Jason Levin - Memes Make Millions

All right, Jason, welcome to the pod. Appreciate you coming on, man.

Thank you, sir. It's good to be here.

Want to start with a news topic. What are your thoughts on the Snoop Dogg Solo Stove fiasco over the past couple days?

Yeah, a lot of ad agencies try to win awards instead of selling products, and I think that was the case in this. I know the CEO was ousted. I mean, I think it was brilliant marketing, don't get me wrong, and I think it might still win awards, but at the end of the day, an advertiser's job is to sell products. And so if you're not selling, you got to go.

Why do you think it didn't sell products? Because it did work. It did, you know, take over the internet for a while.

I'm not sure. I don't know enough about smoking food, to be honest. I've never smoked food. I've smoked a lot of weed, never smoked food, so I'm not sure exactly, to be honest. Maybe just wasn't the right demographic fit, not the right target audience. I also think there was just like a bit of minor confusion where like for a day no one knew, like everybody thought that Snoop Dogg gave up weed. And I think that maybe if it came up in like a little sooner or came up in the ad earlier, I don't know, because I thought Snoop Dogg gave up weed, like that is what I thought and walked away from that ad with. So I don't know, maybe instead of going for virality and causing PR, they should have just tried to sell the product, you know.

Yeah, and I also think it was like, I think it's like a couple grand product. So who you and like at the same time also is like, who you, you know, for that product, you know, what's their target market? You know, 50-year-old white guy, essentially, does he really care like how much about Snoop quitting smoking potentially? And so is that going to, you know, actually hit the right audience to buy a product like that? Because like you said, you know, I'm 30, I've never smoked any, any food or anything like that either. So while it definitely was on my radar, just like, you know, the purchasing consent was never even thought about.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, maybe if it was, you know, some small, you know, smoking some, I don't know, I don't know, something small like a s'mores maker, I'd be down for that. Like a $50 s'mores maker that I'd take outside. Totally down, but just not the right demographic fit. They would have been, you know, they would have had better luck with like you know, some, some, uh, what's his name, um, a guy from Home Improvement, like Tim Allen or something, or like Kevin James or something. They could have the Kevin James meme or something. Like, I don't know, if they wanted to go with the viral celebrity, then maybe somebody more in the, in that purchasing power.

Yeah, yeah, I like the s'mores idea. That one probably would have rocked a bunch of dudes. Like, hi, munchies! Like, s'mores with Snoop.

I just bought s'mores sets for two of my friends. So yeah, in that demographic and my grandparents who just don't smoke weed, but really like s'mores.

So yeah, you reach all audiences there across the, across the spectrum.

Of course. Of course.

But then I would say like that just vibe or just what we're talking about there is very similar to like what you try to do. You're a marketing guy trying to make Brands go viral and yourself go viral, um, and through mostly memes, kind of like that, rather than traditional marketing. And so like, for you, what is the mix of like virality versus, you know, a smaller reach but towards the right audience? Is it always thought of in that way, or do you think about it some different way?

Yeah, not every tweet, not every post is meant to go viral. Some are for your target audience, some are just for your friends that you want to make laugh. Like, a lot of my tweets are no intention or no thought that they're going to go viral. They're just funny for my tech bro friends to laugh at and my creative friends to giggle. But a lot of my, you know, with the viral posts, when it's in your target market, great results, right? Like, For example, you know, I had a thread that went pretty viral to 1.7 million views about a new piece of AI hardware, right? And so that, like, you know, I wrote it, I had a feeling it was a hot topic. It's in my niche, which is tech startups, marketing. I had a chance that it would do well, you know, got, you know, 1,700, 1,500 followers, something like that from it. But then I had a post that was way more viral, right? I have a post where You know, it was a joke, it was a satire post, like why you should join the mafia with Tony Soprano memes and Soprano memes, right? And so that got 15 million views, but only like, you know, maybe 2K followers, didn't get a single DM except for, from my friends saying this is funny. But then like the AI one, the AI hardware got, you know, 30, 40 DMs, you know, consulting, a bunch of newsletter subscribers got like nothing from the mafia one, right? Like didn't barely even sold any books and I write about meme marketing. So I really think, yeah, a lot of people should spend less time optimizing for virality and more time, you know, making sure that the business is set and making sure you're going viral for the thing that's on brand. Like my entire Subway Reader thing, like you might have seen the Instagram that I run. I read provocative books on the subway. You know, 30 million views last month. And the only reason I do that is because I write books. Like, I did that to start promoting my book. Like, that's it. Like, it's pretty simple. Subway Reader. And now I'm helping promote other brands. And, you know, I just honestly, like, I needed a clever way to break through on Instagram for book marketing because every book marketer is just, you know, blah, blah, blah. This is my book, you know, or the top 5 reasons why I love Ryan Holiday. and it's like, I am not doing that boring shit, man. Like, I did not, you know, I didn't write a book about wisdom or stoicism or philosophy. Like, I mean, you know, maybe there's a little meme lord philosophy in there, but, you know, I wrote a book, a funny book, so I better make some funny content, you know? So I guess that's, that's really where my head is at, is like finding the right balance, knowing the intention behind a specific post. Whether it's you're hoping it's going viral or whether you're just hoping to maybe sell some books or whether you're hoping to just make your friends laugh. Because there's nothing wrong with any. It's just, you know, finding the right balance.

And if you had to give some numbers to it, what is that balance for you? Like 10% just for your friends, 90% on brand, 10%, 5%, you know, whatever the numbers are.

What are your—

where's that breakdown?

So if you remember, did you ever have Twitter circles?

Yeah.

