#36: Danny Miranda - The Danny Miranda Podcast

All right, welcome to another episode of Cyber Patterns. Today we have a very special guest, none other than Danny Miranda. He runs a podcast called the Danny Miranda Podcast where he interviews the happiest, healthiest, and wisest people in the world. Danny's grown his podcast quite a lot, and he's going to tell you the exact numbers. He's going to tell you how to grow a podcast, and we're going to talk some deep philosophical talks. This was a really exciting, fun conversation. Really thankful for Danny for coming on the podcast. Dude, I got a bunch of questions for you and then I got a book to the vet for my dog's appointment around 3. So it's absolutely perfect timing. Um, so you've been on the Creator Ground for a while. Newsletter, I saw archives going all the way back to 2020. So, you know, people just know about the podcast kind of blowing up, but like there's a history there. So, so what's the deal? How'd you get started creating on the internet?

Well, I'll take it back to when I was 13 years old. I started a time management blog, started writing about the things that were important to me then, which was happiness, how to live a fulfilling life and I had some creator talk in there as well. I was covering Gary Vaynerchuk and why I found him interesting. That was 2009, I believe. So been at it for a while. Then I started a Knicks blog when I was 15. I've been creating forever and it's just always been in my heart to look at the world, type some shit out, and then put it out into the world. And so Yeah, been doing it forever and really only got consistent with it, I would say in the past 2, 2.5 years and really been more comfortable coming into my own, getting rid of the insecurities I had about putting my face out there and just letting it rip. And good things have happened ever since.

Nice, man. 100% the same. I've been creating since, you know, a kid making YouTube videos with my little brother and everything, and then started a newsletter in college, but stopped that after like a couple friends like kind of gave me shit and I was like, all right, I guess I'm not gonna do this. And then eventually just started doing it. And then the last 2 years as well, the last few years when I really got disciplined and shit's been, shit's been good ever since. So it's crazy.

That's the thing, right? It's like you realize that the only thing stopping you so often is your own insecurities when you get rid of those. And for me it was like the reason why I stopped blogging at 13 was 'cause some woman called me out and was like, this kid is not 13 years old. Like it's someone posing as a minor. And because of that, I was like, fuck, maybe I should just be a normal kid. So, so yeah, I think, you know, my, my friend Zach Pogrob has talked about that as well, where he had a YouTube channel and he stopped doing it because someone gave him shit for it when he was like in 7th grade. So I think it's just so common and it's why I beat the drum of looking at your own insecurities and looking at where you're holding yourself back. 'Cause I think everybody has felt that at some point.

[Speaker:JASON_LEVIN] Yeah, 100%. And I wrote this essay a while ago, I guess a year, the idea of decentralized friendships and the internet has led me to so many friends in different cities and I didn't have a lot of creator, online creator friends, like a couple growing up. And then hop on Twitter and now, you know, just like have friends all over the place. And then you move to— like, I just moved to New York in July. So now I'm in this place where I could like actually link up with friends all the time and that are creating on the internet. It's crazy. Where from? I was in New Jersey. Yeah.

Oh, okay, cool. So in the area. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy having that network of people. I think Twitter has been the best place for me to find it as well of just like-minded people who are interested in the same things, creating, building something. It's a really beautiful time because I really feel like I'm going to, and you will too as well, look at it like, "Wow, those were the good old days when we were just building our things." If you think about Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss, they started out as unknown bloggers in 2005 to 2010, and they're probably like, "Damn, I wish we could get that back in some sense. So I think, you know, it's just important to really like appreciate the point and the stage you're at because if you have long-term aspirations and if this is in your blood, then this is a really special time.

So yeah, I, that's beautiful. Really, you know, learning to cherish. I feel like I'm one of those people that very impatient when it comes to like, you know, I want, I want my like, you know, 100K followers. Like I got to 10K and Like 6, 7 months, I could fucking do it. Like, you know, like I, I want that and I'm constantly like pushing and at the same time it's like I gotta reflect and I feel that 100%. I am curious. So when we, we talked about hopping, you hopping on the pod, asked me to rate 5 stars. That was, I, I like that. So is that something that really helps, you know, on Spotify with podcasts?

Jason Levin: I'm not sure. I just love setting a goal for myself of, "All right, I'm going to do this and this is going to be my main focus right now." For example, if you had asked me today to come on the podcast, I'd be like, "Yo, you want to subscribe to my newsletter?" Have a main focus where you could direct people to. I get a lot of inbound every day of people being like, "Yo, I love the podcast. Yo, this really helped me with this." And I put out so much, so it makes sense that that's coming back. But then it's also important, I feel like, for a creator to be like, or at least a creator on the rise to be like, "Okay, you appreciated what I did enough to send me a message. Now, how can I take that and funnel it to someplace that is going to help me?" Because you don't want that interaction to end just with, "All right, thank you so much." Let that interaction end with you helping build the network for me. And right now I'm trying to build the Substack and the newsletter. So if you had asked me that today, I'd be like, yo, like, you wanna sign up for my newsletter?

