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The Startup Ideas Podcast

Supercharge your career with this one cheat code

Wed, 26 Jun 2024

Description

Join us for an insightful conversation with Jonathan Courtney, Co-Founder and CEO of AJ&Smart, as we dive deep into the niche coaching category and explore why living in a big city could be a game-changer for your professional opportunities. In this episode, we discuss how transitioning people from careers they hate to ones they love can be a lucrative coaching business. We delve into why this is a promising opportunity, the strategies we’d use to grow such a business, and much more. Our discussion broadens to career growth and how geography can serve as a powerful growth hack. Whether you're aiming to start your first million-dollar business or are interested in entrepreneurial strategies, this episode is packed with actionable advice and inspiration. Don’t miss this essential guide to launching a successful startup!Want 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: [gregisenberg.com/30startupideas](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.com70,000+ 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/Episode Timestamps:0:00 Intro02:45 Startup Idea 1: Career Transition Coaching19:56 Career Advice: Why geography matters

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0.149 - 28.625 Greg Isenberg

My take on this is that every person has a ignorance tax that they have to pay down. So no matter what your goals are, there's a price that you have to pay to learn to get to your goals quicker. And by living in San Francisco, New York, some of these places, yes, it might be two times more expensive to live, but you will, just by osmosis, pay down your ignorance debt way, way, way faster.

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51.206 - 52.467 Greg Isenberg

Jice Cream is back.

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52.727 - 53.788 Jonathan Courtney

Hey, time to sip.

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53.808 - 65.376 Greg Isenberg

Time to sip. You haven't been on the show in like three weeks, so you're just like super, super electric about it.

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66.145 - 83.955 Jonathan Courtney

I was so sick. I got COVID got that bat flu right in my brain. And it just, it really messed me up. It stopped me from being sharp. There's nothing more scary as an entrepreneur, especially if you're running your own businesses, then your brain moving slower than usual.

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84.095 - 90.479 Jonathan Courtney

I think, I don't know if you've ever had something like that, where you get it, you get sick or something happens and you become more stupid.

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91.522 - 96.544 Greg Isenberg

No, nothing. My brain is never slow and is never stupid. It just hasn't happened ever yet.

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96.564 - 101.607 Jonathan Courtney

That's just the standard speed for you, right?

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102.067 - 105.668 Greg Isenberg

I just take a sip and I'm back where I need to be.

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106.269 - 116.993 Jonathan Courtney

Well, you Americans, right? And I was really thinking about that this week. You Americans are all like, you've got this zin stuff. I actually don't know if it's a patch or if it's a chewing gum.

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118.709 - 134.318 Greg Isenberg

No, Zin is the rage in America. It's basically like a, it looks like a piece of gum and people put it like on their lip. It's just like, it's a nicotine thing.

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134.458 - 150.261 Jonathan Courtney

It's a little bag that you put up here. Yeah. Oh, okay. A lot of people in the Nordic countries use that too, but not for productivity because, hey, guess what? Nobody from Nordic countries is going to be watching this show for productivity ain't the thing.

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150.681 - 169.767 Jonathan Courtney

But yeah, I was thinking, I was literally like, maybe I need to start taking some of these powerful concoctions of stuff that Americans take to get work done. Um, but yeah, in the end I just ended up waiting until I didn't have COVID anymore, but I do have some fun topic. I do have one main topic for you today. I think it's like.

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170.922 - 182.366 Jonathan Courtney

I, when I saw this and I've been looking into it for a couple of weeks, I was thinking, okay, your audience, a couple of people in your audience are going to be smart enough and hustling enough to take this and actually turn this into a business.

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183.106 - 201.276 Jonathan Courtney

Um, and it's based on, I was, so I'm in a couple of different entrepreneurial groups and one of the groups I was in, I was listening to the call last week. Again, I was like out of my head with COVID, just like slow, sweaty, whatever. Um, But I was listening to this woman and she was getting help with the marketing challenge.

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202.297 - 224.522 Jonathan Courtney

She was talking for a while and eventually I was just like, I'm really sorry, do you mind if I ask you how much your coaching program costs? And she said, oh yeah, yeah, it's $38,000 per year. And I was like... What the fuck? What are you? How? And the reason I was so shocked is because what she's selling is she's selling a program. It's not an online course.

