How To Actually Go Viral on LinkedIn, gain 20,340 Followers in 7 Days and Lessons in No Bull Shit Strategy - Alex Smith

48:51And, you know, a lot of the book is focused on obviously the stuff around this, like what is strategy? How do you write it? How do you execute it? How do you tell if something is a good strategy or bad strategy? This is all surrounding stuff that makes you understand the concept and helps you shape your thinking into something which is a functional strategy. But there's always that little leap in the middle, which is actually coming up with a fucking good idea. And that's where there's a little bit of sort of magic and, you know, a little bit of the more kind of esoteric, hard to systematize part of the process.

49:37Now, although I do think it is hard to systematize and there is no like, you know, I can give you a formula for how to write a strategy document, for example, that's just like fill in this template, right? I cannot give you a formula for coming up with the insight, which the strategy hinges on because it's always done in a different way for every single project. But what I can do is give you some sort of games or thought experiments that might dig it out. And one useful thing to understand about this is that the insight that you're looking for, it is never or almost never a new piece of information.

50:21It's never a stat or a fact or something that you can sort of necessarily find out by research. You basically have to assume that in terms of just raw information, you and your competitors, you all are working off the same information. You're working off the same basic facts. What gives you an advantage is not the information. It's the way that you look at the information. Like it's something that you, the way that I like to talk about it is it's not about what you know, it's about what you notice. So, you know, you can, two people can be looking at the same information, the same business, but one of them will look at it from a weird angle and they'll see something that other people haven't seen before.

51:06So I'll give you an example. Well, with, with my business, right? So I was thinking about, you know, like articulating my strategy the other day. And so what is the insight that I have in my business, which other sort of strategy practitioners don't have. And it's a good example, I think, of how it's something which, once I say it, it's totally obvious and everyone would agree with it and everyone knows it, but it just so happens that other people haven't thought about it. So that's it. And in my case, it's because, like I said, people think that strategy is about figuring out what you're going to do, what actions you're going to take.

51:48But when you think about it, there are two parts to taking effective action. Part number one is deciding what is the right thing to do. What would be the thing, what would be something we could do that would be effective versus something that is ineffective. Every single person worth their soul who talks about strategy on the planet knows that strategy is about figuring out what the right thing to do is. So that's obvious. But if you think about it, there is actually another equally important part of the equation here, which no other strategy people, as far as I can tell, think about, which is that it's not just about what you do, but it's also about motivating people to do it.

52:29So you could tell your team or you could tell a business, you know, the most sensible strategy in the whole world. And if you do this, if you do this, then it will be effective. But if they don't actually go out there and bloody execute, and if they don't go out there and execute with passion and intensity, it won't do anything. Like strategy is a motivational discipline, just as much as it is a discipline about what being right or wrong. So a strategy also has a responsibility to entertain and to get people pumped up and to get them inspired and to get the blood flowing. The more that a strategy inspires people and gets them excited, the more hard they will execute and the more effective the strategy will be.

53:10If you do a strategy that is only focused on being right, but not on being sort of passionate, then it doesn't matter how right it is because there's going to be shit execution. And so you're never going to see the results. So you see that there's this sort of hidden aspect of strategy, which is very obvious, which other people who talk strategy aren't folding into their stuff. So I am folding into my stuff, which makes me deliver things in a different style and a different way and sort of put emphasis on different parts of the process than what other people are doing. So it's a long-winded way of saying that is an insight, right?

53:45It's something that is super obvious and doesn't need any proof. I don't need to do any research or crunch any data to prove that this is true. It's just a different way of looking at something which everyone else is looking at. so you as a business ultimately the way that you're going to find the that that secret that insight that point of leverage is just by looking at your market your business your competitors in a weird way that other people haven't looked at it before and there are various kind of tricks and questions that you can ask in order to make that happen so i've got a bunch of them in the book, obviously, but to give you just one example, a very, very basic example is you have to figure out where you disagree with your competitors.

54:41So where you can say, okay, all of my competitors think X, but we think Y. Now, most businesses, when they're honest, when they step back, they actually don't agree with that. They don't disagree with their competitors at all. they and their competitors agree about every single bloody thing oh we oh we think of that we think it's we think that the environment's important we think that taste is important we think that customer service is important da da da da da da da da right so that there'll be no points of disagreement at all between between the two businesses but you know if you uh if you actually i mean if you if you were like you know what actually we don't think the taste is important at all for sake of argument.

55:26When you come up with that point of disagreement with your competitors, that then opens up leverage. And then you can start to think, okay, well, what can we do because we actually disagree with this thing or we don't care about this thing, which our competitors can't do? What opportunity does that open up? So, you know, there are a bunch of these kind of games that you can play. And, you know, know, most of them at any given time and not going to provide you with the answer, but at least it starts getting you thinking in, in, uh, in the right way. The. the the i think i read it on a comment on your linkedin where you said super astute was asking how can we get consumers to love us is the question is how can we get consumers to love us to love us Yeah, yeah, yeah.

56:31Love and hate are the same, like, generally love and hate are the same thing. I've kind of applied it to this podcast is that I know, and my newsletter, I know, and I can see for the subscribers, I kind of want to piss people off. I don't want to piss people off, but I'm really okay with people unsubscribing. That really doesn't bother me because I know I want it to be so marmite that the people that love it love it so much that they tell all their friends. I want a small, sticky, strong community of growth versus a wishy-washy kind of community. And actually, this is the value of long-form podcasts and written newsletters.

