Jack Appleby - How to use originality and authenticity to build a social brand on the Internet!

I think a lot of people get themselves bent out of shape in this industry when like their clients are very risk-averse or their ideas are like maybe a little different than the client, the product type they're working on. That happens to the best of us. It certainly happened to me. But I do those projects as my job is to push it forward. And if I got 5— if I got the client 5% better, I'm sleeping well at night. And I think a lot of people try to get their like artistic endeavors out in advertising or social media, and that's when you burn yourself out. Yeah.

Welcome to the Undefeated Underdogs Podcast, where I unpack and narrate stories of ambitious people who turn obstacles into opportunities. My goal for this podcast is to create a platform to narrate underdog stories and maybe play a small, teeny tiny role in inspiring you. I intend to highlight the underdog mentality and make authentic conversations with people who play the long game, take action with a chip on their shoulder, and convert obstacles into opportunities. Buckle up as I'll be bringing some authentic founders, VCs, community builders, and content creators who got underestimated their whole lives, and yet they beat all the odds to become insanely successful. Now today I want to tell you a little bit about our awesome sponsor acquire.com. Selling a business is as tough as building a business. As someone who went through this process once, selling my own startup, I know the pain it takes to get to the end zone. This is where our sponsor shines. Imagine this. You're a founder who's built a solid SaaS product, acquired customers, and generating consistent monthly revenue. The problem is you're not growing forever for whatever reason, lack of focus, lack of skill, or just plain lack of interest. And you feel stuck. What should you do? The story I'd like to hear is you buckle down, somehow reignited the fire, get past yourself and the clichés. And start working on your business rather than just in the business. You start building an audience, move out of your comfort zone to do sales and marketing, and in 6 months you triple your revenue. The reality isn't as simple. Situations may be different from every founder facing these crossroads, but too many times the story ends up being one of inaction and stagnation until the become business— the business becomes less valuable or worse, worthless. If you find yourself here, or your story is likely headed down a similar road, I offer you a third option. Consider selling your business on acquire.com. Capitalizing on the value of your time is a smart move. Acquire.com is free to list, and they've helped hundreds of founders already. Go to try.acquire.com/shirath and see for yourself if this is the right option for you. Now let's get into today's episode. Welcome, folks. I'm super stoked and excited to bring this guest on this podcast. First of all, grateful for your attention and time. Thanks for tuning into the Undefeated Underdogs podcast. Today I have an amazing guest who I've been following for a while, and oh my God, where should I start? I think I've learned a ton about writing. I don't know, I don't want to say like viral content, but at least good copywriting, you know? And I learned a ton about social media, the strategy, campaigning, branding, advertising, a ton. So without further ado, Jack Appleby, welcome to the show. How are you feeling, Jack?

That was a very kind introduction. I'm great. I'm excited to chat. Helping people learn how to do this kind of stuff, that's kind of the whole reason I do it.

Absolutely. And for folks who don't know Jack, Jack is also dubbed as, at least, you know, to me, he's the startup Steph Curry. I recently, I don't know if you all saw this video, highly recommend, I'm going to put it on the show notes as well. This guy shoots like on the spot, like, you know, he's like Mike Breen, the famous commentator who said bang, bang, bang. I'm trying.

He's like that. I'm trying, like, I'm just turned 35 and trying to keep the dream alive and play as long as possible.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You're killing it. You're killing it. But anyway, for folks who don't know Jack, I want to do like a proper, proper introduction. Let's start here. Jack is the creator and writer of Future Social, the newsletter that enlightens more than 60,000 marketing professionals about the intricacies of social media. With over a decade of experience in the industry, He has channeled his passion for social media, creativity, content, and the love for doing incredible campaigns that have impacted companies like Microsoft, Beats, Spotify. Man, I can go on and on. NBA, Twitch. It's a big, long list. Also, his passion for internet marketing made him start an amazing newsletter called Break an Egg, which I'm a big fan of. I'm a paid, happy paid subscriber. Appreciate it. With Amanda Goetz, who's a phenomenal person. Shout out to her. She also joined this podcast a few months ago. But Jack is phenomenal. The way he writes, the way he breaks down social media campaigns, be it MrBeast's YouTube channel breakdown or some of the campaigns, some of my favorites. He also has one of the amazing things on his crown, which is like he was senior creative strategist for Twitch. So of course, that's where a lot of amazing campaigns happen. But yeah, I can go on and on, but let's actually dive into the mind of the amazing Jack here. Jack, want to really start off by asking this question, which I think you get asked more often. How do you keep your creativity juice up?

Oh, I mean, that's the hardest part of these jobs, right? Is to be creative all the time in a way that's strategic, in a way that makes sense for business goals. I think my personal biggest hack, I suppose we can call it, is like I am a heavy consumer of social content and entertainment. For the first 5, 6 years of my career, I think I did that the same way a lot of social strategists do where I was looking at what other brands were up to, like seeing what kind of content they posted. And I think that's how most of us approach this industry. And as I became more and more versed in the space and more and more interested in the creativity behind things, I started looking at pretty much anybody except for the competitors of the products that I worked on. I think it's really easy to get caught up in industry trends and things can get A little monotonous. Everyone starts making the same style of content. So I really looked outside of the brand world. I'm fascinated by creators. I think creator storytelling is wonderful. I mean, I'm a creator myself now. I get my inspiration from everywhere. Like there's a lot of, I can't tell you how many tactical social ideas I've pitched where I got those from watching how like a small little emo band Posts on Instagram. So like I'm a heavy consumer, and I'm also I think besides just viewing a lot of content, I think theorizing about the content is really really important. I'm I want to break things apart and know how they work, why they work. If I see something go viral, my first wonder is why that went viral. Was it the hook in the first three seconds? Was it an emotional story? Is it someone who just has such an audience that people are championing them at all times? Like Did it feel like you got algorithmic pushed for some reason or another? Like, just constantly theorizing about social is maybe the most important thing you can do in this space.

When you say that's a very fascinating way to look at things, 2 observations I just had. One is, I think James Clear said this when he writes an article. I mean, he writes a lot. He's an amazing writer, right? With the Atomic Habits book. One of the things about his writing process is he seeks everything as in like an eagle that is looking for food with the hunter's eyes. Like, what can I seek from this? What can I seek from this? So that's one great observation. I feel to create great content, you have to consume great content. So number 2 is theorizing social media content. So I think the first topic is very well talked about, right? Like, to consume, you have to, like, to create, you have to consume a lot. But let's talk about breaking it down, all the breakdowns that requires a level of observation and seeing things from a different angle. So how did you develop that? Is there like a secret sauce that you want to share that you know, hopefully other people can view it as well.

