The Revenue Lab

Patrick (00:01.858)
Okay, welcome back everyone. Um, welcome back to the revenue lab podcasts. And I'm your host Patrick. And today we're joined by Josh Josh. Welcome onto the podcast. Great to have you. And thanks for jumping on. If you don't mind just giving us a quick intro, um, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Josh Czuba (00:15.372)
Thanks for having me, Patrick. I am pumped to be here.

Josh Czuba (00:26.299)
Absolutely. So my name is Josh. I am a mental health content creator. I make videos on TikTok and Instagram, helping people with doom scrolling and other mental health symptoms related to chronic internet use. I sort of stumbled into this kind of work. Before that, I was creating other kinds of content, but this has really resonated with a lot of people. And so I've been following that and I've helped a lot of people and it's been a really rewarding journey.

Patrick (00:56.354)
Wow, that's really exciting. So, I mean, can you tell us a little bit more, like how did you get into that? Like what's your journey been so far?

Josh Czuba (01:03.859)
Yeah, absolutely. It's funny, in September of 2022, I stumbled into a little corner of the internet that we call Money Twitter. It's this sort of mini digital society of people who are trying to build internet businesses and digital marketing agencies. And I just learned about email copywriting. And so that was the first idea I had of like something to do that was creative that would allow me to pursue.

some lifestyle autonomy or something like that. So I started doing that and started creating content as I was going about that journey. And it wasn't until I started sharing more of myself in a more authentic way on TikTok, some of my experience in psychology, which is what I studied in school, and really just getting more of myself out rather than just on Twitter, where it was very limited to the journey of trying to get some clients to write emails for.

And so then I started sharing there and I got a lot more resonance there and I think that that's because I was really being myself People could sense that truth and that authenticity and so then I started doing that essentially talking about journaling and other practical Things that I do in my life to feel good and to take care of myself The stuff that I was really passionate about at that point, you know in like March of 2023 I made completely randomly one video about attention span and about the fact that

um, at the attention economy and, and what our society has dealt with since the internet and, and the frustration that I was feeling around not having control over my time and my life. And, and I just ranted into my phone for three minutes, absolutely compelled to get this idea out is the closest thing to a creative epiphany I've ever had. And, um, and that, you know, was the first thing that got tens of thousands of views. I made a follow-up video the next day, just really off the cuff, like

Patrick (02:38.222)
Thanks for watching!

Josh Czuba (02:58.039)
ranting kind of, but there were cogent thoughts formed by my own opinions and what I have learned so far. But it was very, very raw is the point that I'm getting at. And that got like 500,000 views within a couple of weeks. And so for me, that was the first thing I had put out there that really resonated with a lot of people. And so I followed that rabbit hole and sort of brought in the scope to include like dopamine, cheap dopamine, which is something that's talked about a lot in that corner of the internet that we met on.

Um, and so, and then from there, it's been, it's been, it's been a ride. Now I'm at a point where I almost want to broaden my scope a little bit and talk about more things and really not be pigeonholed into one kind of topic. Um, but you know, I'm sure we'll get into that in a second.

Patrick (03:42.782)
Indeed. Wow. No, thanks for, thanks for sharing that. That's a, that's a good summary of your journey. And obviously we met through, through money Twitter, I guess was kind of like how we, we first connected. Talk about a little bit of that. So you got into money Twitter and then you kind of had to make this pivot more into, you made the pivot more into, content creation, being authentic. Tell me a little bit more about that. How did you get there?

Josh Czuba (03:51.891)
Yeah. Right.

Josh Czuba (04:01.919)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (04:06.011)
Yeah. Well, it's weird. There's this dichotomy, right? I want to be a creator. That's the thing that resonates with me most. I learned that when I started making videos that resonated with people because I was being myself, um, when I started on money Twitter, what I was putting on a persona that was not myself, I wasn't, you know, saying things that were untrue, but I was really concentrating all of my identity and everything that I was putting out there to just this, like this one core skill set and trying to emulate one type of person that people.

who I followed in the first place, who are very, very good at what they do, and they are very competent. But anyway, the other side of that equation that isn't the authentic creator is the practical part of me that needs to make money and wants to have a full-time job on the internet, believes in digital education, believes in the creator economy, but is a little bit more practical. Those two brains need to work together for this thing to work, you understand that, but they can get in the way sometimes.

And so what happened in early 2023, when I first started seeing videos that resonated is they sort of separated and I leaned way more into the content and, and stopped, I didn't stop worrying about it, but I stopped hyper focusing on how to monetize very quickly, um, and just put out good work. And that's kind of where I'm at still. I've really learned to take the long game here. Um, what I realized is that I, I didn't, um, I didn't resonate.

There's aspects of the money Twitter culture that don't jive with me. It's kind of not who I am. There are a lot of amazing people there. There are a lot of very talented, very, very competent people there. There's a lot to be learned there. Um, but it's not, it's not who I am. And I think that's one of the most valuable things that happens along both the creator and the entrepreneurial journey is you find out who you are. You find out what you believe in, what you're not about the, your frequency. And in the best case scenario, you find your people. I'm still in the process of doing that, but it is.

It is nice to have some process of elimination and say, okay, this corner of the internet is not for me, that's not where I'm going to do my best work. This is resonating. I like it more. It's clicking. I'm going to take the long view and make it work over time. You know.

Patrick (06:17.006)
Gotcha, that's really cool. And that's a great point there about like, you were kind of before you were thinking, I need to monetize this right away. How can I monetize this thing that I'm doing? Whereas, you're getting a lot of value of just saying, okay, look, I'll focus on the content and then the results will come from that. So maybe talk a little bit about like, yeah, I could for sure. And it's hard because it's delayed gratification, right? That's the key to long-term success, but you've got to delay the rewards.

Josh Czuba (06:25.62)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (06:36.317)
It's hard though.

Patrick (06:47.114)
So what do you see, like what's your plan over the next years? How are you going to kind of scale this up? And what do you want to do with it? Like if you do want to monetize it, how do you, how are you thinking to do that?

Josh Czuba (06:58.487)
Well, we've tried a few things and I'm really grateful for that too, because I've found some things that I don't love. The first thing that I thought of doing was coaching and that one-on-one coaching, coaching around really anything. I knew that I liked working with people. I'm a psychology background. I've always gravitated to that kind of value delivery. It made more sense for me to hop on calls with people than to create write up sales assets or other types of things. Because that's the other thing. Over the last...

Summer of 2023, I did actually work as a ghostwriter and I got that experience and I found that it wasn't for me anyway. So I tried the coaching. That was the first type of monetization that I tried. When I first got my, uh, when I first had a video cross multi-million views and, and my, um, I saw my follower count go up over like close to a hundred thousand. I was like, okay, surely I'll have, I'll be swimming in clients now. Surely just with that level of volume, I'll be a full-time online coach and I won't have to worry about money ever again.

