Selling yourself & knowing your value

Tommy: Ep 11.

Josh: Yep.

Tommy: The Daily Talk Show. See, I told you you'd take the mic and sit back. We just had an argument about where Josh— you changed the height of the desk, which affected me because you said you're going to sit up the whole episode with straight back.

Josh: Standing desks aren't designed to be used with two people.

Mason: They're not.

Josh: Can you hear my fizzy water? I'm doing that thing again. I'm sorry. Mate, it's only been 12, literally, what, 13 hours ago we were recording.

Tommy: Yeah. It's a new day and the weather's changed.

Josh: Not to make it about the weather.

Tommy: You know what, when I was doing radio, the amount of times I spoke about the weather, and the weather is such a fucking excuse of nothing to talk about, so you talk about the weather. Relatable.

Mason: I saw it.

Tommy: Relatable, guys.

Josh: I was listening to a podcast with the guy who does the Art of Charm podcast or some shit. Oh man, fucking wanker. Massive wanker.

Tommy: Like, he was okay to put that out.

Josh: Yeah, he was, he was in a podcast with Kevin Rose, really like Kevin Rose.

Tommy: I don't know him.

Josh: This founded digg.com.

Tommy: Digg.

Josh: T-I-G-G. And yeah, this Art of Charm guy, I thought, okay, this is— He's not like a pickup artist. He's just about like how to connect with people. I'm like, this is just some nerd who is trying to sell to other nerds how to like speak to people where it's like, I dressed up in a kangaroo's costume. Kangaroo. Kangaroo.

Tommy: Literally.

Josh: And I just, I think it's so gross.

Tommy: Well, it's almost back to what you, we talked about 12 hours ago where you're saying people love like a roadmap. People love instructions of how to do something.

Josh: People love a storey as well, right? They love to be like, this guy went from not being able to speak to anyone to being able to speak to anyone at a bar in 3 weeks. Yeah. Anyway.

Tommy: When it comes to picking up, it's like you can't. If you're thinking about it, and I'm sure it works for some people where you're actually thinking about using these techniques and you're trying to pick up, you know, you're putting it in practise in the field.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Oh, it's gross.

Josh: It's so gross. You know, the grossest book I reckon I own is— The game. No, well, I don't have the game. I'll pick it up.

Mason: It's the—

Josh: It's this book here, Max Tucker. Assholes Finish First. I'll just throw it to a random page and read one sentence. Let's see how—

Tommy: And so, tell me what the book is about, or will it—

Josh: It's just all about like a, you know, this fucking storeys of wildly entertaining depravity and sexual debauchery from the—

Mason: Debauchery.

Josh: Debauchery. See, I'm a fucking shocker when I have to read out loud. Here we go. He's trying to impress us with his voice.

Tommy: I'm going to call this off when it gets boring, okay? But just— Just go for a short paragraph.

Josh: Okay. In the movies, this sort of thing happens overnight, but in real life it's slow and developing. TV shows, movies— Fuckin' nah.

Tommy: Was this a really bad idea?

Josh: That was a terrible idea.

Tommy: Are you good? Are you continuing with your idea? Or are you pulling the pin?

Josh: Oh, look, there's the word pussy on that page.

Mason: Okay.

Josh: Just like, it's its own pack.

Tommy: Silly girls. I started with a round of brutal hammers, vodka and Red Bull. Then we shot for the shot with them picking awful things like, oh, your finger's in the way. The Bravely.

Josh: Yeah, it's fucking gross.

Tommy: Yeah, it's just like, anyway, hang on, you're the guy that owns it. Why the fuck do you own that book?

Josh: Uh, I don't know, because, um, uh, I liked the title. But no, reading it, it's like there's not much sort of substance to it. It's also their marketing and stuff was actually, uh, what Tucker Max does well is, um, markets himself. Yeah. He, uh, Ryan Holiday, who did The Obstacle Is the Way, all about stoicism.

Tommy: Have we talked about selling yourself on this podcast?

Josh: No.

Tommy: Let's do it. Um, cause I'm shit at selling myself.

Josh: But in saying that, you, have good friends, good relationships, and don't you think that that's—

Tommy: Well, I'm probably good at the relationship building, which in turn helps my business and, you know, my career. So, I'm good at that, good at networking, but I feel like I'm shit when it comes to talking about myself and what I do.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: So, you know, it's like you have an elevator pitch of someone who just can reel off I have a business that connects with, you know, like, and to me, I don't know, is that gross?

