Friday Fury with Adrian Oprea

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Summary

This is going to be a great episode where I speak with Adrian about fake gurus, toxic self-development recipes, and how online advertising has fundamentally ruined the internet. It is a Friday Fury episode with plenty of raw language and swearing, so if you are not a grown-up or you do not like that, then don’t bother watching this hour-long video. 

We get completely real about pruning synthetic marketing and inspirational hustle porn from our feeds to focus on normal, unfiltered realness. We dive into our own experiences with toxic perfectionism, the reality of running a hard business, and why copying someone else’s corporate cookie-cutter formula or waking up at five in the morning will never substitute finding your own natural rhythm and getting actual work done.

Raw

Kia

00:00

This is going to be a great episode. I’m speaking with Adrian. I met Adrian on LinkedIn, I do believe, and we’re constantly talking on LinkedIn about specific topics, and we’re going to go through it in these. So just try to watch as much as you can. It’s a long video. It’s about an hour long.

00:17

But we basically go through talking about fake gurus. Now, there will be swearing. There’s going to be grown-up language.

00:24

If you’re not a grown-up and you don’t like swearing, then don’t bother watching this. It is a Friday Fury episode, and I really hope you enjoy it. Here’s our conversation.

00:34

You know, I’m getting to that stage. You know, I want, you know, I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I’ve kind of wanted to be myself more.

00:45

And I am when I am with my clients and stuff. And I think, you know, we’re talking about marketing and fake gurus and stuff. That they’re all, it’s all synthetic.

00:57

It’s no real people anymore. And I woke up this morning knowing that I was going to do this recording with you. And I thought, I want to get rid of people that post inspirational hustle porn type stuff, which is what we’ve been talking about recently.

01:18

And I did. And I got rid of quite a few. I don’t follow that many people anyway.

01:22

On Twitter, this is. And I got rid of about seven of them. And I’m already, even this morning, I’m feeling, huh, this is actually quite nice, you know.

01:32

And I want to get back into following real people with their real, with their realness. And when I started doing my videos originally, I didn’t want it to be produced or anything. I just wanted it to be me in front of the camera, right?

01:51

And the whole black and white thing came. We talked about this last time. Right, so listeners who are listening in, we recorded this last week.

02:00

And the app that we were using, Welder, I’m not naming and shaming, it was just shit. And it fucked up my mic and it fucked up the transcription. So just letting you know, that’s why we’re doing this again.

02:14

So.

Adrian

02:16

It’s a meta, actually. We’re going meta because we’re recording about the recording, right?

Kia

02:21

We’re recording about the recording, yeah. That really irritated me. But yeah, I wanted to follow normal people.

02:28

When I did my videos, I didn’t want it to be produced and stuff. So I just wanted to be me and do the ums and the ars and stuff. Not too much.

02:38

I mean, if you do it too much, then it sounds silly. You’ve still got to be presentable in a way. But I wanted to be me.

02:47

My dog walks in now and again. Or he walks down the stairs and I’m like, oh, sorry, wait, he’s walking down the stairs. I mean, why not?

02:54

Because that’s real life, right?

Adrian

02:56

Yeah. It’s actually funny. I actually kicked my cat out of here because cats are different.

03:03

Like, a dog doesn’t just jump on the table. But the cat does it, and you’re going to see her, like, wagging her tail, like, going around over here. Like, what you got here?

03:14

But the funny thing is that, so you mentioned that you were doing some, like, feed pruning, which is actually a topic that I have. in Basecamp so it’s already like scheduled for recording for my podcast which is like I’ll make your feeds a little bit more valuable for yourself for yourself and I actually saw your tweet but what I wanted to tell you was that yesterday evening I was with my daughter at my computer and I was showing her one of the like the latest videos that I’ve made the the latest episodes of the podcast yeah and Um, she was, um, asking me like, uh, since when are you doing this? Cause she’s like, she wasn’t like very into what I was doing.

04:01

And I’m like, since you were about four, like I’ve done videos, uh, when you were four. And she’s like, show me. And I show her the video and she’s like, you look younger.

04:12

You had more hair. You blah, blah, blah, blah. And then we get into this talk as she’s like almost nine.

04:18

Yeah. Um, and she’s a perfectionist. And, uh, I. don’t like that and I don’t like that because she resembles me a lot in that.

04:29

Right. But the perfectionism that she, well, I wouldn’t say suffers from, but like that I see in her is the type of what is usually called toxic perfectionism. So because she can’t do something perfectly, she won’t even try. And I keep telling her like, that’s wrong. Yeah.

04:48

You got to try because otherwise if you don’t do, you’re not going to get good at. something and then I I showed her actual footage like see this 15 minute video that you liked here’s an hour of me like sweating and puffing and huffing and and we laughed and she was like looking at them and she was going like oh so you took one hour to record this 10 minute nine minute video and I’m like yeah and I was sweating and swearing like hell yeah I tried to jump skip over the swear words because like I’m gonna wait till she’s like 15 16 to like enrich her vocabulary but but yeah you could um you you you like native english speakers would say that uh i i definitely demonstrated the diversity of the word fuck right on those videos brilliant yeah you know it’s do you know the boondock saints the movie yeah yeah so right you know the scene where like they go into the hotel room where rocko the like the like the long hair guy was supposed to like kill some mafia guys and like become made. I’m thinking of wrong film.

06:00

Oh no. So it’s with these two Irish brothers that there are like some sort of, you know, what do they call them like event? Not Avengers, vigilante. Vigilante’s stuff, you know.

06:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And so they have this friend who’s kind of in the mafia, but he’s like a package boy. Right.

06:18

And he gets sent by his boss to kill some guys that were having a meeting in this hotel room. And these guys go to kill the same bad guys. And they enter the room, they kill everyone.

06:33

And then Rocco, this career guy, was at the door pretending to be service, room service, you know, to enter and kill them. And they decide to play a prank on him. And, you know, like, they ruffle him up a little bit.

