15k Follower Spectacular!

Hey so I made it to 15k followers! That's really cool for me. That's just on instagram too. I've got another 6k on tiktok which is also wild. Honestly all of this has been wild.

I wanted to make a podcast where I just get out all my ideas on where I'm at, what I want to do, and what I plan on doing next. Solo pods are HARD. But I think I did a good job on this one. 

Thank you so so so much for all your support. Been a really crazy 6 months for me and I just cannot stress how much I appreciate this journey.

If you like anything I have done and want to support me in ANY way, please sign up to play at KLUBHOUSE.GG

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome to Hey Smiling Strange. This is my podcast. It's going to be an audio and visual treat from here on out because I have finally figured out a very simple way to post these onto YouTube. So if you're watching, uh if you're listening on something that is not visual and you want to see me sit in my basement uh with my little hair bandana thing that makes me look like David Foster Wallace as I chat to you about my 15,000 subscribers. That's what the theory? Not theory. Theory is not the correct word. Uh theme. There we go. New as a TH. The theme of this podcast is going to be uh 15,000 subscribers. I just wanted to do something. It's been about six months of me posting uh reels under Smiling Strange, and for that, you know, I wanted to kind of recap mostly for me. I want to like go over some of the old reels and just remember like why I've done this, some of the different events from when I started to where we are right now, because ultimately, like, I'm gonna forget, and I don't really want to forget everything that happened. So we're gonna do a little 15,000 subscriber, six-month, you know, more or less, celebration podcast. Thank you all for listening. Thank you for all for watching, for subscribing, all that fun stuff. Uh it is time for my ad read, which is for Clubhouse Fantasy Sports, which is the fantasy sports app that I'm building out. It is a game built to solve the two major issues that people have with fantasy sports. Number one, nobody trades in fantasy sports. Everybody thinks it's because their league mates are mean and don't know what a good deal is or don't know how to have how to have fun. I argued, and I have been arguing for almost a decade now, that it's a mechanical issue that the trades in fantasy sports don't work the way that they work in real sports. In real sports, it's always star player for package of assets. In fantasy sports, it's gotta be player for player. Those don't work, they don't make sense, it's impossible to get value. So uh we figured out a way to solve it. We I figured out a way to solve it. I use the royal we on that because it makes me feel like there's more people involved, but this is my project, whatever. Uh, I figured out a way to solve that by looking at one of my favorite party games, one of my favorite social games, Mario Kart, which operates under the basic logic of the better you are at the game, the easier it is, the worse you are the better you are at the game, the harder it is, the worse you are at the game, the easier it is. That makes sense, right? The items for first place are worse than the items you get in last place. What does that do? It keeps everybody in the middle, keeps everybody competitive, makes the game more fun. It's a little less competitive. The best racer does not always win in Mario Kart, but nobody cares because it's more fun. That's what I'm trying to do with fantasy football. This is what I want that game to be. I think it is a social game, it is a reason to stay in touch with other friends, family, co-workers, all that fun stuff. So, in our league, if you are doing bad, you literally will play more players than a team that is playing good. I have all of the metrics for this, how it works, how the actual rules of the game are on clubhouse.gg. That's with a K K-L-U-B-H-O-U-S E.g. But the basic premise is that if you are bad at fantasy sports, but you want to play in a game that makes football a little bit more fun to watch, that means you're gonna pick up the phone and text your friends every Sunday and maybe on a Tuesday asking for trades and stuff like that, a way to keep in touch. Uh go play it. Also, even if you don't want to play, it makes a huge difference to me personally to keep doing the content that I am making right now. Uh, if you go and sign up and give me an email address. I am not gonna spam you with anything. I write the emails myself and I send them out as a BCC bulk carbon copy. No one else is gonna get your email address. Uh, I'm not gonna spam you with anything. I just the more people I can show that want to play this game, the more likely I am to find a way to make get some funding off of this. Because ultimately, guys, the amount of content that I make is a tremendous amount of time, right? I I spend, I just finished an hour and a half long walk where I I've made a bunch of videos and then I post all those videos, and I'm probably gonna spend another two hours today monitoring the videos, responding to comments and stuff like that, thinking of more stuff. I'm gonna spend another hour today probably recording this podcast. It's a ton of time and it's a ton of effort. Ultimately, I am doing this so that I can get people to sign up to play a fantasy football app. Is this the worst marketing campaign of all time? Almost certainly. It has nothing to do with fantasy football. It has nothing I talk about has to do with fantasy football. We'll get into that a little bit because that is actually how I started making reels, but we'll talk about that in a sec. All I am saying is that this is my best attempt to get normal people to sign up for this app. And if you like anything I do, if you want me to keep doing it, if you like this podcast, if you like the reels, I do need to get something out of it eventually. I've done the first six months for free. At some point, I do have to get something out of it. And this is what I would like to get out of it. I want you to sign up for this. So this other project that I've been working on for years and years, and I have a whole team of people working on this, guys. I have convinced people to sacrifice time and effort into helping me see this vision come to fruition, right? And then I have wagered all of that on can I get enough followers online listening to me talk about music that I could potentially get to sign up. So ultimately, if you like anything that I do, if you like anything about me at all, please just sign up. Give me your email address at clubhouse.gg. Uh, and you know, even if you don't want to play, you can ask me to take you off the list in a couple of weeks or tomorrow or something like that. I just, I need to have a couple of emails so I can show other people, people that have money, that this is something that generates interest, that the way that I market myself generates a little bit of interest, and so that eventually I can make money for me and the people that I've convinced to work on this thing. The other part of it, though, is that genuinely, heart of hearts, I would not be putting this thing out there if I did not think it was a fun game, even if you don't like football. Even if you've never watched the NFL in your entire life. My entire strategy for this is I want to create a game that if you've never watched football, you will enjoy playing, and it might get you to enjoy football just a little bit more. That's the goal of this. I'm not making this for football fans. Football fans have enough stuff. Fantasy football fans have enough stuff. There's a million podcasts for that. I play fantasy football because I am in a league with a bunch of friends that I've had since high school who have since moved all over the world, and it's very hard to stay in touch with them. So during football season, we text each other every couple of days during the season about stupid trades. When the trade happens, doesn't happen, whatever, at the end of it, we go, hey, how's it going? How's your wife? How's your kids? How's your job? It's a nice way for me to stay in touch with people. So that's why I play it. That's what I enjoy about fantasy football. I'm building a game for people that want to have that as well. I'm gonna expand into other sports eventually. This is just the first one that I have. I can expand into them only if this thing works and it takes off. So again, sorry, that is an incredibly long ad read, but at the end of the day, at the end of the day, guys, uh, this is why I've done