How To Grow An Audience If You Have 0 Followers

Shaan Puri

All right I got a great question in my inbox this morning and it is from a guy named tony l so he says uncle sean I love the nickname by the way uncle sean I'm leaning into that he said if you were starting from scratch building an audience again from 0 today 2024 if you're starting again from 0 how would you do it what advice would you give somebody like me who wants to be a content creator but has 0 followers today tony from miami alright tony I got an answer for you so first I gotta flash my badge I'm like an fbi officer who walks into the room and I gotta show you my credentials if you're gonna take me seriously so I've built a you know email following of over 500,000 subscribers I've built a twitter following of 400,000 + on youtube I think I have 500,000 + subscribers this podcast has done over a 100,000,000 downloads in the last 4 or 5 years so that's all in a 4 year time span 1 university block and all of that has happened and I've learned some things and what I'm not gonna do today is I'm not gonna give you either a generic advice like you gotta be consistent and just be yourself right like okay sure but not very helpful obviously not helpful so I'm gonna share the counterintuitive things I've learned I wrote down 9 so 9 counterintuitive surprising things that I've learned I'm also not gonna give you some generic one size fits all advice I hate when people do this especially this sort of youtube guru economy of like here's the answer as if there is such a simple formulaic answer that you could follow that anybody could follow right it's very personal and there's art and science as a blend it's nothing is guaranteed but I will share with you the wisdom that I wish I had when I was starting from scratch 4 or 5 years ago versus today knowing what I know now what is the wisdom that was surprising non obvious that I wish I could have just drilled into my brain then and if you're starting today you could take this now I'd also like to say that there are many ways to peel the banana and all I know is the way that I do it maybe other people do it a different way they have had success but I can only share with you what's worked for me and how I think about it and you could choose if that fits for you if that resonates or not alright so here's the 9 non obvious lessons I've had building a big ass audience number 1 forget the numbers you wanna focus on who follows you not how many people follow you tim ferris once said something that really stuck in my head he says okay thought experiment would you rather have 100,000 americans picked at random from across the country be chosen to read your book or have every member of davos read your book and love your work obviously you'd pick davos right you'd pick the higher value higher signal group of people this is a general principle that I buy into which is that more important than how many people follow you is who follows you because the content you put out is who you're gonna attract and this is hard to do this is surprisingly hard to do the first reason is because the platforms shove the numbers in your face especially a platform like youtube where not only do you see how many views every video gets all your audience members see how many views every video gets and you know that they're gonna see it so it is very hard to block that out podcasting a little bit easier not everybody can see how many downloads a podcast gets only you can see it but every platform has some version of this instagram twitter whatever your platform is it is very very easy to start to chase the number so the bad news is it's hard to resist that the good news is it's hard for everybody else to resist that in fact they won't even try everybody else will fall into this trap and so it is actually a competitive advantage to completely ignore the numbers at the beginning and focus more on attracting the right types of people to your content who are you actually trying to trying to attract like I got a buddy he manages hollywood talent so when he writes a newsletter it doesn't matter if there's a 100,000 people reading it or a 1,000 as long as the 1,000 people who read it are the right people they're people that either need his service or they're people that are like him agents in the game talent managers that are very high signal and will become his future professional network right I'll use a car analogy as well which is dangerous because I'm probably the one guy on earth who knows nothing about cars doesn't care about cars but I dabble so general motors sells 2 and a half 1000000 cars a year and is a like 50,000,000,000 ish dollar company ferrari only sells 13,000 cars 200 times less right 200 times fewer customers less reach but it's an $80,000,000,000 company so almost double the value and so how is that possible where you can have 200,002 100 times less reach yet still be more valuable and it's because ferrari chose to be luxury they chose to sell to higher end customers one customer for them is worth 200 for a average car company that's why they have much thicker profit margins and so on and so forth and there's a principle there which is attracting the right customer one of the right customer is worth I don't know a 100 random or non correct customers for you and I use customer because in content whether it's a viewer a reader a follower they're customers of yours you're producing a product they're consuming it let's call that a customer so.

