Growing $1M/year courses (course sales, tricks, growth)

If a professional designer looks me in the eye and says that they're using like AI generative tools beyond like Midjourney imagery, I'm talking about like interface generative stuff, they're lying. Like, it's just not true. You're like trying to make a cool LinkedIn post. Like, it's not true.

Let's blow up the internet.

From the basement to the higher net.

Scrolling, tapping, man, we ain't done yet.

Let's blow up the internet.

So how do you grow a course in the year of our Lord 2024 or 2025 or whatever year people are listening to this?

Diving right in. It's such a good question. And the emphasis on this year is a good one because I feel like the playbook's changed like 4 times. Like when I first started, it was so easy because no one was doing Twitter threads and you just do a Twitter thread and put a CTA at the end and just print money over and over and over again. And it's not like that anymore. Um, and so I think that the high-level idea still remains that you gotta give so much of your material away for free and do it in a way that has standalone value that is not directly attached to like a pay me CTA. If you are putting out like, hey, I made a course, buy my thing, buy my thing, buy my thing. You'll get crickets. You'll get absolute crickets. And so like, here's the thing though, is like, as someone that makes courses, you have this innate fear that like, well, I can't, give away too much of my secret sauce, because that's what I'm charging for. And people are going to get in there and they're gonna get pissed off. It's like, what I always tell people is I have now had well over 5,000 people take my course. In some shape or form, I have given away every single lesson of that course for free on Twitter and/or YouTube, every single one, most of the time in multiple different versions. Out of 5,000 people, I've had exactly zero people say anything about the content being publicly available. That's it, man. Just like talk about the thing that you're good at, keep talking about it. And what you're doing is effectively testing your content in public domain, which is a good thing to do anyway before you actually codify it in a curriculum and hit record and throw it into Descript and all that kind of stuff. So like my curriculum, I was shaping on the fly as I was seeing what was getting the most comments on Twitter. And I'd be like, oh, that's kind of interesting. I should double down. I'll do another tweet thread on that. And then I keep nesting the tweet threads. And then all of a sudden you have this viral parent thread and people are like sending it to me. I'm like, okay, that's kind of interesting. I should find a parallel idea and double down on that. And I just kept building the curriculum in public. And then somewhere, not as like the dominant ask, but somewhere I'm putting like, hey, I got this course coming. If you like this and you want to go deeper, sign up here. And I made that ask consistently just to get people on a waitlist. And I think that has like a kind of a different feel. And you can even, if you're really invested, you could drip out valuable content in the waitlist, get people kind of behind the scenes of the course. But like in the grand scheme of things, I've done this for, gosh, over 4 years now. I've had probably less than 10 tweets. For me, it's all Twitter, but you know, it applies everywhere. But like I've probably had less than 10 instances of me pushing as like the dominant piece of content and enroll CTA with a link to pay me. I want to do as much as possible of giving value in public, capturing emails, and then selling in private.

Yes, yes, 100%. It's been the same with me. Um, you know, I have my Meme Lord course, which doing around $1K a month and not pushing it at all. It's just a funnel kind of thing where people are on my newsletter, they see it, or, uh, when they sign up for, uh, my software now, Meme Lord Technologies, they you know, uh, see it. Um, so it's, it's just kind of a subtle push. Um, similar thing. And, uh, so I'm really interested as well because I'm looking to launch more courses down the line all around memes and marketing. Um, and so you've done over 5,000 course sales. I think we talked last time, if you're comfortable saying, uh, over, over a million or 2 million or so in, in revenue. What, what other, uh, what other tricks and, and, uh, do you recommend cohort-based courses still, or are you an async kind of guy? Personally, I'm async courses. I never wanted to do a cohort because of the timing and everything, and I like async. Um, what are your thoughts? What's kind of the meta right now? What's hot?

Such a good question. And I think there's probably like two different paths, so I'll maybe chunk off the first one. And a big part of the course, which has varying degrees of relevance depending on the topic, is like, how expensible is your course? For me, it's like a super professional skill. Like, I don't have great metrics, but about half of all of my sales are attached to a corporate credit card. And so I do everything that I can to one, make that journey really easy. Like, I literally have like a Google Doc button that you can like, you can click and it will take you to a Google Doc with like a pre-written letter that kind of feels like in the voice of an employee sending it to their manager with like social proof and a CTA. And then I lean into like team discounts. So if you do 3 or more, you get 25% off and I make it super, super easy for inside sales and for people to like, like bubble up my course to like larger organizations. And that's worked really well. You can also partner with these bigger companies where I'll like, for instance, like Shopify would be a good example where like I just created a Shopify discount code. I guess now that I'm putting that in the ether, anyone could use that. You get 25% off if you type in Shopify. And what they do is they just put this into their onboarding materials. So whenever they hire a new designer, they say, here's the link, use this card, use this code. And every single new employee just gets funneled through that process. And like, I reinforce that in a lot of the messaging. Like if you would tease apart my copywriting, how I'm positioning the course on Twitter, how I'm talking about it in like my trailers. It's all teams, teams, teams. This is where the teams— I never would say like, we're 5,000 designers. Anyone can say that and anyone can paste a bunch of like really interesting like team logos cuz that one person at Netflix took their course in 2019, you know? So all of my language is around like where teams have sent 5,000 designers to learn Figma. Like a subtle reframing, right? Like a subtle reframing.

