Jonathan Courtney
Appearances
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And I think what this and Stardew Valley have in common, what the two people who worked on these have in common, is that this is absolutely a labor of love where you never know if this is actually going to turn into a viable way of making money. But it's almost like an obsession that these people go down and actually start working on these things.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So my personal second but our third Tiny Team Award is going to the A Profound Waste of Time video game magazine. And how they do each episode, by the way, how they fund each issue, is by doing a Kickstarter for every issue. So that's also kind of cool. So they don't just bring out an issue. Every single issue gets funded through Kickstarter, which is kind of cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It's like a company where you've maybe used their product or you've maybe seen their product around, but you didn't really know that it was just a tiny little team behind it. So it's a tiny team doing something big and special that you may or may not know about. They're like flying under the radar, that kind of thing, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah, you can see on the Kickstarter pages how much each edition makes. So there's some transparency around that. But a lot of the all of the past issues that I bought were not through Kickstarter. So those wouldn't be included. So I guess you could check the Kickstarter pages. Like, for example, there was 100. If we look here to issue four or issue. Yeah, I don't know. Actually, OK.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
They're interviewing like the members of the Portal 2 team, the creator of Silent Hill. Come on. Come on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
This is shoo-in. Yeah. It's too much. I have them all around my apartment. I bought every, or my girlfriend got them to me as a gift, but they are so unbelievably beautiful. I love them so much.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah, exactly. I'm like, shit, I'm waiting for you to run out of ideas and run out of one so that I don't have to have another one. You know what I mean?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
No, I'm looking it up right now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yes. Yes, exactly. You think they're going to be bigger than they are, but then it turns out, you think it's like a hundred people, but then it turns out to be two people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
That's what I'm thinking about. It's interesting. Probably you see this with your audience. I definitely see it with my tiny audience, is that if I would post something like this, you'd have one or two idiots in the comments being like, oh, so pointless. We don't need another one of these things.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And the point that you should be, when you see something like this, something like card, what I am thinking is, what the hell? How can you make something like this differentiated when there's a million different like one page, I don't know, there's a million different ways to make websites also for a very low price.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So I'm like, my gut reaction is to be like, why would you need another one of these? But actually the correct way to think about this is how is this actually working? And this is, I'm super curious about this because it absolutely does not appeal to me at all on first glance. But like, why do you think this works?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
But why? How did that happen? Was it an accident or was it cultivated?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
In the best way possible, when I'm looking at these card pages, it reminds me of GeoCities. Was it called GeoCities or GeoCities? It reminds me of that sort of retro... If you look at... We talk a lot about anti-trends. It's like the anti-trend of Squarespace. Squarespace is all about high quality. Everything's aligned perfectly. The templates are beautiful. Whereas this has this more...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah. And it's super cool as well because they're often like family-owned businesses or like it's a couple or it's like a brother and sister or it's like two high school friends. And I just think that's like a nice heartwarming kind of story as well.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
rugged, homemade GeoCities vibe. I wonder if that sort of retro energy is what also makes it work so well.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Well, it says on the landing page that it's a simple, free, fully responsive one-page site.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
That's pretty, very affordable.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It's less than $2 a month. $19, that's like one coffee, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
$19, that's like an espresso, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
That's like a water, isn't it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
But $19 is like the price. It's only the price of like a small glass of water.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah. You know, I think what we should do, you know, people don't watch every podcast. I think what we should cultivate on this podcast is a sense of being really out of touch with the rest of society. And when we see something like, oh, the Apple Vision Pro is only $3,800, like price of a coffee. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah. Dude, it's like coffee. What does it cost approximately? I mean, I'm sure it's within the ballpark of $3,800, right? Right.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Just lovers. Yeah. It could just be just lovers, you know? That's it. We just keep it like that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It is your audience. Does your audience think we're both fully wearing a tuxedo or do you want... Where do they think it ends?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
I don't know. We just have to think about it. You're going to have to guess in the comments. You have to guess in the comments.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah. Can you see this ghostly shit happening behind me?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
I hope your editor does one of those crash zooms whenever that happens. Stuff's just moving around in the background. Wow. That's scary. Okay. You just give your tiny business award.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
I love that. I have another one. All right, we'll go, we'll do another one. I'll do one last one, okay? I'll do one last one. So I think there's an area we haven't gone into yet and it's Patreon businesses, like really small Patreon businesses. And I want to give an award to... A Patreon business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And again, like maybe this person wouldn't like it to be called a Patreon business because it's he's a really amazing artist. But I want to give an award to Bobby Fingers. If you go to YouTube and search Bobby Fingers, my favorite video, the best video I've ever seen on the internet is called Jeff Bezos Rowing Boat.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
All right. So... The first Tiny Team Award for the Startup Ideas Podcast 2024 goes to King Flipchart.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
If you watch this whole thing and don't think it's the best YouTube video you've ever seen, something's horribly wrong with you and you're a bad person. So Bobby Fingers has a Patreon account. And what I love about his Patreon and what he does in particular is that he's not like a person who's constantly putting out different... He's not constantly pumping out content.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
He puts out like one video every couple of months. You have no indication of when it's about to come out. And then this video... is literally him making a diorama. Do you know what a diorama is?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So it's, it's kind of hard. It's like a, it's like something happens in real life. So for example, um, uh, what's the guy's name in his most recent one, Fabio. So there's this, I think singer called Fabio and he was on a
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
or got hit in the face by a bird whichever way you say that around and there's like footage of that there's footage of him coming down from the roller coaster with a bloody nose and he's really pissed off and this guy Bobby Fingers he makes like a little model of that moment like a moment in time but like a physical model like a sculpture of the moment and
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And his videos are like the making of these little sculptures, or in the case of the Jeff Bezos thing, he makes a boat, which is Jeff Bezos's face, but a massive working boat. And literally the strangest, most kind of confusing videos I've seen on the internet, the most like painstaking work, like we're looking, you're talking about a 30 minute video of
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
of the making of this goose, this diorama of a goose hitting this guy in the face. And just like the journeys he goes on while he's making this diorama and the weird things that he's saying while he's creating it. And... This is like, for me, a business that could have never existed outside of Patreon existing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And I think Patreon really allows for single person teams or one or two person teams to monetize just their weirdness. And I love that. And I think it's super cool. I don't know how big... Bobby Fingers team is. I cannot imagine it's more than 10 people, but he gets another tiny team award from me in the content category. Let's add in categories now. Wow. You went there.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
i can't believe you went there yeah content art category wow yeah yeah exactly yeah very very niche so bobby fingers honestly guys if you only get one thing from this uh from from this episode please and also something weird is happening i know this is not really interesting for the episode but i pay for his um patreon but like i can't use it. I don't know what's happening here.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So something's... Patreon, if you're listening to this, tell me what's up with that issue there. By the way, another example who I'm not going to give the tiny team award for, but one of the runners up. Have you seen Van Neistat's channel?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Good, good, good, good. Okay, so King flip chart. If you go to any Alex Hermosi video, if you've ever seen videos of Tony Robbins on stage, if you've ever seen basically any public speaker using a flip chart on a stage, This flip chart, if you look closer, has a little stamp on the bottom right-hand side, and it says King.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
I love that. I love it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
I love that people now can take their weird little hobbies and if they're just consistent enough and just focused enough and willing to sort of push through this initial phase where just no one knows you, you can literally replace your job by showing a 30-minute video of you making a boat that's in the shape of Jeff Bezos' face and you never have to work for someone else again. So good.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
How cool is that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
What'd you say?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah, you could quit whatever. I mean, you don't really have a job. You're kind of like creating your own jobs. But like if we just did this award ceremony every week and it's like $10 a week to listen to. I'm just kidding. That wouldn't be good.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yes, yes. Imagine how little money we would make and how annoyed we would be.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
that posted you know that we just you know even so here it is here you go yeah i think it would be uh if if you guys do this um please let me know if you get responses i think this could make some people's day or maybe they don't give a shit maybe they're like who are you losers how are you how dare you call
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And there's no air conditioning in Germany. Like in most German, I'm in a new building, like a new apartment. And there's still no air conditioning being built into apartments. And like, I'm just sludge.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Greg, we need to do an episode. This is a preview for what I think we should do as an episode in the future. Europe versus the US when it comes to entrepreneurship.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Biggest episode ever.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yes. I have a lot to say about that topic. And have you had Peter Levels on this podcast yet?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
We got to get him. We got it. OK, we're going to do here. Here's live canvas strategy. You and me are going to do an episode on Europe versus the US entrepreneurship. We're going to talk about Peter Levels, European accelerationism, which is one of his his new kind of movement and his merch. And Peter will just have to He'll just have to come on, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Come on, Peter. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And this is because they are using a company called King Flipchart, which literally is two people doing one thing, and that is they make the world's biggest flip chart.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It's literally like a stand with really big pieces of paper on it that you can write on and then just turn them over to the next piece of paper. A flip chart.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Honestly, I don't know. And I've reached out to them to see if there's any way I can like, get that answer. I don't know the answer to that question. But the flip charts are very expensive. And literally every single person in the personal development space is using them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Look at any Alex Hermosi video where he's like every second Alex Hermosi video, he's standing in front of two of these flip charts. And the paper refills, which are specific to these flip charts, cost $100 for one paper refill. And we're a tiny company, like my company is very small, and we're using like four to five of these paper refills per month.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So anybody who buys one of these flip charts is using that paper and essentially paying a monthly subscription to keep doing their events and using these flip charts. And they do pens.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Yeah, it's expensive because it's like completely custom made. And the weird thing about it is, so I started seeing this flip chart on stage and the exact same thing happened to me. I was like, oh man, I need a flip chart that size. And so I started looking for a large flip chart. And eventually I was looking at all these different flip chart companies.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And most companies are not standalone flip chart companies. They do all sorts of other things. And eventually I went back to the video that I was watching. And again, I think it was Alex Hermosi or Russell Brunson or someone like that. And I zoomed in and I was like, King, what is King? And I figured out it's a two person company.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
working out of italy and it's a sales and marketing expert uh and a like a furniture designer i think uh working together they're i believe a couple and they are the people who personally respond to you when you message them on the website so we had like an emergency two weeks ago because we were running an event at our office and we ran out of the flip chart paper And they're like, no problem.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
We like expedite it to you. And it's just so nice to have this as like the most personalized experience ever. And I just love, I love the simplicity of it. It's like we make a flip chart. What else do you do? Nothing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Absolutely. And that's exactly what I do as well. Like for me, once you buy one King flip chart, first of all, you're locked into the ecosystem, right? You can't find, you'd have to custom design or have a company custom design that paper size for you because it's humongous. But the other thing is I just want to keep supporting them. They're so nice.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It's just such a humble... Tiziana is the person who we talk to when we need new stuff. And honestly, one of my biggest challenges right now coming up in the summer is when I'm traveling around... And I don't have my king because I don't want to bring it onto the plane. What I'm going to have to do is literally buy a new one and have it shipped to the location that I go to.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And so I'm like super locked into the king universe. And they're just such a tiny company. I just love it. They deserve this tiny team award, which we need to make a little logo for so they can put it on their site.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
And we're wearing tuxedos here.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Greg, we are wearing suits today because we are introducing a new award for the industry. The entrepreneurial small business, business bootstrap industry.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
King flip chart. So it's just what I love about it is they've so you can buy flip charts from anywhere, right? You can go just Google flip charts, and I'm sure there's a million of them on Amazon. But they've locked themselves into this world of like direct response marketing and personal development.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
where they basically now, and all of the testimonials on their website, and I'm sure way more people have thing flip charts, but they are focusing on the people in the personal development space. And it just keeps, it keep, yeah, it's like a niche within a niche because it's not just that it's, we're just doing flip charts.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It's we're just doing flip charts for the personal development on stage space, right? which is just so cool. It's a flip chart that's big enough to be on stage. That's what I think is so unbelievably specific and niche about it. And it does make me think like, what are like the normal stationary style things where you think that 3M has already cornered the market?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
So 3M is the company that makes Post-it and all of these other things. And I actually have one of the 3M flip charts here. It's hidden in the background here. But this thing is like pretty expensive as well. But King flip chart came along and was like, what if it's the biggest though? You know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
All right. I'll lift it up again.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
That award is... The Tiny Team Award.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
I know about the story of Stardew Valley and I have it on here and have way too many hours on it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It's the flip chart family again. It's the son of the flip chart.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
It's an award we're going to give out maybe once per month, maybe once per quarter. Who knows?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Maybe once per lifetime. So like zero consistency at all. Listen, audience, don't expect any consistency here. It's an award we're going to give out to a company that has a team of less than 10 people, but that is very special.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Very, very good one. Very, very good one. Okay. So, you know, before the episode, we didn't discuss how many awards we're giving out, uh, So I'm going to give out another award right now. Another Tiny Team Award. Staying in the video game space, I don't know if you've heard of the magazine called A Profound Waste of Time. Have you heard of it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Ah, ah, I'm very happy to hear that. So in the video game space, there is a magazine called A Profound Waste of Time. The guy who does it is a guy called Caspian Whistler. And Caspian Whistler is the person who not only is like putting together this entire magazine and finding all the artists and figuring out how to get all the interviews in there.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
He's also the person who personally is messaging you when your magazine is stuck in delivery and was personally messaging my girlfriend back and forth over Christmas when she was trying to get me the three issues of the magazine. Super high quality, really amazing interviews from really crazy video game developers in there. Really like high-end video game developers.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
This solopreneur made $300M so we gave him an award for it
Like, for example, the developers who created Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Really... I don't know if you can see, if you go to the website, apwot.com. Like, it's just... ludicrously high quality for one person to go in and actually take on a project of this size. It's ridiculously ambitious as well, similar to Stardew Valley, the amount of effort that goes into a project like this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Well, you Americans, right? And I was really thinking about that this week. You Americans are all like, you've got this zin stuff. I actually don't know if it's a patch or if it's a chewing gum.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I mean, you could even simplify it down to whatever jobs require you to decide at the age of 18 that you're going to do that job, the chances of you actually liking it by the time you're 36 is very low. Like a lot of the people in my town in Ireland, anyone who is smart and good at math was basically told to do civil engineering. I don't think I know anyone who actually does that job now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
it's like engineering the engineering kind of mathematics behind like stressors on buildings and stuff like I know so it's like if you you study civil engineering you're you become an engineer right a civil engineer so what does that even mean I don't fucking know. But one of my friends is a video game designer right now. I was just going to say the name of the company, but I won't.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And he, yeah, like that's an example of a transition path that not a lot of people who went into civil engineering might know about. I mean, in the end, sometimes it's just about seeing what other people do, right? Sometimes how you calibrate what you want to do with your life is just by looking at someone else and being like, oh yeah, like I could do that with my life.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I can't even say that. I'm not even going to try to say it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I 100% believe that. Um, that's why I also like, so we talked about this before I live in Europe. Europe is very laid back. Um, you can see it from the economy, but it's like, it's super laid back. I even live in the country with like one of the best economies in Europe. I live in Germany. It's so, so laid back compared to the U S uh, from a career point of view. And I
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I do have to sometimes just get on a flight like I am in a couple of weeks and go to California just to like, you know, be in San Francisco, be in LA, hang around with other founders who are just a lot more focused and successful and like driven than me. They're just on a lot more zin than you are. I didn't know that dude. Now I know. No. Okay.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
So not everyone is, but I definitely learned, uh, I learned a lot about Zen in the last few months. Um, yeah, Americans definitely, uh, have a very unfair advantage of having like a lot of chemical compounds going at the same time to keep them very awake. Uh, I don't know whether I think that's a good thing or a bad thing. I just am now aware of this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
But yeah, there's also just this energy in the US, this energy in places like San Francisco, which I then, if I'm there a few weeks, I do start to mimic it, right? I do start to, there's this like Tony Robbins says, proximity is power. I think nothing beats it, right? If I spent more time with you in person, I'd become more like you. If you spent more time like me in person, you become way cooler.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
But really, it just is that, right? It's really hard to get away from this proximity thing. Totally separate topic, but it's also why... I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs. I'm in a lot of entrepreneur groups. And one common problem people have is like, things aren't working out for me. And I often ask, where do you live? Like, as in, do you live like near where stuff is happening?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Oh, no, like during COVID, I moved out into the middle of nowhere. And like, I've got this amazing house, but it's like three hours from anywhere. And I'm like, it's really hard to simulate the proximity thing. Like you do need to be near stuff physically, the energy, like I live in Berlin and I live in an area that's super busy and there's a lot going on and it feels, it just, there's a momentum.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
It's a little bag that you put up here. Yeah. Oh, okay. A lot of people in the Nordic countries use that too, but not for productivity because, hey, guess what? Nobody from Nordic countries is going to be watching this show for productivity ain't the thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
There's something about, not to say that being in a nice, peaceful, still place isn't a beautiful thing to have. It's just, if that's your day to day, you will also become more chill. You, you, you start to mimic that environment as well. I mean, where you look like you're in a pretty chill place right now, but you you're often in Miami, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I was going to I was going to push you on that one because I am really trying to build a community in my in my physical neighborhood here in Berlin. Like two nights ago, I was hanging out at my neighbor's house just downstairs. We're in a like a high rise building, I guess. playing the new Elden Ring DLC. I'm cooking dinner for neighbors. I know the people working in the different shops here.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
But yeah, I was thinking, I was literally like, maybe I need to start taking some of these powerful concoctions of stuff that Americans take to get work done. Um, but yeah, in the end I just ended up waiting until I didn't have COVID anymore, but I do have some fun topic. I do have one main topic for you today. I think it's like.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
So I do love to be integrated into my community. Yeah, this is interesting, right? A city is a utility. And this is actually, this is a totally different topic. I guess we're just on topic two.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
There's a lot of, I never, I don't post about remote work versus in-person work and cities versus urban environments anymore because people go, people who are like, who've made the decision to like no cities forever get so angry about it. Like if you now, for example, had moved to wherever you are right now and had decided I am now a monk living in the middle of nowhere.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And I was like, cities are a great place to get like this proximity. And you'd be like, oh, no, you can't say that for everyone. But because you're flexible and you can move between these two worlds, it doesn't bother you. And I think the objective truth about this is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
First of all, if you're already balling out of control, unbelievably rich, and your momentum is crazy and your network is insane, sure, sell everything, leave the city, live in the middle of nowhere. You don't need any more money and you don't need any more connections. And let's say your purpose is gardening, then you do not need to think about this ever again.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
But if you're still on your journey, I do think cities are, they're not just a place to go have fun. They are a utility that you pay for. Like, there's a reason also people are like, oh, if you live in Berlin, you pay this much for an apartment. But if you just move two hours outside, you can get a house for that price. And I'm like, yes, I'm not just paying for physical space.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I'm paying to be close to people who are doing things that I want to do. I'm paying for this energy. It is actually a service to live in the city. I actually heard like someone was commenting, someone was posting recently, oh, Munich is getting so expensive. It's ridiculous, whatever. And this other German guy underneath wrote and everyone was agreeing. Right. And I was also like, yeah, sure.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Like Germany is getting expensive. Everywhere is getting expensive. And
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
was kind of in agreement i was like okay yeah everything's expensive this and then somebody wrote underneath it's not your human right to live in the center of a city like it's not a human right to live in the center of an expensive city obviously different story if you live there now you're getting kicked out because of gentrification but you as a you know me as an irish guy who went to college
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I have absolutely no right to live in the center of Berlin. I don't, by the way, it's actually insanely expensive, but I have no right to do that. So it is a utility, it's a service, and you're paying a premium because of the services and the amenities provided. That's a whole separate thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
But like, for example, I know if I wanted to live in San Francisco where the center of this AI explosion is right now, if I was in AI and I wanted to like basically increase my chances of a successful outcome, I'd have to pay the price and live in a place like San Francisco.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I, when I saw this and I've been looking into it for a couple of weeks, I was thinking, okay, your audience, a couple of people in your audience are going to be smart enough and hustling enough to take this and actually turn this into a business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I'm not looking for that, but that is really the price of getting the rewards of living in a physical space that brings you closer to all the things you want. And I think a lot of people need to change their mindset about that when they're saying I can get a seven story house out in the middle of nowhere. It's like, yeah, you can. And you just need to understand the trade off. You can do that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And that's really cool. It's just about understanding these trade offs is important. Am I going down a bad rabbit hole?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
It is absolutely that. A practical example of this is talking to someone today who is talking about digital marketing and how do I do this and how do I get calls and it's really difficult to get calls and da-da-da-da-da.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And then I was like, I was trying to give advice, but then I was like, but the truth is how I started was I was in a coworking space in the center of Berlin, which was full of startups. And I physically talked to them and then I got work. Like I went drinking with them. That like, that's the truth. And now I could move out into the middle of nowhere and build a career. But it is...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Um, and it's based on, I was, so I'm in a couple of different entrepreneurial groups and one of the groups I was in, I was listening to the call last week. Again, I was like out of my head with COVID, just like slow, sweaty, whatever. Um, But I was listening to this woman and she was getting help with the marketing challenge.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
of course possible to build a career remotely and not in a city. It's just the challenge. It is kind of like playing on hard mode versus easy mode. You get the, it's like in a video game, you're putting the attributes into comfort. You're putting all your points into comfort and convenience, but then the, you have like low ability to get leads and build a career remotely. And I agree.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I think all of these options are like people who want to live out in the middle of nowhere like you right now. I think that is absolutely amazing as long as you understand the trade off. And I think a lot of people are convinced by a lot of people who still haven't built their careers yet. are convinced by some sort of part of the media to move out to the suburbs before they get any momentum.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And then there's sometimes a little bit of resentment later in life, like, oh, I could have done this, I could have done that. And it's like, yeah, you would have had to pay The city tax to get that, to get those things. Or you have to become a fucking amazing content creator, which is hard to do. Or like a world-class marketer, which is also hard to do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Totally. I want that insurance too.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I think it's, but it's, yeah, we've, we've gone deeply into another topic, but I, I would love if some of my friends and entrepreneur friends had, uh, not jumped so aggressively on the COVID, everything is going to be remote now train. And now are like, oh, it's really weirdly hard to get work. Like, yeah, it is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
It is difficult when you didn't get that momentum, career momentum before you went away. I think that's the challenge. I think there has been this like, It's back to your mimetic, the wanting book. I got to read this. I think the mimetic desire thing works more powerfully in person. It just has more of a powerful draw in person, but also, God damn it, in-person stuff's just easier.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
She was talking for a while and eventually I was just like, I'm really sorry, do you mind if I ask you how much your coaching program costs? And she said, oh yeah, yeah, it's $38,000 per year. And I was like... What the fuck? What are you? How? And the reason I was so shocked is because what she's selling is she's selling a program. It's not an online course.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
It feels like it's easier to start a career when you're in an environment where just other people are doing that too. For example, when I moved to Berlin, I just copied one of my friend's careers. He was a UX designer. We both studied digital media production. And I was just like, you're doing what? And we would go out drinking and I would talk to him about it. And then he'd show me his portfolio.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
He'd tell me how much he got paid. And I'm just like, I'm copying you, dude. Eric, thank you so much for letting me copy everything. You did. I appreciate it, dude. But yeah, that shit would be very challenging to do where I come from, which is a small town in Ireland, because I don't know if there's a UX designer there. You know what I mean? A UX designer. I don't know if there's one.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I don't know if there was one back when I was starting. I went down there. We rabbited.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
How do you split your time between this place you are right now and Miami?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
10 blog posts i want to write just fly up here spend a week here and fly back that's so cool and and you know here's the thing audience if i would spend more time with greg then i would get more successful and be able to have two places where i live so i just need to spend more time in greg's proximity absorbing his energy and then just those dollars and Come flying in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
That's how it's going to work.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Yeah, thank you so much, everybody. Appreciate your time.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
It's like a kind of one year program of coaching to teachers who don't want to be teachers anymore and who want to transition out of that career into being something else. And then I was like, okay, wait a minute. There are a lot of different careers that people are in and they probably don't know that they can take their skills and turn them into something else and get a different job.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
A lot of people get burnt out from teaching. A lot of people realize like from their perspective when it's too late, that they actually don't like it. And it's a super, super popular thing for people if you look at it. So I started Googling it then. I looked at her website. Maybe I shouldn't. I don't know.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Maybe I shouldn't tell people about her specific website on this thing because I'm sharing things from within my entrepreneur group that would maybe get me kicked out of that group. But there's a couple of companies that do something like this. For example, if you just start Googling teacher transition, new career. There's one called Teaching Transition Academy. There's things like that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And these are super high ticket programs where not all of them are high ticket. Some of them are lower ticket, but where essentially, you know, a team of people will help you figure out what you can do next. And what I love about it is that this is something that, so I run a company called ajandsmart.com
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
We help people become facilitators and we realize one of the most powerful things that we do is we help people go from where they are, which is usually like product management, UX design, project management to something more like facilitation, which is what they specifically want to do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
But looking at this, I was like, you could literally take almost any job, like nursing, teaching, I still think is really underserved. I was looking at it. You could even look at consultants who go and work at McKinsey and then realize they don't like it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
