Julian Dorey Podcast - #15 - Why I Left My Finance Career Behind—And What's Going On Here

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

SOLO POD - Many of you have asked for a podcast episode that talks a bit about my backstory and what my plan is for the show over the long term. So here it is. ~ YouTube FULL EPISODES: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q  ~ Show Notes: https://www.trendifier.com/podcastnotes  TRENDIFIER Website: https://www.trendifier.com  Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey  ~ Beat provided by: https://freebeats.io  Music Produced by White Hot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It won't take long to tell you Neutral's ingredients. Vodka, soda, natural flavors. So, what should we talk about? No sugar added? No sugar added? Neutral. Refreshingly simple. But I looked at him and I said, you know, Larry, if I take that offer, I'm taking it because I like you and the money.

And the problem is, two years from now, I'm going to be crying in my Tesla and blaming everyone else in my life except me. And I'll be the only person that is actually at fault. For today's podcast, I want to do something a little bit different. And this is really by popular demand. I have said, however, the first few weeks of doing this, I've had a chance to speak with a ton of you, including people I don't know. And it's been on the phone, it's been in DMs, it's been in texts, and there's been a lot of lengthy conversations, which helped me a ton. I mean, that's what I need. I need feedback across every part of the spectrum, good and been asking me, including people that I'm good friends with or even very close friends with in some cases who I didn't talk about this podcast with until it was released. One of the things they were asking me is why are you doing this?

What's the purpose here? What are you trying to do? How did you get to do this? Why are you at this point in your life? And I'm one of these guys who cringes at the idea of people asking me about my life or what's going on or why I'm doing things. But frankly, I'm in the business now of talking into a camera and into a microphone and and spewing what's on my mind and bringing in cool people hopefully to to spew what's on theirs and so in that light i have to be able to be comfortable with talking about some of these

things and in some cases i guess talking about myself so some of that is going to occur today and i guess i'm just going to have to get used to that on that point i think i should kind of go through my experience especially those of you who don't know me at all who are listening and give you an idea of how i arrived at this point so for me it started like a lot of us graduating college and trying to figure out what the hell to do with my life and i came out of college and i'd always been one of those guys who just kind of did the next thing that was put on the plate in front of me what i mean by that is there were like these expectations even if they weren't told to me by my parents or older people in my life or whatever it was this

idea maybe society telling me that like okay you do you do this, then you do that, then you do that, then you do that, and so on. And then eventually it gets to the point where it's like you die. And not to oversimplify it, but that's how I lived a lot of my life. I just did the next thing. I worked hard in school, did pretty well there. And then once school was coming to an end with college ending, it was like, okay, well, now you get a job and you get a respectable job and you go out and you do something and you earn money and then you grow through that. And eventually you have a 401k, a family, kids, the whole bit, and you retire at 65 and go to a beach somewhere. Again, oversimplifying it, but that's how we look at life.

That's kind of what the sale is. And there are a lot of people who do that and have a lot of happiness. And maybe they are also lucky enough to find the thing they really want to do coming out of college. Maybe many of you can say that right now. For me, I didn't necessarily find that. I thought I had, but I didn't get there. Because what I thought is, okay, graduating business school, I'm supposed to go get a job in business. Oh, let's look at finance. And so I got a job in finance. And specifically, I was working in, I was working with ultra high net worth individuals and corporate plans and sometimes things related to like SEC rules, like 10B5-1 plans, things like that. I don't want to get too much in the minutiae,

but it was a big deal. In my opinion, it was a very good job. And more importantly, I was hired by my friend's dad who really became like a second dad to me. And somebody who I love to this day. And as far as what my world view is. And how I was able to get there. Is somebody who I owe a debt of gratitude. I could probably never repay. But even as I had that relationship with him. And I had that relationship with my team as well. Our team was amazing.

As the years went on. I started to figure out that, you know, this is not what I want to do with my life. And, you know, working with ultra high net worth individuals, dealing with money problems, you learn a lot. You see people at their strongest moments and you see them at their weakest ones and you also see how money can play a role in everything in life for better or worse and so the crash course real life education you get from that is you can't just really get that you can only get that doing it so doing that job for four or five years was something that I wouldn't trade for the world.

And the other reason I wouldn't trade it for the world is because a big part of my job was my boss empowering me to go out there and just meet people in the world. Movers and shakers. Figure out who talks to who, why, how this industry works, how that job works works and build a network and build relationships and then eventually get business from said relationships and i took that very seriously and that's what i did i saw myself as a connector as somebody who was constantly trying to ask people how things worked and i actually was speaking today with one of the many people who I built a relationship with over the years, who was in a totally out there kind of space that I would have never known

anything about or had any interest in. And he was asking me about this podcast and he said, you know, Julian, I think you're in the right place because you have literally made a career out of meeting people to ask questions, to learn more. And now that is exactly what you're in the right place because you have literally made a career out of meeting people to ask questions to learn more. And now that is exactly what you're doing on camera when you're bringing people in or even when you're just doing a solo podcast and trying to open up the conversation on things. And that was very fulfilling for me because that is what I did. And I enjoyed that aspect of the job but I started to see some things in the industry that I wasn't in love with and I guess I got to a point where I had to separate myself from my boss because again you know he's in his early 50s he's had an unbelievable career he manages

