The Art of Winging It: Timm Chiusano's Secrets to Viral Success Without a Plan.

today I spoke to Tim juano and if you don't know him he's got 1.4 million something followers across all his platforms most notably for his Vlogs that he does on Tik Tok and today in the conversation it was about progress and it was a really interesting conversation because for someone as notable as he is and the success that he's had both in professionally and as a Creator you would think that he has his [ __ ] together but actually in in his words he has no idea what he's doing but what he is doing is he's making progress and every day he's getting a little bit better and he's moving a little bit further along his path so listen to the podcast and hope you enjoy it

conversation helps you uncover these things you talk it through with lots of people and then I remember this the reason I say that is because that's where I was 5 years ago when I quit my career in hotels that what I needed to do is talk to as many people as possible and I did that for a God knows how many people hundreds of people before lockdown happened yeah yeah and then it helped me figure out like oh this is the path like I ran hotels and now I have a marketing agency like it's funny I actually feel the opposite right now it's like I need to just shut up and do the work yeah interesting and that's where I'm having it's like it feels

like there's usefulness in saying yes to the things I'm saying yes to but then at the same time too there's this lingering thought in the back of my head of like I should just be sitting at my computer building and making and trying and failing and repeating that as much as humanly possible possible all day long versus like trying to spend too much time I was actually thinking about this in uh this morning one of the most dangerous phrases I feel like I heard on a consistent basis in Corporate America was we had a great conversation about blank where especially because I was I'm just an anxious person by nature and with the the scale of the team that I had I didn't say this

as often I don't know if often as I should have is the right way to put it but I I would is very cautious for two reasons one how do I respond to that and be like Define that for me and what's going to happen as a result of that versus like encouraging that type of thoughtfulness because everyone's brain's going to work differently as well so I'm I feel like I'm somewhat on the other side of that where even though most of the summer was spent traveling being with family all these amazing things that I needed most of the anxiousness and the desire to get to the next phase kept getting rooted in get back to routine get back into a space where you can

be like you're going to do this thing for 90 minutes and then you're going to have a hard stop pencil's down what did you do what did you learn what's your next thing to do and even if that means cool hard stop go do laundry downstairs hard stop go pick up my daughter from school it's like it's that type of rigor Yeah it's gotten incrementally better and this is really just week two because the summer was flying back and forth to Oregon several times a lot of amazing opportunities like going to a startup Fest in Montreal and going to Texas for a couple different reasons but I feel like I just I need the I need the repetition at this point and as somebody who's

an introvert by Nature now that I don't have a team it's almost like I want to be a bit more isolated too it's like I really just want to get in the office close the door and not come out for like two weeks and then be like I don't know if this is the right thing yeah but this is what I'm doing like this is what the next six months are going to look like and everything gets treated the way that it got treated which was under no circumstances am I not on my Monday 10:00 a.m. meeting yeah because there's ex that's on the line for that conversation with my team or whatever and just get into that type of pattern but that's kind of

the rub in this right is that you don't know but also you can't just think it you can't think through it through ever you just need to get to the doing as well so I give myself a very hard time about that and then I try to remind myself like how much content have I made since then how much progress have I made writing all of these things and there's both good and bad to it but just not allowing myself to feel like dude you haven't done [ __ ] since you left yeah because that thought does creep into your mind yeah and then how does that manifest itself into your own self-confidence in how you're showing up when you're if you're trying to talk to the

camera if you're trying to do something if you're trying to answer a question not getting stuck into a corner based off of all the questions you're asking yourself about the purpose of that thing that you're doing that you might feel self-conscious about uh Etc so it's it's an amazing conundrum to have though because if you can really sit with that and be okay with that and allow yourself to get through it and not have to go a th000 miles an hour but also make sure that you have enough momentum it's a special place I think to flounder in and I think is deserved and necessary for me to flounder in that right now and we'll see and then I get to decide how I make

the most of the floundering yeah what when you talk about doing the work and and these bits of like getting things done and doing the Reps for you what is that right now what is the work it it's a few different things one is uh the book right so 95% of it is completed but that's first pass y it's going to take a lot of back and forth with the editor it's not going to hit bookshelves for another 11 months you know year September 2nd 2025 I think is is like the hit the shelves date so there's there's that piece then the it's what does the routine look like to make the most useful stuff and where does it go and to me I think

that starts with the syllabus is well what is the stuff and to me that stuff is where I can be most helpful at scale because with all due respect to myself and my surroundings in my day-to-day no one's going to give a [ __ ] about my or like a day in the life of a random stranger on the internet forever so how can I be most useful I know how how I can be most useful but it's like the book and then in my head it's this syllabus of entry level 101 stuff for employees how to write an email to your boss's boss without throwing up like what are all of those listicle things you know I've got a 100 different cards in an organized system

my computer where I finally taken this PowerPoint that I wrote this word document because in for four years it was just making it up as I go literally every single day making it up as I go maybe sometimes there's a little bit of pre-planning or forward thought into why should I be making this piece of content and what is the timeliness of it but I don't know I still don't know on a day in and day out basis what I'm posting that day and that's a problem yeah if I build the syllabus the right way way so getting to do the work is like making sure the book is making as much progress on a week toe day-to-day basis as possible writing the syllabus so

I at least have this like core thing that I can keep going back to and then figuring out all right is this because I don't like yesterday I sat down in my basement and I did a podcast and recorded myself and then I literally edited it in iMovie by myself and put it up through megaphone and was that better as a podcast that have been a YouTube is there a better way to tell that story of how I had this awful day at work during my first real you know week at work back in 2003 or whatever it was is that a better podcast is that better as a YouTube is that better as a short form should I've started with an article that maybe

was a substack that I linked to on LinkedIn should I have made something on LinkedIn should I have taken the cut down from the from the podcast and put that on LinkedIn I made the cut down I didn't post it anywhere yeah didn't like it it was okay I thought it was a decent sound bite but then you start to think yourself into a corner about all of these things and then you're like well where the hell did that story come from okay yes it makes sense it's college football season there was a loose tie in there from a timing perspective you want a good story about a college football experience gone wrong and live sports production this will be useful you want a good

story about fumbling out of the gate in your job this will be useful but is that the right one to do should I have saved that and tied it back to something else I don't know like I don't know the answers to these things it was it was arguably much easier before when everything was so chaotic that was just go and do and capture and make it up the next morning you got nothing to lose tell them about the day move on to the next thing y now I feel like there's so much more that I can do but I need to establish the syllabus how does it come to life what's the best flow I've got one person that's helping me with editing just

for YouTube mhm but everything else is still a solo act so how do I figure all of that out like that's yeah that's the doing yeah I got followers but I think Jan's got questions I'm gonna cut this into the podcast we'll do it in the end do it in the end we're already we're already straight into this now I love this line of thinking because this is my question in rebuttal to what you've just said is why do you have to do that with the lock door on your own like why don't you why can't other people help you figure that out you know by by talking to the those conversations why does it need to be Tim locking himself in his basement or

