Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. My name’s Doug Cunnington and you are listening to new intro music. I occasionally jam with my friend Tyler. He plays the drums and he, we go to this place. I’ll tell you about it, uh, maybe some other time. And, uh, we, we just play Lao and this may have been one of the first or second times we were playing together and I was like, oh, this is cool.
I’m just gonna bring one of my recorders because I have a bunch of audio equipment and stuff that I recorded the podcast on back in the day. And I was like. You know what, I’m just gonna hit record and I have a bunch of, um, you know, just wild long jams where try to feel, feel it out. So I’ll get a little update on the music shutter stock com issue that I have as well.
And, uh, this is a classic episode. I’m gonna have a beer. I’ll tell you a little bit about that. We’ll talk about some things I have coming up by the time you listen to this. I’ll be back from a trip, but I’ll be unplugging a little bit, so I have some other updates as well. The last few episodes have largely centered on me talking about potentially calling out.
Uh, scammers out there and I put scammers in air quotes ’cause it’s hard to tell if people are like intentionally doing something bad or if they’re just fucking up. It’s hard to, hard to say. And just a little update on the podcast too. Yeah, before, well, actually I, I wanna open the beer up. So this one is called Wonderful Things.
It’s from Four Noses, which is a local brewery around here. I think they have, uh, like their main brewery in Denver, but they have a location in Boulder. It says, this was brewed and packaged in Denver, Colorado. Uh, they actually tell us the Hobbs. So this is, um, it’s called Wonderful Things. It’s a West Coast double IPA.
And I really like West Coast IPAs over hazy 99% of the time. I’m sure I’m offending a great number of you out there, but I just like a clear beer most of the time. And not to say that I don’t like hazy, but it’s like when I go to a brewery and it’s like six hazy and no clear beer, I’m like, come on man.
Gimme something here. So Amarillo Hops, Centennial Simco. Tuka, I think that’s how you say that one. And then the malts two row Munich and Oats clocks in 8.2 A BV. So it’s a perfect morning beer. No, I’m just kidding. This, it’s the afternoon right now. Real good beer. And I found it, uh, initially when we were on vacation out in the mountains, we were driving by Woodland Park.
We’re heading out to, uh, the high country Woodland Park is like on the way to Cripple Creek. It’s west of Colorado Springs. We stopped by a Safeway, which is like a Kroger, um, Albertsons kind of, it is just a grocery store. They had a great beer selection and they actually had this. And then, uh, one of our friends back in Atlanta is a big, uh, Tigger fan.
I have no idea, uh, why or what. But on the label, uh, Tigger is on there, which I’m trying to get the camera to focus. Uh, but the guy was like, we sent him a picture and then a couple weeks later he was like, man, can you, uh, can you send some of that out? Um. Just a fictional story. So I didn’t send alcohol or anything like that, but I picked up some more of this beer ’cause I saw it at my local, uh, beer shop ’cause it’s pretty good.
So that’s what I’m drinking today. And yeah, should be shorter episode. I, I think I like this 20 to 30 minute length. I don’t ramble on as much, although I, I feel myself doing it now. So. A few of the updates. Right. So music, I, I got a, it’s, it’s not a copyright strike, but it’s a copyright claim. Against my video from a couple weeks ago, I used the same intro music that I’ve been using for six years, which I paid for a license at Shutterstock in 2019.
Technically, when I looked back at the receipt, it was, uh, December of 2018 is when I. Just grabbed that music, paid 50 bucks or something like that. And basically I got the copyright claim against my video and um, I was like, what the fuck? I’ve been using the same thing for a while. This is weird. And it’s actually relatively straightforward.
You go to Shutterstock, you log in, you request a content claim. Monetization ID something or other. Basically, you can go in and request it and within two or three days, they’ll send you some weird snippet of code that has, uh, the information that they’re, um, that they’re looking for. So I don’t monetize my videos.
S, but if there’s a claim against it, then other people, Shutterstock in this case, I I believe will then I, I guess they attempt to monetize it, and then for those few days that you’re unable to monetize it. They are monetizing it, I assume, and then taking the money and they don’t give that back. So I have heard recently there’s been more like copyright claims and like, I don’t know what the mechanism is.
I actually asked, I said, Hey, did I do something wrong? They didn’t reply back. So anyway, as I mentioned before, I don’t recommend Shutterstock anymore that that’s kind of unacceptable. Um, like I said, they give you no recourse to claim the money back. So if they were showing ads, I, I don’t get any of that.