money in the billions like with a b and has pretty much seen it all at this point and he's the kind of guy who loves what he does and i think is going to do it for a very long time but if he wanted to walk away tomorrow he probably could so it he was coming at it from a different lens than I was. Whereas I was in my 20s, I was looking at this as a future, you know, building a business, building these relationships, and then accruing assets over the years and becoming him. And so a big part of how to do that and what you rely on is well what is the industry doing and how much is this a value add moving forward and what i found is number one to get into my boss's stratosphere and deal exclusively with the types of people he was dealing with who you know i mean

i'm jaded with money for the rest of my life because he dealt with people who had tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars at all times. So like now, no amount of money really impresses me, which I don't really know what to think of that. But to get there, you got to spend a lot of years getting there. That's my point. Like you have to deal with much smaller individuals maybe at the beginning and work your way up to that. And I knew that that was a game of time. And so with time comes changes. And some of the changes I saw in our industry, especially as things changed after 2008 and 2009, which obviously I wasn't there for the first 10 years that happened, whatever, eight, nine, 10 years. But the way the industry was shifting, the rules and the regulation,

and some of the lack of innovation and some of the clamping down on innovation that I saw scared me. I also looked across at Wall Street and I saw guys who had been traders in 2005, 2006, making millions of dollars in some cases, who were now out of a job. I have too many examples of that to count. I saw automation coming in pretty much everywhere. It wasn't really a question of if. It was a question of when for the rest of the industry and then specifically in my industry, which dealt with individual people relationships and then also with the other side of it was dealing with some corporate situations, which I had a different opinion on. But on the individual side, yeah, I saw a lot of people moving to resources online that they didn't have even five years ago or 10 years ago. You see things like

Robinhood pop up and yes, it's not a financial advisor. You can still be an idiot human like we all are when shit hits the fan and we can sell the wrong things or manage money the wrong way. But the ability to access these resources and get more information and have a better understanding of what your viewpoint is was certainly a lot stronger than it had been and it made the margins on being an advisor tighter and so i didn't see that turning around i remember there's so many things that they really can't even teach you in college or just don't and one of these things was looking at your surroundings so I loved my surroundings right away with my team I met all them right away and like we clicked like crazy so obviously the people aspect I nailed which is I would argue the people you surround yourself is the most

important thing of your environment so that part I'm lucky i i had that right but a lot of the other parts i didn't and i remember i had never been a big tech guy i am now but i i shouldn't say that i was i was never a guy who was really overly curious about tech and technological trends and that shifted big time during my career and obviously i'm very into that now but when i walked into our firm's office for the first time i didn't take note of what i saw you know we we were a top five office for this line of business at the entire firm and i think there were i don't know 200 advisors working in there, a lot of advisors, and then all people who work for them. And the office was huge.

But when you look at the environment, the cubicles were old. Some of the rooms were straight up gray. They were working on 2011 Dells, forced to use Internet Explorer with a firewall that sometimes blocked Wikipedia from policy. That actually happened a couple times. I shit you not. It really did. And then once I got into the career, I didn't notice right away how a lot of the choice and a lot of the flexibility to make decisions and take actions, even on basic trades for clients, was hindered. And I also had a very different view on this because I worked for a guy

who was in the upper echelon of the firm. He was in something they called the private bank, which was basically the 1% of the 1% of the 1%. So in our, in my reality, I even got to see a lot more streamlined things than most of the other, than most of the rest of the firm had. So I was even getting the best case scenario. And there were even things there that I was like, I don't know about that. And so once I started to get more into the world, which is what my boss hired me to do, get out there, meet people, understand what's going on. I started to realize that a lot of things that other places just had as an expectation in their workflow and in the technology they leverage and how they do business. A lot of other people had. We weren't even able to do.

And so I questioned this. And you're saying, well, where does this come to the podcast? Well, I was always involved in other things. I've been on three other LLCs and a couple other projects as well. I was always moving and doing something on the side. I firmly believe that in your 20s, you move, you shake, you figure it out, you get involved in cool shit, and you hustle like crazy. Because if you're in your late 30s or early 40s with a family, it's a lot harder to do that. So if I was going to jump into things and

discover stuff, now was the time. And I was in a job that literally enabled that too. And as I got more involved with some of these projects i started to get curious about things like marketing and things like online culture and how the internet was changing society and then obviously as i already alluded to moving into how technology was changing things and what that was going to mean i met a lot of people in even like the cryptocurrency space and or i shouldn't even say that in the blockchain space who were just operating on a whole nother wavelength than i had ever operated and i thought that shit was so cool and so then i'd i'd go back to my office and i'd sit down at this 2011 workstation with internet explorer and look at the gray slab walls around me and the carpet that hadn't been replaced in 25 years

and the kitchen you know it was basically out of a 1970s good housekeeping magazine and i'd say what am i doing and that doesn't mean that other people can't have that job and really like it and are cool with that but for someone like me who was constantly looking at what's next and what's going to change what we're doing 10 years from now, 15 years from now, 20 years from now, this wasn't it. I remember bringing my, my cousin was staying with me a couple of years ago, maybe a year and a half ago, something like that for a couple of days. And i took her by the office on a saturday very quickly because i had to grab something so i took her upstairs with me and i said you know you're a marketing major right and she said yeah i was like okay tell me what you see she's like what do you mean i said i'm going to show

