How 3 Roommates Made MILLIONS Online in 1 Year
In this candid, hour‑long conversation recorded in Austin, Texas, three former roommates—Dan Coe, Dakota, and a third participant (referred to as Speaker A/JK)—reflect on how they collectively generated multi‑million‑dollar revenues within a year by leveraging social media platforms. The dialogue begins with a snapshot of each person’s follower counts (Dan: 1.2 M Instagram, 300 K Twitter, 200 K YouTube; Dakota: 180 K Twitter, 200 K Instagram) and quickly moves into Dakota’s ghost‑writing cohort that produced $160 K cash collected and $280 K in contract value. Dan’s concept of “tactical degeneracy” (using moderate alcohol consumption to spark ideas) is discussed, alongside his shift toward healthier moderation. They dissect the structure of their Modern Mastery community (≈3,300 members, ~2,800 active), the challenges of onboarding, and the importance of accountability through paid coaching. Both Dan and Dakota outline their product strategies: tutoring/coaching cohorts, a four‑call $1 000 web‑design tutoring package, and the broader “one‑person business” philosophy that emphasizes teaching a skill before selling higher‑ticket services. Platform‑specific tactics are compared—YouTube’s evergreen links driving consistent sales, Instagram reels versus carousel vs. story funnels, and Twitter’s high‑volume posting versus a low‑frequency, high‑quality approach. Dan stresses never outsourcing his creative work, preferring to retain full control over content. The conversation also touches on personal well‑being: therapy, insecurity, confidence, financial cushion concerns, and the psychological tension between abundant cash flow and the fear of sudden loss. Finally, they debate originality, credit‑taking, and the influence of early creators like Jack Butcher and Naval, concluding with a promotional plug for their monetization service.
Chapters
So Dan, Dakota, and me lived together under the same roof for around a month in Austin, Texas a year ago. Dakota has over 180,000 followers on Twitter, over 200,000 followers on Instagram. When it comes to Dan, he has 1.2 million followers on Instagram, over 300,000 on Twitter, and about 200,000 YouTube subs. The dude's a machine. So hopefully this will help you, and, uh, I'll see you at the end. I'll start with you, Dakota, because you were on it. So where were you last year? And where are you this year? Because it's been almost exactly one year since we all moved together-ish. But where were you last year?
So March 10th, I think I moved countries to live with Dan and Devin. And that was like 3, 4 months into my ghostwriting journey. I think I was at $15K a month or something doing ghostwriting and all that. And I was living in Austin and that was cool because I was kind of like osmosis, you know, learning from Dan and just all that shit. That was cool. So yeah, I was on Twitter probably like 20K. That's when I started really blowing up on Twitter, 15 to 20K followers. And then yeah, so that's where I was like business-wise.
Now You were doing a thread a day.
'Cause you had the tweet 100 challenge. Like, fuck these guys, I'm gonna win this. Got placed top 5, what's up? But yeah, so that's where I was at. No need to flex. And then yeah, recently I launched that Done With You offer for the ghostwriting and I hit $160K cash collected. Dude, I was ripping sales calls. Through like 2 weeks. Taylin was helping me, but we were ripping sales calls. Probably took like 60. I probably took 60. It was draining. But yeah, I got $160K cash collected and then $280K contract value. And I attribute a lot of that to Dan, just seeing him, how he ripped that cohort together, because I wanted to do some kind of cohort for a while. And then this fucker, he just has this idea after a hangover one day and he's like, I got this idea. And then a week later, he's launching this cohort. I'm like, I'm here twiddling my thumbs, like trying to make the perfect cohort and all this shit. Like, no, it has to be perfect. This guy just fucking whips it up and makes a bag. And that's when I was just looking at myself. What am I doing? Like, then I see you, JK. You're just launching shit out the ass. These guys just execute shit on shit fast. And here I am just overthinking. Thinking stuff. That was one of the biggest realizations living with you guys was— I mean, I wrote a newsletter about it, but you two guys, like, were some of the most successful people on Twitter. And one of the patterns I noticed with you guys, you just got to execute on stuff. Like Dan was mentioning before, you just gotta just throw shit out and then iterate on it and just do it. So I was just fucking I was just twiddling my thumbs and then just seeing that was a big inspo. And then I paid a bunch for coaching to get my ass in gear because when I pay money, I'm accountable. So I paid like $28,000 total for coaching. I took some lessons from you guys and then just executed on it, launched the VSL funnel, said I was going to build it out as I go and stay a week ahead. It's been going really well. And like you mentioned, JK, like you're kind of like a people pleaser or you really want to deliver a great product for people. So been going ham on that and be getting a lot of good feedback. So I'm stoked. I'm going to rip up another cohort probably within 2-3 weeks. And this time I'm not going to limit the capacity. I'm sure to go all out because fuck it, run up the bag and iterate on that. But no, it's been going good, man. So yeah, I hit my first $160K a month, which is fucking crazy to me because I used to think $10K a month was crazy. And then yeah, try to catch up to you fuckers.
That's what I, that's what I was going to say because I remember we had a bet who had the biggest launch. You had a bigger launch than me.