You know, it's funny, like I've been in the social space for 12, 15 years now, depending on if you count internships and things like that. The longer I work in social, the more I believe it's really just all about fundamentals. Like it's not, there aren't some deep analytical surprises that are coming up that are generating like strong versus poor performing social. Maybe some of the emotional triggers have changed as the formats have changed. Like, I mean, when I started, Facebook didn't have video when I started in this career. Like YouTube was a 301+ network at one point, like where like it took a full day to get the actual real-time stats. So I think some parts of that have changed over the last decade or so. But honestly, like, for me, like, I think the most important thing you can do if you work in this industry now, scroll TikTok, wonder why that piece of content was put in front of you and wonder why it's resonating with other people. And the things that I would say, like the same way we approach brainstorming content, that's the same skeleton that you start to pick apart when you view content. Was the 3-second hook really interesting or not? Were there visual cues on the screen that got your attention? Why did it get your attention? What triggered you to go look at the commentary? Was it the caption on the post or was it something that said in the CTA? Or are you that kind of, that social user where you're always curious what's in the comments? I think you have to ask just so many questions and it's not necessarily the most natural thing, but I think that's what's more important for brainstorming than anything. Yeah. is analyzing why other concepts perform so you can bring new ideas to brainstorms.

It's more of like, I wouldn't call it imitating, but it's kind of getting inspiration from and applying what worked for them in our own space. Because I think the famous brands like Burger King, Wendy's, they do things in a very different way right now because of TikTok and the vertical video being very popular, people have very little attention span, like 10 seconds, even less. But the other part of it, when you say just scroll through TikTok, is that it's a rabbit hole, right? It's a never-ending game. So how would you kind of say that this is where I end? Like, where is that? Full stop for you when you consume? You know, it's funny. When do I log off? Yeah. When you, when you'll say like, you know what, this is the end. I'm going to like, you know, I have, I have my tank full. I don't want to overflood my tank.

So, you know, I don't do that scrolling time. That's not part of my process as far as when I have a specific assignment. That's just kind of part of my day. Like, I think anybody who like, If you work in social, you probably scroll social. You probably have social. I keep that part of my brain going in my free time. It's never a, I have an assignment or I'm consulting for someone and I'm looking for something. And then I like, I'm like, oh, I should go scroll social media X amount of time. It's more of like, I'm really into efficiencies. Like how can I make my day as fast as possible, as effective as possible? So I do think, I think one of my superpowers is I don't burn out on social media. I find it really interesting. Like I'm able to stay in it probably longer than other people are. It's allowed me to spend more time theorizing and making stuff. Like what fulfills me as a, like not just a professional, but as a person is creating things and then understanding how the world perceives those things.

Mm-hmm.

That's why I can have, like, I'm a marketing influencer on Twitter and LinkedIn and with a newsletter. And then completely separate from that, I'm a basketball content Creator on Instagram and TikTok. I mean, I have three other TikTok accounts that people don't even really know about that have 50,000 followers each that are just in like little niches where it's like things I want to explore because I just love making things.

I think that's you're kind of like a you're very well balanced like a Yoda. You know, you know where to basically start, where to start and where to stop because. It's very hard, Jack. Let me tell you this. Even though the process is so approachable, but having that balance in the mind and converting that consumption to creation, that's pretty hard. That bridge takes a lot of, I would say, mastery to get controlled and then immediately switch to like, okay, let's actually use this. Let's create something because It's a rabbit hole, right? You know better than me. You've been here for longer than me.

Well, I think an important caveat to all of this is like right now I'm in a spot where I'm a creator. I make what I wanna make. Of course I do that strategically. I need to build my audience and know what serves them. And like, it's like Future Social and my Twitter and LinkedIn, they're not creative outlets. They are strategic outlets. So I have to approach them as a business. But I think an important caveat away from the creativity is when I was working social jobs, of course, like I wanted to pitch the best ideas I could and felt very qualified to do so, but I didn't get my like creative fulfillment out of my advertising jobs. I viewed those, my job as I need to push my client to make the most effective creative content possible. And my metric of success was that I get them 10% further than I did last time. I think a lot of people get themselves bent out of shape in this industry when like their clients are very risk-averse or their ideas are like maybe a little different than the client, the product type they're working on. That happens to the best of us. It's certainly happened to me.

Hmm.

But I do those projects as my job is to push it forward. And if I got 5, if I got the client 5% better, I'm sleeping well at night. And I think a lot of people try to get their artistic endeavors out in advertising or social media, and that's when you burn yourself out.

Do you think that 5% push, do you think people aim and flip that to 95% or 100%? That's where they get burned out, or where do they—

I don't think they even think about the job that way. I think there's So social media has exploded over the last 10 years as a professional industry. There are more jobs than ever, and a lot of those jobs are between entry-level and mid-level jobs. So there's a lot of, there's more social media managers in the world than there's ever been before. Mm-hmm. I think human beings love to be creative. The reason we all have Instagram and post photos or post stories is we enjoy expressing ourselves that way. And I think when you enter this field, a lot of people who are entering professional social media, they're doing it because they love social media, not because they love marketing or not because they love selling things.

Hmm.

I was fascinated by all of the above. And I think in retrospect, I'm finding that was maybe the most important thing for me. Is because I wasn't interested in retweets if my client's product didn't sell or our brand lift didn't increase. So I think what, I think there's a lot of industry things that cause burnout. Overwork is very like happens all the time. That's true. Unreasonable bosses, too many expectations of team of one. There's a laundry list of reasons that are out of a social media manager's control that cause burnout. But I do think an unspoken part of this Is that there's a lot of self-pressure that social professionals put put on themselves, where it's every post has to be perfect. They get asked to post something by their boss they don't think is strategically correct. They die on that hill instead of going like, "Yeah, it's one post. Who cares?" They need their creative ideas to go through as 100%, which doesn't happen ever. And just things like that where. I just really hope people don't burn themselves out.

Not just burnout. I think I want to add one more topic which applies pretty much to everybody who actively wants to build a brand on personal brand, working for another company regardless. To add to that burnout, I think people go hard on themselves, which will lead to self-doubt, which will eventually lead to low confidence, which will lead to Okay, I'm actually quitting this because none of the metric is moving. I mean, all the retweets and all, they're good, but at the end of the day, they are the vanity metrics, right? They can— anybody who posts like viral content or meme-oriented content will get those numbers. But I think in your words, the true strategic way is what I feel people should really rely on. Like any personality creator, working for someone. I feel that mind shift change really helps because I think that's a very fair point, like, to add to that burnout. So you've had a ton of experience, you know, of course you've covered, you know, all that in many podcasts, but I want to ask, like, have you developed a, you know, set of frameworks that you handpick to different phases of your creativity levels? Like when you, for say, you're about to burn out, you have like a framework that you pick and apply so you can come back. Or when you're at the highest of the highs, how do you keep maintaining that creativity? Is there like a set of frameworks that you use in your archery?