all this. I've done all of this so that I can get some people to sign up and play Clubhouse Fantasy Sports. Just give me an email address, get a group of friends together to play in a league. It's gonna be very fun. I guarantee you that if you have any interest in football or fantasy sports, if you've ever done a fantasy draft and thought, oh, the draft was fun and the rest of the season was boring, we fixed that problem. Uh I'm very confident of it in it because I've honestly been thinking about it for 10 years. I'm gonna you guys know I'm kind of crazy. You know I'm a weird thinker or whatever. Uh this is the best idea I've ever had. That's why I've sunk so much time into it. And speaking of the worst idea I've ever had, the worst idea I've ever had is this is a marketing strategy. I'm fully aware of that. But like I said, I don't want to get fantasy football players, I want to get normal people, people that don't really care that much about fantasy football. And I also just like making reels. I've enjoyed doing this. So this is, you know, we'll kind of transition. It's all gonna tie back in because at the end of the day, guys, this started uh Smiling Strange, the account that posts on Instagram that posts on TikTok as a music content guy who talks about whatever and goes on walks. That actually did start based off of Clubhouse Fantasy Sports. I was in the process of I had this like first round where I made fantasy football TikToks, and it was me sitting down and I would do the thing that a lot of people do, I use the green screen, and I'd have like pictures in the back, and I'd try to think of interesting things to say. And you know, it worked okay, and then I just kind of stopped doing it because I ran out of momentum. I had one thing at the time blow up, and I thought like, oh my god, this thing is huge. And it was a 30,000 view video, uh, which is still really, really big. And at the time it was wild. I just remember seeing so many notifications that I had to like turn the notifications off. Um, and that first round was was interesting. I I didn't really figure, I didn't really stumble onto a formula. I didn't really know what to say, I didn't know what my voice was gonna be, I didn't really know how how or what I was gonna make, and I was just doing fantasy football content. Uh, and then I just kind of stopped doing it because I had other stuff that I had to do with the project. We had to get a team together, build all that stuff out, and eventually it got to a point where we're like, oh my god, I need to make another post because we had a little bit of momentum and I kind of gave up on it after about a month, and now it's been like three months since then. I have to go and post again to see if I can generate a little bit of interest. And this was in late October. Uh, and this is like this is all gonna tie into Smiling Strange in a little bit, but this was like a weirdly profound moment in my life because I was walking down the street, because I I owe the walks you guys see me go on, I've been going on for years. I've always gone on walks, I really enjoy them. I listen to podcasts, I listen to music, I talk to people on the phone. When I was recovering from my Achilles tear, that was this was the only exercise I could do. So, you know, I it just it helps me clear my head to go for a walk in the morning, and I feel like it, you know, I I don't know. I feel like it keeps my brain fresh or whatever. And coming back from one of these walks, I'm like, man, I need to make a video. I'm just gonna pull my phone out and hold it out at arm's length, and I'm gonna say this point, which is kind of the I think most compelling point if you are a fantasy football player for why you should play Clubhouse, which is just that point about trades that nobody likes to trade in fantasy football. That it's the number one complaint in fantasy football leagues, is nobody in my league wants to trade. Uh, and like, you know, this is why I made all the mechanical changes that I made. Most leagues, if they're a high trade league, might have 10 trades in a season. Our league averages 70 to 80 trades in a season with a high of 87. We had 87 trades one season. It's just every week people are sending players back and forth because that's fun. That's what you do in a board game, you know? You trade in settlers of Catan. It's fun. That's like that's the only thing you can do after the draft. But I was just arguing that, like, hey, the reason that nobody trades is that trades and sports work as the star player for put a package of assets trade. And I did a 60-second video of me walking around, and then I posted it on the Clubhouse Fantasy Sports TikTok page, and then I put my phone down and I checked it back like in an hour, and it had tens of thousands of views. It eventually got up to about 380,000 views, but this video blew up so big, and all it was was me walking around talking about this issue that I I I thought, you know, had some relevance. It's why I've started making this, you know, app or whatever was this idea of trades. It was wild to see 380, you know, got when it got over a hundred thousand views. I thought that was nuts. When it got over 200,000 views, that was it's still fucking wild to me. What's weird is I've been making videos every single day, essentially, since that moment, right? I have broken, I've had I think two videos get higher than that first video, really. This is really my first video because this is the one that's me walking around and talking uh back in late October. Uh and that I really and all my videos that are posted, that there's only a couple that have gotten bigger. We'll get into those in a little bit. Uh, but it it's still wild to me. I was like, that was the moment where as soon as that one took off and blew up, I'm like, all right, I have to do this more. I have to start doing I started doing them every day at that point. Because I realized too, the the lucky thing for me was I hated editing the ones with the background, even just finding the background photos and plugging them in. I really hated doing it. I just want to walk and talk, and having this video blow up, which was just 60 seconds, stream of consciousness, no cuts whatsoever. Uh that felt doable for me. And the fact that it was popular only helped, but it's like, oh, I I think I can just walk around and do this walk that I do every day and occasionally pull the phone out when I have a good idea, and it did work for the first, you know, that first month after that 300,000 video one. I think I got two million views on that channel just talking about fantasy sports, you know, and I tried a bunch of different things. I tried to be funny, tried to be clever, tried to just post ideas. I tried I learned the biggest thing that I learned from that first month getting that many views, uh, was one, you need a lot more views to get followers than I thought. You know, I think that that channel ended up getting about two thousand followers at the end of that uh month. Again, three million views to get two thousand followers. It it I'm not gonna lie, I thought it'd be more. Uh, but you know, this is this is part of why I like doing this, is like I like the process of figuring out what is short form video, content creation, whatever, how it works, uh, how these things you know fit together, and what buttons can I push to make get reactions out of stuff. That's what I used that first month for, was just trying to figure out like a bit of a voice. Again, it was just talking about fantasy sports, and I did that for about two months, and I got a good number of views, a couple things that blew up here and there. The other really big one that I got that uh surpassed 300,000 views or whatever was just talking about another game we're building out called Fantasy Football Golf, which is just you select a quarterback, running back, and uh wide receiver, and you try to score the least amount of points as possible. It's a fun little side game we play where you just try to draft players that are terrible, and you hope that they're terrible, and it's very funny, whatever. Um, but at the end of the football season, I started to notice two things. Number one, I don't have that much to say about fantasy football, and I didn't want to start repeating myself. I didn't want to have to say the same thing over and over and over again. I wanted to say new things, and uh there's only so much that I actually can say about fantasy football. Obviously, it's a lot, it was two months of stuff to say about it, but as the season uh when the season ends, there's nothing to say anymore. You can't