Skip to content

By playing, you agree to uListen's Terms and Privacy Policy and YouTube's Terms of Service.

The Calum Johnson ShowThe Calum Johnson Show

The $10M Multipreneur: How To Get RICH In The New Era Of Al (Painfully Simple!) | @GregIsenberg

About the video Today’s guest is Greg Isenberg — a startup entrepreneur, advisor, and CEO of Late Checkout, a company that builds and invests in internet communities.

Greg IsenbergguestCalum Johnsonhost
Mar 31, 20251h 20mWatch on YouTube

Summaries, chapters, transcripts, and FAQs on this page are made by uListen, not YouTube.

Great conversations run long. Their best ideas don't have to.

uListen is free on iPhone, iPad, Android, Chrome, and Claude.

See how

Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 2:07

    Intro

    1. GI

      When I give away a bunch of free startup ideas, the exact playbook to how to do it, and then I get a DM saying, "I just hit 1 million ARR and it- I was able to retire my mom." If anyone has good ideas for AI startups, it's people who work at jobs they don't like. If you're listening to this, you're early, and you can actually go and participate and create businesses around that. That's why it excites me.

    2. CJ

      You have, like, this five-step framework of how someone can build an AI business in 2025.

    3. GI

      Let's do, like, a quick five, 10-minute crash course on two AI products that I think would be really valuable to people. So-

    4. CJ

      Okay, before we get into the episode, I want to give some context to this conversation. In the last few months, I've gone deep down the AI rabbit hole on YouTube, and one of the things that has become clear to me is that there is so much opportunity right now to use AI to build a great business for your life. And so I got inspired in the lead up to this conversation with Greg because I believe that so many people, maybe you watching at home, get excluded from these new wealth opportunities because of the belief that you're not a tech person. And so my intention with this episode was to make it so easy and simple for you to start an AI business. And so we brought on Greg Isenberg. He's a successful entrepreneur. He's also a tech outsider that built and sold three companies before he turned 30 and is now building a multimillion-dollar AI company called Boring Marketing. And a little behind the scenes, before we even hit record on this episode, Greg told me that in the last year he has shared this framework with a few people in his network, and they've gone on to build AI businesses that make over $50,000 a month. And so my hope with this episode is simple, that some of you watch this video, it inspires you to take massive action, and by this time next year, you're DMing me saying that, "I just built my first million-dollar AI business." That's it. I'm speaking that into existence for you guys. Let's get into the video. Greg,

  2. 2:07 – 3:10

    AI would change your life!

    1. CJ

      if someone's listening to this, maybe they stumbled upon this video on YouTube, they clicked on it on their feed, what is gonna be the value to them? They're non-technical, but they want to start a business. What is gonna be the value to them of listening to this conversation of what we're about to talk about in the next 60 minutes?

    2. GI

      So my thesis is that, you know, if you landed here and you're on this YouTube video and you are seeing what's happening in the world of AI and technology, and you feel like an outsider, my thesis is that that's a limiting belief. And by the end of this episode, what I hope to do is to remove that veil, 'cause that's what it is, and give you the confidence to actually go and put something out in the world that will change your life.

    3. CJ

      Mm. I think that's awesome. Let's do, let's do that. Let's do-

    4. GI

      Let's try to do it.

    5. CJ

      Let's do it right now. Um,

  3. 3:10 – 8:07

    What is an AI agent?

    1. CJ

      you know, actually, you know what? Let's start, let's start right in the beginning, 'cause I see these videos on YouTube talking about people that are making millions of dollars with AI agents. I want to start right from the top. What is an AI agent?

    2. GI

      Yeah. So [chuckles] good question. Um, an AI agent is ... Well, do you know what an LL- LLM is?

    3. CJ

      Let, let's start with that.

    4. GI

      [chuckles] Okay. So here's the way I ... I'm gonna just dumb it down because I think, uh, what insiders like to do is put complicated words associated to simple things to keep people out. So in this conversation, we're gonna try to use simple si- simple language, um, because I actually don't think that the terms really matter. Lar- l- uh, large language model doesn't really matter. What matters is this. Before, uh, AI came to be, all software was dumb, meaning if you were-- If you signed up to salesforce.com, which is, uh, a CRM custom- you know, customer relationship management software, basically a way to track all your sales leads, if you signed up to it, uh, pre-AI, that software was dumb because it relied on the salesperson to go in and add, uh, a sales lead manually. So it would say Greg Isenberg is a good sales lead, and it says Greg Isenberg, my email address, what company I work for, and it's basically this manual process. And a multi-trillion dollar industry was created on dumb software. Um, now we're entering an era, uh, of smart software. I call it smart software. What happens to software when you can inject human and human-like intelligence into that software? And what do I mean by that? Instead of relying on, uh, a human being to go and say, "Okay, Greg Isenberg is a four out of five star lead for these reasons," what if there was intelligence, human-like intelligence, AKA an LLM, AKA AI, that could go and sc- you know, maybe scrape the internet and based on a bunch of criteria, score the, the sales lead? Now, that's what a LLM really is, and that ... when, you know, when people h- you know, they hear about or they've used ChatGPT and products like that, you're basically u- utilizing human-like intelligence to accomplish a task. And what an agent is takes it a, a little step further. It says- Okay, we've got human-like intelligence over here. What if we can create a human-like person to go and actually complete the task? Meaning, what if we can create an AI salesperson? So what if you can go and say, um, "I would like to close 10 sales leads this month, and the ideal customer profile is a CEO who is making between one and $10M a year in their business, and they need to be in, you know, England," let's say. Um, go and complete that task. In the past, you would actually ask a human being to do that. But in this new, you know, smart software, uh, world, you can actually give a task to a human-like individual to go and complete it. Now, I wanna end-- I wanna just say one last thing before, before y- I hear your reaction to this. When you ... When I go on X or Instagram, whatever, I'm seeing e- everyone talking about AI. I still think despite that, it's underrated. I still think that we don't understand how society will change. And by the way, there'll b- there'll be some negative effects to this. We can talk about it, but there'll be some negative effects to this. But how society will change when you can completely unlock, uh, human-like intelligence and human-like people at scale, what happens to the world? Now, I like to look at it glass half full, as in if you're listening to this, you're early, and you can actually go and participate and create businesses around that. Um, and that's what, that's why it excites me.

    5. CJ

      Hmm. You know what? It's-- I f- I, I just find the AI conversation is just so fascinating. Um, and you know what? You even

  4. 8:07 – 12:19

    2 business models to create with smart software

    1. CJ

      mentioned right at the end there, you mentioned that it's underrated. And so I was thinking about what you were saying about, like, f- up until this point, we've been using dumb software. Like, we've had to-- it's had to be paired with our own intelligence to actually be, like, useful, and that's created trillions of dollars of value with dumb software. And now we're kinda getting into this, like, AI era where we now have, as you called it, smart software. And so if we're actually underrating it right now, what in your mind, what is the, the opportunity? Like, it's hard to do, but, like, how would you even quantify the opportunity of what's gonna happen in the future looking forward, the fact that we now have smart software?

    2. GI

      Yeah. I wanna talk about two specific examples. Uh, and, and there's more than these two specific ones, but I just wanna give a couple just to get people's creative juices flowing. One is, my belief is that SaaS, the SaaS industry, software as a service, so companies like Adobe, um, companies like monday.com, those big companies are basically com- being completely dismantled by people who are gonna go and, you know, in our world they call it vibe coding. Vibe coding basically just means you're gonna go into a software like Replit, Bolt, Lovable, uh, Cursor, and s- just like, just like how you'd, uh, do a Google search, you type something in, uh, you can do-- or a ChatGPT search, you can basically prompt some of these platforms to create software for you. So I believe that, uh, there's a ton of opportunities to go and create cheaper or free versions of some of these software products, um, and create businesses around that. And so go and create, like, the, uh, DocuSign for, you know, Germany. Go and create the monday.com for, uh, Canada and charge a tenth of the price and try to just suck as many clients as you can. And when you look at how big these companies are, these big SaaS companies, they do billions a year, so even if you could get 1%, 2%, it's absolutely insane. So that's one trend, uh, that I think that people listening could go today and go and create a SaaS business, uh, to go and compete with some of those. The second one is, uh, agencies. So the consulting business, the freelance business, the agency business, um, that is, I mean, such a huge business, like McKinsey and all these companies, you know, gener- have thousands of employees. Accenture, thousands and thousands of employees. What happens when completing-- What happens if I can spin up a junior McKinsey and analyst in a second? So I think that there's an opportunity to undercut consulting agency and to fulfill it by AI. Now, I know there's someone in the comment section that's saying, "Well, you'll never be able to do that because I've got really good taste," or, "This person at McKinsey doesn't..." You know, they hire McKinsey because they don't wanna get, you know, fired at their job. Like, no one gets fired. You know, there's a quote, "No one gets fired, uh, when, when you hire IBM," and-- or, "No one gets fired when you hire McKinsey." Wh- why is that the case? It's the case because, you know, people trust those brands. I'm not saying McKinsey's gonna go to zero. I'm not saying Adobe's gonna go to zero either. I'm just saying that there's gonna be billions of dollars for you to go and pick up and create cheaper services that probably have similar type of results. And I don't think un- un- enough people are doing it

    3. CJ

      Yeah. You know, that's awesome. I, hey, you know, I'm getting excited and, and, and we're gonna get into, um ... I was actually

  5. 12:19 – 17:55

    How you can build a $1M AI startup in 6 months.

    1. CJ

      reading it last night. You have, like, this five-step framework of how someone can build, uh, an AI business in 2025, and we're gonna get into it. Before we do, though, and you spoke about the, the opportunity, and you even mentioned it before of, like, there are people that are ... that have watched your videos or read your content and actually reached out, like, implemented some of the things that you mention and reached out to you to be like, "I've built a $50,000 a month business," or, "I'm building, like, a m- a business that's tracking to a million in revenue from implementing the steps that you mentioned." And so I wanted to just do, like, a little thought exercise for you, with you before we get into the frameworks, which is, let's say I had two groups of people, right? I have the group that watches this video and it's a complete waste of time to them. Like, nothing happens after watching this video. And then I have another group of people that they listen to this conversation and 6 months or 12 months from this point in time they have built something that is having a meaningful impact in their lives. And let's just say I, I zoom out, I don't know, 100 feet and I just observe their behavior. I observe the actions that they took in that 6 to 12-month period. What did group two do that group one wasn't doing? Like, the people that are successful and actually doing the thing and building the AI startup, what, what are they doing versus the people that aren't?

    2. GI

      I would say two things. There's two things that they, they are doing differently. One is, uh, the second group is way more curious, just intellectually curious about using some of these new products and pushing out stuff into the world and seeing what's gonna happen. And I, I, I will say I'm one of those people. Like, I hear about a tool, I hear about something that's happening, and I wanna get in- I wanna get involved. I want to get my hands dirty. The second thing is a lot of people are afraid to get their hands dirty, and some people think that they're too good to get to, to get their hands dirty. Um, I once met, uh, a guy who, uh, owned many factories and, and he was in the clothing business. Uh, so he manufactured clothing. He's a very famous, uh, individual and, uh, he would tell me that every year, and I don't know if this was truthful, but I ... it felt truthful. Every year he would go and sweep the floors of his factories for one day, for one day only, and I was like, "Well, why do you do that?" And he was like, "I need to remember how to sweep the floors. I need to remember h- what it feels like to sew so that I understand, you know, the, the machines and I understand, like, my business," right? He's like, "I don't feel like I'm better than others because, like, I've succeeded," et cetera. And I think that there's a lot of people who are listening to this and they're like, "Well, I don't need this. I don't need to use Replit or Lovable or Manus or Bolt or try these things or push this idea out there because I've got a stable job. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm okay. I'll do it in, I'll do it in six months when the tools get easier." You know, people say ... I hear this narrative a lot, "Oh, it's not, it's not that good. It wasn't able to actually do what I want it to do, but it was o- it was 96% there." When it's 96% there, that's exactly when you should be training so that when it gets to 100%, you're a ma- a master. You're ... You know how to just, like, prompt this thing and get the most out of it. So my hope is that 100% of people listen to this and they ... even if they don't believe that we're at the 100% mark in, in, in AI, uh, in terms of the output quality, and by the way, I actually don't think we're at 100%, but even if we're not there, they still say, "Okay, I'm gonna go implement these things as a part of my workflow. I might not ship products that do 10K a month, 20K a month, 50K a month and build companies around it, but having it as a part of my workflow is gonna make me smarter, and being smarter is gonna yield good results than [laughs] not being smart about these tools."

    3. CJ

      Yeah. You know, I, I, I think that second point is so good and it, it's something that I, I constantly, uh, remind myself, which is, uh, you have to embrace the beginner's mindset is what I tell myself.

    4. GI

      Yeah.

    5. CJ

      I think a lot of the times it's like we, we get to a point where we feel, like, ashamed to be beginners. Like, we feel ashamed to be novices. And I think it's interesting for me 'cause we've done over 100 episodes of the show, um, all with, like, entrepreneurs that have achieved these, like, great feats and built huge businesses, and they always have that ability to go all the way back to step zero and be, like, the beginner again, and the humility of that. Um, and that's how you l- that's how, like, when people talk about gold rush eras or a new wave or whatever, that's how you take advantage of opportunities is, like, you are willing to be the complete novice, the beginner, and build from the base up. Um, I think it's so good.

