w/ JK Molina, Tweet Hunter
"Twitter is like the sweatpants of social media."
Twitter can be a powerful tool for entrepreneurs, but not in the same way as other social media platforms.
In this episode, you'll hear how to grow your network and make the most of Twitter's potential as an entrepreneur.
We're joined by JK Molina. After successfully exiting his SaaS Tweet Hunter for $1.4 million dollars, he now coaches people on how to monetize their Twitter audience.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
Kurt Elster: Ah, Twitter. That strange corner of the internet where retweets are the currency that we care about and follows somehow determine your social status. I don’t know if that’s legitimate or right, but I know I enjoy Twitter. I know I have spent too much time on it. I know I’ve spent years of my life wasted with Twitter, but I’m not sure I got anything out of it. Did I monetize my audience? Did I get income from it? Or did I just tickle my brain and get some dopamine because someone liked something stupid I said two years ago? Why am I doing this? Where is the value in Twitter?
And more importantly, I’m doing this for business. Is Twitter valuable for business? Can I in some way monetize Twitter? With our new overlord, Elon, is Twitter still relevant? I don’t know, but I suspect maybe I’m doing Twitter wrong, because I’ve got a guest here, a gentleman, JK Molina, who… He’s really done very well with Twitter. He’s a founder, he’s got a successful exit from his brand, Tweet Hunter, and on this show, if you want to grow your Twitter audience, quit listening. That’s not what we’re talking about today. If you want to monetize your Twitter audience, I’m told that’s what we’re gonna discuss today.
And with that, okay, fine. We are discussing personal branding here. We are. We’re gonna talk about building a personal brand, marketing it, promoting with Twitter, monetizing Twitter. That is today’s topic. I’m your host, Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: And this is The Unofficial Shopify Podcast.
Sound Board:
Kurt Elster: JK Molina, welcome.
JK Molina: Thank you for having me, bro.
Kurt Elster: All right. Currently, what do you do?
JK Molina: Well, I just sold Tweet Hunter, which was one of the reasons why I’m here, but right now I’m just coaching people on how to monetize, not grow, their Twitter audience. And I had a few eCom guys. I thought maybe the things that they’ve been teaching me, I think they’re pretty interesting, on how they use Twitter, so I think that might be valuable for the people listening. We can just talk about Shopify. We can talk about eCom guys on Twitter in general.
Kurt Elster: Okay, so what did Tweet Hunter do?
JK Molina: So, Tweet Hunter was a tweet scheduler. Essentially, it was a software as a service. It’s a SaaS, right? And it just helped you schedule your tweets and kind of grow your audience. That’s what I did for the longest time. And I just promoted it with a couple friends. They were in France, which is probably the thing, but recently we had a pretty good offer when it came to just exiting given that, you know, like you said, the Elon overlord thing is kind of not stable, you know? So, when it came to the decision, we sold it. Sold it for $1.4 mil. And now they stayed at the company, my co-founders, and now I’m just doing my own thing coaching people.
Kurt Elster: Man, a $1.4 million exit off a tool that is adjacent to Twitter. That’s pretty good.
JK Molina: The funny thing is the response wasn’t good when we launched it. Everybody said it was too low. And I agree to an extent, but I appreciate you saying that anyway.
Kurt Elster: Oh, that the exit price was too low? Everybody’s gonna say that to tear you down after you’ve been handed a million dollars. Oh, you won the lottery, but you only got a milly? Oh, why didn’t you hold out for more? Please.
JK Molina: Right. Have you ever watched the Olympics and when the ice skater falls, everybody’s like, “Oh, what an idiot.”
Kurt Elster: It’s like, “All right, you go do a triple axel.
JK Molina: You go to the Olympics, dude. Try it. Right. And I’m not saying at the same skill level as the Olympians, but you know what was funny about it? A lot of the eCom guys that I know, they’re like big hitters, right? I’m really fortunate to have met with them. Nobody who makes more money than me dissed me. It was only people who made less. And the people who made more money-
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Exactly.
JK Molina: They were all like, “Dude. Congratulations. That’s something.” I don’t know. I was really harsh on myself in the beginning, but when these guys actually said, “You know what? You’re 22. You’re getting at it. You’ll be fine.” So, that was actually very encouraging.
