From Creative Quirk to Content Superpower Ft. Jen Friel

Jen Friel:

I used social media as a utility. So instead of using it to necessarily acquire followers or things of that nature, I allowed social media to kind of be that entry point to getting whatever I wanted. So, crashing the Grammys, for example, I used Diet Coke and Twitter and live-tweeted the entire time everything that I was doing. And so, that to me is really fun, kind of being able to play with social media in different ways and push boundaries, not only within myself but within the platforms as well, just in terms of what you can get away with.

Adam Kerpelman:

Hey everybody, it’s the Data-Driven Marketer. I’m Adam.

Mark Richardson:

I’m Mark.

Jen Friel:

I’m Jen.

Adam Kerpelman:

Welcome back for another hang in the data basement. Thanks for joining us, and special thanks to our guest today, Jen Friel, the founder of talknerdytome.com.

Jen Friel:

Woo-hoo.

Adam Kerpelman:

Which of course, only barely says it in terms of how you, Mark, and I have been friends over the years as social media, marketing weirdos, all kinds of whatever. So entertaining.

Jen Friel:

I ousted you as mayor. I ousted you as mayor on Foursquare of your own building. And then Mark was in the Talk Nerdy to Me, Lover live show.

Adam Kerpelman:

Right. Yeah.

Jen Friel:

Yeah. So talented.

Adam Kerpelman:

Oh, the live show.

Jen Friel:

Yeah.

Adam Kerpelman:

Forgot about the live show.

Mark Richardson:

Yeah, we got to get to that.

Adam Kerpelman:

Yeah, for sure. But so first, for listeners who don’t know you, want to give us a bit of your background, and how you … I mean, I don’t even know how to … It’s been Talk Nerdy to Me all along, but you’ve done all kinds of other cool stuff, so.

Jen Friel:

Yeah. I like to keep things interesting. Yeah. So we met, actually, I ousted you as mayor of Foursquare of your own apartment building. And then one time our wifi went out, and I knocked on your door and I was like, “Hey, can I borrow your wifi?” And you were like, “Okay, this is weird.”

Adam Kerpelman:

Need to post my blog.

Jen Friel:

Yeah. So it was great. But hi guys, my name’s Jen Friel, obviously of talknerdytome.com. I’ve a rather eclectic career in tech. So I started a blog that got … Talk Nerdy to Me, Lover originally, and that got purchased and optioned by Jerry Bruckheimer and CBS. It was in a four-way bidding war between ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, which is really cool. That’s the most awesome thing to be able to say. I also crashed the Grammy Awards. I danced on stage with Prince. I did 103 dates in nine months, but I used social media as a utility. So instead of using it to necessarily acquire followers or things of that nature, I allowed social media to be that entry point to getting whatever I wanted. So crashing the Grammys, for example, I used Diet Coke and Twitter, and live-tweeted the entire time of everything that I was doing. And so that to me is really fun, kind of being able to play with social media in different ways and push boundaries, not only within myself but within the platforms as well, just in terms of what you can get away with.

Adam Kerpelman:

For sure. I mean, we’ve talked about this on other podcasts, but not this one, you were early inspiration for me, at least, in terms of when we met, I was … I don’t know, two, three years into running a digital marketing company where we were similarly right at the edge of stuff. And so immediately you were like, “Yeah, I do this streaming stuff.” And we were like, “We do too. And we don’t even know what it’s …” live streaming didn’t really exist as a thing yet. But watching you use social media that way was my first inkling that like, “Oh, this is different from just a broadcast platform.”

Jen Friel:

Yeah. Because I used it in a way to really push things and push it within myself too. Because I started with livevideo.com in 2008, and our competitor was YouTube at the time, but we technically … no it was 2007, because it was right before smartphones, actually. So I had a USB camera and I had a little laptop and an air card, and we would just go around and document our lives. So it was normal for me to be recording myself and to be doing this stuff, even pre-smartphone. By the time it came out on smartphones, I was like, “Oh, I can just keep doing these adventures. And it’s just a lot easier.” So I didn’t start off in some sort of broadcast room or anything of that nature. I technically started off in my kitchen on my laptop, but I was always an adventurer and wanted to go explore. And so that’s kind of the impetus for a lot of things.

Mark Richardson:

Yeah. I think the adventure nature definitely is reflected in your writing style, which I have to say is, best gif game, gif game, however—whatever, hard G, soft G, whatever side of that you’re on.

Adam Kerpelman:

Yeah. Now it’s like-

Mark Richardson:

Now this girl Jen’s gif game is just elite, undefeated.

Jen Friel:

I do it in text too, but it’s actually really cool. So I just found this out. So I got diagnosed just a couple of months ago with something called synesthesia. And so I literally hear, that’s how my brain operates. I didn’t know that … I just thought that was the inspiration or something. But the other day I was looking for my husband and I just couldn’t figure out where he was. And so Haddaway’s “Where did you go, my lovely?” It actually plays in my head. And so all of that that I’m doing in terms of creation and whatnot is literally the sound effects of pop culture people that come into my head, that I’m like, this tone, this note. Words are actually noted to me. So it’s really, really cool to now understand that it’s not just like, “Oh, that’s an imaginary thought of what this is.” I literally hear it in my head.

Mark Richardson:

Well that explains to me a lot more how it’s kind of flows so easily for you as a writer, content organizer, publisher, SEO optimizer. For me, those are the types of things that I would spin out for half an hour on, where … what’s the perfect gif? Whereas for you, it’s like you’ve already heard that track in your head. So you’re like, “I know which Kardashian moment to go to. Boom.”

