Episode 5: 

How to find your content and podcast niche

- Greg Younger, The Write3 Guy

Greg Younger - The  Write3 Guy

​

Eric Rutherford: [00:00:00] It is time for Build that podcast where we will discuss how you can use a podcast to grow your business and expand your influence. I'm your host Eric Rutherford, and I'm excited today because I have with me,

Greg Younger. He is the Write3 guy. He's a leader in web three writing and literary NFTs who helps writers explore the blockchain.

​

He's also hosted the Write3 show, which is a Twitter space every Tuesday at 3:00pm Central, and he also has the Write3 podcast. Greg, welcome to the show. 

​

Greg Younger: Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. 

​

Eric Rutherford: Yeah, I'm excited too. I have been following you on Twitter for a while and I, I've subscribed to your newsletter and I thought this is a great opportunity to, to explore the right three guy as well as to get into your podcast, which you've recently launched.

​

So, yeah, I'm pumped.

​

Greg Younger: Me [00:01:00] too excited. Let's do. 

​

Eric Rutherford: Before we get to the podcast and we will get there, what is the Write3 Guy and what led you to become the Write3 Guy? 

​

Greg Younger: Sure. Right on. Well, the long story, trying to make it as short as possible is that I was a financial advisor for a long time and for about 20 years, I spent my days helping people save for retirement and send their kids to college. But I've always been a writer. I've always had blogs. I graduated with an English degree. And so it's always been something that I've done on the side. About a year ago, I, I had a good old fashioned midlife crisis I think is the easiest way to put it.

 

And I sold my company, I sold my business. I said this isn't fulfilling anymore. I had this revelation that we all have two lives, and the second one [00:02:00] starts when you realize you only have one. And I decided to do something else and becoming a full-time content creator is what I wanted to try out.

 

And so I had been writing daily and writing about all kinds of topics. I'm a dad, I was a coach mental health, and I was also talking about web three. The social signals that I was receiving was people like this Web three writing, people are responding to it. They're engaging with it.

 

And so I doubled down on web three writing and essentially what I did was I said, Hey, this is kind of ironic that so many people are building three audiences using web two tools. And for those of us in the Web three world, those of us who believe in decentralization and peer to peer internet.

 

And this kind of new wave of, of building audiences, it's ironic that [00:03:00] there's so many people building on web three platforms. And so I went to start looking, how could I do this differently? How could I create content in a web three way? And quite frankly, there was not a lot of help.

 

There wasn't a lot of people out there, there wasn't a lot of resources out there. And I just started producing my own. I spend most of my days trying out new things and looking to discover how to create content and write. And then I turn around and share that with my audience and help my fellow writers and content creators to use the blockchain in web three to create work.

 

So I essentially sit at the intersection of writing and web three and I'm just having a blast.

 

Eric Rutherford: I love that description. Sitting at the intersection of writing and web three. I've been down the web three rabbit hole. I understand a lot about what you're talking about. Some of the listeners may be a little [00:04:00] unfamiliar with it. Would you share what makes Web three unique and how it differs from web two or social media or other forms of content.

​

Greg Younger: Yes, I will. And that is essentially the million dollar question, right? But what I try to remind my audience, you know, people in my social circles that might ask the similar question is this quote, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. And so social media platforms like TikTok or Facebook or Instagram that are free to use are mining your data at a very deep, deep level.

​

And Web three intends to change that paradigm and create systems and platforms where they're not built on mining your data. They're built on a [00:05:00] more organic and decentralized platform. And so that's the biggest difference. It's also this idea of owning versus renting. If we think about finance like I did for 20 plus years, I would always tell young people, buy a house.

 

Buy a house. It's a great investment because you own something. And then once you own something, you can leverage you can build equity, you can buy and sell the asset. Whereas when you rent you can't do any of that. And so, you know, as we create content online, if we create a a TikTok, we are renting space on Tiktok's platform, but you don't own anything there. And so consequently, TikTok can stop you. They can censor you, they can do all sorts of things because you don't own the content. Whereas in web three, we're trying. and we're not there yet, but we're trying is to create systems and platforms where we can take control and own the content that we're [00:06:00] creating.

