How To Grow a Sustainable Business and Live A Life Of Service (feat. Tiago Forte)

This is probably the silliest question I'll ask you. How many times a week do you get people tell you that you look like Elon Musk?

If you count YouTube comments— it was the format of online education which I had tried, but with the group coaching of Landmark, which is this like transformational personal growth program, right? With— but with the pricing of corporate training, it was like fusing these different elements into what today is known as cohort-based courses.

First of all, congrats on the book. I congratulated you in DMs. Here's the book.

Awesome.

Building a Second Brain.

I've heard people call me every name. I've heard them talk about how this is a scam. It's a pyramid scheme. It is a bait and switch. I've heard it all. Compared to those comments, the comments on the book are like child's play.

To me, from a lot of your work, what I sense is a sense of a spirit of service. Even it's business on the front end, I feel like there's a deeper purpose, deeper sense of Just genuinely helping people. When did you think that became very important to you? Was it always like that? Or as you grew into 20s, late 20s, like when did it become like, this is, first of all, is it true? Like, am I just making this shit up or is this true? And when did it become true for you? It's

very true. I hold it to be true.

Hello everybody. Welcome to yet another episode of the Building Public Podcast. I'm your host, KP, and I am joined by An incredible, incredible special guest on today's episode, Thiago Forte. Thiago, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I'm excited for this.

Thank you so much for being here. For folks who are watching this live or watching this sort of on YouTube, you will notice a very discernible difference between like my lighting, my setup versus Thiago's. It feels like MS-DOS versus Apple's latest macOS. So I apologize for not living up to the high standard that Thiago is setting for all of us here. But shout out to Kevin for great work on the setup. How has that experience been? Like, that could be a kickoff point for us. How has that experience been to set up a great Zoom? What do you call this? Like,

it's like my Zoom slash YouTube setup studio.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How has it been? What was surprising about it for you?

I mean, the most shocking thing is what an impact it makes. I really— I'm not an aesthetic type person. I don't have I don't have good taste. I don't dress well, like clearly. I'm not—

Basics, man, right? Yeah,

yeah, yeah. I stick to minimalism just because that I can look sophisticated and cool and don't have to reveal my lack of taste. I never thought— I was always, you know, of the opinion only the ideas matter. It's about the substance, not the presentation, all that stuff. And here we are a year later after starting this project, basically we get more compliments on the visual appeal, the lighting and the sound and all this stuff than anything practically.

It

makes such a huge difference for people's

Yeah, I think there's something about when you see a creator go the distance and put in the effort into presentation as well. I think there's a perceived value difference there too, is that it's not just that you're presenting something off the cuff. There's a little bit more deliberate, intentional preparation. So there's like a bit of a respect, I think, from the audience perspective. Yeah. So your ideas have a little bit of weight. to them.

Exactly.

Which is understandable, right?

Yeah.

So tell me about this. The other kickoff point that I have is around this tweet that you made about your YouTube journey. First of all, congrats on the book. I congratulated you in DMs. Here's the book.

Awesome.

Building a Second Brain. But Thiago, this is so funny. Like when I was reading this book and picking the book, my wife was laughing and I was laughing too because I think I'm the kind of person this book was written for because I am completely scatterbrained. You may have seen this from my tweets and my projects and everything. So much surface area, so little focus, so little organization. And the joke was like when we were joking that my second brain needs a second brain. That's how insanely disorganized I am. And I thought the way you've distilled a lot of your life's work into that book was super pointed and actionable. That's what I loved about it. And also wholesome. Everything about you is a little bit wholesome. Of course, there's a little tongue-in-cheek. But there's a sense of wholesomeness to it, you know, which I appreciate so much because that's something I resonate with. Tell me about the journey after publishing the book. How has it been? Because I see that you're— you've been building the book in public, which I'm a big fan of. Thank you for doing that and showing us the way how it's done. But even after the publishing, you've continued building in public even after.

Yeah. Gosh, I feel like building in public is so core to what I do. To me, it is just the obvious, just obviously more effective, fun, generous, productive, faster iterating way to do almost anything. And that's, I think, maybe more clear when it comes to other things, little software projects or something you're building in public. But books have always been kind of this esteemed, very prestigious— you're supposed to go off in this log cabin writer's retreat and really just dwell in isolation, all these very romantic ideals. And then I started doing it. This is just another project. This is just another project of bringing together building blocks of knowledge into some sort of output. It's no different than any other kind of, you know, knowledge work product. And so I've tried to just open source it all. I have a comprehensive guide to publishing a book, which I published recently, which is just a— it's like an index of links to all the different posts that I've published over the past like 2 years, 2 or 3 years, which we can link to in the show notes. But I— yeah, it's really just part of my mission to share it all.