Jen Friel:

It’s so true. But it’s fun because I keep pushing myself with it, that now I’m aware of these, and it really is a superpower, truly. It’s now I get to be aware of it and go, “Oh, this’ll be fun to play around with.” So it’s been really … it’s been a weird couple of months, but it’s been really awesome too.

Adam Kerpelman:

When you first mentioned that to us, before we started recording, it was entirely unsurprising to me. And the reason, sort of to what Mark was saying, at the time that all of us were first hanging out together, Mark and I were back in the office going, “Okay, if this is the future of blogging and this kind of stuff, let’s start trying to figure out how to use it, and how to deploy it for customers and clients.” And we couldn’t do it. I mean, not in the same way that you did. I think it pushed us toward stylistic choices that are now … that do kind of align with modern blogging and more conversational ways of talking about stuff, but the magnetism of your feed, and the sort of … where you put the videos and the gifs and how it fits and all that stuff, was just the thing that we were sort of like, “Okay, this isn’t …” there’s sort of what I think at the time we would’ve called the artistry side, and sort of going, “Okay, it’s a thing that’s not … can’t teach it in a writing class.” So then when you say it’s actually a superpower-

Jen Friel:

But it really is. But I didn’t know at first. And that’s why I didn’t even call myself a writer when I first launched Talk Nerdy, because what I was doing, I knew was different, and I was seeing numbers increase. So I’m such a numbers person. So I’m like, “Well, why would I try and be like everybody else? Clearly this is working for me. So let me just explore what that looks like.” And now it’s just expanded and grown into … Even when I was just optimizing the new site for Talk Nerdy, the guy who was helping me with the back end was like, “Oh yeah, we have to turn your gifs into little videos.” And so you would have to press play on each one, because Google says that you can’t do that. And I was like, “Well, we’re going to come up with a different way to do this because that’s one of the non-negotiables that-

Adam Kerpelman:

Right.

Jen Friel:

… I can’t not have it. I don’t want the user experience to go down. There’s got to be an alternative, and we wound up finding it. But yeah, that was a complete non-negotiable, that this has to be a feature on here, because it really … All of those gifs, gifs, however, anybody wants to pronounce it, they are all a … they’re a note. And that’s why I start with maestro. Because there’s always a song that I can hear in my head as I’m doing it. And so typically the song goes with the flow of the writing, too.

Adam Kerpelman:

You were also one of the first people that really, I felt, materially cared about your Alexa ranking for the URL and stuff. But the reason you even came and said, “I need your wifi right now,” you’re like, “I have to post immediately, or else numbers start to decline relative to this thing and this thing and this thing.” You listed off a bunch of stuff. And it was just sort of like, “Okay, Jen is in the same …” this is at the same time for me and Mark. We were back in the office, reading blog posts by Rand Fishkin and stuff about SEO, and this emerging … SEO wasn’t really a thing yet. We were still right at the edge of, that those rankings even existed and you could-

Mark Richardson:

And you were able to get away with a ton of shit-

Adam Kerpelman:

… watch them. Yeah, and then what you did, you could see the results of what you were doing, post to post, in almost real-time.

Jen Friel:

That’s what was so wild. And that’s, to me, what was really cool, was being able, because then I was like, “Well, if I’m talking about something on Ustream or if I’m …” because I always called it live blogging, live to update. I called it lifecasting. Because I didn’t want to … The word blog was considered derogatory. If you called yourself a blogger, that was like, “Oh, that’s kind of trashy.” It was considered very gossipy and very … it wasn’t considered art. It was considered a four-letter word of a different kind. And so it was really interesting to very specifically … It’s kind of what I feel like the word influencer is now. The word influencer is kind that same, ew, utterly full of yourself, and influencer’s going through its own blogger disparaging, if you will.

Mark Richardson:

I mean, to push back on that a little bit, it’s a bad word until you realize you can get free shit for being a blogger. What I realized very quickly was I think I paid for two concerts before movies, music, mayhem. I was able to just push that URL, push that business card or whatever to the promoter. And they’re like, “Oh sure. We’ll put you on the list.” From now on, it was free concerts just for writing an article. And you know, it’s like … that’s what your life casting, attention hacking sort of mentality has been for these big events.

Jen Friel:

Well, it worked. It started with crashing the Grammys though, that I was like, “Oh, okay, well if there’s a will there’s a way,” but also that’s synesthesia I have to give credit to, because I can feel time. So I can feel when we need to leave for certain things. For example, for my dad’s 60th birthday, we did a rerun of it. So we did it last year, and because we weren’t able to go on this cruise we were all going to go on together. It was a seven-hour drive. I didn’t know I had a half-hour window, because we were surprising him in Sedona. And I said to Jeff, my husband, I was like, we were at the rest … First of all, I said, “I’m driving,” which I never drive. I was going to drive like a bat out of hell because I just wanted to surprise him before they went to this dinner, and I had the details of their hotel and I had the points of an Italian restaurant. I didn’t know which Italian restaurant. And I knew kind of about the time that they would go to dinner.

Jen Friel:

So I didn’t realize this, but I wound up having a 15-minute window, and I got them within the 15 minutes. If we were a little bit before or a little bit after, if we’d stayed longer at that rest stop or getting gas, we wouldn’t have been able to make it, and I could feel it. And I said to him, I was like, “Get in the car. We need to go.” And he’s like, “Okay, okay. Let’s just …” because he knows when I’m in a … when I go into a specific zone. I don’t know if it’s necessarily flowing, but when I’m in tune to synesthesia or in … which technically it’s always there, but when I’m actually accessing it, I can just very much feel that this is the time that we need to be there. And it’s right now. So that’s what I did with the Grammys. I had no connection. I had no clue. Twitter and Ustream, Diet Coke, and found Pete Cashmore within 10 minutes of him getting on the red carpet. That, to me, is the impressive part. Not crashing the Grammys, finding Pete Cashmore within 10 minutes. That’s the coolest thing ever. Who finds the person that they’re there to crash for?

