[CTQ Smartcast] What it takes to Manage Oneself? With Deepak Gopalakrishnan
Deepak Gopalakrishnan has donned many hats. He is a content creator, podcaster, marketer, and teacher. He runs a popular newsletter Things of the Internet and is also the host of podcasts such as Simblified, The Origin of Things and Getting Meta.
In this Smartcast conversation with CTQ co-founder J Ramanand, we talk about how one can make the shift into the world of freelancing, build an audience, manage their time and be productive. There are also some very valuable lessons to learn in future relevance from the world of freelancing in this CTQ Smartcast.
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(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)
SOME OF THE THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
The right time to start freelancing
How to plan if you want to start over as a freelancer?
Tips on navigating the freelancing world and networking effectively
How important are systems and processes to manage oneself?
Tips on growing and nurturing your audience.
How relevant will AR-VR be in future in marketing?
PLUS
The future of the creator economy
AND
The future-relevance of cats on the internet
LINKS TO THE NEWSLETTERS, PODCASTS, PEOPLE, BOOKS and recommendations by deepak MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST
NEWSLETTERS
PODCASTS
PEOPLE
BOOKS
OTHER
If you enjoyed this Smartcast, you will also like Upleveling For Single-Person Entrepreneurs, With Ravi Handa
TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
00:00:00
Ramanand: There's a lot that we can learn from successful freelancers. How do you strike out on your own? How do you manage your time better, and even find time to uplevel and be future relevant? What are the pros and cons of managing oneself? And what do you need to do to make a shift like this possible? Our guest today is Deepak Gopalakrishnan, also known as Chuck. He's been self-employed for several years now. He's a content maker, a podcaster, a marketer and even a teacher. He runs a popular newsletter called Things of Internet, and he’s brought to life podcasts such as Simblified, The Origin of Things, and most recently, Getting Meta. Deepak is very vocal about his interests, in digital marketing, music, and even cats. In this conversation, Deepak speaks to us at Choose To Thinq about making the shift to freelancing, his systems for being a productive content maker, how professionals can build audiences for themselves, and the future relevance of marketing. At Choose To Thinq, we help teams and individuals be future relevant in a shape-shifting world. For more such Smartcasts, please subscribe to our channels. You will find a list on our website https://www.choosetothinq.com/. Thank you.
00:01:45
Ramanand: Hi, I'm Ramanand and welcome to this episode of The CTQ Smartcast. I have Deepak here with me, hi Deepak. Welcome.
00:01:53
Deepak: Hey, how's it going?
00:01:54
Ramanand: Very good. Deepak there is so much to talk to you about. So let's get right into it. So here is the question. Your LinkedIn profile says the Chuck story is available on request. Why are you called Chuck? I don't know if anyone has taken you up on that. So let me ask you why you are called Chuck.
00:02:16
Deepak: Fair enough. It is interesting enough that you dug it from my LinkedIn profile from all places. It's a very sad story. And I mean, there's no profound story. It was really when I was in college, I used to make a lot of bad jokes. A bad joke in Malayalam slang is called ‘challi’ which literally means mud. And a clever friend just put Challi and Deepak together. And that is really it. The other option was ‘chaddi’, which was thankfully vetoed by everyone who was present. So yeah, so that's chuck. It's stuck ever since I honestly never thought that it would stick around for as long as it did.
00:02:59
Ramanand: Yeah, I'm both mildly sorry. And mildly happy that it was safe for work, sort of a story. So yeah.
00:03:06
Deepak: I mean, considering that it did become a work email id as well later. So yeah, very happy that worked out, but honestly, I didn't expect it to become like my identity in some sense.
00:03:20
Ramanand: I mean, you have a show around The Origin of Things, right. So and I think, as you amply illustrated, in some of your shows, origins, that sometimes you don't really know when something is going to get started off. So I think we can chalk this down to one of those as well.
00:03:38
Deepak: Oh yeah. Like I love doing these sort of thought experiments as well. Like, I was hugely fascinated by this movie and concept called the butterfly effect. So in some sense, you really don't know what you're starting. It could be the start of a beautiful relationship with somebody, it could be the start of a great idea, it could be the start of a company, you never really know. So, just shoot your shot, put things out there, give yourself as many chances as possible, and I guess things will work out.
00:04:07
Ramanand: So let's rewind the clock a little bit and do another origin story. I mean, one thing that is difficult with someone like Deepak Gopalakrishnan/Chuck, is, how do you describe yourself? Or how do you introduce yourself and do justice to your introduction on an episode like this? So because you have not done the full-time employment thing or used to do it, and you're no longer doing it. So when did you decide to get out of full-time employment? And what led to that?
00:04:36
Deepak: Okay, I'll answer the first part of that since you asked me how I would introduce myself. I think it's a matter of horses for courses. It depends on what context the introduction is going to be used for. If I were to pitch myself to a client for marketing purposes, and obviously I would play up that angle of things and the fact that I've, you know, spent about a decade or so in the advertising industry, marketing industry doing these kinds of projects. “Oh, and by the way, I also run some podcasts and newsletters, etc, etc.” On the other hand, if I actually, say, doing a podcast assignment, or somebody were to say, “Hey, we'd like you to, you know, do something with respect to podcasts.” And obviously, I'll play up that aspect of the angle that I'm a host of this and so many episodes, etc. So I think again, it's a matter of horses for courses with respect to how I introduce myself, really, and I think that should be the case. I think one bio really does not and I'm not saying this for myself, but for everybody. I think everybody should tailor whatever they're doing when they're sending it across to somebody.
00:05:34
Ramanand: How did you get out of full-time employment? What happened behind that?
00:05:38
Deepak: Yeah, so I, as I said, I spent about a decade in advertising and marketing roles of various kinds. I spent about seven-eight years in agencies themselves. And then I spent two to three years in the events and ticketing space, OML and Insider, I didn't really shift companies. Sure, actually, what ended up becoming Insider was initially a part of OML, it segued, it transitioned, and then it got bought over by Paytm. So as part of that transition, even though it might seem that I worked in two different companies, it was really the same organization going through a bit of a restructure. And I love my time over there, I absolutely loved what I was doing, you know, the things that are happening over there, etc. But for me, I think a point came when I realized that I wasn't enjoying what I was doing anymore. And I didn't really see the scope for what I wanted to do happening in this particular company for a number of reasons. I mean, all the people there are lovely, don't get me wrong, it wasn't a matter of leaving my boss as the case very often tends to be. For me, it was very clear, like what I wanted to do and what I felt I could contribute to the company, they didn't need me at that point in time. I think that's the best way to kind of put it because of various things, they were going through transition, a bigger company had come in, and they had put a lot of equity inside, I mean, put a lot of stake in the company. So their imperatives are somewhere else. And I could see that writing on the wall. And at the same time, I was toying around with this idea of wanting to freelance, I really didn't want to go back to advertising and I didn't ever fancy myself on the client-side of things. So I thought, alright, this might be an interesting time to do this as well, like things are fairly fine financially, my wife has a job as well. There's no problem and for me, I always look at these sort of big shifts. I always ask myself, what was the worst thing that could happen? The first thing that would happen is all right, I don't make any money as a freelancer. I know that there are some doors open for me, touchwood. So that really was it. So I spent a lot of time thinking about it, speaking to some very smart people, friends, and finally just decided to do it. I think that was the point I realized, “Hey, I could actually do something like this.” And finally just having the guts to go ahead and do it, you know, I knew that it was this time or never. And that was really when I decided that and that was the end of 2018, I decided to do that. So yeah, from the beginning of 2019 or so, I've been freelancing full time. I think the one piece of advice I would say for somebody who is looking for not just a shift like that, but any career at all is something I've often said is whether the pull is bigger than the push. Sometimes very often when we shift jobs, it's always the push is larger. “Oh, I hate my boss, I hate that the accounts aren't working or I hate this environment.” Alright, but if you're going to go somewhere else, which is sort of like the same structure, chances are things will happen again. It's happened to all of us, not saying that it hasn't happened to me. Also, I think at one point when you know that the pull is more than the push. That's when you know, then you're also recently excited as well because a certain bit of the unknown also with respect to where you're going. So yeah, hope that answers that question.
