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My name is Gary Henderson. And I built the creator studio to show you what's possible. Today's a special day. I was cruising Twitter. And I saw a tweet. That said. I'm going to be a billionaire. And Twitter's going to help me do it. And I immediately just stopped in my tracks and I was like, well, I want to be a billionaire. And if Twitter can help me do it, I think that's amazing. So, what I did is I slid into Clint Murphy's DMS. And I said, I would love to host you on my podcast. Now we do our podcasts, a little different. A lot of people do videos. A lot of people are on YouTube. We're live in our community. So our community is about 3000 creators. Let me paint the picture for you. We have music playing from two friends. It's big booty mix 23. So it's like a DJ mix playing fun music. Our guests come in, we've got about 40 or 50 creators in the audience waiting. It's kind of like a Twitter spaces or a clubhouse room. It's audio only. It's on a stage and discord. Clint comes in the music's bumping, the chat's blowing up. Clint jumps up on stage. He says, Gary, This is the most fun interview I've ever had, and we haven't even started yet. Because of the energy and the vibe. So Clint takes the next 45 minutes and he teaches us everything that he knows. About growing his personal brand, how he's been juggling back and forth. And how he's actually growing hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. And let me give you one little tip. My wife, Peyton listened to Clint on. We brought him in on a Saturday, on a Saturday. The following Monday or Tuesday, she posted a tweet. Her tweet using the strategy that you're going to learn here with Clint Murphy. In this podcast, her tweet. Got over 1.4 million impressions. Organically. Learn. Implement. And immediate results of over 1.4 million impressions. So go ahead and follow the show. Get your notepad out and get ready to take some action let's jump into the studio with clint Murphy.

Gary Henderson: 2:23

Creators, welcome back into the studio. I am so excited today. We have Clint Murphy in the studio. I was on Twitter one day and I didn't know Clint. I'm cruising Twitter and I see a tweet that says, I plan to be a billionaire and Twitter is going to drive it. Here's my simple blueprint you can use. And I read this tweet. It was May 25th, 2023. So just about I don't know, right at a month ago. Let me post this tweet here in our chat if you're here with us live. But I read this tweet and I took a second and I said, well, he's talking about a flywheel. And coincidentally, I had just been on Facebook and I, like some of the people that I know, like Perry Belcher just hosted a mastermind and the whole concept of the mastermind was about the flywheel. I've got a lot of experience with HubSpot. The whole concept of HubSpot is about the flywheel, so I'm reading. And I'm reading and he talks about his podcast and he talks about his newsletter, right? So I'm reading and I'm reading and he talks about passive investments and active investments in real estate and social media He just keeps going on and I'm like this is the plan and it's a simple simple system build on Twitter Drive to the newsletter invest the free cash into businesses Write about the process and grow on social repeat the cycle for as long as you'd like Clint I'm so honored that you said yes. I'm so honored to have you here in the studio with us. I'm welcome.

Clint Murphy: 3:57

thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to having a fun conversation with you on this topic.

Gary Henderson: 4:03

Yeah, so You kind of seem like you figured out life, right? Like you figured it out kind of early, you became a millionaire in your 30s. How did you, how'd you figure out the path? I don't think most people do it until a little bit later. How'd you figure it out young?

Clint Murphy: 4:18

Part, part of the interesting that you say that I, I really worry that I was too late to the game and I try to teach my sons. So much more about money and finance and mindset in the path than I knew when I was young, Gary, partially because I did grow up lower middle class. We didn't have much money. Parents started earning a little more towards the end of high school, but we didn't have money. So it was learning along the way. And I think the biggest driver was The people I was able to surround myself as I grew my career and I, uh, for background, I worked at KPMG for about a decade, uh, built a lot of friendships there with people who are now reasonably wealthy, high earners, but high earners. And so it wasn't until I went into industry and I started to work for real estate developers that I was able to see how they did what they did. And one of the benefits I've always had is really taking that Stephen Covey's begin with the end in mind and saying, okay, well, if this real estate developer I'm working for is a billionaire, how did they get here? And how can I repeat what they did? Obviously not at the scale they have right away because at the time I'm in my early 30s But how can I repeat what they did at my scale? So that I can grow to a certain level by a certain age and then I can double down And so that was the big thing was always looking at those people Ahead of me and asking myself. How did they do what they do? How can I do it? So a lot of young people nowadays, Gary, seem to look at rich people and be like, Oh, bourgeois douchebags. And it's all like beating up on them. I'd rather look at them and say, well, how did they do what they did? And how can I do that? That would be the, the simple answer was working for very wealthy people and copying what they did.

