0:00:00[Music]
0:00:08From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 13. This week's episode of Upgrade is brought to you by
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0:00:35My name is Myke Curley and I am joined by your host and mine, Mr. Jason Snell.
0:00:39Hi Myke, how's it going?
0:00:41Very well, Mr. Jason Snell.
0:00:42How are you?
0:00:43I am doing fine, Mr. Myke Curley.
0:00:46How are things in the Snell Zone this week?
0:00:50They are a little damp because we've had a lot of rain.
0:00:54Well, by your standards, we've probably had very little rain.
0:00:57You've had a Wednesday afternoon's amount of rain.
0:01:00There have been days where we didn't get rain, which is unlike, I think, England.
0:01:06So yeah, but we know we've had a lot of rain, which is good, and the hills are turning green
0:01:10and not the sort of brown sun-blasted hellscape that was described by John Zaragoza when he
0:01:15visited my house once.
0:01:17It's greening up.
0:01:18Yeah, so it's good. We're getting ready for the holidays, we got the Christmas lights on, the house, and we have a Christmas tree, and we're frantically shopping for things, and you know, all the usual things that make December the most stressful time of the year.
0:01:37[laughter]
0:01:41Does it snow where you live, Jason?
0:01:44No.
0:01:45Not at all?
0:01:46>> Oh, interesting.
0:01:47>> Not at all.
0:01:48Never, never ever.
0:01:49I think there have been two times since we've lived in this county where snow was visible
0:01:59briefly as it was falling and then was no longer snow again.
0:02:04But generally because we're by the ocean, the temperature stays pretty warm and anytime
0:02:11you have a storm that comes in, the storm insulates the air and keeps it from getting
0:02:17too cold. So we can be cold, we can be below freezing, or we can be rainy, but it's very
0:02:21rare that it's cold enough to cause snow because when it's that cold it usually doesn't rain.
0:02:29But where I grew up we used to get snow a few times a year up in the mountains, but
0:02:33down here by the bay there's not a lot of... there's no snow. It doesn't happen.
0:02:38We don't get a lot. Every couple of years I think these, these in recent times there's
0:02:46been enough snowfall to make a disruption. But that doesn't take a lot of snowfall here
0:02:51because we're not prepared for it. So if you have just a moderate amount of snow it kind
0:02:55of shuts England and the UK just down, just shuts us down. Actually just England really.
0:03:01That's what rain does in California. It rains in California. It's like "Oh go it's raining,
0:03:05"No, we don't know what to do!"
0:03:07Sure, Scotland is probably just used to it, and they shrug it off.
0:03:10It just rolls down the hills, it's no problem.
0:03:13But yeah, it shuts England down anyway.
0:03:16Anyhow, we have some follow-up, I believe.
0:03:19What is our follow-up this week, Mr. Snow?
0:03:21Oh, is there follow-up on this show? I didn't know.
0:03:24I think it's an important part of this show.
0:03:27I need to snap out of my reverie about snow and weather and get to...
0:03:31That was our weather vertical, Myke.
0:03:33putting that in the weather vertical. Follow up, listener Michael wrote in and said, "Your
0:03:41discussions the last two weeks about striking out on your own and your hopes for the future
0:03:44of your new businesses struck a chord with me." And this is what he said that I thought
0:03:50was really interesting. "As I explored different opportunities, I learned about many businesses
0:03:56that exist to help small firms like yours. I encourage you to look to other small businesses
0:04:01for the services that you need but for which you can't afford to pay full-time staff.
0:04:06My point is you can become a good-sized business without hiring full-time personal staff.
0:04:10So this was that question we got last week about what if you become a big business?
0:04:15And listener Michael's point is that you don't necessarily have to become... that's not the
0:04:21only path to suddenly have five employees in an office somewhere because there are lots
0:04:25of other people who are doing what we're doing and they would love our business to help their
0:04:30business too, which I thought was a nice point. So and he says, Myke, I'm assuming the small
0:04:35business professional market is robust in the UK as well. He's in Chicago, so he says,
0:04:40we're unlikely to be a client for him. Sorry, but there are people all over. I thought that
0:04:46was an interesting point, the idea that a lot of times you have different small businesses
0:04:50that specialize in different things and they work together and that's good. And you don't
0:04:54have to just kind of—so Relay doesn't have to become a giant 20-person operation if you
0:04:58don't want it to be. I don't want it to be. I would love an assistant. Yeah, well sure,
0:05:04and that's harder to outsource. Although, I think I know somebody who's got an outsourced
0:05:10assistant that's like part of an assistant. This isn't the name of it, but it's like myassistant.com
0:05:15kind of thing where... I know people that have used these sources of services, and I
0:05:20don't trust them. I feel like you would just be spending most of your time trying to explain
0:05:24to somebody what you need.
0:05:25Yeah, I don't know whether this is a...
0:05:29Well, let's face it, I'm talking about Lex Friedman here.
0:05:34Because occasionally we'll email him and suddenly I'll get a CC and it'll be like, "Oh, take
0:05:38care.
0:05:39Can you schedule something with Jason here?"
0:05:40And I think his assistant is in Texas or somewhere, just like literally random location.
0:05:46And I don't know whether she works for their company or works as a contractor or what the
0:05:50deal is.
0:05:52But I agree that having somebody who knows the business and is going to be preferable
0:05:57if you can get to the point where that's feasible.
0:06:02I like how you said "let's face it," like everybody assumed you were talking about Lex.
0:06:08That's how I chose to throw Lex under that particular bus.
0:06:10Gigs up, you got me, it's Lex.
0:06:12It's Lex, of course.
0:06:14It's always Lex.
0:06:16That's the answer to everything, it's always Lex.
0:06:17I don't think I want an assistant sitting here right next to me.
0:06:23I think I like the idea of having... because most of the stuff that I do I don't need somebody
0:06:27here.
0:06:28But you know, just somebody to... for example there's this thing that I need to do with
0:06:32some old audio files, I need to check some, make sure that one is the correct version
0:06:37basically and it could be like a hundred audio files I need to go through and I would love
0:06:43to be able to give that to somebody to do.
0:06:45Oh, and by the way, listeners, I'm not asking for volunteers.
0:06:51It's perfectly fine.
0:06:53I will one day hire someone, but right now I can just get on with it and deal with it.
0:06:59Because I know that there are people that would very gladly offer help because they
0:07:04enjoy what we do because we get that sort of stuff.
0:07:06But I already thank you for your fault, but it's fine.
0:07:12I need to hire somebody in right now.
0:07:14I don't want to, I can't really afford to do that.
0:07:19Next piece of follow up.
0:07:20All right, good, good follow up.
0:07:22Listener Eugene wrote in, and you may have missed this because Eugene's name was printed
0:07:27in Cyrillic and so I think my email client was like, "I think this is probably spam,
0:07:31but it's not spam.
0:07:33It's listener Eugene."
0:07:35Poor Eugene.
0:07:38So he says, "I think all the things you're saying on the show and all the people in the
0:07:42podcast field are really supportive and encouraging newcomers. However, I think it's worth mentioning
0:07:47or talking about how the podcast should be distributed if you're new in the field. This
0:07:52comes from real questions of my own. I'd love to do a show myself, but who might want to
0:07:56listen to the ramble of a 19-year-old without any guess? All independent podcasts are made
0:08:01by people well-known in their field, and most of the people don't have such a background
0:08:05and such a number of followers. What can a young novice podcaster do to find an audience?
0:08:11What would you do if you started from scratch?
0:08:13I suppose that Myke can answer this question because he started doing this on his own way
0:08:18back when.
0:08:19So Myke, what's the advice for somebody who's just getting started in podcasting?
0:08:23Do you have to be famous doing something else before you can be a podcaster?
0:08:27>> Definitely not, but find a friend, either a friend in real life or a friend that you've
0:08:32made on the internet and do the show with them because it really helps to be able to
0:08:38talk to somebody.
0:08:40yes you probably can't get guests on the show if you're just starting out but you
0:08:45shouldn't have guests on your show if you're just starting out in my opinion
0:08:49so I think it's difficult for people who want to do interview shows because you
0:08:56need to build your skills especially if you've never sat down in front of the
0:09:01microphone before and you're maybe best waiting until you've had a bit of
0:09:06practice before you start bringing guests onto your show because I mean
0:09:09Obviously one of the great reasons about having a guest on your show is it brings
0:09:12more people to your show but if you've not yet gotten to a point where you are
0:09:17comfortable with what you're doing then you may be doing a disservice for your
0:09:22show because it can't be as good as it could be if you did it in two months time
0:09:24for example. So find a friend and do the show with them so you can share the work
0:09:30and you can share in the success that you'll have later on and also because it
0:09:35is way easier to talk to somebody than to talk on your own. So yes anybody can
0:09:40do it you just need to I would say to find somebody to do the show with start
0:09:44doing it with them and as you get better then invite guests. However in this day
0:09:48and age with there being so many podcasts having guests having high
0:09:52profile guests don't necessarily mean that your show is gonna become an
0:09:57overnight success but just keep plugging away and working on it and I assure you
0:10:02you that you an audience will build. So was Terry Lucy your find-a-friend?
0:10:08He was. He was. He was one of my best friends in real life. We went to school together and we
0:10:14started doing the show together. And then as time went on I then started finding
0:10:17online friends, people that I met by Twitter or via other networks and in
0:10:22little groups and then started doing the shows that way and that's how the rest
0:10:25of my shows have been born is through people that I've met over the internet.
0:10:30Which is something me and Casey talk about in analog this week actually is that sort
0:10:34of like how Twitter becomes like you get into these groups you know like you find
0:10:39a group of people that love X so for example there are people that I know
0:10:45like this little group of people who are big fans of relay shows and they talk
0:10:49and we talk and they talk together and it's fun you know and there's like a
0:10:52community that's built around people that enjoy the stuff that we do which is
0:10:56awesome. I was in that for 5x5 back in the day, you know, and it's nice to see
0:11:02those groups build up and then it's nice to see people that are in those groups
0:11:06and that kind of stuff. They start doing their own work together. It's cool.
