Make it till you feel it

Josh: The Daily Talk Show, everyone.

Tommy: Episode 49.

Josh: How you going, Tommy?

Tommy: Good. It's Friday. It's always a good vibe on Friday. It is.

Josh: Normally we're doing it later.

Tommy: Yeah, what time is it? Feels late.

Josh: Well, it's only 4:24 PM.

Tommy: Yeah, well, doing this means the day's over, so I feel like I'm going into the weekend. This is taking me into the weekend, but then again, I'm working tomorrow.

Josh: So why are you working tomorrow?

Tommy: Uh, you know, Josh is a business owner. It's, uh, no, I've just, I've, I've actually got a whole bunch of, I want to do a whole bunch of my videos. I've spent all week doing client stuff.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And I need to do more of that, but I also want to do my own stuff.

Josh: Well, you did the candle video.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: You've been texting me updates. You're a couple hundred bucks off retiring. Yeah.

Tommy: Made it, made a solid $250 today. That's, uh, mate, that won't even buy me one meal at a retirement village when I'm fucking 80 needing to be in a retirement village.

Josh: That's true, once you include inflation. Wait, so explain to everyone what's been going on.

Tommy: With the candle video? Oh, the candle video? Yeah, explain this.

Josh: No one knows you made a fucking candle video.

Tommy: Well, you just said it like everyone knew.

Josh: I know.

Tommy: I made a candle video about, the premise of the video was that I'm shit at selling myself. When someone asks me, "What do you do?" or, you know, "Tell us about your skills," I find it hard to articulate it confidently. And, you know, like, I struggle talking about myself, essentially. And then the premise of the video is that's me. It's also my wife, and my wife has a business that she doesn't talk about nearly enough. And so the video is centred around me bragging about her candle business called Flossie Mossie. And, um, yeah, I thought it was a—

Josh: it's a cute premise.

Tommy: I thought it was a creative approach to promoting someone else's business, whereas like promoting yourself can feel a bit gross. Yeah, it can even seem a bit gross from the outside. I think we're like flooded on LinkedIn and social media of people talking about how good their product is or how good they are. And so this is like the reverse of that, where it's like, I'm actually fucking shit at this. So I'm going to spend some time talking about how good someone else is because that's really easy.

Josh: Well, I think that what you can do, that's why case studies can be so good, because rather than it being a celebration of look how good I am, it's like, look how awesome my client is. It just so happens that we helped them. I think some people get it wrong though, and they talk too much about themselves and not about their actual clients. But so you made this Flossie Mossie video. What was it? So the premise was my wife's candles? Well— Or did you not end up doing that?

Tommy: No, I put that in there. I've got another sort of flow-on video from this one, which I'll get, which I'm going to get into. Not today, I'm not going to talk about it.

Josh: So you haven't actually promoted, because I saw the video, I'm like, I've seen this one, but I think I'm merging things together now.

Tommy: You are, because I initially started, Like a lot of my ideas are sort of these grand things and I struggle to make that video that you're talking about, which sounds like I'm being sort of secretive on this, but I'm not.

Josh: You just haven't put out the idea yet.

Tommy: Yeah. So, I had this idea that didn't work. I shelved it because I was struggling to get there. I felt like I needed to make a previous video to that video, so I've done the candle one you were talking about, and it actually worked in terms of getting Amy some sales for her candles. You had 4 today just come through, and like a new business, it's a new website, and it's pretty fucking cool seeing my pocket, it just goes, "Buh-duh." I love, like, that's why doing an e-commerce business would be fun. Yeah.

Josh: I mean, sales, but like the fact that I remember when I got analytics on my Mediaflex website and, um, Josh's business from 2000. Yeah, my old, old business from like 2008.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: And I, um, I got this— there was Google Analytics didn't have real-time analytics at that point, but there was a service called Mint that did. And I set up like a an add-on where it would beep every single time someone would visit my site. And this was, this was during the time where you could put your website— like, those inspiration sites were huge. So if you were building a website, you would just say, go to a design inspiration site, you'd pick one that you liked. So I was being featured on all of them because my mate Blaz, who was a really who's an awesome web designer, designed it all for me. And it got picked up on all of them. So I ended up with so much traffic and I would get like ding, ding, probably like every like few minutes.

