I’m selling My Epiphone Les Paul on craigslist.
Giftlab (by Emily Odio-Sutton) The Print-On-Demand Etsy Course.
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Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. I’m Doug Cunnington and I’m recording outside again. So if you hear the crickets and the noises and all that stuff, it’s because I’m sitting in the backyard. And people, , you seem to enjoy this, , kind of style. This feedback was uh, good Georgie’s sitting back here with me.
She thinks it’s time to play, so we’ll see how it goes. The other thing I need to do, ’cause I’m recording on. The cannon out here and it cuts you off after 30 minutes. So last time, couple weeks ago, I, I was frustrated when it cut off in the middle. Uh, but now I thought, Hey, that’s a feature. Alright, so that’ll make me keep this episode a little bit shorter.
So I set a timer for 20 minutes. Uh, the downside is like when Georgie hears me talking, she thinks, Hey, it’s time to play. So I may have to pet her the whole time, which is not a downside to actually, it’s one of the great joys in life. Petting a dog. All right, so, uh, today we’re gonna talk about some reflections that I have after.
Going to FinCon in Portland, which was very fun. If you, um, missed the episode that I recorded with, uh, Jason a couple weeks ago, please check that out. I think I might have recorded an episode where I talked about it a little bit, but basically I don’t go to too many of the sessions out there in Portland.
I’m not. Trying to grow my channel. I’m not trying to learn anything specific. It’s not that I’m trying not to learn anything, it’s just I’m not going there specifically to learn stuff. I have in the past a little bit, but by the time I started going to FinCon, it was more of a networking activity and that’s totally cool.
You can learn so much. Like there’s so many great sessions out there. However, I’m gonna, I’m not gonna talk about this, uh. The thing that I’m gonna talk about is the, the bigger sort of keynote sessions. Those are the ones that I went to. Those are like the main stage where they call ’em community sessions, but they’re the main stage keynotes.
And several of them were good. They’re entertaining and that sort of thing. But the issue that I had was, and it’s not an issue, it’s just a critique from where I sit. So when I went to, uh, FinCon this year, I met. A lot of like new creators. They’re like, Hey, I am starting my YouTube channel. I wanna start a podcast, blah, blah, blah.
And they’re like, this is my first year. They’re like excited and overwhelmed and it, it’s cool. It’s a great energy and it’s really cool when like new folks show up and they, they’re starting to make the friends that I started making, you know, five, six years ago, some stuff like that. So. They are literally just getting started.
So they’re like, yeah, I do have a YouTube channel. I’ve published a handful of videos. They’re working on it. They’re watching other creators talk about YouTube. Similar to what I did back in the day. Um. And actually I still watch some of those occasionally. But, um, I catch myself going down the route that I, that I’m gonna describe eventually in this episode.
So they had the main stage talks. Um, I saw Pat Flynn talk, I saw a couple other sort of like, panel discussions. They, they get it to move fast. So even like Pat Flynn’s talk, I think it was only like 20 minutes, something like that. 20, 30 minutes. And then the. Panels were short and it was like one or two questions.
And the panels are the ones where I observed this the most. And they had, uh, YouTube creators. They had short form content creators and it was like short form videos. So think TikTok and that sort of thing. And I believe there were four people on the panel. There was another where it was like YouTube oriented and I think three of the four were, um, sort of. More in the audience capture, uh, realm.
And then one other guy, Rob Berger, he wasn’t, he was, uh, he was like, I’ve adapted this to be what I want it to be, and I’ll describe some of this stuff. So the main issue that I have, I’ll lay out my thesis if people, especially beginners or anyone that is not on sort of like the top tier of. Uh, sort of like the biggest audiences.
If you’re not on, say, like the top five or 10% of any platform, the advice that you got from the people that are, that are in the top like 5% is not really helpful for you. Or if you follow, it’s gonna lead you down a path that maybe you don’t want to go down, but you don’t know it yet. So, again, FinCon and other conferences, you could apply this to any other conference too.
