23 episodes
Make Now. Think Later. Ben & Francis
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- Business
Ben and Francis talk about their journeys of trying to share valuable content online (and then eventually trying to make a living off it).
We're both chronic overthinkers, and our solution to getting stuff out there is to make now and think later! Join us as we try to navigate the struggles and share our experiences trying to make this whole thing work.
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#23 - Polishing, procrastination, and promoting the work
(00:00) Intro(01:03) Audience involvement in streams(03:36) Being an entertainer(10:03) Three word prompt YouTube video(14:03) What voice to use in front of the camera(18:22) YouTube on top of everything else(21:46) Collecting and analyzing reference(26:40) Promoting the work(29:02) Business and marketing is creative(34:40) Getting going when you're procrastinating(42:36) Experimenting with free brushes(47:29) Prioritizing(49:22) Wrapping up
Contact us on @makenowthinklater or send as an email at hi@makenowthinklater.com. Recorded on the 13th of September 2023
Links
Ben's 3rd video
Ben's YouTube
Ben's instagram
Ben's website
Francis' twitter
Francis' website
Keepon -
#22 - Building more variety into your content
(00:00) Intro
(00:28) Ben's 2nd YouTube video results
(04:09) Three word prompt challenge for the next vid
(11:00) Having more variety in your channel
(14:14) Summarising the new video idea, and systematising video editing
(18:02) The need to be solving puzzles
(20:46) Rebuilding Keepon
(22:21) Procrastination as a signal and working on what you can't stop thinking about
(25:19) Content on what you're doing anyway
(30:58) What can you do week in, week out
(34:27) Building the habit of saying what you're doing
(35:40) Working together
(37:56) Being an expert in something
(41:09) Relearning the same lessons & wrapping up
Contact us on @makenowthinklater or send as an email at hi@makenowthinklater.com. Recorded on the 10th of August 2023
Links
Ben's 2nd video
Ben's YouTube
Ben's instagram
Ben's website
Francis' twitter
Francis' website
Keepon -
#21 - Grand plans and 20 hours of focused work
We hope you enjoy this one, we love hearing your feedback, questions, and suggestions! Contact us on @makenowthinklater or send as an email at hi@makenowthinklater.com.
Links
Ben's YouTube
Ben's instagram
Ben's website
Francis' twitter
Francis' website
The Fillthy Plugin
Deep work by Cal Newport
Badass by Kathy Sierra
US Airforce average seat
Adam Savage Youtube
(00:00) - Intro
(00:49) - Ben's grand plans
(11:10) - Francis' grand plans
(20:39) - Evergreen content
(21:46) - Space for creativity
(25:53) - Office "families"
(29:04) - Having slack in the system
(30:28) - Optimising vs delaying optimising
(33:53) - Prioritising your 20 hours
(37:16) - Sharing cause you like your friends
(38:57) - Wrapping up -
#20 - Small bets to navigate the content game
In this one we talk about the concept of small bets. That is breaking down your content, business, or product ideas into smaller pieces so you can learn from them quicker. Think about having a portfolio of many small bets vs having a portfolio of few large bets. Luck works in your favour when you have many bets because of the law of large numbers!
Getting good at content is about experimentation. What works for others many not work for you and it's so dependent on you, your voice, and your audience.
Our first Make Now Think Later product small bet is a photoshop plugin! It's linked below.
We hope you enjoy this one, we love hearing your feedback, questions, and suggestions! Contact us on @makenowthinklater or send as an email at hi@makenowthinklater.com.
Links
The FIllthy Plugin
Ben's YouTube
Ben's instagram
Ben's website
Francis' twitter
Francis' website
(00:00) - Intro
(00:39) - The Fillthy plugin
(02:16) - Describing small bets
(06:20) - The Kelly Criteron
(09:29) - Small bets in content
(14:51) - Breaking out of what's working
(18:17) - Conserving energy
(22:10) - You still need to consume content
(24:59) - Staying curious
(26:57) - Consistently making small bets
(30:11) - Fear of alienating when experimenting -
#19 - 100k YouTube views in 1 week: Behind the scenes
Ben's first YouTube video is out! It's been a week and by all objective measures (that we should probably not be thinking too hard about) it's been a success! 100k views in the first week and the comments have been nothing but supportive.
