#211 with Julian Shapiro - The 3 Cheat Codes Startups Use to Print Cash

If you can't make the economics of an ad channel exciting. Can you at least A not burn money? While B Building a huge lead database that that likes you because your free thing or your cheap thing. I feel like I can root

Well I know. I put my law in it like my days off On the roadless travel, never looking back I'm actually uh I'm surprised you haven't been on this before.

If you like I feel like you're made for this in a way. Maybe. I mean I was doing pods for a while. Like I was trying like purposely to get on podcasts.

For like indie hackers, yeah, for like getting the word out about the manker. Then at some point I'm like This is cringe, man. Like I don't like listening back to myself. And so it's it took the process of actually

Starting a podcast. Uh we know in part thanks to also watching you do your your magic. to be like, you know what, I can just totally be myself, not to worry about it as much, and then stop being cringe. So now I'm all for it. And how how has it been since you launched the pot? So you launched uh What'd you call brains, right? Brains with the S or without the S?

Yeah, brains with the S. It's been good. It's been Because it It's 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.

So like I have to be so deliberate about can I be charismatic? Can I be interesting? And I'm not saying I'm there yet. But I'm saying I'm at least thinking about it all you know, in in in the in the context of trying to not bore people on a podcast. So it's been a really good forcing function. Okay, I like that. And uh Has it been. So you launched this podcast. You did it very methodically. You recorded like eight

Episodes with badass people ahead of time. And uh so you I feel like you were pretty thorough about how you went about it, or more so than me at least. Um Did it go the way you want it to, or where what did you learn? Yeah, I was thorough because I felt that I kinda had no choice. Cause I listened to a bunch of podcasts and found most of them to be like unlistenable.

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. And so my co host on the podcast, Cortland from Indie Hackers. He's like, What's going on here that special? Is they're not asking boring interview questions. They're literally just

riffing on ideas collaboratively. 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. 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? 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 in in a in a way we're my first million, but for everything outside of business, like writing a book, being a storyteller. You know what I mean? Yeah, and the episode I was on had uh

Uh Alexandra I don't know how you say her name actually. How do you say it properly? That's right. Chess. champion uh twitch streamer. So she's like Content creator, really interesting person.

Her content is about chess,'cause she's really damn good at chess. Um And so I found it pretty interesting. Like that was not what Like I've been on a bunch of podcasts. That's not usually what I get to to talk about or talk to

And uh so I immediately was pretty bought in just as a kinda guest on it. But anyways I wanted to have you on here because Uh, this is, you know, the pod for ideas and 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 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 on 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 uh uh in enough time in in the right group chat. So I feel like I've gotten to know you even though we have never met in person. Uh

But you are an idea person. Do you consider yourself an idea person? Um I s I see I think of myself as someone who just loves to brainstorm, but I I'm not as fixated on ideas, I think, as you are. Like I know you and Sam. love the treasure hunt. You love the chase. Like who's making money how? I'm more like All right, give me a problem. I want to solve the problem.

And so what I did for this show actually 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 could find. 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 cheat codes. Like ways that startups were printing cash and reaching unicorn status much quicker than one would think they should.

Okay. So That's something we can jam on. I got a few three categories there we can jam on if you 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. All right. So okay, let's kick it off with this first category. So I'm gonna give these funny names'cause I don't have good names for them.

So category one is give customers an absolute No brainer. So there's two ways to give them a no brainer that I've seen in a community. 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. that people are like, ah 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 Starting with giving away money.

There was this Product a long time ago called service. And what they did is they would give you money back. Any time that your flight was delayed. Uh 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. to give flyers some money back if their site was delayed. 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, we'll create like a VA army. We'll file the paperwork for you. You just give us your itinerary. We're literally Giving you cash.

Almost literally,'cause it's like credit. So the reason this was so clever Is for a s very simple reason. It wound up creating Some of the world's best performing ads. 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. The click through rates on those ads were astronomical. The cost per click were super low. Interesting. And they were able to yeah, to just skyrocket to millions of Madspend monthly very quickly.

And let me give you a couple more examples. More than just service could do. So another interesting example is a recent Y C company. And they're called Yada.

So what Yada does is they'll take your money just they're a normal bank they'll take your money you know they'll manage savings But because there's so low overhead. They they redistribute all of that extra potential margin. into lottery winnings for their bank customers.

So just by having more money in Yada. they're going to give you tickets to this vert to this real lottery that they run every single week. They give away millions? And you just you're automatically entered, you're just a bank card. No a no loss So imagine no loss lotteries called, right? Yeah, exactly. And just imagine their ads.

Like just think about the how compelling it is to position that to a lot of people. Who either love the lottery 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.

