The Trouble With Knowing Better
“Why those microphones?”
Jay had been asking me questions like this for weeks.
Why that camera? Why that light? Why would I set something up this way instead of another?
Most people who hire me have a few questions like: How much space do I need? Will I need access to power outlets? What are the deliverables like? These are transactional questions and things I can easily answer.
Jay, on the other hand, was interested in the details of my process.
He would ask which microphones I was using and then ask why I’d choose them over something else he’d seen or heard about. When I’d give him an answer, it was like I could see him log it in his brain for future reference.
He wasn’t just interested in the final product. He wanted to know how and why.
The problem was that sometimes my answer wasn’t particularly profound.
Because it works.
Photo by John Zamora
I have a relatively new friend named Jay. Jay loves the business and act of content creation.
Like many people today, Jay has watched some of the most prolific business people gain their rise through content creation. I’m talking about Alex Hormozi, Omar El-Takori, Myron Golden, Dan Martell, etc. For the last year and some change, Jay has been taking a crack at creating his own content, starting in the mortgage industry.
Jay bought a camera and microphones. He signed up for the Forward Content Accelerator program by Neel Dhingra. He practices creating content by making an Instagram story and talking to the camera every single day.
Jay has the enthusiasm, drive, and execution practice to not only become good at creating content, but potentially get paid from his efforts.
When I met Jay, he was already comfortable enough in front of the camera to make videos. In fact, the reason we met was that Jay wanted to start a podcast.
He sold me on the idea because he would be tapping his network and beyond to get leading real estate professionals to sit down with him and have discussions, usually around social media and marketing efforts.
It didn’t take much convincing, and I was sold.
The original agreement was to take it one episode at a time, with the first being held at Jay's office in front of a live studio audience, an idea Jay borrowed from Omar and Myron Golden. The live audience would provide real feedback in real time on whether a topic hit home. It also allowed the people who showed up to talk with Jay, me, and the guest, who happened to be Elise LoSasso.
This is when all of Jay’s questions started.
I’m a pretty run-and-gun shooter. My equipment is mostly light and able to be set up and broken down quickly. I have a small portable light, a mini light dome, and relatively lightweight stands.
When discussing lighting the podcast with Jay, I discovered he had two Amaran 60ds with light domes sitting on heavy-duty stands with wheels.
Jay wasn't playing around.
When discussing the audio and atmosphere of the show, I revealed that I had several USB microphones, an XLR condenser microphone, and some wireless options. Jay wanted to rent Shure SM7Bs or something similar because he liked the aesthetic, but he also wanted to know whether they would actually be functional for what we were doing.
These kinds of detailed questions gave me pause at first, but as I got to know more about Jay, I realized he didn’t just want to do a podcast.
He wanted to execute a production.
And he approached almost everything that way.
Jay is a pretty good networker and communicator. In about a month, he was able to market the event and pack the room. He landed Elise LoSasso as his first podcast guest completely through an Instagram DM. He secured an event space in his office building and coordinated with the people working that day to accommodate somewhere around 30 to 50 people.
It was pretty incredible to watch it come together.
As we were prepping for the podcast, Jay asked me if the questions he had prepared were good enough to get useful responses for the audience.
I’d worked with hosts before who seemed primarily concerned with what they wanted to ask or how impressive their guest sounded. Jay kept bringing the conversation back to the people sitting in the room. What would they actually get from this?
This concept isn’t, or shouldn’t be, mind-boggling, but I don’t think I’d ever heard anyone I worked with describe their preparation in quite that way before.
I met with Jay probably three or four times before that first podcast episode. I probably talked to him on the phone three or four more times as well. Jay was meticulous in his planning and understanding of how things would work.
By the time the day of the podcast came, there was nothing left to do but execute.
The show went smoothly. There was some nervousness and a few hiccups when speaking, but otherwise Jay and Elise did great. On the back end, the setup and breakdown went well, and everything worked.
