The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to get your first customers (even with ZERO audience)
Mon, 16 Dec 2024
Join me as I chat with Jonathan Courtney, Co-Founder and CEO of AJ&Smart, as we dive deep into various lead generation strategies. Jonathan shares his strategies and frameworks for building a client pipeline without having a large online following. 00:00 - Intro03:13 - The Dream 100 Strategy11:01 - The Canvas Strategy (for reaching out)18:12 - Go Where Your Audience Lives27:21 - The Power of Strategic Gifting36:33 - Content Creation (if you choose to)40:47 - Key Mindset Shift around Content Creation1) The Dream 100 Strategy:• Make a list of 100 people/orgs who already talk to your target audience• Research their platforms, reach, content• Focus on building relationships with them• Can start with just 10-20 namesExample: Web design agency targeting founders? Start with podcast hosts, community leaders2) The Canvas Strategy (for reaching out):• Don't just ask for favors• Focus on providing extreme value first• Make thoughtful, detailed pitches• Show you've done your homework• Be patient and play the long game3) Go Where Your Audience Lives:• Join paid communities ($149/mo is nothing if you land 1 client)• Lurk in Reddit threads• Answer Quora questions in detail• Participate in Discord servers• Be the MOST valuable memberNo promotion, just pure value.4) The Power of Strategic Gifting:• Doesn't need to be expensive ($5-50 can work)• Make it personal and meaningful• Think long-term relationship building• One mentor landed a huge deal with a $50k guitar gift• Small gestures = big memories5) Content Creation (if you choose to):• Focus on MASSIVE value over production quality• Create 5+ hour detailed tutorials• Answer common questions exhaustively• "Low quality, high effort" is the new formula• Example: mastering . com's 11-hour tutorials6) Key Mindset Shift:Stop obsessing over:• Social media metrics• Personal branding• Complex marketing funnelsStart focusing on:• High-leverage relationships• Direct value creation• Being present where your audience is7) The ROI is INSANE:• Single partnerships can generate millions• One webinar can outperform months of ads• Relationship-based leads convert better• More sustainable than viral marketing• Less stressful than being an "influencer"Pro Tip: Review your Dream 100 list every quarter. Most businesses forget this and focus on low-leverage tasks instead.Links Mentioned: The Dream 100 Google Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a7d1GSZoJq_pT2Ptbvc9HsZWPxNsQDhRcUvT6d1V2Jw/edit?gid=0#gid=0The Canvas Strategy Ep: https://youtu.be/fr5xG_bTV44Want 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: https://www.gregisenberg.com/30startupideasLCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/BoringAds — ads agency that will build you profitable ad campaigns http://boringads.com/BoringMarketing — SEO agency and tools to get your organic customers http://boringmarketing.com/Startup Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses https://www.startupempire.coFIND 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/AJ&Smart: https://ajsmart.com/
Today's episode of the Startup Ideas podcast is well needed. It's about how do you get customers for your startup without a social following, without spending tons of money on ads, and just some really, really simple tips on how to do it. And we go through three ways on how to do it in this episode. And this is a tutorial. So by the end of it, you'll really understand how to do this.
We talk about a concept called the Dream 100, and we give you a spreadsheet for it. It's about how do you reach out to potential partners or people and leverage their audiences to be well-known. The second is, you know, how do you utilize groups and communities to get customers and leads?
And the last is thinking about how do you make high quality videos and coming up with ideas for content that's going to spread within the audiences you care about. This episode's with Jonathan Courtney, one of my favorite people to come on the Startup Ideas podcast show. You're going to love it. See you in there. What are we talking about today?
Today we're going to talk about how you get clients or how you get leads without needing to be a social media influencer, without needing to even use social media necessarily, and also without needing to create content. Thought that might be interesting for people. Like this kind of cold start problem of finding an audience, finding leads, finding, like building a list, but like out of nothing.
That could be interesting to your audience.
Okay, don't hit the desk because it picks it up.
Oh yeah, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk. I saw one of the recent episodes and it just sounds like I'm drumming the whole time.
Don't do that. But this whole getting leads and customers, probably one of the biggest questions I get asked. I listen to the Startup Ideas podcast and I'm like, Great. Good for you, Greg, with your 500,000 followers or whatever. Easy for you to say you're going to go and create this startup and then people are going to go and use it. But we're keeping it real here. We're keeping it real.
We're keeping it real.
Yeah, I work with a lot of people or I chat with a lot of entrepreneurs who never use social media. They've never run ads before. There's no chance of them going on X and posting regularly or even making YouTube videos. And then they're like, how do I get leads? How do I do this? And so I... talk about this a lot, but I don't think I've ever made content specifically about how to do it.
