Would you guys be up for singing this song to finish this up? Only if you guys sing it with us. Are we doing Jake and Jonathan or Product Breakfast Club? I've been preparing for this all day. One, two, three, four.
Jake and Jonathan. Jake and Jonathan.
Hi, everyone. You're listening to Metacast, a podcast about podcasting. My name is Eli Bazilev. I am the co-host. And with me on the call is Arnav.
Hello, I'm your co-host from Vancouver where it's unusually sunny and kind of cold. Yeah, I'm based out of sunny Florida and I'm sitting in my closet and I turned off AC.
because otherwise it would make noises and as i explained in my first episode you know we will get all that noise in the recording all right um and today we have very special guests
Jake and Jonathan, I really would like to introduce your podcast in my own words and then, you know, hear if you agree with that and then kind of hear what you would say. How would you introduce your own show?
So here's this podcast. Oh. No, go ahead, go ahead.
No, you go, you go. I thought we were supposed to go first. You go first. That's good. I'm not ready. This is off to such a typical start of your podcast. I love it.
Okay, so here's this show that I discovered maybe three or four years ago. It's like two guys with background in product design talk for about an hour, hour and a half on average about product design and service design.
They talk about very interesting conceptual questions like the power of moments or specific examples like toilets in the middle of hotel rooms in Berlin and stuff like that with very, very long detours about all sorts of different...
topics like why Gandalf gets all the credit in Lord of the Rings for like 20 minutes and stuff like that. And what I really enjoyed about the show is it's just so light, so easy to listen to because you get very dense topics.
And at the same time, it's just so funny. I laugh a lot. I laugh with you guys when I listen to you. I really like taking you on the drive with me. So yeah, I'm really happy to have you here. Do you agree with my description or is there anything that...
I don't get about the show. Hi Jake.
I mean, yeah, the show is was sort of I just I think it's just me and John talking really more than anything. It's just like it's just a conversation between the two of us about, you know.
Like just hit the record button and John would usually have like a topic or two. You've read a news story or two.
And then, I don't know, we would just like talk and kind of laugh about it. And yeah, we would try to advertise stuff if we had stuff to advertise. I think like, I'm trying to think back to when we began.
doing the podcast you know the first the first sort of seed of it and you were like look let's just try this i've got it all set up john was visiting me
I had an example podcast that I liked called the giant bomb cast, which I wanted to like emulate. That was like my pitch. Although actually, interestingly enough, you did really like that style initially.
Because it probably wasn't the best pitch because it's like, yeah, here's a three hour show about nothing.
that I like yeah I was always trying to get structure into it and then John was like no no no you wanted segments yeah I wanted segments I think you wanted structure
But neither of us wanted to do any prep work. And so it was the person who did marginally more prep work could control the show.
And one bullet point that I would find once every few weeks was more of prep work. I'm curious, how did you guys meet? Can you tell a brief story about how you guys met?
And what, I guess, led to that relationship between you? Because you guys have amazing chemistry. And how did it all lead to the podcast? Yeah, I think I hunted Jake down. I was in a... So I read... I was reading Jake's blog.
The blog that you had before the book, what was the blog called? We had a blog. There was a design staff blog, which was predated the Google Ventures blog. And then, yeah, then eventually the Google Ventures.
blog. So at this time, Jake, you were working at Google Ventures. And Jonathan, what were you up to? I was still running the same company I'm running today. Yeah, exactly. So I haven't done anything different.
You've done a lot of different stuff. You've turned it into an empire. Same name, though. Same name. I have some questions later about the name itself. It's a very insulting name.
If I say it in recorded format, I will no longer be... I'll be deplatformed. You'll be cancelled. Yeah, but it's okay. I'll be still allowed to stay on Twitter. If it still exists, man.
Exactly. I forgot the question. You reached out to Jake. He was working on... Oh, yeah. Sorry.
um so i was really amazed by this design sprint process that jake was talking about i was working actually at i was doing a project for udacity
somewhere in Silicon Valley. And I was doing a talk. They wanted me to do a talk at their conference. And I used that opportunity to say, to contact Jake and say, hey, I'm going to be in town.
to do a talk. Is there any chance you'd like to meet? Because I actually wanted to pitch him on this idea of doing like a training boot camp thingy in Berlin.
And that was the first time we met, which I think was in 2000s. It was just before the book. Oh, no. No, it wasn't.
Now everybody is wondering, what is the book about? What is that book? Oh, the book was his version of, I think, chemistry, right? Yeah.
Really horrible illustration. I just wanted him to show me how to do it.
And then he was like, oh, there's this design sprint thing. Yeah, there's this design. Let's talk about that instead. Different positions of doing product design. Yeah, I totally remember this vividly. I got this email because...
You know, everybody gets kind of a random email from somebody. But John, like even from the email, he just came across like really authentic, like you seem like an interesting guy who's going to be in town.
you know, a day or something. So I was like, yeah, great. Come on by and we'll, we'll, we'll chat. Yeah, we chatted. I just feel like we, from my perspective, like we hit it off right away. And what John was suggesting was like,
really cool like hey do you like i was actually just about to leave google ventures and he was like you know do you want to come to berlin and do like actually guy
I don't remember what the year this was. Yeah. But anyway, so he's like, you want to come to Berlin and do a workshop? 2017. Yeah. So I was just about to leave. But I hadn't announced it yet. So I was like.
Cool. Yeah. I didn't know what I was going to do exactly after I left and that sounded fun. And here's this like pretty fun guy. That was the, I felt like we kind of clicked right away and I was, I was definitely interested in hanging out. And then, uh, what was the next thing would have been in Berlin?
in I guess yeah I set up the boot camp thingy like which was basically an event which Jake would speak at or we we sort of did like a co-teaching thing at this event
but jake was the main attraction and uh i think we had like 50 people from different companies you know those people from ideo there that you called in there was a lego team was there it was really cool and yeah that was like the first
businessy thing we did together i think that spawned a lot of different things where jake would call me in to help him with stuff i got the chance to work
with the new york times because of you and the other one the other newspaper wall street journal wall street journal yeah because i didn't want to say it's just the american newspaper names are not so in my head
i'm like the berlin times like the berlin daily well i was thinking the washington post is another one right that's like another one and then uh yeah so that just then we did like this like
World tour, world tour, AKA the European bootcamp tour in the Nordic countries. Yeah, that's right. In between that, we started the podcast.
So did you, Jake, you moved to Berlin or you were just touring around at that time?
Yeah, I would just go and visit John, do a workshop, or we did these other workshops. Yeah, it was just a traveling thing. So we got to hang out a bit on these trips. Yeah, I think that kind of explains actually why.
In the very first episode of the podcast, there was a section with questions for Jake. Because probably all those people, they learned about you during the boot camps. So they knew you. I mean, they were like Jonathan's audience who knew about you. So they were asking Jonathan...
questions for you in the first episode. Is that how it worked? I can't remember. But yeah, definitely our audience would always ask me questions to ask Jake, for sure. Okay. The first couple episodes.
We tried to have some kind of structure, I think. We were sitting on the floor in your bedroom or somewhere in your house with, like, recording things. And Michael was there, right? Yeah. And we tried to play Mario Kart. I don't know if we were actually...
published that one but i don't know that didn't work it didn't work very well wait you were trying to play mario kart while recording the podcast yeah and like narrate it like narrate it was that was
That didn't go well. Seems like it would have been fun, but yeah. I have a question about the name. As I was listening to your first episode.
actually, a couple of days ago. You had so many interesting names, like a Secret Weapon 10X, Innovation Club, and a bunch of others like that, right? But actually, Product Breakfast Club was never in that episode. Did you come up with the name...
after you record it and like... Oh yeah, we did six episodes first. That's right, we did a batch. Because that was the idea that we would do... Because there's this Tim Ferriss blog which says you should launch...
the podcast with already four to six episodes ready to go. We didn't have the name and we decided to just start without a name. Oh, okay.
Good to know that that's exactly what we're doing. This is the third episode we're recording. But you already have a name. We committed it because we saved it. Maybe you can change it today, boys. Yeah, you can change it. You know, there's a little risk and people will think it's related to meta.
