Solopreneur Grind

A fun new marketing strategy I’m trying

Josh Schachnow — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 00:05:31 +0000

Happy Monday folks,

Another week, another good batch of updates and fun stuff to talk about in the business world.

Let’s jump in:

Trying a new/fun marketing strategy for Visto

It was definitely a slower week.

While summer is usually a bit slower here, we’ve managed to have a pretty strong few months on the business front. But something about last week was just very quiet.

Lots of vacation auto-responders, voicemails, etc. Did you have the same?

And that’s okay, because it’s just the name of the game at certain times of the year. Also gives you time to catch up on other stuff that’s been lower on your list for a while, and also spend some time outdoors, recharging and recouping that energy for when things pick up.

I also launched a LinkedIn Growth program through Visto, which so far is off to an exciting start. What is that, you may ask?

Well as you know, my tech company (visto.ai) builds immigration software for immigration professionals in Canada. As I’ve gotten to know more of them, I’ve learned that most are looking to build their presence online, but don’t know where to start and/or don’t have the time to. And they lean towards LinkedIn as it’s more professional.

So after hearing this from far too many of them – and because I know a thing or two about LinkedIn with over 14,500 followers – I decided to put together a 6-week paid program on how to grow your presence on LinkedIn for immigration professionals. Not only do I enjoy it, but it’s another fun way to market ourselves to our target market and build trust in our industry.

It’s also a nice way to mix things up as I spend most of the rest of my day selling tech, so mixing in some other stuff helps keep me on my toes.

We had the first session on Friday where I went over setting LinkedIn goals, intentions (and why they’re so important) and optimizing your LinkedIn profile, including tips and homework.

As I said, so far, so good, and I’ll keep you posted on how it goes over the next 5 weeks (as it’s a 6-week program).

Key takeaway(s): listen to your audience and get creative to serve them

Now this program is still new, so it might be a complete flop, but the first session went well and I have a great feeling about it. Mainly because I know I’ll provide them with a ton of value, and it’s a cool new way to network.

One of my biggest learnings from this year, especially as we improve on our immigration platform at Visto, is to always be listening to your audience instead of forcing what you think may work on them. Of course, there’s a little bit of that that’s required (especially early on when you’re just starting and don’t have clients), but the last ~6 months of new product features for us have just been based on what our users are asking for.

Ironically, it actually makes improving your product really easy – because users just ask for stuff. But make sure you’re listening and/or giving them the space to communicate their wants and needs with you.

It could also mean testing out some new products or services you hadn’t thought of before, because if enough people are asking you for it, it’s probably for a reason. So get something out there quick, then show it to as many people as possible and listen to what they say (good or bad!).

Book of the week

I’m still not done Jack: Straight From the Gut by Jack Welch, but not for a lack of trying. At almost 500 pages, it’s a doozy.

Luckily it’s also a great book. Jack shares a ton of details on how he worked his way up at GE, what it was like running it, chapters on the cool deals he and the company did, management of people and more. I will hopefully be done it for next weeks email…

Episode 14 of the Grind Mastermind podcast also went live, where good friend Chris and I share updates as we grow our businesses, set goals for the next 2 weeks and talk about books/tools we find. Watch or listen to it here.

That’s it for me – have a great week, make sure you’re getting my updates right to your inbox here, and keep grinding,

– Josh

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A very valuable networking event and sales tool

Josh Schachnow — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:10:35 +0000

Happy Monday folks, summer continues to fly by, with a lot of exciting times too.

Let’s jump in:

A very valuable networking event and new sales “strategy”

We had another good week on the tech front. Even though summer tends to slow things down a bit here in Canada – on the business side – our revenue curve continues up and to the right.

Also had a cool discovery this week. Which is that the government offers a grant for SMBs to help them implement new tech, that we (Visto) are likely eligible for.

Or in other words, the government offers free money to our clients to implement software like ours. Which is pretty awesome, if we can convince potential clients it’s worth their time to apply for the grant (which we think it is).

We discovered it from someone we met at a networking event last week, and are going to push it hard as a sales strategy – especially to try and convert leads who are on the fence about using our product. Certainly de-risks giving our tech platform a try if you can get the full payment back from the government, right?

Suffice to say, I’m excited to get back to sales this week with that tool in my back pocket, and I’m certainly glad we attended that networking event.

It was a pretty interesting one as well because they had a great panel that focused on a) hiring your first 10 employees and b) mental health for founders/entrepreneurs. Two very important topics, I’d argue.

It seems like, to me, part of the battle in solopreneurship is finding the right balance between focus and “getting out of the house”. Especially when you figure out something that works for your business, it’s very important to put the blinders on and grind it out, grow grow grow, and not get too side tracked.

But it’s also good to, periodically or as-needed, get out of the house, talk to some outsiders, take a break. It usually gives good perspective and you might pick up on a new opportunitity, strategy, partnership, etc., along the way.

Key takeaway(s): hire away your least valuable skills

I’ve usually never regretted attending a good networking event, and last week was no different.

Keep in mind the word “good” is important here – because if you do your research then most networking events are a good experience, but some can be weak.

This one was good because it was organized by great companies, they had an interesting panel/topics, and served dinner (major points in my book…).

Alex (my cofounder at Visto) and I had some really good takeaways too, such as:

the grant we discovered that should drastically improve our sales
good tips on how to find the right balance as entrepreneurs
things to think about for your first hires

More specifically, we learned that for those first few hires, you want to hire away your least valuable tasks so you can focus on where you add the most value.

For example, Alex spends a lot of time building our platform and also doing customer service. Our initial thought was to hire another developer so they could build our product faster, but we realized that Alex’s highest value skill is coding – not doing customer service.

So instead of hiring another coder, we should hire someone who can handle customer service, unlocking more time for Alex to focus on his high value skill – coding.

Might sound obvious, but sometimes you need to step back and see the forest from the trees to put those ideas in place.

Book of the week

I’m still reading Jack: Straight From the Gut by Jack Welch and am about halfway through. It’s a pretty big book so I’m not sure if I’ll be done by next week, but let me tell you, I can already confirm this is an A-range kind of book.

The closest comparison I can make right now is to Bob Iger’s autobiography, because they’re both “lifers” who worked their way up their respective companies until they became famous CEOs, and I also loved Iger’s book too.

More info next week…

That’s it for me – have a great week, make sure to get my business updates right to your inbox here, and keep grinding,

– Josh

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The Grind Mastermind: Episode 14

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 20:50:26 +0000

Josh and Chris go live every 2nd week to discuss their businesses, recent progress, struggles and focus for the next few weeks.

In this episode we discuss:

Etsy stores
landing pages
promotion services and products
podcasting and Youtube videos
cold calling and email cross promos
short video/snippet creation

Resources we mentioned:

Nobody’s Perfect: Bill Bernbach and the Golden Age of Advertising by Doris Willens
Vidyo.ai
Heygen.com
syllaby.io
https://elevenlabs.io/
d-id.com
Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy by Mo Gawdat
Jack: Straight From the Gut by Jack Welch
https://savewisdom.org/the-1000-word-save-wisdom-questions/
https://christophersilvestri.com/user-journey-test/
https://christophersilvestri.com/website-copy-and-ux-audit/

Make sure to like/subscribe or tune in live on Youtube or your favorite podcast platform for new episodes!

