I Can Do Anything (But I Can’t Do Everything)

0:00Here's a phrase that I came up with, although I'm pretty sure someone else has thought of this phrase before, and the phrase is, I can do anything, but I can't do everything, which is the title of this episode. Pretty simple. Now, this is, I'm sorry for the deep breath, but this week has been a little stressful only because it's the beginning of the month of January as I'm recording this and man, there's there's something I guess I've never noticed. I'm not trying to go hard on work. Everyone else is. So I'm being pulled in many different directions, and I figured once this weeks over, then things will calm down and I'll be fine. But that's hence the deep breath, hence the sigh. So the truth is, and this is not a

1:04this is not a brag, but I really can do anything, and I think anybody can do anything. If you put your mind to it, you know what they say? And I want to do everything. I do. I like the challenge of coding when I don't know how to code. I like the challenge of making videos, like the challenge of writing songs, like the challenge of doing, taking photos, something that I'm really not that good at. And I like all of these things and I can do all of them and any of them. The problem is is that I can't do all of them at the same time. And so I have to pick and I have to choose which thing to focus on in order to actually grow my business. And I had a fun exercise that I thought about. Here are the things which I kind of just mentioned, but here are the things that I can currently do. Again, I can do anything. But these are the things that I that I

2:04can currently do. I can code only in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP. And of course, I have a little bit of help from AI, but I can I've always been able to do that from hand by hand from scratch. I can do graphic design. In fact, I was talking to some people at the company Swimpley, which is a Airbnb for pools. And they were like, the CEO was like, Oh, who designed your website? I go, I did. I go, anything you see at Suim University, I designed it. And it was like, Oh, holy shit. You know, and it's like, you know, what you're, you know, we asked me what my background was. And I just said, I just honestly, I don't have a graphic design background. But I guess I have an artistic eye. And so when it came

3:06time to designing my first website, it that was my first foray into graphic design. And so I think I just have an eye for design, but I'm not trained in it. So I mean, I trained myself over time in different disciplines when it comes to graphic design. But I'm not, I wouldn't go as far as I call myself like a hardcore graphic designer, but I can do it. And I'm, and not, you know, I'm dangerous enough. I can write as much as I tell myself that I'm not actually a good writer. I think I've wrote myself out of that myth. I've, I still don't think I'm a great writer, but I know I'm not a great writer, but I, I can write. I can make videos. I feel like when it comes to making videos every step of the process, I can do, I can do pretty well. I can make music

4:08proficient at making music. Do I know music theory? No, not barely. I barely know the notes. You know, and I don't know my scales besides C and G. And, and honestly, if it's, if it's G, is G one sharp? And I think that sharp is F sharp. Am I right? Yeah, don't know music theory. Can play guitar, bass, drums. I've played saxophone in my day. I can mess around on the piano, but I can put together shit. Pretty good at that. And I can podcast because that's what I'm currently doing. I like broadcasting. I did have an interest in that. I did think at one point I was going to be a radio guy. I went to broad, I went to a short term after after school broadcasting

5:11education program. And I've always been interested in broadcasting, which is why I've been podcasting for as long as I have, because I've always been interested in it, which is, I mean, when, when people ask, I mean, I guess it's really hard to, I'm just thinking about this. Sorry, I'm just like all over the place. I've been podcasting since 2000. And six maybe. Yeah, yeah, it was definitely no, no, 2004. I think 2004 is my first podcast. And how do I know this? I was living with my parents when I first started. So I bought my house, my first house in 2008. So it could have been 2006. I'm going to go with 2006. And then I moved in

6:12with my friend two years before that. So yeah, 2005, 2006. Anyway, I coded my own XML feed. That's how long I've been doing this because at the time, the only, we didn't even, I don't even think libson liberated syndication existed. And if it did, I was unaware of it. This is old school shit. I'm talking here. This is like when, when podcasts first came out. So, but doing this a long time. Anyway, those are all my current skills. Now of these things, here's the exercise, which would have been, which would have, I should say, the greatest impact on my business. And what are the things that I truly believe that I'm better at it than most people? All right. So, you know, as long as I've just bright about doing podcasts, I actually been doing video longer than

7:13that. Graphic design is newer. Website design is newer. Writing is definitely. Writing is probably the thing I've been doing for the least amount of time, if I, from that list I just mentioned, I've been a bad writer up until like maybe 2014. I think is when I started to actually care about trying to be a good writer. So yeah, not a great writer. If I had to pick out of all of these things, it would probably be video. And the reason is I've been doing it the longest. I'm the most interested in the medium. So I am a, I'm not a cinephile, but I'm interested in cinephile things. If that makes any sense, like I'm not a, I haven't watched like every brilliant movie of all time, but I am fascinated with the behind the scenes of how movies are made. I love