57:12I know you're writing newsletters because I was listening to a podcast before we came live today, and this guy got James Smith, who's a fitness influencer. He's done this whole thing, love versus hate, right? fitness before james smith was very like yeah it's like bit like basically people kind of rip off arnold schwarzenegg like super hench geezers and girls uh very very nice nice nice we're all on the same page this guy comes in he's kind of like the gordon ramsay of fitness swears like no end so many people hate him i actually used to hate him i actually think he's hilarious now he's super on the knife edge but by doing that he does he doesn't care and he's actually attracted to die hard fans but what he was saying is his this is kind of going a bit tangential here but his instagram following went up by a million because if he's got these instagram reels and tiktok whatever but his actual sales didn't move at all and that's why he's gone into into newsletters and longer farm podcasts because it's not as it's not as big a community it's not as it's a much smaller community but it's a much stickier community and i think what people and brands want to do and even just content creators is they want to create get hop on board with the new tiktok hop on board with the new marketing strategy um sorry marketing uh craze to throw the net out really wide but there's no point having a really wide net where everyone kind of likes you because there won't be many fucking fish in that in that sea right you're much better having a smaller net where people some people hate you some people love you but the ones that love you are in that net and i think there's a great lesson in that for for founders who are listening to this like how can we actually get people to hate us and i think it's a uh there's so many examples of of that i think he's a great example i think in terms of restaurants i mean there's a restaurant called um sorry there's there's a there's a cake brand up north called get baked uh and if you look at most cake brands they are mumsy dumsy fortnum and mason harrod's cake or calling kind of calling the caterpillar cake he this guy he's based up in leeds he's got a huge he's created this cake called bruce this chocolate fudge cake that's like that he says he basically goes i make a living telling my customers to fuck off and he's hilarious the copy on his instagram's amazing he literally retweets everyone that hates him but he's got people like me who love him so much that then they're willing to talk about him like i'm talking to him about you know alex and i think there's being on the knife edge of love and hate is the same thing is a real unfair advantage it just takes bollocks to actually do that in terms of you're gone mate i don't and yeah and just uh I completely agree.

1:00:11And so that is just another example of a game that you can play to look at your business from a different angle and dig these things out. And, you know, and don't want to give the impression that it's all about, don't want to give the impression that it's all about being bolshy or kind of liquid deathy. That is, you know, some brands, some great, a lot of great brands, you know, they, they are a bit bolshy in some respect, but, you know, there is also like, I won't labor the point, but another simple game is position your business against a completely different foreign product category. So one of the greatest strategic brands of all time, as everyone knows, is Southwest Airlines.

1:00:51They invented the low-cost airline category. How did they do that? Long story short, they thought, what if our competitor isn't American airlines what if our competitor is buses how would we do things differently if we were only trying to compete with buses and never mind about american airlines then comes a whole cascade of innovations which ultimately results in an amazing thing so again another little game so the whole bunch of these games these games are fundamentally the way that you dig out the inside it's it's it's like alcohol free as well in some in some respects it's maybe a bit more of a tactic but alcohol free yes they're competing against traditional booze Friday, Saturday, Sunday, sometimes Thursday but actually there's a whole other opportunity I think we talked about this last time but not with Alcohol Free as an example of unlocking the dormant market whereas in the week Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday people are going for lunch they're going for lunches in the city they're doing business meetings there's a whole opportunity there to have Lucky Saint and or other brand there but it's as you say you've got our main competitor here whether that's buses for southwest airlines whether that's heineken for lucky saint but then actually we're also competing some other parts of the week against coca-cola diet coke water uh you know i'll have lucky saints those loads of times in the week just to just makes the lunch slightly better in terms of um going viral and you wrote a post about how to do that what if we could boil it down into to the three levers or two levers that really had this almost pandemonium like lift off for your content what would you say it is because i think you talked something about stacking content together what's that about well the first thing i just want to caveat is that the stuff that i talked about was my sort of own personal innovations but obviously i piled those innovations on top of a ton of best practice which i won't go into because you can get it from lots of different places but you know there are what are some what are some of the best practices sorry i'm just asking this oh so you know if you like i don't really follow any of that stuff i just write it but i probably could learn a thing or two like yeah i mean i i thought it was really important for me just to kind of get the basics covered off so if you look at someone like you know justin welsh he's the the sort of like the stock linkedin guru um and you know he's got these online courses uh and they're very simple and just go through a whole bunch of stuff you know like how to just get your profile in shape you know really really super basic stuff but ultimately you know you need to do it and uh or you know even like that it's more sophisticated than this but it's like the optimal amount of times to post is once a day every weekday or um make sure that your posts have a hook you know there's there's all of this sort of pretty basic stuff i say basic but like most people who are trying to play the game aren't doing it but yeah so like so i don't so does that because everyone's on this carousel craze at the minute yeah and this at the end of each post it's like if you like it reshare it repost it or something does that actually work or well where's what is that just everyone doing because everyone seems to be doing that now i see on linkedin well i think they're just ripping me off there because i i i was pushing that one i thought i was quite innovative with that particular little bit but the carousels do fundamentally perform better for whatever algorithmic reason, which is a bit annoying because they're more labor.

1:04:43But then of course, LinkedIn wants to have higher quality content. So I guess it kind of makes sense. So that's the main thing, the main reason why you're seeing the carousels. The carousels also can obviously, you can put a big fat call to action at the end of them, which is harder to do in a text post or something. So I think those are the main things with the carousels now. So there's, again, this is a lot of the just sort of like basic, I say basic, but a lot of people don't know. I just don't want to, you know, I don't want to like, sort of like waste everyone's time telling you a whole bunch of links.

1:05:21No, no, no. When one, I'm not an expert, and number two, you can get them from loads of other better sources than me. But my personal... Sorry, mate, to interrupt, but no, you're not wasting people's time. sometimes the basics is the important things just just if you rattle them off you don't even have to go yeah so it's like it's like the hook i mean the basic stuff that i that you know that that i think mattered which i didn't invent i just sort of learned was okay number one get your profile in the right shape number two like oh it's a whole bunch of boring stuff like turn on creator mode and like make sure that you have a good a good sort of banner image and and put some links in your featured section and, you know, kind of housekeeping type things, which I don't know.

1:06:12I don't actually know if LinkedIn, if the algorithm cares about that stuff, but obviously you're trying to pull people through to your profile and then you want to give them a good smooth experience when they're on the profile. You know, there's a whole bunch of stuff about that little headline that you put beneath your name where you say, you know, founder of the hungry podcast or whatever it is you say. So there's, there's a whole sort of like theory about good things to put there, which, which I can't, I can't remember much of the nuggets, but the basic gist of it is you kind of want to say what problem you solve for people there.

1:06:54uh so these kind of lots of these sort of like housekeeping getting getting the foundations in order stuff then you come on to your content now yeah you're right i mean i say this like it's all obvious i suppose it isn't necessarily obvious to people next thing when you're going to start making content you obviously need to know well what do i write about and which is really means what value am I giving to people? Why the hell should anybody follow me? So, you know, again, classic, what problem am I solving? What benefit are they going to get from it? What are the different kind of pillars within the problem that I solve, which I can write content about?