Dude, that is so smart. And now that I'm thinking about it, so I've been working with Dani over at jam.dev, um, for, for the last couple years and, and that's actually how she phrases it and we've never really talked about that. Um, but that is so smart and something that I'm going to, uh, actually change and, and change a little bit because, uh, on Memelord Technologies, like I have teams at Beehive, multiple people at Beehive, multiple people at Coinbase and other firms and multiple people at Polymarket all using it. Right. But I don't say teams. I just, you know, I did the, did the, did the logo thing, to be honest. Yeah.

It's a— and that's what everyone does.

That's what everyone does.

I do a bigger stamp of approval if it's clear that like, oh, this was a corporate decision.

This isn't just like, yeah, like the head of marketing, his intern, his intern, like the whole thing. Like everybody's on there for PolyMarket and, um, and they're just dominating right now. So I think that's—

have you asked any of them for like testimonials? Like any kind of—

yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've gotten, I've gotten testimonials not from them, but I've gotten testimonials from a bunch of people. But yeah, I should definitely ask for them too. And so I think that is so smart. Also just the collaborative feature, I'll be adding that to MemoreTech. And, um, yeah, that is, that's brilliant. The discount codes for companies. Um, oh man. That is, that's crazy.

There's a lot to run on. Go to, hey, as a resource, go to growth.design and look at how they have set up this funnel to empower like some random employee to upsell into their company. They do it amazing. I basically created a simplistic version of like their playbook exactly. Wow.

That's so smart. I, so, uh, for context as well. So, uh, Memelord Technologies, it's either $6.99 a month or $69 per year. Love it. Um, and I actually, you know, most people are cool with it. They're cool paying whatever. But I did have somebody message me the other day saying, hey, like, I can't corporate expenses because the CFO is going to be pissed off seeing 69. And I was like, well, your CFO is just not cool enough, I guess. But, you know, I, I do think maybe, maybe that was an error. I don't think so because people are generally pretty chill. I don't think so either. And it fits on brand. But there is something to be said. Like the other day, it was actually pretty cool. Somebody tweeted that they made a a Brex card or whatever, like a corporate card to buy it. And I was like, oh shit, like that's, you know, that's a huge, like that's, that's a big signal because that's the point of Memelord Tech is it's, there's a bunch of meme editors. There's a lot of like whatever, but none for marketers. And so that's why I wanted to build that was like the marketing tool for, for Memelords and then social media managers. So, um, man, already, already getting some, some cool bits of wisdom. Working at Maven. Um, you know, you were, you were, uh, first designer there if, if I'm, if I'm correct.

Yeah, one of the, I was the third employee.

Yeah. Yeah. Did you see any, uh, patterns with top course creators? And, um, you know, for, for context as well, I took a Maven course, uh, from, from Adit and Brandon, uh, Make Your Mark it was called.

My wife took that.

Yeah, dude, it was the same. I, I still can't believe they named it the same as a whiskey. Um, which is so funny because they were 18, so they never drank, I think. And so they just named it the same name as a whiskey. And, um, and they did what you were saying back then in 2021. It was so easy, like drop a thread, CTA, like everybody, I was getting so many newsletter subs that way. You've had to get a lot smarter. You've had to be, you know, a lot, a lot, a lot smarter these days. So yeah, curious, um, you know, patterns that you saw in, in top course creators and not just who made a lot of money, but enjoyed it. And like are still doing it now? Because a lot of people like, like Arden and Brandon, they cashed out and then they, they stopped doing it. Um, you know, I've talked to Brandon. He said he just burned out. Like it was just, you know, not fun. I've talked to other friends who've done it. So, so people who enjoy it and also made good money doing it. Do you have any thoughts? I know that's a big question. That's a—

Yeah, I mean, there's just so many different ways to take it. And I think the reality is that it actually is kind of tied a little bit to your earlier question about the differences between self-serve and cohort-based courses, because I I think that, that, so maybe we can even start there and then talk about it through the different angles because an element of a cohort-based course is you have to be drawing some amount of life from interacting with people. You know, like if you don't like that part, it's like, it's not worth it because sure, you can command a higher price point, like a significantly higher price point by adding some level of people feeling that they're getting access to you, that person that they're like following on Twitter, they're subscribed to the newsletter and all of a sudden it's like, whoa, they're here. I'm in. This like exclusive group and I get to see part of them that like is not publicly available, you can command a higher price point for that straight up. But it's not really worth it if you don't like that stuff.

