#034 "Thomas Frank - Work-Life Balance and Notion for Creators"

The Brandon Zhang Show

On today's podcast, Thomas Frank is joining the show. Thomas is a Youtuber, Podcaster and writer focused on providing content that will make you more productive. Thomas launched the blog College Info Geek in 2010 and it is now one of the largest student advice sites reaching over 400,000 visitors, and his personal YouTube channel recently crossed 2 million subscribers. Today, we talk about work-life balance, his new Notion course for creators, and what it is like being the co-owner of a Youtube agency.

Links:
The 1% Rule
Thomas's Website
Thomas's Youtube Channel
Matt D'Avella's Youtube Channel
Notion Tips and Templates
3 Habits for Better Work-Life Balance

Contact Me:
My Twitter
My Website

5 Key Takeaways:

1. I think Notion is not a notetaking app. Notion is a graphical programming language. It has more in common with JavaScript than it does with Evernote. But instead of coding, which you can do a little bit of with the formulas, instead of coding, you use graphical interfaces to create tools for yourself.
2. The biggest thing that sticks out to me is just the production value, my friend Matt D'Avella puts into his work. In 2019, I went out to his place and we did a bit of a breakdown in his work process: the gear he uses, and that was really fun. But more importantly, doing that video with him inspired me to finally sort of get off my butt and really start pushing myself in terms of content, production quality again, because I think, after five years of doing YouTube, I had sort of gotten into this space where we're making some improvements every video, but I'm not really pushing it anymore.
3. There are risks in going super niche, but there's also a lot of upside to it. Because people love to say YouTube is oversaturated and you can't make it there now. And they are correct. If what you're trying to do is the worst version of something that somebody has already done. If you are trying to review apple products, there are already creators who have been doing that for years with incredible production quality and it’s going to be hard to standout. But if you niche down and you're like, alright, we're gonna review Apple technology from the perspective of an illustrator: I'm a digital artist, here's how this benefits me. There are a lot fewer people doing that so you instantly gain a little bit of protected niche where you're kind of maybe the only player.
4. You know, people discount this, but face to face conversation is how people make the strongest connections between one another.
5. If you want to have work-life balance, I find that the best way to do it is to create social obligations. And this sort of goes to a more general idea that I have around habits, and specifically breaking bad habits or modifying them into what you want them to be. Is that the idea is you don't break a bad habit, you replace it.