Hank Green talking with Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry on The Colin and Samir Show:
Listen to Rick Steves’ How I Built This is something that I do. Rick Steves is like a travel guy. He made a travel show on PBS, forever. And it’s like weird.
And one of the things that Rick Steves talks about is— he’s like, ‘I kind of wish that we’d called it something else.‘
Cause it’s called Rick Steves. And, like, everything’s branded. There are like— all these travel books are branded as Rick Steves.
And, you know, seeing what Theorist has done where, like, it’s possible for MatPat to step away.
And that’s like— that— John and I call this The Jerry Garcia Problem where, so like, at the end of his career, Jerry Garcia was kind of, like, done. He didn’t wanna be, like, touring all the time but he had all these people who are economically dependent on him.
He had, like, all the roadies and the tour people and, like, it wasn’t just the audience. It was like these people who would lose their jobs if he retired.
And he— like, you can’t have the Grateful Dead without Jerry Garcia. And so he just, like, kept doing it even though he didn’t really want to. And we don’t wanna have that problem.
You know, you don’t wanna be in the situation where you don’t wanna do the job anymore, but you can’t quit because you care about the people around you too much.
If you’re a creator about to register a URL for a new owned platform, ‘What should I call it?’ is a question worth more than a few minutes consideration.
It’s easy to get wrong, and mainly depends on the nature of this fresh destination of yours you’re planning to bring your fans over to.
- Are you already at the stage where you have an owned product idea you’re thinking of offering to your audience?
- Or are you not yet that far, and just want to begin collecting email addresses so you never lose touch with your hard-earned fan base?
Also to consider: How many years as a creator do you feel like you have left in you before you finally get bored with your current iteration of public life, and want to step away?
These kinds of branding and offer development questions are worth having some honest conversations about now, before you end up with all the success you never wanted.
— Tang
Hank Green’s owned platforms include: Crash Course, Complexly, Nerdfighteria, and HankGreen.com.
Colin and Samir’s owned platforms include: The Publish Press and ColinandSamir.com.
