0:04

Welcome to a bonus

0:06

episode of First Class Founders. I

0:08

wanted to bring you this special episode. I recently

0:10

recorded with Joe Casabona on

0:12

his podcast, How I Built It.

0:15

Joe did a fantastic job with his production

0:18

for this episode and even followed a similar

0:20

format of the show with life lessons sprinkled

0:22

throughout the episode. A nice shout out

0:25

to First Class Founders. It's a bit longer

0:27

and more of an interview style show, but

0:29

we covered some great topics like how

0:31

I launched my podcast to just 10

0:34

downloads an episode last year to now

0:36

a top 2% globally ranked podcast.

0:39

It involved a lot of hard work building my audience

0:41

from scratch, in particular on Twitter slash

0:43

X. Joe did a great job breaking

0:46

down each step of my journey.

0:48

Please enjoy this bonus episode with Joe Casabona

0:51

of How I Built It. So

0:53

basically it felt like I

0:55

was going into a party and

0:58

imagine like a room full of people. And

1:01

at that point I had about 400 followers. And

1:04

so at the very least I go into

1:06

a party. I would imagine that at least

1:08

I would recognize one or two people in that large

1:11

room, new environment that I could

1:13

kind of like bounce ideas off of or

1:15

just meet other people through that person.

1:18

But I walk into this room at a party

1:21

and I know

1:23

no one.

1:24

It's all filled with strangers. I

1:26

don't know anybody. That's how I felt when I

1:28

first started posting on Twitter where

1:31

I'm sharing all of these vulnerable things about

1:33

me, all these stories. But no

1:35

one cared. And people it's like

1:37

a weird thing, Joe. But like I could feel

1:39

people like looking at these posts and like

1:42

almost like judging me, who is this guy, like

1:44

who invited him to the party?

1:45

And so it took me a long time

1:48

where I had to go

1:50

up to each person using this party

1:52

analogy, introduce myself, build

1:54

a rapport, build a relationship. Imagine

1:57

running a high seven figure business.

1:59

with over 300,000 followers on social media, then

2:04

launching a podcast. How

2:07

many downloads would you expect?

2:13

What about 10? We've

2:16

all been there. We spend a ton

2:18

of time pouring blood, sweat, and tears

2:21

into a project just to have

2:23

it launched to crickets. That's

2:26

exactly what happened to Yang Soo-chung with

2:28

his podcast. Despite the

2:30

social following, no one

2:32

cared about his podcast. But

2:36

instead of wallowing in self-pity or shutting

2:39

the show down, Yang Soo

2:41

took action. He reactivated

2:44

his Twitter account, which had been dormant

2:46

for 12 years, and

2:48

started basically from scratch, growing

2:51

to over 20,000 followers in less than a year. Now

2:55

he has a great process for getting people

2:58

from Twitter to his newsletter to

3:00

his podcast. We'll cover his

3:03

entire journey and more. And in

3:05

the pro show, we'll exchange notes on

3:07

our production processes. Now

3:09

as an homage to Yang Soo's show, instead

3:11

of top takeaways, I want you to look for

3:14

these life lessons. Life

3:16

lesson number one, have a clearly

3:18

defined niche and know

3:21

how to reach people in that niche. You'll

3:23

find that that was Yang Soo's initial

3:25

problem. Life lesson number

3:28

two, share personal stories.

3:31

We all try to hack the social media algorithms

3:34

and copy what the biggest influencers

3:36

are doing. But Yang Soo says that's

3:39

not the right approach. And

3:41

life lesson number three, continuously

3:44

hone your target audience and

3:46

make sure to grow your show

3:48

to serve them and yourself.

3:51

This was such a fantastic interview.

3:54

I love talking to Yang Soo anytime

3:56

I get the chance to. I think you're going

3:58

to enjoy it as well. And if you

4:00

want to get this episode and

4:02

every episode ad free and extended,

4:05

you can join the membership over at HowIBuilt.it.

4:09

Like I said in the Pro Show, we're going

4:11

to exchange notes on our production

4:14

processes because I'm going on Yongsu's

4:16

show and he has come online.

4:19

But for now, let's get to the intro and

4:21

then the interview. Hey

4:27

everybody and welcome to How I Built

4:29

It, the podcast that helps busy

4:31

solo preneuers and creators grow

4:33

their business without spending too

4:36

much time on it. I'm your host, Joe

4:38

Casabona, and each week I

4:40

bring you interviews and case studies on

4:42

how to build a better business through smarter

4:45

processes, time management, and

4:47

effective content creation. It's

4:49

like getting free coaching calls from

4:52

successful solo preneuers. By

4:54

the end of each episode, you'll have

4:56

one to three takeaways you can implement today

4:59

to stop spending time in your business

5:02

and more time on your business

5:04

or with your friends, your family,

5:07

reading, or however you choose

5:10

to spend your free time. All

5:15

right, I am here with Yongsu Chung. He is

5:17

a serial entrepreneur and creator of First Class

5:19

Founders. I would consider him at this

5:21

point a friend. Yongsu, how are

5:23

you today? I'm doing fantastic,

5:25

Joe. How are you? I'm great. Thanks

5:27

so much for coming on the show. I had a great

5:30

time on your show. We

5:32

probably should have talked about this in the pre-show,

5:35

but I don't know when our episodes are coming

5:37

out relative to each other. This episode's

5:39

coming out before mine hits yours. So I'll just

5:41

link to your show in the show notes

5:43

and then people can subscribe so that they

5:46

can hear my episode in your podcast.

5:48

Your episode is going to be really good.

5:51

For your listeners, definitely don't

5:53

miss out on that one.

5:55

I don't know if this made it in, so I'm

5:57

just going to say something I did was...

6:00

I enjoyed screaming music

6:03

like Screamo and Slipknot, and I

6:05

told Yongsu and his producer

6:08

that I did a rendition of that

6:10

in a high school play, and so they wanted

6:12

to hear that. So I did

6:14

it, it got recorded. I don't know if it'll make it into

6:16

the show. I guess you'll have to listen. Or if

6:18

you wanna hear my best. I was gonna make it in. My

6:21

best Slipknot impression, if you wanna hear

6:23

that. And there you go, that's how you grow a podcast.