I had my little Calendly link up, right? Book a one-on-one with me. A very, very bare bones funnel for that. But I was like, people like me, they like the video. I'm getting so much positive feedback. Surely this is gonna work. And no, it didn't. I was not swimming in clients. No one clicked on the link. I got my analytics for it. It was not doing what I thought it would do. Not even by a long shot. Over time, I ended up working with a couple people.

fairly low ticket coaching compared to what some of your listeners might be familiar with in the, in the Twitter space, right? You have guys who are, who are selling, you know, $2,000 programs. I didn't really feel comfortable with that because it was new for me. So I, I sold like mid three figures, um, and just wanted to get some reps under my belt. I had done some free coaching in the past, but I had my first paid clients. That was the first level of monetization I tried. Um, and it, it was good. I found over time that it's, it wasn't my favorite thing to do. I like talking to people, but.

the, um, I felt, I thought that it, it was not a lot of, um, time leverage. I was spending a lot of time checking in with people and, um, running calls. And so I was like, okay, this is not, uh, this is not the long game. And I realized, okay, what do I actually want to do? I want to write. I want to create. I like the creative process and I want to perform. That's, that's what I like doing. Right. Um, and so then I think to answer your initial question of what's the long game here, what does it look like in five years, whatever, even now?

Josh Czuba (09:26.267)
Um is to is to travel and speak is to bring the curriculum that i'm developing kind of the material I'm developing to schools to businesses to frankly whoever will have me. Um, we've started to get that on its legs Uh, i've gone to a couple schools at this point um, and that's been interesting talking about social media stuff and My vision of a humanized internet where we don't throw our phones away We don't delete social media But we learn to flow with it a message that I think a lot of people in this sphere of the world Resonate with because we're using

the internet to achieve lifestyle autonomy. I'm trying to bring that message to schools and kids in a way that isn't immediately about money, but is more about how do you replace consumption with creativity? I believe that's, that's kind of my whole schnick, honestly, if you were to boil it down, um, cause that's what I'm doing for myself. Uh, so yeah, just more of that. I want to write, I want to speak. Um, I want to get this thing in front of as many people as possible and really see what it can do. Um, but yeah, it's, I'm grateful to have found the part of the process that I love most.

Patrick (10:12.878)
Thank you.

Patrick (10:26.526)
Wow. Yeah, that's a, that's really powerful. And I think this is quite a common theme on occasionally. I just get your tweets coming up on the, on my feeds and just in what you're saying there, the theme that comes up again and again is self-awareness for me and what you're saying, because you're always like, Oh yeah, I tried this thing, but actually it's not what worked out for me. And you know what, in money Twitter, that's rare because everyone's trying to be like, yeah, I can do everything. I can do this sales email, no building system, building agencies. Yeah, I can do that.

Josh Czuba (10:39.624)
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Josh Czuba (10:44.565)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (10:48.487)
Yeah.

Patrick (10:55.222)
But what you're saying is, you know, maybe I could, but it's not what I wanna do. And it's not the thing that like is where I'm best suited. So what advice would you give to someone who's like, maybe in that position where they are, they don't know if they like what they're doing. And they're maybe like, how do I find my thing?

Josh Czuba (10:55.968)
Yeah, yeah.

Josh Czuba (11:02.856)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (11:12.079)
Yeah, well.

Josh Czuba (11:16.379)
Yeah. We're talking to a very specific type of person here because as you move up in levels of competency, you find yourself in, I mean, I'm sure you would answer this question very differently to someone who is in your position. You've built a thing. You're in something. You're now running like two businesses. So for you to have a moment where it's like, I don't, I don't, I don't know if I love what I'm doing. That's a, that's a different ball game. I think when you're lower on the totem pole of competency, of experience, of time in the game.

It's easier to switch and pivot because you don't, right? It's that you have less sunk cost. You have less skin in the game. Um, I think that the, for me, it was, it was, uh, it wasn't hard to tell if I didn't like it, it was, you can kind of just sense it. Like I don't want to wake up and write four hours of tweets and auto DM guides for people who I don't even really like that was not working for me. Yes. I liked the, the fact that I was finally making money for my laptop, but

It just wasn't clicking. I ended up, but I, you know, I stopped doing that when the opportunity ran out. So I think for people who are still figuring it out, you, if you are uncertain, the only solution is to try different things and you hear that from everyone. So I want to just contextualize that because everyone says, try a bunch of things. Um, what I personally believe in is if you can separate those two things, I mentioned before the creator identity and the practical business identity, if you can separate those things in the exploratory process, I think that's really helpful.

because it's really tough to find something that fuels you when you're constantly thinking about the practical anxiety of how am I going to pay bills or how am I going to whatever. Even if you're a young person, you don't really have bills, you'd still want to provide or just make something happen. I think if you can separate those things so that you have something where you're making money, whether that's in the online space or in real life, the traditional way, whatever, and then give yourself room to explore.

Patrick (12:55.254)
Yeah. We've still got to eat, right?

Josh Czuba (13:09.987)
And then that has to be a very intuitive process where you trust the immediate sense and it's like it's like Subconscious brain, you know what I mean? like you can't you probably if you're listening to this and you're thinking about this particular question you probably have a tendency to You know journal and plan and analyze and be strategic before action. I am the exact same way That's how I'm wired it can help with anxiety for a second But then action is the only thing that really leaves anything and so then you just you just try stuff

We try stuff with the same playful, low stakes energy as you had in the sandbox when you were a child. You know what I mean? Like you just, you keep things very light and loose so that you can keep track of the senses in your body and be like, okay, yeah, I had fun writing this email. It energized me to try and practice persuasive, creative writing. And then you just sort of build that skill and then you can go in a lot of directions, right? You can do it for someone else or you can do it for your own thing. But just to wrap it up, the...

The biggest thing that got in my way in that process over the course of 2022 and 2023, as I was just overwhelmed with shiny object syndrome, right? There's so many cool things I could do and I know that I could do them. I could do high ticket sales, explore these things. I could do email marketing, I could do ghost writing and I tried some of them. But the thing that got in my way that prevented that action, that is the only thing that alleviates the anxiety, was this anxiety, this practical anxiety.

make 10K a month and it's like that's not the best mind frame to try something and to be playful with it. So if you can separate those things, support yourself while you explore, you just might enjoy the process more and actually connect to your zone of genius and find what you are good at and what you enjoy.

Patrick (14:52.686)
I love it. I love it. And especially in something like creative, you have to kind of, you have to train the craft, right? It's not something that you just, you can do and learn overnight. You have to put in the work, you have to put in the reps. And if you enjoy that process, good. But if you're having to do it and you're always having to think about where's your next, you know, your next invoice coming from, it's tough, right? For sure.

Josh Czuba (14:59.508)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (15:04.064)
100%.

Josh Czuba (15:11.547)
Yeah. A hundred percent. And just to be real, I just want to be perfectly real here. Um, that's where I'm at right now. As we're recording this, I'm still, um, I'm trying to figure out what that practical thing is for me. So I like, because I, so I just graduated school and so it's like, do I. Go all in with the creator business now, or do I find something else in the meantime, and I just want to say that I'm not on some high horse here. I haven't figured everything out.

The next step for me, it probably is to get something more practical, like a job, or like, uh, even if it's a job in the online space, while I can go all in on the, on the creator thing on the side so that I can play the long game. I just want to say that because I, you know, it's, I have, I have to follow this advice myself and part of me doesn't want to, but I recognize that I need to, I just wanted to say that just to be real.

Patrick (16:02.646)
it, gotcha. No, and this is good because like on this podcast, you know, we have a, we have a ride, we want to keep a very wide variety of people in all kinds of connections to business without just starting out or doing millions in revenue a month, right? So it's really cool to hear that. And it's, but you know, you've been on such a journey and I think that will really resonate with a lot of people that you try different things and you know, some of it works, maybe it works financially, but it doesn't work for you. And you're not thinking, okay, I need to do it this way because

Josh Czuba (16:29.303)
Yeah.