8:20editing videos. Like I love just sitting down and like cranking out an edit. Because video has so many different disciplines within it, because in order to put together a video, you have to make music, or at least you have to be interested in music. I guess you don't have to be, but it does help. Graphic design helps for animation. If you're doing animation stuff in your videos, which I do. Podcasting is helpful, because if you're speaking on camera, it would help if, it would help that you were a good broadcaster. And now I'm not saying I'm a good broadcaster, and I'm not even saying I'm a good podcaster. But I've been doing it for a long time. Actually, I'd be curious. Now that I'm saying that out loud, what does it take to be a good podcaster? Because it's not, I don't like, I'm not talking about show design and structure,

9:26or all that. I'm talking about as a broadcaster, like I know how to speak into a microphone. I've been training myself not to say, um, in awe too much. I've been taking pauses when I speak. But what really makes a good podcaster? I would like to know that. I should probably look that up. Because I don't even know if that's what I'm doing. I know people, I know like I grew a podcast very well, but that was kind of in the early days. And I think it was a good combo. And man, if we had to continue that and switch to video, I think it would have been really, really good. So all of that said, I think video is the thing that I feel like I'd be better at than most people. You know, it's like, if I were in competition, I can compete with my, I would be very proud to enter my video into competitions and feel confident that I would win. I don't even know what that

10:30means, but that's one area where I feel very confident that I know I can make a good video. Because truthfully, like, and this is not, I hate sounding like a braggart because this is not the point of this episode. So the, the exercise is, yeah, I can do all those things, but I can't, I can do all those things, but I can't do all those things at the same time. If I'm going to try to build a business, I can't be the graphic designer, the podcaster, the guy who does the videos, writes the videos, edits the videos, the guy who writes the articles, the, I can't do all of those tasks. Even though I am capable of doing all those tasks and doing them well. And so the whole point of this exercise is to figure out what, where should I focus

11:34all of my energy? And I truly think it's video. And I honestly don't even think that it's editing, even though I think I'm a really, really good editor. I think I'm a really good video editor. And the only reason I say that is because I've been phrased a lot for that talent or that skill, I should say. I'm also willing to, to re-record stuff. And that's true for podcast. If this podcast sucks, if I'm in the middle of, of recording a podcast episode, I will dump it. If I got footage that's terrible, I won't use it. Like I'm willing to push the medium, because I enjoy it. Yeah, videos have a lot of skills baked into it, which I get to use. And so, yeah, it would be video. Also, thinking about it, it's a bit AI proof right now. I really don't see

12:43AI. And honestly, like, I just got an email from Miles Beckler, my buddy. And he's like, I didn't expect him to take this to, I guess, did I expect it? I'm not surprised, but I'm glad he took it. He's basically, he said an email that's like, I'm fucking done with AI. I'm paraphrasing. But I go, yeah, I'm, I'm feeling the same way. Like, you know, what, what, what, what was, what was supposed to happen? Like, I don't know. Every time I get AI to write something for me, I'm like, that's fine. It's like, it never got better. Like it just thought more. Like it, it almost was like an overthinking human, where it's like, uh, you're overthinking this bud. You know, like, you're two in the weeds. That's what AI feels like now. It's not, it's not very helpful. And I say this, especially when it comes to making video, I think AI is a

13:50terrible video editor. I've never ever, and I've tried using AI to edit stuff. And I'm like, oh, it's, it's making terrible choices. Because it can't really see anything. So how the fuck does it know? So, and it's bad with timing, which is like a very human thing. And I don't think math solves that. I think that's 100% feel. And like, when it comes to that, like the AI producing on camera talent, oh my god, it's so bad. It's so robotic. Like you can immediately tell. And the truth is, is they keep saying it's going to get better. But if the people who are trying to make it better are terrible artists, then I doubt it. If it's just nerds and ones and zeros, I doubt it. At least not in my lifetime. And I'm not to say that I'm doubting AI, but I'm just like,

14:51all right, you know, I'm not afraid of it. And I think video, you're starting to see now like more logos are, are clearly hand drawn by human beings because it's just so anti polish anti AI. Which I'm like, yeah, that's kind of what I thought would happen. If they're not moving fast enough, we're going to humans that are going to pivot. And we're going to, and our tastes are going to change before the AI can catch up. And I think that's kind of, that's kind of cool. It's like we're going back to the roots. Anyway, I digress. The point of this episode is to determine where my time needs to be spent. So I'm thinking about my business, and I'm thinking about all of the things we do. And we do a lot. We write articles. We post on social media, mostly video. We post on YouTube.

