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Built in Public
John Hu: Stan's Founder on How to Make Your First $1K Online, and Building a $500M Creator Platform
00:45:04
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- [00:00]
A
You are around a lot of really, really successful creators. Stephen Bartlett, Gary Vee. What are some of the tips and tricks or mindset frameworks that you've learned from being around people with that big of an audience?
- [00:12]
B
I will give you a specific learning I've learned from Steven, a specific learning I've learned from Gary, and then I'll give you the meta learning that I've learned across all of the most successful people I've ever met. And what we've seen is those people who post every single day that is the highest corollary variable and the people who actually make the most money on Stan.
- [00:26]
A
I think there's so much good that could come to the world if good hearted people feel the confidence to have a platform and to put themselves out there.
- [00:34]
B
When you start to succeed over time, there are moments where society will make you feel bad about who you are. I actually realized that I actually, really genuinely enjoy working because if you are that obsessive, I promise you at some point you will succeed.
- [00:44]
A
Welcome to Built In Public. I am your host, Courtney Johnson. I've been a full time content creator and a personal brand strategist for seven years and I really built my career sharing the process, not just the outcomes of personal brand Built in Public is about what it actually looks like to build a brand, a business and to build real leverage in the creator economy. We're talking strategy, systems, audience growth, monetization and that uncomfortable middle ground between. I have an idea and this is actually working. I'll be sharing what I'm testing, what's working, what's not, and I'm going to be bringing on people who are building their careers and companies out loud too. If you want honest conversations, practical insight and zero bs, you are in the right place. Let's build in public. John, welcome to Built In Public.
- [01:29]
B
Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
- [01:31]
A
I am so excited to be here. And guys, before we start, so we know that John, you're a co founder of Stan and I am about to hit 200k on revenue. No way in Stan. Yeah, and I, I just got. Thank you. I just got my 100k plaque like 3 weeks ago, 4 weeks ago. So to already almost be at 200k. I was hoping I'd hit 200k like on the podcast and it might happen because I just launched a new offer. I've got stuff coming in. So yeah, really, really cool. You know a lot of people have asked what is Stan, why I use it and I can definitely explain it all. But to show people that number is the easiest way to put it into context.
- [02:12]
B
I'm so, first of all, congratulations. That's super cool to see, like, those numbers manifest. I'm sure it'll be a million dollars made on stand in no time, but, yeah, I mean, when I started Stan, it was with a single premise because I was trying to post online, trying to figure out how do I build my own business, trying to make sure that I was doing the. Doing right by my Asian mom and doing right by society in terms of, like, that society tells you to do certain things in life. And I just wanted, like, one really simple and easy way to start an online business and manage it. And so that's why we started Stan and we built the first version of Stan for my own account. And so it's really, really cool now to see your story being built on Stan, see so many people's stories built on Stan. We just crossed $500 million made for our customers, and we'll probably cross a billion pretty soon. Fast compounding works.
- [02:57]
A
So that's incredible. Congratulations to you.
- [02:59]
B
Thank you.
- [02:59]
A
Yeah, I think your team reached out last year to have a call with me and, you know, transition me from other platforms on a stand because I think I was on, like, five different platforms and they're like, it's going to be really easy. You're going to be on one platform. And I was like, all right, I'll try it out. So, yeah, obviously very excited about that. What's the next level of plaque? Is in a million.
- [03:20]
B
It's a million.
- [03:21]
A
Okay.
- [03:21]
B
Yeah. It's like a beautiful purple plaque.
- [03:23]
A
I'm motivated by this plaque.
- [03:25]
B
It. Because it's a sick plaque. Right. It's like a very heavy, solid chunk of metal plaque. It's what the YouTube plaques used to be. Yeah, because like, I. I got the new YouTube plaque. It's like soft and, like, empty inside. But yeah, we're.
- [03:37]
A
We're very.
- [03:37]
B
Because we're so proud of people for hitting these miles. Like, how badass is it that you just, like, went on this journey, you're pregnant right now, building your own business. You're about to cost 200k made on sand. You'll probably cross a million. And then like, the next year, next few years. It's really like an understatement to us. Just send you a plaque for the journey that one has to go through to even get to that revenue made around building your own confidence, being secure in yourself enough to post online, to do your first offer to fail through your first offer, your second offer, your third offer to keep iterating. So a plaque is like truly the least we could do for like, how powerful this journey is.
- [04:09]
A
I love it. It's so, it's so fun. And yeah, it's crazy. I mean, the first thousand dollars on Stan took me like three months, four months, and then the next 200k took, you know, nine months. Like it's crazy how, how fast it compounds and how much easier it gets when you're iterating. And after you go through that difficult, maybe period of testing doesn't have to be difficult, but yeah, yeah, very cool.
- [04:33]
B
Yeah.
- [04:34]
A
Well, one of the things that I think is really interesting that you do is you encourage your team to post online. Of course, that can be really hard to get your employees to be excited to post on Instagram or LinkedIn or wherever can be an uphill struggle for a lot of people. So what advice would you give to founders or maybe CMOs of encouraging their team to be posting online?
