Dylan Schmidt: 0:00

Welcome to Digital Podcaster. My name is Dylan Schmidt and today I have a special guest conversation I've been looking to forward to for a while now. The man's name is Josh Terry, Josh Terry has a thriving social media accounts accounts I should say. And he has a very distinct style to his videos. So before diving into today's episode, if you have Instagram or tick tock handy, I would suggest looking up the guest account unless you're if you're not familiar with him already, Josh Terry plays is the account name. And one thing you'll notice, in particular, especially on his tic toc is his distinct style of delivering content, there's not a lot of production into what he's doing. There's not. It's just simple, straightforward. It's very consistent and repetitive. And the topics he talks about inside the videos are super, some I would say for the most part, they're pretty deep, and some deeper than others. But it's not just talking about like, simple cat videos, for example. And he has his own podcast called The Josh Terry plays podcast, where he talks about learning theory, mental models and investing. And he interviews different people on his podcast. But one of the things that has drawn me to Josh Terry's social accounts from the very beginning was just his distinct style, his lack of production, and the way he delivers content and the messages that he wants to share. Because in the videos, he's reading off the screen, he's not looking directly at the camera reading. It's not like a teleprompter. He's looking off to the side. And I just love a lot of things about that which we dive into this episode. So no need to talk any further about the man. We'll just dive right into it. Here's my conversation with Josh Terry. Welcome to Digital Podcaster. Thank you for joining me today, Josh.

Josh Terry: 2:08

Thank you for having me.

Dylan Schmidt: 2:10

So I am a big fan of yours. And it's interesting, I find it interesting, at least in in this social media age we live in where you can cross you know, anyone can come across your feed, especially on something like tick tock, and you never really kind of know, but the algorithm seems to know. And you came across my feed feels like a while ago, in tick tock years, which like dog years, probably it's like six months is like

Josh Terry: 2:40

very short years.

Dylan Schmidt: 2:42

And, and immediately, I was drawn right away to your style, like everything about like, I'm not a big like TV watcher. like social media, but I love reading books. And I immediately I was like, I love what Josh is doing. And I go to your page. And what do I see, I don't see these hyper produce videos, I see this. This consistency, this mastery at delivery of one type of format. And I was just instantly inspired. I was like, save the video follow. This is incredible. And I didn't even think of having you on the podcast first because it was just like I was just in the consumption mode. And I was like, Wait, we can talk about this. This makes sense. So one of the a lot a lot of the things I want to talk to you about but what is your background in like, how did you get started with making videos specifically for social media? Cuz I know you have a music background, but I'd love to just know a little bit more about your background because it almost like hidden in some ways, if that makes sense.

Josh Terry: 3:52

Yeah, I grew up in the music and art world. And I wanted to be a rock star. And I studied music for a very long time. And I became a music teacher. And I did that for a very long time. As I did that, I was also a content creator. I am classic 10 years to an overnight success type of person. When I looked back at what had happened to me, I realized it had been actually exactly 10 years before I got any sort of success on social media. I take full credit for being terrible in the past. And I spent a lot of time making music content that wasn't I was a skilled musician, but I was not making music that was the type of music that I should have made. I wasn't playing to my strengths. If you Well, you planned

Dylan Schmidt: 5:02

different types of instruments, right?

Josh Terry: 5:05

Not just Yeah, I taught. Yeah. I taught violin, piano, guitar voice, music composition, technology, songwriting, and probably some other things.

Dylan Schmidt: 5:17

Yeah, my background is audio as well. Like, I think that's maybe why, somehow through the ethers, even just a simple video, my background is audio, like I went to school for audio engineering, got into some audio production, work at a recording studio, and then got into marketing and podcasting. And then came across you with more personal development. So I'm like, that's that this is starting to connect the dots. Okay, so, so you're making music?

Josh Terry: 5:43

Yeah. And it's interesting, I've noticed that a lot of musicians follow me. I learned a lot of the lessons that I talked about today, inside of the music world. i be i became a workaholic when I was inside of the music world. And I learned a lot about, you know, skill development, and all sorts of things in the music world. And I learned to apply them in a lot of different places. And it's interesting that I've noticed that musicians do seem to, to pop up on my page quite often. comments and things like that. It's neat.

Dylan Schmidt: 6:22

Interesting, yeah, I wonder. It's like, there's a, like a certain introspection or something that I feel like you helped me identified myself. That it, like, it's, if I had to distill it in the simplest way, it's like, consuming, consuming your content, makes me makes me create better content, because it helps me kind of realize what I'm approaching, it's like, it's taking something that seems abstract and making it grounded, and I guess real, in a lot of ways.

Josh Terry: 6:57

I'm really happy to hear that, because I really like exploring what you might call the flip side of the coin. I really like taking ideas commonly accepted ideas of self development, or just ways to live a life and finding an angle of it that people don't typically think about. For example, you know, one that I talk a lot about is this idea of, you know, pushing as hard as you can on something, and you know, never giving up. And I what I say is, you know, that's great advice for a certain subset of people. But for another subset of people, they're wired to never give up. They're there, they're wired to keep pushing. And for them to follow that advice, they're going to just do it too much. And it'll it'll wreck them. Right. So I think that that type of thinking of, you know, taking a commonly accepted thing, and, and digging a little bit deeper into it to understand basically, okay, here's a commonly accepted idea. Why is it actually used? What is it solving? So when does it matter in my life in the context of my life, and when do I need different ideas? I think that that process one, it's extremely helpful in general to do that, but also going through that process seems to help people come up with new ideas and enable them to come up with their own independent insights in their own creative endeavors.