Josh: But then I think it's about synthesising what you do. I think I'm okay at selling myself.

Mason: Yeah.

Josh: Are you more—

Tommy: I reckon you're quite, you're quite good, but it's more for me the internal, because I could probably—

Josh: Sell yourself to me. But do you know the key to selling yourself is you need to know who your fucking audience is.

Tommy: Yeah, because then right then I was like, what invite, who am I speaking to and what do I want to Because you trying to sell in yourself to, you know, a friend's family member versus a business thing.

Josh: Like some people try and sell themselves on a business level or try and show some sort of elite status in all that. Like, that's what's gross. What I find gross is when you meet someone in a social environment and they're wanting to sort of throw their business shit at you.

Tommy: Okay, so they haven't read the situation. So maybe, maybe there's a confusion for me when I think about selling myself. I see everybody on LinkedIn and I see people on Facebook selling, you know, courses, 10x-ing their business. And maybe it could be I feel like I don't have the sell in me like they do, but I don't even appreciate the sell that they have.

Josh: Yeah, well, that's it. Like, you don't want to be the whiteboard guy. Nah. And that's, I think the, yeah, there's, it's trying to work out. I mean, it's that whole thing where it's like if you go to the US, people are a little bit more, you know, they appreciate that more. Like if you, self-deprecation is a big thing in Australia and it's something that we respect. From the few experiences I've had with working with US businesses and just sort of the cliché of what people say, you don't really do that in the States because they— Siyan, my mate Siyan, who helped, was a co-founder of Envato, she talks about dealing with venture capitalists and stuff and how they she didn't take herself seriously or whatever. And basically the venture capitalists took her word for it, in the sense of like, if you position yourself in that way, they can be like, oh yeah, well, this person's just a bit of a joke.

Tommy: What idiots they are, seeing as in Bardot's half a billion dollars.

Josh: They fucked it.

Tommy: I guess when you're in a situation like that where you're having to pitch, you— it is the time to talk about how good what you have is and your idea is.

Josh: Well, I think that that's the difference. Selling—

Tommy: then how do you do it outside of that?

Josh: So, because selling yourself isn't about selling yourself, it's selling how you can help that person.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: So, and you and I have spoken about this a lot, it's about that value piece. It's like if you position everything of like, this is how I can bring value to you, it becomes a lot easier versus selling yourself in that common thing of how people think about it, I think it is very, um, unappealing to the listener. Whereas like doing— actually selling yourself well is being a good human, listening, working out how you can actually provide value versus saying, this is what I do and you need what I can do, which I think a lot of people default to when they're trying to sell themselves.

Tommy: It's It's all poppy syndrome in Australia.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: It is that the opposite of America.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Where people are championing themselves.

Mason: Yeah.

Tommy: And, and others' successes. And then in Australia, because we've talked about people wanting you to win.

Mason: Yeah.

Tommy: And it's, they're few and far between, the people who really want you to succeed. And I don't mean that people are evil. There would be some, but they're not going, I hope Josh doesn't have any success in his life.

Josh: People see, people see other people's successes. Their own failure. And that's the biggest issue in this piece. It's the amount of— the older I get, like, the more you realise how much this world is just everyone projecting, whether that's positivity or negativity. Like, we are all just projecting how we're feeling, and it very rarely has anything to do with the person that we're applying that projection to, right? Like, you think about road rage or getting annoyed at someone in a car. If I get annoyed at someone, it's normally because I'm having an annoying day versus that person being an idiot. Because I think about, I'm like, oh, you know what? There's people who have done worse on the road. And if I'm having a good day, I'll just like let them cut me off.

Tommy: Yeah, totally. Like, you see that angry dude just yelling at someone. I watched a guy like tailgate a cyclist for miles and he was just getting so angry at this dude. It's not about the cyclist that cut him off.

Mason: No.

Tommy: There's something going on in his life that he's not sorting out.

Josh: Yeah. I mean, that self-awareness is a hard piece, right? Trying to work out without trying to overthink things. Because if you could get to a point where, am I projecting right now? Am I doing this? Am I doing that? I think having some core values makes sense, which is giving people the benefit of the doubt. I think that's a massive one, right? Because I think it's so easy that when people fuck up, we say that, you know, they're doing this for some sort of malicious reason or something like that, where I guess probably they're just anxious.

Tommy: You're good at looking into the storey behind what's going on, what's actually happening.

Mason: Yeah.

Tommy: And sometimes it serves you, sometimes it definitely doesn't serve you.

Mason: Yeah. Well, I think that it's the, you know, Seth Godin talks about dropping the narrative. And it's that idea that for all these generations we've used storytelling as a way to remember things and to pass on bits of wisdom. It's a great way from a memory point of view, and it can work against you where it's like if you tell this negative storey about something that's happened in your life, Unfortunately, it's going to stick to your fucking brain. So dropping the narrative is about like saying, and I think it's even harder for creatives because we're fucking creative. So we have that built in, right?

Tommy: What, forming storey around something?

Mason: Yeah, forming storeys is what we do all day. So it's very easy, I guess, just to do that in our head. Mentioning that Accidental Creative. He said something really interesting. The wanker?

Tommy: No, no, no.

Josh: Can you not mince my words? Because you're going to—

Tommy: Someone who actually likes— This is what people do. They listen to 4 seconds of a podcast.

Mason: Exactly.

Tommy: 1 minute you've called someone a wanker, now you're talking about—

Josh: Yeah, but you've applied that. That's not what's happened. Anyway, the—

Tommy: But let's clarify, who was the wanker?

Josh: The wanker is The Art of Charm.

Tommy: Okay.

Josh: So, The Art of Charm and The Accidental Creative have nothing to do with each other. Nothing to do with each other. Other than the fact that they're both being mentioned on this podcast.

Mason: Okay.

Josh: I mentioned The Accidental Creative as a good podcast yesterday. That was one of my recommendations. But he was talking about when we're stuck with a creative idea.

Tommy: Oh yeah, you mentioned that. Yeah. How do you—

Josh: Have I already spoken about this?

Tommy: Oh, you said yesterday. No, that was the time.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: You were explaining the time where stuff's coming really easy and then it's not. But maybe that's not the same thing you're saying.

Josh: When do you feel like What do you do when you're stuck creatively?

Tommy: Oh, it's cliché, but it's like, just do something. Yeah, like stick at it and defining what it is. Maybe it's an edit, right? Yeah, it could be taking some time off from that project. Yeah, because you're putting pieces together, like ideas are coming together over time. It's just compounding, like you do one version You go away and for some reason your head's putting it together when you're not even thinking about it. We come back and you've got fresh eyes and you're seeing stuff you didn't. So, for me, it's like taking a break or— Yeah, definitely. That's my number one. Just take a break for a moment.

Josh: Well, the funny thing is he talks about when we're stuck, we feel like we need momentum and the best way to get momentum is we work on something else.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: He said that that's like, think about like the negative side of that too, which is like, that's where procrastination and shit goes in because we need to, when we feel stuck, we want to get unstuck. And the way that we do it is by doing other easier things. So, for you, it might be, I've got this client thing, but it's actually easier for me right now to be doing YouTube, this YouTube video.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: So, you'll do that. So, he was talking about having the anti-to-do list. What's the sh— Write down the shit that you're not gonna do this week.

Tommy: And then do that?

Josh: No, and don't fucking do that. So, I think that we've got these crutches or these things that we fall back on, which are easy for us to get like these feel like we're getting these quick wins and building momentum. I think email is one of them. Like I can spend ages in email and write back and feel like I'm being productive.

Tommy: So, how would you get something onto the anti- to-do list?

Josh: Like, well, I think it's—

Tommy: What's the kind of checklist to get it onto?

Josh: I think the checklist, you know, and this would be me sort of theorising versus anything that he said. He didn't really go into it, but it would be saying, what are— What's the easy thing? What's the easy thing that— It's almost taking the theory of Eat the Frog, which is doing the hard stuff first. And so, it's saying, okay, well, what are the tasks that I need to do at some point in the next month that is going to be enjoyable? And taking that off the list, like taking that off something that you could do today and taking—

Tommy: Doing the hard thing.

