How To Get Started With Building An Audience in 2022 (#373)

Aadil Razvi

Well, let's go ahead and kick things off. How do you think about audience building, and what does your audience mean to you, Sean?

Shaan Puri

Oh wow, that's an emotional question. How do I think about it? I think about it like I don't really think about it; it's the byproduct of what I do. The way I approached it was after I sold my company. I said, "Alright, I can do whatever I want now." So, it was time to face the tough question: What do I actually want to do? What do I actually care about in my life? Those were big questions that kind of scared me. So then, I trimmed it down. I said, "Alright, how do I just want to spend my days? What would be a normal day? What would be a great day that I could do every day?" The thing that came to me was that the thing I enjoy doing the most is just getting curious. I'm generally very curious about things. If I have to go do work and then put those on the side, hoping to get to them when I can, that didn't seem great. But if I could just make my work about being curious, then I could explore these things—whether it's crypto, audience building, some new science tech thing, or even something simple like, "Where do peanuts grow? On trees or from the ground?" I don't know; let me go find out! I realized I want to be **professionally curious**. Alright, well that's cool. The curious part's easy. But how do you be professionally curious? One way was to turn that curiosity into content. I could take these questions that I want to explore, package up my learnings at the end, and share them with others. That sounds cool! It'll make it more fun for me and turn into something that actually generates income, which will let me do this all the time. That was my thought process. So, audience building and content were just a necessary means to an end or a byproduct of the main thing I wanted to do, which was just to be professionally curious. I wanted to wake up and dive into the thing that's most on my mind that day, with no other restrictions beyond that.

Aadil Razvi

how's that otos sorry what about you

Saagar Enjeti

Yeah, I mean, I think that building an audience is a lot like making money, especially in the year 2022. 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, the way that I build my show and the way that I consistently think about building and getting more audience is just to continue to fill niches. I started out filling one particular niche, built niches upon niches, and put an underlying philosophy that girds that. Then, I continue to try and build more on top of that, which just results in an overall top-line figure that continues to go up. Yeah, I actually don't think it's really that complicated as a concept. It's just incredibly complicated to execute, which is why not a lot of people do it. There are really not that many people at the very, very top of the game. In the whole influencer market, all returns are exponential. Both, you know, the top 0.1% of podcasts get just so many more downloads than even the top 1%. When I found out what was even in the top 1%, I was like, "Wait, like 20,000 downloads? I mean, how can you...?" I was like, "I don't even know how you make a living from something like that." Then, you know, you compare that to what the top ten are. So, I think that execution is harder than anything else in this game. It's probably exactly the same as business. I mean, it sounds easy to fill a niche, but actually doing that consistently over years, through changing conditions—changing market conditions for business, changing information environments for somebody who's in the content game—that's where the skill all comes into play.

Shaan Puri

Like, simple... simple, not easy, right? Yes, it could be simple what the answer is, but not necessarily easy. We did this getaway where we were going to play basketball with a bunch of interesting people. One of the people that came was Mr. Beast, the number one YouTuber in the world. So, he knows a thing or two about audience building. If you talk to him, you're like, "Hey, awesome! What's the secret? What's the trick for getting huge on YouTube?" And he's like, "I just want to make the best YouTube videos possible. Make great videos."

Aadil Razvi

and we're like

Shaan Puri

Okay, yeah, but like, how'd you do it? How'd you become number one? He's like, "I just try to make great videos every day. I just wake up and I'm like, alright, what's a great video? How do I make that?" It's simple, not easy, in the sense that he didn't overcomplicate it. Okay, well, what makes a great video? Something that gets your attention, something that holds your attention, something that makes you feel something at the end. You know, laughter, or a feel-good moment, or outrage, whatever it is. You could choose and you could break it down from there and add a little more detail. But fundamentally, you're not going to get some answer that's like, "Damn, I never thought of that!" Right? "Wow, they had this insight that just wasn't available to me, and now that I have this insight, 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.

Aadil Razvi

Totally agree. Is "make great content" really kind of the bottom line here? If you were to say what separates that top 1% that Sawyer was mentioning from the other 99%, is it as simple as just "make great content"? Or...?

Shaan Puri

well you you went through yc right I will you you guys were you in yc

Aadil Razvi

we did yes

Shaan Puri

Yeah, what’s the Y Combinator (YC) motto? Right, YC, the greatest startup accelerator in the world, bar none, has the greatest track record. They created almost half a trillion dollars of value from the companies that went through it. What's the secret? "Make something people want" is their motto. They just try to say, "Hey startup, don't get distracted by fundraising, press, and all these other things, or growth hacks. Are you making something people want?" Of course, really? Yeah, tell me, how do you know? What gives you that feeling? And then they're sort of like, "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. The same thing applies to content or audience building. Are you making content that people want? Right? That’s the thing. It’s not just about making great content; it’s about making 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 others and doing it consistently so they build a habit, etcetera, etcetera.