You know, there's not. For better or worse, there's not. And I think that's where I've probably caused myself stress by not having that kind of stuff. I tend to just be like, templated social media is where brands go to die. It's very, very hard to be successful in a templated format. And that's not to say there's not wonderful brainstorming and creativity tools. There's all kinds of exercises, storytelling exercises, Like big blue sea brainstorming. I personally was never trained in any of them and I don't really use them. I'm very much open brainstorm. Nobody has a bad idea. Let's keep banging it out until something feels right. Do I think that's made it incredibly hard at times when I'm overbusy with things? Sure.

Hmm.

But I also think that thinking openly about that is why the content I've worked on over my career has performed.

Interesting.

Maybe not a helpful answer. I think that goes back to where it's like, I think the way people use those frameworks, that's where I almost go back to the theorizing and analyzing that I do is like, I didn't do this on purpose, but early in my career I became like this encyclopedic resource for my agency where it's like, oh, like you wanna know something about like what a brand's doing, like just go talk to Jack. He's probably seen it. And because I just consumed so much, I was able to share so much. And like, I would just, I'm more interested in pulling reference points than I am using creative exercises.

I see that. That's a very beautiful point. Like pulling that reference points itself is a way to build up that creativity, right? Like one, Sure. So a brand that executes a content strategy, you can pick few things that applies to another brand which is completely different, completely like on another planet, right? I think that's what I really like about what you do in your content, Future Social as well, your breakdowns. Let's talk a little bit about platforms. I want to talk definitely about 2 things. One is LinkedIn, X, Twitter. One question, how are you feeling about Twitter under Jack versus X under Elon? Like, what are some biggest things that you've observed that you love and hate?

So it's funny, like, I've definitely been on the Elon doesn't know what he's doing train. I think Twitter is categorically worse since he's taken over in almost every way. I think Elon's launched a couple of products that I really quite enjoy. I think long-form tweets, it's insane that the former Twitter regime couldn't figure that out. They tried to do Twitter Notes, which never made any sense. And some of the functionality he's brought, Really, that's the only positives I have to say. He's upset brands in a way where I don't know if he'll ever get trust back. It's interesting. I will be the first to say, I don't think Twitter was well ran during Jack Dorsey's era. I don't think they were nailing anything. Like, I think they were terrible at product. I think they launched incredibly mediocre features. And most of those features would be in public beta for a year. And any hope they had of becoming a, like a regular consumer use tool was gone because the hardcore users had seen either betas or terrible versions and that just didn't make sense. It often felt like the people at Twitter didn't use Twitter. So give me the old group over Elon's group any day of the week for things like public safety, for things like a general, like, promise of platform. Professional is the wrong word. Just like kindness, which is becoming increasingly rare on Twitter. And this is where I think a big part of what really disgusts me about Elon is I think leading by example is really important. And I think, I mean, he is the most— if he's— I forget if he's the number 1 or number 2 most followed person on Twitter now. If he acts the way he acts, which is like a petulant child who's had his ball taken from

him,

it encourages everyone else on his social network to act that way. And it encourages people who are not great, like toxic's a loaded word, but encourages people with really bad behavior to feel empowered. And people who don't want that type of social network have no trust that it'll ever be a safe place.

Right. Yeah, I think it's a debate that I intentionally avoid because you can see just the way the country is divided into 2 different parties politically. It's the same way some people love what Elon does. They think that they can bring that trolling nature, which is fun to a certain level and all that, which is exciting and all. But I agree with you. I'm on this side, which is the reason I love the previous Twitter than this one. Even though, despite all the product features, the access, the fastness and all, like the long form, everything, you can upload like hours long video. It is increasingly becoming a platform where you go to troll others. or you can be the negative side of humanity, right? Like, when a world leader like himself posts memes that are so ridiculous, and I think it sets a wrong example in many ways, right? So that opens up—

Yeah, I mean, listen, politics are a touchy subject, and this country is more divided than it's ever been. Regardless of whatever his politics are, which I don't know what his politics are, to say you want to start long-form content on Twitter, make that a bigger part of the platform, and to pilot that with Tucker Carlson gives a very specific message to the people who use Twitter. That is at best an incredibly polarizing person, and at worst someone who's maybe bigoted, maybe does not like view certain people in like an ethical or moral way, that sends a message to what this platform stands for. Because it's certainly not an apolitical person.

For sure. 100%. I think, yeah, I mean, let's not talk about that. I think at least let's talk about the good side, which is over the last week or two, I really experienced the old Twitter, if you know what I mean, with the OpenAI drama and all. Even though there are trolls, even the trolls were very sensible, right? They were trolling in a very sensible way. They didn't cross the line, at least to my— the way I view things on X, Twitter. So that's the beauty of Twitter. I feel the reason why it still exists is regardless of what Elon does, or all the negative side of it, you can still control what you view, right? The people you follow. You can control a set of things that you, at least the For You page versus following the feed. And it's a lot about what you choose right now. The buffet is there, what you want to eat, healthy or fatty or whatever it is. The last one week or two was very— I felt very good about Twitter because it's all breaking in the live. The news was coming out. People started posting good jokes, at least to me, they were not bad. So I felt the old 2018, 2019 Twitter vibe, which is more supportive, more positive for the change or for the news that is happening. That's where The whole town square, town hall type of vibe is always about Twitter, right? So in this age, why do you think LinkedIn is underrated compared to what's happening with Twitter and X?

Oh, I mean, so I'm only 2 years or so into LinkedIn, I think maybe like 3. That platform, is incredible. I think for all of the reasons we've talked about where Twitter can feel more negative, and let me zoom out. I approached Twitter from a business sense. I was there to talk about my industry, share my thoughts and analysis of brand and social strategy, and to meet my peers in the industry. So I was using it in maybe a very specific way. LinkedIn, I don't have a study that shows you this, but LinkedIn has to be the most positive social network. I have to believe that. And maybe that's anecdotal, but I think the behavior that people enter platforms on matters. And I think people enter TikTok to be entertained. I think they enter Twitter to have conversation. I think they enter Instagram to present themselves or see what their friends are doing. People enter LinkedIn to find jobs, hire people, learn about their professions. And for years, you might have heard like LinkedIn's corny, LinkedIn's corny. That corniness is something that attracts me. And I think it's become a lot more human over the last couple of years. Like, and again, maybe the part of this is me aging up. Like, I'm 35 now. At 30, was I using LinkedIn? Not really. At 25, I was only using it when I was doing job hunts. But now, like, if I wanna talk about whether it's a tough issue in the industry or highlight someone's work, the energy and excitement from people is palpable. Like, it's so much stronger than on any other social network where you're gonna get some snarky anonymous person who's gonna inevitably derail the conversation. And I think that's where— Internet anonymity is a really interesting subject. I truly believe lack of anonymity is what makes LinkedIn far more positive, 'cause you're not gonna act like a jerk when your resume and your job are attached to your profile.

