My First Million: #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 likes you because you're a free thing

or you're a cheap thing?

All right, quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now,

HubSpot just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the host relived the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank,

from Squatty Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down

why these pitches were winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding,

pricing, valuation, everything. Basically, all the things you want to know about

how to survive the tank and scale your company on your own. If you want to give it a listen,

you can find another bite on whatever podcast app you listen to, like Apple or Spotify,

or whatever you're using right now. All right, back to the show.

I'm actually, I'm surprised you haven't been on this before. I feel like,

I feel like you're made for this in a way.

Maybe. I mean, I was doing pods for a while. I was trying purposely to get on podcasts

for indie hackers, yeah, for getting the word out about the manker.

Then at some point, I'm like, this is cringe, man. I don't like listening back to myself.

And so it took the process of actually starting a podcast, in part thanks to also

watching you do your magic, to be like, I can just totally be myself and not have to worry

about as much, and then stop being cringe. So now I'm all for it.

And how has it been since you launched the pod? So you launched, what's it called,

Brains with the S or without the S?

Yeah, Brains with the S. It's been good. It's been, I guess, 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, you know, in the context of China not

bored people on a podcast. So it's been a really good forcing function.

Okay, I like that. And 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 so I feel like you were

pretty thorough about how you went about it, or more so than me at least. Did it go the way you

wanted to? Or what did you learn? Yeah, I was thorough because I felt that I kind of had no

choice because I listened to a bunch of podcasts and found most of them to be like unlistenable.

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 charged statements, 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, you know, 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. The episode I was on

had Alexandra Botez. I don't know how you say her name, actually. How do you say it properly?

That's right.

As in a particular case, she's chess champion, Twitch streamer. So she's like content creator,

really interesting person. Her content is about chess because she's really damn good at chess.

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 talk about or talk to. And so I immediately was pretty bought in

just as I kind of guessed on it. But anyways, I wanted to have you on here because 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 in their boxers, you know, you just,

you're going to the shared bathroom together. There's no place to run. You're going to be

yourself over in enough time in the right group chat. And so I feel like I've gotten to know you

even though we have never met in person. But you are an idea person. Do you consider yourself an

idea person? I see, I think of myself as someone who loves to brainstorm, but I'm not as fixated

on ideas that 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 40,000 marketers and founders. And so I picked out the three most interesting

growth trends I could find. And 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 unicorns that is 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 completely,

I'm completely hooked. Let's do that. All right. All right. So, okay, let's kick it off with this

first category. So I'm going to give these funny names because 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 the 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 anytime that your flight

was delayed if a few conditions were true. Because 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 flight 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 because it's like credit.

So the reason this was so clever is for a 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 100 bucks

whenever you're delayed? The click through rates on those ads were astronomical. The cost per click

were super low. And they were able to, yeah, just skyrocket to millions and ad spend monthly

very quickly. And let me give you a couple more examples, because this is actually something

more than just service could do. So another interesting example is a recent YC company

and they're called Yada. So Yada does is they'll take your money just through a normal bank. They'll

take your money, you know, they'll manage savings. But because they're 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 are 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 if you're just a bank. No, no loss. So imagine no loss, lottery is called,

right? Yeah, exactly. And just imagine their ads, like just think about 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 when you said it, that's the one that came to mind. As soon as you said,

you know, 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 come at it from the perspective of what is the ad,

because that's the whole perspective of this chat is like, what's the growth, right? So the ad

Main Street can run to people is, did you know that you're not taking advantage of an extra, say,

$10,000 in tax credits every year for your business? It's like, whoa, if I was 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 a scam, either give you 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, or do not pay is another one that does this, right?

I don't remember how they started if it was them or somebody else. There was another one that was

like the 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 send us a picture of the ticket. We will

fight it for you. Did you know that four out of 10 tickets are filled out incorrectly and are

therefore invalid? Even if you were in the wrong to cop filled it out wrong. And therefore, you

don't have to pay a dime. We will find these opportunities for you. And you only pay us out

of the savings of whatever money we save you will take 20% of whatever money we give back to you.

