Fei Wu: Content Strategist Extraordinaire ⚡️
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by kirupa | Interviews with Creative People: https://www.kirupa.com/podcast/index.htm

Fei Wu (https://www.feisworld.com/) talks about building a creator business with unusual patience and realism. She explains why she started publishing before the business model was obvious, how freelance work helped support bigger creative bets, what documentary production taught her, and why audience growth, repurposing, and AI all work best when they strengthen the human side of the work.

Watch the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4
A conversation with Fei Wu | 1h 06m

ABOUT THIS CONVERSATION

Fei Wu describes a creator path built on conviction more than theatrics. She started podcasting while still in corporate work, not because everything was lined up neatly, but because something was missing and publishing felt like the right way to explore it. One of the most useful parts of the conversation is how patient she is about the early years. She did not treat the show as a shortcut to sponsorships or status. She treated it as a place to practice, build trust, and discover what sort of work she could sustain over the long run. That patience gives the whole story credibility. It feels like a real business being built, not a performance of one.

Her technical background adds another layer. Fei connects computer science, immigrant experience, and creative curiosity in a way that makes her business feel unusually integrated. She is comfortable talking about systems, workflows, and constraints, but she never reduces content work to mechanics alone. That balance becomes especially vivid when the conversation gets into documentary production. Taking a crew on the road sounds exciting, but Fei emphasizes the operational reality underneath it: logistics, budget pressure, scheduling, and the need to keep moving even when the outcome is still uncertain. It is a strong reminder that ambitious creative work usually looks glamorous only after someone has survived the spreadsheet version of it.

The later sections widen the view to audience building, global reach, repurposing, and AI. Fei is thoughtful about community, clear-eyed about the fact that audiences evolve as creators evolve, and practical about using every format differently instead of forcing one template everywhere. Her take on AI fits that pattern. She likes tools that reduce friction in editing, clipping, and business workflows, but she does not confuse convenience with connection. The deeper message across the interview is that sustainable creator work comes from showing up consistently, staying flexible without becoming scattered, and building systems that support the message instead of replacing it.

WHAT YOU'LL HEAR ABOUT

- Starting before the business model is obvious can be an advantage.
- Client work can stabilize creator work and buy time for better long-term bets.
- A technical background can quietly improve workflow, tooling, and platform choices.
- Audience building is steady relationship work, not a one-time growth trick.
- AI is most useful when it reduces production friction without flattening the human voice.

JUMP TO A TOPIC

- 0:00 - From stable job to creator work: Fei opens with the shift from corporate stability toward a creator-led business and why that change mattered. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=0s)
- 8:00 - Starting the podcast anyway: She explains how podcasting began, why she kept going through doubt, and why she did not lead with monetization. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=480s)
- 16:00 - Technical roots and constraints: The conversation turns to her computer science background and the practical realities that shaped her path. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=960s)
- 24:00 - Meaningful work over shiny work: Fei talks about choosing projects that fit a multi-year creative life instead of chasing every lucrative option. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1440s)
- 31:00 - Inside a documentary project: She shares the behind-the-scenes demands of travel, production, and working with a professional film crew. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1860s)
- 39:00 - Growing an audience slowly: This section covers consistency, community management, and the ongoing craft of audience building. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=2340s)
- 47:00 - Speaking to different audiences: Fei discusses international reach, localization, and why different groups may need different framing. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=2820s)
- 56:00 - Repurposing across formats: She looks at Shorts, cross-platform publishing, and the tradeoffs of tailoring content to each surface. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3360s)
- 64:00 - AI and the creator stack: The conversation closes on recording setups, business systems, and where AI fits into day-to-day workflows. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3840s)

TO LEARN MORE

- Fei's Feisworld: https://www.feisworld.com/
- Fei's X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/feisworld
- Fei's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/feisworld

TRANSCRIPT

The automatically generated captions have been organized by speaker, lightly edited for clarity, and broken into paragraphs for readability. Names and wording may still contain errors.

0:00 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=0s)

Hi everybody. Today I'm thrilled to talk to Fei Wu. Fei is a content creator's content creator. She has been consistently sharing her knowledge around how to build audiences, how to effectively create content across blogs, video, podcasts, and other mediums, and how to help companies use social media more effectively. She's been doing this for many, many years. In the following chat, we cover everything from how she got started, how she made the transition from a stable job to becoming an entrepreneur, how she traveled the country with a film crew to record a series of documentaries with some very famous people, and a whole lot more. This is a fun one.

It's great to meet with you. I've been following your content forever, so getting to chat with you right now is a lot of fun. It's like putting the face behind the words, the videos, and the images that I often see. So it's great to be here. Before we get started, what's Feisworld? Who are you, and what makes you tick?

0:57 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=57s)

Oh, thank you so much. Before we get started, I just want to send so much gratitude toward your work since 20 years ago. When I was a college student studying computer science and math, I had so many doubts, and when I stumbled upon kirupa. Com, I learned so much from you. I really couldn't believe you reached out to me. I barely get to say this to anybody who reaches out for an interview, so I'm so thrilled, and thank you for asking. Feisworld Media has taken many twists and turns. It has existed since 2014, first as a podcast.

Just like you, I started reaching out to my colleagues at advertising agencies and marketing agencies. But since then, because of the podcast, I've left my full-time job officially as of January 1st, 2016—trying to save some money on my LLC setup, that's why. I was trying to get every penny into the 500 incorporation money on January 1st. I started consulting for local small businesses as a project manager, as a digital producer, but very quickly I realized that content at its core is something I wanted to pursue for a lifetime.

It wasn't something I wanted to do just for a year or three years, so I was very, very ambitious about how to do this so I could do it forever, like Dorie Clark says, and play the long game. It evolved, and I'll try to summarize it. I did my documentary in 2018. Fast forward two years and it gave me the break I needed from taking on high-paying clients while I was on the road. When I came back from the documentary, I had to build everything from the ground up. That's when I really started working full time with creators and creative businesses.

At the same time, I started my YouTube channel, which took off in 2020 right in the pandemic. So nowadays Feisworld has evolved into a tutorial site and a helpful site for people and businesses looking to integrate artificial intelligence into their business, much beyond ChatGPT, by the way. I look at their processes and help them do business better and more efficiently. At the same time, I'm still a YouTuber creating tutorials. I still love talking to people like yourself, Kirupa, and I still run my podcast. In a nutshell, that's what it is: content creation as well as a consulting side to support what we do.

3:26 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=206s)

So let's go back 2016. You know that's a long time ago. In Internet terms, today, everyone is a content creator. The tools, the services, the ecosystem is just great to be able to do this. So what made you decide to be a content creator, especially when back then it wasn't a very popular or common path?

3:43 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=223s)

Yeah, for sure. You know, thanks to the corporate life, which did not really meet the needs for me as a human being, I felt so much of it was missing. I was doing well, the paycheck was really good, was steady, I felt respected, you know, it was doing well at work, but there was just this void that I couldn't quite describe it, because nobody, you know, taught me in school- my family members didn't quite, you know, point to exactly what was missing. So for me, Kirupa was really about like, let's just start some conversations. What do I love doing?

Love talking to people in this format back then was more like bringing people to Chinatown. I'm originally from Beijing, China. I came here when I was a high school student, so many people at work wanted to say, hey, I really want to try dim sum, could you take me there? And we then quickly sparked into this unbelievable conversation with anybody from IT, from copywriting, from, and I just thought, what if I could record these conversations? I'll just listen back to them myself self when I feel, I don't know, sad or like dissatisfied. And I finally had the got to launch the podcast. It was really scary.

