Podcast With Trace Brady Transcript

Trace Brady 0:22

Hello and welcome to Drinking with Visionaries - a podcast where we have a nightcap with daydreamers. My name is trace Brady and I will be your host. For this next episode, we'll be joined by Malcolm ocean. Malcolm is a systems designer, a singer-songwriter, and a co-founder of Complice, a noncoercive productivity app. And so without further ado, I present Drinking with Visionaries, Episode 12. Malcolm, what's on your mind these days?

Malcolm Ocean 0:48

Yeah, well, I mean, very much the stuff that we've just been talking about on Twitter, and which I'll go into in a moment. But as we get into this conversation, I'm feeling just really excited by the sense of like, "okay, we're gonna have a conversation, that on one hand is just like a call that we want to have for some purpose". Like, we've got stuff to talk about, that we were talking about on Twitter and we wanted to dive into on a call. And simultaneously, this is being understood as a podcast that can go out on your stream as part of the Drinking with Visionaries piece. And I think that the conversation we want to have is appropriate to that podcast. And so it's like, "Oh, like that just killed two birds with one stone kind of kind of energy". And that's, I guess, one of the things that have been on my mind lately - it's like, where to find those win-wins or those places where energy is released because you're solving multiple problems at once, or your energy is released because you're just doing the thing that feels most natural to do anyway. And like, you're setting up your environment such that the things you feel like doing are things that deeply fuel the world. So that's kind of what's on my mind on various levels of abstraction.

Trace Brady 1:59

I mean, I've tried to do that too, you know? Find multiple things that I can hit with one stroke. And it's so satisfying when it happens. But lately, I've been trying to curate my entire day-to-day life with things that bring me energy, because that's like, for me, one of the best measures of going to be able to keep up the momentum.

Malcolm Ocean 2:24

Sometimes, you're gonna have to do stuff that doesn't energize you, but if you're doing it so that you can do more stuff that energizes you and you feel like that is making sense to you, then that puts you in a different kind of place where it's like, "okay, yeah, I've got to file this paperwork, but I know why I'm doing it. Like, it's not just so that I can live, it's so that I can thrive."

Trace Brady 2:47

Yeah. So Visa, posting about how his least favorite thing about marketing is filling out all the descriptions of things, and I completely agree. You know, there are times where I want to put something out and I have to write some sort of tweet or description in, like, a YouTube video or something to go with it. And [with] that stuff, I can go from being super energized to being on E, when I have to do those things just drives me crazy. I don't know why, [it] just doesn't feel very meaningful, I guess.

Malcolm Ocean 3:19

Yeah.

Trace Brady 3:20

So what, these days, is giving you energy?

Malcolm Ocean 3:23

Yeah, well, let's see. I mean, I had this really powerful experience, a year ago on this very front that we're talking about of like laying out my vision of what I want to see happening, in terms of like people collaborating together in the Twittersphere. Not specific to Twitter, but kind of like the crowds of people that are all around there. And I had this very negative effort experience of laying that out. Negative effort is this term I've coined to point at this, which is basically like, it would take more effort not to do the thing. So you know, a year ago, I put up this vision and I feel like it's just been incubating for months. [And] just gradually, these tiny little pieces click into place, and then suddenly, it's like, "oh, we should do barn-raisings". And so I put the word out about that, and we ran the first barn-raising, I think, a week ago. And that went really well, and I need to make a... oh, you said this podcast might not go out for a while, so I'll just tag. We're talking October 14, just for reference of when a week ago is. So I ran the first barn-raising about a week ago, and that went really well.

And now we're just looking for like, "okay, who's going to be barn raising number two? Like who is another business or project or something that's right on the precipice but isn't off the ground yet? And can we take care of everything in one day or two days and kind of get the thing off the ground?" But that's just kind of like, one arena for prototyping the thing? You know, it's like, the point isn't to have 'n' barn raisings total. I mean, that's a useful metric to keep trying to make that number go up because of the other things that it serves. But the bigger thing is, "how do we give people experiences of working together on projects that they really enjoy? And working in ways that are self energizing" And so it's like the people helping launch the business who aren't running the business - on the one hand, they're not getting paid, but on another hand, they kind of get to do whatever they feel like and make an impact. And people love doing that, like really making an impact in other people's lives. People love doing that and often feel like they don't get to do enough of that at their job where they are paid. And then I don't know, thinking about a "pay it forward" sort of economy for the whole thing, where it's like the people who get all this help and support don't have to pay back the people who helped. But hopefully, we're having people run it who are naturally energized to want to give back, but back to the community, not to the individuals directly. Like, you know, it's so it's not a debt, basically.

Trace Brady 5:56

Could you tell me more about the concept of barn raising? Like I'm familiar, because I follow you and I've heard the term many times before. But for people that aren't familiar, could you briefly explain how you came about this concept? How you've developed it and made it your own? Things like that?

Malcolm Ocean 6:12

Yeah. So I think a lot about metaphor design as being central to what it means to design anything. And you don't always have the new metaphor right at the start, but the point is, like, you know, Evernote, is trying to use a notebook metaphor, right? They have notes, and they have notebooks, and then they have stacks of notebooks. But assuming that by "notebook", they mean the sort of thing that I would call a notebook, which is to say, a bound piece of paper that you write on, page by page. That metaphor is actually wrong. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm saying it's not what their product actually is. The notes are loosely floating pages, and then you arrange them into what would be better called binders. But "notebook" is like the wrong metaphor. And, ironically, you know, Roam Research has a daily notes page that's actually much more like a notebook, because it automatically rolls over every day and you can't do anything about it. Like that's actually more notebook-like than Evernote is. Meanwhile, Evernote is actually... I mean, I said binders but in some ways, it's actually more of like a file folder metaphor, still, masquerading as a notebook.

And I think people, unconsciously... I mean, I don't know if I can back this up, but my guess is that this metaphor sheer, like the tension between the metaphor you claim to be using and the actual structure and whether it matches that metaphor, makes things less good. And moreover, it makes it harder to design coherently. Like, what are you trying to do? Because if you're not clear on what your metaphor is, then you're going to constantly be designing in a sort of way that, like, you don't know what the whole thing is. There's no sense of the whole, there's just a bunch of features. There's a bunch of like workflows, and so on, but there's not a sense of like, "what this is[sic]" So I thought a lot about metaphor design from that perspective, and the barn-raising thing really emerged as a way of like - I was originally going to use a hackathon metaphor. But while that works for some people, it can alienate people who don't feel comfortable or familiar with the whole tech scene. Some people see hackathons as a kind of caffeine-fueled coding orgies, right? Which is not wrong and not bad. It's not a wrong description, and, frankly, I enjoy a caffeine-fueled coding orgy sometimes. Like, that's awesome. But for people to whom that's not their aesthetic, it doesn't work as well, and I wanted this to appeal to a wide range of people.

And so I realized that virtual barn-raising or 21st-century barn-raising, or something like that, was a way better metaphor. Because it's like, with a canonical barn-raising, like a classic barn-raising, a bunch of people get together -this often happens in Amish communities, but probably prior to the Amish technology stream splitting off from our tech tree, everybody was doing barn raisings when it was farming, which was everybody, like 97% of the population were farmers. So, people would help each other put a barn up. And what this does is, it means that if somebody's barn burns down, or a new person moves to the community, or, you know, your son finally gets married and moves out and has his own farm and then he needs a barn, it's like, instead of him having to take two or three months to set up the barn, during which he can't do anything else useful, everybody pitches in, and suddenly there's a barn, and then he can do all the other stuff. And it's a great project because it's very parallelizable, like raising a barn is, which is tons of surface area, literally surface area on the barn, that people can be hammering stuff to and putting roof shingles on and so on. So, basically, it's like the barn-raising thing is also a really good metaphor because, while the role that somebody takes in a barn-raising is going to depend on their experience, you know, both [of] have they raised a barn before, right? Like, do they have the overall picture? Do they have that experience? But also, just like, have they climbed around on a tall surface before? Have they used a drill before? Like, a hammer and saw or whatever, right? You know, people's experience is going to affect what they do. There's also a sense in which anybody can be helpful. Like, I've never raised a barn before, but if I showed up at a barn-raising someone could put me to work. Sure! Like, they'll just [say], "Carry this thing from here over there. Great!"

Oh, the other reason the barn-raising metaphor is really powerful is that unlike with a hackathon, where a lot of the projects don't go anywhere, with a barn-raising, the whole point is to get someone off the ground and up and running - that's kind of the energy. And so here, similarly, it's like, the only projects we're going to do barn-raisings on are ones that already intend to be successful already. They're already aiming to be something - not necessarily a business, you know, it could be a nonprofit, or a political project, or something like that. But something that has its own legs. And so what that means is that the person who can't not do this, who's like, "This needs to exist, goddammit! I'm going to make it exist." That person is going to find one way or another to take care of all of the boring stuff.

But in the meantime - or not in the meantime, but in order to even have all that boring stuff to take care of, they first need to just like get the critical mass of energy to get off the ground. And so that's why you can bring a bunch of volunteers, and none of them ever has to do anything they don't feel like doing. Because there's somebody who, ultimately, it's going to be their job to clean up all the loose ends. And so you let people loose on like, "What do you feel like helping with?" And like, last weekend, you know, somebody built a wrapper for the API that we were launching on the barn-raising. Like, somebody built a Python wrapper for it. Somebody was just using it and reporting bugs. Somebody else was, maybe, fixing the bugs. A couple of us were ideating, like names and logos for the organization. What else? Oh, yeah, people were writing up like copy for the website, like sales pages, like, "Here's why you should use our thing instead of doing your own thing."

So there's just a ton of stuff that was happening, right? And people with all sorts of different kinds of experiences... we're still figuring out how to do it. I mean, literally, last weekend was just the first one, and I also was distracted by a few things going on in my life, so I wasn't as present for it as I hoped I would be. But it still went well. And that's partially a testament to just there being a bunch of great people showing up, who want to help and are down to take a few minutes to figure out how they can help as opposed to needing to be delegated to, right? So I think it's also practice for people figuring out how they can be helpful, like learning how to notice, "What can I contribute here?" So that's the long spiel about barn raising. And so that plugs into this whole bigger vision that I have - we're talking vision here. So far, I've been doing too much talking to drink, though.