Gary Henderson: 6:30

I think it's so smart. And, you know, you've got to stay humble when you do that. You've got to realize that you may not align with everyone, but there's still a lesson to be learned by following them and seeing what they did. Um, so you started doing this in your 30s. You started leaning out. You started learning from people. Um, was it instant success for you when you, when you just figured this out? It

Clint Murphy: 6:51

Absolutely not. Nothing is ever instant from a success perspective. I think the biggest issue I had was that I didn't necessarily have the right mindsets. And there are two things that I'll throw at you there. One was in my early 30s, I was out of shape. I didn't necessarily know how to achieve goals. And I had a pretty dark moment where, where, where a friend was kind of shitting on me and, and being a little bit of a jerk. And as a result of that, it made me really question, well, wait, what am I doing wrong here? Why am I out of shape? Why aren't I achieving any of my life goals? How do I go about doing this? And that's where I really started to practice the habits from seven habits of highly effective people and say, I'm going to introduce this into my life. And I'm going to start being a person who achieves the goals that I set. And I say to a lot of young people use physical activities as a way to test that until you can do it outside of physical activity. So for me, that looked like Ironman training and doing that. Getting, getting from at a shape couch potato to completing an Ironman in a decent time and then saying, okay, now I know I can achieve hard physical things. I can take that same approach though and apply it to my career, apply it to my finances and set goals, work backwards and then make it happen. So that was definitely a failure. And then I would say it about 35, about 10 years ago now. I had a conversation at work where we mutually agreed to part ways. And when I look back, I really got fired in that one, Gary, if, if I really play out what they did and at the time we owned a home, we had another home that we had to close on in the next six to nine months. And we hadn't sold the first home in my what we just had our second baby like it was just a bad financial time to be mutually quitting or getting fired from a job. And that's when I started to dive very deep. Into personal finance. So I started reading Mr. Money Mustache and any finance blog I could to understand financial literate literacy and plug the holes in my game. So I'd always been increasing my earnings 20% a year, every year from basically 20. One till now, and then the weakness was I would just spend those increases and it wasn't until I had that failure of essentially getting fired that I said, well, wait a second, I can never put my family in this situation again. I need to make sure that we are always financially secure. And so I started to dive deep into saving. Earning more and investing. And that really is when I turned the corner,

Gary Henderson: 10:05

makes a lot of sense. You know, you, I was doing a little research and you were Ironman back in 2010. So a couple of years later, you went through this, this mutual, um, uncoupling with your career and realize that, that you could do this on your own. So you start studying personal finance. You, you learn to save, you learn to earn more, and what does that, like, you said it wasn't a great financial moment. So what are those next couple of months like when you're, you're kind of trying to figure out how to fish?

Clint Murphy: 10:41

I was scrambling the, for the next couple of months, I mean, we agreed to give a six month notice period to find a job and over that six months. You know, the first four months, nothing was coming in and then at the end, three things came in, I was able to narrow it down to one that was good. I ended up actually not being there for long and the day before, the Friday before I was going to start that new job on the Monday, I had a meeting with a, with CFO. He was asking me a lot of questions, you know, what type of person should I be looking for? I basically painted a picture of well, you should be hiring me and at the end his reply was oh, you know It's too bad. You're starting this other job. You'd be a great fit here. And I said, hey, I'm on probation for them But they're also on probation with me and We kept having conversations ended up meeting about 14 people on the team and seven months later. I went to work for them And I've been there for a decade now. So it's the longest job I've ever had up until then. It was two years, eight months. It was the classic, Hey, I'm going to jump because I'm going to get, I'm going to get growth, going to get an opportunity. I'm going to go somewhere else. But I've now been with that company for 10 years and became their CFO about seven and a half years ago.

Gary Henderson: 12:10

That's really nice. It's such a fun story. I think timing always seems to work itself out. And then you started growing your personal brand. So, what was... Did you, did you wake up one day and say I have to, I have to grow my brand or what was that big epiphany for you? Because you've got a heck of a following on Twitter.

