Oct 5, 2023 · 42m · startup-ideas
How To Build An Audience From Scratch | Yung Pueblo
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Bestselling author Diego Perez (Yung Pueblo) joins Greg Isenberg to discuss audience building, book publishing strategies, lean business operations, and the intersection of Vipassana meditation and compassionate venture capital.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Greg holds 28.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Greg as informed peer 5.0 Guest teaching 4.7 Guest disagreement 0.4 Greg pushing back 0.8
speaking balance: gold is Greg, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 22:57 Pushing back on pure self-publishing
Diego counters the popular digital creator belief in total self-publishing, highlighting its strict distribution limitations compared to physical bookstores.
Hardest push from Greg ▶ 4:40 Demanding proof for compassionate businessGreg directly challenges Diego to explain how prioritizing user compassion actually produces a profitable, viable business model.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 38:31 Demystifying Vipassana mechanicsDiego provides a structured masterclass on Vipassana meditation stages after Greg candidly admits he has no idea what meditation actually is.
Greg holds their own ▶ 24:24 Dropping Hudson airport retail revenue dataGreg reinforces the discussion on physical retail reach by pulling exact revenue metrics on Hudson airport bookstores ($1.8B annual turnover).
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Greg as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Greg pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome and Mutual Creator Connections | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Greg sets a warm, admiring tone and shares his history following Diego since 2016. Diego explains his transformation from personal rock bottom to meditation, writing, and founding Wisdom Ventures. | |
| Defining Compassionate Ventures in Tech | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Greg presses on how compassion translates into a viable business model, drawing parallels to his early advocacy for community-based products. Diego details non-addictive tech design and bereavement support startups. | |
| Audience Scale, Book Sales, and Product-Market Fit | 6 | 5 | 0 | 1 | Diego details his funnel from 3.5 million social followers to book sales and venture credibility. Greg interjects with his definition of product-market fit. | |
| Social Media Algorithms vs Owned Newsletters | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | The conversation explores the vulnerability of rented social media channels versus owned Substack newsletters. Diego and Greg compare lean two-person creator operations against bloated production teams. | |
| Longevity, Meditation Routine, and Creator Influences | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Greg asks whether heavy spending on content teams is essential for creator success. Diego clarifies that virality follows a predictable formula but true longevity requires genuine writing anchored in daily meditation. | |
| From Newsletters to Books: The Writing Blueprint | 5 | 6 | 0 | 1 | Diego encourages Greg to write a book by repackaging viral posts into expanded chapters, explaining that publishers function essentially as venture capitalists. | |
| Traditional Publishing and the Value of Bookstore Reach | 6 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Diego explains why self-publishing falls short of traditional distribution in physical retail and airports. Greg demonstrates domain research by citing Hudson Books' $1.8 billion airport retail revenue. | |
| The Meaning Behind the Pen Name 'Yung Pueblo' | 5 | 5 | 0 | 1 | Diego details how his pen name Yung Pueblo reflects the collective immaturity and healing journey of humanity. Greg breaks down the marketing funnel and intrigue required to turn social profile visits into loyal followers. | |
| Empowering Creators and Greg's Upcoming Projects | 7 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Greg takes center stage to announce his Community Empire initiative, outlining how high-value tactical playbooks help operators convert audiences into eight-figure businesses. Diego enthusiastically validates Greg's book concepts. | |
| Writer-First Philosophy and Algorithm Traps | 6 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Both creators discuss the dangers of algorithmic capture and encourage a writer-first approach, emphasizing experimentation and playfulness over chasing metrics. | |
| Demystifying Vipassana Meditation | 2 | 8 | 0 | 0 | Greg admits he does not understand meditation, prompting Diego to deliver an in-depth breakdown of 10-day Goenka Vipassana courses as mental conditioning for awareness and equanimity. |
Statements from this episode (23)
Diego Perez: Wisdom Ventures Backs Founders Building Compassionate, Well-Being-Focused Products
“To build wisdom ventures, which is basically a venture capital company that's trying to invest in companies and founders that are trying to build their products in a compassionate manner. So whether they're building in the wellness field or not, they're intent…”
Diego Perez: Wisdom Ventures invested in bereavement platform Betterleave
“I think there's one in particular that we just invested in bereavement company. That's like when you have a loved one that passes away, you don't quite think about How many things go into taking care of them as an individual, like, and simultaneously taking ca…”
Isenberg: Consumers increasingly demand 'anti-products' and alternatives to TikTok
“There's definitely this movement and you're seeing it on, on the forefront, just being on, like, writing your books, and on, being on Instagram, of people wanting wanting almost, like, the anti-products. They want the anti-TikTok.”