6:25

So end of this episode. Yongsu,

6:27

what I love and what I wanna talk

6:30

about with you is you've really

6:32

built, I think what is a really good

6:34

Twitter following. I've been on Twitter

6:37

since April Fool's Day 2007. I'll

6:41

never forget it because I'm like, well, I'm the

6:43

fool here. I'm like a Twitter

6:46

pessimist where I feel like you're like

6:48

a social media optimist. And

6:50

I think it shows because I've got

6:52

like almost 6,000 followers as we record

6:54

this. I didn't check right before

6:56

we started recording, but you have a lot more

6:59

than that. I think it was 18,000 the

7:01

last time I checked maybe. We're gonna hit 21K probably

7:03

today. Wow,

7:06

okay, so like quite the following. And

7:08

you, correct me if I'm wrong,

7:11

you were not really doing Twitter

7:14

before 2022. I

7:16

was not.

7:17

I think I joined around the same time you did, Joe.

7:19

I mean, we must have been one of the first few

7:21

users on there.

7:22

Yeah, because they launched in 2006, probably

7:25

like in San Francisco, because that's where all social

7:27

media starts basically, or like a Harvard dorm room,

7:30

I guess. But it didn't really enter the cultural

7:32

zeitgeist until Oprah mentioned

7:34

it in like 2009 or 2010.

7:36

I was on there and I was pretty

7:38

early, but I didn't really understand it. And

7:40

I just thought it was pointless. And so I kind of

7:42

disappeared for a while. And so I pretty

7:45

much took what, a 10 year, actually

7:47

more than 10 years, like maybe 12 year hiatus,

7:49

where I just got off the platform. I didn't

7:51

see a point in it.

7:52

There's a point in my journey where I

7:55

just didn't really like social

7:57

media. I didn't really see the point of it. And I wasn't

7:59

really into. publicly sharing what I was doing all

8:01

the time. And so I got

8:03

off of it. And then when I

8:06

launched the podcast, First Class

8:08

Founders in November, that's when

8:10

I realized, hey, I need to get

8:12

more public about what I'm doing here, or

8:14

else my audience will just be

8:16

nothing. So that's when I

8:19

decided to get back on.

8:20

Okay. Before you launched your podcast,

8:22

though, you have multiple

8:25

million dollar businesses, right?

8:28

Yeah. I was a company with three

8:30

businesses. And so I launched

8:33

my first business in 2015. It's

8:35

an e-commerce site selling flashlights,

8:38

pry bars, pocket knives. That's

8:40

been growing really steadily. And

8:42

then in 2018,

8:44

brought home a French bulldog named Humphrey.

8:46

This is right around the time when Instagram was promoting videos.

8:49

A few of his videos, actually what's funny is

8:51

the videos where I'm holding him and creating him like a

8:53

baby, those really took off like

8:56

into the million views, right? Wow.

8:59

And so he gained a following really fast.

9:01

It surprised me and we weren't planning on that, but it

9:04

just happened. And so my wife

9:06

and I were like, all right, people are asking us like,

9:08

hey, what's that leash? What's the harness

9:10

you have? So we decided, hey, we have an e-commerce

9:12

brand already with Urban EDC,

9:14

my first company. Why don't we just do the

9:17

same thing but for French bulldog owners?

9:19

And so my wife launched Spotted

9:21

by Humphrey, which is an online

9:23

boutique for mostly French bulldog

9:25

owners.

9:26

We launched that and then fulfillment,

9:29

or I guess in e-commerce, you have to like

9:31

actually pack the item and ship it

9:33

to the customer, right? That is one of the notoriously

9:36

difficult parts of e-commerce. We were

9:38

getting a lot of feedback from people like, hey, who's

9:40

doing your fulfillment? Because my fulfillment is horrendous.

9:43

And I have some horror stories myself where a customer

9:46

would email me and say, hey, is this a joke?

9:49

Like you ship me an empty box. I'm like, what are you

9:51

talking about? And so it turns out that the

9:53

fulfillment partner that I was using had

9:55

taken the item out and these are like

9:57

expensive collectible items. It's like $1,000. customer,

10:00

custom pocket knife, for example. And they shipped

10:02

my customer an empty box. And

10:05

the way I found out about it was the customer angrily

10:08

emailing me being like, what is this deal?

10:10

Right? So like fulfillment

10:12

is a huge pain point. And so we decided

10:15

to launch growth jet, which is a e-commerce

10:18

3PL. And so that was in 2019.

10:21

And so those three businesses collectively

10:23

were doing probably six, seven

10:25

million this year in annual revenue. So

10:28

approaching the eight figure mark, which is kind of like my goal.

10:30

And so those three businesses, going

10:33

back to this original question, I thought

10:35

people have seen me grow as an entrepreneur, especially

10:38

like the urban EDC, my first business, you know, we

10:40

had 170,000 followers on Instagram, we

10:43

have a huge emailing list, approaching

10:45

100k subscribers on the emailing list.

10:48

We have my French Bulldog, Humphrey,

10:51

his following is very loyal. I mean, my

10:53

wife does an amazing job with the content.

10:55

And she's basically co-creates the content

10:58

with Humphrey. And I

11:00

just thought, Hey, you know what, I can launch a podcast

11:02

here. And I'm launching

11:04

to an audience because I already have the

11:06

first business I started.

11:08

And then I have the Humphrey account.

11:10

And so those two audiences should allow

11:13

me to at least start with a baseline

11:16

audience, right? It was so funny, because

11:18

I launched it and I was so optimistic. And then

11:20

it just fell flat, like no one cares. So

11:22

let's establish the baseline here, right? Your

11:25

EDC following cared about

11:27

EDC, everyday carry, for those who don't

11:29

know. And I love that. I love

11:31

pocket knives and pens and all that

11:34

fun stuff. Actually, there's a knife brand that

11:36

like escapes me, the name escapes me right

11:38

now. But it was so light. It

11:40

was like a $250 knife. It was so light.