Dylan Schmidt: 8:39

That makes sense and it what I think of when I think of like my own content endeavors or create creative endeavors, I kind of use content and creative and creation kind of loosely, I guess, like, loosely but pretty similar. Especially in the in the realm of like, social media, for example. I I feel like about once a month I go through existential crisis of like, what am I doing only once a month? I mean, well, not. Every other day, probably, but all right. All right. You got we just did. Okay. Weekly.

Josh Terry: 9:23

I mean, I was gonna feel really lonely, man.

Dylan Schmidt: 9:26

Okay, then. Yeah. Not once a month. Yeah, definitely. Not once a month. It's I guess if I never really

Josh Terry: 9:33

got it right there winner. Yeah. Okay,

Dylan Schmidt: 9:34

that's good to know. That's really good now, because it feels like it feels like a constant battle of like, talking at somebody. And why am I say like, in almost a lesson in repetition, a lot of ways do you. Like I'm curious what kinds of things you've you've learned from a higher level of creating content so regularly around different areas, not not the content itself, specifically, but just the process. Because with music, it seems as though there is a little bit of a different process. Because you can play the same song and people like, wow, never heard the song, right? I hear the same song live, but you're just playing the same song. And another thing with content, it feels like constantly trying to say, not not something new, but even if it's the same thing in a different way. Whereas you can't really do that with this song. You can't be like, Well, anyway, here's Wonderwall. You know, have you probably have thought maybe once or twice about the differences in content creation for social media versus music, I'd imagine.

Josh Terry: 10:49

I have Yeah. And I mean, okay, so, the existential crisis, the creator of the creative goes deep, right? This is not a small thing. It's, I mean, you can, you can break it into simple pieces that are useful. You know, there's, there's times when there's immense utility in going, Hey, look, your, your existential crisis here, in your creative endeavor is just too much indecision. So, you know, it's time to just pick a thing and move on. Right, you know, and there's, there's times when that's, that's immensely valuable. But, but the actual thing that's happening in that crisis that creatives find themselves in so often, is it's really deep. And what it is, is, it's, it's something that's baked into the nature of your creative, which is to reach out into new things, right? So a creative by nature has to reach out into infinity, infinity options into the, the chaotic void of the universe, if you will, grab something, pull it back, take a look at it and go, Okay, well, what am I going to do with this? And that's, that's what creatives do, there's, there's no way of getting around that that base level thing is, creators come up with new stuff. And it's beautiful. And if they don't do it, they feel like their lives are meaningless. And at the same time, it's incredibly dangerous. It's incredibly difficult to do something like that. It's it's basically, you know, going into the wilderness to pet the dragon, you know, as a day job. You know, that that's, that's what being a creative is. And if that's what your life is, then if you want to do it regularly, if you want to learn to, you know, create content, often you you asked me about, you know, what it's been like to create so regularly and and I've been posting something every day for the past two years, I guess maybe by now, I should probably say two and a half years, I'm not sure. But yeah, I've been going at it for a while here, with pretty good regularity. And if you want to do that, I don't know of any other way, but to look at the balance of order and chaos. It's it's it's a it, you know, I hate to get so deep, so quick. But in reality, I don't think there's any way to get around it is we survive and function by how well how well, our lives are balanced between order and chaos. Everyone has different needs for order and chaos. And everyone thrives at different points. So to give some examples of this, and there's, there's simple terms for it, right? So Tony Robbins is well known for a framework of the six human needs. And the first two are certainty and uncertainty, right. And essentially, that is ordering chaos in a lot of different ways. But these things, what they are is is we have to have a set of things that we know, and things that side of things that we don't know. And we have to have a set of things that are fixed, and have a set of things that can move, and without that we cannot survive. So if you think about it in terms of certainty and uncertainty, if you know exactly what you're going to have for breakfast and you know exactly who you're going to speak to throughout the day, and you know what your day is going to be like and when your next breath is if you know every single thing about your day you die from boredom, you go insane. It's just it's not an option. You could not do that. On the flip side, if it was all uncertain, if you didn't know what you were going to have for breakfast, if you walked into your kitchen, and you looked at that round thing that's white. And normally, you know, people put, you know, granola inside of it, and you didn't know that object was called a bowl, it could be called anything. You can't function that way, you need a fixed thing that's like, Okay, I wake up, and there's a box, like, there's a, you know, a panel above my sink with a door and I open that, and there's a box inside of it, and I opened the box. And I know, there's stuff that's edible. And I pour that into this big round thing we call a bowl. And then I take this white stuff from the fridge and I pour that all of those are fixed points, it's certainty. But then also, you know, what you do with your day is kind of up in the air. And that's uncertainty. And so we need this balance in order to survive, everybody needs it. And everybody has different needs for the amounts. So creatives tend to need a little bit more uncertainty. And they can handle a little bit less certainty. That's their their preference, they want change, they want to explore, they want to explore ideas. I'm going to tie this back into content creation. The problem with it is that when your passion and your work is creative, now you are diving into uncertainty all the time. So if you're diving into uncertainty all the time, it's very easy for it to take take over to the point that you don't know what you're going to talk about, you don't know what you're going to make, you don't know what the camera angle is going to be. You don't know. If people are gonna like it or not, you don't know how good it needs to be, you don't need to know if you need to think about quantity, or quality or any of the other things that you think about. That is where the existential crisis comes from, is that mess of unknowns that you desire, because you are creative, and you want to offer to the world, some new manifestation of order, where you take those random things, and you go, this is my thing that I think is valuable, here it is world take a look. The danger is that it's all too much. So for us to get to a point of productivity, where we can create often, we have to look at it and realize, hey, if this is unlimited chaos, if this is unlimited creativity, I'm going to fall into an existential crisis, I'm not going to create, I'm just going to, you know, sit here, a blithering idiot, overtaken by too many things. And then you have to accept, okay, that's too much to handle. So what could I handle? And I think the way to do that is to set limitations, set limitations on some aspect of what you're doing. So that you have fixed predictable, predictable elements. And then you have areas that are now essentially protected by those fixed elements that you can play with.

