We're jamming with our boss boyfriends, Paul Jarvis and Jason Zook! We're talking about all things digital detoxes, publishing a book, and monetizing podcasts—plus all the silly tangents you can expect when you get us all together.
This episode is sponsored by Freshbooks Cloud Accounting and Incorporate.com.
Get full show notes for this episode here
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Follow Paul on Instagram: @pjrvs
Follow Jason on Instagram: @jasondoesstuff
Follow Being Boss on Instagram: @beingbossclub
Follow Being Boss on Twitter: @beingbossclub
Follow Being Boss on Facebook: facebook.com/beingbossclub
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Listen to brand new episodes of Being Boss on the main feed >>
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Listen to more Being Boss shows on our website, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Follow Being Boss on Instagram: @beingbossclub
Join the Being Boss Community: beingboss.club/community
We're jamming with our boss boyfriends, Paul Jarvis and Jason Zook! We're talking about all things digital detoxes, publishing a book, and monetizing podcasts—plus all the silly tangents you can expect when you get us all together.
This episode is sponsored by Freshbooks Cloud Accounting and Incorporate.com.
Get full show notes for this episode here
---
Follow Paul on Instagram: @pjrvs
Follow Jason on Instagram: @jasondoesstuff
Follow Being Boss on Instagram: @beingbossclub
Follow Being Boss on Twitter: @beingbossclub
Follow Being Boss on Facebook: facebook.com/beingbossclub
---
Listen to brand new episodes of Being Boss on the main feed >>
---
Listen to more Being Boss shows on our website, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Follow Being Boss on Instagram: @beingbossclub
Join the Being Boss Community: beingboss.club/community
Hello, and welcome to being boss,
Emily Thompson:a podcast for creative entrepreneurs. I'm Emily Thompson.
Kathleen Shannon:And I'm Kathleen Shannon.
Paul Jarvis:I'm Paul.
Jason Zook:I'm Jason will be and we
Unknown:almost
Kathleen Shannon:Hey guys, today we're talking to Paul Jarvis and Jason Zook. Both of them are incredibly generous with their gifts of knowledge. And so we're just here talking about building businesses and making it work. We mentioned a lot of resources in today's episode, so be sure to check out our show notes at being boss clubs, so that you can click through and see everything that we're talking about. So just the other day, I was doing some of the end of the month admin that you've got to do as a creative entrepreneur. And I noticed on my freshbooks dashboard, that I was just $1,000 shy of hitting my monthly goal. And you guys, it got me in gear. with the click of a button. I sent out some invoices, I got paid within hours and I met my goals. So fresh books, cloud accounting not only makes getting paid easier, it's going to help you reach your goals by giving you the status of your business at a glance. Try fresh books cloud accounting for free by going to freshbooks comm slash being boss and enter being boss in the How did you hear about us section? Hey, boyfriends,
Paul Jarvis:girlfriends,
Jason Zook:boss, girlfriends, with a Z obviously, on the end,
Emily Thompson:obviously, so good to see you guys. I feel like we haven't been in the same Zoom Room together in quite a moment.
Paul Jarvis:At least two weeks. It
Emily Thompson:hasn't been only two weeks.
Paul Jarvis:Yeah, I think it's been two.
Kathleen Shannon:I know like we have time is how long? We had a casual get together. And I was like, we need to stop talking and save it for the podcast.
Jason Zook:Before we go any further at all. Emily? Yes. How's the Moroccan poof? Because I looked at those and almost bought one. And I need to know if it's worth it.
Emily Thompson:I love my Moroccan poof, for sure.
Unknown:Where'd you get it from? Um,
Emily Thompson:David's grandmother got it. David's mother actually not grandmother got it for me for my birthday last year. So I
Jason Zook:store I can find David's grandmother
Emily Thompson:perhaps.etsy.com. I can ask her where she got it. She's here visiting, I will
Jason Zook:was curious. I was looking at them. That's very, for everybody listening, it's gonna be great, because they're gonna totally get value out of that.
Emily Thompson:Yes, for sure.
Kathleen Shannon:Let's talk about this digital detox Jason,
Jason Zook:um, one of my favorite things that I do these days, which is taking 30 days off of social media. I can't remember exactly where this stemmed from. But I think Paul and I talked about it in the first season invisible office hours of just like, you know, feeling the weight of negativity that you get from scrolling through Facebook, or you know, someone yelling at you on Twitter about something and you're just like, I didn't want to see this first thing when I woke up or whatever. And so really, it just stemmed from what if I just took a break? Well, we started with superdraft. Like, we're just gonna quit everything like, okay, we'll back a little bit. Let me just take a break for 30 days. And so in October 2014, I took my first social media, detox, everything, delete all the apps off the phone, don't log in anything. And it was super difficult for the first two weeks, like I felt like a crack addict, like I would pick up my phone when I was driving, swipe it open, my thumb would go to where the Facebook icon was, and there was nothing there. And like, that's when you realize, honestly, like, you've built an addictive habit. And I was really like, happy to break that habit. And so fast forward now, three or four years, however many years that is, from that I've done six of these. So I basically taken half of a year off of social media in this time. And it is every single time I do it, the best thing that I do for my mental clarity, for getting things like in order in my business with all these things I have going on, and also just gives me time to like, enjoy, like look up and enjoy everything and really to go like why am I doing all of this stuff? You know, like why do I sit on the computer all day? What am I building? And if it's not to have more time to do the looking up in the doing things, then what's it all for? So yeah, it's really great. And from this last one, I actually came back and decided to unfollow everybody that I followed on Twitter to see if my because that's really been my like, my last remaining thing. I quit Facebook last year. And now it's been Twitter's, you know, with all this fucking Trump stuff. Like I just don't want to see it at all. And I try and unfollow anybody who talks about that. But still someone will like something that someone else I'm not even connected to. And now I get to see that and it just affects me. I don't want it to affect me. So that's my latest thing is now for the next two months. I'm unfollowing everyone on Twitter and just kind of keeping a journal of what that's like and sharing what the experiences. I can tell you spoiler alert, I'm second day in I will start following people again because I miss certain people 100% Paul Jarvis is one of them. Like 100% I'm like, I love those tweets and he never does any of the stupid stuff that I get mad at But friends like Jeff Sheldon from Ugh, monk, like he finds cool things. I want to find those cool things, but I'm gonna be super selective when I come back and just try and be way more intentional with it. So yeah, social media detox is I love them and very, like awesome side effect. That's the most highly trafficked article on my site bring in over 100,000 people a year to my site, when I did that the first time and wrote about it. So these are powerful things people are looking for.