Shaan Puri

Number 1 quality matter matters much more than quantity you might think you believe that but watch 95% of your attention will go towards your follower accounts your view accounts and all that other stuff resist this okay lesson number 2 what should I talk about my trainer who I work out with every morning he's got these great phrases and one of his great phrases is the best product is just you pushed out to the world and basically like if I just turned you inside out and the whole world got to see what you are all about what you stand for that if you could just productize that this is me pushed out to the world that is the best product why because no one can compete with you at being you if you truly just take your desires your interests your tastes your opinions and you package that and productize that properly you are in a market of 1 nobody else can match your taste palette nobody else can match your set of experiences prior experiences and stories and nobody can match your delivery style as well as your opinions and so the core thing you could do if you really wanna be great and separate yourself in the content game is make the product you pushed out I call this finding your inner nerd so quick story I remember going when I was younger to my uncle's house and we get to his house and he's like hey you wanna see something and he takes me down to the basement and he shows me flicks on the light and he shows me this elaborate model train set that he has been working on for years like 5 years + and it had all these little like the scenery the trees and the trains and it was I mean it was incredible and he's showing me this proudly he's beaming he's smiling and in my head I'm trying to smile back but I'm like wow my uncle is the biggest dork in the world but in the content game you wanna be like my uncle you wanna unleash your inner nerd you wanna go down the basement and show everybody that train set that you've been tinkering with for a long time why is this well because the things that you nerd out about are the things that you know the most about it's the nuanced in-depth detailed over the top passionate obsessed that actually turns into great content and you see this by the way on platforms like tiktok you'll see a guy who's a tomato farmer and he's like all about tomatoes this guy thinks about tomatoes more than anybody in my city has thought about tomatoes and so that guy's got an obsession an inner nerd dom about tomatoes and the reality is that the internet is a geography vaporizer so let's take me for example if I just took my set of inner nerdy obsessions it's like oh man I really love on one hand I love startups and building companies and I'm I I love going and reading old stories about how the paypal mafia and leaked email transactions about how zuck bought instagram that's my I love that that's my netflix right but then I also like basketball and I also like trashy reality tv I like a bunch of different things now if I walked outside my neighborhood growing up and I tried to find somebody who had the same interest as me 0 right there would be nobody who has the same set of weird obsessions as I do even if I took one of them like I like basketball but I don't just like basketball I freaking love basketball I'm obsessed with basketball and there weren't really many people growing up that were as obsessed with basketball as I was they didn't find the jokes as funny they didn't find the the nerdy x's and o's stuff as interesting as I did the internet vaporizes all of that on the internet you go on there you will find your tribe you will find the 10,000 people in the world that are as weirdly obsessed about a single subject as you are right and that's what works and so there are people who do this there's a guy on twitter I love dye workwear this guy just loves men's fashion and he will think about talk about and obsess about you know how long a pant leg should be on a men's suit something that I don't personally care that much about but he does and he has found his tribe online that's what you wanna do with content on the internet you want to find your tribe by unleashing your inner nerd you gets rid of competition and also by the way the secret here it makes success a guarantee what do I mean by this normally if you come to me and you said hey I wanna build a big following you know winning to me is becoming famous online nobody really says this but that's what we all want winning to me is having a famous online nobody really says this but that's what we all want winning to me is having a huge audience well if that's your only definition of winning you will almost certainly fail and even if you succeed you will feel like a failure for many years probably before that ever happens that's a pretty miserable thing like 1% odds of success if ever and in that 1% it still takes years so every day you're gonna feel like a failure however when you unleash your inner nerd the benefit is you're just reading about stuff you're really interested in you're talking to people who are you know experts at the thing you really love you are learning packaging up what you learned and you're sharing it with the world and you're just really into that stuff and so every day feels like a win because you are talking about the things you are most interested in which just lights you up and so you shift the odds of success to maybe 1% maybe many years down the road to every day 100% of the time I like those odds okay lesson number 3 build a magnet not an audience everybody wants to build an audience I think that's the wrong way of thinking about it the way I think about it is I am building a magnet a giant magnet that will attract like minded people into my life so every blog every podcast every video it's a honeypot and I'm just trying to trap like minded people into coming into my orbit and then I get to know them I get to meet them and then they start to share things with me that you know they know that I'll like because we're like minded and this has led to incredible deals you know for my business it's led to incredible friendships for me it's led to a faster rate of learning because people will start to send me stuff they know that I'll like and so I'm trying to build a magnet to bring people to me not an audience okay next one back in the category of what do I actually talk about there's an exercise that I'll give you this is probably one of the only tactical things that I'm gonna say like a everybody can literally go write this down and do this and it will make your content better and again