Top Strategies On Marketing And Launching (feat. Sachit Gupta)

Hello everybody. Welcome to yet another episode of the Build in Public podcast. I'm your host KP, and today I am ready for a clinic on podcasting because I have the legend Sachit Gupta with me joining us from Miami. Sachit, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. And you know what I just thought of, sort of based on like the pre-interview discussion we were having, I am the complete opposite of Build in Public because you've known me for how long? Like 3, 4 years?

3 and a half years.

I just mentioned a bunch of projects and you're like, wait, you did that? And so This is going to be interesting because I'm the opposite.

So many of them that you just mentioned were like, what? Wait, really?

Maybe this convinces me to like be more in public and share more in public.

So, but, but it's awesome for me and the audience, you know, who tuned in or who are watching this because I get to do the archaeology side of like, all right, let's go dig deep into the side that I don't know much about, Sachin. All right. So first let's set the table here. You've helped top creators with their podcasts, including Tim Ferriss, including some, you know, New York Bestselling authors like Seth Conan and so on and so forth. You've been in the podcasting game for at least seven. How many years? Give me a number. Ten.

Twenty eleven. Twenty twelve is when it started. So eleven.

So officially eleven years, dude. That's just wait. Eleven. Eleven.

It's wild.

Eleven. That's wild, man. Massive respect. I think you look one of the things that I'm warming up to a lot more these days is. Because I'm now in the podcasting game peripherally, I'd say since 2021 January, which is 2 and a half years, and I've done 75 episodes and I have a lot of respect for the game. It is not easy. It's not also not just not easy, but it's like most people, an average person on the street, if I pull them aside and said, you know, do you know how hard it is to take a podcast from like script to production to editing to like to the final publish and then to promotion. Like, they don't even know. It's the closest thing I have is filmmaking, I think. But people respect filmmaking like it's some godly art. But people think podcasting is like some people shooting the shit, forgetting all the steps. So huge respect for— I've been bringing a lot of big, uh, like creators on the show who are mostly in podcasting. And, you know, massive respect for 11 years. The first jump-off point I have for you is what got you into the game at all? Like, where What was in your life that was like, huh, I'm gonna get into podcasting? And this is 2012. Was it 2012 or was it much earlier than that?

2012. So I'll give you the quick origin story, but a quick point on what you made actually that we should discuss at some point, which is when you're looking at all these mediums, right? Podcasting, movies, music, all of these have these inherent assumptions that are there for creation which actually might not be accurate. So like, for example, like podcasting, an inherent assumption is you have to publish every week, so you just have to keep going, right?

Right.

You're not going to go to Kanye and be like, bro, publish a song every week, right? Like, like, like, or U2 or anybody. Yeah, it takes time. And we've sort of accepted this model because part of that is like algorithm-driven, which is like if you don't publish every week, people will forget, forget or whatever. But I think it's just something to keep in mind where all of these mediums have these assumptions that are sometimes driven by the platforms Which are not the best for creative output. And I think I spent a lot of time thinking about that because even when you were saying like, I have 75 episodes, I've actually published less than you because really my podcasting has been in spurts of like creative energy. I learned something and it's like, okay, I gotta pull back and actually integrate it. Um, so that's just an interesting thing. It's like,

that's an interesting thing. However though, I think, I mean, I'm sure you would agree that you've been small or big part of probably thousands of episodes at this point.

Oh, for sure, for sure. Yeah.

Which gives you a lot, to me, of exposure to how the game is played, you know, which I think was the hardest part for me.

Yes.

Because when I was diving in, it felt like I was trying to learn scuba diving without any instructors, right? I mean, in theory it's easy. I mean, it's like easy if you know it kind of thing, right? Uh, but it was also nerve-wracking. So,

so, um, let me give you the origin story and then we'll I'll give you a couple of points. So yeah, 2011, I actually moved to San Francisco after quitting my corporate job at GE, and I was like, I just want to work with cool people and work with people I was inspired by. I had read this book in college called Recession-Proof Grad by this guy Charlie Hoan, who'd used this idea of free work to work with Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi. I was like, I'm just going to use this. I literally like took the email from his book, copied it, and 2011, emailed like hundreds of startups and people that I was inspired by. One of the people who said yes was Andrew Warner from Mixergy.

Yeah, I love Andrew. That's awesome.

Yeah, so that turned into like a small project working with him. And the next year he wanted to like help with something else, hired me for it, did a bunch of stuff for him. And at one point I was like, this sponsorship thing in your business, like, I think I can do it better. You kind of suck at it. And he's like, I don't want to do it, so take over. Um, so I took it over, we did really well, um, and I built this like expertise in like audience growth at that point. So I basically consolidated what I was doing to like those 2 things. Um, and from there it just exploded. I still remember there was a mastermind in August 2015 where I decided I'm going to focus on podcasters. Like the, the, the guy who was leading it, um, this guy Sam Ovens, who you've probably heard of, um, he was like, everyone should pick a niche. And I was like, all right, mine's gonna be podcasters. And I remember writing, in 3 years I want to work with Tim Ferriss. Like that was the goal, right? Like, because even then he was that big.

And that happened.

Yes. Right. And well, the story is even crazier. Like the universe has its own ways of connecting things. And so I was like, maybe someone will intro or whatever. And someone actually offered, and I was like, wait, don't make it yet. I'm not ready. A month later, I get an email inquiry from Tim Ferriss. Sachit, we heard a few from XYZ. Tim is looking for a right-hand person. Is that something you'd be interested in?

Hell yeah!

Hell yeah! So so that led to working with Tim. Did audience growth for him, not podcast specific, like audience growth. And then that led to working with Seth, where I also did audience growth. And it was sort of this journey where I was, I realized like I was like, first time I mastered audience building and then I mastered audience monetization, right? Which is like sponsorships, clients and stuff. And at some point I realized, um, actually it was through the show Chef's Table where, I don't know if you've seen it, um, they basically like profile like, like high-profile chefs, um, Michelin stars and all of that. And there's a really interesting pattern. At some point in their career, every chef goes, I have to start my own farm. Because I have to control the raw ingredients, right? And I was like, right, we can market and all this stuff, but like, if the show isn't great, none of what I do works. So, so really that brought me into, I'm going to start my own show. And we launched that, and now we basically can, can do all 3 parts of it.

So that's the Conscious Creators.

Exactly. And Conscious Creators was really like a lab to be like, can I do this and can I build this myself? Now, um, I didn't expect it to blow up or whatever, but we launched it, we ran our growth playbook It did massively better than I ever expected. And that created a story actually that I think I'm still unraveling because honestly, I don't think I was ready for that level of fame right when I launched.

So, so I love to front-load the value and insights for anybody listening. Yeah, it's something I'm learning these days. So on that theme, I would love for you to drop a few nuggets of what would make for that great launch playbook. If somebody listening to this, wants to launch their podcast in the next 30 days, you know, what can you teach them or can you advise them on? How should they run the playbook?

Right. So it obviously, like, it depends on what you're optimizing for, right? And I think in this world that we live in, hype unfortunately plays a huge part. And so for podcasting, which is considered a very hard medium to grow, if you can basically like engineer a launch that works, it gives you a lot of positioning, right? And so What we understood about the iTunes algorithm was it cares more about velocity of growth than growth. So if you have 1,000 downloads and you add another 1,000, it's way better than a show having 100,000 downloads and adding another 1,000. Because the ratio and the velocity is way more, right? And so we basically leveraged it. And my background is in paid ads, so we really mastered that. We've now integrated that with community and paid ads. And it's basically getting a lot of intention really fast. It's like launching a book on New York Times bestseller. This or whatever. And if you can create enough of that, it just climbs. So for example, like when I did my show, we ended up on number 2 in the business category, number 25 in the country. We launched a show in Germany last year, which was a really interesting experience because I don't speak German. So I was literally producing a different language that was top 50 in 24 hours in the country, number 1 business in 5 days. And so the, the sort of Way to think about it is like how do you get as much traffic as possible? I personally like using paid ads because that's that's what our background and my background is.

And so when you do a paid ad, would it be like when you say paid social or paid Google? Like what works best for podcasting?

That's honestly like a game of whack-a-mole where something works and then it stops working and then you got to do here. So when I launched my show, we were I think buying ads in like iPhone apps. So you would open an iPhone app; it would be like a banner ad for a podcast. We've done newsletters and different places. So it's, it's, I think the, the best marketers like don't stick to a tool, they stick to a strategy.

Strategy.

Right? So like strategy is like as much attention as possible. Now, like someone like you, right? Like you have a lot of community experience and friends. So I would go, don't do paid media, hit up everyone you've helped for like the last whatever years and be like, just start this like sort of like distributed campaign to get a lot of people to download. Right? So in your case, that might work better than paid media because that's the relationship and network you've built.

Right. And so you, when you ask, not the person, but I'm just saying, I think one thing I've learned is to, there's 2 lessons I've recently warmed up to. One being from Hormozi, which we touched on earlier, where it is as big of a deal as you make it out to be. So nothing is a big deal objectively. You as the author/creator/founder have to make it a big deal. So I advise the same thing even for product and launches. Founders are like, KP, like, I don't know what people— I'm like, no, no, you should make it a big deal for yourself, which will be contagious. And other people will think like, yo, maybe I should help him or her, right? So number one is make it a big deal. So I think I didn't realize that power when I launched my thing, but I'm warming up to your point where if you make your launch a big deal by acting like it, it will be a big deal. Number one. Number two is people actually surprise you at how much they want to help you. And I think that's something that we don't, You know, it's very contented. We think like it's very selfish to go and ask someone to download our app or rate or upload or whatever, but they want to help you. They just don't get asked, and they don't get asked in a way where it's low friction.

Yes.

Would you agree?

It's about making it easy for people, right? Like, a lot of times people make it hard. I should tell a quick story from marketing campaign we launched because I know you want to touch on the Rohit Sharma thing. Yeah, that tells the story really well. Um, so this is back in 2014. I was working in Basically like running digital ads for this company called Restless Action Drink, and our what do you call it? What's the word for it? The celeb celebrity endorsement person. Celebrity partner was was this guy Rohit Sharma, who if you're in India, you know who he is.

The big deal, right? Yeah.

He's like the captain of the Indian cricket team at this point.

Right.

And so he was the endorser, right? And so we were doing this event where he was coming to our office, and he was going to basically like play cricket with people and like just like sign autographs or whatever, right? And I was like, hmm, right before the event, let's get questions from the audience or people, and then we can like ask him those questions and record, and that will be content. And now, and so the easiest thing would be to be like, tweet, hey, Rohit Sharma's coming to our office, tell us questions to ask, right? But like Twitter algorithm doesn't work. And with that company, we built a massive email list. So I was like, let's not just tweet, let's email the people and tell them like the first X questions are going to be selected. So people have like more of an incentive to go and ask questions quickly. Right? Yeah. So, so first we added that. Second thing, I was like, but like, I really want to make sure that like these questions get in front of him and people do it right. So we basically use this thing called click to tweet, and the link, like if you click the link, it would basically open Twitter and it literally had our, our handle, Rohit's handle, the hashtag that we wanted with literally like square brackets with insert question here. So we make it, made it really easy for people, right? It was like really simple. And so we just send that email and Rohit comes into our office and he's like, how are you doing this? Like, I don't get these many people responding to me or asking me questions.

Because he's being mentioned in every possible tweet there.

Exactly. And so what we did was, the other thing we did was if you posted on Twitter, the algorithm would only show it to a few people, right? By starting it from the email, it was like everyone just got a blast and it was like Rohit Sharma is coming in 1 hour, ask your question, and here's the, like, how to make it like really easy. Right? So like by connecting all of this, we just made it really easy for people to take action. And I think a lot of times people don't think about that. Like how many times do you get a request from someone and you're like, I want to help you but I have to do like 50 things to be able to help you, right? People will send me a podcast, I'm like, can you send this to me in a Notion with a transcript so I can leave comments for you? And then people don't reply. It's like, like make it easy for me to help you, right? Yeah. Um, we, we, we're actually creating a process, uh, internally for clients now. Recently, uh, I talked to my designer about this today morning. It's literally like the module is going to be how to give feedback. Because we're like, clients aren't giving the best feedback. Well, have we told them how we want feedback? No. So we're going to teach clients how to actually give feedback on design so that it's actually useful for us. So I think people just don't make things easy for people or have empathy for that.

Yeah. So I get a lot of compliments from so many of my founder friends and people in my circle saying, Kibbe, you're a great marketer. I love it. I'm grateful, but they haven't met you. You're the real great marketer, I think, in my books, because what you just described, the way your mind works is so different than the way my mind works at rest.

Wait, say more, say more. How so? Because this is helpful for me.

Take the clip. But I'm serious. I think I'm very much a community-driven, you know, it's like a very different angle. I approach things very differently, but you're analytical plus, Um, you know, I think acumen, the, the marketing acumen you just naturally tend to have is, is very showing. You know, I love that. I love the way you thought about that whole, um, Rohit Sharma campaign. Actually, tell me the story of how you landed that gig in the first place, because it's— I'm sure top celebrity, you know, one of the biggest sports people in Indian context, and launching an energy drink, you know, that's amazing for your brand. How did that happen?

So the answer is an easy one because it was my cousin who had the energy drink. But I will actually give something that's useful for people, which is— and this honestly is like the secret of how I built my network. It's this concept called trust the generals, which is what people usually do, right? Let's say you want to meet Hormozi. You're going to like be like, what's the best thing I could send Hormozi? Or like, what is the tweet, right? Right. People spend too much time reaching, trying to reach the influencer, but they already have people coming to him. They're like, they don't have any time. But all of them have these advisors that they turn to for advice. So a lot of times what I've done is I've built relationships with the advisors. They're the ones actually doing the stuff. Like, they know what's going on, right? Like, the influencer is just like influencing. They don't know what the fuck's going on in their company because they're like— no influencer is doing both. I think that's another secret that people don't understand. It's like there's a face and there's a company builder, and, and the best have both. It's like one person doing both is very rare. And so I try and build relationships with not the primary person, but like with the Their advisors. And, and so—

How does that, how does that look like in real life? Give us, give us a couple examples.

I'll give you the Tim Ferriss thing, actually. Uh, so the way that actually happened was, um, going back to that book, Charlie, Recession-Proof Grad. Um, so I got the gig with Andrew, and I basically emailed, uh, Charlie. I was like, Charlie, I used your email and I got this gig. And then I was like, I got this gig, and we did this. I always like just kept him updated. Apparently what happened, Tim or someone on his team reached out to Charlie and were like, We want to hire someone like you. Charlie's like, well, this kid's been emailing me for 4 years and he's like made progress. Let me recommend him. Right? And so I didn't do anything. Someone Tim trusted recommended me and that's what worked.

That's a huge unlock for me, man. That's amazing.

But the thing is, that's how we make our most biggest decisions, right? We go to people we trust. Yeah. Like, who do you trust?

Because that's like what I'm thinking right now. Like, if you have to get to me, I'm thinking about. I mean, I'm not like that big, but I'm just saying, like I have four or five people that I trust really well, and if they say something, if they co-sign,

yeah,

that's golden to me. I don't need to vet them. First of all, they're doing me a service because I don't want to vet. Vetting is a pain in the ass. But so instead of coming through me directly, which is a busy channel through all the public channels, you can come through the back door. Damn, that's smart.

And think about like

like I think my biggest. The challenge there, even thinking about it before this conversation with you though, I think I kind of knew this, but it felt like the resistance that I had was like, what would I talk to— let's say Phil Toronto, you know, Gary Vee's right-hand man. I'm like, why would I talk to Phil Toronto? Like, I know Gary and I love— I know that he loves immigrants and we have a lot— I know we have a lot in common, but I don't know what I would talk to Phil Toronto about. I think that's where my— I was stuck until this unlocked.

I mean, everything I've learned about the creator economy has been from Being on these teams and observing and asking questions. So for me, it was like I'm basically doing research, and I'm doing research at a different scale, right? Because Tim knows his team, his staff. Seth knows his team, his staff. Someone else knows— I'm like kind of like getting knowledge across the board.

Across the board.

And so if I was with Gary's right hand, what would I ask him?

Or Seth, for example. I think you worked with Seth. Like, what were some conversations like with his team? For you, for example?

Uh, this is great because you're actually setting this up for me in, in the best way. The way Seth's thing happened too was, um, there's another— and I love, like, I'm glad I get to shout out these people. Uh, Willie Jackson, who, uh, he worked with Seth around 2010 when Seth did this, like, before AltMBA. I forget what it was called. I think it was like a 6-month MBA thing. And Seth announced, like, all of these people, like, started, like, working or were working with him. I literally, like, I think I was Was I in? I was either in college. I was working at my corporate job at GE. I emailed Willie, and I'm like, literally, I was like, "How the fuck do you get this job?" Basically, right? And Willie's like, "Yeah, you sound like an internet person." This is ten years ago, so like internet people was not as common as it is now. He's like, "I'll respond to you," and he like reconnected and then kept him updated. And so I started working with him. I saw Seth's team was running ads, and like the advert was not good. It was clear like they were just like testing out. Took a screenshot, sent it to Willie, being like, "Hey, this is what you guys are doing." If you guys need any help, no hard sell. Let me know if I can help. So I didn't hear back, and then he's like, "Send me this email again. Remove this part. Keep this. I'll send it to Seth." Send it to Seth. Seth emailed me, asked a question. I replied to it, and I never heard back. And I was like, "All right, this is done." So someone from Seth's team actually, she ran Alt MBA West, who runs Maven now.

Yeah, with Scale. Yeah, yeah.

So she reached out, and she was like, "Hey, we want to learn this. We don't want to hire it out." I'm like, "Sure." And I was like, "I'll do calls with you guys. Like, like I'll just teach you this." You don't have to pay me because Seth's work has had all of this impact. Like, whatever, I'll just show you guys. I think we did 2 calls and they were like, we don't want to do this. Can we hire you?

That's brilliant.

Yeah, but that also came from like someone I just like emailed him who he trusted, right? And so—

I mean, this is just brilliant, man. I think most people don't talk about this. Let me tell you this. I've listened to like hundreds of episodes of these kind of topics. I haven't heard this playbook, this, the one you're sharing right now, which is going through, you said Wilson, what's his name?

Willie Jackson. In this case, it was Willie.

Willie or Wes or any of these people, you know, to get to Seth. By the way, I've emailed Seth in 2011. He and I, we emailed each other back and forth, but I had to like bust my ass off to get to his attention level. Because, you know, like he's got thousands of emails and I did like some crazy shit back when I was at Vanderbilt. I did like Purple Cow campaign or whatever because he was, you know, Purple Cow was the book he wrote and I wrote for 700 days nonstop on my blog, and I would every like three months.

You wrote him for 700 days?

I didn't. I didn't write him, but I wrote on the blog. I was posting like some of the stuff, and I would ping him like periodically every three months once. I would send him an email saying thanks for you for impact. Here's what I wrote. Eventually, he got tired of me, and he said, "KP." I mean, I don't think he got tired. He was saying, "How can I help you? What can I? You know, what do you want?" I said, "I'd love to meet you." And so he gave me tickets to his. one of his conferences in New York, which I felt sick the night before and I couldn't go. So, I passed it on to some other Seth fan. But all I remember was he emailed me saying, KP, you're a legend, in one of my emails. And I framed that for like, I don't know, for a year. But what I'm trying to get to is the fact that I've always thought that was the only way, which is just literally— I'm not saying they're right or wrong. I know both of us know that. But It just—you've enlightened me on this other side where think about the people behind the brand. It's not just Seth, right? And I'm like, damn! Now that I'm thinking, wow! And you don't need to wait to add value to them.

It's—I think we all look for the direct thing, like like shortest. It's a very like masculine thing. But if you even notice, like like nature like does things indirectly, right? It's like we're like order, like direct. But nature is fucking chaos. Yeah. And and by the way, here's another thing about. This that actually I just like it hit me, which is then like I'm not doing anything. This person's telling that person about me. Yeah. Then they reach out if they like it. So it's like the, the, there's always a power dynamic going on, right? And these things, it's like it's flipped because you're reaching out. Um,

yeah.

