Happy New Year my friends! When I last recorded I said you're either gonna hear from me a lot or not at all and it is the former or no the latter. I did not record one of these episodes almost the entire break. Part of the reason is I really wanted to lean into the no work thing. I shut down my computer and I was enjoying family time. Part of the reason is due to my grudging acquiescence.
What are you eating? We got a dog. We got my kids a dog for Christmas. I am NOT much of a dog person at all or I'm really not an animal person. It's not specific to dogs and so things have been busy because he's a puppy and he was a rare... I'm allergic to dogs and this was a rare hypoallergenic puppy rescue from the SPCA so we kind of jumped on it as soon as we saw him and the kids are very happy especially my oldest. They all have wanted a dog for a little while but things have been busier and less relaxing for me than I would have hoped for the this 16 day break.
I also recorded my yearly theme episode yesterday and man when you don't record for a while at least when I don't record for a while I am out of practice. I was saying um a lot more way more than I usually say um and rambled a little bit more so I don't I don't want to say it's not a good episode. I think it is a good episode. My yearly theme episode is always an episode that does well but I'm definitely shaking off a little bit of rust.
Now the reason I am banging in here now is because it is the Friday before I go back to work officially and the kids go back to school and I'm thinking a lot about my content strategy. Now the episode that's going to follow up the yearly theme episode of Streamline Solopreneur is about my gaps content framework and that is for gear automations processes and systems and I'll talk more about that in the main episode but I'm really thinking about the automation side of things.
My friend Chanel shared a tweet with me. Gosh probably a year ago that talked about somebody was saying you know he thinks that there's like a goldmine in teaching solopreneurs how to use shortcuts if I'm recalling correctly. I want to I want to text Chanel and ask her if she remembers because I think I'm ready to be in that spot where I do more videos building automations. I think my live streams can be a place where I experiment more with automations. My build in public automations have always... build in public is not right. My build with me live streams have always done pretty well when I was a web developer and since moving away from web development I've really just thought it was like me talking and I kind of you know I mean my friend Justin Moore does that extremely well but I think my live streams need to have a purpose. I can't just like I feel like I I don't know I feel like my podcast is where I talk about stuff in a more structured format.
So the idea struck me this morning as I was trying to build an automation for the brick device that I have that you know blocks apps on my phone when I physically scan it and it feels like it's lacking it feels like it's lacking shortcut support. I'd really like to set a focus mode on my iPhone when the brick becomes activated for a specific mode. So like for example the default mode might put me in my personal focus mode and the deep work brick mode puts me in the deep work focus mode and then the bedtime brick mode puts me in the in the sleep focus mode. So anyway something I'm thinking about but I feel like kind of building these things thinking thinking through them experimenting on live streams and then maybe turning them into polished videos would be a good idea. So that's I definitely want to do more of the automation stuff in 2025 you know based on a lot of feedback I've gotten that really is my strength and so that's kind of what I'm thinking about this morning which is good I feel like I haven't had a lot of good thoughts since the end of podcast advent like I feel like I used all of my good thoughts up on that and so I feel like the the good ideas bank is replenishing.
I'm also I need to work on my talk for pod fest I'm speaking a pod fest for the first I'm speaking at an event for the first time in over five years and I'm pretty excited about it I need to work on that anyway I hope your year is off to a good start and I will talk to you soon