# 2 $1M+ EdTech Startups you can launch tomorrow

Channel: Greg Isenberg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swxsv1SgCiA
Duration: 56 min
Language: English
Words: 10138
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/Swxsv1SgCiA

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[0:00] okay last last question before we move on to the uh the next startup idea biggest thing you learned from Mark Zuckerberg Zuckerberg shadowing him for hundreds of hours this is the key to what makes him so unique so the fact that he is is this extreme humility and amazing self-awareness so he knows when he doesn't know something and he doesn't just go in to learn it he gives himself or he used to and I I don't I'm not close to him anymore but he would really put himself in a position of extreme humility and he had no ego in the fact of oh I don't know this thing I have to

[0:36] posture like I know it he'd be like I don't know this thing and it's vital and um and I learned this firsthand [Music] because okay we got Sarah Lacy on the Pod she's an idea machine and I I was emailing her before this I was like come with ideas I'll give you 30 minutes and she's like I don't need 30 minutes you know I'll see you there in a few so thank you Sarah for for coming on the Pod and and sharing some of your ideas with us it is my pleasure um I you know it's really anyone who has built several companies knows like the fun part is

[1:20] coming up with ideas like we can all come up with ideas like the shitty part is actually trying to build them so I am uh fortunately at a stage in my career where I can just come up with with ideas all right should we get into it let's go so where do you want to start do you want me to just pitch you my ideas is that how this works yeah you you share your ideas and I will yeah we can just talk about if we like it we don't like it how we'd start it yeah I love it all right so I was thinking about this um

[1:50] the the my last startup that I did um which you know had uh you know a lot of successful startups always have these near death experience es I think I had near um you know generational wealth huge success with it and always would just grab the uh defeat out of the jaws of Victory um but uh it was this company called chairman me it was started as chairman mom and you know we we went on a lot of sort of pivots and iterations but what the part of the company that I loved the most was during the pandemic when women were really stuck at home and

[2:25] employee resource groups which had really worked to like boost women and give them solidarity and ways to get ahead like those were kind of gone because everyone was working from home um we started doing these really functional really effective online courses for women and we just nailed how to do online courses like we had 90% completion rates whereas online courses usually have 5% completion rates and we taught really tactical things by the best people in the world so like we had this negoti this course on negotiation taught by this coach who used the scientifically proven way to negotiate without a gender backlash and on average got people 30% increases in

[3:07] salaries like they were really like Navy Seals of courses to get women to the next level they worked they had huge results sounds great right do you know why that company failed because every day I had to do battle with women's internalized misogyny and it was like I was falling into a pit wrestling with Gandalf like it was I couldn't do it and that was ultimately why the company failed because women did not they've been so emotionally beaten up and conditioned by them that they didn't deserve to have more it was I I mean we we changed tens of thousands of women's lives but I couldn't reach millions of women's I

[3:48] could not convince them their lives could be better they could have more money and it was terrible but that's the reality so I give all that as a preamble because I think what someone should do is build an equivalent for tween girls because right when girls go into adolescence is when they start losing their confidence um and there's all these studies about this um actually always the uh the tampon and Pad company did a commercial about this for Super Bowl one year and it was like this run like a girl campaign people should Google this if they haven't seen it because it's stunning they ask like

[4:27] little girls they well first they ask asked like older girls post adolescence what it's like to run like a girl and they're like everyone's like making fun of girls and stuff they ask young girls they're like running all out and they're badass and like it is a drop off in confidence and belief in yourself right when you hit adolescence that's when the internalized misogyny starts I think if we could have a program in school that's like a pre-mba entrepreneurship confidence program not stem because stem's great but that doesn't teach you how to negotiate how to have selfworth how to ideate but if you had that in schools before they hit

[5:07] the confidence Rock Bottom um I think in a generation it would transform female leadership and I think it's one of those things that I guarantee you in 20 or 30 years whenever people would be like interviewing you know the Fortune 500 female CEO and they'd say how did you get there they'd be like well I did this program when I was in sixth grade and people say the Girl Scouts you know helped teach entrepreneurship but like really like you families go through it and they're like it's just m it's just a marketing scheme it's just a pyramid scheme um I think there's really cool ways that you could teach a lot of these

[5:47] fundamentals to kids then you could also even partner with local businesses to have a lot of this stuff in the wild now a lot of schools do entrepreneurship clubs but they're taught by teachers or they're taught by a parent who comes in they're not curriculum Rich they're not saying hey here's where you're going to stumble and here's where you're going to work through it and the reason I'm so confident in this is because in the pandemic when we were building all these courses and I was filming a lot of them in my home editing them doing a lot of office hours uh with these like world

