🔊 Escaping the Attention Economy — Resonance Over Reach with Jay Acunzo

Amelia Hruby [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

Hello, and welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio. And on this show, I join you in our journey of creating thriving, sustainable businesses with no or minimal social media presence. If you're tuning in when this episode comes out, happy March, my friends. This is technically our second episode of the month because I put out my monthly forecast episode on the first. If you haven't caught one of those yet, they are full of marketing trends, biz care tasks, and some listener q and as.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:11]:
I'm adding them in this season because I want more opportunities to chat with you all, and I want to be even more responsive to your questions, concerns, ideas, thoughts, feelings, inquiries, all of the above. So next time you head out on a walk, I invite you to pop one of those in. They're typically 30 minutes or less. Trying to get a little shorter on the format. For my friends out there who don't have a full hour to listen to a podcast all the time, raises hand, that is me. And if you have tuned into those, thanks so much for listening. I can't wait to answer one of your questions in a future month.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:49]:
If you're new around here, I also wanna make sure you know about the Leaving Social Media Toolkit. That is a free resource that pairs with the first four episodes of the show. It includes a five step plan to leave any social platform, a list of 100 ways to share your work off social media, and my Creative Marketing Ideas Database, which will help you plan monthly or quarterly marketing experiments so that your business can be successful off social media. Because as we know around here, leaving social media doesn't mean you get to quit marketing altogether. Sorry if that's a bummer. It's just pretty much the truth.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:27]:
But also around here, we're always talking about ways to align our marketing with doing the things that we love and creating the things that our communities want to support and be a part of. And that, in fact, is what today's episode is all about. So today on the pod, I am talking to Jay Acunzo. Jay helps business leaders become stronger storytellers. After starting his career in media and marketing roles at Google and HubSpot, Jay authored Break the Wheel and cofounded a mastermind for business storytellers, the Creator Kitchen. Clients like Salesforce, GoDaddy, Wistia, and Drift turned to Jay to develop their most visible creative projects. LinkedIn editors named his podcast Unthinkable, a must listen for marketers. I will cosign that assessment.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:19]:
And Jay is here today to talk to us about how to cultivate resonance in our marketing instead of always searching for more reach. Jay's work has really influenced how I've been thinking about marketing and business relationships, and I'm just really excited for you to hear this conversation. So let's go ahead and dive on in.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:47]:
Hi, Jay. Welcome to Off the Grid. I'm so happy to have you here.

Jay Acunzo [00:03:50]:
Thank you for having me. And I gotta say, people listening may not realize this, but they need to. You had one of the most enjoyable, professional, and unique prerecording interactions with a guest. I've hosted podcasts since 2015. I've done, like, an inordinate amount of episodes myself as a host, and I've also been on, I don't know, two to three a month for a long, long time. And there's nothing like what I just experienced in a very great way.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:17]:
Thank you so much. I wanted to invite you on the show to talk about resonance overreach. So I thought I'd quote you to you, one of my favorite podcaster things to do. And so on one of the episodes of your podcast where you're talking about speakeasy business, here's something you say that, like, really pulled me in, and I wanna have you expand on it a little bit for our listeners. So there you say, "One of the most accepted norms among modern creators and companies seems to be that marketing is about reach. It's about getting in front of the most possible people, but I disagree. Marketing is not about getting in front of people. It's about ensuring they care."

Amelia Hruby [00:05:01]:
And you go on to talk about how ensuring they care is about knowing, liking, and trusting us. And to do that, we have to develop resonance. So could you take a few minutes to explain to our listeners here at Off the Grid this distinction between resonance and reach and why you think focusing on reach may be a mistake?

Jay Acunzo [00:05:19]:
It's kinda like if you obsess over how to shake hands or how many hands you've been shaking when your goal is to get married. Like, is reach a part of the process? Is the handshake a part of it? Yeah. Of course. To the degree that we obsess over it and spend time, energy, money, and effort, no. Not at all. Right? Like, if reach is how many see it and residents is how much they care, then no amount of reach is gonna guarantee that they care. So it's a little bizarre to me as a storyteller, as a consultant, a coach, an author, a speaker, sort of like everywhere I'm showing up, I'm finding hopefully smart, strategic and remember and memorable ways of saying to people, like, "Hey. You know that thing you're saying to the world? It has to matter to other people."

