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HOW TO GAIN INFLUENCE ON X with Robert Scoble
Recorded: April 15, 2025 Duration: 1:37:59Space Recording
Short Summary
In a dynamic discussion, industry leaders emphasize the importance of niche focus, consistent content creation, and leveraging personal relationships for growth in the crypto space. As video consumption rises, creators are urged to adapt and innovate, while the significance of having a clear mission and passion is highlighted as essential for long-term success.
Full Transcription
Thank you. What up, what up, what up, what up, my people?
What is going on?
Let's get Scobalizer up on stage.
Sent co-host invite.
There we go.
We got, who else we got on stage? We got Jackie on stage or Excalibur on stage Jackie you've been good welcome back to the X fam
How you doing?
Hey, I'm doing good. I
Actually, I've been very boring, but I figured out that you know, I need to not be boring. So there you go
out that, you know, I need to not be boring. So there you go. That's the number one rule of life.
The number one rule of life is do not be boring. You taught me that and I just fell into this
boring space and you know, I just had to fight my way out. So we're going to talk about sex
scandals today. This is not going to be boring. Right on. I'm here for that. I am so here for that. Sex scandal day. It's sex scandal day. I fucking love it.
One thing about Robert, you always keep it interesting. You're never boring, Robert. I love that.
I try. That's the first rule of being a content person. You got to be interesting and stand out.
Otherwise, you're not going to have an audience.
Robert, are you on YouTube?
Do you do video?
I have a YouTube channel.
I haven't focused on it, and that's going to be today's lesson to myself,
is more video is coming because people in the next three years are going to start getting video glasses from Google and Meta and probably Apple and maybe a few others.
And people with those glasses are going to watch a lot more video.
So I better upgrade my video presence if I want to be relevant.
Yeah, I'm going to do a new challenge if you want to do it with me.
I've been doing a YouTube video a week for the last like uh eight months nine months i want to move it up to a day of a
youtube video a day it could be long form or short form something in every other day do long
form every other day do short form but i want to i think the secret to video is just doing it
is just going hard at it um and doing it over and over again and
just improving every step of the way and so I'm just going hard at it man you
want to go hard at it with me let's do it I did a video this morning so I'm
ready to go and they can be simple like I'm I I if I can't think of idea I'll
just turn on the camera and talk about the news of the day in AI, the news of the day in tech.
Like, I'm going to get anything, you know?
Don't be boring.
You know, there's others doing that.
In fact, that's where I was going to start out today is, you know, if you want to break in the content business today and build an audience, first, you've got to know what you're up against that's why i
built a list for everybody that are here on x so you can see what kind of content and how much
content because you can put all those lists into x pro and you can sit there and watch the world go
by and it goes by fast right there's more content being produced now than ever in my life and it goes by fast, right? There's more content being produced now
than ever in my life, and it's going up.
You know, when I started my blog in 2000,
there was only 200 bloggers.
I wasn't up against this kind of flood of content
that is here on X,
and we haven't even thought about, you know,
YouTube gets more video uploaded every second than you can possibly watch in your lifetime.
Right. And TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and and all the new ones, threads and Mastodon and Blue Sky.
There's a lot of there's a lot of content there.
So people need to understand what they're up against. First
of all, second of all, most people, uh, when they start out, they, they, they start too broadly.
They think they're going to be the next, you know, tech crunch or something like that.
And that's done. And it's really hard to do, but, but like you're sitting in a cyber track,
right? There's not many people who have Cybertruck shows.
So by narrowing your focus down to something smaller, you can own that.
You can stick out in that.
And you can build a brand over time in that.
Certainly some tricks.
Pick something that is monetizable.
Cybertruck owners tend to be richer than, like i'm sitting in a model three than me
so your audience is uh wealthier than if you try to write a blog about poetry right uh second of
all you're convertible you're cyber truck people they like buying wraps and racks and
tow hitches and bikes and all sorts of other shit that goes with the Cybertruck.
So they're convertible to other things.
I've noticed entrepreneurs that pick an audience that is growing and convertible do better
because they have a business opportunity to monetize in the future.
And so the first thing is pick a niche and and own the fucker right uh if you're going to be
the cybertruck guy you better do a video every day about cybertrucks right and interview cybertruck
owners and go on cybertruck rallies and uh figure out how to make friends with the cybertruck team
at tesla you don't give a fuck about the optimus team. All you need is the Cybertruck team, right? You better be best friends with those people so you get some news
that nobody else has and some insights nobody else has
and you have a relationship to take care of your audience, that kind of thing.
But I assume that most of your audience is going to do
the basics. They're going to have a great picture, a great bio.
If they're going to do a Cybertruck show, they better have Cybertruck in the bio,
right? And maybe even in their name.
And then they're going to have a lot of Cybertruck content, right?
If I look at their profile, I'm not going to see a lot of politics or a lot of sports
or a lot of other shit. I'm going to see Cybertrucks if that's
the channel audience that they've
decided on.
That gets back to you have to know
what audience are you chasing
and who do you want to be
let's say in two years.
Do you want to be the Cybertruck guy?
Well, you better be the Cybertruck guy.
If you want to be a sports guy, you better be
all about sports and
consistently so. I don't want to see a lot of politics. I don't want to see a lot of animals. I don't want to be a sports guy, you better be all about sports, and consistently so.
I don't want to see a lot of politics.
I don't want to see a lot of animals.
I don't want to see a lot of chit-chat.
I want to see, you know, if you're going after sports, I want to see sports.
I've looked at some of my credentials.
I wrote a book about social media before this fucking website started.
I've been watching this since the beginning.
I've looked at hundreds of thousands
of profiles in my lifetime, and I see some people do this really fucking well from the beginning.
Other people flail and complain and go, why am I not getting reach? Well, your bio's not good,
your photo's not good, and your content's not on point, and you're not telling me what
you're going to give me every day, so it's hard to follow you or care about you because you're
all over the map. I see a lot of people who are in the AI industry. All they do is talk about
politics. That gets me to unfollow them real fast, unless that's their deal, right? If you're
going to be a politician and you're going to run for office, then make it all about politics and put that in your bio.
And say I'm running for state senate in California and that's my deal.
I'm going to be all about politics.
I might follow you for that reason and put you on a different list than if you're writing about Cybertrucks or because I have a Tesla list or AI because I have a lot of AI lists, right?
So that's where I thought I would start with is just do the basics.
Then we can have some fun and talk about sex scandals.
Well, I like the part you mentioned and listen, if you're in the audience, request to come up if you want to add to the conversation.
Talking on the stage, I'll tell you this, gets your followers, it gets your attention, you know know it builds relationships it builds your brand so
definitely request um i like the part you brought up about niche right niche like people you need to
really niche down the higher the niche you you go after the the harder it is to break in right if
you go out you're just a sports account you you're just tweeting about sports, it's going to be very hard to build an audience because there's so many people in that niche.
It's so difficult to get into.
For me...
But is there a sports show that only covers the third base?
Yep.
Or just one very specific AAA team or something like that.
Something, Some niche. Now, Nick O'Neill started a blog about Facebook in the early days
before anybody realized Facebook was going to be a big multinational company
with billions of users.
And he started early covering Facebook.
And that's all he did was Facebook, right?
He picked a niche that was going to grow a lot over the next two decades.
And so that was a good niche to pick.
So I would be looking for a niche that, you know, is going to be bigger in two years than it is today and is convertible.
And he picked one that was both because facebook users uh tend to tended to convert
to things right so um yeah pick your niche and and own it right that's all nick o'neill did
was cover facebook um and he owned it he i i had a famous blog back then and i covered facebook
here and there but that's all he did all day long, and he built a whole company around it and passed me by.
So a lot of these lessons I'm going to share are people who passed me by.
I was the first one to link to TechCrunch, right?
And Mike Arrington took that and just passed me by because he was just covering a very
specific kind of startup and he
got news and he
built relationships. He had parties in his
backyard in Silicon Valley
that everybody came to.
One of them was for me,
which was cool, but
he went on and made a business and I didn't
make a business out of what I was doing.
So here's a lesson.
Be keeping your eye on the business possibilities here because there's going to be a, there's people listening that might not even be posting yet.
That might be billionaires in years.
Right.
I'd also think about how your niche can evolve too.
Right.
Like, cause I started off in the nft niche right i was nfts
then i moved to crypto i moved up you move your niches upwards so from nfts to crypto to tech
to entrepreneurship and now i'm like on ai coding specifically and you you can evolve your niche
in ways where the people in your previous niche are still not alienated by what
you're now talking about so you can try new things evolve and develop your image and brands more and
so now i've gone from nfts to entrepreneurship to tech to to coding with ai and if i'm successful
in the coding with ai niche i can then niche up even more and just kind of go broader ai because
i've kind of built up so you think about the evolution of your niche as well.
Well, you're already in two niches.
You're in social media and coding with AI.
You're building a tool for social media content creators,
and you're building a lot of expertise for AI and AI coding.
So that gives you two niches right there,
and you'll get more over time.
You might start a Cybertruck show because you're sitting in a cyber track. I'm very Well, that's well, that's also a listen to like think about this. It's also a strength, right? If you
Find the intersection of two niches right and find something interesting there
You now have basically created your own niche
Right my niche is like the intersection of social media and building
with AI. And that's not something a ton of people are in. So my competition is even more narrowed.
