In this episode I talk to Sahil Bloom. This is Sahil’s second time on the show. He’s doubled his audience from an already large number since then, and he’s now a full-time creator.
Sahil is someone I’d love to have on the show every six months or every year. He’s putting out incredible content. I’ve probably learned more from Sahil in the last few months than I have from any other person.
We talk about Twitter growth, monetization, growing a podcast, and newsletters. I also try to sell him on switching to ConvertKit. You can be the judge of how well I did to convince him.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Two game-changing habits that can lead to big results
- How Sahil categorizes his content for more engagement
- Sahil’s strategies for growing a new podcast
- How Sahil monetizes his newsletter
Links & Resources
- James Clear
- Shane Parrish
- The Generalist (Mario Gabriele)
- Greg Isenberg
- The Tim Ferriss Show, episode 362: Talent Is the Best Asset Class — Graham Duncan
Sahil Bloom’s Links
- Follow Sahil on Twitter
- Listen to Sahil’s podcast, Where It Happens
- Visit Sahil’s website
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Sahil:
You’re not always going to have amazing ideas. You may have one amazing idea per week.
I write every day. I read every day. I maybe have one really good idea per week. I need to keep creating and trying to be consistent, and put things out that people find value in.
If you can repurpose things, if you can take a slightly different angle on old things that you created, and use that to drive value for people and keep the engine going, and keep your consistency within the algorithm it’s super powerful.
[00:00:34] Nathan:
In this episode I talk to Sahil Bloom. Sahil is a repeat guest on the show. I had him on about seven or eight months ago. He has doubled his audience from an already large number since then. He’s gone full-time as a creator; he had a full-time job when he first came on.
We talk about a lot of different things. I’ve probably learned more from Sahil in the last three months, the last six months, maybe than any other person.
It’s really fun to have him back on. It’s a riff on Twitter growth, monetization, growing a podcast, newsletters. I’m actually trying to “live sell” him on switching to ConvertKit, with moderate success. We’ll see. You’ll be the judge of how well I did or didn’t do to convince him to switch over.
I guess we’ll all find out if he switches over or not.
I think you’ll enjoy the show. Sahil is one of those people I’d love to have on every six months or every year. He’s putting out incredible content. I learn so much from him every time.
So, enjoy the episode, and make sure you like, subscribe, and all those things. It helps more people find the show.
Thanks.
Sahil, welcoem back to the show.
[00:01:33] Sahil:
Oh, man, it feels good to be back, Nathan.
Since last time, I have turned around my desk in the other direction. In the prior episode I had a painting right behind my head, and I was up against a wall.
It looked like I was taking a mugshot or something.
Now I have my nice background. I feel much more at ease.
[00:02:02] Nathan:
That’s right.
The background has changed, and I feel like a ton of stuff in your life has changed since we last recorded.
Let’s give the highlights, and then we’ll dive into a few of these.
[00:02:16] Sahil:
Yeah. I’m trying to remember when it was that we actually recorded. I had definitely moved to the east coast. It was probably, I don’t know, it must’ve been July, August of 2021.
[00:02:27] Nathan:
Yeah. Maybe around then.
So only seven, eight months ago? Somewhere in there.
[00:02:31] Sahil:
Yeah, but you know, the internet age, man, things move fast. It’s been a whirlwind.
I, officially transitioned out of my prior full-time role that I had. I guess that would be a big one.
[00:02:47] Nathan:
Yeah, you’re working full-time as a VC.
[00:02:50] Sahil:
I was at a private equity fund. Yeah. and it was, it was great, but it, you know, it was time and ready for ready for a change a little bit. and I’m still an advisor to that firm, but largely kind of out of the day to day, you know, the big stuff that has progressed has been on all of the kind of media and brand building stuff, I suppose.
I mean, I think the Twitter following has exploded is, is much larger than it was then,
[00:03:19] Nathan:
Dena, just to put numbers to that, do you know, do you remember what it was like? Oh, you had a lot, like 200,000.
[00:03:25] Sahil:
Up pretty easily. Yeah. I think I hit, I think I hit 300 in October. I tracked this pretty, like I’m a data nerd. I don’t know if you’re like this, but I’m data nerd. And so I actually, I can actually just check. So in July I was at two 30. so 230 test. So it’s almost doubled, well actually more than doubled, sorry.
I’m at four 90 now.
We’re recording
[00:03:51] Nathan:
So you’re adding like 50,000 a month almost.
[00:03:55] Sahil:
Yeah, 50 a month. the last few months, I mean, I had it took, I mean, I started my first Twitter account in like 2011. It took until I really started in may of 2020. And so from there I went from like 500 to my first a hundred thousand. Took from may of 2020 to January 21. The next hundred thousand went from, like took from January to, may.
And so like five-ish months and then the 200 to 300 went from may until, I don’t know, October. And then it went like from 300 to 500. It’s just been from October to now. So it’s definitely accelerated, which is crazy.
[00:04:37] Nathan:
Give her a good party plan for five hundreds. You know, you got to do
[00:04:40] Sahil:
Party plan. I don’t know, man. I was, I was thinking about funny things to do.
Like we’re recording this a few days before Valentine’s day. I was thinking about doing something fun where like, if I hit 500 before Valentine’s day, I’ll pay for like five people’s Valentine’s day dinners, like five of my followers who share something, just do something fun. Cause I do feel, I feel very grateful and it’s funny that people have gifted me with their attention at this level.
But I mean the numbers just make no sense to me anymore. It was like, I remember so distinctly when I got my first 5,000, and thinking like, holy shit, I’m sorry. I apologize if I’m not supposed but thinking, thinking, holy shit, I can’t believe 5,000 people follow me and actually care what I say.
And so now when I look at it, I’m just like, it’s, I can’t comprehend that. It’s it’s, it’s really crazy to me. So I feel very grateful, but, you know, between that and the newsletter has continued to build, I hit. big milestone this morning at 69,420, felt like, felt like a big milestone.
So that has continued to build that’s been fun. And then we launched the podcast, which was re, which has been really, really cool And we’re going to have to get you on for an episode too, by the now I’ve been on yours twice and I need to, have you on to to talk about the billion dollar creator. so a lot of fun stuff.
And I have, an announcement that I will soon be making on, on the investing front of something that I’m working on there as well. So man, just a lot of cool things and I feel very, very grateful.
[00:06:10] Nathan:
And, and a new baby coming.
[00:06:13] Sahil:
That’s probably the biggest, although I think I did now, I’m going to get, I’m going to get smoked for having that, not be one of the things, by the way, if my wife listens to this, I’m going to get killed. feel like that was probably already out. No, it wasn’t. It definitely wasn’t. it definitely wasn’t because I didn’t find It I found out on September 11th. well I remember which I remember very distinctly, obviously. yeah, no, so I haven’t yet, so that’s the big news I have my, baby boy due and, doing may.
[00:06:41] Nathan:
Yeah. Oh, that’s exciting. Yeah. So a lot has changed. there’s so much stuff that I want to dive into, but one fun thing with having a podcast is that you’d like, you get to bring people into like, have checkpoints in the story and. You know, people talk about like, who has really high trajectory and your trajectory just as a creator is insane. And so I love having you back on to talk through this and there’s all kinds of stuff, right? You and I are texting about like random things happening in.the market, or what’s working for Twitter growth This is like, all right, we just got to make this happen on an episode. So
[00:07:15] Sahil:
Totally.
