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Escape the Slop | Johnny Ainsworth | Full Battery Media

• Sean Trace

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0:00 | 48:53

I sat down with my longtime friend Johnny Ainsworth - communications veteran of 23 years, content creator, and founder of Atomic Mango, and we got brutally honest about what's actually holding people back from creating content that connects. 

Johnny nearly fell into the perfectionism trap himself when he tried becoming a YouTuber at 40, made two videos, and quit. The lesson? Stop waiting for the perfect gear, the perfect lighting, the perfect script, because the people winning online right now are winning through consistency and relatability, not equipment. Keith Lee built a food empire filming himself eating in a car. That's the era we're in.

We also broke down what it really means for content to be working, why vanity metrics are noise, and Johnny's dead-simple 30-minutes-a-day formula that anyone can follow regardless of experience. We got into branding, the AI wave, and why being unapologetically human is your biggest competitive advantage right now.

If you've been hesitating to start, or posting without seeing traction, this conversation is going to hit differently.

If you only had 30 minutes a day to grow online, how would you split that time?

 


SPEAKER_00

You know, um LinkedIn also. I w I was one of the very first people on LinkedIn when it first launched as a platform. Nothing like it is today. Uh I was doing so I had my own freelance business. It was called Design by Zuni. Zuni was just a nickname I had for Johnny. And um I said, you know what? What's a way I can make myself stand out a little bit more? So I said, uh, you know, like Ross uh in friends and stuff, I'm gonna put a monkey on my shoulder and hold the camera out in the field. And so I photoshopped this monkey onto my shoulder and just threw that on my profile uh on LinkedIn. And within a couple of days, actually, some somebody contacted me in uh for for a graphic design job. And he's like, Do you can I ask you the question? Do you do you really have a monkey? And I said, Well, I have a monkey if you think I have a monkey. Because I didn't want to spoil the magic for him, right? So uh it's just one of those things, you know, we're we're you just gotta keep moving forward with uh with the content you're making and and and get yourself out there, I would say, you know.

SPEAKER_01

All right, welcome everybody back to the Full Battery Media Podcast. I've got an awesome guest uh with me today that actually is someone I've known for a long time. Can you introduce yourself and tell people who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_00

Hey yeah, what's up, everybody? My name is Johnny Ainsworth, and uh I'm a content person. I'm a communications person, been working in communications for 23 years, uh, on the corporate side of things for international organizations mostly, uh, but also dabbling with content creation on the side and just uh just loving creating content. I just I'm a creative person by heart, so that's that's who I am. Uh launched uh an agency called Atomic Mango in 2020, height of COVID. Uh so running that on the side as well, just uh keeping busy. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01

Well, what do you how did you get down going down this path? What started you down this content creation path?

SPEAKER_00

Ooh, ever since the beginning, man. I mean, since uh like Flickr. Do you remember Flickr being out there? Flickr. Yeah. I I've just I've always been a photographer at heart. So I would say that I started through photography. You know, my dad gave me my first uh Minolta Zoom camera when I was 12 years old, and just had a love for photography when I was in college, learned how to develop actual print uh in the dark room. And then of course the the you know with digital cameras and iPhones and stuff just evolved as time would go by. But uh I would say photography is the first thing that got me started, even on Instagram when it was first for photographers and not uh influencers. Right. I was originally there for the best time, man. It was the best time, right? I know. Yeah. That's I I loved uh Instagram back then, uh just when you could just put your art out there and you didn't care about getting followers and views and stuff. You just did it because you loved the art. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I loved that, man. And I it's interesting too because um we started photography kind of same time, same place. You know, I was learning, we grew up, we went to high school in the same area, and I I started doing photography. My dad gave me an old Pentax K1000 that, you know, with the kit, it was like a beast of a camera. And man, oh yeah, you learn how to make mistakes, but you learn how to do it right. And one of the things that I I loved with the I still love film cameras so much. And the yeah, right. But you don't know what you're creating, you don't know how it's gonna go. And one of the things that I find with content is like everyone's like, how did that perform? How did that perform? And one of the things that I tend to do is I just kind of move on. Like, I'm like, what's video is the most important video? And it's like, it's the next one. I mean, certainly you want to learn from what you've done, but at the same time, in this content, this world, you gotta be moving forward. You can't look back too much, you know?

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. That's very true. You know, um, LinkedIn also, I was one of the very first people on LinkedIn when it first launched as a platform. Nothing like it is today. Uh I was doing, so I had my own freelance business. It was called Design by Zuni. Zuni was just a nickname I had for Johnny. And uh I said, you know what? What's a way I can make myself stand out a little bit more? So I said, uh, you know, like Ross and Friends and stuff, I'm gonna put a monkey on my shoulder and hold the camera out in the field. And so I photoshopped this monkey onto my shoulder and just threw that on my profile uh on LinkedIn. And within a couple of days, actually, some somebody contacted me in uh for for a graphic design job. And he's like, Do you can I ask you the question? Do you do you really have a monkey? And I said, Well, I have a monkey if you think I have a monkey. I didn't want to spoil the magic for him, right? So uh it's just one of those things. You know, we're we're you just gotta keep moving forward with uh with the content you're making and and and get yourself out there, I would say, you know.

