Dave (00:00.000)
I am excited today because this is someone that I have actually connected with because of my personal brand. We both kind of, uh, real recognize real and we're able to connect on Instagram and just kind of, you know, share some love for each other's, uh, you know, skills and efforts towards, uh, content creation. Um, and really just have been supporting each other along the way. So it's been great to be able to schedule this and have a conversation about all things, personal branding, content creation.
and nerd out a little bit about what he does as well as a profession. Cause you know, I share some of those, the same background myself. So this is the owner, founder of find it tech Mark Zemanski. Mark, welcome to the show, man.
Mark Szymanski (06:45.62)
Dave, thank you so much for having me on, man. I really appreciate it.
Dave (06:47.945)
Absolutely. Yeah, it's great that we got this scheduled. Um, so one area I want to start with is in one of your, cause that, you know, one on your, uh, your YouTube and, uh, you know, you're, you're in the world of website development, WordPress, uh, development, everything as it relates to helping people build great business websites, personal websites, which we'll get into. And one thing I noticed in your main video is you had a quote here.
about a passion for creating content. And you said, what you like to do is learn, try and share everything you do, which I think is just the encapsulation of what a personal brand really is. So can you kind of walk me through what that mindset is? How did you establish that mindset? How did you come to have that as kind of a motto? And then how has that been kind of translating that motto into actually creating content, you know, for your audiences?
Mark Szymanski (07:46.58)
Yeah, so the learn tries chair, like kind of life motto that I've, I don't know when I actually came up with that, but to give a little bit of a background in like coming out of college, I'm 28 now. So coming out of college and like, uh, was it, I can't remember at this point, like 2018, um, I had a job with nine to five is doing all that sort of stuff. Um, learning a lot. Like I'm just like an avid learner, especially once I got out of school and into the real world, you learned so much. So I was learning a ton and I.
started to dabble with entrepreneurship, website stuff, things like that, started the business in 2018, and just throughout that time, I just naturally kind of discovered that about myself where I like to learn things. I like to, I don't know how to build a website, so I naturally, I went on YouTube and I figured out all the things on how to build WordPress websites, and as I kind of put those pieces together, I like to learn it, and then I try it for myself.
and then I share with other people and the idea being that I feel like I don't wanna call it necessarily a gift, but I feel like one of the things that I'm good at is taking more complex things that people would look at and be like, I don't know what they're talking about, like from an expert in website building or what have you, and I'm able to kind of ask critical probing questions from more of a beginner's perspective or an intermediate's perspective.
and then just kind of translate really, you know, if somebody knows something really well, there, a lot of times they're going to talk in the language in which they talk to their colleagues all the time, but that doesn't always translate really well to a beginner or somebody that's trying to make an agency or something like that. And that's just, I feel like where that's kind of all stemmed from is so I'm kind of that conduit a lot of times between learning a new skill or a pro or a plugin or platform or whatever, trying it for myself, telling in that phase, it's also like,
vetting it a little bit, reviewing it. Like this could be better, this is really good, this could be better, whatever, maybe that also goes back the other way to the developer or what have you. And then ultimately sharing that with my audience or anybody that really wants to listen, honestly. Just because I feel like that's a really, it's a valuable kind of ladder of steps there. And it's, I don't know, I just deal with everything. I've niched down, I've had to niche down a little bit more into the website stuff, but I used to do with literally everything and.
Dave (10:07.785)
Well, let's, let's explore that actually. Let's explore that because you said you niche down. What was, I know this is a hard issue with a lot of people is that they do have so many passions and it's hard for them to find what is it that they actually should be focused on. You are focused on website development, WordPress development and all that. Were you in an area where you kind of were multi -passionate and you were like, well, I could do this. I could do that.
Mark Szymanski (10:07.956)
Yeah, it's just, I just, I really enjoy it. It just speaks to me.
Dave (10:34.537)
What was that process for you to finally decide, okay, I'm sticking with website development?
Mark Szymanski (10:39.38)
Yeah, you know, again, I'm, I'm, I still fancy myself as pretty young, at least in the WordPress space, because it seems like everybody's been around for a little longer than I am. But like, just in general, I know there's like a ton of like young people just doing crazy stuff nowadays, like having massive success. And I look to them for inspiration. But if you think about it on a scale of like, a, you know, like more of a traditional trajectory, like going to, you know, college from 18 to 22, getting out, getting a little feel of like the corporate environment, everything. The way that it really,
kind of like all happened was that I had that corporate experience and I realized that I wanted to be my own boss. I wanted to get out of that a little bit. And then I started trying everything. Like, you know, try everything in your 20s. I was like listening to, you know, Gary Vee, like, you know, at his peak and everything like that. So it was like, your 20s are for doing crazy stuff. I didn't go like super crazy, but like I was trying a lot of things. So if you actually look back,
Dave (11:26.057)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Szymanski (11:35.316)
on probably not my YouTube channel because I've kind of pruned that specific to what I'm trying to do now. But if you look back on Instagram and other things, I haven't really deleted a lot of stuff, you would see that I've gone through the gamut of things. The first thing that I did was I took the like the Gary V method of like, oh, I'm gonna have a bunch of companies and I'm going to have like a parent company. So I like made a company actually, this funny story, I made a company called my name Mark Joseph Samantha, and that was don't ever do that, please. I mean, if you make a company your name, which is really confusing. That's just an aside.
Dave (12:03.881)
That's taking the personal brand thing to the next level where it's literally you LLC there.
Mark Szymanski (12:06.036)
Exactly. It's, it's crazy. Yeah, it's, it's not a terrible idea, but it does get really confusing really fast. So when you walk into a bank, and it's not, it's not fun. But anyway, learn from my mistake there. So I changed that and it's MGS industries. So that's just like, you know, again, I was a young kid, I still appreciate a lot of the advice, but it was Gary Vee, like VaynerX, he had all these things. It's a terrible idea, looking back on it, because you can't do all these things at once. But the structure though, not not bad.
So I had MJS Industries as my parent company and then I owned, I set up like four or five LLCs for massively different things like Samansky Media for my personal brand, Find It Tech for web development, Fueled By Progress was gonna be like a podcast and I was listening to Joe Rogan, I wanted to do that, I wanted to make, I was watching people like Max Chuning and stuff like that in the fitness space, I wanted to make clothing and all that. So like all this crazy stuff. AM and the PM was like a company for me and my girlfriend at the time, wife now.
to have like a podcast, like just crazy stuff, like, and then some other real estate stuff, because everybody is getting into real estate, right? So my point being in all that to kind of concisely answer the question here is I was so spread out. I was actually doing like multiple podcasts per week for those two that I said there. I was trying to build websites. I was trying to make random videos when we were renovating our house on my personal brand, like just really, really wide. And then I would say,
Probably two years ago at this point. I was like, okay I need to stop doing all that stuff because you can't I think of it like building a city and like you can't build like five skyscrapers all at one time that there's actually a better example I think it's I don't know if it came from Sam Evans or there's like this Graphic where it's like a circle in the middle and then if you if you take like one inch arrows around it Versus like having like one like ten inch arrow basically is that you know describing it poorly?
But the idea is like if you consolidate your energy into one thing, you're gonna be better off and then you can spin off and do other things, because you'll have more resources and all that. So I say all that to say that that was my trajectory specifically. And now I'm much more specific too. I'm still a little spread out with like kind of the personal brand stuff and the find a tech stuff, but it's way more consolidated and it's all revolving around the mainly WordPress web development and the business of all that.
Mark Szymanski (14:25.524)
just the content and the things that I'm doing there as well as some client work obviously.
Dave (14:28.873)
And how did you, how'd you land on that? Like, how did you take all those passions and interests and then, cause that seems to be the biggest holdup with everyone is like, how can I niche down when I also love doing this, that and the third, or what was kind of the final decision? What was the equation in your head to finally decide website development?
