4 min read

Back in 2014-15, I was busy building and running a ticket marketplace called Tixers. A lot of the time, it was really in-the-weeds and miserable work.

Not only was it rough work, but there weren’t a lot of people I could talk to and relate over it. So it was during this time that I really became close to my friend, David.

David and I went to college together, and about the time I was getting started with Tixers he was dedicating most of his time to growing his business, Death to the Stock Photo.

We were in a similar spot – building an early stage company, often being lost and unsure and feeling pretty isolated. So we started hanging out more, and Taco Tuesdays became a regular part of our weeks.

The best part about Taco Tuesday with David is that we really didn’t even talk about our work most of the time. It was just cozy to know that this person across the table understood what we were going through, and we didn’t have to actually talk through the details to empathize and feel supported.

A lot has changed over the past few years – David kept growing Death to Stock while moving to Los Angeles, Tixers was acquired in 2015, I took a short stint at a healthcare startup in Columbus, and then I went back out on my own again in 2017. My first “gig” as a freelancer after quitting that job was helping David produce and launch his podcast, The First 4 Years.

I think he admitted this to me that he threw me a bone, knowing that as a first time freelancer just having a paying gig would mean a lot for me (it did). But he also told me at the time, “You’ll probably do a podcast some day so let’s just figure this out.”

He interviewed me on The First 4 Years about a year ago after I had been doing Unreal Collective for a few months. Then some months later, Eric and I started our podcast, upside, and David started working on the new format for his podcast, No Agenda.

Eric and I have started to find our stride and get some traction with upside, and a few weeks ago I chatted with David on No Agenda to talk about behind the scenes.

I love the format and idea behind his show. His thesis is we all see these amazing projects online by different creators, but really don’t know the behind-the-scenes, practical, nitty gritty detail behind what actually goes into creating these projects.

So he interviews them, has a very candid conversation with screen sharing and detailed questions about the thought process, tools, and plan for getting these projects started.

I’d love for you to check out No Agenda, and you can see my interview here. He’s a great interviewer and I feel like I’m more transparent with him than just about anyone else. So if you’re interested in creating media, you’ll probably get something from this conversation.

Click here to check out the interview or watch the video below.

The other, related point I wanted to drill into here is the value of support from your friends, peers, acquaintances, and more…

When friends or peers of mine find success in what seems like a short amount of time, I always can see support of people around them. People talking about their work, sharing their work, holding them up…

And it’s great, because it costs nothing. Especially if the work is good. I try to do this for people around me, because, again — it costs nothing. And people seem to know it…

…but I still don’t see many people default to support. We put so much work into using our influence and channels to hold ourselves up, and don’t use that space to help others.

But it’s almost always more meaningful when someone else brags about your work than you. I’ve heard an urban legend about Larry Page and Sergey Brin having a pact between the two of them that they’d never talk about their own achievements — but they’d relentlessly brag about one another.

I think it’s a good practice to use your influence and voice to support those around you that you believe in. And I can’t thank my friends and peers — people like David — for doing that for me. I hope you check out No Agenda and enjoy it as I have.