Creative support group

Tommy: It's The Daily Talk Show, episode 76.

Josh: Hello everyone. What advice, Tommy, would you give to someone if they said thinking about starting a podcast?

Tommy: Um, start. So one of my best mates, he didn't tell me this. Yeah, but he told James. Yeah, my other best mate, that he wants to do this podcast and he's— I needs a space and, you know, I, I've got to get all these things together and I haven't talked to him yet. I'm gonna send him a message today.

Josh: Which mate? Do I know him?

Mason: Kel.

Tommy: Yeah, Kel.

Josh: Yeah, okay.

Tommy: We lived together in Shepparton.

Josh: Yeah, copywriter Kel.

Tommy: He's a seriously good broadcaster. Like, he, in terms of radio style, great. Knows how to anchor, knows how to fucking, you know, present, knows how to talk, interview. And nothing's stopping him from doing this podcast except him. And I just want to give him a message to say, dude, I heard your idea. Fuckin' do it. Yeah, I'll help you in any way. It's, it's so simple though.

Josh: Mm-hmm.

Tommy: Like, I think if you are going— if you're wanting to start one, start one. Don't worry too much about it.

Josh: Simple as in his idea is simple, or podcasting is simple?

Tommy: I think podcasting is simple, and it's at a refined form. I think maybe because we've come from video. Yeah, you could have so many things going at once, but I don't know, start small if you're going to. Just literally start small. We don't edit anything in this podcast.

Josh: That's the big— I think that the biggest element that makes this doable is not having to edit. It's the exact same thing with video, right? Like, if we were, um, the videos that I made for YouTube, the ones where it's like me talking, is great because it doesn't require much editing. I cut out a little bit here and there, but it's not like I'm building narrative with B-roll and fucking going crazy with it.

Tommy: If you feel like you've been jolted into a conversation, it's because we were talking and getting some really great stuff before we hit the—

Josh: we weren't even talking about podcasting, we were just talking about sort of— you're working on a little doc at the moment, uh, yeah, and there just— there seems to be, um, a lot of people making stuff, or a lot of people finally— feels like we've hit a point, whereas, you know, if, um, you know, podcasting is what 14 years old or something now. Yeah, um, you know, 13, 14 years old. And, um, what I find so surprising is just how long it's taken to get where it is today. But I would say if you're listening right now and you have an idea, send money. No, no, just, just do it. Do the podcast because there, there is a tipping point right now. And there was the reason why I reached out and said, hey, let's do this podcast. You know, initially we were talking about, you know, what can we do? We're talking about like YouTube was our big thing at the beginning of the year, right? And then I saw, okay, there is a big increase in, uh, um, like Google Home, like fucking, what is it called? Okay Google, the like Google Home, Amazon's Alexa, all of these audio devices.

Tommy: Talk.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And so, voice activated.

Josh: And what that means is that not only is it data input, but it's also like everyone's getting speakers in their home. So they're going, and I know when I had got Sonos for the first time, you just wanna have content to play. And it's definitely, if you look at Spotify, we should be on, I just got an update from Simplecast where we host, we should be, Spotify in the next month, which would be great. So, that's cool.

Tommy: Will they put all our episodes onto it? I wonder.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. I think it should be all. And so, then people can listen to music and they can listen to podcasts. My point is that there feels like podcasting used to be quite hard in the sense of people to consume it and it still is. But I think by the end of the year, we're going to get to a point where the these apps start to merge into one. So, you have an audio app where you can listen to music, then listen to a podcast, and it's going to be a lot more integrated.

Tommy: Futurist Josh over and out.

Josh: Well, I think like, for instance, Google just incorporated podcasting into search.

Mason: And so, if you—

Tommy: Yeah, you sent me that email.

Josh: Yeah. So, if you look on, if you search for a podcast in Google on Android, you can start to play the files.