- [04:56]
B
Totally. So the core business thesis that one should think about is this concept of employee generated content. So that first started with us as solopreneur creators, building a brand and creating distribution for ourselves. That same attention mechanism also applies to a business which is you can run, you know, crummy paid ads or really boring creative, and you can pay an agency millions of dollars to make creative, to hopefully maybe do well. The alternative course that you actually help your own team build their own brand and through that also capture attention for your business. And so what we've seen is through our teams, employee, our teams and our employees, creating content, it's had an immense amount of downtrend benefits for the business. Number one are the quality of the hire. So the person who's coming in to apply to Stan has increased significantly. 2 Is I no longer have to feel like I have to run under treadmill and make content all the time. The team is also excited to make content. And having 50 people make content is just better than one person always. And then lastly, the customer. Our customers have really enjoyed hearing a multitude of voices and a multitude of different perspectives on our journey in building a business. All that to be said in terms of how you can actually get there. I think it starts first with hiring the right kinds of people who are inherently entrepreneurial. Because what I think a lot about within business is how do I create, win, wins. It's all about incentive alignment for whoever I'm working with. And so in this context, like, how awesome of a pitch is it that I get to go to the market. As a business owner, convincing top 1% talent to come work with me is like, hey, not only will you work here and work on a super cool mission, have a ton of autonomy, have a ton of impact, but also through joining this specific company, you're going to get to build your personal brand. And so you're getting to build agency and resiliency for your own self and your own career, while also helping build the business. Because if you're building a personal brand the correct way, which is our team is telling their stories of getting into Stan, of of the cool stuff they're working on at Stan, it helps build the business's success, but also their personal success. So I think angle number one is to really understand how this is actually a net benefit for everyone involved, especially employees. And angle number two that you need, on top of that is you also need to hire people who want to make that content. You can't force someone to make content if they don't feel like they're the right personality for that. And so you need to be looking for people who are entrepreneur, who have, who have high agency and also that kind of personality type who want to make content.
- [07:06]
A
Mm. But I would assume not everybody you hire wants to make content. Like, do your engineers make content?
- [07:11]
B
They do and they crush it. So our ask, our soft ask of folks is that you post at least once a month on LinkedIn and so no one's out there monitoring anyone. Like, if at the end of the day someone recovers, hey, I don't feel comfortable making content. Like, good for you. Like, the total respect for that. It just so happens that most of the folks who work for us are inherently interested in the creator economy, in being entrepreneurs themselves. And also by working at this company, you see how much immense value is unlocked for yourself if you make content online, whether you're a solopreneur, an entrepreneur, or an employee. And so I think that rational reason to make content is enough to drive even people who initially felt very hesitant to make content. They're like, holy shit, I'm seeing how this is opening the floodgates for myself and obviously the business as well.
- [07:53]
A
Yeah, I was talking to a sales leader a few weeks ago who wanted to enroll a bunch of their team members into my LinkedIn program and ended up. His objection was, look, I know this works. And I'm afraid my team, some of my employee personal brands, are going to get too big and they're going to leave my company.
- [08:11]
B
Totally.
- [08:11]
A
What would you say to someone with that objection?
- [08:13]
B
I think That's, I think that is very clearly a concern that, that a leader should have, but also at the end of the day for the sake of their business. But at the end of the day, when I think about the best management scenarios I've ever been in and also just supporting my team as people and human beings is I always take the route of like, if they win, you win. And so at the end of the day, if one of my team members or one of my employees has a huge brand and they ultimately leave to go do their own thing, well, that is a huge success case study for all future employees that I get to attract. Like, for example, I, I have a couple employees who are now fully on their entrepreneurial journey and gassing up in their own comments and like their own stories and we have a great relationship that we get to hang out like now as, as like kind of colleagues in a different way. But like, for example, Low, our original social media creator who started our Instagram, she's now a full time solopreneur and like, look at Lo, she's crushing it. I get to like for any new employee, I get to use her as a case to be like, look what Lo's doing. Our mission here has always been to empower anyone to work for themselves. That includes our employees. And like, this is us like walking the walk. And so that very much so applies for future recruiting. So I think in the short term there's a fear of I might lose an employee. But if you really are playing a long term game, you want to build a culture and a reputation for bringing the best talent, of course that talent, at some point it might leave to start their own thing. They're that good.
- [09:28]
A
So yeah, if you get a reputation of oh my gosh, everyone that works with Stan gets too rich and famous, so they leave. Everybody's going to want to work for you.
- [09:36]
B
So. Exactly.
- [09:37]
A
Yeah. Great reputation to have. Beautiful. So I asked my audience to come up with some questions that they wanted to ask you. And one of the biggest questions that I got was, you know, you are, you don't necessarily live in one niche, of course you have a company around the creator economy. But you also post about surfing, you also post about travel. And a barrier that my audience comes up across is I'm so multi passionate. I love all of these different things. I don't want to confuse people. I don't want, you know, what if my, my friends don't even care about surfing? Right. So how have you changed your mindset to bring in all of you into your content.
- [10:16]
B
Yeah. So if you feel constrained by a niche, then I'd want to. I'd want you to use Taylor Swift as an example. As in, Taylor Swift just started out as a niche country singer. Right. We think about her 20 plus years ago and the reality that you have to accept is when you first want to break out in the market, more often than not, you need to be initially niche to actually make a dent in the universe. To have people care about you, you should strategically think about what is that first niche that you can pop out in and really carve a name for yourself. But then over time you think about Taylor Swift. And the reason why I love the Name Eras tour is like different eras of her because her career has been so long and so successful, she's able to insert additional parts of her personality over time. Right. So I didn't first start talking about my love for surfing when I first started posting content. It was very much so. I was the business tech bro who gave you advice on how to succeed in those niches or what have you. But over time, if you continue to be successful, that first niche is kind of like your entry wedge into the market. And then over time you're allowed to. To essentially expose more of yourself and all the different facets of you as a person and a human being that we all have. But I would generally recommend for most people is to start with an initial niche and then you just kind of think of it as expanding your niches over time. But you gotta like land and expand first.