[6:21] renowned instructors um it was during uh lockdown so like my kids were home and they were um they were a little bit young now they uh 11 and um and 13 but I mean they learned amazing negotiation skills they learned amazing executive function just by kind of being in the room and absorbing these things and asking me follow-up questions and um and now you know we own a a bookstore in Downtown Palm Springs which we kind of we live here part of the year and there's no bookstore so our family opened one and um both of my girls had have a business within the bookstore my

[7:02] youngest daughter makes these good luck pom pom monsters and if you buy $50 in books um you get one for free and then my older daughter makes these uh Pride cranes origami cranes and if you spend I think $30 you get one for free and I'm telling you people come in this store and they will grab an extra book to get one of those two items they sell out in like two days so I pay them like a dollar a month monster or I think a $150 crane my kids have like I will be regularly giving them $80 and it is not pity money the store is 100% made money

[7:39] and so we look at supplies we look at chains there's small businesses All Over America who would be willing to sell friendship bracelets baked goods cards all kinds of things kids could be making um so that's idea number one sh don't tell anyone but I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions and I'm giving them away for free these aren't just random guesses they're validated Concepts from entrepreneurs who built hundred million plus businesses I've compiled them into one simple database compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast but the main thing is most of these ideas don't need a single investor some cost

[8:32] nothing to start I'm pretty much handing you a cheat sheet the idea bank is your startup shortcut just click below to get access your next cash flowing business is waiting for you essentially what I failed to build for women for tween girls so your vision of this is it like an online thing is it an inperson thing like H how does it how does it look like well I think the most scalable way to do it would be to do it as an online thing but something that happens in the schools and like I most schools now are actually like using a lot of technical tools whether it's Con Academy or other

[9:17] curriculums like it's pretty common right now that there's um private school curriculums that teachers are basically following a framework pressing play on um this lot of stim curriculums like this so um so I think you would slot into that model Okay cool so yeah I think the way I think that makes sense I think I would do it online like you put out the content online but the challenges happen IRL in schools so for example my elementary school for you know for boys and girls we were in order to teach entrepreneurship what they did and charity what they did was they handed us a bag of 20 chocolate bars and

[10:04] and said you need to sell these uh chocolate bars and each chocolate bar was $2 each the catch was we had to sign a paper that said we owe the school4 $40 so all of a sudden as a kid I'm like oh my God I'm in debt $40 like it's such a horrible feeling and you know uh you hated it um but you learn learned a lot um around like okay um debt is not good um okay now I need to sell this thing how am I going to sell this and then you there were some support structures around how to sell certain things and then the money went

[10:42] to charity as well so that could be an example of like I can imagine like a monthly challenge like that so that people can go down the world and learn as well but let me let me tell you the problem with that method in today's world and I I say this as someone who kid was just given 20 raffle tickets that she has to sell so we're in debt $200 if we don't sell these things um and so what's happening well in 2024 my 13-year-old is not going to go doortodoor selling things that doesn't work it doesn't work why does it not work first of all um people don't know their

[11:23] neighbors in the same way they used to um also we have ring doorbells people don't answer their doors if they don't know who it is and they don't come a lot of people don't have doorbells like we're not built for a world where kids can go door to-door selling stuff and so then what happens one of two things either the kid has parents like me who and by the way by the end of this episode I will sell you a raffle ticket you could win a RAF four um but like so you have someone like me who pings a bunch of people and is like hey Eli's to

[11:56] sell these raffle tickets or I just had the idea today I'm actually going to make her do a sales pitch on video and then I'm going to text it to our neighbors because I think they would love to do this but they're not going to answer their door and so but so that's not really teaching her anything is it that's just me being forced to handhold because otherwise I'm just buying the tickets because where else is she gonna sell them um when you know you always see kids walking into like around malls or something and um shopkeepers they consider it loitering they shove them away so it's like you know what are you

[12:28] supposed to do and I also think in the best of times all that does is teach kids sales and starting a business is a lot more than sales I think some of the most creative parts of starting a business are thinking about the product I mean obviously you agree because that's the whole point of your podcast but like ideating like what does this look did you find product Market fit what did you do wrong how do you pitch this to investors um there's so many pieces of this that are not sales and like I think sales is great because sales is like the number one thing that

[13:04] women sort of get socialized out of like there's there's so much talk about not enough women going into um engineering like women in sales is even more of a desert because um there's all kinds of gender Dynamics there only three less than 3% of female founded businesses ever do a million dollars in Revenue which I think is due to the socialization against sales so like I'm all for sales but I don't think it's the only skill and I don't think a world we grew up in exists anymore yeah so I think that's a really good point around on the door-to-door sales piece like what is the equivalent

