Hi everybody. Creating content is hard, and getting the content you create noticed by others is even harder, but there are things we can do. To help highlight some of those things, I am thrilled to be chatting with Dan Hunter. Dan has been sharing very actionable tips and insights for quite some time through various forms of media, and I've personally benefited greatly from them. I hope through our conversation you find some things you're able to grok and glom onto that you can use to make yourself more effective as a content creator, or just sit back, relax, and listen to a fun conversation between two people who enjoy creating content.

Dan, great to chat with you. I had an intro video where I talked about why I really like your content and why I wanted to talk to you more and dig deeper into all the things you're doing. So before we go further, just introduce yourself.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. My name is Dan Hunter, and I am a software engineer, also a creator and writer, and I try to share what I learn in public. It's a forcing function for me to actually get into a routine and the habit of learning and growing, and yeah, I'm glad to be here.

Well, awesome. You mentioned you're a software engineer, but you're also a prolific content creator. When you think of yourself, do you see yourself as a software engineer first, or would you say you're a content creator first?

Yeah, so I worked in entertainment full time—I still do—but I worked in entertainment full-time prior to working in tech as an engineer and started my career more as an artist. I kind of put on the artist hat first before the corporate-employee hat came into my life. So yeah, I take more creator than engineer, although I see programming as a form, a medium, of creation, so it's kind of hard for me to answer that question. A lot of engineers use a technique called engineering as marketing to grow their brands and build an audience. So engineering is definitely a core part of my creative life.

So do you fall in the camp of looking at programming and engineering as more often art, or do you see it as more of a mathematical, rigid science?

Ooh, that's good. I see more art, to be honest, and I feel actually more strongly about that with the kind of like an introduction of tools like, you know GPT-3, which has kind of hit the internet by storm, and you know it's becoming more important to like think of creative ways of leveraging Technology than it is like to like deeply understand it. And well, I'm actually going to kind of discreet what I just said, which is funny, like I do think it there's so much value and understanding technology. Don't get me wrong, like I don't want to.

I don't answer that question in like a broad stroke, but I will say that, you know, if you have like a lot of depth in like one area and not as much breadth, it's, I think, you know, going to be like harder for you to kind of compete because, you know, a generalist that just knows how to leverage technology in creative ways and we can like really kind of scale themselves and their ideas without having to really involve other human beings.

Those people are, I think, going to excel more and you know there's a reason why you've seen like solopreneurship and, you know terms like that kind of Catching Fire, especially during the pandemic, and you know a lot of folks talk about digital leverage and that's that's kind of like what I'm speaking to. You know, not to say that, you know, being a computer scientist and understanding how open, OpenAI and how, like, you know the kind of algorithms that power, all this amazing tools.

Isn't important now what I mean, but, a creator that knows how to use all these tools and kind of piece things together and to help people solve problems, to kind of educate folks, to help people grow, to entertain, those people are gonna, like, dominate.

Yeah, no, fully agree, and the way often like to describe it is that it used to be that in order to ship software- let's use software as an example here- it required different people with extremely deep domain expertise across various stages of like, the inner and other Dev loops and so on, to be able to get something out the door. What we've seen with technology and abstraction, all these layers, is that, like you mentioned, one person can potentially be able to handle all parts of software development life cycle. They didn't have one area with a little deep and usually it's run. I need to know how to code an.

A language could be any language that you want, but deployment is easier. Creating a project is easier, being able to monitor it. Yeah, you're getting analytics, all these numbers like one script, away from like using a service that someone's already provided. So the ability to zoom out and be able to know like- okay, there's something needs to be done here.

I don't know what to do, but I know enough to know what to type into a Google search box to figure out what the service needs to be, or learn from our you know people on like what a recommended solution is, and then be able to go ahead and do all the, whereas if I was very, you know, laser focused on like I'm only gonna do the devops workflow, I only care about the deployment part of it and I don't care about anything else.

