Marketing is like skydiving.

Leading a marketing team is like being a skydiving instructor.

A few weeks ago, I was hanging with the Product Hunt team in SF and I decided to take a funny pic of the CTO to get him some followers on Twitter.

One of our engineers Matt screamed out “That’s so cringe!” then stopped himself mid-sentence and said “Aghhhh wait, cringe is the new cool! Right! Memes make millions!” In real-time, I literally saw Matt’s mind break free of the fear-of-cringe mentality and switch to embracing the cringe thanks to my essay “Cringe is the new cool” and my book Memes Make Millions.

Matt has since fully embraced the cringe and started a meme account. What a king. I feel like a skydiving instructor who pushed his hesitant student out the plane into the vast unknown of social media. This was one of the coolest moments of my life: to see in real-time that my essay and book helped people break free of fear to start making content.

Here’s our memelord CTO now 100 followers higher.

In a similar skydiving situation, a few months ago I ran a Cold DM Challenge where I gave $1,000 to the person who got a DM back from the person with the highest number of followers.

The challenge was a hit and I ended up becoming friends with one of the contestants Austin. We got coffee in New York one day and he said that the challenge changed his life; he started messaging people online and making friends on the internet and even finding customers for his business because he was able to break free of his fear of messaging strangers. Again, I felt like a skydiving instructor.

On this week’s podcast, I spoke with a skydiving instructor (marketing leader) named Mara Huberman who is the Queen of viral shocking content. She ran The New York Post’s social media and now runs Citizen App’s where she gets millions of views/day posting crazy shocking content from around cities. In our conversation, she tells me a story about the first time she went viral as a teenager and reads me dirty haikus from her haiku book. Mara is such a good skydiving shock queen she even pushes my ass out of the plane!

My mission throughout my newsletter, book, and podcast is that I hope I can be that skydiving instructor for you even if we never officially meet in person.

Sometimes all people need is a good push out the airplane to get started.

And thanks to the internet, I can push you out of the airplane from 5000 miles away! I hope I can push you out of the airplane to get uncomfortable, go make some crazy content, and not give a fuck what people think. Because I believe that’s what a marketing leader should be in the 2020s: a skydiving instructor that pushes the whole team out the goddamn plane to help them fly.

Cyberpunk Hyperlinks:

🤑 Learn BizOps from a YC COO for free every week

😻 Tech peaked when everything was transluscent

🤣 Anduril named one of their missiles after a cartoon

📘 I’m finishing up The Parasitic Mind by Gad Saad. #based

🔥 I’m finally popping off on LinkedIn, connect with me.

Memes of the Week:

Let’s blow up the internet together.

Thanks for reading nerds.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Head of Growth @ Product Hunt, Author of Memes Make Millions