Josh: And doing the hard thing. So, eating the frog is, you know, taking on the tasks that you really don't want to fucking do. Because if you think about it, once you get busy, and you have a huge list of things that you need to do, we could spend hours cherry-picking all the ones that we want to do. And at the end of the day, have the things that we actually needed to do not done. And we could say that we had a productive day. And that I was talking on LinkedIn to a few people, like we're commenting back and forth. And one of the big things that I learnt was non-negotiables. And this could be another way of doing the anti-to-do list, which the non-negotiable is Elevating certain items in your to-do list and saying everything else can fail. You can have a shit day, think, you know, you can be having all the things going wrong, but if you do the non-negotiables, you can then walk away from the end of the day and say, I feel great. Whereas think about how many times you've had something that you need to be, that needs to be done, but you prioritise some other things because you're like, oh, these are easy. And you think that that's going to get, and in the moment it feels like you're giving, having priority progress, and at the end of the day you still feel a bit anxious and you're like, oh, hang on, I haven't actually done the thing.

Tommy: Yeah, I mean, yeah, lists. Yeah, do you—

Josh: so we talked about your list the other day. So you're— you've got your Google Doc and Google Doc, what I need to do for the day, index it all, and then I put it into calendar.

Tommy: Yeah, but then some days it's like I just know that I've got to do this shit, and so I've got to sink 6 hours doing this one project.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: So I don't even go there. I just do that. But you go through times of actually being able to deal with a list and times where you just don't have the headspace to deal with all of that shit.

Josh: Well, I think that that's part of the thing. So it's having a system in place because half the time it's fine not to have a system and you can work without a system, but the system is in place for when your head's a bit fucked and you're really struggling.

Tommy: But then it's back to the thing about needing a roadmap or instructions of how to sort of win. And these are all the listing, how someone telling you what they do is only them telling you what works for them and it might not work for you, right?

Josh: It's the equivalent. I think that having a system, being able to structure, you know, like you've worked with young editors and stuff and they'll be messy as fuck and they're like, oh, this is just how I work creatively. When the reality is that you know, that's not you being creative. That's actually going to get in the way. Like that works for your like 2-minute little video you're making, but but you not having any system in regards to how you're naming things or file structures or folders, that's gonna come to a halt when you're working on a feature film. And that's a short-term game type of thing. But I think systems are very important. I think that the— what can sometimes happen, it's like the whole schizophrenia paradox type thing where it's like they— when someone has schizophrenia, they'll take medication. And they start feeling better and they're like, okay, great, I'm better now. And they'll go off the fucking medication and then they go nuts again. And so, it's the same sort of thing where it's like these systems, when we may be not busy or we don't like— It's easy to prioritise at the moment because we're working on one project. It's great to say, actually, I don't need these systems now. I've found I've been able to prioritise myself and I can do it. When the thing is that we've just, we're playing in a safe, you know, it's like going into a beach where there's no rips and it's beautiful and easy, easy water. And so, I can swim. And so, I— And then going in there every day, not preparing for the day that there's a fucking rip and you drown.

Tommy: Do you know how to get out of a rip?

Josh: Just— Yeah, you go— Well, you can lie—

Tommy: Can you swim?

Josh: Yeah. I did nearly drown, though, once.

Tommy: Can you swim though?

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: How competent are you?

Josh: I'm not real sort of deep ocean swimming.

Tommy: When did you start swimming?

Josh: Young.

Tommy: As a bub?

Josh: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm definitely like, I'm not one of the, those like the people who just like have a fear of swimming or whatever. No, I think I was okay at freestyle and shit.

Tommy: How'd you nearly drown?

Josh: Gold Coast, 2006.

Tommy: Was that storey about you? The guy that went into the water and it was really nice every day and then one day there's a rip and he dies? Sort of.

Josh: They— No, I did— What I didn't see is there was a sign that said to like not to go any further up past your chest or whatever. And I did. And then all of a sudden the— I couldn't feel the bottom of the water, which was fine because I can swim. But where the rip had taken me to or where I ended up landed was right where all the waves were crashing.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: So, I ended up getting like every few seconds getting smashed by a wave and I was waving, like putting my hand out, like trying to get help. Apparently, someone said like after I got saved, it took 2 lifeguards to try and save me. The first one lost their board by the waves. I got on.

Mason: How old were you?

Josh: I would have been 16, 17. And like, because we were bodyboarding, because the next day we're meant to go surfing. And so, I was like, I think I just got confidence, that beginner's mindset again that we spoke about yesterday. It's like being too cocky in that sort of scenario, like you need a little bit of fear, right? If you start going like, yeah, I'll fucking go on that wave, that'll be fine. But to answer your question about rips, you just fucking go with it. You let it take you out and then you can go out to the side, right?

