Ever feel like your creative career is becoming an uphill battle you’re no longer sure you can win?
Budgets are tighter, opportunities are fewer, and AI is rewriting the rules. But this isn’t a conversation about giving up. Debby and I focus on how to adapt with intention, and why now is the time to design your next move, not just react to change. We pull back the curtain on the summit we’ve been building—designed specifically to help creatives like you to tap into your strengths, build meaningful connections, and move forward without burning out. Tune in for a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the event that’s poised to redefine your creative career.
Debby: All right. So here we are again, Zack. Welcome to the Zack Arnold podcast.
Zack Arnold: Yes, I appreciate you having me here. I've heard good things. I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Debby: Yeah, so here I am, your producer, and having a conversation today about, well, a few things, but one where I wanted to start was just taking a look at what's around us. And to be brutally honest, right now, it's it's kind of sucks to be a creative right now. The entertainment industry is in a free fall. The budgets are shrinking, jobs are disappearing, and then there's that big bad wolf of AI that is just sort of threatening to, I don't know, take over the world at this point, but you, I think, have a different perspective on all of this, and I think you even saw this coming a long time ago, and have been planning something to maybe shed some light or some hope or some motivation to people. So can you tell us what that's all about?
Zack Arnold: Yes, first, I'll start by saying that it's an understatement to say that things suck for creatives right now, I would say, by and large, in general, building a creative career has a lot of suckage included in it. I would say that right now, it's far beyond that, and it's terrifying to have a career as somebody that relies on their creativity for a living. So I just, I want to, want to make sure to say the quiet parts out loud, right up front, that we are terrified of what this future holds. And I would say that not that I'm a prognosticator. I'm certainly not calling myself Nostradamus, and I certainly don't know what's coming next, but I definitely read the tea leaves. And I've always been of the mindset that while everybody else is paying attention to skating to where the puck is now, to steal from the Wayne Gretzky quote, I want to skate to where I think the puck is going next. And what I oftentimes focus on are the things that are staying the same while everybody is freaking out about the things that are changing. So yeah, I was writing about a lot of what's happening two, three years ago, even before the strike started, I was telling people, you need to set your expectations that when the strike concludes that we're not going to be going back to the same industry that we're at right now, and people thought I was crazy. I remember having a conversation with an editor friend of mine at a live networking event, and he was telling me how he was about to send out an email to a bunch of our editor friends, saying, buckle up. This is going to take a month or more. I'm like, dude, like, you're doing everybody a tremendous disservice if you're setting the expectation. This is going to take a month. Really. You think I'm like, This is not only going to take months, if not the rest of the year. This is going to change our entire industry. But everybody was focused on the contracts. Everybody was focused on the strikes. And I said, this is about the business models changing. And I saw this in 2020 during the COVID lockdowns, as I watched how my kids were consuming content, and I said, this is the future, because my kids don't want to sit down and watch movies with me. Maybe that's just me personally, I don't know. Maybe they don't like me, but in general, they wanted to watch YouTube. And I was introduced to Mr. Beast, and I was introduced to FaZe Rug and air rack and all these random people. And I'm like, Who are these people? And then they'd show a video of them showing up at a mall, three layers, three levels of that mall, 1000s of people to see this person like I've never heard of this kid. And I said, this is the future of entertainment and content creation. I saw that happening years ago. And then when all the streamers said, we're going to make everything under the sun, we're going to hire everybody with a pulse to make our TV shows. I'm like, There's no way that this business model works. And at the time, I thought I was the idiot. I'm like, hold on a second. If I watch all these shows and I'm paying you $10 a month, I don't have to pay you an extra 10 dollars for each one. I must be stupid, because I don't understand how they're making money. And then, lo and behold, mid to late 2023 we realize they're all idiots. The only company that has figured this out is Netflix, and what everybody believes is that Netflix is the number one streamer in the world. When you realize that Netflix is a distant, distant, distant, number two to the number one streamer, you ask, Who in the world is that it's YouTube. YouTube is the future of entertainment and content creation. The next step is when I realized, and again, these are not discoveries that I made, Christopher Columbus style, but as I was reading more about this, this was the game changer. And I don't remember exactly when it came out. It was sometime maybe mid to late last year. Don't quote me on it, but I know that it's true. There was a transition to the point where more people watch YouTube on their televisions than their devices. And that's when I said, game over. And I thought that meant like kids. That meant everybody, kids, parents, adults, like, all YouTube consumption. More of it was happening on devices, smart TVs, than it was on phones and laptops. And that's when I said, YouTube. Is the future of entertainment. But everybody was still focused on Hollywood and the strikes and the business models, and people were not skating to where the puck was going to be. They were screaming about where the puck was right now. And I kept thinking to myself, Where are we going in the future? And by the way, disclaimer, I still don't know, but it is something that I've had my finger on the pulse of, and have been focused on relentlessly trying to help everybody solve this problem and figure our way through it. And I truly believe that the future of entertainment and content creation is when we take what is, what I'm now calling, because I've been called this, the Venn diagram of legacy Hollywood. Ouch. Like for anybody working in Hollywood, that one hurts. I get it. I felt that way the first couple of times, too. But then the Creator economy, I believe the future is the integration of both of these worlds. And here's why, I think that in the Hollywood legacy world, we're talking, you know, the high end feature films, television, scripted, unscripted, high profile docs, all the things that you would find on the premium streaming channels, the people that make those are the best storytellers in the world. The problem is the people that make those number one have to adhere to the gatekeepers. And by the way, the gatekeepers have no fucking idea what they're doing, no clue. Now we're talking the wizard from behind the curtain. We see how absolutely incompetent all of the executives at all the top C suite levels are at all of these companies, minus Netflix, they have no idea how to make money off of streaming content, and the content they're creating is garbage. The vast majority of movies suck, and frankly, most new television sucks. That's just not just my opinion. That's the collective opinion of our culture right now, but the best storytellers in the world have to currently adhere to the gatekeepers. However, on the content creator side, they can make whatever they want, and they know how to build audiences. And we're not talking of 10s of people. We're not even talking of millions of people. Do you know how many subscribers Mr. Beast has right now to his YouTube channel?
Debby: I don't know, millions,
Zack Arnold: 500 million subscribers. Mr. Beast has more subscribers than the population of our country, and on any given week when he releases a video, in the first seven days, he gets more viewers than the Super Bowl Hollywood, it's game over. Wow, they have won the war, but they don't know how to tell stories. And I know this because I've started talking to content creators, and they all say the same thing, well, now that we're getting bigger and now that we're growing, we're losing retention, we're losing our audience, yeah, because your content sucks and you're all one note wonders, you bring the Hollywood storytellers into that fray, and you start paying Hollywood storytellers somewhere in the range of what they're worth, knowing there's going to be A new equal equilibrium that we're all going to find that, to me, is the future of content creation. So here's the next stat that's really, really interesting. Do you know what YouTube's content creation budget is per year? Take a guess.
