Hello, and welcome to another episode of mind share radio podcast.
My name is Kevin Whelan, and today I've got a little bit
of a different format for you.
I have an interview with
and he is a founder of low L O G O L O G Y.
Dot co and his startup basically creates inexpensive logos for startups
that are designed by real people.
So you go in, you answer a bunch of questions.
They, they come up with sort of a personality in the assessment and then
they suggest some, some human made logos.
That you can then choose from.
And so we talk a lot about his.
Marketing strategy on Twitter in particular, how he uses
memes to grow as startup.
He's very engaged, very active on Twitter.
He's got about a 30,000 person follower.
Many of whom have you'll find out in the episode have,
have been recent subscribers.
He said has been kind of growing exponentially since he hit 10 K.
So I wanted to kind of get under the hood a little bit and find
out what is his core strategy.
What's his thought process.
What are the tactics he's using and what is the mindset that he's
using to grow his Twitter, Twitter.
Profile and ultimately his business.
So we get into all of that stuff.
And I think this is going to be an episode you want to pay attention to.
There's tons of really great.
I took away from it.
Great mindsets about how to approach Twitter as well as other social
platforms, but Twitter in particular.
And this idea of memes as marketing.
And I think as marketers.
Using memes for ourselves using your memes for our client are a great way.
Not only to get engagement, which is sort of a vanity metric.
But to generally engage with the community that you're participating
on and by tapping into the zeitgeists and ideally to the.
The the, the Target market your niche.
So we're going to get into all that stuff.
I just wanted to kind of give a quick pre intro to save the kind of awkward on the
spot and shows that, that I can come when I, when I recorded during the interview.
So.
Without any further ado, I'll jump right into it.
Listen to this one, take some notes and be sure to follow Dego.
Bear.
If you want to see some great Twitter.
Uh, strategy and mindset and action.
His details are in the show notes.
It's a ad.
Dag.
Oh, Uh, R E N O U F is his Twitter handle.
I've had any further ado we'll jump right in
So the reason I wanted to bring you on is you seem to be a cult favorite in the
startup community and use memes as one of the primary means of communication
but obviously that's not all you do.
Uh, you're very active, very engaged with, your, you know, 30,000
almost now followers on Twitter.
So I want to unpack kind of two parts is one your memes and how that works
with you and how it's worked for your business, uh, as well as how you sort
of interact on Twitter and how you've managed to go to get where you are today.
So maybe I'll just start with, what is your overall kind of Twitter
strategy, if you could summarize it in one to one to two sentences.
So that would be engage with people, not like us.
I think.
Yeah.
And that, by that, I mean, don't just like reply to people who like, you know, don't
dislike people who reply to your tweets, but like actually go out of your way to go
see what people are up to anytime to them.
That's like the key.
And how, how many, like how many times a day would you say you're, you're
replying and interacting with people like what's do, I'm sure you're not
trying to hit a number, but if you give a ballpark, how often are you replying and
interacting with people on a daily basis?
I think it was like between 50 and now.
Uh, basically, I just had like this habit of like doing two hours every morning.
Like it's like the first thing I do, I wake up, I open like the list of people
I follow and I go see what everybody's up to and see if I can bring value,
be supportive, you know, basically basically like it's a community.
Like once you understand that it was a community and you're treated like
a community, like you come to the community, Hey, what's up, what's up.
That works 10 times going up.
I love that.
So you're not really there to just blast out content, which is the kind of
easy thing for people to think about.
You're really there just to think of it as, as maybe Elon Musk would
say a town square where you're just interacting with people the same way
you would, you know, on the streets.
That's the key.
I think a lot of people, they just.
Uh, you come to Twitter, you see something, you like, you
like it, and then you move on.
But if you just actually like, just hide one sentence to try to express
what you actually feel, that just lazy, like the thing, it just changes
the whole dynamic of the person.
And if you do that, like with everything on Twitter, it changes the whole.
Well, one thing I've noticed about your replies on Twitter and your engagement.
Um, first of all, kudos for being able to keep up with all that.
Um, but your, your, your replies, aren't just like that's great or
well done or anything like that.
Your replies are, and I've noticed this, not just when you reply to my
tweets, but just like I see your tweets coming up all over the place on other
people's tweets that I don't even follow.
Well, you have a, you actually add insightful commentary and I
don't know if, like, do you spend much time thinking about it?
Are you just naturally, you know, insightful or, or what is your sort
of just general approach to writing a good comment to reply to someone?
Because they're not off the shelf.
Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's uh, yeah, cause, uh, if you just like, cause like a few
people do this, they go and instead of just liking, they like, and they'll reply.
Exactly.
So.
Okay, awesome.
But that doesn't help, you know, to do that.
Uh, And I think the reason why, I mean, uh, I actually try to think of my reply
as a tweet, like standalone tweet usually.
I mean, not if it's like congratulating someone or supporting someone or just
like a fun of your blight, because it's a fun context, but like, uh, it's about
like, if I shoot with that inspires me.
About.
Okay.
How can I make my tweets stand on its own?
Like, so it's like has, has value on its own.
Um, and it feels me with just because I was focused on bringing value to people.
Cause like, that's how you go.
Like you give people value.
So you spend time, like you have to spend time to come to steak shortcuts
that take, you have to spend time, but then over time, the reason I keep
doing it, even though I need to do it less now, because I have a video
account, I keep doing it because it's actually the best way to find good.
For me cause so, so basically like there's two step now is like, I'm
going to use these replies as a way for me to, you know, think about, okay.
That would be a good answer for that tweet.
But then that reply can become three weeks from now a standalone tweet
that I make for my own timeline.
