“I’m crafting a story to get something done” - Sam Hoffman | S3E1

Sam Hoffman is a multidisciplinary creative with roots in copywriting and content creation for Broadway shows and Fortune 500s. For over a decade, Sam has moonlighted as a part-time high school speech and debate coach with one of the nation's top programs, Ridge High School in New Jersey. He specializes in the competitive categories that allow students to craft a persuasive acting performance geared around subjects they are passionate about. We discuss the creative strategy and seduction of authentic storytelling and storydoing.

Key topics

• Sam’s background and journey in corporate advertising, copywriting and content creation, and why he loves chasing eyeballs
• Sam's journey as a speech and debate coach, and why speech and debate is a great way to develop one's own voice and values
• What Sam means by authentic storytelling with purpose

Detours and Tangents

• The evolving social media landscape and why it makes sense to think of social media platforms like cities
• The time Sam worked on a promotional campaign for comedian Mike Birbiglia
• What it means to have legitimate attention, and the role of competition and coaching in development and growth

Episode Digest
Visit the Grokkist podcast hub for a full digest of this episode including highlights and links to stuff we discussed: https://grokk.ist/stillcuriouspodcast/s3e1-sam-hoffman

Recorded 14 December 2022

Website: grokk.ist/stillcuriouspodcast | Email: podcast@grokk.ist | Socials: @grokkist
Music: Kleptotonic Swing by Tri-Tachyon

Transcript

Sam Hoffman 0:32

I was going to go to college for something that could get me a job and so I was trying to find a job in which I knew I could be creative and I watched madman and I saw them brainstorming in fun creative ways and then making cool things so I wanted to do that. I've always been drawn to creativity within structure and within framework and for a purpose for persuasion, for an outcome, to get a rise, to get a laugh, to get an action. I was drawn to that before I knew I was conscious of it and advertising is that and so is the part-time speech and debate that I do, right? I am crafting a story to get something done

Danu Poyner 1:12

You're listening to the Still Curious Podcast with me. Danu Poyner. The voice you just heard belongs to my guest today. Sam Hoffman. Sam is a multidisciplinary creative with roots in copywriting and content creation for Broadway shows and fortune five hundreds for over a decade. Sam has moonlighted as a part-time high school speech and debate coach. With one of the nation's top programs, Ridge high school in New Jersey. He specializes in the competitive categories that allow students to craft a persuasive acting performance, geared around subjects. They're passionate about. Today's conversation is all about the creativity strategy and seduction of authentic storytelling and story. Doing. Whether it's corporate brands on social and recommendation media. Or finding a way to narrate our own lives with purpose and direction. Sam is someone who enjoys the chase and what he likes to chase most is eyeballs. We talk about working on Broadway and big brands. The evolving social media landscape and what the rise of recommendation media like Tik TOK means for storytelling.

Sam Hoffman 2:17

if you're making something quality and you post it will get to the people who need to see it You don't have to spend a dime on advertising. You need to just spend your money on creative output. And that's so exciting.

Danu Poyner 2:30

We also discussed the meaning of storytelling with purpose and what constitutes legitimate attention, both professionally and personally.

Sam Hoffman 2:39

I was a very misbehaved kid in middle school I've always had that Little narcissistic Bo Burnham give me attention Performer side of me. At the core of it is because you like bringing people joy

Danu Poyner 2:51

Sam is also a natural teacher and I very much enjoyed hearing him talk about his speech and debate coaching journey from being the center of attention to helping others shine in the spotlight.

Sam Hoffman 3:01

One of my favorite quotes I say to students a lot is, hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. But if talent works hard, you're fucked. And it's true right? You're born with certain gifts and you should lean into them if you have them.

Danu Poyner 3:13

Enjoy. It's my conversation with Sam Hoffman coming up after the music on today's episode of the Still Curious Podcast. So, hi Sam. Welcome to the podcast. How are you?

Sam Hoffman 3:50

I'm great. How are you?

Danu Poyner 3:51

Oh, I'm doing really well. Thanks. I've got lots to ask. We'll just dive in and get going if that's okay.

Sam Hoffman 3:56

Sounds good.

Danu Poyner 3:57

What I like to do on the podcast is talk to people who I would consider to be grokkists in the way that they move through life, and so I wanted to ask you straight off the bat, is that an idea that resonates with you at all?

Sam Hoffman 4:11

Yeah. I think that's one of the things that kind of drew me to our relationship and starting to talk to you, which is the idea that. know, to grok, which is a way to find your own path and your own education and put different pieces together is very much something that resonates me, is kind of, a path towards learning that I hope is something that can resonate with everyone and especially I think in the last decade or two, it's been easier than ever. I actually just finished a nice fun conversation with my grandmother about kind of finding your own way. And a lot of that conversation made me realize how much of my ability to find my own way is thanks to the internet. I do think I view myself as a grokkist and as someone who can grok because I have so many tools at my disposal to find what I want to do and seek out next.

Danu Poyner 4:56

Yeah. Fantastic. You describe yourself as a multidisciplinary creative with roots in copywriting and content creation for Broadway shows and Fortune 500 s. You also say that you've moonlighted as a part-time high school speech and debate coach with one of the nation's top programs, Ridge High School in New Jersey, where you specialize in the competitive categories that allow students to craft a persuasive acting performance geared around subjects that they're most passionate about. I'm super interested to talk about your content creation stuff, but also the way that you say moonlighted as a part-time high school speech and debate coach, gives me the strong impression that this area is something that really excites you. What's the most important thing for someone to understand about what you do?

Sam Hoffman 5:42

I think the most important thing is that I try to be guided by the same compass no matter what it is that I'm doing and that I don't really like to actually think too much about what it is that I'm being asked to do other than, do I want to be doing it? There's a lot of privilege with that statement, but I think having that guide me as much as it has, at least in the last few years, especially the last few months, has taken me to a lot of different places of learning. So, it's interesting because I went professionally in terms of the thing that brings me in my income, is, last six months I went freelance. So I'm fully on my own, finding my own work and negotiating pay and all those things and I have found that I wear a lot of hats and I'm a jack of many trades and I do think there's a good amount of them that I do feel comfortable taking money for in exchange for having an output that would add value to someone's life. What I have found from that is that it's not super usual or what people are expected or looking for, at least at an organization that I could contribute to, right? It's like, are you a copywriter? What was your last role? you have to really get down to the dirty of like what it is you actually specifically did. and that's where I start to find that well, actually I've done many, many, many different things that could all be labeled many, many different job titles or roles. A lot of the experience that I've gained in the things that haven't really brought me too much money, which is like the moonlighting of speech and debate coaching, which does financially support me, but it's not obviously my main income, which is why I say moonlighting. But a lot of skills and a lot of things I did and have learned and accomplished through coaching and participating in that activity myself are some of the greatest skills and most applicable outputs I could provide to an actual organization who might be hiring me as a copywriter, right?

Danu Poyner 7:23

We all have this tension between our economic value and how we make our money and the stuff that really lights us up. And ideally if we're following that compass of, do I wanna do this, then those become intrinsically connected over time. But it doesn't always work out that way with life. The step that you've chosen to take to be a freelancer means that you are very intentionally trying to bring about some order from all of those blurred lines at the moment. So what an interesting place to be.

Sam Hoffman 7:52

It's also brought out a forced redefinition of what it is that brings me joy and pleasure. I have found, I really enjoy the chase, which doesn't surprise me whatsoever. But the idea of being handed something new that I haven't done, just default actually is almost one of the highest values I have. whereas conversely enough, some of the stuff that I think if I had been thrown a certain project under a salaried position, I may at least in a past self been like, okay, I'll do it. I'll figure it out. But now I'm like, oh, you want me to do that? I gotta figure it out, will do it. And so it brought back that joy, that creative energy that I hope everyone finds in certain ways. It's like I'm not even really too particular about what I'm being asked to do as long as someone wants me to do it for them.