Yeah, I miss those days because I could just tweet stuff to my specific circles or my friends, my close friends, right? Now I have like subscribers, but I don't have that many Twitter subscribers. So, eh, you know, so really like I tweet some of my dumb thoughts that I have late at night and probably shouldn't tweet, but some of them end up doing pretty well, right? And they make my friends laugh and it also portrays me more as like a human, as a real person who has like funny thoughts, right? So I don't know if there's like a perfect number. It's really like whatever's natural for you, man. I think trying to, you know, go viral, maybe like what I like to do, you know, one thread a week, you know, max to do it right. And that's like, you know, maximum. Sometimes I don't, I haven't written a thread for a few weeks, right? Except for this one. And then try to sell books because like that is one of my main goals, right? So I have a scheduled post every day that's like a meme or something about meme marketing. And then I just use a tool to auto plug my book underneath, right? And then every day I also have a scheduled post about Cyber Patterns, which is my newsletter. And then if that does well, then it auto plugs my newsletter. So like my two goals, you know, book, newsletter, you know, maybe driving some more content clients, which happens organically. So like every post has intention. Like I'm most of the time, like 85% of my posts are not to go viral. They're just to like drive subscribers and, and book sales. And like when you get enough posts that do decent and it starts adding up where you get, you know, maybe 5, 10, but you do that twice a day for 2 years, it starts adding up, you know. And so all my book sales have been primarily via Twitter, just plugging it underneath my posts. And, you know, it works. I interviewed Chris Bakke. He is a very big memelord in the Twitter world. He sold two $100 million companies, one of them to Twitter, now X. And he drove $3 million in revenue from memes, just plugging his company under viral memes. Right. And, you know, That's one way to do it, right? Is just underneath the memes. I guess the right answer— sorry, this is long, but I guess that's what podcasts are for, right?

Yeah, I love it.

The right answer is not 100% either way. So, you know, there's this idea of like dumb memes, smart threads, right? So Trung Phan came up with this. It was in his Twitter bio in like 2021. He deleted it, but I stole it. And so, you know, I quote him in my book, don't worry. But, you know, it's this idea of like, you need this smart educational content to prove you know what you're talking about. But then the funny dumb memes and the dumb jokes to get people to see the smart stuff and also for virality as well. And this, that perfect combination, you know, that's what I do. That's what Trung does. Jack Raines, Charlie Light, a lot of us basically copy that same strategy, which is like use the memes, the silliness as the magnets for like the real moneymakers, right? Because like, you know, the book is called Memes Make Millions, but memes alone don't really make millions. Like, memes are the lever to get you attention on your business that makes the millions.

Then how do you think about Instagram? You said most of your, most of your book sales are through like the Twitter post. So how do you think about the two different platforms and like what the uses are? I mean, the subway books are hilarious and really well done. So just kind of how do you view the two platforms separately, differently, or kind of the same idea?

So I kind of have a philosophy where I, my approach on a platform is how I use it. I don't use Instagram to learn, so I'm not putting educational content on there because like, that's just not how I learn and it feels really awkward to do that. I learn on YouTube, so occasionally I'll post a YouTube video of me talking. I learn on Twitter, so I'll post videos there. But I use Instagram to find memes to laugh and sit on the toilet or connect with my fiancée or whatever and friends. That's really it, is just me making people laugh at scale. I think it just feels very unnatural. I've tried filming educational short form talking head Instagrams. There's something about it that just doesn't feel right to me. But doing it on Twitter, where it's my people, that feels right. So I don't know, maybe it's just me. Like, I tweeted about this earlier. It's like, the best social media platform for you to build on is your favorite platform. Like, it's so obvious. Like, your target audience is everywhere. But if you don't enjoy it, you're going to burn out after, like, you know, 3 months. Like, you're just going to stop because you don't love the platform, and you're going to get beat by somebody who loves and lives and breathes this shit. You know, and so people can't beat me at Twitter because I love it. Like, I'm on it so many hours a day. Like, I, you know, I've been doing this since I was 14, like, tweeting, right? But like, TikTok, like, I'm dying. Like, I don't know, like, I'm on there a minute a week, like, literally, because I just have posts auto-posting from Instagram and I check how they're doing once a minute. Like, I don't know TikTok. I don't know the community. I don't know the slang. I don't respond to comments. Just don't love the platform. Um, so that was like a long-winded route of saying like, you know, each platform has kind of a different approach. Um, and like Instagram, I feel a lot more comfortable being funny and goofy. Twitter is more of like the giga brain where I— that's what I use it for. I use Twitter to learn and meet people.

So yeah, yeah, I love that framing of using the platform the way you consume it. Never thought of it like that, but super simple framework to just base how you want to post on. And then I want to talk about the Subway stuff for a second, because like I said, I really do love that one. Where'd the idea come from? Was the first video a hit? Just kind of, what was the progression of that?

Yeah, so I, 6 months ago when, all right, so 6 months ago, June-ish, June 2023, for people listening in the future when it's not 6 months ago, uh, Elon was taking over Twitter, right? And it was insane, like totally chaotic, right? And Twitter was paying my bills and not like ad share Twitter, but ghostwriting for Twitter and like getting newsletter subs and everything. All my revenue was Twitter. And here, you know, Elon, I love Elon, you know, Elon's a man, but was scaring the shit out of me, right? And so I'm like, I need to invest in Instagram and build my Instagram and I can't do it alone. And so I hired a video editor, $3,500 a month for the last 6 months. And it's, I spent 5 months totally failing, like video editor. He also film, filmographer, like he lives, you know, across the park, comes over, you know, we were doing multiple times a week. Right. And 5 months of complete failure, maybe got like 50 followers and barely any likes, no money, not a single dollar. I spent $22,000 growing my Instagram before I made a dollar back. And then made it all back in a month once I started doing the subway books. And so we tried so many different iterations. We tried sketches, we tried short form, just jokes. We tried street interviews, which now I'm doing for a different business. But like, none of those popped off on Instagram, on my personal Instagram, because it wasn't the right fit. But then once I started dedicating and posting every single day the subway book videos, it just clicked. Like, I posted the first one. you know, 50 likes, 100 likes, post the second, post the third, post the fourth. By the fifth day, the first one started picking up and going viral, and I've posted one every day since, almost every single day. And so just getting consistent. And for me as well as like, it's just so easy. Like we buy the books, we film, it takes an hour, and we have a week's worth of content. Literally in an hour subway ride, we get some tacos, we go back and we, we edit some videos, right? Uh, it's, it's simple, it's high leverage, but it took a lot of experimentation. Like I said, took $20 grand and a lot of time to figure that out, but very glad that I spent the time figuring it out.

What a story. That's crazy. $20 grand getting nowhere, then—

Yeah, I mean, so yeah, I, I would have been afraid to do that for most of my life. And I've spent the last 2 years working in startups and venture capital. And many of these startups are literally pre-revenue. They will give some 18, 19-year-old $3 million. They don't have a product. They're not making a dollar. You know, this is a year later. They still haven't made a dollar. And it's totally normal. Pre-revenue is okay. Pre-revenue is sometimes a good thing because it means you have maximum potential, right? And so I chose to think of my Instagram account as a pre-revenue account, like a pre-revenue creator, right? And so I needed to be my own VC, my own angel investor, put the money in. And yes, there was a chance it would fail. Yes, you know, 99% of startups fail, but like, that's part of the fun, you know? And so I needed to invest in mine. And personally, I wouldn't feel as comfortable investing in other people's, but I feel comfortable investing in mine because I know I can do it. If I'm putting my money to it, I'm going to do it, right?

Yeah. Bet on yourself.

Exactly. Yeah. Betting on yourself. And so working in startups and VC totally changed my perception. For most of my life, I was scared to spend money on any of my side projects. I wouldn't spend a dollar because I was, oh, what if it doesn't work? What if it doesn't work? It's like, oh, you got to spend money to make money. And like, finally, you know, get into a place where it's like, all right, this is how you do it. You know, you you can't do it for free these days, really. It's just pretty, even if you're buying, you know, a selfie camera and some stuff, it's not free to grow an account anymore. And your time is expensive as well. Like, even if it's just Twitter, like, that is your time is, that is money, right?

What was the first thing you invested in?

For Instagram or what?

No, for just in general that kind of got the ball rolling of like willing to bet on yourself?

Yeah, probably a Twitter scheduler of some sort, or Readwise as well. I love Readwise. It, you know, takes my Kindle highlights, puts them in notes, makes like a database kind of for knowledge curation. I then put that on my newsletter and, and in tweets and stuff like that. Um, for Twitter, so like when I first started out on Twitter, I heard a podcast between David Perel and Alex Lieberman, founder of Morning Brew. David Perel is like the writing guy. He makes somewhere around $5-10 million a year just doing writing classes, right? Teaching these big writing schools. And his whole idea, he started his Twitter when he was in college or right out of college. And his idea was like, I'm going to spend 2 hours a day, I'm going to invest my time for 6 to 12 months, and I think it'll pay back, right? And at the time, I was like, 2 hours a day on Twitter wasting my time. Oh, it's not a waste, it's an investment. Oh, like, I have to invest the time. It's not a waste of time. And once that changed, everything clicked, and like, my bank account went up, right? You know, the following— when you see it as like investing and you're not wasting time on social media, like, social media is here to help us make money, or it can screw you and be your heroin, right? It's your choice of how you do it, and I think that's like part of the beauty of it.

A bunch of Twitter trolls just loved hearing that, like, oh, I could spend— this is investing time. I'm not wasting time on here.

Exactly. I mean, hey, if you're getting an ROI back and you're able to keep your sanity and have fun, like, there are worse things out there, you know, for you.

So yeah, 100% better or worse ways to spend your time. You said you started your Twitter when you were 14?

Yeah. So I started my Twitter when I was like 14-ish and really just tweeting my high thoughts, to be honest. Like, I smoked weed from like 15 to 21, and so that was what my Twitter was for most of high school and college. And as most people, yeah, tweeting at like rappers and stuff. But it was cool because back then, like, I'd see that I'd get a reply from like Lil B or something like that, if you remember him. And I was like, oh my God, I get a reply from a celebrity. Like, this is crazy. And then I also, you know, my friends followed me and I was able to meet like mutuals and like meet people that way, right? From Twitter. And so like from a very early kind of age, starting to find internet friends, connect with, you know, big names. And I think like more people should be. Yeah, I think my being young and trying that and just like tweeting at a celebrity and getting a reply was like, Oh, I could just do that. Like, you know, maybe like if I was older, I wouldn't think that that's possible. It'd be like, no, they're impossible access. But because I was a kid and I was stupid, it just was like, oh, that's ingrained in my head is if I, you know, I could contact who I want, like to some degree, right? Still trying to, still trying to get on a call with Ryan Reynolds. So if you hear this, trying, trying to meet him, trying to work with him one day.

So he's an avid listener. So I'm sure he'll hear this.

That dude is a a genius marketer. I've written about that before, but absolutely brilliant.

Yeah, he's incredible. Everything it seems he touches just blows up.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of his coolest things, if you don't mind me going on this tangent.

Yes, please do.

How quickly he reacts and his team, like most ad agencies, you know, will take weeks to months to produce an ad. And if something happens in the news, they have an ad done in 2 days. And that's like the genius of it is the tempo. And it's done well. It's done Hollywood or ad agency quality, right? It's that tempo of like, dude, the internet moves so fast and all these old ad agencies are like moving slow. He's like, I'm going to outpace them. And if you got the tempo, you got the tempo. So yeah. Reynolds is a genius.

Yeah, I remember right when ChatGPT got big, they did— he did that Mint Mobile commercial with that, like, ChatGPT wrote or something like that. And yeah, it was a super short turnaround time that just in that sense alone gets more people to pay attention because it is the hot topic of the day.

Yeah, it's brilliant. You know, it's trend hacking, right? And it works. You don't have to be Ryan Reynolds to do that. Like, I did that on Twitter. Like, I saw that AI hardware came out, right? and I wanted to go to bed. It was like 9:00 PM and I was like, I need to write about this. And I was exhausted. I was like, no, I shouldn't. Like, I should just go to bed. Why am I like on my phone? It's like, no, I need to write about this if I want it while it's hot and I want any chance of it going viral and people talking about it. Like, I need to do it now. Right. And so that tempo, yeah, I'm beginning to realize more and more, man, you can't train tempo. Can't teach tempo. It's like you could, you have to do it yourself kind of thing. Or like you just, you force the tempo.

Yeah. Then in that moment, does, is like an idea or, you know, like hit you instantly of like what you wanna write about? Or is it, I know I need to write about it. All right, now I gotta figure out how I wanna write about it.

I watched, I watched a video. I noticed a few things, like I noticed some marketing genius moves that nobody was talking about. People were just insulting it. I was like, dude, they literally played a song called Computer Love. And it's like, you know, they could have played some, you know, famous whatever, Beyoncé. They could have played whatever, and they played a song called Computer Love. Like, that is attention to detail. Like, gets you thinking about loving the computer, right? Stuff like that where it was like, oh my God, like, this is brilliant. And so yeah, I had the basic ideas, but The thing most people don't understand about writing is like, you start with like a spark, and then while you're writing, you get all the ideas. Like, all the ideas come from actually doing the work of writing. So like, while I'm writing long posts is when I come up with tweets most of the time. So I'll be writing a long post and then I'll be like, oh, that was a good sentence. Let me just throw that on Twitter. Right. So it's in the act of writing that you get more ideas. You know, reading like is decent for that, but like writing is where the ideas actually, you know, fester and become original.

Then do you think typical ad agencies are gonna start catching on to this type of marketing, you know, doing more of the Ryan Reynolds stuff? Or is it, you know, people like yourself that are gonna, you know, build new ones or just do stuff yourself that are gonna, you know, kind of shift the marketing landscape?

Yeah, I mean, I spoke at an ad agency, marketing agency recently. I've done some work, did some man on the street interviews for an ad agency. So they're definitely like adopting for sure. I don't know enough about the entire landscape to say like, you know, what percentage are going to fall behind or something. But I do know that, you know, something I talk about a lot in my book, which is like humor-based marketing has been around forever, right? So 1700s, like reading a book about capitalism, right? They were doing humor-based marketing in the catalogs for like the dick pills and stuff like that, and potions or whatever they call them, right? Or, you know, uh, foot surgery, they had, you know, funny, uh, ads for that. And so memes and shitposts and humor and silly TikToks and, you know, reading the book on the subway, that's just like the latest iteration of humor-based marketing. And like you think about Super Bowl commercials, right? Like Obviously, like, they use humor, and this is just like a quicker version that could like hit a lot of people, and it's so— it's, it's a lot easier to do than some $10 million Super Bowl commercial, you know?

Yeah, much more nimble and able to just— yeah, react.

I think a lot of brands are seeing it though, because like, I'm in a group chat with some meme pages on Instagram, and big brands are sponsoring some of these guys, you know, like Heinz. Nature Valley or whatever, like the guys behind Ranch, like Arizona Iced Tea, like, you know, these brands like are seeing that memes are valuable and that memes especially get like the trust of Gen Z, like the meme pages. You look forward to whatever your goofy meme page may post, you know? So I think there definitely is a shift in that landscape. I know I'm seeing it with brands that I talk to in general. It's like, more casual, more down to experiment. When I started doing marketing stuff, when I was, you know, I guess 7 or 8 years ago, I was just doing a lot of, like, I started with just like doing Facebook ads for companies and that was the most boring experience possible. If you've ever done Facebook ads, it is so boring, just beyond boring. And people are slowly realizing like, all right, let's try organic. And if you could do organic, like, I made a vow to myself, like, I'm not spending a single dollar on advertising this year. It's like, why do I need to spend money on advertising if I could just get the same results myself for free, right? Um, so I think a lot of companies are like realizing, like, maybe we don't need to spend all that money on ads and just, you know, hire a good organic content person. Let's just do that. It's so much cheaper. Like, so much cheaper.

But does a big brand doing a meme or a shitpost take away from the shitpost at all? I don't know if that makes sense. What you mean? If what I mean, you know what I mean by that?

Some brands are definitely, they try a little too hard. And it doesn't fit. I think also like, the bigger brand you get, the more people in legal departments it has to pass through. And that's where the humor dies. And so that's why I love working with startups and creators, man. We have no legal departments and we could post whatever we want for the most part, right? But I think, I think that's part of it. And then a lot of times like companies will hire just some like college kid and the kid won't actually understand the community that the product and their niche is. So You could try paying me $10,000. I couldn't make a meme about hockey. Like, I know nothing about hockey. Like, you could pay me $10 and I'll make a meme about startups. I can make 100, right? Like, you can't just hire some random college kid who knows nothing about your industry and expect them to make memes. And what's funny though is like every industry is memeable if you're deep enough in it. Like, I was just on the phone with somebody who who runs like a meme community, freight brokers. Like these are the guys that like, you know, like do freighting and logistics. And he has 900 people in a Discord making memes about freighting because people have these jobs and they're bored and they want to send funny memes to each other, right? So there's memes to be made about everything, but you can't do it as an outsider. You know, it's got to be something you're passionate about that you love, that you get the community, you get the inside jokes. That's the only way to make memes about something because you understand it deeply.

That's amazing. 900 freight brokers sending memes to each other.

His name's Reed. It's called Lost Freight, FR8, the number 8. It's pretty wild. Like, he's built this entire software and community just for freight brokers. I didn't know this existed. I literally— this guy responded to one of my tweets. I saw what he was about on Twitter. I DM'd him. We talked for about 2 minutes. It's Friday night, 9:30 PM, maybe 10:00 PM. My fiancée is in bed and I just go like, can I call you? And he's sure. Yeah. So we just talk and I'm like, this exists. What? How? There are meme communities for everything. Dude, I got reposted on Instagram today. I did a collab with this guy. It's called gripping foods, and the entire Instagram is just people gripping foods, like, really hard. 50,000 followers. Like, there is a subreddit with 16,000 people, like, just for gripping foods, like, very strongly, right? And so, like, any weird interest out there, there is a community for it on the internet, and there is, you know, attention that you can get for your brand by tapping into it.

