Cortex

00:00:00 ◼   ► This time on State of the Workflow, I'm joined by Ben Thompson.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Ben is the writer behind Stratekery, which for the last 13 years has been

00:00:08 ◼   ► one of the most influential publications in technology, a one-person operation that's read inside

00:00:14 ◼   ► of every company that he writes about.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Strategry started in twenty thirteen as a blog about the business and strategy of

00:00:20 ◼   ► tech.

00:00:21 ◼   ► It's grown into a daily paid update, a weekly free article, a bundle of

00:00:25 ◼   ► podcasts including Sharp Tech and Dithering, a run of interviews with the CEOs of

00:00:29 ◼   ► Microsoft, NVIDIA, Meta, Netflix, Google, OpenAI, and many more, and along the way, Ben

00:00:34 ◼   ► built his own publishing platform to run it all on, which now powers some

00:00:38 ◼   ► other publications too.

00:00:39 ◼   ► It's a lot of output to manage for one person.

00:00:42 ◼   ► So for this conversation, I wanted to understand how Ben is able to find

00:00:45 ◼   ► his focus and put together an update.

00:00:47 ◼   ► So we're gonna follow that process from start to finish.

00:00:50 ◼   ► You're gonna hear about this more later in the show, but the subtle range

00:00:54 ◼   ► is back on sale at cortexmerch.com.

00:00:57 ◼   ► I am so proud of this clothing line that we produce and we have

00:01:00 ◼   ► some wonderful updates this year.

00:01:02 ◼   ► It is only available until November 19th, so check it out.

00:01:06 ◼   ► But for right now, let's get on with the show.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Ben I wanna get started by asking you, what is an app that you're

00:01:13 ◼   ► using right now that you're really enjoying?

00:01:15 ◼   ► Honestly the real answer to apps is like Codecs or like ChatGPT or Cloud

00:01:20 ◼   ► or whatever, because we're making more and more of our own apps for just

00:01:23 ◼   ► little workflow jobs.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Yeah I guess that is the funny thing.

00:01:26 ◼   ► Like I asked this question to everyone and I think over time it does

00:01:30 ◼   ► feel like we're gonna start trending towards the my favorite app is the app

00:01:33 ◼   ► that makes my apps.

00:01:34 ◼   ► It's totally true.

00:01:35 ◼   ► There was like that article floating around about where's the great AI app.

00:01:38 ◼   ► And I don't know that we're ever going to get one because from my

00:01:41 ◼   ► perspective, I'm making incredible apps.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Not that they're incredible technically, but they are tailor fit to solve specific problems

00:01:50 ◼   ► that we have, which by definition makes it the best possible app.

00:01:54 ◼   ► And I'm never going to release any of these publicly.

00:01:56 ◼   ► And I'm not just me doing it.

00:01:58 ◼   ► Like people that I work with are doing these little things.

00:02:01 ◼   ► So if you think about that, number one, great software as in it solves

00:02:06 ◼   ► a problem is increasingly not going to be released to anyone, which didn't before.

00:02:10 ◼   ► If you're to put all the effort to put in to build software, you

00:02:13 ◼   ► would want it to be broadly used just to make your money back, if

00:02:16 ◼   ► anything else.

00:02:17 ◼   ► But then number two, I was previously the best customer

00:02:21 ◼   ► for software developers because I would buy expensive software.

00:02:25 ◼   ► I would gladly pay.

00:02:26 ◼   ► I'd pay a subscription, whatever might be if that software solved my needs.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And I'm increasingly just not a customer for new software because I'm just gonna

00:02:34 ◼   ► make it myself.

00:02:35 ◼   ► See, I feel like I am very happy to make tools that are very

00:02:41 ◼   ► specific to a specific use case.

00:02:43 ◼   ► But if it's something general purpose, I have no interest in vibe coding it.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Like to do app, I'm never gonna do it.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Oh, for sure.

00:02:50 ◼   ► I never plan to have any of the vibe coded stuff I'm making broadly

00:02:53 ◼   ► available.

00:02:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:53 ◼   ► Customer support is a nightmare.

00:02:55 ◼   ► Customer support for a product that you did not like deeply think about and

00:02:58 ◼   ► think through from an architectural perspective, particularly a security perspective.

00:03:02 ◼   ► And the vibe coding goes wrong.

00:03:05 ◼   ► You have to tell it continually explicitly, there isn't a privacy concern here.

00:03:10 ◼   ► This is running out of private network.

00:03:12 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:03:13 ◼   ► That's where it spins out of control is it's trying to like cover every

00:03:16 ◼   ► possible edge case, usually for privacy or security reasons.

00:03:20 ◼   ► And so you have to tell it continuously, best effort, it's fine.

00:03:24 ◼   ► This is running on a whole private network.

00:03:26 ◼   ► I have a server here that runs the apps that we make.

00:03:30 ◼   ► That is you can only access it if you're my tail scale network.

00:03:33 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Relax.

00:03:34 ◼   ► And then that usually like stops the oh this job ran for two hours.

00:03:39 ◼   ► What's going on here?

00:03:40 ◼   ► So we could probably speak for two hours about this book today.

00:03:43 ◼   ► I want to talk to you about what it takes to make strategy.

00:03:47 ◼   ► What is strategic?

00:03:49 ◼   ► Well, it's become more and more things, but at its core, it's a newsletter

00:03:53 ◼   ► about the intersection of strategy and technology.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Thus the name, which is very obvious once you know that and not at

00:03:58 ◼   ► all obvious before then.

00:03:59 ◼   ► I think we've long passed the horizon line on the name.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Like the name is just what it is now.

00:04:04 ◼   ► It's really I'm the one that always goes back to the well.

00:04:07 ◼   ► It's a great talking point.

00:04:08 ◼   ► The word of mouth newsletter that you can't pronounce.

00:04:11 ◼   ► When someone asks you what you do for a living, how do you answer

00:04:14 ◼   ► that question?

00:04:15 ◼   ► I say I write about technology.

00:04:17 ◼   ► Okay.

00:04:17 ◼   ► Do you consider yourself an analyst?

00:04:19 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the title that I use if I have to like fill in

00:04:22 ◼   ► a form.

00:04:23 ◼   ► I just say analyst.

00:04:24 ◼   ► I mean I also like tongue in cheek, like say that I'm a blogger,

00:04:28 ◼   ► which I do consider myself to be.

00:04:30 ◼   ► And I enjoy that because amongst technology, it's fine.

00:04:34 ◼   ► Of course bloggers are bloggers.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Amongst other people it's like, oh, you're a blogger which I sort of relish

00:04:39 ◼   ► in.

00:04:39 ◼   ► So I'm yeah, just a lowly blogger trying to make my way in the

00:04:42 ◼   ► world.

00:04:42 ◼   ► 'Cause I guess it just whatever suits the scenario, right?

00:04:44 ◼   ► Because not all analysts are bloggers.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I am not a Substacker.

00:04:48 ◼   ► That is the one that irritates me.

00:04:49 ◼   ► I'm like look, no, Substack copied me.

00:04:52 ◼   ► We're gonna get to this.

00:04:53 ◼   ► That's right.

00:04:54 ◼   ► So So yeah, Stratekri at its core is delivered by email.

00:04:58 ◼   ► I'm I'm gonna erupt you because actually that's the same mistake Substack made early

00:05:02 ◼   ► on as they got two indexed on email.

00:05:03 ◼   ► Shotecari is a blog.

00:05:05 ◼   ► That actually is the conception I have in my mind.

00:05:08 ◼   ► And I will deliver you the content that I write in the way that

00:05:13 ◼   ► is easiest for you.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Do you think your customers think of it as a blog over an email?

00:05:18 ◼   ► I think the core ethos of Stratekery is I don't care what my customers

00:05:21 ◼   ► think.

00:05:21 ◼   ► Yep.

00:05:22 ◼   ► I write what is interesting to me, what's important to me, and I think

00:05:26 ◼   ► about my business in that terms.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Strategic is in many sense a journal of my attempts to understand the technology

00:05:33 ◼   ► industry.

00:05:34 ◼   ► And I will continually update my views and write them down and then share

00:05:39 ◼   ► them with you in the format that's easiest for you.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And I don't mean this to be dismissive of my customers.

00:05:43 ◼   ► I love my customers.

00:05:44 ◼   ► They make this possible.

00:05:45 ◼   ► But the moment I start catering to them or letting that influence what I

00:05:49 ◼   ► write about or my views, like audience capture is obviously a real thing.

00:05:54 ◼   ► And not only would that be bad in terms of the content that I

00:05:57 ◼   ► do, but it would be bad for me.

00:05:59 ◼   ► And that's when you start burning out.

00:06:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:01 ◼   ► Is when you do stuff that it's not for you, it's for someone else.

00:06:04 ◼   ► I think that is what I like about your work is that I don't

00:06:08 ◼   ► always agree with you.

00:06:09 ◼   ► I often disagree with you.

00:06:11 ◼   ► But I like that I disagree with you.

00:06:13 ◼   ► It's what I enjoy about reading, right?

00:06:16 ◼   ► I don't want to subscribe to Shattery to have someone tell me all of

00:06:20 ◼   ► the things I already think.

00:06:22 ◼   ► It's what I appreciate about your writing is that you challenge me.

00:06:25 ◼   ► And sometimes I didn't agree with what you had to say, but then as

00:06:29 ◼   ► the days go on, I'm like, you know what?

00:06:31 ◼   ► Ben made a bunch of really interesting points there.

00:06:33 ◼   ► You know like they kind of like turn over in my head.

00:06:35 ◼   ► No, it sounds like cliche, but that is the ideal.

00:06:38 ◼   ► On one level, I'm selling my views of the world.

00:06:41 ◼   ► On a deeper level and on an idealized level, I am selling a ongoing

00:06:46 ◼   ► ongoing trigger to make you think.

00:06:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:48 ◼   ► So I'll say what I think.

00:06:49 ◼   ► I'll try to lay it out very logically.

00:06:51 ◼   ► If I get it wrong, I'll come back and not just say I got

00:06:53 ◼   ► it wrong, but also say this is the thought process that led me to

00:06:56 ◼   ► this conclusion and here's where I messed up.

00:06:59 ◼   ► But the idea is you should read it and say, I disagree, but you'll

00:07:03 ◼   ► at least be forced to think about why you disagree.

00:07:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:06 ◼   ► I should strengthen your disagreement in the best scenario because it's very clear why

00:07:11 ◼   ► you disagree, and then you have a better understanding of your underlying precepts and

00:07:15 ◼   ► why that led you in a different direction.

00:07:18 ◼   ► So Shratekuri started off as a blog delivered by email for the majority of

00:07:22 ◼   ► its customers, but now Stratekeri is so much more.

00:07:26 ◼   ► You have Shratekeri Plus, which you also remember also referred to as the Shotecari

00:07:29 ◼   ► bundle because it is a bundle.

00:07:31 ◼   ► But what are people getting with Shatecary now?

00:07:33 ◼   ► Like what is the overall suite of products that you offer?

00:07:36 ◼   ► Shotecari did start out as just a blog.

00:07:38 ◼   ► It was only on the web.

00:07:39 ◼   ► But it started with the idea of Shatakuri as a business embedded from the

00:07:44 ◼   ► beginning.

00:07:45 ◼   ► But at the beginning, when I was writing Strathechery, I limited myself to two

00:07:49 ◼   ► things a week.

00:07:50 ◼   ► And these were all sort of just a regular blog, front-page articles.

00:07:54 ◼   ► The other real pioneer in this space was Andrew.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Sullivan.

00:07:57 ◼   ► So he had this super high volume blog.

00:08:02 ◼   ► It was hosted by The Atlantic.

