Quality or Quantity in Content Creation: Insights from Seth Godin, Tim Ferris & Top Creators

[00:00:00] Volume vs Quality or is it volume and quality?

[00:00:05] Our day to day has to be integrated with our process, where everything that we experience

[00:00:10] is a data collection process to then go and put your message out there.

[00:00:15] People need to redefine what is quality for them,

[00:00:20] what are the resources that I have at hand, and then how am I going to stick with this?

[00:00:26] There's a layer of how happy you are or how enjoyable is that for you to create.

[00:00:33] There is great benefit to creating and putting your ideas out into the world.

[00:00:37] What platform? What format? How long?

[00:00:40] Critical thinking my friend. Critical thinking is extremely important,

[00:00:44] and when you hear something whether that's coming from us or any other expert out there in the world,

[00:00:49] you need to do your due diligence, do your research and challenge some thoughts.

[00:01:23] These are clips that are going to help you understand better the creative process.

[00:01:31] They're going to help you become a better creator, not just by listening to this,

[00:01:36] but maybe by listening to this, listening to our opinion or takes,

[00:01:41] and most importantly, you developing your own opinion.

[00:01:47] Critical thinking my friend. Critical thinking is extremely important,

[00:01:51] and when you hear something whether that's coming from us or any other expert out there in the world,

[00:01:57] you need to do your due diligence, do your research and challenge some thoughts.

[00:02:04] Some of them of course you're going to listen and you're like,

[00:02:05] you know what I agree with that, but actually I was a little tangent.

[00:02:10] I was watching this YouTube video from this guy. I love his videos.

[00:02:15] It's all about learning, how to learn better.

[00:02:18] He talked about a book called The Socratic Method,

[00:02:22] which is something that has been out there for a very long time since Socrates.

[00:02:27] I don't know the timeline on that, but what Socrates used to do is he used to go out on the streets

[00:02:33] and then he would start to question people.

[00:02:35] He's like, oh, why do you believe this? And why?

[00:02:38] And blah, blah, blah.

[00:02:39] And just get people to think, and a lot of times people would get upset and all that stuff,

[00:02:44] but the thing is he had a method to question ideas which help him learn better and learn deeper.

[00:02:54] So that's kind of like the point that I want to go with this.

[00:02:57] It's kind of like our old Socratic Method, right?

[00:02:59] The content-disprofited method for learning, which is we're going to play some clips

[00:03:03] of what some thinkers out there in the podcasting world have to say in the content world

[00:03:09] and we're going to question those, right?

[00:03:12] Do we agree? Why do we agree? Why do we disagree, etc.?

[00:03:16] And then you're listening. You can do the same. You can go ahead and do your own Socratic Method on this.

[00:03:22] Why do you believe this? What would happen if I didn't do that? What would happen if I did this thing consistently?

[00:03:29] I love that. I'm excited.

[00:03:31] I mean, I've seen a lot of clips lately obviously with politics coming soon to the United States.

[00:03:37] A lot of it that comes to me is on that route and it's funny because the people that kind of know their topic

[00:03:42] and they are open to discuss, which we're very blessed to live in a country that you can express yourself,

[00:03:49] have a conversation but the people that don't know their topic or they might not even know what they're talking about,

[00:03:55] just repeating like parrots.

[00:03:57] The message, they either get angry, they reject the other person's conversations.

[00:04:03] I think it's important to have this discussion from personal level to business.

[00:04:07] So, I'm excited. Let's go.

[00:04:08] Yeah. I think this can be a new continuous profit segment.

[00:04:11] Let's do it.

[00:04:11] I mean we snipped a lot of stuff.

[00:04:13] We do a snip a lot.

[00:04:14] On a regular basis so we can snip and put them in here and then come and do the continuous profit method of learning,

[00:04:20] aka the Socratic Method.

[00:04:22] Alright, so clip number one is from...

[00:04:28] I forgot the name of the podcast.

[00:04:29] Oh, How I Write, the name of the podcast is How I Write by David Perrell.

[00:04:33] And he's talking about some of the best lessons he's gotten.

[00:04:36] Oh, I thought you were going to just send the clip online and then give me some context after.

[00:04:41] No, I'm not giving you context. I'm just giving credit.

[00:04:44] So again, the clip is from How I Write from David Perrell.

[00:04:48] This is a clip where he's sharing some of the best lessons that he's gathered from some of the guests that he had.

[00:04:55] And this one specifically is with Tim Ferriss.

[00:04:59] If you don't know who Tim Ferriss is, he's a really big author, huge podcaster.

[00:05:06] He's been in the content game for a very, very long time.

[00:05:09] His book was one of the first books that inspired me to pursue this crazy life of a Japan.

[00:05:16] Yeah, you might have heard his book, The 4-Hour Workweek.

[00:05:18] Again, Tim Ferriss, somebody that most people would argue that he has a big, big influence in the content world.

[00:05:25] So let's hear what he and David have to say on this.

[00:05:29] Perfect.

[00:05:30] I was researching for the episode out of the four top Kindle books of all time.

[00:05:36] You know what they are?

