#47: Isaac Medeiros - Selling Swords and Making Millions

How do you sell swords on the internet? Better question, how do you make over $10 million selling swords on the internet? I talked to the entrepreneur doing it. His name is Isaac Mendaros, and he's the man behind Minikatana, a viral sword company doing over 8 figures in revenue per year. Isaac has built Minikatana into an empire, over 9 million subscribers on YouTube, millions on TikTok and Instagram as well. You're going to hear all about his content hacks and how he's thinking about arbitraging attention on the internet. Get ready to hear from the content samurai himself, Isaac Medeiros. I hope you enjoy. Really excited to chat. I have been hoping to have this convo for a while. You're like, I don't know, man, the swords, selling swords on the internet, viral TikToks, viral videos is fascinating. Hilarious. How did you get started selling swords on the internet?

Yeah, it was basically late 2020, 2020, the pandemic was in full swing. And I, this was not my first, that was not my first rodeo. It was not my first business. I had a few others beforehand. They failed pretty badly, but I think I'm just a very persistent person. So I'm always constantly experimenting. And I started with a letter opener. So my first product was actually a tiny little letter opener. I actually have, I have it on my desk here. This was the first product, right? Literally a mini katana. And the idea came from, I bought a lookalike at a gift shop for around $50 and it just fell apart. But I, I thought to myself, wow, I really like the concept. Let's just try to buyminikatana.com and see where this goes. And we actually launched on Meta. That was the playbook at the time and tried and true method and it worked. We were actually pretty profitable for that first few weeks until Meta banned us for their weapons policy. They don't like letter openers or swords or any of that stuff. But the initial experiments had gone well. And at that point I had maxed out my credit cards on InventoryRight. So I was just stuck with these little letter openers. And at that point I'm just like, okay, I have debt. I have a ton of these boxes in my tiny apartment. Let's just like do things, right? Let's just really try to make this work. And I basically began this process of just spamming every marketing channel on the planet. Tried Snapchat, Pinterest, but it was really fascinating that the first thing to work was TikTok. And it wasn't like I went into TikTok with a mindset of trying to make this work. I was actually just making videos because I hadn't been a user through the pandemic and I liked the video editing software and I happened to make the video because I was trying to like get an ad content piece for Snapchat. And that first video got, I think it was like a few thousand views, but it sold a single unit, right? And it was a pretty magical time because it was, no one was using TikTok for commerce at that moment. It was very rare to see brands doing that. And it was just a lot easier to get views. So I talk about, I talk a lot about there's always these new arbitrages for attention that are very cheap. And TikTok happened to be like the great one of that year. For several years really, but I kept posting videos after that and the third or fourth one just sold out our stock. And what I do now today is not that different from that initial stage, right? All we do is now is just more, a very extreme version of that where we're making significantly more content, significantly more views, significantly more audience.

Yeah. You want to tell the audience kind of some statistics? I've seen you tweet about them, but would love to hear.

Sure. We have, we launched on YouTube 2 years ago after our success on TikTok. I think we have about 9 million YouTube subscribers. By the time we put this video out, we might have 10. I don't know. The channel grows fast. We get about 500 to a billion views a month across our channel network. And that's just on YouTube. But yeah, we're really just a kind of a media, we have a media mindset and we consider ourselves a kind of an attention aggregator on these platforms. And that's what the entire team is built around. It's not brands have an ad spend budget. I just happen to have that, but I put it all behind organic media spend.

I love it. I am so for organic, organic content. I made a rule to myself not spending really a dollar on ads this year. Just really focus on just try to go viral with organic content. You don't really need ads. People pay you for ads, right? When I started growing my Instagram, I started getting paid to promote stuff. It was like, why am I paying other people when I could just make the content? So it was, it was definitely a big mind shift.

Yeah, I feel, and again, there's always new opportunities. I just think people don't look. And what I mean by that is there's always a new platform. There's always like things that people are not doing. And basically like by going for tried and true methods, you're really depriving yourself of cheap distribution, which I think is, you have to get at this point. That's how hard starting a brand has become.