Debby: Content create, like their overall budget? Yeah, to
Zack Arnold: create, let's start with Netflix. What do you think Netflix is budget? Netflix's budget is to create their shows, movies, docs and
Debby: otherwise, oh, I don't a billion.
Zack Arnold: It's measured in billions. Okay, what do you think YouTube's yearly content creation budget is, knowing that they're number
Debby: one? Oh, it's gotta be like, well, it's definitely way less million
Zack Arnold: YouTube's content creation budget is $0 because their users generate all of their content. YouTube doesn't make anything. YouTube
Debby: is the platform. Nope, didn't they make Cobra Kai? When they did, that
Zack Arnold: was YouTube Red, and YouTube Red was a massive failure. And I know because I was with Cobra Kai when YouTube Red went out of business and they said, Sorry guys, we're not going to distribute season three. We're out of the content creation game. So we floated around for over a year thinking nobody's ever going to see season three of Cobra Kai. Then Netflix swooped in. They released one and two, and everybody said, look at this new show. And we're like, we've been here since 2018 Hello, right? So, other than all the you know, the fanboys on YouTube, like the younger generation that found us on Cobra Kai, nobody knew that the show existed. YouTube's content creation is 0 dollars you cannot compete with that. There's nobody on the planet that can compete with a $0 content creation budget. But I keep coming back to the people that are making the content, that are getting all the eyeballs they don't know how to tell stories, and they know they don't know how to tell stories, so they're now starting to reach across the aisle to the Hollywood legacy storytellers that are the best in the world at telling stories. The future of our industry is the overlap of these two Venn diagrams.
Debby: Well, let me play devil's advocate for a second, because why do content creators care? If they can tell a story they've got millions of viewers, what does it matter?
Zack Arnold: I'm so glad you asked that question, because they're realizing that that's not enough anymore. They're losing viewers. Retention is going down precipitously. This is something I talked about in my interview with Sven Pape. So if you go back to one of our previous. Episodes. He said the same thing, and granted, he's not playing at the Mr. Beast level, but he's got half a million subscribers. He said, I used to be able to get 100,000 views. No problem. I could make a living off of the monetization of my YouTube views doesn't work that way anymore. So in order to be able to retain an audience, I firmly stand by you're gonna need good storytelling that makes people feel something. Stories are what help us make sense of reality, make sense of our relationship to the world. That's ultimately what's going to get people to come back all these videos that say, I'm going to see how many people I can get to put their hand on a Ferrari and the last one to have their hand on it wins the car. Like that's what's gotten YouTube to where it is. Now that's not what's going to get YouTube to where it's going next, YouTube is going to need great stories. It doesn't mean that all of the top channels are going to have that, but you even see this evolution with Mr. Beast. Most of the stuff from five years ago is literally unwatchable if you're over 10 years old. I think I've described it to you this way before, but the way that it feels to me watching a Mr. Beast video, it's like putting razor blades in a blender, just the way that they edit these videos is so bombastic and so all over the place. It hurts my brain. They should have epileptic seizure warnings, but guess what? They're getting better. They're becoming more storytelling driven. They're slowing down. They have story arcs. And now, when you see the transition of Mr. Beast to amazon prime for beast games, they're figuring this out. And you know who's helping them figure this out, Hollywood storytellers. So this intersection Mr. Beast is the perfect example. And it's not to say that every content creator is going to get an Amazon Prime deal for three seasons of their show, but this is the direction that we're going. We're going to see a lot of these crossovers, because content creators need good stories, and they don't know how to tell good stories. We know how to tell the stories.
Debby: So this is a natural place to maybe bring in one of the reasons that we're here today to talk about, which is your upcoming summit.
Zack Arnold: Our upcoming summit. This is definitely not mine. We have been busting our asses as a team on this for many, many months. So this is our summit.
Debby: So do you want to talk about, Well, number one, what it's called, and why you're doing it, and what you hope to achieve from
Zack Arnold: it, absolutely. So the place to start is that, yes, this is a five day virtual summit that is all about navigating the future of entertainment. And before I go into all the bells and whistles and the features and what it's about and what you get, etc, etc, I want to start with, why a summit? And this is a conversation that we had as a team, conversation that I've had with our business consultant and operations manager. I don't know if it was a year ago, but it was probably last fall. I think it was after the fallout of, you know, having to move unexpectedly, and my father passing, and just all the craziness that happened probably September or October, the big question was, what's next? What do we do? And we already knew that we wanted to rebrand. And for anybody that wants all the juicy details of what that looked like, we've got a couple of episodes where you and I talked all about, why are we rebranding? Why are we making these decisions? How are we rebranding? So plenty of that, if somebody wants to go deeper into it, but the question, really, underneath all the questions, was, where can we be helpful? And I think that's one of the most important questions that people are missing right now, because everybody is focused on, oh, my God, my career path has disappeared. I have to start over. And how can I start over? And I think a more useful question, rather than how can I start over, or where do I start is, Where can I be helpful right now? So I thought to myself, and we discussed, where can we be helpful? And there are a myriad, there are countless ways for us to build an audience and generate more content and get people on an email list, or get instagram subscribers, like all the things. And for me, the most important was, what can we do that's both authentic to who we are as a company, that's authentic to me and my values, where we can use our strengths and we can overlap our different strengths, and we can create something that I believe we're going to be really good at, that can be useful to people. And what we started talking about is that where I excel, or where I hope that I excel, because I've been doing it for 10 years, is I really excel at having deep, introspective, honest, long form conversations with individuals. All right, how do we build around that? Well, we already have a podcast. And then somebody said, Well, how about a summit? My response was, what's the summit? Had no idea what it was, and it was explained to me how you put together panels of conversations. You You know, either do it in person and do it virtually, do it over a number of days. And I said, That's interesting, what I don't want to do is panel conversations. Because what I don't appreciate about panel conversations, not that they don't have value. But every time I see a panel with five people and they talk to one person and ask them a really good question, I lean and I'm like, Ooh, I want to know more about that. So that was great. All right, so I'm going to go to this new person and I'm going to start a totally different conversation. And I'm thinking, Oh, damn it. I wanted to talk more about that thing, so I figured, why not take where we're. Strong, which is really good individual conversations, where we're also good is constructing a narrative around a complex problem. That's something that we've talked about a lot in the coaching program, specifically in our design your dream career class, where you look at all the different various areas, the skills that you have, your work, experience, your life, experience, your abilities, your unique knowledge, you find the overlap of all these Venn diagrams to find your asymmetric advantage and where I believe that I'm a jack of all trades, and Master of one is my ability to take really complex ideas and simplify them so people understand them, but do it in a really engaging and entertaining fashion. So I thought, why don't we do that with a podcast? The summit is the natural expression of taking individual conversations but building them into a much larger narrative so we can solve more complex problems. Well, that's great, but if we just shoot that into an echo chamber, well then we're just gilding the lily, and we're just doing a lot more podcasts, you know, spraying them through a fire hose. The other area where I believe that we excel, and we have been, this has basically been proven to us over the last several years. We're really good at building relationships and building communities around those relationships. So then I thought, rather than just doing a summit where you send people to a bunch of recordings, you build a community around it. So that was part of the Venn diagram. Then the next one was, we're also really good at giving people actionable steps, where they say, What do I do with this thing that I learned because we have a multitude of online courses, workshops, master classes. So what if that's part of our Venn diagram where we take all of these really deep, introspective conversations? It's not people in just one siloed area of the industry, but there are people that you would you never in a million years. Are you going to find an event, a panel or otherwise, that has the same guests in it, it's impossible, because most of the people on these panels would be like, Who the hell are you? I don't even what industry are you in? That's by design, because we want this intersection of all these different perspectives. That's something that we're exceedingly good at. But so people don't walk away saying that was an overload of information. We then collect all of it into an educational course so they actually know what to do next, and break it down into very small, easy, actionable steps. So you bring all of that together to say, let's make a five day Summit, and we've been off to the races ever since.
Debby: And I have to say, as someone who has attended many virtual summits and signed up for many, for many years, I have never encountered one that is designed like this, with all of those intersections that you just described. Certainly the community, I've never seen that done. That doesn't mean it hasn't been done. I certainly haven't done all the summits, but with all that I've done, I've never it has been more of a fire hose of you're blasted with, like, I mean, some have up to seven interviews a day. Or, you know, it's just like, you can't possibly, you have to take the week off of work just to ingest it all. And then by the end of it, you're just, yeah, you're kind of a little woozy from all the information that you've received. You're not really sure what to do with it. And maybe, you know, you take, you have a few takeaways, or you remember a certain guest that you then start following, and that's kind of your takeaway from it. So what I love about this is, like you said, the community aspect is so huge. And the in the fact that you've got this diversity of guests where you're right, these guests don't intersect, you know, they probably don't know each other, so they're meeting each other, they're intersecting their little corner of the world with another corner of the world, which is exactly what we're trying to do here, within the creators and the creatives, and trying to create this new world so that we we can figure out how to navigate this absolutely, Incredibly changing landscape that's changing at a very fast pace.
Zack Arnold: Yeah. And the interesting thing about the guests, and this is very much by design and PS, in retrospect, this could also be our downfall. We're going to find out. But as we were starting to put together this guest list, what I wanted is, for a portion of the industry, or whomever it is, is going to like, oh my god, you got Walter Murch for your Summit. And then other people are like, Who the fuck is Walter Murch? Same thing. There are gonna be people like, how did you get Jay Clouse to do your Summit? And then people are like, the fuck is Jay Clouse? What? Right? And we have that for all of our guests, where there's no one person that every single person is gonna recognize. I tried to get that one person, wasn't able to get that one person. But other than that, everybody is from their own different world, so it's not about just them individually. It's about the collective power of these intersections. Because nobody's going to know everybody else. So everybody is going to say, I've never heard of this guest, I've never heard of this author, I've never heard of this editor. Never heard of this visual effects artist. That's by design. I. Now if that means that it leads to branding confusion, people say, Well, if it had been all visual effects artists, I would have signed up for it, but I didn't know who your guests were. Well then maybe this is a poor business decision. I'll stand by that poor business decision if it leads to that. But I think as long as the narrative is clear and it comes back to this question, Where can we be helpful? It's our job as marketers to make it clear. Here's who this is for, and here's how we help you. So if the marketing positioning is strong enough, it doesn't matter who the guests are, as long as we positioned it is a potential solution to your problems. My hope is the exploratory process of learning of all these new guests and their books and their shows that, to me, is a really exciting thing about this summit. So one thing that I wanted to bring up that I think is a really interesting takeaway from this that I hadn't really considered until you brought it up. But I think it's so important for anybody that it's going to go into any creative endeavor. I think the reason that you're saying that you've been to a ton of summits, and there's nothing like this, number one, is because I've never really gone to them myself, so I don't know. Well, here's the model. This is how everybody does it. I was very intentional about not looking I said I want to build what I want to attend. And then once we built it, and we are far enough along that we couldn't go back, I started to sign up for every Summit. I could find all of them. And here's how they work. You sign up for the registration page, you get one email that says you're confirmed for the summit. Save the date the morning of I get an email that says, Click here to join the call. Here is your zoom link. That's the summit. And then you go to that link, and it's either literally just a zoom call, or it's a web page that just has a video that's embedded, that's streaming, that's it. And even if there are hundreds of people on there, you're like, I'd like to connect with the 255 people that says, are streaming this right now. Can I connect with them? Nope, you got a play button and a pause button. That's what you get. And I joined them and like, I don't want to be a part of this, because I don't feel like I'm a part of something. So I said, if I were if given where I am right now in PS, I'm still figuring this out like everybody else. It's not like I solved all these problems. As I'm trying to figure out what our future holds, too. What summit do I want to attend? What summit solves my problems and answers my questions? So this came from a place of me very deliberately saying I don't want to study other summits, I needed to understand the basic playbook. What is a summit? How many days? Like, what's the logistics? So, like, we have the business consultant and coach that we're working with, she had a framework and a playbook that allowed us to get through the basics. But as far as, like, what are other people doing with their summits? I specifically did not want to go into that, because I wanted to build what I wanted first, because then the thought of my head is, well, this has got to be better. I'm sure everybody's already doing this, so let's add this feature, and let's add this and then I show it to people that have done this, and they're like, What in the world is this? Like? I've never seen anything like it. So that certainly came at the expense of our team and our energy and our resources. But my hope is that when people attend this and are done with it, they're like, damn. Like, this was a game changer for me. I really enjoy this. I met some really cool people, multiple insights, and I actually have hope that maybe there's something that I can do about this, rather than just staring at the wall in the news wondering, Is my career over?
Debby: So I think this is a good place to talk about a little bit to talk about the narrative and full transparency. When I was sort of prepping for this conversation with you, I used chat GPT to what
you used, AI, oh no, which
is one of the things we'll be talking about, but it actually came up with something that I thought was kind of interesting as a description of the summit. It said, think of this as your creative State of the Union, a compass for navigating what's yet what's next.
Zack Arnold: Interesting. I'm not saying that. I'm going to copy paste that verbatim, and it's in our little new log line, but it's not that far off. Yeah,
Debby: so do you want to give people a little sneak peek into each of the days and what? What the narrative we're going for in these five days?
Zack Arnold: Absolutely, that's why we're here. So the narrative is as follows The first day. Very much. I think state of the union is a really good way to put it. I would think of it as state of the industry, but it's a combination of, Let's better understand what the industry looks like right now. Let's get a better understanding, more importantly, of history, because I really think that understanding the past can help inform the future. So again, I look at the things that stay the same more than I look at the things that are changing. So we actually have two historical conversations. Number one with Walter Murch to better understand the transition from film to digital, from black and white to color, like he's seen six decades of technological transformations. He was very optimistic and lackadaisical. Oh yeah, artificial intelligence, it'll be a fun tool like but there was no amount of. All right? No, no. This time it's over, there is no amount of that from him whatsoever. He's seen more transformation in our industry than any other human being on the planet. So if there's a voice to listen to to understand, there's a lot to hope for in the future with artificial intelligence. He's the guy. But then, on the flip side, this again, goes to if you know who Walter merch is, you probably don't know who Brian merchant is. I like the alliteration of those two things, by the way, merchant merchant, but Brian merchant is a former LA Times columnist that wrote the book called Blood in the machine, and he has an incredibly deep level understanding of technological shifts throughout history. And literally wrote 600 pages about the Luddite movement with the introduction of textiles and how that changed those that were, you know, independent garment producers, and really understanding, how have we navigated massive technological shifts in the past, and how does that inform the future? And he's now got his finger on the pulse about what's going on in the workforce with AI, not just in entertainment, but throughout all of technology. If you want to know what happened this week in the world of AI and workforce and jobs and tech, blood and machine, by far, is my number one recommendation for a sub stack publication.
Debby: But and to see if there was, if there was any panel that I would want to see if we were to do that, it would be Brian merchant and Walter merch together, because they are so opposite in the way that they're thinking about these things, and it would just be fantastic to hear them sort of duke it out a little bit.
Zack Arnold: And that's actually something that I thought about that it's obviously too late to do now. But the one realization I've had throughout this is that I don't want to go back to doing five person panels like everybody else does, but I think there would be a really interesting exploration for the next summit, assuming we survived the first one, where it's not five people, but it's two and it's not a debate, per se. It's still more a panel style conversation, but it's only two voices, so you still are allowed to go in depth. The reason that I didn't want to do that this time is I really wanted this to be more like guest lectures at a university. I didn't want it to be opposing viewpoints or digging in. But yes, I agree. You get Walter Murch and Brian merchant in the same conversation. That would be really, really intriguing. I wanted to think of this as, all right, I'm going back to school. How the hell do I navigate the next act of my career? Here's a whole series of guest lectures from guest experts so I can go deep into a topic. But yes, there were several people that I'm like, Man, I got to get these two people on the same call, so that may be coming in our future. But the other thing that we explored on day one is this idea of transitioning from being a specialist to being a generalist. Because the reality, if we're talking State of the Union, is that it is now becoming abundantly clear, nobody's making a living that's stable and secure doing one thing anymore. And again, going back to I kind of predicted that I was writing about that three years ago, when people thought it was nuts, and we were having people on the podcast talking about this three years ago, when people thought they were nuts. This is now our new reality. Everybody's becoming generalists. We all have to find multiple ways to generate income streams. We're not going to make a living with one highly specialized skill set. So I literally talked to the author of the book The portfolio life. That's also a lecturer at Harvard Business School that talks all about how we do this, and that's just day one. Man, I'm already exhausted and I got four more days. So day two is all about creativity. In the age of AI, what it's not about is the tools. So people are thinking, finally, somebody's going to tell me, these are the five tools that I need to learn as an editor, as a visual effects artist, as a composer. It is not about the tools. It's about our collaboration with this technology and how we introduce it as a collaborative partner without losing our humanity. So what does collaboration look like? What tools and workflows are being used, for example, in the visual effects industry? And what we found out is, oh, they're not actually using it, because they're not allowed to really interesting. I wouldn't have known that otherwise, but that's only going to last for so long, actually, as of recording this either just today or yesterday, the main one of the main sponsors of our summit, mpse, the Motion Picture Sound Editors, they just came out with an article and deadline that said, we will not recognize any projects for awards for the golden reels that have used AI. So there's, there's going to be a lot more regulations around this. And you could, you could look at it from both sides and say that's, that's very controversial,
Debby: and I don't know how they enforce that. How? How can they figure that out
Zack Arnold: exactly? So I'm definitely not going to litigate that in this conversation, because there are multiple ways to look at it. The point is, a lot of these things are starting to come to pass. So rather than Well, I'm all in on the tools, or screw AI, I'm never using it, this is more about where do we think this is going next, and how it's going to shape the workforce, and how do we need to change the way we think? So that's what day two is all about. It's not the AI tools. It's how does AI change the way that we create and we collaborate, and then how do we make sure that we stay human and leverage the things that set us apart from AI? And who are the guests for day two? Oh, yes, thank you. So the guests for day two, we have Chris Deaver and Ian Clawson, their leadership consultants for both Apple and. Disney. They also wrote the book called Brave together, and we actually did a podcast conversation with Chris Deaver a couple of years ago, talking all about how, how we create the best things when we're not in a vacuum. So one of the, one of the the areas that we talked about in general, is like Google veil three, for anybody that's paying attention, Google veil three is now you can write a prompt just like you could with Dolly, and say, I want a 10 second video clip of X, Y and Z, and it literally looks Hollywood ready, like it's mind blowing the quality of it. It's picture and sound. This is pretty much game over, because if this is what we're going to be able to do in a year or two for a feature film or for a TV series, you're not going to need to be pressing all the buttons right? It's good, but you still need storytellers to know this is a good story. This is a good prompt. So the tools change. We're still going to need humans to tell those stories. I have no worries whatsoever that creative executives at studios are going to be using prompts to make their movies because they don't know what the hell they want and they don't know how to communicate it. And how do we know? Because we work with them when we get their notes and they have no fucking idea what they're doing. Fucking idea what they're doing. So talking about that with Chris and Ian, talked to Sean Cushing, who's the co owner of a company called cantina creative. And they do visual effects, really complex visual effects, like, you know, displays and 3d HUDs and all kinds of stuff for Avatar movies, for Marvel films, Marvel TV series, they're playing at the highest level, and just talked about, what does AI look like in your world, and what does AI look like in the future for career paths. Then the third one is with Maxim Jago, who's a futurist. So you really want your mind blown about what AI might do to society in the next three to five years. I was listening to this and like, what are we talking about right now? Like, my mind does not compute this conversation, so very high level conversation about what AI does to our society.
Debby: Yeah, that one blew my mind as well. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around that one
Zack Arnold: exactly. So it's not well, here are the latest tools. Here's how you write better prompts. This is the five steps to get the most out of chat. GPT, none of that crap. Much higher level, more holistic
Debby: conversations, yeah, more philosophical, more deep questions, yeah, just brings up all sorts of things. Yeah,
Zack Arnold: exactly. So now day three comes our creative career in crisis. We've got our State of the Union. We're starting to get a better idea of where we think maybe, possibly AI might take us, knowing we don't have the answers. And PS, if anybody says they're an AI expert, they're full of shit, because there's no such thing, because it's an oxymoron. But after we learn all these things, the question, I would hope naturally, becomes, so what the hell do we do about this? Like, where do we even start? And again, I don't believe that people have to start over, but we have to have some sort of a plan. So day three is better understanding where do we actually go next as storytellers? Where do we go next as creatives? So one of those conversations was with a longtime friend and collaborator of mine, Matt Nix, creator of multiple TV series including Burn Notice, he gives a unvarnished perspective of what it really takes to get a show made in Hollywood right now.
Debby: And when you say unvarnished, you aren't kidding,
Zack Arnold: yeah. So I can't remember, were you, were you on that live? Or did you listen?
Debby: I was not, but I was listening to it before we started this. And he's brutal. There was
Zack Arnold: no bullshit, right? No No bullshit. There was no bullshit. So it's here's what it actually takes to be a working writer, to be a working showrunner, and for somebody that's a craftsperson, here's how to get our attention, knowing that this is the reality of the industry. Great, I already knew that it was a shit show. Well, the great thing about Matt is he's also a terrific teacher and a terrific coach, and I think that's probably where he's gonna end up being someday, even if I have to steal him, and he can be, you know, a teacher in our academy. But we talk about practical ways to build our networks, to expand our relationships, and how do we pitch ourselves? How do we pitch ourselves as the solution to somebody else's problem so we can navigate the career crisis? Also had a conversation with, again, somebody from a totally different industry, anybody in Hollywood, there's not going to be one person that says, You got Selena sue to be on your Summit. But people in Selena Sue's world would be like, how the hell did you get Selena sue to do a summit for you? And she is one of the world's experts in how do you build rich relationships, authentic relationships. And this is a game of chess that is not a game of checkers. Most people listening are probably paying a really shitty game of Go Fish right now with their networking, we talk about the game of chess. How do you build real, authentic relationships so that over time, it's an investment, no different than putting $100,000 in the bank that will yield results, but doing that with relationships instead. So that's just kind of a small smattering of the conversations that we have on day three, which with I think might be, it's hard. It's like choosing children if there were a competition for my favorite competition, my favorite conversation where I said, if there's one of these, you got to listen to, it's probably Andy Duke. Because Annie Duke broke my brain. For those that don't know, Annie Duke is, if not the world's expert, one of the world's foremost experts on the psychology of making decisions. And we did a deep dive for 90 minutes into the psychology of one simple question, do I stick with my career path, or do I go in a different direction, all the way down to me having to guess how much her dog weighs. You're like what? That makes no sense. Listen in and you'll it'll you better understand but she's really good at understanding the cognitive side of decision making, or probability, given that she's literally one of the former World Champions of poker, not because she's great at cards, because she's great at psychology, because she's great at understanding probabilities and making really good decisions.
Debby: And if you're someone that makes emotional decisions, you are not going to understand this conversation at all, because she just takes emotions right out of it,
Zack Arnold: which, in a lot of ways, I think is beneficial. I don't think one way or the other. I don't think either is better. I think making only emotional decisions, has a lot of detriment to it. Making only logical decisions, they're going to be a lot of detriment to that. Finding a way to intersect both Absolutely you want to know the logical, probabilistic side of it, and he's your gal, absolutely. And that's only the first three days. So day four, this is where we talk, at a much deeper level about the intersection of Hollywood legacy storytellers, creatives and artists and this new generation of content creators, looking at it both through the lens from somebody that's completely in the content creator space that has no background in legacy Hollywood and storytelling in understanding where can we be useful to them, but also how Can we become our own content creators? Because he's, excuse me, was voted the 2023, content Entrepreneur of the Year. So if the question is, I want to do this at a legit level, I want to be a legit content creator, and I want to build a business around it. Jay Klaus is kind of the guy, but has no knowledge of how Hollywood works. So I just asked him, Where can we be valuable to you? So if you're wondering, well, I don't want to be a content creator, but I want to be a part of this world. Where can I be valuable? Jay Klaus, J Klaus helps us answer that question. Then, in another very interesting conversation, we talked to two writer show runners that are straddling the world of Hollywood creatives and content creators because they're the host of the very popular podcast, happier in Hollywood, Liz craft and Sarah Fain, who has spent, I don't know how many years, but well, over two decades, as writers and show runners and networked in cable television. But they've also, I think, I don't know if it's been a decade, but they've been they've run the happier in Hollywood podcast for a long time. Yeah, I think
Debby: this probably is a decade coming up this year at some point, and this was one of my favorite conversations, just because I've followed them for a long time and since they started their podcast. And they, too, are pretty honest, but they they have a little more well, I don't want to say they sugarcoat things, but they have a more hopeful side than than Matt Nix who was very,
Zack Arnold: very brutal, yeah, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to bring them on, because they are happier in Hollywood, right? Matt is, like, you're fucked in Hollywood. That'd be his podcast. Like, that's, that would be Matt Nixon's podcast. All right, welcome to the you are fucked podcast. Let's talk about what's going on in Hollywood this week. So yes, they're a lot more optimistic. And again, I wanted those counterpoints, and that, to me, was another one of those where I'm like, I would love to get Matt and Liz and Sarah on the same conversation at some point. That would be really interesting, knowing that they already know each other and they work in the same space. But then the third conversation I wanted to have was with somebody that's made the transition successfully. So actually, and this is totally by coincidence, maybe not totally, but one of the former students of our academy, Nick Milo, during the pandemic, said, I want to figure out another way to generate income that isn't just being an assistant editor on television. He was working on better call. Saul at the time, said, I feel called to, no pun intended. I feel called to something different, and over the last five years, has built a massively successful creator business, and literally just landed a six figure publishing deal with one of the top book publishers in the industry, huge name and thought leader and influencer in the personal knowledge management space called PKM. So anybody that's familiar with Tiago forte build a second brain. Nick is kind of like, right on Tiago Forte's coattails as being one of the world's leading experts in personal knowledge management. So if you're like, he
Debby: has such a great way of explaining things. He has a really nice demeanor. He's very calm, and he he really thinks he's, like, really into this whole PKM and, yeah, and he has such a great way of explaining it, I can see why he has such a big following, and what people are getting from the content that he puts out, we have a