We got Main Street. That's the when you said it, that's the one that came to mind. As soon as you said Giv you know, cr basically 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 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 ad Main Street can run to people is Did you know that your not taking advantage of an extra, say, ten thousand dollars. In tax credits. Every year for your business.

It's like whoa, 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 Without being scam. Either give you f 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? And this brings us to this idea of like having a wedge in the growth world. We talk about wedges or even investing.

And if you can just use one of these products as a means to collect emails and happy customers very quickly. 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 um Or do not pay is another one that does this, right?

They uh 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 uh flight flight cancellation payback. There was one that was Hey, did you get a parking ticket in San Francisco? We'll fight 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, the cop filled it out wrong. And therefore you don't have to pay a d 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. Um, and I thought, wow, that's actually like A great idea and it got so popular That San Francisco banned them.

Um Yeah, pretty quickly after a few months because it was like being used so much. Same with service, by the way. service the airlines were like what what the hell's going on here? They just shut it and then close they started tightening up the policy. And so sometimes

That actual wedge can be a very flimsy one. Yeah. If you if you ran away with happy customers who now trust you for other products. Then maybe it was still an okay one. So I I wouldn't necessarily recommend these flimsy unsustable channels, but but Main Street does not seem flimsy 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.

Not These billboard apps. And so imagine being a business owner and someone comes to you and says, Hey, I'm gonna pay you, let's say Fifty grand a year. All you gotta do is put this billboard on your roofs.

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 was possible. It has become a crazy growth wedge.

Yeah, that's yeah, and there's you can basically create value out of thin air just by um Just but just by knowing the rules or connecting the dots. I feel this way about There's some bigger businesses that do this principle. Um one for student loan refinancing. It's just like hey. You're paying too much.

Just Tell us what you pay today and then we will find you a cheaper student loan. You just click a button and and boom, you're you change to this monthly payment instead of this one. I think uh common bond or something like that is one of those. And house free financing is another, but these require You 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. Um

And that seems like a pretty big opportunity to me. Absolutely. And and what this actually speaks to is This larger trend of Can you think of your product roadmap if you're starting a business? in unison with your growth roadmap.

Because everything we've just been discussing is basically A product feature. It's not like you're just running ads 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 Can you think of the

feature list on your product roadmap. Can you reprioritise it such that it facilitates Gros strategies like these. And that can guide you from built for growing a lot quicker as opposed to just you know living in the local maximum running in circles. So

'Cause we're ultimately talking about the idea of like a Trojan horse here for acquiring customers. In a non scammy and authentic way where you're really offering value. So The other half of this, by the way, is This idea I was mentioning of Super low friction.

So this the we're still under this category of giving customers an absolute no-brainer to exactly how do you become a no-brainer where it's like I don't have to think about this. So second subcategory. So first was giving away money. Second is super low friction. So let me give you an example. 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? If you're looking at a chair, it'll say you you didn't know this, but you can get twenty percent off. So That's brilliant because the Chrome extension is like a two-click process 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 verify via two factor authentication, verify your email address, none of it. You don't even have to remember to open the app, right? That's most apps you just f 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 flea on an elephant's back. Exactly, that's right.

And so If you could find a way to make something so painless. Where it's like two clicks that it forget it. The idea is that Now you're around.

Now you have a bunch of exposure opportunities. You keep popping up when relevant on web pages that The user's browsing. And eventually 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 you finally ask, Hey Can you make an account real quick before we give you this monster coupon? And now they're completely bought in and they've come to trust you. Yeah, that's smart. What uh what other Chrome extension ideas uh 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 it is a tough question, but One good example is Extensions in the SEO space. That give you data about web pages. 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 data's valuable. Um which which Chrome extensions Which Kermos do you have inf installed? I have similar web Which is what you're talking about, basically gives me traffic information about different websites so I can see how popular they are and where the traffic comes from.

I have MetaMask, which is a you know an Ethereum wallet. Uh or a crypto wallet. And then I have add block. Those are the three Chrome extensions I have, and I'm very particular about Chrome extensions 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 website that had their passwords sort of broken into. So it'll tell me if I should switch my password, you know? Um

And then I have um Uh oh, this awesome Twitter extension. That when I'm looking at someone's Twitter profile. It'll show me all of their historical best performing tweets so I get like a snapshot view of who they are and what they're known for. It's called uh T W E

M E S. Like Twe Max. I like that. Uh, that's pretty cool. I was thinking there could be a couple others. Like uh while you were saying that, I was thinking what what other x ray when you said 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 uh like the Twitter thing, but sort of like Anytime someone's name is on a webpage, if I just hover Can it just pop out a thing that basically tells me About that person. It's like here's you know Here's the Twitter profile you can click follow.