It definitely has. So are there any attention arbitrage opportunities that you're focused on right now that you could share?

I haven't. If anyone runs across something interesting, feel free to DM me, but I'm still focused very much on YouTube. I think it's the best platform on the planet for attention. I, I would trade Instagram, TikTok. I would delete all of our other accounts and just stay on YouTube if that came to it.

Wow. That's fascinating. I'm curious. So how many creators do you have working with you? What's the process for putting out so much content growing so quickly?

Yeah, I have a, it's not really just creators. I have a. Media team. I'll say we have about 13 or 15 people depending on the week. There's a mix of contractors in there. We have a core team, but it really takes, it takes a village to produce the kind of attention we do. Yeah, I would say we have 5 or so creators and across 2 brands we have 7.

Wow. Wow. And how much revenue is this translating to?

Um, it's, it's, it's in the 8 figures.

That's pretty incredible. Does that, is it still mind-blowing to you? I know personally definitely had some failed businesses when I was younger, and so it's crazy to now have some successful stuff, right?

Yeah. I haven't fundamentally changed. We launched a new candy brand December last year and it's probably gonna be bigger than the sword thing by the end of this year. And what people don't often hear is, oh, there's a lot of failures attached to that. I launched other projects in between that, that were a mixed bag of successes or failures. It's just like the Kenny thing ended up being the biggest win. So my whole attitude has always been extreme experimentation with everything I do.

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about what kind of failures did you try? What kind of experiments failed?

Before Mini Katana, I had a small social app called Gaggle that became semi-viral on SoCal university campuses. And the pandemic kind of brutally murdered it. And then I had the typical e-commerce teenager dropshipping store, one or two. But I, it's funny, we talk about what I do, but no, early Facebook ads, that's the real, that was a real opportunity. And I actually look back and I was like, God, I should have just put all my money into like these stores. And I also had like fintech company too. So that's, I've been everywhere.

Interesting. Yeah. Early Facebook ads were crazy. I was also selling stuff on the internet since I was a little kid and really wish that I was able to just put a lot more money behind Facebook ads, start promoting a lot harder. It's interesting, man, how anytime a new platform pops up like you're talking about, I know for example, when Instagram released Stories or just a new feature on a platform, right? Morning Brew jumped on that and that blew them up because they jumped on that and started advertising on Stories and started posting on Stories all the time. So yeah, I've been trying to be very mindful lately of when does a platform add new features? How do I jump on there? It's funny with Twitter because it's, are they going to keep it or are they just going to delete it? Because Elon, you never know.

That's why I say YouTube is the ultimate platform. I think it all goes back to Meta and YouTube. Like those are the two winners of all this. Dropping engagement across Twitter, right? Twitter's not doing so hot. Then dropping engagement on TikTok, independent of the TikTok threat of a sell or ban, whatever people want to call it, regardless of your opinions, if you actually dig deep, you can tell that it's actually a dying platform. It's reached its peak.

Interesting. So you're not scared of a TikTok ban at all?

I guess I'm, it's not that I'm not scared of it. I'm just making the point that regardless of the ban, the platform was, has reached its peak. There's no more room. If you look at the engagement, you can, you can Google this. Engagement on the platform has dropped significantly and you can blame that on the e-commerce rollout, but also the platform just sucks. Creator specific, right?

How so?

I think who listens to this podcast? Like mostly business owners?

Mostly creators and founders, marketers.

Okay. A lot of like founders are in this bubble where they talk to other founders. But if you talk to like creators, like professional creators, there's this sentiment on of TikTok, like being just a really sucky platform if you're a creator, right? And there's a lot of reasons for that. There's small ones, but they're large. There's large ones. And just a small thing, for example, if you get to 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, whether you're a shorts or long-form creator, you get one of these silver things right here. I have 5 of them at this point. Because I like cows, but you also get access to support. You can message a human and they'll reply in real time. There's emails, like you can actually get a reply from YouTube really easily about any issues you face with your account. TikTok, you get to 100,000 subscribers, followers, who are you? We don't care, right? There's no acknowledgement sent. There's no human being you can contact. And that goes all the way up to the extremities. I know creators with millions of followers. That are like real creators, they make a real living from the platform, who aren't verified, they don't have a human being that they can contact, and they have no acknowledgement from the platform that they actually matter. So like, when you think of that like little thing, you're like, wait a second, that applies to the entire attitude TikTok has to its own creators. So like knowing that, that YouTube would probably win that battle for attention because it's what creators take seriously that really matters.