Patrick (16:32.59)
XYZ, you're wanting to completely free yourself of that worry and say, I'm focusing on the craft, I'm going to perfect it and I'm going to monetize it when it's there. I think that's fantastic. Do you know what? Let's dive in a little bit into the kind of content that you're doing. You spoke about doom scrolling. You talked a little bit about social media and how our attitudes towards it these days are kind of screwed.

Josh Czuba (16:39.581)
Yeah.

Patrick (16:57.374)
And even early on, as we were talking, I don't know if you heard it, but I started to get a notification and a call. I completely forgot to put my phone on silent. So, you know, you were talking about something I got completely distracted. Um, and I finally followed the thread again and it just was like, okay, this is perfect. The perfect metaphor. Cause the next thing you said was we're also distracted and doom scrolling. So what's your, um, what's your take on it? What, what, what can we do about it?

Josh Czuba (16:58.805)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (17:03.479)
Ow.

Josh Czuba (17:16.223)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (17:22.323)
Well, first of all, I take a very compassionate approach for a couple of reasons. Number one, I'm right there with you. Like, you know, I don't have this figured out. I'm not some monk that lives on do not disturb all the time. And I still find myself in moments where I am turning to aimless scrolling, like scrolling through content without a purpose or a direction or a vision because of a lack of stimulation or because I'm bored. I think that that's really the main.

that I talk about, that I try and get people out of. I want my videos to be an interruption to that behavior in a very compassionate way, because I also don't think it's very helpful. I think that any approach that is guilt-based or shame-based is not particularly helpful. There are different schools of thought here. There are people that do genuinely respond well to the Goggins approach or to the, you know, like you're a piece of shit and you gotta get your life together. Some people respond to that.

That's not my approach. I have never found that, I found that I will pay attention to that concept, but it doesn't actually help me because when I am coming from a place of shame, guilt, I'm not good enough, I need to fix everything about my life. This is all screwed. Even if I do make a temporary change, I end up self-soothing the guilt and shame with more escapism. That's, so I do things with a compassionate lens and I try to meet people where they're at. I try to do it in a very low anxiety way. Some people are like,

Are you aware of how bad this is? You need to be aware. And they hope that awareness is enough to get people to change their behavior. My approach has been, hey, this is just what's happening. You're in a dopamine hole. Right now you're overstimulated. That's just what it is. There's just too much content going in. It's not your fault. This information economy was designed to take advantage of you, to convert your conscious experience into advertising dollars. That's how it was designed. It's not your fault. You didn't choose this. We can do something about it.

We're not gonna redesign the whole social media ecosystem right now in this moment. So the first step is to just separate yourself from the content, just for a second, and to get yourself back into your body so that you can make a conscious decision about what you do with your attention, your most precious resource in the attention economy. And so it's just this little calm empowering interruption that gives people a second to be like, okay, I wanna do something else. Sometimes that's all it takes. There's something really pernicious about the infinite scroll that...

Josh Czuba (19:48.039)
you know, doesn't allow for any interruption like that. So anyway, with a little bit of an interruption and then also that empowerment with some clear, simple examples of what it looks like. Honestly, the only advice I give, like the only practical steps I give are like, recognize the heroic significance of standing up from your bed, cleaning the kitchen, doing the dishes, making your bed, putting on clothes, taking a shower, like just the most basic, I'm not telling people to start a business or to go take a cold shower.

or go work out, all things that I enjoy doing myself and have found a lot of success from, or personal feeling good, right? But it's those little things, just the basic executive functioning that I think is most therapeutic when you're in that disintegrated state of trying to escape the moment. So that's been my approach. And then on a deeper level than that, my thesis on all of this is that, creativity is the direct one-to-one replacement for chronic consumption.

Patrick (20:20.511)
No worries.

Josh Czuba (20:43.643)
And so I've recently launched a school community, which we'll be moving over to discord to help people do that, to really make that a reality. Um, I think that is the most optimistic future of the, of a digital society, right? The internet's not going away. We need to learn to flow with it. You can be a creator, you can be a curator, but you have to learn to engage with it in some type of value providing way. Um, so that this place is actually built for humans.

Patrick (21:10.594)
for sure, for sure. And yeah, I think that what you're saying there about doing it in a compassionate way and not guilting people when you're saying, you're giving this message, I think that's really important. There's a lot of this, you know, this kind of hustle porn of like, why are you on your phone? You know, get, uninstall these things, get rid of it. And, you know, I, for a while, when I was younger I had Instagram and everything. And I then deleted pretty much all my social media accounts. I kept Facebook, but I didn't use it. And I deleted it for like three years.

Josh Czuba (21:21.267)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (21:25.639)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (21:36.627)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick (21:41.098)
It was good because it means that you're like focused on the real world and you're like at present in the moment, but you do also lose connection with people. Like we're in a social media world. Like you do need to still connect with people. Right. Um, so in a way it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of sad that you can't completely detach from these things, but I guess a responsible, a middle ground is using them responsibly. Right.

Josh Czuba (21:45.267)
Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Josh Czuba (22:04.031)
I think so. I think, but I think that's an interesting point though. I think there should be room for that. Um, it's part of the, the curriculum I brought to schools, uh, the, the three intentional user archetypes is I think that there should be that option. I think that you should be able to still participate in society without existing on social media. And that's what I call the challenger identity, the person who, uh, really, you know, they want to live life in the real world and they do not want to be a part of social media while that is going against the flow. Um,

I think there's room for it. It typically is an older person. Um, you know, I don't think there's a lot of 17, 18, 19, 20 year olds who are, uh, willing to do that. Um, so we have almost the harder task of, yeah, like you pointed out, the middle ground, that, that sort of yin yang balance that that's the harder work in my opinion. Um, but we'll figure it out.

Patrick (22:54.246)
I'm sure we'll figure it out. In terms of, just to dive into a little bit more, obviously these are huge companies and we know that they're just toying with our attentions for advertising dollars. To what extent is it not our fault? To what extent is it our responsibility? We need to fix it. We need to do something about it for our own lives, but to what extent is it not our fault?

Josh Czuba (23:02.911)
Mm-hmm.

Josh Czuba (23:06.151)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (23:12.736)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (23:18.811)
Yes, that's such a huge question. Um, I'm glad you asked it. I really should have started with this. Okay. It doesn't take very long of looking into this to realize what happened. Um, you've got these companies, these big tech companies, you've got Google, you've got all the social media companies, Facebook, um, that are built to make money, they have to make money and they make money off of human attention. They are incentivized to keep us online for as long as possible. Um,

so that we can be advertised to so that our user data can be sold. And everything, basically every feature about these things is optimized to take advantage, to monetize, to, um, to, to just take up our time and attention and turn us into products so that we are the product. Um, that's how these things are built. Um, you learn a lot by looking into the center for humane technology. These, it's a nonprofit organization that's on the front lines of this thing. The cool thing about it is, um,

CEOs Tristan Harris and is a raskin they were part of the movement that built some of these features So is a raskin built infinite scroll He was on the team that built infinite scroll Tristan Harris was in the room when the buzzing notification was designed and implemented With a lot of excitement these the people who made these things are not bad people. They didn't intend to ruin humanity They were just doing their job the best they could to achieve the end of

of getting the most engagement, making the best possible product they could. I'm sure that's something you understand, right? On the tech side of things, you're thinking about a lot of the same things. How do we get people to actually use the thing? Unfortunately, this is, I don't know whether I'm not totally sure the extent that they anticipated what we're looking at now. I know that Tristan Harrison and as a Raskin did, they saw what was happening and they actively tried to oppose it. When Tristan Harris tried to oppose it, they put him in a little office and left him to think, like they gave him a.

uh, um, sort of, uh, what's the word for, yeah, right. Exactly. Like they gave them, they can grab, they've had it them on the back. They said, thank you for bringing this to our attention. Here's a new cushy title. Go figure it out in this office. But they kind of just pushed them off to the side. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Um, because again, they have to make the best possible product and they did. We're looking at what happens when you make the coolest thing. Um, and so anyway, then, then they made the center for humane tech and they're envisioning.

