142: Creative Economy Lessons from “The Great Race to Rule Streaming TV”

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What'S Next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

This is an experimental episode based on a really fascinating article that I recently read in the New York Times Magazine. That article is called the Great Race to Rule Streaming tv. It's written by Jonah Weiner and the subtitle is in their rush to match Netflix, competitors like hbo, Hulu and Amazon are ordering a slew of content, ushering out the age of prestige TV and ushering in an age of anything goes. This article is so juicy, so jam packed with insights into where TV is heading that I believe strongly parallels and possibly even forecasts what we're going to see in publishing, podcasting, and even product creation. Given the quote mutation of television's DNA, I'm going to go through piece by piece to extrapolate what we can learn about where the creative economy is heading, how to stand out, and even how to pivot your own creative projects. If it goes well and you like these topics and you're interested in this article as much as I am, I can even invite Jonah to a follow up interview for the Pivot podcast, which would be a lot of fun. I've long held a theory that the shows we binge watch inform our career choices and even creating our ideal businesses. So I'm curious, what do you binge watch, if anything? And what might it say about qualities that you value in your career, in your business, in your creative projects? This episode that we're going to break down together spans such a huge and interesting engrossing swath of topics that we're going to unpack together. Everything from prestige content versus quick bites, this notion of hyperabundance and an atmosphere of plentitude, infinite possibilities, and the unpredictability that comes with that. Celebrating the fringe Great ish content and the golden age of quote, good enough quiet time meetings. You'll learn more about that licensing versus original content hoarding and what's going to be the great reclamation of content and perceived barriers to entry. These are just a few of the topics that this article gets into, so I can't wait. And I even created a free worksheet for you to work through some of these concepts and apply apply them to what you're working on. So you can grab that@pivotmethod.com streaming to set the stage. One of the big events that kicks off the whole conversation that the reporter Jonah describes in the article is at and t recently completing its $85 billion purchase of time Warner, whose holdings include Warner Brothers and hbo. John Stanke was chosen to head up the resulting umbrella company, WarnerMedia. Now I'm reading you this from Jonas, so full credit where it's due. So John Stanke is now leading this umbrella company, WarnerMedia. What does that mean for everybody who is part of some of the smaller companies that we don't think of HBO as a small company or even Time Warner, but here we see this big consolidation happening. The article kicks off at a town hall meeting with 150 HBO employees. Sanke says to the group, it's going to be a tough year. He talked about how the, quote, tightly curated cluster of shows released seasonally and in weekly batches no longer amounted to a tenable strategy. He quote, says, it's not hours a week and it's not hours a month. We need hours a day. You are competing with devices that sit in people's hands, that capture their attention every 15 minutes. Now this is Jenny Piping in. I'm sure you can imagine that this was a bit disconcerting to HBO employees to hear they have been part of an organization that focuses on niche content. Super high quality, going back to Sopranos and Sex and the City and the Wire, some of these shows that really started to change the game for TV and also push the boundaries of what was possible on television. By being a private subscription channel, HBO was able to take more risks than the networks. But now we see someone coming in saying, hey, that's not going to cut it anymore. We're competing with people's phones and things, capturing their attention every 15 minutes. Well, that's a huge philosophical shift. And the head of HBO ended up stepping down not long after this. Jonah says in the article, quote, for media companies like AT&T, the real value of HBO style prestige programming is not that it produces, works of art as profound as the Sopranos, but that it offers a viable market alternative to all the gaming, videos, makeup, tutorials and alt right primers that millions of people spend millions of minutes watching on their phones every day. Randall Stephenson, AT&T's chief executive, has expressed his desire for 20 minute edits of game of Thrones, a length more optimal for mobile viewing. Let me pause here and say 20 minute edits of game of Thrones. Come on. So already here we see a couple themes emerging. One, quote, the relentless pursuit and monetization of our attention. That's really the foundation of this article, at least one of the pillars of the article. And we see number two, a concept called prestige prestige TV contrasted with what Stevenson, AT&T's chief exec has expressed, which is a desire for 20 minute edits of Game of Thrones. So concept three, I'm going to number them for you just so we can stay on track together, is about Quick Bites. Even Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, quote, is building a new streaming service named Quibi for Quick Bites, devoted to lavishly financed big name programming that will be delivered in phone friendly 10 minute chunks. Now, I can't help but think that our phones kind of have us by the balls, pardon my French, but really they have become an extension of our brains. It's like we all have a third hand and that hand is our phone, if not a second brain. It's weird. And now we're starting to shift, or we're seeing these executives start to shift the notion of content away from prestige programming toward, again, quote, the relentless pursuit and monetization of our attention. It just kind of stings to hear that, to see it written out loud. And maybe you like phone friendly 10 minute chunks. And I'm not opposed to it. I love Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. I write about that in Pivot as I introduce the chapter on piloting small experiments to test what's working. I think Jerry Seinfeld made a brilliant Pivot from his days doing Seinfeld, a show about nothing, to his three passions, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, which is yet another show about nothing. What works about that is that he's so passionate about all three. And I love the quick bits notion of Comedians in Cars. And maybe you do too, if you've seen it now it's been acquired by Netflix. So there's more proof in point that Jerry Seinfeld's pilot to produce this on his own and get sponsors later led to a deal with Netflix. So now he's part of this ecosystem that we're talking about here in this episode. That said, we've all seen what's happened with major movies and movie theaters. In fact, many of us are probably going much less than we used to. Why? Because movies increasingly started becoming made for the lowest common denominator. You really weren't seeing Game of Thrones quality content in the theater. You just see these mega blockbusters, these multi million dollar movies, if not billion dollar movies with pizzazz and bang and explosions. And I find it kind of tiring. It's so tiring, in fact, that every time I go with Michael to one of those movies, I fall asleep. And I hate to say it, don't get mad at me if you're an Avengers fan. Even the recent Avengers movie A Little Ways In, I just sort of rolled up my jacket on the side of my movie seat and purposefully went to sleep. So I don't know what it is, but