his office and trying to figure out the syllabus on his own what there's not a good reason for that other than being in the position that I was in for my career in the corporate space ultimately final decisions came down to me so there's part of me that probably just AA faults to I've heard a decent amount I feel like I know enough it's time for me to just go make a decision what are these roles going to be called how is the thing going to be set up what is the process going to be like we're picking a direction we're going so there's there's that part of it there's another part of it where I get it's and this is not a good reason

but this is the reason I get too anxious it's like all right where's the you know especially coming from a world in which it was start on time end on time every 30 minutes throughout the course of a day if not even smaller increments what is the point what are the next steps Y what is the timeline so having just like exploratory conversations on a consistent basis my head has a hard time wrapping it itself around that yeah interesting I know the use and it's almost like okay cool if I should be smart about opportunities to have good conversations with the right people yeah but at the same time too there's the internet yeah so part of the work can be just having the conversation

by myself simply by digesting yep or general internet osmosis and then also making keystrokes at the same time yeah cuz then there's also just the day-to-day work that's still necessary of you know got more brand deal follow-ups to do how do I even start to respond in a coherent consistent way to LinkedIn messages other oper you know people that are still reaching out through my archaic website and like all of that stuff the random little things will pop up that are just like circumstantial so there's not ay hey this is why it has to be just me other than I feel like it will help my brain to just have the like as much quiet time as possible to let that and I've reserved so

much of the quiet time since I left either to write or to just kind of sit at the dinner table with my in-laws or whatever the situation might be and be present yeah and I've definitely had some of it for myself since but just not as much as I feel like I need to this coming weekend my wife and daughter going out of town they're going to be with you know another other friends at the school it's kind of like a kids and Mom's weekend away and I'm already like all right what's on my calendar that I'm getting out of yeah because I want nothing other than go for run in the morning and then once I'm like reason simply you know cleaned up and

ready for the day I'm not leaving the house finish the book see how much I can chip away because the the syllabus is a long syllabus too like I just did the framework of it yeah and there's like you know all of the 10121 301 401 stuff and but then at the same time too like I got to make a piece of content for the day like I need to get them make sure that the organic continues to be there on a consistent basis and like this week is a great example today's 911 y I have a far too many stories about that day yeah a lot of things that I would like to say that I think should be heard on a day like

this I had it scheduled I think for Monday or Tuesday to come downtown I was going to find the spot where I would come in the days after that and I would literally just sit somewhere downtown across from the initial pile of rubble and I would just watch yeah and just sit there and I would stare at the thing and be like the [ __ ] is going on in the world right now and literally just watch yeah and I had it in my head how that could look and how I would do it and I was scheduled literally blocked off time this is when I'm going to go shoot this thing something for a brand obligation that I already had on the table popped up started

to rode away at that time all of a sudden the commute time wasn't going to allow me enough time to get there and come back fell off the table this morning I'm like I got another idea literally have a friend who nuisance Middle School who lived across the street from where my house is I didn't we didn't live there at the same time he lived there in 2001 and he has stories of getting back from when everybody got kicked out of Manhattan and was like everyone get like get out of here we don't know what's going on and clear day exactly like this still pieces of paper on fire landing and this is 2.7 miles away from the World Trade Center just floating around the

breeze landing on the street yeah and I had a way in my head to connect that to what is ultimately part of like what I think my purpose is these days which is to try to help people be less stressed out in the works space like be nicer to each other like the all the shenanigans and [ __ ] that I've seen and people that ask me questions that come from you know it's it's pervasive right like there's people with three million followers that do nothing but toxic workplace content I want to help address that so like I had a way in my head to tie the things together I don't have that I don't have that maybe when I get home I can like sit out

of my stoop so it's it's like the plotting but then there's also the how do I reconstruct the engine so that there's no question what I'm going to post Tomorrow there's no question what I'm going to post next Tuesday you know if it's September 11th right now I should within the next couple weeks have some fun ideas for Halloween that I'm already starting to like plan out yeah right like that's part of my job now kind of so it's you know how can I just get smarter at all of that and not get sucked in this Vortex of like let me plan for what's going to happen down the road oh [ __ ] it's 4:00 I don't know what I'm posting today I have to post

something today cuz I got a brand piece coming up and a and I don't want to just be that like here's more and more like ad content even if I feel like the ad content is as good as it could be or it's additive or it offers something of value Etc and it's a it's an interesting vortext to be stuck in yeah it's um it's real interesting listening to you speak about this because like I mean I don't know if Janie can pick up what I'm thinking but like as a leader of like 30 something creative it's like a very similar one-on-one conversation I have with all of them yeah cuz I'm not a creative at heart like in in the sense of content and

yeah obviously there's parts of my being that's creative but there's this uh I mean this happened a week or two ago with you the same conversation of like Jan's like work load and like planning and like where do I go next I just got to get this thing sorted in which direction I go and she had all these ideas and then we just start to unpack them and through conversation with with me which doesn't look at it the way she does and looks at it quite um what's the word I'm looking for but like quite objectively different to her I were're able to like give her a lot of clarity of like what's the next steps and so that's why I was kind of asking

is most of my job outside of sales and in in the business is talking to my creative team helping them get through that like they've got all the answers but helping them just go that next step because they can't CU they go in this Loop of where they are and they they could probably eventually get through of course of course they're very smart people but there's like an unlock that they get all the way up until that point where before they come and see me or before I like intervene mhm they start going to these anxious spirals yep and that's all I was all I was wondering is like you're outside of the system of corporate America that gave you a system to be inside

of that had checks and balances and people there and whatever it was in terms of it system but now you're on your own system mhm what is your thing that what is your checks and balances for yourself that stops your creative brain from doing it's what the thing that creative brains do because that's why they're so good they yeah they think through things so differently to other people um how does like how does Tim get out of that like what do you need to do or is that is that your wife or is that do you you have other people in your world that help you pull you out of that space or is it still something you're trying to uncover I I am still

trying to uncover it I I I really think it's just on me yeah like I just got to get to all right cool don't overthink how do I address I mean silly things like when I say it out loud I know it's silly but it's also especially if you're in the creative space you know how perplexing this can be and how potentially debilitating it can be too I want to answer as many questions I get amazing questions from all corners of Life new dad firsttime manager how do I get noticed by a company if I'm 21 and I just graduated how do I you battle back against agism when I'm 55 and I'm working with a whole bunch of you know 25y olds and they

don't take me seriously you connected with the younger audience seemingly how do I all these amazing things it's like so much content is already being teed up but then it's like I struggle with just like answering it directly unless I'm doing some sort of just Instagram stories because I know it's gone in 24 hours and I can treat it like a one-on-one FaceTime but like how do I like what is so to me the answer of getting out of your own way is almost it it's this pencils down mentality that I'm trying to get back to it was so helpful in the corporate space who was like it doesn't have to be perfect by this date but you just have to have your pencils down

