I'm dividing the written content on this site between the 'blog' which is a collection of more thoughtfully produced articles and the 'journal' which is more raw and reflective.
This seems to be a trend among a lot of content creators I've seen. Last week Kyle (of The Louis and Kyle Show fame) and I interviewed my friend Ryan who has a YouTube channel with 1.8 million subscribers. The viewers of that channel have expectations from him and his videos. So, he started a second channel that allows him to be more open and creative with the format of his new video concepts without upsetting loyal fans of his main work. Nathaniel Drew also does this.
This morning, I had the opportunity to interview Howard Lindzon from Social Leverage. He is an extremely interesting person and had a lot of wisdom to share with Kyle and myself. I'm really excited to share that interview in a few days. He explained the democratizing effects of Robinhood's popularity and gave tips and career strategies for early 20-somethings. The key take-away for me was to either build or find a rocket ship early in my career. Whether that's starting a company of my own or trying to work my way into an exciting company such as Notion, Roam, or Robinhood, the point is to get involved with projects with massive potential. Howard went as far as to say that (assuming you could survive) its preferable to spend 5 years earning 10k in an environment that you are learning and growing in than it is to work for 5 years in a bad environment for a comfortable 60k a year.
This is similar to what you hear from a lot of entrepreneurial thought leaders. A central theme in Rich Dad, Poor Dad is to "work to learn, not to earn." If you are working for someone else, it is because that is the best way to learn what you want to learn and is not for the money. As Taleb says, "The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary."
I have a lot more to say about the Howard interview, but I'm keeping this post brief because if I try too hard on post #1 there will never come a post #2.
Today I read an article by Nat Eliason about being an internet huckster.
Nat's main point: don't just copy other people's strategies. That applies to content and marketing. Do things your own way.
Ask yourself why are you doing the things that you are doing?
Why did Kyle and I start our podcast? What do we want to accomplish with it?
There are many answers but this is one main one.
Podcasting is a way to serendipitously foster social leverage.
Remember Howard from this morning? His firm, Social Leverage is built around maximizing the compounding benefits of maintaining wide-reaching mutually beneficial relationships in order to help startups (like Robinhood) reach escape velocity in order to reach orbit (a metaphor for making it as a company).
Social leverage is more robust than financial leverage.
Kyle and I started the podcast to grow our social networks AND learn as much as possible along the way AND share that with whoever wants to listen.
Kyle ultimately wants to own real estate (think large apartment buildings) and I want to be an internet entrepreneur (whatever that means).
As with all things, having good mentors is a critical step in reaching your goals.
Kyle would love to learn from real estate legends like Sam Zell or Gary Keller.
I want to learn from the people that inspired me in the first place: Taylor Pearson, Nat Eliason, Thomas Frank,Tomas Laurinavicius, and David Perell.
Their reading lists, articles, books, tweets, and podcasts have been massively impactful to me over the past few years.
Podcasting increases the odds of Kyle and I being able to contact, interview and occasionally befriend amazing mentors like this.
As we grow a meaningfully sized audience, we can reach out to one of these "dream mentors" and ask if they'd be willing to do a 45-60 minute conversation.
Say we have 10,000 listeners (we don't, yet). At some point, coming on our podcast becomes a compelling pitch. Do an interview with us and expect a modest surge in traffic. Talk about your passions for an hour with two engaged hosts and have it shared with a lot of people.
Interviewing Howard Lindzon under 3 months into the podcast is a great example of podcasting already creating new forms of leverage for Kyle and I.
Howard is a highly respected VC and a big voice in stock trading. He's someone I would have been very excited about interviewing years into the podcast let alone within the first 25 episodes.
This just demonstrates the compound effects playing out.
I've been reading Tomas Laurinavicius' newsletter every month for 3 years. I had the chance to speak with him for almost 3 hours last week because of the podcast. Again, we are just a few months deep..
This is an incredible learning experience just 20 interviews in. I am so grateful to the guests we have already had for sharing their time and ideas with us and I'm excited to see where things go.
We had our first 100 download day a few days ago.
While I was going about my Tuesday, close to 100 people were listening to a conversation I pre-recorded days earlier. I was functionally in many places at once. That's leverage.
This is why I'm so drawn to the economics of content creation, software, and internet entrepreneurship.
This is why I want to journal in public: to document my thinking, process, and journey.
I want to thank Howard Lindzon's blog and David Perell's twitter account for the nudging me to start this habit.
I'll pay it forward by nudging Kyle to start as well.
For those of you that are curious about the roadmap Kyle and I have used for the podcast so far, I've diagrammed it below.
Step 1 - Just Get Started
Step 2 - Don't Stop (Just Keep Going)
I've been journaling in private since October 2017 and its one of the most beneficial practices I've done. I'm excited to shift towards publicizing thought to be accountable to improve my thinking and writing and hopefully provide value to others.
P.S. There are so many places I should be hyperlinking here, if only there was a way to do that automatically without interrupting the writing flow. If you know of anything please tell me.