Did you know there are there are multiple Confoes Podcast shows? Today, Diego and Jean-luc are joined by Gregory Bainathsah (Co-Host Capital Confoes) and Tevin Morris (Co-Host Creative Confoes) in a bizarre Confoes Crossover Episode.

Episode Overview

• 0:00 – Confoes Intro
• 3:16 – Favorite Episodes
• 7:56 – Meme Talk
• 25:25 – Should we create separate channels for each show?
• 29:08 – Future topics to cover on Capital and Creative Confoes
• 38:34 – How pragmatic should the Confoes be?
• 43:36 – Why don’t the Confoes happen more often
• 53:47 – Closing off: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Video Version of the Episode

The Hosts

• Diego Ameerali
• Jean-Luc van Charante

Feel free to join our Discord Server.

---

Full Transcript

Jean-luc: [00:00:00] Good evening. Good morning. Good afternoon. Wherever you are in the world, watching Social Confoes live with right now. And for those of you listening to the podcast version, thank you for joining in again, and it’s a very, very special episode today. So Diego, tell us a little bit about why today is so special.

Diego: [00:00:40] Special different call it what you may. But as you can see from people watching the video, you usually, you just see the two of us starting the episode, but this time you’re starting with four people and you may be wondering for people where these people come from. for those of you have been following Confoes from, you know, back in 2020, know that started with, you know, just the casual conversations among friends Fast forward 2021, we kind of gone official, you know, launch the website. We got the Social Confoes, that’s doing weekly, but many people know now, know Social Confoes, but I think it’s time to introduce the other hosts from the other shows to a wider public. Although not many episodes have been released yet on those because we’re experimenting with different formats.

But I think it’s time where we’re ready to, you know expose them and that that’s called a that. But yeah, usually you guys see and Social Confoes  a chat. We always have somebody checking the audio and video and that’s none other than our other host from a Capital Confoes. That’s Greg Greg Bainathsah and from Creative Confoes, we got Motev Designs with us.

Aka Tevin Morris, actually the other way around Tevin Morris  so guys, welcome to Social Confoes different from the usual, but

Jean-luc: [00:02:04] be here.

Gregory: [00:02:04] It, it feels great, but it feels anxious. I’m feeling a bit anxious to be live because everything I say, it’s out there in the internet forever. During Capital Confoes. I can edit out if I say something stupid. So there’s some pressure here.

Jean-luc: [00:02:16] Well, we, we started off the first time as a life as well, not knowing what to expect and the fun thing about live this is something that you guys know from the other side, because you have commented on the live we have some people joining in, so PLU us joining in.

And Tom actually, there’s actually a separate conversation going on between Tom and the whirlwind. So that’s a little fun as well. And Anil is joining as well from on Facebook. So I thank you for joining and again, Anil so basically today’s gonna be a fun show. We have set the boundaries well, that.

Basically the three the four hosts of the different Confoes podcasts are available here for questions. So if you’re watching and you’re taking like, okay, I want to let them know a little bit more like when’s the next capital Confoes coming out. What exactly is Creative Confoes feel free to drop the question, but also just to have a little fun, Diego. We could almost start with a quick fire if you want to.

Diego: [00:03:16] Yeah. That’s a hit them up with a quick fire real quick. So we, we, we chatted in the, you know, our, our little group on, you know, what are we going to talk about? I kind of been, not reacting just to leave it open. So guys then let’s start with Greg. What’s your favorite Social Confoes episode till now?

Gregory: [00:03:35] Oh, definitely the one with Anil definitely easily. Like that guys is really, really smart and I, I’m glad he’s here in the, in the chat to hear us compliment him because it was really a great one.

Tevin: [00:03:48] Yeah, my first my favorite one was the, I was the one with Sergio Pengel the way how he developed himself, even in hard times, there was a really good one.

Jean-luc: [00:03:58] So you also see like the different, different things, and it’s interesting that you chose two guests that are actually Suriname related. So that’s a, that’s pretty awesome as well. I do want to know from your guys’ perspective what’s the episode, our, what topic would you love to discuss the most tonight? So I’m asking that question, of course, to the both of you.

Gregory: [00:04:19] I like to talk about economics memes and investing, like if we touch at least one of those three, I’m good. And if it’s all of those three, man, I’m going to sleep well.

Tevin: [00:04:30] Well, in my case, that would be more of the creative side, but also in a way from K if we watch, if we watch our infrastructure for creatives in our country, you will see there is a lot of development that can put out there. But there is a structure that needs to be set first and as the financial structure and that’s where Gregory can come see, can come in working together with Diego. So we can explain that further.

Diego: [00:04:56] you guys gave a description. Why your co-host of the show? So maybe we’ll just start with that.

That that’s a good segway to definitely go into. And that’s the reason why I approached you guys individually in the beginning as well. So actually started with another friend back in the day and he introduced, I already knew Greg, but he introduced me to the financial side of Greg and that’s where we kind of hit it off and, you know continued with that.

And Tevin, I know Tevin from previous years from the social media conferences here and I, I knew his grade, his illustrating work, and I knew he was trying to, you know document the process and why not make a part because of that. So that’s my approach to them.

Jean-luc: [00:05:41] yeah, we’ve been through this already. We’ve mentioned this already. Basically it was a way went for Diego and I to start. So Social Confoes. So we both, we both really benefited from, from it. I mean, people that are watching don’t know great shout out to Jill who’s watching as well. Good evening. Good evening. And people don’t know the backstory, like we were discussing, like in a pre, a recording session.