Yeah. That's why I never wanted to do the cohort.

You're gonna burn out.

But that's like, you know, it's via Slack. It's 1 hour a week of calls, but like the cohort part, it's just too much. Like it's a lot of hours.

And so there's a, so there's different formats, right? And so like, actually this was something that I was like a really big proponent of and. A way that Maven has kind of shifted maybe what like the mean course looks like right now is like in the beginning was all live sessions and it's just like, hey, we're getting up, all knowledge transfer is happening live. Personally, I have zero interest in that. That's not fun at all. It's incredibly draining actually. Now the difference between no live element and just a little bit of live element is enough to make it so that you can position your course as a very premium offering. And there's like a price point increase that's attached to that. But like I was trying to figure out a model where I don't wanna do anything more than what you're doing actually, where it's just one live call a week. And I also kind of wanna keep that fresh. So the model that is becoming like really popular among the courses that not only are having success, but that there's like a longevity to the instructors, uh, cuz a lot of the people that are doing 24, like all of the, like just only live courses, they burnt out. It's hard to do that unless you're like, yeah, they did born to be an educator, you know?

Yeah.

Most people are not, they're practitioners. So, The model that is really interesting, I think, is thinking about this like hybrid course where you have as much of the knowledge transfer that can happen async as possible. Great. Like anything that, uh, let me put it this way. A live session should be reserved for things that can only happen live. And those are often more like discussion, more back and forth, more dynamic, more question and answer. And that part's kind of fun. Like I like that. So like what I would do is, I have like my course offering, like all of the videos at the front of the week. And then on the ideas for the first 3 days, any questions, what do you wanna talk more about? What's unclear? Where do you wanna go deeper? Drop it into this channel. And then on Thursdays we'll get together, go through it as a group and like go really deep on that content. And then Fridays you'll submit a work, like some kind of a project. That format actually is like, it's not that much work. It's not that much work. And you can charge twice as much. Now the disclaimer is I like, I like having some level of interaction. I like it when most of it is async or like I do a lot of Loom videos. So most of it is Loom videos, not live sessions.

Dude, Loom videos have been such a game changer for me.

They're amazing.

Like, yo, I, so I have a couple of employees and, um, I find meetings a lot of the time very draining, especially when it's like pointless to have a meeting when you could just send a video or obviously like, like Looms have been such a game changer and now like Oh man, the AI for Loom, it describes what it's about. It's good, huh? So it's really good actually. Shockingly good. Yeah, shockingly good and like weirdly good. And now I'm like getting to the point where like categorizing the Looms and folders, cause there's so many. And what's so nice too, as you know, and talk about as you grow a team, maybe like you're able to just onboard people with all these Looms. It's so nice. Yeah. All right, back to that. Have you grown your team or like what's kind of Is it— are you solo?

I've grown it and shrunk it. Actually, everything that I do is a family business.

Really? Really? That's so cool.

So literally everything.

Yeah.

Wife helps. And then I have a sister-in-law and a brother-in-law. I basically hired my siblings.

Don't you have a 1-week-old baby?

No, we're up into— we're up to like 8 months now. So she's interacting.

So is she— is she helpful? Plus, plus, plus.

She is helpful or certainly not helpful. Yeah, this is, uh, this is my, my Mio energy shot that I now keep directly by my computer because I'm always—

Those are so good. Those are so good. I love those. Um, that's sick, man. Uh, how is working with your family? Like, I was not expecting to go down this tangent, but it's, uh, it's something I've thought about a lot. My parents run a business together and, and honestly, like, when the good times are good, it's good. But then like during stressful times, it could be really stressful household, you know?

Yeah, you feel that with like the spouse a little bit. It's like, that was one of the reasons I got married was like, I was so attracted to my wife because she was like super ambitious, wanted to start companies. Like, should we just like get married and start companies together? Like, yeah, that sounds amazing. So that was kind of where it all came out of. And I think that there's like different types of companies, right? So like the— I'm— everything I'm doing as of right now is very much so like, it's lifestyle business, you know? It's like, nobody's working 40 hours a week. We're like enjoying our time and like, you know, the business has evolved many times, and it's really fun to like sit down as a group and kind of think through that. But it's, you know, there is a dynamic where like, I, at the end of the day, I'm calling the shots way more than I would in an environment where I'm like at Maven or something like that. And you're surrounded by people that are like really deeply embedded in the space. So like, it's, it is a little bit more like, family as a way of extending your own abilities. That being said, there are surprising little unlocks. So like, I have a brother-in-law who's a videographer and good with animation, and like, it's fundamentally changed the way that I approach things now, because now I'm constantly asking myself, how can video be a competitive advantage here? And that's something that I've never been able to do before. And it started not because I wanted video to be a competitive advantage, it was just, nah, you know what, let's just hire on my brother-in-law. And I don't know, my— maybe too much context, but like, my— I grew up with a grandpa that kind of provided for everyone. And, you know, it's just so generous and like, kind of, you know, was the tide that lifted all the family boats. And I've always looked up to that. And so like, for me, this was my opportunity of like, you know, we have a full profit share system, right? I just give 10% to my two siblings' households each. And that's like a really fulfilling thing for me. It makes no sense on paper, but it's like a really, it's like a cool thing that I get to do as someone that works in tech where they don't, they don't work in tech, you know, like they don't have that kind of ceiling.

