# This legend gave away 3 crazy cash-flowing business ideas

Channel: Greg Isenberg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtXN2tgvNOM
Duration: 1 hr 3 min
Language: English
Words: 11172
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/VtXN2tgvNOM

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[0:00] so one of the things I really love to do is launching stuff like taking something that's pretty boring so our latest thing if you go to ajs smart.com we just launched a in-person facilitation training essentially for mainly for corporate employees and we repackaged it in a way that no one else in the industry is doing it at a price that's three to four times more than anyone else is charging that's the kind of stuff I really love to do I I love to take boring elements pull them together and repackage them and then sell them with me as the CEO we would probably max out a 10 million on a business like

[0:34] that I can't believe we're doing this yeah it's PR cool I'm very very excited about it you know you messaged me about coming onto the Pod and you were just like hey I've got this other friend who's this big-time YouTuber and he should be on the Pod but also like I would be on the Pod too and I was like whoaa that person who you mentioned by the way I've already spoken to about coming on the pod and I would much rather you on the Pod than him well I much appreciate that Greg I appreciate it I just didn't want to like be presumptuous messaging you

[1:10] like hey uh just let me on your podcast you know just I'm so cool just let me on your podcast because I met you once because we got drunk together you know now you have to let me on your podcast that's the rule you know the rule about startup ideas podcast have a coup and then we're bonded you come on the Pod deep bonding happened deep bond deep bonding yes absolutely um you are the internet's best kept secret as far as I'm concerned oh no well no one's ever said that to me in a good way I mean a lot of people know about you and you you create a lot of content

[1:55] and you're you're you're known as the quote unquote unscheduled CEO in some circles yeah in some circles yeah I think the unscheduled CEO is like my my little that's my secret thing that's my dirty dirty secret little podcast going on in the background uh most me most people know me because of just nonstop Instagram ads so I think if you think about the the majority of people who know about me they're already annoyed just because of the amount of Instagram ads that they see with my face on it exactly but it it's it's worked and that's kind of why I wanted you to have why I wanted to have you on it's

[2:35] just because I I do think you have a ton of good ideas for Better or For Worse for the internet but I'm excited to talk more about it yeah me too I even brought a few uh weird little ideas to talk about as well weird I know I know you like guest to bring startup ideas and so I brought a couple of ideas I brought a couple of things that I think you're going to like your audience will find valuable of course you had to call it weird ideas so it's very well some of them are sexual okay okay all right maybe I don't know if you're going to put this on the

[3:10] I listened to your last episode with Noah Kagan you talked about this podcast you went on where you recorded an episode and then they did not air it I think this is going to be what happens to me for this podcast that's possible that's possible that was the 20 VC podcast yeah which I I didn't I wasn't it didn't air so what a shame I'm going to air this I'm going to air this we're going to we're we're we're we want unfiltered unscheduled CEO Jonathan Courtney you know two two names two first names one name great guy let's go what do you got what's idea number

[3:43] one oh you want me to actually go into the the startup ideas straight away okay yeah all right yeah because I do all right that's how we do it in America you know in America it's stra to business let's just make some money immediately okay here's my first idea so I mean first of all just maybe a tiny bit of clarification for people I am not a startup founder I'm a business owner a small business owner right I don't uh I don't do VC stuff I'm I actually do invest in other people's companies but my own business that makes me money um is essentially a small business you know

[4:21] we sell uh we're mixture of an agency info products and all of that kind of stuff but we work with a [ __ ] ton of startups and I'm always excited excited to when I see an idea that just excites me or a an industry where I can see that something should be happening but because I don't start startups I'm always frustrated so here are some ideas that I want your audience to bring into the world I want them to make themselves billionaires and I'll be an investor right in these ideas okay so Greg I'm very sensitive to noise here's my first idea for you very sensitive to noise but

[4:58] I like living in cities I also have like tinitus meaning my ears are ringing when it's too quiet I don't like I don't like when it's too quiet but I also don't like noise right so what do you do what do you do when your ears are ringing but you don't like noise but you want to live in a city uh especially for me one thing that irritates me living in a like a kind of building with lots of other people is Neighbors walking around uh so even though I have a nice insulated apartment there's just there's always something that's going to wake me up now I'm

[5:29] someone who invests a lot in my sleep so I have an eight sleep you know mattress cover that keeps me cool all night that thing's amazing um I take sleep supplements uh all that kind of [ __ ] I wear my like you know blue blocking glasses but the thing that has improved my sleep more than anything else this is not a sales pitch this is an idea for to start off I'm so used to pitching stuff that I'm in sales pitch mode the thing that has improved my sleep the most is a essentially Brown noise just this noise coming out of my Sono speaker and

[6:05] I figured this out by buying different Brown noise and white noise machines so the first thing I did is I went to like wire cutter if you don't use wire cutter for getting your products you're an idiot it's just a product review site and on wire cutter they have this product called the elran Evo I bought that it was good but it wasn't loud enough and it wasn't Bassy enough so then I started looking around the internet and I ended up finding this like white noise and sleep sounds podcast on Spotify and I found the perfect noise for sleeping which is called Deep Brown noise now I'm going to get to the first

[6:40] startup idea right so the first startup idea and if you look by the way the bestselling white noise machine in the [ __ ] world if you go to go to this website for me so search elran and then go to soundof sleep.com now I get very excited when I see a not very sexy website and not very sexy marketing for a product that's super useful and this is this would be my first startup idea it would be disrupting basically creating the eight sleep for brown noise and creating a device that is so it's AI powered of course it figures out when you know when it hears your neighbors walking it adds

