How this former intern launched her career through 100 days of creating

Adam Vazquez 00:07
Rachel Braun is the producer and correspondent for This Week in Startups, a weekly show hosted by technology entrepreneur Jason Calacanis. Rachel also leads operations for launch, which is a venture capital and private equity company headquartered in San Francisco. In addition to providing production and consulting services of her own. I first met Rachel and she was an investor at Dynamo ventures were previous guests. Santosh Sancar, is a founding partner. She’s an extremely talented marketer and producer who understands the new media landscape in a way few others do. During the episode, we discussed how Rachel’s career was formed by the various internships she held in and after college, how growing her own podcast informs her work now and the tactics and tools used to produce and grow a show of the caliber of This Week in Startups. I thoroughly enjoyed this episode and think you will too. We are Adam and Rachel let’s get into it.

Adam Vazquez 01:25
Alright, welcome back into content is for closers. I’m your host Adam Vasquez along with a guy Carlton referral. Carlton. Welcome to the show.

Carlton Riffel 01:31
Glad to be here. I think maybe

Adam Vazquez 01:36
20 minutes, Carlton. We had Rachel Braun on the show. We’ll get into her interview in just a second. And obviously she had a ton of TV if you don’t know Rachel she is we met her through Santosh Shankar, a dynamo. She’s done a ton of different things currently working now at inside comm with Jason Calacanis, and has done a bunch of different internships along the way. So Carlton for our our icebreaker, what do you have for us? I know it’s intern related.

Carlton Riffel 02:03
Yeah. So Adam, I know. I know roughly what you did for us and internships, but what what were some of your internship experiences? And tell us a little bit about your your path?

Adam Vazquez 02:16
Yeah, so lots of internships, and probably in a good way. But I feel like I could have maybe been a little more strategic with my internships. We talked a little bit about this, I think with Landon when during Landon Campbell’s episode, but I had my first internships were as like in churches, church interns, and I started doing those in high school, and then interned at a logistics supply chain and logistics company, which is weird because we work with supply supply chain companies now, but obviously didn’t go down that route. And then also interned at an agency and ad agency. That was my junior year of college. And then my, my last internship was at a retail company, just as a sales intern, essentially. And again, not something I probably used for the rest of my writing go into that field, but I think it did teach me some skills that have helped me in my career. What about you? What did the internship landscape look like?

Carlton Riffel 03:15
Yeah, so I, I didn’t do a ton of internships, I do a lot of volunteer stuff throughout college. And I probably should have done more. But my last semester, your for a major, we had to do an internship and I was actually an art major. So drawing, painting, stuff like that, but I did it with my brother in law, and he was illustrating the book of Revelation. So I was able to actually put some, some of my design skills to work for that I’m doing, basically just taking all that all those illustrations and then adapting them for an app. So we were making like a comic book and an app with it. So pretty early on, it got me. I got my feet wet with motion graphics stuff. And it was it was a good experience. But I went I went to school for art but I ended up doing more like motion graphics and design in right in that we called it an internship but some people now like to call it a fellowship, or Oh, yeah, it was last names had on ship and I just shipped

Adam Vazquez 04:18
I ship apprenticeship. Yeah, it wasn’t nearly as cool naming wise when we were doing that. Yeah, but I do feel like that’s residency. Yeah, there’s there’s a bunch of different ones. The connection I think, to today’s episode with your internship was isn’t that when you worked with Chris dem, topless or whatever. Who, for those of you who are listening Silicon Valley fans is Russ hanaman from from Silicon Valley that

Carlton Riffel 04:39
yeah, he was a producer on the project. So I talked a little bit but it wasn’t like working relationship as much as it was like, I think he was helping to find it and he knew the guy that was producing it. So okay, he did some voice acting for some of the test things that we did. We did kind of like a motion graphics test with the with the whole thing and So he did some voice acting for that as well. But yeah,

Adam Vazquez 05:03
yeah. Awesome voice actor. I’m probably a little bit obsessed with him too much. But yeah, I think in the intern ship trail someone can leave behind them is interesting to see when they end up in whatever career they end up in which which Rachel, we talked with Rachel about a little bit on the episode. But before we get to that interview, what have you heard this week, Carlton, that would help listeners out?