Danu Poyner 8:33

Yeah, that's for sure a lot of fun when you have some big, hairy, scary thing to do and you don't know how you're gonna do it yet, but you know that you are gonna figure it out somehow. You describe yourself as being absolutely bonkers, obsessed with social media and online subcultures, which is a great phrase, and I just wanna ask you, where should we start with that?

Sam Hoffman 8:52

I think it really became conscious for me a little bit before covid, so like 2019 or so, where I started to realize that I was digging into the internet more than most people were. You hear the classic algorithmic feedback loop, you see the world that is already yours reflected back at you. That's what the social media programs are designed to do, and ad dollars brings in more eyeballs more frequently, and I I think one thing I found myself doing for many years is trying to blow that up as much as possible, which is also a trait of mine beyond social media. I constantly, like when I find myself going down a rabbit hole or seeing the algorithm or thinking that I think maybe I've been figured out too much, I will consciously unfollow a ton of people or consciously follow someone new that I would never actually have any interest in, like a mommy blogger. I'm like, I'm not raising any kids right now, but let's see what their content is, right. But in terms of maybe extrapolating it more philosophically, why I would consider myself bonkers, obsessed, at it's core, it's just a curiosity about people. And every single person, across every single political affiliation, religious affiliation, least in the more developed world, has that thing in their hand that can make content. And they're doing it, words and pictures, and that's just wild to me. so I try to understand all the different language being used across all of these different places, I don't know, it's just the innate curiosity about human beings.

Danu Poyner 10:16

I love the social cities piece that you wrote back in 2020 during the pandemic on making sense of the social media landscape. And you described the way people interact with different social media platforms as being a bit like the way cities have locals and tourists. I wonder if you could just share a bit about the guts of that piece.

Sam Hoffman 10:35

Yeah, I reread that piece for the first time in years after you brought it to my attention that we might talk about it and I dig it. It still holds up a little bit for me, which is nice. It's the idea that every single time there's a major social network that comes out, a generation flocks to it and then stays there because that's where their community is. If we think about the migration of people in reality, that's generally what happens, right? You move to where your community is, if you need to migrate, and you try to stick together as much as possible. And then you don't really question, should I go somewhere else? Unless things get really not so great for your safety. I think social media is rather the same, right? When Facebook was invented, you had these native, early adopters of technology and social network jump on. Then later adopters started coming in, which also correlates with maybe people of older generations. And then you might say Instagram came around and two things happened. Either certain people migrated cuz they didn't want to be a part of the larger sphere of everyone in their life seeing what was going on in their life. Or you just had the next generation, which was like five to 10 years. And I'm saying generation, not the way we think of like Gen Z millenials, a much smaller, less time period way. It makes sense right?

Danu Poyner 11:46

Yeah

Sam Hoffman 11:46

it's just moving at such a rapid clip. So Instagram came in and then new people jumped into that and built their home there. And very much later, if an older generation decided to migrate and they migrated, and so you got your mom coming on Instagram, even though your mom came on Facebook seven years ago, and that may have been the reason you went to Instagram God now you have close friends cuz you're avoiding your mother if that's your prerogative. And then Tik-Tok came along and it's the same thing, right? Gen Z and also it all connects and correlates, right? TikTok couldn't have been Facebook because you didn't have a phone that could film like that, for that generation. So, right TikTok came along and said, this is what we have now technologically speaking. and the generation that grew up with the smartphone in their pocket innately was already primed to make that place their home. It had what they wanted. It had the services, the vegetation right? And slowly but surely, the laggards will migrate from one or the other or pick it up. But what I've noticed through user patterns is that people generally stay where they are, to go all the way back to the beginning of the claim, right? Once you make a home and you have most of the people who are really important to you in your life on that platform, unless something really goes wrong with that platform, you're happy sharing what's going on through that medium and unless you really make an effort to shift or there's a really good reason to shift, it's just gonna be the new ones are for the next generation because they have different habits and as we know, people don't change habits very easily. So, that's, I think, my very quick summation of that article.

Danu Poyner 13:09

Thanks for that. I wanted to pick up on something you mentioned when you were talking about TikTok and Facebook, which was the importance of the portrait video to the way that TikTok works. You got into portrait video, when Instagram tv was first getting going and now of course you focusing a lot of energy on TikTok. Is there something particular that excites you about that portrait first content, and how you've seen that evolve?

Sam Hoffman 13:33

Yeah, I just, I like new, I like different. I think portrait first video was one of those things in my life where I can point it and be like, ha, I was there. I saw that coming. I remember a conversation I had with my first manager at my first job, and it was right when I started seeing Instagram television ads, like Facebook did an actual campaign about that when it opened. And we started talking about it and he said something like, it'll never catch on cuz the way our eyes work and the way we view reality is horizontal. And that's why we watch movies that way. That's how we developed cameras that way. And it didn't sit with me, cause I went, it's actually not what we're doing right now. Most people are holding their phones vertical most of the time. Why would they want to turn it every time they want to engage with content? Any good user experience designer, designer in general will tell you that what they're really searching for with all their research and all their conversations is how are people behaving and how do they wanna behave? People don't always really know what the solution is until you hand it to them, and what good design is until they realize that what they have next is actually easier and better. And until they really realize it's easier and better, they're not gonna think of it or go for it or want it. And that's what I think portrait video was. The minute you see something really cool in a portrait mode video, you're like, oh, that was so easy. I didn't have to change anything. And I enjoyed watching it. To me it was just very obvious. It's easier and it's as simple as that.

Danu Poyner 14:57

Let's talk a little bit about the jobs you've done then, and flesh out some of the interesting experiences you've had. You've worked at some interesting places. The first was a live entertainment and Broadway marketing startup called rpm. And you've also spent time at a brand consultancy and creative agency called Co Collective. What can you tell me about those opportunities and what you were doing and how they came about?

Sam Hoffman 15:21

Sure. They were both wonderfully formative. The first one was a result of me sending a cold email. I was graduating from an advertising degree because high school me decided I wanted to study advertising, which actually makes tons of sense and still makes sense to me. And so as I was graduating, I was thinking about all the different places I might want to go, types of places I might wanna work at. I wasn't totally drawn to like a big agency and the more traditional format that you might go to as a quote unquote creative in advertising, which is the type of person that makes the quote unquote ads. So I saw a PR article on playbill.com. That was a new Broadway agency broke away from one of the holding company agencies called rpm. sent a cold email and a few interviews and phone calls and emails later, I had an internship with them and was able to turn that into a full-time job, and it was really, really cool because I'm a huge theater nerd. And I also like making stuff and trying to figure out how to sell something, especially something that I'm super passionate about, which was shows. It was really, really interesting, to learn about the theater industry and what goes on behind it and the many things that have to go into it. The thing I was missing from that role more than anything else was the deep strategy. And candidly, the budget and time that you could put into a non-live entertainment client. Because as a person who's mostly driven by the actual creation of things, I found myself being able to put as much time as I wanted to into the actual creation. I think there were a lot of moments where I wish I had grabbed life by the horns a little bit more and said, I'm gonna roll up my sleeves and get it done and figure it out.

