Friend of the Show: Stephen Robles

Today is something a little different. Rather than publish a typical post, I'd like to share a Youtube video / podcast that Stephen Robles and I recorded for Friend of the Show, a new podcast I'm starting.

For the last few months I've been kicking around the idea of a podcast where I bring on guests to try and learn more about what has made them successful, and at least in the first few episodes, understand the range of skill versus luck in determining where they've arrived in their careers.

Stephen is the third guest to the show, and it was a delight to talk to him.

I've followed him for a while, on YouTube, on his Primary Technology podcast, and he kindly accepted my invitation to come on the show and chat.

There's a bunch of things I wanted to get into with him, and we were able to tee off on several of them, including skill versus luck, getting into YouTube video creation, finding success based on multiple repetitions of a thing, and how I might be able to take one of my passions and test out the waters with video.

I've been thinking about this episode. First, I really enjoyed it. Stephen has an insight to how he approaches video content creation that is worth listening to.

And second, it got me thinking about the things that I'm most passionate about. Generally I want to share about a thing that either excites or irritates me.

On the episode we got into discussing Freeform, the Mac and iPad and iPhone app for sketching. It's struck me that I haven't found a single Apple tech enthusiast who reports on this properly.

I've written about the topic many times. But I've not created a video on it. And that might be an area that's missing. So, Stephen encouraged me to try that out—create a few test videos for Freeform and see what happens.

It's an interesting challenge, especially since it means delving more into video. But I've been thinking a lot lately about activation versus retention for building an audience. You need to find people, and then you need to offer something valuable enough that they'll want to stay. A podcast format is a proven method for building retention. People get used to your voice, and stay over the long term. But it's not a great way to build an audience from scratch.

Other formats are, though. And that's where I may need to branch out. Which brings us back to social media—a thing and place I've mostly avoided this last year, and in years past had little success with.

All that's to say, this episode with Stephen brought up a bunch of questions in my mind, and I'm looking forward to thinking it through to try and figure out what's next.

Oh, and if you're curious about what I was up to last week, check out Async, where I dove into attending Dragonsteel for the first time.