Patrick (25:14.202)
leave or something.

Patrick (25:23.923)
Yeah, go away, be quiet.

Josh Czuba (25:40.723)
What would a humane technological future look like? They have some ideas on what that is. I think one of the tough questions that I'm absolutely not an expert on is how would the monetization structure change? Because all of these apps are free and the way they make money is through the advertising and through monetizing us. Does that mean that they become public utilities that you pay for with taxes like the sewer system and electric?

Are they things that you pay a monthly fee for like Netflix? And it's a tough question. I don't think there's very many people who'd be willing to pay nine bucks a month for TikTok. Um, but anyway, it, this is not our fault. Yeah.

Patrick (26:14.646)
Yeah, well, they did experiments, right? They did like a test run of, I think it was Facebook that did it and they said, you know, the average user value is like, was it 300 bucks or something? And then, but they could only get someone to pay 200 or 20 max a month. So it's way more profitable for them to keep it free.

Josh Czuba (26:31.19)
Oh, wow.

Yeah, I hadn't heard that. That's really interesting. Huh. No, no.

Patrick (26:36.55)
I could be wrong. I think I've definitely heard it from somewhere. The numbers might be completely wrong, but they worked out that they were much more profitable on keeping it free and letting people come in and monetizing them through ads rather than... And it makes sense. Otherwise they would be doing subscriptions.

Josh Czuba (26:42.865)
No, not at all.

Josh Czuba (26:54.503)
Yeah, a hundred percent. I, for me, it's like, it's clear that this is, was not set up for our success. It's clear that we're, we're being taken advantage of. But when I look at my life and what I have control over, it's like, okay, I'm not going to wake up and go to Congress tomorrow and oppose this. I think that's a huge part of the process. And I've been fortunate enough to come into contact with groups who are doing that, design it for us coalition is a team of people our age who are really pushing.

to change things on the policy level. I think that's huge. But my thinking is like, okay, if the technology never changed, how could I fully command my attention so that I'm not susceptible to this? I have not figured it out yet. I do have, I think that some of these strategies are helpful, but it's important to recognize like, you're up against a powerful force here and it's not weighted evenly in terms of how much.

how much power you have. I think we all just need to be very aware of that and then take as much responsibility as we can with compassion and all of those things. That's sort of the thinking.

Patrick (28:04.998)
sure for sure. I think for me, I'm sort of, I'm in two minds about it because on the one hand, I see this sort of thing of being manipulated by the algorithms and I see the kind of the doom scrolling of just getting your attention as a negative. And at the same time, you know, we do run ads or we're going to run more ads. And sometimes the ads I get when they're genuinely targeted at me and they're genuinely useful.

Josh Czuba (28:10.367)
Mm-hmm.

Josh Czuba (28:24.307)
Yeah, right.

Josh Czuba (28:30.579)
Yeah, yeah, right 100% right

Patrick (28:32.01)
you sign up for the link and you get it. And it does help you. So they have created the best product for it, right? But it's just this double-edged sword and it's always how you use it. So it's a tough one to navigate.

Josh Czuba (28:42.515)
100%. I have the same thing. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And like you look at me, right? And we started this conversation by talking about creator business and trying to make this the full-time job. It's like, I stand to benefit from having as many people online for all of this. Like I'm, I'm very aware of that as well. And frankly, I'm not, I, if I'm being perfectly honest with, with the audience of people who are probably more on the business end of that spectrum, I am more motivated to make this creator thing a full-time career.

Patrick (28:58.218)
100 percent.

Josh Czuba (29:12.191)
than to, I don't know.

That I'll just say that to me is kind of the top priority in my life right now And so I have to really be honest with myself about what that actually looks like for an audit like, you know Are my creative aspirations more compelling to me than helping a lot of people? I like the idea of helping people But is that something I'm just saying to myself to you know To is that a sweet dream? I'm feeding myself in the effort to become a full-time creator. I don't I don't know I'm kind of thinking about that right in this second

I think that they're probably not entirely separate. I think that the more people you help, the more attention you get and the more, the more you're recognized. I would like to believe that. I think that's kind of the, the belief that I operate from. Um, but it is, it's definitely a catch 22. I don't know. It's weird. There's a, there's weird considerations there. Yeah.

Patrick (30:09.482)
Yeah, well, we like asking tough questions on this podcast. So don't worry. I don't think it's one that's there's an answer for, right? It's just like, it's both. For sure. Okay, let's go down a different. Let's go down a different direction. So earlier on, I was just writing some notes. So you mentioned cold showers and you mentioned journaling. Okay, so obviously all these things are again, hyped up Twitter. So what do you think? Is it hype?

Josh Czuba (30:13.147)
Yeah, right. I'm like going to be.

Josh Czuba (30:18.767)
No, yeah, no. Yeah, it's the worst, the worst answer.

Josh Czuba (30:32.139)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Patrick (30:38.678)
BS or is it genuinely transformative, the best thing that you can do with your life? Where do you sit on that spectrum?

Josh Czuba (30:40.839)
Yeah. Overrated, underrated, properly rated. I love it. So, I mean, I like the cold exposure. I just like it. I don't want to be the guy that talks about it to people. But if it wasn't already such a meme to do that, I would be telling people about it. Because I like it. I don't do anything crazy. I don't have the tub. I like cold showers. I like the way they make me feel.

I'm currently not taking them in the dead of Chicago winter, but I have found that interestingly enough when I've been in a state where I'm in a dopamine hole, where I've stacked dopamine sources, cheap dopamine sources, and find myself really, really unmotivated and just out of motion, it's very hard to get yourself back into a flow of things when you've just sapped all of your natural motivation with quick hit stimulation. I found that a cold shower can be a helpful rejuvenating process there because it really shocks you.

And there's something vaguely heroic about it as well. Like, you know, you just, it is uncomfortable. And so you come out feeling good. So I like that. I would say, no, it's not, but it's not, I think for the people, mostly beginners or whatever on Twitter who put it on a pedestal, it doesn't need to be on a pedestal. I think it's like any other health practice that you'll hear from the esoteric Twitter health bros. Like it's worth trying, it's worth trying for sure.

Um, the journaling I am obviously a huge advocate for, um, again, it's something that I just enjoy in my life. I don't, I don't, um, I would say that I talk about it a lot, but, um, it's one of those things everyone has to have an individual relationship to, right? You find your own way to it. Um, I found that I think the biggest point here is that it's talked about a lot in the self-improvement context. Start journaling and you'll, and you'll achieve all your goals. I, whenever I was thinking about it from that lens, I never stayed consistent with it.

