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The week we almost ended Aggressively Human · Aggressively Human: For experts choosing expansion over extraction.

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to what could have been the last episode of the Aggressively Human podcast
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: if I wasn't so damn stubborn.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: I am your co-host, Meg Casebolt.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm Jessica Lackey.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we have had quite a month, Jessica.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you know, the month we almost burned Aggressively Human down.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: We almost killed it.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I basically said to you, you will pry this podcast out of my cold dead end.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Which is funny because I think,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know, two years ago we both sort of said when we're done, we're done.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: We'll split amicably.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: We'll walk our separate ways.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: No hard feelings.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think probably about just under a year ago,
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: I would say last winter,
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was like feeling a little burnout and I was ready to walk away.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you were like, okay, I'm going to put you on my shoulders and carry you for a bit.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the point of having a co-host.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, you had a bit of a A burnout moment yourself?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: You want to tell everyone what was going on?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Where things started?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, for members know this.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not a member, you don't know this.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've been playing with AI tools and creating a tools hub for my membership.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was doing all fall planning newsletter series
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: and I created this committed capacity calculator in the membership.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Which is like, how much time do you actually have committed?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I like looked at all the things I was doing, Aggressively Human podcast, newsletters.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have all these projects I want to do, book.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about another podcast that I want to start.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I looked at it all and I'm like, oh, oh no.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: There is no time.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you already work nights and weekends like this isn't like,
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: oh, just stretch yourself from 20 hours to 23 hours.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's not an option here.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I, you know,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: wrote you and I was like,
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was like,
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: this is one of those things where you have to have space to have
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: to birth your new creative projects.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I've been trying to think about writing a second book in the first book.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I thought the second book I thought was going to be planning.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: It is not planning.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I've been wanting to explore more and think more
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: and read nerdy business books more and talk about that more and really kind
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: of like hone in on this like body of work around building a business based
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: on your expertise as a discipline in and of itself.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I looked at my calendar,
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at my capacity calendar and I'm like, danger, danger, Will Robinson.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, hey, I think I need to take a step back from the podcast because...
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right now,
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: with everything I have running in flight,
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm running flat out just on the commitments I have.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I sent you an email on a Thursday.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't send it to you on a Friday,
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: because I was like, oh, she won't read it the Friday before Labor Day weekend.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I sent it on a Thursday.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I still didn't read it the Thursday before Labor Day weekend.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I left you in this terrible limbo for five days.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then I saw it on Monday and I immediately emailed you back and I was like, I just saw this.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to leave you hanging.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to take some time to process it, but I want to let you know that I have seen it.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you probably could have sent a read receipt to know that I hadn't opened it,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: but I just wanted to like respect the fact that you had done something
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: that was probably a difficult email to write.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you had written in the email, to be fair, you were like...
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Could have reached out to you more personally, but I didn't know if I was emotionally able to.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: It could have been a very emotional conversation,
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: and you wanted to keep some distance and restraint from that,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: which I respected,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: and therefore I wanted to reply back to your email and say,
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: heard, received, give me some time to process.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: You did actually send other emails across the bowel during that time,
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: which is a couple of pitches.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, should we take this?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, well, clearly...
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Either Meg hasn't seen this or...
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't go into my most important section in my Gmail.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like scrolling through and it said something like,
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: the future of Aggressively Human was like the subject line.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: It felt like it was a newsletter, maybe?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that was awkward.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, well,
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: either Meg hasn't seen it or she has and she's just processing,
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: but she's not mad at me.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, totally awkward.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Especially when I'm like, should we...
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Should we bring this person on as a guest?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, do we have a podcast?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: This was right before Labor Day weekend.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was staring down,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: looking at September, being like, all right, I'm launching my cohort program.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still delivering a ton of welcome calls.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how we're even going to get guests scheduled.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm looking at this being like, oh my God, what have I done to myself?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: In the best possible way.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love my business.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love all my members.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I love to never take the welcome calls out of my hands.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And...