Hmm. Interesting.

And that's an emotional behavior that's separate from the algorithm, like where LinkedIn, it has the highest engagement rate The ratio of creators on LinkedIn to users of LinkedIn is the most out of whack of any social network. Like only a microscopic fraction of people are making LinkedIn content or even just like posting on LinkedIn. And you can immediately see success by just putting your thoughts out there. They don't have to be crazy thoughts. You don't have to become a content creator, just sharing a handful of professional thoughts. You'd be shocked how much more like notoriety you can get yourself, which if you're looking for a job or participating in the social network, that's fundamentally where people look for careers, is a good thing.

I never saw LinkedIn that way. It's always, I think it's stamped in a way that when you go to LinkedIn, you'll get attacked by salespeople immediately. Instantly you get these DMs flooded with DMs saying that, hey, are you hiring? we can help you with this, we can help you with that, et cetera, et cetera, and all that. But lately I'm also kind of— that's why I joined Bay for a reason. We can talk about that later, but that's one of the reasons I want to also build some sort of content there, brand there as a partial creator, not a full-time creator at least, is because I see a lot of people like you, Amanda, and Justin Welsh. Like, there are some folks who are leading by example saying, hey, LinkedIn is not bad. You just openly share your thoughts. And to your point, when you share, there is a serendipity angle as well, you know, to your point, which actually happened to me. I want to touch upon your situation as well, how you got your Twitch job, right? Through the serendipity on Twitter. I built my career completely in the last 5 years just by connecting people, creating posts on Twitter. So we can talk about that. I think this is even much more stronger when you do the same because it's a freaking platform for people hunting jobs, right? And people giving jobs to others. So it makes even more sense to produce more content, create more content on on LinkedIn. But I think, yeah, I think I haven't gotten the whole vibe of LinkedIn. I still feel probably I might double— I have to double down on spending more time there. But yeah, that's one of the reasons I wanted to join Break an Egg newsletter, because I get these ridiculously simple prompts that I can implement on a day-to-day basis. Talk to me about it. Like, is that why you and Amanda started, you know, the newsletter? And

I mean, so, so for anybody that doesn't know, Breakin' A is a program that myself and my friend Amanda Goetz developed, where it's to help people who are professionals who are looking for jobs, wanting to connect with peers, find more mentors. It's teaching people how to do that by creating their own content. And we're very— it's very important to us that we don't— people don't think we're trying to make you into a content creator. We're just encouraging you to share who you are as a professional and how you think, because with the job market the way it is, with job openings the way they are right now, anything you can do to set yourself apart is important. And content is probably the easiest way. And people think content's very hard. Sometimes it's hard. There's an easier way to do things. Like Amanda and I both, like we, We didn't join Twitter or LinkedIn to become content creators. That wasn't the goal. We just wanted to like meet some people, share some thoughts, meet industry peers. With Break an Egg, like we, what we've seen is, and it's a $5 a month service.

Mm-hmm. I love, by the way, I have to tell you, I didn't mean to stop you there. I have to tell you this. I love the way you priced it because In your launch tweet, you literally said that getting a footlong sandwich is expensive nowadays and I want to make it less expensive than that. So I love the whole framing there.

We left so much money on the table and we did that on purpose. Like, this is where it's very, very important to me to give back to professionals who don't get career training. Like, nothing's $5 now. You can't do it. You can't even get a coffee for $5 half the time. Now, you add one adjective to your coffee order and it's $7 all of a sudden. But I really wanted to do that. And you know what? I might have underpriced myself to like a great fortune. I genuinely don't care. I really wanted people who are out of work to be able to make a no-brainer decision. I wanted young professionals who, like people in the first 5 years of their career, Historically do not spend money on career advancement. They don't spend money on development. I wanted to help them understand that there's a lot of value in doing that. And I just trust that. And you mentioned Justin Welsh. I'm a big believer in his ideology of like under-promise and then massively over-deliver. People who've never posted on LinkedIn are getting 20,000% increases in their engagement from our program that they paid $5 for. So we're seeing people get— generate really incredible results. And I just trust that if we built something special that's going to help people, those people will tell other people about it.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's how you grow, right? Like you deliver, you know, insane value that other people couldn't keep to themselves. They obviously will burst out and say that, hey, I've tweeted many times about Break an Egg because it's— I said this as well, like, you should really rename, think about this, Jack, make it Peel a Banana because it's so freaking simple. My gosh, those are all like immediate. So one, I'll be honest and I will admit this, I consume the newsletter every day, but I'm not posting on LinkedIn. Rather, I'm taking those prompts and posting on Twitter. I don't know why.

And that's totally fine. A lot of people are doing that. I'm now getting tagged in people doing it on Instagram, which was not a behavior I anticipated. We framed it as LinkedIn because Amanda and I are passionate about helping people do 2 things. One is learn how to speak about yourself, and then 2 is to help you find jobs. But at their core, There are emotional triggers to help you talk about yourself wherever you want to do that. You might be a, like, if someone was a video person, they could make little vlogs about this stuff very easily on any social network they choose.

Yeah.

There's people who use our program on Twitter, and then there's people who use our program for entirely different reasons. Like we've got, I'd say the overwhelming majority of Break an Egg users, they're following the daily prompts. They're posting, if not every day, let's say 4 or 5 days a week. Mm-hmm. But there's a specific part of our audience where they're using it as brainstorming opportunities. So they like getting the morning email. They may not write to our exact prompt, but they store it in their head almost like we talked about at the beginning of the call as far as like consuming and theorizing. So like there's, and again, at 5 Bus, we want it to be something that's part of people's toolboxes forever as a helpful resource on top of the community that we've built there where it's like, I think 1,200 users now. where people are very supportive of one another. They're learning from one another. People are making friends. They're getting hired from each other.

I love that. Yeah, that's what I've been doing. It acts like a soundboard to me. That's what I use. Break an Egg. I read this, it feels like, you know what? Yeah, maybe I can reframe it in a different way that I feel comfortable with and I just tweet it out. So I think this is a great transition to talk about building a personal brand on social media. And I feel what you're trying to do with Break a Neck is when you say we want to help people to narrate their stories or talk about themselves, it's not a very popular way because a lot of these times when you talk about yourself, the other set, again, the negative set of people will say, hey, why are you bragging? Why are you showing off and all that? So let's talk about building a personal brand. Talk to me about the elements of building a brand on social according to you, which works in a more positive way.