The Other thing that I loved about sort of now that you're an author, right, which is a new identity. I mean, you've done the course, you've had the community, you've run the business for a while, but like being an author suddenly, like, I think allows you to operate at a whole different level because now you have book sales and like, you know, reviews and Amazon and other stuff. But going back to what we talked about earlier, I think a lot of authors still treat their books from like the traditional playbook of, you know, like I shouldn't be promoting my own book too many times, or I shouldn't be talking about the sales volume, or I shouldn't be talking about how many copies we made. And I think you just flipped that framework. And I feel like every other tweet that I see is like 9,000 sales of the book. And that's kind of like what we see in the SaaS world. What I see is, you know, SaaS founders doing this building in public, talking about, oh, we hit the milestone of $1K MRR or $10K MRR or whatever. Yeah. Authors barely ever do that 'cause it's almost a sense of like you don't wanna show your hand or show what's going on. But people can figure that out. It's not rocket science. They can look up, you got 1,056 reviews on Amazon. It's like, I just looked it up. Like it's not, No longer stuff is secret anymore. Yeah, I like that you bring it out and put it in the public here yourself.

Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely something taken from the SaaS, you know, indie hackers playbook. You— it's like you celebrate and publicize every milestone. Yeah, every single little milestone becomes an event. Yeah. Which, I mean, I feel like partly is just to keep up my own motivation, you know, like I need to celebrate wins and I like when people celebrate them with me. And so, yeah, like, you know, like each time we get a foreign book deal, You know, like yesterday or the day before, we found out it's going to be— the book's going to be translated to French and Arabic. Like, to me, those are some of the— maybe not the biggest business breakthroughs, right? Like, I don't know if, you know, bookstores in these countries are that important, but like from a meaning point of view.

Yeah.

It's so freaking meaningful that there are presumably people in these countries that don't know about YouTube or don't have access to the internet or don't speak English who now will have access to that. Like, to me, that is one of the most important outcomes of this entire project. Yeah. That's why I want to celebrate it.

It's exciting, right? Like, you're, you know, a lot of your work now is going to impact some of the people who need it most in a way because they don't have access to the typical David Allen stuff or whatever, you know. Exactly. The other thing that I resonated deeply with one of your interviews was when you mentioned about your service and work in Ukraine, and it was top of mind for me. And I shared that clip with my wife too, you know, and, you know, like the way you've shared about your time there. And now as you be here in the bubble of the bubble of the bubble, and, you know, just reflecting on what things are like there, you know, I actually brought you up this morning on one of my public Founder Hotline projects that I'm doing, which is a call-in show. And the founder, one of the founders we invited is Ukrainian. And you probably— I don't know if you run in the same circles I know, but like, her name's Daryna, and she's the founder of openphone.com, which is a—

Oh, cool.

Yeah, you may have heard of openphone.com.

I've used them when we lived in Mexico. I had an OpenPhone. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll make

Or something because you know she's Ukrainian and she we were just talking about you. I literally mentioned you and your story about how you felt that Ukraine was a peace-loving country and just like you know like didn't want any of these conquests, any of this crap, and they're just the wrong place at the wrong time kind of thing. And she just she just like was yeah she was just moved by the clip and by what I told about you. And so the reason I bring that up is I think. To me, from a lot of your work, what I sense is a sense of a spirit of service. Even it's business on the front end, I feel like there's a deeper purpose, deeper sense of just genuinely helping people. When did you think that became very important to you? Was it always like that or as you grew into 20s, late 20s? Like when did it become like this is— first of all, is it true? Like am I just making this shit up or is this true? And when did it become true for you?

It's very true. I hold it to be true. To me, the purpose of business is to serve. That's actually what it's for. The purpose of strength is to serve. the purpose of privilege is to serve. The reason that we have these reserves of strength or money or time or knowledge is to serve. We have to pay it forward. I think it started for me when I was very young, like around 10 years old. We started going on church trips across the border into Mexico around Tijuana every year from the time I was maybe 9 or 10 years old. I remember being 10 years old and all I could do was like carry water to the construction workers from my church who are, you know, building houses or providing medical care or doing dentistry or donating books. We are in Southern California, so Mexico is just a couple of hours away. Right. And I just grew up with this sense that, oh, service— you know what it was? It was like service wasn't, oh, once I figured out all my own problems and I have all the assets and resources in the world and I have this overabundance of everything I could possibly ever need and want, then in retirement, I will make some donations to charity. It wasn't about that. It was inextricably linked with just daily life. You serve because you owe it to the world that has given you so much, because— but also in a selfish way, it's also just the most fun and fulfilling thing there is. There is nothing as fulfilling and fun as service, truly nothing. So I have this blog post called Servant Hedonism, which is kind of my life philosophy, which is to be a servant to the people around you at the same time as you're being hedonistic and seeking all the pleasures that the world has to offer. Those 2 things combined are like my life philosophy.