comment on players, you can't comment on the game itself. Um, and I also wanted to see, like, all right, well, what else can I talk about that might get some traction? Can I do this? Am I just a guy that has thoughts about fantasy football, or is there something else that I can talk about? And at the time, I had another TikTok account that was my personal TikTok account. Uh, it went under the name Costco, and I mostly used it to get on TikTok lives and debate about politics with people. Uh, so I don't know. That was a a learning experience, probably mostly a waste of time, but uh, you know, that's what I did for fun. And before I was posting, I did like going on those lives because it gave me someone to talk to, it gave me a way to kill some time. It is absolutely like an addictive thing, to be honest with you, because they're kind of designed, those debate lives or whatever, are designed to just make everybody mad. And that type of anger is it's almost like a drug. It's hard to turn it off. Uh, and I didn't like it, you know. The the reasons that I've deleted TikTok in the past weren't watching too many TikToks, it was being on too many TikTok lives and getting too mad and having it ruin my day. Um, but when I started posting uh football content, that helped because I had this other outlet to like interact with people online, and then as the football season started to wind down, I started to just post random thoughts on my walk on this Costco account talking about other stuff, you know. Uh, and I play a lot of music. I live in Portland, Oregon. I moved out here to play music and ended up in the local DIY scene. It's where I met my wife, it's where I met most of my friends out here. They all play in bands too. I'm in a basement right now that is a practice space for multiple bands because it's in my wife and I's basement. Um, and it's surrounded by guitars and basses that are all owned by my wife and a drum kit. That's mine. Uh, but I do play b bass and drums and all that stuff, and I play some music, and I wanted to talk not necessarily about making music. Uh I didn't really necessarily want to talk about my own music, uh, which I'll you know get into in a second or whatever. But uh I just wanted to talk about my experience of like playing in bands, because I I don't think I have a ton to say about making music. I make music that I really enjoy. Again, if you don't know this, the name Smiling Strange is one, a reference to the theme song from Pete and Pete. But two, this has been my band name since high school. Whenever I release music that is my own music, I've released it under the name Smiling Strange. Uh, because I thought that'd be a cool band name. And that band never really took off. I've released eight albums. I really like all eight of those albums, but I didn't know how to promote them. I didn't really know how to get them out there, and they are very weird, so they're not, you know, marketable. Uh, but I like them, I enjoy them thoroughly. Someday I'm gonna do like a little album uh commentary over each album where I just talk about like what I was thinking about when I was making that album. Little I like it as a director's commentary. I'll probably start doing those soon. Those might genuinely just be for me. Uh, but at the time I was like, I didn't really want to promote my own music, I wanted to promote stuff that I knew about because what I've learned from the fantasy football TikToks is that when you try to sell something to people, they turn you out. They tune you out, they turn you off, they go on to the next thing. Uh, if you give them information for free, if you do that enough, you may earn enough of their trust that you can then ask them to check out a song or you know, check out their fantasy football app and sign up for that. But like you have to give away stuff first. My theory on this is that uh everybody watches so many short form videos, they've gotten very good at intuitively picking up on whether or not somebody is being genuine or if somebody is being, you know, uh if they're trying to sell you something. Like in the same way that if you're a millennial, you know where the pop-up ads are, and your parents don't know where the pop-up ads are. I think that people that watch a lot of these short form videos now natively kind of recognize what is an advertisement versus what is genuinely somebody uh, you know, offering advice. I can't remember the guy's name. He's very, very big on TikTok and Instagram. Uh, he's an author, he writes a bunch of books, but he makes a bunch of TikToks that are just things he found interesting. He like talks about, you know, this social trend or this instance of a mysterious disappearing body or something like that. Like just stuff that he finds interesting. He does a little deep dive, he presents it to you, he has his face in the corner, and then if you click on his profile, you'll see that he's an author trying to sell a book. And every once in a while, every like 10th reel or TikTok, he'll say, Hey, by the way, go check out my book, please. Uh, but all this information he gives away for free. That's what I learned from the fantasy football thing. If I asked people, when I told people, I have a solution to your problem, please check out my app, nobody wanted to listen to it. If I said this is what the problem is, let's diagnose the problem, that's when people would listen. You know, if I gave them fantasy football advice, that's when they would listen. So that's what I learned is that you have to give things away. And what I did when I started posting under Costco, uh, which was my TikTok account, because I didn't want to post on Instagram, because I didn't want any of my friends to know that I was making short-form videos for the most part. But when I started doing that, I started talking about all right, how did I get involved with a local music scene, you know? And how did I start playing shows? Because I remember a time in my life where I thought that was impossible. I thought that was just something that was like very, very difficult to do. I thought it was a million steps away. And the biggest thing that I remember learning from getting involved in the local DIY scene was how much easier it was than I thought it was to find people to play music with, to find friends that like very similar music, uh, and to like get involved with different bands to get your band out there playing shows and how to book shows, where the shows are. It all kind of came down to the same thing. You just got to go to shows. If you want to play music live in your local scene, whatever that looks like, you have to go to all these little venues and go to shows. When my wife and I first met, it was because we went to a bunch of different shows. I met her because I went to a Halloween cover show, not cover show, Halloween uh house party that had a show, a band playing in the garage, right? And I went alone to the show because I just wanted to go see them them play. Turns out the band, the bass player of the band, is now my wife. That is how I met her. You know, I'm not alone in that. There's a lot of people I know that have met people through this. Uh, and not just, you know, partners, they met a lot of friends, they met people that have very interesting takes on music, that write really interesting songs, that can plan a tour. All these people congregate at shows, and if you just keep showing up to these things, if you just keep going, so many different things happen. You make yourself known to an extent, you find yourself in these low stress hangout environments where you can say hi to people, you can talk to them, you know you kind of already share something in common. The fact that you're at this show that maybe 10 other people are at, you already share a lot in common, but going from zero to like actual friend to like group chat friend status, that takes a lot of like small interactions. You think of how you made your friends in like school, you sat next to them for a semester, and through the act of just sitting down next to them, the ability to like be there and not talk to them for a day, that you didn't have to be friends with them all the time, that allowed you guys to be friends, right? This is how you know normal social interactions work, but it's very hard to do that as an adult. Most Adults will tell you it's really hard to make friends, mostly because the only attempts people have are these events that are designed to like create friends. You know, it's like you join like a kickball league or something like that, and it's kind of awkward. And the awkwardness is that