15:54And we have an app. We have books. We have courses that are video courses. And our company needs to write. We need to create words. Words need to be scripts. Words are important. But what I've realized is I don't want to do that. It's not my skill set. It's my, it's my weakest skill set. And it's a absolute slog. And when it comes to, so that means that I definitely need someone else to write for me. Now, I can edit, meaning I can take a piece of written material, whether that's a script or an article. And I can punch it up, make it a little bit better, make it fit my voice a little bit. I know how to do that, which is why I kind of like AI as a first draft writer, because it just gets the words on the page. But then as someone who doesn't like to write from scratch,

16:59I just kind of like having a starting template. And then I can roll from there. But yeah, I'm changing almost everything, because it's just, it's just bad. So I need somebody to write for me, which means they're responding, you know, anything that involves typing on a computer, I need somebody to do for me. Okay, I recognize that. Cool. That, that takes a lot of stuff off my plate in this business. Now, when it comes to coding our website, look, we don't do that much coding that does, that is typing on a computer. I can do that for now. But yeah, that is something I would absolutely hire out. Now, graphic design is interesting because I, I do think I'm fairly good at it. It is, I don't think I'm the best at it though. I do think somebody could come

18:00into our business and be a better graphic designer than me. I know that for a fact. So, oh, that's interesting. I just said that out loud. And I thought, I don't know if I could hire a better video person than myself. Like that is a telltale sign that I just had that feeling and thought internally. And I just said it out loud. Again, I'm not trying to brag. I'm just trying to figure out where my time needs to be spent, where I am irreplaceable. Okay, so that means that my goal, I'm going to say this out loud, bear with me. My goal in 2026 is to do nothing but videos in my business. What does that look like? And what does that mean?

19:02Because within video, there are a lot of different disciplines, right? I could be, I could do the scripts, I could film it, I could edit it, I could film B-roll, I could do animations, I could do music, I could do voiceovers, I can do all that kind of stuff. I could even do titles and thumbnails for YouTube. That's, I got to be more specific. I think that if I'm talking about video and I'm doing video, it's the filming part. It's the recording part. That is the thing that I am not maybe not the best at, but it's the thing that I know,

20:10it's how to make a video. You have to hit record. Interesting. Okay, so here's what I'm thinking, here's what I'm trying to get to this idea. My job is to hit the record button as often as possible. Okay. What does that mean? Well, tomorrow is an example of this. I'm recording this on a Thursday. It's late. It's like 620. I still have work to do today. It's not, has nothing to, and it has nothing to do with video. It's all to do with email. But I am setting up an email process to which I will no longer be involved in email. So it's like a one-time project that I'm working on right now. Tomorrow, however, I have scheduled, let's see, four shorts. I have to film four shorts.

21:11Those scripts are already written for me. I have to film two, I think it's two or three long, I think it's three, long form course videos because we are updating our pullcare video course. And I also scheduled myself four app videos. So one that scripted and three that are not scripted. So three that'll be off the cuff. So tomorrow, I'm shooting a ton of videos. Now what's cool about that is I don't have to do anything other than film those videos. The rest of the work to actually get them published are done by other people. So like my brother is going to edit all the videos. There's a few videos that I'm doing off the cuff that'll be that don't even require editing. They just need to be published, which I guess I'm doing the publishing, but I could get my brother

22:14to do that as well. And another thing I was thinking about was, man, I don't know if I want to say this, but I'm going to say it. Just I'm just going to say it. I was thinking about starting up the swimming diversity podcast again. I have two podcasts that are still there. I just haven't published them in a while. But I was like, we're writing scripts again. We're writing it like why not just record these as podcasts? Like what am I, like what's the big deal? And then put them up for, you know, just just put them up. I don't I mean, if yeah, it's extra work, but it's me hitting the record button. So it's something. I don't know, that could be cool.

23:21I think it's kind of cool. Something to think about. Something to think about. On top of that, I had a meeting I mentioned earlier with this company Swimply. And we got together. And we were trying to come up with a solution to like a win-win marketing scenario for us. And the thing we came up with because we had done this. And I'll tell this story because I think it's definitely related to this. So back in April of 2024. So this is almost two years ago. I had this company, you know, this company Swimply reached out to me. They said they wanted to do a webinar with me. They had all these people reach out to me. And we were trying to come up with something to like collaborate on. The one thing that actually moved forward within the

24:21company was this webinar idea. So I was going to do a webinar for their hosts. So if you're not familiar, I mentioned earlier, Swimply is a place. It's basically Airbnb for your pool. It works the same way. So they have a bunch of hosts who have these pools. And so a lot of these hosts take care of their own pool. And they did a webinar with me, the pool expert, for their hosts. And all I did was show up. And there was a deck. There was a bunch of slides. And I think I had seen the slides maybe once before. And I kind of assumed when I got on this call or this webinar was to resume that there would be somebody hosting it. And they would just kind of like go through each slide with me and ask me questions along the way. But that's not what happened. Instead, what happened was I had gotten in my studio. And this was a different set up at the time.