Follow Josh at https://solopreneurgrind.com/join

Follow Chris at https://conversionalchemy.net/

Summary:

00:00 Josh and Christopher discussed their recent activities, including posting podcast episodes, reading books, and creating products for an Etsy store. They also mentioned their plans for the next two weeks, such as finishing a book and promoting the Etsy store on social media.

9:37 Josh and christopher discussed the importance of building trust with potential customers through various channels such as podcasts, email lists, and social media. They also talked about the need to drive traffic to their products and services and brainstormed ideas for promoting them effectively.

17:48 Josh and Christopher discussed their goals for the upcoming weeks, including promoting their podcast, posting a YouTube video, and scheduling an in-person meetup. They also talked about their strategies for cold calling and creating video snippets for social media.

26:38 Josh and Christopher discussed the use of AI avatars for generating content and the process of scheduling and posting snippets on TikTok and YouTube. They also mentioned their use of chat GPT for various tasks and shared their book recommendations.

35:01 Josh and Christopher discussed the books they have been reading, including “Rework” and an autobiography by Jack Welch. They also mentioned a cool contest on Twitter where people shared their wisdom and recorded it for future generations to learn from.

The post The Grind Mastermind: Episode 14 appeared first on Solopreneur Grind.

Raising money in the tech world – strategically

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 22:29:03 +0000

Happy Sunday folks, we had a holiday last weekend up here in Canada land, which I used to relax, go for a run, then proceed to waste said run by eating far too many blueberry pancakes.

But hey, we only live once, right?

Let’s jump in:

Crossroads and raising money in the tech world

It’s an interesting time in a good way for my immigration tech startup, Visto, as we continue to grow week over week.

Usually things are a bit quieter in Canada during the summer due to vacations and such, and while it is a little quieter, we still continue to head in the right direction.

But we’ve come to that infamous crossroads in a business, where our revenue is growing and we want to scale up, but don’t yet have the funds to hire (yet). We’re certainly on pace for it, and we know we’ll get there soon, but we’d love to be able to hire yesterday to expedite our growth.

And for that reason, we’re in the process of trying to raise more money from our current investors, which would be great because a) we’d have the funds to grow the team much quicker (and by extension, the company/product/revenue), and b) being able to raise from your current investors (as opposed to going “outside” to new investors) is typically a smoother process (since they already know and trust you).

Have you ever raised money for your company before? Is it something you even want to do?

To be honest, I never know how much time to spend talking about fundraising because I feel like some people won’t ever do it (they may not want or need to, for a variety of reasons), especially since this list started out focused on solopreneurship – which by definition is probably the types of businesses you don’t need or want to fundraise for.

So unless there’s a big demand to read more about it, I’ll keep it surface level for now, and also say that we’re lucky because we don’t have any big fancy venture capital (VC) firms that invested in us. Mostly angel investors, family offices and other successful entrepreneurs who believed in us.

Which is pretty great because there’s less pressure, more realistic expectations (as opposed to some VC firms that expect 10+ times their investment returned within 3-5 years) and a more personal relationship.

Maybe you do or don’t plan on raising funds at some point, and assuming you’re not building the next Facebook, I recommend going the route that we did (which, to be honest, was mostly by accident and not design!).

Key takeaway: raise money, like anything else, very intentionally for your business

Fundraising ain’t for every business and/or person, but if you decide to do it, I still recommend doing it intentionally. Like anything in your business.

Especially if you don’t want/need to raise a ton of money, try to stick to more down-to-earth investors that won’t have the expectations and pressure from VCs. Easier said than done, as most things are, but it will help you sleep better at night and, given the tools and resources out there these days, most companies probably don’t need as much money as they think anyway.

If you’re starting out on your own, try to leverage everything else possible. All of the new AI tools, communities, maybe even a business partner to fill in your blanks, and get as much traction for your business first before going out for any money.

Because if you can fund your business through revenue then you may never need to raise, and if you do need to raise, it will be much easier if you have revenue to show to prospective investors!

Book of the week

I finished reading Rework by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried, and I gotta say, it was a great read. Best comparison I can make is to The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz – if you liked that book, you’ll like this too.

In short:

highly recommended read, especially to entrepreneurs/founders of any kind of business
short, punchy chapters that are easy to read with very little fluff
covers a wide variety of topics and provides a ton of advice in very few words (a great combo)
topics range from starting a business, motivation, productivity, hiring, culture and more. You may not need to know it all this second, but they’re quick to cover and the book acts as great reference material for down the road

It’s pretty short too, so it won’t take you weeks to read.

Up next: Jack: Straight From the Gut by Jack Welch. I’m about 50 pages in and loving it…

That’s it for me – have a great week, make sure to get all of my updates right to your inbox, and keep grinding,

– Josh

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The Grind Mastermind: Episode 13

Josh Schachnow — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 14:01:05 +0000

Josh and Chris go live every 2nd week to discuss their businesses, recent progress, struggles and focus for the next few weeks.

In this episode we discuss:

getting a new podcast started
Etsy stores
productized service landing pages
cold calling
balancing growing pains
newsletter growth strategies
optimizing social media content strategies

Resources we mentioned:

Lettergrowth
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Vipassana meditation
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
Rework by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried

Make sure to like/subscribe or tune in live on Youtube or your favorite podcast platform for new episodes!

Follow Josh at https://solopreneurgrind.com/join

Follow Chris at https://conversionalchemy.net/

Summary:

00:00 Christopher and Josh had technical difficulties while trying to livestream their podcast episode. Christopher successfully completed his goal of recording the first podcast episode and transitioning to a weekly email.

11:35 Josh and christopher discussed the challenges of recording a podcast episode and the benefits of doing so. They also talked about the importance of providing a brief introduction to the podcast and christopher’s plans to create an Etsy store related to his podcast.

21:27 Christopher and Josh discussed various goals and tasks, including creating t-shirt ideas for an Etsy store, redesigning productized services landing pages, and increasing cold call outreach. They also talked about strategies for promoting their email lists and the challenges of fundraising.

30:51 Josh and Christopher discussed their morning routines and the importance of incorporating moments of silence and reflection into their day. They also shared book recommendations, including “The Power of Now” and “Hagakure: The Secret Wisdom of the Samurai.”

39:06 Josh and christopher discussed various books they have read, including one by George Lucas and another by the founders of Basecamp. They recommended the books for their practical advice on entrepreneurship and managing a business, and found them to be easy and quick reads.

The post The Grind Mastermind: Episode 13 appeared first on Solopreneur Grind.

Growing pains of a small tech company

Josh Schachnow — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 21:34:55 +0000

Happy Monday folks,

Back to the regular Monday morning grind update since last weeks travel debacle.

(And in case you missed my email last week, you can read about my 7.5 hour overnight drive home here)

Let’s jump in:

Growing pains for a small tech company

It’s been a good summer for us so far. We continue to focus on adding in new features for our immigration platform, Visto, and onboarding new clients.

As I’ve talked about many times before, the tech world is a bit different from the traditional service business world I was used to, but learning and improving as we go along.

Our userbase is continuing to grow and, most importantly, staying with us and not dropping off.

It’s an interesting situation to be in, especially when you’re a small team, because we have this sort of virtuous – but difficult – cycle.

As we get more users for our tech platform, we also get more feedback and requests. And this is awesome, because when you have an open feedback loop, your users basically guide you in what to build next (on the tech side). It’s great – assuming you are listening to them, which you definitely should be.

Designing and building tech products can be hard enough, so take any advantage you can get in the form of user feedback.