And I thought, wow, that's actually like a great idea. And it got so popular that San Francisco

banned them, you know, pretty quickly, like 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. They like close. They started tightening up the policy. And so sometimes

that actual wedge can be a very flimsy one. Yeah. But 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 wouldn't

necessarily recommend these flimsy unsustainable channels, but the main street does not seem flimsy

to me, right? On paper. Another great example, I'll give you one last one because 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, you know, these billboard ads. And so imagine being

a business owner and someone comes to you and says, hey, I'm going to pay you, let's say,

50 grand a year. All you got to do is put this billboard on your roof, right? I'm sure it's much

more complicated than that. But the idea is that sometimes when you get pitched with a revenue

sheet, that's super low friction for you that you did not realize is 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 just by knowing the rules of connecting the dots. I feel this way about

there's some bigger businesses that do this principle. 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 boom, you change to this monthly

payment instead of this one. I think common bond or something like that is one of those.

And house refinancing is another, but these require, it's not as, they can't do the whole

thing on your behalf, unfortunately, but I feel like somebody could get closer to doing the whole

thing on your behalf. And that seems like a pretty big opportunity to me. Absolutely. 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 reprioritize it such that it facilitates growth strategies like these?

And that can guide you from built for growing a lot quicker as opposed to just living in a local

maximum and running in circles. And so, because 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 we're still under this category of giving customers an absolute no

brainer reason 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, you didn't know this,

but you can get 20% off. So that's brilliant because the Chrome extension is like a two-click

process from being part of your internet browsing experience until the rest of the time to 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 facts, their 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, 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 can find

a way to make something so painless, where it's like two clicks, set it and 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 is browsing. And eventually, when the time is right

and you can deliver real value like contextually, because like, this is going to be a monster coupon

I could give the customer. We're going to save them a thousand bucks. Right. That's when we finally

ask, hey, can you make an account real quick before we give you this monster coupon? And now

they're completely bought and then they've come to trust you. Yeah, that's smart. What other

Chrome extension ideas have you seen that you like or you have? Like, 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 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?

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 is valuable. Which Chrome extensions,

which Chrome extensions do you have 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 an Ethereum wallet

or a crypto wallet. And then I have Adblock. 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 into 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 Adblock. 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.

And then I have 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 a T-W-E-M-E-X, the Tween Max.

I like that. That's pretty cool. I was thinking there could be a couple others,

like while you were saying that, I was thinking, what other X-ray, we used the 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 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 the Twitter profile. You can click follow. Here's some things about them.

Here's the Wiki or whatever. So it's like, the quick, who is this on any name on any website?

That's one. The other is Facebook ads. So 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 company's website, and be able to click this and see what

ads are running without having to go open up the ad library. Yeah, I love that. The way I think

about this type of a question is like, what type of Chrome extension? What's the framework for

thinking about which category of Chrome extension would be the stickiest and would people love to

download the most? And I think about how to appeal to advice. How do I appeal to 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 Bloomberg or you're on Twitter? And anytime the Chrome extension picks up a keyword

for a public stock or some crypto token, cryptocurrency, then it just suggests,

it gives you an X-ray into how it's performing, who else talks about it a lot? Who should you

fall to learn more about this? And then it kind of triggers more so this greedy like, okay, well,

I can make money off this. So I'm going to pay a bit more attention because when you do the educational

route, really with any tool, like, hey, let's give X-ray vision and let people know like,

Amazon's X-ray vision to when you're watching a movie, it'll tell you like, what music is playing

in the background? Who are these actors? Like, do people really care? I mean, maybe some, but it's

probably nerds. Yeah, the one more on this is that I was just thinking of while you're browsing

websites, if it basically, could you create Robinhood and a Chrome browser or 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 tells you,

hey, you've been shopping a lot on Apple, why don't you buy $100 of Apple stock? Click here to do it.

And 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 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 Robinhood 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 I'm on robinhood.com, right? Can there be Acorns? It can 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. You get a sense of ownership and incentive alignment, or even better, like, hey, we

think it pops up right as it's easier about to do a trade. It's like, hey, we see about the trade

for like 97 bucks. You want to roll this up, get the extra three bucks in Robinhood itself?