Yeah.

Versus them reaching out for your need. Yeah. Yeah. Versus that. I mean, yeah.

Which versus me cold emailing, right? So, so whenever people ask like, what's the best cold email you've gotten? The one from Tim's team. I don't think I will ever beat that.

Right? Inquiry from Tim. Okay. So tell me about Creator MBA. Tell me about why you started it or what were some big lessons from there, from that. And then where is it evolving to now?

Yeah. So Creator MBA was started after On Deck, which we were both part of. And

we should talk about it at some point. I think the listeners would be like, who are these guys? How do they know each other? Like we should talk about it. Yeah.

Yeah, we can. Um, the, the idea is, and it's honestly the thing that I've been sort of working on for the last 10 years, which is if you're a creator, if you've built an audience, how do you build a business around it, right? And then for me, um, it's been this sort of like exploration of like whether it's coaching, whether it's communities, whether it's education. And, and so I sporadically did a lot of coaching between 2017 and 2021, but never really built into something because I think really the thing that was blocking it is like I didn't want to be public. So I would only coach people who like came to me. Um, until 2019, by the way, if you look for me online, you would not find me. It was, it was very like dark because I had the clients I wanted. Yeah, I had the clients I wanted. Um, and so, so I launched it like really after one day because I basically— it's— we went through this period of 2 years where like I think like more than like half a billion or whatever was invested in the creator economy. Yeah, it's basically been just like— it's like, I wish they'd just given me— I'd go on my roof and throw it, and maybe that was a better use because all that money was just lit on fire. Um, creators at the end of the day care about 2 things: help me make more income and help me get a bigger audience. I mean, it's actually— it's the bigger audience piece is there because they think that drives more income, which actually is not accurate. You can make more income with a much smaller audience, but like, those are the things that creators care about, right? And so, uh, it was launched to just focus on that. Um, I launched it as a core thing. I was really burned out after On Deck, didn't really like sell that many people into it. I think it was 2. I was like, wait, this is really weird compared to 100 people. But the interesting thing is, again, you're on a mega

cohort. You're on a mega cohort at On Deck, the 100.

100 plus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but again, it's like nature does things indirectly. And like, one of the things I've been working on really is like, when you stay silent, you actually start listening, you start getting ideas. And so what happened with Creators MBA was one, like, 2 people joined, kind of like put it on ice. Then one of those people came back and they were like, hey, I want you to coach me on how to do this because like all the education is good, but when you get that email from a brand being like Blah blah blah blah. How do you actually respond, right? How do you know what's going on? What are they saying? But what are they actually saying behind the lines? Like, you can't learn that from a course. And I was like,

right,

I'll start coaching you. And instead of like managing the deal, I'll start coaching you, and I'll drop my percentage compared to what an agency would take because it aligns incentives. And she said yes. First month, she did tens of thousands of dollars, crushed it. Our income, like what we would have charged her for like a

A cohort spot or

a—

yeah, or a membership.

We've made that in like quarters and like, it's like, so it's like we've both won, right? And so what's happening with Creators MBA now is, um, inspired by Hormozi, um, in the next few years I plan on basically open sourcing everything I've learned about like getting sponsors, brand deals, all that stuff. And the way we're going to monetize is we're going to work with a few people and just like think of it as maybe like private equity or whatever you want to call it, uh, rev share slash, uh, arrangement where we like co-develop stuff.

Hmm. I just had this written down in my journal the other day, is give away the education, charge the implementation, which is Hormozi's whole thing. And it's so counterintuitive. I'm like, I feel so dumb for arriving at that conclusion much later. But I feel like a lot of people still haven't arrived at that.

You're still early. Yeah.

I'm saying, I think a lot of people are still trying to like guard their real value. So I just published, I had one of the best interviews with Dani Miranda at the— so just to catch you up, we did the— we just announced the Podcast Fellowship. We're gonna go into the On Deck podcast, but like, I just did the Build in Public Podcast Fellowship, right? Announced it. I really wanted to run quickly and test the waters. So we had 8 paid fellows and 2 scholarships, and we just went to market quick. In one of the episodes, or one of the sessions, I invited a fireside chat guest. Which is Danny Miranda, who I love. Danny has got similar energy like me. Killed it, crushed it. Like people were like, like jaw dropped kind of level. In the past, I would have guarded this under like, oh, I'm going to save this for BAPP F2 or whatever shit. Immediately I just told my team, let's put this on air. I mean, let's put this on my podcast and on YouTube and on the website so that people get a sense of what it's like inside, right? I think that's the biggest thing, even on deck. I mean,

I know all those sessions that we recorded, like Gold.

Lost. All of it's gone, evaporated, like you said. And I feel so dumb looking back, even within my own Building Public Fellowship. I'm like, there's so many golden gems that I had in the sessions that were just guarded by 12 people who watched it. And so, only recently I finally warmed up to this idea of what you're arriving at, which is, you know what, the magic really is in implementation. And if they're really like— only the— among, let's say, a class of 100 people, Only four or five will have all-star outcomes, and they frankly don't care about rev share percentages as much. I mean, they're willing to work with you is what I'm trying to get to. And so you'll make all the money from that as opposed to trying to charge the people who are not even as committed.

Yes.

You know, so you're right. You're on the right track, brother. You know, I'm on the I'm same realization that I just had.

So so so a few things on what you said because a lot of it was like counterintuitive too. The first one is what you just said, which is like the top people are willing to pay ref share. A lot of times we believe like they're going to nickel and dime you. Yeah, but they're not. But the thing I've learned from— by the way, this— do you see? Just see what just happened. This is a new Apple thing. It's like if I do this, yeah, it's, it's—

oh yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, okay. Uh, so the top people will actually pay, right? Like Seth, one of the best marketers in the world, was like, I need to do Facebook ads, I'm not going to figure it out, like what do you charge Like the best people pay for experts. And I think a lot of times we believe that like, oh, they're not going to do that. Or like if I ask for a rev share, like no, if you do your work well, they will pay for it. Um, I think the second thing, thing I also always think about is like this like idea of like creator content business model fit, right? And so I think there are some creators who are geared towards courses. Like I think Ali Abdaal is excellent at creating content, right? His course is— I've heard it's amazing. And It's interesting actually, like when he came to services, he partnered with someone else because maybe that's not like where his core skill set is, right? Um, I did an interview with Eamon from AppSumo who ran AppSumo, and he's like, dude, your podcast process is insane. Like I've never seen anything like this. And he's like, you're good at providing service at a high level, why not just do that? And so that's why we put— because it also, in terms of a business model, it's where like providing high-level services to people who are at the top who have crazy expectations. I just know how to do that because—

So this is like the white glove, the white glove service. Exactly. And you're great at that.

Exactly right. And it's— I mean, I still remember like times like working with Seth and Tim. I'd message their team, they'd be like, hey, do you want to get on a call? They'd be like, nah, like you're good. Because I was like the one problem they didn't have to take care of. So they're like, if you're doing your work— and I was traveling around, like no one cared because the work was getting done.

Um,

and so yeah, I think this is where,

uh, it's kind of like being the founder within Being a founder within their team, of course they would like that, right? 'Cause you have the ownership DNA.

Yeah. Like, I mean, I took over Mixergy sponsorship, ran it, grew it from $50K to half a million a year in 4 years. And like, Andrew didn't have to do much. He actually has a video where he says, he's like, you're the CEO of this. I don't know the point of this. Oh, this is another thing I'm actually thinking about a lot, which is like the AI and content. So I believe that with AI, there's going to be this like Cambrian explosion of content. where we're going to create way more, we won't know what's real, right? I actually just had a call with someone. They were like, yeah, we have like all these podcasts, half are AI hosted. I was like, what? I didn't have any idea, right? And so like, if this is where we're going and there's all this content, we actually don't know what's true or real at this point, right? Like if you've seen something on the internet, screenshots, you don't know what's true or real.

Right.

So if you're trying to parse something or make sense of something, what do you do? You go to people you trust. Right? So we're actually like social media, which was like one-to-mass. That one-to-mass has gone to such an extreme that it's driving us back to one-to-one, which is relationships, trust, right? It's like it's not like go shout an award on social media. And so for me, I'm really thinking about like story brand relationships. Like those are the things that are going to drive business. And actually, I'm trying.

Is that is your birthday today?

I'm gonna see if I can turn this off. Oh, there you go. That's so funny. Uh, but yeah, I think like those 3 things are going to drive business more than like posting on social media. There's this article called The Tim Ferriss Effect which talks about like how being mentioned on his blog or podcast can just like crazily influence book downloads, right? And I remember actually someone tweeted—

it's like the Oprah effect, yeah, right? It's like the Oprah effect.

Yeah, exactly. And someone— I remember someone tweeted, they were like, one blog or podcast can change your life. And I was like, that's actually false, because if you have a product, the right pod— being mentioned on the right podcast Can completely change your business.

100%,

right? And so like now let's say you're working on marketing. Is it better to spend, and you've done this, so you have data on this, a year building a Twitter following or like a year targeted developing relationships with the right people who can then shout something out that you're building?

Obviously the latter, right?

And in fact, is it? I don't know for sure because I don't.

No, actually genuinely don't. The I mean I just made a this is so funny because I just made a tweet yesterday. And I was like, for some reason, one of my Google Docs showed up and I was searching for some keyword and Google Docs showed up and it was July 2020. And I took a screenshot of that and I said, biggest goal ever is build leverage on the internet, right? And this is me, the 2020 me talking. This is before On Deck, 'cause I joined in September. This is July. Today, I don't know many top creators. I don't have relationships with, I was trying to describe my condition, my situation, and I want to change this. And here's the list of people that I want relationships with, like Arvid Karr, a bunch of these names, right? Now they're really my friends. It's funny. And all these people that I wrote a list of, and then I said, I'm at 2,500 followers. I don't care. If I get to 10,000, it'll be a miracle, right? And I had email, same thing. I had like, I think 300 followers. And I'm like, if I get to 5,000, it's a miracle. And, but one other criteria I wrote though is that in this pursuit, I wanna make sure I don't lose my DNA. And which is, I put 4 bullet points, positive sum, warm, And like hype, I can look for a bunch of words like that, right? Energetic and all that. And I looked back and I was like, first of all, I took a moment to really be proud of that. Because in this grind, we're constantly chasing what's next, what's next.

I'm like, you got it done.

I got it done. Plus 4. I got 47,000. I'm like, are you— I can't believe it. You know, I'm like, wait, just for

that?

Just for that. That's for that. Oh, thank you. Thank you. And like I wished for, I have top creators like you as friends. I can really like send you a particular pitch and say, Sachin, what's your quick take on this, right? Same thing with like anybody, like you said. So, but what we don't— I think for my big lesson there was that you don't just want the audience. Like a meme page on Instagram has more audience than me and you combined. Like I will never outblast or outcompete a shitposting Reddit page on Instagram or Twitter.

Yeah.

They have 500,000, 600,000, 1 million, 2 million top of the funnel, quote unquote. but they literally cannot even sell a sock, a single pair of socks or t-shirt. And so what you really want is attention and trust. Yeah. Ideally, even if you don't have attention, that's why when everybody's like, Musk is effing up the Twitter algorithm, I'm like, I don't care. Even if my posts get 400 views out of 4,000, which is like 0.1%, I don't care. I get Sachit to reply, or I get like Chanel, who's one of my favorite newsletter writers, Drew Riley.

He's great. Yeah,

he's great. We want those people to reply and read.

Yeah.

Really, that's what— like, so to me it's almost still— it sounds so dumb, but it's like a group chat still. I felt like a group chat in 2020. Twitter was like a group chat for me. And after all this, it's still like that, you know?

That's interesting.

So I do care about the top line from the lens of like, how many reps am I putting?

Right.

So like, it's almost like a one-to-one relationship. By the way, I feel like, uh, this is something Hormozi also talks about. He says If you really saw how much I, how much work I put in for this new book, The Hundred Million Leads, you think I'm dumb as rocks. I personally think the same thing. If you saw how many reps I put to get to 47K, you think I'm dumb as rocks. I got 37,200 tweets,

right?

So it's 1 to 1.5 relationship.

Yes,

it's not great, man. Like there are people who have like 600 tweets and have 40,000 followers, you know. So I'm actually really low, uh, in terms of Efficiency.

Interesting.

Efficiency-wise,

like your reps-to-follower ratio is way less

terrible. It's like worse than like some of these other dumb accounts.

I, I wonder how much of this is because of what you just said, which is you're not playing to the algorithm. Exactly. So this is actually my thing with social media. Um, there's an interview Hasan Minhaj did on with Colin Samir that he talks about it, which is like he talks about how if you're doing a comedy show, right, and someone's like yelling You see the normal people, but you don't like, and you hear kind of like hear the crazies. So you know, like the crazies are only a small part.

Yeah.

On the internet, it's like you only hear the crazy. So you think that's everyone, right? And so I think a few things have happened. Like one, I think this Overton window of like what's acceptable has shifted. So something that would be extreme like five years ago is like normal now. Normal now. And if things keep getting more extreme, my at least what I think is you almost have to. Like, do more extreme stuff on social media to build a following.

More controversial stuff, right? That's what we get. You become a performative monkey. But my thing is this, that is precisely why we need to have the alternate creators like you and me play the game. The problem is most people are exiting the game because they're seeing this as a circus and they're like, I don't want to be a performative monkey. But my thing is like, but that's exactly why you should be in the game because otherwise it'd be left with only performative monkeys.

Yeah. And so what we're trying to figure out is like, how do we just do this all without social media? It's— it's— in 6 months I will have an answer. We have a very specific plan. Um, if this works, I'm just gonna delete all of it because it's— again, like, the extremes are getting more extreme, and I get worried of like, oh, like, do I almost have to do something freaking crazy like cut off my arm to get a like? Like, is that— is that what's gonna happen?

But— but

that sounds stupid, but like, that's where it's going.

I know, I know. But there's two— here's the thing though. I think I fully agree with that, and I, I feel tempted sometimes to kind of fall into this trap of like, okay, Okay. If you watch YouTube, right? If you see YouTube, what MrBeast has normalized is spectacles. Like you literally have to put on a freak show.

Yes.

Like a spectacle. And the whole thing about first 7 seconds, the thumbnail matters, the title matters. So every second microanalyzing, it's almost like junk food, right? How McDonald's microanalyzes what ingredients gets you wanting to taste the fries and never put them down. So there's the junk foodization of social media that's happening left, right, center. We know that. But I— my whole point is that because if you watch a particular YouTube video featuring MrBeast, within 10 seconds, you know, you walk away. I never walked away feeling like I'm inspired, I'm moved, I'm touched.

Yeah.

Mostly I feel like it's a gimmick, or man, how much money must have gone into this dumbass gimmick? Not in a good way. I mean, not in a mean way. I just think that it's just dumb gimmick, you know?

Yeah.

I don't have nothing. I love MrBeast. I just think that too much, right?

He's playing a different game, right? Like, I consider MrBeast more like P.T. Barnum. And like, he's putting on a show and a spectacle. Not everyone needs to do that.

But everybody's copying that, obviously. Like you said, like everyone tries to drink from the same thing. They're like, oh, this is maybe that's what I should do. My spectacle, spectacle. What I'm trying to lean towards is the opposite. Or like, I want the world to have the opposite voices still win, but I have to trade off something. I have to— there have to be some sacrifice. They have to— I have to sacrifice the goat. Or some kind of whatever, you know. The sacrifice that I have to give is that there will not be any quick ROI results in years. But in decades, hell yes. And in terms of impact, hell yes. So I watched this episode, this video by Mr. Rogers. I think you'll relate to this.

Oh,

he's great. You love him, you know, right, Rogers? So this is Charlie Rose, 1995 or something, one episode of him, which is one of my favorite episodes. Mr. Rogers was basically dealing with stuff that you and I are dealing with, where every childhood— any show geared towards children in those '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, 4 decades was filled with hyperbole, like blackface, like dumb shit, right? Like racist undertones or throwing kids off the bed and like laughing, like physical comedy, right? Like dumb comedy.

Yeah.

And Mr. Rogers was genuinely concerned that some silly kid is gonna attempt that dumb stunt because they don't know anything. They're kids, right? And so Charlie Rose asks him at the end of this whole career, 40 years in the game, how many lives do you think you've impacted across 40 years? And he just won Hall of Fame in television, which is one of the greatest, you know, things.

That speech, by the way, when he won that is— I don't know if you've seen it.

I've seen it. He walks his He rushes his own intro.

I'll watch the clock.

I'll watch the clock. And he says, he gives the best one-liner example, like, because Charlie Rose is kind of like the normal person, right? He says, I don't care how many lives I've impacted, even if the number is one. If there's a kid down there who has Down syndrome, and when I wrap up my show and hang up my boots and say it's a wrap for my Mr. Rogers, you know, legacy, And I go to the end of the stage. If that kid gives me a hug, I think I won life.

Yeah.

I think that is the perspective that I feel like people like you and I should draw from.

Yes.

Because otherwise, of course, I can never play the performative monkey game. I just don't want that, you know. And but but by any definition, did Mr. Rogers win or lose? I think he won by 40 years though. There was no quick win.

We're two freaking kids from India talking about Mr. Rogers. So like. He won.

He really won. He went after— how many years after his death? 15, 20 years after his death, or maybe something like that, right? So I genuinely think there were so many people who did the short-term tactics during his era in the '70s, which you and I are not talking about. So MrBeast, I generally concerned to think about him. I'm worried about him that is he thinking about his legacy or is he thinking about just P.T. Barnum shit? You know,

I think MrBeast almost is like— this is the interesting thing is like when you look at like how Hollywood has shifted, like he's now actually the talent, the studio, and like the distribution, like where he's basically merged all through, right? So like I think of him as more of a studio. But let's actually talk about the big creator lie because I wanted to talk to you about this. Yeah, yeah. Um, and I think it's— if you don't think about this, you don't notice it. But when you first see it, you realize everything that is online about creators comes from this and is a huge lie, which is we've created this, we've created this sort of like expectation that we have to get max views, right? Everyone's optimizing for audience and max views. And why is that? Because the biggest way most people want to monetize is sponsorships or ads, and it's based on number of views. It's a CPM game, right? So it's like if I get 1,000 views versus 100,000 versus a million views, like my sponsor revenue will linearly change based on that. That's a fucking lie. So when we do podcast— I mean, I remember like Mixergy podcast sponsorship, right? Like, I think— I'm sure you've heard like podcast CPMs are standard, like $25 or whatever. We were doing $100 plus, and we were, we were like— so Andrew published 3 times a week, 2 ads a podcast. I still remember the numbers. It was 312 ad slots in a year. That's a lot of ad slots. We would start some years like by the second week 60 to 80% of the inventory sold. Like, we were just crushing it, right? And none of them— I think like a few people asked us for CPMs. I didn't even tell people what the CPM was because I would just like frame the discussion. And so just by changing that, we went from max optimization to ROI. Like, what kind of content will give our sponsors the best ROI and not like the biggest downloads, right? We didn't even have like a crazy download change in like the 4 years, but like people still kept paying because the audience was different. And so, so much of the creator stuff is max views for max sponsor dollars. When you just remove this and you start looking at everything people are saying that you should do, you're like, why? Right? Why?

Wow.

Um, and then in terms of monetization,

how did the discussion with the brands work out in terms of ROI? What was the lens they were using?

