Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Craig Burgess!

Craig specializes in working with organizations and individuals of all sizes to help them make their marketing work for them. A designer by trade, he is co-owner and Creative Director at Genius Division, providing designing development and marketing services for apps, branding, and marketing, web applications, web design, and development search engine optimization and WordPress development.

He wrote a book called Extreme Production, on creating 365-day challenges (designing a poster every day, a photo a day, etc.). Outside of that, his Design show releases every Sunday is called Thats The Job, about the realities of working in design.

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Transcript

Norman Chella: [00:00:00] thatsthenorm.com. Craig Burgess is the relentless designer, the action taker, building with extreme production. He is the AntiFool.

Welcome to the AntiFool podcast. This is where we deconstruct the wisdom of people from all fields, backgrounds, and walks of life. My role is simple: I play the fool, I ask the questions and you get the answers.

Our guest is the Antifool, the source of wisdom, who we will learn from today. I’m on a mission to create the antidote to foolishness so we can understand the world and ourselves better, wonderful stuff. Right. So. Shall we.

Hi there, Norm here, the king of all fools. Welcome to the show. In this episode, I want to talk about extreme production and challenges.

It’s a very specific topic and it caters more around the notion of creating content online on social media for all the platforms on. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, whichever or LinkedIn, and being able to continue creating set content for a consistent amount of time without missing a single day in order to grow, learn your skills and also build a body of work for your own endeavors or for your own projects.

Now, it sounds very overwhelming, but we have a specialist in this regard. I’d like to introduce you to Craig Burgess.

Craig specializes in working with organizations and individuals of all sizes to help them make their marketing work for them. A designer by trade, he is co-owner and Creative Director at Genius Division, providing designing development and marketing services for apps, branding, and marketing, web applications, web design, and development search engine optimization and WordPress development. A whole load of services that Craig and his team is able to provide.

And outside of that, he has a Design show released every Sunday called Thats The Job, which can also be found in podcast form, talking about the realities of working in design. These are natural conversations that flow in to each other for each and every episode.

He also wrote a book called Extreme Production, on creating 365 day challenges, designing a poster day, taking a photo a day, designing a record sleeve every day for three 65 days. And learning how to make a podcast for 365 days. Craig, he has done a lot. And in this episode I wanted to take a deep dive into what makes him tick. What makes him so obsessed with challenges?

We took a deep dive into his burning passion to learn something. By diving into it for a year straight producing one poster a day for design. Next we’ve talked about the content plus model, how to create tons of micro content based off of one large piece of content that you’ve created,  either it’s a podcast or a large video or a long form video.

Craig breaks down this model for us to try to use it for our own endeavors. We also talked about the attention span of consumers on social media and Craig’s thoughts on how to tackle these different kinds of consumers by social media platform, by visuals, by audio, by pictures, by blog posts and more. All of that and much more wisdom for those who are wanting to start their own content platform, their own channel, or their own Twitter account or something along those lines.

We hear a lot of wisdom in this regard from Craig himself. So let’s play the fool and learn from the wise, by diving into my chat with Craig Burgess, the author of Extreme Production.

Mr. Craig Burgess. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Craig Burgess: [00:03:51] I’m very good. I’m very good. How are you?

Norman Chella: [00:03:55] I am excited. I, this is going to be pretty fascinating because we know each other from a specific group, uh, that we are a part of Visualize Value.

And even outside of that, I would be following your Twitter on all the interesting things that you’ve been working on, but there is a lot of shall we say topics, a wide variety of facets of what makes Craig. So we’re going to have to go through a lot of that. Before we even start though, before we even go through the nine points that represent you on your website, Get Doing Things I would love to hear your origin story.

Craig, how did you go from, well, pre-Get Doing Things to making all the content from podcasts to blogs, to extreme production. I would love to hear how did you get on this journey?

Craig Burgess: [00:04:47] Ah, Jesus, where do I start with? Where do I start with that one? Um, I’ve always, I’ve always been a bit of a workaholic, I guess, I guess what we’re call it works.

Somebody sent me a message the other day, um, a link to, you know, the whole hustle porn thing, you know, Gary V and all that kind of thing. One of my mates sent me a link to it and said, you’re a hustle porn star. Yeah. Uh, maybe I am. Yeah. Um, I guess it all started. I’m just massively curious. That’s the thing that, where everything really started was I got my first job as a designer, as a graphic designer, and I loved the job.