Saagar Enjeti

I completely agree. Yeah, I mean, I get approached by a lot of people asking, "Hey, will this light do it for me? Will this camera?" I'm like, "The camera's not your problem, bro. Your content's the problem." I'm like, "Make the content good, and everything falls from that." You know, I recently spent $60,000 on cameras, and that's after three years of doing this. Needing 4K cameras was an added benefit for my existing audience, not a requisite to start. Sure, there's a baseline level of production. I think a pop filter, like a Yeti USB mic, and a basic webcam do not have 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, etc. But what Sean is talking about, which is that all MrBeast does, is he knows exactly how to rank retention, thumbnail, all of that. He stacks it all on top of each other, iterates it a million times, and then comes up with the secret sauce. He has the exact same YouTube dashboard that I have, that all of us have, 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 as he said, it's simple. It's not easy at a certain level.

Saagar Enjeti

It is strange. It is really one of those things where, you know it when you see it. I can listen to something and be like, "That's compelling." Then, I can listen to something else and just think, "I don't know what it is, ma'am, this needs work." It is tough to exactly explain what that is.

Aadil Razvi

Yeah, we listened to a session on product-led growth yesterday. It was almost like everybody was kind of like, "Well, what's the hack? What's the tactic? What's the secret?" Our speakers were very simple like...

Saagar Enjeti

well

Aadil Razvi

You need an A+ product in order to have any sort of product-led growth. I feel like the principle stands true for any form of audience growth as well. Now, both of you have pretty distinct personal brands, as well as a business brand that you're both independently growing, either on accident or on purpose. How do you think about the sort of brand building as a company, as an entity, versus personal brand building? Do you have any heuristics or ways of thinking about it? Sagar, you know the way that you kind of use your own Twitter versus like... right, breaking.

Saagar Enjeti

Points. Yeah, that's interesting. So, from a business perspective, it has to be whenever. And Sean, you too, you're in a partnership, right? So this is inherently not something that you have total and 100% freedom on. Whenever I'm doing something under the BP umbrella, or you know, business or hiring, it's not necessarily just a reflection of me. It's a reflection of the ethos and the principles that we decided we were going to grow on, mutually agreed upon together. You know, within that framework, everything is being branded, it's being used, and that's a reflection of us, of our philosophy, etcetera. On my personal brand, to be honest, I just have a lot less capacity for care. If I'm interested in it, I'm just going to explore it. Frankly, I'm at a level where I can do that if I want to. And if people don't follow me, I'm just like, "I literally don't care." You know, either Instagram... you know how it is.

Aadil Razvi

hard it is sandra to find find tweets that I'm able to show yeah I was like I

Saagar Enjeti

Was a little scared. Whenever you do it, you were like, "Oh man, you're gonna piss off half the audience." But I mean, that's fine. I'm used to it in this line of work. That's kind of what I'm getting at, which is that the business has an orientation: 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 on the up and up. But at this level, I actually just do whatever I want to do. So that is the only dichotomy between the two.

Aadil Razvi

how do you think about it sean

Shaan Puri

So, what kind of answer would be interesting to you here? What's the... like, because I try to figure out what's the question behind the question. So, the surface question is, "What's the difference between your pod brand and your personal brand?" But what is the question behind that?

Aadil Razvi

The question behind that... Let me start with the problem. The problem is that audience building as a brand is hard. It's hard to create affinity when it's not coming from a human face. People often find, at least in the folks that I've chatted with, that even personal accounts—honestly, demand curves on Twitter—have been difficult to grow. Versus, like, you know, personal individuals, like Julian, for example, has a much easier time with his growth than we do as a company account. So, yeah, the question behind the question—that's a great question, Sean—is, you know, how should startups and companies be thinking about audience building when they have, yeah, but they have got like the personal brand in there?

Shaan Puri

I understand now I understand

Aadil Razvi

yeah

Shaan Puri

the question really is like what am I doing wrong here with demand curve curve but but more generally speaking like I don't know the it's 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'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 go 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 so like if you wanted 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 my case like I had a personal newsletter and a personal twitter that grew really fast I grew my personal twitter from like 10 or 20000 followers to it's at 300000 in like a year basically a year and a half in a year we got to 200000 and then it just trickled up but like great what am I gonna do with that I'm I don't really wanna be some like influencer and 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 because like I just don't get like I'm like I just don't care so I'll go 6 weeks without tweeting because I'm not trying to maintain some schedule this is not a business of mine but when I created the milk road it's intentionally not called sean's crypto newsletter which actually would have been easier at the start to get subscribers for because people already had bought into the sean franchise so going for oh sean so you're 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 because 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 I want this to be an independent asset and so for that again me as an independent media 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 sean the growth guy from beboe and I wanna talk about growth over here not the bebo account doing it because it's gonna get less play because people would rather follow people than 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 my opinion on this

Aadil Razvi

Yeah, well, that's super helpful. It kind of points to the problem that we originally had a demand curve where so much of our brand equity was tied up in Julien's brand equity. So, you know, being able to build that up under a new brand has certainly been something that we've done over the last couple of years. That's super helpful. Okay, we... yeah, let's go ahead and start the "Repeat That Tweet" segment here. We're going to experiment with screen sharing for the first time. Let's see how this goes. The idea here is for both of you to just react to the tweet. What were you thinking when you tweeted it out? Why do you think it took off? Why did it work? And any other context that you think would be interesting.

Shaan Puri

I wonder what percentage of these I'm just going to be like, "I have no idea what I was thinking." I don't believe that. That's stupid.

Aadil Razvi

These are bangers only. So, hopefully you remember, Sean. You did this hot take about everybody being wrong about the metaverse. Obviously, it's a very hot topic at the time when you did this. What can you tell us about this?

Shaan Puri

Well, I'll tell you kind of like... okay, I'll tell you my story in a second. But I guess that's a little less interesting than just what made this work. This thing reached, I think, I don't know the exact stats, but it's somewhere between 10 and 20 million people in the U.S. It also got shared like crazy on Instagram and in China. Some big Chinese social media influencers are posting it, I guess, so it got millions of views there. Logan Paul was talking about it on his podcast, and Mark Zuckerberg referenced this in a Lex Fridman interview. So it went really far, and I was like, "Why did this go so far?" I think it was because it basically had three things. **Number 1:** It was timely. This was right when Facebook had rebranded to Meta. People were talking about the metaverse, and I think everybody had this sixth sense and a little sort of sneaking suspicion that everybody's bullshitting about this. But nobody knew; it was all smart people and big names saying how the metaverse is the future, but nobody was saying what the hell the metaverse is or why it's the future. So, I think everybody kind of smelled bullshit but didn't know how to call it. It was timely, and I was calling bullshit, which generally is something people are going to want to click into and read. The last thing was, I think I backed it up. I think I had a good argument.

Shaan Puri

That could get you to agree with my conspiracy theory, if you will. It’s not so far-fetched. Basically, what I was saying was that when people hear the word "metaverse," they think about this virtual reality stuff, like, "Oh, I'm living in something. I'm an avatar now." I said, actually, I think it's more like this concept called the **singularity**, which is an artificial intelligence moment in time—a tipping point. This is where computers have reached a superintelligence and are vastly smarter than humans. They are so smart that they just program themselves to become even smarter. It's like runaway intelligence. So, I thought, oh, the metaverse is kind of like that. It's basically this tipping point. A lot of my friends are online now. I think I have this experience, and maybe you guys do too. Look at this experience we're having now. A lot of my work is now digital. My social identity—like my profiles and my followers—are all digital. If I buy NFTs, cool, some of my art is now digital. More and more things that are important to you now live on the internet.

Shaan Puri

All of your digital stuff matters to you more. You spend more time, energy, and focus there than you do in your physical life. That doesn't mean you'll never go eat, walk, or exercise. That's not what it means. It just means there's this tipping point. If you rewind 20 years, it didn't matter. I had a computer room in my house, and everything else was non-computer. Now, the computer is basically attached to my body. You've seen this transition already, and it's just going to continue. So, don't think of it as this crazy virtual world. It's just this tipping point. We've been creeping towards it, and at some point, we're just going to value our digital stuff more than we do our physical stuff. In the sense that we're going to spend more time, energy, effort, and money on the internet than we do offline. That was the idea. So, that's my explanation of the suite.