like you have to get all these small little touches as you kind of vet each other and see if you're actually going to be friends, if it's gonna work out or whatever. Uh, shows kind of resolve that because you go to these shows, you start playing, you start seeing bands that you really like, and you start seeing people that like those bands too, and now you kind of have something in common. And uh the other part of it is like if it's a DIY scene where people are putting house shows on, if the shows are kind of not well attended, these are bands that are just getting their feet wet, they're just trying to like establish themselves in a local scene. Uh they'll recognize that there's something that you recognize in people that show up to a lot of shows that is like they really genuinely love this. They're not in this for other reasons. The people that get into a music scene because they want you to listen to their band, right? Uh those people tend to fall away pretty quick because there's no money in this, and there's not really any fame in this, and it's not a great way to like become an overnight success is playing house shows in like whatever local music scene it is. Versus the people that just genuinely feel like they want to give something back, they wanna host a show, they want to clean up after a show, you know, they want to play bass in somebody else's band, they want to do posters, they want to hang up posters, they want to start their own label, they want to design t-shirts, they just want to hear good music and support a band that otherwise might not have anybody else at the show, and they're gonna sit there and have a really good time and then tell their friends. So the next show, instead of it being for five people, it's for 15 people. Those people that keep showing up over and over and over again, uh, you know that they believe in the community of local scenes as much as they believe in, you know, their own band, if they do have a band or something like that. And those people tend to weed out over time or whatever. Like the more that people would show up to these things, the more that you tend to trust them as you know, people that are are trying to help out a local music scene. That's what I know, right? That's the thing that I started. I wanted to start talking about on TikToks was like how to get involved in a local music scene. So I made a little video. Uh, the first one that like popped off when I was talking about music, not necessarily popped off, but did okay, was just made a video where I said join a band and I told about the story of me being 25, thinking, like, all right, well, this is my last chance to play even one decent show. So I'm gonna move to Portland, Oregon, and I'm gonna try to make it work. And if I can play one good show, then I can like put the guitar away and retire from music and be okay, which is wild because that's over 10 years ago now, and I've played so many shows that would have qualified back then as that one good show, but that was genuinely my thought process. Like, I need to do this now or it's just gonna weigh on me forever. Uh, and the the point of the video was like, I came out here to try to make it as a musician, and I kind of failed at that. Like, I've never made any money off of this. I still play in plenty of show bands. Right now, the biggest one is the band Pile Up. Go check out that album, by the way. Really, really good album. I play drums on it, uh, but you know, Nathan, who wrote all the songs, he'll say that he wrote them all with a band. We all know that Nathan wrote all the songs. Uh, it's a phenomenal album, it's really, really good. I don't know how to promote our own music, but if you like me, go check out Pile Up. They're awesome. But I've played in a bunch of other bands in town or whatever, uh, but I never really made it as a professional thing. In fact, these reels where I talk about music are far and away the most successful music-related thing that I've ever done. By far. Not even remotely close. This is so much more successful than anything I did musically, which is wild. But yeah, I made this video about joining a band. Another one that was early on that I really liked to kind of show you that like I didn't really know what the formula was going to be. I I I made this thing work on this TikTok account that nobody knew about until I started to get stuff that's kind of tracked uh by just throwing things at the wall. This is what I do when I try to figure something out. Is like uh the phrase is you let a thousand flowers bloom, right? You just throw stuff out there, and when something sticks, you run with it as far as you can take it until you can find the next thing. Uh so I was making videos like kind of talking about bands, kind of talking about sports, uh and I got a little bit of traction on the join a band thing, and then I made a got a little traction again on another video, just me walking around talking about how hard it is to play a show where no one shows up, you know. Uh that I've been doing this for 10 years now, and it's you know, I will you have to play shows that nobody came to. I've played shows with my wife to just her parents, they were the only people that showed up at the bar, and it's the most embarrassing thing you'll ever fucking do. And it hurts. It's like it makes you feel like you will walk away from some of those shows being like, why the fuck did I do this? This is so much time and effort that I've put into this. Why did I do this? And it hurts, but you know, you get better at it. Anyone that's played music, this is like the uh you know, trial by fire that we all relate with. If I know anybody that's been playing for a couple of years, you could talk to them about like, hey, when was the last time you played a show to literally nobody? And they'll make jokes about it, and you know, tragedy plus time always equals comedy or whatever. But that like even now, I st it still bugs me to play a show with no people. It really it does, even though I know that the feeling will go away eventually, every time it happens, I still kind of go like, what am I doing? What should I should stop doing this? Jesus. Um, and I that video did a little bit of traction. Um, and that was cool. I I enjoyed that. I still wasn't posting anything on uh I think I ended up posting those videos on Instagram eventually. Uh it wasn't until uh I made a video where I called Billy Corgan a dork, essentially, right? I made this video that I put on TikTok that was like uh Billy Corgan's the only uncool rock star, right? That he's a rock star. He achieved everything a rock star could ever achieve, and yet everyone still finds him to be kind of an uncool guy. Uh that that was the first video that like really feels like a smiling strange video because it's got the song in the background. I'm talking about this thing that's kind of tangentially related to the song, and it's got a bit of a hot take. A lot of people like to say that I do hot takes. I really don't think they're hot takes because I feel like a hot take is something you say to get a reaction out of people. I have hot takes, but I genuinely think that there is some sort of insecurity to Billy Corgan's public persona that actually like this is the part that was very confusing, I guess, to some people, is that like I think that's what makes Billy Corgan cool. Is that he isn't cool, that he is an insecure guy, that there is something genuine about his uh off-puttingness that keeps him from being Kirk O'Bain. I think that's what makes him interesting. I think there's been a million cool rockstars. There's one Billy Corgan. That's far more interesting to me. That's what the point of that video was. But you know, people related to it. They like when I make fun of Billy Corgan. I have learned that uh and thank God because I have a lot of thoughts about Billy Corgan. He's one of my favorite musicians of all time, one of the most important people. But anyway, that was that video of uh, you know, uh, that that started to feel like a smiling strange video. And that was the first one that got big enough on TikTok that I was like, all right, this has to do with music. My Instagram account at the time was called Smiling Strange. It was originally Kai Guy on the fly, because I made an Instagram account uh to literally just follow my sister, who's 10 years younger than me. And you know, I made a Kai Guy on the fly because at the time she was younger and it was it embarrassed her that I would call myself that. And I kept it for a while, and then after a long time, I was like, well, I want to use this to try to get some