It was my first ever job as a graphic designer and I wanted to learn illustrator. So Adobe illustrator. Yeah, and I’m massively impatient as well, so I didn’t want to wait to learn it. So I didn’t want to just learn it through my job. I wanted to learn it a little bit quicker. So I thought, right, what, how can I do that?

And at this point I’d seen a couple of people doing these kinds of daily challenge things, a thing a day for 365 days. And I thought, Oh, okay. I’ll give that a try. I’ll make an A4 poster every single day for 365 days. So that was my first challenge at 18. And I did it. I did one every day. There was a couple of days where I did two a day.

I could miss a day and go on holiday or something like that. I did it. I did one every single day published when every single day, got my boss to do it with me. And it was a lot of fun. And then when I finished that one. I moved on to another one. So the next one was taking a photo every day for 365 days and roping in 20 people this time, random people from the internet.

Uh, we call it Nice Smile, Sir. That was a lot of fun too. And then after that, there was another one where I, um, I designed, uh, A record, a record sleeve. So a 12 inch record sleeve every day for 365 days. And I failed that one. I failed that one, about 120 days or something. So that was kind of. When I started that I was, I was, I was really keen to become a better designer and just better at my craft.

So I just did everything all the time and I was just so into it. So I love doing design so much that I did that. And really that kind of thing probably turned me into a little bit of a workaholic. Doing that all of the time. And then since then, 12, 13 years ago, I’ve kind of never stopped. I’ve just piled more and more stuff on top of it.

And in the middle, in some years, I’ve done nothing because I’ve burnt out and I’ve just, you know, just do nothing. But majority of the time I’ve, I’ve done loads of stuff and it looks like I’m doing a lot of stuff to the outsider, but to me, it’s kind of just a normal level because I’ve done that much stuff for so long.

And it’s just a, it’s a curiosity thing. You know, I just, I see something like podcasts in which I started a couple of years ago, always enjoyed podcast and wanting to learn how to do it. The only way I know is doing a thing a day every day for 365 days. So I did that and I learned it and then it becomes another thing that I do.

I guess that kind of answers it.

Norman Chella: [00:08:10] Well, I, I like, I like your interesting, like focused mind, right. You focus on one thing and you’re like, okay, I want to learn this. Let’s spend an entire year, like 365 days straight, uh, focusing on doing one thing a day. And it’s not, if you think about it, it’s not that, that overwhelming.

Maybe, it depends, right? It’s just one thing a day. And you can track your progress because as long as you’ve done it once a day, you are well on your way to become at least a certain percentage greater than who you were the year before. Once you’ve done a one year straight. Just a quick question though.

Why did you fail the record sleeve challenge?

Craig Burgess: [00:08:52] I was doing it with another friend and he kind of started getting a little bit bored of it and because he was getting bored of it. So did I, even though you usually, the boredom and the rubbish base is part of the process. I always say that, you know, a little bit like Gary V and things like that.

Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s not as much as part of the process of not liking it as sucking out as it is being good at it. So I don’t usually quit when I got to that stage, but it just kind of lost momentum and we just stopped because we didn’t enjoy it as such. So yeah, we just stopped because we stopped enjoying it.

Norman Chella: [00:09:29] When you were trying to pick up new challenges to make, because you started off from design specific challenges, right? Like an A4 poster a day and then a record sleeve a day. And then you moved on to different mediums like podcasting and maybe even writing or making a blog posts or writing tweets per day.

Uh, was it difficult or was there anything interesting or fascinating about changing mediums? Because, been doing design for so long now, and I know you as.I know you first as the prolific Twitter user like the writer and the video person. But I know that more than I know Craig, that designer. So was there something interesting or something you noticed about the transition to that?

Craig Burgess: [00:10:16] I’ve always enjoyed writing and specifically, I remember when it right back in school.

Jesus Christ 20 years ago or something. When I was in school, when I was in school, I used to love, do you remember Max Payne? You know, the video game? I love the game. I love, love, love Max Payne. And I love the way that the, the comic strips was in there and the way that it was written and everything. So I distinctly remember writing a short story in the style of Max Payne, where back then.

It would be terrible, but I’ve always had this kind of, um, this passion for writing, but I’ve never really had a medium to do it because I’ve always been a designer. And so I’ve always had a passion. I’ve got a littered past of blogs.

I’ve done all sorts of stuff. I never look at it because I just, I can’t find the motivation to do it all where it slots in to something. So Twitter is something I’ve done for a really long time. I’ve been on Twitter since 2008 or something, and it was always, kind of just a medium to share ideas with people.

