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The Startup Ideas Podcast

80 mins of advice to level up your life with lifehacks

Mon, 29 Jul 2024

Description

I’m joined by Jonathan Courtney, Co-Founder and CEO of AJ&Smart, discuss startup ideas, lifehacks and book recommendationsStartup Idea: "Drip" - AI-powered content resurfacing• Combats "read it later" syndrome• Synthesizes bookmarks, saved content• Delivers curated insights via SMS/email• Personalizes based on interests & goalsStartup Idea: Entrepreneur Bookmark Newsletter •  Weekly newsletter• Curated Bookmarks from famous entrepreneur• Partner with famous entrepreneursLifehacks:• Craft a personal mission statement• Avoid angry people & curmudgeons• Chasing generational wealth is overrated• Show up to meetings with small, thoughtful gifts• Use social media apps on desktop only• Use analogies to make ideas stick• Keep a learning list as your side hustleMust-Read Books for Entrepreneurs:• The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris• Anything You Want by Derek Sivers• Double Your Profits by Bob Fifer• Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier’s ReworkBonus Book Recs:• Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson• Traffic Secrets by Russell BrunsonWant more free ideas? I collect the best ideas from the pod and give them to you for free in a database. Most of them cost $0 to start (my fav)Get access: http://gregisenberg.com/30startupideas🚀  My FREE 5 day email course to learn how to build a business of the future using the ACP funnel:https://www.communityempire.co/free-course🎯 To build your own portfolio businesses powered by community you might enjoy my membership.You'll get my full course with all my secrets on building businesses, peer-groups to keep you accountable, business ideas every single month and more!Spots are limited.https://www.communityempire.co/📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free:https://www.gregisenberg.com/70,000+ people are already subscribed.FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND JONATHAN ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JicecreamLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/To improve your rankings your business on Google and using AI for SEO, sign up tohttp://boringmarketing.com/Links Mentioned:Episode Timestamps: 0:00 Intro03:58 Startup Idea 1: "Drip" - AI-powered content resurfacing13:04 Startup Idea 2: Entrepreneur Bookmark Newsletter18:53 Lifehacks1:04:40 Book Rec 1: Tim Ferris’s 4-hour Workweek1:08:53 Book Rec 2: Derek Sivers’ Anything You Want1:10:39 Book Rec 3: Bob Fifer’s Double Your Profits1:11:55 Book Rec 4: Jason Fried and David Heinemeier’s Rework1:16:06 Book Rec 5: Russell Brunson’s Traffic Secrets and Expert Secrets

Audio
Transcription

0.444 - 5.107 Jonathan Courtney

What do you mean by chasing generational wealth is overrated and wealth is underrated?

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5.127 - 30.413 Greg Eisenberg

I'm not chasing generational wealth. I don't need hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars. This came to me a couple of years ago. We got offered a $100 million blank check to basically scale out late checkout and build out a bunch of new products faster, acquire faster products. Just take our model and just add steroids to it.

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31.675 - 63.386 Greg Eisenberg

And we turned it down and the VC basically called me up like sweating bullets. He goes... People need a sip on Jonathan Jice Cream Courtney.

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64.308 - 68.032 Jonathan Courtney

Yeah, I'm going to just start calling myself J Ice Cream now on your podcast.

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68.533 - 69.874 Greg Eisenberg

I like calling you Jice Cream.

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70.174 - 76.081 Jonathan Courtney

Yeah, that's not what I intended when I created my gamer tag, but you can call me whatever you like, Craig.

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76.222 - 78.324 Greg Eisenberg

Well, that's the internet, bro. That's the internet.

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78.785 - 79.846 Jonathan Courtney

It's your podcast, dude.

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81.581 - 82.742 Greg Eisenberg

What do you want to talk about today?

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83.262 - 102.416 Jonathan Courtney

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...

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106.673 - 132.44 Jonathan Courtney

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...

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133.854 - 156.402 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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156.702 - 167.767 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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169.728 - 187.818 Greg Eisenberg

Okay, let's start with the idea. Let's go backwards. We're going to start with the idea. Then we're going to go the life hacks. And then we're going to go the books. If we get to it. No. Well, listen to the whole episode to get to it. We are going to get to it. Okay.