So I, I assume. They have like the same kind of criteria. They do the same shit. Probably other conferences are even worse, particularly in the keynote, they get the biggest names ’cause I guess they wanna fill, fill the seats, which by the way, the seats were not filled. It seemed like there were only a couple hundred people in there.
Like the size of the room was fairly small and it never felt like there were many folks in there. So the, the advice the people were giving, and I’ll focus in on say the short form video. I think they. Had the sort of, the, the worst advice to give people. So part of it, and they try to backtrack it. They’re like, oh, in the beginning, I, I, you know, I didn’t do the all this stuff, but it, it kind of was lost.
So you have these creators that are huge and they’re trying to give advice to beginners and shit. Half of them like, forgot what it was even like to be a beginner. They’re like talking about, um, like. You know, there’s like a, there’s a formula for like being viral and they could pretty much do it on command.
And it reminded me of like listening to interviews with like Mr. Beast, which surely people can get value, but I mean, I haven’t paid attention to his interviews in a while with Mr. Beast. Uh, seems like a nice guy, but like literally it seems like he just like followed the analytics and the algorithm and he’s making like kinda.
Okay. Videos that people want to consume F from the analytics, but not, fuck, I don’t know. I haven’t listened or watched any of his stuff in few years here. But basically like he’s doing videos that the algorithm likes, not necessarily stuff he wants to do. Again, I haven’t paid attention in a while, so maybe he is.
Maybe it’s exactly what he wants to do. But when I listened to the interview, say two to three years ago, he sounded like, uh. He was a little too busy. He sounded like he had a huge team of people. And of course, again, this is me like trying to absorb information from people that are, I mean, he’s literally like the biggest YouTuber, right?
With the most subscribers. So like to learn something from him, it, it doesn’t really apply to someone like me. And the one of the biggest things is like people have different goals. So my goals. Are not even close to what the, the viral creators on the main stage doing the panel. It, it’s not even close. So they’re giving advice like, yeah, you need to whatever, publish five videos a day and you need to script everything out and like be, um, like surgical about everything and go check out the analytics.
And I’ll mention something that Pat Flynn was going, going down,
so they talk about being, uh, very surgical and check the analytics and being, uh, essentially all they’re doing is creating, uh, videos or content and it pretty much consumes their world, which I mean, if that works for them, if that is their goal, then fucking do it. Great. But there are, I mean, I’m coming from the financial independence, retire early area where I’m like, I’m trying to do less work.
The last thing I wanna do is like, go to social media. Yeah. And, uh, look at the analytics and then like, give all my content out there for free. Although I, I realize the irony, I’m actually creating these videos for free. I don’t run ads on YouTube, uh, very few sponsored videos or anything like that. at the end of the day, when you’re chasing the analytics, it could lead you down a path where you’re just going after the audience capture, which is, I’ll define it in, in a way that I understand where essentially you are following the analytics and you’re, you’re trying to do everything based on growing your audience, regardless if it aligns with what you wanna do or not. So there are plenty of examples where people end up creating these videos or content in general where, and it’s great the neighbors.
W for some reason trying to work right next to the fence here. Okay. So
the creators are trying to create videos merely to grow their audience and make sure they’re getting better analytics. So what might happen, and there’s uh, documented versions of this. There was a guy who basically, he like. Gained, I don’t even remember. He gained like 120 pounds or something like that.
‘Cause the, the audience was like guiding him towards overeating
so in Pat Flynn’s talk. He talked about a very large YouTube channel that he’s grown up and I stopped listening to Smart Passive Income probably six years ago, seven years ago, something like that. And it was just moving in a direction that I was like not super interested in. And Pat’s talk was entertaining.
Great keynote speaker. Uh, and I’ll have a side note. Towards the end. But basically he, um, he talked about his YouTube channel and he was, he went down the audience capture path, although it seems like it’s what he wants to do and. It’s the kind of videos that he wants to do. So he’s figured out the Venn diagram that works for him.