There were a lot of designers on there in the early days. A lot of my friends were on it too. So we just kinda hung out and talked about design stuff and things like that. And then it was only this year I thought, right. I know I kind of had a bit, a little bit of an epiphany with social media. I got sick of it.

I got sick of being on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and. No, no, it doesn’t really serve you at all. Does it, you just go on that, you consume things. It makes you angry half of the time. Cause you see something you don’t like. And I just got into this thing when I thought, right, I’m just going to get rid of social media.

I’m going to try not using it for a year. That was my initial thought. And then I kind of think, well, I do enjoy Twitter, so I thought right, I’m going to try and just take it seriously for just a little bit and think. What, what is the method for this? What is the thing that people recommend? And after doing a bit of digging, people recommend posting 10 tweets a day and commenting on stuff and things like that.

So I thought, right, well, that’s easy. I’ll just write 10 tweets a day. And I never really thought about looking at it as, um, as being good at it necessarily. I just did it. I just wrote whatever was in my head that was around my topic. And. I still kind of approach Twitter like that to this day as well. So right.

In any of the medium, because I started with design, I think there’s, there’s laws of crossover between design and writing and, and backwards too. If you’re a writer, there’s a lot of crossover between design because you’re, you kind of designing a story or you’re communicating something. So I’ve never found it that difficult to jump between mediums.

And I think. It’s also because I’ve got this attitude where I don’t really care. If it’s bad, I’ll just do it. And it is good great. But if it’s, if it’s mediocre, I’ll still put it out. And someone who I really, really got to mention here, someone who I really admire for doing this is a guy on Twitter called Adam Sandler.

And not that Adam Sandler. He is a designer, not the famous one is his Twitter handle. And he makes this really beautiful gradient work. Hmm. And every day, every day he posts stuff. Sometimes it’s not that good. And sometimes it is because he makes something within 190 seconds and posts it. And sometimes it’s amazing, but sometimes you just look at it and think it’s okay.

And that’s the kind of attitude I take to it. So I don’t see it as being good. And I just keep going, you know, like it just a machine just now, but just keep practicing and practicing.

Norman Chella: [00:13:56] I guess a focus on output, right? As opposed to expectations and whether or not it’ll be the best thing you’ve ever made or just an okay thing or something decent.

Uh, the fact that you could show up each and every day, create something. Yeah, I’m having trouble with that. Like I’m generally having trouble with that. So like, if we’re put on the spectrum of output or expectations, I don’t know how to define that per se. You and I will be on very opposite sides. And I would love to do, to probably deep dive into that.

Maybe it’s related to your book, Extreme Production. Cause you just have this one track mind set on getting something out and I’m having trouble there, but this is this isn’t a more, this isn’t really a. A complaint or anything, but, uh, let’s tap into that a little more. So you recently just posted a video/podcast called content plus, and it was related to how you are able to repurpose a lot of content.

And I guess it’s a little bit of a shift from trying to make something new per day to creating something that’s large and then mining it for valuable content and making it much more snackable, uh, depending on the social media, depending on the platform that people might be consuming it. Uh, but could you tell me, why are you doing that?

Like I’m going to play the fool. I’m just going to say, I have a really big podcast. I’m just going to let it out there. Why should I make my podcast or anything else that’s large, smaller for other people? I would love to hear your take.

Craig Burgess: [00:15:36] The, the whole idea of content plus is related to another video that I posted called the content onion.

So the idea in two seconds is that if you make a long thing, there’s a lot of people out there that don’t digest long things. So if you’ve got, if you imagine it as a content on you, and you’ve got a big old content onion, some people don’t like onions, some people hate them. Most people will not just grab an onion and just bite into it, like an Apple, because it’s disgusting.

Okay. But if some, if somebody, if you take a second of that or appeal of that and you put it into something else, if you put it into a chilli or you put it into a spaghetti bolonaise or something like that, They’ll consume the onion, but they won’t necessarily realize that they’ve consumed the onion.

So if you’re only making the big thing, the big content onion, and that’s difficult to digest for people, it’s hard for everybody to, in your audience to see the things that you’re producing. And the other, the other kind of bit that’s related to it too, is that, uh, when I put a tweet out. The likelihood of using it as a follower is probably not 0.1% or something in terms of a tension of how much of your attention budget every day that I get.

It’s nothing, even if, even if you have a put the bell on, on Twitter, so you get a notification every time I tweet, even then it goes into your notifications and you’ll think, Oh, Craig’s tweeting again and you’ll dismiss it and you won’t read it. So in terms of attention of what I get every day, if I say it once.