Um, so now it's all like kind of like a silent synergy between everything.
Interesting.
And do you save or record those when you write a good tweet?
Do you kind of say so basically, yeah.
It's five times a day.
I mean, every morning let's say you're 50.
And I'm going to have, like between two and five of them, I just see,
okay, this is just as potential.
So I copy and pasted in like one of my task folder and also cookie
and pasted the link to the tweet.
And then like, let's say three weeks later, I come back to it and I click
on the link and I see, oh shit, this one guy got 15 likes as a reply.
So it's kind of like an MVP of my tweets.
Like seriously.
It's like, it's actually like testing it as a.
And if it got some traction as a reply, I know it's going to
succeed as a standalone tweet.
Interesting.
So you're looking for kind of signs of life for that idea based on a replacement.
No, it it's.
So, cause like, if I replied to a smaller account, it's not going to
get much likes because like, it's just not my treat, but basically yeah.
Trying to find like, it's a mix of like, I mean, if I feel like it's a
good one, I'm going to post it anyway.
But like, if I see like sometimes I have a tutor, like always just like.
You know me Joko answer, but I get.
20 likes.
I'm like, okay, I'm going to use that as a standalone tweet.
Cause it has a native of people.
Very cool.
So, okay.
Very cool.
So what you've been on Twitter, I noticed your profile says from 2018,
but you were kind of saying that you over the last year has been the monster.
Yeah.
And those May, 2021.
And we were like early may, 20, 22.
And now.
Yeah.
And is that when you sort of left your job and you were like, I better
try this Twitter thing or what happened almost four years ago?
Yeah.
Uh, I had some savings and, you know, we just went full time with my wife.
Uh, she had some savings too, and we just, you know, went full time.
It's built and we had this assumption that we could be making million.
Quickly which didn't happen.
Uh, it's like a year and a half to launch.
So we basically, you know, quit and 7 28.
I mean, we started in September, 2018 launched in April, 2021, no, 2020.
So just after it.
So that's like a year and a half and then it took us one more year.
So up to may 20, 21 to get some type of.
And some sales finally.
Uh, so it was a lot of like sticking with it, uh, knowing,
okay, is this worth continuing?
Or should we give up, uh, you know, we even have like a sealed co-founder who
came at some point and who, and who didn't want to keep going because he
felt it was, it was never going to work.
Right.
So it was like a lot of, uh, you know, keep pushing mentality that we had to.
Wow.
Good for you.
I mean, and I remember I've seen your several between saying something like
your mother, your father-in-law jokes, he should just go back and get a job.
Uh, do you feel, is that a real thing?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, most of the memes are not doing your thing.
Like it's like the jokes I make, it's more like a per in, I invented,
it's not a situation that happened.
Not exactly like the original thing was, uh, when like, End of 2021, you
know, end of 20, 20, early, 20, 21.
So one and a half years ago we were making.
Like $150 a month, like setting two logos for multiple startup.
Uh, and so this still could, founder had just left.
We gave him money, uh, so we could get back his shares, like, and that's when,
like my, my in-laws, I kind of lost it and told us this, just go back to a
job, like stop wasting all your money.
It's stupid.
It's not going to work.
Uh, you know, like very demoralizing, uh, And so that, that was helping for me to
like, have a way to, I mean, I was there, we were pissed cause I grew up like, okay,
now you should be like supporting us, you know, instead of sending us stupid.
So, you know, support us, but not too bad, maybe crazy, but when it's stupid
and you know, and so, and the funny thing is a few months later, like in
June, I think that was in June, 2021.
I May 1st meme that had some taction was a joke about that.
About my father-in-law sending me to get a job and me just building features and not
making any money and not understanding.
So that was just a good joke about that.
So th that's a good place to kind of dive in a little bit.
I've noticed that there are a lot of recurring themes in your tweets.
And so you're, you're you focus on marketing, not features you focus on.
Um, making money, like, you know, you're sweating and then you would get another
payment or another transaction, and then you get little signs of life and stuff.
So you kind of have a few kind of core themes.
Is that just because you noticed that they've sort of resonated, you've tried a
bunch of things, you've tweeted a number of things, and then you find some of these
big themes and then you can repeat them.
It does not like a big strategy is mostly like, uh, at first I feel about everything
and then I saw, you know, both that the best is to treat about two weeks.
It was when they started tweeting, I was trying to make like good sounding
tweets, like sound like a novel, or like one of these big accounts
that can spit out like four worlds.
And people are like, oh my God, it's amazing.
So I was like, I want it to be that a lot of people, when they
start Twitter, they do that.
If I to spit out like small sentences and be like, yeah, that's a good tweet.
And then nobody gives a shit.
So that's what happened to me.
I tried that I, you know, and didn't work.
So then I asked.
Just talking about my experience.
So that's why I started reading like bit longer, like long, long tweet.
So like kind of like a short story, because that was a way
for me to tell my experience.
And instead of trying to make a generality, I trying to just
say, Hey, here's what happened.
And trying to find a way for, for it to be helpful with like extracting
kind of like a lesson I learned and that way that was working way better.
And with demeans, it's kind of the same process.
Like just making fun about things and seeing some things make
people laugh more than others.
Um, But mostly like, since I do like one meal per day, eventually I'm
like, I'm just hurting and have idea that like every day I want to make a
meme because it's become a thing now.
So you just do it.
And I always play to like, okay, I need to, so, you know, I have so many
ideas, like from time to time and I tried them, uh, But does this like
high, now I have this thing about the users against paying users, you know,
like, and like trying to pit them against each other, like as a fun thing.
But yeah, the reason I talk so much about marketing is about
what I just said about my expense.
