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Greet from the deep,

It’s Ole from the AI Solopreneur here - the solopreneur newsletter that teaches you how to grow your business with AI.

Today, we'll talk about finding contrarian content ideas and creating thought-provoking content that'll make your audience go:

"Huh, I never thought of it that way before..."

Let’s d-d-d-d-dive in! 🤿

Introduction

Today, Peter Thiel is known for co-founding Paypal, being Facebook’s first big investor, and his book “Zero to One”.

He also named one of his companies like the seeing-stones in Lord of the Rings (Palantir).

What a G.

Thiel became a billionaire by seeing what others didn’t - contrarian ideas.

The premise of contrarian ideas is simple:

If you think and do what 99% of people do, you'll always be part of the crowd, stuck in the noisy middle.

If you want to see success only 1% of people see, you need to be comfortable having ideas only 1% of people have.

As a side benefit, contrarian ideas also make for popular content:

Why Swimming Against the Content Current Gets You Fans

When you go against the grain, you make waves, you get noticed.

When Sean Puri published this thread in 2021, everyone thought Clubhouse would be the next BIG thing:

Not only did the contrarian thread blow up, but it also built authority because his prediction turned out to be true.

(2 years later, Clubhouse is now as relevant as my Blackberry from 2008)

The Power of Predictions

Making predictions is a solid way to create contrarian content.

If your prediction is correct, you look like a genius.

If it's wrong, well, at least you sparked some debate.

The golden rule here is that you should only make predictions you believe in, otherwise, it’s gonna backfire heavily.

Just remember to not predict the end of the world too often, okay?

The 'Love to Hate' Effect: Why Everyone Reads Contrarian Content

Contrarian content also tends to go viral because it attracts both groups:

1) The chads who agree with you and want to learn more

2) The Karens who disagree and want to prove you wrong (usually those are higher in number)

And both sides, whether they love or hate your content, end up sharing it - you win.

Prompt: The Crazy Contrarian Conceptualizer to Get Unique Ideas

The main issue with contrarian ideas:

Because they are uncommon, they can be time-consuming to spot.

This prompt helps you brainstorm 20 contrarian content ideas within your niche that you can write about:

I need you to come up with contrarian ideas about [WHAT YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT]

For context, [GIVE CONTEXT]

To identify contrarian ideas, follow this process:

1) Identify widely held beliefs or trends in a given area.
2) Question why these beliefs are held and whether they are justified.
3) Consider alternative viewpoints or scenarios that go against the grain.
4) Suggest 20 contrarian content ideas I could write about in the given area

Your output should contain your reasoning on each step.

Here are some contrarian ideas GPT-4 gave me:

Continue the chat

Wrap up

Pro tip: You can combine the Crazy Contrarian Conceptualizer with the LinkedIn & Twitter post writers to expand your contrarian ideas into posts in 10 seconds

LinkedIn post writer

Twitter thread writer

Twitter tweet writer

I’ve been going full monk mode to finish up my upcoming course.
This is me working on it in my basement.

Keep diving,

Ole

PS. I want to create the best content possible for you. Please let me know what you would like to hear more about. Just reply to this email, I read every single response!