They were talking about why inconsistency and me being late and always Social. Confoes always starting on time. So for me, that’s a great trigger on, on Tuesday to start right at nine o’clock to sharp to start the show now. I do want to go dive directly into, into the things, because basically Greg, you mentioned economics, memes and investing for me, there is only one, one topic Doge.

all three, is those economics memes and investing or not?

Gregory: [00:06:43] Yes. Yes it is. And it’s, I believe it’s the best of all, three of them.

Diego: [00:06:49] And what would you say to this when the notification from Elon what’s your theory on the influence that Elon has and especially on doge lately. Yeah.

Gregory: [00:07:02] So I have a bit of a niche opinion on, on Elon Musk, which is that normal, the usual Bitcoin crowd, either swears by him or they denounce him publicly.

But I believe that the problem with that is that the biggest pro that Bitcoin had was that it’s decentralized. There’s not a single person that can have access to everything, but we, the community let Elon become such a big part of crypto that we actually became a slave to whatever his thoughts were.

So whatever Elan said, like everyone just went along and it was fun until it turned upside down. So we caused this on ourselves and I hope it’s a learning moment for everyone in the Bitcoin community, which is that you don’t trust billionaires just cause they’re cool. Bitcoin is anti billionaire.

Jean-luc: [00:07:56] Okay. Then just, just quickly for, for people that it went a little bit too fast maybe a short story on what exactly is doge. And, and what exactly is Elon Musk’s his influence on, on, on doge, and also shout out to Esther seeing that she’s enjoying this meeting.

Gregory: [00:08:16] All right. And so bit, because Bitcoin is open source, which means everyone can copy the source code of Bitcoin and create their own digital currency. Basically a copy of Bitcoin, the community behind the developers behind the Bitcoin network just came together and said around 2014, 2015, that they want to create a copy of Bitcoin. And they want to name it after a meme and the community could vote for what meme they wanted to name it. And those, the meme, the dog was the winner.

And then they called it those coin. And those go in is a carbon copy of Bitcoin. It’s got a really huge, and as of a few months ago, Elon Musk started pumping it like crazy. He, he publicly tweeted so many times about it and every time he sent a tweet about those coins, it would run up 20%, 10%. The means were insane because if you don’t know, Elon Musk at the time was the richest person in the whole world.

And for people to see that, Hey mom, like this is, I’m not doing crazy stuff. The richest guy in the world says, this is cool. So I’m cool now. So people put a lot of faith in Elon Musk and then eventually the support started to go down and eventually he made a public statement that his company was not going to be accepting Bitcoin anymore.

And that had a whole cascading effect, but basically the, the faith from Elon Musk, the godfather, it went down and then that caused a whole negative spiral.

Jean-luc: [00:09:50] So it, it jumped, it jumped, it stopped going up right around the time that he was the host of SNL Saturday night live. Is it also due to the fact that they were expecting more because he plugged doge coin at least three times during all those sketches during Saturday night live.

So it wasn’t like that they were expecting him to promote it more or was it something else?

Gregory: [00:10:14] Yeah, I think that the expectations were too high and anything, they hyped it up to be. It would be disappointing. And ever since then he stopped hyping it up. And then the, the F the unlimited amount of faith people had in Elon Musk, the person, it just wasn’t there anymore. Then it started to sell off.

Diego: [00:10:32] I quickly want to go through some more memes as, especially on Twitter, cause Twitter is the place to be for crypto memes and stuff. And, well, one of the. memes that has been trending with the laser eyes. A lot of celebrities, a lot of crypto people, a lot of people just started putting laser eyes and it took me a while to get it.

So you being a meme connoisseur yourself, what can you tell us about these laser eyes? What does it even mean for people who are normally unknowingly? See them on twitter

Gregory: [00:11:01] I have no idea where they came from, but it started off as a hype to publicly announce your support for Bitcoin. You put, you take your profile picture and then you add laser eyes to them, and then you put some hashtag Bitcoin or something, whatever.

But then as soon as the Bitcoin price started to fall, now it’s down about 50%. If I’m not mistaken, then obviously the support has gone away because they’re just following the crowd. And this exemplifies that perfectly is that you think. It all goes up forever and then you, you lose your job and then you got to start back at McDonald’s.

I think that’s a really funny meme.

Diego: [00:11:40] Yeah. So I actually looked it up, but the laser eyes date back to the old four Chan days. For those of you who don’t know, four Chan it’s a really. I wouldn’t call it shady, but it’s a, it’s a troll website and a lot of, you know, stuff that people don’t want to talk about publicly gets shared there and memefied there.

So from my take the, the revitalized it from there. And what the laser eyes are like, like kind of powering up like the Terminator kind of thing. And then the goal with this was that they were expecting Bitcoin to 100 K. So they kind of leave that as on their profile pic till Bitcoin hits 100 K. So that, from my understanding what I quickly read on

Jean-luc: [00:12:26] okay. I quickly, I want to go to Tevin before we do last question for Greg, because Anil explains it as following, so basically people are following the bigger influencer. So it’s like being at a casino where you piggyback. And so you shouldn’t cry when you follow Elon and you lose all it kind of lying, saying like, oh, I’m just going to follow the person at a casino, makes the most money.

And I’ve got a side bet on every bet that he makes hoping that I become rich.

Gregory: [00:12:51] Exactly, exactly. But Elon Musk was attracting so much attention towards himself. He had all this power and people were expecting him to use it for good, but eventually it just couldn’t keep on going anymore. And then it started to fall. So just don’t trust, millionaires.

Jean-luc: [00:13:07] Okay. I quickly jumped out. I quickly jumped on this meme because basically we were talking a little bit about investing, we also want to talk to Tevin about being creative. And the thing about creative is always, we don’t have anybody. We don’t have anybody we’re being. So Tevin when we look at beams, for instance, do you feel like, does it take away from the creative of the creative people? Are, do you say like no, actually creative people have an advantage into making, into making memes.

Tevin: [00:13:36] To touch on that. I tried to make some means and it failed. It never catched on, so you don’t, you ha you need to have a sense of humor. Let’s put it that way. And when you get the fives, you get the trends and then you make a meme.

So. You don’t have to be that Picasso to make a meme. So as, as long as you understand the situation and you could put it in, in a way with pictures or in a, in a gif yeah. So I can’t, I, I would say anyone could make a meme

Gregory: [00:14:09] if I can get into that. Like the meme format is so compressed, you have very limited opportunity, but just like we see with TikTok, you get like five or 10 seconds and people go insane creatively insane with those things. Like it’s the same with meme. So you have a very limited room in which you can be funny, but the people that can do it really well. It’s so amazing when you can hit a meme out of the park.

Tevin: [00:14:31] and the other port at the portal Allen’s perspective. when I tried, when I tried to make a meme a few times. I put too much effort to put it creatively and I’m losing the edge for yeah, the, the, the humor edge. Like I miss that out.

So it should be

Jean-luc: [00:14:51] sloppy basically.

Tevin: [00:14:53] yes. And, and see, I got a thumbs up, but if I, if I would look, I look at memes, it’s slop. It’s like it’s done on a phone app or something, but I tried it on. Maybe I should try that, but I try to on using Photoshop, you know, make it nice, play with text and all that, but Hey,

Jean-luc: [00:15:12] I think there’s a niche for that, but in most cases, if you just use a free online app, like a meme maker, and then sometimes you just cut out the name of the meme maker, even like people do that as well. Or they just steal from somebody else. And that just added two small things and it put their name on it.

It goes quite crazy. And I also think, yeah, it’s, it’s hard. Like there there’s this discussion, like a one Surinamese company that actually posted a meme and I, and I replied to it and somebody replied to my comment saying like, Is it normal for a company like this to, to connect to such a meme? Isn’t that like, it’s it doesn’t, isn’t that like a bad correlation between the company and the meme is like kind of dark. And I was like, yeah, I don’t know. So I’m not sure what you guys think about that.

Diego: [00:16:04] You’d be surprised too, how much people appreciate donkey humor and, you know it’s, it’s kind of a reflective, in my opinion, it’s kind of reflective of people that don’t want to say something publicly, but it shows it reflects the real, how the situation really is in a, like a satirical cynical way.

And people usually connect with that. And the funny thing is Greg shared another, not per se a meme with us, Kind of like, if you look at it now, companies are looking to hire people who kind of, you know, they, they call them meme. Artists are shit posters. And this is just to, you know, connect with a different kind of community different kind of way of reaching people.

So I’d like to get your take from a creative side, from a creative perspective. And also, you know, you also work at a company kind of design marketing aspect, branding aspect. How, what, what’s your take on, you know, formal job listings like this?

Tevin: [00:17:04] the look at it, I S memes are getting high names are getting shown. Memes are getting posted reposted. And that is kind of like a way of rolling with the wave. And if a meme makes a wave, you instantly get. A lot of you can say your posts can go viral. So if you make a meme that stands out of so many memes, people will share that. And that is basically online marketing is content marketing, you posting that.

And I would say, I would say more companies should do it in, in our country because as you see, as, as I watch Facebook, there were a lot of trends online. Maybe something bad happened and somebody made a meme and under companies take it over. I S I’ve seen that I’ve checked it and it works. People are literally posting that, but putting a there that attached to that name. So I would say it’s a really good trend. It’s a really good thing to do.

Jean-luc: [00:18:12] I think it goes a little bit further than just memes. I think it’s getting jumping into the news, jumping into like trends, things that are hot at the moment. If you’re able to, I mean, in Dutch, we call it inhakers like if you’re able to, to leverage what’s currently going on and find a way to creatively get involved as a company, that’s a big win. And I think in, in Suriname, it’s kind of hard to do because most of the time the news is kind of negative. a, and there are companies that do it, you know, like when Parramatta was flooded with water because of the rains, like there were some companies that jumped into like saying like, we can actually, we can help you out with this situation, but it’s for companies is really hard.

To kind of jump into situations actual situations when it’s kind of negative, like there’s a negative connotation to it, then you’re very much a free to do it. Whereas there are some companies that are just like, yeah, we can do this. We’re going to go for this. And those companies get of course, thousands of shares.

Gregory: [00:19:10] For example, I w I want to take Wendy’s Wendy’s is internationally famous for the way they roast people online. So I just looked it up. Wendy’s on Twitter has around 4 million Twitter followers. That is insane. And if we come and when, when this is just a regular US-based what do you call it? Fast food joint. And they have more Twitter followers than McDonald’s, which is a global fast-food chain. Right? All of all that following all that expansion and network is just because of how good they are with their memes. It’s ridiculous means are amazing.

Tevin: [00:19:46] And maybe I will jump into that there even have the audacity to roast other competitors. So not only people competitors,

Jean-luc: [00:19:55] so that’s. Yeah, yeah. But sometimes the competitors ask for it.

Tevin: [00:19:59] I think I saw an ad also where I dunno if it’s burger king or something, but they are using the old toys to make some trays or something with that.

They they’re recycling it. And in that ad, there was a small section and they were like, oh yeah. Or also their toys we’re using to recycle to make plastic trays or something. I forgot which company it was, but I know it’s a fast food company who did that. And it’s kind of also like a meme, like a pun.

Diego: [00:20:27] Cool. So just to bring this a meme full circle with going back to Greg and Tevin you can comment on it as well. There’s one last meme I’d like to share. So there’s this kind of hits home like from really recently. I want to get your take on this Greg there’s the psychological aspect from, you know, people in economics and investing.