Here's some things about them, here's the wiki or whatever. So it's like You know, the quick who is this on any name on any website. That's one. The other is um 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 want to go to any product's website, any c any company's website. And be able to click this and see what ads are running without having to go open up the ad library. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love that. The um

The way I think about this this type of a question is like What type of Chrome extension's a framework for thinking about Which category of Chrome extension would be the stikiest and would people love to download the most? And I think about how to appeal to vice. Like how do I fuel the 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 the Chrome extension picks up a keyword. for a public stock or like some crypto token, right? Cryptocurrency, then it just suggests Um, like it gives you an x-ray into like how is performing, who else talks about it a lot, who should you follow 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. Cause when you do the educational route, really with any tool. Like, yeah, let's give X ray vision and let people know. Like Amazon's X ray vision to when you're watching a movie. It it'll tell you like what music is playing in the background. Who are these actors? Like do people really care? Maybe some. But it's probably.

Yeah, the the the um One more on this is uh 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. 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 of Apple stock, click here to do it. And uh maybe there's a way to kind of like use that roundup 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 is just look at every app on your phone and say

Could this be a Chrome extension? How would you do Robin Hood as a Chrome extension? How would you do blah blah blah. That's super clever. So to recap that You're basically saying as I'm browsing Like literally as them on Robinhood.com. Right.

Can there be an acorns that can there be some acorns like extension that's like, hey, why don't you spend a little bit more and actually invest directly in this company? Exactly. And get a sense of ownership and incentive alignment. Or even better, like, hey, we stick it the it pops up right as it's easy you're about to. Do a trade. It's like we see you're about to trade for like ninety-seven bucks. Do you want to roll this up, get the extra three bucks in Robin Hood itself? Yes. That's super clever. I love that.

All right, so that's that was theme one. Uh let's go to theme two. Sure. So let's see here. Okay. So this next category is Does encouraging people to use your product.

naturally encourage other people they know. 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. Okay. So

Slat connect. Dropbox, PayPal. Calendly. So what these companies have in common. Is when I use any of those products My use of that product.

Is better. If I invite other people onto it or share it with other people 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 co workers. And then Slack is something super brilliant.

called Slack Connect. where now I can invite non co workers, so people who exist like at different comp people who work at different companies. 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

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. So you're gonna do it without them having to Bribe me with five bucks. to invite your friends'cause you're gonna do it anyway.

Right. And then the back hash a product that growth. Is When your friends receive your invite or when you share that product with your friends. They have to feel that signing up for the product. is also beneficial for them. So let me give you an example.

Like if I Dropbox someone a file. They could just take the file as it is. But if they signed up for Dropbox.

Well now they're gonna get version history. Now they're not gonna have to store it on their hard drive or in the email. It's gonna be like this thing that they can more easily manipulate through the Dropbox software. Or let's say I'm sending someone a PayPal payment. 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. And for Calendly, same thing. Like when I'm sharing my Calendly link, you know, the software for Counterbooking. The person who's receiving the link has a much better experience if they themselves sign up for Cowdly.

because it'll show them when they have over overlapping time windows, right? That are free. So That's the trick behind product led growth. Both parties have to benefit. And if you look at the fastest growing companies of 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 makes Algorithm updates. Don't have to rely on like paid acquisition meaning ads. So if Facebook, if the CPMs rise, if the costs rise. And it's so healthy and robust and retentive. And so

That's the obvious part, though. So the less obvious part. Is this idea that I call billboarding. And billboarding is A subtype of product led growth.

That is my favorite because anyone can do it. You don't have to be a software company. And I'll give you the OG example of Billboarding. If I sign up for hotmail and I send an email. And you know where I'm going with this, which is there's that hotmail signature.

In the email, right? Or if I send with my iPhone, there's that sent from iPhone in the email signature, right? Right. And like how many millions of people every day get beaten over the head with sent from my iPhone. And It's just a phenomenal way to stay top of mind. So

And we also have the clear view example, the billboards from earlier. Like we were saying it was such a brilliant business because It was giving people money. But it's also brilliant because guess what they do whenever they put a billboard on? They throw their logo on the billboard. Right.

So that's billboarding literally in the truest like definition. And then I'll give you one last example. Which is my favorite because It's like blowing up right now. I can't stop. Like I'm I'm subject to it.

I can't stop seeing this. Oh 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 CryptoPunk's are an NFT. And if you go buy it, cool, you bought this digital file. It sits in your digital wallet. 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.