It’s funny, now that I think about it, it’s also how I built my Tiktok channel… I started posting a few basic videos that I thought would be helpful, then all I did was reply to the comments/questions with new videos, answering their questions. And it grew from there (my Tiktok account for Visto has over 54k followers).

The downside is that with more users comes more customer service requests, questions, queries, etc.

Again, these aren’t bad things and are just part of doing business, but it also means the tech team has to spend more time responding to/fixing issues, which then slows down the development of new features.

In short: growing pains.

But hey, I’d rather have growing pains than shrinking pains, right?

And I’ll continue to share my journey and the ups-and-downs of growing a tech company with a small team/budget. I think it’s going to be a fun year or two…

Key takeaway: accept and adapt

Building a business of any kind is hard, otherwise everyone would do it – and do it successfully.

The interesting thing is that when things start to go well, they can also get harder in ways you didn’t experience earlier on. When you start, you’re struggling to get clients. When you get clients, you may struggle to keep them happy. And so on and so forth.

It’s good to remember that 1) this is just business. If you think it’ll be a walk in the park, you may have signed up for the wrong gig. And 2) everyone else goes through similar struggles. They may feel personal and unique, but we’re all going through the grind. Together, in one way or another.

If business was boring and easy, then it probably wouldn’t be so fun…

Book of the week

I finished a re-read of Shoe Dog, and let me tell you – this is an absolute must-read for any solopreneur.

As you know I read a lot, and I’ve read hundreds of business books/biographies/memoirs/etc. Shoe Dog is a top 5, maybe top 3, business book. The story, the way it’s written, the detail he goes into, the flow of the entire adventure. It’s an incredible read.

And I’ve lost count how many times I’ve read it, because I usually read it every ~2 years. I think it’s been 3-4 times now, but it’s such a good book to re-read because, as I talked about above, it’s a great example of the grind that is entrepreneurship, and how perserverence and hard work can lead to so much success (as opposed to just brain power/intelligence).

And since I’ve read it so many times, you can check out my last review on the book here.

Next up: I’m reading Rework by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried. I’m about 1/3 of the way through and it’s very good. Full review next week when I’m done.

That’s it for me – have a great week and keep grinding,

– Josh

PS episode 12 of the Grind Mastermind podcast dropped last week, where good friend Chris and I share updates from our week in business, tools/book reviews and more. You can give it a watch or listen here.

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My 7.5 hour drive home in the dark

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 15:58:10 +0000

Hey folks,

Had quite the adventure trying to get home from a trip this past weekend (read below) hence the major delay in this email (as you know it usually goes out Monday morning).

Let’s jump in:

An adventure back from America

So this past weekend I spent in New York visiting some very good friends. We usually go for a visit every summer.

The problem?

Airlines kind of suck these days. And last weekend, 2 of my friends had flights cancelled to/from New York due to weather. Not a good sign.

Our flight there was totally fine, but our trip home was a bit of a mess.

As I always insist on, we got to the airport early, but our flight was quickly delayed. First they said it would be 4 hours (!), then they moved it down to 1.5 hours, then pushed it to a 2.5 hour delay.

Not great, but considering how bad air travel has been lately, not the end of the world.

Then they cancelled the flight…

Something to do with weather, who knows, but we were stuck at the Newark airport at 730pm and the next available flight on our airline was the next day at 6pm.

It only took me about 2 minutes to suggest that we (my fiancé and I) rent a car and drive home. Now keep in mind, it was only a 1.5 hour flight, and the drive is about 7.5 hours… but based on all of the cancellations i’d seen over the last week, plus the 100+ other people trying to rebook for Monday, plus the risk that flights on Monday might also be cancelled…

Made me confident that we should just rent a car and drive home.

Sure, it would suck (driving 7.5 hours, mostly in the dark, and getting home after 3am), but at least we’d be home.

So we did. We rented a car, got on the road and made it home around 330am.

I wouldn’t recommend doing it for fun, but it wasn’t the end of the world. We got to sleep in our bed, I didn’t have to reorganize my whole day of work and there was no traffic (woo).

Anyway, that is why this email is 2 days late… please forgive me?

Key takeaway: rip the bandaid

Since getting home I’ve thought a lot about that decision we made and how I may not have done the same thing a few years ago.

But one thing I’ve realized is that it’s worth short-term pain for long-term gains.

In that example, the “easy” but risky thing would’ve been to just stay overnight in New York, get on a flight the next day and hope that it worked out.

But I don’t like that kind of risk, and I also trust myself more than others to get stuff done. I knew I could drive home (I did the full 7.5 hours of driving myself) and that I could salvage the next day of work, I didn’t know if the planes would takeoff the next day/how long we could be stranded there.

Good application in business and life too: sometimes it’s better/less risky to suffer some short term pains (driving 7.5 hours overnight) for long terms gains (being settled at home to start the week properly).

Book of the week

I took a break from The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene to do a re-read of Shoe Dog by Phil Knight.

Because Greene’s book is a long one I felt I needed to break it up, and I usually read Shoe Dog every couple years (yes, it’s that good). I’ll chime in on it next week when I’m done, and/or you can read or watch my last review on the book here.

That’s it for me – have a great week, don’t miss getting my weekly updates right to your inbox, and keep grinding,

– Josh

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Tech business and social media growth stuff

Josh Schachnow — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 22:03:23 +0000

Happy Monday folks,

Been another busy week in the immigration + tech cofounder world of mine.

Let’s jump in:

Building tech businesses and online audiences

We had another pretty good week over at Visto, as we continue to focus on adding more features and clients to our immigration tech platform. The pieces really feel like they’re fitting together well, so it’s a matter of how we want to continue to scale it.

While getting a tech company off the ground has been much harder than non-tech – from my experience – I think my overly simplified guide would be:

find an underserved market that is willing to pay for a solution that will make their experience/business/life better
build a really good product
create and optimize 1 really good sales funnel
be in constant communication with your early clients/users to continue to improve the product

Of course, each of those steps could be a novel of its own, but if you let me know which interests you the most, I can go into more detail in the next email.

I’m also continuing to evaluate and evolve our content/social media marketing strategies, ie. where we’re posting, how often, etc. Over the years I’ve really come to like 2 methods:

1) email lists like these:

As different platforms come and go, and/or change their algorithms, email lists are forever. Pick 1-2-3 social media platforms you like, post good content and point everyone to an email list

2) long form video content into snippets:

We all know that content is king, but video content is the king of kings. That’s why we all can’t help ourselves scrolling on Tiktok/Shorts/Reels/etc. And my best suggestion to “hack” video is to record 1 long form piece of content and then just edit it into shorter snippets.

For example: every 2 weeks we record an episode of the Grind Mastermind podcast (which you should be watching/listening to every 2 weeks here of course). From each podcast, we edit 10-20 short 30-60 second snippets that we can post inbetween episodes for even more reach.

1 recording, dozens of videos. And it can be done for any/every business if you’re creative enough.

What’s holding you back?

Key takeaway: keep things simple and systematize

One thing I love about business is how simple it is. It’s not easy – but a lot of it is actually pretty simple.

In my opinion, hard work + simplicity is the key, despite what all the content/gurus online might be telling you or trying to sell you.

Want a big audience on Tiktok? Go study 2-3 profiles you aspire to, and post religiously for 6+ months.

To do that, build systems so that you’re not staring at a blank screen each time too.