I mean, not that many people watch the video to be honest with you, but, but still, it’s the principle of the thing. And what if I did have a very popular channel out there? I’d be, I’d be upset. I mean, it could represent like thousands of dollars to someone, not me, but to someone else. So, anyway. Kind of bad business practice.
And they did this before on my other channel as well, and I had to go jump through the hoops to do the monetization stuff. But I said, fuck you guys, I’ll just play my own music. So that is the music that I played, and I think I’m gonna do it for my other show too. I’m gonna, I haven’t. Um, come up with it yet, but I was texting back and forth with Tyler and I may switch it up and just be like, all right, we’re gonna use this for a season, or tell my producer like, Hey, here’s a few tracks.
Mix it up. I don’t care about branding, but it’s cool that I, I, you know, I played the guitar on that. Tyler was jamming and it’s not perfect. Uh, it it’s real though. And we just turn, you know. He plays super loud. I have a very loud amp and it was really fun to do. So since I’m, I’m doing it my way here and I’m not trying to, you know, bow to Shutterstock or whomever, I’ll just play my own music.
Alright, feedback. I’ve been getting a lot of feedback. As I mentioned, the last few shows have really been about me talking about potentially. Calling out bad actors, bad influencers out there that are promoting either crappy products. And if you’re not on my email list, you should sign up because I, I wrote longer emails where I was, I was basically thinking about.
The pros and the cons of calling out these folks. And last show I mentioned, Hey, I don’t know if it’s worth it. I’m not sure if I’ll number one, be able to do like the right and appropriate amount of research and if it’s worth calling people out. Anyway, so I thought about this and I may record, you know, I.
The, I might record something that is in response to it because at this point I would say it’s, it’s a low chance that I’m gonna record stuff to call people out. A few people actually commented on the videos and sent emails and said, Hey, it’d be entertaining for us, for you to call people out, but it may be more.
Like hardship on you, Doug, so you should be careful. And that, that was like a lot of the response, but I have to thank you everyone out there that replied back. I got so many more responses than I expected and then, I mean, more than I’ve ever received in, well, perhaps in recent years. Back in the day when everyone was into niche sites, there was a lot more, uh, chatter out there.
But at this point. You know, I don’t get too many emails back, but I got dozens. I got dozens of emails back, which is really cool. And I’m gonna pause just for a second to, uh, drink some beer here.
It’s very good. It’s good beer. Alright. So a lot, a lot of replies, a lot of people said, Hey, this will be very interesting and it’ll. You know, show those people that they can’t, you know, they can’t just sell a a product and then like turn it off. Especially software like, you know, here’s one of the issues.
Like someone comes up with some tool, they built it with ai, maybe they don’t know software very much, and they’re like all, I built a tool. But they don’t realize they have to maintain the tool and if there’s issues with it, they have to debug and. They have to fix those problems. And by the way, you have to test to make sure when you fix something, you didn’t break something else in the meantime.
And that’s just, uh. Uh, very basic software development. And if you don’t come from a software background and you’re, you’re like, Hey, I’ll use these AI tools, and then you sell your product for a little while and then you’re like, oh, actually this, this sucks. But you sold, uh, some lifetime packages out there and people were counting on the software.
They believed the bullshit that you were telling them. Like, oh, I’m using this tool and it’s really changing my business and all this stuff. I mean. So many out there, and I don’t, there’s a handful of people that I don’t think are, they don’t realize that they’re doing anything wrong. And they’re like, yeah, you know what, I, I tried to do this, I sold it.
And people know that. It’s just like, uh, you know this, everything moves so fast. They’re not expecting to actually be able to use it. But some people they are. And. You can’t assume like what your audience knows. So I believe there’s some folks that are intentionally selling things that they know are crappy and then other people are just ignorant of the fact.
And I think the people that are ignorant will figure it out before too long. ’cause people will stop buying their stuff if they keep creating things and then they’re like, oh actually this, you know, we don’t use that anymore ’cause the internet changed and all that kind of stuff. I mean, people will stop buying their stuff.
I hope so. Anyway, I got a ton of feedback. Thank you to everyone who replied back. I actually tried to email everyone back, and a handful of those bounced back because it, my email was marked as spam or something like that. So it hit your server and then it didn’t, so I tried to reply back to you. I usually said something specific.