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188.191 - 193.699 Jonathan Courtney

We'll only get to it if you like and comment right now. And we'll know. We'll know.

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194.901 - 200.269 Greg Eisenberg

It's the least you can do. It's the least you could do. After all we've done. After all we've been through together.

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200.808 - 221.797 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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221.817 - 248.382 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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248.402 - 273.968 Jonathan Courtney

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

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275.609 - 294.248 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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295.128 - 314.947 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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315.787 - 340.756 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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340.836 - 365.227 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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365.687 - 386.629 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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386.869 - 406.141 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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406.701 - 425.972 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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426.493 - 430.516 Jonathan Courtney

And the idea would be one day, just it could be a year later.

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430.717 - 457.362 Greg Eisenberg

It's just like... 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 that could help you outrank your competition.

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457.702 - 480.142 Greg Eisenberg

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. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money back guarantee.

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480.623 - 484.469 Greg Eisenberg

Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com.

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486.253 - 505.447 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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505.707 - 523.462 Jonathan Courtney

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

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524.793 - 533.92 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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534.321 - 552.075 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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553.544 - 579.847 Greg Eisenberg

It would be really cool if you can also connect the dots. So for me, I'm one of those people too. I have thousands of bookmarks and I bookmark them. In my mind, I'm like, I'm going to get back to this. I'm totally getting back to this. Never get back to it. In fact, on my newsletter, I started just sending out five bookmarks called Greg's Letter, gregeisenberg.com.

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580.883 - 603.883 Greg Eisenberg

And I started doing that because I literally don't look at my bookmarks. And I was like, this is going to force me. Creating a newsletter around these five most interesting bookmarks of the week is going to force me to drill in my head that these bookmarks, I need to read them, write notes. But then I forget about them. Yeah, absolutely. I forget about them.

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604.323 - 608.167 Jonathan Courtney

What if instead of drilling into your head, you could drip out of your head? That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

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610.031 - 612.351 Greg Eisenberg

That's what I'm saying. You know, the drip noise. That's what I'm saying.

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612.832 - 634.516 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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635.41 - 651.895 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah, I think the easy way to do this, so you can still be a one-man startup and build this and not have to do crazy AI stuff, build a big team and raise venture, is when you sign up to the service, it could say, what are your goals and what kind of business are you in?

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652.636 - 678.828 Greg Eisenberg

So for example, I could say, I'm an agency owner and I'm trying to get to $75 million this year in revenue and I'm looking for content that XYZ. And then from those data points, from that first party data, from the data of the bookmarks, then it's like, oh, hey, we're going to resurface this bookmark with this new piece of information that WPP has acquired this agency. Yes.

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679.749 - 683.311 Greg Eisenberg

And we think that... Like community notes edition or something. Yeah.

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683.832 - 710.387 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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710.427 - 737.538 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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738.598 - 752.982 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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754.263 - 772.353 Greg Eisenberg

I don't think I do a free version. To me, you do a paid version. I think the way to... get a lot of people excited about this is you create a bunch of Twitter accounts that are like Sean Poorey's bookmarks, Greg Eisenberg's bookmarks, Jay Ice Cream's bookmarks.

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773.494 - 781.378 Greg Eisenberg

And maybe what you do is you go to some of these creators and you're like, hey, I'll give you $1,000 a month if you just share your bookmarks with me.

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782.139 - 790.644 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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791.684 - 795.207 Greg Eisenberg

That's so true. Oh my God. Oh my God.

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795.627 - 814.561 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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815.199 - 816.099 Greg Eisenberg

How much would you pay for it?

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817.36 - 831.368 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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832.182 - 839.767 Greg Eisenberg

By the way, I thought you were going to say like, yeah, minimum pay like $10,000 to $50,000 a month. Is there like $10 a month?

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840.167 - 843.249 Jonathan Courtney

I don't know. You think you're a baller?

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843.369 - 846.892 Greg Eisenberg

You think you're a baller because you're about to spend $10 a month on this service?

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847.372 - 862.002 Jonathan Courtney

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,

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863.643 - 884.852 Jonathan Courtney

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

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885.925 - 889.828 Greg Eisenberg

People... No. No. No. Don't do it.

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890.188 - 893.731 Jonathan Courtney

Bookmarks. Do you use any of these things like pocket casts and stuff?