you the office just tell me what you see what do you think what do you mean? I said, I'm going to show you the office. Just tell me what you see. What do you think? What do you think happens here when you look at it? And the words she was using to describe it were not new school words. They were not innovative words. They were not things that evoked, hey, this is on the cutting edge. And I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was clear. And so not just that one event, but other conversations with people and more and more data around that, last summer, end of 2019 summer, my deal, so to speak, came up. And now my boss was – assuming he liked me – was going to be able to come in and offer me some sort of contract to basically bring me into the inner sanctum with him. And he did. He gave me an unbelievably, unbelievably generous offer far beyond my expectations and cemented all the confidence I had that he believed in me in the offer. And I looked at him and said, I can't take it. And it killed me to do that. I put it off for a few weeks to tell him because I didn't even know how. And I wanted to also be sure like I wasn't crazy. But I looked at him and I said, you know, Larry, if I take that

offer, I'm taking it because I like you and the money and the problem is two years from now I'm going to be crying in my Tesla and blaming everyone else in my life except me and I'll be the only person that is actually at fault and I know it broke him up

and it was hard for me and hard for him but I won't go into some of the things he said to me at the time, but he understood. And a lot of what he said validated how I felt, and I realized I was fighting this for too long, and this wasn't where I was supposed to be. As an example, working at the bank, you can't do anything online i mean if you put your linkedin through them which is like you know one of the lower end social platforms you couldn't even post anything without putting it through six offices at the firm so doing things on social media talking about your business none you can't do any of that like completely against modern day standards. And that just wasn't it for me. That was,

that was one of the many things, but I knew that that was something I was fighting for a long time. I couldn't even put out content on side stuff I was working about. Cause I was worried about the compliance there. And I'm like, this is not good for anybody. Definitely wasn't, it just wasn't good for anybody. And so Larry was like, Hey like hey you know start kicking the tires on some stuff and obviously you're doing a great job here so while you're figuring it out you know can you stay and i said absolutely which he did not have to do at all but he did because he's a great guy and so i began looking around i reached out to some mentors had some people who helped me out and started looking at other industries like marketing and things like that. And as I came towards the end of 2019, I had really been

hitting the ground hard. And the thing was, I was making an industry shift and I recognize that this is not you don't just go from like high-end finance to content marketing you know people look at that and they go what's happening here so I was not in the business of going after jobs that had stable pay or anything like that I was in the business of going after jobs that paid 38 grand a year in New York fucking city. That is what I was going after. I was like, okay, people need to give me a shot. And to give me a shot, they need to do it on something low risk. And then I know I can prove myself based on some of the side work I had done and the hunger I had to go do this. And throughout the whole end of 2019, I kept on hearing people saying, nah, wouldn't even look at me. I got stood up from interviews sometimes. I will never forget some

of those because people are under no obligation to interview me whatsoever. I don't have that expectation at all, but when you schedule stuff with me and I do everything I'm supposed to do and you repeatedly, in one case, someone stood me up three times with my follow-ups and everything that's just not that's bad business and I took that personally other than that I didn't really take much of it personally I was just like wow this is really hard and my mind was always going with all these things I thought I could do or knew I could do and I couldn't put my finger on well no this is exactly what I'm going to do and here's how it's going to be done and one of my goals had been like hey I know I'm going to want to go start some company or start a business whatever with some other people who I really love where we're aligned on something that we all want to go after and are passionate about.

But before I do that, I want to go and work in an industry that speaks the language more towards the things that I might start a business in. I want to go learn from the people who have been doing that. I can sit here and say, all right, I've done some of my street work on the side with LLCs and call that experience. But to me, it was like, well, maybe it's not. Maybe I really do got to go in there and sit behind someone, even if they're like not that talented, but they know what's going on and they can show me all the little things and the lingo that I can't get never having worked in other industries like that. And so as 2020 came in, I kept going. I was trying very, very hard.

And repeatedly again, I heard go fuck yourself a lot of times. And to be fair, most people didn't say that. Pretty much everyone I dealt with was extremely nice. And some of the people like I still talk to a little bit and let them know what I'm doing. And I appreciate them even taking the time. But when it got into February, I realized that, you know, this couldn't go on forever. I didn't want to keep hanging around at my job. And maybe I needed to do some gig work or whatever. And February was really interesting because something had happened right at the end of January

that at least got some things started. And this is where the podcast comes in. To be very clear, when I first really hatched this, I had no plan. It was something I was thinking about in November and December and starting to look into a little bit just on the side didn't tell anyone about it because i did kept keep on hearing no and i started thinking about other things i could do as well but at the end of january i went to do

a shoot for my buddy ty and his company athletes. And so they were getting a bunch of action shots that day. It's a lacrosse training company and he's got a big, big program, but they were doing a bunch of action shots in an indoor facility at the end of January. And he was like, Hey, can you come down and do some interviews too on camera and interview me and the co-founder, Andrew? I said, hell yeah, no problem. And so by the time we went to do it on that Sunday night, we'd been there for like six hours. They'd finished all the other shots and they literally had like a camp in there that day with a lot of high school players. And so those players were filing out and it was,