What was it? What did we, what was that? Like, did we even bet anything?
I, I don't think, I don't know if this is bad or good. Like when you think about it big picture, but in Austin specifically, it hasn't really been much of a habit, but both in Austin specifically and in other areas of my life, this is why I coined the term tactical degeneracy is because I know like when I'm in this creative rut and I don't have anything, if I go and I have a good time, however that may be, if I drink, if I binge drink or if I just have a few drinks with friends, and I get home, my mind will be flooded with ideas and I'll wake up the next day just ready to go all fucking in on something.
Well, it's interesting because I remember you would really beat yourself up, or if you had a— when we first went to Austin in December, you would get really pissed off at yourself that you would drink. And it's fun. It's crazy that you, you seem to have reframed it now in a good way. So now it's like nothing changed.
You just changed.
You reframed how you view it. So now you have good ideas, which is interesting. The power of reframing.
Yeah, I can't, like, it's, it's difficult to talk about because so many people struggle with alcohol, right? So it's not something that I, like, I have to be conscious of my influence and it's like, I enjoy, I've realized over the years where it's like I've been able to moderate myself a lot more from like the college days. Where I was never even a heavy drinker. And so if I talk about it, then it just paints me as an alcoholic because people think in extremes. But aside from that, it's like one of my favorite things, dude, is like on Saturdays, Sundays, go have a nice dinner, have a few drinks, like nice drinks beforehand, have a nice dinner. That's like one of the best times and you have the best conversations. You have the best ideas. And if you don't go fucking insanely overboard and get trashed and then go to the candy store and pick up like 10 pounds of candy and like shove it all down your throat in bed, then you're set, right? That was like, that's really it. Where my main problems, it wasn't the alcohol, it was what happened after the alcohol where it's like I would just take all food into my room. Eat it, that would exacerbate the hangover. I'd look like a Michelin man the next day. And yeah, but if it's just like a few drinks and you space it out and you're smart about it, I think it's actually a very like beneficial thing.
You heard it here first. Danko says become an alcoholic because no.
Yeah, there you go. That's not an alcoholic.
That's not definition. See, that's the thing is like, I'm, I'm still, well, not compared to you Dakota, or probably you now, JK. But like, we're, that's the other thing is like, we're comparing ourselves in, in relation to this stuff to people who like aren't healthy. Right? Like health is like a huge pillar in our lives. So a little bit of alcohol, that's like a healthy balance there. Where it's like we're still more fit, strong, jacked, tan, maybe not right now cuz the sun isn't out, but overall we're healthier than other people in general, no matter what we decide to do in moderation. Because we know the other thing is prioritized 100% over any style of degeneracy and that it won't take us off track. Like it's not a distraction to us. It's like a dessert, but we understand that food comes first and dessert is dessert free if you say it's your birthday.
Yeah. I read a tweet about, uh, I read a Quinn Fulmer tweet the other day that says he like works extreme hours, works out twice a day, and wakes up super early. So he does that regularly. He normalizes that. So on a bad day, he will still work. He will still wake up relatively early and he will still train at least once. So when you normalize like the high performance, the low performance is kind of just a hiccup in the road more than a habit. You know what I mean?
And it's a balance, right? Because even, even when the— I don't know how to explain it, where it's like high performance, it's a balance. Like you can, to me, I feel like you can only sustain a certain level for so long before you do have to cut back and like, like reset that high that you were on, no matter how like it is, like you can be. I think of it as like a forced low because if I just want to work, work, work all the time. So it's like I have to literally force myself to do something degenerate in order to reset that for you. You know what I mean? And then it helps.
Oh, I have to go get an ice cream.
Fuck. No, not like an ice cream. I know. You know what I mean? Where it's like, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
So those drinks that you have, are they like with other business owners?
It depends. It's either with like, even I was out with Dickie and I would have a few drinks even when he wasn't drinking, but it just makes it that much better. And Dickie doesn't care. Like the high performance people, they don't give a shit because they know it's like individual choice. But aside from that, it's either like when I'm out for, with friends or like when you're out with a girl or anything like that. That's just how, especially at night, like it's just good vibes where you have a few drinks, you don't overdo it. You have a great dinner, you walk around, you feel good.
Yeah. Do you, do you guys find it? I don't know if you, there's like a lot of people in that same like kind of. Vein as you, like, business-wise. But do you guys find it, like, a little bit— I don't know, kind of, like, challenging? There's not many people in our same business kind of vein near us. At least it happens to me. Does it happen to you guys?
Yeah, I kind of prefer it that way though, because in Scottsdale— I moved down to Tempe because Scottsdale was getting a bit insane. But the thing is, is when there's too many people there, like similar with Austin, when there's too many entrepreneurs that just want to hang out all the time, it's like the overwhelm of Twitter DMs taken to your text messages. And I fucking hate that. Like I experienced that really quick and I had to ghost like a bunch of people just because I was meeting people left and right in Scottsdale. It's like, I want to be alone. Like after a certain amount of time, it's like, you can't handle this. It's like I need 2 to 3, or like 2 to 5 close people in my life. The rest are like close online friends because you can handle that a bit better. But when people are like texting your main phone and it just gets overwhelming really quick, and I started to really dislike other people, and then I dislike that. And so I was like, I just need to fuck off, be alone, get back into the routine. And like gradually introduce people to the point where I can sustain that because I understand the need for like the balance of being alone, but also, yeah, you need that thing with other people.