Carlton Riffel 05:25
Yeah, so I’m going to be a little bit of a self promoter this week and talk about a personal project of mine I’ve been working on for probably, well, I guess I started it last month, but I just did a kind of a quick one weekend build, I thought of the idea and thought, hey, I think this would be good for my personal use. And let’s see if I can build it. So basically, it’s called scramble. And the URL is scrambled dot land. And basically, it’s to help you make good choices every week. So there’s a lot of habits apps out there that try to remind you to do something every day. But there’s a lot of things that are on a list of somewhere for me that I’d like to have the option of doing. But I don’t necessarily have an incentive to pick a different thing each week. So what it does is just scrambles those picks one for you. Or if you want to just have a list and get a random choice from that list, you can do that too. So just a way of kind of scrambling some good things that I have on the list. So anything from what to eat at a restaurant to what dates to go on adventures, bike trails, I just load a bunch of stuff in there. And then you can choose to get it through email or you can choose to pick it right on the spot.

Adam Vazquez 06:36
Yeah, I love that. I love the idea behind it. When you when you told me about it, that you were making it, it was immediately I understood the to do part of it. But then what’s fun about this is like it’s not always something that you’d necessarily prioritize if it was just up to your own brain. And so I think yeah, the idea of like, you were given the example earlier, you put you load up the restaurant menu. And when it’s time to go to a restaurant, you have to order whatever you have to commit to it. Yeah, that’s great. I love that it makes you do something, something different and challenging.

Carlton Riffel 07:07
I was to some friends and we were talking about different themes we could have for it. We need like an eight ball theme. One that’s like dice theme. And maybe one that’s like your wife just telling you to do it theme

Adam Vazquez 07:20
to do list. Yeah. That’s there’s a I just listened to a podcast this weekend with two of my favorite NBA players of all time. Kyle Korver and JJ Reddick. And they talked about Kyle does this thing every year, very similar to what you’re describing, where he cannot prepare in advance. And he’s has to go on an adventure that he has a greater than 50% chance of failing that, I love it. And, and he, like they find out he and his buddy do this every year, they find out the week of or they decide that week of like, we’re gonna watch the Appalachian Trail or whatever. Yeah, it could be anything that they you can’t have like a greater than I think he said 10 or 25% chance of like dying, like, because they don’t. But they Yeah, so one time they paddle boarded across a channel out in California that was 32 miles or something like that, just to open water. So something like that, where you can survive, but it’s not easy. So it kind of your app reminds me of that incorporating that idea into you know, more frequently,

Carlton Riffel 08:21
it’s gonna be my next list things I have a percentage of dying doing. And whatever we

Adam Vazquez 08:29
might have you heard is going a little bit of a different route. So Rachel, we talked a lot about new media. We talked about how she’s built some some really good engagement and personal branding and company branding as well on a bunch of different apps that listen for that, but going the opposite contrasting with that. I have recently discovered newspapers.com. And the reason I discovered it is I was trying to do some research for a client of ours for an advertorial. We were writing and needed information about the trucking market in 1988, which is a very specific need. And so I tweeted at some of the people that I you know, Santosh, Craig Fuller, some others who are in the space. And Craig, who owns freightwaves. We talked to press in Holland last week, who works for Craig, he he sent me newspapers.com And I’m just like, there’s there’s no data from that era on this industry. But newspaper.com you can just look any search any topic any year, and it will give you every headline and then you can drill down into articles related to that topic. It’s unbelievable. So it’d be great

Carlton Riffel 09:37
for like copywriting too, if you Yeah, just scan through this, those headlines. And there’s some great that that era of advertising has just some phenomenal headlines, copywriting that that was kind of the main way that you did it. You couldn’t show it as much visually as you could write about it or make it clever.

