Pod Insights The Pomp Podcast #1151 JK Molina On How He Made Millions From Twitter About this episode JK Molina is the founder of Tweet Hunter, which was recently acquired by lempire. JK has an incredible story, just 4 years ago he was selling perfume door-to-door with his grandmother in Guatemala, then built and sold a software company for seven figures. This is a great example of the internet allowing for the export of the American Dream. ======================= Announcing LYCEUM | Miami, a day-long event on March 4th, 2023 in Miami hosted by Pomp. We’re gathering an explosive group of experts to engage in a series of fascinating discussions. We'll cover topics from investing, emerging tech, scientific research, sports, music and more. We have some massive names being announced via Twitter throughout January so stay tuned for details. This will not be your typical event and it certainly won’t be one you want to miss. We’re going to learn a lot, make some smart friends, and as always, we’re going to have fun. Spots are limited so head to lyceummiami.com to buy your ticket today. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 200,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ =======================
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Anthony Pompliano? What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. We have no advertisers on this podcast, so it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. JK Molina is the founder of Tweet Hunter, which was recently acquired by La Empire. JK's got an incredible story. He comes from Guatemala and just four years ago was selling
0:43 Anthony Pompliano? perfume door to door with his grandmother. But now he's built a following on the internet, he built a software company, and sold it for seven figures. This story shows exactly what happens when people get internet access and how the internet has allowed us to export the American dream to kids and to young adults all around the world. I really enjoyed this conversation with JK, and I hope that you enjoy it as well. Once you get done listening, jump on Twitter and let me know what you liked, what you didn't like, and what you think we can improve. I always appreciate the feedback. Here is my conversation with JK Molina.
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2:13 Speaker 03 Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.
2:36 Anthony Pompliano? All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got JK here with me. I really wanted to have this conversation because you have an absolutely incredible story. It's a story that I think most people will look at and say, wow, that is part of this trend of the internet being able to take the American dream where anyone can come from anywhere in the world and can actually be successful, can achieve economic mobility. And the internet exported that globally, anywhere else. If you have an internet connection, you now can participate and kind of capture this. And so JK, tell us a little bit about your story in terms of where you were born, where you live now, and then we'll get into this business that you just built in Seoul without ever meeting your co-founders.
3:15 Speaker 04 Yes, sir. I feel for having you, man. So what's up, everybody? I'm JK. Recently sold to a venture, but the place like I really came from is I was born and raised in Guatemala. Early started business around five to six years ago, selling, selling perfume like door to door and selling some shirts I sold with my grandma. And just kind of, kind of just selling like physical things, right? Going door to door, seeing how that, how that went. And it was not until like when you said like 2020 around ish, when the, when the pandemic hit, when I was really thinking like, okay, I need to, I need to make some money, right? And that's when I kind of realized that it's not just like the local things that can make you money. It's actually just going on the internet and selling stuff. So I go on Twitter
3:59 Speaker 04 and that's like the main thing I did. I went on Twitter and I saw people selling like info products and these like ebooks and that it seemed interesting, right? Because at the time I was making like $250 a month, but then I saw people making $250,000 a month, like a hundred thousand dollars a month. And to me it was crazy, right? I just was never there. And I don't know, I just, I just tried it. Right? And just tweeting and kind of sharing my ideas, I realized there was a lot of other people that actually were into that space. Cause my mind, and this may be something you encounter, people think like, when they think Twitter, it's just like, oh, it's just politics.
4:39 Speaker 04 It's just drama. It's just that kind of thing. Whereas you go into Twitter and it's like, there's like crypto Twitter and then there's like startup Twitter and then like money and client acquisition Twitter. And going into it, I started figuring out how the client system works, how to get people like to buy high ticket stuff from you. And I just started doing that. Started writing for other people's tweets. Uh, so yeah, that, that, that's a thing, right? Do you go to people? That wanna grow their Twitter account and you say, hey, I'll grow it for you, right? And people will pay you on Twitter to write tweets for them. And to me that was crazy. So that's kind of how I started the thing.