Trace Brady 12:40

That means I'm doing my job right.

Malcolm Ocean 12:42

[Laughter] Yeah. Oh, man, I haven't had a Guinness in a long time. Jeez. [Sips]. Oh, this is nice.

Trace Brady 12:48

So could you tell me more about the results from the first barn raising?

Malcolm Ocean 12:53

Yeah, so the company is, as far as I know -unless they've launched in the last few days- they still haven't kind of quite... yeah, I think they're still sort of publicly in the same state they were before. And that's... on one level, like, even though the barn-raising thing went really well, I kind of consider that like a failure. Like, I think we could have taken them to launch if people had been more focused, particularly me. Maybe not, though. I mean, I need to debrief with them and sort of find out what's still missing before they feel thoroughly launched, as opposed to just a landing page. But that's what I want to aim for. It's like people who are at that threshold where in one day, or in two days, or something, we can just get them launched. Like, "Now you're live, you've got customers," I mean, they already had two customers, but like, "You've got like, an onramp for more customers," and all of that kind of stuff. So in some ways, the results weren't as tangible as I'd hoped, immediately. And I think that that's really important, because like, you know, I watched a time-lapse of a barn raising and like, they didn't get all of the wood panels on the side of both barns that they put up in one day, there was like 50 people or something like that. But they, also, had to start with the concrete foundations like already there, like you can't pour the concrete and later that day, put up all the stuff on top of it, right? So there's a kind of laying groundwork thing.

But anyway. But there definitely was a sense of them being done, even though there was still like, probably five to 30 more person-hours of putting up stuff on the walls, I don't have a very good gauge on how fast. Even though it is still five to 30 person-hours, you know, it's like 30 person-hours is like one person for a week or four people for a day. Like [a] "you can just wrap it up" kind of thing, [and] it's done, right? I really do want to hold myself to the standard of picking projects that are kind of right on that precipice already, and really aiming to get to a place by the end of the day where people are like "We did it!" And we didn't quite reach that, so this is a helpful reflection for me. Like, I haven't thoroughly debriefed the day with anybody yet, just in general. So, this is helpful for me to just kind of go over it and be like, "Oh yeah. No, we had that threshold and the day went well, but it fell short of launch." And I think that's really important for people's ongoing enthusiasm. And I mean, we'll make a big deal about it in a week or two, when they finally do launch and say, "Hey, you know, like, with the help of our barn raising, these guys launched", because, you know, it's important for people to see the impact of what they do, right? But yeah, so that's something important to keep in mind. And it's subtle, like it's hard to find someone who's right on the precipice, but hasn't just already done it, you know? So, it might be tough.

Trace Brady 15:37

Besides focus, on your part, what do you think you could have done better in order to make it a success? Would it make sense to extend the timeframe? Because I know, Startup Weekend, for example, has like a 54-hour weekend. So maybe [you'd] make more progress if you extended the timeline a little bit?

Malcolm Ocean 15:57

Yeah, so that's the thing, and we talked a bit about that. It would be harder to get people to come if we were making it that long. As it was, lots of people were coming and going just for various reasons. They had other plans and stuff, or they were just tired, you know, after 10 hours of doing stuff, right? Not unreasonable. There's something about coding, in particular, that can lend itself to a 16 to 30-hour marathon, because the feedback loops are so tight. It's like, "Hey, this doesn't work. Blah blah blah blah. Okay, now it works. Oh, but the bigger thing still doesn't work. Why doesn't that work? Oh, I need to rethink the whole thing. Oh, okay." You know, wherever you're at there's kind of like... I mean, you can be really stuck, but the point is when you get things working you know they're working immediately, and if they're not, you can test them, and you can debug them and all that. Whereas if you're writing website copy, the feedback loop just doesn't work the same way. It's like, "Does it work? Well, I don't know. I mean, let's show it to some people. What do they think? Well, they have these comments, they have these critiques - the critiques are inconsistent. Like, some people think it should be longer. Some people think it should be shorter. Should we write a shorter one and the longer one and leave it the middle sized one? And, you know, I guess we have to do some A/B testing. But that takes time and just doesn't have the same tempo to it."

So I do think there's a reason why hackathons are hackathons and not designathons, or even writeathons. I mean, I'm sure people do writeathons, but it doesn't have the same natural kind of "vroom" to it. Anyway, but in answer to your question, one thing that we did get clear was that it would feel good to do two days, probably on... like, one of them would probably be a weekend day so that people who have jobs during the week can come. The other one might either be like the previous weekend or somewhere in the sort of the week leading up to it. And the first day would be a shorter one, and its foundations - putting the concrete in, right? And so that way, people who want to contribute a lot can come to both days. People who can't make it to the long one can still come to the short one, which is nice. But also, it's not like you're expected that[sic] if you're signing up, you're going to be there multiple days. It's best*[18:07] to just feel like a different kind of commitment than a one-off event. There is something unique about one-off, even compared to two. Where it's like you're interested in not getting yourself sort of signed up for something, it's like you either show up or you don't and, like, great. So I mean, that's one kind of design thing that we've tweaked that's related to having it sort of just be longer. I mean, the team that I was working with on this was pretty proactive in terms of coming up with clear stuff that people can work on.

So it's not like there wasn't... like, that's something I could imagine tripping another team-up if they didn't do the advanced prep of like, "Here are 15 projects you can contribute to" right? Like, people might show up and just be like, "Oh, you only need coders, I guess?" And even if that's not true, if there isn't an easy way to kind of sort them, then it would be hard. Beyond that, I mean, I think a few other things is like having a few better templates for things like contributor licensing agreements, where it's like, any code I write is yours, you can use it - just basic stuff like that. We've been prototyping some of that stuff, but it'll have to just evolve a bit as we do more of the barn-raisings. That makes it easier because if you've got one of those that feels really good for people, then you can have new people looking at the code base or part of the codebase on minute 20, right? Whereas, we were kind of like, "Ah, should we use this form? Should we use this document? You know, what should we use?" And that was just taking up bandwidth, where if we had a kind of streamlined "Here's our default process for this. Here's why we think it's good. We even talk to a lawyer." I don't know if we'll run it by a lawyer or just use a template somebody else has. But, yeah.

Trace Brady 19:43

Speaking of killing two birds with one stone, and metaphor design, and foundations and all that. I see a lot of parallels between what I'm currently trying to do and what you're doing.

Malcolm Ocean 19:56

Well, that's why we're talking.

Trace Brady 19:57

Yeah, exactly. So, metaphor design is particularly tricky because we started off with the the metaphor of creating yourself, right? And that's what this workbook that Nicolas and I, my partner, we worked together to create this book, because we realized that we had, eerily, written the same book, essentially, right?

Malcolm Ocean 20:16

Right, right. That's "Nurture Your Nature" right?

Trace Brady 20:18

Yeah. So-

Malcolm Ocean 20:19

Great title, I love it.

Trace Brady 20:20

Thank you. So the workbook is called "Create Yourself", but we didn't want the coaching program to be the exact same name, because it might be confusing for people, right? So we went through a couple of other iterations and we settled on, tentatively, "Nurture Your Nature", because we felt like, that wasn't as big of a promise, you know? If you're telling somebody, you can help them create their self, I mean, it's not a lie, t's just like a stretch. Right?

Malcolm Ocean 20:48

And it's also like, what... I mean, it begs the question, "what does that even mean?"

Trace Brady 20:51

Right

Malcolm Ocean 20:52

Like, do I not have one? I create a different one than the one I already have? Am I like, just making more of the self that I've got? Like, you know.

Trace Brady 21:02

Yeah, I had all of these thoughts as well. And-

Malcolm Ocean 21:07

Have you read the Meaningess article on "Selfing" by the way?

Trace Brady 21:10

I haven't.

Malcolm Ocean 21:11

I think - let me just read the first couple of sentences of it.

Trace Brady 21:13

I might have bookmarked it, but I don't think I actually read it.

Malcolm Ocean 21:17

So it says, "We are awash in ideological crazy talk about the self. Moralists say we have to overcome ourselves because they are selfish. Psychotherapist, say most people aren't working well and need tune up using the expert understanding of how selfs should work. Spiritual teachers say we have somehow misplaced and forgotten our true selves and must go on quests to find them. Most implausibly Buddhists say the Self does not exist. And worse, many pop science writers agree." And he's just like pointing at like people making all sorts of claims about the self, and he's like, "What?! What is all this stuff?"

Trace Brady 21:54

Yeah, that's kind of what we wanted to avoid with the coaching program. And I think we're even going to rename the workbook to be more about like, creating your characters, almost like as if it's a video game, which is much more tangible, and people will have something con-

Malcolm Ocean 22:12

I really like Nurture Your Nature, honestly. I mean, I haven't thought about it that much, but it's an incredibly pithy busting of the nature-nurture dualism. Like, it doesn't get more pithy than that. You are implying, by virtue of saying that you can, that the two are mutually supportive.

Trace Brady 22:34

Exactly.

Malcolm Ocean 22:35

And then, so it busts that duality. And then the other thing it does is it just like, it does it in a really friendly way or something like that. It's like, I immediately hear in that, "Hey, you're different from other people - you have some nature. But I guess, also, part of your nature is that you are similar to other people - that's part of your nature to a point. But, like, WHO ARE YOU? Like, self-discovery? And then also, how do you take care of that and help it grow?" And it's just like, "Oh, that's beautiful. Let's straight*[23:04] that in the package.

Trace Brady 23:06

Thank you, I appreciate that. You know, we went through several different names and we could never settle on one. And I'm always looking for pithy but meaningful.

Malcolm Ocean 23:15

Yeah.