For the first few episodes I did not like how I sounded at all and I was really surprised by how supportive people were and I said, okay, let me just keep going then, whatever it took, and we can talk about the struggles. It was very much, I would say, not easy. There are a lot of negative self-talk at the beginning and I just thought, you know what, like you said, I think, at the beginning, before even hit recording, if it could help 10 people, then I don't want to take that privilege away from people. What if I can develop a relationship? So just let let that fuel me.

And, that's that's what I did. But, to be quite honest, in 2016, I was not thinking about how do I turn that into a money machine right away, how do I get sponsors? And so I was still working as a freelancer for, you know, different businesses, so money really wasn't an issue. I saw working for clients as a menu for me to drive Revenue, so I can do this work that I really love and know it's important.

5:52 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=352s)

But that's quite the story. So let's go even further back. You know, I believe you made it in computer science and you got internet computers. So how do you get involved in computers in the first place? Like, what was it that sparked your interest in that fun field, which I'm a huge fan of course?

6:06 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=366s)

Of course. I mean you're definitely an inspiration. I remember stumbling upon your site sporadically, right, when I graduated from high school around 2001. I didn't know what I wanted, but I just remember that transformation, the feeling, believe it or not, all the flash models and sites that you get- literally I couldn't believe. I still can't believe, we're sitting here having a conversation. So you played a really important part and at the same time, to be quite honest, as an international student, I was someone who needed a work visa, who couldn't really work immediately after graduation.

I was someone who had to be 17, 18 and start really seeing my, seeing through my future years in advance. So you know, being a Chinese immigrant talking to relatives, one of the reasons is not a good reason is: how do I major in something that could probably guarantee or give me a good job when I'm a 22 and graduating? Computer science was really the field and, as a result, I think one thing that really made me quite happy was I had three different internships during college.

I went to Northeastern and it just kind of opened my eyes up to not just the theoretical computer science applications- we're learning Java at a time, and you know- and to be able to practice that and to see what it can do it was. It was satisfying. It definitely again had many struggles.

7:28 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=448s)

Yeah, you know it's an underrated skill sometimes to kind of pick an area that you think long term has viability as a career, which you can either make it your full-time passion or you can, I think, in teams like what what you and I do as well, which is like, yes, it's a part of what we do, but then this is a jumping off point to do other more interesting things and it gives a great foundation for being able to pull this off. Yeah.

7:51 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=471s)

Very true and actually I like what you said about, computer science almost as a social skill. There were a lot of hidden gems of learning computer science and thinking about all the Practical applications, things and terminologies I have to learn and I think later on, even still today, as a creative entrepreneur, I really borrow and I apply a lot of things I've learned back in college. I probably didn't appreciate back then to leverage in the work I do today.

8:18 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=498s)

That is so true. A lot of what I'm doing now. You know I always go back and go. You know I've only spent more time in college actually really understanding the importance of this, you know, instead of just like cramming for the latest exam or the short-term idea behind it. And you know, if time machines ever become a reality, that might be one of the things where I go back and see: like you know, let me do this differently this time around.

8:39 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=519s)

Yeah, isn't it true, though I'm just curious, you know, like lately I was listening to this like Random episode of Tim Ferriss. I really hadn't listened to his podcast for a little while, but he mentioned the idea of our live actually come in Seasons where he was reflecting the same thing when he was 20 years old, 30 years old. He wish he did this, but I he didn't think he would be ready for them.

So I think about the integration of our knowledge, our feelings and our experiences, in my 30s and I- I just turned 40 very recently- and I think about being an entrepreneur pretty much throughout my 30s and the things I was able to learn probably was, and they weren't, something that I could easily pick up when I was a teenager or in my early 20s. So, in a way, like okay, there's kind of No Regret and I've had fun along the way.

9:28 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=568s)

Yeah, you know, one way I could always think about it is like: imagine you're solving a maze. You're solving like a gigantic hedge Maze and you're trying to figure out, like, how do I get to places? Do these moments when you're actually stuck and you're trying to figure out where to go, a little bit of panic, a little bit of fear of the unknown, all these things kind of kick in where it isn't until you fully finished it, into amazing, like, oh, wait a minute, it wasn't that bad. It turned out that it was okay.

There were some paths I took that I didn't know if it worked out or not. And then you go back and go like, okay, it all turned out, you know fine. And then you remember like, oh, there's a water fountain there. What was in the Waterfront? Was there anything there? Right, oh, I saw a sign there. What would that sign say? In hindsight, you look back at it now that you know that you're safe, everything is okay, you start reminiscing about: like what if those options there?

At that moment, though, you don't have a guarantee, no one's going to be and able to constantly say like it's okay, everything will be fine. Just take a deep breath, relax and make this work. It's never that sense, and even today, I look at you know, like how I'm approaching life right now. Now, they're things that I'm like- oh, of course, you know, 20 years ago I don't know, I was worried about that- like there's nothing there. But I look forward to 20 years and I'm like I'm terrified of, like how some of these things will play out, and so it just repeats itself right here. Right it Seasons.

It repeats itself. I don't know how to overcome that fear, though, because I'm no longer fearful of many things, but I'm absolutely fearful of things in the future that I don't have any control over. It's one of the things where, until you get there, you won't be like you know. Yeah, it's irrational. Why are you afraid of it? But I guess that's what makes us human.

10:57 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=657s)

Yeah, I'm so curious and I don't know if your guests, ever ask you these questions, but I'm kind of curious, like for the past 20 years we obviously only connected now. But for me, to look at someone like you, who's you're? You clearly have very high IQ. They're things that came very natural, probably easily to you than most other folks- I mean myself included for sure- especially when it comes to computer science and programming- very intuitive. So I wonder, like, in the past 20 years, did you find yourself having to reinvent yourself, reaching New Heights or making some parallel moves?

Like what are some of the things, like related to what you just said, that you experienced in recent years? Yeah, first of all, I'll say I was a terrible computer science student, you know, and the reason it's basically I'm a visual learner. I need to be able to visualize what I'm learning and see the actual meaning behind it, because for me, the bar for is it a good use of my time or not? I was spoiled, you know. And so for me, like taking classes, and even though they were great teachers, great classes, like nothing actually complain about, I just found it all to be meaningless.

I'm like I know that this is not going to be important. Why am I learning this? And no one was actually explaining it in a really good way. And the reason I bring it up is also like I'm writing a book right now on data structures and algorithms, and the reason for that is because that was one of the classes I did absolutely the worst thing back in college and I never have. I never, I've never talked to engineer.

I'm a product manager, so I basically, you know, have to understand at a high level, like how these things go, but I don't deal with technical details at all in any way, shape or form, but I still do enjoy writing and teaching people various technical Concepts, and so that gave me a perspective like, okay, 20 years ago, if I had a book like what I'm doing right now, how would that actually help me make sense of like this topic and see the meaningfulness of it? And there's so many examples when I go back in my life of like why am I doing this?

Why is this completely you know, why did I hate it at that time? Now you see the value of it. And that keeps coming back as the as the main theme in like what I do here, because I wasn't really good at computer science and I always knew that I enjoyed working in a real company, like doing some of these things. So this is like a side project, like what I'm doing right now, like with, like you know, my blogging and my podcasting and so on. It's just a thing like in another side, like I'm doing it like an apparel to it.