5:14 Anthony Pompliano? So ju- just to make sure people understand this, you, three years ago, four years ago, were going door to door in Guatemala, selling physical products, literally perfume and other types of physical products. Uh, sometimes with your grandmother and you, uh, knew about the internet. You obviously understood, uh, what people use the internet for in terms of searching or whatever, but had never thought about business as a, uh, the internet as a business opportunity. And so once the pandemic hits, you then start to say to yourself, hey, I can't go out. I can't go do all these things that I used to do. How do I make money on the internet? And within a three-year period, you were able to build a company and actually go ahead and sell that business, uh, which
5:56 Anthony Pompliano? I, I don't think you guys disclosed, uh, in terms of how much you each individually made, but it is much more than the $250 a month that you were making when you were going door to door selling things, correct?
6:05 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, that's right. And we actually did, if you wanna talk about it, but the, the reason like when it started, it's because you kind of are like a product of your environment and you end up doing what the people around you are doing. So my first business, quote unquote, was the perfume thing because my high school teacher, like, I don't know if you ever watched Breaking Bad, but it was kind of like that, right? So he was selling like secondhand perfume. And I just, I just saw that and then I, then I imitated it.
6:31 Anthony Pompliano? Yep.
6:32 Speaker 04 Right? Yeah. And now then. I was seeing Shark Tank and Gary Vee and doing like this, you know, trash talk where he like buys stuff and then resells it.
6:39 Anthony Pompliano? Yep.
6:40 Speaker 04 And I, and I saw that and I was like, oh, let me, let me try that. And then in 2020, because like I couldn't do anything, right? I just see what people are doing on Twitter and I just kinda, kinda copy the trend of whatever was popular then.
6:52 Anthony Pompliano? How much were you getting paid when you were writing other people's tweets? So you would go to them, you would say, hey, you want to grow a Twitter, it looks like I can help you do that. I'll write your tweets for you. What does that engagement look like when you first started?
7:03 Speaker 04 Right. So the way that worked was I was going to write maybe five tweets and a few threads a week for the person. And the way I priced my service was I wanted to make sure they got an ROI and they saw the immediate ROI. So my pricing actually changed depending on who I was writing for. So for example, first guy I wrote for, he sold a course at seven fifty bucks, right? So first guy ever, I've never had a sales call. I was kinda like, like nervous, right? Cause I've had a few calls in Spanish. I didn't know what I was doing in English. And I was like, kinda freaking out a little bit. And then I wanted to charge him seven fifty on the call, right? And then like these dudes like used to closing seven figure deals, right? And I'm there like tree, like chasing seven fifty bucks.
7:47 Speaker 04 And I tell him, it's not gonna be seven fifty because we have a discount. It's actually seven hundred dollars, right? It's like pushing. And I kinda freaked out because I wanted to charge him seven fifty. I charged seven hundred because I choked. And then when he didn't respond immediately, I freaked out again. And I'm like, oh, by the way, we have payment plans. You could pay half today and half next month, right? Kind of like that. Anyway, he was happy with it. So the first guy paid me seven hundred bucks. Second guy paid me like eleven hundred. And when I got into the intricacies of why do people actually buy? And in understanding offer creation, that you're not paid for the work you give to them.
8:26 Speaker 04 You're paid for the value they get. That's when I went from eleven hundred bucks to charging twenty five K to write tweets for other people. Because I understood how offer creation works and what it meant to them specifically on Twitter.
8:38 Anthony Pompliano? Okay, hold on. So rewind for a second, uh, cause you just dropped what I would consider a gem there, right? Was you started to charge not based on what you were giving them, but what the value that they derive from the service you were giving them. And you said you went from eleven hundred dollars to twenty five hundred or to twenty five thousand dollars that you started to charge?
8:56 Speaker 04 Twenty five K.
8:57 Anthony Pompliano? Twenty five K. And that's per month that you were charging people to write tweets for them?
9:02 Speaker 04 That was maybe three months, two or three months, because I started like I stopped charging based on monthly. And I started charging based on a certain deliverable. Because what I understood is when people buy a service from you, they're not buying you every month. You're buying the outcome that you're gonna take them to. It doesn't matter how long it takes. Right? Nobody cares if it takes one month or seven days or whatever, right? So when I understood that, that's when I kind of shifted the way I crafted my offer. Because if you think about it, when the reason people are going to buy from you, it's because you wanna get them to a certain outcome. Okay, and that outcome is worth something to them. If you can somehow place your price as lower than the value you're providing, you're allowed to choose whatever you want.
9:46 Speaker 04 Like right now, if I wanted, like if I wanted you to give me a dollar, but I gave you two, you would do it. If I wanted you to give me a hundred bucks, but I gave you two hundred, you would still do it. So the math still applies at the higher levels. So when I understood that, I shifted to selling people who had like huge enterprises. And I've, and the way I sold my service was instead of writing tweets and writing threads which have a certain dollar value. Let me just write for you for connections and networking and meeting other interesting people in the internet. One of those clients, we actually talked to them, which is, which is fun. It's the reason why we connected, right? But when you realize that you could go from not changing the gift that you offer, which is your service,
10:31 Speaker 04 but changing the wrapping around the gift of what you offer is when you go from charging like four figures to actually five figures. To go into these seven figure exits, because you can choose to layer what you offer as so much higher than what you price it at.
10:46 Anthony Pompliano? And when you would go and you would ask someone, hey, I want twenty five thousand dollars to help build your online audience so that you can do better networking or meet certain people. Uh, what is like the hit rate? Were you getting lots of yeses? Were you doing fifty fifty? Like what, what was the general hit rate that you were getting?
11:02 Speaker 04 Yeah, so when it came to.
11:06 Speaker 04 The leads were qualified in the beginning nearly to a hundred percent because I DM them. So that's an advantage you have on Twitter and social media. Before you DM anyone, you can check their bio and kind of gauge if they can pay you or not. But on the calls, the hit rate was maybe fifty fifty like that. And it increased a little bit when I started doing the math for them. Because, and I love this thing that my, my sales friend taught me. He said, everything is expensive without context. So you need to establish context first before you drop the price. Right? So I would ask them, how much is your business making? Or well, how much is this connection worth to you? Who are you connecting with? What do you want to do in the future? What does it look like in three to five years?
11:46 Speaker 04 And when you paint those big numbers, then, and they tell you something like a hundred K, two fifty K. Then twenty five K doesn't seem that much, right? Because you establish context before it's all about perspective. So when it came to hit rate, it was maybe fifty percent. When I did the math with them and actually pulled the Google Sheets and the calculator, it was around sixty to seventy five percent. So it went up.
12:06 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. And so how do you go from what I'll call a service-based business where you're going, you're getting paid, almost like an agency to actually create content and help these people to then having a software product with Tweet Hunter that you were able to scale over time? What does that transition look like?
12:22 Speaker 04 Yeah, that was an interesting one because, and I got lucky twice. And I'm going to explain to you the two moments I got lucky. The first one was when I built the account, I built it off talking about ghostwriting and writing other people's tweets. I had around twenty to twenty five K. That was the first stroke of luck. Because Tebow, who's a co-founder, actually DM'd me. And he showed me this tool called Tweet Hunter that I enjoyed and I liked because it combined other like softwares into one that I used to ghostwrite. But his pitch wasn't, hey, let's partner up. This, his pitch was actually, hey, you want to try this app for free for a month? So I tried it. I liked it. And then when I was going at it again, like seeing what other people were doing,
13:02 Speaker 04 there, there was this thing on Twitter at the time that was big on influencers partnering up with like tech guys and then building something together, right? So you see it like McGregor has the, what is it like the whiskey? He partnered up with the product guy, right? Like The Rock has the German tequila, product guy, influencer, product. And then I kinda, I was getting into it and I liked it. And then he, we got on a call. And I'm like, dude, let me help you promote this. He's like, of course, you wanna be an affiliate? I'm like, no, like, I wanna be a co-founder on this. And then it's like, alright, let's try it out. So we launched it. And the cool thing was, I had like the audience and they had the product. But they didn't have an audience and I didn't have a product. Right? So we, we came up together like that.
13:46 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, so we, we, we like assembled like that. And I just kept promoting it. So we really never met, we haven't met like in person, we've only been doing Zoom calls. But that economy was always clear. I was gonna be the muscle behind the brand, bring people in, and there were gonna be product retention software. And I told the guys, I wanna make the distinction so clear that I wanna sell this company before I even know what programming language is written in. And I still don't know what programming language is written in. So I guess we did something right there.
14:18 Anthony Pompliano? So explain what the product actually does. Tweet Hunter is a product that helps people grow on Twitter, but like, how did they exactly do you do that?
14:25 Speaker 04 Yeah, so it's, it's really a scheduler. Like, the product is not something completely new. The positioning of what we try to do was a little bit different. Because there's, just like there's Twitter in general, there's like smaller subdivisions of Twitter. One of them was people who are focused a lot on client acquisition, just getting a lot of clients through the door. Right? Or building their personal brands specifically. So we wanted to tailor just to a certain segment of the market. And we, instead of making every feature better than other schedulers, we tried to include a lot of education into it. As in, you can't tweet before you read both the monetization and the growth guide. So we, we were very clear on it. Tweet Hunter itself isn't revolutionary. It doesn't do anything that other schedulers don't do.