As I said, the reason we spent two and a half years building it,
not making any money is because I didn't want to do marketing.
I hated marketing.
I thought it was stupid.
And I saw if I just made the best product, I would have the next Facebook.
Like I thought, like if I just make an amazing product that I really did,
that was actually a source of conflict.
Like the co-founder that left and all that.
So like, I really know that that feeling, I know that feeling of.
Making that mistake.
And so that's why I keep repeating it.
And at first I was like, people are probably going to get
tired and that was back in like October, so like six months ago.
But then I was like, I feel like on Twitter, like it's so
like it's so moving, like people change all the time on Twitter.
Like people use Twitter for a few months actively, then they leave the
new ones come in, then some come back.
So I noticed.
It's good to have like the same tool.
It's not about repeating because I always create like different memes,
but the same mistake, the same core message, but I never copy and paste
tweet or mean, but it's like, I mean, except like when I make it clear that
it's like, uh, an old one, but, uh, but yeah, it's, it's mostly because
I also have like limited experience.
Like I'm not going to talk about VCs, cause I don't want to raise money so high.
Now I'm talking about marketing.
I'm talking about.
Hi, now I'm talking about pricing cause I'm about to increase my
pricing and it's stressing me out.
So I made a couple of memes about increasing your pricing as a founder,
you know, but you know, this is because I want to talk about my experience.
Yeah.
Interesting.
So yeah, there's kind of an element of humor, which I
think resonates really well.
I think you naturally have have that and that's a great, that's a great
skill and just a great natural.
And that seems to resonate really well.
Um, and then there's this idea of working in public where you're basically
saying like, I'm about to raise my prices and sometimes you make you, you
combine them, like you show you like, maybe there's like a sweating image.
And then like, you're like, I'm about to raise my prices.
Are you not in that exact meme format, but you've done the similar with others.
Yeah.
So that's interesting.
So you, I also wanna unpack a little bit about your idea of daily.
So I write daily, I've written for about, uh, almost 600 days in a row on my blog.
Um, thanks.
Yeah.
And it's, it's a, you know, it's a labor of love.
You do it.
If you're doing it seven days a week, you're gonna, you have to love it.
You have to at least enjoy it.
And, uh, I like kind of, I like it.
It's a good exercise.
Um, what are your thoughts on, in terms of deli daily?
I mean, a lot of people can't commit to things weekly, monthly, let alone daily.
Uh, how important is that to you and your strategy or just your approach?
So I don't actually hide daily because they scheduled ahead of time.
Uh, what I do daily is engaged with people.
Uh, I mean, to be honest, uh, if Twitter didn't penalize.
MI for only engaging one day a week.
And I could just do one day engage with like a hundred people and then be done.
I will do that.
Cause like it's stressful to have to engage every day, but because it's
like so useful for my business height now for how I go, then I'm like,
It's my way of getting customers.
So I need to make it into a habit.
So my daily habit is like engaging with people and then about hiding.
So basically every morning is dedicated to Twitter and the
afternoon is for all those things.
And usually what I do is like week a, uh, afternoon is going to be hiding.
So it's going to be hiding tweets, clearing names and will
be, it's going to be either.
Or, you know, doing some other kind of marketing.
Um, so that's usually how I do, but yeah, I noticed habits is so
important, especially when you start.
Cause like two years ago I had almost no custom meals.
Uh, I didn't have any habits.
I.
You know, spend my day, try to do shit.
I had no, I had nothing that really worked.
So you didn't have a plan, but now it's like, okay, I have
this, I tried so many things.
And now I find one thing that worked with Twitter.
So now it became a habit.
And now basically my whole life is built to help the time when I need
to engage with Twitter, uh, then you know, and it was hard at the beginning,
but, um, I mean, it's what it takes.
I know.
So that's what I do, but yeah, I mold for habits in like how, I
mean, that's the only way I can relax now is because I have habits.
Cause without it I'm over stressed of like, I'm going to meet this
kind of like deadline I have or like whatever, like it's impossible.
Yeah.
I love that.
It's actually something.
So as a marketing advisor, I try to turn all of my good ideas
when I work with clients into a system or a habit of some kind.
So that.
And I try not to have to take up more than 20 or 30% of their time.
So, but maybe 20 or 30% is like, let's run the habit.
What happens daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual.
And then how do you spend the rest of the time going in the offense, working
on projects and that sort of thing.
And it's just fascinating that you have that in, you know, replaces
discipline, as long as you do the system, which still requires.
Um, yeah, yeah, you get the outcome is the funny thing about like
leaving a job because I left a job.
And before that I was freelancing, but basically, uh, the discipline
was coming from the outside.
Like you have to meet a deadline, you have to do this for this guy, whatever.
And so the first year I wasn't working much on myself.
'cause.
I was like, oh, I'm free of like the responsibilities.
I'm free of the deadlines.
So like the first year I was probably working three hours a day, to be honest.
Uh, cause I was like, you know, I can do it this way.
They don't even realize, okay, it's not going to work.
I need to work my ass off.
I'm going to succeed.
And then I started to see the value of discipline, but like that
comes from me and as the beautiful.
Going up thing of like, okay, you do it because you're told,
and then you stop doing it.
Cause you don't have to do it anymore.
So fuck that.
And then you'll realize, oh shit, it's valuable.
And I was beautiful.
And now like, I mean, for the first time in my life for the past two
months now I have an alarm clock.
I never had one before.
Cause I don't like it, but now it's actually helping me.
And I'm like, is this baby?
Because I'm getting old.
I don't know.
But like I there's this thing about, I actually loved that.
Setting my alarm clock, not too earlier.
