224: Riffing on Rogan, Education, and Superskills with Dr. MJC (Part 1)

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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 episode is brought to you by my Heart of Podcasting Live Masterclass coming up on June 25th in this live edition of the week long Heart of Podcasting, Quick Start or Sprint. To help you get your podcast started or optimize the one that you have, I am going to cover the priceless benefits of podcasting even if you don't monetize it right away. Tips for agile podcasting, how to launch a show and episodes quickly. I'll talk more about my shift from weekly to daily publishing. You can hear more about that in episode 223 of the podcast. I'll give you simple tips and templates for audio editing, post processing and publishing and then we'll open it up for Q and A and even some screen sharing walkthroughs of anything you would like to know or see in terms of the Pivot Podcast production process. I may even give you my favorite top five to seven GarageBand shortcuts that make audio editing so much easier even if you are self taught like me. If you want to join us for this, registration is now live@pivotmethod.com heart and I am throwing in an early bird bonus if you enroll by June 1. You will also get lifetime access to the week long version of this course that has a $297 value. So head on over to pivotmethod.com heart and join me for this live masterclass coming up on June 25th. Can't wait to see you there. Now on to Today's show, part two of my most recent conversation with Dr. MJC as part of our Pivoting Around a Pandemic series.

Hello my friends. Welcome back. I am just delighted to have the one, the only Dr. Michael J. Consuelos back for the first time since April 30, aka a year ago. He was last on the show in episode 203 on reopening. What's next? When and how will you leave the house? He is the principal at MJC Solutions, a veteran owned small business that provides professional consulting and advisory services to organizations in healthcare and beyond. He's held several leadership roles in emergency preparedness and pandemic response since 1997. With was in the army for many years. He worked as a pediatrician in the field. He is just someone I admire so much and those of you who are avid Pivot podcast listeners, you know that he has been a voice of calm, reason and interesting bon mots during this pandemic. Michael welcome back to the show.

Jenny, thank you for having me again. And bon mots. I love that word. That's one of my favorites.

Kind of reminds me of a bon bonus.

Yes, absolutely. I can't believe it's been three weeks to the day. I think it's been a lot been going on on the reopening front. But you know what's on my mind?

Tell me. Joe Rogan I know, right? It has nothing to do with the pandemic and yet you and I just can't wait to debrief.

I know. It's like, oh, holy guacamole, wow, is that a deal? And it's I don't know, I just can't wait to talk about it. One great thing is it has nothing to do with the pandemic and Covid at the same time. Maybe there is some little strings there that are creating some havoc in the world that is allowing this to happen. But I want your take first because I can't wait to hear your side of the crystal ball retrospective on this one.

Retrospect. O gram cool. First of all, when you said it has nothing to do with the pandemic, the following thought was and it has everything to do with the pandemic. I don't know how or why, but it feels like this great talent shakeup that you've been talking about as well. Everything is up for grabs. Everything we assumed was just going to go on as normal may not be. And so in a way, he's making this move and Spotify is making this move right in the midst of this crazy global snow globe. Shakeup is the metaphor that I keep using. So I'm almost not surprised that now is when people are making these massive moves. For listeners who aren't totally geeking out on this. Yeah, yeah. If you've been not living in podcast land or newsland, Joe Rogan has arguably the most popular podcast. He started it 11 years ago. He's reported to get about 190 million downloads a month. Of course, the Joe Rogan Experience is available anywhere podcasts are available, podcast feeds, podcast apps. He also releases video editions of the podcast to YouTube. Now let's maybe listener, you're like, Jenny, you're the one living under a rock. I know this. And each video gets a million views on average. That's the ones that go viral might get 4 or 5 million views. The big news is that for a reported $100 million contract, although I've heard as high as $200 million, Rogan is going to be exclusive to Spotify by the end of the year. So even if you try to access it on your regular podcast app or on YouTube by the end of the year, that will not be possible. Crazy.

Wowza.

Mind blown.