[00:05:38] They're the ESV Bible, the one-year Bible, four-hour body, and four-hour chef.

[00:05:45] Those are the top four.

[00:05:47] He has two of them and the other two are the Bible.

[00:05:49] So when I talk about outputs and what he does, I think it's worth listening up.

[00:05:53] The quality level has to be incredibly high, which is a constraint I'm happy to always embrace.

[00:06:00] Of course.

[00:06:01] Right?

[00:06:02] I don't care about volume.

[00:06:05] I just do not care because there's no competitive advantage there.

[00:06:12] You're going to lose to the robots.

[00:06:13] You're going to lose to the people using robots.

[00:06:15] If you think you're going to win on a volume game, long term, you're not going to win.

[00:06:21] At the very least, if you're doing it manually, you're going to burn out.

[00:06:24] So for me at least, the quality by my standards needs to be incredibly high.

[00:06:33] I was researching for the episode out of the four.

[00:06:37] That was clip number one.

[00:06:39] Volume versus quality in a nutshell, right?

[00:06:42] He does share.

[00:06:43] Obviously, the context you could hear was a little bit about books and whatnot.

[00:06:48] Was I going to react to your own clip?

[00:06:52] No, I'm curious.

[00:06:53] You see me grinning in here.

[00:06:57] I'm smiling because I...

[00:06:58] It dedicated this clip to me 100%.

[00:07:02] So for those that are maybe new to the show and haven't had the chance to interact with me or Fonzie,

[00:07:08] Fonzie leans heavily into the quality over the quantity

[00:07:15] and I lean a little bit more on the quantity over the quality.

[00:07:20] Well, first of all, Tim Ferriss, goat of the industry.

[00:07:25] Clearly two of the four top downloaded books are here.

[00:07:31] Authority, 100%.

[00:07:32] I obviously like the message of the quality.

[00:07:39] Here's my personal opinion on this.

[00:07:44] I like the quantity first because it allows us to put in the reps to get to the quality.

[00:07:54] And again, given the context of go back to a publishing pyramid,

[00:07:59] your resources, the capacity of those resources, your commitment to consistency and your message.

[00:08:04] It's really hard to get to quality if we don't put in the reps in all four of those departments

[00:08:12] or have the resources to hire somebody that can help you produce the quality.

[00:08:17] So again, I wonder and again, I'm not familiar with maybe the background of Tim

[00:08:22] on how many books or e-books or guides or things he published

[00:08:27] before he got to the quality of what he's putting out today.

[00:08:31] He has hundreds of podcast episodes too.

[00:08:34] Exactly. So to that point, let's put it in the way of like creating...

[00:08:38] Can I finish my thought?

[00:08:39] Yeah, I just want to frame something real quick.

[00:08:41] Like creating not just like popping on camera is like the act of putting your thoughts out

[00:08:47] in a structured piece, whether that is writing, video, etc.

[00:08:51] But I still think even the act of putting your thoughts in a structured thing,

[00:08:55] you still need to put in the reps or hire...

[00:08:59] It's going to either take time or it's going to take a great team to put something of quality out there.

[00:09:05] And at the same time, we can get into the weeds on this a thousand percent,

[00:09:11] but it also is like what is quality?

[00:09:14] Because we have an example of this physics professor that has millions of subscribers on YouTube

[00:09:20] which the quality production, I'm doing air quotes,

[00:09:23] it might not be the best, it's literally one Zoom camera on a Zoom call

[00:09:26] and he's doing the lesson on a whiteboard,

[00:09:29] but the quality itself of the content is really high for his audience

[00:09:33] because he's solving people's problems.

[00:09:36] So again, we have to define that for yourself in what that looks like

[00:09:42] and can it be better? CBB? Right? Yes, absolutely.

[00:09:46] It can always be better. We can always strive to get better.

[00:09:50] I think, to close my personal thought,

[00:09:54] is I think we need the quantity first and as you go,

[00:09:59] depending on where part of the journey you're in, strive to improve that one percent.

[00:10:03] And maybe that one percent is your message,

[00:10:06] maybe that one percent is hiring a team,

[00:10:08] maybe that one percent is learning how to restructure and create a message

[00:10:12] that gets better over time.

[00:10:13] And then what happens is like with time, once you put in the volume,

[00:10:18] then you can take your time and create less but way higher quality.

[00:10:22] That's why movie theaters, I'm moving the movie theater.

[00:10:26] I'm going to go with this.

[00:10:27] I'm going to go with the, it's like a Bruce Lee,

[00:10:31] I think it's Bruce Lee saying, which is,

[00:10:35] actually I'm going to butcher it totally,

[00:10:36] but I know it kind of comes from Bruce Lee,

[00:10:38] but it's practice that 10,000 kicks.

[00:10:41] So if you practice, you want to be a master at one thing,

[00:10:43] like practice it like 10,000 times, right?

[00:10:47] But what if those 10,000 times that you practice it,

[00:10:50] that you think they're the quality thing,

[00:10:51] like they're bad, you're practicing the wrong kick, right?