I'm trying not to go super prescriptive because everybody's got their own voice you might like linkedin another guy likes podcasting you can win there's a 1000000 different ways to win I'm giving you the timeless principles and hard earned wisdom but one tactical thing I will give you is an exercise you can do and I call it first last best worst weirdest five questions 1st last best worst weirdest stole this from matthew dicks I added the weirdest one he did the the other stuff first last best worst so what you do is you take any subject in your life like jobs you say first job last job best job worst job weirdest job and in each you'll just immediately come up with things my first job was I used to coach basketball at a school for autistic and asperger's kids cool my last job that I had was working at twitch my worst job was when I created a I built a sushi restaurant and every day my hands were like covered in tuna my weirdest job was when I worked for this psychobillionaire in indonesia who too many stories to tell there but that guy so everybody has a version of these and you could do that with relationships what's your first relationship your last relationship your weirdest relationship your best relationship your worst relationship so you could do this with jobs relationships you could do this with side hustles projects whatever and that will create just this huge pipeline of personal stories that you can tell because most people wanna say alright what what do you got what's your content they have like 1 or 2 ideas it's like you should be idea rich time poor maybe but idea rich and the way to get idea rich is a very simple exercise 1st last best worst weirdest and then you plug in different subjects and you'll suddenly be sitting in front of 200 personal stories that only you can tell and then you basically circle the ones that you think have the most juice and then you that turns into content for you alright next one a thing I wish I knew earlier the 5 d's so a lot of people wanna be famous but I've learned over time that is the wrong goal fame itself kind of annoying but there's something to it right like I don't think I wanna be famous but I do want people to know me what is that well I don't wanna be well known I wanna be known well so what does it mean to know somebody well that's an interesting question I think it's you know their personal stories like I just said their hopes their dreams their fears their obsessions their quirks that's what goes into actually feeling like you're known well and when somebody feels like they know you well they feel connected to you when they're connected to you that's when they subscribe to you that's when they pay for you that's when they show up to your live events and sell out arenas that is how you build a truly powerful audience so the 5 ds what are they the first d done what have I done what's my track record you should know that about me that's a goal you should have as a creator that your audience should know what you've done they should know what you deliver meaning what do you offer people who follow you for example this podcast on this podcast I offer interesting business ideas so opportunities trends business ideas business breakdowns I'll tell you about businesses you haven't heard of that are interesting that are either just cash flow monsters or you know they could be $1,000,000,000 companies in the future I'll tell you about those I teach you about those and the last one is frameworks ideas much like this podcast here I am telling you a way that I think about things that might be useful to you bring you clarity and bring you hopefully more success so that's what I deliver what do you deliver the 3rd d do what do I do for work and what do I do for fun I want you to know that 4th dreams what am I shooting for what's my goal right if I said gary v a very popular person who is very well known but also known well gary v wants to buy the jets if you've ever followed gary v you probably know that gary v wants to buy the jets and that's his dream and by the way it's such a good dream so smart of him because a it's aspirational it's relatable wanting to buy and own a sports team it tells you about him he grew up a miserable jets fan it's also likable he didn't say I wanna buy the yankees which is like oh yeah of course everybody wants to buy the yankees he's saying I wanna buy the loser franchise from my hometown I wanna help turn them around that's an admirable sort of like underdog underdog way of saying something that's kinda douchey in reality which is I wanna be so rich I could buy a sports team so anyways you should tell people your dreams and the 5th one dork out what are you really into what are you what are you a nerd about what do you collect that's what people should know about you so the 5 d's this gives you 2 wins your audience feels more connected to you but also you get luckier it's weird I said that right luckier yeah that was a surprise to me too there's a certain type of luck where when people know you really well and they find something that they know you will find valuable or you could help them with they will reach out to you and it's almost like you were out there searching for it but you never had to leave your room the analogy here came from naval that I really loved which was imagine you are known well you are known well you are known to be somebody who loves diving deep sea for treasures and you are the best at this and you have done it several times you've shared your stories well well when somebody on the other side of the world finds a hidden treasure buried deep in the ocean you will be their first phone call because luck will find you in that scenario and so that's something that comes out of the 5 d's okay this is getting kinda long right but you're still here that's weird well that's because there's another important principle which is there's no such thing as too long only too boring so if you bounce by now it's because I'm telling you things that you don't find interesting you don't find insightful or you don't find novel but if you're still here you're listening to 1 guy on a monologue for this long you can literally hear my mouth drying up it's because I'm telling you things that are insightful that are entertaining and that are useful to you so there's no such thing as too long only too boring next one I think I'm on 7 don't worry about writing style or production quality if you're doing audio video the goal is not c - content with a + production it's a + content with c - delivery that's the starting.

