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I'm really looking forward to this episode today because we have a special guest, and that special guest is Eugenio Castro, who we had the pleasure of working with actually for some time now and has let us realize the value that there is when it comes to operations for being a creator. And one of those key pillars of operations is research. And Eugenio is, you know, definitely world class guy when it comes to research. And it's something that a lot of creators are leveraging today in order to make their podcast a better experience and overall applying it to every line of work that they do. So, Elgenio, I'll let you speak to your business, your background, and what exactly you do, but welcome to uploading.

Awesome. Thank you for having me, Ramon and Blaine. It's great to see you guys again, and I'm excited to talk about research. So I've been doing research for 13 months now. I started in 2023, in January, and it completely changed my life. I worked with some amazing people, with my heroes, I would say people that I really looked up to before I started working for them. And I've learned a lot, and I've realized that there's a massive demand for research, and I'm still in the process of figuring out how to best capture it. But essentially, the value that it gives to a person or a company is the ability to sort of have their content generation machine, the research component up, sort of a outsourced store, delegated to someone that knows what they're doing and they don't have to set up themselves.

And I think any person or company that has a media machine, the moment that that media machine starts generating content about something that is not just about the company or the person, like their stories and their value props, but they want to talk about something external to them. That's when research comes in, because research helps capture what that is factually, precisely. And then we give it to the content creator or the company's media machine, and they do their copywriting on that. So it helps. So that's what research is for in content, in the content world is for people or companies that want to talk about things that are not just about themselves, but in their niche or outside themselves in some aspects. That's when research comes in, and there's, there's a lot of use cases, a lot of, like, work streams, and we can talk about some of them, but broadly, what research is. Yeah.

And you've, you've, you know, can you share, um, for example, an example of the type of research that you do and maybe one or some of the clients that, that you do this for, for sure?

Well, one of the most common work streams or the most common that I've encountered is interview preparation. So helping podcast hosts really get to know everything about their podcast guests and that information, those insights that we pull for them, help them ask better questions and help them be confident and not ask questions that we're asking the guest podcast, because the guests I research are people that are constantly on podcasts and are famous people. So they. They have a lot of information, and you don't want, as a podcast host, like, ask them the same question and not provide any additional value for the audience. So that's. That's one of the most common ones. And I like to think of it almost as Jamie as a service. Jamie, the Joe Rogan's, like, resource guide.

Joe Rogan is like, oh, Jamie, pull it up. And that's kind of like what I do. But before the interview prep, and I started doing the interviews for some clients, I'm not. I haven't done that lately, but I sort of was like a remote Jamie for some people for some time, and. And it's a lot of fun, but, yeah, interview prep is one of the most common ones. Others are like, a podcast host wants to talk about a business. I research that business, make sure they get it right, and then they get to sort of just do the creative stuff of giving their take, sort of remixing the research into, like, a hook and a quick baby. Not really quick baby, but something that's more attractive to people and that just bullet points.

And I would say the biggest person that I work with is Sam bar. I feel comfortable seeing it because he told me to put his name on my Twitter bio, and he told me that I should change. I used to have, like, a artwork as an image, and he said I should put my face on it. And, yeah, so I'm sample arts researcher, and from there, from sending that name on my bio. I mean, I get like weekly DM's people wanting to work with me. So I've been building a team. But yeah, interview preps and then like business research, or also like personal research. Even though they're not going to interview a person, they want to get their facts right in person or an event, like when SDB, the back thing happened, or the OpenAI saga, getting those facts right and leading to the right tweets so that they can, on Google, talk to what would take them 3 hours, it takes them 15 minutes.

Yeah.

And getting those facts right is really important. Like, there's a lot of trust into having you do the research. You know, if they have someone important coming as a guest and you throw out a fact of their life and you're wrong about that, and they're like, no, I didn't do that. That would be pretty embarrassing for the guests. So there's a lot of trust that goes into what you do and fully trusting you on that research. And it's really impressive to see how you keep earning that trust from bigger and bigger creators. So I definitely want to touch into your background.