Clint Murphy: 12:29

Yeah. And we're just scratching the surface because my wife's now retired, going full time helping me and we're going to start hitting all other platforms, but what it looks like is. January 2018 having a conversation with my boss. I'm the CFO. Now, the only real step up is can I, can I own a piece of this company? And the answer was no, that's not an option. And so I looked at it and said, okay, I'll give you guys 10 years. And when you fast forward four years. At the time I said, Hey, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to write podcasts, public speak, coach and consult private equity, real estate investment. Everything that I put in that tweet to you, I said to him, January, 2018. So the tweet you read on how I'm going to be a billionaire and the things I'm going to be doing. That was the plan at six years ago, even probably earlier than that, as I started to reflect, if I'm not an owner and I'm not going all in on this company, what am I going to do for the rest of my life? Because I don't want to be an employee that that was clear to me. And when you fast, my intention was not to do any of these things until I got closer to the retirement date. But when COVID came. There was a lot more time all of a sudden, and I had created a roadmap of how I would get there for each of those five or six categories that I listed. I had an idea of where do I want to be on this? So if I want to be a coach, I want to be one of the top coaches in North America. If I want to have a podcast, I want to have a top podcast. If I want to write, I want to be a top writer. And I started to create a work plan for all of them, Gary, where do I want to get to? To get there, what do I need to do? What courses do I need to take? What, what habits do I need to develop? What skills do I need to develop, etc. And the one clear takeaway on all of them was you need to build a brand. If you want to be a good coach, you should probably have a brand. If you want to be a writer, you should have a brand. If you want to do private equity real estate investments, you should probably have a brand. And so that told me I needed to start building. And so I decided out of the blue, didn't talk to anyone at work, didn't have a conversation. I just said, I'm going to launch a podcast and then I needed to promote the podcast. I started on Instagram. Some of the shareholders started following me, started joking about it at work, got really uncomfortable. So I said, well, where aren't these guys? And the answer was they're not on Twitter. And so I jumped over to Twitter to promote the podcast and within probably six months. I started in April, August I started taking it seriously, August 2021. So it's, it's been still slightly less than two years. And the idea was, I'm going to take this seriously. And then I realized, you talked about it already, the flywheel. It became clear very fast that the first flywheel was the social media. As I grew, my ability to access guests, Increased. As I had conversations with bigger guests, talking about it on Twitter increased the following. And so feeding each other became very powerful. And now I'm, I'm at a point where I'm already starting to have conversations with people I never thought I'd talk to in life. And yet realize we're still the tip of the iceberg. Like next Friday, Kevin Kelly's coming on, someone who Tim Ferriss calls the most interesting man in the world. And I'm like, wow, I get to talk to this guy. Like, so that comes from the growth on Twitter because Now I can promote and say, Hey, we're going to reach out to this many people. And the second step you already talked about was the newsletter, which we started three or four months ago. So that was, that's why I got on there. That's why I'm growing there. And then the next step is to grow. Each of these platforms until I can step away from work. The original timeline was 27, teen, or sorry, 2027. I think we're going to be quite a bit ahead of that date.

Gary Henderson: 17:02

It's such an inspiring story that you're doing this still running, you know, still working, um, building your brand on the side. You've got this very methodical plan. You've got it like down to the like, and I would expect that from someone who was a, um, you know, in accounting at one of the big fours, I would expect that it's. You've got spreadsheets and it's, it's all charted out and you've got contingencies in there and, and you know, if you could get these catalysts, right, these huge guests that it might happen a little sooner. This is inspiring. It's, I'm the exact opposite of you. I kind of just play by my, um, by the seat of my pants and, and fly. And, and I'm just kind of in awe and shock whenever something cool happens. And I'm like, well, that's cool. And I know if I'm moving energy in the right direction, it works, but I think it's really fascinating. Um, what do you think is the key to the growth? Was it the guests that you had on your podcast, your growth on Twitter, or was it your, like your personality? What do you think really helped you grow on Twitter?

Clint Murphy: 18:04

I think it's multiple things. So the first one is going to be you have to, you have to become a good writer. At the end of the day, if the content isn't good, you can't grow. The second piece of that though is how do you package it? So the first one is let's take a step back. It's not even becoming a good writer. It's, it's living an interesting life. Because at the end of the day, the content that you're writing about has to matter. It has to add value to people's lives. It has to be able to help people and you have to emotionally connect with them. At the end of the day, we want our audience to know us, like us, trust us. So we have to be able to do those three things with our content. On the trust us, we have to live in a way Where the content that we write about resonates with them. That's step one. The content has to be good. Step two is we have to package it well. So that means it has to look good. That means becoming a better writer. Which also allows you, interestingly, Gary, you probably hear this from a lot of people, when you become a better writer, you become a better thinker, you become a better communicator, you become a better person. Better public speaker. It all ties together. That's step two. And then step three, you have to have a distribution network. So you have to have a circle of people who work together. Similar to what you have in this room right now, the fact that you have this Discord community, it's that same thing. The number of Discord tweet, You guys hit me when you drop your tweet, I'll hit you and, and we grew as a group that way. The last way was the, the last really important thing is threads. When, when you know what works on a platform, use it while it works. And on Twitter, the fastest way to grow is by writing threads similar to the one that you shared in here, which is a series of tweets linked together that tell a story. And those are the ways to add the most value to people, which in return generate the most follows. And so I, Every month on Twitter, I was growing, and when I got dedicated to writing threads, it was the first month that my grow I still grew, but it was the first month that the pace of growth slowed down. And that was because I wasn't good at first, Gary. But I'm willing to suck long enough to become good, and then be good long enough to become great. And that first month we added 4, 000 the second month and I was writing a thread every day the second month we added 20, 000 people and that roughly doubled my account size. And then from that month on, we've averaged around 20, 000 new followers per month. And so I, I think Gary, it was consistency. building a network, getting a good group of friends, and then learning how to write threads and writing one every single day for three months until it became a bit natural. And now I do about three, maybe four a week.

Gary Henderson: 21:26

I think the consistency, the routine there, you sit every day for three months and I think you have to be brave in order to have your numbers go down when you first started writing threads. You knew you needed to focus on it. You knew you needed to be there, but the numbers didn't show that. But you persisted and you pushed through that because you knew you were willing to suck. And I think that's a really, really cool skill. I think maybe back from when you were training for marathons and teaching yourself that physical activity, you learned that lesson. What do you think about that?