Shaan Puri

You should be going for that. That's the first milestone of success. I do not waste hours on packaging or perfecting my setup. If you go look at the early versions of this podcast, it's me in a bedroom with **shitty** headphones and **shitty** audio. Literally, the very first version of this, I had like one AirPod in. It was bad, right? Go look at Joe Rogan's first podcast. Here's a screenshot of it. If you're on YouTube, you can see it. You know, it's literally Joe with a fuzzy webcam. There's literally like a snowflake, trippy effect on the screen, which is like so obnoxious. There's a giant rainbow background behind him. Today, Joe is the king of podcasts. He's got a custom studio, but back then, he didn't worry about all that. He first conquered content, then conquered packaging. I see a lot of people get this wrong because they go look at people who are 10 years into the game and they think, "Oh, that's how my stuff needs to look." No, no, no. First, nail content. When you're confident you've nailed content, then start leveling up your production. Number 8: Create a binge bank. At the beginning, your numbers are going to be small. Mine were also small. Everybody's numbers are small at the beginning. That is now normal, natural, and pretty much unavoidable. It is very natural to start thinking that way.

Shaan Puri

Man what's the. Of even doing this right nobody's even gonna see this my last video got 8 views you cannot think about the 8 views it will demoralize you it will kill your momentum that you need to build up instead the trick here is convince yourself no no no forget the 8 views that's not what this is about I am building my binge bank so a binge bank is like your own personal netflix binge worthy show it's an hour or 2 of your content that if somebody was interested they could go click the button consume it and be like man I'm a huge fan of this person that's the goal create an hour or 2 of content that if somebody ever got there and of course they will why would they not you're you're awesome eventually people will show up that when they do that in an hour or 2 they'll walk away being like wow I love this guy this guy's awesome so that's a trick to overcome the chicken and egg problem of having an empty room at the beginning is no no no forget the empty room I'm building my binge bank right now the last last two I'll give you here people don't want information they want a feeling what does this mean so I think of any channel I create as a little shop in the world's most crowded flea market because that's what social media is it's probably the most competitive market on earth more competitive than the dating market right because there's billions of people on social media every day fighting for attention if you're gonna be in that market you have to know what you're selling you're not selling things you are selling a feeling david blaine when he creates his show he's not selling magic tricks he's selling the feeling of awe james clear who talks about habits he's not selling habits he's feeling he's selling a feeling of self control a feeling of hope that I can actually turn my life around through this habit stuff the ufc dana white once said I don't I don't sell fights I sell holy shit moments all live on pay per view I love that tony robbins he sells a feeling of motivation crossfit they sell a feeling of a satisfying sweat and if you give people a feeling once or twice maybe they'll give you a follow-up but if you give it to them every day for several years you have a lifelong fan and I figured out what I wanted to sell which was inspiration and I tried to do it consistently meaning I want you when you listen to me you're gonna be inspired you could buy a success story I tell you about about overcoming failure story about a personal story where I did one of those two things or I'm gonna sell you inspiration around ideas like hey I think this can work or I think this tactic can work and you will feel inspired to go take action that's what I try to sell why because that's the feeling I like that's what I try to give other people and last one my bonus one be so good they can't ignore you I have had the fortune of becoming friends with mr beast over the last few years and if there's someone you wanna learn content from it's mr beast that's the number one most watched youtuber in the world and I love his attitude towards content here's the advice that mr beast gives whenever somebody asks him about how to be a successful youtuber he tells them go make a 100 videos and every video on the 100 I want you to think of one thing you're gonna do better than the last video maybe it's your hook maybe it's your title maybe it's your thumbnail maybe it's the storytelling maybe it's the editing pace whatever doesn't matter what it is 100 videos improve each one try to make one be conscious about making one thing better each time I love this advice I love it for two reasons