I love it. I love it. I love And that comes off in many things you do. And I think I share that with you too, is that in the sense of serving, it feels like a heavy word, but I think it's just like really wishing for others what you would want them to wish for you. It's nothing more nobler than that. It's like, hey, if you got more water than me, I'd love to get some water from you. It's essentially at the core of it is that it's just giving, sharing what we teach our kids. So segue into kids and being a dad. Dude, I cannot tell you how much I appreciated every thought that you shared, every insight that you shared about being a father, being a dad, and then being even more ambitious in business and in entrepreneurship and all that on Danny Miranda's podcast. Probably my favorite segment. Like everything else you said was like, I knew that. It's like, of course. Mm-hmm. That was where I was like, yes. You know, and I'm dying out here trying to get more people like you and me to come up and talk about this shit. Because, you know, not many people— because I feel like we're somehow ostracized having to have kids. Or it's become like a burden. It's become like, at least to me, 4 years ago when I just got married, I was like, no, I can't afford to have kids. No way. I'm way too ambitious for this shit. I want to be that. I want to be this. And suddenly when Neil was born, I just had a whole new level of perspective about life.

Yeah.

And as I was sharing with you at the beginning of this pod, I think I only grew more ambitious after he was born than before. So again, let's switch back there. I want to hear your sense of like service and doing like raising a kid is service. Like, what have you learned that you apply today into business that you learned from being a dad?

Gosh, it's funny because I feel like I've like in the productivity note-taking world, I'm constantly sharing these very opinionated pieces of advice. This is the way to do it. This is what I figured out. This is what I've discovered. It's all about like certainty and like the right way. I feel like I hardly share anything about parenting because I'm still so much in the like I just have more questions than answers. Every time I think I know something, it's wrong. I have the opposite of certainty. I have total uncertainty when it comes to parenting, but I agree. I'd love for people to share more because yeah, I had all these misconceptions. You know, I thought there's actually an interesting parallel to hiring employees and having kids. Before I started hiring, I would hear often creators, you know, say, oh no, I don't want all that responsibility. I'm not a manager. I don't want to have like HR and Payroll. It's like such a doom and gloom world. And so I put it off, put it off, put it off until finally with COVID online education was growing so much, I just had to out of survival.

And now you have a team of 17 or something like that?

Including contractors, about 18 people, half of which are full-time employees, half are contractors.

That's so ironic and funny. I know. A few years ago, you— yeah.

I know. And I love it. I mean, there's been some rocky moments here and there for sure, but on balance, I love growing a team.

I

love managing people. I love figuring out human problems, which are so much more complex, but also once you figure them out, so much higher leverage than any other kind of thing.

Leverage and meaning, right? Yes. So finish the line of thought with the kids. Hiring people was similar to the framework or the fear around having kids, which is it feels daunting in the beginning, but once you're in it, what did you discover?

Yeah. So here's how I would frame it. This is something I've been thinking about writing about is What's in common is learning to trust a system outside of yourself. Like, that is when you build a company what you're doing, right? Because you build this team and all these things start happening that you don't control, you don't even know about. You have to trust the system of the team that you created. Same thing with building a second brain, by the way.

Yeah.

Like, the same mental barriers and psychological constraints that keep you from trusting everything from your car to the government to the company you work for to your neighbors, right? All of these things at the most abstract level, if you abstract away the details, are systems outside of you, right? And the same thing with the family. Like, it's— people often remark, you know, when you have a kid, it's like your heart is popping out and running around out in the world.

Yeah.

And you're just like, there's moments where the sense of risk, you know, it's like, what's that? The thing that's most important to me now is not even around me much of the time. Yeah. They're with other people, they're going other places, they're at school, they're at daycare. But it's the same thing. You have to actually trust the kid. You have to trust the kid. You have to trust the caregivers. You have to trust the world. In a sense, when you have a kid, you're trusting the world that the world will be on balance.

Yeah.

At least a place of possibility for them.