Dylan Schmidt: 18:39

And that makes a ton of sense when looking at what because it's

Josh Terry: 18:45

obvious.

Dylan Schmidt: 18:47

In one way, I know that there's a part that's not obvious to the, the audience, in your case, that you could say, okay, obviously, we know what's fixed in this realm, there will be a camera, a straight to, you know, the camera setup, the camera shot is the same, the how I'm going to speak is the same, but, and then like, what the captions will look like, like the creative element of it, not the creative but the visual element, I guess, is going to be this fixed way. Hashtags will be fixed. Caption may be a little different but the message is the uncertain element of looking at like yours like would be the uncertain variable of your content creation is that right?

Josh Terry: 19:38

Yeah, yeah. For the people that that don't don't know the stuff that I make. I make one minute videos on tick tock, and these I've gotten sort of, I guess, two nicknames. One is king of side profile and the other is advice Daddy, I'm fine with that, but

Dylan Schmidt: 19:56

the does he realize me see which one does your license plate so

Josh Terry: 20:00

The man if it's the license plate, it's got to be advice that assume Jesus. But, but the the videos are all locked in place with the same tripod. And they're all with me looking in the same direction. And I just read off something that I've written like a zombie. And that that's, that's kind of the basic structure of what I do. So yet, there are a lot of fixed points in there that enabled me to actually be more varied in other ways than most creators are. So to give you a little background, the way the reason I was able to start doing this, the reason why I got to a point like that is actually from another area of my life. So when I was 25, I did the same thing. Everybody at 25 does, which is bottom out. life sucked at 25. You know, I was I was depressed and friend had committed suicide, and I was in debt and all of the things it was terrible. And I hit a point where I started to turn things around. And the way I turned things around was I realized that I was obsessed with getting things right and doing the big dream. You know, I want I'd wanted to become a rock star, right? That was the thing that I cared about a lot. And I was so obsessed with these big dreams, that the things in front of me that needed to be get done today felt disgusting, they felt shameful, they felt repulsive, they felt wrong. And eventually, I had to come to a point where I went, Well, look, you can't do those big things that you think you want to do, or that you think you deserve to do or that you think you could become like whatever you think it is, you're not there kid. Right? You're not at that point. So from that, I sort of started to ask myself this question over and over again, what can you do? Right? And what can you do is very different question than what could you do? Or what should you do? You know, those those are very future oriented questions. What can you do is much more in the present. And at that time of my life, the first what can you do that I got out of it was I just started taking a trash bag a week, out of my house and throwing stuff away. That was kind of the first thing. The next thing was like $5 Extra on my student loans every month, it did not start glamorously. But here's the thing, when I gave up on those big steps, and I asked myself about what I could do now, like what I was capable of, currently, those things became an accomplishment. And once something becomes an accomplishment, now you gain pride and you gain a possibility for a positive loop that moves you forward. So when I was obsessed with my big dreams, taking a trash bag a week out and put an extra $5 on my student loans, felt pathetic. When I said oh, wait, no, you are kind of pathetic, you're a mess. Now taking a trash bag week, and $5 Extra student loans his victory I am. And I was able to look at the impossible things that I was trying to do and set them down probably for the first time in my life. And so, over the next five years, I went through this process where that was what I just I did over and over and over again. I'm still doing it to this day. And I'm trying to like like the people in business that I'm working with, I'm trying to say this with a get them to ask that question. The people that I coach, I try to ask them this question over and over again. Like I I'm coming at things from this framework where it's like, okay, the big amazing thing could happen. But what can we do now? And and sometimes you want to think like what can we do now to move us towards that thing. But mostly the more you you focus on what you're capable of Now, usually you do 20 Things like that of what you're capable of now, and you're a smarter, more capable person who's able to come up with a better dream anyways. Right? So I really emphasize this. So when I when I had the shift in content creation, I had made music stuff for years and I wanted to make thought content of some sort for A long time, but like I'd get in front of a camera and like look at the camera and I'd forget my lines. And I'd look at the camera and stutter just, it was a mess. It was annoying. That just another point of failure for me great, great spot to feel shame. You know,

Dylan Schmidt: 25:13

all that editing afterwards like, I don't want to edit all this. Oh, yeah, it's great.