And I just thought that maybe I'll just jump straight into some strategies. They're not already connected. They just kind of all can work. And I don't even know how many there are. It's not something I've ever written down. It's just something I do. Have you heard of the Dream 100 method?
I haven't.
That's good then. It would suck if you're like, yes, I have. And I already talked about it on this podcast.
I have. By the way, before you talk about the Dream 100 method, I literally need to take off my sweatshirt because that's how hot I'm getting talking to you.
Before I talk about the Dream 100 method, we need to talk about the Dream 200 method. You've already upgraded. So Dream 100, the idea here is that you try to find other people who have access to the audience that you're looking for. So for example, you want to, I don't know, start a web design agency or just give me a random business and I'll use it as an example.
Sure. You want to start a, I mean, web design agency is a great one.
Fine. So you want to start a web design agency. And so you, and you also think I should, I probably would like to work with like founders and not, you know, massive corporate. So I want to work with like small businesses or startups and I want a web design agency. Okay. I'm starting it tomorrow and I have no social media presence and I don't know what an ad is.
And I'm one of those people who thinks that ads don't work, even though that's not true. But anyway, it would take me too long to figure that out anyway. So what's the first thing you do? Well, one of the first things you can do is a strategy called Dream 100. The idea behind it is you literally make a list. You make like an Excel sheet or a Google sheet.
And on the left, you make a list of all of the people who you think would be already talking to your audience or would have access to your audience. It can be people or it can be organizations. So off the top of your head, Greg, Can you think of anyone who has an audience of people that speaks to founders and startup owners who might at some point want to have a website? Can you think of anyone?
Wait, can we do this live? Can I just open up a Google Doc and we can write this out?
Yeah, let's make it live. Top left, we have the partner name or company name or person name. So back to the question, I want to start a web design agency. Okay, I want to somehow think about, not thinking about how to contact them, but who are the people who are talking to the audience that I want to have? So question one is,
Can you think of anyone off the top of your head who's speaking with an audience of startups, startup owners or founders who you think might at some point want a website designed for them?
Maybe like when I think. Okay, so me.
Yeah. Since you are an example of someone's dream 100. So you would be at the very top for a listener of this podcast.
True.
So you're and then you just fill this out. So your main website, you just fill in their main website. You link to all their social media stuff. You probably want to blur that out.
Yeah, let's blur that out.
You try to fill this whole thing out. And get a feeling for that person and how big is their audience, all of that. So this is like a research project, basically. And if you honestly spend one day just filling this out, let's jump to the second one already. Who would be another person who speaks with founders and people who might want their website designed?
I was thinking of Product Hunt.
Product Hunt is a website which you could do a partnership with. So yes, Product Hunt.
So it could be people or companies, right?
Theoretically, it can be people or companies. It's only worth putting a company there if you think that there's something you could potentially do with that company. For example, if that company has a podcast, which would also have that audience. So I would say it's worth it at least for this first pass to put Product Hunt on there.
I would also put like, okay, thinking about my city, looking at different meetups, finding, oh, there's an entrepreneur's organization meetup happening every Thursday in the city. And so I'm going to figure out who runs that. And I would put them in the list as well. How can they put me in front of those people? That would be something I'm thinking about.
So step one is just making a list of people or organizations or meetups or like containers where the people you want to work with are already being talked to or already being interacted with and are already gathering essentially.
Quick break in the pod to tell you a little bit about Startup Empire. So Startup Empire is my private membership where it's a bunch of people like me, like you, who want to build out their startup ideas. Now, they're looking for content to help accelerate that. They're looking for potential co-founders.
They're looking for tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them, how do you do email marketing? How do you build an audience? How do you go viral on Twitter? All these different things. That's exactly what Startup Empire is. And it's for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas.
Or it's for people who have a startup, but just they're not seeing the traction that they need. So you can check out the link to StartupEmpire.co in the description.
So this is like step one. Now you have a list of people that might be able to like massively... It might be that contacting one of these people gets you more leads or gets you more traffic than doing all of the other stuff, like doing all the social media stuff and doing all the other things you could be doing.
So for example, let's say someone is thinking, okay, out of this list, I've made a list of 100. By the way, a lot of people just do 10. A lot of people just do 20. Now your next step is figuring out what could I do or what could I offer this person or organization
That would put me in front of their audience or that would somehow expose me to their audience, but would also give them a lot of value. Like very simple question in your mind, like what can I do to either have a partnership with them or give them value? So they put me in front of the audience. One option is paying them. So I'll give you an example.