SPEAKER_01

It's about capturing attention. And I mean, and there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, in that the right way I think is again, I'm sorry for having the the cliche keyword, but like being authentic. You know, the authenticity to like to do it the way that matches with you. And I think that's the right way in the wrong way. And it's interesting though, because I today I saw a linked influencer that was also a fitness influencer that got naked on camera and lured themselves. And it was like in the first 10 seconds, you know, first five seconds, and I was just like, oh, there's your hook. And I was just like, wow, like it was completely blurred, and it just got me thinking. I was like, mmm, thinking about some content now. And I was just like, but the and I when the video comes out that I'm gonna do, which will be hilarious, I'll share it with you.

SPEAKER_00

So this is like Blink Blink 182, like running down the naked, but it's all blurred out, right?

SPEAKER_01

Like uh Oh yeah, oh yeah, you know, and uh it was like kind of the fun was I was just sitting there thinking about there's no wrong way to do something. Like at the end of the day, you're just trying to find a way to inspire someone to pay attention. And you know, it's like it certainly, I'm not a huge fan. I never was a big fan of like the jackass TV shows because I felt like they were so shock value. And there wasn't like I never felt like they delivered on the shock. But we're in this hook time period now where people get this hook and then you deliver. And then I think one of the things that's so important is to educate. Like you have to give people value. And like coming from an educational background, I see content generation as the ultimate in fast education, you know?

SPEAKER_00

Mm-hmm. Definitely. Well, just on an education point. So again, coming back to LinkedIn, um people were saying, okay, you gotta fit your resume, your CV on one page. Otherwise, people, you know, uh recruiters are not gonna they're not gonna even look at your CV if it's on two or three pages. I said, you know, that that makes sense. And so uh I just saw somebody else post about uh Marissa Meyer, the CEO of Yahoo back then, uh, and her CV was on one page. And so I just shared that post. It's not even my post. I didn't copy the image or anything, uh the original one. I just shared it. And I said, um, if the CEO of Yahoo can get her resume on one page, so can you. That's all I did. And that's been one of the highest performing posts I've ever had on LinkedIn. It was like 50,000 views. And even today, like 15 years later, I still get people who comment on that, oh, that's so true. And I'm like, oh my goodness, this content's still alive? Like, what's going on with that? It makes no sense. But uh I think you're totally right. Like education, I mean, I I'm also uh big on education. I was an English teacher for for four years uh in Geneva, Switzerland. Uh I love to educate, and and I think it's so important because that's what I'm consuming on in terms of content. You know, I I love to be entertained, I want to laugh, but I want to learn stuff. I want to learn. So if you can help people learn something really quick, especially with short attention spans these days, then you're you're good to go.

SPEAKER_01

I think that's one of the things that I was teaching at a school in Los Angeles. It was an English language school, and I was in graduate school, and I was moonlighting as an English teacher for kids from Korea and Thailand and all over around the world. But my boss pulled me in and at that time there was a bunch of schools that didn't necessarily make the kids come. They wanted them to come, that they got them in to the US, and the kids just kind of and they disappeared and went to other schools or got jobs, or it's not the way they're supposed to do it, and it's definitely something that's frowned upon now. But that time, these schools were doing it, and yet they wanted to keep the kids there because they needed to keep their licenses. So my boss pulled me in and she's like, What is your goal here? Is it to educate or is it to entertain? I was like, Well, obviously, it's to educate. She's like, No. She was like, it's to entertain. Yeah. I was like, Oh, I didn't know. And she's like, if you are not entertaining people, they will not come to the seats. And there's no education that's gonna happen. You can educate and you know, try to you, but you're gonna be educating to an empty room. So if you entertain first, then you're gonna have a room full of people, and then you're gonna have an I was like, I don't know how to do that. I come from an education background where education is paramount. And that my she's like to me, she's like, You studied acting, right? And I was like, Well, yeah. And she's like, try acting a little bit. And I was just like, oh man, I don't even know what she means. So I tried to be funny, and I just started to be more entertaining and be more funny. And you know what? My students started showing up regularly. Okay, okay, they started coming to class. And it was one of the things that I wish someone had have taught me or had have told me when I was getting ready to be a teacher, hey, you gotta entertain. But like, this is one of the things that if someone is a new content creator, yeah, I try to tell them entertainment is really important. You want to get your message out there. Well, you got to be entertaining people and hooking them in first, you know? But you can't only have a hook and then not deliver value. So it's something that I think is a dichotomy. But I want to ask you a similar question. I'll let you have a chance to comment on that too. But if someone has zero followers today, what's the first thing you think they should make and post and what should they do? What advice would you give a new creator?