06:48

and then look at the gun and realize that they sent him, his boss sent him with a gun with four bullets to kill six guys. So when everything chills, yeah, when everything chills, like the guy goes, what the fucking fuck? And he keeps going and going and going.

07:06

And then one of the guys go, that certainly illustrates the diversity of the word fuck.

Kia

07:10

And so, yeah, I see that. I’ve seen something else. I’ve got to go and check that out.

07:15

But yeah, it’s an old movie. It’s not easy. making these videos really. When I first started, yeah, I am a perfectionist as well, but I gave it a go.

07:28

And I remember the first video I made, it’s still there. It was actually by accident. It was a conversation I was having with someone. And then I thought, wait, if I cut this up, this is what tech minimalism is. And that was my first video. It was like, I think it was a 45 minute conversation, which I just recorded myself. Obviously, I was recording me, not the guy. So I just cut out what, when he was talking and just carried on with me. And that was it. And I thought this will be good idea. But it took forever to freaking edit it. It took forever. Right. And then after that, I thought, you know, let me be the Casey Nice stat. Let me go and do the videos and, you know, and it took me forever. So I was making a video a month and it was taking forever. But being the Tech Minimalist I am, I was like, I’ve got to hone this down. Now, again, because of, I’ve done so many videos, from the time of the idea to the time of actually posting, it’s about 35 minutes, 40 minutes max. And that’s including everything. Because again, I don’t, I, there was a short period ago, a short time ago. I was told to start posting everywhere, and I did, so at the time took a bit long But usually I only post to a couple of places and edit.

08:51

I mean, I don’t really edit. I don’t color grade because it’s black and white basically. So it makes it a lot easier.

09:00

But yeah, if you don’t start, you ain’t going to get good, which is basically what you’re saying.

Adrian

09:07

That’s precisely it. That’s precisely it. Because to end every, like to close the loop, I showed her that video and that then how long it took me to make the video, how many takes I had to go through.

09:24

And then we went back to my latest two podcast episodes. And she’s like, but you don’t seem to be cutting here. And I’m like, because I didn’t. I have 30 seconds to a minute of me like sitting around getting into the mood before I started speaking.

09:41

And then there’s the end where I have to put like a little bit of music and cut before like I turn my face away from the screen and look somewhere else, you know? Right, right, right. And that’s it.

09:51

Like, it’s continuous. And she’s like, you did it in one fell swoop? And I’m like, yeah.

09:55

Yeah, yeah. Talked. But what about the ums and us?

10:00

Because she’s like, you seem to be interrupting at some point and like what she can understand because she doesn’t speak English right now. She understands parts of the discourse. She has a vocabulary, but she’s not an English speaker.

10:14

And she’s like, I can tell your. stuttering and you’re interrupting yourself and you don’t aren’t isn’t that bothersome and I’m like to who is interested to to the people who are interested in the information that I’m giving no that’s

Kia

10:28

not they’re just going to like skip it yeah it’s true I mean that’s what I was going to come to it’s it it’s got to sound good the audio quality is going to be good but your the next tier down is the content the actual story the the the information and if that’s good then the umz and ours don’t matter too much. There is a guy on YouTube. I watch a lot of Van Life videos as a guy on YouTube and he makes great videos, great content, great ideas, but I can’t watch him because he goes, um, all the time. You know who has a tick like that?

Adrian

11:07

Paul Graham from White Combinator, he has this, hum, hum. Oh yeah? He does this like frequently and it’s, distracting, but it’s actually beneficial to one point because if you go like, you drift off and

Kia

11:21

he goes like, come, you just come back. It’s just like this cycle, you know? It’s like, it’s weird because as I said, with this guy, I like the content, but I just can’t watch it because of that.

11:32

And to people who are listening, don’t worry about your, I’m not going to call it mannerisms, but it’s not just the way you speak, the way you are. Because just because, just because Someone won’t like it. There’s other people who will.

11:47

He’s got thousands of followers, right? So people do like it. So whoever’s listening, just get on with it and do it.

11:56

Don’t worry about what people say because you’re making it for yourself and giving the information out there. And if people don’t like it, they’ll just do something else. If they troll you, don’t even bother listening to it because what’s the point?

12:09

I got trolled once or twice, but it was like nothing. Not many people, you know, worry about that kind of stuff.

Adrian

12:15

I guess it depends on on how you take trolling like I was also talking to someone and he asked me why are you doing these I saw you know he said I saw you’re trying to become a content creator so you might watch this and that and that and I’m like no man I’m not trying to become a content creator because you don’t see me going like hey guys no welcome to my and then you know this the clapping and the fist bumping and the, uh, presuming, you know, snapping the fingers, the, all those ticks that, uh, uh, you to content creators have, right? Uh, I’m not doing it for that. I’m doing this, uh, to serve as a personal historian.

13:03

So that when I do have to make up my success story, I won’t, I mean, I’m gonna have the, you know, the historian tell me like, no, no, no, you were, that was a lucky guess. You were stupid over there. This is what you did wrong.

13:18

You just kind of stumbled and fell into it halfway through. And I don’t end up like inventing some hero story for people. You know, I’ve always knew.

Kia

13:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, exactly. Well, this is the thing. Why do I do it? I do it for, it was to start with content.

13:36

It was kind of content marketing. It was like being top of mind, making videos. But then I realized quickly that I’ve got a lot more to say.

13:44

so they kind of morphed into something else, into kind of ideas of simplicity and simplifying, well, you know, being a tech guy, simplifying your tech stuff and things like that. And I think in 2022, it’s going to be morphed into something else. But we all have stories.

14:01

We all have ideas that we could share. And especially for people like you and I who work on our own, I mean, it’s a bit different with you because you have a family. There’s people around.