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224.582 - 244.469 Jonathan Courtney

It's like a kind of one year program of coaching to teachers who don't want to be teachers anymore and who want to transition out of that career into being something else. And then I was like, okay, wait a minute. There are a lot of different careers that people are in and they probably don't know that they can take their skills and turn them into something else and get a different job.

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244.849 - 261.259 Jonathan Courtney

A lot of people get burnt out from teaching. A lot of people realize like from their perspective when it's too late, that they actually don't like it. And it's a super, super popular thing for people if you look at it. So I started Googling it then. I looked at her website. Maybe I shouldn't. I don't know.

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261.299 - 289.825 Jonathan Courtney

Maybe I shouldn't tell people about her specific website on this thing because I'm sharing things from within my entrepreneur group that would maybe get me kicked out of that group. But there's a couple of companies that do something like this. For example, if you just start Googling teacher transition, new career. There's one called Teaching Transition Academy. There's things like that.

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290.846 - 310.079 Jonathan Courtney

And these are super high ticket programs where not all of them are high ticket. Some of them are lower ticket, but where essentially, you know, a team of people will help you figure out what you can do next. And what I love about it is that this is something that, so I run a company called ajandsmart.com

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311.059 - 327.267 Jonathan Courtney

We help people become facilitators and we realize one of the most powerful things that we do is we help people go from where they are, which is usually like product management, UX design, project management to something more like facilitation, which is what they specifically want to do.

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327.887 - 342.415 Jonathan Courtney

But looking at this, I was like, you could literally take almost any job, like nursing, teaching, I still think is really underserved. I was looking at it. You could even look at consultants who go and work at McKinsey and then realize they don't like it.

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342.855 - 358.143 Jonathan Courtney

You could also look at things that are getting like laid off, like product managers, really think about how could you actually help this person get in? And especially if they're later in life, maybe they don't, they already have a family, maybe they're already kind of locked down to where they live.

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358.783 - 381.271 Jonathan Courtney

How could you actually find something that could help these people, a program that could help these people? Or could you figure out an easy thing that they could retrain themselves on? And honestly, that can be a killer business. And I was just shocked. When I was talking to her and she was like $38,000, teachers pay $38,000, usually spread out over the 12 months.

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381.771 - 390.593 Jonathan Courtney

But I was completely shocked that this was, I honestly expected her to say maximum $3,000, maximum.

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390.613 - 396.734 Greg Isenberg

Hey everyone, if you're anything like me, you've got a ton of design work that you need.

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397.463 - 425.419 Greg Isenberg

websites landing pages emails social assets you name it but you don't just want beautiful landing pages or beautiful websites you want the stuff that's going to convert you want the stuff that's going to actually drive value that's where designscientist.com comes in it's an agency that for one monthly price will do all your design work all your copy work all your engineering

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426.119 - 451.682 Greg Isenberg

and do stuff that actually scales your revenue. You don't need a designer. You need a design scientist. Let's go design scientist.com. I liked it so much. I invested in the business. So what you're saying is there's a bunch of careers that, I mean, most careers, honestly, people don't like. There's a subsection of people who don't like what they're doing.

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452.142 - 465.168 Greg Isenberg

And there's an opportunity to get those people to create content to attract those people and then sell coaching and other services to help them transition from what they're doing. To what they want to be doing. That's what you're saying.

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465.208 - 482.834 Jonathan Courtney

There's a couple of nuances to it that I would focus on. If I was starting this business, I'd focus on people who are, who already have kids who are already settled down where they live. Maybe their kids are just like starting to move out. Maybe they're starting to realize maybe this career isn't for me. So I wouldn't be targeting anybody like,

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483.514 - 508.917 Jonathan Courtney

Under 45 or maybe like it would be more like 40 and above. They'll also have more money to spend as well. So there'll be more. They'll have felt the pain also being in the industry that they don't like for a long period of time. And so I think that's why teaching. is such an amazing target. Like teachers often, I know a lot of teachers, they get to the certain point when they're like 35, 36, 37.