0:11:10I was just listening over the weekend to an episode of Joe Steele's
0:11:14podcast with Dan Sturm, "Defocused," and well, and Joe was on the Incomparable
0:11:21this weekend, which was fun. Long time listener, first time caller kind
0:11:24thing. And that was, that struck me because those guys are visual effects
0:11:30professionals and they're talking about movies and yet almost every reference
0:11:35they make there's a there's a reference to tech podcasts. And at some point I
0:11:41think in the Ghostbusters episode Joe actually says something that leads me to
0:11:46believe that he literally believes that they are like the footnote to the tech
0:11:51podcasts that they assume their entire audience listens to Roderick on the Line and Upgrade
0:11:59and The Incomparable and ATP and The Talk Show and I thought that was really funny because
0:12:04they're not it's not a tech podcast but they're it's like they definitely view themselves
0:12:09as living at least mostly inside this like inside the existing subculture even though
0:12:15their podcast isn't about that I thought that was an interesting way of doing it yeah so
0:12:19So I love those guys.
0:12:21Defocused.
0:12:22Although it's amusing to hear somebody who didn't live through the '80s, people who didn't
0:12:27live through the '80s talk about movies from the '80s because every time they make a comment,
0:12:32I feel like John Syracuse, actually.
0:12:34I want to say, "That was real.
0:12:37It was really like that."
0:12:38They're like, "Oh, this is a very '80s sort of movie thing."
0:12:41No, no, that's a really '80s thing.
0:12:42It was really like that.
0:12:43That's a real thing.
0:12:45People did aerobics.
0:12:46That was a thing.
0:12:47- It's not just a movie trope.
0:12:49- Not just, that's where the trope comes from.
0:12:52Listener Ryan has some follow up for us
0:12:55that I thought was really interesting.
0:12:56We asked about how to take listener requests
0:12:59because we did our lightning round
0:13:01that was very, very slow lightning last week.
0:13:04And he said, "I work at an ad agency doing social media work
0:13:07"and I found the Twitter hashtag to Google Sheet
0:13:10"if this, then that recipe useful for aggravating, yes,
0:13:15and aggregating everything coming into a designated hashtag into a shareable spreadsheet. And
0:13:20he shared a link to a recipe, which is not his recipe, but it's an if this then that
0:13:25.com recipe for a hashtag. And his suggestion is #askupgrade. I actually turned this on.
0:13:34So if you want to tweet your questions to #askupgrade, and you can mention me and Myke
0:13:42too, but that will actually stick them all in a Google spreadsheet that I will share
0:13:47with Myke and we will look at, and then I can't guarantee we will actually answer your
0:13:51questions, but that's a really cool idea. So thank you, listener Ryan.
0:13:57That's actually an awesome way to do follow-up as well.
0:14:00Mmm. Yeah, I mean, throughout the week people can be sending their questions to...
0:14:05Just any time. Any time you have a question, like, "What shall I have for breakfast?"
0:14:10#AskUpgrade.
0:14:11I hope it works. I don't, you know, it hasn't created it yet, but I'm hoping it will work.
0:14:16Interesting. I like that. That's really cool, actually. I should have been on the lookout for
0:14:23a social media professional from the get-go. They could have helped me, so thank you, Ryan.
0:14:27If you need to hire an ad agency to do some social media work, I recommend Listener Ryan.
0:14:33Listener Ryan Incorporated.
0:14:36Yeah, LLC.
0:14:37[laughter]
0:14:38Shall we take a break to thank our first friend for this week's episode?
0:14:45I feel the need for some friend thanking right now, yes.
0:14:48This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Boom 2 from Global Delight.
0:14:52Boom 2 is a pro audio app for the Mac that offers a system-wide volume booster, advanced
0:14:58equalizer control with presets, amazing audio effects, and so much more.
0:15:02This app was built from scratch and is designed for Yosemite.
0:15:06Boom 2 is tailored to calibrate itself to your Mac as no two Macs are the same and once
0:15:11you get used to using Boom 2 it becomes something you cannot live without.
0:15:15Personally I remember Boom 2 saving me from going mad when I was using an 11" MacBook
0:15:20Air.
0:15:21I couldn't watch movies or TV shows on it, Netflix was just horrific as it was just too
0:15:25quiet I just couldn't hear anything.
0:15:27But then I found Boom and it totally saved the day.
0:15:30And now Boom 2 is here and it's louder, clearer and better than ever before.
0:15:35With personalised and customised sound to suit any occasion, it also gives your Mac
0:15:40the power to fine tune and control every single element of audio.
0:15:44Spotify, Netflix, YouTube and iTunes, every other service out there is going to sound
0:15:49a whole lot better and is localised to German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and five other
0:15:54languages as well.
0:15:56The first version of Boom, Boom version 1, was awarded the Macworld Best of Show in 2011.
0:16:02The Global Delight team is a small team that operates from a small town in southern India
0:16:08and my illustrious co-host, Mr. Jason Snell, was the man that actually went to their booth
0:16:12to hand over this coveted badge.
0:16:15And the Global Delight guys were very excited to tell me this story and I think it's so
0:16:18awesome.
0:16:19Jason, do you remember doing this?
0:16:20You know, you were setting that up.
0:16:22It was really going to sound like I traveled to a town, a small town in the south of India
0:16:27to seek out new Mac applications.
0:16:29And what I found will surprise you.
0:16:32But I do remember, I actually remember when we had, so every year we would have the Best
0:16:37of Show debate where all the editors would bring the stuff that they'd seen.
0:16:41And it's not a scientific process like something like, even like the Eddie Awards was a little
0:16:48bit more like we had tested everything and then we would argue about what we thought
0:16:52the best was.
0:16:53Best of Show was even more hazy.
0:16:54It was like, is this cool?
0:16:55Is this cool enough?
0:16:56And you'd end up with these long, weird arguments between various editors.
0:17:02And I remember that one, especially we were in a room somewhere at the convention hall
0:17:06having that conversation.
0:17:08And I remember somebody actually brought out their laptop with a beta, I think, of Boom
0:17:12installed on it and said, "Listen to this," basically like, you know, demoed it for us
0:17:18right there.
0:17:19And so, and that convinced the crowd.
0:17:21And so, yeah, then I had the job that year of walking around and sort of giving everybody
0:17:25their little trophies or ribbons or whatever it was that we were handing out.
0:17:29So I remember that well.
0:17:30You can now try Boom 2 for free for 7 days by going to bit.ly/upgradeboom
0:17:37which I quite like that. bit.ly/upgradeboom and we'll put the link to that in the show notes of course.
0:17:42And when you decide to buy, get 20% off by using the coupon code UPGRADE.
0:17:46This offer is valid throughout December. Thank you so much to Global Delight and Boom 2 for sponsoring this week's episode of Upgrade.
0:17:53Good friends.
0:17:56Good friends indeed.
0:17:57In a small town. When I visited them in their small town is...
0:17:59small town in the south of India. I know I've never been to India, but they came and visited
0:18:04us in San Francisco.
0:18:06It's not the same thing at all.
0:18:09What are friends for?
0:18:10Indeed. Do we have any more follow-up today?
0:18:14We do. We have a couple more. I'm going to say listener Tebow. It could be Tebow. I don't
0:18:23know. I'm like, once again, this is the third time I'm going to say this. Little John Syracusian
0:18:29and failing to, I'm tried, but probably failed.
0:18:32Anyway, listener Tebow says,
0:18:34"Follow up regarding Marvel Unlimited.
0:18:36Another reason why there's a six month delay,"
0:18:37he said, "I thought this might be tied
0:18:39to a deal with ComiXology.
0:18:40Maybe ComiXology and Amazon are getting a cut from sales
0:18:44and they'd want to prevent Marvel
0:18:45from offering the same catalog."
0:18:47Now, I think this is a good thought,
0:18:50but I don't think it's accurate.
0:18:51I actually think that Marvel could control this
0:18:55and do whatever they wanted.
0:18:56I think it's, it's, uh, I don't think that there's an exclusive window, uh,
0:19:01that comiXology and Amazon have.
0:19:03I could be wrong, but I think not.
0:19:05I think the way this is working is that they, they like with Netflix, there's a
0:19:10primary market and the secondary market.
0:19:11And the primary market is people who spend a lot of money on brand new comics
0:19:14and they don't want to lose that market and have all their hardest core fans
0:19:18sign up for a $70 subscription service because they would lose money on the
0:19:22deal because those people buy a lot of comics, more than $70 a year worth of comics by a
0:19:27long shot from Marvel. So I think it's not that. I think that's more of the symptom,
0:19:34which is Amazon, Comixology, and Marvel are very happy to have people paying the full
0:19:40price for those issues. In fact, you can see it, that new issues cost maybe $4 and then
0:19:44after three months or so, they get cut to like $2. And then eventually they end up on
0:19:49Marvel Unlimited as well so they can, because they're digital, they can now cut
0:19:53the price as they get older because they realize that the number one
0:19:58moneymaker for them in terms of profit margin is the people who are gonna buy
0:20:02it the first week or two that it's out for full price. So that's my theory.
0:20:07I believe this is Thibaut. It's French. It works at RealMyke Software.
0:20:16also friends of the show. Listen, Michael also had some follow-up for us.
0:20:21- He did. - Which is interesting. I saw this. I'm surprised this is in here. I thought this
0:20:26is a very interesting follow-up to send in. Michael is a very open individual. I don't know
0:20:32if he expected this to be follow-up read on the show, but here we are.