I thought you guys were working at Meta.
So, yeah, we will sell all your private information now after this podcast. That's what this podcast is. So, guys, what's your social security?
So I was too lazy to go through the entire catalog of your episodes to find the one where you decided to rename Product Breakfast Club into Jake and Jonathan. How did that go?
this is just the jake literally it was like me sending you a message random like it's always just done with a random message i was like what do you think about changing it to i think i literally said what do you think about changing it to our names yeah and
i also when i want something i put the other person's name first so that they're more like willing
So I was like, obviously, I won't ask him to call it Jonathan and Jake. But I do think it's better because it's not about producty stuff anymore. It's just about toilets.
So when, about when did you figure out that, like, you want to rename it? And how did you start up with Breakfast in there, first of all? I just liked the movie The Breakfast Club. And then...
I think we couldn't come up with a name. So there was no great reason. Yeah, I remember you said breakfast.
I remember somehow you mentioned the word breakfast. It sounded nice. It was like Secret Weapon 10X Innovation Breakfast Club. You guys were just piling things on top of each other.
Yeah. I mean, that would have been better, probably. Like, Project Breakfast Club is not a good name. To next breakfast. To next breakfast. You guys can have that one for free. That's a good one.
There was a dog's breakfast club. I mean, I literally laughed with you guys as I was driving. Dog's breakfast club actually does sound like a good one.
You know, SEO matters, right? So people were searching, like if you search for product podcast, product breakfast club would come up. But like if you search for product podcast, Jack and Jonathan probably wouldn't. So you renamed it after you already built some audience for yourselves. Do you think it would have worked?
the same way if you named it Jake and Jonathan right away? I don't think we were really thinking about it. So I think there's a leading question to this.
What was the, like, did you have a purpose in mind when you were starting off or was it like, let's just record our thoughts and have a chat and see where it goes?
was there a purpose in mind Sean it was your idea so did you what were you thinking I think like so the the idea was for me that every time you and I talked like
on zoom or whatever i always felt like it gave me a lot of ideas for the business i got a lot of excitement and it was just a nice experience and also we came up with ideas uh but we're both very bad at i think
I would definitely consider myself to be not easy to schedule things with. And I don't like to have stuff in my schedule. So just doing things on the fly never really worked with me and Jake.
and so for me the original thought was let's do this number one as a way for us to regularly chat with each other and number two it was actually originally a way to like have some like
what is it called? Mind space around the design sprint topic. So it was also a content marketing ploy.
and we just got up we just left that topic within like three episodes and didn't care anymore about that thing and yeah it was a great way to build like um
Like quite a engaged audience, the most engaged audience of any of our different, of any of my other platforms anyway, personally. I'll just have to add on that topic of being difficult to schedule.
We sent you guys probably like 50 different time slots across three weeks. And you just picked one. Like, I can't do this time. Everybody adjust.
I hate having stuff. I'm literally writing a blog post now. I can't share my screen. I don't like having stuff in my calendar because...
it kind of feels like it ruins my day. I don't know if anyone else feels like this. It ruins my whole day. Like this, this is nice to do. And I personally, just cause Jake was into it. I was like, yeah, I'd love to chat to Jake again and have a reason for it.
But it also ruined my day because I have like now with my daughter and like leaving the office and like...
I like having this open, endless space where I can read and think and work on the business and do my own thing. When there's something in the calendar where I have to be somewhere and do a specific thing, I almost don't...
to get anything else done in the whole day it's a weird thing about i'm the exact same way too and this is probably what destroyed the podcast we just like can't have a thing on this on the schedule you know it's like yeah it's it's it's like
the whole, like, I know my energy, like the rest, like my window to work after this, it would be like, I don't want to make you guys feel bad, but like, it was just like, it'll be kind of fractured.
It's yeah, it's, it's tough. So yeah, that, like that experience of that you guys had to scheduling us, that's a very real slice into like how, how we work and probably what like made the podcast dissolve.
I literally just bought the domain name, the unscheduled CEO and unscheduled CEO, because I'm currently testing out writing on Substack and my entire... topic is about running a business, but also having a schedule because I literally have an empty calendar every single week.
But I also know people who are running businesses even smaller than mine or just back to back all day long. But I've always had this open.
where I can sit around all day reading and watching YouTube videos, which gives me like a weird superpower of just being able to jump onto these like hot topics before other people do. But yeah, I have a really difficult time.
Jake, actually, one of the things that I've been doing recently, which is really helpful, was when someone contacts me and says, hey, can we chat or whatever? I just say, can you text me on the day you want to meet me? And then I'll see.
Oh, that's interesting. And that's actually been working really well. I was just about to ask you. Text me, Jake. How do you, like running a business, and you've been running it for like...
12 years now, I think, right? AJ and Smart? Yeah, yeah. We'll be 12 years in... No, fuck. No, it's... I think it's 11 years. Right. Okay. Off by one. You're wrong. Oh, God. Yeah.
But yeah, so running a business and you have like a lot of people on staff too. How do you manage to actually keep your calendar absolutely free while doing that?
And I think that's, it sounds like that's what you're writing about in the sub stack. It'll be really interesting, but maybe a glimpse into that because I also felt, I think most of us, like...
Anytime there's a scheduled day with like slots around, you are not getting anything else done that day. No. So...
I do think it's important. So I'm trying to figure out how to explain this. I don't have a clean way of explaining it. The first thing I should make clear is that when you're just starting out, you have...
it depends where you are a little bit in the hierarchy and for some people you cannot just tell them hey text me on the day like when i wanted to meet jake and i felt like
that i would want to pitch him something it's not like i would have been immediately from day one oh yeah jake just like you know just like making it hard for jake to meet me even though i am the one who wants to meet him so there's obviously
you have to be smart in terms of who what you're trying to get and you don't want to come across as a total like nightmare to work with but
In general, it is a mindset that you don't want to have yourself scheduled the entire time and that you want to have. For me, the idea is that...
You need a lot of open space and a lot of unstructured time to be creative. For the way that my brain works, it's not okay to say, oh, this is my four-hour slot to be creative.
80% of the week to be unscheduled, enough for me to get bored, enough for my mind to actually start wandering, enough for me to feel uncomfortably bored.
and so then i'm like oh my god like what am i what am i doing here and then i end up like
I don't know, watching like five hours of YouTube and going on Twitch and watching that and then going through Substack. I spent eight hours on Substack last Thursday.
just reading other people's sub stacks. And at the end of it, I was like, holy shit, there's a business model here that I never even realized that I can like plug into.
Yeah, so to answer your question of how do you do it, there's a lot of steps. Number one is that you have to decide that you have to also believe that you can be that, that you can have a life that's relatively unscheduled.
but also earn enough money to survive and run a business. The second thing is you also have to hire people who take the reactive type roles like managing.
And you have to accept that if you give them these roles, then you relinquish power on a lot of things within your own company.
And so for me, it means that something could go like we're having a Black Friday sale this week. And even though that team is going to do an amazing job, I know if I would look at every single ad that goes out, I would find problems with it.
for myself, but I don't do that. So there is no, for example, that meeting, that kickoff for Black Friday meeting, I'm not in it because I'm relinquishing that control.
delegating essentially those tasks. So again, I know a lot of people who are running much bigger companies than me and much smaller companies than me who are involved in every single detail and super stressed all the time, but don't.
Their businesses are not maybe as profitable. And when they meet me and they send me a message and they're like, hey, do you want to meet? And I'm like, yeah, I'm free all day, just whenever you feel like it. And they're like, do you ever do anything?
And I explained to them, my job is literally, my job is not to be doing the reactive stuff that I can find other people who are good at doing these things. I am like the creative, visionary person whose job is to just...
look out for the next five years for the business and see what we're going to be doing. I know that's not really practical, but essentially it comes down to hiring people.
Not doing client work. Client work, you'll always be on other people's schedules. So you want to look for work that isn't requiring your specific time. And yeah, just...
avoid saying no to things that are schedule-related repeatedly. I want to ask a similar question to Jake. I actually read that blog post that you referenced when you left Google Ventures.
And you were talking about your parents, how they moved to one of the islands in Washington.
