00:00
If you can't make the economics of an ad channel exciting,
00:04
can you at least a not burn money while b building a huge lead database that that likes you because of your free thing or your cheap thing.
00:14
I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to.
00:19
I put my all in it like the day's all on a road. Let's travel never looking back.
00:24
I'm actually,
00:26
I'm surprised you haven't been on this before. I feel like
00:29
I feel like you're made for this in a way.
00:32
Maybe.
00:33
I mean, I was doing pods for a while. Like, I was trying to, like, purposely get on podcasts
00:39
for
00:40
like indie hackers, yeah, for, like, getting word out about the man curve. Then at some point, I'm like, this is cringe, man. Like, I don't like listening back to myself.
00:49
And so it it took the process of actually
00:53
starting a podcast.
00:55
You know, in part, thanks to also watching you do your your magic.
00:58
To be like, you know what? I can just totally be myself and not to worry about as much. And then just stop being cringe. So now I'm all for it.
01:04
And how how has it been since you launched the pod? So you launched
01:08
you got brains. Right? Brain's with the s or without the s? Yeah. Brain's with the s. It's been good. It's been, I guess,
01:15
is is rare to have reasons in your life to be very seriously self reflective about whether or not you're boring the shit out of people.
01:23
So if I have to be so deliberate about can I be charismatic?
01:27
Can I be interesting? And I'm not saying I'm there yet, but I'm saying I'm at least thinking about you know, in in the in the context of trying to not bore people in a podcast. So it's been a really big forcing function. Okay. I like that. And,
01:40
has it been
01:41
to launch this podcast, you did it very methodically. You recorded like eight episodes
01:46
with bad ass people ahead of time.
01:48
And, so I feel like you were pretty thorough about how you went about it or more so than me, at least.
01:55
Did it go the way you wanted to or where what'd you learn?
01:59
Yeah. I was thorough because I felt that I kinda had no choice because I listened to a bunch of podcasts
02:05
and found most of them to be, like, unlistenable.
02:08
Right. And then when I heard my first million, I'm like, there's something special here, but I don't actually know what it is.
02:13
And so my co host on the podcast, Cortland from Media Hackers, he's like, what's going on here that special
02:19
is they're not asking boring interview questions.
02:22
They're literally just
02:24
riffing on ideas collaboratively
02:26
and making charge statements and letting other people respond to them. And the net effect is it feels way more like rapport, like a dinner conversation you're overhearing.
02:35
So we really rolled with that, and then we try to be deliberate about Well, how do we choose guests that can actually play into that? Can they speak spontaneously?
02:43
Are they willing to play ball and bad ideas around? Right? So I feel like it's probably a lot of the stuff that you're thinking about as well. And, yeah, it's been it's been great. So we're basically, you know, in a way where my first million, but for everything outside of this Like writing a book, being a storyteller. You know what I mean? Yeah. The episode I was on had,
03:01
Alexandra
03:02
Botez. I don't know how you say her name, actually. How do you say it properly? That's right. As an important position. You got it.
03:08
Chess
03:09
champion,
03:10
Twitch streamer. So she's like, content creator, really interesting person.
03:14
Her content is about chess because she's really damn good at chess.
03:18
And so I found it pretty interesting. Like, that was not what I've been on a bunch of podcasts. That's not usually what I get to to talk about or talk to.
03:26
And, so I immediately was pretty bought in just as I kinda guessed on it. But anyways,
03:31
I wanted to have you on here because,
03:34
this is, you know, the pod for ideas. And
03:37
I feel like you have a lot of interesting ideas and also see a lot of interesting ideas. And for the people who don't know,
03:42
we're in a group chat together. And being in a group chat is like the closest thing to being in a dorm together, I feel you get to know people over time. You get to see them walking around in their boxers. You know, you you just You're going to the the shared bathroom together. There's no place to run. You're gonna be yourself over, in enough time in in the right group chat. And so feel like I've gotten to know you even though we have never met in person.
04:07
But you are an idea person. Do you consider yourself an idea person?
04:11
I I see I think of myself as someone who's loves to brainstorm, but I I'm not as fixated on ideas, I think, as you are. Like, I know you and Sam
04:18
love the treasure hunt. You love the chase. Right. Like who's making money? How? I'm more like, alright. Give me a problem. I wanna solve the problem. And so what I did for this show, actually,
04:28
is I went through the community of my startup, we have about forty thousand marketers and and founders. And so I picked out the three most interesting growth trends I fine. And I I came with some examples of each of those trends. So there were like three things that were popping out that felt almost like cheap coats, like ways that startups were
04:48
printing cash and reaching unicorn status much quicker than one would think it should. Okay. So that's something we can jam on. I got a few three categories there. We can on if you'd like. Yeah. Let's do that right now. Don't even say anything else besides that. I'm I'm completely I'm completely hooked. Let's do that.
05:04
Alright. Alright. So, okay, let's kick it off with this first category.
05:08
So I'm gonna give these funny names because I don't have good names for it. So category one is give customers an absolute
05:15
no brainer. So there's two ways to give them a no brainer that I've seen in the community.
05:19
No brainer number one is you literally give them away money, in a way that's economically sustainable, which we'll get into. Right. Another no brainer way is make the friction so crazy low
05:30
that people are like, oh, fuck it. I'll just click the button one time and get this installed. So let's walk through examples of what I mean by that. So
05:37
starting with giving away money, there is this product a long time ago called service.
05:42
And what they did is they would give you money back anytime that your flight was delayed.
05:48
If a few conditions were true. Cause there was this lesser known loophole in the contracts of airlines where for loyalty reasons, they wanted to have a policy
05:57
to give flyers some money back if they're fight with delay. You just have to do the paperwork and request it and nobody ever did it. Exactly. Right. No one wanted the friction. So service is like, hey. We'll automate create it like a VA army. We'll file the paperwork for you. You just give us your itinerary. We're literally
06:12
giving you cash. Right. We'll almost literally because it's like credit. So the reason this was so clever
06:18
is for a very simple reason, it wound up creating
06:22
some of the world's best performing ads.
06:24
Because when you made ads on Facebook that were something like, hey, did you know the airlines will pay you up to a hundred bucks whenever you're delayed?
06:33
The click through rates on those ads were astronomical.
06:36
The cost per click were super low. Interesting. And they were able to yeah. It's just skyrocket to millions and ad spend monthly very quickly.
06:44
And let me give you a couple more examples,
06:46
because this is actually something more than just service could do. So now they're just an example as a recent YC company,
06:53
and they're called Yada.
06:54
So Yada does is they'll take your monies just through a normal bank. They'll take your money, you know, they'll manage savings.
07:01
But because they're so low overhead,
07:03
they they redistribute
07:05
all of that extra potential margin into lottery winnings for their bank customers. So just by having more money in the auto, they're going to give you tickets to this to this real lottery that they run every single week. They give away millions.
07:18
And you just you're automatically answered you're just a bank card. No. No loss. So imagine No loss lotteries. It's called. Right? Yeah. Exact and and just imagine their ads.
07:27
Like, just think about the how compelling it is to position that to a lot of people who either love the lottery
07:34
or just really want a way to make extra cash. So a couple more examples, if it's helpful for me to run through here,
07:40
we got
07:41
main streets. That's the when you said it, that's the one that came to mind. As soon as you said,
07:46
give, you know, basic giving away money. I thought of Main Street as a company that's growing fast doing this. It's brilliant. Right? And so so explain explain what it is if people don't know. So
07:56
They're basically running ads. I'll I'll come at it from the perspective of what is the ad because that's the whole perspective of this chat. It's like, what's the growth. Right? So the admin street can run to people is did you know that you're not taking advantage of an extra, say, ten thousand dollars in tax credits
08:12
every year for your business. It's like, woah. If I'm a small business making it month to month, that's huge. And so again, they found a business model that can act as a means to at least optically
08:24
without being scammed,
08:26
either give you, like, free money in a sense or credit back And it functions as the ultimate acquisition wedge in a sense, which then becomes how they grow so darn quickly. And so the question is, how do these companies make money?
