Blake: On this episode I am joined by Whit Anderson !
[00:00:03]We want to start out by just talking briefly about what you’re doing at bad unicorn, because they’re going to be a lot of people out there that say, hold on, you can make a business online out of basically making jokes.
[00:00:18] Yeah. How does it work? Explain to people what you’re actually doing, because you want something pretty often, but to, an older generation, it may not make a ton of sense.
[00:00:30] Whit: Yeah. Yeah. For about five months now, I’ve I launched something and I’ve been running something called bad unicorn.
[00:00:36] It’s bad unicorn.vc. If you wanna check out the landing page, but. The whole premise is I guess like the short line is like SNL for startups where like we’re trying to like parody startups, make funny startups, launch, funny side projects. And the way we’re able to do that is through no-code.
[00:00:53] So both me and my co-founder Ash we’re both semi competent and in no-code and building projects. And yeah, so it’s just on the side for both of us, we’re coming up with wacky ideas and then the only constraint that we’ve set for ourselves is every other Friday we launch a a funny or bad business idea.
[00:01:13] And yeah, the goal is for like those products to go viral and like up our newsletter subscribers.
[00:01:19] Blake: So do you actually ever make any money off this stuff?
[00:01:24] Whit: Sometimes. Yeah. It’s peanuts to most people. And so some of the projects make money. Some of the projects are adjustment to be shared around.
[00:01:31] And so we’ve got like some ideas that are like engagement generating ideas, and then some that are revenue generating ideas. And right now we’re striking the balance of like, How many do we launch? Like where we like ask for money? Like how many do we launch that are just share this around.
[00:01:47] And I think later we’ll figure out like what that balance is and yeah. And if we can make like substantial money on bad ideas.
[00:01:56] Blake: That’s awesome. So you’re hearing it here first. If you’re trying to build an audience. There literally are no ideas because you’re taking bad ideas and making them into something that eventually can turn into subscribers and build your audience.
[00:02:10] So whatever anyone listening to this, that’s Oh no, people care about my idea. And I don’t know if it’s going to work. Probably you could probably find a subset of people that are interested in what you’re doing. So let’s talk about your audience I’m targeting.
[00:02:25] Whit: So we’ve said like the it’s like innovators are creators.
[00:02:30] Who also have a sense of humor? So I think a lot of our stuff, some people probably land on our sites and this is Don, this is stupid. They don’t get it. And they leave we’re targeting person almost like the always try to think of like adjacent audiences, but almost like the morning brew audience where it’s like people that like, like the news, but they also want it like a little like cheekier than like the wall street journal or Oh, yeah.
[00:02:51] Bloomberg. And so that’s the, I think it’s the same type of people where it’s like people in tech who have a sense of humor
[00:02:58] Blake: and you’ve launched a bunch of stuff so far. So like Musk on Mars, slow and Slack, Mimi university, bunch of really funny things. Go check it out at bad unicorn and BC, by the way, if you don’t already know what’s building with Ash, but.
[00:03:12]It’s funny stuff. I’m curious. Which one is actually been the biggest driver of new subscribers or even money for you?
[00:03:20] Whit: Yeah, so we’ve done. It’s so tough to tell because cause the cause it varies like in the first launch we had zero subscribers when we launched Moscow, Mars, let’s say like on Slack for instance is the one that has the most page views.
[00:03:34]And Which is at 15,000 page views. And so it’s tough to say, because like we have this audience that helps share it around a little bit more and yeah, but there’s ideas that like, yeah. And then there’s also ideas where it’s you just can’t even tell we’ve had ideas where they’re like duds and it didn’t resonate with people or people didn’t care about it that much.
[00:03:53]Or it was Christmas time and people were busy doing other stuff or it was election time. And so it’s a little bit of Yeah. Finding the right idea and the right timing. So some of that could be luck as well.
[00:04:04] Blake: Yeah. So you mentioned you, you watch every other Friday, you try to launch something, right?
[00:04:08] Yeah. What’s the actual time commitment that you put into it between those two weeks? How many hours do you think you spend on building one of these bad projects?
[00:04:18] Whit: Oh, it varies. Cause sometimes I’ll take over some of the building of the website or the product sometimes Ashwell so we kind of balance each other as far as product to
[00:04:28] Blake: project.
[00:04:30] Whit: I would say we probably spend, and again, this is like a side project, so it’s like we have full-time gigs and then this is what we’re doing on the side. I’d probably say we spend, I don’t know. Six to 10 hours, like per project, maybe if, maybe a person. And I don’t know where I’m like gauging that.
[00:04:48] Cause it’s it’s the type thing where it’s bad unicorn. Just like always on my mind. So yeah, there’s no, no running clock, but somewhere in there.