  6. 17:55 – 24:43

    How to use social media to build an AI business

    1. CJ

      You actually said this when we, when we spoke before this conversation, and I think it's just a nice, a nice intro into your framework and how you think about building an AI business. You said anyone can sign up for an Instagram account, a TikTok account, an X account for free. You have access to global distribution instantly. And if you can pair that with AI that can automate work, the possibilities are endless. Can, can you, can you explain what do you mean by that, the possibilities are endless?

    2. GI

      N- not only is that statement true, but there's one thing I missed from that statement, which is not only could anyone sign up, uh, with a TikTok account, an Instagram account, X account, be connected to the 7 billion people and, and unlock opportunities with AI, those 7 billion people, or, or 6.5 billion people, have a credit card attached to the whole network. Never in the history of the planet have you had access to 6 billion people, 6 plus billion people, where you have their credit cards. And anyone who creates great content, uh, especially with the For You pages now, and the For You pagification of all the different social platforms where it doesn't matter if you have a million followers on X. You know, so I, I see sometimes accounts with 500, 1,000, 1,500 followers get a million, 2 million, 3 million views because the content strikes a chord. So the limiting factor to creating a, a business that, um, that could change your life r- really is, is can you create content that's gonna resonate with people in a niche that is underserved? And can you ... Do you have the skillset to actually put out or vibe code a product into the world so that when they see that product they feel something, they connect with it? And can you get them to pay something for that product? Now, I'm dumbing it down. It's these three things. I'm dumbing it down because I actually think that that's all it really is. Like, that's what business school should be in 2025. Like, modern business should be those three things. It should be classes dedicated to how do you go viral on social and what does that mean, picking a niche, picking different formats, uh, when do you post, how to think about those things. It should be about how do you use AI to assist you in implementing product ideas that connect with that audience, and it should be about pricing strategy and business models around how you can get and create a sustainable business. That's all it is. I don't know what people learn in business school today. I was speaking to a friend of mine. She just did her MBA at Columbia. She spent, I don't know, 200 and some odd thousand. I don't know if you went to an Ivy League school, so I apologize.

    3. CJ

      No, I didn't.

    4. GI

      Okay. [laughs]

    5. CJ

      You're in a safe space, Greg.

    6. GI

      Okay, so-

    7. CJ

      You can talk about it

    8. GI

      ... safe space. Okay.

    9. CJ

      [laughs]

    10. GI

      It's not real. It's not a real ... It's fake. It's a bubble. It's a bubble. It's like you're, you, you know, you're not in the real world. It's like you're a bubble boy.

    11. CJ

      Mm.

    12. GI

      You know? That's not, that's not how you learn business. Like, don't tell me that you're learning business if you've never played with Replit.

    13. CJ

      Mm. It's, it's interesting as well because, um, I even, I heard it even as I was preparing for this episode. Even in your story, 'cause you're a college dropout, even in your story that, that, like, urge to actually learn and implement what is happening, I think at the time it was in engineering, like in coding, what's actually at the cutting edge, in s- that's the, that's the motivation for why you left school. Can you just briefly-

    14. GI

      That's right

    15. CJ

      ... tell people about that? Can you briefly give people that context? Okay, quick break. In this internet technology era, it's more important than ever to make sure your business is secure. Luckily, the sponsor of today's episode, Vanta, is gonna help you and your business stay compliant irrespective of whether you're a first-time founder or a seasoned entrepreneur. And so Vanta is a trust management platform that automates up to 90% of the work getting you audit ready in weeks. And they do this through continuous monitoring, automated access reviews, and AI-powered workflows that make things like security questionnaires five times faster. And so the good news is that over 10,000 of the fastest growing companies all use Vanta, and the reason why is simple. A recent IDC whitepaper found that Vanta customers on average achieve $535,000 per year in benefits, and the platform pays for itself in just three months. And so whether you're a first-time founder facing your first audit or a seasoned entrepreneur trying to navigate this tricky security landscape, Vanta is the place for you. So go to vanta.com/calum to get $1,000 off. That's vanta.com/calum for $1,000 off. Someone told me recently that we've done over 130 episodes of this podcast, and it shocked me because I remember sitting in my younger sister's bedroom filming the very first episode. Well, 130 episodes later, one of the things that I've learnt from our guests is the value of investing your money for the long term. And so for me, when it comes to investing in the market, I go to today's sponsor, which is public.com. And Public is the app where you can invest in everything: stocks, options, bonds, crypto. And so what really sets Public apart is they give you all of the tools you need to make informed investment decisions. Their built-in AI tool, Alpha, doesn't just tell you if an asset is moving up or down. It tells you why the asset is moving, so you can actually understand what's driving your portfolio's performance. And Public is a FINRA-registered, SIPC-insured, US-based company with a great customer support team. And when you fund your account, you can do it in five minutes or less at public.com/calum, and you'll get up to $10,000 when you transfer your old portfolio. So that's public.com/calum. This was paid for by Public Investing. The full disclosures are in the podcast description. Let's get

  7. 24:43 – 28:00

    Why he dropped out of college

    1. CJ

      back to the episode.

    2. GI

      It was 2009 And I was ... It was the, you know, the App Store had just come out. Um, we all knew at that point, 2009, 2010, that the App Store was gonna change everything. Just like how we all know right now that AI's gonna change everything, just like we knew that cloud was gonna change everything, the web was gonna change everything. It wa- it was very obvious in 2009, 2010 that mobile and the App Store, what was going to unleash things like Instagram, things like Uber, et cetera. So I'm sitting in these classes, you know, curious, beginner's mind, learning, p- pushing apps to the App Store, just trying to get something out just to ... You know, again, it wasn't at 100%. People were creating, like, beer, beer drinking apps and fart apps and stuff like that. But it was just like, "I need to create something so that when a billion people are using apps, I'm ready to ship for the prime time." So I went to my professor and I said, "We are learning about how to create desktop apps right now." Like, this is, this is ... By the way, that class was supposed to be ... This is McGill University. It's, it was a top 20 university in the world. Like, here I am thinking I'm at the be- best univers- one of the best universities, and we're learning about how to create desktop apps in a world where mobile is what matters. And to me, that just didn't make any sense. So I was like, "Hey, can we learn how to create apps? I think that this app thing is gonna be really big." And he was like, "That's not how this works. There's no apps in the textbook." And he hands me a textbook, and the textbook was, like, introduction to, like, Java or something like that. And I was just like, "How do I hand my resignation letter in right now?"

    3. CJ

      [laughs]

    4. GI

      Like, if you're telling me that at the end of this degree I'm going to be a computer scientist, but I don't know how to create and scale mobile apps, to me that means you haven't done your job. You m- you, you, you might have a narrative in your head saying like, "Yeah, I did, I taught them computer science. I d- you know, I need to teach them the fundamentals, and then they can learn mobile apps on their own." But I had an insight, which was, I'm not gonna be able to depend on anyone in my life, and I'm sure a lot of people think like this too. When my bank account was empty, it wasn't like I can call the professor and be like, "Fill my bank account. I learned computer science." It wasn't ... The degree is, wasn't something I could actually fall back on. The only thi- the only thing that you can fall back on is assets. Uh, now that asset could be in the form of financial assets. It could also be in the form of you've got a million followers. It could also be in the form of you have a skill set that is really in demand. For example, you understand how to, you know, do AI coding. So when I had that insight, I was just like, "I need to get the hell out of here because I'm not building assets right now."

