The argument in one line.
Social media growth at zero followers comes from studying what already works and creating your own take on it, then manually building genuine friendships who will share your content to their audiences.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A complete beginner with zero followers who has developed at least one skill (writing, design, analysis, teaching) and is willing to spend 2-3 months on manual outreach.
- A creator stuck at 100-1000 followers who understands their niche but hasn't systematized how they find content ideas or build relationships with peers in their space.
- Someone who has failed at multiple projects and accumulated skills across different domains, now ready to consolidate that experience into a single content platform.
- A solo creator who wants to grow without relying on viral moments or algorithm luck, and has time to both create and manually network with other creators.
SKIP IF…
- You already have 10,000+ followers and are optimizing for monetization or sponsorship deals — this is pure beginner-stage growth strategy.
- You're looking for tactical hacks like hashtag research, posting times, or content formats — this video focuses on foundational habits, not execution mechanics.
- You work in a niche where your audience doesn't congregate on social media or where creator-to-creator networking isn't a viable distribution channel.
The full version, fast.
Growth on social media is not luck and not the algorithm � it comes down to two deliberate habits any beginner can practice. The first is validated content: study posts and videos already performing in your niche, then write your own opinion on those proven topics rather than chasing novel ideas. The algorithm rewards familiar territory, so iterating on titles like "how to get ahead of 99% of people" beats inventing from scratch. The second is non-needy networking: manually DM five creators a day, give simple praise, send useful resources, get on calls, and build real friendships so peers willingly share your work. Time-block thirty minutes for each habit, compound over months, and growth becomes a skill, not a lottery.
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00:00 – 07:31
01 · Origin story
Seven failed business models gave Dan accumulated skills before he ever touched social. He credits his early growth to not starting from scratch, and frames beginner hell as what happens when social media is your first endeavor.
07:52 – 16:19
02 · Lever 1: Validated content
People watch social media to hear familiar topics from fresh opinions. Craig Perry got 230K and 144K views on his first two YT videos by running this playbook. The 'how to get ahead of 99% of people' wave (Dan 1.7M, Mark Manson 4.5M, Hormozi, Bilyeu) proves a single topic sustains multiple massive creators.
16:20 – 22:55
03 · Eden product demo
Screen-share of Eden (eden.so): YouTube Swipe File board, Posts Swipe File board, content discovery feed with platform filters, creator top-content search, AI chat over boards for worldview breakdowns and video outlines.
22:55 – 37:52
04 · Lever 2: Non-needy networking
The followers you want are currently following someone else. Seven-step framework from DM to genuine friendship to share request. Gym-friend analogy is the clearest metaphor. Key: real friends share great posts for free.
37:52 – 38:36
05 · Wrap + CTA
Subscribe CTA plus Eden link in description.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Growing a social media audience from zero is easier when you already have transferable skills from previous failed business attempts — failure is experience, not waste.
- The two habits that compound into audience growth are studying what already works and then building your own opinion on top of it, and manually making genuine creator friendships.
- Beginner hell is where you post into the void and never gain traction because you are not course-correcting based on what is working — attention to feedback is the escape.
- When everyone has AI superpowers, nobody has them — the differentiator becomes the human perspective, taste, and experience that the AI cannot replicate.
- Social media is a viable one-person business model precisely because it scales distribution without scaling headcount.
- Aesthetic judgment, copywriting intuition, and networking skills developed across failed business models transfer directly into content quality when you finally start posting.
- Your first breakout on social media is more likely to come from a single viral piece that finds the right audience than from consistent posting volume alone.
- The creators making consistent income from social media are usually not famous — they just have better economics, not bigger audiences.
- Studying content that already works and forming a genuine opinion about why it works builds taste faster than any amount of posting without analysis.
- Manual non-needy networking — making real creator friends who will share your content — is the organic amplification channel that most people skip entirely.
- Validated content research tools like Eden surface what is already performing in your niche so you build on proof, not assumptions.
- The fastest path to consistent follower growth is posting about topics you have genuine expertise in rather than chasing trending topics you have no stake in.
Two levers. Pull both.
Dan Koe playbook
Stop trying to come up with original ideas and start doing what already works — from your own angle — while building five real creator friendships who will share your best posts.
- Build a live swipe file of validated titles and posts — YouTube search plus top-filter on creator profiles.
- For every piece of content ask: what already-proven topic can I put my own opinion on?
- Time-block 30 min/day: 15 min writing validated content, 15 min genuine DMs to 3-5 creator peers.
- The gym-friend analogy is the networking template: casual contact, shared interest, mutual support, ask.
- The product-demo-inside-an-education-video format is the CTA template — use it for JoeFlow ModBoard and Clip Lab launches.
- Watch for topic waves coming back up — own your stack and self-host everything are overdue for a new explosion cycle.
- Non-needy networking removes algorithm dependency entirely — it is a manual growth lever you can pull any time.
Terms worth knowing.
- Shiny object syndrome
- The tendency to abandon a project as soon as the initial excitement fades and chase the next new idea, instead of sticking with one thing long enough to make it work.
- Drop shipping
- An ecommerce model where the seller lists products online but never holds inventory — orders are forwarded to a third-party supplier who ships directly to the customer.
- Cold outreach
- Contacting strangers — usually via email, DM, or phone — to pitch a service, product, or collaboration without any prior relationship or warm introduction.
- Hook
- The opening line or visual of a piece of content designed to stop the scroll and pull the viewer in long enough to consume the rest.