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, the podcast is like something that's got to give.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the podcast is the least directly related to the work that pays us.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, not exactly, but yeah.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I got this email and I took my dog for a long walk and I let myself really think
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: through What it would mean to end the podcast without being reactive,
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: without being like, okay, we're fucking done.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Fine, you pull the plug.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I just kind of went like, what would it mean to be done?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: I did some logistical thinking too about like, where does it live?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Does it get owned by one of us because it was a joint property?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Does it, you know, like what do we do with these assets and resources?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because I had already sort of mentally been Thinking about,
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: I had just purchased AggressivelyHumanPodcast.com like the month before that, right?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was starting to think, how do we turn these assets into something greater?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time that you were going, I don't have time to make any more assets.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we were just fundamentally at different levels of capacity for the podcast.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And something that you said in your email was also like,
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have time to Do the guest interviews.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard to do this.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: I knew that you had these intake email or intake calls with your new members.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that was really stressing you out right now in September.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you would put in there like we can finish out the end of the year.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think by the end of the year, like not to say that you're you won't still be busy.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I think especially when you're feeling the crunch of launching and onboarding
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: and changing, like it felt like a very heavy time.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And something that wasn't directly correlated to that felt like extraneous.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so anyway, I took, took my dog for a walk, talked to Claude for a bit, right?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Talked to Andrea Jones.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I was just like, Andrea, I need,
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: I need a sounding board who understands the value of partnership,
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: who understands community building,
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: who understands podcast assets,
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: who understands relationships in a business capacity.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: She was the only person that I talked to during that was Andrea.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I basically like where I came down was
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: what would be lost without this podcast
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: in two different ways.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: One of those ways was the industry conversations.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: What are the conversations that you and I are having that I don't think exist in
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: the space if we exit the space?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't the guest interviews.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: As much as I love our guests and think that they are brilliant human beings,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: and I think that we do ask different questions than other people do,
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: if people are going on multiple podcasts,
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: they're probably covering some of the same ground on all those podcasts
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: that they're covering when they come talk to us.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's normal.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's what guest podcasts are for, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I thought what would be missing from the industry commentary
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: if we exited this would be the conversations between you and me.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the conversations were real business owners pull back the curtain and go,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: here's what worked, here's what didn't, here's what I learned from it.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: Those like kind of plus delta conversations that we're having or what are the trends
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: that you're seeing or what are you thinking about or explain this
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: to me what you're working on.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt like that would have been a loss.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other loss was greater, which is not your friendship.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: I would have still held your friendship.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: That wouldn't go anywhere.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: But the cadence of thought partnership in public
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: would have been a personal loss to me.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I say a personal loss, not a business loss, although it would have been.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: But there's something incredibly valuable in having somebody that you talk to at
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: a regular frequency to reflect and reflect.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: To ask questions from a place of knowledge and not from a place of sales.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Where we don't owe each other anything in these conversations.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: We're not coming here to say,
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: here's why you should hire me or here's why you should keep me on return.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Here's why you should keep paying me because I'm going to keep giving you value.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is very much, it's a thought partnership between the two of us.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's a...
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Here is somebody whose opinions and values I respect so much and losing the,
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: weekly or biweekly conversations with you would make me a less,
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what the word is for it, like a, not critical person.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Less informed, a less articulate, a less...
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think I would lose a lot by not having these conversations with you is
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: where I'm going with it.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so then I went, okay, well, does it need to be Jessica, right?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm...