08:40
And this brings us to this idea of like having a wedge in the gross world. We talk about wedges or even investing.
08:46
And if you can just use one of these product as a means to collect emails and happy customers very quickly.
08:52
Then it's a wedge into building a customer base that you can monetize through other revenue streams, if not that one revenue stream itself. Right? Yeah. I like that a lot. And there was another one that was doing this or do not pay is another one that does this. Right? They, I think I I don't remember how they started if it was them or somebody else. There's another one that was like the flight
09:11
flight cancellation payback. There was one that was, hey, did you get a parking ticket in San Francisco? We'll find it for you. So just show send us a picture of the ticket. We will fight it for you. Did you know that, you know, four out of ten tickets are filled out incorrectly and are therefore invalid? Even if you were in the wrong filled it out wrong. And therefore, you don't have to pay a a dime. We we will find these opportunities for you. And you only pay us out of the savings of whatever money we save you. We'll take twenty percent. Whatever money we give back to you.
09:40
And I thought, wow, that's actually, like,
09:42
a great idea, and it got so popular
09:45
that San Francisco banned them
09:48
you know, pretty quick, like, after a few months because it was, like, being used so much. Team was service, by the way. Service, the airlines were, like, what what the hell's going on here? They just shut they, like, close, they started tightening up the policy. And so sometimes
10:01
that actual wedge can be a very flimsy one. Yeah. But if you if you ran away with happy customers who now trust you for other products,
10:09
then maybe it was still an okay one. So I I wouldn't necessarily recommend at least flimsy unsustainable channels, but but Main Street does not seem Lindsey to me, right, on paper. Another great example, I'll give you one last one because it's It's my favorite because it's under everybody's noses, which is if you look at the top of buildings when you're driving around, you have those clear view you know, these billboard ads.
10:31
And so imagine being a business owner and someone comes to you and says, say, I'm gonna pay you, let's say, fifty grand a year. All you gotta do is put this billboard on your roof. Right? I'm sure it's much more complicated than that. But the idea is that sometimes when you get pitched with a revenue stream that's super low friction for you that you did not realize as possible,
10:50
it is becomes a crazy growth wedge. Yeah. That's yeah. And there's You can basically create value out of thin air just by,
10:57
just by just by knowing the rules of connecting the dots. I feel this way about There's some bigger businesses that do this principle.
11:05
One for student loan refinancing. It's just like, hey,
11:08
you're paying too much.
11:10
Just tell us what you pay today, and then we will find your cheaper student loan. You just click a button and and boom. You're you changed to this monthly payment instead of this one. Think, common bond or something like that is one of those. And house refinancing is another, but these require
11:24
it's not as they can't do the whole thing on your behalf, unfortunately, but I'm I feel like somebody could get closer to doing the whole thing on your behalf.
11:32
And that seems like a pretty big opportunity to me. Absolutely.
11:35
And and what this actually speaks to is
11:38
this larger trend of can you think of your product road map if you're starting a business
11:43
in unison with your growth road map? Because everything we've just been discussing is basically
11:48
a product feature. It's not like you're just running ads.
11:52
It in a silo, you're running ads because you have this way of giving away money or at least the optically giving away money. So I tell founders sometimes,
12:00
can you think of the feature list on your product roadmap,
12:04
can you reprioritize
12:05
it such that it facilitates
12:07
growth strategies like these?
12:09
And that can guide you for for growing a lot quicker as opposed to just, you know, living in a local maximum running in circles. And so because we're ultimately talking about the idea of, like, a Trojan horse here for acquiring customers in a non scamming and authentic way where you're really offering value. So The other half of this, by the way, is
12:27
this idea is mentioning of super low friction.
12:30
So this the we're still under this category of
12:33
giving customers an absolute no brainer rebrand to exactly. How do you become a no brainer where it's like, I don't have to think about this.
12:41
So second subcategory. So first was giving away money. Second is super low friction. So let me give you an example.
12:48
Chrome extensions are maybe my favorite example because if we think of honey, right, which gives you it's a Chrome extension that as you browse the web, it surfaces discounts on whatever you're browsing. Right? Right. So looking at a chair, it'll say, you You didn't know this, but you can get twenty percent off. So
13:03
that's brilliant because the Chrome extension is like a two click process
13:08
from being part of your internet browsing experience for until the rest of the time until you delete the extension. Right. It's so low friction. You don't have to sign up. You don't have to add a credit card. You don't have to give any of your data verified via two two factor authentication, verify your email address, none of You don't even have to remember to open the app. Right? That's most apps. You just for person just forgets to open you ever again. But with Chrome extension, they're opening Chrome. They already have that habit. You just get to tag along, like, a little, you know, like, the the flea on an elephant's back.
13:39
Exact exactly. That's right. And so If you could find a way to make something so painless where it's like two clicks at it and forget it, the idea is that now you're around,
13:50
Now you have a bunch of exposure opportunities. You keep popping up when relevant on web pages that the user's browsing. And eventually,
13:58
When the time is right and you can deliver real value, like, contextually, because, like, this is gonna be a monster coupon I could give the customer. We're gonna save them a thousand bucks. Right. That's when we finally ask, hey, can you make an account real quick before we give you this monster coupon? And now they're completely bought and then they've come to trust Yeah. That's smart. What what other Chrome extension ideas,
14:17
have you have you seen that you like or you have? Like, what what else is like, honey? Does anything come to mind? I know it's a hard question, but What else is like, honey? Yeah. It is a tough question, but one good example is
14:28
extensions in the SEO space
14:31
that give you data about web pages. Yeah. A competitive analysis as you're browsing so that if you are a marketer You can get this like x-ray vision into how are they growing? Right. What are they what keyword terms and all this stuff. Right? So it winds up educating you to better grow your business and it becomes very sticky. If that date is valuable.
14:50
Which which Chrome extensions which Chrome extensions do you have it in installed? I have similar web which is what you're talking about. Basically, it gives me traffic information about different websites so I can see how popular they are and where the traffic comes from.
15:03
I have Metamask, which is, you know, an Ethereum wallet,
15:06
or a Crypto wallet, and then I have adblock. Those are the three Chrome extensions I have, and I'm very particular about Chrome because when you install a Chrome extension, it says, this extension can read everything you type onto any website. I'm like, wow, that's so insecure. That's crazy. What do you have installed? Yeah. So nothing exciting. I got my ad block. I got the thing that tells me if I'm on a web site that had their passwords sort of broken into. So it'll tell me if I should switch my password, you know. Okay.
15:33
And then I have
15:35
oh, this awesome Twitter extension that when I'm looking at someone's Twitter profile,
15:40
it'll show me all their historical best performing tweets. So I get like a shot view of who they are and what they're known for. It's called the t w e m e x, the twin x. I like that. That's pretty cool. I was thinking there could be a couple others. Like, while you were saying that, I was thinking, what what other x-ray? We used to x-ray vision. I like that. So I was like, what x-ray vision would I want as I browse the web? So one is just taking, like, the Twitter thing, but sort of, like, anytime someone's name is on a web page, if I just hover Can it just pop out a thing that basically tells me
16:12
about that person? It's like, here's, you know, here's the Twitter profile. You can click follow. Here are some things about them. Here's the wiki or whatever. So it's like,
16:19
you know, the quick who is this on any name on any website. That's one. The other is,
16:26
Facebook ads. So I I'm constantly going to the Facebook ad library to find what ads a company is running. I actually just want that done automatically. So I just wanna go to any products website, any any company's website, and be able to click this and see what ads they're running without having to go open up the ad library. Mhmm.