So there’s this popular meme from Leonardo DiCaprio from the Wolf of wall street. And you, you, they, they kind of lay it over a text you know, spending $20 at the grocery store versus spending $2,000 or a crypto or on an investment or something. So. What’s the, you know, psychological or, you know, the financial motive behind that, that, that people kind of act that way. And I find myself in that same trap sometimes.

Gregory: [00:21:13] So, so the reason why this meme is really good, because it goes into something deep in psychology, which is the gambling mindset, which is that people don’t want to spend money on something that in fact loses money. But when they think that they can gamble their money and make more of it than the gambling part of their brain starts activating.

So you can basically compare this to spending $20 at the grocery store, and $2,000 at the gambling ring or at slot machines. It’s basically the same effect. And that’s why it’s really fun

Tevin: [00:21:45] for me is just the creative side. Like, come on. Those two shots is perfect.

Jean-luc: [00:21:51] So you could be Tevin, you could be the one that selects the screenshots of different movies, and then you just post them all there. And you just say, guys, give me your best captions. So maybe that’s something you can do say like be the provider of like the facials for the memes and that other people make the memes.

Like there there’s always a niche to, to play around in, I guess. Yeah.

Tevin: [00:22:14] Th th that’s a good idea. I think, I think I tried it once. I think there was a movie going on or a TV series. It was called brilliant Bridger tan. And there was also this trend with oh, well, I’ll say I say it, someone in the politics that had did something with money and I kind of put my head and I put his name and he was saying, oh, look at those peasants.

Because in Britain they were a lot, a lot Royals and those kinds of stuff. So it kind of gets done, but not as I hope so. Don’t put your hopes too high also up that I would say too,

Jean-luc: [00:22:47] Hey, I think work that that’s what one of the memes has said as well. Like if you would infest like five years of your life into creating memes, I mean, you’re, you’re bound to catch on, but then don’t stop after four months of trying because you just haven’t reached.

And I think people underestimate that a lot, I mean like pretty simple ex really recent example right now my, my YouTube channel is doing quite well. Like from the last three, four videos, I’m getting a docent fuse per video, just because it happens that at the moment, I’m also wearing a Surinamese vest.

Natio is hot. Everybody wants to talk about, about football and about the world cup qualifiers. So the topics that we’re uploading now is resonating better with the viewers. Then for instance, high quality information that I would usually post. And that’s all part of the. Trying this for four years, like finding a way to, to use content, to, to find out what kind of content do people want to have at what moment?

And yeah, we really like along forum. Of course, we look at Joe Rogan and like, wait, I can do a podcast for two hours. Let’s just do podcasts for two hours. Why can’t we do a podcast for two hours? But once you do that, like if you do a podcast for two hours, somewhere in those two hours, there are two minutes and 30 seconds that are legit fire.

But if you don’t take that out and distribute on other social media platforms, like nobody’s ever going to find out about it, because nobody’s going to look for two and a half hours to find a two and a half minute segment that’s really fired. So I mean, the media companies have figured this out a long time ago. It’s just, we are starting to slowly catch up to that, to that idea as well.

Gregory: [00:24:35] Yeah. Getting into that you see for now for example, Joe Rogan has a YouTube page and then he has a Joe robe and clips, separate YouTube page where you can just subscribe to get all the highlight clips, which are really good. So there are a lot of people doing that right now. So people are really catching on.

Jean-luc: [00:24:51] Yeah. And also the funny thing is like, like you only start the second channel when the first channel is already kind of big and you know, you want a different audience, so it doesn’t make sense. So this is also the conversation that like we are, we’re having with this podcast and with other podcasts.

You have sorry. So do you have a separate channel just for the podcast? Yes or no. Should we have a separate Spotify just for the different Confoes podcast? Or should the Confoes be just on one Spotify link. So it’s these kinds of things. It takes time to, to figure these things out.

Diego: [00:25:25] I’m glad to mention that Jean-luc on you know, should we let, let’s go a bit meta since we got all the hosts here, so let’s go a bit meta and, you know, use convos as our Guinea pig.

So let’s start with Tevin for this one. So from your perspective, right, the kind of, we, we, we kind of went on a hiatus, a little hiatus with Creative Confoes. You started recording again recently and we’re planning it out, expanded the list of guests as well, but from your, at what point do you think, or what do you, how do you see Creative Confoes going forward within the Confoes platform? Should we go, you know, separate Spotify, separate apple podcasts channels what, what’s your take on that? We’re now publicly discussing what we do behind closed doors.

Tevin: [00:26:16] Okay. At the moment we w we are recording. We have a huge guest list looking at the, and the guests that we have lined up and yeah, looking at the guests, we could say for now, we’re good in this Confoes universe using the same handles on Spotify and apple podcasts, but there’s gone.

There will be a time that it will expand in the way of, of users of listeners. And they might want to check off on a few episodes. So if you move that to a separate account, they can check it right away. Like, for instance, like what we did a few times ago, like, Hey, we, we talk with this person on this episode, on this thing, and about that thing.

So at some point they might want to search in that separate account for that specific episode. So it’s, it would be really ha I would say that again, I missed on unaware. It will be really good to check up on that episode for that specific topic. So for a way of like, okay, I’m gonna make it short.

I’m gonna get my answers short for now. We’re good in this industry, in this lineup. But as soon we’re getting more and more listeners for that specific convo, like creative compost, then we can go over to a separate account because at some point we have so many episodes and when we go back, Hey, check this one out.