Aadil Razvi

Super helpful, man. It was surprising to me during your podcast with Hasan Minhaj that he was genuinely triggered by the tweet. It affected him on an identity level.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he called me and was like, "Hey, can I call you?" I don't know the guy, by the way. I didn't know him before this. He had followed me from one other tweet that went viral about Clubhouse. Then he called me and said, "Bro, I do stand-up comedy in real-world 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 metaverse bullshit." He asked me to talk him through it, and I was like, "I don't know what to tell you, man. I think it's going in that direction." I remember people saying, "I love waking up, getting the newspaper, bringing it in from my front lawn, and the feel of the newspaper." It's true; you probably did like that. But guess what? What you liked more was instant, real-time news constantly flooding into your brain. It turns out that was more addictive. Being able to get news from all these different sources rather than just your local provider turned out to be really important. Accessing it only on your phone also turned out to be significant. So, yeah, you liked the feel of it, but there were all these other benefits that ended up crushing that. So, that was what happened after this tweet.

Aadil Razvi

You contextualized it well. We talked about the benefit of accountability. It's a book, a double-edged sword here, where you get the upside and the risk involved in that. Super interesting saga! Yes, like I said, it's challenging to find tweets I can share with everybody here, but I would love to hear...

Saagar Enjeti

a little smile

Aadil Razvi

yeah actually I think the most viral was 2 days ago I I just thought yeah very cool

Saagar Enjeti

it's up there

Aadil Razvi

Yeah, talk to us about why this tweet worked. What is this speaking to, and why do you think it resonated?

Saagar Enjeti

yeah I'm actually it's interesting I kind of pivoted to becoming the gas guy politically 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 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 texturize them I think that every american has to put into their car on average a couple of times or at the very least like once a week a couple of times a month so what did I do there I said the average american nets x amount of money after taxes at $5 a gallon that means they're spending approximately 10% of their take home pay on gas 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 sean was saying I mean people screenshotted it it was shared on instagram both ways is like why the 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 I'll just speaks to 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 one of my most viral posts recently has been about mortgages and it really was just a basic take about like hey in 2021 you could buy x house price house for this monthly payment mortgages price has 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 any particular way so I think to piggyback on what sean is saying I think timeliness is everything everything so timeliness is you know timeliness is because number 1 it has to be timely number 2 it has to be the most viral stuff I believe 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 3 I think it's also concise which is why twitter is very very helpful

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's great. By the way, it's like you handed them a hammer and you're like, "Go beat up whoever you want to beat up with it."

Saagar Enjeti

information exactly

Shaan Puri

This can be used on anybody, you know? Just bingo! Use it to serve your agenda, which is kind of the cynical take on content creation. You will blow up faster if you sort of "gas up" an audience around something that they already have a bias or belief system about, and you feed that. This happens, for example, with crypto. It doesn't even have to be political. You see it all the time, like, "Oh, just be anti the dollar, anti Fed, anti Warren Buffett, anti whoever." You just keep feeding information that riles up this zealous crowd that already believes that. All they're looking for is not real information; they're looking for information that just fits their worldview. I don't mean to pick on them because pretty much everybody does this. Everybody's looking for information that feeds their worldview. So, one useful way of thinking about it is: What worldview do I like and respect, and maybe share? What worldview do I understand? That's the worldview that I can serve by producing good packaged nuggets because I know what will resonate with that audience. Then I'm focused on that versus just generically producing content and not really thinking about the worldview that it's going to go live in. Our software is the worst.

Aadil Razvi

have you heard of hubspot

Shaan Puri

See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best: HubSpot.

Aadil Razvi

grow better

Saagar Enjeti

oh by

Aadil Razvi

the way this is what it says

Shaan Puri

what's the what's the tweet that went viral 2 days ago

Saagar Enjeti

oh that was about doctor fauci we don't have to get into that one

Shaan Puri

come on what are we here to do

Aadil Razvi

I mean I'll I'll go into it I don't care

Saagar Enjeti

Sure, well, I don't want to derail your entire tradition. For those who are not familiar with something called the **lab leak theory**, the theory is that the coronavirus leaked from a lab. The underlying facts and circumstances around this are pretty interesting. The tweet that I did actually speaks directly to what you just talked about, Sean. If you're unfamiliar with the characters involved, there's one particular guy who served as the so-called cutout for funding from the NIH to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. His name is **Dr. Peter Daszak**. He's been intimately involved in the cover-up of any facts or evidence around the lab leak theory. This was all old news, basically, two years ago. We've known all of this information. Well, **Dr. Fauci**, in his waning days as the head of NIAID, actually just granted a **$600,000** grant to the same individual for the same type of research, which possibly led to the escape of the coronavirus from the Wuhan lab. There you go, it's right in front of you. I said Fauci is in his waning days, and as you said, I'm like, "Here's information." Why do I think it went viral? I mean, that's not difficult because nobody else is reporting it, and millions and millions of people are interested. That's literally just a screenshot from a government website.