Mark Richardson:

Do you remember what the hook was? Do you remember what the first thing you said when you found him?

Jen Friel:

Oh, I recognized you by your jawline. Because I did. So I walked up to him and I was like, I just blurted it out. Because I was hiding in where Access Hollywood was. So they at first were about to kick me off, and because they’re like, because I’m taking pictures on Ustream, very much broadcasting. This is everything that I’m doing. And so the guy then comes up to me and goes, “Ma’am, there’s no amateur photography.” So I think I’m getting kicked out, and I’m like, “Oh shit.” And then he just kind of tucks me back a little, and I was like, “Oh wait, I can stay here. I just need to make friends temporarily.” So I did. And then it was like in a movie, Pete just walks out with the founder of Tumblr, and I just beeline for him, because it’s the red carpet. So there’s people everywhere. And where the cameras were were a bit further down.

Jen Friel:

So it wasn’t like I was beelining across Britney Spears or anything like that. It was Mike the Situation, and Chester from Linkin Park. I was standing next to-

Mark Richardson:

Oh, RIP.

Jen Friel:

… I know. RIP Chester. Then, but I saw Pete Cashmore walk up and I blurted out, “Hi, I’m Jen Friel. I recognized you by your jawline.” And he was so freaked out by me, I’m surprised I didn’t get some sort of notice of a restraining order. I started a daily tweet to Pete where it was all these corny pickup lines that were like, “Hey Pete, is that your dog going into that abandoned motel?” So now imagine months of getting those tweets, and then I actually say, “I’m going to meet you on the Grammy red carpet.” And then I actually do, and he was really cool. He is like, “Do you want a picture?” I was like, “Okay,” totally having an out of body moment. But it was great, because that taught me that where there’s a will, there’s a way. So that anything I truly set my mind to, and this was 10 years before I knew, got diagnosed with synesthesia, but I knew that anything I could set my mind to, I could do. And then that got the attention of Ford, and then that changed my entire life.

Adam Kerpelman:

That had just happened when we met, the Ford Fiesta.

Jen Friel:

Yep. I got a car and a gas card from Ford. So I took it basically like reality bite style, where it was kind of like, “Hey, well what can I get with this?” Not necessarily taking the cash out from the gas card, because that would be very illegal, but I wound up moving into the car, and then just had beef … ate a lot of beef jerky and Powerade, and then got sponsorships for both, technically from Skinny Water, and then just went on an adventure, because I had a car and a gas card. So I was like, “Well, I can go anywhere in the continental United States. So where do I want to go? And what am I going to do?”

Adam Kerpelman:

So a thread that I’m interested in pulling is just the idea of your experience recently, in terms of the diagnosis and synesthesia and all that kind of stuff. The idea of that being acknowledged by the broader world as a spectrum situation, it’s a super exciting thing. And then I think of my own, of things in my own life that are sort of … I can’t describe any other way as, “Hey, this is a thing that happens for me. I’ve realized it sort of doesn’t happen for other people.” It’s not as extreme as the stuff that you’re describing. But when I see asymmetry on a website, I don’t know how to explain it to people other than my tongue itches. And so I’m good at design, and it’s sort of like, well, what of that is learned? And what is the stuff that I don’t know how to explain, which is that I go to my designers sometimes and I go, “Can you not see that that’s three pixels off center? You’re a professional designer.” And they’re like, “Oh no, I didn’t see it.” And they fix it. And then I’m like, “Okay, okay. My ears don’t itch anymore. We can publish this thing.”

Mark Richardson:

Things that happen reflexively for you, you assume either I’m the outlier or everybody’s experiencing this. Right?

Jen Friel:

Well, and it’s hard because I just got diagnosed with being autistic as well, and so … which made me really angry, that I’m like … I’ve had seizures, I’ve had fainting spells. I’ve had a lot of the physical … I get these jolts in my body periodically from senses, sensory overload and whatnot. And so I’m 37 years old and I have been through so many different mental health doctors and hospitals and all these different things, trying to be like, “I’m different, I’m different. There’s something off. What is this feeling?” So I got really angry at the diagnosis, because I started to discover that, especially in boys, the tests, the way that they’re done currently, are only measured for boys, and boys mask very differently than girls. So I hyper-excelled at everything. So I started typing at two. I was talking at 18 months like a four year old, and I finished high school at 16 with honors.

Jen Friel:

I can see pathways of efficiency to getting things done like it’s air. It’s just something that I breathe, and I’m really, really good at it. And so that made me really frustrated, that I’m like, “Wait, these things are so outdated.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me, that none of this …” You have a seizure and your MRI comes back as unremarkable, which is their terminology. And I’m like, “No, this is very remarkable. There’s something wrong.” You’re telling me no. And I’m like, “There’s something very wrong.” So I’ve yelled at so many different doctors and people over the years, going, “This doesn’t make any sense.” And then I get this diagnosis and I’m like, “Oh my God, this explains everything.”