And you were talking about your dad and then you made the decision to leave Google. Actually, I cried after reading that blog post because right now I'm exactly the same age. I work for the same company. I used to live in Seattle for seven years. Many of those things resonated just so well.
with me. But you just said that you don't want schedules, you want to be free from schedules. How did you manage to survive for 10 years at Google? Because the corporations are just inherently schedule-driven.
Yeah, well, I mean, and even now, I mean, you know, I don't work for a corporation. I would work for myself.
I still have I'm not as successful at this as Jonathan is. So, you know, the it's it is a battle in our lives, you know, and I think that's sort of what that.
part of what that post was about, she referred to. And by the way, thanks for saying that, Ilya. That means a lot to hear that. I shared it with multiple people, by the way. And right now my eyes are watering because I think that just spoke to my heart so much. So thank you for writing it.
It's like this sort of battle we have in life to try to figure out what we're sort of here for, how we want to spend our limited time. Our time is very limited.
And it's kind of sort of scary how fast it goes by. It's really important to question the norms of things. And, you know, like...
Like Jonathan, I am constantly trying to figure out, how do I do the things that matter to me? And at the same time, like... question how you know question both like my priorities and what i think matters to me but question the way what is the best way to do things
And, you know, I think there are a lot of things, too, in life. Like I said, you know, like, oh, the fact that neither John nor I want to have anything on our calendars. What caused us to stop doing the podcast?
You know, there's some truth to that, but, but I think that like, there's this, this bigger thing of like us having stuff happen in our lives. It was just like, we kind of had to deal with, you know, and, and like.
In my life, the past two, three years, I had a lot of illness in my family. And so...
You're dealing with that. And, like, up until then, you know, and I look back at, like, I think about the book Sprint or my book Make Time, which is about, by Sprint, by Make Time, which is all about, like, you know. We'll add it in the show notes, too, yeah. Yeah, good, good.
So we never mentioned that you're a New York Times bestselling actor. New York Times bestselling actor? No, author. Sorry. Jake is also New York Times bestselling actor. Those are all about like... optimizing how you spend your time and
questioning how you spend your time and yet having like after that had these things happen in my in my personal life that disrupted time i'm like what a what a naive person i was writing books about like how to sort of master your time because when
Things happen in your life and you have to like drastically shift your priorities or you just have to deal with things that are...
Where you can't control it. You can't turn the knobs. You can't optimize or like life hack your way through it. What then? How do you find like, what's the meaning of your life then? And anyway, this is.
I'm sort of, you know, maybe far afield from the question initially, but it's like, how did I survive at Google? Well, at that time, I was constantly trying to question, like, there's a lot of power here.
inside google or in google ventures there's a lot of power in these startups we're investing there's a lot of like raw power i could just follow the script and sort of
try to work my way up the job hierarchy or whatever. And that's kind of what everything wants you to do. That's what the culture wants you to do. That's where the incentives are. That's what your peers are doing.
pushing you that way if you want to like tell your parents that like i got a promotion or whatever like everything is like oh good like that's everything pushes you in that way but like there's i mean for me at least there's nothing there like there's no that
That wasn't interesting. What's interesting is to like, how do you like, I was interested in how can I sort of create agency? How can I create what I want to have happen here or try to see what I think matters. And I guess that's the essence of it.
It's like I only made my way through Google by coming up with what I thought mattered, trying to come up with my own sort of. But I couldn't go back there now, like having gone through that and now being on my own.
and trying to come up with what matters to me on my own, I don't think I could go back to working for a company full-time like that. It would just be, you know, there's not enough space to question things, which I want to do.
Can I just add to what Jake said, like about writing all these books about optimizing time, et cetera. And then when real shit happens.
kind of goes out the window what i will say is this my life has always also been um not the easiest in the last year no illnesses are no like
serious illness actually no there was one serious illness but whatever it doesn't matter that my life has also been kind of chaotic and what i will say is that i think living a relatively unscheduled life business-wise
makes you more robust for when shit hits the fan. Because for me, it meant that I pretty much had to work.
10 for the last i don't know 10 months because was just hitting the fan majorly and it didn't zoomed out looking at the the money that the company is making it made no difference at all because my inch like
that's what i'm trying to build is a very robust machine that doesn't require my time and attention all the time and it also meant that like
I was just canceling so many meetings the whole time that I just decided eventually, wait a minute, I'm just not, I'm just going to tell people, since I don't know how I'll feel in two days from now, I'm just not going to commit to anything until I feel like it.
And just doing that for so many months in a row has made me get to the point where I'm just like, actually, I'm not, I'm just going to keep that up. It means that like my daughter, for example, is sick now. She's coming here, like basically.
She was supposed to be in the kindergarten tomorrow, a normal thing that happens, right, when you have a kid. And I have all these things on tomorrow. Well, I can just cancel them and move them. And then it just doesn't really matter so much anymore. It's not going to destroy the business.
Black Friday sale is still going to happen. Nothing has to wait on me anymore. And yeah, I don't have any to-do lists. I don't have any systems for being productive because I do realize life is just so...
There's almost just so much chaos and entropy going on that now I've designed it the way that my brain, it feels robust to me the way I've designed it now. Stuff doesn't feel like it has to get cancelled the whole time.
are moved the whole time. It's just, well, I just don't have anything in my schedule at all. But yeah, you have to build a machine then to accommodate that way of living, obviously.
But thanks for sharing this. Because I think, Jake, what you were talking about really resonates with me. And Arnab already quit Amazon. Last couple of years, I think it's been exactly what you both talked about, right? Like, it's just...
so much structure and like running from thing to thing and not being able to work on things that actually matter to you that eventually I was like, this is not happening. We'll have to figure out a different way.
Let's just leave. Of course, in the beginning, I also worked at corporates and all of this stuff, but at a certain point when it feels like you could possibly make...
some of this money without a corporate's help. I don't know if it's worth the comfort that you get from a corporate, like the way they own your life then.
And then they can just lay everyone off. It's a weird deal somehow. I always felt unsafe when I was in that environment. I always felt not financially secure.
but also i just hated doing bullshit bullshit meetings bullshit just like it felt like it all a big theater where everything was fake and i couldn't fake i couldn't play along i couldn't just be like oh yes
I'm working, I'm doing my thing. It just drove me insane. It drove me to start a business. We're in a very lucky position. And I can say this having built up the ability to not work for someone.
over you know many many years and and like having a lot of sort of lucky lucky breaks along the way like lots and lots of lucky breaks put me in that situation right but um all that said like
From this situation, it is like it is very it's like, oh, God, what I think is that one of the comedians in cars getting coffee where he's like talking about to a comedian how absurd it is the notion that somebody is your boss. Like, OK, so we're going to agree that like you can tell me what to do. Like, that's crazy.
And it is crazy. Once you get out of it, it seems crazy that someone would tell you what to do. And you would do it. Even in the very loosey-goosey way, maybe, of a company like Google, where I felt like, oh, yeah, there's some really...
It's a nice culture and I always like my bosses, but like in the end of the day, it's like, I don't really, I don't know. It's just, it's, it is so weird. And of course you can't, there are things in life where like, as an investor, I would say like, yeah, like you, I get why you can't just have a team of.
you know, two or three or four people and they are just all peers and then they can do endless amounts of stuff. Like eventually you need more people to do ambitious things. So like we, as humans, like we do need organizations.
And I don't know what the answer is there, but there is this tension between like living the most sort of fulfilled life that you can. And I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's for some people like Jonathan and I are both like very.
maybe like difficult to work with in different ways and like maybe also easy to work with in different ways but like maybe there's just a thing with us that just bristles at like following directions you know um but i yeah i don't know it is it is kind of a kind of a wild
a wild idea once you stop being used to it. I think I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was just, I say that to my employees too. Like there are some people.
There very often are people who work at AJ and Smart where I say, look, you should actually really leave. Like their personality type is not the personality or it could be age, personality, anything. Like you should at least try your own thing.