Yes. I think it has a lot to do with the pandemic and the shakeup in just streaming in live media and the monetization, I guess land that we could maybe kind of talk about a little bit. But yeah, so wowza. Prior to having a job that required me to drive about an hour and 15 hour and 20 minutes each way, which started back in 2014, 2015, I was a sort of occasional podcast listener. But being stuck in a car for long periods of time and then traveling the state of Pennsylvania for my health policy work, Jenny, I became an avid podcast consumer and yes, Joe Rogan aficionado. So what's interesting about him is that and thank you for sharing this article from the Atlantic from a while back because it made a lot of sense to me. It was the he is sort of a curator of a lot of different formats or I guess maybe type of styles within the podcasting world. And I was so drawn to him when he interviewed. Sort of more intellectual, I guess, your thought leadership folks. I was just glued to the virtual phone. Just glued to. And it totally had my attention. My drive went swimmingly fast. I occasionally heard some of his other types of podcasts with some of his comedian friends which were interesting once in a while to me. And there were some other kind of fight things which I'm not a big MMA person, but I would consume him pretty religiously if he had a thought leader. And the way he interviewed folks to me was magical. I just felt like I was in the room eavesdropping and listening to these Great minds question each other, talk about things. It was very, very addicting. So that's my kind of your ode to Joe. Yes. Yeah. So of course when I saw this cross, and obviously I've been doing a lot less driving since I've been working from home and I still consume some of the content, but I see the magic in the power in his personality and I could go on and on and continue to gush over this, but. But I thought it was very interesting when he made this move because he's clearly not for want of money. He's got plenty of gigs. Right. He's got all this other stuff that's going on. And it's just interesting that that's the move that was made.

I was talking to another friend about this. What's your number? If somebody gave you 5 million to go exclusive on their platform, would you do it? 10 million, 50 million? You know, I think for a lot of us it'd be far less than Joe's 200 million. And yet at the same time, even though a lot of his YouTube fans are quite upset over this, understandably so they probably think, I've been with you since the beginning. How dare you go away from our beloved platform and community here. And yet Joe Rogan has made his name being controversial and being a pioneer. You, you spoke to some of the aspects of his talent that have allowed him to be a pioneer in the field, which are his presence, his platform, of course, the size is now huge. His just context that he creates with the guests. And I think I'm not even this sort of like long time devoted Joe Rogan listener. I listen to episodes every now and then, but I'm often. I find it remarkable at his vulnerability and intelligence of being willing to just have such casual unfolding often or sometimes controversial conversations for one to four hours at a time. Just put it all out there.

It is, I wouldn't say exhausting. That's not the right word. But you feel almost like, wow, that was a lot to take in during some of his conversations. And I think you and I have had some really interesting conversations over the period, over the. Kind of just doing some reflection here and the amount of energy that I kind of put out there and try to receive and all that kind of stuff is kind of, it's there. Right. And I always feel pretty high afterwards. I'm just trying to think of what kind of natural or in case Joe Rogan, he makes no two ways about it. Some unnatural highness. He gets it sometimes, right. So I mean, it must be A very interesting experience to be. I always think, like, what would it be like to be a guest on his show? Look at.

Also if we zoom out at the macro perspective in terms of even career pivots and the talent pool. I just heard the other day that Burberry is going to launch proprietary internal to company podcasting software. How interesting is that? That companies could release private proprietary podcasts within the organization. Almost like what the intranet is, corporate intranet platforms to the Internet. And that got me thinking, got me curious about going in and hosting. So pivoting away from in person, keynote speaking or even virtual keynotes, what about this interviewing format? I think there's something very compelling and in the moment about it. It's that total presence, seeing where something goes, it's less planned. And I think now during this pandemic, people are gravitating toward that because nobody has the answers. It is interesting to listen to, whether it's someone like Joe or Tim Ferriss or Renee Brown or pick a podcast that you listen to the Daily. I don't know. And it's interesting to hear people think out loud, if you will. Which, by the way, you and I are not exempt. We're doing that exact same thing.

