all right I got a great question in my inbox this morning and it is from a guy named Tony L so he says Uncle Shan I love the nickname by the way Uncle Sean I'm leaning into that he said uh if you were starting from scratch building an audience again from zero today 2024 if you're starting again from zero how would you do it what advice would you give somebody like me who wants to be a content creator but has zero followers today Tony from Miami all right Tony I got an answer for you [Music]
so first I got to flash my badge I'm like an FBI officer who walks into the room and I got to show you my credentials if you're going to take me seriously so I've built a you know email following of over 500,000 subscribers I've built a Twitter following of 400,000 Plus on YouTube I think I have 500,000 plus subscribers this podcast has done over a 100 million downloads in the last four or five years so that's all in a four-year time span one University block and all of that has happened and I've learned some things
and what I'm not going to do today is I'm not going to give you either a generic advice like you got to be consistent and just be yourself right like okay sure but not very helpful obvious and not helpful uh so I'm going to share the counterintuitive things I've learned I wrote down nine so nine counterintuitive surprising things that I've learned I'm also not going to give you some generic one-size fits all advice I hate when people do this especially this sort of uh YouTube GW economy of of like here's the answer as if there
is such a simple formulaic answer that you could follow that anybody could follow right it's very personal and there's Art and Science is a blend it's nothing is guaranteed but I will share with you the wisdom that I wish I had when I was starting from scratch four or five years ago versus today knowing what I know now what is the wisdom that was surprising nonobvious that um I wish I could have just drilled into my brain then and if you're starting today you could take this now I'd also like to say that there are
many ways to peel the banana and all I know is the way that I do it maybe other people do it a different way they have had success but I can only share with you what's worked for me and how I think about it and you can choose if that fits for you if that resonates or not all right so here's the nine non-obvious lessons I've had building a big ass audience number one forget the numbers you want to focus on who follows you not how many people follow you Tim Ferris once said something that
really stuck in my head he says okay thought experiment would you rather have 100,000 Americans picked at random from across the country be chosen to read your book or have every member of Davos read your book and love your work obviously you'd pick Davos right you'd pick the higher value higher signal group of people this is a a general principle that I buy into which is that more important than how many people follow you is who follows you because the content you put out is who you're going to attract and this is hard to do
this is surprisingly hard to do the first reason is because the platforms shove the numbers in your face especially a platform like YouTube where not only do you see how many views every video gets all your audience members see how many views every video gets and you know that they're going to see it so it is very hard to block that out podcasting a little bit easier not everybody can see how many downloads of podcast gets only you can see it but every platform has some version of this Instagram Twitter whatever your your platform is
it is very very easy to start to chase the number so the bad news is it's hard to resist that the good news is it's hard for everybody else to resist that in fact they won't even try everybody else will fall into this trap and so it is actually a competitive advantage to completely ignore the numbers at the beginning and focus more on attracting the right types of people to your content who are you actually trying to trying to uh attract like I got a buddy he manages Hollywood Talent so when he writes a newsletter
it doesn't matter if there's a 100,000 people reading it or a thousand as long as the thousand people who read it are the right people they're people that either need his service or they're people that are like him agents in the game Talent managers that are very high signal and will become his future Professional Network right I'll use a car analogy as well which is dangerous because I'm probably the one guy on Earth who knows nothing about cars doesn't care about cars but I dabble so General Motors sells 2 and a half million cars a
year and is a like 50 billion is dollar company Ferrari only sells 13,000 cars 200 times less right 200 times fewer customers less reach but is at $80 billion company so almost double the value and so how is that possible where you can have 200 thou 200 times less reach yet still be more valuable and it's because Ferrari chose to be luxury they chose to sell to higher-end customers One customer for them is worth 200 for a average car company that's why they have much thicker profit margins and so on and so forth and there's
a principle there which is attracting the right customer one of the right customer is worth I don't know a 100 random or non-correct customers for you and I use Customer because in content whether it's a viewer a reader a follower they customers of yours you're producing a product they're consuming it let's call that a customer um so Point number one quality matter matters much more than quantity you might think you believe that but watch 95% of your attention will go towards your follower accounts your view accounts and all that other stuff resist this okay lesson