Sure. I mean, and listen, like personal branding is still a new term. It's like 5 years, 10 years old. So there's a lot that's changing, a lot that's developing in that space still. And that's a common fear that I hear from people who are like, either want to post for themselves or want to join Break an Egg. Like, how do I avoid negativity? How do I avoid controversy? I don't want to get internet fights. There's a way to approach this where you're almost foolproof to not have that happen. I'll say I'll never promise you 100%. I started my personal brand. Like, I fancy myself like almost like I was building a classroom. So when I started tweeting about advertising, I would feature things that I didn't think were smart or things that I thought were very flawed. I'd break down what I thought was flawed about them. And what I didn't realize when I first started doing this is that I had built an audience large enough that that would get back to the people who worked on

it.

And I'm someone who like, I take criticism in stride. I find it interesting. I like to learn from it. Other people aren't like that. So when we were building Break an Egg, or when I'm helping people start personal brands, your taste for— I don't want to say controversy, it's an ugly word, but like, let's just say spiciness for lack of a better— that's a controllable element of a personal brand because you can build quite a brand for yourself by just highlighting other people's work. that you think is very good just by curating things that you like. And I think that's the best way for people to start. If you're building a professional personal brand, is just curate, curate and highlight, tag the people responsible for it, tell them they did a great job, and you become a resource to other people in your industry because like, oh, they follow you to see other stuff like that. I think it's the most easy, foolproof, positive way to build a personal brand. I do think there are some ceilings to it. I think, like, I think one of the reasons that I've gotten hired for the jobs I've gotten is because I've shown, like, critical thinking towards a lot of different types of work. And don't get me wrong, it came with plenty of cons, and I'm sure there's jobs I haven't gotten specifically because of that. But that was true to who I am, like, being very— thinking critically about work. That's what I'm most fascinated by. Yeah. So a place that didn't want to do that, like I've worked at places where they were, the biggest value wasn't creativity or strategy, it was positivity. I'm a very optimistic guy and I like a really positive workplace, but that place wasn't for me because we couldn't have critical conversations. We couldn't even criticize our own work.

Right.

So, I mean, we're tangenting off from the personal brand stuff, but there's always a way to build a personal brand that's exclusively positive.

Yeah, I think, like you said, the best possible way is to cheat others and curate. Curating is, in my opinion, is showing off your taste, right? Like, you're kind of expressing you have a grip on it. And on top, what you said is really true. You have to add your 2 cents why this particular set is the best in copywriting, for example, or in advertising or in marketing. If you talk about various products or tools, why you think it's really that critical angle really helps people build. That's exactly like what I did in my playbook when I started my journey on Twitter. I had like, what, 200 or less followers? I used to post 50 tweets per day just showcasing, hey, this is what I really like about— this is my 2 cents, my take. feel free to take it or not. That type of posts were very— it was a volume about that and later sharing about my own thoughts. So I think, yeah, that's the best way. I feel that's why break an egg is such a simple yet powerful concept people can take advantage of. I want to talk about Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about your expertise as a creative strategist at various places, Twitch, in other places. I want to talk about one thing. So you've done many campaigns successfully, ideated, executed, launched, made an impact. So talk to me about how one should design a campaign, especially an advertising campaign or even a marketing campaign, how do you go about concepting, pitching, and selling that to a person or a brand?

Oof. I mean, that's the full job. That's the big question, right? I'll say that I think the— maybe it's a little conceptual. I think it's really important for everyone to develop their personal style. When it comes to all of that stuff, how they pitch, how they communicate with clients, how, like, what type of work they do, how they work with other people. I'll say for me, what you're getting here, this is very much how I've communicated with my clients for years. I'm pretty casual. I like talk, try to speak like a human. I don't try to be overly professional or anything like that. Obviously respectful. But I'm pretty casual with how I approach things. My personal way that I handle this industry is I'm trying to give you like the, I want to put in front of you something that you immediately understand, understand why it drives value to your business, show that I understand your business and that I can actually bring results through content. Which like maybe that's obvious, but I also don't know if that's obvious. I've seen other people's presentations where they don't mention business goals. I've seen companies come in or social media managers come in where they don't understand how the bottom line works or they don't even show interest in it. So it's a tough question to answer because you're kind of asking the whole, the full how the job works thing. I think the most important things are Do you understand what the client actually wants to accomplish? Do you understand what their taste is? And do you understand what abilities you and your team have to accomplish that so you can pitch something that creatively and strategically makes sense for everybody?

That's right. It's basically, you know, asking some fundamental questions and really understanding about what they want. At the end of the day, that's, you know, that's, that's like an approachable way to problem solving. Because one of the things I keep on— so I did like an audit in, in when I was doing my master's at an advertising course. I audited it and the professor said the worst brief anybody can give you is Do anything you want. Oh,

it's the worst. It's,

it's,

I get 'em all the time where it'd be like, oh, we just wanna like hear some ideas. You know how many of those I sold over the last decade? Like I can count on one hand. Like it's, it's unreasonable. It shows clients that don't know what they actually want. It's asking advertising agencies for free work. No, it never works. Like Give specific briefs, please. I'm begging everyone, give people briefs.

Yeah, I think these questions kind of unpack the specificity of a brief, what really they want. Sometimes if they don't give, you know, understanding what they really— the place where they're in, that is really important, right? Like, you know, as a client, because you want some actionable numbers to happen, you can get lost in really expressing what you really want. So I feel for a brand building exercise, I think that's a great way. I want to ask about campaigns. In your experience, what are some campaigns that failed miserably that you executed? And from those campaigns, What are the things that you actually learned that are life lessons?

What flopped? Let me think. I mean, there's certainly been a handful of them. What didn't work? You know what? Here's a good one. So I worked on Rock Band 4. I led social strategy for them through the advertising agency I was at. And that was a dream for me. Like I grew up playing guitar on Rock Band. I remember telling one of my boss, like, go get us Rock Band. I need to work on this. And he got it. And I think we did as great of a job as we possibly could have with a completely insane set of restrictions. The legality, their license agreements that they signed with the songs. Made it so I couldn't functionally even mention the songs half the time. I had to mention songs in, if I'm remembering correctly, in triplets where I had to mention 3 songs at a time with only special exceptions to that. I couldn't show pictures of the artists. I couldn't use the music from the artists. Like it was, I was marketing a music game with music. And we came up with some like, I mean, I pitched some wacky stuff to try to get around that and to try to deal with those rules. It performed fine. You know what happened is the social posts that announced new songs outperformed everything. And the daily social content I made, like the whole strategy was people know what Rock Band is at this point. How do you get them excited about the soundtrack and how do you get them excited to make a hardware purchase? when people weren't making hardware purchases anymore. So strategically, it was quite simple. Creatively, it was an absolute pain in the ass. And did it work? I mean, Rock Band 5 hasn't come out, so probably not. But, you know, it was still— it was fun, but it was tough. And I would say this is where— to your original question, like, what would you do differently or what do you take away from that? If you don't give your marketing teams the license to do what they need to do, like not creative license, I mean legal license,

you

can only accomplish so much.