one of the most one of the best performing pieces of content that I've had since I left was in my head forever something I want to do and I don't honestly didn't even know that it perform well because I won't open Tik Tok other than to post and I haven't done so since Easter okay I open it up as quickly as I can and I hit the plus button and then I upload and then I shut it off like I can't and I'm getting to that place with Instagram now and I don't know if this is healthy but like that's what I'm doing I just don't want to know any kind of performance I just want to Chuck things and run away yeah and I

remember remember shooting this piece that did well at least based on feedback and had a lot of people that reached out and was like hey love that one where you're sitting in the chairs and I remember running around my house shooting it and I'm like this is an like no one else was in the house I still get self-conscious around my wife and my daughter shooting stuff as as odd as that may sound and I was frustrated I'm like this is taking too long and then I'd to be like this is not taking very long this is like maybe 20 minutes dude like this is but I'm like it's getting late and I'm GNA eat later and like all those things that send anybody into

a bit of a spiral yeah and so it to me that like getting out of it is just a giving yourself some Grace y b creating confines of the same as as kids it's like here are the amount of crayons that you have here's your piece of paper yeah we're not going to do this for the next four weeks yeah you know this is afternoon recess go make something yeah so I feel like I'm kind of closer cool and there's some pieces that are coming together I felt like I had this breakthrough and this is like really nerdy into the creative side of things M where Mr Rogers meets Corporate America tutorials is like that's my goal and Direction yeah and forever I had this

thing in my head where a drone flies down the street and I poke my head out of the door I'm like hey welcome back today we're going to talk about whatever the topic is had some had Kelly film some stuff she never fown a drone before did it was it was good I mean for somebody that never FLW a drone before it was yeah quite good y had a real guy real drone person come over and shoot some stuff it was like this is this is it yeah shot like three try to be smart let me wear three different things so that I can mix it up a little bit and then we got even even more creative and Kelly actually had the idea she's

like well what it can it like fly backwards out of the window in your office so it's like you come back in the door and it looks incredible and I'm yeah but he crashed the Drone after the second attempt it was very difficult he was like flying backwards and he was like looking up at the window and so nothing on him whatsoever and plus I think it would not have broken had I not already broken it and try to glue it back together yeah so I do that I'm like this is amazing now this is like the intro and I can just bookend the stuff yeah but then it's like well the sunlight's a certain way so if I don't shoot it in between these

hours it's going to look super goofy yeah and I only have this one shot in this one outfit because it crashed afterward so it's like I've got intro but then I take off the hoodie and that's fine cuz I'm wearing the same pants but if I go from this outfit to then sitting in something completely different like how weird is that yeah and then you start then all of a sudden you've got a whole new set of problems to try to fix then I'm like well for the backyard if I can't do that in the front if I put a tripod on the pergola in the backyard I can then shoot into my office window and I can talk to the camera in front of

me but then have this interesting POV coming in from outside which gives it A New Perspective and could potentially hook people's attention in a different way but I'm like well it's a tripod on top of a Perle it's got slats in it so like and once it's wind out it's going to fall over and so I actually stopped the B&H on my way here to be like what do you guys have for this and the guy's like I don't even know what you're talking about like you're trying to install a permanent tripod on a Pergola in your backyard he's like everything's going to rust I'm like well it doesn't it's like well what do you got with clamps and he's and so I think I

got something but it's the incremental progress that I have to give myself credit for and as much as I don't want to say that out loud for the purpose of anybody listening that's like well dude just don't make us bummed out like we're never going to the incremental progress is where it's at yeah progress always beats Perfection yeah I got that shot the thing that I said was always in my head I extracted it that's a win yeah I see how it comes together that's a win is it 100% there yet no have I made at least a couple pieces of content based on that premise yes that's a win how do I make it repeatable what is the best stuff to do there there

how does that vend diagram with the syllabus so it's like starting to see those things come together which kind of goes back to the just want to lock myself in a room because if it's like cool syllabus syllabus syllabus o I've got this idea let me go make a terrible version of that just to experiment and extract it from my brain pencils down take a look okay cool what's next back to the syllabus keep building that and keep experimenting and then at some point be like all right that goes in my back pocket not getting so excited you're like cool I'm going to go post that right now no wait like that's an evergreen piece and so trying to get like smarter about those things

too and at least short look it would be amazing and I've had some incredibly talented people that are like I want to help I get blind DMS from people that are like I just fixed this thumbnail for you because my thumbnails and my titles on YouTube suck I do it in the reverse order I will go make a PowerPoint shoot the thing yeah send it to my editor that's doing the long form stuff for me get it back and then I'll make the thumbnail which I do is a screen grab of one of the first frames in PowerPoint that I lay text over that I know doesn't pop well and I know and I've been told a million times that scales to [ __ ] when you

see it on a mobile device yeah and I have people that are literally sending me here's I made you a new thumbnail for this thing yeah I did did the I did podcast uh with Ryan holiday three weeks ago amazing experience through that I met somebody that is prolific in the space of YouTube content creation Etc love to work with me to see a lot of potential here Etc it's a cost and as it should be like who's going to do all that work for free but then I go back to like okay I just walked away from a pretty substantial ongoing paycheck that was like clockwork things are going well like I'm we're fine for now yeah but do I just invest and be

like cool this is just the cost to start this up I cuz I to the broader question you could almost go and hire that one person to do that thing that's like I saw your syllabus I know thumbnails and titles here is your next 10 pieces is let me give you a loose outline here's the shooting schedule go y a I don't know if I'm ready for that B I don't know if that's the best investment in the short term and what of that should I be doing myself knowing what needs to come together and then you can spiral just in that alone of like well I'm stuck here thinking about whether or not I should do that so I'm not actually doing it myself

which would make me more guilty of actually taking the person up on it because I'm Outsourcing it and paying it for somebody but is that the right place for my money to be going oh [ __ ] I just spent a half hour thinking about this it's 3:00 what am I posting today I love the live spiral it's great but you know what I I think I like the most about your answer there to my question which I don't even know if you realized that you you answered it was that your answer to it is progress like think about progress and I actually think that's quite profound because I know for a lot of my team it's a thing they struggle with is to look back and

recently we've been talking as a team about the concept of the Gap in the gain and how they struggle they always sit in the Gap and they they can't look at the gain and look where they've come from and so I think that progress is a good spot because as long you spiral more if you can't see progress yeah you know if you're only seeing the Gap and also can't get clarity y so I like that because I think so most people who watch this podcast most of our regular viewers are other creators and small business owners of this particular podcast and I know that they all struggle the same way they all struggle with like like the Perfection of getting the thing right or

like like I saw CLA laughing about when you're talking about sitting up with the cameras and everything CU it's like so it resonates so much of these guys and like everyone that we know actually in the creative world trying to get it perfect but there is as you mentioned there is no way to really get it perfect except for Progress yep so I like that that I think is a good a great answer cuz I my team struggles with that like a lot just as young creatives they struggle with the understanding that one day you know 20 something one day when they're 40 something but they've been doing 20 years of practice y they're going to be in I mean they're insane now imagine in

