Welcome explorer

You’re in the Slipstream. Your weekly view into the way of entrepreneurship, self-improvement and peace of mind.

You’re here because you understand one thing:

The only thing holding you back from becoming the person you want to be, is your lack of knowledge on how to get there!

Luckily, today’s issue is taking you one step closer.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP LESSONS

I went (kinda) viral on Twitter - here’s how that was

After ramping up my activity on Twitter these past weeks, I have finally gotten my first taste of fame. However, due to the ephemeral nature of Twitter, it’s more like 15 seconds than the usual 15-mintues.

As the boys of Lonely Island might say, “Doesn’t matter, had fame.”

That being said, my growth on Twitter has been going slowly but consistently.

I’ve been dipping my toes into the Twittersphere by posting about carnivore and health related ideas and questions.

However this week I experimented with more comments on general things that I liked and enjoyed.

That’s when this post hit the jackpot.

I had about 120 followers when I made this post. To then have 486 people like this, as well as 18 retweets and 23 comments was quite incredible. It was also quite out of the ordinary, considering my other posts were averaging 3 likes, 0.5 comments and 0 retweets.

That’s why I say this was my experience of going relatively viral. I had an engagement rate that was extremely out of bounds for a typical post. More so, the amount of likes far exceeded that actual amount of people following me.

But then the question is, how did my post reach more people than actually follow me? How did I speak to people who didn’t even know my name, let alone chose to hear my thoughts?

The secret is… replies!

My tweet was actually a reply to a post from a way larger account. Check below.

Massimo had 55k likes on his post and 9.6M impressions. Really massive. But, that’s because he has 1.6M followers. That’s about 12,500 times larger than me right now.

He is a celebrity and I just walked in behind him and got in the club, for free.

This is the power of Twitter (X) specifically.

I posted a reply which was more of a sentimental feel. It turns out others agreed with it, because so many who follow Massimo saw his original post.

What was the experience like?

1. It was distracting

   • It was hard to concentrate when I was getting desktop notifications of likes, retweets and comments on my post.

   • By the end of the day, I disabled these so I only know whats happening on Twitter when I want to know

2. It was exciting

   • Naturally, seeing engagement and interaction triggers positive feelings in the body.

   • I took breaks and breaths to maintain composure and not let the event detract from the rest of my work for the day
     

3. It was nerve-wracking

   • There were people who disagreed with me. Some posted negative comments in general.

   • I worked on distancing myself from the reactions - it was about playing the game. Any engagement is good engagement and I didn’t have to respond to everyone.

That being said, the event generated a small amount of stress and by solving and handling the issues, my systems have been upgraded to the point that I can handle this kind of event again.

More so, this stress upon my mental state has been like going to the gym for the mind. Now I am stronger and less likely to be triggered by negative comments and people who are rude or disagree with me on Twitter. I also will be less thrown off course the next time a post goes kinda viral.

Building mental fortitude is about getting in those reps in the mental gym of life.

What’s been the result?

Well my follower count has increased, and is sitting at about 42% higher since a month ago. Pretty good growth and I hope that can last.

At the current rate of growth, I will have over 500 followers in 4 months, and over 1,000 followers in 6.

Impressions are through the roof (15,600% is some crypto level gains). But that’s because I started from close to zero. We should see this number getting more reasonable and stable over time.

Deeper analytics show that my reply garnered me 97 profile visits. Based on that, I have definitely converted about 5-7 of them into new followers. It seems that stat is broken on the dashboard above.

Okay, so what is the meaning of this? Why do these stats matter and why is it important to grow my Twitter account and following?

All roads lead to Monetization (on Twitter)

The aim of all this is to eventually make money on Twitter. This is done by generating content that people find useful, informative, engaging in some way.

The likes, retweets, views metrics all signal movement towards that direction.

But how much is needed before I (and anyone else) can earn money?

Well, after my success, I was ready to cash in the rewards for my “hard work”.

I went to Twitter’s Monetization section and received a firm “Not yet”

Okay, so 1 kinda-viral post is not enough.

But hope is not lost. The targets are now at least clear. I know the path to money in my pocket.

1. Get to 500 followers

2. Get 5M impressions over the past 3 months

Based on the stats of my mini-viral post, I need to get that level of engagement 40-50 times over 3 months, or ~15 times a month, or every 2 days.

If I put in just 5 replies to big accounts a day (minimum), then I’ll have 10 chances every 2 days.