So that you at least know if you're going to enjoy it or not. Like I do say that to people quite often. Totally. That's a great way to look at it is like, like working for other people. You kind of think of it as like school.
doctors go to school for a really long time, right? Like, you know, they go to school for a decade or something. I mean, there are people who are in school for years and years and years and years and years. They don't get done with their schooling until they're in their 30s. Well, like maybe...
If you, if you got on this track and you're like working in whatever kind of a company you're working for, like you can think of that as school and it might take a long time. Like for me, it might have taken until I was in my late thirties before I was done with that. And I was like ready, you know.
I think looking back, like maybe there's things I could have seen and done it sooner, but like you can think of it as as school and in a school that lasts a really long time. But I think.
Yeah, I don't know if it's true for everybody, but I think for most people, whenever people are at this point where they're thinking of leaving their job and they're wondering what to do next, I always tell them like, could you do something on your own first before you jump to that next thing?
Can you be in that uncomfortable state where you don't have a next thing and you have to figure out you have to be an entrepreneur in some way, whatever form that takes, you have to come up with something for yourself because the freedom, there's a lot of discomfort with it.
And it may not work out too, which could be really disappointing and stuff, but like the feeling of freedom and agency is really priceless. And I think for me, like it was very hard to give up once I experienced it.
My nightmare would be having to have a job again. I think I actually have nightmares about it. I think not...
Everybody is like that, but there is a lot of people who are like that. And I think we're seeing, at least during the COVID period, and now especially last three, four years.
the indie hacking community and all that. And I've been like personally inspired by all that, right? Like just figuring out where the safety nets are, what would happen if you were to like not work for two years, go do something else.
What are those things you want to work on? And what is your backup plan? And you're seeing a lot of people now getting into that.
Which is part of also this podcast is like we're seeing an explosion of podcasters, right? And we want to inspire like more and more people to jump in if you feel like you're not confident. Still, how do you start a podcast? Why do you want to do it?
Don't start one. I'm just kidding. The thing is, sometimes I post this stuff and people like, well, easy for you to say because you're this, this, this, this, this.
And the truth is not everyone should be an entrepreneur. That's true. It's great that there are companies because that also offers some, it means you're not having to put as much risk into a system to get job security.
and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I just hate working for people. Cool. So this is a good segue. In the very first episode, and also in many of the subsequent ones, you talked about the power of moments.
the book and also the concept and how it's very important in service design and also in product design. Can you give a brief overview of that concept and also name what are those moments for your podcasts?
the song yeah that's a great it's a great book uh you should totally check it out it's by chip and dan heath um who wrote like made to stick and
Decisive, Switch, a bunch of other great books. Empower Moments is kind of about this notion that people don't really remember things as one long, continuous story. They tend to remember key moments.
And we like, you know, so if you're if you're whatever you're doing, if it's a business or you're building a product or whatever, if you think of things in that way.
Like it's a really valuable way you think about what are going to be the great moments here. And, and then those will be the things people remember and great moments can outweigh.
like like lousy experiences to like the parts that are that are tough and so it's i think that's that's like a really it's been like a one of those like light bulb things i'm reading that and being like oh wow this is a really this is a really cool
And it syncs up with a lot of what I've done with design sprints where I always want to figure out on the map, like, what's the one moment where we're going to...
build the prototype, you know, what's the crucial moment. And so I just kind of like, yeah, I just kind of lit up this whole way of thinking for me. So I don't know, John, what do you think on the podcast? What were the, what were the great.
I don't know that we actually intentionally applied anything to any thinking to the podcast. So I can't say that we consciously created anybody. The power of moments. I think you can really simplify it down to starting strong.
with something like having a very strong strong start a very strong ending and some peak moment in the middle because in that book they tell you people basically remember the start the finish and one peak moment and so
One of the examples in the book is that if someone goes to Disneyland and you ask them every hour, how would they rate their current experience out of 10?
Sometimes they're going to be standing in line and it's a 6 out of 10. Sometimes they're going to be just after getting off an amazing roller coaster and it's a 10. Sometimes maybe, I don't know.
went into a toilet and was covered in diarrhea and it's a zero, whatever. At the end of the day, they're not rating it based on the average of all of these scores and all of these moments. They're actually just rating it based on...
How did it feel when we walked in? What were one or two really memorable things? And how did it feel when we left? And that's going to be the rating.
We use this when we're running workshops or like if I'm doing a retreat or anything like that. Just, you know, the very first impression, the very last impression. They're super important. But in the podcast.
we would start every episode with me and Jake singing the song really badly because we couldn't hear the song while we were singing it. So it was never in sync and never in any way good.
We also ended it with singing the song again. And so I do think that was a very powerful moment for people listening to the podcast.
There was always some fart noises in there as well, which are very important. We would talk about them for hours. What was the perfect fart noise? I think the power of moments in the podcast were the songs.
In the beginning and the end. Actually, I was just showing to my vibe.
Like before I went, you know, to my closest to do this interview. She's like, back to the topics. Yeah. Like these guys, they make this song. It's like so funny. So I turned the song on for her in one of the episodes.
And actually, surprisingly, it actually was the episode where it was just Jonathan. And you sing, it's like, like, where is Jake? Oh, no, I think it was actually just Jake. And you sing like, where is Jonathan? Where is Jonathan? Where the heck is Jonathan? So it's just actually you singing by yourself.
And she looks at me and she's like, what's funny about that? I enjoy it so much. I think a lot of the jokes in the podcast, they get funnier over time.
I'll attest to that, right? So Ilya introduced me to the podcast maybe six months back or so.
And the first few times I listened to it, I was like, what the heck is going on? I'm being totally honest with you, right? But then I think once I sort of figured out what your personalities are.
From the start to the end of every episode, it's like totally authentic. And the second one is you don't...
know exactly what is going to be discussed but there are so many key things that you come out of it at the end of it that was like amazing and i don't think this is a model that anybody could have for a podcast like no structure just
like figure out what you're going to talk about during the show. But you guys definitely had some sort of a magic. Maybe it was just the chemistry between the two of you.
But I'm just curious, was there any intentionality to this sort of rambling? It was all on the flight. I mean, there was also, for example, the fact that we would...
ask the editor to leave in the parts where we talked to him. This wasn't intentional, but the actual moment that this was decided, you hear it being mentioned in the podcast. It's like...
oh, Jason, can you change this? And then Jake is like, should we leave that in? Yes, let's leave that in. Jason's now part of, Jason being talked to is now part of the podcast. So yeah, like I think that it was.
Whatever we thought was entertaining was going to stay in. Is it actually Jason or Jason? Because I think there was something weird about it, like in the last episode. Oh, yeah. God, good one. Yeah. No one will ever know.
Yeah, his name is actually Jayce. His name is like Brian or something. We're just so ignorant. Actually, I'm curious how you get...
Production and editing. So you had this guy, Jason, who did the editing. What was your process? So you get together, you record. What happens afterwards?
No schedule, remember? Right, no schedule. It was really automated. But you randomly get on the call together. No, you would, John, you'd put the, we'd put the files in a Dropbox folder and then Jace would just like. Jace would just take them and he'd upload it and schedule it.
Yeah. Not even that. So I hated the process of uploading the files to Dropbox. And so when I would save in Adobe Audition, it would automatically go to the Dropbox folder that Jayce had access to.
yeah jonathan gave me bothered to like drag and drop an icon i don't want to do that i hate doing stuff i want things to be self-contained i want like when i'm doing a youtube video i want to say my thing
press the button and then not say my thing anymore and walk off and go to the toilet. I think that one of the things that works...
you know, to the extent that the podcast worked well. And like the thing that you guys are describing that you liked about it. And I think what people who liked it enjoyed is maybe came from like, I don't know, in the beginning when we started, John may have all along.
realize that it could be great being kind of unscripted and like as like we don't care as possible but like at the beginning i thought like this would be like a podcast like this would be like i've listened to podcasts there's a there's like a way that
you know there's some different formats for podcasts but there's some expectation of like there's some kind of structure and people are using like a voice because they're presenting something that they kind of have thought about or prepared for
And like, even the ones that are more conversational, there's, there's some kind of structure that it hangs on, you know? And I think what was like, when you do that, when you start off and you think like, I'm doing a podcast now, you're like.
you know, you're, you're like, Oh my God, like I'm in this role. I have to, I'm doing a podcast. Like I really have to, I really better like think about my voice and like choose my words carefully and like, think about the four and what's the format. And like, even as I'm doing the introduction, like what are the.
