1. Excited about

2. Really good at

3. Able to monetize

4. And will feel proud of

Is one of the hardest parts of building an audience:

• It keeps most people from starting (← if this is you, read this.)

• It prevents others from finding success from the effort they put in

It’s almost like you’re 18 years old again and trying to decide what you want to do with your life—intimidated by the endless options and not sure what you want, what you care about, or what the implications of your decision are.

There are a few things to consider. Let’s start with your ikigai.

Find your Ikigai

To find a topic you’ll be happy to dive deep into, you need to find your ikigai:

Let’s break that down, you need to find a topic that aligns with:

1. What you love.

This is the most important because, frankly if you don’t love it:

• You won’t be able to write about it endlessly.

• You won’t have strong opinions or create content that speaks to people.

• Your content will feel lifeless because your heart is not in it.

Be honest with yourself.

Would you enjoy learning, thinking, and writing about this for years to come?

The three hardest parts of audience building (beyond topic selection) are:

1. Getting motivated at the beginning when it’s really hard.

2. Staying motivated for an extended period through life’s ups and downs.

3. Creating content that makes people stop, care, and feel something.

For those three things, you need to enjoy:

1. What you’re writing about. It has to be something you care to dive deep into.

2. The type of content you’re creating. If you hate sitting at a computer writing, then make videos. If you hate being on camera, write or design. If you hate short-form, do a newsletter or a podcast. If you hate long-form, then tweet.

3. The people you’re serving. You can create content for single moms, teenagers, high-performance CEOs, construction managers, and everything in between. You want to create content for people you want to be surrounded by.

Passion matters most

Go for the thing you won’t stop thinking about, regardless of experience.

Not only will you create better content, but you’ll feel more fulfilled. I like to use Bezos’ regret minimization framework to help me make tough life decisions like this:

In short: If you will regret not trying to create content about something, even if it’s a bit crazy or out there, do it anyway. The pain of regret is worse than the pain of failure.

2. What the world needs.

This is the most philosophical of the four.

The first interpretation: “Is it something that positively impacts the world?”

I’ve known ~5 professional poker players. Every single one of them has said to me unprovoked, “I provide zero value to the world; I just siphon money from rich people who think they can play poker. I’ll do something else one day, I just don’t know what.”

You have to respect what you’re doing. It has to promote something positive that you believe in. Or you won’t be happy and proud to be doing it in the long term.

The second interpretation:

• Is this a subject people value? i.e., does anyone care?

• Are you solving a painful problem?

• Is it helping people who need it?

• Are there not currently hordes of people all doing the same thing?

• Can I add unique value?

To have moderate success, you don’t need to be super innovative. You just need something good that solves a painful problem (see #3 and #4 below).

To succeed in a big way, you need to offer something different. Something people want but the market hasn’t given them yet.

We didn’t need another interview-style YouTube, but the Hot Ones format of getting famous people to eat intense hot sauces during the interview adds a layer of delight we didn’t know we needed.

3. What you can be paid for

This is the second most important.

You don’t want to write just for the joy of it, and you don’t want an audience purely to spread your important message or to educate the masses.

No, you want it because you’ll be able to make money.

Whether it’s:

1. Directly from selling the content (Substack)

2. To attract people to a product you sell (courses, software, etc)

3. To bring in more leads (consulting, agency)

4. To sell indirectly (sponsorships, affiliates)

5. To get paid to speak (conferences, workshops)

Deep down, that’s what motivates us to put in the effort.

So, you need a topic that you can monetize.

Note: If you’re a YouTuber, you can monetize just from people watching your videos, so it’s unique. You could make silly videos for kids and still make insane amounts of money if you get a lot of views. But that’s not what I’m focused on here.

What is a monetizable topic and audience?

Seven factors to find a great market you can monetize:

1. Pain: They must desperately want what you’re offering.

2. Purchasing power: They have money to pay to solve the pain. Students hate spending money. Venture capitalists will pay a lot if you can make them more.

3. Social presence: They exist on the channels you plan to target. For example, LinkedIn isn’t the right place if you talk about gardening.

4. Specific/niche: Leadership is a broadly appealing topic. It’s a problem for many, and it means a lot of different things. Don’t just talk about “leadership;” instead, focus on being a better startup CEO. It’s a specific buyer with specific problems.

5. It’s growing: The fastest-growing content creators in the past several years wrote about crypto and AI—two booming industries on an uptrend. Another example is someone scaling a pickleball newsletter to 150,000 subscribers in record time. Find the next trend, or at least one going in the right direction.

6. Matches what you sell: If you sell or want to sell SEO services, the buyers are anything from local stores, dentists, tiny startups, and massive companies. You need content that gets in front of your target buyer, like simple “how to” guides. If you talk about nitty gritty, nerdy SEO details, you’ll attract your peers, not buyers.

   1. But if you sell advanced SEO training or are looking for a job as the Head of SEO, then nerdy talking about SEO details is perfect.

7. Infinite game: Your content cannot solve a finite discrete task. For example, fundraising for a startup. It’s a painful problem for someone who can pay a lot. But, once that person finishes raising money, they never want to think about it again. Your content will be interesting to them for that brief moment. Instead, you need a game that never ends. People never stop striving to be better CEOs, parents, creators, marketers, programmers, designers, storytellers, or product managers.

You want an increasingly painful, persistent problem for people with money.

4. What you’re good at (your unfair advantage)

The creators that grew fastest all had an unfair advantage in some way. The concept comes from the book Unfair Advantage by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba.

In other words, how can you cheat to make it easier?

You can have an unfair advantage in a variety of ways:

1. Valuable assets, such as money or businesses. If you have resources to spend on designers, editors, coaches, and assistants, you can outcompete someone doing it by themselves.

2. Knowledge & education, such as deep experience or expertise in a field. Or having copywriting, marketing video editing, or design skills to allow you to create great content from day 1.

3. Location and timing, such as being in San Francisco and writing about startups and tech. I’d also include being early to a channel, like growing on LinkedIn five years ago or being one of the first newsletters on Substack.

4. Interpersonal skills. Networking with would-be customers and other creators is a big part of building an audience. You'll have a big advantage if you’re skilled at meeting and befriending people.

5. Prestige and Social Connections. If you have awards, recognition, or achievements in a field, you’re more likely to succeed in creating content in that field. If you’re friends with big creators in a field, you’ll be more likely to succeed because they can amplify your content.

As you can see, being an expert in the topic is not mandatory to succeed. You can have an unfair advantage in other ways. You can become an expert just by writing about something every day for years. As I said, passion matters most.

Let’s illustrate how this can play out for audience building with some examples:

Examples of unfair advantages

Here are some examples of this playing out:

Eric Partaker

Eric is a CEO coach with 600k followers on LinkedIn. Here are his unfair advantages:

• He was CEO for over a decade, was named CEO of the Year, and has coached 100+ CEOs. So, he’s highly credible when talking about business and leadership. He does not have that when talking about SEO or baking.

• He has a high-value service (CEO coaching) to trade with big influencers for advice and engagement on his posts. He

• He’s exceptionally good at networking and building a solid network for himself.

• He worked only two days per week and could devote the rest to audience building.

• He earns 7 figures (despite working two days per week) and can invest in a designer and a social media manager to make his content A+.

• Before posting anything, he had 20,000 LinkedIn followers, just from being a CEO on the platform for 20 years and getting connection requests.

Neal O’Grady (your loveable author)

I started building my personal audience in August 2022. I was able to hit 50k followers in the first year. Here’s how:

• I had been running a business for multiple years with a newsletter of 75k subscribers. People already knew my business; I just needed to start getting my name out there. I changed the emails to come from me, and our subscribers were more likely to engage and hit the follow button.

• After sending connection requests to customers and fellow YC founders over the years, I had 11k followers on LinkedIn. Unlike many others, I didn’t start from 0.

• I could re-use content we had previously created for our newsletter and Twitter.

• I leveraged the notoriety of my business to create relationships with big creators.

• I’ve been writing and studying marketing for many years. I’ve created multiple courses. And I’m a full-stack programmer with extensive experience using Figma to design websites. Creating educational carousels for LinkedIn came naturally to me.

Ali Abdaal (5M+ subscriber YouTuber)

• He was in Cambridge Medical School (a very prestigious university) when he started a YouTube channel on getting accepted into medical school—something very few people could credibly discuss.

• He’s quite likable, making him a great fit for video.

• He’s incredibly smart and clearly has an insane work ethic, given he could grow a YouTube channel and tutoring business while going through medical school

Zain Kahn (founder of a 600k+ sub newsletter, Superhuman):

• He worked in marketing for many years before starting.

• He started posting on Twitter during the golden era. He got 50k followers from a single thread—that’s unheard of today.

• He was among the first to post carousels to LinkedIn, kicking off the trend of sharing Twitter threads as carousels on LinkedIn.

• He lived with his parents and could dedicate much time to audience growth.

• He was early to the trend of AI. And already had a large following when he started scaling Superhuman through LinkedIn and Twitter.

Those are some unfair advantages that are completely unique to those 4 people. Now, let’s dive into other aspects of your uniqueness:

Your spiky point of view

On top of your ikigai and unfair advantage, you want to dive into your spiky point of view.

What the hell is a spiky point of view? Well, here it is from Wes Kao (the creator):

Here’s the full article about spiky points of view if you’re interested.

Essentially, it boils down to:

• What do you believe differently than many others in your niche?

• How do you see the world differently than your peers?

• How have your experiences influenced you?

Document the values, viewpoints, and experiences that have shaped you.

How to find your ikigai, unfair advantage, and spiky point of view

Here are questions to ask yourself to drill in:

1. What you love:

   1. What do you find yourself getting lost in?

   2. What could you talk about for hours? Or do a presentation or fireside chat without any preparation?

2. What the world needs:

   1. What causes do you care about?

   2. What problems do you want to help people with?

   3. Who do you care most about helping?

3. What you can sell:

   1. What’s an increasingly painful, persistent problem for people with money?

   2. What can I do to alleviate it?

4. What you’re good at (unique advantage)

   1. What are you uniquely skilled or experienced at or positioned to do?

   2. How can you cheat the system?

   3. How can you massively increase your chance of success?

5. What you believe differently (spiky point of view)

   1. What do others do that you don’t agree with?

   2. How do you see the world differently than your peers?

   3. Do you have unique life experiences relative to most people?

Jot some ideas down. Choose some possible candidates for topics.

Next, we niche down.

Why and how to niche down

Niching is important for two reasons:

1. It’s easier to be known for something. You want someone to associate your topic with you. Like

   1. Habits for James Clear.

   2. Solopreneurship for Justin Welsh.

   3. Leadership for Simon Sinek.

   4. Marketing for Seth Godin.

   5. Product management for Lenny Rachitsky.

2. Easier to sell and charge more. If you solve a specific person’s problem better than a generic solution, those people will pay you more.

Now, let’s show how we can niche down.

You can always broaden the niche later. But for now, you want to find something you can own.

Three primary ways to niche

• Subtopic: Not general copywriting, but writing ad copy.

• Audience: Not “leaders” but CEOs of Fortune 500.

• Outcome: Not “build an audience” but “make 5-figures a month from LinkedIn.”

Just remember, you really cannot go too niche. Particularly if you sell services that cost thousands of dollars or more. Going super niche means you can likely close customers more easily and charge more (because you’re solving their unique problems).

Examples of niching down

Let’s use leadership, copywriting, SEO, and building an audience as examples:

• Leadership

  • Subtopic niches: storytelling, managing, building teams, culture

  • Audience niches:

    • CEOs: B2B, Agency, Fortune 500, early-stage.

    • Managers: Engineering, Business, Product.

  • Outcome niches: Get promoted, become CEO, grow company.

• Copywriting

  • Subtopic niches: Hooks, email copywriting, ad copywriting, storytelling

  • Audience niches: marketers, authors, founders, email marketers, dental offices, or even other copywriters.

  • Outcome niches: Grow audience, sell more, more copywriting clients.

• SEO

  • Subtopic niches: Local SEO, technical, link building, keyword research, etc.

  • Audience niches: dentists, founders, CMOs at big companies, advanced SEOs,

  • Outcome niches: More clients, more traffic, improve SEO skills.

• Building an audience

  • Audience: coaches, agencies, founders, wantrepreneurs

  • Channel: LinkedIn Growth, Twitter Growth, newsletters, podcasts

  • Outcome niches: Grow audience, get leads, build media company.

Jot down some niches for your topics

For your topic ideas, find ways you can niche down.

Again, optimize both for your ikigai and unfair advantage and for the following:

• Pain: They must be experiencing the pain your content will solve.

• Infinite game: It must be a pain that never goes away for them. A CEO at a large company does not care to learn about nitty-gritty SEO. A dentist might constantly try to get more traffic for their practice.

• Purchasing power: They must be able to afford to solve the pain. Productivity for CEOs is far better than productivity for students.

• Matches what you sell: If you sell SEO services, don’t write for your peers. If you sell advanced SEO courses, write for your peers.

• Social presence: They exist on the channels you plan to target. For example, dentists are harder to reach on social media than programmers.

What stands out?

Take some of your top picks and talk them through with a friend or loved one.

This will take some time, and you don’t need to figure this out on day 1.

This all requires a lot of soul-searching—a deep look at yourself, what you want, what you care about, and who you want to be surrounded by. It’s like finding a partner, picking a business idea, or choosing a career.

Just remember: The biggest reason people fail to build an audience is that they never start. They get stuck in analysis paralysis forever, unsure of what to write about.

Do not worry about finding the perfect topic/niche if you aren't writing and posting consistently.

It doesn’t have to be daily; it just needs to be regular:

• It’s how you improve. Frequent practice is the only way we improve.

• It’s how you discover what you love. It’s rare for someone to come up with the perfect idea out of the gate. Most people stumble upon it accidentally while creating.

• It’s how you slowly pry out the knowledge from your head. “The Curse of Knowledge” means that experts often assume others know everything they do, making it hard to recognize all the valuable things they have to share.

If you haven’t started creating or posting, read this first:

Make sure to work on your copywriting too ;0

You must be a sharp copywriter for your content to perform.

Here are a few resources I’ve created to help:

1. 10 Ways to Write Hooks. I’ve studied hundreds of viral hooks and found 10 fundamental ways to hook people.

2. The 10 types of posts and how to use them. Use these to systematize your content creation process.

3. 10 Copywriting Tips. One of my top articles and LinkedIn posts.

4. 7 Copywriting Frameworks (with cheatsheet). So you don’t have to start from scratch; these frameworks make “fill in the blanks.”

5. Breakdown of the top 30 hooks on LinkedIn. Each hook is color-coded to show the smart thing each creator did to hook you.

6. Breakdown of the top 26 hooks on Twitter. 

   1. An analysis of the top 20 female creator's hook. Due to the total lack of gender diversity of the top 100 creators, I created one for the top 20 women.

7. An analysis of 12 ways to hook with Thumbnails. A hook can be an image, too.

Notice the lack of sponsors? Help keep it that way by subscribing :)

Cheers folks!

If you like this post, share it with a friend who is trying to grow through content!

How I can help you grow:

• Need advice on growing your startup? Book a consultation call with me.

• Need to run ads? We’ve built the ads agency for startups.

• Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

• Sign up for my premium newsletter to access my post archive.