1:07:39And, you know, there is, you could get very, very formal and laborious when it comes to mapping out your different types of content that you put out there and the different subjects that you talk about. And for most people, that would probably be a good idea because if you can't just come up with killer content off the top of your head, then you should probably systematize it. So again, like I say, I don't do this, so I don't really know much about it, but you might say, for sake of argument, okay, I'm Dan, I give useful tips for FMCG founders, therefore there are five pillars under which FMCG founders worry about, there's marketing, there's team, there's fundraising, there's something else, supply chain, I don't know, and then you're like, here are my five opinions under each one of these pillars.

1:08:41So I think marketing should be done like this. I think that fundraising should be done like this. And then each one of those five opinions, I can write that five different ways. So that's five times five is 25 times five is 125. So you've got 125 posts there in theory. So that is the sort of formal way where then you're like, okay, this is all the stuff that I talk about. And now I can kind of put it out there probably use a scheduler to do that most people do although i've stopped doing that outcome i believe although everybody would disagree with me but it's just my personal experience that the posts perform worse when they go out there with a scheduler i think that there's something in the linkedin algorithm that favor this is just pure conspiracy theory i've got no proof that favors you if linkedin sees you dicking about on the platform for five minutes before posting whereas if you post in absentia with a scheduler i don't think it performs as well so i'm probably just paranoid about that but now now i don't use a scheduler actually funnily yeah scheduler were you using first i used social champ because it was a free one uh then i switched onto Tapleo, which is a much more sophisticated one because Tapleo could do carousels and Social Champ couldn't, but I think Social Champ can do carousels now.

1:10:09And it's got a whole bunch of other kind of like functionality, which other people might find useful, but I think are kind of nonsense, like getting AI to write content for you and stuff like that. So it's got loads of like pretty sophisticated functionality, but I was just using it as a basic scheduler. So then I was doing one post a week. And obviously I know, well, I'm improving it all the time, but you know, I knew the general stuff that I wrote about. And then this is now getting into slightly more insightful territory, I think. So you've probably seen that famous Jack Butcher visualized value image that where it has kind of like a flat line going along with no results.

1:10:54And then the little quote saying this is pointless. And then after that, it suddenly booms. And the moral of the story is, if you keep on going long enough, eventually it'll compound and you'll break through. And in my case, you know, my graphs did look exactly like that. So I had six months of like pretty flat nothingness, and then suddenly overnight, kaboom, like a rocket ship. but I think that that graph and that principle although it's valuable in one sense in that yes you do need to keep on turning up fine I get that but I think it's really misleading because it implies that if you just keep doing the same thing and you keep on trying eventually you're going to break through and and that isn't true I genuinely think that you could keep on pumping out crap for literally years and you'll never, ever break through because, because, because you're not, because you're not, you're not, uh, you're not producing something that people want to see.

1:11:55So although I did have six months of like, sort of not unsuccessful posting, but you know, not anything special, uh, the, I wasn't just kind of plodding along and waiting to win the lottery. I was doing an intense amount of thought and consideration over what worked, what didn't, improving the quality of my writing, improving the quality of the hooks, the headlines, all that stuff. And so one tool which I use a lot is a analytics tool called Shield, which is just like LinkedIn analytics, but it stores all of your posts and it tells you, I mean, it's mostly information that you can actually get natively on LinkedIn.

1:12:42It's just a bit of a more convenient format. So you can just look back on it and you can just sort all your posts by which posts got the most impressions, which posts got the most likes. And then you can look at them and say, OK, well, what do these posts have in common that the crap ones didn't? And then, you know, you're starting to build and build and build. So, you know, I was sort of like, what was in common with the crap posts? and what was in common with the good posts? Because, I mean, to be honest, I probably should do all this stuff. I don't. I just kind of just write what's in my head and then just throw it out there if it works.

1:13:16But, yeah, what was good about the good posts? What was bad about the bad posts? Good about the good posts.

1:13:28So I'm sorry to say that clickbaity stuff really does work. I mean, you know, there's good clickbait and there's bad clickbait, but to me, it's still kind of like clickbait where you're like, where you're saying something like, you know, the unbelievable secret behind the Elon Musk's da da da, that kind of, that kind of stuff. And the reason that it works is because it forces people to click that see more thing and go on to the next line. And then LinkedIn loves it if someone clicks that see more thing. And so then that, so then that gets it sent to more people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

1:14:03so that first line has got to make people read the second line and second line has got to make people read the third line again these are these are sort of classic lessons which anyone will tell you but it's still very hard to get the knack of doing it um you know whereas what i see a lot of on linkedin and what i was doing a lot before is that people like to just sort of come out with opinions that they have and the opinions actually can be really really interesting but but they don't but they don't have that FOMO factor right they don't have that feeling of like oh I need to hear this so it's quite successful to make some sort of big bold contrarian opinion like uh like i don't know like people uh uh people think that um i can't even think of what i could share in the video but i know i know what you mean so so so like because i've looked into this so i'm going in on youtube with this podcast as i'm a bit late to the party but podcasts 30 percent of podcasts now found on youtube that youtube youtube have just created a but it's owned by google so it's a search engine um but the what i've been learning and researching a lot into this is how important the hook is the hook's more important on youtube than it is on linkedin on linkedin people are accustomed to written it's a bit more written format you've got longer to play with and actually you're in you're in your own pocket of an industry so we're in the challenger brand space so it's easier to build in that niche whereas on youtube it's a fucking free for all it's it's mad but this guy's got this thing about great hooks which is negative and this is what pisses me off but i'm kind of having to put my ego aside and use them but negative hooks work so if you say the top 10 mistakes uh mind figures made when trying to build minor figures is better than the 10 lessons minor figures had when they build build it words that actually work so how to actually win oh yeah i'm in my own is that actually it's absolutely yeah yeah win a wait waitress listing versus how to win a waitress listing um the biggest mistakes you're making will do better than like this is how to do it well so as is fucking annoying it is negativity works with hooks what what are some of the hooks that have performed really well for you um how i dot dot dot is always a winner uh people love any how thing it's pretty basic uh the thing is that you're saying it's all you're saying this is basic but it's not is this is you know i think it's because you're so engulfed into it yeah yeah it's not basic um it's common if you've been looking into this stuff which i have so i feel like these are all like cliche is not worth mentioning but that's because i've been studying this stuff if you haven't been studying this stuff then they aren't then then then it's completely different so also how cliche cliche for a reason i always say damn right so how i dot dot dot um anything around sort of secret or hidden so i had a good post that was the secret process of expert thinkers that uh that that succeeded well for obvious reasons a much more subtle one this isn't a hook but it's something i've really noticed that people bloody love any post where they can say i feel seen right i get that comment with quite a lot with the with the with the with the best posts where you say seen yeah so where somebody feels like you've um articulated something that they do or they think and they felt a bit ashamed about and you're saying you know what actually this is the right the right thing to think or the right way to do it or whatever so people love a bit of solidarity this is why this is and this is this is a real practical and challenging point it's very easy to build an audience of your peers where all of your posts are applause lines so for example let's say you're a founder of uh of uh of a hungry style brand and then you can do a whole bunch of posts that are like uh here's what sucks about pitching to retailers or something and then all of the other founders are going to be like bravo bravo god yeah doesn't it suck and you're going to build that audience or maybe you're a copywriter in an ad agency and you can do posts that are going to be like, don't you just hate it when account handlers give you a crap brief?