- [11:25]
A
Yeah, beautiful. Okay. Start niche and slowly integrate more parts of you. That's a. Yeah. Interesting perspective that we haven't seen here before. So thank you.
- [11:33]
B
It's actually very similar to building a business in general. Right. If. If someone comes out there and says, I'm gonna. People lose weight, it's probably not going to be a successful business. You have to start super niche. Right. You have to start first with. I'm actually going to specifically help busy moms who work in 9 to 5 who have two kids who don't have enough time to work out. I'm going to start in that niche, build a product that cuts above the rest of the noise. And then over time maybe I can add dads, and then maybe over time I can add the kids in the family or what have you and expand over time. So it's the same thing with building and inserting first in one niche for content and then adding your personalities over time.
- [12:03]
A
One of my favorite personal brand, Solopreneur, I've Ever seen is nerd fitness. I don't know if you've seen that, but it's such a good example of a fitness niche. We help nerds.
- [12:14]
B
That's great.
- [12:14]
A
So cool. You live in your mom's basement and you play video games for five hours a day. That is who we help.
- [12:20]
B
That's so cool.
- [12:21]
A
It's so cool.
- [12:21]
B
They immediately cut above the noise because they're inherently niche.
- [12:24]
A
Yeah, it's beautiful. All right, the next question my audience has for you is you are around a lot of really, really successful creators, and, you know, Stephen Bartlett, Gary V. What are some of the tips and tricks or mindset frameworks that you've learned from being around people with that big of an audience?
- [12:42]
B
I will give you a specific learning I've learned from Stephen, a specific learning I've learned from Gary, and then I'll give you the meta learning that I've learned across all of the most successful people I've ever met. So Stephen, more than anything, has taught me, actually two things. Number one is to not afraid to be obsessive, as in when you start to succeed, over time, you start to. There are moments where society will make you feel bad about who you are. So my example of that is I actually realized I. In this season of life, I actually really, genuinely enjoy working. Like, I work pretty much seven days a week in some form. And society will have you think that there's something wrong with you for that, or have you feel bad about that that you work or that you care about this thing in life. What Steven really helped show me is. No, John. In order to get to the very best of the best, to be top 0.1% of whatever you do, you have to be obsessive. Or use Kobe Bryant as a very extreme example of that. But, like, Kobe, like, loved and died by the game. Like, that was what he truly. He bled the game. And so Stephen has really been a great role model to me in that way of, like, Steven's going for gold. Steven's building a generational company for himself, and there's a reason why he will be the top podcast in the world and why he's built a machine around him to make sure that that success will happen. Like, I have deep respect for how he executes. The second thing he's taught me a lot that's really opened my eyes to is really, as an entrepreneur, understanding how much of your success first starts out with what you can will into the world, but very quickly becomes who are the people that you can hire and recruit. To join your team and join your mission. He's constantly talking about, you know, CEO should be spending upwards of 60 to 80% of their time, even extreme ends, on hiring and like, really searching for the very best people. So those are two ways that he's really, really affected me, amongst a hundred other ways Gary has. I feel so lucky to have gotten to work with Gary because it's like, truly, every time I hang out with him, like, dude, this is sick. What I will say about Gary on the record is Gary is even better in person than he is in his content. He's a really freaking good dude. Like, I truly I heart of hearts. Just like, he is such a good dude. I'm so grateful for how generous he's been with his time and energy and his care. If there's anything I've learned from Gary, more than anything is truly going with your gut and trusting your gut. Gary is all about authenticity, truly being his fully authentic self and not sacrificing his values and always going with his gut. And so it's really, really cool to pair what Gary's taught me a ton and kind of, kind of strengthened within me my own conviction on going with your gut, but also then being the entrepreneur who's thinking about data, who's thinking about logic and rationality and strategy and trying to combine the two. So those are the two things they've explicitly taught me. But there's a meta level insight that I've learned across all the most successful people I've been with. And it doesn't matter if they're an athlete or if they're a famous actor, famous comedian, or a famous entrepreneur. The one thing that I've learned across all these people is that they just never, ever gave up. They just never quit. Right? The amount of times that you get knocked down in this entrepreneur journey, the amount of times you have a post flop, if you're starting to post for a personal brand for the first time, whether or not you make it isn't a function of that moment. It's a function of whether or not you continue to persist through that moment. And if you are down to stack days, to get wallowed into the face, to get like, truly pushed down constantly and still get back up and do that for years at a time. Because if you are that obsessive or you do care that much, or you do do want that end goal so much that you would persist through all of the irrational things that we subjected ourselves to as entrepreneurs, I promise you, at some point, you will succeed.
- [16:01]
A
Yeah, it is crazy how much of success is simply showing up and doing the thing. And I'm sure your audience has really seen this through the they went on a 30 day content creation journey. Just the wins that will come out of that. Just by posting 30 days. Most people aren't even gonna get to 30 days. And I'm sure I'd be curious the stats on that, like how many people actually complete that. I do a 10 day challenge with my audience and it's only about 40% of people that even will make it through 10 days.