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894.291 - 901.056 Greg Eisenberg

No. I use Twitter bookmarks religiously. And that's it.

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901.717 - 927.39 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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927.41 - 932.893 Greg Eisenberg

Why aren't you more excited? Yeah, why aren't you more excited? Why isn't someone building this right now?

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933.977 - 949.984 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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950.612 - 954.134 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah, but we took, in our defense, we took the idea to the next level.

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954.154 - 956.755 Jonathan Courtney

Yeah, exactly. We took the seed.

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957.355 - 957.615 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah.

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957.695 - 960.357 Jonathan Courtney

The seed was birthed.

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960.417 - 962.017 Greg Eisenberg

He spread the seed.

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962.858 - 981.372 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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981.392 - 982.373 Greg Eisenberg

Yes, we did.

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982.413 - 983.896 Jice Cream (Jonathan Courtney)

And then we fried it.

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984.016 - 988.603 Greg Eisenberg

And it was amazing. You were lovely. Thank you. We consumed it. Yeah.

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990.046 - 991.967 Jonathan Courtney

We don't talk about eggs enough on this podcast.

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992.047 - 995.268 Greg Eisenberg

We don't. And everyone who's listening to it sipped it.

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996.308 - 1004.611 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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1004.671 - 1011.133 Greg Eisenberg

We're going back to the egg juice. You can't just say and they sip the egg juice and just like segue it into something else.

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1011.153 - 1029.668 Jonathan Courtney

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...

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1031.309 - 1056.845 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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1056.865 - 1057.805 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah, I saw that one.

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1058.066 - 1060.967 Jonathan Courtney

Don't have this guy on your podcast anymore.

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1062.288 - 1063.128 Greg Eisenberg

And what did I do?

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1064.149 - 1066.049 Jonathan Courtney

What did you do? I actually didn't check the follow-up.

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1066.29 - 1069.271 Greg Eisenberg

I texted you and I was like, hey, you want to record a pod right now?

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1069.591 - 1091.123 Jonathan Courtney

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...

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1092.096 - 1098.699 Greg Eisenberg

I mean, the reality of the situation is that startup idea with the insight around bookmarks is a huge insight.

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1099.259 - 1102.6 Jonathan Courtney

Now he should give constructive feedback on how huge of an insight it is.

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1103.501 - 1126.868 Greg Eisenberg

Like, period. That's a really good insight. No, and it's something I'm going to think about. So yeah, listen, you might talk about egg juice here and there. And that's really, really strange and unusual. And I hope you're well. I'm not well. Yeah. But, you know, in a sea of egg juice, you sprinkle on some great startup ideas and some good insights that I think people should be taking notes.

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1127.769 - 1132.214 Greg Eisenberg

And I take notes. So that's why I bring you on. All right. Yeah. Thank you, Matt. All right. See you.

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1132.254 - 1132.775 Jonathan Courtney

I'm going to bed.

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1133.836 - 1138.682 Greg Eisenberg

Next segment. You want to talk about life hacks.

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1139.676 - 1160.693 Jonathan Courtney

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...

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1161.474 - 1172.039 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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1172.599 - 1177.761 Greg Eisenberg

Does that sound good? Well, let's do that, but be sure to bring up the one around Instagram close friends.

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1178.542 - 1197.032 Jonathan Courtney

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?

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1198.313 - 1225.937 Greg Eisenberg

I the only social media app I have on my phone is TikTok. Oh, and that sounds like an addictive one, though. And it's like buried away. And it isn't something that I post on. And it, for me, it's not an addictive one. So I think, I mean, I think the advice is don't have the, you know, certain apps are more addictive to, to certain people. Like Twitter for me, it would be the most addictive.

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1226.318 - 1248.299 Greg Eisenberg

Instagram to others would be the most addictive. So I just remove the ones that are addicted to me. And, uh, It's just the experience on desktop isn't as dopamine friendly than on mobile. You've got to be crazy to put social media apps on your phone. You've got to be crazy, period.

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1248.879 - 1256.982 Jonathan Courtney

I agree. Do you sometimes sneakily log into X on your Safari browser?