[00:04:56] Blake: All right. I think we got a good idea on what you’ve been building with bad unicorn and what that whole blah, blah, it looks like, but I want to shift a little bit too.
[00:05:03] So right now on Twitter, you’ve got about 2,500 followers. For anyone listening to this podcast, not just highlighting people with hundreds of thousands of followers at any stage, you’re going to see growth and stalling and all kinds of different things. Like it’s going to happen across a bunch of different stages.
[00:05:21] So where you’re at right now with 2,500, how long did it take you to get to that point? When did you start taking Twitter? Seriously?
[00:05:30] Whit: Yeah, so I I guess the first thing that kind of Was prior to bad unicorn was something that called random pizza. And I built an app that sends you pizza at a random time each month.
[00:05:41] And it’s a subscription service. That’s where I figured out, like this was my niche, like funny products. Like some people think it’s silly. I think they’re funny and somewhat useful. And so like for a long time, I just learned on Twitter and probably was around like 400, 500 Twitter followers.
[00:05:59] Didn’t tweet PR really anything that was like that valuable other than like launches or like self promotion. I, then I, then it wants bad unicorn started it just resonated with people and I was, and I found my voice. So for awhile, I was going to tweet it into kind of before I found my voice, I was tweeting into what felt like somewhat Like nothingness.
[00:06:22]And then just the more I tweeted, the more I found the things I like to tweet about and the things that people liked me tweeting about. And so yeah. And then now it’s just like a battle of like consistency, like trying to show up every day having no zero days. And then tweeted about, like I was saying just a couple of categories, not I don’t know the NFL, like I love NFL, but.
[00:06:42]I try to keep it pretty focused.
[00:06:43] Blake: Yeah. Like all the things I actually am interested in. I just try to comment on stuff elsewhere and I’ll keep I tweet out stuff.
[00:06:53] Whit: Same here. Same here. Yeah. Same here. My like friends that would be there, aren’t in tech, look at my Twitter and they’re like, Kinda give me crap and stuff like that.
[00:07:03] Blake: Yeah. Definitely. Nobody understands that. All what I do either. So most people on this podcast are in that
[00:07:08] Whit: category. Yeah.
[00:07:10] Blake: At 2,500 followers. How many is bad unicorn at right now? Because there’s a separate Twitter account there. Yeah.
[00:07:16] Whit: So yeah that’s a crazy, but that’s been like an interesting growth, cause that was, it has 12, 1200 maybe.
[00:07:25]And that’s from like zero, five months ago. And I guess my 2,500 has been like from a long, like way longer than like the life of bad unicorn. But it did pick up substantially. When I started like talking more tweeting, more shipping,
[00:07:37] Blake: more products, how have you balanced having your personal account?
[00:07:41] And then I’m assuming that you’re probably. Are you the one writing the tweet for the bad unicorn account usually? Or do you split it?
[00:07:47] Whit: So it’s Ash ashes as the, he’s the wizard behind the bad unicorn account. And that’s, it’s just always a funnel for both of us where we’re like, whenever we’re talking, we’re tagging bad unicorn does tweet some but we don’t put a ton of effort into the bad unicorn account.
[00:08:03]There’s That again, this isn’t me doing it, maybe ashes but he keeps he’s consistent as far as like posting our content, updating things. We did, we have a lot of like nuances with that unicorn. They’re like Easter eggs that we just like doing, even if no one noticed, this is it.
[00:08:18]For instance, like each drop, we target like a tech personality. So Slack or fast.co or Elon Musk. And we only follow each time we drop, we change our bio to the new job. We change our header image, which asked us he designed it. It looks awesome. And then The only people we follow are someone that like has to do with that drop.
[00:08:41] So for Moscow, Mars, we only follow you on Musk until the next shop for fast.co. We only followed like the three founders of a fast or official, I guess it was the product we built. But yeah. So anyways, yeah. There’s like some nuances, but I doubt many people even noticed that
[00:08:56] Blake: you’re. Yeah, but you’re not, you don’t have to manage both of them, but,
[00:08:59]Whit: No ashes, the man.
[00:09:02] Blake: How I’m sure that you’ve hit a ton of different plateaus, just like we all have. And I definitely have, were probably tell yourself I don’t really want to post a day. Cause I don’t think I’m going to say anything that’s helpful whatsoever. What do you do in those days? Because you mentioned not having zero days.
[00:09:18] It’s important that to be consistent, obviously if you’re building an audience you can’t miss, when you feel like totally just missing for a day or two. What processes do you put yourself through? What do you say to yourself? How do you actually keep going?
[00:09:34] Whit: Yeah, it’s actually not. There’s no, like one tactic.
[00:09:36] Like I like, I’m so bad about missing cause for awhile, it’s taken me a while to get consistent or even get semi consistent. Now I have five ways where it’s if I’m having that feeling where Oh, I have nothing good to say today. I’ve got a bunch of different ways which I know some people have one way, which is I go to my inspiration list and like I pull from there, but I’ve got like a, I have a list of people I follow on Twitter.