For example, this email. I have a calendar event for every single Sunday reminding me to write this email, plus a template to use. So when the time comes, I sit down and I write – following the system I already have in place.

If you’re trying to do something and constantly skipping/missing it, ask if you’ve got the right system in place to make it easier for you to do consistently.

Book of the week

I’m still reading The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. Yes, still.

As mentioned previously, it’s long as hell, so it’s hard to say when I’ll be finished. To hold you over, especially since I was on the topic of social media above, here’s a review I did of Crushing It! by Gary Vee.

That’s it for me – have a great week, make sure you don’t miss another update here and keep grinding,

– Josh

PS episode 11 of the Grind Mastermind podcast just dropped, where good friend Chris and I share updates on our businesses, tools we’re using, books we’re reading, and more every 2 weeks.

The post Tech business and social media growth stuff appeared first on Solopreneur Grind.

The Grind Mastermind: Episode 12

Josh Schachnow — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 21:57:26 +0000

Josh and Chris go live every 2nd week to discuss their businesses, recent progress, struggles and focus for the next few weeks.

In this episode we discuss:

email list cadences
Youtube and podcast content strategies
growing pains in sales
fundraising for tech companies
books and tools of the week

Resources we mentioned:

the real madmen
ben settle
the intention merchants
the 48 laws of power
shoe dog
https://vidyo.ai/
https://www.opus.pro/
Chris’ Youtube video: https://youtu.be/4QXfaO_69tA

Make sure to like/subscribe or tune in live on Youtube or your favorite podcast platform for new episodes!

Follow Josh at https://solopreneurgrind.com/join

Follow Chris at https://conversionalchemy.net/

Summary

00:00 Josh and christopher discussed their recent trips to New York City and London, sharing their positive experiences and observations about the cities. They also talked about their plans for upcoming projects, including christopher’s podcast about advertising and Josh’s bachelor party.

07:40 Josh and Christopher discussed the possibility of starting a podcast and transitioning Christopher’s daily newsletter into a weekly format. They also considered the benefits of focusing on digital products in the future for a more scalable business model.

13:55 Josh and Christopher discussed various topics including the success of Josh’s cold calling efforts, the need for more time to do outreach, the possibility of raising funds, and the positive impact of switching to a weekly email format.

20:56 Christopher and Josh discussed their current readings, recommending “The Attention Merchants” and “Shoe Dog” as interesting books. They also mentioned using AI tools like Video and Opus for creating short snippets of videos for social media.

26:50 Josh and Christopher discussed their experiences with video editing software and the success of Christopher’s latest video. They also talked about the importance of thumbnails and the potential for future improvements in their video content.

The post The Grind Mastermind: Episode 12 appeared first on Solopreneur Grind.

The Grind Mastermind: Episode 11

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 09 Jul 2023 18:47:51 +0000

Josh and Chris go live every 2nd week to discuss their businesses, recent progress, struggles and focus for the next few weeks.

In this episode we discuss:

FB and Youtube strategies
outsourcing versus automating for video editing
vacations
podcast experiments
growth pains in tech
community building
podcast/content consumption habits
updates on books – business and fiction
personal CRM tool

Resources we mentioned:

Founders podcast
Podbean
VidIQ
Opus pro
Win Bigly by Scott Adams
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
https://clay.earth/

Make sure to like/subscribe or tune in live on Youtube or your favorite podcast platform for new episodes!

Follow Josh at https://solopreneurgrind.com/join

Follow Chris at https://conversionalchemy.net/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Josh: I think we are live for the Grind Mastermind episode 11, right. It’s uh, it’s July, man, July 3rd, 2023. The year is flying q3. Q3. And we’re flying.

[00:00:16] Chris: How’s it going? It’s going pretty well. As I was saying before, we turn this on and we’re gonna be on a vacation starting tomorrow in New York.

So if anyone’s listening is in New York, wants to meet up, gonna be there until the 11th, just for some, exploring some, yeah. I’ve only been in New York for three days in the past so far, so it’s gonna be. Nice to have a full week to see what’s around. I saw that it’s pretty hot and you are like 30 degrees Celsius, which is pretty crazy coming to from the UK as well.

[00:00:58] Josh: It’s fun. It’s, it’s, it’s too bad. We were just saying, I’m actually going on the 21st, so I’m, I’m going to visit 10 days after you leave. I have a few good friends that live there actually, so I love to visit New York. I don’t think I could ever live there cuz it’s just too busy for me. But, uh, great city to visit great food, so, oh

[00:01:18] Chris: yeah, I think you’ll have some, I, I, I use charge PT to give me a huge list of food places recommendations, like divided by themes.

And then I have all my locations. I asked it to give me a couple of good, um, like experiences, activities around the mafia. In New York Mafia history in New York. So there’s lots of good stuff. Very

[00:01:44] Josh: cool. Anyways, before we get too much into ai, why don’t we jump in and then we can talk about it in our Yeah.

[00:01:52] Chris: Tool section. I can go through my goals. So what did I have?

[00:01:56] Josh: Oh yeah, let me pull ’em up here.

[00:01:58] Chris: Last week. So I was supposed to, uh, basically test my weekly YouTube posting schedule, so, First one. Yeah. So I did that. How did it go? And, uh, it was helpful because it made me realize that I cannot and don’t want to edit YouTube videos.

So I edited the first one, which was kind of like the pilot for the new like version of the channel. Yeah, but the problem was that that video was just two minutes and a half, three, and that was fine. Mm-hmm. And then I started editing the new, the second video that I recorded, which at the end, like post editing, um, comes out at around seven minutes and it was a nightmare.

As soon as I started, I basically had to Upwork and, uh, I found a really great video editor from the Philippines again. So, It’s been working out pretty well. He edited this first video, which is coming out in 40 minutes. Actually, it’s scheduled on YouTube, so if you want get it, well, it’s hot to the Conversion Alchemy YouTube channel.

You’ll see that soon. And yeah, I mean, it’s pretty straightforward process. It’s great.

[00:03:19] Josh: You should definitely, um, well, two things. Number one, I mean, video editors are a dime a dozen at this point, so it definitely makes sense to outsource it. If you don’t like it, I bet you there’s some good AI tools where you could just like drag and drop your video and it’ll edit for you using ai.

But I don’t know, maybe, maybe they’re not great yet. What I found, maybe we’ll talk about this at the end. There’s some really good AI tools and they’re good, like they’re not great. You know, like you can see that. Yeah, in six to 12 months they’re gonna replace humans, but like, they’re not perfect yet. But anyways, that’s why you gotta get started, right?

It’s only when you, when you do it, that first rep that you find out what you like, what you don’t like, and you can adjust. Yeah. So how, how did the first few videos go?

[00:04:09] Chris: Uh, I, so I’m gonna post this one today and I recorded another one this morning that I plan on posting next week. So the. The schedule, uh, remains the same that I had in mind.

So four videos a month, which are one, is kind of like a how to lesson video. Then I’m posting a website tear down, which doesn’t require much editing, so I, I’ll probably just do that myself. You can basically do it automatically with the script, just cutting the, the silent, the word, the silences and the, the ums and the.

So the third one of the month is going to be, um, a process video. So kind of a mix of me talking briefly and then showing the screen, showing how I do something. So the video that I recorded this morning was that kind of video, and it’s all about productivity. So looking at my processes, systems, tools that I use.