15:10 Speaker 04 But what it does do is it instructs you on how to use the tool before we get into it. So it's nothing like huge.
15:17 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. And so when you start thinking about building that out, talk to me about finding the first clients for it and also building a company in a remote environment where you never met the founders in person. What, what is it like kind of in this new digital era? Especially given the experience that you had in business previously, what were the things that kind of stuck out to you in terms of how you guys have found clients and also how you built the company?
15:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, the main one was a little bit of, it was kind of itchy in the beginning because of the trust, right? Because how can you trust somebody to build a company with you if you don't like know each other? Right? But not like, no, nobody, you've actually never met together. So that was kind of the main challenge at the beginning. How can we know we trust each other? But when you run the math, when you build an audience, you have a lot to lose, right? Like the pump name itself carries a lot of weight. And because it carries so much to lose, you also have a lot to win. Because like Naval said, the more accountability you take, the wealthier you can get. Because you take business risks under your own name. So the first one was trusting each other. That was like big. The second one was getting, when getting the first client, I actually asked my co-founder,
16:24 Speaker 04 Tibo, what do you think it worked? So Tibo is the head developer, right? He's good at it. And I asked him, what do you think this thing worked? And what he said really surprised me because I thought he was gonna say, because of the product, because we listened to the customer. Instead, he said, I think the business was successful because we at some point stopped listening to the customer. And we stopped doing what they wanted and then gave them what they needed. Right? So instead of giving you a way to write better tweets, we figured out a way to come up with better monetization methods. Instead of AI that might make it easier for you to write, we saw other templates that make it easier for you to monetize and actually do your work. So that was, that was big. He was big on giving people what they needed, not what they wanted. And obviously it came with a lot of hits and misses
17:09 Speaker 04 because there were a lot of features that nobody used, like a lot. There's like a few that actually hit, and those are the ones we stuck to. And, um, and the main one was just clear divisions in the company. Like in the beginning, like I've never had a contract, I've never done the equity thing. But they were very serious about you cannot touch this and we cannot touch that. And we made the divisions very clear. I'm the marketing guy, you guys are the product and tech guys. And when you have those conversations, those hard conversations early in the beginning, it's so much harder, it's so much easier to get it well down the road. Because you don't need to like really put a foot around, everybody's clear on it. So I'm a big fan, if you're gonna partner up with someone, have the hard conversations early on and be ruthless about what you want.
17:54 Speaker 04 Because you think it's gonna get easier down the road, it's not, it's just gonna get harder. So might as well do the hard things already now.
18:01 Anthony Pompliano? One of the ideas that I've seen you talk about a lot on Twitter and I think Tweet Hunter was really kind of built around was not just building a following, but being able to monetize an audience or monetize a following. Talk to me about kind of that nuanced difference. A lot of people want to build an audience or have a lot of followers, get a lot of likes, whatever. You guys seem to be really focused on how do you actually make money on the internet and why is it so important? Hey guys, what's going on? I hope that you're enjoying this conversation, but I wanted to interrupt for a quick second and tell you about a brand new conference that I'm hosting on March 4th at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The event is called Lyceum Miami and tickets are completely free for anyone who wants to come. I'm bringing together many of the most popular guests from the podcast over the last couple of years. Some of the
18:45 Anthony Pompliano? guest speakers that we've already announced are people like Vivek Ramaswamy from Strive Asset Management, or Delian and Mike Solana from Founder's Fund, Chris Williamson from the Modern Wisdom Podcast, Cody Sanchez from Contrarian Thinking, and billionaire Christian Augermeier, among many others. I've got a number of amazing surprise guests as well, some that you definitely will not expect, and others that come from walks of life that you will be scratching your head as to how I even got them to show up. But come check out Lyceum Miami on March 4th. The Lyceum was a public gym in Athens, Greece, where people used to come together, talk about ideas, and debate topics that were important
19:28 Anthony Pompliano? to society. I want to meet people in person, in real life, once again, after three years of a hiatus from real life events. And so, I'm hosting the event, and as I mentioned, anyone from anywhere can come to this event completely for free. All you need to do is go to lyceummiami.com and you'll be able to pick up a free general admission ticket. Make sure you claim your ticket in order to get in through the doors. Lyceum Miami is going to be a great time, so come check it out. Come hang out with me, many of the popular guests from the podcast, and other like-minded individuals. Lyceum Miami, March 4th, Miami Beach Convention Center. I hope to see you there. Alright, let's get back into this conversation.
20:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's, it kind of, I, sometimes I call it a lesson, sometimes I call it PTSD, because I had like 70,000 followers or so, and I remember I met this guy with 900 followers. I had 70K, he had 900. And when it came down to it, I realized that we were making the same amount of money. I had seventy times as audience, we were making the same amount of money. So it was like, super embarrassing, right? And I thought I was the only one, but there's a lot of people with huge audiences that didn't know how to monetize. And when I realized why it is that way, it was kind of, I don't know, a little bit kind of disappointing in the way audience building is taught nowadays.
20:58 Speaker 04 Because a lot of audience building is equal in people's minds to getting a lot of eyeballs on stuff. Okay, and sometimes that's not what you want. What you really want are the right eyeballs on your stuff. Because you could tweet about anything, right? Let's say you tweeted about ten books that Warren Buffett recommends. And let's say it goes viral and it's an incredible video or incredible thread. The problem is, it went viral, but it has nothing to do with you. Right, so it doesn't correlate to you, which means that people are not there for you, which means they're not gonna buy from you. Which is an issue, right? Whereas I'm big on sacrificing virality, sacrificing engagement on these likes,
21:39 Speaker 04 and focusing really on what can you talk about and what should people listen to you? Okay, so my audience building and monetization approach is based a lot on accountability and what you've done before. Because there's a big difference, right? Like, a lot of people here are into investing, right? Anybody can give you investing advice, but it's like, yeah, a dollar cost averaging today is you should totally put your money into this. Whereas it's very different if somebody tells you, hey, you should put your money into this. Then if somebody tells you, I put my money into this and that's why I recommend it. Because there's so much more weight to it. So the way I feel people build audiences is the first way. Hey, you should do this, you need to do this, you have to do this, but you haven't done it. So it doesn't carry any weight.
22:24 Speaker 04 And that's why people don't buy from you, because again, like Naval said, the more accountability you take, the more you can win. Because you have a lot to lose. Like, it's a really weird correlation, because the more you have to lose, you also, like, you have a lot to gain, right? Whereas when you say, this is what worked for me, this is what I tried, this is what I did. Suddenly, people start correlating the things they read to you. And then they start giving you money, right? Because you were the one that originated the idea and it came from you, and not from ten book Warren Buffett recommends. Right, so I'm big on talking about what you've done.
22:57 Anthony Pompliano? So one of the things I want to do in our conversation is let's pick a topic and just walk through like how you would go about building an audience and then actually monetizing that audience. So I'll let you pick the topic, but just some random topic out there. You have no preparation for this. You didn't know I was going to ask you it. And let's just go through, how do you build an audience and then how do you monetize it?
23:19 Speaker 04 Right. So this is an interesting one. And let's say you had to choose between three competitive advantages, right? And you're a locksmith, but you're really good at opening locks. You could choose between having an ad in the best part of town, that's traffic. Two, you could be the best locksmith in the world and be open, open those locks fast, that's offer. And the third one is you could be in a hot parking lot with a bunch of monks that left their kids inside their car with their keys. And they can't get it, like they can't open it. That's market. So which one would you choose if you had the three? Most people would choose market because it's like they're going to pay you a premium, whatever. You could break the window for all I know and you would still make money.
24:02 Speaker 04 So my audience building and monetization approach starts with picking the right market. Because how you're going to sell it isn't as important as what you're going to sell, which isn't as important as who you're going to sell it to. Because we want to sell to people with a lot of money that can pay you, that are great clients. So first thing is market. And what I would do there is I focus really on positioning and finding ways in which you cannot be better than everybody else. But you can be different than anybody else. So I'll give you an example from yesterday, right? Just yesterday, I had this fitness coach, just my client, and he was concerned he sounded like everybody else. And maybe that's you, you feel like you're sound like everybody else and you find a way that's different. So what we did is we figured out what was your personal story?