We’d be talking about this with this person. Then they can check up in debt handle. For that episode, they don’t have to search all the way to all the episodes of all the other convos.

Diego: [00:28:02] Greg, so we’re kind of taking a different approach now after some evaluation for Capital Confoes at the beginning of the year, we decided, you know you’re going to branch out as you suggested that we started with Casual Confoes that that was the, the, you know, the place of it all. But because we, our conversations were, you know, very. Financial related economics related, we decided to, to niche it down and kind of figured out different format to try out. So how do you see Capital Confoes going forward?

Gregory: [00:28:31] I think it’s all about the viewership. If we see that viewers translate over from other episodes to watch our episodes, then that would mean that there’s a lot of demand for the network Confoes.

but if we see that its niche and we get considerably less views or considerably more views than all the other Confoes episodes, then we could consider putting it as a separate channel. But my gut feeling is, is that we are going a bit niche. So it might be a good idea to separate, but I can’t know beforehand. I’m not an expert in this.

Jean-luc: [00:29:08] Okay. I feel like we should, we should definitely ask. I mean, we have a couple of people watching shout out to Ro-Ann who’s also joining and thank you for joining and again, and Tom, who has been in the comments for a while, but also say good evening. Good evening, Tom. Thanks for joining it.

So we have some high quality guests, some people that have been around and have run their own businesses are done international research. So maybe a good question to ask them. And what I would do is say like that all four of us put in a topic like right now, discuss a topic, say like this is something that would regularly be featured on Capital Confoes

this would be something that would be regularly featured on future on creative Confoes and on Social Confoes and let the people in the comments decide whether they would be interested in, in a podcast about that topic.

Gregory: [00:29:58] So I, I would guess one person, because investing opportunities here from a mindset perspective are very limited. People don’t really know how to access financial markets and because they don’t know how to access financial markets, they are really limited in how and what they can invest. And investments are one of the most beautiful things in the whole world, because that’s how you gain generational wealth. And if you don’t know how to access that you, you kind of stay at a base point and you never really go as high as you could.

So one, it would be around just personal finance, how you can change your personal spending habits. And the second would be how to invest specifically from the perspective from the average Surinamese person earning.

Tevin: [00:30:43] Then I shall go, I have at least two as also about the financial thing. But that’s about, if you look at the creative space there is a saying the artist goes hungry. Yeah. It’s we need to learn this. As Chris Do said it. You need to learn also thinking the business side of designing and being creative.

So that’s one. And the second one that I have is also, if you look at the creative audience that we have, we have a lot of creators, a lot of creative persons. We have artists, we have designers, we have content creators. We have so many, we’re really talented, but the only thing we don’t have is the platform we have.

We have the artists side, they have the art platform, but I’m talking mainly more on the side, on, on design-wise just as how we have The Futur. from Chris Do, it’s, it’s more centered around a niche audience. Maybe we should also look into that. We need to have a platform that not per se a platform, but where they can go for advice for guidance and to check on more on those kinds of things in the design world.

Diego: [00:31:56] So, correct me if I’m wrong. Are you saying that we aside from the podcast, we should expand to being that platform, or is it more going in depth on those kinds of topics? Getting the experts on, who on, you know, creatives who have, you know, successfully turned around their arc, their designs and turn it into a sustainable income source that kind of can work for you.

Tevin: [00:32:26] If you put it that way. Yes. Because at, at the moment when we’re having guests, we’re also asking what do you do? How do you do it? How do you take, how do you do your stuff? How do you make money off your work that you’re producing? So that’s, that’s where we’re get, we’re giving them the advice.

But also if you’re okay, I’m, I’m keep taking the example of The Futur. The future is also a co a company, but it also gives a way of how to do things better. We all, we already show you, Hey, we’re doing it this way. This audit does it this way. And then having YouTube lives on the Thursday, I believe I check it along a long time ago.

They have Thursday’s live to talk about a certain topic. For instance, they might go into, let’s say, how do you brand yourself? Are what branding tools you use or they might ask another guest for, Hey, maybe you should give like a tutorial or like a crash course about LinkedIn. How, how do you use LinkedIn as a creative?

So those kinds of things we can put on more out there. And the, the Creative Confoes is an outlet channel where people can get ideas from and where they can take other persons or create this as, not as ideas, but more as an example for, Hey, I can learn from this guy, this, I can do this better. I can learn from this guy or much better, but as a platform, we could use the, even use the website that you already have put more things out there. Yeah.

Jean-luc: [00:33:58] Okay. So, because I have to ask about The Futur. So is it more like the show is it’s a show and there’s a business model builder on it are there’s an actual business. And part of the business model from the business is running the show.

Tevin: [00:34:11] Okay. If I, if I look at the future, there are, they are a business. they do business, but it’s more, the future is you can say the more, the, the more there’s a platform for more expanding the way of how other people are doing their, their, their work.

Because I know Chris Do and his team are sitting in a company blind, but whatever they’re doing and learning, they using the future to tell it out there. And here he has a saying that he puts out there is to teach 1 billion persons, He wants to read 1 billion person to do that. So it’s a goal is using to teach people because he was a teacher and a design school.

And he’s using that to emphasis more on how other creators should get the word out, because he says there are a lot of persons struggling and I need to get the word out for, Hey, we need to do, for instance, how to brand a better, he’s saying he’s giving tips. He’s even you can even buy certain things like documents. You can also get them for free.

Jean-luc: [00:35:13] Yeah, but so for me personally, if you would describe it, like that’s me being an entrepreneur, I see that as a business, I just see it as a business. And the, the, the platform is kind of part of the business model. Like it’s, it’s kind of similar to the, to the conference, whereas the social media conference you’re now it’s not a conference.