20 years from now you know that progress piece I I really like I like I really want to hold on to that and make sure that people clip this you know like see that piece of progress that's the thing I always said everyone like we're never going to get this right first go yeah but if we do a thousand of these the thousand one will be a lot better than the first one totally yeah um we like jumped straight into conversation and one thing I wanted to ask to start this conversation is I wanted to just go back a little bit and ask a question around um like when you started making content in your corporate career first of all where was it was it

LinkedIn first was it Tik Tok first like where did you first start actually in a public sphere putting content out and then two like what was the response from everyone else inside your job it depends on how you want to Define content creation putting it out there I mean I made one YouTube video in 2008 but I saw YouTube then is almost like Dropbox y okay where it's like if I publish this thing on the site I can send my friends a link to it y It Is by no means a place where somebody is going to watch something and then want to engage with it nor am I in the head space of let me do this and see how I can like truly

broadcast myself as it was being you know marketed at the time still True to this day and then there's you know as a 46y old dude like when Instagram came out pretty quick to download it it was like cool this is a photo first way to instantly send a telegram to people yeah straightforward love Twitter out the gate too Yep this is fun I remember there was somebody who was on CNN at the time that was using it a ton in their show and I was in a shared office when I was working at ESPN and there was a TV on almost say like white noise because it was a shared office and I remember being like this is so smart leaned into that for

a minute you know getting back 2009 I want to say Instagram was a one consistent place but I really just looked at that as this is friends and family this is an expanded version of sending cards in the mail yeah I was never a Facebook guy yeah I was never a MySpace guy but Instagram felt like oh and it's and it is a very quick instant gratification type of platform too around 2018 maybe 17 I started to do like protein bar and protein product reviews for my own y just I enjoyed doing it yeah and I've got some stuff there were like I'll look back I'm like this is like a 3 minute long thing of me sitting there by myself in my office in

2017 reviewing this lowc calorie ranch dressing that I never actually put anywhere but I was literally just doing it for my own entertainment CU I enjoyed it yeah I started to put a couple like then I started to get a little bit quote unquote better of them it's funny I bet if you for anybody and I will happily say this out loud and people can call me out on it there are protein bar reviews from early 2019 that I believe are just on my Instagram page that are very similar to Keith Lee food reviews oh yeah because I would shoot it in 16 by9 Y and the only way for me to make it more engaging for my own you know just is this interesting

was to crop and to just keep cutting around that one shot yeah and it's like me sitting in my office by myself and they all have been in my office and like it's a big beautiful space and I just like lean back and it was like just me in the camera and it was fun and it was loose and I didn't care and I would just do these like abstract almost too close crops and it's not difficult to kind of quote unquote trick the audience to think like there's multiple cameras in the room or this is like a lot fancier and it was literally like shoot it for 60 seconds put it in an iMovie crop it a handful of time so that it looked

like there were several Cuts in it Bad int intentionally bad intro and outro Graphics just to have fun and be self-deprecating y than Tik Tok yeah because the protein bar at some point someone's like what are you doing yeah I'm like I don't know I'm just having fun and I really like protein bars and I've got a protein bar of the month subscription and like I get to try a lot of these things so it's just kind of fun to do yeah and I after like maybe four or five people were kind of like what are you doing and like how long do those take you like once I heard the question how long do those take you especially with a bit of like a

head tilt yeah then I was like I'm shutting it down yeah I don't want to deal with that like yeah that's fine it literally takes me three minutes between setting it up shooting it and then so maybe seven minutes after I would do four or five cuts in it which if you know iMovie like it's pretty straightforward you can literally turn that around and in a just a matter of a handful of minutes yeah but I'm like I just don't want to deal with it and then I just stopped making stuff all together Tik Tok meant nobody knew who I was yeah okay no didn't have to care to even convince people to download the app in the first place let alone like follow somebody

or give me any kind of attention yeah amazing creative freedom to just go and be as weird and do whatever I wanted yeah with zero ramifications because I didn't have anything to lose and it was good work perspective as well quick turnaround low budget yeah with a department that focuses on doing that for small businesses at scale why would I not want to know what this latest technology is that people are carrying around their pockets where they can go shoot something edited it and then put it in a public space within one workflow MH I need to be aead this for my for my producers long-term career healthiness like I need to know where this is going what's the technology and how could it impact

what we're doing and then all of a sudden it's like oh [ __ ] where did a thousand people come from I like oh my God there's as many people here as Phil Madison Square Garden which is like 18,000 yeah and then I blinked and now I'm sitting here with you and I'm not 100% sure what happened between then and now yeah but I got sucked into some sort of Vortex and I just kept shooting things and then editing them at 5:00 in the morning and making up voiceovers off the top of my head and I somehow blew up my entire world in the process I love that I love that um I was going to ask I was going to follow out with that like where

you talked about obviously with the protein bars like people started to question it yep at which point did they start questioning Tik Tok cuz at some point obviously they found out about it y but like what was that moment like for you luckily it got it got big before it got known if that makes sense where people that would discover it within my own world would have been would have been like the last in on it or like the late comers I mean I had some some like I have some OG people that I knew you know intimately that were like no I've been there since the get-go it's funny somebody that I work with one of my favorite people who ever worked with her

daughter was number seven from a follower perspective and would bring that up often was like hey I think your boss is on Tik Tok kind of thing but for the most part like the people that would found that would have had anything to say were like dude where did you get 250,000 followers on Tik talk from like how did that happen yeah and so then people wouldn't just jump into like what are you doing yeah it was more like what did you do and how did it get to this place which was amazing because then I could be like I don't know but I'm going to keep doing it yeah and kind of too late now so I'll just be like cool thumbs up and

keep going on my Merry way and pretend like the conversation kind of happened but like trains already left the station yeah and at that point it was train had already left the station and i' had already done enough it was almost like one of those you do the thing and if you do with the right intentions it can create enough critical mass where it's almost impossible or becomes very difficult to push back on it yeah was like okay once they noticed there were a couple hundred thousand people already there a base of positive you know helpful relatively helpful you know moderately inspiring stuff that was kind of hard you know if it was a series of why my boss sucks or course things that would

be you know negative or condescending or you know then I'm sure it would have been a different conversation but was like oh you built an audience around just being a goofy version of who you are as a human being yeah and shedding a little bit of light on what it looks like to have the career and a family and do all the things and then it was almost I wouldn't say too big to fail but it was almost like there's not much we can do about it other than be like wow can't believe you were doing that and we had no idea yeah yeah it's interesting because it's what I find with a lot of people we work with or people we know it's the

same thing there's a there's a critical mass point which beforehand everyone's almost either telling you off or laughing at you or laughing making fun of you your experience like my family were doing that to me when we started this journey like what is this kid doing like he's G up this keran hotels to do this weird thing that he's doing he's posting on LinkedIn thinking he's I don't know and then there's this critical mess point where everyone's like you said is how did you do that like how did you get to that piece and and and the conversation starts to change and we try to tell this to a lot of um people we meet that like the perseverance or that progress path that you're

on there's a point you don't know where it is you don't know how many bicep kills to get the biceps but at some point you Flex in the M like oh yeah yeah and and then everyone catches on so that's quite interesting like you had quite a unique opportunity with Tik Tok that I mean at this point in time probably no one has the same but there will be another social media or there'll be another platform for people to jump on to um tell me about the LinkedIn space CU you obviously do a lot on there as well did that start around the same time was that quite early we started to build that or did it build from Tik Tok I would actually say

