Brainstorming $1M Business Ideas with Tiago Forte

0:00I think sometimes internet creators worry too much about capturing every little bit of value that they're creating I mean I do this with books too I have two traditionally published books but before that I released seven self-published ebooks on Amazon and the amazing thing is as an independent Creator you can do both you're not signing exclusive contracts you know they're like oh let's leave gumroad and go to some other platform cuz we can pay 3% instead of 5% or they're like oh we can self-publish this ebook we don't have to pay the publisher all this percentage and we can keep it for ourselves I love that sort of

0:30self-reliance but I think sometimes it really makes online creators be blind to huge opportunities to essentially leverage the media platforms of the world to spread their message so before we begin I must say you did one of the smartest things that I've seen an author do in your book building a second brain um which was you said in your book that if you want the bonus chapter you'll email it to people so you essentially use you put a lead magnet in your book totally oh yeah I that was essential that was essential it makes no you know the whole project doesn't almost doesn't make sense at least financially unless

1:12you can use it to grow your audience and you know sell them courses and other things so that was that was an important part yeah and I I think about that often because I think about like lead magnets and I call them Community magnets which are basically lead lead magnets where you're bringing someone into a free community in exchange for their email address and I was like man this Thiago guy that's when I realized I was like I need to get this guy on my podcast because this guy knows what's up and so I'm excited to talk to you uh we talk about business ideas here so I'm excited

1:45to talk to about business ideas and I knew you were one of us when I saw when I saw you put that lead magnet in yeah I feel like we've been we've been sort of orbiting in the very much the same circles I mean I've come across here especially on uh your your content on X so many times uh so this this just seems only natural I appreciate it man I appreciate it and I actually reached out to you um which I encourage other people to do like I I saw your book in a bookstore here in Miami called books and books and I think I just sent you a

2:18message and I was just like a picture of of the book and I was just like like great book or something like that something so and you responded I was like whoa this guy responded it just goes to show you that you know people have their DMS open a lot of the time and and it's sort of worth reaching out to people and you'd be surprised who responds oh absolutely uh so many things have come into my life both professional and just personal from that I mean it's kind of crazy if you think about it we all have mostly direct messaging access to each other and to

2:52almost anyone and we barely we really barely use it I feel like that's right and that's kind of a good segue into one of your startup ideas which is acquiring a small business and growing it using your your what you've got a few hundred thousand followers at this point so what do you mean by that what type of business would you consider acquiring yeah this is one of my little uh kind of side projects uh at least for now uh I guess I've been bitten by the uh the bug this is kind of like a you know like a trend I've I've come across a number of

3:27times you know people like Cody sand and uh Michael girdley and and others and uh you know for the longest time I couldn't even fathom that possibility because my one business takes up 100% of my bandwidth and more and I was like how are these people like running multiple businesses um but now I'm starting to see you know it's a combination of like having operators that you hire to run them or you know using the same team for one business or some of the same team as another or having them be mostly you know sort of passive businesses I kind of get it a little more now and what's driving it is

4:05basically I mean it's it's partly a a desire to diversify you know I have we worked recently with a financial adviser this a funny story uh like an independent financial adviser that charges you a flat fee for like three or four calls and he did this comprehensive analysis of our entire Financial life like your your total net worth and everything and uh and he had this software that he used that you input like every single asset you had every credit card every debt every everything and at the bottom of it if you don't include the business like just include everything else but the business our net

4:41worth today my wife and I in our late 30s is a big fat nothing it's like our debts which is we have we have no personal debt or credit card debt it's just like our house but we live in Cal you know Southern California cancels out every other asset that we have which essentially means that that we're you know that our the business is everything I have all of my financial life in this one business and the way the world is going with pandemics and wars and different things like you know it's dangerous it's dangerous to live that way so I'm just interested in moving into something that

5:17is complimentary or even like counter cyclical to an internet-based business uh you know should the internet go down or should online education go down I can you know survive basically yeah you know you want to hedge not that you really want to hedge but like obviously we hope I think your business is only going to compound but the hedging piece of around like you want to hedge and diversify basically is what you want to do you want to you want to earn you want to buy something that has cash flow that is not related to your current business um but that could be supercharged by the asset