Yeah, that's insane. The internet is such a wild place, just, and big that like, yeah, freight brokers, gripping, gripping food. It just goes to show, you know, how much opportunity's out there. And, you know, if you think that I'm a, I don't know, a dentist and like, I hate my dentist job, but I can meme about dentistry for the next, you know, 5 years because I'm, I've been, I've done it for the last 5 or whatever. Then like, there you go right there.

Yeah, yeah, whatever it might be, there are memes to be made about it. There is content to be made about it. All these— you're seeing a lot of like business people turn into creators because it's just so much more fun. Because like, it's just fun, you know? Why would you want to sit in, you know, meetings all day when you could be making cool shit with your friends? Like, I mean, It's a pretty, you know, I think it's, there's some survey or whatever, right, done that people hate on that America has all these kids who want to become creators and YouTubers. And meanwhile, China has all like the astronauts and, you know, that kind of stuff. I do think it's a problem. But at the same time, like, I don't know, there's nothing better than making art and creating stuff, creating stuff you're passionate about. Like, You know, I love the idea of like part-time creators. I think it'd be amazing for every kid to want to be a part-time creator. Maybe, maybe not full-time, but like in your side, you know, whatever you're doing on the side, like go make, create some stuff. Stop just consuming, go create some stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. I was never a creator until like 3 years ago. I was on Twitter for like 6, 7 years before that, but it was just more of a lurker, you know, tweet some high thoughts and whatever sports were going on or whatever as well. But for the most part, never like thought of it as a potential way to make, you know, a living or just have fun, you know, enjoy myself. And that switch from a creator or a consumer to a creator mindset is a tough one for a lot of people, myself included, with just putting yourself out there and potential just looking dumb, a joke falling flat, whatever. Have you had any of those just fears or anything like that starting out?

Every single day I still do.

Mm-hmm.

You just push through the fear, man. Just push through it. I wish I had an easy answer that it gets easier. You just keep pushing. I mean, I guess I will say some things, it does get easier. You know, the first time I was filming on the subway with a book that said how to live with a small penis, I was definitely nervous. And now it's gotten to the point where, alright, like, I'm pretty jaded to that. And you just keep on pushing, you know, Um, but I still have fear that I'll post something and lose the respect of friends, or, or somebody will insult me. And, and people will insult me. They do all the time, right? And it's like, eh, I'm making money, my family loves me, you know, I'm happy. Like, fuck them, you know, if they're not up for it, like, who cares? Uh, they're just some, you know, Trollface69. I do not care what you think, my friend. Like, you know, and there's enough people out there who will find your content funny or meaningful or insightful that it doesn't matter if there's some people that don't like it. There will always be people that don't like it. So that's really, it's like accepting it. It's like, what's the word? Radical acceptance. There will be people that hate me. There will be people that think I'm cringe. Fuck 'em.

Well, is there any time that you ask your fiancée or anybody else like, Did I go a little too far here, or should I send this?

Yeah, yeah. My fiancée, the main job of a meme lord's wife or husband, I guess for the meme ladies, is to make sure they don't get canceled. That is like, that is the main role, is that. So there have been books, like you've seen my subway videos, I post some ridiculous books. There are books that I haven't posted because they're too offensive. There are plenty of tweets in my draft that I have saved I have an entire folder basically, which is wait until I have fuck you money and then I could post. But right now, no, I do not have that kind of thing where I could post it.

I love that. What is the research process for your books, by the way? What does that look like?

For honestly, now I'm just getting recommended it, bro. That's kind of funny. Like I'm just recommended How to Live with a Small Penis and it's like, oh, Amazon, you just know me so well.

Let the algorithm do what's best, bro.

It sounds weird, but I just typed in penis book on Amazon and I figured there'd be something funny. Like I typed in funny book and then, you know, just whatever the algorithm selected, honestly, and just poured through it. And then like going through like Thriftbooks, different websites like that, that are just like cheap books. Cause I'm not trying to pay like $20 for a book every time. Oh, also my parents, they had way too many sex books. So like found some of those like weird books, like, you know, all that stuff. Like my grandparents, I, you saw the video, I don't know if you saw the video with the, the Bill Clinton one. Like I stole that Bill Clinton book from my grandparents. So yeah, I think like that's a good place to find 'em. Just if you want weird books, go to your grandparents' house.

That's, that's great, great advice right there.

Yeah.

Never know what you're gonna find.

No, no.

There's content everywhere.

Dude, it was quite the shock when I saw Fifty Shades of Grey behind my grandmother's photo. Very scary. Very sad moment in my life.

Oh man. Yeah, that's, that's one you're going to remember for a long time.

So what's the plan with the podcast? What, you've been doing it for a few years now, you said?

Uh, no. So I've been doing it since like May of last year. So about 7 months now. Started whenever I got back from— I was traveling in South America for like 7 months previous to that. And yeah, the, the, I mean, the goal is eventually monetize it in some sort of way, but I just always have loved podcasts since I first listened to it. First one back in like 2019, 2018 or something like that. Listened to way too many, so I figured why not make one myself and have a cool, interesting conversation with interesting people and kind of see where it goes.

Love it, man. Love it. Yeah, it's a fun art.

You had one at once, right?

Yeah, I did. And then I was just traveling too much and needed to pause it. And now it's— I'm just a lot on my plate. So when I'm able to come on somebody else's podcast is quite fun. But right now it's like it's tough to be able to do my own right now.

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely a lot more time than I originally thought.

Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's not as simple as just plugging it in and talking, unfortunately.

Yeah. That's literally what I thought it was. It's like, oh, plug in, talk for an hour and then just, you're good to go.

Yeah.