 

And so the idea behind web three writing is then to own our work, own our audiences, so that we can reward and engage our readers in a way that's never been done.

 

Eric Rutherford: I think it's a great description and things that just come to mind talking about rewarding, and this may take us down a rabbit trail, but you know, talking about rewarding creators and authors, I think of the used bookstore marketplaces out there, right?

​

You write a book and you may get something off the top, but that book can sell half a dozen more times easily, and the author gets nothing. And so part of what you're talking about is not simply I'm throwing stuff up on Twitter, I'm throwing stuff up on TikTok, on YouTube, and it's not mine, but even hard stuff, right?

​

Articles and books and art and other types of content. Am I tracking with you? 

​

Greg Younger: Absolutely. [00:07:00] NFT books is a very good use case for what Web three can be. And again, we're at the early stages, but the ebook on Amazon is not really a great medium for authors now. It's fantastic for the user.

It's cheap, it's easy. You just go on Amazon and boom, you knock it out. But for the creator, it's not great. You know, one, your cut is substantial that you have to give to Amazon. Two, you don't know who your buyers are. You just put it up there. People buy your stuff, but there's no way for me to know Eric bought my work unless Eric tells me that he bought my work. Right. And then for the user, again, it's easy, but you don't own your Amazon Kindle book. There's not a secondary market to sell it. You know, my dad has probably a hundred Kindle [00:08:00] books in his Kindle , right?

And he can't sell any of those. He can't really even lend them or share them. If he owns one and I say, 'Hey dad, send me that book", it's a convoluted process and you really can't do it. So N F T books is there. There's all of these books being created. They're being created on chain and secondary markets now exist.

 

If you own it and you wanna sell it to me, I can buy it from you. If you own it and wanna give it to me, you can send it to me, you can lend it to me, you can lend it to me for money. There's all sorts of awesome ways that you can now engage and again, have this ownership model around your ebook, where you never did before.

 

And again, there's benefits from the creator's perspective, and there's benefits from the reader's perspective. But it's all new and we're developing and building and, the user experience is not quite yet up to par with an Amazon Kindle. 

​

And so a lot of [00:09:00] people will come and say, I don't care about all that stuff. I just want two clicks and I wanna read it. And that's fine. And that's okay. No worries. You be, you as I like to tell my kids. But we're trying to develop and think about things in a different way. Can we put some of this ownership online? Can we own the digital assets that we create and consume?

 

And again, can we reward and engage our audiences like never before and I'm confident Write3 can do it. 

 

Eric Rutherford: I agree, and that's one of the things as I've been following you and trying to learn more about it, looking ahead at publishing, looking ahead at writing, even podcasts in the terms of audio and how to be able to really own that.

 

Because as I think of content, especially online, there's two forms of content you really own are podcasts, actually three podcasts, your website and your email list. And even those, with [00:10:00] podcasts you've got distribution and other stuff, but ultimately it's, it's what you own.

 

And so I appreciate you walking through that and thinking through that because though I think a lot of people in the world don't realize what you were talking about earlier. Social media-- it's not theirs. Right? 

 

Greg Younger: It really isn't. And to even challenge those three that you shared, you know, do you even own your email list?

 

You know, mail Chimp recently censored several large crypto newsletter list. MailChimp basically came out and felt like crypto and Bitcoin was not the type of content that they wanted on their platform. And so they shut 'em down. They said, Nope, you can't use MailChimp. Twitter recently shut down their newsletter review and for a while, I don't even know I think, this has now gone past, but for a week to 10 days, users couldn't access their email list. So [00:11:00] do you own it or does really Twitter own it? That becomes the question on some of our email lists. So again, a benefit of web three is these ideas of wallets. If you have a digital Crypto wallet, that wallet is decentralized. You own your wallet, you own your wallet address, and if you've provided that wallet address to me, you and I have a communication portal that is immutable. It cannot be censored. It cannot be interrupted. As long as I have internet and you have internet will always be connected till the end of time. And that's not necessarily the case for emails. So again, a bit of a rabbit hole. A lot of people are just like, well, I don't care. That doesn't apply to me. And and that's okay. We're at the beginning of this. I believe that my kids will care a lot about owning their digital [00:12:00] assets and will want to be owners and not renters.