number two what should I talk about my trainer uh who I work out with every morning he's got these great phrases and one of his great phrases is the best product is just you push out to the world and basically like if I just turned you inside out and the whole world got to see what you are all about what you stand for that if you could just productize that this is me pushed out to the world that is the best product why because no one can compete with you at being you if you truly
just take your desires your interests your tastes your opinions and you package that and productize that properly you are in a market of one nobody else can match your taste palette nobody else can match your set of experiences prior experiences and stories and and nobody can match your delivery style as as well as your opinions and so the core thing you could do if you really want to be great and separate yourself in the content game is make the product you pushed out I call this finding your inner nerd so quick story I remember going
when I was younger to my uncle's house and we get to his house and he's like hey you want to see something and he takes me down to the basement and he shows me flicks on the light and he shows me this elaborate model train set that he has been working on for years like five years plus and it had all these little like the scenery the trees and the trains and it was I mean it was incredible and he's showing me this proudly he's beaming he's smiling and in my head I'm trying to smile
back but I'm like wow my uncle is the biggest dork in the world but in the content game you want to be like my uncle you want to Unleash Your Inner nerd you want to go go go down the basement and show everybody that train set that you've been tinkering with for a long time why is this well because the things that you nerd out about are the things that you know the most about it's the nuance indepth detailed overthe toop passionate obsessed that actually turns into great content you see this by the way on
platforms like Tik Tok you'll see a guy who's a tomato farmer and he's like all about tomatoes this guy thinks about tomatoes more than anybody in my city has thought about tomatoes and so that guy's got an obsession and an inner nerdom about tomatoes and the reality is that the internet is a geography vaporizer so let's take me for example if I just took my set of inner nerdy obsession sessions it's like oh man I really love on one hand I love startups and building companies and I'm I love going and reading old stories about
how the PayPal Mafia and leaked email transactions about how Zuck bought Instagram that's my I love that that's my Netflix right but then I also like basketball and I also like trashy reality TV I I like a bunch of different things now if I walked outside my neighborhood growing up and I tried to find somebody who had the same interest as me zero right there would be nobody who has the same set of weird obsessions as I do even if I took one of them like I like basketball but I don't just like basketball I
freaking love basketball I'm obsessed with basketball and there weren't really many people growing up that were as obsessed with basketball as I was they didn't find the jokes as funny they didn't find the the nerdy ex's and O stuff as interesting as I did the internet vaporizes all of that on the internet you go on there you will find your tribe you will find the 10,000 people in the world that are as weirdly obsessed about a single subject as you are right and um that's what works and so there are people who do this there's
a guy on Twitter I love die workware this guy just loves men's fashion and he will think about talk about and obsess about you know how long a pant leg should be on a men's suit something that I don't personally care that much about but he does and he has found his tribe online that's what you want to do with content on the internet you want to find your tribe by unleashing your inner nerd uh you get gets rid of competition and also by the way the secret here it makes success a guarantee what do
I mean by this normally if you come to me and you said hey I want to build a big following uh you know winning to me is becoming Famous online nobody really says this but that's what we all want winning to me is having a huge audience well if that's your only definition of winning you will almost certainly fail and even if you succeed you will feel like a failure for many years probably before that ever happens that's a pretty miserable thing like 1% odds of success if ever and in that 1% it still takes
years so every day you're going to feel like a failure however when you Unleash Your Inner nerd the benefit is you're just reading about stuff you're really interested in you're talking to people who are you know experts at the thing you really love you are learning packaging up what you learned and you're sharing it with the world and you're just really into that stuff and so every day feels like a win because you are talking about the things you are most interested in which just lights you up and so you shift the odds of success
to maybe 1% maybe many years down the road to every day 100% of the time I like those odds okay lesson number three build a magnet not an audience everybody wants to build an audience I think that's the wrong way of thinking about it the way I think about it is I am building a magnet a giant magnet that will attract like-minded people into my life so every blog every podcast every video it's a Honeypot and I'm just trying to trap like-minded people into coming into my Orbit and then I get to know them I
