The Formula for Efficient, Effective Content

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0:42Jason:These conversations can literally save you money by helping you find every deduction and maximize your tax savings. And this isn't just for tax time. TurboTax Experts for Business provides unlimited year-round expert support at no extra cost and provides 100 % audit protection and accuracy guaranteed. So, ready to get the help you need and stop worrying about taxes? Learn more at TurboTax.com slash business. That's TurboTax.com slash business. Every year, tax season hits and I am playing the same game. The game is called Who Actually Needs a 1099? It's a terrible game. And then comes the scavenger hunt.

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2:08Jason:There's total control, zero chaos. And QuickBooks BillPay's unlimited 1099 e-filings keep compliance simple and stress-free. QuickBooks BillPay helps you streamline your accounts payable process and your time. so you have control and peace of mind to focus on keeping your business growing. Learn more at quickbooks.com slash bill pay. Again, that is quickbooks.com slash bill pay. Terms apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments, Inc., licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Running a business means solving problems. I tell you how the smartest entrepreneurs do it.

2:50Jason:Hi, I'm Jason Pfeiffer, Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, and this is Problem Solvers.

2:58Jason:If you want to make any kind of media, whether that's a podcast or a newsletter or just short form video or whatever, and you should because if you are a founder, if you're listening to this just because you aspire to be a founder, whatever, it doesn't really matter what you are. You need to think like a content creator. You just really do these days because you need to be known for your ideas. Ideas are scalable. Ideas and communication is what gets out into the world and helps people build relationships with you and get to know you and trust you. And that is good for business, whether you're trying to sell something or you're just trying to get to the next step in your career anyway.

3:39Jason:You need to be producing things. You just do. And here is a formula that I think people don't think about. They often overlook. They actually often do in reverse, but that I have found throughout my time creating media and specifically with this podcast, which I'll talk about in just a moment, that I have found to work really well. And it is this. Here's the formula. form is the solution to function form is the solution to function i'm going to explain what that means today on problem solvers and here is why let me give you a little context so this is the 451st episode of problem solvers can you believe 451 it sounds like a random number actually, but if you rewind one, it's 450.

4:30Jason:And that actually sounds like a more interesting, nice round number. We're impressed by 50s and hundreds. And anyway, if you've been listening to this show for a long time, you know that every 50 episodes, I usually, sometimes I forget, but usually there is a tradition, which is that I pause and I step back and I reflect upon the show and I share something about making the show and what I learned by making the show and how the show has evolved. And I just try to pull back the curtain and bring you along because I understand that when I'm speaking to the kind of audience that I'm speaking to, when I'm speaking to you, that you're not just consuming something.

5:11Jason:You're making things yourself too. You're listening to this show because you want to make things, not because you are just looking for entertainment or whatever. You're looking to make things. So that is also the reason that you're interested in the making of things and the reason why I like to share how I make things to help you. So I usually do this. I usually step back every 50 episodes and I kind of offer some perspective. And I forgot to do it at 450. So I'm just doing it at 451. Close enough, right? And now, again, if you've been listening to the show for a long time, and by the way, do you know how long 451 episodes is?

5:49Jason:It's crazy. I looked back. This show began on July 30th of 2017. I've been doing this since 2017. How is that possible? This is an insane thing to me. Anyway, so 451 episodes later, here I am. And if you've been listening, well, if you've been listening for a long time, let's say back to 2017, and if you have, can you reach out to me? Because holy cow, that's cool. But you would have noticed that the show has changed formats a number of times. It didn't start as an interview show. It started as more of a narrative show where I would tell a story and then I would drop in audio of the person that I was talking to.

6:31Jason:And I would tell the story and would kind of go back and forth. It would almost sound like a longer radio piece, like something you would have heard on NPR. And that was, and then it evolved. Actually, I'll explain why I did it that way and then why it changed because that goes to my concept of form as a solution to function. But I have made another change. The show went from that narrative thing to this kind of interview format. And it evolved and tweaked in an interview format-y kind of way for a while. But now another change has happened, which is that maybe you've caught this recently. It started, I don't know, a couple months ago, which is that the show now opens with me doing this high-energy monologue for like two minutes, and then it just leads into the guest.

