Episode 53
One Year Celebration!
Today we welcome back Igor after a two month sabbatical and celebrate more than a year of podcasting. We spend some time catching up after taking a bit of a summer break from releasing podcast episodes, talk about some of the origins and inspirations that led us to start podcasting to begin with, get into some emerging tech ideas, and cap the episode off celebrating the last year and talking about what is next for us.
Thanks for joining us after a year, we love doing this and hope you are finding value in our content. As always, don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at [email protected].
Transcript
Robert Greiner 0:04
You were ready to come back to work or to Texas?
Igor Geyfman 0:07
I was ready to come back to to the podcast.
Robert Greiner 0:12
Yes. Yes, good answer,
Igor Geyfman 0:15
definitely ready to come back to the podcast because we had some failed, failed at bats, I not quite ready to come back to work, I took three months off, like three or four years ago. And really, by the end of month, two, I was ready two come back to work. And in this case, took nine weeks off, which is a little bit over two months. And I would say that I really needed the extra month. And I think some of that has to do with buying this house. But some of it has to do with helping a person who's basically new to the country who's lived 33 or so years of her life, in a very different mode adjust to living here, and also without her social support system that she's that she has and that she's built up. And then there's just like difficulties there that just require time. And I think that was like, the stuff that was different. This house thing is a big distraction for me. The closing is on Friday, but that doesn't actually and the all the headaches because it's got it basically, that starts a month long clock, hopefully just a month long clock of getting it furnished and as cheaply as possible, but still looking good, and then rented. So it can start generating some sort of income without having to make a bunch of mortgage payments while it's sitting idle. So I think that's the stuff that's like, preventing me from being 100% ready. And it's also the stuff that distracted me from doing stuff that I thought I was gonna be able to do during the sabbatical. That's like work related or other things. That's my answer to y'all. Which is the real answer. But I think the answer, the company line is, I'm back and I'm at it.
Charles Knight 2:06
Yeah.
Robert Greiner 2:07
Well, hey, I'm glad you're back.
Igor Geyfman 2:10
There. I am glad to just be back, if that makes sense, right? Maybe not be like in the thick of a bunch of stuff. But But I am glad because I do I like work. And I miss work. And it's just, I've just got these distractions that will probably take a month or so to resolve. And I'm hoping it's not they're not going to affect the quality of my deliverables and work and the things that I do. Because that's not fair.
Charles Knight 2:42
You'll make a work.
Igor Geyfman 2:43
I hope so. Yeah, I I think so. So,
Charles Knight 2:47
and Robert will do all the work that you need to
Robert Greiner 2:52
been covering for him for two months.
Charles Knight 2:54
So he's Yeah, he's been already doing this already. Yeah.
Igor Geyfman 2:57
Well, I don't want to do that to Robert. Especially, Robert. But yeah, I wouldn't want to do that to anyone. So yeah, I want to, I want to be able to pull my own weight.
Robert Greiner 3:09
Things are pretty stable right now. So I think it's a good time to ease back in and hopefully, ramping back up on on your work will not what we'll take a nice pace that will Yeah, give me some space.
Igor Geyfman 3:22
I didn't shut off slack this time. Like I did last time, I just completely shut everything off. And I wasn't like keeping up with anything. But I would check slack probably, you know, four or five times a week. So I'm, there's not I don't have to like catch up on a bunch of stuff. I know Mark's leaving to join the Mavs for example. I know Rachel had left to do something and we got some new stakeholders. And first thing this morning Greg had a one on one with me to catch me up on a bunch of the details on those things. So I feel like I'm not gonna take as much ramp up time as normal because I just never truly disconnected. 100%
Robert Greiner 4:00
do you think that affected your vacation? at all?
Igor Geyfman 4:03
No. Because it was it was like idle time. I'm not doing anything. Anyway. everyone's asleep. Let me see what's going on.
Robert Greiner 4:11
You looked a lot like I don't I never any posts from you.
Igor Geyfman 4:15
Oh, yeah, I did. I did. I I implemented like, no posting discipline. But I read every single email and slack message that came in probably within a day of becoming in
Robert Greiner 4:29
good. Well, I'm glad you didn't reply to anything.
Igor Geyfman 4:34
Why I didn't. I didn't want people to be like, Oh my God, he's he's working on his sabbatical bad, whatever. So I wasn't really working. I was just like reading the news. Because I'm not on social media and I don't have the news. That my my, my real Escape is reading work stuff.
Charles Knight 4:53
That's funny.
Igor Geyfman 4:55
There you go. When you don't have any feeds to read. Right, then then he just your feed is your slack and your outlook. Yeah. You turn those off. You miss them. That's
Robert Greiner 5:08
true. Yeah, that's a much better use of time, though. But yeah,
Igor Geyfman 5:11
because when I, when I took my first leave, I was still very much in like Instagram and Facebook and I was I had a whole bunch of stuff to engage in. I quit all that stuff right after that sabbatical. And so I realized I was like, Man works like the only real it's where I get all my news. So, and most of your stuff, most of my stuff. I'm happy to be back. recording with you all though.
Robert Greiner 5:33
Yeah, we're happy to have you on on Charles and I talked weekly about how much we missed recording.