So dude, that is amazing. Um, I grew up different, different grow up, but, um, you know, grew up on Mac Miller and, uh, and you know, he always talked about putting the homies on. A lot of rappers talk about that, right? And I always dreamed of that. And so being able to support friends, um, like I've hired hired friends, videographers, my friend who's a comedian in Brooklyn and, you know, comedians don't make a lot early days, but I've thought he's gonna be famous since we were like 15, so I just hired him to make some videos. You know, that is one of the good things that making a little bit of money does if you do it right. And I think that's really cool, man. I think that's awesome. I want my little brother to start working for me. He's at college. I'm like, he actually ran a meme page before I ever ran anything with memes. He was like making memes in like 7th grade. Great and had this like viral Instagram meme page. So I want to get him going on some stuff. So really cool. Switching topics a little bit, design and marketing. I am not a classically trained designer. I've been on Photoshop since I was a little kid, you know, 11 or 12, and have just like, you know, always loved it and have learned Figma a little bit, but Um, really like design has become like a huge part of my brand and I would say competitive advantage where like no one notices it at first. And now like every day it's, it's compliments around like the cyberpunk branding, the Windows 95 design around Memelord Technologies. Um, so yeah, just curious your thoughts on, uh, design, uh, and marketing and, and how, how it can propel a company forward.

Man, you kind of said it honestly. It's, it's, you feel the absence of it, right? And so like, I totally agree. Like I opened up your email and I'm like, it feels good. Like it feels good. Cause there's like a, there's a vibe. Vibe that is consistent and aesthetically pleasing and unique. And man, I mean, I feel like I'm always having to try to use design to stand out in a sea of designers, and it's like kind of hard. But like, when you, you kind of step outside of design Twitter, all of a sudden it's like, all right, the bar is not that high.

Yeah, dude, it's funny talking to design friends. Like, they are very, um, it's like a dick measuring contest sometimes. Like, yeah, yeah, dude, honestly, I'll, I'll be honest here. So is it with memes? You're like, oh, that's a danker meme. Like, that meme went more viral. Like, we, we're, we're measuring.

I believe it. Yeah, I believe it. Yeah, I always look at the memes with envy, right? I look at that, I'm just like, man, my brain doesn't think. I just, I'm like, I don't make that connection. I'm like, I wish I could do that. So I just—

but I'll see that with like a friend's meme that pops off, I'm like, oh, motherfucker, you know? Like, I believe it. Um, Yeah. Do you think anybody can learn Figma and, and, and be a good designer? It's not just about the tools, but like how to— I think a lot of people are curious about how to develop taste and like, what are your thoughts on that? Mine has always been just like put in the work and like that, that's it. And, and find inspirations. But what's, what's kind of your thoughts around that?

I, so I actually, I, I ask people the same kind of question actually all the time on my own podcast. And I've tried to like hone in on a way to make it a little bit more practical to talk about because it's super wishy-washy and like pie in the sky kind of thing.

It's like some Rick Rubin shit, bro.

It is.

It's like the beat. Like, we don't know design. We don't actually know what's cool.

We don't know how to talk about this. So we just keep posting the same video over and over again. Exactly. I think it's— I think a way to make taste practical is I think it's almost like a regurgitation of short-run inputs. What is in your brain. I don't think that we're able to keep track of that many things. And so like so much of taste is like what we've recently been exposed to and what was sticky in that bunch. And so it's like you just have to look at a bunch of stuff, like you just, you have to. And I, and I think I'm a big proponent of like putting in the work to like organize it too. Like I do it in Notion. MyMind is another great tool, but like just collect things. Like if you want to have good taste, you have to be a collector in whatever realm is interesting to you. And I think what's cool as it relates to design specifically is, my gosh, I mean, it's so easy to recreate stuff now. So like, I feel like as a result of some of these AI tools, like, I love Visual Electric. I use it for like everything.

Oh, I haven't heard of that one. What's that?