Danu Poyner 16:53

but I thought you liked the chase

Sam Hoffman 16:55

I did like the

Danu Poyner 16:55

Yeah

Sam Hoffman 16:56

I did not feel totally supported by the chase there, and I didn't really feel that type of energy to create in that organization. So I decided I wanted to go more into traditional advertising or something that's racked my brain in maybe a, a more strategic way rather than a content creation or a way that entertainment would. Especially with live entertainment, your role as the advertiser and as the content creator is to yes, and what is already a fairly creative existent product and I found myself a lot of Broadway wishing I actually was the writer or the actor. I like the combination of strategy and quote unquote business and creation. It's what still draws me to like I'm doing as a freelancer nowadays. And so I just didn't feel that kind of confluence as much. It felt too, actually in the artistic space. I had a friend who was also looking for a job at the same time and she had a connection at Co Collective. They brought us in. And then, for about three years, it was really interesting cuz it was a very project based job. So I worked with dozens of clients, multiple ones at one time doing different things for a lot of them. And that's where the whole freelance thing and many hats really takes off at least professionally. Cause It's like, can you do this? I'm like, yes, I have two experiences doing this. It's like, can you do this? Yes, I have three experiences doing this. Can you do this? I have four experiences doing that. I didn't just do social media for three years. I didn't just write TV spots for three years. I didn't just develop tone of voice guides for three years. Every single engagement asked for a different thing, a different product. We grew and learned and tried to do it. Yes, there were through lines and commonalities in each one and near the end it began getting a little bit productized for me and repetitive, which is one of the reasons for my departure. But in general, it's just been a career of searching for a challenging creative fulfillment. I guess.

Danu Poyner 18:38

I can see, from some of the examples of looking through your work that that interest in finding a new way to do things and to have to figure something new out to deliver a project is there, even in your early work at rpm. One example, is you said you were the only copywriter on staff, and you were working on comedian Mike Birbiglia's new show where you had to create a campaign that didn't reveal anything about the show and didn't do the usual thing of just pulling pull quotes from reviews, which is the common Broadway thing. Is that something you are asked to do or is that a challenge that you set for yourself to do it quite differently?

Sam Hoffman 19:16

I was the only copywriter, but my manager was also a copywriter. He was like director for copy. So I had supervision. I had coaching, I had teaching. That's actually another important thing to point out about why I wanted to jump from Broadway after a few years, which is Broadway, ironically enough, is a very conservative industry. The art might be pushing the limit, but the industry holds on. and that was a little bit frustrating with the advertising itself. I found that most of the campaigns felt very repetitive because frankly, the data showed that that's what worked, right? The data showed that people look for pull quotes, they look at reviews, they want a friend referral. My one caveat to that will be data shows you what worked in the past. It doesn't always show you what will work in the future. Creativity and newness, that's the whole AI debate. So when it came to the Mike Maniglia campaign, I believe the producers of Mike's team, wanted something a little bit different than we're gonna have quotes in the top. And we're gonna have reviews everywhere. How can we zing that a little bit? That was my effort with every campaign we were on to begin with. I remember I was on Twitter once while working on it, and I stumbled upon a few people saying the word go, about the show. I was like, all right, what if we did the pull quotes that everyone wants, but we did it just the word go and we just pulled it with as many people's names as possible, that had influence because again, the data shows that you listen to people whose art you respect, right? If you love Lin Manuel Miranda, cuz you love Hamilton, he says, go see this show. Well, you're more likely to see the show. So, kept the pull quote shtick, but just used the word go. And then we basically tried to get as many celebrities as possible. And that was particularly effective with Mike's show because Mike is a celebrity who is friends with celebrities. He liked the idea and he started, and we started and everyone started reaching out to any name they could that either was a part of the show or might actually see the show. We wanted to make sure it was credible, right? Like you have to have seen the show or had read the show or been a part of Mike's process in some way to say the word go. So that it wasn't just a lie, which people might equate with advertising We just filled it with the word go and people's names and it's just so simple, ideas are simple. It's one of my more favorite things that I've worked on. I think when it comes to the idea of a personal brand, what it really is a personal story. When it comes to the idea of a brand brand, like a company, it's a collective story that people agree to play out. Like Nike is not Phil Knight's story. Phil Knight is Phil Knight's story. Nike is Nike. And Nike has a massive team across the world right now playing out that story. Everything posted on social media is a lie because it's not in the present moment. Unless it's literally a live stream, you were able to mediate on it, therefore you were able to give it thought. Therefore, it is a story. I learned a lot in that moment with Mike because it was looking at the story and also looking at the authenticity of a celebrity and managing that. The work that goes into figuring out what that story is, what that brand is for an actual living entity that is always changing, but at the same time isn't changing too much. I don't know. But it was really interesting to me, especially with me as a social media manager of the show.

Danu Poyner 22:20

You said quite a number of interesting things in there. Everything posted is a lie because it's not in the present moment, cuz you, you're able to mediate it, right. But I think the storytelling aspect of it and the authenticity of those stories is really key here. And I'm really interested in your thoughts on authentic stories and advertising. What's going on with that?

Sam Hoffman 22:44

Yeah, I say the word lie cause I know it's the good sound bite. So when you look at the line between advertising and authenticity, and this is actually the big, big crux of my last job. But they had this term coined by Ty Montague, the chief purpose officer of Co Collective And he coined this term called Story Doing and he said basically, the delta between story doing and storytelling is everything in between that is bullshit. And he now has a podcast that he runs called Calling Bs where he picks companies and he finds what's the difference between their storytelling and their story doing, the actual actions they take, and the goal is to get it as close as possible with the knowledge that you're never gonna actually get it to be perfect because people make mistakes But to go back to the question which is like advertising and authenticity, it's purely just a philosophical answer which is do your best in the moment and hope that you're working with the best intentions to try to help the most people in the most utilitarian way. I think if a business operates like that, then you have a good business right. At the end of the day it's just a reflection of people's actions the advertising can be as much of a lie as you choose it to be and as much as people are willing to make it and you can take that all the way down to like, Nazis, right? Like propaganda and storytelling and lying for the sake of a desired outcome. It really just comes down to the actions people are taking And the goal should be your communications should be as authentic to your actions. You could argue that Nazis propaganda was very aligned with their actions or as bad as it was. I don't know what I'm getting at with that definition.

Danu Poyner 24:13

Well, this is the first time we've mentioned Nazis on the podcast, but I think there's some really important points in here. I like the distinction that you've made, pace co collectives, storytelling and story doing, and bullshit as being the gap between the story you tell and what you actually do. On your recommendation I listened to some episodes of that podcast, and I thought it was quite nuanced, the way that they talk about purpose washing and the way that these companies ride off their purpose driven storytelling, but don't necessarily live that out, but sometimes do. And it's not just all or nothing. And if we think about the gap between intention and action being where bullshit is then we do get the problem that you raised of Nazis, which is well what if the intention does match the action, but it's actually really problematic to begin with. And I wonder what the role of advertising is in here. I'm lingering on it because you mentioned that advertising was something that you wanted to get into from quiet early on. Was that always plan a? What was appealing to you about it?

Sam Hoffman 25:19

So there's two things here, Yes. The first one is the history of me, I suppose, which is in high school, I was raised in a way where I was going to go to college for something that could get me a job and so I was trying to find a job in which I knew I could be creative and I watched madman and I saw them brainstorming in fun creative ways and then making cool things And I liked the culture and not the drinking part and whatnot. It was the sitting in a room being silly part of the show. So I wanted to do that. The other part, and this is what just appears in every single part of everything I do, I've always been drawn to creativity within structure and within framework and with persuasive goal. I was always drawn to creativity for a purpose for persuasion, for an outcome, to get a rise, to get a laugh, to get an action. I was drawn to that before I knew I was conscious of it and advertising is that and so is the part-time speech and debate that I do, right? I am crafting a story to get something done And to track it all the way back to the advertising bit, your goal is to hope that what you're trying to have as the outcome making the world a better place, And that's a different discussion about what that looks like and what that means and whether you are or aren't. You just need to hope that you are and feel like you're grounded when you're making those decisions. which I think the role of advertising is to communicate actions and or to be in action in of of itself. It only goes wrong when you consciously know that the action you're taking is harming others Perhaps. That is when it mostly goes wrong, when there is a collective group who are knowledgeably behaving in a way that is not aligned with actions that are positive to the benefit of the planet.