Jay Acunzo [00:06:05]:
But I do think a beautiful thing happens if you can create work that matters more, which is my entire mission for people. You can hustle for attention less. And, you know, so the whole idea of resonance is, like, that's where actions come from. If you care, you might act. And if you don't trigger an action in whoever you're speaking to, then whatever you're after doesn't happen. Right? So you could be a and I know this is not your audience, but you could be a cold, hard, calculating capitalist only, and you should care about resonance because that's where results come from. Or you can be someone who's building a heart based business who, like me, maybe cares deeply about the emotional side of the work, how much meaning is bottled up in our work, how the others receiving your work are experiencing it, and hopefully taking it with them and using it to their advantage, and then, of course, coming back around to help you and your business too. You could be that type of person, and, of course, you should care about resonance.

Jay Acunzo [00:06:56]:
So waltzing around the business world as I have for many years, you know, first the big corporations, then startups, then as an independent for many years, I just see a lot of people missing the point, like, forgetting that it's not about, like, 10 x-ing your content and, you know, like, churning out more stuff. You're just, like, trapped on a hamster wheel going nowhere. How do you get off that hamster wheel and start to compete more on the impact of your ideas and not the volume of your content? Well, you have to start by saying something that matters. Right? And then we can talk about all the other techniques and tactics that follow. So to me, that is probably the highest order idea, from which all of the rest of my work flows, which is how do I help people make things that matter? In other words, make things that resonate with others, so that people like us can do more meaningful work.

Amelia Hruby [00:07:47]:
And I think this is something interesting for a lot of Off the Grid listeners because there are a lot of artists in our listener base, and they're very accustomed to focusing on the work and to being deep in process with it. What would you say to people like that who are saying, you know, "I'm really making work that matters, but it's not reaching anybody. That's why I'm focusing on reach." What do we do then?

Jay Acunzo [00:08:10]:
I like to say that I'm trying to equip people with substance to compete in a world that's tipping too far into the hype. Right? Like, there's a lot of hollow gimmicks and stunts and things like that that, you know, I know many people listening are thinking, like, "Yeah, I hate that stuff, but it's what works" and whether they do it or not. Right? And I just so fundamentally disagree. Maybe if you're trying to have a certain type of business with a certain type of vibe for a certain type of person, maybe. I'll give you, like, a percent correct. Maybe. What you know, if you're an artist, if you're an expert, if you're a substantive teacher of anything, what you know matters. And that's what you're saying is like, Amelia, you're like, people come to me. They're like, "Listen, this this is meaningful to me, and it should be meaningful to other people." So what you know matters, but what you say has to make that clear.

Amelia Hruby [00:08:57]:
Mhmm.

Jay Acunzo [00:08:58]:
And that's typically where it breaks down. You know, I spent three years as basically a Road keynote speaker. You have Road comics. I was a Road speaker, not famous, but earning a healthy living being on the road as a paid public speaker. And one of the very many things I've been taught as a speaker that I learned is that, you know, you're in the how-to-think business. There's some how to wrapped up in it, but a keynote to the whole audience is the how-to-think speech. And to shift someone's perspective and to deliver something overly memorable like that, deeply resonant like that, you have to go out and meet people where they're at. And I don't see people mastering that ability.

Jay Acunzo [00:09:33]:
Like, you know, when you are a writer or an author as I am and you think about an idea like resonance, you do weird stuff. Like, I looked at the science of resonance. What does this mean? We keep saying this word resonate. Everyone's hopefully nodding. Like, "Yeah. I want my work to resonate." What do we mean when we say resonance? Well, if you look at the sciences, just suspend our work for a moment. Go down this weird rabbit hole with me for a bit.

Jay Acunzo [00:09:54]:
In the sciences, it's about frequencies. Right? Like think about wave like sound or, you know, energy, even pushing my daughter on a swing, for example. If I can match her frequency with my own, I amplify her. I'm literally imparting an energy by matching that swing. So when one frequency matches another, they're called resonant. It begins with alignment. It's can you go out to understand people with a sense of empathy for them and actually meet them where they're at?