Adam Vazquez 09:57
Yeah, it’s what I like to call pure advertising. Before you artists got perfect words, it really is a cool take to your point like you can look up campaigns, how brands communicated about certain things, a lot of really interesting thing. So anyway, if you haven’t heard of that, check out newspapers.com. But today we talk to Rachel about a bunch of more modern things she gets, she keeps us up to date. She’s a newer grad. She lets keeps us from getting old. And so I really enjoyed this episode. So without further ado, let’s get to Rachel Braun from inside All right, we’ve got Rachel Braun, who’s a producer with This Week in Startups she was is and was the chief meme officer at Dynamo ventures, and which is where I met you, Rachel, and I appreciate you coming on the show.

Rachel Braun 10:51
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. This is really cool.

Adam Vazquez 10:53
Of course. So we met probably, I don’t know, when did you start your your? What was it? It was

Rachel Braun 10:59
January of last year. But I think I met you a little bit before that.

Adam Vazquez 11:03
Yeah. So we get to work together a little bit on the future of supply chain, which is the the podcast for Dynamo ventures. And then you were able to leverage that experience everything you were doing there into your current role, which is producing This Week in Startups, which is connected somehow with with Jason Calacanis and his venture firm. Is that correct?

Rachel Braun 11:23
Yeah. So Jason Calacanis is the host, the creator, and everything like that. And I work with the branch This Week in Startups, which is this podcast, and that does come off of launch.

Adam Vazquez 11:33
Cool, cool. Yeah. So a lot to kind of get to, I think, obviously, on this show, we talk a lot about how to go about the process of content creation, and then what some of the direct business benefits could be from doing so. With with you, it’s a little different because your career in some ways has been built through and alongside your content creations, I think it’s gonna be a really interesting look for people who maybe are coming to it, and are trying to learn content now at a different stage in their career for to hear someone like you who you started, brawn and brains is that’s your show, right? Your first show. When you were at Penn State, right? We’ll talk a little bit like, why didn’t you start it? How did that come to be? And what is the show? To begin with?

Rachel Braun 12:16
Yeah, so I guess the first thing that made me really want to start the show is I’m definitely I’ve considered myself a creator at heart. So I do really think that there are some people who are consumers, some people that are creators, and you you could obviously both be both like I listen to podcasts, and I do listen to YouTube videos and things like that. But while I’m listening to them, I’m always like, what could I do to make like this video better, even though I’m not the one behind it? Or what could I do to like, create this in my own way. So I always knew that I really wanted to create something. But I always also kind of known that YouTube or blogging weren’t really the mediums for me. I’ve never really loved writing, I just didn’t really think that my words came across as well. And then with YouTube, it was a very visual aspect. And I although I thought that was interesting, I think that it did take away from some of the content that I did want to talk about, which was interview style shows. So podcasting was obviously the best medium for me. And it started off with just interviewing other students at Penn State and asking, How did you become like our mascot? How did you become the student body president? Or how did you start a startup while like managing your your class load? And that was really interesting. And then when the pandemic hit, I was like, oh, man, what do I want to do when I grow up and I started having really awesome conversations with people that were already pretty established in their career. And they were all across the board, because I honestly didn’t know what I want to do at all. So I was reaching out to people all across the board. And then it started getting to the point where I was having conversations with really cool people. So eventually, I just smooth that over and had them on the podcast, which resulted in having some cool guests on like, people that were NFL coaches or the the president of Cinnabon was previously on and things like that. So that was it’s been definitely a roller coaster, but it turned into something that was definitely been definitely a lot more impressive than just interviewing my friends and slopping it on a podcast I think.