😍

– Neal

For example, Mr Beast’s YouTube channel:

Just in 20 videos, you can see a few repeat formats:

1. $1 vs $XXXXXXXX [thing]

2. [something] vs [adjective] [something else]

3. I [verb] X [thing]

4. World's [superlative] [thing]

5. Somebody surviving something and winning money

You'll also notice that his thumbnails have recurring elements:

• Crazy bright colors and high contrast

• Goofy grin

• Overly big head

• Insane scenarios

• Looks like a teenage boy created it

And the videos themselves follow a certain structural pattern:

1. First, some larger-than-life wacky concept evokes an “I can’t believe someone is doing this” reaction.

2. He immediately yells the title of the video (to reinforce that the video will deliver on what the thumbnail promised)

3. The camera then makes a dynamic move (zoom out to show the scale of something)

4. He introduces the schtick for the video

5. He engages you throughout by layering on additional wacky, surprise elements and keeps teasing the big payoff later in the video

6. There will likely be a cameo from someone like Gordon Ramsay or Tom Brady

7. His bonehead friends do something dumb

8. He does an ad read right at peak action, so you don’t skip it,

9. He teases an upcoming video

10. He brings in some fans or shows people recognizing him

11. He does some sort of giveaway if you subscribe to his channel

Pick a random video; I guarantee it’ll check nearly every box above.

Reasons to re-use formats

Reason #1: People know what to expect

If someone likes $1 vs $1,000,000 Hotel, they’ll probably like $1 vs $XXX House, Yacht, Boat, Vacation, Car, and Job. This is smart because:

• It's easy for the YouTube algorithm to know what to recommend next.

• It's easy for your audience to decide what to watch next. It's de-risked that they're going to like it.

• People like comfort, simple as that. They’ll watch the 200th episode of Seinfeld for the 10th time rather than watch that exciting new show because Seinfeld is comfortable. They know it. It’s safe. They won’t be surprised. At the end of a long day, that’s important.

Reason #2: It de-risks the investment

This is why there are 5,000 Marvel movies.

People loved The Avengers; let’s make The Avengers 2 (and so on).

Every piece of content requires time, effort, and resources. What worked in the past is likely to work again. So, it’s infinitely less risky to repeat rather than radically innovate.

Warning: You still need to be creative and do innovative stuff. People will get annoyed when you get to the 7th Avengers if it feels too similar each time.

Reason #3: It’s a lot less effort + systematizable

For years, I wrote a newsletter for over 100,000 founders where I shared unique 3 startup growth tactics (it’s since changed formats).

It followed a repeat format:

Intro → sponsors → 3 growth tactics → news → meme → outro.

This format was very liberating:

• I wasn’t reinventing the wheel each time.

• I know what a "growth tactic" looks like

• We trained team members to help write tactics, grab news, and find relevant memes.

• I like to say it's more like "filling in the blanks."

Just like Mr. Beast can train his team to develop and execute ideas given the repeatable format that he knows works.

The goal of content themes

The goal is to find repeatable content themes and formats that allow you to:

1. Keep going deep on your core topics and ideas while keeping it interesting.

2. Be creative and innovative, so you create something interesting and unignorable. Creativity often needs boundaries.

3. Train your audience on what to expect from you.

It’s funny because people naturally gravitate to a repeat theme and structure when they create podcasts or newsletters. But when it comes to social content, they don’t. Every time they post, it’s kinda random.

Let’s dive into some examples of the various kinds of themes you can have:

Examples of content themes

There are a few ways you can get thematic with content. It can be days of the week devoted to different content types or subtopics. Or they can be more creative.

Let’s dive into both, leaving the best for last.

Day of the week themes

A key way to systematize is to plan the type of content you create on specific days of the week. This is particularly important if you sell multiple products or topics to cover.

You can either do it based on content types or subtopics:

Content-type/format themes

For example, you can theme days of your week for post types to make it easier to design:

• Mon: Meme

• Tues: Cheatsheet

• Wed: Client Win

• Thurs: Analytical Carousel

• Fri: Promote Newsletter

To further systematize content creation, dive into the 10 types of posts.

Subtopic themes:

With the high-level topic of “building an audience:”

• Mon: Hooks

• Tues: Systemization

• Wed: Monetization

• Thurs: Creator teardown

• Fri: Motivation

Creative content themes:

This is more of a grab bag of creative ideas. It’s hard to formalize it

Will Nitze: "Monday Morning Shower Thoughts"

You can get creative with the format like Will’s “Monday Morning Shower Thoughts:”

These goofy posts made my week and caused me to DM and befriend Will.

This format is perfect for Will because he naturally has weird observations and thoughts. It works because it leverages his unique superpowers.

Jenny Hoyos: "[Fast Food Chain] for $1"

Jenny Hoyos had a recurring series where she recreated fast food items for $1 on YouTube Shorts. She made over 10 of them and got over 150M combined views.

Ad Professor: Curated ads and invented ads

The Ad Professor’s entire content strategy is doing curated lists of creative ads:

And creative ads of his own creation:

Me: “Analysis of top hooks”

Here, I found a repeat format to analyze top hooks from creators:

The next step in reusing this format is analyzing all the top posts from specific creators.

Me: “How to do [hook type] hooks”

I created a template to re-use for each of the 10 Ways to Write Hooks.

Note: Whenever I talk about hooks, I promote either an article or a lead magnet related to hooks. This allows me to take people off the social platform (an audience I don’t own) to my newsletter (an audience I do own). This has led to over 5,000 subscribers to Demand Curve’s newsletter.

How to find your content themes

Here are the general steps:

1. Figure out your high-level topic and audience

   1. Ex: Audience building for entrepreneurs wanting more leads.

2. Figure out the goal for your content

   1. Ex: Build trust with and close potential customers

3. Define the core content pillars (subtopics) within that topic. Examples:

   1. Writing hooks

   2. Getting the f*ck going

   3. Systematizing content creation

   4. Figuring out your topic

   5. Turning attention into intention

4. Determine the format of content you want to create based on your skills:

   1. Video

   2. Text only

   3. Carousels

   4. Cheatsheets/infographics

   5. Long-form articles

   6. Podcasts

5. Learn the 10 types of posts you can create:

   1. Actionable

   2. Observation

   3. X vs Y

   4. Motivation

   5. Analytical

   6. Listicle

   7. Contrarian

   8. Testimonial / Client win

   9. Personal Story

   10. Meme

6. Figure out, generally, what types of posts you will do each day using either the content-type or subtopic day themes.

7. Experiment with different styles of posts until you find something you really enjoy making and people seem to enjoy consuming.

8. Try to templatize it in a way and continue to improve and experiment with it.

9. Study what others are doing and see if you can adapt and innovate on it for your specific audience and niche.

Remember to have fun.

If you have fun making it, they’ll have fun going through it.

Make sure to work on your copywriting

You must be a sharp copywriter for your content to perform.

Here are a few resources I’ve created to help:

1. 10 Ways to Write Hooks. I’ve studied hundreds of viral hooks and found 10 fundamental ways to hook people.

2. The 10 types of posts and how to use them. Use these to systematize your content creation process.

3. 10 Copywriting Tips. One of my top articles and LinkedIn posts.

4. 7 Copywriting Frameworks (with cheatsheet). So you don’t have to start from scratch; these frameworks make “fill in the blanks.”

5. Breakdown of the top 30 hooks on LinkedIn. Each hook is color-coded to show the smart thing each creator did to hook you.

6. Breakdown of the top 26 hooks on Twitter. 

   1. An analysis of the top 20 female creator's hook. Due to the total lack of gender diversity of the top 100 creators, I created one for the top 20 women.

7. An analysis of 12 ways to hook with Thumbnails. A hook can be an image, too.

Cheers folks!

If you like this post, share it with a friend who’s trying to grow on LinkedIn or X!

How I can help you grow:

• Need advice on growing your startup? Book a consultation call with me.

• Need to run ads? We’ve built the ads agency for startups.

• Need to hire an agency/freelancer? We’ll match you with a vetted partner for $0.

• Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

• Sign up for my premium newsletter to access my post archive.

😍

– Neal

Most who try won’t for long.

What’s holding them back: Being scared to start and sticking with it.

The fear comes from a variety of sources:

1. Imposter Syndrome

70% of people feel like they’re not good enough or that they’re just pretending to be competent, according to a study published in 2021.

They’re worried about sharing their ideas and having someone expose them for the incompetent fool that they are.

Competent experts are more likely to experience imposter syndrome partly due to the…

2. The Dunning Kruger Effect

The less you know, the more confident you are:

An expert knows there’s a lot that they don’t know and can think of various people who are better at those things, so they become less confident in their abilities than the complete amateur who doesn’t know enough to realize they know very little.

It’s a dangerous combo when it’s combined with…

3. The Curse of Knowledge

“Yes, but I don’t have anything interesting to say.”

When you’re an expert who’s been doing something for years, and you’re surrounded by people who have also done that thing for years, it becomes incredibly hard to recognize how much valuable knowledge you have that others wish they had.

For example, one of my friends has worked with Dr. Andrew Huberman, Sam Harris, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, Dr. Peter Attia, and Shane Parrish to grow their audiences and increase the revenue they earn from their businesses.

The above quote was what he said to me when I encouraged him to start posting online.

A marketer with 10+ years of experience working with some of the biggest creators in the entire world, and he thinks he has nothing to teach people.

We need more people like him sharing their knowledge, not 20-year-old influencer wannabes sharing lists of free AI tools.

Lastly, we’re all scared to put ourselves out there because of…

4. The Spotlight Effect

We all feel that everyone is paying attention to us. If we mess something up, everyone will notice and care.

The reality is that everyone is too busy worried that you will judge them.

Because of this, people get stuck in the research and prep phase

Here are the reservations people typically have at first

1. “I don’t have anything valuable to say”

2. “I don’t want people to judge me”

3. “I don’t know what tools to use”

4. “I don’t know what to write about” (← the major focus of the rest of this article)

You need to muscle through the first two by reminding yourself of the 4 psychological biases above. They’re ingrained into us. Even when you’ve been doing it for years, you’ll still have to fight them off occasionally.

The others we’ll dive into separately:

“I don’t know what tools to use”

Researching tools feels productive. And it’s a lot easier and less scary than actually doing the work.

In reality, the only tools you need to get started as a creator are:

• A social media account

• An internet connection

• A smartphone or computer

You don’t need the ultimate productivity system. You can write directly in the app and record video and audio using your smartphone.

That being said, here’s the Audience Building Tool Stack I recommend.

“I don’t know what to write about”

A content creator rarely starts with the perfect idea.

It’s very similar to startups. Most successful startups are not:

• Selling the same product they started with

• Targeting the same market they started with

For example, Slack started as a video game. After years of development, they scrapped the game and turned the in-game messaging system into a product.

Airbnb was a marketplace for finding places to crash during conferences where you’d sleep on an air mattress on the floor (hence Airbnb). Hell, Airbnb even sold presidential breakfast cereal:

As for content creators:

• Justin Welsh started with software sales advice and now sells the dream of solopreneurship after people asked him how he grew on LinkedIn so quickly.

• Ali Abdaal helped people get into medical school, then did MacBook reviews, then did investment advice, and has settled on being a productivity expert after researching how to create content efficiently.

• Sahil Bloom started with nuanced finance discussions and now talks about family and living a “high-performing, healthy, wealthy life” because that’s what he gravitated towards.

• Katelyn Bourgoin was sharing general marketing advice when she realized she was really interested in the psychology behind why people buy. So, that became her entire focus.

I became obsessed with How to Write Hooks while creating startup growth content.

So, in short:

Get f*ckin’ going, you’ll find it on the way

Imagine you were 18 years old and refused to work until you knew what you wanted to do for the rest of your life. You’d likely be homeless and never work.

Instead, follow your interests until you find something you want to explore deeply.

You don’t need to be an expert in it; you can become one by obsessing over the topic for months and months.

That being said, I have an article on choosing a topic you can monetize coming out soon. Subscribe below to get access when I release it:

Subscribe now

And you’ll get better with consistent practice.

In 2007, a struggling digital artist from South Carolina named Mike Winkelmann was frustrated with his poor drawing skills. So, he issued himself a challenge:

→ Post 1 new piece of unique art online by 11:59 PM Eastern Time.

No excuses:

• He did it on his wedding day.

• He did it when he was deathly ill and could barely move.

• He did it even on the days his two children were born.

For years, this challenge was purely a means to improve his skills as an artist and to get attention to his work so he could do commissioned art pieces for people.

His first pieces are objectively… terrible:

But after consistent practice…

The result?

On March 11th, 2021, Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, made history. He sold an NFT of the first 5,000 pieces of art he made this way for $69,346,250. It was the second most expensive piece of art from a living artist ever sold.

His 6,000+ pieces of art are documented proof of his development over 17 years.

His strategy worked incredibly well for a few reasons:

1. It forced him to create art every day. The hardest part of being a creator is getting your ass into the seat. This forced him to do it.

2. It forced him to keep expanding his skill set to stave off boredom. He went from pencil drawings to 3d renderings.

3. Posting every day gives him the opportunity to create culturally relevant and timely art—art that can strike a chord immediately as it enters the Zeitgeist.

4. He could be known for something. He’s the guy who creates weird, culturally relevant art each day.

5. It gets easier every day. With every piece of art, he’s adding to his catalog of assets that he can use in future pieces. If he creates Elon Musk or Sam Bankman Fried one day, he can re-use them in the future. He has systems, presets, and templates that make creating complex art way faster and easier.

Frameworks to get started

Sure, it’s easy for me to tell you to get started, but here are some frameworks to make it easier to figure out what to write about:

• Explain something you’ve explained 3 times or more recently

• Tell stories from your life

• Write down whatever interests you lately. Your latest rabbit hole.

• Something you just learned.

• A problem you just dealt with at work

• An analysis of one of your favorite books, creators, companies, styles, etc.

• Create lists of your favorite books, podcasts, tools, and resources

• Actionable step-by-step on how to do parts of your job

• Share a meme that made you laugh out loud

• Issue yourself some sort of challenge. For example, Beeple’s daily art or Soren Iverson’s daily parody UI:

Make sure to work on your copywriting

You must be a sharp copywriter for your content to perform.

Here are a few resources I’ve created to help:

1. 10 Ways to Write Hooks. I’ve studied hundreds of viral hooks and found 10 fundamental ways to hook people.

2. The 10 types of posts and how to use them. Use these to systematize your content creation process.

3. 10 Copywriting Tips. One of my top articles and LinkedIn posts.

4. 7 Copywriting Frameworks (with cheatsheet). So you don’t have to start from scratch; these frameworks make “fill in the blanks.”

5. Breakdown of the top 30 hooks on LinkedIn. Each hook is color-coded to show the smart thing each creator did to hook you.

6. Breakdown of the top 26 hooks on Twitter. 

   1. An analysis of the top 20 female creator's hook. Due to the total lack of gender diversity of the top 100 creators, I created one for the top 20 women.

7. An analysis of 12 ways to hook with Thumbnails. A hook can be an image, too.

Cheers folks!

If you like this post, share it with a friend who’s trying to grow on LinkedIn or X!

How I can help you grow:

• Need advice on growing your startup? Book a consultation call with me.

• Need to run ads? We’ve built the ads agency for startups.

• Need to hire an agency/freelancer? We’ll match you with a vetted partner for $0.

• Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

• Sign up for my premium newsletter to access my post archive.

😍

– Neal

This post methodically details the 10 fundamental types of posts you can create. It tells you what they are, what they’re good for, and how to do them (including step-by-step frameworks).

Knowing the types of posts and how to use them can drastically improve the quality of your posts and the outcome you get from them.

All while making it easier to create them.

We’ll dive deep into these 10 types of posts:

1. Actionable

2. Observation

3. X vs Y

4. Motivation

5. Analytical

6. Listicle

7. Contrarian

8. Testimonial / Client win

9. Personal Story

10. Meme

If you’ve read Justin Welsh, he details 8 different post types. Based on my research, I have changed and expanded them.

