Overview
Thought leadership, as we know it, is coming to an end.
The Internet is being flooded with AI content that is getting better every day.
To succeed in the new landscape requires completely reinventing the thought leadership process from first priniciples and embracing AI.
That’s where this weekly newsletter comes in…
I help you create blockbuster content that is 10x better at a 10x faster rate with an AI-first approach to thought leadership.
I build upon 10+ years of deep research, experimentation (4,000+ A/B tests), and deliberate practice to stand on the shoulders of giants and pioneer an approach to thought leadership unlike anything else on the Internet.
Think of this newsletter as Masterclass for thought leaders, except you're also guided by a world-class coach who helps you apply the lessons step-by-step.
Blockbuster Blueprint is a newsletter course taught via curated video clips of top thought leaders, creators, and AI experts:
Thought leaders and creators: Malcolm Gladwell, Ray Kurzweil, Michael Lewis, Elizabeth Gilbert, Seth Godin, Anne Lamott, Cal Newport, Ray Dalio, Ryan Holiday, Mr Beast, James Clear, Glennon Doyle, Mark Manson, Jim Collins, James Cameron, Adam Grant, Tony Robbins, Brené Brown, Simon Sinek, and many more.
AI experts and leaders: Sam Altman (OpenAI), Ilya Sutskever (Safe Super Intelligence), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Shane Legg (DeepMind), Mustafa Suleyman (Microsfot), and many more.
Using my approach, over the last 10 years, I have:
Written hundreds of posts and articles
That have been read close to 100M times
In top publications like Harvard Business Review, TIME, Forbes, Fortune, and the World Economic Forum.
That have generated millions of dollars
More so, my approach is unique not just because of the external results, but because of the internal transformation. It maximizes for:
Authenticity
Aliveness
Personal growth
Curiosity
Lifestyle
Impact
This is opposed to many content marketers, who turn themselves into a cog in a machine.
The Most Comprehensive Map Of Thought Leadership
I credit a large part of my success to studying the best practices of the world’s top thought leaders, researchers, and AI experts, noticing patterns, making them my own, identifying the right sequence to master them in, and then experimenting with them.
The problem?
It takes time. I’ve spent thousands of hours doing the research and analysis. With Blockbuster Blueprint, I give you the shortcut to replicate my research. I find the best clips, summarize them, add context, and help you apply them in the right order. Most of the time, to get unstuck or achieve a breakthrough you just need to hear the right thoughts in the right context at the right time.
Finally, Blockbuster Blueprint is more than just a newsletter. It’s a course delivered through a newsletter. Collectively, each email lesson walks you through the entire process of manufacturing ideas that change the world using AI. They provide the most comprehensive breakdown of the leadership process including finding a niche, strategy, research, ideation, packaging, production, and promotion.
It provides a holistic approach designed for transformation, which means it also touches on the skills, mindsets, habits, paradigms, mental models, and workflows of the greats.
How It Works
The Internet is a cornucopia of knowledge.
But that knowledge is noisy and fragmented.
This leads to info overwhelm…
Curation. It takes endless hours to find high-quality video, podcasts, articles, and books. Then, it takes even more time to find the best clips and excerpts within. All the while, there are constant distractions from ads and interesting content that isn’t educational.
Application. It takes endless trial and error to apply these lessons in the right order and in the right way to achieve our goals.
This is where I come in.
I…
Search the Internet for the top videos of thought leaders and AI experts talking about the thought leadership process.
Prioritize and extract the best video clips and throw out the noise.
Summarize the key ideas in the clip so you can easily understand and apply them.
Extend the ideas via second-order effects so you can see the deeper implications and context of the video.
Why Enroll In The Paid Version
Every new post includes a premium section at the end of the article that’s just for paid subscribers.
By becoming a paid subscriber, you also get over $2,500 in value immediately:
Two Mental model mastery manuals. Each manual is roughly 10,000 words and took me dozens of hours to research and write. ($40)
Three AI courses. The courses are on frontier prompting, augmented intelligence, and AI mental models ($700)
Database of 20+ premium AI prompts, that will make you smarter ($1,000)
Tutorials and resources, on how to do augmented reading, become a better thought leader, create and grow a paid newsletter, and much more ($500)
Paid podcast, where I interview top entrepreneurs and experts, with 13 episodes so far (invaluable)
Discounts on my other programs ($250+)
100+ curated video lessons from top thought leaders in the world: Malcolm Gladwell, James Clear, Victor Frankl, Yuval Noah Harari, and others ($200)
Database of all my blockbuster articles on creativity, learning, thought leadership, mental models, successful aging, productivity, and having a more fulfilling life overall from the last 10 years. Each article took me 60+ hours to research and write ($500+)
Who Am I?
