Episode 52:One Year of Making At Least, Like, Twelve Bucks Online
You’ve been listening to this podcast for a year now -- Thank you; we’re so sorry -- so we’ve provided a retrospective episode to look at the highs and lows of Make Money Online.
Summary
Nick and Kai review 2016 and set goals for 2017, mixing business targets with personal ambitions. Kai walks through the whitelist system he uses to filter opportunities against a fixed annual goal list, and both assess where the podcast stands after its first year. The conversation ranges across sous vide turkey, sausage technique, a maggot-induced garbage can fire, and Nick’s shaving situation.
Highlights
- Kai filters every incoming opportunity against a 2017 whitelist: 10,000 email subscribers, 200 students added to his freelancing academy, and product revenue hitting $2,000, $4,000, and $5,000 on three-month rolling averages. Anything that doesn’t match goes into an Evernote file called ‘Business Ideas,’ reviewed monthly via OmniFocus.
- The podcast sold 13 about pages in its first year, roughly one per month. Nick says that’s enough data to start A/B testing.
- The show averages about 1,200 listeners per episode. Kai says 2,000 by April is realistic through small changes, including mentioning the podcast in his email onboarding sequence, which he currently does not do.
- Nick sous-vided a whole turkey for Thanksgiving but says the skin came out only okay. His fix for 2017: blowtorch it to caramelize. He put out a literal call for a Chicago resident to lend him a cooking blowtorch by mid-November.
- Nick’s 2017 barbecue goal is moving the Thermapen to his right hand and tongs to his left. Pricking sausages in one consistent spot limits juice drainage onto the coals.
- Kai set his garbage can on fire with lighter fluid and charcoal briquettes to kill maggots, then made about 15 trips inside with a mason jar to put it out. The can melted around one wheel and is no longer rollable.
- Nick grades 2016 as D-. His listed wins: bought a house, got a dog (Basil), published two books, visited Copenhagen.
Read the transcript
So going into the year, I thought a lot about like things that I could improve in 2017, because you’re always trying to improve. Like things change. Market changes, world changes, and you wonder what you can do differently. And I think that one of the bigger things was my Thermapentech So, if you don’t know, Thermopen is one of the greatest devices that you can possibly have at a barbecue, and I use it all the time for lots of different things. But probably the most important thing I use it for is you you basically poke a row of sausages each one by one. You can determine hot places on the coals pretty easily by the temperature that they’re at. It’s an instant read to the tenth of a degree thermometer. And so it’s insanely valuable when you’re in a barbecue. And I think that the biggest thing I’m going to do in 2017. Is learn to hold the tongs in the left hand and the thermopen in the right hand. I kept left-handing my thermopen, and like I’m ambidextrous, but I’m not that good. How ambidextrous are you? So I can write pretty reasonably well with my left hand, but the like consequence for most ambidextrous people is they build up muscle memory. With one of their hands. So I’m not like flawless with my left hand. But what ends up happening is you just get this weird hodgepodge. So I bowl left, throw left, right, right, mouse right. I do a lot of things left-handed, a lot of other things right-handed, bat left. And so it’s just weird. It’s really weird being ambidextrous because people think, like, oh, you can write perfectly well with your left hand. And no, that’s not. All I do is write with my right hand because I don’t want my ink to smear, you know? And most books are built so that the spine is on the left, so you don’t have to go backwards through your notebook. So that’s how being avidextrous is. It’s not that fun. It’s just whatever it is.
But yeah. I’m nervous about tongs and left hand.
Like, even with the ambidextrious modifier, like, well, and that’s why it’s a challenge in 2017. And I think that it’s going to help. My barbecues, quite a bit. But I mean, the barbecue.
Ah, well, even ignoring the ramifications for your business, like helping the barbecue sounds like you saying it’s gonna help my WordPress installation. Well, great, WordPress installation. How does that help your bar? Like the outcome you’re shooting for. How does left-hand technique barbecue tongs improve the output of your barbecue? How does it make your guests?
Because you’re pricking the sausages in the same spot each time, leaving less drainage onto the coals. And you need to be more precise with that because you don’t need fine-grained motor skills with the tongs. You just have to get them out of the platter.
So the actual issue here is. Too many pricks in too many different spots in the sausage, leading to overdrainage. Overdrainage. You don’t want sausage overdrainage.