Tommy: Yeah. See, I had this thought yesterday of I still don't know quite what it looks like, but creating like a creator's support group, it's a play on it being a support group. So it's not, it's more meaning every creator goes through that thing of, oh, I can't do it, there's a reason why, or I feel shit. And it is the exact same thing that everyone who has previously done it has gone through just at a different level. Or a different time. And I think there's definitely something that could be created where people can get together and, you know, hear the experiences of everyone else. I think if you're doing it alone, that's the hardest fucking thing.

Josh: You know what, I just had an idea.

Tommy: What is it?

Josh: I think we could actually do this. I think we could even try and get it, get it going before we go away. The, that idea, just what I was thinking about was I was thinking about meetups. And the problem that I have with meetups is that it's a lot of opportunity for people to talk about what they're going to do and like, oh man, yeah, I've thought about it. And it's sort of very contained. And then people leave, it's sort of like a conference. You fucking, you get real pumped and then you go home and do fuck all.

Tommy: What about we, if we were to have a venue Well, I've got one in my office.

Josh: Yeah, no, well, I'm thinking like even something that's more, um, like a bar type of scenario where we could say every fortnight, uh, we have podcasts from around Melbourne doing shows. So basically, rather than— so one of the things that we've talked about is the, you know, live shows are really interesting. The thing is you need an audience, right? And when you're getting started, you don't necessarily necessarily have it. But what about if you treated it almost like an open mic or like a comedy thing where it's like, this is something that's open. Like we do live podcasts every second Wednesday and we fucking invite local podcasters. So people who are just into this format can fucking come along. And so you have, say, a 50-seater, they might be filling only 20 seats with people who listen to their podcasts already and they get this new audience.

Tommy: Oh, that's cool. So you can— yeah, so you're building audience but also creating content. Yeah, yeah, it's nice.

Josh: I think that could be really fun.

Tommy: It's like stand— it's like a—

Josh: it's like an open mic for stand-up type of thing, but, um, you could definitely bring guests, interesting interviews.

Tommy: Who have you got this week?

Josh: Maybe it could be two podcasts, two different podcasts, back to— like back to back.

Tommy: Yeah, you only want to limit it. Yeah, 30-minute spots. It's like a comedy show.

Josh: Yeah, 30-minute spot, and then getting, um, could even get like some people emceeing and stuff. I think that'd be fucking cool.

Tommy: You know who would emcee it? BMAC. Fucking hype man. Hype man would promote the shit out of this.

Josh: Fucking handing out drink cards, just going, fucking go help yourself, go grab something nice for yourself.

Mason: Thanks for being here.

Tommy: Treat your fucking self. Yeah, to a little Bacardi Breezer.

Josh: I think that's an okay idea.

Tommy: I like it.

Josh: I mean, fuck, now like it's— I always say, okay, what's the next steps? How can we make it happen? I think that it could definitely— it's just like doing comedy stuff, but that's what I'm seeing is it's like the, um, what's happened within comedy where you create a bit of a community, you know. That's one thing that we've been talking about is just having other podcasters on.

Tommy: Well, I mean, it's just a basic idea. This is just segueing into ideas.

Mason: Yeah.

Tommy: Um, and Sleep. Fuck, man, you have to listen to it. Joe Rogan podcast with a neuroscientist talking about sleep. And just, it goes through everything you could possibly imagine, you know, from memories of your dreams and how when you wake up they're vivid and within 10 minutes they're gone.

Josh: That's why people have like books next to their bed to write them down.

Tommy: Well, yeah, dreams are fucking weird. Yeah, but he talks about sleep and, um, how sleep can connect the pathways of your ideas to, you know, problems. So you can solve problems. It's like saying, you know how they say sleep on it?

Josh: Yeah, it's— yeah, well, it's creating probably neuropathways or whatever the fuck they say.

Tommy: The benefit in sleep is— oh, this is the craziest thing— we're all having low levels of brain damage while we're awake. I feel it, and it's usually when I'm talking.

Josh: Yeah, increased by 10%, hearing the buzzes.