16:43
Yeah. I love that. The,
16:45
the way I think about this, this type of a question is, like, what type of Chrome extension or, like, what's the framework for thinking about which category of Chrome extension would be the stickiest and would people love to download the most?
16:57
And I think about how to appeal to advice. Like, how do I appeal to people's desire to make money And so where my brain goes right away is what about some sort of x-ray vision where you're on, like, Bloomberg, or you're on Twitter, and anytime
17:09
the Chrome extension picks up a keyword
17:11
for a public stock or like some crypto token, right, cryptocurrency,
17:15
then it just suggests,
17:17
like, it gives you an x-ray into, like, how it's performing? Who else talk about it a lot? Who should you fall to learn more about this? Right. And that then it kind of triggers more so, like, this greedy, like, okay. Well, I can make money off this. So I'm gonna pay a bit more attention because When you do the educational route, really with any tool, like, hey, let's give x-ray vision to let people know, like Amazon's x-ray vision to when you're watching a movie,
17:37
it'll tell you, like, what music is playing in the background? Who are these actors? Like, do people really care? I mean, maybe some, but it's probably
17:46
Yeah. Yeah. The the the,
17:48
one more on this is, that I was just thinking of while you're browsing websites, if it basically Could you create Robinhood in a Chrome browser? A Chrome extension? I think you could. So you could basically have it be like Acorns where it sort of rounds up on anything you buy.
18:02
And then it buys either a fraction of that stock or it adds up until you it it tells you, hey, you've been shopping a lot on Apple. Why don't you buy a hundred dollars at Apple stock? Click here to do it. And, maybe there's a way to kind of, like, use that round up model to get you to own instead of just being a customer and not own any of the underlying company in in which case you could. So I think this is one interesting idea. Just look at every app on your phone and say,
18:26
Could this be a Chrome extension? How would you do Robinhood as a Chrome extension? How would you do blah, blah? That's super clever. So to recap that, you're basically saying as I'm browsing, like, literally as on robinhood dot com. Right? Can there be an Acorns? Can there be some Acorns life extension that's like, hey, why don't we spend a little bit more at actually invest directly in this company? Exactly. You can get a sense of ownership and incentive alignment or even better. Like, hey, we like, if the it pops up right as it's easier about to do a trade. It's okay. We see about the trade for like ninety seven bucks. You wanna roll this up, get the extra three bucks in Robinhood itself. Yes. That's that's super clever. I love that. Alright. So that was that was theme one. Let's go to theme two. Sure. So let's see here.
19:08
Okay.
19:09
So this next category is
19:11
does encouraging people to use your product naturally encourage other people they know
19:18
to use the product also. This is commonly called product led growth, but we can break it down in more interesting ways. Let me start by giving you some examples. K. So Slack connect,
19:29
Dropbox,
19:30
PayPal,
19:31
Calendly. So what these companies have in common is when I use any of those products,
19:36
my use of that product
19:38
is better if I invite other people onto it or share it with other people. Like, when I join Slack, it's a ghost town if it's just me. Right? Right. So I'm naturally encouraged to to invite my coworkers
19:50
and then Slack did something super brilliant called Slack Connect.
19:53
Where now I can invite non coworkers to people who exist, like, at different com people who work at different companies,
19:59
and I'm using Slack as the glue. But because I'm using Slack as the glue, I need to go invite those people to start using slack so we can communicate on our, you know, whatever service contract we got going on. So
20:11
the idea behind product led growth, the first half of the idea is that you use the products in a way that benefits you when you invite more people you're gonna do it without them having to bribe me with five bucks to invite your friends because you're gonna do it anyway. Right. And then the back half of product led growth
20:27
is
20:28
when your friends receive your invite or when you share that product with your friends,
20:34
they have to feel that signing up for the product.
20:37
Is also beneficial for them. So let me give you an example. Like, if I
20:42
drop off someone a file,
20:44
they could just take the file as it is But if they signed up for Dropbox,
20:48
well, now they're gonna get version history. Now they're not gonna have to store it on their hard drive or in the emails. It's gonna be like this thing that they can more easily manipulate for the Dropbox for it, or let's say I'm sending someone a PayPal payment.
21:00
Well, guess what? If you want my money, you gotta sign up for PayPal. Like, you literally have to sign up in order to get the money. Right.
21:07
And for Calendly, same thing. Like, when I'm sharing my Calendly link, you know, the software for calendar booking,
21:13
The person who's receiving the link has a much better experience
21:16
if they themselves sign up for Calendly
21:18
because it'll show them when they have over overlapping time windows, right, that free. So that's the trick behind product led growth.
21:26
Both parties have to benefit.
21:29
And if you look at fastest growing companies over the last few years, a lot of them grew in exactly this way, where you don't have to rely on SEO, which can be super flimsy when Google make algorithm updates.
21:40
Do have to rely on, like, paid acquisition, meaning ads, so Facebook, if the CPMs rise, if the cost rise,
21:46
and is so healthy and robust and retentive.
21:49
And so that's the obvious part, though. So the less obvious part
21:54
is this idea that I call bill boarding.
21:56
And billboarding is a subtype of product led growth,
22:00
that is my favorite because anyone can do it. You don't have to be a software company.
22:04
And I'll give you the o g example of billboarding.
22:08
If I sign up for Hotmail and I send an email, and you know where I'm going with this, which isn't there's that Hotmail signature
22:13
in the email. Right?
22:15
Or if I send with my iPhone, there's that sent from iPhone in the email signature. Right? And, like, how many millions of people every day get beaten over the head with scent from my iPhone.
22:25
And it's just a phenomenal way to stay top of mind.
22:29
So,
22:30
we also have the clear view example, the billboards from earlier. Like, we were saying it was such a brilliant business because
22:36
it was giving people money. But it's also brilliant because guess what they do whenever they put a billboard up?
22:42
They throw their logo on the billboard. Right.
22:45
So that's billboarding literally in the truest like, definition. And then I'll give you one last example,
22:50
which is my favorite because
22:53
it's, like,
22:54
blowing up right now, I can't stop. So they, to I'm subject to it. I can't stop seeing this. And it's on mercury. Oh, yeah. Actually, actually, that is that's better than my example. Because they're they're they're they're making it their like, people make it their profile. Right? So
23:08
crypto punks are an n f t. And if you go buy it, cool. You bought this digital file. It sits in your digital wallet.
23:15
Privately, and there's no, you know, it's it's even worse displayed than art because you're not putting it in a frame in your house.
23:22
But what people started doing was they put it in the most visible frame they have, their profile photo. So they're swapping their Twitter profile photo with a crypto pump. And one person started doing it in two, three, four, and then more started doing it. And so now I can't use Twitter without seeing fucking crypto punks and reminding myself how I missed out on crypto punks. And so I feel like that's like a version of billboarding.
23:42
It's like wearing your favorite company's t shirt, but wearing it every day and in front of thousands of people a day. Exactly. It's like the Twitter equivalent of having, like, AirPods or Nike's on, like, everyone's gonna see it. And it's also identity building. Like, if you if you break apart
23:57
what makes her brand loyal to, like, why would you want to put a Crypto Conk as your Twitter avatar? Right. Or why would you want to wear Nike shoes?