something about that type of content just doesn't grab me. And then you have these indie films that are never going to make it to the big major motion picture theaters. Yes, they'll get released to indie theaters, but because they're not going to be a mega blockbuster, they don't make it. And thank goodness that we have had YouTube, we have had Netflix, we have had Vimeo, and places where people could release their more thoughtful, more low key, slower paced, more heady content to some of these other channels. Which is why I think it's a little bit of a shame that now some of these channels are saying, okay, well great, Game of Thrones was awesome while it lasted, but now we need 20 minute edits of game of Thrones. I mean, really, what is that again? I'm not opposed to having 20 minute edits from that higher quality show, but I think it'd be a huge miss if we stopped aiming to produce epic content like the Game of Thrones originals. Now, of course, we're all if we're in the business of content production, then it's really helpful to repurpose existing content. Maybe if I do an hour podcast on this subject, riffing off of Jonah's article, then it can become an interview with him where we can pull out, as I mentioned to you, pulling out some of these thought starters into their own worksheet. I'm all about repurposing content, but we've all also had the experience where you watch the trailer for something and it just kills your desire to ever see that show or the movie because the quick bite content steamrolls or replaces the Bigger, more exciting chunk of it. Okay, you're gonna hear paper wrestling on this episode. I just can't help it because old school style. In fact, here's a little behind the podcast. And by the way, at the end, I know we're gonna cover a lot of ground together. So at the end I'm gonna really pull out some questions for you to consider so you can glean them as we go. But I'll make it more explicit at the end. I subscribed to the New York Times paper edition like inky, make your hands dirty four days a week, Thursday through Sunday. And I ripped out the magazine article, couldn't help myself, but started clipping quote after quote after quote into Evernote. And then I ended up printing that condensed version of the article, marking it up with all these concepts and what I wanted to address with you in this episode. And I just thought there's so much good stuff here, I can't even mention it in an offhand manner. And hopefully Jonah won't mind that I just totally break it down point by point. Now I have this printed out handout that I old school style I'm reading from. So that's a really long way of saying you're going to hear paper wrestling as we go. Let's move on to concept number five. Quote from Jonah. In the golden age of what's now called linear television, when viewing patterns were more predictable and DVRS notwithstanding, more controllable, people had to watch what they wanted to watch when networks wanted them to watch it. But the advent of digital platforms, streaming video on demand, SVODs in trade lingo, has broken the 24 hour day into infinite possibilities. Let's pause there. Infinite possibilities. This is so crucial. We are now looking at non linear content production. This is something you've already seen happening. Look at what happened in television. Linear television. You had to be home at a certain time or we all knew when we could. When I was in college, we would all gather on Sunday night. We would cram 20 of us into a room and watch Sex and the City together. It was so fun and so memorable because that was the night that it was getting released. Even Game of Thrones, when Michael and I moved the way, we didn't do a typical housewarming party. We would just invite friends over to watch Game of Thrones with us for each episode of the season, at least when we were both in town. But now, streaming video on demand SVODs have broken the 24 hour day into infinite possibilities. This is something that I can't help but look at the parallels to Pivot where when we have so many possibilities even in the gig economy in our freelance businesses, if you work at a job and you have a side hustle, this infinite possibility is exciting. We all you can practically run your business from a mobile phone now, which is really mind blowing. But it's also overwhelming. It can also create a lot of uncertainty. Going to quote Jonah again, the success of a given streaming show isn't determined by how many people watch it, but by how many subscriptions it helps generate or maintain. The programming goal of an SVOD then, is an overall atmosphere of plentitude. This is concept number seven, an atmosphere of plentitude, and let's call it eight, which is a shift into subscription based businesses. This is really crucial and if you are running your own business or your own side hustle and you are not thinking of it in terms of subscriptions, I really encourage you to do so. There's a great book I read called Subscribed, a couple others that I would say as Secondary Retention Point, Membership Economy, Automatic Customer. All of these are describing the trend and we feel it. How many of you are subscribing to Evermore Apps Products programming channels now than ever before? Yes, there was a movement, I'd say in the early aughts. I didn't know what the word ought meant for so long. I still don't know how we got ought to mean the 2000s, but in the early aughts we know that so much was free, there was a freemium economy and now more and more companies are saying okay, enough subscribe. Even on demand networks like Netflix and Hulu, you see them raising their prices. So there is this shift to subscriptions. What does that mean for business? It means that rather than any one show being the game changer, it's an overall atmosphere of plentitude that these networks are looking to create. Now I have my thoughts on that. As a content producer myself, I don't personally go for just an atmosphere of plentitude. I actually find that quite overwhelming. And I much prefer quality over quantity. Which explains my six month absence when I felt that I couldn't deliver to you the utmost highest quality content and excitement, I wanted to take a pause so that I could recalibrate and make sure that every single time I was flipped on the record button and got on the mic, I was super passionate about that content. But that's not the case. We know some podcasts that produce five minute episodes five times a week and it gets you coming back and back this is a place for you to check in and think. 1 Is there something you can transition in your business or side hustle toward a subscription? Now what's so brilliant about subscription based billing? And many, many years ago that concept changed my business. It saved my I was billing for one on one coaching on a project basis, so for three or six month increments and I never knew what revenue was hitting when. I could never predict if and how I would pay the rent. So when I switched to retainer based billing for one on one coaching where I would invoice clients on the first of every month and we'd have two sessions a month at a same recurring day and time, I became sane. This saved my business. I did it very early on and I didn't even think to call it subscription at that time, but it's essentially what it is even for a service based product like one on one Coaching. Momentum. Same thing. This is my private community for side hustlers and solopreneurs. I launched it in earnest in 2014 and really it got more and more momentum itself in 2015. A little over four years old now, and that for me was another thing born out of necessity. I did not like the pressure to always create and launch new products and write all the sales copy and the email invitations and I found it very tiring. Whereas with