Kurt Elster: 22?
JK Molina: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Man, you lucked out. You lucked out. I didn’t… At 22, I was like, “I have $100 and I’m gonna try to sell some stickers on eBay.” And I was like, “I’m gonna make it.”
JK Molina: How did that go?
Kurt Elster: You know, I sold some stickers, but I think if I made $1,000 that I’d probably be exaggerating, right?
JK Molina: Right. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: eBay was my introduction to eCommerce 20 years ago.
JK Molina: I mean, you gotta start somewhere, right? I saw a thing the other day that said, “Did everybody also fail at drop shipping as their first business?” And I think that’s kind of a right of passage in online business. You need to fail at drop shipping. Or do well. Maybe the guys listening did well, but I tried it. That’s kind of my intro-
Kurt Elster: That was my first real eCom job. I worked for an automotive parts… An aftermarket automotive drop shipper. And I didn’t appreciate at the time how fortuitous that was in that I parlayed a little bit of eBay experience into that automotive drop shipping job in eCommerce, and then from there, round about and then ended up with Shopify exclusively about 10 years ago, and so that’s like… A lot of value in that drop shipping. And I’ve dissed on drop shippers. I’ve celebrated drop shippers. It’s just a business model. You can’t make a judgment on it. It’s just an accessible business model that I think we all got a little over-enamored with for a few years.
JK Molina: See, that’s where you school me, because for me I was like Shopify selling was gonna equal drop shopping. In my head, that’s how little I know about eCom, right? I know eCom brand building for owners. Not the actual running of the business.
Kurt Elster: Oh. No. Yeah, I like the stuff where people make their own stuff, design your own product, like the stuff, the Kickstarter, Indiegogo type brands, like what do you do after that campaign? Well, the answer is go sell it yourself on Shopify. Okay, so you worked with Tweet Hunter, you exited this thing, you’re like 22, you can’t get your wallet closed because there’s too much money in it. I hate when that happens to me.
So, you got this experience working, helping people monetize Twitter, helping eCom guys among others promote their brands through Twitter, and it sounds like their personal brand, so… All right, it sounds like we’re gonna talk about as our base a little bit of brand building. I want to know, let’s start with the inverse. What’s the wrong way to build a brand? How are people screwing this up today?
JK Molina: Yeah. That’s a good one. And when you think… I saw a tweet this morning, most people are building a following, not a brand. And I thought that was spot on by Dakota Robertson, and the wrong way to build a brand is by talking about things that are not you. So, at some point you need to be selfish, because let’s talk about different things. I’m not talking brands like shirts and mugs. I’m talking like you, the personal brand. Because it is a personal brand. You’re expected to talk about you. So, if somebody wants to get into the online audience building game, a big mistake they make is they start talking about everything that’s not them, okay?
So, I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you’re an eCom store owner. You could write a thread on ten tools to run your store, right? And it’s like this tool, and this tool, and this tool, and that might go viral, right? That might do well.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. The algorithm loves those tech stack tweets with like-
JK Molina: Oh, dude.
Kurt Elster: That always annoys me. I was making fun of those. I rarely make fun of stuff on Twitter, but that one, I was like, “All right, enough with the tech stack tweets.” And I tweeted like, “This computer server that’s in a pile in my basement was like here’s my tech stack.”
JK Molina: Yeah. It’s that and then there’s the book stack, right? And the guys that just share my 10 books that’ll 10X my life. And then there’s my Google Chrome extension stack, like it’s relevant, right?
Kurt Elster: I’ve seen the same thing applied to podcasts. It’s just… I think the human brain and the algorithm together love listicles, and it’s easy to mistake that for some modicum of success, but what’s the outcome there? Likes and retweets? What does that get me?
JK Molina: It’s like buying notebooks or buying courses. It’s like the illusion of productivity. Or like buying books. Oh, dude. That’s a big one, right? Everybody buys books but how many people read the books? And I’m guilty of it. I think I buy-
Kurt Elster: Yeah. We all do it. I do it.