You could also look at things that are getting like laid off, like product managers, really think about how could you actually help this person get in? And especially if they're later in life, maybe they don't, they already have a family, maybe they're already kind of locked down to where they live.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
How could you actually find something that could help these people, a program that could help these people? Or could you figure out an easy thing that they could retrain themselves on? And honestly, that can be a killer business. And I was just shocked. When I was talking to her and she was like $38,000, teachers pay $38,000, usually spread out over the 12 months.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
But I was completely shocked that this was, I honestly expected her to say maximum $3,000, maximum.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
There's a couple of nuances to it that I would focus on. If I was starting this business, I'd focus on people who are, who already have kids who are already settled down where they live. Maybe their kids are just like starting to move out. Maybe they're starting to realize maybe this career isn't for me. So I wouldn't be targeting anybody like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Under 45 or maybe like it would be more like 40 and above. They'll also have more money to spend as well. So there'll be more. They'll have felt the pain also being in the industry that they don't like for a long period of time. And so I think that's why teaching. is such an amazing target. Like teachers often, I know a lot of teachers, they get to the certain point when they're like 35, 36, 37.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
My sister, for example, when she was 33, she transitioned into facilitation. I think it takes a while for them to realize, oh shit, like my salary is going to go up really slowly. I can already see, I already know what my salary is going to be when I'm retiring. And this is what it's going to be like forever. And I think there are a lot of different jobs like that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Teaching is just one of the most obvious, but immediately for me, what I'm always thinking is what would I do if AJ and smart failed? And yeah, One of the most obvious things after hearing the price of her coaching program was, well, I'd probably look for jobs that people feel stuck in. I do feel like.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
It has to be the pain that they have to feel is that they're stuck and that their skills are not transferable, right? You don't want to be targeting people like you and me who are like full stack marketer entrepreneurs who can kind of do anything. You want to be targeting people who spent their entire year building towards one career and their entire life building towards one career.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And then you can actually help them gain the confidence to move back into the market into something different. So I think it's like a career coach on Zin, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Yeah. And like, okay, so how do you build this business? Literally, especially if you're not a teacher, if I was building this, Well, first of all, you would ideally find a teacher potentially as your co-founder, a teacher who's already transitioned out. Another thing is, so literally in one day, first I would Google the shit out of it. I would look at all the Quora posts.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I was already doing this today. Looking at all the Quora questions about how to transition out of teaching, looking at all the Reddit posts about how to transition out of teaching. looking at all the different things people are doing, then I'd reach out to a lot of the people who've been posting, ask to interview them, just gather all these ideas. Then of course, I'd look at the competitors.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I'd look at all the different websites, all the different things. If I'm looking at a lot of these, they're fairly low quality from a
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
trust perspective i would say they look very salesy and and like bad and so i try to i would just build a more trustworthy version of these things and go content first and who i would make the content with would be teachers who have transitioned out right i'd learn from the people who've transitioned out of being teachers and build like the best content hub and
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
But yeah, I mean, you would just then try to, I guess it would be some form of education business, coaching business. Even better if you find like the thing that they can transition into. But honestly, I think it would be a super, it would be a super powerful business to at least replace your normal day to day corporate salary with. And you would be helping people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I was so sick. I got COVID got that bat flu right in my brain. And it just, it really messed me up. It stopped me from being sharp. There's nothing more scary as an entrepreneur, especially if you're running your own businesses, then your brain moving slower than usual.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
The stressful part is there's a lot of fear of leaving teaching and a lot of fear of won't be able to do anything else. And what that does is also makes people stay in something that's going to burn them to the ground. And eventually they end up on sick leave for, well, sometimes years. I don't know if you know any teachers who are in that setup. I do. And I think that's
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
There are a lot of people that I meet, especially older people who hate what they do. They absolutely hate it. And sometimes people come into our programs and they're so, and it wasn't, it's not even the intention of what we do at our company, but they're so thankful to have found something that they actually enjoy doing. And they never thought they would see an alternative.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
I think, I don't know if you've ever had something like that, where you get it, you get sick or something happens and you become more stupid.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And I never connected even our marketing doesn't even touch on that topic. But hearing somebody talk about building this teaching transition coaching business where you have multiple coaches hired, don't care what you think about coaching businesses, it's just an example. But there are... Just so many people stuck in jobs, like so many people stuck when they're 55 in a job they just despise.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
But the fear, the fear of not being able to do something else, you can really you can create things that are just super valuable for these people. But yeah, this teachers in transition subreddit is the perfect place to fill yourself up on the problem teachers have. It's mostly negative posts if you look at it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
The other thing I thought of is, and I found a couple of examples of this as well. Again, all... I like finding examples. We talked about this with the deep brown noise thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
It's like fragmented, scattered all over the internet, tiny little pockets of it, but paid communities, again, paid communities for teachers who are still in teaching, who are looking for essentially a support group, but also maybe looking for a way out and just having like a private space where people can also share things that will help each other have an easier teaching life.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
Again, this is not something I would personally pursue because I'm not interested in teaching. But just watching this other lady in my entrepreneur group running and I'm like, holy crap, like this is genuinely you're doing a business that makes you money, but also takes people from being burnt out and hating their lives to genuinely feeling completely different about their futures.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
That's just the standard speed for you, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
it's just crazy how many different jobs that fall into this category. I almost can't think of a job where it wouldn't fall into this category. I can even imagine if you want to go to the super high end, like the end game of this is, what do you do when you're an entrepreneur who sold their company
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Supercharge your career with this one cheat code
And you're like 40 and you've nothing to do anymore because you've nailed it and finished the video game of business. How do you transition into something else? I even think that could be a cool thing to help people with. I'm not there yet, so I can't do it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I don't know, man. But I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. These guys, I haven't used their product so I can't vouch for it, but But it's purple, so it's good. Exactly. Then you want to use 11 Labs for AI voiceovers. So you just put in the script. You get the voiceover. And then using something like vidIQ, which is a Chrome extension for keyword research and channel optimization.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
You can also use MrBeast has a new one called... Viewstats, viewstats.com. So, and there you have it in a box. But I think what's missing from here is you got to pick a niche that's high value and because it's not just about the views, it's about converting those views into products and services and communities.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Or we explode.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I think so. I think a lot of people listening to this probably have jobs and they just kind of want to set up something on the side. And then maybe it turns into something super big and maybe it doesn't need to. I mean, it could just be like... making $100,000 a year or whatever it is on the side.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Less than 72 hours. Seriously? Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, dude, 72 hours is conservative. Like 7.2 hours is realistic. But just giving extra time, I think 72 hours, like the hardest part is going to be picking a niche that doesn't have a ton of competition that you think could stand out, that you think can go viral. I mean, writing a script is really not hard.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And I mean, with Fiverr, if you want to use Fiverr, like, okay, that just extends your time 24 hours probably. Um, but all the other tools, like they're quick.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
No, I always start with the niche in mind, like the audience. And I'm always like, okay, what's a lifestyle? I generally prefer targeting lifestyles because there's like stronger, there's a stronger community with a lifestyle than just like a random audience. So I usually start with that. And I always try to look at like, what's a, what's a new, interesting lifestyle.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And like, for example, with, with the brick one, it's like, there's this whole generation of people who are like anti-phones and
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
they're buying like dumb phones um and it's starting to get it's starting you just start to see it like the posts that are going viral are like i left my phone and went for a walk and and then i see who replies i'm like that's a dumb post like and i see who replies to it and it's at jice cream on twitter oh my god i never thought about taking a walk
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And it's like, great, you know, and you can sell that you make $100,000 a year and you can sell that at five times ARR if you want.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I just feel bad for the receptionist at the climbing place. That's what I feel.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Yeah, exactly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I would say, uh, I'm targeting people of the XYZ community.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Of the climbing community, of the anti-smartphone community, of the, you know...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
keto diet diet community yeah i think those are the strongest and those unsocial just do the best because people people people see that content and you know half the people are more than half the people are like this doesn't pertain to me but the people who are into keto are like really into keto and then once you you know what once you
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
What most people are doing and what people are missing on faceless channels is they're not picking these niches. They're not really picking niches. They're just like, how do I get as much views as possible so I can monetize via ads? Whereas The move is to be like, what is the most high impact niche to go after? And then how do I create faceless content for that niche?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
you build this faceless YouTube channel or it could be on other platforms too. It could be on Instagram, whatever. Once you have that audience and now you're like one of the de facto places where that community is getting content, then that's when you can build like a set of products and services for that audience.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And the reason like I love starting at audience first is now you understand that audience better than anyone. Because when you're optimizing scripts, And you're optimizing titles and you're optimizing thumbnails. And the difference between one word is the difference if your video pops that day or goes nowhere. And that's like the YouTube algorithm.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I've had videos that just changing a word to a number is the difference between 40,000 views and 400 views. And that's just the reality. That's just the reality. And especially if you're relying on this for income, if that's the difference between $40 a day or $4 a day, sorry, and $400 a day or $4,000 a day, like you're going to pay attention to what this audience clicks.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And it's not just like the clickbait. It's also the retention. What is going to retain these people? So that's why I think doing a faceless channel in a particular niche, great way to get started if you want to start a business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Oh, 100%. Do you feel, now that you know how the sausage is made, are you embarrassed to watch faceless video?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Yeah. It's YouTube channels.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Right. And I think that's the hallmark of a great video, right? I think like if you're creating faceless, you know, YouTube content, for example, Just create great YouTube content.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
That's so lame. That is so lame, right? Like when I, that's the thing with faceless YouTube channels is they all are making money on Patreon and, um,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Would it be? Here's my take. Here's my take. Hit me. I'm about to hit you. You don't even know what's coming right now. Okay. All right. The amount of work it takes to create a faceless YouTube channel in a lower quality niche is And a faceless YouTube channel with a higher quality niche that has the potential to extend beyond ads to create something really simple.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I'm talking about you're selling a PDF, you know, on Gumroad. You're creating a paid community on school. You're like, I'm talking, you know, you're creating a pretty simple SaaS app. Like these are things that especially now, the tools are so easy and there's global talent. I just figure if I'm going to build any faceless YouTube channel, I'd much rather it be the latter, not the former.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
That's true. By the way, you know what also is a faceless YouTube channel? Literally like every animation channel. The Infographics Show. Do you know that one? No, but that's on the list, actually. So they've got 14.3 million subscribers. So we're talking... This is a top YouTube channel. Like, period.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Yeah. And they create a video every day. I'm almost certain that they use AI. Sorry. And they do... So I'll read you some of their videos. Like their latest video is how your pet is trying to warn you that you are going to die. And it's a four hour and six minute video. So these people are creating long videos, animation, AI enhanced. You know what?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I bet you on a video like that, just on ad revenue, they are making... you know, 10 grand, 15 grand easy. Because how long it is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Totally. I think that's the secret that no one's talking about is if you look on social, Quora, Reddit, TikTok, even other YouTube videos, you see which videos are being validated. So if you could basically create faceless versions of them, but also add value, you're not going to... Don't go on YouTube, find a non-faceless video and create a Facebook video because...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
You want to give credit to Cody Schneider.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
It's probably not going to work if it's just a copy. And it's just wrong, frankly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Not going to work.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I don't know why you're not doing it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And I think everyone should start a faceless YouTube channel. At the very least.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
So hopefully no one got to this point in the episode, but you should start a faceless YouTube channel. At the very least, you're going to learn about the audience and you're going to learn these AI tools, which is a win.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
We'll link it. We'll link it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I mean, worst case is this. You spend a couple hundred dollars on AI tools and you waste some time.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And you now know more about how to use these AI tools and how to build audiences more than 99.9% of the population. Literally the worst case. No one's heard of Creo. No one's heard of some of these tools. So you will be more advantageous than most people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
There's a lot of appeal and the, and you know, what does this look like if it, if it works out? Well, you've just created an audience that is, is worth millions, definitely. Uh, and might have millions of views per month, you know, building affinity, um, and, If you're working, you might be able to quit your job. You can double down. It is so much leverage in your life.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
It's the same pitch around why start. Go back to 2007, 2008, 2009. Could have made the same pitch about starting an Instagram account or starting a YouTube channel or starting a Twitter account. It's like, what is the downside? You're going to lose some time and a few dollars.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Yeah. Well, I think there's, if you fail, the reality is this, here's what you're not saying. The reality is if it fails, it's not as personal.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I don't think this was a reminder of Start a faceless YouTube channel. Or start a faceless channel. Go. Do it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Anything else you want to say before we jump?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I think we, I think we, what do you think? Cause I think focus is, I don't know.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
That was actually pretty good.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
it's an audio version of what you would have written a hundred percent yeah you nailed it you nailed it you nailed it i think there's a lot of short-term minded people in the faceless youtube game but the long term yeah the long term the long term niche focus um eventually building products and services acp funnel as i always say audience community product um
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
It's basically that. I mean, you got it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
should do well and at least you'll learn. So this has been real. And if you want to compliment Jonathan in the YouTube comments, he is accepting compliments. I got a haircut.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
It's the only way, I hate doing this, but it's the only way the video gets seen is if we get likes and comments. So if you enjoy this, just go and quick like, quick comment. And that's how we know we should continue making these videos. We do it for you. And we do love you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Crazy Taxi? Wow.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
When was the last time you played Crazy Taxi?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I'm so out on that. Yeah. It's so glorious.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Yeah, I mean, I'm going to play it. But that is hot news. And that's actually smart to build the faceless Crazy Taxi YouTube channel before it comes out. So when it hits...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Later everyone.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
So if you want to do this, here's how I would do it using mostly AI tools. All right. Jonathan, Jice, Cream, Courtney, you're back.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Well, that's because the DTC bro is now the faceless YouTube bro who was previously the crypto bro.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
right so like the next this is like the next gold rush and quick ad break let me tell you about a business i invested in it's called boringmarketing.com so a few years ago i met this group of people that were some of the best seo experts in the world they were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on google and the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and ai
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
that could help you outrank your competition. So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO and that's why I use boringmarketing.com and that's why I invested in it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30 day sprint with 100% money back guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com. You know, when I say that a lot of people are going to listen to this and they're going to be like, oh, I don't want to be. I don't want to be a DTC bro or whatever.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
But to your point, there's there's like a small subset of people who are doing faceless channels like so right. and actually adding value to the internet that, you know, this is just one of the, it's just one of the best ways to build an audience right now. Like just point blank.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
So here's what I think people are missing with faceless video channels is like traditional media, they're monetizing it basically only with ads. So a lot of these people are just, okay, I'm going to throw up a faceless YouTube channel. I'm going to clip You know what a lot of people are doing, by the way? I don't know if you've seen this. It's all over my TikTok feed.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
They're taking Joe Rogan's voice and just telling interesting stories with Joe Rogan's voice. Have you seen this?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Yeah, I've heard that. Quick story on this. Every night when I want to chill out and numb my brain a little bit, Your boy goes to TikTok. Okay? Your boy goes to TikTok. And I'm noticing that 10% of my feed is these... Joe Rogan telling these such interesting stories about like stuff that I would never expect Joe Rogan to talk about. Like how dolphins were, you know...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
essentially aliens and just the craziest stuff. And it's entertaining. I'm not saying I believe that dolphins, you know, are, you know, I, I'm not saying I believe that, you know, dolphins are, you know, smarter than human beings and like colonized, you know, the planet and stuff like that. Anyways, point is I'm getting these videos left, right and center.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
And I'm like, at a certain point I was like, there's no way that Joe Rogan said this. There's just absolutely zero chance that he's saying like thousands of these stories. And turns out it's a faceless TikTok YouTube channel. I don't remember the name. And people like that are making, you know, 10 to 100K a month on these channels. But I think the move is not to do it with ads.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
You're like the gecko of the Startup Ideas podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
It's to build your own products. Like I talk about always the ACP funnel, right? Build an audience, then convert to a community and then build a product for them. What most people are doing and what people are missing on faceless channels is they're not picking these niches. They're not really picking niches. They're just like, how do I get as much views as possible so I can monetize via ads?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Whereas The move is to be like, what is the most high-impact niche to go after? And then how do I create faceless content for that niche?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
So if you want to do this, here's how I would do it using mostly AI tools. So step one is you got to come up with ideas. You need a script and you want to optimize your script. I would probably use a mixture of ChatGPT, Cloud, Um, I'd probably use a tool like gummy search, um, which I'm actually going to create a whole search. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
I'm going to create, I'm actually going to create a whole separate video on how to mine for gold on Reddit and some of these platforms.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Yeah. Yeah. It's really, really key. It's really cool. I use it every day actually. So I'm going to, I'll do, um, I'll do a whole video on that, but I would use that to basically see like in different subreddits, um, What is being, you know, what's popular? What are people talking about? And then, yeah, I would use ChatGPT and Clo to create that script. You could also use Fiverr to supplement it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Step two is you need to create the images. So, you know, before... If you want to create a viral YouTube video, it's all about title and thumbnail. So you want to optimize for the image. So I'd probably use Dally 2 or something like that for the image generation. Step three is you're going to have to create the video. So there's a bunch of tools like this. There's NVIDIA AI.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
There's a new one called, let me pull it up. It's called Crayo. C-R-A-Y-O. Creo.ai.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
These are like faceless YouTube guys who created this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
This will make minimum $1 million per year. What if we look back to the things that were popular and exciting when we were 14.5 and you try to milk the nostalgia out of those things to create new products? And I'll give you an example. I was obsessed with the video game Halo back when I was like 13, 14. And I used to do LAN parties a lot back then.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I did. So I sent you a text message and I said, I saw this thing, I saw this survey, and also something else happened. And somehow it's connected in my mind and we need to talk about it because I think your audience needs to hear about it. And then I couldn't find the survey and then you found it. So that was the whole thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I'd love it, honestly. If someone does this in Berlin, I'm in. I'd rather be paying for this than a lot of other... Because this goes into a bigger topic, by the way. You know this idea that when AI gets better, we're all going to have nothing to do. And actually, entertainment becomes more and more important. Filling your time with entertainment is... It sounds ridiculous.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I also saw this guy on Twitter. He was doing this post. Maybe you saw it. It was like, since 1885, we've been living in a world of abundance. And so we don't actually need to do anything. Most of us are just making up our work. Look what we're doing right now, dude. And so entertainment becomes super, super important.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And it becomes an actual important industry because we're all going to be so bored. And I think, yeah, just tapping into that nostalgia, tapping into the IRL thing. Dude, online gaming did not kick off for me at all. The last time I really enjoyed multiplayer gaming was Halo 3 with a friend of mine, Alex, in person. I'm not the multiplayer gamer, but I love gaming.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I want to go hang out and play games with people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Do you still play a lot of PC games?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
You should, though. Treat yourself.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
You should just do it. Another... Another Steam, I have the Steam deck here for anyone who hasn't seen it. The Steam store is also full to the brim of games that tap into different types of nostalgia. Right now I'm playing a game called Bellatro, which is just like a, it's kind of looks like solitaire, but it's kind of like a weird haunted poker game.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I'm also playing a game called Roadwarden at the moment, which again is just full on Game Boy Color vibes, which is super cool. And it really appeals to me. I think there's just this... I don't know. I also love AAA video games, but there's something that drags deep into my soul and deep into my wallet when I see anything relating to video gaming from when I was younger.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
That mod retro, I didn't even read. I was like, I need it. I need it right now. And by the way, the shipping to Europe is almost the same price as the object and I still had to have it. If they can do that to me, there's a market.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
The survey is called, or actually, well, I don't know exactly the name of the survey, but the important part of it is called Nostalgia Tends to Peak at a Single Age. And nostalgia, in this case, you can see, I guess you'll see this in the video version, In the study, they asked people when was the most moral society? When were the happiest families? When was the best music?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
run paid ads i know you're a big paid ads guy i love paid ads yeah you love paid you love paid ads as much as you love halo i shot like 30 new ads today i saw some guy on twitter say that meta ads uh i can't remember who it was i should remember this stuff uh to get them a shout out Actually, he did a great job. Maybe I should give him a shout out. So you bring him on your pod.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
He is like this ads expert. And he was talking about the idea that like a lot of people who are running paid ads just don't run actually enough ads. And so the algorithm can't really tell which things are working. You know, as in the more ads you have, the more likely you are to find the winners. And then you can kind of double down on those winners. but it takes a while to find the winners.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I'm not going to go fully into that now, but I can find it. It was really good. I recorded loads of ads. Back to nostalgia. Dude, you know what? People are going to get nostalgic. When the people who are 15 years old watching the ads with me and them right now, in 15 years, I am going to be nostalgic to them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
It's fully bedtime. My eight sleep is like pissed off right now that I'm not, that my eight sleep is going to be angry that I did this podcast so late, but I just had the urge to tell you about this graph.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Is that relating to the eight sleep kind of bursting and soaking the whole bed or?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Is this relating to like, if I hadn't told you the idea, the idea would have changed tomorrow? Or is this related to something nostalgia related?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
That's true. River moves on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I think I just kind of, I just don't, why are you saying this quote? Yeah. because i don't know man i don't know but we gotta leave this in i like leave this in i guys i don't know why greg said that but later when i'm watching back i'll be like oh yeah like how didn't i get that like i don't know why you said that quote yeah i just i just wanted to confuse you
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I could pretend that I'd... Oh, yeah. You're right. Yes. Twice. Yes. River. I understand. Yes.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
That is a great... It is actually... It is a great quote for something, I suppose. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
When was the best fashion? When was the best economy? When was the best television? When was the best cuisine? And it asked people to sort of rate when these things were the best according to them. And it asked people from a broad range of ages. A lot of people came to the same kind of
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I do think that content would be the easiest way to start. And that content would probably be, you know, let's say Metal Gear Solid is probably one of those things that a lot of people in my generation were like obsessed with. I remember like everyone looking at every detail of the trailer for MGS2 was one of these just obsessive things.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And so what I would probably do is realistically start a YouTube channel. And I would maybe do a series on one specific game. And that series would be like breaking down what made it so special. I would try to recapture the excitement of looking at the trailers and it would be almost like a little kind of low-end documentary about maybe something like Metal Gear Solid, for example.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I would try to get an audience. Basically, I would try to get as much of an audience as possible.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
and honestly if i'm thinking about a high-end product just in something that i would know how to create i would probably create a coffee table book uh something like we talked about the um last week this guy who does the video game magazine um what's it called a something waste of time i actually have it literally right behind me uh what was it called a ap oh dude i don't know
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
it was in the podcast i know i know exactly i can picture the website i don't know what it's yeah he's really leaning into this like he he's interviewing video game developers who worked on games from like you know 10 to dude you know uh one of the biggest reveals this week in the playstation event i'm obsessed with the video game industry by the way uh one of the biggest reveals this week in the playstation event uh one of the biggest showcases was silent hill 2.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And so that would be an example. That's getting remade. Like, if you played a game that really stuck with you, that you became obsessed with, that you got really into... making content about that product and I wouldn't even sell it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
The high-end product probably would be a coffee table book about either one game or it's about a couple of games that came out for maybe there's a special coffee table book just for the PS1 or just for the PS2 or just for Halo. That would be probably my angle. What would yours be? Oh, I got one more. I got one more. Controllers.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Like refurbishing controllers like PlayStation 1 controllers or Xbox controllers. Like just making them, I don't know, making them into like some sort of object that you can have in the house. Maybe it's just the faceplate of the controller. I don't know. Something with that, you know?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
or a lot of people's answers lined up with that basically the best stuff, the best movies, the best everything happens, happened sometimes between sometime between when people are like 10 years old and 20 years old. So nostalgia peaks somewhere in between 10 and 20. I think they did they like bring it down to 14.5.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
So you would also sort of do a content-first approach? Yes. Content-first and then just see what sort of things... I think also even something as basic, if you go to the Kojima website, Hideo Kojima has his own company now. He's the guy who made Metal Gear Solid. And I actually buy the shit on that website. I have his hat from the Death Stranding video game.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I buy little keychains, all that kind of stuff. But you know what I think would work best? I love the high-end idea, the high-end product idea. I would just advertise other people's high-end nostalgic products.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
on my super long form three hour episode per week conversation between me and you talking about reminiscing about our gaming time during like the you know late 90s and early 2000s honestly yeah yeah and you know the name of the show would be called the good old days the good old
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I remember the good old days. I remember it. There's actually a podcast that if you guys want to check out an example of like, it's not exactly what we're talking about, but there's an element of it because it's more about the industry. It's called Game Boys to Men by Jeff Gerstmann. I don't know if you can get it for free. I pay for access to it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And it's like this guy and his friend reminiscing about the games industry in the 90s. But I think there's a Game Boys to Men for millennials talking about Halo, Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid. Guys, if you're listening to Greg's podcast right now, let me see if this does something to you. Da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da. You've lost your entire audience.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