What are the things I need to be sure to say? And how do I introduce myself? There's so much to kind of think about there. And I don't remember if we started off doing that, actually, but I thought we would do that in the beginning.
And then at some point, like, it became clear, like, we're just, that's not happening. Like, it's not going to be that. Like, it's, you know, we're just sort of screwing around. And the more I think we just stopped caring about people listening to it.
And we're just, you know, John used to always say like, look, this is selfish. This is just for us. Like, we don't care. Like, we don't, we don't care what you think. Like, let's just bore the audience to death. It's just going to be what's a fun conversation for John and I to have.
The more we got to that and stopped thinking about creating a podcast, I think the better it worked. But but it's not it's easier said than done to actually find like in writing, the hardest thing is to write.
and say what you want to say, but make it sound like you're just talking, not like you're not like you're, you know, crafting something. It's really hard to do that.
Yeah. I don't think it was so hard with the podcast because we really just were like, let go. But that was maybe the hard thing was saying, gosh, I'm doing this thing and it's public, but I'm just going to let go. I just like, I don't really care. I think. Yeah. And I think.
Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, go ahead. But I just want to say Arnav is sitting, for anyone who's listening to this, because there's no video.
Both Arnav and Ilya are sitting in closets where you can see all of the clothes, and Arnav just pulled out a random piece of clothing from inside.
one of the sections and he's now wearing it. He's using the closet. It's not a random piece of clothing.
It was purposely placed there knowing that it's going to get cold inside the closet after a while. We planned our shit, okay? We planned everything down to the detail, like 50 second minutes into the recording.
pull in this green shirt and put it on yeah sure dude sure um you know the thing about the like about podcasts i think uh about the about the format and about the style of it
I really enjoy listening to like Twitch. If you think about Twitch, like the platform, people like some of the biggest channels, all they do for eight hours straight is they chat, they eat, they talk.
They're talking to their chatters. It's very, very informal. And I listened to one podcast, like I said, the giant bomb cast, which had this style where...
they would talk for three hours. And I just, it's not even entertainment. It's more like comfort food. And that's actually what I had as my vision for it is just to emulate.
that podcast which is it's a comfort food experience versus an actual learning experience and i also knew people wouldn't like it almost everything that i make like people you know some people think it's really dumb and some people really like it
But I think, you know, and obviously people, you know, would write to us and write in the reviews that they thought it was like, oh, you learn nothing from it. Also my own friends, also my own employees. But actually what's interesting.
I don't know if this is the same for you, Jake, but for me, when I think it's right and when I think it's enjoyable for me, I don't personally care.
As long as it's not hurting anybody. I didn't care at all. I was just like, I'm happy. I wanted the numbers to go up, but I didn't care what the general individual people were saying about it.
Yeah, that's when something's working well, I do feel that way, but I am more.
I am less courageous than Jonathan about starting on that journey to get there. Like it's harder for me when thinking about doing a new thing to let go of like, oh, but.
Like, how will I make it great for everybody? How will I make it something, you know, the perfectionism? How will I make this something that universally people will applaud? And that's paralyzing, right? I mean, there's a lot of stuff that.
I don't do because I can't get past that stage. Like Jonathan was such a like wonderful partner to work with stuff on because he will just start doing something. And like in this thing, he's just, we're just going to do it. Like it didn't have to be perfect. Like you just will do it.
You know, that's that's a big deal to like start doing something. I mean, if I think if you have the combination in life of like the willingness and the courage to like start things that may people may hate.
And also the discernment to edit the things that you're doing so that you're not just doing everything. Like the combination of those two things is really powerful. And I think what you said in there, there's a gem in there, which like I've heard this before.
in terms of blogging but not podcasting, maybe it applies equally, is to when you're starting out, it can be really...
daunting to think about all the audience and who's going to read my blog posts and what are they going to think about it so just do it for yourself in the beginning right let's see see what what comes out
If you feel like, oh, this is I'm like happy doing this and I want to continue doing this, then start use that confidence that you have gained to actually mature the thing. No, I disagree.
No, I'm just kidding. No, that's exactly right. The hard part is that there really are. When I say edit, I don't mean edit like you edit a podcast afterwards, you know, to get the right stuff. And I mean.
It's like those, there are those blogs that like, like writing a blog, for example, it's a lot of work, you know, like if you, every, every post you write, you're going to have to think about it. If you look at your days the way Jonathan and I do like one.
One focused activity might destroy your day. If you're trying to do a big thing, like if I'm trying to write a book or something, writing a blog post is super disruptive because it might break a chain.
that I'm in of working on something else that's big. And so all those things that we do, they have costs. And the hard part is knowing where's the thing that's worth the cost to do. It's one of the appeals of podcasting is that...
If you like, at least for the way we did podcasting, it's just.
You know, zero prep, show up, record into the recording. And like, if it could magically be uploaded and, you know, be edited or like have the music in and stuff, which we were able to achieve with the help of our excellent editor.
But like that one, yeah, Steve, that was like, that is, that is the appeal is like, it's, you know, even a blog post, you could, you could put a lot of.
you could put a lot of work into writing a blog. And if you're just writing it for yourself and it never takes, because a lot of this, a lot of blogs and podcasts and other things like they don't ultimately like.
deliver to an audience. Like, you know, an audience doesn't find them. And so that's, that's one of the, you know, one of the dangers of them is that you just like, you sink a lot of time into it. On the flip side though, like to go back to your.
your sort of suggestion or your advice there are now just like, if you do it for yourself, if you, if you're really getting something out of it yourself, then it doesn't matter. And one of the things that I think this is a piece of advice that maybe Jonathan.
picked up on tim ferris or i don't know or maybe it's his own but i that i've heard from it's like these finding these activities where like you can't lose like like no matter what happens you'll you'll gain something from it
And, you know, if you're writing a blog, make sure that you're going to get something out of it, even if zero people read it. Like it's going to be your journal. It's going to be a place where you think things through or you practice.
phrasing stuff that you're going to use in other settings or whatever. There's some purpose. It's like 100% for you. You're going to get that benefit no matter what. And then if nobody ever wants it, you still walk away with that.
Like with the podcast with me and John, it's like, well, you know, baseline, like he's a fun guy to talk to. Like if that's on my calendar in the day.
With the exception of I don't like having stuff on my calendar, but like having but but like getting to talk to John is a treat and I'll feel energized and like happy for the rest of my day afterwards because I got to talk to him.
In fact, I used to like listen to our podcast after it would come out just because I enjoyed like hearing the conversation again, you know, and like John and I are on opposite sides of the planet. So we rarely get the chance to talk. So it's like, great. I get like another.
conversation i mean that's pathetic like how lonely am i but like i'll listen to it again so like well i don't care like what happens because that's like a fun that's just like a fun thing i'm getting no matter what so if you're doing one of these things
whatever it is, like you kind of have to, I think you're crazy if you don't find a way that you're going to win, even if nobody reads it, nobody listens to it. No, you don't make any money off of it.
you're going to gain some skill or do something for your head or do something for your emotion that that you need yeah i can actually uh it really resonates with me
Many years ago, you know, I was writing a lot of music. I was doing some recordings. They were pretty, you know, unprofessional. I never learned to sing very well, but I enjoyed it. At the same time, I was doing like a video blog for like how I was doing this.
And I was so obsessed about people watching it, and very few people actually watched it. I would lose sleep over that, and at the end of the day, I just burned out. And I didn't do music for many years after that, because I just had these kind of scars from it.
Yeah, so the lesson I learned is really focus on the music, not on how many people listen to it or watch the videos and stuff like that. Because, yeah, it can actually destroy the hobby. You try to do that. Totally.
So coming back to the podcast, we did have a bit of structure and some questions. Yeah. And we've got like 20 minutes left. Question one. Yes. Should we do the intro? Hello.
Just delete everything so far. Take two. I'm tired. One interesting thing that I thought, and Ilya, I think you wrote this up initially, is like...