But what I realized is that what I really enjoy is this is solving problems and talking to people and doing these things in a very abstract scale. And I love large companies, mostly because it takes a certain kind of skill to survive a large company. You know the politics, the inertia and all these things. Like I enjoy it, and so that is the thing that I used to like. How can I use my learnings here to indirectly feedback into my hobby? So what I really created is a- I like to call it- a career reinforcing hobby. So it started off.

My blogging, I think, was the primary thing I did and I had like a job on the side. Over period of time I realized like I actually really enjoy my job more. I really enjoy the people I meet with, the challenges I see and so on. Then I just flip the equation around. So it became a career enforcing hobby is what I do right now, as opposed to a hobby reinforcing career and the things I do, and all that purely accidental. I never actually planned it out.

You know, it's mostly a case of like: am I enjoying this, do I find this meaningful and can I use what I'm doing right now to help me be better at my job itself?

And so, like, one of the big things about podcasting I really enjoy is I have to spend a lot of time like on the Fly, understanding situation, making presentations, talking to people, customers, execs and so on, and to me, podcasting became a natural extension of that, where I'm just channeling my own curiosity and trying to figure out how to communicate ideas and get information from others in a very effective way as well, and so that's really been the driving force in a lot of what I've done.

14:34 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=874s)

It's so refreshing to hear that because I realize we kind of lost in touch, even though we're never really in touch, but I fell very close to you because of the work you have created, you know, 20 years ago and to hear, so much more about your current Journey, it's just so satisfying for me to realize, like number one, how relatable you are and what is precisely what you said about computer science. I was really bad at programming on paper. I remember going through midterms and finals having to program on paper and I also argued.

A lot of these professors did not really explain the problems very well or certainly did not make them interesting, and it was a struggle that I never thought you would be going through. And it's so satisfying to hear that you know. Channeling our curiosity without and also the unintentional, unplanned path is something I hope we'll get into as well. Is that I also did not anticipate that. Okay, I want to start a podcast and I- it makes me smile to see people want to have at least 10 episodes in the bank.

They want to know everything, they want to have some sponsors already lined up, and then you see that still, on average, most podcasts will stop after the seventh episode, and for me it was like I didn't have these spectations, these expectations. I would sometimes release two episodes a week. Sometimes I would take a break for two weeks. I didn't think anybody would care, but that actually helped me create content very consistently, which I know is a thing that you're also interested in as well.

16:01 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=961s)

Yeah, and we talked about this before, we've hit record. So the motivation behind why we do the things that we do: if your motivation for creating a podcast is so that you can get a million- you know a million- visitors and then, like, you can get the big sponsorships and things like that, some people are lucky and you know they hit it at the park from day one, but 99- like you know, up people. It takes time, it takes, you know, a certain commitment.

You know being able to go through this gigantic trench of like you know no one watching your content, no one watching what's going on and things like that, and so you need something bigger to motivate you. You know why do you do the things that you need a stronger purpose of like.

What makes this work- and I think that's the hard part that many people often don't realize- is that you know survivorship bias is huge, especially in the world of social media and algorithm and so on, where not only thoreship- you know bias, like you know there it amplifies it at an almost like unrealistic scale, where all you see are people basically talking about how. Like I woke up one morning and hit publish and now I- you know I'm like the spokesperson for a, b and c and you start- and you see it over and over again- you start internalizing that, being like: wait, there's something wrong with me here.

You know, this is going to go back to college again, right? You know, if every student was struggling and having difficulty- I'm absolutely certain the professor of the curriculum- they would be like: wait, let's take a step back, let's revisit this. I was an outlier. All my peers did fantastic, like they had no difficulty. Like looking at this like gigantic wall of text and diagrams, and be like, Oh yeah, this makes sense, I'm making connections, I can do this homework and all these things. I'm still going like: what is this? What you know? What? What am I looking at here?

I'm trying to sort some numbers, yet I see these mathematical equations. I watched like this over and over again. It doesn't click. And so I'm like: wait, there's something wrong with me here. And so when you get to that point, you're like: okay, I can either give up or I can adapt and realize: okay, how do I tweak this situation to be something that I can get past and figure out how to do things more meaningfully.

You know, beyond that and those are all the hard parts that I think that may have been easier for us back then in a world where we didn't have like a massive amount of social media and the amount of pressure we see from like what the success look like. You know, what is the first 10 minutes of a video supposed to? What's first our video is supposed to do? You know Mr Beast talks about like yeah, here's how I pick my topics, and so on. I'm like I don't do any of that. Maybe I should, but it feels unnatural.

And that, going back to like what motivates me, if I'm not enjoying it, if I don't think I'm learning something from it, then that's okay. You know I'm not going to do that, even if it means that I greatly, you know, reduce the amplification of the continent, create or the people I reach. It's fine, because at the end of the day, you know, no one escaped the world alive, you know. So I'm like let me just give you a little bit amount of time on Earth.

Let's just do what makes us happy, it makes us fun and, you know, provide for the people around us and just be a positive member of society. Everything else, whatever happens, it happens or it doesn't, but that's the intrinsic motivation part. Again, you know it's like. You know you have to focus on what are you going to get out of the learning part of it. I think fun and happiness are so essential for for anyone, and especially for creators, because we're having a good time chatting and people should visit your podcast and your YouTube channel- nearly 20 000 subscribers and a lot of conversations.

They can see the smile on your face and even if they can't see you know some people will listen to the podcast and I also focus on- actually a project on disability. So I think about people with different abilities can still experience you, even just through hearing your voices. Right, they can sense that. And I've spoken with creators- believe it or not, who are extremely successful. I've spoken with, you know, women, as one woman comes to mind who started this sort of you know, like a sort of like a food blog.

She's not- she says she's not- into food and her blog generates half a million dollars on you know just just one blog, and she was really not having a lot of fun. She was telling me she was thinking about quitting and I was thinking like what a what a privilege to be in, to have like a steady income and then that is. You know, a lot of people would be like a dream. That would be a dream come true. But for her she said she just she wished she paid the different Niche and she's thinking about how to start over again.

So I think that's absolutely true about connecting with the work that we're doing as opposed to only doing it for the money.

20:12 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1212s)

Yeah, I completely agree on that. That completely makes sense. As an aside, one thing I've noticed in Riverside is that it shows both of us as guests. Do you see an upload sign on your side versus uploading?

20:30 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1230s)

Oh, yeah, I can see recording uploaded—99 for me. Okay, then it's working. I was just curious. Oh yeah, yeah, they're pretty solid, believe it or not. I was one of the first creators to do a branded video for them, like two years ago, before they became so famous. Oh my God, yeah, I went through so many podcasting solutions, from Zoom to Google Meet to ultimately Riverside because of what they do here. By the way, we're going to cut this part out. This is all part of the show, though. People are going to be like, wait, what are they talking about? And I'm like, yeah, this is us doing it live.

This is the life of a content creator, that moment of panic in the middle. I only see one icon. That is me, I would guess. I don't see—because I used to see both you and me showing up. I see it. There's a dropdown. Do you see the dropdown, like you and one other? Yeah, so I can see you and me both. Yeah, both says guests, but I think that's okay. I can see uploading consistently, and I know to keep the tab open when I'm done as well. All right, we'll figure it out one way or the other. No worries at all.