number 1 it's true and extremely useful advice but more importantly it just shooze people away because what they come to you for is the secret sauce the answer and what he gives them instead is the path here's the way he teaches them to fish it immediately filters you a lot he says that like you know 99% of people when he tells them that he never hears from them again they never go do it so it kind of filters out the unserious people and there's a lot of unserious people in this life and the serious people it also works for them it shoos them away too because by the time they do the 100 improving one thing each time they don't need this advice anymore by the 100th one they've got it it's working it's cranking they're so busy they forgot about mister beast so that's why there's golden advice I'm doing that right now so this content that I'm telling you right now is something I wrote on a new content series that I'm doing so 4 years ago I started this podcast my first million I did it by myself I interviewed my friend suhui as the first episode and I just told myself I was gonna try to do 50 of these episodes and I said I'm gonna do 50 I'm trying to make one thing better every time similar philosophy I used 50 at the time fast forward 4 years I've just started my first new content project since then which is a email series so if you go to seanpury.com you can see it you get to watch me do my 100 reps this is now rep number 4 all the content that I'm telling you today is something I just sent out in my email to everybody who's on that list so if you like this type of content go to sean puerri dotcom subscribe to it and you get to see me do these reps in public and you'll get more content like this if this is what floats your boat so I have a new content series where I'm like people email me and I publish the email chain so basically fans email me questions and I answer them and sometimes I email friends so like interesting people maybe an expert on the election or an expert on whatever or like we're doing one with lebron james' trainer of you know say he's been training lebron james since he was 19 20 years old and for 20 years he's been his personal trainer so we're doing a series with them where we email back and forth and we publish the whole chain for anybody to read it's really great it's kinda like the like the banter of a podcast because 2 people going back and forth but it's the ease and readability of a blog post so that's my my sales pitch for it but my approach to that to making that successful is exactly the same I'm gonna do a 100 reps and every single week you will notice I pick 1 or 2 things and I'm actually gonna publish what is the one thing I focused on making better this week I'm gonna publish that so that anybody can see it that is how I'm gonna make that series great or I'm gonna figure out that hey this is not for me but either way that is the correct approach to giving myself a chance of greatness and that's what you should do for yourself the other thing I love that mr b says is he goes a lot of people I hear them say oh man I yeah I'm trying my hardest I'm doing great but you know the algorithm I just can't you know I have to do all this stuff the algorithm doesn't like it the algorithm's not serving my video and he says anytime you blame you say the word algorithm just switch it with the word people because you're blaming the algorithm the algorithm didn't like my video no no no people didn't like your video the algorithm is just simply giving people videos they like if the algorithm is not giving them the video it's because they didn't like your video so I think that's a very useful thing to know which is it's a skill issue it is in your control to make your content better to be so good that they can't ignore you alright I hope that's helpful if you like this type of content let me know in the comments here on youtube and please go subscribe to my new email series it's called good friday it's stuff like this and if this was really inspiring to you if this felt actionable it felt insightful felt fun to listen to check it out at seanpuri.com I'll put the link in the description below and you can just type your email in it and subscribe there's a little fun animation when you do it check it out good friday that's the email series by the way why did I call it good friday because I noticed that most email newsletters are sent on mondays tuesdays wednesdays whatever nobody sends emails on friday because most people hate getting emails on friday but for me I thought about this way what is the one good email I could send to somebody on friday what's a little bit of brain food something that is both entertaining and insightful that you could have going into the weekend it's that one good email on friday and that's what I committed to I'm gonna send a good ass email every friday for the next 100 next 100 fridays so we'll see how that goes check it out and thank you for tuning in