0:20:36- He put it on Twitter. If he had sent this in a personal email to us, I might have felt
0:20:40a little different, but he did put it on Twitter and included it to both of us. So it's very
0:20:44definitely about the show and he says, listener Michael, he says, "I'm not sure how it happened,
0:20:49but we had an ahoy telephone moment during our special," in quotes, "special cuddle time
0:20:55this weekend." So he says, so yes, during some private time, listener Michael and his partner
0:21:04seem to have accidentally triggered ahoy telephone on his partner's phone.
0:21:13Not his, he said, "I have that turned off. I have a hoei telephone turned off on my phone."
0:21:20But I believe it was on her phone and they have a special. So Siri got to be a part of that
0:21:27relationship, apparently. That is what I like to hear. Siri's bringing people together with
0:21:37a hoei telephone. So another reason to turn off that feature is what I'm saying.
0:21:41Yes.
0:21:43Or, before you have special cuddle time, unplug your phone. It's one of those.
0:21:50[Laughter]
0:21:52Alright.
0:21:53Oh, dear.
0:21:55[Laughter]
0:21:57Should we go to a topic, Myke?
0:22:00Please, I would very much like to go to a topic. What would you like to discuss today?
0:22:04the dice case. The topic I would like to discuss at least at the start is merchandise. Merchandising.
0:22:13I've been over the last year or so selling t-shirts for various incomparable things.
0:22:18I put a I put an incomparable mug up on Zazzle last night because everybody wanted a mug
0:22:25and I didn't want to make and ship heavy mugs and worry about them breaking so I just did
0:22:32design and put it up there and I'm letting Zazzle, uh, Lazel, Zazzle, Lazel, Spazzle,
0:22:37Mazel, Basil, I don't know, them. Zazzle, what a great name, I don't know what it means.
0:22:42- It's terrible. - Anyway, Zazzle with the three Z's, uh, it's up there. And then Relay FM has
0:22:49merchandise too, that you opened a Relay FM shop where there's a, uh, a t-shirt with a big R on it,
0:22:55which I've worn a couple of times, um, indicating that I'm a registered trademark. And, uh, stickers.
0:23:01as well. Yep my stuff actually arrived today finally. Oh good. Shipping is a fun
0:23:07fun thing. We should talk about that actually because there's interesting points in the
0:23:13merchandise because what we've done, what we've decided to do, we decided
0:23:21that we would like to go the route of owning and operating the store
0:23:25ourselves as opposed to using someone like Cotton Bureau or Teespring or Zazzle.
0:23:31Don't get, don't know Zazzle t-shirts, they're not good.
0:23:35So I've, we, we decided... They fade after like one wash.
0:23:39Oh really? I don't recommend it, yeah. Yeah, that's not good. I got those for the Space Shuttle launch. I got a, I made a, I made a
0:23:44couple t-shirts, one, one-off t-shirts for, which, you know, they do, which was great.
0:23:49And they were great for the event and then I put them in the laundry and they
0:23:53were like half faded away that after that but they were good for one shot.
0:23:57You used them quite a lot. Oh yeah. Zazzle like your just I would like a
0:24:04t-shirt or a mug or a hat. Well no so I don't the t-shirts I don't I don't I
0:24:08don't do the hats turned out pretty well and then the mugs I you know I've been I
0:24:12had a I've had a mackerel oat mug that I made on Zazzle for like three years now
0:24:17and it's still great which is why I did the incomparable mug on Zazzle it's the
0:24:21same thing. That's like, have you, but this is what you were saying is, there's a lot
0:24:27that goes into this. You've got, if you were making t-shirts, who's going to make the t-shirts?
0:24:31And then how are you going to distribute the t-shirts? Do you make a batch? Do you anticipate
0:24:35what the sizes are? Do you get, a lot of these things like Teespring and Cotton Bureau, they
0:24:39take the orders up front and that's so that they know exactly how many to make and they
0:24:43make that many and then they're done. If you don't do that, you risk selling out or being
0:24:48left with stuff that's extra and then somebody's got to fulfill, they call it
0:24:51fulfillment, I hope it's a fulfilling job because technically that's the industry
0:24:55they're in is fulfillment. They've got to put them in boxes and mail them out to
0:24:59people. So there are lots of different choices you have to make when it
0:25:02comes to merchandising.
0:25:03Yeah so what we decided, so basically the hope is that we could try and make some
0:25:09money out of this like there's another way to help support the network and we
0:25:13figured the best way to make the most money, in theory, is to manage the entire
0:25:19thing ourselves. And also we would like to do some different stuff,
0:25:24some interesting things, and we'd like to have a permanent store. And kind of we
0:25:29found the only way to really have a permanent store that we could control
0:25:32in the way we wanted was to set up our own. So that's what we did. So Relay FM's
0:25:37store, like we own an operator, and luckily Brad Dowdy from The Pen Addict,
0:25:42he has a company called Nokk where he makes and sells with his friend and co-business
0:25:48partner Jeff. They sell pen cases.
0:25:52Of course they do.
0:25:54They do indeed. They pack and ship all this stuff out of Atlanta. So they are operating
0:25:59the fulfillment of our products for us. So Brad is helping with the t-shirt printing.
0:26:06They're being printed in a local place in Atlanta. And he was sort of on the ground
0:26:11to check all those out and make sure the proofs were okay. Then we kind of guessed
0:26:15the amounts that we wanted to order because we had no idea of knowing. So we
0:26:22kind of took some guesses, we ordered a bunch in, the t-shirts sold pretty well.
0:26:27The stickers, they were selling a lot better and then we used a sticker
0:26:32printer for that and then we had the sticker printer send the stickers to the
0:26:38shipping house. However we discovered after having all the stickers sent out
0:26:44that they are in varying quality. Unfortunately some are blurry, some
0:26:49are not. We are actually getting them all replaced so if you have been trying to
0:26:53buy a sticker and haven't been able to because we took them off the store
0:26:56because we didn't want to continue getting orders, those stickers should be
0:27:00arriving as we record on the 8th of December 2014. The refreshed stickers
0:27:05arrived today so we hope that they look good and then we'll be able to ship out
0:27:09all of the orders that have been made and then put them back on the store. So
0:27:12these are like the perils of doing it. The thing is we are making more
0:27:18money per order than I have done in previous stuff like this, but we're
0:27:24also just kind of, you know, we're trying to deal with the balancing of when do we
0:27:31actually start making some money because there's not an awful lot of money in it
0:27:35And in theory, the money will get better in the future,
0:27:38but that means we need to keep coming up
0:27:39with new and interesting things
0:27:41that people actually want to buy,
0:27:42because the real AFM t-shirts, the logo t-shirts,
0:27:45which we hope, which we'll probably keep in stock,
0:27:48like forever, you know, at some point,
0:27:52everybody's gonna have one that wants one.
0:27:54- Right, there'll be an army of people
0:27:55wandering around WWDC with the black t-shirt
0:27:58with the white R on it.
0:28:00- I hope so.
0:28:01It's more of a sort of slate blue.
0:28:04- Okay.
0:28:05- It's the same color as the background of the...
0:28:08- It's very dark.
0:28:09- It is very dark.
0:28:10- It's dark, you're right,
0:28:11it is more of a slate blue, isn't it?
0:28:12- Yeah.
0:28:13- All right, you win that one.
0:28:14- So, oh as well by the way,
0:28:16if I do ever see anybody in the world
0:28:18wearing one of these t-shirts,
0:28:20you get a free hug if you want it.
0:28:21- Free hug, yep.
0:28:22- It's yours if you want it,
0:28:23you don't have to take it, I'm not gonna jump.
0:28:25- $100 value.
0:28:26- I may jump on you, but I'll try not to.
0:28:28- Oh my, just don't activate Ahoy! Telephone with that.
0:28:32- Attack hug.
0:28:34And you know, we want to try out some other things.
0:28:36We will do show t-shirts, but they will all be limited.
0:28:40We'll buy X amount of show t-shirts
0:28:43and when they're gone, they're gone.
0:28:45But I think it's about just, this is a lot,
0:28:48this is actually kind of a running theme
0:28:49of the way that me and Steven have set up Relay.
0:28:52We kind of want to control as much of it as possible.
0:28:56It would have been so much easier
0:28:58for us to just set up Teespring.
0:28:59We did it, we did it with the prompt, we had a Teespring.
0:29:03I've done a couple of Teesprings for,
0:29:04I think I did one for the Pen Addict,
0:29:06and I did one for 70 Decibels T-shirts.
0:29:08And I've always been very happy with them, actually.
0:29:10They're very responsive,
0:29:13I've found the quality to be very good.
0:29:15But I and Steven, there we go, that's that.
0:29:20I and Steven wanted to be able to control ourselves,
0:29:25and there's just like, this is a running theme
0:29:28of the things that we're doing,
0:29:30is trying to do it on our own.
0:29:32I mean, obviously it causes a lot more work,
0:29:35but I think that we're happier
0:29:37with the end product actually, in theory.
0:29:40- Well, so this is, I think this is interesting
0:29:43'cause I'm going to, you may well be right,
0:29:46but I'm going to say, I wonder if you're insisting
0:29:50on controlling everything, including things
0:29:54that it may not be worth controlling, maybe not,
0:29:57but having talked to people about this before I did it,
0:30:01I think there are levels here,
0:30:04and you guys are going to this extreme,
0:30:07well, you're not packing and shipping them yourself.
0:30:10You've got somebody to do that,
0:30:11but you did, you wanna keep the store open
0:30:14and you did order a larger amount of merchandise,
0:30:17which is tricky because the more you order,
0:30:20the cheaper per item, but the more stock you have,
0:30:23and then you have to sell out of it,
0:30:27or at least get close enough that you are in the profit,
0:30:30Your profits come at the end after you've sort of,
0:30:33you know, you've sold enough shirts to pay for the run
0:30:35and then the remaining shirts you sell are in the profits.
0:30:39Merchandise can be really successful.