21:36 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1296s)

Yep. So getting back to you know your first days of creating content. You know how was you mentioned earlier that you know it's never easy to start off creating content. What, how was it? What motivated you to keep going?

21:49 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1309s)

Absolutely. I have three, at least three different scenarios. I just want to call it out like: first day recording, my podcast, which was Audio Only. The recording part was really fun, but, my goodness, the editing and hitting the publish button process were extremely painful. I felt it in my chest, in my gut, to be like, well, this is the I shouldn't be doing this. I sound too funny. I'm not a reporter. I am not a radio host, I'm. You know who who gave me the permission to do this, right and so that's we can delve into that. Guess what?

Well, a few years later, you would think that I was really quite comfortable with podcasting, believe it or not. A few years later, my producer, Haman, said we should do a docu-series. We should invite the most famous people, like we just had this plan. So we ended up having Seth Godin, Chris Voss, Sarah Cooper, Atherton twins from Cirque du Soleil, you know we had all these folks to join me at Dory Clark as well, and I just remember, I was on the road, I had very limited clothing choices and I was with the production team, was working with for the first time.

Oh, my goodness, I relive that all over again. I did. I, you know. I was like, oh, like people are like you know, on camera, you put on 20 pounds. I was like, oh, my God, you know, I look horrible. And then I would say, another year later, after that I wanted to be on YouTube and once again I was nervous. But then I look at myself now on YouTube. Compared to the first video, it, I'm like two different people. And keep in mind I've been an adult this whole time, right? So yes, it doesn't. I feel like it's not just once and done.

It comes in ways and you know Ebbs and flows and it's kind of exciting to know that you're growing, even eight, you know 18 plus.

23:39 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1419s)

That's great to hear. So you mentioned that you're evolving as a content creator and all of this. How much of it is your own personality? A lot of people have their on-screen persona, then their off-screen persona. Do you have that same kind of thing, or is it just Fei all the time?

23:56 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1436s)

I think that's such a great question. I've been thinking about it and thinking about my answer for that. My Persona has been pretty consistent for a couple of reasons because, primarily my content on artificial intelligence tutorials- I did a lot of Zoom videos like virtual meetings, so it was, frankly, be kind of easy for me to be myself versus we're just talking about Sarah Cooper a moment ago. Obviously, you know she has different personalities because she is a comedian and so I'm pretty consistent.

But when it comes to me versus authentically me, I think when we create content, we do really dial up the energy by at least at least 10 to 20 percent. So as soon as I'm done with this recording, I'm sure I'm going to talk to my partner, my mom, slightly differently. Right, my, I'm probably going to be way more chill. Same thing with my YouTube video that I try to perk up a little bit so that I deliver that energy to whoever is watching it. So I'm, I'm, I guess I'm 10 to 20, not exactly my myself right now.

25:00 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1500s)

1024 Is actually great, you know. So it's not like a method actor who's, like you know, 100 different on screen versus, like, when they're, camera recording stops. You know, it's actually really fascinating because, you know, many content creators typically are just like a it's a solo show, like they, basically, you know, do these things on their own. They, you know, make all these things work. How did, how do you find the crew? How do you find the people? How do you? What are the logistics even of, like, going from location to location with like a bunch of people and making this work?

25:31 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1531s)

It was fascinating. I was figuring it out with my producer for the first time, and they were also doing a documentary for the first time. They were professional video editors who might shoot something for half a day, a day, or a couple of days, but they had never made a documentary on the road for three weeks, plus two more weeks toward the end. My years of experience as a product manager and project manager helped with spreadsheets, planning, budgeting, and communication skills. One team member was gluten-free, so when traveling, we had to figure out how to arrange for that too.

As you mentioned, the funding came partially from me and partially from a sponsor, roughly 60 to 40. We made it happen. Even as a professional filmmaker, you will never know all the pieces or have all the answers. We figured it out as we went along. While traveling, I was still emailing guests and asking, “Is it possible for us to interview you?” If someone said yes, I had to take the entire production team to San Francisco, return to LA, and then fly together to New York. I live in Boston, so the travel logistics were crazy.

As a result, I wrote and published on my blog a series of documentary how-to 101 posts for people doing this for the first time. I was getting many questions. It was fascinating because this is almost inside baseball. There was no complete blueprint for handling those decisions. Our professional skills helped, but much of the production still required practical problem-solving in real time. The audience interested in how to go from point A to point B on location with a set and crew is small. But it is the kind of information nobody gets to know unless they actually live through it, and I think that is fascinating.

27:31 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1651s)

Can actually watch some of those and that I was related to him. Like this is so fun because, even though it's like, I have no plans of doing that, you know, anytime soon- but just seeing because it's new, it's novel, it's something that no one else has already talked about and I can see, like the you know 80th video on the same topic, or I can watch your video on this top and be like wow, like I have no idea what goes on here.

You always see bits and pieces of it and we watch, like behind the scenes documentaries of like bands and music shows and Comedians and things like that. But it's always very different because I can't really relate to like you know how YouTube or Taylor Swift probably like- yeah, that's a whole different thing of its own- or even like comedians, it's like it's a very different world in terms of it. But a Content like I can relate to this because I can sort of relate like what all goes into, like you know, hitting a record button and like being a topic in people like this is a whole.

This is fun, this is entertaining and also informational at the same time. Yeah.

28:20 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1700s)

Exactly. It's so crazy. I think people I first of all, I develop such respect for people who do this for a living, because for us it was kind of a temporary thing and to figure it all out. Like you said, I we try to capture as much behind the scenes footage as possible. I mean I wish we could do more. I wish we had another cameraman which is follow me around, because there were so many funny moments there's no way for for me to forget. For instance, we, you know, on on location, we have to either rent a studio, which we're totally out of our budget, or the timing.

Some of those just won't work out. So we end up booking a ton of airbnbs, as you know, film locations, and there was one that we the. The woman was super nice, but there was just no way that would have worked. So I remember on site, I had to call her. We became really good friends and I found out that this- this is a woman who started, basically started- her own Organization for domestic abuse for for women and children. I ended up interviewing her. She fully refunded me for the Airbnb and even it was following me calling me to say: fake. Can I help you booking a local hotel.

You just don't know the relationships, the friend friendships you're going to be developing fast forward. We ended up booking a hotel- it was Marriott- and we had to set up all the film equipment and guess what? Nobody could stay in that room. You pay 300 and now you got to find a different Airbnb to live in. And because everything is already on site- and that, by the way, was for Seth Godin, which I absolutely admire- discovered him at the exact same time that I found out about you, Kirupa, and I just remember walking, Seth go to my heart, was just pounding out of my chest. He was there early.

I walked with him towards the room- it's like it's room 104- and I just remember the look of the hotel, as if I was going to kidnap him or something like something bad. And then you open it up with just all the film equipment, fill out the room and he's like: it's okay, this is how professionals do it. And I was like, oh, we're gonna be okay, and then you have 40 minutes to do everything. When you book with these guests, right, like it's 40 minutes, you have to be, you have to show up two, three hours ahead of time.

And they show up and leave if you don't have the footage you captured. Well, that's it. You, just, you just lost a whole day of money with audio Engineers, with everybody. So, I, it was, I think for me. The last thing I will say is: you know, when I was facing those moments, I know that there were literally completely out of my control that I could be sick, the guests could be sick, they could cancel. I still have to pay the audio engineer, and I actually ended up feeling a lot more relaxed. I just go. So be it. If I lose five thousand dollars today, that's fine.

