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The week we almost ended Aggressively Human · Aggressively Human

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