Let’s dive in.

But first, here’s a tl;dr cheatsheet

Reference this later as you write. Here’s a high-res version.

1. Actionable

A step-by-step breakdown of how to do something.

Actionable posts are often “How to X” or “How I X.”

Generally, you want somebody to feel equipped and able to implement your advice without feeling confused or stuck. They should just be able to take your advice and get to work.

Actionable posts demonstrate your expertise.

They also make people like and appreciate you for helping solve their problems.

And when they run into trouble implementing your advice (because things are hard), they’ll come to you for help. So, they’re particularly effective for coaches, consultants, freelancers, and agency operators.

Actionable posts are typically done in Threads, Carousels, or long-form text or video. But you can also do a short form one like this:

This glosses over a ton of nuance and steps, but these are the steps you’d need to follow to create the type of business Jon has. Each one of those steps could be its own post.

Let’s dive into some longer-form examples.

Examples

• How to Hook People with Credibility – Neal

• The Structure of a 10M View YouTube Short - Neal

• How to build a $300/day side business – Jon Brosio

• How to make an extra $2500/mo selling ebooks – Jon Brosio

Actionable content is extremely powerful at demonstrating your expertise and building affinity with your audience.

Our agency, Bell Curve, got nearly all its leads from a single mega-piece of content that my cofounder wrote on “How to Acquire More Users.”

This one piece of content allowed us to work with clients like Microsoft, Figma, Lamba Labs, Huobi, Cameo, and Envoy in the first two years.

It was an 80/20 run-through of startup growth with step-by-step advice on writing a landing page, creating and running ads, doing content marketing, improving onboarding, B2B sales, and A/B testing.

People would go through it and see how hard growth was.

Because someone had methodically taught them how to do it, they trusted Julian (and our agency) to do it for them.

Note: This guide has since been broken into two pieces: the Growth Guide on Demand Curve’s website and Julian’s Startup Guide.

How to do Actionable posts

1. List everything your customers need to do to achieve their goals. For example, someone starting a personal audience will need to:

   1. Pick a topic/niche

   2. Pick a channel

   3. Pick a content style

   4. Learn how to write good content (huge topic with tons of subtopics)

   5. Get over imposter syndrome

   6. Get in the habit of posting and engaging

   7. Engage with other creators

   8. Create a system for generating ideas and getting inspiration

2. Figure out which problems are the most painful or the ones people ask the most about directly to you or on Reddit/social.

3. Write a step-by-step guide to solving that problem. Try to make it the only resource they’ll need to solve it. You can do this by either:

   1. Writing purely based on your expertise.

   2. Doing a bunch of research (books, articles, podcasts).

   3. Interviewing experts and compiling their advice. This is Lenny Rachitsky’s model for his newsletter (the largest and most successful Substack).

Done right, actionable posts are some of the most powerful for generating leads.

2. Observation

What have you observed in your industry that others aren’t talking about?

The point of these posts is to:

1. Show people how you think about the world.

2. Demonstrate your thought leadership.

3. Make people think differently.

4. To attract your tribe to you. More on this in the Contrarian section.

They’re often short-form but don’t have to be if there’s much to be said on the topic (I’ll give some examples below).

They’re typically text only or text + image. A carousel is overkill.

Examples

Short-form examples

Long-form examples

Notice they’re articles. However, these could technically be carousels as well, especially if you have a lot of images.

Neal's Newsletter 🍉

Dopamine is a hell of a drug

Ever notice that most of the top creators seem to post about things like: Productivity Leadership Communication Relationships Workplace culture Work-life balance Living a better life Mental models And say things like “Steal this” or “I’ll teach you more in 4 minutes than a 4-year marketing degree…

Read more

3 years ago · 13 likes · 1 comment · Neal O'Grady 🍉

@andrewchen

How novelty effects and Dopamine Culture rule the tech industry

Dear readers, First off, hello from Substack! I am writing from andrewchen.substack.com where you’ll find me from now on. After 15+ years of writing via wordpress on andrewchen.com (and its predecessors), I’m going to try Substack. I’m long overdue, of course, led the company’s Series A in 2019. I will be…

Read more

2 years ago · 195 likes · 35 comments · Andrew Chen

How to do it:

There are a few ways.

#1. The brute force way:

1. Turn on focus mode and close other tabs.

2. Set a timer for 30 minutes.

3. Jot down as many short-form ideas as you can. This is the brainstorming phase.

4. Then, filter the ideas for the great ones and edit them to make them punchier.

5. Repeat regularly. The best ideas will take a while to come out.

#2. The ad hoc way: if an idea hits you randomly, jot it down.

#3. The research way: browse other people’s social accounts and find observations they’ve made. Put your unique spin and perspective on them, or use that to inspire your unique observations.

If they don’t work the first time, rewrite them and try again.

If they do well in short-form, consider expanding further in long-form.

3. X vs. Y

Compare two things, situations, or states of being with an interesting takeaway.

X vs Y posts are effective at highlighting your values and encouraging discussion. And for making a point.

They can be a quick comparison or a methodical breakdown in a carousel or thread.

One reason they’re so effective is the cognitive bias of “What you see is all there is,” where people tend to evaluate the information that’s currently presented rather than tapping into all the knowledge they have about the world.

The X vs. Y comparison causes them to tunnel vision on how you present it, allowing you to control how they perceive the “bad alternative” and the “good alternative.” Usually, the good alternative represents the thing you sell.

Examples

Short-form:

Longer-form:

Can see Rob’s post below here.

How to do it

Choose two things to compare and either do it in a sentence or two or bullet point it out. Ideas of things you can compare:

• What happens when you do X vs. what happens when you do Y (or don’t do X)

• Before vs. after

• Past vs. Present or Present vs. Future (how will technology and future trends change things in the future)

• What I want vs. what I don’t want

• What people want vs. what they get

• What people think vs. reality

• Group A vs. Group B

There are endless ways to do this. Use the above examples to get started.

Note: If you follow Justin Welsh, he breaks Present / Future out as a separate type of content, but I think it’s a subset of X vs Y or observation.

Bonus points if you convert the text into a nice, eye-catching visual.

4. Motivation

Sad truth: Most people don’t need to learn more to achieve their goals.

Instead, they need motivation and encouragement to take action.

This is why the self-help industry is so big.

The key is to motivate your audience to achieve their goals while triggering their Fear of Being Outdone and highlighting your credibility.

These posts are typically shorter-form unless it’s done in a video and you’re Tony Robins doing a long speech.

Examples

This post from Justin Welsh is well executed:

1. It’s visually appealing. The list with times gets your attention).

2. It leaves you hanging and forces you to click to learn what the catches are.

3. It also makes you stop and re-evaluate your life.

“Wtf, I wish my day looked like. And wait, doesn’t he make 7-figures per year???”

It triggers your Fear of Being Outdone while also making Justin seem credible, preaching that we should all become solopreneurs. And it motivates you to work towards the dream that Justin is selling.

Here are a couple of others from Lara Acosta that do the same:

Here’s another simple motivational post that’s more blatantly motivational:

How to do it

Here are two broad steps:

1. Identify your customers’ selfish desires. What do they want deep down that they might not be willing to admit? This usually comes down to status, wealth, and power.

2. Find ways to encourage your audience that achieving their selfish desire is possible and is everything they want. This often boils down to:

   1. Making it sound easier. Example: Jon Brosio’s post above illustrates that generating content ideas is easier than you think. Even oversimplifying could help someone get over the fear of starting.

   2. “I did it; you can too.” Make yourself seem unprivileged and relatable, then share how you overcame the difficulties and achieved the success they’re striving for (personally or for others).

   3. Highlight how awesome it is. Example: Justin Welsh sharing his enviable daily schedule or pictures of him hiking during work hours.

   4. Sharing big wins. Like Lara being featured in Forbes. It’s a dream for many, and people want to celebrate her achievements.

5. Analytical

Teardown of a topic, company, person, content style, framework, etc.

For example, this post is an analytical one. It discusses “types of content” in depth.

Analytical posts go deep, so you need a carousel, thread, long-form video, email series, newsletter, article, or even a series of emails.

This one is my favorite.

Examples

1. Top 26 X Creators’ Post Breakdown

2. Top 20 Women Creators’ Post Breakdown

3. Top 30 LinkedIn Creators Post Breakdown

4. 10 Thumbnail Types to Increase Views

How to do it

First, you need to identify things to analyze. Here are some ideas:

• People (ex: Jeff Bezos’ advice, quotes, story, etc.)

• Companies (how Apple grew to $1T)

• Research (ex: how backlinks affect Google search rankings)

• Trends (ex: how Mr Beast is influencing YouTube)

• Ways to achieve something (how to write hooks, types of posts, copywriting frameworks, etc)

• How people do things (analysis of LinkedIn’s top 30 creators’ hooks)

As you did for Actionable posts, you must identify everything your customers need to do to achieve their goals. Instead of explicitly telling them how to do something, with Analytical posts, you can analyze:

• How Bezos did it

• All the possible ways it could be done

• How the way it’s done has changed

• The effect of doing it

And so on.

6. Listicle

A list of things related to your industry, likely with minor commentary:

• People to follow

• Books to read

• TED talks to watch

• YouTube channels to watch

• Podcasts to listen to

• Tools/software to use

• Products to buy

These have historically performed extremely well because they’re aggregated research for people. An easy bookmark and comment: “This is awesome, thanks!”

It also warrants a comment/engagement from the creator of those things, leading to increased post visibility.

But it’s also one of the most shallow types of posts.

You’re not teaching anything.
You’re not demonstrating any expertise.
You’re not making people think or inspiring them.

You’re just listing out some potentially useful stuff.

They also don’t tend to perform as well anymore, as algorithms have adjusted not to weigh these so heavily.

So, as Justin Welsh recommends, do these sparingly.

Usually done as a thread, text-only, or carousel.

Examples

^ The “curated” style like the one above still does fairly well, IF you are good at curating images that give people dopamine hits and haven’t been seen before.

How to do it

Pick a category of things from this list:

• People to follow

• Books to read

• TED talks to watch

• YouTube channels to watch

• Podcasts to listen to

• Tools/software to use

• Products to buy

And tailor it to your industry.

Add context to WHY each item is important for your audience to consider/use them to achieve their goals and selfish desires.

7. Contrarian / Trolling

Here you ruffle some feathers by making strong statements how things should be done, or how things are being done wrong.

Contrarian posts are great for:

1. Encouraging discussion. Strong opinions elicit strong reactions.

2. Attracting your tribe by saying what they wish they said.

3. Making them think.

If you give people an epiphany, they get a little surge of oxytocin (the bonding chemical), making them feel more connected to you.

There can be some overlap with Observation, but they differ because they:

• Are strongly worded and spiky opinions

• They sometimes aren’t observations but rather opinions or hard fact

• They throw jabs at people, their actions, or their beliefs

Examples

They can be a bit hard-hitting and potentially ruffle feathers:

Or they can challenge an existing societal belief that won’t offend anybody:

And instead of just stating an opinion, you can demonstrate it by trolling:

How to do it

First, you must develop and identify your “spiky point of view” of the world.

What the hell is a spiky point of view? Well, here it is from Wes Kao herself:

Here’s the full article about spiky points of view if you’re interested.

Essentially, it boils down to:

What do you believe differently than many others in your niche?
How do you see the world differently than your peers?
How have your experiences influenced you?

For example, for me, here are unique aspects that shape how I view the world:

1. I lived out of a backpack for 3.5 years in my mid-20s, prioritizing life experiences over career and monetary achievement.

2. I’m a mechanical engineer turned programmer reluctantly turned marketer. I entered marketing believing ads were made to convince people to buy things they don’t need. As such, I’m skeptical of many marketing tactics and dislike inauthenticity.

   1. I try to explain complex concepts in simple, easy-to-understand ways because I saw how badly engineers communicated complex ideas to non-engineers.

3. I bootstrapped my companies without connections, experience, or resources. We made money consulting and kept reinvesting it. We spotted opportunities along the way and put resources behind them. As such, I’m skeptical of the VC funding route.

4. We’ve grown our companies purely through organic content slowly nurturing people over time, rather than doing heavy ads or sales pushes. As a result, my opinions are shaped by what worked for me.

5. I’ve been told by various people that I should be a comedian and that I’m sarcastic and witty. I use that to my advantage on LinkedIn, where people are quite boring because it’s a very business/corporate/professional environment.

These life experiences and qualities shape how I view the world and use them to create content and build an audience.

Find yours and champion your views.

8. Testimonial / Client Win

Warning: This post type will generally NOT get you much engagement or followers.

But it is one of the best for actual conversions.

Nothing sells better than a happy customer or proof that your product works.

A single post I did on LinkedIn led to at least $30k in revenue. It shared the success stories of former students. It’s the first example below.

Examples

There are various ways to do this. Check the captions below.

How to do it

There are a few ways to do this, as hinted above:

1. Share a testimonial directly (quote image or video). Use the post's text to expand on what you did for them.

2. Share a win you had for the client (with permission).

3. Talk about their problem and how you helped them overcome it.

4. Create a longer-form case study.

5. Get them to post their story directly and then quote-tweet it.

6. Share a DM conversation with them to highlight their win.

7. Use their win as a hook to then share your general process/framework.

Then, ask people to DM to learn more. Or add a direct link. Or have a link on your profile and direct people there. Or put a link in the comments.

Note: Asking people to comment to show their interest is risky because that then makes it public how many people are interested. If you anticipate a lot of demand (like for a free lead magnet), it’s a good thing. If it’s possible there won’t be (like for paid consulting), then asking for a DM keeps it private and a mystery.

9. Personal Story

We all love a good story.

They deepen the connection people have with us.

Stories allow you to show, not just tell. People can see themselves in the story, feel the pain, and believe the solution.

A personal story is the number one post type that compels people to DM me and has been used to sell our course.

They can used to build a deeper connection, teach, or sell your product.

Examples

How to do it

First, you need to have a story to tell. It doesn’t have to be a crazy travel story. It can be a simple story about a totally normal problem you faced and overcame.

It’s actually better if the story is relatable.

Think back on your life and career. Jot down all your highs and lows. The failures and the achievements. Or stories that you find yourself repeating to friends or colleagues.

Then, you have to write them.

Storytelling is an art form, but here are some basic principles.

The Hero’s Journey

Surprisingly, a lot of movies and books have the same basic structure:

Eric Partaker (a former student with 600k+ followers now) used the Hero’s Journey as the framework for his carousels teaching leadership principles.

A 12-step framework might be a tough place to start, so I instead suggest the Pixar storytelling framework (that they’ve used in some of the best movies of all time):

Once upon a time, ___________________.
Every day, ___________________.
Until one day, ___________________.
Because of that, ___________________.
Because of that, ___________________.
Until finally, ___________________.

Fill in the blanks, and you have a story. Let’s illustrate this with an example:

1. Once upon a time, Alice, the founder of a creative agency, was on top of the world.

2. Every day, she'd do sales calls for inbound leads and crush her client work.

3. Until one day, a recession hit and cut inbound leads by 2/3rds.

4. Because of that, she needed to increase leads, or else she'd have to lay off staff.

5. Because of that, Alice started posting on LinkedIn and Twitter. Most of her posts flopped, but a few did well and brought in leads. However, she had a tough time running a business and consistently creating good content.

6. Until finally, she joined the UNIGNORABLE Challenge to learn how to create content that resonates with her audience systematically.

This framework allowed me to create a basic story with a proven structure about our course in a few minutes.

The shape of stories

There’s also this delightful video of Kurt Vonnegut teaching the shape of stories:

Use them to shape your story arc.

10. Meme

The meme is a special category.

It can dip its toes into several of the ones above. A meme can be contrarian, compare and contrast like X vs. Y, or make a humorous observation.

But the goal is to make people laugh and think and give them a quick dopamine hit that causes them to click, like, and share as a knee-jerk reaction.

The best memes reinforce your spiky point of view. They shouldn’t just be funny to anyone with thumbs; they should be funny to your specific audience and communicate your core ideas.

Examples

How to do it

There are three ways you can do it:

1. Hunt: Go through various subreddits (and Instagram accounts) and find posts that were either at the top or were good but didn’t take off due to a bad hook. Adapt those to your industry.

2. Gather: Follow social media accounts that share memes. When you find a good meme or meme format, adapt it to your industry or sharing it directly.

3. Farm: Use a meme generator site to explore the various formats. Go back and forth with a friend, making memes to make each other laugh. When you find a good one, you’ll both know it.

Have fun with it. If you’re not, they won’t.

And here’s meme master Aidan Brannigan’s playbook:

What’s next

Now that you know all the types of content, there are various next steps to creating content that grows your audience and converts readers into customers.

I plan to write thorough guides, like this one, for each of those steps and will add links as time goes on. But essentially, here there are:

1. Figure out some foundational things like:

   1. What you’re writing about

   2. The job to be done of your content

   3. Who you’re writing it for (and the pains they’re experiencing)

   4. Pick a channel (LinkedIn, TikTok) and content format (video, carousels, etc)

2. Fight your way to the first 1,000 followers.

3. Revamp your profile.

4. Learn the 10 Ways to Hook People to get people to stop scrolling.

   1. Bonus: Types of Thumbnails That Increase Views

5. Improve your overall copywriting with these tips:

   1. 7 Copywriting Frameworks that Sell. Frameworks are helpful templates to ensure you hit all the necessary psychological biases.

   2. 10 Tips to Improve Your Copywriting. Write clear, concise, and crisp copy.

   3. 10 Literary Devices with Examples. Make your writing more interesting.

6. Create a newsletter or podcast to nurture followers.

7. Create lead magnets and funnels.

8. Engage and network. It’s called SOCIAL media for a reason.

9. Systematize your content creation

   1. Build a content creation system

   2. Create repeatable formats

   3. Find sources of inspiration

10. Figure out the tools to use with the Audience Building Tool Stack

11. Learn to resist the dopamine

And much more.

Cheers folks!

If you like this post, share it with a friend trying to grow on LinkedIn or X!

How I can help you grow:

• Growing a personal audience? Book a consultation call to get clarity.

• Need to run ads? We’ve built the ads agency for startups.

• Need to hire an agency/freelancer? We’ll match you with a vetted partner for $0.

😍

– Neal

PS: If you’re reading this, you are one of my favorite people, and you should DM me on LinkedIn or Twitter to say hi!

So, it may be surprising to hear me say:

I cannot wait for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to die

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a social media hater. I use them all the time for different reasons.

They are extremely useful technologies that:

1. Allow information to spread. Twitter moves faster than the news. YouTube enables anyone anywhere to learn anything.

2. Make connecting with people easier—for all the reasons people want to connect.

3. Democratize distribution. Anyone can post, and if it’s good, it will be seen. Previously, few had the resources and power to distribute information.

These benefits allow more and more people to create and bootstrap businesses—including mine.

Note this post was inspired from years of thinking about this, and reading Read Write Own by Chris Dixon.

But everyone can agree there’s a lot wrong with existing social networks:

1. You are not the customer. Advertisers are. That’s why all the innovations and changes in the past several years are in ad tech, not platform tech. And why it’s increasingly filled with ads.

   1. All the product changes in the past 5+ years are because a startup innovates, and the incumbents scramble to copy them. Examples:

      1. Twitter Spaces copied Clubhouse.

      2. Twitter/Instagram/YouTube subscriptions copied Substack.

      3. Instagram Stories copied Snapchat.

      4. Instagram Reels/YouTube Shorts copied TikTok.

2. Your attention and data are the product. Meta makes $200 per year per user. Even if every user paid a $15/mo subscription to use Facebook and Instagram, they would lose money—and there’s no way every user would pay for it.

3. They’re increasingly filled with spam. In the 90s and 00s, email inboxes were filled with spam, including viruses that could wreck your computer. The Internet community banded together to combat it. Today, Twitter is overrun with bots, and Instagram is filled with fake accounts.

4. You do not own your distribution. They control the algorithm. It can change at any time. It’s opaque. And they increasingly dislike you sending people off the platform.

   1. Instagram doesn’t allow posts with links. Twitter reduces their reach. And LinkedIn will never give you a “Top Voice” badge if you send people off LinkedIn.

5. You do not own the relationship with your audience. If you are banned. If the algorithm changes. If people leave the platform. You’re screwed.

6. You cannot innovate on top of them. Have a great idea on how to improve Twitter? Well, you can’t do that anymore. Perhaps you can file a feature request for the 20 overworked engineers?

   1. Twitter made its API horrendously expensive killing dozens of apps.

   2. Reddit killed off some of the most popular apps people built to view Reddit.

   3. Facebook killed Farmville and Vine.

There are various reasons why this happens.

1. No one will pay to use social media at this point. Only ~640,000 of Twitter’s 75,000,000 monthly active users pay for premium, a cool 0.85% of users.

2. Public companies need to grow to make investors happy. They need to keep extracting more money out of it.

3. They need to cover their asses. They can’t allow rampant innovation, which could lead to scams and problems for their real customers—advertisers.

4. It’s expensive to run a massive social network:

   1. Engineering talent to create a great, usable product.

   2. Customer support to handle the various issues that come up.

   3. Infrastructure to handle the billions of actions per year.

Subscribe now

Email, podcast, and SMS subscribers are the only audiences you can own.

With email, as long as you have the list of emails and they’ve consented to receive emails from you, you can directly contact your audience.

The only algorithm that will prevent you is designed to filter out spam. As long as you follow good deliverability practices, you should be fine.

And even if your domain is restricted for spam, you can always move to another one. (Assuming you don’t do it so egregiously, the government comes after you.)

There are tons of different email service providers. You can switch back and forth between them as many times as you like.

With SMS, as long as you have their number, it’s even easier to contact them since there’s not as much spam filtering. That’s because sending SMS’ at scale is much more expensive than emails, which helps cut down on spam.

With podcasts, it’s a simple RSS feed. Subscribers receive your episodes in whichever podcast app they prefer. Sure, Apple or Spotify could de-list you if you did something really bad, but the RSS feed is still there.

With each of these, anyone can confidently create a business without worry of it being taken away from them one day by a corporate giant. This is especially true as anyone can buy a domain name and set up a website without fear of it being taken away.

But these 3 channels are not enough.

There are two types of channels:

1. Discovery: You broadcast content, and it allows new people to discover it.

2. Relationship: You send content to people who have opted to receive it.

Discovery channels include social media. You post, and assuming it’s good, the algorithms cause it to be seen by people outside of your direct followers.

It can also include things like SEO. Someone searches for something and finds one of your newsletter editions or a podcast episode’s transcript.

Email, SMS, and Podcasts are relationship channels. If you send them out, there is no built-in mechanism for them to be seen by other people. People will not stumble upon the output of your relationship channel unless:

1. Someone refers them to it. Example: A friend tells you about a podcast they love. Or it’s shared on someone else’s relationship channel (a newsletter links to another newsletter).

2. They find it on a discovery channel. This could be the creator sharing it, someone else sharing it, or finding it via SEO.

3. You (the creator) pay to run ads to it. This is a common way people grow their newsletters and podcasts once they make money from them.

4. Bonus: You create something people want and only allow people to access it if they subscribe. But that thing must still be distributed via discovery channels or other people’s relationship channels.

Social media allows someone with no followers to start sharing useful, interesting content and build a following. They can then siphon a percentage of those people from the discovery channel (LinkedIn) into their relationship channel (email) and slowly convert those people over time into customers.

Or monetize the audience by inserting sponsorships into their relationship channel (newsletter/podcast).

As creators grow, they also typically diversify across multiple discovery channels so they’re not completely reliant on one for their business and to expand their reach.

Without discovery channels, it’s way harder for new people to start businesses. They enable anyone to earn distribution for their ideas and their products.

So, we need discovery channels that corporate giants do not own

The incentive structures mean that social networks run by a central entity will always have these inherent problems. We need decentralized social networks.

Websites, email, SMS, and podcast feeds are decentralized. No central authority controls them. Anyone can build a business on them without fear. Decisions to update them are made by the community of users and developers, not by a small group trying to maximize their profits.

Until recently, we didn’t have the technology to run and bootstrap decentralized social networks that could compete with the incumbents.

But now we do.

Unfortunately, it’s a technology most people do not understand and make fun of (rightfully so in many many cases).

That technology is blockchain—the tech that powers cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

No, this post is not trying to shill cryptocurrencies.

Yes, many cryptocurrencies are scams, memes, or vaporware. Just like in the early days of the Internet, there were many scams and vaporware Internet startups.

But it’s technology that can radically fix a lot of the problems of the current architecture of the Internet to make it more equitable.

So, instead, I highlight the power of this technology to replace broken systems.

Nor will I dive deep into how blockchain works as it’s incredibly technical, and you probably have very little understanding of how the Internet, electricity, engines, or really most things you use daily.

You care about what things can do to make your life better. So, I’ll focus on that.

In short, blockchain enables:

1. A network of computers to all agree on something and to follow rules. Without blockchain, computers operated by strangers cannot all agree on who has how much money, followers, likes, etc. And it protects against bad, dishonest actors.

2. Funding projects and incentivizing developers. Companies create “shares” to enable people to own pieces of it. They raise money by selling their shares to investors. Blockchain networks create cryptocurrencies for the same reason, allowing them to fund development.

3. Incentivizing usage and bootstrapping a network. It’s really hard to get a network going. No one likes to be the first one at a party. Many blockchain networks distribute cryptocurrencies to early users to incentivize them to use them. As the network gets more active, they distribute less and less of the currency as network effects kick in and it’s running itself.

4. Enabling a large community of people to govern themselves. Cryptocurrency owners vote on the direction the blockchain network takes in the future. Rather than being decided by a small board, it’s decided by the network of users, developers, and stakeholders.

5. Anyone can innovate on top of the network. If you have a great idea to improve the network, you can build on it, and everyone else benefits, and you can profit from it. No one can take that away from you.

6. People can create different apps to interact with it. Twitter has a website/app that lets people interact with the data on their servers, i.e., the Twitter app. If you don’t like the app or its algorithm, you’re screwed since there’s only one. But if you don’t like Apple Podcasts, you can use Overcast or Spotify because RSS feeds are decentralized. This applies to blockchain networks as well. Someone can create a blockchain social network where people follow, post, like, and comment, and then you can have as many different apps that view that data. So if you don’t like how one does it, you can use a different one. But your followers and content transfer across all of them.

   1. Picture creating a Twitter account for the first time and all of your LinkedIn followers and posts transfer over.

7. Creators can get paid for ad revenue. YouTube is the only social network that shares meaningful ad revenue with creators (45%). Most of the others either do not share or share an incredibly small percentage of their revenue. With blockchain networks, the creator can get paid the lion's share.

   1. The community decides the fees, and they typically end up being set to the cost of running the network.

Problems with blockchain networks at the moment include:

1. They cost money to use. You need to pay to do things because there’s no central authority to pay for things, and advertisers aren’t footing the bill. Luckily, this is getting cheaper as technology improves. And with clever design, the network could help cover some of the costs by inserting advertisements into them. But that doesn’t exist so far.

2. They’re still scaling. Up until recently, they were super slow. There’s still no blockchain network that can handle the 1,000,000 actions per second that Twitter can handle. But they’re coming.

I know this is hard to understand in theory, so let’s use an example

Recently, a blockchain network called Farcaster was created.

This network lets people follow, post, comment, like, repost, and send DMs—everything Twitter does essentially.

Note: A tweet/post is called a “cast” and a retweet/repost is called a “recast.”

Warpcast is a mobile and desktop app that lets you view this data and looks very similar to Twitter, except it also has “Channels,” which you can think of as subreddits on Reddit—communities centralized around a common interest.

It costs $5 upfront to join Warpcast to help cover the cost of actions on the blockchain of follows, likes, and posts. $5 covers 5,000 posts/comments, 2,500 likes, and 2,500 follows. For the average user, that will likely cover years of use. And this cost will likely decrease over time or get covered by the platform or advertisers.

There is a core team that created Farcaster and Warpcast. Still, they’ll likely distribute a cryptocurrency that will give the majority of the ownership of Farcaster to the community of users and developers.

And other people are already creating alternatives to Warpcast. So if someone wants to view the data on Farcaster (like one might view podcast episodes) but doesn’t like how Warpcast works (like one might not like Apple Podcasts), they can use the alternatives instead.

One of the “channels” within Warpcast distributed its own cryptocurrency called $DEGEN to reward early members. The average USD value of the distribution was $8.7k.

Enter the frame

Just in the past 2 weeks, Farcaster created a special type of “cast” (tweet/post) called a “frame” where people can essentially embed a mini app into a tweet. They’re simple right now; they include an image, up to four buttons, and an optional text field.

Pushing a button can:

1. Change the image (which can enable a lot of things)

2. Perform an action on the blockchain (like create an NFT or buy something)

3. Cause an action to occur on a server (like subscribing you to a newsletter)

4. Take you to a website

The whole community has been innovating with these simple constraints to do cool things

Here are some examples

Subscription boxes

Imagine being able to have a nice email subscription box embedded directly into a tweet:

Or if you want to be able to read the newsletter inline first:

“Games”

Someone recreated the game DOOM. Another created poker. Another created 2048.

Contests

People have been making weird contest-like games, such as:

Last one to click

1. Each person gets to click the button once

2. The last person to click the button is “it,” and a 10-minute timer starts ticking away

3. If 10 minutes goes by without someone new clicking the button, the last person to click it wins $500.

4. The money is sent to them automatically by the frame.

Longest person to have it

1. Each person can click the button once

2. They then become it

3. The person to be “it” for the longest before the contest ends wins money.

Little apps

People made it so if you click the button, the image changes to show a graph of your Farcaster follower growth over time:

Another person made a frame where a button click generates an image of a chart showing the likes you got on each post over time:

Another person made a ranking game showing two random concepts and letting you choose which one you rank higher:

Stores

Others made it so you can show an image of an NFT. Clicking the button will open up a little modal for you to pay to buy it.

Another person made a frame with an image of shirts in 4 colors. The 4 buttons take you to a Shopify checkout page with the shirt of the chosen color already in your cart.

And this is just 2 weeks in

The concept of frames is brand new. They can be updated to have more than just an image and buttons.

And people have only had 2 weeks to play around with it.

It’s exciting to see what’s coming next.

Farcaster may not be “it”

At the moment, it’s just crypto nerds posting on it about crypto things.

But its Monthly Active Users are growing fast.

Twitter has 75M monthly active users, so there’s a ton of room to grow.

Farcaster needs to bridge the gap from early adopters to mainstream users to get there. To do that, it needs to offer something uniquely valuable to users and completely obscure all “crypto/blockchain” things from it.

Farcaster may not be the decentralized social network to do that. But I think it’s the first to have a real shot.

And it’s exciting to see the innovation already happening on it.

As I said, I can’t wait until LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube die and are replaced with more equitable alternatives that allow innovation and ownership.

Discovery channels are critical.

But we need ones where WE own our content, earnings, and audience.

Realistically, this will take years to play out. And the incumbents will do everything they can to compete, which will only mean positive things for users.