Josh Terry: 25:18

And you get to look at every every flaw of your existence. Yes. Wonderful. Every. I still feel that. Yeah. Yeah. So I was basically at a point where I had, one of the big things that I'd given up on was content creation. Because I realized, Hey, I needed to get my life together, I needed to get my finances together, I need to just just handle me. So I'd done that. I'd set content aside a little bit and sort of given up on if you will, and, but in the process of getting my life together, I was doing some research, and I did some research on I was looking at buying some houses at the time. And I saw I was studying real estate, and I just found some information that I thought was interesting. And so I thought, Hi, I'd really like to make a video about this. This is this is cool. It's just something I want to share, which is ultimately kind of what all creatives want to do is when it comes down to is there's just something that though they want to talk about. And so I started to make another video. And I prepared it. I wrote a script. I you know, I figured out how I wanted to share the idea. And I got the camera got a set up. And I looked at the camera and I started to record. Remember this this question had been like rattling around my brain for five years, like, what can you do? And I had been applying it in all these different places. And I started to record I looked at the camera. And it was this terrible as always. I like you know, I forgot the line like three times because I'm a conceptual person. I don't remember details. That's not who I am. It's, it's just not my thing. Yeah. Like, I like I've struggled with memorization my entire life. It's not going to change. This is like, I mean, yeah, you can develop your memory, but it's like, it's not my pocket. So I looked at the camera, and I couldn't remember. And then I remembered it. And then I stuttered through it because I felt shame in my existence. Because I'd been trying to make content for 10 years. And I was looking at camera again. And what will people think of me and I'm a terrible person and all of that stuff, you know? And I was like, this is awful. Yeah. I was like, here I am human. And again, I hate it. And so I thought, okay, here I am looking at this camera again. And I hate it. What if I just don't look at the camera? I'm bad at look at the camera. Right? I faced up to that. And in a way that's like the dream of wanting to become a rock star that like you can you can extrapolate this back down to something as simple as, oh, look, you want to look at the camera and you're terrible at it. You're not good at it. So I was like, alright, well, I'm not the person who can look at a camera right now. So I won't. So I didn't look at the camera. So I turned away from the camera. This is gonna be weird. Well, I'll record it this way. So I started recording it again. And I forgot my lie. I was like, ah, eight this. I can't remember my lines. I was like, Well, okay, what if I just read it off the screen like a zombie? Because I can't remember it. And I went okay, so I read it off the screen like a zombie and it went viral.

Dylan Schmidt: 28:49

Amazing. their very first

Josh Terry: 28:50

video went viral. That's

Dylan Schmidt: 28:53

that's like, confirmation from the, from the universe that maybe something is in the right direction. Probably.

Josh Terry: 29:01

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, of course, I'm immensely grateful for the fact that I got such fast feedback. Right. You know, that's, that's lovely. Yeah, but but the reality is, I had been applying this idea in different places for five years. A lot of the stuff that I learned I learned even before then about creativity, right. And I'd learned it inside of music. I'd had a bunch of insights, but I had skill sets that were so ingrained, it was really hard for me to apply these lessons inside of inside music. So I ended up with this new subject, right? I just made a video about real estate because it was just a thing I was thinking about at the moment. And, and then I as I went to, to do it, I applied every lesson I could possibly think of that I understood that I knew to be true because it had been benefiting me for the fast past five years as I've been applying these things, and I just applied it to this new place. And, and it was just so much easier. And then I started to do that more regularly. So to tie this back into limitations, because this connects, I really believe that the limitations should be all the things you're terrible at, and all of the things that will give you an existential crisis. So my limitations became camera angle, it became I read off of a script, the limitations became, okay, well, I'm, I'm struggling with all these points. So these are the points that I'm going to make default consistent points, I'm just gonna just gonna do the thing that is the lowest barrier to entry, it gets me through it. And now I can lean on my strengths. So now I have this very odd situation where there's a bunch of things about what I do that's very, very similar. But I get to talk about whatever I want. Because I've established so much consistency in other areas, that now I get to pick lots of lots of subject matters, which makes me very happy, because I like to talk about lots of subject matters. And in the past, I've tried to niche back down by picking specific subject matters. And it's felt terrible, because I'm good at covering different subject matters. That's my pocket. I'm not good at, you know, a bunch of these performative things that don't work for me. Now, over time, I get to branch out, like, I'm changing some of the production elements of the things that I'm doing now. And I'll do that more over time. But that's just, you know, me growing little by little and the ways that are comfortable. But yeah, I really believe that like, understanding this concept of what can you do, and stop doing the things that you're bad at, I think that this concept can enable you to start leaning on your strengths, and then setting healthy boundaries and limits, which, by the way, is a more conceptual term for niching, down, essentially, setting boundaries and limits, setting boundaries and limits based on your weaknesses and the things that you don't care about, and the things that annoy you and frustrate you. And the things that you get overly indecisive about that just drive you nuts, set limits there in the things that you do. And then you get to play in the places where you're comfortable. And you get to do chaotic things, the way creatives love to, in a place where you're built for.

Dylan Schmidt: 32:51

Yeah, that's fascinating, in a lot of ways, what you, you live seems to me like, rebellious in so many ways, because of, of how frequently people are, how well they they have a hard time being themselves, maybe when the recording content. And they it's like all or nothing, if I can't create the most original new creative thing that or replicate something else that they saw, then I'm not going to do it. And then if I try to keep that up, then I get burned out. So what you're, you're applying in your own life and, and showing us really I could see how it could easily apply to any type of creative endeavor. Whether or not it's social media. Our learning really, is this, I noticed you it

Josh Terry: 33:48

applies in entrepreneurship, it applies in scaling a business, it applies in technology, it applies everywhere. It's it's absolutely needed. And it's and you're right there is a rebelliousness to it. It's a rebelliousness against the concept of the problem is you and you need to be better. Yes, because the reality is, oftentimes, you've been trying to be better your entire life. That's not to say you don't need to be better, right? There's many times where you need to be better. But a lot of the people that struggle with creative endeavors, they've tried to be better their entire lives. And that is not something they need to keep working on. They're already awesome. They've already learned tons of stuff. This This isn't some statement of Oh, you're fine. As you are, know, the people that want to make stuff have worked on being better their entire lives. That's all they care about. Yeah. So for a person like that, who tries to improve and tries to build skill sets. If they're running against an impossible problem. Their solution needs to not be be better. Their solution needs to be Oh, that doesn't work. Do something else that works.

