I just watched a short, very awkward clip of Silicon valley multimillionaire Bryan Johnson, being interviewed by comedian Andrew Schulz.
Johnson has made a lot of headlines over the past year. He’s spending a couple million of his own money on his anti-aging regimen. He has done a great job publicizing that on his social media, and so people have taken notice.
Schulz, on the other hand, is a white dude whose shtick is talking about race in a way that white people aren’t supposed to. He opens the interview like this:
“First question. Do black people age better?”
Johnson lets out a little gasp that he modulates into a nervous chuckle. He looks around for help. And then he retreats to the saferoom deep inside his mind, and he replies,
“There’s data showing that different people, in different circumstances, in different environments, have different clocks.”
Andrew Schulz nods in understanding. “The one time black people are slower,” he explains to the audience. To which Johnson nervously guffaws again.
Here’s why I thought this was notable.
I follow Bryan Johnson on Twitter. He gets a lot of hate and mockery there for his rejuvenation quest.
And yet, his tweets are uniformly funny and crisp. He agrees-and-amplifies like a master. He diffuses attacks. And he works trolls to his own advantage, all with a smirk that you can somehow feel in those 180 characters.
On the other hand, whenever I’ve listened to Johnson speak, he sounds exactly like he did while talking to Andrew Schulz. Abstract. Humorless. Pedantic.
I don’t know whether Bryan Johnson manages his own social media. Maybe he has somebody else write for him. It would explain a lot.
But whether or not he writes his propaganda himself, the following point still stands:
You can be an entirely different person in your writing. You can be smarter, better, funnier than you ever could be in real life.
And like Bryan Johnson’s case shows, you can build up a large audience this way, and create a lot of influence, and have your ideas and your offers reach millions of people, who you could never reach otherwise.
And on that note:
Until this Monday, I’m promoting something to help you get there yourself. It’s Kieran Drew’s High Impact Writing.
High Impact Writing is a course that takes you by the hand from what you are now — no judgment — and turns you into an inspiring, funny, influential presence on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Kieran, by the way, has some authority when he teaches this. He has succeeded in building up his own presence on social media to an audience of over 200,000. He’s built a million dollar-personal brand as a result, with course launches that bring in $100k-$200k over a few days (like right now).
Also, if you buy Kieran’s High Impact Writing via my affiliate link below, I’ll give you a free bonus. It’s the recordings of my Age of Insight training, which sold for $297 when I actually gave this training live.
Age of Insight shows you how to write in an insightful way, even if you’re not very insightful and you have nothing particularly insightful to say.
I, by the way, have some authority when I teach this. People regularly tell me my emails sound insightful. And yet, in all honesty, I think of myself as rather shallow-minded in real life, very pedantic and very formulaic. Again, you can be somebody entirely different in print.
The cart for High Impact Writing closes this Monday at midnight 12 PST. The next time Kieran offers HIW, the price will explode to never-before-seen levels.
If you’d like to get it before then, and grab my Age of Insight training as a free bonus, here’s where to go: