How to attract an audience by talking to yourself

As creative entrepreneurs, our content is our sword.

Through it, we bring awareness to our brand, our mission, and our offers. However, it’s impossible to do that without having ideas for what to write about. It’s like trying to build muscle while having no clue how to achieve your goal.

While there are many ways to ideate, the method I have for you today is by far the easiest.

It’s also responsible for 80% of my content, which has generated over 20 million impressions so far. Buckle up. Let me show you how to make talking to yourself more profitable.

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Before we dive in, I recently realised I hit 81,000+ Twitter followers.

While that’s good news, getting here was hell. 18 months ago, I didn’t know how to build an audience online, so I buried my head in books, courses, and more YouTube videos for tips. However, after 4 months of doing this, the only thing that was building was my confusion. Nothing worked.

I wish I could walk up to my younger self and show him exactly what to do to scale faster, but time machines are rare these days.

I can’t help him, but I can help you.

In keeping with that theme, I’m opening slots for clarity call sessions. The aim is simple:

• Analyse your goals and situation

• Give you the steps required to succeed in 60 minutes

• Keep you accountable until you hit the goal

No need to spend months banging your head on the table. I’ve done it. I’ll show you how to as well. I hope to see you on one of those calls.

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The Egg Theory

Many months ago, I found myself on YouTube trying to kill time.

After scrolling for a few seconds in search of my next dopamine hit, I stopped on a video with a weird thumbnail titled “The Egg Theory”. I like eggs, so it sold me.

5 minutes into the video, I made two observations:

(1) This had nothing to do with poultry.

(2) This is one of the most bizarre things I’ve watched on YouTube.

The main takeaway from the egg theory is that all humans are simply one being separated into now 8 billion bodies. In summary, I am Steve Jobs, you are Andrew Tate, etc.

That sounded abnormal, but my curiosity only grew. And when I studied about how societies developed, it finally made sense.

Societies form when a group of people come together and work towards a common goal — be it cults, degenerates, or religious members. And there is one thing that brings people together: a mutual interest.

For the cults, it’s power.

For the religious, it’s salvation.

For the goths, it’s style and self-expression.

All humans share biological and psychological similarities, despite our slight differences. The ‘slight distinctions’ (like eye curvature, skin colour, etc.) make us unique, but don’t confuse that with being “special”.

Think about friendship. You have friends (I hope you do) because the things you are interested in are also fascinating to them.

This proves the Egg theory is valid. We are all the same — or almost at least.

And thanks to the internet, it’s never been easier to find and connect with people who share similar interests as you.

Now, we’ve analysed a couple of things.

• You and I aren’t that special.

• There are 4.9 billion internet users. No matter what you’re interested in, there is someone who bubbles with excitement over the same thing.

So let’s enter today’s idea-generation method:

Talking to yourself.

Serving your shadow

In traditional marketing, companies created avatars — which acted as the focus of their marketing messages. It had an age, name, face, gender, location, purchasing power, problems, etc.

This process works, but from experience, it’s stressful. Imagination has its time and place, and this isn’t one of them. I believe in making yourself an avatar for your business and personal brand. You become the avatar and CEO of your business.

We’ve concluded that you and I aren’t special and there are millions of people just like us. So, do you think there isn’t 1 out of the 4.9 billion online users who you can help?

If we’re not so special, there has gotta be someone somewhere who is struggling with a problem that you’ve already solved.

Expertise is relative. If you’ve made $1000 online, you might call a person who’s earned $10,000,000 an expert. But to someone who has never made a dime online, you’re an expert in their eyes.

Your goal is to just help someone who is a few steps behind you.

Here are 2 ways to serve your shadow:

1) The 2-year test

2) The energy loss test

(1) The 2-year test

Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole from Ship30for30 created this technique. The idea is simple:

Step 1: Get a sheet of paper

Step 2: List out everything you’ve learned over the last two years

That’s it.

Why 2 years? It’s a perfect yardstick because a lot can happen in 730 days. You can use a year or 6 months, but I find 2 years to be the sweet spot.

You’ll have a lot to talk about at the end of this exercise, except you were in a coma or served jail time during the last 24 months.

(2) The energy loss test

In his book, Disrupt You, Jay Samit shares an incredible strategy for solving your problems.

Step 1: Write 3 things that annoy you (or reduce energy)

Step 2: List 3 ways you can solve each of them

At each month’s end, you’ll have 90 different ideas. You can turn these ideas into product ideas and, of course, content ideas. Jot down the problem, even if you can’t list 3 solutions. It’s often a pleasant reminder to see what ‘your shadow’ struggled with.

Once you’ve gotten ideas from these methods, all you have to do is provide valuable solutions to them. Do this consistently and you’ll attract an audience who are just like you — by talking to your past self.

Content creation is just self-education packaged as public consumption.

As Dan Koe says: Solving your problem offline is called growth. Solving them online is called business.

I hope this makes the ideation process a little less boring. Stay tuned for the clarity calls.

See you later in the week.