Danu Poyner 27:04

Yeah. I had another person on the podcast who's a sales expert, and we were talking about trust in sales and authenticity there as well. He was describing sales as instrumental communication, which really latches onto what you said about creativity within structure with a persuasive purpose for an outcome. That's a really nice tight definition of what you're interested in. That connects all the different things. When did you start thinking of it that way?

Sam Hoffman 27:34

I wanna say that may have been you who got me there. I think in the past few months honestly, synthesisation, that connection. The answer is either that or I don't know.

Danu Poyner 27:44

Well, let's talk about the story of you then. That interest in advertising and the curiosity about people and wanting to be on the cutting edge of things and find creativity within structure. What did that look like when you were younger and where did that come from?

Sam Hoffman 28:02

I think this is a nature nurture question to some degree. I think maybe I was born with it. Maybelline who knows

Danu Poyner 28:09

was hoping you'd say that

Sam Hoffman 28:11

The idea of doing something to get a rise out of someone else has been one of my worst traits since a very young age. I can tell a story of like first grade where I touched a fire alarm just cuz I wanted to touch a fire alarm. The teacher said don't touch the fire alarm And I looked her in the eyes and I touched the fire alarm again. I think that tells you a lot about my personality even at the age of 26. I just think I've honed it for more socially acceptable and productive ways.

Danu Poyner 28:38

What happened when you touched the fire alarm?

Sam Hoffman 28:40

I got in trouble.

Danu Poyner 28:41

what did you take from that?

Sam Hoffman 28:43

pick and choose your battles. Maybe there's like two ways you could take that, which is there's no reason to touch a fire alarm, It can be dangerous. You never know if your hand's gonna slip, listen to authority and she's right and she has more experience and you should have just listened to her. And the other one is like should you trust yourself and know that in that moment you weren't gonna do anything bad whatsoever to that fire alarm and cause any harm to anyone else except for the fact that you just felt like touching a fire alarm. And or was it that you actually knew the entire time that what you were doing was just going to annoy your teacher and the entire reason you did it was to annoy your teacher. I don't have enough ability to tap into my first grade mindset to know. I also don't know which one I align with the most. I was a very misbehaved kid in middle school which is a good little make sense follow-up to the story I just told, and I think it's because I kept doing the same things. I kept wanting to see what would happen. That is a big trait of mine. And lots of things happened and then I got to high school and I discovered this activity that family friend had done called Speech and Debate. Another word for it is forensics. It was the National Forensics League, ak the N F L before the N F L was the N F L. At this point renamed the National Speech and Debate Association. I dunno why I went to the meeting. There was a meeting in eighth grade and then I went to a meeting at the beginning of ninth grade. My parents thought my brother might be interested in it. He was three years older than me And so I was in fifth or sixth grade and we went to an information meeting and there was someone who performed a 10 minute humorous one person performance of a series of unfortunate events. And it still left in my brain And I think there's a reason for that. I don't remember how I felt in that moment. But I remember it specifically very clearly and that tells you something. So I had a family friend who did it. Three years later I go to this meeting and turns out there's this part of speech and debate that most people don't know about. You say it and people think one-on-one Lincoln Douglas debate, two on two public forum, mock Congress. They think argumentation. There's a whole other part that is actually like competitive acting and it's really fascinating and it's what caught me from the get go, which is you take a book or a play sometimes a news article or a YouTube video or a TikTok and you cut it down into 10 minutes or you take multiple different ones into 10 minutes and you perform it. There's different events. One is humorous It's the one I just referenced with Lemony Snicket, which is you perform different characters. It's a one person show and it's meant to be humorous There's dramatic, which is more like a traditional 10 minute monologue and a very simple form. There's duo It can be either dramatic or humorous It's two people,10 minutes long and they each have an introduction. This is where it's the academic part of it, You're supposed to give an argumentation for the importance of this performance and, to some degree what you want people to take away from it or think about or feel. There's also one other event which is called program Oral Interpretation, which I know for a fact it began in college and then trickled its way down to high school. And that one you take sources from anywhere. So as I mentioned: books, plays, the Bible, mugs in a home good store, Tik Toks, YouTube videos, slam poetry you name it And you pick a topic that you care about specifically like a thesis the way you would a dissertation and you craft a 10 minute performance about it where you play different characters and you pantomime things and you have a book in your hand And the book is meant to really just be a prop to help bring it to life But the original idea of the book in the Hand was the idea that the text is sacred, the argumentation is sacred it's inherently not performance. And something about that in ninth grade just clicked with me. I auditioned with Captain Underpants which, hey you wanna find an argument You find you can find an argument. The argument is probably, to no one surprise, getting a rise out of authority and what that means right, and whether it's for the betterment or not of the community. I was on that team for four years and I've been coaching now for about eight, same team.

Danu Poyner 32:34

Of the range of things that you described there, the humorous and the dramatic, and the program oral interpretation, what was most compelling and attractive to you?

Sam Hoffman 32:44

I was most attracted to humorous from the get go I just wanted to make people laugh and that is what I mostly found myself drawn to. That has changed so much in 12 years of doing this in terms of why I'm here and what I'm doing and what I enjoy about it. But at the end of the day nothing beats making someone laugh. I think anyone would agree with that. And so that's what I chased most of Lee in high school which was I liked doing the humorous events. Improv was an event specifically in New Jersey so I did a lot of competitive improv, and that was also what I was best as a competitor, But I found myself in the second half of my high school experience, junior and senior year I was the captain of the small little interp squad the performance based events And I was a much better coach than I was a performer. Because the people I was coaching were beating me. Also there's elements of speech and debate that I liked doing more. So for example putting together the actual performance where you have to cut it down into 10 minutes and write the message and craft what the performance looks like and the structure of it and when you're gonna move and what the characters are gonna look like. I liked creating all that stuff more than I actually liked performing it in the moment. But just wanted to make more and more and more of them And so as a coach you get to do that constantly and then you don't have to perform in them at all. Of course I mis performing here and there but honestly not enough to really make it a major part of my life at least at this moment. I'm sure I'll in the future will find more opportunities to be in front of an audience. I have found a few open mics and stuff in New York I've become very confident that the thing that I just seem to have a natural ability towards is getting it out of someone else more than finding it in me.

Danu Poyner 34:30

Yeah, that's super interesting. Was there a, a particular moment when you had that thought that, oh, I can get stuff out of people that way?

Sam Hoffman 34:38

I can think of one example where in retrospect this probably was it. I don't think I had this awareness in the moment, but the last ever tournament I was at was the nationals of my senior year and one of the duos that I put a lot of time and attention to as a fellow teammate of theirs but someone who was helping them with the piece as the captain. They made it to semi-finals and I didn't make it anywhere. And It was so exciting watching them. I was upset with myself, but I was excited just how well they were doing because there is of course me in that piece too, the way any director is in the show you watch that they're not actually literally in, in the way any artist is in anything that they had any sort of mini hand in. It's why any great creator has a team. And the team behind the scenes is making the actual art.

Danu Poyner 35:30

Yeah. Okay. This is a really important moment, I think. It sounds like you found a structure that could contain and also spark the, the creativity that was flexible enough to move in, in ways that you liked. How did the performance go in year nine? What was it like for you?