Adam Vazquez 14:03
Yeah, but I think that’s a great story. I think that leads well to how content can kind of work a lot of times people begin to think of it too much as a transactional tool where I put out a sales benefit and then you buy something as a result of it right and like your your description your experience is much more a journey that you went on in order to help just explore different avenues play of potential you didn’t even know and then that led that turned into something much bigger which by the way is how we start I’ve shared this with you before but like that’s how our company kind of got off the ground. Yeah, one thing I have to touch on this isn’t super like exactly but how in the world and and what was it like interviewing one of my idols in life dig for a meal when you had him on the podcast I’m a huge Eagles fan having my whole life. Dick is like the what one of the biggest what ifs and Philadelphia Eagles history because he was a great coach, our owner at the time was a moron. So anyway, huge fan of debt must have been a fun experience for

Rachel Braun 15:04
oh, he’s just honestly, he’s the nicest guy. But honestly, he wasn’t one of the traditional ways I got a guest. So normally what I do is, I actually, even though I’m a creator wouldn’t consider myself to be a highly creative creator, which I think people misinterpret that if you are a creator, you have to be creative. You really don’t you just have to be consistent. In my case, I really found that like consistency, toppled over creativity. So I got to use a little creative juices, I had to create something really awesome because I was consistent. Like I didn’t have to be the the thinking of like the hottest trends because I was consistent. So I reached out that I documented on Twitter, actually, I did a challenge for myself, where I reached out to one person every day for 100 days. And if you’re just consistently keep reaching out to people, eventually someone’s going to say yes, so even, you only need one guest a week if you’re doing a weekly podcast. So even if six people said no or left me on read, you really only need one, you know what I mean? And I think people really misinterpret that I really like this analogy. But there’s this story about somebody creating a clay pot, and they’re teaching students right. And they say you can make like one really great pot and just really work on it, like take the time, or you can create 100 clay pots, and eventually come upon the best one like that, that final one could be the best. And the benefit of creating 100 Clay plots, clay pots is you’ve gotten to learn all those other things in that journey. And I really do find that podcasting for me it was like that. So kind of messing up along the way, and reaching out to 100 people and maybe getting like some pretty nasty replies back or getting ghosted or anything like that was kind of beneficial in the end. And that’s how I got my guests normally was, as I said, just creating a ton of clay pots and kind of like learning as I go like, which email format was the best? Or was email even the best way to reach out to people? Should I be reaching out to them on Twitter? Should I not even be cold messaging them at all? Should I see if we have a connection? Somehow, but with very honestly, he’s a family friend. I’ve known Nick for me for about two years now. Ben, it was house great, great family, his son went to Penn State. And DEC is a has a has a hunting lodge out there too. So he’s just he’s pretty integrated into the Penn State community. So that’s how I am Unfortunately, he’s not a cool story. No,

Adam Vazquez 17:15
I don’t think is unfortunate at all. Like I think that’s just again, I don’t like dig for meal probably has a lot of family friends like that, that didn’t think to take an opportunity to have them on his on their podcast. So I don’t think you need to be ashamed of that at all. But But yeah, I love your your analogy there and also the the test. So I want to dig into a little bit more. So you kind of like set up these rules, where you had to contact 100 People in 100 consecutive days, or just 100 people over time. It

Rachel Braun 17:43
was supposed to be consecutive, a Christmas Christmas stuff popped up. So ended up being more than 100. But originally was supposed to be Yeah.

Adam Vazquez 17:49
Okay. And how do you know like, how loosely how many of those you ended up at? You ended up interviewing?

Rachel Braun 17:56
Yeah. So I think it ended up actually. So I did get a lot of people back that responded. It wasn’t the response rate. But it was who was willing to come on a podcast, which was interesting. So I had a lot of people that I would reach out to and ask like, Hi, can you give me some advice about career wise Oh, and by the way, I have a podcast, I would love to hear it on the podcast. And I would say like, a lot 70%, which is I would think pretty high, people actually did respond. And some like pretty big people too, which was like, it was so cool. Twitter is definitely the best for that. I found Twitter to be like the best medium to get the responses. However, other people, especially in the industries that I was interested in, which would be like other podcasting people or people, for example, I reached out to somebody that worked at morning brew, obviously, their day is packed with like media already. So they were like we’re gonna pass on being on the podcast. But here’s kind of how I approached my career. So I only interviewed probably like, 30 people and how I didn’t even put all those episodes, because they were pretty repetitive. So probably, yeah, 30% of people I had up on the show or had the option of putting up on the show if I thought it was like a valuable episode. But yeah, I was really happy with the challenge. But at that point, too, I kind of made it by putting the challenge on Twitter, I think that helped a lot. Because I would say, Oh, I just DM like so. And so and I would tweet that out. So they’re kind of held accountable. And you know what I mean? So I think I think by doing that, too, also kind of helped with the response rate.