Jay Acunzo [00:10:22]:
So like, in a keynote, I'm not going, "Hey. Stop doing this. Start doing that." That's not the first thing out of my mouth. The first thing I have to do is say, "Hey. You know that goal you want?" And people go, "Oh, thankfully, this person's here to serve me. Yes. Yes. I have that goal." Okay. Well and and you're coming at it this way. You're doing this. This is the status quo, and people go, "Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. You clearly understand me too. You want what I want, and you understand what I'm going through. Yep." Okay. Here are some problems with that now. People go, "Oh, no. What do I do instead?" Well, here's this change, and here's the story to illustrate it, and here's the methodology to execute it.

Jay Acunzo [00:10:54]:
There's this wonderful craft to conveying your ideas from a stage or in any place you show up. But if you wanna resonate, it really begins with this place of alignment, which then leads to them feeling amplified. Like, we've all experienced that. You kinda go, "Yes, this," like or, "I feel seen" or, "Oh my gosh, this is so for me."

Jay Acunzo [00:11:12]:
So I define resonance as the urge to act that people feel when our message or a moment with us aligns so closely with them that they feel amplified. Right? Their thoughts, their emotions, even their abilities feel amplified. So you can't control whether or not they act, but you can control that, like, energy being imparted with the way you're showing up. In other words, what you're saying to convey what you know can instill that energy in people, so they take an action. If you want people to act, they first have to feel moved to act. Right? That's why I love storytelling. That's why I love podcasts. That's why I love all these things that feel like my home and creativity.

Jay Acunzo [00:11:50]:
It's because those are the vehicles to impart this energy. So, yes, it's great that you, an artist, or you, an entrepreneur, are doing something that you feel is very substantive and should matter. You have to use the language at your disposal to make that clear to others. You have to start by aligning with them.

Amelia Hruby [00:12:06]:
Yeah. I love this emphasis on beginning with alignment, and I think that's something I see a lot in these sorts of intuitive small business spaces that I occupy is a focus on alignment within ourselves in order to start and run our businesses. And I think that that's important, but it can get us a little caught in our I guess I wanna say, like, a little high on our own supply. And we forget that piece of, like, I'm not doing all of this simply for myself. If I want to make money in a business, I need to be out there aligning with others and providing for and serving other people and creating that, like, amplification. And that's what allows the message to spread, the wisdom to grow, and, like, we get moving together, I keep thinking about that metaphor, you use it like, or that literally not a metaphor, a literal example of resonance of pushing your daughter on a swing. Like, we have to do the push. We can't just both walk up to the swing and, like, be there.

Jay Acunzo [00:13:04]:
Right. And you can't say what's you can't do it your way either. Like, this isn't about eating some humble pie here, where I know as a communicator, wherever I show up, be it a podcast, a newsletter, a speech, anywhere, this type of experience, I want to get people somewhere, but I can't just leap there. And it's really tempting when we are high on our own supply, as you said, when we know where we want others to go. We want them to see it that way. We want them to understand our solution or our art or our offer. It's really tempting to say, okay. Well, they need to hit every alphabet letter along the way, a through z, but the way we communicate is like a, b, l, m, n, o, p, x, y, z, because we're so eager or we're so well versed in it.

Jay Acunzo [00:13:44]:
Right? It's it's really difficult. It's kind of excruciating actually to know how far out we have to move from what we already understand to align with other people. We leap too far ahead, and we have to go back to where they're at and hit every beat along the way to get them to where we want them to go. It's hard. It's very hard is what I'm saying.

Amelia Hruby [00:14:03]:
What I'm hearing and what you're saying too is so many of us are taught that we need to sell the transformation that we're going to offer to our clients, which I think is true, but we lose the journey along the way. We just wanna be like, "You're here, and I'll get you there." And either we, like, pepper in all of these, like, random steps that will get them there without actually taking them step by step, or we just skip it altogether, and we're just selling the transformation. And that doesn't work either.