11:43

It fell out of my pocket and I lost it. And I'm

11:45

so sad about it. Oh, no. I'll think

11:47

of the name before the end of the show. So anyway,

11:50

it's an EDC brand. And

11:52

then the followers of your dog Humphrey,

11:55

that's dog content. I have a really

11:57

hard time leveling with that because I'm not like

11:59

an animal guy. I'm really sorry to everybody who's

12:01

an animal person. And then your podcast

12:04

is not about EDC,

12:07

nor is it about dog stuff, right?

12:09

It's about founder origin stories

12:11

and takeaways from people starting

12:14

businesses, right?

12:15

That's right. So podcast is about, I do

12:17

a solo episode and a guest episode and the

12:19

solo episode is mostly me explaining

12:22

some concepts from my own journey as an entrepreneur.

12:24

And then the guest episodes are hearing

12:27

from others about their founder origin story

12:29

and the lessons they've learned growing, whatever they're

12:31

growing.

12:32

Your thought here, right? Which is a valid thought.

12:34

I would also have this thought, is there

12:36

are people who are following your other

12:39

businesses who are probably interested

12:41

in the kind of stuff that you're doing and how

12:43

other people are launching businesses, right? But that wasn't

12:45

really the case. EDC people only care about

12:47

EDC, the dog people only care about

12:49

dog stuff.

12:50

Yeah, it was a shock.

12:52

In the style of Andrew Warner, who I know you had on your

12:54

show.

12:55

I'll just ask you, right? Like how many downloads were you getting

12:57

in those first few episodes? I was probably

12:59

getting between 10 to 20 downloads, an

13:01

episode.

13:02

Wow. And you had like six figure followings

13:04

on multiple accounts. Yeah, so Urban

13:06

EDC has 170,000 followers on Instagram, 100,000 newsletter

13:10

subscribers.

13:13

The dog account Humphrey has 150K followers

13:16

across Instagram and TikTok.

13:18

And Humphrey's fan base is very loyal. It's

13:21

really engaged audience.

13:22

I thought at least 1%

13:24

would be a good

13:26

base minimum, but I mean, it was just shocking

13:29

to me when no one cares. Basically

13:31

the audiences for Humphrey, he's following Humphrey

13:33

for his content, his funny and cute

13:36

stuff. And then EDC is obviously

13:38

like, they want to see the gear. So they

13:40

don't care about building businesses, right?

13:42

And so that's kind of the

13:44

biggest mistake, honestly, that I made.

13:46

Yeah, it sounds like if you had launched an EDC podcast,

13:49

right, you would have gotten a bunch of EDC listeners.

13:51

And if you launched like a day in the

13:54

life of Humphrey podcast, you would have

13:56

gotten listeners. Exactly. So

13:58

that's really interesting.

13:59

There's, again, in the style of first-class

14:02

founders, life lesson number

14:04

one, have

14:05

a clearly defined niche and

14:07

know how to reach the people in that

14:09

niche.

14:10

Big followings don't necessarily mean

14:12

a lot of downloads for your podcast. Exactly.

14:15

I did that, right? That was life lesson. I

14:17

know you switched it up for Andrew. Life question

14:19

was what you did for Andrew.

14:21

We all know the feeling of,

14:23

I'm going to say we all know the feeling

14:26

of launching to crickets. I remember

14:28

I launched my first course. It

14:30

was a text-based course

14:33

on how to launch a blog with WordPress.

14:35

I put hours into writing those words.

14:38

I remember doing it in Disneyland and

14:41

then various coffee shops around my hometown.

14:44

I was like, this is going to be great. Two people

14:47

bought it. I was like, why is this?

14:50

I had a big following in the WordPress community,

14:53

but they were developers. developers

14:55

already know how to launch a blog. They didn't need

14:57

that course. Their clients didn't need that course.

15:00

I guess, what was the initial feeling

15:02

like? Then when did you resolve

15:05

to take next steps to fix the problem?

15:08

Basically, it felt like I

15:10

was going into a party.

15:13

Imagine a room full of people. At that

15:17

point, I had about 400 followers. At

15:19

the very least, I go into a party. I would

15:22

imagine that at least I would recognize one

15:24

or two people in that large room, new

15:27

environment that I could bounce ideas

15:29

off of

15:30

or just meet other people through

15:32

that person. I walked into

15:34

this room at a party

15:36

and

15:37

I know no

15:38

one.

15:39

It's all filled with strangers. I don't

15:41

know anybody. That's how I felt when I first

15:43

started posting on Twitter, where I'm

15:46

sharing all these vulnerable things about me, all

15:49

these stories, but no one cared. It's

15:51

like a weird thing,

15:53

Joe. I could feel people looking

15:55

at these posts and almost judging me. Who

15:58

is this guy? Who invited him to the party? party.

16:00

And so it took me a long time

16:03

where I had to go

16:05

up to each person using this party

16:07

analogy, introduce myself, build

16:09

a rapport, build a relationship,

16:11

and then get introductions from

16:14

that person. Or I go to a different person and

16:16

say, Hey, how are you? Like, my name is Young Sue. This

16:18

is how I feel today. I also have a podcast. It's

16:20

like building those individual relationships over

16:23

time that compounds like

16:25

you may not realize that that compounds but like

16:28

each little relationship you build

16:30

one on one

16:31

that will add to your kind

16:33

of baseline level of like, all right, we

16:35

know who this guy is. And so

16:37

the party room, by the way, is getting bigger

16:39

and bigger.

16:40

And you're now you have

16:42

a reputation. So like someone might be like, Hey, young

16:45

Sue, like come meet my friend over here, you guys

16:47

should talk. And so all of a sudden, you get

16:49

pulled into like these other conversations.

16:52

So that's kind of the analogy that I like to use.

16:55

It's kind of like when you meet someone, you connect

16:57

with someone, then you get pulled into

16:59

other rooms, and then you start talking there. And

17:01

then someone else is like, Oh, I know

17:03

another guy who's also doing something really cool. You

17:06

should meet him. And so it's kind of like, you have these

17:08

like different

17:09

your computer guys, like almost like different

17:11

nodes, right? So like you got these nodes. And

17:14

like, you're kind of planting yourself in

17:16

these nodes, and you're growing your network.

17:18

That approach has really transformed my

17:20

online presence, I guess.

17:22

I love that. I want to dive into that.

17:24

But first, we need to take a break

17:27

for our sponsors.