[00:07:16] Nathan:
In.
[00:07:16] Sahil:
Yeah. And people can learn things from it that, you know, that I haven’t written about or talked about. And that you haven’t, I know you, I mean, you’re one of my favorite follows on Twitter now, because I feel like I’m learning so much about the broader creator landscape and also like tips, tricks, real things that are happening alongside all of the stuff you share about just like building in public and bootstrapping businesses.
And so I enjoy it too. Cause I feel like it helps me clarify my own thinking about a bunch of these growth principles.
[00:07:41] Nathan:
Yeah, that’s good. What are some of the things that.
You know, as you look back on the last eight months or so since we last recorded, what are some of the habits, right? Or the systems where you’re like, oh, this is where I really started to pay off because, you know, this took off or I showed up consistently in this way.
Any of that?
[00:08:02] Sahil:
Yeah. I started taking two things very seriously. And it’s really been over the last six months when my kind of time was unlocked a little bit from transitioning out of my prior job and the two things for me, or one, Daily, consumption. and I’m trying to think what the right word is to say around it.
A daily consumption habit that was tied to, note-taking alongside it, like a slow methodical consumption habit daily. And I’ll explain both of these. And then the second one is a daily writing habit. So on the first one, I started basically thinking about con consumption that I was doing content consumption that I was doing as a content engine, as something that was fueling my creation process.
And I had always done that in a much looser sense and I’ve developed now frameworks and a really tight process around it that allows me to in a deliberate and really, repeatable fashion. Find source, and distill novel insights from things I’m creating that become the content that I’m then producing.
And, what I mean by that is I literally just now have a process I read for an hour a day. That’s kind of like full stop for me every single morning. I’ll read for an hour. It’s the first thing I do. and I read different things, but, you know, newsletters, articles, newspaper pieces, podcasts that I might listen to different things like that every single morning.
And, and now I have a system and I use notion, but I’m starting to look at potentially using obsidian or other things where I’m actually able to kind of pull as I’m doing that reading slow down and pull out the things that kind of sparked my interest, the little novel insights, the points that made me go Hmm.
Or wow, whatever it was, that those then become the seeds of the things that I’m writing about. And so I’ve developed now a system around that. And then the other piece to that, which was the second thing I mentioned is a daily writing habit. And I actually learned this from you, which was you just need to create more and, and have that spark.
And so I just have a time blocked every day when I just write. And I don’t force myself to write about a specific thing I don’t have in mind before I go into it, actually, what I’m going to be writing about. I just look at my notion board of all the things that I was reading, consuming that sparked my interest a little novel.
And find what grabs me on that day. And sometimes it grabs me so much that I end up producing and completing a piece that I’m putting out. Sometimes it’s just, I kind of wrote somewhat aimlessly for 30 or 45 minutes. but the daily act and the daily habit I’ve developed around it has been a massive, massive game changer for me.
[00:10:38] Nathan:
Yeah, I love that. What’s an example of a piece of content. Maybe that’s gone from, you know, the spark or the input or a couple of those things that have come together all the way through to, you know, a finished piece, either a Twitter thread or a newsletter article or something else.
[00:10:53] Sahil:
Yeah. you know, I would say. Recently in the fall, I had a couple pieces I did around like ever grand, the Chinese property developer that collapsed the supply chain crisis, the Chinese energy crisis. And all of those were examples of things where I was reading, you know, my daily kind of, reading around the economy or, geopolitics or whatever it was.
And these things, these common themes kept coming up. And so I was reading it with that in mind, thinking like, what is the novel insight that I can bring to this discussion that makes it more interesting. That makes it more real. And so I was kind of like over a period of week, or maybe even two weeks in certain cases, pulling out little insights from things I read and logging it into my notion before.
And then I eventually had enough where I sat down and said like, okay, I have enough. And I have an angle on this. That’s different that people haven’t been writing about and looking to evergreen and case, that was the psychological side to one of these collapses. You know, everyone talked about the technical side and having too much debt and how they were over levered, but no one was really talking about the psychological perspective on it.
And so I like taking that angle finance and psychology. I find like the intersection. Very interesting. And so, that was how it kind of progressed from being these insights that I was pulling out from the reading to. Okay. I’ve written a little bit about different pieces of this. Let me pull something together that finds a real story and narrative arc that I can then go create and put out for people.
[00:12:21] Nathan:
Yeah, I like that. And I mean, all of that content did super well, cause it was very, very timely. how much of that is a factor?
Like obviously the things you’re consuming are often timely and then if you’re writing about it, you know, but then like when you write about every ran, right. Everyone’s talking about it right in that moment.
And so I’m watching your Twitter thread takeoff in a crazy way. You know, our
[00:12:42] Sahil:
Yeah.
[00:12:43] Nathan:
How would you try to like engineer that.
[00:12:45] Sahil:
Yeah. So I would say, I generally try to bucket content into two buckets. It’s either timely or it’s evergreen. and I think about that when I’m thinking about what I write about, you know, if there’s something that is very time sensitive, like the evergreen one, it was hitting a peak when I posted.
And so I captured the news cycle. It was like right into the news cycle. And my thing was like the first search on Google, if you’d searched evergreen the day when it was out, my thread popped up on Google, which is nuts to me on the
[00:13:14] Nathan:
Yeah.
[00:13:14] Sahil:
So it was like really getting a ton of views and clicks because
[00:13:18] Nathan:
Firm. And you’re like my threats,
[00:13:20] Sahil:
Insane, insane, the reach of these things.
But like, it was because I stuck it straight into the S like a center of this new cycle. And so I will always prior, like, if there is something that’s timely and you need to hit it, I will make sure that gets there because the thread on, An evergreen principle around growth or around procrastination, like a recent one.
I wrote that can be released any time. Like procrastination’s not going away unfortunately. Or like, you know what, whatever people’s desire to grow or make better decisions, cognitive biases, logical, fallacies, other things I write about those never really go out of style and they’re going to exist the way I’ve actually separated.
It is I tend to do the evergreen stuff on a Saturday, like on the weekend more timely stuff falls during the week. And the reason I originally did that was because people are typically tracking news cycle stuff during the week. And the weekend is when they’re like reset. You’re kind of ready to like maybe read something that you feel like is improving you, that you can grow around and you have more, more head space to actually think about it and do it.
[00:14:21] Nathan:
Yeah. Okay. So I’m going to ask you about that. Cause I text you all the time with like, Twitter questions or, like here’s the threat I’m going to put out? Like what should the, what should the upbeat? And you’re like, no, no, no, not like that. Like this, you know, which I appreciate. And it’s paid off in my Twitter growth.
Write of,
[00:14:36] Sahil:
Yeah, you’re crushing it.
[00:14:37] Nathan:
I think I’ve, added on 20,000 followers since the last time we recorded this episode, which. You know, on a percentage basis is pretty good.
You talk about like you specifically like suppose threads on like Saturday or Sunday morning. Why, why the difference between the weekend and the weekday?
What are you seeing in the data?
[00:14:56] Sahil:
What I see is, people have a higher likelihood of reading something long on a weekend than on a I think about it personally. I put all of these things in the context of myself, where during the week I never, I almost never read a full thread. I’ll save it. And maybe I read it late at night, you know, eight hours later, 12 hours later, or maybe I read it on the weekend.
