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My First MillionHow To Get Started With Building An Audience in 2022 (#373)
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55 min read · 10,968 words- 0:00 – 0:09
Intro
- SPSpeaker
[upbeat music] Well, let's go ahead and kick things off.
- 0:09 – 8:10
How do you think about building an audience
- SPSpeaker
Uh, how do you think about audience building? And, and what does your audience mean to you, Shaan?
- SPShaan Puri
Oh, wow, emotional question. Uh, how do I think about it? I think about it like, um... I don't really think about it. It's the byproduct of what I do. So the way, the way I, uh, approached it was after I sold my company, I said, "All right, I can do whatever I want now, so, like [laughs] hey, time to face the tough question. What do I actually wanna do? What do I actually care about in my life?" Uh, well, and, and I... Those were big questions that kinda scared me, so then I, I, I trimmed it down. I said, "All right, well, how do I just wanna spend my days? What would be a normal... What would be a great day that I could do every day?" And, um, the thing that came to me was, like, the thing I enjoy doing the most is just getting curious. I'm, I'm generally very curious about things, and if I have to, like, go do work and then put those on the side and hopefully get to 'em when I get to 'em, that seemed like, uh, that was not great, but if I could just make my work that I could just be curious about these things, whether it's crypto or it's audience building or some new science tech thing or it's, you know, where the hell, you know, do peanuts grow on trees or from the ground? I, I don't know. Let me go fi- find out, right? Like, whatever it is, I was like, "I wanna be professionally curious." All right, well, that's cool. The curious part's easy. How do you be professionally curious? Well, one way was let me turn that curiosity into content. So I'll take these questions that I'm, I wanna, you know, go look into, and then I just gotta package up my learnings at the end and share them with others. All right, cool. That'll make it more fun for me, and it'll turn into something that actually generates a bunch of income, which will let me just do this all the time. That was my thought process. So c- audience building and content was just a, kind of a necessary means to an end or a byproduct of the main thing I wanted to do, which was just be professionally curious. Be able to wake up and just dive into the thing that's most on my mind that day and have no other restrictions beyond that.
- SPSpeaker
Got that. Uh, Saagar, what about you?
- SESaagar Enjeti
Yeah, I mean, I think that building an audience is a lot like making money, um, especially in the year 2022, which is that you have to provide something that doesn't exist, and then people will commoditize it with their attention. Or, you know, if you're a business and you're building, you're trying to get revenue. So with the way that I built my show and the way that I consistently think about building and getting more audience is just to continue to fill niches. Started out filling one particular niche. Built niches and niches and niches. Put an underlying philosophy that guards that, and then continued to try and build more on top of that, which just results in overall top line figure that continues to go up. You know, I actually don't think it's really that complicated as a concept. It's just incredibly complicated to execute, uh, which is why [laughs] not a lot of people do it, and there's really, you know, not that many people at the very, very, very top of the game and why, you know, in the whole influencer market, all returns are exponential. Both, you know, the top .01% of podcasts get just so many more downloads than even the top 1% of podcasts. Like, when I figured, when I found out what was even in the top 1%, I was like, "Wait, like, 20,000 downloads?" I mean, how can... I was like, "I don't even know how you make a living, um, for something like that." And then, you know, you compare that to what the top 10 are. So I think that execution is harder than every- anything else in this game. Probably exactly the same as business. I mean, it sounds easy. Fill a niche. Uh, but actually doing that, doing it on a consistent basis over years and years through cons, uh, changing conditions, you know, changing market conditions for a business, changing information environment, um, for somebody who's in the content game, that's where the skill, uh, all comes into play.
- SPShaan Puri
Like, simple, simple, not easy, right?