I'm basically standing alone in my own competition. So that's something about as well, right?
Yes. And you're using AI for social media gains, which is a big trend right now and going to be a bigger
trend in a year than it is today, right? So you picked a good niche that's going to grow, grow,
grow, and you're in two niches that are doing that. That's smart. Oh, man, what else worked
in my career? You know, being first helped, you know know i was the first one to get a thousand followers
here on twitter or x uh because i was early because i was in in the business i was at the
south by southwest where twitter was launched i i knew the founder of twitter before he launched
twitter i knew him when he was broke and running a small little startup company called Blogger. And I was a competitor of his back then.
And he came to my dinners.
I ran social media dinners back in 2001.
And he was broke.
He just fired his employees.
He fired his engineering team or laid them off because back then there was no sponsorship
Back then, there was no sponsorship money.
money.
There was no money in the world.
All the money disappeared in 2000 when the dot-com boom busted.
And it was hard times, which actually gave him a lot of opportunities.
He begged his readers for money to keep his servers up and running.
And because he was operating in that environment, there was a lot of talent on the street that was looking for something to do,
and a lot of them started blogs on his server,
and that helped him build his company over a few years.
He sold to Google.
I think he made a few million dollars, maybe $10, $20 million out of that,
and that gave him the wealth to start a podcasting company,
which didn't quite work out. But one of his engineers over a weekend coded this thing called
Twitter. And he saw that was a big deal because the user base of that was growing real fast,
real fast, like overnight. And he took it over and now he's a billionaire and the rest of
the story is written. Some things that worked, you know, I sort of wrote it up in a post earlier
today. If you want to be an influencer, you either got to find news that nobody else does. So you got
to have some friends at some companies
like if you have friends at open ai and you want to start an open ai blog or a video show uh and
you get insights from inside open ai that i don't get or nobody else gets well that'll draw an
audience real fast right because there's a lot of people interested in open AI right now. So if you're one of those people who can do that, that's great.
You have to do something that stands out. In my day, I started doing a video show on
mobile phones. I was the first one to do live streaming show on a mobile phone, right? Which
is why I got the first ride in that first Tesla, because I was live streaming that on a Nokia phone right back in the day, before iPhones really took over.
And then everybody else joined and started doing it, because it was easy. But do something a little
hard, you know, get a camera that nobody else has, get a look that nobody else has, then you stand out.
Some other things.
What else did I do?
You know, when my audience grew real fast, I was faster than anybody else.
Now it's hard to do that.
I was the first one to report Steve Jobs died, which is sort of a weird story here on X.
Because I was listening to talk radio that day and kgo radio came on and said steve we just learned abc news has just learned steve jobs has died and i pulled i was on the
freeway uh when that happened i pulled off the freeway called my friend told him the news
and then it went to twitter and i was still first after four or five minutes intermission there.
Why?
Because Apple, if you understand how Apple works,
they only call major news outlets with news like that.
They call Reuters, ABC News, New York Times, CNN, that kind of thing.
Times, CNN, that kind of thing. Well, back then, nobody cared about Twitter. And so ABC News didn't
Well, back then, nobody cared about Twitter.
even report the news they had on Twitter until 20 minutes later, right? Because they didn't give a
shit about it. So I was able to get first news on Twitter. That got me 20,000 followers, just that
one news event, right? And I was the first one onto the campus because I was close by to the campus. So
I live in Silicon Valley, so I have advantages. I was driving through Sunnyvale that day,
and I was the first one to Cupertino, and I arrived before all the news journalists did.
And they all were looking for somebody to interview, so I was standing there with my
thumb up my ass, and I got on like 20 news outlets within an hour it's like apple pr
came out to me and goes we've been watching you you've been on all the news shows do you think
that's enough now and i was like i guess so which shows apple pr watches every fucking thing that
goes on every platform you know they know what they know what I'm saying about Apple,
even though they think nobody's listening.
What was your tipping point?
What was the point in which you think
was kind of the breakthrough for you?
Well, getting a job at Microsoft,
that's another way to get an audience.
Get a cool job at a cool company
that everybody cares about
and figure out how to do content
from inside the company.
That made my career
in fact vick and doter uh hired me he's the guy who funded uh android at google and later but when
he called me up he said this phone call might change your life or it would will change your
life he told me i was like oh really what are we going to talk about he's like i'd like you to come
to microsoft and work up here. And that did.
Because I had a famous blog before that with a few thousand readers, which was a famous blog back in that day.
And then after I got the job at Microsoft, a lot of people started paying attention to what I was doing.
And I got it in Economist magazine and all sorts of shit happened.
So getting a job at a cool company.
Now the problem with that,
in my first book about social media,
I had a whole chapter of people who got fired with their blogs at companies.
It's really easy to get fired from inside a company if you don't know the rules.
And the rules are different for everybody right i had
different rules than bill gates has right bill gates can talk about the company uh even in advance
of a stock uh disclosure i can't do that i would get fired if i did that so i had to know the rule
about oh you can't talk about anything you learn internally. Like if I learned sales are going to be great next quarter, I can't report that.
So you got to understand the rules that happen in every company. That's a rule that happens in
every company. It's an SEC rule, right? You're not allowed to disclose things and you're not
allowed to do insider trading. And you to understand that that kind of thing but every
company is different a friend of mine uh mark jen uh was blogging at microsoft because there was a
couple hundred bloggers at microsoft well he left and went to google and he got fired within two
weeks of going to google because google had a very what they were just going public. And he was mouthing off about Google, and people got real
nervous about what he was mouthing off about and fired him. So you got to understand the culture
of your own company very deeply if you're going to be blogging inside a company like that. You
have to really understand what's going to piss off the executive team
and the lawyers who run the executive team and whatnot, right? And know what your place is,
what your role is, and what the rules are. I helped write the PR manual at Microsoft for
the bloggers. So I studied the rules very deeply, internally, and talked to a lot of people about them, talked to
executives and PR people. And I knew the rules because I pissed them off a couple times too. So
I got called on the carpet and almost got fired. One time they made, I pissed off all the lawyers
because I put up a video of something that I thought was patented,
and the guy I was interviewing thought it was patented.
It turned out it wasn't patented everywhere and pissed off the lawyers.
And my punishment, because they said, we can't really fire you for this,
but your punishment is at your next South by Southwest,
you're going to have to sleep with a lawyer.
I'm like, oh, that's interesting.
And they said, it's not about sex.
We just want you to be around a lawyer for a weekend and so that that lawyer can teach you all the ways you're
going to piss them off and so you don't do this shit again and i got a college level class in
corporate law that weekend uh because i got to ask the lawyer all sorts of questions like, you know, what's trademark? How does that work? What's a patent? How does that work? Why did you guys all get
pissed off, right? Oh, well, the patent system is different in every country, and some countries,
if you publicly disclose something without getting patent, then it invalidates the patent and so you fucked us around the country around the world and some of the markets right okay
right so now I I know those rules and I could probably do that rule the role
again if I was invited to but I won't be invited to because I have other
problems with my reputation Robert can I ask you a question?
Yes.
I'm listening to your formula for being successful and I'm hearing things like
be creative, be the expert, be first.
All that stuff makes sense to me.
If you have, you know,
a human characteristic that needs to be in place or developed to make that happen, what would that be?
Curiosity.
So you ask a lot of questions before you publish something.
So keep being curious.
Right.
That's how you find out the goals.
You have to understand that
the relationship you have with a source right and really understand the rules i i make people
for instance if i meet an apple employee i i tell them right before i even start talking i said you
can get fired just for talking to me uh and I introduced myself and I explained who I am and I explained why they would get fired.
And if they keep talking, then we're cool, right?
Because we both know the rules and we both know our relationship and we both know how we're going to proceed.
But you have to be curious about that and knowledgeable a little bit about the rules.
That's how Mike Arrington, the reason he passed me by was he was fucking amazing at that,
at getting somebody on the phone, working at YouTube,
and getting them to give him some news that nobody else was getting.
And he would do it quick.
I was in his bedroom at one event and listening to him on the phone doing this.
And he was just really, really amazing at, you know, getting them to talk on the record
and trading things with him.
He would trade like, hey, if you give me this leak,
I'll give you two more stories or something like that of your choice in the future,
give you some favor tips.
He was really good at negotiating with people.
Maybe that's one.
If you're a good negotiator and a good human relationship builder and you can do that fast, that's going to drive you your career fast.
You know, that's how you get on Alex's show, right?
People down in the listener part, how do you get up on the show?
Well, you better be messaging Alex some tips right now.
No, do not DM me.
Do not DM me.
No, I just kept telling him I
love him, and he finally
loved me back. That works too.
Flattering. See, you're good at relationship
building. That's a big one.
Everybody likes to be flattered.
I flattered the hell out of him. I did pay him too, but he
still loves me.
Well, no, what Jackie did and what everyone else did who's up here that I bring up all the time is DMs.
Don't do DMs.
Don't ask for favors.
Don't ask for things constantly.
Just like contribute.
That's a good tip.
Gary Vaynerchuk wrote a whole book on that topic.
Don't hit people up from the beginning.
In other words, punch, punch, jab.