get to meet them and they start to um share things with me that you know they know that I like because we're like-minded and this has led to incredible deals you know for my business it's led to incredible friendships for me it's led to a faster rate of learning because people will start to send me stuff they know that I like and so I'm trying to build a magnet to bring people to me not an audience okay next one back in the category of what do I actually talk about there's an exercise that I'll give
you this is probably one of the only tactical things that I'm going to say like a everybody can literally go write this down and do this and it will make your content better and again I'm trying not to go super prescriptive because everyone's got their own voice you might like LinkedIn and another guy likes podcasting you can win there's a million different ways to win I'm giving you the Timeless principles and hard-earned wisdom but one tactical thing I will give you is an exercise you can do and I call it first last best worst weirdest
five questions first last best worst weirdest stole this from Matthew dicks um I added the weirdest one he did the the other stuff first last best works so what you do is you take any subject in your life like jobs you say first job last job best job worst job weirdest job and in each you'll just immediately come up with things my first job was I used to um coach basketball at a school for autistic and Asbergers kids cool my last job that I had was working at twitch my uh worst job was when I
created I I built a sushi restaurant and every day my hands were like covered in tuna my weirdest job was when I worked for this psycho billionaire in Indonesia who um too many stories to tell there but that guy so everybody has a version of and you could do that with relationships what's your first relationship your last relationship your weirdest relationship your best relationship your worst relationship you so you can do this with jobs relationships you can do this with side hustles projects whatever and that will create just this huge pipeline of personal stories that
you can tell because most people when I say all right what what do you got what's your content they have like one or two ideas it's like you should be idea Rich time poor maybe but idea rich and the way to get idea rich is a very simple exercise first last best worst weirdest and then you plug in different subjects and you'll suddenly be sitting in front of 200 personal stories that only you can tell and then you basically Circle the ones that you think have the most juice and then you that turns into content
for you all right next one a thing I wish I knew earlier the 5Ds so a lot of people want to be famous but I have learned over time that is the wrong goal Fame itself kind of annoying but there's something to it right like I don't think I want to be famous but I do want people to know me well what is that well I don't want to be well-known I want to be known well so what does it to know somebody well that's an interesting question I think it's you know their personal stories
like I just said their hopes their dreams their fears their obsessions they quirks uh that's what that's what goes into actually feeling like you you're known well and when somebody feels like they know you well they feel connected to you when they're connected to you that's when they subscribe to you that's when they pay for you that's when they show up to your Live Events and sell out Arenas that is how you build a truly powerful audience so the 5Ds what are they the first D done what have I done what's my track record you
should know that about me um that's a goal you should have as a creator that your audience should know what you've done they should know what you deliver meaning what do you offer people who follow you for example this podcast on this podcast I offer uh interesting business ideas so opportunities Trends business ideas uh business breakdowns I'll tell you about businesses you haven't heard of that are interesting that are either just cash flow monsters or you know they could be billion dooll companies in the future um I'll tell you about those I teach you about
those and the last one is Frameworks ideas much like this podcast here I am telling you a a way that I think about things that might be useful to you bring you Clarity um and bring you hopefully more success so that's what I deliver what do you deliver the third D do what do I do for work and what do I do for fun I want you to know that fourth dreams what am I shooting for what's my goal right if I said Gary Vee a very popular person who is very wellknown but also known
well Gary Vee wants to buy the Jets if you've ever followed Gary ve you probably know that Gary ve wants to buy the Jets and um that's his dream and by the way it's such a good dream so smart of him because a it's aspirational it's relatable wanting to buy own a sports team it tells you about him he grew up a miserable Jets fan it's also likable he didn't say I want to buy the Yankees which is like oh yeah of course everybody wants to buy the Yankees he's saying I want to buy the
loser franchise for my hometown and I want to help turn them around that's an admirable sort of like Underdog Underdog way of saying something that's kind of douchy in reality which is I want to be so rich I could buy a sports team so anyways you should tell people your dreams and the fifth one dork out out what are you really into what are what are you a nerd about what do you collect that's what you people should know about you so the 5Ds this gives you two wins your audience feels more connected to you