SPEAKER_00

So getting started the very first time, you've never made a piece of content in your life, right? That's the nothing. Okay. Just do something. Just get out there, make a video. It's not going to be perfect. It's probably going to be absolutely horrible, but it's going to be out there in the world. You can start getting feedback from it. Maybe introduce yourself, talk about what it is you want to create content around. Uh you know, just on the thing about being being entertaining, uh, not everybody has it in their in their DNA to be an entertainer. I mean, if you look at the the teacher from Ferris Bueller, Bueller, Bueller. It's like there's some real people out there who are like that. And there if you tell them, uh, or like doctors and stuff, you tell them be an entertainer uh about medical content, they're like, I don't want to be a clown. I'm not an influencer. I have serious things to talk about. I'm an expert in my in my field. Right. So entertainment, yes, to to a degree, but just get the content out there. If it's something that is teaching somebody something, uh, or you know, you're you're inspiring somebody to do something, then it has value. You don't have to be the best performer in the world, the best actor, uh, but you have to inspire people to do things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And you know what the I if that guy, the Bueller, be like, man, if he had a YouTube channel, dude, I'd watch that. Like that was hilarious. Oh, I'd watch that all day. And I think that's one of the funny things for me is like, and that's where he shouldn't try to be like the way I am. And I shouldn't try to be like that. And I think that's where people misunderstand the word like authenticity. Like, I think they're like, oh, well, I should really try to be very real. No, just figure out what's special about you, you know. Exactly. If you if you are enjoying doing, you know, making balloon sculptures. Remember that? I haven't seen anyone doing it. Do you think do make balloon sculptures on YouTube or incorporate that into your thing? I mean, that's that's your thing, man. And I think that that's one of the things I think that people um could really consider. But like, I want to ask you this. Like, you look at content all the time, and why do you think some videos feel boring even if they look really good and flashy, you know?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I mean, there there's so many reasons why a video can just not capture your attention. Either it's too long of a start. I mean, again, we're we're in a society where attention spans are just dwindling down like uh by by the month or by either the even the week. And then add on top of that like AI slop and everything, and people's attention spans are like six, seven, six, seven, and it's just like, oh my goodness, like stop, stop. Please No. I don't want to deal with that. But um Yeah, you know, I I think it's just it's it's really crazy. I mean the the thing that makes a video for me stand out is if it's relatable. Uh it doesn't matter what expensive camera gear you're running, you don't have to save your money until you have a 30,000 uh red comodo, you know, red komodo or whatever uh uh camera body and everything, the perfect lighting and lens and everything, it's nice, great. But you have to know how to tell a story first of all, and tell something that people can relate to or they can laugh because especially if they can laugh and relate to it right away, be like, oh, this-I gotta share this to my friends, I gotta share this to everybody I know because this is just hilarious. This this cracks me up. Or if it's something they're learning again on the education side, they're like, wait, did you guys know you can do this with uh with Cloud AI? I had no idea. Check this out. It's gonna like save you hours and hours of editing later on. Uh so it doesn't have to be filmed perfectly. It just has to be so when when we talk about authentic, authentic is literally just grabbing your phone and filming something and putting it out there. Don't don't overthink it and be like, okay, so I could do a script on this, uh, maybe I could film it with this lens and stuff. Yeah, if you enjoy that, that's the passion you have as a filmmaker and and wanting to do things that way uh as a creative, sure. But that's not what's gonna sell the video. That's not what's gonna get the the likes and everything. It's it's really something that has to bring emotion to the viewer, and they're like, oh wow, oh, I I totally get that. Um Keith Keith Lee, for example, the the famous, I mean, famous now, uh food uh influencer on TikTok. He's filming with his phone. He's not filming with expensive equipment. He's in his car and he goes into a restaurant and buys food uh and just eats it in front of the camera. And his face, when he's eating it, makes you want to have that meal right there. You're like, oh man, I wish I had that. That looks so like yummy, like and he gets people to line up for hours and and businesses that were failing, he he gets them, like revives them, like brings them back to life. And that to me is crazy that we're living in that type of era now with content where somebody's just filming something with their phone and because it's so relatable, he's he's bringing a business back to life that was gonna go bankrupt, like tomorrow. It's it's mind-blowing to me. So yeah, I think I think for me that's that's the best thing is just make something that people can relate to and brings emotion.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. I think one of the things that people forget is like the relatability factor. Like I I think that that's where um we we have been very disconnected by the mainstream media, and I think that social has this beautiful power to connect people if you do it right. And I think that's where like one of the ways that I know like is social media is actually or your your content is actually working and not is that you get that people engaging with it in a way of like, dude, I I feel you on that, or I love this, or you know, when I post something for a winery, you know, uh some some I have my barrels and roots podcast that I talk about wine because we've roofed in halfway, you know? Never value. So I talk about wine, yeah, right? Talk about wine and people like when people get like 20 comments on it, like, dude, I love that wine, or I love that place, or I've been there, you're suddenly realizing that you're connecting in a way that's really organic. But I want to ask you this like, how do you know if your content is actually working and not just getting views?