Yeah, I definitely see that as well with something around Twitter wasn't doing that for a while. They weren't really helping out their creators at all and treating 'em like crap. And that's been changing with the ad revenue, starting to give out money and offer new features. And I think Elon's a very creator-centric owner. I would love to see Twitter events, like why are they not throwing events in New York, in California, or convention or conference? I know YouTube used to throw those. Does YouTube still throw a lot of events and stuff?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, YouTube is the gold center for kind of creator relations, and I think that's such a weird advantage that nobody acknowledges.

Yeah, I've tried tweeting about this so many times. Like, you have these office— Twitter offices that are literally empty because no one comes to work, or nobody was at one point. Like, throw events. There's so many people who'd be down.

Yeah, I think creators can only make content for fun for so long. A lot of creators stumble upon it as an accident. They're not like me where it's, oh, I'm trying to start a business. No, they're doing it for fun. They gain an audience, but they have to make a living from it in order to continue creating content. So it's like a big question of what platforms are best for that. And I think that really matters in the long run if you're finding this kind of battle of attrition.

Yeah. So how did you build out your media team and choose people to work with, train them? I'm currently in a stage where starting to build some teams out with companies that I work with internally and then also working with like contractors. It's building out a long-term team. I'm curious how you do that.

Yeah, totally. I was the first creator for the brand. And so it was a little easy, different and easier for me. The first creator was a super fan of the brand that we were just paying attention to who was posting stuff and the guy floored us with a video. But we've, I think we have weird advantages that don't really apply to other people. Like we just have a lot of subscribers and reach, so it's very easy for us to recruit creators at this point. But I think if I were starting over, What's really key is like you have to be the initial creator and you have to create the templates that work so you can bring in talent and train them, or at least have somebody that's equivalent to that. Just hiring a creator and being like, create content, doesn't work.

Yeah, 100%. It's the same thing with writing. The, I've been ghostwriting for founders for 3 years and the only relationships with the ghostwriter work are where the founder has already done it themselves. They know how to do it. They just don't have time anymore. They're at like 2,000, 3,000 followers and the time is just not there.

Everything has to come from a place of authenticity. Right. And as a founder, you're the most authentic person to deliver your message. And that's irreplaceable.

Yeah. How did you start sharing your ideas and thoughts on Twitter? How did that start? And what have you seen from that?

I started, I think it was like 2 years ago and it was after my friend Sean Frank told me I should start tweeting, but it's been pretty remarkable actually. I went from like unknown and I think I'll still be unknown to like having, I apologize, having a niche kind of audience and following to the point it's actually so weird. Like once a month somebody will recognize me on the street and I have no idea how, but it's the right people. That's what matters. Like you always want the right people. Like I always tell people, you don't want to be famous. You just want to be niche famous, right? The right people know who you are that matter. Because if everyone knows who you are, you won't have a life.

Exactly. Yeah, it's, I prefer getting recognized at a startup event, which happens and has been a cool feeling than getting recognized on the street of New York and fearing for my safety and my wife and children's safety for sure. Maybe it's a little less money, but probably not anyways.

Yeah. I think my biggest advice for Twitter though is you need to be doing something interesting to be interesting.

Yes.

I know that's like a weird thing to say, obvious, but like it's really easy to build a personal brand when you're doing something.

Yes, I completely agree. There's a lot of people who aren't doing anything and want to build a personal brand, but you got to be doing cool shit. I, I had this thing called the cool shit law that I came up with a while ago. I was like, the cooler shit you do, the cooler people you meet, and the cooler people you meet, the more cool shit you're inspired to do.