Kathleen Shannon:ly love the idea of unfollowing. Everybody, I recently went through a little bit of an Instagram detox, not the same thing. I basically took off for the whole week that I went on vacation with my family to the beach, I maybe checked a little bit, but I feel like I got really good at being practicing moderation with it. I didn't fall into any rabbit holes. I maybe looked at it for 15 minutes one day, I didn't braid myself about it. It's kind of like going on a diet, right? No big deal. I was 90%. Awesome. Not looking at it. So one of the things though, that I decided to do from that was unfollow most business accounts. And I've told Emily about this before, I may have even shared this on the podcast that between being boss, my personal Instagram account and breed creative. I was following a lot of people who also had three businesses or personal account and business account. And so I was following some people up to nine times. And it was just getting to be a little bit too much. And I do enjoy scrolling Instagram. And so I just started unfollowing a lot of people, if you notice that I unfollowed you dear listener, I'm probably still following you from braid or being boss. And it's really I felt bad because it's not personal. It's just that I cannot look at anyone else selling anything else. For a while it was just starting to feel I think whenever people feel like they're working in a saturated market, it's because they're following a whole bunch of people who are selling a whole bunch of things, when in reality, maybe the market isn't as saturated as you've built it up to be in your baby feed.
Jason Zook:Not maybe it's just not Yeah, it's just in the bubble that we live in that you follow these people. And that's a that's a really good point. Like I, you those comparison traps are what you fall into, right? Like you see this person, they're doing this great thing and doing something and you immediately compare yourself to them. And that was really like the impetus for my first detox was an article that Paul shared with me by Lauren bacon, I still remember name because their last name is bacon, it's really easy to remember. And she wrote about this idea of comparison traps that like you look at that, and then all of a sudden, you see someone's winning, and you're like, why am I not winning? You know? And where am I in my journey of that, like, I shouldn't even compare myself, it's not a fair time for me to do that. Or even if it is, it then just makes you feel negative about it instead of like a positive motivation. So yeah, I think removing that stuff. And the other thing, I mean, this is the first, they're like, third day for me being in his twitter unfollowing thing. I had those hurt feelings things as well. And I was like, Man, I'm gonna hurt people's feelings, especially for me, I reassure people like way back in 2009, or 2008. I've been following those people. And so we have that. That's like our last remaining connection. And I feel bad. But then at the same time, I'm like, Listen, Bro, I unfollowed everybody. So it's not you like I unfollowed everybody, so don't feel bad about it, which was a nice, easy out for me. But I do think that there's just such a weird thing on the internet and in social media, like, Listen, if I stopped calling you or text messaging you, you wouldn't be hurt, you just know, like, I'm busy, I'm doing things. But if I am following you on social media, I must hate you. Or you're the worst person ever. And it's just a weird place. And so I want to get out of those things. Like I want to use these platforms the way I want to use them. And I don't want any stigmas or like cultural things to affect that. I agreed
Emily Thompson:I, about a year and a half ago, I dropped my phone, the beginning of December and just like smash the shit out of it like would not work at all. It was awful ish, except for the next month because I wanted to go to the Apple Store. And I'd be going around Christmas. And I was like, you know what I can do without a phone for three weeks, it'll be fine. Those are the most glorious three weeks of my life in the past 10 years, for sure is was not having a phone. And though I do have my phone back, I keep dropping it and smashing it. And this is where I find that like, I don't need to have this if I'm dropping and smashing like several $100 phone and I don't care. In fact, like it actually makes me kind of happy because I hate the thing anyway, then you probably have some bad attachments to this device that you're carrying around and all the things that it makes you do. The only thing that I feel the most attached to because I suck at answering text messages. I'm never going to call you back. I never have my ringer on nor is it on vibrate like is I just pick this up to scroll Instagram occasionally. If it weren't for Instagram, I would be a no cell phone user. That's who I would be like you'd have a landline. No, I would just have a David. He can have his cell phone because he likes it.
Jason Zook:You can have that cool light phone. I think that's what it's called. I don't remember what the URL is. But it's like a really beautiful minimal. Yeah, it's just the light phone dot com. And it's like this really well designed like simple overpriced for what it is. And all it does is just make calls and I think it holds like nine numbers in it or something. But a couple people have sent that to me over time. They're like, I feel like you'd be the guy that we use it so I'm like, the minimalist in me is like I don't need a second phone. But like they loved as well design things is like kind of want this thing you know, I can't.
Emily Thompson:This is magnetic hi looks like a little remote control on those except apparently it's a phone. This is magnificent. And this is totally what I feel like I need because I am so tired of being connected to everything and every one at all times. Like I want to walk outside and go do things and not give a shit who's posting what or who needs to get ahold of me, which drives my mother crazy, for sure. But, but I'm around I'll get with you if you need me just shoot me an email or something.
Jason Zook:I also like testing all these assumptions, though, too, right? Like just real quick. Sorry to cut you off Kathleen, but but like, does this impact my business? And that was really the like the thing for me from the beginning. I was like, well, social media, like, yeah, you can't judge the ROI. But you're there and you're branding and you're interacting. Like I've made more money since detaching myself from being on social media all the time than I did before when I was on it every single day trying to do something. And it's because you get all that mental clarity backwards, because you have all the extra time to actually talk to customers, not in a place where they're talking to all these other people. But like in an inbox or on a call, oh my gosh, mind blowing. And to really feel like you're making direct connections, you're making progress, you're doing things that have an impact on the business that don't just have an impact on the brand. Which let's be honest, if we're like a, you know, online entrepreneur, online, business owner, digital, professional, whatever you want to call yourself, it really doesn't matter that much. You just think it does, because everyone else is doing it. And what matters is doing all the things that everyone else isn't doing.
Emily Thompson:Oh, yep.
Kathleen Shannon:Amen to that. So a couple of points that I wanted to make one is completely random. I once heard that you drop things more Emily, whenever you're on your period.
Unknown:Paul, can you confirm that.