 

I think our generation, it comes and goes. Some will get it, some won't 

 

Eric Rutherford: I agree. I think it's an education thing. It's an early adopter thing. It's a mindset thing. But it's coming and there's a lot of good stuff happening from it.

​

And so as you have begun this content journey and I'm realizing you and I could talk for hours just on blockchain and web three and IP and all kinds of stuff. But as you've jumped on your content journey, what is something, a benefit, something fun, that's happened that, that you just totally didn't expect?

 

Greg Younger: Yeah. A couple of things. One is a bit of a vanity metric, but it's my kids think it's cool, which is the Web three world has a lot of intersection with entertainment. I think the idea [00:13:00] around web three is a real democratization around the creative process, and Hollywood is a top-down industry.

 

Even creators who get to the highest rank will look around and say, I'm here, I'm at the top, but I really wanna empower everyone. I want to democratize Hollywood. And so Web three has a lot of Hollywood and entertainers. And so I have been able to converse and connect with entertainers that I never would've thought, or at least with their teams. And it's truly amazing sometimes the rooms and the meetings that I get asked to come into and I'm like, whoa, this is pretty wild. So there's definitely been some entertainment and Hollywood connections that sometimes blow my mind. On a more practical basis I've recently kind of gone through this process of creating digital assets and creating my own NFTs and air dropping those to [00:14:00] collectors of my writing. And I, if you've never gifted and rewarded a collector through an airdrop, it's an awesome feeling. It's just a really cool feeling to say thank you by being able to gift something that I think is worth something, something that I've created, something that's a digital asset, that that is only owned by a few people. And to be able to give it to somebody as a thank you, it really is cool. It's a cool feeling. I highly recommend it for anyone who is out there creating content. Now, both of those things would be fascinating and unexpected, just the people you get to talk to. But I agree that the being able to serve a community and just be of benefit and help and just being able to take care of them in some capacity is huge. It's fun, right? I mean, that's web three is well known for [00:15:00] community building. It's well known for being a fantastic place for communities to come together around a common good. And the common good for a lot of people are those digital assets that people own.

 

People get fired up about it. They get, this is what we know about ownership, right? When you own something or a piece of something, you begin to care. If you own an individual security, let's say Apple, and then you have the option to go buy a new phone, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna buy an iPhone or an Android?

 

Well, you're a stockholder at Apple, you're probably gonna go buy an iPhone, right? So ownership has always influenced behavior. And so what NFTs and crypto allow is for an ownership into a group or into a community. And once you have a even a tiny bit of ownership, you become involved. You [00:16:00] become engaged.

 

You become a proponent because you have ownership. And back to the real estate, one of the downsides of being a rental landlord is the upkeep of property. If you've ever owned a rental, you know that your rentees, don't always take care of their house because it's not theirs, right?

 

They're just renting. And so the same thing happens with web two, social media. Why are we on Twitter? Why are we on LinkedIn? I mean, as long as they're giving us what we need, we'll stay. As soon as they stop giving us what we need, we'll leave. We don't care, right? We're renting land and what NFTs and Crypto and Web three are saying, oh, here's a chance to own something.

 

And once you own it, you become ingrained with whatever that project or platform is. Does that make sense? 

 

Eric Rutherford: It does. [00:17:00] And I agree, that's one of the cool things with some of the projects out there and that's kind of how we ended up initially connecting was through Lazy Lions.

​

Which is a neat, neat project out there. And it's like suddenly everything lion related suddenly becomes pertinent. 

​

Greg Younger: Sure it does. Absolutely right. We care about that project. We care about the success of that project. We have that in common. And we take ownership right in what's happening.

​

And so our connection to that particular project is deeper or deeper than just about anything else that I'm a part. 

​

Eric Rutherford: I agree. And it was unexpected in the whole process of it. It's like, oh, this is kind of cool.

 

It's an additional benefit of the ownership of the property rights. 

 

Greg Younger: Exactly. Digital property rights.

​

Eric Rutherford: As you started on this journey with content, with Write3, were you always thinking you would start a podcast or was that just an afterthought? How did that come about? 