0:30:41The nonprofit that I work for,
0:30:44National Novel Writing Month, that I'm on the board,
0:30:47they make a pretty good amount of money
0:30:51from their merch sales every year,
0:30:54where they've got a new T-shirt every year
0:30:57and a new set of merch and their event is once a year.
0:30:59And that speaks to something, which is there's the ongoing sale versus the kind of stunt sale.
0:31:06And the advantage of doing that stunt sale, like daring fireball t-shirts or when we've done incomparable t-shirts,
0:31:12is there's a time frame you need to order by a certain date or you can't get that.
0:31:16And in terms of buying psychology, a lot of times that's a real motivator.
0:31:21It's, "Oh, I want to buy that now because I want that shirt and I can't just say, 'Well, I'll get it eventually because it'll be gone.'"
0:31:27But it has the direct benefit to the economics of the project by only you're only making
0:31:33as many as there's demand for. And then within that you can go two different ways.
0:31:40Cotton Bureau is basically the people who did Pixel Workers, United Pixel Workers, and
0:31:45a screen printer in Pittsburgh. And they work together now to do Cotton Bureau, and that's
0:31:51end to end. Like literally, you send them a design and if they like it, they will put
0:31:55it up and then there's a crowdfunding kind of model for two weeks and then
0:31:59they print the shirt and they take a lot of money for it but they do everything
0:32:04other than you do the design but even then they they will sometimes help with
0:32:09the design and they want to make sure that it fits with what they're trying to
0:32:11do on the on their site. What John Gruber does with Daring Fireball I believe is
0:32:18he's got a screen printer that he's worked with and that other people have
0:32:20work that he likes.
0:32:22And the screen printer will do the shirts,
0:32:25but John is still taking orders up front.
0:32:29He uses the order taking to determine how many shirts
0:32:33he has the screen printer order.
0:32:34And then I believe the screen printer
0:32:36will do the fulfillment, we'll ship those out.
0:32:39So what John Gruber is doing is he's doing the part
0:32:44of taking orders himself,
0:32:46and then passing that onto the screen printer.
0:32:48So there are lots of different ways you can do this
0:32:51and it sort of becomes how much time do you wanna spend
0:32:53and how much control do you want over it?
0:32:55And for me, with the incomparable stuff,
0:32:58I always felt like,
0:33:01on one level I wanted a lot of control over it,
0:33:03but on another level, I really didn't wanna spend my time
0:33:07worrying about shipping out T-shirts or mugs
0:33:10or anything like that.
0:33:11And so for me, I was willing to pay somebody to do that.
0:33:14And I ended up using Cotton Bureau
0:33:17because I'd bought some pixel worker shirts and they as a proof of concept
0:33:21they were really high quality so I knew I was gonna get something that wasn't
0:33:26like that Zazzle shirt that faded after after one wash.
0:33:29See I appreciate that it what we are doing it requires more work and and at
0:33:36the moment it's requiring an amount of work but in theory if it goes the way we
0:33:41would like it to go a lot of the printing and fulfillment stuff will be
0:33:46handled by and estimated by the guys at NOC. And me and Steven just send them a check,
0:33:52right? And then we split the profits at the end of it. But if it turns out that this doesn't work,
0:33:59then that's fine. But it's an experiment that we wanted to try, and we haven't lost any money on it.
0:34:04And it's tied in with the brand promise of Relay, right? Which is, "Let's do this stuff ourselves."
0:34:11I mean, in some ways, that's part of what Relay represents.
0:34:15And so to have you guys set up your store--
0:34:17and I will admit, I think it's really cool
0:34:19that you've got a store that's open all the time.
0:34:20And things may come in and out of stock,
0:34:22but it's open all the time.
0:34:24There's something cool about that.
0:34:26Because if you want an incomparable Zeppelin shirt
0:34:29today, you can't get it.
0:34:30You just can't get it.
0:34:31We're not selling them.
0:34:32We sold some last year, and we sold some earlier this year.
0:34:36And right now, they're not for sale.
0:34:37And we may have gotten more orders in the meantime,
0:34:41but I also look at Cotton Bureau site where they have a request, a reprint, and there's,
0:34:45you know, there are a bunch of people who've requested a reprint on that already because
0:34:48they just missed it and now it's too late. So I like the idea that it's just sort of
0:34:53all, always available. The problem is just the behind the scenes stuff of the fact is
0:34:57you can't, you can't do a run of one t-shirt. So, you know, if somebody wants, you know,
0:35:04a men's XXL and you're out of men's XXLs, your only choices are to go back and print
0:35:1020 of them or say sorry out of stock maybe later but I like the idea that your store
0:35:16is always there.
0:35:18That was kind of where the original feeling to do this came from was we like the idea
0:35:26of having a permanent store that had some stuff in it.
0:35:30You know, stickers and t-shirts of some description will always be there and maybe if we try some
0:35:37other little things in the future. We'd love to do mugs but we can't do mugs. The fulfillment
0:35:44is too complex and expensive.
0:35:47That's why the incomparable mug that never existed is now exists and it exists on Zazzle.
0:35:52Like I was saying, they're heavy, they're breakable. Just, mmm, no.
0:35:57There are potentially some other things we could do as well as t-shirts, because we will
0:36:02always do t-shirts because t-shirts are fun and also I like having t-shirts for
0:36:07my shows and my stuff however I know that everybody has a million t-shirts so
0:36:14we are thinking of ways and stickers is a good one because
0:36:17stickers are a good one because they're very cheap you know you can get a whole
0:36:22pack for I think it's like eight or nine dollars or something like that and you
0:36:26can buy just a single sticker of your favorite show for two dollars I mean you
0:36:29know that that's that's fun and you can be like me and cover your laptop in stickers.
0:36:36Should we take a quick break and then because I know that you wanted to talk about...
0:36:40We'll jump off of this and talk about something a little bit beyond merch but yes we should
0:36:46hear from a friend first.
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0:38:33Uh, you know, yeah, it's, that's good stuff. That's there, and from friends. Scanning in things,
0:38:41you can scan in real world items, you can scan in crazy stuff, and then you've got it forever.
0:38:48Good. Indeed. So, funding. Funding. This is what we want to talk about right now, right?
0:38:55Yes, we're going to put the fun in funding now. Well, no, I just, we're talking about merchandise,
0:39:01and that brings up a larger issue, which I think is getting money from... Look, we are
0:39:10are, as we've talked about in previous shows, we are people who are trying to find a way
0:39:14to do what we want to do for a living. But part of that is the for a living part, that
0:39:19you can do what you want to do, but then also how are you going to eat? And there are different
0:39:24approaches here, which I think is interesting. It used to be that the approaches were, you
0:39:30know, mainstream media approaches where people paid you for your content and then you also
0:39:34put ads in it. These days, there are lots of different gradations, right? So somebody
0:39:41like John Gruber has site sponsors and podcast sponsors, and we've got podcast sponsors,
0:39:46and that's how we make money from this show is that our good friends give us money in
0:39:52exchange for us talking about our good friends. But there are other approaches, right? Tom
0:39:58Merritt, who used to be at Twit, now has his own daily tech news show. He's using Patreon
0:40:04and he's bringing in $13,000 a month.
0:40:06He's basically got thousands of fans who are paying him,
0:40:11I think it's maybe roughly 5,000 fans paying him about,
0:40:15you know, a little bit less than $3 a month on average.
0:40:18- I'm one of those people.
0:40:20I actually don't even listen to his show every day,
0:40:22but I love Tom and I think he's amazing
0:40:26and he deserves this.
0:40:28- Oh yeah.
0:40:28- He is just the best.
0:40:30He's such a pro.
0:40:32- Oh, he's great.
0:40:33has 4,590 patrons currently paying him $13,149.72 per month. He's fantastic. I've interviewed
0:40:43him a bunch of times. I think I've had him on inquisitive. I'll put the link to that
0:40:48in the show notes.
0:40:49Yeah, so this is, to me, one of the real Patreon success stories, where he's got fans, 4,500
0:40:58of which are able to donate, again, $3 a month. It's not a lot. And that allows him to do
0:41:04the show. And then the show is free. You're not getting anything by donating other than
0:41:08to fund more things for him to do. But that's okay. That's the point of it. And that's a
0:41:13great success story. Then there's somebody like Ben Thompson who does Stratechery. And
0:41:18he posts like a couple of interesting think pieces every, like a couple a week, I think,
0:41:25on stratechery.com, and then he has a daily newsletter
0:41:30that's full of links and other thoughts that he has,
0:41:33and it's a really good newsletter.
0:41:34I subscribe to that, and that's $10 a month
0:41:36or $100 a year, and so for that, you're getting something.
0:41:40You're spending something to support him,
0:41:43but also to get this newsletter that he writes,
0:41:46and he puts a lot of effort.
0:41:47I would say probably 70% of the effort we see
0:41:50on Stratechery is in the newsletter,
0:41:54and then the other 30% is in the pieces on the site.
0:41:56Maybe he would define it differently,
0:41:57but the point is it's a lot.
0:41:59And there are other people out here doing this.
0:42:02I actually had a phone call a few weeks ago
0:42:04with Sean Blank about this,
0:42:05because he has got members on seanblank.net.
0:42:08- He'll be very upset with you, by the way.
0:42:11- Why? - Blanc.
0:42:12- It's Blanc? - Yeah, like Mont Blanc.
0:42:14- Really? - Yeah.
0:42:15- I apologize to Sean and to listener, Tebow.
0:42:20For my, I don't do French.
0:42:22- Sean Blanc, Mont Blanc.
0:42:25Of course you say he's pronounced like a pin, Myke.
0:42:27Of course you would say that.
0:42:28- It's an easy way to remember it.
0:42:30- Shane, Shane Blanc is his name, okay?
0:42:33Shane Blanc.
0:42:34And if you go to shaneblanc.biz.plumbing,
0:42:37you will see, so Sean Mont Blanc pin has a membership too.
0:42:46And I talked to Sean about it.