Tommy: Oh, so people like almost looking for themes or looking for inspo.

Josh: Yeah, exactly.

Tommy: I thought you were meaning inspiration, meaning like fucking inspirational quotes.

Josh: No.

Tommy: No, okay, inspo for websites. I'm looking through those all day trying to find new themes for my website. So, so it's just if I clicked onto that, so it was getting— you were getting sent a notification.

Josh: I would get— yeah, I would get traffic. But the other thing that was funny is people were stealing our code. So they were stealing my code and creating a new website where they would just update the text. The problem being that they would forget and they would copy and paste the analytics, and then I would get like a notification on the side like, oh, people are visiting this page, but that page isn't my website. And I'll click through it was like a fucking carbon copy of my site, but it would have like all their details on there. So weird.

Tommy: So was it a same industry?

Josh: So Mediaflex was like a media production, video, all that sort of thing. But no, it would just be any business. People would just like fucking put all their details in there. They'll treat it like a template, but it wasn't a template.

Tommy: Yeah, so technically you can right-click, say if you've got Chrome, right-click on a website, view the source, inspect source, or view source.

Josh: There's limitations around that because some things are rendered in the backend. I don't fucking compare myself.

Tommy: But you can, you can basically steal someone's website. Yeah, the structure of it. You can't do that.

Josh: Yeah, it's poor form, I would say.

Tommy: Yeah, it's fucked. Why do you think— if we had a conversation in the car And I thought about today, I was like, what can you speak of? And we could maybe speak of shifting perspectives.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Um, cause I think I had a good perspective shift after our conversation. You annoyed the fucking shit out of me.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: But I quite like those conversations.

Josh: Well, it's always that friction that's going to get you moving along.

Tommy: And so you asked me, we'd had a big long day and I, I felt like I just had a stroke while driving. When you asked that question, I was like, What was the question?

Josh: It was—

Tommy: what was it? You ask it. I've forgotten because I was so fucked.

Josh: If I remember, I'm sure it was something— I was— it would have been something like, like, why are— like, what's— what do you— like, would have been questions around like, what do you want?

Tommy: Yeah, it was what you want.

Josh: Why, why aren't you doing it right now? Yeah, it's probably around that, and that normally reveals a lot.

Tommy: I thought about it post the stroke.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And I, I Thought about the question, not the answer.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Still avoiding that.

Josh: Yeah, sure. That's fine.

Tommy: But I was thinking about why I found it so hard to answer what do I want and why do I want it or how am I going to get there?

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And I was thinking it's like in my head, too many things going on because I'm thinking, you know, like life is layered, work life, family life, you know, personal, you know, life, like, you know, help looking after your own health, getting yourself to the gym, all of those things. And so I struggle to decipher and filter the question into one area when I feel like answering on such a broad, multi-layered level is, um, is super hard. And I feel like I almost have like this cerebral overload.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Do you get— do you feel that?

Josh: Yeah. And imagine it's like a business. Imagine if you're a business and you have a legal team, an HR team, a marketing team, a development team. They've got all these different sort of siloed groups. And so, if you think about it, in some regards, your life is like different departments. You've got all these different departments. And what businesses will do, how do businesses make sure that even though these things a silo. They also sometimes come in contact. They— what legal does is going to impact what HR does, vice versa. And that's where values come in and being able to say, okay, here are my core values, and then we use that as a filter to then filter out these things. So for instance, if— because I guess it was like, you know, some people might say, I want to make more money, that's a driving force. But then if we understand why you need to make the money, if the reason that you need to make the money is because because you want to enable, be enabled to be able to do more things with your family, then you can't all of a sudden be making all this cash, working ridiculous hours and not spend any time with the family. And I feel like that's what happens. People look at these things in isolation. A guy I know has just, he quit his video production company, basically gave it away to a bunch of different people, all these old clients, decided to get into real estate. Because he'd done some real estate videos, saw, oh mate, this guy's making half a mil a year, that could be me, gonna give it a go. Did it for 9 months and was like, fuck it, can't do this anymore. I caught up with him yesterday and I said, so what's the plans? He goes, okay, so I want to do documentary type work, branded docos, but at the moment, just to get out on my feet, up on my feet, I need some money coming in, so I'm going to take photos and video for real estate. I'm like, is that what you want to do? And he's like, no. I said, I said, what's the worst case scenario for you? He's got a kid and another one on, on his way.