In other words, bring something to the table first.
Be sending Alex a week's worth of tips
about things that are happening in the world,
some AI tool you should try out,
something you know that Alex might
want to feature on a future show or in a future blog post or even a feature he might want
to add to his tool or something like that, right?
In other words, be a gift giver first, build a relationship that way, and certainly do
all the basics because I run my own own shows too and I'm always looking at
the bios trying to figure out is this guy going to say the n-word on my show is this guy you know
going to add value to my show or is is it going to be a troll right and if you don't have a picture
and you don't have a good bio and you don't have a lot of great content on point for what we're talking about, you probably don't get pulled up. But if you have a blog about social
media and you've done all the basics, chances are you're going to get pulled up by Alex once in a
while, right? And then you have to deliver when you're on the show, of course, right?
Hey, real quick, Robert, if I could chime in, because I'm one of these people that you're
talking about. Excellent.
Deliver some knowledge.
I mean, to be honest, I don't know how I got to the point where I know you and now Alex.
I mean, I know I subscribed to Creator Buddy.
I don't know how I found all you guys.
That's a good way.
That's the ultimate form of flattery.
Put money in our wallet.
Subscribe.
Well, I subscribed after i'd already met him
but my whole thing is like just be interesting and be genuine like when i've talked to you
you and i had a conversation on the phone like i was all just interested in you and telling you
my story like i have a crazy ass story but i just i wasn't asking anybody you know for favors and i
contribute you know information like i mean i last i think last time we did one of these, I gave you some like tip about the iPad and spaces or something like, you know, just be of service, you know, be of use.
My boss at Rackspace used to say, be helpful.
And that takes you a long way in life because if you're always helping
people they're they're gonna look for ways to help you back right exactly and a question i actually
kind of had to play devil's advocate for you my phone number is public for that reason so you can
call me and be helpful it's been public for 20 years nobody ever calls you know send me a text
what you both alex and and robert were saying about you know finding a niche and everything
i completely agree with all of that but to play devil's advocate if you were to just look at like
the last i say 20 posts i have i am all over the place but but it's genuine content. It's analysis of stuff.
I don't use AI to generate most of my stuff, but I talk about politics.
I just got a new puppy.
I'm hopefully about to get a Cybertruck, even though they screwed me again today.
But I'm working on it.
I know a lot about a lot.
I'm a liberal arts major.
I'm earning an MBA.
I'm just trying to share knowledge with the world. I'm not doing it with the goal of being monetized. So I guess in my case, I'm throwing a wide net, but I'm also not expecting to pull anything in either.
that's your brand and that's what you're doing and everybody likes it right if you're good at
sharing all sorts of different things you can make a brand about that it's just easier if you
choose one niche if you want to build a build a media company you know or or stand out because
like i said you have to know what you're up against and if you want reach and if you want you
know people to click reshare on your posts and stuff like that it's easier if you want reach and if you want you know people to click reshare on your posts
and stuff like that it's easier if you're writing about one thing every day uh or doing videos on
one thing every day because then an audience knows what they're going to get from you and
they keep coming back to you for that one thing right like alex is going to start a cyber truck
show the broader you're well we got we got... Well, in the next couple of weeks,
we'll do episode one of the Cybertruck Chronicles.
Rob, I'll pick you up.
But the broader your niche is
and the bigger the market you're trying to go after,
the better your product needs to be.
Right?
So if you're doing sports,
like one of the broadest
niches there is or just tech you're just tech overall your competition's millions of people
which means your product which is your content or whatever you're building needs to be extremely
good but if you go micro niche like for instance i'm going after ai programming on youtube which
there isn't many competitors.
I don't have to be that good.
And I'm not a good videographer.
I'm not a good YouTube creator.
I just, I don't do much editing.
I'm not.
So I, I can still succeed, which I am.
I have 12,000 subs, even, you know, even though my shit's not that great, but I don't have much competition.
Right.
So if you're going to go odd like that, Bobby,
I mean, your writing's got to be fire.
If you want to be Joe Rogan, you've got to be funny, right? And entertaining.
Hey, if you meet me in person, I'm pretty damn funny.
Not going to lie.
Are you funny?
It's not, I can't pull off humor.
I don't do humor, right? I can't be a stand-up comic and
uh joe rogan has a comedy uh uh stage right so comedy mode yeah i'm actually trying to go there
next month um yeah it's really good but i actually that's one thing i'm interested in doing i'm such a fan of stand-up comedy
but doing that but one thing that uh the the lady who asked i believe jackie was her name
about the one word i posted a couple like i think sincerity being genuine that type of stuff but
if you could say one skill set too it's you kind of touched on it both of you have is your
interpersonal communication skills you know how do you speak with other people how do you relate to other people can you read a room
can you target and know who your audience is that is just as important i think and like you're
talking about networking and everything well that's true if you're socially awkward you need
to work on it if you want to be successful i I was lucky. I was Apple's first child laborer. I built
Apple II motherboards when I was 13 in my mom's kitchen. That got me to fall in love with new
things, but that didn't really pay dividends for... That was 1978. I met Steve Wozniak in a
community college parking lot in 1980 because I built his motherboards. And I wanted to meet him because I built his
motherboards. So I stalked him. And I had enough social graces of introducing myself properly
and winning him over real fast right out in the parking lot. And then we studied every day for a
semester in a community college cafeteria.
And I got along with him, obviously.
He didn't tell me to get lost.
So that started my career.
That was my first celebrity interview.
And that was back in college, right?
So I was lucky in that I grew up in Cupertino.
But I was lucky again because I met him in a community college parking lot.
And then I had the social skills to build a relationship and keep it going and talk him out of some money, I might add, which was cool for the journalism department.
It wasn't for me.
It was for helping the ability to do.
Thanks to a teacher who made me set them all up.
Listen, sometimes it takes a push from someone like that my push that really got me working hard uh was a executive at a software company he told me to build a demo for grinder i was working at an analytics uh company
i was a developer there and we're trying to sell our analytics to grinder and so he's like can you
build like a demo gay dating app for grinder that we we can demo the analytics on? And I'm like, all right, deal.
And so I built out the app.
We presented it and Grindr ended up signing a $400,000 deal with the company.
Guy sends out, executive sends out an email to the entire company.
Alex Finn crushed it.
He's the reason the deal got done.
And like that changed my life, that little push from him.
And I just, I just like, whoa, ho shit.
I can like achieve shit in my career. This is incredible
And I worked extra hard after that sometimes it just takes a push from one person to change your entire life
There we go
I think you both are kind of touching on it too. Like from at least my military background
I say you're both saying similar things is one you need to find a mentor and two, you need to find a passion.
Yeah. It's hard to do this if you don't have a passion because after 30 days of doing YouTube
videos, it might take you six months. It starts becoming a grind, right? And if you're not
passionate about the topic, you're not going to keep doing it. And it's the keep doing it that really helps build a brand, right?
If you keep doing the same thing for three years, you're going to have an audience that
cares about that.
Well, you got to find passions.
That's the thing too, is 99% of people on this fucking planet are boring as fuck, right?
They work nine to five, they they come home they smoke weed and then
play video games and go to bed like that's every day every single day over and over again because
they don't got any passions they don't got any hobbies if you're bored you're boring right you
need to find hobbies you need to find things you're interested in right i i used to run uh
conferences for programmers back in the 90s and And one of my speakers was talking about a brand new video game technology, the most exciting technology you could imagine.
Right. It'd be like talking about holodecks today.
And he made it so fucking boring.
And I'm like, dude, you took the most interesting topic ever known to mankind and you made it boring.
How did that? that's that's not
smart you know if that guy was good compared to don box he was uh one of our favorite speakers
he ended up uh later running uh uh engineering on the holodeck uh hollow hololens team at Microsoft. But he was always exciting on stage, right?
He came out naked in a bathtub
and gave his speech in the bathtub,
the whole fucking speech.
And he held the audience
because he was good at speaking
and being passionate about what he's talking about,
which was the Windows API.
He made the Windows API the most exciting thing ever right which is hard to do
it's being a good storyteller you know if you can capture people's attention i posted something in
the chat it's something i learned i called it spice cops people have changed it but it's the
elements of mass appeal you've got like oddity sex
sensationalism all of these things if you capture one of those or multiple of them
you gain attention speaking passion gets somebody promised me a uh sex scandal so i'm still waiting
oh we have a couple in the bag we'll pull them out in a few in a few minutes
well here's one i like to capture, which is just education, teaching people to do shit.
I've been doing content for three years and all my entire strategy is how can I teach people to do stuff?
Right. So I just try to learn stuff myself and teach people to do it.
Right. I learned AI programming. I built my own app by doing it.
And now I'm just teaching people how to do the same exact things. Right. So that's a big one to education. People will fucking ride or die with
you if you teach them to do something. But you do it in an entertaining way too. It's easy to
follow along with what you say. It's not boring to watch your videos. Yeah. Passion got me in the
middle of a presidential Canada sex scandal, actually. I, you know, passion got me in the middle of a presidential candidate sex scandal, actually.
Passion got me pictures of Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan back in 1984, which won me some awards in a school journalism contest.