Early on in my company's history, I realized a lot of our audience is reading Daring Fireball, John Gruber's website. And so I just straight up paid for an ad on his blog and it got us a crap ton of traffic. So that was just like a paid way of doing it. A second example is...
About six months ago, I reached out to a guy called Greg Eisenberg and I pitched him on an idea of me being an occasional host of this podcast. And that also generated a ton of leads for me. I don't post on any social media.
You see, I'm a disaster at social media, but I'm able to generate leads using a system like Dream 100, a system where I just look for who are essentially the people who are just already great at talking to the audience. People already like them. They're already like a face and a trusted person in those people's lives.
And can I just be a slug hanging on to the back of them and just somehow be exposed to their audience? So that's one really simple first step that you can do to start getting traffic to whatever it is you're doing. There's loads of steps and loads of ways you can do this wrong, but there's a strategy for reaching out to people. So that you don't fuck it up. And it's called a canvas strategy.
So once you have your list of people and you're like, okay, how do I actually reach out to people who are super busy already and already like don't need anything from a nobody like me? Usually that's what stops people because they're like, there's no point in me reaching out to Greg. Like he's already got a huge audience. There's really nothing I can do for him.
That's because you haven't really learned any strategies for reaching out to people. And my favorite one is called a canvas strategy. Google it. It's a thing that Ryan Holiday wrote. And the idea here is that it's a system that helps you figure out how to be helpful for people who are gatekeepers or above you in the sort of business hierarchy.
We did an entire episode on the Canvas strategy, Greg, at one point. So maybe it's worth just like linking to that. We actually did a full episode on it, you and I, sometime in the summer. But the idea here is Don't just reach out to Greg and be like, hey, can I come on your podcast?
Because Greg's going to be like, it's almost insulting to do that because he knows you just want to have access to his audience. But for example, what I did when I reached out to you, Greg, even though we already knew each other, I still took it seriously. I made like a pitch for why it would be worth your while having me on your podcast and
And I put effort into it, even though I could have been lazy and just said, how can I come on your podcast? It's like, it's almost insulting. So reaching out to people is an art. And we did an episode called Canvas Strategy. And I think you should just link to that. That is the art of reaching out to people, in my opinion.
How many millions of dollars have you made in your career from the Hustle 100 slash Canvas Strategy?
Way more. So... probably that's actually a great question let me think so we've been around for 14 years 14 let me do a little bit of math this is actually a great question i've never thought about this so that's like i didn't know you could do math honestly i'm quite bad at math for being a ceo of a company i'd say not me personally but my business has made 50 to 60 million euro just from that
You couldn't have said dollars. You had to say euros.
Oh, sorry. Dollars. Yeah. Well, then it's a little bit more. I'm trying to be accurate about it. No one's ever asked me that question. We've been around for 14 years.
And then the last eight years... You're wearing a Yankees hat, trying to be all American, but then you're saying euros. Yes.
Euros. Yeah. I'd say like conservatively, being really conservative, I'd say 40 to 50 million, because we also use ads and I can't 100% figure that out. But I'll give you one very clean and clear example. Jake Knapp, the guy who wrote the book Sprint, I reached out to him a couple of years ago. I talked about it in Canvas Strategy.
This one single connection, instead of me going on loads of podcasts and doing loads of things, I zeroed in on one person. I was like, Jake is talking to our audience. Our audience buys his book. That's one specific person who really is the perfect partner for AJ and Smart and nobody else.
I put all of my effort into that one person, into really trying to figure out how we could have a really good partnership for him as well. That created our entire training business, which now we're working with corporates all over the world since that book came out, basically. And just us training people on the design sprint has been responsible for tens of millions of dollars.
But that would never have happened if we had not met Jake. even just being on this podcast, like just spending time thinking about how I can be valuable to you, probably within 12 months will have been worth 3 or 4 million. So that's pretty amazing. Like, thank you. No worries.
Yeah, it's crazy. I remember the first time I met you and... First time I met you. Yeah.
Cute one.
Yeah. Yeah. The first time I met you, you looked at me like I was a crazy person because I started talking about what I do and creating content, attracting audiences, that sort of thing. And you were like, what are you doing? That is so much work to do that. So you looked like I was taking crazy pills.
You do a lot as well. You're a busy man.
Yeah, I mean, the truth is I love doing, I love the creation of content. I also think it gives you a certain amount of clarity to the community and audience that you don't get if you're just renting. Yes, yes. Yeah. But I think that for a lot of people doing what you say, just like get in the door, get some customers, get some feedback, and then you can always create content afterwards, right?