1:19:04That's such an easy audience to grow. Any peer thing, people bloody love because it basically, to this being seen point, everyone's sort of slapping each other's back and sort of like commiserating with each other about how bad their life is or whatever. The problem with that is that there are exceptions to this, but for the most part, you aren't selling to peers. You're selling to a different party. So I'm not selling to other strategists. I'm selling to founders, chief execs. If you're a founder, you're not selling to other founders. You're selling to investors or to retailers or whatever. So it's much harder game to do content that is going to build your audience with potential customers.

1:19:50And of course, we've got to stop and think, why the hell are we doing this? Maybe you're doing it because you just love the validation, and I wouldn't blame you because who doesn't love the validation? But if you're just getting applause lines from peers, then it's not without value because you are building reputation within your industry and things like that. But it's not a super easy to commercialize audience that you're building. Like if you were to use the example of founders, if you were some amazing bloody founder in the FMCG space who somehow managed to be followed by every buyer and every investor in the industry, then you'd be laughing, wouldn't you?

1:20:38But you're not going to achieve that by posting like, here's why it's shit to be a founder or here's why it's fun to be a founder or anything which is basically targeted at other founders which is what you're going to get a lot of positive feedback on and then you'll start doing more of that but you've got to step back and say why am i doing this the i love i love that because because linkedin can be a self-congratulating carousel of crap to be honest uh and and it's it's really interesting so i wrote a post about the issue with data for brands. And I basically said, I used the analogy of football and I said, people are, oh, I got a bit of a stick saying, oh my God, you're so anti-data, you're so anti-data.

1:21:27I said, I'm not anti-data. I said, it's like football. You need to use data as defense, as a brand. Data will tell you, we'd say it's a listing in Waitrose or Sainsbury's. Data will tell you availability. Data will tell you your rate of sale. Data will tell you the stores that are doing well. that may need some love. The stores that are doing crap that will need some extra love. But the issue with, so that's your defense. You have to have data to defend. But using data to attack, i.e. innovate, is really dumb because every brand is looking at the same data, which means you get the same inputs, as we were talking about earlier, which means you get the same outputs.

1:22:04That's why every protein bar looks the same. That's why RTD cocktails are beginning to look the same. looking at the same data uh you sorry using data to innovate is really dumb but not you but not using data to defend is also really dumb and i basically said imagine putting harry kane in goal that would be pretty dumb and putting jordan pickford up top right that was basically my analogy it got six likes so no one no one liked it and maybe about 400 views maybe no maybe more than that 500 views but two data companies read that post reached out to me and i i had i had a call with them about them sponsoring this podcast because they do data for challenger brands so the point is is yes you can have all this self-congratulatory stuff but you can also you i suppose as a content creator i'm i love i love creating content that's what i just love doing it is is you can actually be really strategic and that's why i think as a brand you can almost say um one of the things i'm writing on my newsletter which is no wonder you're back to the negative no wonder your buyer is ghosting you you donut do this instead or it may be it may be no wonder your buyer is ghosting you you muppet do this instead but i know that will get a lot of buyers which is great for the agency side of the business but i just it i it's fascinating but But I think what I want to, like, basically, I feel like a dog getting pulled in by his owner, because I've just meandered off into the wilderness.

1:23:35But I want to go back to this. You're talking about the kind of the self-congratulatory stuff. But what's this tactic, if you want to call it that, of stacking content together? Because I think that's fascinating. And why did that work, do you think? Yeah. So I talked about the stuff that I was doing for six months and just sort of learning the craft. So park all of that. Now this is the stuff that, as far as I can tell, took me from zero to one and made it blow up, which of course is laid on top of all of the fundamentals. So the first thing that I noticed and the problem that I had was it's chicken and egg problem.

1:24:15If you've got no followers, how the hell do you grow? Because you're not getting any exposure. so you put out a piece of gold and i definitely think that i put out you know the odd really great you did back in the day but it wasn't like blowing up and because of course you know it's only being surfaced to a small number of people even if its engagement rates are huge and obviously on my sort of analytics it tells me the engagement rates and some of these posts i'm like wow that's great engagement but why isn't linkedin pushing it so my theory and again maybe someone who actually really understands LinkedIn would tell me this is bollocks, but I think it worked.

1:24:50My theory was that when LinkedIn decides who to surface your post to, number one, obviously they'll surface them to people who follow you or a proportion of people who follow you. Number two, it will surface them to people who engaged with your last post. So by that logic, I thought, well, if I put, let's say, five pieces of A-grade content, the best thing that I can do back to back to back. Then there'll be a compounding sort of snowball effect where the first post will perform well by my standards, but nothing special. But then I immediately follow it by immediately. I mean the next day. So I'm saying each of these is one day apart.