But my picture of Ronald Reagan hung in the Republican headquarters in Silicon Valley for decades, Ronald Reagan and his wife. How did I get that picture? I showed up in a suit and tie. I showed
up there at six in the morning. I made friends with every Secret Service agent and worked my way
up until I got to the stage where I got that picture. It was that passion that got me the picture. But that got me invited
later on to follow around John Edwards when he was announcing he was running for president,
right? Because I was passionate about the topic and I had some expertise in presidential
campaigns and how they worked. And I had some passion for it.
So when they called me, I said, fuck yes, let's go.
Right?
I wasn't wishy-washy about it.
And they called me because I had that earlier passion
that came through.
Anyway, so Alex, since we're going to talk about
one of the sex scandals, do you remember John Edwards?
Something about he had like a mistress, right?
Yeah.
He was running for president.
So he invited me on his private jet or his campaign manager, who was another blogger, by the way.
Andy Barron had a famous blog back then.
He saw what I did with my blog, and I built a relationship with him.
His dad was one of the main funders of the campaign. So that's how I got on the plane.
Andy Barron invited me. And John Edwards was running for president, announced he was running
for president in New Orleans, but his wife was dying of cancer. I met her at an earlier conference where I was a speaker,
and that also got me on the plane, right? Because she saw me speak and knew I was upstanding or
thought I was upstanding. And yeah, so I was on this private jet with John Edwards as he was
running for president. He spoke to thousands of people in Iowa and New Hampshire and Reno, Nevada. We flew around the country for a day in the private jet. And Riel Hunter was sitting next to me. She was his videographer.
and it turned out
so I took pictures of them sitting together
and it turned out she was sleeping
with John Edwards
and had a child later with John Edwards
and that was a huge scandal
because he was cheating on his wife
and he was a senator
and he was running for president
he was going to be attorney general
it turned out
on the other side of me
was Dan Balz
who covered presidential
campaigns for 30 years for the Washington Post. And while we flew around, he gave me
a college level class in presidential campaigns and how they work, how the political system in
America works. So I still have a lot of knowledge of all that because of that. And Riel was a videographer. Well, I'm passionate
about video. I talked to Riel for hours about videography because she was the official videographer
for the campaign. And I was just the blogger invited on the bus. Yeah.
That's some tame stuff now, Robert. I mean, he got...
Oh, yeah. Well, cheating on your dying wife is still going to get headlines, I guarantee you.
Yeah, that's true.
But he really got crucified for things that just seem passe these days.
His campaign manager told me that he didn't know what was going down while we were flying around.
told me that he didn't know what was going down while we were flying around.
But when he did learn about it, he said, I put a hole in a wall because I was so angry at him.
Because he knew that the campaign was over at that point, right?
And his career was going to be radically changed.
He thought he was going to go into politics.
That didn't happen.
He actually ended up running PR for the Sacramento Kings. And he took me to a basketball game and gave me a tour of the stadium because of that. Right. So, again, it's all relationships you build over time that get you into things, get you access to things, get you content that might be useful. Right. And I haven't fucked up all of that, but I fucked up
a lot of it because of my own scandal.
Well, we all eventually have a scandal.
We all eventually do something
scandalous, right? We're all human.
Well, you know, here's some tips.
Don't get a mission to
life and stay on the straight
and narrow because if you get really famous,
don't get drunk with people
and hurt them.
Because I did that.
That's what caused my own scandal.
The good news is people are not drinking.
Drinking is not cool anymore,
so people don't drink anymore.
I would highly recommend you choose
a different drug if you're going to choose
a drug to use.
Yup, cocaine.
No, that's not good either.
No, I'm kidding.
There's a few good ones on the list.
Those are not the good ones.
Cocaine costs you a lot.
A friend got highly addicted to cocaine.
It costs you a lot of money and gives you a lot of health problems.
Don't do that.
You do got to do mushrooms, guys.
2025.
Everybody just do some mushrooms.
Yeah, mushrooms
are on the approved list.
Let your ego die and get along.
You know, do the mushrooms.
I did mushrooms with a
decentralized computing pioneer
and that was highly entertaining.
I am a
proponent of no drugs.
The only drug you need is coffee you wake up you grind
I don't want to this is the brain god gave me. I don't want to change it
This is the brain that was given to me. I'm gonna do the most of this brain that I can
Alex I can tell you've never been to South by Southwest. Have you I was there a month ago
Ah shit, and you didn't do any drugs. No. How did you get through South by without doing any drugs?
Hey, Robert, how about Quaaludes?
I wouldn't...
I've never used those,
but a friend of mine
who got addicted to cocaine used
Quaaludes to get up or get down
so he could get to sleep.
Then he would do cocaine the next day, and then
Quaaludes. It's not a good cocktail.
Stay away from that shit. Fucking alcohol
almost killed me. That's why I'm not
in the nerdy anymore.
I'm an alcoholic. It kills a lot of
people. That's why I wouldn't choose.
Oh yeah.
I got ventricitis twice.
I was in South by Southwest
with two extremely successful
entrepreneurs. One who's running
a multi, making multi-million
a year on his business, his agency, and the other who sold like 10 companies, including
several to Microsoft.
And they both do zero drugs, zero alcohol.
So we were there, us three, straight edge.
We're there just to meet people, do business, build cool shit, and that's it.
I wish you were around 30 years ago
and kept me on the straight and narrow, then I
would have had a different career outcome.
Well, despite how you
feel about him, I mean, supposedly, Trump
doesn't do anything and never has.
He knows. He'd be a fucking...
He's already a wreck sober.
He'd be a nightmare. Can you imagine
Trump on alcohol and cocaine?
He'd probably be fucking hilarious.
Anyways, if I had to go back to my younger self,
I would tell my younger self,
get a mission to life and stay to it.
Don't get off of it
because these other things will get you off your mission
if you have a strong mission to your life.
And when I meet highly successful people, these other things will get you off your mission if you have a strong mission to your to your life
and when when i meet highly successful people they've they have a mission right even elon has
a mission and going to mars right that's his that's his life goal well it's not just highly
successful people either it's highly happy people i think the secret to happiness in life is just
having a mission right i i don't i think that's all there is to it.
Once the moment people lose purpose, I think they lose happiness.
I think they lose their life as well.
Every time I met Gary Vaynerchuk, I'd bug him,
have you bought the Jets yet?
Because that's his life mission.
He wants to buy the New York Jets.
And he told me, probably you'll never do it.
But having that big fucking hairy audacious goal
for him drives him right and keeps him focused on on getting it and it's the it's the it's the
attaining of the goal that's fine not really getting the goal this is goal of buying a nikon
camera i had a nikon brochure under my bed and i
dreamed about being a national geographic photographer and i opened that book a lot
and looked at the camera and the pictures and just dreamed about it that was more fun than
actually buying the camera which i i did and got you know that Nikon camera got me pictures of Ronald Reagan. So, you know, it all works out.
But, yeah.
Should we go to hands and throw it around?
Oh, yeah.
Let's do that.
We got Dylan's hand is up.
Dylan, what are your thoughts here?
Feel free to jump on in.
Sure, sure.
So, forgive me, my voice is a bit fried today.
But a couple things. Yeah, having a mission, uh, forgive me, my voice is a bit fried today, but, um, a couple of things. Yeah.
Having a mission, having a goal, really just knowing where your aim is, is, is huge. You can
read, you know, every self-help book essentially is, you know, like be, be conscious of where you're
putting your energy. Right. Um, but on top of that, even like further, I've learned from my,
uh, one of my mentors, like he told me like, be the pilot of your perception every day. Like realize you are,
you are in control of that perception and where you, where you point that, you know,
uh, things are going to happen for you, whether it's good or bad, right. It doesn't really,
don't need to label it. That's just where it's focused. And then on top of that, um,
to get it off of yourself. Right. I mean, I know in this world, it's all about how am I going to make my dreams possible?
But, um, a key to like get there is what are you committed to cause today in someone else's life?
And just pick one thing every day. What are you committing, committing to cause today in someone
else's life? And how do you know that you committed to cause it? Well, they'll, they'll show you,
right? And if it's not being, if it's not know that you committed to cause it? Well, they'll show you, right?
And if it's not being,
if it's not reflecting that you're causing that in that person,
then you know that you're not doing
what it takes to cause it, right?
And like things like that are huge
because in today's day and age,
like the people who are really successful in a lot of areas,
they're giving all the knowledge away for free.
They're over delivering before they even buy, before they even get you as a customer.
And that goes so far.
That goes so far that people love it, right?
And so, like, do more for others than you can do for yourself
than you're looking to get for yourself,
and it will reward you tenfold.
It might not be in the exact way you think, like,
oh, I'm going to give to so-and-so, and they're going to give back to me. It doesn't work that way. But it will come back tenfold. It might not be in the exact way you think, like, oh, I'm going to give to so-and-so
and they're going to give back to me.
It doesn't work that way,
but it will come back one way or another.
And it's like that whole thing,
what are you committed to cause in someone else today?
I'm telling you, it's huge.
And another thing I would say,
if you're new to X,
I've been on X probably exactly one year to this day.
And, you know, I've slowly grown the account.
You know, I wasn't really trying to grow.
I just wanted to see what this community was about
and learn about AI.
And I will say that the biggest amazing part
of this platform is spaces.
The amount of actual relationships you can meet
in these spaces that go outside of X
and outside of this bubble is huge.