Shaan Puri

The way... so you said something like, "I know a lot of people care about..." You said, "I know that gas issue" or something. A lot of people feel that they aren't being adequately covered. How do you know that? Are you reading YouTube comments to get this information? Are you talking to people? Where are you figuring out both what my niche is interested in and where there's a lack of service on that topic? Is it because you're not seeing it and you're like, "Oh, I am the customer, that's how I know"? Or do you have some feedback loop? How do you do it?

Saagar Enjeti

At this, it's art and a science. I have a general intuition of like, "This is not being covered." Also, the reason why I got into gas was because I could see that my segments on inflation were going astronomically high. Really, what it is, is I did a monologue months ago. It was very basic. I was like, "Hey, we are going to have an energy price crisis." This was actually before the entire Russian invasion of Ukraine because we were still having problems in our gas supply. I was really obsessed with why these specific market conditions were happening, and it just went mega viral. I got all these emails from people being like, "Hey man, thank you so much. Nobody talks about this heating oil in Vermont and what contracts look like for these things. You know, for me and my family, I only make $50,000 a year, so when I have to lock in at X price, it really, really hurts." I was like, "Well, that's interesting." So then again, you know, I threw a couple of test segments and did some segments on it. Each one either consistently performed or did more than normal. I'm like, "Okay, well clearly people care a lot about this." What I do then is kind of use my insider ability as a guy who worked in the Washington press corps to cover it in a professional manner. I think that was the way I could discover it. But I also have a general sense of, you know, I work in media. I live in D.C. I know what the people in power are talking about and obsessed with. My general orientation has been to bet against whatever that is and cover anything else. In general, that serves me very well. So there you go.

Shaan Puri

that's cool I like that

Aadil Razvi

One thing that Sagar shared—maybe when we get into more tactics later he can cover this—but one of the things that worked for him early on was, I think you had said, like just posting transcripts of what different people would say. So if Trump would say something, all you would do is just **snip** the transcript and just **sweep** that out, letting people have whatever take they wanted on it.

Saagar Enjeti

**Mhmm, yeah. I mean, I can share that. So, my first 50,000 followers... I was really obsessed with Twitter. Like, obsessed! Which is not a good thing, I should say. I went to a younger audience and I was like, "I want to get more Twitter followers." I remember my goal was, "I want 50,000 followers." I had like 4,000 at the time. I had a job as a White House correspondent, and I thought, "Okay, well, how can I take advantage of this?" So, all I did was get really proficient at using live transcription services, which literally watch cable television and then spit out rough transcripts. I was copy and pasting, taking out the caps, editing for clarity, and just trying to be one of the first people to say, "Trump said X" or "The Secretary of State said Y." As you said, Abel, you're just pumping information out into the world. This is why I think I probably have a timeliness bias because I work in the news business. For us, timeliness is everything. If you're two hours late, you might as well be dead; you're a zombie. For us, microseconds matter, especially in the so-called information distribution game. You're competing against the Associated Press, against Reuters, and major multimillion-dollar professional organizations. It really just turned out to be about getting pretty good at tweeting out transcripts. So, I think my first 50,000 followers all just came from people who were following me to find out what was going on that day in politics. Since that was literally my job, I was both doing my job well and building an audience.

Aadil Razvi

There are a lot of ways that people in this audience can apply that. I mean, you're all in your own niche. You all have the influencers and the leaders in those niches going out and doing appearances. There are ways of adapting this strategy, not just in the news and timeliness context, but even in tech.

Shaan Puri

I I have a question around timeliness

Aadil Razvi

oh yeah yeah go for it

Shaan Puri

Exemplifies it. So, I created... there was this big news event that happened in crypto where this token called Luna crashed. It had been one of the high flyers, and then it went to 0 kind of like overnight. I had a position in Luna, so I ended up losing what was like $1,000,000 in that crash. I also had kind of an interesting take because you need to have a take on... you know, everybody knows what happened, but they want to know either why it happened or what it means. So, I had a good take and I decided, "Okay, the way I'm gonna do this..." Two things happened. First, I was a little bit busy that week; I was on vacation and stuff like that. I came back, and a couple of days went by. Then I was like, "Okay, what do I do? Either I'm just gonna post this as a couple of tweets, a thread, or what if I made a video on this?" So, I go on YouTube and I end up creating this... almost like the John Oliver show, "Last Week Tonight." I go and I create this... I do this rant. I rant about Luna, I rant about why it got big, and then why it crashed. I got devastated, and I had jokes spliced in. I hired this editor; the editor is amazing. We're working on this, we're iterating on it, we're making great content, and we put it out. Now, two and a half weeks have gone by since we put it out. You could see this if you go to YouTube, search "Luna John" or something like that, and the video has like... I don't know, 17,000 views or so, maybe 20,000 views.