- SESaagar Enjeti
Yes. Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
It could be simple, what the s- what the answer is, but not necessarily easy. Like, um, we did this, uh, like, getaway, like, this getaway where we would play basketball with a bunch of interesting people, and one of the people that came was MrBeast, the number one YouTuber in the world. So he, you know, he knows a thing or two about audience building, and it's like, if you talk to him and you're like, "Hey, you know, awesome, what's the, what's the, what's the secret, what's the trick for getting huge on YouTube?" And he's like, he's like, "I just wanna make the best YouTube videos possible. Make great videos." And we're like, "Okay, yeah, but, like, you know, how'd you do it? How'd you become number one?"
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
He's like, "I just try to make great videos. Every day I just wake up and I'm like, 'All right, what's a great video? How do I make that?'" And it's like, simple, not easy in the sense that, like, he, he didn't overcomplicate. Okay, well, what makes a great video? Something that gets your attention, something that holds your attention, something that, you know, makes you feel something at the end. You know, laughter or a feel-good moment or outrage. Whatever it is, you could choose. Uh, and you could, you could break it down from there and add a little more detail, but fundamentally you're not gonna get some answer that's like, "Damn, um, I never thought of that." [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- SPShaan Puri
"Wow, they had this insight that's just not, it wasn't available to me, and, and now that I have this insight, now I c- I too can go succeed." It's like, the best, the people who are the best do the simple thing just better than everybody else.
- SPSpeaker
Totally agree.
- SESaagar Enjeti
Is, is make great content, is that really kind of the, the bottom line here if you were to say, like, what separates that top 1% that Saagar was mentioning from the other 99%? Is it as simple as just make great content, or-
- SPShaan Puri
Yes.
- SESaagar Enjeti
Um, okay. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Well, you, you went through YC, right? Other, you, you guys were, were you in YC?
- SESaagar Enjeti
We did, yes.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. What, what's the YC motto, right? YC, the greatest startup accelerator in the world, bar none, has the cr- greatest track record, created almost half a trillion dollars of value of the companies that went through it. What's the secret? Make something people want-
- SPSpeaker
People want
- SPShaan Puri
... is their motto. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Just try to... Hey, startup, don't get distracted by fundraising and press and all these other things that you could try to, growth hacks. Are you making something people want? Of course. Really? Uh, you know, tell me, uh, how do you know? W- w- what gives you that feeling? And then they sort of like, "Uh, I don't know, I just sort of assumed I was. It sounds so simple that I just sort of assumed I was already doing that." Same thing with content or audience building. Are you making content that people want? Right? That's the, that's the thing. It's not just make great content, it's make content that people want. That's what great content is. When he talked about picking niches and then figuring out- How to serve that niche, that's what he's doing. He's making content that people want in that category, and then doing it better than, than others, and doing it consistently so they build a habit, et cetera, et cetera.
- SESaagar Enjeti
I completely agree. Yeah, I mean, uh, I get approached by a lot of people, "Hey, will this light do it for me? Will this camera?" I'm like, "Camera's not your problem, bro."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SESaagar Enjeti
I'm like, "Your content's the problem."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SESaagar Enjeti
I'm like, "Make content good." Everything follows after that. You know, I recently spent $60,000 on cameras, and that's after three years of doing this. But needing 4K cameras was an added benefit for my existing audience, not what I needed for a requisite to start. Like, sure, there's the baseline level of production. I think a pop filter, a, like a Yeti USB mic, and a basic webcam. And that is not a high startup cost. And everybody's like, "What about my thumbnails? What about my..." Listen, thumbnails matter, headlines matter, all that other stuff matters, et cetera. But what Shaan is talking about, which is that all MrBeast does is he knows exactly how to rank a retention thumbnail, all of that, stack it all on top of each other, iterate it a million times, and then come up with the quote, unquote "secret sauce." He has the exact same YouTube dashboard that I have, that all of us have [laughs] that, that you have access to. He just figured out how to read it better than anybody else. So I always say, "Is the content good?" That's my number one concern. Is it good? Is it compelling? And that, as he said, it's simple. It's not easy. You know, at a certain point, it, it is strange. Like, it is really one of those, like, you know it when you see it. I can listen to something and be like, "That's compelling." And I can listen to something and just be like, "Ah, I don't know what it is, man, but this needs work."