You're greatly limiting the potential you now have, because it used to be that you could be very successful focusing just that angle because you had other people handing all these things. But technology has lowered the barriers so much that anybody can come in with an idea and then go from idea to something a human being can consume, whether it's an app, whether it is a website or anything in between. It's trivial. You know, I look at it even in terms of content creation. I started blogging in 1998, when it was and we talked about in Twitter. But yesterday, on like, the text Stacks that I use.

It didn't work today and I'm happy doing it, because as long as they can write words without having to write HTML or change a mental model and thinking about it in terms of code, I'm happy. Yes, it's, you know it has rough edges, but it gets the job done. But then you look at the flip side of it in terms of like, today there's so many more tools. If I had to start over. Today.

There's some so many cooler, better ways of getting things out there, where the time from idea to getting something into people's hands is extremely short, and the people who know how to leverage that, I think, are going to be the most successful. Because there is a little bit of a volume story. If you played as well, it used to be that he could publish one article a month and be a magazine and be very successful. You could do a daily newspaper that came once every 24 hours.

Now it's kind of a continuous stream of it and it's often a case where the quantity of content often overrides maybe quality in some cases and so on, and I think that's where, like, the tension that they want to see is going to come more into. Like a kind of can AI help us both match quantity and quality in terms of fact checking and maybe even generation of materials and so on. So it's actually really exciting. So I'm- you know I fully. I subscribe to your view that generally said Thank you. In the long run, then someone grows very, very deep. Really cool, yeah.

So what motivated you to start creating content? You know we were. You were from art to programming and then content creation that that's a full-time job in its own way. So what? Tell me more about it?

Yeah, absolutely. So I read this book a while ago, called how we learn and it kind of it digs into the science of like what works and what does not. When it comes to learning a new subject and your skill, and that resonated with me so much because, during throughout my journey learning how to code, you know, I in the moment wasn't like consciously aware of like, oh, this article is confusing, or oh, this video like really helped me, or like building X Project like kind of sped up my growth and like helped me get that first job.

You know, I didn't like have the vocabulary and then understanding of like why all those things like mattered but after reading that book, you know, I realized how important it is to leverage writing and teaching as a way to reinforce anything you're learning, and so I see content creation selfishly as a way to you know, kind of be more efficient and effective with my own learning goals, and so if I'm learning how to write, then I'm going to you know kind of talk about my process for writing and you know kind of organizing information and outlining, editing and like actually, you know publishing and getting feedback, like just talking through that whole process in public.

Because the more I do that, the easier it's going to be for me to improve. You know that process, having to communicate and, you know, teach someone, something that you're learning, not only reinforces what you're learning but also, like helps you uncover like creative ways of you know improving your process, and kind of Def, like almost establishing your own like voice and your own like ideas, and it's like you know, remixing, you know certain techniques to kind of create your own thing. You know, something that's unique to who you are, so, yeah, that was kind of like the inspiration for, like going down this path.

It's kind of selfish reasons and, it's funny, you see, more and more people focused on the audience building part of like content creation, like that's like the reason I agree, contest, I would build an audience, you know, and it's like it's like, yeah, that's like I think that's, you know, what you know most people want, and there you know a lot of benefits to having an audience, but, I think it's helpful to always, like you know, kind of fall back to: okay, what is the benefit, for you actually like kind of sharing in public, in you know, kind of building in public and creating Beyond, like just audience growth.

Yeah, it's a classic tension. Many people jump into things focused on the destination, not the process, not the journey that gets them there. You need more tangible things to motivate you than just building an audience. There is a survivorship bias that always kicks in with content creators. You hear from the people who say, yeah, I wrote a few posts, I became really popular, I quit my job, and now I have a TV show. That's not a repeatable thing. That doesn't work for almost anybody except that one person. This applies in software engineering and career growth in general too.

Focusing on the process, focusing on improving yourself, and trying to be better today than you were yesterday—that's what matters. Eventually, in the long run, things may work out. But even if they don't, your goal wasn't only that some big outcome would happen. You still got a lot of smaller moments of satisfaction and happiness through what you've done. For me, self-learning and creating content for the purpose of learning something more deeply is one of the things that keeps me doing a lot of this. I started a long time ago when I had no responsibilities, no family commitments, and no job.

