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[Host]: Nicholas Cole's made over $30 million writing on the internet. So when he talks about content, I listen. And this episode honestly felt less like an interview and more like just a free master class. He breaks down why most people's content gets ignored in the AI era, why AI is making generic writing worthless, and how to build what he calls a digital brain. A library of your stories and your opinions and your lessons and ideas that gets you customers 24/7, that builds you trust, and gives AI something real to work with. If you write online, you sell online, or you want ideas to compound, this is honestly worth thousands of dollars, but it's free for you. The people that stick around to the end of this, uh, you know, are not going to be writing AI slop. And I think the people that, you know, use AI to actually create interesting content, I mean, of course those are the people that have the highest probability of success. Enjoy the episode. I learned a lot. I think you will too. Today's episode is brought to you by Brex. My company's been on Brex for a year and a half, and I started because I kept hearing companies like Vercel, OpenAI, Anthropic, were using Brex, and I figured if they're using it, why shouldn't I? It's been a game changer. The thing that got me is how smooth it is. It's got high limit cards. It's got banking. It's got AI that handles the back office busy work, like expense reports, which I don't want to do, on its own. It's really just built for this agentic world. If you're building something new, it's time to get Brex. Check it out at brex.com/solutions/startups. Link in the description.
[Host]: Nicholas Cole, thank God you're here, man. By the end of this episode, what are people going to learn?
[Nicholas]: By the end of this episode, you will better understand the short, medium, and long-term value of everything you create and write and market on the internet before you create it. That is the goal. Before you invest the time, you will understand why you're doing what you're doing in the first place.
[Host]: Yeah, and I think that matters a lot because all of us are, you know, vibe coding, software, we know there's a lot of opportunity to build apps, ship SaaS, things like that, but it's hard to get customers. And what I love about you is through writing, you understand how to get seen, how to create stuff that goes viral, and there's sort of a bit of an art to it. And what I hope to learn to, you know, selfishly, by the end of this episode, is to, to, to get some of that, uh, art from you, to learn about that so that the products that I create, I could accompany it with content writing that's, tell stories that, you know, hopefully goes viral or that just resonates with people, and, uh, Cole, can you commit? Can you, could you commit that to me? Can, will I learn that?
[Nicholas]: Yeah, that's what we're going to talk about. I, I, so some something I see people talk about a lot these days is that in the AI era, SaaS no longer has a moat. And I actually think that that's not true. I think that SaaS has a moat when you have a point of view. And I didn't, that was a nice little rhyme there. But what I mean by that is, if you're just building commodity SaaS, meaning like, you're just providing features that accomplish tasks to people, um, that's fundamentally a commodity. SaaS with a point of view means that you're building some sort of product or platform that enables users to do things in a certain way. Like, they're they're executing a certain method. So, for example, like, we have a SaaS platform called Typeshare. And the goal of Typeshare is not, well, there's a gazillion scheduling apps, and there's a gazillion writing apps, and our writing app does writing and scheduling too, right? Like, that is a commodity. The goal of Typeshare is to, quote-unquote, automate or or make tasks easier for people who want to execute a different methodology for writing on the internet. So, there's a point of view that drives the product. And if someone says, "Well, why would that create a moat?" For example, if we say inside Typeshare, "Well, your goal is we're going to help you build your personal language model." And our point of view is that there's certain types of content, commodity content, personality content, original content, each of these different types of content create different leverage inside of your personal language model. Even as I'm articulating that, imagine you're trying to build a SaaS platform that does everything our SaaS platform does. Every time you build a feature, it's like you have to turn back and look at me and go, "Oh, so, but wait, like, what does that actually mean? What's the point of a personal language model? What's the, what is commodity content mean?" So, you will forever be one step, two steps, three steps, five steps, 10 steps behind because you constantly have to look at the person who's creating the point of view or creating the methodology to go, "Whoa, whoa, wait. They're the one doing the thinking. I'm just going to copy them." Which means you're always behind. And so, I think it's funny when people say there's no moat in SaaS, because it's like, "Well, yeah, there's no moat in anything if you don't have a point of view." But there's a ton of moat in SaaS and product and writing and marketing if you do have a point of view. And so, that's kind of what inspired this convo is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know, of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know, of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the second thing is creating affinity. So, uh, you know, if I add value to people's lives, it's sort of an effective number one, it, it generates some affinity to, "Hey, this, this guy helped me out a little bit," you know? "I got an idea from him," or "He, you know, I never, I never thought in, you know of, uh, this topic in that way." Like, for example, what you were talking about with, like, "The English language is open sourced." I never, you know, I use English every day in my life, I never thought about that concept before. And for the rest of time, I'm going to be associating that with you, Cole. And I think like, people undervalue how valuable it is to have a new idea, and ship that value to someone, and it actually affects their day-to-day, especially within the context of a business context, because that means that they're going to be making more money, they're going to be being more productive, and that's going to put food, food on the on their plates, feed their family, get them a job promotion. Like, there's so much good to that. And that's what I want to unpack today is like, that piece, for people.