Clint Murphy: 21:57

Absolutely. And Ironman was the start, but you fast forward to 2016. And I'd started to let myself get a little out of shape. Again, we're out with some Clients, uh, or our bankers and one of them talking about running, he and I start chatting about running. One of the other guys overhears us and you know, a few glasses of wine, wine later points at my belly and says, you're not a runner. And I thought, wow, like a, that's just harsh and B. I am whatever I want to be, and you are whatever you want to be if you do it. So I decided, Gary, that I would, I would be a runner again, because I had been at some point in my life. And I started running, I ran every day for one and a half years. And an average, the minimum that I would do is two kilometers, but, or a little over one mile, but the average was seven kilometers a day, or just a little under five miles. So I did that for a year and a half, and that showed me again, the power of setting a goal and being consistent and to your point, out of shape at the start of that running, and at the end, I did a 50 mile ultramarathon. And so that showed me. Again, using a physical activity that consistency allows you to go from not being very good at something to being really good at something and applying that to anything anyone in this audience wants in their life. If you want to make more money, just start every day. Think of an idea of how to make more money and then act on it. Act on some of them. If you want to be a runner, go out and run. Peyton, I see you're averaging three miles a day. You're a runner. Like, just doing the act. If you want to be a writer, write. So many of us, that's exactly right, Lauren. So many of us don't do the number one thing that matters. Gary, is we don't start. And as soon as you start and you be consistent, it's magical. And yeah, I would say that's been the biggest driver of the success. I think on Twitter, I wrote on Twitter every day for about a year and two months. I didn't take a day off. And then after about a year and two months, my wife wasn't helping me. I was doing all of Twitter. I was doing Instagram. I was. I had my job, and I, I burned out, and I, I think I sent a message and said I'm taking a day off tomorrow fam, like I'm out, and took a day off. There's some people like Justin Welch, I think he said he hasn't taken a day off of Twitter or LinkedIn in like two years. Like it's that consistency of showing up every day that definitely does matter.

Gary Henderson: 24:49

I couldn't agree with you more. Um, you said a couple of things. You identified Peyton, which is I left my wife as a runner because she runs. So the identity piece, right? Like you are on Twitter. That's part of who you are. It's part of your brand. Um, we had Pedro Hideo in the studio and he talked about the fact that he had ClickFunnels, a piece of software. He paid for it for a whole year before he used it. He wouldn't cancel it because he was a funnel hacker and he was that committed to being a funnel hacker that he tied his identity into being a funnel hacker. And he wouldn't cancel the software. And then you talked about the daily consistent actions. We do something here in our community, we're creators. And every person here is a creator, and they're on their own journey, and they're moving at their own pace, and their own speed, and some are more full time, and some are, you know, still in their full time job exploring what it means to be a creator. But we have something that we call proof of work. And every day, creators in our community, every single person here can, they submit their proof of work, and we ask them a couple questions. We say, did you grow your audience today, yes or no? Did you make money today? Yes or no. What did you do today? Tell us anything you want to, as many points as you want. And then how intense was today on a scale of one to five? One being light intensity, five being heavy. When they hit the submit button, we acknowledge them and we give them a graphic to share on social media if they want to show off what they did for today. We send them chat GPT power to AI coaching for accountability into their email and we reward them with Garycoin, which is their in community currency. So we believe just as you do that daily consistent action and just starting will definitely get you much further And showing up every day and just doing it taking that action taking that step every day We want people when they come in here to our community to be creators and we want creators to get paid So we start day one as long as they submit their proof of work They get paid as a creator the first day that they're here.

Clint Murphy: 26:39

There's so much power to that. Did you create today? Did you grow your audience? Show us your work. Did you make money? You're just creating a feedback loop that will make people or not make, but Help people on that journey of accountability to be consistent. Like there's so much beauty to that Gary. I love it

Gary Henderson: 27:05

Well, thank you and now you've transitioned a bit, right? You're you're doing Life coaching you're helping people get shit done and kind of implement the way that you are. Is that right?

Clint Murphy: 27:14

to some extent. So I'm, I mean, it's, it's challenging because I still am a full time CFO by day. I have two boys, 15 and one turned 15 last week, one turns 12 this week. And. Trying to do the creator journey. So, so I do have an offer out there and I'll, I'll listen. If people kind of want to say, Hey, do you, do you want, do you coach, do you want to work together, but I don't go out and actively pursue it yet. Partially because I don't have the capacity to do it. The, this may resonate with you. I'm, uh, signing up or applying this weekend for a, to do a Ph. D. in psychology, focusing on creative, creativity, innovation, and leadership. So I, I've realized I, I'd always wanted to transition back to psychology, Gary, and that's what I'd originally started doing in college until my wife or girlfriend at the time said, you know, you should do something that'll get you a job and make money. And so I became an accountant, which I really don't enjoy, but was decent at the, and the idea is I really want to work with creators and founders and help exactly what you're talking about, help people create, help people take that creator journey. An experience in life what what I've realized is possible over the last two years. And so my, my plan is to really go deep down that Avenue and starting with the application process this weekend. So my wife started ordering the transcripts and, uh, I'm going to hopefully press the go button and get accepted into that.