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SESaagar Enjeti
Um, and, and it's tough to exactly explain what that is.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, we, we listened to a, a session on product-led growth yesterday, and it was almost like everybody was kinda like, "Well, what's, what's the hack? What's the tactic? What's the secret?" And our speakers were very simply like, "Well, you need an A+ product in order to have any sort of product-led growth." And I feel like the, the principle stands, stands true for any form of, uh, of audience growth as well. Um, now both of you have pretty distinct, uh, personal brands as well as, uh, like a, a business brand that you're, you're both independently growing, either on accident or on purpose.
- 8:10 – 13:53
Company brand building vs. personal brand building
- SPSpeaker
Um, how do you think about, uh, the sort of brand-building as a, as a company, as an entity, versus personal brand-building? Do you have any heuristics or, or ways of thinking about it, Saagar? Um, you know, the way that you kinda use your own Twitter versus, like, ri- um, Breaking Points?
- SESaagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's interesting. Um, so from a business pers- obviously it has to be y- whenever... And Shaan, you, you too. You're like, you're in a partnership, right? So this is inherently not something that you have total and 100% freedom on. So whenever I'm doing something under the BP umbrella or, you know, business or hiring, it's not necessarily just the reflection of me, it's a reflection of the ethos and the principles that we decided that we were gonna grow on, mutually agree on together. Re- you know, within that framework, everything is being branded, is being used. That's a reflection of us, of our philosophy, et cetera. On my personal brand, uh, to be honest, I just have a lot less capacity for, uh, caring. [laughs] I, like, if I'm interested in it, I'm just gonna explore it. I've, I frankly am at a level where I can do that if I want to, and if people are following me, I'm just like, I literally don't care. Um, you know, either Instagram-
- SPSpeaker
You know, you know how hard it was, uh, Saagar-
- SESaagar Enjeti
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... to find, find tweets that I'm able to show, uh-
- SESaagar Enjeti
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... people who are listening?
- SESaagar Enjeti
I was like, I was a little scared whenever you-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SESaagar Enjeti
... you were like, I was like, "Oh man." I was like, "We're gonna piss off half the audience." But I mean, that's fine. You know, I'm used to it-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- SESaagar Enjeti
... uh, in this line of work. And that's kind of what I'm, what I'm getting at, which is that there, the business has an orientation, which is A, make money, B, perpetuate itself. For me personally, I mean, obviously my personal brand, I probably thought about this very, very differently whenever I was younger and I was, like, on the up and up. But at this level, I actually just do whatever I want to do. And so that is the, like, the only dichotomy between the two.
- SPShaan Puri
Uh-
- SESaagar Enjeti
What do you think about it, Shaan?
- SPShaan Puri
So what kinda answer would be interesting to you here? Uh, what, what's like the-
- SESaagar Enjeti
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Like, uh, 'cause I try to figure out what's the question behind the question. So, so the question-
- SESaagar Enjeti
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... the surface question-
- SESaagar Enjeti
The question behind it-
- SPShaan Puri
... is, like, what's the difference between your, your pod brand and your personal brand? But what is the question behind that?