momentum I'm only ever working to improve one thing and make that community the best possible community that I can. So you're going to see this more and more where businesses shift to a subscription model. What's good about it is that the emphasis is on you, the subscriber, the listener. You're subscribed to this podcast, albeit for free. But if you want to support the show, there's Pivot Insider that allows you to support the show. Get a Q and A call with me once a month. By the way, that's@pivotmethod.com, insider. But it really puts the emphasis on keeping subscribers happy and engaged. That's such a good thing. It allows businesses to be profitable, predictable, sustainable. That's a really good thing. What I have a question about is this atmosphere of plentitude mindset that's getting promoted among a lot of these major networks. Here's a quote from the article. As one producer put it to me To Jonah the mission at a streaming service like Netflix is quote to basically create channel surfing within Netflix Netflix to entice us into a walled garden where the plantings are so copious we never think of leaving. I just Loved how that was written to entice us into a walled garden where the plantings are so copious we never think of leaving. Can you just picture it? It's like they have you. They're grabbing you by the tentacles, pulling you in. It's the whole notion of apps these days and the way they're designed, like slot machines, to get our dopamine going. But how many of you have had that experience of browsing with kind of boredom? We're going to get to that later in the article. Let's return to this concept of uncertainty. So concept 9 unpredictability and celebrating Offbeat Content so Jonah writes. By contrast, the animating force behind today's best streaming TV is a horizon expanding sense of unpredictability. Whether it's the slippery narratives of offbeat magical realist series like Netflix's Russian Doll or the impressionistic shaggy dog plots of High Maintenance, which began as a web series before moving to hbo, I'm proud to say I like when I find things early. I watched High Maintenance when it was on Vimeo. I even paid $5 to subscribe to High Maintenance on Vimeo. And then I was so excited for them when I saw that HBO picked up the show and then gave it a couple more seasons. It's a really great show. This is exactly like the Jerry Seinfeld example. If you create your own content, release it to a free distribution service. Vimeo isn't free. I have a paid account. It gets you more storage. You can create your own audience. And this is the same with self publishing in the book world. If you want to write a book, if you want to be an author, no matter how you publish it, you got to write the book. So there's nothing wrong with writing it, self publishing it, building a small and mighty audience, and then letting serendipity come in and pick it up. So unpredictability also expands our horizons. That's really the key point in this section of the article. Let's move on now to concept 10, hyperabundance. Jonah writes, quote, if you were to argue that this hyperabundance is on balance, more of a good thing than bad, you could point to an underlying economic truth of streaming era tv. It puts less pressure on an idiosyncratic or otherwise quote, challenging series because of viewership numbers needed to justify a show's existence are lower than ever. Concept 11 voice to historically excluded people. So he writes, quote, yet another upside to programmers boundless appetites has been the opening of television's gates to historically excluded Voices. This includes young showrunners of color like Donald Glover Atlanta, Rami Yousef Rami love that show. And Issa Rae of Insecure. And he also cites Lindy west, the comedian and fat acceptance activist whose writing inspired the Hulu series. Shril A couple things happening here. So we talked about hyperabundance giving voice to historically marginalized or excluded. And look at the powerful cross pollination of something like a book, Lindy West's book Shrill that gets turned into a Hulu series. I was enjoying the Hulu series I read articles about in the press and then I bought the book. So I had this cool experience as a consumer of reading the book while watching the TV adaptation while maybe listening to Lindy west get interviewed on a podcast. Think about that. Think about how you can cross pollinate your own content and create hyperabundance. Not through just slamming part of my friend to get shitty content out, but actually by leveraging what you're already doing and seeing how you can put it into different formats. And I think one of the best parts about this hyperabundance is exactly this piece of the article which is opening television's gates. The gatekeepers are going away. And now you know. This is the book the Long Tail by Chris Anderson was was saying that sites like Amazon, although were of course very sad if they create lead bookstores to go out of business. But it does give voice to the Long tail where you can search for any niche topic or book and actually get it. Whereas if you walked into a Barnes and Noble, maybe you're only looking at the mainstream. It's the equivalent of that mainstream movie theater experience. Now we get to the fundamental mutation in television's DNA. This is concept 12. So let me read you a quote from the article. Jonah writes. That sense of creative freedom has enabled a fundamental mutation in television's DNA. TV has long been a medium defined by familiarity, comforting narrative rhythms, stabilizing themes, repeatable formulas in trusty 22 minute cycles. Family tensions and romantic spats flared up only to resolve themselves in time for the end credits. Crimes were committed, solved and punished. News anchors and late night hosts, the suited and paternal, shepherded us through the day's events from behind sturdy desks. Their permatand morning show equivalents garlanded our breakfast hours with pleasant mundanities. Isn't he just such a great writer? I love his descriptions. There is a fundamental mutation in television's DNA happening. And it is happening right before our very eyes. Yes, TV pun. We've got to see this because it is going to affect how we consume content. We've already seen this with YouTube. We've already seen how younger generations younger than me, I consider myself squarely in the millennial category. I was born in 1983 October Libra for any inquiring minds. But we've already seen how younger generations don't even watch tv. They're not even necessarily on the streaming services. They're purely on YouTube. That's their go to when they want watch content. Now we get into concept 13greatish quote as rival megaliths face off in the streaming wars, it's imperative for platforms that when we dig through their digital heaps, we find something great, or at least great ish often enough that we don't go digging elsewhere. This is where recommendation algorithms come in. When I read this, we look for something great or at least great ish. I felt dejected because I know that feeling of wanting to watch something. And Michael and I will go turn on Netflix and we settle. We just flip, flip, flip, watch a bunch of trailers, flip, flip, flip. We start watching one okay show, then we cut it off, then we go watch another okay show, then we cut it off and we watch another okay show and the experience is kind of of empty. So I'm really not a fan of this great ish concept, but that's what's happening. There's there, there's this effort of piling on their quote digital heaps often enough so we don't go digging elsewhere. Takes us to Concept 14, which I mentioned at the end. Data and Customization maybe you don't even know the extent to which these platforms and recommendation algorithms are customizing things. Listen to this.