Gary Henderson: 29:03

That's really exciting I think it's Jeff Walker taught me that in life at different. Are you familiar with Jeff? Do you know him or know of him?

Clint Murphy: 29:12

No, not yet.

Gary Henderson: 29:13

So Jeff, he's the inventor or creator of the product launch formula. So a lot of the informational products or online education was kind of created around his method. Forbes calls him the billion dollar man. A really, really, um, savvy guy. And he said it's really important. As a, a mentor, a coach, an educator, a teacher to go back to beginner mode and learn again, and I know getting a PhD is a beginner, but it is flipping back to a different level from being an accountant to learning something else. And I think at different points in time in our life, it's really important to learn something new and to remember what it's like to start all over.

Clint Murphy: 29:49

I read something by someone just the other day who talked about that very same thing, Gary. And what he was saying was, That when you, when you sort of achieve a pinnacle in one area and you get really good and really known for something, the desire to do that thing actually diminishes. And so 1 of the ways he's found to empower it is to say, well, I'm going to go back to, I'm going to go over to a different area that I'm interested in and be a beginner again. And Tracy said it as well. We always need to be learning. And for me. That is definitely the number one, when I look at my number one value and number one strength, it's learning, learning, creation, or learning, ideation, and competition, though I try to make that competition with myself, those are the top three. And so to your point, restarting, I mean, I want to restart. In as many different areas over the next 30, 40 years as I possibly can, I think that's what's going to allow me, even if I don't achieve that number, I put into that tweet, it's going to be a big number. And the way it's going to happen is by constantly reinventing, whether it's newsletters, YouTube channels, owning businesses. I own a fair amount of real estate now, but owning a lot more real estate and at some point taking that to the next level, sharing that. If we take a step back and look at, for example, Cody Sanchez. You buy the business, you grow the business, you write about growing the business, you write about buying the business, and your, uh, content channels grow, then you are able to get access to deals you otherwise wouldn't have access to, you rinse and repeat that formula, and it just keeps growing the machine. And so you look at someone like Cody, who's doing what she's doing, and it's insane what you can achieve. With 10 years of consistency,

Gary Henderson: 31:55

It really is. So. You read a lot. Like I was, I was reading about you and you're like 50 plus books a year. And that's fascinating to me that as busy as you are as I mean, two kids, a wife, full time CFO. hundreds of thousands of followers, thousands of readers of your newsletter, 14, 000 listeners on your podcast. How do you find time to read as much as you do? Like, 50 plus books a year?

Clint Murphy: 32:26

yeah, and that's driven by the podcast, so. Almost every guest that comes on the podcast is an author. And interestingly, a lot of people who have the, the authors on their shows don't actually read the author's books. And so a lot of authors will say, Hey, like, thanks. Like it was clear that you actually read my book. And I'm quite surprised by that. I would think if I If I invite you on to talk about your book, I'm going to read your book and so what? Yeah, I wish it was that speed reading like that. That's an awesome gift, JJ. The what? I always go back. I heard this quote from um, The CrossFit, CrossFit games champion and names escaping me at, at the moment. I think it was Matt Hughes, if I'm not mistaken. The, no, that was the U FFC fighter. Uh, someone in the chat helped, helped me out the, not the U F C, I'm totally mixing things up. CrossFit games. It was Matt, uh, CrossFit. So Matt Frazier. I'm so bad at that. So someone was interviewing Matt, and for those who don't know, Matt was doing a double engineer, a double. Major in engineering and business. So two hard programs. And while doing that, he was on the podium at the CrossFit games. And so someone asked him like, how do you do that? And his reply was, it's simple. It isn't easy, but it's really, really simple. I take everything in life that doesn't contribute to those three things, and I cut it the F. And so something that COVID really showed me. Was how much time we actually have when you're in a city where they lock it down, you're working from home. Your kids activities are canceled. You can't go visit family. You realize how many hours in the day there are and when covid unwound. I had a choice I could make Gary, I could go back to living the life I was living where I filled it with a lot of idle time, visiting family, going over to a friend's for the afternoon, um, going and having a pint with some buddies, like whatever it was, there was a lot of time killing and I made the decision instead to focus all of my minutes on my mission. It doesn't mean I don't see family. It doesn't mean I don't see friends. I'm just much more deliberate about it. And so doing that has given me a lot of time to focus on what I want to focus on, which is this goal of growing, growing the platform, leaving the workforce. I'm quite excited to say that one, Gary, and be a full time creator. That's, that's the path, and so, what does it look like? I know every day I have to read, I have to write, I have to publish. There's no option. And when you take out the optionality, it just happens. Going back to what you talked about, um, earlier on consistency, and yes, Lauren, it's exactly that. It's, it's deliberate, focused intention on what the mission is and what it takes to achieve the mission.