Mark Szymanski (14:49.972)
I'm still not the most, I'm still not the best at this, because I still haven't even niched within the website space per se, like with what we're developing. But to answer your question on what I decided, ultimately the route, not necessarily the niche of the website stuff, but the route that I wanted to go, was pretty much purely based on the fact that the website prong of all that stuff that I, that apparatus that I had laid out, was the thing that was showing me the most ROI of my time.
because I was making websites free while I was getting paid. I was making those podcast episodes, I was trying to make clothing, that wasn't, it was making no money. So that's like a simple cop -out way almost, but it does make sense. I mean, why would you lean into something that's not making money unless you really, really, really, really love it? I love building websites, I still do, I love the whole atmosphere of it, the whole entire ecosystem that goes around it. So to me, it was just like, that is, the proof of concept is there.
Other people are doing it. I'm making money from it. That's where I'm gonna go first. And then I always say like, maybe one day I will bring Fuel by Progress back because it's still a passion of mine. It's something that I wanna do. It's another one of those life models that really speak to me. Like I'm Fueled by Progress. But at the same time, that's kinda how I got there was just mainly. It's a thing that's kind of working right now. So let's lean into that first.
Dave (16:09.097)
Sure. Yeah, that's the toughest part I feel like when it comes to niching down too is like, there's something I'm really passionate about, but is it bringing, is it helping me pay the bills right now? And then there's things that I'm like decent, I'm somewhat passionate about, but I'm getting paid a lot for. So I kind of feel as though I'm going to enjoy this a little bit more if it's bringing me money and I'm seeing progress versus something that.
you know, I'm enjoying, but maybe it's not necessarily, I then have to get another separate job in order to pay the bills. So I think at the end of the day, kind of the equation there is like, do the thing that seems to be getting traction and then, you know, you'll have time and energy to spin off and do the other passions in the future. Or maybe even just kind of like, you know, you reach the Gary Vee's and Alex Hermosy's of the world where.
everything they do ends up being kind of part of their brand, but they had it kind of niche down at first in order to get to that point.
Mark Szymanski (17:06.004)
Yeah, the one other thing that I would say real quick about that too is not just that it was working, but at least for me, and this isn't the same for everyone because of your interests, but out of those ones, if I learned how to market and build websites and those skills are extremely globally applicable. So if I get really good at this vertical of this,
then I can spin that off easier into like a personal brand because I'll know how to build websites, I'll know how to market, I'll know how to talk to people, I'll know how to sell versus like a clothing or a podcast. That's still there, but it's not like the main thing that you're selling. Like if you're a web developer or a marketer or whatever, like in some ways you're kind of like testing what works on your clients. I wouldn't advocate, like, you know, make sure that I'm not saying to test random things on them. I'm just saying that like you're learning a lot and you're learning faster than you could on your own with your own thing because...
you have so many more reps to like try things. So that's another reason that I would say I probably landed on as well.
Dave (18:07.849)
Nice. And one thing that you mentioned that you had been doing your own podcasts and been kind of a history of content creation, I assume, is that mainly through video?
Mark Szymanski (18:21.684)
I love video, man. I just made a post about it today. Like I can't stand text. I mean, I obviously like I read what I have to read, but like I don't want to be reading walls of text and stuff like that. It's just not me. Like, and I'm not a terrible writer, but obviously with the advent of AI and everything like that, like that's skewed that perspective for me until, you know, like they can, you know, people can make like AI rep, which might be, might be soon with like Sora. Like, you know, I'm, you know, I'm worried there a little bit, but, but I mean like,
Dave (18:45.705)
Already, there's like, yeah.
Mark Szymanski (18:50.708)
Until we can get to that point, I just still think that video is so impactful because it can be passive if it's like a podcast. You could still just, if you have YouTube premium, you turn the phone off or whatever, it's on podcast platform. Voice and video are so much better than text. So much gets lost in text translation. I mean, if it's less opinionated and just fact, then that's fine. But it's always been video. I've never really, I've tried to blog a little bit before, never really have. But yeah, I mean like,
I personally love video and even more specifically live video, like live streaming. During the pandemic COVID times, I was in my parents' house in my room and I was live streaming almost every night for 200 days. And it was stupid. I mean, it was just me talking about my day and what I had done. Occasionally some friends would pop in or whatever and stuff. But it was literally me talking. And those videos, I don't think they're on my channel anymore because they're unlisted. But...
But I mean, but you get the idea. It was just me literally like a MGS daily recap is what I called it. And it was just me like either doing different things like for the businesses or from like the house at the time when we were renovating and all that. And it really, again, it was just reps. It was just me getting in front of the camera and doing all that. And that is the thing that, um, personally, I just love to do. And I think if a lot of people, I know a lot in your content, like people are like scared again, in front of the camera, honestly, like just do it, like just go out in front of it, do it.
you will get better over time, absolutely. And I'm gonna be honest, when you're small, people aren't even gonna, there's no reason, if somebody criticizes you when you're small, they're an asshole, you know what I mean? Don't even, just disregard it. So, I mean, I don't know, that's just my personal opinion. I know it's not necessarily for everyone, but I've loved video since, I don't know, since I turned on the camera, whenever that was.
Dave (20:37.129)
Yeah, to your point about, you know, people kind of shitting on people if they're not their best video self, you know, day one or whatever. There's this great quote from Lewis Howes, I think, and it's something to the effect I'm going to butcher it, but I love the quote, the concept of it, where it's people who are being successful in their business and life will never shit on people who are trying to be successful because they know how hard it is day one and they.
there's that amount of empathy, but those who are, who have maybe tried to be successful and failed, those are usually the people who are just kind of hurt and are the ones to say something. So it's, just take everything with a grain of salt there. But I want to talk about, so I love this idea of kind of getting the reps in and getting over the, this, this,
initial fear of being on camera because this is really I think one of the largest reasons people either one don't start with a personal brand or to stop with a personal brand is because they hate seeing themselves on camera.
Um, and they just don't feel confident being on camera. You have a natural now I'll say, um, I don't know when I kind of get into your past year, but it seems like you have a very natural, authentic vibe on camera, very kind of fluid thought. You're not like overthinking it and all that kind of stuff. This is kind of the stuff that people.
see and can trust and feel like, Oh, I know you, it's nothing, it's not hiding anything. This is all great skills to have when you're launching a personal brand or running a personal brand. What was that like day one? Is that, was that a natural thing for you where you just turn press record and it was just authentic and natural day one, or as you talk about getting the reps in, is that something you had to practice and learn? And if so kind of what were some of the lessons learned along the way where.
Dave (22:32.585)
where you seeing yourself and you're like, ah, that's not me. And you kind of force yourself to be a different way.
Mark Szymanski (22:38.26)
Yeah, that's a great question. It's a really important point. I think I tweeted something recently, like in a world that's becoming increasingly artificial, it's more important than ever to be authentic and like real as fuck. And that just comes from like a background of, again, Gary Vee content at the very beginning. And I just really love that. When I was...
Super young and even more impressionable than I am now like and I was trying to take all that in like a sponge like I was Seeing guys like Gary V and I was thinking This guy has had success and it looks like the way he got there was just being himself Like he just did what he did like he's a dude from New Jersey The videos where he talks about why he swears just as an example like when that was like, you know It's kind of like off -putting to some and certain things like it's just who he is like it's it's the way he was whatever and you can like that you can hate that you can like
You know just like you can like or hate any other thing about somebody else but like there's a certain there's a certain thing This is the realization I think I came to is like if somebody's not gonna like me I want them to not like me for me I don't want them to not like this facade that I'm putting up because now it's like it's weird things like you don't like somebody that I'm not even because I'm playing a character or I'm doing this weird stuff so I try to be authentic as I and and this is the other thing too is just like kind of comes back to this
simple honesty and like not lying. Obviously there's reasons to be a character in certain instances, right? But I'm saying like if you're just your personal brand stuff, like if you, it is way harder in my opinion, from my experience, to keep up like a lie or like in the facade than it is to just be yourself. Like, you know what I mean? Like you always just default back to who you are. It is so much harder to like try to consistently be like, okay, how would I react if I was playing this character or whatever?
rather than just like, this is what I think. And the last point I wanna make on this, because I think this does get kind of miss, not talked about as much as I think, is when you're being authentic, the beauty of that is if you're an actual human and you talk like an actual human and you realize that we all make mistakes, you can change your opinions as well. Like you can have like, I might think today, WordPress is the best thing ever as an example, and then in two years, be like, well, I said that back then, but I'm gonna tell you why my views changed.
