You already know it's the creator spaces show. Do you sitter yourself a creator?
I would have to. I've created multiple things. So I guess I would be lying if I said I wasn't. So what exactly do you create a lot of things, startup companies and content, and a bunch of ideas that don't get executed on. There's a wide gamut of different things I've created, like, all right now in the process of creating a company. Float of creating a lot of content over the past six or seven years, a lot. And most of that has not been seen by anybody.
And it was really bad content figuring out like how to make good stuff now, but I've tried a lot of things. And most of the things, I would say 99% of what I've created has been a total flop and that's okay because I've learned a ton and it's been fun. And so
I think probably the thing, at least I know that. Four is creating content around marketing and Twitter growth. Is that where you started out or is that just your Twitter for the past year?
Yeah. Yeah, like the past 10 months now that I've been active on Twitter, but that is definitely not the origin story of content creation for me. So. Try to do Twitter multiple different times. I started out in 2013 and I did not understand the platform at all. And every couple of years I would try to pick it back up and figure it out. And I just could never get it to work for me. I didn't understand what type of content works and what was helpful.
And I had really no clue about that until the past 10 months or so, but I did actually start out creating more on LinkedIn. So that's where I really. Started honing the craft of writing, especially longer form. Cause you can go a little bit longer on LinkedIn. When I started doing that in like 2015, I tried to be more actionable, but I don't think I was very good at doing that and synthesizing information back then.
So that's where I created content and kind of use that as a testing ground for probably three or so years on and off mostly. But definitely had LOLs there. And then I really, in like August of last year, I started getting back into Twitter. I had 700 followers. I think most of them were probably bots or people that I knew from high school, not a real audience or community by any means.
And I tweet things out and it gets zero likes one, if I was lucky and just started building very slowly and tried to focus on one-on-one connection at that time, and just made a couple of friends, tried to help them out, try to help a small number of people. With whatever I could and then just snowballed from there. So in terms of Twitter growth, that's the approach that I've taken. It's been very methodical analytics.
How do you build up your audience now? And do you think of it as an audience or community? Or do you have both? And if so, how do you differentiate? Yeah,
I think for Twitter, it's still probably a little bit closer to an audience just because there's so many people that you can't really interact one-on-one with. So there are certain people where I do feel on Twitter, I'm in a community with them and they're part of my. But it's more outside of Twitter that true. A hundred percent community really comes into play. But I do think that I have a pretty engaged and an awesome audience that I try to make more into a community.
Like I don't really like the word audience anymore when I was starting out. I was like, I want to build my audience. But the more I got to thinking about it, I don't want to force things down people's throats. I just want to be able to talk and have conversations. And obviously the more that you grow, the harder it is to have that one-on-one. So you do have to make time for it, but I still very much enjoy that and try to make that a big part of it.
But I'd say Twitter overall, probably for everybody just skews a little bit more as an audience, because for me a community. Being available to everybody and everybody's helping each other. And when people are on Twitter, they're not on Twitter because of me. They may like my content, but it's not focused around me. It's focused around a lot of different thoughts. So I don't think it's a true to me.
We've talked a little bit about your early trials with LinkedIn, but I'm wondering, could you contrast what you were doing then, or maybe one of the first times you tried out Twitter to how you're going
about building and engaging? Yeah. It's a lot different again, like I mentioned, it's a lot more data-driven now. Yeah. Try to snowball this thing where I just build on topics over and over again, that I know work and that I know are helpful to other people. When I was just starting out, it was a lot of guesswork. And I think you do have to do that.
You probably have to have periods where you're just guessing what you think other people are going to like, but I didn't glean any insights from that stuff, but. It's a lot different it's much more data-driven. So I rely heavily on topics that I know are helpful to other people. And they've shown that through consistent engagement over time.
And I try to go deeper and deeper say things in different ways so that other people who may not have understood it when I set up before it can understand it. Now that's the approach that I'm definitely taking. Totally different. Also another big part of this is my writing's better, which back then I've always been a strong writer.
The problem is I was one of those kids in high school where I was, I took AP classes and I was very good at English and I was super good at writing for school, but then it took me a long time to comprehend that writing is not the same as online writing. I was trying to write like that still. I was trying to be really formulaic, probably too verbose. I didn't really format things very well.
It was very essay light, and I've totally shifted from that now where I understand I have to have a great hook and then we'll figure the rest out from there. Instead of just worrying about what's my whole outline to this entire essay. No, that doesn't matter to me as much. I'm going to figure out the hook that people care about. The thing that's going to be really helpful in the way that I can say it, that gathers attention.
And then also I'll just build on it line by line and make sure that it all feeds into each other that it's coherent, but that's all in the editing process now, whereas before I was just writing no editing, no chopping it down. Now I'll go crazy line by line and then I'll edit it after the fact and cut it down by seven, the 5%.
How do you go about monetizing now?
I think you mentioned. Yeah, so I'm starting to build products that are intertwined with what my audience should care about. And I've got a lot of people in my audience that are really into no code, which means that a lot of them use notion like I do. And a lot of people that want to make money online themself. One way that you can do that is through selling an online course. So a few months ago for float is a backstory. I was trying to create a course that I already had all my notes in notion.