[00:09:57]That’s like a private list. It’s just like 20 people that I like. I really love their tweets. I really love what they talk about. And so I pull them inspiration from there. I I also do use I’ll draft a lot of tweets and leave it in drafts. So if I’m feeling super empty, I’ll go into the drafts.
[00:10:13] I’ll find something I’ll repurpose it. And then also use, I started using like the, what to tweet website. I’m not sure what the exact URL, but I’ve got that as like a shortcut where it’s like I have no ideas right now, go to the, what to tweet. And it has 50, a hundred prompts.
[00:10:28]As far as like possible types of tweeze. And then, yeah. Yeah, that’s it, and there’s probably other ones that I’m missing
[00:10:36] Blake: the first time I use the, what to tweet. The first tweet that was on, there was mine.
[00:10:41] Whit: Yeah. That’s awesome.
[00:10:43] Blake: So I was like, Oh cool.
[00:10:45] Whit: You just tweet that you screenshot screen, grab that and then tweet it.
[00:10:49] I might have actually. Yeah.
[00:10:52]Blake: What tips would you give right now your growth trajectory? You’ve been from that zero to a hundred, 100 to 500, 500, 1000 thousand to 2,500. Now you’re right there at 2,500. So I guess. 5k is probably the next big threshold for you. What tips could you give anybody?
[00:11:10] Because like we’ve talked about before your story is different because most of the people out there on Twitter are still posting boring stuff that everybody else is, or just retweeting novel without really retweet. Again, they just mix up those words. And so like how have you been doing it differently?
[00:11:27] What tips do you have for people that are. At that smaller threshold that looking to make that next leap?
[00:11:33]Whit: Guess I’m a use cases. This is, but it’s just just do things that are like weird or unique.Like you said, there’s a lot of people tweeting, like novela isms. Like I have done that.
[00:11:41] I probably still do that sometimes. But just like doing something like no one else is doing, which is I guess difficult, but yeah, I feel like a lot of my tweets probably haven’t changed that much.Think I’ve more of an assistant and I’ve got my, a little bit better of a writer, but a lot of my tweets have not changed that much compared to I don’t know, bad unicorn to now, but like now that I’m launching something and creating something, that’s like unique, like more people like are willing to listen.
[00:12:08] And I’m, I guess I’m having new learnings as like I’m building that unicorn, but But I think it does start with you have to have some inflection point which for me, inflection point was bad unicorn. That was like a weird thing that I did. And launched maybe for someone else, it’s like a software product maybe for someone else it’s so writing maybe someone else’s podcast or newsletter, but whatever it is like it’s gotta be.
[00:12:32] Yeah. Until you’ve found your momentum point. Like you have to do something different. I think.
[00:12:37] Blake: You mentioned that this is more of a side gig right now because you have a full-time gig too. There are probably a lot of people listening in that can relate to that. That might be scared honestly, to tweet because they work for a company.
[00:12:48] They don’t know how they’re going to perceive things. What’s been your experience with tweeting, especially like tweeting while being weird when you have. Other people that are potentially looking at this stuff, or you’re still, you’ve still got your whole career ahead of you and you don’t want to mess things up.
[00:13:04] What’s been your experience with that.
[00:13:08] Whit: I’ve been pretty fortunate. So I work for Techstars. My boss is at a founder, like his like the founder DNA, like runs deep with him. And so he like loves seeing like side projects, love seeing like being launched things. So it helps a little bit where don’t have to be like secret dev as far as as far as like my projects which that would make things a lot harder. Like how can you build an audience when like your boss can’t follow you or you have to like, block so that helps. And as far as even the weirdness aspect, like since I’m in tech, I’m in startups, like what I’m doing, isn’t that weird for someone who’s in startups?
[00:13:37] It’s weird for someone who’s in, in like investment banking or something like that, or for someone who’s in marketing, maybe not that, but Yeah. So yeah, that hasn’t been too bad as far as yeah. What about
[00:13:50] Blake: just self-confidence wise? How long did it take you to be comfortable posting stuff that you’re like, I have no clue if this is going to land, this could be super weird.
[00:13:57] I could be the only person that thinks this is funny. Did it take you a while to feel comfortable with that? And if so, like how did you get comfortable? Just pushing, send regardless?
[00:14:08] Whit: Yeah. The one thing that’s helped is I think. I feel like my like friend group, like my, the people I associate with aren’t on Twitter, like they’re on like, onto like new platforms or on Instagram or they’re on like, maybe take talk, but people like aren’t as much on Twitter, which I think bodes well for me, cause I probably would be more self, like self-conscious as far as what I tweet and I still am like, and I still was.