- [16:27]
B
Totally. So we had something like 20,000 people sign up for the challenge of which about over, I think 1500 people did all 30 days successfully. But the reason why we love that challenge and the reason why we so love celebrating someone making their first dollar is because it's not about them posting 30 days in the moment. It's about all of the things that you have to break through in order to even post for the first time in 30 days, which is the first rung of insecurities you have to break through is number one is like, how are people gonna feel about me? Like, what is that random peer from high school or that random X or that, you know, random peer that I currently work with or the coworker gonna think about me and judge me for to first break through that fear because you realize none of those people are going to pay your bills. And then, then the next thing that you have to fight and figure out is like, okay, I'm making content now, but it's kind of like going to the gym once and saying, I want to get a six pack. No, you got to show up every single day. And the thing that we've learned is people, at the end of the day, you either want this or you don't. And you will always find a way to make excuses over like and very valid excuses. I'm super busy. I got to take care of my family by this 9 to 5. The end of the day. I come from the camp of like, if you want something, you will make it happen. And so the people who go from day one and post consistently for 30 days are the ones who truly want to make it happen. And what we've seen is those people who post every single day. That is the highest corollary variable. And the people who actually make the most money on Stan, it's not how clever you are, how good your content is, how attractive you are, how funny you are. It's truly just the people who show up and post the most and push themselves to be that consistent, that's the number one by a long shot. Highest correlation variable between your success and not.
- [17:57]
A
That's beautiful. Yeah, it's, it's really wild how showing up is truly the hardest factor. Like yes, there's all these little tips and tricks to make your content go a little more viral or get a little bit more views or maybe increase your conversion by 1 or 2%. But none of that matters if you're not showing up. None of that matters if you post. And I'm curious if you've had people come to you being like, John, what's the perfect formula? What is the content formula?
- [18:24]
B
Everyone's looking for two things. They're looking for a silver bullet answer and they're looking to overcomplicate things. But the reality is the silver bullet answer the whole time has always just been show up and iterate. So specifically what I mean by that is everyone's always like, oh my God, like how do I, you know, viral growth hack this? Or how do I structure my hook? And all of those things matter on the margin. It would be nice for you to optimize those over the margin. But if you zoom out and think about your success on a long term time horizon, which I think most of us struggle to do because we're just human beings, but if you're able to zoom out, the only thing that matters is you show up, you care. So that means you're putting in an effort to think about all these optimizations and then what's really important that most people struggle with is then you get unemotional about the result. As in when you post that first piece of content or you post your first 20 pieces of content, you should just essentially expect that of those 20, 15 plus are going to flop. You're going to feel super embarrassing and feel super cringy, but maybe one or two of those 20 are going to do well. And your job is to not be emotional about all of that and not take it personally. Just see it as objective data and say, okay, what are the patterns between the two out of these 20 posts that actually did like relatively well, what were the patterns there that I can iterate on and improve on? And so if you just do that posting or creating something in the world, whether it's a product or a piece of content, putting out in the world and observing the objective data of how that performed and then you just iterate on the specific patterns of why those were successful. You can't tell me that after a year or two years of doing that Every single day, you won't be at least moderately successful.
- [19:53]
A
Mm. Yeah. Feedback is neutral.
- [19:56]
B
Yes.
- [19:56]
A
Have you ever dealt with the feelings of the cringe or what people think?
- [20:00]
B
All the time. Like, Constantly. Truly. Yeah. It doesn't go away. Your relationship just to it changes. That's like the least of my worries relative to, like, I gotta make sure that I have a company that's gonna stay afloat so I can make payroll for all these people that trusted me or all of our customers that trust that we built something incredible. And so at some point, ideally becomes the least of your worries over time. Because I've found that the most successful entrepreneurs, at some point, they really stop caring about what other people think of them because they can't do their job. There are too many people competing for their attention. There are too many people giving their opinions or hating on them for them to. If they were to care about those things, then they wouldn't stay sane.
- [20:37]
A
What does your own personal content process look like?
- [20:40]
B
There's two different ways I think about this. One is internally, intrinsically, what does that content process look like for me when I want to be an artist? And then what does the process look like for me and the content, my content team when we want to be entrepreneurs to maximize a business outcome? So what I mean by that is when I first started creating content just like everyone else, all I had was my phone. And I just like, started scripting one day. And so I just. I would just sit down once a week and I'd think about what did I want to post, or maybe I'd be on a walk or go like, you know, in the shower. I had a content idea and I would just, like, let the creativity flow. And my opinion, at least for myself, is I've got probably one or two to three maybe good ideas a week that are of like, of me, are intrinsically of me that I can't wait to express. And I have a very specific vision. So that's kind of the artist part of John, the entrepreneur part of John. So if you think about, you know, how Hormozi thinks about his content system and his process, it's very much so how do you maximize the repeatability and the scale of this content engine? So I'm very lucky to now have a content team that helps kind of scale my content output. So we're finding all the consistent themes that are working for my content in the market. So whether that's talking about hiring a players or that's talking about how do you raise funds as, as, as A first time founder. And so their job is to maximize the performance of my existing content either by repackaging it through maybe making a carousel or through having me film two or three more videos on that specific topic. And so their, their job is to maximize the content output and the impressions. My job is to continue like continually pushing through new creative ideas and new inspiration.
- [22:15]
A
Yeah, I think about that as like the masculine and feminine energies of content creation and nothing to do with gender. Just like the energies of it, the yin yang, the feminine energy of content creation is you're driving down the road, you get an idea, you got to pull off to the side of the road and film it right then while you're in the moment. Right. That's the artist. And the masculine energy is the. We're showing up every day, we're getting something out. Yes. You might be on vacation, you're going to be on an international flight, you're traveling for 20 hours, you actually can't get something out. But it's pre scheduled or your team has it. The masculine energy is also. What's our strategy? We know that these two posts are going out every week. That's going to convert people to this lead magnet, right?
- [22:51]
B
Exactly.
