Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey, welcome to Subscription Heroes. I'm your host Scott. Hi, co-founder and chief product officer of Churnkey. Now, it's not every day you get to chat with a legitimate legend, and that's why I'm thrilled to share my conversation with Jason Fried. He's the co-founder and CEO of 37 Signals, makers of Base Camp in Hay, and he is also a bestselling author of four books about work, design and building calm companies. So, enjoy my chat with Jason. We start things off by talking about his recent sabbatical. So Jason, you're coming off a four week sabbatical first in a long time. Now that you're back in the mix, what's been most on your mind lately?
Speaker 2 00:00:42 Well, it's been good to know that, um, the company can run without me. Not that I imagined it couldn't, but it's, it's confidence inspiring to know that, you know, you built a great team, you've got a great company, things can run. So that's not like on my mind, but it was a wonderful realization to come back to going, Hey, things are great. Things are, things are fine here. Right. I'm not essential, just like no one really is. But, uh, it, it's nice. So there's that. And then I'm also, you know, whenever you come back from a break, you just see things through fresh eyes. And I see some of our messaging is a bit, you know, e even messaging that I wrote, it feels a bit dull. Like I wanna kind of get back and sharpen some things up. So you kind of need to step away from some things to come to see them fresh again. And so I, I feel like, um, I've spotted a few things that are on my mind that I wanna tighten up. So it's good. And, and there's no way to really notice that stuff, I think, unless you're away from it. Right.
Speaker 1 00:01:34 I know you said you just did a lot of nothing, which sounds incredible by the way. But you get any, any like biographies, watch anything inspiring to, you know, kind of bring that energy? Or was it just separation, family, all that?
Speaker 2 00:01:48 Yeah, I read a couple books that are just not business related at all. Um, which I, I typically don't read business books anyway. Mostly what I did was I went in a lot of long walks and I just didn't think of anything intentionally, you know? Right. I, I, I had set out or initially go, okay, I've got six, seven weeks here, I'm gonna, like, I've, I've wanted to learn drums for a while, so I was gonna take some drum lessons, I was gonna learn some Spanish. I, I had all these things I wanted to do. And then I realized like, that's just work also. Like, I actually don't wanna work on anything, you know, for a bit. So right after I got over the things I wanted to do, I just realized how about what if I have nothing to do and nothing intentional to deal with and besides family and this things that I have to deal with no matter what.
Speaker 2 00:02:30 And it was just really nice, literally just to walk around just to, just to be and not really have anything on my mind that was important. And then if I came across something I wanted to check out or read or see or whatever, I would do that. I also went on some longer drives. I, I like driving and I haven't driven cars in a while. Like I haven't really had the time to go out and drive, you know? Right. Like, you wake up, you got your kids, you take 'em to school, you got work, you get back, you got dinner, it's dark. So being able to go on some drives and, and not feel like I have the schedule thing that's coming down on me in 35 minutes was actually quite nice as well.
Speaker 1 00:03:04 It's freedom. It's like, you know, it sounds great to learn Spanish or something, but then it's just a hassle and then you're gonna cram it into four weeks, you know?
Speaker 2 00:03:13 Yeah. I mean, I wanna learn, I really wanna get back. I know a little bit, I wanna get back into it. I think what I realized was trading one scheduled work thing, which is work for another one, wouldn't have been a break actually. So I wanted to just really, truly take a break. I think I'm so used to filling my time with things to do that. It was nice to literally have nothing to fill my time with other than things that just came up out of outta nowhere basically. That's what I realized I needed after a week or two in of like, trying to fill my days. So what's interesting too is I, I kind of realize like when you take a break like this, maybe other people are good at this. I, I haven't been, cause I haven't done it before. There's just a a, there's a, there's like a a there, it comes in stages. Uh, you've got like some, you're like, oh, I have nothing, no work this week. But then you just find stuff to keep you busy cuz that's what you've been doing for 20 years. My momentum is just carrying me into doing things. So it took me a week or two to kind of come down from that. And then it was really pleasant, actually.