Yes. That's super clever. I love that.

All right. So that was theme one. 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 Slack 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. Like when I joined Slack, it's a ghost town if it's just

me, right? Right. So I'm naturally encouraged to invite my coworkers and then Slack did something

super brilliant called Slack Connect, where now I can invite non-co-workers, so people who exist

like at different 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 going to do it without them having to bribe you

with five bucks to invite your friends because you're going to do it anyway. And then the back

half of product-led 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 drop off someone a file, they could just take the file as

it is, but if they signed up for Dropbox, well, now they're going to get version history. Now

they're not going to have to store it on their hard drive or in the email. It's going to be like

this thing that they can more easily manipulate for the Dropbox software. Or let's say I'm sending

someone a PayPal payment. Well, guess what? If you want my money, you got to sign up for PayPal.

Like you literally have to sign up in order to get the money. And for Calendly, same thing. Like

when I'm sharing my Calendly link, the software for calendar booking, the person who's receiving

the link has a much better experience if they themselves sign up for Calendly because it'll

show them when they have overlapping time windows 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. You don't have to rely on like

paid acquisition, meaning ads. So Facebook, if the CPMs rise at the cost 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 billboarding. If I sign up for Hotmail and I send an email,

and you know where I'm going with this, which isn't 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? 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 we also have the Clearview 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 up? They throw their logo on the billboard, right? So that's billboarding

literally in the truest 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. I'm subject to it. I can't stop saying this.

CryptoPunks. And it's mercury. Actually, that's better than my example.

Because they're making it there. Like people make it their profile, right? So

CryptoPunks 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 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 CryptoPunk. And one person started doing it in two, three, four, and then more started

doing it. And so now I can't use Twitter without seeing fucking CryptoPunks and reminding myself

how I missed out on CryptoPunks. And so I feel like that's like a version of billboarding. 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

going to see it. And it's also identity building. Like if you break apart, what makes for brand

loyalty? Like why would you want to put a CryptoPunk as your Twitter avatar? 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 you're signaling you have good taste. You want to be the girl or

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. And just because there's another CryptoPunk competitor, it doesn't necessarily mean that

they can just take over through better marketing because better marketing has a hard, well hit

a hard wall against tribalism and a building identity around something that people want.

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 Yankees and Red Sox on Twitter right now, you'll get CryptoPunks or

Board Apes, Board Apeat Club. It's the other NFT project that is rivaling them. And so people are

switching to those two. Now you're probably not going to get like 20 of these. And so there's

like room for two to three main tribes and then everything else will be very, very fringe and

those be some people who want that. But okay, so you were going to say Mercury is one of these.

Where do you see Mercury billboarded? Yeah, Mercury is interesting because, well, let me just back

up here and wrap my head around. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So yeah, Mercury is a great example of

billboarding because it's a modern and hypergrowth 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 for startups,

but not necessarily just startups. And it's become the de facto startup that YC companies use.

So what happens is when YC companies go to demo day where they fundraise with investors,

they have to then send a link. Bingo. 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 oversampling, which I might be using a term wrong, but you'll get the gist, which is

these VCs 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 risked 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.

Right. But is it really? Probably not. That's how I feel about Max, right? You go to Silicon Valley,

you just see Max everywhere. And then you're in the filter bubble of everybody uses Max,

and then you look at the stats and it's like, wait, 90% market share for Windows? How is this

possible? And it's like, yeah, because the world is not Silicon Valley.

That's right. Yeah, that's exactly right. You can create this optical impression. And if you're

making the impression on a persona that is itself a distribution like Lightning Rod, like investors

or very high social signal influencers, if they get the impression, just them narrowly,

think that you're everything. Well, then they'll act like you're everything. And then finally,

it trickles down to the mainstream. Yes. It's like high school, but for 50-year-olds.

That's growth trend two. So we got trend one, no brainer, no brainer, no loss offers. Cool.

