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Commit, do the work, and everything will work out. We’ve all heard, and possibly even clung to, some iteration of this platitude. But is it true?

In this installment of Spark Infinity Office Hours, David reflects on the last 90 days of posting to Instagram, and the results he’s seen from his efforts. Later, David and Jody further unpack what they’ve been learning and discovering in growing a social media presence.

Sponsors:

• Productivity, Performance & Profits Blackbook: Get a free copy of the “Definitive Guide to Productivity for Artists and Entrepreneurs.”
• The Renegade Musician: David’s magnum opus on building an independent music career is here!

Highlights:

00:17 – Introduction
00:55 – How it all began
01:32 – Content rollout
02:19 – How paid exposure was used
02:49 – Analyzing the stats
06:40 – David’s next steps
07:12 – Lessons and discoveries
10:25 – Pockets of genius
13:57 – Next steps
14:30 – Group discussion

Transcript:

David: Welcome to Spark Infinity Office Hours. It is October 17th, 2024. Today, I don’t have a presentation for you so much as a 90-day review, and I am joined today by Jody.

How are you doing, bud?

Jody: Good.

David: Thanks for being here today.

Jody: 90 days. That’s a lot of days. Staying consistent.

David: Staying consistent. Yeah.

That whole 90 day… like we started with Spark 90 and transitioned to Spark Infinity. So that’s part of the significance there. I still came up with as catchy of a title as I could, which is can 90 posts change everything?

This is how it all began. I started posting again to Instagram daily on July 18th this year. I originally created my account on December 7th, 2012, just for reference, anyone who’s wondering.

And when I started Spark Infinity a little over 90 days ago, I had fewer than 1000 followers. To be honest, it was probably something like 850. And I got a cold start, meaning I hadn’t posted anything to Instagram since February.

There are different reasons for that. Clean slate happened in February. But the months following that were also, I was in a transition, figuring out what I was going to do for work and passion in life.

The content rollout looked out, looked something like this. I talked a little bit about this and I think the initial or maybe even the first ever Spark Infinity office hours. But the first push had nine posts.

Then the second had eight. The third had 10 posts. Fourth had 19 posts.

And then I finally found my rhythm with the fifth push, preparing 53 posts and then scheduling them out. So initially I really had no more than about a week’s worth of posts, which meant I could spend one day creating stuff, scheduling it out, not have to do something for a week. Eventually I got to the point where I could, I was much further out, 20 days, 30 days.

And so in total, I published 99 posts, but Instagram counts your stories as well. So it turns out I published 210 posts, including stories. Paid exposure, paid promotion and shout outs were utilized during this process.

But to be specific, I’m only relying on one source of paid promo and only one shout out was purchased so far. I did purchase another one today. Paid exposure ended up generating the most followers and engagement of anything I did.

So compared to posting and sharing out my Instagram account on Spark Infinity calls or in the podcast and things like that, where I saw the most followers and engagement was with paid promotion. Probably the biggest thing you’ll notice is that I’m up to 6,346 followers starting at under 850 and certainly under a thousand that may be noteworthy. The other thing that might stick out is the 4,000 accounts reached in the last 30 days.

But the really funny thing I noticed was I checked this on desktop, but on mobile, those stats look a little different. It looks more like 12,000 accounts reached in the last 30 days. So I don’t know what the discrepancy is.

I have yet to figure out why that happens, but just know that these stats look a little bit different in my mobile dashboard. I will attempt to narrate through. I don’t have any huge revelatory discoveries in these stats yet, but I think the more I stare at them, the more stuff I’m going to find.

So in the last 90 days, there’s been a reach of 9,735 accounts reached. So almost 10,000 people have at least seen the posts, whether they did anything or not with them is a whole other matter. By content type, hosts had the most engagement and then reels and then stories.

But this is really not a big surprise given that I created more posts than anything else. Fewer reels, fewer videos and some stories. You know, by and large, I reached more non-followers than followers, which is kind of nice.