24:04
It's because you actually feel a sense of prestige. If there's either social signaling, you're in the club,
24:09
or you're signaling you have good taste, Right. If you wanna be the the girl or the the the guy who wears, like, his shoes every day, or the girl or the guy who has slack stickers all over his laptop every day. Like, it becomes this identity based affinity for a brand. And when you have that, it becomes very hard to compete with because now it's almost approaching tribal for better or for worse. And just because there's another crypto pump competitor,
24:34
it doesn't necessarily mean that they can just take over through better marketing.
24:38
Because better marketing has a hard will hit a hard wall against tribalism and a building identity around something that people want. I think the way it plays out is
24:47
With one,
24:49
it's good, but it's not great. As soon as you get two tribes, now they have somebody to fight and feud with. And so you'll get Republicans and Democrats. You'll get, you know, yankees and red socks on Twitter right now, you'll get crypto punks or board apes. Right? Board ape yacht club. It's the other NFT project that is rivaling them. And so people are switching to those two. Now you're probably not gonna get, like, twenty of these And so there's, like, room for two to three, like, main tribes, and then everything else will be very, very fringe. And those be some people who want that. But Okay. So you were gonna say mer mercury is one of these. Where do you see mercury bill boarded? Yeah. Mercury is interesting because
25:27
Well, let me just back up here and wrap my head around. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
25:31
Okay. So, yeah, mercury is a great example of billboarding because It's a it's a modern and hyper growth example and it's all digital. I feel like anyone can find an equivalent way to do the following. So mercury, first of all, is a bank.
25:44
For startups,
25:45
but not necessarily just startups. And it be it's become the de facto startup that YC companies use. So what happens is when YC companies go to demo day where they fundraise with investors,
25:56
they have to then they send a link. Bingo.
26:00
Bingo. So here's the interesting thing. All these investors are now getting these, like, PDF wire details with the label mercury on them. Yeah. And they're very nice. Very well formatted. Looks beautiful. Looks better than a normal bank, but you're right. It's a silent signal that I use mercury. Bingo. And it's also it has this interesting phenomenon of oversampling,
26:18
which I might be using a term wrong, but you'll get the gist, which is
26:22
These VCs
26:23
are seeing such a high percentage of startups
26:26
using mercury
26:27
that they're now under the assumption that everyone's using mercury. Right. Or at least it it it risk that impression. Right? Yeah. And so as a result, these VCs, when they're asked by their own portfolio companies, hey, should we use mercury They're like, oh, yeah. Everyone uses it. It's like the de facto. Right. But is it really? Probably not. It's it's how I feel about Max. Right? You go to Silicon Valley. You just see Max everywhere, and then you You're in the filter bubble of everybody who uses Max, and then you look at the stats, and it's like, wait, ninety percent market share for windows. Like, how is this possible? And it's like, yeah, because, you know,
26:58
the world is not Silicon Valley. That's right. Yeah. That's that's exactly right. You can create this optical impression. And if you're making the impression on a persona
27:06
that is itself a distribution like lightning rod, like investors or
27:10
like very high social signal like influencers,
27:14
if they get the impression, just them narrowly, think that you're everything.
27:18
Right. Well, then they'll act like you're everything and then finally it trickles down to the mainstream. Yes. It's like what it's like high school, but for, you know, fifty year olds. Okay. So that's that's growth trend too. So we got
27:29
trend one.
27:31
No brainer.
27:32
No no no brainer. No loss offers. Cool.
27:37
Trend two is
27:38
the, the the billboard effect, you know, either you intentionally create kind of a status symbol that people choose to flag
27:46
or
27:47
just in the act of doing business, you're attaching your logo into their world.
27:52
And so everybody that they use the product with sees you sees you sees you until it becomes, sort of like, you know, a self it's a free ad basically that you're getting through your own customers.
28:01
What's number three? Yep. You got it. So number three is self liquidating files, which I know sort of silly, silly sounding term.
28:09
It's actually been around for a long time. This is not really a new thing. But very few founders appear to have heard about it. So let's break down this idea of self updating funnels.
28:18
So the idea here is that let's say you can't make your Facebook ads work profitably, or you can't get them to pay you back in a reasonable amount of time. Like, it takes eight months before someone buys from you after you paid thirty bucks to get their email. Right?
28:32
Right. So self liquidating basically means you're offering
28:36
some type of product that is secondary to your main product.
28:40
So let's say you're selling a thirty dollar ebook
28:43
or let's say you're an SEO tool and you're selling a complimentary SEO tool, like a content planning tool, That's only five bucks a month as opposed to two hundred bucks a month. Okay. And the idea here is if you decrease the cost of whatever you're offering, but still make it related to your primary products,
29:00
people will buy much more reflexively, like, during the checkout aisle of a grocery store. And it's cheaper. So lesser consideration purchase,
29:08
And,
29:09
because more will, hopefully, it will be a higher rate of purchase and a much quicker turnaround to purchase.
29:16
It could make the economics of your Facebook ads, for example,
29:19
suddenly totally viable.
29:21
Right. So imagine you're doing this just to break even. You're not trying to make money off the question is, what is the point of this? And this is where it becomes so clever,
29:29
is this a giant excuse
29:31
to print email addresses? Because if I can now capture emails using a self liquidating funnel and I'm paying effectively nothing for these emails, they're just it's like literally self liquidating, hence the name, then I can now just scale this up to the extent possible, capture,
29:46
let's say, a thousand, a hundred thousand emails And now I'm playing in the long game. I've just come up with a fantastic source of lead gen
29:55
so that I can nurture those emails, those people over time and eventually sell them the real product and make the real margins. Right. So that's the sort of brilliance of like
30:04
going back to my point earlier about If you think of your product roadmap in unison with your growth roadmap,
30:11
what are the product features that can actually facilitate
30:14
much easier growth. And I'm not saying every company has to do this. It's just that if you're having a hard time making certain channels work, these strategies we're chatting about
30:24
are, like,
30:25
potentially available to you cheat codes, albeit potentially very distracting ones. So if there are a lot of things to consider, I'm just giving you guys ideas to pick from from what I've seen work in the community. So to wrap up this this particular idea, Sean, it basically comes down to this. If you can't make the economics of an ad channel exciting,
30:43
can you at least a not burn money while b building a hugely database that that likes you because your free thing or your cheap thing rather was really high quality. Right. Yeah. That so you see this in content a lot. I think you do this Pretty well. I think you put you have these, like,
30:59
handbooks, I think you call them on your website. And it's like,
31:04
way more high quality than a blog post.
31:08
And so you send them that thing for free, grab their email address. They're happy because, wow, I got he over delivered on value for this free thing, and you're getting emails for free during that. And I don't know if you do paid ads to run those, but many people do.
31:21
You know, run paid ads to a free ebook and then grab the lead there or a five dollar, you know, just pay shipping. So I think that I think they call this in marketing the free plus shipping
31:31
offer, which is you're giving the thing away for free and you just charge shipping. So they do this with books or, like, if you're a clothing brand, you can give away, like, a little hat And they just pay the shipping cost. The shipping cost kinda bakes in your cost of goods also because it's, like, you know, seven dollars since, like, shipping is five. The cost of goods is two. And you think you're getting the item for free, what do you have to lose? All you gotta do is pay the shipping. That seems fair. And they're they're using that to get your,
31:56
to get your information, and then they're safe. Great. Now I'm gonna go back to this list. Now they've had a sample of my stuff, and can I go get twenty five percent of people to become a real customer after doing Mhmm? Yeah. Absolutely. Well, the way I think about it is and this is a strong opinion of mine that I'm not saying is the right way is I actually don't sell anything on my website. So julian dot com is what you're referring to. Where I write these handbooks, like, a breakdown, like, how to write well, how to grow your startups?