14:15

there are a lot of people like me who there are no one around other than the dog right so getting my information out it’s more to do with getting it out of my head and hoping someone else would listen to it than anything else because when you work on your own you still need people to bounce off ideas and that’s what social media in a way is great for so circling back to what we were saying at the beginning kind of organize your feed in such a way where it’s beneficial to you. And that’s kind of working for me as well, actually, in that way. So I’m really happy with it.

14:54

I mean, these fake gurus and stuff that we’ve been talking about this for a few weeks now, to be honest, online. And they just irritate the bejesies out of me. I mean, that thing that I posted on LinkedIn, I didn’t tag him or anything.

15:07

It’s like, fuck this. There’s people see who he is. You know, I just took a picture of it.

15:12

And it’s like, what are you actually saying? What do you like?

Adrian

15:16

Oh, I sent you the screenshot from the PDF book, the ebook, the thing. Like these people are literally following the same influencers, the same thought leaders, right, with big air quotes here. And they’re probably some of them end up spending hundreds of dollars, if not more, on the special courses, workshops, three-day events.

15:44

whatever the gurus and the influencers put together. And then they start parroting out the same things. I actually made a video while, like I filmed the screen of the computer with your post open with that.

16:01

Oh yeah. But I only posted it. Yeah, I only posted it on Instagram because that’s really not something you want to put on Twitter.

16:09

Because it was more of a, it was not making fun. If I’m going to send it to you, you’re going to. you’re going to see it and probably have a laugh. But, you know, with doing voices and all that, that’s not not appropriate for LinkedIn and by any stretch of the imagination. It’s more suited than like the motivational bullshit that we see over there. But still, I thought it wasn’t for that platform. Yeah. But you said something very interesting about one of your reasons for sharing what you know and it is to get out of your mind and get things out of your mind and into the basically it’s a way for you to communicate to disperse some of your ideas and knowledge and maybe to collect some feedback and some information about the knowledge and there are two quotes that I remember from reading I believe Jordan Peterson’s book I don’t know if you know who Jordan Peterson Yeah, yeah, yeah.

17:12

Okay, so in 12, I think in 12 rules for life, I’ve met both of those quotes, which is one of them. It takes a village to organize a mind. And the topic of the chapter where I found this quote was probably about, like, you know, having a family, a tightly knit group around you and stuff like that.

17:34

And how if you’re alone by the time you get to your 50s, it’s going to be harder for you if you don’t have like really, close friends, like alone in the sense of not having a family. And the other quote, which ties into to the first one very, very well, is the faintest pencil is better than the sharpest of minds, which is something that’s more or less telling you to write stuff down. know, like this is why I keep stuff like this laying around and, you know, I keep buying them.

18:14

Put stuff down. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kia

18:17

Yeah, I started doing that a bit more. I have an app called Day One, which I love. I’ve been using it since 2014.

18:25

I love it. It’s great. And I’ve been using it on and off.

18:29

I’m not a writer. I can’t write. I’m useless at it.

18:34

But I can type and I can type quite well. And I’m very good at very short form stuff. So just getting ideas out quotes and stuff.

18:42

I have it in my dock on the phone and also on the Mac, you know, keyboard shortcut. And then I just put stuff there. And it’s great.

18:52

So that helps me get ideas for my videos. That helps me get ideas for where I want to go and things like that. So writing stuff down is absolutely a great thing.

19:03

The video thing is kind of more an update. dated version of that in a way because it’s like, yes, I’ve written this quote down, but there’s a, there’s a feeling and an idea behind it. Hence why I make the videos. Videos are amazing.

19:19

In fact, I just, I posted something about video. I love video. I just really do love video.

19:25

And I always have, but I’ve never really done it up and, I only started it like two years ago kind of thing. And I think the reason why it works well for me, or, you know, carried on it in that way is because I really enjoyed the idea of video in the past. I’ve had so many different types of cameras and stuff.

19:47

So I’ve all really liked video. And what I usually do, if someone emails me a question, or if I have a question of support request, or a bug, or whatever, this is what happens with… I found a bug in hay, actually.

20:00

It’s really stupid bug, which I can’t believe no one else has actually mentioned it. But you can create a note, but I didn’t want the note, so I deleted it. It was deleted.

20:12

I refreshed a page and the note was still there, and I couldn’t understand it. So I made a video and I explained it, and I was like, is this a bug or a feature? Because sometimes they come back with it.

20:21

It’s a feature, which is really stupid. So I made the video, sent the video, and they fixed it within two emails. He said, oh, we never knew about this, blah, blah, blah.

20:32

It’s now fixed. We pushed a fix, and it’s now fixed. Because they saw the video, which is great.

20:37

because they said they actually said it and I screenshot it and posted it. Really like the video. It was great.

20:45

Blah blah, blah. So video for me is really it really helps me communicate what I want to say.

Adrian

20:52

You want to know why? Because video just the same as writing things down on a whiteboard, for example, respect the principle of Don’t tell. Don’t tell.

21:09

Yes. Yeah. I love that.

21:11

I learned it back in 2009, I believe. I found 2010, I think 2000, whatever, back into Stone Ages. So when I read a book called The Back of the Napkin by Dan Rome, which is a book about visual note taking.

21:35

And the concept was there. show don’t tell and then it got strengthened when I was following some tutorials on this web development tutorials website call can I name them can I go for it egghead.io okay is a great platform haven’t used it for years but they had pretty decent courses and in their article for authors if you’re a course author they would give you like this is the hardware you need need, this is how you set it up. Like their whole onboarding was an article.

Kia

22:11

Right.

Adrian

22:12

And when they would tell you about the videos, how to structure them, this was the most important part. Show, don’t tell. So this means that you have the code written and then you talk about the code.

22:28

You explain after you show, after you reveal the code or after you write it, right? And you summarize at the end always. And you don’t start every video.

22:37

video with, hey guys, today we’re going to learn about the blah, blah, blah, no, get straight

Kia

22:43

into it. Yeah.

Adrian

22:44

I love that. If you can, if you’re interested in that, although like your video, your style of video is pretty, no BS, no fluff.