5:52that you built which is your audience exactly exactly that's the thing too is is with an audience because an audience is just relationships right they're not single purpose they're not single use um so you could conceivably diversify away from an internet business but using the asset of your relationship with that audience as the means of diversification so it's not like you have to go and start over completely from scratch right um I'm also I've seen all these people you know like Kevin as speedy2 and others who are like basically getting this fire hose of attention you have as an online Creator and just like plugging it into even an established business

6:32that already has operations that just needs more clients that is a really powerful model I think so I think the way to I would think about it if I were you is you've got like you know few hundred th000 YouTube subscribers 129,000 Twitter subscribers uh followers it's like you basically have this ecosystem of almost half a million if not more of people uh interested in the same stuff that that you're interested in productivity you know unlocking your potential that sort of thing and the thing is half a million people is a lot of people um that's a lifetime of people to sell them things yeah now the question

7:15is what you know what are you going to sell them is it books is it courses is it paid community and then there's this whole other what you're saying is there's this whole other area and you know what Cody Sanchez and other people are saying there's these boring business is these smbs that your audience might want that you're today you're not selling them that so totally so my so my question to you is you know Cody Sanchez talks about like laundromats and stuff you know like you're not going to buy a laundromat and just like start posting about it on Twitter and if you are that' be pretty

7:51funny if you are I think you need a first brain not a second brain you know you got to get that checked out yeah so so I think I think what what if you have an internet audience like yourself like let's just Jam for a second what is a more brick-and mortar or boring business that you could you know buy that's what I'm trying to figure out now I would love any ideas you have I mean I don't know I have trouble with the idea of a completely boring business just because I just I mean even a laundromat I'm sure is a lot of work to manage and I have a

8:24hard time imagining like that I would even care enough about a business like that to even be willing to do that stuff um so I feel like it should have at least some aspect that I'm curious about or interested in or that will teach me something and it would be nice if it was sort of not internet based I I really think in coming years we're going to see we're going to see disruptions to the internet I don't know why I have this sense but I feel like the internet is is in this like open free era that may be ending or maybe getting less Dependable

8:57uh we're having like different like the great firewall in China and different countries like erecting different you know barriers and all sorts of things so I would like something like land you know something that's land or that's physical and solid that could be valuable even if God forbid the internet was you know was turned off uh but beyond that and being profitable and having cash flow I I'm just doing kind of a wide sweep of the possibilities so why I think you shouldn't buy land and why I think you shouldn't buy something like real estate is because anyone could do that but you have this unfair

9:35Advantage where you've now built this audience of these people who now trust you you have the which is rare and so I'm trying to think okay what could you know what could you do and which movement could you sort of latch on to and have you seen have you heard of The Brick the brick device so it's actually this I have one right here it looks like this it's a literally it's a brick so if you're listening to this on Apple podcast or this is you know check it out on YouTube um and it's this really really cool idea and it's it's a way it's a way it's a device for people

10:13who have smartphone addictions okay so basically it removes distracting apps and their notifications from your phone so it'll it it it turns your phone into like literally like Focus mode um um and you can set up you know different modes for it um you can set up these custom modes so I have I have a couple of them um it's completely magnetic U my my business partner uses uses it Jordan mix uses it he puts it on his fridge he just leaves it and the way the way it works is you you tap the device to turn your phone into a literal bck brick way to un unbrick your phone

10:54is to get up walk to whatever you know wherever the bridg uh the the the brick is and then tap the brick to unlock it so it creates this physical barrier and it creates this friction um how does it do that is is it a software like the software is disabling the phone yeah I think that's how it works and it's I'm sure you've seen people who uh who carry like a smartphone and a dumb phone yeah like and I think it just makes it a lot easier to do this so I look at this and I'm like if I'm Thiago Forte I'm reaching out to these guys who like it's