32:22
There's nothing being sold. Like, there's some ads for not as per se, but some some references to demand curve dot com where we teach people growth, but By and large, if I'm making money from demand curve,
32:32
then I don't wanna have to make money from the things I'm doing for pure enjoyment and that I'm using to build an It's like I want to build this association
32:40
that
32:41
you can trust me that I'm never trying to sell you anything. And I think that's not critically required,
32:46
but so
32:47
healthy for the long term. And, like, if you could call Graham, like, this, you know, the the writer, guru YC founder, everyone looks up there, you know, in a million years, you would never to have, like, a, like, a banner ad at the bottom of the blog post. Right? It's because it'd be so out of character. And we're really compromised, I think, or or a hundred ninety nine dollar course. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, so I just try to keep them totally separate. And,
33:10
anyway, so, yeah, that's but now that I'm not saying people have to monetize. They have to make But if you make a living through other things, you don't have to make a living through the thing you're passionate about. Like, when I see very rich people start podcasts,
33:23
and still run ads on their podcast.
33:25
Like, unless you're doing it to pay employees,
33:28
awesome. But if you're doing because you're trying to make an extra buck, it seems like it's totally defease the purpose of wired. Let's call let's call them out. Read Hoffman.
33:36
You are a billionaire.
33:37
You created LinkedIn. You sold it for twenty billion dollars. Why does your podcast have ads, and I know there I know the answer to it, actually, but, no excuses as far as I'm concerned. Now people could say the same thing about me I do I think there's ads on this podcast. There are,
33:53
I do courses. And the way I thought about it was was pretty simple, which was I'm gonna spend my time doing something, and I value my time. And I also want a scoreboard for if the thing I'm doing is valuable. And one scoreboard is likes, and the other the I think a more powerful scoreboard
34:10
is money. And I do a lot of things for likes. The podcast is free. All that good stuff. But if I do something like a course or I'm actually gonna sit down, spend time with you and teach you something, then I wanna charge for that. Most of the time, I give away a bunch of, like, free spots.
34:23
And the last thing is I,
34:25
I do this to get myself more excited about it. So I'll set a,
34:30
a reason,
34:31
a goal for the money. So I'll be like, okay.
34:34
Like, this right now with this course I'm doing right now. I was like, alright, I wanna do two things.
34:39
I wanna be able to, I made a list of ten people who've been just awesome to me in life.
34:44
And, they've, like, mentored me or helped me in some form or fashion. I was like, I wanna buy them all like a fat gift, like a gift that's like, you know, way more than what,
34:54
what they would be expecting in this case. The second thing is I want to,
35:00
I'm I'm really trying to get in shape. And I was like, I wanna have a personal chef. I was like, how much does that cost? I used to have an investor. He had a he had a a personal chef, a private chef, and the chef would come cook for us at lunch at the office every day. And it was amazing.
35:13
And I always just thought that was a one day one day dream. I kinda looked up the cost and I was like, oh, I think I could pay for that. That's basically like, you know, six to eight grand a month.
35:24
Okay. Cool. So if I sell, you know, if I do a hundred thousand dollars profit in this course,
35:29
that pays for a year of a chef. And now I got excited about it. So it made me
35:34
more excited to actually do the thing than just my benevolence. And maybe it's because I'm kind of a
35:39
a greedy or selfish person. That could be the reason why, but all I know is once I have a target and that target could be anything silly, it could be I'm gonna go buy, you know,
35:50
you know, go buy
35:52
a bunch of crypto pox, or I'm gonna put it all in on this penny stock And then I'm gonna turn that into content of riding the wave of this penny stock. It doesn't really matter what it is. It's but when I have a target, they I'm a financial target. It makes me try to do a way better job at the thing I'm doing. Yeah. That that definitely resonates. And I think it's healthy, and I think that's awesome.
36:11
I see it a bit differently, and my different way is not a better way. And my different way is
36:16
I like I see I see what I spend my time on outside of, like, earning a salary through demand curve dot com in the context of
36:23
a crass person.
36:25
And so I don't wanna do anything. Even if it's for, like, some extrinsic goal, like, getting a chef.
36:31
Unless I I would be happy doing it if I got nothing else from it. Like, the process itself is the reward.
36:37
And I feel like it took a really long time for me figure out what those things are in my life where the process alone is really rewarding. And and, like, to me, so so yeah. Yeah. It's just like it's such a beautiful thing if you can find it.
36:51
And and, like, I was going through this binge on YouTube where I was watching videos of creators,
36:55
and, like, artists and musicians
36:58
in the process of making their music.
37:00
Like, if you Google, if you search YouTube for Ariana Grande,
37:03
I forget the name of the song, but she's big, Aria Ariana Grande in studio. Dude, I've gone down so many rabbit holes of this. There's an insurance documentary. If anybody wants to watch on Apple plus of him making his on Apple TV plus or whatever of him making his album.
37:19
And it's like he invites a bunch of people to his house, and you literally see him, like, in a car ride just messing around on the guitar. And he's like, you can see, you can hear him figuring out this one guitar lick that became,
37:31
you know, you know, love yourself or whatever. It becomes one of these, like, hit today. And you could see him just trying to, like, humming and being like, oh, what if I said, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then he's, like, figuring it out live?
37:41
God, that that stuff is like, you know, that's my business porn. That's my creativity porn. Yeah. It's a dopamine hit. And a great one is if you guys search
37:49
John Mayor beats live radio on YouTube. You'll see him, like, literally make up a song in real time. It's such a isn't such a dopamine hit to watch people, but the thing I take away from all those videos
38:01
is
38:01
if they made no money from that, I know. I in the deep in my bones, I know, not all of these musicians that are successful, but some of them, like John Mayer, they're just obsessed
38:11
with doing this. And the reward is can they come up with something awesome? So
38:16
Yeah. The the the the flip side of that is the flip side of that is you don't want John Mayer to have to build demand curve as a business in order to fund his musical pursuits. And so if if if this is the thing you love the most and you wanna spend all your time doing it and you didn't have some major, major exit beforehand, which is a big criteria for most people, then this is how it becomes sustainable. Right? Like, I wanna create more content. I wanna teach. So that I need teaching to be sustainable so I can set up spent all my time on it. I could hire the best people for it. All those things. Right? So I think that's the caveat. Do you have any kind of like Yeah. Other backup stuff as far as opportunities or ideas or things that caught your eye. I have one. Maybe we'll keep it quick because I don't what you're gonna find interesting. So maybe we do this one super quick. And you you can pull me along if you like it. How's that? Okay. Sounds good.
39:02
Cool. So,
39:04
Okay. Well, actually, have I told you my thoughts on, like, what goes into making awesome content like this podcast?
39:10
No. Break it down. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I I feel like I I remember who I was telling this to. So the short of it is I think there's this curse of overcoming frequency.