- [22:52]
A
So you get to have a balance and that's, you know, I find that to be. For people that come from a more traditional background like you do, especially having backgrounds in like consulting or accounting or engineering or the business side, it can be hard to understand that artist side. Is there any tools or resources that you use to understand that or have you always had an artist side?
- [23:14]
B
I think I've always actually had an artist side that I didn't know that I had until I started creating content. But if I were to give someone a suggestion who is super left brained and is more of kind of that consulting logical brain side, if I wanted to ask this more of the artist side, then I would just ask you to sit more with yourself as a person. So how does your gut feel? What do you want to. If you were to truly sit in silence and not be fidgeting on your phone or getting sucked into whatever distractions on email, but if you're to truly sit with yourself as a human being and you could do anything in the world, express yourself in any way, what would you do? And I think the more you tap into that, which we would call our right brain side or our heart or our feminine energy, the more you can tap into that then the more I think you'll really feel your own humanity unleash. When I think about content in general, why this is so important to unlock the artist side is what is content but just a medium through which you are starting to interact with more people than you could in person? Right. So if your energy in person is a certain way, then if you have that amplified energy where you're in tune with yourself, then content is just going to magnify you in terms of thousands or millions of people. And so the more you are in tune with your artist energy, the more brightly you shine and therefore likely the better your content will perform as well.
- [24:20]
A
Yeah. Okay, so meditate. Meditation is the answer to everything.
- [24:23]
B
Truly.
- [24:23]
A
Yes. I also really like the books, the Artist Way, the Creative act and the War of Art. Those are great places to start.
- [24:29]
B
Yes, all three of those books are fantastic.
- [24:31]
A
Yeah, they're great. I also, I saw a video of you talking about Thinking in Systems.
- [24:34]
B
Yeah.
- [24:35]
A
Oh, that's such a good book. I actually, last year I asked chatgpt, knowing everything you know about me, why am I not a billionaire? Like I asked some silly question and
- [24:44]
B
it's a prompt though.
- [24:45]
A
It is a great prompt. Although now Claude definitely knows more about me. But in ChatGPT days, Chat said, you don't understand systems engineering, you need to read Thinking in Systems. And I read that book and man, my, my business has definitely blown up because of it.
- [25:01]
B
That's fantastic. I'm curious for you, what are the top learnings you've had from that book or that phase of learning?
- [25:05]
A
Yeah, it's, I mean, creating like self sustainable systems that, that almost like feed off of each other. And it's really beautiful because the book talks about how nature does this, how we can do it, and it just really gave me, yeah. A good perspective on self sustaining loops. Yeah. What about you?
- [25:23]
B
Very similar. I think for folks who start in this kind of this, this artist camp, first it's very hard to understand what do we mean by this buzzword called systems. Essentially how I finally broke it down for myself to understand was how do I build a business where I could just leave and it would still accrue and compound without me? Like, how does, how do you build a business or an asset that makes money for you in your sleep? And so if you break that down and work it backwards, when you think about how do I build a system, it's really just like, okay, how do I remove myself from a process and that process still exists. And so whether that's with hiring awesome people to run that system for you, or nowadays it's building an AI agent that just does that for you, I think that's probably the best way that I can describe what a system is. It's just a way to repeatedly get an action without ideally you being in the room.
- [26:05]
A
Speaking of AI friends, let's talk about Stanley.
- [26:09]
B
Yes.
- [26:09]
A
Okay. I am known for un gatekeeping. I will ungate gatekeep. Every tool I use, I talk about on the podcast, talk about on my social. Stanley is one tool that until now I have completely gate kept, which is totally unfair to my audience and out of integrity for me. But it's so good that I, it is my unfair advantage right now.
- [26:28]
B
I, I, I'm, I'm loving to hear that. Why is it so good for you?
- [26:30]
A
It's just so easy. I mean, I just, it, well, first of all, it challenges me. It's not like Claude or GPT. That's like, that's a great idea. Let's put, it's like actually Courtney, that won't work based on your LinkedIn data. Like when you do posts like that, it never works. So let's change it, right? Let's think of something else. So I think it challenges me and it's also just really easy and smooth. Like this is. It's just a great tool to create LinkedIn. And you guys just launched Twitter, right? Or X. Yeah. So very exciting. I'm waiting on Instagram, I've been emailing. All seem like, hey, put me on beta. But it's so good. How did, I mean, did you create that as a system for yourself and then share it with others?
- [27:07]
B
So for everyone's context, what Stanley is, is we're basically building your head of content. So I mentioned before that I have a full content team and it's an unfair advantage that I have. Right? It's cost me a million dollars a year for Gary, for Stephen, for the Hormozis, any of our investors and creators that work with us at the top tier, they all have content teams. They spend millions of dollars a year, which is just like unfair as an advantage. And so what Stanley is, is us learning all of the workflows and science behind how do you build a great content team that scales your presence for you? And we've just turned that into an AI agent. And so we started first with LinkedIn because we were just like LinkedIn influencers ourselves and understood the medium. And now basically what we're doing is we're building a singular head of content that maximizes your content performance across all platforms. So you might start as a LinkedIn creator and you might take photos there and Share posts. Well, now, Stanley, what he's going to do is, number one, he's going to help you make more content on LinkedIn. That's also better because by the way, our data so far shows that in her first three days using Stanley, your engagement improves by 50%.
- [28:03]
A
That's really significant.