That's interesting. I've never been in any of those situations. So I think it must have been like talking to lawyers, dealing a lot of stuff, going back and forth, you know, all the—

I mean, it wasn't even negotiation. We were just told. And we're like, wait, really? And they're like, yep. I'm like, oh, that's tough.

So when it comes to pitching, right, where do marketers stumble? Like, what are some things that marketers or even advertising folks, not just like that, like when you pitch an idea to yourself, right? Pitching works in different ways. You pitch for a client, pitch for your boss, pitch for yourself as a content creator. Anything that we should avoid, you know, that actually makes the pitch great?

Avoid. I think in a weird way, this, and this is very specific for social people, in a weird way, overprofessionalism can kill you sometimes. Like you wanna be respectful and knowledgeable, but I think, you know, I'm gonna back all the way up. It's shocking how many people are clearly not comfortable public speaking, which maybe we don't think of an advertising pitch as public speaking, but it absolutely is. Like, I mean, I've pitched decks where it was me and 2 other people to win $17 million of work. And like, to get good at that stuff, we had years of repetition. I took improv classes to get better at speaking. I've read books on how to present yourself. I changed my wardrobe. Like, I did a lot of work to figure out how to be an effective presenter and got very, very good at it and have my own style. I think do things like maybe not terribly differently, but certainly a little differently. I think people don't invest in that kind of stuff and I think they need to. And then within that practice, everyone's so sure.

I knew it. You'll bring that. But yeah, go ahead.

I mean, I am, I will admit that when I give some of my like keynote talks now, I don't practice a ton because they're usually on topics I've spoken on before. But I mean, true story, like I worked on a, I did a pitch for one of the Batman Arkham games way back when, like 5, 10 years ago. And I had this creative director, I was still like a senior strategist, a little younger, but we had this executive creative director who was Brilliant. Like he was creatively strong. Clients adored him. He knew how to sell. Like we knew we already won the pitch before he got in the room because of how he had sold the clients on the side. But when we practiced, even with all that, we practiced that pitch at least 5 times. And I made like a haphazard joke during one of the practice attempts in our, in our, at our agency. And he goes, you need to do that every time. I was like, well, it's kind of off the cuff. He goes like, no, no, no, we're going to run it back. And every time we practice that, I want you to make that joke. And then he trained the other guy who I was making the joke to, to have the correct follow-up to that. People worry like, oh, is it going to sound rehearsed? We rehearsed enough to where it didn't sound rehearsed.

That's—

But like, no, I don't think people practice enough. Like, I don't think people practice enough for interviews. I don't think they practice enough for pitches.

There is an amazing takeaway. I don't know if you realize, if you practice like few more, like few to like, you know, in a limited quantity, it feels that you are rehearsing something when you execute it, right? Yeah. But to your point, if you practice so much that it becomes second nature, then it feels like you're living it. You're not Kind of reproducing what you practice, you're basically doing in flow. So—

Oh, I mean, totally. Like, I lived in Los Angeles for much of my advertising career, which meant I had a 30 to 45-minute car ride to work and back every day. If I had a pitch day or like a pitch coming up, I would talk to myself in the car on the drive there. Like, it'd be a pitch that I had practiced and practiced like with my slideshow up, but then I'd run through it in my head casually and I'd try different things. I'd make different jokes and say different lines in different ways. But I just do that in the car to myself. And eventually you do enough of that stuff where it's like, to your point, it's just second nature. Like when I'm actually doing the pitch, I don't even know if I'm at the wheel. I'm just saying things that I've already said.

That's amazing. I think it's a great way for every content creator like to practice, practice, practice. Anybody, right? Like you're an athlete. So that's, I want to definitely touch upon the NBA stuff, but one thing about writing viral content, you've You have so many viral tweets. One of my favorites is this tweet about when you Google symptoms about a disease, you'll find out about which diseases have the greatest SEO.

I

love that tweet so much. Talk to me about writing viral content. What is your framework? Or is there a framework if exists? Or you just write it out casually? How do you ideate? How do you bring up those ideas?

I mean, so that's weirdly my most viral post of all time. And it's only casually related to what I'm known for, but for some reason it really clicked with people. As far as writing frameworks for social goes, I'm a big believer in idea over everything. If I don't have a strong concept, It doesn't matter whether I write short form, long form, Twitter thread, essay, screen, script. Nothing will matter if the idea is not strong. I think as far as formats go, I do struggle to believe that you can build an audience in 280-character tweets. I think it's tough. It's funny. It's like to do, you look at music nowadays. I come from the rock world where like you gotta sell albums, not playlists. A lot of times a single is something to get you in, but what keeps you in is like a larger catalog of work.

Sure.

I think it's really hard to get known for anything if you just write short-form tweets. Like the reason Twitter threads exist It's not because like thread boys are trying to game the system. It's because people want to share more information than they could get in one tweet. Because it's not, you can only get so far in that many characters. So I will say I write long form more often than I write short form. That's by design so I can share more of the like more nuanced thoughts. And long form looks like a lot of different things. When Twitter threads were more common, I would just, I'd do the Twitter thread format. And then I would copy paste that into LinkedIn, just turn it into like a short essay. With thread, I got really—I mean, I was known for my brand analysis threads, and I became obsessed with how do I make each individual tweet a significant point that still leads to the next point. To like the level of analysis where I knew if I had like a ringer like idea within there. Or like, let's say it was like the punchline where I'm explaining the concept. I might number all the tweets in the thread except for that one. So then that one would generate more retweets because I found that people were less likely to retweet tweet 7 of a thread.

Right.

So this is where we can get into those mechanicals. I don't think any of the mechanical stuff that I did mattered if the ideas weren't strong. And that's why I almost encourage, like, you'll see within Future Social, I really pumped telling people how to be like extremely tactical unless there's things that can't miss algorithmically. Because I think what's most important is idea generation over everything.

I really like the point about, you know, not mentioning a thread number. You know, that's a, it feels like a no-brainer now, but If you think about it, like, there is less chance of people tweeting or even sharing with others. When it comes to ideas, how do one go from bad ideas to good ideas to great ideas?

I mean, reps, experience. Like, can we curse on the podcast?

Yeah, please.

