PIT Reflections: The Spiral to free Content
Your Boy got a JOB! Next month begins my career as a developer advocate, but we don't talk about that too much.
I had a conversation with a friend where we talked about the race to the bottom with content creation becoming more and more free. I talk about the ups and downs of this.
Transcription:
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What's up, everybody?
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J.
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Miller here back with a reflection, this time for the 18th of August 2 20.
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And this is a very interesting one.
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This is what we're recording.
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Live on, Twitch.
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If you want to catch that, then you need to make sure following on twitch.
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So we got a lot to talk about.
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Let's just jump right into this and we're going to start with the biggest news.
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Yeah, I got a job.
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I am officially going to be working as a developer advocate for elastic search.
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Um, I believe the last time we talked about this, I was like, Right there.
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I think I had, like, one more interview left, right?
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Just had the final interview and had to negotiate and do all that stuff.
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So we are now developer advocates.
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And for people who have been following the journey of productivity and tech and my personal journey, you'll know that this has been a thing that I have been working towards for the last 56 years.
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So I want to take the second half of this conversation to talk about something that I came up in a conversation that I had with another content creator earlier today.
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As I'm recording this, I'm recording this on the 17 that will come out on the 18th.
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Uh, I was watching this person live stream, and they were talking about wanting to consolidate some of the things that they were doing and put them all under different tiers of support.
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Now, people that are familiar with pit know that one of you want to give me money.
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I'm not going to stop you.
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But I am terrible at asking for money.
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I'm terrible at providing value that I feel warrants people giving me money.
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That's just something that I have always struggled with presenting.
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However, I also feel like the things that I do are valuable.
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And I let people know if you want me to continue to do those things, there has to be some form of value conveyed so that I can continue to pay to do those things Now.
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To me, that looks like some really fun stuff that looks like me, you know, doing open mic stuff with some of my people, some of the people in the community, or just sit there and having conversations with them for hours on end or you re tweeting and showcasing some of the awesome things that they're doing.
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It could be getting on a stream like this and recording.
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You know, my podcast episodes live and doing all these things.
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But there was a conversation in the conversation.
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We talked about the idea of content creation moving ever and ever closer to where everything was expected to be free.
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And as much as I want Teoh complain about that, he's right.
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All my content available for free.
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I don't even my premiums show is free.
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Yes, you got to do something.
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You gotta sign up for my newsletter, which I mean Newsletter will also go out when this goes out.
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So there's that.
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But if you want bonus content, you don't have to give up anything monetarily for it.
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And in a way, this is a good and bad thing, and I think that it's happening for a multitude of reasons.
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So I'm gonna outlined the reasons first, and then I'll explain why I think it's both a good and a bad thing.
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The reason is it's cheaper and cheaper to make content, and the demand for quality content is going down.
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If you look at education traditional If you go back 20 years ago, if you wanted toe learn something, you had to spend good money.
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And depending on what it was, you might have to pay a lot more.
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Programming books were like 60 70 $80 at Barnes and Noble.
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I'm pretty sure they still are.
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Now.
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You can get an online course for 10 bucks a month.
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Something like that.
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You can get hundreds of courses for $10 a month.
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Why, though Well, because it's easier to mill, it's easier to say I'm going to do a thing.
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I'm going to follow the steps and in marketing terms, I'm gonna turkey carve content so that I'm making more and more content easier and easier with less and less effort.
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And here's an example of that.
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I did a coaching course over the weekend with a client of mine, and in that course we talked about a few things over the span of about three hours.
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In that time, I came out with about five different block post topics with screenshots and a video that I could go back and look at and so many other features so many other things that I could use to generate more content already had the video set up.
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I already had.
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The Screenshots already had the links and references.
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I already had the research.
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I could just turn all that stuff out like butter if I wanted to.
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That's what I mean as we're doing things.
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The things that we're doing can be reused and recycled in my talk that I'm going to be giving it pie.
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Gotham I quote a talk that I gave last year as the explainer for why this talk was even necessary as an explainer for why the entire platform that I created was necessary.
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I didn't have to do a bunch of market research.
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I didn't have to dio a bunch of testing, and I didn't have to pay a bunch of money to host on my code, my storage and make everything happen.
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Now I'm paying a little bit, but in the future, that's actually gonna be free as well.
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So, through all of this, I'm able Teoh really expand the scope of what I'm capable of doing for much less so.