Tommy: But when we go to sleep, it is restoring our brain.

Josh: So it actually restores, so it repairs.

Tommy: Yep, so it's repairing. So we're having low-level brain damage. Yeah, especially if you're watching the amount of Peppa Pig I am with Bodhi. Fuck. And so you're sleeping. That's why probably, you know, babies are developing. It's just, just fucking growing.

Josh: Your mic technique right now is fucking like, you've got it, you're pointing the mic down like you look like some sort of rapper that's about to freestyle. It doesn't sound great, just fucking doesn't. Nah, I find that with these specific microphones it's good to be like around your chin and so you're not talking fucking popping your P's down like that. But like, but anyway, you don't have the headphones. We're currently in my, uh, apartment. And, um, uh, yeah, so I'm always listening in for audio and Tommy's just freestyling with his mic talking about the apartment.

Tommy: You're moving out?

Josh: Yeah. And so I've had the, the normal clusterfuck that is, um, dealing with property managers and things like that.

Tommy: Oh God.

Josh: So they're okay, the ones that we've—

Tommy: like, our landlord is awesome and he's just like, tell the storey about the camera that caught the incident.

Josh: Oh yeah, so I, um, I was, uh, in Auckland traveling, and, um, I knew that they were— that the property manager was coming to our place to inspect. And I have security cameras all set up in my home office, a couple of them. So when there's motion detected, I get told. And so I had all my— this was sort of, um, it's been like 3 years ago. So I had like my podcasting set up then. I had something that was, you know, we use something very portable now, but had a desk and sort of like big mic arms and all that sort of thing. Anyway, so I got the notification, just clicked on to see if it was them. It was the property manager and the landlord.

Tommy: 'Cause you get push notification, or you did get push notifications when it senses motion. And then it's so cool.

Josh: So I got a push notification. I watched them in my home office, basically the property manager was saying that they wanted to increase my rent because they saw all the camera— they saw all the gear.

Tommy: What, can you just do an impersonation, slip into character?

Josh: Oh, so they were like, oh, oh, look at this setup, quite nice, isn't it? I think we'll be okay here increasing the rent without a problem type of thing. But the funny thing was, I remember it now, there was two— they did, they had a The landlord wasn't there for that one.

Mason: Okay.

Josh: And then there was a second one that was months later that was with the landlord. And I saw the real estate, like the property manager trying to push him on increasing the rent. And he was just like, I was hearing the conversation that they were having. They were saying how neat we were. And they're like, "Oh, do you think they cleaned this especially like before we came? 'Cause this is like pretty neat." And so, I knew that as leverage. So, they were, um, yeah, I would just go hard on requests and stuff and just, and, um, I remember we had one instance where they, um, I, I knew that they, um, were happy, really happy with us, right? And the landlord wasn't happy with the property manager, so he changed property managers and they sent us this, uh, letter when we started, basically with all the rules around giving money for rent. And basically it was like in all— there was like bold and capital letters and basically saying, if you miss payment, blah blah blah, we do not accept part payments. I wrote them an email because I knew that they thought they were gonna— I said, I don't know who you're used to dealing with, but, um, your aim— your letter's a bit unacceptable. It's, um, you know, don't treat us like this, basically. Like, if this is the— if this is the tone that we're going to start this relationship on. We expect a bit better. What'd they say? They were just like, I can't remember, I'm trying to remember, but I remember they, um, the— I remember I slammed them for a, um, they gave us a late fee or whatever, which was based on some bullshit that they were, um, they were trying to take out a day earlier than what— and we'd set up auto transfers and stuff, so they charged us like you know, $40 or whatever for a late payment.

Tommy: You got out of that one?

Josh: Uh, yeah, yeah, I did. I remember just doing the same sort of thing. Anyway, so, you know, the— I got a call yesterday.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: Uh, from a guy who was— I didn't know who it fucking was, you know, went like— it looked like a familiar number, and so I thought, I think this must be a client that I haven't saved into my phone.