it was late. And I was like, all right, let's do it. So we sit down to do it. We put on the lights. There weren't, there weren't a ton of people there. It's a big indoor facility, but it was fully dark. All the lights were out and we put up the camera lights for the interview and we sat down to do it. And I sat down for about 20 minutes with Ty and 10 minutes with Andrew. And Ty had said to me, he's like, do this uncut, unedited. You know my story. Come at me hard for some of the things in my past, whatever, just like a couple minor things. But I was like, okay, I will. And so we sat down and we did that. And it was a very direct kind of made you think type interview. And Ty was excellent. And I was just in the moment. So I'm

getting this done and then ty gets up and andrew sits right down and i do the same thing with andrew and then at the end of the andrew interview they yell cut and at this point i finally i'd been facing the two of them like pretty much the whole time so i finally kind of sit back and the bright lights go off and and they turn off some they turn on some of the building lights and there's like i don't know 30 40 people sitting there watching this and they weren't there when i started i had seen what while i was doing the interview i saw a few people out of the corner of my eye straight across but i was thinking you know there's five ten people there whatever but there were a lot and several people came up to me sometimes like with other people and just speaking for the group

i guess and they're like bro do you have a podcast and be like no no i don't have one what the hell am i gonna do with a podcast and they're like you need a podcast and again i'd heard this a bunch but i was like okay and then it just kept happening. And then I went to leave and I was in the car. I had like an hour and a half drive home to North Jersey. And I was thinking to myself, should I do this? Like I am getting turned down everywhere I go, no matter what job I go after. And all these people are telling me consistently, like, Julian, you have a nice resume from finance. We're not sure how it makes sense here. And as far as the type of work you're looking at, you don't really have a public resume. That was the common line. And so I was like, all right, if I do this, I'm going to do it right.

I'm going to build a studio. I'm doing it on camera. I'm going to get as high quality sound as I can. I need to learn how to do all this stuff, whatever. And so again, no plan. It was just a thought in the back of my head. Like I almost went into it like subconsciously. And so throughout February, I was going after all these jobs. I wasn't even thinking about a podcast except for the fact that I was thinking about a podcast during my free time and researching all the equipment and going to places like B&H Photo and learning about all of it. It was just kind of like this little side hobby with no idea of like when or how or what. And so in February, to come back to where I started this little tangent, I went to my boss and I said, look, you know, I'm reaching out to a bunch of mentors now, it's been tough on the job trail, but

again, maybe i'll do some gig work and thread the needle here a little bit But I need to leave like i'm thinking the end of march. I should leave He was like hey, whatever is best for you. You have my full support. I said, I think that's the way to go so I was going to be telling clients my final decision as it turned out the week of February 24th. And then we walked in on February 24th. If you listen to episode 14, I talked about this a little bit, but we walked in and the market was way down because that was really the first big time sell off of COVID. And then we're like, all right, we'll do it tomorrow.

And then it just kept going and it got out of control. And next thing you know, we're in quarantine. But right before quarantine, about a week before, I started quarantine on March 13. So literally like, yeah, that Friday or Saturday before, I had finished most of my equipment research and I pressed the order button on pretty much all of it. And then that whole week building up to quarantine ended up being insane. I forgot about it. And so on the first day of quarantine, March 13th, I get the notification from Amazon

that like everything is downstairs. And I was like, oh my God, you're kidding me. What am I gonna do with a podcast? Like, now of all times? And my boss already asking me like, hey, you know, we're probably not going back to the office till May. Can you stay on till then? Work remote? I'm like, well, yeah, why not?

You know, shit was hitting the fan. The market was going way down. Clients were freaking out. It was like a disaster kind of scenario. I'm like, what am I going to do with a podcast? And then i realized i'm like if i don't do this now when am i going to do it everything i've been working on in february reaching out to mentors to make some headway and get some some ins at companies that was that all blew up in a day with corona like everyone else in the world who had opportunities blow up in a day and so i

was at square zero i was staring down at this crossroads where now i couldn't even get a job and i was like oh okay well if you think you can do this and if if you think you you know stuff about this about these things and and you think you can exchange ideas with people and do it well, well, now's the time. Go after it. Do it. And once again, I went in with very... I did not really have a plan with it. It was like, I'm going to start the research and research the market and figure out style. I got to learn how to use all this equipment,

learn how to produce an episode, figure out where I'm doing it. I had worked with Adobe Premiere Pro a bunch on videos in the past, so I at least had a good understanding with that, but I had to learn how to take that to a new level and all this other stuff. To say nothing of the fact, I had to learn how to be on camera where it's just me and recording and doing something I hadn't done before and being engaging, and then also what the hell am I going to talk about? Now, in fairness to me, I did know I was going to talk about things on current events and we're going to get to that soon, but it was like, all right, what lens am I going to come at

it with? How am I going to start my content? How am I going to, what am I going to build it into? And it was, it started a six month period where this became my main project, and I just kind of kept discovering new things and just going with it. And it ended up landing on me releasing 10 episodes day one on content that I had shot over the previous two months or so that was not evergreen content, but the kind of stuff that needed to be released within about three months or so. That way I could at least build it up, get good at it, know I could do it and then put it out there and then start humming, which I guess is kind of where we're at right now. But I really, I really struggled with the, why am I doing this? Why should people listen to me? I went right back to that. Because I always thought who the fuck is going to listen to me talk?