Tommy: Feeling you, bro.

Josh: Yeah. And he said, he said, oh, worst case, the very worst case would be going back to my parents' place, like us living with my parents. And then he said that I just wouldn't want to, wouldn't want to go back to another job, right? Wouldn't want to go to a, like, the real estate thing and all that sort of thing. So, he was willing to basically do this shitty work that won't pay that much, but pay a little bit to in an area that he's not that keen on to basically build on this sort of stuff. And what it got me thinking was it was like, it'd be like getting— it's like J.K. Rowling, the fucking author, saying, I want to be a writer, so I am going to do— write advertise— like advertisements, or do a Twitter account for someone. Or, you know, with video, we assume that, okay, if someone's doing real estate, that they're just going to be able to transition off to all these other things. I said to my mate yesterday, today, I said LeBron James, great basketballer.

Tommy: If you haven't realized, Josh loves a metaphor.

Josh: Yeah. LeBron James. Ready? LeBron James, fucking great at basketball.

Tommy: Great.

Josh: Do we say LeBron James is good at all ball sports, so he's gotta be good at cricket. And that's what we do with video. We say that, we assume that if someone can do fucking wedding videos, that they're gonna be able to create a TVC or anything like that. So long storey short, I said to this guy yesterday—

Tommy: He's taken up basketball.

Josh: Exactly, he's taken up basketball and cricket and he's not doing any real estate stuff. No, I said to him, I'm like, okay, I said, how long have you got before you're gonna have to really feel the pressure? He goes, I got about 2 months runway before I'm gonna start feeling it. I said, okay, well, what would be a really, really reasonable price for someone to pay for a doco? Like just be an absolute steal. He said, 2 grand. I said, okay, well, rather than doing the fucking real estate photos and the real estate video, why don't you just go to potential clients and say, hey, I'm just getting my reel back. I'm like, you know, building up this new business. I will do these videos for you. I'm doing it. This would normally cost $6,000. I'll do it for $2,000 and like build that. And then you're actually— because what I was saying to him is what's going to happen if you go down the real estate photo and video route, you will get work and then you'll get more work from it and then you go, fuck. I knew it, there was so much work in this and now I'm stuck. But it's not that there's more fucking work in it, it's because that's where you put your energy.

Tommy: Yeah, you focus. So yeah, he's shining the light on that area and sure he's going to find something over there.

Josh: And so yeah, it's true, it's scary.

Tommy: It's fear though. You said to me, you were like, it's fear. That's when I couldn't answer this question and I was stroking out. You were like, it's fear. I was like, fuck off, mate, it's not fear. Yeah, it's not fucking fear. I was getting pissed off.

Josh: I'm not fucking scared.

Tommy: I'm not scared. And so I legitimately was feeling that internally, and then I was thinking about it, and I was. And I, and I think there is fear, and it's so embedded like deep within that you can convince yourself you're not scared, right?

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And I even feel sometimes around, um, like being a fraud, like feeling like you are a fraud. I know I've got skills I fucking prove to myself time and time again, but it doesn't mean that I don't feel sometimes less than others, sometimes more than others, like I am a fraud and like, oh, I don't deserve to be doing that. Like, I don't— and I— and saying it like that isn't how it feels. That's the only way I can articulate it.

Josh: Well, yeah, because it's so— it's— there's so many fucking layers.

Tommy: I don't ever say those words to me. You don't deserve this. Yeah, but I feel That's like, that's the only way to articulate that feeling.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: It's, uh, do you feel like that?