Kia

22:53

Yeah, it is no fluff. And you know, there’s a, there’s a hip hop artist and I’ve got to find it. I’ve got to find it.

23:04

I’ve got to find it. And back in the late 80s, it came out, this record. I put the needle on and it just came into the music.

23:15

It was just beat. There was no intro. There was no pads, nothing.

23:18

Beat. And I was like, damn, this is good. And whenever I make my videos, it reminds me of how I start my videos like that.

23:26

Because I literally just get into it. Because the thing is, when you, you know, sometimes when you listen to podcast, there’s like 10 minute of fluff of who are you, where you link. or whatever it is, although the links go at the end.

23:40

It’s like fluff, who the fuck is listening to this shit? I mean, there’s no reason for it. The point is to get your point across, to have that conversation, and hopefully someone likes part of that conversation, and they carry on with it and carry on listening to it.

23:57

But to go through that fluff, it’s just irritates.

Adrian

24:00

It’s a recipe they’re using.

Kia

24:01

Of course it is, but everything now sounds the same. Everything looks the same. Yeah, but this is the thing.

24:10

Wants to be. But then no way like him because he also just gets into it. It’s only at the beginning way Joe Rogan podcast, blah, blah, music, hey, how are you doing?

24:22

It’s straight in. There’s no bullshit with him. And it’s always been like that with him.

24:27

Right? So the point is to have a conversation and people like it. What’s the point of giving all this crap?

24:33

It’s like webinars. We’ve spoken about. webinars in the past. You get an hour webinar, 45 minute webinar, and it’s like 40 minutes of absolute pure utter shit, and then five minutes of, you got to buy my course or you got to buy this. It’s like, why am I here, you know? So I stopped looking at, I just, basically I’m stopping with all that crap. And I think everyone should. I guess this is why we’re bothered

Adrian

25:01

about this. It’s because of recipes. So I don’t know where I found this, but authenticity itself is not beneficial. I mean, if your authentic self is that of an asshole. Oh yeah. Right.

25:18

Don’t be authentic, right. Right. Right. So, I mean, it has to be pondered. No, pondering is like being indecisive, right? Yeah. Yeah. It has to be thought.

25:31

thought through, right? You got to put a balance over there. But at the same time, you got a little little bit of yourself out. Because turning back to what I said, this is what bothers us. It’s recipes. So podcasts, right? For podcasts, you have like intro, talk about what the episode is about, what you’re going to get, and then you’re going to leave a hook, but like for the end so that people stick in and then you get into the meat of the problem. Then you reiterate the problem you just talked about the topic and then you go links like share subscribe social media blah blah blah blah right yeah same with these not not workshops and we’re going to go into the fake gurus stuff but like with self-development stuff yes you get on the website uh you get the pop you want to click exit you know there are these exit pop-ups yeah yeah yeah people need to know like some of those pop-ups some of them are just when you scroll and then you get like subscribe to the newsletter but others are called exit pop-ups.

26:34

So when you go towards the… Sorry. I have to…

26:37

You want to ask this. Go ahead. Yeah, please.

26:39

I’m going to keep on rolling. Okay. I’m going to wait for you, actually.

26:45

Or do you want me to, like, go through? Yeah. We’re just going to wait for the director to come back into his high chair.

Kia

27:00

So unfortunately there’s no do not disturb on the on the you know you get a parcel and the podcast carries on

Adrian

27:07

I I think you do have a do not disturb it’s called a dog yeah you put it there he’s train it’s there

Kia

27:16

just waiting wow sorry about that yeah you were saying yeah about the recipes yes so I was

Adrian

27:23

saying that with even with like self-development like same thing with recipes. I was explaining about some of the types of pop-ups you might see on a website and leading into the way they collect your email and how you get into a funnel. So some of those pop-ups are made to appear when you go to the exit. Like if you want to go to top right, top left to like close the window or close the tab, that’s when they pop up. And so they ask for your email, right? So give us your email and we’ll send you this free PDF. You give them the email. They PDF. Then they enroll you in the five day email drip campaign course with like workflows.

28:04

And then they invite you to the webinar. In the webinar, they do what you said. Talk 45 minutes of bullshit. Yes. And then trying to sell you on their course, for example. Yeah. And okay, like I’m going to be the devil’s advocate here. The purpose of a webinar usually is to help you decide whether you One of the purposes is to help you decide whether the whatever is being sold is suitable for you or not But if you ship 45 minutes of what we say shit under pressure, you know like in the shit trucks Yes, yeah, yeah, that’s not like don’t do it But then they sell you on the course you go buy the course you join the course You go through with it if you fail it’s your fault of course because you Of course it’s your fault.

28:57

You did not push hard enough. You weren’t dedicated enough. Then you buy the book.

29:02

Then you buy the private, like the conference ticket, private island event, and then private mentorship group with guru. And at the end of this all, of all of this, you are in debt.

Kia

29:18

Yes, absolutely.

Adrian

29:20

Most people, some people go in debt for this.

Kia

29:23

There’s a guy, I don’t know him on YouTube. He’s got a massive following and I really like his content called CoffeeZilla.

Adrian

29:31

I love him.

Kia

29:32

It’s amazing. He’s watched it, right? You’ve seen it.

Adrian

29:35

I’ve seen him. I haven’t watched him for like three months, I guess.

Kia

29:39

Amazing. There’s another guy called Spencer Cornelia. He talks a bit fast, but he has a really good content. But CoffeeZilla, he exposes all these fake gurus and stuff. What I want to do with my Friday Fury episodes, which is what this episode is going to going to be, actually, this is going to be the last video on Friday of the year.

Adrian

30:02

Yay.

Kia

30:03

Yay. And what I want to do with my fake, sorry, with my Friday Fury is kind of turn it into a, because right now it’s basically what, you know, what tech annoys me, what annoys me with tech, what SaaS companies annoy me, why have they done it in this way? And I want to expand on that, basically.