00:08:50
Ramanand: It does and so many things that you said resonated with me as well because me and my co-founder, we went through a similar sort of journey setting up Choose To Thinq. And I think we should also be thankful to our respective wives and so here’s to the wives because, it's really hard, it takes an ecosystem for one to survive. It's rare that you set off on your own. So that's why a lot that you said really struck home for me as well. So talk to me about that decision process a little bit more in detail. You said you spoke to a few friends. Were you already starting to think about, say a portfolio or a bit of work side gigs that already happen, because this is something a lot of people would like to explore, they would like to answer the call of the pull. But how do you navigate those without drowning in the chasm, right? So tell me a little bit about that.
00:09:48
Deepak: Good question. Excellent question. So I'll tell you my story first, and then I'll tell you how this sort of decision became logical and easy for me. So I said I made this decision at the end of 2018. Now since 2010, I've been freelancing in some capacity or the other. I mean all sorts of things: writing, cartooning, doing all sorts of random things here and there. I was always very clear that it was not related to my actual day job, I think one from a conflict of interest point of view and to just from doing something else point of view and I think there's a lesson in there also. If you're just doing more of the same unless you're doing it for money it's probably not advisable because you're going to face the same frustration. Not to mention if your office finds out you'll probably be in hot water. So I had some experience and I had somebody of work. So when I was pitching myself as a writer even if it was slightly dated work I still did have some amount of work. I also had some contacts. I had some people who said hey, why have you stopped writing for us? Would you be interested again? Or would you like to take the stuff up again? So I already had some context to fall back on. Plus I think the biggest advantage for me as I spent a fair bit of time in the industry. Again touchwood I had some good contacts who were reasonably okay with my skills and all that. I try to be easy to work with because I find that it's might be a little painful to do in the short term it really makes things easier for you in the long term and that really, really helped me so when I put out a couple of tweets or LinkedIn posts saying hey I'm now looking to be a freelance etc. a lot of people actually said: “Hey, I've worked with this guy in the past he's really good to work with etc.” I realized that okay, all those times where I made it easy to work with others and again, this is not a boast or something. I think being easy to work with is genuinely the most selfish thing that you can do for yourself for your career as it just makes things so much easier for you in the long run. So I had this body of work and I had a few contacts etc. So when I decided to quit, I mean it was a well thought through decision it wasn't done on impulse. From the time the thought struck my head to the time I put in my papers must have been good two-three weeks or something. So I charted out everything and figure out that alright this is what I'm going to do, this is the type of fee, this is the type of work that I want to do, this is where I see, this is the goal I want to set myself in the first year and honestly that was just I want to make the same amount of money as I'm doing in my day job which is a reasonable sort of target to have. These are the kind of things I want to try doing rather than the stuff I'm used to doing in my safe zone, analysis, plotting a few things to a few targets and stuff for myself once I actually then put in my papers when I could, you know, publicly ask for work on Twitter and all that. Yeah, so then I spent the next two months, it was frantic with respect to at work because I don't want to burn bridges because I deeply respect all the people that I work with, most of the people that I worked with, and I knew that at some point of time a lot of these are potential clients or potential collaborators. It was a small industry after all. So it was frantic with respect to making sure everything at work was delivered, making sure handovers and all that was done in a good, proper fashion. And then at the same time seeking out work and seeking out, building connections and all saying, “Hey, okay, my last day is so and so whatever, whatever. So I’ll work for you from this day onwards.” Essentially, because of this, I was able to hit the ground running. I gave myself a couple of days off or something but after that is pretty much hitting the ground running. And I think for anyone who's looking to get into freelancing, I'd say that I think a good amount of planning is absolutely essential. Now planning could be a number of things. It could be okay, what am I actually going to do? I think the most important thing from a freelancer point of view is obviously where is the money going to come from? Right? Then you need to think about it. There are two things really, I think one is okay, here's a skill I have, which I can easily monetize. It may not be work that I enjoy, but it is work that I can very easily monetize because there is also a market for this. For example, if you're a designer, there are hundreds of agencies looking for people to do social media posts, for instance, which is the lowest rung of graphic design work. Now, is it everybody's ambition to be that, absolutely not? But it's a skill that you can easily monetize, 100%, which means that you can't afford to shun that completely, immediately if you want to have a place to stay and food to put in your mouth. So from there, you can draw a spectrum like I don't want to do any famous marketing models or anything. But if you just draw a spectrum like that of work that you can know that you can monetize, but don't necessarily enjoy all the work that you can monetize and you enjoy which is the golden spot to be. It is more of a quadrant actually if you can picture that, right. So you obviously want to be here which is good from a money point of view and good from a satisfaction point of view as well. Whereas you may be down here and then you need to work over here. So I don't think you can shun one or the other. If you start off here, then amazing, you have a skill that you enjoy monetizing, and there are people willing to pay for it, fantastic. But assuming that the world wants this, that's a very, very bad idea. If you're a musician, you will have to do the Bollywood tribute gigs in order to pay the bills while you're working on your Neo-Prog metal album, which let's face it, is not everybody in Andheri is clamouring to hear, right. So I think it's an appreciation of that as well. While you as an artist, and I say artists, from any professional point of view, I think it's very important to be aware of reality, what the market really requires, right and work accordingly and prep accordingly. Alright, so it means that okay, for the first couple of months, I will have to do this, let's seek clients like that, let's organize a workday. So that, okay, five hours a day, I do this, which means at least my income is covered, my rent and my food and all the basic things are covered. And then for the remaining amount of day, you have to do this, you have to proactively go out and see how to bridge that gap. Otherwise, you're going to keep doing this work, that crap work that you don't enjoy, you're going to have to do some work for free, you may have to pitch yourself saying, “Hey, listen, I've done this already. So I can very easily do something there.” So you have to actively work towards moving the quadrant, otherwise, you will always be in this lowest rung sort of thing. So I think any sort of or whichever freelancing career that you're going for, I think that amount of preparation is absolutely important. I hope I've answered your question because there are lots of ways in which you can sort of approach this. But the biggest failure that I've seen from freelancers is that it's just a lack of preparation, or it's a lack of knowing what this universe of freelancing actually entails. I'm sure you'll ask me more questions about that. But in essence, I would say yeah, at any point in time, you should have a very good idea of what your next two weeks look like, a reasonable idea of what your next three months look like. And a decent like a broad mirror, like my goals idea of what the next one year looks like. I will say, if you have that, then you're more or less sorted with respect to freelance, and dare I say life itself.
00:17:19
Ramanand: Yeah, then you can stretch that to so many things. I think what I picked up from what you just said, is that a lot of it is reflection, understanding yourself, what do you want to do. And I'm glad you didn't say things like passion, right? Because there is a sort of being very realistic about what things need to get done. And, you know, not just freelancers, I think there are a lot of people who will be listening to us, who are maybe professionals who've done 10-20 years of work, are looking at alternative models, because we've been conditioned to think of a job after college and know that steady kind of ladder. And when you see people like yourselves try different things, I think it hopefully gives them another model to think about or consider. So that is great. The other thing I wanted to also pick up, which is kind of obvious, but it's worth calling out is the fact that you had that LinkedIn, Twitter presence. In fact, we are meeting for the first time. I've done your digital marketing course earlier this year. But I've known about you for a while. And this is through the first level in a lot of common contacts. LinkedIn always throws up things at you. So you've been on my radar, and I'm sure you will be on the radar of a lot of people who may not be customers or collaborators today. But come a certain day, you're thinking about a topic like say marketing. And you're then one of the names that hopefully you want to come up with, right, yeah, so and that's something that you also talk about in your course that it's not really about. I mean, that's the branding marketing side of things. So before I get a little deeper into that side, since you are a big music fan, and you brought up the band analogy, let me stretch that a little bit. And say that so now you're the talent of your one-man band, but you're also the manager. And you know, both have different desires and roles to play. And now also maybe throw in the word that you're probably also the janitor, you will have to also clear up, clean up behind the tide. What has been the upside and the downside of this mode of operation? Does it get overwhelming on certain days? How has that shift been for you? How do you play these different roles?