Like no one's stopping you.
Yeah, and I think like it is... One of the strategies I use, it's not the only strategy, but I think it's one of these strategies. By the way, I didn't come up with it. I just learned it somewhere. I don't even remember where. But I was like, this seems too easy. You just write the names of the people who are talking to your audience and you reach out to them and that gets you clients.
The only catch is you have to... Be good at what you do, like as in you have to be able to talk about the thing. So if you're a web designer and you absolutely suck at web design, it won't work at all. So it's only going to work if you are like the real deal, as in if you can do the thing, but then it really works. Who's trying to... Oh, sorry. Nevermind. Someone's trying to call me.
I was telling you before we started this call, I'm having a really annoying day. It is the most annoying day at AJ and smart of the year.
Don't bring that on air. Don't bring that vibe on air.
I'm going to bring all the rage onto this.
You didn't say that in the original text message to me when you wanted to be an occasional co-host.
Hey, I'm going to come on air. You know, people in your audience maybe need to know that we also, well, especially me, are also sometimes just having an annoying bad day running a business. Because I think they probably think we're just like, every day is easy. It's all super simple. Anyway, let's get to the next strategy. Let's do it. What's number two? So dream 100 is number one.
You don't have to do 100, but just even the research, even just researching the people, researching the potential partners is going to give you a ton of ideas on, you know, the different potential ways that you could reach out to different people and all that. You'll also be shocked.
Oh, there's people like I never heard of in a super niche part of the market that are talking to like 20 people who could completely change my life. So that's another thing. Okay, the next thing, it doesn't really have a name. It's just figure out where your audience is congregating and spending their time and start spending your time there too.
And start delivering extreme levels of value to the places where those people are spending time. Let me give you an example. There are a lot of groups for entrepreneurs. Like for example, are you still running a school group? I am. So you have a school group, community, what is it called actually?
I think it's called a community, StartupEmpire.co.
So StartupEmpire.co, it's probably like, this is not an ad for StartupEmpire.co. I'm just giving an example. I do not get anything if someone joins StartupEmpire.co. So does it cost something or is it free?
It costs something.
Like what, if you wouldn't mind?
It's $149 a month.
OK, $149 you pay and I guess you can cancel anytime. So let's say you're thinking about this strategically and you're thinking, OK, where can I find people who are hanging out who could potentially be my clients? I'm not going to recommend people go in and spam your group. Don't worry.
So if I was looking at this, what I'm looking for is, OK, that's potentially a high quality place where people are hanging out, which maybe I might want to do work with. So I'm going to join that group. I'm going to spend the entire first month just being the most valuable person in that group. Zero spamming, zero telling people to reach out to me and DM me and trying to get work out of it.
Just being the most valuable person in the group. When people are asking questions about web design, here you go. Here's a question. Don't even follow up with me. You know also that people struggle with this.
So you just post like free templates, whatever it is, whatever you can do to make yourself an extremely valuable person in that group while also observing the challenges people have in that group. That's an amazing way to start lightly generating leads for yourself.
There's a ton of free groups on platforms like Discord, School, Facebook, whatever it is, and even the comments of YouTube channels that are dedicated to specific topics. And in these groups, you can just go in there and deliver as much value as possible.
And doing that alone will generate leads for you for free or for a very low price per month, like the price of one day of failed experiments on Facebook running ads. And so for me, if I'm starting a company tomorrow, Day one, I'm writing out my dream 100 list. Day two, I'm joining as many goddamn communities as possible. I'm lurking in Reddit groups as well.
I'm looking at different type of entrepreneurial Reddit groups. I'm looking into the places where these people are congregating. And I am just being the most valuable person. Another thing that I used to do is when I started to try to become like a well-known facilitator,
i'm on quora i've got like the paid quora account or whatever it is and i'm giving people the most detailed answers no chat gpt just clean detailed extremely like over the top better than everyone else's answers and i'm just trying to be valuable if you're thinking about how do i generate leads as fast as possible it still takes some time.
But if you just do Dream 100 and just go to where people are congregating and deliver value, within one month, you're going to start getting that momentum. It's like absolutely ridiculously easy. And that's still without you having to be an influencer, without you having to create content, you're just reacting to other people's stuff.
And without you having to run ads or speak at conferences or release a book, it's just the basics of... getting people interested in what you're doing and seeing the quality of what you can do. Those two things will get you like 80% of your clients in the first few months if you just do it like that.