Trend two is the billboard effect. Either you intentionally create kind of a status symbol

that people choose to flag or just in the act of doing business, you're attaching your logo into

their world. And so everybody that they use the product with sees you, sees you, sees you until

it becomes sort of like a self-affirmative. It's a free ad basically that you're getting through

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you grow your business at HubSpot.com. What's number three? Yeah, you got it. So number three is

self-liquidating funnels, which I know is sort of a silly, silly sounding term. 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-liquidating funnels. So the idea here is 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

pay 30 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 $30

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 200 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, people will buy much more reflexively like during the checkout aisle of a grocery

store. And it's cheaper, so lesser consideration purchase. And because more will hopefully, there

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. 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? Because if I can now capture emails using a self-liquidating funnel, and I'm paying

effectively nothing for these emails, they're just literally self-liquidating, hence the name,

then I can now just scale this up to the extent possible, capture, let's say, 1,100,000 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. So that's the sort of brilliance of 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 are potentially available to you cheat codes, albeit potentially

very distracting ones. So there are 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 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 likes you because your free

thing or your cheap thing rather was really high quality. Right. Yeah. So you see this in content

a lot. I think you do this pretty well. I think you put you have these like handbooks, I think you

call them on your website. And it's like way more high quality than a blog post. And so you send

them that thing for free, grab 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, you know, run paid ads to a free book and then

grab the lead there or a $5, 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, $7 since 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 you got to do is pay the shipping. That seems fair. And they're using that to get your

to get your information. And then they're saying, great, now I'm going to go back to this list.

Now they've had a sample of my stuff. And can I go get 25% of people to become a real customer

after doing that? 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 julien.com is what you're referring to where I write these handbooks, or 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 as per se, but some references to demand curve.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 writer, guru, YC founder that everyone looks up to, you know,

in a million years, you would never expect to have like a banner ad at the bottom of blog posts,

you're right? Because it'd be so out of character. And it would really compromise, I think.

Or a $199 course. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, so I just try to keep them totally separate.

And anyway, so yeah, that's, but not 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 through the thing you're passionate about. Like when I see very rich people start

podcasts and still run ads on their podcast, like unless you're doing it to pay employees,

awesome. But if you're doing it because you're trying to make an extra buck,

it seems like it's totally defeats the purpose of why you're doing it.

Let's call them out. Reid Hoffman, you are a billionaire. You created LinkedIn. You sold it

for $20 billion. Why does your podcast have ads? And I know they're, I know the answer to it,

actually, but no excuses as far as I'm concerned. Now, people can say the same thing about me.

I do, I think there's ads on this podcast. There are, I do courses. And the way I thought about

it was pretty simple, which was, I'm going to 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, I think a more powerful scoreboard is money. And I do a lot of things for

likes. The podcast is free, all that good stuff. But if I do something like a course,

or I'm actually going to sit down, spend time with you and teach you something,

then I want to charge for that. Most of the time I give away a bunch of free spots.

And the last thing is I do this to get myself more excited about it. So I'll set

a goal for the money. So I'll be like, okay, like this right now, with this course I'm doing

right now. I was like, all right, I want to do two things. I want to be able to, I made a list of

10 people who've been just awesome to me in life. And they've like mentored me or helped me in some

former fashion. I was like, I want to buy them all like a fat gift, like a gift that's like,

you know, way more than what, what they would be expecting in this case. The second thing is,

I want to, 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 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 always just thought that was a one day, one day dream. I kind of

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. Okay, cool. So if I sell, you know, if I do $100,000 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 greedy or

selfish person. That could be the reason why. But all I know is once I have a target and that

target could be anything silly could be, I'm going to go buy, you know, you know, go buy

like a bunch of crypto punks or I'm going to put it all in on this penny stock. And then I'm going

to turn that into content of riding the wave of this penny stock. It doesn't really matter what

it is. But when I have a target, a financial target, it makes me try to do a way better job

at the thing I'm doing. Yeah, that definitely resonates. And I think it's healthy. And I think

that's awesome. I see it a bit differently. And my different way is not a better way. And my different

way is I like, I see what I spend my time on outside of like earning a salary through demand

curve.com in the context of a crass person. And so I don't want to do anything, even if it's for

like some extrinsic goal, like getting a chef, unless I would be happy doing it if I got nothing

else from it, like the process itself is the reward. 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. It's such a beautiful thing if you can find it. And I was going through this binge