Josh: Yeah, I think that it's a, um, yeah, there's that constant feeling that, um, oh, this is because we live with ourselves all the time, so we see patterns. So it's like that, uh, what we were talking about yesterday, but yesterday about me blowing up over shit, like whenever I leave a job, it's always like more extreme than what it has to be. And the self-talk is, fuck, Josh, you always do this, you fucking do this every single time. But I do give myself a break because I'm like, you know, there's other qualities of my personality which are really positive.

Tommy: I can't think of it.

Josh: Yeah, I can't. I mean, it would have to be an hour long if we had to think of anything. But no, I think that The other thing too around the fear is we have these dreams and we, we elevate the dreams, we put them on a pedestal. And what we do is we, we end up putting it on such a pedestal that it's no longer in reach, or we put on a pedestal to the point where we can't attach ourselves to it because it's seems so far away, and then we heighten it to the point where we can't risk fucking it up. We put— and so that's like, it's like I've talked to— I always talk to myself about minimum viable product, like what's the minimum amount we can do to test this out.

Tommy: Yeah, I'm on to that.

Josh: Yeah, and because in so many cases, uh, You know, we push back on that minimum viable product. We say we can only get started if we have A, B, and C. I'm only going to be in the position to be able to call and get work from clients if I have 4 employees. Yeah, which is—

Tommy: or $40,000 worth of camera gear.

Josh: Yeah, exactly. And the funny thing is, uh, this guy I caught up with, he got half the point and missed the other half because he literally said in his I told him, mate, it doesn't matter, you don't need to worry about the camera and all that sort of thing. And his email, this text this morning was, thanks for the chat yesterday, Josh, great stuff I've been ruminating on, thanks for sharing, I've decided 90% to buy a C200 and I've already got a few businesses on board for videos as discussed.

Tommy: It's good, so he's going hard.

Josh: Yeah, hope you're having a great day, mate. Let me know when you're down this way, I'll buy you a beer.

Tommy: Well, uh, no, I don't drink. Josh doesn't drink.

Josh: I should.

Tommy: Oh, but he sounds like he'd probably get along with me a bit better. He drinks and he's got a kid.

Josh: Yeah. And he's got a C200 you can borrow.

Tommy: Great. That's why I was wanting to— can I have his number?

Josh: Absolutely.

Tommy: No, it is. And so perception shifting, which is what I mentioned before also.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: So you can have those weird conversations, hard conversations. Anyone watching? Yeah, we've got a few people watching. Any comments? Oh, your mum's watching again.

Josh: We're only getting fucking Tommy's audio apparently. That's upsetting.

Tommy: That's annoying.

Josh: Sorry.

Tommy: Well, I think the good thing is—

Josh: Sorry about that, Trev.

Tommy: Our real podcast, our actual podcast is recording my own.

Josh: I'm gonna fucking— Should I end this?

Tommy: Yeah. All right, so we're ending.

Josh: I'll end it and I'll end the live stream and then I'll start it back maybe. Anyway, I wonder if I've fucked the recording. I haven't because we're seeing both the— I can hear both. Ah, fuck, Mum. Thanks for telling me. Mum just said she could hear both.

Tommy: All right, that's fine.

Josh: We're not doing it again.

Tommy: Anyway, so we're talking the perception shift is such a weird thing because not much has changed, right? When you have something like a just a perception shift.

Josh: It's literally just your fucking mindset. Isn't that so powerful to think of how much your whole perception of things can change without anything other than, I am going to think differently, I am going to view this situation in a different light. And I know, and I think that there are these triggers in our life that force us or push us, um, to naturally go certain ways. So for instance, today I haven't had, I didn't have any deadlines due today, so I got to fucking chill out and it was amazing. Like I was able just to, you know, work on my showreel, work on admin shit, and I felt fucking in control. Yeah. And it was such a a nice feeling. I'm like, actually, I probably could, um, like, choose that. That's something I chose today, and I could choose it every day if I wanted to.