but also you get luckier it's weird I said that right luckier yeah that was a surprise to me too there's a certain type of luck where when people know you really well and they find something that they know you will find valuable or you could help them with they will reach out to you and it's almost like you were out there searching for it but you never had to leave your room uh the analogy here came from Nal that I really loved which was imagine you are known well you are known well you are known
to be somebody who loves diving deep sea for treasures and you were the best at this and you have done it several times you've shared your stories well when somebody on the other side of the world finds a hidden treasure buried deep in the ocean you will be their first phone call because luck will find you in that scenario and so that's uh something that comes out of the 5Ds okay this is getting kind of long right but you're still here that's weird well that's because there's another important principle which is there's no such thing
as too long only too boring so if you bounce find out it's because I'm telling you things that you don't find interesting you don't find insightful um or you don't find novel but if you're still here you listen to one guy on a monologue for this long you can literally hear my mouth drying up it's because I'm telling you things that are insightful that are entertaining and that are um useful to you so there's no such thing as too long only too boring next one I think I'm on seven um don't worry about writing style
or production quality if you're doing audio video the goal is not C minus content with a plus plus production it's A+ content with C minus delivery that's the starting point you should be going for that's the first Milestone of success I do not waste hours on packaging um or or perfecting my setup if you go look at the early versions of this podcast it's me in a bedroom with shitty headphones and shitty audio and literally the very first version of this I had like one airpod in like it was bad right go look at Joe
Rogan's first podcast here's a screenshot of it if you're on YouTube you can see it um you know it's literally Joe with a fuzzy webcam there's literally like a snowflakes like trippy effect on the screen like which is like so obnoxious there's a giant rainbow background behind him like today Joe's the king of podcast he's got a custom Studio but back then he didn't worry about all that he first conquered content then conquered packaging I see a lot of people get this wrong because they go look at people who are 10 years into the game
and they think oh that's how my [ __ ] needs to look no no no first nail content when you're confident you've nailed content then start leveling up your production number eight create a binge bank so at the beginning your numbers are going to be small mine were also small everybody's numbers are small at the beginning that is now normal natural and pretty much unavoidable it is very natural to start thinking at that point man what's the point of even doing this right nobody's even going to see this my last video got eight views you
cannot think about the eight views it will demoralize you it will kill your momentum that you need to build up instead the trick here is convince yourself no no no forget the eight views that's not what this is about I am building my binge bank so a binge bank is like your own personal Netflix binge worthy show it's an hour or two of your content that if somebody was interested they could go click the button consume it and be like man I'm a huge fan of this person that's the goal create an hour or two
of content that if somebody ever ever got there and of course they will why would they not you're you're awesome eventually people will show up that when they do that in an hour or two they'll walk away being like wow I love this guy this guy's awesome um so that's a trick to overcome the chicken and egg problem of having an empty room at the beginning is no no no forget the empty room I'm building my binge bank right now the last last two I'll give you here people don't want information they want a feeling
what does this mean so I think of any channel I create as a little shop in the world's most crowded flea market because that's what social media is it's probably the most competitive market on Earth more more competitive than the dating market right because there's billions of people on social media every day fighting for attention if you're going to be in that market you have to know what you're selling you're not selling things you are selling a feeling David Blaine when he creates his show he's not selling magic tricks he's selling the feeling of awe
James Clear who talks about habits he's not selling habits he's feeling he's selling a feeling of self-control a feeling of hope that I can actually turn my life around through dis habit stuff the UFC Dana White once said I don't I don't sell fights I sell holy [ __ ] moments out live on pay-per-view I love that uh Tony Robbins he sells a feeling of motivation CrossFit they they sell a feeling of a satisfying sweat and if you give people a feeling once or twice maybe they'll give you a follow but if you give it
to him every day for several years you have a lifelong fan and uh I figured out what I wanted to sell which was inspiration and I try to do it consistently meaning I want you when you listen to me you're going to be inspired either by a success story I tell you about about overcoming failure story about a personal story where I did one of those two things or I'm going to sell you inspiration around ideas like hey I think this can work or I think this tactic can work and you will feel inspired to