Yeah, I think, yeah, that's the gist of it. I, I actually won't tweet unless I have something interesting going on. Like I, I didn't tweet for 8 months and then I'm like, okay, now I'm working on a candy brand. Just gonna talk about it for a few months and go silent again.

What does your average day look like? Working? What apps are you in specifically as well?

Hmm. I wake up and the first thing I check is probably YouTube Studio. I check the most recent videos, I check stats, I check overall channel stats across all channels. And I actually do that like an hour each day. So I just spent, I spent like way too much time doing that, I actually, I think, but it keeps me in the know. Of what matters for my business. It's like checking your financials every day. What matters to me the most is checking our social vital signs every day. And then after that, it's usually like my focus lately has been on Kandi. So my day is actually just very operations heavy. Standing up manufacturing is something that I've been overseeing personally. And that's about 8 hours to 6 hours on my day right there. Um, and then I'll probably devote an hour or two to like coaching.

Team. And so for setting up manufacturing, does that mean traveling or video calls or a lot of emails and research?

Yeah, I might, but it also means really annoying stuff like machines breaking and you have no idea why. You gotta roll up your sleeves and try to fix it yourself because the company will not send out their person for a week. Or like figuring out regulations and guidelines around food and health safety, but Yeah, look, I think the core thing that makes me successful is I'm just very persistent and I'm not really scared of diving into things that are like unknown. I think like people just don't try enough stuff. Like even entrepreneurs now that have, I know it's a hard time for a lot of people out there. I completely get that. Like Mini Katana isn't necessarily growing this year either. So it's just a hard year for everyone. but like my reaction to that was like, okay, I see this coming. Let's just go start a candy brand and figure that out in a whole new vertical with this insane product that's really yummy. So it's, that's my reaction to it. And I, like, my advice for people is you just gotta try more stuff. If you're not constantly, as a digital marketer, the internet changes so much that if you're not constantly reinventing yourself every year or your strategies every year, you fall behind very quickly.

Completely agreed. When Elon was buying Twitter, I got very nervous because most of my revenue was coming from Twitter, right? And so I was like, all right, gonna hire a video editor. Over 6 months, grew my Instagram to where it was like profitable and doing well. And it was like, that was, I felt so much more safety. I feel safety around Twitter now, but I was like, all right, thankfully did some weird stuff and, or not weird stuff, did some like viral crazy stunts and stuff to grow it. And now have another platform that, all right, I can make money doing this. I completely agree. You gotta be trying weird stuff, trying new stuff, not being afraid of failure and embracing it. Were you always persistent as a kid? Just like a persistent kid as well?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's the thing that I've always been. What, it's funny how like video editors are such a big unlock.

Um, yes.

Or like any kind of editor, like if you have, if you're trying to build a brand, writing like a ghostwriter is equivalent to an editor. Hmm.

Yeah. A good ghostwriter just edits your thinking, your rough thinking, or a good ghostwriting relationship. There are some founders who want you to do everything themselves, and that's not good. And it's the same with video, I bet. Yeah, there it is. I think like standards, that's what I've been most impressed working with my video editor and he films for me as well because he's in New York and he will just tell me like, do that again. Do it again. And I was not used to that. And it was a really cool feeling to like, all right, we got to up our standards on video. When somebody is like really good at their craft, it pushes you, right? There.

Yeah, I think, I think once you figure out templates and format, hiring an editor is like step 2. And then you can basically build systems around that.

100%. Curious. Yeah. Let me see. I don't know if some other questions. Oh, so pulling up some tweets, 'cause this is always fun. Aifeetpics.com, you own it. Are you bullish on it?

No, it's just a meme. Exactly.

Yeah. I do think there, it might be worth millions. Do you actually own it? Is that yours?

Yeah.

Wow. How much did you pay for it?

Like $10, like when the AI thing happened, when ChatGPT happened, I'm like, okay, I'm just going to buy a bunch of AI domains. Like our theme of our conversation today has been like, just be on trend and try new stuff. Just try it. Just do it. Like it's something that's dominating everyone's minds, dude. Go look into it. Fair.

