JBR

Hey there,

Weekly updates used to be posted both here and on LinkedIn in parallel. To simplify the posting process, they are now only posted on LinkedIn. You can check them out my LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobbrobinson/

Here is me filling up the remaining character limit :)

With Boys & Girls: Part I finished and out of the way, I'm looking towards new projects. There's a lot of experiments I want to try to see what's successful, but so far the progress on each has been slow. I'm hoping to speed that up now that I'm free.

There's two main things I want to test: short video and SEO. Short video is in regards to TikTok, YT Shorts, and Instagram Reels primarily. I've discussed this on past Weekly Updates (as well as on Monday Morning Coffee), but I feel as though shorts could be a really fun way to market major projects given if I can figure shorts out. I feel like in terms of cross-platform -- TikTok, YT, and Insta -- there isn't too much variation I need to worry about, other than differences in algorithm. Shorts always seem to give more views than traditional video content (60-120 baseline views versus traditional's 0-5) and I feel like if you can figure out how to catch the attention of that first pack you can then figure out the overall system fairly quickly. I have a few ideas -- each spanning across astukari, JBR, and the fun/joke content. Obviously no spoilers yet, but hopefully they will come out sooner rather than later.

On the SEO front, I've been trying to figure out the new trend that I've seen a lot of companies do. Instead of doing content writing, they now do "template pages". For example, you might make a template page "Our Company vs. [Competitor]", then make a page for each competitor you have. Those pages then each have a chance of ranking if people look up "[your company name] vs [competitor name]". This is of course much simpler and quicker than doing SEO blogging, so I have a few plans to implement this on both JBR and Astukari and seeing what happens.

As I mentioned last week, for this weekly update I have a lot of information on Boys & Girls: Part I to share. I'm pleased to announce that the book is finally finished and edited, and I can confirm a release date of December 21st, 2022!

Starting December 12th, free chapters will start to become available on my blog (https://jacob-robinson.com/blog/), released every week. All in all the first 10 chapters out of 44 will be available for free. From there after December 21st you will be able to get the full book either by purchasing it on the Gumroad page or subscribing to Astukari Premium (https://jbrholdings.gumroad.com/l/astukari). Amazon release TBD.

Expect more updates as we get closer to that December 21st date, and beyond. And, of course, after release plan to hear more about Part II ;)

Hello all,

I am a pretty obsessive notetaker, to the point where my notes can get a little confusing. For example, I have three physical notebooks: a lined notebook for journaling, a dot notebook for planning, and a sketch notebook for... well, sketching. In addition to this, however, I also try to use digital notes when I can. I of course have my "knowledge docs", short cheat sheets on various topics, that are available on Notion. And those cheat sheets are, for the most part, my real notes on those topics. But then I also have OTHER notes, my "working notes" so to speak, in Obsidian. And these notes ALSO include planning and journaling pieces inside! In other words, I'm really undecisive here.

There are benefits to both physical and digital notes. With physical notes, there's a tangibility aspect that's really nice. For example, I've been keeping up a journal since around 2019, and it shows -- I have a big stack of journals with my notes inside them, and I intend on making the stack even bigger. On the other hand, it feels like digital notes can be a little more... "ephemeral". Physical books stay with you pretty much forever, whereas digital books get deleted when space is required. That sort of thing.

On the other hand, you can make the argument that digital notes are much more practical. There's a wide range of features that are both purely beneficial in comparison to physical notes (backlinking) and other stuff that is just pretty darn neat (graph view!). I would also argue that it is easier to take your digital notes with you than physical ones -- you are always going to have a laptop, tablet, or phone around with you, but having a carrying around a notebook solely for having notes feels a little overboard. Plus, it's pretty easy for me to just pull out my phone and type something in when inspiration strikes -- I would argue not so much the same with physical stuff.

As of this point, my stance is as follows: I would like to be digital exclusive, though it is hard to ween off my physical notes. I don't want to quit cold turkey -- I'd rather just keep the physical notes going until I run out of books (not buying new ones, of course) and then once that happens, I can switch to an Obsidian/Notion set up and perhaps scan in the journal entries so that I can still keep everything organized.

I... I suppose this post isn't an update at all, isn't it? Well, I hope you got something out of it at least. My next weekly update should be full of info on the Boys & Girls release, but things aren't quite ready yet. Look forward to it!

Hello all,

Trying to add something new to my productivity schedule. Really this is more of a life thing than Astukari/JBR thing, but it is relevant to the topic, and I don't really have any other updates this week so I figure I might as well talk about it.