I'm just, I need to be mentally okay with it, you know. So it's crazy. You learn so much. You're richer for the experience as well, you.

31:05 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1865s)

You know, I think a lot of people say that the way to measure a life well lived is by how many interesting stories you can ultimately come up with from things that happened. To me, all these things are like, whatever happens, it's a good story. It's something you can tell people about decades from now and it'll still be as interesting and as relevant as it was when you were actually there.

Getting back to the audience, one of the biggest challenges of being a content creator, especially starting out, is how do you find the first couple of people who say, oh, I like this content, and then the first hundred, the first thousand, the first ten thousand, and so on. So how did you pick your first audience, or how did they find you? How did they choose you?

31:47 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=1907s)

Yeah, such a great question. At the beginning I really had no idea, and I think, for a lot of content creators, you know, relying our family and friends, they're obviously very supportive, very lovely. They're not enough and they can be short-lived, because, you know, I look at the creative entrepreneurship content I create now, frankly, they're probably not quite right for, my family and my friends and so, you know, going beyond that, what I have learned is to trying to find out kind of that pyramid ikigai, or kind of find the three Circles of knowing.

You know what you're good at, what you want to do and the values that other people are seeking for. Like, what can you teach others at this? Something that they actually need, as opposed to something that's in your head. So, going back to you know, what you've always taught us is to experiment, treating a lot of things that we do in this live as experiments as opposed to set in stone. This has to work. For me, the transformative experiences are- I would just name two and we can talk about like maybe one or both in particular- that your audience might be interested in learning more about.

See what I did there. One is: what is my YouTube Journey really transformative because, given how, how much work, money we put into the documentary, you know like I could only market so much I put it on Amazon Prime, but then what Amazon Prime would do, just like any big platforms, after about two years or so, you have to compete with the other films and now it's something you have to pay, as opposed to free with Prime, and we didn't really make a lot of money from the documentary, but it was a really good social proof. Now, building an audience is something entirely different.

I think when I finally started my YouTube- YouTube channel in 2019- no plan- and the one moment that I realized was the pandemic happened. We were all doing, Zumba dance. I want to give something really like a specific example. I'm into technology. You know, when I was thinking group, I was like, man, I have to dance at home. I need to help all my not very technical Zoom the instructors to get online, and teaching on Zoom was really impossible because of the syncing issue between you know movements, music and sound- and I figure out a hack. I did a very frankly crappy video.

I edited probably in 10 minutes, put it online when my channel have 300 subscribers and I remember waking up the next day it was a thousand views, so something I never saw before. And then the next day was 2000, then it was five thousand. My channel was monetized within the month. So from there, with all the comments- sorry, that was considered a takeoff video- from there I was able to create a lot more Tech tutorials for Zoom, then Branch out to Google virtual events. Then companies start really discovering me. That's how I build an audience there. YouTube is not perfect. I'm a YouTube strategist.

I can break that down for people if they're interested. Another new venue that we started off is it's SEO based. So we're trying to knowing that the internet and Google, all that- everything is different. Now we know that 25 of the content discovered every year is net news, brand new. So how can we create content that fill a certain Niche and build the kind of bridge, the gap within that Niche? So that's that's kind of how we build our audience. Little by little, and to engage, to reply to comments. It certainly work.

35:09 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=2109s)

You know, that's actually the essential point of what you're saying: it's not easy. It takes work. It's a marathon. You nurture the audience, grow them, make it all work, and then you can lose them too.

35:21 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=2121s)

Exactly. Once you pivot, things change. Even after being on YouTube for four years, our content has really evolved and shifted. We’ve done brand deals and sponsorships. People may leave, and the Zumba instructors who followed me previously probably won’t find as much value in the content I create now. You have to know that people may come and go, and you have to decide how to communicate that. You also have to know what you want. It’s definitely an art, and it takes a lot of perseverance and a lot of practice.

35:55 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=2155s)

I actually want to talk about exactly that. So kind of nice segue here- because you talked about ikigai and the bounds and all of these things- is that we evolve as human beings. You know, as people, you know what you might have enjoyed talking about and doing like seven, eight years ago, very different than what you might be interested in right now, very different way you might be interested in, let's say, in the future as well. And, like you mentioned audiences like you for a certain type of content, and that's where they start following it, for they may not be ready for their journey of you evolving into something new.

So that's why the churn often happens. How do you bounce that? I'll give you a personal example, please. What I used to do is talk about animation and like making things move and all these fun things, but then my interest involved- you know my change. You know I started enjoying more of the more technical side of like why do things work the way they do? Why do big systems work the way how do database work? How does AI work? More than behind us in details.

And I Knew by doing that I've alienated everybody that I've basically built up an audience for for a very long time, and you know it's, and I saw the numbers, I saw all that, you know, going in a different direction. I'm like that's okay, though, because the whole okay part of it, you know, if I'm not going to be happy doing this, I can't imagine like I'd be writing the kind of content or creating kind of content that makes me really excited. And even today, I deliberately don't talk about half the things that I actually really want to talk about.

You know, because 90 of my time these days is think about product management, product leadership, how do you navigate corporate politics? That's what I enjoy. I Mentor people around that stuff so I no longer spend any time actually actively teaching about programming and development. But I do artificially force myself to do that, because talking about something completely non-technical would be too much of whiplash by the audience. Like you know, if I already like churned 90 of my audience from, like you know, 10, 15 years ago, I'm gonna turn everybody, you know, by the time I talk about this.

So you artificially control myself and say, on LinkedIn I'm going to try to talk about these kind of things, even though that's what I really care about, but on everything else, I gotta continue the image that I built up, falsely or not, of being this Tech person that's visually creative, interesting things, even though none of my day job, I spend zero percent of my time, time they think about: how do you mix animation work, how can you fake 3D in a 2d world that thinks that I was really passionate about, like back then. I'm not as passionate about right now I am. I enjoy it, Android's, consuming other people's content.

But to be a content creator that you gotta like internalize the pain that someone's feeling, especially if I don't teach people something and go there. I don't do that anymore, and so I often do struggle, like you know, from the fears, for example, I have is like: you know, how long can I sustain basically doing something that people have known me for for a long time, when I'm no longer happy doing that? And so, coming back to you, how do you, how do you, how do you bounce something like that? Because you also evolved in your content greatly from the time, so oh.

38:36 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=2316s)

Thank you so much for the question. I so appreciate you bringing that, that up, because clearly you're not alone. I'm not not alone in that at all. Right, and I think number one you said: internalize that, that pain. There is certain level of pain associated with it, but also, as you're saying that, I feel like I was smiling because it feels like we are. It's literally like there's like a mother and child or a parent-child relationship that you were born, this baby, and you.

You know you learn to crawl, to walk, you go to school, then you go to college, you start your own life and you know, throughout that- I'm not sure if you realize that too- that we've also developed these frictions with our parents. You know, obviously there's a lot of Joy, but there's always a lot of pain that we no longer function like a child who's like needing them all the time. I feel like my mom's still struggling with that sometimes as, as you know, as close as the last night I'm like, did she say something to me that? Did she really intend to say that?