[7:30] more base to the noise it turns on automatically at the right time when you're going to bed it gets a little bit more Qui it can connect to your whoop and it can tell when you're in deep sleep so it can be a little bit quieter it can be a bit louder when you're in phases where it doesn't want you to when you would be more susceptible to waking up and I think honestly just building a re I would even honestly think buying elran buying their product and reselling it with better marketing would be a pretty huge business not a multi-billion doll business I'm not a

[8:00] billion guy I'm not a billion guy right the most one of our products has ever made we're just doing the like calculations of it is like18 to20 million so I don't I can't lie and tell you I know how to make a billion dollar startup but I think taking this general idea of how unbelievably noticeably powerful Brown noise is for sleep like the eight Sleep mattress you can kind of kind of tell it's working I don't know maybe but you also pay this crazy subscription but I think a company could come along and make a connected subscription based noise device that you can also there's going to be like a baby version of it to

[8:41] bring around with you to hotels um and this actually really improves my sleep first idea what do you think you buying it are you investing well yes and yes so I'm like a sleep nerd too this is my sleep score from last night on my e sleep 95 check this out I I D I didn't sleep well last night wait for it two nights ago all right let me show you two nights ago first we got a 97 who you see that wait we can oh there we go yeah oh man wow last night last night because I had a late call oh 88 although I will say you didn't wake

[9:25] up that much is it because of the brown it is so there's something deep and brown in my room clarification question cuz to me I don't know what brown noise is ready to me Brown noise just sounds like I'm gonna get pink eye it's not coming out of a body it's not coming out of a specific part of the body all right right now go to Spotify type in white noise and sleep sounds the playlist is actually a podcast called add free white noise and sleep sounds 12 hours M then you want to go to the podcast which is called Deep Brown noise and Skip to about 20 seconds

[10:09] because you actually have to pay to listen to it without an ad at the start which you do not want to happen in the middle of the night which has happened to me following the shortage so yeah this guy exactly this guy I hear him every night this is the noise of deep Brown noise it sounds like being in a plane [Music] could you sleep on planes by the way um I mean not unless it's business class right no I asked cuz like you know I can't sleep on planes so to me I'm like is brown noise going to work for me how do I know if Brown noise

[10:45] going to work for me I guess I just need to try it do things wake you up at night noises yes all the time Brown noises deep Brown noise is going to work for you so things that wake me up dogs barking Sirens Neighbors walking around very violent farts coming from different parts of my apartment including me just anything that makes a noise will be the cool thing about deep Brown noise is that it has the base so white noise is 2022 [ __ ] right people are talking about white noise all the time that covers like the high kind of levels of I don't know people going like birds and [ __ ]

[11:21] deep and brown noise is cool but that's like 2023 [ __ ] deep Brown noise is 2024 level so it it gets the Bassy stuff as well I live in Berlin everyone listens to techno 247 and I still but I still want to live where stuff is happening I also still want to sleep with my windows open to get that nice oxygen all that kind of stuff deep Brown noise has changed my life and if someone listening to this is like why don't you just wear earplugs because I'm not a psychopath exactly might drop because he's not a psychop I don't want someone to break into my apartment and murder me

[11:56] without me even realizing I mean the brown noise will cover it up until moment that the knife is about to enter my brain but with the earplugs it would be in me already and I wouldn't even realize it I mean if I was breaking into someone's apartment in Berlin and all of a sudden I hear Brown noise from a machine like this deep Brown noise I'm like uh oh I got to run out of here this guy crazy bad happening in here he's got like a little plane engine um but it's honestly been I'm all jokes aside this has increased my sleep score on the E sleep more than any supplement

[12:29] more than any [ __ ] blue blocking glasses more than fasting more than putting Brian Johnson's olive oil up my ass like any of these things have improved a little bit they can they can improve my deep sleep maybe a tiny bit my RM a tiny bit the brown noise when I switch it off it's like I go down to 85 when it's on I'm up to like 95 and I have a kid and sometimes there's non if you have a child guys there's non like that's another I do not want to wear earplugs when I have a kid in case she needs me but I don't need to hear every

[13:05] cough and every like little you know whatever and so the brown noise it does this thing of keeping you aware you can hear things if they're important but is sleep and covering especially neighbor foot this honestly if we just end the podcast right now this will be the most valuable thing and guess I'm just kidding but but this will actually help a couple of people who are very sensitive and so I think this this this startup could then expand to light sensitive light sensitivity as well because I'm you know everyone is like hyper sensitive and everyone hears everything and sees everything it's like e and actually I'm unfortunately one of

[13:41] these people where I get a migraine if it's too bright and if it's too loud I get overwhelmed um and just a startup and I the research that I was doing trying to figure this out was really most of my time was spent on Reddit right and it was just constant self-experimentation I was thinking there should just be a sweet ass brand eight sleep hire me as your head of sensitive sleep stuff and also by the way the eight sleep dude is your pod sometimes just really loud for no reason yeah 100% it just act up act up like last night it was just like I you know I'm spending like I

[14:22] don't know thousands of dollars on this thing and then SP spending subscription service and it's just screaming at me and you honestly if you use an eight sleep you need to use deep Brown noise to cover the variation in noises from the bed I know this is I'm assuming your podcast is not I'm assuming the people who listen to your podcast aren't going to be like uh first world problems it's a what startup ideas but yeah obviously obviously I know this is a first world problem Oh my eight sleep is too loud yeah oh no the Techno from the best club in the world is playing yeah