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Thinking through all this,
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: like if Jessica is going to step away,
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: is there someone else who could step into that co-host role?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because I do really think that the value of the podcast is the dialogue between us.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to run this alone.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: I ran a solo podcast.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: I did not like it as much as having a co-hosted podcast.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I ran through my Rolodex in my head and I was like,
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: no, there's no one else that I would want to do this with.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Not just the prism and the lens of Aggressively Human,
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: but there's no one else that I want to co-host a podcast with at this point.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I also had this like vanity metric thing hit me,
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: which is like,
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: goddammit, another podcast that just makes it to 100 and I walk away from it?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why can't I get past that threshold?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because that's, I ended social slowdown at episode 100.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we're coming up on, I think this one is episode 92-ish.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, 93 maybe.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we're close to that milestone.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I just like wanted to get there, which is so stupid.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, There's that humanity piece of it.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I really thought through all of this.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: I thought through what does this podcast need to be at a way
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: that it can support both of us without being extractive,
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: without feeling like it's too much,
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: without it feeling like just one more damn thing to do on our to-do list.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so I, like I said, I was stubborn.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I hit you back with a negotiation.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: I said, listen, I respect if you want to walk away from this.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I will make sure that everything ends as well as we possibly can end it.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: But what if we rethink our goals here?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what if we take our own advice here,
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: which is to find the business model that works for us instead of following
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: the industry norms that we have been told we have to do, like podcast every week.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Or have approximately 40 to 60 percent of your episodes be guests?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Who said that those are the rules that we have to follow?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so my pitch back to you was change the cadence and change the format.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when we started the podcast,
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: you're like,
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: I want to have a place to have conversations
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: with people I don't normally have conversations with.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we did that.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: We did.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And now, I mean, like,
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want to have still have some conversations with other people,
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: but the person I want to have conversations with is you.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, did you,
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know we'll have like a longer episode about this, but, um,
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: can you,
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: can you tell them a little bit about how you came up
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: with like Jessica's intellectual signature and yours?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Cause I think that actually funnels into sort of like why this co-hosted dynamic
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: between the two of us is really something special and unique.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that's a different conversation.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll go into way more details on that in a future episode.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: I already have the episode stubbed out.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: The title of it is I Got My PhD in Aggressively Human.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Once we decided to keep doing this and sort of just like change the cadence
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: and figure out what it was that we wanted to continue to talk about,
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to, again,
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: follow our own rulebook that isn't a rulebook,
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: but follow our own philosophy of like, You don't always need to be creating more.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you need to compost and curate and figure out what's there.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so I decided to take all,
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: at that point,
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: 89 of our transcripts and run them through like a research methodology
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: of what have we said before?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: What are the things that we disagree on?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: What are the reasons that we brought the guests in?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: When do we agree with our guests?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: When do we not agree with our guests?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I noticed that the first year we had guests about 60% of the time.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the second year we had guests much less frequently,
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: more like 30 to 40% of the time we had guests.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that also shows an evolution of what this podcast became for us,
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: which is the first year we had a backlist of people where we're like,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: we know who we want to talk to.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And by the second year we were like,
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: okay, let's expand our network, but we don't necessarily know those people as well.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't need to rely on those people to fill the gaps.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because you and I had developed a way of understanding each other
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: that we did not have back in episode one because you can't know someone as well
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: at episode one as you do at episode 100.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I ran these through a series of AI prompts that I won't get into a lot
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: of details about because even my nerds will be bored by
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: the computational analysis phase of this.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I was able to sort of use
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: 920,000 words of transcripts,
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: which is why we use tools to do the research methodology,
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: because even though we have spoken those words,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to read through them again.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Nope.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hard pass.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I went through and had it break down how we're different,
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: how we approach things differently.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And what each of our intellectual fingerprints are.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then what happens when the two of us are together.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because what you bring to Deeper Foundations is different than what I bring to Love
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: at First Search.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: However,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: when you take the two of our brains and mesh them together,
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: it's not just like Love at First Foundations.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're laughing, but you're muted.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Some people don't know
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: that you're
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: reacting.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's...
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: your expression of foundational work is through being,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know, found in AI mediated search.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Did I get that right?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Did I say that?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, good.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And my expression of business foundations is through profitable business.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: So like, you know, we really are talking about, you know, love at first foundations.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's there.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: But The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, right?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And what we're discussing on Aggressively Human touches both
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: of our individual semantic territory,
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: but it also expands beyond things that you and I talk about
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: in our individual businesses in a really delightful way.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I used this analysis to say, what is it that we're actually talking about?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to say skeptical adopters.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And not tech bros who were skeptical adopters,
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: who were able to say like, what is it going to do?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And how does it impact our relationships?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that was sort of the lens that we started with for, I'm going to say really the first year.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then it evolved and we didn't acknowledge the positioning shift,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: which is that it's no longer just like business in the age of AI,
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: because I think other people caught up to that.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's And one of the things that I found really interesting about
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: the signature is sort of
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to slow down our guest cadence
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: if we were going to continue because sort of some of the lexicon that I bring
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: to it is like a wide vantage point of lots of different things
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: that I can like help synthesize together.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, like my my, you know, I've got here a book about product based sales.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've got here a book about.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Big corporate sales called whale hunting.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is called Hidden Multipliers by Jason Cohen.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so like, I, I read and consume, like, some people have hobbies.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I that is my hobby.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Some people have other hobbies.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so like,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: I read kind of voraciously,
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: I listen voraciously,
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to like,
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: expand my like,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: thing outside of the online business bubble,
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: and you are too,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: but you're doing it in a different With a different lens on the world
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: than I'm doing it with mine.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so we bring different lenses.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I think what's really interesting is that an observation I have about a lot of
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: the industry is that it's staying still.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I are not.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like we are,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: like we're like pushing our thinking,
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: pushing our methods, pushing our research, pushing our depth, pushing our own.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Knowledge,
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: because like,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: your your work,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: you almost have to like it's a non-negotiable because like you said,
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I can't like so you're always having to be like, all right, what am I learning?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: How is I shaping the curriculum?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how is the landscape changing on me?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: How do I keep up?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: So sort of by like by requirements, you are your intellectual corpus.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a word?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Corpus?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Your intellectual corpus is moving forward and like You have to to keep up.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Really strong vocabulary choice because I've been using the word corpus more
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: and more frequently,
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: but not publicly because it's so like AI uses the word corpus a lot
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: to mean like body of work, especially written work.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, very, very good word choice, man.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've been reading a lot of books.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like hungry for, you know, continued...