Jay Acunzo [00:14:29]:
And it works a little bit better, I think, if you're starting with someone who's novice and new and maybe naive where, like, your content might look like Tips and Tricks "R" Us. Right? Like, basic how to's and 101 level advice, maybe even sensationalized hacks and cheats because you're like, you want this giant transformation, but you haven't started yet. Once somebody starts, they kinda realize, "Oh, I need something a little nuanced here or maybe very nuanced here. I need something much more personalized. I'm not buying into all the hacks and cheats and stuff we see on social media," the thing we're here to talk about leaving behind a little bit more. Right? Like, "I'm a little bit more savvy." Even if I just started but have some experience, experience, all of these gurus and the hype around social starts to fall away because you're like, "Oh, that's that's not actually it. Like, they keep promising me I can earn six figures in the first year."

Jay Acunzo [00:15:20]:
I had someone DM me. It's these are like digital gnats. I, like, swap them away. They're like it was a consultant who promised he said, "I can help grow your newsletter from zero to a 100k subscribers in six months." And I look under the hood of this individual, and I'm like, "What is this person really doing here?" Like, in their social feed, they just quoted, like, all the big name bro-y entrepreneurs you'd expect as, like, quotes about success. On their website, they had, like, no experience to speak of. On their LinkedIn, it was clear, like, this person graduated last year with a finance major and is now doing this weird consulting thing. Their clients that they listed had no discernible public presence, so maybe they only had a 100k subscribers on an email list and never showed up anywhere else.

Jay Acunzo [00:16:00]:
Like, they failed this person failed the sniff test for me. But here's the thing. Like, that person could very well serve with substance their clientele. I'm judging harshly based on the cover of the book here, but the cover was really icky and really stereotypical. And, honestly, as annoying and icky as it was, pretty generic, like, pretty common in certain circles of the business world. So this person was trying so hard to stand out that they actually ended up blending in. And the phrase that I landed out of my head and I wrote about the other day, and I was like, oh, that's what this person's doing, and that's what we do on social too much, is we're cosplaying success. It looks like you're successful, but is that leading to revenue? Is that leading to clients? Is it leading to fulfillment?

Jay Acunzo [00:16:43]:
You know, it's like the basketball player that I always encounter at my local outdoor court when I shoot around. He walks up whenever we play a pickup game in, like, all this exceptional looking new gear. Right? New shoes, a headband, an arm sleeve, an awesome bag, like, whatever fancy sports drink is on the market right now. He looks the part of an exceptional basketball player, but then a funny thing happens when the ball goes up and we start to play. He can't play the game. But, like, playing basketball is what basketball is. Right? That individual is representative of a whole vibe right now that we're dealing with in business because we're forgetting it's not about reach. It's about resonance.

Amelia Hruby [00:17:20]:
I definitely would agree that social media has made the performance of the thing more popular than doing the thing itself. It's like the pure commodification of every skill on these platforms. And I'm just thinking now about the concept of resonance, and I'm like, well, a lot of people are on that vibe. They're resonating with that frequency of the tips, tricks, hacks – "That's all I want." But I think what we don't get there, like, that frequency has a very, like, low amplification. We're not getting those, like, real journeys that we're taking with people. We're not getting those, like, real identification.

Amelia Hruby [00:18:00]:
And it's really easy to then just, like, peace out and be like, "Great. I got your 10 tricks, and I'm out of here. I'm not following you. I'm not building this sort of deeper relationship." And I think for me, and this is in your work as well, resonance is intended to cultivate a relationship and to create that trust that leads them to take the action. Because you said we can't control the action, but if we build the trust, we're more likely to evoke the action.

Jay Acunzo [00:18:26]:
Yeah. Great great marketing is not about who arrives. It's about who stays. Trust and love and affinity are earned, meaning they're earned over time. And we're really obsessed, back to the handshake thing, back to the reach thing, we're really obsessed about leaping out and getting in front of people, and that's a craft in and of itself. I can't lie. But it's also a craft, and I think a more important one and a more powerful one for us to understand and master to ensure that people care about what we have to say and what we have to offer. And I think a lot of us are sold something that is not reality.

Jay Acunzo [00:18:57]:
You know, we're told, grow an audience. We're told, become an influencer, become a creator, become a thought leader. And either the people saying that don't share how or the how that they share feels hackish, feels shortsighted, feels gimmicky. And so we see through that as unsophisticated, as not strategic. Maybe even we see those individuals more like charlatans offering magic solutions than we see them as strategic business voices. So, like, in my estimation, it's because they're not selling you reality. They're selling you something you can't really control, which is the trappings of success or maybe even fame, even just fame in your space. You can't control that.