Dylan Schmidt: 35:04

Yeah. Like I've been doing bodybuilding exercises, and maybe my goal is to be a marathon runner. Like, wait a minute, I don't I double down on these actual effective things do you think maybe some of that stems from, like in school, it seems like you're set up in a way we're set up in a way that it's, this is how you're going to operate in the everyday world, you almost need to fit in, or you're going to have trouble staying afloat. And when it comes to creative, creatively speaking, it seems like, here's how you need to create in order to fit in, in order to succeed in order to keep going. And it's obviously not the case. But from my perspective, perception, especially with speaking with you makes me think of like, how much how much schooling sets ones up to not think freely. But maybe things you know, I don't know, maybe Austin schools are different to

Josh Terry: 36:02

yes or no. Yeah. So yes, in the fact that it does manifest in schools. No, in that it's much, much deeper than that. So the reality is, we are biologically wired to ignore the things that we're best at. Because humans are imitative creatures. From birth, in order to learn, children have to look outside of themselves in order to survive. That is how you do it. This is an absolute necessity is not bad. And like, I want to be very clear to not judge this principle, it's actually necessary. We have to look at others and go out there making sounds, what type of sounds are they making? Oh, let me see if I can imitate those sounds. And you know, the baby starts with all possible sounds and slowly eliminates them until they're imitating their their parents and you know, Dad, dad, Mama, right. And now Now we're getting somewhere, right. And that is in a lot of ways of study and imitation. And then you know, walking Well, you know, children learn to walk, because everyone around them as walking, I don't I don't know that child, without seeing any other person walking would naturally learned to walk that seems doubtful to me. Maybe there's been some studies done, I hope not. That sounds like a horrible evil study. But you know, I, I don't think it would be possible. But generally speaking, you know, all of these things, we have to learn them through watching others. So the thing that comes out of this is, what we're doing is we're looking at where we lack. And this is the result is as we grow older, we start to look at where we are lacking, and what others have. And then we tried to build those things within ourselves, we see the skills that other people have, we imitate them and try to develop them. Well. That's good and necessary. But with it comes the fact that we spent our entire lives looking outward, we spent our entire lives not looking at what we have, but what we don't. And how we need to be better. It is the default state of a human being by the nature of development. So if that's the case, what's going to make you notice that you're good at something? It's just not even really? Likely? You know? Yeah, because even not even not, not only this. skill sets are habit for me. So the thing that you are best at you were good at it when you were like two. And you started leaning on it when you were three. So if you were good at social interaction, you probably got good at social interaction. young, very young. And now you navigate the world through social interaction. But you don't know that you do that. Because it's just the way you do it. Because it's a habit. It is your default. To go, Oh, hey, I'm struggling with this. Let me call this person to help me with it. You don't realize, oh, some people are really bad at that. And that's a monetizable skill that would never cross your mind. If you're a person who naturally goes and looks at charts to solve a problem, you aren't going to ask assume that that's a monetizable skill. Because to you, it's just what has to be done. Because your mechanism for solving things was independent analysis, right? You did this when you were five, in some form, you went and looked at the data. And so it became a habit from a very young age. So there's this combination of habit formation and imitation. That makes it almost impossible for us to automatically like without conscious thought, know what we're good at.

Dylan Schmidt: 40:38

Do you think social media too plays a role in that? Because we look outwardly is when we imitate for one, we see what's working, and what's going, like, what should we be doing and what style and then when we imitate that thing, we look to the the markers that show us if we're successful, most of the time being some type of engagement on social media, which, you know, if you don't go viral

Josh Terry: 41:07

early, yeah, it could be a good sign or not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like to use the example of Mr. Beast, a lot of people love to emulate Mr. Beast, and I argue that a lot of people look at the wrong thing. So we look at stuff on social media to imitate, but we imitate the wrong thing. Like, we imitate the signs of success, not the actual success. So when we look at Mr. Beast, we go and look at what he does now. And my favorite video of Mr. Beast is his of the video of him that's like, I don't know, hours long. It's like a day long video of him counting to a million or something. That's his victory was he got himself to a state where he said, I don't know, I'll count to a million on YouTube and see what happens. It was his capability to get that open minded about what he was going to create. That enabled him to figure out what he was going to create. So when people look at Mr. Beast, they go, Oh, well, I see he created this thing. So I'm going to create it to it's like, no, you're not, you're not going to out create Mr. Beast at what Mr. Beast creates, that ain't gonna happen, I'm gonna give $50 million away the best data. Yeah, like, like, you're not going to make the same content that that person makes as well as he makes it. But you can look at how he got to that you can look at the thing that made it possible for him to figure out what his strength was. So I think it's, it's really, really important to go through this process where you, you figure out what you're bad at. And stop trying to get good at it. I mean, there's times, obviously, we'll add the disclaimer, there's times where you got to get good stuff. But that you need to go through a practice where if you're struggling a ton to do a creative thing, and you feel like you're a natural born creative. If you're struggling a ton, then you're probably trying to get good at something that you just need to throw out the window, and go somewhere else. So one more thing I'll add to this somebody. I was talking to somebody else about this recently, like another element of finding your strength. Because Because mostly I've talked about like, how wired we are to not notice it. So this is this is a way you can notice it. If you want to know that. If you if you're trying to figure out some of the things that you're better at. One of the simplest ways is just to give up on stuff that you're bad at. But you do need alternatives, right? So the way you do that is observe yourself in activities that must get done that you get done. And see how you do them. So an example of this is you need to move, you're going to move it's not like you're not going to move, you know, the lease is up, you're heading out and you start to go through the process of moving and you think okay, well I need to find a new place to live. So I'm going to look up the crime rates of all the other areas in the city and I'm gonna look up you know, the, the rent appreciation over the past five years throughout the city and you know, five other details and you start to do that, and then three hours in you find yourself confused and a mess and you're like, Oh my God, I don't know where to live. I'm going to call my three best friends and ask them Okay, so you're good at networking. Now, you know,