Igor Geyfman 5:39
Have you? Have we recorded our anniversary episode or
Robert Greiner 5:43
this is it!
Charles Knight 5:44
Today
Robert Greiner 5:45
Happy anniversary!
Igor Geyfman 5:46
Happy, Happy anniversary, y'all. Over 52 weeks, right?
Robert Greiner 5:50
That's right. Yeah, we have been podcasting and releasing episodes. For over a year. Now. I think this is technically 53. And we just missed a couple of weeks. So yeah, not not too bad. Not too bad at all. Congratulations.
Igor Geyfman 6:05
Congratulations to y'all this. It was like an experiment when we started in a way right? We're just like, Hey, why don't we just jump on and do this podcast? And Robert, you really leaned into the production side of it and got
Charles Knight 6:21
Gary Vee. Right?
Igor Geyfman 6:23
Is that was that right? Was it Gary Vee that inspired the whole thing?
Robert Greiner 6:26
Yeah, that inspired the sort of just getting stuff out and recording, creating content and publishing it and worrying about the quality later. Yeah, which you can't do on everything, I don't think but for us, it worked and it felt a pretty big professional void of we just have coffee and we would meet up so many times a week, and that that all went away overnight. And so this did stand in replacement for that.
Igor Geyfman 6:50
I've been following Gary Vee ever since he was spitting wine into a Jets bucket. I don't know any anything about the backstory on his dad on the liquor store basically. And he just started doing this like web show reviewing wine. And but doing it in a way that was like approachable for millennials. So wasn't stuffy. And his dream was to, I guess is to own the New York Jets. So he's a big Jets fan. And so when you do I guess wine tasting instead of swallowing the wine because you get drunk you like spit it out into some sort of vessel it's usually some sort of fancy silver whatever. And he just had this like jets bucket that he would just like spit the wine out into as he was you know, doing his reviews and this was like early days of video, and YouTube and especially like online commerce for for liquor, and wine. And he found an audience that was people like himself that didn't connect didn't resonate with traditional wine, connoisseurs and wine rating. And he did an every man sort of deal and that's how I got started. There's a point in time where I just kind of lost track of what he was doing. And then he came back on my radar and I basically saw him as a motivational speaker like a millennial Tony Robbins like
Charles Knight 8:18
that's that's only how I'm no of him or knew of him when I first was just in that space of you want to be like me, you can do it. And here's some motivation to go try to do your own thing.
Robert Greiner 8:31
Yeah, except he actually has the credentials to back it up it works here because you can trust what he says about building a business for instance, or building an audience because he's done it outside of just being an expert.
Igor Geyfman 8:43
He he has this video it's it's a video with him and this kind of older guy and they talk about the restaurant business. And they basically break down a way to entice customers in the first three visits that they have
Robert Greiner 8:58
that was so good,
Igor Geyfman 8:58
you know, we're talking about
Robert Greiner 9:00
Yeah, absolutely.
Igor Geyfman 9:01
And it's it's like a no nonsense in the weeds. Practical tactical breakdown of like how to engage with your customers, to get them to come back. And what the point of if, if you're able to get that customer to come back for the fourth time into your restaurant and have a good experience, you probably have a customer for life and that came from hands on experience. Well not not like theoretical wish for it and you'll get it sort of a sometimes, you know, that you get from motivational speakers, just like
Robert Greiner 9:37
you know, this was like on the second visit, given this coupon and this color napkin so all the people in the restaurant know that they're on their second visit, and at the end, do X, Y and Z so that they're sure to come back and give them 50% off their third meal, or whatever it was because you're going to make it up. When they come back for life. Then if you want a restaurant, you just Got a bunch of free advice he
Igor Geyfman:Yes, they did. That's pretty cool that was like that you could implement right away, and could probably get very good results with
Robert Greiner:which coming back to the podcast, that's what I like about what we do. We don't sell anything. We this definitely helps us in that we're, you know connected and we get to talk about stuff that we enjoy. And we're furthering our thinking in certain subjects and, and stuff like that. But mostly it's like, yeah, if you're listening, I hope this is helpful. I like the idea of providing value. And just for listening,
Igor Geyfman:the value has to has to be there. Right? Not, it can't just be a future promise of value. If you're doing something, it should be generating immediate value for people.
Charles Knight:Okay, so I've got a question for you all. How important is it for us as individuals like you and me, but maybe also as leaders to stay up with a zeitgeist? Because that that sounds hard. If that's Gary V's superpower, he's he's figured out something, either intuitively, and then he's trying to codify it and share it with others on how to do that. But you know, that that seems like a scary daunting thing to do. Especially, I can't remember if we were talking about this before we started recording. But, Igor, you're not on social media, neither am I. And you don't say the news? I read a single Daily News email. And that's it. And so how, I guess I'm wondering, do I need to be up to speed on this? I'd Geist in order to do what I want to do. What's your thoughts on that? Because that we could probably devote a whole episode to trying to deconstruct or reverse engineer how Gary Vee, does it. And maybe it applied ourselves. If we think
Robert Greiner:Well, I would say, little to no value. And you shouldn't try to do that. Interesting. Most people should not. Yeah,
Igor Geyfman:I agree with Robert, on that 100 percent.