Kathleen Shannon:And then too, I like the idea of unfollowing everybody and then re following because then you have to remember who you like to follow. It wasn't like you have to make that decision of cutting. It's making the decision of adding back. And so this is actually something I love doing. Whenever I'm writing copy, like for my website, for example, is to not even look at what I currently have. But if I just had a rewrite, and the most like the 25% of most important things I remember, and I'll write it and go oh, yeah, that was already on the website. And if I, if I wrote it better the first time I'll copy and paste. But otherwise, I like doing things from scratch and creating things from scratch, whether that's my Instagram following or my website content or a blog post or whatever it might be, versus kind of whittling it down from where it was. Paul? Yes. What are you up to? Did you go on a detox this summer? Um,
Paul Jarvis:I guess I'm on one now. for talking to us. Yeah, well, this isn't social media. Yeah. So I haven't had Twitter. So I deleted Twitter off of my phone probably about a year ago. And I don't like I don't miss it. The only reason I've Instagram on my phone is you can't like it unless you use it on a phone. You can't. You can't you're not using anything. Yeah. So yeah, I don't have Instagram on my phone right now, either. I don't really care about
Jason Zook:your you were well, you were on a writing detox, but I think you're off of a writing detox. I'm gonna, I'm co hosting that, Paul.
Paul Jarvis:Yeah, so I'm still not writing my newsletter, because I'm just trying to like, get the book that I'm writing right now finished. And that's kind of like, that's my focus. So everything else is not as important as that. So things like social media, I just don't like I don't care about what I don't have much to do. So when I do have a lot to do, yeah, I just don't care.
Emily Thompson:So I love what you're doing. You're writing the talk, so you can focus on writing. That's fantastic. Um, but I like that both of you basically are talking about little things that you can do to find more focus on what it is that you're actually trying to accomplish, which I think is so important. Whenever everything is notifying you all day long of all these little things look, to look at the other day, I saw something on my calendar pop up about how its recycling day, or the next day is recycling day. And I went and told David I was like, you know, kid needs to put the recycling out because that's her job. And it's fantastic. And he was like, Oh, well how did you see that? I was like, I got a notification on my calendar. He's like, well, I got an email about it. And he's like, all these little things just pop into your face all All day long from everything I find extremely overwhelming. I took Facebook off my phone years ago, Twitter off my phone, maybe a year ago, Instagram is the thing that I keep up. But like I said a minute ago, I don't have notifications for anything, I don't even keep my ringer or my vibrate on I don't even know if it works. I don't think I've ever used it. I will be notified of things whenever I pick up my phone and choose to look at things. And I think that whenever you can have that much self control, to find focus in those ways, you're able to produce so much more. So Paul, you're writing a book, Jason, what are you working on?
Jason Zook:Nothing, I'm just screwing around. I have I'm completely like overhauling teatree and our entire marketing, customer information, knowledge base onboarding, I have a 27 email sequence that I'm working on, which sounds ridiculous, but it's gonna be, I think probably one of the best, most helpful things we do for our customers, which I'm really excited about. We're redoing spruce metrics entirely again, which is crazy, because now the third time, but it needs it. So we're doing that. Yeah. And then just keeping up with all the other things working with buyer future. And Caroline, my wife and I are redoing our entire workflows of like, all this automation and personalization stuff that we're kind of getting into which I keep pulling I've talked about for years. And it's funny every time we've talked about it, the conversations that are like this, but it's too much work. Let's not do it. We're like, okay, yeah, let's not do it. Let's just keep doing things. But we finally decided like, I don't want to, I don't want to do that. I want to see if I can create more time based on all the existing content things. So I would say that I'm doing that, but it's mostly Caroline because she's smarter than me and she can figure it all out. And I'm just going like, Uh huh, uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah. Oh, I need to write that email. Okay, I can do that. Like, that's what I'll do.
Emily Thompson:Right. So yeah, so you're focusing on lots of things?
Unknown:Yeah.
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah. And it's logistical questions here?
Unknown:Yeah.
Kathleen Shannon:You got married?
Jason Zook:I did. She says, she said, Yes. I went to sales everybody. That's a joke for like, 30% of your audience.
Kathleen Shannon:Okay, so you got married, and you combined your futures?
Paul Jarvis:Yes. So
Kathleen Shannon:how is that blending the personal with the professional?
Jason Zook:It's good. I mean, we it's been interesting. So like, my journey with Caroline was I hired her to work for me when I was doing our shirt back in 2010, I think 2011. And then I reassured went away in 2013. So she started her own business, which eventually became made vibrant. And then she was, you know, we kind of like this weaving back and forth motion. And then now we've kind of come back together and by our future was just supposed to be a one time thing. So by my future, which Kathleen, you're a part of
Kathleen Shannon:Paul's reminder, literally what that is, for our listeners who are not familiar with our boss boyfriends and what you guys do?
Jason Zook:Sure. So it is basically like the one time fee to get everything I've ever created. Everything I ever will create. It was $1,000. In 2015, it grew to 1500. And now having my wife involved is 2000. And it's all of our stuff together. So it's like 34 courses and guides and workshops, software products, there's like six of those, and you never pay again for anything else. And it's like just the best like Bogo of all time. And every single time I do it, I'm trying to get more out of Paul. So it's like buy our future Asterix with Paul Jarvis, and eventually, it's gonna be Paul, like, there'll be some type of like marriage that happens. Like I don't know how that works, but
Paul Jarvis:we're moving to Utah.
Jason Zook:Yeah, exactly. Like it's just a big commune. Now, we're moving to Canada. Paul, like we're gonna come to you, obviously. But yeah, it's been it's been coming to Canada.
Paul Jarvis:Yes. That's why I have acres of land. For my American friends.
Emily Thompson:We're all wives and husbands. I could
Jason Zook:just see you stalking like Tiny Homes, like just all around and then like three Hi. Just
Kathleen Shannon:like those crate crate homes. Yes.
Unknown:It'd be fun. But yeah, so logistically, all of our futures
Paul Jarvis:Yes.
Jason Zook:See, this is I'm we're getting this is gonna be great. But yeah, it was it was just supposed to be a one time thing this year. And then when we did it, we're like, this makes a lot of sense. Like, maybe we should bring our businesses back together in some degree. Because, you know, we work alongside each other all day long. She's six feet away from me at the moment. And we all all of our stuff intertwines at some point. So why not actually make that happen? And and it's been amazing. I mean, it just becomes like the linchpin to us online, which we can attract people to that thing. And of course, we can sell our individual items. But yeah, it's just it's been great. We really, we really liked it and so is the community the community is really love to like the added bonus and now Caroline's perspective as well.