Though.

You were born and raised in Mexico, you still live there. So how did you start working with such big names and continue to go up the ladder? Um, you know, to, to continue to earn that trust?

Twitter, man, Twitter. Twitter is like the down square of the Internet. People posted problems, people hire other people. People tweet about, uh, things that they need. So just by seeing that and then reaching out to people, that sort of opened every single door. But obviously it's not just about like reaching out, it's about having something to deliver. And in my case, what got me started here, Moshe Ali from the limited Supply podcast posted that he was looking for a podcast researcher, and I was a huge fan of. I still have Moshe Lee Sharma illuminate supply podcast.

Before limited supply, Morsely had a podcast with hustle called Exit Strategy, and he would interview DTC founders that had massive exit. So I listened to everything he'd ever put out there and read everything that he ever put out there. So I had a very strong mental model of moise in my head. So I reached out and applied to that role and I got it. And my advantage was that all these, like two or three years of listening to moist constantly, consistently. So that helped. So Twitter and like Twitter and my own natural curiosities and me liking this stuff is sort of how I managed to open the door. And the other doors have been opening because by not messing up and showing up and answering fast and not getting the facts wrong.

Yeah, eating your own dog food, you got them through researching them properly. So clearly you built a product that you truly believe in, which is also what makes you great at it. Can you walk us through like, what your research process looks like in that example, you had a mental model of moyes. And I assume that for your clients, you want to do such good work that they can almost have a mental model of the guests that they're going to have, or for the company to have a mental model of the industry they're trying to research. So what are these framework systems and what is your typical research process look like?

Sure. Out. I took on to mind the more practical one and then the more theoretical one. The more practical one is you choose a subject and implicit in that decision is like what you want to know about the person. Because if you just do like a generic report, it's really of no value. It's like jack of all trades, master of none, that sort of applies to documents. Like if it's just a generic but comprehensive take on a subject, then it's like I could just read the Wikipedia. So anyways, first you choose a topic, then you gather links, all the relevant links, all the.

You go to YouTube, you search the subject. Let's talk about imagine this subject is a person, but it could also be an entity, like a company or something, like an event. But always imagine it's a person. You put them on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple podcasts, and then you gather all the relevant interviews, all the relevant links from those platforms, put them on a Google Doc, and then you enter that subject's name on a tool like perplexity or Google. And also there you gather the most important links. And as you read the headlines, as you read the sub headlines, you start building your mental model of the person where you're still, you're just doing that, you're just gathering links now and building a mental model. And when you above the links, you start taking notes of what's up. You start like skimming through them and extract very brief notes that you know are going to be important.

And when you have gone through all the links and have taken like the most essential notes, then you sort of sit down and step back and decide the frame and the angle of the piece. Because again, if you just stop at that or do something very generic, it's got to be of no value. So you need to repurpose it to something very, very specific. And in my case, it's usually, it's always the client and their objective, what they want to talk about. So, like, sound, any financial information that's going to go top of the Google Doc, and I'm basically going to ignore everything else because he wants to talk about numbers as an example, or maybe someone like Nick Grimoise, they want to talk about how they launched, like the launch strategy, that product. So, so that's, uh. So you decide to frame now with the information, sort of like an outline. You sort of picture what the end product is going to look like, but you've got to really do that before you read about it, because that outline changes with the information you see.

So now that you have the angle, then you just organize your notes and extract additional notes that are relevant and always keep it very, very short and very brief. I feel like most people expect that the longer the research is, the more value it'll have to the person that's reading it. But it's actually the inverse. You want a very high signal and very low, like serial noise. And counterintuitively, my clients pay me for what I leave out of the document, not so much for what I put in, because again, they didn't go to perplexity, they didn't go to Google, but they have to sift through the noise, so they just want to get the signal. So that's like a very practical one. Collect links, take notes, sit back, decide, like, what the end product will look like, and then reorganize everything according to that end product. And another more theoretical approach or way of thinking that has really helped me is that research is just data retrieval.