Mason: Yeah.

Josh: And I was like, you know, hello, this is Josh. He says, oh hey, it's Sven here. I was like, oh hey. And so like you're trying to process like, who's this person?

Mason: Yeah.

Josh: Do I know where, like I'm trying to place him. He's like, oh yes, I just got your number. I need to organise to get photos taken of the property, right? So Bri had had a conversation with the property manager saying that we need, they need photos to be able to get new tenants in. Okay, which is fine, but I was like, it's not your problem though. Yeah, you're out of lease, which is fine. Like, I'm happy to— I'm not an asshole, I want to help them. But the thing is, it was a shit time to— like, I was, uh, I think we were— you were just arriving or something like that for the, the podcast. I said, look, I'm just heading into a meeting. I said initially, I was— I said, my partner looks after a lot of this stuff. I said, um, I'll give you— I'll send you a text message with her email address. And just email. Email's the best thing. And so he's like, okay, thanks, enjoy your meeting or whatever.

Tommy: And so hang out, podcast, you fucking idiot, Sven.

Josh: So I then, uh, hear Bree's phone ring like 20 minutes later, and she's like, oh yep, yeah, photos, uh-huh. I was just like, I just, I was sort of like with my hand just sort of doing a cutoff thing. I'm like, tell me, Sven's throat. Yeah, tell me to fucking email, because my thing is I just fucking I don't know, I just, in that scenario when I just feel like there's a need to be a little bit fucking respectful of our time. Like it's work hours, I get that he needs to do something, but it's just like, I feel like in those scenarios he should have just sent a fucking one-line email being like, hey, can we organise it?

Tommy: What was the end result?

Josh: I think Bri said, I've got to speak to my partner and we'll get back to you. 'Cause it is just like, and this is the hard bit. I understand his desire just to get locked in. He's a photographer, wants to smash out his week. But there's also the thing of like when you're moving, you've got like, we've got a Trello board of all the shit we need to do. 'Cause we're selling everything. We've got like, gotta get rid of—

Tommy: Don't go down that rabbit hole.

Josh: All the utilities, all that like fucking getting rid of phones, boxed out, all of that shit.

Tommy: Fucking hell, there's so much to do. And what you see is, right, just taking an overview of the situation, this guy who's probably running his own business, yeah, is experiencing someone else who has so much shit going on. And when we find friction in, in the conversation or the communication, yeah, with people, it's probably just because there's something going on with them, yeah, or something going, you know, something going on with you. It's like everyone is giving low levels of pushback because we're not communicating 100%, which you don't have to communicate. You don't have to tell them everything that's going on.

Josh: But I also think it's like, um, the communication method I find interesting. Like, I, um—

Tommy: oh, before I forget, I've got to bring up that LinkedIn— oh yes, communication, which I'll get to.

Josh: Well, this is very quick. Like, I just think that I'm, um, not stubborn, but I'm— I feel like I've got less, um what's the word? Fucking less care in speaking on the phone for people who haven't like pre-planned that conversation. Not to be, it sounds like I'm being a fucking tosser.

Tommy: No, I know what you mean.

Josh: But it's that thing of like, if I'm in the middle of something, like just like I don't like interruptions from people that I actually like and that I'm friends with when I'm fucking deep in work or trying to work, him calling, I don't know, like, should I, just set do not disturb.

Mason: Like, Bree freaks out with it. Bree is very good at multitasking, I'm sure. Like, Bree can—

Tommy: So she thinks.

Mason: Yeah, she— well, I just feel like she, um, she gets it done and she manages to do like a fairly good job.

Josh: Whereas if I was to say take that call, then it will put everything else out of whack and I'll be fucking late for that thing and doing all that.

Tommy: No, with you— know yourself. If you go with the flow, you're probably going with someone else's flow.

Mason: Yeah.

Tommy: Because you haven't set your own path.