00:19:30
Deepak: I think anybody who gets into freelancing, the first three months they will have immense respect for every department of the company that they left including HR. No, man I think that's the other challenge, right? You need to be comfortable running your own one-person operation. By the way, the update, thankfully for me, it's no longer a one-person update. My wife who supported me so much during that time, we both work together right now. So it’s just the two of us and we operate together as an entity called Rough Paper. So the two of us who're basically doing this sort of thing and that's great right when you're able to collaborate with your best friend essentially. I think it's amazing. But yeah, the point that you're making still applies whether it is one person or a two-person operation. It is difficult, I will not lie. It is not easy to do all sorts of roles together because now when you look at it, what are the things that you have to do? Firstly, you need to do the actual work that's going to get you money no matter which part of the spectrum it is now all that comes under one part of what you need to do. Then there's another part which is business development which is you know, you're actually going out and seeking work I think a good way of going about this is right, I think for every department like what all do I need to do if you start charting out those goals that I spoke about a while back, you just need to ask yourself, “Alright for this what do I need to happen?” Then this is an exercise I would recommend for absolutely everybody, no matter whether you're looking to freelance whether you're just confused about life whatever it is, take a piece of paper say okay what do I want to be in 10 years so five years whatever it is, like what is the ideal version of myself that I wanted? What is the ideal place that I see myself? What is my ideal day as Amit Varma said in the first episode of Getting Meta which is what my ideal day looks like? Which I think is a great way, a very realistic way of looking at it. And then ask yourself okay, what's stopping me now from getting there? For example, if you ask this to somebody who has a typical midlife crisis in the early 30s or something like that, saying I want freedom, happiness whatever it is okay, what is stopping you from doing that right now? If it seems that a large part of what is stopping you is actually job-related then the elephant in the room is right there, you need to solve that problem. Now at a more micro level, say from a freelancer point of view, I say okay, I want to for example and this is a real example that I'm going to be giving you. I want to write more about music. It is a dream of mine to be published in a place like Pitchfork or Loudwire or something like that. I know I can do it very possibly. I need to think okay, what is stopping me from doing that right now? What is the impediment? One could be time and two could be a lack of experience in something. I can just go up to a Pitchfork or a Rolling Stone and say, “Hey listen, I love the music please let me write for you.” So that's not going to happen. So it means that I need to do some prep work before that. Maybe it means I write on a blog of my own for some time. Maybe it means I find a smaller website and contribute to them where they will be more willing to accept what I have to say for example. So then you start solving problems and then these solutions to these problems actually give you tasks for your medium-term and your short-term. If you think about it right, if I say in a year's time I want to have a byline in Rolling Stone then I know then in two months time I need to have a blog with 15 pieces of content or I need to do something else. So the long-term vision that you have sort of manifests itself in these small goals that you have and that translates itself to the answer to your question which is basically what are the other things that I need to do. This means business development automatically solves, is done which means that at some point of time, okay say four months down the line is when I actively start business development for this goal of mine because I will start reaching out to a Metal Hammer, Loudwire etc. So that becomes my business development over there. Okay, if I'm going to do more of that, it means that I might need to do some more of the crappy work in order to put a roof over my head which means that I need to go back to the client who asked me can you take on more work, so business development happens over there. Again, all this HR fits in beautifully. This is how my career trajectory is moving. At the same time, you need to keep your finances in mind. That's where your finance team comes in. And of course, you need to clean up the mess, so the janitor’s present at all points of time. So once you start, I mean there are many many models and ways I guess one could approach this, but the simplest way of doing this is just asking yourself okay, what do I need to do in order to get there and everything then will end up answering itself. I think it also helps because it's all in the vision of something, you have that sort of goal in mind at the end. Then you don't think of it in terms of okay this is the BD thing part of my life, this is the HR part of my life. Everything is together coordinated towards one thing. Neil Gaiman has this beautiful little short story that he wrote about for content creators, which is you know, keep moving towards that mountain, there are going to be lots of distractions around the way and you will be tempted to move around but take whatever path you want as long as you're more or less moving towards the mountain. I think it's a great way of thinking about it. So honestly, that's about it. That's how I think about it. And it's served me reasonably well I would like to think, but it is not easy. Because there are some parts of this that come naturally to some people I guess and not to some. Like a designer again, for instance, and I'm saying the typical kind of designer, they may be very good at design, they will be excellent with respect to design, but they may not be the most social of people. So for them, business development might become an issue. Okay, how do I solve that problem? There are ways of solving this problem. And I don't intend to turn this into advice for each and every category. But there are ways of solving at least now you know, what the roadblock is going to be? How do you know that unless this problem is cracked, you know that you will not go to the next step? So how do you solve that problem? Do you then overcome your fear? And then send out that email? Do you collaborate with a friend? Do you ask somebody else who's done that before? So you need to find, you'll know that this is a problem that needs solving, just closing your eyes and hoping that will go away and then magically apply, the dream client is going to come to you, that's never going to happen. So yeah, that's how I think about it and it has served me reasonably well, also, because I'm the kind of person who likes to take charge of what I'm in control of. And I think that's just the kind of person I've always sort of been, I like having things in control. So I think I work reasonably well in one person, or now, of course, two-person, small operation.
00:26:09
Ramanand: Right. So I mean, if you really cast your mind back to the origin of the word freelancer, it was someone who was a soldier who had a lot of control over who he could work for. And in some sense, I feel that in modern times the word ‘freelancer’ has become this gun for hire kind of thing, and is not considered very high in the social hierarchy of sorts. So I think the operative word is free, I think we are looking for control. And I mean, just to throw in a framework, even though we've tried our best to stay out of models and quadrants is this, you know, Dan Pink has made famous, this intrinsic motivation model when he talks about people want control, or they want mastery and there are other aspects to it, like purpose and connectedness. But control is, I think, a big feature of why some people turn on their own and free is a very important word for people to realize that that's what they're looking for. And I think that's where what you mentioned about running away from something like your own, you don’t like your boss, and therefore it's not a good enough reason to be a freelancer because you will find someone else you don't really like pretty soon.
00:27:22
Deepak: Exactly, you won't be running away from a problem because of that same thing that annoys you. You need to figure out what it is that you're running away from and get to a place where you will never be faced with that sort of issue again. For example, you might be running away from, you may realize that tight corporate structures are what's stifling. Great, in this case, a smaller company or if you work on your own, absolutely that will go. And by the way, I completely agree with what you said right now, one of the things I always tell people who are looking to freelance is, find out why you are freelancing. Everybody's motivations are different, some people will want more control of their life, some people will just be in it for the money, some people will want to explore their creative self. And let's face it, some people might not be in a position to work, for whatever reason it is physical, or they are having a family or whatever it is full-time. So figure out what the major constraint or motivator for you is. For me very clearly, it was control. I was tired of being tossed about by various people on Slack. Had enough of that. So I said, “Okay, I need to reach a place where only I have myself to blame, you know.” And that's what I was working towards. I think it sounds cliched, but I think it's very important. Like, for example, my life would be very different. If I realized that I was, I thought I was in it for the money. And know that I can very easily, not very easily double what I'm making right now if that was my primary goal, but then that would sacrifice a lot of things. I wouldn't be doing a lot of the other things I'm actually passionate about. So yeah.