Tommy: Here's a, here's a thing, here's a thought. I made that video about Amy's Candles. Yeah, the name of the video is called I Suck at Selling Myself. I made it, I put it out, and I had this feeling of like Oh, that's like— I had this almost like a shift of thinking about selling myself. I was thinking, me, like, me talking about me being shit at something made me sort of removed from that person who is shit at something. And so I have this sort of removed thinking. It's like it kind of has helped me in some weird way step towards being better at selling myself, and not in a, you know, 'What's up? I'm fucking awesome.' Yeah, but like a bit more. I feel like it's almost given me a bit more confidence.

Josh: Well, I think that it's, uh, I don't know what the actual saying is, but our— what we do impacts how we feel. Um, and so it's very counterintuitive because normally how we feel impacts what we end up doing, what we choose to do. So, for instance, if we feel happy, we'll smile. If we don't feel happy, we won't smile. However, smiling will make you feel happy.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: Does that make sense?

Tommy: Yeah, definitely.

Josh: So, the thing is that that's why putting out these things in the world can be— That's why "fake it till you make it" has some truth to it, because it's like, okay, I'm not feeling this way. But it's actually all like, all it is is a feeling. Um, thoughts aren't facts. Yeah.

Tommy: I actually thought then, fake it till you make it. I've always seen that as the external fake. So, um, pretending you're a celebrity or pretending you're someone who you're not, but faking it till you make it is like the shift inside. You make something and you put it out.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: So for me, in that sense, I'm putting out this video where internally I'm feeling fucking a bit gross about it.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And so I put it out and then I have a shift, but it's like I'm faking it by putting it out. So shipping the product or putting my hand up, even though I feel yuck about it, is like I'm— it's like the action changes the internal.

Josh: Yeah. And that's probably why fake it till you make it is such a— is a bit of a shit saying.

Tommy: What's the new one?

Josh: Well, I don't know, like if we were to ruminate on it because—

Tommy: Coining his first phrase.

Josh: Here you go. I mean, it's like—

Tommy: He's taking the challenge. He's looking off into the area where his brain thinks clearly, toward the fridge. Okay.

Josh: Make it till you feel it.

Tommy: Make it, ship it, feel it.

Josh: Now you've complicated it.

Tommy: Make it till you feel it.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Make it. Yes. So making, so doing, doing until.

Josh: Yeah. Do the thing. Until you do it.

Tommy: Do it now, feel it later.

Josh: It's a little bit more PT tagline.

Tommy: Join the church.

Josh: We're taking a cult, uh, no, I did like yours.

Tommy: I was just fucking—

Josh: yeah, no, no, I like it. So, but there's something to it, right? It's that exact same thing where it's like they say habits and doing shit in the morning, you're way more— if you work in the morning, it sets you up for the entire day. And you're going to be more efficient. And I felt it today, like I got stuff done, built momentum. I think that it's the biggest danger that we have is theorising too much. It's this idea that, what's it called? Analysis paralysis.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've experienced that.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: I think we all have.

Josh: Yeah. Where it's just, Whereas if we just put it out there, we're in a lot better situation.

Tommy: Well, a business plan can be analysis paralysis.

Josh: Fucking oath. Yeah, for business plan, I think for the most part you should be able to fit it on one page and it should be just something that you do in an afternoon.

Tommy: And I think it, uh, established— like, you see, I've dealt with clients and I think I've talked about on this podcast where I'm helping a company that's worth $300 million create a video that is exploring their values and their brand because they never worked it out when they got started, but they fucking built a $300 million company.

Josh: But this is the thing, Amazon— you see Amazon now and you think this is what Amazon always was. Amazon was a fucking textbook company. Textbook? It was selling textbooks. What do you mean? So like, it was about if you wanted Like literally it was just that, it was just like school books.

Tommy: Fuck me.