Dylan Schmidt: 44:58

I was like three gets reached

Josh Terry: 45:02

Exactly right. You know, like, first, you have three friends, okay? You're better than average at networking. Alright,

Dylan Schmidt: 45:09

teach me, you, you,

Josh Terry: 45:11

you lean on them for the advice. And you have, like you, let's say, Okay, let's go farther, you call the three best friends that you have that are good at knowing where to live. Like, okay, so you know about networking, right? You're good at building social networks and communities. That's your strength, right? That's your thing. You're not good at detail oriented work. Now we know that, right? So these things that you've been doing your entire life that have to get done, that you get done, if you reverse engineer them, often the answer of what your strengths are is within them.

Dylan Schmidt: 45:54

I love that I love I love reverse engineering, and I've never heard it, in that way of applying it to things are already doing to identify the strengths because I was I was wondering, I was hoping you weren't gonna end on the go more into the strengths. And then I was like, gonna be living my life. Wondering how to go pluck that. Cuz I love it. And

Josh Terry: 46:15

here are my strengths. Yeah. Because yeah, it's hard. Yeah. Yeah. So the first thing I think it's so critical, if you've never tried it, like, like, so many people have not tried this is just give up. Just give up on stuff that sucking, right. And I don't mean give up and the way of like, oh, so this thing I tried, and I'm never going to try it again. It's gone. It's like no, no, no, like, the thing that you're working on this particular way that you're trying to do it, just stop. It's terrible. You've been trying it for six hours, you do it every day, and it never works. That thing, don't do it. What's the five other ways you could do it? One of them you might be good at? Not always. But you, you get a success this way, like five times, and you start to get a pretty good idea of some of the things that you're good at. Like, I'm good at improvisation. I'm good at working with concepts. I'm good at making mental connections. These are things that I'm good at. I come to intuitive leaps on ideas. And that's how I solve a lot of problems. Where, you know, I mean, math isn't my strong sight to do using math as a as an example, I would be the guy that would do a math problem. I'd be like, Oh, I know how to solve it. And, and then like, somebody stopped me from writing on the board and say, how do you solve it? I go, Well, I don't know, just let me write the answer down. Give me a second. And then I write the answer down and then write the problem afterwards. And actually, when I studied math, I started to get these Zen at it for a little while. Math is sort of more difficult for me, but I actually did that, on occasion is, I would know the answer before I would know that the solution to the problem because I'm so I'm super intuitive. I jumped towards things. So you know, if you've you know that about yourself, it's like, okay, so don't put yourself in a position where the only thing that you do is drudgery work, you know, like very measured steps. If that's all you do, you're gonna you're gonna be out of your zone of usefulness, you know, all the time. So, so, but I did, I discovered these, you know, through this process of like, you know, letting go stuff that I was terrible at and starting to lean on these other areas, just finding new ways to do things that were how I would naturally do them. One other one other way to approach this that I love is Jack Conte, the founder of Patreon was in a little band called Pomplamoose on YouTube. And they were not succeeding. They were doing a terrible job at being a famous band on YouTube. They wanted to do a less terrible job. And he was like, writing original songs, and they just weren't getting received well, and they were great musicians. It just, it just wasn't working. So the way he started to think about it is like, okay, let's think about it, where it's like, there's a box of things that you care about, and there's a box of things that you don't care about. And he asked himself, What do I care about with music? In he says, he thought to himself, I care about how the song sounds. So he cares about tambours he's cares about heart nice melodies, rhythms, instrumentation, you know, what instruments are playing to create what sound does the things he really cares about? And that's his artistic expression. He thought about, okay, so what do I don't not care about? He thought about for a little while, and he realized, oh, I don't care what song I play. So they covered Britney Spears and became one of the first cover bands on YouTube. They got some big, big enough that it was worthwhile to start Patreon. Because the idea for Patreon came from them trying to monetize Pomplamoose. And it worked. And it worked because he realized he had no emotional attachment, the song that he was playing. And I'm not claiming that he was bad at writing songs in this case, it I don't I don't know, I actually, I haven't looked up some of his any of his original songs. But, but he wasn't, it wasn't his thing. He wasn't super attached to that part of what was going on. So he was able to let go of it. And then set a limitation, which is, in that case, I'm going to just do the mainstream thing. And this is something anyone can do and should do in any creative endeavor, which is take a piece of what you're doing that you don't care so much about. And just go with the thing that works. There's a quote of Elon Musk, that is when starting a company, it's important to limit the number of miracles required for success. And the reason why he said that was he was at a meeting of people working on the what they call Hyperloop. And there's a big debate right now on the Hyperloop of something along the lines of do we use? I think it was like, do we use wheels? Or do we use maglev or something along those lines? Where it's like, do we just use a regular old wheel to run this train on a track? Or do we use some fancy thing? I don't remember if it was levitation or some other thing. And he had kind of gone back and forth on it himself. But he thought about it. He finally concluded, look, wheels work. Wheels are pretty simple. So you know, it's like, we're already doing 20 impossible things to make this new invention. So if we can just use a wheel, let's go with it.