    5. CJ

      Mm-hmm.

    6. GI

      So I quit.

    7. CJ

      Hmm. You know, I love it. And I love it, and I w- and I wanna,

  8. 28:00 – 36:39

    How to pick AI business ideas to work on.

    1. CJ

      I wanna go straight into the framework, and I wanna give people the playbook. And so step one, and I'll, and I'll read it out, and I wanna get your reaction, is identify a painful workflow. Find a problem worth solving. The foundation of any AI startup is identifying an inefficiency that AI can automate or enhance. Instead of chasing broad AI ideas, focus on specific tedious workflows that people are willing to pay to fix. Can y- What, what did you mean by that, identify a painful workflow?

    2. GI

      I have this thesis that when you're in SaaS software and you see a export button, that every time you see an export button, there's a 1 to $100 million a year AI business that could replace that export button. Now, the reason I mean that, I'll, I'll explain what I ... why, and the reason why is when you're exporting data, traditionally you have some sort of analysis. Like, the reason you're exporting it is you're doing some analysis around, um, the data itself. So for example, I'm filing my ... I'm doing my taxes this week, and I exported data from my bank because I wanted to do ... categorize some of the expenses. Now, the categorization today is being done by human beings, but going back to our earlier conversation, what happens when you can have human intelligence on tap? When you can essentially human-like intelligence on tap? When you can essentially turn on intelligence, um, and analyze data? So what I mean by find a painful workflow, is it painful for me to go and categorize, um, my financial data? Like, yeah, kind of. Like, to be honest, like, I'd much rather be, like, hanging with my baby or, you know, pushing code or designing or being a bit more creative. And I think, um, what people need to do is in their day-to-day lives when they see things like export buttons and when they are a part of a workflow that they feel tedious, prompt yourself and say, "If this could be done via AI, what would that look like?"

    3. CJ

      Hmm. You know what? Can you actually ... 'Cause I wanna make it so real for people. Can you give some examples of companies either that you've built or you've seen other people build these AI companies where basically they identified almost like a pretty niche pain point, and they've managed to build a tool around it or a service that is now generating millions of dollars for them in their business?

    4. GI

      Yeah, I mean [chuckles] how much time do you have? Like, there's-

    5. CJ

      [laughs]

    6. GI

      I, I'll just tell you one that I was looking at literally right before, uh, this, this call. There is a company called Icon. I'll share my screen. Uh, can I share my screen?

    7. CJ

      I think so.

    8. GI

      Yeah. So anyone who's created Facebook ads or Instagram ads knows that it's a l- it's tedious. It's very tedious. Um, it's you have to find an actor and... By the way, I'm not involved in any way in this company. Um, I just thought, I, I just thought it was cool. Um, I just, uh... Yeah, you have to, like, find a creator. You have to manage the creator. You have to edit the f- the videos. You have to write copy. And the best, you know, people who know Facebook ads know that the, the best people create hundreds if not thousands of ads and test the best ones, and they always need to be creating new ads. How, how tedious does that sound? It sounds super tedious, right?

    9. CJ

      Yeah.

    10. GI

      So, um, oh, here even on their website they say, "Coming up with 100 unique 30-second scripts is painful. Um, creating three permutations of each of the 100 ads makes the pain even worse." So their solution? "First AI ad maker. Th- think ChatGPT plus CapCut, but for making winning ads with AI in minutes. AdGBT gets your ads to 80%, 99% complete. Make edits with AdCut, CapCut for ads, and prompt AdGBT until you're happy. Three-person creative teams make 30 ads per month. With Icon they make 300 and get more winners." That's a big deal. And by the way, these... They l- look at these. Like, these are AI. This is AI, dude.

    11. CJ

      Hm.

    12. GI

      Um, it doesn't look like AI, but these are AI. Look

    13. CJ

      So the actual creative-

    14. GI

      ... the greatest script

    15. CJ

      ... itself is AI?

    16. GI

      Yeah.

    17. CJ

      Yeah.

    18. GI

      This is... See, they have AI generated creators. That's what they call it.

    19. CJ

      Hm. You know, I'm just thinking about the person at home that's, that's listening. And so I like what you mentioned of, like, any time you see an export button, there's a potential pain point that you could monetize. And so the thing that, that I would not push back, but the thing that I would be thinking is, like, how does someone figure out the difference? How does someone basically figure out the pain point that they should actually act on? And by that, I mean it's not just, like, a minor inconvenience that no one would pay for. It's actually a pain point big enough that you can monetize it. Like, how do I... How does someone make that decision?

    20. GI

      I think a lot of people watching this video work at jobs which they don't like that much, or that they think that they can unlock their potential a little bit more, and they listen to this because it fires them up. That's my thesis based on, like, the comment section that I saw on this pod- on this, on this channel and stuff like that. So that means that... So you might look at this, this business, uh, Icon and be like, "How would I... You know, it doesn't seem that, it doesn't seem that painful. It doesn't, you know... I, I don't really see it." But if you're a marketing manager working at an e-commerce startup and you're creating 20 ads a month, that's... You probably know it's pretty painful. You probably don't like doing it. So if anyone has good ideas for AI startups, it's people who work at jobs they don't like and doing painful stuff. So if you're watching this and you can take stock of here's the two or three things that I do that are repetitive that I don't like doing, chances are there's a good chance that you can plug an AI startup to go and fix that workflow and make it a lot more efficient with a, they call it a human in the loop. Um, you know, maybe it's not fully AI powered, but you can still have a human review the a- You know, Icon is an example of a human in the loop business. It's not like it's fully automated where you just say, "Hey, I need 10 a- I need 300 ads," and it's gonna go and optimize this, uh, click-through rates and the cost per click and everything. No, you still have a human who looks at the ads, who posts the ads, stuff like that. Um, so that, that's what I would say to, to those people.

    21. CJ

      Yeah. You know, I just, I just think it's so good, and it's almost like the... It's almost step one is, like, just do a r- a r- an audit of your own work life.

    22. GI

      Yeah.

    23. CJ

      And, like, those two to three areas, and we all know them, right? Those two to three things that you do every single week that is so painful and so tedious, there... Your AI business idea is right there.

    24. GI

      It's right there. These... And, you know, you think that the biggest AI business ideas are somewhere in Stanford, but they're right here.

    25. CJ

      Hm.

    26. GI

      Because these people have intimate knowledge around these workflows better than anyone else, right? So you're competing... People who are creating AI startups, they're competing. They're gonna compete with the people who listen to this, and they're gonna try to figure out, "How do I get some insider..." Like, the people listening to this are the insiders basically, funny enough, 'cause these people know the workflows.