I'm terrible with LinkedIn and I was terrible throughout that entire cuz it because Tik Tok was a safe space because nobody else was there yeah exactly LinkedIn is where everybody yeah that's what I was thinking like there some probably listen be like everybody was there if you are in your 40s yeah and you worked for a large company everybody that you knew and that you worked with was on LinkedIn yeah and so I was like keep me away from that got it I don't want to say the wrong thing I don't want to I don't want and as much as I should have been engaged it was like I'm either helping push a narrative that I don't know is actually helping other than just creating

more noise here and I don't want to just like five other people have already reposted that piece of company content MH am I going to actually help with that and how could I say it differently that's going to be on brand for who I'm I am as a human being and then also be additive to that conversation versus just spamming and Linkedin feed can be super spam me yeah so I stayed away MH I started to dabble back into it a little bit once I felt and this is really just within the last year okay cool I've kind of established enough credibility outside where I can speak as myself and not really worry about broader ramifications and also not feel like I just have to

say you know hey come meet us at this junk it or like aren't you excited to go see so and so talk at this thing not that I didn't believe those things but it was like there doesn't need to be another voice to the pile I want to be way more active in that space I'm trying to wrap my head around the new like video only feed that's popped up in the app like where's that even coming from how are they aggregating those things yeah what makes the most sense to put there is you know are articles and posts going to be more impactful should I just take what I'm doing and you know cut a different version of that and put it there kind

of goes back to the putting yourself into that spiral of overthinking the you know the the thing itself but then it's also it is a it's such a good question because it's such a awkward space of there being content Poli without there being content police yeah and when what I mean by that is talking about your salary in a public capacity on LinkedIn yeah is kind of a that's not a cool thing to do yeah when there's a large audience that wants more people to do that there's also an equally large audience it's like dude shut the [ __ ] up you're going to blow up these other people spots yeah you're going to put the company in a weird position you're going have people looking at

co-workers differently mhm but then you hear the other they're like I have no idea what is out there I have no idea like I see headlines of publicly traded companies I see entrepreneurs but I have no idea what it means to be a direct director like I kind of have these broader like things in my head and then also that potential perspective of oh that's like an elite pile over there when I would like to change all of those conversations to be like there should be more transparency you should know what LTI is because everybody that's chasing the fancy business card versus the opportunity yeah could be overlooking the fact that go to the boring place it has LTI if that's something that you're interested

in because you see the upside in the long term and that's just about transparency and education and especially at the end of the day when we're talking about publicly traded companies that have CEOs that make exorbitant amounts of money yeah in addition to putting that into some sort of broader calibration when I and I thought about this a million times over and I'm somewhat you know I'm somewhat disappointed in myself for talking about it publicly to a little bit because I know that it would cause a Ruckus I didn't think about it super deeply in regards to the Ruckus who would cause a work yeah but I was aware like I know that all of a sudden the next day it's going to be distraction

blah blah blah but at the same time too they're choosing to let it be a distraction and that's but at the same time too am I aware that it's going to be a distraction right that's its own spiral yeah but then and I think this is the most like interesting part of it that can give broader context is between the potential view of you know there being this Elite aspect of things what does having a career in the corporate space mean but then how does that fit into the broader American economic system when I realized that my total compensation on its best during its best years was still less than the minimum salary for a year one NFL NBA NHL player yeah yeah I was

like okay when I feel when I see the comments especially if it was something where I would like show up at a fancy event and I'm wearing a suit and it kind of looks has that pomping circumstance and you know you see the word pretentious you know pop up a couple times here and there yeah and I want to you know and I'm like if you're if like I get it I understand but at the same time too there are left-handed pitchers that have like two or three decent years that make 10 times more than I do and you're like cool I would love to get a beer with that dude yeah just cuz I wear a suit and tie or just cuz anybody you

know in the space wears a suit and tie and does these things doesn't mean that all of a sudden they're shitty people but these other people are so like there's so much to that conversation so back to like the question of LinkedIn and like what to do it almost goes goes back to how do I shoot outside my window or the Drone down the street so that I can almost diffuse everything at at the jump and be like come on in today we're going to talk about how to deal with salary negotiations right because there's so much of this content that's out there yeah this is how you ask for a raise this is how you do blah blah blah blah blah yeah and i'

it's been really difficult for me to not just Stitch every single piece of that and be like half of this was right none of this was right 90% of this was right whatever at least based on my experience where I'm like this has 3 million views on it that's the potential for 3 million people to run into a buz saw if they take this and they're like cool I'm going to shut my laptop at 5:00 there's no consequences because I just gave them a good Zinger of a line on the way out from that you should protect your space you should have your boundaries but like so yeah I'm still trying to sort that like LinkedIn I think has some of the best Potential from

a helpfulness perspective from a brand perspective from a just usefulness perspective almost more so than any other platform but it's still super murky in the short term yeah yeah that's interesting it's real interesting your conversation around transparency too like it's a big thing for me as well as a employer and also just as a trying to grow this business but I I wanted to ask like what do you think transparency around pay and salary and incentives and stuff does like what what's the positive part of the transparency piece I think it gives more opportunity to understand what's possible I think it gives more especially when I see so many getting into the workforce large concern around I'm going to make the wrong decision out of

the gate and that's going to put me on a path where I don't like what I do or I'm not doing cool stuff and cool stuff equates to Financial Security and some regard because it's big and it's fancy and that must Point towards you know just being in a good spot where in a lot of cases that could mean that you're stuck in a cog of a wheel and you're focused on is this the right purple for this brand piece over and over and over and over and over again but it's for this cool brand so therefore this is cool and this is on the right path right when people aren't even aware of things like what a long-term incenter package could be I there's

it face value made no sense whatsoever that I would leave ESPN to go to Time Warner Cable that seemed like career suicide for a multitude of reasons plus dude you know go take a backseat on the cool bus yeah you're walking away from an at ESPN email address where you're already at a director level and you're working with some of the biggest brands on the planet around the coolest things that got God knows how many people coming out of school and going through would be like I get to work on Monday Night Football yeah and every auto manufacturer on the planet that wants some sort of piece of that to go work for the cable company to stand up a production and creative Services Department