Dylan Schmidt: 52:54

Yeah.

Josh Terry: 52:56

So in your creative endeavor, there's a bunch of stuff like that. Yeah. And it's different for every person, like, you know, for some musicians, they might care very much about what song they're creating. But they don't care in the slightest what instruments they use. So it's like, okay, use a guitar. Yeah. You know, like, yeah, it's hard work.

Dylan Schmidt: 53:18

And with content creation, whatever camera, you know, Which camera do I use? And it's like, yes. Do you care about the camera? Or are you just trying to get the image? What do you or do you care about the message? And then does the camera affect the message? Kind of? Thing is? How I would relate it to that, if that sounds accurate.

Josh Terry: 53:36

In the answer is, if you find joy in picking the camera that creates the amazing effects that you want, then you should probably pick the camera. If you don't, if it's just a place where you're having an existential crisis, because you're afraid that picking the wrong camera is going to make you fail. You need to just pick whatever the best mainstream camera is, and go with

Dylan Schmidt: 53:59

it. Yeah, that is incredible. And I don't I know, I don't want to take too much time. That is, you've just distilled down on that section of something that I teach people, podcasting, and some of the most commonly asked questions or some of the things that they don't want to focus on the strengths. They want to share a message with the world. They don't care about the microphone. They don't care about really, the type of camera, a lot of the gear or tools like Oh, Zoom good, or should I use Riverside, these different apps and it's like, it's always, I've always felt a struggle, or some conflict because I'm like, it doesn't matter. Like you could record it on a tape recorder. Since start a patron send it out. And that's fine. You could you know, make duplicate as long as you get it out that what's important to you getting the message out which a lot of people that's the main message getting that out. Thank you for Thank you. Bye bye. Like, thank you. There's one let me there's one less existential crisis. I'll send you a Yeah.

Josh Terry: 55:06

I'll add one one last way of aspect to it like one additional thing, which is people are they do not creatives do not look at themselves as humans who need to function enough. They look at the thing outside of themselves and think that they need to make it work. When in reality, if you are a creative and you're functional, you're going to make stuff. So if you think of yourself as the machine that makes stuff, and you need to optimize it, so that it makes the most in the best stuff, then you need to start making decisions based on what makes you function, not based on what works, not based on what is right. So when we look at these decisions of you know, what podcasting software am I going to use? What video editing software am I going to use? The answer is, you're gonna use whatever one gets you moving, whatever one gets you functional. And the thing that makes us the most dysfunctional is indecision. So the first step is pick something. And then you go use it, you decide if it made you functional, you know, beyond that, you see if like, Okay, did I have a good workflow? And then you make a new decision, where it's like, Yes, I'm going to use No, I'm going to switch, you don't weigh that decision back and forth, because that's the slowest part, slow. So think of yourself as the entity that needs to be cared for. Think of yourself as the entity that you need to take on responsibility for you have charge over, that you need to put in the most optimized functional state. And when you start thinking that way, you start making very different decisions.

Dylan Schmidt: 57:09

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense in how, how you just described the last 10 years of my life. Because if that indecision of mine to mine, I'm glad to know about trying to find which of the thing it's an infinite struggle. Yeah, yeah. And not that it's like, oh, you know, I've reached some bliss point of never ending, obviously, talking about existential crisis, but, but at least but it's better, I will take those existential crisis crises over any time, then living in that vague in like hazy indecision of like, abs won't move forward. Or I'm not, I don't know what to do. So I'm not doing anything like, to me, that's obviously led to something good. But if someone about six months in to feeling that way, could have told me that I could not have to feel that way, then I would have taken that. But I know that things all unravel how they're supposed to. And, you know, we're at a time when

Josh Terry: 58:11

the goal is to look at decisiveness as a form of skill development. Or as a skill that can be developed, where it's like, the goal is to move towards more decisiveness. It's not to be a decisive person. Yeah, it's to move towards decisiveness. I'm an artist, I have a highly open personality. Yeah, I, I had a conversation with a friend the other day that I was like, Oh, my God, I just realized him on mushrooms is my normal. You know, like, That's how far apart we are in on the personality spectrum, you know, just in terms of my natural predilection towards creativity or whatever. Yeah, you know. So, so, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to have 20 moments of indecision today, and that's just the way it is. Yeah. And, and, and five of them are going to be existential crises. Yeah. Yeah. But that's, you know, that's 100 less than it was on any given day. Five years ago. Yeah. Or 200. Lest I, you know, I don't know. Because, I mean, depression, you know, I was very depressed and anxious. Depression. Anxiety is basically a constant indecision. Like that's, that's pretty much what that is.

Dylan Schmidt: 59:34

Yeah, it feels like I choices. Maybe.

Josh Terry: 59:38

Yeah, yeah. I mean, anxiety is essentially future problem solving. And future problem solving is indecision. Like that's what that is. Yeah. So it's hard to even say that they're separate things. So so the goal is to move towards decisiveness where you go, Okay, I'm going to just steer myself in this direction, where I will make it a practice to make more quick decisions and let myself let go of some of these things that I need to weigh back and forth. So that I can choose where I weigh things back and forth. And that's my creative gift to the world.