    27. CJ

      Yeah.

  9. 36:39 – 41:47

    Best time to launch your product

    1. CJ

      Okay, you know what? Okay, so step two, hack V1 fast. Launch an imperfect MVP quickly. Rather than spending months refining a product, quickly launch a minimum viable product to validate demand. Can you talk through that?

    2. GI

      Yeah. The mi- the mistake that a lot of people make is, uh, they find a tedious workflow and they're like, "I just..." Th- they're like, "I know that this is gonna be a big business. I'm gonna go and create a, uh, a big brand around this. I'm gonna go create a deck around this. I'm gonna go and spend the next six, nine, 12 months building this fully featured product because that's what this audience needs in order it, for it to be very valuable." And the goal isn't, you know, uh, you know, the goal is to create a minimal lovable product. People talk about minimal viable product. It's, it's actually to create a minimal lovable product. Um, and, uh, thinking about how can you use tools like Replit and Bolt and stuff like that to just get something out there that you can, uh, just gain some, like, s- have a foundation. Think of it as like a foundation. Um, you don't need to build, you know, Rome in one day and a- and that's what I mean by that. Just get something out there, um, and iterate, iterate from there.

    3. CJ

      Mm. You know, I actually, Greg, I have, um, I have a confession to make, which is, um, the first two businesses that I ever tried to start, they were T-shirt lines in university, spectacular failures, like complete flops. And the thing, the biggest thing that I did wrong is I tried to develop this perfect product. At the time it was like when the kinda athleisure, athleisure trend, uh, was starting and I was like, "I'm gonna build the next Nike. I'm gonna build the next Air Jordan." And we just never ended up releasing a product 'cause I would just keep trying to make it perfect before I would show anyone. And it speaks exactly to what you're saying, which is you don't need the perfect product, you need the minimum lovable product. I think that that's so, that's just so good. Um-

    4. GI

      Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you why a lot of people create, wanna create the perfect product, because it's actually similar to why people don't post on social media. So the reason why people don't post consistently on social media and build audiences is because they, a lot of the time they, they feel like they're getting judged by their friends and family, and it doesn't feel good to put out a tweet and get zero likes, especially after your 40th tweet. And it isn't fun to post on Instagram and only, and see no likes and just seeing a lot of shares because you're like, "The reason why people are sharing this is they're sharing it, my friends, my... or my friends, quote unquote, are sharing this and they're making fun of me" And they're, they're like, "Why is Greg posting about AI coding tools? That's so lame," or something like that. Um, products are the same way in the sense that we want to be proud of the products that we ship. We don't wanna put something out in the world that we're not proud of. And that's why, like, a lot of us are Steve Jobs-like in the sense it sound like you are kind of like Steve Jobs-esque in, in the sense that you're like, "I need a, I know what I want and I know it needs to get out there, and I have a, a high barrier for what makes a, an incredible product, and that's why I need to perfect it." But the way to perfect is actually just consistency and iteration. So the way you actually get perfection is to put something out there, get feedback, iterate from there. Um, and I wish more people would just amp up the quantity of things that they put out there, um, and realize that as you amp up quantity, you will increase quality. 'Cause I know that there's someone listening to this and, and they're saying, "Oh my God, he, his, his philosophy is just put crap out there and something will stick." And I'm not saying put crap out there, I'm just saying that what you think is the product is usually w- you know, instead of 10 features, it's usually one feature. And, and then the way to get to 10 features is actually, uh, by iterating your way and adding one feature at a time.

    5. CJ

      Mm. I think as, like, entrepreneurs and, like, just trying to build businesses, we also, you just have an instinct of like, you know when you can put something out and it will be valuable at le- even if it's just to one person. Like, a lot of businesses started out just being valuable to, like, a s- very specific type of person or one person in particular.

  10. 41:47 – 55:29

    How to set up a business in 24 hours using AI agents (Live crash course)

    1. CJ

      And so you know what? I wanna, I wanna actually... 'Cause you mentioned, um, Cursor or Replit, these are tools that before speaking to you I'd never heard of. Can, can you, can you explain or just... 'Cause I'm sure there's a lot of people like me. Um, can you explain or just show people what these tools are, what they do?

    2. GI

      Yes. Today... Okay, how about this? Let's do like a quick five, 10-minute crash course on two, two products, um, two AI products that I think would be really valuable to people. So maybe let's start with using V0, which is a design tool, and then we could also use something called Manus, which no, you know, is, is, is the talk of the AI crowd right now. How does that sound?

    3. CJ

      Let's do it.

    4. GI

      All right. Share my screen. And we can go V... Let's ship something. So V0, you go to v0.dev, I think. Yep. Um, it's basically like an AI product designer. Um, it's free to sign up. I don't pay for it. You can see my account is free. Um, and we're gonna see how it works today. Do you have a website that, you know, an idea for a website that you wanna build? It could be anything.

    5. CJ

      Oh, an idea for a website I wanna build?

    6. GI

      Yeah.

    7. CJ

      Eh. You know what? I'm always trying to find, this might sound basic, but I'm always trying to find, like, great, uh, restaurants or bars in New York.

    8. GI

      Mm.

    9. CJ

      And so maybe, I don't know, some sort of page that, like ... But it's all, like, local reviews, so it's not like these, I don't know, big company reviews. It's, like, people that actually, like foodies that-

    10. GI

      Mm

    11. CJ

      ... that like going and eating out, their recommendations. Oh, so you can literally just type that into-

    12. GI

      Yeah. So-

    13. CJ

      And it will design the site?

    14. GI

      Yeah, so I'm gonna say I want to create a restaurant directory of best places to eat in NYC. But, like, you literally talk to it like a human being, and I'm gonna s- zoom in so people can see here. But the problem with most restaurant directories is they look kind of lame, and their, uh, recommendations are even lamer. I want to create something like a, something ... I don't know. I want to create ... Just from a stylistic perspective, do you have any ideas?

    15. CJ

      Oh, what is that ... Was it called Belly? There was an app where it's like all of the reviews are, like, from your friends and your peers.

    16. GI

      Mm. Belly.

    17. CJ

      So it doesn't feel like it's, like, some corporate sponsorship or someone paid for, like, their restaurant to get the first placement. It feels like someone you know. I want to say it was maybe B-L... Was it B-E-L-I.

    18. GI

      Okay.

    19. CJ

      I think, I think that's what it was.

    20. GI

      Yeah, Belly app. I found it.

    21. CJ

      Okay. Quality. I ain't thought about that app in, like, two years. I'm, I'm impressed with myself.

    22. GI

      So what you can do is you can literally take a screenshot of that app. I want to create something similar to Belly. But do we... You know, but let's say we want a web version, but a web version.

    23. CJ

      Yeah.

    24. GI

      And I want it to look... Give me one or two brands that you like the design of.

    25. CJ

      Any brand?

    26. GI

      Any brand.

    27. CJ

      Apple, and let me think. I was gonna say, like, Warby Parker. Those are two completely different brands, but I-

    28. GI

      Well-

    29. CJ

      ... I like the aesthetic.

    30. GI

      I would, I want it to look like, I want it to look f- from an aesthetic perspective to be like Apple or Warby Parker. Very clean, minimalistic, and with a few pops of color, and let's just see what happens. So what have we done? We've just, just prompted it like we would a human being, and what v0 is doing now is just trying to figure out what w- w- you know, what, what, what to build first, right? So it's saying, "I'll create a modern, minimalistic restaurant directory for NYC with clean aesthetics inspired by Apple and Warby Parker, similar to the Belly app you shared but as a web, uh, application." So we didn't really give it that much, that many constraints, and we did... You know, for example, we didn't say, "We want this feature, we want that feature," but it's still figuring it out. You can see on the right-hand side it's figuring out name, image, um, curated lists, um, and it's actually writing out the code for all of this website. "The classic New York deli serving Jewish fare, including Pastrami Queen," you know? So it's gonna put in some placeholder names, and it's going to go and, uh, just try to create something that's clean, and then we would be able to just copy the code and, and actually deploy it, meaning deploy basically means just pushing it to the web with one prompt.

  11. 55:29 – 57:43

    How to turn your product into a movement

    1. CJ

      you know, I wanna, I wanna move on. I wanna go through, through the other, the other steps in the, in the framework-

    2. GI

      Yeah, yeah

    3. CJ

      ... before we get out of here. And maybe I'll combine actually step three and step four. So step three is grow distribution daily. Turn your product into a movement. AI startups fail not because of bad products, but because they don't have users. Daily distribution efforts compound over time and make or break a startup. Can you, can you explain that?

    4. GI

      Yeah. I think, uh, I think a lot of people are gonna create-- are gonna vibe code. They're gonna use Vantis, they're gonna use v0, they're gonna put, put their startup live, and it's gonna be crickets, and they're gonna be like, "W- wait, what? I didn't expect that." And in a world where the amount of products and software and startups are gonna 100,000x because the tools make it so that something that, you know, cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a few years ago now doesn't cost anything, the distribution is the moat. So, uh, it, it-- what I mean by that is if you can create a system around posting content every day and growing your audience and positioning it like a, uh, like a movement, making it different, making it even look like from a brand and design perspective that it's different. Um, so when you're in v0, I recommend that you-- I actually don't recommend that you design things that look like Apple or Warby Parker. I actually recommend that you make things look like the anti-Apple and anti-Warby Parker in a lot of ways. Make it look chunky, put a lot of colors, um, and post content every day, because that's what's gonna get you customers at the end of the day.

    5. CJ

      Yeah.

    6. GI

      There's only two ways to get customers, right? You either have it organic or you pay for it, and, um, organic customers are always the, you know, they're better than-- Not paying for it is better than paying for it, basically.

    7. CJ

      Yeah. Let, let,

  12. 57:43 – 1:02:36

    4 step playbook to build an audience in 2025

    1. CJ

      let's talk about organic just for a, a quick second, which is, I think for me personally, I am so big on step one. Like, whenever it comes to doing something, I'm so big on step one, because I think if you can, if you can successfully execute step one, you start to build momentum. And so for the person that's listening that's like, "I don't have an audience right now," like the fo- my following's not zero, but it's like close to zero. You know? I'm not, I'm not Greg Isenberg. Um-

    2. GI

      Mm-hmm

    3. CJ

      ... what would be your step one to them of like posting content in a way that if they commit to it, over time they're gonna build an audience that they can then launch their minimum lovable product to?

    4. GI

      Can I show a PDF about this? 'Cause I actually just wrote this down.

    5. CJ

      [laughs] Go for it.

    6. GI

      [laughs] Okay, let me just pull it up. So I'm gonna go through this four-step framework on how to build an audience in 2025 in, in four minutes or less, and this is the answer to your question. So before I begin, I believe that the way to build businesses today is using a framework that I coin the ACP framework. You start with an audience, you build a community, and then you build a product. So your idea for an AI startup, you might wanna just start as a Twitter account or an Instagram page and start testing what people like in that audience, start building a following so that then once you've got that, you can build a product for those people. Basically, the old way of building a startup was start with a product, then build the audience. Now the new way is start with an audience, then build community product. There's a four-step playbook, uh, that I wrote out, um, for, for basically how do you systematize and build an audience that's gonna work for you. So the first thing is, uh, first up is, you know, a lot of people don't do this, but identify who you're creating for, understand what they're not getting from others, um, and you know, I just put this as a note because if you aren't getting engagement, start one level broader than your niche. A lot of people start a little too niche, so sometimes you might wanna go a little bro- broader. The secret to building an audience is formats. Even this, you know, YouTube channel has a format. You have a specific type of format that is working for you. So what I tell people to do is pick one format for each business day. Try to systematize that, look for formats outside your niche, and copy those ni- you know, that format and bring it to your niche, your niche. I'm gonna go, uh, step three, systems. Uh, this is really important. So you wanna-- you're gonna wanna create your creative faucet routine. What, what I mean by creative faucet is find what's-- how you're gonna get your creative juices flowing. So for example, that might be you listen to podcasts to get, you know, your creative faucet going, and you need a, a strong creative faucet because you wanna have interesting ideas and interesting content to share on your audience. So it might be podcasts, blogs, social, and then capture those ideas in your-- in-- I use a notes app And then just schedule out those pieces of content. And the last thing is c- create a goal. So if you wanna create an audience in 2025, just pick one primary goal for 2025. Now, a lot of people pick the goal of, "I need a certain amount of followers." I think that's actually not a great idea. Think of something like a 25,000-person email list, a million dollars in sales through social. So my point is the primary goal for your audience might not necessarily be followers. It might be something a bit more downstream like revenue or an email list. Um, that's my advice to people around how to build an audience in 2025.

    7. CJ

      Yeah. No, that's so good. I, I love the, um, [lips smack] pick one format each day because I think-

    8. GI

      Yeah

    9. CJ

      ... what I've realized, um, with content and actually just businesses in general, that usually the thing you do on day one is not ultimately what is successful for you. And so from speaking with content creators that have got millions of followers, the thing that they do really well is first of all they post, 'cause then you get feedback, and then they're doing different things. And they're like, they're looking for that spike. They're looking for that, the, the type of post or the format, to your point, that when they posted it, instead of getting, I dunno, five likes, it got 20 likes.

    10. GI

      Yeah.

    11. CJ

      And as soon as they get that spike, they're like, "Oh, okay, that's the one," they double down and they continue to, to go up. I think it's, I think it's so good.