Yeah, exactly.

Part of the reason that there's three weeks for listeners. We'll take you into the behind the scenes a little bit. Part of the reason we waited three weeks is that podcast landscape for content around the pandemic just got so noisy. So Michael and I kept pushing a little bit of how can we really. What can we uniquely address during this time? And that was much easier to do in mid March when we kicked off this season series with episode 159 compared to now. So they talk about. There's a book called Blue Ocean Strategy. It's kind of gory because Blue ocean is far beyond competition. And red ocean is where there's so many sharks and fish and competition that there's a lot of blood in the water. So maybe I'm gonna find a kinder metaphor for this. But it's just interesting seeing how pandemic conversation started out as this smaller trickle, little less out there, and then now it's way into the red ocean. So. But of course, it's also to switch metaphors, the elephant in the room. So it's hard not to address it in some way, but it's just we gotta work harder. And I think that's true with all kinds of platform building.

So as you and I were communicating offline, you know, you were talking about how the bar maybe has been raised higher. And my response is, well, maybe it hasn't been raised higher for new content or interesting content, but maybe the bar is just getting crowded. And that was a little bit of a pun on my side. Cause it's not just the jumping over the bar, but actually the bar that we go to and have conversation that's getting really crowded and packed. And in that kind of environment, sometimes it's hard to hear your own voice. It's hard to, I don't know, have conversations and those kind of things. So sort of like, what's the less crowded bar or what's the new bar was where I was going. And, you know, maybe it's not quite the red ocean metaphor, but I totally get that. And it is that that choice of what do you do in the pivot perspective is when the bot. When the. When the podcasting landscape is filled with everyone's version of COVID And actually before today, I just started just trolling around different companies, and they're all doing the same thing. It's Covid this, Covid that. Lots of podcasting, a lot of communications. And it's interesting to me that if people had said that about writing books 100 years ago, what would happen? Oh, there's too many good books. Look, so and so just wrote this great book about this whale that. Blah, blah, thinking about oceans. Right. Well, there's never going to be another good book. Or all the books have been tied up. Right. And the ideas that. And the trends within books in that genre or that channel of exchange of information is still seeing a bright future. No one's saying, well, we don't want any more good or interesting books. So again, on this podcast thing, is that the red. The red ocean, I guess, is that. It's. What are the new trends? What gets you out of that red ocean mindset? Maybe. Maybe it's just a mindset because blue ocean is a mindset.

Fascinating.

Yeah. Because you talk about mindsets all the time. So I'm just reflecting here.

That's true.

It's the mindset of seeing the red ocean and not seeing something else.

I guess it's both. Because if you have your antenna up. I use too many metaphors. My dad even told me this when he was editing Pivot. He's like, you'll use two aphorisms in the same sentence or switch. So now I've gone from an ocean to an elephant to having antenna while being in a crowded bar. It's important. I mean, part of standing out in any Crowded bar is being different in some way. When you were talking about the bar and the bar being too crowded, I couldn't help but think of Vegas, where they'll launch a trendy new restaurant or trendy new hotel. And it's the hot place with a line out the door, right? But baked into it is this half life where by the very nature of it being the new hot new thing, it means that in a year or two or three, it's no longer going to be the hot new thing. There'll be another one down the street and the hordes will flock down to that new bar, that new hotel, unless it has some really interesting differentiating factor that keeps you coming back. I like what you said about thinking of Blue Ocean as a perspective. And what you said about books speaks to that mindset of there is blue ocean. I've often talked about podcasting as making friends. You don't max out on friends. Well, some of us might, you know, but you really don't max out on friends. Although I will say this, I have seen so many new podcasts start during this pandemic and I see all the equipment is sold out on Amazon because I was trying to upgrade a few pieces of my equipment. It's wild. So there are a lot of people diving into this ocean or entering this crowded bar. And it's getting even more crowded. And I'm noticing a lot of even more high profile people stepping into the fold. I don't know, people can only listen so many hours a day, especially with no commute.