to focus on small businesses and local auto dealers I wasn't smart enough at the time to be like cool they've got a long-term at least like I know my dad had a somewhat similar career path and like was very smart to put those types of bugs in my ear so that's one I think just general awareness of like how is it structured yeah and if the number gets your attention so that you start to become aware more aware I want to P able to pull people out of the conversation of how do I go from 50,000 to 55,000 and I saw this amazing video the other day where somebody was like making that comparison they're like if you don't negotiate up over a 10-year period

if these two people start out the same way this other person is making more I'm like I'm like and I'm I'm racking my head I'm like they're right they're right they're right they're right but the huge butt if for some reason you get in the door and they're like the person was kind of a pain in the ass going through this and then you might have that like saddle te just a little bit going through the person that walked in is like I'm cool with this this because I know that that five grand is probably being made up for in these free services that I get is part of the package or I just want to get my ass in the door and do the

work and then they jump over that other person that spent a week negotiating the extra 5K MH neither one of those is right but the awareness that not just being like I need to stay my ground I need to ask for more money Etc I just want to open that aperture MH so that it's not a very linear conversation about here the things you do especially because and this is with all due respect to people that are making amazing content that are doing a ton of research but in a lot of cases and this goes back to the syllabus they haven't spent 20 years underneath the hood yeah and if but if I just come out and I start stitching all these pieces and say

here I'm just an [ __ ] that's telling other people why they're wrong and could shut down an audience super quick that way or I could get the bad clicks where it's just like it's almost you know you're you're almost watching like train wreck type of entertainment because people are just like oh he's just going to be mean about this topic now yeah I don't want to do that so it's almost like I need to go find that back door with the Mr Rogers piece but I think that there's so there's there's so much if it was here's how to make $10 million in a year doing blank blank and blank even that saying that out loud it's like okay like what do you got is there

something reasonable there mhm but to be able to talk about how some companies structure their compensation plans how you can be more aware of what's possible further up the ladder how it's all of those things too where it's like you get into the workforce and know like I had no idea Department like that existed yeah wait this is a financial company there's a huge marketing department over here wait a minute this is a marketing company what's the there's a giant Finance team over here right you think there are all of these lines it's like I want to demystify all of that create transparency and get people to think in levels of like what do I want to go do in Chase and then just let

me give you at least storytelling and perspective and Clarity because I'm not I'm not chasing yachts in private planes like I just want to be able to sustain what I've been doing and I'm good if there was some if i' if I felt like and I don't know that that's a people can judge me for however they like against that but I do I do feel a bit at least a bit more comfortable being like I'm not here to try to extract dollars from everybody's pocket so that I can be like cool let's go do a you know let's go hang it on the yacht yeah if I can order take out sushi whenever I please and not have to you know worry about paying

my kids tuition I'm good yeah and if it means that there's some awkward conversations between here and there because there is more of an emphasis on transparency there is more of an emphasis on how does all of this work then I don't know it's the right answer but I I'm I think it I think it's worth at least dipping my toe in that water and seeing what type of impact it could have cool I love it I like for me I'm real I've always been big on transparency I always thought is I always think there's a positive spin on I don't I don't think withholding information from people was ever great um like in our company everyone's salar open to everyone and the p&l and

the bank accounts like everyone can see everything they can see whenever I spend money that maybe wasn't in the budget or anything but they can also see each others and when people first start they'll come out of like some corporate role or some bigger agency or things like that and they'll come in and they it takes them a good few months to grab the hit around like why why can't everyone see my salary like I don't understand this but then within a few months they realize that like the conversations have shifted around pay like it's a different thing it's like oh I want to get paid as much as that guy yep he or she is doing this I need to learn how to do

those things cuz that's how I get to that next level and grow and then I like we still have some conversations around like especially with the newer people about what that looks like but I just think that's part of the growth and devopment the people have been here longest with us they get it they get it now they've learned and they' developed and then the other thing about like what options are available I really love that conversation about like you know the the finance department inside the marketing company like I didn't realize the source of thing like I have I come from a place in New Zealand uh in Orland called well South Oakland it's quite a poor neighborhood and like my family's like we're

pretty poor like we grew up pretty poor a lot of my family um have pretty like you know like either blue color jobs or just like basic service based jobs like a lot of not all of them but a lot of them and so a lot of my young nephews and nieces come up through school going oh I'm probably just going to be a laborer or go get a job at the local supermarket or something like that and they don't really realize like what else is out there what else is possible and I was having a conversation with one of my young nephews and I was like trying to just open his mind a little bit and I was like what's something that you love

doing like what's the thing that you're just so excited about he's like oh well I don't know I love playing video games yeah I was like why don't you get a job in video games he's like I'm not that good like I can't play video games I was like yeah yeah do you think that like Esports like that's the only job in that world like you think about the Esports events like someone's got to run them like this there someone's going to Market them yeah like someone's there's so much to it and that the penny drop you could see the penny drop on his head he was like 17 at the time and he's like wait like of course someone's got to do all this

stuff you know but just would never faom he just like oh to get into gaming you either have to make games or play them really well right but even I was telling I was like even making games I was like that's just like any other business yeah it's all the Departments everything like HR Finance whatever it is they're all involved in it and so I love like we've got another nephew of mine who's with us now he's doing internship he's only or he's just turned 18 and he's the same like his mind's just been blown like you guys get paid for this yeah I like yeah well someone has to and he's like oh yeah I just never thought about it just I guess Brands

were just on Tik Tok yep or brands are on Instagram so I really love that like transparency piece of like these are options yeah we the way I think about it especially for like my community so I'm um my father's from a place called the Cook Islands which is in the Pacific uh the Pacific Ocean and uh like Pacific are people uh like they don't think like because we we we we're just stoked like cuz they're immigrants to New Zealand so they're just stoked to be there doing whatever but the way we talk about a lot is like the blueprints like we've got to those of us who Pacifica have done other things need to show them our blueprint for what we did or like

our road map so that transparency and like talk and I think pay is a big part of it because it makes it real tangible be like wow you got paid that to do that and I think that's a big piece for me um I'm going to move on because I I realize it's already like cod bus too so I'm going to I want to move into where now but more about like like money like you know you publicly talked about a pretty sizable salary or like at least package that you're getting right in the high six figures and you walked away from high six figures of potential the LTI stuff right so that's a lot to replace yeah where are you at in that journey

and what where's like the path forward like how are you thinking about it cuz currently from your content all I see is like brand deals and book writing MH and is that enough do you think it's going to be enough is that why you had the confidence to leave like what can you talk to that uh short answer is it's funny I'm actually I'm trying super hard to not focus too much on that I feel like if I start to chase dollars I'm [ __ ] yeah and that'll be the quickest path to me being too anxious too uh quick to say yes or no to Things based off of what dollars might be attached to them right that could have impacted whether or not I said