So he is, it seems like he’s creating videos that he’s into, so he outlined like, Hey, people really liked it when, um, it’s a Pokemon Pokemon. His channel is a Pokemon. Uh, like, uh, card, uh, I, I don’t even understand, but it, it’s cards and I got the point, like the Pokemon shit was not the point of it. It was like using analytics to create videos that your audience likes.
And basically he found that, um, cards in a binder were very, uh, popular videos and. Other, I think like giving away stuff or a quest or something like that. But he was able to see like, oh, these videos work pretty well. And I can look in the analytics and I could see the audience retention graph. And I could see, he said, when I’m on camera, people dropped off.
But when I was showing cards, when I was showing binders, people were into it and they, they watched for longer. So he was like, I’ll just do more of that. And the issue here is like. We’ll apply it to my channel. So I started doing some AI videos, and they did, they did well. I did AI videos maybe starting a couple years ago, and I did a handful of ’em.
And then I got to a point I’m like, I’m not interested in this. I’m only doing research. I’m doing this to create videos. So hopefully more people will watch. And the thing is, if you play this out, if you move forward, and if you look at. What does this look like in two years? If this is successful for me, it would’ve been creating AI videos and creating like lead magnets and courses and more information about ai.
That I was not interested in. And that is a really stupid way to like create a job that you don’t like. I mean, literally, I can do whatever I want. Like we can, as independent creators, we can create whatever we want. And if your goal is to like just grow an audience and just get views, then perhaps as a path that can work.
That said. When you peel back what you’re literally doing and you’re like, I’ve created a job where I’m creating videos or content or writing a blog about something that, not only that that I don’t care about, I get a little annoyed, like watching the videos on it. For example, and I’m just making up an example.
So this is where if you follow the analytics and you don’t think about the implications of what’ll happen, then you could end up. Creating content and creating a job for yourself that you don’t like very much, that stresses you out. And it’s even worse if it becomes successful. So this is the other issue, like, or this is another way that you could think about it.
Like what does this look like in 1, 3, 5 years if it is successful? Let’s look at my example. In five years, if I’m doing AI content, then uh, maybe. And wildly successful, right? So imagine if this really works out, then maybe I have a team of people that are relying on me to create more AI videos ’cause it’s so successful.
And I have like, uh, a few maybe apps or courses to show people how to use ai. And then there’s customer support for that. And then I have to do marketing for it, and then I have to go on other. YouTube channels to talk about it. And that is not a route that I would want to take. So like you could identify like, Hey, if this is successful, is this actually what I want?
Or am I aiming for something different? And I’ve done this exercise a few times, like, Hey, if this is successful, what does it look like? And then it can, it can inform you on like how you want to, you know, shape your business or your life or whatever. So as we are starting to run outta time. There are some flaws with recording outside here.
The neighbors at times are noisy. They usually don’t come around and make that much noise, but, um. Just poor timing. The other thing is like Georgie is quite demanding and she’s, um, if you don’t pay attention to her, she’ll start eating grass, which upsets her stomach. And I know some people are like, oh yeah, dogs eat grass when their tummy, their tummy is upset.
But, um, I usually find that Georgie eats grass ’cause she’s, um. Bored or something like that, or she’s trying to get attention and uh, a hundred percent of the time she eats grass and she eats like over a certain amount, she’ll throw up. So I think the grass is making her sick. It just upsets her stomach.
Um, so if you have thoughts on that, if you wanna leave a comment, you can. But like, if she doesn’t eat grass, when she’s upset, she eats grass. Like when her other dog friends come around and she’s like, I’m just gonna chop on grass. Um. The other thing, side note with, uh, the Pat Flynn thing. So Fincons great.
I have met so many friends. I get to hang out with people that I don’t see very often and I’ll. Go back and tell you about the first conference that I went to, it was in Minneapolis, and the reason why I went to it is Pat Flynn was actually speaking there, and I had heard in the past, like he would do maybe like meetups or something like that, and I thought, oh, that’s cool.