You don't know... If you're listening to this and you heard what I just did, put it in the comments. We got to tell Greg what he's listening to.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
You don't know that one?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Okay, let's see if you know this Nintendo one.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
So like basically somewhere between the age of 14 and 15 is where like your nostalgia absolutely peaked. What do you think about that one, Greg? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Dude, this is fucking so fucking cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Dude, you know what's so weird? Remember earlier, I haven't seen this before, but remember earlier when I said I would take the faceplate off the controller? And I didn't explain what I would, I was imagining putting it on some type of frame. But this is way cool. I wasn't thinking about this exploded view.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
But honestly, looking at the Xbox original Duke controller version of this gives me that feeling of nostalgia. Yeah. Oh my God, this is so cool. Do you see the SNES one?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
The fucking Game Boy. I really, really love this. I love this. Do you know the people who did this?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Oh, I actually need to get this purple Game Boy color with Pikachu on it for myself.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I already spent a lot of money on a Game Boy nostalgic thing today. Totally. Yeah, but dude, this is... Okay, I mean, you obviously found the best example. This is amazing. That's exactly what I'm talking about. On the product level... So now that I've seen this... I would make a YouTube channel about Halo, about that era.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
So I think it's probably best to choose your... When you said niche down, if I was thinking about this and I was spending a bit more time on it, I would probably choose a platform first and that would be my first channel. So I would choose the original Xbox just because I have somehow shit tons of nostalgia for that, even though I had the N64, I had the Dreamcast and I had the Xbox.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I think the original Xbox was the most influential console to me because of Halo. And that would be the channel I would create. I would focus on the Halo games. I'd focus on a lot of the other... I mean, there wasn't so many other amazing games that came out outside of Halo that I really loved on the Xbox. But yeah, I would focus in on that. I talk about that a lot.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And I would be an affiliate of this. I would be affiliate of Grid. What do they call it? Grid Studio.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Have you seen Displate? D-I-S-P-L-A-T-E?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
So it's kind of similar. I mean, no, it's not similar to that, but it would be another one of the affiliates for our new podcast. And actually, interestingly enough, coincidentally, Halo is right up front when you land on their display.com landing page. I mean, I don't know how much money they're making, but a lot of influencers talk about them. It's kind of cool. Interesting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Man, this is like... I want to shut down my business and just work on this now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Yeah, but the hosts aren't supposed to do it. Oh, yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Yeah, but honestly, dude, listen, we're not going to do it because we don't have time because you're running a lot of businesses. I'm running one. I'm going to give someone the exact idea. This will make minimum $1 million per year. If you liked that era of video games and if you have a friend to talk about it,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Or even if you don't, so if you don't use Jeff Gerstmann as an influence, so go to YouTube, search for Jeff Gerstmann. He does a one-man show every week. It's three hours long. and you talk about nostalgic, but not, the thing is, people, when they talk about nostalgic games, they go too far back. They're talking about like the original SNES. I'm talking about nostalgic for the millennials.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I honestly, I don't know if that exists yet. There's low, retro is always SNES. It's always, you know, original Sega Mega Drive. I'm talking about retro for us is Halo. It's Metal Gear Solid. It's Silent Hill 2. It's Resident Evil. Resident Evil. And it's Syphon Filter, all of this shit.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
So if you can become the content creator for the new millennial retro, you're going to make yourself a millionaire. And you're not trying to make content that's super educational. It's comfort noise. You're making comforting episodes that last three hours long. You're just chatting about shit. Listen to Jeff Gerstmann. He's a perfect example of it. It's just three hours of chatting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And he opens energy drinks and talks about them. There's just something deeply satisfying about listening to his podcast. And I think this needs to exist for the millennial retro, whatever the fuck that's called.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
They're some of the best memories of my entire life. And if I'm thinking, okay, so that's a memory that I had that I really deeply loved. But what could be something you could do? Okay, it's a comforting memory. Maybe I could start a Twitch channel where I just run LAN parties with eight other people in a physical space. And you're not trying to make content that's like super educational.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
It's a whole media empire run by me. Even though I'm not going to do it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I know. I have so much, dude. I have so much stuff. I don't use it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
This thing is great, though. Look how cute this is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I love the colored buttons. Never going to use it, though. So yeah, that's it. That's all I came here to say. I appreciate you having the time.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
This is personal. I don't know if this is the best episode to do. I mean, this episode's definitely the right... If you don't like this episode, you won't like the vibe. So yeah, you got to tell us if you like the vibe and if you recognize what I was humming as well earlier.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
See you, Greg. Bye. Bye.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, it could be a little bit of both, but it's probably more of the nostalgia element of it, I guess.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Although it is pretty good.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Yeah. So I think I have an idea of how to land this, although it might not work. So the reason this came back to my mind earlier and the reason why I messaged you is because today I bought a very cool thing because it launched today and it's something called a Mod Retro. which is Palmer Luckey's new physical product. Palmer Luckey is the guy who invented the Oculus Rift.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And he also runs Endural, which is like a defense contractor right now. And he's also really into video games. He used to be like a Game Boy modder. And he created this mod retro, which is like a ridiculously detailed and loving recreation of the Game Boy Color. I guess it's the Game Boy Color. I just bought the orange one if you're wondering which color I went for.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And I looked at this page and I was immediately like, I need to get this. This is something I have to get. Now, I had a Game Boy Color. I think I was, I don't know actually exactly what age I was. But when I saw this and I knew I had to buy it, I started thinking back to this study. And I was like, I actually have a weird thing about buying nostalgic things in general.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
There are things where when I see a YouTube video of it or when I see like a, for example, I just got a Game Boy DS because I remembered having it as a teenager and I was excited about it. And it's not really that I end up playing these things or even using them, but just having them gives me sort of like a comforting feeling. I can't really exactly describe it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And I started to look around and realize that so many of the things that I buy and so many of the things that I do, I'm looking to the other side of my apartment here and I can see a lot of Radiohead vinyls and they're all of the albums that I was listening to on repeat when I was 15.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
um i was listening to kid a like on repeat over and over and over um but also like the teenage engineering products that i love and i obsess about and this is also a teenage engineering object it's just like hyper nostalgic hyper nostalgic designs um and i was thinking right okay startup ideas we're always looking for ideas we're always looking for new angles
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
What if you look at people like, okay, we're millennials. We look back to the things that were popular and exciting when we were 14.5. Hey, everyone.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
It's comfort noise. You're making comforting episodes that last three hours long. You're just chatting about shit. So if you can become the content creator for the new millennial retro, you're going to make yourself a millionaire.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And you try to milk the nostalgia out of those things to create new products. And I'll give you an example of like a business that I think you could make relatively good money out of. And I want to go like hyper over the top specific here. One business could literally be looking at something. I was obsessed with the video game Halo back when I was like, I don't know, like 13, 12, 13, 14 years.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And I used to do LAN parties a lot back then. This is where, for any millennials listening, you'll know what this is. You literally would like connect your Xboxes with a cable. We would all sit around in my house in Ireland and destroy the place. But it was like, they're some of the best memories of my entire life.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And if I'm thinking, OK, so that's a memory that I had that I really deeply loved, but I don't see anyone massively taking advantage of, you know, exploiting that memory. But what could be something you could do? OK, it's a comforting memory. Maybe I could start a Twitch channel where I just run, you know, once a week or even, you know, once every day if you want to go hardcore.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I run LAN parties with like, you know, eight other people in a physical space, Halo, maybe Halo 2 as well to add in the, you know, dual wielding for any of the people who know you could hold two guns at the same time. It's pretty cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And honestly, just I honestly think just streaming something like this and then turning that into other types of content, maybe a weekly podcast talking about Halo and Halo 2. I don't know how much money you could make out of it. But if you look at something like the kind of funny games cast, which is a daily gaming podcast, more focused on the news side of things.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I think you could make a fair amount of money doing advertising in a piece of media like that, at least for a while. And then you add in the next thing. Another thing I think you could do, which would be pretty fun, is you could create... And I was listening to My First Million today, and they were talking about these speciality print magazines that
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And I was thinking like, I was one of the very few people who had a Dreamcast video game console. And there was like four of us in the world. But you could definitely create something really high end for us four people. Maybe like a ridiculously nice coffee table book for all of the nostalgic video games and all of the elements of the Dreamcast that would just get someone like me drooling.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
um and yeah i don't know man there's just something to this idea of looking at what was hot what was exciting what made you feel super cozy and it is a comfort thing it's not about making like an amazing new creative thing it's like how do you bring back that sense of comfort uh to the millennials who just crave that sense of like oh man that was such a that was such a cool thing that was such an amazing time you know what i mean am i getting this point across at all
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Wait, what kind of console boy were you when you were like 14, 15?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Oh, the Cyber Games.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
It's funny because I was thinking, okay, first I was thinking, yeah, but that's just a fucking creepy internet cafe. But that's the thing. Internet cafes are now really creepy and weird because like who goes into them? You know, I don't exactly know. Creepy people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
creepy people but um if you were to have a place for millennia like professional millennials to go where they could do multiplayer games that basically also the other thing is like once you turn like 20 you kind of stop gaming in the way you used to when you were in a t you're a And also you cannot compete against people playing Counter-Strike now. Like I'm 36.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
If I try to play any online multiplayer game, including the new Halo Infinite, I can last like three seconds. But if I could go to a place, I honestly, I'm always thinking about like, what are some alternative ideas to bars where you go drinking? And you know what, dude? Fuck. I also, and I've been talking to my girlfriend about this a lot. I hate going to dinner parties.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I hate going to bars and just sitting around in a circle and talking to people. It's so intense. And what I used to do when I was a teenager is we would play games together. We wouldn't sit all facing each other. We had something to do while we were kind of chatting and shooting the shit.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And I think one of the things that I really miss and I'm trying to bring it back into my like social life is just doing stuff when you're hanging out with your friends instead of just sitting around drinking, smoking, whatever it is. I feel like having a central activity. And if we could, if we could have a Soho house with LAN party combo, dude, I would be so in, I would be so in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
That's me. That's me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
And it's kind of, if you think about it, a lot of the most famous entrepreneurs like, okay, Palmer Luckey, also Elon, also just a lot of people who are in startups are kind of nerds. Maybe that's also a great way to just meet other very interesting entrepreneurs. In a way, again, I cannot stress enough how much I don't like sitting at a table and facing people and having to interact with them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
The only way I can do that and find it interesting is when we're drinking. When you're out at a bar and you're all sitting around a table, it's just kind of intense if you're stuck next to someone and you kind of have to talk or else you're going to be weird. But if you have something to do, I mean, I'm a nerd. I find it awkward, I think, to just sit directly across from someone and talk to them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
Speaking into a metal rectangle.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
But if you have something to do, I think you can have some pretty interesting conversations. Halo, GoldenEye, all that kind of shit. There's something to it. I know that people have tried to open arcade bars, but I'm not talking about arcades. That's not the vibe. I'm talking about Halo. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Nostalgia hacking: my favorite money-making hack of 2024
I'm talking about also standing sometimes.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
What is the thing that you find the most difficult and painful about entrepreneurship?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I'm I'm I'm I'm going to just continue drinking mouth. Yeah. Until further notice. Okay, wait, I just want to make sure I got... So you basically just don't ever get to the point where you feel overwhelmed or stressed. You don't go too close to the sun.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Fucking Superman over there. So the unfortunate answer to this question is you are as chilled as you seem. Unfortunately. Would your employees say that you are a chilled person to work with?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
So, ah, do people say that about, like, I know that people say about me that I'm very direct, but also like, I don't talk about the positive things. I'm just talking about the night. I'm like a very much a firefighter. Um, I jump in and I'm like, this is broken. This is broken. This is broken. We need to fix this, this, this, this, this let's do this, this, this, this, this goodbye.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Um, and that obviously rubs people the wrong way. And I've heard obviously negative things coming out of that. Uh, like no one, no one who works with me would say, oh, Jonathan's so chilled. It wouldn't be what they would, uh, talk about me publicly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Just topless, but like not in shape.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Oh, that sounds dangerous.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
twitter's api you know is is being shut off or whatever it is okay okay well you can tell i came to this uh session today uh in a stressed mode and i just wanted you to say you get stressed too but fuck you greg yeah yeah i mean i do get stressed but But you never get to the point where you're like, fuck this thing. Fuck LCA. I'm selling it. I'm done with all this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I'm going to go live in a cabin and then I'll get, I'll think about what I want to do in about five years.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I get to that point multiple times per year, not just with it. Like just it's part of the way my brain works. Sometimes I'm like, ah,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Well, first of all, I'm very grateful for the revenue and profit it generates. And I love the business and it is a big part of my life. It's just sort of part of how my brain works, I would say. Sometimes I just hit a wall and get sick of something and I just want to move on to something new and interesting. I generally... Hold myself back from doing that and like stay on the core business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Okay. All right. So before you hit record, I asked you if it was going to be okay to bring this topic to you and you just pressed record. So you don't know what it is yet. So that's how the podcast works. I like it. I've been pushing. So I've been running my company for 14 years coming up in September, AJ and Smart. And there's been many...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And the problem is sometimes it's also worked out really well. Like I remember a couple of years ago, like seven or eight years ago, I was so sick of just focus or relying on client work to make money. And you maybe know the cash flow kind of variation when you're just doing client consulting work. And we started the education business with in-person training and then online training.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And that moved our burn rate from three months to 15 months to 18 months. And I was like, holy shit, just being super annoyed at something sometimes generates interesting things. Yeah. I mean, what I often say is I'm not the right person to be the CEO because I am the person when I get annoyed with something, even if it's making money, I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I don't want us to do this anymore.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Laura and I have talked about this multiple times and I think... Yeah, one part about it is the idea of looking for someone sounds annoying. And I've heard that process is very difficult and often doesn't work out. The other part is maybe I'm just not ready to let it go just yet. The other part is I did bring in a CEO for the consulting business and fucking shit hit the fan majorly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Can you assess whether we should have a new CEO? Can we do an assessment? You own so many companies.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Four times maybe per year.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I'm not against it. I think, you know, we're, we're doing sort of a big relaunch in September. I talked, I talked to you a little bit about it off the podcast. And I think that's the point where I like, I basically have the vision for the next 12 months, which I'm very excited about and very happy about and very proud of. Um,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And I feel like once that's in place, that's the next 10 years worth of stuff for the company to do. And I think I'd prefer, I prefer for in that decade to be more in the role of the person who is bringing product ideas and bringing the, maybe be like being the, the sounding board for someone else who's running it versus being the person running it and making the decisions. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
It's a, it's a constant conversation, dude. This is, I have no idea if any of this is interesting for your audience. I'm just telling you, I just answered your question. Sorry. I mean, you're like, you're like, the audience is here to learn how to start a business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And we're like, so when you're 15 years into it and it's already making millions, here's the small problems that you're going to, you know, I think, uh, if I were you, I would also become a hold co-entrepreneur. Yeah, I have to talk. I don't even really know what that is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
basically the topic I want to talk about is kind of like burnout and keeping going as a self-employed kind of solopreneur entrepreneur. Like, I guess my first question is, do you ever feel just like, fuck, like I just have so much going on. There's just too much. I just want to get rid of it all and go sell it and live in a cabin in the woods in Canada.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Like, so I would basically have a holding company and then that would own AJ and smart and that would also own other companies and I would be on like the board of these companies.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
You know what? You know what I don't like about that for me?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I really optimize for peace. I like peace and calm and quiet and not a lot of stuff going on. I don't even like traveling because it kind of breaks me out of my routine and I love my routine. I had a holding company which I shut down in December and I was doing investments and I was looking into this concept.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And I think the way my brain works, that would feel... I'd love to help other companies with their products and their strategy with no paperwork at all. And I heard Jason Fried saying this recently. If they make shit tons of money and they feel like reimbursing me for the work I did, great. But I don't know if I actually want to have...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I don't know if I want to do the paperwork for the, and I know I wouldn't personally be doing the paperwork. I wasn't personally doing the paperwork for my holding company and my company. It's just that world of adding.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Well, the holding company I had, which I started, it's just a vehicle for owning other things.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
But there's lots of legal and paperwork behind that. It's a whole other company.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I hate it. No, I hope some people in the comments understand me here. But I feel so much better when I'm working on one thing like doing like it's... I like simplicity and peace. And I would always choose that over complexity, even if it means way more money.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I don't sign every deal. Like $450,000 deals will come in, which I won't even see. It's more that I feel like I'm going to come across like a complete idiot on this call because this is the truth. Because my entrepreneur friends also think I'm stupid when it comes to this stuff. It is, there's more noise when I have holding company plus AJ and smart, plus a few other things going on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
There's more text messages, there's more emails, there's more slacks. And it doesn't matter how like automated and incentivized everyone is. Someone will always come to me and say, yeah, you know, I'd actually like to talk about my compensation for doing this thing in this company. And I, I simply don't enjoy the amount of new open threads it creates.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Someone we know, you and I know, Sam, somewhat, Sam Ovens, he has a similar brain in a way that he hyper-focuses on one thing and leaves infinite money on the table because of wanting to avoid complexity. And so for me, I view that as more complex than I want to go to, even though everyone tells me I'm stupid about it and I don't disagree with them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
So I agree it's stupid that I won't do the Holiko thing, but it just makes me feel stressed. It's the reason I also don't own a place. I have a very simple, easy setup life.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
So I guess my first question before I even ask, Any other questions? Because I want to learn some shit from you here. Do you get to those phases where you're just done with it all?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
abstract away meaning giving it to other people correct dude it always comes back yeah it always comes back it like as in for me it it still like let's say um like there's always things that come back to the legal owner yeah you know what i mean eventually yeah obviously but you know it doesn't it doesn't have to happen like very frequently
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Yeah, exactly. I am literally talking about that level. But it's like, all right, I don't know, again, what you want to put on the podcast. I have a kid in the picture that makes everything 10 times louder and 10 times more complicated. And she's not in the kindergarten. And now there's an outbreak of a vomiting bug. And now I have this thing over here. And now I have this thing over here.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
It makes me feel... stressed and like loud, even when one thing per extra thing per quarter comes in. Whereas when I'm just running one business, it's still a lot of stuff, but dude, you know what? I think I need to talk to you about this. Cause maybe you're right.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Maybe I'm just doing way too many things that are completely unnecessary, but I have these phases where I like step out of everything and then I'm like, all right, I'm free. And And then I'm like, I'm going to go in. And then I'm like, I'm overwhelmed. And finding this middle ground between bored and overwhelmed, I find very tricky.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Do you have a financial goal? I think that's one of the issues I have is that I don't know what I'm actually working toward. I don't have like, oh, this would be the number I would love to have or this is the thing I'm trying to do. With AJ and Smart, I'm like 10 million revenue, but it's like a random thing I pull out of my head. It's not a...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Do you have, for yourself personally, do you have like a financial goal on a yearly basis or like when you want to retire, like when do you want to be financially free, something like that? Am I coming across as like really neurotic and weird on this episode?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I really appreciate that you do actually put out the podcast unedited like this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I mean, in a way, it can be painful to watch because there are any awkward silences between you and I are still in there. I'd appreciate if your editors would remove some of that. But I think it's cool that you're willing to just put it out there and including the fact that you say these sayings and then forget them and just doesn't matter.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
So I think this could be the title and this could be the clip here coming up because I feel like What is the thing that you find the most difficult and painful about entrepreneurship? So my answer to that question is that I do have the feeling that there's a lot of weight on my shoulders to make the decisions that move us forward.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
the financial well-being of the people who are employed by me and like the direction and all of that. And then sometimes I'm like, man, I wonder, could I just make the same amount of money not doing all of that and not having all of this responsibility?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
So for me, definitely there's this feeling of wouldn't it be great if someone else would just tell me what to do sometimes instead of having to be basically creative all the time? what do you find painful or negative or what sometimes really gets you about being an entrepreneur? I'm trying to get fucking anything out of you, man.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And then I would say, because I guess we're just different types of entrepreneurs, I would say that it would be difficult for me to go all in on one of them and really like, I don't know, I feel like right now with AJ and Smart, We've the last couple of years, we've been sort of like, are we a training company or are we a consulting company?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And I think actually we're about to go in a direction that will be more akin to the way you're doing it today. where we have a bit more separation between the brands. And actually, maybe all of this bullshitting I've been talking about in this episode is going to be all undone when people see the relaunch because it's a bit more holdco-y. But yeah, I think for me, I struggle.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
First of all, uncertainty, absolutely. I think if you inherently struggle with uncertainty, I don't think you'll even go into entrepreneurship. Absolutely.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Like, you know, your podcast talks a lot about ideas and I think ideas are great and all, but underneath... You can't come on the Startup Ideas podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
No, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, I think you'll agree with the next thing I'm going to say. Ideas are really important, but the person who's actually executing the ideas and their mindset and their abilities is just as important, if not more. Like if you took any of Cody Schneider's ideas, his second name is Schneider, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Okay, if you took any of Cody's ideas, but you were really worried about uncertainty all the time and you were still like, I don't know, you just had this and you also got overwhelmed very easily and you had a lot of fear, you'd have a harder time than someone who is more entrepreneurially inclined. You'd struggle with it more. And so I think ideas are, execution is just extremely important.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Execution Ideas Podcast. Oh, no. Startup Execution Podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Actually, yeah, then let me put my statement more clear. I do actually think execution is more important than the ideas themselves. And I've seen people try to execute the same ideas as I do, but they give up much quicker than me. And so therefore, it's as if it didn't matter in the first place.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you are right on that one. I guess when I say execution, I mean the actual ability to follow through and even hire that person. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
All right. Just so you can say this is the name of the podcast. I told you the topic wasn't necessarily related.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
similar similar yeah similar like really cult they become super overcrowded everyone loves them i also love them um yeah i don't know what you're going to say next but that part is similar what i'm going to say next is that i think that so this town that has the farmer's market
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
So talk to me about this. You work every day, by the way, which I think is... who gives a shit? Like there's no rules about when you can work and when you can't work. And I think it's ridiculous that, yeah, everyone's trying to jam everything into the Monday to Friday. And actually that could be causing a lot of burnout because you're jamming it all in there.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I love it. And you could even like... Okay, so the idea would be you're running... Is it like a two-sided marketplace as well where you're also essentially bringing the customers by being also the advertiser for the event?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Okay, so... That's really cool because what you could also do, and you know, if you want to get funding, you have to say the word AI. So you have to use AI to find the perfect towns where you can set this up, where you can say, find me. We use this amazing AI to find the towns which do not yet have farmers markets, but have all of the supply areas. And are surrounded by a lot of demand.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And so we find these center points and we turn them into these third spaces where people from different towns can come together. And you could also then expand it to... I don't know if you guys... Flea markets in Berlin are also super popular. And they combine flea markets with farmer's markets. And it's like a whole thing. You could just expand out to anything where...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Then you're like, now is my time where I take my break and now I'm back. So you said you work best in the morning. So the reason you work every day is just so you can work every morning instead of having to work full days, just Monday to Friday. Like how much do you tend to, Like what's your workday look like?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
It's like a big logistical thing as well because, well, that also gives it sort of like a moat because if you can get this working, it's really hard to compete with. There's a, I'm not going to reveal where I live, but there's a market near to where I live.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And the company obviously who runs the market, you know, they set up the tables, they set everything up so that the different companies can just, like there's a place here, if you Google it, called Mark Talanoin. And you rent the space. They have the space. They've now expanded it out onto the streets. It's unbelievably popular.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And it's gone from being a farmer's market to now there being events on Thursday nights. And Saturday, there's this cheese event. And then there's a chocolate-focused event. That shit is expanding like crazy. And I never thought about it being an actual... I never thought about the idea that you could be the...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
middleman in between all of these places even then finding the location even like renovating the place being the person who brings all the tables you could really like corner that market in your area are you gonna do it probably not you got enough but you got your whole co you can just like you abstract it out abstract it out i'm i'm i'm really into uh
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
How would you start something like that? Would you start by going to the suppliers? Would you start by looking for the space? Like what would be the early steps? If someone in your audience actually wants to give this a try, what would be like some of the, tomorrow this would be the first thing to do?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Yeah. Yeah. I remember, I think I was in like Sweden recently and I was looking, there was like this timeout food court. I was like, what the, why timeout? Timeout what? I didn't get the connection with the magazine. And so for me, I just had no idea what that meant. It was like, I'm going to take a little break, take a little time out. Okay. So this... idea is super interesting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I have the boring agency that can go along with it. So let's say the Holdco that creates this farmer's market will have another business, will own another business, which is like... The business that you can hire to help you basically invent and conceptualize and create the logistics around events like this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I honestly think if you had... One of the most difficult things to do... I'm flying to Palo Alto in a couple of weeks to run a training event. And... Selling the event, and the tickets are like 10K each, was 100 times easier than arranging the event and organizing it and getting the catering sorted. And in the end, we spent approximately $30,000, probably more than $30,000 to get it all organized.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And we couldn't find anyone to help us with this. We ended up almost doing every element of it ourselves, or at least we didn't find any influencer or brand or YouTube channel that talks about setting up events in a way that would make us reach out to them and contact them. And I was thinking just when you were talking there is we need the Greg Eisenberg or we need the, you know, specific info.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