JK Molina: Yeah. I buy books like 20X at the speed that I read them. Just being honest, right? But yeah, back to audience building, so people start building the account of things they haven’t done, and let’s say that goes viral. You feel well, right? It feels good. But then how much money did you make? And who did it introduce you to? Because Twitter is more of a networking platform than a social media, so when a big, big, heavy hitter looks at your profile, let’s say it’s this millionaire, this centimillionaire, he looks at your profile. I mean, what are you gonna show him? Are you gonna show him a listicle of 10 tech stack tools? Are you gonna show him 10 books that’ll 10X your life by Jeff Bezos? Or are you gonna show him something that you did, right?
It might not even be big, but let’s get into the brain of the big, heavy hitters, the whales. You know, the higher up you go, the less impressive the money and the less impressive your achievements are. So, what impresses people at the highest level? It’s actual humility. It’s effort. It’s you being open to other ideas. So, if a heavy hitter comes in, just because you haven’t accomplished much, that doesn’t mean they won’t like you. Because that’s not the currency they use. The currency they use for respect is effort. It’s you being up front and you being honest about the things you have done, right?
So, the right way to build an audience is talking about things that you have done. No matter how small, no matter how insignificant you think it might be, you’re still ahead of other people in your journey, right? Like you said, there’s some people who haven’t even known anything about eBay stickers, right? So, at 22 you might say like, “Oh yeah, I didn’t know anything.” Well, you made a dollar online selling eBay stickers, more than a dollar. There’s people who haven’t done anything, right? So, for them it’s incredibly valuable and they’ll pay to learn what you have. So, there’s this fallacy that you need to talk in absolutes and you need to know everything before you start building an audience. No, you just need to know a little bit more than people you’re teaching it to, and there’s a lot of them on the internet.
Kurt Elster: So, you’re right. If I know 10% than the person I’m talking to, I’m the expert. So, domain authority, domain expertise, authority, it’s relative to who you’re talking to. And I think acknowledging it and owning that is powerful. And I know when I’m looking for people to listen to, you gotta be careful about where you are getting info because it has an impact and an influence on you. I value the people who… I think this is what you’re saying here, is you gotta be open, honest, authentic as you’re discussing you and building in public. And the hallmark of that for me is the people who can say, “I don’t know. I’m curious about this and here’s where I screwed up trying to figure something out.”
JK Molina: And the biggest one out of everything you said, it’s not saying what works, but saying what worked for me. Let’s say like infinitely more respect, the respect you gain. You could have said when you built the eBay stickers, right? Arguably not the biggest business in the world, but somebody could have said at that point, “Hey, here’s how you build an eCom store. Here’s how you build an eBay business.” You haven’t built a business, but what you can say is here’s how you get your first eBay sale by stickers, right? That’s just being honest. You did that.
And we get kind of caught up in the lights and engagement part, and you can see how the more people get into the online business game, the more tempted they are to speak in absolutes. Instead of saying, “Hey, you could try this. Hey, I did this,” they start saying stuff like, “You should do this. The way I did it is the only way.” And that’s where you fuck up, because then you repel the people.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. The one that drives me nuts is they’ll be like, “You’re not a real brand unless you do X.” And you’re like, “Who are you?”
JK Molina: Yeah. I mean, I-
Kurt Elster: Wait, all brands are the same now? It’s those absolutes where I’m like, “Sorry, that’s just now the world works. It’s not black and white.” Pretty much everything’s on a spectrum here.
JK Molina: That’s right. That’s right. The way I like to explain it is like a light. There’s like a type of light switches. There’s the on and off light switches and then there’s a gradient light switch, right? So, when it comes to audience building, people talk about the on and off light switches. This is how it is. You need to. You have to. Instead of the gradient light switches, which is you could, I recommend, I tried this, it’s what worked for me. You can try it for yourself.
The second one is slower. It attracts less people. But it’s also better quality people, so that’s the one I vote for, which is just being honest about, “Hey, guys. I’m figuring it out as I go. I’m not a god. Let’s just do it together. This is what worked for me. You can try it.” And then the cool thing, Kurt, for that, it’s nobody can give you shit, because they can’t say, “Hey, bro, that doesn’t work.” I didn’t say it did. I said it worked for me.
So, I’m big on that, just being honest about what you can and cannot do.
Kurt Elster: Oh, it’s refreshing to hear, because there are days where I’m like, “Wow, Twitter’s really valuable,” and there are days where I’m like, “I am going to unfollow everyone and just block this thing at my router. I’m not dealing with this nonsense anymore. You guys are too much.”