And like the juices in the sausage are going to be near boiling. They’re always like bursting out, you know? And then that basically cooks the meat that’s inside of the sausage because you have a natural casing because you’re not a monster So that’s one big challenge I feel. And getting like consistent cooking in sausages is way harder than it has any right to be, especially over an open flame where coals I really I don’t like propane grills. I like cooking over a wood fire and getting the like smoke aspects of it because why else Right. Why else are you cooking over an open flame? I think this is a good thing. I can put that on my stove top, you know, if it’s a propane grill.
I think this is the only time you’ve referenced something that typically happens in camping in a positive sense.
Oh, no, no, no. I talk a lot about good camping stuff. Have you read the, I wrote a whole letter about things I love out of camping. I love bonfires. I love open-cooked meats. I love s’mores. I love drinking bourbon when it’s 50 degrees outside. And all of those things happen all the time in camping. I love camping equipment. If you go to campmore. com, C-A-M-P-M-O-R. Some of the most interesting industrial design going in Western civilization right now. I’m serious. Deadly serious. No, I’ll spend a lot of stuff time talking about great things about camping. You get to build friendships. You get long uninterrupted times without your stupid cell phone, which just went off at the exact point that I said that. You get to do a lot of wonderful things. And I’m going to rep for that. I’m going to rep for camping. The problem with camping is that you’re sleeping on the ground and there’s spiders everywhere. And there’s no running water, so you can’t shower, you monster, and you don’t get any starwood points from it. All of those are enough to deep sick Camping, just bonfires. Give me bonfires.
There’s a Starwood opening at Gerlach, Nevada, Burning Man, this coming year. Double points. Yep.
What did you learn this year?
God, what didn’t I learn this year? Gosh. It’s a terrible stall. Yeah. No, I mean, like, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Every year I do, I want to circle back to the podcast in a couple of minutes because I got some interesting lessons around the podcast. But every year I spend. Part of September, most of October, November, in a tiny bit of December, thinking about my goals for the coming year. And I do it through a process of first saying, Well, what’s gone well and what’s gone poorly about this past year? And from that, I start to analyze: okay, well, How do I make the things that went well? How do I keep on doing them? And the things that went poorly, how do I do less of them or change it so? I’m not doing those poor things as often. And for me, like it came down to 2017 goals of continuing to serve my paying clients. Continuing to record this wonderful podcast with you. Thank you. Thank you, our dear listeners, who support this wonderful endeavor. A health and fitness goal: losing 10 pounds four times, not necessarily losing 40 pounds, but doing an alternating bulking and cutting cycle. Making Burning Man great again by launching my own camp, which is another personal, fun goal. I’d love to hit 10,000 email subscribers. That’s one of my goals for 2017. I want to add 200 students to the double year freelancing academy. And I want to sort of steer step my way to more product focused revenue, hitting $2,000 a month, $4,000 a month and $5,000 a month on three month rolling averages. So When I look at 2017, those are my core goals, and I’m using those goals as a whitelist. When I’m presented with an opportunity, I get to say, does it connect to one of these goals? If it does, wonderful. Now I get to decide if I want to do it or not. If it does not, I’m able to immediately say, this is an exciting opportunity. I’m going to go put it in an Evernote file. The Evernote file is labeled Business Ideas. I have a recurring task in OmniFocus every month. Look at business ideas and see if anything in there is applicable. If it is, move it across. If it’s not, let it sit there for another month. But this lets me. Have focus, and this really gives a constraint to what I’m choosing to work on in the coming year. And I like the idea of having this year-based constraint. Like I think about my plan of going to MicroConf this year. I’m going to be attending MicroConf. I’m most likely going to be live blogging both the starter and the growth track. I’m very excited about it. And I’m like, okay, well, how does this fit into my business? Well, it helps me attract new paying clients. It helps me promote the podcast because, in conversations, I get to talk about: hey, I record a humble internet podcast about business domination. You should listen to it. It helps me grow my subscriber list and it helps me learn more about product sales. I get to whitelist attending MicroConf In. And there’s been other opportunities people have approached me about, starting a conference of my own. And I’m like, this is an exciting opportunity. I’d love to do this. It doesn’t fit into 2017, though. Maybe 2018, let me put it on the list. And it’s been a fun exercise for me to go through and say, like, high-level 5,000-foot view. What do I want to accomplish in this year? And I know I’m not going to get perfect or do perfect at this. I know I’m putting too much on this list because I think it was in Brian Tracy’s The Luck Factor. He had this wonderful, wonderful line where he talked about how in a year we overestimate what we could get done. But in five years, we underestimate what we could get done. And this connects to an early, early article I wrote on my post about how I like thinking about life in five-year segments: 21 to 25, 26 to 30, 31 to 35, and saying, okay. Let me view this five-year plot as, you know, a five-year sprint. What do I want to get done in this sprint? 26 through 30 was all about training. 31 through 35 is all about building and getting to that next level. And we start to see my 2017 goals line up in that direction: hiring more staff, growing my business to this level, getting my email list to this size. It’s interesting for me to move through these exercises and both think about: okay, well, I’m entering a five-year building phase, and for this year, my goal, my whitelisted goals are this. What comes of that? And I’m assuming and I’m thinking it’s going to give me more focus and direction as I move forward. And it also gives me an easier way of saying, no, instead of spinning my wheels about, do I want to do this? Do I not want to do this? I have a list I could check against, and I could check it twice if I want to, and I could say, oh, and adapt it.