I'll give you my first— this is my one of my favorite calls I've ever done because it changed the game. Um, John, like, I started doing sponsors for Mixergy. He had this like Former— all these people had applied for sponsorships. One of the companies was Toptal. So I just remember getting on a call with their CEO Brandon, and I was just like, so tell me about Toptal, like what do you guys do? Right, tell me about the company. I'm like, okay, like what are you looking for? Customers? What else are you doing in marketing? Right, that was the thing. And he's like, yeah, this. I'm like, okay, so you're doing Facebook ads, you clearly have metrics, what's your acquisition cost? Yeah. So it was like, like what is your acquisition cost? I think we can provide you these many customers. So it's acquisition time cost times customers. How's that for the price? And they were like, yeah, like if you give us 6 customers, we're basically spending the same as Facebook. Let's do it. And it's, it sounds very simple to me, but like I don't know why anyone else wasn't doing it. And then they just, then it kept going on. Then it was, and then I think the other thing, I was just talking to someone, um, on Twitter, like one of the questions I always ask like creators is like, okay, you've sold ad deals, how many deals have you sold and how many people came back? And like, it sucks for people. Like, they're like, it sucks, right? Most creators are just turning sponsors, right? Because, and I'm gonna go, they're like, like, how do we know? I'm like, did you email the brand after the campaign and ask how it went? And they're like, no. What? Why? Right? It's, it's, it's a— they paid you to do something.

Yeah.

How did it go? And so I would do like, like strategically do that. I would suggest improvements. And instead of trying to now sell more sponsors, I was like, what else can we do? Oh, like this is working. What if you produce a course? What if you like actually put your pixel on our face, like website, so that you can run ads with our creator's face on Facebook targeting those same people? So so it's like you're not spending money to like promote my client, but it also benefits you, right? So we added all of these things that then they would like pay more for, and so they they were a customer for like actually the entire time I ran the sponsorship, like four or five years in the running. And it was a very good call where, how was this year? Great, great. Same thing next year? Great, great. 6 figures closed. And so a lot of creators just don't—

I think aligning the incentives and understanding their goals, you know, and how they, how much value they put on their goals.

Yeah.

You know, that's the like performance-based—

But it's like, like if you don't know what they're looking for, how do you, how are you going to drive growth? It's Aman had the best line. He's like, doing marketing without like someone you're addressing is like writing a love letter and addressing it to whom it may concern. That's what most people do, right? It's like, and then we would like really work with the brands on the ad campaigns. So the brands would like give us a PDF. I was like, no, I don't want that. Like, give me something better. Can I talk to your customers? Can we feature your customers on our ads? So it's like, let's take this to the best like campaign so that we can drive the best ROI for you because that's how you come back.

See, I mean, this is what I'm talking about. Like you're the through and through marketer, you know, like this, this lifecycle marketing thing, which like even post, um, sort of, you know, post-campaign, the retro and like discussing like how did the ads perform? You know, did you benefit or not? Like that's just signals to me that you're so much on the team of the brand, even though you're working for the creator.

Well, it's all, it's the brand person and the brand. And actually I'll tell you about Another, this was our best thing we did. And like, I actually hope people copy this. So I'll share this, which is I would make the creator record a video thanking the brand. And the video was very strategic. It was not thank you brand. It was thank you person's name and company for sponsoring us and what it means. Because whenever we send it to the rep, what is he going to do? He's going to share it with his own company, right? It's like it makes him look good. It makes the company look good. So I would get messages from friends at those companies being like, hey, Your video was like, is in our exec chat. And it's like, yep, that's what I want. Because a year later when we're talking about renewals, who are you going to remember? The person who sent you like the personalized thank you video and followed up or like someone who you just paid and you're like, okay, like I don't know how the ads went. And so yeah, it's a whole process that we mapped out.

Yeah. Brilliant. Okay. So one last thing I want to touch on is you ran the fellowship at On Deck, right? Both of us were, we worked briefly together. We had so much fun. What were 2 or 3 big lessons you learned from that experience?

Speed and focus. So I think there's like one thing we got right and one thing we got wrong. So, cause I want to just like share both. Um, the way, like, I remember like entering, like joining the company and just feeling like you're being swept by this wave of motion or momentum. Right? And it was my first experience having that. And I realize now, like, trying to recreate it, how important that was.

So hard. It's so hard to get it right.

Yeah, because like the whole culture was like—

Momentum. Yeah.

But I think the converse of that is like we move so fast, we never came up and we're like, wait, should we be doing this? Um, and so I think like focus, not just that, that can be like number of fellowships, it's like the number of things you're doing, all that stuff. We were doing like, like we went— I even looked at like, looked back at our whole fellowship and I was like, if we reduced the number of events by half, we probably would have done better because people felt so overwhelmed by like all the value that we gave, right? And so yeah, I think like focus in what's the minimum effective dose is something I really think about in that way.

I think— what are your lessons? My lessons is something you touched on earlier, um, in a different context, which is, um, Really playing the game, being on your fellow's side and making sure that this is about their success. That's the game. It's not that we ran a cohort, we have so many fellows, so many, so much revenue. That's great. That's the outcomes, right? That's like something you can brag about. It's cool. But it's just like the way you described everything about the brands and would they come back? How can we make it better for you? How can we write your copy for you? All that good stuff. I'm like, I think— That's what I'm leaning towards when I'm getting my chance to write, do my own fellowship at the BIPF. And I feel like even now I am not doing as good of a job I could do. It's easier, I think, somehow to do that in a white glove service business. Like when I ran the consulting, you know, last year I did like briefly, it was every day I was waking up and thinking, how can I make my client more successful? Period. Right? But when it comes to cohort, I almost think that we just leave the onus on the student and the slash fellow and like hope that they catch some stuff, you know? Yeah. Because of the scale, of course, there's an excuse, right? It's like the scale is too big and you can't really give personal attention, which is all fair. But even if it's not personally you holding their hand, are you creating systems?

Yes.

Are you creating information libraries? Like, are you making it so damn easy that they can't, you know, skip, you know, taking the steps? You know what I mean? So I think that is something I'm learning from. And this conversation is really exciting for me, by the way. It was really energizing because you kind of, Giving me that nudge to lean more towards that side. Yeah. Um, given I don't have big scale now, I only have 10 to 20 people.

Let me ask, because I think, uh, from what I remember, your NPS basically destroyed every other fellowship. Is that correct?

We had the highest NPS for, I think, 2-3 years. Yeah.

What was your NPS again? Just, just so everyone hears this.

I think it's 82 or 85. I think it was 85, 81, 82 in Audience C1, the first ever. And then in the third one, we did 85, I think. So we had—

I think you hit 90s at some point, right? Or Was that—

I think it was close, but nobody else, I feel like nobody else had 80s until then. Yeah, I think nobody had 70s.

So I'm just like, for you, when you're thinking of a cohort at that scale of like 100+ people, what were things that you were doing that were like the thing that like was the value which got people to give the NPS? It's never the thing you think it is. It's always something else. So what was that?

I don't know, man. I feel like so much of it, I feel like genuinely caring about them. You know, I think I genuinely made sure that, I think one thing was very helpful for me because I was a no-code maker myself a few years ago.

Right.

And so in 2018, October, I was in the exact pit of despair of like not knowing how to build something and like having to go through the whole bubble journey. I made sure that the curriculum was designed in a way that it really solved for those needs that I personally—

I don't think it was the curriculum. That I can tell you. I don't think that the success was the curriculum. Okay, so that's

one. The number 2 is—

Maybe, maybe, but I think it was something you did. Like it's something that's unique to you.