It's like Google, basically. The only difference is that Google, they do like the ranking and they show you links and whatever, and they have some information you. But very little or a lot, but not the right type of information. The information I have about the client, the medical model I have about the client, serves as a filtering function, or the information that I retrieve, and it ends in a place where it's way more made to fit for them, bespoke. So the client, the mental model of the client. So it's researched what it is like Google plus a very clearly defined mental model of a client and a very clear model and understanding of their objective. So I think eventually this will be automated in some way.

Yeah, I mean, look, some of it I automated myself with cast magic, where I'll research the previous interviews of those people that we might have as a guest. And I think it's really important what you said of what you leave out. And a good way that I use cast magic is to, like, look, you know, find the interviews of those people and know what to leave out, because if the guest is big, they've likely been on a lot of podcasts, and you don't want to talk about the same stuff that they've talked about on every podcast. And so it's also a fine balance of, like, how you do the research to not talk about the same thing and not end in the same sort of topics and conversations and have your own twist into the conversation. And the only way you can do that, like, you know, Google isn't going to tell you what is the stuff they haven't talked about. And that is where, like, in depth research probably comes into play. So one more thing I want to talk about is, like, how can you know when you're, when you're asking in depth research questions and data extraction and all of this, all of this can be monetized, like, this content and this media can be monetized. And I know Greg Eisenberg has an image where it all starts with research and then it plays into monetization.

So how can you use research not only to create content, but ultimately to monetize the content, which is, you know, the number one goal mostly of anyone who creates content.

Right. So I think that would take me to the other half of. So research needs are, from my perspective, fundamentally divided into two categories, to make content or to make decisions. So I've worked with some people, and I haven't sort of gone super deep because it's, it's hard and I have good momentum on the content side, but people are willing to pay a lot of money or information that they feel will help them make a better decision. So what that looks like is something like what Steph Smith recently launched. She has a product. It's not a course. It's like a collection of resources of sources called Internet pipes.

So she includes things like, like how to certain sources to figure out what's trending on Reddit. And I haven't bought it, I think, for $100. But that's like an example of, I think, how you monetize research is by putting it behind a paywall and saying, this is what you get, and then having that on the other side. So that's like the easier one and then the other one, which is, Ivan experimented with that one at all, really want to, but the other one is giving people the sort of research, like Jamie, but now like a personal research assistant, like under Slack. They have someone that they can ask any question to, and they'll take a date, but they'll give a very precise answer to what that person wants. So that's like. So the first way is, like, research guy at Baywell. Second is a service, personal research assistant as a service, research asset service.

That's way harder, obviously. Like, how do you scale that technology? Training people? And then the third one is also, like, the second one, researcher service, where it's more project based and it's more to be. And that's like consultant replacement. Like, replace a consultant for. And I've done, like, two or three deals on that. And. And, Ramon, you sort of send me a deal that's in that direction, which, like, I have a very specific thing. It's like a project.

Go and research it. So those would be, like, three ways. Paid well, personal research assistant as a service or project, research projects on a per project basis. Those are the three ways that I seen other than for content to make my research.

And then, Ohenio, on the content side of things, I think what's so interesting about research, and I'd love for you to kind of paint the picture for our listeners. It's like, especially if you're running a show where it's. If you're interviewing one thing, I think research is, like, pretty obvious. You want research so you can ask better questions, you can guide the conversation. You have talking points, et cetera. But I think a lot of people who are listening maybe don't understand how big of a role research plays in kind of like, the dialogue format shows. I know you mentioned Nick and Moise. I know you mentioned Sam, Sam and Shawn, and how their show is.