- Beginner hell
- The early stage of creating where posts get almost no engagement, making it hard to learn what works or build momentum, which causes most creators to quit before they break through.
- Pattern recognition
- The skill of spotting recurring structures in successful work — hooks, formats, topics — and internalizing them so you can reproduce what works without copying.
- Validated content
- Topics, titles, or post structures that have already proven they can attract attention, so creating your own version starts from a known winner rather than a blank guess.
- Swipe file
- A personal collection of high-performing posts, headlines, hooks, or ads saved for reference and inspiration when creating new work.
- Steal like an artist
- A creative principle, popularized by Austin Kleon, that originality comes from absorbing and remixing existing ideas through your own perspective rather than inventing from scratch.
- Content pillars
- A small set of core themes a creator commits to posting about consistently, used to keep an account focused and to signal to algorithms and audiences what the account is about.
- Eden
- A content research and writing app that lets creators save posts and videos to boards, browse a discover feed of outlier content by pillar, and chat with the saved material using AI to draft new pieces.
- Outlier content
- Posts or videos that significantly outperform a creator's average — used as study material because they reveal what topics, hooks, or formats actually break through.
- Non-needy networking
- A relationship-first approach to reaching out to other creators where you give value, show genuine interest, and build trust over time before ever asking for anything in return.
- Law of reciprocity
- The social principle that when someone gives you something of value, you feel a natural pull to give something back, which makes generous outreach a powerful long-term strategy.
- Time blocking
- A scheduling method where you reserve specific chunks of your calendar for a single task — like writing or outreach — so the work actually gets done instead of being squeezed in around everything else.
- BYOK
- Short for "bring your own key" — a software model where the user supplies their own API key for AI services so they pay providers directly instead of paying the app a markup.
Things they pointed at.
09:57channelCraig Perry
15:12channelAli Abdaal
15:39bookMark Manson — The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck
13:30bookTim Ferriss — The Four Hour Workweek
Lines you could clip.
09:43
“If I had an ounce of muscle for every time that I've watched a nutrition one zero one video or just some creator's opinion on nutrition, I'd be Ronnie Coleman.”
06:19
“Yes. AI gives you superpowers, but when everyone has superpowers, nobody has superpowers.”
07:00
“Social media is like a video game. They have specific mechanics and levers you can learn and pull.”
29:02
“Most people in today's world are antisocial. You would think that more people being on social media would be more social, but they're not.”
Word for word.
metaphoranalogy
00:00Alright. I'm going to sound pretty arrogant for a second, but growing on social media is easy. And I actually mean that.
00:07I'm not just saying it because it's a good hook. It is a good hook. But I I never really had a problem growing on social media on any platform.
00:14So when I was outlining this video, I kinda asked myself, okay, why was it easy for me to grow? And it really came from me failing at, like, seven other different business models before I actually started on social media. So when I started on social media, I wasn't starting from scratch.
00:30I had a bunch of high value skills under my belt even though those prior businesses, thanks to shiny object syndrome, failed. And I tried so many different things.
00:40I tried digital art with, like, Photoshop. I tried photography and charging for like in person photo sessions. I tried multiple agencies like Facebook ads, SEO, web design.
00:51I tried drop shipping twice. I tried building an ecommerce brand like actually ordering. It was pretty much drop shipping twice, and I probably even did a few more that I don't even register because they were so short lived.
01:03It was like a week at a time. I'd start something and then I'd build the website. I'd get so excited about starting the LLC and then the the dopamine would fade and then I'd quit.
01:12And that was kind of unfortunate because as a teenager, for some reason it was just the bane of my existence to get a nine to five job. Right?
01:19I looked around me, I looked at my parents, I love my parents, but I looked at the older generation. Right? You go to Walmart, you look around, you see the people and you're like, that's not what I want my life to end up as.
01:31And when I reverse engineered, okay, what led them to that? In my head as a teenager, it's like nine to five job, right? That takes up most of your day.
01:38You get home at night, you're super tired, You don't really get to work on something meaningful. So I wanted to do something creative. I didn't wanna work a nine to five and I wanted to do something creative.
01:48And I did end up going to college for five years, but I I was kind of treating it as a buffer period to just experiment with things. I was a straight a student in high school, but when I was in college, I was the c's get degrees dude. And so five years into college and just switching around so much, that was a theme of my youth, I guess, is I just switched around so many different times.
02:10I just changed. I made mistakes. I pivoted.
02:12I experimented. And that gave me a lot of experience, but it also gave me a lot of failures. And at that time, I was probably like 20,000 in student debt and that continued to stack up.
02:22So out of urgency and out of honestly just being scared that I wasn't gonna be able to survive, I started applying for jobs, and I got a job at a web design agency because I had previously acquired that skill.
02:34And so at that job, it was kind of a cushy job. I just continued to learn how to freelance. Right?
02:40I was doing web design. I could see inside of the agency that I was working at how things were kind of pieced together. It kind of made sense to me how to start freelancing in a good way.
02:50And so I started doing that and long story short, that started to pick up over the course of six, seven, eight months. And after like nine months of me working the job, I was able to quit because I felt secure enough with my freelancing job now because freelancing is really just a glorified nine to five job.
03:07You're still working for other people on projects that aren't yours. Probably projects that you don't care about that you don't have any creative direction in, but that's aside the point. Actually, not really.
03:17That's why I started on social media is because I saw other I don't know why I was on Twitter of all places, but I was scrolling and I saw that there were other web designers and people talking about my interest. The web designers were just giving out basic advice.