Jen Friel:

So I’m just so excited to … it’s my passion right now. It’s just helping people understand what this looks like in females. Even what synesthesia is. I had no idea that that was even a word, and just assisting people to understand through my own experiences; now that I’m not angry about it and frustrated and taking it out on the engineering of rebuilding the site. But yeah, now it’s just … it gets to be fun because I’m just at a really cool place with it. And it is. Both are superpowers. So superpower in terms of intelligence and superpower in terms of visuals. So it’s pretty great.

Mark Richardson:

I was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, I think eight years old put on Ritalin. And I feel like that acronym is incorrect because it’s not a deficit. It’s not attention deficit hyperactivity. It’s attention overload. And really learning, after getting off of much medication, I’ve learned how to harness it and use it as a superpower, rather than feeling overwhelmed by the different talk tracks or voices or options. The overload, really learning to find which one of those I can hone in on. And then when that time window is done, it’s not grinding it, not going overboard trying to finish whatever project or line of thinking you’re trying to focus on.

Adam Kerpelman:

Or it feels like at this point that we should, on some level acknowledge that we’ve been lucky to be in a space, marketing, art, creation, where the rest of the world is now getting to experience because of remote work, certain levels of freedom that I think artists and creators can get away with. Because it’s okay to just … I never even questioned that I’ve worked with producers over the years who some of the best and most reliable people are I’ve ever worked with, but you’ll give them a task, and they will appear to just be walking around the production lot smoking cigarettes for a week and a half. And then they will not sleep for three days and deliver the best thing you’ve ever gotten. And it’s like, “Look, I’m going to hire this person for this job, but everyone involved, you should understand, here’s how he operates. He’ll deliver. He always has. I know he will.” And in the art and kind of marketing context, you’re way more likely to have a team that goes, “Okay. Yeah, that’s fine. Oh, he’s one of those. Okay.”

Jen Friel:

Yeah. It’s results-driven. It’s results-driven and it’s not … and everybody, I think that’s what’s so beautiful about art in general. And I use that in terms of music, in terms of design, in terms of … I view everything I do as an engineer in terms of tech, I view that as artistry. Because I have to come up with, okay, again, these are the non-negotiables, here’s what I need to get to, how am I going to very creatively get to that solution? So yeah, we’re totally blessed, but it’s knowing yourself too. We have to tune our own instruments. I mean that literally for me. I have to exercise. I have to spin. I play my dead for 12 years grandmother’s solitaire game, is my new thing right now, to help me with stemming with autism, because it’s really great, because it’s from the early 2000s. And so probably even late ’90s.

Jen Friel:

And so there’s no … it’s not programmed to be addictive. It’s programmed really shoddily, but I enjoy that because it’s weird and it’s different from what I’m used to now. So I get lost in that thing. And then I’ll lift my head up hours later, hours, mind you, playing solitaire on one of those handheld devices, and I’ll have worked through something that I didn’t even know I was processing. I’ll come out of it and go, “Oh my goodness, this is what …” and I shoot up from the couch and Jeff just looks over and he’s like, “Are you okay?” And I’m like, “I just solved something. This is so awesome. This is my solution for this or this.” Because sometimes my monkey brain goes on that hamster wheel. And so if I give myself something physical to do, whether it’s playing the solitaire game or being on a spin bike that I’m exerting all this energy into, that I’m not going anywhere, it really helps me work out whatever those kinks are, and be more productive overall, and happy and healthier too, for sure.

Adam Kerpelman:

And my hope for remote work is that that will expose a lot more people to that sort of flexibility because once we adapt to outcome-driven stuff, then there’s room for that idea of, “Oh, it’s not a 9:00 to 5:00. This person’s hours are different from mine in the other way, and doesn’t matter, because that’s sort of their process.

Jen Friel:

I think, especially with people with autism, they have … you can work with your therapist on this and you can come up with a sheet that you present to people that you work with. Hey, I’m really so thankful for this opportunity. These are just things that I need. And this is the clear communication that I have with you of, “Hey, I work best actually between these hours,” or “I can’t tell you what hours I work, but I will deliver, and I need a quieter space, so working from home might be better for me.” All those factors then become so liberating through diagnosis because now I can attach words to it and really understand what my conditions are, which makes everybody involved so much happier. After all, they see the results, and everybody ends up winning.

Mark Richardson:

Yeah. I think it’s always better to have a team member who’s happy in their own body. You know what I mean? So being able to advocate for yourself might feel like a risk. It might feel like you’re kind of going into the void, or asking for too much, when essentially you’re just literally saying, “This is what I need. I’m just being in the fullness of myself. And the most productive version of myself will excel when these terms are met, because I’m attuned to that truth in my own body.”

Jen Friel:

Absolutely.

Adam Kerpelman:

The challenge I think in modern work culture that I’m exposed to now as, functionally a middle manager, is it’s really hard to first, understand yourself on that level, but then also to feel confident enough to bring it forward and say, “Hey, here’s how I work. It might sound weird to you.” And so my hope with even talking about this as openly as you do, and as I try to facilitate here, is that this is part of it, acknowledging that part, so you can normalize the things, so people can feel more comfortable bringing that forward. But in the meantime, it’s a thing that I lean on really hard as a manager, which is trying to make my team feel comfortable with that aspect of, “Hey look, we’re remote. Work weird if you want. I don’t care. Just deliver the stuff that we’ve agreed you’ll deliver.”

Jen Friel:

And I’m sure your team respects you for that, too. Because at the end of the day, you’re encouraging them and supportive of them. Because obviously you have your goals that you have to meet, and your end goals. But that to me is just, well obviously it speaks volumes of your character as well, because if you go to an employer or a client, however you want to quantify that person that’s cutting your checks, if you go … or an investor even, but investors would be a bit more, less day to day, depending upon your situation, actually I should say.

