I care little about the news and even less about crypto. But even I couldn’t escape the news this past week about the fraudulent FTX crypto exchange and its owner Sam Bankman-Fried.
I couldn’t escape the news because of the half dozen people I follow online — in the health, marketing, or being alive niches — all talked about it in some way.
That must mean there are hundreds of thousands of people online right now, analyzing and pontificating their best and hottest takes on FTX and SBF.
So here’s a riddle for you:
Who did James Altucher bring on his podcast yesterday to talk about FTX and fraud?
Who did James Altucher — who has an audience of millions, and who normally interviews “billionaires, best-selling authors, rappers, astronauts, athletes, comedians, actors, and the world champions in every field” — think was interesting and competent enough to comment on the current moment?
It wasn’t a world champion in any field.
It was just some no-name guy. Ok, the guy has a name. It’s Antonio Reza, but that’s not what got him on the podcast.
Reza got on the James Altucher podcast because he wrote a prescient and insightful Twitter thread a few weeks ago.
The thing is, Reza wasn’t writing about FTX and how it was bound to collapse.
Instead, he wrote about Enron, the big corporate fraud from 20 years ago, and how all frauds are really alike in key ways.
So hold on to your stomach, because here’s the recipe for how to get on a podcast with an audience of millions, even when you’re a nobody:
Write something insightful and prescient, connected to the current moment, but also from a different perspective than everybody else has.
I hear you groaning. But wait, I’m just getting started. Since I’m on a roll with giving advice, let me also tell you how you win the lottery:
First, you pick the winning numbers. Then you buy a ticket with those numbers, and then you collect when the numbers are publicly announced. Easy!
And yes. Getting an opportunity to speak in front of an audience of millions, when you yourself are a nobody, even an insightful nobody, is much like winning the lottery.
The thing is, having something insightful to say dramatically improves your chances that somebody somewhere, with an audience bigger than yours, eventually plucks you out of obscurity and says, “Wow! This guy has something really interesting to say. Let me share it with my audience!”
At least that’s how it’s been for me, on multiple occasions, in multiple niches, even when I was a total nobody. I wrote something that sounded insightful, and I got rewarded for it.
There are techniques and writing tricks to doing this. Maybe you can spot them if you read more of my writing. If you’d like to do that, click here and sign up for my daily email newsletter.