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April 25, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:11
730 Success and Freedomain Radio Part 1 - Now
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Good afternoon, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's Steph, 25th, I do believe, of April 2007.
And this is the ruminations, and this will be first of a few, and I'd love it if you would participate in this aspect of the conversation.
But these are the ruminations with regards to What is success for Freedom Aid Radio?
Now, of course, as a whorey old business guy, I like to define success in measurable terms.
So, the number of people who defoo say...
I mean, the number of suggestions have been made, all of which are very clever and right and part of the equation.
But something like the number of people who defoo...
It's not under my control or under my knowledge, right?
So, in general, in life, it's a good thing to set goals which can be achieved and measured objectively.
You know if you're getting closer, right?
You don't have a goal that says, I want to go west.
I mean, I guess you do, but you're not going to know when you get there if you don't have a sort of defined goal.
So, one of the thoughts that I had was, how is it that as I start to plunge into the wild and stormy and exciting seas of internet philosophy as a full-time occupation, what is it that is going to be measurable as a success for me?
And there are a number of different metrics.
Of course, a lot of the ones that have been suggested on the thread of the board are all bright and useful and helpful, but what I would like to sort of take an approach as to look at the defined metrics.
And if you've had no interest in the business process of FDR, then this might be not the podcast for you, but this is something that I thought I would chew through.
Another question, which is a perfectly reasonable question, is why am I talking to you about this?
Isn't this my deal?
I don't actually go over my taxes with you either, but why am I talking to you about this?
Well, I'm talking to you about this because this is a community.
I am...
I mean, I guess I started it and all that, but...
I'm not Free Domain Radio anymore.
I mean, there's no question in my mind about that.
I mean, I could be wrong, but I'm not Free Domain Radio.
Free Domain Radio is a community.
Free Domain Radio is a conversation.
And when you get married, as you and I in many ways are, when you get married, one of the things that you gain is companionship and love and joy and all this sort of stuff.
And one of the things that you give up is the pure independence of your decision-making process, and that's a valuable thing to do.
So, for me, given that I have...
And it's my doing, right?
And it's my doing, and it's your doing.
So it's your fault.
Blame. The first aspect of any business plan is figuring out who to blame.
And so let's set that right up in front.
You and I are both to blame as to why this is no longer my decision, because...
If I had just done anonymous podcasts in that sort of anonymous lawyer kind of way.
If I had just done anonymous podcasts and...
If you had not participated in any conversations, you hadn't given out any contact details or anything like that, then this would not be a conversation, and then there would be no feedback, there would be no participation, there'd be no board, there'd be, I guess, there would be a website with no email address, no pictures, no name, and I would be ex-chatty forehead.
Or Chatty4HeadX. And there would be no community, and I could make all the decisions in the world just for myself as I wanted, but I invited you into this conversation, and for the most part, I mean, a good number, a good many hundred of you have joined in the conversation, and more through email than through the boards.
I can usually tell the age difference, but technology that is used and so on.
But... I wanted to sort of point out that as you've joined in the conversation with regards to this philosophy, then I am no longer sort of independent of the community and there's no reason why I would want to be or should be or anything like that.
And I was quite conscious of the fact that philosophy at its heart is a conversation and not a monologue.
And that's why I do the Sunday shows.
That's why I have chats with people.
With high-stakes donators individually about issues that I may be of some assistance to them with, and so on.
And that's why the board is so essential, right?
That's why I laid out the old cash-a-rooney to get a virtual dedicated server so that we could run the board, which is now spiraling up with two gigs of conversation, right?
That's a very dense, packed, and I think fortunately permanent conversation archive and conversation history.
So... Now that we have a conversation going on that is mutual, that is immersive, I can't define success just for myself independently of whatever other people come up with in terms of what success sort of means to them.
And since that's the case, I thought I would put out my criteria for success.
And I mean, if you don't care or if you're like, yeah, yeah, whatever you need to do, Steph, you need to do just whatever.