Mark Szymanski (24:58.676)
And then you can have another thing. And it's like, you're just, it's natural. It's literally human behavior to change our minds and to grow and to expand and whatever. And yeah, so I think again, to answer the question directly, I, it wasn't, I want to say it was, I don't know if it was completely natural. It might've been, but I think it was a lot of just like watching other people and being like, I really resonate with the people that are just themselves rather than the people that are putting up some sort of facade or trying to fit into a certain mold.
So, yeah.
Dave (25:32.137)
Sorry, I think you cut out there. So, that could get cut out there. We'll cut that part out. I didn't know when you ended because you cut. Can you hear me?
Mark Szymanski (25:45.044)
I can hear you now. Yeah, you've, you've froze a couple times throughout, but like I, it was like four seconds and I feel like the audio, like I didn't really miss anything in a couple, in the, in the questions. So yeah, I mean, maybe.
Dave (25:55.081)
Yeah. This is the only time, this is the only time it cut. And I think you stopped while I was cutting. So I didn't catch that you ended up, but we'll keep it back up. Uh, but yeah, I think that's, I think that's one of the core tenants of a personal brand. It's almost, it's the contingency of a personal brand is authenticity, but it's so difficult for people to understand what is authentic for them, especially when I think people come.
Mark Szymanski (26:02.26)
Oh, yeah.
Dave (26:25.321)
People are come into social media and their public persona with this fear of being themselves because they don't want to feel exposed. And so they start looking towards, okay, what is working for other people who are the top influencers in my space or just on social media in general. And let me try to dissect what I think is working for them. And those people.
have kind of natural, they're being authentic, but what's authentic to them is kind of like a certain setting in terms of vibe, right? So maybe they're just more high energy. Maybe they have a better inflection in the way they speak, maybe their facial expressions. It's just kind of like that vibe works for them and that's authentic to them. And then they attract those types of people. And so they go, a new person coming in and goes, oh, that's working for them.
let me change my default settings to meet theirs. And so then I can mimic their persona and then hopefully mimic their success. And I think that's where that kind of like imposter syndrome comes in. And also that facade that you're talking about where we have to maintain that in order to, you know, continue to look like we're an authority and all that kind of stuff. When in actuality, like people, it does the opposite effect. People see that you're.
being inauthentic because there's that friction between the natural you and the forced performance that you're putting on in order to try to be that other person. And so like the performance ends up leaking through the camera and people go, okay, this person isn't authentic. And it ends up backfiring on you because you're not actually showing up as yourself. And so you're not capturing that same energy that your favorite creators are getting. So it's such a like double edged sword of people coming in.
wanting to be authentic, but actually doing the complete opposite in order to try to be authentic. So it's definitely difficult, but I think I love the concept that you've gotten in the reps and over time you kind of like figure out what authentic means for you. And I don't think people are naturally able just to kind of like press record and all of a sudden start feeling like you're your true self.
Dave (28:47.913)
So one thing I want to jump into was this. So you're on YouTube right now and I checked and you've got, you know, a good following on there, about like 3 ,600 followers since I last checked. And that seems to be kind of like your main channel for content. I think that you kind of put most time into, which is more of like a long form content.
Um, but you also are posting like short form content, reels, tick tocks, it kind of, you know, on every platform, got some, some decent content going, um, and consistently, what would you say is kind of your, your main effort right now, your main focus in terms of content creation, which channels and when, which ones are you seeing performing best for you? I mean, you're in a more technical niche, which is very like educational content around something that's a little bit more of, um,
you know, a technical topic. So which one, which channels do you see kind of performing best for that type of niche?
Mark Szymanski (29:52.404)
Yeah, so YouTube is, I just feel like one of the greatest platforms to really like lean into because it's, you know, basically an extension of Google. Um, and some of that is personal, personal bias, but some of it is just reality. Uh, anytime I have a problem, most of the time, if it's like a visual, like I need to see something, I'm probably going to go to YouTube rather, even rather than Google. Obviously again, they're, they're kind of conjoined, but the,
What that is, what that kind of, I guess, subconsciously taught me and what I learned from others is that if you are going to show anybody anything, then there's a conversation we have whether it should be long or short form. But the point being, if people are going to search for your content, then YouTube is normally the way to go. Now, again, some people like my wife are like searching for things on TikTok now, which I find crazy because I haven't done that. But obviously that still works. So, you know, I would say to YouTube is my kind of my favorite just based off of all the analytics it gives you.
Um, kind of the, the, the minute amount of success that I've kind of had over the years, I just know the platform in and out because I'm a consumer of it and a creator on it. Um, and then the other platforms, I do think, like, if you were just starting out, if somebody's starting out, watch the podcast and they're like asking, you know, like, Hey, how should I start a personal brand? I, I started.
when I started the personal brand stuff, I was like, I need to be on every platform. I need to have like all this stuff. And there's, there is a reason to kind of have like, if you want to do this long -term, I always think like, I love personal branding because I'm never going to, you know, I'm no, I don't plan on changing my name. Like I'm going to be the same person forever. I might have multiple businesses, but I'm going to be the same person. So there is a argument to be made to like set everything up, you know, with good usernames and all that. Like I love that little consistency piece of everything. But my point is that if you try to post on every single platform, like all the time that is kind of not.
Scalable a lot of times because it's just you you're posting on a bunch of different things You're trying to it's the same concept of being spread out So I would try to pick one YouTube would be a big one if you can if you do like video If you're natural on it, if you're on it if you're in a niche where people are gonna be searching for things I mean, I've just gotten so many like people and views and everything like that from People literally searching for the types of content that I have
Mark Szymanski (32:08.468)
And then if you can couple that with getting suggested in the algorithm as well on certain topics, high level overview, but it tends to make for a pretty successful YouTube channel as you continue to grow. And I've seen other examples of that. But yeah, I mean, YouTube's probably the one that I'm the most active on. Twitter is pretty, TwitterX is pretty big now getting bigger and just because of the people that I'm kind of intertwined with. I'm talking a lot about WordPress. I'm talking to other people in the space.
And Facebook is weirdly large, at least in my opinion, because there's so many groups of other developers and agency owners that I'm in there all the time. So that's a big one. But Instagram, there is a way to use Instagram, but not necessarily for the things that I'm trying to do right now. TikTok, the same way. If I have a short form video, vertical video, I'll put it on there. But yeah, I mean, overall.
The only thing I would say is in my particular case, I sometimes try to reach two audiences, which is difficult and not necessarily advisable. You have people that want to build a website for themselves or need a website versus people that want to build an agency and build multiple websites. So those are two vastly different audiences. And again, if you're talking personal brand or general brand, you should really have an idea of who you're trying to reach because that will affect that as well. But for me, those are the ones that I tend to use the most.
Dave (33:29.737)
Yeah, that's, that's the interesting point here. I think is, especially when it comes to website development is if you're creating educational content about like how to, if you're, if it's a little bit too high level, I think you're starting to speak to other people in your profession, you know, other use that want to have a quick way to figure out what you're doing. And if, but if you speak kind of low level stuff, like how to, how to launch a WordPress website.
You're starting, you're tapping more like one -on -one stuff, which is I think more of the audience that'll be your client, you know, cause if those are people who are trying to do it on their own and then maybe stumble onto your, your content and go, Oh, why don't I just use this guy? He knows what he's doing. He's teaching me how to do it. So it is always kind of an interesting area when it comes to educational content where you kind of have to catch this right area where it's either you're catering to just other.
people who are doing what you're doing, or do you want to try to catch your client? And so that's where I think people end up creating a lot of educational content that caters to other people who are doing what they're doing. And then they end up just creating info products or courses of how to become a website developer instead of, you know, getting leads or clients for their website development company. Have you faced...
Have you seen any of that or like, you know, is there a channel or a type of content that's been driving attention from new client opportunities versus those who are like, Hey man, I'm also a website developer. Can you help me like crack this code thing that I've been trying to do?
Mark Szymanski (35:10.836)
So with the type of content that I've done within the last six months where I've really ramped up more of YouTube content specifically about WordPress. And I like to say at this point, some of it is WordPress news, some of it is WordPress technical tutorials, and some of it is just the business of WordPress. So I'm still working on fine -tuning that even, but I'm much more refined than I was a year or two ago. But to answer your question, the...
This is the trend that I've seen, talking to a lot of different people in this space that were either agency owners at one point or product developers and things like that now. The way that I see the general trajectory go in specifically WordPress and maybe just the web development industry as a whole is that everybody starts as an agency, generally, again, generally, because they want to help clients. They know, oh, I can build websites. They figure out how to build websites. It's like, okay, well, how do I monetize this? Well, I build websites for other people that don't know how to build websites. Makes sense.
So that's what I've done. So then you make money from that and then quickly you realize working directly with clients is not always the absolute best thing in the entire world. And then, and nothing against the clients, a lot of times it's actually like on the agency because you're not, you know, you're too busy in the business rather than on the business and you're not scaling. So it's just like, there's not enough going on. You're trying to do a lot and you don't have the processes in order, especially it's difficult to get all that done. So at some point,
I'm literally like nine out of 10 people that I've talked to that are further along in their journey. They had an agency and they realized this is not what I want to do. Some people don't do this, but nine out of 10. This is not what I want to do. I need to go a different route that's away from like one -on -one client work in a sense. And that ends up either manifesting in a product, right? Like some sort of SaaS product or maybe like another service type thing that's not directly client. Maybe it's like some other productized service thing.
or like you said, like an info product. And that one's always interesting because I've seen multiple really, really different ways to like come up with that model there. I've actually seen very recently people that package up what they do at their agency and they sell it as a course to the people that they were selling the websites to. So they're selling like, you know, 500, whatever, you know, amount of dollars for like a course and maybe a community or whatever. But the audience is the...
Mark Szymanski (37:37.94)
not the other web developers. It's actually the baker, the concrete person, whatever it is. That's an interesting model that I could talk about for days, because there's so much, it's an interesting sell, I guess, the way that you have to sell that to those people, because I have a preconceived notion that those people not necessarily shouldn't be building their websites, but they could be spending their time in their business and operating that. The web developer should be doing that. The web designer should be doing that.
But that aside, that's one way that I've seen it, the cat skinned. And the other way that I've seen it is that you do what you said. I know how to build websites. I built a semi -successful agency. I'm gonna put content out that I wish I would have had, and I'm gonna direct that at other web developers that are coming up. I've learned from a lot of people above me, I'm here, to the people below me, just the people coming up, and that's gonna resonate with them. And the way you monetize that,
Which is something I'm kind of exploring to this point is like either consulting with them or maybe it's a course Maybe it's a coaching thing or maybe it's just content and like template like like things that you wish you would have like just like hey Here's here's our contract. Here's our proposal like just go do this or affiliate marketing, too I mean everybody wants to know what tools everybody's using nowadays, right? So there's a lot of different ways to do it And I've definitely ran the gamut because I've done a lot of market research and I'm trying to do it for myself now as well But you have to make that decision because like you said if you're talking
If you're saying valuable content to the wrong people, you're probably not gonna make any, you're not gonna be able to monetize that because you're not speaking to the right people.
Dave (39:15.785)
Yeah, it's definitely, I guess that's kind of an area too that I want to dive into is this idea of coming up with content topics and knowing who to speak to and what you want to say in your content. So you mentioned a few different kind of pillars that you're focused on right now, like news, how to content, community, you know, what's going on, the happenings of WordPress.
Do you have kind of a content strategy right now in terms of like, I need to create X amount of these pieces of content and I have schedules where I post on these days. How much of the content strategy is there and how much of it is maybe just kind of like, this sounds like a good idea. Let me, and I'm passionate about this concept. Let me just wrap on a video real quick and publish that.
Where's kind of your inspiration, your muse for content ideas? And then what's kind of your content process too of recording, content editing, what tools are you using? What's kind of that soup to nuts for you?
Mark Szymanski (40:21.812)
Yeah, so I could have a better content strategy. I mean, I guess everything could be improved, I guess, but I could have a better content strategy. What I tried to do for a little bit was I have a ton of ideas like in my head and then also now on paper. So that's at least I feel like step one is just get anytime you have a decent idea that you think may turn into something, write it down, or at least maybe like if it's a quick idea, like, you know, tweet it out or something because in my...
What I've been doing very recently is I would say, again, the news, the how -tos, and the business side. So that is very predominantly aimed at people in the WordPress space, not like clients. Like a lot of the stuff that I've done right now is like, if I'm getting any leads from it, it's because they're just associating me with websites. They're not like seeing content that I put up that's like, oh, 10 ways to improve your website, and then, you know, like it's directed at them. Like I'm dabbling a little bit more with that.
in the coming weeks here, but more so it's directed people that are already in here, web developers, agency owners, da -da -da, whatever, and making those connections. So the content that I'm creating, a lot of it has really, as I've dove more into the WordPress community and understood what an open source project looks like and the ins and outs and all of that, and I have this, a recent video that I made was, to illustrate this would be why...
why you should care about WordPress like news, if you're in WordPress, not just some random person necessarily, but like if you're in, if you're building a top of a platform like WordPress, you should at least care about where it's going because it's your whole business that you're building off of this. And if it decides to make a right turn when you're expecting it to make a left turn, then that could be potentially bad for you and your business and your customers. So just those types of things, I'm trying to get people to think a little differently on from that business avenue as it intersects with the technology.
So that's kind of been the MO recently for how I've gotten those ideas. And a lot of the other ones is just things that I'm doing. For instance, I'm rebuilding a client portal. I built a custom client portal in WordPress, and everybody was asking me. I made a quick video about how I did it, and everybody's asking me to make a step -by -step thing. So now I have a whole series of that. So I would say mainly things that I'm seeing and consuming and then have ideas on. I love reacting to things. I have opinions all the time, so that's a lot of where it comes from.
Mark Szymanski (42:43.252)
And then the other big thing is viewer requests, because if your audience that is watching your videos is asking you for something and they want information on it, then possibly appease them. Maybe not necessarily one -offs, but a lot of times that might make sense if enough people ask for it. And then as far as the actual strategy, it could be a little better. I try to do consistently. The thing that I do consistently is I go live every Thursday at 11 a .m. That's been fantastic, really love that. And...
Doing a consistent live is like highly, I would highly recommend that because people know, they know to tune in and it starts to go way up as far as like, you know, relatively your engagement, everything. Videos, at least once a week, most likely more though, but I don't really have a set schedule or anything as a lot of it is kind of just asynchronous as far as I'm thinking about it. So I could be a little better there, but I'm not a full -time YouTuber just yet. So we're trying to navigate that. And then just as far as the tools go, I mean,
I have like a ton of lists and it's gonna be on the website here as I release it, but just high level. I'm literally using Streamlabs OBS a lot of times to record my videos just because it's what I've been using for a long time. I recently switched to Restream for the actual live stuff, which is a good one if you're on PC. There's Ecamm, there's a ton of other ones if you're on Mac and everything like that. I literally, I didn't say this earlier, I don't hate editing, but I would rather not edit, so that's why I love live.