- SPSpeaker
The question behind that... Here, let, let me start with the problem. So the problem is that audience-building as a brand is hard. It's hard to, uh, create affinity when it's, it's not, uh, coming from a, a human face. Um, and, uh, people often find, at least in, in the folks that I've, I've chatted with, um, e- even person- I mean, honestly, Demand Curve's Twitter has, has been difficult to grow, um, versus like, you know, personal, like individuals as, like Julian, for example, has a much easier time with his, with his growth than, than we do as a co- company account. So, uh, yeah, the question behind the question, that's a great question, uh, Shaan-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
... um, is, uh, you know, how, how ought to, uh, uh, uh, like how, how should startups and companies be thinking about, uh, audience, audience-building when they have, um, uh, yeah, e- but they have got like the personal brand and they're-
- SPShaan Puri
Now I understand. Now I understand.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
Uh, the question really is, like, what am I doing wrong here with Demand Curve? Eh, but, but more generally speaking-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
... like, I don't know the, it's, I, I haven't cracked this nut. What's the difference? I've, I've noticed personal brands are easier to grow, but I also, I do, I want my company thing to grow, blah, blah, blah. I think that, here, uh, here's my like very simple/controversial take on this, which is I think if you're a company you should be using individual faces to grow. You'll go, you'll grow faster that way. If you're an individual trying to grow like a media property you should put it under a brand umbrella mostly because you can't ever sell you. Um, so like if you want this to be an asset and not a job you need it to grow its own brand, like you need Breaking Points. Or like in our case, like I had a personal newsletter and a personal Twitter that grew really fast. I grew my personal Twitter from like 10 to 20,000 followers to, it's at 300,000 in like a year basically. A year and a half. Uh, in a year we got to 200,000 and then it just trickled up. Um, but like great, what am I gonna do with that? I'm, uh, uh, I don't really wanna be some like influencer. And, um- And great, like, you know, I can't hand this off to anybody. It's my voice, it's my name, it's my face so it's a job now. I need to maintain this thing. And it's cool 'cause, like, I just don't g- like, I'm like Saagar, like, I just don't care so I'll go six weeks without tweeting 'cause I'm not trying to maintain some schedule. It's not a business of mine. But when I created The Milk Road, it's intentionally not called Shaan's Crypto Newsletter, which actually would've been easier at the start to get subscribers for because people already had bought into the Shaan franchise. So going for, oh, Shaan's gonna talk about crypto and do crypto analysis and crypto opinions? Great, I wanna know about that. But instead, I called it The Milk Road 'cause I thought one day I'd like to not be the guy writing this thing. One day I'd like to not be the person maybe even owning this thing. I'd like to sell this someday. Um, I want this to be an independent asset and so for that, again, me as a independent media, like, content creator, I created a brand umbrella for those reasons. But let's say it was my startup. I would be saying, "Hey, I'm Shaan, the growth guy from Bibbo, uh, and I wanna talk about growth over here." Not the Bibbo account doing it because it's gonna get less play, uh, because people would rather follow people than, uh, than companies. And so you gotta use... You make that trade-off. When you're already a company, then use the fact that people would rather follow people. If you're an individual, you take a little hit by putting it under a brand umbrella, but you get this big benefit of it's not tied to your name and face forever that way, so it's a strategic bet. That's my, it's my opinion on this.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Well, that was super helpful. Uh, and it kind of points to the problem that we originally had at Demand Curve where so much of our brand equity was tied up in Julian's brand equity. Uh, and so, you know, being able to build that up under a, a new brand has certainly been something that, uh, uh, y- you know, we've done over the last, last couple years. That's super helpful. Um, okay. We, uh...
- 13:53 – 41:23
Reax to tweets
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, let's go ahead and, and, uh, start the Repeat That Tweet segment, uh, here. Let's, uh... We're, we're gonna experiment with screen sharing for the first time. Um, see how this goes. And, uh, yeah, both of y'all, the, the idea here is for both of y'all to just re- react to the tweet. What were you thinking when you tweeted it out? Why do you think it took off? Why did it work? Uh, and yeah, any other context that you think we would find interesting.
- SPShaan Puri
I, I wonder h- what percentage of these I'm just gonna be like, "I have no idea what I was thinking."
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Um, I don't believe that. That's stupid. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
These, these are bangers only, so-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
... so hopefully, uh, hopefully you remember. Um, Shaan, uh, you, you did this hot take about everybody being wrong about the metaverse. Obviously it was a very hot topic at the time when you did this. Um, what can you, what can you tell us about this?