39:20
And when I was going through, like, all the content creators that I see the most love professed for, like Wake But Y or Paul Graham, who I mentioned earlier, everyday astronaut,
39:30
Right. What they all have in common is they don't publish content
39:33
on a set frequency. Like, literally, the slogan for way put y dot com, this great blog that people love is new posts every sometimes. At the end of the everyday astronaut videos, it'll be like the next video will be out. When it's ready. And like Paul Graham will post at a very erratic schedule. And what they all have in common
39:51
is they're publishing when they truly have something to say. They're not publishing to try to hit a deadline, which I think is a trap because you're then forced
39:59
to try to be a creative genius
40:01
on account on a schedule, which is, like, near impossible. Now what do you make of the, like, Casey Neistat,
40:08
mister Beast or whoever? These guys that basically they made their their bones and they're following by
40:14
doing a daily vlog. And they got they chose to get on that. They've chose to handcuff themselves to that treadmill,
40:20
and the fans kinda loved that. And their premise was different. It wasn't this is great. It's this is everything. I think it's a great question. It's a good counter example. I think this general idea I'm getting to
40:32
is almost domain specific. Like, it depends what you're trying to sell. If you're just offering people, like, cheap awesome entertainment, like, money giveaways, the threshold's not that high to be creatively, like, fulfilling to hit that. But if you're trying to sit down like Paul Graham or Wakeby or James Clear, Morgan Houssel, if he's authors, and you're trying to come up with something original and novel to say,
40:52
that is really where I'm getting at. And it's also not unlike podcasts. Like, can you actually hit a podcast at a really high frequency
41:00
Maybe, but at some point, you run out of awesome guess or ideas when you get burned out. And so the reason this is on my mind is because what I realized
41:07
is there's this weird myth that in order for you to succeed as a podcaster
41:13
or vlogger or content creator or whatever is you have to have a very consistent and high frequency output. But that's not true. This is like some nineteen fifties
41:22
mad men era like our billboard impression crap. Yeah. It's like it doesn't exist with the internet. It's not the same seeing matter of factly. Like, if you look at, like, my Twitter account, I think I got to, like, two hundred thousand Twitter followers and I tweet once every fourteen days. Like, twice a month, I literally I literally said two tweets a month.
41:41
People aren't forgetting who I am, but if the quality is high, the staying power so much better. You don't have to be pumping out all the time. Like, wait. But why? I think he didn't post anything for, like, eight months. You know what I mean? So
41:52
I just wanna sort of encourage people on this on this momentary platform of my first million that, really beautiful things happen. What you can rise above this content overload that we live in. If you focus more so on quality, the
42:06
quantity is useful for yourself. Like, if you're trying to get good at something due to the high frequency,
42:11
But that doesn't mean you have to publish everything.
42:14
You can keep some back and do it for yourself. So anyway, that's my little rant on quality plus quantity. And the reason I bring this up is because your podcast is consistently good. And I think the brilliance of it, the reason it's possible
42:26
is because you found a format, which the threshold, like I was, you know, referring to the YouTube examples, is achievable. Like you haven't you haven't backed yourself into a corner like how I built this where they have to spend so long
42:38
doing something awesome, you can just grab people riff on ideas and it's a lower threshold, but still incredibly hard do. Don't get me wrong. And so I just, yeah, I just I just find this whole topic so interesting because so many people are pumping out content with, like, the wrong framework.
42:52
Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's many ways to win. Like, I think you typically wanna be on either end of the spectrum, either,
42:58
light touch, high frequency.
43:01
So,
43:02
you might the I'm comfort. I'm like friends. There's a million episodes you can go through, and they're all alright.
43:09
Or your Game of Thrones. And there's, like, no, there's eight episodes that you can go go to for this season, but they're all epic. And, you know, I I think
43:18
I find that if you're gonna choose one strategy
43:21
polarized to either end of that and focus on quality,
43:25
or focus on
43:27
frequency.
43:28
And,
43:30
and in the middle is tough because if you try to be high frequency, high quality, you lose. Right? If you try to be low frequency, low quality, you lose. If you try to be right? So it's like, there's all you have to hit one of those in order to make it work.
43:44
As far as I've seen in terms of in terms of how content goes. By the way, tell me,
43:49
share with people your thoughts on bios. So I hit you up. And I was like, hey, I wanna redo my Twitter bio, and I feel like you've probably put some thought into this and you were like, funny enough. I have. Here's some thoughts, and you gave me this audio note, this two minute IMessage audio note that was fire.
44:06
And I was like, this is such a Julian thing. So so share share with people kinda hear what you've scene or how you break that down. The whole idea of bio, which sounds really lighthearted, but in reality,
44:17
how you talk about yourself matters to yourself, like your own self-concept.
44:22
But how you talk about yourself to others, how you present yourself to others,
44:25
it's like, it seems frivolous until you gotta go write one. And then you sit down, you're like, fuck.
44:30
I have so much to say that I have nothing to say at the same time, and it all sounds bad. Then it sounds too Gregi, then it sounds too unimpressive.
44:37
How do I do this? And so give give me give me your thoughts on bios.
44:41
Sure. So this isn't a hard and fast rule. It's just what I think makes the most sense and I'd love to hear a better idea,
44:47
which is write your bio
44:50
to justify why people should follow you. By the way, let's this just sticks with Twitter for now. That's what we're talking about here. So write your Twitter bio
44:58
that justifies
44:59
why you're differentiated more falling. What do people get from following you. So for example, mine is something like I deconstruct. I'm literally reading my bio right now. So it was like this. I deconstruct how things work. Like storytelling and critical thinking, and I share my learnings along the way. Okay. So you know what you're getting now. And the reason this this distinction's important actually, let's compare and contrast. So the typical bio is something like
45:23
Forbes thirty, under thirty, two ex founder, three ex father, five ex Christian, like, all these stats.
45:29
You know? And it's and it's like, this doesn't tell me anything. It's just virtue signaling in in to some respects.
45:37
And I don't know why I should care.
45:39
So the second part of this is is not just why they should follow, but also
45:45
What is the minimal amount of social proof to justify
45:49
why you talking about the topics you're saying you'll talk about?
45:53
You actually are qualified to do so. So so you're you're kinda saying,
45:58
what are you gonna get from me? What's in it for you?
46:01
And
46:02
why you can trust the source, the just enough to get you to trust, not everything.
46:07
Bingo. And it's what's interesting about this question, actually, Sean, is that you're fundamentally asking me a gross marketing question,
46:14
which is, hey, if I look at my Twitter accounts, my Twitter profile, And if we think of it as like a landing page for my startup,
46:21
what would you do to modify either one to increase conversions? So on conversions with the startup, we're talking about clicking and signing up. But on Twitter, we're talking about clicking and following. And so you could if you actually dive into the weeds, there's more you could do to your Twitter profile.
46:35
And maybe it's a fun exercise we can walk through because it just shows how to apply the lens of growth marketing
46:40
to Twitter or to YouTube or to your podcast. Right? Right. So I'll give you one quick example. Like, if you just think, ask yourself this question.
46:49
If I'm presenting the public with a page of any sort,
46:53
What are all of the elements that surface on that page
46:56
that factor into their decision as to whether they're gonna convert? So if I'm looking at my Twitter account right now, I'm seeing my bio. I'm seeing my head shot. I'm seeing my pin tweet. So let's just talk about that. Let's use that one example pin tweet.
47:09
So your pin tweet can reinforce what your bio said to further qualify why you talk about that, why you should talk about it rather. And it gives an example of it so they get the quick dopamine hit off the bat that your pin tweet is delivering on. Like for me, I said, I talked about storytelling and critical thinking. So my pin tweet is exactly it's just a tiny little blog post, the essay. Yeah.
47:31
Exactly. Exactly. So That's your surface area. And the same thing goes for YouTube. Like, every little thing is surface area to when added together can increase conversion. You know? Yeah. So you, and then you have, like, the follower count, which is, like, your social proof that you can't really fake. I guess you can buy fake followers, but that's the other signal that they're looking for is do other people trust this person. Do other people follow this person,
47:54
or the blue check mark. Right? That's that's another signal that that you can you can have or or not have not fully in your control, but that's what counts towards conversion. Alright. I I like that.