Unlike an old school broadcaster, a digital platform generates oceans of second to second data about viewing habits, signups, and subscription loss. Platforms use this data to group customers into different segments organized around viewing preferences and if all is working as it should, to recommend shows that match those preferences. Data affects deceptively simple decisions like which still image will represent a given title in a scrolling menu. If you streamed a bunch of romantic comedies on Netflix, the image algorithmically deployed to tempt you into watching Groundhog Day might be one of Andie MacDowell building a snowman with Bill Murray. If your history is heavy on absurdist comedies, you might see a portrait of Chris Elliott wearing a beanie instead. If the algorithm decides correctly, this benefits Netflix's relationship not only with customers, but also with a creative community, helping to ensure that a show finds a substantial and enthusiastic audience. I bet you had no idea that the Thumbnail is changing for you. I didn't know that. I knew they were testing out different thumbnails because I would see shows and they would have a different thumbnail every time. But who knew that they're being customized to you based on what you have watched? That's crazy. It's so fascinating to me. Concept 15 the Long Tail again. We're back here with these algorithms helping Netflix connect. And of course, it is good for the creative community, helping to ensure that each of its shows finds its right audience. Okay, now we get into concept 16, quiet time meetings. I really liked this. So he interviewed Beatrice Springborn, Hulu's vice president of content development, and Beatrice said that at Hulu, she has instituted recurring quiet time meetings for the Originals team. Quote, just us sitting there zoning out, saying, what do you wish was on tv? I just saw this Eric Romer movie I loved. Is there a version of that? That's a TV show, end quote. Without such introspection. She said, it's a content farm. How cool is this? So I love this notion of quiet time meetings, and I'm wondering if you have implemented them for your projects or with your team, if you have one. What if you just sat around? What is it like to sit around and actually not stuff our faces with content, but have quiet time? And particular. I love this question. What do you wish was on tv? That could be said for any medium that you are considering creating content for? What do you wish there was a podcast about? What do you wish there was one episode of a podcast about? I think that even trying to think about something as big as writing a book or starting a podcast, or even launching a product, launching a business, sometimes it's overwhelming because I can speak for myself. It's like no matter how much I try to make it more specific, it feels very vast. And that then there's so much competition. The whole point of a book called Blue Ocean Strategy is about going where the ocean is blue. It's kind of a grisly metaphor. But there's not as much competition. There's not sharks chomping everything to pieces and having red ocean, red water, where it's like there's already so much competition and poor little fishies being killed. Well, maybe. No, because for the food chain, we want the sharks to be happy too. In any case, what if you literally just thought at the level of one article, one podcast episode, then I bet you could come up with something very specific. I happen to be what they would call a, quote, super podcast listener. Not because I'm so super. But because I listen, I actually subscribe to more than 30 shows. I don't even know how many are in my queue right now. But I love listening to podcasts and I listen to different genres or types at different times of the day. But sometimes there's nothing I feel like listening to. Just like when you go to Netflix or Hulu or HBO and you think, huh, there's nothing here I want to see. Or you go to YouTube and have that feeling, how's that possible? There's billions of hours of content. How could there possibly be something missing? But for you, at this moment in time, with what you need, there might be something missing and that's a great opportunity to dive in. And that's what these quiet time meetings are so good for. Zoning out and just asking yourself, what do you wish was fill in the blank on tv, on a podcast, in an episode. Now let's get into concept 170 sum quote this is Jonah writes Success in the streaming game isn't zero sum, but it might be close. According to a February report by the research firm Ampere Analysis, after years of growth, the SVOD market is showing signs of reaching saturation. You can get an anecdotal sense of the ceiling for this market by asking yourself, how many different companies am I willing to pay $6 to $15 a month for TV before I max out? I got rid of my TV, got rid of cable in 2010, so it was a little early to this movement and I was so fed up with the cable bill and with commercials on TV that I just thought I am not even going to miss this. But now, as more and more people have done that, we're actually racking up the charges again. I pay for Netflix, I pay for Hulu, I pay for hbo. I pay for certain authors communities that I like to get private. What would be the equivalent of podcast episodes. I myself run a momentum community, the Pivot Insider community. All these opportunities to subscribe and we're getting that on all sides. So the flip side of this shift to the subscription economy with users at the center. Users. I don't like that word, but let's say I don't know community members at the center of any given product. Yes, it's good because the focus is on you and keeping you happy. But at the same time, how many of us are feeling pinched by how many flipping things we subscribe to? That said, I am not a fan of subscribing. See what I did there to the notion of zero sum? Anything in life and this notion of ceiling saturation, it's so discouraging. What's the point? There's always room for new voices. And if you tell yourself a story that this world is zero sum, anything in business, in life is zero sum, forget about it, you're game over. Before you even start, you're going to be discouraged. You're going to feel that you're too late. You're going to assume the market is saturated and not even try. And you're not going to find your niche, fringe, long tail, people who like you for you and exactly what you do and how you do it. Imagine if we all. What if we all took from this, oh, it's zero sum, it's saturation. There's a ceiling. Why bother? That would mean that many of you listening, if you want to start your own podcast, you just wouldn't do it. You'd say, well, there are already so many podcasts, there's no room for me. I have that feeling. I started in 2014 with a pivot podcast, and there are times, as I said in my episode 123, where I was just back from a long pause, where sometimes I question, what am I doing here? You know? Or I'll find so many similar podcasts or even business owners or. Or products. When I launched Momentum, within a few months, I saw four or five other people simultaneously launching programs called Momentum. And honestly, I didn't get that discouraged. I thought it was kind of funny that we had all must have tapped into something in the Zeitgeist. When I wrote Life After College, there were several other books with the title When Pivot was coming out, there was another one launching within the same year called Pivot. It happens. This is normal now. This is more and more what's out there. And I much prefer leading with a notion of abundance, with possibility, and with saying, well, why can't it be me? Or why can't it be you? I think back to my days at UCLA. I joined a class called Comms 10. It was an Introduction to Communications class and there was always 400 people in it every semester. And people told me it is impossible to get an A in this class. Only 10 people will get an A. And me being the driver that I am, I don't know, especially at that time, but I really do like school. I just thought, nobody tells me you're not