I didn’t like copy and paste or anything like that. But. There were a handful of people that were like, Hey, we think this, or, Hey, we, um, bought a product and this product is actually pretty crappy. So though a couple people did mention those and you know, I’d never heard of them. I’m not consuming that content.
But yeah, the bad part is there’s, you know, there are still people out there and they seem so convincing and they pop up on your feed. You don’t know what you don’t know. So if you’re a beginner, you may end up watching these videos. And then there’s a handful of other people that are in their circle jerk situation and they’re thinking, oh yeah, I’m seeing these other people talk about it.
And they say it’s good. And then, you know, there’s a handful of people that just promote each other’s stuff and it’s a weird thing. And the craziest part? The craziest part of this whole thing. So it, I was, um. Inspired for this topic because I chatted with a few friends and I mentioned I have observed this thing and it looks like there’s more scammers out there, or people that I didn’t think were scammers or selling products where I’m like, this is clearly bullshit.
Right. So when I mentioned that, the two individuals that I talked to, they were like, is it this person? And I was like. No, it’s not. I don’t even, I don’t, I haven’t followed them in years. I, I had no clue. And they both mentioned different people and sure enough, when I got the emails back, there were probably like four responses that mentioned someone, again, not who I was thinking of.
And it was, so there’s all these people like, I don’t even need to tell you, Hey, look out. There’s some scammers out there. You probably already have somebody in mind. And I think that’s how I’m gonna end up framing it in actual video. And I’m not, I don’t know how it’ll turn out exactly, but I have some ideas.
But in the short term, I mean, if you think something is a little funny and too good to be true, then don’t buy it. Like, if someone is making too many claims, like don’t buy it. If they’ve ever sold anything where you’re like, this, this seems like they were full of shit, then just don’t buy anything from them.
Or if they’re promoting their, their friend and you see their, their offer come around. Yeah. If it smells funny a little bit, then just stay away from it. It’s not worth, not worth the risk. In a couple days, I’m gonna be heading out to some national parks. I’m gonna unplug for a little while. I’m looking, looking forward to it.
It’s one of the great things with a lot of the national parks, you have horrible, uh, data connections and wifi is not available. I’ll be going into Yellowstone and. Hanging out with my dad. I’ll actually, I think we may do a little video, um, based on the travel. You know, I, I like the vlog, I like the idea of vlogging.
It always ends up being a pain in the butt, but I think if I frame it in the right way, and I’ve been watching, you know, vlogs for years, so I have seen, um, some more recently where it’s, it is way more casual and. You know, in air quotes, like amateur, it’s like real people recording. And they were like, you know what, I, we did some stuff but I didn’t record it ’cause it was a pain in the ass.
And I’ll just tell you about it now. And there’s some B roll. We took some pictures so they like make it work. And I’m like, oh, okay. Like I can make it work. I don’t want it to like, I don’t want it to dictate my day, but yeah, heading into Yellowstone. And I was telling a, a couple friends yesterday, I’m like, yeah, I invited my dad to go out to Yellowstone.
We’ll probably drive through the, the, uh, green Tetons on the, the way back and we’re staying in lodges, which normally, um, we’re traveling with Georgie, the dog, or old dog, Brody, and. They don’t allow pets in very many places in national parks, and you could often bring a dog into some of the lodging, but usually it’s the, the cabin area or the more rustic stuff.
You usually cannot bring your dog into the big old lodges. And Yellowstone has a few like. Really awesome if, if you’re unfamiliar, like watch some documentaries, like go check it out on YouTube or whatever. But like they have the Lake Hotel, which is fantastic, and it’s, it’s more like hotel style. And then they have Old Faithful Inn, which is like a giant, like four to five story log cabin.
So it’s built. With logs and you know, when they built it, they actually hired like bridge makers and it was circa about, say say maybe like 1905, something like that, around that timeframe. Maybe a little bit earlier. Could have been a little bit earlier. I’ve been on the tour there, but it’s been a few years.
They have huge fireplace in the middle and like a rock chimney going up. Super cool place, but. The thing is we’ll be able to stay in those lodges. So we’re staying in, uh, the Lake Hotel, old Faithful Inn Canyon Lodge, which, uh, the Canyon is actually a very new structure that was built in, I believe, 2016.