[00:14:31]But I think I found that there’s once you find just a couple of people that like, appreciate. What’s your tweeting or what’s your building or like your like sense of humor. Like you only need a couple of people. I think then I’m tweeting for like me and for those people. And I think that was harder when I didn’t have any, or like maybe one or two that like were just actually my friends.
[00:14:51]Yeah. So I think that might be important where I don’t know, find like that smallest and people talking about like a hundred. Like a hundred people that love your product or love you, love your brand. But probably for tweeting, like just find a couple of people that like really resonate with your tweets.
[00:15:05]And go from there. Yeah.
[00:15:07] Blake: That’s how it was for me. I really only started tweeting like five months ago and there was basically like one or two people that would ever like my stuff. And then that’s how it all started. Just relationship building. Yeah. I’d like to transition just a tiny bit as we get closing up here, but just about your engagement strategy.
[00:15:26] Cause we’ve talked a lot about what you’ve created, what you’re tweeting, how you’re actually creating tweets and things like that. But what about flipping that and looking at what other people are creating, what’s your engagement strategy? What do you think of like the importance of commenting, other people saying liking other people’s things.
[00:15:43] DM-ing what’s your whole take on that? My
[00:15:47] Whit: take on that is I try to respond to every single comment I get. I think that’s something that’s, it’s not incredibly hard to do. Like some days it’s harder than others, but I try to respond. Like every comment I get, cause it’s like one of those things it’s like someone took their time to even say this is cool.
[00:16:03] Or thanks for sharing this. Like I want to comment back and be like, thank you for commenting. This is awesome. And so I try to take that approach as far as responding As far as DMS I’m not as good as far as DMS. That’s one thing partially. I need to get better at it. And partially I wish like Twitter had a better direct message product because I wanna see a DM and I want to read it and then I want to do like a Mark is unread.
[00:16:26] So like I can come back to it. So that’s like a, I don’t know if that’s even what you’re asking, but yeah. And then as far as then, I guess as far as collaborating with other tick, tick talkers, that’s what are people? The I try to support as many, like other creators as I can and even as far as like buying, they’re buying their ebook, buying their course like paying it forward for the people who have even like retweet and my stuff.
[00:16:50] Likeit’s. No, it’s the same type of thing. Like I, I think, and I try to always if I can, I try to like pay, like the full price or pay whatever it is. Cause like the person who built it, spent a lot of time on it. So there’s been times where there’s been times where I’ve offered free things to other people.
[00:17:05] There’s been times when people offered like free things to me. I tried, I want to say I want to pay you something at least pay you 50% or a hundred percent. So I think that’s like important and like a lot of creators do that, which is cool.
[00:17:18] Blake: Yeah. It’s cool. Community. My my final question here is where are you going next?
[00:17:23]What’s the next goal for your audience?
[00:17:27]Whit: I think for, so for me I mean that 5,000 numbers in mind I want to hit 10,000 Twitter followers. It’s not like my. It’s not my largest focus. And my large focus is building like just building funny products and I think the rest will follow.
[00:17:41]But I think that Mark for both bad unicorns audience, which is an email subscriber, I want to get to 10,000 email subscribers and I want to get to 10,000 Twitter followers like personally. So yeah, that’s kinda my personal goal and my bad uniform goal is 10,000 email subscribers.
[00:17:55] Blake: What’s the deadline you’re giving yourself.
[00:17:58]Whit: I don’t know, that’s the one thing I did have a deadline and I’m like, not I guess I’m like not reaching it, like I told myself a while ago or like maybe a month ago, but I wanted to hit 10,000 email subscribers by like mid February or right at 1800. So like it’s. We’re going to have to do some pretty cool things to like, get the email subscriber base there.
[00:18:19] I haven’t set a deadline for like myself. Maybe it’s just I think I said 20, 21 was in my head. Cool. We’ll
[00:18:25] Blake: have to have you back on and we’ll follow up with
[00:18:26] Whit: you. Yeah. Yeah. That’d be awesome.
[00:18:29] Blake: Awesome. All right. Again actually, let me give you the chance you can tell people where to find you and what you’re working on right now, and then we’ll wrap things
[00:18:36] Whit: up.
[00:18:37] Cool. Cool. Yeah.On Twitter, it’s at. Wit fourth, which is w H I T the number four T H a R, then that the bad unicorn account is at bad unicorn VC. Then you can sign up for our newsletter@badunicorn.vc yeah. And see all our products.
[00:18:54] Blake: Awesome. Thanks for coming on. Everybody check out bad unicorn.
[00:18:57] If you ever just want to laugh, it’s good. Every other week to just see something different than the usual stuff people are doing. So we’d appreciate what you’re doing.
[00:19:07] Whit: Thank you, Blake, that out of last, it was good to meet you in person. Yeah.
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