03:33Right? They were like saying, here's the top 10 skills that you need to learn if you wanna quit your job. And to me that resonated at the time, but they were landing web design clients from that and they were selling courses on how to do web design, how to freelance, other things like that.
03:48And so I'm like, I can do the same thing. They're they're saying all of the things that I know how to say, and they're doing really well. Why am I not in their position?
03:56So I started posting on social media, but my edge and the way I kind of had consistent growth out of the gate, it wasn't super fast all at once. It was kind of like 100 followers a week for two months, and then it picked up to like 500 followers a week and then kinda stabilized around 2,000 followers a month.
04:16And then there were waves. There was, like, large explosions of follower growth when I had a tweet do really well, and then there was just the troughs of, like, 1,500 to 2,000 followers a month and it was pretty stable.
04:27But the reason I was able to do that is because my failures in digital art taught me brand aesthetics to some degree. Right? All of skill acquisition is really just pattern recognition.
04:37So it's not like I was actually practicing or doing the skill when I was growing on Twitter. It's more so I had just like failed and had so much experience under my belt already that I had better taste out of the gate for what a hook looked like because I had studied Facebook ads and copywriting.
04:54When I was trying to make the agencies work that I had, I had I did some cold outreach. I knew how to network.
05:00I knew how to DM people. I knew how to make friends. I knew how to provide value so that they would provide value in return, which we're gonna talk about in this video when I finally get to the point.
05:10And the web design that I was doing paired with the copywriting really well, paired with the branding really well. And so I was off to a better start when it came to learning how to create digital products or just creating digital products better than most beginners because what most people do when they start on social media is that's their first endeavor.
05:29Right? So they're learning the skills as they go and they're building up taste over time. And that's kind of what gets you stuck in beginner hell.
05:36Beginner hell is where you kinda you just post into the void and you don't really gain any followers. And usually if you don't correct your mistakes or you don't pay attention to what's working and what's not and you don't course correct and iterate, then you're never really gonna have your breakout.
05:52And that's why most creators, and I don't blame them, quit because they just can't gain any traction.
05:59So that's my goal with this video. Social media is a very viable business model, for one person, especially with AI on your side.
06:07Like you can build so many cool things in today's world and if you have the skills that allow you to stand out because most people are just going the route of, oh, I need to post content. Oh, I need to build something with AI.
06:19Everyone's doing that. And if everyone's doing it, then like nobody's nobody's gonna succeed doing that. Yes.
06:25AI gives you superpowers, but when everyone has superpowers, nobody has superpowers. So again, that's my goal. You're not gonna avoid the failure.
06:32You're not gonna avoid the mistakes. You're not going to avoid having to build up the experience that leads to pattern recognition that leads to skill acquisition. But what I can tell you is the two levers that you actually need to pull to see social media growth faster and it will help with pattern recognition faster.
06:51My secondary goal with this video is to show you that social media isn't luck based on an algorithm. You don't just post and hope that the algorithm picks you up and then blame the algorithm for your failure and your lack of skill. .
07:06Many things are like a video game. They have specific mechanics and levers you can learn and pull.
07:11And when you're at a higher level in the video game, you kind of see it all. You've already gone through all the mechanics. You have already leveled up all of the abilities.
07:19It's just like you get to be more creative. But when you're an expert at something, usually you have more you have more potential for shiny object syndrome and you need to focus more. So as a beginner, you actually have an advantage over people because the people who are very good at social media also tend to fall off.
07:35You see a lot of big YouTubers or people just like decrease output. I've decreased output lately, and what that does is it opens up space for new creators to come in. So two levers.
07:45That's what we need to know. Treat everything else as a distraction. Literally just focus on these two things.
07:52Don't get distracted. Focus on these two things and you will do just fine. I promise.
07:57So the first lever is to do what works from your own perspective and that sounds kinda That doesn't sound that great just yet, but I promise like this is the secret. This is it. If you actually treat it as a priority, it will become a priority because a big problem that beginner creators have is like they always think, oh, I don't have anything new to say as if people are on social media to see something new.
08:23They're not. If you actually think about how you consume social media or how I consume social media, people are there to see what's already being talked about from a specific creator's opinion.
08:35That's literally how the algorithm works, especially YouTube. If you watch one video on a specific topic, YouTube is gonna show you the same freaking topic from another creator. And if you understand that, you understand if that you create a video similar to one that has already done well, then you're gonna be recommended to the people who viewed the one that did well.
08:55I'll explain that soon, but I hope that really clicks. Clicks. That's YouTube growth in a nutshell.
09:00Every other course, like all the other tactics are secondary. They're useful, but they're secondary. And it lines up with my own consumption habits.
09:07Like, could see the same video title every single day from a different creator, and I would probably watch it. I do watch it because I want to hear their opinion. Everyone's talking about Claude code, Claude open AI, all of this shit, the future of work.
09:21When I fall down a rabbit hole of wanting to learn about that, I'm just gonna watch the same topic over and over again so that I get all of the nuances so that I understand it completely. The same goes for like fitness videos on YouTube. That's I'm I love fitness.
09:35Like, that's my honestly, main priority. This has all become secondary.
09:39But if I had an ounce of muscle for every time that I've watched a nutrition one zero one video or just some creators opinion on nutrition, I'd be Ronnie Coleman.