  13. 1:02:36 – 1:09:13

    How to keep your users coming back

    1. CJ

      I'm gonna go to step four, which is nail retention and perfect the core loop. Keep your users coming back. AI businesses shouldn't just attract users; you must keep them engaged. The best startups optimize their core loop. Can you explain what that means? What is a core loop?

    2. GI

      The, the problem with a lot of AI startups is a lot of people are trying these products 'cause it, it's, you know, I call it curiosity revenue. Like, these startups are saying, "Oh, wow, I hit 3 million ARR," but it's just people trying out, you know, these products. But the core loop, meaning like the, the core value creation isn't really there. It's just that they're alm- think of it as like an impulse buy, you know? It's you're, you're there, you're trying it out, but like the actual foundation isn't, isn't there. And you remember when we talked about MVP and the MLP, we talked about it from like a foundation standpoint. Like, your MLP is like a very strong foundation of one killer feature, AKA core loop, um, that, you know, is going to drive retention up. And why does retention matter and why is it so important is because, uh, ag- you know, and we talked about fancy words in the beginning of this, uh, episode, is retention is just a fancy word that says do people like your product and use it every day? If it's very valuable, you're gonna see high retention, meaning you're gonna see people use that product every single day, and that should be your goal. As a, as a product creator, you want to drive value. If you can drive value you'll be able to monetize it for, you know... So your, your first goal is to drive as much value as possible so that ... And from a metric standpoint, that means your, you'll notice your retention is quite high.

    3. CJ

      Hmm. You know, I think it's, um, I think it's a really good point and it's a mistake that we make w- as entrepreneurs, and I've made this mistake, which is so often it's like our business isn't growing or we don't have the revenue that we want. And so instantly we think, "I need new people. I need new users. I need new customers." You don't think, "Wait, all of the customers that I already have, how could I give them more value?" Like, we don't think about retention. And so you, you spoke about core loop. If someone wanted to understand that and also start to understand some of the steps of like how they could actually improve the retention in their business, where would you advise them to look first? Like, where, what would you advise as step one in that process?

    4. GI

      Well, when, when people ... Let's say you've created a product and you're noticing that people are churning, meaning they're stopping to use y- the product. Uh, there's basically two ways to do analytics. One is, uh, I think it's called behavioral ana- a- a- analytics which is looking at something like a Google Analytics dashboard which says my retention is 30%, I had 25,000 daily active users, basically just looking at the numbers. And then there's what's called, I think it's called attitudinal analytics or voice of customer analytics, which is basically asking people why, you know, what they did, what they didn't like about the product, and getting their voice of customer. Let me explain quickly why it's important to have both sets of data and why most people just look at the pure behavioral stuff. Imagine you are a, you know, you go to shop at a Walmart and, you know, you're at the Walmart, you spend 45 minutes there and you spend $200 there. If you just look at behavioral analytics it's gonna be like, "Wow, what a great customer. Person spent 45 minutes because, you know, they love the, how beautiful the shop is. They spend $200 be- and that our average, you know, cart size is $100 so they spent two times, so you know, what the average person spends." Marketing team is high-fiving, "This is amazing." But what didn't, what didn't that capture? Well, it didn't capture the fact that they spent 45 minutes in the store because they couldn't find what they were looking for and their, they spent $200 but their budget was $500 And so they, there was a missed opportunity. So my recommendation to people who, you know, are going, are gonna use this workflow which is, you know, building the audience, vibe coding, putting out these products, is look at the retention numbers, but use voice of customer, uh, open-ended questions asking people, you know, what they liked about it, what they didn't like about it to get a full picture, and using that full picture, that'll help you increase retention.

    5. CJ

      Hmm. You know what it reminded me of as I was listening to you is almost that quote of like, um, like on your, on your deathbed or whenever it ends, uh, the thing that people are gonna remember is how did you make them feel?

    6. GI

      Yes.

    7. CJ

      And so like sometimes as businesses it's like you can get so fixated on just like the, the quantitative number, just the number on the screen, that you completely forget about how did you make the customer feel.

    8. GI

      Yes.

    9. CJ

      And so you could, you could win, and I think this is to your point, like you could be winning in terms of like the, the numbers, but actually there's a huge missed opportunity if that feeling that the customer has isn't a good one, and that's when they're gonna churn and you're gonna lose customers and business.

    10. GI

      Yeah. There's, there's a lot of people in the tech world who, who pride themselves with, with the, uh, the fact that they're data-driven. They say, "I'm data-driven, I'm data-driven." What does that mean? That means that the data drives their decisions. I don't believe in that. My, my saying is data informs, not drives. I think that when we let the data run our companies fully, that's when you end up creating tasteless products that, you know, are very hard to differentiate, and that we don't wanna get in there, right? So we wanna, we wanna create startups that have the highest probability of success. So, uh, y- you wanna look at the data and you want to ... Like, you don't wanna drive blind obviously, but you wanna just h- you just wanna have it one piece of the puzzle, not the full puzzle.

  14. 1:09:13 – 1:11:10

    Why you MUST focus on the core loop

    1. CJ

      Hmm. You know, on the, on the point of the core loop, I think about the business that maybe they have like it launches and it has like a couple features, like you're kind of experimenting. You, you have a, a few aspects to it. How does someone identify actually this is the core loop? Like even if, if my business is having success, this feature over here actually doesn't really matter, but this one really does, like this is the core reason why people are using it.

    2. GI

      I think it's, it's a similar question to like how do I know if I have product market fit? You'll know because people are telling ... Well, will be screaming it at you. The hard part is once you have product market fit, how do you stay focused? So for example, you know, Calendly, uh, a lot of people know that company, it's a multi-billion dollar company, it's a great success story. I think he bootstrapped it, um, for a very long time and it's a pretty core one feature, right? You send someone a link and they can book a time with you. Now, of course they can build stuff around that, but for the longest time they just focused on the core loop. They just focused on how do I make the best scheduling product, uh, out there? And you can schedule via Google Calendar now, but I still see more Calendly links than I do Google Calendar. I don't know about you. And I think it's because they focused on the core loop.

    3. CJ

      Yeah. It's actually really cool of like ... I, I think it's actually empowering in a way which is you can build a multi-billion dollar business by focusing on like one core feature and then building a brand around it.

    4. GI

      Yeah.

    5. CJ

      'Cause I'm sure that's also part of it, right? Is like Calendly, like even in the name, right? You're like, "I'm gonna send you my Calendly."

    6. GI

      Yeah.

    7. CJ

      Like you don't think Google, you think Calendly first and that's like the brand. Um, but just they focused on just doing one thing and it, and it's led to that result.

    8. GI

      Absolutely.

    9. CJ

      On step five,

  15. 1:11:10 – 1:14:57

    The blueprint to partner with influencers.

    1. CJ

      partner with creators to scale. Leverage influencer-led growth. Many AI startups struggle to scale because they only focus on the product, not on community-driven growth. Creator partnerships help you break into markets faster and build trust. Can you talk about that?