Adam Vazquez 19:19
Yeah, that’s great. Doing it publicly is great. And the even if you only did 30, I mean, first of all, 30% is a pretty high return when you consider they’re all cold. And then secondly, 30 episodes is more than half a year. So it’s not like I think people sometimes get confused when it comes to the content creation process and think like, I need to have this entire campaign built out. I need to have all these strategies behind it. And sometimes it’s just like, reach out to 100 people and whoever says yes, record with and then go from there. And I love that that was your process. So that sort of led you then to not not led you but the experiences that you gleaned from that helped you I would say when you were working at dynamo, part of your responsibilities were related to the podcast. And to the media side of, of what Santosh and the team they’re doing. And so then talk about how how you were able to leverage those interests into what you’re doing now with this weekend startups

Rachel Braun 20:11
for sure. So obviously, I reached out to 100 people in 101, in 100 days, that was very well documented on Twitter. And something that I did not do, actually, when I was in college, and I wish I did is start building my personal brand more. And maybe this is also something with people that are maybe a little later on in their careers, I cannot stress it enough how important it is to build a personal brand. And you just need to find out where in your industry that necessarily lies, for startups. And for a VC that happened to lie that happens to lie on Twitter and on medium. And I have either of those platforms set up. So when I graduated, I noticed pretty darn quickly that all the people that I really looked up to were on those social media accounts, including Santosh Sancar, who was a mentor of mine in college, still a mentor of mine today. And he’s a partner at Dynamo. And I actually tweeted out, I’d like how many job applications I send out versus how many responses back I got on Twitter. And from that, he messaged me and was like, hi, why don’t you come to the fellowship at Dynamo. So I think getting the job initially, there was super helpful. And we did talk about it prior and he was already a part of my network. So I don’t think like if I went to Santosh, I think he also would have proposed the same offer. But I think Twitter definitely helped put myself out there, you know what I mean, in that sense. And then, because I was reaching out, like I said to 100 people in 100 days, we do outbound to Dynamo we do outbound in any industry that you’re probably in, you’re probably having to reach out to somebody and a dynamo, especially in venture capital. That is a very big thing, reaching out to startup founders and things like that. So that helped help helped me a lot. And getting on calls with people that I’ve never met before, especially over zoom was something that I was already pretty comfortable with. So that part of the job was pretty well covered. And then moving on to social media and the podcast. So obviously, you know about the podcasts, their podcast rocks, and it was getting to the point where Santosh had a busy season, season of life. And there’s just a lot going on. So we let me write some of the questions down for some of the guests and kind of map out where the episodes could go. And that definitely triggered me to being like, oh my gosh, I really miss podcasting. Like I just find it so interesting to deep dive these people and with the role I was currently in not that I didn’t get to deep dive the startups. But I didn’t get to deep dive the founders on that personal sentence in which you do with like a podcast guest. So that was definitely a huge realization, it was an awesome opportunity that Santosh let me do. And then I ran their social media, which is just part of their fellowship, or was part of their fellowship. But since I’ve continued to take it over. And again, it’s one of those things with the clay pots where it’s just trial and error. And I just really love like, pushing out a bunch of tweets. And if none of them got likes, I’d take them down. And then if one of them got one person to comment, I would keep creating content like that, until I’m, until every tweet I saw would get engagement. And that’s kind of the process. I went with that. And the team really liked it. I really liked it. So I decided to stay on and run up run Twitter, and some of the other social media accounts as well.

Adam Vazquez 23:08
Cool. Couple questions on that. So I’m noticing a trend where you seem to document things publicly and yeah, and maybe hold people to the fire do or are people receptive to that like, Oh, yeah. Okay.