And then the last one, which is kind of, uh, still an idea. Kind of an experiment that I’m pretty excited to try though. It’s, uh, you know, the the Founders podcast? Yeah. That you, you, you link to me. So I’ve been binging. It’s basically going, it’s going to be kind of the, the idea, same idea, but revolving around copywriters.

Marketers basically master persuaders, but also looking at books that teach the art of persuasion and. Maybe marketing. So the goal is for those video basically to go through my notes for that book, read the notes, comment on the notes, give my thoughts and ideas, examples of how I applied those four clients.

So yeah, it’s a great idea. Like any, anything between 30 minutes to one hour, they could be, I have no idea. And as far as the video, it’s just, it’s gonna be no video. So keeping it super simple for those, um, and just posting them on YouTube with an image and repurposing them on like audio podcast platforms.

Yeah, you

[00:06:17] Josh: definitely gotta do the audio. Setting up man, setting up podcasts. Super easy. The hardest part is just creating an account for like the 75 million podcast platforms, you know? Ah, I think you have to do it once, once you pick the host, like for example, I use, uh, Podbean. And, um, once you get that set up, you just, you just like take the RSS feed and then you go to Amazon Music and Spotify, blah, and you plug in the link and it sets it up there.

And then once you set it up, once it just auto pushes. Setting up podcasting is actually quite easy. Um, yeah, that’s a great idea. I’ve been loving that podcast. Let me, uh,

[00:06:56] Chris: yeah, I’ve been, I’ve been listening not only to his podcast, which is great. He had a great episode podcast reposted about Michael Jordan a couple days ago.

[00:07:06] Josh: Yeah, I saw post on LinkedIn, but I’m gonna have to listen to that one.

[00:07:11] Chris: But I’ve also been listening to a lot of podcasts where David, the guy who does it, was, uh, was a guest. Just because I wanted to hear like about his story, about he, how he came up with the idea and how he does it, how he use process and everything.

And it’s super interesting. The guy is obsessed with, uh, like doing the hard work, like grinding every day. Grinding it out. Yeah. But just because that’s what he loves to do. And it’s also kind of what reminded me. Yeah. I got a passion for, uh, like learning copywriting, learning this stuff, persuasion psychology.

So I’m curious to see if I’m going to like it as much as he does anything.

[00:07:52] Josh: It seems like push me. It seems in your case you’re doing that work anyways, right? You’re reading these books, you’re taking notes. Yeah. Yeah. So really all you’re doing is sitting down with those notes and like talking about it for an extra 30, 40, 60 minutes.

See how it goes. That’s it’s a good idea. I’ve been loving the, uh, the podcast. He does a really good job. How did he get started? Like, did he just start recording these episodes on the side and eventually it kind of blew up?

[00:08:18] Chris: Yeah. Yeah, but it took like four years for him, so it, it start, it started in 2018, I think.

[00:08:22] Josh: Four year overnight success, as they say. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. So the, the YouTube schedule’s underway. So what about record two to three Facebook ad videos and then you also had create three landing pages for productized services.

[00:08:39] Chris: So landing pages, uh, didn’t do that. Not a priority really.

[00:08:45] Josh: So do you want to take that off or do you want to keep it on?

[00:08:48] Chris: Yeah, for now we can take that off, especially because I’m gonna be a vacation, so. But I, uh, I had to deliver a couple projects for clients, so I prioritized those. As far as the Facebook ads, yeah, I recorded one video ad and I tried it for a week and a week and a half, I think. But it wasn’t doing great. I guess it’s both.

I’m not still great at doing those kinds of videos. And is it a good script and managing Facebook ads? Uh, pretty simple. I mean, pretty like casual. But yeah, I, I, I think with Facebook ads there’s still still too much stuff that I have to learn. So right now they’re on pause because last week, even just the normal one, they would bring in two, three subscribers a day Last week that it, they was running, it was maybe like one every two days.

So I just stopped it. And for now, I think the new plan, a better direction could be focusing on YouTube and this content, YouTube and newsletter. And use those to channel, like, yeah, use YouTube and the podcast, maybe new podcast to channel the newsletter rather than relying on Facebook ads and paying. So see how

[00:10:00] Josh: it goes.

Well, I mean, it’s, you’re always paying. It just depends on what you’re paying. Are you paying with time or are you paying with cash? Yeah, it’s true. So true. But yeah, I mean, I’m, I’m a firm believer of like, pick one medium first. And crush that first, and then look to bring in a second. Right? Like if you can ramp up YouTube.

The thing is, with something like YouTube, it’ll be slower growth at the start, right? Yeah. Which is fine, but I’m But more organic. I’m prepared for that. Yeah. Yeah. If you’re, if you’re fine to ride it out, man, then, um,

[00:10:30] Chris: and also I’ve been using that tool, you know, the, I dunno if you mentioned or I found it out, but it is called V iq.

Yeah.

[00:10:38] Josh: Yeah. That’s insights.

[00:10:41] Chris: And and I looked, did you upgrade? It’s very interesting. I looked. Yeah. Yeah. Cause even,

[00:10:45] Josh: even the free plan gives you like pretty good info. I can only imagine the paid plan’s probably great.

[00:10:52] Chris: Yeah, it’s great because it also gives you a kind of a checklist when you post the video.

Like, did you do all this things, blah, blah, blah. Right. And uh, it was interesting to see how the copywriting niche, there’s, uh, quite a, it gives you like a meter, right? Of the how many searches and the competition. Yeah, and it’s got high searches, but like low competition, so it was pretty interesting to see.

It would be nice to see how my video do if I follow like all the hashtags, all the, I’ll

[00:11:23] Josh: be interested to follow YouTube search engine, follow that along. Yeah. And, and eventually too, if you get a couple videos doing well, you could throw money at those, right? You could always run YouTube ads and see, uh, Look at, look at my assistant for today.

Those of you watching on YouTube, Uhhuh, pretty relaxed, pretty chill. Have, yeah, we have a foster cat. I, I, I haven’t really seen a cat sleep like that. Like I’ve seen dogs seen either, but she like sleeps on her back with her legs out. It’s pretty funny. She’s a good cat. She looks pretty fat. She could use a few pounds, shall we say, or, or lose.

She could afford to lose a few pounds anyways, okay, so, so Chris’s goals. Um, so I could delete the YouTube one. So, well, let me just ask you this. What the heck are your goals for the next two weeks?

[00:12:14] Chris: Enjoy my vacation. That’s one goal. Enjoy vacation.

[00:12:18] Josh: Hey, it’s important, right? The other one.

[00:12:20] Chris: The other one is probably just, um, let me check a few things that I had actually for these next days.

So, I mean, I. Uh, yeah, try the podcast video experiment. That’s one. Try the podcast.

[00:12:42] Josh: Okay.

[00:12:43] Chris: And the other one I had to finalize, uh, I want to kind of revisit and restructure my click up setup project management, just because it’s been a while. And I want to make it more efficient. So that’s one thing. All right. Did, did I tell you that I scored, uh, a guest post with Click Up? No. Yes, I did.

That’s big. I actually, I pitched them a year ago and they got back to me, geez. Like two, three weeks ago. So yeah, it’s gonna be nice, especially because it’s around. It’s basically a guide to conversion copywriting. So I don’t think, like none of the, like the pros in the conversion copywriting world wrote anything for click up.

So it’s a good. Chance for me to stand out with it.