I mean, you don’t have to be dogmatic about it. But yeah, yeah. I think the end of the year is a very good opportunity to take stock of how far you’ve come and And step back and assess your priorities and then take action on it. And I think that that makes a lot of sense. I think that’s really good. Towards that end, one of my big goals, so I actually cooked Thanksgiving for my entire family and all of my in-laws. And it went really well. I sous-vited an entire turkey, which is amazing, right? One thing I definitely need to do next year, blowtorch the skin. Skin turned out okay, but not great. And it it should be great. It’s turkey skin. Like it’s going to be delicious. But you don’t want to burn it. You still want to eat it. You want it to turn out really well. And the answer is blowtorching it. Get a brulee blowtorch and just go at it for one minute and caramelize it because that’s the one thing that SUVI doesn’t do well is actually getting the skin right. I hate unitaskers in kitchen. I really only have a couple. One of them is a garlic press because I’m Italian. But you know, the vast majority of stuff that I’m actually getting in the kitchen is Things that I can use versatally for a lot of different things. Suvied kind of counts for that. But a blowtorch, like I’m not making creme brulee anytime soon, so I really have no business owning a blowtorch. So. Important statement for Make Money Online. If you live in the city of Chicago and you own a cooking blowtorch, please email my assistant at office at draft. nu and I’m serious. I’m serious. If you do this, please email my assistant. I need a blowtorch by mid-November next year in order to caramelize the skin of my turkey properly. This is an enormous goal for me and my business next year. And I really hope that someone out there among our five or six listeners is able to actually oblige that. I’d be really grateful. That’s a huge 2017 goal.
Make money online, true believers, true fans, true listeners. Please do this. I don’t know if there will be a financial or non-financial.
Yet get in touch with it. There’ll be a financial reward. I’ll give you some turkey.
That’s a good one.
I’ll give you some leftover turkey skin that I blowtorched. Or I don’t know. We’ll go out for a nice meal. I’ll buy you a nice meal and we’ll just chat for a few hours. I feel like that’s a good reward. Let me ask the big question, you know? Yeah, yeah.
Why a turkey? That seems like a conventional cookie.
You have to cook a turkey in Thanksgiving. It’s the one required thing. It’s so required. You have to do it. There’s all this talk. Fuck this. There’s this talk about like doing the old Pilgrim’s Thanksgiving. Hi, Dad, who, where you do the like. The like goose and pheasant and the things that they had at the real First Thanksgiving because they didn’t have turkey. Little known fact. If you Google it, you’ll probably get a lot of fake news, so you have to trust me on this. I’ll go and edit Wikipedia and make it true for you. But the first Thanksgiving was like goose and pheasant and fish and stuff like that. And everybody’s like, I’ll do that. But no. You want Thanksgiving to be this familiar emotional touchstone with your family, and you want it to resonate with that, right? So there’s this very Strong emotional component to having turkey or tofurky or whatever you want, you know. You have to have turkey at Thanksgiving. At Christmas, there’s the notion of a Christmas ham, right? But that’s not so entrenched that you absolutely have to cook. Christmas ham. You can do a goose or a pheasant or whatever or a duck. I’ve eaten all of those things on Christmas and it’s been amazing. But you have to. You have to cook turkey on Thanksgiving. And it sucks because turkey is horrible. Do you like turkey? I hate turkey. I talk to a lot. I actually asked this question of like several dozen people over the course of November because, you know, it comes to talk about Thanksgiving. And I asked everyone, Do you like turkey? And I got only one, I love turkey. But they say, I love turkey because I love eating it with my family on Thanksgiving, not because it tastes good. Right. Does anyone like eating like the flavor and texture of turkey? Dear listener, office at draft. nu, if you like turkey, please email me and prove me wrong on this. But I think most people actually don’t like turkey. Probably the vast majority of people, you’re going to get a few people who are like, Nick D is horrible for hating on turkey. But like, what happens, this goes back to the emotional touchstone thing. You want this Norman Rockwell notion of bringing out the whole bird and carving it table side. That is a great way to have the breast be too dry and the leg be burned. And then nobody eats the thigh meat. And what are you Doing?