Kathleen Shannon:Right, so technical question. I bought your future before it was our future. So do I also have Caroline's future now
Jason Zook:you're already upgraded my lady
Kathleen Shannon:upgraded second question. What if you guys get a divorce? Okay, first, I'm going to be a bummer. First of all, I Bill 60 60%
Jason Zook:of marriages fail. So there's no statistics and say that no, I mean, you know, less than two. We'll figure that out. When it comes to it. We haven't even really thought about it. I mean, at the end of like the This journey of whatever that looks like online like we could separate things if we had to, but it's not gonna happen. We're gonna be those that couple that is in the 40%.
Unknown:I mean, I believe it right or
Emily Thompson:if there's any reason to help hold you guys together is the fact this business livelihood is so tied together What a pain in the ass that would be.
Jason Zook:Listen, money keeps all relationships together. We don't
Emily Thompson:Yes.
Jason Zook:I didn't mean to ask a shit. No, no, it's fine. We have it in our terms and conditions page anyway. Also, if I die like that is a question I knew people were gonna ask too. So
Kathleen Shannon:right. Yeah. Okay,
Emily Thompson:what happens if you die? I guess they're out of luck. Yeah,
Kathleen Shannon:I haven't. Merlin's future actually getting married works well, right. If you die, there's someone to pick up the slack.
Jason Zook:There you go. Yeah, really. It's just like, you know, you get everything but you get nothing else because the person who created those things is dead. So maybe
Kathleen Shannon:if you die we get Paul.
Jason Zook:How do you feel? Sure.
Emily Thompson:I think I think you have to sign over your life insurance to Paul though, if that's the case, right? I
Jason Zook:think that's already in there. It's like gangsta Caroline three first, then Nepal and
Paul Jarvis:then I'll get that. It'll assuage my sadness slightly. I'll drive up to the eulogy.
Kathleen Shannon:I feel like that is a word that I never hear out loud, but I always read it. assuage, assuage.
Unknown:It's good word is a good word.
Paul Jarvis:Yes. Can you guys okay, so it is in grade. In grade seven, a teacher told me that it wasn't a real word when I used it in a book report.
Unknown:Did you give her an F?
Paul Jarvis:I think I called her some kind of expletive and then got sent to the principal's office.
Kathleen Shannon:And now you drop that word as much I
Paul Jarvis:would drop it all the time, because
Emily Thompson:you should call your book that and then mail it to her. Yeah, yeah. That's it. You should title your book. I love it.
Kathleen Shannon:Good. Okay, so Paul, you're working on a book? Can you tell us what it's about? Or is it still a secret,
Paul Jarvis:no secret at all. It's called company of one. And it's basically about how businesses of any size can be, can be more beneficial to them. If they don't think of growth, as we need to grow in all directions at all times exponentially, where they can start to think like bigger companies can start to think like smaller companies or smaller companies can get the benefits of being small businesses, instead of trying to act like big businesses that most people and most consumers don't like anyways. So yeah, it's called company of one, even though it isn't just for people who have like employee list businesses. It's kind of for everybody. But that's the book. It doesn't come out for another like year and a half. So but
Kathleen Shannon:so when sat January 2019,
Paul Jarvis:is that what you're looking at? late? 2018? Hopefully,
Kathleen Shannon:yeah, late 2018. Well, our podcast is forever. So someone might be listening to this and your book is out? Yes.
Paul Jarvis:In which case, leave it a good review. on whatever.
Unknown:Okay, so you're doing a lot of research for this book, right?
Paul Jarvis:It is my life right now is
Kathleen Shannon:what is that? What is that? Like? Are you just googling articles? Are you going into the library card catalog? what's what's going down?
Paul Jarvis:The Dewey Decimal System is my best friend right now. But yeah, so usually my writing is completely egotistical and 100% focused on me, right, like, because that's the easiest story to tell zero, which I don't even have a problem with that my newsletters never gonna change to be like research based. But for the book, I wanted to make it so the the strength of the arguments like the strength of the arguments for people that are in my audience, they already understand where I'm coming from the know my backstory, it's easier to convince them or not convinced them, I don't really carry their way of the things that I have to say, but for a wider net for casting a wider net, the people that are going to buy the book are also going to be people who have no idea who I am, because I'm not that big of a deal. Even though my mom said that I was in grade seven after I got that bad. Book Review report thingy. Anyways, so yeah, I'm trying to I'm trying to add a lot of research to it to kind of back up my arguments. And a lot of the research is kind of expensive, books are fucking boring sometimes. Like, it's just, they're just not that interesting. Like, they'll start with one story to hook you in. And then it's just facts. And it's just like, Oh, I don't
Kathleen Shannon:know, I feel like Seth Godin, even when said most business books could be three pages. Yeah. And but 100 or 200. Rest are just not
Paul Jarvis:exactly that. So I'm trying to make my book more story based, like there's obviously a very specific message in it. And there's very specific parts to each of it. But
Emily Thompson:wait, are you making your stories like fables?
Paul Jarvis:Yeah, no, no, I'm telling. So like, I'm interviewing people, right? And I'm telling their story, as as a way to show that the idea is valid and then backing it up with like a paragraph of stats, but then like, right back in the story says stories aren't and I mean, like, that's why Seth Godin is so good, because he his books are storybooks for adults that are trying to run a business. And like his book, like people eat his books up because they're so good because they're so into like, our society, like as human beings our DNA is story based, like that's how we communicate information. That's how we've communicated information to each other, since the beginning of communication as our species. So yeah, I think stories stories are important. And that's kind of what I'm, I'm trying to make my book bit more interesting than most other books. And in the business world,
Kathleen Shannon:what is the most surprising bit of research that you've come across so far? Oh, geez.
Paul Jarvis:Um, right now
Kathleen Shannon:come up that you were like, what? I had no idea.