00:08:03 ◼   ► And then I think i he went independent at some point called The Daily

00:08:06 ◼   ► Dish.

00:08:06 ◼   ► And this was like just the volume was ridiculous.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Like fifty items a day, just like the ultimate blogger.

00:08:12 ◼   ► And I think what happened was he was at the Atlantic, he left the

00:08:15 ◼   ► Atlantic and he wanted to do a subscription, but he never changed the format

00:08:20 ◼   ► of what he was doing.

00:08:22 ◼   ► It was just like nope, now there's a paywall.

00:08:24 ◼   ► And then the paywall is like super loose.

00:08:26 ◼   ► You had to like hit more than thirty or something.

00:08:28 ◼   ► And so it was like he was almost taxing like his best customers.

00:08:31 ◼   ► That was the way people thought about paywalls, is well, sucks.

00:08:34 ◼   ► There's a paywall now.

00:08:36 ◼   ► And when I started Stratekery, I wanted the experience of customers to be happy

00:08:44 ◼   ► about paying, in that I like what's here and if I pay, I can

00:08:49 ◼   ► get more.

00:08:50 ◼   ► And I'm like, okay, this is the right model.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Stripe, I just come out with stripe billing, but I want this to be

00:08:55 ◼   ► a psychologically pleasing experience.

00:08:59 ◼   ► And so when I started Sheteckery, knowing I want to do subscriptions, I limited

00:09:03 ◼   ► the amount of content.

00:09:04 ◼   ► And then the idea was if you're a subscriber, you get more.

00:09:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:09 ◼   ► Now the whole way I launched it was a total mess.

00:09:11 ◼   ► I had like a super convoluted website.

00:09:13 ◼   ► The logged in experience was way different than the logged out experience.

00:09:15 ◼   ► And what happened was I'm like, this is totally wrong.

00:09:17 ◼   ► I ripped it all out and just said if you're a subscriber.

00:09:20 ◼   ► I'll send you an email.

00:09:21 ◼   ► And so I fell totally backwards into email, actually.

00:09:25 ◼   ► It wasn't this great strategic plan.

00:09:27 ◼   ► And then it turned out, oh, email is actually the thing.

00:09:30 ◼   ► It's funny, like now it's like remember not what What's the checker?

00:09:33 ◼   ► Oh, should repine your email.

00:09:34 ◼   ► It's like over the weekend, this website didn't work.

00:09:37 ◼   ► It was super confusing.

00:09:38 ◼   ► It was a mess.

00:09:39 ◼   ► I'll just send you an email is actually how it came about.

00:09:41 ◼   ► Yeah, but it was the core business, as you say, was the thing that

00:09:44 ◼   ► people wanted and it was just you had to work out the right delivery

00:09:47 ◼   ► mechanism and it turned out that email newsletter was the right delivery mechanism because

00:09:51 ◼   ► it wasn't really something people were monetizing at that point, right?

00:09:54 ◼   ► Like it wasn't a thing that you paid for.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Like the idea of paying for email at that point is kind of a

00:09:59 ◼   ► funny thing that you know like why would I pay to get more email?

00:10:03 ◼   ► But now I mean you really did pioneer a business model that exists now

00:10:08 ◼   ► through many different companies trying to do a similar thing and many publications doing

00:10:12 ◼   ► a similar thing.

00:10:12 ◼   ► Which is awesome.

00:10:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean it's one of the al always be most well known for

00:10:15 ◼   ► Strichecary.

00:10:17 ◼   ► But to me, it is just as, if not more, rewarding to know there's

00:10:21 ◼   ► so many people out there making a living doing this sort of thing.

00:10:26 ◼   ► It's very gratifying.

00:10:27 ◼   ► It's funny really, like one of the things in the Shattachery Plus bundle is

00:10:31 ◼   ► Dithering, which is a show that you do with previous Cortex guest John Gruber.

00:10:36 ◼   ► And John is known for a lot of things, but one of the things

00:10:39 ◼   ► people kind of in my business remember him for is his membership.

00:10:42 ◼   ► Right?

00:10:42 ◼   ► Like the Daring Fireball membership was basically the first thing of its kind.

00:10:48 ◼   ► Like you pay them money and you'd get something in return, and it was

00:10:51 ◼   ► the RSS feed.

00:10:52 ◼   ► But it is funny about how like what you have given to other creators,

00:10:56 ◼   ► both of you, in the form of business models, but that also probably makes

00:10:59 ◼   ► sense for the whole reason behind it in the first place.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Well I mean the Gruber story is actually really interesting too because I think

00:11:04 ◼   ► the degree to which he's pioneer is actually even more underrated.

00:11:07 ◼   ► So he started out selling memberships, which I should actually cite going forward.

00:11:11 ◼   ► I didn't even think about it.

00:11:12 ◼   ► I usually give the credit to Andrew Sullivan.

00:11:14 ◼   ► But what happened was Google Reader came along and Google Reader didn't call customized

00:11:18 ◼   ► RSS feeds.

00:11:19 ◼   ► And so basically it broke his business model.

00:11:22 ◼   ► And so what he did was then okay, I'm just gonna put sponsor content

00:11:26 ◼   ► in the RSS feed.

00:11:28 ◼   ► And I think that's the creation of in feed advertising, which is basically the

00:11:34 ◼   ► advertising model for the internet.

00:11:36 ◼   ► That is what meta does before ads were just around the content.

00:11:39 ◼   ► Now the ads were in the content.

00:11:42 ◼   ► And I think it's very underappreciated.

00:11:44 ◼   ► I've long given him credit for this.

00:11:45 ◼   ► He basically pioneered Infied advertising, which is the business model of the internet, in

00:11:49 ◼   ► addition to inventing Markdown,

00:11:58 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by the Subtle Range from Cortex Brand.

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00:12:15 ◼   ► Today I am wearing one of our subtle sweaters, the nice grey one, real

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00:12:20 ◼   ► We've built up a small collection over the past years, and every piece is

00:12:24 ◼   ► something I reach for on my wardrobe, as do thousands of other Cortexans.

00:12:28 ◼   ► We have a couple of styles of t-shirt, a lightweight cut, which is soft,

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00:12:34 ◼   ► There's a heavyweight T, which has more of an oversized elevated fit.

00:12:37 ◼   ► That is still my personal favorite.

00:12:40 ◼   ► There's the classic sweatshirt, the lightweight hoodie, the quarter zip pullover that we introduced

00:12:44 ◼   ► last year, which I had no idea I was gonna love as much as

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00:12:47 ◼   ► And this year we're adding some heavier styles.

00:12:50 ◼   ► We have a heavyweight hoodie in both a pullover and full zip.

00:12:53 ◼   ► This is the first time we've done the subtle line with either of these

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00:12:57 ◼   ► There's also a heavyweight crew neck sweatshirt and a new midweight pullover.

00:13:01 ◼   ► So there's tons of different options for the type of clothes you want to

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00:13:05 ◼   ► These are the kinds of pieces that feel substantial the moment you put them

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00:13:22 ◼   ► it out, now's the time to do it.

00:13:24 ◼   ► Get your orders in by November 19th.

00:13:27 ◼   ► You can check out the full collection, including all of our new pieces over

00:13:30 ◼   ► at Cortex Cortexbrand.com.

00:13:33 ◼   ► That is cortexbrand.com.

00:13:35 ◼   ► So let's talk about what it takes to build an issue of Stateri.

00:13:40 ◼   ► So yeah, we've mentioned, you know, Stritechari is a website, it's an email newsletter,

00:13:43 ◼   ► and there are supporting podcasts as well that make up the Shotecari Plus bundle.

00:13:47 ◼   ► But I am assuming the majority of your customers are subscribing first and foremost

00:13:52 ◼   ► to get the Shotekari update.

00:13:55 ◼   ► And there's a free article and you have interviews as well as part of

00:13:58 ◼   ► the kind of like shutechari piece.

00:14:00 ◼   ► So I want to talk about what it takes to put an update together.

00:14:03 ◼   ► So this is just one of your emails that you send a couple of

00:14:06 ◼   ► times a week.

00:14:07 ◼   ► How does work start for you in the morning on an update day?

00:14:11 ◼   ► Do you begin by digging into news?

00:14:13 ◼   ► Are you checking email?

00:14:15 ◼   ► What are the first kind of things you're doing?

00:14:17 ◼   ► I think the reality of Stratekri and of the daily updates is I am

00:14:21 ◼   ► always thinking about it 24-7.

00:14:23 ◼   ► Okay.

00:14:24 ◼   ► So I'm on Twitter, I'm Tech Meme.

00:14:26 ◼   ► It's sort of like a background process is always running in my head.

00:14:30 ◼   ► And so I kind of know what I'm going to write about on Monday.

00:14:32 ◼   ► So I call them big articles and then updates.

00:14:35 ◼   ► The articles are the free ones.

00:14:37 ◼   ► And the free ones are more challenging because I'm writing for a very disparate

00:14:42 ◼   ► audience.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Yep.

00:14:43 ◼   ► Some people who are seeing the site for the first time, existing customers, it

00:14:46 ◼   ► might go viral and get spread.

00:14:49 ◼   ► And a key aspect of Strategary success is my best pieces tell a story.

00:14:54 ◼   ► There's a beginning and a middle and an end.

00:14:56 ◼   ► And it's like compelling.

00:14:57 ◼   ► And so you're along for the ride with it.

00:15:00 ◼   ► That is hard.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Whereas the daily updates are much easier in that figure out what to write

00:15:06 ◼   ► and writing it is hard but I give myself more leeway in terms of

00:15:10 ◼   ► assuming more knowledge on my audience, assuming they reach your tech re regularly.

00:15:15 ◼   ► So I can be much more self-referential without having like quote myself a bunch.

00:15:18 ◼   ► And also it's just like Here's an excerpt from a story and here's my

00:15:22 ◼   ► commentary on it.

00:15:23 ◼   ► I don't need to think of an introduction.

00:15:25 ◼   ► I don't need to think of a conclusion.

00:15:26 ◼   ► The best ones still tie together.

00:15:28 ◼   ► They still have a narrative, but I don't hold myself to needing to deliver

00:15:33 ◼   ► on a narrative.

00:15:33 ◼   ► And that sort of like makes it easier.

00:15:36 ◼   ► So for an article, I'm already think like, what's the narrative?

00:15:41 ◼   ► What's the hook?

00:15:42 ◼   ► I kind of have a this concept, this idea.

00:15:44 ◼   ► For an update, it's more a matter of what just happened.

00:15:48 ◼   ► So it might be an Apple like the the iPhone event.

00:15:51 ◼   ► Like it's funny, iPhone events used to be articles and narratives.

00:15:54 ◼   ► Now they're just updates.

00:15:55 ◼   ► I'll have some commentary on the iPhone.

00:15:57 ◼   ► It might be earnings is like a kind of an obvious one.

00:16:00 ◼   ► Earnings are great in that I know exactly what I'm gonna write about.

00:16:04 ◼   ► They always take way longer than I expect because I actually going through the

00:16:08 ◼   ► numbers, reading through the earnings calls, like there's a lot of like sort of

00:16:11 ◼   ► laborious work that goes with it and make sure you have you know come

00:16:13 ◼   ► up with your take.

00:16:14 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm thinking about it sort of twenty-four-seven.

00:16:17 ◼   ► Ideally I know what I'm going to write about, but sometimes you sit down

00:16:23 ◼   ► and sometimes you have to write what I call a professional update.

00:16:27 ◼   ► And a professional update is you're not feeling it, you don't have any ideas,

00:16:31 ◼   ► and you're gonna come up with an update that is maybe not gonna be

00:16:34 ◼   ► the best thing you ever wrote, but it's gonna be something that is of

00:16:37 ◼   ► sufficient quality that you're going to deliver what you promised.