And another tweet, great product can overcome bad branding. Great branding can't overcome bad product. Have you seen that in your own life with other brands? Was there something that made you think of that? Because it's 100% true.

Yeah, I see it all the time. Like, it's in this order. It's like great product, distribution, and then brand in order of importance to me. It's very difficult to build a successful business without a great product. And like, we talk about trying new stuff, right? It's like you talk to most of the founders doing badly right now. They haven't launched anything new in a very long time. It's, have you launched a new great product in the last year? And then the answer is always no. It's okay. That'll probably fix 50/50. That fixes your problems. I'll bet money on it. That's how important it is. I, but I think like where I've seen it really fail is like Minikatana does not have a great product. Right. So I know that's really odd to say because I'm obviously it's doing okay, but if you look into it. It's tamed out, right? And the level of attention we get does not align to the revenue at all. So what that means is I've picked a really bad category slash product to go into, and I can't overcome that problem at all. I'm stuck with it. The, the worst decision you can make for your business is wrong category. And that's a day one decision, right? You're just stuck with it. But like for Kandi, it's growing hyper rapidly, going fast, and it's everyone can eat candy. And I have a little bit of a, of attention viral advantage. So of course it's easy. So it's, that's an example of where like a great product will really help you. Many Katana has great distribution, but doesn't have a great product.

That's fascinating. Has the Katana channels, that network of channels has to be making, you know, significant amount of money just from YouTube alone, right? As well.

Sure. But it's like Shorts revenue. I mean, we're pivoting to the long form. We're getting good at it, but that's going to take some time. But generally speaking, AdSense revenue is never really big cakes for a creator. Like it's a start.

Got you. Got you. That's really fascinating about choosing kind of the category and niche that you want to go into with it. I feel like candy is infinite TAM. Is worldwide. Can't get much bigger than candy. You'll find it everywhere.

Yeah. And there's a lot of exceptional people working on bad opportunities, but that's okay. Like you could, I think another thing that founders tend to do is they get stuck on their business being them in a weird way. And I've been there too. Oh, Mini Katana is a part of my identity. Yeah.

I thought you were the Katana guy. That's you, right?

But you're more than that. You really gotta zoom out. That's a really small part of your life, right? Like you're much bigger than just a brand or a project. Even in personal relationships, that's very important, like prioritizing family. But like outside of that entrepreneurship, it's important to take a step back and zoom out at times.

How do you like to do that?

I just write a lot. Like I journal every day. I write paragraphs every day.

Nice. I love journaling at night. That is my nighttime pre-bed activity. It's, yeah, nice to turn off the phone and just put words to paper.

Yeah. It's also like a glimpse into the past, right? Like I can open it and flip 3 years ago and, oh, 3 years ago I was so broke. So if I'm not doing well today because something bad happens, oh, It's been much worse.

Yeah, it's a pretty magical feeling to look back in the past and be like, oh, that's what I was thinking. I was trying to hit this income goal. Now it's way higher. Or maybe I was hoping to be a different place, whatever. Yeah, it's, dude, I struggle with that. Turning off the phone sometimes. I journal every night before bed, but definitely struggle to disconnect. And let's, what you're saying is my brand is super tech cyberpunk, right? As I am the guy who's super connected, so how do I disconnect? It's, it's really, uh, and it has no, it has nothing to do with that, but it's more just, I think we're all addicted to the internet to some degree at this point in our lives or at this point in the world. Um, so trying to unwind is really important. So I'm glad you brought that up.

Yeah, I think I'm addicted to my phone, but like the thing is, is people respect people who have boundaries. Right. So no, I can't talk right now. I'm hanging out with my kids. Like when somebody, people say that to me all the time, right? People have families. I really respect that. Like you're somebody who cares about your family. Like people respect it when you have boundaries and when you know what's important to you. And like, yeah, don't be desperate. Don't be addicted to your phone or try not to. Yeah.

