I must admit, I’m feeling a bit exhausted at the moment. Not a bad thing, necessarily. Just a testament to how hard I’ve been working on the business. This week, I set up calls with a few creator friends of mine to get a sense of what they were doing when they were at my stage in the game and I was able to glean a lot of important insight into what lies ahead.
Jason’s Office Hours fr. Chet Haase
On the Yellowgold Studios YouTube channel, I have been doing some very casual Office Hours live streams about every two weeks lately. This time I invite my friend Chet Haase to join me. Chet has been a longtime developer on the Android team at Google since 2010. If you went to a Google IO event, you were practically guaranteed to see him up on stage giving a keynote on the state of Android, so he held a very visible role with the Android family at Google. He recently left his comfy position at Google to change careers, moving cities to study comedy writing. (No surprise cause his keynotes were always hilarious!)
Chet and I discussed what it’s like when our identity is attached to a high-profile role, how it feels to step into something completely different, what it is like to write a book, writing code in your sleep (literally), and at the end, Chet and I try to out-Smirk each other. Hopefully, ya’ll learned something new about Chet during this interview. I want to do more like them! Who would you like me to chat with? Leave a comment below and let me know!
SUBSCRIBE: http://www.youtube.com/@YellowgoldStudios?sub_confirmation=1
Android Faithful #39: Premium Upper Mid-Range
This week we welcomed Ben Schoon, the word-writing machine who does so much of what you find on 9to5Google! We compare the many pics we took with our smartphones of the solar eclipse, some better than others… Mishaal breaks down even more features from Android 15, The Find My Device network FINALLY got its long-awaited update, Beeper was bought by Automattic, and so much more!
SUBSCRIBE: https://androidfaithful.com/episode/premium-upper-mid-range
SUPPORT: https://www.patreon.com/AndroidFaithful
AI Inside 12: Suno AI: A Robot… With Soul!
Jeff Jarvis and I fly solo again, breaking down some of the AI news stories that caught our attention. Of note: Jeff spoke at the Nordic Media and AI conference, a New York Times piece shines a light on the harvesting of YouTube transcripts as valuable data sources for big tech, we take a look at the big announcements at Google Cloud Next 2014 including the release of Gemini 1.5 Pro and Google Vids, Jony Ive and Sam Altman are definitely building an AI device (hope its better than the Humane AI pin!), and we listen to some incredibly soulful music generated by the latest Suno AI update.
SUBSCRIBE: https://aiinside.show/episode/a-robot-with-soul
SUPPORT: https://www.patreon.com/AIInsideshow
The Network Effect
This week, I set up calls with a few of my creator friends to pick their brains about where I’m at right now, where I’m headed, and how I can ensure that this works in the long run. I didn’t ask them if I could share their names with the world so I’ll withhold that here for now. But, without revealing too much, here are a few things that stood out during our conversations:
The value of Patreon and community: In my pursuit of ways to monetize the things I’m doing right now, it was reinforced that the most valuable resource I have at the moment is my direct community of fans and supporters of my work. (That’s many of you!) I have a Patreon for AI Inside and for myself and in both cases, I’m looking at ways to increase value so that the biggest fans of my work will be more inclined to contribute. That money enables me to continue exploring these avenues of content creation. Improvements are in the works and coming very soon.
Time is my most valuable resource: I am CONSTANTLY running out of time, spread too thin. At the core of what I WANT to do is CREATING MORE CONTENT. But editing videos takes a crap tonne of time. If I didn’t have to edit, that would be a huge step in freeing up valuable chunks of time during which I could actually create more stuff! And that increased creation could lead to more channel momentum. Do I hire an editor? Especially during a time when I’m not making much, to begin with? I’m definitely considering it!
YouTube is personality-driven, not brand-driven: This lines up with my gut feeling lately that Yellowgold Studios isn’t my ideal channel identity. Especially in today’s YouTube market, people are looking for more “authentic” content. They want the creators themselves to be real, and to be less like a splashy ad for the products they cover. So how can I create content that does a better job of connecting the tech with my personal life and personal experience? How can I craft a channel that leans more into the ME in the equation and less into the STUDIO itself?’
These are just a few things I learned. There’s certainly more, but I’m not ready to talk about that cause, well, some things are best left a secret until the time is right! And you won’t have to wait long. Now, on to the movie theater to watch Dune 2 with my kids! Have a great weekend yall!