[14:59] well so that's my first idea I like it so tact you know if we're going to get tactical sound of sleep I'm on their website um this product looks great um I go to their affiliate program I'm like okay maybe the way to like bootstrap this is you just become an affiliate to them they give you 30% or whatever and then you validate it and then build your own then I go to their affiliate program our affiliate program has ended we are no longer accepting new Affiliates dude I would I wouldn't if I'm making this into a business I'm I'm I'm probably doing it a bit more MVP style I'm making my own

[15:37] Brown noise track so my own deep Brown noise audio track so one of the things I really love to do is launching stuff like it's taking something that's pretty boring so our our latest thing if you go to ajs smart.com this is not an ad it's sold out you cannot get it and we're not doing it again but as an example we just launched something which could not be more boring on a facilit in-person facilitation training essentially for mainly for corporate employees and we repackaged it in a way that no one else in the industry is doing it uh completely like at a at a price that's three to four

[16:15] times more than anyone else is charging that's the kind of stuff I really love to do I I love to take boring elements pull them together and repackage them and then sell them but obviously I want to believe in the things as well with this deep noise thing I think that the way the company white noise and sleep sounds is doing it is closer to the way I would want to play it out and so I would probably rather sell the subscription to initially to different Brown noise things the way they're doing it but the best case scenario would be if I could validate this I'd probably

[16:50] want to make like work with some manufacturers to create this product but I don't do that [ __ ] man you know so it's all yours I know but here's the thing so I went to San Francisco recently and I I met like a bunch of the cool kids um at this place called Founders Inc it's like a lot of young a lot of young people building startups and a lot of them are actually Mark Zuckerberg for example you mean like like Mark if Mark Zuckerberg was you know 20 years ago he would he would he would have gone to this this really cool uh this really cool space called

[17:25] Founders Inc and a lot of the people there are building um like Little Hardware devices that they're 3D printing that's so cool and then injecting Ai and voice into it so I wonder if this isn't that hard to actually MVP dude look here's what I'm good at I'm good at having those ideas I'm good at marketing them and making money from them and selling them and doing internet marketing and making a physical thing that's something I'm not going to be if you want me to pretend for the podcast I am going to build this no but I I'm probably not going to build it realistically but I'd love if

[18:07] someone would do that and I would definitely invest 10 EUR oh sorry $12 oh okay now I understand um so I had uh I had Kevin rose on the Pod last week and I asked him what kind of he he had this like incredi looking microphone like it make made our microphones look like it was Amateur hour the lights around it here I think so yeah and it's just like this it's a it's a gray it looks like a stainless steel block it almost looks I'm looking at an Apple Studio display it kind of looks like an Apple Studio display I just got one of those today

[18:41] literally just arrived this morning that's such a I mean it's not a weird thing that you say that but look I don't think anyone's going to care about this part but this just arrived at my apartment today oh Apple Studio that's cool that's the whole that's the whole piece of information okay let's go that's the whole bit let's go back to Kevin Rose yeah back to Kevin Rose away from Noah Kagan Kevin Rose and then me oh man exact oh yeah such a downgrade and people are gonna love this episode more than any episode so he has this thing called the the the the company's called teenage engineering

[19:18] dude are you [ __ ] serious wait a second let's go back to this picture let's go back to this picture let's zoom in now this makes sense what's on my desk all teenag engineering products yeah are you talking about this microphone yeah that's exactly what I'm talking about what the [ __ ] teenage engineering so teenage engineering is like I think they're in Europe somewhere Am I Wrong Sweden Sweden which is like makes sense they're in Sweden so theyve got these beautifully designed products uh like synthesizers wireless speakers um all their stuff is sold out and all of it is thousands of dollarss um and all of it like if you go to

[19:59] teenageengineering all of it makes your mouth water I have every single one of their products and they're one of my favorite companies in the world so if you like I can imagine your deep Brown noise machine to be like yes teenage engineering style yes deep Brown teenage engineering TJ teenage engineering if you're listening to this and you want to make a deep Brown noise machine with me I'm very close to your office I'm here in Berlin I'm coming to Denmark this weekend even though this podcast is never going to come out I'm talking to you right now let's do this together no I think the move is you

[20:40] don't do it together with them like we do it we compete we we're competitive guys know [ __ ] teenage engineering [ __ ] you guys yeah adult engineering adult adult engineering that's us me and Greg yeah exactly and what you what you do is you build this MVP you hire someone in Sweden to design it you Swedish yeah exactly got it they have to be Swedish so you know designed in designed in Sweden and so we can say that and then we put up a landing page a framer a framer uh frer funnels click uh I don't know we can I would do framer just

[21:25] because it's more beautiful but you would do clickfunnels probably better clickfunnels it's it's so we got to talk about clickfunnels in a while your audience your audience needs to hear more about clickfunnels we'll get we'll get to clickfunnels we won't leave this conversation without talking about clickfunnels again as that sound I'm still with you your audience is going to be so annoyed at the amount of interruptions that are happening here but um and uh you put up a landing page you you you you know you get some creators to back it and you pre- order it you know you do pre-sale and then you figure it out from