And, that’s just because I’m busy and like all of us, we have jobs or doing things we’re creating or whatever it is that we’re doing.
And so I think unless it is highly topical and related to something that the person is trying to learn right then, because it’s relevant. it’s actually hard to get someone to read something longer form during the week.
What happens, Twitter is algorithm based. And so if a lot of people do that, if they send it to themselves to read later, they bookmark it or whatever, that doesn’t help with the viralocity of that thread or the ability for it to catch on and be shown to a lot of people. weekends, Saturday morning, Sunday, It might be having a coffee.
Maybe you’re hanging out with your family, doing whatever you’re scrolling and you have time. and hopefully you have more head space to actually think about things and dive into something. And so what I’ve found typically is that those evergreen things do much better when you post them on a weekend morning than if you’re posting them into the week.
And you’re like hitting a news cycle, maybe there’s something going on. that’s different. Like, I mean, I’ve posted things that I thought were exceptional on a weekday and I posted it into like a seven and a half percent inflation print that everyone was crazy over. And it’s like, oh, you should add a lock.
You just post any wasted it
[00:16:28] Nathan:
Right. You’re like, here’s why you shouldn’t procrastinate.
And people are like, forget procrastination. Like
[00:16:32] Sahil:
Yeah, exactly.
[00:16:33] Nathan:
Money in my bank is leaving. Like losing
[00:16:35] Sahil:
I just lost all my damn money or, you know, whatever it is, like the stock market crashed a few weeks ago and I had posted something, that was unrelated and the market was down like 4%. Everyone was freaking out about that.
And so you, you know, I do think it’s worth being thoughtful about those kinds of things because it matters. And if your goal is to have, my goal has never been driven around the growth of my following. I always thought that that was a natural by-product of creating value for people.
And if you’re creating value for people, they share it.
And if they share it more, people see that and hopefully find value from it and they follow you. And so my whole goal is to reach people and I want to create value for a lot of people. And so if that’s your goal, then you should be thoughtful about the way that you’re playing that distribution game. And so that you are getting in front of the most people that you can.
[00:17:19] Nathan:
Yeah. Oh, that’s interesting. And you know, another thing that I’ve learned from you and Nick Huber is if you post something and it doesn’t take off, actually, if you post something and it does take off either way, you can repost it a month or three months later, you know, tweak the hook, or even don’t even tweak it.
Like the number of times that I’ve written stuff that did okay. The first time and that, you know, or it got posted into a busy, you know, busy day on Twitter. And then I re posted it later and it did so much better. Or it did the same, like no one is like, ah, I think I’ve read this before. Are you repeating yourself?
Everyone’s like, oh, great. This is amazing content. Thank you.
[00:17:56] Sahil:
It’s funny that you mentioned Nick, because I learned that from Nick. Nick has posted that Donald Trump tax loophole. Eight times maybe. I mean, I honestly every two months and every time it does several thousand likes and probably gets him a thousand followers.
[00:18:14] Nathan:
I think I’ve read it three times. Like.
[00:18:16] Sahil:
Yeah. Because interesting in evergreen and it’s like got interesting real estate insights and I like, I’ve read it several times for sure. And I still don’t know that I fully comprehend all this stuff, but I read it. and he was the one that told me that. And so then I started trying it out and I change it up somewhat or I’ll update the hook or for me, my writing has just gotten so much better.
And so I’ll take something that I wrote
Six months ago and I’ll look at it and be like, holy hell man. I was a bad writer, this wasn’t tight. And also I’ll tighten things up and make it better. I also have twice as many followers as we discussed. And so for me, I’m always looking at it saying there’s a lot of people that actually just haven’t seen that thing that I put out six months ago or that idea.
And especially if the idea is evergreen, great. I want, I want more people to see it and it’ll get shared again. So I’ve done that. I mean, I’ve done it pretty consistently since Nick talked about it with me. and I’ve done it more around things that I think are kind of evergreen, like cognitive biases or logical phallic things that I think about on a daily basis, decision-making framework, stuff like that.
But I’ve seen people do it effectively with story threads. I’ve seen people do it effectively with things like Nick, where it’s like a unique insight earned insight driven thread. It all goes into that same principle of like create one, sell 10 times. I mean, I’m doing it now much more effectively with LinkedIn where I’m kind of taking content that I know hit on Twitter and sharing it to LinkedIn and my LinkedIn audiences, five X then the last couple of months as a result of that.
And so it’s, I think it’s just like a core principle to being a creator is you need to get the maximum leverage on the content you produce. And you’re not always going to have amazing ideas because you can’t, I, I maybe have a one amazing idea per week. At this point I write every day I read every day.
I maybe have one really good idea week, but I need to keep creating and I’m trying to be consistent and put things out that people find value in. And so if you can repurpose old things, if you can take a slightly different angle on old things that you created and use that to drive value for people and keep the engine going and keep your kind of consistency within the algorithm.
Rolling. It’s super powerful.
[00:20:17] Nathan:
Yeah. I mean, a lot of the threads and content that I’ve put out over the last, you know, three months or so that I’ve been actively working on Twitter is stuff that I wrote years ago and I blog and I literally just scrolled through my archives and went like, oh, that would make a good threads. And then it’s pretty easy to write because you already wrote it before.
So you’re just writing it for a new format. now I think I’m
[00:20:39] Sahil:
That’s one of the, by the way, like for newsletter writers, sorry to interrupt you newsletter writers or people that have written blogs in the past, that’s one of the biggest unlocks for Twitter growth that you could find is go through your old archives. And I think everyone should do this.
If you’ve been writing, even if you haven’t written it publicly and you’ve just written it, but if you’ve written publicly, you know, which ones hit, you know, which ones got a good response, got likes on medium or on your newsletter, wherever it was got views, open rates. Good. And so it’s, de-risked because you already know that people like it and that the topic resonates, and it’s very easy to take a newsletter and convert it into a shorter form.
Cut out on necessary words, distill it down, put a really good punchy hook on it that grabs people. That’s like your landing page can convert people through, and have it really accelerate, take the distribution seriously around it. I think that. I, and I’ve advised a bunch of people to do that as they’ve started on their Twitter journey, especially to like get through that cold start problem where you don’t know what to write about.
And you’re
[00:21:38] Nathan:
Yep.
[00:21:38] Sahil:
The engine rolling. It’s just a massive, massive advantage if you, if you have that out there.
[00:21:44] Nathan:
When there’s also this point, and I didn’t realize this until watching you and Nick and David Pearl and others do it. but th there’s a point where you get to a certain number of, hits that you’ve written. Right? Like my example of this would be my thread on company culture for remote teams. Right. I I’ve posted that twice or three times.
I can’t remember, but each time I know it’s good for 700 to a thousand retweets because it is topical. Everyone cares about it. It’s a great thread. each time I write it, I like add a couple more, you know, refine it. But there’s this point that I realized I’m like, wait, I’m going to get to where I have say 10 to 12 good threads, that I know are like fire.
They’re going to kill it every time. And if I post those every six months, every three months, then like, actually most of my work on it’s a little bit boring. Right. But I’ve got once a week covered forever and I’m not really even doing that much work.