48:03
Wait, Sean. Tell me about your blue check mark journey. Didn't you where do you say something? And I messaged your BlueCheck?
48:09
No. What do you mean? I don't have one. I tried to get one. They said they just didn't reply because that's Twitter.
48:16
I don't remember. Was there something Okay. No. I said, remember, you had a story about trying to get it. Never mind. We'll skip it.
48:23
You know, if you remember it, say it. I I don't remember it. Maybe maybe you're mixing me up with someone No. That that that that actually might have been dis it might have been the world's worst story. That might have been it. Never mind.
48:32
Fair enough. Fair enough.
48:34
Okay. I think we can we can leave it with kind of like one last little piece and then we'll we'll we'll we'll wrap it up to go. But the last thing I wanted to say is If you weren't doing what you were doing now, right? So you're not doing demand curve. You're not writing. I can't I can't let you go back through those doors. Those doors are now locked.
48:52
Where does Julian go? How does he spend his time? What what would excite you if I gave you all your time back?
48:59
What where would you go spend it if you couldn't spend it, how you're spending it now? So the answer actually no reflexively
49:04
is movies.
49:06
Like, the thing I actually came to the US to do from Canada
49:09
was to try to make movies. And so that remains the thing that I find
49:14
so interesting because it's it's I I don't have a good it's gonna be hard for me to play this, but the brief version is it's so freaking hard, Sean. Like, it's so hard to break in. It's so hard to write a good screenplay. It's so hard to turn that into a good film. It's so hard to get people to watch it. And and the the the requirements for actually pulling it off
49:35
are how resourceful, how creative, and how sort of,
49:40
well, really those are the two key things resourceful and creative you can be. And that do you have a good sense it takes. Right? Right? And I love that forcing I love that burden on my shoulders. Try to crack what I see as one of the hardest
49:51
problems, the intersection, like, creative and business. I've always wanted to do it plus I just love the idea of being able to tell people stories that moves them. It's such a beautiful thing. So What what kind of movies are we talking? Like comedy,
50:04
action,
50:05
drama,
50:06
indie artistic,
50:07
you know,
50:08
documentaries. What are you talking about? I'll tell you I'll give you four movies. I absolutely love, and I think it'll answer the question. So
50:14
whiplash, incredible fiction film. Yep.
50:17
The Prestige, Christopher Nolan's known about magicians.
50:21
And then a documentary on Netflix, which I I'm so stoked I get to tell people this because some will actually go that enough people will listen that it'll get some views. Searching for Sugar Man on Netflix is the best documentary I've ever seen. And then the last I'll recommend is Who who's that one about? Who's who's the Sugar Men one about? Okay. So this is really tricky, Sean, because the entire movie is a spoiler.
50:43
So I'll just say I'll just say this. I'll say it's about a musician
50:47
that disappeared off like the face of the earth.
50:51
And
50:52
where he went to and how he came back. And, fuck, you should cut that now. I'm giving spoilers. You should believe that. We gotta believe he and he came back but the last thing I'll say is a counterpart, which is, this amazing show Amazon is my favorite TV show.
51:06
Maybe ever kind of parts amazing. So it's like a James Bond
51:09
type thing. It's growing. Okay. I've never even heard of that. I'm not pitching anything well, Sean. I suck at this.
51:15
With you're great at things until they become very personal. Like, when it's like, what do you really wanna do in your harder parts? You're like, I don't know how to say it, but, like, you can say everything else. Or it's like these movies that you love that you really want other people to love.
51:28
The pressure in your head goes so high. How do I sell this right without ruining the the first time magic of experiencing it.
51:35
But you almost
51:37
create a a a pressure cooker for yourself here. So, okay. So what you wanna do is you wanna make you wanna make a movie about,
51:45
you know, searching for Bobby Fisher style. Right?
51:48
About, you know, Kobi Ashi, the, the competitive eater. It's like greatness
51:54
slash enigma slash prodigies.
51:57
And, like, you know, with a with a dash of sort of drama and mystery. Dude, well, I see, I knew I could I knew I could rely on you. Yes. Well pitched.
52:06
Yeah. I just love this stuff. I just I love making it. I love watching. I love people. I love seeing people watch it. But how about you? I'm here. I wanna flip this around on you. What would you if I could do anything right now.
52:16
I would basically take, like, little three to five year arcs of my life.
52:21
Is what I think I would do. I'd take three to five year arcs of my life, and I would go try to do
52:27
a really fun thing that I don't do. So I would one would be
52:31
stand up comedy. So I would try to create a set that actually is good, and I would figure out how you do that. I would learn the learn the the trade. I would go to shows. I would do all that I would, I would coach a basketball team. And I would try to, like, be a high school basketball coach and,
52:48
and just give it my all. And I would do it doing that. I would,
52:52
you know, like, one is I don't actually wanna make a show, but I do wanna write a script. I'm actually trying to do that right now. Trying to write a script for a a mock episode of the office,
53:01
which is a lot of fun. And, I would try to make a song, like, a hit song. How do you make a catchy hit song that pops off. I don't care if it pops off as a TikTok meme or what, but but that would be another one. And so I would just do these little, like, I'll try to write a book. I'll try to create a, a brand of a drink or a chips bag or something like that. I would just take these, like, little mini mini challenges.
53:24
That are three to five year sprints. I would go really deep in them,
53:27
try to win, and then I would come out the other side. I would basically switch careers, each time I do them. I love that. So you you wanna wanna break up your life into chapters, and you want it to be a very creatively fulfilling thing where you're, like, maximally using,
53:40
actually, not necessarily because the the high school basketball is a really cool one. It's a nice counterbalance to the creative screenwriting thing. Yeah. Because it's not all about making a song and making a a stand up set. It's like things that I just think would be really fun if you did them,
53:55
at which typically is creative, but sometimes it's not. Right? Like sports is its own then competition is really fun. Leading is fun. Strategy is fun. All that good stuff. What's stopping you from being a comedian in the next fifteen years? Because stop me from making the time to do it? Nothing. I'm just occupied right now. Like, I'm doing things. I got a business I'm running and,
54:14
this content arm. So
54:16
I don't have the clear schedule at the moment to to clear everything off to go go chase that. And I can just dabble kinda like for fun in very small ways. But I think there's something really fun about the immersion. So I've I've set myself this challenge to try to write an episode of the office by the end of this month.
54:33
And, I don't know how to do it, but I hit up my friend who writes for a TV show. And I said, hey, can we jam next Thursday? And Tell me how you ride an episode of TV. Like, that's what I'm trying to do. So I'm I'm doing little, like, you know, tiptoe in the water, but,
54:48
to do it for real the way I want, I would,
54:52
like, I I'm gonna clear my schedule for for, like, a two to your period. You won't hear about me. And then I come out the other side, you know, with some some story to tell.
55:00
You know, fun would be for all of us is what you're gonna do is set. I would one hundred percent show up live. I would be the loudest laugher. Even if it's artificial, I would one hundred percent support you.
55:11
Dude, that would be I kinda wanna live through you if there's something I really want you to do almost selfishly, but also I think you'll just have a blast. Yeah. I I I I do and I will. So so the other thing right now is I just had a kid two kids, actually, two babies. And so I kinda feel like right now, the main project is actually I'm trying to get in the best shape of my life, and I'm also learning how to be a dad. Like a new dad. And so I kind of wanna,
55:34
like, not skip that part because,
55:37
like, I already made I already made the baby. I did it the hard part. Now now I just have to, like, stay there. Don't don't busy myself doing something else. Just stay here and actually do a dead bit. Well, what I will say is if I've learned anything from comedians,
55:49
endlessly talking about
55:51
how their process,
55:53
it's that
55:54
This is exactly the fuel in your life that turns into the comedy. Right. Like, the struggles of being a dad. Right? The struggles of losing weight. Yeah. Exactly. So it almost seems like if you don't act on it now, it almost seems like this is the time capsule where you write down your experiences and your thoughts. And it can become future material. So I'm I'm I'm I'm yeah. I'll give you two. So I was in the shower the day, and I wrote down two pieces, two pieces of content.