Oh, it's like a— I just like it way more than Midjourney, basically. I never really got into Midjourney. Visual Electric does same thing. I just think it's a better product. And all of a sudden you can like reverse engineer almost anything. So I find myself saving a broader range of inputs to influence my taste. Like previously it was very much so like UI, graphic design, motion, typography, like that kind of stuff. But now all of a sudden I'm like, well, that painting is dope. That's really cool.

Save.

Or that rug is really interesting. Or that texture on that paper is interesting because now you can just like take a picture, reverse engineer a prompt, plug it into Visual Electric, and now you have that as like a material that you can work with. Like you can make anything now so easily. And so I think it's like you have to collect things and I think you have to, if you're not already there, but like you have to like almost broaden your, your understanding of what you're capable of creating with some of these new tools because all of a sudden you can make anything.

Yeah, you can literally make anything. I love that. You know, I used to clip out magazines a lot. I would get National Geographic. So I bought like a bunch of old ones from eBay and I would make these collages. And a lot of that like has inspired my work or just like psychedelic artwork. Like I was a big Grateful Dead fan growing up and, you know, had my stepdad's, his Grateful Dead shirts. Right. And a lot of that has inspired my like trippy, you know, kind of cyberpunk artwork. And, um, I think there's, you know, the stuff behind you. I bought those. I actually made that little collage or whatever from some old magazines that I, uh, got at some like thrift shop. Um, so it's, there's, there's definitely inspiration all around you. Um, and I, I think like, uh, it's the same with writers. Like I have, I have one friend, Nathan Bowe. I have had him on the podcast. He collects sentences. It's so cool. So he just—

I collect sentences because of Nathan.

Yes.

Yes.

It's so cool. And that has made him into a much better storyteller. Another writer, Billy Oppenheimer, I've had him on the podcast and he's really good at collecting. He collects and, you know, collects videos, collects clips. And for me, I use Readwise for all my like Kindle bits. Shout out readwise.io/jason for that free couple months if you need it. But like for all my Kindle stuff, like every good quote, every good, uh, it's all in one place. So I love that. I'm building that with, with Memelord tech actually. We'll be able to, you know, you're able to save a lot more memes in there and we're going to be basically building that for Memers and Memelords.

So, um, I think there's the element of it too is like collect a lot, but then you also have to like just look for so many opportunities to be creative on a blank slate as a way to kind of like refine your taste. Like you had to put into practice, like Something that's like silly, but like I've been doing for years is I take birthday cards too seriously. So I will like make something like in Visual Electric, like I'll make some kind of a scene or an image and like, you know, cut out a picture of my dad and put it on there. Or like one time I like wanted to like practice like animation. So I like made a Christmas card that was a full Webflow website. I, you know, just made it in a few hours, just messed around, but like Having, you, I guarantee like everyone listening can find more ways to be creative and make a thing that exists so far outside of like what you do for work or to make money.

I love that. That is, that is so much fun. It's, ah man, that's, that's so much fun. My, uh, so my great example of that, my wife, she works in, in fashion and, um, you know, it's just when Midjourney came out, just like got super into just making AI fashion art and she, she works in wholesale, like you know, she's in Excel all day. She's not a designer, but just wanted to experiment and have fun. And she was posting these, you know, across Twitter and just having fun with it. It's easier than ever to be creative. And I think something else around design, which I think is important for people to understand, is like you have to stick with it with your brand for a long time, for, for it to really hit, like, you know, and build a whole world, right? You know, Cyber Patterns, Means to Make Millions, the colors, the profile picture, everything. And like, that doesn't happen in one day. Like, my blog actually started under a different name and different branding. Like, this shit takes a long time and sticking with it. And like, I've gone to parties, people are like, oh, you're the purple profile picture, right? And you know, I'll see friends who have, you know, their own brands and you recognize that. And personal branding doesn't happen overnight. Marketing doesn't happen overnight, but like it's a matter of, of over time and being patient with it and, and building more and more with that brand and staying consistent with it. Um, and knowing, knowing your brand, um, and knowing what it is. So, um, yeah, I hope people, people take that to heart.

I could not agree more. Like, it's like silly, but like I have like I literally defined like color and typography styles in Figma for my personal brand and everything that I write and like all of my colors. And I always use the same hex codes. And also I don't change things very often. Like we become so familiar with, I mean, for sure the profile photo, like I can't imagine changing my profile photo, but like everything, right? It's like, there's like, you, you, you're accruing recognizability over time. And so like, I'm pretty. Nervous to change anything in that little assembling set of puzzle pieces.

Yeah, 100%, man. And if something's working, you know, you don't want to fuck it up. Yeah. Yeah. I also think like, what's your thoughts on some of the AI design tools? So I've played around with Vercel v0, Claude, both pretty cool. I don't think it replaces a designer. What are your thoughts for— do you use them at all? Like, should early designers or— yeah, I don't know.