Gary Henderson: 35:59

I absolutely love that. Read, write, and publish. Every day. Read, write, and publish. It's so, like, that's just easy. I think we can all do that. We can all read, we can all write, and we can all publish because we all want to. Live this creator journey. We all want to do that. So Clint, I have a big question for you. We have a lot of people, the purpose of our show is to help creators see what's possible and I think you're an amazing definition of that. You're a full time CFO, you're growing an amazing audience, you're going back to school to get your PhD, you've got a wife, you've got kids. So if you were starting all over today with everything, you know, and, and this was back in 2010 or 2013 when you started to make some of these choices, or maybe in 2018 when you started to make this big leap, what would you tell someone that's starting today to do if they wanted to see results similar to yours? What should they do for the next? Let's just say three months.

Clint Murphy: 36:58

Absolutely. So, so the first thing is we already talked about consistency. So whatever we say, we're going to say, be consistent. Number two, we already talked about the fact that people don't start. So we're going to say, start small, start simple, make it achievable. It's the same as habits, right? Gary, if I always refer to it as your, your get shit done muscle. I spent a lot of time, whether it was iron man training, whether it was the running every day for a year and a half, that was all get your, get shit done muscle building. And so now I'm at the stage where I can be comfortable that I can start anything and do it. When you haven't built that muscle, the first thing you have to do is build it. So don't think that you need to start where Gary is or where I am. If you want to write, if you want to be a creator, we'll use writing as an example, then simply write a few sentences a day. Say, I'm going to spend five minutes a day writing. And when you start small and you grow incrementally, it's the same as running. Peyton talked about what she's doing for running. Now, the key there is, one of the number one rules in running is the 10% rule, and it leads to what JJ's talking about, the snowball effect. When you follow the 10% rule with running, you don't increase any individual run more than 10% in a week, and you don't increase your total volume in the week by more than 10%. But when you increase by 10%, the law of compounding The rule of 72 is you take 72, you divide it by your growth rate, and that tells you how, how fast you double. So if you're starting at 1 kilometer and you're increasing 10% a week, 7 weeks later, which is only a month and a half, you're doing 2 kilometers. 2 months later, you're doing 4. 2 months later, you're doing 8. 2 months later, you're doing 16. 2 months later, you're doing 32. Like, you're, you're at a marathon in less than a year. By starting with one kilometer and only growing 10% a week. So the power of that start small, be consistent, incrementally grow. And then that's about creating the habit. When, when you do that, then what you want to do is in me, or we need to talk about that because there, I definitely want to hit on that as a creator, because there's, there's a lot of creators out there who aren't creators. And they're monetizing other people's thoughts and ideas. Uh, whether it's ghost writers, whether it's chat, GPT, whatever it is, they can actually get up here and have a conversation with Gary and see what you're typing in the comments and say, I'm going to integrate that into what I'm saying because they're not speaking from a place of lived experience and they're not speaking from a place of true ownership or authenticity. So for people on your journey, That's one of the number one things I think you need to do. You need to make sure that whatever you're putting yourself out there as a creator, as an expert on or, or as, as an authority on whatever it is, that you actually have that lived experience. And this is why I think Twitter is going in the right direction with audio, with video because what it's allowing us to do is to come in rooms like this, and when we have these conversations, and I'm able to integrate what you're saying in the comments, or if Cassandra throws a question at me, I'm able to answer that question in a split second, not having prepared for the question. It tells you when you read my writing. That that writing is from someone who's lived what they're saying. And when you add that level through video, through podcasts, through other mediums, it shows people that you are the creator, that you're putting yourself out there as. So that to me is a huge thing when you're starting on your creator journey, is making sure you set yourself up for success that way. The last thing I'd throw at you, Gary, is develop rare skills. And the more you can do that as the creator, the more value you're going to add. And what that might look like is, you know, you already talked about me being, being an accountant. I've also worked very hard at being a public speaker, at being a writer, at being a creator and being a standalone accountant is one thing, but being an accountant who could give a public announcement, who can be on an earnings call, who can write. a annual report, whatever that might be. It sets you apart from the other people in your circle. So take the skills that you're learning by being a creator and apply them to other areas of your life to make you more well rounded than the average person. And if there's anything that's going to increase your earnings over time, It's that because at the end of the day, our earnings are tied to the value we can bring to the table. So the more skills and the more value we can bring, the more we will earn. That was a really long answer to that question, Gary. I'm going to pass it back to you and Cassandra.

Gary Henderson: 42:35

I love that. I love the consistency. I love... I love learning. I love showing up. I love taking action. I love building that muscle and not comparing ourselves to someone else. I also love giving ourselves permission to just be us. You know, whenever we're ready, we're ready. And whenever we're not, we're not. And we're on our own path and we're on our own journey. Like many people could look at Clint and say, man, Clint, you're ready to go be a full time creator and you're ready to do this, but that's not the path and journey that you're taking. So I think it's really important to take the time and like that you did with yourself to figure out what your path is. And Cassandra, I've seen, Cassandra's a creator in our community and one of our builders, and she was so excited. She kept raising her hand. So I had to bring her up here. We don't usually bring, um, our community up, but Cassandra, what do you got for Clint today? Go for it.

Kassandra Kuehl: 43:27

Hey friends. Just double check. Can you hear me?