We need me for in the facilitation world. But for event management, which is, first of all, seen as a job no one really wants to do. And it's like always in the top lists of most stressful jobs to do as well. but it is a thing that a lot of companies wanna do events, especially now post COVID, a lot of companies wanna go back to doing more in-person things.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And it is really difficult to find anyone to help with that, to help with the logistics. Literally the brief would have been, We're running an event in Palo Alto. It's four days long. There's this many people. Can you fucking help us figure this out? And we'll give you a 10K commission, whatever the commission is on the thing. And we couldn't find anybody. So we did it ourselves.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
So for this idea that you have, it would be amazing if you as the entrepreneur, if you were starting it, could call up event in person co and say, Hey Greg, like we're thinking about doing this thing in this town. Uh, I really do not want to be involved in the logistics of it for the first one, at least. Can you do like an event sprint for us and get it off the ground next time?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
How do you figure out what those three things are? Are you doing any sort of like, I don't know, task making exercises or prioritization things? Or is it just like you wake up and you're like, here's the fires or here's the interesting things to do? Or what does it look like?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
We'll do it all ourselves because you'll have connected us with all the people, but how do we get this event off the ground? Can you do an event sprint for us? Like that type of company desperately needs to exist.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Someone who is very good at organizing stuff and enjoys that and gets pleasure out of it needs to start an event management company that isn't a website with pictures of big speakers and PA systems on it. It's a video of a person showing you how to do it all yourself, Greg, content style, but for event management, honestly, I think would be a game changer.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I think you could start it in basically every city and these people will be booked out forever.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
So those are like these like brand activation things, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Yeah, if you want to look at what I was looking at, go to Google or if your team wants to show this, you Google event management Palo Alto. Palo Alto, like one of the wealthiest places on the planet. And hopefully you see the opportunity I'm talking about. Oh, man. I don't want to shit on any of the companies. I just want to say we ended up having to do it ourselves.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I didn't, I really, I really, but also like this, you know, Laura organized our Palo Alto event, booked the location, booked the catering. She's our head of marketing. This is how difficult, and every day of her time is worth a lot of money. 100%. It's crazy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Did I save myself at the end there after shitting all over the podcast and saying it's all about execution?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
We literally do and reply to every single one as well.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Yes, please. And thank you so much, Greg, for having me on the podcast again. Thank you so much to Greg's audience also for the really kind comments. And your audience is really great. And like Greg said, we genuinely read every single one. Makes our day when you guys have something to say. Absolutely no criticism is accepted. No, just kidding.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
By the way, it's a perfect example of my peace thing. I just don't use social media because I don't want to keep going into all the services and seeing what's going on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I'm worried. I'm worried that, no, no, I'm using Twitter now. I'm using X because of you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying, I only downloaded, I only went back to X after being on the episode with you a couple of weeks ago for the first time in seven years or something. So I'm actually having a lot of fun on there now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Okay. I'm following your advice. I'm trying to follow your advice anyway.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Me building an audience. Bye, everyone. Bye.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
So I'll tell you where my struggle comes from. So I agree, it's fun. I also don't have productivity systems. And honestly, most of the people I know who have really detailed productivity systems are generally entrepreneurs. They pretend they are going to be entrepreneurs, but all they do is just make systems, but they don't make any money at all.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I actually know someone who is, I don't want to, it could be too close. Let's say I know a person called Kevin, just because I have this book here, who obsesses about systems and reading all the books and reading all the entrepreneurship stuff and collect all these systems and everything.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
literally has never made one dollar as an entrepreneur mainly works in corporates but talks about being an entrepreneur all the time and so i would generally agree with you productivity stuff is just like not for real business people here's the non-system system i'll give it to you the non-system hit me greg eisenberg's non-system system is this wake up relatively early What's early for you?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Okay, let me ask for some context here. Feel free to cut any of this out. Not cutting any of this out. I'm going to ask questions as if you might cut stuff out, but I'm just going to ask freely, okay? Yes. Many times when I'm talking to entrepreneurs who are very relaxed and I'm confused about why they're so relaxed, I find out that they're already ludicrously rich. So I'll give you an example.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I know an entrepreneur who talks a lot about know not pushing too hard and and like it's all easy and it's all fine and i found out that he got like an a 18 million dollar kind of inheritance uh a very long time ago and then i was like of course i wouldn't be burnt out if i had 18 million in my bank account so my question is
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Were you always this, well, first of all, do you have like crazy inheritance and you just don't give a shit about money and it's all good?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
You seem very chill, but you also seem to get a lot done.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Honestly, yeah, it's tricky because I'll tell you for me, one of the things that gets me or the times where I'm the least chill is usually when a part of the business is not working necessarily or very well. And I can tell that it needs like an overhaul in order to start working well again.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
For example, like last year, the consulting or like the corporate consulting and corporate training side of the business just needed a massive overhaul. And I could tell like basically stagnating revenue, stagnating profits. Actually, the profits were starting to slowly go down and I could just see
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Shit, like in a few months time, this is going to be hitting the break even point and then we're going to start losing cash flow. And... I see a project of that size and sometimes I'm just like, I'm just not in the mood to do that right now. Like I'm not in the mood to take it on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And this could be related to the way I have not necessarily hired and staffed up in the way maybe you have like a TO at LCA who seems to just be able to take things and run with them. But Laura and I at AJ and Smart definitely have this feeling that if we, if something starts to stagnate, it's not possible to fix it without me personally jumping in or Laura personally jumping in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Do you still get dragged into things like that? Or are you just totally, are you out of this sort of revenue, cash flow, day-to-day stuff?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
I'm sipping here. I'm sipping over here. Sipping time, baby. I'm sipping some bouche. I don't know if it's pronounced bouche. Bouche.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Sure. And actually, just to be clear, and I know this is becoming a therapy session for me. Thanks, Greg. I don't work an abnormal amount of hours. It's more like the amount of hours I do. And sometimes it is three or four hours. They... they can be quite consequential for the business. They can be the ones that make the decision that makes us the money for the next six months.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
And obviously, I have experimented with stepping out and being out of the business for quite some time. And then more stagnation sort of kicks in. So I guess at least today, I feel like I'm still... very much needed. And that, I guess that stress of knowing that if I just take my eye off the ball, something can fall apart.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Any person running a successful business will now say, well, your business is not robust enough. You're right. And that's what I'm trying to figure out. But yeah, like that's the stuff that kind of stresses me out. Doesn't mess with my sleep. It isn't all the time, but it does. There are like sometimes weeks where I'm like, oh man, now I want to sell the company.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Like whenever I'm annoyed with AJ and smart, I'm like, fuck this. I'm just taking the money out and I'm done. You know, that, that, that comes to my mind.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
It means mouth? Oh, no. I'm sipping on some mouth.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Obviously we're, we're running a, this is a entrepreneur podcast. Like it's, it's a, we're not trying to help people figure out how to,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
do important life although we're yeah we're talking about fuck anyone saying their champagne problems they're coming to this podcast to listen to two relatively successful entrepreneurs talk about stuff fuck you i'm just i just think that someone's listening to this and being like burnout you know like i'm just trying to
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Local businesses to start with NO startup costs
Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, I only realize now that Zin is these pouches that they also sell in Sweden. So like easy access. But I heard they can be quite addictive. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
What do you mean by chasing generational wealth is overrated and wealth is underrated?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Sip the egg juice. That's my next idea. Egg juice. But I was going to make a point related, like, when I come to this podcast, so obviously, I've been on a couple of episodes of this podcast, and I'm sort of like an anomaly in it, like, as in I'm regularly here, but...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
When I look at the comments, I'm like, oh yeah, people don't realize that my brain is a bit broken and that I'm just kind of also a silly man. I'm a silly man. And when people come here for like hardcore back-to-back business ideas and I'm on here, like there was some guy in your comments last week who was like, I want to give you some constructive feedback, Greg.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Don't have this guy on your podcast anymore.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And these are the books that had the biggest effect on me getting to my first million, running my business. So I thought a conversation around which books were actually influential, not just inspiring, but also had practical sort of outcomes and measurable outcomes. So I thought that that could be an episode. So it's like the books that made us our first million or some shit, all right? Um...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
What did you do? I actually didn't check the follow-up.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Hell yeah. I would like to give you some constructive feedback, Greg. This guy sucks. Is that what he said? No, it was like, I'd like to give you some constructive feedback. Something like, I don't like listening to this guy and doesn't bring value and he just rambles. And I'm like, that's...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Now he should give constructive feedback on how huge of an insight it is.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Okay, look, you did this post right. I bookmarked it. Yeah, you did. I bookmarked the shit out of it. I see your team has to... I'll try to reduce the swearing because I know they have to beep it out. Okay, so let's... I'm going to... You did this post on Twitter. Your team can maybe bring it up on screen. It's 50 life hacks. I'm going to just...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
go to a few of them and ask you to expand on it or to talk about them or just very heavily agree with them. Maybe I'll just choose the top 10 of your 50 life hacks.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Okay, I'm going to do that. First thing, and it's really the first one, use social media apps on desktop only so that you don't get sucked in. I mean, so fucking like do you basically then have no social media apps on your phone?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I agree. Do you sometimes sneakily log into X on your Safari browser?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Okay. You'll delete it. Yeah. I deleted social media on my phone years ago. But I'll occasionally get sucked into... You know, it's your fault that I'm back on X. I was off X for like four or five years before I did the first one of these podcasts. And then you were screenshotting what people were saying about it. And I was like, I'll just log in. And now I'm... It's so addictive. It's so good.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
But yeah, I also don't put these on my phone. And again, I try to use this brick, like this brick thing that I talked about a couple of episodes to block things. Okay. Use analogies. People remember them. Can you give me an example of what you're talking about there in an analogy format? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
The second idea I had was on your Twitter, and this is sort of in a similar vein. On your Twitter, you posted 50 life hacks for you today. No, 50 life hacks for you in today's stressful, competitive world. And you had 50 life hacks. I thought we could go through those, see where we get to. I think each of them is really interesting. I think that could be really useful.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I love that book. You remember that book? I remember it and I love it. And I actually refer to it a lot in my training when I'm training people in facilitation.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
That you were covered in egg juice and the smell of it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Absolutely. Especially if you're, I think one of the best analogy formats, because I remember, so Made to Stick is an amazing book. It also talks about this concept of the curse of knowledge, which is amazing. The idea is that once you know a topic, you now can't like, you can't act as if you don't know it anymore.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
You can't imagine what it's like to be a person who doesn't know this thing anymore. And so you actually get worse at explaining something the more you know it. So when I'm trying to sell facilitation training, and I've been a facilitator and a designer for 14 years, I have to remember this curse of knowledge thing and bring myself right back to the basics.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And analogies are an amazing way to bring things back to the basics. And there's this format that I saw Russell Brunson use to make things into...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
more of an analogy and it's like he uses the you know how or it's like yeah it's the the simple format he has is that it's kind of like or it's kind of like when so sometimes it's like you're you're thinking about okay how do i explain something like facilitation to people
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Well, it's kind of like when you're on a trip with your friends and nobody's in charge of how we're going to get from the airport to the hotel. And it just feels super chaotic and everyone's kind of bickering at each other. Well, imagine if you had, if one of the people in the group just said, I'm going to take care of transportation. It's kind of like that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
It's kind of like, and this is something we actually use in our ads is this analogy is that being on, being on vacation with your friends is supposed to be something nice, but it gets really frustrating when everyone needs to decide where to go for dinner. And imagine if there was someone who was taking the lead
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
So it's kind of like thing when you're making copy, when you're writing copy, when you're writing an ad, just keeping this written somewhere in front of you. It's kind of like and then something relatable. So anything you're trying to sell or anything you're trying to talk about, you got to remember that it's kind of like and something relatable, something I've learned from analogy creating.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
So both of those are more on the entrepreneurial journey, finding an advantage as an entrepreneur. And then the third thing is just like, I have an idea for a startup.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
100% agree with that. Have you ever had Neville Medora on your podcast?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
He has a book called This Book Will Teach You to Write Better. It takes 15 minutes to read. It's like an Amazon printed book. And it goes into a lot of these topics about how to tell stories from other people's perspectives. But he has one statement in there when it comes to copy, when it comes to all of this thing we're talking about.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And he said, when you're writing, when you're writing for people... And he goes... And he goes... Yeah. And he goes... Did I actually say that? He said he said. Oh, yeah. Okay. And he goes... And I'll just do his accent and he goes, when you're thinking about writing for people, the one thing you have to have locked into your head is nobody cares about you. They only care about themselves.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And this is one of the key, this insight that I got when I read that book really locked in for me to the point that whenever I'm writing copy or whenever I'm talking to my team about copy, I'm like, I'm like, and I go, are we writing here about us and about how great we are? Or are we talking about what they're going to get? So this is something that just like super locks into my brain.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Oh, no, I was thinking like if you're going to really embody the person and I try to do a big Austin accent. And if I was trying to do the Steve Jobs, California accent and getting like like if I overthought, if I if I really incorrectly took your advice and I thought you meant full impersonation. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
15 minute change. Yeah. And then like practicing for ages and then the person's gone. All right, move on. This one, I really want to know what you think about this because I really want to know the exact thing you do. You said you should show up to meetings with small gifts. The ROI is insane. I have a lot of meetings coming up.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Especially with people who are a lot more important than me, I would say. They are more important than me, but they're more successful than me. I'm always wondering what to do. Talk about this. Tell me what you do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Okay, so a thousand mini Buddhas and you gave them all to one person, right? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
That's really cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I think it also puts you in a humble position, I would say. I don't know if this is even remotely the intention, but it shows somehow some respect to the other person, I feel. Yeah. I think so. What do you do today?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Like, okay, I am going to meet some people over the next few weeks and I want to bring them gifts, but what do you, what kind of things I'm always kind of struggling between like what's too expensive and desperate seeming and what's like too stupid. Like what, what do you think I could bring?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
We'll only get to it if you like and comment right now. And we'll know. We'll know.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Does Costco sell Xanax? I don't know. Okay. I get your idea, though. So, like, a nice tea... Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
So, it should be permanent. Like, something that stays... What about, okay, if I was meeting you, I don't know if I'm going to be able to pull this off before my next meeting, but if I was meeting you and I got you the Playdate, this little cute yellow console from the guys at Panic, would you think that's cute?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
A little yellow games console? Actually, yeah, it's pretty permanent.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I actually just annoyingly realized that that's a great gift for people right now, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to get it on time. Fuck. I was going to get people these, the little TP7, but they're really hard to buy. Could you get me one of those?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah, but it's something we forget. Like... I don't know. It's actually really good intangible thing to do. I feel like it's something that not a lot of people do. And I, I think also there's something about coming across as, I don't know how to put this when I meet. Okay. Just tell me if this makes sense, the way I'm going to put it. You, I often meet people who are a lot more successful than me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Oh, after. Yeah. I mean, we're not, it's not like we're, someone's paying us to make these videos. I mean, I'm certainly not getting paid anyway. I'm waiting on that check. Um, so yeah, please. All we ask for is a like and a positive comment about my hair. And, um, so before the episode started, I asked, uh, Greg, how, how the comments were. And he said, some people didn't like your hair.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And after a while you sort of become friends with them and I feel like what other people do wrong is that, let's say I become friends with someone who's like, who's been running a company for 25 years, super successful. I'm years away from ever getting there and I may never get there.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And they clearly have all the connections I would want, all of the things we talked about, this canvas strategy idea. And I'm here. And eventually I become friends with them. I think what a lot of people do wrong is they're like, oh, now I'm friends. So now I'm just going to get all this person's contacts and I'm just going to call them whenever I feel like, et cetera, et cetera. Whereas...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I would always, in my mind, think, okay, so this person is still being very gracious to give me their time, even though we're friends, etc. And so I think giving a gift, and would you give gifts every time you meet someone? Or just the first time? Basically, how many gifts am I going to get is what I'm trying to figure out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Trying to put their kid to bed. I'm hanging off the ceiling with 1,000 Buddhas. Holding them in a box and shaking, sweating. What are you spraying at me?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
One of them falls on their head and it's like a horror movie. The camera pans up and I'm there strapped to the ceiling.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
So it's not just about every time you meet them in person.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
You know what? I think a great book, Grace, I ruined it. I think a great gift, what I give to people is this book. I mean, having a book that you give to people. Why I think this is a nice gift, this one.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And I was like, Okay, I'm going to go look for those comments now. So we need more positive hair comments. So I got a big haircut two episodes ago. That was a big haircut. So we'll need some updates on that. Okay, so we'll go with some startup ideas. I'm going to hit you with one, and I'm going to be honest with you that actually this idea came from Amer, who works at AJ and Smart.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
It's one of my favorite books of all time, by the way.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
No, no, no. But this is one that I gift people. I give it as a gift. Um, so I bought, I buy it in bulk off the website and then you can get like this hard cover version, but when you get on Amazon sucks, it's like a soft cover, kind of like crappy looking one, but you can get the nice hard cover additions from the website. I buy like 20 of them and I give them as gifts to people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Uh, when they come to my apartment, I give it to them as a gift. So that's kind of like something I do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Um, so that's just an example of a
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
If anyone wants this when they come over to my place, it's like a glasses cleaner, but it's covered in other strange stains. I wasn't trying to bring the book thing in. All right, wait, let's do another. Okay, let's go back to this hack list. Okay, keep a learning list. Make learning your side hustle. What do you think about that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
What do you mean by a learning list, like courses you want to do, books you want to read?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Oh, you use Things. I think it's made in Germany.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I think it's Germany. Germany. I'm just trying to get a claim to fame here. An American using a tech product that's made in Germany is like a big deal. You know, we don't tend to make much stuff over here. Yeah, it's made in Germany.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
That's right. That's right. Cultured code. If you're listening to this episode, you guys make a lovely product. I think it's a really lovely product.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Oh, okay. I don't do that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
How do you decide what you want to learn? Is it just following your interests or is it related to business weaknesses you have or life weaknesses?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Probably a good way to network with high net worth people as well is golfing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
What do you mean by chasing generational wealth is overrated and wealth is underrated?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah, he has a similar voice to you, actually.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
We were chatting around lunch, and I was like, I'm going on Greg's podcast. He loves ideas. He loves all these ideas. He kind of like stopped talking and just went fully quiet and just stared into space. And then he came up with this great idea. Well, I like it anyway. And his idea is a product called Drip, right? And the idea behind this product, it's kind of like a
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I have, I have zero interest in generational wealth either. Maybe I, maybe it's just cause I don't think I can actually make it. Maybe if I had a no, but really, I also like I guess this die with zero concept where you use the money. And when you die, like I was thinking about it, like my daughter doesn't need to have crap tons of money from me. when she's older because I didn't have that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And I, I found it really fun to figure out how to make money. I worked in bars, I worked in restaurants, then I started making my own things that I, you know, like that, that gave me sort of like something to do and sort of like a purpose. Um, So yeah, I would definitely agree with you. How would you define normal wealth, though? How do you define that for yourself?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I'm currently working with a financial advisor to figure out for me, what is it that I actually should earn? I run a creative thing, and so it's variable based on my vibes. So how do you and me figure that kind of thing out?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
that's so frustrating to the financial advisor they're like so what's your goal and and you go that's literally just based on my vibes he literally really nice guy sebastian i um can definitely recommend him if you're in germany uh reach out to me and i'll connect you he he asked me what my goal was and i was like first of all he was sitting in the aj and smart office which looks like
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
like just looks like an art museum of some sort like a chaotic art museum and i'm like look around like do you think i have goals my goal is to keep making stuff that i want to do i want to just do stuff that i enjoy um but yeah i don't have any goals at all i don't know what i want to do i mean financially yeah do you have like a number or like just keeps going up
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yes, you don't want anyone to tell you what to do, where to be.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
That connects to number 20, which is craft a personal mission statement to guide your decisions. First of all, do you want to share your one? And second of all, how do I do that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
My personal mission statement is I want to follow my interests. and then make things that I find interesting with other people. I don't like to make stuff just by myself. And ideally, other people like using those things. I don't have a mission statement, but if it would be something like that, make interesting stuff that I find interesting. It's very much around making things
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I like to create stuff. I like making things.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I have recently very much lost sight of my goals, which I've never defined, but I can sense it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
You know how you, I don't know if you use Twitter like this or if you use the internet like this. I have like tons of bookmarks, tons of screenshots, tons of things where I'm like, oh my God, that's a cool quote. That's a cool thing. I want to check this out later. And also I use like Pocket Cast to put articles into just collecting loads of stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
But what does one look like? Can you tell me what that statement sounds like? I literally don't know what you mean. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
So you obviously don't want to share yours, basically. I don't want to share mine.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Share it with us, Greg. Okay, guys. If you like and comment, share it with us, Greg. Then in the next episode, Greg will share his personal mission statement. No, but it's interesting, a lot of Americans say things like, you know, that's sort of like my purpose or my mission. It's very rare to hear people outside of the US saying these sentences.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And so, yeah, it's interesting for me just sort of trying to understand it and trying to see if that makes sense for me. I like the idea of having like, so what I have is a post-it in my kitchen, which says 2024. Do you actually, can I go get it just to show you? Or is that an annoying thing for me to do right now?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
All right. Just because it's so it's so like not a mission, but it's like I'll just do it. I'll be back. I'm not wearing any underwear or pants. So I'm just sure. So at the end of 2023, I think it was the 29th of December, my girlfriend and I did like a. It's this Tim Ferriss thing. It's called the end of year review, something like that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And then we created our goals for next year based on how that works. It's kind of embarrassing to show this because it's not like a public thing that I've ever showed, but just to show you, I think maybe my version of what we're talking about, which is very much within the year. So it looks like this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And so it's like three questions for myself and then like one physical activity that I am just going to lock into. It sounds like a weird thing. The questions are, number one, am I optimizing for state? And that just means my state of mind. Am I living my life in a way that's going to optimize for how I'm feeling? Because when I feel good and when I feel excited, everything else works better.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
A really simple example of that is being very, very cautious of... things like alcohol, not sleeping, over-caffeinating. I have my own list of things that cause my state to turn bad, also social media. Am I lowering noise and complexity? So this is something where just thinking about like, you and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago as well.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
But in the end, the truth is I very rarely go back to any of it. And I think that's really common. People rarely go back to any of this read it later stuff, even the like best possible read it later software. It still acts as a bit of like a hole for all of your stuff. It's just like a big black box.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I actually shut down my holding company after realizing that even though it makes sense from a financial perspective, the noise and complexity, even though it wouldn't, for example, be a problem for you, for me, that overwhelms me massively. So am I lowering noise and complexity? And then the last one is kind of interesting. Am I being radically integral
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah, I know. It's fine. It's also a bit pretentious. Again, I wasn't planning on showing this so it was only for me. The idea there is that Am I being, first of all, am I telling the truth? Like if someone asks me something like, how am I feeling? Am I just telling them the answer to the question? But also, am I basically living in a way that actually reflects what's happening in my head?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Or am I just living in a way that's good for others to get what they want? Being integral, like having integrity, the idea is just like, Yeah. Am I being integral? Do I have integrity? Am I, am I, are the things I'm thinking similar? Are the things I'm thinking the same as the things I'm saying the same as the things I'm doing those three things lining up and, uh, Then yoga.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I actually have done one hour of yoga per week since January because I was having some back pains. So that also worked out well. That's kind of more like an optimizing for state thing. So yeah, I don't have a mission statement, but I kind of break it down into like the three things I want to focus on for the year. But the mission statement thing is pretty interesting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Is there any like thing I can watch or read about how to create a mission statement for myself?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Um, and Amr had this idea, which I thought was pretty cool for a product that, well, he, he said all of these services are basically procrastination machines, like screenshotting, bookmarking, save later. You rarely go back and take action on these things. And he had an idea for an AI startup, which I thought was pretty cool. And the idea is the product itself combines your sources.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I'm going to look at all of those after I have them open as tabs. I have them tabbed out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah, say the Instagram close friends one. I don't see it here.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Homie, we just met. I haven't used that feature in quite a while, so I can't say much to this thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
So are you telling the public just to not add you to close friends?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I think that's also interesting because what you could do is if someone adds you to the close friends thing and then you see that they're doing something like a wedding or a family party and you haven't been invited, you could get really irritated with them. Like, oh, thanks for the invite. I thought I was a close friend.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah, I thought I was a very close friend and I didn't get put on your will, interestingly. So yeah, okay, fair enough. That's a good one. Okay, let me, can I choose one more just to end on one that I like? Okay, avoid angry people. They suck the good energy out of the room. It sounds like really obvious.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And I would say not just angry, or maybe you, I don't know if you agree with this, but I would say you also generally want to avoid people who are super cynical, super pissed about everything. It's like you meet someone and they're like, oh, did you hear about this stupid thing? This stupid politician did this country's fucked up. And you're like, oh man, I was having a good day.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And now I have to listen to this stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
They're also the people that if you come to them, let me see if I can get this down to the perfect crystallization, if this is exactly what it is for you. You're really excited about something. You're really excited about a new thing. Let's say you got this and you're super excited and you show it to your friend and they're like, I heard teenage engineering are actually a shit company.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