24:47 Speaker 04 What did you do? What makes your thing different? Turns out he was skinny fat, right? And then he built a body. So we went from a fitness coach to the skinny fat specialist. Which is vastly different, right? Because it's different than anybody else and that's what you really want. The other day, another one, he was An investor, right? No, he was a coach for for people who wanted to raise money from investors. Now, the thing that makes him different is that he was an investor before. So while his competition is selling, hey, I'll show you how to raise money. He's saying, hey, I was an investor and I'm the investor that shows you how to raise money because I know that world. I know what buttons to pull or like what's push and tricks to pull, right?
25:32 Speaker 04 So first thing is being different. Second thing is crafting the offer. And offer creation, people overcomplicate it because they feel like they need to get the offer like exactly right. And I remember when I was in high school, I had this this friend and he always used to order a pizza. And when you order a pizza, we all get together around him. Because when you ordered a pizza, what he did is he took did like a psychopath. He took the cheese out of the pizza, gave it to somebody and just ate the bread with the sauce, you know? Like you don't do that, but that teacher like that taught me that people buy things for the most random reasons. And they might buy your stuff for the most random reasons. Like if you go to McDonald's and you want to buy a burger, what does a burger include?
26:15 Speaker 04 It's got like the lettuce, the tomato, the bone, the mayo, the sauce, the ketchup, the bacon, whatever. Now, what does McDonald need to tell you to get you to buy? It's just picnic. That's it. That's all they need to tell you. Because that means that all the offer or the things you could offer people are not the things you should offer people. Because out of all your skill set that you currently have, there's one or two things that are the sexiest about that skill set. And that's what you should promote, right? So you craft the offer and you figure out what can you give people? And then it's just traffic, man. Like I'm big on the big like equalizer that you have. Yeah, you have over a million followers that I have and that somebody with zero followers have. There's one big equalizer in there and that's the DM button.
27:00 Speaker 04 It's talking to people. It's actually getting them and making connections by talking. Right? Because you, me and that guy, we fall to the same inbox. So I'm big on figuring out where is your market now that you know who they are and what makes you different? And then you figure out what to offer them and you send it to them on the DMs. So it's a very broad like simplification, but I'm big on being different, crafting an offer and just being consistent with the outreach and talking to people so they'll book calls with you and I'll ship by.
27:29 Anthony Pompliano? When you go and you look today at what people are doing, what are the biggest mistakes that they're making?
27:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's that's big. One is they they. The biggest one is they talk about things that they have no authority on, right? So they'll. Post something around, hey, here are Jeff Bezos 10 rules of success. Like, OK, cool. What are your rules of success? Like, what qualifies you to say? Or let's say, have you ever read a read the same phrase? Maybe it's a basic phrase, right? But it you feel it differently depending on who's it from. Have you ever had that? Because it's not just the message that's being sent. It's also the messenger.
28:14 Speaker 04 Right? For example, yeah, right? So you like, I'm I have like zero credibility of Bitcoin and crypto at all. Right? So if you say, hey, Bitcoin is getting to this level, people take it seriously. If I say it, nobody cares. It could be the exact same thing, copy and paste it. But it comes from a different messenger. So people talk about things they haven't earned the right to talk about. Like, how to become a millionaire? If you're not a millionaire, you can't talk about that, right? How do you achieve financial freedom? If you don't have that, you can't talk about that. So instead of people, I would say, instead of them going broader and talking about more things, go narrower. If you can't be the king of the ocean, be the king of the lake.
28:59 Speaker 04 And if not, the river. And if not, the pond. And if not, the puddle. But find some place small enough and so small that there you are king. And then when you talk about, nobody can tell you anything, because nobody's better than you. Yeah, at it than you. Like Naval said, be the best at what you do. Redefine what it is until that's true.
29:21 Anthony Pompliano? When you start trying to unpack the Internet today, is Twitter the only platform that you focus on? Or do you think that there's other platforms that could be valuable to people as well?
29:31 Speaker 04 I think it's the one you can stick to the most and I actually want to get your input on that one. If I'm being selfish on this podcast today, but I like Twitter because it's the one that comes most naturally to me. Like I like to write things fast and just send it out there. However, and this is where I want to kind of discuss it with you. I'm seeing that YouTube to me builds like the strongest audiences because people feel like they just, they just know you. Because they see your face and they listen to you so often. So I'd actually like to reverse it to you. What do you think?
