The episode, in writing
by Richard Lovatt · from the episode above, checked against what was said
It's twenty to ten on the twenty eighth of September. I landed back in the UK from Vegas a few hours ago, more than a few hours ago. I'm absolutely shattered, and I was about to go to bed, but I couldn't stop this streak.
I think it's quite funny, my dad's sister is watching the Instagram posts I put out, and she's probably in the same boat as loads of people, because I'm sure all my followers and people who know me are watching and thinking, what is he talking about, what's he doing. It wouldn't make sense to a lot of people. It wouldn't make sense to anyone who isn't the actual target market. I said to my dad's sister, go and look at the website, and I looked at the website myself and put myself in her shoes, and it wouldn't necessarily make sense to other people either. Maybe because some of the wording used, things like build in public, founder diaries, I'm sure it wouldn't make total sense. She did say to me, you do babble on, Richard, sounds just like my dad.
If I try and sum it up, the reason I created this, I created it as a solution to my own issues, and in doing so I also realised at the same time that these problems are what other business owners, and even just creators, anyone actually online, will face to some degree. I'll tell you what they were for me.
A number of times over the past five years I've looked back and thought to myself, I've done so many things. My fiancee says to me all the time, you've lived such a life. I'm not saying this in a boastful way, it's more so that I've done some crazy things, like being in films in Bollywood, on TV, amongst many things I could list. And I look back and I think it's just a shame I don't have this real documentation, like a diary type thing but not a written one. I look back and I think, do you know what would have been so good, is if I recorded and documented myself going through all of these things. And this isn't even to do with business, this is just my life. I'm sure it's the same for parents, when they have a child and it gets to its teenage years, the parents might think, oh do you know what, I wish we took more photos, I wish we took more videos, because you lose that ability, once it's gone it's gone.
The same thing happens in business. Nowadays it's so easy to record yourself, to document yourself, as a social media and being online, but a lot of business owners semi skip out on doing it for many reasons, as there's lots of friction that comes with it. So a lot of business owners think, okay, I'll forget about the documenting, I'll just build it, I'll get successful, and then I'll think about it. And it's just a shame, because so many business owners out there get to a certain point and look back and think, I wish I just documented it, because that's the most valuable bit. If you could watch Jeff Bezos build Amazon from day one, it would be so incredibly valuable to see and hear his thoughts on those first few days, getting his first customer, selling his first product, getting his first partnership, all of the tiny things you don't associate someone like him doing, but obviously he did. That's valuable. When I look back at my business, and what I've done, and even how I got into sales and where I progressed, it's like I wish there was a documentary on it.
The other point is, for someone like me, a bit of the friction about doing it is that a lot of business owners, founders, people with jobs who want to document, are apprehensive about being on camera. It's not for everyone, that's a skill in itself, just being open to do it. And then you've got editing, you've got lighting, you've got scripting, you've got thinking of hooks, you've got doing it consistently enough to get results, you've got posting potentially to a sea of zero, like no one caring, which is what I'm doing now, because my audience isn't built up of people who are following me for this reason. So there's all of these things, and there's so many reasons why people, and I've done this as of recently, haven't documented, even though I'm an extrovert, even though I'm in films and TV and I'm fine being on camera. There's so many reasons that have stopped me from documenting. For me it's also about being a bit lazy, and just thinking I've got to do it every day, and I can't just document it because I've got to think about hooks, and trial reels, and all these different social platforms, and it's so much headache.
I thought to myself, wait a minute, with AI now surely I could put something together that knows everything I've done in the day, and I just sit down in front of the camera and it kind of just interviews me. If a human was sat in your office at the end of the day at seven p m, and you sit in front of him, and he knows about your day and he just asks, and you just have to do that every day. Really simple, you don't have to think about it, you do it because it's out of your hands, and you know that you could do that for years because you don't have to do anything, and then looking back it would be so cool to watch, and more valuable. With underway I've genuinely created that, I've made it, and I'm the living proof of it, because I'm someone who finds that if there's no real reward very quickly I find it very hard, I have to battle that, and I am battling it now, but I think I've taken away so much friction from this process of documenting that even this has now enabled me to do it.
I'm on episode forty nine right now, I've done forty nine episodes of me rambling, and a lot of people listen and think, well it's just rambling. Yeah, but if you listen to Jeff Bezos at the first few days when he thought of that idea, it's all rambling to begin with, until you get your first customer, and then you face the first big issue, you've got your first pitch, all these little steps and goals. When people look back in a year, it just seems all rambling, but in a year or two years time, when I'm still doing this and it's a legit business, and it's got hundreds or potentially thousands of episodes, that rambling suddenly makes sense, because it's the inner workings of an idea and it flourishing.
A lot of success, even when I think about my quote unquote success over the past few years, if you look at it over such a small time period, in days and weeks, you don't see that progression, it doesn't always make sense. But I'm always amazed looking back at the times when I have just focused so hard, I don't care about what anyone else thinks, and I've just focused true intentions on one thing and worked hard. It's amazing what can happen in six months time, and I plan on doing that with this.
I might have got a comment from my dad's sister or anyone saying it's just rambling, what you're doing, but I'm personally not doing this because I want people to understand. I'm doing it for myself, so that in a year, two years, three years, four years, five years time, I can look back, maybe longer, and I can say, that was where I got that idea, that was me progressing just every day on top of it, and I can look back with quote unquote success where I want to be. I'm rambling now, but I'm also a big believer that you can be successful with anything you want. It doesn't have to be the best idea in the world, there's so many ideas that are not even great that people earn so much money from, and provide for their family, because it was their thoughts, and their passion, and their commitment that made it a success. That's what I plan to do with this, because I enjoy it.
I also wish that in the near future, other founders, other builders like myself, will do this, will get on and just keep documenting, forget what people think, doesn't matter, forget hooks, forget editing, forget the friction of it all, just get it done, and use underway.