1:25:29I immediately follow it with another A grade post, which then gets sent to my followers, but it also gets sent to the people who engaged with my last post, which is obviously, you know, a slightly different pool than my followers. And then I do it again. And so each post is getting higher exposure than the one that came before it because they're feeding off the post that came before. So this is what I did. And sure enough, each post started going up and up and up. So my first post was a good performer, but within the realms of normality for me. So let's call it 50 likes, something like that. The next post was, let's say, 150 likes, which would be not unheard of for me, but unusual.

1:26:12Uh, next post was like 400 likes. Wow. Amazing record breaker. And then the next, and then the next post was 8 ,000 likes, 1.5 million, uh, uh, impressions and all the rest of it. So that was the, so the dam broke. Now, obviously what the actual posts were had something to do with this. And I'm not saying that if I, even maybe if I changed the order of the posts and the viral one had been the first one, the whole system might not have worked. So I wasn't clever enough to sort of, I didn't plan the order thinking, oh, that will be the one that goes through. I wasn't like that clever. But I did think that this kind of like intensity of quality content was responsible for me finally fixing the chicken and egg problem.

1:27:01Now, of course, the issue with it is, is that it's incredibly laborious to turn out that content because, you know, these are higher quality posts. So they're higher effort posts. And now I've set a bit of a precedent, which is quite hard for me to keep up with. But, you know, so far I'm just riding the train and going to see where it takes me. But that was, yeah, that was my kind of, my compounding insight. I love it. And I need to do that because I'm so scatty with my content. I may get that shield thing and look at what's done well. And then just, cause I suppose what I can do is I've got content that's been written like years ago, so I can just repurpose it, but I may stack them back to back to back to back and then do videos of the top five performing guests.

1:27:51So it's the 80, 20 rule stack that back to back to back to back. And then I definitely recommend trying that. This then takes me onto the second sort of insight that I had, which doesn't really apply so much to video. actually probably does apply to video if you sort of edit it right, which is this idea of restful content, which a lot of people seem to really chime with. And I do think it's another innovation that I brought in in the same week that I did my compounding. So arguably it actually was more important than the compounding. I don't know. So I read this book, which I recommend, which is a sort of 1962 advertising copy book how to write a good advertisement uh and it had this idea in it and he he talked about this idea of restful content which i never heard before which was basically saying any piece of copy needs to be done in such a way as that the eye rests on it so rather than it having to be a little bit of work to read it even if that's only like one two work, it actually has to feel like the opposite of work.

1:29:05It has to feel like relaxation to read it. Another quote in the book is, great copy is easier to read than to skip, which I think is an amazing concept. The idea that it's possible to write something which is literally lower effort to read than not to read. And if you think about it, that's true, because all day you see things, which for whatever reason you just sort of read without even thinking about it you read instinctively not because you were like oh i should read this you just read it anything like that is something where ultimately the path of least resistance was for you to read it as opposed for you to look away from it so like you know the person can't can't help but read it now this so you know when they read the thing it's like slipping into a warm bath they're scrolling through that feed and they come to this thing and it's just like oh and off they go and they just float so then the question is how do you do this and so obviously it's a combination of the writing and the the the design the layout and so yeah i mean you know like i couldn't even necessarily break it all down i just sort of like did a carousel this word carousel format's good because you can lay the content out in a way that is restful whereas if you just write a post you can improve it you can make it more restful but you can't make it totally restful so i mean all i would say is just go and look at my carousel posts and that is restful content uh and it's just like it just you know slips down like a cool beer on a hot day is is what i'm trying to do the and also that's that's a point that was one of the you'd use lucid picture language one of the guys who's been on the podcast second episode said there's three types of language there's factual language which is words like ironically strategy there's words like um uh corporate social responsibility that they're they're words for the head but they don't really pierce the heart the second level of language is sensory so that is uh cold beer that's sensory languages it's slightly more here then there's pitch language which is like the piece de resistance of language which is like ice face me meltingly cold beer on a scorched earth scorchly hot day like it's so but you you've inserted that language into your post which i think is really sick the the other thing i want to talk about is this this i've i don't know if i've come up with it but there's what we talked about at the beginning is playing the infinite game versus finite games have you heard of that infinite versus finite games yeah yeah so infinite game basically means you just it's it's the game where you keep playing you keep playing and i think you and i are very lucky in that we just love what we do so we can just keep playing like i've i've kept playing with this podcast no one listened to it for two years but i love doing it doesn't really matter say same with your content right six months people as long as you can keep playing it doesn't matter but to play this game there's there has to be something called i believe in terms of content creator fit a bit like product market fit so product market fit is you hit product market fit and it kicks off but content creative fit is are you writing the content that you actually want to write because if you start writing or creating content because everyone else is doing it and you hate it it becomes a finite game whereby you lose so for example uh you they're with tiktok and instagram reels you're at the mercy of the algorithm right there a bit like carousels are in the rage right now with linkedin but you're at the mercy so the value of a newsletter is you control that algorithm there's no algorithm and it so what i suppose I'm trying to tease out with you here is, or for people listening, is just because every brand is saying go on to TikTok doesn't mean you should go on to TikTok.

1:33:15Like there's brands out there, I'm trying to think of a great example. The obvious example is Hyatt Denim, which David Hyatt's been on this brand. He's built his whole business around a newsletter. I think it looks somewhere behind me. he's written a book all about how to build a jeans brand off a newsletter he could have gone into tiktok he could have gone into instagram reels he could have gone on to blog posts and this but he found out what his content creative fit was he found out what works for him and then executed on it and i think what happens is so many founders and brands get pulled into well this is the new shiny toy i'm gonna go and do a bit of that and then they hate doing it and they lose the game do you do you find because i've toyed with these carousel things but i just think the idea of me sitting around trying to create them i'd go fucking nuts like but do you think it's worth doing it or what do you think no no i don't i passion i have a passionate belief that um how can i put it what would be a nice restful snappy copy way of putting it um

