Good Friday - August 16, 2024

This week - it’s an Ask Me Anything (AMA) - you ask questions. I answer.

We got over 200+ questions from readers - but there was one that stood out from the rest. So I answered it and turned into a whole blog.

Alright, let’s boogie.

Q: Uncle Shaan! If you were starting from scratch and building an audience from zero in 2024. How would you do it?

What advice do you have for me as a content creator who’s just getting started?

-Tony from Miami

Tony! You hit me with a question so good, I'm not even gonna bother asking if your real name is Tony or Anthony

First, let me flash you my credentials like an FBI officer flashes their badge when they enter the crime scene.

In the past 5 years, I’ve built audiences of:

• 500k+ email subscribers

• 400k+ twitter followers

• 500k+ youtube subscribers

• 100,000,000+ total downloads of my podcast

And not just for me. I did it for me, my company, and my podcast.

So while there are many ways to peel a banana, all I know is the way I do it.

I’ll skip the obvious advice (eg. be consistent, etc..) and share the 9 non-obvious lessons I've learned building big-ass audiences. Here we go:

LESSON #1: Forget the numbers. Focus on WHO follows me, not HOW MANY people follow me.

Tim Ferriss once said this, and it stuck in my head:

…obviously the latter.

Obsessing over the number subscribers & followers is like watching grass grow - time-consuming and doesn't speed up the process.

I try to ignore numbers. Instead, I focus on who loves my content.

By the way - this advice is surprisingly hard to follow.

First, the platforms shove the numbers in my face. And on YouTube, it’s worse. Because I know that everyone else can see the numbers too.

But the good news is, everyone else falls into this trap too. It is actually a competitive advantage to ignore the view counts and focus on quality instead of quantity.

I’ll give you a car analogy. (which is dangerous, because I’m the 1 man on Earth who knows absolutely nothing about cars…but I’ll give it a try)

• General Motors sells 2.6M cars a year and the company is worth $50B.

• Ferrari only sells 13,000 cars a year but the company is worth $80B.

Ferrari has 200x LESS customers than GM, yet is still more valuable.

Why? Because they are luxury. They sell to high end customers. Every 1 customer for them is worth 200+ customers for their competitors.

Similarly, if Elon Musk loves my blog, that 1 reader is worth a lot more than 100,000 TikTok views from people who pick boogers all day.

Quality matters more than quantity.

LESSON #2: What should I talk about?

My trainer has a great motto: “the product is just you, pushed out”.

I call this - finding your inner nerd. 

What is the thing that you nerd out about the most? The thing you have an insatiable thirst for? The thing that looks boring, or even like work to others, but feels like play to you?

I remember going to my uncle’s house one time, and he took me down to the basement to show me his (don’t worry! it’s not that kind of a story)… model train set.

Every night, he’d spend hours in the basement, tinkering and assembling an elaborate train set. He flicked it on, proudly, and the train went in a circle. He was beaming at me with a huge smile, while I thought to myself… “wow, my uncle is the world’s biggest dork”.

But actually for content, I wanna be the basement model train guy.

Except instead of doing it in the basement, take the thing I nerd out about, and do it publicly for the world to see.

That’s why you see huge creators that do the most random stuff. 

Like the “die, workwear!” guy, who just loves nerding out about men’s style. He writes 1,000 word analysis on what pant length men should have on their suits. And it’s fun for him!

This does two things:

1. It eliminates competition. Very few people have the same taste palette as me.

2. It makes success a guarantee. If my only way of measuring success is “am i famous with millions of followers yet?” - I’m going to be unhappy for a long time (probably forever). But if I unleash my inner nerd, I’ll be having so much fun everyday, every day feels like a win.

I shift the odds of success from 1% to 100% because I win by playing (vs. only winning by winning).

LESSON #3: Build a magnet, not an audience.

I think of content as a giant magnet. It should attract the type of people I want in my life.

Every blog, every podcast, every video should be a honeypot to find like-minded people.

The internet is a geography vaporizer. I love watching old Berkshire Hathaway meetings, playing basketball, and building startups. There’s not a single person in the neighborhood I grew up in that likes those things.

The internet makes it easy to find the 10,000 people who share my flavor of weird.

My goal is to build a magnet, not an audience.

LESSON #4: Remember the 5 D’s

Most people want to be famous. But I have a different goal...

I don’t want to be well known. I want to be known well.

What does it mean to know me well? I have to share stories, hopes, dreams, fears, & obsessions.

I call these the 5D’s. 

*Done - what have I done? what's my track record?

*Deliver - what do I offer people who follow me?

*Do - what do I do for work? for fun?

*Dreams - what am I shooting for? what’s the dream? (eg. Gary V wants to buy the Jets)

*Dork Out - wwhat am I really into? what do I collect?

This gives me 2 wins:

1. Audience feels more connection (because they know about me)

2. I get luckier.

Luckier? Yeah, that surprised me too.

By sharing the 5Ds, my fans know…

• what links to send me (obscure stories of rich people)

• what books to recommend to me (i’m studying comedy & storytelling right now)

• and what deals to send me ($1m+ annual cash flow, bootstrapped, but need growth help)

LESSON #5: OK, this is getting long. But you’re still here. Weird, right?

That’s because there's no such thing as too long, only 'too boring'.

LESSON #6: Don’t worry about your writing style or production quality.

A+ content with C- delivery is a great starting point.

C- content with A+ delivery is a death trap.

Don't waste hours on packaging. Instead, spend years living an interesting life so that you actually have something interesting to say.

Just look at Joe Rogan’s first podcast episode:

Ugly webcam, snowflake video effects, and a rainbow background.

Fast forward to today, Rogan is the King of Podcasts.

Why? He focused on content first, and packaging later.

LESSON #7: Create a binge bank.

At the beginning, my numbers were small. Which led to doubts. I started thinking to myself… “What's the point of even doing this?”

Here’s the trick. Instead of thinking about the 8 people that will view my content today - I told myself I was building a binge bank.

A binge bank is like a personal Netflix binge-worthy show. It’s 1 hour worth of content, that if someone consumed, they would love me.

So I tricked myself into thinking that in the future, people will discover my content, click to learn more, and fall into my binge bank.

LESSON #8: People don’t want information, they want a feeling.

I started thinking of my channel as a little shop at the world's most crowded flea market.

I’m not selling things, I’m selling a feeling. 

David Blaine sells the feeling of awe. James Clear sells the feeling of self-control. The UFC sells “holy shit!” moments, live on PPV. Tony Robbins sells motivation. Crossfit sells a satisfying sweat.

Give them the feeling once or twice, and you’ll get a follow.

Give them the feeling every day, and you’ll get a lifelong fan.

I figured out which feeling I wanted to sell, then did it consistently.

LESSON #9: “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

I’ve become friends with MrBeast over the past few years - and I love his attitude towards winning.

Here’s the advice he gives when people ask him how to become a successful YouTuber:

This is amazing advice because it works, and because it shoo’s people away. (Almost nobody actually takes the advice, so it gets rid of the unserious people right away).

And for the people that do take the advice… by the 100th video, they don’t need MrBeast’s advice anymore. They’ve figured it out by themselves.

He also has a great line for people who whine and moan about the ‘algorithm’:

The algorithm simply serves people videos that they like to watch. If you’re failing, it’s a skill issue.

Remember, content is a skill. It’s a muscle that can be developed. It takes reps.

And if you want to win, the foolproof strategy is simple: become so good they can’t ignore you.

That’s a wrap for today’s Good Friday.

Now do me a small favor… tell me what you think!

I wrote it. You read it. How was it?

P.S. - we’re gonna be posting these weekly on the blog too.