Jason Snell from Six Colors: From Magazine Editor to Small Business Publisher– SBS 58

The Small business show at BusinessShow Co episode number 58 for Wednesday, March 16, 2016. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small business show at BusinessShow Co the show where we talk about out to and for small business owners and things that are interest to all of us here in Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton and in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you sir?

I'm doing well. It sounds like you're having a little technical issue over there with your microphone, Shannon.

I am.

My mic decided to die a few minutes ago, so I'm going to be on mute I think from a lot of this show. But I'm going to chime in when I just can't resist anymore.

Sounds like a plan. Good news today we have someone else joining us so you don't have to just listen to me speak for the whole show. Welcoming from six colors and many things in addition to prior and after that, Jason Snell. Thanks for joining us, Jason.

Hi Dave. Hi Shannon. Thank you for having me. This is a lot of fun and topics that I don't normally talk about on podcasts, which is also a lot of fun.

Yeah, right. Well, that's why we do this, is giving people who like us are in the situation of running our own shows, running our own businesses, you know, the, the opportunity to talk about that which we do. So let's, let's do that. You, let's, let's, let's give people a little bit of context of who you are just in case they don't know. You had a long tenure at idg. Most specifically with, with Macworld or Macworld for the, the longest part of it, but before that or during. Tell us a little bit about, about you.

So my first real full time job out of school was as an editor at Mac user magazine in the mid-90s and I kid you not, the first week on the job I heard a copy editor across the cubicle wall from me say do you think they're going to shut down the magazine? So literally my entire media career and this is like this. If you are a media professional in the 90s, 2000s, 2010s has been one step away from the GR. But in 1997 they did shut down Mac User because they merged all the Apple stuff right when Apple looked like it was going to go out of business. They regretted that decision almost immediately, but it was too late. And then there was just Macworld and I was one of the people. Some chunk of the staffs of both magazines got kind of shoved together and told to make a new magazine that would be Macworld. And I was in on that. And then I was at macworld for like 17, 18 years after that. The last few more at the IDG consumer division supervising the editorial for Macworld and PC World and a couple other sites that we launched as well. So I started as an intern and ended up as the group editorial director. And then in 2014, I left IDG after many, many layoffs. I was very fortunate to have a good relationship with the senior management there, and they were well aware that I was, they talked me into staying through a layoff and I said, okay, I'll stay through this one, but I'm not going to stay through anymore. And then there was another layoff coming and they're like, you can go. And that was, I was like, thank you very much.

Yeah, that was nice of you.

And because I, I, I had already made my, my feelings pretty clear at that point that I was not particularly happy with the way things were going and I wanted to, to get out of there.

And so I did well there and here you are. That's right. Yeah. But so was, was being a writer slash content creator always the driving force? I know I asked this because I know that you, in addition to being a great writer, you're also a geek. I mean, you understand the stuff that you write about much better than, frankly, most people do.

I mean, I'm not a developer. I mean, I have so many friends who are developers now and that I feel like I am a complete, just a fraud compared to them. But it is true that I was always the computer nerd. I was in the computer club in fifth grade and I ran a computer bulletin board when I was in high school. I was one of the first people to sign up for a UNIX account when I got to college. And yet what I would say is that I always mix that with creating stuff and doing media stuff. So when I was a senior in college, I was the editor in chief of my college newspaper. But I was also the person who strung all of the networking cable through the office so that we could network all of the Macs together so we didn't have to copy all of our layouts onto floppies and bring them to the computer that was attached to the printer. You could, gasp, print from anywhere in the office. So I was always doing books, both of those things. The technical side, I did a fiction, a short story magazine when I was in college that rather than get money from the college student government to print 100 copies and make them available on campus for nobody to read. Instead, I just made the magazine myself and I put it on FTP and on Usenet, and there was a text version and a postscript version that you could dump to a postscript printer. And this was like 91 92. So, again, trying to mix the super nerdy kind of computer side of me with the words and creativity writing kind of side of me.

Sure. Yeah. Okay. So this is really interesting because I've experienced this too, and it's actually good. Maybe a little bit of therapy to talk about this. You described it perfectly. You were this uber geek that could understand anything. You could make it all work. You were the guy. Right. And few people that you encountered knew more than you. Probably few encountered Newt as much as you. And yet today you feel like a fraud because.

Well, because, well, at times, I did not run. Well, that's the thing is, I didn't run in the computer nerd circles. You know, in high school, I didn't run in. There were the people who hung out in the computer lab.

Got it.

And I wasn't one of those people. We made movies and TV shows and stuff like that. I was a video. I guess we didn't have an AV club, but it was the equivalent of that, right? The nerdy AV club type person. I hung around with people who dreamed of being writers and cartoonists and movie directors, and I worked on the school newspaper, and we had a radio station. I had my own show on the high school radio station. So that was my crowd. And so I was always the most technically adept person in my not technically adept crowd. Got it. And so on one level, yes, on one level, I was probably the most technically savvy person in the room, but the room was not packed with technically savvy people. Geeks. Got it. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just interesting because I experienced the same thing, and I did hang out with the geeks, and I was in the computer club. And yet there are many moments now where it's not just that I'm not the smartest person in the room. That happens all the time. And that's actually a good thing. But it's when you suddenly realize, wow, you know all that stuff that I know. Everybody knows now, but not really well.