00:28:57
Ramanand: Interesting. So let's talk a little bit about these systems and processes that now help you function. So let me take a specific example. Now, you know, we spoke about the fact that you have a lot of podcasts, you have your writing, you have a newsletter that you send out and you've committed because it's a paid newsletter. So you have a lot of these visible commitments. Plus there is going to be I think, also people need to realize that any form of entrepreneurship involves burstiness, you get work coming in suddenly and then there are periods of lull and so on. So what have you set up for yourself that lets you be productive? Have you always been the kind that got stuff done or you've just now put together these systems that say that you know, I have a calendar, I have an appointment, I have slots? Tell me about that.
00:29:47
Deepak: Yeah, I genuinely don't know where this tag of productive has sort of come in. Yeah, I mean, I guess I've always been the type who's got stuff done. I'll be very honest, I think and I know this might seem a little counterintuitive, but I think a lot of my so-called productivity comes out of the fact that I'm intrinsically quite lazy. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. When I was in advertising, for instance, I saw the mistakes that other people would make which would lead to rework for them. Right, I would anticipate this well in advance so for example, if I thought if I want to pitch a weird route to a client, right? I said okay, what if the client doesn't like that so take five minutes more when you're in that flow and give a safe route also. It saves work later. You might have something on a slide that says your servicing counterpart might not understand it, might call an entire meeting just to explain that. Take the time to put some notes in the comment saying this is what I mean by this, I will change it, this is what the client will take etc, etc. Build that context. It's sort of cliched now to say the word empathy but I think that's genuinely the best thing that will get you ahead in life. To me, I defined it this way. Put yourself in the shoes of whoever is going to be seeing this content and think through any and every question that they may have and account for it. That's genuinely it. That's something that I tried to do in the course itself, hopefully, it worked. It's something I do every time I put out a newsletter, it is something I do every time we send something to the client for instance, like okay, this is the problem I have been known for notoriously overexplaining my email. My emails have sometimes been very long and maybe that's a part of the success that has come in. But I think that's one thing that sort of worked for me. I try to anticipate and I try to account for worst-case scenarios and all that and I account for it in my work. So that could be one way of getting things done I suppose. The second thing then is something that I noticed about myself when I was at OML which is a very Slack-heavy organization is that I reply asynchronously. I work best asynchronously. I actually turn Slack off during the day, which might seem like, “Oh wow, how can you do that!” unless of course, it's like a live project or something. But by and large, what I do is I turn Slack off and when I'm doing work, I like to just finish that off and then move on to something else. Of course, it creates problems at some point of time saying that, “Hey, I pinged you two hours ago and now you're replying,” that sort of thing tends to happen but I think over time what ends up happening and I've heard this being repeated by people way more successful, intelligent smarter than me on several other podcasts including Tim Ferriss and all that is that when you build up a reputation like this, people know that okay, when he gets to my work, I know that he's not going to be distracted by another slack thing, for example. So I think I'd built up that reputation over a period of time again, if you think about it all this ties back to laziness. Why am I doing this because I want to get done with stuff earlier so I can attend a gig or something like that? Right? So all of this hustling to be productive ends up you know, it's a complete byproduct of the fact that I want control over my time. I find that like you know, I don't know whether it's because I worked in the strategy department and agency or you know, or whatever. But I worked in two notoriously difficult or time crazy industries, which are events and advertising. And to date, I haven't missed a weekend trek or a gig that I had planned or whatever it is. I'm not being boastful again I think it's just a matter of expectation setting because if I'd like to think that if I have and I also make it a point to say well in advance, “Hey guys, I need to leave at six today because there's a gig happening at IIT Bombay, which I can't afford to have missed.” People will know that it is in my own best interest to have built up a reputation that okay if some work comes at seven I know that this guy will somehow or the other make sure that I get it by 10 in the morning tomorrow, that's something I've never missed. And again I'm not trying to be boastful or sound trying to sound virtuous or something. It is something that I need to do so that I can make all the other things that are important to me in my life happen. So I think productivity ended up becoming you know a thing because of that. Right now it's kind of interesting because a lot of people have asked me about productivity and all that and honestly Getting Meta started because I didn't have answers to a lot of these questions. I had my own theories but I don't consider myself an expert in those. Some are being validated. Some are okay, those are unique to me. I can't extrapolate that to everybody. But I think right now, for one I am like for me, Google Calendar is something I can’t function without. I need to know what's happening the next day. And next week, as I said, have excellent visibility over what your next two weeks are. It's like, decent visibility for a month, so on. So I, you and everybody work in a different model, right? Some people may not be comfortable tying themselves to a Google Calendar. And like, for example, right now I have an Excel sheet that tells me over the next month, how many hours a week am I spending on individual projects that I have? So hence, how much free time do I have, hence, etc, etc. Some people might find that too regimented for them. Fair enough, find your own model, what is it that works for you? How would you define, again, like I say, always have the end thing that you want, and then work backwards, don't say, I am a free-spirited kind of person? That's great. But what does that lead to? Have the end goal and then work backwards and then fit in your respective constraints accordingly. And I think that's what's worked for me to be very honest. It's interesting about the newsletter that you said paid, and yes, I did make it paid so that I, myself would be committed to pushing it out. I know, I've done a lot of projects where I actually do commit to putting things out, I think that keeps me updated, it forces me to be updated on things. By the way, for people who don't know, obviously, you wrote this because you were part of the course. But the newsletter that Ramanand is talking about is a newsletter called Things of Internet, which sells for the cheap price of Rs 3000 a year. Initially, it was meant to be a newsletter that went out to all students of my course, with one case study a week, because I tend to read a lot of marketing kinds of things to keep myself updated. So I thought, okay, this is a nice value add, plus, it will force me also to keep finding something new. And then a friend said, “Hey, listen, I don't want to take your course, because I know digital, but I'm willing to pay for that newsletter,” I thought, well, that's an interesting idea. And then that became a newsletter on its, you know, a completely different product, if I may, on its own. So that was the origin. And I realized by making it paid, it actually forces me there's a responsibility. I'd like to think 3000 bucks a year is not too much. But at the same time, somebody has paid money, somebody has reposed faith in you for that doesn't matter whether you read it or not, your responsibility is to get it out because somebody has paid for it. And similarly, with a lot of other things that I do, which I try to have a podcast, by nature, obviously, you have to deliver at a certain time, and you need to, like, if you can't do it for a period of time, then bring some closure to it so that people aren't left hanging, which is why The Origin of Things, for example, is in seasons format. It's very difficult to do it on a very, very regular basis, I write in bursts and finish off like 10 at a go, that sort of thing. Third Slip was a newsletter that a friend and I ran for, we're very proud of it for about 200 odd weeks at a stretch with all sorts of family lives, job changes, vacations, everything. I was at the campsite of a metal fest, and I was writing it on a tablet. And these are also things that happened. And we're very proud of that. I think when you have people when you make a public commitment to any project, or even indeed something like losing weight or quitting smoking or something like that, I think it's social pressure. I mean, there's a little bit of social pressure out there that you have put yourself out and all that I think that really, really helps. So yeah, for anyone who wants to do something, I would highly, highly recommend putting something out there. So if you're a designer, for instance, trying to do more projects, say, “Okay, I'm going to do one cool thing a month, for instance,or week.”, because or whatever the case may be, let's face it, there’s so much content doing the rounds, people aren't going, “Oh, Abhay didn’t do this today.” Nobody's going to ask that. But at the same time, you have to be known as the person who does that. And I want to go back to one of the earlier things that you said, which was, and I call this broadly, I call the signalling, which is not everybody in your network is going to consume the content that you put out, you have to face that fact. You need to put your ego on the back burner. We'd like to think as content creators that when we put our podcast all 2,000 Facebook friends are going to rush and consume it immediately. Stop what they're doing on a Monday morning and listen to your 30-minute podcast or not, let's face it, they're not, but some of them will, some of them will love it as well. What is important, however, is for a reasonable part of your network to know what you're doing broadly. As a result of which I would like to think that over these 10 years now, I'm not a networker. I've never gone to a single networking event. And I genuinely can't reach out to a random stranger on LinkedIn and say, “Hey, I came across your profile and thought it was interesting, I thought I’ll message you.” And I still find it very weird when people do that to me. But I think it's very important for me, for example, to have to say, 50% of my network know that I know something with respect to digital. And this has happened. I've had, for example, my juniors from MICA who have known me well personally because of the time at MICA, who will reach out to me and say, “Hey, I asked around and you seem to be the best guy who gets digital. So can you help us with this problem?” Now that turns into something which turns into a project, which turns into something else, right? So that sort of signalling for yourself, they may not have a requirement, but somebody else might, they may not consume your content, but it's important. Like I'm so surprised that a number of people from my engineering college who have absolutely no idea about the marketing side of me, they reach out to say how you keep posting digital, digital, you know this, so somebody in our company asked so can I connect you. So that's what you need to put yourself out there on some level. And when I say put yourself out there, you don't need to be an influencer, you don't need to constantly create content on a daily weekly basis. Opinions on this will vary, but I find that extremely inauthentic to do. And to me it's like I said, for me my basis is laziness, right? This is why I don't like lying because it means you need to remember to do so for me, the easiest is to, “Okay, like this is it, take it or leave it. If you like it then great. I don't need to work on whatever it is that you want me to do.” So I think I'm a lot of rambles over there. I’ve even forgotten what the question was. But I hope I've answered it in some sort of way I think about networks. Yeah, I think that's about it broadly.