Maybe it’s because I grew up vegetarian for 15 years and I just don’t have such a strong cultural attachment to. Turkey. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, maybe. My mom’s a vegetarian veggie loaf with some nutritional yeast, mushroom gravy on it. That’s like a tofurky. That’s like a tofurki, though.
You’re still doing something turkey-ish.
No, it’s literally a meatloaf made out of tofu and bread and vegetables and delicious, delicious things.
Okay, that’s different. That’s very different. That’s different. I’m talking with the worst person to talk to about Thanksgiving.
And that I was vegan for four years. You’re really not helping, guys. And now I just don’t. I’ll tell you what, though. I love a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce on it. Unlike some hollow bread. Yeah, man. Oh, holy shit. Yes. Day after Thanksgiving turkey.
There’s a burger bar called Kuma’s Corner that does that pretty well.
Ah Kumas. Kumas is good. I’m a good guy. Kumas Three stars. Three stars. Thinking about the podcast, though, what’s gone well for you in relation to the podcast? And what would you change about the podcast in the coming year?
We sold 13 about pages about the podcast.
We broke one a month? We broke one a month.
I’m so proud to announce that horrible statistic. That’s really great. Nowhere to go but up. Yeah. So the goal, I think we’re at enough about pages to start A-B testing. So we’re going to be optimizing the fuck out of this.
Question. Have we raised enough revenue through the about pages to buy a turkey?
Maybe a small turkey. Okay, we can sous vide it. We can sous vide the about page. We’re gonna sous vide an about page. We’re gonna deep fry an about page For me
In terms of the podcast, I’m super happy with the format. I’m super happy with the execution. I’m super happy that I get to talk with you for an hour and a half every other week, and we get to do this thing, and people like it, and people say they enjoy it. I mostly believe those people. Thank you. Thank you, every single person. Okay, so every person who has reached out to us is that it’s not a good idea. That’s actually a serious thing.
I tried to troll the entire podcast. There’s one thing about the podcast that I should not troll about, which is I love this. So Kai and I have both gone to two different conferences this year together. And nobody talks to me about the podcast, but everyone talks to Kai about the podcast. Like, how many people talk to you about the podcast at conferences I’ve been at?
Oh, lots, lots.
Right. Want to know how many you’ve talked to me about the podcast? Guess how many. Guess how many. Was it me? One? Actually, no. You’ve never talked to me about the podcast because we already know about the podcast. There’s nothing else to say about the podcast. But it is one. It was Brennan Dunn. Brennan Dunn was like, I love your podcast. I’m like, thank you so much. And that was it. That was the only thing I got about the podcast. But people go up to you all the fucking time and they’re like, Thank you so much for Make Money Online. This is actually really important and valuable to me. And then you relay that information to me, and I have no idea if it’s true. So assuming it is true, thank you, dear listeners. But I wouldn’t know because I get no feedback about anything going on in this podcast other than through Kai Davis. And my dog occasionally confusedly looking up at me during large outbursts such as this one.
Listeners, true believers, fans of the show, friends of the show. Mom, please send Nick an email, office at draft. nu. If you appreciate the podcast, tell him you appreciate the podcast. If there’s something you appreciate about it, tell him about it. His assistant will delete the email promptly. As instructed, and he’ll never know.
Just a tally mark. That’s it. All I need is a photo of tally marks sent to me by my assistant. And we can do that. That’s it. Be you’re gonna be the best little tally mark. I’m gonna love you. I think I’m gonna love you like all the other tally marks more.
I think what I think The first year, in my view, about this podcast was partly connected to the last episode: finding our voice and finding what we want to talk about and finding our, I use the P-word, position within the market. And As I look to 2017, I’m excited to continue. Like, we found a number of topics in a number of episodes that have resonated incredibly well with the listeners. The Imposter Syndrome episode still is one of our most listened-to episodes. Kai Buy’s a Pen, unfortunately, just fell off the top 10 leaderboard. But we’re finding what resonates with our listeners, and I’m excited to buy more pens. 2017 goal, buy more pens. I’ll let my accountant know. But I’m excited. The one thing I think we haven’t focused on, and it’s an area of optimization, is How do we get more listeners? How do we better optimize for new subscribers? And A-B testing, obviously, but also things like: I don’t, in my onboarding sequence for my newsletter, say, I have a podcast. You should listen to the podcast. Here’s a link to my favorite episode of the podcast. Here’s a link to. I do that. Yeah, I don’t do any of that. And there’s. So many opportunities for just tiny, like what I think of as 1% 20-minute implementation opportunities, but you stack them all together and suddenly it goes from, I think, we’re averaging like 1200 listeners per episode right now. I don’t think it’s unrealistic that by April we could be at 2,000 listeners per episode and then climbing up from there. So I’m excited to. Is it really that low? I thought it was more than that. It’s about 1,200 per episode. We’re unpopular.