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: How are we getting out of the online business bubble and how we think about building
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: a business that happens to be done online?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: What are the disciplines we're not necessarily that are outside
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: that are straight up economics and geography?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, again, like systems thinking books, like I'm going down that whole thing.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think you and I are we are pushing our own thinking forward in
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: a way that's really exciting and in a way that I think not every business has to.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree with that.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Not every business has to.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And to an extent, we don't have to.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: We have strong, solid experience doing certain things that we could just keep selling forever.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: But we choose to keep evolving with the technology.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to not even say evolving, but adapting to what the people that we work with need.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because I don't think we know how to sit on our hands and just like run
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: the same program over and over again.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: There are people for whom that business model works.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I have this cohort based model.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to launch it every three months.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: People are going to go through the same thing.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to have coaches that work for me because they can learn the curriculum.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that is fantastic if it works for them.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't think you and I are the kinds of people who can Replicate
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: the same systems without always trying to measure and tweak and improve.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's just it's not
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: in our nature.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, it is not.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that would.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so not only are we always evaluating our own programs and our own body of work
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: and how we explain things,
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: but we're also, I think, very keenly attuned to the landscape in the industry.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: You and I pay attention to different people and listen to different things,
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: although some of that is overlapping a little bit.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: But we are very attuned to what's happening.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: You with your clients, me with my members, with all our industry things.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think our narratives,
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: particularly about the fact that you may work with a broader brush of people
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: than I'm aware of,
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: but we've also seemed to hone in on businesses that sell through written authority.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Which I don't know if was as clear two or three years ago
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: when we started first circling each other.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we're...
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: You make us sound like we're like bucks that are going
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: to start like smashing our horns against each other.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we've,
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: we're now,
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: we might have been two coins and now we're like two sides of a similar coin.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think our sharpening against each other Is would be very,
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: very missed because we bring different influences,
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: we bring different angles, we bring different experiences with our clients.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: But what has not changed is that you and I are like unwilling
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: or our businesses don't let us repeat.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we can't either through by nurture or by nature.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's our brains.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think I could have very easily taken the same cohort that I ran last time and run
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: the same slide deck this time.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it would have still been incredibly beneficial,
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: but I've learned more and I want to integrate that.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you're exactly the same.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you can still say to people, yes,
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: go through building blocks or go through relationship rhythms because
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: the system works,
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: but The ways that you're teaching and approaching
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: and recommending things can change even if the building blocks
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: that you already have are,
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: are sort of locked in because you know that it works,
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: but you're adapting how it works for individual businesses and adapting the order
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: of operations for people or giving them the moments of entry into each one
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: of those kind of, I mean, you're always doing diagnostics is what it is.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so like,
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: not that I don't want to have guests,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: but I found that one's guest scheduling is really hard,
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: but two,
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: like the depth of questions that I want to get into with our guests
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: to require me having like a very solid knowledge of their body at work.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a bad interviewer when I'm cold.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know you.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know your angle.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not great at it because, um, I'm not great at small talk either.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: You should see me at parties.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Not my best time.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Give me a book and a room and a dog and I'm much happier.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to bring on,
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: if we have guests,
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be like,
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: this person has something to say about a very specific topic on an angle you
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: and I can't cover.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: I want to bring that in.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the weekly cadence of guests I don't know very well,
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: you and I having to like Come up with our,
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: that was just, it's a, it's a,
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: when you are doing it with a cohost,
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: it's like both easier to have a weekly cadence and harder because you have
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: to like mind build.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want to talk about?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: But what does Meg also want to talk about?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: You and I were boxering about this yesterday.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, I want to talk about these couple of ideas.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, my brain is not there.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I even said, like, you know, here's my three ideas.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: What are your ideas?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then we can order the sequence of what needs to happen when so