Some of that is generational. It is. I'm teaching a class at the local library to a bunch of high school school students about how to do podcasting. And in early 2000s, I taught a web publishing class at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to a Whole bunch of people who were in their 20s and had no idea like how to use the menus of Dreamweaver or how to type, not just type HTML but like how to use a computer. And this podcast class I'm teaching with these high school students, I was intending to have to walk them through like how to use a multi track audio editor and, and you know, I had to give them an overview, but they got it immediately and some of them already knew how to use GarageBand inside and out and it was just not a problem for them. And that took my breath away because I thought, you know, the stuff that I, that you had to specialize in when I was younger, where you had to be like, I'm going to be a computer person and I'm going to learn how to do all this computery stuff that's just a given for everybody below a certain age in our society. And when you have that moment of like, oh wow, these are no longer like my skills. They are just the world.

Yeah. And thank goodness we have them. Right. I mean, you know, so well.

Yeah. That's the big benefit is that, is that there are a lot of people my age and your age who don't. Who weren't the computer people and so they don't have those skills and they look at the rest of the sort of a younger population are like, oh my God, how can they do this? I'm left out. And at least when it comes to that stuff we are current in that way.

Yeah, we just. The trick is staying current. Right. Or hiring people that can stay current for us. Right. So let's shift this. This because we do. We did bring you here not to just reminisce about.

Yeah.

All of this. Although that's fun. So. But now once you left Mac world, you started six colors.com and, and are now in the business of. Of publishing a website all on your own. Is this your first business or have you had others before it?

Yeah, we started the. The corporation about a year and a half before I left IDG because my podcasts are also a part of it. And that was also sort. Honestly, it's the positioning of I'm going to need to go out on my own. And so let's get it running now and see how that goes. But it is the Incomparable Incorporated, which is the name of the business. It is my first business. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. So you hadn't run things on the side before or anything like that where you had to manage cash flow in any significant way for a Business entity.

Right. Most of my side projects before were essentially free and there was no money involved. And so there was the whole level of like taxes and registering and things like that that just not that big a deal. But this was the first one where we had to say what kind of corporation are we going to be? There is real money coming in. The first lawyer and accountant I had were assuming that this was sort of like a silly side project that would not have any money and would lose money and made some decisions that we had to reverse. When they realized, oh, you're serious about this, there's real money coming in, you're making a profit, I'd be like, yes.

Yeah, that was the goal.

That was what I told you up front. But they're like, nah, it's just a hobby kind of. No, it's not, not that. So I had to learn all that stuff and make those decisions. And it really was the first time. My dad was an orthodontist and so he had his own business and I got to watch the small business to employee kind of thing growing up. So it wasn't totally foreign to me as a concept. But for my professional life I worked for basically a few different corporations continuously. But I was always just an employee and I didn't have any sort of side bit businesses going on.

So we like to offer advice to people. Was there anything specific there? You said there were a couple of mistakes made at the beginning at least. Looking back. Any examples that might be helpful to other listeners here?

Well, I think being clear with the people that you work with, especially things like accountants and tax advisors and attorneys when you're setting up your corporation, being as crystal clear as you can about what your intent is for the business, not just what you're. We can talk about hopes and you could try to downplay your hopes, but for intent I feel like you gotta be clear because that's a lesson I learned is that my lawyer thought that I was one of like her husband's. Her husband is a friend of mine from college and I don't know any lawyers so I thought, okay, I'll ask her to set up the corporation. And she assumed that I was doing one of these kind of hobby corporations. And even though I never said that, and in fact I thought I had made it clear that this wasn't that. I think it was very easy for her to kind of fall back on know it's another one of these and as a result like you know, wrong choice about between an S corp and a C corp. The accountant I talked to just assumed that it was as a new small business. It would start out with low revenue and losses, and over time, it would end up becoming profitable and you could guide it as you went. And I said, no, I'm selling advertising on my podcast. It's already got, you know, 20, 25,000 listeners. I'm going to be bringing in money. The expenses are incredibly low. It will be profitable day one because almost every dollar that comes in is profit. And he just didn't get it. And then he saw the numbers and he went, oh, right. And it was like he was surprised, even though I felt like I'd been clear. So clarity of, like, what your intent is and where your business is and how you think it's going to work. That was my number one lesson, was just, you know, people are going to put on you their expectations of you unless you make it really clear that that's not what you're planning.

Yeah, no, that. That it totally makes sense. You can't really blame them for it other than the fact that they weren't listening to what you were, just adding their interpretations and going from there.

