Why Millionaires & Billionaires are Becoming Content Creators

0:00All right. So we're going to talk about why millionaires and billionaires are becoming content creators. So let me set the stage for this one. So what's interesting to me is that Chamath Palihapitiya, he is creating a paid subscriber list. So he has paid subscriptions turned on for Twitter now or X. And I believe he has a paid sub stack too. So where he's going to share research with his fans and say, hey, look, I'm going to use the proceeds from this. And we're going to use the proceeds to basically get even better research for you all. And so I want to share this with you all because you all enjoy what I read.

0:33And I actually subscribed to one of his sub stacks where it just shows the stuff that he's read for the week. And so I can kind of get into his head, right? And then the other interesting thing is that Andrew Wilkinson, who founded Tiny. So Tiny, they own a handful of companies. They own MetaLab and they have Dribbble. What else do they have? They have Thrive Market. So they have a handful of companies. And I think, what is it, WooCommerce? Maybe they took that company public. So WooCommerce, they took it public. But anyway, so you have both these people that are maybe worth, you know, 100 million plus or so.

1:04You know, Chamath is maybe close to a billionaire, if not more. And they are turning on. So Andrew Wilkinson, sorry, let me back up a second. He also turned on a$29 a month Twitter or X subscription. And he has to basically, you know, contribute to the community once a month or else people are going to be upset. Right. And that maybe makes him like, you know, 10, 15, 25 grand a month or something like that. So I find it interesting that millionaires, billionaires, more and more people are getting into the content creation game. It's not just the Mr. Beast of the world. But it also helps him too.

1:35Like if you look at Chamath, his following, creating content, also helped more people learn about the SPACs that he produced, which in theory, I bet you there's at least one person who follows him. I don't know if he wants to talk about the SPACs anymore. i know but because of you know all the content he's pushed out and all the followers he he created there's people who bought at least there's at least one person who bought one share because of knowing him and following him from twitter uh and that of course helped him make money there's a big expose i don't know if you ended up seeing it on success none of i don't think many of them worked no now don't get me wrong i'm a shaman fan right i generally like what he says I think, you know, so, so, but you know, unfortunately the SPACs didn't work out.

2:19Here's the other things people are like, did you, one of the tweets was like, did you, did you repent for all the losses that you incurred? And like, you know, and, and he's like, well, did you get out when I got out? So, so that was his response to them, but not, you know, we digress. The point being here is that I think even the investors, the top investors in the world, people that are popular, they understand the value of an audience. Right. And I think more and more people understand that the one thing that you can separate yourself from, from the rest of the crowd is, is having the audience.

2:47One of our, our video editors sent me a text the other day. Um, so when we, when we record Brad and he's like, should I, should I build an audience? Right. And I was like, absolutely. You should build an audience. If you're going to, if you're willing to put the time and effort and eat poo poo for three years, then you should build an audience. And look, more and more people are doing it. Um, there's a reason why Oprah became so successful, why Tim Ferriss became so successful, right? They all came up with their own angle. And then they just continue to do it for decades. Dude, totally. And oh, by the way, speaking of Ferris, dude, look how much money he made from things like Shopify, Uber.

3:24Building an audience is more than just making money from something as simple as charging for information and having a subscription. You can make a ton of money from other things as well, such as the audience investing in a company or following you or helping you get business deals. There's so much to be made by building a brand and becoming a content creator. Let me give you two examples here. So you sparked, we just made an idea, baby. So for example, Jason Lemkin. So he had a company called Echo Sign and he sold it to Adobe and now it's just called Adobe Sign. And he did well with it, right?

4:04But what he did afterwards was he was just answering questions about SaaS, software as a service on Quora, which is a question and answer website. And that's how he started to build his audience. And eventually he parlayed that into Sastr, which is probably the largest SaaS conference in the world. And that does probably$20,$25 million a year or so. So it's a great business. And that's an example of not only did he build a conference from it, but he gets a lot of deal flow from the SaaS world where he also continues to invest as a venture capitalist. Now, another example here would be Harry Stebbings from 20 Minute VC.

4:37So 20 VC, he's been doing it for about nine years or so. I think he started it maybe when he's like 18 or 19 years old. But because he's done these VC podcasts for so long, he's gotten access to a ton of deal flow. And that's what led to his success, right? I don't think he has any operating experience at all. But it just goes to show you. And by the way, Tim Ferriss, I think he has some operating experience. He's done some e-commerce businesses, but not like to the level of, hey, like, you know, you should be an advisor, in my opinion, right? I don't think he has, sorry, I don't think he shouldn't be an advisor.

5:07My point is he doesn't necessarily have the operating experience of like an Uber or like a Spotify or a Shopify. What Eric's trying to make a point is Tim's built a great audience similar to Chamath and others. I think Tim's audience is actually bigger. but with tim's audience specifically even though he hasn't operated a large company like an uber anything like that he's still doing extremely well from advisor shares and investing deals etc because of the audience size even chamath not trying to hate on him on the spax or whatnot makes a good point he got out he made money um if people did at the same time i don't know if they were able to or not but if they were you know good for them they would have made a killing as well, the guy's done well from his audience, whether you love him or hate him, you know, you got to give him props for how well he's done building, fostering the audience and using it to make money.

5:59Yeah. And I think there's something interesting about being a creator because it shows in public, whether you're actually a good creator or not. Um, now the Chama thing, interestingly enough, I, I, I did buy into this facts when he did it. And I, I got in, I got out pretty, pretty early too. Cause I was like, I don't think that these are going anywhere. Right. So money. Yeah. So none of us, we made money. None of us, by the way, like none of us are hating on on chamath andrew wilkinson tim ferris or anything like that they've all done great for themselves we're just saying like everyone has their own angle it doesn't like just because you don't have operating experience doesn't mean we think any less of you or anything like that so yeah and at the end of the day building like i look at chamath wilkinson i look at them as smart for doing this it's not about hey it's actually it's a smart thing to do you know how people leverage it that's up to them there's no right or wrong way um but At the end of the day, if you build an audience, you're going to be better off versus if you didn't build an audience.

6:54It's that simple. Let's give some numbers here, Neil, because you've – okay. I think you've probably been creating content for about 20 years or so. I've been creating content maybe for about 10 years or so, something like that, right? Sure. I'm a little less than 20, but yeah. Yeah. Point is, like, this stuff takes time. So anyway, that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, resubscribe, and check out this video over here. And we'll see you tomorrow.