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Comparing Two Similar Videos with Drastically Different Lengths - Which Performed Better?

When you look back on your life, are there distinct "chapters" that span a certain amount of time but inevitably change drastically?

I'd find it hard to believe that you don't. If not, maybe it's time to do some more reflection on your past... or maybe you just have a suuuuuppppppeeeerrrr stable and happy life.

For me at least, it's very real. I have such clear chapters that go through the story of my life. Sometimes the main character barely seems like the same person-- good characters grow and learn lessons along the way, so maybe it's really good book series ;)

Here I am, sitting in a coffee shop in Moab, Utah waiting for my car insurance company to finish up with a car accident I was in.

Car accident!?!

Yes.

To make that even crazier, I was living in that car. It was my home on wheels as I traveled the country working from my laptop.

I have been living as a Digital Nomad (which I explain A LOT about in my free ebook you can dive into if you want to learn more about that lifestyle).

It was the dream. Ever since I left Austin, Texas in 2015, this has been the life I've been working towards.

Now... the car is totaled. The loan is more than the car is worth, so it's going to put some extra financial strain on me.

This is where that change of chapters comes in. I've really enjoyed the time I've had as a nomad and will likely go back to this lifestyle in a few years.

I think it's time though, to settle in a really focus on work. I've got a lot of REALLY cool businesses running right now and I'm excited to sit down and focus on these for a few years.

So the end of the nomad era has come for now. The new era will be another one of focused work (that I enjoy-- thank God) and really making a difference. 

Here's the rundown of this new chapter for those of you that need or want to know.
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• I'm moving to Omaha, Nebraska for at least a year.
• Craig Inzana Media had taken a bit of a coasting period while I was traveling, but I'm back to taking new clients and working hard for everyone that's on the roster already.​
• Happy You Are Here is my new podcast all about how we can live more fulfilling lives.

I've always been a talker. So when I started a newsletter and have tried to keep up with this blog, it always seems like work. So I don't end up doing it.

So what medium is best for a talker to communicate?

Podcasts... duh.

I ran a podcast about a year ago called the Producers Podcast, which still has a good library of episodes you can check out any time. The issue I ran into was as my interests and career changed, running a podcast about producing movies no longer felt genuine.

The last year I've helped other professionals start and run their podcasts, like The Revolutionize Podcast with Peggy Caruso. It's allowed me to try new things out and continue to learn about the process.

Now I'm in a much better place personally than I was a year ago when I quit my last podcast. I've undergone some amazing self-healing through a community of healers and amazing people.

Sharing those teachings, habits, tools, and ideas with others lights me up. It lights them up too. So that's what I'm going to do as a podcast. 

Enter LOVE & LOGIC PODCAST: MANIFESTING HIGHER SELF THROUGH MENTAL HEALTH SELF IMPROVEMENT TO REACH YOUR POTENTIAL.
​(Scratch that, new name: HAPPY YOU'RE HERE)

You can subscribe on any podcast platform you currently use, but it'll be a few weeks still until I start releasing weekly episodes.

I'm currently on my way to do another interview. I'm spending a lot of time preparing this podcast to make sure it can provide some real solutions, guidance, and inspiration for people who need those things.

There is so much pain in the world right now, but there is also a ton of beauty. Let's not minimize the pain, but let's move towards the beauty. Let's heal together.

My business has been going through a lot of changes lately. Earlier this year, I left a full-time marketing position to pursue freelance video editing full time.

Pretty quickly, I realized things weren't working. In a matter of weeks, I felt utterly disinterested in the work. It felt like the quality was suffering.

So I started hiring some of the creators I know that do great work. They nailed it, but the profit margins still weren't making me enough even to scrape by. I refuse to deliver shoddy quality work, so I'm not going to outsource to the cheapest bidder.

Scalability with freelance is an issue too. The only way to grow a freelance business is to turn into an agency by hiring more people or raise your rates significantly. It's just not a game that seems like it would play out well.

So I've spent the last few weeks trying to separate my past interests with a plan to take advantage of my strengths. Here are some of the insights I've come across.
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The idea is that true fulfillment can come when you're spending your time doing something that you are good at, society needs, you can be paid well for, and you enjoy doing.

The trouble is figuring out what you're good at, what you can be paid well for, and what society needs. The only way to figure out what you enjoy is to try a bunch of things.

At this point, I already know the kinds of work I enjoy (luckily it's a lot of different things). I keep running into the issue of something I can objectively know I'm good at, get paid well for, and society needs.
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Humans aren't exactly good at discovering objective truths about ourselves without outside feedback.

There are three main ways that I went about looking to find what were objective strengths in my work so that I could refocus my work in these areas.
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The obvious way is to ask your clients.

I sent out a text to a few of my clients that I know are pretty thoughtful people.

You could do this via a long email explaining your thought process. You could send a survey. In my case, I just sent a text asking, "From working with me so far, what do you think my biggest professional strength is?"

There were a few different responses I received. None of them had anything to do with my creative talents or skill.

More or less, they all summed up to Communication, Strategic Thinking, and Creative Problem Solving.

Cool. Now let's see what the people who do work for and with me think.
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Think of collaborators broadly. For me, that was a few co-workers from past jobs that I worked with closely AND some creatives I've worked closely with over the years.

The text was the same, but obviously, you can vary that up to reflect the specific circumstances of your working relationships with these people.

Again, not one responded with anything related to creative talent. One did say "You're incredibly talented" but wasn't able to describe what specific talent to which they were referring.

The takeaways were Decisive Problem Solving, Clear Communication, and Idea Generation.

There was still a feeling that there might be some personal biases at play here. You'll never be able to remove those entirely. This last one was about as objective as I could get.
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We're all familiar with personality tests by now, but I'm not talking about something like the Meyers-Briggs here. Those can be useful for containing personality traits and learning how to work with others, but I didn't feel that reflected a work-scenario.

You might notice that these don't sound like the strengths of a creative, do they?

No, they don't. These line up pretty perfectly with the responses I got from clients and collaborators.

Hopefully going through this process can lead you to identify the common strengths as well.
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