00:16:41 ◼   ► Now that's not my goal to be clear, but that's the reality of writing

00:16:45 ◼   ► every day is sometimes they're like that.

00:16:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I think of that similarly as doing the job.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Like you, right?

00:16:50 ◼   ► I have content that comes out on a schedule, it comes out weekly or

00:16:52 ◼   ► comes out monthly.

00:16:54 ◼   ► Sometimes on a weekly news show there's not news and you have to come

00:16:58 ◼   ► up with your own things to talk about, you're doing the job that day.

00:17:01 ◼   ► That's right.

00:17:02 ◼   ► Or the news is you gotta write about the DMA for the fiftieth time.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Or you know, you it's like you're doing the job.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Regulation and court cases.

00:17:10 ◼   ► Just awful.

00:17:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:11 ◼   ► I think the challenge that I have, and this was much easier in so

00:17:14 ◼   ► I was in Taiwan for the first, you know, many years of Shutechri, and

00:17:18 ◼   ► now I'm in the US.

00:17:19 ◼   ► And the worst part about being in the US, and the best part about

00:17:21 ◼   ► that was being in Taiwan is for actual writing, I do need to like

00:17:28 ◼   ► get in the zone and sort of lock in.

00:17:31 ◼   ► And it's funny, once I'm in the zone, it's fine.

00:17:35 ◼   ► I'll get it done.

00:17:36 ◼   ► The process of getting in the zone can be like a multi-hour sort of

00:17:42 ◼   ► thing.

00:17:42 ◼   ► And the reality is the forcing function to get in the zone is usually

00:17:46 ◼   ► an impending deadline.

00:17:48 ◼   ► People think that I'm very productive and the reality is I have a daily

00:17:52 ◼   ► deadline that I have to write and get it out.

00:17:55 ◼   ► So I'm thinking about it, but it's hard for me to get stuff done

00:17:59 ◼   ► during the day.

00:18:00 ◼   ► Just because there's people around, I have to go pick up my son, I

00:18:03 ◼   ► have to do this.

00:18:04 ◼   ► And also the deadline is not till tomorrow.

00:18:06 ◼   ► I can and so I don't do as much during the day now as

00:18:11 ◼   ► I would have liked.

00:18:12 ◼   ► In Taiwan, because it was twelve hours ahead, the deadline was like six PM

00:18:18 ◼   ► and so that meant the afternoons perfect, kids are at school, could sort of

00:18:23 ◼   ► get it done.

00:18:24 ◼   ► In the States, the reality is I usually do most of my writing at

00:18:27 ◼   ► night.

00:18:27 ◼   ► The house is quiet and the deadline is impending and I have to lock

00:18:31 ◼   ► in and get it done.

00:18:32 ◼   ► Yeah, you see I I hadn't realized the change in time 'cause Shriker was

00:18:38 ◼   ► comes out relatively early for many.

00:18:40 ◼   ► Well the thing is it's much more regular now because now I finished writing

00:18:44 ◼   ► at night and then it's scheduled to come out at six AM.

00:18:47 ◼   ► So it always comes out at six AM now, Eastern time.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Before it would come out when I was done.

00:18:52 ◼   ► So it's better in some respects.

00:18:54 ◼   ► Like for example, the podcast now.

00:18:56 ◼   ► The podcast comes out as the same time as the update.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Whereas before the update would go out and then like an hour later the

00:19:02 ◼   ► podcast would come out because it had to actually be produced.

00:19:04 ◼   ► So there's aspects where this new system is better in terms of like I

00:19:09 ◼   ► deliver to my customers at the same time every single day, which I think

00:19:12 ◼   ► is really important because I think strategy, particularly being four days a week, it's

00:19:18 ◼   ► part of people's routine.

00:19:19 ◼   ► They're used to reading it in the same place or listening to it in

00:19:22 ◼   ► the same time every single day.

00:19:23 ◼   ► And it's good to deliver on that.

00:19:26 ◼   ► And that was a problem in Taiwan.

00:19:27 ◼   ► I sometimes would be really late.

00:19:30 ◼   ► But from a personal standpoint, it was nicer to write in the afternoon than

00:19:34 ◼   ► at night.

00:19:35 ◼   ► But that's the time that works for me.

00:19:37 ◼   ► And I guess even though it's changed from when something was done you would

00:19:41 ◼   ► publish it, the fact that you're writing late in the evening and it publishes

00:19:44 ◼   ► early in the morning, it's unlikely that anything is going to change now.

00:19:48 ◼   ► I was trying to get super disciplined about writing during the day and I

00:19:51 ◼   ► wrote this long thing when open I released Chat GPT five, which, you know,

00:19:55 ◼   ► reduced the models.

00:19:56 ◼   ► There's only three.

00:19:57 ◼   ► It defaulted to using like a router where it chose the model for you.

00:20:01 ◼   ► And I wrote this whole thing about it and it was very controversial.

00:20:04 ◼   ► And I was fairly like defending what they had done.

00:20:07 ◼   ► And between me writing that, because I wrote it during the day and I

00:20:11 ◼   ► was gonna publish it the next morning, then that evening they completely rejiggered it

00:20:15 ◼   ► and rolled everything back.

00:20:16 ◼   ► And I was like, This sucks.

00:20:21 ◼   ► It's always up to date.

00:20:22 ◼   ► And it w Taiwan did give a sense of sort of living in the

00:20:25 ◼   ► future that I had lost.

00:20:27 ◼   ► And that night as I'm up super late rewriting a whole update that I'd

00:20:31 ◼   ► already done, I'm like, ah, this is very annoying.

00:20:34 ◼   ► And I guess that is actually an interesting thing about like where technology is

00:20:37 ◼   ► right now is that the AI companies do move at a speed that the

00:20:41 ◼   ► existing tech companies did not.

00:20:42 ◼   ► That definitely is the case.

00:20:43 ◼   ► They give a lot of content, but they can change very quickly on a

00:20:47 ◼   ► decision that they've made.

00:20:49 ◼   ► In the daytime then, are you doing any administrative work?

00:20:52 ◼   ► I mean businesses just require administrative work.

00:20:54 ◼   ► Where does that fit into your day?

00:20:56 ◼   ► So I write Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights.

00:20:59 ◼   ► And then usually by the time Wednesday rolls around I'm prusted, except probably haven't

00:21:03 ◼   ► gotten enough sleep.

00:21:04 ◼   ► But sometime on Monday, Tuesday, ideally not Wednesday, but sometimes Wednesday, I've recorded an

00:21:10 ◼   ► interview.

00:21:11 ◼   ► So I do an interview every week, except during the summer.

00:21:13 ◼   ► I stop in July and August.

00:21:15 ◼   ► So right now we release the transcript and the recording.

00:21:20 ◼   ► So Wednesdays I'm quote unquote done with content.

00:21:23 ◼   ► I always edit the interviews.

00:21:25 ◼   ► So my assistant runs through it first, but I do a a read through

00:21:29 ◼   ► and we do lightly edit them as it says in there for clarity.

00:21:33 ◼   ► So for the written one, I will make it clear and more readable.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Some people you interview, it it can be a little sort of like hard

00:21:40 ◼   ► to read, even if it's fine to listen to reading the text of a

00:21:43 ◼   ► podcast is a terrible experience.

00:21:45 ◼   ► Because that's people do not speak the way they would write.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Filler words are fine to listen to.

00:21:52 ◼   ► That's right.

00:21:52 ◼   ► And so we clean that up, just for clarity.

00:21:54 ◼   ► And then uh occasionally we add it for content.

00:21:57 ◼   ► And you'll know I did because I will change my this is lightly edited

00:22:00 ◼   ► for clarity to this is lightly edited for clarity on content.

00:22:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:03 ◼   ► So that's the interview which happens during the week.

00:22:06 ◼   ► And then my podcast day is Thursdays because it lines up.

00:22:10 ◼   ► I actually think a lot about my physical and mental state in terms of

00:22:14 ◼   ► producing content.

00:22:15 ◼   ► And for podcasts, I want to be well rested.

00:22:19 ◼   ► I want to be fresh and ready to go.

00:22:21 ◼   ► So part of this design is by Wednesday I'm pretty tired.

00:22:24 ◼   ► All I need to do is edit the interview.

00:22:27 ◼   ► Wednesday night I get a great night's sleep and I wake up Thursday, I'm

00:22:30 ◼   ► ready to podcast.

00:22:31 ◼   ► And so do dithering first, get some lunch, then do Sharp Tech, and then

00:22:36 ◼   ► by the end of Sharp Tech, an hour and a half, very highly engaged.

00:22:40 ◼   ► I'm usually wiped all over again.

00:22:41 ◼   ► That's just sort of the nature of that.

00:22:43 ◼   ► And then we put together this weekend strategy, which is just a summary of

00:22:47 ◼   ► the various stuff across the bundle that we email out on Fridays.

00:22:50 ◼   ► And then um if I do other interviews, I do think about the energy

00:22:55 ◼   ► bit.

00:22:55 ◼   ► So we are recording on a Friday afternoon for this reason.

00:22:59 ◼   ► And well the other thing too is I do have lots of administrative work.

00:23:02 ◼   ► In all these areas I've hired people, but I have to meet with them

00:23:07 ◼   ► regularly.

00:23:07 ◼   ► You can get rid of a lot of the actual day to day work,

00:23:10 ◼   ► but as a business owner, you can't be like, I'm just never going to

00:23:13 ◼   ► engage with this.

00:23:14 ◼   ► Eventually it has to come to you.

00:23:16 ◼   ► That is Fridays.

00:23:17 ◼   ► Fridays is usually all admin work.

00:23:19 ◼   ► It ends up being admin work until I will tell my assistant I'm done.

00:23:25 ◼   ► I can't do it.

00:23:26 ◼   ► Because like decision making is tiring and responding to emails is tiring.

00:23:30 ◼   ► I'm just trying to be very in touch with and continually monitoring and optimizing

00:23:36 ◼   ► my schedule for that mental clarity.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:39 ◼   ► I talked about getting in the zone, but part of getting in the zone

00:23:42 ◼   ► is not not having stuff on your plate.

00:23:44 ◼   ► I referenced the Getting Things Done David Allen book on a recent article.

00:23:48 ◼   ► I actually got a chance to talk to him after that.

00:23:50 ◼   ► And it's super interesting.

00:23:52 ◼   ► He's got a very non traditional background.

00:23:54 ◼   ► Even though he's his book is like him in a suit and he's like

00:23:56 ◼   ► hired by Executives.

00:23:57 ◼   ► I mean, I think he's retired now, but he's like a black belt in

00:24:00 ◼   ► karate or something.

00:24:01 ◼   ► I didn't know that.

00:24:03 ◼   ► But the whole book is flow state, your mind being clear, mind like water.

00:24:08 ◼   ► That's why it always appealed to me so deeply because it And it's been

00:24:12 ◼   ► always super clear how that's important to me.

00:24:15 ◼   ► And so I end up having a fairly structured life.

00:24:18 ◼   ► All the people that I hire, they all understand their role and the reason

00:24:24 ◼   ► why things are the way they are is is about me being in a

00:24:28 ◼   ► place to write every day.

00:24:29 ◼   ► And if I write good things every day, everything else will take care of

00:24:33 ◼   ► itself.

00:24:34 ◼   ► This is actually the description of a lot of people that I've spoken to

00:24:37 ◼   ► really, and I think you've put it beautifully, of creator facing businesses.