Back then it was just, yeah, I enjoy creating content because I enjoy creating content. Now it's more that the more I learn something, the more I want to understand why it's done this way. When you learn something and then try to recreate it or explain it to somebody else, gaps in your assumptions or your logic show up. Why did this not work? Why am I doing A, B, and C? It makes you question things and go deeper. And at least in my case, I ended up making a career out of my hobby, which is working with developers and related things.

So there are many times when I get cornered in a conversation and someone asks, can you explain to me why this is being done this way? I'm like, oh, let me tell you all about it. Do you want the 20,000-foot overview or the details? Those activities, mostly stemming from my hobby of learning more deeply so I can explain things to other people, end up paying huge dividends. That's a very valuable skill in corporate life in general: how do you simplify something at the right altitude for the person you're talking to so they can figure out what to do next?

I realized that even if I don't do any writing or content creation purely for its own sake, just the fact that it helps me be more relevant in my day-to-day job makes it incredibly useful.

Like, like you, I like that you pointing out the questions that come up.

You know, during this like, you know, kind of Journey in process, and you know, journaling is like such a big part of like my process right, and it's, like you know, drilling like interstitial journaling is kind of a new thing I've been testing out just kind of like writing notes throughout the day, capturing One Moment, One memory from the day and then, you know, at the end of the end of the week, kept reflecting on each day and just kind of looking at what stands out like patterns and, you know, using that to help inform the next week. And that's how you, that's how growth actually happens.

It's like everyone wants to grow right, everyone wants to get better and like smarter and like more efficient, more productive, like we all want these things. But how do you actually make it happen? Like you know, you gotta, it's like not just journaling, it's not just reflecting, it's also like sharing and trying to explain to someone else, like like what's in your head and what are you learning, what are you doing, and like then, like more insight, more questions like actually come out of that.

Yeah, no, so true, because in many ways we've been all you know from a very early age. You know you go through the schooling system. You have a lesson plan that's been defined for you. If you're just going through a routine of going through someone else's rubric, of what success and failure and all these things look like, when you start going on this own path, there is no predefined solution.

You know you're creating everything on as you go and it's often impossible to know: am I, you know, am I going an upper trajectory in, like whatever I'm doing, or am I just going staying flat, or am I going down- and this you know- reflecting and being able to be very honest with yourself about what am I doing? Is this meaningful? Is this meeting whatever long-term goal I've identified is actually a very important part of it, which you know. You touched upon it very nicely. So you mentioned note taking. What do you use for note taking? What tool do you use?

Or you can send paper, or yeah, or what is your process there?

Yeah. So I mean, I could talk about this for an hour probably. I'm definitely like big into like the personal Knowledge Management space. I think you know it's. It's it. You know productivity is a trendy like Hot Topic, right, and there are a lot of detractors, and people that kind of make fun of, like you know, those of us that spend so much time like optimizing like the system and like you know.

But I think it's important because, you know, time is our most valuable asset and I see I see personal Knowledge Management as a like, a part of like the time management family and it's like the whole point for me personally, is to save time and to be more efficient, because I only have so much time, we all only have so much time.

So, for me, my tool at the moment is Tana which a lot of folks might not be aware of, but it's a talk, it's ton is a combination of tools like Roam Research, obsidian that have kind of popularized like this notion of backlinking between different notes or files within the tool and notion which is super popular and is more like the a kind of way of describing notion would be: like Google Docs in Evernote. Essentially, Notion is an incredibly like, viable tool and something that I- I still use, but for note taking specifically, Tana's is, my main tool.

Yeah, I just loaded the Tana web page and I'm looking through it now. I've never heard of it, but this looks impressive. This is exactly the kind of thing where it goes from note-taking to the next steps as well, as you figure out how to go from notes to maybe structured content and ideas, and ultimately content itself.