Robert Greiner:Now that the funny thing is he's so he's in 10, or 12 different things. And Charles, you may have a niche and you might like woodworking and woodworking materials are really big right now or something. Or you may have a restaurant or something like that, you may want to start your own online store where you whittle some things out of wood and try to sell them. If you have an interest that overlaps with someone like that, then it's super valuable because you're getting a bunch of content for free. But should you go and immerse yourself in that firehose of content information? No, because that's not that's not what makes you unique in the market. That's not what we need from you as a as a member of the firm. Like there's nothing about that area that would benefit you from from digging into it. That's not true for everybody. But I think for the three of us, there's no way like we shouldn't be on any of that. Well, okay, so
Charles Knight:let's define zeitgeist then because that I don't think I understood the the woodworking kind of analogy there. So the zeitgeist, what is this Merriam? webster.com define Zeitgeist as the general intellectual, moral and cultural climate of an era? Is that, is that how you think about zeitgeist,
Robert Greiner:I just thought of what's popular and trending, broadly speaking, so yeah, yeah, it's probably some overlap there.
Igor Geyfman:I just, I don't think I think it's important for some people, especially for people like Gary Vee, who, at his core is a marketer, and really helps marketers, I think, for us, we, that's, that's our job function for the most part. And so we're probably better off investing in our time and ways to engage with people, right, and be curious about our relationships, be curious about the people that we come in contact with. Whereas Gary's probably better off being curious about what's what's gonna be on, on the minds of a particular market, or particular type of people. And, and, and by the way, Gary Vee, probably has no idea what boomers care about, right? Like he's planted himself in the millennial era. And he's just sort of keeping in touch with what the millennials care about, and probably some late version of, of the Gen Zers, but at some point, he's, he will, he will like age out. And he'll have an increasingly harder and harder time understanding the Zeitgeist of Gen Z. And then whatever the generation is after that, but he'll still probably have a pretty good pulse on what the millennials care about. And for him, that's important. I don't find that important for me personally, I just don't think it helps me.
Charles Knight:I think I think my thinking about what zeitgeist covered, was more focused on the culture. You know, cultural But this definition has a pretty broad one like intellectual, moral, and cultural climate. There's also some other definitions that talk about politics and economics to like those trends of a particular an era. But I do think that it is, it probably is connected very tightly, Igor to the generations, like specific generations. And, and yeah, I just I don't know, like it's,
Robert Greiner:you have, you know, returned to work and war on talent. And there's like, areas that are bubbling up right now that overlap with our responsibilities and interests as professionals. And so I would say that those kind of things would might make sense to dip your toe in, but just not in general, like the firehose of what the culture is thinking, I think would do very little good.
Charles Knight:Yeah. Well, I feel the need to take the contrary position and advocate for understanding the zeitgeist, but I don't think that's what this episode is. Oh, no, no, no, I think I need to
Robert Greiner:wade into those waters and let us know. Let us know how it goes for you. I
Charles Knight:don't think I'm ready for that yet. So okay, I think I've talked myself out. I've taken a stance on why we all need to understand things like Tic Tok and NF T's, although I know a little bit about NF T's not so much about TicTok.
Igor Geyfman:Yeah, I have like, weird opinions on like cryptocurrency in general. And the more time goes by the more false those opinions probably aren't. So
Charles Knight:well, we could have a whole topic centered on that, because I've come to some realizations that recently where I feel compelled to invest on behalf of my kids future in cryptocurrencies.
Robert Greiner:That's not investing, buddy. That's speculation
Charles Knight:What's that?
Robert Greiner:Yeah, you're that's speculation, nothing wrong with nothing. Like it's not gambling. It's speculation. So you're in your tribe.
Igor Geyfman:Robert and I are exactly on the same wavelength about crypto. And it's, it's, it's kind of an unpopular opinion, because it's like, oh, holy cow, like, look at all these folks making so much money off of off of crypto. Yeah. And so on. And I don't want to speak for you, Robert. But sounds like we're of the same mind. You know, I can speak for me anytime I look at the crypto market. And I'm like, this. This is like the, the Dutch tulip craze. At least there are tulips at the at the end of that. But there's there's not even tulips here. Right. So I don't know. Yeah,
Robert Greiner:I mean, maybe I'll close the loop really quickly on this one. If you if you're saying I want to speculate on something on behalf of my kids, and I'm going to put this discretionary income over here and see what happens. Go for it. If you're saying I want to put together a nest egg that will grow and support my kids over time. Trading currencies is not the way to do that. You wouldn't you wouldn't go buy a bunch of British pounds, or pesos. Right? And that's the same thing.