Yeah.
Especially as an introvert. Like I just, yeah.
Yeah.
I just like being alone.
I find, oh, I know.
Yeah.
Yeah. You know, that's why I go on my walks is because it's like, that's, if I can't be alone, are not there. That's why you go on your walks. I like, for anyone listening, like I've never heard Dan talk longer than we are today and I lived with him for a month. Dan has never uttered this many words before.
Yeah, well, that's because it's like, I don't know, I like that.
I like that because like people just fill the fucking air with just random shit that doesn't even— well, I care. To be fair, I say random shit, you know, living with me, just saying stupid shit, but I do it cuz it's funny. But people just talk just to talk. It's, I don't know.
I ate ice cream today.
That's you and your 400-calorie ice cream that you did.
I'm getting, I, it's weird. I bounce between like two different diets where it's like super clean or still super clean, but heavily artificial. Where it's— yeah, I have my meals that I switch back and forth to and they kind of plug in like puzzle pieces, but I just get tired of either one, like here and then. Like, I remember you were bouncing between like steak and potatoes, and then you'd have those like syrup and the sugar-free— the one sugar-free— well, that and like the— well, the sugar-free, uh, chocolate chips that—
dude, those are fucking bad.
Like not in the, not in the taste sense, but do you guys get recognized like on the street?
Yeah.
A good amount. Oh yeah.
Twice. Shit.
Yeah.
How did those interactions go?
They're usually just like, hey, is your name Dan? Like it's at like Whole Foods or like somewhere just literally in the street. I was like, yeah, what's up, man? He's like, I love your videos. And I'm like, awesome.
Oh, there you go.
And then we'll talk for— that's really it. I haven't had any like weird encounters yet, which is a good thing, but I don't think my content would spark.
Tim Ferriss is obviously big, but I guess he reached some point where he's getting fucking crazy people. But, uh, was it gangs and cartels or whatever? They'll check flights to see if there's any like well-known people on the flights, and if there are, they'll set it up where they'll pretend to be a driver so they'll hold up a sign with your name on it and they'll get you in the car and they'll kidnap you or ransom you or whatever. And so what Tim Ferriss does, he gives a pseudonym on whatever for the driver that he gets to pick him up. So it's Bob, Bob Joe. And so if someone comes up to the airport and has his real name, he knows that I did not give that name. By going there, I'm gonna get kidnapped or fucked or something. But that happened to him. So once you reach a certain point, you got to kind of watch yourself with protocols like that because there's people out to get you. Even your family. That's the crazy shit too. They go, they'll look for your family. That's kind of scary. Like the path we're all on, like that's going to happen too. Like that's the like 5, 10 years when you really blow up. That shit's gonna be kind of fucked. That's the shitty thing about all this, but I mean, we're signing up for it.
Yeah, when you were saying about kidnapping or fucking, I remember the guy that, uh, when you went to the gas station at 3 AM to buy a banana and he offered you a ride home.
Yeah, I'll give context to the people, but, um, yeah, so one of the first nights in Austin, Texas, when we moved there, Dan, Devin, and myself met up with some people that were living there because it was a guy's birthday. Shout out to Rohan. But, uh, that was that day. That was— oh yeah, you went too, JK. Yeah, we all went to the club and we all got just blasted, like pre-gaming and then to the club. We got even more— I blacked out. JK, I think you blacked out.
I tried Adderall the first time because Dan gave me Adderall for the first time. I was like, oh my God, what is this?
But we all We all got fucked up and I don't know, I blacked out at a certain point, but I guess we all got split up. And I came to and I was downtown Austin at 7-Eleven. This is where I came to. And for some reason I had to buy a banana. I don't know why. I was dead set. I need to buy a banana and I need to eat a banana. I remember buying this banana. I walk out and I'm peeling the banana, eating the banana. I'm walking on the sidewalk downtown Austin, 3 AM. And the streets are dead and I'm walking and then a car pulls up and it stops and I'm on the sidewalk eating my banana and he's like, rolls down the window and he's like, hey, do you need a ride? And me being drunk and stupid, I'm like, why yes I do, I do need a ride. So I get in this complete stranger's car, random dude, And I'm sitting there and I guess I gave him my address and he's driving me there and we're just talking, being friendly and stuff. And we were just talking and then he casually brings up, like halfway through, he looks to me, he's like, yeah, I'd suck your cock. And I'm just, I'm in my head, I'm like, what the fuck is going on here? But I was just playing it cool. I'm like, oh, cool, man. Yeah, thanks.
That's—
I appreciate that, or something along those lines. I kind of brushed it off. And then he drives up to outside of our apartments and it's just like an awkward pause as he like parks. I'm just sitting there. All right, cool, man.