Rachel Braun 23:21
So I don’t know about cool with that. But I think for a long period of time, I like a lot of people I’m definitely in the middle between being a Gen Z, like I’m on cost. So my parents, for example, my sister is six years younger than me and like was posting tiktoks before was even called tick tock what it was called Alien. If I was her age, my parents would be like, Absolutely not like don’t put your face on the internet. And so now that I’m an adult, and I’m kind of looking at the younger generation, or like my sister who’s not even that much younger than me, I’m kind of realizing like, if I put myself on the internet, just a little bit more than I’m comfortable with, people will start being a little bit more receptive because at the end of the day, I think people like to see that you’re a real person so me like you’re struggling to get a job after college or I so what happened after college is the week before the pandemic and the only reason I remember that it was a week for the pandemic is I got to go on spring break because Penn State spring break was early week before spring break I declined a job offer to go work at a big bank that I interned in and then declined another job offered another big bank that I interview that being like, I don’t want to go into investment banking. That’s not me. I don’t like the finance industry. I do like the finance industry. Let me preface this I just didn’t think I liked it when it was at a big bank and went into Spring Break being like oh man, like I had that that cushy internship on my resume getting a job will be no problem. And of course like right after spring break on the flight home my mom’s like, do you have hand sanitizer to have a mask and that’s that’s when the pandemic hit. So when I was able to document I think like that journey of me like thinking I had it all set up like I was like I did everything right, and then having it all kind of like really crashed down like that. But being really public about that experience, I think not only people could relate to, but it was interesting to people like, oh, man, like, a lot of people that followed me on Twitter before were older than me. And were experiencing the pandemic in such a different way. Like, they already had jobs and they were moving online, but not a lot of people. I think were navigating the the actual job search platform when you don’t even have anything on your resume. Like, all I had was that internship and like, the things I experienced in college, but no real job experience, I think that I think people thought it was entertaining.

Adam Vazquez 25:29
Yeah. And that’s, that’s what I think is so fascinating about your entire story is like, it did come come to fruition during one of the weirdest, the weirdest year of the past century. And, and but leveraging content in order to to build that career out is something that you’ve been able to do effectively. So now that you’re on the other side of it a little bit, you’re now working for Jason, and This Week in Startups, and you’re producing or acting as a producer, along with the team with that show. How has that changed? Because obviously, you can’t just when it’s your show, you can make it all about okay, Rachel is doing this and then just like to call shots, like I’m just gonna call out so and so and and and explain that this is my process. Obviously, the creative process has has has to shift a little bit when it’s more, you’re speaking from a brand perspective. So how do you think about that? How do you feel about the creative process and integrating some of these new media’s formats, whatever to what you all are doing there with the show?

Rachel Braun 26:26
That’s, it’s, it’s definitely really interesting. And I’m happy that I did have that fellowship at Dynamo to kind of give me that medium experience because the Dynamo platform is a lot smaller, obviously than Jason Calacanis his platform, his name is literally at Jason on Twitter. I mean, like, you can’t get any more. Like, you can’t get any bigger than that. I feel like when you have your first name as your as your Twitter handle. So by being able to kind of learn, I don’t want to say corporate, but kind of more on that corporate side at dynamo and see how social media works. In that aspect has definitely benefited my experience at This Week in Startups. However, I think a dynamo, what was so interesting is I knew 100%, who our audience was, if you’re interested in trucks, if you’re interested in owning a Tesla, neither of which I’m very interested in. But like, I could make content for you, because I knew exactly who was who was interested. Whereas a podcast that has This Week in Startups, which has 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of people listening to it, it’s a little bit harder to narrow down who exactly your audiences. And I think maybe that’s kind of unique to podcasting, because of course, you get like your demographics. But in so many other industries, for example, if I was selling, like b2b SaaS, exactly who’s buying your product? Well, I’m promoting a podcast, it’s kind of like, a lot of people are interested in startups, a lot of a lot of people are interested in like creating their own company. And some people that listen could also just be fans of Jason. So the range of people that you’re targeting on their social media accounts, where when I’m helping write things off, maybe before the show is definitely a big switch. But Jason is an awesome boss, he definitely understands that it takes time and maybe doing that same thing. Like I said, before, just creating content and kind of seeing what works, you totally understand that like, not everything is going to be a hit. You really just need one thing to be ahead. And then that lets you learn off of it. So for example, he let me start a tic tock account. So if anybody wants to wants to follow this Week in Startups on tick tock, Jason was like, Do you like tick tock? And I said, Yes, and I’ll figure it out. But it’s definitely one of those things. It’s like I’ve never made I made like two tic TOCs before for my own podcast and kind of forgot about it, to be honest with you. And now it’s really fun, like learning a whole new platform and kind of trying to engage the the audience that is traditionally younger than his normal podcast listener, and trying to see like what ties they have to the show. So it’s definitely a learning experience. But in in the world of podcasting, I feel like everything kind of is.