Jay Acunzo [00:19:34]:
Here's what you can control. The first, can you develop a premise? What is the big idea driving a project or your overall brand? It's like your positioning becomes your perspective. Like, you take your perspective, you figure out what it is, you figure out how to articulate it through conversations and content, you turn the perspective into positioning. That's a premise. Podcasts, great podcasts, have premises. This podcast has an exceptional premise. Right? Because it's an assertion you're making. Just like when you set up a joke, jokes have premises.

Jay Acunzo [00:20:02]:
It's an assertion I'm making. This happens. Or what your assertion is this should happen. We should go off the grid a little bit more. We should be able to build our businesses in these ways to thrive without relying on these things that are not values aligned to us. My podcast, Unthinkable: You should trust your intuition and your creative craft more than best practices and blueprints. Unthinkable. From the outside looking in, to break from a best practice, unthinkable.

Jay Acunzo [00:20:26]:
Well, let me tell you stories about why it's not. Right? A premise is you making an assertion, but using the language needed for others to understand it. Right? Not in your personal jargon, but in a way they can access. That's a premise. It's that defensible purpose from your perspective for your audience, and that could be on one project. It could be over your whole platform. You can control that. You can develop that actively.

Jay Acunzo [00:20:48]:
You can control the skill set that you build to take that premise to market, storytelling. You can control the types of content you select and matching that content to who you are and what you like and what premise is even. You know, I do a lot of weird things in my podcast not to rebel against the standard episode format, but because every episode is like an argument for my premise. So I'm using the premise to inform things like the episode structuring and editing and even the idea generation and the guests I select and the questions I ask. Those are the things we control. The output. So you get premise, storytelling, and content. The output of those three things is you resonate.

Jay Acunzo [00:21:25]:
The output of those three things is you might have influence in the right domain or the right area among the right people. Those are the things that everyone is selling you. Like, I can guarantee it. No. No. You can't. So, again, I'm an I'm an idealist, but I'm also trying to trade in reality on behalf of my clients.

Amelia Hruby [00:21:41]:
Hi, friends. Amelia here, interrupting this wonderful conversation with Jay to share a message from one of our pod sponsors and personal biz friend of mine, Chelsie Tamms of Lettering Works. Chelsie has a few questions for you. Do you have big dreams for your business? Do you want it to reflect your creativity, talent and passion? Are you hoping that people can feel the love and intentionality behind the work you do as soon as they land on your website? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then I'm guessing you would love a custom brand created by Lettering Works.

Amelia Hruby [00:22:22]:
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Amelia Hruby [00:23:08]:
Another concept from your work that really was impactful for me that resonated so much was your description of the commodity cage and the field of favorites. Because I think for listeners here, they've probably identified many of these sorts of charlatans that we know, and they're not out there saying, "I can 10x this, I can do that." But what I see a lot of Off the Grid listeners do is be generally informational, which is kind of one of the "ultimate sin" is a little strong for language, but does feel like one of the things that you're really trying to get people to stop doing by cultivating a premise, by moving beyond these sorts of, in my opinion, just like basic SEO seeking content in order to develop something more personal and insightful. So could you speak a little bit to that slogan you have, don't be the best, be their favorite, or don't be forgettable, be their favorite?

Jay Acunzo [00:24:01]:
Yeah. Yeah. I love to say that to people don't be the best, be their favorite. So let's play a little thought exercise here. What would you say is the best Disney film of all time? And if you're listening, answer in your head. But for you, Amelia, what's the best Disney film of all time?

Amelia Hruby [00:24:15]:
I'm gonna say Mulan.

Jay Acunzo [00:24:17]:
Okay. So thank you for the participation, but you are wrong. There is actually one objectively correct answer, and I'm going to share it with you now. It's A Goofy Movie. And that's because if you know, you know. It's Powerline, the pop star in the film who's, like, legitimately amazing, and I still want the album. Please give me the Powerline album from A Goofy Movie. Alright. So this is a a ridiculous thing to ask anybody. Like, what's the best Disney film of all time? Because we actually can't say. Right? That's an objective way of seeing the world. I'm saying the best. You're saying one movie. Your listeners are saying several different movies. I'm saying, no. You're all wrong. It's this one. It's fun, but it's it's silly. Right?