0:42:47I only used his first name because I hate names, Myke.
0:42:50I don't use, I was walking with my wife yesterday
0:42:53and we were talking about names and how I never,
0:42:56I just never use names.
0:42:57I try not to use people's names ever, Myke,
0:43:00except on shows maybe, Myke.
0:43:02- I'm the same because I'm terrible at remembering names.
0:43:06I'm great at remembering faces, horrible at remembering names.
0:43:10- Yeah, hey you.
0:43:11- So I fall back. - Good to see you.
0:43:12- I fall back to being very British.
0:43:13Oh, hello sir, oh, hello mate.
0:43:15And it works, people just, they like to hear that.
0:43:19especially Americans. It doesn't work so well in this country but Americans like to hear it,
0:43:22they say to let it go well. Ahoy, ahoy, buddy. Yeah, hey pal, hey skipper. That's what I say
0:43:28here to British people. So anyway, Sean's got a membership too and his membership has,
0:43:34I think he does a podcast, a short podcast. Yeah, he does a daily members-only podcast called Sean
0:43:41Today. That's his main thing that he gives and he has like a pledge drive, like a membership drive
0:43:48every year, it's like giveaways and stuff.
0:43:51- Right. - And I know,
0:43:51like Sean is an interesting one to me because he,
0:43:56he was doing this, he's been doing this for a while,
0:43:59there weren't a lot of people that were doing memberships
0:44:01when Sean did his, and he kind of looked to Jon Gruber
0:44:05for inspiration, and then Sean set up his own,
0:44:09and it kind of, it started off a lot of people
0:44:11trying to do sort of, I am an independent writer,
0:44:15please support me type stuff,
0:44:17and Sean has done very well and continues to do very well.
0:44:20I believe it's his main source of income,
0:44:22even though he does own, like, 1,000 websites.
0:44:25I believe that the membership is Sean's thing mainly,
0:44:29and he continues to be very successful from it,
0:44:32which is a great success story.
0:44:34But he also takes sponsorship as well.
0:44:36It's like it's another avenue of income for Sean.
0:44:38- Right, and you put it together.
0:44:40And this is--I think this is interesting.
0:44:42This is not that different from, I think,
0:44:44the struggle that app developers face in terms of deciding how am I going to, you know, can
0:44:50I charge for this app? Can I do in-app purchases? Is there a subscription model here? I mean,
0:44:54this is finding the right way to get people to pay for things is a challenge. And then
0:45:01what I found, and I think Sean has found this, I think Ben Thompson has found this, and it's
0:45:07obvious that Tom Merritt has found this, is there are people who like what you do and
0:45:11and want to support you.
0:45:13And there are different ways to approach that.
0:45:15Tom Merritt, like I said,
0:45:16I don't think the people who give him $3 a month on Patreon
0:45:19are getting access to any special content.
0:45:21They're just getting the good feeling
0:45:23of supporting this guy who's gonna make great stuff
0:45:25that they listen to or watch every day.
0:45:28For someone like Ben or Sean,
0:45:32you're getting something out of it.
0:45:33Now, you may or may not actually listen to every podcast
0:45:35or read every newsletter,
0:45:37but there is a feeling like it's an exchange
0:45:40where I'm giving you money
0:45:41because I like you, but also I get something out of it,
0:45:43whether I take advantage of it or not.
0:45:45And there's some psychology there.
0:45:47And it's just, it's fascinating
0:45:49to see these different approaches.
0:45:50And I mean, the reason that I talked to Sean
0:45:54and didn't use his last name a couple of weeks ago
0:45:56is that I'm absolutely thinking about this.
0:45:58This is one of those things that I'm thinking
0:46:00when I'm trying to come up with a way to, like I said,
0:46:04you know, make a living doing things that I love.
0:46:07And I've heard from people since I left Macworld saying,
0:46:10"How can I support you? I'm not an advertiser. I don't have a product, but I'd like to support you."
0:46:15And right now my answer is, "Well, you can't. I have no way to do that."
0:46:19But tell people about the site. But I'm definitely thinking about this for me or for Six Colors or
0:46:26something like that. Could I do a membership? What would I offer? Would people want to give
0:46:31some money to me on a regular basis to support what I do? In addition to the sponsorships,
0:46:35would that be the difference? It's entirely possible that that could be the difference
0:46:39between me making it or not with something like six colors. It is knowing some of these
0:46:45other examples out there, and Tom is in the stratosphere, I would say, but you can see
0:46:53he's in the stratosphere with 4,500 people. So, you know, it doesn't take that thousand
0:46:59true, that Kevin Kelly thousand true fans thing, there's truth to that. Like, a small
0:47:04group of people paying a small amount of money to somebody to do something that they, you
0:47:09to keep doing what they like that person doing can make the difference between success or failure.
0:47:14And that's fascinating. Now, I haven't done anything about it yet other than think about it,
0:47:19but it's definitely something that I've thought about. I don't know, you know, I don't want to do
0:47:23a tip jar, right? That I don't, and I don't know if you've thought about this for Relay, if you
0:47:28want to do anything other than, you know, sponsorship and some merchandise things. I know
0:47:33people feel like when they buy a t-shirt they're supporting you, but, you know, the amount of money
0:47:37you get it like you said out of a t-shirt is not particularly great so yes
0:47:42I have thought about it yeah yes to which okay I asked you like 90 questions
0:47:48there well in the form of statements so yes yes all of them basically so I get
0:47:55the same thing we get the same thing I would love to support you what do you
0:47:58have a patreon I get that question a couple of times a week at the moment for
0:48:05For a while I was thinking about it, but then after having some conversations and then also
0:48:11thinking about it some more, I love Patreon.
0:48:15I think it's amazing, but for some reason I don't think it's right that we're there.
0:48:20Relay is maybe different to say you.
0:48:25Well, right.
0:48:27I think that's an aspect of this too, is people versus product, because I thought about doing
0:48:32a membership for Incomparable too, but that would be a different thing, and that would
0:48:36be, that's much more complicated because there's different podcasts and different
0:48:39people who would be involved and the money would need to go to different places, and
0:48:43I'm not, you know, that would be a different kind of thing. Not necessarily better or worse,
0:48:47but a very different thing than I'm supporting Jason, doing, and Six Colors being the most
0:48:52obvious place where it's, you know, it's sort of my thing, and I have some other people
0:48:56writing there occasionally, but it's really my thing. And Relay is many things, right?
0:49:00So it's a little harder to pin down,
0:49:03I wanna support Myke versus I wanna support Relay.
0:49:06- And because I am Relay, right,
0:49:08this is where all of my creative endeavors go,
0:49:11I don't wanna have a Patreon for me, right?
0:49:14- Right. - It doesn't feel right.
0:49:15I don't wanna have a Patreon for Relay
0:49:17because Relay is a company that sells ads
0:49:22as well as a company that creates podcasts.
0:49:26- Right.
0:49:27- And there's just something in that to me
0:49:29which is peculiar. Like that I am an entity, as in the business, right? The
0:49:37business has these two parts of it so I don't really want to have a Patreon for
0:49:41that. There's just something about it. So then I thought could we have a direct
0:49:45membership? Again, we do it ourselves. It's another thing I'm thinking would we
0:49:49want to do it ourselves? Maybe. That one is a maybe I think. But I just don't know
0:49:54what I would give and I feel like it would have to be something really good
0:49:57and I don't know what it is yet. I have an idea for a thing that I'm working on, which
0:50:01is not membership-related, but there could be something that falls out of that, which
0:50:06we could offer to people. And maybe, I don't even know if we would want to call it a membership,
0:50:12we might call it something completely different, but it could be a way for people to give us
0:50:15money for a certain thing, right? Like, you're buying something regularly from us, which
0:50:21is digital.
0:50:22And I feel like whether it's a direct transaction of money for a certain thing or it's money for access to a thing, I'd like that.
0:50:33I mean, I mentioned Sean's podcast, right, and Ben Thompson's newsletter, and I think there's some truth to that, that you may not actually read the newsletter.
0:50:42You may not actually subscribe to that podcast. But I still think psychologically you're getting something for your money and that I like that.
0:50:51I like that as a person giving money and as a person receiving money, I think that is a better kind of transaction than Patreon.
0:50:59Although I like the idea of Patreon.
0:51:01I just, it makes me a little uncomfortable because it is, it is surely, I like you.
0:51:07And instead of being like, I like you, so I'm buying your product or subscribing to your, your product.
0:51:14And for me, that, that second one feels better to me.
0:51:17It feels more tangible, even if you don't use the product.
0:51:21Right.
0:51:21You just want to support the person.
0:51:23You don't have to use the product.
0:51:25Nobody's going to make you read the newsletter, but, uh, but there is something
0:51:29there, you are getting something.
0:51:30And when it comes time a year down the road to renew, you have a reason for
0:51:36renewing beyond support, which is access to these, you know, this thing that.
0:51:41Has has maybe some value to you.
0:51:44I don't know.
0:51:45It's, it's a, it's, it's, it's tricky, but I do believe that, that if I were
0:51:49gonna do something like this, I would want to have something as a benefit and not just
0:51:53do Patreon. Patreon, it's really cool. We've talked about it for Incomparable, we've talked
0:52:00about doing it for like our radio dramas, although we've talked about doing Kickstarter
0:52:03for that too, which is also another thing that's out there. The difference there is
0:52:07that Kickstarter, there starts to be this implication that everybody's gonna get goodies
0:52:12and that you're using the cash specifically to fund the project, whereas with Patreon
0:52:16it's more about support. It's about these are people making a cool thing and I want to support them.