Thanks. And I just walked out. But I was sleeping on the couch with you guys because there were 3 rooms and it was all taken. It was like you, Dakota, and Devin. So I was sleeping on the couch for like a month or so. And I remember one day you just disappeared, but like nobody knew where you went, but we just knew you weren't coming back. And like in my head I'm like, dude, like this couch was horrible because you just kind of like curled in. But then I was like, oh fuck yeah, I can finally get a bed, right? Because dad's not home, let's go. So I go to your room, but you don't have a bed in Austin, you didn't have a bed, you just had a tatami mat. Which is basically just a blanket on the floor with a different name. Like, it's horrible. And anyway, yeah, it was horrible. So I just go there, finally after a month of sleeping on the couch, I go there and try to sleep, and like 5 minutes in, I'm like, yeah, fuck this. I'm just going back to the couch, just all defeated, just slept on the couch again because it was so uncomfortable. On Twitter, you know, we all have a persona, right? We all like A lot of people pretend to be some other person. You're like exactly the person you show on social media.
It's a good sign.
It's so aligned, like it's so focused that you just do things. And when you were like, disappear for 6 months, remember that weekend Dan just disappeared and didn't tell anyone?
Oh my God.
That's all my content is, is I literally just tell myself what to do and then I have to do it.
Yeah.
Or else it's incongruent, right? Because like I'm putting it out in front of fucking, yeah, millions of people now where it's like, yeah, if I'm giving someone advice and I'm not taking that advice, then what I liked about your approach was you actually experimented with shit.
So you heard, you'd hear like Carnivore Aurelius or whoever talk about something, then you would actually implement it. I thought that was really cool because you, you'd find out for yourself.
Like, do you share the lessons as you're learning them, or do you like reach a certain level of understanding and then talk about it?
Uh, both, but I've been, I've been straying away from like health stuff because I wanted to keep that like after I got super dogmatic about it and started talking about beef liver all the time and kind of became a slave to the Like, it's like a little cult following on Twitter, right? And so I didn't like that. And so I just dropped health as a whole from talking about it. And now I'm like into way deeper stuff where, yeah.
Yeah.
Speaking of that, like every time, like maybe 20% of my inbound DMs come from somebody saying, hey, I saw you in Dan Coe's Modern Mastery. Like it's always, I don't know what, I don't know how many, how are people seeing? I don't even know what they're watching, but it's always, they always come from you, dude.
Yeah, it's the training. Like we, so we have roadmaps and like courses in there that guide people through certain things. So for all of the social media ones, the training with you is one of the first ones where it's like, watch this. So you get a big picture overview of what you're trying to do on Twitter. Um, and that was like two, that was like right when Modern Mastery started. So that's just been watched.
How many people do you got on there now?
There you go. Now I know.
Uh, well, some people, dude, I don't, I don't get it with like courses and stuff. One, people don't know how to read like anything in, in terms of, this is only of course like a select few people, but they don't know how to read the instructions, like when you get into the thing, they don't know how to check their email. Uh, some people just don't care and don't accept the invite. So we have like 3,300 members, but only 2,700 to 2,800 are in the community. And, and the only cancel, the main cancellations we get are like, hey, I have no idea how to cancel because I've never checked my email and never logged in over the last year of being in here. And so it's interesting shit like that where I'm like, what do you, I don't know. It's just how it is sometimes.
It's kind of the dopamine of buying things. You ever, like, like when you buy books, like you buy all the books and then you just don't do anything. You just buy more books.
Yeah. That's why I like the, the whole notion of, of like self-awareness is a big business hack because I know that I buy, I used to buy courses all the fucking time. I buy books. Like nothing, just like butter. Like they're normal to me. They're a part of my life. And the, I feel like the main thing that prevents people from monetizing is just not having a product or service. That's literally it. Where it's like, once you have one and once you get that first sale, you're like, oh yeah, okay, people will buy. And we're of course focused on like optimizing certain aspects and making it a good offer and this, that, and the other. But really all you need to get started is just put something out there and then start iterating on it and then start making it good. And then things take over from there because the— I wrote this tweet and it's going out sometime like in a few days, but it's like the only reason people aren't buying from you or the only reason people are buying from other people and not you is because you haven't put a product in front of their face. I said it more elegantly than that, but it's really, it's like if you use a planner, Then create your own planner and just put it online. And then that's how you start.
Do you show people to start with a certain kind of business model, like service or info products?
I recommend service. Um, I'm pushing more people towards like a tutoring offer now because the—
like coaching?
I don't really, I, I'm calling it tutoring because it helps frame it more, but like, I, I personally like coaching, consulting, and tutoring offers as opposed to like done-for-you freelance offers. Now, I still think they're viable. They're all equal, equally viable, viable. But with something, when you're building a personal brand and you're trying to grow very broad, because I like writing basic beginner-level tweets and like trying to grow that way. I like growing the audience as like a prime focus. But then that begs the problem of like, you're attracting a lot of beginners, right? And so people with these high-level services, they're gonna have trouble actually generating leads for that. But if a beginner comes in or like if you are growing a large audience and you create what I call like a tutoring offer, which is pretty much you have a skill. So let's say I'm a web designer, like I was, I wish I would've gone back. And when I started on Twitter, I wouldn't have done freelance web design. Instead, I would've done like a cohort style one-on-one offer where I'm straight up teaching them web design one-on-one. And then I have a product which is like, here are the video courses of how you create a website. But in short, it's like me teaching them one-on-one, here's how you acquire the skill. And then on top of that, I could have like a bigger consulting or coaching offer of like how, here's how you monetize. The skill. But in short, I really think anyone can just teach. I feel like that, that's kind of a big message of mine is like start teaching something both in your content and as an offer, literally just structure it out. 4 calls, $1,000, lead people into that. Like I'm helping Devin, uh, you guys know Devin set up like a YouTube editing one where it's just gonna be 4 calls. Here's what you need to do. We're gonna run through Premiere, we're gonna run through Cuts, we're gonna run through color grading and just separate it over 4 calls, $1,000. The quantifiable end result is you have a polished YouTube video and boom, like you have that skill for life and you're able to continue doing that and it's more personalized. And then he can just straight up turn that into a course and monetize that as well for his audience.
I remember when you were, when you were starting your YouTube, Dan, it was, you've been there for years, right? But when you first started, now you're getting like crazy results, but I remember seeing your videos, you're getting like 100 views, like 150 views. And I was like, dude, this guy, I'm like, almost I wanted to tell you like, dude, you should just stick to Twitter, you're crushing it already. But now it's like this huge machine, like you're doing so well on YouTube now.
Dude, YouTube. Yeah, it's a fucking game changer, man. I think I'm gonna hit 2 400K months in a row and I attribute that mostly to YouTube. So that's, it's crazy, man.
How do you attribute it mostly to YouTube? Do you track it?
I don't track it, but I know that's where it's coming from because it's just evergreen links in the description. Like I know I know what patterns usually led to the most income in the past where it's like I send out a newsletter. Okay, you get a spike. I make a promotion. Okay, you get a little spike, but now it's just consistent, like every day, same amount of sales. And then it's as long as I keep up with my little promotion system, it just continues to increase.
Damn.
I've been trying to get into the YouTube game, but it's, I wish I started when you first started. And I'm sure you get that a lot too.
Yeah. Well, the good thing is, is like, what's weird is that, well, not weird, but like when I blew up on both YouTube and Instagram, then that's when people start, that's when people start actually on the platform itself because they're like, oh, he's growing. Maybe it's time, like I can get in on this. But they don't realize like that's been compounding for such a long time that It just took off then. Like, yeah, you can get, if you get on Instagram or YouTube and you post one video, it can pop off, it can go viral, but they're gonna see you have zero subscribers, you have zero previous videos. You're going to, you might gain like 100, 1,000 subscribers or followers, but it's gonna be nothing exponential because you have nothing else there that they can look at.
Yeah.
Like they say, so there is a prerequisite. Like I feel like you have to have, at least 30 to 40 YouTube videos before, like, you have that chance at like, okay, we're gonna jump by 50,000 subscribers.
Do you have a framework you follow for the YouTube video itself?
It's just the newsletter. So I, I could walk through like how I do that. The, the main framework for the newsletter is pick a high-performing topic, or at least something that I think will do good. And we all have those, like you can just pick one from one of your best performing tweets, but then the lead is a personal experience. So just a story where I've experienced a certain problem, relate with them. And then the next section of the newsletter is like big picture understanding. Like I have to, in order for me to give them the meat, the actionable step-by-steps, I have to get every single person up to speed. Even like the absolute beginners that have nothing, that know nothing about what I'm talking about, I have to introduce everyone and get everyone on the same page. And so if I'm talking about how to write a tweet, then I need to persuade and open people's minds to Twitter, right? Like, here's why Twitter's good. Here's what you can accomplish, you know, basic stuff, introduce Twitter. And then I can go into the step-by-step, like, here's how you write a tweet. And then from all of that, I can go and start to look at which YouTube videos are already performing, like in that topic. And then I can study a bunch of different headline or title structures to see which, like, I could fit something into. And then the, what's been working really well for me is just concepts. And like creating your own concept. So in terms of, or like names for systems or like a big idea or something like that where like solopreneurship or freelancing or Twitter or whatever, I saw that the one-person business angle was very attention-grabbing, not only to me, but it was just when I did a podcast with Justin Welsh and that one started doing better than any of my other YouTube videos, it's like, okay, I need to make the best damn video on the one-person business ever. It was long. And then that one just took off out of nowhere and I started milking that. So it's like, okay, I just built off of that. Like I would take certain parts of the newsletter and turn it into its own as its own topic. And then would run with that for a bit, throw in some self-improvement stuff. And overall that's like, general structure. In all honesty, like, it wasn't predicted, and I still have no idea what the exact cause was. All I do know with YouTube is that, like, growth usually comes from one video at a time, and then it spills over into other videos and gives them the potential to pop off. But then if you can't sustain that, or like there's no way to know whether or not your videos are actually doing well in like a state of growth where when the one-person business was popping off and just growing, growing, growing, all of the videos that I posted for like a month did extremely well simply because people were still going to that video and the next one was recommended. And then it slowly started to drop off as the other, as the main video stopped getting more views. So that's usually how it goes from what I've noticed is like one gets a ton of new people and then all of your other videos rise with it and the ones you post after start doing better and better and better. And then it starts to taper off until you do that like next best video.