shows around town, so I'm gonna change it to my band name. It was only like two years before I started posting videos, and so I was like, all right, this this page is kind of tangentially related to my music. Um, I'll make these music posts that I've started doing, I can put those on here. It's popular enough on TikTok that I'm not super embarrassed to put it on an account that my actual friends will follow. Because at the time, if you ever make these videos or whatever, there's gonna come a point where you have to show them to your friends, or you have to put them on something that your friends are gonna see, and they are gonna know the single most embarrassing thing in the entire world, which is you are now making videos. The act of making videos is wildly embarrassing. Every time I'm walking around and somebody starts walking at me in the other direction, I have to cut whatever I'm doing and just reshoot the video as soon as they're gone, because I cannot have somebody watch me do it. Um, I can do that if I'm in front of my friends now, now that I have a following and they're all interested in it and it's been validated by the numbers or whatever. But at the beginning, I was like terrified that anyone's gonna watch these things and think that they're really lame and unpopular. And that very first video uh did not do great. It actually did significantly worse than uh it did on TikTok to the point where I was like, all right, well, I guess this is just something that will work on TikTok. I'm not really popular on Instagram. Uh, I'm gonna have to let this thing go. But I like I almost stopped posting after like the second one because I can't remember what the second one was, but it didn't do uh great at the beginning. I'm now scrolling through my own videos if you're watching on the video here, because I want to go back to the beginning and just start like scrolling through my old videos. I have 500 of these things now, which is wild because at the time, after two, I literally almost stopped posting on Instagram because I thought, all right, well, this is just a TikTok thing, it's a little too embarrassing. I don't really want to embarrass myself on this account forever, and it's not, you know, that important. At the time, I remember thinking, like, I am just doing these videos because it's fun, I like making little videos, but ultimately I'm gonna go back to being a fantasy football poster. You know, my friends knew that I'd posted about fantasy football, but uh none of them play fantasy football, so they didn't really care. It wasn't impressive or anything like that. Uh, and so I started posting these little the what's it called? I post the the Billy Corrigan video. That one does okay. I'm still scrolling here, guys. This is how long it takes to scroll through this thing. There's so many videos. You know how weird it is to see my different haircuts? Oh, yeah, that that's another stupid little thing. If you watch my early videos, I had really long hair, and I never really had long hair outside of the pandemic. And right when I started shooting these videos, and I cut kept it really long, in part because of indifference, it just got long enough that I'm like, ah, I don't really want to cut it. And then I remember thinking, like, I think it looks better on the videos, it's like more interesting. I look like this like bearded caveman thing. Uh, and you know, whatever. Uh I'll keep that going. And so my early videos, I have this incredible long hair, this flow, and a beard that I never grow, though I kind of look like I got it now. Usually I keep it relatively short. Uh, but it's been funny. I don't know. It's I have this like running diary now of the last eight months of my life of all the different things that I was wearing, weather and stuff like that. But yeah, anyway, first video is this Billy Corgan video. Doesn't too well do great. Got like a hundred thousand views on TikTok, got one thousand on Instagram. Next one is a video that I really liked. It's my first mountain goats video. So we're starting off with Smashing Pumpkins and the Mountain Goats. Uh, and that's on There Will Be No Divorce and like the Economy of Language in John Darnial songs. And oh man, I loved that video on TikTok. That's another one that got like 80,000 views on TikTok, got like a thousand on Instagram. And I remember thinking at the time, like, all right, I'm just not gonna post on Instagram for whatever reason, Instagram doesn't like me, which is funny because within a couple of weeks I thought it was the it turned into the exact opposite. I stopped posting on TikTok because TikTok wasn't getting big. Uh you know, I was only getting a couple hundred views on most of the videos, and I wasn't getting any followers, and TikTok blew up. The first one being uh a video about drama mean from Modest Mouse, where I talk about America as a project to build roads from sea to shining sea, right? And that's an idea I think I got from a podcast called the Pseudoxology Podcast, which had this guy Contbot from Twitter and this guy logo deadalist from Twitter. A lot of my ideas are just repackaging stuff that they said that I thought was very interesting. I will I'll I'll admit that. I'm always like a stand on your the shoulders of giants type of guy. Uh, and I really am just repackaging other ideas in this different form. But you know, these are the things that I'm thinking about. And I I thought about like the idea of America as uh a system of roads, the idea that you could drive anywhere in America, and that's your birthright as a citizen. And drama mean uh the band that I most associate with road trips is early modest mouse. They are the sound of like driving endlessly forever on tour as a band, and I love that. And uh that's the first one that blew up on uh on Instagram. The next one was talking about range life by pavement, and that one gets like 200,000 views, and all that's to say is the big difference was TikTok was getting a lot of views. Remember that first one on fantasy football got three million views and fell apart or whatever. Uh not fell apart, it three million views, but I only got like two thousand followers within those two videos that blew up that got roughly you know 300,000 views together, and then I did a Songs Ohio one that uh that did pretty well. That first week these uh Instagram videos start popping off, and I go from 300 followers on Instagram to like 3,000 overnight, you know. It pop it went so fast. I don't know what it is about Instagram. So many people were so much more willing to follow me. I think it's like a music recommendation thing. I think people use Instagram to find music recommendations or something like that. And this is when I really hit on this formula of uh play a song in the background and just kind of talk about the song or talk about whatever is working for me. And I stumbled on that on TikTok and then just brought the better TikToks over to Instagram, and then Instagram starts taking off, and Instagram starts doing significantly better than the TikTok to the point where I didn't really like following at the time I was still posting fantasy football stuff, so I had the fantasy football TikTok, the you know, at the time it was still called Costco TikTok, where I'm posting the same stuff from Instagram, and the Instagram account, and it was just too many different accounts, and I eventually I just stopped posting on TikTok and just posted on Instagram for a couple of months, and then eventually the football season ended, so I stopped posting football content on that TikTok or whatever, and just started posting on this, and it just kept getting bigger. And the thing that it really like I don't know, I don't know if it'll surprise anybody or not. It might surprise me. It does surprise me is how many people uh were saying that my the music that I was recommending was stuff that they really enjoyed. That I had like taste in music or whatever. And I've always liked the stuff that I like, but I always just like the stuff that I like. I I've never really been in high school, all the stuff that I liked that I was listening to, nobody around me liked it at all. They hated this stuff. They were very into you know, I remember I my friends in the car listened to the high school musical soundtrack more than they listened to any of the music that I actually liked to listen to. Uh, and I never really pushed it on them. I didn't I know they didn't like it, and I could tolerate their stuff more than they could tolerate mine, so I just like kept it. It's always been a very personal, private thing to me, whatever I liked in my