[13:43] of door to-door sales and 2025 it's probably more like recording a video and posting it online and you know setting up a gum Road and and learning about how to sell and build a product on the Internet you know it's it's almost like the startup ideas podcast but for tween you know totally and yeah and ideas that they have are amazing I mean we always like the cliche in Silicon Valley is you want to find like the next Mark Zuckerberg who's never held down a job and is this like brilliant young nerd who has a Total Clean Slate well like okay let's go even earlier and here like

[14:23] what twins want um and I think the sales piece of it is like a like a typical like growth marketing funnel like these kids are so much better at digital tools than we are my 13-year-old can put any growth marketer a shame with her canvas skills so like I think do an Instagram campaign do a Tik Tok campaign do an email marketing funnel like the sales pitch is still coming from you but you're learning how to do it and you know also do that thing where you're like you're you know part of the where I see people who feel awkward about sales and aren't good at sales tend to go

[15:00] wrong is like they they send their first email or cold call trying to like close the deal and that's not what you're doing you're trying to close for a conversation so teaching kids like those fundamentals um it it's going to help them in every aspect of life because what are you doing when you're trying to get into college you're selling what are you doing when you audition for a role you're selling I mean you're trying to get um a summer job you're selling yourself um so I think this is something that would like absolutely transform um the demographics of the labor market because I'm telling you I

[15:41] spent 30 years as a journalist and I always asked people you know when they got interested in starting their own business and I can't tell you how many boys told me about their damn paper route or their yard business or about you know their side hustle they did or you know stories like Tony Shay selling pizza for a dollar this is something that male CEOs and male entrepreneurs have always been doing but we don't the equivalent for the girls is they're selling you know pyramid scheme chocolate bars for the Girl Scouts and setting up a stand with you know a little uniform and a required skirt on

[16:17] like I think we can do better for girls yeah and I I think we can do better for everyone is you know I think uh no I think I think the boys would be jealous they weren't allowed and and there's no reason it should be gender binary but honestly like if I were starting it my goto Market would be initially for girls because I think that is the pain point and I think you know I've just I've learn one thing I've learned the hard way with entrepreneurship is like um the riches are in the niches we always think by by narrowing Something That We're restricting but we're not like how many

[16:53] people shop at Forever 21 who are not 21 um we you know by being super specific I think you speak really directly to someone and then you know other people will want to be part of it like when we started chairman mom from day one 30% of our customers were not moms like it never precludes people if they want that thing um and I think it it's it sends such a clear value of what it is so I actually probably would start it um aimed at girls but you know like the girl scouts or whatever else say like it's open to everyone and you know and not uh discriminate but I think

[17:30] there's I bet there is public money you could get from public schools to roll this out and it would be a guaranteed Revenue stream um you know that any Elite boarding schools or private schools there is a dad who would write a check for that thing if their daughter was getting a heads up on entrepreneurship I think you'd make a ton more money than I made trying to sell it to uh corporate women sadly I was just doing some quick Googl like Girl Scouts does a billion does wow they do over a billion dollars a year in Revenue they make more money than Oreo makes that's amazing and this cookies

[18:11] aren't even around all year all year long it's crazy that's crazy yeah but so so I'm I'm in on this idea I'm in like I think uh I think it's a great one I think it would work I think it resonates I think the wi now is here also you would get magazine cover stories about it because of the issues with girls because of the things they could be doing you could do an annual like you know demo day in all of these communities that everyone would feel great about sponsoring and coming to I mean it's just one of those feel-good things people want to be a part of and

[18:48] it's it's where people could like they people could virtue virtue signal and still actually meaningfully support young women at the same time and if you were so the only thing that challenges me on this idea is the funding piece of it you know it's like uh you just said the Girl Scouts does a billion dollars I don't think there's any issue with the funding piece of it I think you have so many comps you have so many comps in uh companies like everyone from blackbot to like all kinds of like private curriculums that sell into schools like the reality is school not even just Public Schools one of my

[19:31] daughters goes to Catholic school and like they don't have the budgets for custom curriculum so what the teachers are doing is buying private curriculum and teaching it in the classes I think there is actually I think 20 years ago you'd be right I think now there is such a pathway of getting things into schools and there's so much money and budget for it not on you know a maybe a per unit basis but you know there's a lot of schools in the country I think what you need though is you need a CEO who sold into that before right I think if you had a CEO who sold into that before has

[20:08] connections there I actually think it's the funding piece of it is like a no-brainer you'd probably do a seed round build it get a proof of concept do one series a and in five years it would go public like snowflake I think you would need one funding round I wonder I I also wonder like I'm not a huge fan of cold emailing but I imagine a lot of these teachers Pro like you probably can get their email addresses and if you did a really really like tight cold email campaign with like maybe like a selfie video from one of the girls talking about her experience and um and and and