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: that I can prepare in advance because, sure,
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: I could absolutely talk through my, like,
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: my PhD in Aggressively Human,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: but it'll be better in two weeks because I'll have more data, right?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have more to say about it.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes we have always said, like, sometimes these topics are time-sensitive, right?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we want to push them forward.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes they need a bit more time to simmer.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that's normal.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how we should be treating this.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think also like not releasing just because somebody said,
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: well, you have to go on Thursdays.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise you break the algorithm.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, listen, I study algorithms.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: I would rather put out fewer episodes that are higher quality than feel like we have
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: to produce something that is below our standards,
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: which I think has not happened often, but it has happened.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to break the algorithm.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care about the algorithm.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: I do not want to break the habit.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why if we were going to continue like every Thursday,
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: not every Thursday anymore,
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: but like if we were going to continue,
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: it would not need to be, it could not be just like whenever.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: I am a diehard podcast listener.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if your podcast shows up in my feed when I'm not expecting it,
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: unless you're like acquired or,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: um, This guy Liam Curley is like undisputed authority.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: If your podcast doesn't show up when I'm not expecting it,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: I may not listen to it because I've got like time slots and I'm like, all right.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Tuesdays,
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Creator Science and Diane's podcast and sometimes Drea's podcast,
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: depending on the topic.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Wednesdays, Amelia's Off the Grid.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thursdays, Aggressively Human.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Friday, The Physics of Startups with Rob Schneider.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever Derek Thompson has a good,
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: you know, plain English out, Sundays is this person's podcast.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little ridiculous.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: I listen to a lot of podcasts, but like they come out on a schedule.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't want to.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you listen to our podcast after we release them?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Depends on depends on the topic.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I listen to it.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I listen to our podcast two times.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when I do the show notes and when I,
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: then it's published,
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've listened to the one we did with Jeremy ends like three or four times.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Cause I always get something.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I've listened to the one we did with Max trailer, like a few times.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Cause I always get something.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: I always,
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: that like,
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: shockingly,
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: that one is one of my most quotable episodes because I've been doing so much
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: about sales and sales outreach and his was the podcast on that.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes I do, um,
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: I listen to all my own podcasts
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: when they come out whenever I'm experiencing someone else.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, I said that.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: That was really good.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: I never do.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: I never do.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: I never do.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because I black out sometimes when I talk.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, especially, well, I edit them.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like I also listen back to them and learn from them a second time around.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to make editorial decisions about like, Oh, I sounded like an idiot there.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just cut that question.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Or the sound quality wasn't good here, so this will be a shorter episode.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know,
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: how much umming and ah and ha and like do we want to include to make it seem human?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: And how much is just like, oh my God, am I getting to the point?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I do want to tell the audience about sort of how the negotiation went down.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Please.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I get on Tuesday.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Was it Tuesday?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was not on Monday.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it was Labor Day.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was Tuesday.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think I gave myself like 36 hours to really like think
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: through what my negotiation tactics were,
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: what my like non-negotiables would be or what I was willing to concede on, you know?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I get an eight minute Voxer message at like eight o'clock, nine o'clock
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: on a Tuesday.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because I was like, I'm not going to sleep if I don't talk to her.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: I just like, you don't have to respond to this right now, but I need to get it out, you know?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then we had a back and forth negotiation on
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Voxer at like 9.30 on
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: a Tuesday night where I couldn't see your body language.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't see anything.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: We were doing this all on,
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: the cues that came through voice, which only gets you, what, 30, 40% of the total...
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: You need.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: And Voxer is even harder because you can't interrupt.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we would like,
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how many people here are a useboxer,
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: but like they're long voicemails,
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: but then you can also type and people can see the voicemails
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: while they're recording.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're listening while somebody is doing it, you can be like, yes, I agree with that.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's move.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like, and so, but you don't always see it the minute it comes through.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you're like, oh, are you responding to what I said a minute ago or what I just said?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like it gets very hard.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I agree with that.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: If they started listening right when you started talking...