09:48This is the single most fundamental aspect of social media growth on any platform. So if we look at someone like Craig Perry who is just running my playbook, I don't know if he got it from me, but his you YouTube bio is literally reading my newsletters to a camera.
10:03I just had my newsletter open here. It's not like I read it word for word, but it's like an outline that I can riff off of. But if we look here, these are his first two YouTube videos ever, ever.
10:15Like, do you see this? You have 230 k views and you have a 144 k views.
10:22That's literally absurd. Like, do not see that for the first two videos on someone's YouTube channel, and that proves exactly what I'm talking about here. Did he get lucky a bit?
10:32Maybe. If you were to copy these one to one, would you get the same results?
10:39Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know.
10:41But all I do know is that if you do this enough times, you will start to see a green streak of engagement and followers coming in. So how is he doing what works from his own perspective?
10:54If you look here, how to remember everything you read. If you're on this side, I've created a video like that. I've almost created with the exact same title.
11:02If you look on YouTube, you can see that Ali Abdaal has created a video like that. You can see just look up how to remember everything you read in the YouTube search bar and you'll see, like, 10 to 20 iterations of those videos. And then right here, how to become dangerously self educated.
11:17Now this one is actually kind of unique, but it uses the same validated structure because I've seen multiple times how to become dangerously articulate, how to become dangerously confident.
11:29Right? This is a rather new structure with the whole dangerously, but it still shows that it works.
11:35Now is this copying? Are the things inside of Craig's videos the same exact script that every single other person who created a how to remember everything you read video the same? No.
11:46It's not. If you actually watch the video, there's some great insights he's pulling from his own experience, from his own perspective. It's his own opinion on how to do it.
11:54Another thing for people who are worried about copying, you like, nobody has a novel idea. Novel ideas are extremely rare.
12:02It's not like Craig or I can claim how to remember everything you read. Like, that's a process. That's not something that you can claim.
12:10Now, if it's something else like a unique category or a unique concept that you've created, then yes, it is kind of copying if you take it. But of course, then semantics come into play.
12:21Like I did a spin off of, uh, Tim Ferriss' The Four Hour Workweek. I did the four hour work day because I kind of created a little framework around it from my own experience and other people could take the four hour work day and some people may attribute it to me, but honestly, I wouldn't be very mad because it's like I can't claim that.
12:40So you kinda have to use your own judgment here. Like if you're obviously just purely copying, then, yeah, don't do that.
12:46But steal like an artist is a thing for a reason is because that's just how nature and reality works. You don't reinvent the wheel. And the same thing goes with, like, tweets or short form posts or reels.
12:57Like, nobody can claim the idea that they're saying because it's usually not completely novel. The way that they worded it, the the way that they structured it can be considered theirs. And obviously, like, you're gonna look like an idiot if you just, like, copy paste it, change a few words, which I've seen a few few times, and when I see those, I kind of immediately label that person as like, wow, you can't think originally.
13:17But you can take the idea. So I mean, if we just look at these posts here, like major cheat code for life, increase your recovery speed, you will get rejected, will you lose money. You will embarrass yourself.
13:27The goal isn't to avoid the fall. It's to shorten the time between the fall and the reset. Fast recovery compounds.
13:33Now there's an essence to this idea. Obviously, saying increase your recovery speed, that's kind of Sahil Bloom coded. But major cheat code for life, you could definitely use that as a hook.
13:44Why not? And then if you actually look at this tweet, you can just read into it and be like, you will get rejected. You will lose money.
13:51And then you start to think, do other ideas spin off of that? And most of the time they do.
13:57And one thing I like to actually use AI for is just that for iterations on those ideas because like I can think through them and let ideas come to my mind, but when I'm actually sitting down to write a post, like you kind of need a topic to write about.
14:12You don't necessarily need to brainstorm and like have this non practical way of coming up with an idea or reject AI. Like you're just trying to choose a topic to write about so that then you can think you can think in a certain direction.
14:26So what I like to do is take really good posts that I like and be like, hey, just give me iterations of these and I'll read through them and I'll just wait for one to hit and I'll be like, okay. Yeah.
14:37I'll write about that. And usually through so many through those two filters of like, okay, it goes through AI to give me a iteration.
14:45It goes through my mind because I'm usually not taking exactly what it says here. By the end of that process, I usually have something that's pretty original. And since I've read and pattern recognized and pattern matched so many good posts, the the structure of my writing starts to come out over time and then I can use my own taste to refine it to make it even further mine.
15:05So that's like that's content one zero one in a nutshell. Now an even better way to just lock this in is many of you remember this video, how to get ahead of 99% of people in six to twelve months. What many of you don't know is that I wrote a tweet in 2019 or 2020.
15:21I think it's 2019 with the first line that said how to get ahead of 99% of people. So it was already a validated idea.
15:29In 2023, I turned it into that YouTube video. That's now my highest performing YouTube video at 1,700,000 views.
15:37After that video did really well, Mark Manson, the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, created a video with the same exact title except he said something else instead of in six months and that video got like 4,500,000 views.
15:52It's a proven topic at least for now until it gets ran through. That's another thing is you'll eventually learn that some topics that used to do well are kind of just dead now or they they've been exhausted to the point where they need a reset period. And you'll see how to get ahead of ninety nine percent of people start to come back up in maybe a year, two years and it'll flood the space, will be super viral for a second and then it'll die down.
16:17But after Mark Manson made the video, Alex Hormozi made a video titled how to get ahead of 99% of people. And then after that, Tom Bill you retitled one of his videos to have how to get ahead of 99% of people in the title.