And there are a lot of things going on
behind the scenes here on X,
different business deals and who knows what.
And give what they can to other people, right?
That's all it is, right?
Sales.
I need something from you.
You need something from me.
Let's make that transaction.
So, yeah, get in the spaces, make friends, make connections.
I hate when people come up in the spaces and they go
hey can you give me a job can you give me
the answers that are going to solve all my problems
like that doesn't it's not going to cut it
you gotta offer
something up right it's a sacrifice it's a
transaction so you know again
what are you committed to cause in someone else's
life that's my challenge to all of you
and I would love to hear how that works
out for you absolutely right I would love to hear how that works out for you.
Absolutely right.
I invited Alex out to breakfast, and I took him to
Apple's campus and
gave him some first-hand stories
of the neighborhood.
Well, it's about, well, I like what
you said earlier, Robert, the punch-punch
jab. I mean, you give as much away as you possibly can.
I try to ask of nothing from nobody.
Like I had this person DM me today.
First time he ever DM me.
He's like, hey, I'm a big fan.
I love what you do.
I just put out a post.
Would you mind retweeting it?
And I usually in these types of situations, I ignore it.
I just, I, maybe I shouldn't have done it.
You're good.
This time I decided to
not rip into them, but I'm like,
dude, first of all, I'm not doing that.
Second of all, me retweeting
your shit won't do anything for you.
It won't do you any favors.
Either your shit's good and it'll go viral
and go send out to people anyway,
or it's bad and it'll go to no one.
And now you won't get any feedback from your engagement on it because I'm doing a retweet for you.
So you get no favors from me retweeting you, dude.
So don't ask me for engagement again.
Just don't ask people for it.
Now, if this was a good friend of mine that asked for a retweet, I'd probably do it.
But listen, don't ask for shit from people.
If you've got to ask shit from people, then you're doing it wrong.
Figure out how you can do everything yourself and figure it all out and build your own thing.
And soon people will be coming to you and trying to give you stuff and ask you for stuff.
You really want to figure out how you can be completely independent and not need to ask other people for stuff.
The more you give, the more things will come your way naturally over time.
I really believe that. But if you do have a good AI tool, you can ask for retweets because I'll
probably give it to you anyways. If you subscribe to my AI tool, I'll probably give you retweets. So
there's that too. Subscribe to CreatorBuddy account in the co-host space because sarah didn't show up today uh is a bad
time to ask for a retweet yes can i just throw something creator buddy i uh have been very bored
lately it's because i am boring period and so in order to break out of being boring because you
know there are phases in life where you just you know shit happens and you go down. I needed to get my creator buddy back on, and it was a jolt that I needed of creativity.
And so I'm saying that tool works.
And, you know, thanks, Alex.
You're a giver for sure.
You're a giver.
Does it help you become more boring? Because I know several people I follow who are like the boring dad or the boring technologist, right?
So you can build a brand around boring.
You can build a company around it.
I'd rather build a brand around being sexy and charming and 70 all at the same time.
But, you know, that's a tough gig.
But I'm working on it, okay?
I think there's ways to be boring. same time but you know that's a tough gig but i'm working on it okay
there's uh i think there's ways to be boring but you got to be boring in like a charismatic way you know it's like you can't just be boring
boring you have to be like ironically boring you know
yeah like that with some personality and some charm to it
exactly uh thank you jackie creator buddy my ai tool if you're interested
link in the creator buddy account up on stage uh andy we got andy on stage andy you're you're
coming up on my feet a lot more andy shit's working for you what's up andy hey that uh
you know what that's like the coolest thing you've ever said to me so that's awesome. I love Creator Buddy. I use it all the time.
Listen, you guys, okay, to be boring, I used to be a waiter at this crazy place called Bobby McGee's.
It's probably not even around anymore.
Everybody dressed up as characters.
I was Dudley Do-Right, big giant Canadian Mountie.
I wore roller skates.
But here's the crazy thing. We had this guy named Mr. Nobody.
And you remember Stephen Wright, the comedian? Well, he would go, Mr. Nobody would be like,
nobody loves you. Nobody's here to take care of you. Nobody's going to bring you food. And he
totally deadpanned the whole day. He made more money than everybody.
I tried every stupid gag.
I would fall down.
I would bring out a box with a candle
and it wasn't a cake and I'd fall on top.
I tried every stupid thing in the world.
And this guy just,
he made triple the amount of money that I made.
But yeah, niching down on what you do great
is fantastic. The stuff you just added to CreatorBuddy, to 10 out of 10, stuff rocks.
And Scoble's interviews. Hey, Robert, who was the guy that you interviewed that
that you interviewed that did the AI talking thing. I can't remember his name, but he said
something fantastic that I just can't get out of my head. He said when he had his whole company
do AI one day a week, and then all of a sudden, he looked at who's adopting it. Marketing's
adopting it. Sales is adopting it. HR is adopting it.
The admins are adopting it.
And all the engineers are going,
yeah, we already can do coding.
We don't need that.
That was, that blew my mind.
Yeah, that was the email tool.
Yeah, my mind is bad.
Yeah, I don't mean, yeah, I don't want to put you on the spot.
There's the last video I put up, yeah.
Yeah, do more of those with those guys because I want to hear what the enterprise is having problems with, with AI.
By the way, I do an AI show.
I do it because it's interesting, but I do it because it's about the thinking.
When you have a cool new tool, it's the internet.
It's a cell phone, it's AI.
Whatever the new tool is,
it disrupts thinking with everybody.
And I'm fascinated by the fact that people can pivot,
some people can pivot their thinking and do something new.
Like, you know, hey, I was there when you were NFT God
and then you became Alex.
I remember the big long post of,
oh my gosh, I don't know if I should do, man, I remember that, but it was cool.
The point is, I'm fascinated by how people pivot.
How do they use when a new thing shows up?
Are they fired up about it?
Do they engage?
Do they grab it?
Do they want to, you know, how do I take this new freaking shiny thing and break stuff with it or build stuff with it?
I don't know.
But if it's cool and new and shiny, maybe we should go ham on it.
So I just do the show because I think it's fascinating.
And I started because I have no freaking idea.
And I figured if I started an AI space, people would tell me and then I could learn more.
So, you know, i'm just a big idiot
who's excited about stuff so love you guys love love all the stuff you're doing thanks
i love i mean if you're in tech and you got personality if you're an ai and you got
personality like you andy you're going to be successful there's so many fucking boring people
just having some charisma will give you a win. That's it. Having charisma puts you ahead
of 95% of people. It really does. We got on stage, Lincoln. Lincoln, what's up, dude?
Alex, how was your cyber truck? I want to hear about it. I am so pumped for you.
I love it, man. I love it. It brings me joy. It brings me joy being in it. I'm in it right now.
I'm sitting in a CVS parking lot in it.
I just supercharging. We got it down to 5%, so I had to supercharge it.
So now that's done. Now I'm just in the parking lot sitting here.
I love it, man. It's great. Someone spat on it. Someone spat on it last week.
That's fine.
But do you find yourself sitting in your Tesla a lot? Because I do. I am right now.
Yes. We both are. We both both are something joyous about i'm in my tesla i'm in my tesla and fsd's driving me on highway 101 coming out of san francisco
like a kid security blanket i just feel safe in my cocoon it's i don't have to run the car i can
keep it whatever temperature i want i can listen to the best sound system. I can have it drive me
somewhere if I want. It's just, yeah, people don't understand. So I'm glad that you like it
and you're loving it. Well, that's why half my portfolio is Tesla is because there's something
special about this brand. And when you find brands like this that have something special about it,
they're going to succeed. I mean, it's just it's just like Apple you know the the iPhone was never the most powerful phone it never had the most features but
there's just something about the iPhone when you have it you just feel a connection with the
technology there's just some sort of connection there you have some sort of relationship you have
when you unbox it everything every part of it makes you feel an emotion and
tesla is the other company that does that for me so that's why it's half my portfolio it's
unfortunate when people are doing it tesla's now turning it political but i think people get over
that eventually they always do yeah you bought it you bought it at such a weird time man like
the hate is pretty freaking strong right now i don't see it much where I'm at, but I also don't drive a Cybertruck.
That definitely pulls a lot of attention towards you, I'm sure.
But you should come to one of our Tesla spaces at night again and chat and share your experiences and ask any questions and all this stuff.
We did one at a time. It was fun.
What time are they in? What days in time?
We have a Tesla space every night usually where we're just totally
BSing, but we're always down
to chat Tesla as well and answer
and yeah.
But it's not a regular time.
I'm not good at BS, bro.
I want to BS. I don't just want to talk Tesla.
I want to fucking BS too, dude.
Yeah, so I also DM'd you about it, but you don't respond
because you're a big wig and I'm a little guy.
But anyways.
I just hate DMs.
DMs give me anxiety. I get anxiety.
I'm on the same Tesla space.
It's a lot of fun.
Robert said there was me all the freaking time.
I've gotten to know Robert really well.
I've gotten to know Robert as what did Elon say about Trump?
I've gotten to know Robert as well as a man could get to know another man without being in person ever.
Okay. That's true. That was weird.