Shaan Puri

But it never went viral. So, you know, I consider that sort of like a flop of a piece of content, especially one that I tried really hard on. The funny thing is, I kind of knew this. The smarter thing would have been if I literally had opened up my phone, typed out a thing in the notes app, screenshotted it, and just posted it immediately when it happened. It would have been less great because the jokes weren't as good, there was no video production, there was nothing. But it would have been on time, and on time matters way more than great when it comes to this type of reactionary content. What does everybody care about right now? Because by the time three weeks have gone by, nobody cared about it anymore. The world had moved on; there were two other crises to worry about. So that was an expensive lesson, time-wise, of how much effort I put into something that did not go viral compared to the stuff that did go viral because I did it, you know? Good enough at the right time is better than great at the wrong time.

Aadil Razvi

Totally agree! "Good enough at the right time is better than great at the wrong time." That is the quote. And heck of some art here that you got going on, Sean! I love it. Okay, cool. Let's rapid-fire through one more each. Let's see. So, Sean, we have your Clubhouse 1, but I feel like it's pretty close to the Metaverse one as to why that worked. Do you want to talk about this Elon one, or do you want to talk about this learning one?

Shaan Puri

yeah I'll do both real quick the elon 1 is actually like sager was saying I I I one of the threads that went viral was not no original insight elon was on clubhouse elon like popped on to clubhouse when clubhouse was hot and you know just a guest appearance by elon musk is not something you get very often and also clubhouse was like overloaded it was like invite only and it was overloaded so I just go for those who are locked out of the elon thing here's what he's saying and I just live typed and transcribed everything interesting he was saying in a thread in real time and I was the only guy doing it and like you know on one hand I felt a little silly I was like oh man I've become like a professional notetaker on a fucking beta app of clubhouse like jeez what does my career come to and then also I was like oh wow this is like 7,000 likes already okay never mind shut up like go and so you know I just like just did it but it was like it it it talks about that same thing which is like some people think they need to have this like really great insight or amazing you know perspective or whatever and sometimes you're just providing a service better than others you're just clipping good content and you're posting it and you're doing that consistently and people will follow you for that you can build a huge audience as simply a curator or remixer of content you don't even need to be an original content creator I would say in most cases you do not need to be so that's kind of what this one was which was I just pull this was separately I just pulled out you know this this great quote you know by elon and and you know this is another one where it fits people's worldview my my audience is mostly entrepreneurs entrepreneurs love to have this chip on the shoulder this badge of pride about like how hard it is to be an entrepreneur which I find pretty stupid in general but I can play to it and so I played to it here which is like elon was like you know if you need words of encouragement for doing a startup don't do a startup oh yeah like you know that's right we are the special breed and like we don't need this you know motivational you know speeches whatever so I knew that this would play and so you know just threw out there and and sure enough it hits the other one that you shared was oh yeah this was meant to trigger people so everybody thinks that everybody thinks that things like education and health care are like highly nuanced topics and I find it also that really funny and stupid like I I think that nuance is something that smart people love to hide behind because it's so easy to just say oh well you know it depends and like you know it's it's not so simple it's not so easy it's not so cut and dry it's not so black and white it's not so binary they love to like do this this nuance thing and so I knew I could trigger everybody if I just said here I I could fix education in like a tweet and it's like oh classic tech bro thinks he could fix education in a stupid tweet and so you know I know how to like you know just bait the animals with like here you go right and it's something I do believe which is that most people when they wanna learn something they start by trying to learn it they go read about it they watch about it they go attend seminars and workshops or take courses about it and they'd be better off just going and trying to do the damn thing and then when they get stuck they should go look up how to get unstuck like I do believe that that's true but if I had just said that it would have gotten a tenth of the likes by adding there I fixed education I was able to trigger a bunch of people and so you know that was yeah these are the jedi mind tricks of the of the great content creators