Congratulations on launching the paid newsletter, by the way.

Thank you, sir.

I appreciate it. So it says, you know, 25,000 monthly listens going up to a million. So where are you currently at? I'm, I, uh, I'm not sure. And so, yeah. Yeah.

You wanna follow up on that?

No, I'm just like curious where you're at and how you get your first, you know, 10,000 monthly listens? How do you do that? How do you get your first 50,000? [Speaker:JASON_LEVIN] Yeah.

So we're at 60,000 monthly listens in October of 2022, which is insane because in one respect it feels like a small number, in another respect it feels like a massive number. So I can think about both of those being true at the same time, which is exciting. How did I get my first 10,000? I think the first month that I hit 10,000 listens was the month that I had Gary Vaynerchuk on the podcast, which happened to be my third month of doing the podcast. And so that was exciting. But I would say that it's a combination of consistency with compounding, and I was doing 3 episodes a week. So you do 3 episodes a week, you build up a backlog. A lot of the listens right now are from previous episodes that I published many months or years ago. And so it builds up over time and people just have more to choose from and more to search from and more links in the network. So it's hard to see when you're just getting started with it, but if you build it fast, the first 10,000-month listen can happen pretty quickly, I think.

Fair enough. I, Sean and Sam from My First Million, they called it like a binge bank. I love that. Yeah. You know, right now I'm only, you know, 30, 40 episodes in and already like, you know, when, when Jack Raynes, your boy as well, when he went viral like last week, I had a podcast from him in March, like just a video of him talking about it. It's like, oh, I already have this content. Let me throw this up there. And like, you know, it's hype. He was literally talking about shitposting on LinkedIn and getting banned. And then, you know, it's funny how that works. Yeah, I am curious, like, oh, also, also congrats on Morgan Housel, bro. That's insane. Insane, right? That's crazy.

When he followed me a few months ago, I was saying to myself, holy shit, like, who can I call to like let someone know that this is like a huge moment in my life? Yeah. So it was just like my friend Zach Pograb, who mentioned before, who I'm like, all right, like, dude, This happened. He's like, that's the craziest thing ever. But the crazy thing about the internet is that you ask 100 people who Morgan Housel is on the street, what, one of them is going to know who that is? So it's a crazy world we're living in. But to me, it was significant for him not only to follow me, but then also to have him on the podcast.

Yeah. Anytime I say something like that to my girlfriend, she's like, okay, this means nothing to me, but I'm really happy you're happy. She's like, that's good enough for me. I'm happy. So I see you're like super active on Instagram and killing it on there. I haven't saw you— are, are you on TikTok as well?

Yeah, just started posting there in the past year.

What's kind of been the biggest channels of growth for you and like also what do you, what feels most natural and what do you enjoy most?

Yeah, so that's a good question. So what happened was I started on Twitter, you know, I always enjoyed writing the most. That always felt the most natural to me. That's always how I enjoyed expressing myself, but Over the past, I don't know, year or so, I've really started to challenge myself to be like, okay, learn Final Cut Pro. This is important vertical content. Let's just do it. And so I've kind of leaned in. Once I've gotten comfortable with publishing consistently on Twitter and writing a lot and then publishing podcasts consistently, I've just been like, okay, it doesn't matter if this doesn't feel natural to me in this moment. Just pushing on that. And so yeah, I enjoy posting on all the platforms, honestly. Have had a bunch of growth on Instagram thanks to a couple of different viral videos. One of Sebastian Georgeou has 4.7 million views. Another of my friend Shervin talking about friendship and how to make friends without drinking alcohol, that's got 1.3 million. And it's like, Like anything online, a lot of the growth comes from a little of the actions. So that's why I push so hard on telling people to take more shots and just put more things out there without judging or expecting anything in return. Just put it out there. And my Sebastian one started to go viral after 5 days of me posting it. So people looking for that quick dopamine of like, okay, this isn't going viral. What does this mean? Well, just wait. Maybe After 3 days, the right person will see it. Maybe after 7, something will happen in the algorithm. So yeah, just patience and go hard. Just go, go, go, go, post more.

Nice. I got to watch your one on being sober and making friends. It's been huge for me. I got sober 3 years ago. And so—

Congrats.

Yeah, thanks, man. And it's been cool. I had my birthday party Sunday, You know, like a couple people drank, like nothing crazy, but it was just like, oh man, if, if you could tell 16-year-old Jason Levin, who was a fucking pothead, that he could have like fun with soberly with his friends, it'd be, it'd be a great thing. So, um, I, I'm curious as well, um, who have been like your favorite guests that you've had on, if, if you could, you know, think of any off the top of your head and, um, you know, who, what have you learned from doing this as well? Yeah.