I said it like eight 30 or nine, but like, for me, it's still
like a fucking alarm clock.
And like I said it in the evening and I'm like, awesome.
Tomorrow morning, I'd wake up and be able to get good work done.
I'm still happy.
So that's like totally different.
Oh, that's great.
It's great that you feel that way because a lot of people are miserable or
Sunday rolls around and they're looking forward to Monday and they're just
saying, oh, I have to do another week.
And so in some ways you've already won.
I know you're not at the income level.
Maybe you're, you're hoping for, you're not, you haven't become a
millionaire unicorn yet, you know, but Hey, the road is ahead of you
and there's a big need for logos.
And there's so much scope that you can expand to if you want it to.
But I only want, I mean, I'm very happy, so yeah.
As long as your father-in-law recognizes that too, it actually doesn't matter.
I'm only joking anyway, but I even joked with you actually, I'm like,
if this whole logo thing doesn't work out, you could start a meme business.
And I think he didn't know what I mean, but I genuinely think.
Businesses could benefit, you know, so I'm putting on my marketing hat again.
Now I know this, your, your approach is unique to you and your experience.
Um, but I think, I think one of the reasons I wanted to chat with
you is because I believe memes are extraordinarily powerful way to
generate engagements, spread messages.
That's the whole thing.
There there's a viral component to them and there's a whole communication
language with, you know, repeating images.
So people use the same sort of set of images, their movies, screenshots,
and then they apply an idea.
Yeah.
So we're not going to go down that rabbit hole, but I genuinely think you could
have like a whole memes as a service if that, if that was even possible,
because I think it's that valuable.
And I think it's really hard for companies to do that themselves.
Yeah.
It's kind of like, you know, finding a good cook your high
two or something like that.
It it's about having your sense of humor.
Like it's really so, so, so
good.
Like I look at them now, look back.
And yeah, it's like, uh, that's why I wanted to keep doing one a day.
Cause I really saw the potential and I was happy and I was like, I'm going to
get better on this, you know, so yeah.
And they get a lot of engagement, man.
Like you get, I've noticed some of them get over a thousand likes and
hundreds of comments, retweets shares.
Um,
it's not what brings me the most followers.
It's not what brings me the most, uh, meaningful, engaging.
You know, uh, uh it's and division I keep, but I kept doing it
for fun, you know, at first.
Yeah.
And the interesting thing is now it's part of my brand basically,
and now people know me for that.
And so now it's awesome.
But what I, what I mean by that is that means in itself.
Uh it's like, it's like another dimension of connecting with
someone, but like, Let's say I share a story about my startup.
Like some very intense thing that happened.
I'm going to get like the engagement, I guess it's going to be people who care.
So they're going to be curious about my story.
They're going to want, maybe follow me.
They go, like, it's going to be a real connection.
And that's like the most valuable thing.
Whereas like a mean, even if it has like 2000 lights, we mostly people just liking
it and it don't give a shit about me.
It's just so cool.
You mentioned you like it.
They have fun.
They move on.
So it's like on a different level.
I mean, both sides.
What I'm saying is that, uh, I sought out of people trying to do memes, you
know, recently like about startups and they don't get action instantly.
And so they give up because it doesn't really help them.
And so they realize that they're small.
Like, uh, the, the main value I get for me is personal binding of like,
oh, this is the guy who does the memes.
Uh, so I'm known for that.
Also.
Yeah.
But, uh, the value comes in like doing repetition of like
doing things all the time.
Cause it's like, kind of like, I mean, you know, it's making people laugh.
It like, it's so much better to build trust with people, you know?
Uh, like, like now I have a lot of people who are customers of my startup
oncology and it's when I, you know, I send an email to every customer to
thank them and some of them are reply.
I love the memes dude, you know, and I, and I know.
The memes help in like connecting on a deeper level.
Like it's not just corporate bullshit.
It's not like serious.
It's like also, Hey, we're having fun.
It's like the kids so much more bonding.
So I feel like if you only do memes, it's dangerous, but if you
do them as part of like, uh, a content creation that has some bad.
Like, like not just fun, but like some value to bring then it's like,
they're kind of like the catalyst and like the spice that makes it like
really more tangible and emotional with people in a positive way.
Yeah.
I mean, so in marketing, there's sort of two categories there's there's brand,
and then there's direct, direct, and direct is more about like buy my thing.
Do do this, take this option.
That strategy and brand is about how people feel and people only buy.
If they feel good, like very like, like never do people like that.
Most people don't buy things unless they feel genuinely good about it,
unless they're like coerced or they need to, you know, they have to replace
their roof or something and whatever.
Right.
Even then they're going to go with the option that makes them feel something,
at least the most comfortable, the most confident, whatever the choice is.
So you're really investing in that, which is like, it's kind
of like the opposite of selling.
You're just kind of joking and having fun, adding value.
Creates a feeling and then people are more likely to know, like, and trust
you and I've recommended your services to several people because of that.
Yeah.
Really interesting you say that because, uh, so because when I went
full on Twitter, I can last last year I completely stopped working on my
product because I had been working on this for two and a half years.
It was, uh, and I had like already customer feedbacks.
What are the inputs based on feedback?
Um, And so I spent like the next 10 months Twitter on, I did nothing
else, but on my life with Twitter.
Okay.
So I, you know, I started developing this mean coding skills, you know,
hiring skills, you know, get better engagement, Twitter strategy, all that.
And the funny thing is, uh, so I started getting more sales from my.
From Twitter.
Obviously I say most of my stuff's coming from now.
Uh, and because of that, because of that trust factor and the second part
I noticed, which I knew, but I knew intellectually, but I didn't realize
how powerful it was is I think it was in December that I cost 10 K four wheels.