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 pun. And one person started doing it and 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. Uh 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 what makes your brand loyal to like why would you want to put a crypto punk as your Twitter avatar? Right. Or why would you want to wear Nike shoes? It's because you actually feel a sense of prestige. Like there's either social signaling, you're in the club. Or y you're signaling you have good taste. Right. Uh if you want to be the the girl or the the the the guy who wears Nike 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. For sure. And just because there's another crypto punk competitor. It doesn't necessarily mean that they can just take over through better marketing. because better marketing has a har will hit a hard wall.

against tribalism and a building identity around Something that people I think the way it plays out is With one 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 Sox

On Twitter right now you get Crypto punks or bored apes, right? Born apart 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 tr 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 billboarded? Yeah, Mercury's interesting because

Well, let me just back up here and wrap my head around. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So yeah, Mercury's 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. uh for startups. But not necessarily just startups. And it bec it's become the de facto startup that Y C companies use. So what happens is when Y C companies

go to demo day where they fundraise with investors. Lee Have to then send a link. There you go. Bango. 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 over sampling. I might be using a term wrong, but you'll get the gist, which is These V Cs

are seeing such a high percentage of startups using Mercury. that they're now under the assumption that everyone's using Mercury. Or at least 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. But is it really? Probably not. That'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 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 the world is not Silicon Valley. That's right. Yeah.

And if you're making the impression on a persona That is itself A distribution like lightning rod, like investors. Or like very high social signal like influencers.

If they get the impression of just them narrowly. Think that you're everything. 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 uh, you know, 50 year olds. Um that's that's growth trend too. So we got Trend one. No brainer.

No no no brainer, no loss offers. Cool. Uh trend two is the uh the the billboard effect. You know, either you intentionally create kind of a status symbol that people choose to flag Yeah.

Just in the act of doing business, you're attaching your logo into their world. Uh and so everybody that they use the product with Sees you, sees you, sees you until it becomes uh sort of like you know, a self it's a free ad, basically, that you're getting through your own customers. Um, what's number three?

Yeah, you got it. So Number three is self liquidating files. Which I know is sort of a silly silly sounding term. Um, 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 leviting funnels. So Did you hear 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? So self liquidating basically means you're offering Some type of product. That is secondary to your main product. So let's say you're selling a thirty dollar ebook.

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 product. Uh people will buy much more reflexively, like they're in the check out aisle a Grocery store. And it's cheaper. So lesser consideration purchase.

And um because more will I hopefully it will be a higher rate of purchase and a much quicker turnaround to purchase. It could make the economics of your Facebook ads, for example. Suddenly totally viable. Right. So

Imagine you're doing this just to break even. You're not trying to make money off it. The question is, what is the point of this? And this is where it becomes so clever. Is this a giant excuse? to print email addresses. 'Cause 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 Let's say a thousand, a hundred thousand emails. And now I'm playing the long game.

I've just come up with a fantastic source of lead gen. 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

Going back to my point earlier about If you think of your product roadmap in unison with your growth roadmap. What are the product features that can actually facilitate 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 Um or like potentially available to you cheat codes, albeit potentially very distracting ones. So there's a lot of things to consider, but 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.

Can you at least A not burn money? While B building a huge lead database that that likes you because your free thing or your cheap thing rather. Right. Yeah. That so you see this in content a lot. I think you do this Pretty well. I think you pl you have these like uh

Handbooks, I think you call them, on your website. And it's like Way more qu high quality than a blog post. Um, and so you send them that thing for free. grabbed your 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. uh 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. 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 kind of bakes in your cost of goods also, because it's like, you know, seven dollars. And it's 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 I gotta do is pay the shipping? That seems fair. And they're they're using that to get your um To get your information and then they're saying, 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 a after doing that. Mm-hmm. 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.com is what you're referring to, where I write these handbooks. Like a breakdown like how to write well, how to grow your startup. There's nothing being sold. Like there's some ads for not ads per se, but some some references to demandcurve.com where we teach people growth, but By and large, if I'm making money from demand curve.

Then I don't want to have to make money from the things I'm doing for pure enjoyment and that I'm using to build an audience. Like I want to build this. association that You can trust me that I'm never trying to sell you anything. And I think that's Not critically required.

But so healthy for the long term. And like you think of Paul Graham, like this, you know, the the writer, guru Y C founder that everyone looks up to. You know. In a million years, you would never expect him to have like a like a banner ad at the bottom of a blog post he writes'cause it'd be so out of character.

And we really compromise, 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 um Anyway, so yeah, that's but no that I'm not saying people have to monetize, they have to make a living. But if you make a living through other things, you don't have to make a living to the thing you're passionate about. Like when I see

Very rich people. Start podcast. And still run ads on their podcast. Like unless you're doing it to pay employees, awesome. But if you're doing'cause you're trying to make an extra buck.