going to tell me what I am or am not going to get in this class. It was even. It became less about the A itself and more about even at that time. At that Younger age. I just did not want somebody to put some kind of shackle on me or limitation, saying, well, don't even bother. And so I worked my ass off for that class. I disproportionately doubled down on that class alone and flashcards, and I just sought to get one of those A's. I was not going to be told, oh, you're just, just not going to get there. And of course, by the end of the semester in that class, I did get an A. So back to the zero sum. I don't buy it. I don't believe it. This is why you heard me say, when I introduced momentum, earn twice as much in half the time with ease and joy. That is not about a get rich quick scheme. It is about saying, I believe it's possible. And I do. I believe, what if you could earn twice as much in half the time with ease and joy? If we don't even ask that question, we won't even try. So I always check myself when I'm reading articles like this or see things in the media or see things in the business world that talk about competition and zero sum saturation ceiling. Any of this type of language and I just throw it out the window. I just think, well, not for me. It's not like I have some crazy, unshakable confidence either. The reason I have to throw out that language so immediately is because I don't. Is because if I even let it in one iota, I'm gonna get discouraged. I know myself. I'm not the type of person. I used to have friends in college where I would look at them and I would think, this person genuinely believes they are a princess, like they believe they are God's gift to the planet. And I remember being awestruck by that level of confidence and moving through the world and something I never really had. Every bit of confidence I have has been cultivated and I've had to change so many thoughts through Byron, Katie's work and turnarounds and meditation and mindfulness. It has not been an easy, straightforward journey for me. So the reason I'm so quick to throw out all those words is not because I just believe, oh, yeah, I'm the best. It's not about being the best. It's about I don't want these little cracks getting in the way. Getting in the way of me pursuing my creative expression or yours. All right. Concept 18 pleasing the masses Jonah writes at Netflix. The strategy from the beginning has been to try to please as many people as it can. As Cindy Holland Netflix's vice president of original content put it to me, quote, we want to entertain the world.

Treating that as a concrete objective rather than a bit of grandiose sloganeering, she explained required forethought and infrastructure. What an interesting concept, right? We want to entertain the world and trying to please as many people as it can. That just flies in the face of what you hear, at least in the small business world of pick a niche. We even talked about the long tail, we talked about fringe content. What's so interesting about Netflix and this strategy of trying to please the world. And notice that interesting language there. I find that fascinating that they actually do and no one show, look at the difference. No one show can please the world. But Netflix as a network is certainly trying to do that. And that's very interesting. I don't know how that relates. I want you to think about that one. If it, if it's possible in your business ecosystem. I'm not sure, I'm not sure that I, with this podcast, could please the world and do a very good job at it, or even my business. I certainly find it more helpful to be much more specific. Specific about who I'm trying to reach. But the way that they are doing that takes us to Concept 19 scale and delegate with a long term view. Cindy Holland, Netflix's VP, she says that they have a 10 to 30 show slate of scripted originals. She says, we knew our long term appetites would be bigger. So very quickly I thought from an organizational standpoint, how do I accomplish the goals not of one network but but of six networks? So my team is essentially the equivalent of six or so networks on the scripted side. Each has their own focus in terms of content they're searching for. And I've delegated authority, so the power to greenlight extends down. The only way she is making this happen is treating them as six networks, not one. And let me read that last line again. I've delegated authority, so the power to greenlight extends down. That's so crucial. And all of us, content producers, creators, business owners, delegation is so crucial and something I continue to learn and grow and struggle with, and learn and grow and struggle with again. And as I elevate and sort of spiral upward in terms of my capability to delegate. Side note, there's a great book I just binge read called Clockwork on teaching your business to run itself. And a big part of it is how to get better at delegating that sometimes, even if you hire a team team, if you're still the bottleneck they use the analogy of an octopus with eight arms. There's one brain and eight arms. Although actually octopus have greater intelligence, more distributed intelligence. But anyway, that's not really delegating because everyone's still coming to you with questions and everybody is still waiting on you to tell them what to work on next. So the book Clockwork is all about systems that allow the business to run without you, which it's a really interesting challenge and I think they break it down in a very effective way. They also have a great podcast called Run Like Clockwork if you want to take a listen. Here's a great line as it relates Quote as for Netflix's brand new game show Awake, in which sleep deprived contestants are made to compete in challenges both eccentric and everyday for a chance at a $1 million prize, it's hard to say where such a concept would fit Fit in Japanese reality tv hell. Thought that was funny. It's like you can't get it all right. Concept 20 Silicon Valley mindset which happens to be I was born and raised in San Francisco and then Silicon Valley from seventh grade on, so I find discussions of the Silicon Valley mindset very interesting. Even when I go home to visit my mom, there's like self driving cars all over the neighborhood. It's an odd and interesting place. Jonah writes. It bears noting that Netflix, the most consequential contemporary force in Hollywood, was born 335 miles north of Hollywood in Silicon Valley, a place driven by venture capitalists who seeking gargantuan investment returns prize scale above all else. Netflix tends to play down the threat posed by its streaming rivals. Alan Yang, he's former Parks and Rec writer and creator of a new show called Forever, says that when he first started working with Netflix, the feeling was, quote we don't see ourselves becoming the next hbo, we see ourselves becoming the entirety of cable that takes us into 21 sacrificing quality. So I I am not big on this Silicon Valley scale at all costs and always take venture capital. I can't stand it. Honestly, it's not my thing and I forgot to read you but from earlier in the article, this is Concept four of competing with Sleep. Sleep. Netflix boss Reed Hastings put it in 2017, making a half joke about bleary eyed binge watching that was no less dystopian for its tongue in cheek delivery. Quote we actually compete with sleep and we're winning. That's the mindset. We compete with sleep and we're winning. Ugh. Sleep is so important. This is another Silicon Valley mindset I'll sleep when I'm dead. Go, go, go. Hustle, hustle, hustle. I. I can't stand it. So this whole notion of scale above all else and becoming the entirety of cable in this global behemoth, and we see these tech companies now, these, like, mega monopolies, you know, I wouldn't be so mad about the monopoly status if people weren't also offshoring their tax revenue. I think at least. At the very least, if you're going to create these megalith companies and monopolies, then sending your taxes offshore so they don't get fed back into the economy is just complete and utterly utter BS.

