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 Sean.
I love the nickname by the way Uncle Sean.
I'm leaning into that He said if you were starting from scratch building an audience again from zero today 2024 if you're starting it from zero.
How would you do it? What advice would you give somebody like me?
He wants to be a content creator, but has zero followers today Tony from Miami All right Tony.
I got an answer for you. I feel like I could rule the world.
I know I could be what I want to 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 gonna 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 hundred 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 gonna do today is I'm not gonna 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 So I'm gonna share the counterintuitive things I've learned I've worked on nine so nine counterintuitive surprising things that I've learned I'm also not gonna give you some generic one-size-fits-all advice I hate when people do this especially this sort of a YouTube Guru economy 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 as 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 non-obvious that?
I wish I could have just drilled into my brain then and if you're starting to say 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 could 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 Ferriss 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 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 gonna 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 gonna see it So it is very hard to block that out podcasting a little bit easier Not everybody can see how many downloads a 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 Hey real quick, you know
one of the cool parts about what we're doing is that People have reached out and told me that they've built actual million dollar businesses made their first million Often idea they heard on the show that is crazy.
That's wild. That's why we want to do the show and we want to see more of that one of the questions We get asked over and over again is there some kind of idea database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas That we've talked about well the answer is finally yes the fine folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50 plus business
ideas And put them into a business idea database It's totally free you go to click hubspot.com slash MFF and get the database for you all right now back to the show 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 try to attract like I got a buddy.
He manages Hollywood talent So when he writes a newsletter it doesn't matter if there's 100,000 people reading it or a thousand as long as the thousand people who really are the right people They're people that either need his service or the 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 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 two and a half million cars a year And is a like 50 billionish dollar company Ferrari only sells 13,000 cars 200 times less right 200 times fewer customers less reach But is it
80 billion dollar company so almost double the value And so how is that possible where you can have 200,000 200 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 100 Random or non correct customers for you and I use customer because In content whether it's a viewer a reader a follower their customers of yours.
You're producing a product They're consuming it.
Let's call that a customer So point number one quality matter matters much more than quantity you might think you believe that but watch 95% of your attention We'll go towards your follow accounts your view counts and all that other stuff resist this.
Okay, let's number two What should I talk about my trainer who I work out with every morning?
He's got these great phrases and one of his very great phrases is the best product is just you pushed out to the world And basically like if I just turned you inside out in 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 nobody can match your delivery style 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 I
mean it was incredible And he's showing me this proud he's beaming he's smiling and in my head I'm trying to smile back when 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 main spit and show everybody that train set that you've been Tain ring with for a long
time Why is this well because the things that you nerd out about or the things that you know the most about It's the nuanced in depth detailed over the top passionate Obsessed that actually turns into great content You see this by the way on platforms like tiktok 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 nerd them 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 obsessions like oh man I really love on one hand.
I love startups and building companies and I love going and reading old stories about the PayPal mafia And leaked email transactions about how zuckbot 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 like a bunch of different things now if I walked outside my neighborhood growing up And I try to find somebody who had the same interests 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 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 nerdy exes 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 That's what works and so there are people who do this.
There's a guy on Twitter.
I love Die workwear. 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 I don't personally care that much about but he does and he's 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 You get get 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 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 one percent odds of success if ever and in that one percent 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 it was just lights you up And so you shift
the odds of success to maybe one percent maybe many years down the road to every day 100% of the time.
I like those odds Hey, so you're listening to a business podcast which means you're probably like business and you like podcasts And because of that I've got another business podcast and you check out it's called marketing made simple and its host is dr JJ Peterson again marketing made simple Marketing made simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing
easy and more importantly make it work One of the episodes that I think you need to check out it's called get your audience from don't care to buy now with better copy And he basically just breaks down all the biggest mistakes that most marketers make when it comes to their audience in respect to copy Which is obviously a topic I love and I talk all about so you guys need
to check it out marketing made simple You can get it wherever you find your podcasts Okay, lesson number three Build a magnet not an audience every once a 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 honey pot and I'm just trying to trap like-minded people into coming into my orbit And then I get to know them and I get to meet them and then they start to share things
with me that You know, they know that I like because we're like-minded and This is 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 everybody's got their own voice You might like LinkedIn and other 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.
I added the weirdest one.
He did the other stuff first last best worst 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 then 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 asperger's kids cool My last job that I had was working at twitch My worst job
was when I created 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 Too many sources tell there, but that guy so Everybody has a version of these 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 can say you could do this with jobs relationships You could 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 want to say all right.