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.
the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and ai 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
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. I want to add one quick thing to that whole strategy, which I do that strategy today. So
I think not only does it work for Facebook groups and school groups and discords, it also works on just replying and commenting to creators that are in your niche. So for example, on YouTube, like on this podcast, Startup Ideas podcast on YouTube, I recognize the same people who comment every single time. Like for example, there's this guy named Ryan Aldridge.
No idea who he is, but I know he comments. Yeah, hi Ryan. And I know that he comments on every single video and he says something like pretty thoughtful. And if Ryan hit me up and he was like, you know, on Twitter, let's say, and he was like, hey, I'd love to do something.
I don't know if I'd say yes, but I'm 10 times, 50 times, 100 times more likely to do something with Ryan because I've seen his name so many goddamn times. And the same is true with Omar, who was recently on the pod, who taught a 90-minute session around using AI to build directories. he was like a listener of the pod. He was like commenting on stuff.
He, you know, he, he was messaging me, you know, from that, you know, he ended up getting access to the pod, which, um, you know, that episode might get a hundred plus thousand views and listens, which is worth a lot of, you What I suggest people do is turn on notification bells for a list of creators that you care about and just be the first person to write something thoughtful.
Don't write like cool video or great thread on Twitter, right? Like, are you kidding me? Don't do that. But add value through comments and you'll also attract people other commenters, you'll also attract trust with the creator. Thoughts?
That's an amazing idea. And I also think turning on all notifications for your Dream 100 as well. Just any of the people who are in that list of people who are talking to your audience, they're probably the same people you're talking about. I actually somehow never thought about the fact that it makes sense to turn on notifications so you can jump in there and reply to them.
But yeah, any time you can deliver value also to the creator by being a helpful person in the comments, also by sharing the creator's stuff so that they have the feeling that you actually care about what they do and that you like what they do and that you're spreading it. I think that's a fantastic idea.
And you can see all of these are like layers that you put on top of each other for the machine to start working. I love that one. I remember you told me a story, you told it on the podcast of like you reaching out to the like singer of Weezer, was it? And then getting to go to one of the gigs?
Dude, not even just going to the gigs. I was hanging out with him backstage.
You're the master at this. You're the absolute master at it. You're just killer with that sort of stuff. If you also have some money, one thing that people also don't realize, and I don't mean a crap ton of money, but if you're listening to this, and I know you are because I've spoken to some of you, and you're running an agency that's making...
uh, 500 K and you want to grow and you're like, you know, spending loads of money on branding agencies, all of this other stuff, take like 10 K of that money. or 15K, reach out to the top person on your list and ask them to do a collab of some sort or ask them what could we do together that would expose me to your audience.
We did a, and I'm not gonna talk about the number, but we did a collaboration with Chris Do. He's like got a huge, huge design channel And I just went on Instagram, reached out to him and I was like, I'd love to do some sort of collab with you guys. You know, we had zero followers back then. And I just straight up said right from the beginning because I had nothing to offer.
I had no, I thought of the whole canvas strategy thing and I was like, I have nothing to offer this guy. He's just too, he's too far ahead of me in this game that we're playing. And so the only thing I can say is, We have a pretty good budget and we'd love to do a collab with you. Done. We did a collab within the next like three weeks or something.
So I think just being clever with your marketing spend and thinking about over leveraged things versus we're going to do a rebrand versus we're going to throw this into something we don't understand or versus sometimes like...
hiring a marketing agency i hear this a lot people hire a marketing agency to like run their ads these people don't care they don't care about your company necessarily so sometimes it would be better to take that 50k or 10k and just use it on your dream 100 and i heard a really killer one recently my mentor bought his number one dream 100 person a 50 000 guitar and
signed by like a super famous person and brought it person, obviously with permission, brought it personally to the guy's office. And now they're like doing crazy collabs together. It's so cool. And that's the kind of thing people don't think about. He could have spent that on some sort of bullshit marketing thing.
He could have spent that on like rebranding or making tons of YouTube videos or whatever it is, but he spent it on buying a guitar for this guy. And I just think that's such a, like, These are the types of things you need to be thinking about if you're looking for a lever. And by the way, that guy also has no social media. He's nowhere. He's nowhere to be found. This is an invisible person.
I just love that kind of crap. Guys, I'm not asking you to buy me a 50k guitar. I don't want you turning up to my office with a guitar. But he had an angle. He had a whole thing. It was really just super cool. What do you think about those types of things like these?
like, you know, lasering in on one person you think you could have a killer collab with, maybe just offering to pay for it, or maybe just, uh, you know, bringing something interesting to their life. Like for example, a crazy guitar.
I think, uh, a lot of people hit me up and they're like, I, you know, I do cold email or I reach out to people and no one, like I don't hear back and they get like super, they feel bad and I don't blame, blame them for feeling bad. Um, but it's just that the reach out isn't targeted. It's not personalized. It's not, it's about, it's not about the person you're reaching out to.
And I think like gifting is such an underrated tool to get someone to be on your side. Um, it just stacks the cards in your favor. So I love hearing stories about like a 50, you know, 50 K guitar that's like meaningful, you know, like, um, I think, uh, I also heard a story.
I don't know if he, he wants me to share it, but someone who you all know, uh, who buys, you know, companies, you know, offer, he wanted to, you know, in his dream 100, I guess he had a company, you know, this founder and he wanted to buy this founder. He, you know, I think like a Ferrari, he said like, Hey, like I've got a Ferrari waiting for you in Hawaii. Yeah.
In Hawaii, and you paint this picture. If you come and close this deal, I can't wait to meet you in Maui, and we're going to sail into the sunset. Things like that. And now, I know the comment section is going to be like, but I don't have enough money for a Ferrari. And it doesn't need to be that, right? It could be something small. Yeah.
Someone recently brought me this, right? Like... A business partner, we started a deal together and they brought this little teenage engineering thing. Thank you, Alan, by the way. And it's just such a memory. I think it's like $80 or something. And it's such a memorable thing because he knows I love teenage engineering. He knows I like to make music. It doesn't need to be something crazy.
And what was the thing you said you always gift people? Was it a little Buddha or something?
Yeah. I did a year of Buddha, which is hilarious because I'm just a Jewish guy with a bunch of Buddhas. So one year I bought like, I don't know, 500 Buddhas or something, hundreds of Buddhas. These small little things that were about like $5, maybe $7 each. It was a really good deal, I will say. It was a high quality mini Buddha.
and to the and i would you know meet all you know this is like i'm in my early 20s i'm in san francisco i'm trying to meet as many people as possible uh i've got my dream 100 list even though i didn't know that that's what it was and every meeting i would basically just be like hey like thanks for your time you know i wish you good luck and i would just hand them a mini buddha and to this day some of those people ended up you know
They were also in their early mid-20s. Some of them are like billionaires now or run $100 million venture funds or have sold companies to Stripe and things like that, executives at Meta. And they still, to this day, 10 years later or more than 10 years later, they have that Buddha and they send me photos of They send me photos and they're like, hey, hope all is well.
And it's like, dude, you're like the SBP product of a trillion dollar company. And I'm on your mind for this five dollar Buddha from this Jewish guy. How does this make this make sense?
That's so cool. You are very, very good at this game, I have to say. You are one of the rare people... You do have a superpower of keeping in touch with people and keeping... Making people feel... And I think it's real. Making people feel thought of. For your audience, just in case you think you need to have superpowers like Greg... I'm the opposite.
I'm like a disaster with keeping up with people as Greg knows, like Greg, you are, you have like the absolute mastery of just, I'm going to send a quick message to Jonathan. I'm going to reach out to this person, you know, everyone on the planet. And I think you have like, almost like a natural inbuilt dream 100 machine inside you. And I'm lazy as fuck.
So what I do is I like have my dream 100 and I like focus on one person per year or one thing every two years or one thing every three years. And even that, you know, if you're not trying to build a hundred million dollar company, if you're just trying to do what I'm doing, which is
bootstrapped under 10 million that you can do this and be lazy and still it's like not true you can't be lazy you can do this be good at what you do keep it consistent and still be pretty successful with it without even what do you think about the angle?
Actually, Greg, I'm saying here without building any sort of content, without doing any sort of, you know, being an influencer, but obviously I think it goes without saying having content out there. So my, our YouTube channel for AJ and smart, having content out there being like somewhat visible, that makes everything 10 times easier.
Then that's almost like a, you know, moving it from hard mode to easy mode, right?
Yeah, I mean, that's the whole game of business and life in general is you want to make your life easy, right? And you're trying to stack the deck in your favor. Content, audience building, the leverage that you get from that is so big. So I think it's... And then once you're doing multiple things, you're doing Dream 100 plus you're doing content, for example, you've just multiplied it.
It just starts to multiply. So that's why I look at someone like you and I'm like, I don't know why you don't do content.