Keep throwing podcasts my way because two a day or three a day ain't enough.
That's fine. I mean, it's voluntary.
It's anarchism. You don't have to participate at all.
But... I thought I'd throw out some of my criteria for success, what success for me means in terms of Free Domain Radio, and if you want to share your thoughts, you're welcome to.
Now, I mean, there are several obvious challenges with Free Domain Radio, which is that everything's out there for free, and I rely on donations.
That's my choice, and I'm quite pleased with that.
And that basically is because the younger I can reach them, the better.
And, of course, the younger people don't have as much money.
They'll have independent income.
And they're also hoarding their money for more important things like video games and iPods.
And video games and iPods are important.
Can't listen to free-domain radio without the old iPod or something like.
And so I wanted to reach the young, and I can't put a high-price barrier down there.
And, of course, trying to get a young person to pay for an MP3 is not the easiest business proposition in the world.
So no worries.
I've got some Solutions around that.
And so there's only a couple of ways really for me to measure participation in this conversation.
Objective metrics, right?
So clearly there's the number of board members.
There's the number of hits to the website and how many of those hits translate to downloads of the podcast.
There is tracking metrics.
The podcast sequence, right?
So, a thousand people come to the website, a hundred people download podcast zero, ninety people download podcast one, and then you're pretty much hooked, and that's about it.
So it's also tracking to see, is there, like at podcast 8, does everyone, like does half the people stop listening?
Maybe that's the one about self-defense, I don't know.
But is it that there's a particular podcast that people just drop off, right?
There's after that, they just don't listen anymore.
That's, of course, important to know.
There are the metrics around investment versus return, right?
So I started spending a good deal of money.
I spent like $150 yesterday on StumbleUpon, which is a...
You say, ooh, I'm interested in...
I set up a category, agnosticism and atheism, because that's a pretty hot topic these days with Hitchens and Dawkins and fellow folk like that.
And so I put that up, and we got about 2,000 hits yesterday, a little over 2,000 hits yesterday, which is about eight times more than normal, which is good, right?
So my sort of thinking is that it costs a nickel to bring someone to the site through StumbleUpon, And so...
So my thinking is that if one out of the 2,000 people who come to the site end up donating $100 for the podcast, for a bunch of podcasts they've been listening to, then that would be a good thing.
I think that would be a good thing.
So the conversion rate between people being drawn to the sites, people starting the podcast, and people continuing on to the podcast, or at least to the ones where I start whining about It's important.
I'm already asking people to do something pretty freaky to begin with, which is come and start listening to some philosophy from some guy on the internet they've never heard of who claims to be some sort of expert and is notably deficient of any formal PhD in philosophy.
Thank heavens. So that's another aspect which I would like to track at some point.
But I think that the investment in getting people to come to the site now that I'm going to go full-time, that's why I'm starting to spend the money.
I did have Google AdWords for a while, but it was very expensive.
And this is not cheap.
And of course, this is not people who click on a link.
A StumbleUpon works a little bit differently.
You just say, I'm interested in this, and it brings you to the whole page.
So they can see all of that.
Of course, there are people who are older who don't have as much technical savvy.
I've tried to put a Listen Now flash player for the MP3s so that they don't have to know what a feed is or how to download and all of that.
But frankly, I don't really care about the people over 40.
It's nice, but I don't imagine that there's going to be much...
I mean, either they're really social and they've had kids, in which case, if they're good people, they don't need to listen to my podcast.
Actually, that's probably not true at all.
I mean, I think they do. But the older they are, the more embedded they are in the social circumstance.
Especially if they've had kids and done a bad job raising them, then there's just no way that they're going to want to participate in this conversation.
Or they're total loners, in which case I'm converting one guy in an attic who never talks to anyone, which is...
Well, it's not bad, but it's not something that's going to have a lot of...
And she told Two Friends Momentum.
So... So that's another aspect of how to see it.
Now, as far as media appearances go, I don't view that as being a particularly fertile area for me.