[00:13:40] Josh: That’ll be some good domain authority, that’s for sure. 86. Nice. Damn. All right, so Chris, for the next two weeks is going to enjoy his vacation. Try the podcast video experiment. I’m interested. Let me, um, Let me know when the first episode’s up, cuz I’ve been loving his podcast and I really like that style.

So I would listen to those. And, uh,

[00:14:03] Chris: what, what

[00:14:03] Josh: episodes? The, uh, David, uh, what’s his name? David Sra. Sen. Sra. Yeah. So if you, you’re doing that kind of style because I I’ve got it. The podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then restructure your click up setup. I’ve been, I’ve been getting into a good routine where, um, I’m going to the gym like four or five times a week in the morning.

And now I’ve just been sticking my earphones in and I could crush like one episode per morning. Yeah. Um, not, I’d say like 75% of an epi of an episode per morning. I listen on like 1.2, 1.3, and by the time I put it in, walk down to the gym. And then usually I go for a little walk after, so it’s like 45 minutes.

So you can like crush most of an episode.

[00:14:51] Chris: Do, do you find that maybe before, like maybe sometimes you don’t want to listen to one of those episodes because you want to read the book and you don’t want him to spoil it to you,

[00:15:01] Josh: or no, not, not really. Um, if, if anything I use it as like a gauge. I, it’s, it’s interesting.

I find he does a great job of like summarizing the key points. Summarizing the key story, but he doesn’t go into full detail. Right. And he’ll even say like, oh yeah. And then the last, you know, the last a hundred pages, he kind of talks about this and blah, blah, blah, and it’s not as important for this show.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And then he gives his recommendation, oh, this is a great book. Or, oh, this is a good book. So, um, I’ve listened to some of his episodes on books I’ve already read just cause you know, I read them a while ago. Yeah. Because you know how it is, right? You read a book for me at least a year and a half later, I forget 80% of the book, right?

Yeah. So that’s why like the really good books I reread every couple years and like the really cool people too, like, like Munger, it’s just like, I just like Munger, I’ll read, I’ll listen to anything about Charlie Munger. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So

[00:16:01] Chris: anyways, yeah. It’s also, it’s also, I. I really like how he is able to connect different lessons from different books that he is read.

Because after reading, I don’t know, 300 books that he is read, he’s able to kind of connect ideas between them and, and maybe he’s talking about Michael Jordan. He tells you about how this is how Warren Buffet. Does this then Michael Jordan does. I,

[00:16:25] Josh: I wonder if, um, I’ve, I’ve been wondering whether he has that in his notes, cuz he’ll be like, off the cuff, he’ll be like, oh yeah, and Charlie talks about this.

And that’s similar to what Warren talked about in episode 124. Yeah. Yeah. And in my head I’m like, wait, did he just recall the episode number off the top of his head or is that in notes?

[00:16:43] Chris: He can actually recall episodes because I, I’m sure he does. Yeah. I’ve listened to interviews where he doesn’t have anything.

Like there’s a video and you can tell. Doesn’t have anything. Oh, yeah.

[00:16:52] Josh: Yeah. That’s so I love that. I love it. He’s great. He’s great. I’ve been following on LinkedIn now too, man. Social media’s crazy, right? Because you can like find a podcaster that you love and then go find them on a medium like LinkedIn.

Like for example, last week he released. An episode about the, there’s a new Steve Jobs book out apparently. Yeah. And so, uh, it’s free.

[00:17:17] Chris: Is it? The book is free, yeah. Oh, I didn’t know that. Can download the, can download the electronic copy and it’s super nice. So like a lot of, uh, images, color images. Oh, that,

[00:17:27] Josh: okay.

I’m gonna have to check it out. But anyways, I commented and I was like, Hey David, like, love your content. Do you like, did you like this book more than Isaacson, like the Isaacson biography? And I forget what he said now, but he answered. And I was like, that’s really cool. You know, like you can, you can just, it’s so much easier these days to connect potentially with some of these people.

But anyways. Mm-hmm. All right. So let’s switch over at the halfway mark. Yeah.

[00:17:52] Chris: About you. Well, you’ll be nap to,

[00:17:54] Josh: um, it’s been a pretty good few weeks. We’re still, we’re slowly growing on the, on the ow side. We’re slowly growing. We’re, we’re getting into some of those like classic growth pains. Where it’s like, now we ha we actually have more paying clients, which is good, but then it’s like new feature requests, customer support chat is getting busier.

So w we think we might raise a little bit more money just so we can like hire a couple more people cuz things are going well, our products looking really good, but we wanna add in a couple like more key features. But engineering has slowed a little bit cuz now Alex, he’s our cto. He’s still building new features, but now we’ve got more clients, so you gotta like answer those support chat messages and stuff.

So you know, it’s a lot to handle. Meanwhile, I’m doing all the sales and the marketing and the onboarding and the admin and the finance. So anyways, let me go through these items first, 30 plus cold calls per day. I did that for about half, and then the last week partly I got sick and partly I got so booked with demos that some days I couldn’t get.

That many cold calls in. Um, but I’m going to keep it on the list cuz I just want to keep doing it as many days as I can. It’s, it’s just interesting if, if you keep up that outreach, at least for us. Um, and I’m assuming this would be the same, like if you can just keep up your, your cold outbound. It keeps the funnel moving pretty well, which I guess is like, kind of obvious, but anyways, it’s kind of nice to see, um, confirm repurpose strategy from LinkedIn content, short videos for, yeah, so I was able to, so I’ve gotten into like a decent groove on social where, um, I post on LinkedIn every day, five days a week.

Um, and then I haven’t been posting native content. Onto TikTok and shorts. But what I’ve been doing is I go live with you every two weeks. You know, we talk about our business journey, and then I go live every two weeks on LinkedIn and I talk more about immigration stuff, right? Like immigration updates, news, blah, blah, blah.

And so with that, um, on Fridays, yeah, every second Friday, so the problem was like a couple weeks ago. Usually we’ve been one one. So like one week I’ll have our podcast. The next week I’ll have that. But now we’re all mixed up and it’s on the same day. Well, this is, this is obviously a Monday, but anyways, the couple days where they’ve fallen on the same days is kind of rough, cuz then I have like almost two hours of live video recording, which is fine, but when you’re trying to get a whole bunch of other stuff done.

So I’m gonna get it back. I’m gonna shift around my calendar so that it’s like 1, 1, 1, 1. Yeah, but I think the, I think like one of the best social media strategies you can have, especially if you wanna play the, the video content game is like once every week or two do a long form piece of content and then just chop it up.

Um, and that’s what I’ve been doing. So I chop up. And maybe I’ll talk about this at the end. I, I’ve been using an AI tool. I’ll just mention it now. Screw it. I’ve been using, I think we’ve mentioned it in past episodes, but I’ve been using it, it’s called Opus Pro. I think we talked about it. I’ll throw it in the show notes again with the other tools.

It’s quite good. It’s not amazing, right? So for example, you would get a better result by paying somebody to do it, but it’s a 10th of the price. And it works in three minutes. You know what I mean? So, and I’m assuming it’s only gonna get better. So like we, we record this, we throw it up on YouTube, I take the YouTube link, I paste it into Opus Pro, and five minutes later it just generates 10 clips with full captions.

It’s nuts. It’s

[00:21:46] Chris: totally nuts. So, so what, what do you think is working now with the tool and what doesn’t work so well? Because I tried it for mine, but it was just a two, two, like three minute video, so it didn’t make sense for this new video that’s coming out. The, the editor is also going to create the short clips.