00:41:20
Ramanand: In fact, a lot of what you mentioned, you know, is really something that we've also espoused. So for instance, we have something that we call CTQ Compounds, wherein a group of people come together to read, you know, every day. So, you know, we initially when we thought, right, I mean, we are readers but what's so difficult about going and reading regularly, but when you think about it, there are a lot of challenges. Like reading a book means it's a great signal to show people like you're intellectually minded, but you don't get through the damn thing for various reasons. Yeah. And so we said that we'll just give you this curated article, a short article, and spend 15 minutes on it. And then on top of that, you have to pay for it. Because again, it's a signal to yourself, that you're taking this more seriously than all the others. So essentially, we are curating what is available for free. But you're doing this, and you're paying for this, because for you, this is now important, and therefore that signalling also works that way. A lot of things that you mentioned, I mean, really something that we've been also thinking about the asynchronous part is also something that works really. So this is a good time for me to segue into, you know, building an audience something that you have clearly done. And like you said, a lot of people struggle, you may say you struggle with connecting with someone that you don't really know. For a lot of people this whole, building an audience for oneself, and is something that is held you in good stead especially while becoming a freelancer, launching a course, getting that seed capital for your course, right? That comes from an audience. So tell me a little bit about how an individual should think about growing and nurturing an audience and it's easy these days, it's not as complicated as it once used to be. So what are the right reasons to do that?
00:43:13
Deepak: I genuinely thought you were going to say it's actually more difficult these days. So I guess that's great if one person says it's very easy.
00:43:21
Ramanand: I meant from a tools’ point of view.
00:43:23
Deepak: See, the thing is when you democratize something, it becomes easy for everybody to do it right. This means inclusion becomes more difficult for you. Take the example of music right now or, or anything, it is far easier to create music or content now, it is for anybody else, which means that the competition is a lot more and it's global as well. So suddenly now a musician is not just competing. A rock musician is not just competing with another rock musician, but also an electronic musician, TikTok musicians. Now you're also competing with Netflix and everything that that universe has to offer for instance. As it becomes easier for thoughts to get out, it becomes more difficult in a sense. Okay so I'll try to answer, thank you for thinking that I too have an audience and all that. I’ll tell you what I've done and what's worked for me. I think with respect to growing my network, as such, I've never really worked towards growing it and I think that's the thing that's worked best for me. I've never really been obsessed with follower counts and things I think. The one thing that's worked for me, I was early on Twitter, I mean early in the sense from an Indian point of view, it was 2009. Actually, the story goes a little before that if I may, because I think that has a path to lead. I was a college student in a small town in Kerala called Thrissur and I was desperate to get through an institute called MICA which is a premiere, it's an advertising Institute in Ahmedabad for listeners, of course, you know what it is. And people who were writing CAT in that small city were very small, people who had heard of MICA let alone that being the sole institute that they wanted to go for was non-existent. I'm pretty sure I was the only person in the city who was aiming only for that institute. It made life very easy for me from a CAT point of view because everybody else was obsessing about how to turn their 95s into 99s, I just needed 95 and I think that is excellent career advice. I think that's excellent life advice across the board. Most people need a 95. I think a lot of content efforts, a lot of brands etc, whatever struggle because they need to signal 99. Aim for 95 it's actually not all that bad. Once you've got there then try to go up as you can imagine, I am a huge huge believer in universal basic income but that's a different show altogether. But coming to your question. So then what ended up happening from there is I found an online community called PaGaLGuY, which anyone who has done an MBA from a certain vintage will remember it used to be one of India's it still is though not as active, India's largest forum, the world's largest forum for MBA discussions and all that and still some of my best friends today are from that community, etc. And the interesting thing about that is that the target audience itself was very small numerically, but it was extremely influential because these are guys who are going to B-schools and possibly captains of industry and all those terms tomorrow. Now what ended up happening was I became the MICA guy, I also became the poor jokes guy, I also became a few other things. I became a guy who knows a little bit about rock music to sing and all that so I was fairly active on the forums in those days. What ended up happening was a large part of this network happily transitioned onto Twitter, so when I landed on Twitter I had this network of people in some sense. So I had that crowd at the same time I was in Bombay for the first time. I was keen on seeing okay who the Twitter folks over here are. So as I started connecting with these guys, met up with some of them, some of them became friends. was very weirdly a part of this huge South Indian wave of early Twitter humour. Not sure if you know about all that, but it was a very, very esoteric, very different kind of humour. So you had guys like Anand Ramachandran, Big Fat Phoenix, Krish Ashok, a legend who also will be appearing on one of the episodes that I'm doing. A lot of guys, a lot of that influential early Twitter who are still at 4,000-5,000 followers, by the way, because the humour was so esoteric but it shaped a large part of who I ended up becoming. And these guys are super in and all of these kinds of huge, huge people by themselves. It's just that they don't make the jokes and all that which get them to, you know, 100,000-1 million followers, like in you know, like all over comedians now do they were like bloggers and all those sorts of guys. A very tightly knit community, huge it was. And then from there, because I was only on Twitter. And because I guess I just interacted with these guys, the following just very organically grew up. And I think it's around 13 to 14k followers, which I guess is decent enough unless you are aiming to be an influencer and monetize your skills from that perspective. Again, a completely different talk show, I guess. So I have never really worked towards growing it. Let me put it this way. I never really because I find that if you are doing stuff for the sole purpose of growing your followership, then to me that seems like a weird goal to sort of have both from an individual point of view and a brand point of view, I think. I think what's more important is that if 5,000 people decided to follow you for something, can you keep delivering them that because if it's worked for 5,000 people, then I'll probably get 5,000 more. And if it doesn't work for the other set of people, fair enough. I don't want those if I have to change who I am or the type of stupid humour that I'm putting out to cater to somebody else. Because I'm reaching a milestone. That's a very, very weird sort of goal to sort of having. I wouldn't lie, there are times when I look back and say like, okay, 15k followers. Not a bad scene at all. But if you ask me like what are the things that have gotten me there not really, I think it's just a matter of luck because I landed up at the right time. And it is just time. Anyone who joined Twitter in 2009, and has been reasonably consistent with respect to posting, especially about one particular thing, or the other is bound to grow their followership over a period of time. Now what that network gave me was licensed to try a few other things, which then fed back. So I thought, okay, podcast, podcast, hey, I announced that Naren and I are starting a podcast when people like, “Oh, okay, that's amazing.” So now it ends up, you know, becoming what's the thing that all investors say, the flywheel in the hands of becoming a sort of flywheel. More people then listen to the podcast and end up following me. So it ends up becoming more and more. Then you start some projects because you know, you have a ready audience for it. Today, I know if I want to start a different thing of mine, suppose I want to start an actual company of my own, right. And I put it out there saying that, hey, we have a team of whatever, whatever, whatever. If I know if I put it out there, I know I'll get some interest, I still have to prove myself but I know that we'll get some interest. So I get the benefit of a following. But then it needs to be very carefully nurtured. You can't bullshit your audience. If you’ve inorganically grown your following, suppose you bought your followers or something and you put something out there, it's not going to be authentic at all, you won't get those people who are actually interested in what you have to offer. So stay true to yourself. I know it's very, very cheesy advice. But the more and I'm not gonna lie, the older I get, the more of these cliched, cheesy sounding lines, the more resonant they get the older I get, and I'm not sad about it at all. And honestly, that's how I've tried to grow my base. I think also what I try to do is because you know, when you work in advertising, events and all