So that one’s brand spanking new basically. But anyway, I was telling a friend like, Hey, my dad’s coming in. We’re we’re doing a trip. And she was like, oh, that’s great. That’s a trip of a lifetime. And I was like. Yeah, it, it’s gonna be awesome. I was like, we lived in Bozeman, so like, we’ve been like dozens of times, like we’ve been to Yellowstone a bunch.
It’s cool every time, it’s not like you’re able to see everything. Like you, you’re always like compromising. And like, I think back, I’m like, we lived in Bozeman for four years. We went a bunch and we would try to go off season most of the time. And that made it better. ’cause there there were fewer people, there’s less traffic and you’re, I mean.
You feel less rushed. I like a park that’s not too packed. However, my dad and I we’re gonna be there like during like the heart of summer, like it’s right in the middle of summer, right? I mean, right smack dab when everyone in the country is like, uh, all the kids are outta school, right? So, um, you know, once you hit, say like early mid-August, some places are actually going back to school.
But anyway, it’ll be cool. We don’t have a, a big agenda. We have a lot of, uh, just open time. We do have dinner reservations at all the nice restaurants. So those are at the lodges and that that’ll be like the, um, the lake dining room and old faithful in a dining room there. So should be very awesome. And not all parks have.
Poor data connections, but the ones that are often more remote, especially out west, these are in the middle of nowhere. So over the years, the, uh, data connections and wifi availability has been a little bit more in Yellowstone. Um, I mean, the first time I went it was like 1999, so it’s like there’s, there’s no wifi.
There’s no cell phone towers close by. In fact, I don’t even think, I’m trying to remember. Yeah, I probably had a cell phone. It was probably like a Motorola star tack or something like that. If you’re a younger person, you don’t even know what I’m talking about. You’re like, there’s a time before cell phones.
Yeah, we had pagers and stuff and Yeah, like having a laptop was like bananas. So anyway. The connectivity has gotten better. And I know like at Old Faithful, you know, it went years ago and they act like I was able to connect via data and send some texts and stuff. Now it’s, I think it’s a little bit more, um, connected, but not a ton.
I know we stayed in the lake not too long ago, and I believe one of the hotels had like some wifi and you would see people like. Going in and checking their phone. But the last time I stayed in Yellowstone for a stretch like this, I stopped bringing my phone with me. I just left it in the room and walked around.
And you would get the phantom vibration in your pocket where you think some signal is coming through. But there’s, I didn’t even have the phone in my pocket, which is a funny thing to think about, but we’ll be zipping around a little bit and. The camera’s on our phones are so good, so I, I, we’ll have it around and on me and we won’t be staying in one place the whole time.
So by the time you listen to this, I will be back home already just based on the, the schedule and all that stuff, but it’ll be very fun. One thing you may have noticed over the past several episodes, I haven’t been doing interviews and I was trying to hook one up with. Olga Czar, who’s been on the show several times, five or six times, but it’s been a little while.
And actually I need to, I should probably send her an email, but we were like, alright, maybe we could do an interview. Just catch up, see what’s going on. But the scheduling has been a little difficult. I think we’re like eight. Eight or nine hours, uh, difference. So it would probably require me to wake up, uh, very early one morning.
So we may do it in the summer ’cause I, I can’t, it’s easy for me to wake up early in the morning during the summer when the sun comes up and all that, very early. But, uh, still scheduling has been a little tough. And then actually Dave Fox pinged me. So if you, if you’ve been around for a while. Dave Fox was one of the earliest interviews that I did.
He was an early student of mine in like 2015, so I actually remember he and I doing calls in 2015 when we stayed in white. Fish, Montana, near Glacier National Park. I still had a job and I was doing side hustle stuff and it was just before I released my courses and stuff. So I was kind of like, I had sort of the game plan.
Dave kind of went through it and it wasn’t, uh, he didn’t enroll in a course. It was just like some one-on-one coaching and he went on to earn lots of money. I think he, um. He started many other sites and dabbled in other areas. But anyway, he pinged me and he was like, Hey, I, I wanna do an update if possible.
So let me know about that. What do you think? Would you want to get an update from Dave Fox? Leave a comment out there. And I, I was struggling ’cause he’s pinging me before and I mean, a lot of people wanna try to be on the show, right? Dave and I have a history. He, I mean, he was, again, one of the early folks that wanted to share a story, so I, I always appreciate that, but I was like, Hey, like, do you have actionable stuff to share?
Do you have like is it success story stuff? Is it somewhere in the middle? Like what are we talking about here? Because I mean, the fact is success stories are fun and they’re inspiring, but often people get a ton of value from a non success story. So I was trying to gauge like what’s going on and I wasn’t really sure.