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you happen to be looking at Voxer when it happens.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise,
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: you're like,
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: okay, we're there responding to the thing I said at five minutes or two minutes.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly right.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: But you were like, what do we need to do to keep this alive?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: You gave me options.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: You gave me options.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, what if we did change the cadence?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think I was like, hey, you're like, the thing I would miss most is the friendship.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, cool.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: That would be what I would miss most too.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't we think about just doing us?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the best part, it only took us an extra month to do this.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: We now have a dedicated biweekly time slot on Fridays.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't have to deal with the schedule.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: My calendar looks like a Smurf blew up on it because all my calendar blocks are blue.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it looks like a Smurf.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Threw up on my calendar.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: But now I don't have to deal with that because every other Friday at 10 o'clock?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: 10 o'clock.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll have to adjust it sometimes because like
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: holidays and stuff.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: But now I don't have to worry about when we're going to do the next episode.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's there.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's locked.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's set.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes my little like scheduling heart happy.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it also frees up time to do other projects, which was really important to me.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not just like once I'm done with the welcome calls,
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: then there's like all the other things that have to go into like, OK,
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: now that I've done fixed the business in this case, I got to go do something else.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it also gives me some creative freedom to to do some solo projects.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think like when you're establishing something,
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd love to hear your business coach ritual thoughts on this.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're establishing something, it does take more upfront work and time.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that was determining, you know, what is the podcast?
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Where does it live?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: What's the name of it?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: What are we going to talk about?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: What are our values?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: like we had to really figure out the positioning and the narrative differentiation
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: of, How is this different from other podcasts?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then some of that just happened over time.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that we took the time because we were so busy producing
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: that we didn't take the time to go, what has this become?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so it took you like taking your hand and slamming on the stop button
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: to make me stop and go, this is why this matters to me.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is why I'm willing to fight for it.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: Not because it's a sales mechanism for me because it's not.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe, maybe it is.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: But like our episode three weeks ago where we talked about like our sales cycles being longer.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: And there is certainly a parasocial component to this where people are listening.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're getting to know you.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're getting to know me in a different way than how we show up on YouTube
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: or emails or even in live trainings because it's much more conversational
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: than anything else that either of us is releasing
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: because we're just two friends talking, two thought partners talking.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I feel like people feel like they're in the room with us in a different way
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: than if it were even a networking event or a dinner party or something like that.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there is certainly a sales benefit to it,
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: but that wasn't the top priority for me in all of this.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: And Aggressively Human still isn't a sales mechanism for me.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is a way to...
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Increasingly as a way to like have transparent conversations
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: about what I'm learning,
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: what I'm seeing,
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: what I'm experiencing with somebody else who I respect more than almost anybody else
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: in my life.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hearts.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: But also like in part of the reason I wanted to slow down is
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: because I am feeling called to have more audio visual material
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: to expand my next body of work.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so like, I'm like, okay, well, I can't have a weekly podcast.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be doing another weekly podcast as a solo.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it is going to be like the creative outlet.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've like,
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: as much as I would love to like bring Jessica nerds out on these business books
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: and tells you how it applies to your five foundations.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's like my IP.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: And one that would be not respectful to the two of us to have it like you're like,
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: it can't, this show can't be grounded in either RP.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's true.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm like,
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: if I want to have an outlet to explain more of my body of work to because it used
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: to be that I used to have the free deeper business dialogues.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: That was where I developed and taught the material that went into leaving the casino.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: And in the paid membership, like there is only so much content.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I can ask people to consume in that membership without people being like, tap me the hell out.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Without them slamming their hands on the
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: stopwatch.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: No whammies, no whammies, and stop.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: But YouTube is challenging for me to produce.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Not in a bad way, but just in a...