I'm curious for you, like who have been your favorite guests from doing that?

Yeah. So Jack Raines was one of them. Like my boy, honestly, he just taught me so much. Like he was like, dude, double your rates. Like go freelance, double your rates. Like, I'm like, okay. All right. Thank you, Jack sensei. He was just brilliant. And then I interviewed Christine Smyth who She was Martin Shkreli's ex-girlfriend. And it was like a couple days before Shkreli got out of prison. And she's like a journalist and just, it was super interesting, like a weird scenario. And then the other one, last one, Josh Rosenthal. He's like basically like a, I don't know, biology-esque kind of professor in VC and just like brilliant. And it was like a one-to-one lecture with a Harvard professor, like, but a fun lecture, fun conversation. Yeah. What about you?

I'll have to check that one out with Josh Rosenthal because anytime anyone's compared to Balaji, I'm all in. Yeah.

Facts.

But I mean, for me, there's been so many that I've walked away from and been like, how the hell did I get to talk to that person for that long? I mean, recency bias plays a huge role in this answer, but I just published one with Ankur Nagpal, the founder of Teachable. And the dude sold his company for, I think, $250 million. So I don't know how much ownership he has in that, but just, he seems so like just a normal guy. And that was so heartwarming to me. And he's helped so many creators. So he's very familiar with the game that we're playing and he had great tips and great advice on how to be just a great human being. So I really appreciated that one. But honestly, it's really fun to create something that you enjoy consuming. Like I have so many just amazing conversations and I'm so grateful that they get to be— there's like time capsules to them, right? Like it's a beautiful thing. Like I just want more people to record conversations in general, even if they're not comfortable with publishing them, because I think that when you do that, you really appreciate the ability to like time capsule a moment and time capsule your train, your thought process in that moment. So yeah, man, I mean, so many favorite episodes, but I've just enjoyed recording and I've enjoyed getting better at expressing myself, getting better at asking questions, getting better at researching, getting better at promoting it. Like This podcast has been the greatest self-improvement or greatest thing that I've ever done in my life.

So that's incredible, dude. That's amazing. Curious what you're reading, anything right now, anything good?

So I've really, I've gotta get better at reading books. Here's the thing, like when I, in 2020, I probably read 25 books, like in 6 months during lockdown. And now I am reading your newsletter. I'm reading Jack Raines's newsletter. I'm trying to read more books, but— and I consciously thought this to myself yesterday because I was like, wow, I'm really not— my inputs aren't that great right now in terms of just long-term information. But I was very impressed with what I read from you last night. I signed up to your email immediately and I was just like, I need to get better at that. Do you have any recommendations for me?

Yeah. So my last guest, or Elon Musk, recommended me Alchemy by Rory Sutherland. So he's an advertising— Love that book. Oh yeah. I interviewed Rory.

He's amazing.

Oh shit, dude. He must be awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. I'm writing an article on it. I think it'll be coming out this Sunday. So that's been a really solid one. And then other than that, what was I reading? I could look at my Notion where I keep everything.

One thing I noticed about you is your stuff is designed so well.

Thank you.

Where do you think you got that eye for design from?

A lot of failure. I mean, I started learning how to do Photoshop in 7th grade.

Wow.

I ended up selling like $40,000 worth of stickers online by the time I was like 18. So just like designing stickers on Photoshop and then putting them on Redbubble and just flipping stickers. And so like, I just used to get high in Photoshop all the time. Like that was my high school and college, like, you know, while I was at school and shit and like screwing around. And so it's just a lot of trial and error. And then Like a lot of design, you know, DALL-E really helps with that. And then honestly, like, you know, like the cyber patterns, like the COVID and stuff like that. Like I paid a designer for that cuz there's so much that's out of my range. Like I'm not a good, like I, I have an eye for it. I'm better as like a creative director than, than as an actual graphic designer. But back to books, dude, Philosophy of Andy Warhol was, was pretty bomb. Dude, Autobiography of Gucci Mane. Not going to lie, pretty damn good. Like, really good. War Reporting for Cowards. I just read that. Just like, it's just like a funny, like, true account of a journalist who, like, accidentally ends up going to the Iraq War. Yeah, those are the recent ones. Most recent, Snow Leopard, Nicholas Cole. Yes, that is incredible. I really want to get him on the podcast at some point. Um, but yeah, all those.

I'll put you guys in a group chat if you'd like.

Oh dude, that, that'd be incredible. He's dude, I like, this sounds so bad. Like I wanted to hate him cuz like he was like, you know, I wanted to and then I read his book.

Why do you wanna hate him?