Um, when I was trying to do it to improve my life or to just stay consistent for the sake of consistency, I never stayed consistent. It wasn't, there was no pull for me. Um, and there needs to be some level of natural motivation. Anyway, when I started doing it to actually get anxiety out of my head during that period of 2022, 2023, where I was constantly swarming with overwhelming shiny objects and drove, I poured all of my ideas onto the page. You look through my two journals ago, if you look through that document, it is full of the same ideas over and over again.

Josh Czuba (33:06.923)
Do I start a coaching business? Do I start creating videos? Do I start doing all? And the content isn't very good, but it had a practical function in my life. I was channeling ideas out of myself. And that's when I learned to crave it because there was an exchange going on there. There was an emotional transaction and it was dynamic. It wasn't just today I woke up and had my steel cut oats and then took a cold shower. And it was in the moment I was getting out what I needed to. And now it's something that I do.

naturally consistently. I would say that it is the sort of the cornerstone of the creative process because it just gets you out of your head. It puts ideas to paper. And so yeah, for that reason, I highly recommend it. Just do it for the right reasons. Find your way to it. Learn to do it functionally. Get your ideas out. And then you will be amazed at what it can do for you.

Patrick (33:58.41)
Well, yeah, that's a, you're definitely selling journaling. I don't know. I'm kind of a, I would say an occasional journaler. And I feel like what I mean by that is whenever, whenever I feel like there's a lot of things going on, thoughts, different directions, I just start writing things. But I'm definitely not consistent with it. And it's not something that, like you said, you know, you kind of say, I'll wake up, uh, 9 a.m. today, I had this for breakfast and then I did such and such. And then I thought...

Josh Czuba (34:24.371)
Yeah.

Patrick (34:26.678)
I'd lose interest after like three days. But if it's like, oh, by the way, I'm thinking about this, and then we could go down this direction, then we could invest in this marketing, or we could do that strategy, or we could do such and such. And I don't know what to do because there's all these things going on. Write it down, and then your brain starts to connect the dots and it starts to make sense of it. So I don't know, is that just writing, or is that journaling, or who knows?

Josh Czuba (34:28.959)
So boring, yeah.

Josh Czuba (34:38.196)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Josh Czuba (34:45.717)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (34:49.779)
Yeah. Oh yeah. No, I do the same thing. I do the exact same thing. Um, there's, uh, so what you just described is sort of like when you use journaling as an intervention, when you are in an anxious state and you need to do something with it. And so you, okay, I'm going to stop what I'm doing and I'm going to get this out. I think that's great. Do you find that that's, um, that you've gotten, uh, workable ideas from that process?

Patrick (35:11.854)
100%. Like within, within two minutes of starting to write, like immediately I'm going, oh shit, I didn't see that. There's a connection there. Do something else, you know?

Josh Czuba (35:13.588)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (35:16.96)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (35:22.067)
Yeah. Right. And like.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I have the same experience. I mean, the other component of it, like the consistency part, and this comes from the book, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's a really great book on creativity and artistry. And she's someone who has essentially learned to teach it, how to teach creativity. And really all it is, is it's getting people out of the way of themselves, because everyone has access to this kind of.

divine spirit. You can get as ethereal with it as you want, but it's there is something very real to it. And everyone does have the ability to use it. And she talks about morning pages. You wake up and without fail, without thinking about it, without any expectation of a result, you show up and you write three long hand pages. And you can call that journaling or writing doesn't need to have any label to it. But what it what it is, is it's just teaching you to connect to the stream of consciousness and get things out. And then you can apply that muscle.

to whatever you're working on, whether it's coding, like you're building something, right? You're programming, it's the same thing. Or it's a more traditionally creative thing where you're writing a screenplay, or you're in the studio creating visual art or music. Or, you know, I like to think about it even in the sense of like sales or management or manipulating people in a creative way. I think all of that, when it's coming from you and it's authentic and you're making something and you're creative problem solving, you're...

Producing something that has not existed before that to me is the creative spirit. I'll also call it my creative contribution, right? I think the limits to it are It's very broad and the barrier to entry is very low and the morning pages that consistent journaling practice Is sort of that's sort of like the boring fundamentals that you do want to drill Consistently and then you also have the intervention that you talked about where you just have to get ideas out quickly between those two things I've absolutely fallen in love with it and it's like

Josh Czuba (37:18.171)
Rick Rubin talks about how important meditation is to him. Journaling is that for me. I'm really grateful for it. I'm hoping to teach it as well. I wanted to ask you though with yours, like what is it, I just, could you say more about what the experience is like for you when you're writing? Like you have all these ideas and you're getting them down on paper. It's like, is it, do you find that, cause I know you're a tech person and that you spend a lot of time doing that. Do you...

Patrick (37:27.549)
Mm-hm. Yep.

Patrick (37:38.882)
Mm.

Josh Czuba (37:45.439)
Build out the ideas sort of step by step or is it very, is it random, chaotic? Do you know what I mean? Like, what's it like on the page?

Patrick (37:52.286)
Yeah, I think I get what you're saying. It's very much like ordered within paragraphs and paragraphs to the paragraph is no connection whatsoever. I think that's kind of the best way I can describe it. But it's like you said, creating a business, creating tech, whatever it's coding, whatever, there are things that people don't typically think of as creative because you think creative means like writing or, you know, creating videos or content, whatever. But actually, these are creative

Josh Czuba (37:59.219)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (38:02.987)
Cool. Yeah.

Josh Czuba (38:14.696)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (38:20.789)
Yeah.

Patrick (38:22.05)
when you're gonna write something, when you're gonna produce some content are very similar to the kind of micro decisions you make building a business. And there's oftentimes just so many different routes that you can go down and not always an obvious answer, because there's no right answer when you're writing. And sometimes there's no one right answer when you're deciding what to do with your business. You could probably make it work two or three different ways. You just gotta pick the best one for you at that moment. But if you're stuck in it,

and you're not giving yourself the occasion to like detach and go, hang on a second, just look at this objectively, you get stuck in it and you probably make bad decisions. So for me, it's more like that. It's kind of just, here's a thought, write about it. Next thought, write about it. Or maybe there's a link kind of right connecting them. And by that point, if I've already saw something, I'll just stop mid-sentence and just go do it. Sometimes like some of my journal entries or like writings are just like in the middle of a sentence, I've stopped because I've gone, right, okay, I've got it.

Josh Czuba (39:21.479)
Yeah, that's awesome.

Patrick (39:21.718)
just put the paper down and move on. You know what I mean?

Josh Czuba (39:25.727)
That's really cool. Yeah, I do. I know that's really cool. I wanna just make a point on that real quick because the fact that you do that is great. And that's very cool that it has a functional purpose for your business as well. You can very quickly sort through your brain and find something actionable to do. But I also wanna say for anyone who's listening, who is looking to build a personal brand, that kind of process is so usable for any type of.

Patrick (39:50.466)
Mmm.

Josh Czuba (39:52.919)
creative thing that you put out there because I think there's a lot of people who want to build a business or, you know, maybe they're a programmer or whatever. They have technical skills, but they're not resonating with content as much. They don't like posting or they don't, doesn't make sense to them. If you can let people into your process in that way, just by living your life and then doing what Patrick just laid out where you, where you have ideas and you write them out and you organize your thoughts and then have something to work with, that's very cool documentation on your process that becomes a newsletter. That becomes.

a spoken video that becomes a tweet and on its base level or a short form thing. All of that is usable and you can trust it fully because it's truthful. Because it's, you know, that it's your process and the whole idea here is to build in public, right? Everyone knows that. So you build in public and you, and you have that document to work with. So I just, I just wanted to make that point because don't underestimate your own process here, the minute that you have something down on paper, that's something that you can share. You just, you know, slice it up and, and make it a thing.