Gary Henderson: 43:30

you loud and clear.

Kassandra Kuehl: 43:32

it's just so fun to get to be able to, to just say hi and thank you. I mean, your followers, man, 327. 8k. It's amazing. And one of the things, you know, I, I think we probably swim in a lot of the same communities, Dan Coe and Justin and just, uh, uh, Justin Welsh, Justin, the other Justin. But my question is, I have a, I probably do about three threads a day. And one of the things that I've kind of been finding myself is really kind of moving into these templatized must be, kind of should be, and follow everybody's templatized Twitter threads. And at the same time, really evoking my own essence through what is already working. Um, so I just kind of wanted to hear from you as far as How do you stay out of the groupthink of templatized Dickie Bush type formulating and really stay in your essence? Because when I open your emails and listen to your podcast, I just, if nothing else, wanted to tell you, like you have this nurturing, I'm sitting in your living room type of feeling with your personal brand. And so if nothing else, I just wanted to share that with you. Because I don't touch your content and feel like, Oh, it's just another, like, big influencer. Like, you have that really honest workmanship behind your work that feels personalized and true to you. So if nothing else, I wanted to say that. And then maybe if you can give some words of wisdom, where you see Twitter right now. If you think templatizing follow everybody can be detrimental to your copy and where you see copy going in the future and I love Twitter for that reason because I can comment on your or Dan Coe's threads and they get back to me right away. There is reciprocity on Twitter that I have seen nowhere else in social. So that's it.

Clint Murphy: 45:44

That you covered so much of it, the, you know, and I was going down that trap a little like I look at my highest performing thread ever. Cassandra was about Microsoft Excel. Now, in fairness, I use Excel almost every day of my life. As a CFO, I love Excel. I use it, I, uh, get a lot of joy out it, out of it. So writing a thread about it doesn't feel bad to me. That thread added 28, 000 followers. over a weekend. It was,

Kassandra Kuehl: 46:21

Damn. That's crazy.

Clint Murphy: 46:23

it was like, you know, it was, it became a template that people mocked because it was the one that was Microsoft Excel is used by 99. 9% of the world. Most people don't know how to use it. Here are 10 basics everyone should know. So super templatey. And then I might do another thread on Excel. But what I realized over time was, what do I want to be known for? I don't want to be the Excel guy, like miss Excel on Tik TOK. I love what she's done. I love that she makes millions of dollars a year teaching people about Excel. I don't want to do that. I'm quitting being a CFO because I don't enjoy accounting. I don't enjoy that aspect of it. I want to focus on other areas of my life. So what you have to realize is don't fall into the trap. Of chasing the growth for the growth and what I think it was James Clear and Tim Ferriss who were talking about this together and one of the challenges they saw was a lot of creators will become a shell of themselves. Because they chase what gets the dopamine, they chase what gets the growth. And then all of a sudden, they go from being this well rounded, wide person to a very narrow shell of their former self. Because they only talk about that one thing that their audience wants. There has to be a blend of what does your audience want from you, and what do you want to give to your audience. Now when it comes to the actual thread itself, do I think there are templates that work? For sure. I mean, your hook is generally copy. Right. And so you're trying to draw people in and you can do that in different ways. There's people out there like Sawhill Bloom, who is the original thread writer who has gotten so big now that his hooks can be bad and he's still going to get 3000 likes on that thread for the rest of us. Not to say all of his hooks are bad, I'm just saying some of them, based on the copywriting formula, maybe, if you ran it by the, the Twitter copy people. For the rest of us, there has to be that. How do I get people to read what I'm doing? And I would say, don't sell out and doing it, Cassandra. But even if I look at the one I did this morning, that's going mildly. Okay. Like we'll probably pick up hopefully a thousand followers today from it. The, we said. And this is a repurposed one that's very important for creators. It's your own work. Don't be afraid to reuse it. Twitter life cycle is like 18 hours. So if you republish something every six months, you're going to be fine. Yeah. So in, in, in that one, Gary, we say I've spent 23 years studying finance and became a multimillionaire in my thirties. I'll teach you everything you need to know about personal finance in the next seven minutes. And the downside of this thread, Cassandra, is generally if you want a thread to really, really pop, you're only going to put about 10 maximum 15 tweets in the thread. This one had like 30 because I really did want to teach people. Here's the net worth statement. Here's the cash flow. Here's a budget. Here's how they all work. Here's some financial rules you should know. So this actually is like a little e book as a thread. So it breaks some of those rules, but the hook itself, I developed that hook as a way to really get people to want to dive in and read what's in there. So I, I do think there's that element of copy, but I, but it's the right way to say this. And I think it goes back to what we said earlier, the no like trust. So part of the way we do that is we don't just write the reds like this. This is, this is trust, right? This is an authority thread. It's Hey, I know about personal finance. Here's what you want to read. If you only write this type of thread and you do it regularly, you become a professor. You become the teacher and people don't want to come to class. They don't want to come to Twitter to sit in your, in your lecture. They want to come to chat with a friend. They want to come to learn with a buddy. They want to come to learn with someone they can go have a beer with. So the other side of that Cassandra is you have to mix that type of thread with engagement posts. So you might write authority 60% of the time, 30% of the time focus on engagement and engagement is like, In one word, how are, how are people successful? Tell me in one sentence, how can you get rich? That's the engagement. The third one is. You want them to know you, and that's the personal stories. That's the, here's what's happened in my life. And there's a psychological phenomenon where those stories are more powerful if you've, if you share your failures, you share your losses. But it's only more powerful if you're, you've already demonstrated you're competent. So by writing 60% of the time about your competence, when you share those Moments of loss, those moments of failure, then that's the glue that binds your audience to you because now they know you're a real person. They know you're a human, right? And that might be a story about how my kid stopped looking me in the eye, stopped telling me he loved me because I worked too much. And when I share that story, like, it hurts me to share it. But people are like, oh shit. Dude's telling us, like, the dark side of his life, not just the wins, not just the authority, like, he's sharing him, his full self. So, the blending of that three, and where I see people fail the most, is they miss that third one. They don't share who they are, and if they do, they only share the wins.

