The highest ideal is to offer someone intrinsic value. Or maybe that’s the highest value to the creator of the product, at least from my perspective. The recipient both needs materials of intrinsic value and of learning. But to offer someone direct value is rarer, more noble, and more difficult especially when the quality is very high. Materials of intrinsic value include music, stories, literature, songs, jokes, comedy, television shows, plays, philosophical works, artistic photographs, entertaining foods, movies and so on. Materials of learning include how-to’s, courses, textbooks, college educations, most podcasts which are instructing something, generally anything that offers the recipient the hope of learning something so he or she can improve their life in some way. Often in the world of world of YouTube that learning, usually doled out in a specific chosen “niche” includes how to make money and how to get views and subscribers, how to manifest something, or how to do fix make sell build a zillion different things. This feels particularly somewhat like a pyramid. Is teaching a pyramid scheme? Hey kid I’ll teach you how to do math so you can pay me and then teach the next younger kid how to do math and he can pay you. But what are else are we going to do with the math? Teach more people and charge them.

I feel that as a creator it’s of utmost importance to give the recipient something of intrinsic value. Beethoven didn’t write his symphonies and say, “Hey listen to this symphony and it will show you how to make ten thousand a month in passive income.” He said, “Hey listen to this symphony and your entire soul will fly out through your eyeballs and launch into the solar system into orbit with the rings of Saturn.” (Yes, that’s an actual Beethoven quote but I am a liar.) When researchers and scientists discover new formulas and prove hypotheses, others can learn from this but is it of mainly intrinsic value? I think so. So pure knowledge seems to straddle the ledge of intrinsic value and learning. Knowing reality is intrinsically valuable, it’s an expansion of the mind.

Tim Ferriss is basically a fancy teacher. Most everyone with a podcast is offering how-to or learning. Unless the podcast is fictional or is some story based format where you get some entertainment or joy directly from it regardless of wanting to better yourself for something specific, then it is of teaching or how-to value.

How-to’s are a copout. For me. I want to be able to offer the public intrinsic value. I don’t want to have to say, oh hey if you watch my video I’ll show you how to get a million subscribers, clean your cat, make a pumpkin pie, manifest your dreams, fly a ceramic kite, fart in a crowded room without being discovered and so on.

What’s cooler, being a guy who interviews Nikki Sixx and offering the insights of a songwriting genius or being Nikki Sixx and writing and recording dozens of songs that blew away the youth of the 80s?

It’s all about intrinsic value. Nikki Sixx didn’t put out a YouTube channel about how to write killer rock songs. He wrote killer rock songs which blew away a generation of music hounds.

Let me think more about this. Of course teaching is important. But it’s of the highest importance to create at the highest level, to do something that no instructor, podcaster, marketer, or glorified teacher can do. I guess many publish and teach. They research for intrinsic value output and teach for income. But the highest level of achievement is to produce intrinsic value and be paid massive sums of money for that production alone, and to not have to offer how-to’s. This is my asinine opinion.