16:30So that's four massive creators who just prove what I'm saying here. And that's the thing is that these creators aren't creating the same exact video.
16:39In my video, I'm talking about like the process of creating an anti vision and a vision and so on and so forth. But Mark Manson, like he's written so much about this before that he has a completely different view.
16:50Right? Anyone can take the topic how to be to get ahead of 99% of people and just think, how would I get ahead of 99% of people based on my interests? Right?
16:58It doesn't even like it can be business. It can be start a business like this to get ahead of 99% people. It could be finance, budget like this.
17:06It could be relationships. How to get ahead of 99% of men because for some reason, young men just compete against each other and looks max all day and don't really get anywhere with it, but they'll learn that lesson when they get to it. But the point, the overarching point is that the best creators don't just post what's on their mind.
17:23Right? They don't just like open up their phone and send a post. Some do.
17:26I do sometimes. You should, but that shouldn't That's not a strategy. Right?
17:30If you're treating social media as a way to pursue your life's work, then business is a part of that practicality strategy tactics. So the best creators most of the time research what works and base what they're going to create about on that. And so what most people do here is they'll just like bookmark posts on social media and hope that they come back to it and remember it when it's time to actually create.
17:53But then most people just start looking at a blank page and write something that isn't that good and then wonder why it didn't do well since they're actually doing the steps. Or before they write the YouTube title, they'll go to YouTube and they'll search for similar titles and that's a solid way of doing it. Or they'll go to the creator's account and filter by most popular and then they can write down and study those specific titles that did well.
18:16Another thing people do is they just jot down ideas as they come to mind and hope that those ideas are good enough to do well, and sometimes they are. And all of those are fine, but they're not really strategized. They're not really a system.
18:29They're not something that you can rely on. And frankly, they're just time consuming and they're slow. And so this is where I transition into a sales pitch for the new iteration of Eden, which is very focused on outlier content and just being the place where you research content and write great content.
18:46Eden is quite literally you have boards that you can paste links to of social posts or websites or you can upload PDFs to. You can create notes in or documents so you can write. And so it's like I showed you my YouTube swipe file.
18:57I showed you the post swipe file. I can reference these with AI or I can go to the discover feed, set my content pillars, and I can just scroll through here and see which post catch my eye. I can also filter by platform if I only wanna see tweets or YouTube videos.
19:12And then I can click one when I like it. Let's say I add this one to my YouTube swipe file. Boom.
19:18Add it there. So if you don't know what to create next, just scroll through here, add it to a board, and then when it's time to actually create, go to your board, create a note in there, and then start writing. Another thing that you won't find anywhere else is just the ability to search a specific creator and look at all of their platforms and filter by top performing content.
19:37So a lot of mine on Twitter are articles, so Twitter just renders those as a link. But I can scroll through here and I can just see, one, my own good ideas so I can iterate off of those, and I do that all the time.
19:51That's really how I continue growing at this point. But I can save a bunch of these to a board and just use them as inspiration or you can do what I showed you earlier, where if I open the post swipe file and then I open the chat and I can reference this board in the chat and then I can ask for variations of these or I can just chat with it or I can add a creator's top performing YouTube videos and just be like, hey, break all of these down.
20:14What is this person's worldview? How does he structure his videos? Uh, how can I apply this to the next video that I create?
20:20Help me create that video. So super simple, super powerful. I'm actually very excited about this new version of Eden.
20:25If you're wondering what happened to the old version of Eden, there's actually an article up that is at eden.so/the-new-eden, and that kind of goes over, uh, how we went broke.
20:39Thanks to AI credits and how we had to pivot to something specific that is actually a lot more valuable, and we landed on this. So blessing and a curse because this is going to become a staple in what I hope is every creator's workflow, and I'm gonna work to make that happen because this is just like a massive unlock that no other app has.
20:58So I'm super excited about it. You can try it out with the link in the description, and I think you will enjoy it quite a bit. Okay.
21:05Onto the second lever that you can pull. The first one is just validated content. Study what works and create your own opinion on it.
21:12It is that simple. That's how you start practicing writing good content. Please do not overcomplicate that.
21:17So the second lever, you're going to hate this word, but it's networking. And so with this, I don't know what goes through most people's heads when they actually start on social media, but for some reason, they're just probably bringing consumer behavior over.
21:30Right? They're used to just scrolling on social and seeing that, oh, people post and oh, this posted really well. And so all I have to do is start creating posts and then one will do well and then I'll become famous.
21:42They don't see that a creator treats it as a business because that's what it is at this point, but a business doesn't have to be soulless. It can be very purposeful.
21:51It's been the most purposeful thing in my life. It's led to some of the most drastic changes I've had in my life and it can actually provide good. Oh, You're selling something for money.
21:59That thing preferably for a specific person is valuable and it's worth paying the money and preferably it would be worth more than what you're charging and the value that it does provide. It's called voluntary exchange. But if it were as easy as just posting, then everyone would do it.
22:18And then if everyone did it and then if everyone did it, then it wouldn't work for anyone just like AI. Like you have to understand that if you want to be good at something, you have to treat it as a skill that you acquire over time.
22:32I don't know how that doesn't click for people. Like just because it's social media, a thing that you use on your phone every single day doesn't mean that there isn't a very high skill cap to succeeding at the business side of that thing.
22:46So now the question is, okay, Dan, well, what do I do if it's not just praying for the algorithm and hoping that my post goes viral? Because we learned about validated ideas.