Trace Brady 23:16

Like, "Create Yourself" was flipping that quote of like finding yourself on its head, right? That's why I chose that as the original title for the workbook. And I still like it, but now that I've had a lot of feedback from people who have read it and people on Twitter and things like that, I do think it's over promising things. And it might be a little too confusing for what it is we're trying to do. Like, the whole thing was built on the actual quote from George Bernard Shaw, that says, "Life isn't about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself." In reality, it's about both but you know, like, that's it.

Malcolm Ocean 23:52

Right. Right.

Trace Brady 23:53

That's the pithy quote.

Malcolm Ocean 23:54

And that's where I feel like "Nurture your Nature" actually captures both.

Trace Brady 23:58

Cool. You know, the most recent thing that I have been thinking about is, whenever I quote tweeted your tweet, asking for somebody who's doing this kind of nurturing your nature thing. I said, really simply, "My thing is helping you find your thing", and I was furious after I wrote that because it felt like I had been trying to say that for a long time. And I have said it in other words, but never so like succinctly. And I wrote that in like two seconds and just sent it, and immediately afterward I was seething because I'm like, "Damn it! that's what I've been looking for". Yeah, so that's the other thing. I was briefly considering -and still might, I don't know- changing the coaching program to be "Find Your Thing" because that's something everybody's trying to do, and it doesn't necessarily back me into the corner of like "finding your niche", it can be like whatever your thing is. So I really want to steer away from helping people find their niche because that's not necessarily what I'm particularly passionate about.

Malcolm Ocean 25:14

Yeah, the niche framing is sort of intrinsically external.

Trace Brady 25:18

Mm hmm.

Malcolm Ocean 25:19

It's like, and I mean, ecologically, it's about right, you know? It's like, "Where do you fit in with everything?" It's not just "Who are you? But who are you in relation?" And so like, ecologically, it's right. But the way that people talk about it in the context of like startups and stuff, which is like how most people are familiar with it actually being used in any context, like "find your niche," as opposed to, "this organism occupies the niche of blah blah" it's like, yeah the metaphor has gotten a bit twisted, from my perspective. Like, it doesn't quite mean the thing that it would want to mean. It's close, but the connotations are boring. Yeah, I agree.

The niche thing is not the thing, but yeah, find your thing. I mean, I'm remembering this really funny video that used to play as, like a public service announcement, or something, on TV when I was a kid. And it was like, this one guy was like, "My thing is playing the tuba," and he's like [imitates tuba sounds]. And then, there's like, "My thing is dinosaurs, here's a T Rex, [roars]" or whatever. And then, there's like, somebody like hula hooping, like doing different things like. And the video just like, "Everybody's got a thing, what's your thing?" And, like, there's something I hate about that phrase. Like, I really hate that, as a generalist, you know, as a person with many things. As a, you know, all of that. As someone who doesn't want to be typecast or put in a box or whatever. But there's also something I really love about that, especially the descriptive statement of like, "Everybody's got a thing", which I think is more or less true, like people just do have their own unique interests and unique perspectives and their unique whole thing.

Trace Brady 27:13

Yeah, I had the same thought. Because the thing that I've been working on [for] the last couple of nights is... actually I want to tell you how I came about this in another annoying way. You know, everybody's heard the phrase like "Show, don't tell," right? I always say, "Show and tell". But like, I still struggle to do it, right?

Malcolm Ocean 27:34

Yeah.

Trace Brady 27:35

Like, how do you demonstrate the thing that you're trying to explain? Like, how do you live your philosophy and embody it? And I've been thinking about this for a while, and I was watching Modern Family the other night. And there's this episode, where the main character, the dad, he has this lifelong dream of like walking a tightrope, right? And then his wife is trying to teach their kids a lesson. And throughout the entire episode, she's trying to explain to them, why they should do it, how they should do it, what it is they should do, all of those things. And at the end of the episode, she brings the kids back to the house and the dad is up in the air successfully walking the tightrope. And it clicks into her head that she's been going about this thing all wrong, you know, because he demonstrates by walking the tightrope.

Malcolm Ocean 28:36

Yeah, yeah, by doing with the actual thing.

Trace Brady 28:39

And it, all of a sudden, clicks in all of their kids' heads too, because they see it in action. And, you know, just that slight reframing for me was like, "Goddammit, that's what I got to do." Like, I gotta walk the tightrope, instead of trying to tell everybody on Twitter, the importance of what it is that I'm trying to do.

Malcolm Ocean 28:57

Yeah.

Trace Brady 28:58

So with that in mind, I have a thing, you know, one of my many things - I'm also a deep generalist, so I resist the idea of having one thing, it's just not going to happen, especially for people like you and me. So, I was going to say, here's my thing, I want to help you find your thing. But the problem with that is that many people have, or almost everybody, has multiple things. So that was also that was also a point of tension for me just like in thinking through my marketing in the coming weeks. I think Nurture Your Nature is what we're gonna stick with for now.

Malcolm Ocean 29:39

It also doesn't have that problem because your nature is sort of a mass now. Like, it's a single noun in a sense, but it's like it encompasses all of the things and their relationships with each other and their relationships with the world and all of that.

Trace Brady 29:55

So hearing you work through your barn-raising metaphor, really reinforced what I've been doing with Nurture Your Nature, because I picked that for the same reasons that you picked barn raising. You know? It doesn't exclude people who aren't in tech. You know, like if I had chosen that the niche thing-

Malcolm Ocean 30:15

Right, right. [inaudible 30:17] that phrasing alienating, and, as it is, whatever phrasing you use will probably be alienating for some people, but you kind of accept that and you say, "Well, as long as I'm alienating the people I want to alienate, we're good." Yeah, approximately. Yeah.

Trace Brady 30:34

Yeah. I mean, we're targeting misfits. So, you know, the subcategories of that would be like artists, entrepreneurs, etc.

Malcolm Ocean 30:42

Right, right, yeah. And, I mean, your pinned tweet is really clear about that. It's like, [singing] "You are weird. Weird as fuck." Yeah, it's like, alright, some people are gonna be like, "Fuck this guy." Right?

Trace Brady 30:57

Yeah.

Malcolm Ocean 30:57

And I'm like, "Well, this is a little cheesy, but he's clearly sincere."

Trace Brady 31:04

Yeah, for what it's worth, I shared that with multiple people before posting it. And all of them were like, "Yeah, this is cringy as fuck, but I love it". And I'm like, "Yes, that's what I'm going for." You know, I look at that video and cringe a little bit, but-

Malcolm Ocean 31:19

Nice, nice.

Trace Brady 31:20

But I think that's part of what I'm trying to say, you know?

Malcolm Ocean 31:25

It's okay to be weird, even if it's cringy.

Trace Brady 31:27

Yeah. Like, what's wrong with that? You know, all of my favorite people are people who are like, sincere to their core, and cringy because of it, you know?

Malcolm Ocean 31:38

Yeah, it is interesting to ask, like, what makes it cringy? Like, what is cringiness, and is there a sign that's being ignored if we simply say, "Well, that's okay, it doesn't matter." It's like, "Well, what's the signal there?" I guess, even if we're saying, "We're not going to be run by the question of whether or not what we're doing is cringy," it's like, what does that mean? Like, what do we learn if something is cringy? Can something be totally sincere and not cringy? Right? Like, what does that look like? And I think that's partially a framed thing, you know? Like, I've written songs that, when I sing them to the right person in the right moment, it's like, "ooh," like the channel just opens up. If I sing that song to somebody who's not on my wavelength, they find it super cringe. So it's like, "well, that's actually an example of the cringe is in the eye of the beholder," basically.

Trace Brady 32:35

Beautifully said. If you came up with that, I'm gonna quote you on that for sure, because that's perfect.

Malcolm Ocean 32:44

Should it be cringe is in the eye of the beholder? Or cringiness? Probably just cringe.

Trace Brady 32:51

Probably just cringe. I mean, cringiness is more accurate, but I feel like it's less accessible for people who have-

Malcolm Ocean 32:56

Yeah, with the original quote, it's beauty, it's not beautifulness.

Trace Brady 33:03

Right. [Laughter]. Yeah, I was very deliberate in alienating the right kind of people, because I knew the people who were interested, ie misfits, wouldn't really care that I sang a little song and talked about buttholes on the video. For context for anybody who's listening, I listed three things that were super weird about three successful people. And the last one being Salvador Dali, who made actual clay imprints of people's buttholes so he could see if they were unique, like fingerprints and snowflakes.

Malcolm Ocean 33:42

He had to know!

Trace Brady 33:44

Fun fact, they are. [Laughter]

Malcolm Ocean 33:45

[Laughter] Did you actually say that in the video?

Trace Brady 33:49

No.

Malcolm Ocean 33:50

I was wondering

Trace Brady 33:51

I was hoping that people would like use that as bait, you know, and say like-

Malcolm Ocean 33:56

And ask like, "What about the butthole thing?"

Trace Brady 33:59

But nobody asked it. I was really let down by that.

Malcolm Ocean 34:01

I think I was wondering, by the time I reached the end of the video. Like, I had kind of forgotten about it. You know what I mean?

Trace Brady 34:07

Yeah.

Malcolm Ocean 34:08

I thought you were maybe gonna say it, and then you just like you didn't. But anyway, yeah.

Trace Brady 34:12

Yeah, this was just a fact that I learned very recently. So I thought it was super funny, and one way to stand out in the marketing, because, like, who's gonna talk about buttholes? But yeah, he did this research and found that everybody has 35 to 37 greases in their butthole. That's an extremely specifically narrow range, right? And, as far as I can tell, it only alternates between the two, like you have 37 or you have 35. Or maybe it's - I don't know, some crazy people have 36. But the really crazy thing is, the only exception to this rule is identical twins who also have identical buttholes, what? [Laughter]

Malcolm Ocean 34:59

[Laughter] Amazing, was Dali able to find out all of that, including the twins thing? Or did the twins thing, like somebody later research that?