It seems like it's totally Defeats the purpose of Liberty. Let's call let's call them out. Reed Hoffman, you're a billionaire. You created LinkedIn. You sold it for twenty billion dollars. Why does your podcast have ads? Uh and I know there I know the answer to it, actually, but uh 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 Uh 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. is is money. And I do a lot of things for likes. The podcast is free. All that's good stuff. But if I do something like a course where I'm actually going to 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.

Um, and the last thing is I uh I do this to get myself more excited about it. So I'll set A um A a reason a a a goal for the money. So I'll be like, Okay Like this right now, th with this course I'm doing right now. I was like, all right, I want to do two things.

Um I wanna be able to uh I made a list of ten people who've been just awesome to me in life. And uh 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 uh What they would be expecting in this case.

The second thing is I want to um Uh I'm I'm really trying to get in shape and I was like I want to 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.

And I o 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?

Um okay cool. So if I sell, you know, if I do a hundred thousand dollars of profit in this course. That pays for A year of a chef. And now I got excited about it. So it made me more excited to actually do the thing than just my benevolence. And maybe it's because I'm Kind of a

uh a greedy or selfish person, uh 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 uh I'm gonna go buy, you know. Uh you know, go by. A bunch of crypto punks, 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, if but when I have a target. The uh 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. Um, I see it a bit differently and my different way is not a better way. And my different way is

I like I see I see what I spend my time on outside of like earning a salary through demand curve.com in the context of A craft person. And so I don't want to do anything, even if it's for like some extrinsic goal like getting a chef. Um Unless I I would be happy doing it if I got nothing else from it. Like the process itself is the reward.

Um and I feel like it took a really long time for me to figure out what those things are in my life. Where the process alone is Really rewarding. So yeah, yeah, it's just like It's such a beautiful thing if you can find it.

Um And and like I was going through this binge on YouTube where I was watching videos of creators uh and like artists and musicians in the process of making their music Uh like the if you Google uh if you search YouTube for Ariana Grande. I forget the name of the song, but she's big Are you are you on a Grande in studio? Dude, I I've gone down so many rabbit holes of this. Uh there's a and Shearn documentary if anybody wants to watch on Apple Plus of him making his uh

On Apple TV plus or whatever. of uh him making his album 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 you know, uh, you know, love yourself or whatever becomes one of these like hits today. And you can see him just trying to like humming and being like, Oh what if I said You know, blah blah blah. And then he's like figuring it out live. God, that that stuff is like

Yeah, 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 John Mayer 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

Is 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. with doing this for and the reward is can they come up with something awesome. So

Um Yeah, the the the the flip side of that is The flip of that is you don't want John Mayer to have to build demand curve as a business in order to fund his m musical pursuits. And so I if if if this is the thing you love the most and you want to 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 then I need teaching to be sustainable so I can set spend all my time on it. I could hire the best people for it. All those things, right? So I think that's the Yeah, yeah. Do you have any kind of like, yeah, other backup stuff as far as opportunities or ideas or things that

Contract. I have one. Maybe we'll keep it quick because I don't know if it's what you're going to 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. Cool. So um Okay, well actually have I told you my thoughts on Like what goes into making awesome content like this podcast.

No. Break it down. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I feel like I I feel like I I don't remember who I was telling this to. So the short of it is I think there's this curse of overcoming frequency.

And when I was going through like all the content creators that I see the most love profess for Like wait, but why? Or Paul Graham, who I mentioned earlier, everyday astronaut. Right. What they all have in common is they don't publish content

on a set frequency. Like literally the slogan for WayPut Y.com, this great blog. that people love is new posts every sometimes. At the end of the everyday astronaut videos will be like The next video will be out. When it's ready.

And like Paul Graham will post at a very erratic schedule. What they all have in common Is they're publishing when they truly have something to say. They're not publishing trying to hit a deadline. Which I think is a trap because you're then forced

To try to be a creative genius. on account, on a schedule, which is like near impossible. Now w what do you make of the like Casey Nistat uh Mr. Beast or whoever. These guys that basically they made their their bones and their following by Doing a daily vlog and they got they chose to get on that they chose to handcuff themselves to that treadmill.

And the fans kinda loved that. And their premise was different. It wasn't this is great, it's this is everything. Yeah, I think it's a great question. So I it's a good counterexample. I think this general idea I'm getting to is almost domain specific. Like it depends what you're trying to sell. If you're just offering people like cheap, awesome entertainment, like moneyways. 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 Way Put Y or James Clear or Morgan Housell, if these authors And you're trying to come up with something original and novel to say. 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.

Maybe, but at some point you run out of awesome guests or ideas or you get burned out. And so The reason this is on my mind is because What I realized Is there's this weird myth.