22:56We learned how to find those. We learned that if you create your own opinion on them, you're setting yourself up to do really well. But if you're in beginner hell, if you're at the very start, you're still posting into the void.
23:07You can't expect the algorithm to just launch you into the and give you a ton of followers, especially on certain platforms like Twitter where the algorithm is kind of nonexistent. Right?
23:17I started on that platform so I knew that my growth had to take manual effort. Right? And I'm blessed that I did it that way because now I know that, like, if the algorithm isn't working in my favor, I still have a lever I can pull.
23:30So let's just break this down so it makes sense. You want followers. Followers come from people seeing your post on their phone and then clicking your profile and being interested enough to follow you.
23:42And so if the algorithm is like the lottery, so people aren't going to see your post on their timeline organically, how can we manually get people to see your posts? How can we start rolling the snowball until it, like, starts rolling down the hill or becomes an avalanche or whatever?
23:57So you have to think where is the source of followers or people on social media and it's in other people's audiences.
24:06Right? When you're on social media, you really have only a few actions that you can take.
24:11You can follow someone, you can like their post, you can repost it, and you can comment on it. That's the that's the bookmarks, etcetera. Like those are all Those don't matter.
24:21That's the thing you do on social media is you engage and you follow. So the followers that you want lie or following someone else. This is why brands pay so much for creators to post about their product because they have an audience.
24:34Like how else is the brand gonna find people to buy their product? They need to put it in front of people. And the way they can do that is like podcast sponsorships, partner with the creator on social media, run paid ads, Facebook or Google, maybe run chat GPT ads now that those are a thing, or they can do other forms of marketing.
24:52But on social media, as a creator, you're practically marketing yourself. So you could technically pay people to share your posts, and that works to some extent if you do it the correct way, but, uh, let's not bank on that. And for those who kinda get turned off by that, that's a very viable strategy.
25:07Right? If you're treating this as a business or as some like a way to pursue your life's work and you have the money to do it, go ahead.
25:14I do not care because people are only gonna follow you if your content is good. Right? If your content sucks, like people say it's cheating to pay someone else, it just doesn't make sense.
25:23They don't have a business mindset. They don't understand it. But if someone else shares your post and people don't like it, they're not gonna follow you and then it's a waste of money.
25:31It's the same thing as putting money into Facebook ads and people not buying your product because your product sucks. So in essence, it doesn't really matter if you pay or not because you're only gonna grow if you're good, if you're skilled. But if you don't wanna pay someone and if you're smart, you can get in front of other people's audiences for free.
25:48And all of it just boils down to making friends. And I know that sounds simple again because it is, but most people don't know how to make friends. Most people in today's world are antisocial.
25:59You would think that more people being on social media would be more social, but they're not. And so, yes, that means that you're going to have to talk to people and that on social media that happens in the DMs or in the replies, but one on one, it's in the DMs.
26:13And for this to work for you, I would recommend prioritizing it. I would recommend time blocking it for thirty minutes on your calendar so that you actually sit down and do it. Right?
26:22Thirty minutes on your calendar should be for, uh, researching validated posts and writing out ideas and actually drafting the posts, and then the other thirty minutes should be reaching out to people to get those posts shared. Right?
26:35When you launch a product, that's practically what you're doing in the first place to kick it off the ground is you're reaching out to people to see if they like the product and to see if they'll promote it, whether it's for money or not or if they'll just use it. And if they do use it, boom, you have a user. You think one user isn't a lot, but if you compound over time and then word-of-mouth kicks in, then you start growing organically.
26:54The same thing works for building an audience. And so the goal here is to make actual friends because what do friends do? They support each other and they're usually working toward the same goal.
27:04They have a similar value set. So if you have like five people that you're in communication with and then you write or create a really good piece of content and then you send it to them and you say, hey, I put a lot of time into this.
27:16I think you'll resonate with it. I think your audience will resonate with Can you share it? Now, obviously, it takes a bit of time to get to that point, which we're gonna go over, but it really does become that simple once you actually have friends because if they are friends, then they're more than happy to do that.
27:30Like sharing something takes no effort. Like, it's not a big deal at all.
27:35But if the content sucks, then they're not gonna wanna do that. So go back to step one so you know how to write good content.
27:42And you're there to return the favor. Right? Like with Eden, when I go to my friends and I say, hey, I built this really cool thing.
27:49Do you like it? And they say yes. And I say, okay, I'm launching this week.
27:52Will you help me promote it? They'll say, sure. And then, like, they have a lot of followers, so that's really helpful for me.
27:58And so what I say, anytime that you launch product or anytime you need something shared, please do not hesitate to send it to me so I can return the favor value exchange. But if you don't have that friend group yet, I call this process, some of you may have heard of it, non needy networking.
28:13And so if you do this right, this is how you get someone like a 50,000 follower account to share your post. And now your post is in fifth in front of 50,000 people and you didn't rely on the algorithm.
28:24And that's how you grow if you turn this into a repeatable process. So the first step is to just find someone that you want to DM. Obviously, like you shouldn't just reach out to anyone and everyone.
28:33This should be like a small curated group of people that you're gonna strategize and grow with over the course of six to twelve months or probably even longer. Like, I have built so many long term friendships just by being on social media and being social. I moved to Texas with JK Molina and Dakota Robertson, like, three years ago.
28:52My buddy Joey lives down the street from me. He literally moved here from Atlanta. My trainer, Randy, lives over there, and we met online.