JK Molina: I have 1,500 people blocked and 1,100 people muted. It’s awesome.
Kurt Elster: My list of muted keywords is extensive just to… Once I started doing that, I was like, “Wow, this is way more tolerable.” Like, “Oh, I no longer have to get roped into a discussion about ivermectin because I muted that crap.”
JK Molina: Good. That’s good. And so, what do eCom dudes do on Twitter, right? When you get into the Twittersphere there’s like the drama and politics Twitter, and then there’s the let’s make some money together Twitter. I’m speaking to that end of the spectrum. And you’re gonna see like two spaces of eCom guys. There’s eCom guys that actually run brands and stores, and then there’s others who sell services to those stores. Those are the ones you don’t want to mess around with. You want to see the actual B2C guys.
And the cool thing about those, they just share their strategies, like I was talking to you about the Kill Crew guys, so Colton and Marco, and these guys kind of started on Twitter. They’re very well known and respected. They built an… I think it’s an eight, crossing into nine-figure brand, Kill Crew, and Logan Paul uses it, and a lot of the UFC guys use it. It’s like fighting. The other day I interviewed this guy, Kyle Hunt. It’s always the guys with like one or two followers and a dog profile picture, those are the millionaires.
Kurt Elster: They got nothing to prove.
JK Molina: Yeah. It’s like they don’t give a shit, right? Which to me is wild. If you’re an eCom store owner, Twitter is not gonna be a place where you promote your brand and you get sales from it. That’s just… I think that’s what TikTok and Instagram’s for, or YouTube, right? Twitter is a place where you connect with other heavy hitters in your space, which is valuable, just not the same kind of value. It’s just not gonna have more value in the short term, like sales. It’s gonna have more entire value in the long term of the people you meet.
The other day, this dude, eight-figure agency, eight-figure D2C brand. I don’t know if you guys know Family Gifts Co., something like that, it’s like this wooden sign thing. Anyway, eight-figure brand.
Kurt Elster: Oh. Oh my gosh. I know who you’re talking about. I really like him, and I can’t remember his name now.
JK Molina: It’s Kyle. Yeah. Anyway.
Kurt Elster: All right, so-
JK Molina: Yeah. It’s like an eight-figure brand, eight-figure agency, invested in six D2C brands. Guess his follower count. It’s 200. I know dogs with more followers on Instagram, right? The people who create accounts for their dogs. Anyway, this dude is just loaded. Has like 200 followers. The other day I met… I’m not gonna mention his name, but he had like 1,000 followers, and he just talked about poker. That’s all he did. And we got on a call, turns out guy runs a nine-figure Amazon brand. It's huge. And dude’s talking about poker with 1,000 followers, and these people are not uncommon. You can find a lot of them on Twitter.
So, if you had a brand, and by the way, it doesn’t have to be a huge brand, but one or two insights, one or two things that have worked for you, as long as you share them, and people… It’s valuable because it taught you a lesson. That’s all you need. And remember, high level dudes, the whales, they’re attracted by humility and effort. So, if you start sharing your journey, they’ll see that and they’ll respect you, and before you know it you’ll be in these in-person meetings, and these people will introduce each other to you, and these dudes will pitch you on the DMs and you can ignore them if you’d like, but just still, you could build a huge network just on Twitter sharing what you’ve got with your brand.
Kurt Elster: So, as a business tool, in the past, I’d have to go… If I want to do networking, I gotta go to conferences, and I gotta go to events, and that’s a huge time suck. And when you include travel, it gets expensive, and what I’m hearing here is like, “Hey, with Twitter you bring that party to your phone and an iOS app.” And with it, if I get out there and I’m open, honest, and authentic, and not a total blongus, then I am going to attract potentially people I want to be more like. People who can help me if we get over this idea of competition, we start seeking out people who want to be collaborative. We want collaboration over competition. We want some of that positivity over negativity, more like, “Hey, here’s what worked for me. Maybe this is helpful for you.” Versus like, “You’re not a real business owner unless you do X,” kind of stuff.