Jen Friel:

But if you’re going to someone and saying, “Hey, these are what I need for myself to be able to do this job,” and they come back and say, “Okay,” they redline it, “Well, these are my needs, and do this,” it’s like, “No, no, no, this isn’t that. This is literally me saying to you, ‘I put pants on today or I didn’t put pants on today, but this is what I was able to do.'” And it shows … it’s a test of respect in people. And so if someone can’t respect what those conditions are for you early on, it’s probably not going to be a good fit for you anyway. And for them. And that just is what it is. But I think having the courage to say, “These are my needs,” and these are literally your non-negotiables to be able to function as in your role, yeah. But that’s what makes you so awesome is the fact that you already know that, and are already supporting people that way.

Adam Kerpelman:

I try at least. I don’t know, ask Mark. He works for me.

Mark Richardson:

There was a great … oh, here it is. Dan … or our producer. I don’t know if he’s on … he’s not on right now, but had a great comment on our Slack; feedback is important but scary to give live. And then Dan goes, “Agreed. Fortunately, our small team is real with each other.”

Jen Friel:

So rare.

Adam Kerpelman:

And my answer to that was just like, “Yeah, being any other way is too much work.” I don’t have the energy for that layer of politics anymore. That said, that conversation started because I turned on a chat bot that’s for anonymous feedback, and it was sort of like, I also get why that needs to exist.

Jen Friel:

For sure.

Adam Kerpelman:

It’s in my personality to bring stuff forward with authority. I don’t mind picking those fights, but I completely understand why people don’t want to. I have panic attacks over it sometimes, but it’s like, I’m also good at it.

Mark Richardson:

Especially being, when we’re being integrated into a massive multinational organization, coming from a 25 person startup. A lot of … I think our tendencies are to try to operate in the mode of a scrappy startup, but then that … the paranoia, the teacher, the red pen, whatever you want to call it, comes in internally. And we enforce it and say, “Oh, can I have that crazy idea? Because we’re now in a public company.”

Adam Kerpelman:

That’s unprofessional.

Mark Richardson:

Yeah. That’s unprofessional-

Adam Kerpelman:

Yeah.

Mark Richardson:

… or that’s unseemly.

Jen Friel:

But I think what’s so exciting about this time right now, too, is the transparency around … first, it’s just transparency. Really at the end of the day. But even transparency around people have with salaries and whatnot, and the conversations coming from it of like, “Hey.” I know Buzzfeed does a bunch of really great threads and whatnot. Typically they get them from Reddit or their own community, I should say. But basically, they put these questions out there, and a lot of them around salary I read a lot, and it’s just totally eye-opening to learn what some people make and whatnot. And it just helps better inform you in terms of, “Hey, would something like this meet my bottom lines?” That’s similar to what an anonymous chatbot does. It’s that transparency of being able to have these conversations and understand where people are at. And I’ve never heard of anything like this before. I’m really excited about this transparency in the workplace, across the board.

Adam Kerpelman:

Like everything else we’ve talked about, it’s certainly an interesting time to be alive. Interesting seeing what resistance does emerge, and it’s weird being … I’m 40 now, and the narrative around millennials is still that we’re weird and squishy, and it’s like, “No, we’re just weird and squishy by Mad Men standards, post-war, dead inside, shell shock-ness.” But I think what we’re actually doing here is building a workspace where everyone is fundamentally more happy and more themselves, and doesn’t burn out in the same way. Or maybe they do, but they go to a new thing every three years. That’s the thing I’ve bumped into a lot is people say, “Well, I see you haven’t stayed in a position for more than three years.” Sort of like, “Yeah, that’s what all my peers are doing too.” Because as soon as it sucks, we’re out.

Jen Friel:

The corporate ladder is gone-

Adam Kerpelman:

Go get another thing.

Jen Friel:

… yeah, or building, or having the availability to build your own thing and be your boss. And I had hopes for the gig economy that that would help many other people explore that entrepreneurial side within themselves. Obviously that, history will maybe tell a different story. Still, it’s really … it made, as you were saying earlier about people in terms of working from home and developing their own vibe and whatnot, I think that’s going to happen professionally as well now, too, which we’re already seeing, that people can, because they know at any given moment, “Hey, I can drive for Uber,” they’re willing to take more risks than they would before potentially. Now the risk is Uber might not pay you as much as what gas prices are, but you might not … might be a little lopsided in terms of your compensation, but at least it’s allowing people to be spoonfed what those changes in reality are. There is no corporate ladder. That’s long gone. So now what?

Mark Richardson:

With what you were saying about … the kind of blog is a bad word, influencer is a bad word. It’s funny how everything starts out on the margins and then moves into the mainstream. And we know that’s how … you know that TikTok is an effective way to hack the attention real estate, because it’s this big topic, because people have their hackles up about it, and how much time kids are spending there. That’s how we know, as ad men, yes, this is a place where brands should be if they want to get their name out.

Jen Friel:

Well, the question for you guys on that. So I have trouble … so I’m working on this project now that I’m very excited about, with the true stories from Talk Nerdy, doing it like an anthology series. It’s animated, which is really cool. And I’m working with a designer who has synesthesia as well. So it’s the coolest thing, but I had never been a TikToker, and now I have to get on TikTok. That’s part of the conditions of this project. When I go on TikTok, I can only watch it for a couple of minutes before I feel like I get heart palpitations. TikTok does something to me in terms of attention and on a sensory level that I’m like … I put the phone down and I have to take a bath. Because that helps me reset my system. I have a robust sensory response to TikTok, and I’ve never had this with a social media platform before. I’m curious to see if you guys feel anything.