29:00He was using my software, reached out. He's like, hey, I I know you like fitness. I know you do everything yourself, but let me do your meal plan and training.
29:06I think you'll like it. I was like, fuck it. Okay.
29:08Let's do it. And now we're very good friends and we're starting a nootropic business together. Like it's it's so serendipitous how these things happen and just opportunities pop up when you have people who either have opportunities or like the connection between you creates opportunities.
29:25I know that DM ing other people is just like this non tangible strategy. Like, it just doesn't result in an immediate direct outcome as feedback, but I promise if you do this, like this is the greatest advantage you can have.
29:38And so where do you find these people that you wanna DM? On social media. Like you you kinda just take it easy.
29:44Like you scroll, if you see an account that you like, make an effort to DM them, make an effort to engage, make an effort to be seen by them and to and for you to show that you're supportive. And if you just have time to look around, like you can go to someone's profile that you like, like you can go to my profile and do this.
29:59I don't I don't know if it'll yield any results, but you you just find people on social media by how you would find people on social media. There isn't like an exact way to just pinpoint exactly who to talk to, but you could go to like my profile, click on my following list, who I'm following and see people who are similar to me or similar to you and just go through them and see if you like any of their content.
30:20And so step two, once you have someone that you wanna DM, which should be pretty quick, you literally should just open social media, see someone and then be like, that guy sounds cool. I'm gonna DM him. But the second thing you do is you just send them simple praise.
30:32Right? You like, you don't have to do this. You can skip to further steps, but we're just getting into the flow of things here.
30:38You have to learn how to make friends. You just send simple praise. It's like how girls compliment each other's shoes or something like that.
30:44And then they're like, oh my god, girl, where'd you get those? And they start up a conversation and then one thing leads to another and then they're getting lunch and then they're best friends. So what you do here is you go and look at the person's like content at their website, at what they're creating, if they're creating anything, and you're trying to find, like, something that you resonate with.
31:04And in my opinion, the simplest thing you can do here is to just send a single sentence. So someone wrote a social post that was, like, about how most people quit social media too early. They'd be like, damn, that's true.
31:15I actually quit like four times and now I'm back at it. How long have you been a creator? Wow.
31:20So difficult to start a conversation. You can ask chat GPT for how to start a conversation.
31:25I wouldn't recommend it, but if you're that far gone socially, maybe try it. The only other tip I can give with this step is to just avoid corporate speak like the plague. Right?
31:34You're not here to connect with someone on LinkedIn. You're here to just, like, text them like a friend. Like, you're you're just act as if you're passing by the you're at the gym.
31:43Right? And you see someone with a similar shirt as you and you're like, oh, dude, nice shirt. And then that connection is kind of form.
31:50You go on about your workout and then you come back the next day and then you see them again and you go, oh, what's up, man? You give them a fist bump and then you go home and you come back and then you give him a fist bump again. You go, oh, dude.
32:01I didn't get your name. What is it? And then you give your name and they're like, oh, nice.
32:04And then you just be like, oh, what's your what's your split? What are you training today? And then they go, oh, I'm training arms.
32:10What about you? And I'm like, yeah, me too. And it's like, oh, what are you training like on Saturday?
32:15It's like chess. And I was like, oh, we should hit that together. Do you come around this time?
32:18And they'd be like, yeah. And you'd be like, okay, cool. It's a date.
32:22So it's it's literally the same exact thing. Like, you're just doing it in the replies in the DMs as opposed to in the gym. And rather than getting in a lift together, you support them in some way on sharing their content.
32:34And so that kind of covered step three, which is to just, uh, show interest in them. So what you're trying to do is drill into something that is important to them. And for another creator, it's usually what they're building.
32:45Like, you can ask them, are you what are you building? Or I see that you're building Eden. How's that going?
32:51What's the next feature gonna drop? I actually looked into it. It looks super cool.
32:54I'm gonna start using it or just be like, oh, I I was on your sub stack and I went back like a year ago and you had this really good article that I read through and this part really resonated with me. Like, where did you come up with that?
33:05Just something. Right? It doesn't even matter.
33:06So step four is to show you are useful, and this is really where, like, the power comes into play. But it's also the part that trips people up the most because they don't think that they have any value to provide.
33:17And the thing here is that, like, you personally don't need any value to provide. Like, you just need to be someone who can connect the other person with some form of value that can be a resource, that can be a person if you meet another person that you think that person should meet.
33:31And it's like, dude, think you should reach out to this guy. Uh, I think he's really cool. You guys would hit it off.
33:36Or what I really like doing and what I really like when people do for me is when people know what I'm working on or when I know what other people are working on, like me working on Eden. Imagine I'm someone else. If someone else were working on a software, then if I watch a YouTube video about AI and how it's gonna disrupt tech and how this is the way forward, I I would just send them the video and be like, hey, you might find this interesting.
34:01I know you're building x y z. Maybe this will impact it a bit. And then they might watch it or they'll just be like, thanks.
34:07Or they'll take mental note and be like, oh, that was really cool. Like he thought of me outside of our DMs.
34:14And then that's when the law of reciprocity kicks in and they feel the need to return the favor. If you give something, someone else is gonna feel the need to give something in return. So all you really need to do at that point is just ask, which we'll get to.
34:27But step five, which is an optional step but highly recommended, is to just get on a call with the person.
34:33Right? This is like getting coffee or getting lunch with someone you met at the gym or something of that nature.
34:39But online, you kinda just be like, yo, we should catch up on a call sometime and talk about business. That's it.