Trace Brady 35:06

Yeah, like he was very... I guess he was very passionate about this concept because he... I think it was also like, partially, sexually motivated, because he would, I think, specifically ask people who came over to his house to sit on a clay foundation. And then afterward, he would study the creases and see what the similarities and differences were. Super interesting, but super, super weird. And I think part of that, I don't know what you would call it, neuroticism, that would drive you to do such a thing is partially why he succeeded. You know, I would have to really look into like statistics and conduct research to find out the link between weirdness and success, but you can clearly see the willingness to go in weird places.

Malcolm Ocean 36:03

Yeah.

Trace Brady 36:04

The analytical mind that would spend the time to find out the answers to such a thing.

Malcolm Ocean 36:11

Yeah.

Trace Brady 36:12

And-

Malcolm Ocean 36:12

Questions! Inquiring minds want to know.

Trace Brady 36:16

Yeah. So I'm curious, and I want to explore this more in the future. What's the link between weirdness and success? Because, like, [if] you hold up anybody that's super successful - like Elon Musk, super weird dude. And you know, you can say successful people just happen to be weird, but I think it's weird people have a better chance of succeeding. What do you think about that?

Malcolm Ocean 36:39

Ah, I mean, yeah, it's like, by and large, they're definitely weird before they get successful and so, insofar as like, there's actually a correlation, which like, seems to me to be true. But I mean, it's plausible to me that the successful, weird people are way more salient, if you see what I mean, because they're going about being weird, you know? If you said, "Successful people, all write about their lives, I mean, just look at how many books there are about successful people." And it's like, right, but if there were 10 times as many successful people that were just very quiet about it, we wouldn't even know that they were there. So it might be that the weird ones are just more salient, or that their weirdness itself is more salient. Or something? I don't know.

Trace Brady 37:22

It's also very hard to measure, like-

Malcolm Ocean 37:24

But by definition, an outlier success is not normal.

Trace Brady 37:28

Yeah.

Malcolm Ocean 37:30

So there's a sense in which it's sort of just intrinsically true, actually. Like, that doesn't mean they're gonna be weird in any way that you could identify, obviously, aside from their success, but by definition, even if in some sense they got lucky, they created the conditions for that luck to occur, you know, they bought the right lottery ticket, something like that. And honestly, like people who just actually win lottery tickets don't make the news really, for anything other than winning the lottery ticket, which doesn't count as news, because it's happened before. That's my definition of news. Anything that would like... that... I don't know if I have the words for it, but it's like, something is not news, if it would still be as newsworthy if it happened again. So it's like, a sports team winning a thing, not news. A sports team winning a thing for the first time...

Trace Brady 38:27

News.

Malcolm Ocean 38:28

Slightly news, but that's happened before, if you see what I mean? Not with that particular sports team, but with some other sports team. So like, I mean, kind of, but also not really "breaking a world record" kind of news. But again, that's happened many times, right? Like on that level of description, it's not news. Like, did you hear somebody broke a world record this week? Like, I'm sure that happened, and it's something, but it's not news, you know? Whereas like science and technology, it's like, "Oh, this thing is possible that wasn't possible before." You know, with politics, it's like, "Oh, like this whole thing has developed, you know, this new policy exists that has never existed in this country before." And I mean, partially what makes that news is about how it impacts people, but it is also partially about the sense of it actually being new. You know, there are, I think, a couple of policies that the Democrats and the Republicans, every time one of them gets in power, they just repeal it, or they pass the bill again - it just goes back and forth. And it's kind of not in use anymore. It's just like, yep, 'x' parameter in the overall system is going to be 'y' when the Republicans are in power and 'z' when the Democrats are in power. Meanwhile, I'm Canadian, so I say 'zed'.

Trace Brady 39:53

So to bring this [to] like a higher level of abstraction, basically asking the 'Ship of Theseus' question like, when does something become new? Everything's a remix of something that came before it.

Malcolm Ocean 40:04

Totally, totally. And my definition, is not like, logically rationally sound, right? Like, it's more just an attempt to articulate how I noticed I was already relating to news. Where it's like, sports events, like "no, none of this is news". You know, there's some like slight sports news in the space of like, what's going on with like trans athletes and stuff. Like, actually just, "Oh, things are - [there are] new decisions to make, that haven't been being made before. Hmm. Interesting." Like, I tweeted recently that that's a topic that I don't have opinions on - I think it's really complicated, and I don't know of any good solutions to it. But anyway, coming back to some of the stuff we were saying, though, about barn-raising, and like what you're doing. Like, I want to kind of really bring this to some of the core of what what prompted our exchange in the first place. And so, basically, I was sort of looking at this barn raising thing and this sense of having access in myself. And this is what prompted it, having access in myself, a deeper clarity about one of my big things, which is some sense of design or something, like just seeing what could be that isn't, and being like, "What if it were though?" which sometimes gets framed as seeing some product that's bad and being like, "What if it were good, though?" and being able to sort of imagine beyond the limitations of the frame of how the product sort of presenting itself. It's like, "No, no, no, this is completely missing the point of the problem it's trying to solve, which is actually why."

So, I was kind of recognizing just how valuable that was for me to have experienced that. And a year ago, when I put up my thread about the kind of meta-team meta-vision, the collaborative, self-energizing meta-team when I put up that thread, I said something about like, "at some point, we're going to need a person who's..." well, no, actually, at that time, I said something slightly different. I said, "We're going to need a person whose role is finding people." And I think that's true, in some sense, because sometimes there's a specific problem that needs solving and you need to match it with a person. You're going to find the person who's going to be a match to that problem. But what we already have, in some ways, even more than we have a bunch of problems, is we have a bunch of people. And so what are these people all about? How do we find out what their deal is? And so, I was just reflecting on that and the value of this conversation that I've had with a friend of mine who had gone through this thing called sacred gifts, where she was just inviting me to... like, I already had an inkling of what the thing was, like, we didn't have to go through a bunch of effort to even just find a kind of trailhead. But she really guided me down the trailhead and just really looked at me, and, you know, when I picked up the random objects in my room, and Elian picked up this little thing of, like, posted bookmark stickers. And I was like, "You know, this thing is honestly, pretty well designed, but it would honestly be really even better designed if it actually had a part of itself that made a bookmark. So it could just be your bookmark. The way that it is, it's actually too thick for that." And like, I hadn't thought of that until I picked it up. I'd actually been pretty satisfied with the thing, but once I picked it up, I just was immediately able to see like, "if this thing were really good, it would be different in this way."

And she just watched me in astonishment and was like, "How do you see that? Like, what are you doing that you see that? How are you - what?!" And that just really underscored for me in the sense which, "Oh, yeah, I'm doing a weird thing here. Like my mind is paying attention to the world in ways that most people, I guess, are not." And part of what was present in recognizing that was a feeling of aloneness. But it was a feeling of aloneness that I'd had for decades anyway - of feeling like I lived in a world designed by people who didn't know what design was. And so the aloneness just sort of became more obvious in some ways. And then I started noticing people on Twitter who I was like, "Hey, that person sees things. Hey, that person... they thought of a thing that nobody else thought of." And I started just collecting a list of people that I called "Deep Design". And I've been periodically adding people to it. There are maybe a dozen or 20 people on there or something like that. And that helped me feel less alone, and then also sharing some of my own design thoughts and having people appreciate them helped me feel less alone. But then I started to ask "Okay, well, so I can't pull everything into existence. My hands are not big and numerous enough. I can see dozens or hundreds of things that I think should exist, and I can't pull them all into existence myself. But plausibly, we could find other people who would want to make some of these things exist, you know, on whatever levels, whether that's just object-level skills, like coding a thing to some specification, or whether that's more meta like design skills, or running a business type skills, or whatever."

And so the barn-raising is you can maybe see is sort of inching towards that is kind of like, "Oh, let's get some crews of people together, just combining their skills in a really fluid way." And the idea is that, as we get more practice with that, I might be able to have an idea of a thing I think should exist, then there's the "finder" person - we don't have them yet, but we'll find them or we'll make them or they'll find us. So then the finder person would find somebody who would make a great fit for owning that project. Right? Like, you know, I had the initial vision, but the finder person would find somebody, or in lieu of a finding person, me tweeting about this thing long enough would find somebody that would go, "Oh, I want to do that." And I'd say, "Great, I'll support you. I will share as much of my perspective as I can until you own this vision. Because like, I don't want to be in charge of it. I just want it to exist." And, you know, that's not like a one-off thing. Like we can keep synching up. And if I think you're doing something that's bad, I'll be like, "What if it were good, though? But then in order for that person who owns the thing to be able to pull it off, they might need other people's help. And so that's where it's like having more people with various skills who've been practicing using them on different things, and who can like really fluidly step into collaboration with each other [like], "Oh, you need a couple of hours of debugging of a whatever thing? I did that in my previous company or project or whatever. Let me help" and just kind of really fluidly sharing what we know and supporting each other.

And basically, what I realized is that, in order for my design gift to be leveraged as much as I want it to be leveraged in my lifetime, I need an entire infrastructure of this collaborative self-energizing meta-team. I can't do it if I'm just trying to run a company in which I like make a bunch of products, because then I'm going to be too fucking busy running the company to actually just be focusing on the things that need to exist and pulling them into existence. And plausibly, you could say, "Well, okay, somebody else could run the company, and you could be the, you know, Chief Idea Officer." But it's like, "Eh, I don't think that'll work." And we could go into why I don't think it'll work but from an information-theoretic perspective, something seems confused about it, compared to like, "What happens when the whole thing is way more self organizing?" Because, I guess, I mean, one simple thing to say is the problem is, once everybody's on payroll, as opposed to like self-organizing around and self-energizing around stuff, once everybody's on payroll, you got to find shit for them to do, even when you don't have a thing for them to do. I mean, you don't have to technically, there's no reason why you couldn't, technically, if you had enough money, have a company where you know, you've got 40 people on payroll, and at any given time, most of them are spending most of the time doing whatever they feel like. Like, you could do that, it's just it's a hard thing to organize, right? And it's easier if the whole thing starts as more of a network in the first place, within which there will be companies that take on projects and stuff like that.