Paul Jarvis:Yeah. So on a on a consumer brand, like on a scale where consumers ranked brands that they were aware of, Tom's ranked higher than Nike Nikes, advertising budget alone was in 2005 $3.2 billion. For advertising and endorsements. Tom's is like a 600. And something million dollar company. So their entire business is worth less than Nikes advertising budget for a year. And they still rank higher for for younger people, in terms of like, brand like, and I think a lot of that also relates to the story, like Toms has a wicked story. Like it's one for one, like a bunch of companies have copied that as a business model. And like, woven into the way that Toms works isn't just like, buy these shoes, they've got a swoosh on them. It's like buy these shoes, they're helping put shoes on people in Argentina are helping restore, I think they've restored eyesight to something like half a million people because they saw glasses now as well. So I think that the story aspect of it and the social aspect of it and like voting with your wallet thing, accounts a lot for brand. Like you can't buy that, like obviously you can't buy that Nike, I guess spent like over $3 billion on advertising and still for younger people are were like 22. And Tom's was or no, Nike was 25. And Thomas was 22. Something like that. That's in front of me. But yeah.
Emily Thompson:Good. So how are you feeling? I want to know how you're feeling getting traditionally traditionally published as independent, Paul?
Paul Jarvis:Yeah, so I kind of built my reputation on indie publishing, and self publishing. And that was kind of fun. But I felt like like, for me, I like to experiment with things. And I like to try new things. And I like to kind of figure like, my biggest thing is like, I need to see how this works. Like I was a kid who took apart every piece of electronics that I had, because I'm like, what's inside making this magic. And so I feel like, I feel like I didn't figure out self publishing, because I think that that's impossible to do. But I figured out enough of self publishing, to make a decent living off of it. And I still like writing books, like I've always loved books, books have been like the thing that have carried me through everything. So I felt like, it'd be interesting to see what traditional publishing is like, and for no other reason, then there's like, what would happen, like, let's see what happens. Like, let's see what happened. Like I talked to a couple people, I think I talked to you ladies as well, like, how does that work? And then everybody was like, you need an agent. So I was like, Okay, how do you get an agent? So I asked my mailing list, Hey, does anybody know an agent. And so I talked to I talked to the agent that you ladies use, I talked to a couple other agents, and I found an agent. And I was like, Okay, now what, and the agent was like, Hey, you have to write a book proposal. So I did that. And then like, she pitched it to publishers, and then I talked to a bunch of them, and then they bid on it. And then I picked somebody. So it's just, it's interesting, like, it's slow going, but it's like, I don't mind the cadence. Because I have a lot of other stuff on the go. Like, even though I've scaled back a lot of things, there's still a lot in my life, because I am a company of one, like, I'm one person running my business. So like, there's a lot of I'm being pulled in a different direction all the time. So it's kind of interesting to do that. And it's kind of interesting to give up control because like, I'm a control freak. And like, that's, that's like, that's why you start a business, right? Like, if you cut all the bullshit, like you start a business because you think you can do something better. And you want to be in control of doing that better. And so in this unlike Okay, well, some of the control is with my agents, some of the controllers with my editor, some of the controllers with like, the PR and marketing department of my publisher now, so I only have a little bit of that, but it's fun because I don't have to do as much of the nuts and bolts technical stuff. Like I've kind of over the last couple years I've kind of moved from being like just a technician to being like somebody who like does the main part of the work and then other people do the other parts like I don't have to worry about the typography. I am going to worry about the typography. Because, like I'm a designer, no comment, no common, hot topic.
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Kathleen Shannon:Okay, so I have a question if you're, if it's an experiment to go from self publishing, and I kind of think of self publishing as in, we all publish our own podcast, we're not a part of a podcast network, we publish our own articles with our newsletter that we own. So we're publishing in a lot of different places. And we're both trying out traditional publishing. So as an experiment, so I'm curious if you have some sort of hypothesis or objective going that route, do you have a guess that you're trying to prove right or wrong?
Paul Jarvis:Yeah, so um, my guess is that, while it's so there's, there's two things. So the first is that it's really hard to get a traditional publishing deal, unless you don't really need one. It's just like in the music business, you're not going to get a record deal until you kind of don't need a record deal. And related to that, and tie to that is that those things, those those gatekeepers in these traditional ways are amplifiers. So I have an audience, you you ladies have an audience, where the book, we're book publisher, I think can help is bringing our reach beyond the people that we reach, as long as we do a good job of that to more people. So if I do a really good job at getting pre sales for the hardcover of my book, and it launches really well, then my publishing company is no doubt going to put more effort into promoting it and promoting me as an author. Whereas if there's like, what, what was not very many sales, I don't think a whole lot is going to happen, right? So I think that they're amplifiers. And so if you have zero, the amplification of zero is nothing still. Right. So you have to start with a base. And like that's I don't know about about you, ladies. But like, that was the main conversation, like my agent wanted to know how big my audience was. All the editors that I talked to the publishing houses wanted to know, the reach that I had currently, without their help. Because they can't, it's really difficult for them to promote when you're starting from from zero.
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah, it's like getting a loan, like, what's the collateral?
Paul Jarvis:Exactly? Yeah, you need to show that you can make money or build an audience or do something yourself first. For sure. I
Emily Thompson:remember at one point, during the the courting phases of publishers having a conversation with Kathleen, where we were talking about at this point, we're not even selling our expertise, we're selling our following, or we're selling our reach and what it is that we've created, and not so much our content, though, there's definitely a part of it, like what we're able to write this book on is important. But it's really about what we've built in terms of the community, and not even just the numbers, but the engagement. Like they wanted to know what numbers were, but they wanted to know how good quality those numbers were, were they engaging? Were they buying? Were they having conversations and doing things amongst themselves themselves. And I remember that being just sort of a funny sort of mindset switch that Kathleen, and I had to make where those conversations, we went into them expecting to talk about what we've done and what we created. And you know, the content we're sharing, but the questions we were being asked was, how big is your Instagram following? You know, tell us about this Facebook group, how many people are coming on your vacations, they loved those fucking vacations for sure. And having people come and hang out with us in person. And it was really fascinating and not something. I feel like not something that a lot of authors were having conversations about 10 years ago. But with the bombardment of social media and the Internet, and all of those things. That is one thing that has certainly shifted than the traditional publishing world is it's not just about content, it's what else you're bringing to the table.
