Speaker: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. I’m Doug Cunnington, and today I’m gonna go over four different items. Should be sort of a, a quick type episode, hopefully, and few updates, some foreshadowing of episodes to come, and a couple little updates, things that are on my mind. So number one, I have a point that’s labeled work optional.
And maybe some interesting points and things that I discovered after some reflection. Number two, video is the note number three. Taking some advertising, so I’ll explain that as well. Number four, journals and the journals that I have laying around, I think I talked about ’em a couple episodes ago.
Work Optional Mindset
Speaker: So number one is a work optional.
So coming up next episode, I believe, episode six 15, looking at my Trello board. If I numbered things correctly, six 15 with Matt gei. It’s pretty exciting. It’s a marathon episode that’s about an hour and a half long. Matt and I can get going and start chatting. And this was with no aid of beer. This was a hundred percent sober.
I think we started in the morning even, and he and I could just talk. So the main topic that. Uh, interview was how Matt is shutting things down. Matt is quitting. A lot of his media that he is creating mostly in the business casual money lab area. He’s still working on Swim University. I’m not gonna steal the thunder of that episode, but there was a a point that I was making with him.
Around like me being lazy slash I’m really good at leisure, which is what Matt mentioned.
Matt was saying, I’m really good at leisure, which I took as a compliment, and the thing that I was encouraging Matt about was really related to like doing less work and. Taking time to spend on your hobbies and we go on and on about this sort of thing. And one point that Matt brought up was that he was gonna continue to work.
Like he couldn’t imagine retiring, even though that is in his sight sometime in the future, that necessarily the near future. But he was like, I am just, you know, I’m a worker. I’ve always worked and I can’t imagine not working. Later I was talking to my wife Elizabeth, who knows, Matt knows Matt’s wife.
We’re all friends and everything. And I was explaining some of the things that Matt and I talked about. ’cause we were down here for like two and a half hours or something like that. And I was explaining this one point. Around Matt saying that he was gonna continue to work and that sort of thing, and I was like, oh, like I, I totally get it, but also not exactly.
And I encourage people to explore the option of not working or turning things down quite a bit. My wife brought up a great point and she said. That I said the same exact thing just a couple years ago, and it’s when I was basically still, um, selling courses. I was still, I was still running one niche site that was getting some traffic and earning some money and things were fairly straightforward.
I was like, I’m continuing to earn money and it’s not a huge. Um, ask as far as the amount of time or effort, it was a lot of maintenance and just keeping the momentum going, but when algorithm updates hit, when AI got bigger, when everything just got a little bit harder. That was just enough of a barrier for me to turn things down quite a bit from a work perspective.
And I forgot that. I forgot that I, I was telling her, I was like, I am gonna keep working. It’s been fairly straightforward. I’ve been earning money for, you know, eight plus years straight where it’s. Exactly what I expect. I’ve been doing it for a little while, and the longer I do it, the more confident that I could do it in the same way for a little bit longer, and it’s not that big of a deal and I’m totally fine with it.
But at some point the courses weren’t relevant and I didn’t feel right selling those courses, so I, I shut ’em down. I think I was a little bit ahead of some people, a little bit behind a few others, but in general I was like, Hey, I’m not seeing this working as well. I think I should probably, you know, turn these courses off.
I stopped selling ’em, and then about a year later. Sunset them, shut them down and turned off the access. That said, I did go back to anyone who wanted access. I put ’em in a Google Drive folder and if people wanted to check them out, I let them know. So imagine if you know some software company is sun setting their software.
They may have to shut the shit down, you know, but they’ll let their customers know. They’ll give them a transition path, and that’s what I did. It’s the best I could do with what I had and the resources that are available. And you know, my courses were not ones that you had to pay each year. To keep getting access.
It was like you paid years ago and then you had access ongoing. So there were people who bought, you know, my first course in 2016 and they still had access to those courses until, whatever, a couple years ago when I turned it off. So anyway. This was an interesting observation, and I wonder if you know Matt or other people or you out there in the audience if you’re thinking, ah, I’m gonna, I’m, I am gonna keep on working.
And, uh, I mean the fact is I’ve turned this. Podcast and my other podcast into my work, but the amount of time that I put into it is much, much smaller. There’s no one to answer to. The revenue demands are extremely low in that it’s just to cover cost, which will bring us around to 0.3 whenever we get to it.