And that's why I love just kind of turn, press record and just record something and then end the recording and then upload it. You could do a lot more, especially if you're doing short form content, because you want to be more engaging and all that. But until I start hiring somebody to do that stuff, I'm probably not going to be doing wonderful videos like you did. So I know it's easy, because I've watched your videos on CapCut. But I don't. But it's just not something that I just want to necessarily do right now. But yeah.
Dave (44:33.289)
I mean, the editing part is the biggest pain in the ass. So yeah, it is like, you know, that metaphorical iceberg, it is definitely like the big old butt below the surface.
Mark Szymanski (44:37.428)
Yeah.
Mark Szymanski (44:43.316)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So that's kind of the setup I got going on.
Dave (44:47.881)
Um, and so, cause that's the other thing too, is when we talk about people being confident in being on video, they want things to look and sound perfect because again, they're trying to kind of curate the best version of themselves or in some cases, a version of someone else that they're trying to be themselves. Um, and so this idea of like going live or just pressing record and then rapping on a, a topic.
can be pretty scary because if you don't feel like you're fully prepared with like a script and or whatever you might need for it to be perfectly curated, you don't want to look less than or stupid or whatever. So the idea of you kind of going live and then just being able to say like, whatever comes, comes. And again, this is me. I'm just wrapping on this idea or.
I've seen kind of your videos where you are speaking to a topic and some some top, you know, we get the how to content. Obviously, there's there's a narrative there because you're literally going through a sequence of something. But then other times it's more like news content where you're like, hey, you're a journalist. Like, hey, here's here's what's going on. Here's my opinion on it. Do you have any preparation for these things like lives and those types of videos? Like, do you bullet point anything out? Do you have like key talking points you want to make sure you get get to like?
Is there prep for those types of videos? And then how do you kind of weave through that where you still feel you're getting across, you're coming across authentic and you're also just like leaving room for, you know, different, different thoughts and things to be injected into it without it feeling too scripted and formatted.
Mark Szymanski (46:29.908)
Yeah, this is a great question. Yeah, so I don't think I've ever filmed a video where I had like a full script written out to my knowledge. I don't think I ever have. Just because that's not my personality. And sometimes it doesn't really fit exactly the content that I'm doing. Sometimes it would. A lot of times if I'm doing a technical tutorial, you have to kind of know how to do it.
Obviously you have to know how to do it. You should have some steps maybe like written a lot of times I will have like bullet points off to the side just on things I want to talk about Especially in the live streams recently because there's a lot of stuff that's happening and I don't want to forget anything So like I'll have a list of just like hey, I want to hit these topics You know, we'll talk about them and I'll kind of just riff on them There's a couple things though because I don't know if everyone can do that. I'm not saying I'm special I'm just saying like I don't know if everyone can do the whole riffing thing because there's really
I'll tell you a quick story and I'll tell you, but like ultimately the reason is because you have to know the stuff. You have to know the stuff pretty well. You have to be extremely like open to being wrong in a sense. You have to almost like default to like skepticism or questioning a lot of the times. And I feel like that's just something that's natural about my personality is I always want to like try to dig more to the bottom and I have these ideas like I don't know my, it just flows quicker. Like I don't know.
But like I'm always just thinking like that. So the videos don't come out as perfect. A lot of times I'm probably rambling and saying things different ways, but it's not pristine and they probably go longer than they do. Something I might refine over time for sure. But at the end of the day, it still does speak to that authenticity. So I think it's a net positive to a degree, but could be improved. The funny story that I wanna tell you though, because I think it really resonates, it probably will resonate with a lot of people, is I was in college.
We always used to do like, you know, in grade school and stuff, like you would do presentations and you'd have to go up to the front of the room and you'd have to talk about something that you do not give one shred of a shit about because you're a little kid and you're talking about some sort of weird historical event or person or something like that most of the time, right? Unless you're, you know, brainiac at that point, which I was not. I had decent grades, but I didn't care about those types of things. So my point is I was in college one time with my buddy and we had to give this presentation. I remember having like a note card and I didn't know a thing about what we were talking about. It was like the worst.
Mark Szymanski (48:45.684)
the worst thing ever. And if you're younger and you're watching a podcast like this or watching content and you think, I can't talk like that, I think you're being a little short -sighted. And the reason is because I guarantee you there are things in your life that you could talk about. Maybe people like playing video games or something. They could talk literally on a stage for hours about like, maybe the stage fright thing is a situation. But I'm saying like, you could just turn on a camera and talk for hours about,
oh, how I know how to do all this stuff and this map and all this other stuff or whatever, it's video game or some other topic. My point is that that is the real key, is if you're passionate about the thing and you know it just because you like it, it doesn't matter what the topic is, I guarantee you, it's not that you can't speak on it or you can't develop a brand around it or whatever, it's just the fact that you haven't found that thing or you just haven't made that connection yet. So my point is that don't let those early experiences of talking about random stuff that you didn't care about,
like misconstrued your idea to be like, oh, I need to have all these fancy things or like, I need to be like really good on camera. If you're talking about something you know and you care about, I think you're gonna be way better off than you think you are.
Dave (49:58.185)
100%. And I think the passion, the experience, like lived experience drives confidence, which drives the authenticity. And you can see that when you're talking about it too. Like if you're in a conversation with someone, it's like when you go to like a dinner party and you're trying to like spark conversations with someone and you keep asking them things like, you know, what do you do for work or, you know, the weather or whatever. But then you say like, you know,
Are you, are you a Marvel fan or whatever? And they go, yes. Did you see the last Thor movie? Whatever. And you can see like the passion that drives in their face. Like, and then you can, they can wrap on that and just have all these tidbits and all this stuff. There's such a difference between topics that they don't care about and topics that they're truly passionate about and how all of a sudden they could talk for days in a, in just an excited way. And you can see like, when you talk about authenticity,
Authenticity is driven by something that we don't control. Like it's, it's a core, uh, our innate settings that are like taking over the control of our facial expressions and what we like to talk about and like our reaction to things. And you can't fake that. So like, if you truly are passionate about something, like things just flow naturally, thoughts come naturally, you make connections between ideas more naturally. So I think in your case, you have such a history.
of WordPress and lived experiences through it. And so when certain things happen or you're trying to describe something, it's not, it's not work to you. Like it's like you're showing up talking about the thing you're already excited to talk about. And there's just already so much to connect that it's just easy for you to kind of flow with ideas. So I think the idea of like, you know, I think that's where it's difficult for.
those who maybe are trying to launch a personal brand off of like their work, something that it's like, yeah, I'm a sales person. So I'm a sales agent or something. And this is just kind of like what I have to do to make ends meet. But I'm trying to show up with a personal brand to try to make more sales. And it's not something that they truly care about, but it's something they have to do. It's homework versus like a passion thing.
Dave (52:19.625)
Yeah, that's where it's a little bit more difficult to show up every day because it's just not something you actually, I dealt with this too. I was in, I was in software development. I mean, talking about, you know, trying to niche down over time. Um, and, and having like multi -passionate and choosing one that you, you, you saw more traction with. If you look back on my Tik Toks, like a year ago, two years ago, I talked a lot about like app development and you know, software development and things like that.
And that's because that's where my focus was at the time I was helping people build like mobile apps and such. And I was like, well, that's because, you know, the, the money's great in that arena, you know, like software development, the margins, anything with like developers and stuff, as you know. And so I was like, all right, I'll just go, go with that. And I had a five, 10 years experience in software development, but I would show up talking about these topics that I was just like, I don't really care. I know about them and I I'm helping people because.
You know, these are things I'm saving people money by telling them like, Hey, avoid building this app if it's going to be shit type of stuff. But I just wasn't like.
Mark Szymanski (53:26.324)
Mm -hmm.
Dave (53:29.449)
I didn't truly have passion behind it. And that's why I stopped because I was just like, this is, I don't really care about this thing. So I do think like passion is one thing in terms of having a successful personal brand because the way you show up is more authentic and you are able to craft ideas more easily. But also it's just because you're able to stick with it longer. If you were going to be talking about this shit, regardless of whether you had a personal brand or not.
then you might as well press record and have people like join in on the conversation. You know what I mean? So there is that kind of like icky guy concept of like what people will pay you for and what you're passionate about and what the world needs and all that kind of stuff. So yeah.