on YouTube where I was watching videos of creators and like artists and musicians in the process of

making their music. If you Google, if you search YouTube for Ariana Grande, I forget the name

of the song, but she's like, Ariana Grande in studio. Dude, I've gone down so many rabbit holes

of this. There's an Ed Sheeran documentary if anybody wants to watch on Apple plus of him making

his on Apple TV plus or whatever of 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, you know, love yourself or whatever becomes one of these like hits today. And you

can see him just like humming and be like, Oh, what if I said, you know, blah, blah, blah. And

then he's like figuring it out live. God, that stuff is like, you know, 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 dopamine hit to watch people. But the thing I take away from all those videos

is if they've made no money from that, I know 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.

And the reward is can they come up with something awesome. So yeah, the flip side of that is the

flip side of that is you don't want John Mayer to have to build demand curve as a business in order

to find his musical pursuits. And so 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 want to create

more content I want to teach so that I need teaching to be sustainable. So I could spend

all my time on it, I could hire the best people for it, all those things, right? So I think that's

the caveat. Do you have any kind of like, yeah, other backup stuff of source opportunities or

ideas or things that caught your eye? 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 can

pull me along if you like it. How's that? Okay, sounds good. Cool. So, 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 feel like 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 Waiput

Y or Paul Graham, who I mentioned earlier, Everyday Astronaut, what they all have in common is they

don't publish content on a set frequency. Like literally the slogan for WaiputY.com, this great

blog that people love is new posts every sometimes. At the end of the Everyday Astronaut videos,

we'll be like, the next video will be out when it's ready. And like Paul Graham will post at a

very erratic schedule. And what they all have in common is they're publishing when they truly

have something to say. They're not publishing try 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, what do you make of the like Casey Neistat, Mr. Beast or whoever, these guys that

basically they made their their bones and they're following by doing a daily vlog and they got they

chose to get on that they've chose to handcuff themselves to that treadmill. And the fans kind

of 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. It's a good counter example. 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 money giveaways, the threshold is 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 Why or James Clear or Morgan Housel, like 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 1950s madmen era,

like our billboard impression crap. Yeah, it's like it doesn't exist with the internet. It's not

the same thing matter of fact. 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 said two tweets a month. People aren't forgetting who I am, but if the quality is high,

the staying power is so much better, you don't have to be pumping out all the time.

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 momentary platform of my first million

that really beautiful things happen when you can rise above this content overload that we live in

if you focus more so on quality. The quantity is useful for yourself. Like if you're trying to get

good at something due to the high frequency, but that doesn't mean you have to publish everything.

You can keep some back and do it for yourself. So anyway, that's my little rant on quality

of this quantity. And the reason everything's 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 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 light touch,

high frequency. So you might, I'm comfort. I'm like friends. There's a million episodes you

can go through and they're all all right or your game of thrones. And there's like, no,

there's eight episodes that you can go to for this season, but they're all epic. And, you know,

I think I find that if you're going to choose one strategy, polarized either end of that and focus

on quality or focus on frequency. And, and 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, you have to hit one of those in order

to make it work. As far as I've seen in terms of, in terms of how content goes. By the way,

tell me, I share with people your thoughts on bios. So I hit you up and I was like, hey,

I want to 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 what you've seen 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 got to go right one. And then you sit

down and you're like, fuck, I have so much to say that I have nothing to say at the same time.

And it all sounds bad. Then it sounds too braggy. Then it sounds too unimpressive.

How do I do this? And so 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 is just sticks 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 was like this, I deconstruct how things work, like storytelling and critical

thinking. And I share my learnings along the way. Okay. So you know what you're getting now.

And the reason this distinction is important, well, actually, let's compare and contrast.

So the typical bio is something like Forbes 30 under 30, two X founder, three X father,

or 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 to some respect. 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 you're kind of saying,

what are you going to get from me? What's in it for you? And why you can trust this source

that 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 accounts, 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

on 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? 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 going to

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 tweets. So let's just talk about that. Let's use that one example,

pin tweet. So 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 talked about

storytelling and critical thinking. So my pin tweet is exactly, it's a tiny little blog post.