34:47And then you get on a call and then you come out of it with, like, a lot deeper connection. The amount of calls that I got on when I was just beginning on social media was absurd. It's like people just like to speak with other people who have related interests because they're not gonna find those people in their everyday life.
35:03Like, there are very few people around me or especially that I went to school with that have similar interests or that do similar things. So you kinda have to build a tribe of those people.
35:15So you can do that or you don't have to, but step number six is to just continue sending more resources or to just check-in. So you send them a video that you thought was interesting. You send them an article.
35:25You send them a tweet and be like, oh, dude, this is exactly what we were talking about the other day. You just kind of maintain faint connection while providing value to them. Maybe you create something.
35:34Like, I've had many people scrape all my YouTube videos, which you don't have to do anymore because you can just go and eat in creators, go to my YouTube, chat with all the videos. You don't have to spend thousands of dollars scraping with manus anymore to actually get transcripts of people's YouTube videos.
35:48So try that out. But they'll do that, and then they'll have the AI, like, get all of my stuff, like all of my patterns and all of my concepts in one place, and I'll be like, oh, that's really cool.
35:59And thank you for doing that even though I've like, that's what I do as a like, you reverse engineer your own stuff. Like, I have a database, not really a database, but I have a note of all of those things in one place already. Yeah.
36:10It's good either way. But now step seven and finally, and you don't need to go through all seven steps to do this. It can just come naturally in the conversation, but this is where you ask.
36:18And you can ask them a few things. You can just ask them to join a group chat with other people you've been talking to, and now you have this really powerful group chat where you can share strategies, or you send them one of your posts that you put a lot of time into, or you can just ask them questions. Right?
36:31If they're an expert in a place that you're not, you have a connection where you can kind of get free answers out of them without paying for consulting or coaching. But if you plan to leverage their audience for growth, which isn't the goal of the friendship, but that's a benefit of it, you want to send them a post that you actually put a lot of time into and that's good, and then you ask them to share.
36:51Because if it's not good, they're not gonna wanna share it. But this is also how you can come up with content ideas. Right?
36:55In your conversation, something comes up like a problem or just some idea, and then you can write about that thing, and then you can send the post to them and be like, hey, I just wrote this up. It was inspired by a previous conversation. Um, if you hit it with a share, I'll hit you back at some point.
37:11Or just be honest, like my favorite outreach strategy in general is just brutal honesty and be like, hey, dude. I'm really trying to grow. Um, if you could share this, that would be awesome.
37:20If not, absolutely no worries at all. I'm not expecting anything. And so that's literally it.
37:24You have two levers. You can write validated content, and then if the algorithm doesn't magically pick it up, which it probably won't, especially if you're a beginner, then you have a manual way of making friends and having them share it to their audience so that it can at least get kick started.
37:40Is this all going to happen overnight? Is it gonna happen tomorrow? The next day?
37:43Probably not. It's gonna happen over the course of two weeks, four weeks, three months, but it will compound and you'll definitely see some growth out of this because these aren't levers that you guess at.
37:56They're just levers that you pull. It's just an action that you do and you get better at. It's a skill.
38:02Not that you're gonna DM 500 people, but if you DM to five people a day for thirty days or sixty days, it's a lot of freaking people. And if one isn't kind enough or close enough of a friend to share one of your posts, then you're doing something wrong.
38:15So that's it. Those are the two ways to grow. If you like this video, like the video, Subscribe.
38:19If you want to research out layer content or have a place to write high performing content, check out the new version of Eden. I think it's really cool because I like just saving links to boards and being able to write with them open next to it. So check that out.
38:32I'm super excited about it. Yeah. That's it.
38:33I'll see you in the next video. Bye.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Dan Koe opens by admitting the hook is a hook — then making it land anyway. Seven failed businesses, five years of college Cs, and a web design job he quit after nine months are the credentials behind the arrogance, and they make the two habits feel earned rather than prescribed.
Named ideas worth stealing.
07:52list
Validated Content System
- Find a topic or title that has already performed well
- Add to a swipe file
- Run through AI for iterations, filter for ones that resonate
- Write your own opinion and angle on the validated structure
Study what already works, then bring your own perspective to the same proven territory.
Steal forContent planning for any Joe channel — JoeFlow tutorials, self-hosting stack, creator tools
22:55list
Non-Needy Networking 7 Steps
- 1. Find someone to DM
- 2. Send simple genuine one-sentence praise
- 3. Show interest in what they're building
- 4. Show usefulness — share a resource relevant to their project
- 5. (Optional) Get on a call
- 6. Continue check-ins with articles tweets callbacks
- 7. Ask — share a high-effort post or invite to group chat
Manual algorithm bypass: build genuine creator friendships, then ask them to share your best content.
Steal forJoe's MCN growth strategy, JoeFlow launch outreach, any product launch
15:15concept
Proven Topic Wave Pattern
Topics cycle: explode, exhaust, reset, explode again. 'How to get ahead of 99% of people' ran through Dan Koe (1.7M), Mark Manson (4.5M), Alex Hormozi, and Tom Bilyeu — each making a completely different video on the same title.
Steal forTiming Joe's next YouTube essay title — watch for topic waves coming back up
How they asked for the click.
37:52product
“If you want to research outlier content or have a place to write high performing content, check out the new version of Eden.”
Soft and earned — the entire middle third is a live demo so the CTA feels like a natural extension. No hard sell. Link in description only.
Visual structure at a glance.