- [28:04]
B
He understands your voice really, really well. He understands your data really well, which is why he's giving you really canned feedback. And then lastly, most importantly, he also understands what's performing in the market, which chatgpt, your cloud don't have access to. But like, what content is actually hitting the market right now, with all that being said. So first, he's going to help you maximize your content output on your favorite platform and then also just make sure that you're repackaging old stuff, all that kind of stuff. But then on top of that, what we're releasing soon is then on top of that, he's going to be able to repurpose and optimize your content for Twitter specifically, or for threads or for YouTube carousels or Instagram carousels, whatever it is that you're doing. And then what we're launching very, very soon that the team is working on and already using on my content is not only is he ideating and scripting for you and helping you write as this co partner, but he's also going to start editing for you too, so for your videos. So he's probably about 80% as good as my editing team at editing videos. And so we'll get the model even better over the next few months.
- [28:56]
A
I mean, also 80% as good as your editing editing team, plus add some post editing from the creator. It's going to be exactly, even better
- [29:04]
B
than what you have. The hope is you are no longer sitting there on capcut, like, like, you know, cringing, trying to move your thumbs to like the exact level. It's doing all that cutting for you. And then basically what we're building is a Vibe editor. So in the same way that people are vibe coding apps now, you can actually just vibe at it where you say, hey, add captions or add this kind of graphic. And Stanley's starting to add that to videos.
- [29:21]
A
Oh my God, that's going to be so helpful for my brand deal edits. It's like always, like at 1:40, we need to just actually switch this out for this caption. I'm like, oh my God, this is so tedious. I love that. That's great. How do you think that will impact the future of the creator economy? Let's say everyone is using this Everness fantastic content. What is it? What do things look like?
- [29:44]
B
Well, the honest answer on that is we're here to arm the rebels, right? So we're here to arm the up and coming entrepreneurs and solopreneurs at some point in the same way that now everyone uses Google Ads or Facebook ads or whatever go to market channel. We would hope that, you know, for the sake of our business, that Stanley is like the de facto tool that everyone should use. At the end of the day. What we know is that all of the tools that a large company has access to, most of the entrepreneurs out there don't have access to. And so our goal first is to arm the rebels, arm the, arm the future of what we think is the economy. And so for us, we're really excited about democratizing these tools for all these creators to just like crush it and get way more output out.
- [30:21]
A
That's so cool. I have a theory that yes, it's going to help solopreneurs. Like it's going to help the average person. I love this, this rebel archetype. I still think most people, even if it's completely accessible, I still think most people aren't going to do it because of the mindset, because of the fear.
- [30:40]
B
That's correct. I've learned that as well. It's at the end of the day, from the numbers, what I've seen is that 10% of folks are the ones who truly, truly go forward and make it. And so I would hope that everyone listening would want to put themselves in the camp of the 10%. Because I, to me, that's really a function of. Did you, in this one life you have, in this incarnation at least, really make the most of it? Like, why, why wouldn't you do that? And I think the mindset piece is the number one thing that people have to crack in order to become in that 10%. Because I've learned that mindset is almost everything. Because everything is everything is precluded by you having a mindset that actually allows you to achieve that outcome.
- [31:18]
A
Totally. Yeah. That's still going to be. The gatekeeper is going to be your own mindset, right? Like people like, oh my God, Claude code. Somebody, Somebody coded my entire app in five minutes that took me five years to build. Like, they're going to ruin my company. They're not. They're not. Because you went through the pain and having to like sell everybody into this and you went through the cringe. Like, that person is probably going to feel really cringe. Say, oh, I did this cool thing and keep it to themselves. Like that's statistically what's most likely to happen. So the mindset and that's like why I have this podcast. That's what I, why I do what I do. I think there's so much good that could come to the world if good hearted people feel the confidence to have a platform and to put themselves out there.
- [31:59]
B
I could not agree with that more, especially the good hearted piece. One of the things we think a lot about with Stan is how are, how are we impacting the world beyond just like a business level? And I think for us one of the things that we think is really, really cool is we're lucky enough to get to work with some of the most influential people, especially in today's day and age when you talk about creators and entrepreneurs. And so our hope is that we can give the world our, our set of values which is really around this concept of give, give, give. If we can teach more people about this value of give, give, give, even if we're not the one actually advocating openly, you know, about that and you know, chanting that from the rooftops, which we are, that we can hopefully influence the next wave of entrepreneurs and change makers in the world who are going to have a platform that hey, like, hey, we don't have to live in a world that is super shitty, that is like just about to combust with all the things that are going wrong in the world. Instead we can be the change that we want to see in this world. And so giving the right people who are good hearted, who truly believe that they can build something that's successful for themselves but also for society, those are the people that we seek to work with the most.
- [32:59]
A
Yeah, I, I love Gary Vee says give a radical amount of value away. And how can you just give more and more and more? And I think that anytime I get lost, I come back to that. Even in like content planning, I don't know what to post. How do I give a radical amount of value away?
- [33:13]
B
We then we've come across the same anchoring. Like I do the same thing whenever I, whenever I don't know what to do. I'm just like, how do I just give immense value? Just give immense value and you just know karmically you're going to be okay.
- [33:23]
A
Yeah, yeah. So beautiful. Okay, let's talk about monetization. So let's say I'm a creator. I've been posting consistently for a few months. I've got a few thousand followers now, on whatever platform I want to start monetizing, where do I start?