Right. I understand why they did it that way, but it was one of those frustrations of like, no, no, no, seriously, I'm not a deluded person who is coming to you saying, oh, I'm going to make. I'm going to be rich, rich, rich. I'm going to have my own business. I'm somebody who actually, this is what is already happening, and this is why I need to do this.

Well, that's a smart thing to do. I mean, you get things rolling a little bit and then kind of form the business around it. That. I mean, yes, there's two schools of thought on that, but both Shannon and I have always felt like you just roll forward and then, okay, let's put some structure around this because, you know, otherwise people are going to start yelling at us about, you know, taxes and things like that. Yeah, right. So are you a C corp or an S Corp?

So we are an S corp. Okay, now. Oh, we're originally a C corp and basically had to unwind that and rewind it. And we incorporated in the wrong again. There were just some mistakes made at the beginning where it's like, no, no, no, no, no. This is not a loss leader, no employee kind of deal. This is, we want to get paid. We're going to make money. Let's register it. So now we are a California S Corp. And then do the game at the end for two years. Now we've been doing this now where you play the game at the end of the year where you. We're trying to hit the minimum profit possible.

Of course. Of course.

And try to break even as much as we can. We failed both years, but been pretty close. My wife does a pretty good job with that. She's essentially. Because she's got a business degree and she is a librarian, but she doesn't work full time at the library. She is also my accountant or my accounting head, essentially. She's done a great job at tracking finances and having us try to hit that minimal profit from the corporation.

I just want people to understand you're not doing anything wrong by hitting this minimum profit. I'm assuming you're doing just shifting where expenses fall compared to income and that sort of thing as your fiscal year ends. Is that right?

Exactly. The way we've been doing it is all the profits roll to us because we're an S corp. All the profits roll to us to pay the taxes anyway. So if the business makes $3,000 or $10,000, we pay taxes on that profit and then the business keeps that money. And the problem with that is then if we pay ourselves out of that money from the business later, we pay taxes on that as our income from the business, which is dumb. So our goal is to pay ourselves and withhold taxes, actually, and the whole thing so that the business doesn't have a whole lot of money that it's sitting on that instead the payments flow to us, we pay taxes on them, and the business does not have a whole lot of money in the bank.

Yeah. And you're avoiding double taxation and all that.

Exactly that. That's the bottom line is that the more that stays in the business, the more double taxation it is. And that's silly. So you try to avoid it.

See, that's interesting. I have several. Backbeat Media is an llc, the business that Shannon I have together as an llc. But Mac Observer, I was in the same boat as you and never undid it. So that is a C corp and there are minimal benefits for a C corp of our size. We've started Mac observer the, you know, the. In the dot com booms, people like, oh, you're going to go public, you need a C corp, right? You know, it's like, oh, sure, okay, obviously that didn't happen. So. But there are some minimal tax benefits that I get having it as a C corp, even at the size that we operate under. But, but I always thought that that double taxation was. Was unique to the C Corp. And. And you wouldn't really deal with it as much with an S Corp, But. But obviously I was wrong on that because I don't have any S Corps, so.

So, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's basically the trick is my understanding. I'm not a professional tax expert, but my understanding is that it's the same thing, is if we end up with $10,000 profit to the corporation at the end of the year, we pay taxes on the profit. The corporation still has that money in the bank. And then if the corporation wants to pay us salary later, we get taxed on it because we are being paid salary, and that is a double tax penalty. Absolutely. So we try to. In the. And somebody is paying us a bill on December 31st, and that's our profit for the year.

Yeah.

And that's just. You just sort of say, all right, it's fine. It's nice to have a little bit of money in the bank at any given time. But it's weird. I mean, this is not something I've ever done before. And I'm very happy to have my wife's help because she's got the. You know, we're on payroll. I get paid by the corporation, she gets paid by the corporation. You know, we withhold taxes. We went through. We paid double taxes, actually, in 2015 because we got hit with huge estimated tax because of how much came in the previous year where we weren't paying any estimated tax. And we really wanted to get out from under a huge estimated tax payment. So we spent a year sort of paying the estimated tax and withholding, which was painful. But our estimated tax that we have to pay for 2016 is tiny.

This much lower now that you're.

And we'll get a huge tax refund, and then we'll be kind of on schedule with. Because I kind of want it to feel like. Like I'm an employee at a business. It's just my business.

Yes. Yeah. No, I get that. It's interesting. You know, I did the same thing eventually, but it took me a whole lot longer because I was always used to just being in business for myself. So taking distributions instead of a paycheck was. Didn't bother me, because it was no different. It had never been any other way. I mean, it was. But, you know, I didn't really. It didn't matter. But of course, coming from, you know, 20, almost 20 years of getting a paycheck, I can understand how your life. Life, especially having kids and all that, you know, your life is organized in a Certain way. It's like, can we, you know, sort of codify this a little bit? Yeah, that makes sense.