Mason: Yeah. Would you ever do the, like, I'm tempted to start just having my phone on do not disturb.

Tommy: Okay, I got an email. I sent somebody an email. It came back to me as an autoresponder saying something around, we, you know, we value deep work. And so we only respond to emails once a day. I got that autoresponder. Followed by a response. Don't fucking do that. Yeah, because it's, it's like you've talked about autoresponders.

Mason: Yeah, it's hard to get it right.

Tommy: Well, it's hard, but I think I get it because then it gives you the option to not respond because you've sent this previous thing. But if you do respond and the autoresponder was on, it's contradictory to the autoresponse.

Mason: Yeah, I think it shows that they've got respect for you, but like you've managed to— yeah, but, but it's also not honouring the system.

Josh: It's weird unless they say we only cheque our emails at 1 PM and you sent it at 12:30.

Tommy: Maybe, but it had— oh no, it happened twice, happened twice, okay, at a completely different time. And so all that made me think was, at a glance, that's not— they haven't got that right. And so why would I even think that? I think it's like, I always think it— if someone's just to have a brief look And so it's like, what's your business at a glance? What's your, um, what's your, uh, personal brand at a glance?

Mason: Yeah.

Tommy: And because that's all people are really giving you these days is just a quick glance. What's that? Oh yeah, oh yeah, got it. And so it's a headline, it's something, but it's like, how do you sort of form, formulate what you're doing?

Mason: Yeah.

Tommy: For people, for those people who are just at a glance.

Mason: I think the thing that's hard with us is we've got these sort of we've got this two-pronged business where it's like we're in the business of creating content, but actually the business is in solving problems, you know, building brands, communicating. And we're using the mechanism of content creation as a way of doing that. And so when you view it in that point of view, then it becomes actually we need to prioritise communication. We need to be emailing and be on, on all of that sort of, you know, on that, uh, bandwagon.

Tommy: The, the fact bringing the world of creativity together with, you know, solid communication, communicating your idea, communicating the process, is the challenge.

Mason: Yeah, The Accidental Creative is a great, um podcast that I listen to. I've sent a couple. That was the one that Michael Bungay Stanier was on.

Tommy: I like that one.

Mason: Yeah, but, um, yeah, that guy's got a— got, uh, he's got, uh, I think it's called Herding Tigers or something, like, um, how to, how to lead creative teams. He's got a book.

Josh: Um, yeah, so I think that there's a, um, there is that balance.

Mason: And I think that, you know, I've been in the service industry you know, creating videos for people for over 10 years, and I'm just trying to work out what I want that to look like now. And I think that you're like in the same boat, like I think everyone's in the same boat where it's like if your job— if you're a graphic designer, copywriter, you know, video production house, whatever it is, there's that constant balance of, uh, how to provide a great level of service and still get shit done. Yeah. So this LinkedIn thing, you got a LinkedIn—

Tommy: yeah, this is interesting. Um, I'm not— I don't quite know, um, how— what I think about this just yet, but let's discuss. A guy named Bruno, he is a Perth corporate headshot and portrait specialist.

Mason: Yeah, interesting.

Tommy: So, you know, when you get a LinkedIn request, you can add a note to it.

Mason: Your mic technique just then was horrendous.

Tommy: I just scratched my nose.

Mason: When you scratch your nose, we can't hear you.

Josh: Go on.

Tommy: Anyway, um, so the note that he left with the request to connect is, hello Tommy, I'm reaching out to connect because I saw you comment on Zeon's previous post. We interviewed him the other day about his return on investment on his LinkedIn strategy and direct client inquiries. And then he sent a link to it. Your take on this is appreciated. Regards, Bruno. I respect the like, like on-the-ground marketing of what you've done. It's interesting though, it's interesting to see he's seen me comment. This guy, he's a really lovely guy, Zeon Ong. I would actually love to have him on the podcast. He's, he's got like a, um, it's almost like the King Kong style agency, which is—

Mason: so King Kong is like a local agency that, uh, what, they do content and stuff? No, they do a digital marketing.