I haven't heard that before. That's interesting. Yeah. How about, how about cadence? How often do you post?
Once a week. I've been considering dropping it too. Like, I, I, I kind of got, uh, tired of like the volume. Like, I think volume is good to get practice in and just understand the— like, it's good for beginners to get in, especially on Twitter. Just go fucking hard. Like, go balls to the wall. Do everything. Like, post as many tweets as you can. Reply to as many people. DM as many people. Just make yourself known everywhere. But then with time, like I've noticed, like David Perel, Julian, the people that I look up to in the space, they, they post whenever the fuck they want. It's like they'll post one thread a week if they have to, and they're still doing extremely well. And so people that I see on YouTube where it's like Better Ideas, Nathaniel Drew, they'll sometimes post every two weeks, every month. And that's kind of what I'm aiming towards is just building enough leverage to be able to do that. So like writing the book, having enough content there to be able to do that. So growth is still kind of sustained, but eventually I'll probably just pull back to like 2 posts, 2 long posts a month and just put highest quality I can into those. And then those should take off just because the quality's there and the audience is there.
That's what MrBeast talked about.
Yeah.
And it's like Jack Butcher too, Instagram mainly, where it's like he posts once a week, maybe a tiny bit more here and there. And then when I was doing the reels and doing really well, I just got— I didn't get burnt out. I just got tired of like the entire game where like I just wanted to step back and be able to write what I want to write. And I don't know, Instagram's kind of fucking late anyways. I don't really like it.
Twitter's the low IQ.
You, you two guys are cool on Instagram.
Yeah. But like, it's, it's only for authority now. I honestly might just switch it over to like a hybrid personal account and use it for connections and to just check funnels.
Check funnels. Dakota was teaching me how to do Instagram. I just tested it. It just was— I was surprised to find it was fairly simpler than Twitter. Just post like 2, 3 times a day, get a story share in.
Yeah, you just post reels for new audience audiences because that gets pushed to them, and then the carousels for nurturing And then yeah, stories for selling and nurturing too.
So you, you did the animations for a tiny bit. Did you notice any difference between that and just like talking head videos? Cause I'm considering throwing in, I like just one talking head a week.
I like the talking head because for the sake of a new audience, it builds that connection with your audience more when they can see and hear you, especially. You're all good-looking guys too, so that works in your favor. But no, I think the talking, talking as the ones do really well for me when I do them. I need to sit down and do more. The, the animated ones, I had one pop off because I talked about setting your balls in the shower and it was, I'm going to lean more into my personality. That was funny as fuck.
That one was funny.
That's— I need to lean more into that because Yeah, I mean, everyone's doing the same shit now. Everyone's— well, first it was Naval, and then Naval and Jack Butcher, then it was Zach who did that, and then it was you after Zach, or was you before Zach? I don't know, it was around us.
It was me after Zach. I'm kind of— I'm— dude, I'm like upset about the whole animation situation all around. It got saturated so fucking fast after people saw it. It like, it's straight away from the vision too, because I really, I didn't like the volume, volume, volume posting a bunch because I wanted it to be similar to not only Naval's style, which I wouldn't really argue is his style or mine, right? But I would say that I liked his method for them where all of his posts, he barely even posts, but when he does, it's his biggest ideas. It's the ones that are gonna stick in people's heads for a lifetime. And he knows that and he leverages that. So he turned, he only has like 4 or 5 reels because they're fucking good. They're like the best validated ideas. He's not trying to like milk anything.
100%.
Yeah.
Well, it's, yeah, it's cool to see the influence of Jack Butcher and all that. Like all the OGs, you know, back in, I remember looking at shit like 2 years ago. These are amazing. And then now to see the influence, um, a lot of like, I don't like a lot of people, they'll, they'll fucking take credit for it or something like, oh yeah, this is my shit. It's like, no, it's like I was talking to a guy that worked with Jack yesterday or two days ago and like all these guys are like, they're like, this is my shit or whatever. It's like, no, like it's fucking Jack Butcher's shit. Like pay homage to him, man. Like, um, I saw one of the guys that was doing the reels, they called out Justin Scott. And Clint Murphy, whatever, and saying like how they were copying him. And it was like, well, oh dude, you're kind of doing the same thing Naval was doing. Like, okay, I don't know, it's—
yeah, but I mean, even like, I'm not saying he copied them or whatever, but I mean, he did post it first. So is it like yours, you know? Because he's the one that made it popular and you're like taking credit for it. It's like Like Breaking Bad. You guys watch Breaking Bad?
Favorite show, by the way. Yep.