Oh, no. So big goal. So, okay, actually, this is a goal. I’m going to tell you, dear listener. And then you’re going to go and tell three friends, but then they have to go and each tell three friends about Make Money Online. The website is at makemoneyonline. exposed. We’re going to get a beautiful and inspiring pyramid going here, okay? It’s shaped like a pyramid, but it’s not a pyramid scheme. Pyramid of power. Pyramid of making money online, and we’re going to make this happen. I forgot about another goal that I have. Increased dog walks in 2017, both in terms of duration and frequency. And I feel like this is going to be challenging because it’s a Recording this in December. It is 28 out right now. And that’s the high for the day. So, like, I really don’t want to be outside any more than I have to be. But Basil is still. He’s kind of a static quantity when it comes to walks. He just wants. He is just as excited to be running around in 28-degree conditions as he is in 90-degree conditions. In fact, I don’t even think he likes hot weather that much. He probably the fur thing is harming it. But we’re doing it in 2017. We’re going to be going on a lot of walks together. Like we do three a day now, four a day. Whoa. Pushing the envelope right off the table, and now you have to pick up the envelope.
Did Basil push the envelope off the table?
Basil is eating the envelope. You have to save the envelope. You’re not saving the envelope. God god damn it. Dog walks. We’re gonna do it. It’s gonna be great. I’m gonna uninstall more software from my computer. My God. Have you ever looked at how much software is on your computer? Yes! It’s horrible. Horrible! Delete it! I don’t have anything else to add to that one. I’m just vague nebulous goal to uninstall the fuck out of some software.
2018 presents Nick on a Chromebook.
Nick on a MP01, one of them like dumb phones that doesn’t have any apps on it and doesn’t even support emoji. Although, more emoji in 2017. We’re going to write all the show notes in Rebus. So we’re going to write them through like it’s like when you run them through the messages app on Apple and you tap all the keywords and make them all emoji. We’re going to emoji the everlasting bejesus out of all of our communication to the point where it becomes sort of illegible to everyone over the age of 16.
Have you hit a point in life where new technology has started to confuse you? Since I just turned that corner Snapchat. Yeah, Snapchat. I don’t get it. I date the ladies, and the ladies are like, Are you on the Snapchat? And I’m like, I don’t what? I’m so confused. There’s filters. There’s what?
I know that this is going to be weird to say because I’ve never had to do online dating, and my most recent relationship has lasted 10 years in counting, so lol. But Tinder, like the conceit of Tinder. And I’ve like played with Tinder on other people’s phones and messed with their love lives for them. And that is Like, you’re really commodifying humans. Yes. And that really disquiets me. Like, I think the whole, like. Any sort of technology that turns us into cattle is weird. Uber is weird in that way. Amazon Prime is weird in that way. And I use both of those, but like, there it doesn’t I don’t feel comfortable fully about doing so. Maybe reduced reliance on those? More travel. That’s one thing. I already booked five flights for beginning of next year. I am traveling more in the first five months of 2017 than in all of 2016 combined. Wow. And you traveled a ton. And I travel a lot. But I didn’t, I took few trips, but lengthy trips this year. Oh, I’m going to a conference. Let’s take two weeks in Durham for no reason. The reason was a music festival, but yes.
I’m approaching travel from actually the opposite direction. Like, I have a lot of opportunities to travel on my plate, and it’s looking to be a A high-velocity start to the year in terms of travel, but I’m have you booked that flight to Chicago yet? We’re getting to it. Kai, you said on Monday, two Mondays ago. We’re recording the episode. We’ll get there. We’ll get there. We’ll get there. It’s in process. But I’m realizing that lots of travel. . . Pulls me away from working on goals I have like Going to the gym and such. And like when I took the three weeks in Europe, it was super, super fun. But I’ve yet to hit the PRs I was hitting before. And there’s this balancing. I mean, it all comes down to balance, and it all comes down to saying no and yes. It’s an interesting balance between my love and desire to travel and my love and desire for a stable routine where I’m hitting these goals and accomplishing these personal things. I don’t know. It’s something I’m teasing out and trying to learn more about. Like, where do I draw the line?