That in order for you to succeed as a podcaster. Or vlogger or content creator or whatever. is you have to have a very consistent and high frequency of output. But that's not true. This is like some nineteen fifties Madman era.

like billboard impression crap. Yeah. It's like it doesn't exist with the internet. It's not the same See matter of factly. Like if you look at Like my Twitter account. I think I got to like 200,000 Twitter followers and I tweet once every 14 days, like twice a month. I literally I literally send two tweets a month.

Um People aren't forgetting who I am, but if the quality's high the staying power so much better. You don't have to be pumping out all the time. Right. I'm like wait, but why? I think he didn't post anything for like eight months. You know what I mean? So I just want to sort of encourage people on this on this momentary platform of My First Million.

that um really beautiful things happen when you can rise above this content overload that we live in, if you Focus more so on quality. See. Quantity is useful for yourself. Like if you're trying to get good at something, do to high frequency.

But that doesn't mean you have to publish everything. Um, you can keep some back and do it for yourself. So anyway. That's my little rant on uh 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. 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

Doing something awesome. You can just grab people riff on ideas and it's a lower threshold, but still incredibly hard to do, don't get me wrong. And so I just yeah, I I just I just find this whole topic so interesting because so many people are pumping out content with like the wrong Framework.

Yeah, yeah, and I think there's many ways to win like I think you typically want to be on either end of the spectrum, either Um light touch. high frequency so um You my the th I'm comfort. I'm like friends. There's a million episodes you can go through and they're all all right.

Um, 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 Yeah. I find that If you're gonna choose one strategy. polarized either end of that and focus on

Quality? Um or focus on uh frequency. And um And i 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. Um As far as I've seen in terms of in terms of w how content goes. By the way, tell me uh uh share with people your thoughts on uh 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. And I was like, this is such a Julian thing. So so share share with people kind of your what you've scene or how you break that down. The whole idea of bio, which sounds really lighthearted, but In reality. How you

Talk about yourself matters. To yourself, like your own self concept. But how you talk about yourself to others, how you present yourself to others. It's like it seems frivolous until you gotta go write one. And then you sit down and you're like fuck. I have so much uh to say, then I have nothing to say at the same time, and it all sounds bad, then it sounds too braggie, then it sounds too unimpressive.

How do I do this? And so give give me give me your thoughts on Bios. 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. Which is Write your bio.

To justify why people should follow you. By the way, this this is pr this is stick with Twitter for now. That's what we're talking about here. So write your Twitter bio. that justifies why you're differentiated and worth following. What do people get from following you? So for example, mine is something like I deconstruct I'm literally reading my bar right now, so it goes like this. I deconstruct how things work.

Like storytelling and critical thinking. And I share my learnings along the way. Okay, so you know you're getting now. And the reason this this distinction's important Well actually let's compare and contrast.

So the typical bio is something like Forbes thirty under thirty. Two X founder, three X father, five X Christian, like all these all these stats. You know? And it's and it's like

This doesn't tell me anything. It's just virtue signaling in to some respects. And I don't know why I should care. So the second part of this. Is it's not just why they should follow.

But also What is the minimal amount of social proof? To justify Why you talking about the topics you're saying you'll talk about? You actually are

qualified to do so. So so so you're you're kinda saying What are you gonna get from me? What's in it for you? And why you can trust the source the just enough to get you to trust, not everything. Bingo. And it's what's interesting about this question, actually, Sean, is that

You're fundamentally asking me A growth marketing question. Which is hey, if I look up my Twitter account, my Twitter profile. And if we think of it as like a landing page for my startup. What would you do to modify either one to increase conversion? So in 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. And maybe it's a fun exercise we can walk through because it just shows how to apply the lens of growth marketing. 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. If I'm presenting the public with A page of any sort.

What are all of the elements that surface on that page? 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. It's like 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 talk about storytelling and critical thinking, so My pinned tweet is exactly It's just a tiny little blog post little essay. Yeah. Exactly.

Exactly. So That's your surface area. Um, 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 uh 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? Um or the blue check mark, right? That's that's another signal that that you could you could have or or not have, not fully in your control, but That's what counts towards conversion. All right. I I like that.

Um wait, Sean, tell me about your blue check mark journey. Didn't you were doing something in iMessage about your blue check? Uh 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. Uh I don't remember. Was it something else? Okay. No, I remember you had a story about trying to get it. Never mind. We'll skip it. No, if you remember it, say it. I I don't remember. Maybe you maybe you're mixing me up with somebody. No, that that that actually might have been this it might have been the world's worst story. That might have been it. So never mind. Fair enough. Fair enough. Um okay, I think we can we can uh 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.

Where does Julian go? W how does he spend his time? What What would excite you if I gave you all your time back? 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 is Mm.

Like the thing I actually came to the US to do from Canada. was to try to make movies. And so that remains the thing that I find So interesting because it's I I don't have a good it's gonna be hard for me to explain 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.