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510.138 - 530.285 Jonathan Courtney

My sister, for example, when she was 33, she transitioned into facilitation. I think it takes a while for them to realize, oh shit, like my salary is going to go up really slowly. I can already see, I already know what my salary is going to be when I'm retiring. And this is what it's going to be like forever. And I think there are a lot of different jobs like that.

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530.805 - 548.005 Jonathan Courtney

Teaching is just one of the most obvious, but immediately for me, what I'm always thinking is what would I do if AJ and smart failed? And yeah, One of the most obvious things after hearing the price of her coaching program was, well, I'd probably look for jobs that people feel stuck in. I do feel like.

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549.065 - 573.004 Jonathan Courtney

It has to be the pain that they have to feel is that they're stuck and that their skills are not transferable, right? You don't want to be targeting people like you and me who are like full stack marketer entrepreneurs who can kind of do anything. You want to be targeting people who spent their entire year building towards one career and their entire life building towards one career.

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573.705 - 586.147 Jonathan Courtney

And then you can actually help them gain the confidence to move back into the market into something different. So I think it's like a career coach on Zin, you know?

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586.747 - 590.769 Greg Isenberg

It's a career coach on Zin, exactly. That's a good one-liner.

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591.349 - 609.438 Jonathan Courtney

Yeah. And like, okay, so how do you build this business? Literally, especially if you're not a teacher, if I was building this, Well, first of all, you would ideally find a teacher potentially as your co-founder, a teacher who's already transitioned out. Another thing is, so literally in one day, first I would Google the shit out of it. I would look at all the Quora posts.

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609.458 - 626.528 Jonathan Courtney

I was already doing this today. Looking at all the Quora questions about how to transition out of teaching, looking at all the Reddit posts about how to transition out of teaching. looking at all the different things people are doing, then I'd reach out to a lot of the people who've been posting, ask to interview them, just gather all these ideas. Then of course, I'd look at the competitors.

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626.848 - 633.373 Jonathan Courtney

I'd look at all the different websites, all the different things. If I'm looking at a lot of these, they're fairly low quality from a

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634.213 - 659.215 Jonathan Courtney

trust perspective i would say they look very salesy and and like bad and so i try to i would just build a more trustworthy version of these things and go content first and who i would make the content with would be teachers who have transitioned out right i'd learn from the people who've transitioned out of being teachers and build like the best content hub and

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659.375 - 680.226 Jonathan Courtney

But yeah, I mean, you would just then try to, I guess it would be some form of education business, coaching business. Even better if you find like the thing that they can transition into. But honestly, I think it would be a super, it would be a super powerful business to at least replace your normal day to day corporate salary with. And you would be helping people.

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681.56 - 703.351 Greg Isenberg

You wouldn't be helping the kids who are in the schools, but you definitely would be helping... You want to fix the education system, dude? You're not exactly fixing the education system. But yeah, I hear you. I will say... Okay, check this out. So one of the first things that I do whenever I come up with an idea... is I go to Reddit.

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704.192 - 725.712 Greg Isenberg

And I noticed that there's a subreddit called... I was on this exact subreddit today. You would be. You would be. Teachers in Transition. Okay. So it's pretty massive. It's 34,000 members. It's actually a perfect size. Top 3% rank by size. And one of the things I like to do is I go check the top posts. So this month, the top post...

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726.846 - 748.321 Greg Isenberg

is a post that says, in case anyone questions why 50% of teachers leave in their first five years. And it's basically these text messages of parents just following up around report cards. It's so bad. It's like, I'm curious as to the interpretation of the grading rubric, right? And then there's 213 comments of other teachers being like,

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752.25 - 777.937 Greg Isenberg

one of the top comments, I don't care about grades, quote unquote, and proceeds to rant about grades. So I think the way to build this is the way I would build this teachers in transition or whatever in transition is I would actually go and build the subreddit if it doesn't exist. Like go and build a subreddit, moderate the subreddit. I would try to collect as many memes as possible.