25:26And I had the slideshow in front of me. And they said, okay, Matt, take it away. And in the moment, I was I was like, oh shit. Like I just have to kind of go. And I don't know what happened. But I just started going. I just and it like I just knew. Of course, I've been doing this for so long. I just knew my shit. And I put on this presentation. And I could tell that I was in the zone, in the moment I could tell. And then at the end, there was a Q&A. And people who were watching that got on. And were like, hey, I've been following you. This is crazy. Get the talk to you because I've been watching your YouTube videos. And they would ask me a question. And I was cool. And I was like, hey, you know, just do this. But blah, blah, whatever, whatever. They thanked me. I got off the call.

26:29Stefan, I were going out somewhere. I got in a car with her. We were driving. And I was buzzing. I was like, I don't know what the fuck that was. But I'm like, I got so much goddamn energy from that. Because I guess what I just, what just happened was I was kind of pushed out on stage. And I just did like an open mic. And the crowd loved it. And I got that feeling. And I was like, okay, wow, I should do that more often. And Stefan, I had his whole conversation like, yeah, if that went as well as you said it did, which, you know, of course, it felt great. And the people were happy with it. So I'm like, why aren't we doing that for our own audience? And of course, we just like never got around to it because when I record videos for the most part, I'm by myself. So in order to do that kind of webinar, you do need a host. You need somebody there to take over. And you know,

27:29it's Stefan talked about like, hey, I would be happy to do that. And I'm like, yeah, would you, though, like really to like sit there with me live and like do this every couple weeks or every month or something. And we just like never got around to it. We just decided, let's just focus on YouTube. Let's just do shorts, whatever. We don't need to worry about this. So that Swimply comes to me this year. They have an entire regime change in their in the organization. And they come to me and they say, hey, we want to like that went so well. We want to do that again, but we want to make it more consistent. And it's a win for me because I'm like, well, I get to, I get to do that for my audience and their audience, but they get to host it. And so I'm thinking, well, that might just be a better lead magnet for me than the PDF that I'm giving out right now. Is that like you can join me like a webinar with me every month. And someone else is hosting it

28:32and taking care of all of it. All I had to do is show up and be an expert, which is super fun. So we're going to try it at the beginning of February. And that is another example of hitting record. So how do I hit record more? And in order to do that, I have to delegate the rest of the things that I do. You know, I realize that right now, I'm just I'm doing a few things to put structure in place. But once I'm done those things, you know, am I, do I really need to be the guy who's coding and fixing the website? Do I really need to be the guy who's doing all of the graphic design for the company? Am I the guy that has to go out and take pictures and get b-roll? Am I the guy that has to, you know, check up on customer service, make sure everything's running? Am I the guy who has to

29:38like do the emails and put together the emails and publish the articles on WordPress? The answer is no. I really don't have to do those things. There are other people in the company that can do those things, even right now without even hiring anybody. Except maybe graphic design and coding. But okay, those two things, you know, for now, there's not that money, there's not that much of it. So it's easy for me to do. But the rest of it, yeah. And how do I hit record more? How do I film more shorts? How do I film more long form videos? How do I film more course videos? How do I maybe record more podcasts? Do more webinars? Be on camera more. Use the living shit out of the studio that I built. It is the thing that I feel like I'm the most confident in. And if I live there, if that's my job, if that's my 10 hour a week job, then that's a high, high leverage position.

30:48And I'm trying, now that I say it, I think it's important that I get to that place by the end of the year, by the end of 2026, I get to a place where my job is to show up and and hit record. That could be in any format. It could be short form format. It could be long form. It could be podcasting. It could be whatever. But every day I sit at that computer, I should be hitting record. In some way, shape, or form. Because again, I can do everything. Nope. I can do anything. But I can't do everything. I would be curious if you would share the exercise.

31:48If you do this exercise, where you kind of think through all the things you can do, and then try to figure out what's the one thing that you that only you can do, or one thing that you are just the best at, and how do you get to a place where that's all you are focused on. That's because that's the highest leverage place for you to be. I'd be curious if you do that exercise, if you would share it with me, you can send me an email, madatjivenec.com, or if you want, you can subscribe to my newsletter, jivenec.com, g-i-o-v-a-n-i-c-i.com. That's it. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you later.