- SPShaan Puri
Um, well, t- I'll tell you kind of like wh- okay. I'll, I'll tell you my point in a second, but, like, I guess that's a little less interesting even than just the, uh, w- what made this work. So this thing reached, I think, uh, I don't know the exact stats, but I think it's, like, sort of, like, somewhere between 10 and 20 million people in the US, but then it also was g- it got shared like crazy on Instagram, and it got shared in China, like, some big Chinese, like, social media influencers were posting it, I guess. So it got, like, millions of views there. Logan Paul was talking about it on his podcast. Mark Zuckerberg referenced this in a Lex Fridman interview. So it, like, went really far, and I was like, "Why did this go so far?" And I think it was 'cause it basically had three things. Number one, it was timely. So this was right when Facebook had rebranded to Meta, people were talking about the metaverse, and I think everybody had this, like, sixth sense, this little sort of, like, you know, sneaking suspicion that everybody's bullshitting about this. Um, but, like, nobody knew q- uh, it was all smart people and big names that were, were saying how the metaverse is the future, but nobody was saying what the hell the metaverse is or why it's the future. And so, like, I think everybody kinda smelled bullshit but didn't know how to call it. Um, so it was timely. I was calling bullshit, which generally is, like, something people are gonna wanna click into and read. And the last thing was I think I backed it up. I think I had a good point that could get you to agree with my... My, my conspiracy theory, if, so to speak, was not so far-fetched. And, and basically what all I was saying was, like, when people hear the word metaverse, they think about this, like, virtual reality shit, like, oh, I'm living in some thing. I'm an avatar now. And I said, "Actually, I think it's more like this concept called the singularity," which is in, in artificial intelligence, which is, like, this moment in time, this tipping point where computers, you know, have reached this super intelligence and they're so vastly smarter than, than, than humans that they, they are so smart, they just program themselves to become... It's like runaway intelligence. They program themselves to become smarter. And so, um, I thought, oh, the metaverse is kinda like that. It's basically this tipping point where, um, well, a lot of my friends are online now. I, I think I have this experience. Maybe you guys do. Look at this, like, experience we're having now. A lot of my work is now digital. Um, my social identity, like my profiles, my followers are all digital. Um, you know, my... If I buy NFTs, cool, some of my art is now digital. More and more things, more impor- more things that are important to you are now, like, they live on the internet. And so at some point, all of your digital stuff matters to you more and you spend more time and energy and focus there than you do in your physical. That doesn't mean you'll never go eat or walk or exercise or anything like that. That's not what it means, but it just means, like, sort of there's this tipping point where before, rewind 20 years, it, it, it didn't matter. Like, you know, I had a computer room in my house, uh, [laughs] that was like... You know, there was a computer room and everything else was non-computer. And now, like, you know, the, the computer's attached to my body, basically, right? So it's like you've seen this transition already. It's just gonna continue. And so, hey, don't think it's this crazy virtual world. It's just this tipping point where at some point, we've been creeping towards it, creeping towards it. At some point, we're just gonna value our digital stuff more than we do our physical in the sense that we're gonna spend more time and energy and effort and money on, on the internet than we do offline. Um, that was the idea. So that's, that's my explain this tweet.
- SPSpeaker
Super helpful, man. Um, it, it was surprising to me, uh, during your podcast with Hasan Minhaj that he was, he, he was genuinely triggered by this tweet.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Uh, it, it affected him at, like, an identity level. Uh-
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, he called me.