11:29really it's really early for them and I'm being like how can I buy 50% of your business CU wouldn't interesting wouldn't wouldn't this product the brick be interesting for your audience oh yeah I mean I just got one of these a few months ago the Light phone a dumb phone uh and my wife got one too we've been trying it but it's too extreme you know with two kids and at needing to just do all the things that we use smartphones for it was too much of a jump so we've now converted back to iPhones but I'm still personally in search of a solution and I like the I like the physicality of

12:04that I like that it's this artifact in your environment that is reminding you that you can create that that bubble of focus exactly and the thing I've noticed with the brick is if I ever go let's say it's on my fridge I ever if I ever go up to the fridge and I grab it and I Unbreak My phone like I feel stupid doing it you know I'm like oh I check I check Twitter or I check my you know I check Instagram like what what a waste of time and so it reinforces this really good habit and I think why the brick would be so cool for

12:42your for your audience is a lot of the stuff is stuff that you're already telling to your audience like you can live you can live this right like you would you'd probably promote the brick I mean you'd probably promote the brick regardless um so that's that's a good framework for think about it's like you know number one would my audience be into thish number two what's a nonobvious thing that they're that they would be into so like of course you can build a course of course you can go build a paid community of course you could sell some digital asset but like this is like a pretty

13:18non-correlated asset yeah that's nonobvious yeah and I think just like brainstorming from there I really like this line of thinking uh because it's true we so we make we make a def not big but a fair amount of uh revenue from as an affiliate but it's all either Amazon stuff which is mostly books every time we recommend a book it is other people's courses and it's um SAS tools mostly productivity tools but the problem is is all those things are so similar and also similar to what we ourselves sell that it's like kind of a lot of noise there's just like this barrage of courses and

13:58Tool tools and apps that they're just constantly being faced with um that that the physicality of that would I think you're right would really stand out just for the fact that it's so different I also think I saw this in my slack today uh that one of our team members has like a a young sister who uh you know she she's I think like 17 or 18 she came home from college and she came she came with her friends just to like hang out at their family house and they they're all like sitting in the living Room reading magazines so like this guy who works for us like walks into his living

14:33room his family living room childhood house and see all like these girls reading magazines magazines it's 2024 and so he goes like well why are you doing this like what why magazines and and apparently it's like the cool thing to like touch physical yeah no kidding yeah we recently um along these lines we recently got the uh we took the TV out of the our living room we just took it off the wall and stored it because we noticed we have a three-year-old our oldest is a three-year-old and he was just spending I mean maybe just like an hour a day all combined but I we started noticing

15:12behavioral issues we noticed that it was almost like he's addicted to it he always wanted to watch it we noticed that we were watching it a lot and therefore modeling it and it was a rough week or so but it's been it's been awesome like we talk to each other more we my wife and I have like are reading of physical books has picked up uh it's really a really an amazing like one-time decision that then has you know infinite future benefits um but so let's let's explore this I'd love to get basically free Consulting but um how would you think about this like like in theory

15:48that sounds interesting for me to reach out to them I'm sure they'd be open to a conversation but then like do I straight up just like ask for a certain percentage and then offer C certain things in return or like what is it's hard for me to even imagine what that conversation would look like I think you go to them and you say hey I love the brick I love this product I think my audience would love it sure I can be an affiliate but there's something about being like I'm a co-owner in this product that is going to make it feel different when I promote something that

16:22you know has my stamp of approval so I'm looking for a partnership and I would say you know I'm sure that you're looking for more customers I can help you get more customers but I can also bring friends of mine you know you can bring Greg Eisenberg you can bring Shan pory you can bring you know Justin Welsh like people in your circle so it's not just you it's the multiplier effect of your like crew and I would say how could I own 30 to 50% of your business what like why that range why what is what is it about 30 to 50 I think that you want

16:55them to you want the team to have the major majority of the business at the same time if you're going to be a partner in this business and when I say partner I don't mean just like someone who's going to be allowed like a co-founder Creator like my prediction is there's a lot of co-founder creators that are just going to like tweet about a business once and then forget about it like no you're going to actually be there you're G to you know you might have product product feedback that you can give that might be really relevant you know you might write another book and you might include it in that book um