[00:22:39] Sahil:
Yeah. I mean, it’s a brilliant way to think about it, honestly. And it’s, it is again, back to the principle of leverage. Because you are building a business that is your full-time job is building. What is, you know, going in my opinion, going to become a billion dollar, business, you know, and that is your primary focus.
Creation is alongside that. And I think a massive lever for you to continue to drive growth, because you’re going to create a bunch of eyes with it, but you need to figure out how to get leverage on your time, around these things and how to get leverage on your resources and your energy. and that’s a great way to do it.
I mean, you can take that and you can repurpose things and you can, to your point earlier, you’re not posting the exact same thing. time you’re, you’re repurposing it, or you’re adding ideas to it. The company culture one is amazing too. You didn’t say this as a thing for why it takes off, but it’s authentic because you’ve done that.
You’ve built a remote first company culture you’re focused on asynchronous work. Like those are all real things to you that you’ve actually lived by and they’re earned insights, which I think on Twitter earned insights is the most powerful thing you’ve seen this rise of the like. The people that have built a big following by just like, and it’s become a little bit of a meme, but people are, you know, like just kind of regurgitating things haven’t actually, they’re not earned insights and they’ve grown big followings on the back of it, which kudos to them for like figuring out something that works in the system.
And I never will hate on that. I think it’s great creators find a way to, if you can find a way to win like that. Great. But I actually think the most durable growth and the most valuable growth is growth. That’s driven off of your thoughts and real earned insight driven thoughts. and so for you doing that and delivering insights from the journey of building ConvertKit, to what, like in a a hundred million revenue, you’ve done a hundred million of revenue or close to it, is amazing.
That’s so cool that you’re sharing that in public.
[00:24:27] Nathan:
Yeah. Well, I think just like pulling from those stories or what your unique angle is, or any of that, you like the more for any creator that they can put their story into something someone was talking about like, oh, actually this is a conversation we were having internally at ConvertKit of like, what types of creators do we serve?
It seems like, well, educators, it was like, okay, everyone is either an educator or a storyteller. Like these are giant wide buckets. You know, you either teach or you tell stories and really the best, or just you educate or entertain. And one common way of entertaining is telling stories, but really the best creators are the ones who do both combined. Like, here’s this broad principle that you want to understand. Here’s how it, like how I came to the insight, you know? And then here’s two to three examples.
Whether it’s studies or, you know, other, you know, other people who represent that and like, as you weave those together, then that’s the kind of content. that people love and will want to follow.
[00:25:26] Sahil:
Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I couldn’t agree any more about it. The other thing that I’ve just as like a trick that I think people should do more, which I do is I’ll put out a thread that has, you know, 20 ideas in it. mental models, frameworks, razors, growth principles, life principles, whatever, whatever it is.
I will then go look, you know, that I know that that will perform well. That does great for me, that type of content. So I know I highly confident that a lot of people will see it. I’ll then go look and evaluate on an individual basis, how each idea performed relative to the others and the ones that perform the best.
I know that that is going to be a stellar individual topic for me to write about because holy shit, it, you know, rose above the other 19 that were sitting there. And so now all of a sudden I have just this massive repository of ideas that have come out of this stuff that I know are. As content because they already captured people’s attention and they worked.
And then I can take that one idea and drop it into LinkedIn, or I can take that and blow it out into a newsletter. I can talk about it on a podcast or do a video on it. and so I just think, I think all of this is about like leverage and it’s about compounding your actions around it. And as you continue to scale, finding ways to take one piece, get leverage on it so that it expands, use that as a base to then have something compound on top of that and continue to build.
I am, it’s just this massive power law effect that I’m seeing now in the, know, in my own growth across platforms. If I were to look at it because I’m just now starting to feel the benefit of it, which is crazy. Cause I’ve been at this for a while now, but it’s, it’s really cool. Once you finally start to see that flywheel start to really spin quickly.
[00:27:10] Nathan:
Yeah, for sure. Okay. So I want to talk about some of these other platforms.
People would say growing on Twitter is hard. I think growing up podcast is insanely hard. So, but I guess two things. One, what made you want to start the podcast and dive in, on that side and then two what’s what’s worked for growing it and, and, getting attention.
[00:27:31] Sahil:
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Podcasts are super hard. and it’s been a brand new growth challenge for me. I would put it alongside newsletter in terms of, growth challenge, there’s no discovery,
Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever, like there’s just no discovery mechanism for new podcasts. And so you have to bash that thing through the initial cold start problem in order to get it off the ground.
The other thing with podcasts in particular is you need to kind of create almost a habit around it that people are. There’s kind of two pieces to a podcast. In my opinion, there’s like the base, the people that you know will listen to every episode and you need that to grow, and then you need the spikes to grow.
Like you need the holy shit moments that kind of create the like peak vitality on top of the base. and it’s sort of like two different growth questions. The spikes come off the like aha moments that pop out and you need to be able to pull those out and deliver them on these different platforms, whether it’s in like clips on Twitter, like you do a great job of, or whether it’s on YouTube clips or TikTok, wherever you’re doing it, you need to be able to deliver those quickly.
And then the base just has to be, it’s consistent putting things out consistently that are high quality and that you’re delivering something that people know that they have to listen to it because it’s going to be valuable. And so, I mean, I’ve personally found it to be. If not the most, definitely alongside the most challenging from a growth standpoint, we’re growing really nicely and it’s done really well.
And you know, the base is building, the peaks are building, I think the guests compound because you’re able to kind of leverage social proof of other guests you’ve had and you’re able to get better guests. for me personally, I view it as just like a natural part of my overall media flywheel. it’s a place for me to build affinity with people, into place for me to talk about things that I historically hadn’t talked about as much on Twitter, like my interests around technology, around businesses, around investing, and build kind of a new, a new follower base and also deepen my relationship with my old and existing followers.
And it gives me a lever to be able to talk about companies. I’m excited about companies I’ve invested in support them, you know, on a bigger stage. and that is really powerful to me and really valid.
[00:29:44] Nathan:
Yeah.
[00:29:44] Sahil:
Then selfishly, man, I mean, you get paid to talk to, fucking, excuse you get paid to awesome people.
And that is like what joy in the world. Can you imagine? Other than that, like, you know, you get to, I get to sit here and have a conversation with you. there are a lot of people that I think would probably pay to have an hour of your time to get to chat about this stuff. and so I get to sit here and do this as like a job that’s kind of crazy and it’s pretty cool and I feel very grateful for it.
[00:30:09] Nathan:
Yeah, the, I think the superpower in podcasts is, is who you meet, like you, and I know each other first from Twitter a bit, but then largely from the podcast. Right. and like, you know, having a great conversation, hitting it off and then just like texting every week or every other
[00:30:25] Sahil:
Yeah.
[00:30:25] Nathan:
Last, last year.
[00:30:28] Sahil:
Your, your trajectory is interesting to me, at least in my view. Right? Cause I was outside. I didn’t do any creation before, before COVID and I had actually, that’s not true. I had this newsletter, I used to send out to like a few hundred people of like things I was reading every month.
I think I used MailChimp for. if I’m remembering correctly and I just, I would send it out once a month, but so I did technically do some creative work, I suppose, but basically after COVID. And I remember I taught that course with Julian on audience building. The first time we did it, which was, let’s see, it was like June of 20, 21.
We taught it. And during it, we talked about newsletters and I had just started my sub stack. And when people asked why sub stack in the chat, I just kept seeing like ConvertKit, this ConvertKit that you should check out convert K ConvertKit, like Nathan Berry. And I was like, who, who is this guy? And then we were DM-ing I think, and you had asked me to come on the show and I was like, ah, it’s funny because I’ve literally just heard about you from like a hundred people in our damn course that mentioned ConvertKit.
And I want to know what’s up too. and that was like the first time I saw you. And then I started to learn more about your business and what you were building alongside the conversation we had. But, it’s cool for me just as like an outside observer to this world, to see, someone building a company in the space, but also doing it alongside their own creator journey where are kind of intertwined.
[00:31:52] Nathan:
Yeah. I mean, that’s definitely been, I, I guess my personal brand along the way of like, building in public and, you know, like those, those being so intertwined.
Let’s talk about the newsletter a little bit. well, one, I have to give you shit that it’s still on sub stack. we’ll talk about that in a second, but,
[00:32:10] Sahil:
For that. I, was waiting for that.
[00:32:14] Nathan:
You know, so, so you started the newsletter in, I mean, it’s not that old, right? We’re talking nine months old kind of thing.
[00:32:21] Sahil:
I started the newsletter. Let me pull it up. Actually, I started the newsletter on may. Well, actually, that’s not true. I technically started it January of 2021 and for the first, five and a half months,
I, oh, what I would, what I did it for was that I wanted a bunch of people had asked me to send out my threads into their inboxes because they didn’t like reading them on Twitter.
Because at the time, if you recall like 20, 20 threads, actually, weren’t a thing that was enabled on Twitter. had to like actually physically go and post under each tweet and you had to do it manually. There was no thread feature. They realized that,
[00:32:58] Nathan:
Remember screwing it up where you’re like,
[00:32:59] Sahil:
Oh, all this.
[00:33:00] Nathan:
Wrong one, then you’re like, oh, this is all fucked.
[00:33:02] Sahil:
All the time. I mean, Twitter was like, and Twitter is notoriously bad at shipping features.
So it took forever to figure out how to do it. Finally, they did, but I had started the newsletter with sub stack because I was sending out every day. after my thread, the next day I would go out and I did that through may and then may like 15th was when I first sent out actual original content to, to the newsletter list.
And that was when it really started growing. I had built up the list to I’m looking at it 13,000, off of just sending out my threads the day after. And that was just like, Hey, sign up. If you want to get these in your inbox, then I kind of hit an inflection point where it grew from there. Once I started sending out original content to the newsletter list, and then it really hit an inflection point again.
In October when I started doing the midweek deep dives, that actually went kind of deeper on stuff I was talking about Twitter and it’s kind of upturned even more. So I, I would say it’s really eight eight-ish nine-ish months old, something in that range, but yeah, relatively new still
[00:34:04] Nathan:
Yeah. And so you’re at the amazing milestone of 69 for 20, or, or past it.
[00:34:11] Sahil:
My wife was like, I posted that on Twitter and my wife saw it and, she was like, yeah, this is great. So I have great, you know, really the mature behavior that I expect out of my, the future father of my child. Really great. I was like, well, I don’t know what you expect. Like I still think fart jokes are funny, too matters.
I’m just still a kid.
[00:34:32] Nathan:
When kids are just going to make that
[00:34:35] Sahil:
Yeah.
[00:34:35] Nathan:
Even better on that note, what does your wife think about? Like all of this? Like my wife, just, she thinks it’s great.
She’s like convergence, great. Proud of you support you in anything. But if I’m like, Hey, we just, you know, got this valuation for our Ssecondary round about mean, she’s like, awesome. I have your like, does not care any more than being proud and supportive of me. like,
[00:34:57] Sahil:
Yeah.
[00:34:58] Nathan:
Hey, this thing brought in a million dollars, she’d be like, that’s fantastic. I’m happy
[00:35:03] Sahil:
Yeah, yeah,
[00:35:04] Nathan:
Care. What does your wife think about? Like everything.
[00:35:08] Sahil:
It’s so funny you say that. So I, I literally like today was w I was out for a walk with my wife and I was like, oh man, it’s so crazy. I almost have 500,000 followers on Twitter. And she was like, cool. and just like looking around at some of the nature stuff, she was like, oh, that’s great.
And I was like, isn’t that crazy? That’s a lot of people. She was like, yeah, that’s great. Like good job. and so I find it personally to be, awesome grounding mechanism that she’s not, you know, like awestruck by these kinds of things. And, and the reality is like, I’m the same exact person and super normal.
The thing she gets really involved with and she loves talking about is all of my investing that I do. And she’s like my secret weapon on that stuff, because I will run an idea by her. And she is so critical on things that she doesn’t think are like a smart idea or good. And if I don’t distill it and explain it in like two sentences, like I would do a child, she immediately is.
Oh, you don’t really understand it that well, should probably, you know, dig in a little more, like you can’t, you’re not able to explain it that clue. And it’s really like a smack in the face because I realized, oh shit. Yeah. I don’t actually understand deeply. And I shouldn’t invest if I don’t.
But on creator stuff, she, she largely just kind of stays, stays even keel around it. She, I think she thinks it’s cool. I’ve gotten recognized in public a few times with her, which, I can’t tell whether she thinks it’s like really funny and makes fun of me about it, or if it like makes her uncomfortable.
But that would be like, I don’t know, maybe that’ll start to hit an inflection point this summer just given the scale of it. It’s like numbers
[00:36:46] Nathan:
Right.
[00:36:47] Sahil:
Likely to happen.
So we’ll see,
[00:36:50] Nathan:
Yeah.
It’s also different platforms are different for that. Right? Like I remember, for our conference craft and commerce, we’ve had a bunch of different influential people out. but the difference, right? Like, we had mark Manson speak one year, right.
Re wrote the subtle art of not giving a fuck.
I don’t like 5 million, 10 million copies. It’s like something just
[00:37:10] Sahil:
Insane.
[00:37:11] Nathan:
On number of copies sold. And people recognized him. But like, as an author, you
[00:37:17] Sahil:
Yeah.
[00:37:17] Nathan:
Know, his face like
[00:37:18] Sahil:
It’s James clear. I don’t know that a lot of people would recognize James clear necessarily, even though it’s like one of the most popular books of all time
[00:37:24] Nathan:
Right. Yeah, for sure. And, but then having Casey Neistat come speak, like he
[00:37:30] Sahil:
You tuber.
[00:37:31] Nathan:
The Boise airport, like,
[00:37:32] Sahil:
Right,
[00:37:33] Nathan:
Small airport before he’s mobbed, you know? And so it’s
[00:37:37] Sahil:
I do think the video you’re absolutely right. The video is a different layer to it. Now that I’m doing more. Video stuff. I also share. I mean, more than most people, I share more pictures on Twitter of like myself things, I’m doing whatever. part of it’s just vanity and like, I like sharing pictures.
And part of it is, is like an affinity building thing where I think when people see your face, it builds a different layer of affinity. And I want to build a community. That’s always been my goal and I, that’s why I still have my DMS open. That’s why I still to reply to people’s tweets and do things like that.
And I mean, my newsletter, which we’re going to talk about more, I know is like I get, you know, the emails come straight to my inbox from people responding to it, or when people subscribe and I’m working on delivery. and I reply to emails all the
[00:38:20] Nathan:
Yeah.
[00:38:21] Sahil:
Mean, and I like, I spend way too much time doing that relative to the like quote unquote return.
And it’s because I care about the level of affinity and I care about the community that I’m trying to build around all of this.
[00:38:31] Nathan:
Yeah,
For sure. What are some things as you’ve been building the newsletter, you know, obviously I see you at the end of threads. I see you talking each week, you know, about, Hey, make sure to subscribe. what’s worked for driving subscribers.
[00:38:43] Sahil:
I have a very effective funnel built from Twitter to my newsletter. Now I’m predictable and very effective in just knowing, based on how much traction a thread gets, how many subs it’ll drive to my newsletter I link at the end. and that, that has been the most stable, steady source of new subscribers to the newsletter.
Has literally just been I’m posting things on Twitter every week that I know are reasonably likely to go some degree of viral. and. Based on that. I know I can drive, you know, up to probably like a thousand new subs to my newsletter from one of those. and you know, then I share the pieces and those get shared.
And so I don’t, I mean, I’ve been growing it somewhere between 1,002 thousand per week. and probably a thousand of that is from Twitter funnel. And then the remainder is from kind of organic growth from the actual pieces that are getting driven. but I’ve built a really effective funnel in that regard.
[00:39:46] Nathan:
Yeah. One thing that I see you doing is having those tweets basically saying, Hey, the news, like the next edition of the newsletter is coming out tomorrow or like, this is, you know, in like a little bit of a preview. Whereas I think a
Lot of people. Then by a lot of people, I actually just mean me in this case, the people probably do similar things is like have a one-time link to, or like I
Put it in my it’s my pin tweet or it’s in my bio. So like, if people want to subscribe to it, they’ll do that. But you’re actually having that like, like that timely call action. I’m like, I’m going to send this tomorrow, if you want it, sign up here. In addition
[00:40:20] Sahil:
Yep.
[00:40:21] Nathan:
Linking at the bottom of the thread, is that working well?
[00:40:24] Sahil:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that, yeah, it works well. I think there are a few things that work with it. One, my weekend thread is usually the distilled version of a longer form piece that I’ve written deep diving on something. So like a recent thread I wrote, how to stop procrastinating. Pretty big VAR. I mean like almost 30,000 likes, pretty big traction and it probably did 5 million impressions.
And I have a longer form piece that I’ve written basically like a procrastination guide, how to like the science behind it, how to stop different tactics short-term and long-term projects like a deeper dive piece. And so at the end of that thread, I will literally say this was kind of a teaser to what is a longer form piece that will be going out to my newsletter subscribers.
You should join. And then I’ll normally give a number of people. And the reason I do that is because it creates like a psychological social proof effect that, you know, makes more likely when they know there’s a lot of people that are doing it, you should join so that you don’t miss it. And that tends to be a very effective call to action because.
They know exactly what they’re going to get, which is a deeper dive of something they already read through 20 tweets of. So I know they liked it if they got to the end of it and now they got to the end and they see like, oh shit, I can actually get a deeper dive version of this. That’s going to go into more detail and be more valuable for me than what this was.
And that I, like. I think that is a very powerful call to action if I’m just thinking about it psychologically. and it’s not for everyone because, you know, if someone only read the first three tweets and then they turned out, they probably weren’t going to be a good newsletter subscriber either because what you’re trying, I mean, it’s, I think there’s growth with newsletters, but ultimately what you want is people that are opening and engaging and clicking.
Right. and the one thing I’m personally proud of what the newsletter is that my open rates have actually trended up as the thing has scaled. And my deliverability has gotten better because I’ve really focused on it over time. so that’s kind of how I’ve been thinking about it personally. and look, newsletters are amazing monetization channels.
When, when used effective.
[00:42:20] Nathan:
What are you doing to monetize the newsletter?
[00:42:22] Sahil:
Sponsors, I have, I have a team that, kind of sells sponsor slots and I just have one sponsor per newsletter. I only take on sponsors from companies that I actually believe in. So like if it’s a consumer company, it has to be a product that I actually use or have engaged with. and then there’s like a lot of B2B companies that will do things that I just believe in the product or the company, or have invested in the company in certain cases.
And so they, they sell slots out. I don’t know. Now they’re probably sold out through Q2 basically, and I pay them a percentage of what they bring in.
[00:42:53] Nathan:
Yeah. What do you add? Everyone’s going to be curious about this on a, you know, a 70,000 subscriber newsletter. Like what, how do you price the sponsorships? What, what does that go for? it’s you do bulk deals like, Hey, how’s all that work.
[00:43:06] Sahil:
Yeah. It’s, you know, it’s variable based on the type of partnership that talking about. I would say like average kind of single sponsor slot is like, I dunno, probably in the three to 4k range for like a single spot at the top of one of the newsletters right now. and that’s like for current slots that are being kind of pushed out.
If you start looking into Q2, if I extrapolate my growth out, I’m going to be, you know, closing in on a hundred K subs by then. So those are getting priced higher because you kind of are gonna, you’re gonna like either, either you have to pay me up front and you’re paying me the current rate, not you’re like giving me float.
And so then I’ll take Or if you’re going to be paying then, and you’re signing up for it, you gotta be paying a higher rate. so that’s kind of the way I’ve thought about it too. And I put that together with my team. Cause I said like, if people want to pay me three months before the slot goes out, they can buy it at the current rate.
I’m fine with that. That’s just giving me float on the, on the income.
[00:44:00] Nathan:
Yeah, for sure. Do you do anything the, when you get that float, you’re just straight into the market. What, what are you doing with it?
[00:44:05] Sahil:
My money’s down. good question. So do a.
[00:44:10] Nathan:
Here.
[00:44:11] Sahil:
I do have some do. So I actually, I invested in this company Meow that, allows corporates to, have like defy enabled treasury. So you can do like immediate withdrawals, but have, you know, 4% yield. It’s not like some crazy shit, but I have, part of my S-corp, which is all of this media stuff.
Treasury that sits in that and gets me some yield in the reason. The main reason I do that actually is because it gets me some yield before I have to pay taxes on it, because you know, this, like you’re paying quarterly taxes, which is a big advantage relative to when I was paying taxes in real time as a full-time employee.
And so I have three months of, of float basically on the government that I can like take advantage of. And if I’m sitting here with 0%, I’m not taking advantage of it. And this is a good way to get a few points and, and kind of benefit from the float. The government is giving me. And since I am constantly giving the government float on everything else in the world, this feels like a good way to, to take some on them.
[00:45:05] Nathan:
Yep. That’s good. okay. So on the newsletter, someone was telling me, oh, and Laura who writes a fantastic newsletter. She was one of the early yesterday, her newsletter, and I’m spacing on it until the moon is her handle on Twitter, I believe.
She was saying like, yeah, may they had me on the podcast and he didn’t even want to ask me to switch over to ConvertKit, which she did, like, I don’t know, a month later. but like, I, we have good relationships. I can give you shit about this on a, on a, on a, podcast.
[00:45:37] Sahil:
Yeah,
[00:45:38] Nathan:
What’s the thinking on sub stack? What like the long-term plan there And what would it take to get you to, come over to ConvertKit?
[00:45:45] Sahil:
I love it. I love the podcast as a sales tool. This is great. put me on the spot. So. I started with sub stack because I thought, and my view on it, at the time, and maybe, maybe still, is that it was like a very quick, set up and like zero customization basically. And you could have a newsletter spun up in 10 minutes, five minutes.
And at the time what I needed was to be able to just like paste my thread into a thing that just would then go out to people’s emails. I really just needed something that gathered emails and then just like sent my threads out and it was quite good for that. And now it’s a very different situation. And so it’s funny, like you’re catching me at a funny time.
You may have seen about this a few times, but I’ve had direct conversations with a few of your clients. your bigger clients who are I consider friends and kind of mentors, you know, James clear or Shane Parrish, Mario Gabriel at the generalist, because I’m starting to think about what makes sense for me now that I’m at this scale, because you know, my issues with sub stack at this scale would be, the level of customization, which I previously didn’t necessarily want.
Now I almost really need, because I’m starting to do more things. I want, you know, much more personal branding. I want to be able to have customizability and how I think about referral loops with the,
The newsletter. I want to be able to think about different journeys that people can go on and get some of my evergreen pieces maybe, and like sign up to get different, different sorts of information.
And sub-sect just doesn’t have that capability set. They’ve built like a very good. You know, kind of meat and potatoes solution. I think for, for people that are just like very quickly wanting to start out, but the more I’ve researched, you know, what you guys are building, the more I realized there’s a whole lot more that I can do with it.
And that also comes with, you know, maybe wanting to have a team member that is focused on it and helping me with all of those things. And I’m at the stage now from a monetization standpoint where that really makes sense for me, actually, I should be investing in that kind of thing so that I can do all these different things because of what we talked about, it’s really profitable.
And if I can give my, my subscribers who I’m so grateful for their attention, a better experience and an experience that is more, immersive and more customized to them, that’s insanely valuable to me in the longterm. So long way of saying it’s something that, you know, you’re giving me shit for it, but it’s definitely something that I’m thinking about in real time that the other issue, which, you know, I’ll just say that I have about, this upstack kind of model is they are so focused on you turning on.
Because their entire business model is it’s free. and then they make 10% if you go to paid and, you know, off of whatever your subscription revenue is. And so they see my newsletter. I imagine I actually don’t know this for a fact. They must see my newsletter and say like, oh man, if he charged 10 bucks a month and got 5%, 10% conversion, we’d make a lot of money on the newsletter.
He would make a lot of money and we would make a lot of money. And so we should just keep, and so I get emails, man, just over and over again, being like, Hey, have you thought about turning on paid? Have you, have you thought about turmeric? And every time, like I have zero desire to do that. I’m never going to turn on paid full stop.
Like will, would I ever do like a, you know, like what you have your secret newsletter, like some niche, small thing that I do paid or like a community newsletter paid maybe, but that’s not for my main thing. That is like what I’m sending out that I’m trying to build because I want to get, I want to reach a million.
That’s that’s what I want to do. I don’t care about the million dollars that I could make off of this newsletter. If I charge people 10 bucks, I want to reach a million people. And so, I just like, that starts to just annoy me, honestly, like, no, I don’t, I, you know, it hasn’t changed. And every time I say, no, I have no intention to do that.
But, and I get it from their perspective because to a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? Like that’s your
[00:49:36] Nathan:
And you just cost them money, right?
[00:49:38] Sahil:
I cost them a lot of money, but yeah, well, I make them money in the sense that every time I tweet out my sub stack newsletter, get a branding push and that’s worth money to them.
Right. They’re reaching ton of people that’s worth something. but like someone like me or someone like Paki, even worse, Paki probably is going to make $2 million off his newsletter this year, a million dollars, like some, a big amount of money, $0 to sub stack. because it’s all sponsors. I get it and I understand their business model and why it is the way it is.
And they’ve clearly done well. And, you know, they’re sort of a verb like people, you know, like the sub stack, you know, people are want to create a sub stack. They use that to me newsletter. and I get it. I think now I’m at the stage where, changes is kind of in the, in the cards.
[00:50:24] Nathan:
Yo, I think the level of customization that you can have when you talk about leverage, actually, it’s probably the biggest thing, right? Cause in, when you’re running a sub stack, everything is real-time content. And like you brought up, my like private paid newsletter, which was really private. And then Sam Parr talked about it on my first million, which was great.
Like I was thrilled and I think it drove like 15 grand of revenues, people buying it just from him mentioning that. but then it became like, not at all private. So it was like, okay, I’ve got like 25 DMS asking for the link. So let me, let me just post it on Twitter. But like that’s a, I had a paid newsletter.
That’s set up as an automated email sequence. Right. So I can make it once I can gradually add to it. I can tweak it.
And it’s just running. Like, I’ve got hundreds of people now that are going to get an email this Friday that like I wrote forever ago, you know, it’s this thing
[00:51:19] Sahil:
Yeah.
[00:51:19] Nathan:
And so. I just think in your case.
[00:51:22] Sahil:
That’s like a very cool thing. And I’ve never really thought about that. Right. So I saw your secret newsletter when Sam talked about it, I listened to it and then I saw you tweet about it and I bought it. and I bought it partially because I was interested in what you were writing out also, partially because I was interested in seeing how you were using it.
Cause I’m in a diligence process, I’m trying to learn and I think that is so interesting because you’re almost doing a course. Then you’re teaching someone a course, in the format of a newsletter. and as I think about my own ecosystem and a lot of the evergreen things I put out, people constantly asked me to do an ebook or do certain things.
This is a much cooler way for me to do that actually, in a custom and a kind of branded format. That’s not like, Hey, here’s my Gumroad, or whatever, you know, link to buy my ebook. no knock on that. I don’t know anything about them, but like that’s what I would imagine the alternative would be in my mind.
And if I can just set up, you know, you guys have ConvertKit commerce. Like I use, I use it for actually some coaching already. I don’t know if I’ve you about that, but I have like some coaching that I do through there. Advisory work, et cetera. I think it’s great. If I can just like integrate directly into that.
Now I have email and I have, you know, commerce and it’s Stripe enabled and it’s super easy. It’s straight into my bank account. That’s like a pretty cool bespoke thing that just exists. I’m entirely ready to set up within that environment.
[00:52:36] Nathan:
I think the biggest thing, you know, is that like the level of customization and then automation, right? Cause at any point, so many of these platforms, that people are using are built around a certain business model and with ConvertKit, this is like full sales pitch, Nassau apologize. But with convert it it’s, it’s customizable to any business model, right?
The ad business model, it’s like great, full support for that. you could use content snippets that you’re reusing in your automations, like, you know, across the board, if you’re selling products, you know, we integrate with everyone from teachable to Shopify to having our own, our own. paid newsletters that’s in there as well.
So like the creator gets to choose the business model that works best for them rather than on a sub stack or a Patriot, or when he’s at a platforms, you know? whereas like, no, this is the business model that we support, like conform to it or find something else.
[00:53:28] Sahil:
Yeah. Which is so it’s funny you say it that way. It’s like, it’s so anti the creator economy, just in the ethos of it, actually, as I think about it, when you say it that way, I’m like the creator economy is all about power to the creators and letting them be creative and work on what they work, work on and giving them tools that hopefully enable them to work.
However they want to work. And then you have these platforms that like actually force you into their business model, if you want to conform with it and do it their way. that is it’s challenging. It’s like against the it’s against the ethos of it in some ways. I also just look, I mean, I I’m big on, trusting smart friends on things.