I love that the thing causing this worry is not necessarily that it’s impacting your lifestyle or your health, but that it’s making your numbers go down. IV. It’s the most Kai Davis thing. IVT
To break past a 425 deadlift, and it’s been six months of continual training since I hit my last 425-pound deadlift, and I’m very, very
Concerned about this, and I’m double- You’re gonna lead the war against the robot armies, man, because I ain’t strong enough. Holy wow! Yeah Yeah. You know how much I deadlift? How much? Basil, how much do you weigh?
But no, my bench is weak. I could barely do a two-plate bench. I mean, like. It’s getting up there and it’s getting better. And like, my squat’s strong, my hanging cleans are strong, but like I don’t even know what that is.
That’s disgusting. It’s like it’s like hanging clean. That’s. Gotta be some sort of euphemism.
It really is. It really, really is. But it works like the entire everything. But that’s horrifying also. It’s it’s It’s that balance. It all comes down to balance. It’s that balance of saying, yes, I want to do this, but acknowledging there’s a cost to doing it. Like I could travel every other week in 2017 if I wanted to, because I have these opportunities on my plate. But I have to give something up to say yes to that opportunity. And figuring out which opportunities to say yes to and which opportunities to say no to, again, whitelist helps me sort of shortcut it, but It’s still a challenge. And I think it’s a real challenge for lots of people. Like, as you’re presented with a new opportunity and there’s an upside to it, oh, it’s hard to say no to it when there’s a visible upside. But If there’s a hidden cost of, well, you’re going to miss, like in my case, well, you’re going to miss three weeks at the gym, which means you’re nine sessions behind, which means, well, are you focusing on your diet? And now you’re going to have to catch up again. Well, that’s an actual cost in terms of money and time and emotional happiness. And am I willing to pay that price for this opportunity? I don’t know. I think it’s good to be at a point where I’m starting to ask that question, but I don’t have a hard and fast answer to it yet.
I didn’t set enough things on fire this summer. And I that’s a big 2017 goal, is to set more things on fire. Have I told the garbage can story on the podcast yet? You’ve told it to me over iMessage, but I don’t think you have on the podcast.
So one day I walked out and I had got my garbage out too late for garbage to pick it up, and they missed it. And I forgot to take the garbage can out two weeks later, and they missed it again. And this is the middle of August in Oregon. And so the garbage is just terrible. It’s ugly. It’s full of sin. And then finally, I managed to remember to take the garbage can out and put it out, and they pick it up, and it’s perfect. And I go to put the garbage can away and I look inside, and there’s white things inside. And I’m like, I don’t eat rice. Why is there? Oh, those are maggots. Oh, God. And this being summer and me having just bought a barbecue, I have two things in abundance. I have charcoal briquettes and I have lighter fluid. And so I decide that the easiest way to solve this problem is to take my garbage can into the backyard and bleach maggots, right? Because you’re supposed to bleach them. Squirt an entire thing. Of lighter fluid.
An entire thing.
An entire thing in there. And then I toss a match in, and the match just doesn’t catch. And I’m like, what if I throw charcoal briquettes in here? And so I throw four charcoal briquettes in there and toss a match, and it’s on fire. It is on fire. Capital O, capital F on fire. And I let it burn for a couple seconds, and I hear a sizzling, and I’m like, okay. Now, I need to put this out, and I look around and I realize there’s no hose in the backyard, and I realize I lived in this house for 18 months. I’ve never seen a hose. And it’s the middle of August, so everything is very dry. And the garbage can is now starting to slightly melt in ways that mean fire is going to escape. I immediately think, oh fuck, what do I do now? And so I run inside the house, I get a quart mason jar, I fill it with water. I run outside, I pour the mason jar. Into the garbage can. It does not do much. And I repeat this about 15 times until finally the fire is put out. My garbage can now resembles a Salvador Dali painting. It is. It is representational of a garbage can. It is no longer functional.
It’s not what kind of garbage can, really. It’s about, it’s the ideas about the garbage can rather than the garbage can itself.
We’ve reduced it down to representations of its core essence and function. Form, which involves not being able to be rolled around anymore because it literally. People do that with their devices, you know. Johnny Ive would be proud. It melted enough to encase a wheel in melted plastic.
That’s dope. I wish I had seen that. It was beautiful. I’m a video smeller. I’ve smelled it, but seen it.