musical taste. And if I found anybody that liked what I liked, I was like super into it because I'm like, oh my god, thank God you can do that. Or that you like, you know, Sebedo, you like Dinosaur Jr., you like pavement, which now I'm looking at uh now when I live in Portland, Oregon, I play with all these cool Portland musicians. Now it went the other way where all of them know so many more bands than I know. They so know so many cooler bands. Everybody is always showing me from people I just know, they're always asking me, have you heard of this band? I'm always saying no, and then I listen to it, and it's awesome. Uh so you know, I I went from I don't think anybody likes any of my music to, well, most people like my music, but I'm not really like at the cutting edge of taste or anything like that. Most of the music that I listen to since I met my wife is the stuff that she showed me, you know? Uh, and so it was really like weird to me for people to say, like, I like your style of music, I like your taste in music. These you've turned me on to a bunch of stuff, uh, which is great. I think that's awesome. I I'm very happy and helpful, or I'm very helpful. I'm very happy that people found this helpful. I don't want to underestimate that I think that that is like really cool and I really enjoy that. Uh it is just weird to me, you know, because I view it as like I'm not really uh I don't think I have the best taste in music. I just have a taste that fits me, you know? I really like uh lo-fi music. I really like indie rock from a specific time period, or indie rock that feels like it's from a specific time period. Sometimes I like stuff that's super weird for some reason just because it's it's weird and it hit me at the right time. Uh that song by the garden, Orange County Punk Rock Legend, I listen to non-stop for like a month, and it sounds nothing like anything else I listened to, and I fully understand why nobody would like it. I don't really know why I like it that much. That's part of the reason why I like it so much. Uh, but you know, I started getting comments from people that first couple of weeks, first couple of months, posting under Smiling Strange and getting people, possibly like yourself, to comment and write things about how song was really important to them. People were DMing me uh from all over the country and all over the world. I got people from you know Europe and New Zealand and stuff like that. Shout out to uh Harrison Waugh, I don't know if that's how you say his last name, but he is uh an influencer who lives in Australia, and we did a whole bunch of stuff together about New Zealand music where we tried to figure out a way to like pass videos back and forth to each other. That was a really fun little collaboration that we did a couple of uh weeks ago. Uh and he just he commented something in my DMs, I think. I don't know. And I just I lived in New Zealand for eight months during doing study abroad in uh college, and I just wanted to talk to somebody from New Zealand. So, like, and then you know, we started getting along. He's a really cool guy. If you haven't followed him, go follow him. He makes great content, he's got great sense uh uh of music taste and all that fun stuff, and just a really chill guy. You know, that's like that's a wild thing that happened from this. Uh, I ended up writing like an essay for a student magazine, I think, in I can't remember what European country it's from, but like I've written it, I sent it to them. I don't think it's been published yet. I'll probably share it when it gets published. Uh, but like stuff like that just started happening overnight. And I went from nobody knows who I am, outside of the people that you know know me in most people even in the Portland music scene that know me kind of know me as like that guy who's married to my wife, who is the far bigger musician in the music scene. She's in more bands, she's much more talented. People think she's a better musician because they have good taste and they know that she's a better musician, all that fun stuff. But I like went from that guy, the like talkative husband of the cool, you know, female guitarist or whatever, to this guy that you know now is getting uh messages from people all over the world, and it it was uh dude, it was wild, man. I I highly recommend it to anybody. Um, I don't even know what to make of it, I just want to say it out loud, right? That there's so many things about this process where it's like I'll say something just because I'm like that was a thing that happened to me, and I found it really interesting. And uh it sounds like bragging when I say it out loud. I feel like I'm bragging, or I feel like I'm trying to be impressive, or I feel like I'm trying to get a reaction out of somebody. But in the reality is a lot of times it's like it's just something that happened to me, and I think it's neat or something, and I want to say it because I it doesn't even feel real at this point, you know. Uh it doesn't feel real that you know, I think uh oh, a million and a half people on Instagram watch my reels a month, or a million and a half people view it, or something like that. So probably not that many people. That's how many views it gets. Over a million a month, and it has been over a million a month for over six months, which is insane to me. That is really insane. If you think about it, I remember after the first like month or two thinking like the amount of people that have seen my face and heard me speak before the last like two months of posting on on TikTok and Instagram or whatever was you know, this percentage is like you know, maybe it was like a million people total, which I don't think it was. It was probably closer to like uh maybe like a hundred thousand people have ever heard me talk before then. That's a really high number, a hundred thousand people. And since then, it's probably you know what, three million people. I uh I'm assuming the 1.3 million is a lot of people just watching stuff over and over again. So, like realistically, what three million people have now seen my face and heard me talk at least one or two words. Uh so like if you were to do a pie chart of the amount of people that have seen my face and heard me speak, the sliver of before I started posting online versus the giant Pac-Man of after I started posting online is wild to me, right? It's almost like I only kind of exist in the last three months to the majority of the people that know who I am. And that is really strange. I don't really know what to make of that. Um, it is just something that I've gotten better at digesting. It's kind of why I wanted to make this podcast now. Is like, you know, I don't want to forget this feeling because when it first started happening, it was like living in a dream. You just kind of wander around uh aimlessly uh getting notifications. I gave myself carpal tunnel the amount of times I checked my phone. I am just getting to the point now where I'm like trying to get better at uh limiting the amount of use, limiting the amount of screen time I have. Uh, because for the first couple months, I'm like, all right, I want this thing to grow. I'm just gonna let the phone tell me when I'm gonna use the phone. And I've become wildly addicted to this thing. It's um I I'm on it like six or seven hours a day, which is you know, now it's getting to the point where maybe I'm wasting my life a little bit. There's probably an easier way to do this. Um, but yeah, anyway, I just uh I I kind of stumbled into. This beautiful little niche here where I can walk around my neighborhood, a walk that I was already going on, talking about stuff that I find interesting. You know, my favorite ones are the ones where I talk about something that it's just like this is a thought that I had, and here's a song in the background. If I can relate the two together, that is really, really nice for me. A lot of times, uh, I'll think of the thought first, I'll start saying the thought, and then I will add a song that I think fits the background really well. Uh or, you know, sometimes I'm just listening to songs and the thought will pop up, and that's the only reason why that song is attached and people start to read into it in a weird way. Um, but yeah, I think uh some of my early favorites, I really liked the Duster Inside Out one where uh I talk about I think I had this one pinned for a while just because it was one of my favorites. Um where I mentioned that like Duster is like uh uh a hyperstition, which is this Nick Land term. He's sort of a weird internet philosopher. Um that I can give you a full critique