I know you have cool lights in your house. I'm totally
jealous. Yeah, I do, dude. Oh my
gosh. If you come to
Utah, you gotta check them out. A man cannot have enough
LED lights in their house. I have a
bunch in my house and you have more.
Is 1,200 enough with
the three and a half miles
of fiber optic cable I have?
By the way, you have more than that.
You have a TV, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, okay.
A TV has four million lights just on the TV.
It's four million little lights.
Okay, we're going to borrow everyone with our talk about lights.
But passion for things gets connection to humans right absolutely yeah yeah for sure
you know very few people passionate go ahead jockey i'm really interested in this tesla
meetup thing you guys got going on there i just bought the new model y i'm totally Oh, awesome. That's better than a soundtrack. It is red, ruby red, like the reddest lipstick on the face of the earth.
The thing is the sexiest beast on the road, I'm telling you.
And I love it.
But I want to know, how do you get invited to these places where you turn on all the lights and make all those cool, you know, those cool signs and things that they do.
Just get involved with us.
Hey.
Follow me.
Come into our spaces that we have.
We talk about it all the time, and we love it.
And, yeah, where are you at?
Where are you located, Jackie?
I'm in Huntington Beach, California, Southern California.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Plenty down there going on.
In June, Silicon Valley Tesla has a a big big meetup happening in uh silicon
valley uh so you might get come up to that they'll have another one at that but yeah on the space
lincoln's talking about we there's a bunch of people who join who have different clubs around
the united states and they always are doing events and like there was a big cyber uh cyber
track one this weekend
alex you didn't you missed out on that you have a cyber track you should have gotten the cyber
truck rally was that in california uh where was it right it was in uh texas but they did have i
think zach and some other people got together in california too did a thing but yeah there'll be
more i feel like if i'm gonna do a cyber truck meetup though
i need to have a wrap i can't have just the basic silver truck i feel like i gotta stand out with
a wrap no oh are you gonna go all orange like creator buddy wrap that you can then you write
it off there you go so i was when i went to south by southwest my uh friend my friend who owns a very successful agency, he had his assistant drive
his Cybertruck all the way from California to Austin. And his Cybertruck is wrapped like
rainbow colored. And he has his agency's logo as a magnet. And so what he does, he drives a
Cybertruck around. Then when he wants to advertise, he just puts the magnet on the side of his cyber truck so i'm thinking i get a wrap in i think i like glossy
black better than matte black for the cyber truck i think i get like a glossy black uh wrap and then
get creator buddy as a magnet like an orange magnet that will really stand out and just slap
that on the side of the cyber truck i think that'll really stand out it's never ending alex because then you need the rims that are all black and you need you know the
cake and then you need a camper to pull behind it it's never ending come to that's why i haven't
done it somebody always has better than you by the way never really get jealous anybody else
here's an example of that i uh pissed off ste Jobs' PR for Katie Cotton because I was live streaming and she told me not to.
And she was sitting right next to me and I kept doing it because I had to take the shot.
So she never invited me back to an Apple thing.
All right, I feel jealous of all the journalists who get to go to Apple things.
But that meant I got an invite to interview Nokia's CEO
the day that Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone.
So I got interviews with RIM's CEO and Nokia's CEO that day
because all the journalists got to go to the main event,
which was in San Francisco.
So if a door gets closed or you're not getting goodies,
look for other doors because there's always other doors to go through.
A hundred percent. There's always new doors.
Also, follow your speakers.
Follow your co-hosts. Follow, follow, follow.
No, don't follow us. Subscribe.
Subscribe to Robert.
And fuck all that. Go follow my list
because I made you lists of every fucking person
in the tech industry.
They're the best way you're going to get up to date on tech.
And if you know where to look, politics too, because I have a couple lists that have some
politics on it.
And as a bonus, hey Alex, as a bonus, what you do is you get creator, but this is what
I do.
You get creator buddy, you sign up to Scoble's lists, then you use creator buddy to auto
create all the awesome responses to Scoble's lists, then you use creator buddy to auto create all the awesome
responses to Scoble's lists.
And that's how you get more followers and dump more content.
There you go.
Bonus, bonus.
There we go.
Alex, have you added the feature yet to read all my lists with an AI and tell me what's
going on?
I'm working on it.
Trust me.
I'm working on it right now.
I'll just say this.
I haven't, I don't think I've publicly announced this yet. I'm going to work on Creator Buddy until the day I die. It's my forever tool. I am also on the side working on tool number two. I am on the side working on tool number two. It's going to be able to do things like that, Robert. It will be able to do it. Obviously this, it is an AI agent.
You're going to get another 50 bucks out of me, aren't you?
I want to aim for cheaper than 50 for this one.
I want to aim for, because I think that I could for an agent use a really, like Gemini 2.5 Pro is really smart and really cheap.
So I think I could bring costs down by using a really cheap uh ai for it but we'll see
we'll see what happens but we're working on that i feel like you have a successful app that's good
but you bring out a second successful app then you become legendary then like shit really starts
popping off for you so i want to have multiple successful uh ai apps so we'll see. Well, you'll get my money.
I love it.
And Robert, hey, listen.
Robert, if you ever want to throw the creator badge up on the name,
let me know too.
You have an open invite. If you ever need a badge so you can change your profile picture and bio
whenever you want, let me know.
That means I won't be verified for a week.
I'll probably do that.
No, it does the opposite. You'll't be verified for a week. I'll probably do that. No, it does the opposite.
You'll always be verified.
So if you get the badge, you keep your blue checkmark no matter what you do.
You can change whatever you want.
You'll always have the blue check.
Got it.
All right, let's do it.
I got to get something for my 50 bucks.
You want the badge?
I'll give you the badge.
You want it?
Yeah.
All right.
The moment this space ends, it only benefits you.
You can change your name whenever you want, your profile picture, your bio.
You can do any of it, and you'll always keep your checkmark.
There we go.
All right.
I'll get that to you right after.
I love that.
Go ahead, Robert.
You reminded me of the Nokia story because because nokia ceo would for three years
after the iphone came out would give me shit shit about my iphone he'd say oh how's your antenna
doing because they had a better antenna in the nokia phone or how's how's your camera do you
like your shitty little camera because it had a shitty camera in the first iPhone, right? The Nokia phone had a lot better camera.
Man, I miss my Nokia.
I had a Nokia in high school with a little tiny brick, man.
Those were the good days, man, the simple days.
Your phone played snake and made phone calls.
People didn't even text on it.
Those were the simple days, man.
You know, we can't go back, but I do miss it.
Like when I see old videos and people are just actually
talking and looking around and i i miss it honestly but we're not going to go back obviously i don't
know no hey i got a crazy story for the you know those nine key that you had i worked on a startup
that built the first predictive model that tried to run on those nokia phones
to predict the next word oh yeah what you were trying to do by the first three characters
it worked kind of okay but the hardware was a limitation but yeah that was kind of fun back in
the day i thought it was magical when i could push the number like just yeah when it would
predict it right i was like that's amazing how does it know and you know now we're so beyond it but here's another tip alex always be capturing always be
taking pictures i had no fucking idea i took a picture of a sex scandal when i took the picture
right but i was taking lots of pictures so that when uh the sex came out, I had the pictures.
And that helps.
My friend owns two Ray-Bans.
I was just with a bunch of billionaires at this car rally.
And he has two Ray-Bans.
So one pair is always charging
and the other pair is always capturing.
And he switches them every 20 minutes
because the battery only lasts 20 minutes
when you're capturing video.
And so he's always capturing videos of everything.
And that way, if anything happens, he has video of it.
And that way he has something to talk about on Facebook or whatever he does.
Document everything because then you can blackmail people
if you document the right things. Justin can
who started before he started Twitch, he built a rig in his backpack that had a huge battery, a laptop and five cell phones.
He joined them all together so he would always have a cell phone connection.
And he did a 24 hour a day show.
He never took that thing off, even when he was sleeping or having sex.
He had a show about his life, 24 hours a day, and that was a little demented of him,
but it did give him the brand and the relationship to build Twitch later on
and the understanding of video in a very deep way because he wore a video camera 24 hours a day
and did it for something like two years.
No, it wasn't two years. was uh a year something like that so you know always be captioning build a rig like that with
a starlink over your head be a nerd and uh push yourself and then uh you might have a brand that
leads to places hey robert i posted a picture in there in the chat.
You're talking about being passionate.
Well, the photo I posted,
I took that one night
and it was in the middle
of the Persian Gulf, it was cold as fuck
at night, and that was
all I did was take pictures of the first
jets taking off in Operation Inherent
Resolve, but that one got me published
in Time Magazine.
That's awesome.
That's how you do it.
I love it.
Another tip, Alex.
You make your own luck in life.
I've been very lucky.
I was lucky my dad moved us to Cupertino, California in 1971.
But the rest of it was work, right? And if you get lucky at something, you can make more luck out of it, right? Keep working. I noticed this with
photographers that the good ones that got the lucky shot were always in the right place at the right time they made their luck
it from a professional photographer the biggest piece of advice i ever gave anybody i trained
is zoom with your feet don't be afraid to get close to stuff don't be afraid to
you know right friends capca said if your photos aren't good enough you're not close enough well this is my this is kind of my strategy with youtube is i'm going to shotgun blast videos i'm
just going to get videos out every day and i'm going to create my luck i'm going to see what
goes viral what doesn't and i'm going to triple down the shit that goes viral the shit that goes
viral i'm just gonna do more of you create your own luck by doing more and more and more and more that's what i'm gonna try to do with youtube keep in mind kapka was a famous war photographer
and he said he was getting close he meant he was getting bullet shot at him and bombs going
off around him and he was getting closer to get a better shot that's dedication to getting close
at some point i I have a question
that's shifting a little bit.