Speaker 1 00:04:09 Amazing. I was thinking the other day about freedom and leisure and, and I remember used to be a watch collector. I don't know if you still are, but I was, I am, I was thinking back. Awesome. So I, I can't wait to ask you about this cuz uh, I, I've gotten a bug too. Okay. You had one of the best watch Instagrams like 20 16, 20 17. I still think about that feed. That was just incredible. So I, I do miss that, but what are you into now? I along and Sona still, still catch your eye or, yeah,
Speaker 2 00:04:38 I still love watches. Um, I just, you know, the Instagram thing was interesting cuz I found myself getting carried away with, um, showing things off essentially, which is like, yeah, it's not my style to do that, but Instagram kind of, it just kind of happened that way. Like, you buy something and you sh it's like, I want to, whatever I collect or whatever I want it to be for me, not for other people. And I found myself slightly doing things for others on, on that. So I, I said, I'm not gonna do that anymore. But I still kept collecting stuff, but it did change my behavior, which was, which was a good confirmation, that social pressure and essentially it's a peer pressure in many ways by, with like thousands or 10,000 people you don't know, which is not really a healthy thing, encouraging you to do certain things versus you just doing them for yourself.
Speaker 2 00:05:21 So I, I slowed down my, my collecting in a sense, but actually tightened it up and, and focused just on stuff I like, so Langa I like a lot. I, I like Speedmaster a lot. I kind of, I went through a bunch of vintage Rolex stuff and I still have some, but I dialed some of that back. I got into some modern stuff. I tried some different brands, I tried some different things and I've kinda tighten my collection up. It's still like too much. I have like 25 watches. It's still still too many watches. <laugh>. Yeah. But, um, you know, I'm down from like 40 or something whenever I was. Um, but, but um, I'm finding that like if I don't wear something, you know, within three months or something, then I should just probably get rid of it. Unless it's something that's very special that I just really wanna have forever.
Speaker 1 00:06:01 Um, vote. Vote with your wrist.
Speaker 2 00:06:03 Vote with your wrist. Yeah, basically. But I, I'm, I'm, you know, it's watches and Wonders Week right now and I'm sort of watching, I dunno if you're familiar with that show, but that's sort of like the big annual show. Well, not, it's one of the big annual shows that's going on right now in Geneva. I'm not there. Oh no, I've never been, but I'm following from afar, you know, watching all the, the watch sites and seeing the new releases and stuff. So I do enjoy that part of it still, but, and I, I miss a bit of the community on, on Instagram around that. But I don't know, it just, it was, the trade offs weren't worth it. It wasn't, I didn't like having to feel like I had to do things to, to show others or whatever it
Speaker 1 00:06:36 Was. Right. And, and if there's ever, if you ever put something up to the, the group, it's like, ah, should I go for this watch or whatever. It's like they will always say yes, of course, because they wanna live, they wanna live through you. Right.
Speaker 2 00:06:46 Enablers. It's, yes, we're all enablers. We're all, we're all enablers. The other thing that kind of got weird about it was that, um, some of these things can be quite expensive. Yeah. And you know, I I, I really like these things and it's something I've, I've worked hard for, but people start to get the wrong idea. And so I just, it's just a good idea. Right. I, I don't need to share these things and, um, it's, it's not something I need to make public. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:07:08 Well I also got the Speedmaster bug. This is, uh, one my wife got for me when Nice. When we got married. It's the, it's a 1970, the transitional caseback. So it's still the straight Caseback riding. Yep, yep. Which I think is cool. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:07:21 So, so 1970, so it's like a, what's the reference, you know, is it 1 45? No, it'd be, yeah, be 1 45 0, 22 or something. Is that Yep, yep. Yeah. Nice. Those are cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:07:32 Very cool. It's cool.
Speaker 2 00:07:32 That's a good old one. That's a nice one. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:07:34 And it's nice, like, you know, it only happened for a couple years, so it's, it's interesting, you know. Yeah. It's not the typical stuff on the back, you know, so.
Speaker 2 00:07:41 Right. Yeah. Today I've got a, uh, an I W C I got this I W C last year. Oh, cool.
Speaker 1 00:07:47 This is
Speaker 2 00:07:47 The tribute, it's called the Tribute to 37 0 5. So back in the nineties they released what was called the 37 0 5, which was this chronograph that was really, it kinda looked like this, this is the modern one. So they upsize it a little bit to 41, but the original one was 39. But it's made of, um, ceramic or I forget what they call it. They've got some fancy name cause it's bio
Speaker 1 00:08:05 Bio ceramic or something.
Speaker 2 00:08:07 Yeah. It's like ceramic and titanium sero Tanium or something. I don't know what they call it.
Speaker 1 00:08:11 But anyway, it sounds fancier.
Speaker 2 00:08:12 It's, yeah, it's cool. I, I've, I've really come to like this watch too and, um, I'm kind of getting into slightly bigger watch. I used to be into smaller watches, so a little bit bigger now, but I dunno, it's kinda fun. Still fun hobby. I still like mixing up. Totally.
Speaker 1 00:08:23 Yeah. I've got, um, what else do you, I was just wearing last night, uh, an a World War II era, A 11, which is like 19 millimeters, tiny, you know, this thing used to be tiny, so it's kinda
Speaker 2 00:08:35 Fun. Was it some unknown?
Speaker 1 00:08:36 It was, it was Elgan, ELGAN, I maybe Hamilton. Oh,
Speaker 2 00:08:40 Cool. American. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:08:41 Yeah, yeah. So fun American, you know, service member watch. But you know, you mentioned I W C and Longe, they made the fleek watch for, um, yes. You know, the pilots, but that's one of my dream watches. But the whole like radium loom thing kind of turns me off. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:08:58 It's funny. I
Speaker 1 00:08:59 Guess you can restore it, but,
Speaker 2 00:09:00 Yeah. Yeah. But then you kind of, oh, it's funny, I was just talking like an hour ago to, um, this wash dealer. I was looking at this, this old submariner from the early sixties. I asked him to put a Geiger on it because it's sort of in the period where it might be tridium or it might be radium, and it was still radium. And I'm like, I'm not, I'm not interested. I just don't want, there's no reason in my opinion, to have this radioactive thing on your wrist. <laugh>, there's so many watches that don't have that. So I, I, I stay away from anything with radium on it. And especially those old pilots watches, they have tons of radium, I mean, massive amounts of radium paint on those things. So it's probably a good idea to stay away from that.
Speaker 1 00:09:35 Yeah. Strapping something, uh, radioactive on my wrist. Never really, it, it was on my bucket list, so, yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:09:40 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:09:44 Let's take a little break to tell you about Churnkey, the ones making this podcast happen now. I think Churnkey's awesome, but I am super biased because I'm a co-founder, but I love what we're doing for subscription companies. You might look at your churn numbers and think there's gotta be a way to turn this around. There's gotta be someone who can improve retention and help us track down why people are leaving your product. And that's why Churnkey's here, Turnkey's the only platform that fixes every type of churn for you. We handle retention for customer obsessed teams like Jasper, AI Dungeon, and Castos. We lower cancellations by up to 42%, recover up to 89% of fail payments and even increase customer LTV by 28%. And we do it with our user-friendly, customer-centric, cancel flows, modern failed payment, recovery, and AI-driven feedback analysis. So if you wanna run a healthier subscription business, head to turnkey.co to get started. Well, I wanna switch to, um, to writing. I mean, and you mentioned tuning up some messaging that you saw coming back. And, uh, it impresses me how much you still write. I mean, you write a lot and I want to know, do you ever just write for yourself or is it mostly an audience of one? And that's how it's always been, right? You're writing for your own satisfaction.
Speaker 2 00:11:02 I write what I'd wanna read, basically. Yeah. I have to write something that I wish existed, essentially. And I don't write as a hobby, so I, I wouldn't like be someone to write a, a novel or, or short stories. That's not really my thing. But I, I just like to kind of share my point of view through writing. And I've always just written about what's been on my mind and tried to be direct and conversational about it. And some, some of the things I write, it could be, you know, six, seven paragraphs. It could take five minutes. Sometimes it can take an hour. Sometimes it could take a week of thinking about it and putting it down. It just sort of depends. I think the, the best things though are usually the things that's kind of just flow out and you're just like, you're done.
Speaker 2 00:11:41 There's no drafts. It's just like, I mean, you might spell check or whatever, but yeah. You just kind of get it out there and, and, and you move on as if we're having a conversation. But I think, I think the most important thing I've found for reading is, is to, is to write or for writing is to, to, to write something that you'd wanna read and not to write for anyone else. Right. For you. Otherwise, I think you're just beginning to, um, imagine what other people want. And I don't think any of us are very good at really figuring that out. I mean, there's formulas and there's all sorts of things you can do, I'm sure to increase SEO and all that stuff. There's like those tricks. But as far as pure writing goes and sharing ideas, just share the ideas that you wish you, you'd heard or, or you wish you'd read that that's enough. That's a strategy I followed. And I think David's the same way. And, and, and, um, I think it's served us well. So that's at least our point of view on it.