Trace Brady 48:47

Yeah, I can relate, in that, my skills as they are can't be fully leveraged without the infrastructure that you're talking about. And I think there's a lot of ways in which you and I might be able to work together, because when you were describing the foundational work of like, putting in the cement before the barn raising kind of thing, my ears perked up, because I'm like, "that's the kind of stuff that I like to do."

Malcolm Ocean 49:11

Hmm. Cool!

Trace Brady 49:12

You know, so if there were somebody who were finding all these people, and then sending them my way, and then I could help them think through these really big life questions and figure out what their thing is or things, plural.

Malcolm Ocean 49:27

Yeah.

Trace Brady 49:28

And then they would be ready for a barn raising after that. Because there's only so much that I can do, and I've been simplifying and over and over and over again for like years, because I started with this grand vision, and realized pretty quickly that I couldn't implement it myself without a lot of help. And I also... like, I want to start a company, but I don't want to be the CEO, initially. Like, you know, in the beginning days of Apple, for instance, Steve Jobs wasn't the CEO - he was just kind of floating from project to project and making sure everything was running the way that he wanted it to. And then the CEO, or the COO, was running day to day operations. And that, to me, seems like the best of both worlds, you know? Like, you're starting the company, you're a visionary behind the company.

Malcolm Ocean 50:23

Yeah.

Trace Brady 50:23

You have a serious say in what happens at said company.

Malcolm Ocean 50:27

Yeah.

Trace Brady 50:28

You know? So, really, I want to be a founder, but I don't want to be a CEO. At least anytime soon, I think. Maybe a few decades into the future, that could be a role that I would like to take on, but only once I hit a certain point, you know? So right now, I'm with you, I'm thinking of a network of people that are able to build the infrastructure that I need, so that I can shine where I need to shine.

Malcolm Ocean 50:54

Yeah, well, and that's exactly what I'm up to. So in some ways, the thing that you're doing is the negative space of the thing I'm doing. Or, almost, vice versa, would be slightly more accurate. I mean, there's a sense in which those things are just the same statement, right? Like, x and y are negative spaces to each other. But I think the thing I'm doing has a bit more of a negative space feel, so I'll frame it that way. So, you're like, "Okay, person, what's your thing?" And they're like, "Oh, okay, so it's this, but I could never get a job just doing that, right?" And what I'm doing, is I'm saying, "Okay, that thing, the thing that you want to do -I don't even quite know what it is myself, I have some sense of it- that thing you want to do, I want to make the organization in which that role exists. For you and for everybody." I mean, I'm not gonna, myself, pull off a 7 billion person organization, but you know, bootstrapping towards that, where basically everybody has their dream job. And it's sort of like if you set your sights on "everybody has their dream job," what needs to happen in order for that to be true? It's like, well, we need organizations that are able to facilitate and smoothly fill in the cracks. And there's going to be some people who, what they want to do -like their dream job- is picking up all of the random ass loose ends that nobody else wants to do. They're gonna fucking love that. They're like, "I can just, like, do every single random extra thing all day? Amazing!" Right? Like, that's not quite me, but I can feel the shape of person you would need to be to want to do that.

And I'm like, those people exist. Like, totally, they exist. And then there's gonna be other things that maybe nobody wants to do them and those get automated, or they get paid absurdly large amounts of money until people are like, "Yeah, I will like dig through the sewer for whatever, for $100 an hour, like, obviously," right? And everybody else is stoked, because they don't have to do things that they don't want to do, and other people are just like, "Yeah, I mean, this doesn't bother me that much. Like, it's not great, but like, the pay is just absurdly good." And if you're doing that in the context where everybody also basically has UBI, it's like, nobody's forced into taking shitty jobs just because they need to take a job. You know, there's some rate at which you'd be happy to trade - like part of the current issue with things is like, in principle, everybody's wage would be an amount that they are happy to be paid to do the work that they're doing. But the problem is, people don't have good options, and for reasons that are approximately isomorphic to "there is no UBI", a universal basic income, which means that people take shitty options. But if you had something that gave people a really good BATNA, 'Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement', then they'd never have to take a really shitty option.

And I'm not saying that there's a simple way to implement UBI that would just definitely, obviously work. I think many, many institutions should be experimenting with this. We should have cities experimenting with it - where you have to have lived in the city for the last three years in order to get it, so it doesn't just cause an immediate, like, [whooshing sound], you know? Maybe even longer, I don't know. Like cities should be experimenting with it, countries should be experimenting with it, companies should be experimenting with, "Hey, we're going to pay you for the next 10 years, no matter what you do. That's how much we like you." Now, we'd like you to work on some projects. Here are some projects that we've got, if these are awesome enough for you, let us know what projects you want. Right? Like, there's a lot of complexity to actually making that happen, but the point is we should be seeing companies experimenting with stuff like that. So all of that brings us to the tweet in which I said, "You know, let's have a call", which was basically where I was saying, "You want to help people find the things and I want more people who know what their things are." And not just in the world, but in the social scene that is broadly interconnected around us, that we happen to have found ourselves in. Are you a stranger to me? You know, like, here we are talking for the first time, are we strangers? Like what even is that? It feels like we sort of live in the same town, is kind of the impression that I get, right? And we've bumped into each other a few times, and we've had a couple of conversations. But we're not strangers in the way that people are strangers in a city, you know?

Anyway, so that's where I'm like, "Okay, I've got some capital. Not a lot, but enough, from some of the workshops that I've run in the last year where we, intentionally, the people I was co running it with said, "Let's allocate the money from the profits of this workshop to, basically, the meta team fund"". And we did a few immediate things with this - most notably, buying one of the people who had been helping us run the workshops, a laptop because she needed a new laptop. And it was, so it was sort of like, "You need a new laptop, obviously, you should have a new laptop. Like, here's money for that kind of thing". Because she'd been really core to the project that was making all that money. But now we have more of it that we don't have a particularly clear mandate of what to do with, except "support the meta-team", "fuel the upward spiral for the meta team." And so it's like, "Well, okay, then I'm talking with you." And you're like, "Yeah, I want to like have a bunch of calls with people to help them figure out what their thing is." And I'm sort of like, okay, so there's one version of this where... like, one thing I had in mind before you replied, was, "Maybe we'll pay for someone to take the sacred gifts program. And then they'll do a bunch of this for like, ingroup B people for free," right? [That] was sort of one version. But you seem to already have your own framework around this, maybe you'd get something out of checking on sacred gifts, but I don't think you need to, right? And so - not that I've assessed the quality of what you're doing, I actually barely have, but honestly, half of what people need is to just even make an attempt. And so if you can even just be enthusiastically helping people make an attempt to find their thing, that's a win in my books. Unless you are causing problems on top of that, that's a win.

And so, your framework only has to be "not in the way", as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't have to be good, exactly. Although I'm sure there are good things about it, and I'm sure it'll improve as you keep working on this. So where I'm going with this is I'm like, okay, we don't need to cover the cost of training. Part of me was like, "Oh, I'll cover the cost of Savvy Cow". But that's pretty arbitrary, right? Like, that's small potatoes in the whole grand scheme of things. But although there is still an attitude I'm trying to convey by saying that. It's like, I want you to feel supported in this, really supported. But then I was like, "Okay, maybe there's going to be though".... Actually, here's a question, have you been charging for the coaching type stuff that you've been doing with people? Like, how has that been for you? I'm asking it, intentionally, very generally.

Trace Brady 58:01

Yeah. So we've helped, like, 10 people so far, you know? me and Nicholas, for free, so that we could get social proof, we could get reviews, we could get the word out there, [and] see if there was any interest, you know? Because if we couldn't get people on a free call, there's no shot in hell, we'd be able to get them-

Malcolm Ocean 58:18

Not necessarily, but mostly, yeah.

Trace Brady 58:21

Offering too much for free signals that you don't really value your work.

Malcolm Ocean 58:25

Yeah.

Trace Brady 58:26

So, yeah, it was more of a private thing where we were reaching out to people. But actually, the most people came through whenever I just made a joke on Twitter. You know, I said, "I love helping people answer three major questions. Who am I? What do I want? And how do I get it?" And I said, "You wouldn't think it, but this makes me really fun at parties, because everybody wants to talk about themselves. And I'm like, "hell yeah, dude, I want to talk about you, too. Let's go"".

Malcolm Ocean 58:52

[Laughter] Yeah, that's a great comedic thing.

Trace Brady 58:56

So I wasn't really expecting-

Malcolm Ocean 58:57

Some people will be all 'hoity toity' serious about like, "Who are you? What do you want? What are you trying to do?" And you're like, "I don't know, it's just a good conversation."

Trace Brady 59:06

Yeah, that's what it is. And that's how I came to feel like this was like a "calling" for me. Because everywhere I went, those were the types of conversations I was having, you know? Because people were struggling with these big life questions. And I'm like, "Have you thought about this, this, this?" and every time we walk away, they feel better about where they were before. So it was really just a honing in on that, I wasn't just thinking things up, you know, like, "What about this? What about that?" It was just something that happened very naturally.

Malcolm Ocean 59:41

Yeah, the organic sense of things.

Trace Brady 59:43

And people were very clearly giving me the feedback that said, you know, keep doing this in any way that you can.

Malcolm Ocean 59:52

You would probably make a good coach at our workshops actually, come to think of it. The Goalcrafting intensives that we do.

Trace Brady 59:58

I'm open to exploring more of what it might look like to work together. You know, especially since Nicholas can't really dedicate all of his time to this coaching until January, because he talked to his boss at his full time job, and they said, "We really need you to these next couple of months. But you can go part time starting in January." So the plan is for he and I to still work together, it's just going to be, mostly, me in the beginning.

Malcolm Ocean 1:00:30

Gotcha! Okay, cool. Yeah, helpful. That's SissiPhys right?