That's like a waste of money. That's crap. No matter what you do, they see that you're excited and they're like, let me just take the pin out of that. Let me bring you down a few pegs just to make sure you're not too excited and too happy about stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Because it's positive vibes.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Let's say you could even just start with bookmarks on Twitter on X and using Pocket Cast, the things you've actually saved. So you don't even have to create a new plugin for it. And instead of it just being a massive pile of stuff that you go to, you get things drip fed to you at a pace that you feel like. And this could be something as simple as SMS.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
You've probably been given this advice or you've read it before that to succeed, you need to be surrounded by people. I've heard this before and I unfortunately took the wrong lesson from it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
When I was growing AJ and Smart in the beginning, one of my mentors was like, you need to be surrounded by people who will question everything, who are like the devil's advocates, who are like the yin to your yang. I was like, oh yeah, you're right. You gotta have those people around you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And what I realized is that maybe you wanna have those types of people around you when you've already massively nailed it and you need to have, let's say you're running Facebook. You maybe need to have people around you who are like, oh, let's hold the brakes. Let's make sure this decision doesn't have like crazy consequences down the road.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
But generally, you mostly don't want to be surrounded by people who are questioning everything and being the devil's advocates and telling you all the ways things can go wrong when your business is just starting out and you're still under 20 million. You want to be surrounded by people who are enthusiastic advocates and who are excited about what you're doing. And I think there was a time at A.J.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
and Smart where I really...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
brought a lot of people up to the top of the business who kind of opposed everything I did because I thought that that's what you're supposed to do and so it's like and in the end what happens is the founder or the person running the company just loses steam and gets less excited and the whole thing just kind of falls apart and so yeah I think as long as you're especially when you're like the company relies on your energy and you being excited and you being positive it's
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
curmudgeons are the ultimate like kryptonite for a founder. The problem is they're everywhere. And the other thing, the best quote I've ever read on this is pessimists will always be right, but optimists will always get wealthy. Something like that. Something around those. That's what it was.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah, something like that. Right. And I think that's that's such an amazing sentence to have in mind. If you're building a business or if you're running a podcast or if I even as a guest on this podcast, I'm going to get curmudgeons in the comments telling me that I ramble too much or that I look stupid or that whatever. Fuck y'all. You know, I need the positive energy to even keep going.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
You're not on this podcast. You're not out here running the startup ideas podcast like Greg is and putting all the effort into it. You're just sitting around complaining online. And I think that energy isn't, you're a hundred percent right. Like, That energy is not what you want to have around you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And then people will say to you, Greg, which you've probably gotten, if you would do that as a post on its own on Twitter, people would say to you, oh, yeah, sure. Just surround surround yourself with people who just like, you know, brown nose you all day or whatever. And that's not the point. The point is you're not at the point yet where you need people to pick things apart.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
You're not at the point yet. You still momentum is still important to you. And so enthusiasm and being enthusiastic, being excited is super important. Oh, shit.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I got too excited. I got too excited. You know, it's the enthusiasm and excitement of a founder of a small business or a startup is so unbelievably important. Like it's not, it's one of the things that brings down startups and small businesses most often is the founders just giving up and burning out. That's it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
So once a day you wake up and it's like combining maybe three or four things that have something similar, synthesizing them together and giving you that idea. So an example of that could be you wake up in the morning, you look at your texts, There's a lot of weird ones, you know, like a lot of, a lot of weird shit. Like, I don't know. It's just, I wish that person would stop texting me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah, but they run out of cash also because they just run out of energy for it often.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Don't be a curmudgeon, dude. Don't question anything I say. No, you're right.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah. And I think number one, the team gives up usually means the leaders give up. and just run out of energy and run out of steam and just can't be bothered with the... Like you see that often with content creators as well. Like when they get bullied offline or something. It's just a matter of whether they are going to stick around or not.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And it's really often like that with especially small businesses. When AJ and Smart, when this business that I run... When it's doing its best is when I'm excited and enthusiastic and then I can make my team excited and enthusiastic because I'm the cheerleader at the company.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
But when I give myself... If I surround myself with people who are just telling me everything's wrong and everything sucks, then I also can't cheerlead myself or my team. I think it's a huge one.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Absolutely. I think that's a really hard line to manage. I guess some people get mixed up with they read stuff online about being more combative and saying what you mean and all of this kind of stuff. but they're not thinking about the fact that a huge amount of things in the world work just because people are excited about doing them and people are motivated to do them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And yeah, I have that problem when I'm also talking to my team and giving my team feedback and Laura Laura, who I run AJ and Smart with, she's told me I do this where my team will present something to me and I'm like, I don't like this, I don't like this, and I don't like this. And then she's like, yeah, but then they're not excited to do it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And I'm like, yeah, but I don't like this and I don't like this and I don't like this. So it's easy also to fall into it, even if you know how it feels from the outside. Even if you don't like it, it's easier for you to do it too. And that also mixes well with your comment about be nice on the internet.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I think like you said, you probably meet a lot of people in real life that you talk to on the internet, right? And so if you want to be a business person, you probably don't want to be shitting all over people on the internet. I guess Elon can do it because he's already nailed and finished the business game.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
But anyway, next to that, you have drip, right? And drip is an AI that's dressed up in cool drip, right? It's just got, it's, it's very vibey. And. you open it up and it's like, essentially it's your thought for the day or your thing for the day or your idea for the day, or it could even just be your inspiration for the day.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
But I can't imagine you going around trolling people on their content and on the internet.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
These are the books... I just want to... I just have a pile of books next to me. And these are the books where I feel like if you're... Either you're struggling with your business or you're working at a company and you want to start your own business or you just want to get like a good download of good business stuff into your brain.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I just have a couple of books here and I think you've probably read a lot of them, Greg. And I'm going to start with the most cliche, most obvious one. But often people have what I've noticed with entrepreneurs, people have not read it because they think it's like not cool anymore to read this book. And it's like it's played out and it's out of date. Can you guess what it is, actually?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Okay. It's the 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. This is the book. I was working in a company here in Berlin, full-time employee. I picked up this book. It was at my aunt's house or my parents' place. I don't know. My mom reads a lot of these types of books as well. And I looked at it and I was like, this looks like Tony Robbins. It looks kind of like, I don't know, it looks cheesy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I think this looks cheesy. and not cool and like not a vibe. Anyway, picked it up. That's a theme of a lot of books actually in my life where I think they are going to suck and then I read them. I picked this book up and it changed my brain completely. Within probably four or five days of reading it, I already decided I'm going to quit my job. and start my own business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I think it's one of the best books that just like lays out how to make money by selling things and how to do it in a way that just doesn't burn you to the ground. It like teaches you the absolute basics of business and delegation. And there's just a lot of concepts in here that I'd never heard of in my life. And yeah, it's kind of the passive income Bible
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
It's like the digital nomad Bible, whatever it is. It's the first book that I read on that topic and still holds up really well today. So that's The 4-Hour Workweek. I think it's amazing. I think every entrepreneur in the world should read that book.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And it's taking the topic is around one topic that I got really into a couple of months ago was this idea of atomization. I don't know if you ever read this article called the atomization of life. I think the guy is called Nat Eliason. Anyway, I saved that article and then I Googled it and I saved loads of other things and then I bookmarked loads of stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I also love things like the little lifestyle things in there, like the mini retirement. It was just so many things in there that completely broke my brain. And I was so lucky. It's the first business book I ever read. like was the four hour work week by Tim Ferriss. And it's, it's a, it was a completely mind blowing experience.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And obviously his followups like tools of Titans, tribes of tribe of mentors also great. But this really feels to me like, I also love that this book, you know, goes into practicalities like running Google ads to a landing page and testing the copy. It's a super practical book as well. It was the first time I also even learned about things like this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
So cool. All right. There's no, they're not in any order. I'm just kind of looking. The next book I think I probably read, it might've been the next book I read because Tim Ferriss connected me then in his world to this book was Anything You Want by Derek Sivers. And it's 40 lessons for a new kind of entrepreneur. And this book really teaches me, taught me about like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
that you just do not have to run a business the way other people are running businesses. You can really just make your own, you can make your own really specific brand of business. This guy, Derek Sivers, again, you know, his other book.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I'm very surprised about that. I think this is one of my favorite books of all time.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
He created a company called CD Baby, which he sold for either 30 million. So he created an online digital product, sold it for many, many, many million. And then he just went off and disappeared and decided to not do that anymore. And he's just living a really fun sounding life. And so it's inspirational. He's like a, he's a creative, I guess it connects with me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yes, exactly. So he didn't get caught up in the money making.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
So he can teach you things and he doesn't need any money anymore, but he's teaching because he wants to teach. And I think that's really interesting. Next one, Double Your Profits, another old school looking book by Bob Pfeiffer. I don't know if you know this one. It's really, really good. So this book is 78 Ways to Cut Costs, Increase Sales, and Dramatically Improve Your Bottom Line.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
This is a book I read... Two days ago, again, and I read it almost like every quarter. It's just a good reminder of little tactics. And you can open up a page and there'll be a tactic in there. I think one of my favorite things is this chapter. It's also one of the most highlighted ones, chapter 10, step 10. And it's maximizing customer satisfaction leads to bankruptcy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And the idea would be one day, just it could be a year later.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And he talks about this idea of when you're creating a product and creating differentiation, make sure that you only provide the elements of differentiation that the customer is willing to pay for and not those that the customer is not willing to pay for. It sounds really stupid, but sometimes we'll make stuff at AJ and Smart where like...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
20% of it is stuff nobody gives a shit about, nobody uses, but it costs us a lot of money to make it. And we're making it because one or two people said they wanted it. And I think remembering things like this is very important. Another book I'd actually like to put on the list, which is behind me. Well, I'm not going to get up. It's Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeyer Hansen.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
That was probably this, I think that was the second business book I ever read. And that definitely defined a lot of how I think about building products. So rework Jason Freed, get him on your podcast. Guys, if you want to get Jason Freed on this podcast, can you like go on to X and tell him, come on to Greg's podcast? I saw that he replied to you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
He's great. He's great. But let me just... I'll give you the inside baseball on that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
You like that? Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I think that's great because you're being humble and not assuming he remembers this interaction.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
That's not your vibe. You're too good. You're going to suggest a specific thing for him to watch.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah. Jason's not... opposed to receiving reminders well no no one's opposed to receiving reminders by the way no but as in it doesn't see yeah he wouldn't take it as a like that's cool being bugged yeah really cool yeah he's jason is a huge i think jason freed cable sasser tim ferris derrick sivers are probably like my you're about rushmore That's the German version. Alexanderplatz Tower.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I think it's great.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Um, yeah, like I, I have, I think almost every page of this book is highlighted. Um, it's crazy. It's, it's all about list building. It's all the stuff that's still super relevant today. Um, these books are beyond relevant, like they're, they're the best marketing books you can read. And I think what makes them also great is that nobody.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I've said this before, people in our world don't like Russell Brunson because he's cheesy, but he's also just very smart and a very good writer. And he's not trying to be clever. You know what I mean? He's not trying to be deep or clever. He's just like, here's how you do exactly this with very little anecdotes and very little, just straight into it. I really like that stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
That's why you're not going to buy this one because you don't respect it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Could you guys also let us know what you think about my hair? Did you prefer it long or do you like it at this length?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
It's more crazy. You prefer it longer? I don't want to be... My personality already says... You know what the issue with your hair is?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
It's medium. It's mid. It's mid-length. Do you agree? And for anyone... I kind of like it. I like the... It doesn't go in my mouth. I didn't like that the... Like when I was eating, when my hair was like to here, it would go in my mouth a lot. And this is going to sound really... You've changed. You used to like the hair in your mouth. I used to like hair in my mouth. This is another thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And this sounds really stupid. And I don't care about your audience complaining about me rambling. But when my hair was longer, I felt more chill. As in I felt like... I felt like I couldn't... not be chill. You know what I mean? It's like wearing baggy clothes and having long hair makes you feel different. I don't know how to describe it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I needed a haircut because I felt like I wanted to go into a new phase where I was a bit more switched on and a bit more... I can't describe it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah, a very long time ago, so I'm not sure if I'll remember that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah, I kind of remember it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
But it makes you feel different.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
It makes you feel... makes you feel like when my hair is long i'm kind of people assume first of all that i'm super you're not but i'm super like i'm not that i mean i'm not chilled out in the way that many people would think with my hair i mean dude you run you run a successful business you you're busy busy I'm busy. You wouldn't think it with the hair.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
So anyway, guys, I am being 100% serious about the comments on the hair thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
A couple of months ago, you were researching atomization. Here's a couple of new things that have come up around this topic. Here's some of the quotes that you highlighted. Here are a couple of things you were interested in. And it's just a little one pager or just a text message. And that's literally it. You can either go down the rabbit hole back into that topic or nothing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
We'll be back. We'll be back very soon.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Talk to you later, boss.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
It's just reminding you of interesting things you've collected. And there's no central... interface where you go and see all the stuff so you don't have another dump to go to to see where all your articles that you're not reading are stored and over time maybe it can get smarter and smarter and like
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I don't want to make it unrealistic because if you're talking about like a one person startup, you're not going to be, it's not going to be able to tell which parts of podcasts you listen to, et cetera, et cetera. But you could go further.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
But the initial idea is a fairly cheap service that drip feeds you back information that you've stored for yourself at a pace that you want it to drip feed it to you. And it's called Drip AI. Drip a drip. It's a little idea. So much to do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
What if instead of drilling into your head, you could drip out of your head? That's what I'm saying. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I think it would be cool because I think a lot of people, I don't know why everyone loves to make bookmarks products, like collect all your bookmarks, collect all your stuff. I'm like, I'm clicking the things in the apps that store this shit for me. My problem isn't collecting. My problem is getting it brought back to me. You know, that's what's actually my issue.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah, I'm going to just start calling myself J Ice Cream now on your podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I would just start... If I was starting this tomorrow and... I just wanted to make like 99 cents per person per month or something. I would just focus purely on X. My target market are entrepreneurs or creatives who like and bookmark crap tons of stuff on X. And I would just simply build something that works. collects that and sends it back to them. It can be more like a boomerang thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah, that's not what I intended when I created my gamer tag, but you can call me whatever you like, Craig.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
It kind of chooses things from a year ago, one day, two weeks ago, another day. And in the beginning, it would be a little bit random just to see if people care about the idea of reminiscing and bringing these things back. And then maybe adding on this context thing, like there's been an update to this, or this This person who tweeted this thing has talked more about it again. And here's that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
So I think there's a very simple, basic, baby version of this, which could be free and maybe with ads or something. And then there's the AI-powered version of it, which adds context and synthesizes.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
It's your podcast, dude.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I think that's pretty cool. That could even be, we take a couple of steps back, that's another product now where you could just have that as an email list.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Greg Eisenberg, Sean Puri and someone else's like, it's basically the entrepreneur secret bookmarks paid weekly newsletter. It's just, here's what other people are liking and interested in. That would be, I would definitely pay for that. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I'm probably not the right person to ask because I would probably pay a lot. Because I just spoke to you before this podcast about how much I'm about to pay for a mentor. I mean, I would minimum pay like $10 a month or something.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I've got three options for you. And I'm going to tell you them in order of what I think I would be most interested in. Number one, and also this straight up, I think would just work well for views and engagement and all that good YouTube stuff. Number one, I've got a pile of books next to me. And...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I don't know. You think you're a baller?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
I do $10. I do $10. No, I just mean like I'm already sold on being able to access things like that. Like I think if we're trying to do like a large target market, but then again, I mean, if we're thinking about,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
people who are entrepreneurs who are like maybe a couple of million behind those people whose bookmarks you get to look at that could be pretty interesting but yeah i would i don't know i never know what i would pay for something until someone sells it to me totally totally but i think there's two ideas here and they're all around bookmarks people don't need another bookmarking app
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Bookmarks. Do you use any of these things like pocket casts and stuff?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
But there you go. Okay, so... People who use Twitter bookmarks, a product for them. That's a beautiful niche. Entrepreneurs who use Twitter bookmarks very often and obviously never look at them again. Come on. That's a great niche. All right. Come on. Come on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Such a great idea. Again, the drip aspect of this is from Amr at AJ and Smart. I want to give him all the credit. Amr, you're a legend. Amr Khalifa on X. I just want to take the credit because he gave me that idea.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
Yeah, exactly. We took the seed.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
The seed was birthed.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
The seed was, what happens when a chicken, the seed was laid? Why is it laid like an egg? I don't know. I saw it happen with my own eyes, though. He's a weird guy, you know? Then I sat on it and incubated it. for a few hours and then I brought it to you and we hatched it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
We don't talk about eggs enough on this podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks
And they sipped the egg juice. You know, when I'm looking back on episodes of this podcast and I'm thinking a lot of people, you know, there's people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Yes, I'll show you everything.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
True. That's true. So I'll show you kind of one or two funnels that are running today and that people can actually look at live. That's the beauty. The cool thing about me actually not really being a marketing teacher is that I am just running these things for my own business right now. So I can just show you the live things that you can see today. Yes.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And I'd love to be able to also show you... So we're also doing this for one or two other companies, but I'm not allowed to... This is the kind of thing where we do that secretly behind the scenes that I don't want to talk about them publicly, but all the same principles apply. Okay. Okay. Let's open up a funnel or let's have a look at how we do this
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
in funnel style versus website uh versus website so step one is always or the the first part of the funnel for us is always either facebook ads meta ads or youtube ads if you're wondering why we don't run linkedin ads it's just because they don't tend to work as well for us that's the answer to the question we're just choosing the ads that give us the best roi
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So these are the current or like a selection. Facebook is a bit weird. It's like, doesn't actually always show all of them. Could you zoom in a little? Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Okay. Um, let's see a nice one to go through. Okay. I'm just trying to think of a good, my team does. Look at this. Look at this. Um, we make some silly fun ads. I'm just thinking of which funnel to go into. You guys can go into all of these funnels. I think these are just the ones that are working the best right now. Okay, whatever. Let's just choose this one.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So this is an ad, one to boost your facilitation career. This ad is just being targeted at people who are reading a certain type of book that we think could be in our industry. So for example, we'll type into Facebook ads, Hey, anybody who's reading GameStorming, who's read any of IDEO's books, who's read The Lean Startup, whatever, show people these ads.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So there's a lot more that goes into it, but you can actually look at that if you go yourself to Facebook Ads Library and figure it out. So... This is an ad that leads to a super focused landing page, which is full to the absolute brim. I'm just making this a little bit smaller so I can zoom in a bit more. It's full to the absolute brim with copy. Like it's insane.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And this, you click here, you end up here, become a high paid facilitator in 90 days or less. Very like QVC style copywriting. Wait, I don't see anything.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
oh here we go boom okay you get brought to this page this page most people open it up in mobile i actually haven't seen it on desktop in a long time and it's bringing you to one thing and that's a free training this free training is actually a one hour long training that gives you a sense of what it actually would be like to get trained by us
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So it's a one hour training using a format, which I learned from going to lots of marketing conferences and just watching other people. And this format, a lot of it I stole from this book called Expert Secrets, which I showed on the last episode. But there's this section of that book called Epiphany. By the way, this funnel has been running since 2020. and it hasn't changed.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I'm not like a funnel marketing teacher or something, So if anyone's like, oh, he doesn't teach it good, that's not actually my job. My job, I make funnels to make money for my own business and occasionally for other people's businesses. But I'm not a teacher of this topic. I just do it. So if there's... Maybe occasionally you'll have to just jump in with questions.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And this is one hour and 10 minute long session with me teaching you basically the basics you need to become a facilitator and also all the things you need to do to actually build a career as a facilitator. This is a new intro we added this year just so people wouldn't be confused why I look like this in the whole training. And then I look like this in the ads.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So it's actually the only update we did in four years. So people watch the training. After a while, this button appears. After people have watched it, I think we have it like if they skip forward, they can kind of hack it, but they have to watch it for like 15 minutes or something before it appears.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And at the end of this video or multiple times through this video, I mentioned that if you want to know more, you can talk to my team. I keep mentioning this over and over again. And I'm showing I'm basically giving away a lot of information here, like a lot of information. I'm teaching a lot of stuff that you could go away with.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
But there's going to be certain people who are watching this who are like, I actually love this. And I'm not the type of person who wants to read, you know, 30 books and take two years to do this. I actually want to speak with the AJ and smart team and see what type of training I might be able to get or I might be able to get from my team. to make this happen. So then... Wait, wait.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Yes. It doesn't have to be obnoxiously long. This funnel has an obnoxiously long video.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
They would never have watched this one hour long video if they hadn't had to unlock it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
and if it was easier to find you know basically they're finding this because they came through a facebook ad they have no like the the url is insane they have and this is not on purpose it's just the nature of a funnel not having a place that it lives on your website so actually if they do just close this and they don't enter their email address they won't ever find it again but
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
because they entered their email address, we can now kind of, first of all, people can watch the video. And if they enter their email address, we essentially play out the video over email if we see that they didn't watch the video and we play it out to them over multiple days and still end with this call to action to book a call.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
But yes, having them focused and watching this video in a funnel is a lot more effective than having that just on the website.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
You also know about funnels, but maybe you can imagine yourself as the audience if you have things where you're like, that maybe wouldn't make sense to people. Yeah, I think that context is important. I don't have a funnel marketing course that you can buy from.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Yeah, it definitely works for other... The company that I learned it from is a software company that uses it for themselves. And that's ClickFunnels. They basically sell software using this process, using funnels, and they also sell lots of other different types of software. And there's also lots of other software companies doing it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
However, okay, I think there are some people, there are some situations where So it makes sense. It makes absolute sense for any situation where you'll want to turn a stranger into a customer. That's basically the system for it, right? Turning strangers into customers. But it doesn't have to be a one hour long video. That might not work for a software company.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
For a software company, we might want to do something a little bit more simple. There's millions of different types of funnels and campaigns that you can run. I'm just trying to think, is there a company where it wouldn't work? Yeah. Anything where extreme prestige is important, like a Michelin star restaurant.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Although I have seen high prestige things like doctors that are like, you know, they'll charge you 250K per year to take care of your blood work and all of this. I've seen things like this using funnels. I don't know. It works for basically every... Yeah, it's not going to work for... A large corporate is not going to do this. OpenAI is not going to do this today.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I think it's best for bootstrapped businesses because you're getting the direct ROI from the ads. Whereas if you have loads of funding already, then maybe you can just brute force it with branding and different types of deals and having a huge sales team. So I think it works really well for bootstrapped businesses. My speciality is selling...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
uh, training either in person or online, either to large corporates or to individuals and training can be literally, um, you know, teaching people design, teaching people facilitation, um, teaching people public speaking is a big one at the moment. Um, and I can teach, I can, um, build funnels for those types of things.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I can also build funnels for agencies looking to get high ticket projects, like designing websites, doing marketing for people, that kind of shit. But I personally haven't done it for a software company, but I've just seen it. That's, I don't know if that answers your question.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
It was getting on here. Bye.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Okay. Cool. I haven't seen too many, but there are verticals. So I shouldn't say, yeah. Okay. Well, I'll tell them before this episode comes out. So we have this separate company to AJ and Smart called Partners, where we partner up with companies to do this. We don't do it as an agency. We basically advise them on building funnels, but they have to be able to execute everything themselves.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
The things that I'm not comfortable selling or where I think it's way harder, number one, if you don't want to run ads, it's very difficult. Number two, if you have no list at all and you have no experience doing any type of marketing, it is a bit of a, it's not super easy to go from zero to a hundred. Then I even recommend, I'm like this person who wanted to do the partners thing with us.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I was like, I think you need to hire someone in house who can do it because I can't really advise you. I can't help you do this if no one can execute the work. So if you're like totally unaware of how to build landing pages, how to do copy, that kind of stuff, It might be more difficult as well. And if you're not, if you don't want to hire anybody to do it. Cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Yeah, now I'll sell it to you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Then again, a website doesn't do anything. So you need to do something. You got to do something.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Okay, so I'll just continue this funnel for a second to show you where it goes. Also, people will say, yeah, like one big worry people have is like, well, that funnel, like the funnel I'm showing you now, which is four years old, they're going to be like, that looks shitty. Like that doesn't really represent the brand. And what I would say to that is,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
The general vibe and feeling of that funnel, I was able to pull that together in a couple of hours in this ClickFunnels program. There's so many different other ones as well. Mostly by myself without having to think too much about it. And initially it was just to test one product, right? I was just trying to see, can we sell this one product using this type of funnel and
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Okay, so I think a lot of people don't really understand what funnels are. And I think also a lot of people shy away from the concept of funnels because they are not often used in, well, I think people mix up like websites and funnels. That's the first thing. So what is a funnel, first of all? Well, a funnel is really just a step-by-step process from turning someone from being a complete stranger
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
My goal later was to turn it into something much nicer. But what actually happens is it does really well. And every time we try to make it look nicer, it does worse. So the like shittiest looking funnels we have tend to be the seven figure funnels. And the nicest looking stuff we have tend to not make any money at all, which is very annoying because we're like also a design agency.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I think lots and lots of copy tends to work well. Like really good, convincing copywriting and a kind of scrappy look to it. I don't know. It just seems to work fine. I don't know why. Well, I think the simple answer to it is when we try to make something look nice, it has way less text.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Like look at the comparison between this and we're less willing to fill it up with text as well because we don't want it to look ugly. So like... There's this, which is our kind of I keep changing the size because I'm on a massive monitor here and it's just easier for me to see. So this is like our, you know, nice looking thing. You know, it's kind of there's not so much text right up top.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Then you have, and I know you can't see this right now for a second. Then you have this, which I think looks absolutely dreadful. And actually I see that this line, this has actually also broken itself here, but whatever, who cares? This looks horrible. I hate it. Actually, I just realized like, look at the difference between the size of this button and this button. I'm actually disgusted.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
But it's just packed full of information that somehow seems to work well and people seem to need. And we A, B test the crap out of this kind of thing. So I don't know. This is just, this funnel is annoyingly popular. Like as in this one has generated this year. So this launched in 2020. This one funnel, which I can barely look at,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Will has already passed 20 million revenue in it, but in its lifetime, just to be super clear. So in the last four years, actually, it started officially in May. So in the last three and a half years, this one funnel has generated 20 million revenue and it looks like shit. And I don't even like the video anymore. I'm like, I've made so many better things than this since then.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And I'm embarrassed that people see it. But actually, when people see it for the first time, they really like it. So I just have to get it out of my head that new stuff has to be made all the time.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Actually, yes. Yeah. I mean, dude, most people who are not like... I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs have a severe lack of urgency. and a lack of willingness to just see what happens if I get something out there. I, you know, I talk to a lot of, a lot of friends who run companies ask me about funnels because they're like, okay, I believe you. Now I want to do funnels.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I've seen the numbers and I'm like, cool. So like, here's what you have to do. And then they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe I'll get around to that next year. And I'm, you know, I just like, well, whatever. See ya. So I'll just show you, will I show you the rest of this funnel?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Cool. All right, let's see. By the way, audience, I know maybe you were expecting that I would show slides or something. But again, I'm not a teacher of this. I just want to show you the stuff that's live. OK, so now you can see that I'm showing a type form now. Is that what's on screen for you?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
OK, so we've added that we add this type form when our lead flow is low, too high. So when we have a lot of lead flow, as in where our Facebook ads are working really well and loads of people are booking calls, we add in this survey. But when the lead flow is low, when ads are expensive, when not so many people are coming in, we turn it off. So it's just a way to add friction.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So this is a friction increasing survey that we'll add in before you have the ability to book a call with us just to avoid our team getting put onto like calls that kind of suck. I haven't seen this in a long time because the team messes with it every day. I even spelled my name wrong. Let's see. What do you currently do for work? I don't know. Okay. I'm just going to,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
or non-customer so it could be someone on your list so a complete stranger or a non-customer into a paying customer so that's what a funnel does
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
What would you like our help with the most? Okay. And this is also a great question. How committed are you to achieving your goals and overcoming your challenges? Like, especially if I'm going to sell someone an in-person training, I don't want someone who's like, eh. We'll see. You know what I mean? It's going to be way harder for me to teach them then. Why are you interested in the program?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Dunno. This is Jonathan testing. I actually need to say that to my team because they're going to read this. If it proves to be your best next step, how much can you invest in yourself right now? This is really...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
an interesting way to just split people up because if they say less than a thousand euro then we just recommend that they use our free stuff which is way easier for everyone okay this is an important one if you're accepted into this particular program in this particular funnel how soon do you want to get started immediately what's your best email address greg at grungus.com
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
dot kiam where are you based greg and let's see if i get accepted to do a call yes okay schedule your call so now i'm gonna book i'm actually gonna not Do this. So we only allow people to book calls three days ahead of time. That's because if you allow someone to book a call next week or four days or like this, basically what happens is you can guess they'll be like, ah, forget it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And they'll just won't turn up to the call. You need to have people join calls with very close to the time when they've actually watched the video and when they're actually interested in doing the thing. So after the call booking, it's just in their calendar through Calendly. That's called a VSL funnel. It's called a video sales letter funnel. The structure is always the same.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
different to a website a website is more like your brochure a website is more like here's all of this stuff that's going on okay so just to give you an example this is the our website so just a website is a place where there's just all of the stuff that you do it's just loads of It's almost like walking into a grocery store.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
You're from your YouTube channel or your Facebook ads. I'll show you how we send people from YouTube if you're curious. So YouTube channel or Facebook or your list, you're sending people into a free training. you do have to come up with a training.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
That free training then essentially shows people how knowledgeable you are and how much you understand the problem and how much you also for sure have the solution. And then you're saying you can either do two things. One is you can learn all the things I did, get all the experience I have. That will take this long. Or you can take the headache. That's the free version.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And then the headache-free version is jump on a call with us. We can tell you If working with us will help you or whatever. And we have funnels like that for kind of all the different parts of our business. But what's interesting is, so we've spent ludicrous amounts of time on money and money built last year.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
One of my teams spent a ludicrous amount of time building a beautiful, high end, stunning looking funnel for corporates only, only for corporate training.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And this funnel, the one you just saw, which is clearly not targeted at corporates, this generates us the most amount of corporate training leads and the most amount of corporate agency leads, even though we're not actually trying to sell that using this funnel. They just learn about us, they see our teaching style, and then they wanna jump on a call with us.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So one person who came through this funnel in September who was interested in coming to one of our trainings recently booked us for a 300 K internal large training session at their company. So that's, that's funnels work. Funnels don't just work to sell individual low ticket things or individual courses or things like that. They're also conversation starters, which I think is really important.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And no one ever books a conversation through our website pretty much ever. Yeah, that's a VSL funnel. A lot of other funnels are the same are a similar structure. I can show you another one if you're curious.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I can just show you on YouTube first because it will relate to this funnel. It will be easier for me to find something specifically for this funnel. Let's just search. It's always tricky showing. Can I go into a private mode? I don't want anyone to see what shit I'm looking at on YouTube.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
All right, let's see. If I search... So with YouTube, this is actually a great example of how people also don't manage to really monetize their YouTube channels because they don't really understand how to do it. I know you can't see anything right now. I'll show you a few ways that we funnel people using YouTube.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Here we go. So share. OK. Here is a... A 36-minute video of me going through teaching people how to run workshops in fairly good detail. And what I'm constantly saying during this video is if you want to have a deeper dive into this, go to the comments and click on this link. And this link actually, in this case, brings you straight to the exact funnel that we saw.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So we're trying to capture their email addresses. We're trying to give them another more focused pitch on what we do, but we're using this education element upfront to warm them up for even going into the funnel. So this is an example of where if I click here, I know it's not gonna open it straight away, but it brings you,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
You don't exactly know exactly what to do, but it's a place for browsing. It's a place for just kind of getting a feel for a company. But it's not really a focused thing which is telling you, do this, then do this, then do this. It's not going to necessarily take you from being a stranger to a customer. It's really a brochure of stuff. So that's what a website is. So this is our website.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
straight to here right where we've been already so also what's really great is if your team if you're running a team like uh let me just actually this is a really important point if you're running a team and they're making like you're running a company you're making content and you're the ceo of the company you're like i don't know if any of this content is doing anything
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
That's often what happens when I'm talking to someone and they're trying to figure out like YouTube and podcasts and all of this. They're like, I don't know if this content is actually doing anything. The first thing I ask them is, okay, and they're like, oh, my team members are making all this content that doesn't really make sense. I don't really know if they're doing a good job.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Maybe I should hire someone else. And then my first question is, where are you sending people from your content? And they're like, oh, we have loads of places, like depends on the content. Sometimes it's this, sometimes it's that. My first step for them is your content team's only goal from today on is to send people to this one funnel that we're gonna create together.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
There's no other place where you send people and all of your content, always the CTA is sending them to this one place. And then your other team, your sales team, and your actual internal marketing team who's building the funnels and trying to make money, they have one goal. Their only goal is to get more call bookings.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So one day I want to bring some of the people we work with together in a call like this as well, just so we can talk about the different funnels. But we worked with a public speaking guy. And
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
we sat with this team, we flew over, we sat with this team and after listening, you know, three or four hours to all the different problems, I realized the number one problem they had is you guys don't have one metric that everyone is following. And that metric from today on is,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
fill up and we like the there was a sales guy working there so it was fill up this guy's calendar so every day when you start the day your goal is to fill up this guy's calendar when you're making when you're making new content your only goal is to fill up his calendar and within like a month it was just full all the time because they had that one goal and because now they have one funnel which had one goal of filling up the filling up that funnel so our youtube channel for almost all of
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
2021, 2022, and 2023, it only links to one funnel, and that's it, just the same one you saw over and over again. Um, it also links to some other places. So I want to show you just a quick example of another slightly different type of funnel, which is easier to make.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So this is more of a lead generation funnel, which also drip feeds information about our company and eventually leads into a more hard, like a funnel that leads to a sales call like that. So I'll give you an example. So this
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Yes. So I'll show you exactly an exact example of it just to give you a feeling for it. So when someone lands, when someone finds this video on YouTube, okay, this is called how to prioritize ideas in meetings fast. It's a really good detailed video with templates, with all that kind of stuff. One of the templates we put basically behind an email wall, but we wouldn't even need to.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And we tell them to go here, when they click here, This is like a random landing page made in ClickFunnels. I mean, how long would it take someone to make this landing page? 20 minutes?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Oh yeah, sorry. A random landing page. A really simple one. Look, what's even funny about this is that nobody on my team even put an AJ and Smart logo on here. So it's like it's there is no way in hell you're even finding this website anywhere else. So this is a perfect example of a funnel. It's just living on its own somewhere out in the middle of nowhere.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I'm gonna use this as a comparison to what one of our funnels look like. Websites are what we call or what people in the kind of funnel world call shadow funnels. So website is a shadow funnel. It's almost just there to prove that you're actually a real company. And sometimes it's almost just there so you yourself can figure out what you do and just have like a home for your stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So this is this page has a Facebook pixel on it. And this allows us to know. this person who's using Instagram or Facebook or any meta product was interested enough in this video, the previous one I just showed, to go to this page.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So even if we don't have their email address, we're going to be able to show that person ads and see if they're interested in other things that we're offering as well around the internet. So the Facebook pixel allows us to say... But by the way, the Facebook pixel has gotten a lot less powerful since... Yeah, since they changed... iOS changes. Yeah, exactly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
But it still allows us to get some information. But the main thing here is collecting their email address, collecting their name, and being able to give them this template and then being able to drip feed them emails that slowly warm them up to the other things like... open them up to the universe of AJ and smart without, you know, website dumps it all in one go. A funnel lays it out step by step.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
That's really the difference. It's all separate steps that you actually can't see. So when someone fills this out, they don't know that the next step is like a six email chain that we've already written two years ago. Um, but that's a really simple like lead capture funnel or lead magnet that that we would run from YouTube and then send those into a drip campaign.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Well, there's two different types of campaigns that they could go into actually. One is that they could go into the funnel. Usually what happens when it gets more complex, first we'll try to put them into this VSL funnel that will sell them a high ticket program from $7,000 to like $14,000 to any sort of big ticket thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
If we figure out that they have no interest in things like that and they're like not going to buy anything for more than a thousand, then they go into campaigns like Black Friday. So that email address will then be kind of marked and segmented as this person's not interested in high ticket. This person's just a beginner or interested in low ticket. Let's test them out again on Black Friday.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So we're just collecting email addresses, even though it's like, We're collecting email addresses and trying to get the money back as quick as possible with the VSL funnel. But then we have the template that you just saw there where we might not make money from that customer ever, or it might be two years later. So there's kind of different ways of looking at it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Another type of very, very successful funnel, the most successful funnel we ever did. Oh, actually, I'll just show you another thing. So a lot of people have blogs and make content, but they also don't know how to monetize people from the blogs and content. So they just keep collecting leads, but they're like... I don't know.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I think collecting and hoarding leads isn't as interesting as being able to actually monetize them quickly. So we also have a kind of unbranded or well separate from everything else blog, which used to be called workshopper.com, which is why the URL is still this. And it's basically our SEO play, but the SEO play, where does it lead? Always SEO.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Exactly. And there's another type of funnel we'll lead them to within here. Here's another funnel, which you are aware of. Well, it's not exactly a funnel, but it's... It's a call to action where we can then funnel them into this training. And that's joining a free community. You are the expert there with your super successful community.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
But we have one other thing, which is a book funnel, which is insane. Let's see if I can find workshop or play. I don't even know if this thing works, to be honest.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
but you actually can't reach the funnels from the website and you can't reach the website from the funnels. They're completely separate projects. They're completely separate URLs and they're actually living in their own separate worlds and like, project teams, concepts, all of that kind of stuff. So you can see here on the website, it looks nice. It's a nice looking website.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So here's a link out to a funnel. This is a book funnel. This is a free book funnel, it's called. And we've basically turned it off. So we've increased the friction so high that it's not even useful anymore. But you can Google book funnels. Nothing is more effective, nothing, like in marketing, than holding a goddamn book in your hand
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And this like all of the all of the stuff you can learn on a YouTube channel for free, all of the stuff that you can download PDFs, whatever, it's all out there. People don't give a shit if you tell them there's a physical thing that they can have that has all of the information in it. a very large percentage of your audience will want that physical thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Don't even bother thinking of the logic behind it. It just works. And also, it's easier to talk about a physical book than it is to talk about anything else. Now, I told you this is kind of switched off. So today what happens is you just buy it and then you get sent into our newsletter and then that newsletter sends you to that funnel that you saw. But what it used to do is you would buy the book
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
We basically were doing it for less than cost price. So now we're charging, I think, close to cost price, but we make no money from it. Number one, this book gives you shit tons of marketing because people love to post pictures of themselves holding books. We didn't ask anyone here. I'm pretty sure we didn't ask anybody here to do that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Yes, you're right. Fuck. That's brilliant. Oh, these are. Yeah. So like this book now, this page is outdated. This has had like 250,000 downloads and like a ludicrous amount of actual physical copies shipped. But initially, again, people didn't understand the only point of this page was to collect the email address and bring people into a funnel.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And that funnel was called a 2K funnel, which was a different type of funnel. And since it's not going to work right now, I have to explain it. 2K funnel is basically you go, you buy, you get the book either for free or you're paying a small price. I think we had like two euro or something. Then the next page is like, hey, your book is on the way. It's going to take six weeks, as we told you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Do you want to watch just the summary of the book now? And that's the video that teaches you about what's in the book, plus gets you to sit down and listen to what we do and what we offer. And also gets you to, in this case, because it's a 2K funnel, we actually offer you something to buy right there and then, which was a course, which is called the Design Sprint Masterclass.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
which was 2,000 euro, so 2K. I don't know what the A stands for. I can't even remember. I don't know who invented the name of that thing. But the idea there is you actually get, you know, you're paying for all of the Facebook ads for people to come in.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And then there's some extra little elements which you can do where you can liquidate the costs of the Facebook ads with a small upsell in between, like selling a workbook after that first step. So we did all of these steps. It was crazy. It's just so complicated. The amount of physical shipping we had to do nearly killed us. However, the last step is, hey, you don't want to wait for the book.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
It's professionally done, but soon you're going to get a very shocking comparison to how much we don't care about that kind of stuff when we're making a funnel because funnels are really about making money, generating leads, generating call bookings, and those things need to be changed and messed around with a lot. So this is a website.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Here's a free training right now on everything based on the book. I didn't come up with this idea. It's genius. And it worked so well. And the only reason it's not switched on right now is that when it's switched on, it's
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
very explosive and it creates a lot of also support questions like people the book arrived with a bend on it and all this stuff so we now have like a company who helps us do that for our next book And so, yeah, next time we'll pay more attention to how difficult shipping is for workbooks and for all this kind of stuff. But yeah, that's a different type of funnel. You're collecting the lead.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Guys, printing stuff out for marketing, showing people stuff, showing you holding stuff sounds so cheesy and silly. It works so goddamn well. It's unbelievable. It's crazy. um yeah there's a lot i mean this is a you only have 15 minutes left so i've got no time left because i got i gotta go build some funnels you know what i'm saying
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I should have cleaned myself before I came on the show. I'm trying to think. I really want to give people as much value as possible. There's a book called Expert Secrets and Dot Com Secrets, which I definitely recommend you guys read. They're very good. They really teach the concept behind funnels.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I think you think that all the big companies are not like, for example, you'll sometimes you look at this stuff and you're like, it's not prestigious. This style of marketing, which is called direct response marketing, it's not prestigious. But some of your favorite brands use this exact type of marketing. Eight Sleep uses this type of marketing. AG1 uses this type of marketing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Magic Mind, they use this type of marketing. You think these kind of cool brands don't use it. Look at their emails. Look at the style. Look where they're funneling you through. Look at the urgency they use. Look at the deals they use.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
This style of direct response marketing is being used everywhere, except, okay, sometimes not by Apple, maybe not by Google, but occasionally they do use the MIFGI concept, which is epic, which is, that's the thing I'll end on, is the MIFGI concept. And that is free. I'm actually going to show you how AG1 uses it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
It's MIFGI, which is called most incredible free gift ever.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So a MIFGI is most incredible free gift ever. And it's about stacking one-time free gifts onto a current offer, which you would think is like too cheesy to work, but it works so well and dramatically increases conversion rates to the max. Like this is AG1's most recent campaign.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
where not only did they have their welcome kit and the travel pouches, but they also added this AG1-D3 and AG1-Omega-3, and they present these very clearly as free gifts. They present it very clearly as a limited time offer. You also might think, well, I'm an agency or I'm selling really high level shit. There's no way that I can be doing stuff like this. These are consumer products.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
It's so much easier to do it with consumer products. we are doing MIFGs to the max all over the place. Like when we're talking to a client and they're like, okay, there's this, you know, 200K deal and we really want to close it. We say, if you close it this year, we'll give you an extra 30 licenses for your team. Things like this. Like it's about, and that's a free gift.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And we'll also send you printed versions of the workshop as a free gift. And it's really so unbelievably powerful that, And I didn't know about it until last year. Now I see it everywhere. The free gift concept. Again, it's a QVC thing, but a lot of these companies use it like all the time. And it's always a limited offer.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And I got like, look at just to show you how many of these emails I got, uh, Just another example of it. Time is running out, limited time offer. So yeah, and like they use urgency, even though they obviously like, they don't need necessarily to use urgency, but at the same time they kind of do because it is a campaign.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And if you're doing a campaign, if you're doing a one-off thing like this, a lot of the creativity at AJ and Smart is, what's the Mifki this time? That's one of the most common things you hear people talking about at AJ and Smart when a new campaign is coming up. It's like, what are the Mifkis? Time is running out, limited time offer.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And they're just presenting it in different visual kind of lineups, but it's the same thing, basically. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I don't think so. I don't think it feels cheesy. I feel like I actually want to have that thing. Yeah. And it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of, It's like a line between cheesy and not cheesy, but you just got to look at what companies like Whoop also do it, you know, like get it now or buy this version of it and you get a premium band as a free gift, things like this. We'll give you a...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
13 months instead of 12 months as a free gift. If you buy during this period, um, eat, um, Endel, one of the most like, you know, high brow digital design products for me, for this audio, you know, Endel.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
They have, they had such a hardcore free gift campaign, uh, last black Friday, which was you get 12 months of Endel now instead of paying monthly. And we give you an Endel bag as a free gift. By the way, I bought it and my bag never turned up. But I forgot, you know? But I wanted the bag.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Yeah, well, first of all, I think unless you're running, unless you have unbelievably good SEO and you're spending good money and have good talent to get the Google ads to go towards your website, unless you have a lot of brand recognition, your website is not going to sell things for you necessarily. Your website is still the place where people are going.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I hope your audience finds this somewhat valuable. I know it's a bit of a surface level abstraction presentation of all the funnel stuff, but there's going to be some people in your audience who I think will dig deeper. much deeper into this topic now and maybe be excited.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And then there'll be loads of people who are like, nah, this is like scammy shit and I'm never going to look at it and copywriting sucks and all that kind of stuff. And it's all about brand.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Yes. Thank you for having me back, even though I've been a little bit off the record.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
difference uh in their businesses and i think uh if i'm listening to this build some funnels like go have some fun build some funnels um and and look at look at other people's funnels go to facebook ad library type in your competitors names and click on their ads and see if they're running funnels seriously that's one of the best ways to learn what funnels to run for your industry see what other people are running for their industry black
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, funnels.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Oh, I definitely want people to check out our new website and thank my team for it because they put so much hard work into it. AJsmart.com, we redesigned it. We went more in the direction of what Greg recommended, which is the more Holdco style. So thanks for, you know, kind of, you know, Greg...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
is the is the pioneer and i was reluctant um but we've redesigned the whole aj and smart ecosystem so check that out uh there's nothing to buy i just would like you to say nice things about it on twitter so i can uh tag or screenshot that and show my team because they worked so goddamn hard on it so if you see anything nice on the website maybe you could screenshot that and tag me on uh
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And with a free gift. Yes. Actually, and to be really honest, you know, people think it's like a thing, you know, oh, comment, whatever. This episode only exists because so many people commented asking us to do it to the point where you were like saying on Twitter, yeah, people are actually getting annoyed about the fact that this episode isn't happening. And then I felt actually a little bit like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
of pressure that i didn't want to let your audience down so it actually really works i was reading the comments and i was like oh shit i can't just offhand say that i'm going to do something to your audience and then not do it because they fucking they don't forget totally and i and by the way people who are comment
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Yeah, he sent me a lot of these screenshots.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Well, I hope it was valuable. Please let us know. You know, because again, because I don't have this, like I'm not teaching this thing. If you have questions in the comments of things I could have gone into maybe for another part to let us know, because I don't exactly know what people want to know about this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
People are not necessarily going to your website as a first thing that the first time they find out about you, they're going there later to see, wait, let's just make sure this is a real thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I definitely want to. I'm going on a little, after that website launch, I'm going on like a health sabbatical for the next few weeks, but then I'll be back.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
I appreciate you having me on, dude. I know I'm like a bit chaotic.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Oh, so anybody in your community who knows what this hat is from, I automatically love you. Maybe I won't say it, but in the comments, if you know about this hat, you might've already commented on it, but if you know it, then you're my type of person.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So like, for example, if you get a recommendation for a great spa in the city or something or a great barber, maybe after you get the recommendation from someone, then you'll check the website just to make sure. But it's not often, especially with high ticket things, you know, things that cost money.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
a lot of money, the website is more there just to make sure, okay, these guys are real, they work with people, but we're not making any money. Not a lot of money is being generated from the website itself. So yeah. And by the way, we haven't had a nice, we didn't have a nice website for like the first 12 years of the company.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
This website only, or 14 years of the company, this website only launched, last week and we only did it as a branding exercise. So yeah, websites are not like necessarily how you make money or how anyone makes money. And that can be pretty confusing because
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
people will tell you to spend a lot of money on your websites and they'll tell you that you should like have the perfect brand and all of this kind of stuff. Um, that's not the way, and that could make sense if you're a lifestyle brand and the goal is to like build up this mystique around the brand and all this kind of stuff. Maybe you're a Michelin star restaurant.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Um, there's a lot of places where maybe funnels don't make sense, but if you're selling what, what we sell is we sell, uh, training to corporates, which can be pretty high ticket. We also sell training to individuals, which up to, you know, $14,000 per participant joining one of our trainings. We also, of course, sell then digital hybrid coaching versions of that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So from about 5,000 euro or $5,000 to open-ended, that's our range of things we're selling. But we're not trying to be like You know, we're not like a Michelin star restaurant that has to have the branding perfect everywhere. So, yeah, funnels are where we then most people find out about us through a funnel and how our funnels work. Again, completely separate to the website. In fact, unrelated.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And you're not even going to see the same branding on them. Our funnels, which I'll show you one in a minute, they basically could start as a Facebook ad or a YouTube video that leads you into a super focused page, which tells you one thing and has one call to action. And the whole goal of that funnel is to do one thing. And that one thing could be book a call with us. or buy something.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So it's usually one of two things. And we always have a couple of funnels running at the same time. But just a first conceptual thing is that funnels and websites are not the same thing. And actually, what's really complicated in this world is that people who make really nice websites are generally not good at making funnels at all. Because funnels require really good copywriting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And mostly, it's about conversion optimization for that specific flow. So for us, it's called booking generation. Whereas someone who's really good at making a website is maybe very good at visual design, UX design, but they can't tell you how to make money and how to sell stuff. And yeah, a funnel is just a completely, totally different separate thing to a website.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Does that kind of first step make sense?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Yes, and I don't even know how people... When I meet somebody, let's say somebody who's selling an in-person training... when I talk to them and they're like, how the hell are you selling out these $14,000 training sessions? Like, because what they do, actually, this is a great example, a really great example of how someone else does something versus how we would do it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And I'll just give you the exact example of this right now, like visually. I think it's important to see this stuff first before going into like the nitty gritty details. So if you were an outsider and you were guessing how we make money with, let's say, let's just choose our online training, right? So our online training is called Workshopper Master. It's like a mixture of online and coaching.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