7:21Jason:And then I just bring the guest in and I talk to the guest, which is different from how it was a few months ago where I would kind of create this narrative setup, this produced opening where I would tell a little bit of a story and you would hear a little bit of the audio. It was kind of like what I was describing that the show was at the very beginning. And I would set up the conversation that you were going to hear and I would hit the main points and I would just kind of tee the whole thing up for you. And then there would be a break, and then it would get into the interview. That change is for a very specific reason.

7:54Jason:And today I'm going to explain that reason and explain how we got there. And then we're going to get to the broader idea, the reason why the show keeps changing its format and structure, and how you can take that insight and utilize it in whatever it is you make. Every entrepreneur has the same problem, and that problem is time. You're doing too much, and you definitely don't have time to chase down office supplies or tech gear from five different stores. That is why there's Walmart Business. With one free account at business.walmart.com, you get access to a huge selection of business essentials, from cleaning supplies and office tech to workwear and even fresh food, all at Walmart's everyday low prices.

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10:48Jason:That's mathnasiumfranchise.com or call 888-763-2604. so when i started this show in 2017 i had this very specific idea which was you know the world is full of interview podcasts and i want to do something that feels more distinct and special and i like i like crafted narrative i like storytelling that's what i do that's my background and so i wanted to make this show that felt like it was really me telling you a story and that story was going to be about how a entrepreneur solved a problem. So every time I, the way in which I would make the show is that I would find an entrepreneur who solved a problem and then I would get on the phone with them for often like 45 minutes, sometimes an hour.

11:41Jason:And I would talk them, they would talk me through the problem and the solution. We have, we would have this kind of interesting but meandering conversation that was never meant to be heard. And then I would, have the story and I would step back and I would think, well, what's the best way to tell this story? And I would come up with an opening and then I would set up the story and then I would talk about the problem and the solution and I would write this script, this script that was my narration plus little bits of audio from them. So, you know, if I interview, who was the very first person I interviewed?

12:16Jason:Let me look back. I'm pretty sure it was a friend of mine. It was, oh yeah, it was my friend Jaron Galinsky who had a company called Story Hunter, which I think has been rebranded. I've got to go look at it. Anyway, Jaron was kind enough to just kind of be my test subject when I did this back in 2017. So I would talk to him and then I would have this I would create this opening and the opening would it would be me talking about Jaron Galinsky had a problem And the problem was that something, something, something, something. And then it would cut to a little audio of Jaron who was talking to me.

12:55Jason:I would find this good quote, this 20 seconds of good audio from him, good tape, as they call it in radio. And then it would come back to me. But what he didn't understand was that blah, blah, blah. And that's how the whole thing went. And it would kind of flow like that. And that was because that was a thing that I wanted to make. That was the form that I wanted this to take. I was leading with form and I think that that is what so many people who make content do is that they lead with form this is the thing that I want to make this is how I want it to read this is how I want it to look this is whatever whatever whatever okay and back then 2017 I had one child that child was um one or two years old my kid was born in 2015 so depending on whatever time it was and so on the weekends, we didn't do a lot.

13:47Jason:There was a lot of sitting around. There was a lot of like the kidnapping and that is when I wrote the scripts for this podcast. I would interview people during the week and then I would sit down and I'd spend an hour or two and then after a few years of this, my kids got older and my weekends got busier and I was no longer able to make this show on the weekends. Now I had to make it during the weekday and I realized I just don't have the time to do all this, to do all this scripting and to do all this editing. It was just too much. And so I realized that the form of this show needed to change because the resources available changed.

14:32Jason:The amount of time that I had for this show had changed. And so I thought, oh, fine, this will be a interview show like everyone else, except there will be other things about it that are going to be distinct. Number one, I'm going to keep it short. A lot of interview shows are an hour. You spend the first 20 minutes just getting to know someone. None of that. We're just getting straight into the problem and the solution. That's what we're doing. And then I kept at the very beginning the kind of produced idea where I would write a script, but now writing the script would take a smaller amount of time because I was just writing four minutes of script instead of 30 minutes of script.

15:13Jason:And eventually this program called Descript came along. Descript is this incredible tool where essentially you can take a, let's say I interview somebody, I take the audio of that interview, I can just dump it into Descript, it will automatically transcribe it, and then I can highlight the portions of the transcript that I wanted and export them as individual files and bring them into it. And therefore, it made the editing of the audio so much faster. And eventually, I actually just started making the entire show into script. Anyway, point is, I was able to retain a little bit of the old format of this show, the narration, the thing that I like, the storytelling, and put it at the very beginning and then have the interview after.