00:24:44 ◼   ► You can build up a business around you and you can bring people in,

00:24:49 ◼   ► you know, like people will turn to selling products and they'll do all kinds

00:24:52 ◼   ► of stuff.

00:24:52 ◼   ► But ultimately there is still that person who is the face, the voice of

00:24:58 ◼   ► the organization.

00:24:59 ◼   ► The best thing that can happen for that person is for them to be

00:25:02 ◼   ► protected as much as they can so they can produce the thing that people

00:25:06 ◼   ► came for in the first place.

00:25:07 ◼   ► 100%.

00:25:08 ◼   ► Could not agree more.

00:25:09 ◼   ► And I impress that like everyone who works with me understands that.

00:25:12 ◼   ► And there's times that I'm not to be bothered.

00:25:15 ◼   ► And this has actually been really interesting.

00:25:17 ◼   ► I always hesitate to make any sort of comparison between me and very famous

00:25:20 ◼   ► people.

00:25:20 ◼   ► But Steve Jobs is kind of like the extreme case of like just being

00:25:23 ◼   ► known for being a total jerk to everyone around him.

00:25:26 ◼   ► What's interesting is this aspect of you being the decision maker, but also you

00:25:31 ◼   ► needing to be on, whether that on be to write or on be to

00:25:34 ◼   ► podcast

00:25:36 ◼   ► the human capacity to always be modulating yourself and your impulses is limited.

00:25:42 ◼   ► The times I'm on, I have to be super on.

00:25:46 ◼   ► And that means there needs to be times where I'm just not on at

00:25:49 ◼   ► all and I s tired and grumpy and whatever it might be.

00:25:53 ◼   ► I wanna go back to talking about topics that you choose for the daily

00:25:56 ◼   ► update.

00:25:57 ◼   ► Because there's lots of news going on in tech and business and media.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Especially at certain times of the year, there's a stories, lots of threads that

00:26:05 ◼   ► you could pull on.

00:26:06 ◼   ► How do you decide on a given day what might make the cut?

00:26:10 ◼   ► Is there a tension between something that you're the most interested in and what

00:26:13 ◼   ► the biggest news of the day is?

00:26:14 ◼   ► Like how do you balance that out?

00:26:16 ◼   ► Yeah, it varies.

00:26:17 ◼   ► There is certainly an extent where I feel compelled to write about something.

00:26:22 ◼   ► I wrote about, you know, Dario Amade's post on Monday, even though I feel

00:26:27 ◼   ► like I've sort of said my piece about anthropic generally, about The Doomerism, whatever

00:26:32 ◼   ► it might be.

00:26:33 ◼   ► And you know, I'm pretty satisfied with what I wrote.

00:26:35 ◼   ► I think it actually ended up being presaging a lot of the conversation that

00:26:38 ◼   ► developed later in the week.

00:26:40 ◼   ► But that is all anyone talked about in tech this week.

00:26:43 ◼   ► And I did not have any interest in writing about it every day.

00:26:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:46 ◼   ► Now it's on the background processes because this is obviously a big deal.

00:26:50 ◼   ► We talked a lot about it on Sharp Tech, where I think some of

00:26:53 ◼   ► these topics are much better suited to podcasting than to writing.

00:26:55 ◼   ► It's interesting the balance there.

00:26:57 ◼   ► Things that are more subtle or lots of angles, lots of threads to pull

00:27:01 ◼   ► on, harder to wrap into a bow.

00:27:03 ◼   ► You know, a podcast you can sort of have digressions.

00:27:05 ◼   ► And it's not just that a digression is possible.

00:27:07 ◼   ► It's more entertaining in a podcast.

00:27:09 ◼   ► If you have a million digressions in writing, it's like, okay, what's going on

00:27:12 ◼   ► here?

00:27:12 ◼   ► Like writing needs the thread much more clearly, in my experience.

00:27:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:17 ◼   ► But then you get to other days, and it's like all anyone in tech

00:27:21 ◼   ► is talking about is this.

00:27:23 ◼   ► I've written about it.

00:27:24 ◼   ► I don't want to write about this today.

00:27:26 ◼   ► There's other things going on that I have interests in.

00:27:30 ◼   ► I would say Tuesday, a fairly professional update.

00:27:32 ◼   ► I wrote about OpenAI and Amazon and ads, and then I talked about Walmart

00:27:37 ◼   ► and Apple Pay.

00:27:38 ◼   ► That's more like just checking in.

00:27:39 ◼   ► I've talked about those things before.

00:27:41 ◼   ► There's updates in these areas.

00:27:43 ◼   ► I thought there was an interesting connection there.

00:27:45 ◼   ► Why did Amazon ultimately win out versus open AI where open AI wanted Amazon

00:27:50 ◼   ► to like sell stuff on their platform and in the end Amazon is selling

00:27:54 ◼   ► ads on open ads platform versus Walmart and Apple, where Apple won, right?

00:27:59 ◼   ► It took a decade, but Apple Pay is gonna be in Walmart.

00:28:02 ◼   ► Apple's not giving them any funds.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Apple Pay locks in credit cards, which Walmart hates.

00:28:07 ◼   ► For a generation.

00:28:08 ◼   ► That was a satisfying one because there are two items that were worth touching

00:28:12 ◼   ► on.

00:28:12 ◼   ► I wasn't feeling it a ton, but then as I put it together, I'm

00:28:15 ◼   ► like, oh, there's actually an interesting contrast here.

00:28:17 ◼   ► Why did power work in one place and sort of not in the other?

00:28:21 ◼   ► And then on Wednesday, I wrote about Salesforce and Dreamforce, which is like I

00:28:26 ◼   ► don't really cover enterprise software super deeply.

00:28:29 ◼   ► I think Bark Benioff is a very entertaining presenter.

00:28:33 ◼   ► And it was kind of a fun touchback to a a reference.

00:28:37 ◼   ► I made about Salesforce previously, when a few years ago Mark Benioff sort of

00:28:41 ◼   ► mocked Microsoft for the whole co-pilot thing.

00:28:44 ◼   ► He's like, No, we're jumping ahead to agents.

00:28:46 ◼   ► And now they basically launched a plugin for quad code.

00:28:49 ◼   ► And this is a fun one because if you read it on its surface,

00:28:53 ◼   ► it's like, oh, Salesforce did this.

00:28:55 ◼   ► But people who read it closely, I'm kind of mocking Salesforce here.

00:28:59 ◼   ► And so it I enjoyed that one.

00:29:00 ◼   ► And it was no one else is writing about Dream Force this week, particularly

00:29:04 ◼   ► in this space that I do but I think I got a lot of

00:29:07 ◼   ► good feedback on that one.

00:29:08 ◼   ► People are like, no one was thinking about it, but it was angles that

00:29:11 ◼   ► were actually very pertinent to the A stuff.

00:29:13 ◼   ► And there's a bit where when everyone's talking about one thing, I think for

00:29:18 ◼   ► me anyway, but hopefully for my readers, it's actually kinda nice to get an

00:29:22 ◼   ► email about something else for once.

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00:31:30 ◼   ► When you're sitting down to write either an update or an article, where does

00:31:34 ◼   ► research come into the process?

00:31:35 ◼   ► Are you a person who retains a lot of information?

00:31:38 ◼   ► What is research like?

00:31:39 ◼   ► The answer is I've been thinking about and reading about tech since I was

00:31:43 ◼   ► like ten years old.

00:31:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:44 ◼   ► And I have a very high capacity for sort of retention and recall.

00:31:50 ◼   ► And I am also the heaviest user of check research function and a Google

00:31:54 ◼   ► Master.

00:31:54 ◼   ► And and AI is obviously great in this regard.

00:31:57 ◼   ► There's a bit where my true competitive advantage, I think quantity is very underrated.

00:32:02 ◼   ► Quality is obviously important.

00:32:04 ◼   ► Quantity with quality is a killer combination.

00:32:07 ◼   ► And that's sort of number one.

00:32:08 ◼   ► But number two is I've been doing this for so long that almost everything

00:32:13 ◼   ► that happens, I already kind of know what I think about it.

00:32:16 ◼   ► And the way I think about it is there's like a contraption in my

00:32:20 ◼   ► head where you put news item in and opinion comes out.

00:32:24 ◼   ► That contraption is like my understanding and view of the world.

00:32:27 ◼   ► So there's some things that happen that's super straightforward.

00:32:30 ◼   ► You put it in, I could dash off that segment of a daily update

00:32:34 ◼   ► in like literally like 20 minutes.

00:32:36 ◼   ► Like it's obvious.

00:32:37 ◼   ► It just write it out.

00:32:38 ◼   ► Some stuff, there's stuff missing, and it's like that's where predictions come from.

00:32:42 ◼   ► It's like there's another shoe that's grop here.

00:32:45 ◼   ► Like this doesn't make sense.

00:32:46 ◼   ► Absent something coming down the pike.

00:32:48 ◼   ► And then sometimes I'm wrong.

00:32:50 ◼   ► Those are the most interesting ones because those are where the machine needs work.

00:32:54 ◼   ► It needs a new addition.

00:32:56 ◼   ► Something needs to be adjusted.

00:32:57 ◼   ► And that's often where, not always, but it's not where like the big articles

00:33:01 ◼   ► come from.

00:33:02 ◼   ► The big articles are like updates on the machine.

00:33:05 ◼   ► And the daily updates are the output of the machine is sort of a

00:33:08 ◼   ► way that I think about it.

00:33:09 ◼   ► So when it comes to research.

00:33:11 ◼   ► I'm always reading about stuff like earnings, read all the earnings calls.

00:33:15 ◼   ► My assistant keeps a spreadsheet of all the earnings.

00:33:17 ◼   ► I have a bunch of graphs that I've used over the years.

00:33:20 ◼   ► And so that's very useful because it's something it's like I've written about this

00:33:23 ◼   ► before.

00:33:24 ◼   ► There's a change in the graph.

00:33:25 ◼   ► I can go back to what I said previously, think about what goes with

00:33:28 ◼   ► that.

00:33:29 ◼   ► Some stuff like the AIs, the degree to which they're useful is directly related

00:33:34 ◼   ► to how much you know about a topic.

00:33:35 ◼   ► So there was a court case that came down, something app store related.

00:33:39 ◼   ► I can't remember what it was.

00:33:40 ◼   ► This was somewhat early, mighty GPT-4 era.

00:33:43 ◼   ► And I was remarking to a friend how useful the AI was in me

00:33:48 ◼   ► doing research for that particular article and writing about it.

00:33:50 ◼   ► And he's like really?

00:33:51 ◼   ► I thought it was terrible.

00:33:53 ◼   ► And we compared our prompts.

00:33:55 ◼   ► And he had just asked, explain this case to me, to the AI.

00:33:59 ◼   ► And I went in and I already knew all the context about the case.

00:34:02 ◼   ► There was one specific question.

00:34:03 ◼   ► It was something antitrust related.

00:34:05 ◼   ► And I'm like, okay, this case, da da da da.

00:34:07 ◼   ► I'm like, but how does it impact this provision that was some arcane detail

00:34:12 ◼   ► about antitrust law?

00:34:13 ◼   ► And then we had this very productive back and forth.

00:34:17 ◼   ► It brought up a few cases I didn't know about that I think I

00:34:19 ◼   ► might have actually ended up citing in that daily update.

00:34:22 ◼   ► But in that case I didn't quote ChatGPT.

00:34:24 ◼   ► I went and got the Supreme Court case and read the Supreme Court case

00:34:27 ◼   ► and then cited it.

00:34:28 ◼   ► So two parts.

00:34:29 ◼   ► Number one, you really get out of these what you put in.

00:34:32 ◼   ► These are mirrors.

00:34:33 ◼   ► You bring in a lot of expertise and a lot of knowledge.

