April 2025
Books, articles, podcasts, and thoughts throughout the month
Books read:
📕 The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by
📕 Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
📖 Hell Year or No by Derek Sivers
📖 The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Posts published:
April 30
📰 How We’re Profit Sharing on Metalabel by
Kickstarter works by getting a small number of fans to spend a lot of money. The average publishing project has only 1,000 sales but averages $100 per sale, with artists earning $50,000 and up for successful projects.
Metalabel is just the opposite: It works by getting a large number of fans to pay a much smaller amount. Strickler told me projects at the $30 price point or lower tend to do the best on the platform, attracting around 500 unit sales on the high end. Sales at $100 or more only work for artists with a strong connection to their fans—Strickler points to a release by the musician Brian Eno as an example.
Faith Hill writes about in her recent piece for *The Atlantic*, “You’ve Probably Already Met Your Next Best Friend.” ... “We don’t need to meet more people,” she told me. “We need to feel more met by the people we already know.”
📰 A Birthday Meal and Concert to Feed Them All... by Joanne Molinaro
Recently, someone asked me what I want my legacy to be, how I want to be remembered. I'd never thought of this question before in my entire life and I realized it was because I don't really want a legacy. I just want to love and be loved.
📰 28 Slightly Rude Notes on Writing by
Apparently Sir Arthur Conan Doyle considered his Sherlock Holmes stories “a lower stratum of literary achievement” and thought his novels were far better. (Can you name any?) Borges once remarked, “I think of myself as a poet, though none of my friends do.” (Didn’t even know he wrote poems.) Sylvia Plath derided *The Bell Jar* as “a pot boiler”. (That is, a piece of art produced to keep the heat on.) Elizabeth Barrett Browne wrote poems about slavery and politics, but now the only poem anyone remembers is the one about how much she loves her husband (You know it: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”). After he published *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions*, Thomas Kuhn spent the rest of his life arguing with his critics (and—purportedly—throwing ashtrays at them).
whenever I finish a draft, my first few paragraphs almost always contain ideas that were necessary for *writing* the rest of the piece, but that aren’t necessary for *understanding* it.
making art is painful because it forces the mind to do something it’s not meant to do. If you really want to get that sentence right, if you want that perfect brush stroke or that exquisite shot, then you have to squeeze your neurons until they scream. That level of precision is simply unnatural.
Writers are addicted to the particular kind of pain you feel when you’re at a loss for words, and to the relief that comes from finding them.
Most writing is bad because it’s missing a motive. It feels dead because it hasn’t found its reason to live. You can’t accomplish a goal without having one in the first place—writing without a motive is like declaring war on no one in particular.
This is why it’s very difficult to teach people how to write, because first you have to teach them how to care. Or, really, you have to show them how to *channel* their caring, because they already care a lot, but they don’t know how to turn that into words, or they don’t see why they should. (View Highlight)
What I really want to know is: why do *you* care? You could have spent your time knitting a pair of mittens or petting your cat or eating a whole tube of Pringles. Why did you do this instead? What kind of sicko closes the YouTube tab and types 10,000 words into a Google doc? What’s *wrong* with you? If you show me that—implicitly, explicitly, I don’t care—I might just close my own YouTube tab and read what you wrote.
There’s something special about every word written by a human because they chose to do *this thing* instead of anything else. Something moved them, irked them, inspired them, possessed them, and then electricity shot everywhere in their brain and then—crucially—they laid fingers on keys and put that electricity inside the computer. Writing is a costly signal of caring about something. Good writing, in fact, might be a sign of *pathological* caring.
We’ve got a once-in-the-history-of-our-species opportunity here. It used to be that our only competitors were made of carbon. Now some of our competitors are made out of silicon. New competition should make us better at competing—this is our chance to be more thoughtful about writing than we’ve ever been before. No system can optimize for everything, so what are our minds optimized for, and how can I double down on *that*? How can I go even deeper into the territory where the machines fear to tread, territories that I only notice *because* they’re treacherous for machines?
lots of people think they need to get better at writing, but nobody thinks they need to get better at thinking, and this is why they don’t get better at writing.
For example, after Virginia Woolf finished the first part of *To the Lighthouse*, she jotted in her diary, “Is it nonsense? Is it brilliance?” In his own diary, John Steinbeck wrote: “Sometimes I seem to do a good little piece of work, but when it is done it slides into mediocrity.” (That work was *The Grapes of Wrath*.) Francis Bacon, the father of modern science, begins *The Great Instauration* by wondering whether he’s got a banger or a dud on his hands: “The matter at issue is either nothing, or a thing so great that it may well be content with its own merit, without seeking other recompense.” The first page of the book does make it clear, though, which way Bacon ultimately came down on that question
I see tons of essays called something like “On X” or “In Praise of Y” or “Meditations on Z,” and I always assume they’re under-baked. That’s a topic, not a take.
April 28
🎧 Grandma Is a Thief - Beautiful/Anonymous
Gethard recommends reading Derek Thompson's 'The Anti-Social Century' in The Atlantic. It explores how Americans are increasingly choosing to be alone, impacting everything from restaurant layouts to marriage rates. Reading it'll help you reflect on your life choices, especially regarding family, and the structuring of your kids’ lives.
Transcript: Chris Gethard There's an article that came out in The Atlantic, just came out. It's called The Antisocial Century by Derek Thompson. I think it's a very brilliant article. I think everyone will be healthier for reading this article. I think it will help to find some of the choices you make for yourself, especially those of us with families. I think it will help you think about how you're kind of structuring your family life, your kids' lives. And the whole focus of the article is just that every statistic they're finding is that Americans in particular right now are just on this dedicated scramble to be alone. And there's been a lot of talk of this idea that there's a loneliness epidemic. The article gets nuanced about that in a way that's not just a catchphrase, but does put out some stark looks at restaurants now have to dedicate so much more space to takeout orders and Delivery orders because people aren't going out and eating socially in restaurants. Memberships in churches and unions and community organizations are way down. Anything that necessitates being around other people is down. And that the way you see this showing up in people's lives as far as the age at which they're getting married, if they're getting married at all, is shifting so quickly in a way that is at The very least fascinating and probably concerning. And the article is really well written. I think there's some aspects of it that are so jaw dropping. And I think everybody would be well served to read the anti-social century by Derek Thompson, which just came out in the Atlantic, because I think it's brilliant.
April 26
📰 Do What You Enjoy by
Whenever I want to learn how to do something, I lean into searching for individuals who have done it well before. And then I carefully study what they did.
I spent one night watching a talk by Wes Kao, taking notes on what I love, what I hate, and what I wished to have seen in the session. Then I watched a few more afterwards. After the third episode, a pattern started to emerge, and I started seeing what makes their Lightning Lessons great.
📰 AI Can Fix Social Media’s Original Sin by Every’s Dan Shipper
Social media served whatever our gaze grazed and our fingers clicked—what we call *revealed preference—*because that’s all the intent it could discern.
April 25
🎧 Picking a New Name - Beautiful/Anonymous
Chris is jealous of younger people who don't understand the hustle culture. They don't get why you'd want to be gone all day, take pride in working to the point of panic attacks, or raise your blood pressure for a pat on the head at work. He admires that they've figured that out.
Transcript:
Chris Gethard
And i am envious of people who are younger than me who look at the hustle vibe with outright confusion. They are confused. Why do you want to be gone all day? Why do you take pride in working yourself to the point of panic attacks? Why do you take pride in raising your blood pressure all so that you can get a pat on the head in a workplace environment why i'm jealous that younger people figured that out
🎥 How to Quit Your Job - Simon Squibb and Ali Abdaal
you want to first sell the product and then build it
Dan Priestley also talks about before building anything you know you want to validate that the demand for the thing actually exists so you get people to sign up for a wait list
🎥 How to Get Rich - Ali Abdaal
everyone who has a top 1% or above outcome in anything tends to have an unhealthy obsession with the thing
how many hours a week would you say you are devoting to the goal of getting rich?
the idea of mental bandwidth and content diet
The other 90% of my content consumption was about getting rich. It wasn't explicitly about getting rich back in 2020; there wasn't that much content available, but it was about business. It was about how to grow a YouTube channel. I was listening to literally all of the podcasts about how to grow a YouTube channel. I was listening to all of the podcasts about how to build a business and how to market a business — the Smart Passive Income podcast, the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast, Noah Kagan's podcast. I was Reading all the books, listening to all the audio books about business, the E-Myth Revisited, Traction, and dozens and dozens of books and audio books about how to get rich. Ninety percent of the stuff that I was consuming, that I was listening to every single day at like two times and three times speed was content about how to get rich. The way you get rich is by having an unhealthy obsession with getting rich.
What that unhealthy obsession looks like is that in your discretionary time, in your spare time, the thing that you are thinking about, the thing that you're consuming, content about, the thing you're reading, about the thing you're listening to, and the thing you are watching videos on is on how to get rich.
if you’re at this point in the video and you would like to get rich, it’s really worth asking yourself: do you have an unhealthy obsession with getting rich? Would your friends and family say that you have an unhealthy obsession with getting rich? Does your content diet reflect an obsession with getting rich? Does the way you spend your time reflect An obsession with getting rich. If the answer is no, then you have two options. I think all of this is just my opinion. Whatever, I think you have two options here. Either you can decide to develop an unhealthy obsession, or you can change your content diet.
You can start consuming all the content about getting rich; you can start waking up two hours early before your day job, putting in effort towards building your business. You can start while you're at your day job, taking slightly longer lunch breaks and using squeezing in half an hour of work on your business here and there in the evenings. You can not go out with your friends every night or whatever the thing is. You can stop playing video games, stop watching Netflix, stop watching random YouTube videos, even videos like this one, and only ever work on your business while you're going on a walk, while you're doing the dishes. You can switch your content diet so that you are listening to audiobooks, podcasts, and videos about getting rich. On weekends, you can be like, "Ah, weekends are incredible! I've got like 16 full hours on Saturday and 16 full hours on Sunday where I can Literally, just wake up, lock myself in a room, work for 16 straight hours on my business." That is what an unhealthy obsession with getting rich looks like. That is often what it takes. Getting rich is not easy. That's option number one.
April 24
📰 ChatGPT's "Faster Horse" Problem by
I was recently listening to OpenAI’s Chairman Bret Taylor (on The Knowledge Project Podcast). He was describing a world where websites were quickly becoming obsolete. Taylor explained that, over the past 30 years, a company's website had become “the universe of everything that you can do with that company” — what he calls “the digital instantiation of the company.” But consider how your use of “the web” has changed since the arrival of ChatGPT. I basically only use the web to read the news and to buy stuff on Amazon. I barely use Google Search anymore. Any “knowledge transfer” (searching, learning, researching) happens in an LLM. (If I want to look up a consumer company’s homepage, I’ll usually go to Instagram.)