[00:10:54] And then you go and show up and you're like,

[00:10:56] oh, y'all in a fight and you like kick somebody's toes.

[00:11:00] And it's like, okay, like that didn't work out.

[00:11:02] So my point is when you're starting by just doing volume specifically,

[00:11:09] sure, you're training to maybe don't care the fact

[00:11:12] what other people are going to think and you're putting your message out there.

[00:11:16] But is it actually a good message, right?

[00:11:19] Is it actually a quality piece of content?

[00:11:23] I think I agree with you on the sense of first you need to understand where you're at,

[00:11:28] like what are your resources at hand?

[00:11:30] Is your resource only your own time?

[00:11:33] Or do you have your teams as well,

[00:11:37] time as well that they can invest into helping you produce research, etc.,

[00:11:42] a lot of things, a lot of these people have obviously teams that help them with the research

[00:11:45] and all that stuff.

[00:11:46] But my point being is maybe that volume,

[00:11:50] I agree with the fact that you need to put yourself out there consistently to practice,

[00:11:56] but I don't think many people have a frame of what quality is for them.

[00:12:03] So then they go into social media and they're easily influenced by,

[00:12:07] you know, a really cool video with very nice graphics and stuff

[00:12:12] and they're like, oh that is quality.

[00:12:14] That is the quality I need.

[00:12:15] But it's like no, maybe the quality you need is like this professor that you're talking about

[00:12:19] which has zero production but he has a quality message.

[00:12:23] The quality for him is value.

[00:12:25] Like he probably, his way to measure quality is something that is going to solve a problem.

[00:12:32] So then he creates a content, filters that through that lens

[00:12:36] if the answer is yes, is this solving an immediate problem that my audience has,

[00:12:41] I'm going to talk about it.

[00:12:43] So I think people need to redefine what is quality for them, right?

[00:12:50] And different quality is going to take different resources.

[00:12:53] I agree with you.

[00:12:54] You need practice on consistency.

[00:12:57] And again there's different type of consistency too for different platforms, right?

[00:13:01] Like it can be like Alex Ormose which he talks about just putting your immediate thoughts, right?

[00:13:07] Out and then test it to see what people like and then do a bigger piece out of that.

[00:13:12] It's not a one size fits all type of deal unfortunately, right?

[00:13:17] Because if it was, it would be pretty easy for everybody to just follow that recipe.

[00:13:22] But I think the creator needs to understand himself, okay,

[00:13:26] what do I consider quality?

[00:13:28] What are the resources that I have at hand?

[00:13:32] And then how am I going to stick with this?

[00:13:36] Because for them it might be, you know, the type of content that they're creating.

[00:13:41] It might be something that most people just produce let's say two of those pieces a month, right?

[00:13:48] So for them, you know, volume might be let me do one of these a week, right?

[00:13:54] Rather than any other week.

[00:13:56] So now their volume on that is already bigger than kind of like the average on that industry, whatever people are producing.

[00:14:01] But then you got a filter that's through that lens of quality of what you mean.

[00:14:06] Yeah, I think, I wrote here like what is the type of content we're applying this for, right?

[00:14:11] So, you know, for a book for example, right?

[00:14:15] Like what's the specific thing that's gonna live forever, right?

[00:14:19] It has a longer shelf life than maybe Facebook reel or YouTube short, right?

[00:14:23] Which is actually the example, the context of this conversation.

[00:14:26] Exactly. The same other thing was, you know, Twitter.

[00:14:31] There's people that have built their audience and their communities off of X for example, right?

[00:14:36] And then so for them one tweet might mean that they have to do it like really, really good

[00:14:41] to make sure that they continue to publish up to their current standards, right?

[00:14:47] To get better, right?

[00:14:50] So look at your own platforms.

[00:14:52] Like where are you online right now?

[00:14:54] Is it the podcast episode?

[00:14:55] Is it, you know, Twitter?

[00:14:58] Is it LinkedIn?

[00:14:59] Is it LinkedIn articles?

[00:15:00] Is it a newsletter?

[00:15:01] Right, the end of the day.

[00:15:02] And I think something that we haven't really mentioned is the feedback loop on this quality over quantity, you know, type of content.

[00:15:11] So if the feedback is positive, perfect.

[00:15:15] Dig into that.

[00:15:16] Like continue to explore that.

[00:15:17] If the feedback is different as in your piece of content might not be helping these people solve their problem,

[00:15:25] whether that's being entertained or being educated, right?

[00:15:30] Then we have to revisit and pivot a little bit and see how it goes.

[00:15:34] On top of that I think there's a layer of how happy you are or how enjoyable is that for you to create, right?

[00:15:42] Just early this morning I was in a call with this person that her favorite type of content to create is Vlogs.

[00:15:48] And she started vlogging inside of the country that she's in, then she traveled a little bit and she got tired of it.

[00:15:55] She was like, I'm not really enjoying these processes anymore and she's shifting the approach to her content because of that reason.

[00:16:01] So I think personally I would not like to be creating something that I don't enjoy creating, right?