Mark Richardson:

Yeah, I could say yes, but I don’t have the specific terminology to identify that. I feel like there’s certain content creators there; they’ll feel like a huddle puddle, friendly, and never want to leave the jacuzzi. You know what I mean? It feels … like there’s this one guy, your pal Austin, he clowns on MAGA a lot, and he’s got this little hipster mustache and a mullet, and he’s just super funny, and he does these corny little songs. And when I’m watching his channel, it’s like, “Yeah, I’m here with one of my buddies,” but then there’s other stuff, even this dude who is like … he’s kind of a Buddhist, focus your mind, here’s what’s going on in the world. And he’s just very precious about it. And I believe his intentions are pure, but something about it feels like you’re sitting in a therapist’s chair or on a couch. You scroll into that video, and suddenly you’re like, “Whoa, now I’m in this intimate one on one with a doctor.” And I don’t think it’s the vibe he intends to set, but that actually kind of unsettles me. So I don’t know. I think I’m half and half. I’ll answer 50/50.

Adam Kerpelman:

Yeah. So it won’t surprise you that I have a lot of thoughts on this. I’m deep in TikTok. It’s super interesting on a lot of fronts. The way I usually start in terms of when I ask somebody about their own interaction with TikTok, maybe this is a way in, is to ask them if they spend more time on the Following tab or the For You tab.

Jen Friel:

Oh, interesting. Okay.

Adam Kerpelman:

Because I’ve noticed an even split, which is interesting, and I don’t know which sort of curation behavior it is. I don’t … I follow people only so the For You algorithm will know to favor them a little bit more, but I love the For You page, and I can get lost for hours in just sort of scrolling quickly past anything I don’t want to see, and then sticking around for the stuff that I do want to see. And the do want to see part, because that For You page is all fed by that behavior out of everyone, they are, with every action you take, sort of guiding your personal algorithm towards stuff they think you’ll like. And so within a couple days of hanging out on TikTok … I’ve started new accounts to see if this happens over and over again. And it does. Almost every single time, I end up with a steady feed of standup comedy, like absurdist, Monty Python type humor, and then just thirst traps, because that’s probably what happens to most men, I would imagine. But I don’t find it overwhelming, but there’s a training to it. They trained me really quickly to, anytime I do find it overwhelming or sad or sort of whatever, I just swipe past it immediately to the next thing.

Jen Friel:

Got it. So I just need to spend a solid afternoon on it. Because I’ve been doing some … I even watched the TikToks on YouTube, because I’m trying to understand … because I view things as a formula, so I’m like, “Okay, well what’s the formula?” And then, “Okay, what do I like about this content creator? Okay, let me break this down.” I have to break stuff down, and I can do it really easily. And so that’s a good point. So okay. So I’m going to commit to following certain individuals that I know that I like. Now, do you base it … do you like to follow your friends as well? Or is it just strictly-

Adam Kerpelman:

No.

Jen Friel:

… content-driven?

Adam Kerpelman:

Yeah.

Jen Friel:

Okay. Got it.

Mark Richardson:

Hey, I mean you follow me. [inaudible 00:34:16] and I follow each other.

Adam Kerpelman:

Yeah, I mean I do follow friends, but I keep it mostly content-oriented. Again, because of the For You page. So even if I did follow a friend, it would sort of favor them in the algorithm, but it’s not like I would see them all the time. Now you can go to the Following tab and just see the people you follow, which sometimes I do, if I’m sort of like, “Okay.” Like if somebody’s recently died, and I know there’s just going to be a … When Tom Petty died, I was like, “You know what? Social media is going to be a sad place for a week. I’m staying away from all the places.” That’s an example of a time where, if I wanted to go TikTok, I would probably deliberately go to the Following page. It would be like, “Okay, I know I’m not going to catch any news hits. I know I will not catch any unsolicited TMZ shitty takes on how he OD’ed or whatever.” Stuff like that.

Adam Kerpelman:

But it is for sure, and this is a broader one that I think is just short-form video. TikTok is Vine, but it works. Vine was the right idea, that short-form video has a place-

Jen Friel:

Oh for sure.

Adam Kerpelman:

… in the media landscape. TikTok just found a way to do it where they make sure I only see the short term video that I like. So it’s like heroin. It’s so … I mean, I have to be very aware of my own … I have to set … I have the opposite of your experience. I have to set a timer and go, “Okay, when this goes off, I’m going to stop.” Because I get totally lost, and it’s content. So it’s the part of my brain that creates stuff, and that does the marketing and stuff. My team probably knows when I’m on TikTok in the evening, because I send them links in Slack that are just like, “Okay, the construct of this one is this.” And it’s like the stuff that you described. That’s why I like talking to you about this stuff, Jen. Because on some level we’re thinking the same way. Eventually I’m going, “Okay, this is magnetic. We could use it for our brand. Let’s start to dissect it, so we can figure out how to exist on this new channel.”

Jen Friel:

For sure. Yeah. I’ve been pulling so much inspiration, but it’s just so … it’s really wild, because I was on Prodigy when 400,000 people were on Prodigy. I was on AOL. This, TikTok is the first one … I was never into Snapchat. And then I-

Mark Richardson:

Me neither.

