
like the model for our shows, you know what
I mean? Cause there's people who've been doing
it longer, people who've been doing it differently.
So I try to break out of the echo chamber and
follow people that I like. So storytellers
that I like and learn from, and they're not
prescribing how to tell stories, although the
first one does, but they're more like the people
I look at and then try to steal what they're
doing and learn how they do it. So Anne Handley,
she's the first one to mention. If you're in
marketing, you probably have encountered Anne's
work, but she has an amazing newsletter called
Total Anarchy, where she writes about writing.
She writes about storytelling. You know, I
have a newsletter, which is free as well. The
difference between Anne's and mine is Anne
is looking to help you get started with things
that look like the mechanics of writing. And
then she adds a layer of quirkiness and soul
to it. What I'm trying to do is within your
content, how do you use like the stuff Anne
is teaching you to connect on the receiving
end to your audience. So like the name of my
newsletter is Playing Favorites. How do you
ensure that others consider you among their
favorites for whatever purpose you serve? So
we kind of have similar overlaps. We're buddies
and we see eye to eye a lot. She's very much
focused on writing her great book, Everybody
Writes, is a must read. So Anne is someone
I look at. Mike Brabiglia, who's a comedian,
but he's a comedian who tells stories. He has
this awesome way of getting right up to the
edge. of being a little too sentimental, but
not tipping over towards the trite. And I love
stories like that where he puts me in the fields,
but I'm not like, well, this is too over the
top for me. And he also speaks in arcs. Like
he has a one man show or several, actually you
could find on Netflix where it's an arc of
a story, but he takes tangents to these other
bits. And I'm like, okay, I can learn from
his structure, from his model for how to tell
a story, you know, arguably my favorite storyteller
of all time is Anthony Bourdain. And it's because
I think he was able to sit with people who
were just going through their routines and ask
simple questions, be genuinely curious, bring
his personality to it, but not have to prove
to you like, look, I'm funny or look, I'm interesting,
which is a lot of interviewers do that on their
shows. And he would ask these simple questions
of people doing simple things and just reveal
these foundational ideas and profound meaning
and moving stories, like from the seemingly
day to day of somebody else's life. And so
you were there because you're like, I'm going
to Mexico with Bourdain, cool. But he's talking
to a family over dinner. What's more mundane
than that? And yet you're gawking at the screen
because you're learning, you're inspired, you're
seeing all these things. So I think in part
that was his magic when he was with us. So I
learned from him. So those are three people
that loom large. And I think that's the more
important thing in my life anyway is not people
who prescribe how to do it, but trying to learn
Like not what works, but why it works. Why
did that opening moment of that thing move me?
And we don't do this as business owners. We
should be, you know, we do it about marketing
and services. How do you construct the business
model? All that stuff. We should be doing this
about how others communicate when we feel moved.
Cause that's what we're trying to do with others.
Why did you feel moved? And not one big overriding
lesson, but like, okay, in the first moments
of that interaction, what happened? The first
moment or the middle moment of this story, what
happened? And try and rip out that lesson and
apply it to our work. And the more we do that,
it's not like we're going to transform overnight,
but bit by bit, and this is where the practice
matters. You start to find what's working for
you or all these touchstones to go to mentally
to create, you start to make it your own and
eventually people say to you like, man, great,
your show is incredible. Like you move me every
single time or wow, on that stage or in that
pitch or in that email, like it was great.
So awesome. And I forwarded it to all my friends.
You know, that's what we want. I don't think
we study the folks who do that to us often enough,
especially outside of our echo chamber, but
like they, they're the masters. Yeah. I wonder
if you can disagree with this that I think
you're wrong. Yes. Absolutely disagree. Did
I do it? You passed the test early in our careers.
Is there an element of just copying the, like
looking for the best practices, copying and
to try to learn the mechanics. That's a natural
part of our evolution. And then is your call
really, Hey folks, you're past, like you got
some of the mechanics down. That's great that
you understand how to write the seven secrets
to weight loss or what? Like you've done that
eight times now. You understand how to do it.