I'm lazy and I'm not trying to build a company that makes... I mean, look, I am... I think that a big part of it is that I don't really like to be a public figure. Yeah. And I, I kind of like, you know, okay. If I do a tweet, right. No one is, no one is following me on Twitter or X, right.
If I do a post on X, I'm worried the whole day that I've said something bad that I'll, and I'll like have to go back and re-explain myself or something. I'm just like a, I'm not really good with this sort of putting opinions out there and all of that kind of stuff. I used to do it in my early 20s. And I used to almost thrive on a bit of the controversy of the things I would post.
And now I'm like, I want to be not... Checking stuff on, which is why I actually like YouTube. I want to actually, that would be one of my other examples. If you don't want to build like a personal brand, if you don't want to get out there and be like, I'm also not naturally good at it the way you are.
I think you have a really, you've kind of almost got this brain that's optimized to the max for being really good at regular content. I look at your ex account and it's just like, you're nonstop. Yeah. And I think you'll always beat someone like me if we were competing in that sort of game.
And I think that's also why people who make a lot of content are actually usually the most successful people. It's impossible to compete with it. If it was like a video game or a board game, it's like the overpowered skill is the ability to...
keep producing content, even when there's lots of like annoying little fucking comments that you're like, you know, I'll get one comment, negative comment on a YouTube video and it will ruin my day. You can get like probably 10 and you're like, whatever, I'll just make the next video. I just have thin skin for that sort of thing.
And so that's why I naturally lean towards methods which are less about me creating content, I guess.
I'm a baby. You have the thinnest skin in the game, dude. I literally see your bones.
I do need to put on some weight to be fair. I want to talk about YouTube for a second. There's a channel I want to give a shout out to. One of my mentors is the... Founder, that's actually the best way to say it without giving away too much information. One of the founders of this company is a mentor to me. It's mastering.com.
And I think they've really, in my opinion, mastered the art of creating content in a way for YouTube in a way that's ludicrously over the top valuable. And number two, isn't focused on the individuals and the individual characters who are posting the content. I've been trying to do this at AJ and Smart for years. I've not succeeded with it, but they've completely nailed it.
If you check their recent videos, sometimes their videos are 11 hours long, 12 hours long, 15 hours long. And they put these insanely valuable tutorials out there. And then the people who find those tutorials valuable, are obviously going to check out who's this company who's giving away all of this insane value.
So if I were a web designer today trying to start a company and I wanted to have people reach out to me on this next level, like the next level is content creation, but I wasn't super comfortable being right up front as the face and giving my opinions, then I would probably copy what mastering.com does.
Just to be clear, I have zero affiliation with mastering.com besides the fact that I pay one of their founders to teach me stuff or like to mentor me. So I don't care if they succeed or not. I just think it's a really cool YouTube channel.
So is what you're saying basically going, what is the most amount of value you can give basically? Instead of, for example, creating a course and selling a course, maybe it's just you create the course. but you just give it away for free, right? And you just create as much freaking value, highly produced as possible that people feel almost guilty for consuming it.
Here's what I would do. Absolutely, yes. And here's specifically what I would do. I would be on Reddit, I would be on Qt Quora, and I would be in 20 different groups on school and all these different platforms. And I see a question coming up. It's like, how do I, like, what's the quickest way to make a landing page in Framer that's completely responsive and blah, blah, blah, has a checkout?
What I would do is I would sit at my computer, turn on Loom and make a goddamn five hour from zero to the pages made video with no cuts, like maybe going to the bathroom or something and then cutting those bits out or bringing the camera with you. And that would be one of my YouTube videos. And I would then send it to the person who asked the question.
And they're going to be like, what the actual hell? this person's like way too much, like that's way too much value. So that's what I would be doing. So, but yes, it's like making courses, but without the baggage of making courses, because making courses is like a looming stressful thing. This is just, I'm making a video to show you how to do the thing in my lo-fi way, but I'm good at what I do.
And here's how I do it. Here's how I would do it using Framer or whatever it is.
I buy it. I also think that it's a really good way to sell software. The margins of software are so great, especially like SaaS, 70, 80, 90%. Go and create a bunch of videos. Don't worry that it doesn't even need to look good. And it's funny, people ask me all the time, this show looks like crap. And Rafa, my producer, is going to hate me for saying this.
It looks like crap in the sense that when you compare this to like Diary of a CEO.
We're just sitting in our laptops.
Yeah, we're just sitting in our laptops. People hate me that this is in 720p.
And yet you're dominating.
You know, by the way, I will do some 4K videos for the people in the comment section. I see you.