30:03 Anthony Pompliano? I think all of the different platforms have pros and cons, obviously. You can't just look at what the content type is. You also have to think about the delivery mechanism. So for example, it's very easy for YouTube to not allow people to see your content. Right? There's a algorithmic feed. They may give you a boost or they may suppress something that you post. It could be because of the type of content, the title, click through, completion time. Like there's so many variables that go into it. And so video is definitely the most intimate. In terms of people are seeing you, they're hearing you, they can recognize you. There's all these things that make them kind of much more receptive to the message.
30:44 Anthony Pompliano? But the delivery mechanism may actually be a friction point rather than a benefit. Compare that, let's say with email. Email for the most part is unfiltered. If somebody's on your email list, you're going to get deliverability. Unless you've done something kind of crazy or people don't find it valuable. And so you're able to deliver over and over and over again, but it's written word. And so that can be somewhat intimate, but it's not nearly as much as video. And so what you start trying to think about is like there are stages to content creation. Kind of the receptivity or the viewing experience and then also the deliverer kind of pathway that you choose. And so some of the best people that I know, what they actually are able to do is they optimize at each stage for something different.
31:28 Anthony Pompliano? And so they may say to themselves, okay, you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to record a podcast, let's say, and I'm gonna have audio on an RSS feed. I know that if somebody subscribed to my RSS feed, there's no filtering, there's no algorithmic feed, it's gonna get delivered. Having myself talking in their ear is a pretty intimate experience and it can drive somewhat of a connection, but they don't see me. So I'm actually gonna record the video of that same exact podcast episode, I'm then gonna deliver it via email, and then on top of that, I'm also going to post it on YouTube. And so I'm gonna increase the surface area of the deliverability, and I'm going to say the people who want audio and find that the most engaging platform, I'm there to serve them. People who are on YouTube or like the visual, I'm gonna serve them there.
32:12 Anthony Pompliano? So if you look at all of that, that's very different than Twitter, right? Or it's very different than Instagram, it's very different than a TikTok. But what I do think becomes fascinating, kinda what you're hinting at, is if you take TikTok and YouTube and you put them side by side, I don't think most people could name the individuals that they see on TikTok on a day-to-day basis. They would have to describe it to a friend, they'd be like, "Oh, did you see X person?" Or that person who does, you know, Y. Or the person who had Z video. But they don't know their name, they don't have the connection with them. On YouTube, you watch a couple minutes of a YouTube video of someone, you probably know who they are. And so I do think that it's kinda this weird thing where there's a difference between short-form feeds like TikTok that are just all about get to the next one, get to the next one, get to the next one.
32:56 Anthony Pompliano? It's very addictive, but you don't build a connection with an individual. Versus if you go and you watch a YouTube video for 15 minutes with someone, you'll probably have a good recollection of not only who they are, but what they stand for. And so ultimately, it comes back to there's no good or bad, it's just like, what are you trying to solve for? What are you optimizing for? And then you can pick kind of your path of least resistance to achieve that goal.
33:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, like, I think you made a great point there into like which ones for you. Because like fitness, like every diet works, the only thing that doesn't work is for you to stick to it. Right? So every platform really works if you just actually stick to the platform. Right? And I've never thought about what you said about TikTok and YouTube that way, because let's say you're watching this right now, right? So in YouTube, you're Anthony Pompliano, right? Whereas in TikTok, maybe somebody would call you the bed porn guy. Same content, but because it's so like the perception of it is so different. Like what could make you so much more money because it's your name, it's associated to you.
33:59 Speaker 04 You know, so that's why I'm big on and I you see it like back there. That's my that's like my motto likes in cash. Because you could get a lot of likes, but how many of those are you actually monetizing? Right? That's what really matters. What's the connection? What do people know you for? How many people actually recommend you? Not how many people follow, but who actually follows you? And when you optimize for these connections and what I call competence, like proving your competence to others. Money just starts flowing in. It's just a subtle approach to audience building. But one, I feel like leads to vastly different results.
34:35 Anthony Pompliano? Would you rather have a hundred thousand dollars or a hundred thousand followers on Twitter?
34:41 Speaker 04 Depending on how I got them. Did I buy them?
34:43 Anthony Pompliano? No, no, no, they're like organically grown, you know, like a like a normal account.
34:48 Speaker 04 Oh, easily a hundred K followers. Yeah, that's easy. Yeah, because I mean, you can you can sell them over and over again and. Yeah, you you have so much more power, right? I'd say if you say a million dollars and a hundred thousand followers. I would still choose followers because you can sell them over and over and over again. And just the network effects are just invaluable to me.
35:12 Anthony Pompliano? So you would rather have a hundred thousand followers than a million dollars in cash?
35:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, I would. What would you do?
35:21 Anthony Pompliano? I'd same thing, the followers for sure. But I I think what's interesting about it is this is a thought process that is now becoming more prevalent in younger people. Where if you go and you ask them, hey, let's say a high school kid. Would you rather have, you know, 25,000 followers or five grand? Even though they have no money, zero dollars, many of them, not all, but many of them will choose the 25,000 followers. Because they now see it's possible. They understand followers equate opportunity in business. And so they're starting to recognize if I can not choose the kind of short term. Um, you know, windfall of cash and I can look at this as how do I? Lay the foundation for something, that's the better path. It's fascinating to me because I don't think 10 years ago,
36:04 Anthony Pompliano? if you had said to someone, hey, do you want, you know, a million bucks or 100,000 followers? I'm like, what? Of course, the million dollars. I don't know how many of them had ever seen a path to actually building businesses and driving revenue. Now they've seen it, it becomes much more attainable to them. And that's why they're so interested in the followers, not just the cash.
36:25 Speaker 04 Let me turn it back to you. Would you have 10K email subs or 100,000 followers?
36:33 Anthony Pompliano? I think email is by far the single most powerful platform. And again, it goes back to like, what are you trying to accomplish? Obviously, if you're just looking for, you know, broad reach and virality, and kind of how do you grow your audience as fast as possible? You probably can do that all the easier on Twitter. But in terms of connectivity to the audience, email to me is much, much better. It also allows you to actually write rather than have to fit everything into 280 characters. And so email, I think, is much powerful. Now, if you have a big Twitter audience, it's not hard to convert people from Twitter to an email list. Right? And so naturally, you know, an interesting question is to ask yourself,
37:16 Anthony Pompliano? if you had to pick one platform to start on and build your initial audience, that would then serve as the groundwork for everything else you wanted to do? I do think that Twitter is probably the place where it gives you the furthest head start. Not necessarily the only way to do it, but I do think that Twitter being the first one provides a lot of advantages.
37:38 Speaker 04 It allows you to fail fast too, because if you wanted to record a YouTube video, it's gonna take you like a week for you to know if it was a success or not. Whereas when it comes to Twitter, it takes 20 minutes or like two seconds, right? You could just write it and see how it does. You just go like that. And maybe one thing I think we might agree on that the audience might find valuable is, whatever platform you choose, one of your main goals should be to drive people to your email list because you own that. Right? So whatever platform, it's not that the platform are kings. It's the email list that's king. Platforms are just a way to get them into your list. Because you got, you got the man hammer, that's it. I mean, you saw what happened to agitate, right? He had the big following, then just like, poof, disappeared, right? And that is like,
38:22 Speaker 04 It was just a weird situation. So whatever platform you choose, email is king if you want to follow people to that and you own it and you control it and you can monetize as many times as you want.
38:33 Anthony Pompliano? What are you going to do next now that you guys sold Tweet Hunter? What's next on your agenda?
38:39 Speaker 04 Yeah, so about Tweet Hunter, the main lesson I got was think long term and I started too many businesses. And I realized that I think I'm at a point where if I just, I don't need to do too many things. If I could focus on one, just do it through that, then it'll be better. So now I'm just focusing on one business for the next three or five years. It's called Tweeting Clients, where we show people how to monetize your audience. It's not grow, but monetize. And I'm in it now, for sure. Just coaching now.
39:09 Anthony Pompliano? I love it. Where can we send people to find you on the internet?
39:12 Speaker 04 Alright, so if you want to find me, you can go to @onejkmolina, that's O-N-E. JK Molina on Twitter. You want to monetize your Twitter audience, I'm glad to help. If you want to grow your audience, I can't really help.
39:25 Anthony Pompliano? I love it. Alright JK, listen, thank you so much for doing this. Again, I think you've got this incredible story from literally selling perfume door to door in Guatemala to selling a business for over a million dollars within three years. It just speaks to the power of the internet, speaks to the power of your personal curiosity and your willingness to do the work. And I think that there's tons and tons of people who can find inspiration in your story, but also can learn quite a bit in terms of if they can acquire those skills, if they can put in the hard work. The internet really does export that American dream globally and provides an amazing opportunity for a lot of folks. So thank you so much for everything that you've done so far and we wish you the best of luck as you continue.
40:05 Speaker 04 Thank you for having me. That was great. See you around.
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