But I think it's important for us to be creators and to realize that we have to- there's not a choice- that we have to evolve and change. One of the things that really helped me was, I believe Freddie Mercury from Queen said that especially. You know they're operating at the time, I mean the world, world's top tier level. He said that he was smoking, drinking. He's like you know. He said- I even wrote an article about this it was. I discovered an interview. He's like you go on stage, everybody's like Bohemian Rhapsody, like everybody wants to hear those three hit songs. That's what everybody's there for.

And all of a sudden, these are like I have the solo, I have this really mellow tune that I've been practicing. Me and his fans were like what are you doing? We don't, we don't want that. And he said he sat there and, as a Creator, you have to know who you are, you have to know what you want, because if you keep saying, keep creating the same things, and that audience eventually probably leave anyway. So, who you are now, what are you left with?

So I think that's basically what I think about, that that's a story, that that's something that really happened and he's someone I do look up to. So to remember that and it's really hard sometimes because we won the views. So also, like we wanna, I wanna mention something really practical. It's not just something that's in our head. I have Brands reach out to me. Okay, we're okay with the negotiation. You know, this is how much we'll pay for sponsor content, and they will go. You know, hey, I was just looking at your last few videos on YouTube.

I realized that you're not talking when you're not talking about Ai and things like that. Your views were generally, your views are are low on certain videos. You know things like that. And, how do you respond to that? And my take it is like, don't work with me. I am not someone who's going to spend, you know, YouTube advertising dollars just to please your eyes or just to fake the data when you know, look at certain channels where the numbers so consistent and people like, oh, you're so consistent with content creation, well, I can tell you how to do that exactly with fifty dollars, right?

So I just refuse to kind of go down that path. You know, for me, I think one thing, but I don't know if you have a- when I say A Team, if you have someone you love and try, who can be there for you, is, I find myself not just in any Creator Community, but I find myself in a very small group of creators who have been growing up with me, who live with the same pains. We're here to support one another, to reinsure that this is, this is the way. Obstacle is the way, right? So, yeah, that's kind of day by day. That's how I.

I continue to be a creator.

42:12 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=2532s)

That that makes a lot of sense and it totally resonates. Now here's the other angle to it. You know you bring a pretty Mercury because the music part is an interesting angle, because you know we talked right now about how we evolved, how we changed, and you know what our audience kind of grow with us. There's another flip inside of it. The world moves on, the world evolves and we just cannot keep up anymore. Like you know, independent, you know, flash was probably the big thing that you and I, you know, connected on like long, long time ago and, of course, technical reasons, business reasons, flash is not around.

So the world we have had- at least those of us who are doing things in Flash- had to adapt to newer Technologies, web-based, even though they weren't ready, and all these things. So let's struggle up like how do you make something work when the actual tooling things aren't really there? So, true, same with music as well. You know what might have been very popular and like what people enjoyed listening to in the 70s and 80s very much, not something that you see here.

You can probably count, on one hand, the number of bands that were able to reinvent themselves over the decades to still be relevant in some form of fashion even today, but it's a very small number. That survivorship buys and the percentage power law- all these things fully apply here. We're like, yeah, it's probably five that we can probably think about Rolling Stones, you know, and examples of that, but everyone else is like tied to the decade or the era that they were pretty much known in. I think it's very true for Content creators as well.

They're moments where, like these content creators were like extremely relevant because they hid the Zeitgeist of the moment that they were currently in. But then the world moved on, the interest moved on, taste moved on, demographics shifted greatly as well. Back when you and I were creating content, there are probably maybe two billion people on the internet and they were probably all mostly in, you know, very developed western parts of the world. They all spoke English.

Now you know six billion, 5 million people on the internet right now and I can't imagine a world where what worked with a small audience will scale now, because The Persuasions and interests of this much larger audience very, very different and many content creators- and I'm going to say we included- have difficulty understanding that world, understanding scaling to that new audience.

44:14 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=2654s)

Yeah, I mean, I'm so glad you brought up this point because we literally very recently started using Weglot to translate not one website but actually two of them. I was a little uncertain at the beginning because feisworld. Com now has thousands of articles, and I kept thinking: how is that going to be relevant? What language do we translate to? My producer happens to speak Spanish and is originally from Argentina, and the moment we processed the site with Weglot into Spanish, we started getting Spanish brand deals, of all things.

We also started to see different articles and different topics pop up in very different ways compared to North America, and we're learning so much from that experience. Exactly like you said, internationalization and things like that are no longer optional.

45:07 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=2707s)

Yeah, and the topics that international audiences are interested in are often very different as well. What they want to relate to and what their immediate challenges are can be very different from the things that you and I might think are the biggest ones. So do you create custom content tailored more for international audiences? Do you jump between various problems in different spaces? How do you navigate that complexity?

45:29 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=2729s)

Yeah, really interesting. I would say not yet, but customization based on international audience needs is something I think we’ll have to consider quite soon. Right now, we’re letting it surface organically. I’m primarily writing content, I would say, for an English-speaking audience. However, because of my background and because I’m fluent in Mandarin Chinese, when I went back to China in 2017, I was sitting in a hotel room thinking, what if I could help American podcasters launch their podcasts on Ximalaya? That has about 10 times the traffic of Apple Podcasts. It was absolutely insane because of the population density, and I did it. It was so funny.

I created a simple course at the beginning. For the first 30 days, there were crickets. Nobody even talked about it. Then, all of a sudden, people started signing up. Even today, although the course is clearly outdated, people are still signing up. I was getting a lot of consulting engagements. I think part of that is letting your natural instincts, who you are, and your key differentiators come through. You don’t want to target a market you know nothing about. For me, I wanted to be the bridge and fill the gap a little bit more.

It’s also interesting that, now that I’m a slightly more established content creator, I’ve given myself permission to talk about what it’s like to be a home-based creator. I built my home around the work I’m doing: solar panels, why I think heat pumps are important, the swimming pool I installed, and the way exercising helps my mom, for whom I’m a caregiver. Of course, this content is completely unrelated to everything else, yet it’s also driving traffic. I think it’s fascinating for us to know that we have to branch out. We can’t hold on so tightly to, “This is what we know. This is what’s going to rank.” It will drive you crazy.

47:28 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=2848s)

Exactly because it often goes. Even look at creative Endeavors in general. One of the big things people say is like how do you get out of a rut? How do you even know you're in a rut in the first place? Because once you get comfortable creating a certain kind of thing, you don't realize that the world has moved on or there's enough sedimentary rock that's basically buried You by, like you know several layers that you don't even realize that. You know you have your small audience. You have the echo chamber.

You know the feedback loops are often not perfect so you think you're still doing great things when you realize that you have to the meteor hit the dinosaur's no longer here. Okay, you're still writing for dinosaurs and targeting that. You know particular audience of creatures that you know have now evolved to become mammals and fish and things like that.

But getting to the translation Parts- interesting because you're talking about, you talk about AI quite a bit, so you're probably where you've probably seen all these examples of like people who are, let's say, famous world leaders, but in real time it translates into a different language using their own voice and their inflections, and how it works.

I just think they're going like: wow, you know what, how easy would it be for basically me to just upload a few clips of my audio, a few pictures of what I'm doing, and then having all these AI Services pretty much make this entire company- you and I- happen because you want to have a backward of content that the AI can train against, and so it doesn't require us to actively be participating, because we talk consistently about certain kind of topics and it knows our tone, it knows their style and all these things.