00:34:35 ◼   ► You will get a lot of expertise and knowledge back.

00:34:38 ◼   ► You bring in, I don't know, you'll get a lot of broad generalizations that

00:34:41 ◼   ► might be hallucinated sort of back.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Number two, I always do go back to primary sources.

00:34:46 ◼   ► I read a lot and then I do have a very good recall and

00:34:50 ◼   ► then I'm very good at Google so I can find it again.

00:34:52 ◼   ► The extent to which Google's gotten worse is very painful for me.

00:34:56 ◼   ► I understand the dynamics of why that happens.

00:34:58 ◼   ► But uh I am a very heavy Google user, even today, even in the

00:35:01 ◼   ► age of AI.

00:35:02 ◼   ► So, you know, you mentioned keeping records on financial calls and obviously you're Googling

00:35:07 ◼   ► a lot to get information that you need.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Do you keep any other kinds of records on the companies that you cover?

00:35:12 ◼   ► So I use workflowy.

00:35:13 ◼   ► It's like an outliner document.

00:35:14 ◼   ► I think I used Omni Outliner back in the day.

00:35:16 ◼   ► I've always relentlessly wanna be cross-platform on the web.

00:35:19 ◼   ► My view through painful lessons down then, I should be able to go to

00:35:23 ◼   ► an internet cafe, which I don't know if those exist anymore, or walk into

00:35:26 ◼   ► an Apple store or Best Buy, get a computer and be up and able

00:35:30 ◼   ► to write within an hour.

00:35:31 ◼   ► I think a library is probably the thing now, right?

00:35:34 ◼   ► Rather than internet cafes.

00:35:35 ◼   ► I feel like that's probably the place where you can publicly use a computer.

00:35:39 ◼   ► I came up with this whole system when I was in Asia, which I

00:35:42 ◼   ► think internet cafes were much more common.

00:35:44 ◼   ► I mean I'm of the internet cafe era as well, and I'm thinking like

00:35:47 ◼   ► yeah, I just don't think they exist anymore.

00:35:49 ◼   ► No, I know I haven't been in one in a very long time.

00:35:51 ◼   ► It's very true.

00:35:52 ◼   ► So I use work fully as a web app as a thing.

00:35:55 ◼   ► So in that, I'm continually putting in links.

00:35:57 ◼   ► In there, I also have an earnings segment where I read through every earnings

00:36:01 ◼   ► call and I copy and paste all the things that I thought were interesting.

00:36:05 ◼   ► I have a keynote segment where I watch a lot of keynotes.

00:36:08 ◼   ► I love the opening of keynotes because the opening of keynotes is where they're

00:36:14 ◼   ► trying to set the narrative.

00:36:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:16 ◼   ► They're trying to put it in context.

00:36:18 ◼   ► What is sort of gonna come afterwards?

00:36:20 ◼   ► So even if it's random stuff, I'll try to at least watch the first

00:36:24 ◼   ► ten minutes of every keynote that is out there.

00:36:25 ◼   ► But if I watch those keynote, then I take notes in that section.

00:36:29 ◼   ► And then like in earnings, like it is organized by company.

00:36:31 ◼   ► So I have like all my notes from every meta earnings call for the

00:36:34 ◼   ► last 1 years is in one place.

00:36:36 ◼   ► So you have that all.

00:36:37 ◼   ► That's what I was wondering of like, is this just like a a thing

00:36:40 ◼   ► that you get rid of, but you just keep them and they're categorized by

00:36:43 ◼   ► company?

00:36:44 ◼   ► I do.

00:36:44 ◼   ► I don't really go back, honestly, but they're there.

00:36:47 ◼   ► So that's the main stuff that I write down if I have the outlines

00:36:52 ◼   ► of an article that is sort like I did start one.

00:36:54 ◼   ► I have this app called are you from Notational Velocity?

00:36:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:58 ◼   ► Oh, one of the best apps ever.

00:37:00 ◼   ► The interface paradigm, you quick a shortcut, you're typing if the note exists, it

00:37:06 ◼   ► will come up.

00:37:07 ◼   ► If the note doesn't exist, you press enter and you're immediately typing a new

00:37:10 ◼   ► note.

00:37:11 ◼   ► It's awesome.

00:37:11 ◼   ► Is that still in development?

00:37:13 ◼   ► So what happened was there's notational velocity, which was replaced by NV Alt, where

00:37:16 ◼   ► someone basically forked it and made it better.

00:37:19 ◼   ► His website's been promising EVALT 3 for over a decade.

00:37:23 ◼   ► I don't think it's coming.

00:37:24 ◼   ► It was in beta testing.

00:37:25 ◼   ► So actually, this is a fun vibe coding story.

00:37:28 ◼   ► So the reason is I've been using Eve Alt, but it's Intel only.

00:37:32 ◼   ► The last release is like a decade ago.

00:37:34 ◼   ► And I got a new MacBook Air and I was putting stuff on and

00:37:39 ◼   ► I realized this is my only Intel app.

00:37:41 ◼   ► Also, this is the last year for Intel apps.

00:37:43 ◼   ► Rosetta is gonna be deprecated.

00:37:44 ◼   ► Yes, I keep getting these scary pop-ups and that there are apps that I

00:37:48 ◼   ► use that I know nobody's gonna update them anymore and it's like what I

00:37:52 ◼   ► don't know what I'm gonna do.

00:37:53 ◼   ► I had code export it.

00:37:55 ◼   ► So I now have an ARM sixty four version of NVALT running on my

00:37:59 ◼   ► MacBook era and uh by the way along the way there's a couple of

00:38:01 ◼   ► small interface quirks that I didn't I mean this isn't the end of this

00:38:05 ◼   ► story with this app now.

00:38:06 ◼   ► This is the beginning of your version.

00:38:08 ◼   ► That's right.

00:38:08 ◼   ► So I have thousands of notes in there and those are mostly meant to

00:38:11 ◼   ► be disposable.

00:38:12 ◼   ► It's not encrypted.

00:38:13 ◼   ► It syncs with Simple Note who which automatic owns and so I have the

00:38:16 ◼   ► Simple Note app on my phone.

00:38:18 ◼   ► Why not Apple Notes?

00:38:19 ◼   ► Because I'm so allergic to lock in.

00:38:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:21 ◼   ► I don't want to always have to have an Apple device.

00:38:23 ◼   ► And I want to be able to go to a website and be able

00:38:26 ◼   ► to access my stuff.

00:38:27 ◼   ► Envy all is where you're putting your ideas for updates, like the things that

00:38:30 ◼   ► are a bit more than a link.

00:38:33 ◼   ► Usually it's just in my head.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Usually I'm just thinking about what I'm gonna write.

00:38:36 ◼   ► It's only when I'm like every now and then, and usually for a big

00:38:39 ◼   ► article, I'll like sketching a couple things.

00:38:41 ◼   ► You never looked into I'm sure you have, but something like an obsidian or

00:38:45 ◼   ► something like that?

00:38:46 ◼   ► I'm sure it's great.

00:38:47 ◼   ► The reality is I am super interested in all these new tools, particularly when

00:38:53 ◼   ► it comes to working with people.

00:38:54 ◼   ► For me, I locked in on a what I feel is making me super

00:38:58 ◼   ► productive like over a decade ago.

00:39:01 ◼   ► The big shift for me was I worked at Microsoft after business school.

00:39:05 ◼   ► I had all the Apple apps and I had to use Windows.

00:39:09 ◼   ► None of my stuff was accessible.

00:39:11 ◼   ► So I could carry my MacBook to work with me.

00:39:14 ◼   ► But to me, I'm like, actually, this is a problem in the long run.

00:39:17 ◼   ► All my stuff needs to be accessible anywhere.

00:39:20 ◼   ► And basically since then, I live in text.

00:39:23 ◼   ► And if I'm in a proprietary app, that app has to be cross-platform and

00:39:28 ◼   ► it has to have a way to access it via the web.

00:39:31 ◼   ► Like Apple Notes is great and being able to put like photos in between

00:39:35 ◼   ► stuff and the check marks.

00:39:37 ◼   ► I will use Apple apps with my assistance, like a short term like collaboration

00:39:41 ◼   ► check mark sort of thing.

00:39:43 ◼   ► But I don't use it for myself because I refuse to be locked in.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Now, what that means is there's a lot of great tools in the world

00:39:50 ◼   ► that probably would be great for me and I would enjoy, but I don't

00:39:55 ◼   ► view what I use as a sufficient issue to go out and spend the

00:39:59 ◼   ► time toward them.

00:40:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree with this.

00:40:01 ◼   ► I there was a real heyday for to do apps.

00:40:04 ◼   ► There were so many new ones.

00:40:05 ◼   ► And about ten years ago I settled the to doist and I won't move

00:40:10 ◼   ► anymore.

00:40:11 ◼   ► Yeah I have too much stuff in there.

00:40:13 ◼   ► It would take take too long to move and I don't want to learn

00:40:16 ◼   ► a new system.

00:40:17 ◼   ► Like I have this system and I use this one and it works for

00:40:20 ◼   ► me.

00:40:20 ◼   ► And again, things will come along and it will be exciting and you'll try

00:40:23 ◼   ► them out.

00:40:24 ◼   ► But eventually you have to stop and get back to the work that this

00:40:28 ◼   ► is supposed to be enabling you to do in the first place.

00:40:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:30 ◼   ► And a way to think about the AI stuff is it's suddenly I got

00:40:34 ◼   ► optimized to the point that everything I felt could be optimized.

00:40:37 ◼   ► This has introduced a new vector for optimization where there's things actually we could

00:40:40 ◼   ► solve this, it would make a meaningful difference going forward, it's worth the upfront

00:40:45 ◼   ► cost.

00:40:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:45 ◼   ► Like I think like a tech company, just naturally, upfront investment is worth it

00:40:50 ◼   ► if it pays off in long term, reducing time, reducing stress, increasing awareness, increasing

00:40:55 ◼   ► trust.

00:40:56 ◼   ► Like a big part of having a clear mind is trust that the things

00:41:00 ◼   ► that need to get done, there's system in place that will track and make

00:41:03 ◼   ► sure they get done.

00:41:04 ◼   ► That system could be people, it could be omnifocus, it could be whatever it

00:41:07 ◼   ► might be, but getting it out of your head and into something is super

00:41:11 ◼   ► important.

00:41:12 ◼   ► But once you've accomplished that, stop.

00:41:14 ◼   ► Right?

00:41:15 ◼   ► Like that's not the job.

00:41:16 ◼   ► You know, it is funny.

00:41:17 ◼   ► It took me a while.

00:41:18 ◼   ► People are like, Ben, you're late to do the vibe coding thing.

00:41:21 ◼   ► And your late is all relative.

00:41:23 ◼   ► I was like six months late to when it was actually viable.

00:41:25 ◼   ► But that was part of the reason is I'm like, I spent so much

00:41:28 ◼   ► time optimizing my workflow a decade ago.

00:41:31 ◼   ► I have a bunch of scripts, I have like a whole desktop routine, like

00:41:34 ◼   ► where stuff's downloaded and screenshots are all sorted and put in different places and

00:41:38 ◼   ► all these different things.

00:41:39 ◼   ► I set up all this stuff ages ago.

00:41:41 ◼   ► It's like it works.

00:41:42 ◼   ► I don't need to do more.

00:41:43 ◼   ► But now the lights got off.

00:41:44 ◼   ► There's lots of other things that could be done.

00:41:45 ◼   ► But yeah I'm a big believer in optimization and then stop it.

00:41:49 ◼   ► Just do the work.

00:41:50 ◼   ► I asked you about record keeping.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Do you keep track of what you're right and wrong about?

