Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Podcast Notes

Link: The Steve Austin Show: Brendan Schaub

Do you like watching professional fights? Do you like watching stages professional fights? You’ll enjoy this episode of the Stone Cold Steve Austin podcast.

Even if you only like one or the other you should check this episode out.

(If you’re 0 for 2 on those interests, well, okay there are plenty of other podcasts out there for you.)

Steve and Brendan go over:

  • Real talk from a friend: As much as I listen to Joe Rogan, I missed the entire thing where he tells Brendan to quit. (In so many words.) I watched it for the first time a couple weeks ago. It’s not new or anything, but I was happy to hear more about it on this episode. Brendan tells Steve what it was like to go through that. Joe told it how it was and was coming from a place where he cared for Brendan. It was a pivotal moment for Brendan and in hindsight one of the best things that could have happened to him because it got him out of fighting.
  • The importance of promotion: Brendan and Steve talk about how important promotion has become in MMA. (It’s always been important in wrestling.) For mainstream success, there has to be something interesting beyond the purity of the fight. Otherwise you’re an Olympic sport that gets eyeballs only when the Olympics are on. Brendan says that watching the Ric Flair documentary opened his eyes beyond the surface of pro wrestling. If you want that next-level monetary success in the UFC, you need to promote your fights and you need to win. In the WWE, Vince can strap a rocket to your back and it’s fueled by crowd pops. In the UFC, you can get that rocket on your back, it’s also fueled by crowd interest, and you can lose it in a night.
  • Money in fighting: Early in the episode, Brendan has a line about how if you’re in it for money you’re better off working at Starbucks. At least you’ll get benefits. I thought he was exaggerating, but later in the episode he gets into the numbers. It’s been a few years since Brendan was in the octagon, but I was shocked at the numbers he was talking about for each fight. Some fights were $8000 to show, $8000 to win. The average UFC career now is 2 years. (Notice the turnover in the undercards.) Brendan says he retired with $2000 in the bank. It reminds me of Kevin Hart’s book where he says he was knee deep in credit debt when he did his breakout performance at Shaq’s show. It’s easy to spend too much money. Particularly when you aren’t making a ton in the first place.

It’s 90 minutes so I’m only touching the surface on what they cover in their conversation. Check it out!

25: Podcast recommendations, don’t leave your shopping cart in the parking lot

No book this week – Instead, we recommend different episodes of podcasts. Each of us recommends 3 podcasts and asks a question or explains a segment that typically comes up in that podcast.

  • What is Dungeons & Dragons like?
  • What have you learned in the gym that you’ve been able to apply in life?
  • What would you tell your 12-year-old self?
  • If this episode were a Saturday morning cartoon character, who would it be?

And many more! (Or two more.)

It’s a little different. We should have another book next week. As always, thanks for checking us out!

24: Edit Better

We opened by talking about UFC 217. We will not niche down to MMA, but we just might start getting down to making videos and vlogging. Wally and I both make videos on our own. They’re very different, but the media is roughly the same.

In light of that turn, this week’s book is Edit Better by Jeff Bartsch.

We had this idea that we’d take some of the lessons in this video editing book and see how we could turn it into general life advice. Actually, here’s the convo where I ran through some ideas with Wally (by “convo” I mean it’s me writing paragraph texts):

That text followed the format we had in mind more than this podcast did.

People then respond with righteous indignation, “I will make my own choices because it’s a personal thing and I am going to be me and I’m going to create my own editorial reality and who R U to tell me how to make my own personal choices you stupid big obnoxious judgmental person you stop judging me stupid judger I shall now post sarcastic yet contextless updates about you on social media.”

This is something I lean on too much. I want to do things my way. In every case, I’m wrong. I didn’t want to do what some podcasts with higher production value do. When I did start adding some of those elements (structure with some audio signposting, adding some music), the episodes improved.

Video-wise, I’ve been trying to skip some necessary steps for making videos. In the making-of videos I’ve seen, people making whiteboard videos always start with a script. I’ve been trying to start with an outline and it leads to problems.

I’m okay with this, though. I’ve learned some things about making videos quickly that I think will pay off in the long run. (Contrasted to skipping standard podcast procedure that just led to worse podcast episodes with no benefits in the long run.)

I mentioned some YouTube channels that I really like:

  • PictureFit: Short animated videos on just about every fitness and nutrition topic you can think of. He also did a great livestream Q&A where he shares how he grew his channel.
  • AsapSCIENCE: Similar to PictureFit but instead of fitness and nutrition it’s about a broader range of topics. ‘Science’ is in the title but there are videos like “What if Everyone Lived Like Americans” and “Introverts vs. Extroverts“.
  • Extra Credits: I started watching I think around when they just started expanding into other topics like history. I’m excited to see they started doing sci-fi videos. When I first got my iPad I looked to Extra Credits for inspiration for simple, engaging visuals. In the past year they’ve grown the team and now the illustrations and animations are more elaborate. It’s great.
  • Nerdwriter: Some of my favorite content on the internet. Evan Puschak 1.) has interesting ideas and 2.) is good at presenting them in interesting ways. I’d love to have a handle on just one of those two things. If you’re all caught up in Game of Thrones, check out his side by side cut of one of the battles in the latest season against clips with similar shots from other classic movies. That reminded me of the side-by-side of the “Let Your Game Speak” commercial with the original shots.

Another section in our episode was about the editorial planning rules:

Determine your Desired Outcome

Determine your Message

Determine your Market. Who is your audience?

