Good Day Google+ - Let the Sunshine In

Hey everyone, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to Good Day Google+. It's a beautiful day in the state of Florida, a little chill in the air, but it's sunshiny, the skies are blue, and there's not a cloud out there. I was just outside riding my bike and having a good day, good start to the day. It's Friday, it's time to relax, it's time to take a little bit of a break and enjoy some conversation. I've got some great guests on today. I have with me a native Orlandian, or not, I don't know if you're native or not, but you live here Adam Avidable. How you doing, Adam?

Pretty good.

And I love your byline there, narcissist and bacon fetishist. And you know, bacon on Google+ is like the national food. It's the food of choice, so you really picked a good one.

Well, good.

Glad to have you with us. And I like your backdrop there. It's pretty interesting with Superman and Batman. I love the— I'm looking at the interior of the Batman. That's pretty cool.

Thanks, thanks. Yeah, a couple pieces I designed actually.

Did you really?

Yeah.

Yeah, do you have any Walking Dead? I see that thing in the back.

Yeah, I do, I do. I have a lot of Walking Dead stuff too.

Pretty cool, pretty cool. Yeah, I'm waiting for their show. Starts Sunday, I think, doesn't it? Starts back up.

It does.

And next to Adam, we have outside in the blue skies of Coronado, Maggie Owensworth. How you doing, Maggie?

Hi, Chef. I'm not in Coronado, I'm actually in San Diego. Yeah, I crossed the bridge and I kept driving. And here I am in North County.

Do you need a passport or a visa to cross that bridge?

No, you don't need a visa even though sometimes it does feel like it. We have this toll that you don't have to pay a toll but you know, you kind of, some people kind of stop and want to put money in and it's like, no, keep going, just drive, it's free to come onto the island. Join us on the island.

That's good, that's good. Maybe you could dress Christopher up in a white suit and he can go, "Die plane, die plane!" Oh, don't tempt me, Chef.

You know us, we would probably do that. Then I would tag you.

And then we have Ryan Hanley joining us from the cold Northeast.

Yeah, Maggie's outside. If I were outside, I think I'd have frostbite in about, I think, 8 seconds. Seconds today is what the, is what the weather told me. So I am definitely inside. Though if my thing shakes, I'm at my standing desk, and I haven't yet built a sturdy enough base for it. So occasionally it looks like we're having an earthquake, but that's not the case.

You know, I did see a picture, and I'm trying to remember where I saw it, of your studio. That was so cool looking.

That was actually in Minneapolis. So one of my, you know, probably the main project that I'm working on right now is for It's a content marketing operation for the insurance industry, and we built a video studio in our headquarters, which is in Minneapolis. So yesterday I was in Minneapolis, and we have a really cool studio that we built to do some higher-end video. So yeah, I took a picture, I did like a panorama with my iPhone, and it came out pretty neat.

Yeah, I did see that. I thought that was in your home, and I hadn't seen it before, so that's neat. So I guess it seems like it's warmer where you are now than Minneapolis, huh?

You know, there's very few places that I can fly from Albany and the weather actually gets worse, but Minneapolis happens to be one of those places.

I hear you, I hear you. I've never been, but I've heard. Well, thanks for joining us.

It's one of those places where everyone there says, "It's beautiful in the summer," and if someone says it's beautiful in the summer, you know that the other 3 seasons it's miserable, which is exactly the case.

Well, I had actually looked at moving out that way at one time.. And they sent me a pamphlet and it wasn't Minneapolis but it was right near there and they call summer severe weather season. And I went, you don't want anyone to move here if it's snowing and freezing in the wintertime and you think summer severe weather season? So I ended up not going.

It's north, it's far north.

Very cool. All right, next to Ryan we have my friend Scott Scowcroft. How you doing today?

Hi, I'm doing great, and in Seattle— well, first of all, before I say anything else, did you plan it that you would be having a representative from each of the corners of the United States in your show? Was that your criteria for this show?

No, you know, I rarely plan anything on Good Day, Good Morning, Plus. It usually just kind of falls into place.

Well, in Seattle, and I always say this because I want people to visit but not necessarily move here, it's nice and cloudy and raining, and we're talking in the green the rain room that they're using a new phrase, the Weather Bureau is, and that is the Sky River because the Pineapple Express has got so much water in it that they're calling it the Sky River. In fact, in Seattle yesterday or the day before, we had 1 point something or other inches and it was an all-time, it was a record since 1961 for rain. So it's cloudy and rainy in Seattle and I couldn't be happier.

Well, that's almost a normal way of life though in Seattle, isn't it? Cloudy and rainy just like in England.

Yeah, I have to admit though that summers are severe weather time for us because it's sunny and the skies are blue and, you know, not at all to my liking, but I'm an outlier.

Very good.

Well, thanks. And I want to say hi to a few people that have stopped by. And Richard Clarkson's in the house. He says it's not rainy down here in Southern California. It never rains in Southern California, at least that's what the song said. Carbon Mandich, wonderful to have you in the audience, smiling, saying hi to Kristen. And Kristen's in the house, saying word must be out about Christopher. Yeah, here Michael Thomas, fuzzy kitties and bacon, he loves it.

Gotta love it.

It's a happy day. And here's Christopher Vogelman, I'm a lot taller than tattoos. Well, you know, remember, who was it? Oh, Dorf. Dorf plays golf on the Carol Burnett Show. Tim Conway. Tim Conway, thank you. He used to be on his knees, so we'll just have to dress you like that, Christopher.

That's all.

I love it. Well, so we've got a good day planned for you today. We've got a lot of great guests and a lot of conversation, and we're gonna say hi to everyone again and let them talk about what they're passionate about or what they're doing. So we're gonna start with Adam because he's got a pretty interesting tale. You know, Adam, I was reading your thing, you're—

you know, I don't think I knew I didn't know you were an attorney.

Are you a practicing attorney?