Speaker 1 00:12:30 Yeah, I mean, if it's not a one and done, what's the process? Like? Do you kick it over to David or do you
Speaker 2 00:12:35 Have some friends? Rare, yeah. Yeah. Sometimes if there's something that's like, there's a page on Basecamp if you go to basecamp.com/small, so I wrote this earlier this year, and this is like a public marketing page around, you know, focused on small businesses, why we, why we're fans of small businesses, don't really care about big ones. This is a piece on our website that's like a part of the site that's a, a strong message. And I did toss this one back and forth with David. So things that are kind of permanent like that I'll often show someone else, get someone's feedback on that sort of thing. But like, um, post to my, hey, world blog or, or things on Twitter or things I used to write on medium or, or our blog signal versus noise over the years, that's just extemporaneous writing. Very, very rarely would I share that with anyone ahead of time.
Speaker 2 00:13:23 I don't think it's precious. I don't think it needs to be shared. It's just like, here's my thought. Yeah. Like, this is my thought, here it is. But if we're gonna write something that's gonna stay in place on a site or have a really strong point of view, um, I'll often run it by somebody, but it's not, there's no, so the other thing is I don't write on a schedule. So there's not, like every week I gotta put produce two or three things. Like sometimes I'll go for weeks without writing anything. Other times I'll write a few things. I've got like three topics on my mind I would love to write about this week if I get a chance to, if I don't get a chance to, I'll do it the following week or I will fall outta love with the ideas and they just won't ever get written.
Speaker 2 00:13:57 So that can happen too. <laugh>. So I, I, I have a very short list of things I'm thinking about that I might wanna share. One of 'em is, um, I'll just tell you ahead of time because maybe it'll encourage me to write it. It's about, um, performance reviews. People will al always ask me about them, like, how do you guys do them? And how often you do them, and how do you decide if someone sort of makes the cut after a serious period of time? You know? Cause when you hire someone, you don't, you don't really know if they're gonna work out. You hope they will. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. How do you know? For me, it always comes down to this one question, which is, let's call it a year in. Usually give people about a year to sort of find their way.
Speaker 2 00:14:32 Sometimes less, sometimes a little bit more. But around that amount of time you can do performance reviews, you can look at all sorts of metrics. You can do all those things. You can also just ask yourself one question that answers all of them. And this is what the piece is gonna be about, which is, would I hire this person again? So I feel like a year in what you're doing is you're rehiring that person, right? Would you rehire that person and would they rehire the job? Are they happy they made the choice to come here? That sort of thing. So I like finding these things that sort of answer a bunch of different questions. And to me, that's sort of one of those things. So I wanna write about that. I've never written about it. Um, I wanna write about that, so maybe I'll do it this week, maybe I won't.
Speaker 2 00:15:09 And maybe I just won't find enough to say. That's the other thing that happens sometimes. Like, maybe I have a paragraph on that or two and like, I don't have much more to say and I'm like, is it really worth writing that up? So in that case, I'll probably just like write it up on LinkedIn as like a comment or something, or a thought versus like thinking about it as a post. But anyway, there's no formula. It's just kind of what flows through the fingers. You know? Do I, do I have enough there? And, and that's how that goes.
Speaker 1 00:15:34 So you got, you got, hey world, you got LinkedIn, Twitter, and there was a time when you wrote just every piece of copy. And I, I mean, and you know, I, I could tell that it was you, you know? Yeah. I still do that and all that. You you still do everything.
Speaker 2 00:15:46 I still write all of our marketing sites, all the key pages. Yeah. So there's some pages on, on basecamp, basecamp.com that I haven't written, and some stuff was changed on the homepage while I was out. So some of that isn't mine. But the majority of everything that's, let's call it the top five pages on the site or something like that. You know, the, the landing page, the pricing page, uh, maybe at the, something about features or how it works, that kind of stuff. That's me. That's actually the thing I, I enjoy doing most frankly, is, well, two things. I like coming up with new ideas and building new products. And then I, I love figuring out a way to talk about them and trying to connect with people who are shopping for them, basically. So that, that I do really like, so I still do that. That's my primary, I would say my primary contribution these days. I, I've been designing conceptually new products and features and whatnot. Yeah. But I haven't been in the HDML and CSS doing that work anymore, but I still do a lot of the writing on, on the sites. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:16:41 And let's talk about like UI in that sense. I mean, that, that can still originate, you know, a feature idea or something that can still originate with copying. I'm, I'm sure it does. Or is it just you saying to Jason, Hey, you know, can you work on this? I had this idea for this thing in, Hey,
Speaker 2 00:16:57 You mean a fe, uh, where, where a feature comes from, or what do you mean?