At the same time. I'm guilty. I would be. What? Anand Girardist? I'm sure. I'm bungling his last name. He writes in a book, winners take all. I'm as guilty. I work with a lot of these big companies as my clients, so there's that. I'm just owning up to my. I can vent about it, but it's not like I'm eschewing all of their business either. So how did I get on that rant? Oh, yeah. Yes. Gargantuan size, investment returns, and scale above all else. I just. That's, in my opinion, not gonna work. If you're a small business owner, if you're going for sustainability, if you're going for. Even if you're going for scale and systems, I just don't think that any of us are served by going for content and output above all else. Jonah writes, it, quote, it's fair to wonder how far any TV maker can spread itself before its output suffers. Suffers. And then he describes the dispiriting new phenomenon reminiscent of old ones, like entering a blockbuster in 1994 and navigating aisle after aisle of VHS tapes, half of which seem to be Jurassic park, and straining to find one you actually want to rent. This is how I felt back in the blogging days. And I think social media creates this feeling as well, which is that we spread ourselves so thin and output suffers that we can only be on so many places. LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, podcasting, blogging, writing articles for other publications, writing your own newsletter. At the same time, somehow trying to create deeper, more original public thinking. It's just so hard. This is why I reject this notion of scale and just a massive content database that I personally feel the way to be sustainable is to really focus on quality. Now, that's in contrast to what Jonah describes in the article as moving away from the golden age of television. Toward good enough concept 22 he writes 20 years later, it's harder to picture that kind of concentration of talent in a single project, as with the Sopranos, because the proliferation of shows has splintered and scattered those writers, actors and scouts leading the medium from its early aughts, quote golden age to what some critics have called the era of quote, good enough tv. He writes, the move into streaming can put premium cable programmers in an especially awkward position. The attributes of their networks that people most cherish craftsmanship, discernment, consistency seem directly at odds with the growing mandate to pump out hours concept 23 back to the benefits of staying small. He contrasts with this new HBO vision and direction after its acquisition with Showtime. Jonah writes, unlike hbo, Showtime was not recently purchased by a telecom company with a stated interest in bulking up. The message to the press from Showtime is that bigger isn't necessarily better as long as the network makes money and remains adaptable. Very pivoty phrase in there, he writes. On the subject of industry consolidation, Levine said, we've never been arrogant about hoarding our programming. We're happy to get it to people through Comcast or charter or AT&T or Amazon or whoever. We don't mind being the add on. Boom. I love that. So now we finally have a network saying we don't mind being the add on. That they're not just trying to bulk up at any cost. That Showtime does not believe bigger is better and they are open to remaining adaptable. So good. I also love in contrast to the scarcity mindset, he says, we've never been arrogant about hoarding our programming. I love it. I have to say I haven't loved Showtime. I do love the show Billions that's on Showtime, but I've never been a huge fan. I don't find that many things to watch. I don't know how the rest of their content strategy is where working, but Billions is awesome and I like that they're not about hoarding and they're they're happy to be an add on. That's that's how I feel too. There's room enough for all of us. And let this be encouragement to add your creative voice to the pile. Because so what if you're an add on. We don't all need to be the next YouTube or Netflix.

Now. Concept24 Licensing versus original content this describes a very interesting shift happening in the business, which you've all probably already started to notice. Notice. Jonah writes, Before I left the bar at Mama Shelter, nick Weidenfeld put TV's current upheavals into historical context. For me, everyone starts off licensing other people's catalogs or libraries because the margins are best, he said. At a certain point, you've built a brand on other people's content and you say, we don't own this. We can't merchandise it, we can't license it, we don't have any revenue streams against it. But we do have X number of viewers coming to our network. Why aren't we making our own stock? Jonah writes, the parallels to Netflix were obvious. Start out licensing, then create programming you own outright. But Netflix's exorbitant push into originals speaks to a contemporary dynamic. Those platforms that control the largest content libraries are regarded as having the best shots at streaming more success, he writes. This is long game thinking, with studios betting that what they sacrifice in licensing revenue will be justified down the line by the market edge they create for their strength. Streamers, they're letting agreements expire as they're building streaming content of their own. And there's this quote, why let others thrive off your titles when you can use them to lure customers your way instead? So we see there's going to be, well, there's not even fights, but WarnerMedia is pulling friends. And what's the other? Oh, the Office. So Netflix paid $30 million for friends and then at the end of 2018, they agreed to pay Warner almost $100 million for one more year of non exclusive rights. And then Office is going away. So we see some of our favorite shows, you go to Netflix and you're like, why isn't this there anymore? Well, that's what's going on if we think about it. On the flip side, as a content producer, licensing is very powerful. Being the one to develop VIP is very powerful. I see so much copycat stuff online and no one, I think the vast majority aren't doing it on purpose, but so many are just sort of writing other people's content. I just, I see it a lot. And you know what, maybe I've done it inadvertently where I read something and I learned something and I integrate it and then I put a twist on it, making my own. In a way, we're all doing that. But there's such a difference between originals, people producing really their own ip, taking the time, that quiet time to step back and reflect versus those who are just rehashing. I just recently unsubscribed from a podcast because I heard an episode, it was a solo show that this person did that exactly mirrored a solo show that I had recently listened to from another, bigger podcast, more well known from years ago, and I thought, that's so shitty. Like, do you think no one's going to notice? Well, probably no one did notice, but I did unsubscribe immediately because I don't trust it anymore. I don't trust it if it's an exact mirror copy of something that I had just heard from farther, longer ago on a older and bigger show. In any case, licensing is such a strong and powerful way to distribute your content and your ip. This is something I've been doing with Pivot, actually, and really grateful to have developed a method like the Pivot Method that I now teach within companies. And given that I can't just fly around the globe all the time delivering workshops, I'm really happy to be working with some big companies where they're licensing Pivot now and they have their own trainers. And actually anyone in the company can pick up Pivot, pick up the materials, the deck, the facilitator guide and deliver it. And it makes me so