[00:16:09] So I think we just had a great time in this specific podcast interviewing the people that come to a show,

[00:16:15] having these discussions because it's our day-to-day.

[00:16:18] We love what we do.

[00:16:20] Some days more than others.

[00:16:21] It's going to be part of your competitive advantage.

[00:16:23] It's doing something that you enjoy doing because then it won't feel like work.

[00:16:28] Fun fact, the other day Friday I had a call with somebody in Spain and we're doing a little bit of a consult for them guesting.

[00:16:35] And they've never heard the show.

[00:16:37] They've heard feedback of people that have heard the show or that maybe know us in the industry.

[00:16:42] And the first thing that he says, like, guys, I absolutely loved your last episode.

[00:16:48] I think you guys are so casual.

[00:16:49] I saw Relax is very different from whatever I've listened to.

[00:16:53] And I'm like, dude, thank you so much for that piece of feedback.

[00:16:56] Like it's hard for somebody to tell you that feedback straight on and I'm very happy that it was positive feedback.

[00:17:01] But maybe there's somebody there that don't like that type of content.

[00:17:04] And you know what? Well, maybe in this stage of life, maybe that's not the person that we should be around.

[00:17:08] Right? So, you know, I think those feedback looks important because guess what?

[00:17:12] Now, you know, my fire is back up. Let's do more of this.

[00:17:15] Let's leaning into our personalities a little bit more because it's going to help us get those reps and we're going to get better at the craft of creating that piece of content.

[00:17:24] So anyways, good discussion.

[00:17:25] Well, I have two closing remarks from my side.

[00:17:29] So the first one is I believe your commitment to quality increases with the flow of volume of your audience.

[00:17:38] So the more you start attracting people with your ideas and your content, I think your commitment to quality has to be higher.

[00:17:47] And again, I'm not talking because I think people will confuse this is I'm not talking about quality of the production necessarily.

[00:17:53] Yeah.

[00:17:54] It has to be the quality of the ideas that are that you're putting forward, right?

[00:17:58] If a lot of people are listening to you, like I think you have just a responsibility to, you know, want to be better, want to improve at your craft and a responsibility to relay quality ideas that solve the problems of the people that are listening to you.

[00:18:17] And the second point is and he kind of mentioned he's a if you play the volume game, you're going to lose by robots, right?

[00:18:24] And that is my other point, which is a lot of people are using tools such as AI and whatever this another topic you can go to previous episodes.

[00:18:32] We've talked about it, but you know, they use a lot of tools to craft volume, right?

[00:18:39] And I agree 100% with that.

[00:18:41] That he has to say it, right?

[00:18:43] Sure, it might put you in front of new eyeballs.

[00:18:46] But again, like, is it good that is it going to be?

[00:18:51] Is it going to have resonance?

[00:18:52] Right? We talked about it.

[00:18:53] Is it something that you'll be proud to share with your mom?

[00:18:56] Exactly.

[00:18:57] Is it going to be?

[00:18:58] Are you going to be proud of sharing this stuff?

[00:19:00] Yeah, with your mom with, you know, with your clothes once.

[00:19:03] But again, and I think that is a double edged sword because first it can actually cause in a way of potential harm, right?

[00:19:12] Just putting random stuff in there.

[00:19:13] And then the other one is if you're an expert because again, content is profit is mainly for expert based businesses or services.

[00:19:24] And if you're an expert and you are sourcing your thinking to AI, what is that going to say about you and your business?

[00:19:32] Right? I think me personally, I see that online and I if I notice something is written by AI in a ways a little bit of a turn off.

[00:19:40] Right? I'm like, well, sure.

[00:19:43] Like maybe I read the hook and that's it, you know, and then I'll move on to the next person.

[00:19:47] But I think my trust towards that expert might diminish because of again, the way it was produced.

[00:19:54] I truly enjoy and I can tell when somebody puts effort into crafting a piece of work into sharing their idea.

[00:20:02] Yeah. I love it.

[00:20:03] All right. I think we have time for the second one.

[00:20:05] All right. And the third one. They're good. They're good.

[00:20:08] This one, I think this one.

[00:20:09] We have all the time for one more.

[00:20:10] This one was the spiciest one.

[00:20:12] Don't be quick. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it, dude.

[00:20:14] No, I worry about it. I have a call that I took on.

[00:20:17] The next one is from actually Tim Ferriss podcast, but he was talking to Seth Godin.

[00:20:24] Seth Godin is a marketing legend.

[00:20:27] If you don't know who he is, go check him out.

[00:20:30] He has great books about marketing.

[00:20:33] One is called This Is Marketing.

[00:20:35] I think the Purple Cow.

[00:20:36] They can Google it.

[00:20:37] Yeah. Multiple, multiple books.

[00:20:39] So on expertise, people would say I listen to this guy.

[00:20:44] I do whatever it is.

[00:20:45] But again, we're here to challenge ideas and learn.

[00:20:49] So here he goes.

[00:20:52] What do you get from writing and having written this consistently as you have in do?

[00:20:58] What is the payoff?

[00:20:59] Like why do that?