Some sense of fairness. Yeah. You know, you heard the phrase Sean Puri and Sam Parr like to use all the time, the trillionaire energy on their pod all the time. And I love it because it's such a tongue-in-cheek thing. And until Neil was born, I wanted to be a billionaire. And when he was born and I started becoming active and becoming present with him and watching him, I think I'm already a trillionaire. And I joke about this all the time. Nothing else that I do, even if I built a great empire like Disney, something so big like Elon Musk, whatever, I think it's still like, this is the most fun thing and this is the most meaningful thing to me that I can't even trade. I would think about the decisions of what I trade. No way in hell would I ever get $1 billion, $2 billion, whatever billion dollars to, you know, like you said, like it's something that's profoundly biologically meaningful. It's hard to explain what it is, you know.

The way I would describe that is sort of like when I was younger, like in my 20s, ambition was one dimension. It was like one dial, low ambition, high ambition. Right. So, like I would,

you know— People had higher ambition and some people had lower ambition.

Exactly. And there was no different definitions. It was just like this one scale. And so, I would judge other people, you know, like that. I would look at a project that I'm working on and be like, is this a high ambition project or low ambition project, right? Then having a kid and also just growing older, and I hope wiser, it's like that one scale suddenly fractures into all these different dimensions. And you realize there's people who are ambitious in their relationships, there's people who are ambitious in their self-care, there's people who are ambitious in, you know, the intimacy of their neighborhood and their community. It's like there's all these different dimensions. And some people that in the business world might seem totally unambitious, I've come to realize are radically ambitious in other ways.

Yeah. So like, I want to ask about this thing that I keep getting all the time about being a founder, being an entrepreneur. Right. And I'm curious to hear your take on it. What do you think defines entrepreneurship? Like, how would you put it? Like, when do you think someone's become an entrepreneur? Because I disagree that it's like when somebody starts an LLC or somebody starts like a fundraising round or whatever. That's like the more tangible way. But when do you think someone becomes an entrepreneur?

Interesting question. Very interesting question. I agree. It's not— I mean, the paperwork is just paperwork, right? Right.

Realized that you were going to be or are an entrepreneur?

Yeah, I think that's why I have some difficulty thinking about my own path there. I can't think of a super clear moment. It was more like I quit my job and I said— and I looked at my savings living in San Francisco. I could survive about 1 month. Wow.

Yeah.

I had a month of runway and I was like, okay, let's just— if I get to the end of this month and I have 1 more month, then I'll just keep going. I mean, for the first like year or 2, it was just Like each month I was making the decision to be— I didn't even think of it as self-employment. I just thought of it as working on random projects in between jobs, you know? And then after maybe like 2 or 3 years, that runway started to slowly extend to 2 months, 3 months, 5 months, 6 months. And maybe by then it was when I started to think, oh, I could just like do this forever. I could just like not get a new job. It took me a long, long time.

Were you productive back then? In those months, were you thinking about productivity as much as you think about it now?

I think I was productive in a different way. It's like the explore versus exploit thing. I just tried everything. I mean, living in San Francisco is kind of— or any big city is the ideal for this. I would just go to everything. I'd go to the most random meetups. I would go to, you know, I'd volunteer to be able to attend summits and conferences and set up the chairs just to get some exposure. Anyone who was willing to have coffee with me, I would have coffee with. I was just exploring, which isn't productivity in the sense of like driving toward an outcome. But when actually When you look at the business that I ended up creating, it was a fusion of so many different things, right? It was like, it was the format of online education, which I had tried, but with the group coaching of Landmark, which is this like transformational personal growth program, right? But with the pricing of corporate training, it was like fusing these different elements into what today is known as cohort-based courses.

You picked from the best from like different parts.

Yes.

So, one thing that seems to come off in your interviews and just some of your blog posts is David Allen, right? Seems like he was a huge influence on your life. What were 3 or 4 things specifically that you attribute to him that you do today? Like, what were his footprints on you?

Yeah, I think there were sort of 2 levels. Like, the subject matter was hugely influential. I mean, GTD, the actual ideas and the presentation of them completely changed the trajectory of my life. That was my first introduction to the idea, the possibility that one could improve one's personal productivity. That was like completely new to me. The way that it's a framework, the way that it's repeatable, it's tested. It is empirical, not just someone's opinion, right? But then as time has passed, I've come more and more to also admire the other level, which is the business that he created around that, right? A lot of people have some very good ideas. Not many people create this container, this machine around it where it can develop it, continue to improve it, translate it to all the different formats. And ultimately, I think GTD has come very close to reaching its full potential. In the world, you know, has incorporated millions of people into this movement, which if I can achieve a fraction of that with building a second brain, I'll be so happy. In

2022, what was the hardest thing you've done? Could be parenting, could be business.

I think getting that book finished, that was hard.