It's time to bring your soul out a little bit
more. Or is it, uh, or are you actually saying,
Hey, from the very beginning, kind of trust
your gut and go with it? I just think inescapably
we're inspired by things that inspire us. Um,
like, so I can't say what that is for you. You
know, and I think like there are ways to take
it further. You know, you might say, I want
to write a book. And so I'm going to copy so-and-so
who writes great books or who wrote that one
book I loved. And if that's your first moment
trying to do so, and for some hollow transactional
aim, people are going to tell you haven't found
a way to inject life into it, like that only
you can bring and. So like an exercise you
can do way before that is something called copy
work. Um, which is literally like, I'm going
to take a favorite passage and word for word,
handwrite that passage. That's it. Cause you're
kind of seeing exactly how that awesome writer
that you love writes. Like you're really going
through this physical motion to create what
they created in a sense. Obviously there's
a lot of intentionality and backstory and context
is missing, but at least the final output you're
copying. And that's important because it gives
you a distant flavor for what it's like to
write like that. You know, it's like, that's
why I love side projects, not side hustles,
not side businesses, things that have no commercial
aim, but affect the things and improve the
things that do. Again, the practice. I created
a bunch of podcasts on the side. I've written
blogs on the side since 2005. And a lot of it,
especially early on, you can tell like I'm
aping Bill Simmons. I'm aping Rick Riley. I'm
mimicking the things that... you know, you
catch me at a more sarcastic, cynical screed
inside of something I'm writing. And you're
like, okay, he's spending more time with Bourdain's
show. You know, there's things that I can look
at in my own body of work to be like, oh, right,
I was really consuming this for a time. So
there's the osmosis of it all. But then there's
also the application of it, which is there
are exercises you can do, or at least if you
have a practice, you can try to approximate
your heroes. And I think like, We need to give
ourselves permission to do that. And instead
of looking for like, what is the answer in some
absolute for who I should steal from or how
I should steal from them, we have to give ourselves
permission to just muck around, to just be
bad for a while, to find ourselves. Like to
keep beating the horse, I suppose. The thing
that scares me most about generative AI is not
that creators get replaced. There's actually
two things. There's one very small thing in
one. kind of existential thing. The small thing
that worries me, which is still very, very potent
in how I afraid I am of it is that people are
using the tool assistively. That's fine. But
they're using it to skip the part, which is
messy. And then they become like a, you know,
a poor man's version of an editor. Um, the
messy part is where you find your best phrasing.
It's where you take a left when you thought
you'd go right and you find something amazing
down that path. You figure out how to inject
your own stories, metaphors, allegories. You
come up with a little pithy turn of phrase
that becomes something people tweet back at
you. You sharpen your ideas and your thinking.
It's not just that your thinking gets better.
It is. It's where it happens. But it's also
that it's where you find yourself and all the
things that make the writing uniquely yours,
which makes it worth doing, which makes it actually
effective for your business. Because it could
come from no one else. They affect you like
no one else. They'll stick with you against
the odds. You know, they can declare, oh, you
know, there's a lot of agencies out there.
They're my favorite. I know that one's bigger.
I know that one claims that they, you know,
they do all the things. Spoiler alert, like
I think 99% of agencies are like, what do you
do? Oh, we do everything. Okay, cool. Yeah.
Move right along. Anyways, problem for a different
day. Forget all that stuff. If you just wanted
the tone of voice of an Anne Handley or the
masterful interview skills of an Anthony Bourdain
or narration skills of the Bourdain or the
humor of a Mike Braviglia. That stuff is found
when they were slogging through the sock themselves.
They didn't say someone else deliver me ingredients
and a recipe, somebody else hand me a mess
of clay. They went and just gathered up a bunch
of stuff and mucked about for a while. So that's
a very narrow thing I'm worried about. And the
extrapolation of this is that, how do I want
to say this? The problem is not that AI will
replace creators or that box will replace creators.
The problem is that creators are acting like
bots. Yeah. Makes sense. So they can not act
like bots. What is the creator kitchen and where
did that, where did this come from? Yeah. Um,
so it's a membership to push yourself creatively.
It's focused on creators who consider themselves
quality obsessed and craft driven and they want
to be effective storytellers and it's a membership.
I co-founded with. author, Melanie Diesel, who's
also in the marketing space, known each other
for years. She worked at like the New York Times
and Time Inc and HuffPost. And, you know, I
came out of Google and ESPN and HubSpot. Then
we became independent creators for quite a
while. And it's just so obvious to both of us
that after you create stuff and creating stuff
is no longer the problem, creating remarkable
stuff is the game. You want resonance. You
want that passion outpouring and support of
your work and evangelism of it. Word of mouth
to grow your work for free. So it's a place
to grow creatively along with other elite creators.
And, um, we treat it like an open gym. So the
way we come at this is there's a lot of things
you're going to be working on and there's a
lot of ways you might want to work on it, but
for a period of shared focus time, we emphasize
in our work, not in the kitchen, but in our
actual creative work as members, one powerful
skill, which we consider personal and transferable
can only come from you and it'll be different.
It'll manifest differently with everybody.