So just from behind the scenes, what does it look like when they're coming together with a show? Like, how much of that is your research informing the content strategy in terms of, like, what they're putting out? And you know them as the creator, obviously, they're able to monetize because they've got this flywheel of content. But if you could just paint the picture of how much of the content that you're hearing on the episodes is. Is directly kind of coming from the research that, you know, you or other people like you are, you know, doing behind the scenes.

Sure, it changes sometimes. Like, for MFM recently, they started sending out prep, like, questions to be guests directly and just asking for ideas. But before, it was like, I want to talk about your background. But now the format is changing a bit, too. We're talking about ideas, so no research is really needed. There I always do research and send it to Sam just so he knows more background, feels more confident thought up before or like when it's not an interview and the rifting the research would reflect on like the topics that are chosen. So what is brought up research helps with that research. Part of research like interview preps.

Another one would be which I also do for some topic recommendations and that's recommending things to talk about. And then once one of those topics is recommended, is chosen by the client, doing in depth research on that and surfacing the most interesting insights. So I think you're a content creator and you have your flywheel and you consistently have good guests, you have an audience. What research, like a good research assistant or a good Jamie ensures that you'll sort of talk about the best things possible and you don't repeat things that have already been asked or talked about. So people find it boring because they already listened or heard about it. And it also ensures that you sort of have a wider view than that which you could achieve by just yourself and your daily life. You have a full time person thinking about topics. And this is what it was like when I was just working with Nick and Moyes.

I was just on DTC Twitter, on DTC newsletters all day, every day. And that is so valuable for a big creator because again, you won't have like dull conversations bringing up things that are already been talked about. And you also find interesting things that are like appropriate or would make a lot of sense to talk about in that moment and would draw people's attention. And then you're when the topic, like the subtopics, like you sort of find the revenue that no one really, really talked about because you need someone to look for it for like 2 hours to service it. Or you find this direct take from a quote tip, a quote attributed to a person on that company's team. So I think it'll be reflected in avoiding redundancy and finding cool things to talk about and then finding the cool things about those cool things to talk about.

The next question I had, or the follow up to that was going to be, how else can you repurpose the research, right? Like, so obviously you're able to use the research in, you know, you may or may not use it in the conversation as a content creator, but what else can you do with that research as a content creator to promote it? Like for example, for us, and I'm curious what you see on, on your side and the clients that you work with. But for us, we have research done for our podcasts like we're having with you so we can have great conversations, but then through that, we're able to actually repurpose that research and use it for other mediums, like our site content, our newsletter, that sort of stuff as well. So is that something else that you see in your sort of workflows, your, your research being able to be upstream and then also being able to be repurposed into other sort of content?

Absolutely. I think for the podcasts, it's used for riffing purposes like common ground. And then from there, people start giving their takes or asking questions to the guest based on that. But then that could just very easily, via copywriter, those concise bullet points be converted into a nice Twitter thread, x thread or a newsletter. So I worked with, I've done research for newsletters at Twitter people as well. And it works because the copywriters don't have to worry about researching anymore. They just have to worry about copywriting. And if you're someone or you want your brand to write about, like stories from the past or stories from an industry, research comes into play.

And I feel like right now a lot of people are asking their copywriters to do that research. And I feel like those copywriters, the ones that I've thought to always say and the experience I've had with them is like having a researcher would caught my working by so much because, yeah, it's just the bullet points with the proper citations, but it takes time. And this is what I've sort of realized, that I can only work with so many different types of clients that have so many different types of objectives and are operating in so many different issues before everything just starts getting harder. And that's sort of where what happened to me and now I'm sort of focusing on interview preps and obviously staying with Sam far because he's amazing and I learn from it every day. But yeah, that I think there needs to be a lot of researchers, not just me, and each researcher have like their own niche, their own format, specialty, and then collaborating with copywriters, I think that would be huge. And copywriters work less and focus more on what they like.