Mark Szymanski (54:08.468)
There's one point that I wanna make, because I think that a lot of people have probably had this feeling, but maybe not been able to verbalize it mentally, is that when I talked about earlier watching Gary Vee and all that sort of stuff, that was around the time that I had a job, and I was thinking, oh, I went to school, I have a job, I don't know the first thing necessarily about entrepreneurship, but I'm learning through osmosis, through YouTube videos and things like that, and then when you start to dabble, you're like, well, can I continue to get into it? The thing,
that I have said many times, I've actually gone, this has been a cycle, a cyclical thing in my life. There was a time where I was heavily, it was around when I was first getting out of college, learning how to manage money way better than I did before and everything. I watched hours and hours and hours of Dave Ramsey, Graham Stephan, Beat the Bush, all these other random, that was my main genre on YouTube was finance, right? So just watching all this stuff. There comes a time,
I feel like where when you go from a beginner, there's probably a name for this, but I haven't looked it up. When you go from a beginner, you have no knowledge on anything, and you watch so much, and you get so saturated with that content, you go from knowing nothing to knowing above average, probably like 80, 90th percentile. You don't know everything. You're not a complete expert, but you know a lot more than you did when you started. And then when you get to that point with me, with finance, it was like, I ...
don't want to watch any more finance content. Like I'm saturated with the finance content. I'm not an expert, but I know what I need to know and I will come back as needed. So that was like, it was almost like a phase of my life. I'm saying this because that plus the other phases, whether it's like, you know, technical, political, whatever it is, you get like saturated and then you're like, if it makes sense for you and you're really passionate about it.
If you're not those things, then maybe it's okay, fine, I'm moving on to the next thing. But if you are passionate about it, I've said this statement out loud many times, I am so tired of watching, I need to start talking. So it's like, I feel like I can only consume so much before I can actually contribute to the conversation, before I'm like, okay, screw this, I'm starting to contribute now. And that's majorly what happened in the WordPress space for me too, is like I have too many thoughts.
Mark Szymanski (56:26.74)
that I have not actually verbalized and your options are, oh, I can tweet this or I can like comment in the video, which is like fine, but like it's not gonna create anything for you. It's just gonna add to the conversation. But I'm saying if you have that many thoughts, do it for yourself, do it in your own personal brand, do it in another brand, start a website for something else. Like that's what I mean is like you can only listen for so long and consume until you, a lot of times, at least for me, I have to start talking because it's just like.
I've done enough listening. I have to give some opinion. Everybody else is talking, why not me? You know, so.
Dave (56:56.905)
I love that. I love that so much. And there's, I want to give credit to whomever I got this from. It may have been Dan Coe, but there was this idea of like fat brain versus skinny brain. And it's the idea that like we consume so much information. It's like consuming food, right? If you just consume, consume, consume, you're creating a fat brain and we don't want a fat brain. We want to fit, you know, in shape, skinny, skinnier brain.
And the way to make a skinnier brain is to actually do. And like, you know, in your case is, you know, create content during the conversation, start talking about what you're learning. So you have to apply the information that you're, you're learning. I think that's one thing it's safe to consume because, you know, you can't be judged by anything. You can't put out content that people are going to, you know, be little or whatever, but.
So people kind of stop and they think, oh, I just need more strategy. I need to like learn more. I need to like, I don't feel as confident enough, but like you're saying, if you consume two to three months worth of beginner content, you will know more than like 90 % of the people that are out there. But at that point you're reaching this like threshold, whatever this name is for, for that, for that point.
where like your brain is just too fat. Like you need to start losing some brain weight by actually applying the things that you're learning and doing and stuff like that. So yeah, a hundred percent in terms of like, that's the boiling point of kind of like your educational journey is either one, start applying content creation yourself or start applying what you're learning.
in real life. So like if you're learning about real estate, go actually buy a rental property or something at that point. You don't need any more education at that point or start creating educational content around real estate. So I really love that concept.
Mark Szymanski (59:02.26)
100%.
Dave (59:03.913)
Cool, Mark, this has been awesome. We learned a lot about how to create content for YouTube, how to show up authentically, how to have an idea of where you're going, but not be too scripted to the point where you lose yourself on all of that, and really how to find your niche and take that hard decision when you are multi -passionate.
kind of that niche equation of, you know, what's kind of working for you at the time and maybe just lean into that. And then over time, we can branch ourselves out and kind of flex some of those other passions. So before we leave, I want to do a quick lightning round of some questions. So put you on the spot here, the hot seat. Nothing too crazy, so don't worry. So think back. So you've been creating content for a while.
Mark Szymanski (59:42.164)
Okay, let's do it.
Dave (59:53.545)
But think back to kind of day one you, the day that you pressed record on the camera for the first time and you started your content creation journey. I know you've always been passionate about content creation, but you know, I'm sure you've learned so much along the way. If you could time travel back to that day one you, what would be the number one piece of advice you would give yourself on day one?
Mark Szymanski (01:00:22.868)
Oh, I would just say.
I would say, I mean, I've kind of done this, but I would say like, don't stop. Like, I mean, honestly, it would probably just be a lot of the stuff that we were talking about. Like, don't worry about what other people think. I think I've probably done a good job of it, but I think that that's probably, be yourself, don't worry about what other people think. I'm trying to keep it concise, but the main thing that I would say that I still possibly struggle with, and I know a lot of other people will as well,
Don't worry about knowing where you're absolutely going, like have a goal, but just keep going. Like just keep going, really. It'll work out as long as you're trying and always trying to get better. There's no reason to doubt that you'll get to where you wanna go.
Dave (01:01:25.193)
You got a broke up there. You hear me?
Mark Szymanski (01:01:28.244)
Yeah, I can hear you now. I just said, don't worry. Don't worry where you're going. As long as you're trying, you'll get to where you want to go. But I think it was probably fine.
Dave (01:01:38.857)
And you mentioned a few different tools that you use for content creation, but what is one tool in your toolbox that you just can't live without for your personal brand?
Mark Szymanski (01:01:52.948)
Say that one more time you broke up at the beginning.
Dave (01:01:54.665)
Sure. And you mentioned a few different tools that you use for content creation, but what would be like the number one tool you use that you can't live without for your content creation?
Mark Szymanski (01:02:08.82)
These are tough Dave. Um...
Dave (01:02:11.177)
I tee this up as being like not the hot seat, but.
Mark Szymanski (01:02:15.156)
Well, they're really good questions. I mean, it's tough to narrow it down to just one. If it was a tool, I mean, it's hard to not put YouTube up there because I do think that that's been good, but I think it's going to continue to be just a big tool for my specific usage. And again, if it's a specific tool, then I don't know if I...
I don't know if I could say a specific tool, but anything, I would just say maybe anything that allows me to go live so easily though. I like Restream as an example. I've used it and it's just, it's so nice that the tools nowadays just make it so much easier to do the things. We just have to put the work in to actually do them, like actually click the button. So.
Dave (01:03:01.033)
Awesome. And if people wanted to learn more about you and your business, where should they go?
Mark Szymanski (01:03:05.684)
Yeah, so if you just type in mjs .bio, that's kind of like a landing page, kind of like a link tree thing that I built, that has my personal brand on there, my agency, all my social links. You can subscribe to my mailing list if you want. There's gonna be content coming there as well. So working on a new website, it'll be there. You'll see it.
Dave (01:03:26.377)
Love it. I appreciate it, Mark. Thank you for the time today, man.
Mark Szymanski (01:03:29.524)
Dave, thank you so much for having me, man. I really appreciate it.
Dave (01:03:33.801)
And we'll cut it there, but I like to just kind of keep it rolling. And I have kind of this like post -show thing that I do where like sometimes good shit just pops up in the rap conversation. So I just kind of keep it, keep things going. So this is new to me, this podcasting hosting thing. So I always like to kind of, well, you can hear me. You can hear me now.