Yeah. I definitely feel that. I think similarly is. People are respected in business when you have boundaries around the business first. And same with writing. Steven Pressfield talks a lot about this for writers is when you decide to turn pro, it's like, all right, go have fun golfing. I gotta, I've got deadlines, I've got work to do. And it's hard to do when you're not getting paid yet as a writer, but then it gets easier and easier. Like I just hit 128 weeks straight for my newsletter and I wasn't getting paid at that for the first 50 to 70. And I was just, all right, gotta stay up late. But my fiancée definitely learned to respect it. My friends did. Um, so something big for creators is setting boundaries around your work in, in both ways. Um, yeah, I think that's, that might be an essay I gotta work on.

I think people, like the leading reason why people, people don't try enough and then they become a successful creator after doing that. But the leading reason why creators stop being creators is burnout. That's the number one reason. It's not an income problem. It's just, they don't have boundaries. They don't have boundaries for a lot of years. And eventually they reach a point where they're just mentally unfit. So I think setting those early and understanding what you're willing to sacrifice and what's important to you, that's how you have a long and prosperous career.

That's facts. You don't want to burn out. I see a, yeah, I don't want to join the 27 Club of creators or whatever. Live fast, die young. I'm hoping to write for the rest of my life and create content and make shit on the internet. So yeah, really, really good mentality. Do you think that's why a lot of YouTubers were quitting? Maybe not a lot, but I just saw it in the headlines recently.

No, a lot of YouTubers are quitting, but yeah, the, the other problem with creative passions is we go into them because we genuinely love them. I actually love making videos and I love YouTube. Even outside of Manikitsan, I probably would have ended up on YouTube anyway. I've always wanted to do that. And when we stop, like when we start doing it every day with unhealthy boundaries in particular, it becomes work, right? And you don't want it to become work. You want it to be a passion. I'm gonna keep that flame alive. That's really what happens over time to these YouTubers. They're like, oh God, I have to get up and shoot this video and edit it. It's, they don't enjoy it anymore.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely understood. I, filming's different than writing I'm finding out is I find filming a lot more tiring. Like I could write a lot longer. I, I don't feel exhausted as much. And then go out to film. Like I have scheduled tomorrow, I'm doing like street interviews on Washington Square Park talking to strangers. And maybe it's just the fact that I have to go outside and talk to people for hours that is tiring. And maybe it wouldn't be tiring if I'm just doing it here, but I do think filming and writing is different. And maybe more YouTubers should be writing. I don't know. Or give it a try at least.

I actually think they go hand in hand. You need a good, uh, script. To get good performance, but I think in your case it's just, you prefer writing.

That might be true. I do love writing. Yeah. Are most of the Katana videos scripted or is it a mix?

It's a mix, mixed bag. I think, like I said, like it, it truly has to be an active passion for it to perform well. There has to be an inkling of, okay, we are moving, we're going in this intent with the video. But if videos are not passionate and they're mass produced, you can tell. And we fall into that trap as well, where like the performance starts dropping off and you're like, oh, let's fix this. But like, you look at very successful creators and they're constantly reinventing themselves. So everyone loves talking about MrBeast, but he's changing his tactics every single video, which is just this long, right? So it's like That's why he's successful.

Yeah. Yeah. Even I know he's now working with Amazon Prime for some video, some big game show of some sort. Another reinvention there. Yeah, I think, yeah, I'm happy for him.

I think that was the right call. I, I was, I've been saying that for years, like he's not touching the older demographic. Like he has to actually launch into other platforms that touch older people.

Yeah, to be able to hit both is really big. If you could hit the grandmas and the grandchildren at the same time on some fun videos. That's a great point. I think I see that a lot with writers who are trying to do like a curatorial newsletter or something where it's just super formatted, templated, or maybe using ChatGPT. And it's, that's not how you write. Like you're not gonna have fun doing that. Like it's really painful. Or Twitter for, yeah, it's just not how good writing is written with formulas. Sure, there's some rules, but not really. You write however the hell you want.

Do you use any AI tools?

No, not ChatGPT, not any writing tools. I'll use it for video and stuff, but I'm a better writer than ChatGPT, so I don't feel a need to use it.

I kind of respect that. Do you ever get like writer's block and you're just like, let me type in ChatGPT and see if it can give me ideas?