They suck. They're not good. Design is really lagging behind development. Like, I— if a professional designer looks me in the eye and says that they're using like AI generative tools beyond like Midjourney imagery, I'm talking about like interface generative stuff. They're lying. Like, it's just not true. You're, you're, you're like trying to make a cool LinkedIn post. Like, it's not true. There's no tool yet that is actually moving the needle for professional designers. And that word professional is important because fact is a lot of people listening to this have no idea maybe how to create an interface. In that case, yeah. If you're going to try to skip a professional designer and you're okay with something that's really generic, really boilerplate, honestly, not very good.

Good.

Yeah. Then that's, that's totally different set of, that's a different playground basically. And like, yeah, you can spit out an interface now. How valuable is it? That's a whole other rabbit trail. I think right now design tools as it relates to AI are mostly in like toy land. They're kind of interesting. They're kind of fun to play with, but they all are only capable of existing within a blank canvas, zero constraints, zero existing brand system. Zero existing code. And how valuable is that? It's like really fun to tinker and just like make a little thing. But if you are a professional designer that's supposed to be integrating with anyone else on a real tech product team, they just don't help. They only really are a fun thing to tinker with in isolation. And I think a lot of that is because it's more difficult, like it's straight up more difficult to use AI for design because there are more variables. Like if you think about like, like code, for instance, in something like Cursor, you know, like you have all the context of the code base and then you're trying to generate something and the AI knows where your cursor is. Yeah, it knows what, where it's supposed to put something. But design is a little bit more ambiguous in terms of the output. But then almost always it exists on a spatial plane too. So the AI has to figure out what do I make and where the heck does it go? And that adds like an order of magnitude more complexity. That is, I think, one of the primary reasons why there's no adoption right now in professional design.

What's interesting is there's no adoption either with professional writers. Like no interesting writer who cares about their craft is using ChatGPT.

Like I, I mean, what about the more specialized tools? Like I know like every has one? Like, is it Lex or something?

It's pretty bad. Yeah, it's really, it's terrible. I haven't used ChatGPT in 3 to 6 months and it just slows you down. It'd be like if you as a designer tried to go, you think it's just faster for you to go do your thing and make it better. It's actually more work for me to go put something in ChatGPT and edit it than it would be to just go do it. And what's funny is there's also You know, one of my, one of my friends, um, was an engineer at Bubble, right? So he was building the no-code tools. I was like, oh, do you use Bubble? He's like, no, why would I use Bubble? I'm like, uh, cause you're building it. He's like, no, I've been coding since I'm 11. Like, I don't need Bubble. Like, Bubble is for people like me who aren't engineers, right? And so, yeah, we're kind of at the point where, I mean, it's cool cause like AI tools make everything easier for people who aren't professionals, but it is kind of a weird contrast where the AI tools aren't actually getting used by like the people whose skills they are like everybody else.

That's why I am so skeptical of people that like are talking about AI workflows and AI tools for social clout. I'm like, there's no way that you actually are in this practice. There's no way that you know what you're talking about. There's no way. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I, I definitely agree with that. And same honestly with memes too is like there is. No, like, good AI meme making. I mean, a little bit with Glyph, it's called, and it makes some funny stuff, but it's very limited. And so, you know, similar with like advertising, like, oh, these AI ad tools, like a lot of people talk about it, but they're so bad. Like, they're just not— they're not creative. They're not exciting. Any of the AI marketing tools, they're just terrible. Like, absolutely terrible. And you're just doing your company a disservice if you're using one of these and not actually hiring somebody who cares about craft. And, and I think like as AI slop propagates across the internet, you know, real craft will become more and more important and stand out. That's, that's my bet for the next, you know, 50 years. 100%.

I very much so agree. I also am excited about like different types of inputs. Like it's, it's tedious right now to interact with ChatGPT. A lot of the times, like you have to feed it so much context and I've invested in like, you know, prebuilt context windows and stuff like that, but it just, it takes a lot of time. Where it starts to get a little bit more interesting is, you know, when we can feed AI different types of inputs, like maybe a, you know, a, a just dump a bunch of memes and the AI would be able to like really intelligently understand, okay, what do we think is like funny? What are the trends here? And now can we create something? And like having more control over those inputs and really actually be able to do a lot of screenshots. Like we think the underlying tech is there, but the applications aren't quite there yet. So like I'm bullish on that in the long run where like as a designer, I fully believe that I'm going to be able to feed an AI like 10 screenshots of different types of designs that are really, really good, like not generic, and hopefully be able to create something that feels at least slightly novel from this more curated set of inputs. So like the only way that I'm using AI right now is almost just like preparing for hopefully it getting better. So I like organize so many screenshots and inputs because I'm like, I think this is going to be valuable in the future. That's, but it's not quite yet, but I think it will be. That's some long-term stuff.