Tommy: It's all real. Yeah, like numbers, digital marketing, Facebook stuff, Google AdWords. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Getting people, um, you know, signups and shit like that varies. But Zeon has been commenting on my stuff. He's really lovely and he's got some really cool stuff that he's making, um, and so I must have commented on it and this guy's gone through the links. So the approach is go through other people's videos of the content we've created for them and then, okay, so Bruno, so Bruno, we—

Mason: so I feel like what's interesting here is the question is, I wonder what Zeon thinks about this.

Tommy: Yeah, like, would, um, and I guess it's, uh, leveraging the connection of Zeon and I, which was very organic. He just saw some of my stuff, started commenting. And now he's piggybacking it.

Josh: It feels like to me, like I think it's okay. I think that there's smarter ways of doing it.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: Like I don't think you, like in one regards I appreciate the authenticity because he's not trying to fucking like create some sort of fake story. I think that for me, I'd probably, if I was, say if I thought, and I guess this is less of a volume game and more about quality leads or whatever, quality relationships. If I was Bruno, I would click onto your LinkedIn, I would then consume your content, and I would write a YouTube comment on your content, on your videos, and actually, and subscribe and be engaged. And then when you naturally start having conversations, then being able to say, like, you will naturally look at his content and what he's doing, and then, you know 6 months later you're talking and he can say, oh yeah, I saw, um, it's funny how we, we connected. I actually saw a comment on Zeon.

Tommy: That's the, um, yeah, yeah, that's a longer approach. And I think, you know, he's probably a business owner, sounds like.

Mason: What does he want? So he wants you to know what he wants. He wants you to view his content.

Tommy: Yeah, so he's put the link in there too. I haven't even clicked on it. It must go to like a video. I can't even click on it. And so LinkedIn issue. Yeah, as a business, you, you have to be doing something, right?

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And I appreciate that that's something like— I'm not offended at all by that. It's like, if, if anything, he's thought that he found a good link to be able to—

Josh: I think that's fine. I think it's pretty, it's pretty low-level shit. I think, um, I don't do— we, we still need to do talking about a few closer loops or rehashing loops.

Mason: We still need to do our cold emails.

Tommy: Yeah.

Mason: Which was on a previous episode.

Tommy: Yeah, the hard thing is making promises on—

Mason: And also spying on you. I still haven't spied on you yet. I had moments where I'm like, oh, this would be a good one.

Josh: I thought about flying up to Brisbane.

Tommy: That would have been so funny. Miss your flight. Cost you 2 grand by the time you get home, you got no footage.

Josh: But yeah, I thought that would have been funny, but it's hard to prioritise at the moment. Um, you know, it's, um, the social, you know, reaching out. All right, so I think we've spoken about it a lot. I think it's, um, all of this comes down to communication, doesn't it?

Mason: Everything that we're talking about is, um, even doing a podcast, the part that people struggle with is how do I communicate to the world with what, like, my ideas, um, and where do I fit And, um, I've got a friend who's been working on a podcast.

Josh: There's people who do way more work than we do, but they haven't fucking released it.

Mason: It's like they've created nothing at all.

Tommy: What are you doing that for?

Mason: I've got like a mate who's done 6 amazing, like, high-end podcast episodes where it's like fucking sound designed and it's all like built out.

Josh: And, um, Yeah, I was speaking to him about the, oh, like, hey, when are you releasing that thing?

Mason: He's like, oh, I still need to, I wanna get a few more in the bank before I start releasing them weekly. And then I was like, how many have you got? He's like, oh, I've got 6 that are done.

Josh: Are you fucking kidding me?

Tommy: There's 6 weeks of content.

Mason: Yeah, and so I think that that's removing that barrier to entry. So it's like, just fucking get it out there.

Tommy: 'Cause I told you, dude, this is the support group that I was talking about. Creative support group, get together, just encouraging.

