8 Simple Tips to Grow an Audience (Hint: The Sooner You Start, the Better!)

when you think of life as a game, because if you think of it as a never-ending game, then you just keep getting better. You keep getting stronger and stronger and you play as long as you can. And then, you know, when you pass away, you pass away, but then that's when the game ends. So, you know, whenever I try to sound interesting, I end up sounding like an idiot. Uh, so, so what I try to do instead is I just try to be helpful. Like, that's the only thing that's been, um, that's the one thing that's been super helpful to me throughout the years. It's just, um, you know, if someone needs something, I'll be out there. Like, if I find an interesting insight, I'm going to try to share it with people. Um, and like, I'll always ask people like, you know, what do you need exactly? What's the number one thing? Right. And I've, I've naturally, like, that wasn't natural to me, but I've learned to make it more of a natural habit. So, um, when I think about like, oh, like what's something I can, um, what's something of value I can post out there? Um, that lens is a lot more helpful than, hey, I want to create some content and I want to be famous. I think chasing status more so than trying to be helpful is not the best game. What do I need to know to be a player in this marketing game? What do I need to know? What are core skills or things I need to just know? Like, yeah, if I know this, then I have a shot at making it in this world. What do I need to know, Eric?

Yeah.

So I'm going to broaden it to the spectrum of business. I think, you know, obviously there's a lot of traits and I put those into the book as well, but we're talking about someone that has a growth mindset and a beginner's mindset. And I'm sure everyone or most people know that here. I would say, You know, for marketing, I, as a marketer, most of your experiments that you run are going to fail, right? So you, let's say you run an A/B test, you try all these different things, you're lucky if 8 to 10% of them work out. So you become numb to failure. And I think the reason why it's worked out for people like Neil and other people like that, it's because they just, they'll fail and they'll move on to the next thing. And also they're these types of people, when it comes to marketing, it's also they're willing to change their minds quickly. I'll use Neil as another example, because whenever he presents me data or I present him data, we have strong views, but we're very quick to change our minds if data is presented to us. I would say the final thing is this, the sooner you start, the better. Whether it's starting to create content or your business, because what we've seen with business is that Typically, it takes 3 years to start to get going. With content, probably 1 to 2 years if you're lucky, maybe 3. And so, it's just the same thing as investing. It just compounds over time and most people aren't willing to let time— let things marinate. Thursdays are typically my podcast days. Sometimes today's Wednesday. Sometimes I'll do it on other days. But Thursdays in the mornings, I'll do my interviews and then in the afternoons, I'll record my videos. And I try to pump everything into Thursday. So I have themes for my days. And I do have a team. I have a producer. There's a bunch of people that write. There's someone that makes micro content for social. And those are primarily the things. And what I'll do on Mondays at 4:30 PM is I actually have a calendar block for me to approve. I'll write the captions and I'll write the headlines because that's where you get the biggest bang for your buck. So I realized over the years that trying to outsource other people doing the headlines, um, is not the best because the headlines is actually what drives a lot of clicks. So, you know, as a marketer, I'm like, okay, I should just probably do that if I'm trying to maximize reach. Um, I know Gary Vee and a lot of these people, they spend their time actually doing the entire thing. Um, and by the way, he's got a team of like 27 people helping him as well, um, on the content side. But that's what it is. I think you're trying to just maximize your reach and, um, touch as many people as you can, impact as many people as you can.

You have the trust, the authority, the experience, and now the credibility to speak your mind and people listen. A lot of folks listening out there are new to digital media or new to content. Biggest fear, self-limiting doubt factor in their mind is, what do I talk about and who the hell am I to say anything? Um, yeah, what got you over that ledge?

You know what's funny? Um, when I first started doing content, um, I would There would be people that would— here's the funny about— I don't know if this is just Asian society. There's this crabs in a bucket mentality and I think I would actually do the same thing if I saw someone that I felt was maybe not doing as well as me and starting to shoot past me. Like you want to drag people down, right? So, there's a lot of that going on in the beginning and that— it certainly hurts your confidence but again, just use it as strength. I think that's the one thing I would say. But in the beginning, when let's say you feel like you're a student, you're starting out right now. Maybe you don't try to teach first because you're still learning, right? Uh, there's a good post from an investor, his name is Mark Suster, talks about learning before earning. And so if you're learning but you can still document that journey as you're doing it, you can— there's this guy on YouTube, um, you know, he has a company called Gymshark. He literally documented everything from 2011 up to now. You can see him starting, you know, by himself, and now his company is worth $1.4 billion. And so why can't you document the journey in the beginning, and then as you learn, you can start to teach your lessons? Right. So I think if you want to do it, that's the formula you can use. And I think if you want to do it, all these resources are available to you nowadays to get going. And then at that point, you just have to stay consistent. Any others in there that you think are relevant to this audience? Yeah, I think it's the idea of the beginner's mindset. So, you know, we have a chapter called Newbie Mindset. In games, you know, when you're new, you're called a newbie. And so You know, the whole idea here is that even, you know, at our age, at your age, I'm really talking to the audience right now, you know, as a father, understanding that, you know, still, we don't know what we don't know. And really, we should be learning all the time. And operating from a position of I'm a beginner still removes the ego, and you're constantly open to receiving new things. You're— the idea here is that you have strong views, but they're loosely held. So you're able to change your mind given, you know, new data that's presented to you. And I think, you know, the idea here is to, you know, I'm not, again, I'm not a father, but my thesis is that you're going to learn a lot from your children. Your children, they're going to teach you a lot. And I think, Scott, maybe you can attest to that. You learn so much, you know, being a parent, right? So I think it's being open. I can tell you, you know, me growing up, my parents, you know, as much as I love them, they think they know everything, right? Just the learning really never ends. And we still know nothing, right? We don't even, we don't even know the whole thing about our oceans right now. We don't really know much about the universe, right? We don't know what's out there. We really don't know much. And again, in the grand scheme of things, we're just talking monkeys on this earth. And yeah, we're not here for that long. Don't forget to check out the next video over there. Okay. Over there. And before we go, open a new tab, levelingup.com to learn more about the book. We may or may not have other goodies tied to this book. All right, levelingup.com in a new tab. You can check out the next video first in a new tab, and we'll see you later.