00:41:54 ◼   ► Not like explicitly.

00:41:56 ◼   ► I subscribe to the John Gruber philosophy that the best way I like to

00:41:59 ◼   ► be right.

00:42:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:00 ◼   ► And the best way to be right is to immediately correct when you're wrong.

00:42:03 ◼   ► So it's challenging because sometimes it seems like you're wrong, but actually it still

00:42:07 ◼   ► needs to play out.

00:42:08 ◼   ► But I do always try to acknowledge that.

00:42:10 ◼   ► I think when I had the 10 anniversary technique, I was thinking I should

00:42:13 ◼   ► have like a list of like the best calls and worst calls.

00:42:15 ◼   ► But I think I never actually got around to doing it.

00:42:17 ◼   ► You said worst call and I have to just put this one out there

00:42:19 ◼   ► for you now.

00:42:20 ◼   ► You don't want to hear this one I can say it to you anyway.

00:42:22 ◼   ► Clubhouse killing podcasting.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Oh, this terrible call.

00:42:25 ◼   ► Man, I remember when I heard you talking about this I was furious.

00:42:31 ◼   ► Obviously it affects me, but you know.

00:42:33 ◼   ► No, the hilariously bad call.

00:42:35 ◼   ► And it's funny because I think the best bad calls are number one, it's

00:42:40 ◼   ► good, it keeps you humble.

00:42:41 ◼   ► People like to hold it over you, which is great.

00:42:43 ◼   ► But also you really learn from that in lessons that are super useful going

00:42:47 ◼   ► forward and not just in a don't make dumb calls like that.

00:42:50 ◼   ► That was a real wake up call in terms of my experience on the

00:42:54 ◼   ► internet is fundamentally different than everybody else.

00:42:57 ◼   ► I am, at least in a certain corners, a celebrity.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Sure.

00:43:01 ◼   ► And that means the way I'm experiencing apps, the way I'm experiencing things, I

00:43:05 ◼   ► need to not overindex on that.

00:43:07 ◼   ► And for a long time, you could just be like, this is what it's

00:43:09 ◼   ► like.

00:43:10 ◼   ► And actually, I don't have a representative view of what it's like on Twitter.

00:43:13 ◼   ► I go on Clubhouse and it was awesome.

00:43:16 ◼   ► Why?

00:43:16 ◼   ► Because lots of people wanted to talk to me.

00:43:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:19 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:19 ◼   ► And it's funny, it sounds so obvious to say that.

00:43:23 ◼   ► And I feel sheepish explaining it now because how could I not see that?

00:43:27 ◼   ► But it came along at a time.

00:43:28 ◼   ► I started Sheckery with 400 followers on Twitter.

00:43:32 ◼   ► And I was a nobody trying to scratch and claw my way up.

00:43:35 ◼   ► And I think I had interest.

00:43:37 ◼   ► Interestingly enough, life experiences where I grew up, you know, growing in like a

00:43:42 ◼   ► small town, blue collar, like I understood Facebook intuitively because most people I grew

00:43:47 ◼   ► up with live with their friends and family.

00:43:49 ◼   ► They've never left.

00:43:50 ◼   ► And uh a platform catering to friends and family makes a lot of sense.

00:43:53 ◼   ► People in tech love Twitter.

00:43:55 ◼   ► It's what I'm interested in.

00:43:56 ◼   ► There are people who left their homes to go pursue what they're interested in.

00:44:00 ◼   ► So I got so much traction the whole runner's checkery, understanding Facebook when no

00:44:04 ◼   ► one else did because of my background.

00:44:07 ◼   ► But at some point I'm no longer the outsider scratching along.

00:44:12 ◼   ► I'm the ultimate insider.

00:44:13 ◼   ► And that's where the interviews came about.

00:44:15 ◼   ► I started the interviews actually around the same time that the clubhouse debacle happen.

00:44:20 ◼   ► I started out, no one knew who I was.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Now I could literally talk to anyone.

00:44:25 ◼   ► How do I preserve the idea of Shartechary, which is I'm serving my readers?

00:44:31 ◼   ► It's subscription based.

00:44:32 ◼   ► Well acknowledging the reality that I'm no longer an outsider.

00:44:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:44:37 ◼   ► And I'm like, well, I can talk to any CEO, I can talk to

00:44:40 ◼   ► the CEO on behalf of my readers.

00:44:43 ◼   ► And so when I do interviews, I don't interviews for my articles where I

00:44:46 ◼   ► quote them selectively to support what I'm saying.

00:44:48 ◼   ► I'm like, if I do an interview with you, I'm gonna publish the whole

00:44:50 ◼   ► thing.

00:44:51 ◼   ► There's gonna be a transcript, and that is like acknowledging my access while also

00:44:57 ◼   ► trying to share with my readers, I'm on your team, not on the other

00:45:00 ◼   ► guys' team.

00:45:01 ◼   ► Here's everything that they said, for better or for worse.

00:45:04 ◼   ► And it's actually not an accident that those two things happen around the same

00:45:07 ◼   ► time.

00:45:08 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform that is

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00:46:50 ◼   ► life.

00:46:51 ◼   ► I want to talk about writing.

00:46:53 ◼   ► Do you enjoy it?

00:46:55 ◼   ► Do you like writing?

00:46:56 ◼   ► No, it's horrible.

00:46:57 ◼   ► It's like the worst few hours of my day and I w I live

00:47:00 ◼   ► all day in dread of having to write, and then I like persevere through

00:47:03 ◼   ► it, and then I'm done and I feel disgusted and I go to bed.

00:47:07 ◼   ► That's really the longest short of it.

00:47:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I think there was early on, just very excited to get my ideas

00:47:13 ◼   ► out there.

00:47:14 ◼   ► It's like with any job.

00:47:15 ◼   ► Like I'm sure if you're a professional athlete, you love Playing basketball, but there

00:47:20 ◼   ► is a point where basketball is your job and anything that's your job is

00:47:25 ◼   ► still a job.

00:47:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm known for being a big basketball fan and crazy bucks fan.

00:47:31 ◼   ► A big part of that was that Giannis came along and he was amazing

00:47:35 ◼   ► and the Bucks were successful.

00:47:37 ◼   ► Another thing that happened was my hobby and obsession was tech.

00:47:41 ◼   ► And once that was my job, I needed something else to be my hobby

00:47:44 ◼   ► and obsession.

00:47:45 ◼   ► I have had the same thing over time of like, you know, the monetizing

00:47:48 ◼   ► your hobbies kind of thing is eventually you need to have a hobby.

00:47:51 ◼   ► You lose your hobby because it becomes your job and then you have to

00:47:54 ◼   ► find another thing that you care about.

00:47:56 ◼   ► For me it's Formula One.

00:47:57 ◼   ► I'm pretty obsessive Formula One fan.

00:47:59 ◼   ► Like that's my sport.

00:47:59 ◼   ► Oh.

00:48:00 ◼   ► Me too.

00:48:00 ◼   ► Who's your favorite driver?

00:48:02 ◼   ► It changes.

00:48:03 ◼   ► I mean the old time is Lewis.

00:48:04 ◼   ► I don't want to hear your opinion on this.

00:48:06 ◼   ► Me and you diverge significantly on Max versus Lewis.

00:48:09 ◼   ► I have nothing against Lewis.

00:48:10 ◼   ► I have great respect for Max except the way he drives.

00:48:15 ◼   ► And then every season I'll have someone I'm rooting for.

00:48:18 ◼   ► This season has been a bit different.

00:48:19 ◼   ► I was rooting for Kimmy at the beginning.

00:48:21 ◼   ► I still kind of am, but now I'm for Lando again because he's you

00:48:24 ◼   ► know, it's like I I move around a lot.

00:48:26 ◼   ► You know what?

00:48:27 ◼   ► I could not stand Lando.

00:48:28 ◼   ► There's a little bit of Max in Lando in that what I like about

00:48:31 ◼   ► Max, I'm seeing in Lando.

00:48:32 ◼   ► What I like about Max is Max was such a jerk and like he

00:48:35 ◼   ► drove like a jerk, he acted like a jerk, and then he wins and

00:48:39 ◼   ► suddenly he's this charming guy.

00:48:41 ◼   ► He still drives like a jerk.

00:48:42 ◼   ► He did change though, is it's interesting.

00:48:45 ◼   ► I identified it with that a lot.

00:48:47 ◼   ► Where like when I start I had such a chip on my shoulder and

00:48:50 ◼   ► I wanted to prove myself, and I was probably like much more of a

00:48:53 ◼   ► jerk than I'd like to admit to people around me.

00:48:55 ◼   ► But then once I was successful it was so much easier to sort of

00:48:58 ◼   ► be gracious and all these sorts of things.

00:49:01 ◼   ► And so that aspect of Max has always resonated with me.

00:49:04 ◼   ► And it feels like there's that with Lando this year.

00:49:06 ◼   ► He like his comments were so grating.

00:49:09 ◼   ► Oh, if I had their car, I'd be as good or blah blah blah.

00:49:11 ◼   ► Like just like coming across terribly.

00:49:14 ◼   ► And this year, I'm like, actually he's pretty great.

00:49:18 ◼   ► If you imagine every single one of those 20 drivers, 22 drivers, they believe

00:49:22 ◼   ► they could be world champion, right?

00:49:23 ◼   ► They all believe that they have to.

00:49:25 ◼   ► Right.

00:49:26 ◼   ► It must be so hard for them.

00:49:28 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure every single one of them in private just says, I

00:49:31 ◼   ► wish we all had the same car.

00:49:33 ◼   ► Right.

00:49:33 ◼   ► Like I'm sure that they all feel that because they all believe that they

00:49:36 ◼   ► could be the world champions.

00:49:37 ◼   ► It's a shocking developer of the year is that I've kind of become a

00:49:39 ◼   ► Lando guy.

00:49:40 ◼   ► And I will say I liked Max more after I met him.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Oh you met Ma I met Max Vistafman.

00:49:44 ◼   ► I got to go to the RB twenty four car launch and I was

00:49:49 ◼   ► with a friend, uh youtuber, he was making a video and I was helping

00:49:53 ◼   ► him out with it and we got to chat to Max afterwards.

00:49:56 ◼   ► But the thing that was interesting, he was really nice because the interview was

00:50:00 ◼   ► interesting to him.

00:50:01 ◼   ► The interview before the person was not good at it and Max was very

00:50:05 ◼   ► standoffish.

00:50:07 ◼   ► But then my friend Austin who was interviewing was talking to him about sim

00:50:10 ◼   ► racing.

00:50:10 ◼   ► And Max was just wanted to talk about sim racing.

00:50:13 ◼   ► And so the interview ran over, like and he was great because it was

00:50:16 ◼   ► he got to talk about what he cared about rather than what everybody wanted

00:50:20 ◼   ► him to care about.

00:50:20 ◼   ► So This reaffirms why I like Max because I feel like I can relate

00:50:25 ◼   ► to Max in a lot of ways.

00:50:27 ◼   ► That ties into though the question you had before about what to write about.

00:50:30 ◼   ► That's why it's important for me to write what I'm interested in and not

00:50:34 ◼   ► write about Doomerism for the third day in a row.

00:50:36 ◼   ► Because I produce an unbelievable amount of content.

00:50:38 ◼   ► I think it's something like two hundred updates a year, something like thirty five

00:50:42 ◼   ► articles or thirty articles and then forty interviews, plus sharp tack, plus dithering.

00:50:49 ◼   ► I don't feel burnout.

00:50:51 ◼   ► The one time I did was I think it was around twenty twenty one.