30:26

I really want to expand on that. And I want to bring in this whole fake bullshit that being sold out there. Because sometimes they don’t always call it webinars.

30:37

They call it workshops. But in fact, it’s actually just a fucking webinar. You’re not learning anything, right?

30:43

Or you’re learning the most stupid, basic fucking shittery on there. Clubhouse is another form of webinar, basically, which I just stopped using. because you get call, you make contact with people, they call you, and they just want to find out who you are and what you do.

31:03

They’re not buying anything, which is fine. You’re not always there to sell anything. But just the way and the manner that they try to speak to you, oh, I’ll be good for you.

31:13

You know, if you come into the clique that we’re in and maybe we can get, like, get the fuck out of here. And I’ve had a few of those kind of calls. And it’s like, oh, it just pisses me off no end that these fake motherfucking assholes, sorry, cunts just tend to want to gather all these fucking people, but not actually do any fucking work themselves.

31:42

Do you see how irritated I am? No, I know, I know.

Adrian

31:46

You can call it instead of calling it clubhouse, you can call it clap house, because what they do is they want to clap your cheeks financially.

Kia

31:53

Yeah, right. There’s another thing that annoys me online. This is a rent episode, I think.

32:01

Is this whole, they call it build in public. This is your wheelhouse in a way. There’s a difference between build in public, meaning you’re showing, you’re helping people.

32:15

This is how I do it. Did I get it wrong? That’s a bit different to when they say build in public and then they’re posting and numbers and stuff. How fucking obnoxious that. Exactly, right? Yeah.

32:29

So obnoxious and it’s like why are you even bothering doing this? Why?

Adrian

32:34

For clout for followers because people are people aren’t going or I don’t know how to put it. People are selling their grannies for clout. No, but I don’t want to make it sound like a generalization but like at the end of the day generalization start conversation so let me say it like that a lot of people go into business and by that i mean even like start a side hustle yeah only from the judgment of uh how much am i going to make yes uh how much are others making so if you say i’m building in public and you’re publishing your numbers what you’re what you’re doing is you’re gathering the flies who want to have a bite of that point you’re pile of shit.

33:23

Yes. Right? So it’s, it’s, that’s what it is on one side.

33:30

On the other, on, on, on, on a different note, um, you do have guys like the guy who build, uh, remote okay nomad list and all that stuff. Peter levels, I guess it’s his name. Right.

Kia

33:44

I’ve heard of that name actually.

Adrian

33:45

This guy has been public with absolutely everything he’s built. He’s had graph, charts, whatever, everything, right? And he is kind of doing it to help you out.

33:59

Like he’s putting everything out there. Even statuses of like cron jobs that are running and sending emails and I don’t know, submitting new job postings to directories. Everything is out there.

34:14

But yeah, that’s why I think a lot of them are doing it. And I think it’s a trend. that I observed by listening to podcasts on like indie hackers, which is a podcast for indie hackers.

34:34

And there are a couple of other ones as well. Everybody who starts building in public, if not with the current project, with the next one, they’re going to stop showing numbers and stuff like that. Because when, like, there is competition, over there and it’s easy to clone anything nowadays if i want a website like yours i’ll have it by the end of the day and it’ll be up and with ads running right yeah so um that’s why you learn right with the the first one you build in in public but then you kind of learn to hide the numbers you start talking but i mean

Kia

35:15

there’s commas in zeros and that’s it yeah exactly but the thing is there as you said there i think there are two different reasons why they’re building in public. One is to show off and clout to get numbers. And I think that happens way more than I’m here to teach you. Of course. Right? Way more.

35:33

And I think that’s the bullshittery that’s got to stop. Who’s going to stop it? Because basically they’re making money. What I think and what I feel and I may be the minority here is that being ethical on the internet will get you nowhere. That’s how I feel. And I’m not.

35:50

not saying, I mean, again, it’s the generalization thing we’re talking about, right? So if you look at what’s going on the internet, the people who are shouting loudest, the people who are being complete utter fucking fuckwits and assholes are always making money. Look at Jake Paul, for instance.

36:04

This is an absolute fucking bell end, but he’s making money. They’re making bank. Look at all this LFT stuff. Seriously. Look all the, you know, I’m not saying all crypto, but you know, look at the crypto space, for instance, the people who are shouting the loudest, but there are in there that are doing well, are doing, you know, but the problem is the people who are shouting louder and making these god-awful videos are making the clout, the following the money, way more than the others.

Adrian

36:39

That’s correct. And you won’t be able to put a stop to this. No, of course not.

36:44

I was having a conversation with, I wouldn’t say a friend. She’s like an acquaintance and she was reposting something from a financial education Instagram account like that’s gained popularity here in Romania. And what I wanted to say is that this is not going to stop unless this is like it’s going to go on until people get smart enough to realize.

37:18

that we can’t all be rich and famous. And they’re going to spend their money on the shortcuts and on the on cutting corners and on the secret and the recipe and whatever. Yeah.

37:32

To no end. And they’ll still be poor. And I was telling this person like, do you like this account?

37:37

And she’s like, yeah, I love it. It’s very valuable. And I’m like, I know the chick who’s behind this account.

37:43

She’s a fucking web designer. She’s not an investor. She’s telling you how to split.

37:48

your stocks are you dumb yeah she’s a designer and she grew like to her point she grew an account to like over a hundred thousand followers i think or something like that i’m just going to look right now

Kia

38:02

just to but this but this is this goes back to what i was saying in our original conversation is that what’s ruined the internet is advertising money that’s pure and simple because look at google they they don’t give a shit what kind of stuff you post i mean you’ve watched the coffee’s Zillah stuff. Because these people, 100,000 followers and stuff, they’re making loads and loads of money with the ads that are being. Now, if she’s doing financial stuff, right, those finance people, crypto people are spending loads of money on ads. And they get a portion of it.

38:38

She’s selling a course. Well, there is that as well, but that’s the side hustle. Right?