Yeah, like notion has kanban boards and tables and, you know, databases, and tana has all those things as well. But combines more of a like digital Garden kind of free-form thinking, second brain kind of- you know, user experience, I should say, versus notion. It's like you kind of have to know exactly where you want to put things. Notion doesn't have a notion- no pun intended- of a global tagging system. So, like, if you just want to like create a tag, for creators, right, it's like, oh, you want to tag like you know every kind of you know key person that you follow on Twitter.

You want to create like a kind of note for them. In notion, you can't like tag them and have like kind of shared information about them outside of a database, and so you kind of are forced to like, oh, I have to create this like creator database and then I can have tags and like metadata about creators in this database, but everything has to live in that one like space, whereas tana and Rome allow you to kind of put things like all over the place.

And for how I work now I think it's I kind of prefer to have like the scratch Pad, where it's like, as soon as you open up China, you're presented with the day and that's your like workspace for the day and you can put everything there. And if I meet a new creator online, I can just like type their name, tag them with creator and add metadata like right there in that one like view, and then I don't think about it, and it's yeah, it's kind of like a frictionless way for me to process information. No, that's really.

Impressive. I'm gonna be trying it out, probably this weekend, and see how it, you know, simplifies some of the work that I do and note-taking and all of that, and so most content creators I know have a very strict routine or a process. You may know we talked a little bit of note taking and how you approach some of it. What is your, you know? Is there any more details about your routine, like: do you have a set schedule that you decide this is my focus time or I'm going to be thinking about ideas? Am I reflecting on the week or I'm going to be creating content and posting it?

What is your process for that look like?

Yeah, so I'm, I'm trying to get better at routine. That's something that's like a goal from for myself, in 2023. I just moved to Los Angeles. I used to live in Philadelphia and so, you know, I've been in La for a few months getting used to the time difference and, you know, I'm starting to settle in so I feel like I'm, during the holiday break, going to use that time to kind of build momentum going into the new year and try to make sure I'm establishing more of a routine. But, just to kind of like highlight what's working for me now, around I'd say, like 3 PM.

In the afternoon I try to spend some time like off screen, writing and just kind of clicking my thoughts. And the hard, the hardest thing about that is kind of queuing up like what I want to kind of write about and kind of explore before that time. So, like the day before it's like all right, like what is my focus, like for tomorrow?

And I kind of have this like- you know, kind of process called The Daily Mis, which is like kind of Rift off of Nissan plots, which is, a kind of like culinary, like phrase where, you're supposed to kind of put everything in into place and kind of get organized for like cooking the next morning, like the day before. So it's like getting like everything organized in the kitchen so when you come back the next day you're just ready to go.

And so I have this like Daily News process where I spend 15 minutes like getting prepared for the next day the day before, and so when the time comes to me to sit down right in the afternoons or to kind of just, you know, think about whatever I'm learning or creating at the time, I'm not like kind of scrambling trying to figure out like what am I, what am I doing right now? I kind of have that prepared the team before, and then on Sundays I do like a weekly kind of review. Just kind of look at my journal. Throughout the week, I journal every day.

I kind of use that process to inform you know what I'm focusing on the next week.

How do you maintain the motivation? You know, one of the things that often comes up is you get writer's block. You just don't feel like doing that for that day, it's like just tired. Or you know the number of excuses your brain often comes up with. You know it's yeah, innumerable, especially so for Content creation where you're you're your own, in this case, studying your own deadlines and your own goals for doing something. There's no external pressure necessarily on forcing yourself to like just get through that initial static friction.

Yeah, no, that's, that's an excellent question. It's hard, I'm not gonna lie, like I'd say the biggest motivation is telling a lot of people that are going to do something. So, for my newsletter, Hunter Labs, you know, I've I've told people like, hey, like you know, once a week you're going to get this newsletter.