17:28things like that that are super super valuable to someone like that and I think that sure could you own 2% like yeah but if you own 2% I'd imagine it's not that interesting and I'd imagine something like the brick is probably doing like it's probably it it it probably has product Market fit with a very small group of people like me and my partner Jordan but probably has if I had to guess less than $2 million of Revenue and so it's early enough that you proba can own a big chunk of the business and they they might say like yeah you can own 50% of 30% of the

18:04business but I want a million dollars in which case you say no problem no problem you you get their financials you get their Vision um and then you raise that money privately if you don't want to invest so you're not putting any of your own money you're actually going in raising from because now you have the deal right so now you go to someone like me let's say and you say hey Greg I found this amazing company it's perfect for my audience uh the business is we're gonna run it as a as a profitable business and there's going to be dividends every year and you model it out you know would you

18:42be willing to give me half a million do and could you find someone else to give me half a million dollars at this valuation so now you have a deal so you're you're connecting and I'm sure people in your network would be willing to back you because now all of a sudden your creating a lot of value because you're going to be promoting it you have this great business that aligns with it um and so you're also creating value interesting interesting yeah I like that idea but now so these investors uh they would have themselves now Equity proportional to how much they invest right yeah so the way you would

19:22structure it is and we're getting into the details but like I think this might be interesting for people honestly um is you would you would you know let's say they wanted a million dollars for 30% of the business and all the advisory stuff that you're going to give you have to come up with a deal with your in your investors let's say I'm the investor where you say like okay of my 30% I'm GNA give 5% to Greg because he's putting in the actual Capital so that's my deal with you yeah so some minority share and then I I could also put in some money right just

19:59to have skin in the game uh but then I I think you should honestly I think you should like I think the Creator should put that's another thing I think creators should put money into the businesses that they're partnering with fascinating fascinating this is this is genuinely interesting man and very timely in fact I I was just uh last week I was exploring a deal my first one that I ever even sort of investigated and at at on the surface it looks so good so compelling and then as soon as I I like talked to the broker signed an NDA got the actual financials and it was just

20:32such a disaster and I was like oh this is why people get paid to like find good deals exactly exactly yeah so I think this is this is interesting for you but it's also interesting for people who have there's a lot of people listening to this who have products that have product Market fit or a little bit of product Market fit with a devout audience and they're thinking to themselves like how do I how do I grow this thing I wish I could have a Creator uh help promote this so understanding how you think about it is interesting to them too yeah I I almost want to I want to speak to

21:09those people for for a minute like to to to tell them what it looks like from my point of view and why I'm even exploring this is like it's like I spend all my time and my team spends all our time creating content and building our audience like that is my my job is to add email addresses to our email list right but but I I've kind of recently this has been a recent realization you know we have like 140,000 people on our email list we send a newsletter every Tuesday and we have 50% open rates so we have the the weekly attention of 70,000 people but we have hardly anything to

21:49offer them right like I have a couple courses I have a couple books that's about it and you know that audience will buy some of those things or not or whatever but then we're just continuing to send them incredible free value every week week after week after week all year never asking or rarely asking for anything in return I almost feel like I'm under uh valuing I'm under utilizing uh this audience uh who's who tells us they would like to buy things also they're like do you have can you recommend this or that and we're just like no sorry we're just going to continue to send you massive amounts of

22:25free value just because we it's fun yeah I also think that people like you are are looking for things to write about and things to film about so so you know using the brick as an example and talking about that lifestyle and talking about the pro you know the pros and cons of taking you know 48 hours off or taking time where you're not looking at your phone and so it it doesn't even need to feel like you're you know you're you're subtracting like a great product shouldn't subtract from like it shouldn't feel like you're asking you know Gary ve is famously talks about the jab jab hook right like you give value

23:08give value give value and then you take and I just don't think that in 2024 that that's relevant to me I think that it's just jab jab jab jab jab jab just another jab like your product should be a jab and I think that with something like the brick some product that spe that is just so relevant to your audience that it just gives you something to talk about that's interesting to them yeah yeah I mean I mean it makes so much sense like distraction is the it's the 500 what's the expression 500 lb you know elephant in the room if you haven't figured that out and mastered that no productivity