[20:45] you know just very tight I I I actually bet these people are not getting hit up that much um with with high value like value ad content that are actually going to make their jobs easier in a lot of way way right like they're looking for this stuff aren't they yeah no they absolutely are and I think that you could have campaigns where you could say either this is what it costs and you make it like as cheap as possible and just go for volume and then say here's what it cost if the school can't afford that you know we can do a fundraising thing you could even have you could run

[21:21] programs where uh local businesses or families sponsored it and and part of the costs were paid for by the proceeds I mean you could get really really creative on how to do this because it's software right you're not hiring a teacher to do this um you know you're you know you have like 80% gross margins on those online courses so it's also something that can be done and can be scaled up and down you know you can have more support at high-end boarding schools where we're facilitating a demo day or making intros to you know people in the community but you could also do a barebones version of it for um you know

[22:04] inner city schools where it's you know maybe like maybe Nike wants to support it for a thousand schools I mean I think you could get really creative with how to pay for it and because it's online courses um there's also like amazing recurring Revenue because once you're in a school and people are getting value it's not going to be ripped out of that school in in the past I I know you've you know cuzz you've you've been in media and you've probably done a lot of sponsorships like do you have any advice for people on how to sell like a Nike like how do you know because people

[22:39] probably hear that and they're like that's so Out Of Reach I don't even know how to do that um quick ad break let me tell you about a business I invested in it's called boring marketing.com so a few years ago I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world they were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google and the secret sauce is they've got a set of Technology an AI that could help you outrank your competition so for my own businesses I wanted that I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg I didn't want to depend on ads to drive

[23:18] customers to my businesses I wanted to rank high in Google that's why I like SEO and that's why I use boring marketing.com and that's why I invested in it there's so so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day Sprint with 100% money back guarantee who does that nowadays so check it out highly recommend boring marketing.com you know I think I mean look there are two reasons that I have done been able to do anything that I've done in my career and it's two superpowers that I have and the first is networking I meet people constantly I am never too old or too networked to meet more people or really

[23:59] engage in those networks and um you know I think that there is an art to networking that is not standing around at um a cocktail party being awkward but building relationships and building relationships with people without um an intended thing you want out of it um and I think that in maintaining those relationships over a long time and being there and showing up and being genuinely interested and you know building relationships and n works when you don't need to frankly um and then tapping them and making asks of them when you do need to and um you know I think every piece of that are things that people tend to

[24:39] fail on um you know they don't make networks when they don't need them and then they if they have them they're squeamish about making asks of them whereas like we all you know we love when people we care about ask us for things because it makes us feel good and makes us feel like we can ask them a favor in the future so I think um that a huge one and I think if you start especially for people in their early 20s start building your network now and it doesn't have to be with the CEO of a company it can be with someone who's a peer because y'all are all going to come

[25:10] up together and then those people are going to wind up being the people who are decision makers in the future um you just don't know who's going to turn into what job and what you're going to need from someone and like case in point with this idea maybe like right now I'm me you know if I'm in my early 20s thinking I want to work at a startup maybe I don't think my friend who is going to school to be a superintendent would necessarily be a great contact but lo and behold here's my startup idea I need to get into schools like anyone can be a

[25:41] great contact for you because you don't know who they know and you don't know what they're going to be and you don't know what you're going to wind up building um so I think that's number one and I think if you've been doing your job in tra Network then I bet you know someone who knows someone senior at Nike I guarantee you could find someone senior at Nike or a connection to them in my network um number two the second thing that I always was really good at it I don't think I realized till later in my career how powerful it was and why is Story I mean one of the best books

[26:13] about story ever written is Lisa kon's wired for story and it basically breaks down the Neuroscience of story and how we have been wired since caveman days to respond to story in a way that we are are by a ically wired to our heart to race blood to rush for to our thighs because we know we're going to have to run away um you know think about how often like the you know the downside of this is when people have anxiety and they're like oh my God I know that it's not rational and it's like yeah it's not rational it's because like your brain is telling your

[26:49] body a story of what's going to happen to you if you sat on stage in front of thousands of eyeballs looking at you and have to give a keynote um so I think that story is the most powerful tool I think it's the reason that most women who raise large amounts of venture capital do not come from a math background but come from a media background because it is like the great leveler so I think those two things right you find the right contact and then you put together the right story um how is this going to make how is this going to transform Nike how what

[27:23] heartstring are you pulling what you know you mentioned getting a kid in the video I mean I absolutely do that there was a brilliant marketing campaign for this nonprofit that um I think does uh water it it helps provide water and they went to this rather than saying this is a huge number of people who go without water and isn't you know isn't it staggering there's this many people on the Earth who don't have fresh water no one cares we don't care about numbers we just don't we have too much in our own life right but they to they showed one boy and and and as a result in this

[28:00] one Village like the bulk of kids would not make it to their sixth birthday because of water so they took this one boy in this Village and they when he was five years old took him around the world completing his bucket list because he was gonna die at six statistically and it is the most moving three minutes you will ever watch and even if you've seen it even if you know the ending you will still cry you can't not because it is so designed to grab you in this evolutionary way that we all that we all do and so it's like you do the equivalent of that and like of course

[28:40] Nike's gonna say yes also like you build like a marketing campaign with them where they can talk about what they're doing for girls it makes everyone at the company feel good um maybe the what you know maybe it's like an like the equivalent of the ernston young entrepreneur of the Year award does Nike do the national Gala of all of these amazing tiny little 10 and 12 year old badasses who've built these things and do they you know hold it in New York and give the number one winner like an internship I mean come on there is so much media they get out of that there's

[29:18] so much feel-good and like how much would it cost like a couple million dollars how many seats could you get with a couple million dollars they could make a massive massive difference this conversation is reminding me about like the first time I ever went to New York City as like an 18-year-old I'm from Canada and when I was in some of these meetings as like a kid basically and I heard people talk like you were talking it it it it shattered you know it shattered my world like it made me realize that thinking big and mindset is such an important part of making things happen um you know we

[30:02] in our minds we're always kind of like a lot of us um are like yeah it would be nice to get it I don't know if I can actually close it I don't know if I can actually get their email I don't know if I can actually but you know you're right when you actually like lay it out and you're like okay it's really just story and people and it's interest of that right I mean it's like uh you know every day what can you do that will be a favor to the Future you who's going to be in this position and need to sell Nike who can you meet what can you learn

[30:39] what can you put in place I I cannot tell you the numbers with both of my startups I was building the numbers of future uh favors to the Future me that I had no idea I was doing in my 20 or 30 20s or 30s that were company changing moments in you know my 30s or 40s before we move on to the next idea because I need to hear your next idea because you're a Legend um can you give one quick story of someone who you met maybe ear you know in your early 20s or in your 20s that ended up being like you would have never expected that person

[31:18] would be so valuable in your career I mean I have a hilarious one which is uh Mark Zuckerberg like I when I was at business week I first called Mark Zuckerberg when Facebook had just closed the Peter teal round of funding and he had just moved to Palo Alto and I called the company and he answered the phone like that's how long ago it was now he had already raised money from from Peter he was in the valley but you can't imagine at that moment how much even when David Z did the $500 million Greylock route I made a bet with another CEO um over a fancy din dinner anywhere

[32:06] in the world because he insisted not only the bet wasn't even will Facebook go public and be worth 500 million which seemed unbelievable to everyone the BET was will they be out of business by this time last year next year like people were so burned um because this is the other thing we're hardwired for is pattern Rec nition and people were so burned from the dotom bubble and they were so burned by things like Friendster no one believed in this company and um so I started you know building a relationship with Mark and like covering him as a journalist and getting interested when he was 19 and then you

[32:46] know within a couple years I was one of the only two journalists in the world who had access to him yeah cuz he trusted you yeah cuz and and he also knew it's like I thought there was something interesting about him when no one else did I thought he was a remarkable person when no one else did and again it's like Network it's all relationships like we don't like it was I was just finishing um uh Indra no the uh former CEO of Pepsi was just finishing her autobiography this or her Memoir this morning and she says at the end like so many amazing things happen

[33:23] when you were the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company and I knew and I when I left my Friendship Circle was gonna shrink because those people as nice as they were weren't interested in me they were interested in what I could do for them and so people never underestimate when you're someone who believed in them before the entire world wanted a piece of them um so I mean that's an obvious one and my first book which Mark was which was about the rise of Web 2.0 and Mark was one of a handful of people that I spent hundreds of hours uh shadowing um you know I mean I that was my Advance

[33:59] on that book was one of the it was like the second biggest advance in Business Week history at that point and allowed me to buy a house in San Francisco that I still have to this day so that one phone call paid a lot of dividends okay last last question before we move on to the uh the next startup idea biggest thing you learned from Mark Zuckerberg Zuckerberg shadowing him for hundreds of hours well I mean this is unfortunately this is kind of something everyone knows about him now but um I think if it's every biggest thing that nonobvious thing that you learned well so let me

[34:36] give you the Twist on it because I do think this is the key to what makes him so unique so the fact that he is you know he talks a lot about this like every year there's a big thing he wants to learn right and he like throws himself into it and I know a lot of CEOs who like talk a big game about always wanting to be learning or whatever and growth mindsets have become super popular a after that but I think think the piece that markk does that other people don't always see from the outside is this extreme humility and amazing self-awareness so he knows when he

[35:08] doesn't know something and he doesn't just go in to learn it he gives himself or he used to and I I don't I'm not close to him anymore but he would really put himself in a position of extreme humility and he had no ego in the fact of oh I don't know this thing I have to posture like I know it he'd be like I don't know this thing and it's vital and um and I learned this firsthand because at one point I was like why does this person giving me so much access because really at the beginning he was like why do we need press like there's no one is

[35:41] in Facebook's audience who's reading business week like he was pretty skeptical of the whole thing and he didn't talk to other journalists and there came a point where I was just like why am I getting so much access this is so bizarre and um and so I asked him that question and he said uh he said said because I've noticed when I'm talking to you I go in not thinking I'm going to say things and then I suddenly start telling you things and you're so much better at people than I am and so as you're asking me questions and I'm telling you things you need for your job

[36:12] I'm trying to figure out how you're doing that wow isn't that amazing so amazing I love that okay so part of what I'm doing now post uh chairman me um I I do not have another venture funded startup in me and I also don't want to become a VC because I'm too opinionated and too controversial and I couldn't back someone who was a sociopath which is kind of required in that that field so um like all people in my position who can't do either of those things anymore um I've become a consultant and the thing that I have found people want to pay me an absolute absolute Fortune to

[36:53] do for them and this is not a pitch because my time is completely booked is help them figure out what is the book that they should write that only they can write that the world would want who's the best agent for them what is the process like how do you build your marketing channels in anticipation of this um I absolutely love doing this because writing books has been super life-changing for me and it is an amazing thing to have this tiny piece of your soul in the library of Congress forever it's just it's something that hasn't been disintermediated and it takes four years and it's like I talked to all of these

[37:36] tech people and they're like can't we shortcut this and it's like you really can't you really can't so every time no matter who you are no matter gender where you live anywhere people walk in a bookstore they see a book they loved meant something to them I don't care if it's twilight or good to great they all do the same thing which is they pick it up and they hold it to their heart and they tell someone they're with about why it meant so much to them there's nothing else that has that impact still but here's the thing you read a good de great you read

[38:10] a wired for Story by Lisa cron which I me mentioned earlier you read a Tim Ferris book you feel like as you're reading it okay I got it I'm gonna do all this stuff it's going to unlock every problem in my life all problems will be solved everything's going to be great you fin the book and maybe maybe you remember remember one or two things from that book maybe you apply them to your life maybe you do it for a short period and then forget but it's actually really hard to apply a framework whether it's a wellness framework um something like Atomic habits or you know something

[38:48] that is more substantive like a business book a career book it's really hard to consistently remember what was in that book book that you read and keep applying it to your life and no one has the time to reread a book because there's always so many books coming out and so you will just forget and I've talked to so many people where they're like oh my God I totally forgot about the Hedgehog strategy and good to great I need to go back and reread that book what do they do I think there's an amazing opportunity for AI here to build coachable AI Bots based on authors and I

[39:28] am so skeptical about Ai and so many things but I think the detail and the rigor and the framework and the word count of a book I think if they had lectures speaking gigs online newsletters you know the more things that speak to that worldview the better I think it's a rare case where you would extend someone's influence and not in any way cannibalize the underlying product I still don't think it's a shortcut because I know a lot of people who are like instead of a book can I do this and it's like I still think there's why a book is hard is it's the the thought process it's the

[40:12] interrogation it's figuring out what have you not thought for it's the research of where does this framework fit in the world who else has researched this I don't I think that's what you can't shortcut because that's also all filtered through your life experience and your Genius as the as the author I think AI cannot shortcut that um but I think what it can do is it can extend you so for instance um Lisa who I've mentioned four times now if she were Beetle Juice she would have appeared um she is like a story coach to the stars and when my partner uh Paul Carr was gonna write his first novel he'

[40:51] published many non-fiction books but writing a novel is totally different he redwire for story and was like oh my God this is genius I'm completely sold but I don't really understand how to apply this to what I'm doing I don't understand when am I doing this right when am I being specific enough when am I putting enough Blood on the page all the things that she talks about that make compelling story and so he reached out to her and was like do you do coaching and she's like I do but I have a really long wait list now he was someone cancelled he you know made a

[41:21] compelling case he was able to like skip her weight her weight list they've spent four years working together on multiple novels he's now on his third novel um but he the book wasn't enough he needed that back and forth and I think a lot of people feel that way when they read Adam Grant's book when they read Tim Ferris is book when they read you know any of you know brne Brown books I think the ability for these people to leverage themselves even as like a daily reminder with doing nothing more than everything they've already written being put in into a nice ux so I totally buy the premise by the

[42:02] way like I especially buy the premise by the way there's so many people working on this this is not even a super new thing because so people have asked me about it but I think the way I'm thinking about it is somewhat different but anyway go ahead yeah yeah I think uh the Insight is correct 100% I think the Insight around people are buying books from their favorite authors or new authors and they it's an incredible experience and even the best books you know like the ones you mentioned you kind of lose you know you forget and you and you there needs to be a better way to get you in the

[42:43] habit now I always think about this is kind of old school of me but I always think about like who who's who builds the best community in the world or who or or one of them or or who's done a really good job at least of of spreading the gospel literally it's like religion like church and if you think about like the Bible like literally you know in Christianity for example every Sunday like you come you listen to you know what what what you're reading or Judaism uh every you know every every week you you learn about a section of the Bible and that piece that missing

[43:19] piece is what brings you back to actually reread the book make it a part of your um Zeitgeist and so I think that Insight is so right and the other Insight that you have which I think is really right is the why now around AI provides an ability to extend now the question I have is like how does what does the extension look like um yeah so I think what it's not is a newsletter because I think most authors um and there are many that do this really well and it's this is definitely like a core strategy I use when I'm helping an author build a multi-year strategy right

[43:56] you send a new newsletter and it's like hey remember this thing or like hey here's something you could try today and those are really interesting ways of continuing to like bring back those habits or Frameworks or you know Adam Grant might send a thing that's like hey here's a new piece of research that backs up what I wrote about and give and take and I think that's great but I think what you need is like a daily prompt like the equivalent of when I wake up in the morning you know I'm gonna look at my email I am G to see if anyone has texted me and then the next

[44:32] thing I do is I go do like the basic four daily New York Times puzzles and it's great because it is not a Time suck like there's really no archive on most of them and if there is I've already like done them so it doesn't matter but it's like I'm gonna spin maybe anywhere between five and 20 minutes I'm going to feel really great about myself I'm because I won't feel like I just do Doom scrolled I'll feel like I did something that made me feel smart and the app is like okay see you tomorrow it kind of kicks you out so like like Paul my

[45:05] partner has so many issues where he like has a smartphone then gets rid of it then has it then gets rid of it because he's like I get sucked in and it's a t time waste but the one app he always has is the New York Times game app because you really can't get sucked in um and so I think it's a similar thing I think you have your coach and you know every you can set the time you know if you're like a nursing mother maybe 2 a.m. is the right time for you you know what is the time you would naturally have that downtime and you get a prompt from your

[45:39] AI coach being like hey have you thought about this today or asks a question like let's see say it was um let's say it was something about being more in the moment and being more you know grateful maybe like that's what you want to work on like maybe you get a that's like um you know you need to put down your phone for the next hour or you know right now pick what hours you're gonna not be on your phone or uh you know um you know right now write down like five things that you're grateful for or you know let's say it's like a you know whatever

[46:17] something around Fitness like you know what is your plan that you can commit to for working out this week and by the way five minutes a day is totally appropriate because it's still putting you in a habit um you know it there's it it can be totally customized like I think if James Clear was doing this you know maybe you pick the different Atomic habits thing you want to do I remember when I was at um chairman me one of the things that I took was like you know in making like daily cold sales calls which is like no one thinks is fun I don't even think it's fun and I'm like I love

[46:54] sales um and it's like I had a spe specific time a specific day I would have like a specific like treat or beverage for that and I would like say out loud every day when I get home after dropping the kids at school I'm G to go sit in my Airstream with some mint tea and I am gonna do 10 sales calls and it's like so it's like I had that discipline for I don't know two weeks like what if James Clear was popping up in my phone saying have you done it how's the mint tea it's a great idea it's a great idea I think uh if I were if I was doing it if

[47:32] I was building an MVP here I think the way I would do it is first of all I'd be selling to these authors so i' I'd figure out you know what is the smallest thing that they'd pay for so I'd go i' reach out to the maybe not James clear to start but like B's and C's first get their feedback um then I would try to create an AI Avatar bot basically um and it doesn't need to be personalized from day one I think the way the to make it easier on yourself whoever ends up building this you could you could have it so that like on day one after you

[48:10] finish the book this happens on day seven this happens and everyone's kind of based on that in the future you could personalize it based on you know your goals and other things like that um and then and and I think with the of like AI avatars and stuff like that you can make something that looks like James CLE that talks like James CLE that feels like James clear that could be really exciting to people imagine having James clear as your coach like that's so cool yeah and really I mean when James Clear is coaching someone I bet he's saying the same things 80% of the time and I