How do I future-proof myself in an AI-first world? Whether you’re an investment analyst or marketing specialist — it’s imperative to think about these second-order implications on your role, career and industry. But second order thinking is notoriously challenging. Here’s a question to kick off that process. Begin by asking yourself: > *How do I add value?* If it seems like it’s a simply innocuous question — don’t worry. It gets more complicated. Next ask: > *How does my boss add value?* Keep going: > *How does my business unit add value?* And finally: > *How does my firm add value?*
📰 Impressions: When Challenging Conditions Offer a Creative Invitation by
When conditions verge on monochrome to begin with, I find I lean into black and white photography. When colour is removed from the scene, the textures, contrasts, and subtle emotions can take centre stage, offering us impressions of a moment.
📰 The 3-Step Formula for Writing Better Videos by Ali Abdaal
HOT formula (thanks to Holly on my team for that 😅). ... Hook, Outline, Takeaway.
but hooks don’t stop at the 30 second mark. You’ve actually got ‘mini-hooks’ throughout the video - opportunities to re-engage your viewer with each point and that’s where the H comes in within this HOT formula.
Once you’ve got your viewer’s attention, next you want to give them more detail. Flesh out the idea in more depth and add additional context—but keep these explanations as compelling and succinct as possible.
then end with the final takeaway. This is where you drive home the key lesson, making sure your audience finishes that part of the video feeling like they’ve learnt something valuable or something actionable they can implement.
April 23
📰 Call Me Charlie Issue 256 by
I don’t know how or when but I’m certain these Memoir Snob deep dives will lead me to my publisher. So I still have to write a fantastic book, I still have to publish weekly so that I can connect with my true fans, and equally, I have to record more deep dives and share them with the authors, editors, and publishers.
📰 On Sitting Around and Reading a Novel by
“Reading really is subversive because no one can see what is going into you,” says Percival Everett. “They can look over your shoulder and see all the words you see, but they will never know what they mean to you.”
📰 Photo Insider: The Hidden Danger of Digital by Cody Mitchell
bumping up your in-camera contrast. ... It’ll simulate the feel of a lower dynamic range. You’ll be forced to make stronger decisions when shooting—but your RAW files still give you flexibility if you want it later.
It’s a simple trick. But it changed how I shoot digital. It made me *think* again.
April 22
📰 Henry David Thoreau's Economic Notes by
These journals were an essential component of Thoreau’s writing process. He always tried out ideas in his journals first. Then, he would harvest thoughts he wanted to keep by transcribing them into new journals. In one of his journals, he described his plan: > *To set down such choice experiences that my own writings may inspire me and at last I may make whole of parts.*⁹ This is precisely how Thoreau constructed his best-known work, *Walden—*by taking pieces out of previous journals and revising his writing
📰 Small Race, Big Weird 🏁 by The Publish Press
Bartlett said Flight Story, the media company behind *The Diary Of A CEO*, now employs nearly 100 people full-time and has “every capability in-house,” including strategy, data, production, partnerships, newsletters, and more.
April 21
🎧 Invite Chaos by Beautiful/Anonymous
Chaos can be a fertilizer for growth. Chris Gethard reflects on how his seemingly chaotic life, filled with diverse projects like a public access TV show, books, and an HBO special, wasn't random. Instead, instability shook the foundation, allowing him to see what could grow from the cracks. Although chaos might seem random, hard work, seeking feedback, and leveraging previous success (like the TV show's hype to pitch a book) are key to making the most of it.
Transcript: Chris Gethard Back when I had my TV, Oh, this guy's got a, a public access TV show. Nobody does that. And then, Oh, and then that when I was writing books, that's cool. That's different than that. And these things start to come up and, you know, and then the HBO special. And one thing out there is I go, my life appeared to be very chaotic, but all these things kept happening. They weren't happening randomly. I'm like you. I was someone who went chaos is fertilizer that makes good things grow for a certain type of person. And I think it sounds like you and I have that in common of, I need things to feel a little unstable so that it kind of shakes the foundation and I can see what grows out of those cracks. And I was also smart enough to go, well, you don't wind up just publishing a book. You work hard and you write it and you do second drafts and you ask for opinions from people on what's working and what's not. And then when something like the TV show started to catch some hype, it meant that I had a little bit of this calling card that I could also turn around to small publishers and go, any interest In publishing a book? Hey, here's an article about my weird comedy. I also got a book. I got a manuscript. You kind of have to sell yourself. You want to read it? You want to read this thing? And then they go, yeah.
Birds singing may improve mental health as it signals a safe world without predators, according to a listener named Andrea. It is an evolutionary response to feel safer when birds are singing.
Transcript: Chris Gethard Andrea just said, I think bird calls are... I love this. I think bird calls are literally good for mental health. It's like an evolution thing. Birds singing means the world is safe and no predators are around.
You'll start defining things for yourself as you navigate the balance between info and entertainment. The news became a 24-hour ticker after 9/11.
Transcript: Chris Gethard You can start to define things for yourself as far as navigating this balance of information and entertainment. And then you, you know, you start to see him after it's very well documented after nine 11, the news becomes 24 hours and it's a constant ticker scroll.
April 20
📰 The Selfish Reason for Befriending a Lawyer, the Halfway Rule by Cam Houser
What is The Halfway Rule? It's simple: When you're 50% through any project, task, or engagement where someone is paying for your time or expertise, pause and ask, out loud, for feedback.
Evan Osnos is one of my favorite writers at the *New Yorker*, particularly when he turns his gimlet pen on the ultra-wealthy. Learn about luxury apocalypse bunkers! And how to hire Flo Rida (or Beyoncé) to play your Bar Mitzvah! And modern-day Hollywood swindlers! The rich are different than you and me - they make for better copy. Out June 3.
Nick Thompson is the CEO of *The* *Atlantic* magazine, a former editor at *Wired* and *The New Yorker* - and, somehow, the American 50k record holder. (When he marathons, he runs a sub-6 minute mile.) So, how does a guy with a day job and three kids find time to become one of the fastest people in the country? By running from a past of troubled fathers, cancer, and the science of pushing yourself farther than you thought possible. Out October 28.
April 19
📰 Trump's Impact on Creators - Jon Youshaei
merch has always been more of brand move than a money maker.
📰 Springtime Experiments: Cultivating Curiosity in the Season of Change by
Spring offers an ideal period for personal experimentation.
“How might I expand my social circle?” Research suggests that shared activities create effective foundations for new connections. Join community-based outdoor activities where interactions occur naturally. Test “social diversification” by introducing different social groups to each other. Experiment with different ice breakers when meeting new people.
“How might I engage with my environment differently?” Implement systematic curiosity by noticing one natural element daily – maybe it’s a flower, a tree, a woorden bench you’ve never noticed.
“How might I incorporate more sensory experiences into my daily life?” Try going barefoot to test the effects of direct contact with natural surfaces such as grass and soil (I’ve seen this referred to as “earthing”). See how it feels to wear natural fabrics. Make your own candles. Experiment with getting a massage every week. Or massage yourself with different oils and take notes of the massage protocols that seem to help.
“How might I experiment with my creative expression?” As a liminal moment of renewal, springtime is great for creativity. Experiment with dancing, painting, drawing, singing, writing. Produce some form of easy creative work each day. Take inspiration from nature by incorporating natural patterns and principles into your creative project.
📰 AI Created This Keynote Speech by
Why Claude over ChatGPT? In general, I’ve found Claude to have a more delicate approach to creativity. To me, Claude has the vibe of a Brooklyn-based liberal arts grad while ChatGPT has that of a Silicon Valley engineer.
📰 How to Choose What to Pursue by
A new idea often feels exciting, cool, and unique. But before jumping in, you want to imagine a little and ask yourself:
What does the world look like if this idea succeeds?
Do I want to live in that version of the future?
Am I overvaluing being different?
Can I be different *within* something bigger?
April 18
🎥 Trixie and JOOLS LEBRON Get Very Demure!
I've learned over the years like I used to be all about the business and then at this stage in my life I feel more about the artistry is good You
learn over time the balance of too much business not enough art you get bored Yes Yes And the balance of too much art and none of business you get broke
Be a player coach. Set up incentives and provide feedback. Help people improve, don't just critique. Demonstrate excellence, and be willing to share your expertise to upskill your team. Catherine Dillon helps people do their jobs, she doesn't just say 'this wasn't great'.
Transcript: Scott Galloway My partner in the business, Catherine Dillon, has always been what I call a player coach. And that is rather than managing people, you got to set up an incentive structure that works, got to provide feedback. That's really important. But what she does is she helps people do their jobs instead of, in addition to saying, okay, this wasn't great. She will actually, she can do that. And she can do that almost as well as, or better, almost everything in the company as well or better than anyone else. And she doesn't provide just feedback. She provides learning. She sits on, I don't have the patience for that. If I say to someone, when I send feedback, like this edit on this podcast sucked, I don't call them and then say, okay, let's edit it together and let me teach you. I just say it sucked. That's not that inspiring or that helpful. They demonstrate excellence and they're willing to share that excellence with their team. They take the time to try and teach people and upskill them.
April 17
📰 Vibe Check: O3 Is Here—And It’s Great - Every’s Dan Shipper
It’s agentic. Someone at OpenAI referred to o3 as deep research-lite to me, and that’s exactly what it is. Set it to do a task, and come back in 30 seconds or three minutes and get a thorough answer.
My highest compliment for o3 is that in one week, it has become my go-to model for most tasks. I still use GPT 4.5 for writing and 3.7 Sonnet for coding in Windsurf, but other than that, I’m all o3, all the time.
I’ve been saying for a while that we haven’t come close to using the full power of frontier models. It’s like we’ve invented jet engines, but we haven’t invented a jet. If you drop a jet engine on my doorstep, I probably wouldn’t be able to do much with it. But attach it to a plane and give me a pilot’s license… now we’re talking. With o3 inside of ChatGPT, it finally feels like the engine and airframe have matched up.
This output is similar to what I would get with deep research—which itself is powered by a version of o3—but it’s much faster. Deep research sometimes feels like sending a probe into space. You’re going to get a good answer, but it takes 10-20 minutes, and there’s not a lot of room to course correct. By contrast, o3 will return comparable results in anywhere from 10 seconds to around five minutes, so you can do many back-and-forths with it in the time it would take a single deep research query to return.
Predicting your future I’ve been asking ChatGPT to predict my future since 2022, and o3 is the best at it. Combined with ChatGPT’s new memory feature, it’s incredible:
Analyze meeting transcripts for leadership analysis One of my favorite things to use o3 for is leadership coaching. Because it’s agentic, it can read extremely long files and pull out detailed and insightful analysis. At the end of last week, I fed it a file containing transcripts from every meeting I was in over the past five days and asked for its thoughts:
It does an incredible job of pulling out themes, helping me understand what I’m focusing the team on and where I might be falling short by, for example, avoiding conflict. And because it can reference the exact points in the transcript where this is happening, it helps me sharpen my skills in context—a huge (and hugely expensive) lift for a traditional leadership coach.
But now we can talk to algorithms—we can state our preferences. I used o3 to generate a YouTube playlist that reflects what I actually want to watch (like I said, it loves tables):
Then I clicked on those videos to tell YouTube what to serve me, and voila—instant feed cleanse.
This is the biggest “wow” moment I’ve had with a new OpenAI model since GPT-4. The company has successfully lengthened the leash that an AI gets in order to do its tasks. Now you can reliably let it work for minutes at a time to get higher quality answers, with no intervention.
April 16
📰 3 Ways to Amplify Your Creator Gravity by
Build Dense Things
When I say dense, I mean something that doesn’t have a 24-hour life cycle and can’t be plucked from the top of your head. It should:
Challenge you
Push the edges of your thinking
Be impossible to build overnight
Note how these examples exist on owned channels (community, job board, online courses). That’s a big part of amplifying your gravity—creating value independently of a testy algorithm. Otherwise, your planet is constantly under threat of being extinguished.
If you want to stand out, you have to map a new territory. And you can’t do that without venturing where others haven’t, risking being wrong, and experimenting with ideas that might fail spectacularly.
The idea from this section came from reading Anu Atluru’s incredible piece, Make Something Heavy. I would highly recommend you read it!
📰 Finishing the App by
there's also something unsettling about this new relationship with creation. Unlike Georges Seurat meticulously placing each dot of paint, I'm orchestrating rather than crafting. The AI handles the tedious parts while I direct traffic. I wonder if this is still art. And as amazing as channeling this tidal wave of creative energy feels, it would also be good if I remembered to eat dinner.
Without the natural pauses provided by research, learning curves, or even the limitations of skill, there’s nothing to slow you down or force you to step away and reflect. The dopamine rush becomes constant and relentless. As a result, the very thing that feels like progress—making something new—can easily slip into compulsion. And compulsion can tilt all too easily into something even more destructive.
This is the paradox of unfettered creativity: without resistance, without friction, the creative impulse doesn't find its natural rhythm—it accelerates until it derails. What makes AI-assisted creation so seductive is precisely what makes it dangerous: it removes the natural constraints that have always forced creators to pause, reflect, and return to the world around them. The hat gets finished, but at what cost?
📰 Staying Sane in 2025 by
I’ve been delving into history, looking for inspiration of those who silently protested their intellectual age and I’ve become fascinated by the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Less famous than his existentialist peers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty seemed to do a better job of resisting the madness of his age, Communism. He was able to clearly see the horrors of Stalin and the Soviet Union and directly criticized his friend Sartre for excusing violence. For this, he lost a friend and withdrew from the intellectual scene in France. Despite this, he never seemed to really get caught up in the popular political fights of his age. He shifted his attention toward his work, toward philosophical inquiry.
📰 The Book That Changed My Life by Ryan Holiday
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Hardcover) (Leather) (Paperback) Why do I like the Gregory Hays edition so much? Because it’s alive and accessible. Hays uses clear, modern, plain English, but still manages to capture the power and beauty of Marcus’s writing and wisdom. There are no “thou’s,” “shalls,” “thys” or “thees,”—nothing old-fashioned to confuse you and slow you down.
📰 Finding Your Intuition and Changing Your Personality by
3. How to Have a Passionate Life (David Brooks, NYT)
📰 A Science-Based Guide to Thinking Creatively—With LLMs by Every’s Rhea Purohit
In her 2003 book *The Creative Mind*, Boden described creativity as the ability to come up with ideas that are new, surprising, and valuable. She also classified creativity, dividing it into three types—combinatorial, exploratory, and transformational.
Combinatorial creativity: Great ideas come from unexpected but meaningful connections This type of creativity is about creating unfamiliar combinations of familiar ideas, with the added requirement that there’s a clear conceptual link between the ideas. The resulting combination has to “make sense.”
Exploratory creativity: How to find new ideas in familiar places Exploratory creativity is about discovering new possibilities within a conceptual space—a style of painting, a genre of music, or a branch of mathematics, for example. Each of these spaces is defined by rules, and exploratory creativity doesn’t break them. Instead, it plays within them in surprising ways. It’s about seeing new patterns in familiar places.
Transformation creativity—bending the rules until a new reality emerges Transformational creativity goes a step beyond exploratory creativity. Instead of exploring a conceptual space, it fundamentally alters its structure by changing one of its core rules. Boden takes the example of the composer **Arnold Schoenberg**, who made atonal music by altering the rule that a piece of music must begin and end in the same key.
Here are three ways LLMs can support your creative process in practice.
Make feedback loops shorter One of the most practical ways LLMs can support creativity is by dramatically shortening feedback loops. For example, it reduces the time I take to come up with a good analogy (combinatorial creativity) because I can prompt it to come up with, say, 20 examples of metaphors that describe the concept I want to express. From there I can identify the ones with potential and refine them myself. Exploratory and transformational creativity, on the other hand, often require deep familiarity with a conceptual space. Here, LLMs save time by acting as intelligent research assistants. Tools like OpenAI’s deep research can help you get a clearer sense of the landscape you’re working within, as well as a stronger foundation from which to push its boundaries.
Push past the obvious—and you might surprise yourself Since LLMs can rapidly iterate on a given idea, they’re good at revealing directions and nuances you might not have noticed on your own. Finding adjacent but unexpected ideas is an important aspect of both exploratory and transformative creativity—and LLMs make it easier for you to see the spectrum of creative possibility.
Another way to practice this kind of thinking is by prompting the model to challenge your assumptions—for example, by asking it to present an opposing perspective, or a critique from a voice unlike your own.
Articulate your taste We’ve talked about how LLMs are powerful tools to help you put words to your aesthetic sensibilities before. Taste—in books, music, clothing, people—is notoriously hard to define without resorting to a string of examples. I find it hard to put words to the kind of books I like to read, but I can tell you that I enjoy Vladimir Nabokov, David Sedaris, and Jon Krakauer—three wildly different writers. An LLM, however, detected underlying patterns across those choices: a tendency for precise word choice, a mordant wit, and a fascination with the intensity of the human experience.
📰 The Subtle Art of Showing Up by
“Just showing up over and over again is kind of my way that I get over everything, over my laziness, over my apathy, over my despair at what might be going on in the wider world,” Kleon shared.
📰 AI Phobia Is Just Fear That ‘Easier’ Equals ‘Cheating’ by
The next time someone reflexively rejects AI-assisted work, we might gently ask: Are you concerned about the quality, or just uncomfortable with the ease?
📰 A Simple Vision for the Future of Media Organizations by
The most successful media organizations of the future will provide a structure that supports and invests in talent while sharing the financial rewards.
🎧 Tariff Twists and Turns, Meta Antitrust Trial, and Blue Origin Girls' Trip - Pivot Pod
Companies don't fail because they're invaded; they fail because they become bankrupt.
Transcript: Scott Galloway Countries don't go out of business because they're invaded. They go out of business because they go broke.
April 15
Corporate governance involves shareholders electing a board, which then acts as a fiduciary, representing the interests of others after agreeing to their compensation. Being asked to be someone's fiduciary is a compliment, indicating trust in your skills and integrity to prioritize others' interests. Humans' capacity to act as fiduciaries, representing even those they'll never meet, distinguishes us.
Transcript: Scott Galloway This is how corporate governance works. Shareholders elect the board and the board really has two jobs. They, what does it mean to be a fiduciary? I love the word fiduciary. I think it's a fantastic word, and that is once you have your deal, once you say, okay, I'm getting paid X, your job is then as a fiduciary to represent the interests of others. I love that. When someone asks you to be their fiduciary for their estate, that's a real compliment because what they're saying is, I think you can represent other people. I think you have the skills to represent somebody else. And also you have the integrity to think about or look at the lens of decision-making through other people. It's very difficult. Other than the instincts, one of the things that separates us from the animals is that we have the ability to be just better fiduciaries. We can represent society. We can represent people that we will never meet.
April 14
📰 How to Write Online by
If you’ve ever thought about writing online or been tempted to publish an opinion, let me teach you all that I know. Here are the four principles I’d like to share:
1. Craft at every level matters.
2. Pursue your curiosity, but acknowledge the lizard brain.
3. People will misinterpret you.
4. AI is a terrible writer, and a wonderful thought companion.
carefully editing at the individual word or sentence level can create a smooth, waterslide-like flow where readers glide effortlessly from sentence to sentence, unable to stop themselves. Many writers mistakenly think achieving this effect means using elaborate language, complicated grammar, or ornate sentences. In reality, especially in online publishing, it typically means simplifying—shorter sentences, direct language. People behave differently on the internet than when they sit down to read a book. You need to work harder to hold their attention.
The challenge with simple sentence structure is that you can attract an audience that is only casually engaged in what you’re writing about. The more broadly accessible your work, the more explanatory you’ll have to be, and the less subtlety you’ll be able to employ.
A merely good piece can get away with containing either a great idea *or* great sentences. But if you really want to be in the top one percent, you have to be excellent at both sentence-level craft and ideas.
It makes me uncomfortable to say, but if you wanted to have a consistently performant publication, you should probably find a way to tie everything into sex, sports, gambling, or outrage.
At some point you just have to acknowledge that everyone has lizard brains. Your task is to embrace it or write work that is so good people overcome their more primal interests.
The hard truth is that your readers will misinterpret what you do. People are more interested in confirmation of their biases than nuanced argument. You cannot take it personally.
people will misinterpret what you say. When you are making an expansive, detailed argument, you need to repeat your central point over and over again throughout the piece. Every section has to clearly support your central thesis. If there is an iota of ambiguity, readers will insert their own bias and your writing will not be nearly as impactful.
The best way to use AI is as a mental lubricator. It can edit, advise, partner, and transcribe. It’s the world’s most flexible intellectual assistant. It should reduce the delta between the words you can type per minute and the *publishable* words you can type per minute. You'll know that you're using AI well when your total publishable word count creeps up per day. In my own practice, I found that I was slowly but surely able to go from 1,500 to 1,600 to 2,000 to, these days, 2,500 words of publishable content in a day. The ultimate sign of success is that you are able to create great work faster that feels like it is yours, not the AI’s. Writing with AI means that you no longer worry about publishing enough content; you only worry about publishing the *right* content.
April 13
📰 Inside MrBeast's Creative Process by Jon Youshaei
For 14 years, he made 3,000+ videos that got 20 billion views. Here's how he did it:
Every Monday, while in college, King gathered his roommates and had them pitch video ideas.
King awarded $100 to the best ideas he made into videos.
Years later, now with a staff of 20+ employees, King does a similar process.
“Everybody comes to the table with a concept. Somebody from finance is there, an assistant is in there," King told me. "Anyone can have a great idea.”
What’s a T-Sheet? Ah yes, glad you asked. Grab some paper. Draw a big T.
On top, write your video’s headline.
On left, describe the concept.
On right, sketch thumbnail or intro scene.
"The 2-step process for exceptional results: 1. Spend a little time each day thinking about the highest leverage activity available to you. 2. Spend a little time each day working on it."
"The feeling of progress is one of the best feelings of all. This is true even when progress is small."