So you mentioned, for example, you work with sample, you like working with him. And you also mentioned that these other, you can only expand to so many different niches and verticals, but even within the same niche and vertical, I'm sure there also has to be the dynamic of you working with the right client, the right creator. Um, what is it about, you know, you worked with besides Sampari, other big names in the creator space. What are the common themes you've seen of what make these people a great to work with and be like so.

Successful at what they do? Yeah, I mean, they're, everyone's reply time is super fast, so they're always on. I guess they like, at least what I learned with Sam and Moisenick is a very low tolerance for inefficiency or for just not doing your best. So I feel like I had the privilege of learning from or like adhering to the standards, being made adherent to such high standards. So I think they have very high standards. Like they'll, if I get something wrong, I guess happens from time to time, they'll call it out. So I would say they're always used to be on and definitely it doesn't mean that you can't take a break. And the other thing is that the other thing that I think there's no compromising is equality. They sort of can, they can tell the noise from the signal and if you give them something that's noise or get a fact wrong, they'll, yeah, they all liked it.

And so, yeah, I think they just have like very, very high standards in everything they do.

What is, what is bad research? Like, what is bad research look like for somebody who might like hire a researcher or upwork and has not seen the quality of your work, how can they detect what is bad research?

I'd say good research has every single claim, verifiable, cited. Those citations, if they take you to a YouTube video, they will take you to the link to second. So the exact second where that claim is being. Because YouTube, you can right click and then link to second that's so valuable for poor people or on a website, you can do link to text. So that's one verifiability and then like valuable citation, not just like something that's unusable, the other one is concise that you can tell that they like sort of gone through everything and just get the most important thing. So it's short, it's not generic. And the third would be, it's also not just like bullet points, it's, it makes sense. It's not a story, but it's, I would say semantically junk is what I call it.

So there are like, if they're talking about a company and they're talking about their financials and all of those bullet points aren't the same section if they're talking about their founding story in simulation. So I see all the time with my team, that was not intuitive. Like, they talk about their founding, then the revenue, and then again, their founding, and that sort of breaks the flow. So I think verifiability, short and concise, and it flows well. So the main thing, I think that's about, third thing is that it's easy to read. If it's hard to read, it's not good research. If you just, if it gives you dopamine and you're like, this is awesome, and you just sort of, like, smoothly go from top of the document to the bottom of the document, that's good research. And so, yeah, the, like, time anchoring.

Every way that makes sense to anchor in time has a date. Because what generates noise is, like, those unanswered questions where you're like, all right, this is a funding story, but when did they launch that? They didn't mention it? Or who's the founder covering all those questions that someone might ask as a reader and answering them, because you ask more, like, a single one, ask a question from a client as a read top down, that generates noise, and then you have a citation that doesn't take them to a length a second, that generates more noise. So a good research document has zero noise, zero friction, and it's a pleasure to read. It's. It's fun to read. Yeah.

At the end of the day, they're hiring you to save time.

Right?

Like, they're hiring you have to do this research themselves. And I'm curious, like, how many rounds of revisions or how much time does one of these documents typically take? Because I can see reading myself reading a research and being like, actually, that's really interesting. Let's go back and expand on that one part.

Right.

Like, what? I guess, like, another way to ask this question is, like, is that one of your KPI's to try and, like, get less and less sort of revisions on each round? You do?

Yeah, absolutely. I would say. I think. I think morsely is the one that I had to thank the most for this, because he gave me such detailed feedback one time, and then that was, like, all the feedback I needed. So I usually don't get that much feedback from clients because I just, I. We and my team would try really hard to get it right and not have them give feedback. But if they do give feedback, it's something like that. Like, I want to know more about this.

It's not like, this is wrong. Don't do it like this. I mean, they're Bailey, so they don't have to do that. Right. And, like, train someone in house. But anyways, like, but every time I get feedback from a client, it's super valuable, I guess a client that I've been named up because I talked about him once, he said it was cool. David Burrell, his interview preps are some of the most comprehensive and hardest ones because his clients are so high profile and there's like a scale of complexity and like, I would be complexity one, like the easiest. I have LinkedIn.