You know, when I go look at it, newsletters, I admire, you know, whether it’s James Clear’s 3, 2, 1, or Shane parishes, you know, brain food or Mario at the generalist. And I’m looking and I’m like, man, that looks really nice. It’s a custom template. It has their branding on it. It just, and then I look at mine and I’m like, this looks like, you know, it looks like a kid made, it looks like, well, first off it looks like my old website.
I’m about to launch a new website, which is going to be dope. And to part of me was also just like new website, new year, new me, you know, type vibe where I was like, huh, I should really level up my game the same way when I got my mic set up and I leveled up my game for like doing stuff like this. I just started to feel like, man, I’m being left behind.
I need to level up my game. If I want to take this seriously. I also have to admit, I am, Hugely supportive of people that are building businesses and bootstrapping businesses. And so, I mean, you know, I’m a big fan of your Twitter content. I just love the idea also of like supporting other creators that are going out and building.
So that’s another thing that’s just in my mind, as I look at this, I don’t mean to make this an easy sell for you the way, I need to like, think of some tough questions to hit you with, to like, you know, w will you commit to this or whatever it is, I need to stick a mic in your face at some point.
But, all of that is definitely weighing on me.
[00:55:24] Nathan:
Yeah, that’s good. Well, we’ll talk more and figuring out like the logistics and get you in touch with our migrations team.
[00:55:31] Sahil:
Oh man, we’re really accelerating this. Well, I don’t know, depending on when this gets released, maybe I’ll be on ConvertKit by the time this gets released. If you guys work fast, if not, I expect there will be changes, for me personally, in the next, in the next couple of months,
[00:55:49] Nathan:
Sounds good.
Last thing I want to touch on is just kind of the monetization side of things, of like you went from leaving your job where there’s a consistent salary, you know, consistent income there. and then you’ve got a bunch of different channels. for monetization, and I’m curious where like, where you’re driving revenue and what’s working and this, is there anything where you’re like, this is awesome, but I don’t plan to do it again.
Or, you know, I’m doubling down over here.
[00:56:15] Sahil:
So broadly speaking, my universe is Twitter newsletter. podcast. and then those are kind of like creation channels. And then from that, there, there were like the courses that I did, there was a job board that I have. There was an advisory business that I spun up. That’s kind of separate, but It’s somewhat related. there’s, a couple of SAS businesses that I’m excited to talk to you about soon that are still secret, but there some cool built in public around some micro SAS stuff that’s happening. and that’s kind of, you know, and then I have the fund and that’s like a separate, I think, of the fund as like wealth building.
It’s not really income generating. I actually charge zero fees on it. but that’s, you know, there’s, I’m investing in things for the long-term. And so that’s kind of a big part of my long-term wealth that I think about, the monetization, I think of like at all, Is is, in this like mish-mash right.
Like the podcast is sort of a separate company. And so they’re sponsors for the podcast and there’s revenue that comes off then it’s great. Twitter, a newsletter I think of is connected. The newsletters, obviously monetized certain things about Twitter I suppose, are monetized. Although again, I kind of think of it all as one, within like the brand and kind of the franchise being sold.
And then I’ve spun up a few businesses on the side, which I don’t really talk about a ton publicly, but like things that are cashflow generating that somewhat relate to my personal brand, but are also kind of uncorrelated in a lot of ways. the SAS stuff that I mentioned being some of that. and then, you know, some of the advisory work I do, which is really just, you know, supporting entrepreneurs, startups, founders, as they’re building things, just based on my experience within, you know, within the world of finance strategy, et cetera,
[00:58:00] Nathan:
Yeah, I love it. There’s a lot of different things there.
[00:58:03] Sahil:
Too much probably.
[00:58:04] Nathan:
You
[00:58:04] Sahil:
In terms of like stretching my brain in different directions.
[00:58:08] Nathan:
Are you already exceeding income from a
[00:58:13] Sahil:
Yeah.
[00:58:14] Nathan:
Had
[00:58:16] Sahil:
I left like, my formal separation. I was probably already at like, probably at like three X, what I was making when I left, like on a run rate basis. and now I’m probably yeah, I mean, I’m probably at five. Five-plus X what I was making. and obviously it’s not W2. So I’ve talked about that in certain things I’ve written about that it’s like you know, in the world, we live in this type of incomes.
Not like I can’t, you know, I wouldn’t be able to probably go to bank of America and convince them to give me a mortgage on your house. I’m probably go buy that house in cash potentially, but I probably might not be able to, and I’m not saying that as a flag, I’m just saying like, it’s nuts, you can’t a mortgage, but, but you can, you know, go, go buy it.
Like Greg Eisenberg, my co-host of the podcast literally has not been able to get a mortgage his, for his place that he’s buying. And he’s like, look, I have enough cash in this bank account to buy this place like several times, and you’re not getting a mortgage. Like, it makes no sense. but I it’s, it’s a huge opportunity.
I mean, you work with a lot of creators. there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of income and yet it’s 10 99. And so it’s in traditional institutions. They’re not able to underwrite it effectively and it’s tough. But I’m going to, I mean, I’m in a good place. I also just more importantly than any of that, like, I’m not a big money guy.
I don’t have like, am wearing an apple watch. Like I’m not a fancy watch guy. I’m not, you know, I don’t have like fancy cars and stuff for me. I, I love the freedom and I’m huge on this whole concept of like time billionaire. I heard it originally from a Tim Ferriss podcast. And, I wanted freedom of time, relative to my prior role because I was working 90 a hundred hour weeks, man.
I was doing, it was like the finance meme. I was just working myself into the ground and I loved it. I learned a lot amazing group of people. that will be my friends for life, but I wanted to be able to spend time with my kid when he’s born. Like, I want to be a really present father. I want to be an influence.
I wanna be able to coach his little league team. Maybe he won’t play little league. I played baseball, but I want to be able to do those kinds of things, and I want to be around. I want to be able to support my wife, be a great husband.
I have found in this new world, as I’ve started all this, I’m so much more present with my family, with my wife, with my sister. Because I’m not stressed all the time. I’m doing something that is much more in my zone of genius. I’m spending time putting my energy towards things that I know I’m really good at. I’m playing my game, not someone else’s, and that is just an unlock.
I could be making the exact same amount—I could probably be making less—and feel so good about it because I just feel that energy around what I’m doing on a daily basis. I feel more present on a daily basis and less stressed. I would trade almost anything for that.
[01:01:03] Nathan:
That’s amazing. The craziest thing about this creator world is you can build build a job for yourself, build a business for yourself, where you have not only that income that matches or exceeds it, but then you get the time as well. You’re like, wait, I can have my cake and eat it too.
I love it. You’re a fantastic example for everyone else who’s in this space following your stuff.
Where should people go to check out the new site?
[01:01:32] Sahil:
Depending on when this is launched, it’s going to be SahilBloom.com, which is my same site. It previously looked like a kid made it because it was a kid, which was me, tech-inept Sahil. But I hired this amazing team, who I’ll announce when I put it out, that worked on it and put it together.
But it will be at SahilBloom.com. And you can find me on Twitter @SahilBloom. I won’t give you my newsletter link because it might be changing. We can talk about that later, Nathan. Send me a text.
But for now, thank you so much for having me. This was a blast. Always a pleasure.
[01:02:04] Nathan:
Sounds good. We’ll talk soon.
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