Reader Question Round-Up: Approaching Execs, Micromanagers, and Scaling without Job Interviews
I’ve fallen off a bit with creating video content. But don’t worry; I recently remedied that.
We left the Florida Keys, stopped in Raleigh for 10 days or so, and finally landed back in Michigan. But, upon returning, it wasn’t as simple as setting up the ol’ boom mic and tripod and letting ‘er rip. We returned to a house in a state of flux.
You see, before leaving for the winter, we’d sold our former primary residence and basically just dumped a lot of that stuff here and in storage. So it was like returning to a house that was in the middle of a move.
But, fast forward a few weeks and I’m relatively settled. The office looks office-y, and the aforementioned boom mic and tripod are ready to go. So I’ll get back on the horse with video content.
This Week’s Round-Up
To start that trend, I tackle another four reader questions. Those are as follows:
- 1:20 How to approach executives if you’re “scruffy and nerdy looking?”
- 5:43 How did we scale up Hit Subscribe without doing job interviews?
- 11:50 Is my manager a micromanager?
- 17:39 Can I keep my 401K after leaving the company?
This episode featured several topics that sent me into mild rant mode about organizational scale, realpolitik, and job interviews. If you like that sort of thing, then you’ll like this video. If not, well, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
One thing I’ve really come to understand over the last few years of professionally brokering content is that if the only reaction to your content is positive, it means you don’t have much reach. The content game is about finding the audience that resonates with your message and not sweating the rest. So, let’s do that.
And, before I link the video, let me offer the usual note about more reader questions. As you can see, I’m actually committed to turning all of them around these days, so please feel free to hit me with more. Comment below, comment on the Youtube video, DM me, email me — whatever. I’ll get ’em in the backlog and get ’em answered.
What’s with the background music?
It’s a good example of an aesthetic detail that puts a content creator in a no-win situation. If I add it, someone leaves a “what’s with the background music” comment, and if I remove it, someone leaves a “you really need some background music” comment.
Is there some research on what works better?
I generally don’t enjoy video or audio as a medium so my opinion shouldn’t count for much, my personal preference is no music, and of course I strongly prefer text but I suppose video/audio is a lot easier on the content creator?