on because I I think his idea that capital is this uh concept from the future sent into the past to create itself. Um there's you know, I I have my critiques of that. But the idea of it is interesting. Like the idea that if you were going to invent an iPad, the first thing you have to do is write a science fiction story in which somebody uses an iPad. I think that's really cool, and I loved tying that into Dusters Inside Out and the band duster being like a band from the future sent to the past to create the future in which the band duster could be popular. Um, that was just a beautiful little piece of providence where I could stitch together a song that I really, really like and a weird philosophical concept that I really really like. Um but yeah, I just I don't know, I lucked into a formula where I can just kind of talk, wander around and talk, and I wouldn't have to edit, I wouldn't have to do any of the stuff I don't want to do. Um I realized a couple of things early on. Uh, number one, there are certain bands that I can talk about and it gets more attention. Uh David Berman of the Silver Jews, Pavement is a band that I can kind of always push that button, and uh The Smashing Pumpkins have the majority of my like most listened to songs. Um Cameron Winter, huge one that I could just I whenever I talk about Cameron Winter, people really enjoy. I don't know. I think it just gets stuck in the algorithm. This is the big thing I learned about the algorithm is that you know you can push these buttons. I think this is I've talked to a couple other content creators about this, where it's like it becomes very obvious once you start doing it that there are certain buttons you could push, and that the algorithm wants you to push those buttons as much as humanly possible. And you have to actively make decisions to make less popular videos so that you don't just become, you know, somebody that is reacting to the algorithm so that my boss is not an inhumane robot that just wants me to pump out pavement takes over and over and over again, or use the exact like I'd probably be popular if I just kind of kept saying the stuff that worked over and over again with the exact same couple of songs that are are far more popular. But you know, that's not why I do this. I uh I'm doing this because I want it to be something. This is uh, you know, maybe pretentious, maybe totally out of left field, maybe not something that is even achievable. But the idea is I am trying to do something where if you out there as an audience member, if you're watching short form content every day, I want there to be at least a couple of things that you see that make you think there's an actual human being behind this, there's some human connection here. That there is that the internet is not just the algorithms, you know, that it's not just the thing the internet wants to be to make money, that it is still a force for connecting people across time and space, right? And the reason that I do that is because of the people that I follow on like Twitter, certain Reddit threads I've hit up, YouTube videos and stuff like that. People that I really like, every once in a while, the internet gives me this sense of connection that is very human and very real. And I always kind of thought it was like, well, these people did it on Twitter or something like that. Uh I don't really need to do that on Twitter because that already exists, these people are already there. But short form video, this is the wild west. There's less people on here, you know. There people have just figured out what works to sell stuff on short form video, so now there's a need for creating kind of something that feels somewhat genuine. And I stumbled into something that I think does that, and I want to figure out how to do that more. It does mean though, but I also wanted to succeed, I wanted to do well. I talked about this in a reel recently. I really like it when I make a video about Billy Corgan that does a hundred thousand views or something like that. I don't want anyone to think that I'm one of those people that's pretending I don't get a kick out of making a very popular video, right? It's great, it genuinely feels good. It makes me feel like a good guy and that I'm good at what I'm doing. It's an ego thing. 100%. I'm upfront and honest about that. Uh, but I also want to talk about bands that I really like that nobody knows about, you know? Bands that are are much less popular that I just think are really, really cool. I've done a couple videos on Bedhead because they're one of my favorite bands, and none of those videos do well for whatever reason, which is wild to me because I feel like Bedhead music would be so good as the background music on so many different reels, but whatever. I digress. I have a bunch of friends that make a lot of music, right? And I have struggled to find ways to promote their music that I love. I genuinely like it. You know, I don't put anything out there that I haven't listened to a couple of times on my own because I genuinely like it. I'm not, I don't do that kind of promotion. I I I I don't know. I no one's no one's paid me enough money to do it yet. Like, I guess if somebody paid me a bunch of money, I would change my tone on that. But right now no one has. Uh so all the music I put out of my friends' music, it's music that I genuinely, genuinely enjoy. But I know that when I do that, it's automatically gonna do worse than anything else. So actually, one of the things you'll you'll kind of notice this, if I think I have an idea that's sort of independent of the song, that it's an idea that could be attached to any song, I will try to put a lesser-known band on those ones if I think it's a really good idea. I've done this with like I remember there's a How Strange, the one I've discovered this on was a How Strange It Is uh song. They're the guys that do the intro and outro music to this podcast. And I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was some tweet, and I I will sometimes have a tweet in the background. I'll use the uh the green screen for that because it it's nice to have that as a point of reference. And I didn't talk about the How Strange It is song at all, but I I made it about this tweet and my thoughts on that tweet itself. And it's one of the highlights of making this entire of making all these videos was multiple people commented on that video because it got up there, it got like 40, 50,000 views or something like that, and a couple people commented, yo, this song is really good. Who sings this? Which one very funny, the name of the song and the name of the band is in every single video. And uh, if you have ever asked me like who who is this song, trust me, you're not the only one. So many people do it, and I always have to like kind of sheepishly be like, Oh, it's like uh it's actually in on the video. If you just watch the video, it's right there. Um, but like that was that was a big moment for me because it made me realize, like, oh, if I want to promote my friend's music, I might have to kind of be sneaky about it. I might have to make videos that would be watched and and paid attention to otherwise. Um, but you know, whatever. That's that's part of the game. That's what I that's what I'm trying to uh say with all this, is like I want to play the game. You know, I want to play the game, I want to have videos that get a lot of views and that people really like. I want to play the game in that like I want to promote my friend's music, but I'm not gonna sit here and tell you, oh my god, it's so annoying that you guys won't watch these videos or that the algorithm won't pick up those videos. The algorithm's the algorithm, it's telling you the rules of the game. I just have to figure out a way to play them. And so that's one of my things that I I still am struggling with is like how to get more promotion of bands out there. It is a big reason why I started this podcast, right? The reason that I'm making a podcast today, there's a couple of big ones. Uh, number one, um, I wanted to get on other people's podcasts, but uh it's really hard. Even with followers on on Instagram, it was really, really hard to get on other people's podcasts. People don't really care for me that much. I'm not that big a name. I haven't been doing this very long. I'm not gonna pull in that much of a draw. Um, but it's really easy to get people to come on my podcast. If I have a podcast and people want to come on that, they're much more willing to say yes. So that was number one. Uh number two, it's like I I needed to figure out a way to start advertising this