No, no, I decided about halfway through law school that it was a miserable existence and I was never going to practice, but I still decided to get the degree because it allows me to feel more superior to everyone else, so it works pretty well.

That, well, yeah, I hear that from lawyers, so—

I'm kidding. I just give out unsolicited legal advice to anybody who needs it, even if they don't need it actually, and I'm glad I have the degree. It helps, it teaches you to write in a different way and to think in a different way, and for as comedy is doing stand-up is all about semantics of language, and the law degree actually has provided a lot of insight to that.

I bet it has. Now why don't you tell us about some of the things that you do for fun or that your passion or what you do?

Well, I lecture on writing. I've been blogging since 1998 and have a pretty decent-sized audience as far as that goes. So people know me for being very transparent and not really hiding anything about myself, both literally and figuratively, online. And so I talk about that and I do stand-up. I'm also a big comic book geek, and so I do all that. And I love to eat. You can look at me and tell that I love to eat. And that's really it.

Where do you do your stand-up at?

Wherever they'll pay me, whether it's the crappiest little bar, there's 4 people in the audience, or if it's an improv, or I've been at the Comedy Store in LA. Wherever you can get paid to perform, you will perform. It's basically a step away from prostitution.

I love it. So you do go outside of Orlando then to perform?

Oh yeah, wherever I can. I mean, most of my comedy is done in the Southeast just because it's easier, because I do spend a lot of time here. I work during the day a lot of times, and so it's not as easy to leave. But if I can, I'll travel wherever.

Do you teach writing at one of the universities around here?

No, no, not yet. I've lectured at UCF about it, but I've also given a writing workshop. It was a spin-off of Florida BlogCon called Florida Blog Content and did a 6-hour writing workshop that gave some really hands-on tools. And it worked pretty well. People really walked away with some takeaways, and I'm actually going to be reprising a 45-minute segment of that actually next Sunday the 15th at Forum, which is a thing that the founder of Florida Blog Con is doing.

Yep, I'm going to that. I have my ticket. I signed up right away. In fact, I have one of the special tickets I think they give us. Plugs for everything. And then I don't like to— but yeah, Bess has been great to work with, and she's been a joy since I moved down here. And Florida BlogCon was great because I got to meet all kinds of different bloggers. It wasn't just, you know, food bloggers, which I pretty much had known, and, you know, until I started on Google+, and I started meeting other kinds of bloggers. But that was a great way to get them all together.

It is.

It's a really fun Fun environment. I really enjoyed being on the planning committee. I have been going to blogging conferences for years. BlogHer was one of them. I used to meet a bunch of different— everything from photography bloggers to food bloggers to people like Reid Drummond, Pioneer Woman. I met her years ago before anyone knew who she was. It's always nice seeing people grow and have their own little niche markets that they write to.

Oh yeah, the Pioneer Woman really set herself apart. I don't think there will ever be anybody that gets as big as her or as popular as her. The market, especially with food bloggers, has, has gotten so saturated. There's so many of them out there that to reach that kind of status anymore— I mean, you'll still— people still jump in and out of those different shows because the Cooking Channel offers a lot of opportunities. But boy, yeah, she is definitely at the top of the heap.

Right, right.

Well, thank you for coming. And you said you design those things behind you. Do you do that regularly, or is that just something you do for fun?

They're just something fun. I don't really have any artistic ability, but I just thought I would have some fun with it. And this is kind of my reading room, so I kind of have comic books and I have Muppets and I have all types of things in here that I just kind of like to relax in here and read.

Very good, very good. I love it. All right, well, let's stop over to Ryan Hanley, because Ryan's got a book that's finally coming out that we've been anxiously waiting for.

Yeah, it's been a trial getting this thing to actually be created. It's funny, everyone, I think people romanticize self-publishing, and now that I've actually gone through the process, it's a pain in the rear end. It is not— I can see why publishers get paid what they do. Maybe it's not worth 85% of what the book makes, but It's certainly worth something because it is a lot, a lot of work, a lot of coordination. You know, the thing I'm struggling with now is file formatting for the hardcover. It's like the stupidest thing, but to get it to work, and every platform has a different file format, and it's like, oh my God, you got to— it is a lot of work. But I got the softcover from CreateSpace in the mail this morning., and I put a picture out on Instagram and on Google+ about it, and that was very exciting to actually hold— I have it here— to actually hold the thing in my hand made it a lot more real than it was when I just had the ebook version.

So have you done the ebook on different formats, or just— I mean, how does that work?

Right now it's just PDF and the Kindle version, so I'm just going to launch it on Amazon mostly because I don't want to say I'm lazy, but the idea of trying to push people to Nook and iTunes and all these different things, it just is a bit overwhelming. I'm actually going to use the Kindle Direct Publishing, the KDP, and do the first 90 days of electronic format just on Kindle. If anybody wants the PDF version, obviously I'll get that to them. I can only really make it available via Kindle, and I do that mostly just to get people to the thing, give them a place to purchase it, and if they want to wait and purchase it after, or they can purchase a soft copy and I'll have a hard copy too.

Very cool. I know you did do a Kickstarter for that as well, didn't you?

Yeah, so I was lucky enough to— it wasn't Kickstarter actually, it was a platform called Publishizer, which is a crowdfunding platform specifically designed for authors., and I used that and was able to raise almost $11,000, which basically has financed— I wanted to create this book as professionally as I could, but self-published, and I think that I got that. I had Mars Dorian do the COVID so, you know, it's a very kind of unique cover. His style is very unique, and, you know, that comes with a price. And, you know, I had the interior design done by a couple Actually, I shouldn't say a couple, they're a brother and sister down in— and excuse my— I don't exactly know where they're located, but I know that it's— I want to say it's either Mexico or somewhere in Costa Rica area. Brother and sister, and they were phenomenal, phenomenal. So the interior design is very unique, and that's part of why it's been trial to get this done. But yeah, it's been a learning experience and the support of people has been amazing.

So will you do another book now that you know all this?