Sam Hoffman 35:48

It was great. I had no idea what I was doing but I was doing it and I enjoyed doing it and figuring it out and I've always had that Little narcissistic Bo Burnham give me attention Performer side of me. Like I can tell stories of since I was three years old liking to perform for people. At the core of it is because you like bringing people joy and them and sharing feelings in the moment. So it was nice to finally find that in a concrete way, Cause I did not have that until ninth grade And if I had had it earlier I think it would've been really healthy for me. So I found it on it and I got it. I got people staring at me and evaluating me and also celebrating and criticizing me every Saturday at a tournament and I liked that. To each their own right But I really enjoyed the game of it and I still enjoy the game of it.

Danu Poyner 36:40

Were there any more fire alarms after that?

Sam Hoffman 36:43

uh Yeah. There were a few in speech and debate and professional context. There will continue to be fire alarms.

Danu Poyner 36:50

So you've had these two threads running the whole time. You started this Competitive acting thread when you were in year nine and that's been going through since and now you're coaching, but you've also been doing the brand and strategy work.

Sam Hoffman 37:02

Yeah I was gonna college for advertising. I was also a competitor on the college the University of Texas team for a semester. Um it wasn't for me And so I left. The were a few reasons. The one That is probably the strongest was in college was more I wanted to do and see an experience and it's extremely time intensive. They're one of if not the best sometimes some years team in the country and so with great success comes great commitment. I didn't want to. There are other things I wanted to do and in high school I didn't have as many things I wanted to do I just wanted to do that I wanted to eat sleep and breathe that. But my coach said now that you've left the team I know you're gonna have more time if you wanna actually be a coach coach and add some structure to it and whatnot. That was also the moment where he was like if you want me to pay you hourly for this, we can do that. So immediately when I stopped doing it in college I started doing it more aggressively over Skype for next three and a half years while I was in Texas and the school and the students were in New Jersey. So I was on that remote work life since 2014 to some degree.

Danu Poyner 38:08

Yeah. So you've had a while to get used to that. As a coach then, what are some of the most interesting topics you've seen people take on?

Sam Hoffman 38:18

One that I really really loved cuz it's so clear, it's important, it's in my opinion irrefutable, and it just makes for a great performance was, I had a student a few years ago do a performance about how there's not enough teachers of color in the US public school system and exploring the reasons why that is, and I just thought that was just so to the point. A lot of times, and this was a lesson passed down for me during my brief college stint, you can't say your topic in seven to 10 words or fewer then you don't have a clear understanding of what your topic is quite yet and that one's just like boom! I really love that one. The one that won nationals last year I really liked as well. I won't be able to articulate the thesis as clearly cuz I wasn't as close to it and I've only seen it once but it was something along the lines of, as a black trans woman and the topic was essentially telling that experience through the lens of horror tropes. So it was a lot of Gothic and performatively dark like vocal registrars to just bring out the experience of existing in that body and in that mind. I think those two examples are great cuz one of them is a lot more intellectual maybe even policy driven and the other one is significantly more emotional and just really directly personal experience driven. Right? It's like I want you to understand my lived experience and the beauty of specifically program oral interpretation is both of those work.

Danu Poyner 39:41

Yeah. It's a really interesting format. Again, on your recommendation. I had a look at a bunch of videos of these performances and if you haven't seen one, it feels like a TED Talk, but it's more lived experience and more raw. It's much more performance than a TED Talk is. The argumentation is really strong, as you say, but it's not purely cerebral. You get all of the power of theatrical performance with an argumentation kind of purpose. And it's not something I've really seen before. So, it was super interesting to me.

Sam Hoffman 40:13

One of my favorite things about that in terms of that kind of way of looking at it, and it connects completely back to advertising as well, is we're emotional decision makers. I think anyone who tells you we're not to be more in touch with their emotions. The beauty of these events is it's like yes I want there to be an outcome because of who I am, And that's why anyone really wants an outcome because of who they are and what their beliefs are. It's like I am after a goal am after an understanding and it is because I have lived like this. And that's art to some degree right. That's why anyone writes a memoir. It's kind of first person storytelling I think. This is just very to the point about it.

Danu Poyner 40:53

What effects does going through this experience have on students? These are high school kids. They're young. What do you see happen when people go through this?

Sam Hoffman 41:04

These seems to be the big selling points of speech and debate, which is it's a confidence builder. It's a truth-speaking builder. It helps you dig more into who you are as a person and your mind and what you want from the world and what you're interested in and what you value. It grows people as people in a way that I think any competitive activity does. But what I really like at speech and debate is how much language is attached to it. So you are kind of required to find your own voice literally. You you must find your own words. You must use words and language if you want to succeed. And a lot of my coaching is pushing people to challenge their own language to find stronger, clearer authentic language that they like to say every weekend that they think is true. It's like it's speak your truth. Speak what you believe is right in that moment. If it's not right the next day you try your best to rectify it or just accept that that's now what the truth is. And the goal with the performers is like your performances change. should recut it you should rewrite it You shouldn't say what I did in September is what I did in May in the same way that an article I wrote seven years ago or five years ago is wrong Or I might not love the language I use or certain words.

Danu Poyner 42:17

I wanna ask you a bit about the competitive element cuz you've emphasized that in a few ways. How important is the competitive element here, do you think?

Sam Hoffman 42:26

This is the bane of my existence and the dopamine that I chase. I would love a world where we are not competing, where you don't need 300 shoe brands selling the same type of shoe. I would love a world where we just speak my truth. I would love a world where showing up on Saturdays in high school speech and debate and everyone's performing everyone's saying thank you that was great. Let's now go home. I do lean more towards the idea that it's significantly more beneficial for it to be a competition in certain ways because I think anyone can agree that different performances and pieces of art have different amounts of what one might refer to as quality to them. You can hear Kendrick Lamar's music and you can hear my attempt at music and I would hope that you would agree Kendrick Lamar's music has a higher level of quality.

Danu Poyner 43:18

I'm gonna see him tomorrow night, so, uh, yeah.

Sam Hoffman 43:22

So, you would agree that you would pay lots of money to go see him perform for you over me and I would hope that would be the case and I would admit that is the truth right there. I think it's healthy in that regard in that like yes you are hitting high schoolers against each other but you are also lessons about quote unquote quality, hard work, success and more important than anything else, failure Right? One of my favorite quotes I say to students a lot is, hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. But if talent works hard, you're fucked. And it's true right? You're born with certain gifts and you should lean into them if you have them. And I think competition is what it is. It's one of the things where I just go there's a reason it became this way and I don't lose too much sleep over it.

Danu Poyner 44:08

I tend to think of it as legitimizing attention because when you are doing advertising, it's about attention and you need to earn people's attention, and so this is one mechanism for sorting that.

Sam Hoffman 44:21

That's beautiful. You primed me very nicely for the second half of the first answer which is it's chasing the dopamine right? You're connecting all the dots right? The attention economy that we are finding ourselves in with TikTok and content creation What brands are searching for right now his eyeballs. When I was thinking if I would ever start an agency what would I name it I would name it eyeballs. If you want someone to buy a product you wanna get their eyeballs. And I also think that's where connection is right? When you rank a tournament and you have the competition of high schoolers, what you're really deciding is who goes on to the semi-finals and the finals where more people are going to give it their attention and watch it and spend their time viewing it and learning from it. And that's exactly what benefit of competition in this regard is. This week I went a little viral on the TikTok and I posted a caption on Instagram on my story to my friends and it was like I don't drink or do drugs I just chased a variable reward system of virality a few times every year and ride that high until the next one. So I think there is some degree of the dopamine chase of people's attention is my drug perhaps. It's a very powerful drug, I'd be lying, and I think any performer would be lying, if they told you that they didn't love that feeling. You're not after it from an ego standpoint. You try to be after it because you like the art and performance you're making Whether it's high school speech and debate, a TikTok for a brand or a TikTok for yourself. You need to enjoy the process and then hope that people enjoy it well.