SPEAKER_00

Well, it depends, I guess, on the on the goal you're trying to achieve, right? I mean, if you are in the whole marketing aspect and you're like, okay, I built my my marketing funnel, my landing page, and all this stuff and top of funnel, trying to bring all these people in, if that makes any sense to people who are not marketers out there. Um that's if you're judging how many people are going to your landing page and clicking on your thing and buying your program or your product or whatever it is, or coming into your bricks and mortar store uh and buying your product, then you know it's working. Uh I can tell you the majority of of, especially here in Europe. I don't know about uh how it is for for you in Vietnam, but here in Europe, it's it's a struggle. It's a struggle because there's just so much noise out there. It's so much there's too much. And this is before AI. Again, no no dissing AI, I love AI, but uh there's just a lot of it's like multiplying by 10 the amount of content that's out there now. So it's just becoming a noisier and noisier world. So I think for that, to to know if your thing is working is if people are actually engaging and commenting on your on your content, on your stuff. If they're saying, oh, I love that. That's and actually that's that's one of my personal things that I that I kind of love doing. Because um, for me, social media is not just consuming, consuming, consuming, or putting my own content out there. I I love to interact with people I've never talked to before. So they have this thing on TikTok where you can be the first to comment and it has this cool little animation that says, you're the first comment. And I don't know, I get this little dopamine hit of being able to comment on people's content, not just say, Oh, it looks cool, but something like, oh, wow, that's that's awesome. Like I just commented on this guy's uh he has this huge video set up and it's it probably cost him like a couple of, you know, like $20,000 or something. Um and I asked, I wrote the comment, I said, so does that mean you no longer have to ninja walk because it's so stabilized and everything? And he responded within within one minute. And I was like, wow, okay, this is this is the social part of it. So if you're making content and people are actually interacting with it and they they like what you're doing, it doesn't matter about the number of followers. It just matters that you're reaching the people that you want to reach and and have that conversation with them online.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. I think that like that's it, you know, and I do like what you said about knowing whether um what is your goal, first of all? Is your goal to you know, move people down your sales funnel and move them to become clients? Is your goal to just increase visibility? Is your goal to uh just entertain, you know? And I think that at the end of the day, you have to figure out um, are people actually liking what you do? Are people embracing what you do? Are people responding to what you do? Because some people, you know, they make stuff and then nothing comes of it because um you're just spinning your wheels in a way, you know? And I think that like one of the things that I try to do is it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to, not every single video needs to get, you know, but I I pay more attention to what people engage with than what people get high views. Because if I get high views, but like no one's commenting or no one's engaging with anything else, or there's no discussion, then I don't know if I'm necessarily winning.

SPEAKER_00

You know what I mean? Or people might think, uh, oh, you just it's vanity metrics, you just bought those uh influencers and likes as and and everything, the followers, you know, it's it's not real people behind it. So yeah, I think I think there's definitely truth to to what you're saying. I mean, it's it's it's not about the numbers, it's really about the interactions, the the social dynamic of of everything. Let me just let me show you a quick example because this is this is really something I saw like literally five minutes before uh before we started. Um it's it's crazy when you think of this uh this type of content.

SPEAKER_02

Uh yeah, okay, here we go. I don't know if you can see that, okay? Can you see that?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy. It's just so relatable. It's nothing big. It's just filmed from inside of a car. Uh it's somebody who's gonna turn 30 years old. So it's relatable in terms of oh no, I'm I'm I'm running away from from from getting old. I'm gonna run away like a horror movie. And you just see this birthday cake with the candles, 30, like chasing you, and it's it's like, ooh, I feel the pressure of uh of society and what my parents said, and I I should have been married by now and I should have had like a successful career. And so when when you see that type of content, you it just clicks and you're like, oh yeah, good job. I I wish I had filmed that. I wish I thought of that. That's funny. Right.

SPEAKER_01

I a hundred percent agree. I think that one of the things too that I find with content like that, I find the dad content where parents are talking about their kids. You know, it to me, like that stuff I just get, where parents are like, uh-huh, and then this thing happened with my kids. And when I wasn't a parent, I was like, what is up with this stuff? Man, why do these parents do that? But now that I'm a dad and I'm just like, oh, I get that. You know, a kid's always screaming. I don't think anyone understands that unless you have a kid that was always screaming, you know, and like I I think it's really funny. My daughter actually wasn't always screaming, but you know, she was a good, pretty good kid. But yeah, it's still something that I could connect with, you know? But I want to ask you this too, because like time is a is a is something that people don't have a lot of. If you only had 30 minutes a day, if I only had 30 minutes a day, what should a person focus on to grow online?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, 30 minutes a day. It's not very much time, uh, for social networks. But uh Yeah. Uh split it up, split it up into something. So, for example, 30 minutes. Okay, spend 10 minutes a day interacting with other people's content first, just consuming content, liking other people's videos, commenting on other people's videos, because then they know you exist also. Because you know, i if you're struggling or just uh you know beginning your content creation career or Or whatever, or if you're a photographer, you don't even have to be a content creator. I mean, you're for a photographer, an artist, a chef, what whatever you are, and you're putting it out there, people will start to say, oh, who's this person who liked my content? Okay. So spend spend 10 minutes just interacting with other people's uh content and stuff. Uh but stuff that you really truly enjoy. I mean, don't just like be looking for followers and because that was a thing. Remember, like uh you know, you would follow somebody on Instagram and like three posts. That was like a big strategy and something. And then as soon as somebody follows you, you like ghost them. Yeah, like no, please do not do that. Like don't horrible thing. Like, would you do that in real life? Like, oh, your cake is so good. And then you like run away and you never take the picture.

SPEAKER_01

See you later. I those out. I get these people to add me and they come in like, hey, I want to add you. And then I'm like, okay, cool, I add them. And then suddenly, like, thank you. Boom, gone. I was like, what just happened right there? Yeah. I try to like actually be organic with the people, especially the people who come onto my podcast. I'll go through each day and try to like go find those people who have come on and to just to continue engaging with them.