Engagement number, 8,834 accounts engaged. Vast majority non-followers. It’s incredible.

So I engaged 23 followers. Shows how much my old friends care. And non-followers, 8,811.

Again, by content interaction, posts had way more engagement by a huge margin, but the reels actually had a pretty good reaction and stories did okay. Considering I was probably posting two to three stories per day, that tells me even though it’s kind of worth doing, it’s not something to stress over. That’s for sure.

And then profile, 6,577 visits. Out of those people, three people clicked my link tree. So that’s not doing much for me right now.

And then of course the followers are up to 6,351. Instagram provides some other really good stats on, hey, here’s the times where people are engaging most on Monday through Sunday. And that will be worth looking into as well in more detail.

This is just a really brief glance into top performing content. I realized pretty quickly as I was delving into this that I could honestly spend hours. There’s simply different ways of visualizing this content.

Instagram gives you a lot of options and I’ll talk more about that in a minute. But what we see from top performing content is the three reels that I published most recently, they say about 14,000 views, but in the mobile, it actually says 30 over 30,000. I think that paid promotion, that’s an unexpected side benefit given that I think a lot of the other content was getting maybe two, three, 400 likes max.

So within insights, you can view top performing content based on views, interactions, accounts reached, accounts engaged, and shares. And based on which option you select, you’re going to get a completely different view of which content was ultimately top performing. I’ve really only done a surface level dive of this so far.

And in fact, I probably could have spent 15, 20 minutes on this alone if I had spent a little more time looking into this today. But there’s at this time, there is still much to be learned from outperforming content. In other words, the content that did the best.

And I think this is the way a marketer would think if they publish 90 posts, they would look at top 10, top 20, do the 80, 20, figure out which ones were working best, and then iterate on those, create more like that. Looking to the future, I’ve already planned out a bit of content beyond those initial 90 days. I’m going to address my strategy, just like I said, looking at the content and figuring out what worked and what didn’t.

Incorporate more visual media reels and videos into my content schedule. That’s already starting to happen. Use more humor in my posts.

In settings like these, it may not always come across, but at play, I have a sense of humor that while does not appeal to everyone, does appeal to a certain demographic. And focus on what I’m good at. And I’ll talk more about that in a moment.

I’ll share a few lessons and discoveries. Creating and publishing content did not always spark joy on this journey. Consistency can be like that though, in my experience.

I really have no problem coming up with new ideas. And I definitely had some fun. But at times, generating and editing captions kind of felt like a chore.

At first, it was fun. I was writing it myself. And then I decided to start using Claude.ai, which I love. And then I made a prompt and then I tweaked the prompt. And then I kept tweaking the prompt. And that was kind of fun.

Once I settled into a groove and was kind of getting what I liked, it was less fun. Next lesson or discovery, running multiple promotions simultaneously makes it harder to measure where the results are coming from. This realization comes from running the ongoing promo, paid promo alongside shoutouts.

It’s much better to isolate your promotions. And running them independently would make it much clearer what results you’re getting from each channel. And this was a timely and super important discovery.

I’m really not good at all aspects of marketing. I shared in an earlier video on fine-tuning and micro-adjustments that I’ve been learning and trying many things simultaneously in my business. And this had a really great benefit.

So spreading myself out like that and tackling different aspects of my marketing, it taught me that I’ve got pockets of genius where I operate exceptionally well, but many, many other areas where there’s no fruit on the tree to speak of. Let’s start here. I’m great at writing, but in a sense, I suck at blogging.

Neil Patel gets over 500,000 visits per day to his website. Sometimes 600,000. He’s amazing at blogging.

I’ve had sites that got me over 1,200, maybe 2,000 visits per day at a time. I’ve never seen six figures. And him and I even started blogging around the same time.

I think he was maybe a year earlier than me. I’m great at interviewing people, but I suck at podcasting. I have trouble sticking to themes, staying relevant to my audience, weaving narratives, knowing the difference between content that will work versus what won’t.

James Schramko has earned over 5 million podcast downloads to date. I’ve only got 110,000. I don’t want to say only.

It’s still an achievement. But again, James and I kind of started around exactly the same time, 2009. Basically, I’m not especially good at blogging, podcasting, YouTube, SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing, market research, competitor research, and on and on.

I don’t say this to point out my flaws as I’ve helped my clients. I’ve helped my customers. I’ve helped my students achieve amazing results in their lives.

Crowdfunding campaigns, independent radio campaigns, social media campaigns. I’ve even had my own moments. There was a blog post, one, a single blog post I wrote that generated thousands of views for me, maybe even more than that.

So in isolation, I’ve had my successes. I’m not saying that I haven’t, but I would say on the whole, with how much time, effort, content that was produced, advertising, all efforts combined, I’ve had only a few breakthroughs in these areas. The good news is I’m discovering my pockets of genius.

I’m actually skeptical that I have seven. I think it’s more so that some of these are interweaving with each other. My superpowers, which I’m calling the super seven, one is creating content.

I don’t have any trouble with this. I can come up with ideas. I can move from idea to concept very quickly.

If I know what I want to say and what I’m writing about, I could have a great blog post pounded out in the next half an hour. I can adjust content to scale too. I can create something small and quick and digestible and fun.

And I can also create something long form, like some of these presentations have been. Like I said, interviewing people, multiple people have come to me and said that, gosh, you’re just one of those guys. You’re able to bring things out of people that they just wouldn’t otherwise share with the world.

Sniffing out opportunities and monetization streams. I’ve virtually never been accused of being unaware of what’s available in terms of various income streams, whether it’s in my business or a business I’m considering or helping others find them. I know where to find them.

Identifying opportunities and gaps on YouTube. I actually now have proof of concept because I use my framework. I use my process and I’ve only done it once.

However, when I did it and followed the process and did my research and found the keywords and found a video gap that I could fill, it led to 40,000 or 50,000 views on a single video. And I know I can do that again if I focused on it. That’s the key.

Collaboration and contribution would be the next superpower. I’m still looking for the exact languaging or terms to describe how this works or what this is. But in other words, I sometimes see opportunities.

There’s a YouTube channel where they were playing a video game and they were talking about this sound effect that they really loved. And I decided, hey, because one of the presenters or one of the hosts said, you should put music and a beat to that or someone should. I decided I should be that someone and put music and a beat to it.

Then I submitted to their channel and he emailed back and said, this is hilarious. I’m going to play it on the next live stream. That live stream is happening tomorrow.

I am now spotting more opportunities like that where I can insert myself into the conversation and or be of contribution or enhance what they’re already doing. Novelty and humor. Not to say that those things are the same necessarily, but in the same way that I just talked about contributing a song that is ultimately hilarious and funny, I can inject and use that in my content.

And people have come to me and said, that’s one of my key strengths. Then I would say webinars. When I give webinars and it has not been that often, I usually find people are eager to work with me.

And so even, even if I have like a small number of viewers, like five or 10 people, three to five of those people would be like, hey, David, tell me more about this. Can you build me a website? Do you want to work with me?

I’d love to get your ideas on this. So whenever I do webinars, I see good things happening. It’s really clear to see where I should be putting my time and what I should be relying on with team.

What I can do and what my superpowers are versus the things that I want to delegate or outsource or give to other people to shine. And this may not happen immediately, but I’m going to be gradually chiseling away at the things that I shouldn’t be doing. So I can spend more time, for example, creating videos that gets tens of thousands of views.

So thanks for joining me for this review. As always, you can follow me on Instagram at David Andrew Wiebe. And are you currently struggling coming up with marketing ideas for your music?

Are you tired of trying to figure out the social media game? Are you tired of trying to build sales funnels that don’t work and don’t lead to the results you want? If that’s the predicament you’re in, you’ll want to check out my new book, The Renegade Musician.

It’s all available on Amazon, Kindle, paperback and hardcover. So Jody, what are you taking away today?

Jody: Oh, this is good to review. I think some of us just don’t. You know, there’s the work that you put in and then what you have from that work.

So if you don’t review it, you know, and you also don’t share it, then there’s nothing. It’s going out to wherever it goes. There’s no acknowledgement of what’s completed.

David: And this is what I’m realizing more and more about marketers. They’re the kind of people that will analyze every tweet, every Facebook post, every Instagram post, every YouTube video. They’ll have all their numbers in the spreadsheet and they’ll connect the dots and they’ll be like, oh, here’s something.

And you’ll be like, I have no idea how you made that logic leap. Right? Yeah.

But without having done it yourself first, you may never make those connections either. So there’s value in doing it yourself and also letting true marketers see what they see in it.

Jody: Yeah, I think there’s always like what I’m seeing too is like, what do we have financially in our time? I mean, somebody said it to me a while back, which is like, which is something I’m still working on myself is like, how do we trade instead of trading time for money? How do we trade money for time?

I think that’s the way that it goes. So that it’s not always like you’re limiting yourself. I think, I think you can do it anywhere.

I just, I’ve been noticing the town that I live in. I’m like looking up there, I’m like, noticing the town that I live in is unique. And I think there’s a market for unique things.

They just need to stand out more effectively. And there isn’t any proven cycle to that. Knowing people in the town that offer different community stuff.

It’s like, why are you in it? I think I was watching something the other day on a photographer from a skateboard industry that has done a lot of photography in a lot of different demographics where he started off in skateboarding, but then got into commercial work and commercial work was way better for financials. But it was that he didn’t, he loves skateboarding so much that he wants to be more in that community.

So he’s not in it necessarily for the money. It’s just that the money happened for him. In general, we all need money to live.

So it’s like, how do you meet all of those financial obligations in life to thrive rather than struggle or strive towards something? And there’s nothing wrong with either of those things. It’s just a matter of the questions that I’m asking myself recently in how you’re comparing your, you know, with other people too.

It’s like, is it value anymore in comparing ourselves? Because does it limit our expansion in innovation? It’s one of the things I’m asking myself because I noticed when I don’t do it, I actually thrive more.

And it’s something that was given to me way back in a branding course that I took is to like find comparisons and use them as a guide, which I think is fine. But it’s as long as we’re not comparing ourselves too much to specific set individuals that have found their niche. And maybe we just haven’t yet.

Because I think the niche is such a great thing in the problem solving question of marketing. What problem are you solving? You know, it’s that thing that I didn’t really know that question for a long time.

And I find a lot of people just overstep things going into like solving a problem that doesn’t need solving. So there’s just a lot, man.

David: I agree with you. I think the key takeaway from all this isn’t so much that you want to compare your bloopers to someone’s highlight reels. It just doesn’t work that way.

James has his niche. He knows exactly what he wants to do and industry and niche that he wants to impact. And he’s doing it.

And he’s doing a fantastic job of it. As creatives, he and I have both shared this. It’s not a curse per se, but sometimes it’s not a blessing that we have so many interests.

I’ve always loved skateboarding. And I love watching people skateboard. I don’t do it well myself.

But that’s like a side passion that I’ve always have. I love fishing. It’s not a thing that I go every week.

It’s not even a thing that I go every year. But when I do go, I have a good time and it feels good to be out in nature.

Jody: Yeah. It might be the only thing that those people have too, is they might not have all these side things that we love so much. You know, it’s like they’re able to hone in on that one niche and that’s all they got.

So it’s like when it comes down to it, that’s where they’re putting all of their energy. You know, even, you know, applying for jobs or doing things out in the world right now is like, I love the three things that I found I enjoy a lot is, you know, hair, music, and design, like graphic design. They all harmonize within each other.

And a lot of it is based from skateboarding. You know, hair, music, and design. It’s all, you know, connected to fashion.

And those are things that I love because of the artistic nature of them. So it’s a self-expression thing and it can get muddled. I think a lot of, you know, but I think there’s a clarity or anything.

There’s a clarity in discovering who you are and it’s, it takes a long time. I mean, you know, in age, age is age. We can use it as a guide.

But again, if we compare age to like some people I know that are younger than me, that look older than I do or act older. So it’s like, I just don’t know, like in their health or their being, it just, there’s so many things that just are so superficial, I guess you could say, if that’s the word.

David: And that’s where I ended up finding a lot of value in spreading myself out. Even if just, it’s like not as a permanent arrangement, just right now to go and see like, is it right here or is it over here? Or do I enjoy doing this?

Like I would have SEO reserved for Mondays and I would have social media posts reserved for Tuesdays. And then on Wednesdays I prepare something for Spark Infinity. And then Thursdays we’d record Spark Infinity.

And then Friday I’d post a podcast and Saturday I’d post, I would send an email campaign. And it obviously got to be a lot of stuff. But the thing that was discovered through that is like, whoa, hold on a second, there are some things that I do extraordinarily well.

And if I just gave myself the time and space and didn’t have so many things to do, I could actually do those things really well and then find other people in different strengths.

Jody: 100%. I think it was one of the things I really loved, in comparison to doing hair for the last 15 to 20 years, sometimes doing it all is great, but you also have a lot more to take on. So if you do haircut, color, one of my mentors way back might’ve mentioned, you can’t be great at all of it.

I beg to differ in some aspects because I like the whole connection, but it’s like, when it comes down to it, it’s a lot to take on. To one guy that just does haircutting, like maybe a Sassoon, like Vidal Sassoon, when he started and things like that, he did haircutting and styling. He honed that craft, maybe not the color technique so much wasn’t focused on.

So there was just honing that craft and really developing that specific niche. And that’s what made the difference.

David: In a workplace conversation, a lot of people were saying, gosh, you kind of know a bit about everything. And if there’s something I need to ask, I know I can just ask you. So I’ve definitely developed into a well-rounded generalist.

But the funny part about that is I can play circles around 80% of guitar work that’s out there. 15%, if I worked at it really hard, I could learn it. The other 5%, I don’t know.

I may never approach that, but that’s how I feel about writing too. I could write around 80% of chat GPT even and make something way better. So like I’m well-rounded and simultaneously, there’s at least a couple skills that I think I do excel at.

Jody: Yeah. And I think if you can harness that, you know, looking at that now that you know that, what would you do with that information? Because it’s like, I see freedom.

It’s not personally on this side, you know, because there’s, there’s you looking into the camera and then us looking back at ourselves, but then I’m on the other side of what you’re saying. And I’m, I’m absorbing it over here differently than your perspective or point of view. Yeah.

And I see freedom in with you in understanding, and I’m inspired to discover that and have been personally on that journey as well as like, I can do a lot of things. Like I’ve worked in a ton of different industries and things like that. What am I great at?

Is a tough question sometimes because it gets so strewn in that, but I’ve definitely, um, with the new launch of my website and, and going with a new approach to social media with just Jody Lubin and the new band side of things. It’s like, I’m starting to see a friend of mine mentioned, put it in a shoe box. Like if you have a lot of band ideas, which we used to have, we would put it in a shoe box and we put it over here.

And I was like, that really hit me recently. Cause I was like, holy shit. Okay.

That’s crazy. I could do that. Like, and now it clicked and it’s years later.

Like I’m talking, this was like five to seven years ago and it just clicked like recently again, where it came up. And I was like, I could really see that I can do that now. Whereas before I wasn’t as aware, like you said, I would be putting all my time in different areas and not be able to cleanly put it in that shoe box, put it over here and come back to it or never come back to it.

David: I think you mentioned that last time too. And it totally stuck with me. I sit here and contemplate it too.