You know, who even wants to listen to me talk to other people? It's a crazy concept to me. And we all know everyone and their mother started a goddamn podcast. I mean, they're everywhere. There's the data I looked at as of like a few months ago. There were over a million podcasts. Like 200,000 of them or 250,000 of them or something were active. And you know those numbers are way higher now because people have been starting podcasts left and right in Corona. So there's a ton of marketplace out there.

Very few people make money because they don't rise to the top. It's the name of the game. You got to have subscriptions and downloads and consistency. You got to keep coming up with content and putting out good things and you got to build a relationship with your audience and so my mindset was hey i don't know what's going to happen but i'm going to put my money where my mouth is. I'm always talking about like, hey, I could go after some things and do it and lean in in bad times like a corona or something like that and be one of the guys who runs the opposite way that everyone else is running and does the hard thing.

Okay. Well, if you're that guy, do it then. This is doing it. And to go back to the point of why are people going to want to listen to me, I think people want to listen to things that are entertaining, duh, engaging, also duh, but that provide them value. And when those three things are combined, it gives them a relationship. I just talked about that a second ago. But when you look at personal podcasts, whether it be someone hosting a solo podcast or someone hosting a guest podcast or someone doing both, which is what I'm doing right now, the people that tune

into that, that hit that button, the second that thing downloads and a new episode drops, are doing it because there's this relationship that when you put someone in your ears and go about your day and feel like they're speaking with you and not at you and then when they're having a conversation you feel like you're sitting at the table there with the two or three people having the conversation when that happens you build a bond with the person on the other end speaking or in some cases the people on the other end speaking and so for me i felt like if i worked hard enough and i put my money where my mouth is with my ability to talk about culture

and and talk about things that are going on and put it in a bright new lens that isn't just what you read in the last social media post somewhere. If I could put that all together, then maybe I could really give people something that became a part of their day or their week and something that they truly enjoyed and looked forward to and would want to tell other people about. That was the thought. And the topics, the idea I ended up chasing, if you read my podcast description, I believe in simplicity and being shortened to the point. Like in my opinion, all my episode descriptions are too long, but part of that's like having at least a little bit of SEO,

which I ignore a lot of, but when it comes to descriptions, I'm going to do that not to shoot myself in the foot but when i did my description it ended up being one sentence a podcast where hot takes meet context and ideas meet conversation doesn't really tell you exactly what but it gives you a feeling of how and why it's happening. And then you can kind of guess when it's under society and culture as its main subcategory that I'm talking about things that are going on in society and culture. That's the idea. But when people come in here,

I want them to feel like whatever's been going on outside that's got them worked up or got them thinking about things or excited about things, we're hit on i say we because i i am having other people come in here this is starting to happen now there's there's a lot of people lined up right now i want people to feel like they're a part of the conversation too whether it's just me or multiple people in here and i think i can deliver that because so few podcasts do it now theme wise i want to focus on things that we all wonder about and when i say theme i'm not just talking like all right the current events and the news and and relevant shit happening and breaking it down and providing analysis and talking about it no when i talk about themes I'm talking about the things that make us all

similar based on what we see in the world and how we feel in it it's like I just took a brownie here and you're wondering why I'm about to get all existentially like crazy on you bear with me things like purpose things like what defines. Things like the concept of hard work in an automated economy. Things like, yeah, what does the future hold for the younger generations as far as potential and possibility and the ability to chase the American dream. These are really, really loaded themes. These are the kinds of things that you don't even realize they're coming up but they do and i want to hit on those i want to speak those languages i have a lot of the same worries and fears and questions that you do i'm sure i do and i want to give a platform where i bring in all different people here to talk about their lives and talk about what they got going on but also talk about what's going on and what they think about it you know so on that point and i hope you're okay with the ramble today i just want to hit all these things so that you really get a feel especially people who don't know me

you get a feel for where i'm coming from and what i'm about here but on that point to be crystal clear if i never had to to do a solo podcast, I never would. The reason I did that is, well, there's a few reasons. Number one, it was corona, and I needed to build content. And I wasn't getting a ton of people coming in here during the peak of the pandemic. Let's just be honest. Number two, I needed to get good at it, which means I had to try and fail a lot myself. And so in doing that, I'm going to create content.

And then it'll be content that I put out. That's a solo podcast. Number three, and this is a little bit of the ego, but it was for myself to be able to prove it. A solo podcast is by far, a solo non-read podcast, meaning you're not reading a script. I hate those ones. Is by far the hardest type of podcast to do. It is just you, especially if you're on camera. And I'm not just saying that because I do it. There are other people who do it too, and it's hard. Like someone asked me, one of my really good friends asked me like the day I dropped it.

