The Transformation Spectrum: Matt Reustle Returns To JUST PRESS RECORD

Every LinkedIn guru promises the same thing: create valuable content and you'll be rich, happy, or at least better off than before. We know it's mostly BS. But we also know there's something there. The tricky part is figuring out what.

So when I wanted to dig deeper into this tension, I knew exactly who to ask.

I called up Matt Reustle to show him a clip from Josh Spector and Dennis Moseley-Williams' prior appearance on Just Press Record. When Josh says, 'If there's no transformation, it's not valuable,” I wanted to see how Matt would build on it.

Matt was quick to point out how entertainment has its own value, and it’s a different form of transformation, which isn’t going to show up in perfectly linear ways.

He said, “I think there’s different degrees of this… I think there’s a lot of value in entertainment. The level of depth that you can create a relationship off the back of it might not be quite there, but I don’t think we should completely overlook entertainment.”

Now, funny enough, this is a huge underlying detail in the broader Josh and Dennis episode, where we start connecting comedians, and musicians, and art to experience - all around the coaching and speaking transformations Josh and Dennis are known for.

But Matt, with his media empire building brain (that he works at, over at Colossus), is all about opening up the gates for multiple forms of transformations.

In a friendship, for example, you don’t know what exactly is going to be great, or just so-so, or incredible when you get together for a hang. Sometimes you might catch up. Other times you might laugh until your stomach hurts. In all cases, the hang is just impossible to quantify where it goes.

In a parasocial relationship, i.e. the type of bond you form when you tune into the host of a podcast or talk show or even the announcers who call games for your local sports teams, you also don’t know exactly what is going to be great, or just so-so, or incredible when you tune in.

The potential for positive surprise becomes a key ingredient to what makes the relationship valuable.

Just like in friendship, you don't engineer every conversation for maximum ROI. The unpredictability itself becomes the value. The same is true for content.

Matt took it back to the litmus test he used in his prior investment research days. The question he was told to always ask when crunching data and diving deep into a story was, “What did I learn and what should I do about it?“

In a parasocial context, where he focuses his attention and skills now, this opens up multiple paths. In pure entertainment, the transformation might be emotional, and change how you feel from the start to the finish. In an educational setting, the transformation is intellectual and in whatever you learned. In an action-oriented setting, the transformation is behavioral, and spelled out in terms of what to do.

And, because the potential is so broad, you can even wrap all three together.

If you estimate your audience to be present in only one category, you can guide them to one action.

But, that estimation is probably an underestimation of what’s present in other categories too.

Dennis would say this is exactly what The Experience Economy is about - crafting transformations that can't be prescribed, only discovered. Josh and Matt get this too, but Dennis' work specifically focuses on crafting immersive, explorative transformations. They're all solving different parts of the same puzzle. All three of them understand the magic of making great art - knowing when to control for transformation and when to let it emerge naturally is what separates hobbyists from geniuses.

What I learned most from Matt Reustle, on his return to Just Press Record: Maybe the most valuable content trusts people to find their own transformation within the entertainment, rather than force-feeding them takeaways. Think about it. I know at least for me, my favorite podcasts never end with “3 action items.” Instead, they end with me emotionally, intellectually, or behaviorally thinking differently.

Listen to our whole talk right here (on Cultish Creative YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts):