Louis' Learnings 1 - Learning Through Conversation & Why I'm Here

There's A Reason, I Promise

Greetings from Tuscaloosa, Alabama!

Welcome to the first edition of Louis’ Learnings, a weekly newsletter where I’ll share the major updates and lessons learned from my previous week.

You can think of this email as my “public journal.” It’s a place for me to document what I’m doing, learning, reading, and thinking about as I progress through life and work towards my goals.

I plan to flesh out a Martin-Luther style manifesto covering “why I’m doing this” over the coming weeks, but here are 3 of the big bullets.

Why I’m Doing This Part 1

1) Writing is thinking. Writing this email forces me to clarify my thoughts and cement my understanding of concepts that are important to me.

2) Decentralized Dunbar. Dunbar’s number is the well studied idea that we are only able to maintain around 150 relationships. According to this super credible infographic I just snagged from Google images, it is the “typical number of people we can keep track of and consider part of our ongoing social network.”

This newsletter provides a lightweight way for me to keep in touch with people who care to know what I’m up to on an ongoing basis. (If that’s you, thanks for caring 🤠 ). Always feel encouraged to reply and let me know what you are up to.

3) I WANT TO BE A WRITER. I say that I want to be a writer, but I’m not consistently writing. I can either say that forever and defer my goals, or I could get started with this weekly newsletter to build the writing habit, grow my body of work, and start building an audience.

With these (initial) reasons in mind, let’s dive into the newsletter.

Learning Through Conversation

I’m creating a virtual summit themed around how to Grow Your Podcast Audience. The plan is to ask 30 awesome podcasters the same 5 questions about how they’ve grown their shows.

So far, I’ve talked to about 15 podcasters and it’s opened a ridiculous amount of doors.

Here’s one lesson from each major conversation that took place this week.

Monday afternoon chat with David Perell. David has been a dream mentor of mine since I first found his writing in February. He is a prolific writer and thinker, and it was amazing to include him in the summit. He beat me over the head with the idea that the most important success metric from the podcast is how much I’m learning each episode—not how many downloads we get.

Tuesday morning chat with Eric Siu. Eric is an internet marketing celebrity. Eric gave Kyle and I extremely encouraging feedback about our future as content creators. He also helped temper our expectations. Eric’s been making his show for 7 years and his year-one downloads were on-pace with how The Louis and Kyle Show has been doing. If I relax my expectations to be 18-24 months for building an audience, I’ll be less likely to be emotionally attached to short term results.

Tuesday afternoon chats with Case Kenny and Travis Chappell. These guys are awesome podcasters. I’m extremely grateful to them for participating in the summit. Case’s big ideas were to be extremely authentic and to leverage email lists to grow an audience. Travis gave valuable insights into the importance of one-on-one community building.

Thursday chat with Danny Miranda. Danny is a fantastic writer and podcaster on the come-up in the content world. We met via Twitter and had our first meeting because of the summit. I credit binging his interviews with other writers for pushing me over the fence to finally start this newsletter. Last, listening to Danny’s podcast reminded me of the power of vulnerability as a creator. He is extremely personal and open in each episode, and it greatly improves his show’s appeal.

Sunday with Byron Dempsey. Byron’s show has exploded in popularity thanks to Tik Tok. Currently, it’s ranked the #2 business podcast in Australia. I DM’d him Thursday asking if he’d want to participate in the summit. Less than 72 hours later, we were on a call from across the world. Pretty amazing. He’s also introduced me to a few of his friends, and I hope to connect with them in the coming weeks. Byron’s key lesson was that Tik Tok is underutilized for podcasters and is a much less crowded marketing channel than Twitter and Instagram.

Quick Ideas

Positive Habit Of The Week: Get some sun ☀️ — 15 mins a day is a good goal

Book Rec: Deep Work by Cal Newport — almost as good as the bible if you ask me

Movie Rec: Casino Royale — who doesn’t love James Bond?

Cooking Tip: Bring eggs to room temperature (with running water) before cooking

Reflection Question: Ask yourself “what would this look like if it was easy?”

Content Updates

Blog Post: I published a short blog post about RoamResearch, Graph Databases, and Personal Knowledge Management. This may or may not be a repurposed school assignment.

Here’s the pitch: If you've heard a lot of these buzzwords and want some of them to make a bit more sense, this article might interest you!

Podcast: I published episode 41 of my podcast, The Louis and Kyle Show. We interviewed Jeff Sorg, the CEO of Pat Croce and Company. Jeff works directly with my cousin Curtis who we interviewed in episode 10 of the show. We asked Jeff about his management philosophy, reading and meditation habits, and some thoughts on trends related to COVID and hospitality.

Photo of the Week

Would I really be documenting my life if I didn’t include at least one picture from the week?

I’ve been working pretty diligently on my handstands. One of my benchmark goals is to walk a full-length basketball court (on my hands of course).

On Saturday, I came within about 3 feet of finishing which is the closest I’ve ever come! Hopefully I’ll update you in a few weeks with a video of a full walk!

Closing Thoughts

🙏 Thanks so much for being here and for following my journey.

As an early reader, your support & feedback are deeply appreciated!

Please reply and let me know what you think of this week’s format and content… I’d love to hear from you.

Wishing you a fun and productive week,

Louis Shulman