1:34:31you never achieve success through hard work because if something is hard work you will never be good at it you will always be bad at it if we take it back to Arnold for sake of argument and him becoming a hench Arnold he didn't work any harder on becoming a bodybuilding champion than you work on watching Netflix every night because for him it was like his Netflix it was just something that he got pleasure from doing he just liked he just liked the game he liked the process just as much as you like sitting down in front of Netflix so like someone who hates watching Netflix would would say wow you really work hard at watching netflix don't you but of course you don't you because because you're into it so um you're only ever going to be able to win at something which feels like watching netflix that feels like play uh you know the people who become amazing at the playing the piano are people who really enjoy being shit at the piano now if i learned to play the piano i would find it very frustrating to be a really shit pianist and that's why i will never ever be great at the piano but other people they're loving every minute of plodding through chopsticks so they'll become great pianists so if you're looking at it and you're saying this thing carousels whatever like um oh do i have to do that the answer is not only do you not have to do it you definitely should not do it and more broadly of course like okay you and i both one way or another like producing content but a lot of people don't like producing content of any shape or form and you know that's fine because it's only one game it's only one game to play it's not the only game in town you know there are plenty of phenomenally successful people out there who don't produce content so i yeah i just you know i genuinely i genuinely wouldn't bother i wouldn't bother doing anything which which doesn't give you some some element of pleasure it would just you're just you'll just waste your time and uh yeah i i think that i think that's reassuring and i think the point i suppose we're both trying to get to we're going we're on maybe different trains going to the same destination but it's it's don't get blinded by the con the content and the hype that everyone's doing if it's not in your soul like so there's there's some brands who would make um write amazingly long-form newsletters but just because long-form newsletters are not uh as cool as as a tiktok with someone prancing around it doesn't mean it's this it's it's all a level playing field as long as it's it's the content you like to create and this is why i love writing my newsletter and this is a it's a choose plug but it is uh and i'll put a link in the show notes and i'll put a link to your to your wonderful newsletter as well mate but what i love what i think content's become on linkedin now is it's almost become like pop music it's become taylor swift defied it's become milo cyrus defied whereby you kind of not not not your carousels i think you're doing something truly remarkable there but i mean in general like you basically put a picture of you on the train after you've shat yourself like yeah do you know what i mean or like yeah and then you have a few emojis it's super short copy um and and then that will get engagement so that means every man is dogs writing that content and it's quite easy to get engaged likes and it goes back to that kind of appraisal stuff um which is great for the ego but does it actually move the needle in the bank account i don't i don't agree but why i love the newsletter is is it almost allows you to submerge creatively I don't know if you get this with your newsletter.

1:38:30I mean, I get it with the podcast, but there, obviously, you can see how many people read your newsletter and you can see how many people, the open rate for sure. But that's it. So that means when I'm going into writing newsletter is I've submerged myself through heavy dosages of techno, heavy dosages of coffee and vape. And I'm in this creative space where it's, it feels like the content's coming out of my soul more than it is when I'm writing specifically for LinkedIn. I don't know if you find that when you write your newsletter, but it allows me to pull... It's almost like if you were to compare a song by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, and I'm not saying you and I, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, right?

1:39:15But versus something that's more kind of poppy. I feel like LinkedIn is becoming more like pop music where you're losing that ability to create something that's really unique to you. Not does it have to be great, is unique to you does that make sense yeah it does i could argue both ways basically i agree with your point uh however the one caveat that i would put is that that brutal algorithmic feedback that you get on linkedin if you take it the right way and don't go down the sort of the bullshit rabbit hole, which of course, easier said than done. It is a great writing coach because the stuff that you're producing, including away from LinkedIn on your newsletter, let's say, ultimately you want to create stuff which people find value in and you want to create stuff that people read and you want to create stuff which

1:40:22which resonates with people. Now, just doing what you want. I know that there's a certain artistic purity in like, I'll just write what I want and it'll land where it lands kind of thing, which was what I thought about with my newsletter for a long time. But then also I was like, well, if I'm not improving as a writer, and being conscious of my audience, then it's actually kind of self-indulgent. And if I think that I've got something important to say, well, I'm not doing myself any favours because I'm not putting it out there in a way where people are actually going to listen. You know, about that clickbaity stuff, you know, one of my pals said to me, look, don't think about it as clickbait.

1:41:11Think about it as that you're doing the reader a favour because you're making them more likely to read your genius point, whatever it was. And I was like, hmm, yeah, that is a good point. So ultimately, for example, on my newsletter, my writing has probably become less free than it used to be, in a sense, in that I'm not just kind of like pontificating in a self-indulgent manner.

1:41:48but it's become more useful. And ultimately, any piece of writing or content creation or a bloody ad, let's say, it's a negotiation between you and the audience. If you let it all be audience, you're going to produce like, you'll never guess what happened next, bollocks, clickbait, which is completely empty and rots your soul. But if you let it be all you, It's going to be like a 3000 word snore fest of a whole bunch of stuff that nobody cares about. So you've got to have that negotiation. You've got to let it be 50 % them and 50 % you. And LinkedIn, if you do it right, it forces you to think about them.