​

Greg Younger: Here's what I know, or what [00:18:00] I knew is if I'm gonna sell my business, have a midlife crisis, and start creating content, then I'm gonna do what I want to do. I'm gonna do what's fun. This is the opportunity to do what I enjoy doing. And so when I look at writing and I look at podcasts, or I look at making videos, you know, all of the different ways that you can create content, the thing I love to do most is that interview podcast thing.

 

And you know, if you think about, for 20 years, I would have chats not unlike the one we're having four to five times a day. If there's one thing that I've done a thousand times over is talk to people and chat with them and engage and listen and make a human connection. And it was the part of the job that I actually love.

 

And so when I really sat back and said, okay, well, you can do anything that you want, [00:19:00] what do you wanna do? And podcasting was at the very high on the list, but as you and I were talking about, before, the podcast world is hard. It's tough. It's a difficult place to make your mark.

 

And so what I thought about and not to say that my journey is the correct one, but I've had some success with this idea or this mental model, which is go start where you can get the quickest feedback. 

 

When I started creating content, I wasn't always talking about web three writing. I started by talking about being a dad. I started talking about being a youth coach a youth athletic coach, which I had done for 10 years. I liked Bonzai trees and had been creating some content around Bonzai. I was doing all kinds of stuff to see what I liked and what stick and by using like a Twitter or even like an Instagram, you're gonna get a [00:20:00] feedback loop very quick. Whereas if you're doing a podcast once a week or even five minutes every other day, it could be tough to start getting feedback, especially if you're writing and talking about the same thing each time.

 

You can't really do any type of a b testing. You can't put out, I mean, you can, right. But it's, it's kind of weird right, to start a podcast and in day one you're talking about five ways to raise three growing boys, and then two days later how to trim your Bonzai. People will be like, this is the weirdest podcast I've ever come across. Whereas on Twitter you could do that, right? You can one day wake up and write this and then write something else, and then a month later you can look at the social signals, right? You can see how, wow, you know, this web three stuff is getting a ton of action.

 

And by the way, nobody cares about your Bonzai trees and so, although I knew I wanted to do a podcast, I knew that at least early on, if I [00:21:00] really wanted to get into content creation and try to monetize it, at some point, I needed that quick feedback loop that Twitter gave me. Does that make sense?

 

That makes perfect sense because you iterated in various capacities. You tested the market, you started getting feedback. It's like, okay, here's my niche. Because that's what you really need for a podcast or really need for long-term content. So yeah, you were just trying to narrow it down and then you landed on it.

​

Right, exactly. And then the next step for me was Twitter spaces, and, you know, for those that might not be familiar with what a Twitter space is, it's essentially a very easy spendable audio room that can be created in just a couple of steps, right? Right from your cell phone, if you want.

 

It is a very low friction process and [00:22:00] one thing I think about a lot is friction and how important it is to create content for your audience and then reduce friction as much as possible. Again, if I'm creating content on Twitter and I'm getting a lot of people on Twitter saying, man, I really like this guy.

 

I like this work. I wanna follow what he's saying. And then I throw out a link to my podcast. Now I've created Friction, right? I've asked them to leave the platform that they came for and go to another platform, and Twitter and other social media platforms don't really like it either because they want you to stay on their platform.

 

They don't want you going to Spotify or wherever. By talking and using a Twitter space, there's a lot of benefits. One Twitter is going to not only like it, but they're gonna actually help you engage. If you tweet out, Hey, I'm going to be doing this Twitter [00:23:00] space, you'll find the algorithm is like, good.

 

Okay, let's throw that in front of a bunch of people. Right? So you've already got your core audience in Twitter. They don't have to go anywhere. They can pop it open. They can actually stay on Twitter doing what they usually do, and the audio is in the background so that, you know, it's a very low friction way to sort of start getting your podcast feet wet and the other great thing is it's great practice. Twitter spaces are very laid back. They're inherently laid back. You could be walking your dog while being a spaces host and it can be as laid back as you want it to be. And so one of the things that I would say is that it gave me an opportunity to practice, try new things.

 

Do all kinds of fun ideas and again, build up this audience of folks who like coming on every week [00:24:00] and chatting about my particular niche, which is web three writing. Does that make sense? 