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1257.762 - 1280.283 Greg Eisenberg

No, actually I don't. You don't? No, but sometimes I will say if I'm out of the house for like a really long time or I'm traveling or something and I've got like a tweet or something that I just can't get out of my head. A banger. A banger as the kids say. I'll download it and... And quickly push it live and then delete it after.

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1280.303 - 1304.08 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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1305.321 - 1320.435 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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1321.221 - 1336.15 Greg Eisenberg

I tweeted this and someone who listens to the pod was like, yeah, and the river goes into the river into steps into the river. Remember from like four episodes ago? The worst analogy ever. Yeah. I made like the worst analogy ever.

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1336.17 - 1336.951 Jonathan Courtney

Yeah.

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1337.151 - 1345.136 Greg Eisenberg

So I read a book a long time ago and maybe this is actually interesting because we're going to talk about books later, but it was called Made to Stick.

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1345.836 - 1354.549 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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1355.309 - 1372.863 Greg Eisenberg

So I read it maybe 15 years ago at this point. And it talked a lot about how do you communicate in a way that sticks with people. And one of the ways is just analogies. The reality is when you have a conversation with someone for an hour, they're going to remember one or two things.

0
💬 0

1374.076 - 1376.498 Jonathan Courtney

That you were covered in egg juice and the smell of it.

0
💬 0

1377.099 - 1388.148 Greg Eisenberg

Even egg juice, right? It's so visual. You can kind of picture it. I can picture it. Oh yeah, you can smell it, unfortunately.

0
💬 0

1388.168 - 1390.43 Jice Cream (Jonathan Courtney)

I can smell it right now.

0
💬 0

1392.452 - 1401.02 Greg Eisenberg

So analogies work. And in the context of business specifically, like creating content, selling people, analogies just really stick in people's minds.

0
💬 0

1401.832 - 1422.449 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

1422.489 - 1444.407 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

1444.968 - 1455.737 Jonathan Courtney

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...

0
💬 0

1456.738 - 1479.252 Jonathan Courtney

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

0
💬 0

1479.972 - 1497.516 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

1497.576 - 1512.832 Jonathan Courtney

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

0
💬 0

1513.843 - 1537.519 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

1538.56 - 1548.564 Greg Eisenberg

The other thing related to this that some of the smartest entrepreneurs I know do is they make it conversational when they're writing copy or they're communicating.

0
💬 0

1549.304 - 1578.413 Greg Eisenberg

So what they'll do is, instead of saying, I remember a story that Steve Jobs said, and just explaining what the story is, you say, when Steve Jobs was at WWDC and everyone thought that BlackBerry owned mobile, Steve Jobs goes up on stage, he goes, So using the words, he goes, and then you just talk like you are Steve Jobs.

0
💬 0

1579.454 - 1593.125 Greg Eisenberg

When you're conversational and you talk like the person that you're bringing up, it puts the person listening, gives them a front row seat, and it is just a way more effective way to get your point across.

0
💬 0

1594.168 - 1597.529 Jonathan Courtney

100% agree with that. Have you ever had Neville Medora on your podcast?

0
💬 0

1597.769 - 1603.271 Greg Eisenberg

No, I don't know him, but... You need to get him on your podcast. I do. I do need to get him on the podcast.

0
💬 0

1603.431 - 1621.782 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

1622.402 - 1645.056 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

1645.556 - 1668.615 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

1668.875 - 1676.023 Greg Eisenberg

The funniest part of what you just said was that you tried to do Neville Medora's accent, but then you just used your own accent.

0
💬 0

1676.613 - 1694.418 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

1697.919 - 1705.774 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah. Like you started talking about Steve Jobs and then you're like, oh, give me a second. And you like pull up a black turtleneck and you just start changing. Yeah.

0
💬 0

1706.175 - 1729.022 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

1731.78 - 1745.383 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

1745.443 - 1765.696 Greg Eisenberg

When I first moved to San Francisco, I became friends with a group of 10 Japanese people who had just moved to San Francisco too. They all could barely speak English. Really, they were learning about American culture and stuff like that. And one of the first things I noticed was every time I'd meet them, they would show up with a gift.

0
💬 0

1766.896 - 1793.134 Greg Eisenberg

And although I didn't need a pancake mix as a gift, which was one of the gifts, it didn't need stuff like that. It was just so nice that they showed up with a gift. So I took that to heart. And when I was in my early 20s, I remember I bought a thousand mini Buddhas. Because who doesn't want luck of a mini Buddha?