So my reframe on that is the restaurants and bars, as you mentioned, we're going to just metaphor ourselves right off the cliff here. There's another one right there.

This is hilarious. We drank the metaphor water today. We did.

Exactly. The topic of this, the title of this podcast, folks, will be Drowning in Metaphors. Exactly. In the Red ocean metaphors is that the ones that are successful, those restaurants we can think about, those named bars or restaurants, hotspots that are across the world that people still gravitate towards because not just because they're trendy, because the quality of the experience and the food still exists and they're continuing a lot of times. Innovate and keep up with the times. On some level, those will continue within the, I think, this genre of podcasting and just because it's getting crowded and there's some people who will fall out, right? They'll experiment. They're still going to be, I think, a more rich experience for us to choose from. Right? So think about blogging when it first started, or some other technology based tv. Tv, like how many? You used to be like three channels, right? So there used to be three channels, three major channels and PBS basically when I was growing up, right. And now there's. I don't know, I can't even count the number. There's new channels that I came. And there's. I think there's a channel where you can turn up, by the way, because of dog lovers. I think there's a channel you can turn on and it entertains your dog, right? They have like dog stuff that they keep some entertained during the day or something. And no one's saying stop making more content for tv, right? So they're still continuing to generate and getting better and interesting and moving with the times. And it's the mindset, I guess, of that even though we're in this genre, we're in this whatever platform, the bar is crowded. If you build the right bar and if you have your audience that is loyal and faithful, just like Joe Rogan has going back to him. So it's just not the Joe Rogan. The JRE stands for Joe Rogan experience. I'm going to call this the Joe Rogan effect. Right. So what has he done over.

I like it.

Yeah.

Joe Rogan, E squared.

There we go. E squared, Right. So he used to have this in his, like, I guess there was a couch in his living room. He was doing this with like almost no tech and invited his comedian buddies and he grew it and grew it and grew it. But his format is this ubiquity of interests. And you know, he, he gets to the MMA fans have loyal, loyal area. He has the people, like I said, my kind of neck of the woods that are interesting in intellectuals and thought leadership interviews. And then there's the comedians and everything in between. And he's able to capture all that and he has that JRE squared effect. And in the pandemic piece, going back to what does it affect the pandemic is I think if I was one of the Netflix executives, I'm seeing what's happening. I'm sorry, Netflix, I mean, Spotify, right? If. If I was seeing what was happening in the other areas of content where you want to solidify.

The share of wallet, right? But also in this case, the share of heart of your audience. You want to make sure you secure both those things. And I think Joe Rogan brings share of wallet and share of hearts to the table.

What's interesting is you accidentally said Netflix, but you had made the point in our brainstorming for what we could talk about that it could have easily been Netflix that poaches somebody like Joe Rogan and says, okay, we want to bring this podcast. It reminds me when Brene Brown had her a talk that was released onto Netflix and it was the first time they just showed an hour of what would have been standup. But here it is, it's a thought leader, author, researcher and getting a Netflix special. And that was a shift. And they don't seem to have gone the route of podcasts yet. But it could have been.

It could have been. Yeah. No. So yeah, so offline I was going, boy, I wonder if Netflix or somebody else. There was a bidding war. The market has to set a price and I'm wondering how they set that price, whoever the agent or managers for Joe Rogan are and what were the comparables? So we'll start to a business class here. So what are your comparables? And if they had to compare this to other artists in the related media, I would imagine and other deals they could basically think of. So what does in hbo, what does Bill Maher or John Oliver get for their weekly shows? There's comparable sort of in that comedic interview kind of whatever, newsy, sort of up to date style. And there had to be some comparables that they applied some value to Joe Rogan's name, his audience, and some of it may be offensive so that they're trying to grow their market and someone may be defensive trying to protect their market. So what keeps Spotify listeners to continue to subscribe to the whatever it is per month? And this is another thing. That's another just quiver.

In their armatarium to get this done.