[22:03] there yeah dude I would do it I love the Sleep space um yeah and this is the only one you can actually measure honestly if you wear an aura ring or a whoop and if you are sound sensitive this is just a huge topic that people haven't been tackling but it really changed my entire life the other thing that I always thought Apple would build but never built which has also changed my life in Miami is an air purifier right I haven't gotten in on that game yet so there's just a ton of dust and allergens in the air and having you know not that I'm like allergic to a

[22:43] lot of things or but whatever I have people over they might be sick this removes it I have like I open the door on my balcony and there's like pollen and like mold from the outside that comes in it just keeps like a fresh air I always thought Apple would potentially build like an air purifier um they never did but I I like the idea of like starting with a deep Brown noise machine and then likeing your way up yeah working your way up working your way out but I think like uh you know we call this company sensitivity um a sensitivity Ai and um billions yeah that's it or elran if

[23:27] you're listening to this I'm sure elran the guys at elran probably listen to this podcast every week uh call up me and Greg what we'll do for you guys is we'll take that product off your hands and we'll resell it under a new brand called adult engineer adult engineering yeah and you know with teenage engineering you always have to have a cryptic name like the tp7 so we'll call it the adult engineering dn2 deep deep Brown oh no DB deep Brown n dbn perfect I need to go I need go it's been a long day for me on this end dude I'm at the end of like campaign meetings

[24:12] like it's my eyes are so red look at me they're great you look so fresh and I look red you're firing at all cylinders what's idea number two that was idea no no I'm kidding let's see I dude I I put a lot of them together here um will we do a naughty one let's do it how naughty can we get on your podcast I mean it's the internet you know you've seen the Internet it's a pretty naughty place I don't know dude you know some people's podcasts are a little bit more like we got to be we got to be careful with what we say there's

[24:44] no advertisers good okay yeah you know the way and this is something that I'm sure people have been thinking about so the other day I was on the verge yesterday the verge.com they were they were showing off this product called orifice doai if you haven't checked out orifice doai it's the world's first AI powered sex toy for men and I was looking at this and I was thinking why do women get all of like the nice cute like just APPL like branding around sex toys and guys get the flashlight and orifice AI I genuinely think there's an entire Market out there for sex I don't know what pleasure self-pleasure devices

[25:34] for men that is like as big a as big a thing as it is for women but just not creepy and not weird and not like some dirty [ __ ] that you have to like I don't know just like the flashlight you know what I mean it doesn't you don't want to have that lying around if someone walks into your apartment you know not that you want to have other sex toys laying around when you walk into an apartment but still there's something deeply not cool or or like uh sophisticated that's the word I'm looking for like if you look for there's a lot of like uh brands

[26:10] in and I don't know if this brand is in Germany or in in the US but in Germany there's this brand of sex toys called fun and like there's a whole store it looks like an Apple store it's mainly toys for women this just could be the biology thing where maybe you can just make more of a variety of toys for women but I think we got to make like the Apple more sophisticated kind of self-pleasure toy business for men that isn't called orifice or Fleshlight and is rather called something like adult engineering it's also the next adult engineering product because that can also help you

[26:48] sleep Greg if you know what I mean that's right so I agree with you the naming is absurd I mean you invite a friend over to come have some tea or something just like my orifice no it's oh oh oh you just dropped oh you just stepped on my orifice be careful I say that even if I have no sex toys lying around yeah so that's a bit weird and so I think you know the Cannabis industry actually did a really good job of right of taking something that was like pretty like it was for Stoners and stuff like that and then in La there was this company called

[27:28] men which basically created like the Apple for Cannabis stores yes that's what I mean exactly like because it is really I I I wrote this as a joke you said I can say whatever I want and I was careful because again you know I do a lot of work in the US a lot of work with us companies a lot of uh work with EU companies in EU in Europe I can say anything I want in a meeting no one cares if I swear in the US I was recently in New York and and dropped the f bomb in front of like 57 people working in a large bank and I got a like

[28:02] and I was like oh sorry sorry about that just G to tone that back but I did have a joke name for so what I wrote here is is there a way to make masturbation toys for men less creepy a Cool brand like liquid death but for male sex toys not called 5000 for example yeah exactly we shouldn't call that no that should be the name of this episode just so out of context 5,000 yeah watch this episode to the end all right all right I'll give you another one um I dude I have a lot you I I I woke up this morning I got your

[28:43] message saying three to five ideas and myself and my girlfriend just sat down and we just pumped out a couple of ideas okay let's stay on the sex Concept in Berlin right we're we're in Berlin I don't know if know much about Berlin but it's a very sex positive environment which I'm which I'm which I think is great um I think though what I will say is that a lot of the sex positive stuff I don't know if anyone knows about this sex positive idea it's just the idea that like in Berlin there's a lot of clubs where you can go and you know I don't know dude I don't

[29:19] know how far I can go on this podcast I me do people know generally the Berlin thing like people kind of know that but all right okay let's say you're a couple and you're interested in like I'm just I'm interested in exploring kind of what's out there you know and we're not talking about like going as far as swinging or whatever you start looking at Retreats like sex positive Retreats like maybe you learn Tantra whatever I feel like there's a missing part of the market for people who are not interested in the spiritual stuff who are not interested in the Psychedelic side of things and who just kind of want to go

[29:55] and have a more yeah just just a non non-spiritual non psychedelic sex positive Retreats and what I have written separately is I think there's also a part in the market completely separately for entrepreneurial like unplugged Retreats that are again non-spiritual no yoga No meditation no whm Hof none of those things I think there's like sometimes these interesting ideas are mixed with things that are a big turnoff if you're not into spiritual kind of more psychedelic things so that that's another I feel like there's a place in the market for looking at things which are usually mixed with psychedelics uh and usually mixed with meditation or yoga and removing those