JK Molina: But the cool thing about people listening is that you guys already kind of did the fourth part already, which is building a business. You guys already did it, right? So, on Twitter it’s gonna be like an extension of you, like you sharing what you’ve done, and before you know it you have a great network. Your brand grows, which is amazing, right? That’s great. And you should absolutely run that business. Whereas you also want your name to carry some weight, right? You also want you to be a brand, so you build the brand, and you build the personal brand. And those two are just great because they end up connecting you. It’s just… If you want to think of yourself as the business owner, running the business, and that’s kind of your presentation card, but things that happen off the Shopify dashboard are also gonna be very beneficial to you because you’re gonna be introduced to somebody else who might know a certain distributor, somebody else who might have that piece of knowledge you didn’t have, and that’s what Twitter is for. It’s not just for drama. It's a network tool.
I built my company with two dudes I haven’t even met in real life. We sold it for over a million dollars just on Twitter organic. There’s people like this out there and they’re waiting for somebody who’s actually competent at what they do, which is like… I feel like I’m promoting more Twitter than myself here, but guys, just go on fucking Twitter. Meet some people. You’ll see what happens. It’s just gonna be great for your business.
Kurt Elster: It is funny, because I run a… I have a Facebook group. I work with these merchants. And I’d say a majority of them are not on Twitter. Or if they are, they’re like lurkers on Twitter. They follow 250 people. And you get some real interesting heavy hitters who from the outside looking in appear to share genuine strategy, what’s working for them, and then you see the collaborations start happening. Like for me, I’ve gotten a lot of really good guests on this show because we started a relationship on Twitter and then in the DMs you’re like, “Hey, I heard you talking about this thing. It’s really interesting. Would you come on my show and explain it to me?” And then they’re like, “Yeah, sure. No problem.”
And so, I have seen the value there. I’ve not necessarily tried to get clients out of Twitter just because I want it as a networking tool, and then as soon as you’re pitching people in the DMs, it’s a little… Makes my skin crawl. I don’t like it.
JK Molina: You mean pitching or being pitched?
Kurt Elster: Both. Both.
JK Molina: Bro, you gotta get on the DM game then. That’s big for you.
Kurt Elster: I should be reaching out? Be like, “Hey, I can help you out here, buddy.”
JK Molina: The thing about Twitter DMs, and I believe this wholeheartedly, in the beginning you said retweets are like the currency, right? And I’d say retweets are kind of the perceived currency of Twitter. Retweets are great. But the more advanced I get on Twitter, the more I realize retweets are actually not as valuable as DMs. Because the DMs is where the actual business… You can do a lot with it.
I’ll give you an example. You, me, and the guy with zero followers, we go on the DMs, we’re at the same level. It’s equal playing ground because you, me, and whoever, and Elon Musk, and Oprah will fall in the same inbox. It’s just the inbox request. It’s always in the same place, so right there you got equal opportunity. And then it’s not so much of a game of how big your following is, which does play a factor in clout and status, but also just how good you are, and how well can you talk to people, right? If you’re a big eCom store owner, you can get two types of DMs. There’s people pitching you and there’s people actually wanting to connect. And you’re chill, you’re high status, you did not have to DM anybody. You just got a connection other people wouldn’t have gotten. You said it yourself. There’s a lot of people, heavy hitters on the Facebook group, they’re not on Twitter or they’re lurkers. People might be more advanced than you. They might make more money than you. But they don’t have the network you have because you built a personal brand, and they didn’t. And that’s an unfair advantage a lot of eCom people are just not utilizing. And if they did, you may not make more money than them today, but you would still have more potential to make money, because there is no reality in which you post more, and you share more, and you send more of you, and it doesn’t end up in you somehow making less money. That just doesn’t happen.
But if you share what you did, you have that network, you’re gonna win in the long term because they don’t have that.
Kurt Elster: It’s kind of interesting, because for years, there’s a few truisms I use on this show. People buy from people, not brands. And your thing is like, “Hey, Twitter is the platform to build that personal brand.” And then two, all I’ve ever done for my marketing is work in public, is build in public. Share like, “This is what’s working. This is what isn’t. This is what we did. This is what I learned.” And have a… It’s essentially a journal.
JK Molina: That’s interesting because notice how you didn’t say, “This is what works.” This is what’s working for me. And I feel like that benefitted your brand in a very positive way. Do you feel that way?