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't naturally show up on camera in a way I like to on YouTube,
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: but there are times I've been doing it and I've been putting out some things,
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: but I'm like,
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: I want a To have a different way to explore the concepts in
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: a more long form bingeable way than the newsletter lets me do.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like I want it to be a little more even conversational with myself,
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: a little less polished and very still audio only.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm like, all right, well, I can keep the best parts of Aggressively Human.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: While also freeing up the space for the next step of my creative projects,
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: which I can't, I'm so excited about.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so excited.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't wait to talk about it
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: on this podcast.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's where I was just about to go,
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: which is you started telling me in that Voxer negotiation,
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: which is Almost sounds like hostage negotiation when you say it really quickly.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe it was, maybe a little bit.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: But you started telling me in that boxer conversation about like,
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: I want to launch the new podcast where I'm able to dive deep into my own way
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: of thinking about this.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: have time to write the book and maybe have more on YouTube that has
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: that visual component that you can't get on a podcast.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you were talking through everything you wanted to do.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, but I want to talk to you about that.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: I want to have Aggressively Human be the meta layer of here's what I'm trying.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what I'm testing.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Here's how it's working.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because you don't have a space in your body of work to say what's the body of work doing.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: Quite as easily,
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: if you're always in production mode, where's the place where you're now analyzing?
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: Where's the place where you're analyzing?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Where's the place where you're reflecting?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that this can be that for both of us, too, is we're both tinkerers.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we can go tinker and then come back to each other and be like,
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: hey, what did you learn this month?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think this is the space for that.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to create space for the two of us to go tinker independently and
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: then come back and be like,
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know, the kids and be like, what did we find as we tinkered?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: And when your production outpaces your reflection,
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Then it feels more like a treadmill than it does something that is curated.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we talk regularly about composting.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: I keep coming back to composting because I think that's what I've been doing for
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: the past month since we had this conversation is going, what's the gold?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: What do we already have that we want to do more of instead
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: of following someone else's rulebook that says, here's how it's supposed to go.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: And what is the Aggressively Human way to podcast is do compost.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: To slow down,
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: to do less,
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: to rely on what we've already created and to sharpen up our way of thinking so
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: that it's unique to us and that it's valuable to both of us
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: without it being extractive.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: But the one thing that I was like,
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: if we're going to,
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I said this out loud,
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: but like I've been thinking about this more like the one way if we're going
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: to continue,
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: it has to be on a schedule because I think predictability creates trust.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: And like being like, all right, we're going to switch from weekly to biweekly.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're still coming out on Thursdays.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: We may or may not be on Substack.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at some point we're moving off of that.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm making a thumbs up or a thumbs down face to you in the camera
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: that people can't see because I thought that you'd say that.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now we'll talk about that in future episodes,
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: but I'd like to move off of Substack for several reasons that we don't need to go
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: into in this episode.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Some are ethical,
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: some are search, some are indexing, some are, and shitification, but you know.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: But that being said, like if we, if we don't.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: Have Substack email you if you're a subscriber.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: I find it really important.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: we have to show up in the feed when people expect because otherwise podcasting,
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: you can't be a habit in someone's mind if they don't know when you're coming out.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know when to look for it.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least it will still be Thursdays.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: It will still be every other Thursday instead of every Thursday.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: But it will still be Thursdays for those of you who are like Jessica,
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: who have your cadence of your weekly listens.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if anyone else,
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: that's just maybe me cause I'm on like a dog walk at like certain times
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: and you know,
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: but like,
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: I really feel like I,
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: if there are creators who say they're coming out on Sunday mornings
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: or they say they're coming out on Sundays as their, their,
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: their newsletter and they don't,
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: that is a, I feel like it's a promise that's been broken.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like if,
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: if I'm like,
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: if you can't,
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: if you say you, if,
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: if you term your thing like a Sunday newsletter,
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: And Sunday's in the name of your newsletter.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it comes out on Mondays.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I don't ever say what day of the week I'm going to send my newsletter on.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because I wait until I'm inspired and I have time.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Which probably drives you crazy if you're waiting for it.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: But don't wait for it from me.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: But like if you're trying to create a habit of consumption.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, like, you know, my favorite TV show, The Rookie, slash Ted Lasso.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ted Lasso comes out Tuesdays at 9, Eastern Time.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: We watch it on Wednesdays, unless I can't get to it.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: But like, you know when it's coming, right?
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if you create something that is meant to be consumed on a regular basis,
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it should show up at that time to generate content.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: The repeatability, regardless of if it's weekly shit, it can be once a month.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: But like,
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh,
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: like the first of the month,
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: Lindsay Max Tarot podcast comes out because it's a monthly medicine.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I know to look for it on the first of the month that I'm not surprised.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I think to your point of, you know, how this impacts what we're doing.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Knowing that it's going to be out every other Thursday.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: Unless, again, I think Christmas is on a Friday this year.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we skip that week.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: We'll figure it out.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: We'll let you know.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: But also because we don't have to work around anyone's schedules but the two of us.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think that also gives you a little bit of peace of mind of like,
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: and I've done the math because Notion does the math for me,
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: that we're 34 days ahead on our production.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we could be,
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: 20 days ahead because of the way that everything hits,
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: but like,
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Knowing that we have time to edit,
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: to produce,
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: to think, to add,
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: to do more with these pieces,
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: and to have time to not have to come up with something weekly every week,
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's also really good for both of our mental health
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: to give ourselves more white space between episodes.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: And because we are now recording them on Fridays at a time, I know how to...