I feel like that's, that's been a pattern. Like every time I talk to a founder or creator, they always say like, Being the author part has been harder than they imagined. I think it's— how much of it is just thinking that it's easier, or is it like expectation setting? How much of it was like just poor expectations, or maybe just like, that's just a grind?

I mean, I had the expectation it would be hard, but it was harder than that. It's really difficult to describe. I have a blog post called The Psychological Toll of Writing a Book.

Wow.

Which you could also link to. But I really tried to— this was like right after the book launch. I sat down, I was like, It's kind of like having a kid. You know how you like— it's like torture. You like lose so much sleep. It's like you're just in pain. But then I don't know about you, but looking back 2 years, I can barely remember that. Yeah, it's like my— something in our evolution like wipes the memory of all that pain. And now we're like looking forward to the next kid. But then I'm like, I'm looking at my old journal entries like, wait a minute, I seem to have been in a lot of pain.

That's exactly what my wife and I joke and laugh about. It's like how we forgot about the first 3 months Like, you know, complete sleeplessness and all that. And now we're like, yeah, let's look forward to the second one. She's like, are you— are we crazy? What's going on here? Yeah, I know.

That's crazy. So I sat down and I wrote this down because it's like, the way I describe it is like, as a creator, you're used to controlling your own work, like many or most or all dimensions of it. You can choose to speed up or slow down. You can do this part first, that part second. You can, you know, do anything you want. With a book, you know, the publishing team, only just the people that were directly involved in getting this book published was maybe like 12 people. Wow. Some on my team, which I have some moral attitudes, but many people on the publisher's team.

Right.

And so it's like you're getting on this train that you're not in charge of and it's barreling down the track. So like if someone sends you, oh, we need you to write the blurb for the back jacket, which is a super important thing, right? That's what people are going to open and read to decide whether to buy the book. That matters. You can't just dash something off. But it's like Thursday afternoon at like 5:00 PM and you're just like, oh my gosh, I have to summon from the depths of my soul the energy. And you know what it It is the caring. It's not just the energy and the time. I have to actually care. And the person you're caring about, you will never meet.

Yes.

Won't even see this for like another year and you will never even find out what the impact was on them. So, it's like the capacity to care. I had to really just dig deep and like psychically find that within myself.

I think the feedback loop too, you're right. Like the feedback length and the loop of that cycle is just so sort of skewed. It's just skewed. Because you're right, like with the creator stuff, let's say you do a YouTube, within like 2, 3 days, 4 days max, you'll see the impact of that particular segment of the video. Or if you write a lot on your blog, so you can just very quickly within a day, you can see the impact. With some of that stuff, it's just, you know, it takes 6, 7, 8 months to even see what it might look like in the final product, right?

Exactly.

It is insane.

It's like the stuff I'm creating in the book, It has to be perfect, practically. I hate to use that word. Yeah. As creators, we're like, oh yeah, no, nothing is ever final. Nothing's ever perfect. Just iterate. Just put it out there. Not with a book. I mean, it's going to be printed hopefully hundreds of thousands of times on dead trees, you know, on like actual paper. Uh, then it's going to be translated. You're certainly not going to update those translations. It's the highest of stakes and you have no feedback. You're just like, is this amazing or is it crap? And actually it's funny. No one can tell you. The publishing team doesn't know. The publishers don't know what's going to do well. So, you're just like, wow, I'm just like betting years of my life on just this being good out of like hope.

I have a fun question for you, Tiago. What was the most flattering compliment after you published the book? Like once it's out for you and where did it come from? Like what really made you delighted to hear?

Yeah, I think it was 2 things. David Allen's blurb, his little testimonial quote was very meaningful. But then the other one was, do you know Venkatesh Rao?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ribbon Farm, is it?

Yes. Ribbon Farm.

Yeah.

He's been one of my sort of very most important influences and sort of like a mentor at a distance. Right. My writing and Twitter presence is very much modeled on his.

Right.

I joined—

Shout out to Venkatesh. I have to say this on air. I feel like I'm a second grade kid reading his stuff. I don't know if it's me or if it's you too. Please, Venkatesh, for the life of all of us, please dumb it down. He writes in such like sophisticated way that I feel like I'm a chimpanzee reading, uh, reading, you know. I know.

I feel the same way. That's part of it. It's like, it's like a Rubik's Cube and you have to like solve the puzzle to be able to get the benefit.

I want to keep this part and send it over too. But yeah. So what he said something about the book?