00:50:55 ◼   ► And I feel like all that there was to write about was or I

00:50:58 ◼   ► felt compelled to write about antitrust cases and like congressional hearings.

00:51:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:02 ◼   ► And I was doing it 'cause I felt like I should do it.

00:51:05 ◼   ► And I hated it.

00:51:06 ◼   ► And I felt so burnt out.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, I feel burnt out not because I'm writing a lot, because

00:51:10 ◼   ► I'm writing about stuff that I care about it, but I don't comment on

00:51:14 ◼   ► because there's not much to say.

00:51:15 ◼   ► It's implicitly partisan.

00:51:17 ◼   ► And so I'm like, nah, I'm not gonna do it.

00:51:18 ◼   ► And guess what?

00:51:19 ◼   ► The sense of burnout went away.

00:51:20 ◼   ► I didn't work any less.

00:51:22 ◼   ► It was just I was interested in it.

00:51:24 ◼   ► And uh that sort of ties into yeah if you want to interview Maxwell

00:51:27 ◼   ► sim racing, it's gonna go very well.

00:51:29 ◼   ► You mentioned you you don't enjoy sitting down to write.

00:51:32 ◼   ► Do you feel the same for podcasting?

00:51:34 ◼   ► No, podcasting is pretty fun.

00:51:35 ◼   ► I will probably podcast forever because the writing is very hard.

00:51:39 ◼   ► That said, I don't think there's any question the writing makes me a better

00:51:43 ◼   ► podcaster.

00:51:44 ◼   ► By the time I podcast, I've already thought about it.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:47 ◼   ► And I've already articulated it.

00:51:49 ◼   ► Cause there are times I think I know my opinion.

00:51:52 ◼   ► It ran through that machine.

00:51:53 ◼   ► But then I dig into the details like ah, that might not be quite

00:51:56 ◼   ► right.

00:51:56 ◼   ► There might be a different angle here.

00:51:57 ◼   ► That happens.

00:51:58 ◼   ► And if I had just podcasted about that, I would have been wrong and

00:52:02 ◼   ► I would have been less precise.

00:52:04 ◼   ► So writing is better for podcasting, no question.

00:52:07 ◼   ► Obviously, I do not have a writing publication like you don't have the rigor

00:52:09 ◼   ► that you do, but for all of my podcasts I have very heavy outlines.

00:52:14 ◼   ► I have written down a lot of the things that I think I might

00:52:16 ◼   ► want to say beforehand.

00:52:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:18 ◼   ► That's very simple.

00:52:18 ◼   ► And it's not to script them, it's so that I thought it through.

00:52:22 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:52:22 ◼   ► You don't want to be reading a script.

00:52:24 ◼   ► It's like public speaking.

00:52:25 ◼   ► The best way to be an effective public speaker is to know your content

00:52:29 ◼   ► so well.

00:52:30 ◼   ► Yes.

00:52:30 ◼   ► That you know what to say when the moment arises.

00:52:33 ◼   ► I never want to sit down on a show and talk about an article

00:52:37 ◼   ► I haven't read I'm not live reacting to things.

00:52:39 ◼   ► Which by the way, it's kind of sad what a differentiator that is for

00:52:43 ◼   ► you as like an interviewer.

00:52:45 ◼   ► Like one of the things I've said this before, like when I prepare for

00:52:47 ◼   ► this show is how I've always when I've prepared

00:52:50 ◼   ► I write questions of my guests that I already know the answer to and

00:52:54 ◼   ► then write the questions that will be in response to their answer.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Oh, for sure.

00:52:57 ◼   ► 100%.

00:52:58 ◼   ► It's the follow-up questions that are the killer questions.

00:53:00 ◼   ► Because those are the things I don't, but I need to get you there.

00:53:03 ◼   ► So I have to ask you the question that I know you'll answer first.

00:53:05 ◼   ► It is about guiding them and getting them in the ma I'm sure you're

00:53:08 ◼   ► guiding me right now, which is great.

00:53:09 ◼   ► I'm happy to be guided.

00:53:10 ◼   ► But I think about that with interviews is you want to get them thinking

00:53:13 ◼   ► in a certain direction.

00:53:15 ◼   ► And that's when you can ask the real question you know, you get the

00:53:18 ◼   ► most interesting insights on follow-up questions.

00:53:19 ◼   ► Earlier on you mentioned Passport and you've also mentioned platforms like Substack.

00:53:24 ◼   ► Passport is your platform that Shotecari is posted on.

00:53:28 ◼   ► Why have your own platform.

00:53:31 ◼   ► It's a terrible idea, to be clear.

00:53:32 ◼   ► You know, if you want to spend a lot of money.

00:53:34 ◼   ► The the reality is when I created Passport, there's more things I wanted to

00:53:38 ◼   ► do and no one else supported that.

00:53:40 ◼   ► I was successful enough that I could hire people to make my own software.

00:53:44 ◼   ► And that's how it came about.

00:53:45 ◼   ► So I was on Memberful.

00:53:47 ◼   ► I was one of the first Memberful customers.

00:53:49 ◼   ► And it was very reliable, worked well, and was, in my experience, very slow

00:53:55 ◼   ► moving in terms of developing features.

00:53:56 ◼   ► And not very receptive to feedback.

00:53:59 ◼   ► And so the key thing was I wanted to release a podcast of my

00:54:04 ◼   ► updates, paid podcasts.

00:54:06 ◼   ► I think supporting cast existed at that point.

00:54:08 ◼   ► I think there was a paid podcast platform.

00:54:10 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

00:54:10 ◼   ► It might have been about the same time.

00:54:12 ◼   ► But that was a totally separate service with this separate membership.

00:54:16 ◼   ► You had to like sync stuff together.

00:54:17 ◼   ► And I was already in syncing hell.

00:54:19 ◼   ► I just synced between memberful and stripe and then it synced with.

00:54:24 ◼   ► MailChamp was using for mail.

00:54:26 ◼   ► There's all these things that could fall through the cracks and so much work

00:54:29 ◼   ► in just sending out a daily email.

00:54:31 ◼   ► So I went to Memorial asked, can we do the pay podcast thing?

00:54:35 ◼   ► Can we support this?

00:54:35 ◼   ► And no was the answer.

00:54:37 ◼   ► There's all these accumulated frustrations.

00:54:39 ◼   ► I'm like, fine, I'm gonna do it myself.

00:54:42 ◼   ► So we start out just with paid podcasts.

00:54:45 ◼   ► So the first version, all it did was include a paid podcast.

00:54:48 ◼   ► And of course, once I did that, it was so obviously the right thing

00:54:52 ◼   ► to do.

00:54:52 ◼   ► That memberful supported it like six months later, which was kind of annoying.

00:54:56 ◼   ► We use it.

00:54:57 ◼   ► For which not to sound haughty, you should thank me.

00:55:00 ◼   ► I do.

00:55:00 ◼   ► I did I asked for that for years and they would not do it.

00:55:04 ◼   ► I had to leave and do it myself.

00:55:05 ◼   ► And once I did it, they did it.

00:55:06 ◼   ► We also, by the way, if you've ever scanned a QR code for a

00:55:09 ◼   ► podcast, we invented that.

00:55:11 ◼   ► That did not exist before us.

00:55:12 ◼   ► So we did that.

00:55:13 ◼   ► And then once we did that and I had developers that I was working

00:55:17 ◼   ► with, I'm like, okay, let's just do the whole thing.

00:55:19 ◼   ► So we're like, we're gonna have an all-up platform that basically handles all this.

00:55:24 ◼   ► It's gonna deeply integrate with Stripe to manage all the membership data, all your

00:55:28 ◼   ► information, all your credit cards.

00:55:30 ◼   ► That's all there.

00:55:31 ◼   ► The only thing we ever have is your email.

00:55:33 ◼   ► We don't even have passwords.

00:55:34 ◼   ► I know people don't like the magic links.

00:55:36 ◼   ► I really hate them, but I understand them.

00:55:38 ◼   ► I know when people do them and I outsource security to Google.

00:55:41 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:55:41 ◼   ► I respect that you do it because then I don't have to give you

00:55:44 ◼   ► a password, right?

00:55:45 ◼   ► But man, I hate going backwards and forwards.

00:55:47 ◼   ► Well I'll tell you what we do about that.

00:55:49 ◼   ► Is number one, we spent a lot of work on cookies to make sure

00:55:53 ◼   ► that if you're logged in, you'll stay logged in.

00:55:56 ◼   ► Number two, we do this thing with tokenized links where in your email or

00:56:00 ◼   ► if you go to a paid podcast and you click a link, it will

00:56:02 ◼   ► always log in.

00:56:03 ◼   ► That's my favorite thing.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Because I don't get the email.

00:56:05 ◼   ► I'm a podcast listener to Shutechary.

00:56:07 ◼   ► But if I ever want to include a link in show notes or something,

00:56:12 ◼   ► I love that I can hit the link in the show notes and it

00:56:14 ◼   ► just gives me the URL and I'm logged in and then I can add

00:56:18 ◼   ► it to read later on or whatever.

00:56:19 ◼   ► It's brilliant.

00:56:20 ◼   ► And that's because every single link is tokenized to you.

00:56:22 ◼   ► And this is the insight with Paid Podcast, the way it works is everyone

00:56:25 ◼   ► has their own podcast feed.

00:56:27 ◼   ► If everyone has their own podcast feed everything in that feed can be customized.

00:56:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:31 ◼   ► So all those links are tokenized to you.

00:56:34 ◼   ► So you click it and you get the experience, even if you're a podcast

00:56:38 ◼   ► player that has its own browser and you don't have the same cookie session.

00:56:41 ◼   ► Yes, we use magic links, but we make it so you almost never have

00:56:44 ◼   ► to use them.

00:56:44 ◼   ► So yeah, the other advantage of magic links, by the way, is that makes

00:56:48 ◼   ► it trivial for me to add more properties.

00:56:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:51 ◼   ► So we add on a Sharp China.

00:56:53 ◼   ► How do you sign up for that?

00:56:54 ◼   ► You just go and put in your email address.

00:56:56 ◼   ► There's no sign up flow.

00:56:58 ◼   ► You're just there because all it has is your list of emails and you

00:57:02 ◼   ► get the link and you can add the podcast.

00:57:05 ◼   ► So there's actually a lot of user advantages that do come from Magic Lakes

00:57:10 ◼   ► that you don't perceive and you only think about it when you're like, Can

00:57:14 ◼   ► I just put a password in, please?

00:57:15 ◼   ► So I'm sympathetic.

00:57:16 ◼   ► I get it.

00:57:17 ◼   ► But there's to it.

00:57:18 ◼   ► There's a good reason for it.

00:57:19 ◼   ► But the idea is it should all be in one.

00:57:20 ◼   ► So passport should rely on Stripe for all the subscription stuff, but then it

00:57:26 ◼   ► should take care of everything else.

00:57:28 ◼   ► So it supports the five free formats.

00:57:31 ◼   ► What are the five free formats?

00:57:33 ◼   ► The web, RSS, Podcast, email, and text message.

00:57:39 ◼   ► So text message is SMS.

00:57:41 ◼   ► So SMS you have to pay for, but it is free in that there's

00:57:44 ◼   ► no gatekeeper.

00:57:45 ◼   ► So it can just be sent out.

00:57:46 ◼   ► So we support all five of those things.

00:57:48 ◼   ► And the idea is when I publish, you just press a button and everything

00:57:54 ◼   ► happens according to the user's preferences.

00:57:56 ◼   ► So they get it in the format they want, they get it in a

00:57:59 ◼   ► way that's tokenized to them.

00:58:01 ◼   ► I don't use this on strategy, but other sites do where you might have

00:58:04 ◼   ► different membership levels that get access to different amounts of content.