Charles Knight:I'm not trying to build a nest egg. But I do want to better understand the difference between investing and speculating because is, but I don't think that's the point I, to me, the I view blockchain and cryptocurrencies, not any particular cryptocurrency as something as destabilizing as the internet in terms of disruptive technology. And so that's what I'm, that's what I'm betting on or speculating, I guess. And so for me, because I was like, y'all, it's like, this is ridiculous. Like, I've, I'm not, I'm not touching any of this. It's like, Huh, this is probably the same mindset that people had when the internet came out and was like, Who the heck needs a website? It's like, I
Robert Greiner:want it. Yeah, it's not ridiculous. I mean, I think that's been proven out and it's not going anywhere. Yeah,
Charles Knight:yeah. And that's really what I'm, I'm hedging on for my kids future. Do I think that I'm gonna get rich and then be able to pass on to my kids by investing in Bitcoin? No, absolutely. Do I think underlying protocols that cryptocurrencies are built upon? Are they going to be the foundational protocols like TCP IP of the future? Absolutely. Yeah. Right. I'm betting on those things. Yes. And so yeah, I don't know what to call that. I've been using the word hedge, like it's a hedge for my kids, not a investment or not a way to get rich or anything like that. I don't know. Like, I guess
Robert Greiner:there's a lot of value in voting with your dollars and things you want to participate in. But if you think if you like the idea of sustainable energy, nothing wrong with putting some money in Tesla. Yeah, no, yeah. Most people would say that it's overpriced, but people were saying that was overpriced three years ago, and it's doubled. Yeah. So yeah, but that's, that's the thing about speculating versus investing versus gambling? Like if you want to put some dollars in something to participate or have your kids be participating in it earlier. I don't have a problem with that. Yeah, it just it's not investing. Yeah. Yep. You should really try to retire off of it, either. Like there's a lot of people that will be able to buy jets and Mazda rotties because they did multiple houses and there's other people who completely wrecked their, them in their future families like financial stability.
Charles Knight:Gotcha.
Igor Geyfman:I distinctly remember having a conversation with a friend of mine. This is kind of like mid, it was like mid 2017 and Bitcoin just broke $2,000 and I was like, looking at that, and I was thinking like, this is the most absurd thing that I've ever seen in my life. And I distinctly remember telling him like, Bitcoin is about to crash. You know what I mean? Like I was like, like, there's there's no doubt in my mind that Bitcoin is gonna crash. Like, it was like, this crazy run. And, and it was just, like, driven by speculation. And I remember like, my Uber driver was like, asking me about cryptocurrency. And I was like, What? Like, that's crazy. Alright, well,
Robert Greiner:the funny thing about that is it did crash a bunch time since then. But it's also
Igor Geyfman:but it never, it never fell below $2,000. And at one point had reached, like, 60k.
Robert Greiner:Yeah, it's gambling
Igor Geyfman:what is it? Like?
Robert Greiner:What is it today? 43 $43,000 going,
Igor Geyfman:right? I mean, Holy smokes. And how wrong and stupid was Igor four years ago, saying it's gonna crash and $2,000 price tag is, is a boondoggle. And, and so I don't think you are wrong or stupid. And I don't think if you had it at 2000, you would have kept it to 60, you would have sold it at four or 10. Yeah, right. Like you, you just can't hold on stuff like that. I mean, it was it was a crazy roller coaster ride for a while, in 2017. And at that point, it was like, wow, this this is like, pure speculation. This is, this is before a lot of this is what popularized thinking around what the blockchain could do for companies and the inner product. That was the point in time when people were thinking like, okay, yeah, maybe Let's not discuss Bitcoin, for example, as a store of value or whatever, or actually is really meant to be a medium of exchange. But let's talk about the underlying technologies, and what a decentralized ledger might mean for for various industries. And those were definitely like, interesting discussions. And yet still, not in those four years. I don't think much has as come out of it, except for companies and governments are now regulating these cryptocurrencies and the like, the initial ethos behind creating something like, like Bitcoin is completely gone. like nobody, nobody talks about that anymore. Nobody cares about that anymore. Right? Like the original Bitcoin paper. People are just talking about Dogecoin.
Charles Knight:Well, no, I think I think what's what, I guess the way that I would, once somebody made the analogy to what's happening with blockchain and cryptocurrencies to the internet, it all made sense for me. It's like asking, like, hey, how can companies take advantage of blockchain is like saying, How can companies take take advantage of transport Control Protocol, like the TCP part of TCP IP that runs the foundations and the plumbing of the internet?
Robert Greiner:Yeah, like you would build a system that manages contracts on top of rights, a technology not? Yeah, I agree.
Charles Knight:Yeah, they don't talk about Bitcoin. Well, a lot of people talk about Bitcoin and Dogecoin and stuff like that. But, you know, those conversations have evolved into what is now called defy, where there are billions of dollars locked up on blockchains, specifically on top of like, aetherium, which is where all the smart contract conversations go. And so I think there has been evolutions but there's like a fork. And there's been a fork because the protocols have evolved. And so there's this concept of layers, right? blockchain is like the, it's like the foundational plumbing. Ethereum is like a different layer. I forgot which layer, but there's other layers. So people are building on top of these protocols, new applications to facilitate things like define mortgages, that allows that stuff to take place, people to transact without without the need for, you know, some sort of banking institution.
Robert Greiner:The supply chain stuff's interesting, too.
Charles Knight:Yeah.
Robert Greiner:Although it is kind of silly like that. There's an IBM commercial I think we're like the each tomato is on the blockchain from a farmer, which I kind of chuckle that and maybe that is not smart of me to chuckle at. But I do think there's some interesting supply chain contracts, patient management like those kind of things. I really could go next level.