He goes, how weird is it talking to yourself for like an hour and a half? I said, bro, I'd tell you it's weird, but then I'd tell you that it's usually about four hours because I fuck it up for the first three. And it is. Like sitting here right now, there's no one in this place with me. It's just me. I don't even have a producer in here. It's a little weird. But if you can pull it off and hold that conversation and keep people engaged

and bring up interesting shit, then you can do anything when it comes to podcasting. Like when I brought in Sydney and when I brought in Terrence, oh my god. Cake. It was great. We turned on the cameras. We forgot they were there. And I actually have another human being to

bounce stuff off, bounce ideas off of. Which is why I say if I never had to do a solo podcast again, it would be too soon. And the reason is as much research as I might do or as passionate on a topic as I might be, or

as entertaining as I might be in some cases. Cringe is to make me say that, but some people have said that, so we'll go with it. All that being true or an idea, you still cannot get the value from one person talking in their own voice with no one else there to question them or ask about things, you still cannot get the value there that you do when you literally have one, even just one other living, breathing, basic life form sitting there as well to listen and respond

or create a topic of conversation or both. And so when I talk about things that are currently happening, like let's take the first three episodes, for example, the college debt situation. Okay, I may have done a lot of the research on that. But imagine if I brought in just someone who was dealing with college debt and had an experience with that. You know how much better that would have been overall? A million times better and it also as the listener completely takes away even the feeling that i could be talking at you because it's just one guy talking instead you get multiple people going back and forth and you're just there witnessing it

as if you're sitting at the table with them you know if i brought in an expert on college debt to talk about it, fire. I mean they would have forgotten more in the last five minutes than I learned in all the research for those three episodes. And so I knew that's what I wanted to go to. But I want to do in-studio guests. I want to sit down and have long-form conversations. And I want to be able to have the credibility to do it so right now building my library doing my thing putting out quality content showing that i am capable of doing it myself as well at least is a little different and at least makes people go okay he's not fucking around

that's that's why i'm doing those but as i might have this earlier, but we do have a lot of guests coming up now. And if I can get it to a point where it's pretty much always a guest every week, great. My goal right now is one episode a week. If there are weeks where I have a couple, I'm going to put out a couple. But I want to give you one a week unless I'm on vacation. And even when I'm on vacation, I want to have one built up to be able to give it to you. And with the guests, you're going to notice a difference in the content. And that's why I bring that up specifically. So in the first 10 that I dropped, you had two guest episodes.

And then the four I've done since then are all solo episodes. So you've had two guest episodes total. The first one was Sydney talking about the creative process. And that one, we literally, I was like, hey, you want to just turn the camera on? And she said, yeah, because we were there. We were working on the music and we did. And I cut it at an hour. I cut it.

And I don't like doing that. But she's also my cousin cousin kind of like my sister i know everything there is to know about her so we got a lot out in that hour that you normally wouldn't get out in a regular conversation with someone you don't know extremely extremely extremely well everything about them so i still even like cut it off but that one got good feedback because people were like oh yeah i really understood where she was coming from and what she was about and that's the goal but the next one I did was with Terrence which was number 10 which of all the episodes in the feedback I've gotten the strongest feedback and the most visceral feedback of that was I really enjoyed that one was the Terrence one

and that's the model I'm looking for when I bring in guests. With Terrence, I was bringing him in to talk about, you know, knowing what his expertise was, a very uncomfortable topic. If you haven't heard it, that was the episode where we talked about the social unrest and some of the racial unrest that's been happening in this country this year.

And there were a lot of touchy subjects that i was sure were going to come up but sitting down there and having that conversation with him for that length of time where there was just cameras on and we were just talking bullshitting like regular and actually getting somewhere and having a conversation around these difficult things that made it something where people could just toss it in their ears and get a perspective on something that usually they just hear people screaming at each other about and feel like they were there. That was my number one thing that I got from a lot of different people

who all checked the box of my target demographics, who were saying, I felt like I was sitting at the table with you guys that's what we want to do and so one thing i want to touch on here is that you will notice the length of my solo podcasts have been the shortest one was about 45 minutes but most of them are about an hour and one ran to about 124 which is really the highest i ever want to go i don't like listening to myself talk for an hour and one ran to about 124 which is really the highest i ever want to go i don't like listening to myself talk for an hour and 24 minutes so again i guess i gotta get used to that but anyway you however would see that the the terrence episode was you know two hours and 35 or 40 minutes when it's a conversation i'm not putting a clock on it it's also not outlined it's not an interview

at all i made that clear in that intro i don't do interviews i know people's hot buttons and what they're interested in or i know what's going on in the world and what we can talk about and the conversation will go where it goes it'll go off on tangents it's a real conversation you know so to do that yeah we're not going to be like all right stop watch on an hour it's not how it's going to go it's long-form content that you know is passively consumed and some people maybe people who aren't as big podcast head or maybe some who are will say well what the hell am i going to do listening to a two and a half hour conversation that's fair but that's the model just like in

basketball you look at michael jordan and lebron james what do they do that's what i should do okay we'll look at podcasting the michael jordan podcasting is joe rogan talked about him before that's the model and joe rogan has built the base he has and the people who are i guess are in his target demographic the reason they really fuck with him is because there there's no bullshit what you see is what you get and my what i would expand upon it with is when you are sitting down in a studio across from a person with headphones in your ear hearing their voice right in your ear and the cameras go on and you just talk without any of that production or crap that makes it not real neither of you can really hide