Danu Poyner 45:45

Yeah. I think that makes sense. It's sort of ego in service of a authentic purpose, or in the case that you were saying before about the coaching, it's, you didn't mind losing yourself because you were losing to these other people who were really doing a great job. So there's a kind of self-transcendence going on in there, which I think is really what is dopamine for teachers, isn't it? That's what teachers love, losing themselves in the achievements of someone who they've helped.

Sam Hoffman 46:13

Oh yeah! Oh big time. That's one of the greatest joys. When I was talking earlier about how my values of what I like about coaching has changed, One of my highest values of coaching now is seeing growth and joy and achievement of another person that I helped create simply by helping them create. Right? God it feels so damn good. Go to any religion they'll tell you that the meaning of life has to help others. And guess what, they're all freaking right.

Danu Poyner 46:43

Let me ask you something, Sam, I can imagine that someone like you, who is pushing the edges of things and trying to find the novelty and structure and who also likes to press buttons to see what they do and poke authority a little bit, would make you, for some of the corporate clients who are struggling to adapt to this new and lively social media landscape and get their stories and brands out, someone like you would be a very potent and attractive mix for them, but also might be a bit prickly for them sometimes as well. How does that play out?

Sam Hoffman 47:19

Yeah Um, I did that to the organizations I was in, especially Co Collective. I was a prickly little prick, but the irony of that job and why I actually felt like a great culture fit a lot was that was actually the role of the company A little bit. It was a little bit of brand consulting where we actually jumped into teams at other organizations and poked and prodded them willingly. It was almost in a way like organizational therapy. Like there's a department in the company that is organ culture design and change literally bringing us in to look at your culture and figure out what be better. But what I found as a freelancer is, they know perhaps why they're bringing me in. I'm grateful for this in my own life that I in the last year or two have really started expressing myself outwardly, digitally, in a way I never have. I've let myself go a lot more, and I have found that's how life should work. You should be yourself and trust yourself right? So now my LinkedIn and a lot of my social media online is very indicative of what you get if you put me into your life. I like to think that if they're bringing me on either full-time or freelance they kind of know the type of personality they're getting, and I try to remain as aware of that as possible while also the work I'm being paid to do and making sure that everyone's happy. It's a fine line, extremely hard it caused me a lot of stress.

Danu Poyner 48:33

Yeah, I can imagine. There's a particular type of Grokkist who makes themselves kind of unemployable steadily, by pointing out things, and to be able to turn that into a story of, this is what you'll get if you bring me into this situation, I will be your change agent and I will change your structure. That's quite a powerful place to be.

Sam Hoffman 48:54

yeah, I wouldn't say that that is me and that is what I'm promising. It feels personally self aggrandizing. But what I'll say is, you you know at least in the work you're asking me to do I will try my best to push it. Right? If you want me to just write a commercial for a car company I will do my best to write you one that is different and doesn't sound like every until you tell me please just write the one that isn't different. Go Okay! And at that point I'll question whether or not it's where I wanna be spending my time but it might be. It might be what I'm looking for in okay. I say this a lot as like my rebuttal to people who are like aren't you afraid you won't get hired if you be that weird or aggressive or profanity laiden or boundary pushing on XYZ platform. And I say Lil Nas X is currently one of the most popular artists in the world.

Danu Poyner 49:36

His TikTok is wild.

Sam Hoffman 49:38

Right Twitter and TikTok. He is pushing every single boundary of language and body movement you could possibly imagine. He is my idol And I think any company worth their salt should bring in that man to do anything they want him to do or he would want to do. If you want him to write you a car commercial, have Lil Nas X write you a car commercial. If you want him to plan your holiday party, let him plan your holiday party. It doesn't matter. The point is he has something. It is beautiful. It is brilliant. And if you don't wanna hire him that's a problem with you. That's kind of the mindset I try to take to build my own self-confidence, which is I'm gonna be myself. I'm not talking about myself in any of those superlatives. I'm just saying that when I express myself in a way that tries to feel as authentic as Lil Nas X expresses himself, I hope that it's being received by people who want that creation in their lives regardless of what it is I'm doing.

Danu Poyner 50:32

I really like this image you put in my head of your team going and working with the people and org uh, people, it's like companies that hire white hat hackers to come and invade their security system. Is that what that was like? What are some interesting stories from there?

Sam Hoffman 50:48

Um I wasn't part of the specific part of the organization that really was like explicitly change agents. I was part of more so brand building. We came in and we helped someone maybe better tell their story and figure out the language. I actually don't love trying to go in and change a person or an organization to the best of my ability. Because in my experience answers are fairly obvious. It's a matter of just being willing to do them. So it's a little bit frustrating to walk into another organization who's asking you for help only to realize that you are just maintaining the status quo as much as possible while also shifting it just a weenie bit. I understand that is also what I'm doing in my life but it was very conscious to me in certain moments and that was painful for me to just stare at in the face, like organizational change. Something about the speech and debate stuff, one-on-one in person, it's just the explicitness. It's just so clearly about the self. There's a lot of,

Danu Poyner 51:42

Hmm

Sam Hoffman 51:42

like masks being put on in organizations where it's like how aware are you of what this conversation is actually about vs not aware of it. And what games are you playing here. And like the politics is just really difficult. But I don't think anyone needs me to tell them that. I think that's how any organization is whether it's government or business or any team right? There's politics in speech and debate as well. Great Jeff Bezos quote: politics is a room with three people. Point being, I like to try to keep my life as like one-on-one as much as possible about each specific relationship.

Danu Poyner 52:18

With your freelancing that you're doing now, what does it look like when a client comes to you with an issue? What does it sound like and how do you help them?