This is my first podcast and a Twitter. But then I know Sam Alton, who David said it publicly, so I feel comfortable about this. He has like so many interviews and so many tweets and so many blog posts. But it was. He gave me some really nice feedback. He like filmed a room and, but again, not really, like more. More so than more explaining, like, the directions that he wants us to take. Like, not don't just write about the writing process, also research about something that's unexpected or obscure about the person.

So that type of feedback is amazing. And, and I feel like all of that feedback of, like, what North Star should look like, it's sort of applicable to all the other clients and our research in general, it's not just like, oh, David Perel is the only person that wants to know obscure things about a person. So every client would appreciate knowing obscure things about a subject so they could talk to them if they so choose. Yeah.

One of the things I find so interesting about just research and the role it plays within content creation, it's almost like you have traditional legacy media where all those people, you've got the talking heads that are like, sitting on the screen, and they all have writers and researchers and teams producing all that content. Then they have mass distribution. And as the content creator economy expands, it's like the best content creators now are bringing in their own in house video production research scripting, like, all of this stuff as well. So that's not to say that you necessarily need to outsource your research to start, but it is to say that if you're going to be a compelling content creator, research is definitely a big component of that. And then as you scale and as you need more efficiency, like, it becomes something that's like a major unblock and in a lot of cases, a completely essential thing for a lot of these big creators. I remember when we talked with you, I was like, kind of mind blown that, like, all these other big creators, like, they had so much research and prep and operations happening behind the scene, right? So I think that's, that's something that's really important for other content creators to understand. It's like, you know, in the beginning, you want to handle as much of it as you can, but as you start to scale and you start to, like, offload time and start to look for efficiencies, like, bringing on the right sort of researcher to your team can be a massive unlock to your. To your content.

Absolutely.

Um, as we wrap up here, Ohenia, we just have, like, a little lightning round to ask. So, um, my first question is going to be, who is your. I know you've worked with a couple, maybe why don't we name someone who, um, you know, is separate from the ones we've talked about, but who's one of your favorite creators today and why?

I think Greg Eisenberg, because, like, I talked with moan about what his podcast the other day, and I think he's, like, so on the edge on the podcast. He just. I think he doesn't really do a lot of research, but he, like, gets, like, so open with the ideas. Like, he's not afraid to really, like, play with, like, almost, like, metaphysical stuff and content, like. Like a bank. Oh, say. And I feel like my mind. My mind sort of, like, expands every time I listen to what Greg Ashoker interview.

Cool.

Next question is, if you had zero followers and you're, like, an emerging creator, like, where are you going to create content? Like, which platform and why?

I mean, I have zero followers, and what I would do is I have hundreds and hundreds of different topics that I could just repurpose in my voice for my twitter. So I would do that. I would just focus on that. But honestly, that's not my workspace. And I started doing research because I needed to make money, but now I'm sort of thinking, like, how can I sort of start making content myself? So that's a question that I'm actively thinking.

And last one is, who is maybe either someone who's a creator that employs, like, solid research or just a general content creator that you think is, like, really up and coming. So it hasn't necessarily, like, blown up yet, but, like, you're following along and you think they're gonna. They're gonna be big.

Danny Miranda, he is also very close to the research world. He does great research on his clients, on his clients, on his guests before he interviews them. So I'd say, danny, I feel like it's gonna be like Rex Friedman in five or ten years.

I love that.

All right, and for anyone who's listening, where can we connect with you? Why don't you shout out your Twitter, your socials, and where we can find you.

Well, hell yeah. I'm on Twitter on X. It's el quenio inu genio, underscore.com. C o M, underscore Mx, like.com dot mx. I'm from Mexico, so I'm on Twitter. Definitely send out a DM or give me a follow and we'll connect. Awesome.

Well, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Thank you.

Like, wise plan, Ramon. Always a pleasure to talk with you guys.