[30:45] elements and making it more practical look at that weird thumbs up thing just appeared it's so weird when that does that um I think uh no uh I think uh I like the idea so a buddy of mine has an app that he's beta testing right now in New York and Miami called beyond beyond beyond uh oh yeah it's a NAU app so the idea is basically it's an app for open-minded people basically the idea is have you heard of the field app no I haven't so field app is like a popular it's kind of like Tinder but for mult multiple people for like couples looking for other

[31:30] couples I have another idea on that my coming up for you but yeah no I haven't heard of it but I'm going to check it out yeah so that app is apparently like really is getting really popular but it feels very like Tinder in the sense that it feels from a UI ux perspective like if Tinder is like the Walmart of the internet R is like you know a boutique it doesn't it feels very you know so he was like how do I create the Rya but for uh open-minded people and it's really starting to take off that is very interesting the way he's scaling it is through these parties I

[32:11] shouldn't call them parties Retreats like you what you what you were saying so he's doing one soon in El uh Els salador where he's like renting a big place he's inviting a bunch of people the community he's curating it um and it's like more along the lines of what you're talking about um and it's starting to work for me it's like a framework for like these Retreats are actually a really good way for user acquisition and like getting really be stoked about what you're doing I'm not personally saying that this is something that I interested in right now at this point in my life but I think it's

[32:45] something where I'm just exposed to it a lot in Berlin and I just see I just do see a gap for it there's like a definitely a space in the market for the non kind of of spiritual version of that or like the non don't know whatever that would be all right let's go let's go nonsexual for a second all right and actually no I've got a really bad sexual no um okay do you know the app brick and the product brick you use it I have one right here yeah I do use it okay so brick I think it's an amazing product I use it every day let's see

[33:26] what my current streak is my current streak let's take a look let's get it 39 hour is it uh 319 hours is my current streak why is my phone so wet looking um so brick is basically a physical product which you can use to lock certain apps on your phone and when you lock these certain apps on your phone uh you have this physical product imagine it looks like this and then it it's also magnetic you can like stick it somewhere in your kitchen and you cannot get access to those product there you go you cannot get access to those apps again until you physically use the brick to

[34:09] touch off your phone again now I think that's a cool idea because I think there's a lot of problems forming and I don't think it's going to get any better anytime soon when it comes to phone addiction I think people don't don't also don't realize they don't realize they're addicted to their devices yet I think it hasn't really been defined people kind of understand what it looks like to be addicted to things like alcohol or drugs but I don't think there's a clear understanding yet of what it looks like to be addicted to your physical your digital device and I think there's a huge space in the market for a company

[34:44] to come along and be essentially the digital you know like the the product zero for fasting something like zero but paired with something like brick so not only can you get a lot of Education on maybe potentially the dangers of using digital devices all the time but you can explain what zero is to people for for people who don't know what it is zero is a fasting app it helps you to fast uh do different types of fasts um and track those fasts but it's also got a lot of educational content from people like Peter AA Dr Peter Dr Peter AA um and so it builds the education around why you

[35:26] should why fasting is valuable but it also tracks your fasts and it also kind of builds streaks and and gives you a lot of uh feedback so I think it's it's a great product for just keeping track and actually Kevin also created a product called zero alcohol which is a product Kevin and Mike uh worked on this product called zero alcohol and this is a product that does something similar but for alcohol and I think there's a huge gap in the market for people first of all a lot of what a lot of what I like to do is pres uh show people that they actually do have an issue a lot of

[35:58] marketing is like hey you do you realize that this is actually a problem uh and then showing people how they can work with it and I think that brick is probably one of the first products that's actually helped me reduce my time on my phone and honestly I I just see also having a daughter now I really want there to be some infrastructure for people dealing with digital addiction but brick is just literally a utility and I think it could be turned into a brand a product uh educ Media company around digital addiction um so it could do something good but also I do think that's something that

[36:36] people would pay for especially entrepreneurs like me who are on our phones all day just having something like that where I'm like no matter what I do I always just keep checking my phone I'm just addicted I just want to see what's on Twitter and so I need something that literally physically blocks Safari so that when I'm sitting on my couch and I open my phone or I'm sitting on the toilet and I open my phone I would literally have to walk into the living room pants down to get that block to unblock Safari so that I can look at it which I would have no problem doing

[37:08] but still you know what I mean right it's just this extra layer of friction that stops you from using your digital product and so the idea would be a bigger you see you see the pattern here I'm looking at boring stuff and thinking about how to make a bigger brand making content like like a Content strategy around it because that's what I do so how would you okay so say you were say you bought brick what I would do to make it a bigger company yeah all right you ready Greg oh I'm I would just use my own Playbook I mean it's not it's again just to clarify I am not someone

[37:46] who grows businesses to billion like I don't know how to do that I don't know how to do the VC thing that Kevin does where you just make these crazy huge companies I know I've never hired I've never had more than 36 people working at this at at AJ and smart um and I've never made I've never had a product that has made more than 20 million I think it's $18 million just just so when you're listening to my playbook this is me thinking from a pure maybe 37 signals kind of no VC bootstrap just it's about making money uh but that might not be the big type of