Armatarium, Armamentarium. Why don't I know that word? No, probably not. I've never heard it.

So the different weapons that you have, wow.

I love when I learn new words on the podcast guest like transmogrify.

Transmogrify. That's still one of my favorites.

I know. I'll never forget what transmogrify means now.

I actually used an email a couple weeks ago and people said what nice to magically to change with magic, right? So I was like, oh yeah, we're going to transmogrify this whatever. They went, wtf? Consuelos.

That's awesome. We're all transmogrifying during this pandemic. You brought something up about uniqueness, standing out and standing out in a crowded market. And it made me think of schools, companies and talent. I was just interviewing Henna and Mom for the podcast. I don't know if it will come out before or after this one. Of course I'll link it in the show Notes. She's working on a book called Wired for Disruption and in it she says career ladders will be replaced by skill marketplaces. We know career ladders are out. I wrote about that in Pivot. The word career is practically irrelevant at this point. I don't think anybody could give a ladder, let alone one step in the ladder for the next two years. I just don't think that's possible. You're lucky if you're on a stair of the ladder. That's already a very lucky thing. But this notion of a skill marketplace is fascinating to me because with students taking classes from home with talent opening up to a global connected marketplace because of remote work, with companies no longer able to offer as much in person differentiation, I think the talent pool, I think it's going to get a little tricky. I think it's going to get trickier for companies to retain talent because they're going to have to offer a different set or different frame of benefits, maybe of salary. You know, at this point during a recession or depression, people are going to want safety as well as a big value. I think that individuals are going to have to upskill in a major way because they're going to need to stand out in a global marketplace. And I think schools have a lot of big tough questions in front of them because it's one thing for a college student to zoom in from home though I don't know why you pay 60 grand a year for that. It's quite another for a four year old. My, my sister in law is saying that, you know, my niece is four and a half. Like she can't stand to be on Zoom all day. It's just not going to work.

No, I mean four year olds. So. So again I'm a general pediatrician as you mentioned at the beginning of this and I can't imagine what seem like to try to teach a kindergartner or pre K in a zoom environment and they think about the social inequities that also can occur in this same thought process. Right. So for families who may have the ability to engage with their younger child in a zoom version of pre K first, whatever the lower grades and those families who can't, who don't have the tech or don't have the time that both parents are trying to do whatever, I think one of my concerns is that it'll divide, it'll increase the divide in some of the social inequities we already have in education and is in and I don't know how we're going to solve that, but that's something we need to figure out.

That's where I think the most innovation is needed. Just to give another example, my so there's the one older niece and I won't say their names just because it's not my place. There is the younger niece who's maybe two and a half by now and we were going to do a family zoom and I think they asked, do you want to join? She said no. You know, it's just a very simple. When you're that age, it's just no, no, I don't want to. You're not going to sit in front and learn. Although, oh my gosh, credit to my sister in law. She's been having the family guest in and do lectures. My mom took, I think I mentioned this before, took them on a tour of Tanzania because we went on a safari. So I think certain creative outlets will open up and surely kids, people of all ages will be learning more creatively. It just does seem like even there are so many people I've spoken to recently who are seriously rethinking the nature of their work.

There's estimates that 20 to 25% of students will not return to universities and colleges this coming year. That's the biggest number I've heard so far. I've heard 8, 10, 15%. But now people are saying 20 to 25%. So when you talk about talent early in that ladder piece, I'm kind of circling back to that piece. What happens to that ladder or that traditional thought process to the author of what happens after college, after life after college, when that gets delayed by a year or maybe even longer. And those kids are some of are kids like my daughter who's saying I don't like what I just experienced over the past couple of months to finish my spring semester of University of Michigan. I really want to have something more interactive. I want to be able to learn. I don't think I got much out of it and I don't think it's worth my time, effort and dollars to do this. So that's that part of that 25%. Then there's those who financially, their families have been hit financially. Even if they can get student loans and those kind of things, it doesn't make sense to them at this point in time. And then there's another group which is sort of the adult learners who they're not kids whose families have financial problems, but they themselves may be a single mom, a single dad supporting their family and they also trying to put themselves through college and now they don't have a job. And so now that gets delayed. Right. So you add all those numbers up and now there's these huge estimates and also the universities, you know, so that the high end, higher ranked universities will probably do fine but. But a bunch of other ones are just going to get crushed. I was on a call just the other night with some friends from college in Princeton and one of the folks is a professor at a large university, a law professor, and he's, he's in their state. They don't have a sales tax. I'm sorry, they don't have an income tax. So they only have a sales tax to support higher learning. So with no sales going on, what's going to happen there? I'm sorry, I'm going a little sideways here, but it's interesting, the talent piece and the adaption. Adaptation. Doing.