Oh, hell yeah, I'll do another book. Yeah, for sure.

The second one should be a lot easier, won't it?

Yeah, right. It's mostly just, I think, addicting. It doesn't necessarily get any easier. But this is what I'll say about the book. Even if I didn't publish it, the process of going through and formulating all your thoughts into a larger body of work and really coming up with the narrative and having to think, is this story actually build or is it just filler? How does it fit? It really helps you focus your overall beliefs and structure and how you teach. And how, you know, like Adam, I do a lot of speaking and I can attest to the to the fact that you'll go just about anyone who will pay you, you'll go wherever they are. And it really helps you focus that. And so even if I wasn't selling it, I guess I could say it was a great, it was a great project.

Well, it certainly sounds like it was, and it sounds like you put an awful lot into it. And I think a lot of people really don't realize how much goes into it. Before they start a project like this. You see so many books out and you go, you know, how hard could it be? Everybody's got a book. But then you find out.

Yeah, you know what, it's funny that you say that. And so when I— it feels like everyone has a book until you start, you get into the process and you start talking to people and you realize that very few people actually have books. Like everybody does., but it is such a pain in the ass that not that many people do. I think we see it a lot because we're in the marketing world, so obviously if you're in the marketing world, you want to make sure that people see your message, but you step outside— I don't know a single other person that's in my close network that actually has written a book. My close network, say the first 100, 150 people that I have in my life. I think for people who are interested in taking it to that level, my only advice would be go in with your eyes wide open that it's going to take you a long time. You know, the stories of people writing books in 6 weeks, I mean, I'm sure that you could do it, but you can't have any other thing that you're trying to do in your entire life. So kiss your kids goodbye, kiss your spouse goodbye. Don't have a full-time job, don't have any hobbies, and yes, maybe you can write a book in 6 weeks. But otherwise, it's going to take you a long time.

I would think so, unless you have a really big support staff that's doing a lot of the work for you, that's editing and regrouping your thoughts for you. It's going to take some hours. They had talked to me about doing a cookbook, As soon as I learned what went into that— I have a lot of friends that have done cookbooks. It's like, "Well, you need about 50 recipes. None of them can have been on your blog already. None of them can go back on your blog again. You have to do all these testings, and you have to do all the pictures." I'm like, "Oh my God. That's like half my life then." I don't want to devote that kind of time. I think probably one of the best moments in someone's life has got to be when you hold your physical book that you have compiled and your name is on there in the byline and you actually hold it in your hands and you can feel it. That's like giving birth, I think, to a mother.

Yeah, well, I guess for a guy it's probably about as close as you can get. I didn't want to tell my wife this, but in the picture on Instagram I was holding my child and my book and I was a hard time figuring— no, I'm not going to say that.

Or you may give birth to that book later on today.

Exactly. I'm just playing. This is what I'll say is that when you work with a publisher, I think that you do lose control. I'm not against having— if this book works out, I'm not against moving it into having a publisher take over some of the fulfillment at some point. I wanted to go through the self-publishing process, but there's a reason— I know a lot of authors complain about they take so much of your money and blah, blah, blah. There's a reason that they do that stuff. If you want to have a life and write a book, you have to use a publisher. If you're going to self-publish and do it the right way and really make it something that you're proud of, it's going to take a lot of time. I'm not trying to discourage people. I just want them— I think it's a great exercise. I have a lot of friends who have come to me since I started this project and said, "Oh, I want to write a book. I want to write a book." When I really explained it to them, they're They're like, "I don't want to write a book. I don't want to write a book." So I think it's just important to remember. But Jeff, before I stop talking, and I promise, I think someone already called me out for ranting today. I have to give Sue B. Zimmerman a big shout out. So just hold on one sec. She created this for me. She created my Content Warfare hashtag sign. And I just have to give her a plug because this is the first Hangout I've been since she made it for me, and I really appreciate it.

So that's good. We love Sue.

Sue B. Zimmerman. She's the bomb. She's the Instagram woman. She's amazing. So just, I had to give her a shout out for that.

She is InstaGal, I think, isn't she?

Or—

Yes, InstaGal. What did I say, InstaWoman?

Yeah, well, that too. Superwoman.

Well, she is a woman too, so that works out.

And you can hear her roar often enough. She is good. In fact, Sue is in Denver this week. I think she's meeting up with Mia. To today and tomorrow. They're going to be doing something together. She's at a women's conference, and though the organizer, after she called it a women's conference, was sorry she called it that, but I said, you know, hell, I would have gone if I was invited. I don't care what you call it. But yeah, Sue is there and Mia is there, and I, you know, I think it's all women speaking. But yeah, it's pretty cool. Sue does a great job with Instagram.

She You gotta have a high energy threshold to be in the same room as the two of them.

Oh my God, I know that, that's gonna be a lot of fun. And you know, we are getting a lot of great comments from everyone on your book, and I did want to say something about, you know, you're talking about the book and about why you would have a publisher and, you know, all the money that they take. And you know, they do really earn their money, I think, for the most part. And honestly, you know, I think people It's like anything, going into blogging, you think you're gonna make a fortune, you're gonna be the next big thing, and the money's just gonna be rolling. Same thing with a book. Whether you self-publish or whether a publisher publishes, those days of like those humongous royalty checks, unless you write one of those bestsellers and then another one and another one and get movies sold from it, you're not gonna make a ton of money off of a book.

I think it's message. I think if you— so I talk to a lot of people about this because obviously I've been going through it, and I like to do my homework, and I have some friends, and it's message distribution. That's what you're doing. Like, you know, I asked a mentor of mine who's written a couple books, how do I— the question I asked was, what should I be thinking about to sell more books? That was the question I asked him, and he immediately pushed back on me and said, that's the wrong question. It's not about selling more books. It's about getting your books into more people's hands. And how do you do that? Because he said, if you think that you're going to stop working because you wrote a book, which not that I did, you're never going to— it's never going to work. So I think when you go into it with that mentality, then I don't really care how much money— if a publisher helps to reach more people, and you know, and I'm talking to some right now. More power to them. I don't care. I mean, I have a full-time job. This is about kind of sharing this messaging that I think can help small businesses and just creators in general. So I think if you go into it with that mentality, the money that you make means less than just reaching people and getting the message in front of them.

Yeah, and you're going to gain a lot of things from the book, not necessarily from the sale of the book, book, but a lot of opportunities are going to present themselves. I just read a really good book, and I did not know it had been self-published at first. Guy Kawasaki was on a few weeks ago, and he talked about a book called The Martian. When Guy recommends something, you buy it, so I went and bought it. It was an amazing book, well written. It was like a Robinson Crusoe kind of story, but really well written. And he had self-published it, and now a publisher picked it up and they're making a movie out of it. So, wow, you never know what's gonna happen.

Very, very cool.

Very cool. Alright, well, let's move on over to my buddy Scott. Scott's been with us before, but it's been a long time since you've been on, and I'm glad you can make it today and talk about the Scott treatment a little. So what's new in your life? What you doing?

Oh well, thanks for asking, and I— yes, I Indeed I am, the Scott in the Scott Treatment. I've been around for about 3 years in terms of Hangouts On Air, so I wasn't at the very beginning, but I was close to that. Both you and I, Sheff, and the others in the film strip too, have been seeing an evolution of Hangouts. I think the first year we were just kind of giddy with the idea that we could get on, and then the next year it was experimentation, and now I'm seeing people take things to the next step where their Hangouts On Air evolve and it's repurposed in a way that actually accomplishes something and reaches more people. And more and more they're finding ways of putting Hangouts On Air, repurposing them to be behind a paywall. So I think this is the year that we kind of learn how to do that, and then who knows what's going to be next year. And that's what a little bit, or a lot of what the Scott treatment is all about, is just repurposing Hangouts On Air so that they can have a second life even behind a paywall. That's what I've been doing.

So, you know, we need to talk more about that too, because I've got to really get more involved with that and learn. And you do a lot of amazing things with the Scott treatment, and I've seen some different variations. But if people wanted to come to you, what could they expect from you? What would— what can you do for them? When you talk about repurposing, what can you do to their video?

Well, the first thing is that if you have a live show like this, then it really has an intended audience of the live show. We talked about the weather earlier and so forth, and that's great, but it doesn't necessarily mean that this program would have an evergreen life. It wouldn't necessarily be as relevant 6 months from now as it is now. So one of the things that anyone can actually do, but this is what I specialize in, is just removing any dated material anything that might be a little awkward. Sometimes when people ask a question, the, and then the person answers it, the person has some filler material while they're getting their answer together, and then they, they've got it, so they end the filler material, and then they look in the camera and they give their answer. So I take out all of that filler material, and usually an hour-long Hangout on Air can be 45 minutes, 40 minutes, and it is takes it up to near broadcast quality. So it takes as if a Hangout On Air is a rough draft and then I can edit or anyone can actually just edit it up so that it looks a little bit more professional. And then the other component is that people just love to have single topic golden nuggets. Something that's a minute in length, maybe 2.5 minutes. Someone says something that is outstanding and they want to share it but they don't want to say, oh well, you can go 23 minutes and 10 seconds in and you can look at it. You can just segregate it out, put a nice open and close to it, and share that out, and people seem to appreciate that.

So you could actually take quite a few nuggets out of a show and push them out individually and help get a message out, because a lot of people don't have the attention span to watch a long show.

Sure, people go to YouTube and if they're looking for an answer, they just want to have an answer. So all you have to do is put your your video, your answer in their stream, optimize your 2-minute video, and people will go and look to you for the answer rather than someone else. You bet. And it—

go ahead.

I was going to say, what tool are you using to do this editing?

I started with Sony Vegas, and it's a little bit of an outlier. There are more popular and more common editors, but I find that it does everything I need to. And then Snagit. So between those two pieces of software, I have a lot of manipulation of the images and stills and so forth. I tried to use Camtasia, and I kind of know it, and it is really terrific. You can move frames around on the screen. So those are my three main pieces of software.

Okay, because I mean, I played with Adobe Premiere, I think it is, or something, and I'm not really very technical, and it just, it just made me want to bang my head against the screen.

Yeah, well, that was what Sony Vegas was for me when I first started, and then eventually you bang your head across enough and then you get, you kind of get used to it. There's one technique that viewers might be interested in, and that is to just go ahead and record locally. You don't have to go and use Hangouts. Or use a Hangout for one camera and have your iPad over here. And then you might even— I have one client who will talk to the two cameras and then I can edit it together as if it's a two-camera shoot. And that just gives a differentiation of your video than what everyone else is doing.

Sorry, are you starting two different Hangouts then?

No, one of them is recorded onto the hard drive and then it's uploaded to YouTube and then I can download it however I get the two files. It's like A/B. It's just the same footage, it's just from two different camera angles. And then the person in front of it is making eye contact depending on what they want. And one camera is closer up and then one is a medium shot. It's just a different variation of doing video, and it's not necessarily meant to be live with an audience. It's something that is meant to be recorded and then edited later.

Okay, that makes sense. Alright, so there really is a lot you can do now. If someone comes to you and wants to learn how to do this or wants to hire you to do this, you're available for that, correct?

I— absolutely, absolutely. And I've discovered that to try and do it by the hour is just too hard, so it's always Well, you know, this is what it seems to be and it's also taking into consideration the market. Those who are in Google+ and who are doing Hangouts on Air, that's an entirely different market than it would be someone who is used to normal video productions and so forth. So it's always working with a client to deliver something that is really usable within their budget.

Scott, where can I see an example of what your work looks like?

Oh my, gee, I'll send you the commission afterwards. Everyone, anyone can go to thescotttreatment.com and I've got plenty of examples up there.

Sounds good, thanks.