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778.518 - 786.484 Greg Isenberg

And the memes is how you attract the audience. You just end up sharing memes for teachers, nurses, dentists,

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787.769 - 808.34 Greg Isenberg

um that sort of thing get a bunch of you know thousands of followers and from there then that's when you create your high ticket offer and that's when you you know you sell them stuff and teaching was just an example because just there's a lot of people in my life who've quit teaching and found it very stressful and and the

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809.741 - 832.747 Jonathan Courtney

The stressful part is there's a lot of fear of leaving teaching and a lot of fear of won't be able to do anything else. And what that does is also makes people stay in something that's going to burn them to the ground. And eventually they end up on sick leave for, well, sometimes years. I don't know if you know any teachers who are in that setup. I do. And I think that's

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833.749 - 854.655 Jonathan Courtney

There are a lot of people that I meet, especially older people who hate what they do. They absolutely hate it. And sometimes people come into our programs and they're so, and it wasn't, it's not even the intention of what we do at our company, but they're so thankful to have found something that they actually enjoy doing. And they never thought they would see an alternative.

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854.736 - 881.359 Jonathan Courtney

And I never connected even our marketing doesn't even touch on that topic. But hearing somebody talk about building this teaching transition coaching business where you have multiple coaches hired, don't care what you think about coaching businesses, it's just an example. But there are... Just so many people stuck in jobs, like so many people stuck when they're 55 in a job they just despise.

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882.059 - 900.744 Jonathan Courtney

But the fear, the fear of not being able to do something else, you can really you can create things that are just super valuable for these people. But yeah, this teachers in transition subreddit is the perfect place to fill yourself up on the problem teachers have. It's mostly negative posts if you look at it.

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901.718 - 922.555 Greg Isenberg

Yeah, and basically gossip, you know? But it's, you know, if you're a teacher and you're in the subreddit, you read a post and it's kind of like real recognize real, you know? Like I see you other teacher, like I've been there, we've all been there. And if you can get that feeling, that's basically the feeling that you want to reverse engineer.

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923.376 - 932.282 Jonathan Courtney

The other thing I thought of is, and I found a couple of examples of this as well. Again, all... I like finding examples. We talked about this with the deep brown noise thing.

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932.702 - 957.793 Jonathan Courtney

It's like fragmented, scattered all over the internet, tiny little pockets of it, but paid communities, again, paid communities for teachers who are still in teaching, who are looking for essentially a support group, but also maybe looking for a way out and just having like a private space where people can also share things that will help each other have an easier teaching life.

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958.633 - 978.451 Jonathan Courtney

Again, this is not something I would personally pursue because I'm not interested in teaching. But just watching this other lady in my entrepreneur group running and I'm like, holy crap, like this is genuinely you're doing a business that makes you money, but also takes people from being burnt out and hating their lives to genuinely feeling completely different about their futures.

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979.252 - 998.472 Jonathan Courtney

it's just crazy how many different jobs that fall into this category. I almost can't think of a job where it wouldn't fall into this category. I can even imagine if you want to go to the super high end, like the end game of this is, what do you do when you're an entrepreneur who sold their company

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999.238 - 1015.03 Jonathan Courtney

And you're like 40 and you've nothing to do anymore because you've nailed it and finished the video game of business. How do you transition into something else? I even think that could be a cool thing to help people with. I'm not there yet, so I can't do it.

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1015.991 - 1039.434 Greg Isenberg

I'm just trying to think. Okay, so what... job titles need this the most and i think if you if you think about some of these positions like teachers or dentists or even doctors even yeah doctors like they spend they basically decide that they want to be these people at age like architects architects hate their lives usually often

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1040.074 - 1061.343 Greg Isenberg

So they might, you know, in their mind, like, you know, their parents or, you know, they had an uncle who was a who was a dentist. So they become a dentist. And then by the time they're, you know, in their mid 20s or late 20s or early 30s, they're like, whoa. I don't like being a therapist. It's horrible. People are just telling me their problems.

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1061.924 - 1073.392 Greg Isenberg

So I think a lot of job titles where there's a lot of studying and prep and long hours, that's what I'd go after.