Mark Szymanski (01:03:47.668)
Yeah.
Mark Szymanski (01:03:54.516)
Yeah. Oh, I think you cut there for a sec.
I can hear you now. Yep.
Dave (01:04:02.505)
Okay, cool. Um, so awesome job. I think there's a lot of great tidbits in there. I mean, I've done, like I said, like two or three of these already, and there's a bunch of shit that you talked about today that haven't been discussed in our other, um, in our other podcasts. So it's great. There's going to be some like news, new stuff there, but at the same time, there's, I see consistencies in, um, some of the things that do pop up. So it's been interesting to kind of like,
see some similarities in how people think or some of the things that they think are like the most important for stuff. But so awesome. I appreciate your time today. What, how do you think it went and what are some things that you think could be improved for everything besides Riverside fucking up the whole time?
Mark Szymanski (01:04:47.156)
Now, yeah, I think it was great. Obviously, your content, I can't remember how I found you initially. Did I? I can't remember, but maybe I just, honestly, probably in the algorithm. But I mean, I love the stuff that you're doing. I'm really passionate about personal branding. I know I'm in the WordPress space, but I've been obviously doing that. Like I've been doing the.
thing just not niched for a while. So I love these conversations. I could talk about this stuff all day. I think that you're very good at the questions you prepare and everything like that were solid. I mean, I think that everything that, I don't know if you took that directly just from the form and everything like that, but I could definitely see some connections there. You obviously do your due diligence and research and everything. So I thought.
you know, from an interview perspective, it was great. Conversation was good. Um, I would, I think, yeah, rivers, the, the, I think with, with less technical people, if you have less technical people on, they're really going to get thrown off by the riverside thing. So I don't know if we can, I don't know if there's something, I don't know if it's a, and again, a bandwidth issue or whatever. I love this platform that I've heard nothing but good things about it. It looks, it looks beautiful. I guess, is it, I, I don't know if it's just cause it's trying to like upload.
Dave (01:05:55.785)
Yeah.
Mark Szymanski (01:06:03.764)
while we're recording, so I'm sure that's a lot of stress on your end. I don't, I don't know.
Dave (01:06:07.113)
Yeah, I mean, if it's continuously trying to upload a high definition video, I can understand how that's the case. We're trying to record and upload at the same time. So I'll figure that out. This is the second time it's happened. Obviously, this shouldn't be happening. And it throws a wrench in the fluidness of the conversation. So it's not great.
Mark Szymanski (01:06:12.212)
Yeah.
Mark Szymanski (01:06:27.988)
Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't, it was, it was obviously fine. I mean, it's just, it's just so weird. Like it cuts out and you can kind of hear you. I feel like it doesn't even, I think zoom does this where like you, it kind of catches where the audio was a lot of times, but there was a break in there. I don't know, but sometimes it like speeds audio up and stuff like that on zoom too. But, um, regardless though, I mean, that's just a technical thing that everybody has to deal with, you know, as you continue to do it. But like, I mean, um,
The only thing I would say is just trying to understand your, I'm just like genuinely interested in like the podcast and everything. Like what is your, cause I try to go to your website. I don't know if it's not accessible currently. Like what is your next, well actually I'm really interested in Zen post. Cause I don't think we've specifically talked about the connection there, but like what's your goal for like the podcast, the channel, the.
your personal brand plus ZenPost, is there a marrying there or are they separate or how's that work?
Dave (01:07:32.841)
Yeah, I mean, it's a good question because it's something I was thinking about how much I wanted to marry the two. But I have a Zen post. Our focus, we launched it back in 2016 or I launched it back in 2016. And it's kind of taken a few different variations over the years. Content creation is mainly the through line through it all. And then we focus on SEO and we work with brands to.
specific B2B to publish content on their sites and improve their online presence through SEO and just like digital marketing. But then over the last year or so we've saw that one, me and my business partner have been focusing on our own personal brands and see that personal branding is more the wave in terms of people are buying from people versus logos. So we're like, and this goes back to the passion thing too, where I was like,
We worked with some really great brands, um, with Zenpost and it was awesome, like some really great logos. Um, but it was like, we were working with teams of people and I just, I felt disconnected from like the success of the company and it was great, but it was just, you know, there wasn't like, I didn't wake up every morning being like, I want to help this company write blog posts. But then we started to work with, um, individuals, you know, business leaders and.
people who just want to translate their experiences and thought leadership into content in order to help improve or drive more clients. And so it was more of a one -to -one relationship and I just felt so much more, it was just so much like, the passion was there. We could see the immediate results when you start working with an individual because it's like you're changing an individual's lives versus a company who's already making money or whatever.
So, yeah, we started more focusing on personal branding. So we took everything we applied from like content creation and personal branding or digital marketing. And now we're just applying that at the individual level for personal branding. And we've been just loving it so far. So, but with that, we kind of need to practice what we preach in a way. So we individually have been working on our own personal brands.
Dave (01:09:56.073)
And so that's, I've been, same thing you were talking about in terms of like learning, translating into content and then, you know, producing that content or learning, like translating, you know, into a lived experience and then translating that lived experience into content. That's what I've been doing on my own for the last year or so in terms of content creation and learning the hurdles that come along with launching a personal brand.
So for me, I don't feel like I'm leaps and bounds ahead. You know, obviously like the video editing stuff always makes it seem, you know, super, super professional and all that kind of stuff. Sure. But, um, you know, I'm still just like one or two steps above someone who's like day one. Um, so, but I like that area because that's kind of where I want to stay with like.
feeling like I can still help the day one person. I don't want to be the Gary V. I mean, Gary V is actually pretty good with that. But like there are those people that feel completely out of reach. But like I'm still there in like the trenches and learning every day. So for me, my personal brand right now, the kind of thesis around it.
is being that like, let's get you from nothing to started. And a lot of that is like what we talked about today with the idea of most of that is just mental, like not being confident, not understanding what being authentic means to you.
imposter syndrome, coming into everything and looking at who's being successful and thinking, Oh, do I have to do that in order to be successful? And it's like, no, you know, let's figure out the strategy that's right for you and all that kind of stuff. And so I like the idea of just kind of helping people go from zero to, to started. Um, and then, you know, we have ongoing coaching that helps them grow from there. Um, because there are like,
Dave (01:11:45.833)
The opportunities as you were talking about, the opportunities with personal branding is just huge, but people feel there's this technology hurdle, there's this mental hurdle that are just like easily, you can easily overcome those, but you just need that guide, that kind of fitness coach to kind of get you in the gym and doing it. So for me, my efforts right now are like, you explained.
You know, really learn, be the journalist in a way, like learn. Well, actually scientists is kind of more so my, my, uh, my focus, you know, I know I, I said that I changed it, but I really, this podcast is going to be called brand science because it's, I want to take a scientific approach to branding and personal branding and really kind of go through the hypothesis myself, understand the core elements that make up things like authenticity.
you know, how to become and how to be authentic. Like what are the elements that help support that? Break that down into its parts, label them, put them back together and then teach you like, all right, here's how to be authentic. Or what's the, like abstract ideas like value. Like, okay, they tell you to add value into your content all the time. Okay, what does it mean to add value? Like what is valuable to people? What's the concept of value?
And so taking a scientific approach of just like breaking those concept concepts down, like you, that's why I was resonating with everything you were saying in terms of like really becoming kind of nerding out on concepts and then distilling them down into their parts so that you can understand how they work. And then presenting the easy to understand version of them back to your audience. Cause the some, you know, especially with web dev, like that shit's complicated. So like, what, what is that? So that's been my focus is just like, let's have good conversation.
with people who are doing it well and then I want to drive kind of the the philosophical and like psychological and anatomic elements from what they're doing so that you can kind of see that it's not it's not difficult if you just look at it this way or if you see these these parts so for a long -winded answer to your question, but the idea here is
Dave (01:14:03.209)
This podcast is gonna be just my, I think, did I break up? Okay, there you go, yeah. So for this podcast, this is separate from Zenpost. Me and my business partner both run Zenpost, but we have our separate personal brands. And so we are kind of selling ourselves so we can sell Zenpost. And then this podcast specifically is one, like an educational thing for me. I wanna get in front of people who like,
Mark Szymanski (01:14:08.596)
Very good, yeah.