17:30

All right, we're back. You're at this

17:32

party. I love this analogy. I love

17:35

what you're saying about building relationships,

17:37

because I think that the approach for a lot of people is I'm

17:40

building a Twitter following at a macro

17:43

level, I want to appeal to as many people

17:45

as possible because Twitter has millions and millions

17:47

of followers. But your approach

17:50

is

17:50

really different. And it's really worked for you.

17:52

I think it's really important

17:54

to realize that it's a two way street. The

17:56

way I like to see it, it's like it's not a broadcast platform.

17:59

It's not like there's standing on a soapbox,

18:02

broadcasting with a loudspeaker like, hey,

18:04

this is what I did this week, or here

18:06

are my wins. That approach won't

18:09

work, especially at the beginning, the approach

18:11

that works is getting on the ground

18:13

floor, meeting people, hearing

18:15

about their problems, their

18:18

pain points, connecting with them, adding

18:20

a little bit of value to that conversation.

18:22

And then now you have this rapport with that

18:24

one person.

18:25

And then you kind of repeat that process. And

18:27

it's very difficult in the beginning, because you don't

18:29

know anybody, and no one really cares about

18:31

you. And you're putting in all this work, and

18:34

you feel like you're doing it for nothing. And so

18:36

the hardest part is always at the beginning. But

18:38

one by one relationships build, and

18:41

then you support their work too. So

18:43

what's great is when you meet these people at this party,

18:45

they may also be kind of a smaller

18:48

following, some smaller account. But

18:49

then you start engaging with each other, and

18:52

you kind of grow together. And then at some

18:54

point, they're also like a larger group,

18:57

and they have more authority in cloud.

18:59

And so it's kind of like this flywheel

19:01

where you're like growing together. And imagine

19:03

you do this with a bunch of people. And

19:05

when that happens, like everyone lives together.

19:07

A

19:08

lot of bigger accounts today, what I've

19:10

heard is that they also started really small,

19:12

but then they had like a peer group accountability

19:14

that kind of lifted all the boats together. I

19:17

think that's like really key is like finding accountability

19:19

partners or this like pure group of friends

19:22

who are going to support your work, you

19:24

support their work, and you just all grow together.

19:26

I think that's been a really big

19:29

shift in the way I approach Twitter and

19:31

social media in general.

19:32

You painted such a great picture here.

19:35

Because I think people view

19:37

Twitter as if they were invited

19:40

to speak at a conference, and they

19:42

act that way. But really, it's

19:45

more like what you said, it's a party or

19:47

a networking event where you don't just address

19:49

the room, people are going to just ignore

19:51

you unless they already know you. So

19:53

you've got to go to these individuals

19:56

or groups or, you know, there's the idea

19:58

of like podcast, Twitter and baseball.

19:59

Twitter and EDC Twitter and engage

20:02

with those kind of micro communities

20:04

inside of Twitter as a whole. Or

20:07

LinkedIn or maybe Threads. We're

20:09

using Twitter as the royal we for

20:11

all social networks, right? Because who knows

20:13

what Twitter slash X is going

20:15

to be in a few years and it's

20:18

just kind of the natural life cycle of most

20:21

websites, most technology things. But

20:23

I like this approach of the

20:25

one-on-one thing. And before I ask

20:27

you how you made the move

20:30

to get people from Twitter to your podcast,

20:32

I do want to ask you about the relevance

20:35

of Twitter slash X, right? Because

20:38

Elon bought it around the time that you

20:40

got onto the platform, right? We'll say

20:42

re-engaged with the platform. So

20:44

you don't have the same baggage that a lot

20:46

of Twitter users and former Twitter users

20:49

have of like, I remember the good old days

20:51

or whatever, which, by the way, the

20:53

good old days were like 2007 to like 2010

20:56

when me and like a bunch

20:58

of people would just like live tweet Yankee games.

21:00

Like those were the good old days.

21:02

Anything after that was kind of a hellscape

21:04

and Elon did things that

21:07

didn't change that. Anyway, my point

21:09

is you've built this following almost

21:11

exclusively on Elon's Twitter.

21:14

Do you think Twitter is still relevant? I feel

21:16

like you're a little bit more optimistic about this than I am.

21:18

Yeah, so I am

21:20

optimistic and I'll tell you why.

21:22

Each social platform goes

21:25

through these waves of change.

21:27

And you can't really control

21:30

this change because it's almost

21:32

like psychological, like human consumer

21:34

behavior that changes. And

21:36

so imagine back in the day, like remember

21:38

when Facebook launched their newsfeed,

21:41

there was an outrage. Like there was literally petitions

21:44

to Mark Zuckerberg being like, bring the old

21:46

Facebook back. We hate the newsfeed.

21:48

Literally the newsfeed is every single

21:50

social network right now has a newsfeed

21:53

of some sort. That is social media. Right.

21:56

That's social media now. But you're right. Like

21:58

I remember any time Facebook. made a change

22:00

from like, let's say, 09 to like 14. There

22:04

were petitions, bring back the old one. If

22:06

you repost this, Mark

22:08

Zuckerberg will show you the old feed again

22:10

or whatever, like those like weird scammy post

22:13

things. So yeah, you're absolutely right. People

22:15

are just averse to change. They're averse

22:17

to change and I do feel like

22:19

towards the end of the Twitter that we know

22:22

it, before Elon came over, to be

22:24

totally honest with you, I felt like it was

22:26

a little bit stale. What I mean by

22:28

stale is like, there wasn't a lot

22:30

of innovation happening. And I

22:33

remember at one point, I live

22:34

in San Francisco. So I drive by that Twitter

22:36

headquarters building like very frequently.

22:38

I just remember like thinking, when

22:41

is Twitter gonna go down? Because first

22:43

of all, they were losing money. It was like an antiquated

22:45

old platform that people weren't really using.

22:48

My prediction was that it would actually be like

22:50

MySpace where they would just become irrelevant.

22:53

Or like relevant to only a very small niche,

22:55

right? Like bands. MySpace

22:58

became like a thing for bands.

23:00

So I thought that was happening. That was in my point of view.