I'm not sure that's the word. Yes, it's like adoption with a Boston accent.

Yeah, exactly.

Adaption.

Adaption. How are we going to be adapting to that? You know, internships, research, all these other downstream things.

I can't help but think that this will spark even more entrepreneurialism and creativity and out of the box solutions from even our youngest and those who are adults going back to school. But I cannot help but think about if somebody like your daughter rightfully does not want to go back to school and take on student debt or not to be on Zoom, then I do think people are going to get very creative. I just shared in episode 221, be willing to be the exception for years now. Because you're right, Life After College came out in 2011. So I've been getting this question for so long of what do you do after graduation? What if you can't get a job because of your degrees? Of course you can't get a job because of your degrees. If you major in history. I majored in poly Science communications. Of course I'm not going to get a job. That's like just because my, my coursework on global politics prepared me to work in an office that just that math never added up or it hasn't for a long time. What I do think we're going to see are people creating their own, their own set of skill building and their own education. The format is going to have to work and maybe it's going to look very different. I'm not saying they won't go back to college, but I would understand if people want to take a gap year and just think about it and recalibrate and still get very valuable life experience while creatively thinking what does the market need? And that that is the super skill. It's not the degree, it's not The Random Stats 101 class that made me cry, it's what does the market need? And that is going to unfold before our eyes. And there's no reason that a 20 year old can't ask that question the same way that a 50 or 60 year old would be asking it. And in fact the 20 year old might be able to serve the market of all their fellow gen zers who don't know what they're doing now. But it's, it's almost talk about accelerating trends, it in fact may accelerate this trend of Look, a degree was never going to prepare you for the job world, your internships, your skills, the skills you can teach yourself, how quickly you're able to learn, how agile you are. So I think that a lot of the skills, and this is not to shortcut or discount how difficult and how difficult a decision this is for today's students, but that it will give them, I do believe, a skill set if they're willing to take it, if they're willing to go for it and not just sit on the couch for the next year as that version of a gap year that there is.

I don't see why we won't see more kind of upstart ideas large and small.

Yeah, that sounds like adaption. So yeah, I couldn't agree with you more on that piece. And one thing that I've been thinking about is the impact on the trades. So I know many people, business owners who are in the building trades and how difficult it is for them to hire good help people. Just because right now if you're in high school, the goal of the high school is to get you to college. If you're in colleges is get some sort of job as you mentioned, depending on your degree, it's a history degree. Now what do you do? Right. And in other countries there's a little bit of a different vetting effect that occurs and some very nice high paying blue collar jobs at companies like Mercedes and BMW and Siemens and these very high tech trade oriented organizations, but also in the building trades. I'm wondering if that will have at least a generation potentially of kids who maybe really college really wasn't maybe the step, maybe the universe stepped in. So let's talk about the universe a little bit. Maybe the universe kind of stepped in and said, hey, wait a second, I need to rethink about this and maybe it'll allow them to do something else with their skill set and maybe that's what they should have been doing in the beginning.

That wraps up part one of the latest installment with Dr. MJC. Stay tuned for part two where we talk about not quite being ready to pop our pandemic bubbles, talent matching, super skills, and the importance of self education.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss 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 at pivotmethod.

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