Mm-hmm. But obviously if I could use a cheaper tool, that would be better. So what did you find out? I,

[00:22:07] Josh: I think the two parts where it’s lacking is like, number one, I don’t know if it picks the best clips yet. Some of them are very good. Some of them are like either kind of random or like overlapping, you know what I mean?

Yeah. So it’ll make one clip that’s a minute and one clip that’s a minute and like 20 seconds of each is the same. And I see why, cuz it, like, what it claims is that it finds the most like vir, you know, the highest vir virality potential, right? So I guess maybe if, if that like overlapping 20 seconds is really good, maybe you actually want it in like multiple clips.

So number one is, Yeah, I don’t think it’s amazing at picking the best parts yet. And number two, some of the editing stuff is a little finicky. Like how you can change the format and the head, you know what I mean? Mm. It’s quite, like I said, it’s quite good if you don’t want to pay someone to do your, your editing.

Um, and or, you know, the video doesn’t have to be perfect. The clips doesn’t have to be perfect. You’re more just trying to like, push out content. I think it’s a great option and I think it’s only gonna get better. Um, I’m sure there’s some competitors too, maybe worth checking out. I don’t know what they are.

I haven’t tried them yet, but this one’s been pretty good. Um, so yeah, I, I mean, I think it’s a great strategy, right? Every week or two do a long form piece of video and then just cut it up and use that to post on reels, on shorts, on TikTok, blah, blah, blah. So that’s been good. Um, cross promo outreach on letter growth.

So I’ve done a little bit of that actually by email. Again, I forgot to do it on Discord, so let me keep this one in. I’ve, I’ve had a couple, sorry. How did the email go? Uh, the emails went a little bit better this time. I think. I think, you know, I used your script and I think maybe part of it’s luck, um, but part of it’s obviously the text that you use.

But I’ve had a couple respond. I’ve also had a couple reach out to me in the last, like month, so that’s been good. Um,

[00:24:11] Chris: Or, or maybe also the fit of the newsletter. Like what type of, what types of newsletter you reach out to.

[00:24:17] Josh: Yeah, I mean, I always go under the solopreneur subcategory, so it’s like pretty good.

Um, so I’m gonna keep that in. I, I do want to keep doing the outreach for that on the Discord specifically. Let me highlight that cuz I think I still sent emails. Uh, and Paul, if you’re out there, please build in in-app messaging please. But anyways, I’ll, I’ll check. I’m sure the discords more active. And then lastly, think about a strategy for immigration AI community.

So this actually went really well. So what happened was I just said, screw it. And I just launched a Discord community. I guess we haven’t been on in a while. Hey, it’s been like three, four weeks. So it just like kept coming up where like, I. Immigration professionals kept kind of like asking about AI and stuff.

So one day I was just like, screw it. I, I update, I already had like an old ow discord thingy set up, so I rejigged it. I, you know, I rewrote the description, took 15 minutes and I just started inviting people. I posted about it on LinkedIn and I just started inviting people. So for the last like month, every Tuesday at five 30, we’ve been going.

Not live. We’ve been having a voice chat on Discord, and it’s for Canadian immigration professionals who want to talk about ai. And it’s gone really well. They’ve been like anywhere from like three to seven people each week. And uh, we just talk for like 40, 50 minutes. Hey, what tools are you using? Are you using Chachi, bt, anything else?

What do you think? How do you think this is gonna change our industry in the future? Blah, blah, blah. Um, and it makes for interesting conversation. And then last week there was an event in Toronto called Collision and a, a couple of our clients were gonna be in for collision. So I did it in person. So last Tuesday, we actually met Tuesday night and had dinner at a restaurant downtown, and there were like seven or eight of us and it was great.

So I, I think there’s a good opportunity for us to do some more community building around this, where like, there’s not, there’s plenty of communities, but there’s not communities for. You know, this group of people to talk about things like AI and technology. So, um, I don’t really have a goal for that. I mean, I just want to keep, I’m just gonna keep running it with that weekly call.

So for, for the next two weeks, three plus cold calls per day, cross promo outreach on letter growth. And I’m just gonna write, like, figure out fundraising.

[00:26:49] Chris: Try the idea. We talked about it in the past, the idea of running kind of like a book club in a community. Um,

[00:26:59] Josh: well, that, I would say like, that doesn’t align as well.

Like, it, it’s mostly to talk about the tech side. Oh, okay. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it’s not really about, I mean, maybe, maybe, maybe it’ll, it’ll evolve into that. We do talk a little bit about that stuff, right. Inevitably we talk a little bit about. Because most of these immigration professionals are running their own firms.

So there is some chat about entrepreneurship running a business, solo entrepreneurship, yeah. Blah, blah, blah. But I wouldn’t say it’s like the key piece. So I’ll keep tabs on it if it veers more in that direction, could potentially do that. But for where it is right now, it’s, it’s also like nice and easy cuz it’s.

Low commitment, right? We just have one chat a week. I’ll post a few times throughout the week and send reminders and share tools and stuff. But other than that, it’s one voice chat a week. They’ve been going really well, so, uh, so we’ll see. So yeah, I mean, it’s summer now, right? Things, people are slowing down, people go on vacation.

It’ll be interesting to see how the next few months go. So, um, yeah. I’m going away for a few weekends over the next month or two. So anyways. Okay. Should we do, uh, we’re almost at the 30 minute mark here. Should we do some, uh, books and tools?

[00:28:22] Chris: Yeah, so I’ve been finishing a couple of books. I’m, I’m still on my one book a week streak.

Oh boy. And the last one, uh, we finished that I finished is. Still by Scott Adams. So I’ve been going on Scott Adams spree. It’s, uh, win Bigley Persuasion in a World. It’s what, where facts don’t matter. Winning. It’s called bigley. It’s called Win Win Biggly Bigley. And it’s basically about, uh, uses like the Trump election to talk about like how he used persuasion techniques.

So, and, and it’s not like pro or or against Trump, it’s mostly just tells you Yeah. Different persuasion techniques that, uh, that Trump used or that are used in politics. So it’s pretty interesting and yeah, good reminder of how we rational people can be and um, of the cognitive bias or the confirmation bias that we have.

So that was a really good one. What about you?

[00:29:32] Josh: Um, I’ve been reading, um, the 48 Laws of Power. It’s a, it’s a big book. Yeah. I mean, not only is it big, but it’s dense. Right. Not in a bad way. It’s just like, it’s a lot of pages. Right. It’s like, I think just under 500 pages. But it, every page is packed, right?

Like not only are they big pages, but then he has those like little stories in the margin. You know what I mean? Yeah. You read it, right?

[00:30:01] Chris: Quotes. Yeah. I started, it probably got like a quarter. I also have his seduction and mastery books, but I, I didn’t finish, uh, any of them. It’s super, I think they’re the best way.

Probably the best way to read them is not to like go from start to the end. Yeah, but like, look at the table of contents and look at the lessons and, and think, okay, what do I need to blur now? And use it as kind of like a one, like a tip.

[00:30:30] Josh: And, and he mentions that in the Forward too. He’s like, you can read it front to back or you can use it as like a manual.

You know what I mean? So I haven’t read it before, so I am reading it front to back. There are a, I mean to as a quick summary, it’s exactly what the title says. It’s 48 laws. And he talks about how, you know, you should follow each one if you want to quote unquote, you know, get more power. And so some of them I kind of skim through.