Speaker 1 00:17:00 Yeah, yeah. So in terms of, uh, I, I know you used to to write out the UI first.
Speaker 2 00:17:05 Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:17:05 You know, are you still doing that as, as the, the zero point or is it more of the, the pitch that's taken place of that or?
Speaker 2 00:17:13 Yeah, so the, the pitch is always written. It's never performed. So it's not like there's a meeting where I explain it. It's always written down. It's written down. Maybe sometimes the few sketches to support the writing, to like explain something visually, like this is what I'm trying to say, or how I think it could look. But everything always starts with writing. And the idea, the feature itself, a big part of it is like, how would we write the screens? Like how would we explain what this is? And then the pitch is written, you know, a handful of paragraphs in, in, in a sketch or two. Sometimes we'll write, actually, like design the UI in words first in a sense. It depends on the feature. Some features are more conducive to doing it that way. Others really need to be drawn out. Yeah. Um, it just depends on, on the feature, but it's always described in words. It shouldn't require anyone to have to re-explain or to explain it in a different way. So if we can't get clear enough, then the feature probably isn't ready, is kind of how, how I tend to think about it. Right. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1 00:18:13 That to me is one of the, I mean, it's, it's a staple of your products and it kind of feels like that is one of many reasons for your staying power. I mean, you started out going up against Microsoft Project and now it's, you know, name your VC backed opponent, Asana, click up losing hundreds of millions of dollars for them. It's okay, but you know, you're still there. You're still delivering. I wanna ask about like your, your playbook for, for staying relevant, evolving. Do you think it's your consistency and authenticity that, that make you stand out and grow? Or is it something else? Because it's, it's 25, 4 years, you know? Yeah. Almost.
Speaker 2 00:18:52 Yeah. 20, almost 24 years. So one thing is, I don't know, but I'll, I have a few ideas. Number one is we've always run a profitable business, right? So staying power, like at the most fundamental level means like, do you make more money than you spend so you can pay your bills? Like it really
Speaker 1 00:19:08 Imagine that <laugh> yeah,
Speaker 2 00:19:09 It, it's sort of silly, even talk about it. But in our industry, of course, it's unusual. And so that's where staying power is to start. You, you can, you can will yourself into existence for as long as you want, but like, reality is always gonna come and get you. And if you don't have, if you can't stay in business, fundamental business, then you're out. So part of this is always trying to run a profitable business, which means keeping our headcount small, keeping our costs low, charging money for our products, not giving them away for free, and figuring out how to make money later. And then delivering a really high level of service, delivering unique products with a unique point of view. And also marrying those with, with, with a perspective and a philosophy that's tied into all of it. So it's, you know, if you use Basecamp or use, hey, you're, you're, to some degree, you're buying into a degree a a certain philosophy of working.
Speaker 2 00:19:54 You could still use it in your own way and do it your own thing. But if you wanna sort of swim with the current, when you're using these products, you kind of, it's nice to sort of have a sense of, of where you're headed and, and why you're headed in that direction, why things work and where they work. So I think, and then, then, then there's the sort of prolific sharing we've always been doing for many, many years. So we share without ex expectation of return, write books, write blog posts, do podcasts, share our insights, share design reviews, share code reviews, share as much as we can to show people how a business is run and how we run ours. And then try to be as transparent as we can all, all the way through and try to be as honest as we can all the way through and price things fairly and, and, you know, all, all those things.
Speaker 2 00:20:33 I don't know which parts of those are the fundamentally most important parts, but I think it's a, it's a combination of all those things. But fundamentally gotta run a sound business, you've gotta make good products, you've gotta treat customers well, you've gotta treat employees well. You've got, I think you have to probably have a unique point of view to last. And we also aren't beholden to any outside powers that want us to go away. I mean, like, if you raise money, they basically want you to kind of go away at some point because <laugh>, you need to Right. Exit, right. You know, or merge or go public, which changes your company. So we're in it. Like we started our business, stay in business, not to go out of business. I think that also, that mindset's important. Like, we wanna be here for the long term.