If you’d like to learn more, check out Read Write Own by Chris Dixon.

Cheers folks!

If you like this post, share it with a friend who runs a startup :)

How I can help you grow:

• Growing a personal audience? Join the waitlist for the next Un-ignorable cohort.

• Need to run ads? We’ve built the ads agency for startups.

• Need to hire an agency/freelancer? We’ll match you with a vetted partner for $0.

• Need advice on growing your startup? Book a consultation call with me.

• Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

• Sign up for my premium newsletter to access my post archive.

😍

– Neal

Combined, my content has been read tens of millions of times.

This post is everything I know about how to write hooks.

What is a hook?

A hook is the opener of anything you want people to pay attention to.

Whether it’s a:

• Social post

• YouTube video

• Fundraising pitch

• Cold email/DM

• Presentation

Or even a quirky travel story.

People are gone if you don’t intrigue them within a few seconds.

They continue scrolling.
They mentally check out.
Or they mark you as spam.

A hook is the first:

• 1-3 sentences

• The title slide of a presentation

• The first view seconds of a video

Hooks have the power to make or break any piece of content.

A “meh” piece of content with a WOW hook has a better chance than a WOW piece of content with a “meh” hook.

This is true whether the post is short-form or long-form. Why invest in a 20-minute article if it fails to grip you in the intro?

I bet you could rewrite the hooks on all your posts and get upwards of 10x the engagement the second time.

This post will teach you how to write thumb-stopping hooks.

10 fundamental ways to write a hook

I write a newsletter for 102,000 startup founders and have 65,000 followers on LinkedIn.

Naturally, I wanted to reverse engineer what made posts go viral. I started going through the top posts with 10s and 100s of thousands of likes, and certain patterns emerged.

Here’s what I discovered after a lot of hours and coffee:

1. Credibility

2. Fear

3. Curiosity

4. Counter-narrative

5. Eloquence

6. Faces

7. Value

8. Surprise

9. Celebration

10. Identity

Note: You may have seen me previously say there were 12, but I’ve revised it to just 10 as the other 2 were subsets of the others.

Let’s go into each of these now with a ton of examples.

1. How to write a hook with Credibility

Telling people WHY they should listen to YOU for this topic.

This isn’t bragging. It’s contextualizing why they should take your advice seriously.

Credibility hook examples

You can write a credibility hook in three different ways:

1. Your experience and accomplishments

2. Your effort

3. Someone else’s credibility

Your experience and accomplishments.

Why should I listen to you?

• “I have an MBA.”

• “I was ranked CEO of the year.”

• “I run two 7-figure startups.”

It feels like bragging, but you should be fine if you do it with humility and without standing in front of a Lamborghini.

Your effort.

Is this information worth anything?

“Oh damn, Naim spent 16 hours on this?”

This is a result of the Labor Illusion:

“A psychological phenomenon where people perceive a service to be more valuable when they can see the effort being put into it, even if it doesn't necessarily result in a better outcome.“

Speaking of which

Someone else’s credibility.

If you lack credibility, you can leverage the credibility and familiarity of a well-known and respected person or company.

This is why people do a lot of Apple and Steve Jobs posts:

Credibility Hook Ideas

• “Last year my business did $10m in revenue…”

• “I’ve run two marathons…”

• “I spent X hours…” or “I analyzed 1000s of posts” or “I read 1000 emails…”

• “MrBeast videos have 49,273,123,390 views.”

• “I lost over $100,000 on these failures:”

2. How to write a hook with Fear

There’s a famous newspaper adage:

“If it bleeds, it reads.”

Fear and negativity works because:

• Loss Aversion: We’re more likely to take action to avoid losses than seek gains.

• Negativity Bias: People are more influenced by negative events, feedback, or terminology than positive ones.

Fear hook examples

Fear can manifest in various ways:

1. FOMO – Fear of Missing Out

2. FOBO – Fear of Being Outdone

3. “I hope I’m not doing it wrong.”

4. “I hope that doesn’t happen to me.”

FOMO – Fear of Missing Out

“I don’t want to miss out or be left behind.”

It is super popular with AI fearmongering.

FOBO – Fear of Being Outdone

This blurs the line of credibility and FOBO. The fact that she’s making a 1% salary without employees triggers anyone’s FOBO:

And Justin’s ridiculous schedule is enough to make anyone feel outdone.

“I hope I’m not doing it wrong.”

This benefits from the strong language of “suck at.”

“I hope that doesn’t happen to me.”

3. How to write a hook with Curiosity

When you're curious about something, your brain rewards you with a major dopamine hit when you satisfy that curiosity. So when it’s pique, your brain becomes a junkie looking for a sweet dopamine fix.

Curiosity hook examples

Frame things in such a way that makes you say:

• “Then what happened?”

• “I have to know more”

• “Hmm, what is it?”

• “What is going on?”

• “…?”

“Then what happened?”

Tease a fun and interesting story.

Andrew uses fun, colorful language to paint an intriguing picture:

“I have to know more”

First, the “hot take” gets you a bit since we like spiciness.

Second, Shaan is saying that we’re all wrong about the Metaverse. What are we wrong about? Is he pro-Metaverse or anti-Metaverse?

“Hmm, what is it?”

Here, I share an image and tease at something. You’re forced to keep reading to figure out what I’m pointing out.

Subscribe now

“What is going on?”

Casey Neistat’s “Do What You Can’t” video became a rallying cry for internet creators.

But it didn’t start with him. And it didn't start with any dialogue.

Instead, it started with a man hanging from a helicopter on a ladder (and a cryptic title).

“…?”

This was a popular hook for a bit:

It’s the start of a sentence normally followed by something interesting or spicy.

Curiosity hook ideas

1. Shocking truth: “I used to sell drugs.”

2. Strong words: “Everyone is wrong about…”

3. Open a loop: “I don’t know who needs to hear this…” or “

4. Tease: “Look closely at most successful creators, and you’ll notice something:”

5. Start a story: “This is a story about how I lost $10,000,000…”

4. How to write a Counter-Narrative hook

Strong opinions and bold claims provoke dialogue and thought. Particularly if they contradict things we already believe to be true.

Counter-Narrative hook examples

For example, everyone always says our attention spans are shrinking:

By countering the common narrative, he grabs our attention and gets us to keep reading. Just like Justin and Katelyn do here:

You don’t expect a guy making 7-figures and a gal with 100k+ followers to shit on money making and audience building.

Spiky points of view

Those examples are what Wes Kao calls “spiky points of view.”

Subscribe now

5. How to write a hook with Eloquence

Eloquently putting a voice to an unvoiced concern, frustration, or opinion.

The magic is in finding and tapping into those unvoiced thoughts. And then summarize it succinctly and powerfully.

Eloquence hook examples

You want people to say:

• “Finally, someone said it!”

• “That’s so damn true.”

“Finally, someone said it.”

Many of the comments on the following post were people saying: “Yes, finally, somebody said this thing that I've been thinking.”

Chris hit an emotional nerve.

People are tired of companies virtue signaling rather than fixing fundamental problems. 

“That’s so damn true”

Here, Andrew tapped into a feeling that every entrepreneur has had:

These are hard

You need to tap into unvoiced concerns and do sharp copywriting.

Tying it to a trending topic or news story is even better.

6. How to write a hook with Faces

This isn’t about writing. It’s about visuals. Specifically faces.

We're hardwired to notice and like faces—especially when they’re displaying strong emotions (or they’re attractive). 

We even naturally mimic the emotions we see in them through mirroring. That allows us to understand those emotions and empathize better.

Faces hook examples

Here are five ways to use facial expressions in your hook:

1. Show your shock

2. Share a selfie

3. Non-tasteful versions

4. Boost credibility

5. Help people know where to look

Show your shock

Open mouth, a shocked expression: This is a classic on YouTube.

A shocked face gets your attention. You wanna know what caused it.

Share a selfie

It's been a trend on LinkedIn to share a photo of yourself, often combined with a semi-emotional post. Codie Sanchez did a tasteful version of that:

We’ll naturally wonder why there are two photos side by side. We want to spot the differences and discover what connects them.

Non-tasteful versions

Note that I called Codie's selfie “tasteful.” That's because it's relevant to the post.

When a selfie lacks context, it's less likely to be all that appealing, or be seen as attention-seeking. 

Example: the viral post when a CEO announced that he'd laid off staff and shared a photo of himself crying:

Boost credibility

Faces can be combined with Credibility, the first hook type we discussed. If you reference someone famous, use a photo of them:

Subscribe now

Help people know where to look

Studies show that ads using an averted gaze draw more attention toward the product than ads with a direct gaze:

We’re drawn to look at whatever someone else is looking at.

7. How to write a hook promising Value

Not every hook needs to blow people’s minds. Sometimes, it just needs to promise some educational value so people know they can expect something useful.

Value hook examples

This opener is simple:

It tells you exactly what you’re gonna get by reading.

If you’re currently building a startup and thinking about brand strategy, or if you’re a marketer who wants to hear Amanda's take, you’ll stop and go, “Hmm I should read this.”

Or here’s the first slide of a LinkedIn carousel I posted:

Yes, I leverage the Credibility/Familiarity of LinkedIn, and use the Faces of credible/familiar people, but the hook is just promising exactly what they will get.

Handle Objections

A popular addition to this is to handle an obvious objection they may have:

Naval

Harsh Makadia

Ben Meer

People are naturally skeptical. Handle their objections upfront.

Just make sure that the value you promise is the value you deliver—otherwise, you create clickbait.

Subscribe now

8. How to write a hook with Surprise

People love surprising, amazing facts. People also love to share surprising facts due to “Social Currency.” People’s perception of you changes based on the novelty of the information you share.

You want people to go, “I didn't know that.” Or, “That's wild!”

Since you’re trying to hook readers quickly, you can’t share a surprising *story*. 

You need to surprise them in a sentence or two. Do that with statistics:

Surprise hook examples

Codie Sanchez

Reno Perry

Justin Welsh

People love to be surprised and say, “I didn’t know that!”

Importantly, they also love sharing surprising discoveries—which can mean a high share rate on this post type.

All 3 of the examples above could be shared just for the stats themselves. “Wow! Did you know that 75m baby boomers are retiring soon?”

9. How to write a hook with Celebration

People love to celebrate wins. You want them to go, “I'm so happy for you/them/us.”

A couple of benefits of celebratory posts:

• People feel compelled to show their support, meaning a higher engagement rate.

• There’s a clear comment to make: “Congratulations!” Other post types can require some thought when writing a comment. This one's easy.

Celebration hooks can be about many things, but some common ones are:

Celebration hook examples

Here are 3 obvious times to do a celebration hook:

• New jobs

• Miletones

• Birthdays

New jobs

They don't even have to provide additional value, like we've talked about with other hook types (Education, Eloquence, etc.).

Again, people feel compelled to say congratulations, particularly if they know the person personally or professionally.

Milestones

Here, Lenny shares a major newsletter milestone (note this is also Credibility ;0)

It warrants a, “Congrats, Lenny! That’s huge!”

Other milestones might include follower count, revenue, fundraising, and awards

Note: Lenny’s post also leverages Credibility (wow, he’s got 250k subs!) and FOBO: Fear of Being Outdone. Just like this one:

Birthdays

Jay's post has Credibility and triggers FOBO (damn, I’m 33, and I haven’t done any of those things…). So you post a “happy birthday” comment and keep reading.

Subscribe now

10. How to write a hook with Identity

With this one, you want people to stop and say, “Hey, that's me!”

You're signaling who your post is for so those people know it’s relevant to them. 

Identity hook examples

You can do that in two ways:

• Use a Barnum-style statement/question

• Label them directly

Use a Barnum-style statement/question

A statement that appears to be specific and tailored to an individual, but is actually vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.

This is essentially how horoscopes work. They dance between specific and vague—and occasionally really nail how you feel that day.

Question

Statement

Label them directly

Or you can call out a group of people directly by name like Julian did for “movie nerds”:

Even better: Lump yourself into that community so they feel more connected to you (”my fellow movie nerds”).

Better yet, use terminology that they use to describe themselves. For example, address Lady Gaga fans by their preferred moniker: “Little Monsters.”

Subscribe now

Hook examples and ideas

These are the 10 fundamental ways to hook, but as you have likely figured out by now, a single post generally leverages multiple hook types. This is particularly true when the post contains text and an image/video.

But you’ll need to master copywriting.

These are the 10 ways, but you must be a sharp copywriter for them to work.

Here are a few resources I’ve created to help:

1. The Hook Vault. I used Readwise's list of top Twitter thread creators and analyzed the top 4 hooks from the top 100 creators.

2. The 10 types of posts and how to use them. Use these to systematize your content creation process.

3. 10 Copywriting Tips. One of my top articles and LinkedIn posts.

4. 7 Copywriting Frameworks (with cheatsheet). So you don’t have to start from scratch; these frameworks make “fill in the blanks.”

5. Breakdown of the top 30 hooks on LinkedIn. Each hook is color-coded to show the smart thing each creator did to hook you.

6. Breakdown of the top 26 hooks on Twitter. 

   1. An analysis of the top 20 female creator's hook. Due to the total lack of gender diversity of the top 100 creators, I created one for the top 20 women.

7. An analysis of 12 ways to hook with Thumbnails. A hook can be an image, too.

Cheers folks!

If you like this post, share it with a friend that’s trying to grow on LinkedIn or X!

How I can help you grow:

• Growing a personal audience? Join the waitlist for the next Un-ignorable cohort.

• Need to run ads? We’ve built the ads agency for startups.

• Need to hire an agency/freelancer? We’ll match you with a vetted partner for $0.

• Need advice on growing your startup? Book a consultation call with me.

• Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

• Sign up for my premium newsletter to access my post archive.

😍

– Neal

I’ve built multiple 7-figure startups in the past 6.5 years.

Bell Curve is a growth agency (twice—long story).

Demand Curve is a growth education/media business.

And likely in 2024, Unignorable. We hit $500k in 9 months part-time from 3 cohorts.

The past 6.5 years have been a series of mistakes.
And suffering from past mistakes.
And trying to correct those mistakes.
And in the process, making more mistakes.

Here are some of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in 6.5 years:

#1. Thought I was the sh*t.

Many times, I’ve blissfully sat atop Child’s Hill, overconfident about my skills as an entrepreneur, given our series of early successes.

Landing Microsoft as a client, and being invited to apply to Y Combinator and getting in despite putting little effort in was probably the peak. Then, I came crashing down as the tech recession hit, and the easy wins stopped coming.

It’s made me a better entrepreneur and marketer in the process.

But it’s been humbling.

#2. Hired the wrong people

When we started the agency, we hired folks who were too junior at growth marketing and had never worked in an agency before.

And we had never built an agency before.

This meant that we had to train them to do everything. That meant we had to learn how to run an agency and then teach it to everyone.

The definition of “the blind leading the blind.”

But this meant we got very good at learning and SOPing everything we did.

We’ve gotten better, but we have messed this up a lot.

#3. Hired too soon

When revenue is going up, you feel the obvious choice is to spend more of it on more people so you can do more things, right?

Well, unless you have an obvious need for those people and how they will either:

1. Drive even more revenue directly

2. Make you or someone else more able to drive revenue directly

Then you end up spending more money and managing more people.

#4. Fired too late

It’s hard to fire someone—especially the loveable B player.

Someone you really like personally, who isn’t necessarily harming but isn’t the person to help take your company to the next level.

Firing people feels like a step back, and it takes a lot of humility and bravery to accept that you were wrong and that someone else needs to suffer because of it.

But it’s necessary.

#5. Did too many things

It is extraordinarily tempting to do more things rather than do more of the right thing.