It makes it. It makes it a little more understandable in the sense that if you know what your paycheck is every, you know, every two weeks, then, I mean, if the business is doing well, then you're going to end up bonusing yourself because there's more money in there. But. But the bonus is a bonus, and the paycheck is sort of what you count on. And yeah, if. If there are hard times, then you have to cut down what you pay your. But ideally, you've got this kind of base level where, you know, that money is flowing to me regularly, and I can plan my life around that, and then these bonuses will happen. And if you keep the money in the bank for a while, then you can ride out some of the fluctuations kind of get washed out of the system, too, because if you have a low month and then a high month and then another low month, if they all are within what you've got in the bank, then you're just getting your paycheck every month and you bonus yourself at the end of the year, whatever is left over.

Yeah, yeah. Shannon, you. You like to talk about this particular concept, in fact, so. So let's. Let's deal with your microphone and talk about it.

That's right. Yeah.

Well, I love that, you know, you've made that decision to issue yourself a paycheck, however it, you know, big or small, it may be, because it. To me, it really talks to the importance of paying yourself first. You know, there's all kinds of things you can do to manipulate, you know, your cash flow and different things. But, you know, as a small business owner, you need to pay yourself first and then obviously whatever your business can support. But paying yourself last is not a good experience, and I just commend you on that. I think that's fantastic.

Well, I have to. I mean, I admit that I am very fortunate that because my business is entirely digital, my expenses are extremely low. I mean, that's the reality. Like, I am paying Linode $100 for my server and server backup, and that contains. That is my entire server infrastructure for my site and my podcast network. I guess there's an extra $20 here and there for another podcast CDN, and I'm paying some of my cable bill because I needed faster Internet to do this job. So I'm paying a little bit of that and a portion of. I think maybe a portion of my electric bill. But the overhead of this corporate corporation is really low. The biggest expenses we have are people in that I've got some stuff that I have another writer for Six Colors who I pay. And I've got some other occasional work that people do for the podcast that I pay. But that helps a lot that there isn't a lot of outflow other than compensating people for the work they do. We don't have a lot of overhead.

Your fixed costs are low, very low.

And that's really nice. That's one of the beauty you talk about, the dot com boom. This was one of the promises of that back then, is that I don't have a printing press. I don't have to have any of that kind of stuff to do what I do. I need to pay. In this case, I pay Leno $100 a month for a server. And that's it. I am broadcasting my writing and my podcasts worldwide for 100 bucks a month. And that's it.

That's awesome. That's great. This brings up an interesting topic. You say you have people that you pay, and obviously there's you and your wife, but there are others as well. And you did that at Macworld too, right? I mean, you managed a team and had people that you were in charge of deciding how much they get paid. But now it's different, right, because you're paying them and it's your company, not somebody else's budget, right?

Yeah. Although, I don't know. In some ways it's not that different because I had. I mean, nobody told me what to pay anybody. I had a manuscript budget, but that was it. Decide your pay scale, Stay within your budget. When I started, yeah, here's the features budget, and you have $4,000 or whatever. And then in the end it was, here's the IDG editorial budget and figure out who gets what, and then they'll figure out the details of it. But in some ways it's not that different that at the end you have to kind of just kind of say, what about this? Why don't I pay you this? Is this a fair way to pay? I will say that it is a little bit different. I don't think it's because it's my business's money instead of someone else's money. The billionaire who owns the company's money is what it was. At idg, I always felt really responsible for that money and was kind of appalled when, especially in my early days when I was at Ziff Davis, there were some people who I felt like their attitude was very much like, let's take advantage of the. The money that's in this business to spend money on things that we would never spend that money on ourselves. And that always bothered me. My dad was a child of the Depression. I think I was raised with sort of. He was always like, why buy a new thing when you can stick a wire from some other thing in this thing and twist it around? He was big with cutting things off of the end of wire coat hangers and using them to repair things. Because growing up in the Depression, that was the kind of thing you did right. And disposability was not a thing that was acceptable. So I always. My long way of saying I always took it as a big responsibility, even though I was spending somebody else's money, that it was to do right by that. That all said, I'm also aware of what money I have in my business and I'm not a billionaire and I don't have the ability to lose money very much because that's just coming out of my own pocket at that point. And so that does affect my calculation of how much am I going to pay for a story or for somebody to write for my site for a day, Because I don't feel like it makes you a little nervous, like, wow, what am I committing to paying this person? Also because there's the calculation of what if? Now, as a business owner, I have that. What if something goes wrong and it's not like a higher up's decision to cut my budget, I'm going to have to decide to cut my budget. And I'd hate to be in a position where I pay somebody a number that makes me feel good. But it also means that if there's the slightest hitch, I'm going to have to say, I can't pay you anymore. You have to stop working for me. I'd much rather pay them a level that is sustainable so that I'm fairly confident that I can pay, like Dan Moran, who writes for me, an amount of money that I'm going to be able to pay. Even if we have sponsors that come and go or whatever, that money is still going to be there for me to pay him well.

And as I'm sure you found, and I've certainly found, people whom you're paying actually appreciate that more too, because they like to know that there's going to be some stability. They're not running their own business and they don't really want to deal with that. Right?