15:54Jason:And this also solved another problem, which is that often when I talk to entrepreneurs, you know, they're not always the best tellers of their own story. and sometimes it would take me a while to find the story and to really get a understanding of the problem and the solution. Even though we would have talked about it by email when we actually start recording the episode, it becomes kind of loose. And so having this opening allowed me to present this tight idea of exactly what the story was gonna be. And then it allows me to kind of dump into the interview at the time in which it becomes most interesting.

16:30Jason:So oftentimes you'd get this set up at the beginning of the show and then you'd get the ad break. And then after the ad break, I would say, I'd say, all right, we're back. You know, again, today we're talking to this person about this problem. And just before the break, they were telling us about something, something, something. And, you know, now they're going to pick up on that. And then you would hear, it would essentially kind of move into an interview. But what you might not know is that we are actually picking up like 15 minutes into the interview. And I just dumped the first 15 minutes because it was establishing and it wasn't that interesting.

17:04Jason:And now we got to the good stuff. This is how I was making the show. Okay. So that was fine. It was still kind of labor intensive, but not nearly as labor intensive. I was able to accomplish it during the day, the regular work day. and then another big change happened. And that big change is more recent. And maybe you have experienced this or noticed this as a consumer. Maybe you like this as a consumer. Maybe, like me, you actually hate this as a consumer. And that is video. Podcasts have shifted into video. You'll see it all the time. If you happen to listen to podcasts on Spotify, you open Spotify, it is now feeding you video.

17:46Jason:I will be honest with you, I literally don't understand this. I don't understand this. I don't know why you would want to watch two people talk to each other. That is excruciating to me. I literally, I have a physical reaction to how much I hate the idea of sitting and watching two people talk to each other. I can't do it. I listen to podcasts when I'm on the move, when my body and my eyes are engaged with other things. I listen to podcasts when I'm washing dishes. I listen to podcasts when I'm walking down the street or when I'm on the subway or something, I'm never looking at something. Why?

18:21Jason:Why would you want to watch people talk? I don't get it. But maybe you do. Maybe you're listening to this and you're like, I actually love watching Diary of a CEO and watching Stephen Bartlett sit across a table from somebody and talk to them. Maybe you love that. I don't know why. Reach out to me and tell me why you love that. It really doesn't make sense to me. But anyway, podcasts are now video. and uh so that when you know like could i buck that trend yes i could buck that trend but this is a show made for entrepreneur and entrepreneur has a lot of sees a lot of value in the video that means that there's more content for our youtube channel and that we can cut the video into short form and distribute it on entrepreneurs instagram and tiktok channels and all that stuff so now i got to make a video podcast and the thing about the video is that editing video that's really complicated.

19:14Jason:And, uh, and, and, and it just, it would balloon in labor and just doing video, by the way, balloons in labor already for me. Uh, there are more things that I have to think about today. I'm not really thinking about them to be honest. So if you're watching this in video, which you can, there's an option to watch this in video. Why you would want to watch this in video again? I have no idea. It's just me sitting in a chair, talking to a camera. Why would you want to watch that? But you could watch it. Maybe you are watching it anyway. Here's the thing. So I've got two lights on me. I've got a big, this thing called a key light, which is this giant light that I had to buy and like wedge behind my desk, which means that my desk is now out in the middle of my room.

19:56Jason:And then I got a side light because if you just have a key light, then you look kind of flat. So you actually need two light sources in order to look dynamic. And then there is, I have to think about how I look, which today I've decided not to, just in the spirit of the 451st episode. So I'm just wearing a regular t-shirt. My hair is kind of a mess, but normally I would clean up for these things. And then also when I'm producing video now, I'm trying to use, I bought this like ridiculously expensive DSLR camera and I have it set up behind a tripod and like getting it to focus each time is like a 10 minute process.

20:32Jason:The whole thing is crazy and nonsense. I'm actually not even doing that today. I'm using this 4K camera that I just stick on top of my laptop. It's so much easier. Anyway, so it's like, and then I got to think about what's going on behind me. And I haven't even figured that out yet. So if you've seen any video of me, I'm just in my home office. My home office is not set up like a studio. Behind me is like a couch and some bass guitars that I have on the wall. Is that because I want people to know that I play bass? No, it's actually because if I don't hang them on the wall, I forget that they exist.