The nude videos will be in 4K. Yeah. yeah it's true so um yeah that's kind of where i'm at wait you were just about to say something really like profound and i was i think we got distracted by the 720p thing i think you were just about to say something big yeah me too but i haven't i haven't had enough coffee this is the what was i even talking about yeah i also don't know
I got so distracted by the 4k thing. Um, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. We were talking about making these long form YouTube videos and the fact that it doesn't have to be high quality. Totally.
Yeah, exactly. Low quality is the new high quality.
Look at the mastering.com videos.
Did you hear what I just said?
Low quality is the new high quality.
Yeah. Do you agree with that?
A hundred percent. 100 lowest quality is the new 4k.
Yeah, exactly. And by the way, low quality doesn't mean low effort. We put a lot of effort into the... Well, this episode we didn't put that much effort into prep, but this show I do put a lot of effort into it.
Yeah, you do for sure.
And it's also... Don't think that just low effort means... Sorry, don't think that low quality means low effort. What you want to do is... Low quality, high effort. Yes. That's where you want to be.
Yeah. Also, just don't forget on YouTube, a lot of people just want to have something on in the background and learn through osmosis. So if you look at the mastering.com videos or I've been recently looking at my favorite YouTube video this week was a two and a half hour like review of the new OPXY from Teenage Engineering.
And it's just two guys literally, it's just like a video camera pointed down at the device and the person pressing buttons on it. That's something I'll passively watch, but get a lot of value from. So it doesn't need to be obsessively high quality with slides, with whatever, just showing the people how to do the thing and doing it like showing how good you are at the thing as well.
In the end, you know, when these people are watching it, they're going to be like, can I just get Jonathan to do it? Actually, I don't want to watch our video.
Well, I also think you're dropping a gem here, which is Cora is. There's so much good stuff on Quora because you can understand what people are asking for. And just going to make videos based on top Quora questions and answers in and of itself is such a huge insight. So thank you for sharing that.
Oh, you're welcome, man. I'm trying to think, is there anything else? So dream 100 going to where people are just, you know, getting together and talking about the topic, just going to where your audience already is, um, thinking about things like lower, you know, high effort, low quality content options. Is there anything else?
Like it's, if it's about how are we spending this first month generating a couple of new clients without building a big personal brand and you don't have a list, Those work really well. Those, for me, are the things that I recommend or the things that I do with people.
Yeah, honestly, don't overthink it. That's what I would do. And in fact, I feel like I want to put this into the process of whatever new company we launch.
I think the Dream 100 thing... You know what I'm annoyed about? At AJ and Smart, we talk about this Dream 100 thing all the time, but it only comes back to me once every two years when somehow we've stagnated, like our revenue has stagnated, our profits are going down, and I'm like, yeah, but we're doing this and we're doing that, and I'm tweaking all these little things.
And you've probably heard this quote where it's like, don't be the lion that chases the rabbits or something about lions and rabbits and get the antelope instead of the rabbits. Great quote, right? But I end up looking at all the small things and trying to optimize the crap out of them. And it brings up our revenue by 1% or 2%. And then it just clicks with me. And I'm like, wait a minute.
What if I just reached out to this person and we did something together? And usually that's the step function explosive growth thing that happens when I go back to the goddamn dream 100 list and just look at it again and remind myself, oh, yeah. Like, for example, I give you a clear example of this. We were thinking about, OK, we're doing our Facebook ads.
We're doing all this other stuff where, you know, we're tweaking the funnel in all these little ways. And we're like, but how... Looking at the email list, where did this huge bump come from? Like, that's basically 80% of the whole year. And then we were like, oh, we did a webinar with this partner. Like, we did a webinar for this person's list. Why the...
fuck, am I not doing a webinar with this person again then? It's because we forget how it's just still high. The hardest thing about running a business is trying to discern what's high leverage and what's just like menial tasks that feel good but do nothing.
And honestly, just starting a business and focusing on something like Dream 100, focusing on something like being in the place where your customers are, these are like hyper high leverage things to do and to be good at.
Couldn't agree more, dude. Couldn't agree more. All right, well, you're firing me up. You're firing me up. I know what I'm doing today. We'll include the Dream 100 Google Doc in the description for people to download and do it themselves. Highly encourage it. You know what else I highly encourage? Liking this video, commenting.
Yes.
Stuff, like just say something to us and probably subscribing because... That lets us know that we should continue creating videos and podcasts for free. So please do that.
And I want to know who the top five people on your Dream 100 are. Let me know in the comments now.
All right. I'll catch you later, dude.
Thanks so much, Greg. See ya.
Thank you.