And it applies everywhere you show up. So like
telling personal stories is where the current
kitchen focus is, which is why I was talking
about Brian Piper and telling stories about
skydiving to create better, more unique work.
And the output of whether you're in the kitchen
or not, focusing on these creative skills that
are personal and transferable is that you end
up creating things that could only come from
you, right? You're not yet another, you're
the only in the way you communicate, the way
you create, the way you inspire and tell stories.
And so far it's going well. We launched it this
year. We have people like Amanda Natibidad,
who's the VP of marketing at SparkToro. She's
a member. Jenny Blake, who's a bestselling
author and a podcaster with 2 million downloads,
former Google made a mind like she's in there.
Um, you know, and there's people who have been
professionals for a while, but they're just
kind of starting the creator journey. And it's
really rewarding to see how many people don't
just want to ship hollow stuff into the world.
They have something meaningful they want to
say, and they're trying to find a way to say
it. Confidently and consistently so that they
have an impact. You know, they're not just trying
to push pixels. They're trying to have an impact
Yeah, that's awesome All right. I'm watching
the clock. We've got two minutes left and I
gotta get you out of here in time. I Wanted
it I wanted to go back to this one and I was
saving this because I was gonna cut this if
we didn't have Time but if I've got 90 seconds
every time I can go over if you want to but
your Podcast like you love these super highly
produced narrative style podcasts that seem
like a ton of work. I've been dying to try
one and do it at some point in time, but you're
editing it, you're cutting stuff up, you're
adding music and effects and you know, doing
all this stuff. What is your process for doing
that? Who's involved? What does the process
piece look like? Sure, sure. I'm happy to answer
that. So I work with producer a lot of evidence
on that. You know, and the way it works is
we're very clear on our premise. It all flows
from the premise. On any show, this is the
case. your decisions get faster and more aligned
and more effective if you actually have a premise,
not a generic topic like talking topics with
experts. We're here on the marketing show today.
Uh, it is what's different when a listener comes
along for the journey. Where are you leading
us? Like, it's not just your topics, it's your
topics plus your hook. So we know that unthinkable
is about these unconventional choices that creators
make, which caused them to resonate. And so
we know where we're starting with that. Every
time we then think about our episodes, we're
like, what's a question or a challenge? or a
concept or a heuristic that we either want
to explore or we know our audience struggles
with and we'd like to explore on their behalf.
Or who is somebody that has done something that
approximates the feel of that premise? And
then we're gonna assign afterwards the more
narrow seam question, whatever. So we're enrolling
guests, not because of who they are, but because
they help advance this journey towards this
mountain peak in the distance. And then eventually
I'll write the book about, you know, resonance
is the train we're on right now. So that helps
us make faster choices. That's where it begins.
It's clarity on your premise. It is specific.
It is also defensible. You can own the idea
outright. Nobody else can. And if you hold it
up to a competitor show, people go, yeah, we
don't do that. It's not, we actually get the
practical. No, no, no. Your competitor would
want to say they do that too, even if you disagree.
So it's no, we do this. This is what we explore.
We explode one favorite project of a famous
writer and have them describe it. Other writing
shows would say, yeah, we don't do that. It's
more about their bio. Great. You have a premise
from there. What we do is a lot. And I decide,
do we have the story? It's about gray. Great.
Do we have the theme question or heuristic that
advances our journey towards the premise? Yes.
Gray is here to talk about how to confront writer's
block or something like that and has a story
to tell. And do we have a sound or a style we
want to experiment with or play with? Yes.
Okay. We're actually going to surround gray
with voices from our audience or voices from
members in the creator kitchen. who are explaining
their own struggles with writer's block. And
we're going to sort of surround Grey in the
edit with those voices because that'll be evocative
of what the listener is thinking. Fantastic.
So we have clarity on that. Alana will go and
do some research on who you are, on what you've
done, et cetera. And then what we're looking
for is in the edit, I'm literally going to pull
this up right now. We have the most important
document is our episode rundown. So the episode
of Rundown, it basically just says, these are
the five blocks of the show that we're gonna
hit every time. So Alana's research fits under
one of these blocks. My interview goes in this
order. Our edit is informed by this, and we
will break from it and innovate and play, but
for the most part, this is what we're saying.
A block, what's the conventional approach? So
I talked to Rishikesh Hirway, who hosts the
podcast Song Exploder, very famous podcast in
music. He takes one track with a famous musician
like Madonna and has Madonna not tell her old
story. Why wouldn't you do that? It's Madonna,
not Rishikesh. She's gonna bring a song that's
meaningful and talk about how it was made.