Patrick (40:51.158)
Yeah, do you know, I need to get better at doing that. Yeah, I need to get better at doing that. You're a hundred percent right. It's probably a gold mine of good content. But yeah, Ryan's quite good at doing that kind of thing. I'm just like, oh, something comes up, right? Let's tweet about it or whatever. I don't know. I should probably look at that more, to be honest. Do you have any, in terms of like personal branding, what would be your advice to someone, maybe not so much my position, but like someone just starting out, they want to...

Josh Czuba (40:51.547)
Is that something you've ever considered for yourself? Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Josh Czuba (41:01.396)
100%.

Josh Czuba (41:06.387)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (41:12.663)
B-

Patrick (41:19.926)
to a personal brand on Twitter, they want to grow their audience. What would you say to them?

Josh Czuba (41:27.159)
Well, first of all, if you're listening to this and you're a business owner, you're an agency owner, you're someone whose top priority is to build a functioning business, you might not need one. Everyone, there was this whole phase where everyone was like, you need a personal brand. If you don't want one and you're making money and you're doing your thing, you probably don't need one. And I think that goes for you. If you don't want one, don't waste your time. Your time is better spent in the creative work that fuels you. That's the whole thing here. And so that means that you're...

Patrick (41:41.95)
No you don't.

Josh Czuba (41:54.227)
solving problems for the business and for the product, then that's where your attention should be. That's first of all. If you know you want one, or if it's something you think would be worth trying, the first thing is finding the mode of communication that clicks for you most. Some people don't wanna put themselves on camera. Some people don't wanna record their voice. Some people gravitate towards that. Some people are more drawn to writing. You just find the way that you can communicate. And you do that through trying things, right? That's what we're gonna keep coming back to. You just dabble in the things.

that feel good. If you find a certain level of satisfaction in writing and posting a tweet, that's great. If you're a photographer, you just find the way that you can get your message out and then most importantly, it's finding the message that is truthful. That's my whole thing. I always go back to truth. I always go back to authenticity. I think this is especially important in the business world because there is such a culture of charade and just putting on a front, trying to fake.

fake it till you make it, put on this, like, you know, put pictures of cars and stuff that isn't you and that isn't even really helpful. If you can, if you, what's cooler is what Ryan, Ryan is doing and what we just talked about where you show the insides of the process. That's what people want to see, I think. I think that's more interesting. It's what I want to see. And it's also what you can produce pretty easily, where you don't have to fake it. You don't have to pretend to be someone you're not. You can literally write out what you're doing that day and then turn that into a thing, like we just said. So, um,

Find the motive communication that works for you and then share the nitty gritty of the process. Bring people into what you're doing. You don't have to, this is kind of the whole Gary V idea of document don't create. That's really what I'm saying right now. You know, you don't have to go out of your way to create, you know, groundbreaking assets every day. If you can be a journalist in your own life, that I think is much more interesting to people. That's what I see people doing who have big audiences. And you might not think that right away if you're starting out and you have zero followers,

But that's what they're doing. They're being a journalist in their life. They're having an insight in the moment and then they share that. Um, but I would say if, if you can be true to yourself, if you can say things that you believe in that are true to where you're at in your journey, that sounds a little bit cliche, but that's when you can trust it. You don't have to think too hard about behaving, performing a certain way. And you'll find that the anxiety drifts off on its own because you're just giving people the truth. That's what I would say. Number one. Um,

Patrick (44:13.966)
Mm-hmm.

Josh Czuba (44:20.103)
Yeah, I think, does that make sense?

Patrick (44:23.054)
100%, 100%. And it's interesting you mentioned it, like there's a bit of like an anxiety, people putting themselves out there. And I remember, correct me if I'm wrong, but you made a video early on talking about like video and how that's like the anxiety of just making videos, but the results are there. Tell us a little bit more about that. Obviously we're very much into video as a business, as you can imagine. Tell me a little bit about that. Like what's your been your experience with video as a form of, as a medium of content?

Josh Czuba (44:24.955)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Josh Czuba (44:36.403)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (44:45.159)
Yeah, of course.

Josh Czuba (44:53.939)
Yeah, so it's funny, that was a period of time where I was so set on that being my business. Like I was gonna do video coaching because I had put out some videos and I had gotten some positive feedback from people on Twitter. They were like, dude, you kind of are good at this. So I was like, oh, bet, like I'll do a fucking video coaching and that'll be my thing. So I was helping people with that. I did do some free coaching for that. I think that it's...

There, there it does. It is kind of has an extra power, I would say. And I might be a little bit biased here, but there is something about seeing someone's face and seeing them communicate that has a certain pull over just writing. I don't think that it is an absolute necessity though. You know, if you had asked me then when I was so set on doing a video coaching business, I would have said, yeah, you have to, everyone has to do it. I, I don't know. I probably wouldn't have said that, but I would have been a little bit more on that. So I, I am now at a point where it's like, okay.

You find a way to communicate and you do that. Video is 100% better at helping you develop a quick relationship with someone across the screen, especially I think in the short form, on the short form platforms. On TikTok, the videos that seem, then there's not just one way to do this, but the videos I have made that have resonated the most are ones where I'm talking to one person and it's almost like I rip them out of the for you page.

and bring them into a FaceTime call with me. And I think that that's a really helpful way of doing it because first of all, it's very low effort. You literally, like, you don't need to be in a studio. You don't need Riverside. You don't need anything. You can be walking outside. And sometimes the low quality works to your advantage because people are so tired of, or they're, you know what I mean? Like they're, and right. So you've probably seen this with pitch lane as well. It's like, there's something approachable about a real person and a real thing. And when you can get that authenticity and rawness and.

Patrick (46:32.686)
person.

Josh Czuba (46:45.687)
unpolished quality across, you have people's attention. Because that's what stands out now in an oversaturated world of high quality, right? Yeah.

Patrick (46:50.582)
100, 1 million percent, 1 million percent. Yeah, we see this as well, you know, anything in the pitch line videos where you can kind of, that humanizes you, that just makes people think, you know what, actually this guy's authentic, this is genuine what they're doing here, is the thing that performs the best. So even just like, you know, if I take a sip of coffee or something, hey, so such and such, and you just start the video with that, or you've got a background behind you and it's messy, just something like that.

Josh Czuba (47:03.08)
Yeah, yeah.

Josh Czuba (47:11.68)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (47:17.471)
Yeah, wow.

Patrick (47:20.522)
works better because it's authentic and it builds a more of a connection. You know, if people can, it's obviously a double edged sword. You don't want people to perceive you as like unorganized or whatever, but like you can, you've got it, but if you manage it correctly, it's, it's the, it's the winning strategy.

Josh Czuba (47:22.838)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (47:30.615)
Sure, sure.