The smell was actually not that bad, surprisingly. So the maggots died, right? Oh, the maggots died very, very fast.
Oh, okay, great. Very fast. And fire. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that like one. One thing about being a good pyromaniac is having a certain amount of respect for fire, and people are always shocked at how much I love fire and also how much I’m into fire safety. Like, like, and it’s possible to hold those two things in your head at the same time while simultaneously setting a lot of shit on fire. You Be around me on the 4th of July.
Come to Burning Man with me. Nick, you want to set things on fire and be impressed by fire safety? Come to Burning Man. I you keep asking me to go this way. No, I’m telling. I’m telling. I’m commanding. It’s the imperative form in Spanish.
We already talked about the camping bit. There’s an airport you could find. Do you like Zuck camp at Burning Man in like an air-conditioned trailer? If you want to roll in with an RV, we’ve got space for you. I need running water and the ability to shower once a day. Yep. Somebody told me that there’s like a cabin camping thing in upstate Illinois. That has running water, and I told them, Do you know how long it takes me to shave? And they were like, No, I’ve never seen you shave. And Aaron is like, 29 minutes. It takes Nick between 28 and 30. One minutes to shave, depending on how well the shave is going. And I can tell that the shave is not going well because of swear words. And everyone is shocked, and I’m just there nodding, and Aaron is there nodding, and they’re like. Are you serious? It takes you that long to shave. And I’m like, yes, and I need very hot water to shave. Like, one of the things that I did in this house was upgrade the water heater and insulate it in order to get hotter water for my shave. You should come to Burning Man. So, another goal in 2017 is to cut myself less while I’m shaving. Ha ha! Because I like chop the left half of my face good on this shave. today and that was I felt really bad. I actually got a scar on my chin now, which like that’s kind of horrible. Um and then I just switched blades. Um how often do you switch blades? Boom, like once every three or four years. You have to relearn all the blade. Like, that’s that’s a huge, huge commitment. Huge commitment. Intriguing. I uh interesting. Yeah, no, no, it’s um But yeah, so you know, my shave B plus try harder. That’s kind of how I feel about my shaving practice right now. And if you have Good shaving tips for a face that has simultaneous like patches of very thick brittle hair and they grow in like what seem to be random directions. Like the hair on the bottom center of my neck grows to the left. The hair on the very right side of my neck grows backwards. And there’s like a part in the middle, like two inches down. So, if you’ve dealt with beards that complicated before. Please email my assistant at office at draft. nu and we’ll schedule a Skype call. And I’m just going to talk to you for a while and then I’m going to like overnight you a tub of some nice true fit or or tailors or whatever you whatever you shave with.
I’m honestly surprised you don’t have a barber.
I I have a barber. But she is so booked out because she’s so capable with curly hair that I can only do it once a month. My hair grows fast enough. It grows much faster than par. I should be getting my hair cut every two weeks. I don’t have the time for that. It would be too expensive. Does she shave? Does she do shaving? No, I don’t do shaves out there. Why not? Because I don’t trust them. Yeah. It’s a specialty thing, because you either go to a barber for the shave, because they happen to be a particularly good shaver, or you go for curly hair. When you have curly hair like I do, because my curly hair is also weird. There are two straight tufts out the back corners of my head. Stick straight. And you have to learn that. There’s a natural part on one side of my head, and then another natural part that only goes halfway back on the other side of my head. There’s a straight part that goes directly out and diagonally to the side, and you have to learn how to tame that. And so I need someone who gets me, right? And that is often mutually exclusive. Like there’s a branch of Trufit and Hill that’s downtown, and I shave with Trufit Grafton most days. I run with that or Mitchell’s Wolf Hat. I have a Penhaligan’s Blenheim. If you are looking for spare tubs of Penhaligan’s Blenheim bouquet or a half used tub of Santa Maria Novella, which is one of the most expensive and rare shaving creams on earth, Office at draft. nu, I will mail these to you because I don’t really use them anymore. The Santa Maria Novella, you’d have to put it to good use because I, A, it’s hard to find, and B, I’m kind of not feeling it now because it’s kind of a menthol-y and tobacco shaving cream, which is amazing during the summer. And as mentioned, 28 degrees. I’m not really feeling it. But like I’d have to be convinced. I think I need to just air into like I need to have a serious conversation with my partner about my spare tub of rare ass shaving cream that I got on my honeymoon.