0
💬 0

1796.874 - 1801.995 Jonathan Courtney

Okay, so a thousand mini Buddhas and you gave them all to one person, right? Yeah.

0
💬 0

1803.055 - 1811.137 Greg Eisenberg

No, I gave... So I spent... I gave out those... It was like the year of the Buddha. I gave out all a thousand Buddhas that year.

0
💬 0

1811.157 - 1811.817 Jonathan Courtney

Fucking hell.

0
💬 0

1812.137 - 1820.169 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah, I had a lot of meetings. In my early 20s, I would just like meet with anyone. Yeah. And... People just like started talking about it.

0
💬 0

1820.189 - 1822.271 Jice Cream (Jonathan Courtney)

It's definitely memorable.

0
💬 0

1822.451 - 1842.449 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah. People started talking about it and I like kind of became known as like the guy who showed up with gifts. From that, and by the way, I was giving gifts to like the founder of Uber who I just like randomly met and all these crazy people that I shouldn't have been in those rooms, but I was in those rooms and they would send me an email right after and be like, by the way, thanks.

0
💬 0

1842.83 - 1844.131 Greg Eisenberg

I'm looking at the Buddha right now.

0
💬 0

1844.943 - 1845.664 Jonathan Courtney

That's really cool.

0
💬 0

1845.824 - 1852.471 Greg Eisenberg

So it works, especially if you're trying to build your network and you're trying to create a lasting impression in people's minds.

0
💬 0

1852.911 - 1868.951 Jonathan Courtney

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?

0
💬 0

1869.091 - 1887.76 Jonathan Courtney

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?

0
💬 0

1888.62 - 1915.531 Greg Eisenberg

It like price doesn't matter. It's really just the thoughtfulness. I don't know if a thousand Buddhas would make sense today. Maybe they would. But it's just thinking about... Maybe today people are really stressed about the election, let's say. And it's generating anxiety. So what is something that you can give to people that is the ante of that?

0
💬 0

1915.591 - 1925.304 Greg Eisenberg

What is something small, thoughtful that you can give? Xanax. Yeah. Maybe you should just... Go to... Become a pharma company.

0
💬 0

1925.324 - 1934.867 Jonathan Courtney

Does Costco sell Xanax? I don't know. Okay. I get your idea, though. So, like, a nice tea... Yeah.

0
💬 0

1935.828 - 1948.413 Greg Eisenberg

Well, the problem with tea is that you're done, right? Like, I'm sure that there's people who still have these little buddhas on their desks. Teapot? Teapot is a good one.

0
💬 0

1949.073 - 1967.699 Jonathan Courtney

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?

0
💬 0

1968.139 - 1974.943 Greg Eisenberg

I would think that's real. I would love that. That would make me so happy. But that's not permanent, I don't think.

0
💬 0

1974.963 - 1978.845 Jonathan Courtney

A little yellow games console? Actually, yeah, it's pretty permanent.

0
💬 0

1978.865 - 1980.306 Greg Eisenberg

I take it back. It's pretty permanent.

0
💬 0

1980.856 - 1996.801 Jonathan Courtney

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?

0
💬 0

1996.821 - 1996.981 Jice Cream (Jonathan Courtney)

Yeah.

0
💬 0

1997.001 - 2030.597 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

2031.577 - 2052.991 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

2053.051 - 2070.762 Jonathan Courtney

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...

0
💬 0

2071.622 - 2092.019 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

2092.479 - 2097.524 Greg Eisenberg

The best time to give a gift is to give a gift when the person least expects it.

0
💬 0

2098.693 - 2108.243 Jice Cream (Jonathan Courtney)

When they're in the toilet. Kick down the door. Here you go. Here's a play date. Oh, no. Jice Cream's here. Play it. How did you get my address? 1,000 Buddha.

0
💬 0

2115.731 - 2124.394 Jonathan Courtney

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?

0
💬 0

2124.454 - 2126.214 Greg Eisenberg

Why are you spraying egg juice at me?

0
💬 0

2126.434 - 2132.476 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

2136.557 - 2152.538 Greg Eisenberg

What I mean by that is on people's birthdays they often get gifts and they're busy. Yes. Are they more likely or less likely to remember a gift you give them on their birthday?