56:18
Texted it to some guy who is a comedian
56:20
that, is is pretty famous comedian. I don't know him very well, but we kind of we text your DM a little bit. And I said, hey, I got two little nuggets for you. Two two little truths about life that I think you could turn into jokes.
56:31
Here they are. And, it's just they've come to me while I was in the shower. And one was,
56:38
receipts. Like, I don't care how old I get. I got no fucking strategy when it comes to if I'm at the cashier, they say, do you want the receipt?
56:45
I say yes. I say no. There is no consistency. There is no logic. There is no strategy.
56:51
And, like, n nothing is a more panicked moment than whatever the fuck I do when they ask me, do you want the receipt or not? And why, like, why do we do that? Why why does nobody have, like, any kind of, consistent to that? The second one, what is the second one I sent to him? It was,
57:06
oh, racism. It's like people think America's really racist.
57:10
And there's racism as a big problem.
57:13
And when you think of racist, like, if I say racist, you know, think of a racist, what image pops into your head?
57:20
Clooclex fan member. Right. So, you know, you think of the the the the Clooclex, the KK, like a white guy in a white hood, or you think of, like, you know,
57:29
white person in a MAGa hat or something like that. That's what people think of when they're thinking of racist. Like, who are all these racists in America. Right? And,
57:37
and it just occurred to me, like,
57:40
in reality, nobody is more white people are the least racist. Nobody is more racist than, like, you know, an Indian parent or a Chinese grandmother.
57:48
Like, they'll just straight up tell you, like, you know, some pretty
57:52
like, Hey, can I marry, you know, a person of this race? And it's like,
57:56
no one here's why. And and so I just it sort of occurred to me that nobody's more racist than a Chinese grandma. And, and so I was like, you know, that's a truth about the world that I believe that I was like, okay. These are nuggets. I wanna write down. I don't know how you craft those into jokes. Like, what I'm telling you isn't a joke. It's just sort of like an observation of the world the way I see it. And then, like, okay. Cool. How do I write these down so that
58:19
I learned how to actually, like, turn these into jokes and weave them together and make a set out of it. And that's exactly what I think is the most interesting part. Is, like, what's the scaffolding? What's the narrative structure for taking that observation and making it laugh out loud funny? Is it post, like, just a smirk on my face? Right. And this is where it gets so fun to sit down or reverse engineer like Dave Chapel.
58:39
And this is actually one of the podcast episodes we did, storytelling
58:43
is you're trying to reverse engineer what makes such a great storyteller,
58:47
and it's like setting up the stakes, the hero's perspective. All these cool ingredients, the climax, the twist. Right?
58:52
And that to me is the joy. That's gotta be the most fun part, I think, because you figure how to craft it. And then the people who totally buck the trend like Mitch Hedberg,
59:00
you know, he has a joke that's sort of like your receipt joke.
59:04
But my point, though, first is he's, like, not really doing the the normal joke structure. I don't think. I'm not an expert. Right? But it's still so funny because he has an extra layer. The extra layer is phenomenally unique and like like like tickling
59:18
delivery. Right? And so there's there's an extra layer beyond the structure of the narrative. Like, if you just wrote his jokes on paper, it might not be as funny. But he has this joke going back to your receipts thing where he's like, people who hand out flyers on the street as you pass by for, like, whatever, you know, organization they're running, they're basically saying, hey, you throw this in the garbage. And I remember that always stuck in my head. And, like, I can't use it. I can't deliver it like he can. Right? Oh, that's pretty good. He got me to laugh. Actually, there's a thing you There's a thing you had put out in your storytelling thing, by the way. You you you said, oh, here's all these elements, but the one that stood out that actually was telling Ben,
59:52
my right hand man. I was like, hey.
59:55
Julian had this thing that I think is spot on, and we should Like, I think I I do this to an extent. I think you should do it more. But, like, we we can all do this more. You were saying something like
01:00:06
the best storytellers
01:00:08
when they tell a story, it's almost like they're blowing their own mind. Again,
01:00:11
live, they are they are surprising themselves in their their or in a comedian's case. They're making themselves laugh. They're cracking themselves up. And,
01:00:21
the extent to which you can genuinely blow your own mind repeatedly or crack yourself up repeatedly
01:00:26
is pretty much the extent to which you can deliver a story or a joke. And, if once you realize that, you can't unsee it. And it gives you a blueprint to just be more charismatic and entertaining when you talk. That's spot on. So the way I the way I realize that is there's this person we interviewed a pod called Jason Silva, who, for my money, is the most charismatic person on YouTube, Jason Silva. And I was sitting there showing a reverse engineer what made him so damn good. Then I eventually got him on my podcast. And I asked him, like, what's going on here? And he said, Julian, before I even turn on the camera,
01:01:01
I first make sure I'm in a mental space
01:01:04
where I'm experiencing the idea I'm about to talk about like I was for the very first time. Because all of his videos are, like, interesting
01:01:12
philosophical concepts. And so he sits there and he's like, oh, yeah. That's what was so fucking
01:01:17
mind blowing about it. He, like, chews on it, lets it sink in, turns on the camera, light goes red, and now he relives that initial impression And then it's it's it's infectious. He is the per he's the proxy that we now live through. And it's just it's such a beautiful thing to see someone fully interact in in their own excitement without any concern for, like, no self cautious. Like, what are my hands doing? Am I stuttering where am I looking? It's like, All these things fade away when you can get absorbed
01:01:46
by your own enthusiasm.
01:01:48
And then people people just love seeing that. It's so authentic.
01:01:51
Yeah. Exactly. It was totally spot on. And if you're gonna, like, try one thing, try that. Get yourself into the state where you remember what it felt like so that you re you re
01:02:03
you tell it with that same emotion that you felt when it happened. If you were mind blown then, you'll feel mind blown now. If it cracked you up the first time you realized it, it'll crack you up now. And,
01:02:12
I I love that. I thought that was a great, great little hack, great little deconstruction,
01:02:16
on your part.
01:02:17
Alright. Where should people? So Twitter is at julian.
01:02:21
Julian dot com. Your branding is is kind of amazing.
01:02:25
Where else should people follow you? Yeah. Sure. So, really, it's,
01:02:28
julian dot com. And then demand curve dot com is where,
01:02:32
all these ideas we chatted about That's where they come from. We teach people how to do growth marketing. And that's basically it. And then if you wanna see Sean himself on my pada, there's brains podcast dot com. That's right. I think I'm on two two episodes of it. So Yes, dude. So we call you an honorary brain because Cora and I love you so much for, like, Alright. Even though it's kinda weird to have one person twice in the first six episodes,
01:02:54
there's no one more lovable and charismatic and just fun and interesting and juicy mental models and like a bag cool ideas in the back of his brain. And we're like, we just we we love you. I love you. And so thank you for coming out as awesome. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Alright. Sweet. We're out of here. Alright. Peace.
01:03:15
I feel like
01:03:17
I know I could be what I want to.
01:03:20
I put my all in it like my days. All gonna roll. Let's travel never looking back.
00:00 01:03:26