[38:26] business that some people listen to this podcast would want to have but okay I buy brick and my goal is to make lots of money with it as much money as possible and spread awareness about it the first thing I would probably do maybe in in week one is I'd probably start a YouTube channel uh that YouTube channel would be 100% focused on grabbing all the keywords around uh digital addiction uh phone addiction um any I would just do the keyword research and and the easy way to do that by the way if you just want to be really uh very lowii is go to YouTube and start slowly typing in the

[39:05] thing like so for example I would write phone I would write first phone addiction and I would I would just press enter and I would remake the top three videos better than the ones that are there already then I would click into the first video and I would remake the first recommended video so the start of me creating a YouTube channel or the start of when we move into a new topic at AJ and smart is essentially REM making all of the most popular videos and I don't know if you know this trick I can't remember who I learned it from if you find a video that has a lot of

[39:35] views but very few subscribers that's something that YouTube really likes and so you you want to remake that video essentially so I would start uh one stream would be having a YouTube channel to build some sort of content awareness and it would be purely SEO focused so I'm not trying to build a like a YouTube channel like Mr Beast where people are super engaged I'm doing what we've done with a SM where people are searching for keywords and finding us on YouTube that YouTube video would probably link to a free mini course or could be literally a small ebook or it could be a free community I mean we

[40:16] both use school.com um it would just be a place to ner collect and nurture leads for a while so I would I would just be creating content collecting and nurturing leads on this topic of digital um digital addiction etc etc the product itself wouldn't be super to be honest like I'd rather do this without having to buy this brick product like the logistics behind that wouldn't be very interesting to me personally I think I would make I think one would make a lot more money doing this without taking on a physical product um what I would do is I would build essentially a media and cont business an info product

[40:59] business around digital addiction um I would write the book on the topic but I wouldn't launch it with a publisher I would launch it the way that a direct response marketers launch their books and which is the way we launched our previous book uh I would use I would create a bookfunnel a bookfunnel is just like essentially your your ping you're you're losing money on every book because you're giving it away for free a physical copy of the book and you're getting but you're bringing people through like a a lead collection funnel and potentially upselling them to something like a course or something like that um I'm always thinking in the

[41:39] way the things that work for me is selling info products so I would probably sell training in-person training uh I would I would very likely try to get corporates to book me and my team to do large scale digital awareness training for their employees and I think you if with me as the CEO we would probably max out a 10 million on a product on a business like that that's my problem is that I I'm not as ambitious as like a lot of American CEOs where they're like I'm going to take over the world with this thing I'm like that's that's fine that's enough well a lot of people are coming to that

[42:19] realization now that especially people listening to this that like that VC uh treadmill is is definitely treadmill and so a lot of people are it's becoming now popular to do what you've been doing for a while and what I've started to do over the last few years yeah dude you're you're also doing that a lot I see with the school group um I see you with the boring SEO company um these are just it's just so much more enjoyable to look at the p&l every month and just be able to see this how much money we make this how much money we spent and now we can optimize based on

[42:56] those things this is how much our ads cost this is how much it this is how many people bought our thing um yeah just selling services or info products and uh masterminds or any sort of Education thingies I also I masterminds masterminds like here's my take on masterminds is like I've had really productive Mass what people would call Mastermind sessions with Sean pory for example from my first million used to have this like Mastermind type type thing that he used to do and it was super productive um so I've had I've had uh instances of that but these like pay for a mastermind type experiences that I see a

[43:42] lot of people do like to me would feel weird like I don't think I would launch a mastermind personally because I would be like I'm not going to charge you Jonathan $30,000 a year to like hang out with me I disagree with you um I agree with you that I don't personally want to run a mastermind and charge people for it and i' I've kind of tried different things on that on on that general idea and I've never personally enjoyed running them or even every time I've just every time I'm just about to start running one of these things I quit I will say that I am currently in a

[44:16] mastermind that's been ludicrously helpful and previously I was in Sam oven's Mastermind for 3 years and Sam ovens maybe with within maybe within the first or second day of being in the Mastermind changed literally like I joined in like let's say on a Tuesday the following Tuesday I completely rethought everything about AJ and smart and the product we created in Sam oven's Mastermind with Sam's help is our still our core product four years later still the thing that makes us our most money and what I will say is I like so when you have some I I think you've met Sam when you have someone who's very special

[44:56] and who has like done the thing you want to do I actually prefer to be able to pay them for their advice rather than trying to figure out how I can deliver value as well uh if it's possible so if someone has a way for me to pay them just to get the [ __ ] advice I will I would rather pay them Sam's Mastermind was $36,000 per year just just like the connections I made the Val the information I got from Sam the energy of being in that group was always worth a lot more than 36k per year and the other thing I will say is almost everyone

[45:34] who's been who who was in that Mastermind is still like really good friends with Sam so I would disagree with you on that one the current Mastermind I'm in is actually one of the members of the ma of Sam oven Mastermind a guy called Blake lrange and the product we just launched the full stack facilitator we wanted to launch this for 3,000 or 4,000 or something like that one 30 minute conversation with him where we talked about repositioning it uh increased the price to $9,000 and it sold out so we like just the amount of money we wouldn't have made if I hadn't had that conversation with him but I do

[46:16] understand why you wouldn't want to do that or why I wouldn't want to run it I just I would just find it annoying um but I personally am very happy that masterminds exist for my own own sake so first of all you've changed my mind on on things before so literally like the first minute I met you you're like hi I'm Jonathan and then I was like oh I got to record a bunch of videos for or what what was I saying no I was like oh I have a cohort-based course I'm doing next week oh cohort based courses and exactly what you said you're like