You don’t see it. If I say even 10 times, you don’t see it. So I’ve got to say the same thing a hundred times, 200 times, all like Jack Butcher says find a thousand ways, find a thousand ways to say the same thing, because if you only say it once nobody notices it. So the content plus idea is the strategy behind the whole content onion thing.

You make a big thing. And then you find ways to chop up that big thing and put it across loads of different mediums. So if you make, I’ll say this podcast is a video too. You make this video, you chop it up into five or 10 chunks that might be a minute long or something like that. You put those minute long videos on Instagram.

But then if you’ve got a transcription of the entire episode, you can also pull out the key text-based bits too. And those text-based bits can become Twitter posts. They can become LinkedIn posts, you can visualize them and put them on Instagram again, as a visual, instead of a video, you can just make the short snippets into short podcasts, you could launch another podcast and have a really sharp podcast. That’s only five minutes. So you could have a big, long podcast. That’s an hour. And then a shorter one. That’s just five minutes. It’s a little bit like what? Um, Joe Rogan does as well with his really long videos.

He released it as a video. It releases it as a podcast, but then also on YouTube. And I’ve only just recently realized this. And there’s another thing called J R E clips. Yeah. Now that’s, that’s an official channel now, but it didn’t use to be an official channel. It used to be owned by someone else. And since then, Joe Rogan has brought them in and now they make content for Joe Rogan.

So their job. Is to go through his ridiculously long podcasts/videos and find the nuggets which are five or 10 minutes long, because he knows just like everybody else that you just, you can’t consume the big content in one sitting. And so the whole idea is, is basically taking that knowledge that you’ve got splitting it down into key chunks and meeting the person that you want to share it with on that level, because some people are visual people, some people prefer to write. So some people prefer to, you know, listen, there’s lots of different ways to do it.

So that’s the core idea. I probably ran a bit long then, but you know, that’s the kind of, the idea of chopping something up.

Norman Chella: [00:19:38] Yeah, that’s, um, it’s not, it’s long at all.

I see it as well. Um, and on, on the note of Joe Rogan, that’s actually pretty fascinating. I wasn’t aware that JRE clips was not under Joe Rogan’s digital marketing agency. I knew that Joe Rogan has an official channel, and I know that the podcast itself has a channel and then the clips of highlights is a separate channel.

And I think it was because that. I thought it was a strategic move that you’d have multiple channels, each catering to different kinds of attention spans. So I think it was, there was this comedian on YouTube that did a TEDx talk about how he had to reposition his content to make it shorter. Yeah, have more bitable sites a bit like what you’re.

Talking about with content plus, um, yeah, he had long sets on comedy nights, but people don’t have the patience to go through to the punchline. So he made shorter bitable snacks, videos, like small, smaller videos, and he would pump them up like very, very often, very, very regularly. And what he noticed was that because you can have the analytics for this on YouTube, what he noticed is that smaller videos lead to an autoplay of the next smaller video.

So they get consistent exposure of the same message, right. Which is basically, Hey, I’m funny. I make good jokes. Watch me perform. Two to three minutes per video, multiple times. And you’ve binged for like two hours on like 20 videos, um, as is the case for most behaviors on YouTube, on podcasts, I guess. Yeah.

Craig Burgess: [00:21:16] The biggest irony of it is that you’ll sit there for two hours watching five minute videos, but you won’t sit there for two hours watching one, two hour video. So it’s trying to flip that mindset of somebody,

Norman Chella: [00:21:28] Yeah. It’s I, I think it’s like, um, sort of like exhaustion. Right. Or a video consumption exhaustion, because you would have the choice of, I should stop YouTube at the end of a video two to three minutes.

It doesn’t seem like much of a time commitment, but then a Joe Rogan episode is, you know, it can range from two hours to four and a half hours long. We have a lot of things to do throughout the day. Um, so that specific video may only cater to a certain time percentage of the world. I mean, I say world because his is like the biggest show on earth.

But I really have to commend his agency for being able to craft so many smaller pieces out of this, this one show. And he has to, he doesn’t have to do it. He has a whole team to do it for him. Could I ask since I know that you’re the kind of person who is super interested in doing this, like repurposing larger pieces of content.

Do you have like a, like a workflow or a process for sharing a one large piece of say a podcast episode or a video. Um, do you start off with the main video and then the transcript and then tweet, or do you start off with video and then the audio version? Uh, do you have an example of that?

Craig Burgess: [00:22:45] Alright, I’m experimenting with it at the minute.