23:02

Again, like other people might be like, wow, it

23:05

was amazing. Like I had whatever, whatever, but

23:07

like in my point of view, it was declining. And

23:09

so when Elon took over, I was like, all right, this

23:11

is gonna get interesting. Obviously Elon,

23:14

his vision is probably top 0.001% of

23:17

entrepreneurs in the entire world.

23:20

Like he's crazy vision.

23:21

Obviously he's a little out there. He says

23:24

stuff that he shouldn't really say. He's

23:26

a crazy dude. And the thing is you have to

23:28

be a little crazy if you're gonna buy out

23:30

a public social media platform, bring

23:33

it private again, and it's now his ownership.

23:35

It's crazy. Like you have to be a little crazy

23:37

to do everything that Elon's done. Imagine

23:40

being like, oh yeah, we're gonna make like reusable

23:42

rocket ships that land themselves. Like that's insane.

23:45

And he made that happen. Like, yeah, I mean, like

23:47

Elon says a lot of things that he shouldn't say.

23:49

And he definitely like shoots first

23:51

and then aims. That's the kind

23:54

of thing that he does. And that's like really annoying and capricious

23:57

to people who have been on the platform

23:59

for a long time. But

24:00

I think you're right like it was going again like thread

24:02

boys to use like a he's term right like

24:04

oh here's how to make a million dollars build a

24:06

product people like get people to buy

24:09

it those people who buy it will then. Sell

24:11

it for you and i'm like that's not how it works

24:13

and you know that the key bush that's

24:16

crazy that you would even say that

24:18

but that got a ton of engagement. Yeah

24:20

i'm glad that it's changing now and

24:23

i've been following his kind

24:25

of like what he's trying to build it's very ambitious

24:28

and i don't know if he can pull it off but

24:30

you want to pull it off of anyone can

24:32

pull it off right so i know he's gonna push

24:34

video he wants to make it into like a video compete

24:36

with like. YouTube spotify apple

24:39

i think it's gonna be more audio podcast up i

24:41

know you can payments some micro payments using

24:43

cryptocurrency.

24:44

So he's got a lot of stuff planned

24:46

that i'm eager to see what happens

24:49

but i think that it's good for the platform as a whole

24:51

one other thing is like i think change just

24:53

generally is a good thing. If you can

24:56

be on the front of that change that's a huge

24:58

opportunity because now you're writing the wave

25:01

of this new change versus being stuck in

25:03

the old ways of like i'm and i used to remember

25:05

when i. Post it is random thread about

25:07

making money it went viral so easy

25:10

but now changing and so if you're ahead

25:12

of the change like you could grow really fast. That's

25:14

a huge point i think the takeaways

25:17

here are first of all build

25:19

relationships right i was gonna ask you if

25:21

what you were doing is still effective but like building

25:23

relationships is always going to be effective.

25:26

That's not a twitter hack or

25:28

like linkedin growth strategy that's

25:30

just people like people are people and

25:33

building relationships is always gonna be effective. I

25:35

will add here joe that so in the last

25:38

two three weeks i've seen kind of a

25:40

change in people that i'm attracting

25:42

and so i think this is an important point i want to bring up so

25:45

about a month ago i started instead

25:47

of posting for my audience so

25:50

i was like quote unquote a creator and

25:52

my content was around building an audience

25:54

and i'd monetize your audience like things

25:56

like that.

25:57

Which to be honest like there's so much content

25:59

out there.

25:59

for that.

26:00

And I was kind of like hiding behind, I didn't

26:03

really know how to structure the content

26:05

around the holding company that I have, the personal

26:07

holding company with the three businesses. And so I wasn't

26:09

really sharing about that. It's just more about like,

26:12

here's how to build an audience, things like that. And

26:14

when I shifted my content to

26:17

talking more about my own life

26:19

and like, just generally like things

26:21

that I've been doing for the last eight years, the

26:23

funny thing is, it may not seem

26:25

like

26:26

relevant for a lot of people, because who's

26:28

going to build a holding company with three, four

26:30

or five businesses? Like, I don't know if like a lot

26:32

of people would do that.

26:33

But what's interesting is I started getting

26:35

followers being like, I want to follow

26:37

your journey.

26:38

You know, I want to get to know how you're doing x,

26:40

y and z.

26:41

And so it became more of this, like,

26:43

follow my journey type thing and like

26:45

a more of an interesting perspective, because not a lot of people

26:48

are doing what I'm doing in terms

26:50

of like the holding company. And like, essentially,

26:52

my view is you can pretty much build a

26:54

business from any hobby, we brought

26:56

him one free,

26:57

his food was expensive. So we built

26:59

a business. And now like, we get paid

27:01

to go to five star hotels, we stay for free,

27:04

because we just have to create content around

27:06

the hotel. It's crazy. I

27:08

started sharing more of that content. And

27:11

I may not appeal to the broader audience.

27:13

But then what happened was I started

27:15

getting people to follow me, people that would

27:18

not imagine would follow me like, for example, like

27:20

Pompliano, like Anthony Pompliano, like

27:22

I had Greg Eisenberg follow me, I had these guys

27:24

that I wouldn't expect them to

27:27

follow me, they started following me because I was sharing

27:29

interesting stuff. But it's almost like a higher advanced

27:31

level content. And they were following me because

27:34

I was sharing that level content

27:36

versus another like here are five habits

27:38

that you need to know to succeed.

27:41

Pompliano is not going to follow me if I post content

27:43

like that. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's

27:45

super interesting, right? Because one of the conversations

27:47

that we had via J classes

27:49

lab was how I can

27:51

leverage the podcast audits I'm doing to

27:54

do well on Twitter. And the first

27:56

one I did was like, Yang Soo is

27:58

gangbusters. best tweet

28:01

I've ever had. And

28:02

it's not even close.

28:05

That is my most viral tweet,

28:07

where the second is like way behind.

28:09

And it was a picture of a table

28:11

with a bunch of books with swear words in them. And I'm like, this

28:14

is my least favorite trend.

28:16

So like that got maybe half the

28:18

engagement and views that this thread

28:20

got. But did I notice like recently, like those

28:22

threads weren't doing as well. But

28:24

I tweeted that after 86 months,

28:27

this podcast finally got to 100 reviews

28:30

in my takeaways. And that like

28:32

popped off a little bit. This is like something

28:34

I like sent at my kitchen table

28:37

when I noticed it. And like that popped

28:39

off a little bit. And so I think like sharing

28:41

your journey. It's so funny, because

28:44

earlier you said like, with your podcast,

28:46

like people didn't really care about that. But that seems

28:48

to be the thing that's resonating on Twitter.