Yeah, it was just a, uh, it was a few tweets like threaded together. Uh, it was funny because he didn't exactly compliment the actual writing. I have a feeling if I had to guess that it was, it was much too simplistic for his But he did compliment, you know, he said something like, I've never seen anyone work so hard to—

That's a big compliment coming from him.

It is. It is. And he, you know, he's known a lot of people. I think he mentioned he knows a lot of people that have published books and he just complimented the effort. It was like when you're teaching, when you don't turn in a very good paper, they're like, A for effort.

That may have made your entire month. I would feel excited for a whole month. But that's funny. That's so funny. But that's so classic him too. That's so funny. So now, Follow-up to that question. What was the part of feedback that you got that really hit a nerve with you? Like, what stung you the most about in terms of the feedback you got about the book? It's funny, most stuff, I'm sure you're like, you've seen that version of what they're saying. Could be a troll, could be whatever. But what really stung you?

Honestly, nothing.

Cannot say no. You can't say nothing. Come on. There must have been a day where you talked to your wife about this.

I have fully brainwashed myself where I even tweeted the worst, most brutal review, which was a Goodreads review. I mean, it was— I had to tweet it because it was a work of art. Like, I

think, wait, I think I replied to that or something. It was hilarious. Actually, go on, finish your thought. Yeah.

It was funny. He was like, in the 15th century, this happened, but you won't learn any of this in Tiago Forte's book. No, you know what it is, KP? It's that I've heard it all about the course. A course is so much more commercial and it's such a bigger target. I have heard it all. I've heard people call me every name. I've heard them talk about how this is a scam. It's a pyramid scheme. It is a bait and switch. I've heard it all. Compared to those comments, the comments on the book are like child's play.

Well, you know, I think I'm with you too. I feel like nothing fazes me anymore. Like, you know, because if you've been a creator for as much as, I don't know, 3, 4, or 5 years, you must have heard about every possible dig at you and you're like, initially it means a lot. You're like, oh, you're processing it. And eventually you're like, that's cute. Especially when it comes from someone who doesn't produce a lot. I'm like, that's cute. It's hard to create shit. And it's so easy to just say, oh yeah, on page 94, I didn't like the 4 words you used that were fluff. I'm like, but dude, have you ever written a blog post? How hard it is to do anything. So I actually take— to me, the things that not hurt, but I give them a lot of thought are the ones that come from people like you, people like Peril, people like RV Kahl, or some of these people who I know care and I know they get it.

But those are so much more forgiving. Anyone who actually—

They are too. But that's the problem though, because they will never fucking tell you the truth because they're viewing it from the lens of like, I know how hard it is to do this or whatever. And so it's interesting. Have you run into someone who bought your book? But they didn't know you before that. Like, have you ever been— you ever had a moment where you were at a coffee shop or maybe you're on a plane?

Not yet.

Oh my God, I can't wait for that.

This is the moment. I feel like it's going to be as meaningful as the first time I saw the book in a bookstore, if not more so.

Yeah,

yeah,

yeah. I can't wait for that for you.

I've been looking everywhere I go. Everyone has a book. I'm like looking at the COVID But what was funny is the week of the launch, mid-June, the week of the launch, my whole team was in town for our like summer retreat and we went into town, into LA. We were like in the Arts District. So kind of like the trendy, cool area, and we split up, and, you know, some people went to a coffee shop and we went to like a bookstore. And then they came back and they were like, yeah, we were sitting in this coffee shop. This was like days after the book was released. And they're like, we saw someone stand up and was holding the book and walked out. And I was like, you didn't stop them? You didn't talk to them and get a picture? I was so pissed because that would be so cool.

Oh, that would have been so great. I think that's— that would be a fun moment to capture.

I do know I've already planned this all out in my head. When I do find that person, I'm going to stop them. I'm going to talk to them. I'm going to take a selfie because that will be— it's such a mind-blowing concept, right? Because, yeah, it's like I am my own distribution. So I feel like most people who have even heard of the book, it's because I told them, like, here's my book. But to see that first person, I think, will be just mind-blowing.

Yeah. And for that to happen, what would be even more dope is if that happens to a book that happens in France, in a French translation, that would be That would be insane because it's like, whoa, you know, that person clearly doesn't know you or, you know, doesn't know some of the concepts. That would be like even more insane.

Yeah.

So tell me about your YouTube journey. I think, you know, one of the tweets you made recently was that your YouTube audience has now surpassed Twitter audience. And God bless you and your team because YouTube is so hard. I'm like, God, it's so hard, way harder than Twitter.

Yeah,

I was like surprised that you don't have 10x the audience you have on Twitter, first of all, because I was like, you're crushing it. Content has value, clearly is crushing it. I'm like, why don't— because also Twitter is weird too. But what were your 3 or 4 top of mind lessons from growing YouTube? Like what worked for you, you think, eventually?