You have a lot of criticism about other companies and other things in the podcast, sometimes even sponsors, right? And how did you like... Fuck Squarespace.
We didn't actually have any sponsors. That's the key. It makes it really easy to criticize. Did you get any repercussions out of that?
Did anybody miss you for that? Can I just add a little bit of flavor? Because yes, I wrote that. Because I listened to many of your episodes and what I really liked is how you're able to criticize things without actually sounding sarcastic or snarky.
So it's, like, it's really fun to listen to you. I don't know if it's fun for, like, InVision or somebody else to listen to you, like, when you, like, talk about them. But for, like, an outsider, you know, sometimes people criticize things that sound, you know, bitter. And, you know, you're like, why have you been talking about this? But you guys...
I'm just like, I'm just like with you on the right. And it's just so funny. So I'm curious, like if you can unpack, oh, it's just your personality. Like, how do you make it sound so funny? I guess the thing with Envision, like...
they had a podcast that was like actually a real podcast i'm trying to remember like we i think we oh sorry fucking vision not fuck's first place yeah well there's both there's really both i forgot who we have
Yeah. I think it's, it can be funny if you, you know, well, personally, I'm, you know, I'm like.
competitive and insecure right like i'll look at the people who are doing a thing that's similar to me and having more success or you know and i'll and i'll be like i'll i'll like it kind of the worst part of me will agonize over it and like you know
just get get so frustrated and think about it and i think it's i don't know i think there's like there's humor in the like the authentic like angst that we have as humans like that's often a good source of humor is like if you
just sort of lay bare, like, like have fun with that, with that sort of emotion. So I think that was sort of the, probably the source of the InVision stuff was like, they, like.
There are podcasts that started probably around the time of ours, very different, like they were doing. No, it's because they didn't put us on their list of best design podcasts.
oh that's what it was these motherfuckers there was like all these crappy podcasts and then they didn't put us in there not petty at all we're in vision now huh
Does anyone use Envision anymore? I think the Squarespace one was actually rooted in the UX. And you both used it and you absolutely hated it. And that's where most of it came from. Yeah, we should not tell them.
where we work at Amazon because they would just look shit in it. I don't anymore. No, I think...
By the way, I think our criticism, the reason it didn't sound bitter is because we know how difficult it is to do design work. And so I think actually a lot of the times on the podcast, we would criticize designers.
for criticizing like oh apple doesn't know what they're doing blah blah blah it's like yeah you have no idea what it's like to work in a company like that and how many decisions need to be made before one thing happens and i think we came from a place of actually
understanding and empathy for the product teams working at these companies. And we're also not bitter, I think, as well. I think a lot of... online discourse is is bitter and hateful and weird and dark because these people have been like hurt by these companies or whatever and i think we've
basically had only good experiences working at these tech companies. But we still feel like it's fun to point at things we don't like.
always with the understanding that we know how difficult it is to get things done at these companies right right it's like there are those two faces to it and you can go it's like you can go in and like
Criticizing can be fun. It's fun. And it's helpful, too. If you're making things, looking at other...
things that other people have made and seeing like what frustrates you about them, whatever, like there's value in that. But so often it's just one sided. And if you have to turn and look at the other face and say like, yeah, like that.
Try to see it from the perspective of the inside. Like how hard is it to do those things? Now there's some places where, you know, like, like Mark Zuckerberg is like, it's very hard to like empathize with him a whole lot, you know? So I think it might empathize with people who work at Facebook, but like.
Empathizing with Mark Zuckerberg is pretty tough. I don't want to change spaces with him. It seems like a pretty miserable existence, actually. You just don't like his haircut, I think. Yeah, right.
You know, but by a large... In the metaverse. Yeah. But, yeah. John's right. Did you ever get any responses from the likes of InVision or others?
who'd be like, guys, take down that episode or something like that. No, they always, these companies, anyone from these companies always got the joke. Yeah.
they all everyone knew this it was always so obviously a very silly joke i mean the episode where we started our fake beef with envision
It was so over the top stupid. I went through every single podcast on their list pretending that I thought we were number one and then we weren't number one.
We didn't care. It was just a joke. And there was somebody from InVision, I remember. So I have written a lot of articles for InVision, including after those podcasts.
And I'm joking with the person about this. Like it's a, they know it's a joke. We know it's a joke. If they don't, well, they're idiots, you know? We're in vision now, huh?
There's another thing about this where it's like hard to make something because you worry that you'll offend someone or you worry that like people get mad about it. And obviously that's very...
possible on the internet like people are just waiting to get offended and get upset and like it's really cheap to to post your negative review or like whatever and that stuff like really sucks like i've read negative reviews of my books that which like
really like made me feel bad for a long time i should have a thicker skin about this but like you know like i don't but at the same time it's it's also true that most
People are really just thinking about themselves and their own little world and don't really care that much. And so even if they do write a negative review or something, it's...
Unless you're like really, really popular, nobody's probably going to come and like try to punch you, sue you or make you take down an episode or like something like that. Like I think people just don't really, I don't know, like maybe don't really care so much.
I do think that it's there's so much attention gravitates toward.
people on the internet who have extreme views and are like unyielding in their like extreme view about something and it is there's like a there's like an opportunity space where you have like a
a nuanced view or like you talk about both sides of something. Like that's, I think that's where like actually most people are, you know, like the extreme views are interesting. They're like clickbait worthy. But if you talk about a podcast where you have more time to like listen and hear people.
I think people are interested in the nuance, the two sides, all that stuff. I will say, by the way, I find the whole, when we were doing our podcast, it was also the time when...
You guys in the US, there was like the Trump stuff, there was COVID, there was all of this. There was a lot of tension in the air, I feel, around the internet in general. Everyone was quite angry.
And I personally don't have thick skin. I like, for example, we've been posting YouTube videos for seven years. I don't know, a thousand years at this point every week. I don't read the comments because I just don't want to see the stupid.
crap that people write about like oh your teeth look stupid or what you know like this stuff just doesn't i just honestly as long as i don't see it it doesn't matter but around this time
I was worried about what I would say on the podcast, especially around, because anything around these topics of Trump and COVID, which by the way, I just didn't really have so many opinions on anyway, because I'm not American.
But just when that would come up, sometimes you would mention it, Jake. I was always thinking in the back of my head, oh, no.
someone's going to try to cancel us around or like some really angry mob is going to come after us or about the mentioning trump or whatever so yeah these i think there were topics where
I would personally just never talk about anything really controversial because I see what happens when people do talk about things that could be controversial.
And I just stay away. I think in the same way that you just shouldn't talk about these topics on a night out with your friends. Sometimes I think it's, it's best to keep, I would personally, I always keep.
controversial topics away from the content that I create. I don't see any positive. I see only negative. And I think you have to have a really strong skin to talk about that topic. It would be like...
If I would come out with a political blog or something, I think this would destroy my life. We also have to like, I think have.
I don't really remember, but I'm sure to the extent that we talked about things that were in the news that were controversial.
I can't imagine we went super deep on it. No, we didn't. Because we don't know anything. It was just whenever you had mentioned the stuff, I was like... Right, right, right. It's like, yeah.
I think that there's sometimes an expectation that we're all going to have an opinion about everything that's going to be valuable. We don't really know anything. We just stick to the little stuff that interests us.
All topics in the world, for some reason, have to be so America focused that when we are creating content from Europe, it's like...
What do you think about Trump? What do you think about this? I'm just like, I don't know. I don't care. I don't know about any stupid senators you have. I don't know any of their names. I don't know what they do. Fuck off. Stop asking me these questions.
And it is this extreme, over-the-top, America-politics-centric thing that also drives me crazy. American politics is this reality TV show.
that everyone else in the rest of the world, we are apparently supposed to be watching. And if we don't watch, we're bad people.
Well, that's why we did that 10-episode Merklefest, right? Like the Merklefest. The Merkdog. That was a big hit. So what you're saying is only discuss these topics over your Thanksgiving dinners in America.
Yes, exactly. There is another, yeah, look, we don't even have Thanksgiving. I didn't even know it was Thanksgiving. The only reason I found out it was Thanksgiving is that I saw a post from my company saying happy Thanksgiving to our American clients. And I was like, oh.