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: I know how to show up.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're not like catching me coming from one meeting, going to another meeting.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're doing this from 10 to 1130 on Friday.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's never a meeting I have to run to right after this,
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: which is hell on the recording anyways.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we're staying.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're staying.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're not getting rid of us.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: in January 2027,
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: you're going to have Jessica,
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: more Jessica in your ears should you find that to be a lifestyle choice for you.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: Lifestyle choice.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear Jessica do business diagnoses and business book teardowns
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: and case studies,
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: you'll find me on my new podcast,
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: which we will probably at least cross post the first couple to
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: the Aggressively Human feed.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: But that gives Meg time to work on her projects, which there are numerous behind the scenes.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it'll give me time to work on mine.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then you'll always hear about what we're doing on this podcast.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to do something while you're not listening to our podcast on
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: the off Thursdays, I will let you know that the new website is live.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have future episodes to talk about it, but it is at aggressivelyhumanpodcast.com.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I have been working hard to make sense of what have we said over the last two years?
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: How has that thinking evolved?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: What does it mean now?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: And can I just read you the new sort of...
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: Not description.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't exactly what's in the Apple Podcasts description.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: But we did update that.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody's commented on it yet.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: But we did update that.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're going and looking, you can read it.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: But here's our sort of value prop, for lack of a better word.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Aggressively Human is about designing businesses around human judgment,
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: relationships, capacity, expertise, and care.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: In an environment increasingly designed around scale, optimization, automation, and extraction.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: We explore the friction between what modern business promises
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: and what it actually asks of the humans who build it,
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: work in it, buy from it, and live alongside it.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a lot less like AI automations.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: It still has it in there.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: But this is much more about the human side of it, of what does that do to us?
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we continue to run businesses in a space
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: where our human limitations are valued instead of just liabilities?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: So this is roughly about the two year time frame.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Technically, we started I think our first episode came out in December 2024.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: This will come out in November 2026.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not totally two years,
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: but this is basically our two year anniversary of Aggressively Human.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: We can't wait for you to stick around for year three.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: I feel so optimistic about this.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was like a gift in a way to take the pause,
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: not just the pause in July that went,
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: oh, the world doesn't crumble if we take a break, which was also important to this.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: But to take the pause and go, what do I need this to be?
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: And what is it that is outside of what I need it to be?
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: And how can I do what I'm trying to,
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: we spend a lot of time on the podcast preaching about making a business that works
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: for you.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we hadn't been doing that with the podcast itself.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so pausing and saying, how do we make this work for us?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: And our own limitations and our values and our priorities.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm very excited that we had this conversation and that we were able
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: to come down in a place that was mutually beneficial and Both individually
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: and businesses.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't mutually beneficial.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a stronger podcast.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's not just like, oh, we settled on something.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's going to be better.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a,
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: when you're establishing something,
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: you test out a lot of things and then you hone and you decide and you discern.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we discerned.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're always talking about discernment and judgment.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: We discerned what we needed it to be.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're going to turn it into that.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that hopefully that can be helpful to other people to pause and say
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: and reflect and say, like, what do I need my business to do?
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we just had that conversation a couple weeks ago about, like, what do I need to put down?
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: We needed to put down.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: God, that makes it sound like we're putting down a dog.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, no, no, no.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: We don't need to, like, euthanize any of our business.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: We need to set down.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: We were carrying a lot of wands, ten wands, right?
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: We need to set down our wands and, like, redistribute how we carry the wands we keep.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and the recognition of what it's for and reset our own goals,
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: which we had a goal-setting episode where we were talking about,
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: like, the metric that we can track is production, right?
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're changing our metrics.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a choice that we made.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not made lightly.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: With that, y'all,
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: you'll hear from us not next week,
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: but in two weeks with another Aggressively Human episode.