Oh my gosh, this has been such a journey. Basically, I needed to hire someone. This was really the key. I needed to hire someone. They needed to be full-time, completely dedicated, all in. That person is Mark Koenig, who is in charge of all of our YouTube efforts. That person needed to be a creator in their own right, have their own ideas, their own philosophy, their own creative process that had nothing to do with mine.

Wow.

Interesting. And then that person needed to— like, Mark really has had to build his own team around him, not me. This was the crazy thing is Mark came in as the director of content. I was like, just, just do the little things that I do, publish the blog posts, send the newsletter, like kind of easy stuff. He came in and he was like, actually, no, that stuff doesn't really matter. The big opportunity for this whole business is YouTube. I'm going to focus completely on that. And I was like, oh, okay, well, like, have fun. Like, I didn't really— I didn't tell him to do that. I didn't expect him to do that. But then what he did is he started creating these videos with almost no involvement from me. And this was the key, is if he had asked like, oh, could you give me feedback on the script? Could you give me feedback on this edit? Then I would have had to— like, I wouldn't have been able to resist the temptation to get in there and start expressing all my little opinions. Right. But that's not how we do it. How we do it is I show up the morning of, I have like an hour notice to see the script. I make maybe a few small changes to the script. It goes up on a teleprompter. I just read what's on the teleprompter. Then he takes away the footage and I don't see or hear anything from that moment until it comes out on the YouTube channel. That is the cut.

So like, it's a lot of it. It's Mark's creativity, like the way he edits.

It's all his creativity.

Right.

Yeah. It's completely, it's like, but it's interesting because where are the ideas coming from? He's basically going through the blog and the course and cherry-picking the very most successful ideas.

Right.

So it's almost like the rest of the business, Twitter, you know, our Facebook group, the newsletter is like the R&D lab. And then he gets the best ideas, turns them into videos, and we know they're going to succeed, which is how we can invest thousands of dollars because it already succeeded over here.

Right. Wow. I love that. It's kind of like a comedian where like you have the Netflix show, which is the final output, but you test it out at various comedy cellars and all these like smaller stages, right? You set— you test your sets and then you suddenly on Netflix, you look at it and go, wow, every bit was hilarious. Of course it was tested 15 times.

Exactly. Exactly.

I love it. I love it. So switching gears here, one thing that actually really caught my attention when I was researching about you was I felt like— correct me if I'm wrong— I felt like there was a video that was, I think, your most popular video on YouTube with the highest number of views was kind of like the thesis of the entire book. That was like an hour-long video and it was called Building a Second Brain. And it was you presenting a slideshow about the concepts, the PARA method, all of your signature concepts. And it was free and it was 3 years ago. And I thought that was fascinating. I thought that was like, wow, actually the book, which is paid, was already tested in the free format on YouTube and it got raked a bunch of views, right? How much was that like intentional? Was it just accidental? Was it intentional? Or did that video lead to the book eventually?

It was one in a long, long chain of tests. Wow. Yeah. You know, it's funny because I've gone on this arc where like when the course was first created, I was like, no, there needs to be exclusive content.

Right.

It needs to be secret, needs to be proprietary, paywalled, right? And then I thought, well, how am I going to market this? Like, people need to know what's inside. And so I was like, let me get 10%, you know, like the first 10% and use it as like the free content, right? And that did well. And then I said, let me do 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%. And then it hit 100% where all of the content in the course was available for free in some other place. And now it's gone past 100%. At this point, it's like 500%. There's at least 5 times as much free content, including everything that's in the course available on the blog, the YouTube channel, or via the newsletter. Content is a commodity. I truly believe no one has any secret proprietary special magical power or trick. It's all just content. What is differentiated now is accountability, coaching, community feedback, and other kinds of human support. And that's what connection—

All these human things. Yeah,

exactly. And that's why we teach it in a cohort, because you can only do all those things You can't do all those things if you're just sitting at your desk watching videos.

Right. I love it. I love it. I love it. And something that I think for me to take away, as, you know, we designed the Day One stuff that I'm part of now, is to, you know, remember that content is not the angle. You know, it's a connection. It's all these human things that you just talked about. And content is marketing, right? You need that to market it, promote, and get in front of more people. Seems like Gary Vee's model, right? I mean, it's a I hate how many times I have to quote him in my weekly stuff. But so in terms of the cohort-based courses, and I think that's probably a good segue for me to ask you this. Again, another thing that's huge, humongous, in terms of Herculean effort to run these things, to execute these. They look so easy on paper, on theory, but as someone who's run this for 3 years now, it's insanely hard. A lot of logistical work. But beyond the logistics too, just even the curriculum, just keep delivering those is hard. What has been the most fun for you in that journey? And what were some hard lessons you learned by experimenting?