And that was in December.
If I remember correctly as like four months ago.
Or four months.
Yeah.
Five months.
Wow.
So now you're at nearly thirties.
Yeah.
But like, it'd be, it's exponential.
So like, uh, it's like, it's a, it's kind of like a normal, like,
it's like basically like the first ones I got like a hundred followers.
Then the second, I got 200 then 400 and now like at between three and 5,000
a month, but it's still the same kind of amount of work, but it's because
they, the network cause big around you.
So like every time it gets more viable, you know, it's really interesting.
Interesting.
And are you sales going up?
Are you sales growing exponentially?
Like I know, I know you've showed me a chart basically.
There's wait, let me just finish my thought.
There.
It's like where they cost 10 gay.
I mean conversion rates with no thing else that changed
conversion rates just went way up.
But when, I mean, way up, it's like, I mean, it's very hard to measure because
like it's like it's between 25 and 50% up.
And that was to me, like a big change in sales around the same
time that I went above 10 K.
Because, and, you know, I can't be certain, but I noticed also the way
people behave with me on Twitter change.
And I think there's something about, you know, social proof obviously.
And so it's like one of these components of like, looking like you will someone
just because it's just a number, you know?
But like it still counts for people.
I didn't know, it counted so much, but it does.
And so it completely changed the way people trust me and my.
And if you mix that with like the human side and like the value side, like
the old thing together, it's like, no-brainer like, I trust this guy.
If I need a logo, I'm going to see him.
Right.
And you're so consistent though.
Cause I always say there's three, there's three factors.
There's recency.
How recently have I heard of someone?
Cause that's going to be making them more likely to refer or by,
uh, how frequently do I see them?
Cause then you're, you're making more of an impact in my brain.
You're paying and my brain would value.
And then the potency, which is where I think the memes really come in house.
How, how, how high fidelity, how good is that experience or how like
how much impact does it make you connect with someone emotionally?
So by you going daily, you're you're checking the frequency.
Also, you're engaging with people like crazy in a great way.
Uh, it's a recency frequency or then, and then the memes really added a significant
additional level of potency in my view, just from an outsider's perspective,
because it just kind of creates an emotion as opposed to like, Nepal is great,
but most people can't be in a ball.
And so a lot of times, you know, the, the platitudes don't create an emotion,
therefore you're not really facing.
Yeah.
I don't know how, but the thing about platitudes is I used to say.
Uh, so, you know, I tried it, so I had this, uh, I wanted
to do a petty to like him.
I mean, all like big accounts and actually, and I failed and then I was
like, okay, it's because I'm a smaller account, which is a part of the story.
Okay.
Yeah.
But then I realized, as I hiked every day, he bites people every day.
Like it takes a big skill to do a good place.
You know, and actually some platitudes islands, platitude, uh, suits, because
the more I hide the more now I have this skill of now, I mean, a bit
more the skill of saying something meaningful, like a few words, because
I said it so many times because I told my story because I replied to people.
So now I can make platitudes.
That sound good.
So now I do some of them like some very short ones, uh, and they found, and they
are like, Um, and like this isn't all too hiding, like very short statements
that I didn't have at the beginning.
And now this last couple of months I started to do.
'cause I noticed some of my replies and I didn't want, because I was
like, okay, I had this experience in the past of writing a short pretend.
It does.
It feels, really realize when it's so really like when the 3d
hits, it's kind of like a meme.
I can mean if you want it to work, it's usually better to have very short
caption, uh, you know, uh, that's what I noticed because it just hits you way
more, but like it's harder to make the full caption because it has really.
It's like the same is the same.
Like if you really are able to make your point at like five wheels and
it's still an unique perspective, that is not a platitude, it's just like a
file tweet, but it takes like, it takes hiding a lot of long tweets to get there.
It's kind of like when you hide a blog or something, You start this, like, you
know, 2000 worlds and then you trim it.
It's like 500, you know, you know what I mean?
It's kind of like the same thing.
Yeah.
I try to keep my blog post under 300 discover one idea.
And that means that my brain is tired.
It's long and it's kind of tired like in, it's not that clear, but when I'm, when
I'm clear-headed I can get those down and.
And, uh, that's the key, I think, to like, if you're going to go
there to me, they're daily emails.
So if you're going to, if I'm going to go into someone's inbox, I want
them to be like, yeah, I'm going to get something very quickly.
Some little hit of value.
Yeah.
Cause it's daily.
It's like, you want it to be quick.
Yeah.
Because no one's going, you know, it takes mental energy to
read stuff and whatever else.
Um, yeah, interestingly, so.
So you have this work in public and I, and I love that because it
shows them kind of vulnerability.
You know, when you, when you joke about, you know, income fluctuation
and all these other things, you've talked about your challenges.
Um, I guess, you know, just to kind of think in terms of the listeners of this
podcast and video, uh, will, you know, some of them are marketing consultants,
some of them are, um, freelancers.
And so there's this expectation that you need to be sort of an active.
And, uh, and sometimes I guess people are challenged by working
in public because they also have to be a learner and they have to be,
you have to be open, vulnerable.
Um, what do you like, how do you think working in public works for someone?
I mean, you're not a consultant or freelancer, but what would you suggest for
someone who's trying to work in public?
Both being, showing intelligence, but also.
Vulnerable.
I mean, do you have any thoughts on that?
Yeah.
Well, it kind of like brings me back to what I said earlier about
trying to sound like a bad-ass versus sharing my experience.
And that's the same, like now I noticed it's very dangerous to
try to sound like your next builds because then it becomes an argument
like people can say, oh no, you.