I really don't. And most of the kids, of course...
I mean, hey, if Jon Stewart says come on the show, I certainly would be overjoyed to do it.
But... That's not going to happen until there's some intersection, right?
Until there's some intersection of media or until the numbers of people in the podcast are just so irresistible.
But people will resist that.
People will resist that.
Jon Stewart is a bit of a slut for politicians.
He makes fun of them and then ha ha ha it's just a game and he'd probably lick the ear of Alberto Gonzalez if you could get him on.
Or get them off that way.
So there's a little bit, I'm sure there's some resistance that way.
So I don't view that as a very high priority.
As far as extending the conversation goes, Christina and I have been talking about for the past couple of weeks the idea of Free Domain Radio weekend seminars in Coming Soon to a City Near You, where it would be a process of, you know, a There would be an agenda, there would be different...
I guess originally it would be that Christina and I would work together, but at some point we'd split into Christina and then myself and talk about either philosophical or personal, and I would guess mostly personal issues or questions, put forward a framework with the ability to actually have a sustained and interactive conversation about philosophy and with me not just having to rely on my voice, but you doing my beautiful balloon animal thing.
That's another aspect, and that to me would be important, because one of the challenges with Freedom Aid Radio is the ideas, let's say, are great, but...
How the hell do you actually net this into your dough, right?
How do you actually make this stuff get up and walk and talk in your life?
And that's partly what the Sunday shows are about.
But I would very much prefer to have a room full of a bunch of people where we could have a really sustained conversation about this, go back and forth, and do a seminar-type work for that.
And I think that would be a lot of fun.
And of course, now that... I'm no longer going to be working full-time.
I will have the opportunity to plan and execute on those.
I've actually planned two conferences in my life, various parts of my jack-of-all-trades career, so I have some understanding and experience with that sort of thing.
I think that would be an excellent, excellent way to bring the conversation to life and for it not to be such a purely isolated experience as it is for a lot of people who don't really know anyone else who speaks the same language.
Why not get us all together in a location where we can eat and drink and be merry and talk until the cows come home, which I think would be an excellent and wonderful, wonderful thing to do.
And highly, I think, highly motivating and highly practical.
I mean, the idea is to get these ideas out of the MP3s and into your life.
And that's not easy.
It certainly hasn't been for me.
Maybe it is for you, in which case you could lead the seminar, which would be excellent too.
I'll just sit in the front taking notes and being a keener.
But that would be another aspect to me of success would be once we define and start to move those into U.S., primarily U.S. cities, then what would the sign-up rate be to come and join in that conversation?
That, to me, would be a measure of success as well.
And there are other ways to look at the success of Free Domain Radio.
Of course, there is a financial aspect as well.
Which is not unimportant, right?
I mean... I am no martyr.
I will buy toys from time to time with donations like this fabulous iRiver 799, which lets me podcast with much greater audio clarity when I am actually out walking around, which is much more pleasurable for me, especially since the summer is coming and Christina has patients that she sees in her house, so it's a good thing for me to be able to get out of the house to do a podcast in case I want to not be too quiet, as I occasionally am not one to be.
So, that's another aspect of the donations that it's going to...
I mean, a lot of it gets plowed into the free domain radio for ads and hardware and upgrades and this and that and the other.
Bandwidth prices.
Oh, the bandwidth. Oh, the bandwidth.
I'm actually just going to mail them a kidney in my firstborn, so...
So the donations have an effect as well, and they have an effect, obviously, as I mentioned before, not just because it's cash, which I can use, but also because it tells me where philosophy is in people's minds relative to all other values, right? I mean, if this is just an entertaining set of ideas for people, then the show is a failure, right?
I mean, that would be a very strong criteria of failure for me.
So, for instance, if...
If I had, you know, let's say this month there are 300,000 downloads of the podcast and no one paid a penny in donations, then it would be clear to me that I was just being used as a vaguely entertaining diversion like a bad comedy show with some decent philosophy rather than a decent philosophy show with some bad comedy.