28:50

Now,

28:51

exactly. Your original question about is

28:54

your strategy working now, I would say sharing

28:56

personal stories. And you got to have

28:59

like a little bit of a unique angle. Like I'm trying

29:01

to do this, which is like kind of a fun

29:03

and like quirky thing. Like follow me

29:05

if you want to like, see what I'm doing.

29:07

I think that's kind of like what is

29:10

working. Generally, I feel like that's a good strategy

29:12

to have because people are curious, they want

29:14

to see people succeed.

29:16

And so that's been working for

29:18

me in the last month or so.

29:20

So again, in keeping with the format,

29:22

I'm going to say life lesson to share

29:24

your personal stories. These are the things that

29:27

resonate with other people. It helps you build

29:29

those relationships. I love that.

29:31

But we're missing a key piece of this puzzle here,

29:33

right? Like because we have a very big open

29:35

thread in Yang Soo's podcast story,

29:38

launched a podcast with no following, built

29:41

a huge following on Twitter.

29:43

How do you get those people to listen to your podcast?

29:46

Yeah, this is interesting. Because when

29:48

I started building these relationships on Twitter, I

29:50

started directing them to listen to the

29:52

podcast.

29:53

This was not easy. Because

29:55

if you imagine someone scrolling through a feed

29:57

on Twitter, getting a reply being like, Hey,

29:59

you check out my podcast, like who's going to have

30:02

a time at that very moment

30:03

to click into a podcast player and

30:06

listen to an episode, a 30 to 40 minute

30:08

episode. Nobody. No one's going to do that.

30:10

What I started doing is instead of having my,

30:13

I guess, audience funnel be from social media

30:15

or Twitter in this case to the podcast,

30:18

I put the newsletter in between there.

30:20

And so it's a really easy ask

30:23

like, Hey, by the way, I share lessons

30:25

on how I built my business and other people as

30:27

well join 8,000 people who also signed up to my

30:31

newsletter. And so I'm using the newsletter

30:34

because all you're doing is you're asking for an email address.

30:36

So that's very quick, takes two seconds,

30:39

very low commitment. And then now you have them

30:41

and now you can continuously email them reminding

30:43

them, Hey, I have a podcast episode. Hey, by

30:45

the way, I have a podcast episode this week. Every single

30:48

week I send out a newsletter. And now

30:50

not only is it good for like, they'll click on

30:52

and listen to the episode, but it's like a good branding play. Like

30:55

they may forget the first cast on his podcast

30:57

exists, but then they'll see it each week.

30:59

Be like, Oh yeah, I remember this guy. Like, Oh yeah, I

31:01

met him on Twitter. I wonder

31:02

what he's up to. They might go to the Twitter profile and it's

31:04

a very good like branding play too. Yeah,

31:07

I love that. The newsletter sits right in

31:09

between. Yeah. So the newsletter is the

31:11

bridge. Basically it's the bridge between Twitter

31:14

and your podcast. And this makes perfect sense,

31:16

right? Because Hey, listen to this podcast

31:19

is a big ask, especially if

31:21

someone's not ready at that moment, if

31:23

they're not already subscribed to your podcast, or if

31:25

they don't usually listen to podcasts.

31:27

Now they're like, how do I listen to this? I got

31:30

to keep this website up on my phone.

31:32

So listen to this. There's

31:34

a barrier to entry there, right? It's

31:36

like saying, Hey, you've never swam before it

31:38

goes swimming in the ocean. Whereas

31:40

like with the newsletter, like you said, it's a much lower ask.

31:43

It's like, Hey, just stick your feet

31:45

in the river. That's nicer. You're already

31:47

at the river. Just take your shoes off, but

31:49

your feet in it. I really liked that. There's

31:52

like a psychological principle

31:54

behind this too, right? Political campaigns

31:56

would do this, right? Where they would go door to door before

31:58

like micro donations were like a thing.

31:59

doing online, they would go door

32:02

to door asking for donations

32:05

to the campaign. Hey, are you willing to donate 100

32:08

bucks to the campaign? No, I'm not really

32:10

ready to do that, right? Oh, okay. I

32:12

totally understand. Would you mind if we put this sign

32:14

in your yard for our candidate?

32:17

Well, yeah, it's like the big ask followed

32:19

by the smaller ask. You feel bad that

32:21

you didn't give them 100 bucks, but oh yeah, you can

32:23

put the sign in my yard. That's fine.

32:26

I think that's kind of the same thing. You're not going to listen to my podcast,

32:28

but you can sign up for the newsletter, right? That's

32:30

an easy thing to do. Yeah, exactly.

32:33

I'm going to ask more of a tactical thing here. What

32:35

do you use for Twitter? Are you just posting

32:37

directly on Twitter? Are you using Hyperi

32:39

or Typefully or something? I use Typefully

32:42

for 80% of it and then

32:44

for the ones that are longer form tweets

32:47

or ones that I really want to pay attention to,

32:49

I just do it on my own. I just do all

32:51

the bold italics, all the stylistic

32:53

stuff directly on Twitter. Okay.

32:56

Because I noticed like Typefully support. I don't

32:58

want to call it Typefully. There's no API, no

33:01

Twitter tool can do that. Only

33:03

Twitter can do that. So then when you do like the

33:05

follow-up tweets, is that only going to be on the ones

33:07

that you post from Typefully? I'm asking because

33:09

I use Typefully, but I find myself

33:12

writing just on Twitter more lately

33:14

because you can do longer formatted stuff. And

33:17

so I don't get the follow-up tweets now because

33:19

unlike Hyperi, Typefully doesn't watch

33:21

all of your tweets. It just watches the ones that it

33:24

sent. I go in there

33:26

and I respond to every single comment on the

33:28

tweet. That's pretty important. This is

33:30

another thing that we should mention is the latest Ago

33:32

change, which I don't like chasing Agos stuff,

33:34

but it's significant in that if

33:36

someone replies to your tweet, it

33:39

boosts the algorithm significantly. And

33:41

then if you respond back to that response,

33:44

it boosted even further. So it's really important

33:46

to engage. And also generally it's good because

33:48

you want to engage with the audience anyways. And

33:50

so I always respond as much as I can to every single

33:53

response.