[48:49] bet he would be thrilled to be able to extend himself and say the same things like another great person to do it would um Kim Scott it's like if you had a Kim Scott bot which Rhymes which is nice like what if they came in every day okay you had a great day didn't you yeah okay what conversation did you need to have that you you know wriggled out of because it felt too uncomfortable like what a good prompt for a CEO it's like oh my God you're so right I let myself off the hook for that I did it this is a reminder I need to go

[49:25] do that um and I you know I would I mean you know from the the Nike comment earlier I would start with James Clear I think the biggest authors are always looking for ways to leverage themselves and they're really likely to roll a dice on something like that um especially and I mean it has to be business authors it has to be tech people you know it has to be people who have like that following but like and the people who do multiple books like awesome put a QR code in the next book you know have a special edition that you could sell where the first you

[49:59] know thousand people get this you know get the beta into the Kim scottbot and after that you have to you uh you know have to be on a wait list or something you would drive so many bulk sales you would drive so many First Day sales which is like the the best bet of getting on the New York Times bestseller list if you said everyone who pre-orders gets to be gets the Kim Scott bought for free including in their Book price it only takes 10,000 books to get on the New York Times bestseller list that would have a meaningful meaningful difference in what a book does at Market

[50:37] totally and you can do a REV share like don't even charge James clear or whoever anything just be like I yeah nope and um because here's the it's like I would yeah you could do because you think about like the I mean like AI is a cost suck so you have to think about that but I bet the Publishers if you were driving sales would give you part of the royalties or would give you some amount of money like right now at the store when we do things like well there's a lot of places where we're we'll do like the only signed copies and so the

[51:12] Publishers will like ship books to that author in La they'll sign them and the publisher will pay for them to be shipped to us like Publishers have um discretionary marketing budgets for this kind of thing and so yeah I think probably the money could all come from the publisher um and you wouldn't have to charge the author but I will say like authors will 100% pay for it I mean most Business book authors I mean I know because I am paid to help Business book authors do a really good job like they invest in publicists they invest in people like me they invest in ghost writers they're giving a cut to their

[51:49] agent um you know most authors will buy copies of their own book that they're giving to um you know schools or they have in their office they give someone a copy um so most authors business authors are doing it because they want to give back because they want to leave Legacy because they want everything they've worked for in their career to kind of add up to a philosophy or something at the end of the day or because they're going to get a lot of other things out of it like you I mean I am Living testament to like I don't think I ever earned royalties on any of my books

[52:28] because I'm such a good salesperson I got massive advances but every one I wrote I got so many monetary career benefits whether it was speaking gigs whether it was board opportunities whether it was you know whatever whatever I mean you name it it is there's such a moat to getting a published book out there that even with self-publishing even with everything else that there's all these benefits down the line from having written a book so most of people who um you know who who take the time to write a book who are at that level it's not a monetary game for them and they don't want to

[53:05] leave they want they don't want they want regret minimization and if they've taken four years of their life to get this book into the world that represents what they think and what they know and what they've built in their career you think they're going to bulk at spending um a couple extra dollars or pennies per copy on a subsidized chatbot no because they're also going to think it's cool totally you g you you gave us the sauce these are two good ideas a Zuckerberg Story come on this is this is better than expectations Sarah where plus a cat a dog like you know if you're listening to this on audio you

[53:47] missed out because the you know the YouTube animal appearances were were iconic um Sarah where uh where where do you want to plug like what do you want to plug if anything you I'm so delighted that for the first time in my life I don't actually need anything from anyone nor do I have anything to plug but if you I can always come up with something so if you uh want to buy books not from Amazon you can go to best bookstore.com and buy them from us we also have an incredible newsletter I read about I don't know anywhere from three to 10 books a week so I always have amazing

[54:27] recommendations of both fiction and non-fiction books so check out best bookstore.com and sign up for our newsletter and we also if there's any CEOs listening one thing we do which I love is we we do corpor corporate Book Fairs so it's like the Scholastic Book Fair but like for your company and at conferences we'll do book uh popups and we've done that some for some of the largest uh software companies on the planet and you even people who are heads of huge companies when you show them a table of books and they can take anything they want and we'll even ship it home for free it's like $30 from your

[55:08] company is there's no other way for that to make someone look happier so those are my plugs more books and more hands did you know that there are 19 research studies that show if you read fiction you become more empathetic you can understand what other people need and desire you can get along with more different kinds of people there are so many studies that show that reading fiction especially for people anyone building a consumer product trying to sell to people trying to understand the empathy that you gain from that is absolutely a career Advantage so that is always my soapbox because there's so people are like I don't have time to

[55:46] read fiction I gotta slay and it's like you will slay as a result of reading fiction totally folks you're you're sleeping on fiction uh I'll include those links in the description so it's easier if if you if you miss that um go and do that and Sarah until next time this has been a lot of fun [Music]

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