Dave (01:14:31.081)
know their shit. It doesn't have to even be like personal branding specific. It could be personal branding adjacent. So like people who are just, you know, really good with storytelling or actually I have a, I'm doing a podcast with someone on Friday who's a men's fashion designer or a friend, men's fashion. Um, uh, they, they, he creates your wardrobe for you essentially.
Mark Szymanski (01:14:56.372)
Oh, nice.
Dave (01:14:56.713)
And so what he does is the, he does personal branding, but in wardrobe, uh, like services. So like, he gets to know who you are at your core, what your goal is, what's authentic to you. And then he crafts.
a wardrobe for you that fits all of those things. And like what we do at Zenpost is basically do that, but for content, we get to know you, we get to know what's authentic. And then we tell you what your metaphorical wardrobe would be for a content format. So I think there's like a really interesting conversation that can be had there. And I'll put a bow on this because no one's really asked me this question recently. So I'm just kind of word vomiting a lot of stuff, but.
Mark Szymanski (01:15:41.812)
I love it.
Dave (01:15:44.041)
But lastly, with this podcast, it's educational for me, but I also want to make it obviously educational for my audience.
and being able to connect with people in the personal branding universe. That's one, I'm gonna do two episodes a week. One episode is gonna be an interview like this, and then the other episode is gonna be a solo episode where I just deconstruct a concept like I just talked about. So it's gonna be, I'm gonna do one, I'm gonna record this on Friday, I think.
where it's going to be, like I have this whole kind of concept broken down about authenticity and like what is authenticity? How do you know when someone's being authentic? How do you like spot it? How do you become authentic? Like what are the elements that make up authenticity? Because you know, there's these, like I said, abstract ideas that I think if you can kind of break them down into their elements, people...
can kind of grasp the ideas a little bit more and feel comfortable and confident in like, okay, now that I know how it works, let me see if I can apply that to myself and get over that hurdle of actually starting a personal brand. So that was the 10 minute version of everything, but hope that answered your question.
Mark Szymanski (01:17:00.116)
Nah man, I love it. I think that I can obviously see that you're very passionate about this. You are a, your content machine as far as the ideas and everything like that that you have and the way that you push everything out. So I think you're gonna have a lot of success in this area because you have all the pieces and everything like that. I'm excited to continue to see.
how everything goes. I mean, the only piece that I'm again, just genuinely curious about is, do you have, obviously things can change long -term, but short -term in your mind, is one way to interpret what you just said, that you're not selling anything through your personal brand though?
Like you're not consulting, you're not coaching, you're not doing any of that. The only thing that if I ran a person and be like, hey, I love Dave's content. I want more access to him or I want more than just the free content. Is there only option to go to Zen post or are you offering anything or are you expanding the offering of Zen posts in a different way? Like, you know what I mean?
Dave (01:18:16.009)
Yeah, no, it's a great question. And right now it's Zen posts or nothing. Um, so this is right now at the gateway is if you fuck with what I do and you want to start a personal brand, then come into our, it's a high ticket offer. Um, but I'm in the process of, of kind of distilling those things into lower ticket options. I don't think I would do consulting.
because it would kind of be, if I did consulting, it would be through ZenPost. So we can, you know, me and my business partner have talked about just doing like one -off consultations and such, but for, but through ZenPost. But then things like, and this is kind of a question, I wanna almost, I guess it wouldn't make as much sense to kind of ask this question to you because I think you're your only,
employee or member owner of your business, right? Yeah. So I have business partners, I have investors. And so I have a fiduciary duty to make sure that money is coming into that business under this model. But at the same time, where do you draw the line with IP and things that you're doing from your personal brand that are you or Dave Polykov?
Mark Szymanski (01:19:33.78)
Yeah.
Dave (01:19:37.513)
assets and we've had this conversation, you know, the behind the curtain stuff there is I've had, we've had conversations internally about like, Hey, we need to individually have successful personal brands, which means having, you know, assets and things that we do that monetize away from Zenpost. And so I'm, I'm in the process of kind of creating some things that will be separate from Zenpost.
that live on its own, that still live in that universe of personal branding and such, that don't, that don't, that I guess, still trying to figure out where they bleed in because part of what we want to do with Zenpost is have that community aspect to it too, like get access into a community. And then when you're in the community, you get access to assets and courses and training.
So yeah, how we skin this cat, you know, it could be like, I have my trainings. I, you know, the things that I'm talking about in terms of, um, distilling complex concepts, like authenticity down into its parts and then, you know, creating that into like a workbook or something like those things, if that was like a paid product, um, whatever.
that could be like a paid product on my end, but you get it for free when you become a client at Zenpost. It's like that kind of stuff I'm still thinking through. But I think just if it was Zenpost just me as like the only owner, it would be a little bit more cut and dry. But I think since I have business partners and like,
investors and such, it's been a little bit more of a tightrope to walk in terms of like, what's mine and what do I want to put into Zenpost. Because also too, like you're working on two different businesses at the same time in theory, right? Because I have Zenpost, the agency and service there that I need to make sure is successful. But then you also have like, it's like your side gig is your personal brand in a way, where you need to spend some time building that up too.
Dave (01:21:45.993)
and I can't spend too much time on one without having the other one suffer.
Dave (01:21:54.761)
Cool. Any other thoughts before we sign off?
Mark Szymanski (01:22:01.684)
Oh yeah, sorry, you just broke up there at the end. No, man, yeah, I love it. The only thing I was gonna say almost like Zen post personalities in a way. Like you and your business partner almost like, in a way, like you can, I don't know, that's just one random thing that came to me. But.
Dave (01:22:18.825)
You said Zen post personalities?
Mark Szymanski (01:22:24.116)
Yeah, oh yeah, it was just random thing that I thought was just like Zen post personalities, like you and your business partner, personalities of Zen post. And like you have your own thing, but ultimately it all kind of drives back to it. Just a random connection that I made. But yeah, man, I, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you having me on happy to, happy to chat anytime. Looking forward to continue to see your success and everything. If there's any way that I can help, definitely, definitely let me know.
Dave (01:22:38.217)
Yeah.
Dave (01:22:51.305)
For sure, man. No, yeah, one thing I want to get into is like lives and such down the road. I actually have a StreamYard. Did you use them before? Yeah. So I got a subscription there and I kind of pulled the trigger on that one of these days. But yeah, I also, like I said, I have a, actually I build websites. It's kind of a side gig for myself. I have someone who has this boutique.
Mark Szymanski (01:22:55.924)
Hmm.
Mark Szymanski (01:23:01.908)
Oh yeah, yeah. Stream Yard's good, yeah.
Dave (01:23:20.905)
marketing or advertising agency and whenever a new client comes in where they need a new website, he just like throws it in my lap. So I kind of do that on the side WordPress, Elementor and all that shit. So, you know, if you ever do like a live or whatever, happy to, you know, throw my two cents in there as well and nerd out over there.
Mark Szymanski (01:23:27.284)
Nice.
Mark Szymanski (01:23:34.196)
a little bit there.
Mark Szymanski (01:23:40.212)
Yeah. For sure. Any idea when timeline of the launch and like when this might be live?
Dave (01:23:47.273)
Yeah. So I'm going, like I said, I'm going to do, uh, two a week, but one is just me and another is a guest, uh, you know, uh, me and a guest. And I have like two or three that I've already filmed or recorded. So if I launch next week with the first ones, it'll probably be like close, maybe early may is probably what we're looking at for like when this comes out. Um, but in the meantime, I'm just going to stop recording now.