Happy Thanksgiving, I guess. Listen to how bitter he is about America. Yeah, you guys. There's a big chip on his shoulder about America. Ireland is coming back, baby. Ireland is going to be the central cultural reference. I'm also curious.
to talk more about the chemistry that you guys have. So when Jonathan was out touring Germany in his van, there were, I think, six episodes or something with Jake and Jake's co-author, John.
Sorry, I forgot his last name. Zeratsky. John Zeratsky. So I listened to one of those. And it does change the dynamic of the conversation. Because I think Jonathan sets a lot of tone in how the conversation is like. It's still enjoyable to listen, but it feels like a different podcast.
So I'm curious how you guys made this decision to actually run with something rather than have a gap. And what did you think about the end result? I'm also curious what was Jonathan's reaction to coming back and listening to all those?
I was on vacation. I was doing like a camper van thing. Yeah, I remember that. And I remember doing the episodes with John. But I don't remember like the strategy for do episodes versus don't do episodes. I think we just had like a rule.
that we would never skip a week. Yeah. Because that's like a good practice to have in content. Like also when you guys said that you're doing a bi-weekly podcast, I don't think that's a good idea. We should do weekly.
yeah because people need to have this rhythm like it's it's much easier if people know oh yeah like every week i listen to this thing every week it just becomes part of their rhythm yeah
Yeah, I think we were, yeah, so we wanted to keep the rhythm up. And since John was going to be a way, the choices would have been, I'm kind of trying to reconstruct like the logic, but the choices would have been do rerun episodes or do episodes by myself or.
have guests or find somebody to be the temporary co-host.
Like reruns, it's a lot of reruns. Like six is kind of getting to be a lot. Cause we didn't have that many episodes and we already did rerun sometimes. That's 200 baby. And then.
What was the other one? Well, like do it by myself is really hard. Doing a podcast by myself is like, I've done that a couple of times where I'm recording and I just, you know, I just can't maintain that for very long. Finding guests.
is that's a lot of work you guys know like it's annoying schedule a super annoying and you're sort of expected to like be ready to interview them and you know like maybe do some research that's very anti the whole
shtick so john is a really good friend of mine we've worked together forever very easy for us to like have a conversation and not
really have it be super scripted. John, John, this is the other John, John Zratsky. So that's probably why, you know, that would be better looking sense. Yeah. Yeah. Super handsome John with better teeth.
Yeah, well, I just need like six more months on these babies and then John Zorazzi is going to have to take a step back. So that would have been the logic. And then, yeah, like it's I mean, I think that the.
There's something very special about Jonathan Courtney that is that is the very hard to replicate ingredient of our podcast.
um i would i mean you as well i think both of us are it's hard to replicate a human i think is that yeah it's true but but i appreciate it i'm certainly i'm a unique snowflake and everything but like if you there's i've seen john
I'm talking to Jonathan Courtney interact with a lot of different people with like his friends. And it's always, there's always chemistry. I don't, I don't ever see him talking to somebody where there's like not chemistry and it's not funny and like enjoyable to watch. So I was just like lucky to be.
like along for the ride because he's going to make anything like fun and like he's going to make you crack up and like he's i don't know he like sets you up so that i feel like you're going to look pretty good like
If you can get an interview or in a podcast with John, like, you should do it. And so, like, since we stopped doing it, like, I've thought...
I'm like interested in doing another podcast, but then I'm always like, well, do what, you know, would I want to do interviews with people? And then there's that same issue of like, you have to schedule it. You have to, you know, you have to prep it.
Like, would John Zratsky and I like doing one? Like, yeah, we could. But like, it's, you know, we would probably want to do it in just kind of a different way. And to get that kind of like just that random like.
rambly, fun vibe. Like it's only, it's only Jonathan. So there, yeah, there's, there's, there's definitely something special there that, that is not, is not run of the mill. And when I've tried to think like, who do I know, you know, since Jonathan.
He doesn't want to schedule anything. If I can't do it with Jonathan, who could I do it with? And there's really like, there's nobody like that. I don't know anybody else who's like that.
I appreciate that, man. That's very nice of you to say. I feel the same. It's not a compliment. It's not a compliment. It's an absolute compliment about my teeth. So we are almost at time. Maybe almost last question. Is season two coming or you guys are done with the podcast?
I did make a graphic for season two, and we recorded one episode of season two last December, and then my personal life shit hit the fan.
And I was like, I probably can't do this right now. So I don't know. Honestly, I just don't know. Like, I think it would be really fun to do it. I think probably both of our lives have to calm down somewhat.
personal lives i would say uh mine for sure and maybe yours too but who knows i don't know yeah i mean i'm probably getting i'm getting close to on top of things
john so you know when when you feel ready we can we can revisit we can revisit it i still don't have curtains look but i do have a kitchen now you have lovely windows and i like how the the wall is kind of rounded yeah that's really
We don't do that in America. We might have Thanksgiving and we might have senators, but we don't have the technology to round walls.
I mean, look at Arnav and Ilya in these closets. These are square walls, you know. I'm in Canada, but yeah. This is my closet, by the way. This is a German closet right now. I don't know why your closet is so small.
We have full kitchens in our closet and balconies. Yeah, this is my closet. Cool. So would you guys be up for singing a song to finish this off?
Will we sing the theme song? Yeah. Only if you guys sing it with us. Yeah, we'll try. Are we doing Jake and Jonathan or Product Breakfast Club? We'll find out.
We'll find out. Can we do Jake and Jonathan on Metacast? Let's do Jake and Jonathan, I think. It's more recent. Yeah, okay. Well, I counted in. I'll say like one, two, three, four, and then, you know? Okay. Very prepared. One, two.
Yeah, I've been preparing for this all day.
One, two, three, four. Jake and Jonathan.
I couldn't hear any of what other people were singing, so it actually sounded fun.
It's good. I think that was beautiful. I'm curious, Ilya, what the transcribe of that is going to come out as. No, I think I'll just not transcribe this part to save money on this script.
Descript is just, like, killing. Yeah, you know, we really want to have Andrew Mason on our show, who is the founder of Groupon and Descript. So, yeah, we have to mention Descript in every episode. Oh, yeah? Really? Please don't dissound them.
I heard this script was kind of shitty. I heard they released their podcast, the best podcast list recently. Let's read it.
So I'll have to counter this because we do want Andrew Mason on the show, right? All good, all good. No, actually, it saved me a lot of time because my previous podcast was in Russian. Descript doesn't support Russian, so I was editing.
Everything manually in just like the audio editor where you can't see the text. So Descript saves a lot of time. I really did hear it shit though.
So he will have to come and provide counterpoints to that. What is it? Andrew Jason has his name? Andrew Mason.
Yeah, Andrew Jason. Andrew Brian. Brian Owen. Sounds like a bad man. Honestly, you can cut all this out. I'm just kidding. Okay. Andrew, I'm coming for you, man. To close it, just a...
Do you guys listen to any podcasts right now or books? Anything you want to recommend? Yeah. Yeah. You go first. I've really been enjoying my favorite murder.
is it has a bit of uh the rambly vibe talking to the editor at the editor steve's kind of character on the show that's a good that's a good one and uh my brother my brother and me i usually
Don't listen to the whole episode, but the first 15 to 20 minutes, they have some good ramble, jokey. It's like a little bit of the Jake and Jonathan vibe. I'm going to open my podcast app, see what else I'm listening to. What about you, John?
I listen to, I don't know if it's like controversial, but I listen to the All In podcast. It's like four tech DC guys talking every week about the state of tech.
and the state of the economy and politics and stuff. And it's quite entertaining. Also listen to the Jeff Gerstman show, which is the guy who used to run the giant bomb cast. He started his own podcast.
which is really nice. And yeah, I listened to other shows that I'm better. Maybe like too offensive to admit to people out loud. What's offensive about all in? I mean, I haven't listened to it. I'm now I'm thinking, you know,
I'm in venture capital. Maybe I should listen to this. I don't think it's offensive at all. They're just like very hard nosed and like they have like big, I don't consider it to be, I don't think it's offensive actually. I like it. It's entertaining.