Trace Brady 1:00:34

Yes, yes. Yeah, I just am in a position that I don't have to ask a boss for anything. So I just am gonna do it and see what happens. And you know, there's a chance that I'll have to Uber on weekends or something, after my savings run out or whatever, you know, it's just like...

Malcolm Ocean 1:00:53

What kind of runway do you have at this point?

Trace Brady 1:00:56

I mean, a few months... not a whole lot.

Malcolm Ocean 1:01:00

Oh, no, I love people who are rocking their feral free agent energy on a few months of runway. That's fuckin dope man. Some people are like, "I've only got like, 14 months of runway and like..." I mean, look, I understand, different people have different lifestyles and so on. But I feel a kinship with people who are like, "Well, I don't know what it looks like in a few months, but we got a few months."

Trace Brady 1:01:24

Yeah. I've bootstrapped things enough times to know that even at its worst, it's still manageable. So, I don't really have any concerns there. You know, because like I said, if it really comes down to like, "I've run out of all of my savings, I have nothing to live on", I don't mind Ubering on the weekends. I'm not above that, you know?

Malcolm Ocean 1:01:48

Yeah.

Trace Brady 1:01:48

So if I really want to dedicate myself to doing this, I'm just going to do it and figure it out along the way.

Malcolm Ocean 1:01:55

Yeah, exactly.

Trace Brady 1:01:55

Trusting that it's gonna work out one way or the other. So when I say, I'm cool with these sessions being pay what you want, I'm trusting that, based on all the things that I've done up until this point, people will value that and will compensate me when they can. And if they can't, then I still want to provide that service, because not everybody has access to those types of resources.

Malcolm Ocean 1:02:22

Yeah. Was that something you were already thinking about before I mentioned it? The pay what you want structure?

Trace Brady 1:02:27

Yes. Only since Nicholas had the conversation with his boss, and found out that he couldn't do it for another couple of months. So we immediately retreated a little bit saying, "Okay, if you can't give this your full time and attention, and it takes both of us to facilitate a cohort, for example, which is what out original plan was- if it takes two of us, and you can't right now, let's retreat a little bit, make this pay what you want, only accept a certain number of people and really dive deep on them so that when January rolls around, and we're ready for a cohort, we can sell out pretty much instantly."

Malcolm Ocean 1:03:03

Right.

Trace Brady 1:03:04

Based on all the work that we've done up until that point.

Malcolm Ocean 1:03:08

Interesting. Yeah. Cool.

Trace Brady 1:03:10

So, thinking about pay what you want? Very recent development.

Malcolm Ocean 1:03:15

Yeah, well, so let's share with your podcast listeners, the thing I proposed to you, which, again, fits in this whole meta team imagery that I have, which is basically - I was like, what if you do pay what you want -and for anybody who's, at all, in the scene, which I'm imagining is going to be most of the people that you're working with- to the point where, I'm sort of rounding it to everybody if somebody is like, "This totally transformed my life, I want to contribute to it, and also I have no money, or I have a little money, but I'm trying to pay off my debt, and I'm like, really tight" you know? That they would, basically, have the power. And we could even set up a website, somehow -I don't know how we do this- we even set up a website where you give them a custom link, or whatever. This might be more work than it's worth. But it also might be profoundly empowering. Like, they would go to the pay what you want site - they're like, "Am I paying with my funds? Or am I playing with meta team funds?" And they would put in the number and so that would let somebody who doesn't have very much money be like, "Oh, Trace, you got 100 bucks for that coaching session." Right? And, you know, I would be down to, basically, with some constraints, offer that for something like 50 to 100 people probably, which might be more than you're aiming to get to in the next couple months, anyway. I don't know kind of what your thinking is on that front.

Trace Brady 1:04:44

It honestly depends. Because, you know, like I said, we've been trying to simplify, simplify, simplify and get to the bare bones of what it is we're trying to do.

Malcolm Ocean 1:04:52

Yeah.

Trace Brady 1:04:52

So it started with the cohort and now it's like trimmed down to three 90 minute sessions. So we can go through your past, present and future self and and really whittle it down, and maybe make a strategic plan and all that. But it depends on if we stick with the three 90 minute sessions, or if we do like one-offs, with the option of people booking up to three sessions or something.

Malcolm Ocean 1:05:15

Yeah

Trace Brady 1:05:16

Because there's some people who really just need somebody to bounce ideas off of and get through it. But then there's other people who are starting a new project, but prior to the barn-raising stage. Like, they're just sussing it out and seeing what this might look like. And with those people, it's a little bit more intensive, because I have to walk them through some frameworks and narrowing it down and helping them form a strategic plan.

Malcolm Ocean 1:05:44

So it's not just doing the like, "What's your thing?" in this sort of, "Who are you? What's your essence sense?" But it's those other two questions that you said as well? Like, what do I want? What am I moving towards? What are my goals, all of that stuff?

Trace Brady 1:05:55

Yeah. But I want it to be like a tangible thing, you know, not something 10 years from now. I want you to like-

Malcolm Ocean 1:06:01

Yeah, neither 10 years from now nor something just kind of like, "Oh, like, I'm a creative who inspires people through my art, that's who I really am." Yeah, it's just like an identity.

Trace Brady 1:06:15

I want to get specific.

Malcolm Ocean 1:06:16

Right, it's like painting or digital art? And are you like drawing people in order to inspire them? Or re you drawing like landscapes in order to make them imagine worlds that don't exist? Or are you blah blah blah blah blah? Like, yeah, exactly.

Trace Brady 1:06:31

I want to get very specific with it. And then, as best I can help them put a plan in place, so that whenever they leave me, they know what to do next.

Malcolm Ocean 1:06:42

Totally. Have you played around with Complice?

Trace Brady 1:06:45

No, I've seen it on your profile and stuff, but I haven't actually checked it out yet. Tell me more.

Malcolm Ocean 1:06:52

Well, so I mean, Complice is an app, and it's also sort of a mindset or a philosophy. And the basic idea is it's goal-oriented. It's a goal-oriented productivity system. And I don't really think in terms of the word productivity anymore. It feels really like '80's, or like early internet or something. But the thing that productivity is pointing at, of like doing worthwhile shit, having a sense of output- what you were doing is creating, right? And what goal-oriented productivity means in the context of Complice is basically, like, instead of starting by trying to list out your whole backlog of all of the random things you feel like you're supposed to be doing and all of that, instead of any of that, it starts with, what do you want? What are you aiming for? What do you want to achieve? You know, when you get to the end of this year, like, what do you want to be like, "I did that. Me, I did that. That was my thing. I did that. I made it happen"? Like, trying to capture that energy for people, and then saying, "Okay, that's where you want to be. What are you going to do today, on that path?" And complex has relatively little planning built-in, in part, because plans can so quickly turn into tasks and to-dos and the onerous drudgery of homework. So you know, each goal has one top priority at any given time, which is like, the only thing that extends out more than today. But aside from that, everything is just "Alright, what are you doing towards your goals today?" And then if you don't do it, it doesn't go on tomorrow's list automatically, because maybe it wasn't actually a good idea. You know, it goes on another list, you can pull it on today if you want to, but it doesn't automatically rollover.

So it's a system that I think would be really compatible with the thing that you're talking about. And for some of the people that you're working with, I could imagine it feeling really meaningful for them -once they clarify, you know, one or two goals or something like that- for them to set that up in Complice, and like, you know, just every day be like, "Okay, what am I doing towards this new goal?" Because there's something so amazing that occurs for people once they clarify a new goal, and then the next day, they do something that they were not going to do. But it's not that hard to do it, it's just that they didn't have the clarity before, that they wanted to do it, because they hadn't really gotten clear, like, "I want this outcome, and this is the thing I can do that will achieve that." But like, once you've gotten clear [on] "I want this, this will help", then the thing emerges. It naturally kind of has this energy, where it's like, yeah, you want to do the thing, of course, because it's gonna help you achieve this thing that matters to you. So I think for some people, getting them set up on Complice could be a really meaningful kind of part of the goal setting and planning process for you. And you know, we can talk about anything from extended trials or other promotions or some kind of cross-pollination that we could do. We've got co-working rooms on Complice where you can sort of do pomodoros with other people. And so you could have a like Nurture your Nature-themed co-working room where people hang out.

Trace Brady 1:10:05

Yeah, I think that'd be cool.

Malcolm Ocean 1:10:07

You know, just like a few things like that. And that would allow you to have some of the elements of like cohort-iness before there's actually like a cohort, cohort.

Trace Brady 1:10:16

We were thinking, in the beginning, we'll just take everybody who signs up for Nurture Your Nature and throw them in a group chat, and whatever happens happens, you know, like-

Malcolm Ocean 1:10:26

Yeah, I mean, a group chat is good too, because the co-working rooms don't have any history. They're just like, if you're there, you can chat with people, but like, I'm probably going to add a feature for the group chats where it saves up to a day of history, or up to a week of history because that can be nice if you sign on and there's nobody there, but you see that people were there two hours ago, talking and that can give you a flavor of like, "Oh okay, cool, people are here." It can also be distracting though, honestly. That's part of the subtlety of managing a work-oriented group chat, or like a work-oriented social app. It's like, how do you make it not distracting? It turns out, this is hard.

Trace Brady 1:11:05

So, even if it was distracting, it wouldn't be a huge deal because it's not really part of something that they would be paying for. It's just like, do you want to connect with other people who are struggling with the questions "Who am I?" "What do I want?" and "How do I get it?"? Then this is the place to do that.

Malcolm Ocean 1:11:18

And so even if, yeah, people are just chatting, that also be good.

Trace Brady 1:11:22

They can kind of, as you were saying, just self-organize, based on what gives them energy and what they deem a beneficial thing to do at any given point in time, based on who's on what journey, you know?

Malcolm Ocean 1:11:35

Yeah.