Jay Acunzo [00:24:57]:
But here's the thing that's revealing with that question and why I love asking it everywhere I go with people is something very telling about our work happens when I ask people that, what's the best. They don't answer it. I asked you, what's the best? You didn't answer that. You answered, "Well, this is my favorite." Favorite doesn't mean anything objective or academic. We spend a lot of time in our work trying to project I'm the best, I have the most followers, I'm the number one ranked. You know, I came out of software companies who were obsessed with, like, analyst rankings and, like, we're the number one most reviewed. By the way, gameable, pay-to-play systems. Like, we do such weird things trying to tell others I'm the best. That's not how we make decisions. Like, we're not objective. We're we're subjective creatures. We're emotional, and then we rationalize why we made a choice later.

Jay Acunzo [00:25:41]:
So just as a thought exercise, think of your favorite things. If you're listening on a walk or in your home or in the car, think of your favorite things right around here, right around you now, or that you experience throughout the day. Maybe you're wearing a shirt that's your favorite. Like, my favorite shirt is not objectively the best shirt that exists or even that I own. Right? But it feels irreplaceable to me. My favorite sports team is the New York Knicks. And if you know anything about sports, you know that for literal decades they were among the objective worst franchises, not even in the sport, in all of sports, but, like, still my favorite.

Jay Acunzo [00:26:16]:
So the punchline to this is this doesn't sound like rational thinking, does it? No. But it sounds like human thinking, which is good news for us because that's what our audience is made up of. And so we shouldn't try to be the best. We should try to be their favorite. And I'm happy to get into what you hinted at, which is the commodity cage being the issue. But I just think this is one of the biggest realizations we can have as experts, as entrepreneurs, as marketers, as people trying to lead a community is what we are in the business of doing fundamentally is not projecting anything objective or academic to other people, so they pick us and stick with us. No. We wanna be the object of this emotional, almost irrational bias in our favor against the odds so that the biggest comes along or the most famous comes along. And you don't worry about that because you're like, "Well, I don't have to be the biggest or the best to compete. I have to be their favorite, their personal, or preferred pick for a specific purpose."

Amelia Hruby [00:27:09]:
And to me, that's so much about relationships again. It's like especially within the realm of podcasting, it's like what I'm cultivating there is the sense of I want my listeners to feel close to me. I want the episodes to be unmissable. I want this to be their favorite show. There are certainly people with more marketing experience than me making podcasts like this, who've worked for longer, who are quote, unquote better at every stage of the journey, but it doesn't matter because Off the Grid listeners don't wanna go listen to them. They've listened to those shows. Yeah. But they're here because it's their favorite. Thanks, listeners. I'm grateful.

Jay Acunzo [00:27:42]:
Yeah. Yeah. In other words, what you're able to do in a great way is compete on the impact of your ideas, not the volume of your content, not the posturing the size of who you your business professes to be or who you profess to be or all these things. You know, you said something interesting a little while ago, which is like, there are some people out there who seem to be resonating using all these tactics that many of us dislike. I'm not here to convince them otherwise. I'm here to show people that there is a different way because what you're seeing is all that junk that we really actively dislike or abhor, and you're like, "But it's what works, but what else is there? But, like," and my job is to help people see a different path and then walk it and do it in their own way, not be like, here's my simple system for this. Right? Like, that's why I that's why I coach and consult and give speeches and all these things that feel like high ticket services, not a simple course that, like, has seven prompts and seven videos, and you're you're allegedly fixed. Right? I don't believe in that.

Jay Acunzo [00:28:40]:
So it's a long way of saying, like, yeah. Sure. Some people are resonating with tactics we don't like, but there is a different way. But it's gonna cause us to have to rethink some things like where does the power of your idea come from? Right? Like how you wanna have an impact. What makes something high impact? I think there's only two things. So picture, like, a two by two matrix. Right? There's two dimensions to this, the value of your ideas to other people and the originality of your ideas to you. That's what causes something to have an impact, and I think it's directly proportional.

