Why you should be on Twitter/X

So I had lunch over at my office the other day. This is a coworking space that we have, but we invite over kind of a bunch of community members and friends who come over to the office and have lunch with us. We do it once a month on Fridays, and we invited over a guy who I got to talking to kind of early in the lunch. And this guy's a banker, so he talks to probably hundreds of companies per month. And remember, when you're a banker, you don't only see companies at the surface level, you see them kind of like at a colonoscopy level, to use a crass term, like you get in there and you understand exactly how these companies are working, who their customers are, how their business model works, who their vendors are, how their staffing, where their challenges are. Like, that is part of your job as a banker. So this is a guy who's pretty darn informed about what's going on in terms of businesses in my community here in San Antonio. Sitting there at the table waiting for the sandwiches to arrive, he looks down on the table and he sees a business card sitting there. And it turns out that business card is one of my business partner's business cards who had— we'd had a meeting there a few days ago and he had left his business card there. And, you know, this Man's name is Hayden, and he's president and CEO of our business. And the business is an offshore staffing company, which if you're on Twitter and these other places, is kind of old hat. But it was super interesting that this particular banker said, oh, well, what does that company do? And I started to explain, okay, company's name is Near, been around for about 5 years, and we basically help US companies staff overseas employees in their businesses and help them track them down, recruit them, interview them, negotiate salary, and then get them all set up and then support you after you have them. and we do that as a recruiting firm, or we do as a staffing firm, bunch of different models. And as I started to explain it, I was watching his face, the banker's face. And what was fascinating to me is despite all of his experience and his exposure to companies, what I was explaining to him was kind of relatively new. And it's not a knock on him at all. It's just opened my eyes to kind of how trends happen and where it's easy in the scope of a trend to feel like you're behind the curve, but in reality, like you're super early. And this concept of offshore hiring, it feels like it got onto Twitter even before Elon Musk bought Twitter. It was a thing years ago where people were starting companies around the same time we did, and we started ours in 2020, plus or minus. Looking back over that time, it feels like Twitter knew about this idea of offshore hiring, which, by the way, is super popular. Like, I feel like I've known about it for years, but what it reminded me of and this discussion at lunch was reminded me that, oh, the majority of people, like, they don't even know about it yet. It's not even like a twinkling of an eye that this huge wave and this huge trend is starting. For them. I think there's two takeaways from this story. Number one is just this point I just talked about, which is it's really easy to feel like you're way behind when in reality, like, you're way ahead. It's just because typically you've been exposed to things that the vast majority of the world hasn't even been exposed to yet. And the reality is, like, the mainstream and kind of flyover America and everybody just kind of doing normal jobs and living normal lives, like, there are just so many of those people that if you're somebody who's upfront and early and stuff and innovative, man, like, you can feel like you're just behind the curve. But in reality, there's a huge way wave of people that haven't even like heard of what you're doing yet. And here's the second takeaway, which is if you're an entrepreneur creating businesses, if you're somebody trying to be even the least bit innovative, there is a place where all this stuff and all these innovations and all these trends get talked about earlier than any other place. And it's not on YouTube, it's not on TikTok, it's not on LinkedIn. And the reality is it's on the platform formerly known as Twitter. It's on X now. And this is why when people ask, you know, one of the pieces of advice I have for entrepreneurs, it's you should be on Twitter, you should be on X. And you don't have to publish anything, but just by following the right people, you can start to see these trends before they even happen. And in my case, like the staffing business that we built, Near, is hugely successful. But how did I kind of get clued into this trend of global hiring? It's because I was reading a lot of stuff on Twitter. Like it was, it was front and center that people were already on there talking about and living the future. And you've seen this happen over and over on Twitter. Like I think back to the first kind of time I heard about COVID and the first idea that it might shut down the whole world. Well, I didn't hear about that in the New York Times. I didn't hear about that on YouTube. It broke on Twitter. And cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, NFTs, AI, LLMs, like all of these trends, there's a place I heard about them first, way before anything else, and it was there on Twitter. And I remember when Elon Musk paid $44 billion or whatever to buy Twitter, and a lot of people called him crazy. And I think I was one of the people who was like, man, this is pretty smart. Like this guy gets it just because he has seen and saw like the same phenomenon I'm talking about. Because ultimately, like Twitter, like it or not, is at the epicenter of where news breaks and where kind of innovations are first broken to the kind of broader group of us. And it's where it all happens. And I've seen it over and over again with the press. Like there are tons of reporters that are lurkers on Twitter. They're not writing, they're reading. And I've seen it over and over again where something on day one becomes a story or a breaking thing that somebody he talks about on Twitter, day 5, it shows up in the mainstream media. And why? Because some reporter went and picked up the story after they read the tweets, did some research, did their kind of reporting, and then published a story on day 5. And when you have that kind of platform that is at the emanation of everything that becomes newsworthy, like, that's an incredibly powerful thing. When you're at the epicenter of every single trend that's going to start. And I don't know what your feeling is for Musk's politics or his style or the things he does in his personal life, but ultimately, like, the power of the platform is pretty crazy. One, one that's huge ROI. If you want to be ahead of the game and learn about stuff, whether it's practical knowledge for your business or things that are going to change in the world, like, it's the place to be. There's nothing more powerful than Twitter and X. And you can either be me or you can kind of be blissfully happy like that banker was. I kind of envy the guy. Seems kind of nice, just kind of waiting for stuff to happen, living in the mainstream. It's— I'll take it. It's a lot more calm than the life I live, for sure. Oh, and one more thing about this Twitter stuff. And what people are worried about and are ahead of the game. I'll tell you what everybody's freaked out about on Twitter big time— tariffs and what's happening out of the White House and with China here in kind of April of 2025. And so far, Twitter's been pretty good about being ahead of the game. And alternatively, do you know what level of panic there is as I talk to people on Main Street and kind of Main Street businesses about this stuff? Very little panic, very little worry. When all is said and done, usually Twitter's been pretty right about this stuff, especially when everybody panics on something. So if you're worried about these tariffs, Twitter It certainly is, and that's a good reason for each of us to be worried as well. That's my video. If you like this kind of stuff, uh, stick around, give me a follow and a subscribe, or comment below saying you hated it or you loved it. I'd love to hear from you, and we'll catch you next time. See ya!