Kathleen Shannon:I have loved working with our publisher too, though, to bring some of our expertise of online business and non traditional marketing to the table for them. And so looking at their marketing plan, and seeing Oh, you're trying to get librarians on board, is there something that we can do to help you there? Can we get a librarian on the podcast and they're like, Wait, what? We're like, Well, yeah, why not? And so it's really fun kind of blending the two, like the traditional and non traditional and kind of the, you know, our naivety of like how this works to bring more innovation to their process, hopefully. Yeah,
Jason Zook:Paul, what's your what's your book Budget 3.2 billion.
Paul Jarvis:It's about what Nike spent. Right?
Jason Zook:I could follow along and see
Paul Jarvis:that book advance. Right?
Emily Thompson:Oh, man,
Kathleen Shannon:it's been advanced. You just bought a Porsche.
Paul Jarvis:Yeah, but I bought that before the book deal even happened.
Kathleen Shannon:Tell us about that. So can we talk about it clean talk about the car you bought. It's pretty sweet.
Paul Jarvis:It's a it's an amazing vehicle. So the reason that I bought it is because for the last couple years, I've wanted a luxury vehicle that was vegan, so no leather. And unfortunately, the mindset the consumer mindset and the manufacturing mindset of car manufacturing is that leather equals quality and that leather equals luxury even though leather is harder to maintain. Things like Al cantera are and B techs are new locks or whatever the names are, are just last longer. Even Tesla's ultra white when they first launched that that's been one of the best selling and one of the most well liked features of those vehicles is the non leather aspect of it. And now is Ilan musk. I think it did probably about a week ago of recording this announced that Tesla is going all vegan for their seating, so you can no longer get leather on anything, but they're staring well, Jason, if you're listening to this show on iTunes, Jason is fist pumping at that as a new as a new convert. So that was kind of the
Kathleen Shannon:as a new vegan convert or Tesla convert.
Paul Jarvis:Oh, yeah, almost. Well, yeah.
Unknown:Wait, you're vegan Steen. Yep. Nice. Listen, you hang around with
Emily Thompson:I really miss water when I say the word vegan.
Jason Zook:But there's good alternatives these days. Nice. Which is probably why it's so much easier. I mean, nowadays is so many more people are anyway, sorry, Paul, talk about your Porsche, by the way, as a previous Porsche owner who got reprimanded when I was 24, and bought a Porsche, by the way, I literally walked out was like, I don't want that Porsche thing. I was like, if you can't say portion, two syllables, you're not allowed to own one. And I was like, oh, okay, so this is a potential car brand. Okay, I got it. Okay. Just to make sure I know. Now that that's out of the way, yeah. Okay, good.
Unknown:Okay. So it's Porsche.
Paul Jarvis:Porsche. I still say Porsche, because I think just ridiculous.
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah. But if we just said Porsche,
Paul Jarvis:Porsche, Porsche.
Kathleen Shannon:Okay, C drive a Porsche,
Paul Jarvis:Porsche. So yeah, it's been fun. It's a fun car apart. Actually, part of the buying experience was that they send the the new owners to a racetrack, which is slightly up Island, which is where they launched the new, the new Porsche Panamera s, I think it was. So my wife, Lisa was like, well, this is like cars and driving fast is kind of your thing. She's like, I can just take pictures. I'm like, Fuck, no, they gave us two tickets to drive as fast as we possibly can around a track and by like, the second lap, because like one of us would sit passenger and one of us would drive. By the second lap. She's like, this is the best thing ever. Like just like redlining it all the way around the track. But yeah, they're it's a nice, like, it's a nice vehicle. Like it's a really, it's a really nice vehicle. And it's all vegan. And it's like, it's literally like talking about research. I contacted not only every dealership of like luxury vehicles that exists in Canada. But I talked to like corporate headquarters in Canada for like, probably 20 brands to worldwide headquarters. I know more people's email addresses at Mercedes Benz and don't at the dome or group than most other people do. Because I talked to so many people, like, just come on, like, I want it like I don't understand why I want to give you my money for a nice car. And you won't let me like and sometimes it was just like one strip of that like on the Mercedes Benz AMG GLA there's one on the L cantera. Sports wheel. There's one strip of leather at the top. I'm like, how about we just don't do that. Like, I just ship it to me without it and I will get somebody to put it on. They're like, No, we can't do that. Porsche and makes shit so and there's such a small company that they're like, yeah, we could do that. So I emailed them. And they're like, yeah, we can do that. I'm like, Alright, I'm like, now it's time to play hard to get.
Kathleen Shannon:Like, and now here's my money that I wanted to throw.
Paul Jarvis:Yeah, so it was a two year process. I wrote a couple articles about it just because of the like gobs and gobs of research. I felt like I was on 60 minutes or something. Like the amount of research and digging that I did to be able to get this car.
Kathleen Shannon:Did anyone ever lie to you? Are they ever like yeah, it's vegan. And then a couple research and you're like, No, it's not.
Paul Jarvis:So I don't know in the US. But in Canada, it's against the law for car sales people to lie if they know the answer is different than what they say.
Jason Zook:They can add. It's 100% different than Canada. Okay.
Paul Jarvis:Yeah. So They will get fired. And there's possible like legal and criminal action that can be taken against them, if they if they tell you something that they know is false. So no, they couldn't say that plus i did more research than them. I know more about the vehicles that I was interested in as in terms of just that aspect of like, the materials than any car salesperson that I spoke to. Because this was that like, that was my job for two years. It's not the job of salespeople to know that, like they have to talk to parts people who have to talk to other people. So yeah, no, nobody lied, because I would have known.
Jason Zook:It's always a fun experience when you know, more than a car salesman, like I actually have a story about that, which I can tell you quickly in 2010. Nissan contacted me when I was doing the I reassure thing, and this is where I used to wear t shirts for living and represent companies on social media. And they were like, Hey, we represent Nissan were like their marketing company, whatever, we want to send you this new car that's coming out, but it won't be out for another year. But we just want you to like make videos and talk about like, we're just, you know, you're interesting. This is interesting. So they sent me this car. And they're like, you know, whatever you want to do, like, just have fun, obviously, don't wreck it or whatever. And I was like, Alright, first thing I'm gonna do is take it to a Nissan dealership because none of them will know it exists. And so literally, I go to a dealership and I pull up and the guy walks up like classic car salesman, like you see him coming up, like, Oh, I got a sale coming, or whatever. And he looks at the car, and he's like, stops in his tracks. And he's super confused. And I'm like, Oh, this is the Nissan Juke. Have you not seen it? It's a 1.6 liter turbo motorcycle inspired design. It comes with a full leather interior seats seven, like went through all the stats, and the guy just sat there like dumbfounded and I was like, Okay, bye. And then just like, backed out and peeled out of the parking lot. And it felt so great. Like, it was like the best moment ever to be able to do that to a salesman. And that was just like a fun random thing to like, be able to know more than those jackasses who like, come up to you and think they know everything. That's wonderful.