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Like I said, it's easier to create content content to be created faster and it requires a lot less work and energy, and the people that are doing it at the highest level are still going to excel because of the calibre of content and the quality of content that they're putting out.
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No.
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Is this a bad thing?
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In short, No.
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No, it's not.
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And here's why.
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As I mentioned earlier, part of what got me hired onto elastic was a skill set that I developed over time and gave away for free.
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So if you look at my salary and it may be a bad way to equate the value of this, but if you go back and you look at what I've been able to get to in terms of a salary over five years, if you look at where I started, I have doubled close to doubled.
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Haven't double quite yet, but I'm close to doubled.
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What I am, what I was making when I started in the tech industry in seven years, I almost doubled what I was able to do, all because of the things that I did for free in my off time.
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So for me to make those things for free was a net positive in my book now, Do I feel like content should be given away for free?
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No.
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Some content?
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Yes, a lot of content.
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No, I don't think ab should be free.
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In general, I think that giving away an app means that you are selling something else.
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You're making that money back some way.
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Unless you're doing what you know a few of my friends have in building a thing to learn about it.
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In fact, most of people that I know that have built a thing just to learn how to do that thing, actually sell that thing that they made that learning until they sell it.
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Because they understand that there was a work that went into it.
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So they want to get value back for the work that they put in.
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That makes sense to me.
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Is it free for me to podcasts?
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No, it's not happy hosting peas.
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Ah, take time away from my family like I am right now.
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I do a lot, Teoh and pay a lot to do the things that I do streaming this.
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I had to buy a whole new computer last year so I could stream because when I tried streaming on my other devices.
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They just crashed and they shut down this whole set up that I have this microphone that I have the audio interface, everything else.
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This is thousands of dollars that I've invested into this.
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Now you would say that those air probably good investments, but they were investments nonetheless, so it doesn't make sense to me to create a thing for free.
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However, I knew strategically what I was doing and that I was going to get paid for it eventually.
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And now I can happily say, like for the last three or four years, productivity in tech podcast has paid for itself.
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We have people that support the show at a high enough level that I don't have to pay any money to host it.
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Between the work that I do outside of the client work that I pick up in all of those things, I'm effectively getting it for free.
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That said to the people who are making something and hoping to give it away for free and still make a living off of it.
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You have to know what the planets my plan was to do the bed podcast for free in hopes that one day someone would pay me to podcast for them.
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And like I said, I'm not there yet, But I'm hoping that soon enough that will be happening.
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Now I'm in a position to where that can possibly happen.
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There are a lot of people out there that are making content for free that don't have a monetization strategy.
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There are a lot of people out there that are doing something for free and hoping to turn it into something that they can get big enough on and make a bunch of money off of eventually.
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Here's what I have to say to those people.
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It is much easier to look at what you have.
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Look at the people it brings value to and ask them to support your work now, not with the promise that you will do anything outside of what you're already doing, but just for the sake of supporting your existing work.
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It is much easier to ask them now for support, and you'll most likely receive some form of support from those people that get value from what you're doing.
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It may not be a ton, but it may be a little long term listeners.
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The pit will know that there used to be a Facebook group that had thousands of people in it, that we're all part of the productivity and tech Facebook group.
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I gave up that group to start a small private community where people had to pay to get access to it.
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It didn't promise them any bells and whistles.
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All it promised them was a chat room where they could connect with me on a regular basis.
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And since then that community is now free again.
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And the only people that really talking it are the people that still give me money to support what I'm doing.
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The people that signed up for that there were a total of eight people, and I'm still friends with all of those eight people.
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Those eight people provided 800 times more revenue, more profit and on a budget that made it a lot easier for me to do podcasting, then a group of thousands of people who were listening Teoh the pope, reading the posts and liking and doing all that stuff, and it was so much easier to please those eight people than it was to create, engaging and enlightening content for 2000 people, and that's why I'm saying, Look at your existing audience, figure out how much value you're bringing to them and ask, and if they can't do it, they can't do it.
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But I think the reason that people are rushing to the bottom for free content is because they have to rely on a numbers game that is unfair to creators.
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They're having to push hundreds of thousands of people consuming their content.
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They have to create content instead of creating the content that they want to create in the content that they enjoy creating.
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They have to now make content with the thought of.
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Is this going to generate an audience?
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Is this going to generate traffic?
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Is this going to make what I'm doing appealing to advertisers?
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I don't like the direction that we're going in, and I don't want people to feel like productivity And tech is Go is helping promote that kind of business model.