[00:21:01] Okay. So the biggest payoff is simple, not in terms of equity stock value,

[00:21:05] but in terms of the noise in my head.

[00:21:08] The biggest benefit is I will be writing tomorrow because it's Friday,

[00:21:12] not because I've written the perfect blog post.

[00:21:15] That every single day something gets published by me because I decided that 24 years ago,

[00:21:22] not because I have reconsidered each day whether this one is good enough.

[00:21:28] And even if no one read my blog, I would still do it.

[00:21:32] And I'm very fortunate that people give me the benefit of doubt knowing that I am not

[00:21:38] guaranteeing this is the best thing I ever wrote.

[00:21:40] And they're still willing to look at it.

[00:21:41] So that's lovely in terms of my professional practice, again, back to genre,

[00:21:51] having a Cinecure, a platform where for a long time if you type blog into Google,

[00:21:57] I was the first match because I just showed up more than just about anybody.

[00:22:02] There's a lot of value to saying, this is my lane and you can count on me in this lane.

[00:22:08] And for someone who is as parapetetic as I in their creative pursuits having one of those.

[00:22:16] Or your thoughts?

[00:22:19] I mean, I'll say that there goes like somebody else, right?

[00:22:22] Talking about the power of consistency be present every single day from a personal level

[00:22:27] to a professional level, right?

[00:22:30] I relate it to not only our story but a lot of people that have come to the show

[00:22:35] that they owe to be online and to kind of take that identity of a creator

[00:22:40] and put in their thoughts out there consistently.

[00:22:44] They owe a lot to them, like the business, the team, the families, like so much to it.

[00:22:50] So I resonate a lot with him and I think he comes from within.

[00:22:55] Like it's a decision that we have to make today as business owners

[00:23:00] and to be at peace that maybe one of those pieces is nobody's going to read it, nobody's going to listen to it.

[00:23:06] I personally think that we're okay with that.

[00:23:08] Like you and me are okay with that.

[00:23:10] I don't think we were okay with that five years ago when we were in publishing.

[00:23:14] And I think today a lot of people are there and they see the creation process

[00:23:21] or publishing process as a last resource, you know,

[00:23:25] or help Mary think that they might be doing to save their business or different things.

[00:23:29] And I think that might not be the best place to start publishing.

[00:23:32] So that's what I can take from the 30 seconds that we just listened to.

[00:23:37] It was like a minute and 15 seconds.

[00:23:39] Cool.

[00:23:39] Your time perception might be a little off.

[00:23:41] Very off.

[00:23:44] I like the reason I picked this one is because in a way,

[00:23:48] I feel like somebody could, you know, hear to this and say,

[00:23:53] Oh, but this is contradicting to the previous one that we heard about.

[00:23:57] Right?

[00:23:57] But I think the fight that he said he's been consistent for 24 years.

[00:24:01] First of all, impressive.

[00:24:03] I don't think it necessarily means that he's not creating quality work.

[00:24:07] Right?

[00:24:08] Like I think the question is, can volume exist with quantity with quality?

[00:24:13] Sorry.

[00:24:13] Can volume exist with quality?

[00:24:15] Right?

[00:24:16] And in his eyes and in his actions and what he's published and also in his proof

[00:24:22] in the result, the answer is yes.

[00:24:26] Right?

[00:24:26] Because I get he publishes.

[00:24:29] I don't know if you guys are familiar.

[00:24:30] He has a newsletter and then he sends you that blog post that he writes every single day.

[00:24:35] They're not like 10,000 war blog posts.

[00:24:39] All right?

[00:24:39] Like they're not massive.

[00:24:40] They're short and he proud himself on like being able to deliver strong ideas in short

[00:24:47] blog post, right?

[00:24:48] In a simple way.

[00:24:49] And that is part of the craft.

[00:24:51] That is part of what he has improved on in 24 years of sharing his ideas.

[00:24:57] So I think it goes back to kind of like what I was sharing about what is your lens for

[00:25:04] value, right?

[00:25:06] And necessarily and also what is the consistency of that industry, right?

[00:25:12] In a blog industry in a blog, the blog in niche, it might be one a week, right?

[00:25:19] Let's do one blog every single week.

[00:25:21] Well, he said I'm going to commit my consistency to be one a day for perpetuity.

[00:25:28] It seems that way, right?

[00:25:30] But then the question is, is he sacrificing quality for the purpose of that volume?

[00:25:36] And I think the answer is no, right?

[00:25:38] He actually in the in the episode, right?

[00:25:41] Obviously that's not in the context of the clip, but he goes back and he edits his post.

[00:25:48] He tries to make them smaller.

[00:25:50] He said, I only send a blog that I can only make shorter.

[00:25:55] If I have to expand into something, I do not send that one, right?

[00:25:59] And he probably has, I'm sure, a backlog of things that he's creating.

[00:26:03] So again, this is a challenge for you.

[00:26:07] What does your consistency looks like on the medium that you want to create?

[00:26:13] And can you make quality coexist with that volume that you want to be sharing?