That's me like a thousand years ago. So if you were from the outside and you were like wanting to compete with AJ and Smart, right? You were like, I'm going to... figure out how to make money the same way AJ and Smart makes money. So you go to our website, facilitator.com, you go to the page for the product you wanna copy and you're like, okay.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So they basically have this landing page and through this landing page, people book application calls And then that's how they make money, right? That's how it works. That's how AJ and Smart works. And if you would make that mistake, you would essentially fuck yourself up because that's not even slightly how we do it. And that's often not how companies do this at all.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Like they have their like facade, right? But that's not how this company makes money. But often people will copy the facade and not know why it's not working for them. Another quick example of that could be this. If you look here at our in-person training, I was having a chat with a guy yesterday who I'm helping sell an in-person event.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
The Prince of Ireland, yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And he was like, how the hell... He said that he put an event... online in January this year and it's like $4,000 to come to it. He only needs to fill 50 seats and he still hasn't filled it. And it's like happening in November and it's one month from now and he's only sold like 20 tickets or something. And he said it's been a super manual process.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
So I asked him, okay, so like, what was the process of selling it? What campaign did you do? What funnel did you run? And he said, well, we just put it on the website and no one's buying it. And it's just crazy to me that anyone actually does this. It's totally shocking to me that this even happens. Like it's...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
If that was how we sold, if that's how we expected to sell out three events per year at $14,000, my business would not exist because no one would ever buy it because it's too high ticket. And also, why would you buy it? It's just on the website. You can decide whenever you want. So... We don't do that. We build funnels, right? We build single purpose funnels to solve these problems.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
Hello. Hey, man. Hey. Hey, audience. I'm very well prepared for this funnel chat, as you can see here. I've got my slides. and my thing to create the slides. So it's going to be fun. So I did say on the last episode that I was on that I would talk about how to basically kind of do a funnels 101 sort of session. So yeah, I mean, just maybe good to know upfront.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
And these funnels are very ugly. No attention is paid to the design. And the copy in the end is not even aligned with our brand because the copy is very much whatever marketing style copy is working for this particular funnel. And it's not like...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a $20m sales funnel from scratch
totally insanely misaligned like fuck you motherfucker it's just that the style of copy is not the style of copy we would ever put on our own website because it's not representative of what our brand is but it works really well for the funnel so our funnel yeah so maybe and maybe this is where you're going but it sounds like you're saying I have a secret but I can't tell you
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
How the hell do you get in touch with literally everyone on the planet? Like, how do you do networking?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Not to say that I helped with his YouTube channel at all. But just reaching out and being like, hey, I am in Austin. What are you up to? Sends me his number, invites me to his house. These types of things are so... There's a lot of nuance to it that you did there. You didn't just reach out and say, hey, can I hang with you? You said, I'm already going to be in these areas.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And that's a weirdly important thing. The other thing... You and I were speaking to the same person last week, Blake, who actually is my mentor because I pay him to be my mentor. And you somehow were already talking to him. But we were talking about this topic in the mastermind last week.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And he said, one of the weirdest things with people who are very successful and very powerful is they give out their number so easily. And giving your number and just being like, hey, here's my number, like whatever. That is also something that a lot of people don't do, but it's actually super powerful.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And in the background here is someone that I've been messaging with who I never thought I would have the number of. Once you cross that boundary, once you deliver value or a compliment, or in your case, it's content, or it's like figuring out what they want and what they can resonate with. And then combine that with that with or without you energy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
It's not like me not meeting you is going to hold me back or anything. And then a little number on top. Those things seem to be some juicy elements of connecting with people who could be your mentors or not even mentors. Sometimes it's just people who can connect to you or people who you just really would love to meet.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And, and people are lazy about it, dude. People are so lazy. People reach out. I'm sure people reach out to you every day and they say, Hey, can we grab a coffee? Like, You're not trying to be mean. I guess you feel like, how do I even respond to that? It even feels sometimes a little bit insulting if you're a busy person. You're a busy person, Greg.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And if someone just says, hey, can we grab a coffee? And you're like, who are you?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Yeah. Greg, I have a topic for you. I have a question for you. And this is something I actually genuinely have been wondering. And there's probably a couple of different angles we can take on this. But I think one thing that one of the most valuable things I think your audience would love to know is how the hell do you get in touch with literally everyone on the planet?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Dude, you really hold back. You keep your story. You really hold stuff back. I can't believe that this is... I thought the end of the story was going to be you messaged him. The whole thing actually happened.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I think that another thing here, I'm just trying to break apart the kind of principles here. You also, I sometimes draw this for people when I'm showing them the canvas strategy. If you're watching this, if you're not seeing this, it's basically a circle. This is where you are. You're on, you're at this part of your life. The Weezer guy is here and then here, all of his connections, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And you like want to move up this ladder or whatever it is. But a lot of people are not humble enough to also realize that they are below somebody. And I think for me, one of the things and because it sounds weird to say it, it's like, I am below this person. It doesn't mean you're below them as a human. It just means that maybe they're ahead of you in certain parts of your life.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And I think it's very difficult for people to be humble enough to assess where they are. And often in your case, what would have happened is you would have gone, if you were not humble and you didn't understand the laws of power, you would have gone there and talked about yourself for two hours.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
But you understood that the dynamic stays in place, essentially, and that you still have to deliver value. And this is something that once you understand it, once you understand that there is this like dynamic in the world, you can really, really connect with a lot of very interesting people. I think.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
getting too comfy with people, getting too cozy with people after you meet them the first time is often a way or getting too familiar and overstepping boundaries. That's like next level ninja shit to not do that when you actually get in the door.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Like everybody I know, every investor, every entrepreneur, every company owner that I end up working with already knows you before I meet them. How do you do networking? Like... I don't understand it. You're everywhere. You're everywhere all the time. How does it work?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I think as well, it's just another example is we're doing this podcast right now, which is going to give me extra exposure. We're doing it because I thought for a long time about how to bring value to you and your content universe. And I was reading your tweets and I was looking at your show and then I was looking at other people's shows and I was like,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I wonder if there's a way that I can just take some of the heavy lifting of maybe like an extra episode so that Greg can still grow his podcast. He can do his own advertising on the podcast. I can be in the background and I can still bring value while getting connection to you, learning a lot of stuff, but also getting connection to your audience.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I was joking about this earlier with my girlfriend. I was like, if I didn't understand this world, then if you think about how stupid it can be, right after this episode, I'm like, hey, dude, I'm just going to send you over an invoice for the work I put in for this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
just like this super short-term thinking when people play these games you know it's like oh hey actually now you have to pay me to do this totally even though i am getting a massive advantage because i have no audience that's also a thing if people are wondering like how do you grow an audience nobody listens to my podcast great like two weeks ago nobody was listening to my podcast i went on greg's podcast and now more a lot more people are listening to my podcast
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
but i also had to think about how to bring value to greg's life um instead of just being like hey dude you put me on my podcast there's a level of like you you just you have to have some level of understanding your position in the hierarchy of whatever it is you're trying to do um and that's very tricky for people their entitlement comes on very fast when people like Often someone will meet me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
They'll like put in some effort and then they're like super entitled immediately. Why didn't you hire me? Like what? What are you talking about? You know what I mean? Do you know what I mean?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I put on 1.5 X. People listen to this podcast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And I also don't know if you noticed this, but when you asked me at the end of the podcast where people can find me, because we talked about your newsletter and all of that stuff, I actually didn't tell where people can find me. I asked people to go and write reviews for your podcast and your Spotify, and I didn't tell people where to find me at all.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And that's like, in my opinion, part of being valuable is also not just... fully taking advantage. You don't have to like squeeze every situation dry. You can just see where things go and enjoy them. Like I think there is something to that as well. I don't need anything to come out of this. It's an enjoyable experience.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
By the way, side note, in the comments of the last YouTube video, people said something about us not looking at this, like looking everywhere. And now I'm recording in a camera that's over here. Like it couldn't be. I'm like, hey, how's it going, guys?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And we're not professionals, okay? You need it more extreme. You need to make it more extreme so that it's clear. You need to put the camera behind your head.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Oh my God. We got to end it right there. Do you think people are going to be able to take actionable... Okay, I want to leave you with one thing. So if somebody today... Let's just pick Noah Kagan as an example. Somebody wanted to connect with Noah Kagan today, and they'd love to do it within the next three months, but they do not have... We haven't even talked about the idea of doing free work.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
We're not going to go into that today, but they don't have content out there. They don't have a social media platform. But they would love to work with someone like Noah Kagan, Kevin Rose, whatever, someone who's like influential. What would be some actionable steps they could take over the space of two weeks?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And could that just be retweeting other people's stuff if you're not like...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And actually, just if you guys are listening to this and you're like, oh, easy for you guys to say because there's so much activity. I have been tweeting only for the last maybe three weeks and I get like one like per tweet. Like I am an example of the opposite of Greg where I don't really have a social media presence.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And reaching out to people on Twitter has been so powerful in the last few weeks. I'm shocked that I have just not been doing it. So you're definitely, you don't have to be like, it doesn't have to look like people like your stuff for this to work. But I guess it does, it helps if you have a picture and stuff going on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Someone here, I remember one time somebody met me and they thought it was something even worse. So wait, is my username Jicecream? I thought that's just my handle. Isn't my name Jonathan Courtney on Twitter?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
You looking at my... Wait, so why would it be offensive? Jice cream. Is Jice... Is that like something dirty?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
It's true. I actually, so my name on Instagram is also J ice cream. It's, it's actually my Xbox gamer tag, which, you know, I wasn't ever thinking of becoming a business guy. And so this was my, like making my Xbox account when I was like 12 or something. Um, Yeah, I don't know if I can change it. I love it too much, J. Ice Cream.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
The thing is, I'm trying to now become successful in spite of my name being J. Ice Cream. Okay, apart from that, is it okay to have posts which have not many likes?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Yes. Yes. That's what I've been trying to do. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. So that's step one is like, get yourself and would you start with one platform? Like, would you start with X?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Even though Twitter's dead, right? Because I heard two years ago that because Elon Musk took over, it's dead. So it doesn't exist anymore. Crazy that you're using it even though it's dead.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Yeah, I definitely get more responses from people on X than anywhere else.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Yes. Do you know the dream 100 concept? No. Okay, I'm not going to talk about it now, but if anyone wants to figure out how to... You can't just... Well, if you want... The Dream 100 concept is a... So you just said, like, choose 10 people who you'd want to meet and then set notifications for them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
There's this concept about growing a business where if you want to grow a business, one of the best ways to do it is by making a list of the 100 people who have access to the audience that you want.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
and then in that so you have the list it's basically a google sheet you would create on the left would be the their name then you would have their all of their different social profiles uh and then you would have like you know the amount of people who are following them and then you have like a list of all the things that you think they want so if you're doing this by yourself dream 10 is probably better but you could create a google doc here
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
where you're also when you're watching all their content you're collecting almost an uh a an archive of the things that they're interested in so you're creating your own profile and i'm sure someone will use ai to do it but yeah the the concept of the dream 100 thing is that you have a way then to track all the people you're reaching out to and apparently
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
If you actually reach out to 100 people, then maybe 20, 30 of the people will respond to you. And this is one of the best ways to get in front of the audience that you actually want to get in front of because you can get on their content, etc.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
But Dream 100 is something you can Google and watch videos about if you want to see a practical breakdown of even how to decide who you would want to reach out to. I just didn't want to take you off track.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Oh, no, I just didn't want to annoy your audience. And they're like, Jonathan keeps interrupting you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
No, dude, your YouTube comments are extremely kind and constructive, honestly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Your YouTube comments are very, very constructive and I am responding to almost all of them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So you would turn on the post notifications for the people that you would like to get in touch with. And every time they post, you essentially respond. Would you also say that like retweeting and then like quote posting? I don't even know what it's called, like quoting what they did. Would that count as a replying to what they do?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Because then you're spreading their message to other people, to my one follower.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Yeah, this, this definitely I've, I've been, I'm actually trying to get, um, I want this guy, a man who used to be the CEO. You probably know him. I should have just asked you. I want him to coach me a man, the ex CEO of, uh, AppSumo.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And, uh, I've been, I've, I'm in his like waiting list and I'm, I'm like replying to all of his, and I'm jokingly saying, yeah, it's because I want you to coach me earlier. And I'm definitely getting noticed. If you know him, tell him to coach me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Yeah, call him up. I want to pay him. I want to pay him and I can't pay him because he won't let me coach him.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And you cannot be entitled. That's the worst because you also don't know. Like sometimes someone will reach out to me, right? Um, on YouTube or LinkedIn or whatever. I'm not on X so much or on Instagram or they'll email the company and they won't get a response from me just because I don't see it. And then like a couple of weeks later they'll send me like an angry message.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I'm like, are you fucking serious? This is the first, that's also now the first time I'm seeing an interaction with this person. You know what I mean? Like, that's the thing you gotta be, you gotta be really okay with silence.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
You gotta, when I'm reaching out to, when I'm in LA and reaching out to people who are like way above me, if they ghost me, if they don't respond to me, uh, the best thing I've ever done is just not pushing and not being irritating. And then like the next time I'm there, sometimes I meet them and it's just that they were away.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Just don't, uh, I think that's very important to be very okay with silence and to be very okay with rejection and,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
and not be entitled because they might change their mind a couple of years later if you're doing something more interesting i also think it's okay to follow up so for example i'm trying to do you know colin and samir do you know who that is of course yeah i know them personally no i don't not at all i do know of them but i don't know them personally at all are you trying to get on their show i know them personally
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
But just were you, they were there and you were like, oh, I'm going to be there anyway. As in you went out of your way to meet them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Yeah, of course. But you, you with or without you'd them, you Bono'd them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I have a little hack on maybe, maybe something different you could have done there. And you're better at this than me. So take this with a pinch of salt, Greg's audience. There's someone who I'm, so I'm running this mastermind. Don't worry, I'm not going to sell it on your podcast already sold out. I'm running this mastermind in LA and there's the speaker. I want to, I want him to speak at it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I won't say his name on the podcast right now because I'm still working on it. um he agreed like he was like i'm in no problem let's do this um we agreed on everything and then uh he was like i just need to chat with my wife to to make sure that like the dates are good and i didn't get any response then for a little bit and so i followed up and i was like hey just uh
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
you know, confirming, are you still in? But I didn't get a response. And then so I spent I sent another email just saying, hey, just just checking in. And he said, oh, absolutely. Just I'm still in. I'm still excited. I just need to really make sure of my life. And then I was like, wait a minute.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
This is an opportunity for me to make this easier for this guy, because clearly he's way like he's just got a different life to me. This person has way more going on. And also, I want him to speak at my event. I actually really need him to speak at my event. It would be amazing for him to speak at my event. And so I wrote him an email and his response to it was, I love that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And we'll tell you about the email in the next step. No, I'm just kidding. The email I sent him was, OK, how about this? The event is happening anyway. And how about two weeks beforehand? I'll just reach out to you again and see if you want to come so you don't have to think about the scheduling. And he was like that was the thing he was super excited about.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
A lot of the things that I noticed about people who are very important and who are kind of higher up in this hierarchy Dude, they have so... I mean, the amount of stuff you and I have going on. And I mean, I am like here in the business world. You're here in the business world. And maybe Colin and Samir are here. I don't know. Kevin Rose is like in space. These people have so much going on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
It's unimaginable. So if you can just make it so easy. And they often, I think, like spontaneous and impromptu ways of doing things. So I wonder two things that I would do if I was trying to get this guest. on my podcast. And I had a couple of these bigger guests on my podcast before and I had this challenge. One is
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
finding out without them even knowing who their assistant is and just going around them and trying to see if I can schedule it with them.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Uh, the other thing is literally just having a slot, like, but, but soon like a slot that's happening in the same day and reaching out to them in two weeks and being like, Hey, I actually have like a slot today, tomorrow, the next day in the next 72 hours, often I noticed that people like this
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
tend to like to do things sort of last minute because it doesn't have to add on to their really chaotic schedule. It's just, oh, I'll just put it in right now as it was today with you, right? We were chatting, we were messaging and I was like, how about like today? It just, it sometimes works out better when you do these things on a very short scale, I have found.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Yeah. Before people start reaching out to you, Greg, just to make sure you actually remember the things in the episode. If you just reach out to Greg and say, can I pick your brain? Nothing's going to happen. You know what I mean? That's not the point of this episode. Make sure you didn't listen to it on 10x speed.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
There's probably some bits in here that would help you get in touch with someone like Greg. But yeah, dude, that's it. I hope that's valuable for your audience.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
There's a great meme that maybe your team can pull up. I posted it on my, I don't know if I can share my screen right now, so I'll just kind of post it to you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
It's another experiment. It's not like a news topic. It's not like a tweet. It's like a general thing that I see you doing out in the world that I think some of your audience would find valuable.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Give me some likes. Give me some attention out there on Jicecream.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah, if no one likes it, we're not doing it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Yeah. The lesson is if no one likes it, don't do it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Yeah, I think people should also know that this does not replace the core podcast. This is sort of like Greg's still going to interview people and give you that other stuff you like. This is more like a BTS, you know, behind the scenes of like, Greg has a crazy guest on his podcast. How does Greg contact these people?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
That's kind of what I was thinking, you know, like in my mind, I was thinking in here.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I'm trying to like push my temples to show that it's my brain.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
That's what I want to talk about. So can I pick your brain on a few different angles of this and try to be the voice of your audience here? Yes. Okay, first of all, most people, the first thing they say, as you already said, is, oh, easy for you to say because you have a big audience.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
So now let's assume we're both talking about this from the perspective of people who started out doing this without audiences. And then the second thing is, okay, the people you're reaching out to are probably already very successful. Um, usually in the case that when we're reaching out to people, they're a lot more successful than us.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
At least I know for me, when I reach out to people, they're more successful. Um, and so they don't need a lot of the things you can provide. How do you figure out how to deliver value to someone who's already, let's say 20 years ahead of you in the entrepreneurial journey, even if you don't have a large audience, for example, like what would be your, what was your process?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
How do you figure out how to deliver value to someone who's already, let's say, 20 years ahead of you in the entrepreneurial journey?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Yeah, let's give some examples. I'll give one from a perspective of someone who had actually literally no following. Back in 2016, I was reading, so I'm running a design agency. And I was reading a blog from GV, Google Ventures. They had this blog and it was about, they were talking about this thing called design sprints. This guy called Jake Knapp, who was blogging about it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
He was kind of like this person who I was like, oh my God, this is like the Silicon Valley designer that I would love to meet, who like is doing all the things I would love to do and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Eventually he wrote this book called Sprint, became a New York Times bestseller. And I was still like, oh, my God, this is this is amazing. Like I'm reading this book. It's so cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I'm here in Berlin. I have no Internet presence or anything like that. And again, I'm just like this, you know, random person living in Berlin.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I was trying to figure out what could be a way that I could reach out and hang out with someone like Jake without just being like, hey, can we grab a coffee? And I read this article from Ryan Holiday. It's called the Canvas Strategy. Have you ever heard of this?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
it's like a systematic way to figure out how to deliver value to people who are ahead of you. And one of the things it talks about is that if you're the person who can clear the path for those in front of you, you can also kind of choose the direction, which is a cool way of thinking about it. And so what I actually did is... First of all, I had to come up with an excuse to be in San Francisco.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
So I offered to talk at this kind of design and tech conference in Silicon Valley. This was an offer to do this for free, of course. And then I was in the region. And what I did is I reached out to Jake and I said, I have an idea of something to pitch you that I think would benefit you spreading the word of Sprint all around the world. It would also make you money.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And I've taken care of like 90% of the details already. And he was like, cool. So I went to the GV office and pitched him this idea of traveling around the world and teaching design sprints. But I would use my marketing skills to sell out the event so that he wouldn't have to think about it. And I would take on the really annoying part of setting up the locations and doing all of that stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
We're doing this again? Are you giving it a name yet? Is it Sipping Time?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
He was like, yes. And this, first of all, we became really good friends. And this opened up. So many doors to me that I could never have imagined. A lot of the Silicon Valley clients that we work with today are because of that relationship that I built with Jake. But initially, instead of just being like, hey, can we grab a coffee?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I really deeply thought about what types of things he might find interesting and thought about like, what's going to be really annoying if he wants to go and teach this around the world? Locations, filling those locations. And so I just presented an option to him that was super easy and cleared the path for him spreading the knowledge of Sprint around the world.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
And that was a cold, pretty much a cold outreach from me to the team at GV. I didn't even have Jake's email address. I just emailed GV. And this is the kind of thing I do all the time. What's maybe one or two examples from you? So...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Hey, everyone. I'm here to ask Greg questions. The things that maybe you've been asking him on comments and Twitter are things you've been wondering about. And I think this is the show where occasionally, depending on when Greg wants to do it, he's the one being interviewed and not guests being interviewed. You know what I mean?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Nah, it's shit. I don't like it. Nah. Nah, it's shit. I thought about it again. I don't like it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
Fuck, man. There's so many things you just said that we need to talk to your audience about here. That's amazing. Two things. One, you did something that I don't even know if you know there's a label for. There's this when you're reaching out to people who are, let's say, who in this case, you were trying to reach up to this person.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
There's this concept, and I think it was Daniel Priestley, again, I keep referencing this guy, who came up with this concept of with or without you energy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
With or without you... That's true. I didn't actually think about that. That's probably where it came from. So this idea of with or without you energy, when you reach out to someone, you don't want to be like... What's his name again? Not Bono. What's his name? John Rossman? John... Whatever. The Wheatus guy, right? Wheatus? Weezer? Weezer? Rivers Cuomo? The guy... Rivers... John Waters?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
I watched the episode we did that came out on Sunday. I was looking at the comments and I forgot we talked about this constipation thing. We talked about doing the reverse Brian Johnson where you try to get your age markers up as high as possible so you die as early as possible. I think that's going to be game-changing for some people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
All right. Like... Okay. So... So you reach out to Rivers. And if you were like, hey, love your music, whatever, love your art. Can I come visit you? He'd probably be like, go. That's weird. But if you already say that... The important thing is you're kind of like, I am there. That is something I already do. And it would be something that is just on my way. It's on my journey.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to meet anyone you want
That makes it seem less intense for people. One example of this for me... It's a bit weird to mention this online or on the podcast, but I think he wouldn't mind it. I really wanted to meet Noah Kagan and just saying, I'm in Austin. Not like a week before or two weeks before. Just, I'm here right now. And I was also looking around what he's looking for. He wanted help with his YouTube channel.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
See that? You see that shit? So it's a collaboration between Panic and what do you call them? Teenage Engineering, the company that I have like every product of. And it's just such a cute, cool thing for Panic to do. It took them a very long time to make it. It's like a passion project, but it sells like a lot. I don't know if you know about Panic, but they do like... They make this console.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So just giving people like the basic package of meta ads and simple Google search ads, it can be a game changer for these people. And if you're taking a small cut of every single one of those sales,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I know someone else who's doing this as well and he's doing pretty well and he's also not douchey and he's a bit more like bit more in the selling, like the spiritual events and stuff like that, like retreats, things like this. I don't know. I feel my brain is a bit muggy. I don't know if I'm making, am I making sense?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that I know what you're talking about.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I hear it all the time, dude. You're constantly hearing it. I hear it all the fucking time. And I'm like, yeah, that's because you're stupid. That you could have six million ARRs.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
take a lot of the Silicon Valley status symbols and try to apply these status symbols to small businesses. I think this is what Jason Freed is good at kind of cutting out and getting through the bullshit.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
A lot of these status symbols, like not running ads, saying Facebook is dead, saying Meta is dead, are totally relevant when you're trying to be, when the status game in Silicon Valley and the status game in startups is to work on like the cutting edge stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
But if you're working on doing something that's like running a yoga retreat or running a creator's retreat or trying to sell cups or whatever it is, you don't need to play those types of status games. And in fact, they might actually hurt you. Like trying to build a massive...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
personal brand or a massive like crazy like trying to do what Liquid Death did but for your tiny yoga retreat or something isn't going to necessarily apply without having loads of funding and all these other things. I think ads are just such an amazing easy way to start for most people. I also know it because I run a community which has like a couple of thousand people in it
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
We teach people also, hey, you know, we're teaching them facilitation, but we realize after a while, well, they need to get clients. So we need to teach them some basics. And when people run ads into a simple funnel, they get call bookings. And when they get call bookings, they get clients. The end. It's as simple as that. When you're a one person show or a small team, ads are so, so helpful.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
When you can't do some massive branding campaign and get on TV and do billboards and stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
They also publish a lot of different video games. They're like an aspirational company to me. I love companies that are just like doing lots of weird stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I agree. In most cases, I agree with you. And what we do is we... Because our audience, again, is older. At the event that your CEO was at, I think he was probably the youngest person there. And he's in his 30s or something. So our audience... And he's in his 70s. He's in his 70s, exactly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Like just due to the price range, like our in-person events cost like 11,000 something dollars. We are aiming for like generally it's senior people at corporates and consultants coming to our events.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
