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Skills I'd Pay For

There are lots of skills I'd pay for but it's generally hard for me to work with people who are unfamiliar with FI philosophy. For example, I'd like video editing to cut down streams to summaries. The main idea is to delete 80% of each stream so that just highlights are left. (Here's an example of a video made by cutting out 88% of a stream. They're pretty common with popular gamer streamers like smallant and zfg who I believe hire video editors to make them.) But I don't think it'd work to get a video editor who knows how to use editing tools but doesn't know anything about FI. He wouldn't know which parts are the highlights! Plus he wouldn't watch my videos normally. It works best to hire an editor who already watches your videos anyway, so then basically you don't have to pay him extra to watch your videos in the first place. It's more efficient and cheaper to use someone who was going to watch the video on his own than someone who wasn't. And it's better if the person doing it actually likes the videos, is interested, is in a position to make judgment calls and additional edits besides cuts (because he has ideas about what would make something better), etc.

Other things I could use: art, design, marketing, other types of video editing, animation, and Keynote polishing (there are lots more tutorials on that channel, but that one video will give you a good idea of what I'm talking about).

I've been having Justin do some work on making ebooks from email archives and adding tables of contents to videos. Those are other good examples of the kinds of skills I'm interested in delegating.

Editing text would be valuable too but basically that takes a ton of skill and I can't trust anyone to edit my writing. The other ones I listed are all easier to do well enough it'd have value to me. I'm less skilled and picky about them.

I'd also be interested in someone to do my newsletters for me. That takes some writing skill and FI knowledge, but a lot less than writing or editing my essays.

I'm sure there are other similar things that I'd also like to delegate. Maybe you could suggest some.

Are any of my fans good at some of these things and interested in doing work for me? Get in touch. I particularly value people who work fairly independently, and come up with some ideas of their own, instead of just following detailed directions. Micromanaging is too much work for me.

Some of these skills, like basic video editing (how to cut parts out), are quick and easy to learn. Others are harder but have lots of resources to help you learn, e.g. there are books and videos about design and marketing (The Futur is an example of a pretty good educational YouTube channel for design and marekting). If you're interested but not already good at any of these skills, you could learn some. Most of the skills require being decent at using computers. Using other software tools can often help you get stuff done faster and easier, e.g. using otter.ai to transcribe videos with timestamps can help you find the good parts to include in a condensed version (then you can edit the video backwards, cutting stuff out from the end first and working towards the start, so when you delete stuff it doesn't change the timing of any earlier parts).

Work would be freelance project work, not full time employment. And not a ton of hours. You could do it in addition to other stuff in your life, rather than choosing one or the other.


Elliot Temple on October 25, 2020

Messages (6)

Volunteer work is welcome too if you can do something useful without being micromanaged.


curi at 12:36 AM on October 25, 2020 | #1 | reply | quote

Subcontracting might work for some of this too.

> it's generally hard for me to work with people who are unfamiliar with FI philosophy

It could help solve this problem. e.g. editing videos: FI person (the contractor) watches the stream and notes various parts (or uses a transcript, etc). The contractor could hire an editor and handle any micromanagement parts. That management might be lots of work for some editors, but there should be some who are pretty decent. The editor needs to know a bit about editing conversations, but that's a more common skill than editing conversations about philosophy.

I don't know if this would really work in practice. You'd probably need the right ppl for both contractor and subcontractor. Still, might give someone an idea.


Max at 12:46 AM on October 25, 2020 | #2 | reply | quote

#2 Video editing, consisting only of cuts (and maybe adding transitions like fade in/out), once you decide which parts should be cut out, is so simple/quick/etc you could literally script it if you had specific timestamps. it isn't worth subcontracting. there's not enough work that's being delegated to the subcontractor. the FI guy could just edit it himself and maybe even save time.

and i don't really think FI is ready for a management hierarchy atm.


curi at 12:49 AM on October 25, 2020 | #3 | reply | quote

I added a new paragraph to the end of the post:

> Work would be freelance project work, not full time employment. And not a ton of hours. You could do it in addition to other stuff in your life, rather than choosing one or the other.


curi at 11:17 AM on October 26, 2020 | #4 | reply | quote

Marketing and sales are learnable. There are plenty of rational, productive parts (I know the area has a bad reputation, particularly advertising, and there are some bad parts, but you can avoid those). Here are some resources:

https://groups.google.com/g/fallible-ideas/c/gfcGjocYOGk


curi at 9:25 PM on November 21, 2020 | #5 | reply | quote

#5 Oh I found out he does have his newsletters available on the web. He just doesn't include that link in each newsletter. He should.

The sales resources are also at:

https://jonathanstark.com/daily/20201121-2124-book-reco-the-ultimate-sales-letter-by-dan-kennedy


curi at 2:30 PM on November 22, 2020 | #6 | reply | quote

Want to discuss this? Join my forum.

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