Yeah. I mean, stability. It's funny that comes up A lot when you talk about this, I'm sure you guys have talked about it too. There's this illusion of stability when you're inside a company because you get that paycheck and there are a lot of issues you don't have to worry about. But the fact is they can tap you on the shoulder at any point and say, sorry, we're making cuts, you're out of here.

It's at will, of course.

Yeah. So it's an illusion. But sometimes the illusion, I mean, it is comforting to not have to worry about that stuff. But I think you're right. There is something to be said for making decisions that allow you to create stable situations. Say, well, it's going to come and go, and sometimes I'm going to pay you really well, and other times I'm not going to give you work and instead say, well, I'm going to pay you a little bit less, but I'm going to be able to pay you that every month.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I always, you know, I, I, I make decisions, especially when it's growing the business and adding people as opposed to replacing someone that's, you know, that, that had left. I, I always to myself, commit to a, you know, that I can, I'm going to do this for three months or I'm going to do this for six months. And, and then it's a little bit easier to look and say, well, do I have the budget for that? Because maybe I just have, you know, that pile of cash sitting in there. It's like, okay, I, great. Even if we don't earn, you know, an extra dollar in the next six months, I can still pay for this experiment, you know, and, and you have to be careful when communicating this to a potential new hire because you don't want to make a guarantee that you're going to employ them for six months. But I, you know, I always tell them, hey, look, this is how we're looking at this. If it works, we're going to continue to have this position in existence for six months at least, and then hopefully, you know, it works even better than we think. And onward we go. You know that.

Yeah. And that's actually one of the things that I like about having my own business is one of the things that frustrated me at IDG is we had a CFO who was not. She hated laying people off. I mean, that's the easiest way to put it. She hated laying people off. And laying people off isn't fun. Everybody should dislike it. But she hated it so much that she didn't want to hire anybody for fear that you would have to lay them off later. And so we would have these positions where it's like this person we want to bring in, we think they're going to bring in revenue, so I want to hire them. We'll try this, this for six months or a year. We'll know immediately whether it's going to work or not after that six month period, let's say, because either they will have brought in more money or they won't have. It could not be clearer to measure it. So let's bring them in and if it doesn't work out, then we'll say it didn't work out and we'll go our separate ways. And at idg, I would get that kick back to me as basically like, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. And so I felt like we missed all of these opportunities because of that. Just being gun shy about having to take a chance on somebody that you might have to say goodbye to them. And as somebody who has my own business, I have not had to do that yet, but I feel like I could do that. That seems very reasonable to me. I can take a chance with somebody and say, look, I don't know if this is going to work or not, but let's try it for six months and see. And at the end of six months we'll know and either we'll keep doing it or we'll stop. And I can make that decision now, which before I can make all the logic in the world, the arguments in the world go my way. And at the end of the day somebody was saying it makes me feel funny. Let's not do it.

Yeah, well, we had somebody on the show, we had a guest on the show who called that, you know, fear based decisions. And he said that's the worst thing I've ever done in my business is making fear based decisions. And he's, it's totally right. Yeah. And it's frustrating. It's, it's, it's one thing and it is frustrating when you find yourself making your own fear based decisions. And that's something to avoid.

Void.

It's even worse when you see somebody else doing it and you can't control it.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I struggle with that too. I mean that's a logical thing to say. Like wait a second, why am I making this decision? This is a bad decision. I was talking to Jim Dalrymple about this who does another kind of independent website, you know. You know Jim and he had an example. I forget what it was exactly, but it was a decision he made. And he said that was a fear. It was about fear. I made that decision because of fear. And it was the worst decision I made running my business. And then I had to make an even more difficult decision, which is I had to reverse myself because that was such a wrong decision. And I mean, I've never done that in my year and a half of doing this. I haven't done anything at that scope yet. But I've certainly had those moments of like, oh, I should do this thing. And I think, why would you do that other than out of fear? And that's not a good enough reason just because you're scared?

Yeah, totally, totally, totally. Shannon, do you have a question for us here today?

I do.

So, Jason podcasts are growing like crazy. You know, someone who's looking on the outside that you know with envy, like, oh, look at this guy's got all this experience and he's starting, you know, doing well and running a profitable business.

What.

Let's talk about marketing for a little bit. And what tips could you give someone that's getting started or just running, you know, a self publishing business like you are and wants to, you know, see some success?

Oh, I don't know. It's. I don't know. I don't know if there's one. I don't know if there's one answer here. I always. I'm hesitant to give advice as somebody who's just. I feel like I'm just figuring this out.

Well, what do you do? Let's talk about that. That's probably fine. I mean, whether it works for them or not, you know, just kind of talk to the things that you try that have worked.