Zack Arnold: whole other day to talk about, don't we? Yeah. Wonder why I've been tired the last day so well it is right now, right now. So as of recording this episode, the itinerary for day five is that I wanted to bring things back down to the very personal level and the very emotional level. So it's not here's another of the world's experts that's helping you through X, Y or Z challenge. I had a conversation with a member of our community who has a very successful animation and design agency that's really struggling right now, because everybody's struggling right now, going from the phone is off the hook, I can't I can't take all the work to I think all my devices are broken because nobody's reaching out to me. So what does that look like as a business owner, but also, what does it look like as a human being when you are midlife and you've already achieved a significantly high level of success and it's all taken away from you? What do you do with that, especially when you're midlife and you're in the sandwich generation, and you're trying to raise your kids, and you're also trying to raise your parents because they can't take care of themselves. So my conversation with Kalika Sharma is a very, very personal episode. It's gonna be, I hope it's gonna be a transition in the best way possible, but it's a huge shift from the first four days hoping, maybe, I can't promise anything, hoping to get one more person and that other slot for day five. But as of recording this, it isn't confirmed enough to make sure that I can talk about it even, literally two minutes ago, as we were saying this, I checked my email inbox to say, All right, last shot to see if I can say it. Can't say it yet, so I can't confirm if there will be somebody else. If there is, it'll be pretty awesome guest, if we can make it happen. And then we conclude the five days where I follow through with my promise of taking everything you've learned and turning it into action. So I'm going to finish with a 90 minute masterclass, which is going to be free to attend, just like all of this is free to attend, that's going to help people take action on what they've learned, breaking it down into three basic areas, how do I leverage my skills, my abilities, my knowledge, my work experience, my life experience? How do I take all that find the intersection so I can find a direction to move forward, so I don't feel like I'm starting over and from there, well, how do I build relationships around me, mentors, peers, experts or otherwise, so I can actually go on this new direction and not feel like I'm alone. And then third, how do I do all this without losing my fn mind, as you know all too well, because we've talked about it many times. It's much, much simpler to be a craftsperson that does not devalue how absolutely ridiculous the hours are and the stresses and the deadlines, but you got one job. You wake up, you do the work, you go to sleep, and maybe you don't even sleep. But you got one job. When you transition into the world of being a generalist, you're spinning 100 plates and you're wearing 100 different hats. Different hats, and that takes completely different skills to be able to manage your life, not working towards work life balance, because work life balance is bullshit. It's a myth that we are never going to achieve, but developing and learning the skill of work life integration. What does that actually look like when you're setting goals? What does it look like when you're putting things on your calendar so you can spin the plates and wear the hats without losing your mind. So that will be the conclusion of the five days of the summit.
Debby: And if there's anyone that knows how to do that better than you, I don't know who it would be, because you've been doing this for a long time.
Zack Arnold: I appreciate that. Yes, I whether it's fortunately or unfortunately, or unfortunately, I have a decades head start on most everybody, because I had my midlife existential crisis about being a specialized crafts person 10 years ago, and I had that. I had that crisis when the industry was in a completely different place, so I had more security to take the jobs when I needed them to pay the bills. But yeah, I've got a decade head start on building this kind of a life.
Debby: Yeah, and what I want to highlight, too is speaking of of storytelling and how those in Hollywood are the best storytellers, just it this summit is sort of proving that point in so many ways, because most summits do not have a narrative thread like you just outlined in your five days, right? It was, it was very intentional. It was very thoughtful, and it was designed very specifically to have that narrative thread other summits, you know. I mean, they might have themes for days, and they might, you know, try to group like subjects together, but for the most part, they don't, they don't have this kind of thread. And I think that's why at the end of them, in addition to the excessive content, it's also why at the end you just feel like, kind of like you were hit by a truck or washed over by the ocean wave or something, because you don't have a good through line of the material this, I think just the way to experience it. Within those five days, it's going to have an arc to it, and so you're going to feel like you're able to absorb the information, you're able to absorb the content, you might have questions, and then at the end of it. But you'll have a plan, an action, list of ways that you can start to implement some of the things that you learned over the week.
Zack Arnold: Yeah. And the key here that I think is so important is that if you're a great storyteller, you can do this for yourself. You have all the tools you need to write the next chapter over your story, you just don't see it, and that's what we've discovered over and over and over. Because you and I have been coaching and working with creatives for years, helping them with this. All of our students are great storytellers, because that's how we're trained. We just don't know how to apply those storytelling skills to ourselves because we can't read the label from inside the jar. But you start working with other people, and you collaborate on this process of rewriting our own stories, the game changes. So this is all about using our storytelling skills so that we can figure out the narrative for the next act of our careers. But yes, this narrative for the summit is very deliberate. It was three months of me staring at a whiteboard with markers and post it notes saying, What is the story of the summit and the without naming any names, because I don't, don't want to point her out publicly, because I don't know if she'd be comfortable with it. But behind the scenes, in addition to working with our business consultant and event producer, we have who you would consider like in the summit space, if summits were a business niche, like the woman like this is the summit woman. This is the Michael Jordan of summits. Anybody that wants to organize a summit, they go to her for the playbook. She's reviewed our sales page and she reviewed our summit video. She said, I can't do this anymore, because I've never seen anything like this at this level. It's the I don't know how to give you notes, because this is the best sales page I've ever seen. I'm never going to be able to make a video again, thanks to you, because I don't. I can't compete with this, because that's the intersection of what we bring. Am I the best at creating summits? No. Am I the best at marketing summits? God, no. So much to learn about the marketing angle and building an audience. But I can tell a story, and I can tell an engaging story, and if I need to make a two minute trailer talking about the narrative of a summit hold my beer, because that's what we do. It's what we've done for so many years. And the summit world can't compete with that, because they can't automatically download 25 years of Hollywood storytelling and marketing expertise.
Debby: And hey, if this all goes to shit, I bet this woman would hire you. I
Zack Arnold: was going to say I have a future in editing trailers for summits, for groups that are trying to build their gift card their, you know, greeting card businesses. So this, this is where finding that asymmetric advantage is so important. And it took me a long time to take all those Venn diagrams and say, I don't think there's anybody else out there they can do this better than we can. Not that we're the best in the world of building summits. We're not the best in the world of doing better. World at doing podcasts. We're not the best in the world at telling stories or making trailers, and we're not the best in the world at making audiences. We take all these different areas and you bring them together, and I think we can be the best at doing something like this, because nobody has all these other generalized skill sets that all of us bring to the table, which is why we now literally call ourselves the A team, because we're just this rag tag group of misfits that has all these random tools and skills and abilities, and we just figure shit out.
Debby: And that's exactly what we hope the takeaway will be, is when you listen to all of this, you'll begin to understand the different the different unique talents or specialties that you have in your life and in your creative career that will make you, that will lead up to your asymmetric advantage, and you'll be able to take that with you. So I think that's a that's a big point that we want to make, that this isn't just about you or this company's asymmetric advantage. It's about everyone who attends the summit, that they're going to be able to read the matrix and figure that out by the end of this. Yeah,
Zack Arnold: and that's the most important thing, is, if this is about me, I would have quit months ago. Are you kidding? This is a conversation we've had. You know, it's a narrative, both throughout the summit and a narrative for many of our podcast interviews, is that if you're trying to figure out, how do I get through this and how do I make it about me, you will quit, because this is really hard, and this sucks, if you can put a purpose to the work that you're doing that's outside of yourself, that is what will get you through the trenches and get through the shit. And what's gotten me through the shit the last six months is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, which is that if we pull this off, we're gonna help a lot of people figure this shit out. That's what keeps me going.
Debby: Yeah, so this is probably a good place to talk about the inner circle and tell people a little bit about what that is and what they get if they decide to upgrade to the inner circle,
Zack Arnold: sure. So this is what we call the But wait, there's more portion of the program. So if you missed it already, everything we talked about is 100% free. Literally, all we need is your email address so we can send you a link to join our community. All this is going to be available. For free. Just to clarify, for each of the five days, the content will release at 8am Pacific Time and will be available replays for 24 hours. Then the next morning, we have the next day's content. All that free. But if you want lifetime access to all of the interviews, you want bonus resources for all of them, takeaways, quizzes, insights, to really turn it into an action plan, if you want the ability to be a part of Q and A's with me every single day, I'm going to do a 60 minute Q and A for the first four days. If you want to be a part of that, you upgrade to the inner circle. If you want access to my most popular networking workshop, build your dream network. Then you join the inner circle. If you want to be able to take all of these five days and be able to say, how do I take action on these even beyond the master class, then I'm going to build all this into a self guided course that's called navigating the next act that, again, is part of upgrading and becoming a part of the inner circle. There's also bonus interviews. We also have bonus resources from our sponsors, so you can go way deeper into a multitude of all these crafts. The reason behind all of that, and this is something I probably should have mentioned earlier, but the other thing I'm trying to do with this is de silo our industry. We are just the picture editors, we are just the Sound Editors, we are just the writers, we are just the visual effects artists. There's so much siloing in our industry, maybe that got us where we are now. It does not get us where we want to go next if we don't figure out how to work together. And break down these walls. I mean this, this industry is already literally burning down, and there's no way that we continue to think that just we in our own little cloistered guild or organization are going to solve this. We have to collectively solve this as one industry rather than industries. So I wanted to bring these multiple industries together. So you're going to see resources that you've probably never seen because you wouldn't have been a part of these other industries or guilds. So our resource library is going to have all of that as well.
Debby: And I want to emphasize one point, which I think is really unique about this and and really well worth the price for actually, did you say the price for the I did
Zack Arnold: not, but no, that the price for the upgrade. Wait for it. It's $99 you're stealing it.
Debby: Yeah. And so the one, the one point I really want to emphasize is those Q and A's. Can you tell people, like, what does that mean? Do they get to type in a question and hope that you'll answer it, or like, what does that mean? Exactly? A Q and A it all
Zack Arnold: depends on how much they're willing to, quote, unquote, put themselves out there. So the simplest version of the Q and A's, it's just going to be a zoom call. I'm going to hop on Zoom and I'm going to say hi to everybody and whoever's on the call. If they want to ask me a question, we're going to have a comment. Have a conversation. There is no barrier other than it not being in person. You're going to get a chance to meet with me, talk to me, one on one in a group setting, if you're a little bit more shy, if you don't want to be on a group call, if you do just want to send a message, you know, to where we'll collect all of our questions and have me answer it, then sure I'm fine to do that, but it's just going to be a group zoom call. That's it really simple. And
Debby: this is a zoom call with everyone you're seeing everyone. It's not the webinar type of zoom call where it's just you're you only see the speaker, right? This is just everyone's there. You're able to see the other people, you're able to connect, and you're able to talk directly to you and ask any question about that day from the summit. Is that correct?
Zack Arnold: Yeah, from the summit. I'm going to try and keep it to the narrative of the summit until we run out of things to talk about. But if there's space left over, then I'll open it to more general conversations. But as I know you can attest to, when we've done calls like this, we call them town halls. When we do an academy town hall and we invite anybody to join us. I've literally seen people get jobs just from introducing themselves and saying, hey everybody. You know, this one of my favorite examples ever. The first day we had somebody join our community, he was he had been in the world of post production and animation. He was cleaning barbecues. That's literally was his job, like he was going house to house and cleaning people's fancy barbecues. So like, Hey everybody, you know, I'm currently cleaning barbecues, but really looking to get back into the world of animation, my skill sets are this, this and that. He got a message an hour later from a community member that said, saw your posts, really think that I could help you. A week later, he had a job just from introducing himself and sharing his story, and that is not the only time that's happened. So yeah, the Q and A's just to be able to connect with other people that are in the same situation that alone is priceless. Yeah,
Debby: I agree, and that is absolutely unique, and something that you don't see in a lot of places,
Zack Arnold: which I would know because I didn't look at the other summits. I'm like, fuck it. This is the way I want to do it. So I did
Debby: it all right. Is there anything else I missed about the details of the summit itself? I think we covered everything.
Zack Arnold: The only other thing that I can think of offhand, and this is kind of a an extension of both the Q and A's and of the Friday master class. Is that for those that are in the inner circle, they also have the opportunity to apply for a hot seat. So I'm going to be doing 320 minute hot seats. And for those that are unaware, a hot seat is essentially you come with a very specific challenge, like, I want you to take a look at my resume, or I really want to connect with this person. Can you give me your thoughts on an outreach email? Or I don't know how to balance all this on my calendar, as you know, I do like eight of these a week during our office hours in the Arnold Academy, and I'm giving the opportunity for three people to schedule a hot seat. And all of that is something that's going to be accessible to view for anybody that registers, because the hot seats will be right on the heels of the master class. So only those that have upgraded to the inner circle will be able to apply, but anybody can observe the three hot seats at the end of the master class.
Debby: Amazing. Okay, that's a huge one. I don't even think I was aware of that. So that's fantastic. There's a lot of
Zack Arnold: moving parts behind the scenes. Debbie, so I'm, I'm doing my best at communicating to my team. But every once in a while, things fall through the
Debby: cracks. You know, I'm juggling a lot too. So you very well could have, and I could have completely went over my head.
Zack Arnold: It's not like you're my Podcast Producer or anything. It's not like you should know these things.