Three months into a six-month process of growing out my hair. I cut it short, not like super long. What did Burning Man do to you, Con? So many wonderful things. So many wonderful things. But I’ll send you a photo after the show. When my hair grows long, I get rigged. My curls turn into ringlets, and I really, really love it. And it’s finally gotten to the length where it makes sense for me to use a styling gel, but I’ve gone one step further. I’ve got this very, very thick, very viscous lavender oil. And so, after a shower, I’ll style my hair using the lavender oil. And now my hair is beautiful, my hair is styled. And I smell like lavender all goddamn day long. And that’s amazing.
Lavender oil is good. Using just pure oils is always nice. Like, I prefer that to the like fancy stuff that you see at like Renegade Craft Fair or whatever have you. where like somebody just bought a bunch of oil in bulk and then mixed them and then made a patchouli thing and now they’re making ha money hand over fist on it. Which like good on you for making money offline and all, but like I’m not Yeah. Yeah, it’s not my thing. Maybe 2017 goals for that to become my thing. I don’t know what kind of person I’m going to be next year. I don’t know what kind of person I’m going to be tomorrow.
Honestly.
Yeah, yeah. Maybe I’ll be marginally less miserable. I hope so. Or cranky. I don’t know. I feel like being miserable is good fuel for the podcast.
We could try to burn something else. I mean, we went from propane to charcoal or propane to wood. We could throw something else on the hopper here.
We talked about barbecues. We talked about, yeah.
We touched on, but we did not go in depth on online dating. And I have. Notes. I have so many notes.
He just thumps a three-inch binder on the desk and Kai, what’s that? Yeah, right? That’s the index. That’s the index.
Oh, Christ. I did an analysis of. 200 Tinder profiles to sort the male profile pictures into different categories and determine what the most popular archetypes of Tinder profile photos are. I mean, there’s no way I’m releasing this publicly. It doesn’t connect to my branding at all. But I was like, I just want to do a study here and see what I could tease out. What are the most common? What are the most tropey? What are the ones you should optimize for? And. It’s been intriguing. I will bluntly say it’s been a terrible use of my time.
I hope I use my time better next year, although I feel like I use my time pretty well this year. You published two books. Yeah, I published two books. But one of them was in the works for a while. I got a dog and a house. Those took a lot of time. I don’t know. I’m pretty okay with this here. I’d probably set it on fire if I could, because I’d like to see it burn just to see what happens. I don’t know what it’s like to set fire to a year. But I’m sure that this one would be interesting.
It might go up in smoke. It might not. That’d be intriguing. I mean, you are a fan of the A through F grading scale, and I have blatantly ripped you off on that. How would you grade 2016 as a year?
F.
Really?
Well, no, I didn’t fail. D-. Like, stage an intervention. Stage an intervention. No. But good things that happened this year. House, dog. Tsuvid de Turkey made it not taste horrible, which is an achievement. Um Traveled a fair amount. I got to go to Copenhagen, which was better than I expected. Copenhagen was amazing. I felt I made at least $12 online. Seriously? I did $12 or $13. That went pretty well. I guess I did the books. The other book is still in progress, but you know, it’s almost done. Do you
Do you want to shift revenue sources in 2017 for your business more toward? I think we touched on this, I’m not sure, in an episode or in an off-episode call, but shifting more towards like educational products or continuing down the consulting path? How do you see that changing in twenty seventeen?
I don’t see it shifting a whole lot, to be honest. I’m already doing a lot of educational stuff. I mean, I saw a lot of about pages. But about what? About the authors. I mean, this podcast, if you want to learn anything more about it, I can’t, if I give away information about the about page, then it cuts into sales of about pages. Kai. You don’t want that, do you? Kai.
All I’m saying is blue sky solutioneering. I mean, we did 2016 one way, 2017. Maybe we put it like a blurred-out screenshot of the about page. Like there’s different ways we could take this and turn it, maybe potentially increasing sales. I mean, we are doubling down on A-B testing as one of our core value propositions for Make Money Online in 2017.
Yeah, yeah, maybe we could do like a three-tiered info product or something.
You get the about page, you get the about page and an episode of our choice, not your choice, and you get the about page, an episode of our choice, and You are you shaving cream.
And this picture I’m about to take on Photo Booth of me scowling at the camera. I’m not putting it anywhere on the internet, but I will print it out and mail it to you. If you buy the about page after listening to this episode. For $1,000. You okay there? Are you dying in like a like an on inside way or like a maggot a couple of years ago way?
A little of column A, little of column B. That’s nice, like a cornucopia. Yeah, no, that’s a good restaurant. We have a restaurant here named Cornucopia. They make good burgers.