Here’s how it plays out:

1. You launch a product/service that people buy and is growing.

2. You go: “We should create another one; we could immediately double the revenue, and that’ll grow too!”

3. Then, the initial burst of sales from the launch slows down. Excitement wanes. And now you’re managing two products and teams, marketing two things, and mixing your messaging.

If you find something that works, do that thing until:

1. You sell a lot of it.

2. People love it.

3. It’s getting more and more profitable and easy to run.

Then, you can add complexity.

#6. Didn’t stop to question the long-term implications

Related to #5, I didn’t stop to ask, well, if we launched/did this, what does that mean two years from now?

For example, we launched a free Slack community for growth marketers. We got hundreds and then thousands of applicants within months. But we realized that they were people at different stages of their careers.

• CMOs/CEOs at big companies.

• Founders of Seed and Series A companies.

• And those completely new to entrepreneurship and marketing.

By mixing them all, we knew we might lose the high-caliber folks because they’d be annoyed by basic questions: “How run Facebook ad?”

So, we launched 3 Slack communities. Seemed logical at the time.

Then, when you have 20,000 people apply, it becomes a complete nightmare to organize. And we didn’t even know if it was ROI positive before doing that.

We should have paused to ask, “what happens if this succeeds?”

#7. Didn’t go niche enough

At the time, it seemed somewhat niche.

We “do and teach growth marketing for/to startups.”

The problem is that the needs of a bootstrapped B2B SaaS founder and a Series A DTC ecomm CMO are pretty different.

So, writing our newsletter has required mixing tactics/strategies for all kinds of startups at all stages.

Choosing which topics to focus on for our content has proved difficult.

It wasn’t until recently that we’ve done a way better job creating clear, productized services and offers, like:

• $6k/mo ads management for startups spending up to $50k/mo on ads.

• $7k ~ $20k to develop your brand’s positioning and story

• $800 for a cohort to learn personal audience building

Selling these is easier because they’re clearer. And it’s easier for us to create content because we know which lanes to stay in.

#8. Didn’t delegate enough

I’m a freelance programmer turned marketer and founder.

Independent tinkerers and doers have difficulty getting out of the way and letting others do the work. Particularly if it’s work they enjoy (coding, design, writing, etc).

At some point, the founder must not “work in the business.” They must “work on the business.”

I’ve ranged from terrible at this to not great. I’m getting better, but I still have a lot of room for improvement.

#9. Delegated too liberally

When the work has been outside my expertise, I’ve sometimes been too quick to delegate and offload the responsibility entirely.

This has bitten me in the ass.

It’s still my business, and I must take responsibility for the outcome/output.

#10. Invested in the wrong thing

Whether due to ignorance or arrogance, there have been times I’ve just invested time and money in something that wasn’t worth investing in.

Pausing to be more strategic and get more outside perspective could have saved a lot of time, effort, and money.

#11. Made too complicated of a product

In an attempt to differentiate, it’s really easy in B2B to accidentally create a confusing, complicated, or nebulous product or service.

An agency that does “full-service growth” may be an excellent service to help companies grow, but it’s:

1. Hard for us to explain what that means and why it’s valuable

2. Hard for prospects to identify “Oh, yes I need that.”

3. Hard for friends to recommend you because they don’t understand it

4. Hard for prospects to know what’s a fair price.

Again, products/services with clear outcomes, prices, and audiences make it easy for people to understand, value, and recommend.

#12. Didn’t invest in the long term

Hiring too quickly, firing too late, investing in the wrong initiatives, and a recession led to times when we had to prioritize short-term initiatives instead of long-term ones.

Do what you can to get cash in the door today instead of building a system that brings even more cash to you in a repeatable and scalable way.

For example, we should have:

• Built our personal audiences earlier

• Created a podcast

• Invested heavily into SEO or ads to grow our newsletter

If we had, we’d have a larger audience, better distribution, and more assets to sell sponsorships and pitch our services in.

#13. Added business partners/cofounders too liberally

Be very careful who you give equity to.

Cofounder relationships are essentially marriages. Marriages involving a lot of money, and people get funny when money is in the mix.

Do a lot of vetting before you bring on a cofounder, CEO, or a significant shareholder.

It can bite you in the ass for years and even kill the business.

#14. Let my past define me

As I said, my background is freelance programming and writing.

I run marketing companies. This created a few problems:

#1. Imposter Syndrome.

I’ve hired and worked with many folks with more marketing experience than me.

What right did I have as a programmer to talk about marketing online?

Or to speak my mind about our marketing, products, and content?

#2. Feeling lost.

If you identify as a programmer and own marketing companies, you can feel disconnected from what you’ve built.

“Am I doing the right thing? Should I be the one running this?”

It wasn’t until I had an identity shift in myself (“Wait, I’ve got years of marketing experience now”) and a framing shift (“We’re not a ‘marketing company’; we help entrepreneurs build businesses and products”).

#15. Hid behind the brand and my cofounder

Our company was bootstrapped off my cofounder’s network and personal audience.

But he didn’t want to be the face of the brand, and he didn’t like to be too promotional, so we tried to build our brand. We’ve been decently successful at that.

But the market has shifted, and people prefer to follow people, not faceless brands.

My identity as a “programmer” and my imposter syndrome kept me from stepping out from behind the brand and being the face of it.

I started to do that a year ago and have grown to over 50k followers. And I wish I had done it sooner. It’s significantly impacted my life and our business.

There’s probably a lot more.

It’s hard to read the label from inside the jar. So, I probably missed a ton.

And I’m 6.5 years into this journey and only 34 years old.

I will make many more mistakes—hopefully fewer—but each one is a great learning experience for me to be a little bit less dumb.

Subscribe now

Cheers folks!

If you liked this post, please share it with a friend. Every little bit helps <3

How I can help you grow:

• Need to run ads? We’ve built the ads agency for startups.

• Need to hire an agency/freelancer? We’ll match you with a vetted partner 100% for free.

• Need advice on growing your company? Book a consultation call with me.

• Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

• Sign up for my premium newsletter to access my post archive.

😍

– Neal

We netted $251,643.20 in total revenue for this cohort.

This surpassed the revenue of the first two cohorts combined (by about $10k). This was a combo of a higher revenue per student and more sales.

Here’s everything that went into the marketing.

First, some of our core principles:

1. People who enrolled early got the best deal. Nothing is worse than enrolling early and then seeing a last-minute sale. If someone enrolls early, they’re superstars and should be treated the best.

2. No random discounts for abandoned carts. Actually, there is something worse. Buying and then finding out there’s a better deal if you just abandoned the cart.

3. We do not extend sales or enrollment periods. A common sleazy tactic is to extend sales deadlines over and over “due to popular demand.” This just signals to your audience that you’re willing to lie to them for urgency’s sake and signals that you didn’t sell out the seats that you anticipated.

4. Do not annoy people. Some people are okay with emailing folks every day leading up to a cohort, and then multiple times per day for a sale. We take a more long-term approach and don’t want to annoy people.

And this isn’t a core principle or anything, but we decided to do this 100% organically. We didn’t pay for any affiliates, newsletter placements, or any ads.

Stage 1: Secret back doors

Cohort 2 happened in April. No one wants to do a cohort course during the summer.

Including Katelyn and I.

So we planned our next one to be in the Fall—a ~5-month gap between. We eventually settled on an October 11th start date (right after Canadian Thanksgiving).

Almost everyone wants to enroll in cohort courses at the last possible moment. So we knew having open enrollment between cohorts wouldn’t lead to many sales.

Unfortunately, you have to play this game of short enrollment periods.

But, we wanted to experiment with letting eager people enroll if they really wanted to, as they might lose motivation between then and 5 months later.

So, we decided to create a secret backdoor.

To do that, I took one of our favorite lessons about Hooks and turned it into a free email course. 12 lessons about the 12 types of hooks spread out over 12 days. I called it the Un-ignorable Hooks email course.

At the end of that course, I added 3 emails that pitched Un-ignorable and pushed them to enroll in the Fall cohort for $200 off (25%).

I then created carousels on LinkedIn for each hook type, and I shared one per week on LinkedIn and pushed people toward the hook course.

I also added it as a free resource to our marketing drip sequence. And as a free sample on the Un-ignorable page.

Katelyn also created an email course about the topic of Pre-suasion.

Un-ignorable Hooks launched in June. Pre-suasion in August.

How did they do?

To be honest, not many people bought it early.

Maybe 10 or so, despite over 1,500 people joining our respective email courses.

We decided to close the back door and emailed everyone on the email courses that the back door was closing and we got up to 40 seats at the end of August.

Which is just over 10% of the total seats—and $28,460 in revenue.

I wouldn’t call this a success, but it was a worthwhile experiment. And in the end, 2,500 people have gone through the Un-ignorable Hooks email course, and that list keeps growing. So that’s a win in my eyes.

Subscribe now

Stage 2: Un-ignorable Newsletter Masterclass

As the next piece of marketing, we decided to do an event in early September.

We wanted to do something that was additive to the content of Un-ignorable—not just something straight from the course.

Organic social content is one of the best ways to grow a newsletter.

And it’s a natural next step for a content creator to create a newsletter to own their audience—and monetize it.

So we decided to create the Un-ignorable Newsletter Masterclass. A 2-hour deep-dive into creating a money-making newsletter that people love.

We capped the seats at 200 and sold it for $150.

Alumni from previous Un-ignorable cohorts could get it for $99 and didn’t count towards the 200 people.

As a special thanks to the 40 pre-sale folks, we gave it to them for free.

We promoted the masterclass with:

1. A plug in our respective newsletters (DC and Katelyn).

2. A couple of social posts (here’s mine).

3. Emails to:

   1. Un-ignorable waitlisters

   2. Un-ignorable Hooks students (performed poorly)

   3. Un-ignorable alumni

We sold out a few days before the course and had a ton of people ask to get in after.

But as I said, we’re firm about deadlines and caps. And we wanted a level of FOMO and exclusivity to remain.

In total, we generated $31,833 in revenue from the masterclass. I didn’t count this in the $250k since this was a separate product.

As a thank you to people at the Masterclass, we offered a deal for the cohort:

They only had 37.5 hours to take the deal.

In the end, only 11 people signed up.

The masterclass was a success in and of itself. $30k in revenue and some buzz, but it didn’t lead to as many enrollments as we hoped. We thought the 40 would sell out.

Stage 3: Flash sale

The week after the masterclass (mid-September), we did round 2 of the 37.5-hour flash sale and opened it up to our lists. The deal was $150 off, and they’d get the recording from the masterclass for free.

139 spots were left after 11 masterclass people enrolled.

The marketing efforts were:

1. DC sent:

   1. 1 email to waitlisters the day before (Sept 18th)

   2. 1 email to waitlisters on the final day (Sept 20th)

   3. 1 email to Hooks course alumni (Sept 20th)

   4. 1 email to people who had visited the Un-ignorable page before (Sept 20th).

2. A plug at the top of both of our newsletters (Sept 19th). DC and Katelyn.

3. Katelyn sent 1 dedicated email to her audience (Sept 20th)

4. A couple of social posts from Katelyn and I (Sept 19th)

   1. My post had 250 people comment for a link to the sale

We considered sending more emails or doing more social posts, but we saw it was selling out and decided to not annoy people.

It took the entire 37.5 hours, but we sold all 139 spots—$95,350 in revenue.

Of course, we had various people contact us asking to get squeezed in, but we said that the sale ended and that open enroll was coming soon.

Bringing us up to about 190 people enrolled in the cohort.

Stage 4: Open enrollment

Then was open enrollment. No discounts. Waitlisters got a day headstart and some free bonuses.

We decided that given the cohort was finishing in November, and that we needed more time to do additional product development and soul searching (more on this in takeaways), we decided this would be the last cohort for 6 months.

We added that urgency to our marketing message (since it was the truth).

Marketing details:

• Sept 28th: Social posts to push people to waitlist. Mine and Katelyn’s.

• Sep 29th: Another social post promoting waitlist

• Sept 31st: Email to waitlisters telling them a sale is coming.

• Oct 1st: Waitlisters only enrollment. They were emailed a special link that let them enroll. They got free masterclass recording and Clarity Calls Cheatsheet.

• Oct 2nd: Email to entire email list for open enrollment.

  • Social post highlighting Eric Partaker’s success—50,000 impressions.

• Oct 3th: Subtle mention in newsletter.

  • Social post highlighting Alex’s success.

• Oct 4th: Email to waitlisters.

  • Social post highlighting my launch success. This was a bit of a flop.

• Oct 5th (final day):

  • Morning: Email to anyone who had visited Un-ignorable page and not enrolled telling them it’s the last day. Social post making fun of tired hooks.

  • Evening: Email to anyone who had visited checkout page and not enrolled.

I also used marketing automation from Oct 2nd to 5th to DM people on LinkedIn who had commented on my flash sale announcement post asking for a link to the sale.

In total, 139 more people enrolled at full price during enrollment period with a total revenue of $118,750.

(Yes, I know, odd that it was the same number of flash sale spots we sold.)

Around 2/3 of the people from the “open enrollment period” joined on the last day (Oct 5th).

Subscribe now

Takeaways

Ultimately, this is our biggest cohort with 339 people and $251,643.20 in revenue and is slightly more revenue than the first two cohorts combined.

Obviously, this is chocked down as a success. But there are also a few things that weren’t much of a success in the end.

Here are my takeaways:

Read more

Your thumbnail is the most important part of your video.

It stops the scroll, builds curiosity, causes them to click, and can even keep them watching if you piqued their curiosity hard enough.

Note: No clicks; no views.

Thumbnails are so important that MrBeast won’t make a video unless he has the perfect title and thumbnail.

This doesn’t just apply to YT videos

The same principles apply to:

1. Carousels on LinkedIn or Instagram

2. Reels on Instagram and videos on TikTok

3. Images attached to blog posts

4. Images attached to posts on Twitter/X and LinkedIn

Any image (including the first frame of a video) representing a piece of content, whether text or video, must hook people’s attention, or the content will be ignored.

Without further ado:

Subscribe now

12 types of thumbnails that hook people

Big numbers

Big numbers are unnatural. Unnatural events trigger curiosity. Particularly when it’s money.

Don’t make it too round, or it’ll feel fake.

Write out the whole number to make it bigger.

Before/After

Before and After shots build people’s curiosity. They want to know what caused the transformation.

Make the value obvious by showing the before and after state.

Leverage photo editing to make the differences more pronounced.

Reactions

Dramatic faces attract attention.

People click because they want to see what provoked it.

Your reactions need to seem genuine. Use a still from your footage, not a posed shot.

Subscribe now

Emphasis

Draw attention to details within your thumbnail that hint at what happens.

Show just enough to pique their curiosity.

Ask a question

Asking a question in your thumbnail opens a loop that can only be closed by watching.

Use the video title to tease the answer you pose in your thumbnail.

Join along

Behind-the-scenes builds affinity—people feel like they’re part of your journey.

Re-frame mundane situations like studying, cleaning, and traveling into “a day in the life.”

Fear

Loss aversion is powerful.

We’re motivated twice as much by a fear that we’re doing something wrong than we are motivated to do something right.

The same applies to investing. We feel a 50% loss more than a 100% gain.

Subscribe now

Pop-outs

Zoom in on a spot on your thumbnail to emphasize the video’s primary focus.

Use a border around the pop-out to make it clear.

Familiarity / Credibility

Leverage the familiarity and credibility of people, brands, products, and characters.

We’re naturally attracted to things we’re familiar with rather than the unknown.

And anyone who’s a fan of that person or thing will be more likely to click.

Head-to-head

Side-by-side comparisons attract supporters on both sides—competition = drama.