fantasy football app. And doing it on the reels is really, really hard. Um, because it's not in line with what people follow me for. Uh, I am gonna have to start making fantasy football reels soon. You guys are gonna have to deal with that. Uh, that's that's the nature of the beast here. But having my own podcast that a couple of people would listen to, now it's up to like 200 listeners an episode, which is massive for me, absolutely massive. Um, but now I can read do ad reads for my fantasy football app, and this starts to tie all this stuff in together, all this work that I'm doing on this app, and you know, all this work I'm doing on building this brand of Smiling Strange. It's all getting kind of tied into one neat package here on the podcast. Uh, and number three, it allows me to talk to bands that I think are really, really cool and give them a little bit more promotion, you know? Uh I got to talk to Little Kid, Kenny from Little Kid, one of my favorite bands of all time, and I just they're wildly unknown. And I don't know if they're ever gonna get known. I don't know if it's ever gonna break out, but I did a podcast with them. I did a podcast with the Stillwater guys. Um, you know, nope, Shallow Water. I've done this so many times. The name of the band is Shallow Water, it's not Stillwater. Stillwater is the band from Almost Famous. Shallow Water. I did a podcast with the Shallow Water guys. That was one of my favorite that was my favorite album of last year. And just being able to like give those guys a little bit more space to talk and try to figure out a way to promote the podcast more so that more people will listen to them talk and get more attention on some of the smaller bands out there. That is something I'm really uh I think is really important. I think, you know, the most music is a waterfall, right? It doesn't go backwards. A band today cannot influence a band from 1967, but a band from 1967 can influence a band of today, right? So as long as we keep passing the buck forward, as long as you even if you have all the music you want to listen to in your life, and some people, you know, if you're my age, that might be the case. You might just not have that much room for a lot of new music. Keep trying to find something new that's happening right now so you can stay involved with this river going downstream, right? That's important to me. I feel like you know, I have this platform now for the first time after years and years and years of trying to be involved in music. I really want to try to figure out ways to uh get some attention on some of the smaller bands. So I don't know if you're listening to this, uh when I do do a reel with a lesser known band, if you like and save those ones, it helps the algorithm. That's if you like me, if you like what I'm doing, uh do that for me. That that's a huge, it's a huge bonus, it's a huge boost. Um but yeah, I don't know. So I wanted to make this as a little 15,000 subscriber, follower, whatever. Uh thank you. Because ultimately this is a big thank you. But I also just want to like there's an element of this project, right? All the videos that I'm doing that is uh a diary. Because every day I'm making a little video, and you can see my face, you can see me talk. What am I thinking about? What am I talking about right now? And you know, but they are these sporadic little messages, and they're not really written as a diary entry. This is much more of me kind of writing a diary diary entry. I am trying to put a flag in the ground and say, hey, I accomplished something. I got to 15,000 followers. That is a really big deal for me. I wanted this and I got it. So I get to feel good about that for a little bit. I'll go back to thinking it's nothing in a little bit, but you gotta let yourself feel good about accomplishments, or you're only ever gonna hear the negatives and the negative voice in your head. So you have to like try to balance that out. This is my attempt to do that. Um, it's a way, hopefully, to say thank you, but ultimately it's kind of a shitty thank you to sit here and talk about myself and all the things that I love about me. That's a terrible way to say thank you. So I I don't necessarily I do want to say thank you. I don't think this is a great way for me to do it, but you know, whatever. And finally, uh ultimately in the next couple of weeks, in the next couple of months, right? I am gonna be putting more of a concentrated effort into trying to get people to sign up to play this fantasy football game. I know it has nothing to do with why most of you have ever followed me. I am just saying, from the bottom of my heart, right? I am aware of how stupid this is as a marketing plan. I am aware of how incongruent this is with that. I am also aware of how much time and effort the time and effort I've put into this pales in comparison to the time and effort I've put into this stupid app. Uh and I just I need people to sign up. I need people to play it. That's all I need. So if you have any interest, even if you have no interest whatsoever, and you just want to help me out with anything, please go sign up for that. I I don't get a lot of chances to sit here and say, like, hey, I have put out a lot of content for free. I've done a ton of work for no financial reward whatsoever. And I need you guys to do one thing for me, and that is to sign up for this app. That's pretty much it. That's that's really the honestly, all things said and done. That's the ultimate point of this podcast, of everything I'm doing, is that at some points I need to be able to sit there and go, hey, I am trying my hardest to give you the content that you guys want. I'm pouring myself into these videos, into these ideas, into whatever I think is good that you might enjoy. I have gotten nothing back out of it. The only thing I'm asking of you right now is please go sign up to play. So that's what I'm asking. I'm asking you to do please go sign up to play, even if you don't intend to play, right? We're actually capped at the amount of leagues that we can have this year. So not everyone is going to get a chance to play. But if you sign up to play, I can show people how much more like how much interest there is in this. And when I show people how much interest there is in this, then maybe they can pay me for this, right? Then maybe I can sell the idea. Maybe I can sell the company. Maybe the company can start making money at some point. And if it does that, now I have money coming in, and I don't have to sell what I'm doing on the reels. Otherwise, I will have to get to a point of either I need to figure out a way to make money off of this or I need to stop doing it. That is the honest to God's truth. It's not a fun truth, it's not something I necessarily want to say, but like I said, this is a lot of work. It's been a ton of work, it's been incredibly rewarding work. I've enjoyed every minute of it. I just I have one thing I need to ask you guys, and that is please sign up. Please sign up. That's it. That's all I got. I hope you enjoyed this. Uh, I hope you enjoy everything I do. I have a bunch more podcasts coming up down the line, uh, and more content that's gonna come. I'm gonna keep pumping stuff at you guys. Uh, but I just wanted to say thank you. I wanted to say I think that I am very proud of myself for what I've accomplished. I guess I have to say that. And I wanted to say, please, please, please, if you like anything I've done, if you like anything I've done, please go sign up. Clubhouse, K-L-U-B-H-O-U-S-E dot g. Um, that'd be very helpful. Anyway, um yeah, I I I I I don't really know these solo podcasts are the weirdest experience of my entire life. I just sit here and I feel like I'm rambling. When I listen back to it, it makes more coherent sense than I thought. But when I'm done, when I'm at this moment right now, I think, oh my god, what did I just do? Why did I just do that for an hour? Anyway, it's been an hour. Um, thank you to How Strange It Is for lending me this music, uh, for letting me use it as the intro and outro of the podcast. Uh, How Strange It Is, go follow them on Instagram. Uh, tell them I sent you so that I feel like I've done something good for them, you know, because this song is phenomenal. It's a it's a phenomenal song. Album's coming out soon, but it's phenomenal as a podcast intro outro. And I can't wait for you guys to hear their album when it comes out in a couple of months, and then this song goes on and you go, oh, I already know that one. That's the podcast on it. And then you get to hear the rest of the song. It's gonna be great. Anyway, thank you very much.