It's going to be this curated kind of you know, Trove this like digest of articles, threads from Twitter, videos on YouTube, podcasts, just like this you know, collection that I feel like you like have to have to get through, you have to, like, you know, take a look and I feel like you're going to benefit from what I've found and what I'm sharing. And if I skip a week or, like you know, I just don't do it.

I feel bad because I told like yeah, I have almost 600 subscribers now and I feel bad that like, oh, hundreds of people like no, like, hmm, this, that newsletter didn't come, like I wonder what's going on. You know, and if you do that often enough, then people lose trust, right, and they doubt, like, like or maybe that's the wrong word. They question, like why they're subscribed and so, and then maybe they just don't open your emails anymore, like they kind of get.

They don't get into the habit of reading your newsletter every week and if you think about, like you know, Sunday papers- like New York Times has like a huge, like like paper on Sundays, right, and you know people subscribe and they're expecting on Sunday to get that newspaper delivered. If it doesn't come, it's like wait what? Like what's going on?

And that's as a creator, like when you get into routine of publishing consistently, then you create expectations, you know, with other people, and I think that's a way to help you stay motivated, because then you're you naturally don't want to disappoint, right, so to say, disappoint people that like admire what you do, like that's just, like you know, not a good feeling.

It's so true. So the by building the public, I guess, and or building the open, as the current terminology is- you are giving yourself some external motivation and pressure, because you've already told people that you're going to be doing this every week and then the expectation is that you force them do it. But also it reads benefits, because people do enjoy the routine of it. You know I'm probably dating myself heavily here, but back in the day there was the cartoon series called Home Star Runner, like Strong Bad Emails.

I don't know if you ever you know saw them, but every Tuesday, I believe around 9 or 10 am, definitely go public, and so you know I'd be in school at the time and you know when I go to my computer classes at the time I'd be like, okay, it's a Tuesday, I'm gonna go and check it out right now. And as far as I remember, they never- they never- failed on delivering on that particular timeline.

And that to me resonated immediately mentioned that people have an expectation or a habit to check at every certain time, especially like your content, and not having it will just cause them to lose stress because you given day, there's so many distractions and so once it's not there, it's going to be at the bottom of the queue and, as we'll talk about maybe later on, there's so many things that are going on that compete for your attention, especially online, that the goal really is to make sure your content is not immediately bubbled to the top, but other, many other things get provided into the internet instead.

Now, that is, that is really cool. So we mentioned newsletter. What you know, what service do you use for your newsletter?

I'm currently using Substack, and it's not perfect. There are so many things I like about it, a lot of things that I don't, but I've stuck with it, primarily because the writing experience is just Second To None. Like it's a joy to use the editor, and you know, as a writer, like that really matters to me. A lot of the functionality that you get in other tools for growth and just kind of General marketing aren't there and that's kind of frustrating at times. But Substack has also, I think, perfectly walk the line of building community in a network without it being a social network.

Yeah, and so you know they wrote out recommendations this year that allow any newsletter creator to recommend another newsletter and that creates this you know, through reciprocity it creates this like Network effect where, like, you recommend a newsletter and people subscribe to that newsletter and then that newsletter author gets notified and then in turn they recommend your newsletter and you keep doing that a few times and over the course of a few months, you know, maybe you have four or five newsletters recommending you and that and Their audience can discover you and it's a solid way to grow.

Other platforms kind of adapted this as well, so it's not unique to Substack, but, I have some great recommendations on Substack and it would be hard to just like walk away from, like you know.

Correct. It creates stickiness. We always talk about community building and Community any company- and go on this replicate technology, replicative product, but the community that you build around it, that's the thing that keeps you back in the going back to wherever you started from, because that cannot be replicated people. You can just transport people who are like mostly interested in something over to something completely brand new. That's very true, exactly, and I also know you've. You know you're very active on Twitter as well. What other networks do you post on? Is it primarily newsletters and Twitter, or do you, are you active in other channels also?