0
💬 0

2154.239 - 2154.919 Jonathan Courtney

Less likely.

0
💬 0

2155.279 - 2170.284 Greg Eisenberg

Exactly. So you want to give someone a gift when they're not expecting it. So that could mean the first time you meet them. But then also at month 6 or month 18 or month 24...

0
💬 0

2174.983 - 2177.747 Jonathan Courtney

So it's not just about every time you meet them in person.

0
💬 0

2178.047 - 2192.625 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah, don't be like a bot. You don't create a system where it's like, okay, on the third week of every month, I buy this thing and I create a script. No, be a human being.

0
💬 0

2193.783 - 2207.474 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

2207.734 - 2211.697 Greg Eisenberg

Hell yeah, Harnell. Hell yeah or no by Derek Sivers.

0
💬 0

2211.957 - 2213.519 Jonathan Courtney

It's one of my favorite books of all time, by the way.

0
💬 0

2213.719 - 2216.501 Greg Eisenberg

By the way, I can't believe you're going into books, even though.

0
💬 0

2216.561 - 2236.04 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

2236.06 - 2240.284 Jonathan Courtney

Uh, when they come to my apartment, I give it to them as a gift. So that's kind of like something I do.

0
💬 0

2240.584 - 2240.965 Greg Eisenberg

That's cool.

0
💬 0

2241.125 - 2243.107 Jonathan Courtney

Um, so that's just an example of a

0
💬 0

2243.567 - 2249.832 Greg Eisenberg

That's a really good one, is always have gifts in your apartment or house to give to people. It's like no-brainer.

0
💬 0

2249.852 - 2269.907 Jonathan Courtney

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?

0
💬 0

2270.908 - 2272.029 Greg Eisenberg

I mean, I wrote it, so...

0
💬 0

2274.128 - 2279.693 Jonathan Courtney

What do you mean by a learning list, like courses you want to do, books you want to read?

0
💬 0

2281.014 - 2283.977 Greg Eisenberg

I use the Things to-do list app.

0
💬 0

2284.357 - 2286.739 Jonathan Courtney

Oh, you use Things. I think it's made in Germany.

0
💬 0

2287.7 - 2293.065 Greg Eisenberg

I think somewhere. It's made somewhere. I think it's Germany. Somewhere in Europe, for sure.

0
💬 0

2293.085 - 2308.396 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

2308.676 - 2312.318 Greg Eisenberg

Okay. I use this German product called Thing.

0
💬 0

2312.338 - 2312.798 Jonathan Courtney

Yeah.

0
💬 0

2313.298 - 2313.618 Greg Eisenberg

There we go.

0
💬 0

2313.658 - 2322.461 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

2322.541 - 2336.145 Greg Eisenberg

It's a lovely product. I use it. I have one of my tasks on it is learning list. And every quarter I have three new things that I'm trying to learn.

0
💬 0

2336.881 - 2339.642 Jonathan Courtney

Oh, okay. I don't do that.

0
💬 0

2340.242 - 2357.567 Greg Eisenberg

It's basically every month I'm trying to learn a new thing. And the thing I'm trying to learn, sometimes it's about business, but sometimes it's just like a personal thing. So it could be, well, actually right now I'm taking a bunch of Stanford online courses on finance.

0
💬 0

2358.407 - 2359.027 Jonathan Courtney

Oh, interesting.

0
💬 0

2359.067 - 2386.366 Greg Eisenberg

So I never went to business school. Of course I can like read an income statement, a balance sheet, that sort of thing. But I figured, hey, it would be great to be better at this. So it's one of those things where if you don't put it in a list and actually have homework and put it in your calendar, you're never going to get around to it.

0
💬 0

2387.206 - 2393.832 Jonathan Courtney

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?

0
💬 0

2394.602 - 2412.807 Greg Eisenberg

I think it's business weaknesses and life's curiosities. So like right now, I'm also like for this upcoming three months, I'm also just trying to get better at guitar. So taking a guitar course and then if I pull up, I'm also learning how to golf.

0
💬 0

2413.807 - 2414.568 Jonathan Courtney

Oh, interesting.

0
💬 0

2414.828 - 2415.068 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah.