Where I wanted, well, like what I wanna do with the show, and it’s like, okay, is this relevant? Um, I think there are enough people that have stuck around and, and you probably will send me an email feedback at Doug show or leave a comment on YouTube and let me know, like, Hey, yeah, it would be cool to hear from Dave and I’m curious about these things, so let me know what you think.
And going back to that, uh, like a lot of this show initially was. Success interviews and just sort of classic interviews. But I, I’m in a spot now where I’m like trying to determine, don’t wanna keep doing the show. And I received an email from my friend Josh out in the St. Louis area, and I own an email back, by the way.
So he actually listens to my other show, mile High five. But I didn’t realize that he listens to the Doug show. Also, I got a couple emails where people were like, yeah, I actually listen to both of your shows. Maybe not all of them. I know. Like I don’t even listen to, um, all the episodes from like shows that I really like.
So I get it. You, you pick and choose. There’s a lot of content out there these days, so. Anyway, there’s a handful of y’all that listen to both of them, which is really cool and I appreciate it. And I heard from you and I think you know me, um, really thinking out loud and sharing like, Hey, previously the Doug show was the top end funnel to sell courses.
I haven’t sold the courses in two years, and this is a hobby at this point. So I’m thinking. Am I getting stuff out of this? And I ran, uh, you know, I looked at the analytics and everything and I was like, actually there’s a pretty good number of people that listen. And if I extrapolate it out and think about it a little bit, I’m like, wow, that’s, that’s a decent number of people.
So I appreciate that. And I know that you all have supported the show in the past. Yeah, and you listen now and you try to support the show now even by just consuming it. And I appreciate that. So I heard from enough people where I’m like, okay, I can figure out some stuff. And like many things, if I’m, I mean, it’s a hobby, right?
So, and, and it’s a, in air quotes, it’s a job. So I’m like able to create whatever job that I want and. You know, the technical aspect of recording the video and the audio and stuff, there’s some overhead with the, there’s some overhead with the, with the admin, like the Shutterstock situation and the music.
But now if I’m like, I’m just, I’m gonna make my own music and it’s not gonna be perfect. But it’ll be my music and I won’t have to worry about copyright stuff, man. If I get a copyright strike on, on this, I’ll have to hire a IP lawyer apparently. But anyway, the point is, um, there’s a little bit of overhead doing the show however I can.
Yeah, essentially just interview who I want. So like I mentioned, uh, in past episodes, like I’m into watching essentially like guitar related YouTube channels and luckily, I mean, my channel does have enough subscribers where if I do email people, they’ll probably reply. They’ll reply back probably, and they’ll probably interview with me if I ask nicely if I have a connection that’s even better.
But the channel is big enough and I could say, Hey, I’ve interviewed these other folks and have been featured in these places. So there’s some legitimacy around that. Um, all that to say it could be interesting to. Uh, kind of focus on YouTubers, but in topic areas that I’m really interested in, and then we could geek out on whatever we want.
And part of it, I mean, I watch a lot of cooking and food related things too, so I could like branch out just in my interest areas in basically. Talk to the creators that I watch, which could be really interesting. ’cause I watch a lot of, um, you know, outdoor stuff too. I’ve reached out to a couple people, but I feel like there were a couple like, uh, van Life folks that I, I tried a specific way to get in touch with them and I didn’t hear back and I was like, I wonder if it just got lost in the mix.
Because usually someone would just say. No thanks. ’cause it’s not like I’m making a big ask. I’m like, Hey, I think what you’re doing is cool. Will you do an interview? I, I like to talk to creators. So that is one angle that I’m looking at to keep it fresh and interesting for myself. And I mean. I assume that you’ve checked out the last few episodes.
This would be a weird one to come into as your very first episode, but it happens. So the last few episodes have just been solo and I tell my stories. Sometimes I’ll make an outline like today. I mean, it’s just a bullet point list. It’s not really an. So I think there’s a, there’s a path where there can be some of the sort of classic interviews and a little more back and forth and some of these travel things as well.
So I said I wasn’t gonna ramble too much today. I talked enough where I hardly drank any beer at all, but I drank a little. So I think we’ll get the, uh. The jam, the music back in for the outro. And if you have feedback on this episode, things you want to hear about, let me know
if
five stars is best.
You made it.