I love that.

Yeah. Like I, like my personal taste library is like what, how, that's how I refer to it.

I, dude, every single day I put into it. It's surprising when I, um, sat down with, so I think I told you my, my best friend Shane, he runs, uh, Turbo Design. Um, and you know, first time when he's designing in front of me kind of thing, I'm like, what are you doing? You're just like looking at stuff. Like, what are you doing, bro?

That's design.

What do you mean that's design? That's not, you're just, you're looking at shit. He's like, no, that's like how most people start. And then he starts building a mood board. I'm like, that is the girliest thing I've ever seen, bro. You're like Pinteresting right now. And he's like, no, this is like normal. I'm like, okay, but like, hey, if it works. So is this just normal?

It's just, it's normal, man. I, I, every single day I dump things that I like into this Notion database. And when I start a project, I apply my filters in whatever way makes sense. I take images, I pull them out, and I paste them into Figma and then I start randomly recreating things and that's like how I start every project.

I started, yeah, I, I started embracing it with, um, you know, I've done it with quotes, but I felt weird doing it with a mood board. It felt like kind of like manifesty and then I did it and it helped and it was nice.

It does, it does, it does help. Mm-hmm. It does help.

So actually Shane, uh, I told him we were talking and he has a couple questions. Oh, perfect. So, so looking at my text right now, um, Number 1, do you like design memes? Shane just made a viral one of, uh, uh, the, the Figma in the Nintendo DS. Uh, you made that on, on, uh, Memelord Tech. I'm not sure if you saw that one.

Oh, nice. Okay.

I'll have to look at it.

But yeah, I love design memes. I have, I might be your perfect target customer because I look at like, there's, uh, this guy Alex who's always posting cool memes and I'm like, I'm like, how does he come up with that? Like, what? How does— how do you— and there is like a timing. This is this comedic timing. There's the right like language and everything comes together and it's like, that's funny. And sometimes I'm just like, my brain does not work that way. So I like them, but I almost look at them with like a little bit of jealousy because I feel like I've positioned myself more as like an educational resource rather than humor. And yeah, you can embrace—

I feel like you can, you could add some memes in there or maybe even in like—

I did one time and it flopped and I am like, oh no, I'm scared. I don't even remember what I posted. It was so, it did not work.

And sometimes like what I found too is for educational, it doesn't even have to be that funny if it just like explains it in a memorable way. Like that's the educational aspect.

All right.

Question number 2, was the Figma AI backlash warranted? I don't even, I sort of know what he's talking about.

What's he talking about? Yeah, I actually know everything. I mean, I was, I interviewed the team at Config that made the feature and And it was so weird because I knew how it worked from interviewing them, but then the way that Figma was publicly talking about the way that the AI, like the make designs feature worked was like super misleading. And so everyone kind of freaked out because they thought that it was just like ripping off Apple, but nobody realized that it's not actually generating designs. It's just assembling UIs based off of this prebuilt design system that they had built built underneath the scenes, which totally makes sense as like a foundational layer for the technology. It was always like an MVP. If they would have very clearly, very, very clearly, and the CEO made a statement, Dylan, it was like, he did not own up to it in a way that I did not think that his response was good. If they would've very clearly said, hey, this is how this works. It's not generating the designs. We have a bunch of components. It's just assembling UI based off of these components. And here's why we believe that it's setting ourselves up for the future. Totally different story. Like, I actually think it was a PR failure, not a tech failure. Interesting. Because I do think it was the right first step. And the first step was always gonna be kind of lame, but it was like, I don't know if you watched like the movies, the Dune movies, or like Dune 2 was sick. It was one of the best movies I've ever seen in theaters. Dune 1 was so boring. It was like such a foundational, like just laying the plot, like, oh, we'll be able to build interesting things on top of this. Make designs. Figma's release was Dune 1. They just didn't own it and call it what it was. And it blew up in their face.

Ooh, interesting. Okay. All right. Question 3. If you were a new designer, how would you get started?

I'll tell you how I would not get started because I see so many, too many people getting started this way, which is, you know, feeling like you need to understand UX fundamentals as like your core foundation. And I see a lot of people going through like the Google UX course or going through a UX bootcamp or like learning all of the like laws about how people perceive interfaces. I've been designing for like, I don't even know, 14, 15 years. I don't know a single one of these laws. I can't remember a single one of them. It doesn't like matter. So much of that is intuitive and it's derived from whatever problem space you're working in. If you want to to like actually stand out and give yourself a chance. Like, I think that the bar for craft and visual fundamentals has become quite high if you want to get a job in tech right now. And if you, if you don't pass that initial sniff test of like, okay, this person generally understands layout, typography, spacing, color contrast, things like that, nobody's going to give your portfolio time of day. Nobody's going to read your— doesn't matter how well written your portfolio project is, nobody will read it if you don't have visual fundamentals. And so if I'm starting up, I am obsessing over visual fundamentals and I'm just recreating all of the bet— like spend time, literally pixel by pixel copying products that are good. And then once you feel like you can consistently copy them and you're paying attention to like, why are they doing certain things this way? Why are they doing certain things that way? Then take it one step further and say, okay, what would it look like for me to rebuild LinkedIn only using the visual language of the Arc browser? And now all of a sudden you're extrapolating visuals to other products.