- [33:36]
B
So the number one thing to figure out how you're going to make money online is knowing that your answer is already within you. As in, your audience already knows what they want to buy from you. And so you already have a gut instinct of what you likely would want to offer, whether it's a digital product, a course, a service, a community subscription, a T shirt, whatever it is that you want. And so your job is to pair your gut instinct of what you really want to do yourself and then survey your market. As in, all you have to do is just post a story on Instagram and you'll be like, hey y', all, I'm like, really thinking about monetizing. What do you guys think about these different options or what? What can I help you with? It always goes back to how can I give value? The best, most successful products or services are just a way to help people in a different format. Um, and so your audience will oftentimes just tell you. So if you're a couple thousand people, then you already have more than enough of an audience to get a signal. And so people are just going to slide into your DMs like, hey, actually, you know, I really, really want this help. Or you know, I, I need you to tell me. Think about this. Whatever it is, it's your DMs plus your comments. And so that is going to then tell you exactly what to productize over time because the reason why people follow you right now is for you. But then your job is to decompose, basically work through what it. What about you is interesting enough that I could productize. So maybe it's because you're really, really knowledgeable on fitness tips. And so your job is to figure out a product that scales and gives that version of you to someone, whether it's first through coaching, so it's a one to one human time, or it's through a guide or through a course. All that to be said. My favorite way that I like to recommend people monetize is by doing something called a template, which is people don't think about this, they only think of me, like courses or coaching or services. What I mean by template, and I'll give a. My favorite example, when I first started, Stan was, we worked with Michael Alafonte. He is the top creator for Airbnb, like Passive Income Building. And Michael was thinking about what's my first digital product. And we were talking about all these different things he could do. He's like, well, I don't know if I want to start with a course. And so I was like, well, Michael, what do. What tools do you use in your own life to evaluate your Airbnb properties? He was like, well, I have this one, like, Excel spreadsheet that I use to analyze whether or not a property is actually going to return money or not. I was like, well, why don't we just package that and sell that as your cash flow calculator? And so he was like, screw it. Like, I'll try it. We listed it for, I think, 50. And once again, we didn't do anything. We just took his Excel spreadsheet calculator he'd built for himself. It was a couple rows. We deleted all the numbers and just had placeholders, and we just uploaded it. There's nothing fancy about it. And that product, that SKU for 50, grossed $200,000 on Stan in his first few months.
- [36:08]
A
That's amazing.
- [36:08]
B
Point being is your job is to think about what is the journey you've been on yourself. And so, like, what does younger you need and what are the tools you've developed or what's the knowledge you've accrued that would help that younger version of you go from point A to point B? And you should productize that.
- [36:22]
A
So your first digital product or offering might already be existing in your Google Drive.
- [36:27]
B
That's correct. Yeah, it likely is, yes, probably.
- [36:30]
A
So you just get to go reflect on what you do, what's helped you, and maybe clear the data, make a copy toy and put that out. Yeah.
- [36:39]
B
In fact, that was literally mine. So when I first started creating content for me, I started first with the Gary mindset of, like, okay, why would people watch me? What value can I give in this world? And so for me, my story was, how do you, as an underrepresented kid, get your first dream job? So I just started posting content about, like, hey, this is how I broke into Wall street without having any connections. And so the very first digital product I ever offered, I had to look up my old Dropbox password, and I found my college resume that I used to get an internship. I did not change a single line of it. I just uploaded it and sold it for $10.
- [37:07]
A
I love that.
- [37:08]
B
And people bought it, right? Because they wanted a resume template for how I got that job on Wall
- [37:12]
A
street, my first digital product ever. I used to write a lot of LinkedIn blogs. Back when LinkedIn blogs were big, I would write a LinkedIn blog every week. After about 20 blogs, I went and looked at what my top performing blog was. I deleted it from LinkedIn, and I copied and pasted it into a Google Doc, saved it as a PDF, and that blog just became my first digital product.
- [37:31]
B
That's really cool.
- [37:32]
A
And I think it was a. Like, it was called 50 LinkedIn post ideas or something.
- [37:37]
B
That's cool.
- [37:37]
A
So that was cool. And my second one, I just interviewed a bunch of people for 10 minutes. I'm just like, hey, what are you struggling with? And if you had unlimited budget, how could I help you?
- [37:47]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:48]
A
And everybody said the same thing. They said, if I had unlimited budget, I would want to get on a call with you every day, and you would tell me what to post.
- [37:55]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:55]
A
So I said, okay, we're gonna make a content club where we're getting on the call every single day, and my team and I will tell you exactly what to post and not let you leave the call until you post. And that's been my biggest standstore product. It's a community subscription.
- [38:07]
B
I love it.
- [38:08]
A
Yeah. Super fun. That's great. Okay. What would you say to the person that's struggling to sell their first digital product?
- [38:15]
B
You are not understanding your customer enough? As in, you are currently presenting something into the void, essentially into people. They're probably hearing some version of it. At least a hundred people or maybe a couple dozen people. That's enough signal for you to get objectively honest with yourself and look in the mirror and say, something clearly isn't resonating. So it's either your messaging and your marketing isn't resonating. So the way you're talking about this product isn't inherently interesting to people, or the product itself isn't valuable for people, at least at that price point. At the end of the day, how do you solve any of those different factors? You go to the customer and you ask them, hey, you know, why isn't this interesting to you? And also, what do you actually care about at the end of the day? What I've learned is any answer in business always goes back to the customer. Because, like, whether you're running a $100 million business or you're launching your first digital product, the mechanics are still the same. You're just trying to offer something out there in the world that someone finds interesting enough to purchase themselves. And so why would you sit there and theorize yourself around what that might be versus just going there and being like, yo, what's the answer?
- [39:11]
A
Yeah, that's great.