Oh, I mean, in general, I think what I would say is that trying things, actually just trying things is the most important thing. And that goes back to fear as well. Of. I find a lot of the stuff that I try to do out of fear is not actually trying things. It's like giving up and not trying things. Like, well, I could do that, but that's too scary. Let's go back to something that I'm used to. Let's go back to something safe. And so I'm not a big believer. And this, I think, says something about what I have chosen to do and what kind of paths in my career I've chosen not to take is I'm not a big believer in the grand scheme where it's like, I have a plan, and this plan if it should succeed, will will make me a multimillionaire. Bwaha. I just am not one of those people. And those people probably exist and are successful and that's great. But for me it's like the grand schemes. I don't like the grand schemes. I don't think they work. I think it's much better to try things out and find things that work and iterate on them. Find stuff you believe in. Some of the products that I've liked the least in general, and I'm not talking about that, could be hardware, software, podcasts, TV shows, whatever. I think some of the products I like the least in general are products that feel like it's a cash grab, Like I don't actually want to be making this, but I'm going to make it because I think it might make me money. My feeling is some of those make money and a lot of those fail. And I'm not comfortable because I don't think that I would be particularly successful making something that I don't believe in. So instead I try to make stuff and see where it leads me. So a lot of that is like, well, this is a weird idea and I don't really know whether it's going to work or not, but I should probably try it. And if it doesn't work, you say, well, that didn't work. And if it does work, then you can evaluate whether you should do more like that or whether you could grow that into something different. And I'm always thinking about that. One of the advantages of being in this digital publishing world, and podcast is a great example where it's a new form, if not a new medium. I had a whole argument with somebody about whether podcasting is a medium because it's just audio, but it's a form regardless. And transmission method, method. This is the early days for it. And I think it would be a mistake if everybody just tried to find the most successful three podcasts that are out there and just replicate them and make a whole bunch of duplicates of those podcasts. Because the other great podcasts of the future are in formats not yet devised and you are not going to devise them if you're trying to knock off somebody else trying to knock off some cereal or knockoff Night Vale. So try to do something different. It may not be as successful as cereal or night Vale, because very few will. But that's how you're going to find something that you are good at, that you're like, oh, I could really do this. And this is really Interesting. And maybe there's an audience for this. And that's the great thing about being like it was in the web 15 years ago. It's a great feeling of being at the beginning of something, that the rules aren't there. And so you got to explore and try stuff out because nobody's going to tell you to stop.

Yeah, well, and I think, you know, it comes down to authenticity. Right? You're, and that's, that's what you're saying here is you've got to just do what is the right thing for you to do, not copy what that person did because they made a ton of money.

You got to believe in it. Right. And I hear from people who say, oh, you do podcasting. So how do I make money at podcasting? I'm like, wow, that is the, that, like, I've done sessions because I've done a few sort of like, intro to podcasting. How. At conferences and things like that. And I can't believe how many people are like, well, I'm thinking of doing a podcast. How do I make money at it? It's like, that is the most backward way of thinking.

Yeah, it's not even the wrong answer. It's the wrong question. Yeah.

No, I mean, it's literally like, any business or any industry, if you say, I would like to be a millionaire, how do I do that? In your industry, it's like, well, that's not how you do it, is thinking of the end result. You need to think of the start and go through it and then come up with something that can lead you to the end result. And it's great that a decent part of my income is podcasts, but I didn't go in saying, hey, podcasting is a place where I could make money. Let's invent a thing that will allow me to make money. Yeah, it's backward. You need to have something that you believe in the audience, especially if you're creating media, the audience needs authenticity. They need to believe that you care about the subject matter and that you know about the subject matter, and then that leads to building a better audience, which lets you build a business. Business.

Yes, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you, you, you need to have all of that in place and, and then you can roll forward. So I think, and I think that answers part of Shannon's question. But if I may, I want to kind of spin back to that. I, I, I think what Shannon is asking is, okay, I'm a, you know, a new publisher, either a podcaster or, you know, I'm publishing something on the web, and I'm publishing that about which I am passionate. So, you know, check that box, Right. How do I make, you know, how what has worked for you to. To market that? Right. How do you get people to know about it? And I realize I'm asking this question. It's like asking this question of me. It's like, well, I did this for, you know, 15 years, and thankfully, I built up some. Some rapport and an audience, and now I can, you know, without being too callous about it, I can market to my existing audience. Are you doing. And there's nothing wrong with doing just that, but are you doing anything more than that? Or is. Or is, in fact, that what you're doing?

Yeah, well, I mean, that's what I was gonna say is the number one secret to the audience that I have built up is that I did this for 18 years, and I had my face on page five of a magazine that went to three or 400,000 people for every issue for about seven years. And that helped. And a. Follow me on Twitter. Here's how to reach me at the end of those columns. That helped a lot. Right?