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1074.212 - 1101.018 Jonathan Courtney

I mean, you could even simplify it down to whatever jobs require you to decide at the age of 18 that you're going to do that job, the chances of you actually liking it by the time you're 36 is very low. Like a lot of the people in my town in Ireland, anyone who is smart and good at math was basically told to do civil engineering. I don't think I know anyone who actually does that job now.

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1101.038 - 1102.939 Greg Isenberg

I don't even know if civil engineering...

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1104.909 - 1129.131 Jonathan Courtney

it's like engineering the engineering kind of mathematics behind like stressors on buildings and stuff like I know so it's like if you you study civil engineering you're you become an engineer right a civil engineer so what does that even mean I don't fucking know. But one of my friends is a video game designer right now. I was just going to say the name of the company, but I won't.

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1130.291 - 1149.504 Jonathan Courtney

And he, yeah, like that's an example of a transition path that not a lot of people who went into civil engineering might know about. I mean, in the end, sometimes it's just about seeing what other people do, right? Sometimes how you calibrate what you want to do with your life is just by looking at someone else and being like, oh yeah, like I could do that with my life.

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1150.29 - 1158.311 Greg Isenberg

Well, it's The Power of Mimemic Desire. Do you ever read that book? I've never read that book. I think it's a book.

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1158.331 - 1160.572 Jonathan Courtney

I can't even say that. I'm not even going to try to say it.

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1161.572 - 1186.938 Greg Isenberg

Yeah, it's called Wanting, The Power of Mimemic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgess. It basically says that even if we don't realize it, we do things to try to mimic other people in our lives. And how we don't have as much, like we think that we're doing things, we're independent, we're human beings.

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1187.859 - 1196.489 Greg Isenberg

If we want to be a doctor, it's because we want to be a doctor, but we don't realize that it's 99% our environment and just us trying to fit in as people.

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1197.612 - 1221.201 Jonathan Courtney

I 100% believe that. Um, that's why I also like, so we talked about this before I live in Europe. Europe is very laid back. Um, you can see it from the economy, but it's like, it's super laid back. I even live in the country with like one of the best economies in Europe. I live in Germany. It's so, so laid back compared to the U S uh, from a career point of view. And I

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1222.632 - 1246.131 Jonathan Courtney

I do have to sometimes just get on a flight like I am in a couple of weeks and go to California just to like, you know, be in San Francisco, be in LA, hang around with other founders who are just a lot more focused and successful and like driven than me. They're just on a lot more zin than you are. I didn't know that dude. Now I know. No. Okay.

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1246.151 - 1273.088 Jonathan Courtney

So not everyone is, but I definitely learned, uh, I learned a lot about Zen in the last few months. Um, yeah, Americans definitely, uh, have a very unfair advantage of having like a lot of chemical compounds going at the same time to keep them very awake. Uh, I don't know whether I think that's a good thing or a bad thing. I just am now aware of this.

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1273.769 - 1300.652 Jonathan Courtney

But yeah, there's also just this energy in the US, this energy in places like San Francisco, which I then, if I'm there a few weeks, I do start to mimic it, right? I do start to, there's this like Tony Robbins says, proximity is power. I think nothing beats it, right? If I spent more time with you in person, I'd become more like you. If you spent more time like me in person, you become way cooler.

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1304.261 - 1328.437 Jonathan Courtney

But really, it just is that, right? It's really hard to get away from this proximity thing. Totally separate topic, but it's also why... I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs. I'm in a lot of entrepreneur groups. And one common problem people have is like, things aren't working out for me. And I often ask, where do you live? Like, as in, do you live like near where stuff is happening?

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1328.577 - 1350.807 Jonathan Courtney

Oh, no, like during COVID, I moved out into the middle of nowhere. And like, I've got this amazing house, but it's like three hours from anywhere. And I'm like, it's really hard to simulate the proximity thing. Like you do need to be near stuff physically, the energy, like I live in Berlin and I live in an area that's super busy and there's a lot going on and it feels, it just, there's a momentum.

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1351.067 - 1373.939 Jonathan Courtney

There's something about, not to say that being in a nice, peaceful, still place isn't a beautiful thing to have. It's just, if that's your day to day, you will also become more chill. You, you, you start to mimic that environment as well. I mean, where you look like you're in a pretty chill place right now, but you you're often in Miami, right?