0:52:21And that's the, to me, that feels like a difference from Kickstarter where it's literally like,
0:52:27why am I giving you this money to make this thing? So I, you know, the money better be in the thing,
0:52:31which is not always how it works. So I don't know. It's fascinating that there's so many
0:52:36different options here, but I feel totally paralyzed about it. I'm only now at the point
0:52:42where I'm starting to really think maybe I will do something like this, but it's just been,
0:52:46there's so many different approaches and asking people for money, you know, that also is a big
0:52:52step. But at the same time, it's very hard when you're out on your own and people are saying,
0:52:56"I really like the stuff that you've done and I like the stuff you're doing now, but I'm never
0:53:00going to be able to do anything beyond buy a t-shirt and I have too many t-shirts," to just
0:53:04turn them away and say, "Well, you know," I mean, this is what Lex Friedman does when we talk about
0:53:11podcast advertising is, you know, he says, he's told me a few times that, you know,
0:53:16you can do a Kickstarter or you can do something like that, but it's very difficult to get that
0:53:20to work instead of advertising. But you could do both. And that, you know, there, I don't think
0:53:28there's anything wrong with that if the advertising is reasonable.
0:53:32That just feels like, I agree with what you're saying, but it feels like to me, the difference
0:53:38is you, it's just Jason.
0:53:42I don't know, it feels like there's something there
0:53:45which is, it feels better than a big company,
0:53:50but a company.
0:53:54- Certainly, certainly that's true.
0:53:56In the chatroom Brian Hamilton says,
0:53:58I would pay a few bucks a month
0:54:00to see six colors without ads,
0:54:02but this is the thing, and this is actually a path,
0:54:03we tried to go down this with Mac World Insider.
0:54:06First off, the ads on Six Colors are a little text block,
0:54:10a single text block at the top
0:54:11that doesn't change for a week
0:54:12and a single post once a week.
0:54:16So there's not a lot of ad clutter there,
0:54:18but this is the challenge is,
0:54:21if you take your best audience
0:54:24and you sell them a product essentially that blocks the ads,
0:54:28then what you're doing is you're trading,
0:54:31you're adding value by having people give you money
0:54:34and removing value from the people seeing the ads.
0:54:37And that essentially,
0:54:39I've come to believe the math doesn't really work
0:54:43when you do that.
0:54:44You kind of need to do both and it needs to be supplemental.
0:54:48And I think removing ads as the product that you're selling
0:54:51is not necessarily that much of a strong point.
0:54:54Plus people who wanna remove the ads
0:54:56can remove them anyway, or you can ignore them.
0:54:58But that goes, that's sort of what Lex's point was,
0:55:01is if you're trading one for another,
0:55:02it's a lot harder to make the math work.
0:55:04- Yeah, it's like anything that we ever did,
0:55:06we're not gonna get rid of ads
0:55:08and we're not gonna talk about that.
0:55:10I know that it's something that Dan Benjamin talks about
0:55:12with his Patreon.
0:55:14You know, they talk about reducing ads,
0:55:16which is, I mean, I could say it's a very perplexing thing
0:55:19to me because he's in that business.
0:55:22So it's one of the reasons that we wouldn't wanna do it
0:55:24is I believe in the advertising model for podcasts
0:55:30and I will show that it's selling our advertising.
0:55:33- Right.
0:55:34- And that's a big important,
0:55:35that's an important thing to both of me and Steven,
0:55:38is that we don't dilute that.
0:55:40- I appreciate Dan saying,
0:55:42if I get enough money on Patreon,
0:55:45maybe we don't have ads in our podcast,
0:55:47but really that sounds to me like saying,
0:55:50like a professional sports franchise saying,
0:55:53if you fund upgrades to our stadium,
0:55:58maybe ticket prices will go down.
0:55:59No, they're not going to go down.
0:56:02They're going to go up because you're going to get the money from over there.
0:56:04And you're going to get the money from over here.
0:56:06And that's just going to, that's sort of how it works.
0:56:09That's not, you're not, it seems unlikely that it would happen any other way.
0:56:14So yeah, I, I, if nothing else, um, I think what this points out is it's,
0:56:22it's complicated and these things are at least for us, I can't speak for everybody
0:56:28else are things that we think about a lot and think about the ramifications of. And
0:56:32that it's not something you do on a lark. I appreciate that you guys, like me, are really
0:56:40wary about the idea of asking your audience for money. And if you're going to do it, you
0:56:45want to do it right. And if you can't do it right, you don't want to do it. And that's
0:56:49definitely where I am now. And, you know, people like Tom Merritt and Ben Thompson and
0:56:56and Sean Blanc are, that's how you pronounce that,
0:56:59are inspirations in that way, that they have done it.
0:57:02And they've gone out there and asked for support
0:57:04from their audience and gotten it.
0:57:06And that is really inspirational, but it's, you know,
0:57:10when money is involved, especially,
0:57:11you don't want to screw that up.
0:57:12And not just because like, oh no, I might lose money,
0:57:15but like, I don't want to cause a rift between the people
0:57:19who like what I do and me over me mishandling the,
0:57:24you know, whatever it is where money is involved.
0:57:26You know, money can change relationships.
0:57:29I would hate to sour my relationship
0:57:31with the people who like what I do
0:57:32because I asked for money in some, you know,
0:57:37inappropriate way or did something wrong
0:57:40where it was a mess.
0:57:41I don't wanna do that.
0:57:43- Do you know what part of the problem is
0:57:44with removing the ads for money?
0:57:47You actually lose the people that are probably
0:57:50most likely to click or listen or connect to your ads.
0:57:54Yes, that's exactly what they said when we tried to do Mac World Insider was,
0:57:59it's very hard for the salespeople to go out and say,
0:58:01"We're giving you this great audience, the most tied in of which won't see your ads."
0:58:09That's tough. That's a tough one.
0:58:11And that is a true thing.
0:58:13I find that the people that support our sponsors,
0:58:17there are a portion of people that support our sponsors to support us.
0:58:22And that is like the best thing that anybody can do because, I mean, I believe that Relay
0:58:29can make more money from advertising than it can from direct.
0:58:32Yeah.
0:58:33I think in most cases that's just the truth, is that the advertising money has much more
0:58:39upside than the direct sponsorship money.
0:58:42The direct sponsorship money is more constant.
0:58:45It's from the people who really care about you.
0:58:46It's going to be there for you in the lean times, but it's never going to be with very
0:58:51few exceptions. I would say even Tom Merritt, somebody like Tom Merritt who's a success
0:58:55story for Patreon, he can monetize his podcast better with ads on his podcasts than the money
0:59:04he's making from Patreon. And he can choose to do that or not do that, but with an audience
0:59:09the size that he probably has, I would be surprised if that isn't a product that could
0:59:14generate way more than $13,000 a month, right? And that's the trick. So yeah, it's weird
0:59:21"We all just want to make great stuff." Bottom line is we all just want to make great
0:59:25stuff and be able to do that for a living. That's really what it is. And then it's
0:59:28just a matter of the math of how do you do it, how do you make something. I've seen
0:59:33so many businesses that get so deep down into advertising and it's crappy advertising
0:59:37and they make bad decisions and the product suffers. I saw it happen at my previous employer
0:59:45and I've seen it happen elsewhere in the media. I actually don't like the idea of
0:59:50entirely relying on advertising to support yourself because once you're that down in
0:59:57it, it's very hard to, it gets very hard to say no, and you end up compromising so much
1:00:02of what you're doing. Not, not like saying things that aren't true, but like putting
1:00:07junk all over your pages and sending out emails that are full of sponsor messages because
1:00:13you need, nobody wants it, but you need to send it. And I just, I would really like to
1:00:18to not go down that route because I've been there.
1:00:21And audience support is one way
1:00:23that you avoid going down that route and diversifying.
1:00:25And it gets you through the tough times
1:00:27when you might accept that really crappy ad
1:00:31and lets you say, "No, I'm not gonna do that.
1:00:33"That's not what my audience wants."
1:00:35- I have one more last little point
1:00:37that I've been thinking about with this sort of stuff.
1:00:38And I've been having some conversations about this recently.
1:00:41You know that people say quite a bit,
1:00:44not too frequently, but you hear it.
1:00:47your advertisers influence your content.
1:00:49Like this is something that you hear people make the claim
1:00:52or ask, do they?
1:00:54I wonder if listener support or direct support would actually
1:01:00make a bigger change or influence to your content than
1:01:05advertisers.
1:01:06Like for example, if you had a podcast that you liked to be
1:01:14for an hour, but you know, you had a bunch of your listeners that you in, you know, that
1:01:22like the show to be 30 minutes, and the ones that like it to be 30 minutes are the ones
1:01:27that pay, but the people that don't pay like it to be an hour.
1:01:31Where are you going to go with that?
1:01:32Right, and well, if all your funding is from the listeners who pay, you might very much
1:01:39want to do that, or you might provide them with two versions of the show.
1:01:43are lots of different ways to go, but you're right that you've got different customers
1:01:47then in a way, except in some ways that's pure, right? Because we really do make these
1:01:52shows for the audience and not for the advertisers. We had an interesting email thread, you and
1:01:56I, with a gentleman who congratulated us on being independent and then said, "But you
1:02:04know you're not really independent because you just do what your advertisers want you
1:02:08to do." It's like, "Well, no, that's not really how it works." And his response was something
1:02:11like, "Yes, that's really how it works." No, that's not how it works. You have to
1:02:17make the show or the website or whatever for the people who are reading it. And then the
1:02:23advertisers love that you've got such great people reading your stuff or listening to
1:02:27your stuff and they want to reach those people too. But that's not the same as saying,
1:02:32if you build a product for an advertiser, nobody will want to see it. Trust me. I've
1:02:36done the holiday gift guide with like 40 articles about whatever that's labeled holiday gift
1:02:44guide because we sold it.
1:02:47And nobody wants it, but you have to make it because it got sold.
1:02:53And that's not good.
1:02:55That's not good content.
1:02:56The good stuff is the stuff that you make for the real people out there.
1:03:00And so yes, if the real people were giving you money and so your entire model was your
1:03:04audience gives you the money and all you need to do is make them happy, then it's doubly
1:03:10you serving your audience. But you should already be serving.