Speaker 2 00:21:18 We've been here for almost 25 years. Can we be here for another 10, 15, 20 maybe? Hopefully like, I don't, but I don't know. But, but the mindset is we're, we're here to stick around. We're not here to leave. And I think that is really important. I think if you go into business thinking about how you're gonna get out of it, you always have that on your, on your back or on your shoulders. Yeah. Like, eh, maybe we don't need to work on this because who cares in three years we're gonna be gone anyway. Or that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 00:21:41 And I think it makes you kind of be hypersensitive to trends and you know, you chase them cuz you want to ride the hype train to something immediate. Right. Or in the short term, which you guys don't do. It does make me ask though, I mean the AI stuff, I don't know, everyone's talking about it, it's so trendy. But I know you've said in the past that computers will eventually program themselves. Yeah. Do you think there's, there's any way you all embrace ai?
Speaker 2 00:22:09 Yeah. So, uh, this is obviously like a, a real thing that's happening in, in a, in a, in a real shift. I think the real power of it at the moment is in providing certain insights that you might not, might not have refining certain things that, that you've perhaps put together, summarizing things. I think right now it's, it's a bit novel and which, well novel in terms of new, but maybe it's a bit of a novelty as well. I don't think we're quite sure what's going on with it yet, like, where it's gonna go. And I also think that at some point there's gonna have to be a splintering of, of voices in it. Because if everyone's using the same thing, which is essentially chat G P T, let's just call it that for the moment, right. Just on the text side, chat, G p t has a voice.
Speaker 2 00:22:54 I know it can write in the style of other people, sort of, but it still has this thing like you can kind of tell in a sense sort of where it came from. And so I think what's gonna be really interesting about AI eventually is, is more on the personal side of things. Like if you had a personal assistant truly that like, like Siri was supposed to be sort of, but not really, but someone who really understood, or someone, or something I should say, who really understood your style, how would you respond to this? How would you write about this? How would you react to this? Would you ignore this? Would you, and engage with this? I think once something can really, where you feel like you have a second brain or like a second pair of hands that are yours, I think then it becomes very, very, very interesting and very, very useful.
Speaker 2 00:23:35 Because then it can really like, do things for you in your own style right. In your own way. Until then, it's, it's, it's interesting, but it's fascinating. But I don't know how we would use it quite yet. So we're gonna kind of s s you know, watch, we're clearly watching right now. Yeah. I think the summarization stuff's pretty interesting though. Like, summarize this thing. But the thing is, the way we work is we don't, we don't write long super long documents that need to be summarized. We don't have 90 minute meetings that need to be summarized. We don't have long transcripts that need to be abridged or something like that. So it, it doesn't really lend itself to the way we work currently. But I think it's very, very interesting and I can see how, you know, people are adopting it, it makes a lot of sense, especially in big corporate environments where there's a lot of stuff going around that people don't have a chance to read. Right. I think mid journey though, frankly, like mid journey is, is more interesting to me. The visual side of it's really fast. I I just find that to be more amazing than right. The tech side of it currently, I know chat g p t fours can look at images and, and, and, and divine meaning from that, but actually to produce the kind of stuff that mid journey produces, that to me is absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1 00:24:42 Yeah. I, I produced a series of paintings, we'll call it, with Mid Journey, where it was Nighthawks, you know, the, the painting, the diner painting at night, but replaced by robots and uh, the output was just hilarious, but also just beautiful. Yeah. You know, and, and I wonder, you know, there's gonna be a time when our kids, that's all they know, right? They can just think about an image and, and output it. I mean, are you talking to your kids about AI yet? Are they, are they aware old enough for that stuff yet?
Speaker 2 00:25:15 So my son who's eight, he's, he and I have played with this stuff a bit. Okay. Chloe Chat, G b t a bit, played with, um, Dolly more than Mid Journey at the moment. Yeah. But yeah, I, I think the thing that's exciting to me about it is that it's, it's like with Mid Journey specifically, cause I think it's just, it's such a level up from, from Dolly or whatever you that's called is that writers can be painters now. And Yes. Um, I, I could never paint <laugh>. I could never really draw. I u I used to be able to draw a little bit. I can like draw interfaces and stuff, but like actually drawing figures or whatever. And it's always been frustrating to me to, to not be able to do that or to, to have an idea for something like a, a piece of furniture or an object or, or a, a building or a room or a layout or something.