go take action that's what I try to sell why because that's the feeling I like so that's why I try to give other people and last one my bonus one be so good they can't ignore you I have had the fortune of becoming friends with Mr Beast over the last few years and if there's someone you want to learn content from it's Mr Beast it's the number one most watched YouTuber in the world and I love his attitude towards content here's the advice that Mr Beast gives whenever somebody asks him about how to be a
successful YouTuber he tells them go make a 100 videos and every video at on the 100 I want you to think of one thing you're going to do better than the last video maybe it's your hook maybe it's your title maybe it's your thumbnail maybe it's the storytelling maybe it's the editing Pace whatever doesn't matter what it is 100 videos improve each one try to make one be conscious about making one thing better each time I love this advice I love it for two reasons number one it's true and extremely useful advice but more importantly
it just shes people away because what they come to for is the secret sauce the answer and what he gives them in said is the path here's the way he teaches them to fish it immediately filters people out he says that like you know 99% of people when he tells them that he never hears from them again they never go to it so it kind of filters out the unserious people and there's a lot of unserious people in this life and the serious people it also works for them it shes them away too because by
the time they do the 100 improving one thing each time they don't need his advice anymore by the 100th one they've got it it's working it's cranking they're so busy they forgot about Mr Beast so that's why that is golden advice I'm doing that right now so this content that I'm telling you right now is something I wrote on a new content series that I'm doing so four years ago I started this podcast my first million I did it by myself I interviewed my friend suly as the first episode and I just told myself I
was going to try to do 50 of these episodes and I said I'm going to do 50 I'm trying to make one thing better every time similar philosophy I I used 50 at the time fast forward four years I've just started my first new content project since then which is a email Series so if you go to shanp perry.com you can see it you get to watch me do my 100 reps this is now rep number four all the content that I'm telling you today is something I just sent out in my email to everybody
who's on that list so if you like this type of content go to sha.com subscribe to it and you get to see me do these reps in public and you'll get more content like this if this is what flots your boat so I have a new content series where I'm like uh people email me and I publish the email chain so basically fans email me questions and I answer them and sometimes I email friends so like interesting people maybe an expert on the election or an expert on um whatever or like we're doing one with
LeBron james' trainer of you know say he's been training LeBron James since he was 19 20 years old and for 20 years he's been his personal trainer so we're doing a series with him where we email back and forth and we publish publish the whole chain for anybody to read it's really great it's kind of like the uh like the banter of a podcast cuz two people going back and forth but it's the ease and readability of a blog post so that's my my sales pitch for it but my Approach To That to making that
successful is exactly the same I'm going to do a 100 reps and every single week you will notice I I pick one or two things and I'm actually going to publish what is the one thing I focused on making better this week I'm going to publish that so that anybody can see it that is how I'm going to make that series great or I'm going to figure out that hey this is not for me but either way that is the correct approach to giving myself a chance of greatness and that's what you should do for
yourself the other thing I love that Mr B says is he goes a lot of people I hear them say oh man I yeah I'm trying my hardest I'm doing great but you know the algorithm I just can't you know I have to do all this stuff the algorithm doesn't like it the algorithm is not serving my video he says anytime you blame you say the word algorithm just switch it with the word people because you're blaming the algorithm the algorithm didn't like my video no no no people didn't like your video the algorithm is
just simply giving people videos they like if the algorithm is not giving them their video it's because they didn't like your video I think that's a very useful thing to know which is it's a skill issue it is in your control to make your content better to be so good that they can't ignore you all right I hope that's helpful if you like this uh type of content let me know in the comments here on YouTube and please go subscribe to my new email series it's called Good Friday it's stuff like this so if this
was really inspiring to you if this felt actionable felt insightful felt fun to listen to um check it out uh at shanp por.com I'll put the link in the description below and you can just type your email in And subscribe there's a little fun animation when you do it check it out Good Friday that's the the email series by the way why did I call a good Friday because I KN I noticed that most email newsletters are sent on Mondays Tuesday Wednesdays whatever nobody sends emails on Friday because most people hate getting emails on Friday
but for me I thought about this way what is the one good email I could send to somebody on Friday well it's a little bit of brain food something that is both entertaining and insightful that you could have going into the weekend it's that one good email on Friday and that's what I committed to I'm going to send a good ass email every Friday for the next 100 uh next 100 Friday so we'll see how that goes check it out and and uh thank you for tuning in [Music]