Do it.
Okay.
You post a lot
about the algorithm.
You post about
what's really going on
and all this stuff.
Okay.
How much of this
do you know
and how much is conjecture?
Because I'm wondering
how you know
some of the things
you're posting about.
Oh, well, the.
Can I introduce you, Alex?
He read the fucking source code. Of course he knows.
OK, now you can talk.
Thank you. I haven't been yelled at you for a while.
I feel better.
Listen, so here's the story, Lincoln, is my big tipping point as an account came two years ago when Elon open sourced the
algorithm. I spent hours that night going through all the code. I have a computer science degree.
I've been a developer my whole life. I coded creator buddy completely by myself, uh, from
bottom to top, all the codes may write with help AI. Right. So I went through all the codes me right well with help ai right so i went through all the code i
took a ton of notes i still got the original notes of all the code and so here's what it comes down
to the posts i do about the algorithm that includes snippets of code means it came from the code right
i read the code i interpreted it you know there are posts i make where i do experiments and then
i go okay i experimented and here's the results of my experiments.
Right. So there's that too. So it's either comes directly from the code or directly from experiments I run.
And anything that Alex says, I do the opposite and God damn it, Alex is right.
No, I've just, I've really been like, I i played the reply game but it wasn't quality reply i played
reply game to get monetized and all this stuff you know and i got all my views and you know then i had
a couple things go viral and then um you know now i'm getting a little bit of revenue it pays my
membership at least you know to x premium um, you know, but this is the thing I,
it's interesting. You're talking about long form content that has like something to it. Right.
And it's true, but you don't know, you know, sometimes I'll put something out there. I'm like,
man, this is like deep. This is like, no, nothing, you know? And then sometimes I throw something
out there and it's like, you know, it gets, you know,
hundreds of thousands.
So it's really, it's, I find it really interesting,
but I do have, it gives me as someone smaller,
a lot of people who are smaller,
hope that we could just like get our word out there.
And if you take some time and post consistently good stuff,
you're gonna get, you're gonna get out there
and you're gonna make something happen.
I have found it to be true, the things you've been saying.
I appreciate it. The emphasis
is on good stuff. It might be
a meme. It might be a
one-sentence post that goes
viral. By the way,
there's a way around the algorithm.
It's called Elon Musk. If Elon Musk
re-shares you, you get a lot of hits.
There's that too i mean that is that is a content strategy for a good amount of people on here is uh just uh do do tricks on
it for elon and uh hope that he retweets you or gives you likes that is a that is a content
strategy for some people i don't personally recommend it
because you'll never have a personal brand doing that if your entire personal brand is s-ing elon's
d like you're just you're not really building a personal brand it's gonna be very hard to like
build products and sell products based on that brand uh so i wouldn't recommend it so few things
uh you know one issue a lot of people have when I give advice is I'll say things like,
Oh, be a reply guy, which I do mean. I do believe people should be reply guys. The issue is people
will then like straw man that. And then they'll take that. Oh, I'll be a reply guy. And then they
spam like 40,000 replies a day of like fire emojis and one word emojis. And then they come
in like, Oh, it didn't work. I didn't grow.'t grow i'm like well why did you take my advice and do it the laziest way humanly fucking possible right like people like
they take advice like okay what is the quickest way i can game this thing like no you still have
to do things high quality you still have to do high quality replies so there's that uh number
two when it comes to the algorithm like, they're fucking experimenting with this algorithm.
They're changing things around.
Every other week shit performs differently.
Here's my recommendation.
There's a lot of people on this platform
who base their entire mental health on the X algorithm.
And what I mean by that is when they're not getting reach,
they start taking it out on people.
They start yelling and complaining. Why am I not getting reach?
There's nothing more unattractive than complaining and if you start complaining, oh i'm not getting reach
I'm, not getting reach you're gonna get even less reach because people don't want to follow that
That's not interesting content, right?
And so if you're in a place where
Your mental health is dependent on your reach on X,
it's not a good place to be.
And what I would highly, highly recommend if I'm you is to diversify,
is to start a YouTube channel, start a TikTok channel if you want,
start an Instagram account if you want.
Because the moment you diversify your algorithms,
it clears up a lot of room in your head.
Because now all of a sudden you're not dependent on the performance of one algorithm,
which if I'm going to be honest, X is probably the last algorithm you want to be mentally dependent on in your life.
You switch it up. You do things where you hopefully can cross post, right?
Like I'm moving my strategy now where like if I'm in a place where I'm just posting one video a day on X and I get just one post
It's a video of me showing you how to do something and I cross post the X and YouTube
It's a place I want to be right then like that
You're gonna be in a good place because you have multiple algorithms. You'll be diversified, right?
But if you're only dependent on one algorithm and it's bugging you and you're ready to quit because of it,
you got to get on other platforms
because you're not in a good place
if you're just dependent.
Your whole mental state's dependent
on if your one post gets reach.
But I did find some tips.
And this comes from watching so many people
and watching my 4U feed
and seeing what gets to the 4U feed, I noticed that
I get a few items every hour from people who are following me, but I'm not following. It just shoves
those things on my feed to see if I'm interested in them. So I started really honing down who I
was following to only people who demonstrate that they might care about my
content, right? If they're a sports guy, they're not going to share my content, right? I'm all
about AI and new things. So I'm looking for people who are into AI and new things, and I'm only
following them. And that gets me a better audience. It gets
me a few more likes or a few more engagements over time. And maybe that doesn't work, but
my feed is getting better. Because guess what? If you do that and you think about what they care
about and what you care about, if you're only following people you care about because you think that they're going to care about you,
your feed gets better because you're focusing who you're paying attention to.
And that helps you with your content development.
Love it.
Let's get to more hands here.
Mr. Vladimir, speaking of not being boring, Mr. Vladimir has a very not boring live stream
He puts tons of effort and support people put ton of effort into content. What's up, Mr. Vladimir?
Hey good to be here and yeah, Andy's been showing up a lot of my profile to Andy's the man
If you're not following him you're making a mistake because he's an AI
You know visionary as well much like yourself, you're not following him, you're making a mistake because he's an AI, you know, visionary as well.
Much like yourself, you know, using the tools that you're making.
Amateur creators are artists and professional creators are distributors.
I heard Samir from the Colin and Samir show say this on an interview recently. And it really changed a lot of things for me.
I've spent the last three months working with hyper-successful Instagram creators,
since we're talking about diversifying.
And what I've noticed is the people that succeed, yes, they're passionate,
but they also have a system.
By the way, my name is Vladimir.
I teach kids to build robots.
I teach adults to build apps and robots and everything in between.
And we do it live, so you can watch us build an app tomorrow
and participate in it at 10 a.m. But if you're passionate, that's streetball. There's a lot of people playing
streetball and that's fun to watch. You feel amazing. You cross people over. But that doesn't
work in an organized setting where you're trying to make money. To go from streetball to NBA or
even any kind of level of professionalism, you need organization. So I've been calling it passion
meets professionalism for a while. And you need to develop that system because passion will run out. And so we talk a
lot about the content and being artists, but it's great that, you know, guys like Alex are taking a
charge on creating systems that let you then take that passion, which is creating content, and then
ultimately making money out of it. So I teach people to build in public, right?
I'm like, hey, you can do this.
Watch me do it.
But, you know, so that's kind of the thing that I've been doing.
And tactically, you can do all kinds of stuff.
Robert was saying, you know, you got to bring something to the table.
I brought the table to the game.
Like I played a poker game with Alex one time.
I challenged him to a poker game.
And I said, listen, if you show up, I'll give out a bunch of money on the stream. And he couldn't say no, right? Because then you look bad. So you
can do that, you know, tactically and strategically. Yeah, diversify, go to different places,
because for one, you'll find the strengths of X and other platforms and where they really shine.
And there are some things that you can only do on X. There are some things you can only really
get away with on Instagram, et cetera. And I think the more you can understand the entire ecosystem, the more you can play to the
strengths of X as part of, you know, if you want to be a known person, think about the people you
know, the people you respect. They're kind of in your head more than they are on a platform. And so
I think if you want to do that, and the people that I see do that, you know, they, for one, yes, they make money from it.
So there's that.
But they also kind of, you know, it's not about a platform.
It's about building that memory, right?
What you're going to be remembered as.
And then you can sell.
You can do everything from that.
But, yeah, that's been my perspective.
And what I've done is I've been talking about, like, you know, hey, you can use AI to build apps and become a billionaire.
So what I've done is, hey, let me show you how to do it. So I started chatsetter.ai,
which actually, if you're a social media person, you have a lot of incoming DMs, right? And so
you, you know, you need to answer them if you want to turn that into money. And so this tool
just makes all those DMs become calendar bookings. Very simple. And so we've done a lot of successful
stuff on Instagram,
like booked hundreds of calls,
made tens of thousands of dollars in sales.