Diego Perez: Wisdom Ventures aims to fund non-addictive social media
“When we first created wisdom ventures, that was a lot of the conversation was like, we were, we're hoping to invest in that next generation of social media that can help connect people without all these addictive, like byproducts.”
Perez: Yung Pueblo audience reaches 3.5 million followers across networks
“The Young Pueblo audience, it's grown over the years. It's about 3.5000000 people now across all the networks.”
Perez: Yung Pueblo has sold over one million books
“Having sold a million books after having come a number one New York Times bestseller, it's just allowed me to like leverage that work to then You know, be able to speak to investors in a way where, you know, they really take you seriously”
Diego Perez sold 12,000 self-published copies of his debut in six months
“I think I self-published my first book, InWord, And it was out there for six months. I think I sold like 12,000 copies, which is a, you know, a good amount, and it also kind of proved to publishers that, you know, this is worthwhile”
Diego Perez: Substack founders are committed to algorithm-free direct audience delivery
“In the past, like, three years, I've been really focusing on just building a newsletter and I've found a home on Substack because I've become friends with the people who have built Substack and have seen the depth of their commitment to how they're always goin…”
Diego Perez: I should have prioritized building a newsletter in 2016
“And I think, looking back, I feel like if I would have done things differently, I would have definitely put a lot more emphasis on building a newsletter in like starting in 2016, as opposed to starting in 2020.”
Perez operates his 3.5-million-follower Yung Pueblo business with only his wife
“Oh, behind Young Pueblo, it's just me and my wife.”
Perez: Author James Clear runs his entire business with only one employee
“Spoken to James Clear about this too, it's like, he just has one person that he works with as well.”
Isenberg: The Hormozis spend hundreds of thousands monthly on their content team
“I also heard that Alex Hermozzi has, and Layla Hermozzi have been spending like hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on their content team.”
Perez: Going viral is not difficult because there is a recipe
“Because I think going viral is not, like there's, like, a recipe to it. It's not, like, something, like that's too difficult to do.”
Perez: Meditates two hours daily and attends 30-to-45-day retreats
“Like, I meditate two hours a day, one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening. I go to meditation retreats, like you know, a few times a year. Usually, usually one of them will be longer, like, 30 or 45 days long”
Perez: Clear and Manson outsell him due to their focus on newsletters
“I think I probably have more, more social media followers than both of them, but they sell more books than I do, and I think it's because of the way that they have set up their being more newsletter focused and having just fantastic content”
Diego Perez: Chapters in 'Lighter' were built from 700-word newsletters
“A number of chapters of that book are built off of newsletters that I released that that I knew performed really well, and so I would take that, you know, something that was maybe, like, 700 words and then built a whole chapter out of it.”
Diego Perez: Book publishers operate like venture capital firms
“Publishing companies, they're basically just venture capital companies. Like they literally will just, you know, they'll make a hundred bets and they, they're all like tiny investments to them and a few of them work out.”
Yung Pueblo: Authors with existing writing can assemble books in six months
“I think you can put out a fantastic book in like six months. It really doesn't have to be like the most like grueling, intense process, especially if you were writing from scratch, then it would take like two, two and a half years. But if you've already been w…”
Perez: Appointed to 80+ podcasts yet remains largely unrecognized in public
“I've probably been interviewed on, like, eighty-plus podcasts, but I don't really get recognized. I also don't put my face up on social media very often”
Perez: Physical book releases drive digital community growth via offline gifting
“I've noticed that when, whenever I release a new book, my communities just grow, especially the first three, four months after the book is released. And a lot of that is from friends gifting the book, because you'll find that some of your best people that love…”
Diego Perez: Writers devalue work by stretching across platforms for virality
“Don't forget that you're a writer first and foremost, and not a social media manager. I find with like myself and with other people who are out there is like, they'll stretch themselves so far on every single platform that it's just sort of like devaluing and …”
Isenberg: Authentic, weird content will stand out against cookie-cutter AI output
“Content first and algorithm second, not algorithm first and content second. You should be pleasing the algorithm gods at first, especially as this whole AI wave Hits us and more and more content feels very cookie cutter. The stuff that's going to stand out is …”