Trace Brady 1:11:36

But also, I think there's a lot of things that people don't really want to talk about, publicly, when it comes to finding their thing. Our plan was to have individual calls with each person, and then on Friday, doing like a group call, so that we can have the best of both worlds. But, like I said-

Malcolm Ocean 1:11:52

Yeah, because it is also meaningful to get the chance to share your thing and be recognized in that.

Trace Brady 1:11:57

Yeah, absolutely. And keeping each other accountable is huge. So, yeah, clarity and accountability are gonna be major benefits of doing this. But, initially, I think we're just gonna do the individual calls, throw people in a group chat. And then by the time January rolls around and Nicolas can go part-time, then we can kind of build this out further. Because everything that I've launched so far is not my best work. I'm banking on the fact that I can improve it as I go.

Malcolm Ocean 1:12:29

Yeah, totally. Which, pretty much, you can when it comes to anything [inaudible 1:12:33] right?

Trace Brady 1:12:35

Yeah,

Malcolm Ocean 1:12:35

And also having it out there can create a different kind of energy towards improving it. It's not just, "Oh, I should write a better draft. People are looking at the copy, and it's bad. I want it to be better." [Laughter]

Trace Brady 1:12:49

You know the scene... have you watched Breaking Bad?

Malcolm Ocean 1:12:53

I've seen some clips from it. I haven't watched it, though.

Trace Brady 1:12:56

There's this scene where one of the main characters, Jesse, is sitting in a circle at an AA meeting. And he's sharing a story for the first time, you know, he's opening up. And he's telling the story of being in high school in a shop class, where their assignment is to build a box. You know, just a wooden box.

Malcolm Ocean 1:13:15

Yeah.

Trace Brady 1:13:16

And he makes it and the teacher, like, all he says, "Is that the best you can do?" And there's no malice or antagonism in his voice. He's just asking genuinely, "Is that the best you can do?" And, Jesse, the main character, says, "You know what? It's not." And so he goes back and he does it again. And he's sort of an underachiever. You know, he's an addict and this is the one of the first times he's been challenged in ways that he wants to be challenged. So he goes back and makes the box, and every time he comes back to the teacher, he asks, "Is that the best you can do?" So he does this, you know, like five or six times and finally, he has this beautiful wooden box, and he's just amazed that he was the one that made it, you know?

Malcolm Ocean 1:14:03

Yeah, yeah.

Trace Brady 1:14:04

It genuinely was the best that he could do, and I think about that a lot because there's a time for that, and then there's a time for doing what I'm doing, which is just put shit out there, and see what happens and then improve it as I go. Because you and I would, literally, not be having this conversation right now if I hadn't published the Create Yourself workbook, because that led to me being connected with Nicholas and me finding out that he had written an eerily similar book, which led to us building this coaching program, which led to us talking in this way. So-

Malcolm Ocean 1:14:40

Well, I mean we also wouldn't be here if I hadn't just put out a scattered thread about like, "We should have a person maker, like a thing-finder-person person, probably"

Trace Brady 1:14:53

[Inaudible 1:14:53]

Malcolm Ocean 1:14:54

Probably, can I point money at this? Can I point attention at this? What do I need to do to make this person show up? And you're like, "Hey, it's me". And I'm like, "Alright, cool. A thread. Great."

Trace Brady 1:15:05

And the funny thing is like, it sometimes doesn't happen for months or years, you know, because people find things they research-

Malcolm Ocean 1:15:18

Oh totally, right? Like, I wrote that original thread a year ago, and like, plausibly, a you-shaped person could have messaged me last year and been like, "Hello, I would like to help by helping people figure out what is self energizing to them, and what is negative effort and all that stuff. Like, I really want to help support people in that way, Let's jam." Like, somebody in theory could have messaged me last year or any time in the past year about that. And they just, either didn't see the thread, like somebody who would have been in a space to do that didn't see the thread or didn't feel like they had the space or the courage or the... whatever they would have needed to be like, "Yeah, I want to do that." And probably, it's just like, nobody saw it, who had that clarity. You know what I mean? Or the thread itself didn't actually quite call out that role if you see what I mean. Like it called out the fine people. Let me actually put this up. Right, "So finding people and encouraging and empowering them to execute. So the meta team needs a person who loves finding."

But I don't say the meta team could use a person who... like, a missing tweet in there could just be simply like... oh, there is a thing about sacred gifts or something, I think, though... oh, yeah, right, so there's a question here of "How do you go about finding what sorts of things are energy releasing for you? There's no one answer to that. For me, I had a hunch, and a series of conversations, including one with a friend trained in sacred gifts helped get me clarity." And so it's like, that would be an obvious jumping-off point for somebody in this kind of headspace that you're in now, which you weren't necessarily in a year ago, even if you read it a year ago. But also, that's not as clear as if I'd included the sentence, "By the way, if you think your gift might be helping other people find their gifts, let's talk," right? Like, that's not there, right? And so I might have missed somebody just for not having written that, is what I'm noticing, basically. I'm like, "Oh, shit," right? Like, some people just won't reach out unless it's REALLY like, "HELLOOO". Like, they don't, themselves, notice, like, "Hey, I could play a role here." Yeah, you know, it's more like you got to be like, "Hey, does someone want to play this role?" And then they're like, "Me, I am someone." So, I mean, that's part of what I'm still figuring out. Right? But if I hadn't released this thread at all, because I've been worried that it would be missing things, like the thing I just described, we will be way worse off now. So, like you say with the just putting things out and iterating on them.

Trace Brady 1:18:00

I mean, it all happens in his own time. So, for the last several nights, I've been holed up in my studio making tweets about my thing, which I haven't told anybody about yet, because it's my thing. You know, I keep it to myself for the most part, but I do want to start sharing it more often. And the last several nights that I've been in the studio, I've been thinking about the concept of a perpetual serendipity machine, right?

Malcolm Ocean 1:18:28

Have you seen Jordan halls thing about the serendipity engine?

Trace Brady 1:18:31

No, but that-

Malcolm Ocean 1:18:32

Oh, my God.

That's exactly what I'm talking about, though. Do send me that, because I don't know what you're talking about but as I was right up my alley.

I'm just gonna tweet it and tag you in it. [Typing] "Talking with the trees. And he said, I'm working on a serendipity machine." [Typing] Is that what you said?

Trace Brady 1:18:51

I was just thinking about the concept of a perpetual serendipity machine.

Malcolm Ocean 1:18:54

Okay. [Typing] "I was thinking about the concept of a perpetual. And I'm like, 'Have you heard of Jordan Greenhall's Serendipity Engine Concept'. And he was like, 'Wow, that is rad, please send." [Typing]

Trace Brady 1:19:23

I like that so much, it just perfectly captures the mood.

Malcolm Ocean 1:19:27

Yeah, it's not what you said in the literal sense, but it's like the, "Wait, what?" Like "No, but tell me!"

Um, boom. Alright, so what else is going on? I've got that other call in like 15 minutes. Feeling pretty spacious, feeling that we've talked about most of what I wanted to talk about. And, I mean, as far as like... I still feel like it would be naive for me, at this point, to commit to, I'm going to fill in the 'pay what you want' for 50 to 100 people for this thing, but let's call it 10. And just like, if you want to do 'pay what you want' with 10 people and have them do that, I'm in, up to... you know, I don't know. It's kind of complex, because it's like, I don't currently... there's like, "what's my budget?" and it's not huge, but it's where [inaudible mutter 1:20:24]. But something like... for now, maybe, let's say something like this meta team fund will put up to $100 per client, towards what you're doing for up to 10 people. And that's literally based on their sense of what they feel you should be paid, and whether they can pay it or not, basically. And so that's sort of, maximum, $1,000, basically. That's sort of like your mark there. And, I mean, that's not very good rates if you're doing four and a half hours, for people. But I hadn't been initially budgeting that you were, and so I'm sort of still feeling into all of it, right? But it's definitely enough that like, if you're getting $1,000 from the meta team, in addition to whatever else you're doing, or from the meta team, whatever that means. It's all extremely nebulous, you got to realize this.

You know, one of the people who was working on the GCI stuff with me, like I told her what I've been saying to you, and she was like, "Wait, there's a meta team fund?" And I'm like, "Yeah, we I thought we talked about this a year ago, we haven't done anything with it yet." And she's like, "I guess so". Right. It's just extremely nebulous. It's currently just like money in my bank account, and I have a different spreadsheet in which I'm tracking how much of that money is, designated towards this thing. Like, it's extremely... you know, we ain't doing anything fancy DAO shit here, you know? With like, crypto shit. This is very bootleg, but it's the raw thing, right? It's the real thing. And, yeah, consider me on for that. And potentially, there could be more available there. We could also, you know... part of what can sometimes happen with things like this is like, if I put out that I'm supporting this, and that I don't have the money to support it as much as I would like to, then other people might be like, "Oh, I would contribute towards this happening also." And so like, we can end up funding the thing with its own enthusiasm. So that's kind of the idea here.

Trace Brady 1:22:30

Anyway that you can help I will be grateful for, you know? So I appreciate that already. The thing that I could use the most help with would be absolutely getting people-

Malcolm Ocean 1:22:41

Just getting people

Trace Brady 1:22:42

Come in my direction, you know?

Malcolm Ocean 1:22:44

Totally, yeah, I mean, that may be more of the bottleneck than, people's ability to pay you in some ways.

Trace Brady 1:22:50

Yeah. So maybe what we could do -and we could work out all the details later- maybe we what we could do is just like initially say, "Here's my Calendly, you can book a session" or whatever, and stick with just that for a week.

Malcolm Ocean 1:23:05

Just do one off sessions for people.

Trace Brady 1:23:07

Yeah, say, like, for the next couple of weeks, anybody can can book time, you know? I'll probably just do like a call a day, because it's gonna be very energy intensive. But maybe after the first couple of weeks of trying it out with the people who are-

Malcolm Ocean 1:23:23

We will just both have way more data, and, you know, I would like to then maybe do a debrief with a couple of people who run through this program with you. Maybe even, I'll send you a couple people who I know really closely, and they can give me feedback on like, "Do they think Trace has got his shit down?" Or "Do they think it's kind of haphazard?" Right? You know, what I mean? Not that it's a test, right? But just as part of me calibrating on like, is this something that wants to have a lot of oomph put into it? Right? I need to calibrate on that. I could even go through the program myself, of course, and just find out how you approach talking with me about it.