Are how resourceful, how creative and how Sort of Um Uh well really those are the two key things. Resourceful and creative you can be and do you have a good sense of taste, right? Right. And I love that forcing I love that burden on my shoulder to try to crack what I see as one of the hardest.

problems the intersection like creative and business. So 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, action, drama. in the artistic, you know.

Documentaries, what are you talking about? Well, I'll tell you I'll give you four movies I absolutely love. And I think it'll answer the question. So Whipple Ash. Incredible fiction film.

Yep. Um The Prestige, uh Christopher Nolan's film about magicians. Uh And then a documentary on Netflix, which I I'm so stoked I get to tell people this,'cause some will actually go Well that enough people will listen that it'll get some views? Searching for sugarmen.

on Netflix is The best documentary I've ever seen. And then the last one I'll recommend is who's that one about? Okay. So this is really tricky, Sean, because The entire movie is a spoiler. So I'll just say I'll just say this. I'll say It's about a musician.

That disappeared off like the face of the earth. Um And Where he went to and how he came back. And uh Fuck, you should cut that. I'm giving spoilers. You should bleep that. You gotta bleep the and he came back.

Uh but the last thing I'll say is a counterpart. Which is um this amazing show on Amazon. It's my favorite T V show. Maybe ever. kind of part's amazing. It's a it's like a James Bond type thing it's growing. Okay, I've never heard of that. Uh I'm not pitching anything Welsh on I suck at this. Well it you're great at things until they become very personal. Like when it's like what do you really want to do in your heart of hearts? 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.

The pressure in your head goes so high of how do I sell this right without ruining the the first time magic of experiencing it. Um you almost create a a a a uh Pressure cooker for yourself here. So um okay, so what you wanna do is you wanna make you wanna make a movie about uh You know, searching for Bobby Fisher style, right? Uh about you know k Kobiyashi the uh the competitive eater. It's like

Greatness slash enigma slash prodigies. Um And like, you know, with an with a dash of sort of drama and mystery. Dude, well, I knew I could rely on you. Yes. Well pitched. Um, yeah, I just love this stuff. I just I love making it. I love watching it, I love people I love seeing people watch it. How about you? I'm curious I want to flip this around on you. What would you do? If I could do anything right now, um Yeah.

I would basically take Like little three to five year arcs of my life. This is what I think I'd do. I'd take three to five year arcs of my life. And I would go try to do A really fun thing that I don't do, so I would

One would be um stand up comedy. So I would try to create a set. That actually is good and I would figure out how you do that. learn the cr learn the tr the trade, I would go to shows, I would do all that. I would um I would coach a basketball team.

And I would try to like be a high school basketball coach and uh And just give it my all and I'm doing doing that. I would um You know, like one is i I don't actually want to make a show, but I do wanna write a script. I've actually Trying to do that right now, uh trying to write a script for a uh a mock episode of The Office.

Uh, which is a lot of fun. And uh I would try to make a song, like a hit song. How do you make a catchy Hit song that pops off. Uh 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 would try to write a book, I would try to create a um a brand of a drink or a Chips bag or something like that. I would just take these like little mini mini challenges. That are three to five year sprints. I would go really deep in them. try to win and then I would l come out the other side and I would basically switch careers uh each time I do them. I love that. So you you wanna you wanna break up your life into chapters. And you want each to be a very creatively fulfilling thing where you're

Like maximum using Um, actually not necessarily,'cause the the high school basketball coach is a really cool one. It's a nice counterbalance to the creative screenwriting thing. Yeah,'cause it's not all about making a song and making a a standup set. It's like Things that I just think would be really fun if you did them. Um Which typically is creative, but sometimes it's not, right? Like sports is its own thing, competition is really fun, leading is fun.

Strategy is fine, all that good stuff. What's stopping you from being a comedian in the next fifteen years?'Cause what stopping you from making the time to do it? Uh nothing. I'm just occupied right now. Like I'm doing things. I got a business I'm running and Uh this content arm. So 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 kind of 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. And um I don't know how to do it. But I hit up my friend who writes for a T V show and I said, Hey Can we jam next Thursday and Sh tell me how you write an episode of TV. Like that's what I'm trying to do.

So I'm t I'm doing little like you know tiptoe in the water. But uh To do it for real the way I want, I would um Like I I'm gonna clear my schedule for for like a two two year period. You won't hear about me. And then I come out the other side, uh, you know, with some some story to tell.