It is very possible one day- maybe it's already happening right now- where we just tell an AI to, like you know, Pretend We're going to talk about how AI is going to impact business and it generates a full interview with exact same facial expressions and style and all these things. And then I'm going to choose a drop down and say: translate into these 20 languages as well, and it's like no problem, it translates it, not just in an audio, in a text-based format, but it actually gets the audio just right as well.

Then you're like: upload to all these Services worldwide, not just your usual ones of like anchors, Spotify, podcast, Apple podcast, but all the services worldwide that it needs to be relevant into because of the languages they're available in how? How far away are we from being able to pull that off?

49:32 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=2972s)

Yeah, I think we still need some more time, because a lot of the systems and apps that you did not mention, but I know you're thinking about like 11 labs for voice cloning. Not only I mean they're transformative, they've really figured out the intonation and all that, but still, I mean I have tested on multiple clients, I've tested out multiple versions of my voice. It's still not quite there yet. They're leading the industry right now. And then I think about the facial recognition speaking portraits. So the ID, which is an Israeli company that we have also partnered with as well, that there it's magical.

But I have also touched my image. Do I really want you know? There's so many subtlety to our eyes that it's again, it's not quite there yet. I'm not someone who would use that. However, I do have clients who are super busy and who wouldn't otherwise have any time or interest in creating content. I would recommend this to them. So I think, aisle solution. It also depends on the project we're talking about, the creators themselves. I think it's going to be. I think we're moving at a really fast pace. I wouldn't be surprised by the end of the year.

The different versions coming out is going to be even more realistic, but for now, when I work with clients on AI initiatives, it's never and primarily they're well, I call content-based businesses or established creators. So the example you paint out is precisely the people I work with that I focus on having a discovery call and conversation usually takes up about 60 to 90 minutes and then pinpoint like: is this something that you enjoy doing? They say I love it and there's no reason to take that away.

But sometimes, when it comes to content repurposing- getting the right Clips, transcription, subtitles, share on social media- I almost never hear anybody enjoy doing that part. Well, let's see what we can automate from there. So it's again, that's a very human process. There's a lot of empathy involved. I think for now, that's still the right approach.

51:31 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3091s)

This goes back to consistency, which is something that you brought up earlier on. How do you create content? It used to be that you publish once a week, once every two weeks, on the spot. It's great and it's going really well. Nowadays you have content forms that create good enough content. You know it might have been great, but it's good enough. Where people are like, yeah, I can totally, you know, go with this. You know if I'm getting it, you know, 10 times a day, this big information, as opposed to like one time a week- from a person's probably more authentic and more a subject matter expert in this area.

That's okay. I'm willing to sacrifice the quantity over the quality. The quality is not like terrible, but it's good enough. How do you balance that out? But got to give an example. I know I don't use tick tock a whole lot, but every now when I go look at that, I see, like you know, I love historical things. It's often, like you know, historical battles and like things like that: 90 of AI generated. You know the voices are generated, the visuals are generated and things like that.

I'm like you know, I'm pretty sure this person or this group of people who behind this probably crank out dozens, if not hundreds, of these videos a given day because they're not going out there creating the content. It's like looking at whatever you know AI chat service give you for here to give you a 10 paragraph summary of, like famous battles in Greece, famous battles in Rome. They just copy and paste that into some service and adds the audio to it as little captions in the video so you can actually see like the bubbly text through them that shows up here and they're done.

Whereas here I am, like you know, creating this slides going and, like you know, making sure it's all perfect. And, like I'm American, is my code snippet working properly? And I feel like I'm like, why am I doing this? You know, it's like the end of the day, like you know, if I can publish one video, Get x number of views, or I can publish 100 videos and each get x divided by 100- a smaller number, but the end result is so the same thing, but the amount of effort is like zero in one, where it's like high effort in the other.

How do you balance those, you know, two opposite, Opposite Worlds, when the end result might be the same?

53:19 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3199s)

Yeah, that's such an interesting example. When you think about the audience of who consumes your content versus, say, the audience for Greek myths or battles, the audiences themselves are very, very different. Somebody who's looking at your code or following you for technical accuracy probably cares a lot about precision and style of communication, whereas another audience may be more entertainment-oriented. One is education and the other is entertainment, and in the world we live in there's edutainment—the kind of content that often wins. I think you have to balance the two. For me, one important thing is giving yourself some slack.

I think I had to stop trying to deliver 110 all the time. Give yourself permission to do something at 80 or 90 and know what's good enough. That's really important. If things ever go sideways, give yourself a break and know that you did your best. We've all published something and then thought, oh, I made a mistake, there's a typo. The good news in the digital world is that those things can actually be corrected. I've even looked at some of the AI content on YouTube where it's just a voiceover, some images, and it's very repetitive, and it still gets millions of views.

That creates that tension in my chest of, why am I doing this? This is such a waste of time, right? And then I come back to the point that I'd highly encourage you, in addition to TikTok and that whole group, to consider publishing your content on YouTube as Shorts. Have you done that yet?

55:10 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3310s)

I've done a few, and it's one of those things where the coding stuff doesn't totally work in that format, even though I can absolutely make it work. It's more of a time issue for me. Naturally everything is a widescreen format, and then I have the extra work of making it fit a smaller screen. Meanwhile the AI bot can take historical battles, make the square shape for Instagram, create the vertical one for TikTok, and call it a day.

55:46 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3346s)

Gonna challenge you. I have a like be a little playful. Here is I too thoughts, because consider, like some of my earlier Zoom tutorials, for instance, it is clearly landscape, okay. So like, why do I have to do something extra to fit into a vertical screen? First of all, it doesn't even fit right like you can, exactly like now you can see something over there, and as everything is all connected, so I'm gonna challenge you to try post some of the clips with black bars at the top, at the bottom, with just your little landscape or Square screen in the middle.

Try to publish that, of course, under 60 seconds on YouTube shorts. Chances are you're going to see a significant increase in the number of views for shorts compared to your regular videos. It's very, very possible because for the entire past year, and actually even towards the end of 2022, YouTube has intentionally been sending so much organic traffic towards shorts in order to compete with TikTok. In fact, YouTube now a platform that people would like prevent you from. People say: podcasters, I don't respect you if you upload audio content on YouTube. That's just lame. You should never do that. Well, guess what today?

Thank goodness I didn't listen to any of those people on my- some of my audio podcasts are on there- actually contributed to my channel being monetized early that. Nowadays, YouTube said sixty percent, six zero percent of the people who are listening or watching podcasts on YouTube are doing it for the first, like they're doing it for the first time. There are people who never even consume podcasts. We're now doing so on YouTube. So I think we have to really rethink about the quality, the orientation. Sure, if you have time, a team to do it, fine. Otherwise, just upload it with black virus and see what happens.

57:29 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3449s)

All right, I will absolutely do this. You know I've done a few, but I'm gonna, you know, take your advice here and just take regular content and make that work. But now the podcasting with YouTube is actually really interesting because before I just had a playlist. It says regular playlists with like all the things I recorded here: United force on anchor, which publishes like all these other podcast platforms, and I also the video itself to YouTube as well. So Spotify and YouTube give you the video version. Everything else is the audio version. YouTube was like: oh, do you want, do you know you want- to publish a podcast?