Charles Knight:As somebody who's talking about how this idea of proof of proof of work, which powers is the protocol that powers Bitcoin, people have to validate certain truths like cryptographic truths to in order to say, yes, this transaction should be logged in this block on the blockchain. They, they, they apply that into the academic and scientific realm, to where citizens like you and I could be validating through proof of work, some of the basic fundamental truths of physics in order to create a blockchain of validated scientific truths that are publicly accessible that other people can build upon. And this is my thing. It's like, Yeah, I don't think you can talk about blockchain and cryptocurrencies. separately. I think you have to talk about them together. And they were talking about, yeah, why don't you incentivize people to do that even with the most basic fundamental scientific truths and reward them with currency of some sort?
Robert Greiner:Well, that way, I mean, we just talked about social media that would unlock a key gripe, which is you you're basically getting a bunch of free labor by people putting their their own information onto these platforms. And though that information is monetized and not filtered back says like that, there's definitely an asymmetry. And labor and pay. Yeah, so something like that could be could pave the way for removing one of that, like, key issues with social media.
Charles Knight:That's interesting.
Igor Geyfman:Yeah, there's like hundreds of coins already like solving that, Robert.
Robert Greiner:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's that's not a specific thing. Yeah, I just like, you'd have to have some Instagram or Facebook, just implement it in a way. That's exactly right. Like, why would you? You're getting it for free? Why would you care? Yeah, it's funny, too. So there's the market cap of Bitcoin is $820 billion. And I'm wondering how many billions of dollars of Bitcoin are on lost hard drives or corrupted hard drives? Or, like the wallet is there, the coins are real, and you'll never no one will ever access them ever again. Which is which Bitcoin does not have a answer for except to inflate the price of the coin? Because you can't create more can create more coins like you can? I think that the US government probably has a way to handle that for dollars that are just lost, right? But there's no way to there's no way to do that with Bitcoin. So that's kind of, I mean, maybe over time, eventually, are they all going to get lost? Like given an infinite time? I don't know.
Charles Knight:I think it could be. To me, it's like I've heard people call about called Bitcoin digital gold. And so that the lost hard drives and stuff like that are the equivalent of gold at the bottom of the ocean, right? The sunken Spanish Armada?
Robert Greiner:One, it's important to realize, if that analogy holds, there were a very select few people who made a ton of money off of mining gold, most of the money made was the people who are selling building and selling mining equipment.
Igor Geyfman:Yes, that's right. That's the business you want to be in,
Robert Greiner:which is not you.
Charles Knight:And and i think i think that's exactly right. Because at some point, the mining stops, right for Bitcoin. Like there's a cap in terms of
Robert Greiner:Where it becomes prohibitively expensive to mine to that's what's happened for a while, like if the if the price goes up, then it makes sense to spin up compute resources to mine. Yeah. And that's and so going back into if you're a knowledge worker, you have a cloud footprint. One of the main attacks right now is just getting access to your compute resources to mine. cryptocurrency Yeah. And so that no one is really looking. I mean, very few are looking to take your site down. Denial of Service just to break a bunch of stuff. The chances are now you're either going to get ransomware which you pay in Bitcoin. Yeah. Or they're going to take your compute resources and mine until you
Charles Knight:shut it down. That's interesting. Yeah. Fascinating.
Robert Greiner:So we're talking about the future, we should have been celebrating. I'm really happy to be doing this with you all for over a year.
Charles Knight:Me too.
I was thinking in prep for this event asking the question that I hadn't really fully answered it myself. So maybe we could do this. But what have we learned in doing this for a year? You know, what have we taken away? Either obvious or not so obvious? That is a result of, of doing the podcast? y'all go to try to answer that question ourselves.
Igor Geyfman:Yeah, I can't I can go first. Charles. I think what I mean, I don't know if it's learned but definitely realized is that I took content creation for for granted. I've consumed a lot of content over the years through YouTube videos, podcasts, blogs, content that is produced by by folks who are not like journalists, right? Like they're, they're not being paid by some firm to produce this content and As a consumer, I underestimated how much work and effort goes into that. And so that that's been, you know, my biggest sort of realization or, or learning from this is that it's hard. And especially if you're trying to be very thoughtful and want your content, like we talked about earlier to provide some sort of immediate value or thought or engagement or whatever it is, to people who are listening. So that's that's what I learned is content creation is not as easy as I thought. Because when you consume it, it just, it seems easy, and it looks easy, but it's a bit harder than that.
Charles Knight:It's very different from where we started, though, Robert, was just let's hop on zoom for 30 minutes and chat, and no prep, and share it out there and see what feedback that we got. We got we got pretty good feedback on that. So there's a yes, Igor, you're right. Because that I remember when I was leading a session and trying to prepare for and distill things down for y'all to think and be prepared for sessions that that does take time and energy that that is invisible, when you're just consuming. And it doesn't take much to start to put some thoughts out there, and have it be beneficial. And I think that's probably what we've learned is to try to calibrate how much time and energy and prep do we put into this, given everything else that we have to do? And given the type of value that we want to bring to our audience? I think our journey has been trying to figure out what is that balance? Right? Because we can't do this as a full time job. We don't want to half ass it every time. But I do feel like we've gotten to a pretty good kind of rhythm and cadence for how do we plan for episodes, how we identify relevant topics and how we lead them and, and things like that.