There's a few, few extra things before and afterwards.

Um, I talk about this a lot, but like distribution, baby, right? Like. Yeah, it's cool to press upload, but like, how's anybody gonna see it? You know, like, gotta cut it into clips and then you gotta cut, maybe make some tweets out of it and turn it into a blog post. It's a lot of work, you know? That's why, you know, the Hermosis of the world have 10 people just on that stuff, so.

Yeah, that's a great point.

My friend is on—

Why'd you choose?

Oh yeah, my friend is on Will Smith's podcast team. 10 people just on his podcast team.

Will Smith?

Yeah, like Will Smith. Yeah. 10.

Yeah. Dang.

10 people just on his podcast team alone. So that's— I don't know. I find that incredibly bonkers.

Yeah, that is crazy. I can maybe think of like, I don't know, 3, 4, a producer, 2 video guys, an audio guy. Anything else beyond that? Beyond me?

I think just endless cutting up into social clips is like what I is my guess. And then I don't know, something to make sure he doesn't slap anybody.

Yeah, he's got a, he's got his therapist there. Anger management therapist.

Exactly. On, on-site, on-site podcast. 100%. That's funny.

Why did you choose a book? Writing a book?

Yeah. So I really, when I started my podcast, that's what happened was I had this guy named Charlie Light on. Charlie is a memelord and he, he grew an account called John W. Rich. It's based on a fake tech executive. He grew it to a couple hundred thousand. And while he was doing that, CEOs, like pretty high-profile CEOs, started messaging him saying, hey, I want funny tweets like this, you know, will you do it? And he ended up growing that into a $40,000 per month ghostwriting agency. And selling it for, you know, a million bucks. And so he was the inspiration for the title Memes Make Millions, right? I actually asked Charlie to write the book with me and he was too busy. Dude was having kids. I get it. And then I was like, all right, I should write this. I can't do it alone. And then I have a call with Jack Raines, who's, you know, another prolific shitposter on the internet. I found out he's making good money making memes. I asked Jack, like, Jack, yo, You want to co-write this? He's like, no, I'm working on my own book. Like, all right, well, I guess I'm going to do it myself. And so I end up writing the book. And really what it was was like, I was just very deeply curious about how to make money making memes and how to make a living on the internet as a funny person. It's like the path has clearly been shown for serious, you know, educational people, whatever. But like, how do you do it as somebody who like main thing is entertainment and it's not like stand-up comic. How do you do it? How do you do it as like a meme lord and shitposter? And how does that apply to brands? So it was honestly just like a topic that I'm like super fascinated by. And if you subscribe to my newsletter, you'll see that I still like do interviews even after the book is published. Like I'm still doing interviews with meme lords because I just want to get better. And really through the process of this is like I learned their strategies, I stole their strategies, and then blew up my own Instagram using the strategies I learned from doing the book. So like, I wasn't an, you know, I didn't have like a big page before the book. Like, my Twitter was decent, but I didn't have like a big Instagram or anything. I didn't know how to do that. And then I literally just copied the strategies from the book. So writing a book is a great way to learn about something. It's not just for teaching. You learn about a subject very deeply, and especially if you do it the route I did, which is, you know, 4 or 5 essays in the beginning and then just a dozen interviews gives you the chance to like, all right, these are some introductions, these are my learnings, now go hear it from the real experts. So it's a great way when you're not like a fancy multimillionaire expert to be able to write a book and learn about really cool people and learn their strategies or learn whatever secrets they have. So.

I mean, that's very similar sub-reason that I do the podcast.

Yeah.

Able to talk to people who are doing something cool. One reason, one way or another that I can learn from and maybe I'm able to implement in my life. Maybe I'm, maybe not every time, but a lot of things is just having, whether it's a podcast and it doesn't really matter if it's small, people like to just get on and talk or doing some sort of interviews or just a reason to reach out to people ahead of you or doing something that you want to learn about. Super valuable, just way to spend your time.

Yeah.

And that's what it all comes down to. If you're looking like best way to spend your time is putting it towards something that you can give other people a reason to want to talk to you.

Dude, I couldn't agree more. When I was starting my podcast, like I remember I had, you know, I just sent DMs, so like they weren't huge on Twitter or anything, but some like very successful people, right? And they don't ask how many listeners, they don't ask how many episodes. They're just happy to talk and like have their voice be amplified to whoever it is and just have a good conversation. And I remember I have like this guy Ben Wilson on, right? He runs the podcast How to Take Over the World. He is, he was the, the guest producer for My First Million for like 2 years. I have him on, At the end of the podcast, he's like, oh, like, what number podcast is this? I'm like, you're the fucking first, man. Like, you're the second or whatever it was. I was like, yeah, I, uh, there's not many listeners here. Like, but it's okay. We just had a great conversation. And like, you know, that's part of the game, right? It's part of the fun. It's really honestly quite shocking how many— I didn't ask you how many listeners. I was just happy to like Whatever, dude. Like, let's, let's, you know, this is content for me to share with my friends and my following. Like, I could take these videos, go post them. Like, I think that was all I asked you was, will I be able to post the videos? Like, it's pretty simple. Like, you just got some cool clips of me that I could use and I'm happy. And I also just had a cool conversation. So it's like, I don't know. I think a lot of people are like, oh, why would anybody want to come talk? It's like, you gotta, it gives you such more of an excuse to talk to somebody than just saying, hey, can I pick your brain? Because you're giving somebody distribution, you're giving somebody content, and everybody wants more of that if they're in the creator world.

Yeah, that's one of my things that I give, say to everybody is like, I'll also cut up 3 to 5 clips that you want to post wherever you want as well to again, give them some reason to want to come on. And so yeah, it's such a valuable thing that even if like you never really want to take the podcast anywhere like big, but just like have one conversation, two conversations a week with people that you're trying to learn from, and then again, provide them value in return for their time. It's a win-win all around. And yeah, like you said, anytime I ask anybody, no one asks for How many episodes, how many listens, anything like that. If you just seem like a normal guy, they'll probably hop on with you and give you an hour of their time.