Jen Friel:

… yeah, and then I dated someone who very much affirms, that you are the douchiest of douchebags. One of the worst dates that I had, but I was like, “This is only reaffirming why I will not use your platform.” Yeah. TikTok for me, is so exciting because I get this newness with it, and it’s been out for a bit. And again, now that I’m understanding certain sensory stuff, I just wear my orange glasses sometimes when viewing it, all these little quirks that I know that just make certain things helpful for me, but I’ve just never been in this boat. And that to me is so exciting, because it’s like, “This is new. This is different.” It’s not Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, which have now been around all equally for a very long time. Now it’s exciting because it’s, for me, something new, and that hasn’t happened in a while. I feel like a social media virgin. I’m getting touched for the very first time.

Mark Richardson:

And there’s our cold open.

Adam Kerpelman:

Yeah, right. Well, and then there’s the forever funny aspect of all of this stuff, where I’ll be down that rabbit hole sitting in the living room, something, and my wife will be like, “You’ve been on TikTok for an hour,” and I’m like, “Yeah, I know. I’m watching the timer. But also it’s kind for work.” Right?

Jen Friel:

Wait, you physically have a timer. You’re not kidding. There is an actual timer?

Adam Kerpelman:

Oh, yes.

Mark Richardson:

No, he’s got a set of guardrails for sure. Oh yeah.

Adam Kerpelman:

And it’s replaced. This is the interesting thing that causes … that’s causing … This is why so much buzz around TikTok. It’s starting to cannibalize YouTube, and even broadcast TV. People will sit down and just do TikTok for an hour, where they would instead have watched Lost or whatever.

Mark Richardson:

I mean, but it’s also apparently-

Adam Kerpelman:

That’s a dated reference.

Mark Richardson:

… kind of like a trailer machine too, if you want. And this goes to the strategy marketing aspect of this podcast, is like, you can use it to entertain, to educate, to ask questions, deliver news, to dispel misinformation. You know what I mean? The short form format that they’ve kind of mastered is just a gold mine for teasing out a larger concept. If you want to send somebody to YouTube, start them on TikTok, get people thinking about the conversation. And then by giving those cookie crumbs, you’re leading them down into maybe a 45-minute video or a podcast discussion. Maybe they end up subscribing to you or becoming a patron. I mean, I think the sort of dot connecting from the medium is compelling in a way that Facebook and Twitter didn’t get, because they were text-based mediums. Whereas TikTok is purely visual and audio.

Adam Kerpelman:

The other fun thing I’ll call out on TikTok, because of its origin, as of music, Musical.ly is what it was originally. So it was mostly people lip syncing and dancing. It’s also built in random aspects of culture and of creative constructs and stuff, but also other interesting discovery things. So sometimes you bump into an audio meme that people are doing, and you click on the sound. And then have the sound not change, but what people are doing to it-

Mark Richardson:

Yeah.

Adam Kerpelman:

… keep changing-

Jen Friel:

Really well done.

Adam Kerpelman:

… which turns into thing of like, okay, I don’t have to rethink the audio part of this component every time, but then it’s just people’s takes on whatever that thing is, over and over again. And if it’s really taken off as a meme or a challenge or something, I’ll spend an hour sometimes just listening to the same 60 second sound play over and over again, seeing other people’s interpretations. Which is, again, a totally new thing.

Jen Friel:

I just saw a meme the other day that said Milli Vanilli being so angry at social media. They’re like, “We got famous for lip syncing first.”

Adam Kerpelman:

Yeah, I think … so maybe a place to start to wrap it up, to bring it back to the business focus and stuff, I’m curious your thoughts on … One of my running obsessions that intersects with all this stuff is, in this remote world of trying to scale more remote organization, and really make remote work for your company, how do you do culture? Because you can’t have the same Friday pizza party where everybody’s involved, because it’s “Hey, pizza’s in the conference room and we’re all in the same office.” I know from being part of other online communities that it’s doable. I have all kinds of friends that are digital first friends, out there in different communities. I just have never … I can’t figure out how to get it to work at work.

Jen Friel:

What if you had … you were talking about using Slack earlier, what if you started a Slack channel, for example, I’m a huge animal lover, massive, massive, huge animal lover, where it just posts … it’s strictly irreverent, if you will, but you can basically just have people post funny animal content in this one. You know what I mean? Come up with curated Slack channels based on things that you think your company can relate to. So it could be ridiculous, not necessarily fails, but maybe. People falling down is always funny. But yeah, something like that, that you kind of … And especially as a manager, I feel like you have to lead it and just keep the content going, but find some pieces and curate it, and just keep that content going. Because especially if you’re a creative, you might not want to be focused on this work thing, but you can go to this other channel on Slack, on the company Slack where that has inspired ideas or something like that. You know what I mean? Just come up with something non-work related that you guys can bond on and experience with, but it’s all user-generated content, and you can kind of vibe from each other’s flow off of that.

Adam Kerpelman:

Yeah. I think you hit the main thing, which is the leadership buy-in part.

Jen Friel:

Yeah.

Adam Kerpelman:

Managers taking part in the silliness is an important part of making everyone else feel like that can coexist with what we think of as professional.

Jen Friel:

Oh absolutely.

Adam Kerpelman:

The thing I think that’s interesting, that again, I’m curious your thoughts on, is sort of like, to what extent … at what size do you get to the point that you need somebody whose job is just to be the Slack community manager? I mean, that would traditionally be HR kind of putting the events together and stuff, but I don’t feel like there’s a function for that. You see it in online communities, you have your moderators and stuff.

Jen Friel:

Oh, for sure. They’re huge.

Adam Kerpelman:

That perform that function. But then internally I find, at companies, it’s sort of just like Slack is handled by the comms team.

Jen Friel:

Yeah.