[00:26:21] And then the other thing that he mentioned that I absolutely love because I think this is something we've talked about

[00:26:26] the very beginning that we started under this profit.

[00:26:28] He separated it for both, right?

[00:26:30] He said, personally, is the noise on my head.

[00:26:34] And we started saying from the first couple of episodes, he's like, wow, it's a great feeling when you get your ideas

[00:26:40] and you put them out into words, right?

[00:26:42] You start realizing a lot of things.

[00:26:46] Do I truly believe this thing that I'm talking about, right?

[00:26:48] Maybe you thought you really knew a specific topic

[00:26:52] and when you started talking about it, you realized, wow, actually I do not.

[00:26:56] So there is great benefit to creating and putting your ideas out into the world.

[00:27:01] And then business-wise, his consistency and his quality both together,

[00:27:07] not just one independent of the other, build him that reputation of being set-goating.

[00:27:13] If you read his books, a lot of his books too are kind of like a mesh of all the ideas that he's written

[00:27:19] of his blog posts.

[00:27:21] Kind of like Tim Ferriss, right?

[00:27:22] A lot of his books are a compilation of the interviews and lessons that he's gotten from the interviews that he's done on his podcast.

[00:27:30] So they're definitely multi-purpose in their content in different ways.

[00:27:35] But I think it's, sorry before you go on,

[00:27:38] I love the fact that he challenges a notion of like, is one or the other but it's actually both.

[00:27:44] But he knows his lane.

[00:27:46] You don't really see him creating a bunch of shorts or reels.

[00:27:51] He knows his lane and he's like, I'm going to build on this medium and I'm going to be the best at it.

[00:27:56] I'm going to be more consistent than others but I'm also going to deliver more quality than everybody else.

[00:28:02] Yeah, there was an element there that when he was talking, and you mentioned it too, it's like the time frame.

[00:28:08] Like under what lens are we looking at this?

[00:28:11] Like under the lens of like short term, last week, last month statistics?

[00:28:17] Or are we looking at into this is a long-term game that we're making a conscious decision and a strategy

[00:28:24] that we're going to be doing this for the next few years, right?

[00:28:27] And it's like, I remember because everybody talks about Alex Ramozzi, right?

[00:28:33] When he hired his internal YouTube team.

[00:28:36] He was like, I'm going to work with you for the next five years.

[00:28:42] And it's like this is a long-term thing. We're going to get better.

[00:28:45] Like we got to receive the feedback and understand.

[00:28:48] So the impression I get with a lot of the conversations that we have either online or people here coming to the studio

[00:28:55] is that they really want a quick fix to a deeper issue.

[00:29:00] They're like, I think publishing or putting content out there is going to help me solve this.

[00:29:03] It is a piece of the machine, right? And then we have to uncover that.

[00:29:08] And at the end of the day is a piece of the machine that's absolutely necessary for the to endure in this decade, I think.

[00:29:16] You know, every company we mentioned it, every company needs to publish their own message, right?

[00:29:21] And again, podcasting might be the medium, blog might be the medium, YouTube might be the medium.

[00:29:28] But it will take time and experimentation.

[00:29:29] So I think like that and creating the containers of, you know, or the margin, sorry, of where, what platform, what format, how long, right?

[00:29:42] Make that decision, make it and make it move.

[00:29:44] Like he is like those short blogs and the newsletters for us is the podcast three to two times a week.

[00:29:51] Either an hour conversation or a 30-minute solo episode, right?

[00:29:55] Like what are those margins that you can execute and get better in that format?

[00:30:00] Good. I like it.

[00:30:01] Alright, I'm going to play the last one. I cannot play this one by itself just because it ties into the conversation that we're having today.

[00:30:08] Five minutes.

[00:30:09] Here we go.

[00:30:09] You got five minutes.

[00:30:10] This one is again from how I write with David Perrell.

[00:30:13] It's a conversation that he's not a conversation actually.

[00:30:16] He's making an episode on Jerry Seinfeld and he is actually showing an excerpt of a conversation between Howard Stern, the radio host and Jerry Seinfeld.

[00:30:30] So that's what we're going to listen right now.

[00:30:32] And then we'll go ahead and share our awesome opinions.

[00:30:39] You went to a Chinese restaurant and you're like, I really admire Chinese people because they're really sticking to this chopsticks thing.

[00:30:47] The line is I like how they're hanging in there with the chopsticks.

[00:30:50] Right. Because they've seen the fork. They've seen the fork.

[00:30:55] We've got it. You beat.

[00:30:56] But they're going out.

[00:30:58] To me, this is a brilliant observation.

[00:31:00] Thank you.

[00:31:00] Yes. Now, when you had that observation, were you sitting at a Chinese restaurant and can you go to a Chinese restaurant and not sit there and work on material?

[00:31:08] I'm never not working on material.

[00:31:10] So even when you're sitting with your wife, you're sitting with the kids, it's material.

[00:31:15] Every second of my existence, I'm thinking, could I do something with that?

[00:31:19] It sounds like a tortured life.

[00:31:20] And you say it is.

[00:31:21] It is. It is. But you know what?

[00:31:24] Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you're comfortable with.