- SPSpeaker
And, and-
- SPShaan Puri
He was like, "Hey, can I call you?" I don't know the guy, by the way. I didn't know him before this.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
He's like, uh... He, he had followed me from one other tweet that went viral about Clubhouse, and he... Then he ca- he called me, and he was like- Bro, I, like I do stand-up comedy if, in real w- crowds with real people. That energy, that is my home, that is my craft, that is my favorite feeling in the world. And like, God, I don't want this like, you know-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
... metaverse bullshit. Like, you know, and yeah, talk me through it. And I was like, "I don't know what to tell you, man." Like, I, I think it's going in [laughs] that direction. I don't think... You know, I remember, I remember people being like, "I, I love waking up, getting the newspaper, bringing it in from my front lawn, and the feel of the newspaper," right? And like, uh, it, it, it's true, you p- you probably did like that thing. But guess what you liked more was like instant real-time news constantly flooding into [laughs] your brain. Turns out that a- that was more addictive. Um, but like, you know, being able to get news from all these different sources rather than just your local provider, that turned out to be really important. Um, being able to access it on the go on your phone, turned out that was, um, really important. And so yeah, you like the feel of it, but there's all these other benefits that like ended up crushing that. Um, so that was a, that's what happened after, after this tweet.
- SPSpeaker
You, you contextualized it well. You talked about kind of the benefit of accountability. Uh, it's a b- double-edged sword here where, you know, uh, get- the upside and the risk, uh, i- involved in that. Um, super interesting. Saagar, uh, yes, like I, like I said, challenging to find tweets I can share with everybody here. Uh, but I would love to hear-
- SESaagar Enjeti
None of those are my most viral
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SESaagar Enjeti
No.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs] Uh, yeah, actually I think your most viral was two days ago. Um, I, I just saw that. Yeah, very cool.
- SESaagar Enjeti
Just up there.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, yeah, talk to us about why, why did this, this tweet work? Um, l- what, what is this speaking to and like why do you think this resonated?
- SESaagar Enjeti
Yeah. Uh, I'm actually... It's interesting. I kind of pivoted to becoming the gas guy politically. Uh, this really is really just purely a function of what I talked about earlier, which is that if you were to ask me why I think my show is successful is I think because I cover things in a way that most people feel are not being covered by existing sources of information. That's a very basic like thesis statement. That's why I think it does well. I've always noticed that coverage of gas is skewed in a particularly partisan way. So one of the things that I like to do is just highlight basic- decontextualize them. I think that every American has to put into their car, on average, a couple of times a w- or at the very least, like once a week, a couple of times a month. So, uh, what did I do there? I said, "The average American nets X amount of money after taxes. At $5 a gallon, that means that they're spending approximately 10% of their take-home pay on gas. And when you include food and housing, it gives you a picture of how bad things are." That's not a political statement. That's just like a statement about where things are. That got shared, as Shaan was saying. I mean, people screenshotted it, it was shared on Instagram. Both ways, it's like, wow, the, you know, oil companies need to stop profiteering. Here's why Biden needs to start drilling. I mean, you can put it any particular way you want. I mean, in general, my most viral content actually, although, just speaks to, uh, more putting out like facts and then contextualizing them in a way where people feel like they can be used to something that is very meaningful to their life. I'll give you another example. Uh, one of my most viral posts recently has been, uh, about mortgages. And it really was just a basic, uh, take about like, hey, in 2021 you could buy X house, price house, for this monthly payment. Mortgages prices have now gone up, so now you get less house. Once again, like you can read that whichever way you want. Like, you can be like, "Congratulations, Jerome Powell." You can say, "Screw you, Jerome Powell." Like, you could put it, uh, any particular way. So I think, uh, to pi- piggyback on what Shaan is saying, I think timeliness is everything. Uh, everything. So timeliness is, you know, timeliness is c- number one, it has to be timely. Uh, number two, it has to be, the most viral stuff I believe, uh, has to be able to resonate with somebody and not tell them how to think, just give them the ability to then form something. And then three, uh, I think it's also concise, which is why Twitter is very, very helpful.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, that, that's great by the way. This, um, it's like you handed them like a hammer and you're like-
- SESaagar Enjeti
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... "Go beat up whoever you wanna beat up-
- SESaagar Enjeti
Yeah, right
- 41:23 – 48:59
Tactics to building the first 100K on Twitter
- SPSpeaker
Um, like what were really the inflection points or, uh, tactics that took you from, from that first zero to 100K, uh, let's, let's say Twitter.