yes to this be like sorry I gota you know am I getting paid for this no all right I'm not doing it right I don't want to make decisions like that there's the book there's the brand deals there's also what I'd already done over the past 10 years right so savings is a very like blanket way to State it but you know I've been in my house for a long time right like that was an investment that I made 13 years ago so like from a cost perspective we have a high burn rate as they say but only because of the city like there's no there's no like the extravagance is relative and people can judge it for what they want but like as far

as I'm concerned extravagance is take out sushi when I want to not having to worry too much about you know can I go buy another tripod to potentially fumble around with like that kind of stuff and as long as I can continue to afford my mortgage and my kids tuition like I'm I'm good you we stay at my we stay in my in-law's house and we go visit my parents my in law out west um were we try to be as smart as possible uh and also enjoy life knowing that we could die at any moment so like don't get too ansy about like well [ __ ] what does this mean for when I'm 75 I know I need to be smart about that but I

feel like if I get too hung up on it I'm screwed in the short term there's what I did to try to help figure this out and I definitely do not have it figured out 90 days in or however long it's been now because I spent so much time unwinding myself from the company in what I thought was the most appropriate way is I made this pyramid of value that I bring to the table and at the top was the thing that I can sell probably the least amount of but probably has the highest price tag and that's Executive coaching um executive onboarding training you know things where I could be brought into and I'm certified in something called the energy leadership index which basically

means I can quantify someone's attitudinal skill set and give a broader assessment in regards to their emotional intelligence I have an actual certification for that that's something that depending on the circle that I get into I could probably charge a crap ton of money for but there's also not a huge population of people that have that need want that need or they would pay you know the upper fees for that kind of stuff at the bottom of that pyramid is the biggest audience for the thing that I should be doing for free helpful career content at scale MH the things that should just be more accessible where people are like nobody taught me how to write a resume nobody taught me how to write a

cover letter nobody taught me how to deal with HR nobody taught me how to manage my emails like those types of things that I just know and goes back to the syllabus so how do I just do that because I like doing it I don't want to have to monetize that type of stuff for the sake of building this you know replicating my salary and then there's all of the things in between so yes there's brand deals but then there's brand Consulting right smaller Brewery that's in my neighborhood somebody that I've known since he open the doors we're kind of stuck we're not 100% what to do here I'm not starting my own creative agency but I can be like cool like what ises that

what do you need two hours a week an hour every other week what do you need let's talk about what could looks like there I don't know what my rate card is for that sure this sounds reasonable plus I can build a case study with it cool got my first Executive coaching gig probably undercharging for that service let me build a case study with it cool I've been really lucky that some of the brand stuff has been things that nobody will ever see unless they're part of like a specific entity or a certain company where the thought leadership is really kind of like the value that I bring to the table and then there's other things too where I'm like okay there are ways that

I can be helpful as it relates to team building exercises offsites things along those lines but I don't want to come up with like a rate card in a package I've actually I'm sitting on an email that I need to get back to where through this random set of circumstances I came across somebody that I was Neighbors with God knows how long ago is now super high up at a company is looking for team building and you know and I don't know I'm sure at some point it's going to be like well what's your rate for this and I'm okay to say right now I do not know let's have a conversation about like what good looks like for you and if we can meet

in the middle amazing so yes brand deals and book is that good forever no no is it should I come up with some sort of hey buy this program you know for I'm making this up 50 bucks you get an hour a month and a group session to talk through this you know almost build the little cohort type of package deals that I'm sure I could do quite well at and I know I could help a lot of people but is that is that the right thing to do how much of a shelf life might that have so right now my focus is how good are we good in the short term yeah am I okay with the fact that I don't 100% know where

this is going and can I just lean into if I can figure out how to extract the value that I have based on what my resume had like not necessarily just what I can do for a brand or what the last you know branded content piece would bring up or what the last de was just deliver value at scale mhm be okay screwing that up in the process that's all I can do for now if I would have had this perfectly modeled out I don't think I would have left my job the right way and even if I you know caused a bit of a Ruckus by talking about my salary after leaving the job I am super confident with how I handled that situation

all the way up to walking at the door on the last day on June 20th yeah and if my error since then is being too transparent at a company that has a public CEO whose salar is already out there in public discussion I'm kind of okay with that I feel do feel bad about the disruption that it would caused like in the water coolers and like that kind of stuff but um the answer to the question is it it's going to have to be all of these little things I have no idea if I'm ever going to be able to monetize the podcast that I'm doing yeah it's I read the stat the other day it's like trying to get into the NBA at this

point yeah but I know the value that those conversations can bring yeah I know the value when I talk to people oneon-one when they're like that changed everything or the people that on their on my way at the door would say I'm most excited for you because you get to help an infinite amount of more people than you did here and if I think about what you did for me and then how you can scale that out that doesn't mean I walked out the door I'm like cool this is how I do it yeah but if I'm just okay in that space in the short term and as long as and I've been super I'm I am built to do brand deals like this I

don't want to do it forever I would like to do as few as humanly possible only because I know of the perception that it could have and people could start to get you know ick on them Etc yeah but I'm a kid that grew up you ever heard of the video uh have you ever heard of the board game it's like somewhere in between a board game and a kind of a video game not really it was called commercial crazies nice it is a VHS you should got it anybody listening watching whatever look this thing up you can maybe find a copy on uh eBay or something like that it was a VHS and a card game got it and you would stick the VHS

in and it would talk to you like here's what you do yeah and it would do nothing but Play You commercials and basically ask you trivia against them got it and it was like all the most brilliant work in late 80s and early '90s yeah the FedEx campaign where the guy talked you know a mile a minute where's the beef like all of these iconic advertising and I was just like add kid yeah 30 seconds is about as snackable of content as it could get back in the day and played that game incessantly you know did live sports production worked in marketing and sales for ESPN coming up with integrated content ideas for some of the biggest brands on the planet and some of the

most high-profile events on live TV period yeah that was my job for seven years IBM would come in and be like we have an exorbitant amount of money we want to do NFL tennis and golf what do you got yeah and it would be my job to come up with the idea that you can actually execute on air that's going to hit on their brand messaging needs keep everybody appeased and also be cool with whatever our budget goals were for that property for that year seven years doing that then I took it and I applied it to small businesses and doing content at scale it's it is an absolute like perfect recipe unintentionally to then take brands that are like cool I'll will pay this

amount of money for this one Tik Tok to do this thing yeah so in the short term if it means saying yes to more of those things so I can build the credibility to be like you don't need me in this yeah I get it I get you're buying an audience too yeah but purchase the brain yeah not the end product and let's have those conversations MH but I think just continuing to do it versus being like you know what I've decided I'm not so I don't so yes book yes content stuff it has to be it has to be multifaceted yeah it's expanding and Contracting at the same time or be like paid speaking gig amazing get ghosted right and those things are going

to happen as well yeah for sure but speaking is a th% something I want to lean into coaching is a th% something I want to lean into I would like to do as much pro bono just helpful work at scale as possible I'd like to have my feed be as clean as possible as well but also partner with smart Brands to do cool things especially if it's going to pay something forward Etc um and challenge my brain that way so just another place where going back to the syllabus and kind of getting out of your your own way don't just Chase individual deals or dollars or start to be like well my third quarter projection is looking blah blah blah blah blah I'm I don't