Dylan Schmidt: 1:00:17

And that choice is such a powerful feeling as a creator, not feeling like, like I don't it feels like I don't know, sometimes creatively, like, you doesn't feel like sometimes it's even a choice because it feels like you're doing something because you have to do something that's not feeling very creative, that feels like a job or something. But choose. Oh,

Josh Terry: 1:00:40

yeah, it's so difficult. Because the The beautiful thing that creatives have to offer is their willingness to go into that place of limbo. It's their willingness to engage in some of that indecision. To go I don't I think the way that we used to do things, guys, I don't like it. I think we should try something new. And here's these million options. And you know what, I think this one here, this is the one we should do. That's what a creative does. Yeah, it's it's it's a it's a it's a it's an act of incredible beauty and leadership and building order out of chaos. It's astonishing. But if we let it be every step of our lives, it makes us impossible makes it impossible for us to do it where we want to. Yeah, so if we want to offer the value that we really have to offer the world, we have to let ourselves be decisive in these other areas so that we can explore and the places that really matter.

Dylan Schmidt: 1:01:44

Yeah, that makes sense to thinking about particular, especially older authors that I I really, like, maybe they aren't alive or anything, but I think of them in their books. But they didn't really try to do everything. It's like they just kind of stuck with the writing was their medium to express their ideas. And I'm grateful they did that. And grateful they didn't try to, you know, do every type of medium. They just stuck with those things that still today I'll reread a book and oh, man, this is so good. This is there's nothing like this. Because they zeroed in on it. Incredible how I agree. How do you work with people? I know you've got a Bitcoin investment going on, which is obviously very different than what we've talked about. Do you work with you? And you also mentioned creativity workshop? How are you working with people these days? Are you still teaching also, by the way?

Josh Terry: 1:02:42

I don't teach anymore. I I am working occasionally one on one with folks. And then, yeah, I'm currently I'm really fascinated by Bitcoin. And I'm working in that area where I've created some investment stuff. But I've mostly been focusing in on I need to build out the business structure of what I'm doing. So, you know, I there's, I need to explore the sponsorship arena, because now that some of my channels have gotten larger, it's, you know, that's a highly profitable way to sustain everything. So if I get that sorted,

Dylan Schmidt: 1:03:27

like a NASCAR jacket, where you have like, kill, there we go. Maybe

Josh Terry: 1:03:32

I should just go for it. You know, I like that idea. Yeah, I like that. But But uh, you know, if I can sort out some of that aspect of, of the content creation business, you know, that makes it very easy for me to, you know, build out more content and do more of what I want to do. So I've been focusing in on on the the sponsorships, the the Bitcoin mining project, and then I'm going to be launching the book here. It's written, it's getting edited, it's got the artwork finished. It's going to be published, it should be within the next six months is outside of those things. We'll see where it goes.

Dylan Schmidt: 1:04:17

Yeah, well, I'll be making sure that depending on when people are listening to this, in the future, I'm saying, I'll be make sure to update the show notes. So you'll see the more recent Josh Terry links and what he's up to. I'm excited to read wonderful. I can't wait to hear more about that. Like, I've been Yeah, the the and no, time's up like but the

Josh Terry: 1:04:44

Yeah, I'll give it quick. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the book is about. Yeah, a lot of the book is about limitations. That's that's kind of where I focused on that. Yeah, the easiest way to find me probably will be Josh cherry plays.com Links, that's that's kind of the the easiest thing to go towards is like I keep that updated. And that that's whatever is, you know, the most recent. But yeah, the the book is primarily going to be around a lot of the limitations that empower us. And I'm gonna go deeper into these these types of topics that we talked about today.

Dylan Schmidt: 1:05:22

Which is, is it I don't know if ironic is the right word, but that you are so consistent with short form social media, and then you write a book that is then long form content. And it is based on limitations, which maybe maybe that's part of the book, but it seems like removing a lot of

Josh Terry: 1:05:38

which I couldn't have written if we wouldn't have split it up into 300 word sections.

Dylan Schmidt: 1:05:44

It's incredible. Thank you, Josh, so much for coming on the podcast today.

Josh Terry: 1:05:48

Thank you for having me.

Dylan Schmidt: 1:05:54

I'd like to thank my guests once again, for coming on the podcast today, Josh Terry. I'll make sure to include all Josh Terry links in the show notes. So please make sure to check that out. Give him a follow on Instagram, tick tock, check out his podcast, the Josh Terry plays podcast. And that's it. That's all I got for this week, got a lot of great interviews coming up, I'm super excited to share, really loving the format to deliver the conversations through this podcast style. I do wish that, you know, I had way more time to be able to talk with each guest. But there has to be some limitations around it. Because I honestly feel that these conversations could go for two plus hours very easily. And a lot of the conversations actually have taken place outside of the recording of the podcast. So that's something I need to work better on have clearly identified how long a podcast should go on. And I'm thinking expanding the time because there is just there is a lot to talk about. And I'm finding the people that I'm choosing, it's so great to be able to link up with them on a podcast episode. And then, you know, you don't always know how much you're going to be able to talk with someone. And I keep finding time and time again that the conversations go on a lot longer. But at the same time, not knowing that going into a podcast, it's a bit of a hard sell to be like, Hey, would you like to join me on this three hour podcast when they don't really know me? So. So that's probably something that will come with time. But I do in grateful for everyone that's come on the podcast, Josh, Terry included. And I really honor and respect our conversation. And I'm glad I'm able, I'm glad that it's recorded and able to share that with everybody. So thank you for listening. If you haven't already, please make sure to subscribe. If you could it mean a lot if you could lead leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts and Spotify. And that's all I got for now. I will see you next week.