Yeah, it's really surprising, honestly. Like I was definitely shocked. I think at a certain level, some people will definitely, you know, I've had maybe one or two where it's like they are New York Times bestsellers and like, you know, they're going on like Tim Ferriss and shit. It's like, yeah, we're going to pass. But like, you know. You could get a lot of cool people on there. There's so many people doing cool shit, so much, so many people doing cool shit on the internet that aren't like super A-list celebs that you would never think about that are just doing cool stuff that you could talk about and learn from. And yeah, yeah, man, it's such an excuse to talk to cool people. There's nothing better.

Then when did you realize that being a professional memelord yourself was the route you're going to go down? You, uh, yeah, dropped outta college, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So dropped out. Um, you know, I always made silly videos. Like I, I've posted videos in the last couple weeks, like of myself when I was like 13 or 14 dancing, like making YouTube videos. Right. But I never like stuck with it until really, um, recently where it was like, all right, I'm getting some traction on this stuff. All I gotta do is like be consistent and also have that serious content where it's like I'm making money. And get to be funny. Like, what's better than that for me? Like, there's a lot of broke comedians in New York. Like, I'm, you know, have the fun part of making comedy videos but also like making money in the serious stuff. And the real kicker when I decided to lean into humor was when ChatGPT came out. So it was like, oh, I am a writer, serious blogs, they could just hire ChatGPT. Like, $20 a month or free. Like, I no longer have a competitive edge with writing blogs except for my humor, because ChatGPT isn't funny. And so like, being funny is, is, you can't replace that with AI. And so that's, I'm doing these man on the street interviews for brands too. Like, can AI do that? No, no. Like, you know, it's like a one of one thing that, yeah, you could get another influencer to do it, but I think I'm decent at it. I think I'm good. And I have You know, I move at a good speed and everything. And so it's like, you know, for me it was really focusing on like, what am I one of one at? Right? There's a lot of writers. There's a lot of different, you know, whatever. It's like, what is my unique skill set? Because whatever it is, like you can monetize that if you market it right. So whatever that might be. Yeah, you just gotta, you know, I, it's funny, man, like meeting more high profile people. My friend works for, you know, works with some pretty famous people. My video guy works. And what we've been realizing, and my experience reading like comedians' autobiographies, right? So I've been reading like Colin Jost, Russell Brand, Woody Allen, all these people. And it's like, they're just normal dudes. Like Colin Jost looks like he has the perfect life, right? Like he's married to ScarJo. He went to Harvard. Like he's on TV every Saturday. Like, He's just a normal guy. Like the dude was fat in college. He grew up like broke in Staten Island. Like he's just a normal dude who worked really hard. And, and it's like, oh, the personas are just all marketing. That's all it is. And so, you know, you got to be able to choose the persona you want and market it.

And what is that specific persona for you? Like if you had to describe it?

Yeah. Meme Lord, viral growth hacker. I'd say like very cyberpunk, obviously. Like, you know, I spent the extra $30 on a light, so it would be the purple light, right?

You're in, you're in big.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's pretty simple, right? Like my, you know, my profile picture hasn't changed in like 2 years. Same with the header. It's like everything that I put out on there is like very cyberpunk-y tech, you know, techno optimistic, at least like everything, my brand, like people recognize that. And so it doesn't have to be that. It could be whatever. Like, you know, Zach Pogrob is a great example if you've seen him around, right? Like, he's the guy. His thing is follow obsession, right? And it's everything is black and white. Nobody was talking about Zach a year ago, right? But more and more people are all for it, right? If you stick with— you could do any brand, you could fucking do Sopranos themed. It could be you in a, you know, a mafia outfit, whatever, whatever it is. But if you stick with the bit, if you stick, if you commit to the bit and stick with it, people will rally behind it. It can be literally anything, whatever you're happy about. Like, I'm a techno optimistic dude. I love the cyberpunk theme. I've been making trippy art since I was like 15 on Photoshop. So I wanted to make that my theme, you know, but you got to select what it is for you. You know, I'm talking to the general audience here, like, whatever you might be interested in, you can make a brand around it. Like, if you want to be like the pirate guy, you could be the pirate guy. You just got to like go all in for it and dress like a pirate. Like, do you do you, bro? Like, whatever. I'm down for it. I, I wish there was a pirate-themed newsletter. I actually thought about starting one because I think it's dope. The aesthetics of pirates, unmatched. All right. That's my rant on pirates. But yeah, yeah.

Top notch pirate, pirate aesthetic.

Yeah. Yeah. I do think there needs to be a pirate-themed brand. Also a mafia-themed newsletter. I would really like to read that. That is like a request. For anybody listening. Like, I just want a nice black and white with some red, like blood red titles and stuff. Beautiful, beautiful.

And what are we talking in that newsletter? Current day mafia, the history of the mafia, Sopranos?

Yeah, maybe like a little bit of it all. Yeah, um, I think like world history maybe, or, or, you know, talking about powerful criminals. Would be cool. I, I, I've always been fascinated by that kind of, those kind of shows, like Blacklist, like something like that. There needs to be like, like that, you know? And I've experimented a little bit with like, you know, I had some like evil geniuses of marketing posts and stuff like that, but I'm in too deep and I'm very committed to my brand to be able to do that. But yeah, there is part of me that's like, oh, that'd be fun to start, you know, but you only have so much time, you know.

Yeah, that would be fire though. Mafia.

Yeah.

And it's criminal history newsletter.

Somebody who's like very okay with being perceived as slightly evil and kind of dark, you know, like, yeah, yeah, you got to like, like, I love Danny, preach these guys up, but Danny can't do that. Like, Danny is all love. Like, he is. He's a fucking puppy dog. And I love Danny, but like, You know, somebody like Zach Pograb could do that. He's dark, intense. So whatever it is, you just, you do that kind of thing. Yeah.

