Framework
Consistency beats quality: never miss a day on Twitter
Dan Held's biggest creator breakthrough: Twitter's relevancy engine drops you from followers' feeds if you stop posting, so quantity and daily consistency matter more than quality. He hasn't missed a day in 3 years.
“Consistency, I think, is the number one thing that people forget. I have not missed tweeting a day in 3 years. If you do, you lose your spot in the relevancy engine with Twitter.”
Steal thisPost every single day to stay in the platform's relevancy engine; consistency beats quality early on.
Framework
Learn marketing by copywork: recreate proven winning campaigns
Sam argues the best way to learn—like learning guitar by copying others' songs—is to study a list of the most successful ad campaigns (Trump, Biden, Native Deodorant) and recreate them step by step before making your own.
“And so what I would do is I would get a list of all the most successful campaigns. So like different ad campaigns that probably Trump or Biden used different ad campaigns that Native Deodorant used. And I would say, all right, you see this campaign? It worked really well. Recreate it.”
Steal thisTo learn marketing fast, copy proven winning campaigns move-by-move before attempting original work.
Tactic
Steal great copy's cadence: feed GPT-3 a famous ad, swap the product
Sam's favorite OpenAI use: paste a famous ad (e.g. the classic Volkswagen ad), then prompt 'now here's a great ad about Airtable' and the model writes a new ad that borrows the original's structure and cadence — without even being told what Airtable is.
“I did this thing where I found famous advertisements and I told— I wrote into OpenAI, this is a famous advertisement about Volkswagen. And I have— and then I copy and pasted and then I go, now this is a famous advertisement about Airtable and it, and it wrote an ad about Airtable that was very similar to that famous Volkswagen ad.”
Steal thisPrime an AI with a proven piece of copy, then ask it to write the same thing for your product so it inherits the winning cadence.
Story
Copywriting as a college education: 3 years of audio in the car
Clemens explains how he replaced formal schooling by listening only to Jack Trout, Al Ries, Good to Great, and Gary Halbert audio in his car for three years while running Eben Pagan's info-product incubator (Altitude).
“By this time I was proficient in copywriting and marketing. I was— that became my college education. I didn't listen to music in my car for 3 years. I only listened to like audio cassettes by Jack Trout and Al Rize and Good to Great and, you know, Gary Halbert shit.”
Steal thisReplace your commute music with audiobooks and lectures in one skill until you've mastered it.
Number
The Hustle hit ~$1 million a month in sales
Sam reveals he grew his company to roughly $1 million per month in revenue before realizing he was a poor manager and needed to hand off operations.
$1M
Monthly revenue · USD/month
“I did a pretty good job of getting us to about $1 million a month in sales.”
Number
The Hustle hit ~$1 million a month in sales
Sam reveals he grew his company to roughly $1 million per month in revenue before realizing he was a poor manager and needed to hand off operations.
$1M
Monthly revenue · USD/month
“I did a pretty good job of getting us to about $1 million a month in sales.”
Take
Copywriting is the most important skill — give me a blank page, I'll make money till I die
Shaan argues copywriting is the single most valuable skill because it teaches you what motivates people and how to persuade through the written word. Master it and you'll always be able to make money — though the same power can be used to scam.
“It's the most important skill you can learn because I've spent years learning it. If you just give me a blank page, I will, I will make money until I die, right? I will always have a job because I could do that.”
Steal thisInvest years into mastering copywriting — learning what motivates people via the written word is a permanent, portable money-making skill.