Aadil Razvi

I mean, I really hear that you relate to Twitter as a game. It's not like a thing where you have to tell people what you believe exactly the way you believe it. There's a bit of a game that you're playing. Is that how you would relate to it?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, don't take it too seriously. I don't take anything too seriously, but I'm definitely not going to take Twitter too seriously. I barely take parenting and things like that seriously. I try to be playful, silly, and lighthearted with those too. So, I'm definitely not going to take Twitter too seriously. The other thing is, I'm lucky that Twitter is not my real job. I've basically been successful outside of content creation, so I have this security that allows me to just kind of mess around with content creation and do what I think is interesting. I'm not doing this in order to become successful, so I don't have that mental block of needing to play things a certain way. Sagar was talking about this too. Once you get to a certain size, whether you achieved it outside of content or even through content, you can start playing much looser. Your life is short, so just do whatever you want to do and say what you want to say. It's a lot more rewarding, fun, and interesting that way. You could do that; you could buy yourself that right. But most people have this mental block where they're afraid and take everything so seriously. It becomes an unpleasant experience for them. I think a lot of people don't enjoy social media because they don't treat it like a game. You enjoy games; you don't enjoy things that are ultra serious. So, I think that's where most people get it wrong.

Aadil Razvi

About that... having that block of like, "Oh, I need to get it right," I think is the kind of internal conversation that keeps people from even taking that action in the first place. So, let's see. We have this on student debt or this on CNN+. Which one would you like to chat about?

Saagar Enjeti

Oh, I like that one! That's a good one narratively. I always enjoy that. So, just for those who may not be watching, the failure of CNN+ and the lapsing of Obama's biopharma are related. So, why is this tweet successful? You take two viral events that are being discussed, you pair them together, and then you put a thesis statement on why exactly it supports a broader meta-narrative. **Shitty establishment content** previously forced-fed to us in the cable monopoly era simply cannot compete in the free market. The revolution has just begun. It's punchy. The thesis is that most of the people who follow me, and I think generally anyone below the age of 50, doesn't like cable monopoly and cable news. Obviously, there's a huge market there. You know, Balaji actually said, "Balaji's stream of auction once said something to me: always bet on charts." It's just you gotta find the right chart to bet on. So, I always say that the right chart for me is trust in the mainstream media, which is at 13%. That means my market size is 87% of the United States. So, I only have even more to grow. And if you include the globe on that, it's even bigger.

Shaan Puri

you're like man I feel sorry for cnn serving this niche 13% of the audience

Saagar Enjeti

poor guy

Shaan Puri

if they need some help I got you

Saagar Enjeti

It's about flipping things on its head. It's like, no, no, no, no. You're the one who is the only serving they need. So, putting these two things together—the Obama Spotify contract and CNN—both are legacy established political brands, kind of in their own right. Everybody knows them, but not a lot of people are consuming them. Then, putting them together and trying to describe a market condition that is arising can tell us about why these two things have failed. This goes against the way that people who actually work in professional media explain it. To date, I have not seen a dispassionate view, maybe out of one or two people. I can count on one hand: Sarah Fisher over at Axios, I think she's awesome. There's also Dylan Byers over at Puck News; I think he's a straight shooter too. Those two are pretty much the only ones I've seen with an actual rundown of why these things don't work compared to the amount of money being invested in them. The Obama Spotify contract is the same one. They paid the former President of the United States $1 million, and it just didn't do that well when he was paired with one of the biggest rock stars on earth. That's kind of insane. I mean, you have somebody who hundreds of millions of people know, and billions of people probably know his name. You have somebody who received hundreds of millions of votes collectively over two elections, and yet he can't even crack the top 10 on podcasts. How does the former MMA cage fighter beat this person? How is that possible? That's a very interesting story. Now, nobody wants to tell that story because, you know, when you work in the "quote unquote" powers that be, you're going to offend the wrong people. So, again, that's just a niche that opens up for me to come in and fill. I think that's why it took off. It's not even a difficult one really to explain.

Aadil Razvi

Cool, no, that's... I like that. Take two viral events, stitch them together with a thesis statement, and then cater to that 87% of the audience who doesn't trust the mainstream media. Very clever! Cool, well, let's go through some rapid-fire questions—tactical questions and some questions from the audience—over the next 5 to 7 minutes, and then we'll call it a day. Sagar, talk to us. You mentioned the strategy that you did early on, kind of just taking scripts of what other more influential people are saying. What were really the inflection points or tactics that took you from that first 0 to 100K, let's say on Twitter?

Saagar Enjeti

Okay, so, growing from 0 to Twitter is actually not that hard. Most people follow only a few accounts, so get those few accounts to follow you and get them to retweet you. 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 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 tweet the transcript, which means that they were all following me. This led to them retweeting me and exposing me to their millions of followers, which means that some people would then follow me. For me, I would say around 10,000 is a big jump. For some reason, in people's minds, it's like when you cross 10,000, that is a point where you're going to get exponentially more new followers. What I've discovered across all my platforms is that the more followers you have, the easier it is to get followers. This is so frustrating whenever you're starting out. You're like, "Oh man, 5,000 at that."