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1374.439 - 1397.064 Greg Isenberg

Yeah. I mean, the way you were describing being in the middle of nowhere is exactly where I am now. I'm in like literally looking at it, you know, 95 acres of mountains and there's no one around here. I'm in the, I'm in Canada. And so I like to live my life from extremes. Miami is like, you're in it. And here I'm like, you're not in it.

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1398.065 - 1405.211 Greg Isenberg

And sometimes I find it really helpful to dip in and out of the extremes.

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1405.751 - 1405.991 Jonathan Courtney

Yes.

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1406.392 - 1412.637 Greg Isenberg

So for you, you're going to come to San Francisco. You're going to get this dose or injection of...

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1414.875 - 1437.206 Greg Isenberg

silicon valley into your veins and but you know you're going to be taking your flight home and on your flight you're going to be wow should i raise venture capital and you're a guy who's never thought about raising venture capital in your life and that's because if you spend enough time in san francisco you will think about raising around because that's what everyone does there for sure um so you know then then you're going to go down to la and

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1438.428 - 1465.319 Greg Isenberg

And, you know, on your flight leaving L.A., you're going to be like, oh, you know, I've always been thinking I should really get into vlogging. Because everyone wants to be famous in L.A. So I think the hack is you have to write your goals. Like, what are your goals? Personal, career. And then cities can help you get to your goals. But too much of one city could also...

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1466.923 - 1491.222 Greg Isenberg

you know, kind of hurt personal goals or hurt other career goals. So I think that you should treat a city as just like a utility in a way, right? Like you get something out of it. And but I want to say one quick thing, which is I also don't think you should be one of those people that are constantly on a flight because if you don't have a home base, you don't have like a community.

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1491.442 - 1493.223 Greg Isenberg

That's also just like a terrible way to live.

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1493.363 - 1518.006 Jonathan Courtney

I was going to I was going to push you on that one because I am really trying to build a community in my in my physical neighborhood here in Berlin. Like two nights ago, I was hanging out at my neighbor's house just downstairs. We're in a like a high rise building, I guess. playing the new Elden Ring DLC. I'm cooking dinner for neighbors. I know the people working in the different shops here.

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1518.347 - 1530.528 Jonathan Courtney

So I do love to be integrated into my community. Yeah, this is interesting, right? A city is a utility. And this is actually, this is a totally different topic. I guess we're just on topic two.

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1531.408 - 1560.567 Jonathan Courtney

There's a lot of, I never, I don't post about remote work versus in-person work and cities versus urban environments anymore because people go, people who are like, who've made the decision to like no cities forever get so angry about it. Like if you now, for example, had moved to wherever you are right now and had decided I am now a monk living in the middle of nowhere.

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1561.108 - 1576.516 Jonathan Courtney

And I was like, cities are a great place to get like this proximity. And you'd be like, oh, no, you can't say that for everyone. But because you're flexible and you can move between these two worlds, it doesn't bother you. And I think the objective truth about this is.

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1577.776 - 1598.766 Jonathan Courtney

First of all, if you're already balling out of control, unbelievably rich, and your momentum is crazy and your network is insane, sure, sell everything, leave the city, live in the middle of nowhere. You don't need any more money and you don't need any more connections. And let's say your purpose is gardening, then you do not need to think about this ever again.

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1599.386 - 1619.818 Jonathan Courtney

But if you're still on your journey, I do think cities are, they're not just a place to go have fun. They are a utility that you pay for. Like, there's a reason also people are like, oh, if you live in Berlin, you pay this much for an apartment. But if you just move two hours outside, you can get a house for that price. And I'm like, yes, I'm not just paying for physical space.

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1620.518 - 1645.09 Jonathan Courtney

I'm paying to be close to people who are doing things that I want to do. I'm paying for this energy. It is actually a service to live in the city. I actually heard like someone was commenting, someone was posting recently, oh, Munich is getting so expensive. It's ridiculous, whatever. And this other German guy underneath wrote and everyone was agreeing. Right. And I was also like, yeah, sure.