Igor Geyfman:And I think we're still like, exploring, right? Like, we're not set on anything worse, we're still trying new things. Every time we have a discussion about the future of the podcast. It's always like what, what new techniques? And maybe content areas? Are we going to explore and, and how are we going to change things up? And not just like, okay, here's our formula, and we're just gonna keep, keep doing it. So I think it's, that's a cool part of the process, or at least for us, for us three, I think is we're just open to exploration, but not just open to exploration, where we're actually doing the things that are necessary to, like, hey, let's try this or that or the other.
Charles Knight:Well, cool. Let me let me go next in the Robert, you can round us out?
Robert Greiner:Yes, sounds good.
Charles Knight:I think the thing that I learned is the, I don't know, I guess how impactful like just simply having a conversation can be on the people around you, the people that you work with our audience, because I really, jokingly we talked about this when we had coffee, you know, years ago before we started doing this, it's like, oh, we have really interesting conversations. We should record these and share them. We joked about that. But I also thought maybe it was really just interesting to us. And valuable just to us, and only us, not anybody else. And the podcast, really put that to the test. And I think I was really pleasantly surprised at the tiny bit of feedback. I mean, we don't get a whole bunch of feedback about our podcasts and our episodes. But we do hear every now and then it's like oh, yeah, I was listening to your podcast, when I was driving from Houston to Dallas, or, hey, what do you said on this thing would hit me at a really important time in my life. And I, I really was surprised at that. Like even that first episode that we recorded, I think some people commented on our Maslow's Hierarchy discussion, Robert, episode number one. And I think I really was surprised a little bit. Ah not that we have original insights to share that we're trying to bring through the podcast, but even just wrestling with some of these things. And talking about it. It's just hugely valuable. And the world needs so much more of that. Because Because the world is so big. There's so many different ideas out there. And because we're overwhelmed with all this, we need a mechanism to try to cut through a lot of that noise. And for me, it's always been podcasts, like finding people who I trust and listening to their podcasts. And as like, wow. in some small way. We are like that for others. And that that's just freakin cool. Like it's just really, really cool. It's humbling. I do feel a sense of responsibility, right that we are as accurate and thoughtful as we can be, but that's what I've learned. It's like our, our voices, our discussions and conversations have a real tangible impact on people's lives. And that is really cool. And also a little scary at the same time.
Robert Greiner:Really well said, I completely agree with you.
Charles Knight:What about you, Robert?
Robert Greiner:Good question. Yeah, I'm probably going to ramble for a little bit, which I hope is okay. One of the main things I learned is I don't care so much about the metrics we've had at this point. And I haven't looked in quite some time 10s of 1000s, of downloads, listens, whatever, across all platforms. And that's pretty cool. And there's kind of something that says the more people that listen, the better but pretty quick, and I'm, I'm fairly competitive. So I thought I would be interested in using this as a metric. And I don't, I don't really care so much about that right now. The thing that really matters to me and Charles, you said, this is somebody or occasionally will say, Hey, I listened to your podcast, and this thing you said about wellbeing or leadership, or the ideal week or whatever, was really like helped me. And that is a ripple effect, right? That has that compounds over time. Right? And is probably a discussion you wouldn't have been able to have with that person. Or you just wouldn't have had the opportunity, right? They were listening to you on downtime. And I think that's just really cool. We, we are talking about things. We're figuring stuff out as we go like this is not really a performance at all, I thought podcasting was a lot more like a presentation, like giving a talk on something week over week. But for us, it's it's just a discussion between colleagues, we're constantly growing, evolving our perspective on a wide range of subjects. And those are directly related to us succeeding in our career. So we're better for having done this. We've pushed our thinking forward and a lot of areas and that happens to have helped other individuals in specific points in time, which I think is so cool, and motivates me. I mean, I like doing this as a hobby. I would chat with y'all just to chat. And but it also is very motivating that other people find value occasionally in what we say. But I also agree with you, I don't have no clue how good of a job we're doing, like an aggregate. There's no good way to measure that. But I'm totally content having people occasionally Tell me, Hey, listen to this. And it was helpful. It was helpful to me in this area. And it's always very specific. I was listening to this episode, and I like what you said here. And man, I think I think that's really cool. And so yeah, we're making the content we want to make, I'm having a great time with y'all. I don't ever plan on stopping this. I like the cadence. We're talking about what we want to talk about. And it helps us It helps other people. I really, I'm thrilled and overwhelmed with how much of a personal and professional benefit that this has been. And I just didn't think that I didn't foresee it. And so it's pretty cool to to reflect back and and see the progress we've made. And this is only the beginning.
Charles Knight:Yeah, this this kind of connects back to Igor, something you said about Gary Vee. He's a marketer. And so he's got to stay up on the Zeitgeist. I think that's what we're talking about. And we're not. I'm a big fan of Seth Godin. I haven't read any of his books. But I absolutely love his podcasts.