1:03:13Yeah, of course. It's not why I'm saying that I don't listen to people and do what people
1:03:22would like us to do because ultimately we need the listeners to be here. But I think
1:03:27There's an interesting, I just wonder what is a bigger potential effect, sponsor money or crowdfunding money.
1:03:35Because I would feel more personally attached to the individual who's giving us their money that they earned than the sponsor that we work with.
1:03:45There is just a greater human personal attachment in that instance.
1:03:50Our sponsors are great and I love working with them, but many of them are really large companies.
1:03:55And the person that I'm dealing with is awesome, but they're spending a marketing budget.
1:03:59So it's a little bit more detached.
1:04:01It's a business transaction, but the crowdfunding thing is a direct kind of exchange between
1:04:09two people.
1:04:11And I don't know, I haven't really got a fully fleshed out thought with this one, but it's
1:04:16just something that I've been pondering when thinking about this stuff.
1:04:21Is there a potential bigger, uh, or at least would I feel different about the content?
1:04:29I think I would.
1:04:30I think I would feel different if people were paying me directly for it.
1:04:33Well, I think, I think the most, um, the, the biggest difference would be, we were talking
1:04:42about the thousand true fans approach, right?
1:04:44So you've got a podcast that's being listened to by 20,000 people, but a thousand of them
1:04:48are your true fans.
1:04:50And this is the difference, right? Your sponsors are very happy to reach 20,000 people. So
1:04:57if you're getting money from sponsors, the 20,000 people, that is your target audience.
1:05:03But if you're giving the show away for free, but a thousand people are funding it, then
1:05:08the thousand--shouldn't a thousand people be your target audience, if that's all you're
1:05:12doing? I think this is why it ends up being that a little bit of both is probably a good
1:05:16idea, because you're making something that's got broad appeal, but only a small percentage
1:05:20of the people are going to love it enough to want to give you money for it, and so you
1:05:23have to do a little bit of both.
1:05:26But it's funny that we're living in a world where all these things are possible.
1:05:30Like I said, that just makes it that much more difficult to figure out what you actually
1:05:33want to do.
1:05:36So we've spoken quite a bit about making money.
1:05:38Yes.
1:05:39Jason, let's take a sponsor break.
1:05:42I think it's the right time.
1:05:43Jason, would you like to tell me all about MailRoute?
1:05:46I am speaking to you about MailRoute because they are a friend and because you are my friends.
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1:06:13on your own systems, it happens in the cloud, they would say now, I suppose, at mail route
1:06:19servers. So mail route, the way it works is basically you point your mail inbound at mail
1:06:24route and then it comes to your mail server after that. And mail route does this thorough
1:06:29kind of washing of your email and pulls the spam out. I've been very satisfied. They send
1:06:33me a little email every day that says, "Here's what spam we trapped." And 99 times out of
1:06:39hundred I would say it's all spam and I get a good laugh at some of the subject
1:06:44lines it's like I found your ATM card and you know things in broken English
1:06:49about how I've got an incredible value waiting for me if I will just give them
1:06:54my credit card. Oh you got my email? Yeah thanks Myke I mail route took care of it
1:06:59for me. Such a shame. So it really does a very good job and so I'm getting a lot
1:07:04less spam it's got a lot of settings that you can configure to make it work
1:07:08the way you want, how often you want to get the digest saying what got filtered out.
1:07:13If you're a regular person like me, who's just an individual or I've got a Google Apps
1:07:17installation so I've got like four users on my domain and that was very easy to set up.
1:07:22It all routes through mail route and then comes to us and that's great.
1:07:27If you're an email administrator, an IT pro, something like that, they've got all the tools
1:07:33For you, they've got an API, they support LDAP, Active Directory, TLS, outbound relay,
1:07:40and Myke's favorite feature, mailbagging.
1:07:42Love a mailbag.
1:07:44It's the best. Everything you'd want for people handling your mail.
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1:08:21if you go to mailroute.net/upgrade. And thank you so much to MailRoute for helping put food
1:08:26on the tables here at my house and at Myke's house.
1:08:32Thank you Mauro.
1:08:34And a good friend.
1:08:35A good friend indeed.
1:08:36What else is on the agenda for today's episode?
1:08:41So in the story arc of today, I want to move next.
1:08:44So we talked about merch and then we talked about money and I want to talk about success
1:08:47and failure and we will probably need to go on and on about this at some point in the
1:08:52the future. But Lister Myke sent a link to a post I'd actually already seen, but I hadn't
1:08:58really thought of it as a topic until Lister Myke sent it in, which Anil Dash did a post
1:09:04on the ThinkUp blog at thinkup.com about how ThinkUp is doing as a business. And it's a
1:09:12really good, honest post about how, you know, this is the—Anil is doing this startup with
1:09:18Gina Tripani. It's like social media analytics. I paid for a year of ThinkUp. It's actually
1:09:26really kind of cool. It sends you an email every day saying like finding interesting
1:09:29nuggets about how people have interacted with you on social media. But it's going okay.
1:09:36They're happy with the product, but it's been problematic to market it. And they are building
1:09:42basically what he says is a small solid business, not a venture capital scale business.
1:09:48So it looks like they laid some people off, but they still have other people working on
1:09:53it and it's not dying, it's just not growing as fast as they had hoped.
1:09:59And this resonated with me because John Gruber in his talk at XOXO this year said this too,
1:10:05and it was something that as I was just going out on my own, I filed away and I keep thinking
1:10:11about it too, which is there's success and there's failure and there's this muddy middle.
1:10:16And forgive me, because I think I've talked about this a little bit before, but Anil's
1:10:20post really brought it home, which is, you know, we all view things through the lens
1:10:26of did it work or did it not work? Was that business a success or a failure? Myke, when
1:10:31you quit your job and went out on your own, did you win or did you lose? When I left Macworld
1:10:37and decided to go out on my own, did I win or did I lose? And what Gruber said at XOXO,
1:10:42that's the resonance with Anil's post is, the problem is that it's not a binary
1:10:48answer usually. You usually aren't a crashing failure or a runaway success. A
1:10:54lot of the truth is in the middle and it's the "it's going okay" kind of thing,
1:11:01right? It's not great, it's not terrible, it's okay. And it's much harder to make a
1:11:05decision about "do I want to keep doing this? Is this gonna work? Can I make
1:11:10this work if it's in the middle, because you can say, "Forget about it." Except, I mean,
1:11:16Glenn Fleishman was talking about this for the magazine. It was the same thing. The magazine
1:11:20is wrapping up this month, and he's shutting down production of it. But for a year, he
1:11:25had been caught in the middle of, "I don't want to shut it down because there's money
1:11:29coming in, but there's not a lot of money coming in. So it's not a success. It's not
1:11:33a failure. What do I do?" And I think that's, I think the ThinkUp post just brings it home
1:11:38again that there's a whole lot of gray and that is where most businesses operate and
1:11:46you know especially I think most small businesses and most independent people like us and it
1:11:53I really recommend in Neil's post just because you get that glimpse into they're not a runaway
1:11:58success nor are they a failure. What happens when you're in the middle? How do you do course
1:12:02corrections? How do you figure out how to make it work? When do you start doing what
1:12:06you know, you and I were talking about, which is, are there other revenue streams? Is there
1:12:09some other thing to do? And I, it's way too early in my journey to know whether I'm in
1:12:16success or failure mode here. I would, I would say that I'm not in failure mode yet, but
1:12:20I would say I'm also not yet in success mode. I'm kind of in the middle and I didn't expect
1:12:25to be, but in six months, you know, I'm at the point where I need to make a decision
1:12:29about am I going to, am I going to do this or am I going to write this off? It would
1:12:34really be nice if I had clarity but I need to steel myself for the fact that it's not
1:12:38going to be clear because it probably won't. Chances are it won't be because that's not
1:12:42how most of this stuff ends up.
1:12:47I promise this is not purposeful because there's like another link to inquisitive in the show
1:12:53notes. It's like 4 now. I spoke to Gina Jopani about this last week and there seems to be
1:13:00this the interesting like the idea of where where are you comfortable with
1:13:04your company being and like and it kind of ties into how we were talking about
1:13:08that team aspect like earlier in the show today and last week like I'm happy
1:13:12with us making a decent amount of money and being okay like I say this to people
1:13:19quite a lot like I have no I don't want necessarily it's like it's not on my
1:13:25list of goals for Relay to make me a very wealthy man. That is not what I do
1:13:31this for. I just want to earn a comfortable living and be a podcaster
1:13:37forever. That's all I want this to do. So that kind of middle, like we are
1:13:42surviving, we're doing good, we're paying people, we're making money, it's
1:13:46fine. I'm happy with that. I don't need this to be this American life for me to
1:13:53be happy. Like I'm happy where we are now and I hope that we just scale at that
1:13:59level and then I would you know that's great for me that's all I really need
1:14:03and want this thing to do. Yeah I another part of this I think that goes into
1:14:10Anil's post is that you know they got investors and investors tend to want
1:14:14that venture capital scale growth and that comes back to you know why are you
1:14:19why are you doing this? Neither of us, I think, is in this to create some explosive growth that
1:14:29is going to make us all rich, rich, rich. I think we're all trying to explore doing this and making
1:14:35a living with it. And that's just a different approach. I read all these stories about Gimlet
1:14:40Media and the Startup Podcast and all that, and I thought, well, that would have been the other way
1:14:45to go, right, for Relay or for me or whatever to say, "I'm going to find some investors. They're
1:14:50going to give me a few million bucks and I'm going to get marketing and I'm going to hire talent and
1:14:55I'm going to hire producers and we're going to make a big podcast thing." And that's great as
1:15:00long as it works and you have the explosive growth that's going to be needed to make that investment
1:15:07worthwhile. And neither of us is doing that with what we're doing. We are doing the
1:15:15the sustainable, slow and steady, I want to make something that's successful, but I'm
1:15:23not in this to create that giant thing. And that's okay. I'm not saying that the big startup
1:15:28podcast thing is a bad idea. It's just a very different way to approach it.