[46:52] Coates courses what are you crazy and and then you changed my mind on it and ever since then I I I never I stopped doing that coort after meeting you I don't do coort based courses anymore yeah glad you don't yeah and it's been great because it allows me to run my businesses um it's just so much energy to run a coort based course yes what I but I did do is record a bunch of my Frameworks and playbooks put it on school community empire.co and that's going really well and then I I show up to some amas uh here and there and that way I actually

[47:29] get to know people because in the coer based course model I was just kind of like I felt like I was regurgitating all my stuff it sucks so like felt like a waste of time anyways you changed my mind on one thing The Mastermind thing I I totally understand like okay the right Mastermind could be impactful the wrong Mastermind could be crap um is basically what you know is basically the idea I think I've never been in a bad Mastermind so I I think it also depends what type of person you are I think I would imagine you are the type of person who can take the best out of almost any

[48:00] interaction for me I'm like I'm looking at every mentor and every Mastermind or everything every course I join is just like a giant blob and I'm looking for the tiny bits that are useful for me um I don't care about like Sam oven's Mastermind I was in it for three years I never once turned up to the in-person events in La never once I never turned up to I almost turned up to nothing never saw me my way of using things is like I turn up I ask one question and then six months later I turn up and say this was the result of that question and

[48:35] now I have something I'd like to ask and that's worth 36k for me because it saves me 36k worth of time working on what I do what I will say is masterminds are not the $36,000 Mastermind is not useful for someone who doesn't know how to take action but you're you're not like for example I think a mastermind that would be good for you this will be controversial this is back to clickfunnels if you're if you're selling info products I think there is like one Mastermind which actually I am not joining right now because the price is so high plus I don't live in the US plus

[49:14] all the events are in the US but if I lived in the US I would join this in a heartbeat and it's it's not someone some it's not a guy that people like in maybe who listen to your podcast it's more likely someone people don't like but I'm bringing a weird angle it's Russell brunson's uh top level Mastermind called Atlas only 15 people are in it um I don't think there's a better again we're talking about the info product space we're talking about marketing we're talking about direct response marketing and copyrighting we're not talking about VC nice looking landing pages and and like fancy looking products we're

[49:57] talking about stuff very much just like money making uh I I think that s um not sens I think Russell brunson's Atlas Mastermind is probably insanely valuable while it exists that's the other thing I think about when I was thinking about joining Sam oven's Mastermind I was like this guy is going to once these people get rich enough they just of course don't do masterminds anymore because they're just chilling like Russell Brunson you who knows you maybe have two more years worth of getting access to something like this for I think it's 100 250k per year I think um which might seem like a lot but you obviously would only join if

[50:38] you knew that the advice could make you more than that um I would join it if I lived in the US um just My just My Vibes so I don't know much about Russell Brenson besides kind of like you seeing his ads in my face for so many years and he seems scammy and he's got that kind of like energy that most people in our world doesn't don't like so talk to me why is R Russell Brunson someone you look up to and why is clickfunnel something that people like me should take seriously all right I didn't think I'd be doing a sales pitch for Russell

[51:18] Brunson here um okay I'll tell you that so as as AJ and smart we were we were normal design agency up until 2016 we were selling in-person training we were doing a lot of content marketing based on like Gary ve um we even went to this like in-person Mastermind with Gary ve where there was just 12 people and it was great we we have a YouTube video on that actually of doing this Mastermind with him and so we were all in on this Gary ve method which is kind of like creating [ __ ] tons of content building up your brand and then that almost automatically leads to sales and ET Etc

[51:57] but then I was introduced to this book called expert secrets in 2016 and this is when I was trying to when I was thinking about this idea of digitizing the in-person training we were doing and the idea was actually just to digitize it for our clients uh because they were asking for videos of the in-person training I read the book expert secrets and it completely blew my mind like I read it and I didn't know anything about this Russell Brunson guy and I was like holy crap like I've never heard of a webinar I don't know what this one to many marketing is I don't know what

[52:34] direct response marketing is but then I realized I actually had been exposed to it for a very long time you know Noah Kagan who was on your podcast recently uh one of his best friends a guy called Neville madora maybe you know him or know of him he's the first person who introduced me to copywriting and all of this world is connected it's direct response it's called direct response marketing so direct response marketing as I understand it is marketing where you can literally measure every every cent you spend so like for every ad you put out there you can measure this is exactly how much money is coming back

[53:12] because of this ad and it's a lot about it's it's not about building a brand it's about actually getting a direct response from what you're putting out there and this really appealed to me uh versus just this broad branding approach uh which I couldn't really tell whether it was working or not and so we ran a webinar using this the structure in the book expert secrets in 2016 and we didn't have the course yet we were saying we had it because we were we were we basically said if we make more than €10,000 Euro we're going to make the course I did the webinar so first of

[53:53] all I created a Facebook group we ran ads to fill up the Facebook Facebook group it was called Innovation hackers it's still there but it's it's dead um and then I ran a webinar to the people in that group who didn't know me and we made $50,000 and I was like what the [ __ ] is this like they've prepaid for a course that we haven't even made yet um and by the way like if you know what it's like to work with clients a $50,000 project is is quite can be quite a lot of calls and back and forth and we were a design product design studio and I was like