"The 4 qualities of a great career:
1. I enjoy it
2. I'm good at it
3. I make good money
4. I’m around fascinating people
Answer in reverse order:
1. Where are fascinating people?
2. In what ways can I make money with them?
3. Which ones am I good at?
4. Which ones do I enjoy?"
🎥 I quit my job, then made $70k in 2 months by
the entrepreneur apprenticeship, and that is a name I got from Daniel Priestley, or that Daniel Priestley came up with. Daniel Priestley is like a serial entrepreneur, an epic businessman. I love pretty much every single thing that he says and read all his books and all that kind of thing. And he's really cool, and he has this idea called the entrepreneur apprentice. To explain this, I'm just going to read something that Daniel Pry wrote about it. Uh, so he said, "If you're at all confused about starting a business, I recommend doing a year as a direct report to an entrepreneur. You'll learn, you'll earn and you'll build confidence. I've had a dozen of my ex-employees go off and start seven-figure businesses. These people worked closely with me for several years and felt ready to do their own thing. Only 7% of businesses hit $1 million, and almost all of my previous reports have achieved it. Being an apprentice to an entrepreneur is part of the entrepreneur journey.
However, my energy started to lean towards this whole group coaching program thing, where I help YouTubers—YouTubers who've already got an audience—build the business side of their YouTube channel. Basically, a couple of weeks ago, I was like, "I should just test it out," and I just made an application for them to see if people were interested, and I just shared it in my newsletter. I got a whole load of applications. I called the program the "$100,000 YouTuber." That's still what it's called. I think it’s a fun name; it kind of accurately describes what the program is about, and so I just made this form, and a bunch of people applied. Then, I was just like, "I guess the next stage is to talk to these people and see if they want to join the The first person I spoke to, I didn't even have a sales page or anything. I just spoke to them and then I thought I needed to pay to describe what I was talking about, so I then kind of made a page and hopped on about 25 sales calls with loads of people who had applied, whom I thought would be a good fit for the program, and a bunch of them joined. That is basically the main source of revenue for February. The last couple of weeks, and so now my job is to help them get results over the next couple of months. It's a six-month program, and I'm going to be very committed to working with them, showing up every week, you know, helping them get results and delivering all that.
April 12
📰 All Is Not Well! by
“What else can I get away with?” is the professional motto of writer and director Noah Hawley. (To quote *The Medium is the Massage*, “Art is anything you can get away with.”)
📰 Drowning in Inch-Deep Water: The Art of Meeting People Where They Are by
As I sit with clients in therapy, I continuously fight the temptation to pull them underwater before they're ready. Instead, I try to meet them on the shore where they stand. I've learned that everyone's definition and experience of "drowning" is different. What feels like ankle-deep water to me might feel like a tsunami to someone else. Their perception is their reality, and my role isn't to correct it but to honor it.
📰 Your CEO Just Said ‘Use AI or Else.’ Here’s What to Do Next. by Every’s Alex Duffy
This five-step guide is for anyone trying to understand what Shopify’s new AI expectations mean in practice. What does “reflexive AI usage” look like? How do you go from feeling behind to feeling fluent? Most importantly, how do you make AI work for you—without it feeling like more work? Let’s dive in.
Step 1: Start using AI now
Pick something you already do—writing a weekly update, sorting tasks, summarizing calls—and try doing it with AI:
One trick: Have AI ask you questions first. Instead of just saying “rewrite this,” give it a prompt, like, “Interview me about my goals for this project,” and let it interview you. That back-and-forth helps it understand what you actually need.
Step 2: Know how you provide value
Before AI can multiply your work, you need to know what’s worth multiplying.
if you know your edge, AI becomes a point of leverage. Try writing on a blank piece of paper or in an Obsidian note:
What would your team miss if you disappeared for a week?
What problems do people ask you to help solve?
What feels easy for you but hard for others?
What do you, yourself, want to accomplish?
Now pick one of those strengths and ask: How could AI help me do this faster, better, or in a different way than I could have before? Generic AI usage leads to generic results. Push yourself to put your subject matter expertise into words.
Step 3: Develop a documentation habit
If there’s one underrated unlock for getting more out of AI, it’s this: Write things down. Not for posterity, but for performance. When you combine good documentation with AI, you’re not just saving time—you’re setting up automation.
The next time you are doing something you do often—writing a changelog, triaging bugs, launching a campaign— write down:
What kicks off your process?
What steps do you take?
What does a “good” output look like?
You can capture that context and those expectations in whatever system you normally work: Notion, Google Docs, Voice Notes, Slack, a notebook. The most important thing is creating reusable context, because that document becomes:
A ready-made AI prompt
A prototype brief
An onboarding document for a new teammate
A starting point for automation Good documentation turns one-off experiments into repeatable processes, and repeatable processes into opportunities for automation.
Step 4: What you repeat, you can automate
Once you notice you’re doing something more than once—and it’s working—you're not just experimenting anymore. You’re building
Block one hour this week to review how you’ve used AI in the past month and ask yourself:
What have I used AI for more than once?
What worked especially well?
What took less time than it used to?
Then ask: Can I turn this into a repeatable thing?
A Claude or ChatGPT prompt template?
A Slackbot that handles a recurring task?
A Notion button that auto-generates your weekly update?
A product that makes you a custom podcast each day?
If it worked once, it can work 10 times, and if it works 10 times, it’s probably worth sharing—or automating. Just make sure it's worth building according to the value you defined in step two.
Can you turn this conversation into a reusable template? Include the key instructions I gave you, the structure of the output, and suggestions for how someone else could adapt it to their own use case.
Step 5: Share what you learn
Pick one thing—an AI-powered workflow, a lesson learned, or a prompt that surprised you—and post it in a public Slack or Discord channel. Or run a 15-minute “here’s what I tried” session at your next team meeting. It doesn’t have to be formal—your goal is to show your process, not just your outcomes. These show-and-tell sessions create vital bridges: The people closest to the problems can explain their needs and solutions, while technical teams can identify opportunities to automate and scale what's working. Sharing your experiments builds trust and visibility. When performance reviews include questions about AI usage (as Lutke says they will), you won’t be guessing at answers. You’ll have receipts.
Learn AI like it’s your job
You don’t need to build an agent or master prompt engineering. You just need to start the loop: Try, reflect, document, share, repeat.
The people who do that—the ones who start small, learn fast, and make their work visible—are going to define what this AI-powered version of work becomes.
📰 We Don't Have Time, We Are Time. by
From the time we can speak, we're conditioned to view time as a commodity similar to cash: something we can save or spend, to be used wisely or wasted.
I do not own my time, and I get so much more by giving it away than trying to conserve it.
An enormous amount of modern life is predicated on the illusion that we should—or even can—try to completely master our time, that we can dominate our to do list, that we can get sovereign power over our clock and our calendar. In reality, we don't have time, *we are time*. You are a series of moments chained together, not someone with a series of moments to master and put in the bank. Not only is this kind of mastery most likely impossible, but even if it were possible, it would be supremely alienating. Almost all of the most worthwhile things in life—love, friendship, community, success—come with a little bit of sacrifice. You turn over some of your control of your time to other people.
📰 The Worst Book Cover I’ve Ever Designed by
Authors want to sell books, but in hybrid publishing, selling books is not necessarily the only, or even primary goal. The goal of this sort of publishing is often to establish oneself as an expert in a particular field. To book speaking gigs and gain clients. The book becomes a calling card or a sales tool. The cover becomes a sales tool for the sales tool.
📰 What Can Finland Teach Us About Happiness? by
The wealth effect is real, so now may be a good time to take a good hard look at your emergency fund and overall spending.
📰 Why I Love Overcast Light by
In art school you don’t often get a chance to paint overcast light conditions because there’s no way to simulate it perfectly indoors. A very large north-facing window comes close, but studio north light is still quite directional compared to actual overcast light. Even a bank of fluorescent fixtures across the ceiling doesn’t match it exactly because the light needs to be coming equally and evenly from above.
🎧 What Is America’s Brand? How AI Is Changing Work, and How Scott Records From Anywhere - Prof G Pod
This is what you want. You want a second screen at work. You want your screen, your typical computer screen, and then you want a second screen that has nothing but AI on it, that has mid-journey, that has Anthropic, that has ChatGPT, and a Bunch of the other cats and dogs. And every time you do a task, you want to turn to your second screen and think, how can my second screen help my first screen? What additional insight, data, research, ideas really get good at prompting? And before you know it, your head's going to spin around all the different shit you can do. Turn this into a chart. What is a different way to frame this? What types of visuals might better display this information? What additional data, parables, historical, anthropological evidence can you do to support the following argument that I'm making in the above two paragraphs, right? I just, just so incredibly powerful. But your job and you sound, you know, you are young, you're 34, you need to be a weapon.
🎧 The Secret Strategist Behind the Biggest YouTubers - Paddy Galloway on The Colin & Samir Show
Five minute haircut versus 50 minute haircut
if they don't click, they don't watch that. The goal is that your video should be familiar to the audience, but also unexpected.
Even our format here of like, maybe it's a $1 versus $10 versus $100 golf club or something like that. You can apply formats in so many niches. And it's honestly, it sounds simple, but so much of our success through my consulting company, through the other things we do, it's just seeing what is working in all these different Niches and what our niche what are in our niche that we're currently focused on what is a format that other people are not doing yet that we could bring over and adapt and also i think there's Always like this feeling of like well we want to be original we want to try something new but there's a big difference between taking a format in your existing niche and doing it yourself Because then that competing channel might be like hey i did that first or one of your audience members is like that's not original if you take like if you're the astrophotography channel You take that over it feels fresh it feels new and
Paddy Galloway mentioned a method called 'be a magician,' inspired by a magician who said he doesn't need new tricks, just new audiences for existing ones.
Transcript: Colin There's this method that we talk about quite a bit, uh, called be a magician. And it's because one time we had a conversation with a magician who said to us, I don't have to come up with new tricks. I just have to show my tricks to audiences who haven't seen them before.
To find the right packaging, push your concept to its most exaggerated form. Then, dial it back to something you're comfortable with. Explore the extremes first.
Transcript: Colin It's a really interesting exercise to, uh, this is actually something Jimmy said to us the first time we ever went to Greenville. He told us with our packaging, he said, pull it to the most exaggerated version of what it is, and then pull it back to what you're comfortable with, but, but explore the most exaggerated Version of the concept. Uh, and, and I thought that was a really interesting mental framework and exercise.
Use ideation frameworks like superlatives (fastest, biggest, smallest) and 'versus' to capture attention. To be seen, learn to see by analyzing how others capture your attention on YouTube and noting the frameworks they use. Also, consider offering exclusive access to something unique.
Transcript: Colin There are some really interesting frameworks to start with when it comes to ideation. Like one is superlatives. So fastest, biggest, smallest. You see these a lot on YouTube. And I think superlatives are really easy visual words to latch onto. And I think think that's, that's important, right? The other is versus versus is a classic, like Ford and F-150 versus Rivian, right? Like immediately you peg two things against each other. And then we just talked about like the three step that, that we talk about quite a bit, the like $1, $10, $100, right? Those like three steps. So I think you start to, the most important thing, there's a Seth Godin quote that says, in order to be seen, you must learn how to see. And I think spending time on YouTube, just clocking what is the framework, like what are they using in this framework to capture my attention is, is the most important and just writing It down. Being like, oh, interesting world's smallest X. How many times do I see superlatives show up like that? Paddy Galloway Another one that I've been seeing a lot that we've had some success with over the years is like getting exclusive access or getting access to something that most people don't get access To.
Consider a YouTube video as a title, thumbnail, and list. This provides an interesting perspective on how to structure content.
Transcript: Colin What do you think about lists? Like six financial tips or six, you know, like what do you think about lists? Ali Abdaal is like a very forward man. Yeah. Ali, if you're listening, hopefully you like that. Samir I called you a list man, but he refers to himself as a forward thinking list man. Colin So he, I mean, he said to us, he was like a YouTube video is, is a title thumbnail on a list. And, uh, I thought that was a really interesting perspective.
Don't just create generic listicles. Make your listicle unique, especially if it has fewer than 10 items. Instead of 'seven money tips,' try 'seven underrated saving tips' or 'seven money tips the top 1% are using.' If your listicle is short, it needs a unique angle to feel less generic and more like a puzzle.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway Let's say in the finance niche and you made a video, which is like seven money tips, you know, to grow your wealth, it's kind of a bit generic and broad and probably lots of people covered It before. But if you say like seven underrated saving tips or seven money tips, the top one percent are using that you don't know so like yeah i think there's nothing wrong i think the actual formative List and listicles is really effective and it's very easy to consume as well but i think if it's a low number so like between like three things and like 10 or 12 things i want there to be a Really unique thing if it's a really big number sometimes that can be just like a bit more generic because you're just getting so much in one video. So you see these videos, which are like 40 pieces of life advice I learned before turning 40 or something. You see this like real quick fire, like life advice type videos. So, I mean, even, I always think about listicles as well. If your listicle is like under 10, I think you can start to see it as less of just a listicle, but more of like a puzzle.
Think of thumbnail branding as the color of the text or font. It could be the t-shirt color the guest is wearing. Control what you can in the thumbnail to drown out the noise.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway I always think of like thumbnail brand is more like you know could be color of text i've seen a lot of people like copy your sort of yellow color but could be color text could be font it could Be just like sometimes i think about even the t-shirt or color that the guest is wearing like it's difficult to control but maybe in the thumbnail that can control it but overall I think It's just about trying to drown out that noise
The 'creator brain' focuses on replicating successful content, while the 'creative brain' emphasizes uniqueness. Balancing these two perspectives is crucial, although they can sometimes conflict.
Transcript: Colin The creator brain is actually look at what's working and repeat what's working the creative is how can I be unique And sometimes those are at odds with each other
Paddy Galloway recommends the '80% rule' for YouTube channels. Aim to interest at least 80% of your audience with each video. This helps diagnose channel problems.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway Building almost like a bingeable format so they watch one and they can watch another right so i like to think of this framework that I call the 80% rule, but it's not like the classic Pareto Principle 80% rule, which is like, we should aim to interest 80% plus of our audience with every upload. That sounds kind of basic when you hear it said, but it's a great way of diagnosing problems with the channel.
Use the 80/20 rule: Aim to interest at least 80% of your audience 80% of the time. This allows for experimentation in one out of every five videos and can lead to innovation. From a strategy perspective, always milk a successful format instead of undermilking it, because others will likely copy it. Don't let the view maximizer stop you from milking a format.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway The 80% strategy reel says you should try to aim 80% of your audience. But the second part of it is 80% of the time. So you try to aim to interest 80% plus overlap with your audience in every video. But you do that 80% of the time. So you get one in let's say every five videos that you can just try something different and go and break that rule. And I think that's where you kind of innovate. Cause if you just, there are channels that just focus down on like milking a certain format so much that then when that format dries up, they don't really have a bridge to cross to go to Another place. I will say from a strategy perspective, I'm always more in favor of milking something than under milking something. It's like, what if I milk this too much? It's like, well, what if you don't milk it too much and everyone else copies it and you've just wasted all these, you know, views. The view maxer is not going to tell you to stop.
Don't only rely on metrics. Start valuing anecdotal feedback by tracking who reached out after releasing a video, who engaged in your inbox, who DM'd you, and what episodes people discuss when you're at an event.
Transcript: Colin We also have started to value anecdotal feedback, which is really intangible, but like who reached out after we made that video, who was in our inbox, who DM'd us, who, when we're out At an event, what episodes are they talking about?
Don't just create vlogs; make them concept blogs. Instead of a simple '24 hours me' vlog, try a 'day in the life of an NFL player' or similar concept.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway I like the idea of like concept blogs. So not just a vlog, but like there's a concept behind what you're doing. So it's like, instead of just like, um, 24 hours, me, it's like day in the life of like an NFL player or something.
If you're tryin' to improve your titles, make it a daily habit to write 'em. Generate a high volume of titles to pull from different formats. Write 30 titles for each video; it shouldn't take too long. Alter previous titles, even if most aren't great. You'll learn what a bad idea looks like.
Transcript: Colin Whether you're a brand or you're a creator and you're trying to get better at this, like writing titles as a daily exercise is probably the most important thing you could do. Like it is just the whole thing. Thinking of titles, writing them, taking a title that you see on YouTube and reshaping it a hundred times, you know, or just like, and now there's so many great tools to help you do that Too. But just like getting a high volume of titles through your brain is so important because then you can pull from formats that you have. Right. Paddy Galloway I sometimes tell creators like, write 30 titles for your video. Yeah. Like Patty, that's overwhelming. It's too much. I'm like, is everyone just experiencing things different to me? Because 30 tiles, like we can write 30 tiles and like, we could do that together in like 10 minutes. Right. Not even like, it doesn't mean, I think people always think that when we say like, come up with a huge volume of titles or thumbnail concepts that they all have to be like, great. No, like it's about like putting things together, trying different words, seeing what looks interesting, studying other people, like what are they doing? Try to adapt that. So for a lot of the clients we work with, like we're sitting down and me and my team will write, yeah, 30, 40 titles for a video. And like, that doesn't take that long. Colin And five of them are slight alterations of a previous one, right? That's just like one word difference or something. So it's not, it's not like you're coming up with 30 brand new ideas in a row you're writing one and then altering that and then altering it and altering it and altering it and like you said Actually if 29 of them are awful that's actually totally fine because you'll also start to learn what a bad idea looks like right and like that that's also important.
Nast created easily repeatable formats on YouTube, like '10 things you can't live without,' similar to Architectural Digest's format or the '73 Questions' format.
Transcript: Colin Condé Nast has created some of the most easy to repeat formats on youtube 10 things you can't live without right or architectural digest yeah or uh the the 70 was a 73 question 72 or 73 73 Sounds it could be 71 weirder no no i think it's guys we look this up right now no no let's let everyone put it let's not look it up. Samir 73. Everyone put it up. I'm saying 72. Yeah.
Galloway suggests immediately delivering on the promise made in the title within the intro, visually or verbally. Make viewers feel they've made the right choice and avoid making them feel foolish. Provide necessary context without overdoing it. Tease intriguing story elements and seamlessly transition into the first storyline.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway My intro formula is like immediately try to deliver on the promise in some sense. So like if you make a promise in your title film now, in your intro, can you deliver on that visually or verbally? Some way to just make like a nice frame I like to think about is like, just make your viewer feel like they made the right decision. Don't make them feel like an idiot. You said the same thing. Yeah. Make them feel like they they made the right decision. Um, and then it's like, you know, the necessary context, not over context. So some credits put too much context in that intro. So what's the necessary context? What are the intriguing, like parts of the story or parts of the, the video that you can kind of tease or highlight in that intro? And then how do we just kind of flow into the, the first storyline, the first action point like this big gap. Like I like being able to look at an intro and say, I don't really know where that intro starts and ends. It just flows into the content.
Use this framework to maximize video retention:
1. Confirm the click by ensuring the video aligns with the thumbnail.
2. Establish the video's context in the first seven seconds.
3. Introduce a new hook by 30 seconds to hold the viewer's attention.
4. Deliver an expectation of value that the viewer will get towards the end.
Transcript: Colin We have a bit of a different framework for that. Basically how we think about it is like the first thing is confirm the click. So you click in, you have to go, okay, that is the thumbnail that I clicked on. The first seven seconds is establishing the video and kind of laying the context and the foundation for it. And by 30 seconds, we want to introduce a new hook. So we want to introduce something that you didn't expect from the thumbnail that is going to make you stay until the end. Samir And deliver an expectation of value. Colin If you stay towards the end, you will get these loops closed.
Use multiple questions in the title, promising an answer to intrigue viewers. For example, for a video about the megalodon, pose questions like its extinction despite being a top predator, then promise to explore the reasons in the video.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway Like a former, I think is really successful as well and works really well is like multiple questions and then a promise of an answer. So it could be like, yeah, you could make, let's just think of an example. Like you're saying, a megalodon which is like a giant prehistoric shark so you might say like the megalodon was like the fiercest president predator in the oceans yeah it was like five Times the size of great white shark it killed everything it's on site and yet somehow it went extinct how how could this shark go extinct how could this thing happen and then you sort of The viewer like yeah how could that happen and then're like, is there a mysterious reason behind the disappearance of the Megalodon? And then suddenly you're like, okay, that's intriguing. And then it's like, in this video, we're going to dive into it.
April 11
🎥 YouTube Masterclass 2025 with MrBeast, MKBHD & Casey Neistat - Jon Youshaei
Our first tip is to use visual anchors. So here's the truth: too many creators make videos that are way better off as articles or written posts on X or LinkedIn.
show versus tell. Showing bills so worthless that people are making sidewalk origami out of them is much more powerful than a reporter just telling you about inflation
the napkin test, which I talked about in my interview with Cleo Abram, who is one of the fastest growing YouTubers right now. You know what a good video is if you and I sat down for coffee, and I was telling you a story about something interesting. The moment when I need to pull out a napkin and draw a diagram, or show you something on my phone and pause it, and be like, you see? This, like, that’s a good video. Otherwise, it should just be an essay because that's much easier to write.
the napkin Test works like this: imagine you're explaining the idea for your next YouTube video to a friend. Do you have to one, draw anything on a napkin to prove your point; two, pull out your phone to show them a photo; or three, repeat words like this or that to point out anything? As you explained, if the answer was yes to any of the above, congrats! You have a visual anchor.
imagine there was a place where you could sort through a bunch of anchor visuals for your niche every single week. Well, that place exists, and it’s called Reddit. You just have to know how to use it in the right way. So here’s the tactic: go to Reddit, type in your niche or topic, and check out the subreddits or forums that show up. For example, here’s a subreddit that I used to check all the time when I made videos about the best marketing and advertising campaigns. The first time you go to your subreddit, this is key: make sure you filter by top and all time, so you see the best posts. The best visuals are upvoted in this case by over 450,000 members of this subreddit. It's basically a pre-vetted visual anchor if you want to make a video about marketing and packaging, and it's so cool to see that because it just starts giving you more ideas for longer videos. Then here's where things really start rolling. You can literally go back to that same subreddit every week or every month. Just change all time to a weekly, and you can see all the best visuals showing up over time
Note: https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/top/?t=month - add Reddit to "idea generating machine"
when something gets posted on Reddit on Monday, it ends up on BuzzFeed on Tuesday, then it gets picked up on social media on Wednesday, and then it shows up on Facebook next month.
next tip is to make your intros rainy on YouTube. Great videos are killed by boring intros all the time, so remember to make it rainy. R-A-I-N-Y. Hear me out: this means your intro has to check the following five boxes, or at least as many of them as possible, and I’ll show you how I did it with a few examples of intros that got 74% retention and 60% retention. So, R R stands for result up front in your intro; you’ve got to tease the result. Get if they watch your video, like where is it going? What are you going to deliver? The value or at least pose the question that your video will answer. Highlight the stakes and make sure it peaks enough curiosity to watch; and again I'll show you a few examples of how to do that for both unscripted and scripted videos here in a moment. A stands for address the objection. Call out the elephant in the room before your viewers even think about it. Listen, viewers today are sharper than ever before because they have more options than ever before, and that means their BS detectors are on high alert. Like you can say the result of your video and your intro, but they're already calling BS in their minds, whether it's subconscious or conscious; and you need to address it. I stands for instant. For long form, your intros should be around 45 seconds or less. And don't worry, we'll talk about what that means for short form. N stands for why now? Like why is your YouTube video relevant right now? Is there a trend, a change, or something in the news that makes your video more timely? And why stands for why you? Like why are you the person to deliver this? Message, and don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean you have to change who you are for a YouTube intro. That just means you have to highlight the right parts about your background.
what I titled the video as well, which is another way to communicate the result
think about how you can make the intro part of your video stronger.
thumbnails, but I actually think there are five, and I call it the five C's: composition, context, clean, curiosity, and color. The first C is composition, meaning does the framing, or the angles, or the leading lines draw you in? The first thumbnail here is so captivating because it comes from the point of view of a person holding on to those chairs for dear life, and the leading lines down the corridor. I mean, this is just a masterpiece of a thumbnail. The second one comes from Isaiah Photo, and it’s so well composed, with the camera being positioned above his head, the prime bottles all around him. You could tell that he took time to frame. And compose this shot properly. The second "C" is context. Too many creators design their thumbnails without any context of where it'll show up. They design it on a giant screen, so it may look good on desktop, but like Marquez says, it has to look good when small on mobile. So here's a rule I like to use: If you scale down your thumbnail to 18%, can you still read it? If not, you have to simplify it. You can see in these examples, you can clearly see the headphones, the ball, the text, the spider. It still pops even when it's smaller. The next "C" is clean. Too many thumbnails are a cluttered mess. The rule to remember is: Does your thumbnail have three elements or less? This first one has the head, the text, the pink foam. The second one from Tyler Blanchard has his head, the text, a grenade. It's simple and clean. The next "C" is curiosity. Meaning, does your thumbnail pose a question that viewers immediately want answered? This could be done with blurring or blocking out an element, like Unbox Therapy did, or contradicting something, like you've seen this fake model thumbnail that Zach did. Again, this one has great composition too. Those leading lines just draw your eye in, so the more C's you can check off the list, the better. The last C is the most powerful, and that’s color. Meaning, do you pair colors in a way that draws the eye? For that, you want to refer to the color wheel and pair primary colors with the complementary ones. Like Ryan Tran’s hair and shirt in this thumbnail are yellowish gold, so it’s not an accident that he made the chairs around him purple. Or Michelle, pairing the primary color of blue from her blazer and glove with an orange jumpsuit and the orangish-brown background. Brilliant! And you know, I was playing around with the new Chat GPT 4.0, and you could literally take these thumbnails, or any thumbnail that adheres to the 5 C's, and then take a selfie of yourself. Um, then put in a prompt that’s like, "Please replace the person in this thumbnail with me and keep their wardrobe and facial expression the same." Then you look at this, and this is crazy! You’ll get these thumbnails and to be clear, I’m not recommending you do this at all. I’m just showing you how powerful these tools are becoming. Especially if you know the 5 C's
The next tip is to test macro rather than micro. So YouTube recently launched a thumbnail testing tool, and there's a really clever way to use it that few creators have caught on to.
Step One is he uploaded three thumbnails with macro, big changes like the angle of the shot, his face, and the different items from the gun, the clothing, and the bomb. Step Two, he let YouTube select the best-performing thumbnail after a few days. Simple. Step Three, he then made micro changes to the winning thumbnail, like a different shirt or a person on the boat — very small, and then Step Four, he typically will continue to make micro changes until the test results aren’t that different.
next tip is to fix your first frame. Most of what we've covered until now is for long-form videos, but this tip is specifically for shorts
Whenever possible, use props like printouts to show it physically, not just digitally with graphics like most creators do with all the editing tools.
Perfection erases humanity. When something is truly perfect, there's no kind of the human hand in it
what I like to do is, if I see something going viral across multiple formats all across YouTube, then it's like, okay, that seems to be something people really like, and you know they're really interested in that content. So maybe I should just do that. I get a really big way on the channel, and sometimes creators like Nick Giovani, who's one of the biggest food creators out there, don't even bother with certain ideas if they're not outliers or haven't already performed well on other channels, because this is a sign that viewers may not be interested.
Actually, Patty Galloway told me how he does this with his creators like Jesser to help him grow past 25 million subscribers. It’s just a simple question of, you know, what are the five or six best performing videos I’ve made on my channel? Could I make them again in some form? Could I adopt them?
to find an outlier in your niche, all you have to do Is this number one? Open up your YouTube app and search three to four words related to your niche. Then go to search filters and sort by view count video. Anytime, this is key because, essentially, you’re asking YouTube to turn off its algorithm for just a moment to show you the videos that have the most views. Then scroll and click on these top videos and then click one more time to see the subscriber count of the channel that uploaded the video. What you’re looking for here are videos that have over five times more views than the subscriber count of the channel that uploaded it. If you make a list of these outliers and reference them, they'll help you so much when you brainstorm your ideas.
next tip is to copy with taste. So once you find these ideas and outliers, don't just copy and paste; do what I like to call copy with taste. And here's a little spectrum I created to remember it: put your own spin on it, adapt from outside. Your niche meld it with other ideas.
there’s this great quote from the late Virgil Abloh, who said you only have to make a 3% tweak to an existing concept for it to be innovative.
next tip is to find popular problems. Here’s the thing: YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine after Google, and it’s estimated that there are over six billion searches per day of people trying to watch videos to answer a question, to get advice, solve a problem, and so forth. So, as a creator, especially if you’re just starting out, And growing, you'd be crazy not to try to make content to meet that search demand.
how do you find the most popular problems in your niche to make content about? Well, there are three ways to do that. First is the incognito mode method. Two is the Quora method, and three is to poll your audience. The incognito mode method, well, for that one, you just have to go to incognito mode in your browser, then go to YouTube and start typing in video ideas or search queries, and let autocomplete tell you what most people are searching for. You see, by doing this in incognito mode, you're not letting your past searches change the autocomplete, so you're seeing the autocomplete based on the masses, based on their searches. Second, you can go to Quora and figure out what are the most popular questions that people are asking in your niche. All you have to do is search your topic and filter by all time. I love Quora because it's literally a place where people ask questions, and votes tell you what the most amount of people need help with. Answering, and if you make content about that, you're golden. Third, and perhaps the most underrated tip is to poll your audience. You know you could use the poll features on Instagram, YouTube Community, LinkedIn, and so forth to treat your audience like a focus group. I mean, if you follow me on Instagram, you'll already know that I ask for your thoughts on topics for my next videos, or even thumbnails you like best. I constantly go through our Discord community to see if there's a pattern of questions or problems that I could help with in my next video. Basically, the goal is to make content that falls in the middle of this Venn diagram, where what you know and what you're excited about matches up with what people want to hear. Whereas so many creators don’t even ask their audience and just make content that feels totally out of touch.
next tip to remember is that what's interesting is interesting. All right, I know, I know we've talked a lot about data, but sometimes you just have to say, screw the data, screw the algorithm,
it all started by being so interested in something that it became interesting to all of us. And I still believe in all the tactics and the data that we discussed so far, but the big caveat to all of this is this: if you can barely contain your excitement about a video idea, then just make the damn video! Trust me, the audience will feel it.
next tip is to avoid eye fatigue
Most creators jam way too many visuals on screen that cause your eyes to dart all over the place and get fatigue, which will inevitably lead to viewers clicking off.
next tip is to remember the paradox of production. So few creators understand.
Simply put, the smaller you are, the more your production value matters. The bigger you are, the less it does.
let's say you do have a bigger audience. What do your viewers want to see? They want to see you, but raw and unedited. I think that's one of the reasons why our behind the scenes videos with MrBeast took off, because people rarely see him in an Unedited context
that's also why we love docuseries or even these FaceTime TikToks of celebrities, because after seeing them so overly produced everywhere, we want to see it all stripped away.
next tip is to simplify your speech.
Three B's: basic, bold, brief. You could probably tell by now that I love alliteration. So, the first B stands for basic. Make sure you translate jargon into simple words. For example, instead of “leverage,” say “use.” Instead of “optimize,” say “perfect.” Instead of “competencies,” say “skills.” The second thing is to be bold. Remove words from your speech that can undermine your authority without you realizing it, such as “possibly” or “I think.” There's a time and place for that, but most times, it just undermines your authority. Be more assertive. The third thing is to be brief. These are just rules of thumb, but they'll become instinctual over time when scripting your videos. Avoid more than 25 words in a sentence, because you'll start to ramble. Avoid more than three sentences in a paragraph, because you're jumbling a lot of thoughts into one section. My biggest pet peeve by far is to avoid double descriptions. You don't need to say “the room was clean and tidy”; just say “the room was clean.”
hone your off-camera craft so there's There are two parts to being a good YouTuber: being good on camera by doing all the things we're talking about here, improving your production, your speaking, your thumbnails, and your editing. But the second thing, the X Factor to all of this, is having a skill off camera, and the more uncommon that skill or craft is, the easier it is to honestly have a real career on YouTube.