Yeah, so you know how Walter White wants to take credit for Gray Matter, but it's like he walked away from it. He did not grow the company, it was the other dudes. So it's like, does he really have a claim to fame? You know what I mean?
Like, that's—
you guys have invented certain styles of tweets and then Sometimes people steal them, right? But I feel like when people are like too protective of like especially creative content, like certain types of threads or posts, it's because they don't trust in their ability to do it again. And that's why they get all insecure. You know what I mean?
Yeah, that was like, I definitely, that's what I've, so what I learned from this is to just not outsource my creativity, because that's what I like doing. Like, I love writing. I love the act of creation. Like, that's what I want to do. I don't really care about, um, anything else. Like, everything I do is to fuel that, where it's like, I want to live this way and I want to write and I want to create cool shit. And so when the reels were outsourced, like, they were very good reels— shout out to Hunter— but like I didn't have much control over the creativity of them while being able to balance everything else, right? So my whole rule now, especially in the one-person business side of things, the personal brand side is that like I can't outsource content of any source. Like that's just, that's just me because that's what I like doing because that's what I noticed as well is when, when people, when I had, write what I think to be an original tweet. That's the thing, you don't even fucking know anymore. Like, I could write word for word something that someone else has already said and then get called out for it. It's like, there's only so many words you can put together over like centuries of language, right?
Especially on Twitter, right? Because it's 280 characters.
Yeah, yeah. And so with that, it's like, okay, That's fine. I see it as competition now where it's like I have to do better. And I would argue that that has led to the most growth for me is like, okay, consistently test new things and just like see what performs and continue doing better. But with the reels, it's like when someone else would start on the style, I didn't have any control over like how I'm going to get above that because it was outta my domain, right? I didn't know. How to actually create the animations. And so then I started planning a new style of reel, but then that just took up way too much time and I couldn't do it. So now it's like I just need to focus again back on the simple ideas that are gonna pop.
You know what always super impressed me when we, when we all lived together, it's how, like how many layers of protection you have against other people's ideas. Like you have your— you're so much focused. And like, I feel like people take ideas from others, but for you, it's like your ideas come from you. So I actually wanted to ask you this for a long time, but how do you stay like so— like in the main sense of the word creative, like how do you— it's kind of like you have this ability to quiet everything around you, so you only listen to yourself. And that authenticity, I feel like, really drives people to you. But how do you— how are you so good at like this creativity and just quieting everything out?
I think it's perspective, where I— or perspective from trying so many different things, right? Because I've tried— I mean, my— the brevity of my story is like, I've tried all these different business models and I finally saw success with one when in reality, like I was just learning about all of them and understanding business from a very big picture. And then I was able to come in with skills, like multiple skills, even if I didn't use one or the other and like put it towards one specific business model, right? It helped me stand out in that way. And so now when I'm studying philosophy, I've just been studying it enough time to pick up all of these different perspectives. Like, I've studied Alan Watts, I've studied Krishnamurti, or I forget how to say his name, Leo Gura. I've watched so much of his fucking videos. And then in terms of like productivity, I've listened to Alex Soo Jung Kimpong. Like, I just study all of these various sources and then note the patterns in the middle. And I like to create like big picture philosophies. Where like the one-person business model, to me, I like to think of that, or I like to create within those boundaries, right? So it's like pick a big idea that I can talk about. So the one-person business model and then what comprises that. And from there I can start to form like a philosophy or meaning behind it. So for me, this could be different from other people and how they teach quote unquote the, the one-person business. But for me it's like, You solve your own problems, health, wealth, relationships, happiness, whatever it may be. And then you document your process and then, uh, learn marketing, sales, writing, speaking, add on, uh, more technical or modern skills like email marketing, whatever it is like present a path that people can choose and be very non-dogmatic about one certain way to go about things. So aside from that, it's just a lot of researching big ideas. That, that's the main thing where you don't have to read entire books. You're just looking for the very— it's exactly, it's big ideas, but that doesn't mean a lot to many people. It's like find the best ideas from the people that you are learning from, and then take those and kind of create your own philosophy behind them by trying to put them into action.
I still remember your tweet, uh, follow your passion, but learn marketing and sales so you can actually make some money off it. I love that tweet. One of the greatest tweets.
That was, that was one of the first ones that actually did really well and was like, oh shit, we're onto something here.
It's the, it's the randomest stuff. It's, You like, I remember I, I posted a thread, just regular thread, but in the end I just said likes ain't cash, just because random thing. But that was the one that like resonated the most with people, and then it kind of became a meme. But it like, that was like 2 and a half years down the road, and I didn't predict that. It just, it just happened, and now it's, it's turned into my whole brand.
I got pineapple. It's random, my fucking brand. I'm just a meme. I'm just the meme here.
You are the meme.
Yeah, people will tag you on it.
I need his name. I'm eating pineapple pizza. Well, you got— you got—
you guys have good, uh, I like it because every time I see M, like, I have people, uh, I've seen people ask randomly, I just come across it. They're like, what does MM mean in people's bios? And it's like someone I don't follow, they just randomly showed up on the timeline. I'm like, my work here is done.