Or like turn your Disney Channel? Oh, way ahead of you here, this playlist is exactly what you want to do. And hitting that box, I agree, it was actually very interesting that there's a recognition from like dismissing podcast and interview like content to being like let's embrace it, let's actually go after the big podcast players was actually pretty cool. You know, right side of history on that one for us. Yeah, for sure.

58:20 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3500s)

I mean, since we're all into podcasts. One thing I really want to mention that people are still watching, are listening to this at this point, is repurposing long-form content. So that includes, like, longer videos, even if Solo or an interview show like this, to repurpose that into shorter content will absolutely help you know, three times, ten times to reach. It's just how the social media ecosystem is designed. That is true for YouTube shorts, for tick tock, for Instagram, especially for LinkedIn. I think this type of content is something that people on LinkedIn are very interested in.

So when you repurpose, you don't have to think about moving like Faye below Kirupa, creating a vertical content, because landscape works just fine on, you know, on LinkedIn, on Facebook. So, you know. That's why I kind of, you know, got into developing pod intelligencecom with my partner, Adam, so that we're using, you know, AI to automatically identify the keywords, the topics, the speakers and giving you Clips, that you can use automatically. The one more thing I'll mention is interesting that I initially were thinking like targeting right around one minute, but we noticed that YouTube, along with other platforms, are now favoring way shorter content.

This blew my mind that their content, if you can pay attention to this like: pay attention on YouTube, 15 to 17 seconds- generally under 20 seconds worth- of shorts are getting a lot of attention because YouTube is using its algorithm to say: oh look, somebody watched 80 of the shorts. That's 15 seconds. It must be doing really well, as opposed to somebody watching 15 seconds of a one minute shorts. YouTube's like whoa.

I guess it's not all that engaging, is it so it's like there's a psychological element, but I think as long as as opposed to us aiming for whatever the requirement is, it's also important to explore other durations outside of the requirements, absolutely.

1:00:10 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3610s)

Accurate. I read an article on some of these AI kind of clipping that I think Riverside also provides as well. So I'm actually going to try it out for the first time, after you know, with actual recording here to see like how well that works and basically purpose that. No, I agree with you. I think that's our content has a longer life than we might often give it credit for, especially in Snippets, because people's attentions are not infinite. You know, and like I, it's read every study that you know us going almost the hour mark right now, 90 people are going to stop.

Like you know, I'm not gonna get to this point, maybe 99 will not get to this point, but one person gets there and like they got value out of it, so great, good for that one person. You know to do this, so I totally recognize and I agree, I think the cutting the pieces of it that might be relevant for a certain audience for that pretty moment in time, I think it's a critical part of it.

So one video can actually it's kind of, like you know, getting back like an analogy stuff, like you know, when, like a lion, like you know, kills a gazelle or whatever, you know it's not just for one meal. It like goes for like a week, basically right, that's kind of like what it is like. Yeah, it's, like you know, a long form contents like a good sell and then you know it's. It's a shame to only use it for like one meal. You can actually repurpose it in multiple different ways, so absolutely.

1:01:14 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3674s)

Yeah, let me know how you like magic cut. So that's a new feature from Riverside. It's still in beta and I've already tested out, so I definitely have some of my kind of you know I was doing that in comparison to the work we're doing, so I would love to. I'll be so curious to hear your feedback on, all right, how you like it. Yeah, absolutely, let you know. And.

1:01:35 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3695s)

So we're getting close to an hour, and I don't want to keep too much of you here, but I am always curious because you're a content creator: what's your tech setup like? I'm sort of familiar with what you have there, but what camera do you use? What things did you try and not try before settling on this one? Curious to hear that.

1:01:54 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3714s)

Yeah, absolutely, I can even move my camera around. So a lot of the questions, the question that comes up a lot is, first of all, the camera I'm using: it's nothing super fancy, it's a Logitech Brio webcam. It is a 4K cam, but still I think it's just not quite the quality comparative. I were to use my phone, you know, using alongside with like camo maybe, or I have a 4k camera, so I'm gonna show you that's the camera. That's kind of the my YouTube setup and that is the Sony 6400 mirrorless camera. It's four years old and still works really well. My mic.

It's on a boom arm so I can move it around really easily without having to like move my table, shake my table as much, so this is a very special microphone. This is a Newman microphone. It's an investment, but it's something that I know I'm going to be using for so long. I have been for 10 years. This is a pop filter, so when I see you say things like the P's and T's, I won't blast into, my mic. I really like this kind of Wireless Logitech keyboard that I'm using. I try to be as ergonomic as I possibly can.

I even got this new like Ergo chair, which is all white, but in terms of the lighting I have two, so I have. This is a Elgato, that's a key light, and I also have a Elgato ring light there, so it's just something that I can play with if I need to move things around, but it's pretty basic. Anything else, Kirupa, you want me to share at my text setup for my business, perhaps the software we use every day. It's up to you like whatever you think would be interesting.

1:03:34 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3814s)

Yeah, because it’s all interesting to me. My setup is essentially my iPhone, as we talked about earlier, but for whatever reason, it isn’t cooperating with me for these recordings right now. I’m currently using a Logitech C925. I actually have a Brio as well. I thought the iPhone worked really well, so I was just going to use that for all these things. Instead, I’m creating a lower-quality video setup right now. But yeah, what software do you typically use for your recordings and things like that?

1:03:59 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3839s)

Yeah, I have a comprehensive list for my recordings, podcasting, YouTube, and small business on my website at feisworld. Com/tools. You can also find it in the center of the website. It’s called the Small Business Toolkit. For recording, I love using Riverside. There’s an alternative because I always need to have a plan B for this type of stuff. The other one I love is called Podcastle, which also has 4K video recording. Before we had these tools, I used Zencastr, which is still very solid. We’ve even had to use Zoom for people who are super busy and don’t want to learn a second or third tool.

In terms of editing, I’ve basically eliminated editing these days. I livestream every single piece of content using Restream. If you’re looking for a cheaper option, OneStream Live is really helpful. It’s $10 as opposed to $19 for the same tier of service, and I don’t really edit much anymore. For email marketing, I use Brevo, B-R-E-V-O, previously Sendinblue. They’re really quite powerful. Our website runs on WordPress and was previously on Squarespace for many, many years. Making that transition was well worth it. I won’t bore you with the rest of the details, but I have a whole tech stack laid out as a blog post on feisworld. Com for anybody interested.

No, actually, I’ll definitely check that out. I think this technical side also comes from the computer science degree and all these things indirectly playing a role. It gives you this willingness to understand exactly why it’s important. Your technical background definitely shows here in your description of Squarespace and WordPress, for example. That isn’t a trivial thing. Yeah, it’s so fun to talk about this. I can nerd out all day long. It’s so fun.

1:05:58 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3958s)

Well, Fei, yeah, I think you can talk forever on this one, but is there anything else you'd like to discuss before we wrap it up for a bit?

1:06:06 - Fei Wu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3966s)

Oh, I really appreciate it. I appreciate finally meeting you after 20 years. And please let me know, Kirupa, anything I can contribute to what you're doing or what your audience is looking for. Feel free to send me an email—feisworld@gmail. Com. That's my personal email. Anything I can help answer, any questions at all, just let me know. I'm an open book and here to help creators and content-based businesses.

1:06:35 - Kirupa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ef5Y3ZDGM4&t=3995s)

Well, Fei, this is a blast. Thanks again, and I'll see you soon. Thank you.


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