happy because it means the message is getting out when it's needed in the moment. It gives people the opportunity to practice facilitating something and I don't have to be there. So licensing can be a really, really powerful income stream and part of your business, but it does develop that. It does require developing that unique IP and really pausing to think. Not just, you know, when I was thinking about writing Pivot, I had a coaching framework that I'd been using for almost 10 years, but it was six or seven phases and I sat down, I thought, no one's going to remember if I give it, if I deliver it in seven stages, people will just not remember as is. You probably don't exactly remember all four stages of the Pivot Method pop quiz, but at least four is easier than seven or eight. Eight. So part of developing IP and making it licensable is distilling things down, simplifying complexity. How'd you do on the pop quiz? If you want to know the four stages, Plant, scan, pilot, launch. You can think like a basketball player. Plant what's working? What does success look like a year from now? Scan for related people skills and projects. Pilot all about running experiments to help you test the three E's. Do you enjoy it? Can you become an expert at it? Is there room to expand? And then only when you've done Plant, Scan, pilot, launch over and over, then you're ready. Plant, sorry, Plant, scan, pilot. Then you can be ready to launch. Or a little L launch is just saying, given my reflecting on plant scan and pilot. What's one next step? What can I try? That's really what the pivot method boils down to. What's working? What does success look like a year from now? What's out there? What can I try? That's it. The whole thing. What can I try? And hopefully you can boil this entire podcast down. If you're still here, if you're still with me. Down to what can you try? Given everything we're discussing quick concept number 25 don't forget to Go International Jonah writes In the ongoing scramble for hours, international shows have emerged as another significant frontier I myself am guilty of binging Love Island UK edition. I friggin love that show. I don't know why there's been articles about it in the New York Times, though I'm clearly not alone. But it's international and I love it. I love learning British slang. I love seeing people in a different environment. I love the psychology of what's going on here. This takes us back to what can you learn from the shows that you binge? But don't forget that we're in a global creation economy now. Yes, there could be a real power to staying local and staying niched down to just your your region or where you are. But there's also so much power in remembering that we can listen to anyone and watch videos from anyone anywhere. So don't limit yourself to just who's in your geographical area. Geographic. I don't think geographical is grammatically correct. That's what happens when you're this far into a solo show. All right, concept 26 and we're we're on the home stretch. Don't worry. Cost of Entry and Barriers to Entry Jonah writes, When it comes to building a viable streaming service, the cost of entry has become prohibitively high and is rising. Apple is spending a reported $2 billion to create original shows and movies, and the consultant that he was interviewing said he was looking to start a streaming platform and when he went to get funding, he said, quote, I was looking at financing and they told me straight up you need X amount of hours per month to make Y amount of subscriptions. It's a math equity equation. Let me continue to read. Nick Weidenfeld, the consultant he was interviewing, said right now it was a very fun moment to develop and sell TV shows because a variety of well funded competitors were adopting messy, fecund, throw mud at the wall programming tactics. But he feared that this moment was about to grind to a halt. The exorbitant cost involved in amassing hours of programming, he explained, combined with parent company consolidation, were already ushering in a period that he called, quote, the great reclamat of content. Everyone's going to pull back what they own. That's concept 27, this reclaiming, like friends in the office pulling back what they own and hoarding it. We're back to hoarding. And he said the coming landscape sounded grim. Quote, once it consolidates and settles like anything else, certain production methodologies and creative methodologies will be put in place and they'll become sacrosanct. And that's all there's going to be for of them all a while. This is the crux of the innovator's dilemma, by the way. That's the title of a book. And it's that once these companies get to a certain size and we start seeing this monopoly of streaming services, they're going to have their way of doing things and things are going to become cookie cutter again. But what does that mean? Well, that's where the doorway comes for new, fresh creative ideas and approaches. That's where you come in. Let me redo the concluding chunk that I pulled from this article and then we'll read. Wrap it up. The Nightmare version of this would be a TV replication of the Hollywood blockbuster model. It's possible that Disney, whose holdings include espn, Pixar, the Star wars franchise and a vast chunk of the Marvel universe, will program its streaming service much the same way it programs its theatrical slate, organized around a loud parade of Jedi titles and interconnected superhero movies. In the movie business, the supremacy of blockbusters has come at the expense of a once robust calendar of smaller bore mid budget titles. It would be paradoxical, though hardly inconceivable, if tv, a much heralded refuge for exactly that kind of storytelling, fell victim to a similar fate. End quote.

It occurred to me that I hope I didn't step on Jonah's toes by reading out so much of this article. Maybe you, maybe you'll call me a hypocrite for saying you should have original content and then just riffing off of his article, but really, I think it'd be interesting to get him on the show if, if you found this content at all interesting. I know I don't usually do this and I'm not actually often addressing articles that are exactly in the news like this and super timely, but look how much was in here. So if we just summarize. So actually I do want to hear from you if you have a follow up question or you want me to get Joan on the show. Leave me a voice note pivotmethod.com ask you could leave your voice note in the form of a question question for Jonah and if I get him on then we can talk about it together. So where does this all leave us again? Don't forget you can get a worksheet that will have thought starters that goes with all of this. I know we covered so much ground, so many different points. I think almost 30 in total. Grab that@pivotmethod.com streaming as we wrap up some questions for you to think Think about Are you filling time with your content? Are you just cramming in to create hyperabundance and a glut of material? Or are you actually creating transformation? Sometimes I'll join somebody's membership, site or product and they have a course library that's so jam packed. I made this mistake myself with Momentum before. I recently revamped it where it's so jam packed. There's so much content, it's over overwhelming and so nothing happens at all. So I I prefer full length the Game of Thrones. Why? Because it takes me into that environment. It transforms me. That evening becomes an immersion into an entire experience. So with your content and your creative projects, are you merely filling time and space or are you creating transformation? Less is more, less can be more. It can create more sustainability, more sanity and more transformation. Transformation.