Josh Czuba (47:35.703)
100%. No, I think I'm glad you brought that up as well, because I think that's especially true for people who are going to create business content. So what I'm imagining here is with your listeners, there's probably a lot of people who, if they do wanna build a personal brand and they do wanna do it on video, they're gonna be giving advice to people who are one to two steps behind. That's kind of the protocol, right? You help people get to square one in the hopes that then you'll find some clients along the way who wanna work with you. They can tell you know what you're doing. And so you...

you build your audience that way. There is something, I would just be aware if that's where you're at and you're listening to this and that's what you're thinking. Be aware that if you're in a perfect studio and you have the captions that are, you know, like they come up and they're like, every other word is yellow and bolded and it's like very, very surgical. When I see stuff like that, personally, you blend in with everyone else. I've seen people though, who are talking to beginner copywriters.

and who are in the make money online space. And they're talking about this, would you have to be very aware of people are very wary of that type of content because they've been hit with it from every angle. The people who do it imperfectly, I'm just saying what we just said, but I've seen it work, I've seen it work. I've seen people get attention that way because then you are not a coarse shiller, you're not a Tai Lopez, you're in my garage. Although I guess actually it's funny.

Now that I'm thinking about that, that is a perfect example of that kind of raw, unedited quality. And that was like one of the most performing DSLs of all time, I would think for this, to make money online space. So nevermind, Ty crushed it, but the culture of here's how, here's a $90 course, people are overwhelmed with that. So, you know, if you can really bring people into the process, I would think that is much more effective and more fun for you and easy and lower, lower stakes for you, it's kind of a win-win, you know.

Patrick (49:07.47)
Exactly.

Patrick (49:14.35)
I'm sorry.

Patrick (49:31.178)
100%, 100%. It's interesting you talk about that. Like even like VSLs, it works with the same concepts. It's just any video content where you can be authentic, you build rapport with people better. You know, it's like you there and people are just gonna trust it a whole lot more. So yeah, big advice everyone, use video in whatever you're gonna do. But yet, so in terms of...

Josh Czuba (49:33.288)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (49:36.778)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (49:49.472)
100%.

Josh Czuba (49:54.239)
Yeah.

Patrick (49:58.818)
Obviously when you're doing your creative writing, whether it's other content creation, it's obviously, it's persuasive. That's the whole point of it, right? It's persuading people in some way, be that to help them with their doom scrolling, with their social media addiction, be that to get them to click on something in your email copywriting. What's the one piece of advice you would give to someone to write better persuasively?

Josh Czuba (50:26.379)
Um...

Josh Czuba (50:29.899)
The most impactful thing for me was talking to one person. This is something I learned from Nicholas Cole from the Ship 30, the Ship 30 guys, they're great. The minute that I talked to one person and I made that person a past version of myself and I got really specific in the details with that and I gave the exact advice that I needed that I, I essentially brought people into my inner monologue. That clicked because you don't realize how many people resonate with that message. I think that that's

one of the most valuable concepts I learned early on.

Josh Czuba (51:05.931)
keeping it real, man. Like we keep touching on this theme, but it's so short, like the internet now and content now is not what it was 10 years ago. I don't even know what it was like 10 years ago, frankly, because I wasn't consuming it like this. But if you can bring people into a conversation and make it as personal as possible, written to them, almost like a letter to them or a text message to them, again, I think lower...

lower quality or more raw also works there as well. Like for example, okay, just as an example of this, I send out emails and I make videos that demonstrate that, that are approachable and feel like they're to one person, but I'm also getting pitched a lot now because people see my, they have a lot of followers and they maybe are a copywriter or have some type of service. The only, just about the only email I even responded to once was all lowercase. And it was all, it was so clearly made several points.

of saying that he was a real person. It's the only one I even responded to. And then I ended up, I have a relationship with him now. We're not working together in that way, but he's a good dude. And if I do need someone in the future, I'm going straight to him. So I think that's also it. And then, so it's really honesty. You can only persuade people when you're being real. If you're talking about the dopamine stuff, I'm sharing my own experiences, making tiny, tiny steps, taking a shower, doing the dishes. That kind of stuff is real. That's...

Patrick (52:15.15)
for sure.

Josh Czuba (52:33.247)
That's, that's, it's approachable.

Josh Czuba (52:38.155)
I think that's about it. Like you can't really go wrong with that. If you're real and you meet people where they're at and what you're saying is true, they'll trust you. And then it's, you know, you have that warmness, you have a relationship with them.

Patrick (52:53.458)
100% in the usual advice for writing cold emails that we hear like, cold email wizard talks about this, all these gurus talk about it is yet write the email as if you were talking to one person like bring up the person who you want to pitch to like someone that represents this ideal person and just write the email as if you were writing it to them. And it works because obviously if they fit the same persona, they're going to respond to similar things. And yeah,

Josh Czuba (53:03.893)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (53:07.635)
Yeah.

Patrick (53:21.93)
you bring out the authenticity if you're talking about it in that sense. So this is good. This podcast, I think that the theme is authenticity. The theme is like being true to yourself and both the thing for yourself and for the benefit of your content, your business, your life. This is super interesting.

Josh Czuba (53:32.725)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (53:39.099)
Absolutely. I had a feeling it would be, you know, I was thinking beforehand before I got on, I was like, this is going to come up a lot because I looked at the questions you sent over and I was like, yeah, that's pretty much my answer to every single one of these. And it but I really believe that. That's what a humanized internet looks like. Right? That's my bio right now across platforms humanizing the internet. It's kind of this big vague idea that I don't I don't even know fully what it means yet. But I think that it kind of encapsulates what I'm doing.

And it does go back to that authenticity. If you look at the, every problem that we're up against, at least in the digital space that I'm talking about, one of the major problems there is a lack of authenticity, a lack of accountability. These platforms are not saying what they're doing to us. And then even with the people who are putting out content, it's like the worst kind of content that is plaguing our feeds that are already designed to take advantage of us is stuff that is, it's...

cheap and empty and not, there's nothing of substance there. So I think one helpful example here, the Center for Humane Technology has a graphic of how we're gonna solve this problem of the attention crisis. They envision it as a lever or like at the fulcrum of the lever or like at the farthest out point of the lever, the most effective solution that we have is a paradigm shift.

changing the culture around the internet, changing the way we see social media, changing the way we use these things. I think that authenticity is a big part of that. For the creators, as much as the consumers, but for the creators, if you can change the way that you produce content so that you are valuing your consumer's attention, you're respecting it, you're understanding the information world that they live in and how overwhelming it is to them, and you actually try to help them in that way.

you will win their good graces and probably their business. But it starts with that positive culture. I think that's huge.

Patrick (55:43.946)
Yeah, that's huge. And that's gonna be super helpful. I think, yeah, this is gonna be very valuable for our listeners. I'm sure there's a ton of goldmine content in here. Josh, just before we wrap up, any final words for our listeners and anything you wanna ask me before we go?

Josh Czuba (56:05.267)
Yeah, well, definitely. For anyone who's listening, and I appreciate that it's probably a range of people, I have a lot of admiration for what you and what we are doing. It feels cool to be on the front lines of this thing, of the creator economy and online business and digital education. I firmly believe that this is where we're headed. And so congratulations to you and all of us for being pioneers in this sense.

Um, I have no doubt that some of the listeners here and you and me, like we, there's, we have a lot of potential to help people navigate a new rapidly changing world that can be very scary. Um, but I would not underestimate the positive impact we're having by taking on that early responsibility of figuring this stuff out, whether it's a cold email agency or a video outreach agency and, and software in the first place, it's all very, very cool stuff, never before done. Like this is.