Josh: So this is, it's so easy to look at these things and say, fuck, look where they are. And also the other thing too is we're in the situation where with the sort of work that we do, we get to peek behind the curtains of a lot of brands, a lot of people. And what we see is it's like there is a lot of, uh, detachment between public perception versus reality. And it's not even the brands or the people manipulating that, it's just what people choose to take out of it. They just like, fuck, this person mustn't have any of those issues. But one thing that you constantly say to me every single time you meet with someone that's successful, the one thing— yeah, you personally, you always call me afterwards, you're like, man, they're literally having the same fucking issues that we are.

Tommy: Yeah, that's true.

Josh: And, um, I think that that's an important reminder. It's that, you know, these things— you need to be able to move forward despite all that stuff.

Tommy: It's— if you're waiting around for your product to be the best, there's some fucking dude who's got a shit product but it's good at marketing and is beating you because they, they will make money and refine their product to get it to where you have without actually marketing it. So I mean, it's so, so interesting seeing other people even criticise brands. Well, it's like, look how shit they are and they're doing so well.

Josh: It's like, but even fuck, like theorising about stuff, all of those things will give you the sense. Derek Sivers, who I filmed the other day in New Zealand, he is the Creative CD Baby. He did a talk about our New Year's resolutions. His thing was, do not tell people your New Year's resolutions. There's a bunch of studies which say telling people your New Year's resolution gives you the same response in your mind as if you actually fucking did it. And so, what happens is you tell people and they're like, oh, man, that's so good.

Tommy: You're like, "Oh, thanks. Yeah, yeah, geez, I'm fucking awesome." I feel like I've lost a stink bug.

Josh: You know what? I'm just gonna chill the fuck out. Like, this is— it's been exhausting, but I've done it, you know. And so, the same thing happens when you watch movies. I know a bunch of people who are armchair critics or whatever, who watch films and they— you actually hear them and it's as if like They think that it's rubbed off on them, that them watching it has somehow made them like that. They've made it. It's a weird thing. Anyway, it's a daily talk show, everyone. We're done.

Tommy: It's Friday.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: I'm going to get pissed.

Josh: Are you really?

Tommy: Well, we've got a nice dinner on tonight. We're going to Donovan's.

Josh: Oh, that's right. See, when you say pissed, I just think of this real fucking messy—

Tommy: No, I'm actually looking forward to a date with my wife. And we've got a babysitter coming over.

Josh: Who's babysitting?

Tommy: Raj from daycare. He's one of the daycare dudes. That's such a fucking legend. He loves Mr. Bodhi.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And, um, so I feel like it's nice and safe. Yeah, his body's in good hands. And, uh, he loves— he, he— I think he might have taught him, um, Old MacDonald Has a Farm. E-I-E-I-O.

Josh: Has a farm or had a farm?

Tommy: Had a farm. What happened? Did he lose the farm? Did he go bankrupt?

Josh: Yeah. Old MacDonald had a farm and then the economic crisis came.

Tommy: Or the drought. Yeah, the drought killed all his animals.

Josh: And on that farm—

Tommy: So this is the bit Bodhi does. Bodhi does the bit, you know, and on that farm he had a pig.

Josh: He does a pig. I heard that, the video, that was so cute.

Tommy: Should I play it? It's the cutest fucking thing. I'll leave, I'll leave you with this.

Josh: Yeah, please do.

Tommy: Oh, I love this. Josh, having a kid's great, mate.

Josh: I can just like, we can live like, just like you sometimes live vicariously through your friends.

Tommy: Yeah, true.

Josh: I can live vicariously through you.

Tommy: Actually, it's much easier for you, buddy. Um, all right, here it is. I'm gonna just get to the end here, my little cute man.

Josh: All right, remember, hi@thedailytalkshow.com if you want to email us.

Tommy: All right, here we go, here we go. This is his mama.

Josh: ...And on that farm he had a pig. A pig.

Tommy: Wait for it.

Josh: Pig. Pig. He's very cute. Very cute. Leave us a review, please.

Tommy: And... We love you.

Josh: Yeah, we love you lots. Have a great weekend and...

Tommy: We're back for episode 50 Monday.

Josh: Fuck Shepparton. We'll do it.

Tommy: Yeah, let's just do it.

Josh: Yeah. All right. Catch you guys. Have a good one.