1:15:33We thought about it. You know, is this something that we would want to do? And we decided we
1:15:39didn't want to do it. We didn't even go far into, like it was just an idea at the start,
1:15:46you know, do we want to do this? Do we want to look at investment? And it was, for us
1:15:51at least, just very quickly became a, no, we don't want to go down that route. Simply
1:15:57because, you know, the idea of doing it on our own, it doesn't lend to that. So we decided
1:16:05that we wouldn't do it.
1:16:07It just wasn't something that we were willing to try out
1:16:10and we just didn't pursue that route.
1:16:12And I don't begrudge people from doing that.
1:16:15I think that there are definite merits,
1:16:19but we were in a very lucky position
1:16:21that we were able to start this company
1:16:24from savings accounts.
1:16:26And that was perfectly fine.
1:16:29As I'm sure you started Six Colors in the same way,
1:16:34from a savings account that you had probably and won't move it from there.
1:16:39Yeah, oh yeah it's very much that thought, well plus I'm decompressing from
1:16:45you know whatever 17 years at this corporate media job where the other part
1:16:48of it is do I want to immediately come out of that and then enter in a situation
1:16:52where I'm doing something where I have an investor or owner or something
1:16:57who's going to have me make those decisions based not necessarily on
1:17:00making the best product, but on doing what we need to do to grow and generate large revenue
1:17:07growth and boy was I not willing to have those conversations when I was exiting my old job.
1:17:15So under other circumstances would I talk to somebody about creating a media company
1:17:21and with investors and all of that? Sure. I might under other circumstances do that
1:17:29because I have skills in working, you know, creating different products and working with
1:17:34big staffs and stuff like that. But boy, not now. I need more time. I need a lot more time
1:17:41before I would even consider something like that.
1:17:43So do we have anything on others today? I have something I wanted to talk to you about
1:17:48very quickly. Yeah, well, let's do your topic and then we'll forward promote the topic for
1:17:54next week.
1:17:55So this is just a very short thing.
1:17:57I, for the first time today, held an iPad Air 2.
1:18:02And I'm interested by it.
1:18:07It was surprising how thin it actually is.
1:18:13It's not that I'd avoided it,
1:18:14I just assumed that I wouldn't be interested in it
1:18:16because the big iPads are not really the iPads that I buy.
1:18:21Or at least I thought that I was interested in
1:18:24I find sometimes the big iPad to be kind of comical in its own way because it feels like
1:18:31a weird iOS. It's like this huge thing and you know, etc. Anyway, and I know that you
1:18:39have yours. Are you still using the iPad Air 2 as your iPad?
1:18:45No, I'm back to my iPad Mini 2 that I've been using for the last year. I still have the
1:18:53iPad, it's a review unit so I think I have to get it back to them next month
1:18:56but it's around and I will use it occasionally for you know
1:19:01checking something on that on that device but mostly it's back to my the
1:19:06one that I have been using all along the Mini 2. I do every time I get
1:19:11another like Safari tab reload or switch to an app and it has to reload I'm
1:19:16reminded of how much nicer the iPad Air 2 is. Not just because of the speed of
1:19:21processor but because of the RAM. So what would you consider going to iPad Air 2
1:19:31or do you think you're gonna stay with the mini? If I was looking for a brand
1:19:39new iPad right now today, if I didn't have that that mini, the mini 2, so it's a
1:19:48Retina, it's essentially last year's model,
1:19:51same as this year's model of Mini.
1:19:54I would seriously consider the Air 2
1:19:59only because it is so much faster,
1:20:03having that extra RAM is a big deal.
1:20:07And it's so light and thin
1:20:11that even though it's got that huge screen,
1:20:14It doesn't feel enormous.
1:20:17And since I read comics on an iPad,
1:20:22having the bigger screen to read the comics is great.
1:20:24That said, I do so much work responding to emails
1:20:28and tweets and things like that.
1:20:30So much active typing and stuff on the mini
1:20:35in landscape orientation.
1:20:38And I can thumb type really well on that device.
1:20:42And I can't on the Air 2, it's too big.
1:20:45I can't type like that.
1:20:46So I would have to find a new typing strategy,
1:20:49move it into portrait.
1:20:51I don't know what I would do,
1:20:52but I can thumb type really well on the mini.
1:20:55So it would be a lot to give up,
1:20:56but that extra RAM especially, it's just huge.
1:21:00So I don't know, it would be a toss up.
1:21:03Even now it would be a toss up.
1:21:04I think I said in my little "Six Colors Holiday" gift guide
1:21:06that the iPad I recommend right now is the iPad mini 2,
1:21:10'cause it's a really great deal for what it is.
1:21:13And the iPad Mini 3 is not a very good deal.
1:21:17But the Air 2 is a beautiful thing.
1:21:20So, I don't know.
1:21:21I don't know, I'd say it's a toss up.
1:21:24But I'm gonna accept that I'm a weirdo
1:21:27who likes that little iPad Mini.
1:21:29And that most people, I mean you've got a 6 Plus,
1:21:34so geez, you don't need an iPad Mini.
1:21:36- Yeah, so the iPad Mini is in this weird place
1:21:39So sometimes I just want something for a slightly bigger screen, but those things are very, very far and few between.
1:21:47So I was wondering, do I need an iPad in my life? And I was hoping that you would just flat out tell me no, not to get it.
1:21:55But you haven't done that, which is fine. I don't want you to change your...
1:22:00I think, I don't know, I think given what you do for a living, that it's less...
1:22:08just the podcast stuff, I have this dream of being able to take only my iPad with me on a trip or something
1:22:15and leave the Mac at home, but podcasting makes that just not possible.
1:22:20Just the recording and editing and podcasting, some of it is difficult and some of it's impossible.
1:22:24And, you know, I think you've got your laptop and you've got your Mac Mini and you've got your iPhone 6 Plus.
1:22:33And I don't know. I mean, where I use my iPad is on the couch and in the kitchen and in bed.
1:22:39It's like in the house and I'm not actively like writing something.
1:22:44That's what I use. That's my auxiliary computing device.
1:22:48That's what I do Twitter on and check email on.
1:22:52it's almost entirely that on the iPad mini.
1:22:57And it's great for that.
1:22:58- A bit of real time follow up.
1:23:03- Yes.
1:23:05- The new stickers look good.
1:23:07- Oh good.
1:23:08- So just receive pictures right now.
1:23:10- And I have opened the all the #AskUpgrade tweets
1:23:14at Google doc and there are indeed three tweets in it.
1:23:17- Wow.
1:23:19And Kyle Seth Gray says, what's the best burrito?
1:23:24- Okay.
1:23:25- And my favorite burrito is a barbecue chicken burrito
1:23:29that I get at my local burrito,
1:23:32burrito, burriteria?
1:23:36I don't know.
1:23:37That's the one that I like.
1:23:38That's my favorite, it's great.
1:23:39So yeah, barbecue chicken and beans
1:23:42and like a barbecue saucy kind of sauce
1:23:45and some grilled onions and it's really good.
1:23:49That's my best burrito.
1:23:50So see, right from the spreadsheet, look at that.
1:23:52- Perfect.
1:23:54- And a listener at Murder of Crows on Twitter asks,
1:23:57"Does this thing work? #AskUpgrade."
1:24:00Yes.
1:24:01- We can confirm it does.
1:24:02- Yep.
1:24:03- So we would like to tease next week's topic.
1:24:07- Yes.
1:24:09Holidays, did you know that it's the holidays, Myke?
1:24:15- I'd heard the rumors.
1:24:17Thanksgiving is over, as you know.
1:24:19You're finally out of the haze of Thanksgiving.
1:24:22All those leftovers, all that turkey.
1:24:23Woo.
1:24:24It is the holidays.
1:24:27It is the end of the year,
1:24:28celebrating the fact the earth goes around the sun.
1:24:31It's like another loop completed, happy new year.
1:24:36I think something that we should probably talk about
1:24:39this month is about the holidays
1:24:41and about what all goes into that
1:24:44along with like bests and favorites of the year
1:24:46and gift ideas and other things like that.
1:24:49So if people have feedback or thoughts
1:24:51about best of the year and holidays and gifts
1:24:53and things like that, maybe they should send those along
1:24:56because we'll talk about that next week.
1:24:58And then presumably the week after too,
1:25:01because we've got December on one level,
1:25:03it feels like it goes on forever.
1:25:04On another level, I feel like completely stressed out
1:25:09about how little time I've got between now
1:25:12and when we're leaving,
1:25:13'cause we're going to visit my mom in Arizona.
1:25:15And so I've only got two weeks and then we're on the road.
1:25:19Um, and I'm hoping still to do an episode of upgrade where I just call you from out
1:25:23in the middle of the desert, just like in the car, driving through the desert.
1:25:27And there's no one around, but like a tumbleweed and a coyote.
1:25:30And we do a show.
1:25:31I would like that very much.
1:25:33We'll see.
1:25:33Maybe.
1:25:34I would like that very much.
1:25:36Indeed.
1:25:37If you'd like to find the show notes for this week's episode, you want to take your
1:25:40web browser and point it towards relay.fm/upgrade/13.
1:25:47Lucky number 13 is a lovely list of links in there.
1:25:50If you'd like to find me on the internet I'm @imike and I'm a podcaster at relay.fm.
1:25:56Mr Jason Snell writes the fantastic six colours and he is @jsnell on twitter j s n e double
1:26:02L. We'll be back next time don't forget #askupgrade.
1:26:05Ask Upgrade. And I hope that you've enjoyed this episode.
1:26:11Yes, as do I. And we'll be back. Say goodbye, Jason.
1:26:15Farewell.
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