That's primarily, primarily it I also, am a partner in a like entertainment company, and so, for that, we actually have like a social media manager that works, works with us, that, and like he's incredible, and so for that, a company, we leverage LinkedIn and Instagram as well, but like for my own personal stuff, yeah, just focused on Twitter and substack right now, and I think for individual creators that aren't like running a you know company with a lot of different concerns, I think focusing on one or two platforms is important in kind of nailing those before you kind of broaden out to other platforms.

I think you can shut yourself too thin, and you're better off like kind of drilling on one platform, maybe to you see a lot of writers focusing on Twitter and Linkedin. Those are like the main two platforms that a lot of writers are just kind of like, you know, doubling down on and then what's the recent kind of a certain threshold on those platforms? Folks tend to move into newsletters and YouTube or TikTok.

What are your thoughts on the many people- me included, sometimes not consistently- of taking content from Twitter, copying that into an image, putting it on Instagram and then making that into a short, like one minute video, introducing the content and posting on YouTube shorts, on Instagram again and also on TikTok? What are your thoughts on that? Because you're kind of taking the same content. You're not creating anything new, you're just repurposing it for the format at hand, without having to think deeply about recreating or thinking about how to optimize it for all these unique segments.

Yeah, I know a ton of people that do that effectively, and tools like Hypefury, I recall. I actually make this really easy to do, where they'll actually create the kind of snapshot image of your Tweet for you and you can just connect your Instagram account and they'll post these images to Instagram on your behalf and, you know, a lot of creators have used that technique to grow Instagram. I so I'd say the only thing about Twitter that your listeners may or may not be aware of: it's hard to grow on Twitter, like in comparison to Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn, Twitter is the hardest not not to crack.

It's incredibly difficult, and so, you know, I think leveraging Instagram to grow your Twitter following is a smart way to go because I think the algorithm is just friendlier and you'll have an opportunity to reach more people. So.

So you know this is an interesting question, because- and I'm curious to get your take on it- you mentioned posting on Instagram to grow your Twitter audience. It's always hard, though, because, on the other hand, you have a newsletter as well. Do you have your Instagram audience using them to create a newsletter audience, or you prefer they grow the Twitter audience? Who, then, will use that to then grow your newsletter audience, because it goes one level, you know, in the other direction, but what? What is your take on that?

Oh, that's, that's a good question, man. I don't know, I haven't, I haven't given that a ton of thought. In this moment I would say the Instagram Twitter connection is strong because you literally can see: oh, this is a tweet, right. So like, if you're on Instagram and you're just scrolling and you see this like tweet shot- I think that's what it like. You know, some people call them- it's very clear, like what it is. Like, oh, this is a tweet. And like, oh, I resonate with this content, let me like this image. And then you've already kind of registered the handle.

You know, and if you have a Twitter account, which most people on Instagram do, you're just going to open up Twitter and be like, oh, I wonder what else this person is sharing on Twitter, and maybe you follow them, and so that's like an easy bridge. I think going like getting folks from Instagram to newsletter is hard, I think, because you can't share links in Instagram posts. You can only add a link to your profile and so, you know, with Instagram, you know, you're just hoping that people click on your handle, go to your profile and click on that link. But with the tweets as images on Instagram.

You're kind of cheating, right, like, that's why it works, because it's like the screenshot of the tweet is essentially a link, because, like, the link is already generated in your brain, right, you already know like, oh, this is a tweet, I'll go on Twitter let me find it and so, but, and that's like it's. It's basically like the like snail way of like getting a link to show up in someone's head, right, and so. Yeah, I think the newsletter to Instagram connection is more difficult, but not possible. Yeah, that's actually really.

Yeah, that's actually really great. It's almost like the tweet image is a QR code for your brain. It just registers. Okay, remember that. That's a better way of explaining it. I have to quote that. That's a brilliant way to describe it. One of the things you've mentioned is that creators should take a data-driven approach, that it's not just about throwing things out there, but actually measuring and analyzing them. What are some aha moments you discovered from taking that approach? Is there something you realized before, and then after becoming more data-driven you thought, wait, the thing I always assumed would work isn't as effective as I thought it would be?