I, I’ll get to meet Pat and all that kind of stuff. So he did his keynote. I never got any information about any kind of meetup, like he didn’t do anything. He actually, he didn’t even go to the happy hours. He didn’t hang out at all. And I was like, ah, you know what, that’s a little disappointing. Um, and at the time I was following Pat and I think actually going back after going to that conference, um, actually like.
Um, hung out with the, the CEO and the CTO of the company that was, uh, giving it, which I think it was. There was a company called Lead Pages and they had, um, an email service provider and they talked me into, actually it really from the CEO talked me into moving over and, um, I think it was during a restructure or a rebrand or something.
And basically I started the process. And then the conversion, uh, the migration team, they completely dropped the ball. They just stopped responding. And, um, I had already paid them. So I was like, fuck that. I was like, gimme a refund, you guys completely dropped the ball. And I was just like, ah. And Pat was doing a ton of, uh, marketing, uh, for that company as well.
So I was just like, you know what, fuck all of that. Um. So one kind of disappointing thing, so Pat was promoting, uh, his book, I think that’s why he went to FinCon. He has a new book out and, um, FinCon is like one of those, uh, conferences where like even the, the biggest podcasters, the keynote people, they hang out in the lobby and they’ll talk to whomever.
And usually there’s, I’ve, I’ve gotten enough years where like I know quite a few people now. One thing I noticed, pat did not hang out at all. He just, um, he did his keynote. I saw him walk through the lobby like once or twice. I never saw him chatting with folks. He did a couple, maybe interviews or something like that, but he was not, um, he was not a community guy.
He didn’t seem like he wanted to talk to anyone, and he just like did his fucking keynote, got outta there, didn’t hang out at all, and it’s a little disappointing and. I, you know, I, I guess it, it fits in. ’cause I, like I said, I stopped listening to his show like years ago and I think the seed of me, like being disinterested was, um, he just didn’t seem like a nice guy.
Like he sounds nice on the pod and this could get some hate, but I’m curious if people have like hung out with Pat. ’cause apparently he used to go to these, um. You know, FINCONS in years past, so maybe he’s like fucking over it. And he’s like, I don’t want to talk to anyone out here. I’m going to just do the main stage stuff and get on the plane and get outta there.
Um, and actually I, I have a couple, uh. Friends that have known him from years past, and maybe he’s cool, but I don’t know. I didn’t talk to him, didn’t even wave or anything like that. So, um, I did stop, uh, that guy, Rob Berger. I, I, you know, he was, we were both waiting for an Uber or something like that. We, and Rob and I have mutual friends even though we don’t know each other, but I was like.
Rob, I appreciate your channel, I dig it. And he was very kind. Uh, and he, he was like, oh, hopefully we’ll see each other later. Uh, we didn’t, but I’m, like I said, we actually have mutual friends, so it’s not beyond the realm that I would actually be able to like interview or talk to Rob or something like that.
But I never got that feeling with Pat. So a little unfortunate, but uh, it’s just one of those things. So what do they say? Don’t meet your heroes, right? ’cause Pat. You know that he’s one of the reasons why I got started with all this stuff. I found this podcast and, um, you know, that’s the root story or that’s the, that’s the origin story.
So, alright, I’ll play you out here.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it’s dug from the future. I forgot to mention that I’m actually selling one of my guitars. It’s an Epiphone Les Paul from 2005 and it’s probably not something that it will be worth it to ship ’cause that’ll cost at least like a hundred bucks. But, um, I’ll put the Craigslist listing so you can check out the details.
There’s a demo video and stuff like that. So if you’re in the sort of Denver, Colorado area. And you’re interested in the guitar, shoot me an email and let me know. And, uh, because you’re a listener, viewer of the show, I could just give you the, the straight bottom price versus like what I listed on there.
But anyway, I wanted to let you know about that and uh, I expect it to probably go in the next couple weeks. So do let me know if you’re interested.