you're out there your experiences your perspective your style your personality it's it's there it's the most transparent like beautiful thing i love it it goes for me and it goes for the people i bring on and so it also doesn't put the time constraints of trying to figure out why are we going to hit this are we going to hit that he leaves it open-ended generally at three hours you're done you know you're tired like even if think of it this way if you go to talk with a girl you really like for the first time like in depth or if you're a girl and you go to talk with a guy you really like in depth do you really get to know them in a 45 minute conversation it's a hard no no you don't and this relates back to that you don't really

get to people in that way and so i guess people and not to pick on them because the production quality is great and you know some of them are really good but you know people who the only things they listen to are npr podcasts and quicks, this is probably not the podcast for them. It's not a speech. It's not a set interview question that's produced and these are the things we ask and then we move on. This is very open-ended. There is no plan.

When I went with Sidney and I went with Terrence, there were no questions. I have the cameras up in that case. There's nothing on the screen saying, this is what we got to talk about. No, we just talk. And that is what we got to talk about no we just talk and that's what i want to move towards you're going to get a big healthy dose of that coming up here just because i got a bunch of people coming in and i got some interesting people coming

in i mean to me that yes eventually i want to get some bigger names too right and and some people who are pseudo celebrities or celebrities and there are some i names too right and and some people who are pseudo celebrities or celebrities and there are some i know but those aren't the people i'm bringing in right now i'm bringing in first of all a couple people who really should be one guy in particularly definitely should be and who have way different experiences on stuff i want you guys to be able to listen on demand when you want and get something that's relatable and real. It's a theme I've hit on in episodes. I'll never stop hitting on it. That's what I value. I don't like the production of TV. I grew up in internet culture. That's what I like. And the data suggests that a lot of people like it too a lot of you guys do too you know this is

it's also this is an explicit podcast i talk i talk right so on that point in the first 10 episodes because i was putting out all 10 at once i knew that going in i went all over the board i went from like really serious and slow and almost somber on some stuff to like crazy funny and raunchy on other stuff i was kind of throwing shit against the wall and seeing what stuck and unfortunately with different people a lot of it's stuck in different ways so it's got me like a little confused what to go for but i guess that unpredictability and what i do kind of going from here to here and all over the place, it adds to the experience. So I'll continue kind of collecting data on that. And please, again, reach out to me and tell me what you think. But that's kind of what it is right now. And so I keep it conversational. and yes you know like some people who are not in my target demographic at all but you know some older people are like well why do you have to curse on the podcast i only had one person my

age say that i'm sure there are some that think that because maybe that's not their cup of tea i don't think about it man i don't i talk in conversations just like the rest of you do and the data suggests that just like the rest of you in conversation with your friends and your peers that stuff gets said so i've never thought about using a curse word in my life except when i'm not using them and it's usually out of respect totally you know with someone generally from an older generation where there was a little bit of a different belief system there and i respect that but i still got to be like really measured with what i say i gotta think about every word that my pitch will go up and get a little slower regardless of if they're like old or not it's not it's not me it's not what

it is if i'm gonna do this i'm gonna succeed or fail as me. That's it. So, you know, there were some that were probably heavier with language. I didn't notice until I was editing. You know, so if that's not your biggest cup of tea on those episodes, I fully understand if you're not into that. But like as an example, number 12, the second part of the Influencer Series, that was kind of the negative one of the three where I was really attacking influencers. And I made it lighthearted and funny by...

We laughed at him. And I did it by being a little bit of a comedian in some cases. And of course, there was very heavy language in that one. So things like that will happen. And I really like... That was one of my favorite episodes because I also loved how that one closed because you took this kind of funny episode that went all over the place to

hey let's actually talk about where we're at fault with this and look ourselves in the mirror and i i love that and i hope you guys did too if you didn't let me know but that's the that's the type of vibe where i like that all over the place kind of unpredictability to the content. So that you can also expect. But I want to make sure I have a few bullet points that I just want to make sure I hit. I haven't been looking, but I think I pretty much hit all of them. I told you about the number of pods per week. I want to do at least one a week.

And some weeks, if I have two or or three I'll put out two or three and to go back to the far initial point of why are you doing this and what's the goal to kind of close on that one big reason I'm doing it is to say I'm doing it putting yourself out there marketing it running the whole thing it drives me nuts i mean it's a lot of work it is what it is but being that entrepreneur and and being able to say no matter what happens like i did it i worked my balls off and not a lot of people ever do that type of thing yeah like that's a part of it another part of it is i never want someone to tell me i don't have a public resume again that's why i have the youtube channel my engagement is on the audio channels and I want to keep it that way because that's really how you build credibility with a podcast so you

know the YouTube engagement's not crazy but the people who go on there they watch for hours I mean my watch hours are pretty nuts and what I'll say is that it's my library you can't hide a camera you either have the studio and have the content and have the quality and have the sheer volume of content that you do or you don't and on youtube there is a literal visual aspect of it and so that's why i put that there i've clearly i don't put it there for the views that's that goes without saying and then i give you snippets of that on social media you know i have to market myself i have to i have to remind people i'm doing this every week because you know one thing that i think we get really we take for granted

big time is people's attention. And this is, I want to say this real quick. This is very, very important. I think I heard, maybe it was Jesse Itzler say this once. He was like, there's 30,000 to 50,000 decision points that a human being makes per day in the modern era. Like, the amount of stress that that puts on your brain, and I've never researched it further, so I don't know all the chemicals and the science behind it, but you and I can both imagine. That's fucking crazy. Part of those decision points now, a big part of them, are what we do with even our smallest off moments.