Speaker 2 00:26:01 And I can't just, like my wife is, is a really talented artist and she can like just draw and I'm just so jealous. Cause I just, I don't have the, I don't know how to do that. And I should probably practice and learn a bit, but it's also just exciting to know, like I, I can write and describe things really well. So now I can also paint in a sense where I can draw in a sense. And, and why wouldn't we wanna do that? Like if we, you and I could communicate without talking. We can just telepathically communicate, let's say that might be a level up too. And then you could go, well, well what about language? Well, language is important too, but if we could directly communicate, and that's kind of what this sort of is to me in, in a sense. It's like I can't draw, I'm jumping over the drawing skill part and I'm able to, to paint with words.
Speaker 2 00:26:44 I think that's great. And I think our kids, I mean, right, this is so nascent right now. Like what we're seeing is nothing, you know, so five years from now, even three years from now, I mean, you can see how quickly mid journey and chat G B T have gotten better, uh, in, in like a year and a half or a year. So it's just gonna be mind blowing. And then you can imagine the next thing would be, I would imagine video, you know, make a three minute video of birds flying in, you know, blah, blah, whatever you come up with, right? And, and then it's like a video is produced and, and then you're talking about making movies by describing them, you know, it's fa it's gonna be incredible. And then, and then sound, I, there's already like AI for sound. Like make a song that sounds like this or I saw something recently, maybe this has been out for a while, but there's an AI that will make music based on a video that you give it.
Speaker 2 00:27:33 And then it's like, we, we made a one minute commercial or demo, like put music to it that sounds like this. And here are the high points where I want like there to be drama intention. And you know, it just sort of, oh wow. Makes all that, you know, here's the big reveal, 45 seconds in at this exact point. And so like, build up to that and then it will kind of, you know, crescendo the whole thing. It's, it's incredible. So these are just tools. It's tool like a computer was a tool. Like, you know, everything was a tool. Everything is a tool and it's a great tool to have in the toolbox. And I think it's gonna unleash a lot of imagination and allow people to do things they simply could only think about, but now they can actually do. And, and those who can also do it personally, like if you can actually paint great, that's great too. Like, that'll be a different version of art, you know, and there'll be generative art and real art and, well, not real art, it's all art, but generative art and handmade art and who knows. But it's a new category and it's fascinating. What, what's your take? I mean, what do you think?
Speaker 1 00:28:27 I think the role of the editor is gonna be more important than ever. Yeah. Because there's that, um, I don't know that that natural sense of taste you get, like, you, you, you want a certain feel. You wanna strike a certain emotion, you know, like that's gonna become, that's gonna become the, the true skill. Or, and, and on the flip side, detecting synthetic media, like there's, um, already training in Finland, I think to national effort where they're teaching kids how to, to, to look at fake news and disinformation basically, and say, you know, okay. So that I know the, the one, the one on of Trump being arrested last week, the fake Oh yeah, yeah. Images comes to mind, right? Like, okay, let's, let's interrogate that. That's clearly fake, you know? Right. So yeah, that's, but I think,
Speaker 2 00:29:14 But figuring out how to know Yeah. How to like, detect that that was fake. Like what, what are, what are the tells? This is gonna be a skill. I think you're right though about editing, especially, it's, it's no different than directing. You know, if you think about directors who direct movies, there's this billion, well, okay, I'm over exaggerating. There's, there's, let's call it thousands probably of outstanding screenplays and scripts. There, there's, there's unlimited number of wonderful ideas and there's probably a handful of really damn good directors who can bring that to life in a way. And that's directing it. It's kind of, I mean, of course it's not quite the same, but in some ways it is. You're directing this AI to produce an effect in a certain style in a certain way and with certain subtleties that only certain people are gonna be able to describe in the same way. A great director might be able to pull off a great scene with just the right lighting and just the right fx and just the right facial expressions. It's all those things. So I, I think, I think it's, to think about it more in terms of directing, directing is clearly hard. Yeah. Because there's an unlimited number of ideas and actors prepared to act, but to pull off a great or cinematographer, like every movie would be just incredible if it was easy, you know? So I think the same thing's gonna be true here.