Then how'd you, startups, like how does that fit into where you play into?

Yeah, man.

Did you work throughout college or?

Yeah, I worked, I got a couple tech jobs, but really it was like, it's so much easier work at a startup than a big company if you don't have anything on your resume. and I was like, not, you know, I didn't have any big names. Like I got rejected by Morning Brew. I got rejected by all these companies and I just started tweeting my ideas, responding to people. And like I could get into founders' DMs who like raised $4 million, has a budget to work with. And that's awesome. Like, dude, you're hiring me based off my tweets and my blog. Like, I don't need a resume. I haven't applied to a job in 3 years. Like, because of Twitter and my blog. Like, I'm never going to apply to a job again. Like, if I see somebody hiring a content writer, I don't apply. Like, I just DM the founder. You know, why should I? So yes, that's always going to prevent me from like working with big tech companies, but it's fine. Like, I'm making good money. I'm happy. And maybe there will come a point where they hire me to do some consulting. But until then, I'm not going through the LinkedIn application thing. I, you know, why would I do that? Yeah.

So really, I think that's everybody's goal in life.

Yeah, dude.

I think never have to click LinkedIn resume again.

I think startups are like very easy to break into if you do cool shit and share about it on the internet and you're willing to talk to people. People are so open and friendly and I love startups and tech and VC. Like the people are just the nicest. Like I was an English major, man. And people are, were so much meaner as English majors. So much more pretentious, so much douchier as English majors than like the, you know, millionaire tech bros that I hang out with, right? Like you'd expect them to be jerks, but they're like the nice, open-minded, cool ideas kind of people. Like it's total mindfuck, but I'm having fun. Yeah. If you want to be around people doing like cool shit at a fast pace and breaking rules and trying new shit, like startups and VC. VCs are funding crazy, crazy ideas. Every— all of Elon's companies, you know, Uber, all that shit is VC funded. So being around people with that mentality, like Facebook's mantra, move fast and break things, you know, if you want to be around that mentality and you are that kind of person, then it's a good fit.

That's something that's just an energy that's contagious and you can't help but try things yourself, whether that's with the company, outside of the company, it just— and also allows you to kind of think a little bigger than you might have.

100%. Um, yeah. Anything else you want to cover in the last few minutes?

I was just interested what your day looks like. Do you have like from 5 to 8, I sit down and write no matter what, like that's my writing time or?

No, not at all.

What does that look like?

No, I wake up, drink coffee and work on whatever needs to get done. So this morning that meant my videographer came across the park. We filmed for 2 hours, ate tacos, and then I hopped on some calls and, and did work. And then, you know, I've been doing some work tonight and now I'm doing the podcast. I'm gonna do some more work tonight. I wish I had some like format, like for me it's wake up, drink coffee. I like to write in the mornings and nights. I think the afternoon, like after lunch, I'm just sleepy. And so I try to do like calls or stuff that doesn't require me writing, cuz that's when I need to be like sharpest and most alone. And so yeah, I think. I don't know, man. Like I was talking about this with somebody yesterday. Like, you know, people used to see writers as these like solo creatures that Stephen King holed up in his room for 8 hours straight. Maya Angelou, like she would rent a hotel room so she could work for 4 hours straight, like, or 6 hours or whatever. Joyce Carol Oates, she's published 50 novels. She works for like 12-hour streaks, right? But I don't think those people really exist anymore. Especially for internet writers. Like, no, not a chance. Like, we're all like writing while we're on the subway or the toilet, or we— you just gotta write whenever you can. And like, yes, I sit down and write a lot of the time, but our attention span is fucked, man. Like, we were born in a different time where like we have just so much more distractions, so much more to do. So hopefully, hey, maybe I get a book deal one day and I could, you know, turn off distractions for 6 hours a day, but I'm, I, I need, I need to respond to shit. I got tweets going out. I got, you know, I, I also, dude, I grew up on Lucky Charms and Twitter, bro. Like I, I'm an ADHD monkey just trying to, trying to do my own thing. Um, I wish I had some like living the new dream. Yeah, dude. I wish I had some magic formula. Really? It's like, there's no, like the billionaire routine not happening. Just, just drink coffee, go to work. It's pretty simple.

Yeah. Do what needs to be done.

Yeah.

Then last question I have for you. You mentioned you're an English major, like why writing? What made, what's just about that in general that has always attracted you?

Couldn't tell you, man. I've been writing since I was a little kid, wrote stories in kindergarten, you know, published a fake little book back then and always wanted to make it as a, as a writer, novelist. And, you know, still haven't signed like a major book deal or anything yet. And I'm doing good. I'm happy. But I've always, that's just always been, been part of me. And, I don't know, man, like I just, like even, you know, when I wasn't getting paid for writing, I wrote, like I've been writing every day for like my life, like a journal, whatever. I don't know. It's just who I am. It's how I express myself. It's how I think. It's how I learn. So it was just like, you know, still, still just doing what I love, you know.

Well, I really appreciate you coming on. If people want to get your book or just connect with you, follow along, where's the best places for them to get the book and follow you?

Yeah, just hit me on Twitter. I am Jason Levin. And then the book, you could go to meansmakemillions.com.

Then once you do sign that book deal, is it going to be a novel, or is it going to be, you know, something else along the lines of internet marketing, or what?

It's going to be like an internet version of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. That's the goal. Like a nerd traveling through the internet is my goal. Whether that's— it'll be nonfiction, but one day there will be some novels and screenplays that hopefully I sell. But it's so much easier, if I'm just being honest, so much easier to sell a nonfiction book. Becoming a novelist is, is, uh, it's not as easy as it was in the '50s, man. Yeah, it's— yeah, dude, this has been awesome. Um, really appreciate your time, dude.

Absolutely, man. I appreciate your time, and I will have all that listed in the show notes below so people can easily find you. But Jason, thanks again, man.

All right, thanks for letting me shoot the shit. Talk to you later.

Absolutely, dude.

Peace.