There are two definitions of what it means to live a "fulfilling day", in my mind. The first is the simplified version written by E. B. White: "To think, to cry, and to laugh, all in a single day". Fair enough, I think it will get you most of the way there. But I think perhaps an abstracted answer to this is to "live in rewarding short-long time dilation every day". This might not mean anything to you if you don't know about time dilation, but fortunately for you I have a word count to hit for this post on IndieHackers, so I will explain:

There are four ways we experience time: short-short, short-long, long-short, and long-long. The first word relates to how long an event actually takes. The second is how much it lives in our memory. Here are some examples of each:

Short-short: Doesn't take too long nor feels that way. Brushing your teeth in the morning.

Short-long: Doesn't take long but has a large life impact. Filling a college application.

Long-short: Feels like forever but you barely remember it. Waiting in line at the DMV.

Long-long: Takes awhile but has an importance in your head. A wedding.

For the most part, all of these have their benefits. But of particular interest is the short-long dilation, because you can tell it can have some really big compounding effects. If you do one life-changing thing a day, what could that look like in the long term?

So, I'm trying it out. Each day for the next 30 days (and counting, hopefully indefinitely!) I have a huge task scheduled for each day. For example, today's is to edit all of B&G Part I. This has huge life-altering effects -- it takes the book from "it might be out this year" to "I can release it whenever I want". Now, there's a change it might be long-long (honestly it probably will be) but long-long events are also nothing to scoff at. I want to see how sustainable this is over the long term, especially if I continue doing usually dailies and habits.

Hello all,

I feel as though my "niche", per say, is being uniquely at the intersection between business/technology and art/media. I feel like for the most part these two sides have always been at odds with one another, especially recently with the debate around NFTs and art generation.

On my blog, I often call out the BS of one side or another, as the nuance of an issue often fails to hit if you're entrenched in one side. But at the same time, as a creator, I see opportunities to combine these two categories in ways I don't see many others doing. I've talked about iterative publishing before, as an example -- this is something that would not have been possible pre-internet, back when monolithic publishers released monolithic apps (in this case: books, games, albums, etc.). I think as of right now it is underappreciated -- it really is only done in games, and even then is considered controversial due to some bad actors in the early years. But I think the future will go by this new iterative format.

I'm also thinking of multimedia storytelling in a new light now. Last week I discussed TikTok, and while before I couldn't really think of ways that I could create content for such a platform (30-second videos when I make writing that takes hours to read...) I've realized that there's a lot of ways you can approach all of this, much of which people haven't explored. Sometimes it takes awhile to figure out, and you have to try/retry different mechanisms and experiments (ask my Instagram followers) but eventually you can hit that sweet spot where you can 1) give something of value, 2) have it be easily digestible in that format, and 3) be relatively easy to produce. I think those 3 are the key to setting up anything long-term and worthwhile on a platform, and from there you can just experiment and see where it leads you.

Hello all,

Continuing the trend of last week, I've been thinking a lot more about content creation as a marketing strategy. The second channel has now surpassed 400 subscribers and I'm trying to think of ways to keep the momentum going while at the same time letting people know that the content they subscribed for may not necessarily be the same content going into the future. I plan on experimenting with YT streaming this week as well, speaking that now the majority of people have access to my Youtube and not much else.

I've been thinking about TikTok strategy as well, which I feel like is the next "nut to crack". I never used short-form video content platforms before so I never actually could figure out what people enjoyed watching on there. But after this experience I have a few fun ideas for what I could at least try, and see if they hit or not with the audience on there.

Finally there's Instagram. I think I'm going to pull the plug on it yet again, and do another semi-restart. But I do think I'm getting closer. Original content is still better than curated content when it comes to Instagram, but I think I'd like posts to come out less frequently and be more focused on specific creative IPs like Boys & Girls, etc. I'd also like to experiment with Reels, Shorts, whatever other weird stuff Instagram has.

Finally, some notes on how actual projects are going. Boys & Girls editing is going great -- things are beginning to speed up, mostly due to the fact that the later chapters are much shorter than the first half. And the work in the pipeline is going well as usual. I have updated and (mostly) fixed the site as well, which you can view as always by going to https://jacob-robinson.com/ (or now also by going to https://astukari.com)

Hello all,

The good news is that, this week, things have gone back to a regular schedule. The bad news is that, since it's same old same old, I don't really have too much to write here.