Draw attention to the most extreme difference: price, size, skill, age, etc.

Shock and awe

Emphasize the most shocking moment of your video.

Include emotional expressions.

Beauty

We’re attracted to what we find visually appealing and attractive.

Ex: faces, food, art, and landscapes.

Takeaways

Get creative.

Whatever worked yesterday will likely not work tomorrow.

Use these general concepts to come up with new and interesting ideas.

Adapt them to your unique style and brand.

Experiment. Get creative.

Don’t just copy. Innovate.

Subscribe now

Cheers folks!

If you liked this post, please click/tap the ❤️ and share it with a friend. It really helps it get seen by more people.

How I can help you grow:

• Need to run ads? We’ve built the ads agency for startups.

• Need to hire an agency/freelancer? We’ll match you with a vetted partner 100% for free.

• Need advice on growing your company? Book a consultation call with me.

• Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

• Sign up for my premium newsletter to access my post archive.

😍

– Neal

• Productivity

• Leadership

• Communication

• Relationships

• Workplace culture

• Work-life balance

• Living a better life

• Mental models

And say things like “Steal this” or “I’ll teach you more in 4 minutes than a 4-year marketing degree.”

Yet various smallish ones seem to post about:

• DTC email marketing

• Product management

• Facebook Ads

• Backlink building

• Social advocacy

And often have nuanced opinions and in-depth posts?

There are a few reasons for this, all centered around dopamine addiction.

#1. It’s impossible not to get addicted

Let’s be honest: most of us hate social media in one way or another.

We, at least, all know it’s probably not good for us to use it all the time.

Yet when you decide to become a creator, you’re signing up to be on these platforms for what could be a couple of hours per day.

That means whether you want to or not, you’re opening the app when:

• You’re on the toilet

• You’re bored

• You’re procrastinating

• You’re walking

• You’re supposed to be spending quality time with your partner/family

It’s hard not to get hooked on the dopamine hits from using it.

Subscribe now

#2. Once you go viral, it’s hard to go back

Likes, comments, and followers are exciting.

Especially when you get a TON of them at once.

And when you have a bunch of your friends reach out to say, “damn, that flew!”

So when you bust your ass daily to write content to grow your audience, have something pop off feels like the reward for all your hard work.

But here are two sad realities:

#1. You’ve now raised your bar.

Every post you do from now on, you’ll compare its performance to this viral hit. It’ll never feel good enough.

#2. Viral posts rarely lead to revenue.

That which goes viral is often broadly appealing and short (among other things).

Broadly appealing and short generally is not establishing yourself as a trustworthy expert in something important.

For example, a post about the top 10 free AI tools is/was interesting to everyone excited/scared about AI—but in no way is someone gonna pay you $10k for your marketing consulting because you share it.

The same goes for that hilarious meme you shared. Or a post talking about work-life balance and bad bosses.

Yet that heavily detailed, in-depth, nuanced guide or thought-provoking piece?

A lot aren’t gonna read it.
A lot aren’t gonna resonate.
A lot aren’t gonna even gonna understand why it’s good.

Yet the people that do are gonna start to appreciate and trust you.

And trust is what causes someone to open their wallet.

But guess what?

You’ll forever be chasing that high.

Every post you now do that even cracks hundreds of likes, you’ll think, “hmm, damn, could’ve been better.”

So you slowly stop doing the nuanced stuff because that won’t get you the highs.

Even if it got you more business.

Sadly: Likes and comments are more addictive than lead form submissions.

Subscribe now

#3. Viral hits are viral hits until they’re not

A while ago, Sahil Bloom posted this, and it flew:

I understand why. It’s the perfect recipe for little dopamine hits from each purposely punchy and hard-hitting point.

Now, every creator under the sun posts a “harsh truths” post relevant to their niche. It turns out it’s well-tuned to go viral with humans.

Eventually, creators start filling their posts with:

• “(steal this)”

• “it’s so simple it’s scary”

• “99% of people don’t know…”

• “so good they feel illegal to know”

• “I’ll teach you more in 10 slides than in a $75,000 MBA”

• MASSIVELY UNDERRATED TACTIC (but actually it’s kinda basic)

Because guess what? All of these battle-tested little sentences work right now.

Particularly with occasional readers—the folks that open LinkedIn/X once a month for 10 minutes and haven’t seen one of the 1000 people post it yet.

They like, they comment, they even follow. And then disappear.

But they won’t work forever

Thanks to the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs, people stop responding to them over time because they’ve seen their 5000th harsh truths post.

Much like old clickbait titles on BuzzFeed, like “12 things doctors don’t want you to know (#9 is terrifying).” They worked, so everyone started doing them. Now, you will be laughed at for doing something so cringy.

Over time, creators who are still experimenting come up with new lines that work. Then everyone starts copying them.

It’s a never-ending cycle.

Which brings me back to where we started. What broadly appealing topics can most humans find valuable and interesting?

• Productivity

• Leadership

• Communication

• Relationships

• Workplace culture

• Work-life balance

• Living a better life

• Mental models

Thus, the person who started writing about DTC email marketing eventually throws in some productivity tips. After all, they must know about productivity to write daily AND run a business, right?

And, well, they saw a post from Sahil about productivity that did well.

“Oh wow, my productivity post did better than my others! I should do more of those.”

Then, eventually, they’re just posting about productivity because they’re getting more likes and followers that way.

“But wait, where are my email marketing clients going? Hmm, well, tbh, I hated selling my time anyway; maybe I should start a newsletter since I can monetize that with sponsors.”

“Hey, everyone! I’m starting a productivity-focused newsletter!”

“Oh wait, such a broad newsletter topic is not particularly valuable to sponsors since ‘everyone’ is not a great niche.”

Subscribe now

Sure, this isn’t every creator.
But it happens to many.

And I 100% understand why. 

Over the past year, I’ve grown to nearly 50,000 followers on LinkedIn.

Every so often, I have to reel myself in from the dopamine addiction and remind myself what my goals and priorities are. 

The ego boost of cracking 100,000 followers would probably be nice on some level, but at the end of the day:

I’d rather have 1,000 people who love me and would buy anything I or my agency offered them, than 1,000,000 people who simply liked my memes.

And for that, I need to remind myself of my identity:

I’m not a creator.
I’m an entrepreneur.

I build companies that create products and services that solve people’s problems.

I create content because it’s effective for both distribution and trust-building. Not because that’s my job, identity, or product.

My content enhances my companies. It doesn’t define them.

This is why I plan to refocus my own content back to the core purpose of Demand Curve and Bell Curve: helping founders grow startups. A personal brand is one way, but there are many, many others.

Subscribe now

Cheers folks!

If you liked this post, please click/tap the ❤️ and share it with a friend. It really helps it get seen by more people.

How I can help you grow:

• Need to run ads? We’ve built the ads agency for startups.

• Need to hire an agency/freelancer? We’ll match you with a vetted partner 100% for free.

• Need advice on growing your company? Book a consultation call with me.

• Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

• Sign up for my premium newsletter.

😍

– Neal

His first 20 posts averaged 15-20 likes. For example:

Around his 30th post, he finally hit the 100-like mark.

His 35th post, one month in, got 2,551 likes.

Sure, it happened fast, but it’s not like he was immediately hitting it out of the park.

What now?

A year in, a “bad” post for Eric is below 1,000.

He’s been ranked #2 globally on LinkedIn for Management & Leadership and 7th in the UK overall.

Ali Abdaal (YouTuber with 4.5M subscribers) even made a video about what it was like to work with Eric.

How Eric blew up

In January 2023, Eric was one of the first students of our cohort course, Un-ignorable.

He used the same 11-step framework we give all our students.

Here’s a breakdown so you can build an un-ignorable personal brand

At a high level, the steps are:

1. Get f*ckin' going

2. Discover “Your Oneness”

3. Know your buyer

4. Pick a topic/channel

5. Get inspired

6. Build your network

7. Revamp your profile

8. Master psychology

9. Build intention

10. Systematize

11. Audit + double down

Let’s dive into each and how Eric applied it.

Subscribe now

#1. Get f*ckin’ going

Most people fail because they never get started. Forever kickin’ the can down the road until it’s a “better time.”

There’s always an excuse.

Just start posting SOMETHING consistently. Yes, it will suck at first.

It’s truly the hardest part.

Eric got started as soon as he bought our course. And hasn’t stopped posting since.

Here are a couple of resources on how to get started:

#2. Your Oneness

Thanks to AI, there's never been more content created each day. You must find what makes you unique to cut through all the noise and stand out.

To do that, you need to find your Unfair Advantage. Something unique about you, your history, or your environment that gives you a unique advantage over others.

For Eric:

• He was named CEO of the Year and has coached 100+ CEOs. So he’s highly credible to talk about leadership.

• He has a high-value service (coaching) to trade with influencers for their engagement and advice.

• He’s exceptionally good at networking and building a solid network for himself.

• He worked two days weekly and could devote the rest to audience building.

For Ali Abdaal:

• He was in Cambridge Medical School (a very prestigious university) when he started a YouTube channel on getting accepted into medical school—something very few people could discuss.

#3. Know your Buyer

To write compelling content that causes them to take action and become customers, you need to deeply understand your customers' motivations, goals, and fears.

Then, speak directly to them.

Eric was a CEO for over a decade and has coached over 100 of them. He knows the mind of a CEO inside and out.

#4. Topic + Channel

Many people fail because they burn themselves out trying to do “everything, everywhere, all at once.” LinkedIn carousels, TikTok videos, Twitter threads, a newsletter, and a podcast.

And post about whatever interests them that day.

Narrow into a specific topic on a specific channel for a specific buyer.

• Master that channel.

• Master that topic.

• Master (the psychology of) that buyer.

Knowing what you write about and who for makes creating content easier. And easier for people to figure out who you are and what you do. And easier for them to tell others who you are and what you do.

Only then can you move on and expand. And it’ll be easier to do so.

For example, Justin Welsh blitzscaled on Twitter after four years of exclusively posting text posts on LinkedIn.

Just like Eric narrowed in on leadership for CEOs on LinkedIn before doing anything else.

#5. Get inspired

Find your Attention Masters:

People who write content that inspires you, whether they’re in your niche or not.

Go through all of their content. Turn on notifications for their posts.

• What does well?

• What's said in the comments?

• What do you agree or disagree with?

• What are they doing that you aren’t doing?

Use it to inspire your content.

Lovingly re-purpose, don’t just copy.

#6. Build your network

It's called SOCIAL media for a reason.

You can't succeed without a strong focus on networking. At least 50% of the effort needs to be networking.

Find people actively posting in your niche at a similar audience stage (Justin Welsh is unlikely to start engaging with you if you have 500 followers, but someone with 1,000 followers might). Start actively engaging on their content. Eventually, reach out via DM and get to know them personally.

Eric is the master of this—and that is how we met and became friends. He reached out after I said I was traveling to Portugal and gave me tips. He didn’t launch into a sales pitch or ask for anything.

The more people you have rooting for you, the better your content will do and the more motivated you'll be.

Build your tribe that supports your work.

#7. Revamp your profile

Read more

But if you go to someone's profile and see they have 300 followers, you probably never hit follow.

This is normal. We're herd animals.

The ice cream place with the line around the block must be the best, right?

We model our behavior based on the behavior of others.

If we see someone with many followers, we assume we should, too. If we see someone with only a few followers, there must be a reason more don't follow them.

Social proof is a powerful motivator. This is particularly true on social media, as social proof is baked right into it.

The person with a small following has to WOW you to get a follow.

The person with a huge following can post a platitude, and you’ll be impressed.

The same applies to a post.

A post with 10,000 likes is exponentially more likely to get a like and a comment from someone than a post with 10 likes.

Particularly from someone other than a die-hard fan.

So a lot of audience building is about growing the number of die-hard fans that like basically everything you post, increasing the odds that strangers will follow the herd, and also liking your post.

And building up a follower number that makes people take you seriously.

If you're early in your audience-building journey, you must be super scrappy. Every new follower matters a ton.

(And writing really good hooks is a great start:)

Psychological Thresholds

There are a few “psychological thresholds:”

1. 1,000: This is where people go: “Okay, they're not completely new.”

2. 5,000: “Not a complete nobody.”

3. 10,000. “Hmm, maybe they do have something to say.”

4. 50,000. “Oh, okay, this is a creator on the rise.”

5. 100,000. “This is a legit creator.”

6. 500,000 or even 1M+. “How do I not already know this person?”

If you're early on, you must fight to 1,000, 5,000, and 10,000.

Here are some scrappy ways to get there:

Read more

Ali is a YouTube legend. He started 6 years ago teaching people how to get into medical school. Now he's “the most followed productivity expert.”

And he has:

• 4.6M YouTube Subscribers.

• 300,000+ newsletter subscribers.

• One of the top podcasts—Deep Dive—gets 100,000+ views/listens per episode.

• ~$2M in profit per year.

• A team of 10+.

He has also taught 1000’s of people how to grow a YouTube channel.

Ali breaks audience growth into 3 distinct stages:

1. Get Going

2. Get Good

3. Get Smart

Let's dive into each one to identify where you're at and what your next steps should be.

Subscribe now

Stage 1: Get Going

The most common reason someone fails to build an audience is that they simply never start. I did this for years.

Most never start because they’re:

• Afraid to suck. You can call this a combination of perfectionism and Imposter Syndrome.

• Waiting for the right moment. “I'm just too busy this month.”

• Trying to perfect the system before ever trying it. As Ali calls it, you're trying to be an “Architect” where you perfectly plan everything out in advance—but most people need to be an “Archaeologist.” Start digging and figure out where to focus later.

Ali recommends:

• If you're going for YouTube, make the first 10 videos on your phone. Don't worry about the ideal recording setup. For Twitter/LinkedIn, don't do videos, carousels, or threads. Just write simple text-only posts.

• Lower your quality bar. No one will notice or remember your first few posts/videos. YouTuber MKBHD (16M subscribers) had 72 subscribers after 100 videos. No one judges him for his first terrible videos.

• Cap how long you spend scripting and editing. Just get it out there and move on.

• Prove to yourself you can be consistent.

As Ali likes to say: “The first 50 videos are for you, the next 50 are for your audience.”

Don't worry about the response you get from your first few dozen posts. Instead, use that time to get into the habit and get better at the process.

Once you’ve proven to yourself you can be consistent, now it's time to:

Stage 2: Get Good

Read more

It also got me over 1,000 new followers). And it’s given me a re-usable piece of content (I actually reshared it on Thursday and got 125,000 impressions again) and a general format that I’ve used several times since.

The funny part is I used ChatGPT and Midjourney to vastly speed up the process of creating this monsterous 30-page PDF.

My goal for the rest of 2023 is to break out of text and images into audio and visuals.

So I decided to create the following video on YouTube (follow me!) walking through exactly how I did that. Note I’ve since used this same strategy to create a few more carousels and they each did really well (thousands of followers total).

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Cheers folks!

If you liked this post, please click/tap the ❤️ and share it with a friend. It really helps it get seen by more people.

How I can help you grow:

• Book a 1-hour consultation call with me. I’ve helped:

  • 1000s of companies define their growth strategy.

  • 100s of people start building their personal brand.

  • And I run two 7-figure bootstrapped businesses.

• Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

• Sign up for my premium newsletter.

• Work with my agency, Bell Curve, and we'll be your Growth Partner.

😍

– Neal

Here’s the 80/20 in a cheatsheet. Read the rest below.

PAS(P)

PAS is one of the most commonly used and referenced copywriting frameworks. You will probably see it everywhere now.

I’ve added the P since I think it’s a bit stronger to add some proof.

Problem: Identify a problem that your audience has.