Oh, people can say, oh, no, I don't believe that.
When you try to make a statement of like, here is how you
should do your life, you know?
And so now I stay away from that.
And so my advice would be, what have you learned?
What have you noticed?
I kind of like to get from a humble perspective of like what I have noticed,
but not trying to take, take it to like conclusions that are kind of like closed.
Like don't say.
I don't want to say to people like to go on Twitter, you need to do exactly this.
I would rather say here's how I learned to go on Twitter.
And here's what I do to do that.
I mean, to reach like 30 K followers, and I think it was small change,
but like when you do that, people supposed to way more, I mean, it
depends like some people can make it.
Well, you have some people like you just look at their profiles.
Oh, this guy is the shit.
I want to listen to what they say now.
Again, just like what I'm.
There's not the only way I'm not telling you this is the only way I'm telling you,
if you will feel uncomfortable with that.
I mean, it makes sense.
Like, for me, I do feel uncomfortable with that.
And so yeah, I would advise to just like focus on, like, again, people cannot
argue with like, Hey, here's what I learned, but they can help you with.
This is what you should do, right?
Yeah.
And people don't like to be told what to, what to do.
Right.
I mean, entrepreneurs, especially.
Interesting.
Um, yeah.
I was going to ask you a follow-up question, but I can't, I can't remember
what it was, but it's just interesting that cause of creates a really connection.
I think people do business with people.
Like if you removed Elon Musk from his company, I don't know if they would
have, like, they don't do any marketing because he's on Twitter, which makes
sense as to why maybe he's thinking about buying Twitter and he does memes as well.
And he's very funny.
Yeah.
Um, so, you know, we'll buy from people and that's interesting.
Yeah.
And you'll do like a few people, like.
Who follow me, who I become, uh, you know, uh, kind of like, you know,
Twitter friends with like a bunch of young coders, mostly from India.
Like some guys, someone is 13, there's one, who's 17, like young kids, like just
learning to code, but it's just like tweet every day they have big like audience
between 10 K 50 K these guys just like also on Twitter all day and they code and
they learn to code and, you know, even me, like I have like 15 years experience.
I'm like when I need to hire someone to code, I'm probably good to this guy.
Like this guy is like 15, but like I see he shares about what he
learns and I'm like, oh, he knows.
You know, so there's really not this, I mean, at least for me, maybe some,
cause I mean, obviously depending on who you're targeting, like I'm
an entrepreneur, I'm a self-learner.
So I don't mind hiring someone who isn't like an expert, but like, depending
on who you're targeting, but if you're targeting people, you know, normal
people, I don't think they would mind.
Like, I mean, as long as it's not like crazy B2B.
Actual Hockett science shit.
Like you can just think, you know, I feel like it's, it's, it's usually
going to pay off more to be vulnerable and share your learnings because
when you share your learnings, people trust that, you know, right.
You're not just talking on high from a mountain.
You're saying I tried this.
And what I love about you is like, Like I tried this, it didn't work.
Now I do this and it works.
Like I thought I needed to build more features.
And this is a big one of your hooks.
Like I've done.
I needed a big build, more features for my startup to grow.
It turns out I just needed to do marketing now it's working or something.
And so it's a nice way to say, like here's where I ran into the wall.
Here's what, here's my insight.
Rather than saying like thou shall market all the time and whatever.
Yeah.
Um, okay.
So we've talked about kind of working in public.
We've talked about memes, we've talked about daily and I think, you know,
in, in habitualizing what you do.
Um, we've talked about the kind of being a little bit vulnerable, and I think
that's a really valuable skill to have.
We've talked about the way you reply.
You want to make your replies feel like individ.
Uh, tweets and then maybe eventually turn them into individual tweets.
Um, I'm just wondering if we could get a little bit tactical before we kind of
wrap things up and just sort of understand maybe some of the tools and, and sort
of your workflow as you go about it.
Like you're a power user on Twitter.
Is there any tools you use to make that process easier or so
you can more or more efficient.
So then, okay, so for Twitter, uh, I use a few tools.
I think the big, the big thing, but once you start engaging with
people, you start getting lots of notifications, even at the beginning,
like even when I had like 500 followers.
Uh, and so the big thing I started is I started learning Twitter keyboard
shortcuts, because you can actually use Twitter, which was the keyboard.
If you want.
It's kind of like has, you know, BIM, uh, shortcuts, you know, not that.
Using VIM, but like, I know, you know, it's something people know,
uh, I don't want to pretend like I'm a Veeam user, cause I'm not, I use
an IDE, I use visual studio code.
I'm a human being.
I'm not like this crazy amazing engineer, you know?
So don't think that, uh, so yeah, so yeah, so I use that, uh, you
know, learn the Twitter shortcuts.
So now I only use the keyboard for Twitter.
So it allows me to go from one tree to the next, like using J and K and like.
And also bought a small tool for emojis, which is called pockets.
Like your hockey chip.
I've used that before.
Yeah.
It's like a $10 a Mac app.
I mean, I'm on the Mac.
You probably can find an equivalent of windows or Linux, but like, because I
use tons of emojis all the time, maybe it's because it takes so much easier to.
To connect with people emotionally.
Like if you just say, Hey, thanks.
I like it, but it's cool.
But if you say, Hey things, I like it, uh, you know, hockey, chip emoji, heart
emoji, like it just connects with Depot.
So I use emojis on almost everything.
So I have this thing which allows me to have keyboard shortcuts for emojis.
So I basically just going to type a, like a key, it opens like, uh,
an, uh, kind of like in slack, you know, when you can, you know, Yeah,
you basically, you said you type the world, like you type those specific
key and then a world, and it's going to give you the emoji for that world.