That's my website. Thanks for asking, Maggie.

Good question. And are you adding music in and other things too?

Oh yes, oh yes, so there's music, there's graphics, There's animation. And another tip is there's a piece of software out there, or service rather, called PowToons. There's a free service and then you can pay for it. But if you don't mind having the little PowToon logo in the corner, people can create really terrific animated open and closes. You don't have to have a master's degree to be able to utilize that service. Service and to have just a little extra for your Hangouts on Air or your videos with, you know, nice graphics and something like PowToonz can give you really makes all the difference in the world, I think.

Very good.

Or I can put something together in that regard as well. But really, you were saying what I was doing and the other half is that I've just found such a nice such a nice home on Google+ and the entire platform and gotten to get to know so many people. It's almost as if it's a treat to be able to kind of make some money over there. But what I really like is being able to sit down and either Hangouts on Air live like this with people. I see Cheryl Deuce is the most recent to— hi— and Ray Hills and others who are commenting. And then the private Hangouts.— just the chats. It is so much easier to talk to someone in a format like than it is to get in the car and drive. I'm just loving the community, the G+ community that we're all creating together.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's just nice to get together and to network and introduce my friends to each other and try and bring them together to work because, you know, it's all about working together, and this is the easiest way to do it. And by introducing more of my friends together, I become even more popular. So that's good for me.

That's right.

I love it.

Adam, are you doing any video work at all?

As in, like, my porn career, or do you mean— what do you mean?

Well, past your porn career, but I mean, there You're teaching writing, but do you do any videos of your teaching or anything like that?

No, not yet. It's something I've thought about, maybe trying to get that out there. I'm still someone who dips my toe into the Google+ pool a little bit. I don't do as much with it as I should. Back when I was blogging daily, I did a lot of video blogging through YouTube, and there's a bunch of embarrassing videos of me doing embarrassing things. But that's the extent of it. At some point, probably. Probably, it would be a good idea.

Very cool. Yeah, and Scott has done a lot with videos. He might be someone to talk to or point you in the right direction. Yeah, that's right. And you know, I did, they did one of me at UCF and they did such an amazing job right there. And oh God, we've got Full Sail and there's just so many places in Orlando that really do video. It just, it blows my mind that this is that big of a technical, technical technological city.

And I've always been disappointed that Full Sail is so technologically advanced and yet at 4BlogCon they didn't record and stream every single session. I feel like every single one of those should have been recorded because they had the potential and capabilities to record those and have them be high quality and excellent videos. So that would have been a nice extra addition to the conference.

Was that not something that they talked about or they just didn't want to offer it?

I wasn't part of that planning committee decision I don't know. I honestly can't even speak on it.

I did speak at ShiftCon in Los Angeles, and they recorded every session, and they made it available for people that couldn't go to the conferences, or even like, you know, if we were in one session and couldn't go to the other session, so you could catch up the ones you missed. So that was a good option.

Yeah, very cool.

We'll talk to Bess about that. Maybe we can work something out. Maggie, we haven't talked to you yet today, just a little bit. How are you doing in sunny San Diego?

I'm good, I'm great. I love knowing that Scott is here because one of the things that I've been doing lately is I've been shooting these 1-2 minute videos, these wine videos of what I'm drinking. I have a lot of videos, I just haven't published them. I've been sending them out onto YouTube and just kind of testing how to do videos. It's exciting to talk to Scott and I can't wait to see your website to see what other ideas you can give me. I like to keep it short and sweet and funny and just ha! So a little combination of all of that. That's lately what I've been doing on top of planning a wedding and moving. I'm moving within days of each other. So I got a lot on my plate. I'm juggling.

I would say so. But as much as you put on your plate, I'm sure that Christopher is always helping you clean the plate off.

Yeah, yeah, he's a good eater. He eats everything I put on his plate, that's for sure. Even when my son doesn't finish it, but it's all good. It's good.

That's great. I just love— Christopher just popped this up, I have to show you. He's searching now for embarrassing videos of Adam.

At least not of me.

I told him that if you just YouTube just Dancing of Ittlebull brings up actually way back, I want to say it was like maybe 10 years ago. I probably weighed about 450, 460 pounds, and I danced to Milkshake on the internet. So yes, that's probably one of the most embarrassing ones.

I am Googling that literally.

There's also a music video. Keshe has a song called Cannibal, and I did a music video where I changed the words to be Avidable. So I would send that out to people so they could pronounce my last name correctly as well. So there's one of those out there too.

That sounds good. So Maggie, the wedding's not far away.

No, not far away at all. It's the 22nd of February, and this really is, to me, the best community, you know. Sorry, Scott, coming back to you because you mentioned how you found your home here. I met Christopher Volgeman on Google+ of all places because here we're chatting and having these Google chats and hahaha. It was fun. It was good. Now we're getting married, which is totally just— I can't believe it's happening in the next couple of weeks. On the 16th, we're having the move. Big move to the other end of the island. Well, not the other end, but more of the middle of the island. So yeah, I mean, it really has been an amazing experience being here on Google+. And most people are like, Google+? What are you talking about? How did you meet Christopher on Google+? It's weird to explain to people, like my friends. It's like, hi, so how did you two meet? And it's like, we met on Google+. It's a story. Uh-oh, did we find the famous video?

It is amazing. It is amazing.

Now you're going to get another 200 hits in the next hour.

It starts to spread.

We'll have to repost that. He'll have a lot of friend requests on Google+, I'm sure.

Oh yeah.

Hopefully not from the bronies. I mean, when I first started, I had all the boys that like My Little Ponies. All of a sudden I had a ton of those following me. So that was a strange one.

I get a lot of— because I do use nudity for humor a lot, I do have a large following among the gay population. I believe I am what they call a bear. And also my phone number is public. I post it publicly, and so I get occasional random texts and direct messages on Twitter and everything you can possibly imagine from a wide variety of fans. That appreciate, I guess, my shamelessness. We appreciate that.