that you end up meeting a lot of people, you try to find out all right, what are the different angles? It might sound a little bad to say this, but you almost need to think about how this person is going to be useful to me later. And I don't mean useful necessarily from a money point of view, right? What are the various reasons for which I might ring up this guy, right? Okay, is he going to be the guy who I call up at 2 am when I have a mental breakdown, or is he the guy who is going to recommend the book for me? For example, one guy who I very, very randomly knew. I knew two things about him - He was a photographer, and he was in Delhi. It was a huge project for a client, an F1 project, their photographer backed out at the last minute. I'm literally in a cab going to the venue, pinging him after years and saying, “Hey, listen, by any chance, are you free? These guys are desperate and obviously, they are going to pay you a lot of money for this.” He said, “Yes boss, done.” He came down, we met up for the first time ever, I think first or second time ever. So you need to look at people from various different angles like it could be absolutely anything. Okay, this guy's gone to Hampi. This guy has done scuba diving before. This guy knows how to get the best, use your imagination. You know everything. I think once you have that, you have a small map in your head somewhere. I think that really, really helps like how I ended up becoming the digital guy for some reason. And the more they make signals about this, put it out on their social media and all that, the easier it becomes. I mean, the human brain is a remarkable machine. It just tries to compartmentalize information as much as possible. I think that really, really helps. So I think I've done that a fair bit. I’ve also referred people and all that, which is why again, I keep going by the freelance advice. Try to position yourself as something if you say, “Hey, I'm a writer.” Here's the thing. Every week, I get at least three people asking me, “Do you know a digital marketing person?” And I get three other people saying, “I am a digital marketing person looking for work, or I'm a marketing person looking for work.” Now the problem is I don't get any more specific information, then I need something more information so that I can remember this and remember this. Let's face it, we are all busy people. We are taking lots of information at every point of time, we can't retain all this. On the other hand, if one of these says “Hey, listen, I need a Shopify Dev. Do you know somebody?” Then I go like yes, because somebody else has been making a lot of noise about it on my Twitter, Facebook, whatever I can connect you guys with, or they are likely to show it of themselves. I've been to a couple of design conferences, and I always like taking inspiration from other spaces and validating my own beliefs in the marketing space. And the design is an excellent space to do that. Because it's kind of related but at the same time not so related. I remember one of the legendary designers coming and saying the biggest mistake he's seen in portfolios of young designers is them trying to be too much. I'm a designer, photographer, illustrator and this and that. Great, shows that you're versatile. But can I trust you to do any one of them right? As opposed to somebody who just says I'm really just an illustrator. It also shows that they put investment into that one thing, forsaking everything else, it's actually a bit of a risk to say, “Hey, I'm going to do only this.” Like, imagine if somebody said, “Hey, I specialize in SaaS marketing, right?” It's a huge risk for them, but at the same time, you're gonna think, okay, if this is a SaaS marketer, then I won't go to him if I have an FMCG project, but the moment there is a SaaS project that comes up, I’m going to go to him. I think, trying to get to that level, I think it's been very, even if you're working towards unconsciously, I think is very, very useful, growing an audience. And I think the other thing that is very important is in terms of consistency, I think the first episode and second episode of anything will come out with a lot of enthusiasm because you already have your pent up ideas and all that. The proof of the pudding is three months down the line, whether the project is still active, that's honestly it. I think I heard a statistic somewhere that 95 or 96% of all podcasts have just one or two episodes. I'm not surprised at all, right? Proof of the pudding is really consistency, which also means from a freelancer point of view or content creator point of view, you can't afford to be disappointed by the lack of success of your first and second, or even your 10th, 15th. It happens but it's fine. It's completely fine. It's happened to the best of people. What ends up happening is you build up a certain sort of equity. Nothing is linear, you end up building certain equity over a period of time. Then Simblified reaches 100 episodes. Wow, Simblified has reached 100 episodes then you have people coming in, checking out the past things, the flywheel starts kicking in. Flywheel, snowball, what are you going to call it? So I think two things then this entire long ramble, building an audience for content projects, I think two things are important. One is a sharp enough idea, I think the sharper your idea is defined, I genuinely think that's why The Origin of Things has worked as well as it has because the proposition is very clear. And I'll say this to anyone who has a very sharp targeted idea for their newsletter, or whatever, it tends to do well, even if it's among a certain cohort. And the second is consistency, I think just doing it for a period of time, or at least giving yourself a period of, say, six months or a year, and then taking a call on what to do with it. I think it's very important. A third related thing that I'll just say, sort of metric to track is don't look at numbers in isolation, don't go as I have got I've got 10,000 downloads. Okay, great, but what does that actually mean? Are these people actually listening? I think what's more important is the resonance with a smaller set of people who you actually like and believe in. I realized Getting Meta was decent when three or four people who I have immense respect for pinged me and said, “This is a great show.” Now, to me, that is enough, it means that the show has passed muster for these four or five guys. If these four or five guys are the only people listening to it, that's fine with me, rather than 10,000 faceless people who I don't know. So if you are a content creator, take solace in that. And if you are a content consumer, please, please tell content creators that you like their work. You might think that for some reason, we are inundated with fan mails, but we genuinely are not. Like if I'm drunk in the middle of the night, I will take time out to reply to anyone who writes saying that they like Simblified or The Origin of Things, or whatever the case may be. So please do tell content creators, including musicians or whatever, that you actually like their work, especially independent guys, especially people who are hustling and doing it for a living, it means the world to them that actual listeners, readers, write in and tell them so yeah.
00:57:56
Ramanand: I think in a world where all of us are content creators, it would just be nice to tell each other that we are doing a good job.
00:58:04
Deepak: 100%. I think gratitude is one of those things that have irrational benefits. You know, one of the things you're trying to do, when you're lazy and productive at the same time is you try to see what are the things that have outsized effects. What are the things that might seem irrational? And in some sense, it's like, you pay one rupee, but you get two rupees worth if that sort of makes sense. Right? You say thank you, I get a thank you back. That's one rupee given, one rupee taken. But on the other hand, if you unexpectedly pay somebody and say, like, for example, I never told you this, but actually, you played a huge part in my career and my thinking and all that, and that's meant a lot to me. I don't want to say that, right? To write that does not take too much, which means you probably spend five rupees, right? But you are going to get way, way, way more than five rupees in return. It may not be immediate, but it happens. Well, it adds up in the long run. I was like one of the names that I told you about, the early Twitter guys, Anand Ramachandran, I'm a huge fan of his blogs. Big Fat Phoenix back in the day. Unfortunately not active anymore. I consider him India's finest satire writer title that he refuses to take. We even make references in the first episode of getting them back, Amit and I. I just wrote him a gushing fan mail from what, I was nearly a 20-year-old or something and he's like, “You're in Bombay no? Come over to Infinity, let's have a beer.” And I was floored like I was genuinely nervous for those meetings. But I think meeting him and you know he introduced me to a lot of other people including, strangely enough, Amit himself. So that opened the door for another universe, it included Naren who turned out to be my future partner. But I met him for the first time while I was with Anand at his house watching IPL or something. So yeah, I think just take chances. I think when you speak to a lot of these so-called successful content creators or successful entrepreneurs, they will acknowledge two things - one they will acknowledge the huge part that luck has played in their success but two is that they create luck and what is creating luck mean? It just means putting yourself out there. If you sit in the room all day. I mean a lot of us are doing that right now. But you know what I mean, nothing's going to happen, you need to shoot your shot, you need to put yourself out there, you need to create opportunities for luck to come your way if that sort of makes sense.