Speaker 1 00:30:23 Yeah. And everyone pulls in their, their own influences and their own, you know, impulses. And, and that's the unique part, right? Yeah. Uh, it's just a matter of getting it done. So I I, I know we're at time and uh, I just got one more question for you. Yeah, of course. Kind of a big one. What's the most ridiculous thing you want to do that you don't think you ever will
Speaker 2 00:30:41 <laugh>? Um, ridiculous thing
Speaker 1 00:30:45 Or improbable. We could to go, we could go that route too.
Speaker 2 00:30:48 I would love to do a, a three month silent retreat. It'd be incredibly hard, but I, I kind of would love to do it. And in my life right now, I just simply cannot see how that could ever happen until like my kids are outta the house. Yeah. But then like, well, I wanna do it then. So that's the thing about, about like wanting to do certain things. I wanna do certain things for who I am today yet, like, let's call it 10, well, ten, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years, whenever, whatever it is. Like, well I wanna do that then. I don't know. But right now that would be an amazing thing to do and it would basically be completely impossible for me to pull off. I've got kids that got married, I've got a company, all the things, I just can't do that. But I would love to see what that would be like.
Speaker 1 00:31:31 But there's a party of you now that that craves that, right?
Speaker 2 00:31:34 Yeah. A big part of me now craves that, uh, for a variety of different reasons. And I'm curious about it from a bunch of different perspectives, but there's no way, so the real question is, will there not, will there be a way, cause there's always a way, but will there be a will when I have the time or, or the will or the, or the way to do it so that, that's what I'm sort of curious about. Do you have one? I'm sure you've, maybe you've asked people this all the time. I don't know, but
Speaker 1 00:32:00 It's the first time I, I've asked it actually. Okay. Um, yeah, the first thing that comes to mind is I love heavy metal and you know, it's like one of my people think it's a weird quirk cuz I'm just not, I don't know. I don't know. I guess I'm not the personality for it, but I would love to perform with Metallica at some point, but I don't think be cool it'll ever happen. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:32:23 <laugh>, what do you, what do you play
Speaker 1 00:32:25 Guitar? I've got, um, got a couple electrics here.
Speaker 2 00:32:29 Have you tried to make that happen somehow?
Speaker 1 00:32:31 I am trying to put pieces in place right now. Okay. To make that happen. Okay. Um, that's cool. So it's not impossible, right. But
Speaker 2 00:32:40 What's interesting about things like that is like, it's not fully, oh obviously it's not completely near control. There's like, yeah, there's some things that are, and then there's also timing and in situations where like how would you pull it off? And then also like Metallica's, a band won't be around forever. Yeah. So you've got that time scale. It's pretty, pretty interesting. Um, that's a, that, I mean that's an, that'd be incredible.
Speaker 1 00:33:00 Yeah. Yeah. And then the question is what do you play with them? Do you get to choose, you know, all these things, you know, and so, right. Do you practice some, some songs? No. You don't wanna play in your Sandman cuz everyone ask about that, you know? So would
Speaker 2 00:33:13 This be onstage or would it be like privately, like a
Speaker 1 00:33:17 I think it would be way cooler in private.
Speaker 2 00:33:19 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:33:20 You know, cause
Speaker 2 00:33:21 They've got I think easier obviously too. I think for sure. You pull that off somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:33:24 You know, because, because they'll pull people up on stage there. They used to back in the day, but, but they've got an HQ in, uh, in Marin County where it's all their gear and stuff and they're, they're recording so. Right. That's mine.
Speaker 2 00:33:37 Well, you have to be a roadie then. Be a roadie. Work your way up that way. Get in that way. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:33:41 You know, who knows. Yeah. Just live on the road, man.
Speaker 2 00:33:43 Yeah. Exciting. Well that's a, that's a great, that's a great one. Good question too, by the way.
Speaker 1 00:33:48 Yeah. Appreciate it. Cool. Well thank you for everything. Good to talk to you. Yeah, this is fun.
Speaker 2 00:33:52 Thanks Scott. Appreciate it. Thanks. Take care.
Speaker 1 00:33:55 You too. Don't miss out on future episodes. Get alerts from new
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