For ineffable, of course not. So we’re a business and the conference is a platform for everybody that’s into social media, for sure. So we don’t try to hijack it seen it’s our conference. We’re just the host of the conference and the platform is on, on itself. So it stands alone from, from the actual business.

But on the other hand, the business benefits from it as well. So you can see it like a foundation, whereas a foundation it’s sole purpose is to just build the platform for it, which is a very different approach, which we do. For instance, with the Surifesta foundation, that’s like an NGO it’s, non-profit, it’s completely focused on a certain goal.

Whereas for me, what you’re describing is kind of more like a business that actually has a platform, which it uses to gradually grow and help others, but it’s still part of the business model. You can fully separate it.

Diego: [00:36:22] Maybe I’ll, I’ll add to that because I know the story of The Futur as well. Kind of that’s how me and Tevin aligned in the beginning because I’ve been a avid yeah, I’ve learned a lot from their content and they originally were an agency, a creative agency called Blind.

And basically they worked for the big boys, like, you know, X-Box made beauty advertisements and they’ve built up that reputation that track record, they started on the side with a future academy on YouTube, as, you know, using that additional content for, you know, sharing, using that as traction kind of like what we’re doing, you know, repurposing content for stuff.

And that kind of started gaining traction. And then they slowly pivoted from one business to the other And it took a few years to build up that audience and they kind of used, you know, investment from blind at first to build that up and then pivoted the business completely to be not just an agency anymore, but to be a kind of, you know, a education platform for other creatives to teach them the business side from what they’ve learned through that journey.

And if actually, or what I really liked about that was they had creatives on the, they tried different models, but documentation was a huge part of that process. They documented everything and they really invested in the quality. And I think that sets them apart from like other similar types of platforms are, you know, Coursera other education platforms is they really niche down into production and really focused on the pain points of creatives.

At that point, what I think for us could be, you know that. Differentiating factor. They are very, even though a lot of it is applicable to anyone in the world, but it’s still very US-based US-focused with the infrastructure there. And that is I think, where together with the financial part, which is why overlap those two yeah.

Topics where we could play a role and capitalize on that potentially. But it’s a long game. 

Tevin: [00:38:27] he, he put it really out there, like yeah, that, that’s how the transition went from the blind to the future.

Jean-luc: [00:38:34] So I wanna know from you guys to be honest how pragmatic do you want your Confoes to be.

Gregory: [00:38:40] Could you please explain what you mean by pragmatic?

Jean-luc: [00:38:42] So basically most of the time it’s like talking about something like putting like a seed into the minds of others to realize like, Hey, there’s this much potential, this is something we can do. It’s really hard to get into the world of investing.

But once you start investing and seeing like how the money multiplies and how it works, it becomes of kind of eye-opening. So that’s like, like you could do it from that perspective that you want to like put in a seed you want to motivate, you want to inspire others. Are, do you want to go to a site that you’re actually also teaching people like, okay, so how should I do this?

So for instance, buying crypto in Suriname is. It’s kind of hard. Like if you don’t have a bank account, like outside of Suriname bank cryptocurrency, like for yourself, like directly to a wallet, it’s kind of damn near impossible. So the question becomes like, do you want to go over a little bit pragmatic where you kind of teach, like these are the tip and the tricks and things that you can do are, do you want to focus on the inspiring, the aspiring investors, the aspiring creatives?

Do you want to kind of push them a little bit forward, but ask them to do a little bit of their own research when it comes to actually becoming practical?

Gregory: [00:39:50] I think that wasn’t the original plan, at least for the Capital Confoes. The original plan for the Capital Confoes was to find a way to network with outside financial advisors and people in the industry. Because from Suriname, the industry is so small that you can’t even get your foot in the door. So when you just start small, just set up the contacts see how they think that’s how I want it to grow it at least. But we just talked about if there is demand for the local population, for how to, how to get in this world and how to actually start get the ball rolling, then I could definitely see it going a direction of more pragmatism.

And getting really down to the basics fundamentals, crypto one oh one, like economics one oh one, and we could do that for a few months and then we could slowly advance as our audience gets more advanced as well.

Tevin: [00:40:47] Yeah, my mindset from the beginning, if I will check on creative Confoes would be that not only motivate, but also put the idea out there from, Hey, you can do this.

If you, if you had an idea, you like this, you want to do this for the rest of your life. This is how you’re going to do it but do it better. These were my obstacles. I, I overcame this on this way. You might be better. So it’s more on, on, on, on using this person life or his journey as an motivation, but also as a way of telling hey, you could do it better.

Gregory: [00:41:24] To quickly add to that. The, the, one of the main things people miss with a podcast is that you have an excuse to have a conversation with some of the smartest people in the world. Because if you call Jeff Bezos or someone you look up to and say, you want to have a chat, you want to network, chances are 99%. They’ll say no. All right. But if you say you have a podcast and you would like to expose their ideas to a whole new set of people in Suriname no one knows who they are. They are very likely to say yes, like that’s, that’s what I did. So I view it as an experience for me. And then on the other side, we can use it as an opportunity to maybe not educate, but at least facilitate a different point of view that the typical Surinamese person doesn’t have.

Right.

Diego: [00:42:11] To exemplify that. Greg, I think looking back you, you cold called going back to our episode with Robert Murphy. Can you tell us how that went and you know how that benefited us as a platform and you as an individual?

Gregory: [00:42:26] All right. So the, the soar is there’s this economist. I really, really look up to, I, I read his paper, I bought his book and then I just sent him a rest and a random email, just thanking him for something he wrote.