I I am not smart enough to be able to digest that conversation and what should I post today at the same time yeah I have to build the right people around like when it comes to building teams I'd rather be like cool y'all at Merl Lynch that gave me a cold call 15 years ago and you're like you have a stock plan you're on my calling list do you want us to help you and I'm like sure I have no idea how this works anyway like yes I would love your help thank you yeah have them working with Knight who's my Agency for the brand deal stuff literally being like here are their email addresses y'all go and tell me when I need to be

concerned or when I need to do something differently Y and otherwise I'm just going to go and do and make a mess in the short term yeah but be comfortable in the value that I bring yeah and if I can bring that type of value if I can help in the way that I have if my resume is true which it is then I got to be okay to know that there's going to have to be multiple things and I just got to figure it out yeah I love I love your answer because uh I was hoping and asking that you would say something similar because it was like when Claire and I went out in our own um our whole thing is that we

had enough in our superannuation you know we we most of my career running hotels was in Australia and Australia has a very great super annuation scheme as part of their system so we were quite fortunate in that when we went out on our own we had enough in that to retire on when we could take it out when 65 so we went into our business going we don't need to make money to survive actually we got a bit of a Runway here we're pretty good we can go For Broke as they say and just give it our best Y and it was because of that we didn't have to take the shitty decisions we didn't have to take the shitty deals and we could choose

to play a real long game you know like when I hir joury were only doing LinkedIn stuff and and like everyone was like why did you hire a Tik tocker like what are we doing I was like I just I just feel like there's something here like I feel like this is a cool thing here to do cool [ __ ] y let's do this and so I know that people listen who who are listening especially people who are coming out of corporate and starting business or long careers so much of their focus is oh no I've only got this small Runway hurry quickly make money and then they inevitably take shitty deals or they get involved in stuff or they start doing a lowlevel service that

they're so much better y than so it's good to hear where you are but I like the way you phrase it where you're confident in the value that you offer the world the way I sort of speak about it is like I have an audience the audience tells me what they need and then I'm able to go and deliver it which is essentially the same thing you've got an audience you you're confident of the value you give them because they I mean they follow you and they they continue to watch and they do all the things and that confidence I'm I'm guessing for you is that you have enough confidence now that the work will come or or the or the business will come or

whatever it was for that um is that the thing and this will be my last question because it looks like Jan's trying to shut me off but is that the thing is it the fact that you've got this audience and you know the value that gives you the confidence to take this long game or is there was it just some like self- awareness in yourself that you're just really comfortable with the spot yeah it always a combination of everything it's a it's probably a combination mhm and it it really just does come back to what is the impact that I can have on an individual and then what that can do for their surroundings I am super confident in the fact that in any onetoone

situation and especially at scale in an environment depending on if that's a Auditorium a department an audience on a social media platform when I'm smart about what I'm saying based off of what they need to potentially hear based on their own needs not based on what I want to say what type of impact can I have I'm super confident that that is a extraordinarily high level of impact that I can have whether or not they want to listen for any reason I can't control that yeah whether or not they choose to do anything with it I can't control that either all I can do is show that potential value be confident in that I've already seen that play out a lot both in real life

and through just people being like I got this promotion hey I've never messaged anybody before and it's been four years since I started following you can I please tell you how much you've changed my life kind of stuff amazing and it took literally like thousands of those types of things to be like oh I think there's something here literally because at first you're like is this really happening wait a minute I got to get back to my work email I got get out of the you know DMs like it don't matter doesn't matter how many there that's not my job I got to get back over here so being being comfortable with that and the broader impact on an individual and then that impact that

that can have from a ripple effect on their families especially as it comes to what are you doing day in and day out for your career how can I help you feel better than that I was able to get super clear on what my purpose is MHM I tell anybody if you're curious as to what your purpose is in the moment it's almost impossible to be like you know outside of being a dad being a good human being like those types of things I think it is extraordinary difficult to be like this is my purpose and this is going to be the same when I'm 75 years old MH but in the moment if you're looking for your purpose of like what am I doing

with this summer job what is my purpose here and you work at an ice cream store write one sentence at the highest level that explains what you do but you have to write in the kindest tone humanly possible MH I help people make a good decision and have an enjoyable treat that's going to make their day that much brighter MH that's working in an ice cream shop and you should give yourself that credit because if you're connecting with a person and you're cool about letting them get a sample and you give them a decent recommendation and your customer service is at a higher level and you're aware of how clean the place is you're doing all of those things and you should get credit for

it so the way I translated it for myself was I help people do their best work work by being the best version of themselves I am extraordinarily comfortable with that I have to be mhm a because it's real and B because it ties back to tangible results if that's my purpose if that's what I've already been doing if I give myself no other credit on this planet outside of being a dad and anything else it's that that's okay and I should be okay to try to make the most of that for those that they can help and not everybody is going to want that needs it or will want to engaging it in the way that I want to put it out there but if

I'm not okay with that then there are a thousand other questions at the bottom of that iceberg that are going to derail everything so be comfortable and confident with just a super simple sentence about what you do that's written in a kind way towards yourself and then try to not paint yourself in a corner and when you do just remember the progress is always going to be better than Perfection uh and have fun along the way because life is too short I love it I love it well I reckon that's a good place to probably stop and Jan's going to tell me to hurry up because of it but I just wanted to say as closing well firstly thank you so much for coming and

been on the podcast with us uh I got a lot out of it actually it was really good to hear you articulate what I see on all your content but in a different way and also uh just in a longer format as well which was quite nice but I also just want to say also from like on behalf of everyone here like how grateful we are of you because you know you took a little chance on Joanie and had lunch and invited us all along and it's become a big part or big reason we were able to come back again to New York and like follow this dream that we've got and help all of us and our team in New Zealand who are all

like supporting us trying to make this part of our journey of success but like you just taken a chance on a little New Zealand agency to help you know you responsibly fire yourself in your last role yeah yeah I really do appreciate you and I'm like super grateful for you giving us that opportunity and super grateful for you giving us so much of your time my pleasure I will say in closing you were part of helping me do that right the confidence that I had and because of who you were and because of the connection that I felt originally through through what I saw even if it was just reimagining what it's like to walk down the street in New York City that that felt

like the perfect piece to put into if I walk away and I know that these things are there I can't control what happens after I leave but if I know the table is set the right way then I'm good and honestly fortunate on my behalf to have all of those circumstances happen to make me feel like cool I'm good and this is a this is a piece of the puzzle that's needed so it goes two ways man cool thank you awesome all right