That's a good, good question. So I've taken a data-driven approach, but admittedly, I've focused on the wrong data at times. You know, you hear the phrase vanity metrics, but it's like, oh, what do? What are vanity metrics on Twitter? What are vanity metrics on LinkedIn? And, like, how do I avoid, like getting excited about them? And so, for example, you know, getting a ton of likes for a tweet is like such a adrenaline rush and a dopamine hit, and retweets as well, like seeing something that's like kind of get a ton of attention and a lot of Impressions. It's like, wow, this is like kind of thrilling, right.

But if you're not actually, getting people to you know, comment or to follow you from that tweet, then it's actually not something you should like double down on or should focus on. You should try and figure out: okay, like a lot of people enjoyed this, but why is no one following me? Like, why is no one commenting? Or like being more engaged with this content? However, if you like tweet something and you're getting maybe not a lot of likes and retweets, but a lot of people are commenting, right, there's like a discussion happening, right, it's like it's social media, right, you're like it should.

It should be this like social experience, where conversations are happening. So if, like, that's happening and maybe you get a few followers, like that's a better signal, like that's something that you should, you know, really focus on. And so, you know, I've tried to get better at that. It's hard, though, because, like, human nature is like, oh, look at all these likes, right, oh, like, look at all these retweets, but, no, focusing on, like, what's actually driving, like more followers and more conversations, more direct messages, like more people reaching out to you and saying, hey, like this really resonated with me, thank you for sharing. Like that's powerful.

Like getting, you know, having those conversations, and learning from you know, complete strangers, like why something resonated with them, why they retweeted something, why they followed you, right, like, I think one of the like there's a lot of low hanging fruit, right, one of the best things you can do is like someone follows you. You just like send them a DM and be like: hey, like, I'm just curious, like what motivated you to follow me? Thanks for for following me, I'm just curious, you know? So.

Yeah, I think you did that when I followed you and that's actually what got us started to converse and I think it was such a brilliant, brilliant way of doing things. By the way, I think it's that's a personal touch to it, because everyone expects it to be automated, impersonal and like as robotic as you can imagine. But getting that DM from you, I was like, well, it's a human being here, it's actually a.

That's a personal assistant, you know, in typical like, if you look at Psychology and marketing, it gets me more emotionally invested in what you're creating, as opposed to just being a random name on an avatar that I've been following, like the thousands of other people on Twitter that exists there, absolutely. So one question I have: you mentioned that you have a tweet in Instagram and then it's very recognizable.

That recognizable part is a- is what I want to dive into a little bit- and I might even touch upon a little bit about your art, background and so on- is that you want, how do you make your personal brand on Twitter more recognizable, more appealing, more visually, just like memorable in some ways? You know, for example, your name is dkh, for example. I know, before we start this recording, you mentioned that there's something you might want to share a little bit more about that.

But even beyond that, like your profile picture, like the bio, all these things play into this overall Narrative of who you are, and I do think it plays an important role. I'm curious to hear your story around how you chose the things you chose.

Yeah, so you know, Daniel is such a common name, that I wanted to kind of experiment with this idea of using, you know, my initials, as a way for people to kind of differentiate me from other Dans. Right, there are a lot of dance and a lot of popular dance, like on Twitter and in like the creator space, and so it's like you know someone being on a refer to me as like oh, that's dkh versus like oh, Dan, or Dan Hunter. Just kind of for me, felt like a more unique thing, and more interesting thing to try out.

I, of course, could get feedback where people are like I don't like it or like oh, it's confusing, or I can find you or whatever. Right, but it's something I'm willing to experiment with and try. There is precedence for this so, you know a lot of folks may have heard of dhh correct, dhh is the creator of this open source tool called Ruby on Rails.

He's also the founder of, our co-founder of, 37 signals, which they made the Basecamp project management, software and the hey email like service, and so, you know not to get into politics, but AOC is obviously like one of the more like popular examples of this here in the United States. She's a congresswoman based in New York City and so there's, like you know, people do do this. So it's not like I'm like kind of coming out of nowhere with this approach, so no, I it makes those sense as well, because we look at numbers and phone numbers and like what things people can remember very easily.