Determine your Media

Determine your Method, the driving idea or unifying concept behind your project

If you’re making videos, check out Edit Better. It’s great.

If you want tenuous connections between video editing advice and life, hit play on our podcast episode!

Book Notes: This Book Will Teach You How To Write Better

Don Draper taught us a little bit about how to be terrible human beings and great copywriters. In This Book Will Teach You How To Write Better, Neville Medhora helps improve your copywriting without betraying your family and spiraling into darkness.

“No one cares about me, they care about themselves…” “No one cares about me, they care about themselves…..” “No one cares about me, they care about themselves…….”

One scene I still think about today is when he’s in the elevator with Ginsberg, aka the Superstore guy. Ginsberg thinks Don isn’t a good person and says that he feels bad for him. Don’s reply? “I don’t think about you at all.”

It was a huge lesson for me: people don’t think about you that often. Even if something happened between you and one other person, good or bad, they aren’t thinking about you.

They’re thinking about themselves too much to worry about you. Think about your end. Even if you’re thinking about them, it’s actually in relation to how it affects you.

When writing copy for an audience, don’t talk about you. They’re not thinking about you. They’re thinking about themselves so tell them how you can help them.

Waaayy too many websites/emails/letters incessantly talk about themselves first. Kind of like: Welcome to Ace Tennis Coaching. We are dedicated to serving our customers. We have been focusing on quality service for years, and have a dedicated staff to help fulfill your tennis needs. Our team is focused on quality coaching and delivering great training. We aim to serve our customers needs blah BLah BLAH.

We we we. It should be about you you you. We’re great because we do this. Well how about you’ll feel like you have Andre Agassi’s mullet after going through a session.

Don Draper didn’t talk about Kodak. He made you feel the importance of preserving your memories. What if you could re-watch your life? You can’t put a price on them. (But Kodak can!)

It’s easy to say what you’ve done. But focus more on what you’ll do for the customer. If someone comes to your house for help with something you wouldn’t walk them straight to your trophy case. Pass by it and let them notice the rec league championships on their own. Jump right into how you can help.

This is actually a shockingly easy task to do, and I’m going to reveal how…right now on the next page: Write casual copy! ….that’s it. That’s the whole secret!

I don’t do this enough. I’m trying to do this now and I still have a hard time doing it. Something that’s helped me is writing an email draft.

While I was reading this book, I subscribed to a few copywriting mailing lists. Because they’re good at their jobs, I also now have been sold a bunch of copywriting Info products.

Anyway, while reading this, I sent a daily email to a friend. I let him know it was just practicing writing more casual posts. Writing in iOS mail or the Gmail app helped a lot. It’s a different environment which gave me a different mindset.

iOS Notes and Evernote have everything and I sometimes get the feeling that I won’t publish things I write in these apps. It might be that percentage-wise, most notes are a few sentences (or even a few words) that are never intended for publishing. Too casual.

Ulysses and Google Docs are on the opposite end of the spectrum. They’re not casual enough. I feel like I need to polish things there.

Writing emails brings out the right amount of casualness. I also know that my friend (my podcast co-host Wally) actually reads the emails. They say you should have a reader in mind so I literally had a single reader in mind.

23: The Power of Moments

We’ve missed a few weeks but we’re back! We’re talking about the The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath. You should also check out our earlier episode about Made to Stick by the same authors.

In this episode we cover a few different topics from the book. We talk about:

  • Good and bad customer service experiences
  • First days of work that we remember
  • Moments that are crystallizations of discontent
  • Moments that affected our lives that have had a long-lasting effect

Stay with it until the end where we do a short  scripted section that we wrote from the book.

My Year of Running Safely

I just finished My Year of Running Dangerously by Tom Foreman. Does two make a list? If so, here’s my current list of great audiobooks for running:

  • My Year of Running Dangerously by Tom Foreman
  • What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

(I’d call it the list of great audiobooks for ‘runners’ but then you might mistake me for someone who can run for a mile without getting winded.)

When I say “just finished” I mean like just a few minutes ago. And I just finished a run as well.

It wasn’t a dangerous run like you’ll find in Foreman’s book. I’m guessing he does more than I just did for a warm-up.

I started running about a month ago. I was walking to a Blink nearby which I’m a member of strictly because there was a Blink very close to my old apartment and I haven’t gotten around to canceling it. While walking to that gym, I realized I could get to my regular gym in about the same amount of time if I ran.

So I picked my pace up and headed to my regular gym.

That began my year of running safely. (I think. I mean it’s been a month now and I’ve been jogging 2-3 times a week. I know that a month isn’t a year and that runners probably don’t consider what I’m doing running.)

Oh yeah, the book.

Foreman used to be a long-distance runner in his younger days. He picks it back up after his daughter asks if he’ll train for a marathon with her. Foreman shares his thoughts about running, family, work. It also has chapters that are diary-style entries about different runs.

Those sections really get you inside his head and are the best part of the book.

In What I Talk About When I Talk About Running Murakami has a similar section about running the original marathon course in Greece. (That might need a capital-M Marathon.)

I’ve mentioned twice that I wouldn’t call myself a runner. I also don’t call myself a writer.

When can write about my runs and make it 1/10th as enjoyable as Foreman or Murakami make it, then I might start calling myself a writer.

Today I laced my shoes up and headed out the door. I use a futuristic elastic fanny pack to hold my keys and phone. Years ago I had an arm band to hold my phone which was inconvenient for jotting down workout notes between sets. (But great for feeling like the Predator.) Then I ran for 20 minutes.

I’ve got work to do.