It has Jason Calacanis on it. Calacanis, I don't even know how to say his name, even though he's a very famous investor.
It's not something I've had to verbally say before, but did you see the text exchange between him and Elon Musk? They both look so stupid about Twitter. I don't think I saw it.
You should look. Everybody in the text exchanges is Elon Musk. It's just like, oh, really? That's what those, you know, that echelon, that's what they sound like when they're talking to each other. They're just like kissing each other's asses and they sound like idiots.
Is that on Twitter? It's too bad. You can find, it's not on, I don't know, if you search for Elon Musk's text messages. They had to be disclosed, I think, or they leaked for some, one of the Twitter lawsuits. But another good one. Good.
good podcast is the uh adam buxton show that's one that john oh i love that turned me on to and he actually has these like really well done funny songs and uh they're so good that was an inspiration for us singing that is a i mean that is an inspiration i think just for like generally
Like that's a great podcast format. If I ever do a podcast that's like interviews with people, I would try to model it after that. Only I don't know how to do the music. So I wouldn't have that. But like he has this, he like takes a walk with his dog in the beginning and he's. Oh, I love it.
Like he, he reads a little bit about what the episode is going to be about. And then he's just kind of like rambling about what's going on. And like, you can hear his feet like stomping in the gravel. And then, and then he goes to the, to the interview and there's these songs like every so often it'll be like.
rejected with a song that's unrelated it's just like he makes these little songs oh and the Christmas special if you if you try the Adam Buxton podcast you have to start with an Adam and Joe Christmas uh special
Because he used to do this podcast or this show with this guy, Joe, who's now like a movie director or something. And they do a Christmas special every year. And they're really good. They make songs for each other. And it's great stuff.
That's cool. We'll have all of those in the show notes. We'll schedule some time for that in our calendars.
Yeah, don't schedule time in your calendar. You've learned nothing. Ilya, come on. I've been reading the book Sprint and Make Time. Oh, yeah, those are great. Actually, no joke, but I have them downloaded in my phone. I haven't started listening to them yet because I...
Just couldn't stop listening to Jake and Jonathan. Oh, you just need to buy them. You don't need to read them. I got them from library.
The libraries are the worst. The libraries are the worst. Libraries don't keep Jake's gold helmets and objects that he buys. Who's my gold helmet? Who's going to pay for that gold helmet? A library? No, forget about it.
I tried to make up. I bought the Sprint, both on Audible and the copy of it. Helping my way. It's better, but it's not enough.
I hope you got the hot cover. You need to buy it on Audible and on Kindle and hardcover, and you need to... Hard, soft, and medium covers. And burn down the library. I am curious if you have a couple of minutes, though. So this is something Ilya and I have talked about.
Typically, I'm such an audio, like I listen to podcasts and audible and all that all the time. So I almost always start with a audible version of a book.
And then when I find out, okay, there's a lot of interesting things in there. I want to scribble and I want to make notes out of it and all that. That's when I buy a paper copy of it. Interesting. I can't stand audible versions of things.
All respect, though, to you, my wife is very into Audible. This is a debate we have for my wife. To me, it's just so slow. I want to skim, especially if it's a nonfiction book.
I want to skim it to see if there's going to be anything good. And so I like download the Kindle sample, you know, and like skim it or I'll wait until it's been recommended a bunch of times. Like it's been recommended by John, but I think it might come down to like, I'm not a very good auditory.
right like learner like it just you know stuff it's just like i'm just like oh words words words this is a conversation if it's people talking on a podcast and maybe that's i also that's the kind of podcast i tend to like the best it's people talking it's just like okay well this is
this my brain can handle but like yeah i don't know yeah so for me i'm the opposite i would go like kindle to the maybe like okay i'm kindle sample it's like okay maybe i'm gonna read this and
I would only listen to the audio version if it's like a kid's book, I guess, or something I'd listen to with my kids. I started switching back from audio into reading more recently.
But who I really like listening to is Neil Gaiman, because he reads his own books. And he's just such a great storyteller. And I never speed him up. Yes, it's slow, but it's like the author with his nice, gentle British voice reading.
These, you know, horror stories that he writes. It's so good. Reading Sprint. Yeah, reading Sprint. Yeah, we're going to get it reading Sprint. Now use two sticky dots.
Okay, cool. So I know we're over time in our calendars with our schedules. So thank you very much for taking this time with us. I really appreciate it from, you know, from the bottom of my heart because like when Jake responded and like Jonathan is also in, I'm like...
Oh my God, this is so cool because, you know, I just love your podcast so much. And yeah, so I think it's been great. This will come out. It depends on whether...
Whether we decide to switch to weekly now after Jonathan's advice. But probably sometime in February, after we start releasing all of the episodes. So we'll need to schedule like weekly. You know, the other benefit to weekly is, I mean...
You guys, I don't know. Do you plan to have guests every time? Or was that going to be every time? Maybe we'll just rumble every other time.
Ramble every other time. Cause you know, I think you'll just get better and better at the podcast too. You get in more rooms and nobody's, the nice thing is in the beginning, nobody's listening. Like no offense, but like, right. Like you start off and like.
You don't have that many listeners yet. And maybe people will come back later. But usually when people come in, they don't go back from the beginning. It's so hard in the app. You got to like scroll down. Like when I've listened to everything on a podcast, I'm so mad I have to scroll back.
So people would just be listening to the new stuff. So yeah, just, just ramble, just record you guys like talking about the next guest or whatever, you know, talking about what idiots we were and then, yeah. Yeah.
Cool. I do think you got to be careful with that Metacast. Yes. Because now they've ruined that word. I used to love that word. Now it's like... Yeah, true. It's kind of like metaverse, but also meta the company.
Yeah, it's meta everything now. You should probably call it like Jake and Jonathan.
Jake and John would be a good name. Wasn't it like MetaMates something, something, something recently? I kind of remember Zuckerberg saying something like Metaverse, MetaMates, and something.
So anyway. The Meta Meeting Project. That's what you should call this podcast. I think you should call it the Podcast Podcast.
Oh, yeah. You know what's usually good at the end of the podcast is if you ask us where should people find us on the end and what would we like to sell? Oh, yes. Before that, I would say one thing is...
I was super excited going into the podcast knowing like your style of rambling. Yeah, you don't have to prepare. And I come out of it like this made my day.
right this was awesome fun yeah all right so yeah where can people find you are you still on twitter uh yeah jaykick
Yeah, I have a Twitter account, but I don't really, you're not going to get much there. You should, if you want to find me, just go to jakenapp.com or the sprintbook.com.
Sign up for the newsletter. That's a good way to... And buy his books. Don't get them from the library. And buy books. Don't get them from the library. And get Audible and Hardcover. Both. Do you get kickbacks from the Audible copies as well, Jake?
Yeah, you get royalties for everything eventually, but you have to pay off the advance first, so probably not. Okay. Okay. You can...
actually i don't have a website and i don't use instagram anymore so i don't really have like a social media central point but what about your physical address would you give out your physical address yeah come to uh no actually you said that you like
getting text messages, so just your phone number would be good. Yeah, sure, I'll give you my number. Right now, you can go to facilitator.com
That's going to be a place where you can see what we're selling. What I'm currently selling will always be at facilitator.com. And you can also, my sub stack, the unscheduledceo.com.
Maybe that's what it's called by the time. Right now it's called howtobusiness.substack.com. So that's something you can find. But I'm not on Twitter. I'm not on anything.
actually. Yeah, we'll get those links in the show notes. So I'm curious, that domain, facilitator.com, how many millions of dollars did you pay for it? It was very expensive. I bet, yeah.
But I bought it two years ago and I negotiated with the guy for like three months and eventually he gave it to me for a good price. And right now it's just a redirect, but you're planning to like set up something in there?
No, I just buy really nice domain names to use them as redirects. It is literally just a redirect. So it will just redirect to whatever the current thing I'm selling is.
Which is Jake's book. Jake, it was really cool catching up, man. Good to see you, man. Thanks so much, you guys.
We'll see you soon. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Bye guys. Bye. We did it again. We're going to tell you where to find us.
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