SPEAKER_00

So I like that. No, no hit and runs. So 10 minutes engaging, no hit and runs, uh, 10 minutes of understanding also like what's what's out in the world. So there's the interacting part, then, but then there's the real pure consumption of knowing, okay, what are the latest trends? What are people talking about? Uh I could I can tell you, my TikTok algorithm is perfect for me. My if my girls watch it, they'd be like, Dad, you're yeah, this is so cringe. Like, please uh why are you liking Mongolian throat singing? And I'm like, Because it's cool. Because why are you watching the these people who are like uh unclogging these uh these pipes that are full of mud? And it's just, well, it's interesting. I don't know. Um I I get all my news and trends and everything from from TikTok. I literally I don't watch TV anymore. I don't watch news, CNN, or anything. Not that I don't like it, but I just I get everything that I need right there. Um so spend 10 minutes consuming content, knowing what's going on in the world, and then finally just spend 10 minutes putting something out there into the world too. Don't overthink it. Don't don't be spending hours thinking about, okay, so is this the right design? Let me just move it this bit more, you know, maybe make my logo a little bit bigger and stuff and all the branding part of it. Nobody cares. Just throw some content out there, don't overthink it, and then get that feedback and make those improvements every single day. But just get some content out into the world.

SPEAKER_01

Two things, yes, I love that. Get it out in the world. And there's another thing that I think is really important that you touched on early on, and I want to highlight that as well. Um one of the things that's a big deal for me, I said content creator, scratch that. Anyone, the majority of the people I work and that are my business like like clients are actually like business people. They're, you know, uh self-help people, they're business coaches, they're career coaches. Some of my best clients are career coaches, and I help them figure out what they need to put out in the world to if you're a career coach, you better believe that you should be telling people about how to have a good career, you know? It it you can't operate in a vacuum anymore, and you need to put stuff out, and it doesn't matter what. It's just can you be visible in a way that provides value to your customers? You know, and I think that your or your possible customers, can you provide value? And I think that's the goal that I try to find with myself on these podcasts. I sit there and do questions that could be things people would search for, you know, and those are the types of questions I try to put together so that when people uh we come through and finish the episode, we at least have a certain number of questions that someone is going to sit there and go, yeah, that made sense to me.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. What's a mistake that you see people making over and over, you know, when they go about creating their content?

SPEAKER_00

Oh man, there's I I can tell you a mistake that I I can tell you. I I can give you three. So I'll I'll give you the first one that's top of mind is um I I loved playing basketball when I was like 30 in my you know late 30s. And I had not a serious injury, but I tripped over someone's leg while playing and I cracked a rib. And I was in bed for for a couple of days in pain, you know, with with the cracked rib and stuff. And it made me think like, oh man, you know, I really did do something with my life. I'm gonna be 40 years old. Hey, why don't I do a little bucket list thing and do a 40 by 40? Um and I made a you know, a little website for it and stuff, and like here's 40 things I'm gonna finish by the time I'm 40 years old. So it was like, you know, 14 months away. And one of the top things in them back this is, you know, uh this is like uh in 2080, yeah, 2018, roughly. I said, uh, I'm gonna be a YouTuber and I'm gonna start YouTubing. And uh I did a few videos, two or three videos, and then I realized, oh my goodness, this is a lot of work. This is like way too much work for what it should be. Like hours and hours filming, hours and hours uh editing. And so I said, you know what? No, okay, let's scratch that off the list. I have so many other things I gotta worry about on the list, let's let's do those things. So I would say that one one of the first mistakes people make when trying to get started doing something on in with their content or just getting their stuff, their artistry or or food or services, whatever, out into the world, they they overthink it like way, way too much. They think about, okay, I need all this stuff. They have this big pilot checklist of dot dot, I got all this stuff done, and then they never actually start. Because actually, if I had just been creating content for the last uh six to eight years, maybe I'd be in a completely different space. And maybe I would have learned so much more about making a thousand videos. Uh so just you know, you gotta you gotta uh what is it? You gotta you gotta walk before you can crawl. Or no, you gotta crawl before you can walk or walk before you can run. Yeah, just just start running and making mistakes as quickly as possible. Um get those mistakes out of the way. Uh the second thing is definitely people obsess, myself included, because I've I've been there and done this, is they obsess over the gear. Like, oh, I just need I need this microphone, I need this lighting set up, and then I can start creating content. I need just this lens because it's the perfect portrait lens, it gives the ice boca behind me and stuff. Then I can create content. Forget about that. Just just do it. Do it, stay, take whatever you have. If you have an old iPhone 7 or whatever, just film with that. Nobody cares. 100%.

SPEAKER_01

My daughter has a YouTube with 11,000 subs. We created a kid's channel where we talk about learning and STEM and science. And she's like, buy me an old iPhone 17 Pro Max. And I was like, Hell no. There's no way that I'm doing that. It's not happening, kid. I said, here is an old iPhone 8. You take that, you show me that you can make some videos with that, and then we can talk about upgrading that. And I'm talking like something way less expensive than an iPhone 17 Pro Max. Because, you know, it doesn't matter. Like the video quality on iPhone 8 is better than what people had from professional cameras 20 years ago, you know? And that's the wild thing. It's like, it's, I mean, maybe not some of the cinema cameras, but you know what I mean. Like, I remember the shooting with the uh the 5D Mark II. Like, I think that the iPhone, it's not as buttery, but I mean, some of the more modern iPhones, dude, blow it out of the water, you know? And so it's like if you have something, anything, I don't maybe not the color science, maybe not the bouquet, maybe not the focus, but you know what I mean. Like the video quality is so good nowadays that you can do amazing stuff.