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Cohorts are the best and the worst. I've

never met anybody who's in our space who said, yeah, cohorts were easy. And like, you know, it's just fun. It's just easy. No, I like—

No, it just takes everything.

It's like writing a book. Yeah,

similar. In fact, yeah, I think that was my preparation. You know, you have to get used to what it looks like to give your all for a time and then stop and step back. Gosh, what was the question? What did I learn? Was that the—

The second one was what did you learn? The first one was what was the most fun in this journey? Let's just talk about the easy stuff. What was the most fun?

I mean, the whole thing. I don't know if I'd call it fun. It's definitely meaningful and fulfilling, but like Teaching is such this deeply transformative personal process. What's kept it interesting for me, I teach the same material for 14 going on 15 cohorts now, is it's real human beings looking back at you. And I can see on Zoom even the fear, the uncertainty, the self-doubt, all the challenges that they're facing. Which are about their second brain, but the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. So usually, what's stopping them in building a second brain is stopping them in life. And I just have to find new ways of explaining it, new metaphors, new stories, new emotions to tap into, new sources of motivation. It's really almost— it's a live performance. It's like a concert. It's like I'm playing the same song technically.

Right.

But it's expressed differently based on the time of year, what's going on in my life, something that happened earlier in the day with my son. It's like it's coming out newly. And that is, it's an infinite game. It just keeps it infinitely interesting for me.

Right.

But that's also the answer to the other question, which is what's hard. I can never phone it in.

Yeah.

If I even halfway phone it in, my team sees it, my students see it, the moderators see it. It's like I am the model of like the role model for everyone.

Yeah.

So, if I'm there reading off a script or if I'm not paying attention or if I haven't done my own self-care to be fully present, Then you just— it's like it cascades the impact through the community.

You can sense the energy too. Yeah. And presence for sure, especially presence. I think with the async stuff, the core stuff, I think you can get away with just like, you know, faking it. You're right to a point. Like, we can just like, you know, pretend to smile, pretend to be, you know, excited about it. But then cohorts and live Zooms and live sessions, you really have to be present. You know, and so you'll— yeah, you're like, you— they'll sense your energy very quickly. So, my last question for you is, this is probably the silliest question I'll ask you. How many times a week do you get people tell you that you look like Elon Musk?

If you count YouTube comments, probably about 1 of every 4, 3 or 4 YouTube comments is. And it's funny, they always— I can tell they've never read any other comments because they're always like, has anyone ever told you?

Have you ever DM'd Elon Musk or have you ever tagged him in something or somebody ever tagged you both in something? Because I think they should do that. I would love to hear. Elon would be the kind of person who would probably reply back and saying like, you're a simulation of him or he's a simulation of you or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. One time, a few, like a number of years ago, maybe like 7 years ago or something, a friend of mine had an event in San Francisco that he was running. And so he like did a selfie with me that was blurry on purpose. Like he shook the camera. And he was like, oh, awesome to see @elonmusk showing up at my event. And I mean, I didn't have much of a following at the time, but it did get a bit of attention. People were like, oh my gosh, he's shorter than I. I think I'm shorter than Elon Musk. So they were like, oh, he seems short.

That's so funny. That's so funny. I never heard that story anywhere. So I'm glad you shared this, shared that here. Thank you so much. I know we're almost at the top of the hour, so want to be cautious. I know you said you have to leave a bit early. This has been fun, man. Thank you. I'm a huge fan of your impact, your work, the way you carry yourself. To me, those are like way more meaningful than, of course, your business impact too, which I appreciate. So thanks for everything you do. And I can't wait for you to tweet about the day you're going to run into one of your readers who just found your book and found you.

I plan on it. Thank you, KP. It's been a pleasure. I think you're doing a great service talking about building in public. It's just beginning. I think it's the beginning of at least decades-long huge transformation in how work is done. And you're kind of like one of the main evangelists of it.

Yeah, thank you. I mean, I went from building just side projects in public to now practically building everything I do in public. So basically like you, where I think it's just like, it's just a, it's no-brainer to me. Like, why would you not want to build in public at this point? So yeah, I appreciate it and excited to see where you'll go and excited to to follow your journey.

Yeah, man, let's keep in touch.

Sounds good. Awesome. Thank you so much. Have a good one. Bye, Thiago.

Bye-bye.