- [39:12]
B
Your customer oftentimes has the answer combined with your gut instinct around how you should drive an inspiring vision or kind of punch that up to the next level so you don't have like a faster horse problem. But generally your customer has the answer.
- [39:23]
A
I think the barrier there is going back to feedback. You get to see that feedback as neutral, not like, oh, this person didn't buy from me and I can't believe they didn't understand what I was communicating to them. No, especially when it becomes a pattern. The same people are giving the same feedback. You get to make that change and then you'll win.
- [39:39]
B
You know, an example that comes up for me that hopefully can land this home for folks is when I was raising money for the business back in the day. Raising money for your startup is an incredibly vulnerable process because you sit there and you expose yourself to all these VCs who don't care about you. Right? They're, they're sharks in some way, and so many of them turn you down. And it's really easy when you get all those nos because your company is on the line. So it feels like your literal life is on the line. It's so easy to, as soon as you get the no, to feel deeply discouraged. And I think that's a very human, emotional moment that you should accept and just process. But what you should be doing and what, what fortunately I did in that moment was every single no to me was just another data point. And I would ask why no? And I'd get to a really concrete, specific answer from folks, because then that would give me data as to, okay, how do I need to improve my company or business, how do I need to improve how I pitch in a way that actually eventually leads me to the ultimate success in this case, which is raising millions of dollars to the startup off of just a bunch of tech talks. And so whether it's getting rejected by investors, getting rejected by customers, throwing something out in the void. As an entrepreneur, it's all about can I get the feedback, not take it personally, and then use that as data to actually inform and win the next time.
- [40:52]
A
Give feedback, the feedback is neutral, use it to iterate and improve the next time. And those no's are gonna get you closer to your yes. So you're not just saying the no's get you closer to your yes, you're saying the nos will get you closer, faster. If you ask for feedback, implement that feedback and then you're getting there faster.
- [41:07]
B
Cause you're just accelerating your learning cycle. So you can either sit in your head for months at a time dreaming up what the perfect Product might be of which maybe 20% or 30% of your guesses might be right. Or you can actually just push into the world earlier. That's why there's this concept in startup world of the minimum viable product. The sooner you get something out into the real world, the sooner you will know reality as a fact rather than guessing it in your head.
- [41:26]
A
I think it's so cool how many tech startups have come from digital product MVPs.
- [41:31]
B
Totally.
- [41:32]
A
Really cool to see. I'm sure you've seen that, including Stan. Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. All right, any final words of wisdom for our audience as they build their personal brands?
- [41:41]
B
You'll get kicked in the teeth, you get punched in the mouth. It will feel like eating glass at times. You will constantly doubt yourself. You will find new ways to doubt yourself because your reward for solving the current hard problem is even harder problems. But if there's a single thing I can leave you with is in those moments where you doubt yourself, I want you to remember that you got through the other thing. You've gone through everything before this. You will get through this thing. It might last way longer than you thought. It might not last a day. It'll last a week or two weeks or a whole quarter, a whole year. Trust me that everyone before you has gotten through the same and you will get through this.
- [42:22]
A
Amazing, Amazing. Well, what's next for you and Stan? What's on the horizon?
- [42:27]
B
Well, we're super excited about Stanley. Basically for all the folks out there who feel stressed about running their business, making more content, having their content perform, think about how does that content convert to sales? You know, how do I optimize my store? We're basically building a singular AI agent. Stanley, that is going to be your co founder, your CEO, your chief of staff, your head of content all in one place. And so you have a single AI agent that's sitting there coming up with daily ideas for you, custom for you, that's sourcing all the top outperformers from the market, that's helping you ideate, that's helping you script that understands your voice, that's in editing your content for you, that's in scheduling your content for you, that's in iterating on that content with you, looking at your all your analytics and then on top of that, then combining that with Stan store over time where Stanley's also going to know what drives the most sales on your behalf. He's also going to ab test your landing pages for you. He's going to, you know, Build new digital products for you. He's going to run your community for you. All of those things a single AI agent is going to do for you so you don't have to feel as lonely and tired in this journey.
- [43:22]
A
That's so cool. Well, I'll put my affiliate link in the show notes. I think it gives you three days for free so you guys can go test it out for free. Yeah. I mean, I'm just so excited about how many more people are going to have a bigger voice because of Stanley and how many more, just like, again, good hearted, mission driven people are going to have access to more eyes and be able to, you know, bring people into their, their values and what they're excited about and their mission. And I think that Stanley is going to be such a great way to, to do that.
- [43:52]
B
Oh, I appreciate having me on.
- [43:54]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Well, where can everyone find you?
- [43:57]
B
They can find me on Instagram or YouTube as Jhoov J A Y H O V Y. I'm the Asian coach with long hair and I hope that my content can deliver you lots of value.
- [44:07]
A
Beautiful. Thank you so much.
- [44:09]
B
Thank you.
- [44:10]
A
I do have an ask for you guys before we go. If this podcast has benefited you in any way, if you have gotten a tip that you've really loved and you've implemented it, if it's given you some sort of inspiration, if it's given you some sort of motivation or clarity, my ask is that you leave a five star review. I would appreciate it so much. It helps spread the message, it really helps the show grow and it helps more people get access to this information. My deepest desire is un gatekeeping shit. I want to un gatekeep information. So anybody that desires to build a personal brand, to build a business, to create this success in their life and to live their dream, I want them to have all of the information. And I don't hold shit back on the show. Okay, we are not holding shit back. So in order to get this message to more people, in order to get these resources and tips to more people, your reviews go a long way. I appreciate you so much. Thank you.