And from those 10 chances I only need 1 (a 10% success rate) to win to get good engagement and convert that to followers.

The takeaway?

1 - Replies are the single biggest way to get exposure when you are a small account.

2 - Your profile is then the second biggest converting factor. It is your landing page that showcases why people should follow you.

3 - More replies to bigger accounts, more impressions on your profile, more growth.

HUMAN NATURE / ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Entrepreneurship is the opposite of war

In light of recent times, I’ve been thinking about the most destructive activity on the planet - war.

War literally destroys.

It destroys buildings, infrastructure, food supplies and farms. It destroys land, water systems and entire ecosystems. War destroys people, it eliminates them from the world.

At the end of the day, war reduces what we collectively have. It makes life worse to the people experiencing it, it destroys the wealth the civilization has built.

I doubt many people in the world want to be involved in war. I doubt that many people exist who actually want to destroy things and people. Who want to inflict suffering upon the world.

I believe in humanity’s good, and that we all would want a better world for ourselves and our loved ones, and even strangers we have never and will never meet.

As a young, strapping graduate I was torn between career choices, having options towards engineering, medicine, finance.

I really just wanted to make the biggest positive impact on the world.

I knew that would involve building, so I chose engineering.

While close, there is one profession I have come to realise that is the exact opposite of warmonger and is the pinnacle of peacemaking, or at least, it can be.

That path is Entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship, business or trade is the process by which one seeks to create and/or deliver solutions to a particular set of people, facing a certain kind of problem.

When he succeeds, the solutions provided are beneficial to people’s lives and they give him money for it.

This repeated over many industries, like food, clothing, services, etc. serves to create a network of trade relationships and interdependencies.

When we rely and trust each other for the various aspects of our lives that makes our lives better, we live more in harmony with each other. We are less likely to cause a commotion, to fight over trivial things. We can have more things, better things and thus better lives. It is through the process of innovation and entrepreneurship that civilization gets built.

When we have strong networks of trade, we rely on each other. We have set up conditions of living such that destroying or alienating the other means our own quality of life suffers.

It’s like if you have two kids fighting. And you tell them, “Get along or nobody’s getting any ice cream!” Very quickly do they become thick as thieves, banding together for the common good of ice cream.

This is why the entrepreneur is the peacemaker. He builds trade relationships among people, and even more so today, among a global set of people.

When the world want’s you to destroy and denigrate a group of humans, seek instead to do the opposite. Try to serve a group of people. Make their lives better in whatever way you can. We have various needs and we all have special gifts that can serve to those needs.

See everyone’s pain and complaints as a to-do list. If you can tick 1 item off that list, you’ll probably be what many would call successful.

I would call you a peacemaker.

An engineer of civilization.

A good human.

And I think, at the end of the day, that’s what we all want to be.

PRODUCTIVITY, LIFE

Build a Life Operating System in Notion

Last week I introduced you to the idea of “Building your Second Brain” with Evernote being used as the main knowledge collection system, and the PARA framework for storage and thinking.

In today’s newsletter, I want to share an upgraded version. This is using the tool of Notion and involves a more comprehensive, holistic and simpler system of categorization called Pillars, Pipelines and Vaults (PPV).

This video, and August Bradley’s entire series for that matter, has been a goldmine of information.

I am quite fascinated with his model and have been completely redesigning my entire workflow based on it.

It has really helped me improve my systems thinking, and helped consolidate my various smaller productivity tools into one larger hub.

Through that I’ve become more focused and more productive. Less distraction and less tools to switch between.

More than that, it’s brought immense clarity to my daily routine and projects.

I highly recommend you check it out if you are involved in any kind of knowledge work, project work or just general task management.

I’ve also been inspired on putting together a small course on PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) using Notion and other AI tools to increase your productivity and get more clarity and hours back in the day.

Let me know if its something you’d be interested in and I’ll add you to the waiting list!

1. Neville Goddard - God And I Are One - 1972 Lecture - Own Voice - Full Transcription - Subtitles - - YouTube

   • Fantastic lecture on the soul, god and one’s place in the universe

2. Dr Layne Norton: The Science of Eating for Health, Fat Loss & Lean Muscle

   • Brilliant discussion on the mechanics of metabolism and its role in how we store and use energy

3.  Leverage Dopamine to Overcome Procrastination & Optimize Effort

   • Brilliant lecture on your your dopamine system, responsible for your motivation and ability to go after goals

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Till the next time,

Be more peaceful

- Karmsheel