[54:32] $50,000 and I've done a one and a half hour webinar okay so we made the product and then I said Laura who I now basically run the whole company with she she runs all of the digital course stuff I said to her if we can make 50k a month uh then I will build a team for this uh and it was like it made it made like over a million Revenue in the first year but the crazy thing is we were just using one marketing tactic and that was a webinar just the same webinar on repeat pre-recorded uh just playing just people could just unlock it um and this just

[55:11] completely blew my mind and so I think a year later my team and I decided to go so we read the book we signed up for the guy's newsletter and he has this conference in the US called funnel hacking live like I rolled my eyes and cringed the first time I saw the landing page for that in the video I was like oh [ __ ] this [ __ ] like it's so American uh Tony Robins all this crap I'm not interested um but I don't know somehow we decided to go because we were going to pick for as a nice thing for the team we were going to pick up I don't know if

[55:43] you've ever seen like in the background of a lot of marketing videos you see these funnel or these like awards that look like discs I don't know we were going to pick up one of those it's if if if your funnel makes over a million dollars I actually think that's cool to have an award that's based on an exact amount of money versus just [ __ ] design agency Awards we used to get which are just [ __ ] uh so I was I was excited to bring the team on a little trip to Nashville we went to funnel hacking live and we were fully converted we were just like Russell is

[56:18] is Daddy right like this guy is not as stupid as he looks he's not like this just pure scammy salesman he's just an unbelievably amazing copywriter uh and he's so good at packaging out products and honestly I don't even want to tell your audience about this because I feel like it's a bit of a secret in the like C because a lot of people just see him and just go ah [ __ ] this guy uh it is a little bit of a I don't know I feel I feel like it's something that not a lot of people openly say they like Russell Brunson um but I think his book

[56:56] expert secrets and then his traffic Focus book like how to get leads called traffic Secrets I think they're like the best marketing books I've ever read and I've read all the highbrow ones as well right I read all the ones that you're supposed to read but these ones are my favorites first of all thank you for being so brave thank you you know you could have you couldn't you could have just not said anything about clickfunnel said nothing about Russell Brunson being your daddy but but you did anyways and and I appreciate it because a lot of people listening to this probably ignore a lot of the ads and what they've

[57:42] seen about Russell um he definitely doesn't make his way around like silic and valy circles either not at all yeah and I'll be the first person to change my mind on something like that Mastermind conversation we had like a few minutes ago like initially I was like I'm not going to do I would never do a mastermind or I would never be I would never be involved in a mastermind and then after thinking about it I'm like you know what I personally might not want to lead a mastermind but I can see the value in it and maybe one of our teams runs it and now I'm starting to

[58:13] think oh maybe we should do a mastermind for this or we should do a mastermind for that yeah same with Russ Brunson like it sounds like there's probably some insights that he has that it's worth diving deeper even if you don't like the guy I think that I I I I feel like I've spent all of the money on all the marketing books and all of the marketing gurus and like I said Gary ve like all of these things and I haven't I haven't um seen someone create more actionable content uh or learnings than Russell Brunson for a small business that's the thing that's important we're not he does have a

[58:58] multi-billion dollar uh software company but which he uses these tactics to to sell stuff for but most mostly it's for info products meaning if you have a book if you have like um courses if you have communities um if you're looking at paid communities if you have like a patreon things like that his tactics are amazing for that kind of stuff teenage engineering shouldn't use his tactics it would cheapen what they do for example you call it a small business but like doing $18 million a year or doing $18 million or $10 million or $6 million if $2 million like these you know you're doing millions of dollars a

[59:42] year like if as as long as there's a decent profit margin there like that's a that's a great business I don't I you know it's a great business yeah I'm not I'm I think I just assume that uh because there's like this startup element of your podcast that I was thinking I'm coming in cuz also okay Noah Kagan has like a $38 million perear business or something Kevin Rose I mean Kevin obviously just balling out of control uh and then I am the next guest so I'm like I basically run a business that makes the amount of money of like a maybe a couple of restaurants in a in a city uh

[1:00:23] so yeah I just wanted to I just needed to clarify it so people don't take my advice and try to apply it to like something that's as big as something what Noah or Kevin do my my thing works great for uh yeah smaller operations which are not really built not being built to be sold necessarily um you know I I've spoken to people about selling AJ and smart I actually um Pro probably someone you also know I I I was chatting with someone on Andrew Wilkinson's team uh and like it is humbling to talk to these guys right when they're looking through the numbers of AJ and smart and they're

[1:01:05] like yeah like if you add another many more million onto it and uh automate a lot more systems and then get the profit margin up to this and then maybe we could you know but yeah it's we're we're still we're we're we're like a I I I call I talk about us like we're more like a high-end restaurant we're like it we're like a little high-end restaurant that has Global appeal just because we can use the internet but yeah we're not a startup that's getting any funding or anything like that JC unscheduled CEO this has been this exceeded my expectations and my it's over I don't want it to be over

[1:01:48] well we might do a part two of people like it and if people hate it then we certainly will not do a part two yeah are you actually gonna post this 100% cool okay yeah thanks for having on I really appreciate it it's it's gonna we're gonna we're posting the unfiltered full thing everything you are listening to right now happen and uh and uh Jonathan where could people find you on the internet um probably the best place to go is the uh unscheduled CEO podcast on any podcast platform you listen to I don't really use social media because I find it too addictive um if you're

[1:02:31] interested in the way we sell stuff at AJ andm you can check out ajsm smart.com um but yeah that's that's it really unscheduled CEO just hanging out beautiful all right I'll see see you around my man

[1:02:54] later for

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