It was very insightful. And then I asked him a question and then here, he gave a response to my question, and then I hit him with the, you want to come on the podcast. And initially he didn’t reply for a few days. Then I just sent the reminder and that needs that. Oh, cool. Sorry. They didn’t get back to you.

I’m, I’m swamped for the next two months, but we can do it a few months after that. It was just that simple. This guy is a PhD economist. All right. I look up to him a lot. He is pretty famous in his small niche and he just like, yeah, cool. I’ll come on. No big deal. Like it was, it was that easy to send an email, sending a, send a reminder and like that it was scheduled.

Like that’s how easy if you have a niche for horror makeup, like just send those people an email and you can get started because there aren’t many opportunities in Suriname I can imagine for her makeup because I don’t see it on social media, but you can just send anyone in emails.

Jean-luc: [00:43:36] Is there, it’s just there, there’s a niche and there’s actually a niche. And I do want to jump into that because if you’re going to mention that you should also put all the content for that because there is actually a need for it. And Ro-Ann just wants to say, it’s, it’s very encouraging. So now I’m gonna quickly yeah. Through you guys, not under the bus, but I’m going to challenge you guys.

Why don’t the Confoes happen more often?

Tevin: [00:44:04] Should I go first? I will go first. Okay. We went like we were at a moment when, yeah, with the lockdown on everything, no excuses there don’t, I, I’m not going make an excuse, but I was really I was blown by a lot of things and in a way I stopped in a way kind of communicating with with Diego.

But I still was asking a lot of persons around that I knew for, Hey, we want to go on, do you want to jump on? And then when we got back together with Diego and I was I have a list and we can do this. And then we started making steps again. And we also have a schedule for at least dropping at least one a month.

So we’re getting, we’re getting there. We already started recording again. So we’ll putting it out there.

Jean-luc: [00:44:47] Yeah, just quickly. I do understand you can’t do it like every week because then Diego will have to do four podcasts a week. So that might be a little much as well. Just finding out Greg Anil also totally agrees with you regarding inviting or podcasts of international. I mean, I knew it was an international renowned in person as well. We got him on the Social Confoes so that was a great example. But you are about to answer the question as well. So go ahead, Greg.

Gregory: [00:45:13] Basically for me, the podcast is not something I allocate a lot of time to because there are a lot of things that are, have a higher priority in my life.

At least at the moment, that’s 0.1 0.2, the lockdown messed up. Everyone’s schedule at least a little bit and 0.3. We are, pre-recording a lot of contents. So in case there are stumbles in the future, we have a buffer of a certain amount of episodes because no one you need that once you really get started, you need that consistency. All, otherwise the algorithm isn’t going to work in your favor and you need everything to work in your favor as much as possible.

Jean-luc: [00:45:47] I do agree. And I, I do think you have to put it out and you have to continue to go at it. And Diego and I, I mean, it’s like we do this every week. It’s not like we don’t have for downfalls that we don’t look at the numbers and like, Hey, why is this episode better than the other one?

But in the end you get into a certain rhythm and you kind of, it becomes part of your life. At least for me, this show is part of my life now. So I think that’s also something in perspective. I think you guys have pretty good setups. I mean, you’re all you is, is point as well. So I can imagine, of course COVID screwed it up because the podcast set up for, for both Confoes was different.

Like it was actual Confoes physical set up. So you do have to change that. And of course you don’t want to lose the quality due to the internet connection, but in the end, like just this conversation as well, we do have a couple of technical hiccups, but it’s not that much that you’re willing to sacrifice and say like, it’s not worth doing so I do want to empower you guys because I feel the content that you’re going to put out in some cases will be valuable even more valuable than the Social Confoes conversation.

And we do need that. So the longer you wait. The bigger opportunity, basically not only we and you guys, as, as host, miss, but also to people that are listening kind of miss out on as well. So I hope that’s kind of a motivation as well for like, Hey, do this for your country, guys, do this for the people listening.

Don’t think like nobody’s interested, you just have to find a format that attracts the most people without losing kind of the, the idea of the show. So for that, Greg, for example, you were saying like, maybe we should start a little bit lower level, start a little bit more personal finance, give a couple of personal finance tips.

I actually, two years ago there was somebody as Surinamese creator that was just putting out short videos, seeing like, this are some personal, personal finance tips and these just went viral they went absolutely viral aside from how good he was presenting. It is also still that people want that information.

So if you have like, if you would have a Social Confoes, that would just say like how to. save 100 SRDs a month. I mean, you know, how many people would just jump into that because it’s something that they’re really interested in. And in the end you have to decide like, do I want to Trek like this big audience?

That is into something that’s very current at the moment are, do I am saying like, no, I don’t mind if it’s a small group because it’s evergreen content. And in five years’ time, this topic will, will ask the same question and it will be the same answer as well.

Gregory: [00:48:23] Yeah. That’s a really insightful the motivation that there is demand behind what we’re producing, even though it might be niche, like just that, that extra validation does it. It does provide a lot.

Diego: [00:48:35] to comment on that, I do remember, I think I know which creator you’re talking about. The, the short videos he made and I know him personally as well. And he was at that stage. If I look, if I remember correctly, I had this conversation with them and the demand was there, but then they lacks once you start, you got to keep going. And that’s where the traction comes in the consistency. Because eventually you’re hit a wall and that’s why I I’m happy. I got have co-host as well to do have that accountability, because believe me, believe me, if we didn’t set up from the beginning, Jean-luc that, we were going to release every week. It wasn’t going to happen. If we didn’t do that, it wasn’t going to, it

Jean-luc: [00:49:19] just wasn’t going to happen. Yeah. But the thing that you mentioned, I mean, Sheetal mentioned it as well about her first course, and as she kept going, and that’s kind of, we know, we know the creator we were talking about is Reeza which I really, I really like as content and, and at a certain point we, I spoke to him about it as well.