33:54

And so I do that just kind of manually on

33:57

Twitter web app.

33:58

if you liked this,

34:00

like check out my newsletter, like you're gonna post that manually

34:03

in the course of engaging

34:05

with other people on that tweet. Oh, for

34:08

that one. So I'd say 80% of the tweets

34:10

go through typfully and typfully

34:12

will plug that in automatically after it reaches a

34:14

certain amount of likes, or hard to whatever.

34:16

But then the ones where I do it manually,

34:18

I will

34:20

plug that in once I see that the post

34:22

is doing well like you can tell

34:25

because you can go back and check the impressions and that impression

34:27

number is like going up really fast. Then

34:29

it's like, all right, it's in the algorithm, it's gonna do

34:31

well. And then what I'll do is I'll do a plug,

34:34

but it'll be a customized plug. So it doesn't seem

34:36

like the regular one that I'm doing for

34:38

typfully. Oh, cool. Yeah,

34:41

makes sense. It'll be more catered towards like

34:43

that piece of content that I wrote. So for

34:45

example, I did one with Humphrey, right?

34:47

And so the call out was like, if

34:50

you want to know how I built Humphrey's business,

34:52

join the newsletter, something like that.

34:54

So let me ask you then, like, how much time do you

34:56

think you spend on Twitter every day? Too much, probably

34:58

at least two, three hours. But

35:00

like that works for you, right? You're not like doom

35:03

scrolling the whole time, you're like building

35:05

relationships that then you

35:07

can send people to your podcast, your newsletter,

35:10

I'm subscribed to your newsletter. I don't recall

35:12

you promoting your other businesses in

35:15

that newsletter. That changed today.

35:17

So I sent out a newsletter. Oh, okay.

35:21

And I plugged in growth jet, which

35:23

is the three people company.

35:24

And so that was the first time ever that I plugged

35:27

my own company. But I think I'm going

35:29

to experiment with this more. I'm actually

35:31

going to add my company as a sponsor

35:34

in a few episodes just to see what happens. But

35:37

I think that that's going to happen more and more. And

35:39

that makes sense. I think great growth jet is kind of the

35:42

closest to like doing

35:44

business and growing business sort of thing, right? Exactly.

35:47

And I think that's where you're most closely aligned there. So I

35:49

do have a note here that I want to touch on,

35:51

right? Because Twitter wasn't your only

35:54

exploration

35:54

for growth avenues,

35:56

right? You did something with player FM. Yeah,

35:59

let's talk about that.

36:00

About a month and a half in, I

36:03

was, I guess, honestly, it was probably because of my

36:05

frustration with the lack of downloads, but

36:07

it was in one of those podcast newsletters. Somebody

36:10

was like, Player FM is right now really a good

36:12

opportunity to do some sponsorship deals. And

36:15

so I reached out to them and I purchased their gold

36:17

package for, it was like two week

36:19

period. I saw a huge spike up

36:21

in downloads for those two weeks. And

36:24

then it just kind of like dipped back down

36:26

and then it leveled, I guess, kind of like the new

36:28

baseline for the

36:30

level of number of downloads kind of like steady,

36:32

right? So I think I was around 400

36:36

downloads an episode. So it spiked

36:38

where I was getting like a thousand for those

36:40

two weeks and then it went down to 400. So

36:43

I lost what, like 60% of that? But

36:46

to be honest, I think it was worth it because

36:48

in

36:48

the beginning, especially, you kind of want to

36:51

have some audience where you

36:53

can kind of get some feedback. 1020 downloads

36:56

is not much. And honestly, they're probably like

36:58

my friends and family. And so like, they're not actually

37:00

going to be your target audience anyways. Yeah.

37:03

What do you think of the show? Oh, it's good. It's

37:05

cool that you do that. Yeah, exactly. So I wanted to

37:07

have some baseline so I can at least get

37:10

something going. And so I think it was worth

37:12

it to just do that in the very beginning. But

37:15

then I haven't done any of those packages since.

37:17

And the show has been just growing steadily and steadily,

37:20

just organically through this method. I

37:22

know you did something similar with Overcast

37:24

ads that you were exploring. Yeah. So

37:27

I did about a month. It was like a banner

37:29

ad in the technology

37:32

category, I think. Like Marco Arment, who

37:34

developed Overcast is like pretty hands-on

37:37

with those banner ads. So like he like algorithmically

37:39

determines the pricing based on

37:42

demand. But then he goes in and personally

37:44

approves

37:45

so that I can't say like, oh, I want

37:47

the EDU category because it's the cheapest one,

37:49

even though there's no alignment in the EDU category

37:52

or whatever. I did that for about a month.

37:54

I think I got about 100 new subscribers.

37:59

can track that because it's a podcast

38:02

listening app. And I saw a spike in downloads

38:04

over that time too, which was sustained

38:06

for at least a few months.

38:08

A lot of stuff was changing then. So I think I

38:10

don't know that I can attribute the loss in downloads

38:12

to just people getting bored with the show, but I

38:14

think that was worth it. I did try using

38:17

Overcast for my other podcast,

38:20

which was at the time called Make Money Podcasting. And

38:22

that didn't work out. There was just not alignment

38:24

there. I think there would be better

38:26

alignment now. I might

38:28

experiment with that more in the future.

38:31

That's great. So let's wrap up here

38:34

with where are things now? How are things going

38:36

with your podcast and your newsletter?

38:39

And how are things going on social

38:41

media now that we've looked at this almost

38:43

year long journey, right? Yeah, about a

38:45

year.

38:46

The podcast is growing. And I

38:48

think the key thing is that you're retaining

38:51

listeners.

38:52

The numbers are pretty much like

38:55

if you look at it from a grand scale

38:57

of monthly, but then also weekly, the

38:59

downloads are increasing. Obviously,

39:01

there's fluctuations based on episodes.