1:42:34And then you can pull that through into your newsletter, your book, whatever. And it's going to be better. fascinating nuance how you would you'd started super self-indulgent and then had and are now seeing this 50 50 it's like what does the audience want i'd gone it the other way around where i'd started on linkedin i've only started my newsletter this year where i basically had a carbon copy of what would work so it's like insert buyer insert lessons from x brand insert how to get a waitress listing and i've got a short amount of space to write so i would go into my creative process but not right these it's just needs to be short snappy here's the four points and it became basically almost became too mechanical and fucking boring and i was like okay well i know this is going to get likes and and so then with the newsletter i was like wow i've just got a free rein here so i've almost approached the other way other way around so i've gone from this super stringent like this is kind of how to write no i've never gone viral right but it's like it's how to create content that's going to land boom boom boom carbon cookie cutter cookie cutter cookie cutter and as you say that rotted my soul and i think it is ultimately a balance it's it's if you're writing stuff just to get likes it's and it's not unique to your soul it's a finite game and you'll lose but if it's so self-indulgent where you write a bit like i was been here longer i mean does that really help a brand drive their rate of sale in sainsbury's probably not it's like what you want about me but it's it's an interesting uh interesting place as as someone who well we both create content i mean you would know better than me oh sorry just and just i don't want to knock you off your stride but just to chuck it in there you know the great artists of the past you know like leonardo da vinci worked for wealthy patrons you know he was working for an audience um f scott fitzgerald hemmingway all of them you know they were commercial writers and i think were open about it so you know art and audience are not enemies they are they are together and i think it's huge huge error to to think otherwise agree but then to sort of to play a backhand back i suppose is rick rubin who's the do you know rick rubin the music creator he did red hot chili peppers he did for listeners red hot chili peppers adele he's done he did johnny cash he he did uh he was the guy put uh run dmc and aerosmith together just be a creative genius and his whole piece is the audience comes last and ultimately i think it's it's both like the audience comes last so it's got to pour out your soul but then it's a symbiotic relationship between you and your audience but it's it's um it's fascinating so so then what i do want to talk about i know you said how it's it's got to feel like play and it does create creating stuff does feel like play but there's a point when you hit resistance have you read this book the war of art have i told you about this book i have read it back in the day but it was like 10 years ago so i can't really remember so like this book is like i'm quite weird but when i like prep for podcasts i'll like literally kind of like touch it to be like we're going in baby like it's it's i've read it so many times it's covered in notes it's just a great book and basically the point is is that it's going to get hard writing is going to get hard creating content is going to get hard there have been days with this podcast where i'm like i don't fancy doing it or i don't fancy editing or i've got to work on a sunday to edit it and probably like you with the carousels i don't really maybe not fancy doing the carousels so yes you've got to love it but there's this point where you've got to dig in to keep going or keep not necessarily keep like churning out the same shite but like iterating what when you wrote this book did you face resistance was there a bit where you just oh this is just i'm just up against a brick ball here and how did you bludgeon your way through that not with the book no but you know it but it isn't to disagree with your point because you've got to bear in mind the book was just like you know I didn't have to think about writing the book I just sat down and wrote it because it's the stuff that I know and and writing for me is as easy as talking so you know it wasn't really any different than just sitting down and having a conversation with someone except having a conversation with the keyboard and it's not super long uh and so so no but if i would have had to have done any research for example you know not to uh not to uh do down the book but i can tell you this is a book that was written with zero seconds of research right i didn't have to like go and like you know uh investigate all of these like obscure case studies to find the one that made my point or whatever it might be.

1:47:45Anything like that, that would have been a completely different story because that's where you are moving out of the flow state and you're moving into sort of labor state. And again, using the example of the short form content, like I just so so far I've kept I've kept my pipeline of ideas a couple of steps ahead of my writing so I've never had to sit down and think oh my god what am I gonna write that will happen and and then it's not gonna be it's not gonna be nice but as far as possible you know I try to have the systems in place to never be trying you've got content create a fit then basically oh yeah the the the what are the systems so you're never trying for people who are probably wanting to put content out the the primary one is capturing ideas when they happen not trying to generate them when you need them so i've got the uh you know i've got a sort of a note-taking app and two or three times a day in fact it's happened multiple times on this podcast but i haven't but i i haven't i haven't written them down i'll listen to it later and i'll capture them you know something comes up and i'm like bam post right there and then you write it down and then when you've got the time to write it you sit and you look at the all the ones you've written down and you say oh which one do i fancy and you just do you just do that one they always come to you when you're making let's say i i agree with that so i i was making one with a i had one the coffee this morning i was making a coffee and i had this idea it just sort of floated to me from the ether of if you go into a house and say you're a founder everyone pats you on the back probably wants a photo with you puts a fedora hat on your head sort of thing if you go into a house and say you're a builder people are oh what's a builder doing a sewer house and the point is i haven't even turned it into anything it may not go into anything but it's like being a founder is very romantic you're saying university oh let's be a founder if we'd actually rebranded founder to builder i reckon there'd be loads of people who are like i don't want to do that because that's what it is it's a it's a brick by brick slog by slog um found founders got this but that's the kind of the point i think for anyone listening trying to create content is the ideas will come from wherever you've just got to be able to in song catch a falling star and put it in your pocket like that's essentially what it is right so true so true yeah and you know that is the and i think that that is the that is probably a look no that is not probably yeah it's definitely a learnable skill so uh and it's you know i don't think that as you say the sort of the the the the however you put it the um the the content creator fit is not a learnable skill ultimately that's kind of just going to be or it's not going to be and you shouldn't force it but assuming that you have a degree of that and that you do get pleasure from playing the game then no question absolutely no question the number one skill is getting in the discipline of catching ideas when they come you know i didn't you know that's not something anyone does naturally but it's not a difficult thing to force yourself to do what's your i nerd out on this what's your writing process what's your day-to-day as Stephen Pressfield has a quote I love which is put your heart put your arse where your heart wants to be aka sit down in front of the keyboard and go what's your specifics how do you do it do you go up in the morning with coffee do you do it late at night have you ever heard of Hunter S Thompson's writing process no oh mate this is hilarious and it's probably hearsay uh but it's it's uh i just so it says 3 3 p.m rise 3 0 5 shivas regal with morning papers dunhills cigarettes 3 45 cocaine 3 50 other glass of shivas dunhill 4 or 5 first cup of coffee dunhill 4 15 cocaine 4 16 orange juice dunhill cocaine cocaine cocaine more ice in the chivas 6 a.m grass take the edge off then he goes to this 705 woody creek tavern for lunch heineken two margaritas coleslaw taco salad a double order of onion rings carrot cake ice cream bean fritter dunhill's another heineken it's just mad but he goes into his praise process was just to get so wild and that's how you write a book like um fear and loathing las vegas but i i darwin had a thing where he did a walk every day he He had this specific walk down this garden path every single day, and that almost primed him into creativity.

1:52:44Like, what's the Alex Smith equivalent? Well, before I had to start producing such a high volume of stuff, I probably wouldn't have had a good answer. But now that I'm having to do it so much, I've been sort of experimenting with things to try and see what is a sustainable system. and basically I've got one of two things and I haven't really like landed on uh which one either spend the whole of Monday only writing and producing content to last for the week and in terms of the actual writing itself uh it's I wouldn't be able to do it in terms of the volume if it wasn't for just having absolute trust that whatever the first thing I write is, is good enough.