0
💬 0

2415.208 - 2420.169 Jonathan Courtney

Probably a good way to network with high net worth people as well is golfing.

0
💬 0

2421.29 - 2426.68 Greg Eisenberg

It's also I live in Florida, so. It's a golfing place. It's a golfing place.

0
💬 0

2428.681 - 2433.384 Jonathan Courtney

What do you mean by chasing generational wealth is overrated and wealth is underrated?

0
💬 0

2434.424 - 2461.79 Greg Eisenberg

This came to me a couple years ago. We got offered a $100 million blank check to basically scale out late checkout and build out a bunch of new products faster, acquire faster. Just take our model and just... add steroids to it. And we turned it down and the VC basically called me up like sweating bullets.

0
💬 0

2461.99 - 2466.773 Jice Cream (Jonathan Courtney)

He goes, this is a Blackberry.

0
💬 0

2468.894 - 2477.26 Greg Eisenberg

He goes, I don't understand. This is like a surefire way for you and your team to get generational wealth.

0
💬 0

2477.833 - 2479.834 Jonathan Courtney

Yeah, he has a similar voice to you, actually.

0
💬 0

2480.095 - 2506.502 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah, a similar voice. Very similar voice to me. And I go, I'm not chasing generational wealth. I don't need hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars. In fact, the people who I look up to who have that sort of wealth, they give away 99.9% of their wealth anyways to charities. what I'm about is I want to, I want to live a wealthy life. I want to live a rich life.

0
💬 0

2506.522 - 2521.812 Greg Eisenberg

I want to be able to do whatever it is I want, but I don't need generational wealth. I think that's, it's something that what I don't like about chasing general generational wealth is it's infinite. You're chasing an infinite goal.

0
💬 0

2522.552 - 2551.878 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
💬 0

2552.158 - 2574.16 Jonathan Courtney

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?

0
💬 0

2574.38 - 2591.045 Jonathan Courtney

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?

0
💬 0

2591.65 - 2615.391 Jonathan Courtney

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

0
💬 0

2616.87 - 2642.232 Jonathan Courtney

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

0
💬 0

2643.342 - 2657.888 Greg Eisenberg

I don't have a number because people I know who have numbers are just, they hit the number and then the number becomes 2x. And then they hit the number and the number becomes 2x. And they hit the number and it becomes 2x. The way I think about it is I want to be able to do what I want.

0
💬 0

2658.529 - 2661.05 Jonathan Courtney

Yes, you don't want anyone to tell you what to do, where to be.

0
💬 0

2662.15 - 2671.014 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah, and there's a lifestyle that I want to have and that requires a certain amount of money, but that's kind of where I'm at.

0
💬 0

2673.464 - 2683.571 Jonathan Courtney

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?

0
💬 0

2684.452 - 2686.213 Greg Eisenberg

Well, what's your personal mission statement?

0
💬 0

2686.694 - 2687.394 Jonathan Courtney

I don't have one.

0
💬 0

2688.135 - 2691.077 Greg Eisenberg

You don't have one? Even around like facilitator.com?

0
💬 0

2692.398 - 2726.629 Jonathan Courtney

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

0
💬 0

2727.611 - 2729.713 Jonathan Courtney

I like to create stuff. I like making things.

0
💬 0

2730.214 - 2748.935 Greg Eisenberg

So where this came from was a lot of companies have mission statements. Most companies have mission statements. And I realized that founders, because they care so much about making the business work, they kind of lose sight of what their goals are.

0
💬 0

2749.975 - 2755.679 Jonathan Courtney

I have recently very much lost sight of my goals, which I've never defined, but I can sense it.

0
💬 0

2755.979 - 2764.124 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah. So that's my point on this life hack. How do you do it? It doesn't make a difference what your mission is or what mine is. It's just like, have a mission.

0
💬 0

2764.624 - 2771.088 Jonathan Courtney

But what does one look like? Can you tell me what that statement sounds like? I literally don't know what you mean. Yeah.

0
💬 0

2771.388 - 2806.627 Greg Eisenberg

So... Help me! Help me help you. Help me! A personal mission statement could be something like, it could be numbers. Like you can say, I want to make a million dollars a year and I want my children to have the best possible life. And I want to have a happy family. And that's a personal mission statement. You can put dollars in there. You can add personal, of course, into it. Family, friends.