And so I want to turn,
like I said,
my whole thing for the next,
I didn't say for the next year,
but for the next year,
my plan is to stop being an artist and start being a distributor.
Not stop being an artist,
but add being a distributor and become a successful creator, let's say, and enable other
people to do that. So I'm just putting it out there. So in a year when I'm back here on Alex's
show and he has a million followers and Robert has a trillion and a half followers and he owns
half of Apple, then I'm going to be talking about where that went and we can all check in on it.
And so we'll see whether or not that goes somewhere. You can watch it happen live and
learn from it with me.
And yeah, so that's what I've been doing.
I appreciate platforms like this because this is the relationship platform.
You can't do this on YouTube.
You can't do this even on kick.
You can't do this on Twitter.
You can't do this anywhere.
But it doesn't mean you can do everything here.
Right.
But there are very powerful things.
And I appreciate that.
Like the fact that we can be here in the same living room is kind of a
blessing. Thank you everybody for, uh, for the,
for running the space and being here.
Of course, Vladimir. So good having you here, my man. Uh,
always a pleasure. We'll have to do a poker rematch soon,
even though I beat your ass. So, um,
I guess you are the one who really wants the rematch. Um,
subscribe to Robert, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe,
make sure you show your support
follow but if you really want to support subscribe um a lot of a lot of cool stuff coming let's go to
hands we've been here for about an hour and a half now let's go to
barbara barbara how you doing oh hey i'm doing well alex thank you i. I, uh, Robert and, uh, Jackie and, uh, yeah, um, Ani, my gosh, all my
friends are here. Kevin, Andy, yeah, Lincoln. Oh my gosh. Dan, yeah. And Vladimir, I did set up the,
uh, reminder for your class tomorrow. I'm so, I'm super interested in expanding. Um, but yes,
I did have a question actually for, um, actually for Robert. Let's see here.
And I wrote it down.
Let's see here.
Okay.
Yep.
So my question would be, what is your go-to process to cross-reference claims or news
that you see on eggs to ensure that they are accurate, especially when time is tight.
The old journalism rule is get two sources if you can.
That helps.
Or really trust your sources.
After the news breaks,
I'm always watching and I'm watching for counter interactions.
You know, somebody, community noting me
or posting a comment saying,
oh, you're fucking wrong.
Here's another point of view, right?
And sometimes I get it wrong.
And so I take down the post. And it's usually within minutes because of the audience I have.
community posting a bit, but I'm, I'm still learning it. So yeah, this is an amazing space
though. I just wanted to say thank you for the mic. And, um, I think I'll drop down cause it's,
uh, it's about eight 30, uh, my time and I get early in the, but I just wanted to thank everybody
for, um, for the space and, and, uh, oh, I see it's recorded. Yes. So I can listen to the replay,
um, tomorrow when I, when I wake up, but I just, thank you. Hey, So I can listen to the replay tomorrow when I when I wake up.
But I just.
Yes. Awesome. Hey, Barbara. Hey, Alex, my my wife, my new wife is up here, Shiloh.
And she reminded we we we we met because she manipulated an algorithm.
She can share her little thing quick.
quick. Yes. Tell us how you manipulated an algorithm, Shiloh. I'm a little autistic and I
Yes. Tell us how you manipulated an algorithm, Shiloh.
got sick. I was at home for like a week or two. I think I had COVID and I was bored and had nothing
else to do. So I decided to figure out the Hinge algorithm and was watching like TikTok videos and
YouTube videos and like trying to understand exactly how it worked and how to boost my like ranking in Hinge.
And ultimately what I did was I completely deleted my profile and then made a new one.
And then for like two weeks, I like didn't like anybody.
Like I would just not like especially the people that they like to have a special.
These are the best ones this day or whatever.
And I would say, no, I don't like any of you.
And once I did that, it ranked me higher because I was not liking people who were already higher ranked by everybody else.
And then one of my first, like, matches after that was Lincoln.
So once I got on X, I was like, oh, I'm going to figure out this algorithm, too.
It's a little more intense than Hinge.
Now, walk me through this.
What does it mean to rank higher in the Hinge algorithm?
Does that mean you just get shown to hotter people?
What does that mean?
Yes.
Obviously.
Look at me.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
You are hot.
If you find that you're getting really low-quality matches or questions, it's because you're lower ranked.
So what you're saying is if you find that you're being shown to ugly people, you're being ranked as ugly.
You need to figure out how to be ranked hotter.
Yes.
So you want people who are ranked hotter than you to like you.
And you want people that are ranked lower than you to also like you but you have to not like any of them okay so what do you do just put you have
some standards alex have higher standards so so you so you act like the blonde in the convertible
corvette who doesn't look at anybody but wants everyone to look at me for the first two weeks
because the algorithm likes engagement.
It wants you to also be engaging and talking and liking.
So for the first two weeks, you pretend like you're the hottest.
And then after that, you actually start liking people and teaching the algorithm like who you like.
Now you have the pick of everybody.
Now you have to teach it who to suggest to you and who to suggest you to.
But isn't the point of the algorithm to match you
with people equally as hot as you? Well, women are different than men.
What does that mean? Some of us care less about how hot you are, just, you know, if you like
are nice or have money or whatever. But if you didn't care about how hot you were,
then why did you try to rank higher in the algorithm? Because I was getting awful matches.
And by awful, you mean like fatties. Is that what you're saying?
I'm not. No.
I'm trying to understand what bad matches mean.
Okay. So statistically, like women have not as quality of matches.
Like men have more of a pick.
There are more single women pick there are more single women you're lying
little men so men can choose whoever they want and women tend to say there's more single women
than their single men what planet are you living on i i i have like articles and stuff have you
been at any major city every major city you go there just 20 men surrounding one single woman
trying to get their attention okay are, you're going to gay bars
Where are you at apparently? No, I'm going to gay bars. No gay bars are actually all the hot women are because it's like more fun
I don't know. All right, but okay. So but like when you say higher quality, what is what is higher quality mean?
They have all their teeth. They have a job. They have an education
They maybe didn't cheat on all their past partners
and this isn't
me challenging you, this is like I find this
supremely interesting so I'm trying to get to the
root, I'm trying to understand all this
I've never heard of someone
I was getting uggo matches
so I just had to delete and reset
Shiloh just
remind me of a technique.
If you're going to attack anybody
in social media, attack
a big flail.
They might pay
attention to you, right?
Attack a big fish. Don't attack the small fish.
I love it.
Punch the biggest guy in the face. Is that what you're saying?
That's what I started doing. Yeah, I was punching people
in hinge.
I got a lifelong friend.
The guy admits that's his technique he used with me.
He attacked me in comments and stuff.
And it endeared him to me.
Well, listen, Alex, she also had the content.
Wait, Lincoln, that was my first opening line,
was that I was going to punch you in the face, wasn't it? Wow.
It was.
It was opening up.
Now it turns me on, so I'm guessing that probably
was the first thing. You two are freaks, huh?
Yeah, I love that. Oh, you don't even know.
Don't even know.
Anyways.
How to gain influence on X after hours,
and you guys tell us what's going on.
Are you a little freaky, huh?
No, we're not
we're not doing that on spaces okay all right but she had content like her got like her her
profile was funny like creative and witty and different so she was ready for it when it came
when i say it i meant me like there are women who will pay photographers to take professional
photos of them for their hinge profiles i'm a single mom i was in school i did not have like the hottest bestest most
altered filtered pictures but my profile was fun and that's it's i think that's much more
important appearing to be fun because fun is contagious i like that yeah by the way that's
another tip if you know a photographer friend take them out for a day and go shoot pictures with them.
And they'll make pictures of you that really rock and have some fun with them.
That's how I got my profile picture.
Thomas Hawk is a great photographer and has a blog on photography.
I invited him out to San Francisco for the day.
And we just spent the whole day shooting pictures.
And I got some great photos.
He took 1,600 photos of me that day.
That's a good profile photo. I love it, Robert.
Anybody that's in San Diego or whatever,
I'm a professional photographer and I got nothing to do.
Well, there you go.
Listen, I'm as sick as a fucking dog right now.
I'm going to go take NyQuil and go to bed.
This is my first time being sick in like three years.
I've been blowing my nose every five minutes here.
I always get nervous when I blow my nose like, am I muted or not?
Because if I was unmuted, it would sound like I'm farting.
So I've been doing that. I've been sitting in my Cybertruck.
I'm surrounded by 100 tissues in the Cybertruck now.
This was fun, Robert.
That was a good space, Robert. That was fun.
That was fun.
Good.
18 years of work
pays off sometimes.
Yes.
I love hearing the stories.
We've done this, what, three or four times
and I always had amazing stories. I'm going to drive home,
Robert. I'm going to send you the badge
This was amazing, we'll do this again soon
Love you all, thank you for coming
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in the next hour, then send me a DM. I'll send you a thank you video. I'll record you a video
thanking you. Uh, so do that. Uh, we'll do this again. Turn on notifications, go on Robert's
profile, subscribe, turn on notifications. We'll do this again soon. Love you all. We'll talk very
soon. This was amazing. Love you all. Love you all. Love you all. Thank talk very soon This was amazing Love you all Love you all
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Love you all
Take care
Bye Thank you.