SPEAKER_00

But that's what's funny, is that there's a there's this whole trend of people going back to nostalgic 1990s look and feel videos, and I'm like, that's it's so old school and looks, it's very vibey and everything. And I'm like, you know how much of a pain that was to have this big camcorder with the VHS and you're looking through this little tiny eyepiece and recording in black and white? Like, you don't know how cool it is to have 4K video in in your pocket. Like, wow. But again, it doesn't matter about the gear, it's it's what what's the story that you're that you're telling with all the stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Can you tell a story? That's it, man. And I think that's where it all comes back to that. Like, how how do you make something that people actually care about, not just scroll past?

SPEAKER_00

Again, I'm I'm I'm not trying to think so much about what people want or or you know you know, like what I what's gonna make them click or what's gonna be like a clickbaity title and stuff. Uh I'm just making stuff that I would want to consume myself. So if if I make a video that is interesting, that it doesn't bore me when I'm watching it back, uh I I've at least succeeded for for myself. Uh because then I'm not gonna bore somebody else. Now, you don't have to get my humor. I I love dad jokes too. I fully agree with you there to the detriment of of my girls. But yeah, it's I I I love doing that. So, you know, you gotta be, you gotta be yourself. You gotta be yourself, you know? But just just make content that you would consume, uh, and then there's there's a better chance that people are not gonna like scroll away. But it's it's a war, man. It's a war out there. And and AI is just now hitting the market and and stuff. And you've seen the Will Smith um eating spaghetti. Spaghetti, yeah, the spaghetti. And and I love the progression of it like in the last three years of how it looks completely figured, like, oh, that's totally AI. And now you look at 2026 and it's like, whoa, that's mind-blowing. That's super realistic. Uh and then you've got the whole thing happening with uh with Marvel. So they just had layoffs of like entire departments of post-production because it's going to all be done by AI. And you're like, okay, so I guess this is where the the decline of Hollywood and cinematography and movie making starts. It's it's now. Uh but you know, it's just one of those things. Uh there's there's always been technol technological revolutions. This all has been changes. Like when we went from black and white to color, people are like, oh no, you can't film things in color, you're losing the artistry of you know, the shadows and stuff in black and white. You just have to evolve with with it. But there's it's definitely a fight because you're fighting now not just against uh people, other influencers, and there's thousands of them, you're fighting against other people who are multiplying that with AI and creating their own faceless channels and and everything, or uh virtual AI in influencers, and it's like it's gonna get rough before it gets better.

SPEAKER_01

Two things that pop up about that. One of the things that my wife is a singer, and I don't know how this connects. Like but one of the things with music, and they're getting AI and music as well, and but one of the things that we're using it to augment our workflows, one, but second of all, you know, one of the things that I'm seeing is that there's an emphasis in going back to live shows. People are really pushing that that like in-person stuff. I would love to see this absolute return to like theater, like, you know, you know, like the opposite of what Timothy Chalome is saying, like people going back to the theater, people going back to this stuff. But right, what I think is a likely thing, and I think one of the reasons that people are enjoying some of the low-tech stuff so much is the fact that it captured authenticity, it captured what was actually happening. You know, it's like, you know, I I took a photo with, you know, we have a bunch of little early digital cameras, and my daughter took one this weekend with her to her birthday, and she's like, Why is everything so blurry? And I said, Because that's the way it was. That's how it worked, you know? You have a flood issue goes off. We have like everything is digitally enhanced now, and it's got all of these wonderful things to make that it's super clear, but that's how it captured the image. And she's like, Oh, and I said, and that was, you know, I my favorite part in the movie, The Hangover, is like when they develop all that they get like they check to see what was on the camera. But I think that like I I want to tell people to not lose hope that real stories are still gonna connect, that real creative artwork will still connect. You know, I saw this guy dude the other day doing this one thing, and certainly there is spam. There's a lot of spam out there. But what I've been noticing too is like, you know, the artists are have stepped up and are kind of pushing back, and I love that, you know, and it's like one of the things too that I think that people can do to kind of combat that, not combat that, but to be more visible is just to recognize as well, it's a numbers game. You just have to be getting out there and don't like say, well, I try to tell people filter less, create more, you know, and just get it out there, you know. Don't aim to have one perfect song if you're a musician. Have 20 songs, like knock out the songs, man. And certainly, I'm not saying just spam people with low quality stuff. I'm just saying don't have that self-doubt shutting you down that oh, everyone else around me is perfect. You know what? AI does sound perfect, but you know, there was uh the too perfect, like what was it, the Rolling Stones give me give me shelter, you know, like that. There was a great line in there, and where they kept, like she's uh, you know, she had this this pitch, like like squeal, you know, sting in uh one of his most famous songs with the police, fell down, bumped the piano, and there's this weird chord that plays, and they kept it in the recording because it sounded different. And I think those are the types of things that I'm telling people stick with it, be be weird, be wild, and let it let it come into your brand, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Have you heard of this new group, uh Angine de Poitrine? Have you seen them pop up yet? They sound pretty cool. Man, I gotta show you. They're they're they're all polka dots, they've got these long, wobbly noses, and they're playing guitars and one of the lead guitars, there's only two of them. He's switching the pedals with his like toes, like his painted feet. And the they're paying they're they're playing like microtonal uh chords and stuff. It's so weird. That's right. I think they call it math, math rock or something. I've never I've never heard that term before. I'm like, okay, this is I guess that's what we describe it, right? But uh it's so opposite to AI, which is why I love it. And it's this huge thing right now that it's just they're gay, they're from uh Quebec, I think, and they're they're starting a tour around the world. Aaron Ross Powell Of course they are. You know, of course they are because no six months ago nobody had heard of them. Now they're blowing a big world tour because they're the opposite of polished AI looks perfect. It's completely you know that this is human. Like AI could not have dreamed of generating something like this. It's too human to be AI. And I love that. So yes, absolutely. Uh you know, were pictures really pixelated and stuff? Yes, they were. I I've gotten that comment from my daughters too, saying when we watch like 90s movies, and we'll go on a on a binge of 90s movies, and I'm like, no, you gotta watch this, it's it's a great movie. And it's not uh crisp 4K quality and everything like like now, which you see on Netflix. Uh but then they would ask me, Is that how you saw things before? And I'm like, oh man. Like, thanks a lot for the slap in the face. But yeah. Yeah, it's not crisp's 4K quality, but it's excellent storytelling again, and it's human. 100%.