Please fuck around. Like that's the way to do this stuff. I think it's, that's where we all have different values for what makes a, what the difference between a good idea, a great idea, and like an amazing idea is. The things that I'm most proud of in my career are the things that strategically made sense, got creative results, and also drove results for my client financially. And it was, there's not a lot of tweets or individual posts that do that. But there's a lot of campaigns in 9-month period of times that did. I think it's reps. I think it's being open to feedback. You don't have to agree with all the feedback you receive, but you need to hear it and understand why other people are giving you that feedback. Like we were mentioning how to pitch earlier, if a client or a potential client gave me feedback on my pitch, it wasn't my job to say whether that was like good or bad feedback. That was data for me to understand how to properly sell to that person. And that's what I had to receive that as. It's like,

and

maybe that meant I asked more questions. Maybe I started like casually pitching things like, oh, like, are you open to these sort of ideas? Or, oh, is this more important to you than maybe I realized? But it's, yeah, it's hard to beat just repetition. I also think this is where people in this industry start in one of two places. They're either highly social and then have to learn marketing, or they're highly marketing skillset and then have to learn content entertainment and human connection. Those 2 groups need different advice. If you're highly, highly social, keep thinking as big social media ideas as possible, but focus on trying to attach that to strategic pillars of what the client's trying to achieve. If you're on the opposite end and you understand like messaging, these are our communication like focuses, then that person needs to be told brainstorm wildly. Because if that's your core, you're not gonna pitch something that's off brand because it's so built into your brain.

Hmm.

So it's tough to give like a blanket advice there. I'll just say that at the end of the day now, like There's so much content in the world. If it's not either wildly entertaining or wildly educational, you're probably not going to get seen.

I think that's the formula right there. The 2 checkbox, even when I think about how MrBeast has this many views or all that, it's very wildly entertaining. Either you check off one of those boxes, educational, or informational, which I learned something, or it just gave me a dopamine hit because—

Well, it's like, I adore Jimmy. Like, I think Jimmy is a genius. I think he understands content and businesses in a way that's truly shocking. It's not highbrow stuff. Like, it's the concept's right. It's like you can hear how every idea they've ever had started with a crazy brainstorm of what if, what if I, And I'm always like, I think you gotta think about social that way. But I also know a lot of social managers where that's all they do and they don't understand the business they work for and they do like unhinged stuff or things that don't strategically make sense. There's a happy medium between those 2 things.

Right? Yeah, for sure. One of the other things about, you know, people who work in social branding advertising is about timing. Right. You have to pick a trend, execute a trend, ideate it, make it great. So a lot of times people are under a lot of pressure, which is good pressure. Like, that pressure will put them in places like a 3-point shot in the 4th quarter, like last 30 seconds or so. How do you handle That pressure. And now that you're a creator, maybe you have your own rules because you work openly with your own rules. But when you worked at Twitch, even in other companies, other agencies, how did you handle that pressure? And what are the things that you learned about timing?

I mean, as far as pressure goes, For better or worse, I just never felt that. And a lot of people do. Like, I've definitely, I've pitched projects where people are gonna get laid off if we didn't win it. Like, I've pitched projects where like the business was gonna change if we didn't win it. Like, that's been a big part of my career. And I think I was less worried, like, I don't know what's actionable from this. For whatever reason, I was just so intent on making sure it worked that I didn't feel pressure from it. As far as timing goes, I think timing is a big part of professional career, about especially professional creative careers. I think something I always made sure to do was when I had a project that I knew the product was good, I crushed it. I knocked it outta the park because there's a lot of things that I worked on that were like tough. Like I wasn't gonna go viral or sell like become a bestseller in some categories. 'Cause like content marketing was maybe not the best place for that product. But then when I worked on like, I ended up, one of my first big projects was a zombie video game called Dying Light. And we remember, and we were doing like playing the beta of it. Me and my creative partners were like, oh my God, this game's good. Like it's really good. And that inspired how we handled that campaign and we knocked it outta the park. Like, so we took great products and make great marketing. It's very tough to make great marketing for products that don't have product fit or have like a big issue. Like, I worked for Yahoo for many years. That's— it's not easy to market Yahoo. Even like, Yahoo has some great products. Yahoo Sports is very fantastic. It's like very much one of the leaders. Still not the easiest thing in the world. I worked for Verizon, who's like, I believe they're the number one carrier. But you're still mostly getting customer service complaints. So like, it's part of it, just like you take the situations for what they are, you try to put yourself in the best situations possible, and you try not to pull your hair out when you're not in an easy one.

I like that. It's, it's, you know, it is also challenging to do something creative when the product is mediocre, right? Like you have less drive, motivation. Because there's nothing that excites you. I don't know how you manage, but it looks like you came out of it well. I know we're almost on the time. A couple of more questions. I'm curious about NBA. Let's talk about NBA basketball. Sure. You have a lot of passion, not just playing ball, but also doing incredible campaigns with NBA itself, right? Like NBA with Amex, DoorDash. And that's Game Campaign at Twitch. What's it like to work on something that you really love? How should people find that sweet spot?

Sure. I mean, listen, there are pros and cons. I'm very proud of the things that I've worked on. I mean, separate from the NBA, a story that I tell a lot is I've worked for my favorite TV show of all time, and I've worked for my favorite video game of all time. One was the best year of my career, and one was one of the hardest years of my career. Normally people don't know, I try to make sure people know what they are. I've already mentioned Rock Band. Mm-hmm. Rock Band was one of the hardest things I ever worked on, but then I worked on the TV show Community and had an absolute blast. And that was because I loved it and because of the way the clients worked with us. They allowed us access to do things. I do think your relationship with the product and industry you work on is like a really nuanced subject because basketball and music are my top 2 interests. I intentionally did not pursue careers in either because they didn't pay well, they were oversaturated, and they're overworked. But I did good enough work that I found my way back into those spaces. Where like, when I worked for Beats by Dre, like, okay, that's music. I wasn't planning on this, but that's music. Spotify too. Then obviously got to do some campaigns with the NBA for Twitch. The— I think it's a personal question as far as where you get your value from. For me, I love solving puzzles. And that was more important to me than to work in a specific industry.

Hmm.

So when I got to work in the industries I love, wonderful. Were there a couple of clients in my favorite industries that like were really, really tough? 1,000%.

I think it's about challenging yourself, right? I think maybe with MBA and the music thing, you're very comfortable. But if there is like a curveball that is coming out of like nowhere, that pushes you through a boundary.

100%. And can you handle like when you're finally working on something you love, If it doesn't go the way you want to.