Kathleen Shannon:My car buying experience was a nightmare. I was eight months pregnant and had like a head full of dreads, which just me people assume all sorts of different things about me from my hair to being pregnant, whatever. And God knows what you were wearing. I was wearing white overalls, and everyone wanted to stick me in a Honda CRV. And then whenever I went to the Mini Cooper dealership, they were like, let's go smaller. And I was like, sold. Yeah.
Jason Zook:So like, you're cool. This is what you should be with your cool.
Paul Jarvis:Yeah, I've had similar spare like I'm covered in tattoos and I look like a dirtbag. So like, but like walking into Porsche like that. What I liked about that experience was that they didn't care because I think they know that. people that buy those cars can look like anything like it doesn't matter. like nobody asked me like what I did, like the credit check only happened because it had to happen in the process. It wasn't like, Can you really afford that car young man is just like changed here. changed? Oh, yeah. Like they handed me the keys and said, Just take it for a day or two? Yeah, like, all right, done. burn out of the parking lot.
Emily Thompson:Right. Sorry, we
Paul Jarvis:need new tires, though.
Emily Thompson:I'm glad that we can all bust through those little boundaries. Um, before, before we start wrapping this up, I want to talk to you guys about your latest season of invisible office hours. Because you guys, I love how you guys are always experimenting with ways to make money and do cool things. I want to talk to you guys about how you decide to fund your latest season and how it all went down.
Paul Jarvis:And how it all went down wrong,
Jason Zook:how it all went down. I
Unknown:just saw that email. Oh,
Jason Zook:let's first start by saying the episodes are great. It's a great season content wise, wonderful. probably our best yet, we had a lot of fun recording the episodes. But each year we've tried to monetize it differently. The we did the bundle of awesome, which was great that made $42,000 which is insane. We did a little bundle with a course in something else. It's like private episodes, that made like 15,000 bucks. We had a sponsored season that made over$20,000, we launched a product that of course books, which is usually in buyer feature still exists was purchased by a buyer future buyer, which is kind of cool. It's a little fun story. No one knows. And you know, that made us like $40,000 total. So we've had like really good track record of 10s of 1000s of dollars per season. And Paul and I came to this idea of doing this like leaderboard and like let's have our audience because we get 1000s of downloads, not 10s of 1000s but 1000s of downloads per episode. We're like that's a good amount of people like maybe they'll support the show six seasons in three years, four years now. Let's put that to the test. And so we built this leaderboard, that was kind of cool. And you know, we had our friend Zack who builds everything with us do it. And it really, really Womp womp
Kathleen Shannon:people who love your free shit don't want to buy your stuff. They don't spend the
Jason Zook:money. They don't want to pledge money for nothing. Basically,
Kathleen Shannon:I want to turn on our dear listeners but this This is why artists can't make a living
Jason Zook:through patronage, right. Like, I think that that's the thing like patronage is very difficult. And maybe if our show started on patronage, and we were four years into it, that would be different, because there are a bunch of people who are killing with Patreon as a service and getting donations and those types of things. Totally could work. But I think for us testing the assumption of like, we have happy people, like they open our emails, let's see if they'll give us money. It brought in like, you know, $700 total and put us like, 15 $100 in the hole. And it just, it didn't make or break us up, you know, obviously, we're gonna be fine. But it's just funny to look at it in the context of all the other seasons, like, plus 20,000 plus 40,000, plus 10,000, minus 1200. Like, okay, we know the idea idea that doesn't work like that we clearly tested that assumption.
Paul Jarvis:Yeah, I think that part of it is that people don't like people are paying for podcasts because that because sponsors are paying for their attention, but not directly. So when I listen to a podcast, I don't think that this podcast cause me as a consumer ever as a listener money. So us saying like, hey, do you guys want to directly support the show, instead of having sponsors pay for the show? Why don't you guys do it. And I think that that was a, that was a flawed assumption on our part, because it's so weird, like how the kind of like, the idea of value works, because like, say, somebody goes to do like a speaking gig, and they get like five or 10, or 20k. But they could put that same information in an article that nobody would pay that information for. Or they could put that same information, like they could record that instead of going to do a speaking gig, put it on a podcast, and maybe they get like $500, or $1,000 in sponsors, if they're lucky if they have the listeners to support that. So it's just weird how we assign these arbitrary ideas have value on things. And when we try to assign value on something where consumers or we're an audience or listeners think that there is less or little value, not in the content, but just in like, the monetary number that they would assign to it. It kind of like goes to shit a little bit, which is what happened with us. And I mean, like, I'm happy we did it. Like the episodes are so easy. Listen, there's no spot. There's no interruptions in any of the episodes.
Jason Zook:And there's a lot of Danielle Laporte, which is even cooler. Exactly.
Paul Jarvis:She has the best voice ever. So she introduces all the shows. But yeah, like it just didn't work. But yeah, like it's not going to it didn't break us like we're still doing a season seven. We're obviously not gonna do that again. Like we learned. Yeah,
Kathleen Shannon:I mean, you know, myself included, like, I hear all those NPR fundraisers, and I donate like five bucks a month, but it's not an you know, it's not enough probably. And I can't donate to every single, you know, public thing that I consume, right? So I guess there is that, but it's just so frustrating to me that, you know, people are like I love I love your free stuff. And then it just crickets chirping whenever you ask them to support you. financially.
Paul Jarvis:I think that it would bother me if people didn't support any aspect of my business. But I sell a lot of courses, I sell a lot of soccer, like all of the other things make good money, right? So in this one time, I feel like we got like Jason and I got our positioning wrong. If we had done it in a different way, like when we asked our audience for money, when we sold the bundle we made over $40,000. When we did this, it did like $700. So like it was it was a way that we positioned it that was flawed in logic, not the not at the audience, because they do support us in every other way. I think.