Sam Hoffman 52:25

So freelancing has been fascinating for me cuz I'm technically five months into my journey. But I skirted off to Southeast Asia for three months and my goal was to pick up freelance when I got back which was only a few weeks ago. Early December of 2022. So I left my job the end of July. The goal was a few weeks to just clean my life in order move outta my apartment in August, travel for three months, return and then worry about freelance. What ended up happening was the LinkedIn algorithm seemed to like me a lot because I post a lot on LinkedIn. So the minute I went freelance, I think it's giving me a lot of love towards people, cuz I get a lot of messages, and what happened was the minute I left I started getting messages from opportunities I could not say no. Things I had dreamed of working on that I didn't think I could get because I didn't actually have the connections or direct experience. I said yes to them and they started working. I did some work in August, then I traveled and I did some work while traveling, And then I came back and I'm now picking up full-time work. The big thing here is, because what I have spent a lot of my career doing in the past five years of my career, and what I wish to be doing are not super aligned. There is enough experience for me to confidently talk about in an interview and get work for, but it's not as deep. Most of what I wanna be doing in the future I know I have the knowledge of and the ability to do in my own self-efficacy but I do not have the look at this Although I am building more and more look at this. So a lot of the work clients come to me for, that is like my bread and butter, is more traditional brand strategy and copywriting work, like website copy, tone of voice guide or how our branch should sound or look or feel, social media posts like Instagram posts or a paid advertisement campaign. What I hope to be doing more of in the future is through social media like very TikTok oriented very content oriented.So whether that's like actually making TikTok toward or it's just strategizing about the best way to exist on social media for a brand or for a small company or it's being a liaison between a brand already famous creators on TikTok to help out a campaign. Since going freelance in August, one of the projects that I couldn't turn down was helping Visa with their TikTok activation for the Men's World Cup and the agency that was working with them. And that was great I served as a social media strategist and it was my first time really articulating social media strategy in a deck format. But I had done so much other strategy in deck format and other social media work in actual practice that it was like combining different skills in different ways, And that's like my dream work, being able to explain and talk about social media and think about what someone should do and then help them execute like a brand persuasive angle for the betterment of people. I believe like that product is like bringing joy right That's where my soul is. Another one I recently got brought on to do was just very quick consulting with a climate change nonprofit that's trying to reframe how we think about sustainability to make it more so like we're doomed. So I hopped on a call with them and I just started talking to them about what a TikTok presence would look like, the best sort of activation, what kind of content they might wanna do. And they came to me the list of like 10 to 20 questions and I answered the questions but because it was such a great conversation and because I have a great relationship with the person who I knew from my last role who Brought this project to me, it became just an incredible brainstorm there were ideas coming out that were like whoa this could be really interesting if you guys pursued this. And so the idea of just creative brainstorming through the lens of social media is I think joy which goes back to the attention thing, which is, let's brainstorm how to get some eyeballs on the thing you want eyeballs on, and at the end of the day that's what marketing is right? Like marketing advertising is, I want people to pay attention to me and then gimme their money. As long as I'm following my moral compass or what I think money is, where money should go as much as I can, that keeps me feeling right and helps me sleep at night. My skill for chasing the eyeballs is TikTok and social media But honestly I've thought about this a lot, that is because I deeply deeply believe that is the most successful way. That is the best way to be a marketer nowadays. I began the lens of like I wanna go into advertising and marketing, persuasive attention, And I've just found by digging deeper and deeper over the course of 10 years that I think the answer to that is currently on TikTok. I've been saying that now for three and a half years.

Danu Poyner 56:59

I agree with you about TikTok, but I'd be very curious to hear your why that is the place.

Sam Hoffman 57:05

That's where people's attention is. It's as simple as that. It's where people live right Now. It's where the data shows the users live and then you say why is that Then? They built an algorithm that's really freaking smart and a user experience that's really fricking easy. As I mentioned I had a video go viral this week I like when that happens One because it makes me feel good but two because I get to also test out all my theories in real time. And so I watch certain things happen and my gut is like I think this is gonna happen next in terms of how it's being spread, The type of person's gonna start commenting, and the people where they are gonna be, based off X Y and Z, And I watch it and I was right about a lot of things this week and I was like yep yep This is how it works. What it's doing is so smart. And it's so beyond any Humans control. TikTok built an algorithm and we humans built something that knows exactly what you wanna see before you know it. So if you're making something of quote unquote quality which is hard to do, hard to quantify, hard to explain with language, but if you're doing it and you post it will get to the people who need to see it.You don't have to spend a dime on advertising. You need to just spend your money on creative output. And that's so exciting.

Danu Poyner 58:19

I always ask people on the podcast to explain a term as if to a 10 year old, and you said two of those, which I think need an explanation. One is a tone of voice guide for a brand, and one is what an activation is.

Sam Hoffman 58:33

Sure So a tone of voice guide is essentially A guide to show someone how to write on behalf of a brand. So if I look at Nike's tone of voice guide, it would show me how to sound like Nike because Nike is not a person, Nike is an idea. I actually hate tone of voice guides. I don't think they work cause they're very rooted in language And language is interpreted very different ways. I could say be silly and your silly is different than my silly. I actually now deliver a product, I worked on it with my last organization but we never actually made one And I consider it something that I can own on my own as well, called a vibe guide, which is how your brand should feel and what your brand's personality and vibe should be. That way, whether you're a writer or not, Whether you're just a person who works on the idea of that brand, you can look at it and get a sense of who they are if they were a person right? So instead of saying silly, there'll be three memes in the vibe guide that will be like these are the memes that this brand likes. And then you'll get a sense of what silly is. Something like that. So I'm trying to capture a personality for a brand is really what it is. The other one, activation, is just a word for doing something. We're gonna do an activation in Times Square. What's it gonna be? Well, we're gonna have people dance, Like it's an idea.

Danu Poyner 59:45

Right? A fancy word for doing a bunch of stuff. What's in Sam's Vibe guide for your personal brand, do you think?

Sam Hoffman 59:52

The first thing that came to my head was there would be a page of the favorite musicians: Big Thief, Phoebe Bridgers, Radiohead, Grateful Dead, Julian Baker. And I think that's the type of page you actually would see in a brand vibe guide too, right? Who is this Brand's Top five on Spotify rap, and then you get a big sense of that brand. Like what is Nike's top five artists, is much better than, there's no language that can get at that feeling.

Danu Poyner 1:00:16

This is a tangent, but I so agree with this and that you can tell a lot by what music people are into, but it means that I have to ask you about one of my other notes, which is the Spotify music Match idea, using data to find music soulmates. And I wasn't clear whether you were actually working with Spotify on that, or whether that was something that you did just with the API.

Sam Hoffman 1:00:35

I can count on one hand the amount of things in my life where I've been like Ugh I was there first. Damn it! Why did I make no money off of that. One of them is the portrait first video that we talked about earlier. Another one is that idea which Spotify then made five years later. So me and my brilliant friend, Sarah Lopez, came up with that idea in ad school in college. It was a digital class where you had to think of digital ideas, And it was, Spotify has all this data, Why can't they tell us these things about ourselves and match us with people who have similar music tastes? Music is so indicative of person's deepest corest personality and soul in a way that can't be explained right. Then a few years later Spotify pretty much did it. They did a few different iterations of that which makes sense cuz it's obvious it's one of those duh you should do it. So they did one where you could do a music match with someone where you just got a playlist of your shared music and different musics. They did another one that showed you how literally the percentage similarity have towards your favorite artists. I still think that they have not used that to its best capability but I also think that's because that's not part of their business plan. I don't think they want to be a social network in any way. I think they very much view themselves as like a media platform. But uh right now I'm seeing something go viral on LinkedIn of there was this intern at Spotify who had the idea for Spotify wrapped. And a lot of the narrative is, she was a black woman and Spotify didn't give her credit for it and didn't reward her for that idea but I just think there's a lot of brilliant young people thinking about data in very interesting ways and a lot of platforms that could really benefit from it.

Danu Poyner 1:02:16

You have a proudest moment or example of where you were able to get a lot of eyeballs on something that you cared about?

Sam Hoffman 1:02:27

I actually don't feel that way towards anything I've made on social media. Like I've gone viral a few times and then I've gone mini mini viral a few times. I don't think I work hard enough at it. I think if I wanted to be a TikTok content creator, I'd be doing it. I just don't spend enough time making things for myself to ever be successful in that regard. Of course it feels good when you go viral, when you make a video that everyone loves. But the one that immediately came to my head, which is the first student I coached in speech and debate that won nationals. My team had never had a national finalist in the events that I did in coached before, and I had this brilliant student, who is also was and is a good friend of mine. It was in my early days as a coach, and it was the first year that program oral Interpretation was actually offered as an event in high school. I learned more from her about coaching than anything else Cuz she just kept saying Nope we have to keep working we have to keep working we have to keep working. I'm like I don't know how else to help you. She's like we're gonna figure it out, like what do you think of this? What do you think of this? And she was relentless and showed me what happens when talent works hard. She undid a belief of mine, which is that we couldn't get to the national final stage, which I think limited me a lot in high school. But she undid it for me really strongly. She won nationals and to see something that we worked so hard on, all of the coaches at Ridge and all of the students right, because everything's a team effort. She was seen by everyone in every different way And see this program that I've been a part of at that point for about six or seven years have a student and make it to the stage where a few thousand people saw it And then if more thousands we'll see it in the future on video form rewarding. So every single time there's success and I look around at a big audience reacting to something that I helped a student work on, That reaction is the joy. I sit in the audience now, but I still see the laugh and I'm like they wrote that joke It was freaking great, Right?