SPEAKER_01

Uh there's this one guy that I love called Harry Mack. He's a rapper. Um I love this You love right? He's amazing. I love Harry Mack. He goes on Twitch, or not on Twitch, uh Omegle, I think. And he goes there and like then he's like these people like it's random people. He's like, hey, give me f four words or three words. Depends. He's sometimes normally it's three, but sometimes he does four. And then he weaves that into the most ridiculous like rap flows. And I just like I don't even know how his brain is working. I don't operate anything that quickly. And you know, yeah, and they're like asking him, can AI do what you can do someday? And he said, Maybe, but like who cares if it can? Like, it's nowhere near as cool as this guy just popping off with that, you know? And so it's wild like that, man. But I'll I love his style.

SPEAKER_00

Go ahead. Yeah, oh, just the thing you were saying about um like going back to live shows. I'm 100% 100% for that. Uh the whole auto-tune, because before AI we had the auto-tune. Right. So okay, great. You know, um that's that's fine. But uh I wanna I want to see mistakes. We we had this back in our generation with MTV Unplugged. So you could tell, like, is this rock star really a good singer, or he can't sing you know, like worth anything. Like, yeah, I'm all for going back to to making mistakes and seeing if there's really talent behind these, or if it's just some industry concocted, you know, amalgamation to this perfect rock star that's AI, you know, their voice is perfect, but yeah, boring. Okay, seeing that a thousand times. Like, no, we want real human things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

One of the things, too, that I think is really interesting that you're talking about, we have all this AI term now, but right, like up to now, you know, we've also had all of this different software that makes things very unreal, you know? Like, trust me, I I work in entertainment and I get to meet a lot of interesting singers. There are quite a few of them that cannot sing at all. At all. Like, at all. I went to a concert once with one of this group, and like I love their records. I love playing them. It was one of my favorite things to throw on, have a glass of wine, put their music on. But when I heard them sing live, I was like, dear God.

SPEAKER_00

No, no, make it stop, make it stop.

SPEAKER_01

Make it stop. This is not the same. And then suddenly I turned to my friend, I was like, What's happening? He's like, Well, dude, auto-tune. And I was just like, but why? You know, I didn't know, you know, and so um, you know, I think that one of the things that I'm seeing is like we can get back to the artistry, you know, and if there's something that's worth doing well, just share that, you know, and all of us are good at something. But I want to ask you this question because you do a lot of branding too. And I think that branding is something I'd love to talk a little bit about. Because if you had to explain branding to someone who has no idea what it is, what would you say branding's all about?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, oof, branding. So let me let me throw the question back to you just for two seconds. So if you had to choose like two or three words to describe branding, like what would be those adjectives that you'd say? Brand or actual nouns of something like branding is this, branding is that. Do you have anything in your mind that would uh pop up?

SPEAKER_01

I can't necessarily tell you quickly and easily, but hold on. Let me put on one of my full battery media hats. Um I think that when I'm wearing this hat, branding means something that represents kind of your style and your brand. But when I put on this full battery media hat, I'm taken back to something that's really important. Like I loved, you know, early, early, early Pokemon, and you know, this kind of resembled Ash's hat. But you know, yeah, it does. I grew up and was born born in the Boston area, and so the Boston Celtics colors and the idea of being and having a battery full, also my Growing Money podcast, which is all about money and has a green, is also important to me. But you know what? My wife and my daughter make up a lot of our brand. So the pink is also important to me. And it's something that identifies my brand. I think branding is about finding ways to be seen. It's about finding ways to be consistent in your the way you're seen as well. You know, and I don't know if you paid attention to all of those different hats. They all had the logo, full battery media. They all had this thing, and and the branding is memorable in the colors, you know. Every time I I will every month or two get a new, whole new color like thing. And all my workers are like, what is this? Why do you do new hats? They're idle. Can I have one? And I was like, uh see, everyone. When I was making the pink hats, everyone told me this was a stupid idea. They were gone in one day. They don't like the green and black, but man, the pink ones, they ate them up. So I don't know. If you I if you ask me about branding, I think it's about great visibility, great ways to be seen consistently.

