New Year, New Decade: How to Make Yourself Useful ??????

Dear strange people,

Welcome to my experiment. This is a newsletter where I dive deep into the decisions that I am making (and learnings) when it comes to my personal brand, community, and business. 

It’s a new year, a new decade. I’m currently typing this on the plane to New York City. Inspired and running on 2 hours of sleep ?????♂?. Let's just dive right in.

New Year, New Decade

I’m not really into the whole “new year, new me” thing. I never have been, but for whatever reason I feel like a new me this year.

10 Years From Now

In 2017 Fyiona Yong gave me a document with an exercise designed to help you get clear on your future. Like I said earlier, I hate the “new year, new me” stuff… but I can totally get behind intentionality. I forget that I do this exercise just about every year and then I find the document again when New Years rolls around. This year I went back and reviewed what I wrote. 

I didn’t achieve everything by any means. But a lot of the things that I talked about, wanted, or the person that I wanted to be … I have now achieved/become. Feel free to use this exercise. Answer the questions and get as clear as possible for each answer.

Making Myself Useful

When I think of the person I want to be in 10 years it’s a lot like Batman — before I lose you, let me explain ??. I am very much a front man. Anyone that follows me would probably say the same thing. I like the attention. I thrive in it even… but I work better in the shadows. When no one knows it’s me.

Batman does both: he is the front man of his “bat-family” and he is the strategist for the Justice League (only getting his hands dirty when he needs to). That is who I want to be. Front man for my own brand and my own company. But I want to be a force behind the success of others. Which is already a part of what I’m doing now. My company has worked with a lot of the successful LinkedIn creators that you might follow. Maybe even some of the companies you follow! 

I find more fulfillment in seeing other people crush it than I do pursuing my own goals. I want to be a part of other people’s journey (while still living my own). That’s the type of person I want to be in 10 years. A force alone. An invisible force behind others. And to get there I need to become more useful than I am. Here is how I am looking at it from a skills perspective.

The areas that I will master in the next decade

When I was 21 I was confused about who I was and what I wanted to do. I read a blog that said something along the lines of this: identify 3-5 skills/passions and master the intersection between those. Looking into the future, this is what I am / will master:

? Human Behavior — why do people do the things that they do. Consumer behavior. Trends. All that jazz.

? Strategy — on the Clifton Strengths Finder assessment my top two skills are Strategy & futuristic (followed by ideation, command, and achiever… I may be a little off on these ??). 

? Business — I know this is broad. And intentionally. A big reason why I started my company is because I wanted to understand. I wanted to learn. To be able to replicate success. To find a system. 

? Story — I’ve been obsessed with stories since I was a kid. I used to get home from pre-school every day and put in the Fox & the Hound (literally EVERYDAY). I’m not sure why I loved that movie so much, especially when I was so young. But that’s the kind of person I am. Obsessive. I disappear in stories & worlds. Always have. 

? Video Games & Virtual Experiences — Video games are the future of story in my opinion. If you don’t believe me play: Detroit Become Human, Quantum Break, Spiderman (PS4), Death Stranding, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Just to get your feet wet. Feel free to send me a message about your findings. I want to create experiences for people. We’re doing it now with the events that we host. But I want to take it a step further some time in the near future.

I’m mastering the intersection between those. A lot of creators get mad when they see others copying them. I’ve been guilty of that. But it’s easy to copy someone when all you’re doing is picking up a camera and talking. It’s easy to copy if all you’re doing is covering a song exactly how it was made. It’s easy to copy someone that doesn’t continuously innovate. Find your intersection. Master that. It will make you SO much more desirable.

A few of the things that I’m doing/will do to stimulate that growth:

• Running a new experiment at least once a month.
• Positioning myself as a strategist / mad scientist (because that is what I am ??).
• Diving back into 3D modeling & code. I’m rusty as hell. 
• Thinking about offering my skillset & network in exchange for equity in an esports team. A good learning experience for me as well. 

Humans the Game — Podcasting in 2020

My Humans that Game podcast is going very well. I took a break with the craziness of the holidays (and I’m surprisingly not beating myself up about it). I did want to highlight a conversation I had with my friend Mark Metry. Entrepreneur, host of Humans 2.0 (a top 100 iTunes podcast), and overall just a really good dude. I lost my text history and some of my contacts (forgot to back up my phone ?????♂?) so I’m totally sharing this from memory.

Get Higher Profile Guests

I’m a big believer that the guests don’t make the show. The host does. Otherwise retention is going to be incredibly hard to achieve. BUT, high profile guests can be leveraged to reach an audience that you may have never before. And of course those guests get something from you as well.

Something that we will probably start doing with our company podcast (Strange on Purpose) is this:

1. Research the hell out of the guest
2. Map out key questions beforehand that we know will resonate with their audience (and ours).
3. Target their social media following via social advertisements to reach more listeners.

Simple. A lot of people do it. I’ll do the same with my Humans that Game podcast. But without those high profile guests there isn’t an existing audience to tap into (organic or paid). 

Run a Competition

Again, I’m reciting this from memory so my numbers may be off. But Mark told me to consider running a competition that looked something like this:

1. Announce that you’re giving an “interview” away via social.
2. All they have to do is rate & review the show
3. Pick a winner

Mark went up a few hundred ratings/reviews because of the first competition that he did. It’s something that I plan to implement as I get back into the swing of things.

Episodes will be going up every Tuesday and Friday starting again this next week. I have some pretty big guests lined up! I’ll dive more into my interview and prep process in the next edition of this series.

My Girlfriend Posting on LinkedIn ??

For as much as I share, I’ve always been private with my personal life. That being said, my girlfriend just posted to LinkedIn and it’s kind of a big deal! Go connect with her, she’s pretty rad. She's working for a Silicon Valley backed machine learning startup & also co-founded Women’s Entrepreneurship Week in Milwaukee. I’m helping her with LinkedIn strategy and running an experiment with her account too ??. I will report on our goals, methods of testing, and findings later.

It’s still so incredible to me that so many of you take time out of your day to read my writing. I’m living out my childhood dream ??. If you’ve read this far 1). Thank you. You’re legit. And I feel like I say it all the time but it TRULY means the world to me. 2). If you’re not subscribed to this newsletter yet smash the subscribe button. 3). Give me a follow on LinkedIn to keep up with my other content. 

What are you focusing on this decade? ????

Stay strange,

#justQ ??????