i don't mean literally senior people i don't mean senior senior uh although actually yeah the range the range of ages at our last event was from 20 25 to 76 not too bad huh not too bad um what was i trying to say fuck is i trying to say you're you're losing your memory in your old age Dude, I've had such a crazy last like six weeks. My brain is done. I need a break.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I can't get a break until like the 3rd of August, but I'm definitely at the point now where I'm like, I actually need a break.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
But I think I was talking about ads. Fucking ads, all right? Fuck it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
There was an earthquake while I was in LA, by the way. Oh, are you okay? I was making deals while this was happening. I just ignored it. To be honest, I actually just didn't. So I was on a call. I was walking on the beach. I didn't feel it. But if I had felt it, I would have totally freaked out. I would have like cried or something.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
We had like a WhatsApp group for all the people who came to our event and they were like posting about it. But yeah, so like, let me close this one up. It is, I remember what I was talking about. It is like this kind of form of pride. It's a status symbol to not run ads.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Fine, if you wanna be, if you're already like, if you've already got funding, if you've already got some angel investment, or if you're just like, have a huge personal brand oh yeah no dude I remember you were saying first post on you know first post on social media before ads and I agree with this the only thing is sometimes people I agree that this is the best way to do it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
In the best case scenario, you're able to test things out in an organic environment and even just getting a feel for the way you write and practicing. So we tell people and our people to practice on LinkedIn just because that's where they happen to hang out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Running ads, though, I think in itself is worth learning just as a discipline, just because when you get that thing you want to sell, you don't want to be feeling helpless and just like, oh, there's nothing I can do now. I just have to wait and beg people to buy my thing or come to my thing. I love the idea of just being able to put money into the machine. The machine finds the people for you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Yes, Jason is great. We actually just moved from using Slack, Asana, and Notion back to using Basecamp after a four-year break. And it is honestly refreshing. I started to have the feeling that my company was becoming like a chat room, basically. We were just on Slack all day. You just open Slack and you have all these red dots. And what I presented to my team last Monday, two weeks ago, was...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And then you can figure out how you're going to convert them, which is another whole thing. But I do think you're right. If you can do both, it's even better. But I just think that discipline or knowing someone who can do it, knowing someone who can help you run these things and demystify it is great.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And becoming the type of person who can help other people do that, not huge startups, but small businesses. I think it's a no brainer.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Well, we definitely always... We think about it more like return on ad spent, essentially. So our ROAS. And we're aiming... We're basically aiming for... Okay, we spent... $1, we want to make $1.50 back, right? And we have our funnel laid out essentially in every step. So we'll have a funnel. We'll have like 12 steps, 12 different things that are going on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And we're constantly, constantly tweaking it. So like our workshop or master funnel, which is our kind of most successful program, We have been tweaking and poking at this funnel to increase conversions for four years now, since November 2020. But it's not just landing page conversion rate. It's sales calls. It's tweaking the video on the second page. It's the survey. We're constantly tweaking it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So the answer to the question is we obsess about it, but we don't obsess about it in the very beginning. We get the funnel out there. And then we can really quickly see which things are broken, which things make no sense. But yeah, a funnel from day one to day 100 usually looks pretty different. Or a landing page.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I think when you're learning a new thing, when I'm learning a new thing, the best way for me to learn it is to have one very specific example thing that I can use as my like... I'm going to... It's like... I don't know if you're looking at a... I'm trying to think of a good analogy for this. Maybe I don't need an analogy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
When I got into funnels, the best way for me to learn funnels was finding someone else's funnel I really liked and funnel hacking it. Essentially... signing up to every single part of it, screenshotting every single page, looking at all the emails, screenshotting all those, printing out the entire thing, laying it all out and trying to understand what the hell is going on here.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Like, why is this happening? And then this happening and then this happening. So for me, one of the first types of funnels that I got really interested in was called a VSL funnel, which is a video sales letter funnel. And it has, um, I'll just draw the thing. I'm going to draw like the basics of this funnel. So this funnel for us.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So this is cheesy, but we go to this very cheesy but fun event called Funnel Hacking Live, which I've told people about before. And this year, I hope I'm not over. I hope it actually happens or else this will be kind of embarrassing. But we're picking up an award for having our first $10 million funnel. And so I'll draw out our $10 million funnel.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I'll try to describe it. I'll draw the main funnel. The first page you create is called an opt-in page. So this is basically a page that offers someone who is interested in the topic something. And in a VSL funnel, that something is a free training video. So let's say for us, we want to sell a $7,500 facilitation program, which is like a combination of self-paced videos and actual live coaching.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Let's not become a company that talks about doing stuff all the time and talks about making stuff all the time. And let's just go back to being a company that makes stuff. And so, yeah, I feel like Basecamp's interface is more built for just working on projects instead of talking about working on projects. In fact, it's actually quite hard to just have open dialogues within Basecamp, the product.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So we want to sell that. And so what we offer them, we don't sell them that first. We don't even tell them about that first. Our Facebook ad is selling a one hour free training, which teaches you the basics of facilitation. And so our opt-in page is to sell that free training, nothing else. And so our opt-in page leads to a video and
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So the way you talk about it in marketing is you're always selling the thing that sells the thing. I wish I could remember the name of the guy who said that. Steve Larson, I think. So your Facebook ad is selling the opt-in page. Your opt in page is selling watching the video. And I'll tell you as you go.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
But you're basically right now, all you're focused on is selling the idea of watching this video because people can get free stuff online all the time. All of YouTube is free. Why the hell should you give your email address and sit down and watch this particular video? So you do have to sell
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
watching this video basically um because in in the end someone being trained by you on a small level is an ad it's a pitch essentially because they're getting a sense of what it's like to be trained by you so there's an opt-in page which which basically tells them that they can get this free it can be also a downloadable it can be a lead magnet it can be like a pdf
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
We're doing a new one soon, which is like a list of different exercises and that kind of stuff. Like we have this, this is actually one version of it here. I'm holding it up to the screen. It's a book, a physical book called meetings that we're going to be using as a lead magnet that will actually ship to you. It doesn't matter.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
The opt-in page is about getting your email address and ideally getting your attention on something. And so the next page, so the first page, we build these on either Framer or ClickFunnels. So Framer is when we want to have something that looks nice.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And ClickFunnels is when a random person at AJ and Smart, including me, who doesn't want to figure out how to use Framer properly, just needs to test some Facebook ads. So I don't have any affiliation with ClickFunnels, but that's like what we use for a lot of our funnels. So I'll make an opt-in page. And how do I figure out how that opt-in page should look?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I look at other people's opt-in pages, right? That's how I do it. Then the next page is the video. The video is like a training based off the book, which is called Expert Secrets from Russell Brunson. I know people think he's cheesy. I don't care. I think that book is really good. And I use 50% of the format of that book to do the training.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And instead of selling something at the end of the training like he does, because I don't feel comfortable doing this, I sell a call.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So basically, in this training, I tell people, if you liked this training and you want to know if you want to get a proper training from AJ and Smart, either in person or online, you can book a call with one of our career coaches who will talk you through and show you all the different things we have. And we get
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
between 16 and 20 of these call bookings per day, which we which we have gotten since November 2020. So the video leads to a call booking.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And this is annoying some of my team, but I love it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
They're free. They're free. We are actually paying for everything up until this point. It's actually ROI negative up until this point. So it's a Facebook ad to an opt-in page to a free training. And then this free training, a certain amount of people, I can tell you the exact stats we have if you're interested, because I have this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I'll open up the funnel tracking sheet and I'll tell you everything.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
All right, let's see. Will I give you a feeling for this one funnel about how much it cost, how much it made, this kind of thing? So we spent 74... It's Euro. We spent $80,000 on ads in... What month is this? In June? June. So this is just a June page that's open right now. $80,000 in June on Facebook ads, $6,000 in June on Google and YouTube ads. So total ads, oh yeah, sorry, total ad spend.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So total ad spend between Facebook and Google, a 79,000 euro, $86,000. then total cash collected was 200 and set, uh, 200 and S oh yeah. Total revenue was $252,000. So, and that's like two thousand, 270,000. Yeah. $270,000, 252,000 Euro. This is getting confusing. I apologize. But our return on investment on Facebook ads and Google ads was 318%. So that's an example.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
This tweet went crazy. I never have anybody liking any of my stuff on Twitter or on X. I hate when that happens because I'm like, oh, did I do something bad? Did I post something that somehow... politically or something. And no, I opened up Twitter. I opened up X. There was a thousand notifications. I never get more than two. And so I was thinking, shit, did I make a really off-color joke?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And you can see how many calls booked. We had 339 call bookings. Only 273 of those people turned up because obviously not everyone turns up. And we sold 65 units of Workshopper Master. That's an example of this particular funnel running. And this has been going for four and a half, well, whatever since November 2020 is. So yeah, that's that funnel.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Four years. Okay. Facebook and Google ads, which then lead to an opt-in page, which then leads to a video, which then leads to a Calendly, which then leads to the team taking call bookings. If you want to see this funnel working, you can, but please don't book. I will ask your audience to not book calls. I'm just wondering, should I do this to my team?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Because actually every time they click on the ad, we're going to get charged. No, I'm actually... If you know, you know. If you know how to do this, you know how to do it. But please don't do the call booking part of this because that will cost my team a lot of time and money if you cancel. But yeah, we have multiple funnels like this. We also have a book funnel that's running.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
This one I can actually show you or your team can look at. If you search for the Workshopper Playbook and you go to workshopperplaybook.com. This is the same thing, except instead of a free training, you can get either a free Kindle version of the book, or you can get a digital and physical copy of the book. We make zero, actually we lose money at this step.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
But we want you to give us your email address and your details because then we can bring you into other parts of the funnel. And we'll often use this as like the front end of the funnel because Facebook ads, when you're holding something physical like a book, work really well. And so this is one of our funnels that has been probably the most successful one we've ever made. And this book...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
obviously isn't the best book ever. It was supposed to just be a little PDF lead magnet that I created in the space of one week or less. But in the end, it was like, oh, this lead magnet's getting so big, we can use it as a book funnel. But yeah, so ads to book funnel to getting the email address and then into some sort of campaign later, like our Black Friday campaign for this year.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So we'll take those leads which have not been monetized yet and we'll bring them into our Black Friday campaign. We'll figure out what we want to sell or what we want to do. But yeah, that's and all of that is Facebook ads, basically.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
For us, this is straight up hardcore email marketing. We start telling people, anybody who's come through any of our funnels but hasn't bought anything yet, we'll start sending them emails. We'll create a sale. We'll create a sale page using ClickFunnels. And anybody who hasn't bought anything yet will get pushed towards that sales page using emails.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And we'll be using ConvertKit to figure out who's done what. And dude, we send a lot of emails. We're famous for that. Get a lot of unsubscribes as well.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
unsubscribes and should you feel bad about them we tried to clean out our um list during these campaigns so during black friday summer sale prime day and a back to school sale um we're not emailing every single person on our list so we have 130 000 people on our list today although we don't do many list building activities outside of running facebook ads um
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
we will find a cohort or a segment of that email list and we'll use that. But generally, I mean, we're threading a thin line between sending too much, getting too many unsubscribed. We're always testing that. But we have a lot of data from the last 16 or 14 years on doing this now. So I think we've got a good... Your question is, how do we think about it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
We try to make the most sales with the least amount of unsubscribes. But we're also okay if people opt themselves out of what we're selling as well. Because there are people who probably just never want to buy anything that we have. And then they can just continue consuming our free content on YouTube. And that's also fine with us.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
But I also feel, you know, we have the biggest YouTube channel for our topic, which is facilitation. Hundreds of hours of free content out there. So we're also, we feel like, we call it like the goodwill bucket. Whenever we do a big campaign like that, where we feel like, okay, we're pushing it, maybe pushing it a little bit.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
We're also trying to make sure our goodwill bucket of free stuff is being filled up.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I think the way I put it, I mentioned this thing about Slack kind of became the default interface of my company and that, but like your tools in a way do determine a little bit what your work culture is like and your tools kind of, I don't know how you say it. There's probably a really nice way to say it. Like the tools determine the way you work, something about that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
If someone finds you via Facebook ad and... Dude, it's the big... Everybody who starts working on funnels with me, one of their first questions is, how do you track exactly which things are creating which conversions so that I know should I put more energy into LinkedIn or into YouTube or into whatever? Uh, yeah. And you know, there's a lot of products that can help you track these things.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Like Hyros is one of these products. And I, in the end, just, we don't call it with Hyros. I don't know how you say it. Hyros, Hyros, H H Y R O S.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
This tells you like, I think it tells you if someone comes all the way from YouTube and it tracks all the conversions all the way through. We don't pay so much attention to that. And honestly, this is because I took advice from Sam Ovens, which is Don't fucking bother tracking it. You have your monthly P&L.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
You just make sure your company is growing and that your expenses are a lot lower than your incoming. And just focus on the Facebook ad spend ROI. And you can assume that having really great content out there builds trust. The people in the ClickFunnels community call it a shadow funnel, meaning someone sees your ad. The next thing they're going to do is see if you're real.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And if they find like six years of high quality YouTube content out there, they're going to be a lot more relaxed about going into your funnel than if you're just completely invisible on the internet.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Dude, I am obsessed with that. I'd love to do... I would need to have like being able to use like the whiteboard sort of thing. I would happily do a live with you, but it would need to be like three or four hours long. I would happily do that. And I can go through... We could make a funnel for someone or like for a product. I would love to do that. I love making funnels.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
A lot of the times when people are building startups or when people are thinking of businesses, they're not thinking about the fact that even very simple Google ads are hard to set up for a company and for even an event. So just giving people the basic package of meta ads and simple Google search ads, it can be a game changer for these people. Here's what I do, okay?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
You know, one of the biggest parts of funnels is copywriting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I spent, today I spent from, I think I spent six hours today sitting with my team rewriting copy. Like that's why I'm honestly so tired.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Yes. You know, my favorite thing ever is when we're doing our partnerships with other companies, we were working with a company last week. And when I can come up with an angle for them and a sentence for them that just makes them go, oh my, oh, that's it. That's like one of the most satisfying things of all time. Like Laura and I who run AJ and Smart were obsessed with the nerdy elements of copy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
It's so, It's crazy how much of a conversion rate difference it can make.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Yeah. Can I tell you one copy hack? There's two copy hacks, actually. So when you're writing copy, copy is just like text, right? Just in case anyone's wondering what the hell we're talking about. One of the biggest things when you're writing copy and you're trying to figure out is it good or not, especially for a landing page, is you can ask yourself the question, does this copy...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And it was just, so I've been traveling a lot over the last few weeks and Laura and I who run the company have been rethinking the business from the ground up, but mainly from like the outside perspective. So we're going to be relaunching the business on the 2nd of October.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
push towards the idea that it will increase someone's status. So this is a really big thing. It means that, oh, I held it up to the screen and I realized not everyone listens. The idea is that we're often writing copy when we're writing about a product, we're not thinking about the fact that people often buy things because of status. Like, will this make me look better to my peers?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And you think like when you're selling corporate training like we do, well, then we should never lean on the status thing. But of course, if you learn something that makes you more valuable to your colleagues in work, your status increases because more people want you to do things. And so we lean right into that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And it makes a massive difference to sales if you push towards this idea of helping people increase their status and not in kind of like a... Again, it's not like if you buy this cool watch, then you're going to have a higher status. It's if you are more useful to other people, you will be perceived as higher status. And it's all very different for different topics and different companies.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
That's one. The second thing is if you're stuck trying to figure out what the hell do I write for this headline? Like I'm trying to sell this microphone or something. Then you can draw this thing, which is kind of cool, which I'll draw and show here, but I'll also explain it. So on the left, it says pain. And on the right, it says pleasure.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I'm sure a lot of you already know this because you've got smart people in your audience. And when you're writing copy, you can figure out whether you want to write copy that moves people away from pain. So away from pain is like... Never carry around... Like this microphone is battery controlled, so it doesn't need this like phantom energy thing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
If anyone knows, like a lot of microphones need to be plugged into a much bigger thing for them to work. So with this microphone, if we were talking about moving away from pain, we would say... Never get stuck in the airport without your podcast equipment again or something like this because you can fit it in your pocket, doesn't need phantom energy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So that's moving away from pain because it's reminding you of a painful situation that happens to you. Moving towards pleasure. would be talking about how beautiful this thing is and how nice it sounds. So it's talking about the positives. And sometimes, depending on the economy, this is something that a lot of people talk about in the marketing space.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
When the economy is really bad and things are going to shit, then you want to make copy. And especially if you're selling some sort of education service, you want to talk about moving away from pain. So during COVID, a lot of marketing was about moving away from pain. In good times and prosperous times, you talk a lot about moving towards pleasure.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
But then we started to realize to make all of these changes, we're going to have to change everything inside the business too, for everything to really work and feel different. So we're moving office. That's one big thing, moving to a new physical location, a bigger space. And that's like doubling down on us working in person together, being able to collaborate with more people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
It's just another little hack when I get stuck writing copy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I learned it from, I think it was Dean Graziosi on Twitter, like fucking six years ago or something, or on stage at ClickFunnels Funnel Hacking Live. Just all these kind of old school telemarketer guys.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I love that people don't really pay attention to them because they have a lot of really good, like they read all these old copywriting books, like Dan Kennedy, all these kind of like old school marketers. They have some really good copywriting tips. Like they invented this topic and we're all just too cool to learn it now, but I'm definitely not too cool to learn.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I'm going to get three gold Rolexes minimum so that I can open my ads account. I have another random idea for you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
What if I say it in one sentence? What if I say it in one sentence?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Now that weed is legalized in so many places, there are people like me who don't like the smell of it. And now it's everywhere. It comes into your apartment. If someone can figure out a way to get rid of that smell and help with this issue, they're going to make trillions. For both the people who are smoking and the people who are receiving the smoke in cities, in cities especially.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I have been kind of hacking together my own system here and that's, that's a longer episode, but if people can fit, like making a website based on this search term, like getting rid of weed smell from neighbors and just turning that into affiliate links to specific air purifiers, things like this. Um, like doing like something like the wire cutter, but for this specific problem, dude.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Well, we have a huge distinction between websites and funnels.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
In one sentence. A website is a business card just saying, here's all the stuff we do. A funnel is a step-by-step process to bring someone from being a stranger to a customer.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I missed you too, dude. I missed you too. I wish I had turned up in a more non-manic state, but you know.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I know. I was traveling, dude. I was in your beautiful country getting my brain melted by so many different crazy things going on. It's good fun.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And the second thing was getting fucking rid of Slack. Fuck that shit.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
At least any of the other people who are listening to this podcast who know me and have the same problem with me now don't feel like I'm just attacking them individually by not responding to stuff. Yeah. Yeah, dude. I have to tell you off the podcast how the last six weeks have been because it's crazy. You'll forgive me. You'll forgive me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
It's been great. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me back on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Of course, because it becomes, it is your work interface.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
It literally becomes your work interface. And here's one of the dangers I think of Slack. I see Laura, who's a senior member of AJ and Smart, who's running like very large seven figure sections of the business. I started to see that her job was replying to people on Slack.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And I'm like, wouldn't we make way more money if you used your marketing strategy skills instead of replying to fucking Slack messages? And it's the same for me. I'm the CEO and I was spending all day just replying to Slack messages. It's because it's like... easy to do that because the work is just put there for you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
It's like your tasks are ready for the day, whereas real work that makes real money and makes seven figure differences, that doesn't come from just responding to shit on Slack from my perspective. So I just wanted to get rid of it. Go cold turkey. It's gone now. I haven't opened Slack in two weeks. It feels liberating. This is the episode.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I actually, I know I told you I didn't have any ideas, but I thought of some things beforehand that I think could be interesting. Like a couple of things that I notice are missing in the industry that could be for small startups or one person kind of solopreneur thingies. One is, I noticed that one, like... one of the best ways to build a business and to grow a business is to run paid ads.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I mean, a lot of people know this. The problem is... Wow, shocker.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Again, these hot takes for me. So a lot of businesses, small businesses, big businesses need paid ads. or they often don't even realize that paid ads are worth using.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
The problem is that the market for people who offer paid ad services are either agencies, which are too expensive and like too big and just confusing, or douchey guys who are like 25 wearing a gold Rolex and look kind of intimidating.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I actually, I know I told you I didn't have any ideas, but I thought of some things beforehand that I think could be interesting. I think there's a massive empty space in the market for not douchey, non-agency companies who help other people run Facebook ads. Literally that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Just to get the business off the ground in one month.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And I think that so when I tell people that we at AJ and Smart run a million dollars of ads per year, they're like, but Facebook ads don't work. Like, but I heard meta ads don't work, but I heard this doesn't work. And I was I'm always very confused about why they think this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
But when I talk to them, it's because they're somehow when they're looking for paid advertising for their business, they fall into like the douche averse. You know what I mean? They end up having calls of these people who are obviously just don't give you a sense of safety and trust. And I'm always helping companies running their ads, obviously for free. This is just something I want.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I'm like, you need to do this. This is something that's very effective. You can turn on ads and get leads and then you can monetize those leads. That's a really big way our business runs. And I think there's... There's a huge amount of space in the industry for one-person ad consultants, basically, who appeal to specific verticals and are not douchey. So, for example...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
There's a huge space in the market for people who can run ads for just like salons, like hair salons. There's a huge space in the market for people who can run ads specifically for female info product owners. There's so many different verticals that you could go into running ads for people.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
but not becoming an agency and not presenting yourself as like a rich person on the internet, because I think that's a turnoff for a lot of people, especially in Europe. And so that's one thing I'm thinking.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
I'm always thinking about like, again, which businesses would I start or which businesses am I trying to get my friends to start so that I can eventually just become part of it and get a cut of it. I think there's a massive empty space in the market for not, douchy, non-agency companies or single-person shows who help other people run Facebook ads. Literally that. That's it. That's one idea.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Do you notice this with the fact that paid ads get poo-pooed, but probably not for the right reasons?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Yes, yes. I mean, that's fine if you're appealing to people who want to run ads for that kind of lifestyle stuff. But there's a lot of people not realizing that there's an entire rest of the market that
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
for, like, if you were, I see a lot of open space for people to run ads to grow people's Patreon accounts, their creative Patreon accounts, things like this, where it's about taking a cut of the revenue or something like that. But there's just so much open space for it. I'm experimenting with this in my business at the moment.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So I'm experimenting with partnering up with other people in my kind of strategy design space and helping them run ads and helping them with sort of lead generation. And sometimes I'm shocked. I'm like, why haven't you done this in the last six years? Like, why... Why are you just doing it now? And often the story is a little bit like, oh yeah, we tried it and it didn't work.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And then we talked to this guy and he seemed a bit scammy. And then this and this and this. Then we worked with this agency and we couldn't contact them. And I'm like, there's so much space for this. There's so much space in the market for this. Honestly, just being a meta ads expert would be a game changer. If you don't market yourself in a weird... It's about getting rich way.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
quite literally sitting in a room with them, opening the meta dashboard, showing them our meta dashboard, showing them how we're doing it. So it's more of an advisory thing. So we're advising people on setting up funnels and taking a cut of their revenue. We're going to announce that publicly in probably two weeks after we launch this episode.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
But yeah, for the last two and a half years, we've been advising other companies on lead generation, building funnels, that kind of stuff. Pure advisory, no agency work, no consulting. I guess it is a bit of consulting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
Here's what I do, okay? Just to get the business off the ground in one month. The first thing I would do is look around at events like, let's say yoga retreats that are happening around New York, something like that. Just make a Google Doc of the ones that are not full yet. They haven't been filled.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And I would contact these people and try to figure out, hey, are you having trouble filling up these events? I can fill it up for you using Facebook ads, but I'm going to take a cut of every ticket sale. The end. That's all my first clients. Obviously, not everyone would say yes, but that would be an example of how I would jump on this starting this business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
But yeah, I would be looking for things where I think the product is probably good or the product is maybe interesting to me. So I know how to make ads for it. And for me, that's like creative stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So I could definitely sell... I could definitely help someone make ads for like creative retreats, things like this, yoga retreats, meditation, anything in the wellness space, anything in the design space. I'd also look at things like...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
bigger, you know, art installation things, things like this, I would be reaching out to these people, assuming they don't know how to do paid ads and trying to work with them on selling out their thing. Because honestly, event owners hate selling events. They love putting on events. That would be like my first vertical that I would attack. Well... It's a pretty broad vertical.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So it's like a horizontal vertical of events. But I would be looking at events around a city that I kind of understand in general topics that I kind of understand. And I would offer them a deal like that where I'm taking a cut only for the ones they sell and only for the ones they sell through my ads. Through their ads, which I help them set up. Cool.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
And the other thing is people think meta ads are dead because people are not understanding that meta ads are only dead for people under 35. So meta ads work really, really well for us, better than anything else for people over 40. And there are a lot of people over 40 in the world. They're not all just dead.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
Sales funnels for Beginners
So I think that a lot of the times when people are building startups or when people are thinking of businesses, they're not thinking about the fact that just because they don't see meta ads and just because they're not on Instagram, doesn't mean like a massive amount of the population aren't seeing these things. Even very simple Google ads are hard to set up for a company and for even an event.