What do you got? What's your content?
They have like one or two ideas and 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.
I think I wish I lit new earlier the five D's so a lot of people want to be famous But I've 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 mean 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 their quirks 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're 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 five D's 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 business you haven't heard of that are interesting that are either just cash flow monsters or You know, they could be billion dollar companies in the future Um, I'll tell you about those I teach you about those and last one is frameworks ideas much like this podcast Here I am telling you 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 Ve a very popular person who is very well known but also known well Gary Ve wants to buy the Jets if you 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 But wanting to buy it own a sports team it tells you about him
you 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 from my hometown.
I want to help turn them around That's an admirable sort of like underdog Underdog way of saying something that's kind of douchey in reality, which is I want to be so rich.
I could buy a sports team So anyways, but you should tell people your dreams and the fifth one dork out.
What are you really into?
What do you what do you nerd about what do you collect?
That's what you should people should know about you so the five D's this gives you two wins your audience feels more connected to you But also you get luckier It's weird.
I said 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 up the analogy here came from the vault
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 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 something that comes out of the five D's 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 is too long only too boring So If you bounce by now 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 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-content with a plus production It's a plus 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 air pod 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 podcasts.
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 shit needs to look no no no first nail content when you're confident you've nailed content Then start leveling up your
production All right, so listen to how ridiculous this is so I remember in the 90s when I used to go to dinner with my family I was just a kid and you get to the hostess stand and she would say something like do you want to be in the smoking or non-smoking section And we look back at that now we think that is ridiculous I cannot believe that existed well I often ask myself that question now
which is in 20 years What am I going to look back and it's going to be sort of like the smoking versus non-smoking section question And that my friends is why I love the a 16 z podcast They look at how technology is changing so quickly and how you can stay on top of it The podcast is put on by VC firm and Jason Horowitz is one of the best firms out there in the world And so they're
able to see all this amazing information that people like you and I We don't normally get access to and I love hearing steps opinion on it So they look at topics like autonomous vehicles the science behind drugs like ozempic and things like that And the security behind lln's and how it's on all of our devices and whether we should be freaked out or not So check it out.
It's called the a 16 z podcast.
It's hosted by stef smith one of my favorite people on earth again The a 16 z podcast you can find it wherever you get your podcast The a 16 z podcast 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 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 got ever got there and of course they will get why they're not 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 And more more competitive than the dating market right because billions of people on social media every day fighting for attention If you're gonna 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 this 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 This habit stuff the UFC Dana White once said I don't I don't sell fights.
I sell holy shit moments alive on pay-per-view I love that Tony Robbins.
He sells a feeling of motivation crossfit.
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 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 gonna be inspired you do buy 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 gonna 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 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 That'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 hundred videos and every video At on the hundred I want you to think of one thing you're gonna 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 Hundred 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 shows people away because what they come to for is the secret sauce the answer and what he gives them instead is the path Here's the way he teaches them to fish It immediately filters you a lot he says that like you know 99% of people when he tells them that he never hears
from them again They never gonna do it So it kind of filters out the unserious people and there's a lot of unserious people in this life In the serious people it also works for them It shows them away too because by the time they do the hundred improving one thing each time They don't need as a vice anymore by the hundredth one.
They've got it. It's working.
It's cranking They're so busy.
They forgot about Mr. Beast.
So that's why there's 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 friends so he is the first episode and I just told myself I was gonna try to do 50 of these episodes and I said I'm gonna do 50.
I'm trying to make one thing better every time similar philosophy 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 Sean Prairie.com you can see it you get to watch me do my hundred 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 Sean Prairie.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 floats 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 my 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's 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 them We're email back and forth and we published published the whole chain for anybody to read.
It's really great It's kind of like the uh Like the banter of a podcast because two people going back and forth But it's the ease and readability of a blog post So that's my my sales pitch work But my approach to that to making that successful is exactly the same I'm going to do a hundred 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 them is you'll be says 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 the 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 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 ignore you All right, I hope that's helpful if you like this type of content Let me know in the comments here on YouTube and please
go subscribe to my new email series is 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 Check it out Yeah, Sean Prairie.com.
I'll put the link in the description below and you could just type your email and then to subscribe There's a little fun animation when you do it Check it out good Friday.
That's the email series.
By the way, why do I call good Friday because I knew 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?
What'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 gonna send a good ass email every Friday for the next hundred Next hundred Friday, so we'll see how that goes Check it out and thank you for tuning in.
I feel like I could rule the world.
I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days on on a road.
Let's travel never looking back