So what's the conventional approach? Well, he's
a podcaster. He's surrounded by people that
do long form unedited interviews. So we're gonna
build up the conventional approach to seem
inescapably either just ubiquitous or ubiquitous
and preferred. That's A block. B block. What
did they do that was unconventional, unthinkable?
If you just see it from the outside, well,
Rishikesh Haraway did his podcast this way.
And here's why it's so hard. And here's why
it was so new and different and risky and blah,
blah. Okay. It seems unthinkable. C block.
Why did they do that? Cause it's only unthinkable
from the outside looking in, when you hear
their story sounds smart, strategic, like inescapably
in your shoes, gray, you would do it this way.
So C block is why, why did they do it that way?
Why was it actually better or smarter or safer
even in their shoes to do it the seemingly unthinkable
way? And the lesson here is of course, they
trusted themselves not to be rogue, not to be
rebellious, but because there was something
about their own situation, their person, their
audience, their resources, whatever that dictated
that, maybe we should all think this way and
not blindly follow the blueprints. Right. So
that's C block and then D and E are you're the
listeners going, Oh, this is interesting. I
appreciate what Gray is saying. And I want to
think like Ray, how did they get here? Anyway,
D block is the typical lead for most interviews,
the backstory, the bio. Who is this person?
How did they get to the point where they could
do this with confidence and clarity? And then
E is kind of what I call exit velocity. Can
we end with something really important about
making what matters most? We send you off hopefully
feeling inspired. So we have this rundown which
informs the prep, the production, the interview,
and post. And it makes it a lot easier to decide,
oh, let's break from it in this coherent way
this time around. Now I'd be lying if I said
I'm not a bottleneck. I do a lot of stuff. I'm
trying to make a show that's like, right, radio
lab or reply all, but with like one sixteenth
of the resources, right? It's a hard show to
make, but I get to make fewer things that have
a greater impact every time out. And so I'm
not sure I would do it any other way. That is
super cool. I'm glad I asked that question.
I appreciate you willing to be a, or being willing
to go a little bit over here and explain that.
Yeah. I think designing, so identifying that
premise and kind of what's the, what's the
arc. happening first and then building into
that. And I'm assuming in your interview, you
may take it in that same order, but you still
would have some, because of the editing that
you do on the backend, you still have some flexibility
in terms of how you actually get to those answers.
Completely, like if you were to sort of take
like the chronology of the interview and then
like compare it to the playback of the final
edit, you would spot that like, oh, Grey said
this at minute 34, but in the actual edit, that's
minute two. Right. Because maybe I remembered
something and I followed back up or it's just,
I pursued interestingness for a time. Like
it's not a rigid approach. It's not, I'm reading
questions. I am pursuing interestingness in
the moment, trying to get the story. But the
most important thing you can do as a storyteller,
you know, I think the phrase is as, as a person,
you want to have strong beliefs, slightly held,
something like that as a podcaster, as a storyteller,
you want to have a. Clear structure. loosely
held. Sure. In other words, like I'm going to
try to tell the story I think the story was
going to be in my head, but you presented something
to me that was way more valuable or worth following
and I'll pursue that. And because we do that
editing and I'm not alone on the show, Olana
is not a, she's not an audio shop shop. I could
rant all day about what people in business
think a producer does, but she does know how
to do that. And she does a lot of that for
the show. But her main kind of value and the
reason I have her on retainer is, uh, and all
producers are worth their weight in gold in
this regard is she can see the code of the
matrix and understand like what needs to get
cut, what needs to get rearranged I'm incapable
of moving from a 60 minute interview to our
target of 35 minutes now that I've stated that
is our new goal for her, everything she's sending
me from an interview is less than 35 minutes
because she knows I'm going to add voiceover
to I can't do that. Like she's got a real taste
and skill to like conceptually edit, not just
Manipulate a waveform. So I want to be clear
like I am NOT doing this alone. I have for many
years I learned what she is doing, but she
does it better than me. Yeah, that's amazing
I own story and she owns a get out of your
way and get it level of editing That's awesome
Jay, this has been awesome. I really appreciate
meeting time here today For folks who want to
check out creator kitchen the unthinkable podcast
the newsletter Where's the best place? Is that
the personal site is the best place? jayacunzo.com?
Everything runs through jayacunzo.com. I mean,
if you are ready for membership, we welcome
at creatorkitchen.com. But typically people
like to hang out with me a little bit first.
That's my free newsletter or podcast or both.
You know, both completely free and you can
find them near the top of jayacunzo.com. Amazing.
You crushed it, Jay. Thanks for joining us
today. Thank you. Appreciate the time.