So... The donations are definitely a measure of success for me, and obviously I like the money and I think I can do some good with it, but more importantly for me, it is a measure of where I am relative to everyone else's values, right?
So y'all paid for food and shelter.
I don't think there are too many homeless people listening to the show.
So everybody pays for food and shelter, and that's obviously quite important, and computer connection, and people buy lattes and get their cars repaired and so on.
And so donations help me to gauge...
Where philosophy is, at least the philosophy that we're talking about here, where this conversation is relative to, say, a cup of coffee, right?
Two podcasts a day, 50 cents a day, 30 bucks a month, that's less than a price.
Jesus, less than half of the price of a coffee at Starbucks.
So, as I've said before, is it worth less than a price of a cup of coffee at Starbucks or half the price?
For two hours of, I guess an hour and a half or an hour or so of podcasting on some pretty essential topics, I think.
Movies are here at 13 or 14 bucks.
13 or 14 bucks.
Buys you, let's say, 15 bucks, a little bit of gas as well, buys you 30 podcasts, which are two weeks' worth of podcasts for the most part, and sometimes more.
And, of course, access to the board is free, and access to the podcast is free, and so on.
So, is one movie worth...
30 podcasts. A movie for 2 hours, 30 podcasts are probably 20 hours, right?
So, for 20 hours of philosophy, or 2 hours of a movie, which is more important.
And it just helps me to gauge where the ideas are.
And there's one of two sort of possibilities that result from that.
Either... What I'm doing in terms of philosophy isn't that valuable if the donations are not high, in which case I'm going to do something else, which I don't think is the case, or that people don't find the philosophical ideas.
They are valuable, but people don't find them valuable, which sort of adds up to the same thing in the real world.
I absolutely would measure donations as...
A measure of success.
I sort of give you an example that crossed my mind.
I did this podcast when I was on vacation.
With regards to the gentleman who was stuck, attempting to get his PhD, and he'd been stuck there for a couple of years, ABD, all but dissertation.
And I did the podcast, and it was, I think, fairly intense, a good podcast, I think a good jolt to his system.
And he decided to go and to get into therapy.
And I got one letter from him since, but I haven't heard any more details after that.
But he's in therapy.
He's got a real clarity of opinion to work with to sort this stuff out.
And let's say that without this podcast, that he would have ended up spending another six months.
And I think that's a pretty generous estimate, a conservative estimate.
Let's say he would have spent another six months Waffling about trying to figure out what to do with his life.
Six months. So, saving six months of your life from waffling and no progress, moving you forward six months in your life to whatever it is you're going to do next if you don't end up doing the PhD, or at least getting to therapy to resolve the issues that you have, what is that worth to you?
What is six months of your life worth?
If a conversation of Free Domain Radio can move somebody's life ahead six months, or if other people can quit bad jobs or get out of bad relationships, what's it worth you?
Let's say that these are just value scenarios.
You can let me know if this sort of makes any sense.
I've certainly had some confirmation of these, but you can let me know what you think.
Maybe the value of the Free Domain Radio conversation is that you ended up not marrying a girl or And having kids.
Or maybe you've decided to put off having kids until you figure out what's going on with your relationship.
Well, what is a lifetime of child support?
What is 20 years of child support worth to you if the philosophical conversation is able to do that?
I know people who've quit their jobs through this conversation have gotten better jobs.
What's that worth to you? Is the raise entirely attributable to you?
Well, sure it is. But the conversation is certainly a significant portion of that.
And what is that worth, right?
And this is just all ways in which I measure these things.
And since I am an absolute capitalist, I know that what people spend money on is what they really value.
It's what they really value.
And so either, if donations are low, and I'm not saying that they are right now, they're a little low, but not the end of the world.
If donations are low, it means I have to sort of change direction, or it means that the direction as a whole is not productive or positive.