Dr. Mike, who keeps treating patients even though he’s well past 10 million subscribers. I can’t give up practicing clinical medicine because it makes me understand better the problems people have. It allows me to relate better to people, use better language where I can actually see one-on-one if they’re understanding what I’m saying, and it just makes you more valuable but also happier. Even when the channel's not performing as well as you hope, going to the office and having someone tell you your notes are late or your patient is mad that you’re five minutes late to their appointment, that's valuable, and people will always belittle it. So, being able to see the exact outcome of your work right there in the moment is so valuable. It’s what keeps him sharp, because he’s in the trenches. He’s hearing about the latest problems from his patients, and that could spark a content idea that could help even more people.
all this stuff on camera, to be honest, the speaking, the editing, the packaging, that’s a must; you need that to survive on YouTube. But it’s the stuff off camera that helps you thrive. It’s the stuff that happens in Dr. Mike’s office, or Nick’s kitchen, or Matt’s autoshop. That’s what gives them their edge and ideas.
next tip is to earn the right to rebel. So this one has more to do with making money and brand deals, which I I actually think this is one of the biggest pitfalls for creators as they grow. I want you to imagine, for a second, that a brand wants to give you $225,000 to make a sponsored video for them, and here's the kicker: you barely have to mention the brand's product at all. On the surface, I know this makes no sense at all, but I got to bring back Casey Neistat because he does this all the time.
the key is what Casey did before pitching brands his wild idea, and he earned what I like to call the right to rebel. To do that, he started by creating free ads for Nike, and soon he got their executives attention. If you're not willing to do the work without getting paid a hundred times, then chances are You're never going to find the opportunity to do the work and get paid for it, and that's how you know that’s how I was able to, you know, get the thumbs up to make it count. That’s how I was able to get the thumbs up to make the Mercedes campaign or the Walter MIDI campaign that eventually led to a brand deal with Nike, where they asked him to make three videos to make it count for Nike. Yeah, I think what's underappreciated about that video is I deal with Nike to make three videos for the FuelBand, and the first two videos had significantly more emphasis and significantly more budget. When it came time to make the third video, I called up Alex Lopez at Nike and I was like, "Look, I want to do this differently." I want to do something that’s way off the book. I’m way different from what we initially scripted. I won't spend any more money, but I think I can make something much better. And he was like, "Okay, just like don’t screw me over, don’t leave me in the lurch. But if you want to run wild with the creative, go for it." The video was Casey spending Nike's budget to fly all around the world with their Nike FuelBand. It was his way of living. Their slogan, "Make it count," was pitched by Casey. He probably would never have gotten the green light for the crazy idea first.
last tip is to be more like Mozart.
the importance of posting your work instead of spending time perfecting it, even if you feel insecure about it. I was surprised to learn that Casey did.
Even if you go back over 200 years to Mozart, because Mozart wasn’t this automatic masterpiece-making machine that history makes him seem to be. Some of his early critics called his music far too noisy, but Mozart just kept working, kept putting out work, and made over 600 compositions before he died at age 35, which is far, far more than his Peers who only averaged 150 compositions despite living much longer.
here’s the thing about Monet that just crushes my soul and reminds me of so many creators, including myself: that number, 2,500, should be way higher. But Monet was such a perfectionist that this one time he spent three years working on a set of new paintings until at the last moment he noticed these slight imperfections in the corners of those paintings. So he took out a butcher knife and slashed through every single one of them because they weren’t perfect enough for him.
🎧 The Secret Strategist Behind the Biggest YouTubers - Colin and Samir
Only 12% of YouTube videos get over 1,000 views. It's a good reminder of how difficult it is to achieve even modest success on the platform.
Transcript: Colin Only 12% of YouTube videos crack a thousand views.
YouTube's become more competitive, but a compelling title, thumbnail, and video can lead to huge reach, even for small channels, due to YouTube's algorithm.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway It's more competitive than it's ever been, but it's also, if you can deliver a really interesting title thumbnail and video, the kind of multiplier effects of YouTube's algorithm And how far that can reach, even as a small channel, has never been greater.
Video content needs to cater to three audience types: the core audience, the casual audience, and the new audience.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway CCN fit, which is it's the core audience, it's the casual audience, and it hits the new audience
Paddy Galloway illustrates the difference between a short and long YouTube video using the analogy of a one-minute haircut versus a fifty-minute haircut.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway Five minute haircut versus 50 minute haircut
Make your videos familiar yet unexpected to grab audience attention. If they don't click, they won't watch, so focus on intriguing elements.
Transcript: Samir Too, if they don't click, they don't watch that. The goal is that your video should be familiar to the audience, but also unexpected.
Transplant formats from other niches into your own. It feels fresh to your audience and avoids direct comparison to competitors in your niche. Don't obsess over being 100% original; adaptation can be powerful.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway Even our format here of like, maybe it's a $1 versus $10 versus $100 golf club or something like that. You can apply formats in so many niches. And it's honestly, it sounds simple, but so much of our success through my consulting company, through the other things we do, it's just seeing what is working in all these different Niches and what our niche what are in our niche that we're currently focused on what is a format that other people are not doing yet that we could bring over and adapt and also i think there's Always like this feeling of like well we want to be original we want to try something new but there's a big difference between taking a format in your existing niche and doing it yourself Because then that competing channel might be like hey i did that first or one of your audience members is like that's not original if you take like if you're the astrophotography channel You take that over it feels fresh it feels new and
Paddy Galloway mentioned a method called 'be a magician,' inspired by a magician who said he doesn't need new tricks, just new audiences for existing ones.
Transcript: Colin There's this method that we talk about quite a bit, uh, called be a magician. And it's because one time we had a conversation with a magician who said to us, I don't have to come up with new tricks. I just have to show my tricks to audiences who haven't seen them before.
To find the right packaging, push your concept to its most exaggerated form. Then, dial it back to something you're comfortable with. Explore the extremes first.
Transcript: Colin It's a really interesting exercise to, uh, this is actually something Jimmy said to us the first time we ever went to Greenville. He told us with our packaging, he said, pull it to the most exaggerated version of what it is, and then pull it back to what you're comfortable with, but, but explore the most exaggerated Version of the concept. Uh, and, and I thought that was a really interesting mental framework and exercise.
Use ideation frameworks like superlatives (fastest, biggest, smallest) and 'versus' to capture attention. To be seen, learn to see by analyzing how others capture your attention on YouTube and noting the frameworks they use. Also, consider offering exclusive access to something unique.
Transcript: Colin There are some really interesting frameworks to start with when it comes to ideation. Like one is superlatives. So fastest, biggest, smallest. You see these a lot on YouTube. And I think superlatives are really easy visual words to latch onto. And I think think that's, that's important, right? The other is versus versus is a classic, like Ford and F-150 versus Rivian, right? Like immediately you peg two things against each other. And then we just talked about like the three step that, that we talk about quite a bit, the like $1, $10, $100, right? Those like three steps. So I think you start to, the most important thing, there's a Seth Godin quote that says, in order to be seen, you must learn how to see. And I think spending time on YouTube, just clocking what is the framework, like what are they using in this framework to capture my attention is, is the most important and just writing It down. Being like, oh, interesting world's smallest X. How many times do I see superlatives show up like that? Paddy Galloway Another one that I've been seeing a lot that we've had some success with over the years is like getting exclusive access or getting access to something that most people don't get access To.
Consider a YouTube video as a title, thumbnail, and list. This provides an interesting perspective on how to structure content.
Transcript: Colin What do you think about lists? Like six financial tips or six, you know, like what do you think about lists? Ali Abdaal is like a very forward man. Yeah. Ali, if you're listening, hopefully you like that. Samir I called you a list man, but he refers to himself as a forward thinking list man. Colin So he, I mean, he said to us, he was like a YouTube video is, is a title thumbnail on a list. And, uh, I thought that was a really interesting perspective.
Don't just create generic listicles. Make your listicle unique, especially if it has fewer than 10 items. Instead of 'seven money tips,' try 'seven underrated saving tips' or 'seven money tips the top 1% are using.' If your listicle is short, it needs a unique angle to feel less generic and more like a puzzle.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway Let's say in the finance niche and you made a video, which is like seven money tips, you know, to grow your wealth, it's kind of a bit generic and broad and probably lots of people covered It before. But if you say like seven underrated saving tips or seven money tips, the top one percent are using that you don't know so like yeah i think there's nothing wrong i think the actual formative List and listicles is really effective and it's very easy to consume as well but i think if it's a low number so like between like three things and like 10 or 12 things i want there to be a Really unique thing if it's a really big number sometimes that can be just like a bit more generic because you're just getting so much in one video. So you see these videos, which are like 40 pieces of life advice I learned before turning 40 or something. You see this like real quick fire, like life advice type videos. So, I mean, even, I always think about listicles as well. If your listicle is like under 10, I think you can start to see it as less of just a listicle, but more of like a puzzle.
Think of thumbnail branding as the color of the text or font. It could be the t-shirt color the guest is wearing. Control what you can in the thumbnail to drown out the noise.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway I always think of like thumbnail brand is more like you know could be color of text i've seen a lot of people like copy your sort of yellow color but could be color text could be font it could Be just like sometimes i think about even the t-shirt or color that the guest is wearing like it's difficult to control but maybe in the thumbnail that can control it but overall I think It's just about trying to drown out that noise
The 'creator brain' focuses on replicating successful content, while the 'creative brain' emphasizes uniqueness. Balancing these two perspectives is crucial, although they can sometimes conflict.
Transcript: Colin The creator brain is actually look at what's working and repeat what's working the creative is how can I be unique And sometimes those are at odds with each other,
Paddy Galloway recommends the '80% rule' for YouTube channels. Aim to interest at least 80% of your audience with each video. This helps diagnose channel problems.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway Building almost like a bingeable format so they watch one and they can watch another right so i like to think of this framework that I call the 80% rule, but it's not like the classic Pareto Principle 80% rule, which is like, we should aim to interest 80% plus of our audience with every upload. That sounds kind of basic when you hear it said, but it's a great way of diagnosing problems with the channel.
Use the 80/20 rule: Aim to interest at least 80% of your audience 80% of the time. This allows for experimentation in one out of every five videos and can lead to innovation. From a strategy perspective, always milk a successful format instead of undermilking it, because others will likely copy it. Don't let the view maximizer stop you from milking a format.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway The 80% strategy reel says you should try to aim 80% of your audience. But the second part of it is 80% of the time. So you try to aim to interest 80% plus overlap with your audience in every video. But you do that 80% of the time. So you get one in let's say every five videos that you can just try something different and go and break that rule. And I think that's where you kind of innovate. Cause if you just, there are channels that just focus down on like milking a certain format so much that then when that format dries up, they don't really have a bridge to cross to go to Another place. I will say from a strategy perspective, I'm always more in favor of milking something than under milking something. It's like, what if I milk this too much? It's like, well, what if you don't milk it too much and everyone else copies it and you've just wasted all these, you know, views. The view maxer is not going to tell you to stop.
Don't only rely on metrics. Start valuing anecdotal feedback by tracking who reached out after releasing a video, who engaged in your inbox, who DM'd you, and what episodes people discuss when you're at an event.
Transcript: Colin We also have started to value anecdotal feedback, which is really intangible, but like who reached out after we made that video, who was in our inbox, who DM'd us, who, when we're out At an event, what episodes are they talking about?