Some of them apply to you much more than others. Some of them translate better or worse to like modern day, right? Because what he’s done is basic. What it seems, and I think he mentions this in, in the, in the preclude or whatever it’s called, the forward, where he basically has like, Rummage through like thousands of books and stories and history and blah, blah, blah.

And what I really like is he tells, he talks about these laws using stories, right? But it’s a lot of like, you know, 15th century this and 600 BC that, which is cool. They’re interesting stories, but some of it’s like, oh, you know, if you’re, you know, don’t stay too close to the king if you wanna blob. You know what I mean?

So some of it’s a little bit less

[00:31:44] Chris: relatable maybe.

[00:31:46] Josh: Yeah, I think you can certainly apply them all, but some of them maybe not needed as much or as important as much. It’s very interesting. I think one of, one of the things that I, that keeps coming to my head is kind of like, huh, I never really thought of it that way.

You know what I mean? And I, and I like those kinds of books, but as big and as long as it is and as, and as dense as it is, it still is quite an easy read. He’s a good writer. It’s very succinct. He, he uses a lot of stories, which makes it much more interesting. So I think it’s really cool. It’s just gonna take me a little bit longer to finish cuz I, I only read at night.

Whereas I’m listening to podcasts in the morning and I’m flying through those. So

[00:32:29] Chris: are you still also reading fantasy books or Artes on hold?

[00:32:33] Josh: I put it on pause. I finished that first book, um, city of Brass, which was very good and I have the second one, but I had gotten back from vacation. I kind of wanted to get back into like a business personal development book.

So I’ll probably start reading the second one at some point soon. Uh, is a really good first book was really good. So, um, yeah, you, you, you had a couple. No,

[00:32:59] Chris: yeah, I’m going through the shadow of the God’s book, which is really, really good. Yeah. The only problem is, yeah, I don’t have much time. So typically before going to bed.

[00:33:11] Josh: Well, how do you, how do you break up what you’re reading when,

[00:33:17] Chris: uh, it’s most of my reading right now it is. Just listening to audiobooks in the morning and taking notes while I’m at the gym, those two hours. Right. And then throughout the day, maybe lunchtime, I’ll have another 20 minutes reading a Kindle book that I’m reading and Yeah.

Before going to bed that fantasy book. Right. That’s 20 minutes. Yeah. And I’m falling asleep. Yeah. But yeah, I, I, I actually want to spend some time. While I’m in New York or like travel, especially traveling there, uh, to read the fantasy book.

[00:33:51] Josh: Yeah. On the plane at night, in the morning with a coffee, whatever.

There’s a lot of nice parks in New York. You could just like, you know, set up for a couple hours with your brother.

[00:34:03] Chris: Yeah. I already planned my workouts as well. Oh, nice.

[00:34:06] Josh: Nice. All right. Um, all of those books and tools will be in the show notes. Anything

[00:34:14] Chris: else, Chris? I actually have one, one more tool that I wanted to Oh, yeah.

Recommend that I’m trying, uh, especially because you like networking and keep in touch with people. It’s called Clay.

[00:34:29] Josh: Clay. How do you C l A Y website? Yeah. Clay Network. Just. Uh, clay.earth. No, it’s, uh, personal crm.

[00:34:44] Chris: Oh yeah, yeah. clay.earth. Yeah. Yeah. So personal crm.

[00:34:46] Josh: Unlock the full power of your relationships.

AI powered tools for cultivating amazing personal and professional relationships

[00:34:55] Chris: looks pretty nice. I’m trying it out. It’s a cool landing, landing page and uh, it basically links all your contacts from everywhere, like phone. Different social media, everything. Basically, it gives you like one single interface that you can merge multiple contacts.

Like for example, for you, I have, if I go on your card, I have all your information from all your social media contents, uh, contact, um, yeah. So, and it also remind, it shows you whenever someone changes something, like on their YouTube, uh, the bio, so you can keep in touch. So, huh. And like I said, reminders, notes.

So yeah, it’s pretty, it looks pretty nice. I’m still not sure if I’m going to keep using it, but I’m trying it out.

[00:35:42] Josh: Are you on the free plan? I think I’m

[00:35:46] Chris: on the trial.

[00:35:47] Josh: Trial plan. Okay. Yeah, try it free. Yeah. I’ll be int I’ve, I’ve actually thought about that before. Yeah. Of like a, you know, building like an app that’s kind of like a web of all your contacts and blah, blah, blah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I’m curious to hear, uh, how it goes. Yeah,

[00:36:04] Chris: the actual, like, the actual like, um, top feature that they are, they’re still in beta, I think it’s called Nexus. And basically it’s supposed to, it gives you kind of like a chat screen search, like a search bar, and you can search anything. Like, uh, for example, I’m going to New York next week.

Who do I know in New York? And it shows you all the people they know in New York, or That’s a great idea. Who’s in, who’s interested in books, uh, in, uh, in Italy? And it shows you all

[00:36:35] Josh: the people. You know what I, I thought about, I’ve thought about the, over the years, the, the two examples that come to mind is like, number one I’ve thought like just walking down a random street or like you’re sitting in a coffee shop and I’m like, Could someone in this shop be someone that’s in my network and I just don’t know?

You know what I mean? Yeah. Obviously that’s a little bit different. But then the other one was last week I was reading someone’s profile on LinkedIn who I like, kind of know, I’ve like known a little bit over the years and at the bottom of his profile was like, I love reading business books. Reach out if you like, need any recommendations or blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, damn, I’ve talked to that guy like many times and we’ve never made that connection before. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it’s like, what if, ah, if I had like brought that up, maybe things would’ve gone better or gone different or what, you know what I mean? So it sounds like a cool way to kind of bridge that gap.

So yeah, keep us posted, uh, on the next episode. Okay. All righty, folks. Well, I think that’s it for episode 11. Thanks for tuning in. If you’re on YouTube, make sure to like and subscribe to the channel. If you’re listening on a podcast platform, make sure you’re subscribed. If you can leave a review, that always helps.

If you think a friend or family member might, uh, be interested, send it their way. Other than that, you can find all the stuff in the show notes. You can find links to Chris and i’s blogs in the show notes as well. Chris, anything else before we head out?

[00:38:07] Chris: No, uh, I’m good. Awesome. I actually had, yeah, one last thing.

I had a really nice in-person meetup last Friday with, uh, 20 something other copywriters for the, I dunno if you know Copy Hackers. It’s uh, I’ve heard of it. Yeah, probably. Yeah. So basically I met with, uh, Joanna Weeb. She’s the founder of Copy Hackers and other copy pros in London. It was a super nice evening connecting with other copywriters.

Actually I should do more of that. So not only like trying to network for clients, but also network with. Competitors in a way. Just connecting, sharing ideas. It’s nice and it, yeah, helps you learn things that you maybe you’re not seeing or

[00:38:58] Josh: there’s some, there’s something about in person, right? It was the same thing like last week we did this dinner in person and it’s a lot of fun and I always leave going, should do more stuff in person, you know?

Yeah. Just because it’s gotten so easy with remote and technology to like do everything. Remote. Yeah. But yeah, there’s something, there’s a little bit of magic there about in person. So yeah, I, I think that’s probably a good thing to try and infuse a little bit more of. Cool. So I think that’s it for episode 11.

Chris, have a safe trip to New York. Thank you. Um, and we will see everybody in the next episode. Thanks soon.

[00:39:39] Chris: See you. See you

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