SPEAKER_00

I I love that example. That's a perfect example. And I I have my hat too. It's it's lost in closet, so I'm not gonna go run in and grab it now, but I have one with the logo for Atomic Mango. Everybody you ask, when you when you say what's branding, the first thing they're gonna say is, oh, it's the it's the logo. It's the logo. And you're like, yeah, okay, that's that's one thing of branding, but it's not just that. Uh it's like if you go into a room and you see a bunch of people, or the matrix, you know, the woman in the red dress, uh, that's the logo, just the visual aspect of it. Uh but the logo is not just one part. I mean, there's the color palette. So what colors are you using in your branding? So, okay, for yours, you've got different uh colors that you're playing around with. So, okay, for October, um, you know, pink uh like breast cancer awareness and stuff. You could wear the pink version of the hat. Why not? Uh you go to a Boston Celtics game, you wear the hat because it's matching the jerseys and stuff. So why not play around with it, have fun? Uh but branding is Halloween as well. October has like, ooh, Halloween? Gotta get to a Halloween one as well. Get the orange and black combination going on, you know? Uh put a little ghost uh icon on the side. Um You know it. Branding is is it's also the emotion of it. So it's it's what are you making people feel through your brand? So when you think of Disney, you think, oh, magic. Oh, uh it's so cute. You know, Bambi and everything. It's it's very cute, it's magic, but magic is like the the word that comes into mind. And that's a part of branding, also is archetypes. So what brand archetype do you do you use or do you identify with? Are you like you? You were mentioning you're an educator, so you're the sage, you know, you're the like you're the yoda because you want to talk about uh the experiences you've had, you want to share that knowledge with people. So that's who you identify with. And if people get that from you, from what you're doing, then your brand is working right. It's it's working perfectly. Because when you leave that room and people are like, Oh, so what did you think of Sean? He's like, He's an awesome educator, man. Like, wow, I learned so much from him. He's he's definitely like dropping knowledge truths here and there, and and I'm getting that. So that's that's what your brand is. It's not people aren't going to remember. I mean, okay, you can go into the how easy is it for a five-year-old to to draw your logo. That's how you know you've succeeded because it's something that they can just recall from memory without having to look at the image again. So there's that aspect, but it's really how are you making people feel when they when you're not around? What are they saying about you behind your back?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, I love that. I love that. What are they saying when you're not around, man? It's like it's it it resonates too because are you memorable? Is there a reason to remember you? Is there a reason for people to even pay attention to you? You know? Um, but you know, one of the things that I think nowadays, a lot of content is camera-based. And if someone's uncomfortable on camera, I mean, I don't think you or I have that problem, but there's a lot of people that do. How should they go about getting started, getting more comfortable being on camera?

SPEAKER_00

Bueller. Mueller. Yeah. You got to start somewhere. Well, let's start with this. If if you don't want to be on camera, don't force yourself to be on camera because it's going to look bad. You're not going to be comfortable, it's going to be a horrible experience for everyone. So if you want to make content in the form that that you admire the most, I mean you can film your food without having to put your face on it, right? But you can film your food in just a way that makes people want to taste your food. Or it's something they've never seen before. You've remixed uh the recipe, you've you've given it a little different look and feel. That's already the distinguishing part, like you know, setting yourself apart from from competitors who are all making the same chocolate cake, but you make yours a little bit differently. Uh so yeah, if if you want to go the video route, because okay, let's you're you're totally right. I mean, you're everything's moving to video. And I love how a lot of these social networks, they didn't do video at all, like Instagram. And then all these other platforms, ByteDance, TikTok, you know, became the platform. And even before then, I I loved Vine, man. Vine, the six seconds. Vine was awesome. Oh, I miss Vine. What a creative constraint to have to tell your story in six seconds. Uh that's not an easy thing. And and so, yeah, you know, other uh platforms started copying the other ones, now everybody's doing video. So LinkedIn wasn't video, now it's video. Uh Facebook wasn't doing reels and stuff, everybody's doing reels, everybody's doing vertical. Do I need to shoot in vertical and horizontal at the same time? Oh my goodness, what a nightmare. Don't worry about that stuff. If if you're not comfortable speaking on camera, practice makes perfect. One one thing that I told a client, uh uh, a client of mine, she she was really shy. She was very camera shy, but she had a lot of knowledge. And she's like, I want to be on camera and I know I need to be, and I'm okay with that, but I just I don't feel comfortable. So I what I did is I printed out like a human-sized piece of, you know, like a face on a piece of paper, and I just cut a hole in like in a way and put it on the camera lens as if she was talking to a real person. And I said, here, I love that. Talk to talk to this person. Don't talk to a camera lens, because when you see a camera lens, it's it's very uh mechanical, it's not human, there's no warmth to the machinery of it. Uh so put a face to to the person you're talking to. Imagine this person you're talking to, and that's again, that's linked to branding, is knowing your audience, who's your customer profile or or whatever. So I mean that's all of these things are linked. Just make it so that you're not talking to a machine, you're talking to an actual person. And if your messaging comes across that way, people are going to resonate with that. I love that. Where can people go to find out more about you and what you do? So very easy place, atomicmango.com. Uh, that's definitely the place. And and our slogan is of course, uh, crushing bad design. Because I see examples of bad design all over the world when I'm walking down the street and I'm like, oh, not again. Oh, please don't use that that oh, why did why did James Cameron use papyrus for for Avatar? No, like that's fine. I can't say anything about that because he's obviously got a billion-dollar industry from that. But um I I we love crushing bad design. So atomymango.com, uh, you can go backslash uh or yeah, forward slash, whatever, I can't remember which slash it is. Uh so um archetypes, and you'll be able to download also uh this whole thing I was talking about for for brand archetypes. You can find the the information uh on that there's a