01:00:32
Ramanand: Yeah, so show up and show up, keep showing up.
01:00:35
Deepak: Yeah, keep showing up. Don't do the regular thing. I think that's the other thing like if you keep trying to conform to the medium, then you know, you won't stand out. I still remember this one company that had come to campus for recruitment and I won't say the name for obvious reasons. But you know how it is during a campus placement right? Everybody's series tend to gravitate towards the median right? And everybody ends up having the same, I want to do this, this is what I like, whatever...
01:01:04
Ramanand: Everyone is Agent Smith in the Matrix.
01:01:06
Deepak: Absolutely. Right. So one of the clients and most clients know this and they happily go along with the process. One client put his hand around or so the story goes, cannot validate. Puts his hand around the placement coordinator and says, “All these CVs are fine, but who are the offbeat ones in the batch?” But yeah, that's basically what he said, as each of your, each of your batch mates is absolute, as these guys are smarter. Because see, for them, they were putting people out on the field for sales for a young company. And it made absolute sense to ask that question, but it's not something. Now imagine if somebody actually had the gumption to write that in the CV. Two traditional companies may reject you but, you know, I think standing out in some way is important and is not as difficult as it sounds, to be honest. Just by being lazy and being authentic to yourself, you automatically stand out from a sea of people trying to gravitate towards the median. It's kind of like a strange world that we live in right now. So going back to how we started this long answer and question, it is, in some ways, more difficult than ever before, but it is in some ways easier than ever before. So yeah, I think the world would be better off if we just spoke what is on our mind this time, it is a lot of legalese and marketing jargon.
01:02:25
Ramanand: Which is easier to do if you're a freelancer.
01:02:29
Deepak: Absolutely. Yeah. So that's another great reason to be a freelancer, you can speak your mind about the industry, which I very frequently do right now. Like, I'd like to think that I'm a critic of advertising as a professional, and there are some content projects in the pipeline, which will elucidate on that a little bit. And you're genuinely truer to what you believe in. And I think that's very, very liberating. Like I wouldn't be able to say half the things I say on Twitter if I was still working in an ad agency, with respect to marketing.
01:03:04
Ramanand: Deepak, we're almost at the end of our conversation. Before I get to the last segment, I want to do a quick quiz question on The Origin of Things. And no, we haven't told Deepak what to expect. But I expect you to get this.
01:03:20
Deepak: I’m very bad at it myself. Which brand was this? So yeah, let’s do this.
01:03:27
Ramanand: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we really like our quizzing at Choose To Thinq so here it goes. So in ancient Scandinavia, if you were using a hot piece of wood or iron, to mark your livestock, what one word would describe what you're doing?
01:03:42
Deepak: Oh, that would be branding.
01:03:46
Ramanand: Oh, absolutely. Right. Yeah. That's the origin of the word branding.
01:03:51
Deepak: Oh, you're asking me a quiz because I thought you were going to ask me questions from The Origin of Things.
01:04:01
Ramanand: This was also an origin question. And then also a meta-question. So, you've got everything together. So before we quit this is a segment called the future relevance of X. And I'm going to throw a few X's at you and just shoot what comes to your mind. So the first one is the future relevance of cats on the internet.
01:04:23
Deepak: Cats on the internet are never going away. They will continue to be relevant as our modern media. Imagine we haven't even seen the full potential of virtual reality hasn't come in and imagine what's going to happen so not going away. Cute on the internet never going to go away.
01:04:38
Ramanand: Okay, something that you mentioned in your course, the future of AR-VR in marketing?
01:04:44
Deepak: Going to go up I think but we will see a lot fewer stunts and a lot more logic and actual like “Okay, there is a reason why we're doing this.”
01:04:56
Ramanand: So a small segue that, how do you as someone who's you know, managing so many things is have you set aside time to kind of go and research stuff which is emerging but how would you go and practice and get better at some of this so that you can pass on the right kind of advice to your clients?
01:05:13
Deepak: Yeah, so I mean if you see some of the content projects that I do, they feed into it. The things of the internet may seem like just a content project. The work that I do for that other reading that I do for that has multiple outlets, one is a newsletter, of course, a lot of it works its way into the course itself. The other thing, it becomes additional thoughts for me to join and then say propose to clients, etc. So for me a lot of the output that you see, there's a fair bit of research and stuff that happens before it but then what I tried to do with that one piece of research is trying to knock off multiple projects. I try to maximize them if I'm reading something. But yes, I do set apart time for doing this. I read at least two hours a day which is a mix of news and all that. And there are some days which are light on work and one weekend day which is devoted to reading and this reading is the non-kindle kind of reading which is usually articles, long-form and things like that. Although recently I have started sending articles to kindle which also is a great way to sort of read. So yeah, I do this and I don't think there's any way around it. Anyone who is in any space and wants to grow has to read and consume and when I say read, I don't necessarily mean the need to read a book or something, it can be a podcast or you need to keep getting updated about these things. Otherwise, you're going to be stuck with the knowledge that was relevant maybe five years ago and at least the space that I work in marketing, also you and I work in is definitely you need to keep yourself updated. Not just campaigns but what are the trends that are happening which way are the winds blowing, it's not just enough to know, in fact, I'd say it's completely irrelevant to know which brand is doing what then you're just answering a quiz question. But more like okay, over the last five years how has advertising changed? What are the broad ways in which things are going which is why I find things like competitor analysis completely pointless. Like what's the point of one BFSI company saying okay, let us look at what our competitors are doing. No, that's not the point. Look at the entire medium. Where's the puck going to be? I think that's very, very important. So yeah, I think it's very important to keep updated
01:07:17
Ramanand: On that, can you maybe recommend a book, one channel and a podcast that the last couple of years have influenced you? I know that’s a standard podcasting question but something that maybe you can recommend.
01:07:31
Deepak: That has influenced me? Okay, not specific to marketing then. I think one person that has influenced me a lot over the last couple of years is Scott Galloway, the New York University Professor of Marketing, very very outspoken. He has his own podcast, The Prof G Pod. He also has another show that he does with the tech journalist Kara Swisher it's called Pivot, highly recommended and he authors a beautiful weekly newsletter free called No Mercy No Malice. Just search for Scott Galloway online and you'll find I think his way of thinking, his way of putting himself out there and small lessons. I found for instance that he is not shy of repeating the same thing again and again over multiple shows and multiple formats in one week and referencing that example here. Before I would think oh you need to say 300 examples to show that you know something. And as a victim of my course, you will know that I keep throwing random examples here and there. But now I'm trying to work towards it. Let's take a few examples. Rather than showing that I know so much. Let's take one example and use that to emphasize the point rather than trying to show how much I know so I think that's small small things that I pick up from him. So he's a brain that has influenced me a lot in terms of not just the content itself but also how he approaches it and things like that. So he would be one person, podcasts etc. I recommend a book that I highly recommend, especially to those working in marketing, is Rory Sutherlands’s Alchemy. I think especially for anyone working in digital marketing as a whole, let's divert all our money from brand building stuff to search and all that because it leads to better ROI. Yes, at least better ROI but you're destroying your brand in the long run. And as a lot of this podcast has kind of shown, really investing for the long term is the way to go, whether it is your career, or whether it is finance, or whatever, or brand building for that matter. So that would be another recommendation from that point of view. I mean, there are so many different kinds of recommendations that I do want to make. So I could go on forever.