21:02Jason:And then I never pick up the bass. And then like my hobby disappears. And so they're just, they're on the wall because I work in the office, not because I want them on camera, but this is the only angle. Anyway, I think I'm going to have to get a backdrop because this whole thing looks kind of crappy and I haven't gotten the backdrop yet. And it's, this whole thing is a mess. I hate, I just hate video. But anyway, because of the video, I also had to think differently about the show because it's now way too labor intensive to do that video interview and then do that like produced thing that I was doing with video.

21:38Jason:Because first of all, how do I deliver the script? When I was delivering the script by audio, the intro, the produced intro, and I was producing doing that by audio, I could just read it. I would type it out and then I would just read it into a microphone. And I've gotten really, really good over the years. This is a great skill of reading something, but making it sound like I'm just talking off the top of my head. So I never wanted you to feel like I was reading it, but I was reading it. And now to do that would mean that I have to load it into a teleprompter. And then I got to do each segment by itself.

22:10Jason:And I got to somehow stitch all that video together. And then I got to use it. It's so much. And so I realized I can't do that anymore. The original produced concept of the show now has to fully go away. And so I'm left thinking, all right, how do I interview someone on video? How do I make it efficient to produce and efficient on the back end? And how do I make it good? Because I still really don't want to just say, hey, here's my guest. And then we just jump into something. because I deeply believe that an audience and especially a business audience who is time-strapped, I was gonna say cash-strapped, often cash-strapped, but certainly time-strapped, that you need to know at the very, very beginning what you're gonna get.

22:55Jason:I have this concept that I call the first question. And the first question is the first question that anybody asks about anything that they encounter. So if you are just walking down a grocery store aisle and you are encountering products, you're gonna ask this question of every product. If you open up Netflix and it starts showing you movies or TV shows that you might wanna watch, you're gonna ask this of this question. When you start every episode of any podcast, including this one, you're gonna ask this question. Ready, what's the question? The question is, is this for me or is this not for me?

23:30Jason:That's it, that's what you wanna know. Is this for me or is this not for me? You're trying to evaluate if this is for you and you're gonna take whatever cues you get in the first couple seconds and you'll be like, yeah, this is for me, or yeah, this is not for me. It's a waste of my time, or I'm not buying this bag of chips, or whatever it is. At the very beginning, I really led this show with form, right? I had this idea of what I wanted this show to be, how I wanted it to sound. And I thought that that was really important. I thought that that separated me from the marketplace. I later learned that that's not true, because when I ditched that format and I went into an interview show, I thought, you know, people are not going to like this as much.

24:06Jason:It's not as unique anymore. Nobody cared. Nobody cared. I got literally zero emails from listeners telling me that they cared about that. Instead, the show only continued to grow. And so I realized that the form that I wanted was not necessarily the form that other people wanted. And that instead, what I needed to do was create a show. And I continue to do this. This is the reason that I have the format that I have now with the video. I needed to create the show by starting with, what does the show need to be, right? So the function, the function of the show. How does the show function for the audience?

24:41Jason:And then also, how does the show function within the constraints that I have to make the show? My time, the technology needs, and so on. And constraints, people often, I think, chafe against constraints, but constraints can be excellent. I remember having a conversation with Ryan Reynolds once because I interviewed him for the cover of the magazine many years ago, and he said he loves constraints. He loves constraints when he's making a movie and there's a tight budget or when he's making a commercial because he's got an advertising agency called Maximum Effort. And there's a really tight budget because he said, look, if you have an infinite budget, you just start spending it on stupid stuff, stuff that just doesn't matter.

25:20Jason:You start spending it on big explosions and stories of aliens coming down from the sky. But if you have constraints, then you have to focus on what truly matters, what truly resonates with an audience, which is people, which is story, which is the emotional connection. So he's like, constraints can really help your creativity. And I do agree with that. So I now have these constraints. The constraints are I got to make video, even though I don't want to. And I have a limited amount of time to make the show, so I've got to make it really efficient. And I don't want to make it too long. so I've got to really laser in on a valuable conversation.

25:58Jason:I have all these constraints. And so the constraints, which is the resources, plus what is the show? What is the show for? Who is the show serving? Have a clear idea of the audience and your value and how the show, anything that you make, whether, again, I keep using show, but this could be a newsletter that you write, this could be the social media that you produce, anything. thing. How does it serve your audience in a way in which they are unserved in the market right now? Again, mine is very specific on problems. I just want it to be a show about solutions. I want it to be a practical, tactical show.