38:44

The hustle is let me get loads of clicks and loads of views on my YouTube channel.

Adrian

38:52

Eyeballs, yeah, correct.

Kia

38:55

So that’s my point. So I truly believe advertising is basically fucked up the internet and fucked up what we, what’s real and what’s not. Like this woman, this girl you’re talking about, who’s a web designer making, what, investment,

Adrian

39:14

advice what the fuck is that investment and financial advice and selling a course on that crazy like told you one thousand three hundred uh i’m sorry a hundred thirty five thousand followers right now to that account started last year i know the account i know it since it had like four or five hundred followers i’m not jealous or anything but like it’s like me we keep saying like listen to the special Look at the doctors about the vaccines and about this and that and the other. But then at the same time, like the same person yelling to me, like, don’t use your brain and your opinions, listen to the specialist, then goes to a designer and buys a fucking financial advice course, you know, and starts investing. And I’m like, you’re dumb. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s it.

Kia

40:07

It happens all the time. Again, the, you know, the video is a powerful thing in both sides. I mean, this person is making videos.

40:15

So then you become, you get to know the person because you think you know the person because you’re seeing them in a video, right? Because you’re seeing them every day. They don’t know you, but you know them because you see them every single day or whatever.

40:29

So then when they say, oh, go and do this because it’s gray, you’re like, well, I know this. Subconsciously, I know this person. Let’s go and do it.

Adrian

40:38

She doesn’t even have a face. She only does the Instagram posts. The course I think is somehow hidden, you know, like you DM for the course or stuff like that. So there’s not a photo of her face or a mention of, there are a couple of names mentioned.

Kia

40:54

But like, so then who do we blame? Do we blame the people making these videos or the stupid fucks actually going after these videos? Falling for it. Both.

Adrian

41:04

Well, both. I don’t know. Like, if you’re a communist, you blame the people who or a socialist.

41:11

blame who’s making the person who’s making the video but if you’re there’s at least a capitalist vein in you you’re gonna blame the people who are buying it right because like as a business person you want to try and sell something right so what you could blame the creator of the course and of the the the account for would be like unethical behavior exactly and if you don’t have like disclaimers that this is not financial advice. This is just for fun, opinion, blah, blah, blah, blah. The small print over there, you know, at the bottom of the page.

41:48

Then, of course, you can like press legal charges.

Kia

41:51

But that’s still scummy because I’ve seen people who say, you know, that they say, I mean, Coffeezilla did a thing about this, about this isn’t financial advice. And they bury it in amongst so much text. So when they have gone to court, they say, well, It’s in the text.

42:10

Right? And it’s literally buried. It’s literally one line or one sentence in amongst all this other shit.

42:19

It’s crazy. Honestly, the internet has got into such a clique mode craziness bullshit. And I do blame advertisers.

42:29

I really do. Because without that, these people wouldn’t be making that much money. And it wouldn’t go to their heads, basically.

Adrian

42:41

You can’t draw parallel here even with like religion, Christianity. Oh yeah. Like, no. Like, listen to me.

42:51

So we went on crusades. We went on and said like, those fuckers over there, we got to take their land and make them repent because they’re sin. Sinners, right?

43:03

Sinners. Where, where in the books, it is said like, you know, if you see someone that’s not of your religion, kill him, his family, his kids, his wife, whatever, make them repent and take their land. It’s the people’s interpretation of that. You know, like, you get the moral code from religion.

43:24

You get a set of rules of conduct, how to behave in a society. And they are understandable, even like, to the lowest level of intelligence. Yeah. That’s why they’re so popular. Like, if you want to look at market, you got to look at Jesus.

43:39

And if you want to look at the best marketing book ever written, you got to read the Bible. You know? Yeah.

43:45

But it’s the same thing. Like even with advertising, it’s what we make with it. That’s wrong.

43:54

Not advertising and advertisers. You know?

Kia

43:58

I understand that. I understand that. But if you, I’m purely talking about YouTube here.

44:03

If you think about the incentive that they’ve given to the content creators and the way they’ve done it. That’s why I’m saying I blame the advertisers. You’re right.

44:15

Because they’ve made it so easy for people to make money. And again, that’s a great thing because there are a lot of people on YouTube that are doing great content and it’s good that they’re getting paid for it. The thing is, in all walks of life, in all businesses and everything, there’s always assholes that come in and ruin it, basically.

44:35

And that’s the problem. I’m not saying get rid of advertising because that’s stupid because you need, you know, people need to make money and fine. But they’ve got to be, they’ve got to be curtailed in some way.

44:47

But the middleman, in this case, YouTube, Google, whatever, alpha, whatever you want to call them, they’re the middlemen in between the content creator and the advertiser, right? And they don’t want to fuck up the amount of money they’re making because they’re making a good 40 or 60%. right? So if these content creators are making, I don’t know, 30 grand per video, because some of them are with millions and millions of followers, you think Google are going to go, nah. No, of course not. Of course not. So in that essence, I’m saying that that’s where, you know, the marketing, not marketing, but advertising has ruined the internet because people are on the internet to make money. so they make any kind of bullshit to click bait to make the money. And that’s my problem with it.

Adrian

45:44

It’s what YouTube and the internet itself has enabled is an era where people with no experience whatsoever in a given topic can teach you how to make money money and become an expert at that topic. At that topic, yeah. They’re called content creators.

46:13

Yeah. They just spend their time on the trending page. They look at the trending stuff.

Kia

46:19

Yeah.

Adrian

46:20

And they just do the same thing.

Kia

46:22

Yeah. Oh, there’s loads and loads of videos. They’re exactly the same down to the, I mean, again, going back to the coffee zila stuff, he’s actually shown, you know, four.