​

Eric Rutherford: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And then so low friction, and I agree. Low friction is important for any content, any product. You have to make it easy for people to get it.

 

And as you're going through this, is it just conversations? Are you doing Twitter spaces and doing interviews, inviting people in to have a conversation? What's that format?

 

Greg Younger: To be sure Twitter allows you to do anything. And honestly, the most successful Twitter spaces are often panels, you know, large panels of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 people talking about some sort of a subject that is appealable to a massive audience. If you're trying to drive a Twitter space to its highest reach, something like that is the formula. For [00:25:00] me. I did always have the podcast in mind. This is the way that I wanted to do it. I'm less concerned about maximizing the spaces' reach as I am just doing what I wanna do. Part of being a content creator is sometimes just deciding I wanna do what I wanna do. I do a more of an interview process and I reach out to friends and again, connections, interesting Write3 topics and people, and I have a Write3 show, which is hopefully somewhat self-explanatory in the sense that I'm gonna bring people on and we're gonna talk about web three writing and in some capacity.

 

And so that's the way that I do it. I have the same. Every week it's Tuesday afternoons here in the United States at three o'clock central. We have the Write3 show. I try to keep it to about an hour. I bring on guests or interesting topics with panels, so to speak. But for the most part, it's [00:26:00] a very podcast feel to it.

 

Introduce myself, introduce what I'm all about. Get into. If you've ever been on any of my Write3 shows you'll know that I have a very sort of podcasty interview style where we're asking about your story and what you're building or what you're doing. Not unlike the conversation you and I are having right now.

 

Eric Rutherford: Now you've launched your podcast, right? And so you created content, you did it through Twitter primarily. You launch spaces cuz that's where your audience and your community were located. Now you've taken another step and you're launching a podcast, which was at the forefront of your mind at the beginning, but now you're like, I think I've got enough ground swell to be able to do that.

 

What benefits are you hoping to get from the podcast besides just the joy of making it? Because some people don't like doing [00:27:00] podcasts and they definitely don't want to do the conversations. I find them fun. And so I get the enjoyment factor but what other benefits are you looking to get from it?

​

Greg Younger: I hear ya. I mean, just a side note, somebody recently Sent out a tweet and said, some of the Twitter spaces that I love and answered and I was humbled enough to be a part of that list. And a little bit farther down, another creative, another spaces person sort of chimed in and said,

 

Oh, thank you. I'm sorry. I haven't been doing spaces lately, quite frankly. They just wear me out and I thought to myself, you know, just stop. Like, life is too short, right? I mean, there's, these things should not wear you out, and if they wear you out, then my suggestion is go create content that doesn't wear you out.

 

That is why we quit our nine to fives and become content creators is to do things that doesn't wear us out. [00:28:00] So yes, I love them. They're the highlight of my week. I thoroughly enjoy them. so why did I then go to a podcast? I'm now getting the social signals.

 

I'm getting the data. There's a real practical issue now, which is I'm doing this for like three or four months, I think four. Four, about four months because I had 16 episodes. And by the way, if you're gonna do a Twitter space, just make sure you click the record button. It's arguably the most important thing.

You do it at the beginning, you hit record. That way the audio is yours. And so, What I did from the very beginning, from the very first show was I was recording and then downloading that audio onto my computer. And that's important because Twitter only stores your audio for a limited amount of time.

 

So at the time of this recording, I think it's 60 days. So in 60 [00:29:00] days, your fantastic conversation that you had in a Twitter space is gone. You'll never see it again. So there becomes this like practical issue where people will ask you,

Hey, how do you mint and publish a book as an NFT and you wanna say to them, that's a great question. I actually talked about this for an hour on a Twitter space. You should check that out. And then you realize, oh no, I can't actually send that audio because it's gone. So I knew practically that I wanted to be able to store what I feel is a wealth of knowledge and learning and understanding that we can really sort of.

 

You know, draw back to. I mean the whole idea behind becoming a content creator is the compounding effect of our content, right? Whatever you're creating today, We'll have benefit tomorrow and may even have more benefit 6, 9, 12 [00:30:00] months from now. But if you're gonna build a Twitter space portfolio, you can't do it.