Adam Kerpelman:

And I usually get in there and go, “No, no, you need to get to that. You need the right person with the right skillset in the middle there running the thing.” And most of the comms department, they’re probably going to seem like a weirdo, and that’s the right person. I often think of you in that context, having, being at the center of talk to me [inaudible 00:43:17] nerdy, and pulling together a community that I can see coalesce around-

Jen Friel:

Oh yeah.

Adam Kerpelman:

… this sort of output, and your experiences and your take on everything, and also your engagement. I mean, you’re one of the first people that I saw going back and updating a blog post after it was up, with screenshots of interactions that you had with people in the comments. And it was like, this is a continuing story for a couple weeks after you put a post up.

Jen Friel:

I respond to everything. Now I’m excited on the new platform I can start to do that. Because it was, again, it was … even in the migration, I made sure. I was like, “No, these comments have to be preserved, because they’re just as much a part of the story,” and the input that comes with them and whatnot, and with the story. But yeah, it’s a great way to just … It’s really, at the end of the day, just acknowledgement. And I acknowledge everyone. When Talk Nerdy got bought by Bruckheimer and there was an announcement in Deadline, I had no idea. My agents didn’t even tell me. I mean, I knew it got bought, but I didn’t know it actually gets announced. I was a bit green in that capacity. I sat there, it was like 9:00 at night in Florida at the time. I sat there until 7:00 AM and responded to every … I’m not saying that’s necessarily healthy. I probably should have taken a nap, or gone to sleep and done it in the morning.

Mark Richardson:

A lot of adrenaline.

Jen Friel:

Huge, absolutely huge. And so I just stayed up and was responding to everybody, and that to me was just so … it was so great, and people that … obviously we’ve all known each other for 12 years, and obviously keep coming back to each other for a reason, that there’s a lot of commonalities with how we treat people and how we like to be treated. But I think that’s just everything, and having that awareness and attention, and letting people know that they’re being seen and heard. And whether that’s with five people in your company or 500, I don’t think that it’s a numbers thing. I think it’s technically a leadership thing in terms of corralling people and finding what those common interests are, and then running with it.

Mark Richardson:

Speaking of migration, I was curious, I noticed that you removed the word lover from the URL. Started as talknerdytomelover.com. And was that a result of the life rights purchase, or was that just a decision based on where you are in your current journey?

Jen Friel:

Yeah, so I know the guy who owned talknerdytome.com, so I didn’t own it. And so he was my neighbor, and back in … once it got popular, so this is in 2010, he messaged me and he’s like, “Hey, I’ll sell it to you for this rate.” And I was like, I literally was still with $10 to my name and couch surfing and all that. But he saw that it was getting really popular, and he did nothing with the domain. And so I told him, I was like, “I can’t afford this.” And he’s like, “Okay.” He’s like, “I’ll just keep waiting on it and waiting on it.” And so I didn’t buy it until last year. So I took the contract from Bruckheimer, and I reverse engineered how people purchased things. And so I didn’t own the trademarks at the time. So I then got all my trademarks. I got all of the IP. I own literally everything that I’ve ever created, for the first time in this journey.

Jen Friel:

And now even doing the migration from Squarespace was massively huge, because I’m on wordpress.org. So there’s nothing that can shut anything down with terms of service or anything like that. It is so cool, but that was part of it. So I still own talknerdytomelover, but I combine the domains just to have everything be in one clean package. Because when Bruckheimer bought it before, I didn’t own any of my stories from that … I owned from that point forth. But I didn’t own anything past. I could write a 7,500 … which is funny, that’s how many posts I had, word graphic novel, but I couldn’t do anything else with my stories. So I took all three of those entities, creating this new one under Talk Nerdy to Me, now that I got everything back.

Jen Friel:

And that’s what this is. It’s all of that reemerging, if you will, but with full ownership, which is awesome. And now I get to do these cool origin stories, where I’m updating aspects of things, or not, because I have all this really cool content of not knowing that I’m autistic, having these hilarious adventures as someone with autism who’s undiagnosed, and now getting to have the awareness of, oh yeah. That’s why this happened. So I made a bad mistake here, because I didn’t know that I’m not a good judge of character. So I have to do research. And all these things that I didn’t know that led to these incredible, insane, insane adventures.

Adam Kerpelman:

I would usually, this point, ask where people can find you, but we just spent 10 minutes talking about your URL in your website, but anywhere else in addition to Talk Nerdy to Me?

Jen Friel:

Yeah, you can go to talknerdytome.com. My name’s Jen Friel. It’s @jenfriel on Twitter, @-J-E-N-F-R-I-E-L, @talknerdytomelover on Instagram, and yeah. And facebook.com/jenfriel. And yeah. Thanks, you guys, so much for having me. This was really awesome.

Adam Kerpelman:

Yeah. Thanks for joining us.

Mark Richardson:

Thank you for joining us.

Adam Kerpelman:

Thanks to everyone for listening to another one of these.

Mark Richardson:

Check out her blogs. They’re awesome. talknerdytome.com.

Adam Kerpelman:

This has been the Data-Driven Marketer. I’m Adam.

Mark Richardson:

I’m Mark.

Jen Friel:

I’m Jen.

Adam Kerpelman:

Take it, easy everybody.

Mark Richardson:

Thanks for listening to the Data-Driven Marketer. Our show is produced by Jessica Jacobson and Dan Salcius. This episode was edited by Steve Kosh. The Data-Driven Marketer is sponsored by NetWise, a Dun & Bradstreet company. Any views or opinions expressed in this episode do not represent the views or opinions of NetWise or Dun & Bradstreet.