Do we check a text or do we check Instagram? Do we scroll or do we go to stories? Do we call this guy or do we put the phone down and go for a walk so when people are going on to social media let's take instagram for an example the idea that on one of my one or two weekly videos a week on igtv the idea that somebody is going to stop their finger on their feed, especially of the people that follow me, like people who don't really know me, stop their finger on the feed, engage with my video for 10 to 15 seconds even, and then on top of that, make a decision to leave that app and go to another app and type in my name or my podcast name to look it up and review the page and then on top of that maybe click an episode and say i'll give it three minutes and see see how i like it

that ask of people is enormous and i think people take this for granted i don't like even if you watch two seconds of my instagram story, that's a win. And that's like thank you for doing that. So I have to do it consistently because if I put it out and 400 people see it, 500 people see it, but really two, like really get into it for the first time. That's two more people that I'm making a bet they're going to come in, click one of my episodes, start listening and go, oh, this isn't bad. This is really cool. Like that's what I'm trying to do there and so any of you who have a business doesn't have to be a podcast or something even with like where content is is your main value play

put it out there just do it don't invade people i keep my content pretty much towards my business stuff now i don't put up unnecessary stories or unnecessary posts i'm focused on this and like if people want to unfollow me because they don't like that that is their right and they're probably not someone that i would be targeting anyway i guess in that scenario but like put it up do it and just understand you can't expect that like these people are just going to come in and adopt it right away you got to break down the levy and that's something thank god i knew that hardcore going into this to me like if i got five listeners on my first 10 episodes that was a lot and i got a lot more than that which was shocking you know but even then growing it that's how that's how the

growth goes and then eventually you kind of have that moment, but you got to get to that moment. The people who get that moment right away are very rare, and they very rarely keep it after that. So for me, yeah, I wanted to just do the damn thing, and I wanted to have the public resume. And then, yeah, I was like, well, once I was putting all the effort into it and doing it and realizing, like, I feel feel great doing this i'm in my zone i love this shit i live for this shit i'm thinking about it all the time i was like fuck yeah i want to make this work yeah i want this to be a big podcast i want to make this something that people love and evangelize i want people shouting this podcast from the rooftops so that's my goal. That's what I do. I don't have a job.

This is it. I left my last career. That's over. This is what I do. And I'm going to keep doing it. And at the end of the day, whatever happens here, no one's taking that from me. And I think for anyone who would be in this position that's a really really cool thing and for once I can actually say to myself

hey good job Jules like okay cool you did something so I hope you guys are enjoying this podcast again please keep the feedback coming it's been great and it's not like I can take all the feedback

I was on four calls on maybe it was Saturday Again, please keep the feedback coming. It's been great. And it's not like I can take all the feedback. I was on four calls on maybe it was Saturday, like back to back to back to back. And two of them had like direct opposite points of feedback as the other two. You know, and I can't really say that or sometimes I will say that to people. But, you know, I got to make a choice. I got to figure out, well, who fits my demographic more? And then maybe I end up being wrong about that and got to try it the other way. There's going to be iterations to this.

But the feedback's great. I want it. I want all of it, good, bad, and indifferent. And we're going to keep it rolling, baby. I'm very excited about all the guest ones coming up. You can really get a feel for the types of people that I'm interested in speaking with and what you can expect there moving forward. And my number one thing with guests is that

I bring on people, and just in life, talk to people who I view as special, like all my friends. I see that thing in them where even if they aren't doing it I'm like wow they're really special because of this I see that greatness and it I try not to think about it but it saddens me that a lot of people won't ever bring that to the surface but to some of the people out there doing some things to bring it to the surface I want people to see them through their eyes the

way I see these people through mine. And the best way for me to do that is put them front and center right here in front of a camera where we're just talking like we talk on the phone or we talk on FaceTime or we talk when we're just talking without the cameras and then let people judge for themselves. So that's my ramble. We'll call that an episode right there. Thank you to everyone who's listening. Keep those subscriptions coming. Keep the five-star reviews and the comments on Apple Podcasts coming.

That's a huge help. And yeah, I hope you share the hell out of this with people that you think would love this podcast. And if that's everyone, great. I'm happy with that. But I'm not going to get into my – exactly what my target demographic is and all that. But yes, I have a very clear focus that I did define, and my idea is that you attack that, and then over time, that will invite in other demographics because those people will go out and say, oh, you you got to listen to this. Oh, you'll love this. And so it gives it a credibility and it puts the guard down on people who exist outside the demographic. So yeah, I would like this to be open to a lot of people over time. But for now, yeah, there's probably a specific subset of people who really, really fuck with this. And then maybe some others who don't. But to all of you who have taken the time to listen at all whether you like it or not thank you and thank you for all the support that's all i got give it a thought get back to me peace everybody