Adam Vazquez 28:49
Yeah, like you needed to just like start furiously texting your little sister. Right. Right, isn’t it? Yeah. So that’s, that’s a good I didn’t really we didn’t we didn’t talk about this beforehand. But that’s a good segue, kind of what are you all seeing? Are you seeing anything specific? I guess that is driving promotion or driving listens more so than anything else when it comes to new listeners.

Rachel Braun 29:13
Man, when it comes to new listeners, I think something that I’m not sure if this is necessarily drive drove a lot of traffic. But I think by having news on a segment, it’s just super beneficial for any podcast, anything that’s like a current event that’s happening, I love in a podcast and our listeners have definitely reacted really, really well to Jason having news on the podcast almost every single episode. And that’s because people want to know what’s happening and they want to know his opinion. And I think people are really afraid nowadays of putting their opinions online, especially because of canceled culture. But I think that that’s the way you get an audience not necessarily to say something that risky, that’ll get you cancelled, but having an opinion, especially on something that’s a current event, or maybe a prediction that’s going to happen. Don’t be too afraid of putting that out there because I think that really that content wise, really is interesting to people. I love hearing about other people’s opinions, especially in podcast form where I feel like I can go on a walk and get like totally zoned into it. It’s not it’s not like The Daily News. Like, it’s not the today show he’s doing he’s giving his own opinion on what’s happening. And I think that is just far more interesting than somebody reading off. Like, what happened today in bullet form. I think that helps content wise drive drive traffic, or I would assume it does, because every time we have news on it looks like a lot more people listen. And then I also think by again, this is for every show, not even with Jason’s the having individual clips. So having something from the show that it’s just either a hot take, or something that’s really beneficial. I’ve started to take and put on tick tock, and I’ve noticed that there is a ton of those already up there. Like this wasn’t something new and innovative, I’ve done. But for example, I think there’s like a Joe Rogan podcasting Twitter account, and I don’t even listen to Joe Rogan. But they always come up. And they’re these little snippets from those extremely long interviews that really do. Like just get people interested. And your real podcast. Like I said, it doesn’t have to be super creative doesn’t have to be super crazy. You really just have to have like one part that really drives people and creates that value add.

Adam Vazquez 31:13
Yeah, I totally agree. I just one note on the tick tock thing. I do think it’s interesting, because you say it’s innovative. And I I get what you’re saying there. But if you talk to like 95% of business owners right now, like tick, I’m not that’s not from a tick tock isn’t for me and I and I get it. I mean, to your point, it’s the younger thing it was girls making the lip synching to songs. Yeah, yeah. But the fact that you’re seeing shows like, really, I guess, like, Rogen doesn’t care about what medium works, as long as he’s reaching his audience, which by the way, is like, what I don’t know, 21 to 41 year old male. So the fact that that audience exists on tick tock, it has to because he wouldn’t be using it otherwise, or some of the other brands like there’s, there’s a one extremely viral brand, that’s a guy that’s like 21, or something like that. And he just lip syncs to 80 songs, and he has a mullet. And like, he’s got the look of an 80s guy. And so all of these moms who are like in their 40s and early 50s, love this kid, to the point where the boy is weird, but it’s like that is an extremely lucrative demographic mom’s in their late, whatever, early 40s, early 50s. And again, they wouldn’t be working if that demo wasn’t on the platform. So I totally agree with you on your decision to make that I hope more people follow that. But I wanted to just sort of maybe as we as we wrap up, ask you what else do you see? Or are you excited about anything else in terms of new platforms, new projects you’re working on? Or or anything else that just kind of? Has you revved up as you’re trying out new new new media?