Cause I think it’s spot on and it’s a really neat concept. And to your point, like I actually do feel a lot more freed now.

Jody: Yeah. I think you can tell.

David: Yeah. You know, the work that we’re doing right now is, is maybe not work that we’ll be doing forever. And in the sense that we have spark infinity going and I can see maybe a year ahead beyond that.

I don’t know. Maybe someone else takes over these calls or maybe they just don’t happen. I don’t know right now we’re doing this and it’s fun and it’s cool and it’s novel.

I’m going to start liberating myself from things that I don’t really need to do. Well, it’s important too.

Jody: I think it was on the last one we are the one before last that we did where you mentioned identity shifts and we looked at that looking back on the previous posts and taking a gander at that. I think it’s important not to disconnect too far away from these things because when you can notice the identity shift, if you put things like my partner would always say, you want to be, you know, people are around for a reason, a season or for a life. And I look at that in all things now and I couldn’t, I would nobody ever told me that.

So I just thought everything was forever, like families forever. So people told me that I got into it. And then when all family left because I came from a gigantic family, I was mad heartbroken and could never, I didn’t know what I was happening because I was like families forever.

I’m bought into this thing. And then I’m like, here I am standing like by myself and I’m like, what?

David: That’s like my joke earlier about like my friends not really doing anything to follow me anymore. It’s pretty much true.

Jody: If you’re not reinventing yourself and you’re not innovating and you’re not reaching new people, then you’re pretty much stagnant. And that’s the challenge.

David: That’s how I feel.

Jody: And social media, I think really puts that present. And you made a really good push. And I mean, it’s huge value in seeing what you have now to what you have then, like how many books you’ll sell and how many things like that and where this goes from here.

It’s really cool to see that and how to utilize. I think you’ve really, you know, hair introduced me to the email list, but also music from back in the day. I think we’ve lost some of the main amazing things, maybe not lost them, but the simplicity of going to a show and signing up to an email list.

It sounds so like almost exclusive back then. It was like, oh, I get to be on the email list. It was like getting a sticker or like getting something else after the show that you went to, to like keep engaged with the people.

And now I just feel like there’s so much content available that it’s like, is there even value in all of this? And that’s the thing is like, I used to love it. And I still love getting certain emails from people, companies that I follow and things like that.

But now it’s just become such an overwhelm of everybody doing it that it almost is like taken away from that exclusivity. It’s like, everybody’s doing it. Who cares?

So that’s like, is it more of a nuisance than a niche? I guess you could say the two ends.

David: All I know is that like email marketing is supposedly, you’re supposed to get a dollar per subscriber per month. And if you have a really good list, it’s going to be more than that. And that’s just never been my experience.

So I’m like, I don’t think I was utilizing my list wrong. As it were, I may have had a slightly bad list at times or not the best quality list, but nevertheless, over the years, I must have collected five, 6,000 emails. To me, it seems reasonable that more people would convert and engage and be interested.

You don’t know. And one of the things, like I started uploading stuff to my music channel on YouTube recently, and I just posted two videos initially. And then I was like, oh, 20 views, 19 views.

Maybe there’s a slight appetite for my music again. So, cause I have a huge back catalog that I haven’t really done anything with. I started publishing more every day and then it was 40 views and 30 views and sometimes back down to seven views.

But I was like, some of this stuff is doing better than what I’m supposedly doing on my main YouTube channel. So it’s just, it’s funny sometimes. But yeah, I do wonder if we’ve, in a way, devalued everything by putting it all on the internet.

And the flip side of it is, there’s gotta be an upside to that too. It can’t be all downsides.

Jody: The first word that came to mind when you said that was exposure and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, you know, not to put, there’s also the middle ground, right? Where it just is.

But it goes back to like having a tangible book or a literature to read versus somebody reading it to you. I mean, I have learned that I enjoy audio books more than reading at times. Just because it’s like more well absorbed or I can get through it at a workday or whatever in the job that I’m working.