Tommy: You can swim diagonally.

Josh: Diagonally, yeah, to the side.

Tommy: But then if there's waves and you can surf them in, it's totally, there's a million variables to every set of—

Josh: yeah, I thought I was going to die diagonally in a rip.

Tommy: That's what I used to remember my old man telling me. Yeah, but it's just—

Josh: but you don't even— to be honest, when you're in a rip, you don't— can't even fucking identify that you're in a rip. Like, when you're—

Tommy: a lot of the time you can feel it and you're just getting pushed or you're getting dragged pretty quickly. Yeah, and I know what you mean about not realizing, because one second you can be in a position, next minute you're like, what am I doing?

Josh: And sometimes. And that constantly happens with, you know, tourists and stuff. They'll— you'll end up like way out and you don't even realise. And then you're like, do you realise how far out you went?

Tommy: Oh, mate, there's some kooks at Bondi Beach.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: They just have no idea. Swimming in jeans, you know, tourists are coming over. They're just— and a lot of them might not have swum ever before. And so, they're wading in the water. It's so dangerous. My mate's a Bondi rescue dude.

Josh: Is he on the show?

Tommy: He's on the show.

Josh: Oh, great.

Tommy: Yeah. I met him in, I met him in, what's in? Bondi? When I was living there and he used to come into the cafe all the time. And so, he was just telling me that they would get so much shit. And have you, but you've been to Bondi Beach.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Have you been caught in a rip in Bondi Beach?

Josh: I don't think I've gone in the water in Bondi. I actually haven't. That's one thing that After all that happening, I don't go in, I don't go in the ocean as much. I would like— One of my friends, Sarah Lee, is an amazing surf photographer. She's from Hawaii, spends a lot of time in California. And I've always thought one day when I catch up with her, it'd be great for Bri and I to go out with her and go surfing.

Tommy: Well, they get taken with the rips, like they— sitting just at the base of waves. Yeah, that's crazy.

Josh: She does like all the deep water, like swimming with dolphins, crazy shit.

Tommy: Um, and how do you end up there? I mean, obviously you're a photographer.

Josh: Yeah, well, she does it like into the water as well. Yeah, exactly. Well, it's like, yeah, it's an interesting— it's essentially being— she reminds me a lot of me in the sense of like, you know, she's a creative and all that sort of thing, and she's found this sort of other niche. It's the exact same way that people fucking do music stuff, right? They love music and they, they've like geek out on video or photos and they end up, you know, filming and taking photos for bands.

Tommy: What, um, this is just a bit back to what we're talking about. What gives me faith in business is working with companies that are making a shit tonne of money.

Josh: Yeah, but they're still working it out.

Tommy: Yeah, like they're still, you know, they started their business, they hadn't worked out their brand and what it meant and what its values were and what it stood for, and they are making hundreds of millions of dollars.

Josh: Yeah, I think what we can take from that as well is that, um, if you focus on some of the right things, like at the end of the day you can have an Instagram account, you can have all that sort of stuff, but that's not what's going to bring in the money. I think that brand can sometimes confuse things for people because they, they can build a shell of a business. They can build, they can have a really nice logo. They can have the, you know, Instagram aesthetic on point. They can all that sort of shit. But at the end of the day, it comes down to what value are you bringing and showing that value so people will pay money. To receive it.

Tommy: Um, let's talk about creative— you getting paid for creative, because it's one of those things, it's like, what's it made up of? A creative, it's trust. Someone thinks you can do something.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And they'll reward you for money. There's time. It's like, it hasn't even— it's not tangible, half of the creative.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Things what we do, I mean, other than putting processes at the start to you know, do some pre-work to get them understanding what we're going to execute. Yeah, but there's still, at the end of the time, there's nothing tangible there.