Robert Greiner:Oh, yeah.
Charles Knight:He's he, he would say, we're all marketers.
Igor Geyfman:Okay, yeah, that's right. And he would
Charles Knight:Yeah, yeah, marketers are people who make things better by making better things. That's his phrase that he says a lot. And for me, I think discussing the topics that we discuss, like the topics that we select, and our discussions about them, I think helped me to make better things, whether that's personally or professionally, and that, I think, as long as I get that value from this, I'll never stop. Regardless of metrics, how many downloads, even the feedback that, you know, we get from our audience, even if that dies away? Which I don't think it will, right. I think as long as we are personally getting value out of it, others will, too. I think that's just the nature of how this stuff works.
Robert Greiner:Yeah. And I'll say, I mean, just to put a point on to add to what you just said, maybe to riff on in a minute. So in my past, in my career, the first emotion I would feel when someone on my team was saying they were going to take some time off, was maybe not anger, but like I was annoyed. I was annoyed. And I was never annoyed when I asked for time off. But and there's like, there's no rational reason for, for that emotion. And we've talked a lot about taking time off, spending time with family, those kinds of things. And what I've found is, I'm no longer annoyed when people come and tell me they're taking time off. I'm like, happy about it. It's really weird. And, but for me, though, and maybe, especially compared to you, and I, Charles, I tend to trend a little more selfish, I think, than you do. I take more intentional time off. I feel like I get more out of the time off, I take with my family. I'm more tactical and practical about the things that I do to create space for good stuff to happen. I'm more cognizant of the experience everyone's having, that never would have that never would have happened without us doing this podcast. And so it makes me less stupid leader. Because like why I mean, such a bizarre emotion. Like, why even I don't know why that connection was made in my brain. And I never probably never would have noticed. And if that's gone, which is cool. But I do things better for my personal wellbeing, and long term professional success, I guess, because I don't get burned out, like I did before. I mean, that's pretty cool. And I attribute a lot of that to the conversations we've had on the podcast.
Charles Knight:That's awesome. It's funny when you were describing your initial reaction, mine was, I think I've always been like this. But when it's been really neutral, somebody asked for time off. Like, look, if you've talked to the right people, you get a plan for it. Just go Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. But But now, what happens is people will do that. And before they even finish, I'll just say approved. Just go on. And then when they keep on trying to justify and ask and explain, that's when I get annoyed. It's like having you listened to our episodes yet on taking time off and the importance of it. Didn't you know, by now that you don't have to justify or really explain why you need this. That's really funny. I hadn't realized that. But yeah, most recently, it's like, why are you still talking to me? I said that this is approved. Just Let's move on. Goodness.
Robert Greiner:Yeah. Still some growth to do on our end. This is always lots of growth. You can fill two internets with all the dumb stuff that I do as a leader,
Charles Knight:and all the blockchains with all blockchains
Robert Greiner:all oceans of
Igor Geyfman:contracts. smart contracts.
Robert Greiner:Yeah, then it could be like, meticulously catalogued for all time and space. Yeah, that'd be scary. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Just think performance feedback and stuff like that. Anyway. Yeah. So yeah, this, this has been a huge benefit to my, to my life doing this with you, I'm thrilled we, we made it over a year, learned a lot. And I'm excited.
Charles Knight:It's been such as stable thing in my life, too, by the way, the seasons change, pandemic shifts, clients and projects come and go. But this has been a really stable thing. So it's, it has contributed to my well being for sure, just in ways that I probably can't even really recognize now. But I think that's the podcast is really kind of a probably a representation of our friendship. You know, that has been pretty solid over the years yet the pocket like something tangible, that represents that so you know, thank you all. Y'all are mine is some of my best friends. So it's gonna make me cry, not just kidding
Igor Geyfman:I mentioned when I said, I was really ready, whatever else I may not have been ready to come back to. I was really ready to to come back for the podcast. And that was super sincere from from
Charles Knight:Yeah, yeah.
Robert Greiner:Yeah, that's great. And it was much harder to do. without you. We didn't get many episodes recorded, and it didn't feel the same. So the feeling's mutual?
Charles Knight:Absolutely.
Robert Greiner:Hey, so on a on a really kind of high note, maybe we can end on. So looking forward. Lots of cool stuff planned for the next year. So I'm just going to kind of rapid fire hit some topics and if y'all want to add some color, to those feel free, but here's what we have sort of on the docket, so just celebrated. In our notes, it's happy week 52. This is happy week. 53. So definitely glad we were able to sit down and celebrate and welcome Igor back, a deaf so we're going to do some questions and answer some questions some of our new hires had at our onboarding program. So there's four of those we're going to hit topics like imposter syndrome, how to ramp up quickly when starting a team how to take on more responsibility. We've talked about ideal week already, right? The importance of sort of checking in being transparent, especially when picking up new work, how to ramp up on new technologies quickly those kinds of things. We're gonna hit a series on one of our favorite books, the trillion dollar coach, that will take about eight episodes where we really do a deep dive into some of the very best human centered coaching that for leaders, knowledge workers that has ever been catalogued, I mean, it's just incredible. If you haven't read the book already, we'll go through that. Managing early career setbacks, that'll be a whole sort of mini series. And so we have dozens of episodes, already kind of planned and things we want to talk about and are excited to talk about. And that list just grows over time. So lots of really cool stuff on the docket. If you're listening, and you want to have input into what we talked about, email us at [email protected]. We'll work it in we were we're 100% on things people asked us to talk about that we're talking about. So feel free to chime in, give us some feedback. We'd love to hear from you. Any thoughts on that? Charles and Igor, on what we have coming up?