[00:31:29] See that.

[00:31:31] All right.

[00:31:31] I like to see and you want to just give down and you want to just give down.

[00:31:36] All right.

[00:31:37] Are your opinions, your thoughts?

[00:31:41] Well, first of all, I love that you picked a comedy ish context clip because I've been obsessed lately.

[00:31:50] And I honestly been learning a ton from comedians, right?

[00:31:54] They put in the time they put in the reps.

[00:31:56] It might be the same joke that they say the same night five different times and different, you know, audiences say the different thing.

[00:32:01] I think also he speaks to the creator in you as in our day to day has to be integrated with that process where, you know, everything that we experienced, everything that we see out there or the company itself, right?

[00:32:15] It's a data collection process to then go and put your message out there, right?

[00:32:24] In Jerry's case is comedy.

[00:32:26] It's like what's the situation that can turn into material for a business, right?

[00:32:32] It could be failed experiences.

[00:32:36] It could be lessons learned from a call of a client.

[00:32:38] It could be a conversation between business partners.

[00:32:41] Like what are those moments in your day to day, right?

[00:32:44] I think a lot of people say they impression again in the last few years is when people come to us like, well, we have this designated time to think and create about content and what's their strategy and what's their content calendar thing.

[00:32:57] And the truth is in like today as well, I believe that we have to look through the lenses of that message, right?

[00:33:05] So whenever we come here in the studio, for example, if we have a conversation with a customer, there might be a lesson there that we get to share in our podcast in a real and something.

[00:33:13] We're talking earlier about the football show and the YouTube content, right?

[00:33:17] Like we're looking at Dude Perfect YouTube channel and they're doing this like jump competition.

[00:33:23] We're like how do we apply that in the football context like a similar video, right?

[00:33:28] So and at the end, like that phrase of the church, you find the church you're comfortable with is for some people that might not be their thing, right?

[00:33:39] And they will see it as a church, but he puts it in the context.

[00:33:42] So it's like that's the thing that you do 24 seven and that you enjoy and that's why you do the thing that you do.

[00:33:49] So anyways, I obviously Jerry is a monster of his industry and a monster of his message and his craft.

[00:33:55] And there's a lot to be learned from from that.

[00:33:58] So my question to you listening or watching like, are you comfortable finding that church or like know that if you want to be a creator,

[00:34:05] there has to be a big element of that day to day that you have to be looking through the eyes of a creator.

[00:34:12] Yeah, I think one of the let me start actually by saying when we first found consistency was when we did the 45 life,

[00:34:23] which in a way we were applying what Jerry was talking about right now, which is we needed material every single day for 45 days in a row.

[00:34:32] And when you are under that frame, you start observing things differently and asking questions like, oh, what did I learn today from this conversation?

[00:34:41] Right. Or, you know, what is something that made me think differently from this other person or this experience or this piece of content that I watched, right?

[00:34:51] And what you're doing is now you have volume in your ideas, right?

[00:34:56] Not volume in your content. And that is what he's talking about. Like, he is consistently doing volume of ideas.

[00:35:04] Now, yes, he tests them right in shows, but then he has the winners, which is the ones that he do his specials.

[00:35:13] And I think that also relates to creating content as an expert of something, right?

[00:35:20] Which is you need to consistently be having that volume of ideas.

[00:35:26] Or Mosi talks about he publishes volume of ideas on Twitter. For him, Twitter is more like a log, right?

[00:35:33] It's not like his main frame, his main road. Like Seth Godin's blogging.

[00:35:41] Alex or Mosi, I will say is YouTube right now at the moment.

[00:35:45] But Twitter is his ideologue and that is where he has all this volume, right?

[00:35:52] So I think that is an important distinction. Do we have a volume of ideas versus volume of content created, right?

[00:36:02] Because just like you mentioned, right? You just mentioned right now too.

[00:36:06] I forgot, I lost my train of thought, but you cannot like mentioned about, you know, loving that torture, right?

[00:36:14] Which is if you're in a business, that is your competitive advantage, right?

[00:36:19] The fact that you see something that you want to do consistently without having to be on a schedule.

[00:36:24] And you're like a lot of people take creating as, all right, I'm going to take this time of the day

[00:36:29] and I'm going to do everything in there from the ideation process all the way to the production.

[00:36:34] No wonder you can't get anything done, right? Because there's so much friction.

[00:36:38] But if you have a volume of ideas and we talked about this on the previous episode, right?

[00:36:42] With Joe on the idea framework how you're like consistently saving ideas, writing ideas on your notes.

[00:36:49] When you get to the moment where you actually sitting down and creating, right?

[00:36:53] Because Jerry Seinfeld has his practice every single morning. He sits down on paper and writes down, he writes, writes, writes.

[00:37:00] You can have the same practice for video podcasts, whatever.

[00:37:03] But he's not sitting down to come up with the idea.

[00:37:08] Again, he's obstructing the world under the lens of how can I compel it as many ideas as possible?

[00:37:15] How can I generate all these ideas? And then when he sits down, he implements those ideas in there.