Josh: Well, I think that it reminds me of a storey that my mate Naysan told me. He says it's a Persian story, but he says every fucking storey is a Persian story. Um, but give it a bit of elegance. Yeah, exactly. But a man was having issues with his tractor. He couldn't, couldn't get it started. He contact, you know, he tries everything with the engine gets a guy to come in. The guy looks around, looks at the engine, gets a hammer from his toolkit and hits the engine. Right. And all of a sudden, the engine starts and the guy quotes and says, okay, that will be $400. And the guy goes, are you kidding me? $400? You literally just hit, hit. I watched you just hit the engine with a hammer. He said, sir, what, you're not paying for me to do that. You're paying for the years of experience of me knowing exactly where to hit the engine. I think that that sums up the creative field really well, which is like, look, there are like, cameras are cheap. You can like, for what a client will pay us to do a video, they could buy all the gear that they wanted. That's reality of it. Like, you know what, your camera's what, 4.5, 5 grand, add a few accessories, 7 grand. People would spend 10 grand on a video with you. They could easily buy all the gear and do it themselves, but the thing is, they're not buying the gear. What they're after isn't the, the gear. What they're after is the storytelling. It's being able to identify what are the, the elements of this storey that we need to tell and to put your filter on it. And that's where I think some people get lost and they say, oh, fuck, like, with everything getting so cheap, we can just get a young person. It's like, yeah, that's great, but, um, and they might be able to, um, they might be able to do these things really well, but can they contextualise it? And that's what we do. We can take, we can take our craft and we can apply it to the context of that business. And what that means is Who is the audience? And tapping into what does the audience care about? And how are they going to be making their buying decisions? And it's the psychology of it. So there's all those elements. It's a hybrid. Being a gun for hire, just being a glorified rental service of equipment where you come along with the gear and you film isn't where it's at. Right. It's, um, you know, you don't like— yeah, maybe being an AV service makes sense for some people, but it's not what I'm doing.

Tommy: I think creatives are packaging some magic and then selling that.

Josh: Creatives do a shit job of articulating. Yes, we do.

Tommy: I do.

Josh: Like, I think that even, even with the experience I've had and being able to articulate myself in general, being able to create, articulate it, uh, so it speaks to the different types of clients you have is hard. But I think that the awesome thing is over the last 2 years I've had— I've seen pain points, I've seen where projects haven't worked as well as they could have with clients, and that is actually what's informing where all of this is going. And me being like, okay, If you can be critical about your process and how you do things and listen, and you see patterns, you're like, well, hang on, all of these clients are saying this or that, then we can adapt and we can have a system so that to make that whole process easier.

Tommy: What do you think about young guns? You said that earlier, coming into the industry not knowing their worth, having a skill and then undercharging for it. Which means that it's driving prices down. For instance, my wife works for a big ad agency.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And she said that the owner said that, um, I didn't like— big agency prices are coming down.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And boutique prices are coming up. So they're meeting in the middle. So prices are shrinking in terms of what people are willing to pay for creative work. Many things— technology, amount of people doing it, Yeah, it's like the barrier to entry is so low now.

Josh: But I guess this is the thing. Worth is based on how much I need to do the thing that you want done. So with that in mind, if that person is happy with making what they're making for the thing they're doing, then they're getting paid what they're worth. And that's what people don't fucking get with like being an employee. They say, I want more money. From my employer. And I've said a few times to friends, I'm like, okay, are they giving it to you? And they're like, no, they're not giving it to me. I said, okay, so you're going to leave? And then they said no. I said, well, they're paying you the perfect amount because if they're paying you enough to stay, they're running a business. The transaction is they're going to give you just enough money to say we want you to work exclusively for us. And that's where I think people like get it wrong sometimes. They're like, oh, I want more money and all that sort of thing. But if it's a— it's the other thing too is it's like depending on the type of business, the business, a lot of the agencies and stuff are— they're an insurance policy. What they're saying is Tommy, you are worth $150 an hour. However, we're going to do a deal. This is what a salary is, right? We're going to do you a deal. We're going to give you $45 an hour plus tax. You're going to work with us and we're going to guarantee you this annual salary. What we're going to also do is we're going to give you an office space. We're going to potentially give you some career growth. And then—

Tommy: Do I get a cake on my birthday?

Josh: You do get it. No, because we're cutting costs, so we only do one a month where if you're, you know, September birthdays, you'll have to have your cake with Josh. But we really like Josh, so it's a good month to be there.

Tommy: Great.

Mason: Okay.

Tommy: I can deal with it.

