- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01KT4D2W53CN03M2FCYVTS522K (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: What’s up, man? Hey, how’s it going? Can you hear me okay? Yeah, I can hear you just fine. Fantastic. I’m having a little trouble. For some reason, my teleprompter is not lighting up. So you’re over here, but I’m going to try and look over here. Yeah, this is great. It’s going to feel terribly impersonal. If I’m ever looking over here, I’m actually looking at you. It’s not that I’m being rude and just ignoring you. No, we just try. michael: If you want to be on a swivel, I won’t take it personally. michael: I understand. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Thank you, dude. Let me unplug and re-plug and see if that sorts anything out. Anyway, how Thank you so much for booking the call. michael: Yeah, no, I’m glad that you offer these. I followed your stuff for a long time, actually. I think I first saw you on Twitter back when I was on Twitter. Yep. Maybe like three years ago or something. And we’ve recently picked up our YouTube stuff. So it just felt like the right timing to sort of dive in and grab some time. Fantastic. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you very much. Yeah. Note you said back when I was on Twitter, have you also jumped chip like many? michael: No, I sort of was made to walk the plank, if you will. We were sending a bunch of DMs to grow our newsletter and hit some spam threshold and got my account suspended with 56,000 followers. And it’s been like two years. They haven’t given it back. It’s crazy. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Really? Wow, wow, wow. Is that just, I presume it’s all tightened up since it became X? michael: Yeah. I don’t know. It sucked because it was right when they started doing the like creator payouts. And so I built this audience that I got. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: No. Just got this nice little income stream brewing on the side. And then all of a sudden it’s disappeared. Man, that’s a pain. michael: It is what it is. I invited Ben, my chief of staff, to the call. He helps out with our YouTube stuff. That’s all right. Cool. michael: Hey, Ben. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely. Of course it is. Nice to meet you guys. Ben, how are you doing? I’m doing great. How are you? Good. Very well. Very well. Thank you. I was just explaining. For some reason, my teleprompters decided to pack up minutes before. So I am looking at you. It just looks like I’m not. So I’ve actually got all my notes over here. So I’m. michael: normally like to start these things and by asking first of all anything that’s changed since you booked it any kind of new focuses wanted to switch to or are we good to kind of go on the foot that you set us off on yeah I think I think you have the context at least to start with um we are just you know we’ve been posting weekly videos now for a little over a month maybe five six weeks and just have a big backlog of interviews we’ve done with founders and trying to decide: A, you know, sort of do we go forward with those? Um, do we sort of move into other types of content? Because I mean, you know, you took a look at the channel, so I know you’ve you’ve context of it’s not. Oh, one other piece of context I didn’t give you actually is I remember this morning is that a good percentage of our current followers, subscribers on the channel, uh, came from shorts. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Um, interesting, yeah. michael: Oh, I would imagine that that’s impacting things in some way, but that’s the one thing I forgot to include in the note. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: No, no, that’s okay. But when you say that, I don’t see the shorts tab on your channel. Have they been deleted? michael: Yeah, I’ve made them all listed because candidly, between you and me, I’ve lost like 60 pounds since then. So I want to look at Well, congratulations. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Like, that’s that’s really cool. But yeah, no, I get for a second. I was like, hang on a second. I didn’t even look at the shorts and I was relieved to look over and see that they’re not there. Okay, cool. Well, that helps. I think there’s a few things I want to talk about overall. And the scripting, obviously, like normally that’s kind of my area. But I think a lot of the decisions and a lot of the things that I would love to get into kind of lay upstream of that. There are definitely some top-level scripting things we can talk about. But they’re the kind of things that, unless we fix the other stuff, it’s not going to make too much of a difference, basically. So I would love to hear in your guys’ words, like what this channel is designed to do, first of all. So I think there’s two real big things we need to figure out: what the channel is designed to do, and really explicitly who it’s for. And I would love to know that first one, first of all, what is this design to do? What action do you want people to take? Are you trying to grow the newsletter more? Like, what is the goal here? michael: Yeah, so I would say that the main thing is just to build an audience on YouTube. I think that’s a wonderful thing for us to have in terms of where we want those people to then go. So our founding journey newsletter, it goes out to 65,000 founders. It’s great to build that with just startup founders, continue to build trust in that niche. We’re raising a venture fund this year as well. And so having a good founder, brand, founder audience will give us credibility to get into more deals, especially if we can distribute information about our port codes. We’ve seen success with that with my angel investing through the newsletter. So that’s one angle. But I’d say, in the more sort of immediate term, we have a bunch of services that we sell into our audience. Startup founders need help growing their business, building it better, et cetera. We have a lot of marketing services. So we have an agency around like LinkedIn and X audience building. We have one for newsletters. We have one for SEO and Gio. We’re launching one for TikTok. And we have another one for AI workflow optimization with a few more planned for this year. So we basically seen Founding Journey brand and my brand are great to build trust with founders. It then lets us. Sell services into that audience. So that’s that’s sort of the short-term goal. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Okay, okay, cool. That’s very helpful. Um, so within that, you’re giving me a sense about anyway, like it’s clearly founder-based. Are these primarily VC-backed or like want-to-be VC-backed founders, or are they more bootstrappers, or is it a bit of a mixture of both? michael: We do have folks who come to us from the bootstrap side, but our focus primarily, just based on my background, is lean to and network is lean into the VC angle. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Okay, okay, cool. And are these people who have already received some sort of funding, or is it a real mixture? michael: It’s a real mix. I mean, just due to the volume, it’s majority people who are aspirational or planning to. But we do have a core contingent of folks who are native to SF, native to New York. They have raised, they’re in the world. They have their investor network and their founder network. And so we sort of balance this like pocket of highly influential people in our audience who are, you know, sort of in the culture, and then a wide group of people who see us as their way into the culture. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: I see. I see that. Okay. Okay. Yes, that’s a very interesting thing already, I suppose. This is one of the classic things trying to figure out YouTube is understanding what point on the journey kind of scale somebody is on. And it’s often quite difficult, even in something as simple as the terminology you use and the language you use, how quickly you might skim over something that somebody who’s been in the VC world for ages, who’s raised funding before, something they would know intuitively versus someone who’s aspirational. Even that is quite difficult to kind of balance. And it’s the same with me and my channel, the whole scriptwriting thing. It’s like, am I trying to target people who are already running 100,000 subscriber channels and they’re just trying to tighten up some extra things and they need the like script writing 201? Or is it the people who are just getting into it and need the 101? And I suppose my take on this would be that it’s probably advantageous to try and choose an end of that scale. And that’s maybe something that I felt is lacking a little bit at the moment. And there’s actually a much broader thing here. We can obviously get into it, but is that I don’t feel that I had quite a sense. Of exactly who is going to land on this channel and think this is exactly what I need. It helps me achieve this goal that I have. And I can’t wait for the next video because it’s going to help me towards that goal. And I wonder if that’s something that maybe you need more context on. We can get into my notes or whether you have an intuitive reaction to me saying that. Does it feel focused right now to you? michael: No, it doesn’t. I think you’ve hit the first nail on the head. The way you framed it, if I had to pick one or the other to focus on, I would rather pick the like SF native in the culture because they’re the ones with the money. They’re the ones who we’re going to invest in. They’re the ones who are buy. They’re the ones whose trust matters the most to us. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. Okay, that’s cool. So, on that, then, just as a kind of side note, I think one thing I think that’s a great decision, by the way. And I think, again, in terms of that goal that you have of brand building and building your authority through this channel. I think that obviously helps more if you’re not being like, So VC is this, and blah blah blah. To be honest, I could probably do with that channel. I’m not in this world at all, and it’s I’m not super familiar with it. Um, but yeah, I think that’s that stands you in good stead. But the reality of that, then I think is that your total addressable market is gonna be smaller because, as you say, like you’ve got this bigger audience, a lot of them don’t haven’t raised before are aspirational. And that’s just kind of something that I suppose, in terms of expectation setting, you will need to be okay with, because it means you’re probably not going to be making videos that get bazillions of views right away, if at all, because just that group of people is inherently a bit smaller. And I think if we compare what you’ve expressed as to your desirable audience, let me share my screen for a second here. I think it contrasts quite distinctly. With the can you see my screen okay? Yep, nice with the examples that you gave me. So, very, very explicitly, like all of these three channels feel like they’re targeted at the sort of like an ambitious beginner or you know an aspirational somebody, as you said, even if it’s not explicit. Something like I built a 30K per month app. That is appealing, even just intuitively, to someone who’s like, I’d love to business. Hey, I can build a 30K app in a weekend or whatever. Like, you know, they always go like, in 35 days. It’s always appealing to that sense of, wow, I’m kind of nobody right now, but I could build this because he did it in 35 days. It’s the same with Mark Liu. It’s obviously a different style. We can talk about the vlogging stuff. But it’s very much like, hey, I’m sharing my journey. I’m literally showing you the step-by-step of how you can go from no app at all, no money to 20K a month. And then, Greg, in much the same way, it’s like, well, I know it’s again a different format, but even his podcast-style interviews, they’re tutorials, right? Here is step one: here’s how you download this, here’s how you do this, blah blah blah. All of this is targeting that other end of the scale compared to what you’ve just expressed at the other end. And again, I think that’s a perfectly good idea, but I think it’s just about expectation setting and realizing, okay, this maybe we’re not building a channel that’s be like a million subscriber channel in the next few years, but that’s okay because we’re deliberately targeting a very specific group of people. So how does that happen? michael: That’s very interesting because it reframes the decision as do I go after the aspirational folks or the like sort of more ahead folks. To more of a decision about what type of like audience size am I going to be too, right? Am I going to be going after these like high-signal, not trying to build a YouTube audience necessarily, but using these YouTube videos to find the exact right people, drive them to our services and products, versus what I said at the beginning, which was I want to build an audience on YouTube. If build an audience on YouTube and have that be our primary goal, then we would probably make the broadest appealing content that makes sense for some percent of people. It. But, but no, but to and to what you’ve sort of made me realize here is that what we really want out of this is to grow our business. And our business is people buying our services, you know, getting deal flow for our investments, things like that. So we need to, to your point, change our expectations around audience size, which I think is fair. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. Cool. That’s good to know. Yeah, and again, I think it sounds like a good move. That being said, actually, there is one, we can go through this in more detail. One country example that maybe shows, hey, it might not be like a total small channel is Slide Bean, if you’re familiar with them. I see Ben, you’re nodding. I did some work with these guys in the last year, like well beyond the time when they were making these kinds of videos, but it does go to show that there are like, there an appetite for this kind of thing. These videos are doing, we’re doing extremely well. But again, they’re just, they’re, they’re a lot more explicit than if we just have at your channel right now. I’m like, I’m jumping the gun on a lot of my notes. I may end up covering some stuff from my notes anyway, just off the cuff here. But something like I fixed a $50 billion sport. Like, the text in the thumbnail speaks to the VC stuff, but the title. Like it could be like a Johnny Harris investigation or a Cleo Abram investigation or a Coffee Zilla investigation. This one is a bit like, again, more explicitly like startup VC coded. But again, if we compare it to something like any of these slide beam ones, these are very explicitly. It's like how to do specific thing. How to appeal to investors in this way, how to, okay, decoding equity and convertible notes, startups 101, seed funding, how to raise venture capital. It's like really, really explicitly, here is what we're going show you how to do. Channel is a bit more like, here is a story about somebody. michael: Yeah, we thought about, and we've looked at Slide Beam, we've sort of like thought about that, but most of those videos that did well for them are. Memory servers are pretty old, right? Yes. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Yeah. michael: I don't know if maybe those same topics would. I think, Ben, when we looked into it, what did we say? That those topics like were not going to draw in the wide audience today? Was that where we landed on that? I don't remember. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, most of their, as you pointed out, their more recent videos haven't cracked like their top numbers that they need. Before. And I guess the videos that we've been doing are the founder stories, right? Like those are very different than how does seed funding work? Or, and that's not shouldn't do that because that is how we discuss this. We're like, we could do those, but it's separate from the audience we were going after. michael: Yeah, I think that plays a little bit more towards that aspirational audience who doesn't already know. Cause like the best founders, they already know how. Like seed fundraising fundraising. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true, actually. Yeah, that's a good point. michael: Our thought was like, if Starter Story can get a big audience from these, like, you know, I mean, not to shit on them, but these like random kind of like small time companies or just like somebody doing a thing and making a little bit of money, then somebody who's trying to change the world, somebody who's trying to literally change the entire industry, disrupt an entire industry and having success doing that would be more interesting. That was our thought. Yeah. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: That's cool. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Oh, sorry, Ben. Were you say something else? Ben Ornstein: Yeah, I was going just like end cat that with like the venture-backed starter story. Like, that was our vision. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I see that. Yeah, I like that. I think that does sound good. And I appreciate. Doing specific case studies on people is like the angle you're going. And I like that angle. I know you're not trying to be, I'm not saying like, hey, you're trying to be this guy, and it's like, it's not coming off, because I know you're doing something different. And again, they've completely changed what they do on their channel now, anyway. I guess this was more just to like an example that came to mind of, oh, look, people explicitly doing VC stuff, not like, hey, you can bootstrap an app in a weekend 30 grand. Also a market for that, if you see what Even though that's not exactly what you're trying to do. But I think this is probably a good time to start looking through this stuff anyway. So I think that is, we've covered this already, what the channel's goal is. But I think this is really the thing to spend some time on after the call as well. And I think this will be changed by the things that we're going to talk about. Throughout the rest of this call. But ultimately, this is the question to try and answer because it affects the topics of the videos and how you kind of set them up. Okay, so I feel like I've understood a fair bit more about this by now. So, do yeah, this is probably a good time to just start looking at the channel itself. So, this is where, in terms of of that ideal audience person that we've just kind of discussed, there, they're more on the, you know, they were away from the aspirational end. These are people who understand the industry, who've raised before, probably. Then it's thinking about, okay, if I were to look at my channel that I already have now, which of these videos probably appeal to that person and which ones probably don't? Which ones feel like they belong on the same channel and which ones don't? There's a test that I like to run just mentally. When I'm looking at other people's channels, even when I'm thinking about my own, is I like pick a random video on the channel. Let's say this one here: I raised $5 million to fix how startups charge. If I imagine that’s the first video of yours that I’ve seen, and it’s a video that I love and it makes me subscribe, what are the next three videos that come after that video? And does it feel like it makes sense to me? Does this next video that I see? Make me go, holy moly, I loved this channel the first time I saw it and like this is their most recent video and they’ve done it again. I feel like this is totally the channel for me. Or what happens if the next video is something that feels actually a little bit out of place and makes me go, well, hang on. I thought this channel was about X and now it seems like it’s about Y. For the most part, it depends which video you pick. I think it works pretty well. So like this one that I picked here, I raised 5 million to fix how startups charge. This next one, I built a startup to do X. And then I said no to VC for 13 years. We can talk about the packaging, the title, in a bit, but I think topically, I think this stuff there’s a fair amount of congruency. Um, where I think it’s a little bit trickier is if we were to pick something like this one here. Like, there was a bit of a gap between these two uploads, so I’m presuming this is like you’ve rethought things in between this video and this one. michael: Um, the The one in the middle there, I left finance, that was a paid one from a specific startup. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Okay, okay. michael: We were also just thinking about this concept of like the interview style video. We just tested it out. Okay, okay. Yeah, understood. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Okay. Sure. But even within that, this kind of comes onto the packaging side of things, which we will talk about. We’re looking at this video, like these two down here, I left finance to founder an EA. From the outside, like glancing at it, I’m thinking, okay, this sounds like the video is be about something they built, a business that they built in order to give every founder an EA. Then this next one is about raising. This one’s also about raising. Then this one’s about building a startup. And then we’re back to VC again. Like, I guess. Thinking through that mindset of who is the ideal viewer, who is that person that we’re trying to attract, the idea of raising feels slightly different to when I, when I, I don’t know what, maybe this is like me not being in the world. When I hear startup, I’m thinking more bootstrapped as opposed to VC funded. Maybe that’s not an association that is fair. What do you think? Is that fair or not fair? michael: Well, a startup, according to Paul Graham from the founder of Y Combinator’s definition. Is a business that is designed to grow incredibly quickly. And so, technically, a bootstrap company is not a startup. I see. Okay. You know what I mean? So, people sort of, you know, bootstrap companies like calling themselves startups, but technically the like academic definition of a startup. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Sure. Okay. Okay. In that case, that is me with my lack of knowledge of the industry as a whole. So that’s that’s sort of okay. Um. I think more if we look at the colors of all of these here, it’s like the congruency between the ones in green, these feel like very, very distinctly the same. It feels like if I were seen this middle one first, I built a startup to save marriage, I would then see this video up here to be AI slop and think, okay, that’s very much the same content bucket. I understand that. Same thing here. It’s like another founder story. I sold my first startup, blah, blah, blah. Topically, even I guess maybe these are not too dissimilar. It’s just it’s not as clear what the value proposition of these videos in orange is. So I raised five million to fix how startups charge. The only issue with that is really the title. It’s just a slightly awkward phrasing, like how startups charge. It kind of takes me a second to reread it. I agree. This one here, I said no to VCs for 13 years. We’re going to come on to this, but it’s. I’m like, why? Well, bluntly, like, why do I care? What is the result of this? How does this affect me? What is the promise for me as a VC-backed founder? Even this one down here, I raised $1 billion. I didn't even want. I'm kind of, I guess I'm curious about it from a, this is like a, tabloid newspaper headline kind of thing. But also, I'm always thinking, how does this help me with my startup? How does this help me raise? More capital? And I don't get a direct promise from these kinds of titles. And then this one. Oh, sorry, please. michael: No, it's like if we're framing it around, how does this help me? Like, why would I invest time in watching this video? Then I'm not going to be presented with a scenario, me as the viewer, I'm probably not going to be presented with a scenario where I raise a billion dollars. I didn't even want. Sure. It'd be nice, but probably not going to happen. Who knows? Got a dream. Yeah. So, okay. I see the point you're making. With the one above it, I think our thought was like we have the amount. We were thinking about title in relation to thumbnail. And then the thumbnail, it's like, hey, he raised this much after so long. And we just sort of picked. The title off of that, but maybe it's not like value-driven enough. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: No, I understand that I can see what you're going for, and it's kind of the same with this one up here where the title isn't super clear, but then this thumbnail text makes it clearer that this is about startups, which is fair enough. But I think that the easiest thing here might be to just get into the specific thoughts I have on the packaging, and it will maybe. A bit further how I would want to transform these things to make sure that they do appeal to that target viewer that we have. michael: Yeah, I guess that's yeah, let's do that. But then also, like, if we're if we're going after this segment, like, are these even the right types of videos to be doing that are going to appeal to them? Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I see what you mean. So, I think broadly, yes, like having just discussed it, I think it's more about how we. Convey that in both the packaging and in the hook, like especially the hook. I think that's where there's a bit of a disconnect right now, or at least it can feel a bit meandering, and that value proposition is not completely clear. But broadly speaking, apart from I was arrested for not spying on you, probably not. I fixed the $50 billion sport, possibly, but we’d need to reframe how the video is presented. The ones in green. I think absolutely. And again, I think even the ones in orange, my issue here, the reason I put them in orange is just that I think the ideas are okay, but it’s just that they aren’t presented clearly enough, and I’m not completely clear on what the promise is. But these three in green, I think, totally works. Okay, we’re still talking about positioning initially. We’ll come back to the packaging shortly, unless you would like to, while we’re thinking about it, just go back to the packaging. Okay. So I think what I was, what I’m always looking for when I land on a channel is like, is it clear to me in an instant, almost like when you see a thumbnail scrolling past it, is it clear to me in an instant what this channel provides? There’s a couple of reasons why I think maybe not in this case. I know we’ve just slightly re-affirmed what the target audience even is at the start of the call. But yeah, a couple of things came to mind here. So the description of the channel. Works pretty well. Like this, this feels like it connects fairly well. But then you mentioned your agency and that you’ve got more coming, one for TikTok, et cetera. In terms of me as a founder and my desires, my goals are what I want to raise more. I want to keep growing my business. I want to get, yeah, I suppose just more funding. This ghostwriting agency is the first thing. This just didn’t feel like the flow I was expecting from the types of videos that I might have been drawn into your channel from I can obviously, if I stop and think about it, I can see the connection between like, okay, I guess if I grow my social media profiles, then I can get more customers and then that might attract more funding. But that connection just didn’t feel, it just takes one too many steps to make that connection. So, I suppose I would pose this of a question. Like, is the biggest thing that your target audience struggle with, and that maybe you’d struggled with when you were first doing this stuff, is it about attracting more customers? Or is it about how to effectively present yourself to potential investors in order to secure their funding? Like, those are the kinds of questions that I want to be asking if I’m. If I’m you, because I want to know what, what is the thing that’s going to draw people in? michael: It’s tough because I’ll use the ghostwriting agency as an example. We have folks who specifically don’t care about customers, but they want us to go straight their X profile because a bunch of VCs spend a lot of time on X and waste their day. And all they care about is how they show up to VCs. We have others who are like, let’s use LinkedIn as our main sales channel, you know? So we do get both of those. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. Interesting. Um. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Hmm. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: I’m just reading the TLDR here. Content partner, founders, executive, the creators. High-performant written content for X LinkedIn. I think it might just be in the way it’s coming across. It just, I mean, it sounds like a straight-up ghostwriting agency. The fact that we’re talking about written content for LinkedIn X, newsletters in your unique voice. This all sounds slightly too. Creatory, I guess. It does it doesn’t to me at least, it just doesn’t sound like it’s targeted at people looking to secure VC funding. Even if, sure, some of them I hear what you’re saying, understand that having a good X profile means that they might get more investors or a good LinkedIn profile or whatever. But this just reads like I see what you’re saying. It reads too much like the other way. Does that make sense? michael: Yeah, it basically reads, it’s not, it’s not for them. It’s just like, hey, here’s a ghost trading agency. It’s not, hey, here’s a ghost trading agency that will help you with these maybe one of two specific goals that you have. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: I think that’s it. Yeah, I think it’s just connecting that bridge a little more explicitly. Um, yeah, yeah, okay. So there’s that, and then beyond that, first impressions, I just wanted to compare your banner. To the three that you’ve our banner is bad our banner is bad yeah okay so just from a graphic design perspective I don’t really care like marks is kind of you know a bit clunky like it’s not that it looks awful or anything uh it’s just that it doesn’t tell me what the channel is at a pinch so i’ve written the kind of my feeling when I look at all of these the first one is is very inviting it’s very personal and it’s clearly it makes it clear that this is going to be about founder stories The second one for Mark, it just shows you what he’s doing all day. And then his videos, as soon as you scroll down, you look at his videos, it’s like, oh, yeah, he’s literally It’s day 700. It’s day 701. Same with this one here. It literally tells you explicitly that is what you’ll get here. Whereas your one just, it just doesn’t tell me like what it is. michael: No, it was, it was honestly an afterthought. Like we started the channel forever ago to, we were doing a podcast for a bit. And the podcast was called Founding Journey because the newsletter is called Founding Journey. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Okay. michael: I’m not a designer. We, as Ben has let me know right now, our sort of weak spot on our team is that we don’t have a great designer. And so it’s a weakness for us right now. michael: That’s understood. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: But even, you know, even if you take this exact same whatever, like Canva template, just say what the channel is, say what it does. Say what you’ll get by subscribing here. Whether it’s in this kind of thing, it’s like implicit, explicit through and like whatever you call this structure, or just literally telling you word for word, here’s what you get. That’s easy. Yeah. Okay. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Because I think all of this together, it just, we want people when they land on your channel to know within an instant, like, okay, yes, this is exactly for me. This is what I’ve been looking for. michael: Do you know what George, the ironic thing is that I do these sort of profile audits for a ton of people’s like LinkedIn and Twitter. And I wondered. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: I record like Loom videos. michael: And so one of the, if you go to my LinkedIn, you’ll see that the banner there is like, tactics for ambitious founders. Like it’s very clear. So we just, we just have an optimization for YouTube. That’s, that’s it. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I did. I had that exact thought. I thought I’m probably preaching to the choir with this. But I guess it’s just, yeah, to like to add an extra voice to that. That’s like, when I land here, I don’t feel totally clear who this is for right now, at least. Cool. Anyway, let’s close the positioning for now. And talk about packaging. Okay, so we’ve already kind of hit on this idea of titles sometimes being a bit too vague to be curiosity-inducing. What I kind of term this is the idea of a curiosity cavern rather than a curiosity gap. So, where the curiosity is so wide that I actually don’t even know what to be curious about. And I think this is probably the biggest contender for that. It’s yes, it’s intriguing. It’s like a headline from a tabloid, but I’m also like, um, in what way? Like, is this related to business? Is this like an expose? Like, what is what is this about? Um, these ones are a little bit better. I like the idea of like 20 million in college. This kind of um juxtaposition is really good. This felt topical. I’m kind of in some ways from the packaging, I’m surprised it didn’t do a little better. Um, yeah. Yeah, I think the issue with this one is a little bit more to do hook. Okay. But yeah, we can talk about that. But then, yeah, okay, fine. You said this one was a paid thing, but I left finance to give every founder an EA. It just takes too many steps in my mind. I’m like, okay, to get every founder an executive assistant. So I guess that means he’s built something and there, but it’s just like I’m having to think about what that even means. It’s too many moments lost thinking. I raised one billion. I didn’t even want. Again, it’s tabloid-y, but I’m like, how does this affect me? Yeah, I I’ve kind of reiterated the same stuff here. Yeah, and actually, this is a big one. We’re going to talk a bit more about the, I said no to VC for 13 years, but it’s that same thing. It’s like, how does that affect me? So those are the main things with the titles. Really, there’s not much to fix here, it’s just these few like headline pieces. The thumbnails generally feel a little bit busy. Um, I noticed earlier on stuff down here felt a bit less hectic. Like this, I really liked this overall. I thought this felt quite clean. Um, this sort of, I don’t know if you know the kind of rule of three with YouTube that I forget which thumbnail designer invented it, but everyone talks about it. It’s like there should normally be three. Three things with like a main focal point. In this case, it’s I guess the text, his expression, and then what he’s holding. With this one, yeah, it’s kind of a similar thing. It’s like the face and then the two sides of the thumbnail. This kind of works in the same idea. This is like verging on slightly busy, but it’s okay. This almost feels too little. Because I don’t actually. There’s the screen and his face, but not anything beyond that. michael: It’s interesting. michael: Yeah, I see it now. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Yeah. But in any case, some of these just get a little bit too hectic. I the car one. For the most part, it have been nice to see his face a little bit more clearly. But then you lose of the car. So I guess like there are priorities. But broadly, I think this one works quite well. It doesn’t feel too cluttered. This was the main offender for. Feeling super cluttered, largely because the text that’s on the laptop, which is it’s like, am I supposed to not? michael: It’s kind of a joke, but like the only thing there is that that is actually their landing page for their website. Like, that actually looks like okay, that is fun. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: And therefore, I can see the temptation to leave it in, but it just means that I’m looking at the text at the top, then the text at the bottom. Then the text on the screen, then there’s an arrow, then there’s his face. And it just kind of makes it a bit overwhelming. This one, to a lesser degree on the right-hand side here, it’s not quite as bad. michael: Same kind of issue, though. I see what you mean. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: But yeah, it just makes it all a little bit hectic. Okay. So, just to give you some examples of how I’d want to fix some of these things, I will just give you some examples. So. This one we’ve spoken about. The main issue here is not like the thumbnail doesn’t feel too cluttered. It’s more that there’s this disconnect between the title and the text in the thumbnail. Thumbnail text, yes, clearly VC related. The title doesn’t really connect with that. So what I’d want to do is just make the title in this case a bit more clearly related to VC. So it could be something like I race 750K with this obvious business idea. This is not true because I know it didn’t happen on the weekend, but this is so like I’m not saying use this exact title, but this kind of idea where it’s like, hey, we can upgrade the existing title, but just give it that juxtaposition that you used really well in that other one, where it’s like, I did an impressive thing, but in unexpected way or short amount of time or something like that. Or this one, like the idea of a boring business, obviously that’s like Cody Sanchez’s whole thing. But people, it’s a classic title you see all the time. It’s like, this is boring, but it made me $750 bazillion dollars in a day. michael: How do we do that with VC? Because boring businesses are inherently non-scalable. You scale by buying a bunch of them, you know? michael: I see. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, in that case, maybe the word isn't boring. Maybe it's something like simple. Okay, it doesn't really matter what it is. The main point, like, structurally is trying to get that juxtaposition. But then, also, here I've added in a here's how because that comes back to that thing we keep talking about is making it like very explicit that you're learn how to do this. Um, later on, actually, in the scripting section, I've got a direct example that shows you how Starter Story does this versus how your videos currently do it, just to make it really crystal clear. But yes, that's the fix for this one, I think, is just connecting the title a bit more the VC thing. The issue with this one, I found, was just the text in the thumbnail was a bit jargony. So, trust is the moat. When I hear that, it's not counterintuitive, it's not especially exciting. And if anything, it makes me stop and think: trust is the moat. If I've not heard that phrase, then the meaning is lost on me and I have to think about it. Whereas something like this, that is just very explicitly steal this system. You can just take this, copy, paste it onto your own business. Or maybe it's something like the financial proof, which I think you do use obviously in other ones: 20 million by 20, 4 million raised. michael: Yeah, some folks are less willing to share, especially revenue numbers. They're all willing to share fundraising numbers. Some of them are because VC-backed company, you know, they'll raise a few million bucks when they have like, you know, $10,000 revenue, which is less impressive if you have than like business was $10,000. That makes sense. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Okay, sure. Okay. So it may not always be completely possible in that way. Maybe it's something that's more like this one over here. But again, it's just pointing the audience a little bit more. The other thing you see I did in this one is just making the faces a little bit bigger. This is not a big problem a lot of the time, but occasionally we do lose just a bit of, I guess, definition on what their expressions are. I think this is probably one of them. This is helped by that YouTube has very recently is always changing stuff, but now you get like three videos instead of four. Watching on your TV, now it's like basically just one video shows up. So even smaller faces are slightly easier to see than they were a few weeks ago. But if I show you my kind of remake down here, I think it just helps when you can really clearly read their expression. Um, so if I compare the two here, that's the main thing that I've done: larger face, and I've just fine. If that is literally their landing page, that's all good. Maybe it's just that you blur the text or something that stops my eye being drawn to the text that is not going to convince me to click. michael: Yeah, actually, I don't I don't care about the text. We can cut it even if it's not their actual end. That doesn't matter. Okay. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: It's fine. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Fantastic. That's great. Good. Excellent. But I think, even still, it's being conscious amount of text as well. And we would just want to make the value props super clear. So 22 million raised after 13 years bootstraps. The curiosity that I have to connect myself is. Oh, interesting. He was bootstrapped for 13 years, then he raised since then. I wonder why he did that. Why, like, why did he, why did he wait so long? And then why did he choose to do it? But it's basically, you just have to assume they are, people are scrolling quick and they don't have the, if they have to connect the dots themselves like that, it's a lost view, essentially. Whereas this feels a bit punchier. It's like, smug face with like no funding. Now I'm curious. Now I'm like, okay, again, I made this figure up. I just, wrote whatever. But I think the real thing that's doing the lifting here is that the no funding thing. And that's a little bit clearer. I can internalize that very quickly, especially if I'm in this world. I'm like, oh, shit, he did an impressive thing with no funding. I want to learn how. Do you know what I mean? michael: I see. michael: Yeah. Again, it's it's tough because some of these guys don't like to share their revenue numbers, but we can we can push for it more when we're interviewing them. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: That's okay. Yeah. If if they can't do it, that's fine. I guess the the you could still do, yeah, actually 22 million raise, no funding makes no sense. Um, but like wow, I'm so confused. I got to watch this. What's he talking about? michael: Um that's a curiosity chasm right there. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're right. Um, so yeah, maybe it's not one million ARR, whatever, but I think the core thing here is like after 13 years bootstrapped, it's just a little bit too much. And it makes even if you remove the text from his laptop. It's just a bit too much text for me to have to read it a glance. Whereas no funding is punchier and it's like, wow, I wonder how he did what he did. michael: Okay, we can put something up there with the no funding. I like the no funding. That's good. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Okay. Cool, cool, cool. This last bit strays into scripting to a degree, but the other thing just to be aware of when picking the title and thumbnail text is that we. Don't resolve that main curiosity too early on. So I watched this video, and the fact that no to VC funding for 13 years is like the main thing. Yes, you continue talking about it throughout the video, but there's a point that comes maybe two minutes in where you, this guy is like, oh no, maybe it's the other guy. I don't know. Someone involved says, kind of what you'd expect. It's like, yeah, we had offers, but they wanted to change the business and we weren't interested in that. And so now it's like, what is my main thing that's keeping me interested in this? Ah, you see what I mean? michael: Yeah, I what We're scripting too, because it's like, we need to identify what that main idea is, and then we need to tease it out and stay focused instead of like throwing people around. Because basically, these videos have been, yes, we've tried to find a through line in the script, but we've also tried to like cover the history of the company, and I think we've a little bit too much into that than into what true line is. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: I think that's it, I think it's exactly it. Um, that's what we're gonna talk about in a sec. Awesome. Um, but yeah, I think that's that's really my kind of last thoughts on the packaging overall. Like, you know, I speak to a lot of different people, and there are some people that are you just think, wow, these thumbnails are so off that this, I don't even know where to start. This is not the case here. It's just occasionally a little bit busy and making sure that they connect always to the target viewer and what they want, and making sure it conveys something like that very easily. Okay, so let's take a look at scripts. And we've kind of hit on this already, but the main thing is that. Especially when we're talking about very specific stories like the horse one, that's such a specific business and such a specific niche in the first place. We really, really need to be very crystal clear like how this thing applies to you and why this is something you should be interested in and how this is going to help your business. So I don't want to go into too much of these. I think you'll notice this if you watch them back, but I built a startup to beat AI slop. We talk about the issue for a long time. We go over a minute, like expressing this idea that, like, hey, more, yes, it's easier than ever to do outreach, but that means everyone's doing it, and therefore, it seems impersonal, and therefore, you're not getting as many leads. Right? I get that, and but so too will your viewers, and they'll be feeling this already. So, I think all we really need to do, especially if we're targeting this, this, you know, not the aspirational people, but the people who are in the weeds already. It's thinking, okay, how do I quickly convey, like, here's the problem, you know the problem, I know the problem too, and here's how we're going to fix it using this case study or whatever it might be. But we don't need to hammer down on the problem quite so much because I think a lot of the time it'll be, they'll understand it already. Do you know what I mean? michael: I totally know what you mean. That's probably a trend across other videos that we have as well in that specific. Case, it was just because honestly, they didn't give us a ton of material and they pivoted like three times. And okay, the video is really short as it is. And I was like, I'm trying something. I need to do something. But I do think that there's a bit of that across the board, too. Maybe also with like the too much backstory that we give on the founder, too. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. Yeah, we're going to talk about that a little bit as well on the 20-year-old, like the college student. Guy as well. But yeah, like you, you already get it. We've spoken a lot about this video already, but yeah, hyper-specific story. The promise is not completely clear. We kind of get into just talking about the business and the guy's history before we've ever said, and here's how we're going to help your business. Okay. Sold the startup for 20 million. I like this hook, and there are things that we, I'm not saying that the hooks are all bad. I'm you like one thing that I like that you do in a couple of your hooks that I think can stay. But same exact story with this one. I'm going to play one of Starter Story's ones immediately before this VC one shortly, just to try and really hit home with this. But it's that same thing. We're just, we're not getting a promise for the viewer in the 20 million. At age 20 video, either. michael: I guess, like, maybe you're about to get into this, but like, if we look at that starter story title, My App Made 120K in 24 Hours, like help me understand the difference between on YouTube, between that and why I sold my startup for 20 million in college does not connect with folks in that same sort of aspirational I can do this way. michael: I see. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: I think in that case, the packaging does. I think the packaging does. It's just not reaffirmed in the hook. It's the way you then set it up once we get into it. Because, yes, I agree. In much the same way, this is like, it's an implicit promise that's like, I saw my first startup. So therefore, okay, cool. I'm going to learn some of his tactics. Right, exactly. It's more that when we then get into it, we then that thread drops away and it just becomes. He grew up in Ohio. He learned to play the piano. He did like this other stuff. And before I know it, I'm like, why do I care about this kid's childhood? He was playing tennis for three hours every morning, like fine, but you know, that's where we lose it. michael: You even have the receipts to bring out. It's great. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Really? Okay. michael: You're so right. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Well, I'm just going to, I don't, yeah. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: I mean, I not to. This is like, it's annoying, but like, look how this person who's been doing it for 10 years does it. michael: But no, no, I like it. It's we want. The one thing that I'll, I'll, I'll sort of try and save my, my, my thinking here was we watched the starter story video with the kid who like got cancer and then bootstrapped his app to, like millions of dollars in revenue or whatever. And I was like, they did a lot on the backstory in that one. And obviously, that kid has like a crazy story. And so maybe that's why I did it. But I think maybe, Ben, over-indexing on that idea of okay, you have to introduce the founder more than, um, because the founder doesn't actually, unless the founder's story is like dramatically inspirational, like that, or directly related to the value that the viewer will get. The viewer probably doesn't actually care that much. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: I'm kind of interested. How long, how old is that video? michael: This is like most popular. If you go to the popular sort, it'll be the second one, the underdog. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Okay. I might just watch 10 seconds of this. Do you mind? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: No, go for it. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Maybe let me reshare. So you've got sound as well. Why doesn't it share sound when you're already sharing? Okay, let me unshare. michael: We've seen it. You can do it. michael: Okay, okay. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Okay, let's have a look. Well, I may as well reshare it anyway. michael: Room, day and night. I had no money, and it was time to make it or break it. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: This is David Park. And for years, he tried everything to make money. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: I started my first company was 16. I'm 27 now. That's a decade of failing. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Then, one day, he came across an idea that would change his life forever. But at the beginning, things weren't looking so bright. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: At Cold called every single agency for eight hours a day. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: In just two years, Park built an AI app to a 24-hour David grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: And even though they never had a lot of this a little bit more, maybe there's more to this, but I think they've done such a heavy lift with this intro. It's so kind of Netflix-y I think it just buys you a little bit more time and reassurance that, like, oh, hell, this is a high-production video. They're going have really. Like worked this out. They're going to have they're not wasting my time with anything. It's not to say that your videos come across like low effort, but I think just the difference with this video here is just it's, I don't have that same level of uh reassurance that it's, do what I mean? Yeah, I understand. That makes sense. Um, I think they've also done a big job in this of making. His history a major part of the curiosity, this like this, the pain that he was going through in those early months and years of building stuff, and the massive difference between where he was to where he is now. Whereas I think this hook maybe just doesn't do it quite so much. But yeah, anyway, I don't want to go on about this one for too long because I'd have to watch more of it. michael: Yeah, that's fine. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: what I really want to just show you with this one, I'll play it quickly and then we'll come back to this moment here just so that I can express. Why I think this hook works a lot better. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Even though it's still about a specific person's specific business, there's a well-known secret in the app space right now, and it's arguably the fastest way to see whether your idea is good or not. Well, I met a guy who executed this perfectly. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: I had zero experience with mobile apps, so I wasn't sure it would work. Meet Umberto. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: He built a really simple mobile app, but instead of launching with a free trial, he did something different. And in 24 hours, he made over $100,000. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: This is the best way to validate your idea. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Most people might tell you this strategy is a bad idea, but Umberto had a playbook. And it worked. So I asked him to come on the channel to break it all down for me. And in this episode, we will dive into how a very simple strategy generated over $100,000 in a single day, the exact email sequence you can copy for your product, and why this strategy might be the smartest move for early stage products. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: If okay. So based on what we’ve spoken about, maybe there’s some stuff that will already be coming to your mind here. But at key points in this hook, they make it very, very audience-focused. They make this clear that this is something that is going to help you, even if just implicitly. So there’s a well-known secret in the app space right now, and it’s arguably the fastest way to see whether your idea is good or not. This is probably a worry that people watching these videos have, right? If this is about starting a business, it’s about coding your first SaaS, it’s about whatever, it’s is this actually worth my time? I don’t know idea is any good. Like, someone’s probably done it before. Is it even make me money? Is it worth my time? Hearing this is like, oh, wow, that’s a very specific problem that I have, and it’s going to be addressed in this video. Then, if we come over here, he built a really simple mobile app, but instead of launching with a free trial, he did something different. Same thing, this is going to be something that probably. Is something I’m debating. It’s like, should I, when I launch, should it be with a free trial? Should I pre-validate the idea in some way? Should I, you know, sell it to a waitlist? Should I, whatever? Like, there’s going to be all these launch questions. And so, therefore, this. michael: a lot of people default to a free trial, and it’s like instead of the common thing, he did this other thing, and it worked better. Exactly, exactly. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: And then he achieved the goal that you wanted. I did have a look at the comments, and some people were like, Yeah, he had an email list of like a hundred thousand people. Of course, he made money, but that’s by the by. Um, but then literally, we cut to a clip of the guy saying, This is the best way to validate your idea, which is exactly what people want. michael: It almost almost sounded in the video. Like Pat had told him to say that, like, it sounded like he was like that sentence. So, like, that brings up a question that I think Ben and I have talked about a lot. We’ve gotten advice from this that says to but I’m curious what your take is: should we be doing the title packaging and hook before and like maybe most of the script before we even interview the guy if we’re going to do these videos? What do you think about that? Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: This is tricky. I think with anything where you don’t know what’s going to happen on the day. I think that is quite difficult. To as much of a degree as you can, yes. Like if you know the headline stuff about them, at least coming the title, it seems reasonable if you’ve got, say, the financial information and whatever, how quickly they built something, that you might be able to come up with the title first. I think that can help inform the types of questions you then ask them. But it really depends. If you don’t have enough information on them, then you can’t do much more than that. But where you can, I would try and sit down and do that if you can do. michael: Ben, maybe, maybe we do a little more of that information gathering before we go in. I know we ask them questions and stuff like that, but I don’t think it’s as in-depth. So maybe we just need to do some more of that at the first stages before the end of the year. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: I mean, I usually do. Research on like anything across the internet that I can possibly find that they haven’t provided. I’m pulling together potential. I am putting in potential. michael: No, I know, but maybe before we’re even doing the research, we need to have like a little pre-show conversation with them or at least an email exchange back and forth. We ask some specific questions and get some context. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, that might be a nice addition. michael: I agree. And I know we’re coming up on time. So keep going, George. I appreciate it. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: No, no, all good. All good. I can run a tiny bit over actually. I do have my office hours with my community, but they’re used to me being a couple of minutes late. It’s all good. Usually making a cup of tea that I overbrew. Okay, so same thing at the end. Like, this is a real choice, and this is something that a lot of people will do. And I think, although it’s what a lot of people do, it can make a lot of sense for just structuring out the video in your viewers’ mind before it starts. Is saying, in this video, you’re going to learn XYZ. The first one is like, sure, a bit general, but the second and third ones are specific. You will care about this, and it’s very obvious why. The strategy might be the smartest move for early stage products. It’s like, cool, I have an early stage product. I want to know what it is. Yes, email sequence, just copy it. Feels easy. That’s another nice thing to make it seem like as much as you can within the realms of truth. Make it seem like this thing is incredibly powerful, but also incredibly simple. That juxtaposition in the hook is really nice. And it makes people think, okay, to learn about this. We are getting through it here. Just having watched that, I want to quickly play this just so you can feel that difference. Cool. And think here, like very specifically about the what do I, as the viewer launching into this, how sure do I feel about what I’m going to learn from this? Time already that other big competitors had already gotten a little bit too enterprisey and big and clunky. We used to like some of these tools. We don’t really like them anymore and they’ve gotten really expensive. Like, why can’t we do like a simple version of them? That was sort of like our initial starting point. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: That was 2012. Three developers working at a Dutch consultancy tired of paying for software that wasn’t working for them. So they built something to replace it, called it App Signal. And ran it for 13 years without a dollar of outside capital. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: I think my qualities are in taking I can feel a parallel universe version of the script where we say 13 years where they didn’t take a single piece of capital because XYZ, or which allowed them to do something that most startups can’t do. Just like something else that makes me something really specific to be curious about. It’s the same here. If we go, I think basically this whole thing, it’s like this is very out of context. This first thing, when he’s talking about, hey, I wonder why, you know, why can’t we just build our own version of this thing? My brain starts going, okay, is this about. Opportunities for people, no matter what kind of niche they’re in, to like help build their own version of something that they think is getting too expensive or that’s like too clunky. But then it’s kind of not about that. Do you know what I mean? michael: It’s extremely clear with the frame you gave earlier. It’s extremely clear where the issues are here. I think, honestly, the key for me is that I don’t watch much YouTube. And so, like on Twitter, when I was building my audience there, I was on Twitter 24/7, right? Yeah, and it’s easy for me to be like, Oh, this impacts me in this way, so therefore it’s good or bad, right? Have that same frame of like, oh, how does that get communicated? Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, I see that. I said, which is totally fair. Like, there are so many platforms to try and be on. Um, like, I totally get that, but I think this is a really good one. And there are a couple of bits here, even I would have trimmed. When he’s like, So I decided to invite him into the studio for a few hours to discuss. Like, it’s a little bit wordy, but overall, the structure of this remains audience focused while still introducing the person, but like making the things that they say, it’s picking moments of things that they’ve said that are resonate with the viewer where I had no experience. Boom, that hits me. I’m an app, whatever, coder with no experience. Well, I guess in your case, we’re not talking to the same type of people, but in this case, yeah. Um, so maybe use this one as a bit of a template, yeah. But there’s always a lot of stuff, like I think the we could talk about lots of other things, but I again, I think the downstream effect of refocusing on the things that we’ve spoken about today will then affect how the rest of the video is structured. If you’re always thinking from that audience-first perspective, um. So I felt that going much beyond the hook, it felt like there was less to be gained. michael: I think that’s fair. Let’s Ben and I will take this. I think been incredibly helpful, and I really appreciate the time for the call. It’s very obvious. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: My pleasure. michael: We will take this. We’ll implement this over the next couple of weeks. And then I’ll be traveling for a few weeks in like a month or so. Would love to be. Grab another call sometime in July where we sort of see, you could basically say, Hey, you guys did this right. You guys did this right. If that works. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: That sounds good. Yeah, that would be great. I really, really appreciate that. Final thing. I realize it sounded like I was wrapping up. I’m going to rattle through these last couple of bits. This we’ve kind of covered, I guess. The storytelling just feels a bit meandering. We don’t get to the audience promise clearly enough. What I did like were the kind of cold opens that you did. So here we open with the 20 year old or whatever age he is by this point. It didn’t change my life in any way. I was living off ram and noodles. The only difference is I parked a Ferrari out of my dorm room. Like that’s a nice, concise quote that gives you this picture of my desired, my desired future. But it’s just then we need to dive straight into, that’s this guy. He did this surprising thing at a young age. So in this video, we’re going to show you how you can apply blah, blah, to your own startup. Understood. Same thing with this here. The world’s largest horse show is held every year in Columbus, Ohio. And until very recently, they were printing out their schedules on 50 sheets of paper and taping them to a concrete wall. That’s a lovely bit of juxtaposition again. It’s intriguing. It’s weird. Now we need to get into the promise. So we can totally keep those. I like that stuff. The final, final thing is just that first impressions thing and where we were. Looking at that starter story video that you mentioned where we have this kind of Netflixy intro, it doesn’t need to be like that. But that level of attention to detail and kind of slickness just presents a certain authority by itself. Whereas I think starting with like this random dude in his headset, I’m just a bit less certain that my time is going to be well spent, if you know what I mean. You’re so right. And then, same here with like the laptop that’s like covering quite a substantial portion of the frame. It just made me think, like, what’s happened there? michael: I didn’t realize until after it was through editing, and oh, fuck. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I have that all the time where, like, this, this monitor occasionally just strays into my camera view, and it’s only afterwards, and I’m sort of, it’s like rocking while I’m filming. It happens, but it’s just those little things to think about. michael: All right. I appreciate it, man. Honestly, this has been a valuable YouTube thing that we’ve done. And I think that’s a pleasure. So we’ll book another one once we implement some of this stuff and you a few examples of it. We’ll go from there. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: That’s fantastic. Well, thank you very much. Yeah, I appreciate your time. I’m going to look at you actually for the final bit. Yeah. Thank you very much for booking it. It’s been a real pleasure. And I just appreciate you being. To all this stuff because I think that always helps. And you can tell when some people are resistant to it and they’re like, I’ve booked the call, but I’m also right and I shouldn’t change anything. So yeah, appreciate you guys. michael: We’re a bunch of idiots over here. We need the help. So well, same round of it for good. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: All right. Conference Room (George Blackman) - Speaker 1: Thank you very much, guys.