So, just to be sort of upfront, I'm absolutely going to tell you that I know how much you value philosophy based on whether you donate.
And, of course, nobody's asking for a thousand bucks a month.
Not that I'd say no, but nobody's asking for a thousand bucks a month or whatever, right?
A hundred bucks every now and then.
The price of one therapy session.
In fact, that would be a pretty cheap therapist.
The price of one therapy session.
You can get hundreds of hours of philosophy.
I think that's...
And, of course, participation and the board and all the other things which the money goes to pay for.
And the spread, right?
The spread of philosophy which the money goes to pay for as well.
I mean, wouldn't it be great if the world as a whole got more rational rather than just us?
Well, that's what the money does.
So that is absolutely a part of the way in which I will measure success of this show.
And I will adjust my conversations depending on whether they're gaining traction in terms of donations or not.
So that's an aspect that's important.
For me, though, it's not...
An issue, and I've weighed it back and forth about moving the podcast to an archive and only releasing them to people who pay, and so on.
But I'm very sure that that would diminish the spread of the podcasts.
And of course, I have a book called Privatizing the Family, which I've started to flesh out, which I'm going to work on, and certainly I'm going to protect that one, like Grim Death and sell that.
But... The aspect of not wanting to limit the distribution of it, because the young are the most important people to talk to about ideas, and the young have the least money and the least freedom, and of course are the least used to paying for internet stuff, and of course the podcast is already out there, and anyone can set up a mirror site if they want it.
Not much I can do about it.
So... For me, if I can...
I've mentioned this before, but I might as well reiterate it since this is the success of Freedom Aid Radio podcast.
For me, success is in sort of order.
Number of people who come to the website and number of board members...
It is the number of new listeners, based on the tickled downloads of Podcast Zero and the continuation of new listeners past the first couple of podcasts.
Those, to me, are very strong indicators of success.
Because without that, I mean, obviously without people coming to the website, people aren't going to know anything about it.
Participation in the board is not as important, but without people coming to the website, nothing's going to happen.
And I am always pleased when, as we've had 20-25% increases over the last couple of months, in the podcast downloads, which of course I am perfectly thrilled about, and thank you all so much for the words that you're putting out there.
And so without the people coming to the site, without people downloading, there's not much that can be done.
Now, some of those who download will come to the board.
There are probably a few people on the board who haven't heard the podcast, which is fine.
Get moving. Get busy.
And then all of that, to me, though, points to a core criteria, not only for my ability to continue to do this.
I am... Not a wealthy individual.
I have made some good money in my life, but I am not a wealthy individual to the point where I can spend the next 30 years working for virtually no pay.
And so that is something that is sort of important to me at a very practical level.
Because when you're running something like this, it's not just that you're working without pay, It's that there's some considerable cash outlays as well.
You know, the microphones, the software, the hardware, the computers, the server, the bandwidth, and the time.
Oh, the time. The time.
The time. And portable recording equipment like this.
The video camera and the webcams for the car.
It just goes on and on.
All the stuff that you've got to buy, which, frankly, I wouldn't really buy otherwise.
Anyway, so all of this kind of stuff is important.
It does come down to some real traction for me.
The purpose for me, what would be ultimate success for me, would be that I have enough money to live, which I sort of peg at $100 a day.
I sort of peg that at $100 a day would be, to me, a decent income.
It's not $500 a day.
I'm currently making actually more than that per day now.
But I'm willing to sort of do that 80% income drop because I can live on that.
I can live on that.
And so I'll take $100 a day, which will be enough for me to contribute after taxes my share to the expense of running Casa de Molyneux.
And I will sort of eat the investment costs that have occurred so far.
Certainly if we continue to get increases, I'm going to have to go to a dedicated server, which is going to cost, oh, a couple of thousand dollars.
Easy peasy. And that's all too exciting for words.
More than that, actually. I think I looked it up last night.
A good hosted server.
It's about five grand for a couple of years, and then all the time to set it up and so on.