Jason Zook:Yeah. And I think it's interesting to just look at like online business as a whole. And you just know that your average subscriber visitor listener, whatever it is, they're not the ones who are going to pay the bills. It's the kind of the combination of the people who really like you and are going to buy everything from you, no matter what you do, and that they're going to offset the cost of all the people who maybe can't afford it. You know, like the single moms of the world, the pregnant dreads white overalls, trying to get a mini cooper like they're
Kathleen Shannon:trying to get into a BMW.
Jason Zook:Yeah, I can't be buying your stuff online. Like I need I got BMW money, I gotta save up. But I think there is just like an evening out that you you start to realize to as you get further along a business where it's like, oh, well, I'm not going to get money from every subscriber, so I shouldn't expect that. And what I should do is just try and give as much value as possible where I can, you know, the interesting thing is, we talked about this, I think about, you know, we have 1000s of listeners per episode. Well, what if we had 10,000 listeners per episode? Would that have gone from 700 to$7,000? You know, what
Paul Jarvis:if we 100,000 it
Kathleen Shannon:out and see, we could let you know, I guess, the point that I really want to make because I don't want this to sound disparaging toward people who listen to podcasts and I don't want anyone listening to feel bad about themselves for not listening. For not supporting invisible office hours or anything else, it's just that I think that a lot of people think that if you're popular, you're going to be making a ton of money out of nowhere. And that's just not the case like popularity does not convert to dollars,
Jason Zook:which is why you see so many YouTubers who are broke and quit doing it because zactly views don't equal business or bank account, I had this conversation with Caroline, my wife all the time, like, you're not running a business, you are not exchanging value for money. Does those views all the vanity metrics, anything you like, that's not a business. Unfortunately, people have told you that it can be or you can see it working for the Casey Neistat of the world. But you're not that person. Unfortunately, you have to figure out a way to offset those things.
Kathleen Shannon:And on the flip side, you know, you can have very small numbers, very small popularity, I'm putting that in air quotes and be making bank.
Unknown:Yes, sir. Sure.
Kathleen Shannon:I think it's cool that you guys tested that out to see like, as your podcast grew, you thought, Okay, this could be a way to monetize. And in fact, season one made the most season one that made the most
Jason Zook:it was season two, because Season One, we were just like, what are we doing? Like, we don't even know if we're gonna keep doing this. So it sounded sounded terrible. By the way, if you go back and listen to season one, it was so bad
Kathleen Shannon:question. Can you go back and speaking of season one, Episode One, Emily and I just recorded a new intro because we found that our C's or our episode one keeps getting the highest numbers, people are just scrolling all the way back and listening to episode one. And we're like, Why get so much better. So we actually recorded a new intro to plug into that episode saying, Hey, we appreciate you starting here. But you don't have to hear lots of great episodes, we interviewed Bernie Brown, Marie Forleo, Danielle Laporte, our sound quality gets better. So you know, just stuff like that. So have you thought about maybe going back in retro actively and trying to plug some ads in or? I mean, you could do something like that for the season? Yeah. What?
Emily Thompson:Do you guys have plans for what happens? Either with this season or with the next season? What what what will be the next experiment?
Paul Jarvis:I think our plan is always to not have a plan until we're ready. Like, I don't know how Jason feels. But like I don't, I could see the value in going back and editing the first episode. But are we going to? I really, really doubt it.
Jason Zook:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, our first episode is our most listened to I just looked at the stats like it's only Yeah, over 10,000 listens, at least in SoundCloud, like, I don't know. And that's fun, right? Apple is gonna release some analytics for podcasters actually no real data, which will be so exciting.
Emily Thompson:Data.
Jason Zook:Yeah, it's gonna be crazy. But yeah, I don't think we would ever go back. And like, I don't know, maybe I say that maybe it would be something we could think about doing because there are companies now that can go through and stitch ads on old episodes, and they can pull them off, right? Like you just run them for a certain amount of time you pay for a certain amount of listens. That's kind of a cool way to do something. If we found a great company, like acuity scheduling, who we worked with a ton like, Yeah, why not? You know, they could they can pay for those those year balls, as we like to say. But yeah, I think I agree with Paul for season seven. We'll see what comes to us. We're not going to do the pledge thing. Again. We learned our lesson. We got some money we need to make up in the negative, invisible office hours account.
Kathleen Shannon:All right. Well, Paul, I know you've got to go. So as always, it's so good catching up with you guys. Thanks for joining us on the show. where can our listeners find more?
Paul Jarvis:Google Paul Jarvis for me.
Jason Zook:Google's book and I think you need to go to the second page and click that link so that I can get my result to go up. I'm trying to get me to be the number one result for Zuck in SEO, I don't know why.
Emily Thompson:Jay Z Oh, okay.
Paul Jarvis:For that, okay.
Jason Zook:Thank you. spelling is important. Yeah.
Kathleen Shannon:Seth Godin on Marie Forleo. Is TV and he was like, just typing Seth. Oh, God baller ball.
Emily Thompson:Oh, I love that. Okay,
Paul Jarvis:I'm gonna try for a try. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much, ladies for having your phone again.
Emily Thompson:Of course, anytime. We have gotten so much amazing feedback over the years from listeners about how our podcast has helped them start to grow and uplevel their businesses. So we want to celebrate you. Here's the boss we're celebrating this week.
Unknown:Hi, my name is Chris Emmer and I am being boss. I help overwhelmed entrepreneurs get their voice heard on social equity wisdom. And this week, I'm celebrating that I practiced yoga before checking my email each morning this week. It's only Tuesday but I'm committing to next week to thanks guys. I love your podcast.
Kathleen Shannon:If you're feeling Boston want to submit your own boss moment or win, go to www.hp being boss dot clubs. I am being boss. Alright big shout out to our sponsors of fresh books cloud accounting, go to freshbooks comm slash being boss to try it for free today and incorporate calm go to incorporate comm slash being boss to get your free guide, a business plan template, incorporation guide and more. Thank you so much to our team and sponsors who make being boss possible our sound engineer and web developer Corey winter. Our editorial director and content manager Caitlin brain, our community manager and social media director Sharon lucky and are being countered David Austin, with support from braid creative and indicia biography.
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