I don't know. Cuz like, you know, he calls himself the digital writer and it's like, bro, I'm the digital writer. We're all digital writers, you know? And I wanted to hate him and then I'm like, damn, he knows what he's talking about. Like I, I lit— like this guy knows like, oh shit. You know, I don't know, it's just some ego shit, I guess.

Makes sense. So books that I recently bought were On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss. Um, I haven't lost anyone, um, but I heard it's a good book to read before somebody dies who you know, and I appreciate the thinking of life in that way. I also pre-ordered Hidden Genius by Polina Marinova Pompliano. But, and then I was reading Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God by Will Durant. So yeah, that's my Amazon history, but I'm not in the middle of any of these basically.

Nice. Nice. That reminds me, you've read like The Last Lecture, stuff like that.

No.

Or no. It's really good. It was this Carnegie Mellon professor that got diagnosed with cancer and gave kind of a last lecture to his students and wrote a book about it. And yeah, it's, it's super short, like read it in a day, but it's, and then, you know, sadly he passed away and, but that was his legacy he left for his kids and family. It's a good, it's a good one.

There's also a book about like our last breath or something like that. Like Breath. I don't know what it's called, but it's—

Yeah.

What's up?

No, I was just wondering, who's your dream guest, by the way?

So Mike Posner's up on that list.

Nice.

I just really respect his The way he's gone about living his life, both inwardly and outwardly is very, just, I just really appreciate it. Tim Ferriss is on the list for sure. Jocko Willink, David Goggins, Rogan, Lex.

That'd be cool. Yeah. Lex Fridman.

Throw them all on there. Kanye.

Yeah, dude. I would love to interview Kanye when he's like not in a manic state.

Have you, have you listened to him and Lex?

No, no, personally, I was just like, I don't know. I just disagree. I think like it was, um, it's like taking advantage of a sick person to some degree. Like he's, you know, I know Lex was like very, I've heard he was like very kind and very like sturdy, but like, you know, I've like seen bipolar. I've, you know, seen that. And like, they're like, the only thing Lex should be doing is trying to get him hospitalized and on meds. Like, I really, I just think it was irresponsible, personally.

That's such an interesting take. And I've heard that, but I've only heard that from people who haven't listened to the episode. So fair. I would recommend it just because I appreciate how Lex pushed back and how he promoted the dialogue. And he really like put to light some of the issues that were in his thinking. And Lex isn't also the type of person to like try to get clickbait or try to like make him look stupid. Like he was truly trying to understand. And for that, I'm really grateful for the conversation, but I also know that some people wholeheartedly disagree with me about that. So I respect that as well.

Dude, Lex is brilliant and he's such a good-hearted person that like, he's all like, I really do believe his intentions were right. Just like, All right. So as someone who dealt, like I have bipolar and so I've been manic and I've been in that state and very public downfall prior to, like I've been very private about this on Twitter. Probably gonna cut it from this episode, honestly, like this part until like, you know, I have fuck you money, honestly. Cause like I don't want people thinking like, I don't know. So I don't know if somebody did that while I was, in that state, I just don't think it'd be like a responsible thing to do. Um, but that's, that's my thoughts. Um, but yeah, yeah, Tim Ferriss would be dope. Mike Posner is amazing, man. Like the, the journey that he's been on. Um, but yeah, yeah, I'm trying to figure— I, I really respect how vulnerable you are in your episodes, by the way. So I'm trying to do that as well. I'm like, yeah, scared to, scared to go public with the bipolar stuff and, uh, So it's, it's, it's something I'm barely, I'm just starting to talk about sober. The fact that like, it's get, it's so popular on Twitter right now, which is like, all right, cool. Like this is becoming normalized and like, I'm not gonna be seen as some like fuck up, you know? So, yeah.

Well, the thing is, I feel like the more you think potentially that's suppressing who you are is going to lead to better outcomes. But I would argue that the opposite is true. Because I believe that if I learn that you had bipolar or dealt with bipolar at some point, now I feel more connected to you, not less. And so it's just like, do you have the courage to step into that and own it? And do you have the courage if somebody, you know, says something mean to you about that, Like, how are you handling that? And so like, I understand like not wanting to show that side of you, but I also understand like, if you are coming from a secure place, it is the best way to connect more deeply with people and to help you because you might get a new client because someone's like, oh, this dude dealt with something that I dealt with. Right? So it's like, you don't know who's listening. You don't know what they've dealt with. And the more you can be your true self, the more people can really latch on and connect with that.

Facts. That's definitely something to think about. Um, dude, I'm, I'm gonna take the doggo to the vet. I really appreciate the time and, uh, we should try to grab coffee at some point and maybe in a couple years or a year or something, do it in person and, and catch up and, and maybe next November. I don't know. But dude, appreciate your time.

Hell yeah. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And, uh, I'm excited to see your journey unfold and keep writing, bro. I love your writing.

I appreciate it. Talk soon. Peace.