Exactly. Exactly. So that's your surface area. And the same thing goes for YouTube. Like every

little thing is surface area. When added together can increase conversion, you know?

Yeah. So you and then you have like the follower account, 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, or

the blue checkmark, right? That's another signal that you can have or not have, not fully in your

control, but that's what counts towards conversion. All right. I like that.

Wait, Sean, tell me about your blue checkmark journey. Didn't you see something in iMessage

your blue check? 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. I don't remember. Was there something else?

Okay. So I remember you had a story about trying to get it. Nevermind. We'll skip it.

If you remember it, say it. I don't remember it. Maybe you're mixing me up with somebody.

No, that actually might have been the world's worst story. That might have been it. Nevermind.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. I think we can leave it with kind of like one last little piece

and then 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 let you

go back through those doors. Those doors are now locked. Where does Julian go? How does he spend

his time? What would excite you if I gave you all your time back? Where would you go spend it if

you couldn't spend it, how you're spending it now? So the answer actually reflexively is movies.

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 I don't have a good,

it's going to be hard for you 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 the requirements for actually

pulling it off are how resourceful, how creative and how sort of, well, really those are the two

key things resourceful and creative you can be. And that 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 is 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 kind of movies are we talking like comedy, action, drama, indie,

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 Whiplash, incredible

fiction film, The Prestige, Christopher Nolan's film about magicians. And then a documentary on

Netflix, which I'm so stoked I get to tell people this because some will actually go,

well, not enough people will listen that it'll get some views. Searching for Sugar Man on Netflix is

the best documentary I've ever seen. And then the last one I'll recommend is who's that one

about? Who's who's the Sugar Man? 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. And where he went to and how fuck you should cut that.

Because now I'm giving spoilers. You should bleep that. You gotta bleep the n***. But the last

thing I'll say is that counterpart, which is this amazing show, Amazon's my favorite TV show,

maybe ever. Counterpart's amazing. So it's like a James Bond type thing. It's growing.

Okay, I've never even heard of that. I'm not pitching anything well, Sean. I suck at this.

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. How do I sell this right without ruining the

first time magic of experiencing it? You almost create a pressure cooker for yourself here.

So okay, so what you want to do is you want to make a movie about, you know, searching for Bobby

Fisher style, right? About, you know, Kobayashi, the competitive eater. It's like greatness slash

enigma slash prodigies. And like, you know, with a dash of sort of drama and mystery.

Dude, well, I knew I could rely on you. Yes, well pitched. Yeah, I just love this stuff. I just,

I love making it. I love watching it. I love seeing people watch it. How about you? I'm

here. I want to flip this around on you. What would you do? If I could do anything right now?

Yeah, I would basically take like little three to five year arcs of my life.

That's what I think I would 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

stand up comedy. So I would try to create a set that actually is good. And I would figure out

how you do that. I would learn the, learn the trade. I would go to shows. I would do all that.

I would, I would coach a basketball team and I would try to like be a high school basketball

coach and, and just give it my all. And I would do doing that. I would, you know, like one is,

I don't actually want to make a show, but I do want to write a script. I'm actually trying to do

that right now. I'm trying to write a script for a mock episode of the office, which is a lot of

fun. And I would try to make a song like a hit song. How do you make a catchy hit song that pops

off? 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'll try to write a book, I'll try to create a, 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 come out the other side and I would basically switch careers each time I do them.

I love that. So you want to, you want to break up your life into chapters and you want used to be

a very creatively fulfilling thing where you're like maximally using, actually not necessarily

because 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

stand-up set. It's like things that I just think would be really fun if you did them,

at 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 fun. All that good stuff.

What's stopping you from being a comedian in the next 15 years? Cause what's stopping you from

making the time to do it? Nothing. I'm just occupied right now. Like I'm doing things. I got a

business. I'm running and this content arm. So I don't have the clear schedule at the moment to

clear everything off to 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 set myself this

challenge to try to write an episode of the office by the end of this month. And I don't know how to

do it, but I hit up my friend who writes for a TV show and I said, Hey, can we jam next Thursday

and tell me how you write an episode of TV? Like that's what I'm trying to do. So I'm doing little

like, you know, tiptoe in the water, but to do it for real the way I want, I would,

like I'm going to clear my schedule for like a two-year period. You won't hear about me.