It was about building a high-performance landing page, which is something that I've got like tons and tons of videos about. And I really already had all the content ready. In notion. I started shopping around the different online course platforms, trying to figure out where I was going to host it. But few things happened. They're really expensive, those platforms. And I was going to give that course away for free. So it didn't really make sense fiscally for me to do that.
But also I already had everything in notion and I would have to copy and paste it back over and learn a whole new platform. Bunch of stuff going into that. So I just decided I was going to find somebody to help me build this out. And when I started at copy AI in February, I had a coworker that had worked on some unofficial notion API stuff before. So that was a good fit and we just partnered up and started building it. And we're going to be launching it soon.
But yeah, I mean, like that's one way to monetize that. I think there's just a lot of overlap and I don't have to be overly pushy or salesy to get people in there. We have 2000 people sign up for the waitlist. We made about 13,000 before we ever launched. Uh, because we sold a couple of lifetime deals and that really helped just get us a little cash in the bank to not have to worry about a lot of different things.
So that's been cool, but we're going to be launching it to everybody pretty quickly here. Other than that, I'm thinking about doing like cohort-based stuff potentially. And thinking about whether it's like super follow. I don't know if I'm gonna do. Monetizing my email lists, but I'm not really like growing my Twitter account just to make money off of people. And I know that's sounds obvious, but also to like a lot of the marketers out there, they're going to be like, what are you talking about?
That's dumb to leave money on the table. But for me, I met a lot of cool people here. I've met people that have changed the trajectory of my career. And I've been able to land a great job as COO of copy AI because of Twitter. So there are a lot of ways to monetize and it doesn't just have to be through selling something. Technically me getting a job through Twitter is probably the most lucrative monetization that I've done. So there's a lot of different ways to end it. So
is the job, your main source of revenue
now? Yeah, I guess so I've got float. I've got some other stuff going on, but this is like the first time where I've truly had multiple streams of income that are viable. This is a new thing for me. Twitter is definitely helped to accelerate that growth there, but yeah, I'd say, you know, copy is number one. Float. It certainly will be number two pretty quickly here. And then I've got this cohort thing I'm thinking of that maybe that could even do more. So we'll see.
What's your north star metric.
How do you know you're on the right path? Really? For me, it's all about if I feel like I'm responding to people, the best that I can, if I'm being helpful with people are like shouting me out for being helpful. That's how I measure if I'm providing enough value to the community in terms of north star metric, monetarily, that doesn't really exist for me. Awesome.
So are you just not concerned
about that? I was really concerned about that a while ago, but I'm a little bit more in my career now, and it's never been my main motivating factor. I'm much more of, I want to be helpful and also more than I would like I do like credit or recognition personality tests. I'll say that. So I can't really deny it. So, so that's more of my makeup. I just want to be known as a person that's helpful.
And I do want to be known as somebody that is smart, but that's really where I draw that line because the more. Implemented that the more money I've made and the more that I've just given all my knowledge away and not worried about trying to squeeze a buck out of every single transaction or interaction, the more money that I make. So I've just stopped being concerned with that right now. It's all just about, am I attracting the right people? Am I giving them helpful information?
Am I learning how to write better and communicate my ideas better? And the more that I do that the more money? Yeah.
What's your current goal as a creator? Is it launching float next or is there something in between
yeah, floats next, honestly, we're probably a week or less away from that being available to everybody. So we're in the final stages there, and then it's going to be taking feedback, fixing bugs, getting ready for a V2 of float. So that's still going to be really top of mind. Obviously 80 to 90% of my thoughts are at copy AI because that's where I spend the most time. And that's my full-time job.
So honestly, I view my role there as the creator as well, and creating a marketing department from scratch, creating systems for the company and culture from scratch all the campaigns, all the different things that we're doing to increase revenue. That's all on me. So that's really exciting. That's where I focus. Most of my time, the rest of it is like float. And then after a while, I'll get into it, this cohort stuff. So question
for you. Do you use copy AI to help
you with your Twitter? The most common question that I get about copy AI. Yeah. So I never used copy AI for my own tweets. But I use it for just about anything else. And I do want to put a disclaimer out there, like AI is not supposed to replace your thinking or do everything for you. It's a supplement to what you're already doing. So if you're not a very good writer, then AI can help you become a good writer pretty quickly. And if you're already a good writer, it just helps you make.
Good writing. And so that I use it for documentation for copy AI. I use it for building out landing pages for float and other things that I'm working on for all kinds of different things. I've tried brainstorming some stuff I can, you can brainstorm topics in there using different tools. And so I've definitely done that, but as for actually writing tweets or any social copy, I have not used it for that.
Back to your start, what would it be? And
when would it be? You get to choose the start. It'd all be around writing. Honestly, it would have two points. It'd probably be like a bulleted list with two points and then say, here's how you're going to crush it on Twitter point. Number one, let your quantity lead to quality. So don't worry about having perfect. Right off the bat, create an obscene amount of content and just analyze what works and what doesn't. And let that be your go-to strategy. Just create as much as he possibly can.
And then step two would be forget high school writing and study, whether it's like direct response or just general copywriting, just study how people write online and figure out that format the way that people talk words to use words, to avoid, how to format things, how to craft a great hook. That's the information. So,
if you could summarize that 280 characters
for us. Yeah. It would be how to crush it on Twitter. One quantity leads to quality to learn how to write online.