39:04

One episode is going to do better than another. That's to be

39:06

expected. But just generally, you zoom

39:08

out and you see a pattern. It is trending up, which

39:10

is good to see. And the newsletter

39:12

is also growing really, really fast. So

39:15

I'm around 8500 subscribers.

39:18

So approaching 10k. So I should hit 10k

39:20

in about a month. And honestly,

39:23

I feel like the growth of the newsletter has

39:25

also helped the growth of the podcast. I mean, it has to.

39:28

And so I do think that it was a big part

39:30

of that growth trajectory. And

39:32

now what's cool is like, people

39:35

on Twitter, like I can have conversations about the podcast

39:37

on Twitter, because people are listening. And like, before

39:39

all this, I'm like publishing it. And I don't know who's listening

39:42

and all that because podcast, obviously, super

39:44

difficult to get listener feedback and

39:46

all that. But now I can have conversations with people

39:49

on Twitter being like, Hey, why did you think of this

39:51

episode? And they'll give me feedback. And it's kind of

39:53

cool to see, I know exactly

39:55

who's listening now, which is really cool. And

39:57

so that's kind of changed the approach

40:00

it now where I'm trying to think about, like

40:02

I know who is listening. And so I'm thinking about

40:04

them when I'm like recording these episodes now. And

40:07

so it's getting a lot more tight, I would say, the

40:09

premise of the show is getting tighter

40:11

because I know more about my audience. And

40:13

so that's another important thing to do for

40:16

people who are, I guess, podcasters is generally

40:18

like, you want to continuously

40:21

hone in on your target avatar

40:23

and evolve with

40:25

your audience and evolve the show to serve

40:27

that audience, but also serve yourself too. Like you should

40:30

be the one curious to talk

40:32

to certain guests. And it's gotta be

40:34

this feedback loop where you're constantly improving

40:36

it based on feedback, based on your download

40:39

numbers, whatever it is. But if you don't have

40:41

that

40:41

system in place, then you're just gonna get

40:43

stale over time. And then you're gonna lose listeners.

40:46

Yeah, so life lesson number

40:49

three,

40:50

continuously hone your target avatar

40:52

and make sure to grow your

40:54

show to serve your audience and yourself.

40:57

Perfect. Love that. All right, we got three

40:59

life lessons in. So this is like a meta

41:01

episode of first class founders.

41:04

And all seriousness though, this is, I think,

41:06

a really good and repeatable

41:08

model for a lot of people because

41:10

we've mentioned Twitter a lot,

41:13

like our audience happens to be on Twitter, but

41:15

you can do this on Instagram or threads,

41:17

right? Like you can build relationships

41:21

and then say like, hey, check

41:23

out my newsletter. You can do this on

41:26

threads maybe, maybe when this

41:28

comes out, the ads will be like big again, but like thread

41:30

is growing. It's all that spike as

41:32

we record, this has got like the web interface, so

41:34

it's getting better and more LinkedIn, like you

41:37

can do this in any of those places because

41:39

again, the premise is build relationships,

41:42

provide value, make it easy.

41:45

Those three tenants are

41:48

perfectly commutable to whatever tools

41:51

and tactics and platforms

41:53

you hang out on. That's

41:55

well said.

41:56

I love this. I'm gonna end with the fact

41:58

that your podcast is now.

41:59

according to ListenNotes in the top 2%

42:02

of all podcasts. And

42:04

you rank pretty high for the term solopreneur

42:07

if you search an Apple podcast, right? Yeah. Solopreneurs

42:09

and then also I rank pretty highly on founder,

42:12

which surprised me. Nice. That's

42:14

a big one.

42:15

Yeah. I'm going to do a callback to Diedre Shen's

42:17

episode where we kind of talk about podcast

42:20

discoverability in that we really dive

42:22

deep into like, why you should pick the name

42:24

and description that you pick. So

42:27

I'll link to that episode. Diedre Shen.

42:29

I listened to that episode, Joe, and it was amazing.

42:32

So yeah, everyone go listen to that episode.

42:34

Gosh, thank you. She's like a wealth

42:37

of information. I really

42:39

loved talking to her. That was 328, by

42:42

the way. So if you're just like typing in URLs

42:44

or looking for episodes,

42:45

that is 328.

42:48

Yangsu, this was a fantastic

42:52

conversation. Thank you so much for spending

42:54

time with us. If people want to learn

42:56

more about you, where can they find you? I

42:58

am on Twitter at Yangsu

43:01

Chung. That's Y-O-N-G-S-O-O-C-H-U-N-G.

43:05

And you can find my podcast

43:08

at firstclassfounders.com.

43:12

Or you can just search either founder

43:14

or founders. I should rank

43:17

highly thanks to Joe's

43:19

episode with Diedre Shen.

43:20

Awesome. And I will make

43:22

sure to link to all of that and

43:25

everything we talked about in

43:26

the show notes, which you can find over at

43:28

howibuilt.it slash 333. Howibuilt.it slash 333 for

43:33

episode 333. Now I was so engrossed in this conversation, I'm going to

43:36

have to insert

43:39

this as like a mid-roll thing now, that I didn't

43:42

even talk about the pro show. So if you want ad

43:44

free extended versions of every

43:46

episode, including this one, you can go to howibuilt.it

43:49

slash 333. There's going to be a join button there.

43:52

But Yangsu and I are going to exchange notes on

43:55

our production processes. And

43:57

I'm doing a deep dive on his podcast

43:59

for my newsletter.

43:59

over at Podcast Workflows. And so

44:02

I might ask him some follow up questions there. I also

44:04

found the name of that knife that I referenced earlier.

44:06

So if you want to know the brand, you

44:08

got to sign up Howley built it slash 333.

44:11

Young Sue, thanks so much for joining us today.

44:13

I really appreciate it. Joe, thanks so much for

44:15

having me on. It was a blast. And

44:17

thank you for listening. Thanks to our

44:20

sponsors. And until next time,

44:22

get out there and build something.

44:33

Thank you so much for listening

44:35

to this bonus episode. Hope you enjoyed

44:37

it. You can find Joe's podcast,

44:39

Howley built it in your favorite podcast

44:42

player. Tune in next week as Joe

44:44

comes on our show, First Class Founders, to

44:46

talk about everything a creator monetization

44:48

strategies. Don't miss out.