23:51tip or technique or framework is going to make any difference whatsoever it's like the it's the stepping stone to even being able able to have the space to even think about your productivity that's right exactly so I'm glad we talked about this I want to shift gears to another space that you're interested in which was interesting that you're talking about this especially considering you recently removed a TV from your house but you're interested in producing a TV show and sort of thinking yourself how can I get involved in the entertainment business my question to you is what do you know about the entertainment business uh the TV

24:32business and why is it interesting to you why do you think there's opportunity there yeah good question it all started when uh someone from a one of the big Hollywood agencies reached out to us I think if it wasn't for that I I have no contacts or network there I have no idea how to even get started it was the the possibility of someone sort of taking us by the hand there um they reached out through my my literary agent and they were interested in the the material in my in my two books and potentially making that into a TV show basically um one of my favorite things to do in in

25:08like the whole world is enter new Creative Media I just love those that first it's like a frontier it's like the wild west you just like enter this new creative domain and you're like you have to question all your assumptions and learn so much and really come in as like a novice with a beginner's mind uh and so over the past Maybe or eight months I've done that just talking to different people in the industry reading articles watching things and I still wouldn't say I have a good understanding of the industry but I have enough understanding to know that it would be so powerful from the perspective of spreading an

25:44idea I think that's what I'm most interested in like when you look at what are the highest leverage ways of getting an idea into the hearts and minds of the most people in this world TV is just it's it that's that TV is the medium that runs the modern world um so it could also be you know cool financially could also be cool for other things but I'm most interested in in just distilling and simplifying and making entertaining these second brain ideas which I really I really believe and know change people's lives if they only find out about them and learn them so I have a saying which is capture Hearts first

26:25then capture carts yes so I think that's what you're saying too which is if you could spread your ideas wide and far and people resonate with them and they are connected to these ideas then then you're gravy right then there's T like you'll find products to sell you'll you know they they'll they'll take out their wallets but you're what interests you about television is you think that it's a not a hack but a a a great way to spread your ideas faster and it's interesting because you come from the internet like to me you're an internet content creator uh first even though you wrote a book or

27:08books to me you're your you know you talk about your newsletter like your your core metric is email so to me it's interesting that you think that TV like why would you spend that time doing TV when you could spend that equal time double Downing on YouTube which is like the new TV to me it's both and they would leverage each other those two Avenues I mean I do this with books too I have two traditionally published books but before that I I release seven self-published ebooks on Amazon and they're they're not in any way in competition with each other in fact I just am constantly getting lessons from

27:44one of those routes and applying it to the other um I think I think this sometimes gets lost in the uh the very contentious debates around like oh self-publishing versus traditional publishing there's like this ideological battle going on and the amazing thing is as an independent Creator you can do both you're not signing exclusive contracts ever right so I mean so so it's interesting uh you can look at this from Hollywood's perspective like let's look at it from where they're sitting we're in the midst not only of a TV Golden Era or like it's it's widely agreed upon that this era right now is like the best

28:21TV that's ever been created right but we're also in the midst of streaming Wars we have all these a corporation spending billions like tens of billions every year losing billions to try to gain market share right and you look at you read about some of these it's kind of Insider Publications you have to go to but they're competing like there there's a there's shows that that are having like multi-way bidding wars it's like Amazon Studios and Netflix and Hulu bidding against each other right and it's a lot of big names that get that much attention but once in a while you see people who are quite early and quite

28:58small really benefiting from that so I'm just like okay I would love to be you know the one the the IP that these huge studios are fighting over uh I'll be the talent you know that is the one actually on camera presenting it and I just see no downside I mean there is time and energy involved but I'll continue to do all the other stuff I do and and run my business um I I I do really I think sometimes internet creators worry too much about capturing every little bit of the value that they're creating and you know they're like oh let's leave gumroad and go to some other platform because we