So I can really stay for like keyboard.
So it makes me go twice as fast for replying.
Cause like, and even for engaging, cause I engaged like two hours a day,
so like it's one way to be effective.
And then it's like, I'm going to use tools like black magic, which is the big one.
It's a Chrome extension by Tony.
Uh, it's like paid, it's like, I think $7 a month, the first place.
And what it does, is it the number one thing I use it for is to know if one
of my cause like, you know, Twitter depends a lot on the algorithm of like
how your tweet is going to succeed.
I'm actually, you know, I think a small course on that to help people figure
out how to get engagement on Twitter.
I was going to ask you about that.
Yeah.
About your thoughts on algorithms.
Um, maybe we can do a quick tangent.
Is there any main things with the algorithm that you look for?
Uh, you know, the algorithm is actually fairly stupid and simple,
uh, and that's why engaging with people work so well, basically the
key is how do you make people see you.
Because you think people follow you, so they see your tweets, but
they don't like your followers.
Don't see your tweets, like by default, because I did just like a feed over like
tons of shit and you're not in it usually.
So how do you get in it?
Well, they need Twitter needs to think.
I mean, needs to know that they like you, you know, they need to think, oh, okay.
I like this guy.
So Twitter will show me the content of this guy.
Yeah.
So how do you do that?
Well, you engage with them.
You engage with them by engaging with them.
If you are actually useful or supportive or whatever, they wouldn't get you back.
And if they engage back, it tells Twitter.
Oh, okay.
This is, there's a relationship there.
So next time you tweet, they will.
Yeah, because I see like 50 people's tweets now, and I
follow maybe 800 or something.
It's, it's actually bad.
And I like, I need to go in and look at my followers and
started messaging like replying.
And I don't use the feed at all.
Like I actually have like a small strip that I built that goes to
people and tells me who treated in the last 24 hours and then opened a
provider and I can go whatever I do.
So that there's the whole systems I'm starting to hide about it.
This has been useful to people like that.
I talked to some time hiding this whole system, but yeah.
So the tools that I use and the second most important one is like
black magic, because it tells me if it really is for tweets fail.
Cause like when you hide content, like it's takes a long time to
write, you know, call it content.
Like how do you know if something is good or bad?
If like, imagine like you tweet a good.
But then it bombs because like the algorism didn't show it to.
So then you don't have actual feedback.
You don't know.
So the good thing with black magic is it tells me the percentage of
engagement and, you know, based on my past tweets and based on like,
you know, on the regular performance.
So, you know, if your tweet is like above average or below
average and what it helps me.
It doesn't happen so much anymore because now, you know, I always think
I do the algorithm shows me everywhere.
I usually, but it's great.
It used to be so helpful at the beginning.
Retweet something, you worked your ass off on it and it gets like two lights or zeal.
And then with black magic, you know?
Oh, okay.
It's because it has zero impressions or like very few, but you can see
that the percentage of people who saw it actually engage with it.
So it was actually a good one.
So then what I would do is I would save it and then, you know, three
months later I tweeted again and then it would take off because the
algorithm was in better mood that day.
So it's very important to know is your content is good on.
To have that cause, you know?
Right.
So that's a great, so even though it, maybe didn't get a lot of
impressions, maybe publish it at midnight and your, your audience's
online at seven in the morning.
Yeah.
And I do that all the time.
Like by the time I write my, I often read my daily article at night and then I'll
just, I'll either publish it or I'll just, I'm trying to save it for the next day to
just share something about it and read.
We communicate it and links suppress it.
Right.
So you're trying to, you want to leave everything on the platform?
Is that it wasn't no use links, but yeah, you should, you shouldn't.
Yeah.
Yeah, so, okay.
So you use black magic, you have your own little tool to see
who's tweeting the last 24 hours.
I guess you can turn off the, the, the, you can shoot credit to like
timeline view or something, or use tweet deck, if you wanted to like,
just see the stream of tweets.
Yeah.
Uh, I mean, if you gonna use the Twitter basic experience, you should
like use the little icon in the top height to switch to time and not.
Yeah.
I mean, I say that, but when I say that, then people see less of my
tweets because my tweets are pending.
So they're not going to be showing cause they might show up, but
usually have a little bit still the real thing is if you want to go on
Twitter, don't go on the fucking feed.
I'm not going to show you the people you want to see.
Right.
Yeah.
And that's the problem that I'm experiencing right now.
I'm like, I'm looking for people's tweets that I follow and I'm not seeing,
I'm seeing the same 20, 30, 50 people.
Yeah, because they figured out, yeah, you gotta go.
Yeah.
And I'm not replying enough.
And so it's really a matter of engaging with people, like
treating it, like it, you know?
Cause if I'm not engaging with people then, or enough, then I'm not going
to see their tweets and then they'll go, they'll basically go dark.
And I mean, uh it's if they don't engage with you.
Um, yeah, earlier, but no.
Yeah, if you don't engage with them, you're not going to show this.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
Especially to get the ball rolling and then more people see it and then
engagement goes up and that sort of thing.
Okay.
Any other tools that you want to share?
I don't want to get too far into the tactics, but because it's really
about before all the means, uh, I use a tool called image flipped, so.
F L I P uh, like a website and it's very cool because you can like bounce templates
and see what people have done with it.
So, you know, actually how to use it.
I mean, what kind of joke is expected with a template?
Yeah.
Then you can just take a joke and, you know, turn it into whatever you want it.
It's like, that's how I started now.
I don't use it so much because I exhausted all your templates.
So now I kind of like go like nine gag and it, and find like templates.
Nobody knows about that.
Kind of like, you know, cutting edge shit.