Charles Knight:nothing other than I'm, I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited to get back into another book series. Those are all always fun. This one I've read. The Nine lies book was a little weird, because I hadn't I wasn't reading along with you all, but this is going to be awesome middle solidify the learnings that I took away from the book and then also will be able to share it with others. Good stuff,
Robert Greiner:Igor, any closing thoughts?
Igor Geyfman:I'm ready, I'm ready to hit it. Definitely one of my favorite books of the last couple years. And that's something that I aspire to do myself at whatever scale, I can do that. And super stoked to want to take that on.
Robert Greiner:I'm gonna put you on the spot, too. Would you be willing to do a trip report? episode?
Charles Knight:Yes. Yeah. We did talk about this before you We're back Igor. Yeah.
Igor Geyfman:You can say no, yeah. If y'all think it's interesting, I'm happy to do it. I just sometimes I think I underestimate how interested people are and that sort of stuff. But then whenever I do a trip report, I get like really good feedback. People are like, yeah, I'm really glad you you did that. And so if y'all think it's interesting, I'm happy to to put some time in and, and do a little trip report. Which book?
Robert Greiner:Didn't you get married at the same venue as Britney Spears? I did. Yeah, of course, it's gonna be interesting now,
Igor Geyfman:I think had like a 52 hour marriage to her childhood best friend, Jason Alexander, but not like Jason Alexander from Seinfeld. And we got married at the exact same venue. So me and Brittany have a connection
Robert Greiner:and made it past 52 hours,
Igor Geyfman:we, we've definitely made it longer than 52 hours. So, so very excited about that.
Robert Greiner:Of course you want to hear about that, man? That sounds amazing. Absolutely. Okay, well, we'll tee that up, then you want to do that next next week.
Igor Geyfman:Maybe give me another week, because I'm gonna get some material. I'm going to do a trip reports just as kind of regular part of my work and getting materials together for that. And so I'll probably need a couple of weeks to do that. So in the next couple of weeks, let's let's go for it.
Robert Greiner:Okay, well, we'll record it before Halloween. How about that? Definitely before out if you if you're listening tune in. That'll be it'll be a banger. Can't wait. Okay, so in, remind me to this, and then I'll stop doing the preview. You went out you went to the Grand Canyon, you went out into the like, little ring, sort of thing that lets you kind of stand over the Grand Canyon, right?
Igor Geyfman:Yeah. And the Grand Canyon is truly impressive. Yeah, like, I've traveled a lot. And I've seen a lot of, and nature tends to impress me most anyway, just because of its scale. And so I've traveled through like the Swiss Alps and stuff like that. And Holy cow. I mean, the Grand Canyon, you can say it's a it's a giant hole. But I mean, I just never, I've seen so many photos, I've seen drone videos. But until you're standing there, breathing that air, and looking at your actual eyes are looking at it and your body's sort of experiencing the atmosphere of the Grand Canyon. I just, I never truly could appreciate it. People would always like, Oh my god, it's so cool. And I'd be like, Yeah, no, no, I even considered dutch not going, like just driving past it. And, and I gotta tell you, man, I'm so glad that I made flight and it was just my decision to my wife actually is right before we got married. So at that point is my fiance who is going to be my wife in about a day. Like, Hey, I think it'd be really cool. And I was like, Yeah, you're right. Let's just do it. And, boy, it's it's it's something
Charles Knight:it. It's all Awesome in the truest sense of the word, you know, we round off I throw around awesome a lot. Yeah, it is truly awesome. I'm glad you saw my experience.
Igor Geyfman:It's not it's, it's really cool. And even for somebody who's like, tech loving ADHD having sort of person just just being there in the moment, taking taking in our planet, and just be you right? The awesomeness of of that Canyon was it was just nothing. Nothing else was quite like it on the trip, man. We talked about it. And I think close. Not a close second. I think maybe a far away second was was the Bonneville Salt Flats in all in Nevada, but the Grand Canyon
Robert Greiner:pack there. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, I'm looking forward to talking about it more.
Igor Geyfman:Absolutely.
Robert Greiner:All right. Well, hey, thanks for chatting today. Happy one year celebration. You
Igor Geyfman:Happy one year celebration y'all.
Charles Knight:One year one week. Happy 53.
Robert Greiner:Yeah. 56 weeks or something like that. We're celebrating or celebrating close.
Charles Knight:Close enough.
Robert Greiner:Close enough. we're rounding Yeah.
Igor Geyfman:Have a good rest of your day guys. Bye.
Charles Knight:Bye.
Robert Greiner:Bye. That's it for today. Thanks for joining and don't forget to follow us on Twitter @wannagrabcoffee or drop us a line at [email protected]