1:53:37So you just like, you know, the general thing that you're writing about. And then I just sit down and write it. And I'm like, for better or worse, that is what it's good. That is what it is. Because if you start getting into, you know, editing and spending a day on a post or an essay or something, we're just not going to have enough time. So, you know, that can't be the way that you do it. If this is fundamentally a marketing exercise for another business, as opposed to being your whole business so so yeah I just uh just sit down and plow it and sit down and plow it out I do my newsletter essays normally on the train to London on a Monday uh and then I I mean the carousel stuff you know I I actually now I write that almost like a kind of poem is the way I try and sort of write them because you know in honor of the restful content uh and then i copy paste it into into my into my uh into my format but you know i've also been uh i've also been experimenting with writing uh quite late at night not like late late but like sort of 9 10 p.m after after you know we've had dinner and a relaxation and whatever and uh when my wife's gone to bed she's pregnant at the moment so you know going to bed earlier than normal and then i think okay i can plow out the post here and then i don't feel like it's eating eating into my day but i think that the main thing is obviously not the time that i do it or even the mindset when i'm doing it I think the main thing fundamentally is trust, just trusting yourself that it's...

1:55:30trusting yourself that it's going to be good enough. And I think that really, like, this is the really brutal, harsh truth, which dare not speak its name, but we just got to, like, chuck it out there because, you know, I did a course, a sort of, you know, kind of like LinkedIn, doing LinkedIn well kind of course that was really good. um but lots and lots of other people were doing it hundreds of other people were doing it and you know they were sort of sharing stuff on slack and you know teaming up to like each other's posts and all this kind of stuff and and the brutal fact is that you know most of these people you know they're not they're not writers you know and not everyone is and of course there are other formats that might, you know, like, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a podcaster.

1:56:21I don't have a podcast and I don't have any, I don't have any appetite to have a podcast. Uh, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't do it, but you know, you can, to be honest, you can just tell you've either got the, and this isn't about specifically writing. It could be about anything like, you know, you're either kind of like, you've sort of got to have the knack because if you don't have the knack, it's not, it's not to say that you can't produce something well. That isn't the point. It's not to say anybody can produce a good piece of writing, that's for sure. But what they can't do is they can't produce it quickly enough and in high enough volume to turn it into a system, to turn it into something that they do all the time.

1:57:00And the only reason that I do this, in a sense, is because because it is my lowest effort form of marketing. So let's just say for sake of argument, you know, I could be doing Facebook ads or something. Like for most people, for a lot of people doing Facebook ads would be easier than doing what I'm doing now. But for me, it wouldn't. For me, that would be like absolutely like pulling teeth and I would spend days on it. And the whole thing would just be would just be crap. so i'm not doing these posts because because i think this is the ultimate way that i can get my message out there i'm doing it because it's the easiest way i can get my message out there and and it's the way you can keep playing the game because that's the way i can keep playing the game so many people have said to me with a podcast it's like why don't you like just take up some clips at the beginning and do an introduction of what's coming up on the episodes and i'm like i know that will get more downloads and it will get more people in but i can't be fucked like i'd rather just be prepping for the next episode do you mean it's time you've got you've got to balance out where where you want to fall it's it's i'd rather as long as i'm enjoying it it may take an extra three four years to get where i want to go to but i'd rather do that than try and rush growth and doing something i hate and it do you know what i mean it just it just falls apart um yeah and just and just pulling it back to to strategy in a general sense, you know, that again, that is a big part of that is always about, well, the big part of it, the whole part of it is finding out the places where you have leverage and then, and then, and then, and then exploiting them.

1:58:43I mean, you know, someone I read the other day, a nice way of putting it, someone said, you know, what is the thing that you find easy that everyone else finds hard? That's the thing to do. Not the thing that you find easy. It's got to be the thing that you find easy that other people find hard. And that is ultimately the way that you that's the way that you're going to kill it and that's the way you that's where you're going to get your competitive advantage uh that's where you're going to get your competitive advantage from and of course when people are going out there following best practice that's the opposite of that thought process because they're they're not going out they're not thinking that you know they're thinking that is the thing that i should be doing so now i'm going to force myself to do that and then i'll be and then i'll be successful that doesn't work They got to think that they got to think, what is the thing that is a complete piece of piss for me?

1:59:28And this also applies to a brand in general, not just a person. What is the thing that is a piece of piss for me and not a piece of piss for everyone else? And then I'm just going to hit that super hard. And then everyone's going to say, my God, how do you do? And, oh, I'd like to do that too, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the answer is just, and the answer is simply, I'm just doing the thing that I find easiest. is that's that's why i love tone of voice as brands and that's i've wrote about this in my news that's the content creator fit or and it applies to brands so there's surreal you know surreal the serial brand yep that's that's one example and then do you know bold bean co amelia yep so two different types of content both very easy to them look like works to others feel like played look like what's one of those paul graham they're surreal are creating these banging hilarious posts that like one-liners they're doing the i don't know they're not actually on billboards they're basically going on photoshop or canva and put something on a billboard it's going viral so easy for them so witty so good amelia loves cooking i know she's a great friend of mine she's loved cooking for yonks she loves creating recipes like she would do it probably if she didn't have a brand and she creates amazing recipes people like oh my god how do how could we create recipes two very different examples but they understand they create a content fit and they create a brand fit um mate i'm we could go on as always we'll have to do part three but i always love love talking to you um when does the um the book come out when does that land and what's the uh what's the how can people get their mitts on it i don't know uh but imminently uh that's good i know that they are in print because i got one right here but there's a whole bunch of publishing uh there's a whole bunch of publishing nonsense of the trickle through to get into retail and all that type of thing so is it going into retail well when i say retail i'm gonna So whatever, I don't know.

2:01:43I don't actually know specifically which bits of retail it's going to go into. But obviously, I'm going to pile everybody through Amazon because that's just the easiest thing to do. So when I say going to retail, I really mean going into Amazon. So but yeah, we'll make sure that the hopefully we can make sure the pod goes out when it is on Amazon. The simple thing I would say is just go to Amazon, search, no bullshit strategy. And there it should be. Wicked, mate. Well, look, we'll have to, yeah, next time we'll do this, we'll do it face-to-face. And it's always a pleasure speaking to you, mate.

2:02:20And, yeah, thank you. Thanks a lot for getting me back on. It's a treat. Thank you so, so much for listening to the podcast. I really, really do appreciate it. If you liked that episode, only if you liked it, please do give it five stars, subscribe, tell all your friends, families, foes, next door but one, cat, dog, whatever, please tell everyone about this podcast. it means the world to me and I really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search Dan Pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much