Don't just create vlogs; make them concept blogs. Instead of a simple '24 hours me' vlog, try a 'day in the life of an NFL player' or similar concept.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway I like the idea of like concept blogs. So not just a vlog, but like there's a concept behind what you're doing. So it's like, instead of just like, um, 24 hours, me, it's like day in the life of like an NFL player or something.
If you're tryin' to improve your titles, make it a daily habit to write 'em. Generate a high volume of titles to pull from different formats. Write 30 titles for each video; it shouldn't take too long. Alter previous titles, even if most aren't great. You'll learn what a bad idea looks like.
Transcript: Colin Whether you're a brand or you're a creator and you're trying to get better at this, like writing titles as a daily exercise is probably the most important thing you could do. Like it is just the whole thing. Thinking of titles, writing them, taking a title that you see on YouTube and reshaping it a hundred times, you know, or just like, and now there's so many great tools to help you do that Too. But just like getting a high volume of titles through your brain is so important because then you can pull from formats that you have. Right. Paddy Galloway I sometimes tell creators like, write 30 titles for your video. Yeah. Like Patty, that's overwhelming. It's too much. I'm like, is everyone just experiencing things different to me? Because 30 tiles, like we can write 30 tiles and like, we could do that together in like 10 minutes. Right. Not even like, it doesn't mean, I think people always think that when we say like, come up with a huge volume of titles or thumbnail concepts that they all have to be like, great. No, like it's about like putting things together, trying different words, seeing what looks interesting, studying other people, like what are they doing? Try to adapt that. So for a lot of the clients we work with, like we're sitting down and me and my team will write, yeah, 30, 40 titles for a video. And like, that doesn't take that long. Colin And five of them are slight alterations of a previous one, right? That's just like one word difference or something. So it's not, it's not like you're coming up with 30 brand new ideas in a row you're writing one and then altering that and then altering it and altering it and altering it and like you said Actually if 29 of them are awful that's actually totally fine because you'll also start to learn what a bad idea looks like right and like that that's also important.
Nast created easily repeatable formats on YouTube, like '10 things you can't live without,' similar to Architectural Digest's format or the '73 Questions' format.
Transcript: Colin Condé Nast has created some of the most easy to repeat formats on youtube 10 things you can't live without right or architectural digest yeah or uh the the 70 was a 73 question 72 or 73 73 Sounds it could be 71 weirder no no i think it's guys we look this up right now no no let's let everyone put it let's not look it up. Samir 73. Everyone put it up. I'm saying 72.
Galloway suggests immediately delivering on the promise made in the title within the intro, visually or verbally. Make viewers feel they've made the right choice and avoid making them feel foolish. Provide necessary context without overdoing it. Tease intriguing story elements and seamlessly transition into the first storyline.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway My intro formula is like immediately try to deliver on the promise in some sense. So like if you make a promise in your title film now, in your intro, can you deliver on that visually or verbally? Some way to just make like a nice frame I like to think about is like, just make your viewer feel like they made the right decision. Don't make them feel like an idiot. You said the same thing. Yeah. Make them feel like they they made the right decision. Um, and then it's like, you know, the necessary context, not over context. So some credits put too much context in that intro. So what's the necessary context? What are the intriguing, like parts of the story or parts of the, the video that you can kind of tease or highlight in that intro? And then how do we just kind of flow into the, the first storyline, the first action point like this big gap. Like I like being able to look at an intro and say, I don't really know where that intro starts and ends. It just flows into the content.
Use this framework to maximize video retention:
Confirm the click by ensuring the video aligns with the thumbnail.
Establish the video's context in the first seven seconds.
Introduce a new hook by 30 seconds to hold the viewer's attention.
Deliver an expectation of value that the viewer will get towards the end.
Transcript: Colin We have a bit of a different framework for that. Basically how we think about it is like the first thing is confirm the click. So you click in, you have to go, okay, that is the thumbnail that I clicked on. The first seven seconds is establishing the video and kind of laying the context and the foundation for it. And by 30 seconds, we want to introduce a new hook. So we want to introduce something that you didn't expect from the thumbnail that is going to make you stay until the end. Samir And deliver an expectation of value. Colin If you stay towards the end, you will get these loops closed.
Use multiple questions in the title, promising an answer to intrigue viewers. For example, for a video about the megalodon, pose questions like its extinction despite being a top predator, then promise to explore the reasons in the video.
Transcript: Paddy Galloway Like a former, I think is really successful as well and works really well is like multiple questions and then a promise of an answer. So it could be like, yeah, you could make, let's just think of an example. Like you're saying, a megalodon which is like a giant prehistoric shark so you might say like the megalodon was like the fiercest president predator in the oceans yeah it was like five Times the size of great white shark it killed everything it's on site and yet somehow it went extinct how how could this shark go extinct how could this thing happen and then you sort of The viewer like yeah how could that happen and then're like, is there a mysterious reason behind the disappearance of the Megalodon? And then suddenly you're like, okay, that's intriguing. And then it's like, in this video, we're going to dive into it.
April 10
🎧 Meta Tell-All, Elon's Daughter Speaks Out, Cybertruck Recall - Pivot Pod
When the US was perceived as the 'good guys,' other countries wanted to be allies and help them. However, now that the US is perceived as mean, other countries might plot against them or not help them, like ignoring an enriched uranium shipment to Iran.
Transcript: Scott Galloway When you're big and strong and a good person, people want to be your friend. People want to be your ally. People respect you. People want to help you. When you're weak and small and when you're weak and kind, people might be nice to you and feel sorry for you, but it doesn't have the same implication. When you're big and strong and mean, people start plotting against you behind your back because you're seen as a threat. People start thinking, you know, I'm going to ignore those funds being funneled to terror cell groups in the U.S. I am going to I am not going to be as kind. I'm not going to help or protect American tourists when I see them under threat. I'm not inclined to do business with American companies. When you go from big and strong and trying to do the right thing to big and strong and just
April 9
🎧 Roberts Criticizes Trump, FTC Firings, and White House Installs Starlink - Pivot Pod
It's boring, but one of the biggest issues facing the economy is the concentration of power in a few companies across various sectors. This allows them to charge higher rents to both corporations and consumers. A robust FTC and DOJ are needed to combat this, but they're not effective enough. M&A activity, while seemingly capitalist, can stifle competition. Google's acquisition of Wiz, a fast-growing cloud security startup, is an example of taking out a significant competitor, impacting the market.
Transcript: Scott Galloway One of the biggest issues facing our economy is really boring. It's the boring stuff that moves the needle. And it's the fact that across everything from home renovations to chicken to things like fertilizer, much less digital media, there are a small handful of companies that control the Entire market. And the result is in concentrated industries, they can charge higher rents on corporations and on consumers. So if you want, I mean, it sounds really boring, but if you want inflation to come down over the medium and the long term, you want a really robust FTC and DOJ. And they're no longer that. They're basically there to say, okay. Jonathan Cantor, who I had on the podcast, was more optimistic. He said that a lot of people still at the FTC and the DOJ are not exactly, they're not just going to roll over. Yeah, especially the DOJ. We still haven't been able to effectively on the left communicate that M&A, while it feels like capitalism and it's more macho and get out of the way of companies, there are a surprise. We have seven companies basically driving the stock market right now. Kara Swisher Google bought the whiz for $32 billion, should people don't know. It's a security cloud company, cloud security startup. I think it's the biggest acquisition ever. It is. It's enormous. So it really is anti-competitive because it's one of the most fast-growing software companies in the world right now. So it's taking out, again, a really robust competitor, which is really something.
April 8
📰 Book Announcement, Moving (Back) to Asia, AI = More Work?! by
I believe that the future of publishing will be author-first, where authors will seek to build direct relationships with readers, offering things like bundles, signed books, and premium editions that readers want. Right now, publishing is built around the needs of random companies in New York and one giant one in Seattle9
April 7
📰 Inside Morning Brew’s Creator Strategy by
While older media companies like BuzzFeed and Bon Appétit have recently faced a creator exodus, newer companies like Morning Brew, Barstool, and NewPress are focused on evolving with the shifting creator landscape. Many are providing incentive structures and rev share based on content performance, and some are even handing over IP.
📰 The Mantra of This AI Age: Don’t Repeat Yourself by Every’s Dan Shipper
This shift in how we see the world aligns with what I've previously called the allocation economy. As AI takes over these repetitive tasks, our role changes from doing the work ourselves, to deciding what work needs to be done and how to best allocate our resources to do it. In the allocation economy, the key skill becomes knowing how to effectively leverage AI to handle these repetitive elements, freeing us up for more creative and strategic thinking.
📰 Tried AI? You Are Not ‘Most Americans’ by Every’s Alex Duffy
Sixty-six percent of U.S. adults have never tried ChatGPT, according to Pew Research. If you're reading this, congrats—you're an early adopter.
Five influential AI thinkers (including Slate Star Codex’s Scott Alexander) captured the minds of readers this week with AI 2027, dramatic predictions of the possible end of times brought upon us by AI (in the form of a blog post-as-website—an emerging medium).
April 6
🎥 Trixie Mattel Eats Her Last Meal
I just sometimes am amazed that they give us so much credit that they think we're like plotting and grooming. I'm like, we're not; we're not plotting the way you think we're plotting. I mean, we are plotting for things like being able to marry who we want or if I died, make sure my husband could, uh, make sure he can still be a parent to your children or we want these normal things. We're not like gunning to go jump split in, for in an elementary school.
📰 Is Your Writing Helping or Hurting? by
In a recent editorial meeting, we discussed the delicate task of informing authors, “Hey, I’m glad you’re telling this story, but you may be oversharing here.” Or similarly, “This feels more like you’re getting something off your chest than saying something helpful.”
“The problem arises when people write from the wound, not the scar
Admittedly, it feels good to write from the wound. To spill your guts onto the page. There’s certainly a time and place for cathartic writing, especially if it helps you process. However, like an open wound that’s left uncovered and untreated, impulsive words can turn toxic and cause harm—even when you’re trying to be honest or helpful. To write from the wound is to bleed on your readers. It’s raw and real, yes, but it’s also unsettling.
While wounds gush with unprocessed pain, *scars*, on the other hand, mark the spot where hope sprouted from the hurt. If you’ve fallen into the deep valley, it’s fitting to take readers there, to let them feel the darkness. Perhaps they're there now, and need a reminder they're not alone. But don't leave them there. Lead them back to the heights, where, glimmering faintly on the horizon, joy is spreading its light once more. Show them healing is possible, even if it's slow. Show them your scars.
April 3
📰 Are YouTube Shorts worth it? by
if your goal is building a business around your channel, then Shorts are not high on the priority list.
~60%+ of Shorts viewers won’t convert to long form.
Shorts viewers are less likely to buy products long term.
They spend less time watching your stuff.
They have shorter attention spans.
They learn less than from watching long form content.
Book a call: Have a bite-sized creative project? Let’s give you a starting line boost a la Mario Kart - https://calendly.com/beckyisj/
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man i'm happy i got tagged here because i just saw this format now and i'm loving it! taking in inspo for my own logs 👀