But it was super interesting when my wife reminded me. That I indeed said that I was gonna keep working and I can’t imagine not working now these days I can’t imagine work working much more than I do. I was supposed to have three meetings today, but I canceled one of them because I thought that’s too many.
And, and these were casual meetings with people that I know and it would’ve been totally fine. It mostly social, in fact, but I don’t wanna have too many things stack up. And heading outta town before too long and basically things are gonna get a little busy and I want to have some free days before I head outta town.
Audio Gear Tweaks
Speaker: So that said, side note, I pretty much always bring my recording equipment with me when I go on a trip, and in the past year or so, it’s extremely rare for me to actually record. I will have some family in town and I think it could be interesting to record with some of my family members, so we’ll see how it goes.
I will, like I said, I always bring the equipment just in case a podcast breaks out or I wanna have the option to record something on the road and it’s, it’s good to have the equipment and it’s good to have the high quality audio, which I do appreciate. Side note, I think it was on my other podcast. This is a side note.
Within a side note, I need to stay on track or I’m gonna run outta time here, but I think my audio should be a little bit better than it was. Some people were saying that I sounded muffled and it was too much base and not enough tre, and I was using my JHS pedals color box V two, which is really nice.
But I think I had the settings, um, off or not. Optimized and I sounded what I thought, fine. But some people, depending on where they were listening or how they were listening, apparently it sounded muffled, especially compared to my guests sometimes. So I’ve adjusted things and it should be a little bit more natural.
Turns out, I mean, everything was pretty much fine before, and adding the color box actually made made it a little bit worse for a little while, maybe for some people. So hopefully the audio is very wonderful and you enjoy, you know, hearing my voice number two, video and vlogs.
Why Video Wins
Speaker: That’s the way to go. So I was recording something with a friend of mine for some other thing.
It’s called the PHI Collective, and it was like a virtual event. And if you follow my other podcast, you’re probably aware of this, but it’s the coworking space slash social club. That used to be Mr. Money Mustache HQ in Longmont, Colorado, and I was recording with Pete, Mr. Money Mustache for this PHI Collective virtual event.
A question came up around doing podcasts or starting a blog. So I’m, I’m big on podcast and YouTube and I really enjoy them. Encourage people to spend time on him. Pete, Mr. Money Mustache started his blog and something like. 2011 and things are different now. Things are different in all, all industries. And the conclusion, you know, we chatted a little bit and you know, if you like to write, then write, start a blog, do Substack, whatever.
If you are kind of open to whatever the format might be, both Pete and I agreed that YouTube and video is great. It’s a fine way to go. Present your content. It’s a great skill to develop. You might be nervous that a lot of people are gonna see you do embarrassing stuff, but you would be so lucky if you have very many people watch your content at all.
In general, especially when you’re first starting out, and again, it’s a great skill to have even though there are some technical hurdles with video or editing or lighting or other stuff. But generally, I mean, a lot of the YouTubers that I watch, a ton of their video, it’s just shot on their iPhone, like it’s pretty straightforward.
Sure, maybe they have external microphones, so the audio’s a little bit better, especially if they’re recording outside or they’re far away from their camera or something like that. But generally, you can get awesome content on your phone, and it can be an older phone. I mean, you could have like an iPhone 10 or something like that, and it can be totally fine.
You don’t need the latest and greatest by any means. If you have something a little bit nicer, like I have A-D-S-L-R here with a nicer lens, but you know, I could do everything that I’m doing just with my iPhone and it would be, I mean, pretty much the same. I’ve added more complexity over time, but it doesn’t have to to be that way.
The good part is if you have written content already, maybe you started a blog a little while back, or you had other content out there in some capacity. Maybe it was on, um. I don’t know, short form like uh, Instagram post where you treated it like a blog post and you wrote a few hundred words for your post.
You can translate that over to video and essentially have a new medium with the same thoughts and ideas. When I started YouTube, that’s exactly what I did. I was running my blog for a couple, few years beforehand and then I realized, oh, I could just go ahead and make this into YouTube videos. So I had the content there and you could tell probably if you go back, I was, I wasn’t necessarily reading, but I was certainly referencing the original, you know, written blog post material.
So I would say if you’re thinking of starting anything. Not that anyone asked, but if you’re thinking of starting something, I would lean into video in some capacity. The other thing Pete and I both agreed on probably a little bit related to our age and our overall attitude. We don’t like short form video.