- SESaagar Enjeti
Okay, so zero to... Twitter is actually not that hard, which is that most of the people follow only a few amount of accounts. So get those few amount of accounts in order to follow you and get them to retweet you, and that's basically the secret to growth. I don't think it's that complicated. So what does that mean? It's like, well, find the, that niche, the 0.01%. What do they need in their feed that they're not getting? Provide that service. For me, I was the first guy to in order to retweet the transcript, which means that they were all following me, which means that they're all retweeting me and exposing me to their millions of followers, which means that some people would then follow me. So for me, it was, I would say around 10K is a big, is a big jump Uh, for some reason in people's minds it's like when you cross 10,000 that is a point where you're gonna get exponentially more new numbers of followers. What I've discovered across all my platforms, the more followers you have, the easier it is to get followers, which is so frustrating whenever you're starting out. You're like, when you're, "Oh man, 5,000." The, at that point, if I had 5,000 followers on Instagram, which, you know, once upon a time was the case. If I got 50 I was like, "Oh my God." I lose 50 a day, uh, to now. A- a- actually more, probably more like 100, and yet I'll net out, you know, at a 1,000 a week or something like that. And it's simply because of like the churn, the burn, the way that your algorithmic treatment, um, is offered. So I think 10 is a big inflection point. I think 50 is an even bigger inflection point. That's where things really begin to go vertical. And you know, this is probably the same in startups, which is just getting that, you know, uh, first initial customers and then compounding that to a sustainable-ish business is like the really most difficult, requires the most amount of thought because at the end of the day that's where, that's where you're filling the niche. That's where you're discovering the niche. That's where you're, uh, playing around. That's- that's- that's really the time, too, of the most experimentation, uh, where you have really, really high stakes. So I would say it's there and then also on the other end where, you know, after I reached 300K, actually after I reached 200K on Twitter I was like, "I just don't care anymore." I was like, "If it goes up it goes up. I could care less." You know? My business is almost entirely dependent on YouTube and I c- frankly I care more about Instagram, um, than I do about Twitter. I think I have much higher quality engagement, um, just from what I've seen. My ability to sell either my subscription tickets, uh, any of those things are there. So then it just became a complete game after that. I just genuinely did whatever I wanted. So those are kind of the interesting inflection points.
- SPSpeaker
Cool. Yeah. I- I like the idea of, uh, finding ... Look, eh, there's a few accounts that everybody follows, like it's almost account-based marketing at that point where it's-
- SESaagar Enjeti
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... getting in c- uh, in touch and making an impression with those nodes, those sort of super nodes, uh-
- SESaagar Enjeti
Mm-hmm
- SPSpeaker
... in your, in your industry. Um, Shaan, do you have any, uh, anything to add?