46:35

or five different videos exactly the same thumbnails exactly the same content exactly i mean just exactly fucking the same but again what’s enabling that they’re making money exactly and and that’s the thing so uh it just irritates me about this whole fake and when we say when i say fake guru i’m putting pretty much everyone into that category who a complete fuckers on the internet. Whether you’re posting an inspirational kind of thing, like I, you know, which, what, the thing that I clipped and posted yesterday from that guy, it’s like from those people to people on YouTube and selling courses to the woman that you’re talking about, who’s selling courses on a subject that she knows absolutely nothing about. And I think a few weeks ago, I even posted something about, especially, and this happens a lot clubhouse, especially with LinkedIn influencers and stuff, LinkedIn experts.

47:42

They read the, there are two types of experts. There’s an expert who’s done his fucking job for 30 years, knows what he’s doing. People ask him a question and he can blurt it out and that’s an expert, right?

47:58

And so if you’re an expert in that field, you can become a coach. You can become a consultant because you’re a fucking expert in that field, in that. content in that subject in that topic what the internet has enabled and and i’ve noticed a lot on clubhouse is when they call themselves an expert because they’ve read the um the um the press release from lincoln so they know what’s happening and then they have a linkedin account and they just put LinkedIn expert.

48:35

So whenever someone asks them a question because they don’t know, rather than pointing them to the actual article, they will say, I’m the expert because I’ve read this and come and hire me. That to me is charlatan. That’s not a fucking expert.

48:50

You just know more than the next person. It doesn’t mean you’re a fucking expert. You just means that you know more than the next person.

48:58

An expert, a coach, a proper coach, has been through the whole rigmarole of, you’re right? his business, his or her business, and knows what they’re talking about. It’s not just reading one or two fucking articles using the fucking product and then saying, I’m an expert.

49:16

Just irritates the, but Jesus out of me, that does. Really don’t.

Adrian

49:21

You know, you know what’s the thing? So I’ve, I’m not the, like, the sharpest tool in the, in the shed, right? Not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

Kia

49:30

We all are not.

Adrian

49:33

So I kind of went back in 2011. I went through like a self-development over-consumption phase. And I read a lot of like the things that I consider right now to be like the bullshit staple, like the staple books of self-development.

49:54

You know, like the think and grow rich, the Dale Carnegie shit, all of that. I’ve read that. And I couldn’t, I could not stomach it like, man, I’m going to just get up and show you something.

50:06

Go for it. So I have this book, right? I can’t see it.

50:13

The 5 AM club, right? Oh yeah. Oh, Jesus.

50:17

Dude, I tried to read it twice. I bought it and I said, I’m going to read it, right? But when I listen, when I read the billionaire story with his apprentices and how the billionaire is teaching him, shit man you just sound like you’re lengthening this fucking story to make the book thicker and I tried twice right I threw up in my mouth and then I also made the mistake of actually reading a book on sleep which is like why we sleep by Matthew Walker oh wow and I tried like I said I said to myself because like in this winter break so to speak I said I’m going to read some of the books that I have like behind me over there and like I have if you see I have two stacks I see it one with the one with the statue those are done right one is that done because i need to burn it and the other one that’s like in progress i can’t read just one book right but i said i’m going to read this i’m going to give it a chance fuck the the like i don’t want to limit myself right i’m going to be open-hearted i couldn’t get past page 20 something and i’m like no fuck this i’m going to burn it or gift it to someone like if you’re into bs i’m not saying what’s here is irrelevant I’m just saying that the story rubs me the wrong way, like very, very badly, right?

51:37

So I cannot stomach this. And I was saying that I went through this whole bullshit stories, you know, about self-development, this over-consumption phase back in 2011. And at that time, I read some books related to like consulting and developing your own business and stuff like that.

52:00

Because I’ve done freelancing since 2008 and then I stopped and then I got like an actual job within a company. But I was also, I wanted to like go back to being a business myself, you know. And I read things like a million dollar consulting by Alan Weiss.

52:19

I’ve read Book Yourself Solid.

Kia

52:23

But why are you reading these books?

Adrian

52:26

What was the reasoning behind them? I wanted to understand what is consulting actually besides what I knew to be like just contracting and being like an extension for a team or an implementer. And with Book Yourself Solid, I wanted to know it was very popular within like the dev circles at that time.

52:49

And I wanted to learn how to like build a pipeline of clients and stuff like that because I wasn’t very experienced. I knew I was lacking and it was just like the starting point for me. If you just read them through and through and take everything literally, you’re done.

53:10

Yeah. Because like there’s a little bit of talk of the Bentley and a little bit of talk of the whatever. And some of those people, because this is where I’m getting with my overconsumption of self development, some of the people you mentioned that are, well, self-development.

53:26

snake oil yeah basically you know what it is yeah they just read these books they spent 1500 euros on a webinar that teaches you the secret and they still haven’t learned the secret so they’re parroting out whatever they got in in in that webinar and since people others you know are looking for the same get rich quick lose weight fast give me a pill but let me eat whatever no sacrifice methods, they have who to sell it to.

Kia

54:02

This is the whole thing. If it’s too good to be true, it is. And it always is.

54:06

Because running a business, not a startup, it’s a fucking business. It’s not a startup. We had this conversation last time.

54:14

Yeah, we had it. It’s hard. Running a business is freaking hard.

54:18

I’ve worked for myself for as long as I can remember. And trust me, I’ve made money and I’ve lost money. many, many times, right?

54:27

Many times. And if you don’t go through that, you don’t learn anything. You really don’t learn anything.

54:35

So failing is a good thing. So just fucking do shit and fail. But going through and reading all of these books, like you say, and agreeing and then trying to implement every single part of these books, just makes no sense to me.

54:49

I’ve never read any of those books, any of those type of books at all. Because I know most of it is bullshit. Bullshit to me because it doesn’t work the way I work.

55:01

I work in a different particular way. You work in a particular way. So you’re getting things from these books.

55:08

That’s fine. I personally, it doesn’t work for me. You don’t resonate with them.

55:14

Sorry?

Adrian

55:15

You don’t resonate with them.

Kia

55:16

No, not at all. And so it just doesn’t. It wouldn’t work for me. And to me, I, for, for a, instance, I went through a messy divorce. Everyone said I was depressed. I didn’t think myself as being depressed. I was just pissed off because of this, that and the other. And everyone’s saying to me, go and see a therapist. I’m like, no, because I just don’t believe in that stuff.

55:40

I don’t, I’m not interested. I don’t believe in it. And that to me is the same as reading those kind of books because I don’t believe in it. Right. And if I don’t believe in it, it was no way.

55:50

My stepmother many years ago was a hypnotist. And she used to do a professionally sometimes. And she hypnotized people in front of me.

55:58

I actually saw her do it. There was no bullshit. But it would never work on me because I wouldn’t believe.

56:04

I couldn’t believe in it.

Adrian

56:05

Because you don’t believe in it.

Kia

56:06

Don’t believe in it. Exactly. So with these type of self-help books, self-help in that phrase in itself to me is so cringy that I just don’t understand why it exists, right?

56:25

So when people are saying, you know, wake up at five o’clock or four o’clock in the morning and get everything done, when the fuck do these people go to sleep? They ain’t going to sleep at 10, 11 o’clock at night. They’re probably going to sleep at 5, 6 o’clock.

56:37

So what’s the difference between shifting the fucking clock the other way? I mean, it makes no sense. So then there’s these hordes of complete fucking asswits that wake up at 4.

56:49

four or five in the morning thinking I’m going to be a millionaire. And they do fuck all because it’s not the fact of getting up five o’clock in the morning. It’s the fact of getting shit done during the day.

57:01

I wake up 10 o’clock in the morning. Sometimes I wake up at 7 o’clock and I do not get out of bed until about 10. Does that mean I get nothing done?

57:09

No. I have a successful fucking business. Right? And I have done for many years.

57:15

So it just really depends on your pay. pace of life, your way of life.

Adrian

57:22

What’s your rhythm? Like, what’s your rhythm?

Kia

57:24

How do you work?

Adrian

57:25

That’s the thing.

Kia

57:26

Someone said to me, Elizabeth, she might be listening to this. She’s a marketeer and stuff. And she has a membership site going.

57:36

And I was thinking of doing it as well. And I did. It failed because I didn’t really put any effort into it.

57:43

And she, before I did it, she actually said something that stuck in my mind. She said, you’ve got to create a membership site that works. I can’t remember the exact words she said, but basically works with your rhythm, with your way of working.

58:00

And I realized membership site would never work for me because my rhythm is so erratic because I want to work when I want to work. And if I have a membership site, that means I have to constantly work. And that’s not me, right?

58:15

work on the membership site. I mean, I’m always working. So it just wouldn’t work.

58:20

Hence why it failed. So you have to work in your rhythm. You have to stop listening to other people.

58:27

Get some information from other people. Even the bullshit that I sell or you sell, whatever. Half of it isn’t relative to that one particular person reading it, watching it.

58:39

Consuming it. Correct. So again, nobody is going to create the content.

58:44

or the information as a whole for you to copy. It just ain’t going to work.

Adrian

58:51

Yeah, tailored for you.

Kia

58:53

That’s the thing.

Adrian

58:54

It’s not going to be bespoke.

Kia

58:56

No, exactly. Oh, what the hell’s going on here? I don’t know what’s happening. What’s the hell’s going on here? I have no idea what’s going on.

Adrian

59:08

You muted me at one point.

Kia

59:10

I’m sorry. I pressed the button and it went all crazy. Sorry, my back.

Adrian

59:14

don’t press the button

Kia

59:15

don’t press the button yeah

Adrian

59:19

yeah you were saying do I go do you go no go for it so we we were saying that I was saying that nobody’s going to create content for you like tailored 100% so you got to take what’s good for you and leave up just like with this podcast like people are not going to be listening to this and go like oh I love the whole thing but they might find that one nugget so As long as the type of content and delivery that you have is easily digestible, you don’t make people ill while they’re listening to you, they’re going to stomach through it and just go like, oh, a minute 34, they said this and they were talking about this. Yeah, exactly. It was great.

Kia

01:00:05

Exactly, yeah. Well, we’ll leave it there. Again, this is the last video of the year. I’ve made a video for a while now, and this was a good one. So, yeah, I’ll see you next year.

Adrian

01:00:21

Yes, sir. We’ll meet next year and maybe we’ll do some more of this together.

Kia

01:00:27

Oh, I’d love to. Because our mind’s kind of connect in a way. So I really like that. So, yeah, definitely.

Adrian

01:00:33

Got it. Okay. So how do we end this?

01:00:36

Have a great day. You just say, have a great day. She fucked it up, but it doesn’t matter.

01:00:41

I’ll cut it before that. Cool, man.

Kia

01:00:46

Okay. No worries. But yeah, no, thanks for that.

01:00:48

I really appreciate that to doing it again. I’ll have to cut a few bits out. Maybe.

01:00:54

Okay.

Adrian

01:00:55

Let’s re-record. Do you want to re-re-record? I think this is a good start for the, like, if you want to do some editing, you just take this, do you want to re-re-rerecord and you put it at the start? At the beginning.

Kia

01:01:08

That’s how you lead into it. I think I might do that. I might do that.

Adrian

01:01:13

I can’t wait. I’m going to like wait for you to publish this.

Kia

01:01:17

I will. I’m going to try to do it for tomorrow around about 3 o’clock, something like that. Okay.

01:01:23

I didn’t want to do too much editing, but I’m going to have to edit the ending in the beginning. But I’m going to leave the door and stuff. So fuck it.

Adrian

01:01:32

And the book. Cool.

Kia

01:01:34

Have a great day.

01:01:35

Have a good new year, by the way. Hello to family.

Adrian

01:01:38

Happy New Year, sir.

Kia

01:01:40

Love to the family and all that. enjoy it.

Adrian

01:01:43

Cool. Thanks a lot.

Kia

01:01:45

See do you later man. Ciao. Later. Bye.