Jay Acunzo [00:29:14]:
So just taking value really quickly, a lot of us are stuck doing low value things that feel like we're sharing informational content. Like, what is AI? The backstory of Anthony Bourdain. I even saw somebody today say, "Just go curate a bunch of ideas from other experts and don't even add your own take. Just make that a blog post." Low, low, low value stuff. Higher value than informational content is instructional. Right? How-to's, that kind of stuff. Still not as valuable as you could be because you ultimately handed somebody a map. Right?

Jay Acunzo [00:29:44]:
Information is like, "Here's the map. It's of North America" information, low value. You know, there's some value, but you're beyond it pretty quickly. The instructional stuff, which is kinda where we get stuck, especially if we're, like, an expert based business or thinker. That's the stuff that looks like drawing a red line to an x on the map. So useful, but you really haven't equipped your audience to navigate any obstacles. Right? You haven't really truly empowered them because a tree is gonna fall on that path that you didn't anticipate, or you didn't know that, you know, they walk with a limp or something like that. There's stuff about their situation you cannot anticipate. So you gave them generalized advice, and they won't know what to do because you've basically turned them into a direction follower.

Jay Acunzo [00:30:25]:
But much more valuable to them than following directions is knowing how to navigate. Right? Being a navigator, like, knowing how to use a compass is much more useful and valuable than knowing how to follow directions on a map. That's what an insight does. So you move from informational to instructional to insightful. That is the most valuable content, and that's not the backstory of Anthony Bourdain. That's like what made Bourdain an exceptional storyteller and, you know, what we can borrow from that.

Jay Acunzo [00:30:52]:
Or not the six fastest growing brands in this space today. It's why are they growing so fast. That's way, way more valuable to have the insight. You know, knowing why something works is more useful and valuable than knowing what works. So that's one dimension. And then the other is much simpler to understand, maybe harder to execute, which is your originality. Are you general on one side? Anybody could have said it. I can get it from anyone, and I guess you're anyone. Or personal? In other words, it's from your personal perspective. It's from your life.

Jay Acunzo [00:31:21]:
And the way I like to think about that, given the moment we're living in, is that AI and humans both run on LLMs. You're not gonna see me lauding the prompts that people are sharing about how to generate content more quickly through AI. That's not, I'm not that guy, but I can appreciate, okay, there's this underpinning technology, it's worth understanding, it's an LLM. It's a large language model. That's the tech. But people have little life moments, and we run on those things. And I think the differentiator between being more original and being general, being a commodity, is are you willing to pull from those? Are you willing to use little moments in your day, observations you made, memories, people you encounter, conversations you have as fodder for stories, for metaphors, for new insights that you extract? Because that's the stuff no one else can access. So if you combine your these two sort of spectra, which is the plural of spectrum, which I love, sounds like a superhero, but the first spectrum being value and the second being originality, if you want something to be more valuable that you share, focus on the insight. Make it more insightful. And then if you want something to be more original, focus on your perspective. Is that coming through? And the combination of the two means you're gonna have a greater impact.

Amelia Hruby [00:32:30]:
And I think what that does is it breaks you out of the commodity cage, to use your phrase. And for me, what actually is so liberating about that is once I'm out of the commodity cage, it feels like I've kind of escaped the attention economy in its own terms. So even a little bit where you started was, like, you know, we have to compete against the hype. We treat attention like it's a scarce commodity. That's what the attention economy means. It's like envisioning the world where we have limited attention and so many things competing for it. And so as creators, our content needs to compete. But what I found is when we actually care about things, like, when we really love them, we kind of have a boundless energy for them.

Amelia Hruby [00:33:13]:
Certainly, we have limitations on you have kids, you have a job, you have it's not that you have unlimited hours. But, like, the things I love, I can always find, like, a little bit, like, a moment, 30 seconds to listen to the podcast. You know? I can find three minutes to put the song on. I, like, stay up late to watch the next episode of the show I really want. And I think that I see so much hype and fear around the attention economy destroying creators. But if we're really in it, I just I'm not so sure that's true. And so I wanted to wrap by kind of asking your perspective on the attention economy.

