1% Better · S4E6 · In post-production
Justin Jacobs1% better.
Behind The Scenes (working title)
Justin, this is the episode where people get twenty minutes alone with you, and you're easy company, warm and funny enough that they'd follow you into any room. What it's missing is more of you. The tour spends its time on cameras and cables, and the story only you can tell, the years you built an agency from a Starbucks table, gets about twenty seconds at the fourteen-minute mark.
The one thing
Make the tour your story. Lead with the handheld and the Starbucks years, and let every room answer "how does this help an agent?" The building is impressive, but you're the reason someone watches to the end.
Section 2 of 4 · Keep doing this
What you did great
Start here. These are the moments that worked, and why, so you can do them on purpose again.
You started with the honest version of how Closed began, not a polished one, and every agent who's starting from nothing gets to hear that you started there too.
“we didn't know what we were doing very quickly. So I started off with a handheld and an idea”
Your humor is quick and never forced. Lines like this are the ones people clip and send to a friend, and that's how someone new finds the show.
“We also like to say don't tap on the glass because it scares the fish.”
You let us see the years before the office. For a moment, the agent watching from their own coffee-shop table sees themselves in you, and it's the most human minute in the episode.
“Justin had to have an office cause I was tired of working at a Starbucks.”
Section 3 of 4 · The 1%
1% better next time
Small moves, not a makeover. Each one shows the moment, what the person watching missed, and a line you can use on the next recording.
- 1
Open on the story, not the setup
The moment. You opened with a fun promise to show us how the donuts are made. Then the first eight minutes walked us through the cameras and the cables.
“So we're going to go behind the scenes today to show you how the donuts are made.”
What the viewer missed. We wanted to meet the guy who built all this before we met the cameras. Your solo episodes lose the most people in the first thirty seconds, and cables don't give anyone a reason to stay.
Open with the stakes, so the viewer has a story to follow before you open a single door: "For six or seven years I ran an agency without a desk. Today I'll show you what we built, and how you can start with a lot less."
- 2
Let every room answer "what's in it for an agent?"
The moment. You were honest that you're not the gear guy, and a few seconds later you said the most useful line in the whole studio section: "I had this camera just kind of laying around" (2:29). Then the tour moved on to the next piece of kit.
“So I don't know all the technicals behind the equipment, so what I can tell you is the the basics.”
What the viewer missed. I wanted that line to stop the tour. The people watching sell insurance, and hearing that you started with a camera off your own shelf is the thing they'd take home. It went by before it could land.
Close each stop with one line the viewer can take home, because it turns a tour of your building into advice for theirs: "You don't need this rack to start. I started with a camera I already owned."
- 3
Stay in the Starbucks years
The moment. You told us that for the first six or seven years of building an agency you had no desk and no office of your own. Two lines later, we were looking at your monitor.
“I did not have my own desk I did not have my own office.”
What the viewer missed. I wanted to stay in that minute with you. It's where an agent working out of their car leans in and thinks "that's me," and we walked out of it after a few seconds.
Stop, look at the camera and tell us one day from those years: the table you worked at, and what it felt like the first time you closed your own office door. I'd happily watch five minutes of just that.
- 4
Hand Tim the mic, and drop "if I remember correctly"
The moment. You checked yourself on the camera, the teleprompter and the year the building went up. When we got to Tim's desk, you explained it for him: "I believe he's doing some live switching from camera to camera" (6:52).
“It's a Sony ZV-1 if I remember correctly”
What the viewer missed. You know this place better than anyone, and those little hedges undersell it. I wanted to hear you say it like it's yours, because it is, and to hear Tim tell us about his own desk while he was standing right there.
Bring a three-line fact card and give Tim sixty seconds at his own desk. You get to say it like you own it, and you don't have to carry the whole show by yourself.
- 5
Ask one question, and ask it early
The moment. Your close was generous. You invited people to come by for a tour and asked for their ideas. But it came at 21:35, after the whole tour, and it asked for anything at all.
“if you have any ideas for our podcast or if you have some thoughts about the direction or vision, we would love feedback.”
What the viewer missed. I wanted to read those comments. By the last minute most viewers have gone, and the ones still watching got a question too open to answer quickly, so most of them won't write back.
Ask one question near the top and again at the end, because a specific question is one people can answer in ten seconds: "If you're an agent starting your own content, what's stopping you? Tell me in the comments and I'll answer it in a future episode."
Section 4 of 4 · Bring it to the next one
The one thing
If you remember one note from this episode, make it this one.
Make the tour your story. Lead with the handheld and the Starbucks years, and let every room answer "how does this help an agent?" The building is impressive, but you're the reason someone watches to the end.
- For the edit. It's still in post, so the edit can do a lot of this for you: open on the 14:12 no-desk beat and the storage-room door at 18:23, where your "you'll see why" makes people wait to see inside, cut the gear stretch hard, and move the feedback ask up to right after the cold open.
- For prep. Bring a three-line fact card (the camera, the teleprompter, the year the building went up) and two questions for Tim to answer on camera, so you can stay in the story instead of reaching for details.