I consume some short form video, but not much. And it’s usually Instagram reels, not really. YouTube shorts maybe a little bit, and then no TikTok. I don’t think Pete consumes any TikTok either, but basically we’re like, ah, we would not advise short form video. It’s not our thing. If you’re super into it, then sure you could spend time on it, but from like a audience connection standpoint is probably not the best.
Ads and Sponsorships
Speaker 2: Number three, I’ve been taking some advertising revenue, taking advantage of that option that I have. So this is in the form of dedicated YouTube videos. Typically there might be an ad placement type thing, and it’s not too bad. So far I have had this option in the past. Uh, you know, there are some sponsored videos that I’ve done, some sponsored.
Spots in the middle of videos, that sort of thing. And usually the lift is not too much. I hope it’s not, uh, too big of an issue for anyone out there. The thing is, I have a big enough subscriber base on the YouTube channel. That companies are trying to find YouTubers that they can have basically show off their product and working with advertisers.
It’s a double-edged sword. Some people are great to work with, others aren’t. Others are more difficult. It might be from like a communication standpoint and like. Actually understanding what they’re asking for, maybe the creative brief isn’t detailed enough or not accurate based on what they actually want.
So there have been some challenges in, there’s a company which I won’t mention that I have tried to work with a little bit and it’s been a little rough and I’ve, I may just like call it. And, and not really worry about it, but some of the others like Search Atlas, that has been a great product to check out and look at.
There’s other people, uh, friends of mine that I’ll just interview because I know who they are and they’re. You know, they’re friends. Others, um, I’ll have some ad placement in. It works out okay. Sometimes it’s products that are really pretty good. I actually had a subscriber of the show. Corey mentioned, uh, one of the products that I, um, talked about.
He was like, that product is super awesome. I should find the name and give them a shout out real quick. And he was like. It’s even better than what you talked about in the interview. It’s really, really good. And like I said, I’m gonna go look for it really quick and give Corey a shout out as well. Hold on.
Oh yeah, it’s been a few weeks, so I, I literally did forget it’s, we can track, so we can track is a way to. Monitor and get analytics and metrics on your affiliate referrals. And Corey says, I’m a customer. And I have to say, this is the first case where the, the, um, company understated their software. He says that the real power and we can track is that it can feed conversions from an affiliate program and the value back to the advertising platform.
That way you can run ads with the OB objective of conversions and then conversion value, and then you let the algorithm do the work. And Corey is an experienced, uh, marketer and you know, business runner and entrepreneur. So he’s doing a really good job using the power of we can track. So I’ll give him another little shout out here and I’ll give.
Corey a shout out as well. He actually has a site called We Study Funnels and I’ll go ahead and link up so you could check that out. It’s, um, it’s an a newsletter slash, I’m not sure what it’s set up on. So, Corey, forgive me for this fumble. I didn’t have this in my notes to talk about, so I’m literally looking it up on the fly.
But we study funnels and you can imagine. He studies sales funnels on that site and does like an analysis so you can dig into it. Corey’s a good supporter of the show. He emails me every now and then, and I appreciate it every time. One benefit of having the advertisers pop on occasionally, number one, it’s nice to have, uh, some little bit of revenue to come in to pay for the small cost that the show, you know, incurs at this point.
You may be aware, I’m not selling any courses. I’m not, um, really earning, like this is not at the top of the funnel anymore. My email list is not growing. It’s getting smaller. I’m not even trying to get more subscribers. If you look on YouTube, the views are even going down. The algorithm is really not favoring my videos.
It’s not even showing it to the people who used to watch the videos and. You know, I, I try to stay a little bit away from the, the metrics and the analytics, because every now and then I get that, that little drive where I’m like, I need to. Do a little bit better so that people will watch the videos. The thing is, on the audio side, it’s stable.
It’s been stable and I can try to do a little bit better to cater to the algorithm. But the other side of it is like I don’t want to cave to them, you know, beating up the. You know, the videos based on the algorithm, they’re not performing. For some reason, people aren’t watching them. These aren’t really optimized for YouTube, and I’m doing it for fun.
So it’s like if I’m really doing it for fun, then it shouldn’t fucking matter if fewer people are watching it. The others are just missing out. You know, they’re missing out on this, this great entertaining content. But the listeners out there, you guys are great. It’s consistent. It’s harder to grow the listenership, but it’s also, you know, if you’ve stuck around for this long, you’re probably around for, you know, the stories.
And occasionally the interviews, I’m doing more interviews, which are, are pretty fun. I just talked to, uh, Kyle Roof earlier today. That interview will be out in a few weeks. It’s always fun to catch up with Kyle. He was, um, in the US so the time zones were favorable to catch up. We had a great time chatting.
Alright, I’m gonna start wrapping it up.
Journals and Road Plans
Speaker 2: The last number four. This is about journals and just a little update on that area. So I have been using my journals. I have a. A little journal that I’m keeping track of my guitar practice and some of the things that I’m working on. My wife and I are working on a Grateful Dead song.
She’s gonna play the banjo. I’m playing the guitar. It’s a friend of the devil if, if folks are familiar with that. And then I have the other sort of general journal here. I’ll keep like to-do list and that sort of thing. And the other I’m using for the podcast notes, and I’ve been a little more consistent.
Not like I’m scheduling time or doing it in a very specific way, but I’m using each of the journals a lot more often and it has been good. It’s good to get my ideas out. I like writing things out. Long hand, handwritten. I might still use. AI to help me sort through my notes, which is kind of helpful. So for example, in the podcasting notebook, maybe I, I write down the general questions and ideas, sort of stream of consciousness I can.
Write bullet points, incomplete sentences, kind of give the context of whatever the interview might be, which I literally just did. And I snapped a picture and I asked, uh, Gemini, in this case to create, um, an outline for a podcast interview with this person. Here’s sort of the thesis and the kind of path that I’m interested in.
Here’s all the notes that I wrote down by hand and organize this. It created a great outline. Basically all the points that I had in here, except it reorganized it. So in the past, right, and I still do this, right? I’ll, I’ll write down a brain dump of notes and then I’ll. Copy them to another page and organize them a little bit more.
Maybe that’s a better way to do it. But in this case, I was pretty familiar. I had already taken handwritten notes when I talked to the person for the pre-interview, and then I wrote down another set of notes. So I already, I was pretty familiar with it at that point. I don’t need to maybe copy at the end again.
And it worked great. I actually asked AI to create a one pager. Brief that I could send to the person I was interviewing, just so they kind of knew what I was gonna ask, but I didn’t want any of the producer notes or anything that I specifically had on there just to give the person an idea of what I was gonna ask, but not too much.
I didn’t wanna overwhelm ’em, and it worked perfectly for that. The overall point here is the journaling, adding it back a little bit ’cause I had gotten away from journaling. It has been a good thing overall and you know, probably the most helpful. It’s the little journal I’m using for keeping notes on the guitar practice and things that I’m thinking about the music that I’m studying, which is a generous way to put it.
I, I have tabs and stuff that I’m looking at, but it is fun to work with my wife. We, um. Worked on a whole song, a Christmas song last year. We worked on it the whole year and then played it kind of at a recital for some friends, and it was awesome. Super fun. We worked on it. Many, many hours, dozens of hours all through the year.
And we, we took a little break and I should have looked up more songs ’cause as soon as we kind of got it under our fingers and uh, got together to play it a little bit, super fun. So looking forward to getting that one done and maybe learning more ’cause we actually got better and better at practicing and, and playing music together.
So. That’s the little update. I’ll probably, I’ll try to do a recording while I’m out on the road. It’s kind of fun to have stuff on the road. I, I love the idea of vlogging and just re recording a little bit more, but it is such a pain in the butt to actually record when you’re out doing stuff. It really takes away from the overall experience, but.
Well, and the second part is even if I had great footage, it’s kind of a pain in the ass to edit it all together. So that’s why I don’t vlog. But I, when I think about it, I’m like, oh, it’d be really cool to record this road trip, but I’m not going to, I know I’m not going to. So what, what I can do is maybe record an episode on the road.
That could be pretty fun. We’ll see how it goes. ’cause at least at that point. I can just set up my phone to record the video, and then I, I’ll have my, you know, portable studio out there and that’ll be fine. So, thanks for checking this one out. If you’re not on the email list, go sign up. And if you haven’t left a review, I haven’t asked for reviews in, um, years.
I don’t even remember asking for reviews. But if you, um, if you’re on a Apple device specifically, most people listen on Apple devices, by the way. So if you’re out over there. On an Apple device, scroll to the bottom of the show, leave a review. You can write down, Hey, I really like this, or if you don’t like it, you could write that too.
But you know, preferably positive reviews. That’s better than the negative ones. We’ll catch you in the next episode. Thanks a lot.