I will preface this by saying, I am not great to this myself. I say it’s a good idea. And that there’s lots of people out there that do do it. Yeah. And in terms of the form, with I’ve just described, I’m not brilliant at it, but I have got one example. We’ve got an, I’ve got a design show that I record every Sunday, which is called That’s the job.

And I recalled that with Richard Baird and that is about 45 minutes to an hour long or something, but we usually record two and a half hours in one sitting. So we’ll recall two episodes at once. Yeah. And they just, they flow into each other. The kind of the point it is, it feels like a very natural conversation.

So very, every single episode just starts. There’s no intro. There’s no out-tro and things like that. So what I do when I’m editing that. As I’m listening to it, I go, Oh, that’s a good clip. And then I pull it out and save it as a snippet. So I’ll, it’ll be a minute or two minutes long. And during the week, rich puts those out on Twitter and Instagram and things like that.

So we’ve got the bite sized chunks that people are aware of as we’re going through. And they’re the highlights of the episode, really. And then we’ve got the full episode, the hour, the hour long episode on YouTube. And it’s delivered as a podcast as well. What I’ve seen so far and I’d probably be willing to bet that Joe Rogan is pretty similar to that.

The podcast is two, three, four, five times more popular than the YouTube, because you can, you can listen to the podcast as you’re washing the car, doing the cleaning, whatever, going for a walk, you can’t really do with the same with videos. So I I’m thinking that. The long form video format isn’t great for people to consume over a long period of time, but the podcast style is perfect for it.

And most people want to talk about that’s the job. They talk about the podcast. They say, that’s the job, the podcast. They don’t say the video or the show or anything like that. So I think it’s. The podcast is working more. The way I am trying to set up a system for it. So this is a product that I want to launch in hopefully a couple of months time.

So I’m trying to set up an automated system to do all this. Sure. Where a client or basically record a zoom call much like what we’re doing now. We’ll record a 30 minute call. I send it off to a video company. They’ll chop out five key bits. They’ll get it transcribed. They’ll be turned into tweets, tweet threads, blog posts, emails, uh, visuals on Instagram, basically the whole, the whole thing, the whole nine yards.

Um, But when you’ve got to spend a little bit of time thinking about the, kind of the process for that. And I say it all, to be honest in that content plus video, the way I see it, it does take a lot of time as an individual, but I. That’s the only way I see in this modern day that we’ve got now where everybody is so starved of the ability to pay attention.

It’s the only way that you can grow an audience at scale, by being everywhere all of the time, all at once. And the truth is you need a team for it. You cannot do it all by yourself.

Norman Chella: [00:25:53] Yeah. I have seen actually a few, um, shall we say podcasts repurposing agencies. So they even have packages, uh, to, uh, find what kind of content will they produce from your one long form episode.

And, um, the price is ranging like, you know, three digits up to four digits, USD or something like that. And that I do, another show where I talk about podcasting. So, um, I’m always on the lookout for potential tools or agencies or companies that might help with exposure for our podcasters, because.

Like you mentioned, um, to be able to repurpose content for podcast episodes, which is just this one, large passively listening content, uh, may not fit the attention spans of all the possible audience that you can tap into. You need to repurpose it.

But like you said, as an individual, this takes a lot of time and you know, not everyone has the ability to write 10 tweets, one blog, post four, audio grams, five quote images, one or two graphic illustrations of a quote from the episode and detailed show notes and transcript. It’s a large checklist. And I can see this time that people want to outsource that because. There is so much value in mining. I mean, I call it mining, I think of as like a mine, and then you mine for diamonds, right?

You gotta go through all the ore before we can get to the diamond, but there’s so much value, but there’s so much time commitment and, uh, I feel podcasters may need to look. Yeah. So I’m looking forward to you building this, uh, Coming up in a few months, I would love to try it out just to see how

Craig Burgess: [00:27:36] There is one thing I’ll mention. Actually that’s given me a little bit of inspiration, particularly for podcasts. If you go over, you might have heard of it is called smashnotes.com. Basically what it does. It does exactly what I’ve just been talking about. You can, you upload your podcast to it, you select the key bits where you talk about questions or answers and things like that.

And it, it turns into, um, basically like a, your podcast will then you’ll see the key bits from your podcast. It’s really cool. And at the minute it’s free too, and I’ve, I’ve just started starting messing with it myself. I’ve not done too much with it yet, but. I think that’s, that’s one part of it. I think the thing with, I think the thing with podcasts is really interesting.