Josh: And in return, we are going to charge you out at $150 an hour. We're going to take the difference. And so they're taking risk. The risk that they're taking is that they're going to have a quiet December and you're still going to have a job. I think that that's where some people miss the whole fucking point because they see this entrepreneur, freelance, all this sort of thing. They see it as an opportunity. But what they— and they mix them up. They go, they see all this hustle and all that sort of thing, and then they try and apply it to this thing that they're trying to do. An extreme version of what I'm saying is what I said to you the other day.

Tommy: Yes, I love you saying this.

Josh: What was it? It's a salary. What was it? A salary is a—

Tommy: Dreams. Dreams.

Mason: Yeah.

Josh: What was it? Oh, yeah, yeah. But I'm trying to think of the word. A salary is a bribe. For you to like disregard your dreams or to give away your dreams, to not chase your dreams. And I think that that's probably a bit overstated.

Tommy: Yeah, I see the point of it.

Josh: That person had just gone freelance and was fucking hating it.

Tommy: And currently they're, um, yeah, exactly, doing a few interviews for a new job.

Josh: Exactly.

Tommy: It's easy to say that.

Josh: Yeah, I mean, I don't like— so, uh, this podcast, The Daily Talk Show, I don't think we even said at the beginning Maybe we did. But—

Tommy: Yeah, I said it.

Josh: Okay, good. But I think—

Tommy: Maybe not.

Josh: I don't— I'm curious as to see where this will go. I think the last— This episode and last episode has been very sort of industry creative focused.

Tommy: We have a lot of these conversations daily.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Multiple times a day.

Josh: I wonder how much steam is in there in regards to like, I feel like We can be quite— we hone in on things and be quite repetitive and all that sort of stuff. So, I don't know. I guess this is just a slightly different format. Email us hi@thedailytalkshow.com if you have any feedback or thoughts. Do you like— like, do you want more of this creative shit or should we go— Yeah, we've even been talking about going more outwards focus where we take some shit that's happening in the news. Like the fucking Strava. You texted me about Strava and the heat map stuff.

Mason: Yeah.

Tommy: What's the deal with that? So, the exercise app Strava that logs your, I guess, tracks your fitness. So, if you go on a ride, it will show you where you've gone for that ride and give you your heart rate.

Josh: And so, a heat map is a way of showing activity within a space. So, you can see if it's super bright, you know that a lot of people are doing activity.

Tommy: So, Bondi Beach, shitloads of people running.

Josh: Exactly. But where it all was a bit of a problem is all of these, a lot of these Google Maps type things, they're very good with being in the pockets of the government agencies and military and stuff like that to be sort of censoring certain areas. Strava didn't do that. So, you could basically see based on military personnel where they do all their training, which is, they were saying wasn't ideal. So, yeah, that was interesting. But yeah, we're trying to figure this out. This is episode 11. It's Tuesday.

Tommy: The beauty of these is crafting it as we go.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And I think that's what you— you don't have that luxury when you have a radio show to front up to every day and, you know, shares, shareholders, um, demanding.

Josh: The funny thing is this iterative type of thing is actually culturally feels like it's a great Australian fit, right? Because if you think about it, the US, they They want to, and if you think we're wrong, let me know. Maybe I'm completely overgeneralising. But if they're sort of pump, if they love pumping things up and making noise, and I like doing that too, but this is very much the opposite. This is like we are figuring it out. This is a cadence. It's about sort of consistency and iterating and getting better and better and better.

Tommy: Um, that's what we're doing.

Josh: Yeah, I'm enjoying it. It's been fun, man.

Tommy: Good. It's good to have a platform. If you start a podcast, Josh is making a video on his YouTube channel about how to start a podcast.

Josh: Yeah, that'll come on the, what, our 20th episode? You're going to release— Yes. A video. I'll release mine.

Tommy: We're not— I'm 9 away, so I've made a video to sort of start.

Josh: So what's that going to be?

Tommy: 2 weeks? Yeah. And, um, yeah, episode 11, we're done.

Josh: Thanks, guys.

Tommy: We're gonna actually do some work.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely.

Tommy: It's 10:30 AM in the morning and We'll catch you tomorrow, The Daily Talk Show. Follow us, subscribe, do all that.

Josh: Yeah, Tommy's on YouTube, youtube.com/tommyjacket.

Tommy: Same for Josh, Josh Janson.

Mason: Great.

Josh: Have a good one. Bye. Bye. What? That was a bit weird. Have a good one. Goodbye.