Has anyone received a Twitter direct message that was actually valuable and relevant, like in the last— Maggie, I think you're the only one. I haven't gotten a Twitter direct message that was relevant or valuable. It seems like a useful tool, but like every single one is either selling, trying to sell me something, get me to subscribe to someone's Facebook page, or just like, it doesn't even make sense. It's so sad.

Twitter's changed so much in the last— you're probably right— in the last 8 months maybe. I've shifted, and I have so many people who follow me on Twitter, and it's like, alright, I'm outta here. Sorry, Twitter, peace out, I love you.

You know, it's actually really good for comedy because you can get some nice retweets and favorites. You can actually see if a bit will work, and if you can get a bit down to 140 characters, you can actually do it really well. On stage usually because it's going to be short. But I actually— and I used to be a big opponent of the auto DM, but I have started using an auto DM further because I've gotten so many followers coming in, and all I do is I just tell a joke. That's all I do. And I say that a tweet walked into a bar, saw 200 unsavory people in there, walked out, said, "Wow, way too many characters for me." And that's just— and that's all it says, just a little useless little joke. That honestly it just says, "Thanks for following," and it doesn't ask them to do anything, it just gives them a little laugh, and that's what I do.

See, I'm down with that. That makes sense to me, and it's relevant to the fact that you're following someone who does comedy.

Right.

But like when you get— you follow somebody and you get, "Hey, connect with me on Facebook," it's like, "Eh, I would have connected with you on Facebook if I wanted to connect with you on Facebook, but I connected with you on Twitter, so why are you sending—" Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I just, I love Twitter, but I literally have complete, um, I like the— I, I don't even see direct messages anymore. I literally just don't even look at them. I just mark all as read and move on, and I'm sure that I'm missing stuff, but I just— it's almost— it's a little sad.

Yeah. Now you're, you're talking to Sue, and there's direct messages on Instagram now, and I know she's a proponent of them. What's up with that?

I don't know.

I'm always afraid to get direct messages on Instagram because I never know what the heck they're trying to send me.

Yeah, yeah, I don't— yeah, it's just those are so bizarre. I get some really weird direct messages on Instagram.

Yeah, most of it is trying to get me to visit porn sites, which not that I'm against, but just like the time of day usually doesn't work out for me, so. Right.

That's exactly right. You know, Ryan, you were saying earlier about your book, and I was going to chime in, and then I decided to just— I did it in the comments too. I self-published as well. I did it 2 or 3 years ago, and my biggest issue was doing the COVID and trying to make sure that the formatting fit in all of the 14 million different Kindle versions that there are, whether it's the— like, I don't understand why Amazon can't make one format that will fit all the Kindle versions. You have to tweak every little thing. I reread my book, I want to say like 12 times, trying to make sure that everything's formatted properly.

I will tell you that the people who did the interior design for my book, and this is why if anybody needs the interior done for their book, their names are Onyx and Alexa. They were amazing, and I highly recommend them because they, the when they gave me the final version, it was formatted to adjust to the Fire, to the version 1. They had, you know, they knew how to make one file, however they did it, readjust to whatever the format was, so I didn't have to do what you just said, and it was a huge time saving for me, and they were really great, so I I'm with you, man. It's a lot of work. Not that people shouldn't do it, just don't go in with the rose-colored glasses because it ends up knocking you back a little bit.

So you know you're talking about publishing a book and you know what it reminds me of? It's got the same look and feel as those people who talk about remodeling their kitchen.

Yeah. Yeah, I can definitely see that.

—see that. Yeah, the Property Brothers make it look really easy, right?

Yeah, I have 3 Kindle books, and I wrote the— I think I spoke to you once about this, right? I did it back in the day before I even had my blog. Like, I wrote them, and I wrote them just for me, and then it just dawned on me, I should really just publish these. So I did, and then people said, oh, you have more recipes, you should start a blog. And that's how it started. But I'm talking about way back in the day when we didn't have like Kindles. So looking back on it, I still don't know how they got published. It was hard back then. I can imagine now what the requirements are. And I've written some things that I would like to publish, and the more I think about it, the more I hear stories like yours, it's like, "Eek, no." Well, I think if you just like set yourself to—

this is what I recommend. The only way that this ever got done was because I did the crowdfunding campaign. From the standpoint of like, know that you have an audience. So this is what I tell people, make sure you have an audience. I'm not saying everyone has to crowdfund, but figure out some way to validate your idea and then set yourself to the fact that you're going to have to pay professionals, right? So there are tons of people out here who are very good. Chef, some of them have been on your show. There's a lot of them here on Google+. And they're really great. I think the only way to get it done today with all the different formatting, and this version doesn't work with this, so it's got to be adjusted, is to just pay people. Pay the professionals who help get self-published books done right.

I did it myself. I actually designed the COVID myself. I did everything. It did turn out OK. And I joked about it, but I actually did do it in a week, week from start to finish when I decided I wanted to publish. I did repurpose some content that I already had, and then I created new content. But I just read all the specifications, and I had all the software, and I had forums, and I was able to kind of figure it out. Now, I was freebasing Adderall just to stay awake for the whole week it took to do it. But that's what I did.

So let me put a caveat on everything I've said. If you're going to freebase Adderall, then to just dismiss everything that I've said.

That's right, because it could work so much faster in that case, you know, if that happens.

So Ryan, could you go into a little bit more detail in terms of the raising of the money, the crowdsourcing, what surprises you had, what advice you might have for anyone who might be thinking of doing it?