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1645.15 - 1647.951 Jonathan Courtney

Like Germany is getting expensive. Everywhere is getting expensive. And

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1648.411 - 1672.791 Jonathan Courtney

was kind of in agreement i was like okay yeah everything's expensive this and then somebody wrote underneath it's not your human right to live in the center of a city like it's not a human right to live in the center of an expensive city obviously different story if you live there now you're getting kicked out because of gentrification but you as a you know me as an irish guy who went to college

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1673.311 - 1691.759 Jonathan Courtney

I have absolutely no right to live in the center of Berlin. I don't, by the way, it's actually insanely expensive, but I have no right to do that. So it is a utility, it's a service, and you're paying a premium because of the services and the amenities provided. That's a whole separate thing.

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1691.799 - 1707.858 Jonathan Courtney

But like, for example, I know if I wanted to live in San Francisco where the center of this AI explosion is right now, if I was in AI and I wanted to like basically increase my chances of a successful outcome, I'd have to pay the price and live in a place like San Francisco.

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1708.888 - 1731.537 Jonathan Courtney

I'm not looking for that, but that is really the price of getting the rewards of living in a physical space that brings you closer to all the things you want. And I think a lot of people need to change their mindset about that when they're saying I can get a seven story house out in the middle of nowhere. It's like, yeah, you can. And you just need to understand the trade off. You can do that.

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1731.637 - 1737.88 Jonathan Courtney

And that's really cool. It's just about understanding these trade offs is important. Am I going down a bad rabbit hole?

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1738.63 - 1767.312 Greg Isenberg

No, no, this is great. My take on this is that every person has a ignorance tax that they have to pay down. So no matter what your goals are, there's a price that you have to pay to learn to get to your goals quicker. And by living in San Francisco, New York, some of these places, yes, it might be two times more expensive to live, but you will, just by osmosis,

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1768.1 - 1800.226 Greg Isenberg

pay down your ignorance tax, ignorance debt way, way, way faster. And the question for you is, or the person listening really is, at this stage in your life and with the amount of money that you have saved up, is it worth spending an extra $1,500 a month or whatever it is for the premium to potentially get an extra client a month or learn about how VCs work or XYZ. That's what it is.

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1800.707 - 1815.319 Jonathan Courtney

It is absolutely that. A practical example of this is talking to someone today who is talking about digital marketing and how do I do this and how do I get calls and it's really difficult to get calls and da-da-da-da-da.

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1815.959 - 1840.747 Jonathan Courtney

And then I was like, I was trying to give advice, but then I was like, but the truth is how I started was I was in a coworking space in the center of Berlin, which was full of startups. And I physically talked to them and then I got work. Like I went drinking with them. That like, that's the truth. And now I could move out into the middle of nowhere and build a career. But it is...

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1842.782 - 1867.06 Jonathan Courtney

of course possible to build a career remotely and not in a city. It's just the challenge. It is kind of like playing on hard mode versus easy mode. You get the, it's like in a video game, you're putting the attributes into comfort. You're putting all your points into comfort and convenience, but then the, you have like low ability to get leads and build a career remotely. And I agree.

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1867.08 - 1893.718 Jonathan Courtney

I think all of these options are like people who want to live out in the middle of nowhere like you right now. I think that is absolutely amazing as long as you understand the trade off. And I think a lot of people are convinced by a lot of people who still haven't built their careers yet. are convinced by some sort of part of the media to move out to the suburbs before they get any momentum.

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1894.499 - 1916.474 Jonathan Courtney

And then there's sometimes a little bit of resentment later in life, like, oh, I could have done this, I could have done that. And it's like, yeah, you would have had to pay The city tax to get that, to get those things. Or you have to become a fucking amazing content creator, which is hard to do. Or like a world-class marketer, which is also hard to do.

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1917.054 - 1939.029 Greg Isenberg

Yeah, I think you could move out to the suburbs or live off the grid if... you build a big audience. Because then, what is an audience? An audience just puts you at the center of digital gravity. And then it's all good because you don't need to be in New York, you don't need to be in San Francisco. You're tweeting and you're getting a million views.