Trace Brady 1:23:58

I think there's gonna be... I don't know, it's not gonna be the right data, if somebody who already knows the answer to these questions. Like, of course, they're gonna be skeptical of anything that I might say because they already know, you know?

Malcolm Ocean 1:24:04

Yeah. Right.

Trace Brady 1:24:11

So if you do send me people, which I would love for you to do-

Malcolm Ocean 1:24:18

Yeah, just make sure that they actually have the appetite, that they feel like... yeah, yeah. I won't send you people who are like, "I don't really feel like I need this."

Trace Brady 1:24:26

Yeah. I would love to talk to anybody and everybody who is genuinely striving to answer the questions "Who Am I? What do I want? And how do I get it?" Because anybody else? It's like, they're giving me false answers or half-truths or something, you know? Because-

Malcolm Ocean 1:24:41

Totally, totally. Yeah. They're not in the right spot for the thing that you're offering.

Trace Brady 1:24:46

Right.

Malcolm Ocean 1:24:47

Yeah. No, that makes sense. Cool. And then -let me just feel into this. Yeah. So then, yeah. And then, you know, you and I can talk again in like a month or something. Not that we can't talk earlier. And I actually really do think it would be meaningful for us to somehow set up a place where you can get paid with this money. I'm like, I don't know how we do that. I have [inaudible 1:25:08] how we might do it. Here's the way I know we could solve it, it might be more work than we want to do. So, I recently started doing some one off coaching sessions, and so I wanted a 'pay what you want' page for my own coaching practice. Previously, I'd mostly been doing like ongoing things, and so I had a different setup. But I wanted a one-off 'pay what you want' page for my own coaching practice. And I just set this up on the Commerce website using a bunch of boilerplate code I already had from our workshops and stuff like that. It was fairly simple. And so it's a page that already understands the concept of 'pay what you want'. And so we would just have to change like, four things. Thing number one, you would need your own Stripe account, and we would link it up to your Stripe account instead of mine.

Trace Brady 1:25:53

Yeah, already good.

Malcolm Ocean 1:25:54

Right. That was pretty easy. Thing number two is, we would need to make the page have you on it instead of me on it. Pretty easy. You know, you send me a photo, whatever. The actual, you know, slightly more work, but still, like, totally not a complex problem just have there be an interface that says, "I want to pay", or "I want to have the meta team fund pay for this". And basically, if somebody would have... so here's where it gets complex, in order to not have there be just a button that arbitrarily routes my money to you, which we don't want to create, that would be a weird button to put on the internet like, right? We need to have it be where there's like, you get a dozen custom codes or whatever, basically, and you give each person a unique URL, and that the code expires after a date. And you know, that code is only good once and, basically like that. So that's the only actual technical problem, but it's just a technical problem. The design is clear, I can see it, there's no... there's a bunch of fiddly details I'm sure I haven't thought about. So I'm sure it'll take two or three times as long as it feels like it'll take to implement, but it's not - I'm not going to fail if I set up to implement that. It'll just take too long, or it'll just take a long time. But I don't even think it'll take that long.

Like I've already done some similar stuff, where if I have a button that lets me compet take it to a particular email address, for instance, but they still go through the normal signup flow because the signup flow needs to trigger a bunch of stuff. So like, I didn't want to just have a button where like... you don't need the details. Anyway, so that's basically the main thing that we would just have to set up there. And then if you and I, together are somehow... Oh right, and so then that would also be your 'pay what you want' paid for if they were going to pay you directly? Right? Then it would just... they would put in their credit card, and it would just pay you through stripe, so it would just work. We might, I don't - this isn't necessary, but would be on some level ideal [to] make the page not be hosted on the Complice website. Maybe. But honestly, it's just a URL. And I'm not bothered by associating somebody's "life purpose" project with complex, again, assuming that it's good. You seem you seem pretty fucking reasonable and not like the kind of person who's going to be coercing people into setting stupid goals. I'm like... the shoe doesn't fit, right? So yeah, it's like, it would be fine for Complice's branding, to have your project be on there.

And honestly, I've been thinking about adding, allowing other coaches to host their pay what you want pages on Complice, just because it's a goo... like, you know, I already set it up for myself, and all it would need to set up for them is just their stripe details. Like, I've already been thinking about doing that. So that would be Thing one to add - it's just like a boring coach 'pay what you want' page. And then Thing two is the like, generate a bunch of codes and stuff. So that's a bunch of technical details. But like, I could whip that up tomorrow if we want, basically, and we could be just like hit the ground running next week if you've got some sessions.

Trace Brady 1:29:07

So, I already have some people lined up. Like I said, I don't have much of a following on on Twitter. And I kind of like let my Instagram following you know, wither over time, because I got bored with it. And, anyway, the the biggest problem for me is going to get more people. I already have a handful. But if we could just get the Calendly like booked up for the next few weeks-

Malcolm Ocean 1:29:33

Yeah, then that would just be what you're looking for.

Trace Brady 1:29:35

Yeah. I mean, that's what it looks like for me to hit the ground running. Like I just want to be cranking it out. You know, like you said, having the infrastructure in place and just like doing your thing, because all of that's in place, so.

Malcolm Ocean 1:29:48

Yeah, so I think the main thing for us to do is to get the right tweet that people can just sign up for and you know - I don't know what that is exactly, but like some some tweet, that's got the right call to action, if you see what I mean, and get that tweet retweeted by me and Visa basically, and a couple of other people. But I, basically, I'm kind of coordinating with Visa about a bunch of this stuff. I don't get to tell him what to do, but if I'm like, "Hey, you remember that thing? Like, what if we retweet this guy's thing?" right? Like he'll probably just retweet it. Right?

Trace Brady 1:30:26

Well, since it's gonna be you guys retweeting it, and that's gonna be where most of the eyeballs come from, you just tell me what you're comfortable with me tweeting, and then I'll tweet it.

Malcolm Ocean 1:30:36

Well, I mean, right sort of. But it's not, it's not just comfort, it's more just like, if I scroll on your page right now, I just literally don't see a tweet that links to the Calendly. Like, that's the main thing I'm pointing out. It's not so much like, I don't have the right tweet. It's like, I literally just don't have a tweet, right? I don't have a thing.

Trace Brady 1:30:57

So the idea was to send people to the Gumroad page, and then the Gumroad page would redirect to the Calendly. But I realize this doesn't like actually make sense in the grand scheme of things, now that everything's changed.

Malcolm Ocean 1:31:11

Right, yeah, if you're doing the pay what you want thing, it doesn't.

Trace Brady 1:31:13

It might have worked before, but like, quite a bit has changed just in the week or so since I put that up. So-

Malcolm Ocean 1:31:20

Right, right. Yeah, totally.

Trace Brady 1:31:22

So yeah, I'll just add the the Calendly link, either to my profile, or to a Linkedln bio, whatever they're called.

Malcolm Ocean 1:31:32

I think, you know, here's the thing I would say. Something like, "Have you felt like you don't quite know what you're about?" You know, as a question. "You see other people doing, like, make 100 whatevers and you're like, "I want to do this, but I don't know what I would pick."" Right? As sort of situating the kinds of people who, when Visa and I retweet it, would very easily self-identify, right? right. I'm sure there are many people in his audience who've been like, "Yeah, a hundred, but what though? I don't do 100 bad things that aren't what I want."

Trace Brady 1:32:08

Just a few sentences about, the problem, agitation, solution, that sort of thing.

Malcolm Ocean 1:32:14

Yeah. And then just like, "Book a session here. For a limited time, pay what you want. And for a limited time, you can even have Malcolm ocean pay for you, if you don't have money." Like, boom.

Trace Brady 1:32:28

Absolutely. If you want to do that to start, or in a couple of weeks, I'm cool with whatever.

Malcolm Ocean 1:32:33

Cool. I mean, maybe let's just start with the 'pay what you want' thing. We'll see how it goes already, we'll even see what's the kind of range that people are paying. That'll give us a bunch of data on stuff. And then also if I'm sending you a few people and kind of debriefing with them, and going "Alright, hat's the caliber of this thing?" I don't know. I mean, I... hang on, hang on, I just did a slight kind of distancing move, just a little, little edge. Because we're dealing with a real thing here of the trust-building process of like, "I don't have a lot of data on one level to know that what you're offering is good. But on another level, I have a bunch of data from just talking with you and getting a sense of who you are and how you see the world." And so we're just dealing with this kind of big, nebulous space of things. And yeah, like, I'm going to collect more data. And like, I'm not going to like... again, unless you're causing active problems for people, I'm not going to shun you and be like, "This guy, definitely, you should not send him any of your business." I'm just going to be like, "Hey, it seems like you're doing this thing, and the people, you know, friends of mine that went, found it weird. Like, what's going on there? Let's untangle it." So it's a win-win either way, like, it's not... yeah.

Trace Brady 1:33:44

I'm very open to any and all feedback. So if you find some of those things that don't quite add up or something, you can just say, "Hey, this is what I've heard, what I think." I'm always looking for that kind of feedback. And I would be very happy to talk to whomever you send my way, and we can go off of that.

Malcolm Ocean 1:34:05

Cool. Alright, well, if we have any more logistical details, let's follow up on those via chat or whatever. But this has been a very satisfying interview plus business meeting, just the way I like it, you know, mix it all together. And yeah, so...

Trace Brady 1:34:20

Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you. And I'll talk to you more on Twitter here shortly. But you know, thanks for coming on. And let's do this again sometime.

Malcolm Ocean 1:34:28

Awesome.

Trace Brady 1:34:29

All right man, have a good one.

Malcolm Ocean 1:34:30

Bye. Bye.