[00:37:21] And it's the same for the creative process, right?

[00:37:23] So find your torture in this in the sense of find something that you are okay thinking about.

[00:37:31] It doesn't have to be all day 24-7.

[00:37:33] But for the majority of the day, you're going to be thinking about it, right?

[00:37:36] You're going to be looking at things and then asking yourself, huh, how can I apply that?

[00:37:41] Or you're going to be reading something and you're like, oh, I have an opinion about this.

[00:37:44] I would like to create a piece on this. That's exactly how this podcast episode was generated.

[00:37:49] I was listening to this podcast, gathered notes and I was like, this would be cool to discuss in one of the episodes.

[00:37:56] And now this is the creation moment for us.

[00:38:00] And we have an established creation moment for the podcast which has allowed us to stay consistent throughout time

[00:38:08] on a higher consistency than most podcasters do as well.

[00:38:13] And full context, by the way. We're supposed to have somebody in today and the time of this recording is Labor Day.

[00:38:21] We like to work in holidays which is great.

[00:38:24] But that person was not able to join us today and we were like, guess what?

[00:38:27] We are committed to our consistency. Let's go to the data collection bank.

[00:38:32] Fonsey does a really good job at it.

[00:38:34] I'm more of a casual like, oh, I thought about this earlier. Let's talk about that.

[00:38:38] Fonsey has a more systematic system which is fine.

[00:38:40] And then this is what we came up with.

[00:38:43] I think it has been a really good episode where we show a different version or a different format.

[00:38:50] This is the first format that we do that.

[00:38:51] That's the full context of the creation of this.

[00:38:54] This was not planned in a session a month ago, right at the end of the day.

[00:38:57] It could be like if it does well maybe now we put it as a layout of episode that we can work with a production team to continue to elevate.

[00:39:06] And I move forward and get it better.

[00:39:07] So I wrote here almost like the equation of quality content.

[00:39:12] Maybe you agree or disagree with me.

[00:39:14] But some elements, volume of ideas, test, publish, gather feedback, elevate and then repeat.

[00:39:21] And then over a long period of time, like we said, your content will become better.

[00:39:26] We'll solve problems. People will find it attractive and you continue to move forward.

[00:39:31] I think for me the key takeaway is putting all these three lessons and comments together.

[00:39:38] Put on the lenses so you can create a high volume of ideas.

[00:39:47] And make sure you're writing them down because you can have a good idea and five minutes later you'll forget it.

[00:39:53] So have a process to writing your ideas down.

[00:39:56] Obviously that comes hand in hand with embracing the torture that you feel comfortable with.

[00:40:00] If you're doing something that you truly enjoy, it's going to be easier to put on those lenses and get ideas on a consistent basis.

[00:40:09] So again, higher volume of ideas then is defining your consistency.

[00:40:15] From Seth Godin he said I'm going to do this every single month.

[00:40:19] Defining your consistency and in which lane.

[00:40:23] Just know that defining your consistency and in which lane is going to require you to look at your resources.

[00:40:31] Is it your own time that you're spending creating this or can you leverage other people's time and abilities and skills to create something?

[00:40:40] And then lastly is defining what is quality for you.

[00:40:45] We go back to the physics professor example.

[00:40:48] He's solving a very specific problem for his audience and the quality of his video is absolutely nowhere near the best.

[00:40:57] But the quality of his message is absolutely outstanding.

[00:41:01] So for you is what is quality? Define it.

[00:41:05] And after you have a finished product piece of content, look at it under that lens.

[00:41:11] Evaluate it and say okay this takes the boxes I can publish this.

[00:41:16] And if it doesn't take the boxes, it might be because you might be rushing the process.

[00:41:22] Just creating content for the sake of creating content.

[00:41:25] And unfortunately that content will have very little resonance with your audience and it probably won't do good.

[00:41:32] And again I challenge you. I would love your opinion.

[00:41:35] What are your thoughts? Volume versus quality or is it volume and quality?

[00:41:41] Which one is it? Like how did you look at this?

[00:41:44] I'm extremely curious. I think there's definitely multiple points of views.

[00:41:48] This is a debate that's going to be happening for a long time, not only between us but you know,

[00:41:54] I think just in the creator community and there's not a one size fits all.

[00:41:58] So I'm curious to see what has been working for you? What have you been doing?

[00:42:02] And how are you going to increase maybe both the quality and volume of your content?

[00:42:07] Yeah let us know for sure.

[00:42:10] I love this episode man. I love this format. Thanks for bringing it on.

[00:42:15] You took it definitely from the football show format that I did earlier but just saying.

[00:42:20] I don't know, I didn't hear it.

[00:42:21] Maybe Subconscious.

[00:42:22] Nope.

[00:42:23] I can't take the credit for this. It was all fancy.

[00:42:26] Guys let us know again in the comment.

[00:42:28] With that said thank you so much for tuning into the Content Crafts Podcast.

[00:42:31] Go ahead and follow the show in your favorite podcasting platform and on social media at VizProscope.

[00:42:44] And leave a 5 star review. See ya. Bye guys!