Yeah.
But dude, hold on. I want to touch on likes ain't cash. I don't think this is like, it doesn't really align, but dude, with YouTube, views are cash 100%. Not, not even in the sense of, uh, like there's different monetization niches like finance. Yeah. Their, their ads pay a lot more than like something like art or something. Maybe it depends how many, how much money advertisers are spending on that specific niche. And, but the other thing, dude, sponsorships are nuts. Like, I— all these people that are like doing sponsorships for like 60 seconds, depending on their audience, are raking in some cash. I have a question for you though, like speaking on, uh, like we were talking about money. How do you guys feel like with money? Because we, we all make enough to the point where it's like we don't really care, but at the same time I feel like I feel like I'm fucked at certain points. Like, I, I've been just saving up so much. Like, I, I spend— it's such like a weird dynamic where it's like I don't have any stress like spending money wherever I need to, but at the same time it's like it's always in the back of my head where it's like, oh, I need to save this much for taxes. Or like when I'm building the software right now, I know that I'm gonna want to have as much money as possible in order to grow that. And so like, have you guys experienced that where it's like you have ample money and ample cash flow, but at the same time you're worried, not worried, but it's like you don't want, you, you feel like at any time you could have to make a big payment. So you wanna make sure that you have that money.
I think it's, uh, well, we didn't, we all didn't come up for money, right? So. I think at least for me, that's—
that's—
I have that too, where I mean, when I've— when I made my first like big amount of money, I was like, I felt a little bit of relief, but also it's like the same thing, like you never know what could come up too. I think that could be some conditioning from growing up because, you know, you don't start out with all this abundance. You're like, oh shit, like I got this, it's good now, but what if there's I don't know, some shit that happens or something, something happens and yeah, it could be taken away any moment. I think that's normal for people that don't come from money. But yeah, I definitely feel that too. It's like, okay, I got to get a bigger cushion now. But yeah, it's funny how the psyche works out like that.
Yeah, that is kind of how it is, right? It's less about It's less about, oh, I need to make this much more, it's I need to have this much of a cushion. Yeah, like just chilling there, at least for me.
I never think about it. Like, to me, it was just never a factor because, like, I mean, what if you lose it all? Because— and I'm very careful in my expenses, I'm very careful not to get into any debt. Like, I don't want to— I have a credit card, but it took my family, like, years of persuading for me to get a credit card. I always try to do it with debit and just try to pay everything in full just to really not think about it. But I mean, I— where I live, it's just too cheap, you know? So I don't— yeah, I don't really care. I don't really mind not to think about it. But part of it was because the reason why I started this whole business thing in the beginning was kind of just like insecurity. I feel like I never had the— I never worry about money or the cushion. I always— well, not always, but I tend to worry about what if I disappoint the people I work with or my co-workers or my friends. That is a bigger driver. That's something I think about constantly, not so much the money. You know, that, that was kind of what I started because I didn't want to disappoint anyone. So I just didn't want to be kind of a, you know, that's something I noticed with a lot of high performers is they, they're insecure.
They start out insecure or they have a need to prove something and over-accomplish. And then it just leads to this fucking crazy amount of success. But like inside it was just because they were, they just didn't feel like they were worthy or something. I relate to that a lot.
You guys, are you like, Confident now? I'm confident.
But there's also times where I'm insecure. I feel like my esteem isn't as high as I'd like it to be. But I understand it's like just looking at where I started and then where I'm at now. Like even you guys, like it's fucking crazy. Isn't it nuts? But just realizing like, okay, like you can always optimize better or improve in some areas. But I'm very proud of how far I've come. And I realize there's still a long way to go, but yeah, I definitely could improve in some areas. I started going to therapy. Well, that's one of the first investments I made when I started making more money. I was like, going to fucking therapy. Like, let's fix, let's fix all this, fix all this fucked up shit in my head. Yeah. Yeah. Really?
How do those sessions go? What happens in those sessions?
Yeah, we talk about a lot of stuff, but I talk about childhood shit. Like, I didn't realize how much a lot of the childhood shit affected me to this day. I like, I brush it off as like, whatever. But I talk about a lot of the childhood stuff, but also shit that's going good, like talking about that. And it's been really good. I think it's one of the best investments I've made because I'm talking about shit and I'm realizing, oh, okay, it's okay to feel that, or it's okay to acknowledge that. And kind of recognizing things or where I'm being challenged on different thought processes too. It's very beneficial. I get a lot of good ideas coming out of it too. So yeah, I'd recommend.
I feel like it also like frees up a lot of space for good ideas to fill that space in after, you know what I mean? It's like when you, when you just do a shit ton of cardio, I know Dan will relate to this. You do a shit ton of cardio and then you just have so much space and then the ideas come to you. Hopefully you enjoyed that interview with Dan and Dakota. It was a great time because we live together and honestly I learned so much from those two guys when it comes to monetization. So if you want to monetize, not grow, your Twitter account to $30,000 a month, go to tweetsandclients.io and we will make you money. All right, see you in the next one.