That's kinda hot, not gonna lie.

I think so too. That'd be kinda sick.

Somebody should make some linked arc or whatever. Arced in. I like it.

If you can do that, you can pass that initial sniff test and like build on from there. And I think spending too much time trying, convincing yourself that you're learning UX is like learning design by like reading a textbook. And I just don't think that's the way.

Dude, it's like learning business in business school or entrepreneurship in entrepreneurship class. Yeah, it doesn't.

I wasn't going to say it. You did. But yeah.

Yeah, dude, I just spoke to kids at NYU last night and basically told them like, you know, you're going to learn finance, you're going to learn accounting, you're not going to learn hustle, you're not going to learn entrepreneurship, you're not going to learn what it's like actually making money. You know, that's what always pissed me off about entrepreneurship classes with like, you'd come up with these projects, you'd present them, and you wouldn't make a dollar. And I'm like, what's the fucking point? Like, you have no idea what you're doing. You're, you, you're not doing anything.

All the hard schools are the most outsourcable skills too. Yeah, I know how to do accounting. I took all the courses. I'm never gonna do accounting. Are you kidding me?

Yeah, you just hire—

that's horrible.

I'm just gonna—

they're not that contract CFO.

Yeah, they're, they're not that expensive. Um, also a similar point around that is like Uh, writing, I don't know subjective or like, you know, pejorative, like the, the, the terms or whatever. I don't, yeah, bro. Like I, I sucked at that. Like I had, I know, uh, I, my memory, like it's in one ear out the other cuz it's fucking pointless and like it's not gonna help me, you know?

Like I don't, I'll give you that feedback though. I've been reading your newsletters and you're just, you're not using enough gerunds.

Yeah, the, the, the gerund. I'm the em dash. I didn't know what the em dash was until like 2 years ago. Like the Oxford comma. I only know what the Oxford comma is because of the Vampire Weekend song. Like, I don't remember that from English class. Yeah. Like, I don't know.

I, it works. It works. Yeah, dude. I use so many ellipses when I write. Like, it's like dot, dot, dot. I use it all the time and it's like exactly the opposite of how I was taught to write, but like, I like how it sounds.

Yeah, like I curse, I love, I love that. I purposely do that because that's, you know, style. I like using made up words, uh, you know, keeping things short. I like brief, um, that, you know, simple. I like using words that everybody can understand. That's actually a great tip for, for the internet, writing on the internet. Most of the internet is not in America, right? So use simple words that everybody can understand with a normal education. Like you're not trying to appeal to a, an English major, you know, professor. You're trying to appeal to everybody on the internet and most people don't care about your SAT words.

You know, another like little writing tip too that I think you do a good job of is you don't write long paragraphs. Like if there's like somebody sends me a paragraph with 8 sentences in it, I'm not reading that paragraph.

I'm not reading that shit, man.

There's no way I'm gonna read that thing. Like it's one thing to have a paragraph with more than 2 sentences. Sometimes I have 3, but like that's it. That's hardline, dude.

And, and, uh, on Twitter especially, like you need, you need the good hook. Um, and you, people are moving fast. Nobody wants to read your shit. You're writing books for people out there. Yeah. Yo, that's actually really interesting. I, I pay attention to this a lot is like, is the writing, like, is the paragraph like long? Like, do I like, you know, I literally think about that as I'm writing and like, it's kind of stupid. It feels stupid, but it matters. Like, does this word go extra? You know, where does it end?

There's like a, like a hanging word is like a design thing. Like if you're designing a card and maybe it's like 3 feature cards, right? Like the last thing you want is for the heading of that feature card to only have one word on the second line. The whole thing looks ugly and not balanced. It's terrible. That exact same visual principle applies to Twitter. Like I go out of my way, I will never write a sentence that has one word on the second line because it just looks bad.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like your, your aesthetics for your writing actually do matter more than like, and they never teach you that in school.

You have to unlearn everything from school.

100%, man.

I was good at writing in school. I had to unlearn all of it.

And now we're, we're doing courses and speaking at colleges. Isn't that beautiful? Um, all right, cool, man. This was fun. Where can people find you?

Twitter, @rid_design.

That's nice.

That's it.

Sick. All right, dude, this is great.