There’s a version of me that wants to stop the story here and tell you every piece of equipment we used. Which Sony body was pointed at whom. Which lenses I chose. How I recorded the audio. What I used as a backup for the backup.
I'm resisting the urge.
Because that urge is partially what this story is about.
I have been doing some form of content creation and social media management since 2015. I have accumulated camera gear for various jobs and gigs for a long time.
Some of these things I’ve done and practiced so much that they are second nature.
When Jay asked me why I had chosen a certain way of doing something, sometimes the answer really was just that I knew it worked.
But his questions forced me to think about why it worked.
Why did I put that lens on that camera? Why did I know where the light needed to go? Why did I immediately know which piece of equipment would create a problem before we ever turned it on?
At some point, things I once had to consciously learn became instinct.
I love gear as much as the next camera nerd, but funds are tight and getting the job done has always been my priority over having the latest and greatest.
I had spent more than a decade accumulating knowledge without necessarily realizing how much knowledge I had accumulated.
And being around Jay started making that visible to me.
What I’m getting at is that, for some people, content creation is still very new. They haven’t even tried it yet, or their understanding is very basic.
There were people in the audience who had never spoken to a camera, not even their phone, before.
As someone who has spent the last 10-plus years with a camera, being on camera and creating things for the internet, sometimes I feel too far removed from the beginner to relate.
Sure, I can rattle off answers to questions, but I can no longer relate to a complete beginner because I’m not one.
I can turn on a camera personality or relax and be myself. I can go line for line on a script or free-flow an answer.
It doesn’t take me 30 minutes to make a 30-second reel because I messed up or don’t know what to say.
It takes me 30 minutes because I’m overthinking the camera. The lighting. The microphone setup. Setting everything up. Color grading. Fixing the audio. Adding captions.
I’m so far removed from the front-facing iPhone video because I “know better.”
And I'm starting to wonder whether knowing better is always better.
Experience taught me how to make better things. It also gave me more reasons not to make them.
A beginner doesn't have to decide between four cameras. They have the camera on their phone. They don't have three microphones to compare. They use the one that's available. They aren't thinking about whether the image needs a different color grade because they may not know what color grading is yet.
There is freedom in not knowing.
And I think I’m a little jealous of it.
Over the years, I’ve attempted to break my habits down. I’ve used less professional cameras that take choices away. I’ve tried editing on my phone or an iPad. I’ve used fewer graphics and only basic color adjustments.
And it works, for a period of time.
Eventually, I start “knowing better” again.
Becoming friends with and working with Jay has helped me see this giant blind spot in my practice.
It has also helped me realize that there may be value in teaching what I know to others.
But I honestly don’t want to become someone whose primary subject is content creation itself.
I'd rather use these skills to explore something else. Cooking. Travel. A neighborhood. A person. An idea. Anything where the camera and everything I've learned behind it become tools for investigating something I'm actually curious about.
I don't want the tools to become the only thing I talk about.
I’m still trying to figure out what that subject is.
Most people would probably relate it to their day job, but mine is marketing, which feels too closely related. I’ve thought about finance because that’s an industry I work within, or some type of lifestyle or travel work because I love exploring where I live.
Maybe I don't actually need to pick one yet.
But the idea of sharing the knowledge I have, my process, and my thought patterns is something I’m increasingly interested in.
Jay and I still work together.
He has since become a content coach and is teaching others what to create content about in the real estate industry. He does live webinars and in-person classes, and he’s pretty good.
It still shocks me when there are people in his classes who have never created more than five pieces of content or posted anything other than templated graphics.
But I'm trying to stop being shocked by it.
When you've done something for long enough, it's easy to forget that the things you consider basic aren't basic to everyone.
Jay started out asking me why I chose a microphone.
I thought I was helping him learn how to create.
Instead, his questions have been forcing me to relearn something too: expertise isn't only knowing which camera to use, which microphone to choose, or where to put the light. Sometimes expertise means knowing when none of that matters.
Sometimes the right answer really is: Because it works.