When you zoom out and you look at what's happening right now in the scale of humanity, this is, this is the turning of the tides in a major, major way. And so I just, I, I always like to come back to that because it, there's moments where you feel lost and where it feels insignificant, but it's like even to just be here and to be trying to do this puts you in like the 1% of, of people who have ever had the opportunity to try and it's all very cool. So that's, that's all I would say to anyone else is like, this is very cool. What we're doing.

don't look down on yourself wherever you're at in the process. Like it's, I'm still figuring it out. If we check in six months, I'll be in a very different place. And, and, and you hope for that. Um, as for you, I would, I would love to, um, I don't know if you ever talked about this on the podcast, but I would love to hear more about like where you're at in the business, both, you know, on a, on a granular level, what it looks like, and we talked about it briefly, but also like in terms of vision, if you were to zoom out, like what, where things are with you, tell me about that.

Patrick (57:49.634)
Hmm?

Patrick (58:00.462)
That's a very interesting question. Yeah, we can talk a little bit about the business. Yeah, exactly, two questions. So with the business, Pitchlane, obviously we started off just as a software solution. So the software solution for creating videos for outreach at scale when you're doing cold email, cold outreach on LinkedIn, et cetera. And we kind of started that journey and that got a lot of traction. But what we were noticing is that a lot of people really struggled with...

Josh Czuba (58:02.983)
Yeah, sort of two questions.

Patrick (58:28.406)
just the fundamentals of call email, like getting their deliverability right, getting the copy, getting everything else. Call emails, it's not easy to execute correctly. There's like a, it's already like a six step process. And if you're using pitch lane, like a seventh step. So it just makes it harder. It's just another thing in their way. But if someone's already executing on the call emails, well, it gets them outsized returns because it's humanizing their outreach. It's making them more personable and so on. So what we said is look,

Josh Czuba (58:32.596)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (58:41.12)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick (58:57.526)
We know how to do it well. Why don't we do this as a service? So we also added on an agency. So they've now got the two arms of the business. So we're, yeah, exactly. Most people, this is the thing, we've done it the complete opposite way because usually you're supposed to do agency and then do a SaaS, right? And monetize it. We've done the opposite. We started with a SaaS and we stuck on an agency service on top of it. So that's really what we're doing in terms of what we're offering to our customers. And...

Josh Czuba (59:04.47)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (59:12.479)
Yeah, right, right. Yeah, yeah, right.

Josh Czuba (59:21.844)
Yeah.

Patrick (59:27.158)
In terms of the vision for it, to be honest with you, it's an interesting question because with the agency, we're just seeing that things are getting much more sophisticated. There's more and more markets are saturating. More and more people are doing outreach and it's harder and harder and harder to stand out. But when you have tools like pitch link, when you have AI personalization, and when you're writing copy, as you said, targeting one person,

and then trying to think about how to scale that, you've got all the fundamentals right, you can still provide a lot of value. And what gets me about it is you're saying, you know, it's impressive that we're even here, that we're doing this kind of thing, as like people in this digital age, in this digital economy, because sometimes you think, okay, well, it's just a little tool, we're just making little videos, like what is this doing for humanity? But actually, you know, if it weren't valuable, no one would pay for it. Like if it weren't,

helping people to make connections and those connections were helping them do things. It wouldn't, there wouldn't be any value in it. There wouldn't be any substance in it. So it's a small piece of the very big puzzle, but it's nonetheless an important one. And I think that, you know, it's easy to kind of think, okay, like I said, what are we doing? It's not like, you know, we're not, we're not starting a nonprofit. We're not like changing the global supply chain, but

you chip away at one little bit of this huge puzzle, which is ever going to exist. And you can provide value in something that, that you, that you learn about how to do. So yeah, that's kind of where, where I see things going.

Josh Czuba (01:00:55.967)
Yeah.

Josh Czuba (01:01:04.544)
100%.

Josh Czuba (01:01:08.463)
I mean, for the record, I would say that your service, Pitchling as a software and the agency like that is very clearly valuable. You know, I mean, like it's so, I remember when I first came across you guys and we worked together for a moment, like it was so in line with what I believed in as a creator and everything. I think that what you guys are doing is amazing. So, but yeah, I appreciate that a lot with the effort you guys are putting in to make something new and valuable.

but also that pioneer element. It's pretty cool, man. It's pretty cool.

Patrick (01:01:44.022)
Nice, yeah, I appreciate that, I appreciate that. Awesome, awesome. Okay, final, final thing then. Final question before we wrap up. What's one contrarian opinion that you hold that you think is valuable for listeners?

Josh Czuba (01:01:54.868)
Love it.

Josh Czuba (01:02:00.948)
Oh, oh.

Oh man, that is a tough one. And it really goes against my nature too, because I'm so conflict averse. Like I don't want, I don't want, and also I don't know what's even contrarian for this. Yeah.

Patrick (01:02:13.322)
It doesn't have to be controversial, but just contrarian. Like just something that most people don't think, but that you think and is... and you think is valuable.

Josh Czuba (01:02:22.039)
Hmm

Josh Czuba (01:02:26.715)
Okay, okay. This is the first thing that came to mind. I think that in today's day and age, with the overwhelming amount of short form content and the amount of time we spend on social media, watching full length movies is actually a really good thing for your attention span. And it's something that you should, if you find yourself in a very distracted, shattered attention state, you can almost look at it as a healthy intervention.

the way you would look at a workout. And I know that sounds a little bit crazy and you definitely don't want it to get in the way of your business or other stuff. I would assume at that point though, if you're, if you're so frazzled with short form that you're probably struggling in your business already or just showing up for yourself, I think I'm saying that I think for most people who are in the social media world and who get a lot of content that way, prioritizing long form content in that form, movies or even TV series.

or podcasts, long, long things, hour plus, hour plus, that you can let your attention really sink into and feast on without interruption and without distraction is crucial. And I'm even at the point where it's like, I need to do more of that. And you never would have thought that. When you were a kid, you were told that it was like, you know, it wasn't something you should limit and you still should limit it, but you should now make room for it. You should prioritize it. I would say that's probably pretty contrarian.

Patrick (01:03:54.126)
That's a good one. That's a good one. I never thought about that, to be honest with you. But yeah, that's you're right. Like, now the thought of like, oh, I'm gonna watch a movie is like, that's two hours. Just just scroll, right?

Josh Czuba (01:03:58.835)
You know what I mean? It's like, yeah.

Josh Czuba (01:04:04.227)
Right, right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's also, you know, from a creative lens, you get so much more depth in creativity, in art that would carry over to your work. It might be harder for more technical or business-minded people to see it that way. But if you are a creator or someone who wants to write or really channel that spirit into what you do, watching really well-made, well-crafted...

beautiful movies, I would say has a powerful effect you shouldn't sleep on. But yeah.

Patrick (01:04:41.828)
Okay Josh, where can our listeners find you on the interwebs if they want to connect with you?

Josh Czuba (01:04:47.559)
Yeah. Um, so on TikTok and Twitter or X, uh, it's just my name, Josh Chuba, J O S H C Z U B A. Um, and then on Instagram it's josh.chuba. Um, but yeah, that's, that's where I'm at and, uh, I would love to connect.

Patrick (01:05:05.486)
Fantastic. Josh, really appreciate you coming on. I'm sure that's been very valuable for our listeners. And yeah, good luck with all the content creation and we'll definitely have you on in the future again.

Josh Czuba (01:05:16.951)
Appreciate you, Patrick. Had a great time and thanks for having me.

Patrick (01:05:19.81)
Cheers. All right.