We talk about what went into making this first video. How it took a lot of rewatching and rerewatching to make it feel snappy, and how a lot of the magic was in the edit and in "killing your darlings". YouTube is a different beast than Instagram. Being so searchable and just with the way the platform is designed, it incentivises more evergreen content — different from Instagram where things feel a bit more fleeting.
The biggest thing that went into it was weeks and months of developing taste by consuming all things YouTube, and all things about making YouTube. Figuring out what you like and don't like. Figuring out what's worked for other people and seeing what parts of those you can take for yourself and you feel will work for you and your context.
Keep it focused on the narrative and the problem. Avoid trying to add all the things that would be nice but are actually not part of the core problem. Edit, edit, edit. Rewatch. Get fresh eyes. Get other's opinions. Edit, edit, edit.
Note: this is actually episode 18, and episode 18 is episode 19.
We hope you enjoy this one, we love hearing your feedback, questions, and suggestions! Contact us on @makenowthinklater or send as an email at hi@makenowthinklater.com.
Links
Ben's first YouTube video
Ben's YouTube
Ben's instagram
Ben's website
Francis' twitter
Francis' website
(00:33) Ben's Youtube Video is released
(04:27) Rewatch, edit, sleep, repeat
(06:27) How to think vs how tos
(09:13) Giving yourself a deadline (or not)
(10:52) YouTube incentivises evergreen content
(13:06) Ideas for a next video?
(15:14) Idea, thumbnail, and transformation
(21:14) Spitballing YouTube ideas for Francis
(31:30) Developing a taste is key
(34:11) Focusing on the problem and avoiding scope creep
(38:10) Combining contract work with streaming
(41:02) Draw it in your style
(42:37) Quick update on Francis' work and wrapping up -
#18 - The content game is a psychology game
Making content is kinda the easy part. Actually posting it and feeling like it's ever good enough is the hard part. In this one we cover how making content sometimes feels more like a battle of managing yourself.
Francis is frustrated with feeling like he doesn't have the time to make the content. When you're working on an app it takes up all of your time, so to actually make the stuff you have to make time for it. But it might just because he takes it a bit too seriously. Posting is a skill you have to develop, and posting should be enjoyable. But the difference between "should" and "is" is big, and crossing that barrier requires some thought — and unfortunately for him, the best way to get better at posting is to post!
Ben's already felt that one and his posting skill has developed to a point where he can do it almost effortlessly, but for him, the challenge is now not getting too trapped up in the numbers. As he's got some success now, sometimes he feels a bit too attached to the numbers and might have a bit of a tendency to read too much into the different "like" numbers from different posts—especially now that "how well" a post does is now linked to his income.
We also get a bit into some of the numbers in Ben's latest youtube video, how much he's made from ads, and how it's encouraged him to really consider YouTube as a content platform worth investing in.
We hope you enjoy this one, we love hearing your feedback, questions, and suggestions! Contact us on @makenowthinklater or send as an email at hi@makenowthinklater.com.
Links
Francis' now posted substack post
Ben's first YouTube video
Conan O'Brien and Nick Offerman podcast
having fun by Ava (post about enjoying the thing you're doing)
Revenge bedtime procrastination
Ben's YouTube
Ben's instagram
Ben's website
Francis' twitter
Francis' website
(00:00) - Intro
(00:58) - Making apps takes up content time
(05:56) - Getting the reps in to start posting anything
(07:41) - ChatGPT reviews Francis's substack post
(12:05) - Never being as good as you think you'll be
(14:02) - Enjoying posting, not enjoying making bad stuff
(17:45) - Posting is a skill itself
(22:34) - The content game is a psychology game
(29:35) - More on posting being a skill
(31:03) - Letting go of the numbers
(38:59) - Making content is more about managing yourself
(41:19) - Numbers for Ben's first YouTube video
(44:57) - You can make a career from YouTube
(51:11) - Wrap up