I can listen to it while I’m at work and it’s stimulating, but I also had a point where I was overstimulated. So I needed to, and my sister actually said this, it’s a funny thing because with kids and the iPad and the stimulation of like cartoons and things like that, kids can actually get overstimulated. So they actually took their child, like removed that stimulation from the child, then take it away.

But it removed it gradually like kind of from the child and the child started to then play more like a child and engage more with everything around her. And she was less overstimulated, less fits, less all of the stuff that happened from them, just simply removing that one device. So it was like, it’s the thing, even for me, I’ve been up on the roof, like cleaning stuff and getting things ready for winter at the house and cleaning the garage and things like that, but less on social media.

And I noticed a lot more peace of mind.

David: I want to say “experiments,” but they might’ve literally done this in China, like gradually taking away the toys from the child and then the child would just find objects and turn them into toys. And so then the creativity. Exactly.

I remember doing that kind of stuff or just using your imagination. Like you’d be laying on a trampoline, looking up the sky and you dream up like the weirdest video game scenarios you could think of.

Jody: Yeah. Clouds. What was that?

You know, and then it was like a stick. How many different things could a stick be? A walking stick, a gun, a bow and arrow.

A lightsaber. That’s the funniest thing. You know, we used to build forts and dugouts and things.

I mean, it’s just so peaceful to be in the wilderness and doing those things rather than digital. Yeah. Sometimes I’m missing it.

I don’t mean to get too nostalgic, but it’s cool, man. It’s like you said, there’s both sides of the good and the bad in the middle out there with there has to be something else. And I think it’s a marketing tool.

That’s more accessible, even within music. I mean, they think of putting out an individual CD back in the day. Now you can put it out to the world instead of having to go through those channels, which is great.

Will the world ever hear it? So it’s like all of these things, running the great campaign, running this and that behind it can help. But it’s like it can also be challenging putting yourself out there so much and not.

And knowing you just got to know, I guess, that you might get nothing in return.

David: That’s why I’ve really come to understand. And like I pointed it out years ago, would have been 2015. But this novelty angle, because you look at what Lindsey Stirling is doing, and she plays violin while dancing and calls it planting.

I’m pretty sure we could go back in history and find Irish people dancing with fiddles. OK, like this is not unique. 100%.

What they did, they’re drinking and dancing and playing fiddle, right? At the same time, it’s like, OK, she found a way of reprising that and turning it into her thing. You look at Igor Presnyakov and he played all these acoustic guitar covers, very skilled acoustic guitar player.

But he’d take all the pop songs and create these intricate, beautiful arrangements. Tens of thousands of views. So the really hard part is like creating music that’s true to you and expressive to you and putting that into the world and not getting reception.

And the part that’s, I don’t want to say it’s easier to do, but I think it’s easier to find an audience if you go the novelty route. Even like Weird Al is another great example that I was thinking of today. And I love Weird Al.

Some of the best concerts I’ve been to have been Weird Al, honestly. I think Extreme is up there. Van Halen was OK. Def Leppard was OK. Like these are some of my favorite bands. But of those I’ve been to, wow, Weird Al out of this world.

Jody: Unique, you know, he didn’t settle. He just, it was OK to be the weirdo.

David: He started with a hardcore audience, which helps, but a small hardcore audience and no one would have figured he’d become a cultural icon in parodies. But he’s even eclipsed that because I think he has a few Grammys, right?

Jody: Well, yeah, and he acted, you know, he’s acted a lot and things like that and cameos and things. So, I mean, he’s diversified his craft too, which is cool. I think, yeah, he does a good job.

And he’s not really made fun of it, is people I think are, they, I think longing, this might sound funny, but they’re like, they would rather be like him in some aspects of how I wish I could be that weird.

David: Yes, that’s true. And he has been very well-intentioned with his parodies.

Well, thanks again, Jody. It’s been a fun Spark Infinity. And for those tuning in, we’ll see you again real soon. Thanks for joining us.