Content Justifies Learning

Shaan Puri shares his perspective on content creation as a way to professionally pursue curiosity and build an audience. He emphasizes that content creation should be driven by genuine interest rather than purely monetary or growth motivations.

Key Points:

• Content Creation as Curiosity Justification:

  • Uses podcasting/content to justify spending hours researching topics of interest
  • Provides a purpose and endpoint to curiosity
  • Allows one to be "professionally curious"

• Audience Building Philosophy:

  • Don't grow an audience for the sake of growing an audience
  • Audience should be a byproduct of doing something you genuinely want to do
  • Better to create content from genuine interest than calculate monetary returns

• Personal Example with Podcast Origins:

  • Started podcast knowing likely no one would listen
  • Primary goal was to meet 50 interesting people in San Francisco
  • Used podcast as excuse to connect with interesting people instead of coffee meetings

• Content Creation Approaches:

  • Time Savers: Package and curate content for others
  • Remixers: Combine unrelated things in new ways
  • Original Content Creators: Develop independent theses and analyses
  • Lifestyle Influencers: Share 10% of an interesting life

• Success Strategy:

  • Focus on doing interesting things
  • Share experiences naturally
  • Followers will be people who genuinely love what you do
  • Don't try to conform to what the market wants

• Quality Evolution:

  • Standards keep rising with experience
  • What was sufficient years ago now feels inadequate
  • Push for higher quality as audience grows