But yeah, I mean, if you just want to create a few means, go to
image flips, look at their popular templates, look at how people use it.
And.
Try to find a couple of ideas.
Usually you can find a place if you, if you stick like one hour
looking through things, eventually you'll think of something.
And do you try to hop onto trends?
If there's any like current trends with memes, you know, humps, some memes go
really viral or they're everywhere.
Did you try to hop.
No, I, I really hate following plans.
I don't know it comes home, but it's not even just limited sort of it's with
anything like with music, with anything.
I hate it.
Cause like, I feel like when you follow the trends, you, you don't know if
it's good or bad, you know, but like if you wait for a few years, then.
So that's how I, but with tens, I probably, I told him, people kept
telling me, do a meme about the, you know, will Smith of the sleep thing.
I want to build more features and I didn't do it.
And tons of people who did it, because it's an easy way, like marketing easy.
I still wait from that.
Now I stay away from the easy worlds because there's like, I need to stay
on top of my game, like people make.
And so I try to find new ideas.
So yeah, I didn't do it.
Maybe I'll do it someday, but I wasn't, I wasn't inspired by this one.
Yeah, well, that one is, I mean, there's a lot of emotion packed with that one.
Then I could see maybe where I don't know, but I mean, I'll do it when I find like
the perfect caption that nobody expects.
Like I'm not going to do with, you know, marketing, slapping features.
But if I find some crazy idea, that's actually new.
Do you, so do you, would you let it season, would you let it age out?
So it's no longer popular and then bring it back when people are
not expecting it kind of thing.
It doesn't last minute.
Really?
Okay.
That's good.
Because that one feels like a perfect prime opportunity for someone saying,
oh, I'm not going to market my business.
I'm just going to add more features my startup.
And then you can imagine will Smith come and be like, you know,
smacking the sense out of some.
Yeah, that'd be that.
But, uh, well this has been really, really great.
I think I just wanted to kind of share with the community.
I think memes as a marketing tactic, it can be highly effective
and, um, tactic that's the thing.
Right?
Cause what I like about your approach is you, you, you, you a, your main philosophy
or mindset, which is, I think important is to treat it like a, like a community.
So you're interacting and participating in the community.
You wouldn't go up and over here, something someone said
and be like, that's great.
You'd say, oh, I heard the same thing.
Like, you'd say something meaningful.
If you were going to say something to someone, so the community at large, and
I can tell you, spend time thinking about it because your replies are as good as
most or better than most people's tweets.
Um, so we talked about working in public daily, creating habits, you
know, I've used a few, few tools, the tools don't don't you can,
there are many tools out there.
Yeah.
It's really about the mindset.
So I don't want to over reinforce that, um, any sort of parting advice
for someone who wanted to grow their business, whether you know, or help
their clients, in my case, grow their business, using Twitter or using memes.
Is there any sort of, kind of final bits of wisdom or takeaways
that someone can, can pick up?
So I think we covered the most important benefits about business specifically.
I would say focus on like the person and not like the blind account.
So even if you're like a brand, cause like we have an account for started
ecology, you know, we have, but like if it's just a logo and not like your face,
like it's not going to connect as well.
So like the big thing people do is they just state.
They just use a blend account and they're like, oh, it's not going.
But like it's actually 10 times harder.
And I use this example.
I'm like, if you had a choice between following Steve jobs
and apple, who would you follow?
You know, what is going to give you vision of the world or like Elon Musk
versus Tesla, what is going to give you insights that are interesting?
And the other one is going to be product updates.
So, you know, who gives a shit, you know, so it does the same thing.
And you're trying to build a brand new account.
I will really try to strive for that.
Who's the person behind the brand.
Uh, you know, and I would focus on that.
I feel like it's the big thing.
And actually by doing that, I grow my brand account.
Cause people know I'm doing a good, at least a day and they check it, we
hold like a few, like a dozen followers or a couple dozen photographs a week.
Uh, we, we post a few updates on there, you know, because it's,
it's more like a professional thing to show people that we exist.
People that don't know me, but know they got it.
You know, but yeah, I would focus on the personal and not the plant
when you try to, so let's say you're trying to market any business.
You're saying, you know, try to use this, bring the CEO in, help them voice, or
the person that the person on the team.
Then you can identify as like part of this company.
And that has a voice because people connect with people.
Yeah, well, this has been really great, Doug, thank you so much for taking
the time to share this with us and, um, a lot of value packed in here.
So I'm going to write up a whole bunch of notes and share
this with, with the community.
Um, where can people go to first of all, follow you so they can
learn from the best, uh, on where can they go to follow you?
And then where do they go to learn more about your logo design?
So the Twitter is a, you know, you can find me that Google news about it.
It does not like too many, so you should find me quite easily.
And then the business is called dot CEO.
And you know, the whole thing is about helping you blend your
startup with like the same quality as working with a designer.
But without having to hire a designer, you know, we designed everything.
So we just met the perfect thing and you can be ready quickly.
I love that.
Anything else you want to plug?
Uh, or anything else you want to share?
No, that's it.
I have just two things.
I'm like pretty focused on that.
And soon there'll be a small course about Twitter.
I'm going to police, I'm working with it now, but you know, when you build
a startup, it is so much things to do.
I don't know when it's going to come out, but you know, I'm saying.
Yeah, it's not your core.
So you just do it in your part-time, but I know this has been a bit of a
masterclass, so I appreciate there's a lot of wisdom and gems in here.
So when that happens, let me know.
So I can share it with everyone as well.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you, Dave.
And, um, it's been a pleasure chatting with you and, uh, I look forward to
connecting with you again on Twitter.
Yeah, that was good.