Jay Acunzo [00:33:47]:
It's a really good question. I mean, I came out of marketing organizations at software companies mostly, and there's a phrase that a lot of my peers in my old stomping grounds love to cling to, which is that people have shorter and shorter attention spans. All due respect to the people doing the hard work of trying to market, an organization. No. We do not. We don't have shorter attention spans. We have a lower tolerance for mediocrity. And what's happening here is a lot of the advice and a lot of the technology coming onto the market is making it really easy to be mediocre at scale. And the opposite of that is not to do something stunt like, is not to press harder on the mediocrity or be more clever or any of these stuff. The opposite of that is to have an idea that you have developed that at once is more insightful and more personal.

Jay Acunzo [00:34:32]:
In other words, it makes it more valuable and more original to you. So you can escape this commodity cage where we're all in the hamster wheel and we're packed in tight, and you start running free like I'm the only game in town for this. Right? We make time for the things that resonate with us emotionally. So it's this weird, you know, apologies to Alanis Morissette, like a black fly in my chardonnay, not actually ironic. Rain on my wedding day, not actually ironic. Here's something that is ironic. Most of the people who are aimlessly trying to be known do things that make them harder to know.

Jay Acunzo [00:35:07]:
They come off as generic. They come off as forgettable because they're trying to be visible instead of memorable, But that's the job. The job for us is not to get in front of people. It's to ensure they care, to do something memorable. Right? So we who don't wanna be on that hamster wheel are far more empowered today than ever before to actually do things that stand out easier and resonate deeper because it's way, way, way more useful to our cause to stand up in front of an entire waterfall of gray, which is what everyone else is producing, and shine bright in our own colors because we want to and know how than if we just had a trickle of gray behind us. Right? So thank you to the AI. Thank you to the generic hucksters, even the well meaning experts who are just stuck in that commodity cage. Thank you to the people willing to or just unknowingly creating mediocrity at scale. Because for those of us who don't want to and know how to stand out a little bit more, we stand out a lot more because of what they are producing in the world.

Amelia Hruby [00:36:03]:
And I will just add for Off the Grid listeners that a great way to stand out is to make an unconventional choice and share insights from that, and that's the whole premise of this podcast. What brought this podcast into being is that I made the unconventional choice to leave social media, and then I'm here sharing about it and having a clear perspective.

Jay Acunzo [00:36:22]:
Right. You have expertise, but you're showing up as an explorer, not an expert. And what you're exploring is not a list of generic topics. It's a premise. Right? There's this real power in a premise. It's that you're making an assertion: I see the world a certain way. The status quo is broken. I wanna get to the mountain peak over there. If you agree with my vision for what should be, come with me. I'm hacking through the jungle every episode. Right?

Jay Acunzo [00:36:44]:
You have this amazing ability to take a perspective that you have, but turn it into language that then becomes your positioning. So you make something readily apparent when before it was only discovered after spending lots of time with you. And that's really the job of a premise, is to take what would have been discovered with time with you anyway and make it apparent so people encounter it, and it immediately resonates. Right? It's not just the urge to act. It's this instant urge to act that people feel when they come up against your premise. So thank you for doing the work that you do, and also know that I'm gonna be citing this podcast everywhere I go to teach the power of a premise because this is a perfect example of that.

Amelia Hruby [00:37:21]:
Well, thank you, Jay, for all of your work, which has led me to so many light bulb moments, insights. I mean, just how you've shared today, I feel like you are so clear on the premise of your work and the light bulb concepts and reframes that take us deeper and deeper into it. And so thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing. Is there anything else you would like to tell Off the Grid listeners about or kind of invite them into your ecosystem?

Jay Acunzo [00:37:56]:
The most important thing to do is, immediatley, like if you want to follow me, follow me. Fantastic. I'm on the internet. You have probably heard of it. It's easy to find. Don't go hiding in my work. Right? Go and make something that truly matters to you. It's a paradox. If you wanna connect deeper externally, you have to start going deeper internally. Right? If it doesn't matter to you, if the emotional stakes of it weren't clear in the story you're telling, then others don't have anything to really connect with. So that's the call to action if there is one, is go make something that feels like you're being more honest with yourself because chances are you're gonna have a lot more likelihood of resonating deeper with others.

Amelia Hruby [00:38:25]:
Beautiful. Thank you so much, Jay, for your time and for being here. Thanks, listeners, for tuning in, and we will see you all off the grid.

Amelia Hruby [00:38:37]:
Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by n'Atelier Studio. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, and until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the Interweb.