Saagar Enjeti

If I had 5,000 followers on Instagram, which once upon a time was the case, if I lost 50, I was like, "Oh my God!" I would lose 50 a day. Now, it's actually more like 100, and yet I'll net out at 1,000 a week or something like that. It's simply because of the churn and burn, the way that your algorithmic treatment is offered. So, I think 10 is a big inflection point. I think 50 is an even bigger inflection. That's where things really begin to go vertical. You know, this is probably the same in startups, which is just getting that first initial customer and then compounding that to a sustainable business. It's really the most difficult; it requires the most amount of thought. Because at the end of the day, that's where you're filling the niche, discovering the niche, and playing around. That's really the time for the most experimentation, where you have really high stakes. I would say it's there. Then, on the other end, 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. Frankly, I care more about Instagram than I do about Twitter. I think I have much higher quality engagement, just from what I've seen. My ability to sell either my subscription tickets or any of those things are there. So then it just became a complete game after that. I just genuinely did whatever I wanted. Those are kind of the interesting inflection points.

Aadil Razvi

Cool, yeah. I like the idea of finding... Look, there are a few accounts that everybody follows. It's almost account-based marketing at that. Where it's about getting in touch and making an impression with those nodes, those sort of super nodes in your industry. Sean, do you have anything to add?

Shaan Puri

that's smart I wish I'd done that yeah didn't have that insight but I learned something great today yeah mine was sort of like this 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 you know ryan hoover had a popular twitter and I had known ryan in person you know for yeah 7 8 years at that. And so once I started getting active and started saying interesting 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 and then that happened with like 25 important people in tech that were already well known but I had built in person relationship 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 and I didn't think about it like creating content that that serves them that they would wanna share with their audience I just thought like it just it just accidentally happens so you know sort of along the way the main things that I would say is like you know 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 but it's very tempting to be broad and I've made this mistake many times with the site 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 and actually you'd be better off just starting off starting off there then there's basically like some tactical things like you know for example there's this theory called the red pill theory I guess I think in politics this has a different definition but I heard it when I talked to the guy there's 2 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 a childhood friend who helps him run his businesses and andrew I talked to andrew and andrew was like yeah you need to have your red pill which is like you need to have the truth that you can say that peep that wasn't like it's not the thing everybody's saying but when you hear it people like some said the same way that people will nod their head vigorously right so what is the answer other people call this your spiky.

Shaan Puri

Of view, it's like, you know, what's your thing, right? Maybe your thing is that inflation is a way bigger problem and the government is playing this down. Boom! That's your red pill. You can base your whole brand off that for a period of time, and then you have to eventually swap out and create a second red pill, which is like you need to be giving people... By the way, "red pill" comes from *The Matrix*, where it's like, do you want to take the blue pill and go back into the matrix, living like a sheep again, not questioning anything? Or do you want the truth? That's the thing you're trying to give people—the truth in a way that they haven't been told. Then you can become known for that, and I think that's important. That's a very useful tool. I think some other tools are speaking from the "I." I found great success in this. A lot of people, the more successful they get, will just keep saying "you," like a fortune cookie: "Oh, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. When you feel this way, you gotta try doing this." It's much more powerful when you're like, "You know, 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." It's much more... I think in general, it's good for personal accountability to speak from the "I." But secondly, I think it plays really well into content because it's different from what everybody else is doing. So, the same thing—personal stories and speaking from the "I" I think works. But like the high-level things, you know, you could be either a generous expert sharing your knowledge and expertise, or you could be a curious novice. 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 them. You're remixing, packaging, curating, and presenting, you know, stuff as a beginner.

Shaan Puri

Of view, rather than saying "I know everything," you gotta know what areas you are an expert in and what areas you are going to be a curious novice. Then, use both in your content. The last point is: I don't know, don't quit and go viral. Ultimately, if you want to win, don't quit and find ways to go viral, or you won't grow. So, if you're only going to remember two things from the strategies: don't quit and go viral. I would say that is the takeaway.

Aadil Razvi

I could talk to both of you for another hour. This is awesome! Yeah, just the nuggets at the end are nonstop. I think we're going to create an illustration of this to capture a lot of those things, so stay tuned for that. Thank you both so much for spending your time with us today. This was a ton of fun!