Yeah, jeez, I'm going to try to make a really long story short. This book I had actually been writing for like 2 years in just that constant, constant, like, "Oh, I'm going to put this out someday," and it got to about 70% done and just never moved any further. I met a good— now good friend of mine, Tom Morkis, who introduced me to a guy by the name of Guy Vincent, who owns Publishizer platform, and I spoke to him. The Publishizer platform is no different than Kickstarter or Indiegogo, really. It is formatted for authors, but it's not like you couldn't do this on any other platform, The point is, um, um, it, it, it, it really helps you focus. What I liked about it was it really helped you dial into what were the selling points of this thing that you wanted to create, because it's a double sale. You're selling people once on why they should commit to you. They have to trust the fact that when they give you your money, that you're actually going to follow through, right? That's not an easy thing. So, um, You know, I think that what I would say is you have to put together a— it's like putting a proposal together or a business plan. You need to really sit down and think about chapters and imagery and messaging and have all that stuff planned out, because if you just launch and say, "Hey, support my thing," and it looks kind of bush league, people are not going to want to give you their trust, because I could have just taken the money and never produced anything, and everyone would have hated me. But I could have just walked away with it and been like, "Oh, sorry, I got busy." At the time, I had my own business. Now I work for another company in a vice president's role, so it's like, "I don't have freaking time to do this." But you can't just do that to people. So I think what I would just say is take the crowdfunding campaign, if you're going to go that way, very, very seriously and put a lot of that upfront work in. The good thing is on the back end, You don't have to do that because a lot of that carries over, but be ready for the crowdfunding campaign or people won't take you seriously. Seriously. Thank you.

And about how long might a typical campaign be? Do you give them 2 weeks, 2 months, 6 months?

So from everybody that I talk to, 30 days is probably the best way to go. You can go as long as 90 in some cases, but there's no urgency there. So if you look, if you think about, um, you think about how your contributions come in. So on launch day you get a huge spike, right? Here's all your early adopters and innovators. You think about the adoption curve, and, uh, and, and then all of a sudden drops all the way down. You're like, oh my god, I'm never gonna get there. And then as you start to get closer to the finish, it pushes people back in. Oh, you know, if you don't contribute, you're not gonna be able to get in at whatever level. And then you start getting more contributions. So 30 days is a good number, gives you enough time to move through the process, but you're not like letting it go on forever.

And then finally, and I hope you don't mind my asking all these questions, Chef, but finally, how much would you say— what range are we talking about? $1,000? We're talking about $20,000? Especially for someone who's never done it before?

So for people who— it depends on what you're trying to produce. I wanted to have hardcover, softcover, audio, and ebook, and I wanted to have it as close to what a publisher would produce as possible. And when I put all the numbers together, $10K was the number that I came up with. I was blessed to have an audience that gave me a little more than that, but that's the number I had. I think you could do it very well for $5K. I think you could have a very, you know, I mean, if you don't have all the skills, like if you're like Adam and you have all these skills and some of these things you can do yourself, so that reduces the cost. When it comes to creating visual creativity, I'm like in the Stone Age. I have no clue, so I needed help with all that stuff.

Sure, well, thanks. Scott, are you going to put a fundraiser for yourself? Is that what you're going to do, a Kickstarter campaign?

Well, I have a friend who's published one book. It's actually 40 years old and has sold several million copies, and she's working on an additional book. So I was really hoping to be able to mine the expertise that's on this panel, quite frankly selfishly, so that I could invite her to watch the show and maybe be inspired to go that route for funding for her subsequent books.

Scott, if you have any more questions too that you want to take offline, I'm happy to answer them for you. Thank you. Happy to reach out.

You're just illustrating the point about how wonderful this platform is.

Thank you. Definitely, everybody wants to help everybody else here, and that's a good thing about Google+ is we're all in there to make sure everyone's successful. That's true. Gotta love it. And we've got a lot of nice comments here too on the show. Here we go. Christopher saying again, Michael Thomas, I put Adam Avidable in my big bear dancing queen circle, or king. And here he also said, I view your book as the best business card in the world. And he's talking to Ryan. Where else do we— here we go. "Freebasing: The Adam Evitable Publishing Way." Here we go, "Freebasing Publishing." That's my next Kindle book. Your next Kindle book, I love it. What a great title. Freebase book. I had no idea you'd publish your book in a week, even with the amount of Red Bull you consume, that's impressive.

Yeah, I've been out with Carolyn, we've consumed quite a bit, and I think drank most of a bottle of vodka and probably a 12-pack of Red Bull. I figure I'm going to go out, my size, my I'm like 40 or 50, I'm going to be dead anyway, so I might as well just enjoy myself now and just, you know, just drink and, you know, party as much as I can. That's the way to be a comedian, you know, because you're not a good comedian if you go out and you just start being lame. So you just have to just do really well and then just die. It's pretty much what has to happen. That's it.

I don't know, you know, I thought that way when I was younger, and then as you start to get closer to 40 and 50, you start thinking, oh well, that's not really that old.

I mean, I just turned 38 a week and a half ago and had a party at my house, and it went till 5 in the morning. I broke my toe. I, you know, like, it was quite a night, and I was like, yeah, maybe I'm getting a little too old for this shit, you know, just maybe. Time for vegan kale shakes.

Yeah, right.

But I also like Ryan's stance on that higher professional. You know, I don't think he was going in that direction. Yeah, never anything wrong with that. Okay, so, well, we've had a wonderful show today. I think we've had a lot of good topics. How you doing, Maggie? You're quiet there now. You're getting ready for your wedding. Is there anything you want us to know about your wedding? Or, you know, I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person. I really tried to work it out.

I know we're gonna miss you, Chef. I know that a lot of people are asking whether we're going to be broadcasting if I'm going to film the wedding or not. I've had a couple of people send me messages now. We don't know yet. That's the answer. Just because of the music. I would love to. Personally, I would just stick up a camera and let's go. But the music that's going to be playing might just be an issue. We'll see what happens. If anything, we'll probably record it, video it that is, and edit it. Take out the music and then publish it. I think that's some— I mean, we haven't— we thought about this, but we haven't really decided how we're going to proceed. So there's the answer.

Maggie, I'd like to give you a little advice too.