Kassandra Kuehl: 52:58

Yeah. I agree with you 100%. And I will say this as well, I mean, ChatGBT, right, so, you know, I use my own white label, um, prompt engineer, and I take tweets like yours, or Dickie Bush, and I put them into a template that I can play with, and go and, you know, whip it out, and then personalize it to me. But, I have to say, Twitter and writing threads, and being as concise as you can, we know less is always more. It has, it has really, I mean, created just, it's, I've become a better writer because of it and being concise. So, I appreciate it so much. Thank you. And, uh, one last question. Tweet Hunter or Hype Theory?

Clint Murphy: 53:47

The, uh, it's interesting. I've been a, I've been a, I've been a tweet hunter person right from the beginning and really enjoyed it. The, if any of you use tweet hunter and at the end of the thread you, you put tweet in the brackets to allow someone to retweet the first tweet. Very early in tweet hunter. That was me having a DM conversation with Tebow to say, Hey, we need the system to be able to do this. Uh, because I like, otherwise I say retweet the first tweet, but people don't go back up to it. And so he coded that in like under five minutes that told me, wow, these tweet hunter people are like legit about their product and it was, it was rolled out the next day. So I've always been a fan of them and I really didn't like how the hype theory team. Responded when tweet hunter was down for a day last month or two months or three months ago I felt like that was not how I would want to treat I don't even like to use the word competitors because I think that's a scarcity mindset That's not how I would want to treat a peer company and that's not how I would want a company in my Circle to treat me and so that made me even more Loyal to Tweet Hunter, but the, this whole API thing where some of the, a lot of the, a lot of the tweets are breaking. A lot of the threads are breaking.

Gary Henderson: 55:22

Well, Clint. Thank you so much for joining us today in the studio. I think it's absolutely phenomenal to hear from like someone that took this really, this, this corporate professional path, took an accounting path, um, going back to school to learn the psychology and still on the creator journey, um, creators or anyone and everyone. And I think it's really interesting to showcase the different types of creators because someone today could be an accountant. Could be setting in a corporate office listening to the recording of this podcast and say, I'm not a creator, I'm an accountant. I'm not a creator. I'm a, I'm a chiropractor and they may see themselves in you. So thanks for coming in and sharing. What's the best place for our audience to connect with you and follow you.

Clint Murphy: 56:07

Yeah, Twitter, Twitter's the best spot. I am Clint Murphy, and I, I really want to emphasize what you just said there, Gary. Every single one of us is a creator. Every single one of us is whatever we want to be, we just have to do it and it doesn't have to be big. It's just starting. It's just pressing go and you will be that. And, and that's what I think too many people don't realize is just start. What an amazing episode with Clint. And a little guest appearance by Cassandra. Look, this is really, really impactful. I was excited to bring Clinton. I was really excited to learn how he was able to grow such an amazing following on Twitter. And it's really relevant right now. I've been playing a lot on a new app called threads to new app by Instagram. I've grown over 4,500 followers on that app. So growing quite quickly, very fast. There's over a hundred million users on the app. And Clint taught us some strategies about threads in Twitter. He told us some strategies about growing wealth and building our brands. He taught us some strategies about life and getting shit done. But at the end of the day, He taught us strategies about getting out of our own way and just doing it. And that's what I love about a new app. We're able to kind of get a refresh. We're able to kind of start fresh. We're able to get out of our own way and just do it. So, what I would love for you to do is I'd love for you to find me on threads. I'd love for you to comment. I'd love for you to engage. I'd love to connect with you. If you're listening to the podcast, you're listening to the show. I want to connect with you. I want to build a relationship with you. So come over to threads. If you don't have the app go to. Or go to your app store, download it. It's threads by Instagram set up your account. It takes literally 30 seconds. And then I would love to connect with you on threads. Have an absolutely amazing day. Make sure you follow the show. And remember we have two episodes each week. We have one episode where we have a guest. We have a solo episode and that comes out on thursdays this week i'm going to be talking about threads i'll see you then