The main thing I have been thinking of this week, I suppose, is how to approach content on various different platforms. Preferably you want to post widely and consistently, but at the same time you don't want to post anything that's going to take too much time or lead to a detraction (e.g. posting too often and saturating people's timelines). You kind of figure this out on a case-by-case basis. For example, given my growth rate on Wordpress, Substack, Quora, and Pinterest, I'd say these are channels I have down pat. Twitter and Instagram, on the other hand, I have been trying and failing to figure out for years.

This leads me to this week, where something interesting happened. On happenstance, I decided to use my second Youtube channel (which contains content a bit too "casual" for LinkedIn, so I will not be posting it here ;) ) to throw up some quick videos and highlights I had made that I wanted to have saved somewhere. Usually I would just keep these on a private Google Drive, but I thought it might be fun to convert them into YouTube videos since they were nothing personal and I figured other people might get some enjoyment out of them too.

After I posted the first video, I forgot about it and went to edit the second. When I came back, however, I noticed something interesting -- the video had gotten a ton of views in a very short time. I uploaded the second video, which was the same editing structure but completely different content from the first. This one, too, got a ton of views. Baffled, I made my third -- this time designing it for a public audience, just in case -- and published it. What ended up happening is that all 3 got a thousand views in a span of three days. This was bizarre, speaking that it was a channel I never advertised, and all other videos had 10 views maximum.

Clearly, I had instigated the YT algorithm in some way, but I wasn't sure how. Then, after some thinking, I had realized something I never thought of before. Remember the four "successful" social media channels I mentioned? All four of them contain one pattern: it's all content made for me, not for other people. The Wordpress contains ideas I find interesting, the Substack are updates for me to keep track of, the Quora is for me to think about questions relevant to my field, and the Pinterest is for me to save art pieces to come back to later. For this second YT channel, up until this point, I hadn't made content for me. I made content I thought OTHER people would enjoy. Then, the second I flipped the script (threw on videos for my own purpose), it suddenly blew up.

To be fair, I am not saying I found the secret to internet influencer clout success. Otherwise, I would be driving a Lambo, eating fruit bowls, and would absolutely not be posting on LinkedIn or IndieHackers. But perhaps its a sign that things I find interesting are more likely to be interesting to other people, rather than if I just guessed what other people wanted.

Hello all,

Last week I said my focus was trying to get back into B&G (https://jacob-robinson.com/boys-girls/) after getting distracted by image generation. And I did! Fortunately the updates on imagegen this week were not as drastic as they were last. Crazy how fast technology grows once it really gets started.

For JBR Courses (https://www.jbr-holdings.com/courses) I've decided to make a pivot and just have the entire catalog available for a yearly subscription (similar to Astukari Premium) rather than offering the sub and then also allowing people to buy courses individually. I think the courses are short enough that buying them on their own perhaps isn't as valuable but getting all of them in one regularly updated package is. Of course this change isn't completely materialized yet but it's a move I plan to make in the long term :)

Speaking of things that haven't completely materialized yet, the website updates I mentioned last week are... sort of working? The headers are now good but the new blog page is janky and the projects page just isn't finished. More stuff to work on I suppose. You can see for yourself here: https://jacob-robinson.com/

Also plan on making a new Google and Facebook ad campaign for JBR to get more people into the community (https://www.jbr-holdings.com/community), we'll see what happens. But that's all for this week!

Hello all,

In addition to the Monday Morning Coffee (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY4VK0vZaK1dX6juBzd5KDp-1YlJYzbKa) and Astukari Newsletter (https://astukari.substack.com/) segments, I wanted to have another smaller blurb where I just talk about what's been going on with JBR/Astukari recently. These updates also get posted to both IndieHackers and LinkedIn which are the two places were I easily have the least amount of (fresh) content.

As some of you may know, the main focus as of late has been releasing Boys & Girls: Part I (https://jacob-robinson.com/boys-girls/) by the end of the year. This is pretty ironic speaking that I haven't worked on editing it in about two weeks. Instead I have been completely and uttering distracted by new imagegen technology, which I've been using to my advantage in creating character concepts for both B&G as well as other in-dev projects. Which is productive, kind of! These are all concepts that you'll be seeing a lot more of as we continue rolling out the marketing campaign. The first batch (created in WD 1.2) is already up on the website and wiki, with some more (even prettier and accurate-er) ones made in NAI and WD 1.3 coming out later. The tech is going so fast I feel the need to keep up!

Of course, there are other things I so desperately need to work on. Like new blog post features (https://jacob-robinson.com/blog/). And fixing my website, the internal site, the JBR site... maybe that's what I'll focus on today. Hope you enjoyed this update, though!