 

So step one is, let's just take this audio and let's throw it into a podcast, because then we know that we can just have a library of that information. The second reason for me was, and is, again, I'm getting enough social signals that this is interesting. This is a niche. This is information that people want to hear about and are asking themselves on a rather regular basis, which is, Hey, what could web three writing look like?

 

Who is doing web three writing? Well, who is leading the web three literary NFT movement? not all those people are on Twitter, or if they are, they're probably like a real human and they're not on there every day. They have like lives, they have like a nine to five, right? [00:31:00] So part of this is about now broadening, Write3 to a larger audience. And we know that a podcast can start to take us away from a Twitter audience and broaden us to a larger audience. What makes Twitter great is the moat that it has people on Twitter, like Twitter and the Twitter products. But that same moat means that all of your content isn't getting seen by another splice of the world.

 

And the other benefit to taking a Twitter space and turning it into a podcast is now we get to share the Write3 story with a larger audience 

​

Eric Rutherford: I think that is brilliant. It sounds like what you're doing is at the very beginning you hit record.

At the end, you stop recording. You then download your file, and then you basically, throw an intro and an outro on it, then you upload it. [00:32:00] I'm painting with a big brush and then that's your podcast episode, is that correct?

​

Greg Younger: As of right now, yes.

 

That is what we're doing. And the third reason that I wanted to start a podcast after you know, just wanting to get the word out of there and building the Write3 m ovement and not being able to access old conversations on Twitter. The other reason was that I have three boys and it is actually really important to me that I get my kids involved in what I'm doing.

 

That's a sort of like a value of mine. And so my 16 year old who is like many 16 year olds, is a gamer and doesn't really care a whole lot about what's happening in the real world. And that's okay, but I knew that he had the ability to edit and slice and dice videos and audio because that's what he does with gaming.

 

He does similar things all the time. And so part of this [00:33:00] process too was to get my son involved as a producer and get him involved with understanding how to create and produce a podcast. Everything from the audio, but also over time, the show notes and even the booking of the guests.

 

You know, this is something he can do. This becomes a real world skill that he can now put on a resume and say, Oh, you know, I might not have done anything, but I have been a podcast producer for a few years, which as, you know, as somebody in the podcast world is not an insignificant piece of experience.

 

And so he is my video and audio editor. And so yes, we, we download I use on a Mac I use something called. Audio Hijack and, and I'd be happy to share these tools with you and, and you could put in the show notes, but, but I download onto Audio Hijack and then my son, I believe uses like a Da Vinci Resolve, which again, is, I think more of a video editing, but it works just fine for [00:34:00] audio as well.

 

I tape a few minutes of intro and again, I'll be honest with you, I'm just practicing these. I'm trying to see what works for me and what I feel like the audience wants. But yes, I'm doing some sort of an intro saying, Hey, this was the guest. This is what we talked about.

​

These were one or two things that I really enjoyed about it. I hope you enjoy, and then boom, you're right into it. And at this point, we're not doing a lot of editing but we could right? We could edit down the audio of the space. But we're really not, and again, another reason for that is low friction.

 

If you're gonna be either a content creator full-time like I am, or even as a side gig, doing things efficiently is important, right? So does it make sense right now for us to spend two and a half hours editing and caring a ton about the polish? You know, I don't think so.

 

You know, my very first [00:35:00] podcast I quoted one of the co-founders of LinkedIn who said, if you're not completely embarrassed by the first version of your product, you shipped too late. And that's, I love that and I believe in that. And so is the Write3 podcast that you can download in January of 2023 a polished, you know, look at how podcasting can be done.

 

Absolutely not. But is it out there? Is it starting to evolve? Is it the first draft of what we are hoping to shift? Absolutely. And to me as a content creator, that's what I believe. Action, you know, over everything. And so that's what we're doing. And that's where we're at now.

 

Eric Rutherford: And that makes perfect sense because as we were talking earlier about sometimes it's about shipping the product at some point. Good is good, perfect is the enemy of [00:36:00] good. And so sometimes it's just getting it out there. And one of the things I've noticed with podcasts is, It's okay that there's some ums and ahs.