    2. GI

      The PDF I went through, How to Build an Audience in 2025, that's the blueprint, but it's gonna take time. You know what I mean? Like it's gonna take time. So the question for, for people is does it make sense to, uh, try to get creators, give them 25% of revenue, 40% of revenue, 50% of revenue, just coming up with creative deals to be like you've got this audience of X amount of thousands of people, I think that this product they would love. How can we make this a win-win? And positioning it like that and give them the revenue. It doesn't mean that you need to do, do it with them forever, you know? What ... You're s- in the background you're still building your own audience so you might be able to reduce your dependency on creators, you know, in it two years, three years, four years. But I do think that, um, a mistake a lot of people make is they don't, uh, they don't go to creators and try to figure out how can we make this work for you?

    3. CJ

      Hmm. I think you're right and I think I would assume, I don't know this but I would assume, one of the biggest reasons is let's say that I'm at the point where I've launched my AI startup, it has good traction, like we're making a good amount of money. I know that, like I have the product market fit. I, I figured out the core loop and it works, and now I'm thinking about scaling. I would say the thing that holds people back from like the creator partnerships is they're probably like, "I just don't know any creators. Like how do I even-

    4. GI

      Yeah

    5. CJ

      ... start? Like I don't know how to get Ali Abdaal or like, you know, whoever it is, Colin and Samir to, um, partner with me on, on my product." What, what is your advice to someone that's at that point and that's the thing that's holding them back?

    6. GI

      Limiting, going back to what we talked about in the beginning, it's a, it's a limiting belief. They ... All those people you mentioned, they're human beings too. They might be getting a lot more text messages and DMs than the average human being, but I've texted with Colin and Samir, I've texted with Ali Abdaal, like, you know? I ... The ... They're real people, right? And when I was, when I was ... When I had less than 2,000 followers, I, I realized that on, on Twitter that, you know, 50% of creators had their, or, or accounts had their, uh, DMs open. Like, you can literally just DM them. What is the cost, just what is the cost to you, person listening, to going and just DM-ing Ali Abdaal? DM- ... My DMs are open, you know? Like, I look at, I look at every one of my DMs, 100% of my DMs. I might not respond to 75% of them, but I look at every single one. If something is interesting to me, I respond. And I've, I've hired people, I've partnered with people, I've invested in people, I've acquired companies all through DMs. And when I was just starting up in the early days, I would reach out to people and, you know, it sucks. You have to be okay to get rejected, but, like, one in every 100 DMs you get the most interesting conversation of your life, and it's worth it. And just what's the downside? People have to ask themselves, "What is the downside?" It's free to do. Why are you not doing it?

    7. CJ

      Hmm. You know what? Here's, here's where I wanna end,

  16. 1:14:57 – 1:20:00

    How to build relationships with successful people

    1. CJ

      and I wanna end with giving people something which I think is, is so valuable in life. Like, even just taking out the, the AI business, I think it's just so valuable. What that is I've realized at the end of the day this, this game or, like, business, it's all about relationships, right? Like, that's what you're, that's what you're getting at is there's always gonna be a ceiling on your success, and a pretty low ceiling on your success, if you don't have the relationships piece figured out. And we live in, like, this incredible age where anyone on this planet you can actually reach who has an internet connection. Maybe not anyone, but mostly everyone you can reach through social media, through cold DM, cold email. And so as someone that you've slid into people's DMs and built connections with an Ali Abdaal or a Colin and Samir, or, like, other people in your network, what would be ... And also as someone that gets these DMs and emails, what would be your advice to someone if you could give them just one piece of advice of, like, look, you might not have followers. Like, you might have under 1,000 followers, under 2,000 followers right now, but if you follow this one piece of advice and you send the requisite amount of volume, you will get a response from someone that you admire that could be useful to your business. Could be the person that 10X's, 100X's what you have going on right now. Like, what would be your, your one piece of advice?

    2. GI

      Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer that question through a quick story. Someone ... Okay. I had a startup 2016 or so called Islands. It was like a Discord competitor. It eventually got sold to WeWork. And one of the reasons why it sold and we got m- you know, multiple offers and stuff like that was because we were in the press all the time. And after the transit- after the company was sold, a bunch of people asked me, "How ..." You know, "I saw you on all ..." Like, "You were, you guys were everywhere, you know? How did you get so much press?" You know, "Which agency did you use?" And I said, "I just did it myself." "Oh, did you know a lot of journalists?" And by the way, this is a time I had, like, very few followers, like no followers basically. And I said, "No. I just DM'd them on Twitter." "So, okay, how did you do that?" Well, here's what I did. I made a list of 175 journalists that I thought might cover the story. I would create a 30-second selfie video where I'd be like, "Hey, uh, Calum. My name's Greg Isenberg. I'm working on Islands. I thought that it might be interesting to you for X, Y, Z reason," and I had an ask at the end which was not cover my story. It was basically like, can we meet? Can we chat? By the end of that chat I'm gonna give you value, value, value, value. The success rate of that video was, you know, sta- kinda staggering honestly. And I don't think enough people are empathetic to the Colins and Samirs and Ali Abdaals in the sense that they don't put themselves in their shoes. They're getting bombarded with all these DMs, so how do you stand out and create something that's gonna create value for them? Uh, well, I think video is one easy way. You know, even cr- you know, using something like a Loom or something, sharing your screen, um, sending it to them, giving them value. Um, I mean, I've had people who've DM'd me value and I've ha- I've brought them on my pod- the Startup Ideas Podcast, which has, like, millions of listeners a month, just because they've ... They're like, "Hey, I thought you'd be interested in this video," and I was like, "You should come on the pod to talk about it." Random person, 600 followers. So it happens. Shoot your shot. Be different. Use video. Add value. It's not rocket science.

    3. CJ

      Yeah. Greg, you've been awesome, man. You've been awesome. And, and as you were, as you were sharing that I was like ... Because I, I was, um ... I think I actually put this on my Instagram. I said, "This year this show is gonna, like, shock the world. Like, the, the level of growth that we're gonna experience is gonna shock the world," and I wanna get some of the biggest guests obviously that we, that we've ever had this year. Um, and that strategy and method that you just explained, I wanna try it and I feel like we're gonna land some pretty huge guests from doing that. So, so Greg, thank you so much, man. I appreciate you.

    4. GI

      My pleasure. Uh, keep it up. This is, this is awesome. It's been amazing seeing, uh, what you're, what you're building.

    5. CJ

      Thank you, mate. No, this was great. I loved this. This was awesome.

Episode duration: 1:20:01

In the uListen app, the transcript lights up word by word as you listen. Get uListen

Transcript of episode 07twxy9TpQo

Get more out of YouTube videos.

Read along on your phone, search it beside the video, or ask your favorite AI app what was said.

iOSAndroidClaudeChatGPTChrome