I actually perform weddings as well. It's something that I do. I'm an ordained minister, and I always have fun with it. But my best friend, I've known him since I was 10, I married he and his wife in St. Augustine, and they were really nervous about I told them I wasn't going to tell them what the ceremony was. I always write it from scratch before each wedding. I told them I wasn't going to tell them what was in it, you know, but it would be G-rated, not to worry, you know, because she was really nervous. And then I would post on Facebook something like, you know, how many times can you use, you know, what's a euphemism for anal sex? Just asking for my ceremony, just to freak her out, just to give her more gray hairs. But anyway, so we get to the ceremony. I have 4 cameras on, like 4 cameras on me and a lapel mic. It's a huge wedding. And they ask me to hold the vow book for them and hold the rings so when they do their vows they can take the ring out of my hand and put it on each other's hands. And that was— you have to be careful about that because I'm trying to balance everything, see, and she tried to grab her husband's ring and knocked it out of my hand and it fell on the ground. And on video, on microphone, in front of the 200 people there, I just really loudly just said, "Oh, shit!" And just as we watched the ring just roll down the aisle. So I'm just saying be careful about your wedding officiant and what responsibilities you entrust them. List, so just keep that in mind.

I love our wedding officiant, she's awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, and we have all this homework, she gave us homework to do, so we're sitting there answering questions. Oh, good. Yeah, so he had his questions, I had my questions, and now we're answering questions together, and it is, I mean, we're talking about homework, it's a lot of homework. If you've ever been married, you know what I mean, it's a lot of stuff. But I'm excited to have her as our wedding officiant. We have a great DJ. It's coming together slowly but surely. There's still so much to do. Okay, let's not go there because I'm going to start sweating and I'm going to get more wrinkles here. That's not good before the wedding.

No, no, you don't want to sweat. Just do a shot or something, you'll feel better, no problem.

Yeah, sure, lots of tequila around in Mexico-land.

Oh well, that could be interesting and you can always use Christopher as the piñata if you need to.

Oh no, I know what he's going to say but I won't, I won't. We are actually going to have a piñata, we're having a piñata at the wedding. I'm not kidding when I say that. We have to go into Tijuana, not tomorrow, next week sometime. So we're buying the piñata, we're getting married on the beach in Coronado so There are a couple of trees, maybe borrow a palm tree or two and just, you know, let's see what comes out. That'll be interesting. We won't go there. No, no, let's not go there.

Well guys, it has been a great show. So let's talk to everyone else one last time before we go and see if you have any calls to action. Adam, are you performing anywhere or anything you'd like you'd like us to know about or that you're doing?

No, you know, actually I just, I'm pretty active on Twitter and my website, www.avitable.com. I post a lot of posts on there that aren't just humor. They're sometimes very, you know, talk about depression and things like that too. So if you're ever looking for good reading, I'd say check it out. It might be good. My book's for sale on there as well. So www.avitable.com, which the way I spell it, A-V-I-T-A-B-L-E, you can see it out there. I tell people it's really easy. It's anal virginity intact and then table dot com is how you spell it. So that's how I do it when I make restaurant reservations. And that my table isn't always there when I get there, unfortunately.

I really like that. My wife's last name, maiden name, is Ross, and she always tells people it's as in Sam, Sam, and I keep telling her she needs to say it's Son of Sam, but she won't do it. I said that would make much more of an impression, but I like that. Very good. And Ryan, anything, any calls to action you'd like to leave us with? Chef Dennis Littley, before we go.

I mean, if every person who listens to this wants to buy my book, I would be forever indebted. But Chef, it's just always fun. I encourage everyone to go to, what is it, analvirginityintacttable.com and check out Adam's work because that just sounds so much more fun than anything that I do. And I just wanted to say anal virginity intact. Right, right. Very good. Very good.

I love it. Anyway, Chef Dennis, I'm sorry, by the way, that I've taken the entire level of this entire Hangout just down to my level. I didn't move up to anyone's level, I brought it down. I apologize for that.

Oh, no apology necessary. I'm loving it. If you've seen any of my shows, every now and then it does take a turn for the worse, but that's what it is. I don't mind.

I plead the fifth. Or drink the fifth, one of the two.

Scott, any calls to action, anything you'd like you have to share with us?

Well, a couple of things. First of all, what Ryan and Adam said. So if I do it that way, I don't— also, I'm an evangelist in terms of Google Hangouts and the Google+ platform, and I just want to encourage everyone to enjoy it and to reach out to your friends in real life, and one at a time, see if you can somehow introduce them to the platform and and bring them over to the light side.

There you go. I love it. The light side. And Maggie, any last words? Not any last words, you're going to be here for a while.

I know. I do have the wedding Hangout, the pre-wedding Hangout happening on Tuesday of next week, 11 my time or is it 10 my time? I don't know. But it's on my G+ page. But it's a pre-wedding Hangout. We're going to be talking— Christopher and I are going to be talking about our epic love story and all of that. So just check out my G+ page. Also my YouTube channel, Maggie Unz. Unz, unz, unz.

Is there going to be a pre-honeymoon Hangout?

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, the pre-honeymoon Hangout. That's a pre-wedding one. You're talking about after we get married and we say I do or I don't? Just kidding, no. Say I do. Don't worry, honey, don't worry.

He wouldn't have married you if you said you don't, so that's okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see, maybe before we go on, we'll talk, we'll see.

Alright, sounds good. Alright guys, well thank you so much for coming on today and for being with us for Good Day Google+. It's always a pleasure talking to my friends friends and introducing my friends to each other. So stay tuned, see us next week. We'll be doing Maggie's Hangout on Tuesday. I'll be doing a Valentine's Hangout with Aslan Bloor on Monday, and then we have my show coming up around the kitchen table on Wednesday. So it's a busy weekend. Tomorrow I will be at SeaWorld for the Polar Plunge, and people are asking me, how can that be possible in Orlando? Well, they actually chill the water there and I will not be going in, I will just be filming it. Have a great day on Google+ and I will see you soon.