Growth Through Genuine Interests

Shaan Puri and Sam Parr discuss their philosophy on growing an audience, emphasizing that audience growth should be a byproduct of pursuing genuine interests rather than the primary goal. They believe in leading an interesting life and sharing it, rather than optimizing purely for growth.

Key Points:

• Don't Grow an Audience for Growth's Sake:

  • Audience should be a byproduct of doing something else you really want to do
  • Better to scratch a genuine itch than calculate potential subscriber numbers
  • Focus on being professionally curious rather than strategically growing

• Content Creation Approaches:

  • Time Saver: Package and curate content to save audience time
  • Remixer: Take unrelated things and combine them in new ways
  • Original Creator: Develop independent theses and analyses
  • Lifestyle Influencer: Lead an interesting life and share 10% of it

• The Most Valuable Play Style:

  • Living an interesting life and sharing portions of it is the most unique approach
  • Anyone can read Reddit and Wikipedia to create content
  • Being genuinely interesting is harder to replicate

• Building Authentic Content:

  • Focus on doing "dope shit" and being okay at talking about it
  • Don't over-optimize for keywords and technical aspects
  • Lead an interesting life, learn interesting things, and share them naturally

• Personal Experience Example:

  • Shaan started his podcast to meet interesting people in San Francisco
  • Used podcast as excuse to connect with 50 awesome people
  • Growth came as byproduct of genuine interest in conversations

• Practical Advice:

  • Do interesting things and invite people along
  • Be at least somewhat competent at communicating your experiences
  • Focus on the quality of your life and experiences first, audience second