Quantity over quality doesn't necessarily work as a long term strategy. I personally feel that an emphasis on quantity alone leaves listeners, readers, community members feeling empty and unsatisfied. So think about that and maybe you want to have a blend in your own pivot portfolio of creative projects of quality and price. Are you prestige programming or are you a quote snack like we heard at the beginning of the article? Or are you both? Maybe you have some flagship content and filler content? I think a mix is good. It keeps it interesting.

Are you aiming for great or great ish? I also think now on the flip side, that we could do with less shine and more impact. So for example, when I was creating some of the new content and momentum, I debated should I hire a video production team and should I put a lot of snazz and pop and polish into a whole set of videos? But the second I had that idea I thought but videos become out of date so quickly. They're kind of onerous. You feel that you have to sit in front of a device and actually watch them. Which is ironic because this whole article was about and podcast episode was about streaming video on demand But I prefer as a learner, actually text based or even audio that I can listen like a podcast while I'm commuting or cooking or walking. I don't want to sit in front of the computer or my phone and watch videos in order to get the content that I need. I really respect a guy, he created a course called Autoresponder Madness. I'll put it in the show notes pivotmethod.com streaming Andre Chaperone and he just said straight up, he's like, I have a voice for text, like not even audio or video. He's a really great writer and he believes that there's a lot of bloat that gets into videos because people think that's what they need to do to have this high production value. But then the videos become very bloated and that maybe you could say and create transformation. Improve people with very short text based lessons that actually create the transformation.

Some traps that we heard in this article to just notice if you're falling into them. Perfectionism, scarcity, competition, barriers to entry. Do not let these stop you. I am a big fan of being open to and even asking for non linear breakthroughs, serendipity, even thinking if nobody read or listened to my content, what might happen a year from now. This happened to me with my first book, Life After College. I put so much effort into the launch, I burned myself out. I crashed and burned. I couldn't move. I was launching a global coaching program at Google at the exact same time, then going on sabbatical, then trying to launch my own business. I was totally out of commission at a certain point. And so the launch was okay. It was okay, you know, wasn't that, but it was, wasn't like a super bestseller. And then a year later, out of nowhere, having nothing to do with me, Target purchased 15,000 copies of the book, which led me to earn out my advance. Couldn't plan for it, couldn't see it coming. And that can always happen. So imagine. Michael and I even talked about this in the Live from the Vulnerability Hangover episode that we did together about his new project, his Instagram account, Ifeofalevanese artist that it can be tempting in the early days to want to look at your stats and see how many likes you're getting and how many viewers. And the thing is, we don't control these platforms like Instagram and Facebook. So just going back to the whole notion of platforms and creating your own content, it's not necessarily hoarding, but how are you letting people reach you let's say creating an email newsletter. I have pivot list pivotmethod.com pivot list if you want to get my weekly ish curate a couple content but how can you reach people and then how can you trust that even if nobody is there, a what would still be worth it about creating that project and b what could happen in a nonlinear breakthrough sort of a way? What might serendipity create if you keep putting yourself out there even a year from now? So don't judge the success of something on short term day to day metrics from a platform and distribution that you don't even control. That is pure crazy crazy. Making another wrap up point scale is certainly not the end all be all. But systems are helpful no matter what. Again, the book I'm really loving is Clockwork. Do develop systems for content creation, batching content, hiring teams to help you get it out. Once you have a piece of content like this podcast, chopping it into different pieces, I could do a much better job of that than I actually do, which is a signal that I have room for some new systems. But I'm getting there. It's always a work in progress. Know the media landscape we just talked about what's going on in the TV world. This mutating DNA that Jonah talked about in the article. Where can you fit? Do you know? Do you have a sense for what you uniquely can excel at? And you might only get there by piloting, by trying things out, by running little experiments. I am a big believer that your joy matters. What you find joyful, what lights you up, what has you leaping out of bed goes there. Follow that energy and trust and ask the question how you can also create abundance for yourself around that. Look at your own habits and preferences. So whether you're binge watching tv, are you somebody that's primarily on Netflix, on Hulu, on hbo, on the main net, cable networks? Are you off of all of that altogether? What are your habits and preferences and how could that inform what you build? So I read nonfiction books in the morning, usually business books. Then I listen to business podcasts while commuting. Right now I'm on a thread, but at night I'll listen to a spiritual more spiritual podcast before bed. I can't have business ideas in my mind. I read a lot of books on hardcover, some on Kindle. Look at your own habits and how you like to get your content, and that is very informative of what and how you can be creating in your own projects. Do do not attach to shoulds single time you catch yourself shoulding about your creative projects, just notice it and drop it. I recently gave a coaching client the homework around building his own platform of make a list. As you go through the next week and you think about building your platform of can't wait and can't stands, what's the stuff you can't wait to do and create? And what is the can't stand that actually stops you from the whole thing? So if tracking metrics is a can't stand stand, or doing Facebook or Instagram ads is a can't stand, don't do it. And if creating the actual content for me, this podcast episode is a can't wait, do that. And then later you can build the systems and support that might help you get the word out. But don't let it stop you from creating in the first place. And last but not least, embrace the fringe. Embrace your weirdness, embrace what makes you unique, and build with international in mind be Because I really do believe that there can be an audience for all of us. There's no such thing as saturation point. Just the same way that are we all are we gonna make another friend in our lifetime? Yes. You don't say. I've reached saturation. Actually, sometimes I do get to the point where I'm like, I'm not even keeping up with the friends that are like my family that I hold near and dear. So maybe at that time I don't go on too many new coffees. But I can guarantee that in the long term, I'm gonna make make new friends. I'm going to attract new people and vice versa, of shared interests and where we're heading and energy and frequency. The same is true for content creation. And believe me, I have to remind myself as much as you that just the same way there's always room to make new resonant friends. There's always room to find your community and create something that someone out there is going to love. And if they don't, you'll keep adjusting. You'll keep learning and you'll keep pivoting. If you made it this far, you win a prize. Thank you for listening and I will see or hear or talk to you next time. Bye everybody.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss the an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.