And it’s just to pick it up again because you’re, you’re going to fall, especially if you’re the first like seriously considering something new, especially Greg, if you’re going niche, you’re going to be the first and look at this podcast. This is episode 22. This is episode 22. We’re still like in the early, early, early days of Social. Confoes like, this is really early. It’s like the first 2% of, of the Confoes that’s, that’s what we’re aiming for, but still for us. I mean, compared to other Confoes I started podcasting in 2014, I did two episodes or four episodes, then Giorgio, And the neighbors podcast, I think as well Jamie, that, that also went a couple of episodes.

We also had on Hoe Duur is Passie. There was also a podcast that also that even when the full season, and it just shows you how difficult it is to continue, because people are not going to tell you, like, we love the show from the early beginning. Like there are certain bumps that you have to overcome that you’re like, oh, wait, people are really, really into this.

And like, for instance, as well, on, on the, on the sports podcasts, for instance, they look at the show. I mean, Dion and I have been on it. Edit for more than a year, every week we’ve uploaded. We started with a separate podcast with completely structured that when COVID really hit, we were like, okay, we’re just going to do a live show.

We started on Facebook going live just on, on separate channels and just seeing like, and talking and all of a sudden it was kind of building up, but because you get the reps in, you start realizing like, okay, this is what people want to hear. This is what we want to do. And again, I’m going to come to the point that you’re going to have to decide, like, am I gonna sway, be swayed by the audience to change a little bit of the style, just to reach more people?

Or I’m just gonna say like, I’m going to be this backpack back wrapper. And I’m going to be like loved underground, but like, I’m not, I forgot to catch mainstream. And that’s just the decision you have to make. But even a successful backpack, rapper, the Naz of the world, like for if you’re really into hip hop, I mean, it takes 10, 20 years.

And, and that’s why I’m seeing, like, you have to get those reps in. You have to put out at least 20 shows a year, just because in five years’ time, then you have made it 100 shows and somebody has done a hundred shows in one year. That person is just getting the same amount of experience that you’re getting over five years.

That, and you have to decide for yourself, like, like you said, how high of a priority is it for me?

Gregory: [00:52:21] That is really, those are some really, really good points and things. These are things to think about not to just respond and say, yeah, you’re right. You’re right. So I’ll have to think about them then I’ll get back to your privately

Tevin: [00:52:34] same, same cause it, it, for me creating, creating something, it’s not a problem, but keeping consistently that’s, that’s where the hard work lies. And it’s done. No, it’s not that I do not love hard work is, is it’s like when you’re working on something, you’re getting it. You’re like, oh, wow, nice. It’s perfect. But you, yeah, we shall not go too perfectly, but it’s go more on like when you create something and has it, it’s good. You see the audience react to it.

I’ve seen it many, many times when I created something. I put it out on Instagram and getting reactions, but to keep that up, it’s, it’s another story. And I, I did, I did with the I did with the with, with the Confoes I searched up so many persons and when the time came, when after Diego touched up again with me followed up, I literally went back to them like, Hey we’re, we’re opening up. We started recording again. When can I do this? And before you know it, we had the entire list and we have literally people from people all over the world. And that’s just people from my Instagram, LinkedIn, mainly LinkedIn we’ll yeah, we’ll work on it. We’ll definitely work on it.

Diego: [00:53:47] Yeah, definitely. And I I’ve had this conversation with every one of you individually as well. So we, we, you got homework, but definitely enter. I think it’s a good place to close it off as a product self-reflection and also to, you know for the people listening to get some. Value or something to research on the way a book that comes to mind on having this consistency.

This is creative rut to get over it. A great book is the war of art by Steven Pressfield, I think was the author so I highly recommend that book for anyone listening and the war of art by Steven Pressfield, a willing to get in there as well. And yeah. So you you’ve listened all the way to the end of this episode. Appreciate it. We didn’t really have any, you know, fancy guests all the way up from the other side of the world this time

to, you know Social Confoes as a format that people expect, and this was kind of a curve ball to them. So that, that’s why I mentioned it like that, but. Yeah, it’s a, this is very introspective, and I think it’s very important for us as, you know, a podcasting platform to look at us ourselves every now and then to see at what point we are.

And I think this is good therapy,

Jean-luc: [00:55:11] quick shout out to Tevin  so guys quickly before we leave and I have to go behind the television because we have to watch Canada play against our Natio so quick shout out to you as well. Keep it up guys so quickly. What’s in store. Where can you find out more? If they’re interested in the other convos, where would you send them?

Gregory: [00:55:30] All right. For capital convos, you can just go on the Confoes website regarding future episodes. We’ll be re sorry, we’ll start releasing content and around end of the month, but we might revisit that and start earlier because of what Jean-luc just said. Like, I, I wanted to start recording tomorrow. All right. So we’ll get to at least the end of the month, then we’ll have a future episodes lined up. I believe either monthly or biweekly after that.

Tevin: [00:55:55] It’s the same way as a Creative Confoes And we’ll be on confoes.com. Yes, and we will be posting at least one a month and we already started recording and we will still grow quicker and keep up those episodes.

Diego: [00:56:12] Thanks for listening guys. This was Social Confoes that audio episodes will be released on Saturday and Jean-luc is egging to go because Natio is playing against Canada. So we won’t and everybody probably who is not, who’s watching this also moving on to watch that, so we won’t keep anyone. So have a good evening. Enjoy the yeah, enjoy the game and we will see you next week on Social Confoes. Yeah. All

Gregory: [00:56:41] right. Bye guys.

Jean-luc: [00:56:43] Right.