Debby: So I think the last place that I want to hit and transition to is really just talking about a little getting a little more detailed into some of these interviews and some of the key takeaways, some just some of the perspectives that have stayed with you that have stuck with you from some of these interviews to really help people understand what we're talking about here and what they're going to get and what they're going to hear when they tune into these. Boy, that's a
Zack Arnold: tough one, because there's so many. The problem is not I don't have the insights. The problem is, there are too many. I don't know how to sift them. The first one by far that comes to my mind is I'll never forget the first moment that I was called Legacy Hollywood. That's a big one that's going to stick with me forever, because I'm like, Whoa. Like, I'm living in a very different world than I thought I was living in. Was that Jake Klaus? That was Jay Klaus. And to be perfectly honest, I'm not 100% sure if it was in the actual recorded summit interview or if it was in the pre interview. I might be conflating the two, but I'll never forget the moment that Jay Klaus called me legacy Hollywood, just like it was nothing, right? It's like, no idea. He had no idea ever. Every time I've used that term with somebody in our industry, they're like, ouch. I'm like, Tell me about it. But for me, it was like, Well, you know, you legacy Hollywood. I'm like, hold on a second. What the fuck did you just call me? So that's a moment I'll never forget. But to be perfectly honest, I don't remember if it was pre interview or interview. So if people are like, I'm only gonna register for that moment. I'm not even sure it was in the actual interview, but I'll never forget the moment that I think for me, I'm gonna refer to my giant floor to ceiling whiteboard that has the entire summit in front of me. I think, I think the conversation, or specifically the portion of the conversation that I had with Walter about the power that that theatrical exhibition, or the collective watching of the same thing as society has, and how we need that as a species, that, to me, gave me a lot of hope that AI is not going to run everything do. I think that we're going to be going back to the movies every weekend. No, like that ship has sailed. But just understanding on a deep psychological level, our need for stories and our need to experience them collectively. Even if you think about appointment television, we feel collected as a society when everybody said, Nope, it's Thursday at 7pm and we're all going to watch this and we're going to talk about it tomorrow. That's a huge shift on our society that I think we're missing, and I think we're going to eventually get back to which makes me feel more hopeful for the future, because we are the storytellers that are going to need to create those stories that allow us to come together as a society. There's no world in which Mr. Beast video on YouTube is going to be appointment television. Now the appointment television could be beast games. And one could say, well, all the kids at school are talking about the latest Mr. Beast video, sure, but that's very, very short lived. It's like throwing a pebble into a raging river. The conversation's gone. So that was one thing that really stuck with me.
Debby: Yeah, this is really hard. One other thing he said that stuck with me was that everything comes in waves, and he went through the history like you said. He's been here for six decades and seen all of it, right? And so just hearing him say, everything comes in waves. It's, you know, everything hits, and then it crests and it falls, and we're on to something new. So just understanding that cycle of things, I think, is always helpful, and gives a little perspective.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I'm going to throw this back at you, because you've kind of pulled the thread. When I record these conversations, it's just like, I go into this blank space, and when I'm done, I'm like, did I just talk to that person? I totally get in the zone. So I actually don't remember half of my conversations. What are some other insights that you took away?
Debby: Okay, so I think from from Liz and Sarah Liz craft and Sarah Fain, the podcasters of happier in Hollywood, they talked a lot. I mean, they were like, I said, they were honest. They said it's chaos out there, but they also said there's more doors open than ever. They just said, if you're if you're willing to build your own house, right? And they're talking from the perspective of show runners, they're still making pitches to studios just like they used to, in the same way, writing things the way they used to. But they are also writing on sub stack. They are also doing their podcast. They are also writing a novel, like they are just exploring every every possible avenue of writing, because that's what they are. They're just exploring all the avenues that they possibly can. And for me, that like, there's a part of me that gets a little exhausted by that, and is, like, a little exhausted I already did that, or, like, I did that years ago. I thought I was done with that. But again, there's another part that is like, Okay, well, it there are some opportunities I don't have to do everything they're doing, but maybe there's one other thing I can do, or there's some Avenue, something that sounds interesting to you. You know, finding your craft, finding a different way of create, of expressing your creativity that is always fun and that is always motivating. So that, to me, was something that I have sort of been chewing on since that interview. Christina Wallace, she was another one. She just has a very eternally, kind of hopeful look and outlook at just, yeah, you got to do what you got to do, and you're going to juggle a lot of things, and nothing's ever going to feel like it's perfect, and you're going to be tired a lot of the time, but if you're pursuing the things that mean something to you, there's that makes it worth it, and there are ways to balance your life, or ways to schedule. I think she talked a lot about scheduling your life and how you kind of plan that out, and she talked a little bit about her specifics of how she calendars her life with her kids and her husband, who also is a managing a portfolio life. So that was interesting to me, to just hear the way that, you know, she was very real about it. She didn't sugarcoat it, as in, like, Oh, this is easy. She said, Yeah, it's really hard, yeah, but we have to do things.
Zack Arnold: She sees it through the same lens that I do, which is absolute brutal honesty, but with a real strong dash of hope. And I may have even said this in her interview, but I swear to God, we are fraternal twins, separated at birth, because I will tell it like it is. But I also believe that things are going to get better, and I believe that there's hope on the horizon, but we got to work our asses off to get there. I felt like she very much was was speaking from the same playbook, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So one other thing that I thought of, I mean, you're you're the host, and I'm not the host, so I don't want to step on whatever toes you have or any other agenda you have. But one other thing that I thought of is that for anybody that's listening, that's thinking, well, is anybody actually going to show up to this thing? Because I don't want to, like, block out my time and nobody shows up, we're recording this well before it's going to be released. If all goes well, we're releasing this the morning the summit goes live. We're already well past 600 registrations, and my guess is that number will be significantly higher by launch day, when somebody is listening to this. So yes, people are going to be there. Your people are going to be there. Like I've never been the popular kid my whole life, but I think there's a world where I might be the popular kid for five days. Maybe that's really all this has been about. Maybe this is just about me achieving all my childhood dreams of being the popular kid. We could, we could do a whole episode about that. Yes, I have no interest in being popular. That's actually my least favorite part about this is I'm the bride at the wedding. I hate that part of it.
Debby: Well, we know you're not going to get stood up at the altar, so
Zack Arnold: Well, don't say that yet. I'm we could see the morning of our summit, Amazon Web Services crashes and nobody can access it. You never know. It never ends. So I'm just, I'm assuming something like that will happen, because it always does.
Debby: And we'll figure it out, right, as we always do, all right? Well, maybe we should tell people how to sign up if they're if they haven't done it yet.
Zack Arnold: Oh yeah, good call. We should probably give them a call to action, shouldn't we? It's something that I teach to my branding students. Don't pitch yourself and leave them without a call to action so they know what to do next. Really simple, if you haven't heard it 100 times on the podcast already, just Zack arnold.com/summit 2025 again, that's Zack. K Zack arnold.com, Summit, 2025, that's simple. All the information is there? Registration, 100% free.
Debby: Excellent. Well, I think that covers it. That covers everything I had. Is there any final things that you want to leave the audience with today?
Zack Arnold: You have tapped the well, all right, I am tapped out. We have covered everything we need to cover, so I appreciate it.
Debby: Awesome. Well, thank you.
Zack Arnold: Oh shit, I forgot to hit record. We're gonna have to do that all over again. Yeah.
Edited by: Curtis Fritsch
Produced by: Debby Germino
Published by: Vim Pangantihon
Music by: Thomas Cepeda
Lydia and I explore how to manage the emotional toll of career shifts, identify the transferable skills you might be overlooking, and find your center amidst the uncertainty.