​

It's okay that you don't have like crystal clear audio. It's because it's conversational and people don't expect it. You can have some bumps and some things go on and it just sort of rolls right off. So, Perfect audio is is not a requirement, but at the same time you're like, Hey, we're just gonna iterate.

 

We're gonna try some things and we'll just get better at it, which, that's a freedom thing for anybody who's thinking about it.

​

Greg Younger: Absolutely right. And again, You don't have to start with a podcast. You, you can start with Twitter spaces and figuring out what works and what doesn't work, and what you like and what your audience likes.

 

And as long as you're hitting record, you know, you're building up a library that you can, you can publish later. The other thing now [00:37:00] is there's a particular guest that I've been chasing for the Write3 show, and he lives in Berlin. Is unable to make my afternoon spaces. And a matter of fact, I asked him two and a half months ago to come on and he said, no, I, I can't make that space.

 

And so we're gonna do a podcast. I'm gonna do an actual podcast. We're not going to do the space. I'm gonna do an interview. I feel very confident that it'll work because I've done it so much. Right. I've done the interview process before I know what it wants to look like or, or how I want it to be presented.

 

And we're gonna do a sort of a podcast lead. And so over time, you know, who knows? Maybe we, we don't do the spaces anymore and now we're doing more of a podcast. But it's all about the flexibility. It's about doing it, it's about having the information out there and, and then ultimately, right. And, and you know this because I.

 

[00:38:00] You're, this is what you're doing. You've got a great niche. Someone like myself who's just starting to podcast needs all the resources they can to try to figure out how to do this. And so the same is for me. I have a niche of people who want to hear this conversation with this guest, right? We know that there's an audience for it.

 

And so, you know, it's, it's just like anything else. If, if you can establish the audience first, then it gives purpose to your content and then that's what drives content creation and audience building.

 

Eric Rutherford: Completely agree. Is there anything you wish you knew ahead of time before you started this? Or is it like I knew enough to just take the first step or how's that journey been? 

 

Greg Younger: Oh, man. It's like everything else. I mean, it feels so overwhelming I just, I don't know how else to say it. It just, it, it be, it [00:39:00] feels insurmountable. I is the word that, that I think, I feel, because what I'll do is I'll have a conversation or I'll listen to something like this and I got some Alpha male telling me to do it, and it's easy and, you know run five miles and, you know, drink an egg for breakfast and then go do your podcast, get off your ass. Right?

​

That's sort of the alpha male content creation world, right? And you're like, alright, I'm gonna go do this. And then you stare it in the face, right? You do a couple of Google searches and you're just literally you know, paralysis by analysis.

So that, that's how I feel about everything. I mean, just, I wanna be really clear as a content creator. I don't know what I'm doing most of the time, but what I would just say is I think I have gotten to a point in being present in recognizing that feeling and that. . Okay. I've got, I've gotten over this before, so just take a deep breath and let's start figuring this out.

[00:40:00] And what's fun is my, my 16 year old is a whiz at all kinds of stuff. And that's an awesome experience to sit down with him and try to figure out things together. And, and of course that generation is they grew up on the internet in a way that no one else has. And so it's so intuitive to them to find answers.

 

And so I guess I'm not sure. I mean, there's a whole list of things that I wish I knew ahead of time, Eric. Right? I mean, a whole list. But I guess if the way I feel like I can better answer that is to try to be as real as I can and just say, that I don't know. And I just had to kind of figure stuff out and, and my hope is that like each iteration is better than the last, for example, I don't have an outro as of today.

 

But we're gonna work on that and add that to the next one. And so, you know, again, it's this idea of just shipping it, seeing [00:41:00] what works, seeing what sticks, and then, you know, Knowing that each time I do something, I don't really have to redo that ever again. I've got it figured out. And so that's it.

 

And look, there, there was three or four people who were just so helpful and instrumental in telling me and helping me out. A and so, yeah, that's the thing. And believe me, you wanna reach out to me, I'd be happy to be that person for somebody else. And so that's how we do it, right? We have to just sort of reach out and get help and without those people, I wouldn't be here.

 

And so that's what you gotta do. You just gotta get out there and try your best and it will work out. 