No, I just write until I have ideas. Yeah, I use it for art. I like DALL·E cuz I suck at graphic design in comparison to what DALL·E can produce. But I don't know, I have too many ideas and I think ideas come from writing, like, and the ideas that you're passionate about come from the act of writing. And so just asking ChatGPT for ideas. Might give you some SEO-friendly ideas or some whatever, but I just don't think it'll be the ones, the best ideas or the purest.

I've been seeing like more and more like almost the commoditization of like newsletters and writing and you can tell when something's written by AI.

Yeah.

Not even the English, but I'm definitely seeing like more and more pieces out there being, at least AI helping write them. At times.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's definitely disappointing to see.

You know, one thing I'll say is we aim for such high quality content. Like every video is unique. Everything's done well. That app, when the AI thing like started happening, I was like, oh, I looked at a Sora demo and I looked at Trash APCA and I started looking, seeing mass produced AI videos show up on Shorts in particular on platforms. I was like happy about it. I know that's a weird reaction. I'm just like, we make such good stuff. If everything else is sludge, if everyone else wants to take a shortcut, like that's just better for us. That just builds a bigger moat for us.

Yeah, exactly. So when AI came out, ChatGPT and everybody started using it to write, and I see a lot of it on Twitter, ChatGPT tweets or replies. There's like auto ChatGPT. I was like, oh, You know what ChatGPT can't do? Be funny or make memes. And so that's when I totally leaned into humor and all that. And it has been such an unlock because I am one of one in that. ChatGPT will never replace that. And even if it's not funny, even if it's serious personal stories, ChatGPT can't do personal stories. So if you're sharing your personal stories, there is no AI that's going to copy you or beat you on that.

So it's— Personal stories are what rules the world.

Yeah, especially sharing personal stories. I hope to see more of that on Twitter. I see a lot of stories, not, you're not, I see a lot of people telling stories about other people and I love personal stories and I hope, I also think it's a very, um, therapeutic thing to do, like to write about yourself and write about your story. That's what journaling is most of the time, at least for me, is writing about my day or conversation or a story. So I, I hope to see more people doing that.

Yeah, that's how I built my brand. And that's basically like what I try to do.

Um, on Twitter, you mean?

Yeah, on Twitter at least. I also have a really weird writing style too. I think that helps. Yeah, I just, I think that's what people want to see. They want to see authenticity. And in a world where everything is being automated away, like authenticity just stands out way more.

100%. Authenticity is so much more valuable in a world of automation and AI. Just be your authentic self on the internet. I wish I could just put that on a giant billboard. I want to end with a quick this or that game. Um, just say this or that of apps/products. So starting out, does that sound good?

Sure.

All right. And you could explain why if you want to or not, either one. All right. Notion or Google Docs?

Google Docs.

Any particular reason why?

We actually use both and our CMS for content, we built a custom one in Notion that we've been using for the last 2 years. Has all of our data and scheduling everything, but I just find like the fact that you can go to google.com/doc therapeutic and it's just so simple. It's like opening a new page on a notebook. Like it almost feels that simple. There's something like beautiful about that. Notion is like a whole thing. Like you get distracted. There's a million things I can put on the page. No.

Yeah, it's definitely distracting. I guess video editing tools, Final Cut Pro or Premiere.

Our team uses Premiere. Yeah, I think Premiere is more the YouTube standard.

Interesting. Is there a reason why?

I'm not a great editor myself, so I'm not gonna pretend to talk about something I'm not good at.

Fair enough. And curious, what about for kind of the backend of the business? Are you on Shopify or anything like that?

Yeah, we're on Shopify.

How'd you choose that?

It's hard to beat Shopify, to be honest. I don't think there's a comparable market. Uh, there's no competition.

Yeah, I was trying to think. Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking like Shopify or blank. There's not much.

Yeah, that sums up the reason why.

Fair enough. Cool. This has been really awesome. I, I've been hoping to talk to you for a while because you're right, man, like your voice is authentic, your writing style, your story, and authentically you, which is sick. And I hope to keep just seeing your shit online and I've taken a lot from it. Appreciate it.

That means a lot.