And then I come out the other side, you know, with some, some story to tell.

You know, fun would be for all of us is watching you do a set. I would 100% show up live. I would

be the loudest laughter. Even if it was artificial, I would 100% support you. Dude, that'd be,

I kind of want to live through you, Sean. If there's something I really want you to do almost

selfishly, but also I think you'll just have a blast. Yeah, I do and I will. So the other thing

right now is I just had a kid, two kids actually, two babies. And so I kind of 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 want to like not skip that part, because

like I already made the baby. So I already did the hard part. Now, I just have to like

stay there. Don't, but don't busy myself doing something else to stay here and actually do a

dad bit. Well, what I will say is if I've learned anything from comedians endlessly talking about

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

you write down your experiences and your thoughts, and it can become future material. So I'll give

you two. So I was in the shower of the day and I wrote down two pieces, two pieces of content.

And I texted it to some guy who is a comedian that is a pretty famous comedian. I don't know

him very well, but we kind of, we textured DM a little bit. And I said, Hey, I got two little

nuggets for you to two little truths about life that I think you could turn into jokes.

Here they are. And it's just they'd come to me while I was in the shower. And one was

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 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, why do we do that? Why, why does nobody have like any kind of consistency with

that? The second one is the second one I sent him. It was racism. It's like, people think America

is really racist. And there's racism is a big problem. And when you think of racist, like if

I say racist, you know, think of a racist, what image pops into your head? The Ku Klux fan member.

Right. So, you know, you think of the Ku Klux, the KKK, like a white guy in a white hood, or you

think of like, you know, a 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 it just occurred to me, like, in reality, nobody is 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, no, and here's why. And so I just, it sort of

occurred to me that nobody's more racist than a Chinese grandma. And so I was like, you know,

that's a truth about the world that I believe that I was like, OK, 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, OK, 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 like just a smirk on my face. And this is where

it gets so fun to sit down and reverse engineer like Dave Chappelle. And this is actually one of

the podcast episodes we did 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? And that to me is the joy. That's got to be the

most fun part, I think, is you figure how to craft it. And then the people who totally buck the trend

like Mitch Hedberg. He has a joke that's sort of like your receipt joke. But my point, though, first

is he's like not really doing the normal joke structure, I don't think I'm an expert, right?

But it's still so funny because he has an extra layer. The extra layer is phenomenally unique

and like tickling delivery, right? And so 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, people who 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 remember that always stuck in my head. And like,

I can't do that. 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 storytelling thing,

by the way, you said, oh, here's all these elements. But the one that stood out that I

actually was telling Ben, my right hand man, I was like, hey, Julian had this thing that I think is

spot on. And we should like, I think I do this to an extent, I think you should do it more.

But like, 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 in there, or in a comedian's case, they're making

themselves laugh. They're cracking themselves up. And 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 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 trying to reverse engineer what made him so damn good.

Then I eventually got him on my podcast, and I asked him, 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,

because 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,

choose on it, let's it sink in, turns on the camera, like goes red. And now he relives that

initial impression. And then it's, it's, it's infectious. He is the person, he's the proxy

that we now live through. And it's just, it's such a beautiful thing to see someone fully

interact in their own excitement without any concern for like no self-conscious, 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. It was totally spot on. And if

you're going to 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 I love that. I thought that was

the great, great little hack, great little deconstruction on your part. All right, where

should people, so Twitter is at julien, julien.com, your branding is kind of amazing. Amazing.

Where else should people follow you? Yeah, sure. So really it's julien.com

and then demandcurve.com is where 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, there's brainspodfest.com.

Yeah, that's right. I think I'm on two, two episodes of it. So.

Yes, dude. So we call you an honorary brain because Cor and I love you so much for like,

all right, even though it's kind of 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 love you.

I love you. And so thank you for coming on. It's awesome.

I appreciate you. Thank you so much. All right, sweet. We're out of here.

All right, peace.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.