Of course. Yeah. As well it should have. I mean, you should be capitalizing on that. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. And I can't. So that's terrible advice is have a big following and then step three, profit. But I think I'd say beyond the authenticity thing, because we covered that, I think you need to be reliable. I think people need to depend on you. Podcasting is a great example of that. That's a subscription relationship, like a magazine or a newspaper is. Or if you think about your favorite TV show, your favorite TV show does not come out with an episode, and then five weeks later, another episode, and then four months later, two episodes, it comes. Comes out, and they do 13. Either dropped it once on Netflix, or they do one a week for 13 weeks, and then they go away again for a year, and then they come back with another season. If you've got a newspaper, remember those. Probably the newspaper doesn't just not show up on Thursday, and they're like, yeah, we weren't feeling it today. We'll be back tomorrow. There is an implied relationship there, and dependence and reliability is very important. So with podcasting, I'd say find something you're passionate about at a level that you are willing to continue. Because, like my podcast, despite my social media reach and my picture in the magazine and all of that, the incomparable. It was a slow build to get it to the size it is now. You did not flip a switch and get 20 or 25,000 listeners. It just doesn't happen that way. It. We started doing episodes and kept doing them every week, and we've been doing that for five and a half years now. Like, every week there's a new episode, and consistency matters. So whether it's every other week or every month or whatever, knowing what your format is, even if you have to figure it out, but finding a focus, that's important and writing, I'd say, on the web, it's the same way. Be consistent. Editors prize consistency. Find audiences that are not your audience by writing. Writing. If you're a writer, writing at places that you're not known, appear in places. Today's digital media is so much about audiences that I would say finding audiences that don't know about you and exposing your stuff to them is a huge part of this. I go on Leo Laporte's Twitch shows a lot, and one of the reasons I do that is because I found that the people who watch those shows have no idea who I. I mean, there's some people who know who I am who see me on there, and they're like, yeah, it's Jason. But I really get the sense, like, when I'm on Knack Break Weekly or Twit, like, people are like, hey, Jason's back. Like, literally, they haven't seen me since the last time I was on.

Yeah, they think you've done nothing in the gap there. That's right.

And I find that to be an amazing opportunity because every time I'm on, there's more of a chance that they're going to go to Six Colors, that they're going to subscribe to the Incomparable, that they're going to listen to my podcast on Relay. I'm getting in front of a different audience. I write columns for Macworld Weekly, and they pay me, and that's great. But it also allows me to place a little note on Macworld's website every week that says, hey, remember Jason from all those things he did at Macworld. He's still around, and you can get more of him at Six Colors. And that's one of the benefits of being there. When I write for Imore, it's the same thing. It's like the Imore audience is a little bit different, and it gets me in front of them. And it is, again, they pay me, but it is also an advertisement for me, me to their audience. And that's part of the part of the value there. So, you know, that's it. I mean, you just got to kind of grind and build an audience and be in front of people and be consistent and reliable, because people who are in the content business really value consistency and reliability, and audiences value it too well.

And that when podcasters come to me and ask, you know, what should I do? How should I do? It's like, do whatever want you want. But know that even though that as a podcaster or a writer, you can create content when you are moved to do so, your audience lives on a schedule. And if you are not there for them when they want to play your podcast on Tuesday morning at the gym, they might give you one week's worth of a pass. But if next Tuesday your show is not there, they're still at the gym, and now they're playing somebody else's show and you're done.

That's right. I mean, I'm sure you've experienced it. I know I have. Where I've had, like, incomparable. I usually post it on Saturday. But what I've said when people ask is, look, we post it on the weekend, and every now and then, I've got family stuff on a Saturday, and I post it on a Sunday. And when that happens, I will hear from multiple people on Twitter and sometimes an email saying, where's the show?

What happened?

We had an episode of clockwise that we delayed a day because of. I think it was because of, like, news, like an Apple event or something. And I heard from people who are like, like, it's Wednesday afternoon. Where's clockwise? And on one level, that's incredibly flattering, but it also shows you we are expected to fill that slot in their lives. Like, I heard from several people who are like, I drive home on Wednesday night listening to Clockwise. Where is it?

Where's the show?

And so being consistent, you are integrating yourself into the lives of your audience. And that's incredibly powerful. But that is. The price is you have to be consistent.

You have to be there. Yeah, yeah. And I would also say, you know, and as we've acknowledged, you came into six colors with an audience. But even if you don't have an audience, you know, make it. Start building it today and make it easy for people to become part of whatever you want to call your audience. Make it easy for them to figure out where your website is, how to subscribe to your podcast, how to follow you on Twitter. Don't hide this stuff, because they're only if they put in a little bit of extra effort that's more than you can expect. And it's, you know, it's the, it's the extent of that, which they're going to do. They're not going to keep hunting. They're going to look once, hopefully they find you and you're done, you know, and now they're a fan for, hopefully for life.

Right. And start and, and, and find a way for them to connect to you. If you, if you do a website, you know, they, A lot of people don't understand about rss. So what's the subscription relationship there? Well, maybe you set up a mailing list and, you know, you can start a, a mailing list on mailchimp below a certain amount. It's free, and that certain amount is thousands of people. At which point it's worth it to pay, right?

Yeah. When it's time to pay, you will be happy to do it.