You know, a collection of three symbols- whether there's letters or numbers or so on- is very, very easily memorable and also recallable as well. So you see it. And then I think a lot of studies have shown that 30 seconds, one minute, five minutes later people can recall those three things they've seen. But anything beyond that it becomes difficult. Like the dashes in a phone number are probably make the memorization look easier. You have like three numbers and then another three numbers. Hopefully, the area code is something that's common for many people, but there were cell phones.

That it's not because we all moved around and we all have things from everywhere else. But you know, I really like your idea there. That's actually a really interesting Insight that I never thought about. That having it be a few letters makes it easier, and I just did a quick search for dkh on Twitter. Yeah, you're the first name that comes up, you know so, even I is an incognito window, I'm not following you just to see, like you know what happens when it is typing in. Normally that ties in the full Narrative of I'm on Instagram. I see a tweet by you. I see dkh as the name.

I might still be surfing Instagram like going to like many other things. Then I come back and go like, oh, let me just type in dkh because it's memorable and you're the first result that comes up on Twitter. I can see your content and, like I see your pinned tweet seems very relevant. Follow conversion. You know, full end to end. Yeah, and then the other stuff you asked about, like profile image and you know the bio and all that. Like man, there's so much to kind of like touch on there.

I'd say, like you know, you don't need to overthink it, I, the image, I think is kind of like you know, totally up to your personality, right, it's like you know, one of one of the core parts of my personality is my smile. Like I, you know, I just I've always kind of been that way- a lot of people kind of when, you know, I've heard, you know, folks like talk about conversations that I wasn't part of, like, oh yeah, like Dan has a great smile, like that's the core part of who he is. He has so much joy for life.

You know, so optimistic, right, like so, you know that's part of the reason why I chose the image that I did the bio. I think it's important to highlight like what you write about. You know Twitter is a write-first platform.

Yeah, people share videos and, you know, images and other forms of media, but writing is, like you know, the you know, core part of Twitter, and so, articulating what you write about, what you're thinking about, I think, is important here in bio, and you know something that other people in the kind of target audience, target audience that you're focused on- can resonate with: and so, you know, being a part of, you know, the creator space and being an engineer.

One thing I really want to put my bio was how I am, an imposter-syndrome survivor, and you know, I think a lot of people can resonate with that and then I just have like a couple mentions of other accounts that I kind of manage on Twitter.

Cool. All right, that is really cool. I like the authenticity of being able to say that you're an imposter-syndrome survivor, because I find that many bios are artificially trying to paint a very particular picture that isn't really about the person themselves. The way you described your profile reflecting your own personality is critical too, because it's easy to want to be something you're not and have that show up in your username, your profile, and everything else.

But as your content starts showing up in people's feeds, if there's a mismatch, it creates a kind of cognitive dissonance where they're like, no, this doesn't add up, so I'm not going to engage with this. It's also just much easier to be yourself. When you go back to the process of writing, generating content, and dealing with writer's block, it's much easier if it relates to your own way of thinking and you're transferring something real. Some people like it, some people don't. But at the end of the day, it's not a numbers game.

It's about getting quality engagement, getting a quality number of people who care about what you're doing, and doing really great work there. Well then, we touched on a lot of great topics. Thank you so much for everything. Is there any final parting words you'd like to share?

No. I would just say that the only thing I'd share in closing is: focus on what you truly need to learn and leverage that to, quote-unquote, build an audience. Don't arbitrarily pick a topic just because it's popular and then force yourself to learn that thing in order to build authenticity and authority. Focus on where you are in your professional career or where you are in your creator journey, what you need to learn, and then share that and grow from there. You can always niche down further, but I would encourage people not to just pick a topic or a niche because it's popular or trendy.

I think that's a path to burnout and giving up when things get hard.

Perfect. Well then, thank you so much, and we should absolutely do this again another time.

Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it.