Um, and it goes to say it goes the same across the older mediums as well. When I’m really into podcasting, I love the audio medium, and I think you can really make a connection with somebody over audio, but. You can only make the connection when they are also interested in podcasting and at the minute that that isn’t a huge audience is growing.

It is growing, but it isn’t, it isn’t mainstream. So a lot of people.Get into podcasts and all they get into YouTube, or they get into Twitter, and it becomes the kind of the baby and they have to keep doing that medium. And this thoughts get blind to that. These are the mediums, even if. The, the medium is as simple as just taking a tweet and put it on Instagram.

They get blind to that because I don’t like Instagram. I’m not doing Instagram. So there’s a, there’s a certain extent of it while you’ve got to become less precious about the medium that you use in and more precious about sharing the message as wide as possible. So in terms of podcasting, that might mean that you dropped down to record in one podcast every two weeks, but spend.

The second week repurposing the first podcast, you did chopping it down into all the things, making tweets and Instagram posts and everything out of it. I don’t think the, the necessarily producing more in that way is always the right attitude. Sometimes you’ve got to step back and mine, like you said, mine, all that content that you’ve got from the past that people have forgotten about.

Norman Chella: [00:29:59] Yeah. I may have to do that myself because just, just creating new episodes. Uh, all the time may not necessarily lead to growth if you’re not taking the time to market it. And if you’re not adapting your marketing strategies to current attention spans on all the platforms, then you are, you know, you’re just shouting a megaphone into a wall.

Like, no one’s going to be listening and sure. This it’s nice to have sustainable, a sustainable weekly schedule. Um, As an individual, it’s great to see the numbers rise, but when you want to scale, when you want to take this seriously, actually having it in all these social media platforms is super important.

So I, I do agree. It’s just very difficult. If you are someone who is a one man show for a podcast doing this independently. So I would love to see maybe, maybe an agency specifically made for this, or maybe. Shows band together to make some sort of pseudo network and then repurpose it, or actually go through the workflow together.

Cause then there’ll be less burden. I dunno. It’s, it’s very difficult. Do you find that there have been, well, you’ve been on Twitter since for a long time. Do you find that the changes in attention span or the changes in how people consume content? Make it a lot harder for someone who may want to start something new on their own, maybe to start a Twitter account or start a YouTube channel or something, do you find that the change in consumption habits make it harder to burst into this?

Craig Burgess: [00:31:40] It’s tough getting started. It’s always tough getting started because you’ve got to, it’s not just the fact that it takes a long time to build traction. it’s the fact that you’ve got to pull it up. We’ve been so bad at it for so long and nobody paying attention and one or two people watching your video and nobody replying to your tweets.

And that that’s, that’s a really, really tough mindset to kind of get over. I wouldn’t say. I wouldn’t say to some extent, yes. It’s gotten harder objectively. It’s gotten harder. There’s more people doing it. And you know, there’s more people in every single niche that you can think of, but there’s, even though there’s more things and there’s more people, people still are interested in people.

So I think that’s why it is so powerful to have a lot of different things going on and also being upfront and showing yourself as well because people connect to you first and then kind of go off and look at your other stuff. There’s um, there’s a kind of a concept for this in, not necessarily body, body language, but it’s kind of across influence and things like that.

And I can’t remember where I read it now when it’s really bugging me. But so the concept goes that if you meet somebody in person for the first time, there’s all those kinds of influencing techniques like mirroring their body language and mirroring the way that they speak and things like that.

But one of the really powerful concepts is moving somebody around the space. So if you meet somebody in say a restaurant, for example, you meet them at the door in the restaurant and you say, hi, hi Norman, how are you doing? Let’s go get them table. And you take them to the table after the meal, you said, right, right.

Let’s go grab a drink. So now you take them to the drink. You know, you took them to the bar and then after the bar, you might say, well, Hey, let’s go grab a coffee and you take them somewhere else for a coffee. And this. This kind of context switching. And when you take somebody through context switching, um, helps them connect with you more.

And I don’t know the science behind it. But it helps you connect to them more and I think the content things the same too. So when you show up on Twitter, as I see it all the time, when people follow me, they’ll, they’ll follow me on Twitter, then they’ll follow me on YouTube. Then they’ll go listen to my podcast.

Then they’ll sign up to my email and you see them across lots of different mediums because, and as soon as they’ve done that. They hear your voice on your podcast. They see your face on, on video. They read your words on Twitter. There’s such a deep connection to what you’re doing, that you can turn your hands to anything, and they’ll still follow you, even if they’re not interested in that particular thing, because they’re just so deeply connected to you because you’ve moved them through several mediums and I think that’s what sometimes you’ll lose out on, uh, if you’re just trying to start a YouTube or whatever. I think that method there that I’ve just described is the way that you build an audience now in this attention staffed world that we live in, you’ve got to make people interested in you first and not the project first.

Sometimes it works the other way around. If you’ve got an amazing project, something that that’s really sticky and that people are really interested in, they might become interested in the project first and then find you. That’s what happened with Jack, with Jack Butcher, with Visualized Value. He’s got the amazing Visualized Value Twitter and the Instagram account.

And then he started putting himself out in public. So. You’ve got to connect people to you at some point to continue to build the audience. And I found that massively, that’s the only way that I can grow an audience.

Norman Chella: [00:35:31] Yeah. And on Jack’s case, it’s fascinating to me because I’m not sure how you started off hearing about the Visualized Value of the brand.

I started off knowing about visualized value from Jack’s Twitter. So from his face, like his personal face has personal brand. Which led to him tweeting about visualized value. So in my case, I guess I preferred having a face to the wisdom that I’m getting from, say his tweet storms and you know, his Twitter threads.

Um, maybe you’ve started off with visualized value of the brand. And on the note of having, I call it like a web, right? Like once you catch them in one pillar or one angle, they want to be caught in a different angle or a different part of the web, because no matter once they go into the spiral of like, hearing about, you know, hearing about Craig, hearing about your Twitter and your podcast and your website and your blog posts and all your shows and your YouTube channel, it’s, it’s sort of like, they are trying to see whether or not they uh, want to commit to having you as part of their routine.

I look at it as that, especially for podcast listeners, uh, they tend to listen to the first three episodes to decide whether or not it’s worth following or listening or subscribing to it. And an analogy for that is just asking yourself, am I worth being part of my listener’s routines? And that sets the expectation for creating something great. And I want to try to translate that for, you know, every other form or medium or piece of content that I tried to put up. So building that web over time. Do you have any recommendations for, if someone were to try to start to own content platform or channel, what would be the first thing that they should focus on?

Is it an email list? Is it a YouTube channel at blog posts or a website?

Craig Burgess: [00:37:21] I always say, start with the thing that, you know, start with the thing that you know, that you can do consistently over at least a year of the very least a year. So I always, when people ask me this quite a lot, I always say. Well, what do you enjoy doing?

Do you enjoy writing? Do you enjoy speaking? Do you enjoy making videos? Do you enjoy taking photos? Whatever it is, start with that thing? Start with the thing and then work out from there. If it’s email often it’s not email for people, but if it is then start there. So I that’s the way I started in fact, I, yeah. I started with the design stuff and then I left the design stuff for a very, very long time.

I’ve not done any kind of public design stuff for really long time. And it’s only recently that I’ve brought that back in. So I started at very beginning with the design stuff. That’s all I showed up as a designer. And over time you kind of spread your wings and try other things out. So I always say one thing.

Whatever it is, stick to that for a long period of time and see how it feels because you’re not going to get it right the first time.

Norman Chella: [00:38:30] Yeah. And you have to be there doing it to know if you should stick to it or you’ll, then you’ll know the answer to what you should do next. Right. Especially after one year’s worth of letting something out, whether it’s a podcast per week or a blog post per week or whatever, have you.

You got to be there and in one, and that’s more than enough body of work to attract other people who could be your initial audience, so that even if you try to test a different content format, then at least you have some sort of safety net. You still have people following you. And I see that, uh, no matter what content format that you start off with, I personally started off with a podcast and that went from podcasts to blog posts and then I dabbled into YouTube for like, you know, two to three videos, and then I stopped and there’s just stuck to podcasts. Cause you got to do it for at least a year.

If you’re willing to struggle for that content format, that’s probably your keystone, a piece of content you should be focusing on.

And, uh, on that note, we are. Coming up on time, but I would love to hear your take on a couple of segments that I normally have at the end. So this part is called mementos. Do you have a memento that represents who you are?

Craig Burgess: [00:39:50] Tough question.

Norman Chella: [00:39:55] Is it the Max Payne fanfic or?

Craig Burgess: [00:39:59] Do I have a memento? I guess probably my memento is the first project that I did that kind of kicked it all off. When I think about it, the thing I mentioned at the beginning, that’s where all this started and that’s what I continue to do. And my past is littered with failures of those kinds of things.