That's right, yeah. And you're saying, well, what am I going to email them? I don't know, send them an email every month or two just saying, thanks for being here and here's a T shirt that I put up for sale or something like that. It doesn't have to be anything super meaningful, but you are building connections so that when it comes time to sell, say, here's what I'm doing, or here's a product, here's a book I wrote, or whatever it is, they're listening to that. And so there's lots of ways to build that relationship.

Yeah, absolutely. All right, so we're coming up on what should be the close of this episode, but there's a couple of questions that we like to ask, and one of them, I think, well, you've already given us one answer, but I'll ask it again in case there's anything else. But feel free to say that there's not. You know, we like to tell stories and we like to learn here. So are there any other than picking schedule A C corp instead of an S Corp? Are there any other mistakes that you have made that if you could go back and tell Jason of whatever three years ago, hey, you're about to do this thing, make sure you do X. Are there any of those that come.

Up, ones that I would stay the same or that I would change?

You know, either piece of advice is actually valuable?

Well, the things that I would say, I mean, I don't know if they're mistakes, but making things not knowing where they're going is always a good one. So, like, the incomparable was kind of an Accident. Oh, this will be a good idea. Let's make a podcast. And you know, we're coming up on 300 episodes now and I. You've got some long running podcasts too, Dave.

And they all started as mistakes and are far different now than they were the day they started.

Yeah. And you know, that is, again, it's not a huge portion of my income, but it's actually part of my income now. It's not just a hobby anymore. It's a little bit of a job and I love it. But it's also, I mean, that's great. And I never intended that. And I've met so many great people. And it led to creating the Incomparable Podcast Network, which is again, not a big revenue generator in the grand scheme of things, but it, it is a fun project that I think has some upside in the future. And so that whole thing was kind of accidental and I'm glad. I would never have set out to create a podcast network populated with all these different podcasts, a dozen podcasts from all these different people, some of whom I had not even met when I started the original Incomparable Podcast. I really only created the network because we had a spinoff that we wanted to do and we didn't have any place to put it, so we made a site for it, of course. So I would say keep doing all that creative crazy stuff and starting podcasts at IDG that we didn't know. Whether there was any place for those to lead clockwise is actually still part of that mistake. It's funny, the mistake I would actually say I wish I could go back and do over is I spent a year thinking about quitting my job. And In December of 2013, I told them I was going to leave at the end of the year because there was a big layoff coming up, as I mentioned earlier, and I just didn't want to go through it. I was unhappy with the job. I didn't want to go through laying off all those people. And they had brought in some new business leadership and the new business leadership talked me into giving it a go and staying and saying, we're going to turn it around. I know now that those people, like the guy they put in charge of the business, he also left. When I left left, it didn't work out. The part of that was that the founder of the company died about three months later and they. And they started prepping it for sale. But so if I could go back to, then I would say, look, you're going to be independent nine months from now anyway, because there's going to be another wave of layoffs and cuts. Just go now.

Yeah, well, that's the hardest thing is, you know, the actually leaving your day job. Yeah.

I should have traveled back. Actually, I should have traveled back six or nine months before that and said, you are still talking about quitting. You're not going to even do it. And work up the nerve to try until December. Don't wait. Just do it now. Make this happen sooner rather than later. Because really, that is the one thing that, in hindsight, I didn't need that extra year plus of burnout and unhappiness in my job and stress about something I couldn't control. And I would have been better off starting to build my business and move on with my life now. I. I would have, you know, if I just quit or asked to be laid off in the earlier layoff or something like that, I would not necessarily have had. You know, I was fortunate to have gotten some money from my employer to start my new business. That was really nice.

Sure.

But still, I think I would have traded even that for not having to spend that last year longing to be independent and not being.

Yeah, there is. I totally understand what you're saying. There is something to be said, though, for. For experiencing some amount of pain that then kind of gives you that ramp from which to blast off into your own thing.

And that's why I said that the December one would probably be my presentation, because then I would have gone through my year of pain, decided to pull the trigger, and then got kind of talked by the new management into staying. And that would have been the moment of like, no, you've been through this process. Everybody in your family's been through this process. We all know that you need to leave. Just go ahead and do it. Don't listen to what they're saying. At that point, I'd already set up the corporation. I had already set up my home office space, which I. I didn't have before I started. So I had a workspace, I had a corporation. I had started selling ads on my podcast. So I had some income coming in. It was. It was enough.

It was time.

Yeah, it was time. And then instead, I sort of ended up with nine more months and another set of layoffs, and it wasn't worth it.

That's not good. Yeah. Anything else before we. Before we bid one another ado here?

I don't know. We. I feel like we covered a lot of ground. It was a lot of fun.

Thank you so much. So much. Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you. It was fantastic having you. So many great lessons that are applicable to any kind of business. And we'll extol on those in the show notes this week for sure.

Cool.

Jason, before we leave, tell people where they can find you so that they can find you.

Oh, yes. Well, six colors.com is where I do my tech writing. The incomparable podcast network is@the incomparable.com. i also do three podcasts on the Relay FM Tech Podcast Network at Relay Relay FM. And follow me on Twitter Snell.

Thanks so much, folks. We will see you next week.