That's interesting too. Yeah, that's a very good question. That's a good question for a retro— retrospect. Last thing I want to talk about, I have so many other questions, by the way, I didn't ask. As you can see, there are like so many takes that are so empty ones because we only have some limited time. Probably we'll bring you back. Let's talk about one of the things I personally believe in. And I've experienced this. I've kind of put a megaphone on so many people that you should believe in as well, is the serendipity that works on social, right? People build personal brands. People got like their lives changed just because they put themselves out authentically and transparently expressing themselves. And the whole doing things in public I love that. I've experienced, lived that. So one of the things you experienced is when you got let down, laid off around COVID time, you literally got hired through a DM within minutes, if I'm not wrong. So talk to me about the whole serendipity and why people should really hone into serendipity on social? And how did you do it?

Yeah. So again, this is where I'm now preaching something that I didn't even realize I was doing at the time. I knew I wanted to— the whole reason I started tweeting was to try to meet some people in the industry, maybe find jobs. And I've been hired from my social media several times now. So Spotify, the way I worked with them, one of their product managers slid in my DMs. He's like, hey, I'd love to work with you. What can we figure out? And then I brought several hundred thousand dollars of Spotify work into my ad agency and I worked on 2 Spotify campaigns. For Twitch. Yeah. I mean, I had just for years at that point, I think I had like far less than I have now. I think I had like 30,000, 40,000 followers and it was the first time I'd ever not had a job. After tweeting about advertising for five years, so I was able to put tweet like, "Hey, I'm available." Like looking for these kind of things. Like curious to hear what's out there in the world. That tweet did a quarter million impressions. A lot of really kind, respected people retweeted it, or like even Thompson saying like Jack knows what he's doing. Hire Jack. And something like I forget now, maybe like twelve minutes afterwards, I got a DM from the woman who become my boss at Twitch saying like, "Hey, would you be interested in working here?" And what's funny is I originally said like, that position doesn't seem like the right one for me. And then he's like, oh, sweet baby angel, here's what that job actually is. Like, oh yes, I actually would love that. Because the titling is different at tech companies versus agencies. And like 3 months later, I was working at Twitch. Like

when

I was at Twitch, Morning Brew started recruiting me through DMs. And after like a year of negotiations, I left Twitch for Morning Brew. The job that took me to New York was from the DMs. I was DMing with a woman who I really looked up to and wanted to learn from. And I was like telling her, like, I don't really know what I want to do with my career. And she's like, why don't you move to New York and work for me? It's like, wait, what? Like, so this all happened because I put my thoughts on the internet.

So powerful. I feel, you know, it's so Not many people realize that. And I feel we should amplify these stories. That's why I really asked that question, Jack. I can go on and on, but I do this segment, which is the end of the episode. I have this rapid fire 5, like 5 questions to just fire you. Sure. So let's start there. Whoever comes to your mind, whatever the thing come to your mind, just shoot it out. If you're rooting for a creator right now, Who would that be?

I mean, I work in creator marketing, so there's like a million I'm thinking of. There's one who I really like, and this is like a very personal one for me. There's a basketball creator named Dabli Duck. I've just recently become a basketball creator myself for fun. There's a lot of basketball content out there that is not the most positive, not the most optimistic, and not the most accessible. He's all about making basketball as easy for people to understand as possible. And he does it in this very, like, for lack of a better phrase, adorable way. He's got this like whole like persona to him. I just really love his content and what he's trying to achieve.

Love that. We'll definitely give him a shout out. What's your favorite advertising, copywriting, marketing, you know, book that you recommend?

This isn't specific to advertising, but it's for careers called The First 90 Days. I think it is the, it's a Bible for someone who's starting a new job or just got a promotion, or even someone who just wants to like be better at their job. Like it is a checklist of how to build internal rapport, what you need to accomplish, how to communicate with your boss. It's perfect.

Wow. I haven't heard of it. We should, you know, we should get it. Which creative campaign that inspired you the most? Like, what is your all-time favorite creative campaign?

I'll tell you the one that made me think advertising could be really cool was Nike basketball. 15 years ago, I was a kid. They did a campaign where they made a fake basketball team called the Roswell Ray Guns. And it was Vince Carter and Jermaine O'Neal. And they were promoting like Vince Carter's shocks at the time. And I remember the kid going, wait, whoa, that's like not a real team. And all the commercials featured this team that had this cool little alien logo. And it became cultish enough where Nike brought it back for an apparel line like 2 or 3 years ago. Like, and I think it might've been the 20-year anniversary of it, but it just really unlocked my brain. I was like, oh, like not all ads just have to be ads. You can do crazy things with them.

I like that. I should check it out. Nike does a phenomenal job in advertising. Nike, Apple, they're on another level. A couple of more questions. So when it comes to copywriting, like ads, I'll tell you mine, but what is your favorite copywriting ad?

Oh man, just copywriting. I don't know if I have one that comes to the top of my head. I'm curious what yours is.

Mine is Lemon, the Volkswagen one.

Oh, iconic. Yes. Legendary ad.

Yes. It's so legendary. It has everything. It has paragraphs and everything with the Beetle there.

Yeah.

Pretty iconic.

I'll tell you some of my favorite writing in general for an ad is there was a Super Bowl commercial a couple years back for, I believe it was, it's not great that I can't remember which car it was. I think it was Hyundai for Smart Park, and they had a couple of famous actors saying Smart Park in a Boston accent. So it was entertaining and hit the name of the feature over and over again. Genius ad.

Love that. Lastly, who's your favorite NBA player you want to ball with?

Oh my God. I mean, currently Luka. I love Luka Dončić so much. My favorite player of all time is Shaq. Like, I grew up playing a back to the basket center. I was a post move guy and Shaq was my idol.

Wow. Awesome, Jack. This has been a pleasure, man. I've had so much fun and I learned a ton about advertising, branding, personal brands, what questions should ask people when you think about doing awesome content. Love talking to you. You're so easy, so awesome, so authentic. Appreciate you for joining. Any closing thoughts before we wrap up?

No, I just, I hope people take a chance on themselves with their careers. I think like life's too short to hate what you do. I think you got like, it's worth putting some time and effort to figure out what you would enjoy and how you get the most fulfillment out of your job. And then worth spending time to figure out how to get better at your job or accomplish whatever you want to accomplish in your job. Yeah. I think it's really easy to kind of take your hands off the wheel and like live life without intention. And I hope people live with more intention.

I love that intention. That's the game. That's where that pulls you in the right direction. Jack, appreciate you. Thank you so much, folks, for joining, tuning in, listening, viewing, whatever you're doing with this episode. We do this for this reason to hopefully teach you something out of this conversation. So I hope you learned something from Jack as well. But we'll put all the all the things that Jack mentioned in the show notes as well as links. But stay tuned for more episodes. We have awesome, awesome creators, entrepreneurs, founders, VCs, you know, joining the show. Till then, cheers.

Thank you.