Kurt Elster: Absolutely. Okay, if this is the case for Twitter, how is this… How are the other social networks different? I don’t get why, and I agree Twitter is this odd man out, where when we talk it’s like, “Well, you gotta be on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, maybe YouTube.” YouTube people understand that I think video is hard, so there’s that barrier to entry, but then like Twitter, which is the easiest thing in the world to do, write 200 characters, that one somehow never gets included in the mix. Why are people sleeping on Twitter? I don’t get it.
JK Molina: Right, right. I can’t attest to why is it better than other platforms or what’s a different strategy to other platforms, because just being real, my game on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, it fucking sucks for now, but we’re getting better at it. We’re getting better at it, and we’ll get to it. But I can tell you why Twitter is good, and I prefer Twitter. So, I feel like it’s two things. One is speed of failure. If you wanted to record a YouTube video, it will take you a few days, at least, to make a really good YouTube video at the quality that it needs to be. So, there if it failed, your speed of failure is three days.
Instagram, if you wanted to make a post, you can only post like two to three times a day before it gets fuzzy with the algorithm, or so I’ve heard. An Instagram post might take you maybe like five minutes, 10 minutes, and you get three shots a day, right?
Let’s talk Twitter. On Twitter, your speed of failure is 60 seconds, and the shots on goal you have are unlimited. Twitter doesn’t penalize you for posting a lot. You can just go, go, and go. And I think the DM limit, it’s like 1,000 a day, so it’s not like you’re gonna hit 1,000 DMs a day, right? You’re not gonna get there. So, the speed of failure is faster, which means the speed of feedback is faster, which means that you can know what works faster.
So, if you see, Alex Hormozi talks about this. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with him, but he says, “I will post a lot on Twitter. It’s a platform I’m most active. But I will filter the ones, the tweets that perform the best, and that’s my audience speaking to me. That’s my audience telling me hey, this is what works.” And then when you go to other platforms where the speed of failure is slower, like Instagram takes three days, you can be confident that it will do well because it already did, right?
Some people tell me, “Dude, your Instagram content just slaps.” I’m like, “That’s intentional because I’m only getting the best Twitter content and repurposing it.” And then on YouTube, “Dude, your YouTube content slaps.” That’s intentional because I’m only getting the things that did the best on Twitter and the best on Instagram and then, right?
Kurt Elster: Interesting.
JK Molina: You see? It’s like the speed of iteration. It allows you to fuck up fast, but the faster you fuck up, the faster you learn. The faster you learn, the more you know what will work. So, for me, that’s aspect number one, speed of failure. And the second aspect is the networking effect just of what we’re talking about for the first beginning of the podcast. There’s so many heavy hitters and they’re all lurking, right? And it’s so good for connecting. I don’t think people realize this because let’s say you like my Instagram posts. It ends there. Nobody knows. Whereas if you like my Twitter posts, your followers will see it. Hey, Kurt. You like JK’s posts. And then it’s like, “Oh, who’s JK,” right? So, right there, the Instagram kind of network effect ended with a post. Where it came to Twitter, it started with a post and then it got distributed to your network, and that keeps going.
So, that’s why I like Twitter a lot, because of the speed of failure and just the network effects are to me incredibly valuable.
Kurt Elster: I’ve always liked Twitter, but now I’m feeling like I need to take a second look at it and really like it. I love the idea of Twitter, using Twitter as like, “All right, this is our playground to quickly test small, snack sized content, see what performs well,” and really play without penalty, and then the stuff that really performs well, then the other social networks that really depend on a more polished look-
JK Molina: Right.
Kurt Elster: Or the quality of content, Twitter loves a good shit post is the thing. It tolerates it versus the other platforms. And so, all right, the best performers end up on the other platforms. Gotcha. All right, go ahead.
JK Molina: I would just kind of look at it like this. Let’s say you have a target, right? You want to hit the target with three different weapons. You could try to hit the target with a tank, right? Or let’s do a bazooka, right? A bazooka takes a long time to reload. That’s YouTube. Let’s say you had another target, which is Instagram, and you were using a weapon that you need to reload, and you only get three shots a day. That’s Instagram. Whereas Twitter, it’s like you have an automatic gun with unlimited ammo, and you just have one target to hit, to just shoot, right? Which is why you see people on Twitter, they keep, and they keep, and they keep, and they keep going, because you have no penalty. You have one target to hit, and you got unlimited shots, so shoot.