- SPShaan Puri
Uh, that's smart. I wish I had done that. Um, y-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
D- d- didn't have that insight, but I learned something great today. Um, yeah. Mine was sort of like, uh, the s- actually it was the same, but I did it in a much slower, stupider way, which was the first kind of 25 people mattered a lot. And so it's not the number, it's who those 25 are. For me, I built those relationships in person. So like, um, you know, Ryan Hoover had a popular Twitter, and I had known Ryan in person, you know, for, you know, seven, eight years at that point. And so once I started getting active and started saying and tweeting things he was happy to kind of like share. I never asked him to, he just, he followed me already. He thought some things I said was interesting and he would share it with his audience. And, um, and then that happened with like 25 important people in tech that were already well-known. But I had built in-person relationships with them, built in-person credibility with them, and so it's kind of the same idea actually, but just a very slow version of, of what you just talked about. Um, and I didn't think about it like creating content that, that serves them, um, or that they would wanna share with their audience. I just thought like i- it just ha- it just accidentally happened so, you know, sort of along the way. Um, the main things that I would say is like, you know, uh, figure out your, you know, the, the domain you're trying to build your authority in. So, you know, get really tight on that. The tighter the better. Uh, but it's very tempting to be broad. Um, and I've made this mistake many times of just like being like, "Well, it's that, but it's also these other things that I like, and it's also this, and it's also that." A- and actually you'd be better off just starting off, uh, starting off there. Um, then there's basically like some tactical things like, you know, f- for example, uh, there's this theory called the Red Pill Theory, I guess. Uh, I think in politics this has a different definition, but-
- SESaagar Enjeti
Mm-hmm
- SPShaan Puri
... I heard it when I talked to the guy, um, there's two guys who, who do Wait But Why, and so there's like Tim, who's like the writer, the famous guy, and then this is his friend Andrew, who, his childhood friend who helps m- run his businesses. And Andrew, I talked to Andrew, and Andrew was like, "Yeah, um, you need to have your red pill," which is like you need to have the truth that you can say that people ... That wasn't like, um, it's not the thing everybody's saying, but when you hear it people, like some s- statistically one of the people will nod their head vigorously, right? So what is the ... And other people call this your spiky point of view. It's like, you know, what is your, what's your thing, right? Like, you know, maybe your thing was like that inflation is a way bigger problem and the government is playing this down. Boom, that's your red pill, and you can, you can base your whole brand off that for a period of time, and then you have to eventually swap out and create a, a second red pill, which is like you need to be giving people ... And by the way, red pill comes from like The Matrix, where it's like, do you want ... If you take the blue pill you go back into the matrix and you just live like a sheep again and you just don't question anything, or do you want the truth? And th- that's the thing. You're trying to give people the truth in a way that they're not, that they haven't been told, and then you can become known for that. And so I think that's important. That's a very useful tool. I think some other tools are speaking from the I. Um, I- I- I found great success in this, which is a lot of people in, um, the more successful that they get, they'll s- just keep saying you like a fortune cookie. Like, "Oh, y- you gotta do this. You gotta do that. You know, when you feel this way you gotta try doing this." And it's like it's much more powerful when you're like, "You know, uh, I was feeling this way," or, "I was going through this. I had this experience and it made me think this, but what I need to do differently is I need to do this." Um, it's a much more, uh, I think in general it's good for personal accountability to speak from the I, but secondly, I think it plays really well to content 'cause it's different than what everybody else is doing. So same thing. Personal stories, um, and speaking from the I I think works. But like the high level things is, you know, you could be either a generous expert sharing your knowledge and expertise, or you could be a curious novice. And a curious novice is somebody who's just going through, like you're saying, you're just typing out the transcripts. You're just finding interesting clips and sharing it. You're remixing, packaging, curating, and presenting, you know, stuff as a beginner's point of view rather than saying, "I know everything." Um, so you gotta know what areas are you an expert in and what areas are you gonna be a curious novice, and then use both in your content. Um, and the last is just, I don't know, don't quit and go viral. Like that, that's ultimately, like if you wanna win, don't quit and like find ways to go viral or you won't grow. So, uh, if you just, you're only gonna remember two things on the strategy is like don't quit and go viral I would say is the-
- SESaagar Enjeti
Right
- SPShaan Puri
... the, the takeaway.
- SPSpeaker
I could talk to both y'all for another hour. This is, uh, awesome. Um, yeah, just the, the, the, the nuggets at the end non-stop. Uh, I, I think we're gonna create an illustration of this, uh, to capture a lot of those things, uh, so stay tuned for that. Um, yeah. Thank, thank you both so much for spending your time with us today. Uh, this was a ton of fun. [upbeat music]
Episode duration: 48:59
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Transcript of episode kwrw2ECniE4