Mason: But it needs to be more because I literally, I have friends who will contact me and I'm completely fine with it where they're like, they're working within a business, they're a creative within a bigger business and they've got no other like-minded people and they'll say, hey man, I'm just feeling a bit down or I'm just like, I need some fucking pump up and we'll literally go out to lunch, and we'll be talking about fucking YouTube and strategies and different ways of doing stuff. And that's enough for them to fucking have fuel to go on and do all the other things.

Tommy: Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. It's like not everyone has those friends that they're talking about creating with.

Mason: Yeah, so it's definitely— I think it's just about, um, I think creating authentic community that is, um, engaged. And that is— I feel like I'm using a lot of weasel words, but weasel words to get No, well, no, they're just like, engage, commute, like all, I don't know, a bit sort of corporate. But I think that the tough bit is maybe getting the right people together. Like, and actually, I think the problem that I've had with meetups previously is that, yeah, there is a lot of talking going on or that it could be used as comparison or things like that where it's like—

Tommy: I think if you set the agenda, if you set the sort of tone of the meetup. I think you're talking about fucking WordPress meetups and internet stuff and like, but if you're the creator of one of these and you can say this is what it's for, you can't get bogged down in thinking that everyone's just gonna talk 'cause that's the reality. Like Craig Harper, motivational speaker, you know, I say to him and I've said, had the discussion around, oh, but, you know, people are just hearing the same thing. You know, they're coming to you twice, they're going to hear you say the same story.

Mason: People need to hear it 20 times before they act.

Tommy: Yeah. And so the support of someone going, dude, you just need to post, dude, you just need to post constantly, might be enough for them to go, okay, hit the—

Mason: well, I've literally— I've done that with a friend of mine who's, um, in Canada. She's, uh, uh, sort of has sort of an entrepreneurial background, worked in startups, things like that, decided to make the move to video, doing video stuff. And I'll do like a FaceTime with her for like 40 minutes. And just because she's in like this—

Tommy: Is it the $700 half an hour one?

Mason: Exactly, yeah, the big consulting sessions. No, it's just like a good chat where she'll say like she's in a near Banff, I think. And so it's just great to—

Josh: she doesn't have heaps of creative people.

Mason: It's great we can chat for 40 mins, and afterwards she's like, okay, yeah, I'm setting up this website, doing this thing, gonna set, you know. And like, that's really powerful, having the confidence.

Tommy: And maybe not even— it's not even having the confidence, it's just getting it done, talking about what you want to be doing. And for this, you know, the podcast, if we bring it back to starting a podcast, what would you say? It's like the benefit in just communicating to another individual or to somebody chatting about things that are interesting and being able to form those links. I know for my brain, how I work, yeah, it's like I'm starting to realise a lot of things.

Mason: Yeah. And you also need multiple input, um, inputs too. So if you have only one mentor or one friend, you've only got like one bit of inspiration to pull from. But for me, like how much I've refined my, like even accounting approach based on, you have some friends that are super fucking pedantic and they'll go like extreme ends and get bogged down and do all these unnecessary things just because they're a bit fucking OCD. And then you've got the real loose friend who doesn't fucking take photos of their receipts and all that sort of thing. But you find a middle ground, you borrow from all of them and say, okay, well, what's my version of this? And that's the same with content. You see people who are the extreme end where it's like they'll spend weeks on an edit and then you'll hang out with a friend who just smashes out a piece of content in a few hours. And then you take from all of them. And I guess that's the power of those meetups, things like that. But I think what it needs, we need to promote the making.

Tommy: Yeah.

Mason: And so I think that if we could— maybe it's the, you know, we don't have— so within radio, if I use the radio analogy, maybe there's, there's a sense that you need to have, you know, in the '90s when you were, you were wanting to become a fucking radio personality or whatever, you would— a presenter—

Josh: you would have a tape and you'd put together your best bits and you'd get air checks. I wonder what the new age equivalent of that is.

Mason: Like maybe you don't need to do any of that because you put it out there and it's being seen and heard by all those people.

Tommy: Self-awareness or willingness to work out and see what the experience of being around you is like.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: So like listening back to your podcast, our podcast, what's Josh's experience? What's the Josh experience for someone else in the room?

Mason: Well, actually, you know what?

Josh: You talk about what you want to create create. I think that we're almost creating this right now with the podcast. We're giving people a new perspective. And it's like what I loved, and I've spoken about it a bunch, when I was like 14 years old listening to podcasts and watching video podcasts, and you'd be learning about like, these are people who are living in San Francisco and they're— all their mates are within, you know, tech. So Gary Vaynerchuk, who a lot of, uh, people know now, is the crazy dude from New York who has VaynerMedia and he's always talking about the fucking hustle and shit like that.

Tommy: Hustle.

Josh: Yeah, I was, you know, I was first introduced to him and his content back, it would have been like 2004.

Tommy: 23 years ago.

Josh: That's like, that would have been, yeah, 14 years ago.

Mason: Yeah.

Josh: And he was the wine guy and he was just fucking making videos and reviewing wine and he was using a really, um, you know, a small, um, uh, video hosting site called Vidler.

Mason: So it was like, this was when YouTube and Vidler were probably like a similar size, right?

Tommy: And he put all these chips on Vidler.

Mason: Yeah, so he was flopped. Well, so it was Vidler, Vimeo, YouTube. And so like, for me, that's so exciting. And hopefully we can bring a bit of that to this podcast where it's like you can be anywhere, you can be in fucking Tokyo right now listening and you're gonna gain interesting insights about Melbourne and about just fucking, you know, our perspective.

Josh: And that's what I've been, I've been listening since starting this podcast. I've made an effort just to listen to, to more as well, to more podcasts.

Tommy: Yeah, one of the things Gary Vee's saying, he's, I think he said it for a while, it's, um Rather than standing on your soapbox, and I metaphorically, um, being the expert talking about how, you know, you know how to do this, or this is how you do something. Yeah, documenting what— working it out. So for us, a tagline for this show is 'A Dummies Guide to Life' by two dummies. We're working it out, right? We talk about stuff that we might not think in 3 months we might learn a lesson. We talk about stuff that we don't know.

Mason: Yeah.

Tommy: And we're trying to work out what's not—

Mason: yeah, we're not the fucking experts. We're just spitballing. And then hopefully, you know, this is the chat that people have over lunch. And if you're freelancing, maybe, you know, working from home, you don't get exposed to that. We did get an email from Michelle in regards to our last podcast around the direction of the show. She said, you've hit the nail on the head. Having the conversations that no one else is having. That's why I follow social media and barely watch broadcast TV anymore. So, I think that that definitely like having those fringe conversations and just— I definitely relate to doing this every single day, trying to think of different things to talk about. I think that we'll start to— bring more—

Josh: I don't know, I feel like I all—

Mason: I'm constantly in life desiring more structure. Yeah, it's like I need another—

Tommy: brings security, safety.

Josh: Yeah, like 100%.

Mason: And like, for me, I'm always working quite unstructured.

Tommy: Um, but, um, yeah, I think if you're locked down in structure, you'd start to fuck you over. Yeah, your head would start going, I want less.

Mason: Yeah, exactly.

Josh: So no, it's all—

Mason: I think part of structure you're having less. Anything else that you want to bring up, or you're just looking at your phone?

Tommy: No, it's all good.

Mason: It's a Daily Talk Show, everyone. Please, uh, we, uh, appreciate when you do email like, uh, Michelle does. I'm glad that my, uh, big push yesterday was so effective. It was good.

Tommy: Um, hi@thedailytalkshow.com.

Mason: Yeah, and we still have that PO box, and we will— and I'm actually I want you to, if you can, look after my PO box while I'm away. Yeah, PO box 400, Abbotsford, 3067. Alright, guys, have a good one.