The you know how fun it would be for all of us is watch you go do a set. I would one hundred percent show up live. I would be the loudest laugher, even if it was artificial. I would one hundred percent support you. Um, do that would be I kinda wanna live through Sean. This is something I w 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, uh 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 Like not skip that part. Because uh

Like I already m I already made the baby, so I already did the hard part. Now now I just have to like stay there. Don't but don't busy myself doing something else. Just stay here and actually do a dad bit. Well, what I will say is if I've learned anything from comedians Endlessly talking about Wow their process. It's that 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 I'm Yeah. I'll give you two. So I was in the shower the other day and I wrote down two pieces, uh two pieces of content and I texted it to some guy who is a comedian. that uh is is pretty famous comedian. I don't know him very well, but we kind of we text or DM a little bit.

And I said, Hey, I got two little nuggets for you, two two little truths about life. I think you could turn into jokes. Here they are. And um it's just they'd come to me while I was in the shower and one was Um 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? I say yes, I say no, there is no consistency, there is no logic, there is no strategy. And like N nothing is a more panic moment than whatever the fuck I do when they ask me do you want the receipt or not. And why like w why do we do that? Why why does nobody have like any kind of uh consistency with that? The second one, uh the second one I sent him, it was uh oh, racism. It's like People think America's really racist, um, and there's racism is a big problem.

And when you think of racist, like if I say racist, uh you know, think of a racist. What image pops into your head? Um the Klu Klux fan member. Right. So you know, you think of the the the Klu Klux the KKK like a white guy in a white hood Or you think of like, you know, uh uh 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 uh And it just occurred to me like I 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, like they'll just straight up tell you, like, you know, some pretty like, hey, can I marry, you know, a person of this race? And it's like Um no and here's why. And and so I just it sort of occurred to me that

Nobody's more racist than a Chinese grandma. And uh, and so I was like, you know, that's a truth about the world that I believe. Then I was like, okay, these are nuggets I want to 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 I learn 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, as opposed to just a smirk on my face. Right. And this is where it gets so fun to sit down and reverse engineer like Dave Chappelle. Um, the in this is actually one of the podcast episodes we did uh storytelling.

is you're trying to reverse engineer what makes such a great storyteller. And it's like setting up the stakes, the hero's perspective, all these cool ingredients, the climax, the twist, right? Um And and that to me is the joy. That's gotta be the most fun part, I think, is you figuring out how to craft it. And then the people who totally buck the trend, like Mitch Hedberg.

I guess he does he has a joke that's sort of like your receipt joke. But my point though first is He's like not really doing it 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.

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 uh people who uh 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. I I remember that always stuck in my head. And like I can't do the I can't deliver it like he can, right? That was pretty good. He got me to laugh. Actually there's a thing you There's a thing you had put out in your uh storytelling thing, by the way. You you you said, Oh, here's all these elements, but the one that stood out that I actually was telling Then uh my right hand man, I was like, Hey

Uh, Julian had this thing that I think is spot on, and we should Thank you I think I I do this to an extent. I think you should do it more, uh, but like we can we can all do this more. You were saying something like The best storytellers When they tell a story, it's almost like they're blowing their own mind.

Again. live they are they are surprising themselves again they're they're or in a comedian's case they're making themselves laugh they're cracking themselves up And um The extent to which you can genuinely blow your own mind repeatedly or crack yourself up repeatedly. Is pretty much

The extent to which you can deliver a story or a joke. And um 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 came the way I realized that is there's this person we interviewed on the pod called Jason Silva.

Who for my money Is the most charismatic person on YouTube. Jason Silva and I was sitting there should reverse engineer what made him so damn good. Then I eventually got him on my podcast. And I asked them like what's going on here.

And he said Julian, before I even turn on the camera. I first make sure I'm in a mental space. Where I'm experiencing the idea I'm about to talk about. Like I was for the very first time.

'Cause all of his videos are like interesting philosophical concepts. And so he sits there and he's like Oh yeah, that's what was so fucking. mind blowing about it. He like chews on it. Let's 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's the person'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 it no self consciousness, 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. By your own enthusiasm. And then people people just love seeing that. It's so authentic. Yeah, exactly. We the it was 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

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 will crack you up now. And uh I I love that. I thought that was a great great little hack, great little deconstruction uh on your part. Um All right, where should people so Twitter is at Julian.

Uh Julian.com, your branding is is kind of a male amazing. Um where else should people follow you? Yeah, sure. So really it's uh Julian dot com. And then demand curve dot com is where uh 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 want to see Sean himself on my pod, uh there's brainspodcast.com. Yeah, that's right. I think I'm on two two episodes of it. So uh Yes, dude. So we call you an honorary brain.

Because Corner and I love you so much for like All right, even though it's kinda weird to have one person twice in the first six episodes. There's no one more lovable and charismatic and just fun and interesting and juicy mental models and like a bag of 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 on. It's awesome. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Uh all right, sweet, we're out of here. All right, peace.

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