Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It: A Podcast — September 15, 2017

Next week I start a podcast.

There’s a Patreon for the podcast with more information here.

Let me unpack a little of the thinking.

Through the last seven years, since I moved back to NY, I’ve had pretty variant experiences of debt or huge costs weighing me down. Previously, I was making some serious income from a unix admin job, and my spending was direct but pretty limited. Since then, even with full-time employment (and I mean, seriously, a dream job), I’ve made some grandiose mistakes with taxes, bills and tracking down old obligations that means I have some notable costs floating in the background.

Compound that with a new home I’ve moved to with real landlords that aren’t family and a general desire to clean up my life, and I realized I needed some way to make extra money that will just drop directly into the bill pit, never to really pass into my hands.

How, then, to do this?

I work very long hours for the Internet Archive, and I am making a huge difference in the world working for them. It wouldn’t be right or useful for me to take on any other job. I also don’t want to be doing something like making “stuff” that I sell or otherwise speculate into some market. Leave aside I have these documentaries to finish, and time has to be short.

Then take into account that I can no longer afford to drop money going to anything other than a small handful of conferences that aren’t local to me (the NY-CT-NJ Tri-State area), and that people really like the presentations I give.

So, I thought, how about me giving basically a presentation once a week? What if I recorded me giving a sort of fireside chat or conversational presentation about subjects I would normally give on the road, but make them into a downloadable podcast? Then, I hope, everyone would be happy: fans get a presentation. I get away from begging for money to pay off debts. I get to refine my speaking skills. And maybe the world gets something fun out of the whole deal.

Enter a podcast, funded by a Patreon.

The title: Jason Talks His Way Out of It, my attempt to write down my debts and share the stories and thoughts I have.

I announced the Patreon on my 47th birthday. Within 24 hours, about 100 people had signed up, paying some small amount (or not small, in some cases) for each published episode. I had a goal of $250/episode to make it worthwhile, and we passed that handily. So it’s happening.

I recorded a prototype episode, and that’s up there, and the first episode of the series drops Monday. These are story-based presentations roughly 30 minutes long apiece, and I will continue to do them as long as it makes sense to.

Public speaking is something I’ve done for many, many years, and I enjoy it, and I get comments that people enjoy them very much. My presentation on That Awesome Time I Was Sued for Two Billion Dollars has passed 800,000 views on the various copies online.

I spent $40 improving my sound setup, which should work for the time being. (I already had a nice microphone and a SSD-based laptop which won’t add sound to the room.) I’m going to have a growing list of topics I’ll work from, and I’ll stay in communication with the patrons.

Let’s see what this brings.

One other thing: Moving to the new home means that a lot of quality of life issues have been fixed, and my goal is to really shoot forward finishing those two documentaries I owe people. I want them done as much as everyone else! And with less looming bills and debts in my life, it’ll be all I want to do.

So, back the new podcast if you’d like. It’ll help a lot.

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Categorised as:jason his own self | Speaking

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