[Nicholas]: Yeah, so, uh, a, a ton of thoughts. First, value is always relative to where the, the audience is. Meaning something that you could find really valuable, because maybe you're a more advanced entrepreneur, um, a beginner would not find as valuable because they're not far enough along yet. And, uh, in reverse, something that's very basic to you, that you've known, and you've learned that lesson a thousand times, um, is not valuable to you anymore because you already know it. But to a beginner, that's like the most helpful thing you could hand them, is step one. So, value is always relative to where the other person is. What prompted this whole mode of thinking for me is, especially in the past like two or three years, and as I've seen AI start to accelerate, I've found myself living in a constant state of frustration where I know that these models can write a lot of things just as well as I can. My frustration is knowing that that, that, uh, solution exists, and yet I still find myself spending time writing and rewriting things to tell beginners that I know would be helpful to them, but are really boring for me to repeat. And so, I've, I've been writing non-fiction online for 15 years. I've been writing about how to write on the internet for over a decade. I have, I'm not exaggerating, like probably written north of 50 million words on the topic, like thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces. And especially in the past few years, this frustration for me is like, I know that there are still a tremendous amount of people in the world who need help taking the first step and going, "How do I start writing on the internet? What's my niche? How do I name and claim what makes me different?" Ideas that are very simple to me, that are very novel to beginners. And yet, every time I write about them for the 999th time, I feel like I'm wasting my finite time on Earth because I'm just reswizzling the same groupings of words over and over and over again. And so, what kind of, that, that's what originally prompted this way of thinking is like, so how do you create a point of view in the first place?
[Host]: So, where do we start?
[Nicholas]: So, uh, an idea I've been thinking about a lot is the fact that the, the English language or any alphabet, any language, is really just an open source language for communication, meaning no one owns the individual letters of the alphabet. No one owns words, like the vast majority of words, right? Like you don't own the word "tomato". I don't own the word "catastrophe". Um, we also don't own even our names. There are a lot of people in the world named Greg. There are a lot of people in the world named Cole. And if someone says, "My name is Cole," or "My name is Greg," and you write, "My name is Greg," right? You're not plagiarizing them and they're not plagiarizing you. And as you start to like tease that idea out, you realize that the vast majority of words and groupings of words and thoughts and ideas and sentences are shared. They are not actually attributable to any one individual. And I think this is what people are wrestling with when they read, uh, writing that they think was written by AI. Is when they, when the, when you identify, quote-unquote, AI slop, what you're really identifying is commodity content. Meaning you're reading something, but it feels the way that it does because it's not attributable to any one individual. It's like reading health and wellness content. Someone writes, "The key to losing weight is eating healthy." That's a commodity sentence. There's a gazillion people who have said that exact grouping of words. And we don't look at the millions and millions of people who have repeated that same grouping of words and go, "Oh, everyone's plagiarizing each other." We just go, "That's a commodity sentence." And so, as you start, like, start to tease this out, it raises a really interesting question in the age of AI. And the age of AI is the creation of infinite text-based content. Anyone can write anything on any topic at any time with any amount of volume and speed they want, which raises the question, so what is worth writing in the first place? And I think it's, it's interesting, even like, your content is a really good example of this, where the simplest delineation is when you're writing and you say the difference between, "I think," "I did this," "I perspective," versus, "You should." "You should do this." Because when you're talking to the reader through the lens of you, inherently the content is going to lean more commodity because you're kind of just repeating all the things that everybody knows everyone should do. But when you're writing from a place of I, like "I just did this," or "I think this," or you, you share all the time, it's like, "I think this would be a great startup idea." When someone consumes that content, that is personality content. That, that is "I am consuming what Greg thinks about the world, not what everyone in this topic area typically says about this topic in the world." You know what I mean?
[Host]: Yeah. I mean, that's why all content isn't created equal, because sometimes I'll see people go insanely viral on X, let's say. And I look at the content, and I'm like, "I've read this before. It's a Wikipedia article essentially summarized, or it's a just a take that's been said before, and they plopped it into ChatGPT and asked it to create an essay on it." And, uh, it, it could still get 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes, but at the end of the day, it's like, what game you trying to play? When I'm creating content, I, I think about two things. I think about, how do I, how do I drive as much value for the person consuming the content. So, I'm just, constantly, as I'm writing, I'm like thinking about the person in the other seat, and thinking about, how can I help them. And that frame of mind is super helpful because that means actually you're not going to write things like, "You should do XYZ, you should do XYZ," because that's kind of coming from a place of, like, "I'm better than you, and I know everything, therefore you should do this." And I don't think that's what I try, that's what I, I, I want to avoid. And then the
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