Kurt Elster: You see results and gains where you spend your time and your resources. And so, Twitter, if I’m just on there and when you see the people with like 100,000 followers, they are posting continuously. And in doing so, they’re learning what works and they’re also just… Like the sheer content, they’re engaging more. I gotcha. Is there advantage to making sure to engage with others? Can I just be screaming into the void by myself? Or do I need to be replying to people and engaging?
JK Molina: Yeah. I’d say if you’re below 2,000 followers, I believe you should comment more than you tweet. And if you’re above that, you should tweet more than you comment. The reason why, it’s because nobody sees you. Nobody knows who you are, right? And the network effects can’t kick in without a one. Twitter is good at multiplication, not addition, so if you’re starting from zero, you can’t multiply by zero, right? Whereas if you have one, then you can multiply. And I feel like that one hits at the 2K follower mark.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
JK Molina: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Actually, that’s a really good rule of thumb to have.
JK Molina: Yeah, yeah, and I came up with it on the go, so I’m happy it came out well. But it was around 2K in my experience, right? But what should you do then? I should recommend doing what Russell Brunson says, so I’m stealing here, but it’s creating your dream 100. It’s essentially saying, “The people I want to reach,” if you’re an eCom store owner, probably other owners. If you’re somebody who’s selling a service, like coaching people in eCommerce, it’ll be probably somebody in the make money online niche. It’s different, right? So, what I would do then is I would go to those people and then figure out, “Okay, who are 100 people who they might be following?” And I’ll add them to a list. Make sure it’s private.
And then just set up a calendar time, 30 minutes every day, and just engage with them. And what I would engage with, I have kind of this rule of thumb, as well. It’s you either respond with something that makes them laugh, makes them smarter, makes them money, or you ask an intelligent question. Because what your competition is doing is… I might be posting something that says likes and cash, and then your competition would be just commenting very smart comments, like likes are not cash, or, “That’s right, JK, fire emoji.” That adds nothing to the comment, right?
Kurt Elster: The one that drives me nuts is you get the person replies and they go, “Interesting.” And then that happens so often, I finally replied to one. I said, “How so?” And of course, they never replied, because they really… They had not thought through it in the slightest. It was just like a throwaway comment.
JK Molina: Yeah. You’d be amazed at how bad people are at communicating their ideas online. They’re like… For example, it’s like dude, you know the question that drives me nuts? Actually, on my coaching program, we put it on the contract that you cannot ask the question, “Thoughts?” Thoughts isn’t a question. It’s not a question. It’s just a lazy attempt to a question, so you cannot ask that. And a lot of people do that, or they say fire emoji, and they’re like, “Can I get some feedback on my strategy?” So, when you engage, that is my rule of thumb. Either make them laugh, make them smarter, make them money, or you ask them an intelligent question. And you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to stand out when you don’t act like you’re socially awkward.
Imagine you and me are at the table, right? We’re having dinner. And you say something like, “Yeah, my truism is that…” What was your truism again? Can you say it again?
Kurt Elster: People buy from people, not brands.
JK Molina: All right, people buy from people not brands. On the dinner table, somebody would add something like, “Oh, dude. For real. The other day, I heard this story about… That’s interesting. That’s cool.” Right? But imagine if somebody at the dinner table, you’re like, “People buy from people and not brands.” And somebody’s like, “I think people buy from persons too.” It’s like, “Dude.” But that’s the comments. That’s stuff people say. It makes no sense.
So, if you just act like a normal human for like 30 minutes a day and comment on your dream 100, you’ll be fine. Get to 2K and then you can start sending threads, and tweets, and things about it, so I would say 80/20 on comments and tweets before 2K followers, 20/80 after.
Kurt Elster: All right, let’s go over a few basics here. How about media types? Am I doing straight text? Am I doing images? Does video work? Any advantages or does it not matter?