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1940.51 - 1962.509 Greg Isenberg

So if you're starting out or you just want to accelerate your career, I think you want to do both things. You want to do the digital gravity thing and you want to build an audience. Uh, and that's kind of your insurance. And also with your fallback plan for when you do, you know, you've been in New York and you hit 30 and you're like, I'm tired of this. I need to help. Totally.

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1962.709 - 1964.71 Jonathan Courtney

Totally. I want that insurance too.

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1965.15 - 1966.81 Greg Isenberg

Yeah. Who doesn't want that insurance?

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1967.911 - 1994.935 Jonathan Courtney

I think it's, but it's, yeah, we've, we've gone deeply into another topic, but I, I would love if some of my friends and entrepreneur friends had, uh, not jumped so aggressively on the COVID, everything is going to be remote now train. And now are like, oh, it's really weirdly hard to get work. Like, yeah, it is.

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1995.075 - 2025.198 Jonathan Courtney

It is difficult when you didn't get that momentum, career momentum before you went away. I think that's the challenge. I think there has been this like, It's back to your mimetic, the wanting book. I got to read this. I think the mimetic desire thing works more powerfully in person. It just has more of a powerful draw in person, but also, God damn it, in-person stuff's just easier.

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2025.218 - 2051.565 Jonathan Courtney

It feels like it's easier to start a career when you're in an environment where just other people are doing that too. For example, when I moved to Berlin, I just copied one of my friend's careers. He was a UX designer. We both studied digital media production. And I was just like, you're doing what? And we would go out drinking and I would talk to him about it. And then he'd show me his portfolio.

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2051.906 - 2075.238 Jonathan Courtney

He'd tell me how much he got paid. And I'm just like, I'm copying you, dude. Eric, thank you so much for letting me copy everything. You did. I appreciate it, dude. But yeah, that shit would be very challenging to do where I come from, which is a small town in Ireland, because I don't know if there's a UX designer there. You know what I mean? A UX designer. I don't know if there's one.

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2075.418 - 2080.579 Jonathan Courtney

I don't know if there was one back when I was starting. I went down there. We rabbited.

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2080.599 - 2087.501 Greg Isenberg

Well, that's what we do. That's what we do. We burrow. We burrow. You know, that's our style.

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2088.134 - 2091.537 Jonathan Courtney

How do you split your time between this place you are right now and Miami?

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2091.997 - 2114.114 Greg Isenberg

I'm, I'm in, I'm in Miami, call it seven to eight months a year, eight months a year probably. And then three, three months summertime here and then maybe a month during the winter. So that's the other thing I like about here is it's got the craziest seasons of all time. It gets to like minus 45 degrees and like snows like 10, 10 feet. Um,

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2117.552 - 2140.118 Greg Isenberg

And Miami is like, you know, like the complete opposite of that. And it's like hurricane season right now. So I don't know. I, I like, I like, again, I like the diversity. I like, uh, I find that I work, I'm actually more productive up here. Uh, it's a great place to write. Like think I'm in like a cabin in the woods basically. Right. So it's like so good for writing. So good for creativity.

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2140.138 - 2146.76 Greg Isenberg

Um, and, uh, that's also just helpful. Like if I have like,

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2149.311 - 2176.971 Jonathan Courtney

10 blog posts i want to write just fly up here spend a week here and fly back that's so cool and and you know here's the thing audience if i would spend more time with greg then i would get more successful and be able to have two places where i live so i just need to spend more time in greg's proximity absorbing his energy and then just those dollars and Come flying in.

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2176.991 - 2178.472 Jonathan Courtney

That's how it's going to work.

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2178.552 - 2197.305 Greg Isenberg

I think we can end it here. I got to ask people to like on YouTube if you enjoyed this. Apparently liking for the algorithm is a thing. Please like it. Please like it and subscribe and then leave us a review on Spotify and Apple if you're listening there.

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2198.286 - 2200.467 Jonathan Courtney

Yeah, thank you so much, everybody. Appreciate your time.

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2202.649 - 2206.91 Greg Isenberg

And have a good one, everyone. Later. Should we sip it out? Let's sip it out.

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2212.76 - 2213.802 Jonathan Courtney

Thanks everyone. Bye.

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