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I said a long time ago it won't have ads on it.
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The podcast itself won't have, adds.
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The newsletter might have ads.
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I might give shoutouts, but I'm not gonna do ads.
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My website might have ads.
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The website.
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I'm sorry, However, right now I'm not trying to align myself any particular pathway that has me selling clicks for pennies.
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I'm not in the business of selling clicks for pennies.
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I'm just not.
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I don't have time for that.
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I don't have the energy for that.
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If I were doing a podcast with someone else, there might be a different conversation.
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But in regards to the pit podcast, it is not in the business of trading clicks or listens for pins.
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However, productivity in tech has always and will always be my playground.
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It will be the thing that I do for fun.
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It will be the thing that I do because I enjoy doing it.
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And I hope that over monetization of a platform that I am able to encourage, inspire and enlightened folks on a pathway to be more productive in whatever it is they're doing.
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That is the goal of productivity intact with the business, the podcast, the brand, all of those things.
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I hope that I've been doing that.
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If I haven't, please call me out, and I will try to course correct bunts.
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Just because I give this away for free doesn't mean that your information is being sold.
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It doesn't mean that I'm tracking you.
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In fact, I have aligned the podcast with organizations and companies and hosting that doesn't track.
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They track information for me.
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And while I will peak at it from time to time, that those numbers don't go anywhere, they don't go to anybody.
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And the people that are hosting it aren't using it.
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They're not selling that information.
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They can.
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It's our assess its It's like MP threes, and that's why I don't have, you know, adds auto generated into this show and all those things.
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And there's again nothing wrong with the people that are doing that.
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I am choosing not to do that.
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So this has been my little rant in that area.
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Like I said, I don't really have any particular point.
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I just want you also think about where content creation is going.
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I see a lot of people now that we're creating what's called premium content where you can't even get access to the basic level of content without paying for it.
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That's a very interesting model.
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You have to have a large audience beforehand to do that.
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I think it will work for some.
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I don't think it'll work for me, but I am excited to see that people are still trying to figure out how they can create content that is scalable monetarily but also protective of the consumer's rights.
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All right, so let's wrap this up.
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What we got coming up next next week, I have an interview with someone that I've been listening to their podcast since like Day One, they come out of the same camp is like Tom Merritt and those folks.
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It's not going to be a technical interview.
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It's gonna be a really fun conversation that I had with someone that I've been wanting to talk to you for years.
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So I am stoked that it finally got toe happen.
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I can't wait to go back and edit it, because I get to listen to it again.
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You know, that's that's like the best part of doing these shows is that I get to record them, some having the conversation as it's happening organically.
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Then I get to go back and listen to it before everyone else does, and then afterwards I gotta listen to it again just to make sure I didn't screw anything up.
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And every time I listen to it, every time I hear the conversation or as it's happening, I pick up on something new and I learned something new.
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So it's like it's super awesome to have opportunities like that coming out.
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So, yeah, I'm gonna like I said, I have that interview coming out next week.
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I am doing the last interviews for the rest of the year, this week and next week.
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So I get to kind of relax going into this new role where I'm only having to create content for the reflection side of things and not for the actual like, Oh, we're doing a podcast interview thing where I got to bring people in.
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I might do some more interviews with people if I want to, but there's no requirement to.
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And if I do, I'll let you know, and we'll figure it out on all those things.
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So that's gonna be it for this reflection and ran a little bit longer because I started rambling people watching live.
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Thank you for hanging out.
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I had to have the fan running behind me because I was sweating something terrible.
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But thank you to the live audience listening.
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If you want to be a part of that live audience, you can follow me on switch.
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I always announce what?
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I'm going live and you can follow me on Twitter.
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That's where I do a lot of those announcements.
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If you're looking at my website right now, KJ why Miller?
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Thank you so much for that.
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Of course, you can catch all the things happening for productivity and tech it productivity intact dot com You can follow them on Twitter, prod, underscore and underscore Tech And last but not least thank you to an eight year old Wally for the use of his music hustler.
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In spite of myself for the intro and Outro folks, I'm excited.
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The rest of the year is gonna be a legit.
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It's gonna be awesome.
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I cannot wait for all the things that I get to do in this new role and how that's point to benefit me as a podcaster so I can bring that value back to this show.
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I am stuff I'm pumped That's going to do it for this week.
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I hope we've been productive.
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I'm Jay Miller.
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Thanks for listening.
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I'll see you next time