“Writing is f-ing hard”

Agitation: Make the problem more intense and visceral.

“Selling is even harder.”

Solution: Introduce your product/service as the solution to the problem.

“These frameworks help create compelling copy that sells.”

Proof: Provide evidence & examples that prove your solution works.

“Lil' Bobby increased conversion rates by 23% by switching his sales emails to follow these frameworks”

BAB

One of the simpler ones, paint the story of where they are, where they could be, and how they can get there.

Before: Show your reader's current (bad) situation.

"Constantly overwhelmed managing multiple client projects and never-ending tasks?"

After: Show how amazing their life could be.

"Imagine smoothly handling all your projects, and having a clear view of your tasks for each day, boosting your productivity significantly."

Bridge: Explain how your product bridges them from "Before" to "After."

"Our productivity app will take you from overwhelmed to organized. Try it today and experience the difference."

Subscribe now

Storytelling

Stories are powerful.

The story of a little girl (Ann Frank) resonates far more than the cold statistics from World War II.

Here’s a storytelling framework PIXAR uses:

Once upon a time, ___________________.
Every day, ___________________.
Until one day, ___________________.
Because of that, ___________________.
Because of that, ___________________.
Until finally, ___________________.

Example

Once upon a time, Alice, a founder of a creative agency, was on top of the world.

Every day, she'd do sales calls for inbound leads and crush her client work.

Until one day, a recession hit and cut inbound leads by 2/3rds.

Because of that, she needed to increase leads, or else she'd have to lay off staff.

Because of that, Alice started posting on LinkedIn and Twitter. Most of her posts flopped—but a few did well and brought in leads, but she had a tough time running a business and creating good content consistently.

Until finally, she joined the Un-ignorable Challenge to learn how to systematically create content that resonates with her audience.

AIDA

This is also quite popular, and it differs from PAS and BAB by having a clear call to action to finish it off—and you’re not necessarily focusing on a problem.

Attention: Hook their attention with a bold headline, an intriguing question, or a unique fact.

"Traditional laundry detergents harm the environment."

Interest: Add fuel to the fire. Build interest with a story.

"Our eco-friendly laundry detergent is designed to provide excellent cleaning results while protecting our planet."

Desire: Amplify desire. Paint a vivid picture of life after using your product/service.

"Imagine having fresh, clean clothes, knowing that you're also doing your part to keep our air fresh."

Action: Drive to action with a clear & compelling CTA.

"Make the switch today and join us in protecting our environment."

PASTOR

This is PAS’s long-winded cousin.

It also works for multi-email sales campaigns. Each email can focus on each one of these letters.

Problem: Call out a problem that their facing.

"Frustrated with your slow and unreliable internet connection?"

Amplify: Emphasize the consequences if the problem is not solved.

"In today's work-from-home era, a slow connection can prevent you from doing your best work—and make a bad first impression with clients."

Solution: Provide your solution to the problem.

"Our high-speed internet service offers a reliable and blazing-fast connection—you'll never have a laggy video call."

Testimony: Showcase testimonials and case studies to prove that your solution works.

"Don't just take our word for it. One of our customers said, 'Switching to this service has changed my life. I used to spend 20% of every call repeating things due to my choppy connection.'"

Offer: Detail what exactly they will get when they purchase the product/service.

"Subscribe to our high-speed internet service today and receive free installation."

Response: Call to action—make it clear what they need to do to take the next step.

"Call us or visit our website to subscribe and say goodbye to slow internet."

Subscribe now

The 4 P’s

This one is all about making them picture their improved life and pushing them towards taking action to achieve it.

Promise: Make a bold promise about what your product/service can do.

"Lose 10 pounds in just 30 days with our proven fitness program."

Picture: Help them visualize their new, improved life.

"Imagine fitting into that old pair of jeans sitting in your closet—and feeling like your old, confident self again."

Proof: Back up your promise with testimonials/data.

"Sarah, a mother of two rambunctious boys, lost 12 pounds in 30 days and says, 'This program has given me my confidence back!'"

Push: Give them a reason to take action now.

"Sign up now and start your journey to a healthier, happier you."

PRUNE

A lesser-known one. The use of an analogy makes it rather unique.

Point: Make your point in the first sentence.

“Get around the city effortlessly with our affordable bike-sharing service."

Reason: Back it up with a reason.

"Why rely on crowded public transport or expensive taxis when you can breeze through the city on a bike, avoiding traffic and saving money?"

Unveil: Present the proof or evidence.

“Our average customer cuts their commute by 7 minutes and saves $152 per year."

Nail: Use an analogy to drive your point home.

"It's like having your own bike, but without the hassle of maintenance or the worry of theft. Simply pick up a bike when you need it and drop it off when you're done."

Exit: Close with a call to action.

"Ready to make your city travels easier and more fun? Download our app today and take your first ride!"

Recap

Persuading with writing is the most valuable skill in 2023.

You can post/tweet your way into any room. Hell, even Jeff Bezos follows someone like Sahil Bloom, and he did that with really good writing.

Frameworks make it easier by giving structure.

But you must: Practice. Practice. Practice.

What’s next?

Copwriting Frameworks are a tiny piece of the copywriting puzzle. Here are some other articles I’ve written to help take your content to the next level:

1. 10 Ways to Hook People. People won’t read your content if you fail to hook them.

2. The 10 types of posts and how to use them. Use these to systematize your content creation process.

3. 10 Tips to Improve your Copywriting. Actionable quick wins.

4. 10 Literary Devices with Examples. Make your writing more interesting.

Cheers folks!

If you liked this post, please click/tap the ❤️ and share it with a friend. It really helps it get seen by more people.

How I can help you grow:

• Book a 1-hour consultation call with me. I’ve helped:

  • 1000s of companies define their growth strategy.

  • 100s of people start building their personal brand.

  • And I run two 7-figure bootstrapped businesses.

• Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter.

• Sign up for my premium newsletter.

• Work with my agency, Bell Curve, and we'll be your Growth Partner.

😍

– Neal

Building a brand (personal or company) is scary.

People DM you wanting to work with you & for you.

They want to get your help. Maybe even pay you for it.

They want you to go on podcasts and speak at conferences.

Here’s my proprietary framework on how to avoid all these scary things:

Subscribe now

1. Only do the logical thing

If everyone does the most logical thing, everyone will do the exact same thing.

And as Rory Sutherland says:

“You’ll never be fired for making the logical decision.”

So don’t even think about doing something that might make you stand out. Look what happened to Liquid Death with their crazy branding, messaging, and attention.

You don’t want that.

2. Post and ghost

People crave community and connection. So avoid it.

If you just throw content up online and then disappear and do not connect with your readers and other creators, you’ll definitely be ignored.

Same if you just let people buy your product and then you never connect with your customers to learn things like why they bought, and what they like and don’t like.

3. Use jargon and long sentences

Clear, simple language makes it easy for people to understand your message.

And you definitely don’t want that—they might figure out what you actually sell.

4. Be a thought recycler, not a thought leader

If you:

1. Have unique points of view

2. Do original research

3. Or share a unique perspective

People will notice. So make sure to recycle other people’s ideas.

5. Use templates

The best way to be ignored is to sound exactly like everyone else.

And to blatantly copy something that people have seen already.

Using templates is an excellent way to do this.

Subscribe now

6. Wait until it’s perfect to publish

If you strive for perfection, you’ll never publish.

There’s no better way to be ignored than to never publish anything.

So keep editing and researching!

7. Your target audience is everyone

If you sell a specific solution to a specific person with a specific problem, they might just find it extremely valuable and take note.

So instead try to help everyone with a very broad problem like “making friends.”

8. Hop on every trend

People love it when someone changes their identity each new season.

They love your evolved thinking when you change from the “Dropshipping Guy” to the “Web3 Guy” to the “Ai Guy” and then to the “Threads Guy.”

So don’t be like James Clear where you choose a specific, niche, and valuable topic and become the domain expert in it over 10 years.

9. Ask: “What in it for me?”

People love kind, courteous, and giving people.

Instead, approach relationships as completely transactional and only post content or engage with people if it serves your self-interests.

10. Optimize for engagement + followers

Do you follow accounts on Instagram with 1M+ followers that share memes, animal photos/videos, or photos of Victorian-era homes?

I sure do.

Have you ever bought anything from them? Ha, no.

Do you even care who runs it? It probably never crossed your mind.

Would you make a purchase decision based on its recommendation? Doubt it.

Accounts that build purchase intent and influence are ones that demonstrate expertise. So don’t do that.

Subscribe now

11. Let AI do everything

ChatGPT is super powerful. Just ask it to generate all of your content for the next month. Give it max like 10 words as a prompt.

Don’t even read or edit them. Then just schedule the posts and walk away.

Done.

Conclusion

In short:

1. Copy others

2. Write poorly

3. Use people

4. And do a bit of everything for everyone

5. Actually, just let AI do those things

Just kidding.

If you want to succeed you need to become Un-ignorable. And to do that, do the opposite of all of these things.

Cheers folks!

If you liked this post, please click/tap the ❤️ and share it with a friend. It really helps it get seen by more people.

How I can help you grow:

• Book a 1-hour consultation call with me. I’ve helped:

  • 1000s of companies define their growth strategy.

  • 100s of people start building their personal brand.

  • And I run two 7-figure bootstrapped businesses.

• Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter.

• Sign up for my premium newsletter.

• Work with my agency, Bell Curve, and we'll be your Growth Partner.

😍

– Neal

Whereas that one was actionable tips on making content more concise and user-centric, this is nearly the opposite:

Making your content more fun and engaging to read.

This is an art and a science.

Most content is really f*ckin’ boring 😴

To stand the f*ck out, you need to inspire 🤩🤩🤩

First, wtf is a “Literary Device?”

It’s a fancy word for “thing you do to better express ideas, convey meaning, and highlight important themes in a text.”

Some common examples:

• Metaphor: Comparing something for effect.

  • “The startup is a rocket ship"

• Simile: Comparing something with “like or “as”:

  • “Dumb as a sack of hammers”

• Alliteration: Repetition of consonant sounds

  • “Five feisty founders fought furiously”

• Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds

  • "The keen, deep founder freely speaks about the peaks and valleys.”

But most people know these from school days (or have blocked them out).

So, instead, let’s cover some lesser-known ones that can help make your writing more fun and exciting.

Let’s dive into 10 literary devices with examples of each.

1. Anaphora

The deliberate repetition of the first part of the sentence for emphasis.

Here’s how Justin Welsh used it:

2. Anthithesis

Juxtaposing contrasting ideas, often in parallel structure, to emphasize, create drama, or highlight.

Tip: Doing this right can tell a story of its own.

3. Tricolon

A series of 3 parallel words, phrases, or clauses.

This enhances rhythm and creates emphasis.

Tip: This contains another literary device called “Asyndeton” that leaves out conjunctions (and/or) to improve the rhythm.

Here’s an example shared on marketingexamples.com:

4. Paradox

A statement that contradicts itself but still seems true. Can be intriguing.

Tip: Can be interpreted as the founder being stressed (storm) yet maintaining composure (calm)

5. Irony

Using language that signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

Tip: Paint a vivid and colorful image.

6. Catachresis

Purposefully using a word incorrectly, for effect.

Tip: Paint a vivid and colorful image.

7. Pleonasm

Use more words than necessary to convey meaning and emphasis.

Tip: Adds a bit of fun and imagery.

8. Synecdoche

Part is made to represent the whole or vice versa. Below a mouth represents a whole person.

Tip: Try to add fun imagery, but be careful to not make it confusing.

9. Paraprosdokian

The latter part causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part.

Tip: This can either reinforce the original meaning, or make them totally rethink it.

10. Allegory

Narrative or description that has a secondary or symbolic meaning underlying the literal one.

Tip: People love storytelling. Paint a vivid scene.

What’s next?

Literary devices is a tiny piece of the copywriting puzzle. Here are some other articles I’ve written to help take your content to the next level:

1. 10 Ways to Hook People. People won’t read your content if you fail to hook them.

2. The 10 types of posts and how to use them. Use these to systematize your content creation process.

3. 10 Tips to Improve your Copywriting. Actionable quick wins.

4. 7 Copywriting Frameworks. Make writing persuasively way easier.

Thanks for reading

If you liked this, please click/tap the ❤️ and share it with a friend. It really helps it get seen by more people.

How I can help you grow:

• Book a 1-hour consultation call with me. I’ve helped:

  • 1000s of companies define their growth strategy.

  • 100s of people start building their personal brand.

  • And I run two 7-figure bootstrapped businesses.

• Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter.

• Sign up for my premium newsletter.

• Work with my ads agency, Bell Curve

😍

– Neal

You're replaceable and forever at risk of being undercut.

Here's a framework for creating a product that stands out and that people love.

(Not despite it tasting awful, but because of it.)

Commodity vs Unique

First: Uber drivers are a commodity.

You don't really care which one you get. You just want to get somewhere quickly, safely, and cheaply.

Airbnbs are unique.

The unique properties of an Airbnb make or break a vacation. You really care which Airbnb you’re staying in.

(Ask yourself: If a stranger booked an Airbnb for you—wouldn’t you be worried?)

As a commodity, you can only compete on:

1. Price (cheaper?)

2. Availability (now?)

3. Quality (better made?)

4. Brand (do they like you better?)

5. Marketing (do you sell it better?)

Whether they decide to buy from you depends on each individual's weighting of 👆 that specific day.

For example

If you sell plumbing supplies, and someone desperately needs those supplies TODAY then they'll compromise on cost, brand, and quality for immediate availability.

They'll optimize for something else if it's not a rush.

Just like if you’re desperately trying to make it home for Christmas, you’d book an absurdly expensive flight with your most hated airline and even sit in a middle seat.

If unique: you compete on way more metrics.

Each Airbnb competes over:

1. Location

2. “Coolness” or “Vibe”

3. Price

4. # of bedrooms/bathrooms/beds

5. Where the beds are located

6. Decor

7. Accessibility

8. Amenities (hot tub anyone?)

9. Pet policy

10. Ratings + reviews

11. Amenities

12. House style

13. Availability

Again, each person will have different preferences depending on the type of trip their taking. More Airbnbs that are better in various ways can be added to the market, but some people will still choose you because they value your unique combination of variables more than others.

But the thing that will guarantee you bookings is if you’re super unique:

Basically what I’m trying to say here is:

Do not launch a commodity, be unique

Often it becomes a race to the bottom in prices. And it's a constant battle to maintain. You can be undercut if someone figures out a process that's faster or better than you.

Examples:

1. Ghostwriter/Copywriter/Artists/Designers/Ads Marketers/Programmers

If you offer the same old services above as everyone else, if someone else can leverage AI to create content, they can charge less and deliver faster.

2. Miners/Manufacturers/Suppliers

If someone else can extract raw materials, or create finished products faster and cheaper, they can charge less or deliver faster.

It's very difficult to penetrate a market and defend your position as a commodity.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has dominated the ultimate commodity arena for a long time. How?

Read more

Yet it's what every startup is chasing.

Here's what they should be using:

The 5 Fits Framework

Product and Market are only 2 of the 5 Fits.

1. Brand

2. Product

3. Channel

4. Model

5. Market

Just like you need Product-Market Fit, you need all the others to fit together to build a truly remarkable startup.

Let's dive into each.

Subscribe now

…

Read more

Whether it was from an Instagram ad, a late-night infomercial, a knee-jerk purchase at a store (possibly due to some sales pressure), or a major purchase we’ve spent weeks thinking about.

We’ve all dropped our hard-earned cash on dumb sh*t.

Here I analyze 6 ways that companies get you to buy sh*t you don't nee…

Read more