I think it's very hard. It's like asking Tim Ferriss, you know, like what's his— I don't know. I think even now, by the way, we have insane high NPS. We just had, first of all, we had 100% completion, which I'm celebrating that because, you know, back then I remember getting people to complete forms was such a big hard deal. And so now we just had 100% and I think we're on like 90 NPS just now in the last cohort.

That's amazing.

But it's smaller because of course I think it's— but to be honest though, If you really ask me, I think we did something very unique where every 2 weeks we would pause and I would have an emergency town hall or some kind of a periodic town hall with the fellows. And I would show my cards to them that here's what the next few sessions are coming. Here's what I hope to address as challenges. Right. Solutions to the challenges that I think you might have. Help me pick the right ones and eliminate the wrong ones. So they felt like they were involved in the decision-making And I literally would move some meetings. I mean, some sessions, like even with Ryan Hoover or whoever I need to move, I would just say, let's move to the next cohort because it's not a good fit or whatever. And so I think they saw that I literally had their interests ahead of my interests. And maybe that helped. And also we had a— I also realized that having a capstone at the end is a massive momentum booster. People love when they get to graduation, right? Yeah,

you're like releasing something. Yeah, yeah.

this adrenaline rush that comes out of that moment. And I think now that with VIPF, I don't have a capstone, so I'm seeing the downsides of that. Yeah. It's like, it's very hard to get people to go into momentum if you don't have an external sort of a, some kind of a north star like that. So, you know, so many of those little things played a role. But I think in terms of my biggest takeaway was, you know, you'll never lose if you have Your customers' best interest in your heart. Period. I mean, that's Amazon, right? That's Jeff Bezos telling us. I thought it was cheesy when I first heard it back then. I was like, now I'm like, I realize how rare it is in business. That's why I've talked to so many podcasters, so many people who have been helping the podcasters, you know, behind the scenes like you. You are so rare. I hope you know this. You're not— I'm sure you don't get it, and I'm sure you think that it's just like, what the fuck, KP is just like gassing me up. No, no, no. You are a very different marketer that I think most brands on the other end don't get to meet on the creator side.

Appreciate that. Yeah, thank you. And yeah, again, I want to just talk a little bit about that because it's not any secret, right? It's— I spent 2 years, like really a few years mastering growth. And I was like monetization, then production. So it's been like this like connective journey where looking back I can connect the dots like that whole like Steve Jobs thing. I didn't know that that's what I was doing. But yeah, I think like what you're saying comes from Being able to see all positions, because I now understand what the producer is doing. I know, yes, I understand everyone's needs, right? And you know what's funny actually is I think that's what the best artists do. So I'm remembering this, um, this really good book, Powerhouse CAA, which is about like CAA, which represents all the top artists, like how they started, right? Yeah, they actually talk about Tom Cruise coming to the set for the first time, and he was like, he did a shoot, then everyone goes into the trailer. Tom Cruise went to the camera guy and was like, Yo, how does this work? Like, tell me more about this. When did this other guy— like, he basically understood the whole thing. And so that's, I think, like, the way I've always thought about is like, I want to understand the mechanics of the system, not be a cog in the system.

So it reminds me of when I was, uh, you know, before joining On Deck, I had a few startup attempts and I pitched a few investors. And, uh, one of the pitches is so funny. I had Sean Zhu. You remember, eventually Sean joined He was at Firstgate at the time of First Round. Sorry, he was at Floodgate at the time and then he joined ODX eventually as a partner. No, that's awesome. But I pitched Sean and within a few minutes, within like first 5 minutes, Sean said, KP, can I just stop you here? Because I was showing him some like pitch deck with 80 slides. He was showing me, what's the path you have in front of you that can get us to $100 million ARR? Like us as in like the company. I was like, why is he talking about $100 million ARR? Why does it matter? I didn't even know the game, right? Yeah. And eventually, so eventually, you know, he gave me advice to go study the game, go like, you know, talk to some other seed founders and all that. A few years later, I joined Andreessen Horowitz, eventually became angel investor. And, you know, now, like, as you know, we— I think you're an angel investor too. Have you invested in a few or no?

I do advisory stuff. I, I don't think I'm my— I've realized like I'm more— I want to have like a share in 10 things and just go fucking inside deep. Yeah. Than have 20 that I'm like just not doing anything with. Yes.

But so the point I'm trying to make is, um, when I became the angel, I did the exact same thing that Sean did. Like, stop the pitch, show me the path. Where's the $100 million ARR? Where's the $1 billion outcome? And I'm like, oh my God, when you just sit on the other side of the table, you learn the game way more than if you just had only one stance.

Yes.

You know, so this— just the way you talked about the brands, I think it's very important to just understand like They care about the leads and, you know, like CAC much more than the CPM or whatever the industry is talking about.

Even before the brand though, right? Like pull back, there's a person on the other side. What does that person care about? When— so, and this is where I think again, to me this is just normal. I'd be like, when did they start their job? A few months in, they're still getting their gear. So like if I show them how it's done, it's going to like, I can be a resource. A year in, okay, like they're probably looking for a promotion. Let's like little simple question: What metrics do you and your boss care about? Because like if I can help him hit the numbers he needs for his next promotion, he's going to go to bat. So I'm just like thinking about like all these like angles and things.

The reverse engineering from what other people might benefit from is mind-blowing to me, man. Like that's

what everyone was doing it.

No, no, no, I disagree. I mean, look, I have a generous heart. I'm a giver. I feel like I want to give and help, but I don't think I'm giving and helping efficiently, effectively. This adds the efficiency and effectiveness, you know, which is literally just reverse engineering about that, you know. So thank you for that. And thanks for being here. Any last thoughts? Any advice on folks, you know, getting started in the podcasting game?

I will send— I will say 2. So one is, what you're saying about reverse engineering, it's actually as easy as just asking. So if you just ask people, they'll tell you. And second, if you like podcasts and if you have a favorite podcaster, message them and send them thank you because they're going to love it and no one does that. And that's how you actually start. Like, if you send 10 thank yous, you're going to build a relationship out of them.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I love— I tell people all the time, you could Reply to my tweets. I couldn't care less. You could DM me. Yeah, I'll care a little bit. If you reply to my newsletter, definitely you're on my top, you know, five to ten people of the day. If you leave a review or if you like say something about my podcast episode, like especially the last twenty minutes of something that I just put out and like leave a note to my email, you're my BFF. So it's like that's hard. That's how rare it is.

There you go. Leave a message for KP and leave a review for both of us. For one of us.

Yes. Check Sachit Gupta. I'll leave all the links in the, in the show notes. Thank you, Sachit. It's been a blast. Can't wait to have you again soon.

Thank you for having me.