Over the last 15 years, I've spent 10,000+ hours deliberately studying, practicing, and teaching the craft of modern thought leadership.
My longform, research-based articles have been read by tens of millions of people in top publications like the Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Inc., Entrepreneur, Forbes, and TIME while also generating millions of dollars in revenue.
Students in my yearlong thought leadership program have used insights from the course to 100x their readership, get published in top publications like Scientific American, and win major multimillion dollar deals. I teach every single class live, so I know what students find helpful and what they don’t.
To my knowledge, no one in the world has been as deliberate as I have (see my research process below) and the results in my writing and those of my students speak for themselves.
I’m so passionate about thought leadership, because I know that one idea can literally change the world. It can inspire personal transformation. It can change culture. It can turn elections. It can leave a dent in the universe.
I became a voracious reader when I was 16 when the ideas in books changed my life. I remember the revelation of reading these books alone in my bedroom in the middle of the night and knowing in my bones that my life was forever changed because of them. I’m passionate about paying this feeling forward. I can think of no better way to spend my time than to curiously explore new, mind-bending ideas, reveling in those ideas with like-minded learners, and then sharing them with others so I can see the same fire come alive in them.
Examples Of My Past Writing
5-Hour Rule: If you’re not spending 5 hours per week learning, you’re being irresponsible (1.4M+ views)
People Who Have “Too Many Interests” Are More Likely To Be Successful According To Research (726,000 views)
Warren Buffett: “Really Successful People Say No To Almost Everything” (636,000 views)
The Research Process I Used To Develop My Expertise On Thought Leadership
Every “guru” out there claims they’re an expert, but few actually are. As a result, it’s easy to actually get information which slows us down rather than speeds us up.
To build a system for thought leadership, I broke it into its 5 core components. Then, I broke those components into 16 stages, and then I broke those into 140+ steps.
Next, I methodically identified the top performers of each skill, identified the patterns in their work and watched interviews of them talking about their process. From there, I integrated what I learned into my own framework and tested it with my own writing.
For example…
Titles. I spent 1,000+ hours studying the most viral titles, and then I did 4,000+ A/B tests to see which patterns actually worked the most in practice.
Ideas. I analyzed the top 100 bestselling nonfiction books of the last 60 years in order to understand the patterns of how the most long-lasting, viral ideas stand the test of time.
Visuals. I collected and analyzed 500+ visuals to understand how create images that make ideas more attention-grabbing, easier to understand, and easier to share. And so on.
After proving the system myself, I created a ghostwriting agency in 2015 to see if the system worked with other niches, platforms, and personalities. It did. People who had hundreds of views on each article suddenly started getting tens of thousands. My clients were published in Entrepreneur, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Inc., and Fortune.
Finally, I proved it via a cohort class I started in 2018. I’ve now taught five small cohorts of experts to rise above the noise, make an impact, and build their business with blockbuster articles. I’ve now put 25+ hours into researching, teaching, and iterating on every single lesson. Students from the course have 100x’d their readership, gotten published in top publications like Scientific American and Forbes, and won major multimillion dollar deals through writing and ideas they developed during the program.
Over the years, I’ve shifted more and more of my time to helping experts craft their own blockbuster articles. We’re about to start our 6th cohort of our year-long, transformational Thought Leader School.
I only teach 25 students in my live program, because I want the programs to be transformative and for students to get personal attention. This newsletter course is the first time I’m consistently sharing my thought leadership lessons to a broader audience.
My Personal Story
I’m a lifelong education entrepreneur and learner who loves to share what I learn with others.
I started my first business in high school with Cal Newport. We spent $500 of our first client contract to buy books, because we had almost no idea what we were doing. Since then, I’ve read over 1,000 books and spent many thousands of hours listening podcasts, taking courses, watching YouTube videos, and scouring the Internet for the best content to help me learn faster and grow as a person. I’ve used this knowledge to grow several successful businesses and be recognized as a top entrepreneur by Ernst & Young, Inc., BusinessWeek, and the White House.
My writing career began when I started journaling. When I was 18, I started writing in my journal for an hour every single day. I noticed that when I put my thoughts on paper, I seemed to learn faster and think more clearly.
After a year of journaling, I started sharing my writing with friends. After good feedback, I started writing for publications. After awhile of writing, I started to get invited to speak. While I gained a little traction, my writing never took off though.
It wasn’t until I adopted the blockbuster philosophy on writing that I gained real traction. To learn more about how the blockbuster philosophy changed my life and how you can apply it to your writing, read Blockbuster: The #1 Mental Model For Writers Who Want To Create High-Quality, Viral Content.