Rachel Braun 32:55
Yeah. So I think that something that I’m starting to see a lot more is younger people getting interested in the digital marketing space. And so if anybody that’s younger is listening to this, I would urge them to really get to know on it before you graduate, because I feel even now I kind of feel late to the game that I just started my career. It takes your Canva pro pro costs like nothing a month, like it’s a very cheap subscription, I think I pay 100 And something bucks a month. And that is work that I do on Canva Pro, for example, literally pays my rent I get I have a few clients on that, and you get enough money. So if you are a young person and you’re interested in content creation, I think the best thing you can do is start and I think that there’s too many people being hesitant on starting. Even if you’re not young, if you’re just anybody interested in content creation, I don’t think there’s enough people doing it. I think there are a lot of people that are trying to break into the space maybe of being like an influencer and stuff like that, which is cool, which is more of like a sales position. And you’re being the kind of like the catalyst for selling something. But everybody needs to sell something. It doesn’t have to be something in that influencer space. I think when especially when you see things like, for example, I helped run the social media to dog training, a dog training company, which is really local, a local, like a local place here. And we’re starting to branch out and maybe get some like short videos to put on Instagram reels. I think that she was so hesitant on starting it because she’s like, What happens if they don’t perform well, like who was even going to like watch watched, like Instagram, like, all the moms are on Facebook. And since we’ve started the Instagram account, and really put a lot of time into reels her company’s done so well. So if I don’t know, necessarily if there’s a new platform, but I do think that there has been an increase in maybe hesitation and just like putting yourself out there that I would really, really like to see. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. I got.

Adam Vazquez 34:38
Yeah, I think that the big takeaways from from everything we’ve talked about, but the first being consistency like showing up and just committing to that 100 days. Like I love that. I feel like I just need to go do the 100 day outreach even though we have too many episodes lined up now but I just want to do it for the exercise. Yeah, exercise of it. I think it’s really powerful and then and Then transparency like, to your point, whether it be Jason talking about the news or the dog kennel talking about who what fluffy did. Yeah, exactly. Like just being willing to have those conversations and not being worried so much about performance to your point is, is where a lot of people get hung up. So I think those are really good, really good notes to take away. Well, thank you so much, Rachel, for joining us. Thanks for sharing your interest your experience your career arc so far, it’s really exciting to watch what you’ve been doing and where should people catch up with you or follow you as you continue on?

Rachel Braun 35:33
Yeah. So on Twitter, I am underscore Rachel Braun, our AC h e l p r. Au N. Also underscore Rachel Braun on Tik Tok and also underscore underscore Rachel Braun on Instagram. So same, same thing all across the board. And I think on Twitter, I have that notion page that you were mentioning where you talk about things like digital marketing, and I also have a recommendation list of all my favorite content that I’ve listened to or consumed. If anybody’s Yeah, well, yeah,

Adam Vazquez 36:01
we’ll link all of that. But specifically, if you’re listening, do check out her notion page. It’s a it’s got some really good resources, things that she’s written, but also you have that like, almost like a I call it a content engine is I have a similar one in notion. I don’t know you call yours where you just, it’s all the articles.

Rachel Braun 36:17
Yeah. I love giving recommendations. I love it’s great. Yeah.

Adam Vazquez 36:22
If you’re interested in anything that we’ve been talking about today, make sure to check that out. Follow this Week in Startups for the future supply chain and you’ll see all Rachel’s handiwork out in the internet. Thanks so much for joining us, Rachel.

Rachel Braun 36:34
Thank you. Bye