JK Molina: Threads are always… have always been historically well achieved. It’s like the broccoli, chicken, and rice of Twitter, right? It’s like it will always… So, threads are always good. When you distill a complex topic, you simplify it in threads, that will always do well. Problem is people won’t pay attention until you’ve reached a certain amount of followers just because nobody’s there to see it. So, if you want to go over actual things to do, I recommend two to three threads a week, three to five tweets a day, build an email list as soon as you can. Just start sending out stuff. And it doesn’t have to be a complex email. It can just be like your threads repurposed, or what happened during the week could be it. And 30 minutes a day of commenting. I feel like those are the most important things you can do.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And then final question. I want to know what tools am I using? Should I just be on normal, regular Twitter client, and just use it as is? Or are there tools I need to be using along with it?
JK Molina: Yeah, so this is where I’m like of course I’m tempted to shill my own tool, because I created it, but I legit think it’s really good because of the fact that it lets you copy, and copy ethically, so Tweet Hunter allows you to schedule things, but I feel like the main potential I saw was not the AI, it was not the fact that it writes sometimes stuff for you, because that can get a little fuzzy, but the highest value add I saw is that it allows you to copy others ethically. So, if you type in eCommerce, it’ll show you tweets on the eCommerce niche that have already performed well, so the hook is there. The framework is there. So, it’s kind of just fill in the blanks with your own experiences. I’ll give you an example. Maybe there’s a thread on… I don’t know, Tobi. Tobi Lutke, right? The Shopify dude. He says about, “Here are the 10 trends for next year in Shopify. Take advantage of this thread.”
You could take that thread and use it for inspiration and say, “Here are the 10 things we did last year with my store that allowed us to 2X our sales in 12 months,” thread. Same kind of carcass, right? But you change the soul of it. So, that’s what I like the most of it. I feel like Tweet Hunter is the best one. And honestly, the most important one, just real talk, it’s your calendar. It’s you saving time to actually do it. I have my truism. Everything works. The only thing that doesn’t work is when you don’t. So, if you do the thing, you’ll be fine.
Kurt Elster: So, how often am I supposed to be tweeting?
JK Molina: Three times a day is good. Two, three times a day. As much as you can stick to it.
Kurt Elster: I’m slacking.
JK Molina: You need to stick to it. That’s the thing. And yeah, you’re slacking?
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Consistency is always critical. You’re right. But I’m like, “Oh, average three times a day, man, I gotta do more.”
JK Molina: I mean, you can do more, or you should do more?
Kurt Elster: I should do more.
JK Molina: Oh. Right. How many are you doing now?
Kurt Elster: You know, I promise to show up once a day.
JK Molina: Yeah. I feel like the reason why people might think Twitter posting is hard, it’s because in other platforms, and I think this can be interesting. In other platforms, the more you polish it, the better. On Twitter, the less you polish it, the better. So, other platforms kind of punish you for just tweeting stream of consciousness, what’s currently in your brain, because you need to make it pretty. On Twitter, you get rewarded by tweeting those streams of consciousness.
So, for example, right here, you could have come up with a bunch of tweets. Like your truism, people buy from people, not brands. In my experience, that’s been true because my store did X, Y, and Z, right? Another one, I remember my first business was selling eBay stickers. My second business was this. My third business was this. And now I run a podcast. Lesson, success isn’t linear. Something like that, right? Or you could say, “Hey, I recorded another podcast, and I realized that when I do longer intros, people stay and listen to it more. I’m gonna try that. Will keep you updated as to how it goes.”
See, there’s a lot of things you can do. It’s things you’re currently thinking about that should be on Twitter. The less polished you are, the better. It’s like the sweatpants of social media.
Kurt Elster: I’m writing that down right now so I can include it in the show notes.
JK Molina: Nice. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like this was a good episode, man. It’s been fun.
Kurt Elster: I had a lot of fun. Okay, so final question, where can we find you on Twitter?
JK Molina: Right. So, you can find me @one, that’s o-n-e, jkmolina. If you’d like to grow your audience, I’m not your guy. But if you’d like to monetize your audience, welcome.
Kurt Elster: Fabulous. I love that tagline. It’s great. It’s memorable. All right, JK Molina, thank you so much. This has been inspiring. I gotta go write some tweets.
JK Molina: Yeah, bro. Whatever you need, let me know. Same goes for you guys listening.
Sound Board Clip:
JK Molina: Oh, God. You got the whole thing!