Danu Poyner 1:04:18

Oh, that's awesome. I like that, not necessarily the most eyeballs, but the right eyeballs for the right reasons.

Sam Hoffman 1:04:23

It's the eyeballs that had meaning to me, uh You know 250,000 people on TikTok is like whoa, It feels good but it doesn't have the meaning that a thousand real human beings have.

Danu Poyner 1:04:33

Well, yeah, that's something I've experienced this year for the first time. Something with my name on it, got whatever it was, a million views on TikTok and many hundred thousand likes but I don't know what that means, but I do know that the emails that I have and the one-on-one Zoom conversations are suddenly much more meaningful.

Sam Hoffman 1:04:51

Yeah I had a video reach 160,000 people last summer. It was about Olive Garden in Times Square, which I love dearly, And the best part of that going viral was when I was at a party and someone went oh yeah I saw that yesterday That's you Oh my Like oh yeah that was that's

Danu Poyner 1:05:08

Yeah. That's cool.

Sam Hoffman 1:05:09

you saw my TikTok, the other hundred 59,999, like I dunno them in person. It should be nice but it needs to disappear once it arrives.

Danu Poyner 1:05:19

Yeah. It's a crazy kind of fame where you have to explain it to someone. One thing that comes up surprisingly often in my conversations with people is improv comedy. Adults. Who I speak to often reveal that this has been a transformative experience in their life because they've gone through some kind of training and improv and it's opened them up about their issues with perfectionism and making mistakes and so on, and taps into their creativity in a safe and supportive, not really competitive way. But I am really struck by the parallels between your program oral interpretation and your speech and debate work and this, and I know that the speech and debate program is for high school students, but I can see something like this being similarly beneficial for adults. Is that something that you've thought about?

Sam Hoffman 1:06:08

Yeah, at the end of the day program oral interpretation is just an artistic medium the same way a musical is and so you can craft a performance and dig into your psyche regardless of the age that you are. And we are all until the day we die crafting a performance and digging into our psyche. So I think yeah a hundred percent. The first time I ever started really thinking about it was when we've chatted a little bit about what a class could look like and I think that could be really fun. To liken it to the improv bit, you have U c B in in New York, you have improv classes, you have standup comedy classes. The reason people take those classes is exactly what you just said. They're working professionals who wanna get outta their shell or they think it'll be fun, they wanna connect with people. And I see the potentiality of these formats and switch and debate, specifically program and oral interpretation, as being exactly like that. Where you bring people in for one to three months you help them be creative and spontaneous within a creative framework, and then you perform it in front of people and you hopefully bring people joy and you get their attention for a little bit. Yeah, I think it'd be great and I think it's would be necessary and useful and I would love to do it one day.

Danu Poyner 1:07:15

well that's cool. if you, if you do gimme a call, I'd love I'd love talk to you about that. Yeah. Yeah. So you've mentioned in several of the stories that you've told about the importance of that hard work element to getting success. You've also mentioned that from time to time, what's held you back or stopped you from going further down a particular path is that you haven't felt that kind of energy for you. And you also said, right at the start, that you have this compass that you follow the whole time, do I wanna do it? With all of that in mind, I'm curious right now at this really interesting point in your life, what is it that you really wanna do?

Sam Hoffman 1:07:53

Yeah, this has also been top of mind. I've realized I like doing a lot of things. And that is why I've never fully dived into one thing and worked my ass off and reached a major milestone or goal. It's because I just wanna also be doing other things. I think I've looked back on that I'm like, oh, I should have done that. I should worked hard on that. Like, yes, like you have regrets, like that's life, but more so anything else. It's like, well, you would've done something in some way if you could have done something in some way if you wanted to do it in that way. And clearly there has never been a moment where I wanted to dive in massively on one thing because this. I must have been spending my time doing something else, even if that was sleeping. Well, guess what? I really wanted to get better at sleeping in that moment. Except to say, I actually think, to your point, that's my strength, right? I somehow now, like I wear many hats. I can write and I can edit a TikTok and I can film a TikTok and I can color correct the TikTok and I know Premier and I know Photoshop and I have pretty serviceable graph design skills and I speak well and I can coach performances and I have all these little things and I'm going to bring them all together in a way that I think provides use and good to the world. and I don't think that needs to be one big, tangible, clear thing. The thing I've definitely worked the hardest and longest on is speech and debate. That seems to not go anywhere. Like I see a student at the beginning in the summer. There are some performances we take through to the next summer, till June at the national tournament. That's a full year of many hours into one specific thing, and the payoff is great and it feels great. I think the longer you hold back dopamine rewards for certain things, the better it feels, the better you are at keeping yourself motivated. The other one is I've been working on a speculative music video since February. But I said to myself, like, I'm gonna put everything into this. Everything. It's speculative. So it's for a small artist. They haven't responded to my messages telling them where I'm doing it. It's purely for my own joy. I wanna get better at animating in a certain way. And I like doing it. It's genuinely, purely for my own entertainment, which is I think is how any art should be. There's a classic Bruce Springsteen, he got advice, the end of Born to Run. It was something along the lines of like, it will never be perfect. Let go. There's like 112 tracks on that song. You know, like a layers on that song, born to Run, like stop already. It's great. I'm finding that happen to me for the first time in a long time with this, because I could keep going more and more detailed. But at what point do you say this is enough for the speculative music video you're doing for free, for fun? But it's also at the same time, the thing I wanna make as my current magnum opus craploads of heart into this. And I'm very excited to see how it turns out. But I learned a lesson recently, which is the video that went viral on TikTok this week for me. There's a lot more I wanted to do with it, and I knew it could have been better, but I have so much of my to-do list right now and I was like, I need to just be done with this. It is good enough. I let good enough be good enough, which is classic advice for anyone who is passionate and a perfectionist. And guess what? It performed great, right, and there's no reason for it to have been better. What is better, better is subjective. And so, trying to reach that point with this music video.

Danu Poyner 1:10:50

I like that answer very much. You don't have to pick one thing. You can do all the things and doing all the things can be the thing in a way. And, that's a very grokkist thing. I like to talk a bit about the red thread because what looks like on the surface, lots and lots of different kinds of things is actually connected at a deeper level in a really consistent and enduring way. I really like the way that you framed it earlier by saying, creativity within structure with a persuasive purpose for an outcome. That's a red thread right there. My last question is the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, which is, if you could gift someone a life changing learning experience, what would it be and why?

Sam Hoffman 1:11:33

A smartphone. If everyone growing up could have a smartphone, it would be a life-changing learning experience across the entire world, right? If people could have the electricity, keep it powered, the data connectivity to reach things in a timely manner, and the hardware, in their hands, regardless of where they are in the world, is a life-changing learning experience. Cuz guess what? You got everything. Everything you could ever want to know in the palm of your hands.

Danu Poyner 1:12:02

I like that answer cuz it goes right back to what you said at the very start about you being a grokkist and your access to information. I think that's a nice, little bookend for the story today. Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that we somehow haven't covered?

Sam Hoffman 1:12:16

No, this was wonderful. I really am grateful that you have taken the time to bring me and talk to me about me. it's, a privilege. It's nice. Thank you.

Danu Poyner 1:12:26

It's been a great pleasure and I've learned a lot. So thank you so much Sam and good luck with what seems to be a really exciting time in your life at the moment. And good luck with the Chase.

Sam Hoffman 1:12:38

Thank you. Thank