0
💬 0

2807.128 - 2809.608 Jonathan Courtney

So you obviously don't want to share yours, basically. I don't want to share mine.

0
💬 0

2809.628 - 2811.609 Greg Eisenberg

It's personal.

0
💬 0

2812.049 - 2837.36 Jonathan Courtney

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.

0
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2839.261 - 2861.288 Jonathan Courtney

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?

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2862.213 - 2862.933 Greg Eisenberg

Go for it. Yeah.

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2863.214 - 2884.259 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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2884.739 - 2901.144 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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2904.154 - 2934.785 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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2934.805 - 2962.47 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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2962.49 - 2984.421 Jonathan Courtney

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

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2985.891 - 2987.655 Greg Eisenberg

I don't even know what that means.

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2987.935 - 3013.053 Jonathan Courtney

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?

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3013.553 - 3042.61 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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3042.87 - 3064.627 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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3064.848 - 3069.731 Jonathan Courtney

Is there any like thing I can watch or read about how to create a mission statement for myself?

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3070.252 - 3102.028 Greg Eisenberg

Yeah, there's like... There's a few frameworks for it. There's one called the three question framework. What is most important to you? What are your goals? What values guide your actions? For example, the integral piece that you talked about, the value that you have is integrity. You have pieces of it. That's one framework. There's also the purpose, values, goals framework. It's

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3104.541 - 3136.046 Greg Eisenberg

purpose what is your life about values what do you stand for and goals what do you want to achieve so I kind of like that one because I do think that you need to have some number what you know associated like from a goal perspective because otherwise it just becomes like so lofty and then the last one that I've seen is the five step plan So it's, what are your past successes?

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3136.406 - 3157.337 Greg Eisenberg

Identify themes from your past achievements. What are your core values? List and prioritize your most important values. Identify contributions, how you want to impact different areas of your life. Identify goals, short and long-term goals. And then it's write mission and vision statements. So you're basically synthesizing all the above stuff in concise statements. Love it.

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3157.517 - 3162.827 Jonathan Courtney

I'm going to look at all of those after I have them open as tabs. I have them tabbed out.

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3162.847 - 3173.136 Greg Eisenberg

Tabbed out. Okay, one more. One last one. One last and then more or then end of episode? No, then three to four books.

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3173.636 - 3173.936 Jonathan Courtney

Okay.

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3174.597 - 3178.12 Greg Eisenberg

I just want to talk quickly about the Instagram close friends one just because it's on my mind.

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3178.941 - 3181.803 Jonathan Courtney

Yeah, say the Instagram close friends one. I don't see it here.

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3182.744 - 3201.792 Greg Eisenberg

Did I not put that on the list? Oh, yeah. Being on someone's IG close friends doesn't mean you're close friends. So I don't know if this is just me, but recently I met a couple people out in the world and they just throw me on close friends. Oh, really?

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3202.212 - 3209.779 Jonathan Courtney

Homie, we just met. I haven't used that feature in quite a while, so I can't say much to this thing.

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3209.799 - 3209.979 Greg Eisenberg

So...

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3211.309 - 3214.211 Jonathan Courtney

So are you telling the public just to not add you to close friends?

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3214.231 - 3225.256 Greg Eisenberg

I'm saying that if someone adds you to close friends, it doesn't mean they're your close friends. And if you want to get deeper, it's like you only have a couple of close friends in real life.

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3227.137 - 3242.25 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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3243.871 - 3271.651 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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3272.491 - 3293.174 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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3293.214 - 3294.595 Jonathan Courtney

And now I have to listen to this stuff.

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3296.852 - 3323.101 Greg Eisenberg

when when you say angry people are you saying someone who's just got a generally negative vibe or someone who's actually angry so in my mind i wasn't going to use this word on twitter because it wouldn't hit the same but i think of them as curmudgeons curmudgeoness the the people the people who are not going to hand out candy at halloween

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3324.113 - 3335.778 Greg Eisenberg

because they hate the kids or the kids listen to loud rock music or whatever it is. You know what I mean? Also, the people that just are rooting for you to lose.

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3336.959 - 3356.844 Jonathan Courtney

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.

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