​

Eric Rutherford: I agree. It's all about the repetitions. It's the reps, it's about doing it, it improves over time and just giving yourself permission to just go for it. Which is hard because I know me personally is I get that people pleasing, perfectionists, sort of, you know, for too many years and it's like, oh, I can't do it [00:42:00] cuz it's not perfect.

 

You can't get to version 100 until you put in the first 99, right? 

 

Greg Younger: Absolutely, absolutely. No question. I mean, absolutely. And, and that's what we have to remind ourselves is that the creators that we admire are on step 2000. and we are on step 10. And if you were to go back and look at their step 10, it's not a whole lot better or worse than your step 10.

 

Repetition will beat ability any day. Just you gotta wake up and continue to create and if you enjoy the podcast medium.

 

Again, getting back to this idea that like if it's wearing you out, you're probably not going to continue, but if you enjoy it the way that you and I do, then you'll be fine. And, that's all we can do. 

 

Eric Rutherford: Now as, as we kind of wrap up here, any takeaway as you'd like to leave our [00:43:00] audience? 

 

Greg Younger: What I would just say from a content creation perspective, and I wrote about this actually this morning, is I think that we all can, myself included, have this paralysis by analysis as it applies to creating content.

​

We often are, we struggle with the idea. Why create, there's so many other people creating, why, why is anybody gonna read our stuff or consume our content? I don't wanna waste time becoming a content creator and then nobody read my stuff or. You know what if I'm reading or, or creating the wrong niche, I don't wanna wake up 6, 9, 12 months from now and think, man, I picked the wrong topic.

 

What a waste of a year. And so I'm just not gonna do anything. I can't [00:44:00] win. and so I'm not gonna do anything.

 

And what I wrote about this morning is that I'm a mountain climber. I've got a good buddy of mine. We, we climb mountains together. And what I told him recently, when he expressed those concerns with me, I said, you know, we can't worry about whether or not we're climbing the right mountain.

 

We just need to be focused on being the best mountain climbers we can be. If we have the tools and the resources to know how to climb mountains, we can climb pretty much any mountain in the world. And so the same thing applies to your content creation. Don't worry about whether or not you're creating the right content or don't worry if you're in the right niche, just focus on creating content and be thankful and congratulate yourself for building up the skills of being a content creator. I created a podcast That's amazing, . That is great. I can use that skill for the rest of my life.[00:45:00] I have now done it. I have a newsletter. I've built that skill. I'm a better writer. I've created and built a Twitter following.

​

These are all things that I've done over the last six months that will be usable no matter what happens in the future. And so I have no idea. Whether this idea of Write3 will ever take off. I don't. I have no idea if Write3 is gonna work, if my content's gonna work, if my branding's gonna work.

​

I have no idea if I'm gonna make any money doing this, that's for sure. But, . It's hard for me to look back at the last year and say, oh, what a waste of time. It's, it's absolutely not been a waste of time. Not at all. It's been an enormously valuable learning period for me over the last year because I've focused on the skills and the resources that I need to become a [00:46:00] content creator and if you're listening to this podcast and you're wondering, I wanna do a podcast, but I don't know what to do, don't worry about it, just do it. Just ship it. Just focus on being a mountain climber, not whether or not you're climbing the right mountain.

 

Eric Rutherford: I agree. You don't know it until you get in it and try it, and you just start messy and you just improve. 

​

As we wrap up if our listeners want to know more about you, about your podcast, your Twitter Spaces, your newsletter, where would you like them to go? 

​

Greg Younger: The easiest place to do is to go to Twitter. Follow me @gregyounger and there I have a link tree to all of my stuff.

 

I'll be sure to give you links to the newsletter and the podcast and my work on Mirror that can be collected in the show notes so that, so that people can, can see the link tree. But Twitter is my hub at the moment. That's where [00:47:00] 90% of my content comes from. And if you gimme a quick follow there, you'll find everything that you.

 

Eric Rutherford: Excellent. So @gregyounger on Twitter, we will put all of that information in the show notes. So if you want to check him out you can, I would encourage you to do so. He is doing some really neat stuff in this space. So,

​

Greg thank you for joining me today. This has been a wonderful convers.

​

Greg Younger: It's been awesome. Thank you. And I, I wish you and this podcast all the success in the world and I appreciate you having me on.