00:58:08 ◼   ► And so, like, say there's an article and like half of it is free,

00:58:11 ◼   ► half it's for pay, or maybe you might have a segment that is for

00:58:14 ◼   ► the gold level, whatever it might be.

00:58:16 ◼   ► Passport takes care of all that.

00:58:18 ◼   ► You mark the levels.

00:58:19 ◼   ► I use WordPress.

00:58:20 ◼   ► It's deeply integrated with WordPress, I should say, as well.

00:58:22 ◼   ► You mark the block, which is like the paragraph or whatever.

00:58:25 ◼   ► You can mark that according to level.

00:58:27 ◼   ► And then passport will take that in, filter it according to every user, what

00:58:31 ◼   ► their entitlement is send them email, send them an SMS with a tokenized link,

00:58:37 ◼   ► post it RSS feed, and it's just all taken care of.

00:58:40 ◼   ► I mean, I'm biased.

00:58:41 ◼   ► I think it's actually a super awesome product.

00:58:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:44 ◼   ► But it's a product I spend money on.

00:58:46 ◼   ► I don't make money on.

00:58:47 ◼   ► But you asked why.

00:58:48 ◼   ► It's because I care about this space.

00:58:50 ◼   ► I view myself as a pioneer.

00:58:54 ◼   ► And I reached the point where to keep pushing forward in the space, I

00:58:58 ◼   ► needed to have software development capabilities.

00:59:00 ◼   ► And so I think I helped lead the way in the newsletter.

00:59:04 ◼   ► But then I got to the stage where there should be podcasts tied in.

00:59:07 ◼   ► And no one did that.

00:59:08 ◼   ► So I had to do it myself.

00:59:09 ◼   ► That's sort of how we ended up where we are.

00:59:11 ◼   ► It's not just your publications that use Passport now.

00:59:14 ◼   ► I know recently you brought some publications into the platform.

00:59:17 ◼   ► Is this an open business that you offer for people to use Passport?

00:59:22 ◼   ► No.

00:59:23 ◼   ► So the way I think about passport, it's kinda like enterprise software for small

00:59:27 ◼   ► publishers.

00:59:28 ◼   ► Yep.

00:59:28 ◼   ► If you are a single author, you should go to Substack.

00:59:31 ◼   ► And I tell people to go to Substack all the time.

00:59:33 ◼   ► It takes care of everything.

00:59:35 ◼   ► And the 10% is a deal, honestly, for what you get.

00:59:39 ◼   ► People get hung up on that number.

00:59:40 ◼   ► It's like, well, once you start pricing out email, once you start pricing out

00:59:43 ◼   ► support, once you start pricing out all these sorts of things, you're going to

00:59:45 ◼   ► be paying that much on other platforms.

00:59:48 ◼   ► And so I don't promise super ease of use.

00:59:52 ◼   ► What I do promise is a tremendously higher level of capabilities of some of

00:59:56 ◼   ► the stuff that we just talked about.

00:59:58 ◼   ► And the site is yours.

00:59:59 ◼   ► It's not a sub stack that looks like everybody else.

01:00:01 ◼   ► It is like shattechary, shattery, semi-analysis, which runs on passport is semi-analysis.

01:00:07 ◼   ► And they do a lot of that, like different tiers get different content, and

01:00:10 ◼   ► they press one button and it takes care of all of it.

01:00:13 ◼   ► But something else is interesting because their newsletter, they moved to passport and they

01:00:18 ◼   ► went back to Substack with our full support.

01:00:21 ◼   ► Substack actually has a network effect.

01:00:23 ◼   ► They will get you more new free readers you know, it's so annoying to

01:00:27 ◼   ► sign up for Substeck now.

01:00:28 ◼   ► You have to click through like forty seven different screens.

01:00:30 ◼   ► All that stuff works.

01:00:31 ◼   ► And Substeck also I know because I I sign up to everything with different

01:00:35 ◼   ► email address, which is a terrible way to live, but I get lots of

01:00:38 ◼   ► interesting insights.

01:00:39 ◼   ► You will get Substacks that you never signed up for.

01:00:41 ◼   ► There's stuff that goes on that maybe is a little questionable.

01:00:45 ◼   ► If you verify your email once with Substack, they treat that as verification for

01:00:49 ◼   ► all Substack sites.

01:00:51 ◼   ► A huge advantage if you're on Substack, verifying email is a way to lose

01:00:55 ◼   ► customers, but we do it for every site.

01:00:57 ◼   ► So I'm pro-Substack.

01:01:00 ◼   ► People who start should usually go there.

01:01:02 ◼   ► But if you have very complex needs, that's what we're focused on.

01:01:07 ◼   ► And even now there's only two other external ones.

01:01:10 ◼   ► And that's where like we are slowly adding other ones, but very thoughtfully.

01:01:15 ◼   ► And it's important to me to preserve our ability to make new stuff because

01:01:19 ◼   ► that's the real focus and goal.

01:01:22 ◼   ► There's something I wanted to ask you about.

01:01:24 ◼   ► It's a thread that I've had of a lot of guests over the last

01:01:27 ◼   ► year or so, which is like the influence that you have in the space

01:01:31 ◼   ► in which you operate.

01:01:33 ◼   ► Now I would say maybe of all of the people that I've had on

01:01:36 ◼   ► the show, you maybe have the most outsized influence.

01:01:41 ◼   ► Stratekeri is read by people at the very high levels at the companies that

01:01:46 ◼   ► you cover.

01:01:47 ◼   ► Do you ever think about this when you're writing?

01:01:50 ◼   ► Does it ever come into your mind, good and bad, that one, you know,

01:01:54 ◼   ► like saying this thing and people were gonna read it, or maybe I have

01:01:59 ◼   ► the opportunity to change someone's mind on something that I don't agree with.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Do they To the extent it is, it's number two, but that's more a

01:02:05 ◼   ► matter of time and experience and maybe temperament.

01:02:07 ◼   ► Yep.

01:02:08 ◼   ► Fairly early, I think this was actually with Memberful.

01:02:10 ◼   ► I got an email from them where they're like, We double charged three people.

01:02:16 ◼   ► We We immediately took care of it, but if you want to contact them

01:02:19 ◼   ► and let them know, here's who they were.

01:02:22 ◼   ► And it was random person A, random person B, and then the CEO of

01:02:27 ◼   ► a top five job company.

01:02:32 ◼   ► I had no idea this person was a subscriber.

01:02:34 ◼   ► And actually it's funny.

01:02:35 ◼   ► Like as more people use Passport, there's this hilariously low-hanging fruit that we have

01:02:41 ◼   ► in terms of like insufficient analytics and stuff like that.

01:02:43 ◼   ► All of which come back to me not wanting to know and not caring

01:02:46 ◼   ► caring.

01:02:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:47 ◼   ► I don't want to know my numbers.

01:02:48 ◼   ► I don't want to know who my subscribers are.

01:02:50 ◼   ► I would just as soon not know because I think strategy at its best

01:02:54 ◼   ► is when I'm writing for myself.

01:02:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:56 ◼   ► And things that I'm interested in.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Not just that prevents burnout, but I'm going to write better stuff if it's

01:03:02 ◼   ► stuff that I'm thinking about and obsessed with.

01:03:04 ◼   ► It goes back to the not being too captive to customers.

01:03:07 ◼   ► So I don't pay attention to who's subscriber, who's not.

01:03:11 ◼   ► That said, yes, you're right.

01:03:13 ◼   ► Like the reality is he's not the only one this particular person.

01:03:16 ◼   ► And I know it has an impact.

01:03:18 ◼   ► And there's a bit where I don't really feel it anymore.

01:03:21 ◼   ► I think I've been in this position long enough, but for a while you

01:03:25 ◼   ► just choose not to let it impact you, I think.

01:03:28 ◼   ► The other thing is I'll get pushback from your senior VP types.

01:03:32 ◼   ► Complain about stuff I wrote.

01:03:33 ◼   ► There was an episode fairly early on.

01:03:35 ◼   ► I think it was with Twitter where I wrote after an earnings call, like

01:03:38 ◼   ► their direct response marketing product is not working.

01:03:42 ◼   ► And their like VP of marketing or whatever was so mad.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Somehow got my number, is like ringing me out.

01:03:47 ◼   ► And I wrote this sort of mealy mouth sort of like, well, maybe I

01:03:50 ◼   ► was wrong about this.

01:03:51 ◼   ► This is a long time ago, twenty sixteen, twenty seventy seven or maybe earlier.

01:03:55 ◼   ► And the next quarter they get on their earnings call.

01:03:59 ◼   ► We're rehauling our drug response product.

01:04:01 ◼   ► It's not working.

01:04:02 ◼   ► Stock plummets.

01:04:03 ◼   ► It was this big thing.

01:04:04 ◼   ► And it was a great experience for me because number one, I felt bad

01:04:08 ◼   ► that I'd been mealy-mouthed.

01:04:10 ◼   ► But number two, it really solidified I need to trust myself.

01:04:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:14 ◼   ► And if you're going to come at me, you have to have definitive facts

01:04:18 ◼   ► and data.

01:04:19 ◼   ► This is what I mentioned before.

01:04:20 ◼   ► If I'm wrong, I want to correct the record but I've learned I need

01:04:24 ◼   ► to wait to correct the record because sometimes I actually am right.

01:04:28 ◼   ► And so that was useful in a just like trusting your guns.

01:04:33 ◼   ► Now here's the interesting thing.

01:04:35 ◼   ► I can't remember any episode of a CEO coming at me like that.

01:04:40 ◼   ► And my experience actually, to the extent I talk to CEOs, is they're so

01:04:46 ◼   ► thirsty for any outside perspective that has any sort of understanding of their business,

01:04:52 ◼   ► they don't care if you're wrong.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Of course they have more context, but everyone under them are the senior VPs

01:04:59 ◼   ► who are emailing me mad that I'm making them look bad.

01:05:02 ◼   ► And so if I write something, then they'll go down and say, hey, is

01:05:06 ◼   ► this right?

01:05:06 ◼   ► And so it's funny because I wish they would tell me more when I'm

01:05:10 ◼   ► wrong.

01:05:11 ◼   ► We could shortcut this and I could say that I'm wrong sooner.

01:05:14 ◼   ► But it's really striking.

01:05:16 ◼   ► This is a Consistent pattern.

01:05:17 ◼   ► There's a certain level of the company, very senior, but not totally senior, that

01:05:21 ◼   ► gets very mad at me.

01:05:22 ◼   ► But this most senior level never gets mad, even when I'm wrong, because they

01:05:27 ◼   ► want outside perspective and feedback because they get it so rarely.

01:05:31 ◼   ► I want to thank Ben so much for joining me on this episode.

01:05:34 ◼   ► You can read Stratekery and listen to his podcast by going to Stratekery.com.

01:05:39 ◼   ► There's a bunch of links in the show notes too for some of the

01:05:41 ◼   ► stuff that we've mentioned today.

01:05:42 ◼   ► On Mortex this time, I want to dig in a little more about the

01:05:46 ◼   ► CEO interviews that we touched on in this episode.

01:05:48 ◼   ► How does Ben prepare for them?

01:05:50 ◼   ► How does he think about them?

01:05:51 ◼   ► How does he deal with these big personalities?

01:05:53 ◼   ► You can listen to this and get ad-free episodes by going to get moretext.com.

01:05:58 ◼   ► Don't forget the subtle range is available right now for a limited time.

01:06:03 ◼   ► Don't miss out.

01:06:04 ◼   ► Go to cortexmerch.com.

01:06:06 ◼   ► Thank you so much for listening.

01:06:08 ◼   ► I'll be back next time