And then my future, it’s still littered with lots of failures and that’s probably my memento. In terms of a physical thing, a physical thing. I don’t have anything other than I’ve always got a Rubik’s cube on my desk. That’s about it.

Norman Chella: [00:40:28] Is it, is there any reason why you just liked Rubik’s cubes? Is that

Craig Burgess: [00:40:33] Yeah. Yeah. I was just, uh, a couple of, when was it a year ago now? Maybe it was something I had a bit of time off work. I had a week off work or something. We didn’t have a holiday booked, so I thought, well, I’ll buy a Rubik’s cube and learn how to do a Rubik’s cube. That was it.

Norman Chella: [00:40:50] Well a memento doesn’t have to be physical. So it’s nice to know that you really do cherish the year when you’re doing your very first, a 365 day challenge, because that really does show your character, which is pretty awesome. And the other segment is called walkaway wisdom. So Craig say, we walk away from this conversation right now, even though I’m probably going to see you in the Vis the Vidualized Value Slack, but say that we walk away from this chat right now.

I meet someone new. We’ve become friends. And in the process of us deepening our friendship, I become vulnerable with them. And I share with them my life. And part of that life is this conversation right now. Is there a piece of wisdom that I can tell them that represents who you are?

Craig Burgess: [00:41:32] Start a project and do it every single day for 365 days. It doesn’t matter what it is. That’s the simplest thing. Just do that.

Norman Chella: [00:41:45] Do you have an upcoming project that you’re going to do for 365 days?

Craig Burgess: [00:41:48] The Produce More Twitter  account and the Produce More Instagram account is kind of become my, uh, that’s probably going to be the thing I’m going to do for 365 days.

I’m doing three a day at the minute. Uh, I’ve not, well, not really, not really going to plant it stop or anything. I’ve got this thing where, and. I don’t really announce that I’m going to do it for a period of time until I kind of feel it out. And because, like I said, that the first design project I’ve done for so long in public, it’s kind of reinvigorate and make to do something in design.

And I’ve got a massive passion for witty design and, and finding a, not a complex solution, but something that just makes people go, Oh, that’s clever. That kind of thing. Clever design. So. That’s probably going to become the 365 day thing, but I, I’m not, I’m not going to jinx it. I’m just going to say that might be it

Norman Chella: [00:42:44] Awesome we will not confirm it. You’ll just keep on chugging along and doing it each and every single day at the Produce More Twitter and Instagram Craig. If we want to reach out to you for more on your thoughts on getting things done on Extreme Production or much more Anything Max Payne related, where can we find you and how can we contact you?

Craig Burgess: [00:43:08] Well, to getdoingthings.com, I’ve got everything on there. That’s probably the best place to do. If you want to follow me on Twitter. It’s where I spend a lot of my time as well. That’s just @CraigBurgess. Yeah, that’s it.

Norman Chella: [00:43:19] I can attest to that. Craig is extremely active on Twitter. Of course, links to all of these will be in the show notes right below.

So you can hit the follow button on Craig on Twitter, Craig, thank you so much and I will chat with you soon.

Craig Burgess: [00:43:35] Thank you.

Norman Chella: [00:43:37] And that is it, my chat with Craig Burgess, author of extreme production, writer at getdoingthings.com, podcaster at that’s the job and much more. This guy is a beast when it comes to creating content and creating micro content or a content mind from all the large pieces of content that he has done, and all of his challenges doing one thing per day.

And now you can see the results of his work at his website, getdoingthings.com. So if you’d like to read more about Craig, I highly recommend that you follow his Twitter. Cause he’s definitely most active there and definitely really valuable in that regard. If you’re a fan of extreme production and creating so many things at the same time, and I don’t want to say a workaholic, but being very adamant and very curious about trying to build or create something to let it out in the world, to share that with your followers, your audience, and everywhere else on social media.

I highly suggest that you follow Craig because he is definitely an inspiration for me. And I hope that he is to you because if that is true, then all as well. Stay warm, stay lovely. And I will see you in the next episode, your foolish friend. Norm.

Thank you for listening to the show. Anti fool is hosted, produced and edited by me. Norman Chella. You can find out more about the show at thatsthenorm.com/antifool.

It’s where I host all my other podcasts shows and more. The music and sound effects.Come from zapsplat.com. If you have any questions, recommendations for guests and more hit me up on Twitter @normanchella or on LinkedIn as well. There is only one of me in the world. I’m sure you can find me there.

I love connecting with people and having warm, meaningful conversations. Don’t be foolish. Alright. Cheers.