UNFLTR Weekly #1

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Author

Rich Cardona
December 20, 2024

Something I didn’t see coming: My therapist asked me what I do for a living, and after I told him he made it clear he wants to hire me.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s how we’re going to start this rebrand - with the truth.

If we haven’t been in touch in years or just a couple weeks, it’s me Rich Cardona. The 44 year old, self improvement obsessed, girl dad and owner of UNFLTR (a media company focused on video content and video podcasts for founders)

You may know me from our time together:

  • serving in the Marine Corps

  • working at Amazon

  • getting our MBA together at USC (Cali, not SC)

  • consuming each other’s content, or

  • working on your content or a podcast together

29 Palms, 2012

USC Graduation, May 2016

If you haven’t unsubscribed yet, you’re good people.

This weekly drop in is to serve you up some home cooked advice on personal branding, content creation, and podcasting. All of it will be derived from my personal experience and no one else’s.

You’ll also find yourself reading about the unforgiving, wouldn’t-trade-it-for-the world, life of being a small business owner. The good news is you don’t have to be a business owner to relate because there’s so many life lessons in this thing. If it’s relevant, I’ll be sharing it.

If you’ve lasted this long, you might bounce for real now (and if so, that ok). I’ll be dripping some of my faith in our weekly touch base. Maybe a bible verse that resonates. Maybe some good word from one of my pastors. The reason is if you knew me before a couple years ago, you might not recognize me today and it’s because of my relationship with God.

Something I might write:
“God feeds the birds, but he doesn’t drop worms in the nest.”

-someone on the interwebs

We good?

Last but not least, I will be writing this. Not ChatGPT. Not Claude. I’ll prove it. I’m wearing a salmon colored Polo hoodie my quad shot latte is empty, Nas “If I ruled the World” is playing behind me, and my wife has texted me about 4 times since I started writing this.

In today’s UNFLTR (we’ll keep it quick today)

  • The therapist who wants to be MY client

Therapist: Real quick can you give me your elevator pitch?

I threw up in my mouth a little bit when he asked. The elevator pitch concept is one that I just hate for some reason. Even before cell phones (someone grab my walker) I don’t usually remember people having deep conversations in elevator. And if so, not sure I ever saw or have even heard of someone getting hired because of it. Have you?

I get I’m being literal, but we can just be ourselves and not have a canned pitch that strips away throw multiple layers of authenticity in just a few words. Anyway…

“We help founders turn their success into success for others through video and video podcasts.” I said, knowing he’d have follow on questions.

I kind of frustratingly looked at my watch wondering how much time this would eat into our session, but then realized something. This is only my 4th session with this guy, who happens to serve in the military, and he’s already helped me profoundly. I can answer some freaking questions.

After telling him what he needed know, he seemed excited and asked 2 final questions:

  1. So content is a money maker right?

  2. Will this help me attract interns for my future practice?

Before I tell you what I answered, have you made money from your content? As in, if content is not part of your job description or business, have you earned some money from it? For most, it’s definite “no.”

I let him down a little bit by letting him figure it out on his own. All I had to do was ask questions:

  1. Do you have social media accounts?

  2. How often do you post now?

  3. What’s your engagement like?

  4. Do you write a blog, newsletter?

  5. When the last time you’ve done some public speaking?

If you want your content to make money for you it requires lots of peripheral efforts, goals, tracking of those goals, iterating, quitting, hating your content, etc The truth is the amount of time you invest in your content, podcast, blog, etc will determine the likelihood and probability of a financial outcome from it. And unfortunately there can be some MAJOR effort for a MINOR result.

That’s why I loved his second question.

THE TAKEAWAY

He already knows that interns will help him help more people. But, how does he know content can do that for him? Maybe instincts. Or maybe he realizes that if he’s helped me, and people like me, he only has enough capacity to serve a finite number of us.

So if he can’t scale himself, he can scale his knowledge. Even if there’s a ton of the same knowledge out there, there’s only one of him. Yet for some reason we look at that as a challenge rather than an advantage.

His gut is telling him that making content and using his unique qualities may attract people who’d like to help his cause.

Money isn’t the only outcome you should desire from content. Stop trying to get out of the parking space in 5th gear. Build up your content, your brand, and be on the lookout for all the great byproducts you didn’t consider!

Content you should see

Read the last few lines here.

Thanks for reading UNFLTR today - I’ll see you again next week!

— Rich