So, success for me is, this is the ultimate success.
This is sort of what I define as measurable and expert success.
The sweet spot for me is I don't really care if I end up making a lot of money.
I mean, I know that everyone says that, but it's sort of true.
Because for me, I'll plow the money back into expanding the conversation.
What's more important for me is that this conversation gets out to as many people as possible because I think it's new.
I think it's unprecedented, which is a synonym.
I think it's redundant. No, wait, that's me.
But I think that it's essential, and I think that we are doing something incredible here with this community.
And so the more people who get the message from me, the better, right?
So after I've got a space to eat and a space to shower and the occasional change of dressing gown, then I am more than happy to plow the remainder into expanding whatever is left over into expanding the conversation.
Because I think that we can be a virus, my friend.
I really, truly, and totally, and emphatically believe that we can be a virus.
But a virus, an antibody to the current cancer of irrationality, subjectivism, mysticism, and patriotism that is swallowing up the world.
The cancer of culture.
We can fight that, and we can win.
We can fight that, and we can win.
But it requires getting the message out to a very large number of people so that we become...
This perspective, this approach, becomes normalized in the conversation that the world has.
Or rather, in the lack of conversation that the world has.
And until it gets normalized, it's going to be fringe and it's not going to make much progress.
And so we have to get this basic question about violence and statism and virtue and family and rationality and empiricism and the scientific method and all the stuff that we talk about here, different approaches that we take to unraveling.
The Gordian nod of the truth.
Which is not that the truth is naughty, but we are naughty.
And we must be spanked.
But we can absolutely do an enormous amount to make the world a sane, healthy, rational, positive, joyful place.
But it does require the conversation get out as much as possible to people.
And so my part is produce it and so on.
Participate in the conversations that generate it.
And Do all of the icky technical stuff to make it all...
I mean, I've written an interface for navigating the podcast by category, so if you're interested...
Just things like that, right?
Put together a female...
A XML, particularly a feed, particularly designed more for women.
Get my wife involved.
And so I'll do all of that.
And you just got to listen and talk and from time to time pay.
And that to me would be success.
When I have enough money and I have enough time...
See, if I have the money, I don't have the time to do stuff, right?
Because if I'm working full-time and I have the money, then I don't have the time.
And, of course, now that with PayPal and all that, I can have the time and the money.
To me, if I can make enough to live from donations and use any excess to plow into Free Domain Radio, to me, that would be fantastic.
That, to me, is true success.
That the expansion of the conversation continues...
And that I have enough to live on.
And that I have no more that I need to live on, but that can plow the extra money back into expanding the conversation.
That, to me, would be real success.
Because if the situation arises, I don't think it will, but if it did, where...
The conversation was expanding, but nobody was donating.
Then it would be clear to me that this would merely be entertainment and not something that I should give up my career and my income for.
That this would just be like, oh, there's this funny guy who talks about interesting ideas.
Pay him money. Good lord.
Now, it's all abstract. It doesn't mean anything.
It's just, you know, it's interesting syllables.
He's a good storyteller. And the story he tells is called Rationality and Virtue.
And it's a story, but it's a fairy tale, right?
So... So, yeah, knowing where I stand in the hierarchy of financial values relative to what other people spend money on, this is not a poor continent.
It's not a poor Western world.
Most of the English-speaking world is fairly rich.
So that's sort of the idea.
If I can get enough money to live on, cloud the excess into expanding the conversation, that to me would be pure and beautiful success, as measured by the number of people who visit, the number of podcast downloads, the number of board members, the participation in the conversation.
The success of Freedom Aid Radio seminars and, of course, sales of books and all these kinds of things, all of which combines to give me some vittles, some Eatons and money for laundry detergent and the excess money to plough back into expanding the conversation.
So I hope this helps. I'm certainly, certainly interested in hearing what everybody else has to think about this, to me, relatively gripping topic.
So give me a shout and let me know.
Thank you so much for listening.
I dare say that I look forward to your donations.
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