01:09:46
Ramanand: Yeah, for more, please subscribe to the newsletter, right? That's the best I think.
01:09:51
Deepak: So if it helps, what I'll do is I'll send across a medium post that I wrote about all podcasts and newsletters that I subscribe to, and recommend. So you can link the show to the show notes and check stuff out, I think you can find their own thing. But I think one thing I've realized freelancing or otherwise is prescriptive, does not work. I think everyone needs to find out what they resonate with, and gravitate more towards. Like, even though I'm big on music, for instance, I don't listen to that many music podcasts, for instance. So I think it's left to everybody to find their own sort of whatever it is.
01:10:26
Ramanand: Right. And before I go to my last question, I just wanted to call out both Scott Galloway and Rory Sutherland. It's interesting that they have the book, you know, Sutherland appears in a lot of podcasts, he’s probably the most entertaining guest I've seen on a podcast. And so there's this content universe that you start to build around yourself. So my last question, therefore, is what is the future of the so-called creator economy? Do you see more people becoming individual creators taking charge, taking that control back? And is that kind going to be more and more mainstream?
01:11:07
Deepak: It's such an interesting question. And, you know, to be honest, I don't know. And I'll say why? Because if you look at the trends, right now, if you were to put a big barometer into where we are right now, everything says yes, right, because a number of platforms are exploding, people are starting Substack, all the big platforms are starting their own content creation, sort of tools to the woo the creator. So Facebook is coming out with a Bulletin. Twitter acquired the platform, which I use Revue. Clubhouse, of course. So there are now more and more ways for audiences to interact with creators or reward creators, like YouTube has tipping and Clubhouse will now introduce it. So there's a lot of action now in space and seems like the word creative economy has suddenly become this huge, huge thing. So it's definitely encouraging more people to become creators on their own, either full time or otherwise. And we also hear success stories in the US. So this journalist quit his job and now runs a newsletter and earns $100,000 a year or whatever it is. But the thing is, this and I have learned to be very sceptical about internet trends in general because I think at some point, there will be saturation, right? Like I am a freelancer, and I am able to devote two to three hours a day dedicatedly to reading, but not a lot of people do have that sort of luxury, what happens when the must-see or your must-read content reaches a certain point. I just genuinely will not be surprised if there is one platform that comes up, that takes up a lot of these individual creators and puts it under one banner. Then it wasn't the same thing that a magazine or wasn't the same thing that a newsletter was. So I think it might end up operating in some sort of cycle. So I really don't know, I think there will be a few winners in this. I mean, I'm just looking to get by and, and do reasonably well. But I genuinely cannot predict what the future of the creator economy is going to be. I think there will be some winners, some losers, right? I do think there will be some sort of consolidation that happens because if you think about any space where there's so much activity, and just step out of the hype for some sort of fantasy, okay, where is this? Suppose this continues on its trajectory, not on its line, suppose it continues on its current trajectory? How is it going to be held up? How's it going to impact the lives of everyday people? Do people really want 300 different creators of their own? Like, is that really going to happen? I think in certain spaces, it might really, really help creators like I already see how something like Band Camp, for instance, is helping musicians so much and for those not aware of it. Band Camp is a platform that very counter-intuitively in the streaming age allows fans of music to download music, pay for music and audio is used by a lot of independent artists. And especially, I mean, I obviously buy a lot of music from the space of progressive metal rock and post-rock and the kind of stuff that I do. But similar with Indie, Hip Hop and all that non-aligned to the big label, so you won't find Metallica and Ed Sheeran. But you will find much, much smaller bands and stuff, now 80% of the revenue goes to the artist. So that is a famous artist-friendly platform, which pays easily the most out of every platform that there is, but then they will not grow beyond the point because not everybody will want to pay an Ed Sheeran the full value. Let's face it because we live in that sort of economy. So in that sense, I think a few creators who have their audience defined, audience tight, think they will be able to subsist and have a lot more means of monetization. And NFTs are another thing to watch out for in that space in terms of how creators can sort of monetize. And again, that's not a completely different show. But I think it's very exciting what the future of NFTs and the changing winds of ownership means for individual creators. I would not be surprised if all this hype that we are seeing right now reaches some point, some sort of breaking point. I don't see, for example, a Substack and Twitter and Facebook and somebody else all having I mean, they all say they want to enable content creation, all that. But there is a point like just for podcasts. I gave you the stat right 95% of podcasts, I wonder I think the same thing will happen to content creators. There will be some outsized winners, but I think a large majority of content creators will just go back to not being content creators. Fair enough. I mean, that it is a test at some point. So the disappointing answer that I have to give your question is, I genuinely don't know. But I'm definitely going to be observing it because I think it has implications for all of us. I will say this because I am a content creator. I think it genuinely has implications for the internet, for businesses, for everything, like it changes everything, like from freelancing to how companies take talent. And it's going to be a fascinating watch. To me, the best thing about writing the newsletter, like Things of Internet, for example, is getting sort of like a getting the license to have an inside view of this entire circus that's happening around us and not knowing what will, I mean, there are so many things that didn't change things immediately. And there are some things that are like watching a film in slow motion. We know what's going to happen, but it's taking so much time to set up. So yeah, it's very, very exciting to watch the whole thing for the creator economy and everything along with it.
01:16:43
Ramanand: Yeah, I'm sure whatever that future will be, I'm sure you will be there in it and right in the thick of things.
01:16:49
Deepak: We don’t know and I don't want to, that's the thing, I don't want to put out a promise like that, for example, I'm not active on Clubhouse at all which was supposed to be the next big thing. But I have stayed away from it for a number of reasons. One, I don't want to get into another time sink and two, I don't know whether I will probably enjoy it and if I had the time to devote to it, I might even have an audience, as you might say, over there. But it's something I've genuinely chosen to stay away from. Maybe it's a little bit of saturation, maybe if you like I'm already doing this, so do I want to do that also? So maybe there's a little bit of that also in there, right? Just like how some early bloggers did not get onto Twitter, with Amit Verma being one of them, for example. So it's interesting. So I don't think a successful content creator is even necessarily looking for another platform. To be very honest, I think a lot of us are also fed up and saying, “Okay, everybody just get a grip on everything so that we can consolidate what we have right now.” So for example, to your point, if, say, a virtual reality sort of content creator thing becomes plausible in a couple of years, which I definitely see happening. I don't know if I'm going to be able to be in the thick of it, because it also depends on whether that's the kind of thing that I want to do if I'm comfortable doing something like that, or do I have to, like do any sort of visual prep for something like that, which I'm not very good at. So I think, you know, I think there are so many factors that come into play. But I'm definitely all for enabling any sort of content creation. I think the one great thing about TikTok, for instance, was it gave an audience that typically doesn't, and I'm speaking from an Indian context, especially how the non-metro cities used it, was fascinating. It just gave them a voice in some sense and gave them a creative outlet which, say, a more elite platform for whatever reason, like an Instagram or something might not have allowed them to. So I'm all for something. I'll hope something comes up here. So lots of things to watch out for in India and around the world across technologies, formats, everything, looking forward to whatever comes.
01:18:48
Ramanand: So on that optimistic note, here's to hoping your voice stays strong. Thanks, Deepak so much for this.
01:18:53
Deepak: Thank you for humouring me. I think I blabbered on for a lot longer than I should have. So apologies to you, to everybody who's listening to this and to whoever has to edit this episode. It was a total blast. Thank you, and like Scott Galloway would say thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about my favourite topic, i.e. me. Thank you.