29:33can pay you know 3% instead of 5% or they're like oh we can self-publish this ebook so like we don't have to pay the publisher you know you know all this percentage and we can keep it for ourselves which is I love that sort of self-reliance but I think sometimes it really makes online creators specifically just be blind to huge opportunities to essentially leverage the the the media platforms of the world to spread their message at the very least people should have an open mind right like in general like you should never be I always I always think I talk a lot about not raising Venture Capital

30:10because i' spent my 20s raising a lot of a lot millions millions of dollars and I'm turned off that being said last week I had a great meeting with a venture capitalist you know he reached out someone I respect I'm not saying I'm taking his money but I I I think it's important to not let yourself as a Founder as a Creator get attached to an identity oh I'm the not I'm the not VC guy therefore I can't have a meeting with a VC person I'm an internet Creator therefore I can't have a meeting with the you know Hollywood producer totally abely not totally that's such a good

30:48perspective yeah it depends on the situation if you know what's that quote if the facts change I change my mind what do you do yeah absolutely I will say on the TV thing I think that the number one reason to go on TV is to get the clips so like I noticed this with like people like Bill Amman and chamath I was like asking myself like why are these guys going on CNB CNBC so much like they have to you know chamath lives in paloo you know it's like he has to like get on a plane go land at like LaGuardia or New York or JFK try you know it's been an hour to

31:27get into the city uh stay at some like Midtown Hotel um you know it's it's like he's got kids like probably doesn't want to like do it you know it's freezing cold I heard in New York it's like 20 degrees right now it's like probably doesn't want to do it but he does it because like five minutes later he takes that clip and he posts on Twitter and it gets millions of views or Bill Amman does the same thing I noticed that like it'll go on TV and then all of a sudden right after clip is live and the and the clips because you're on TV because like

31:59it's a it looks like TV everyone knows what TV looks like uh there's more credibility it spreads quicker and it's just more viral totally totally yeah there's another another kind of bias of online creators they they seem to think sometimes that markers of markers of credibility or status don't matter or are bad that's crazy you know credibility and Status are are more important than they've ever been because of the flood of information no one knows what to believe or who to trust yeah uh I think I think I mean you got to have both you should sort of you know have your own platform that you control and

32:35also take advantage of the The Gatekeepers when and if they come calling I agree man I agree okay you have another idea on here which I'm really interested in which is certifying other people to teach facilitate consult on your IP so you've spent years building this incredible IP multiple books so much content content free content YouTube whatever created a system and I've noticed that more and more people are doing this where they're creating a system and then like the EOS system are you familiar totally um so maybe you can tell people what EOS is or and and if you're familiar with the facilitators what that that they have

33:18maybe you can explain that and then explain what you would do to license uh your business and and your IP sorry and why that's interesting to you yes this is so timely this is what I'm in the midst of right now um I just got back from a uh like a B2B which is sort of the category I would put all this in B2B education B2B training um I've just joined a mastermind uh and I was in Atlanta on Monday for that but basically so basically how did I get on this on this track you know at one point a year or two ago I was like I was like how

33:54does an idea actually reach its full potential this is this is a a question that really interests me you know a new idea comes into the world let's just pick one like I don't know agile agile software right that's an idea how does it fully capitalize and manifest like the full potential of that idea reach everyone who could possibly benefit give them the maximum benefit yes make the most money of course that's part of it and what's so fascinating is is you know the world of like online course creators which is the one that a part of we are are totally focused on BC that's our whole

34:31world we're all about building our our lists and our platforms and you know selling products and even selling a course but that's all B Toc all of it right is finding the customer acquiring the customer selling them something but what I'm learning and and I'm gonna I'm going to be writing about this in creating content because I feel like this is like this big undiscovered secret is the B2B Market I from what I can see has the potential to be far more lucrative far more lucrative it's the world of yeah corporate trainings whether you deliver them yourself or you have in-house on staff uh facilitators deliver them or you certify external

35:12independent facilitators or you license it or you give them access to your self-paced program like whatever it is there's a lot of models but these these businesses that I'm starting to study I mean they they just assume thousands of dollars per per person you know every person uh say on a team that they're doing a training for they're going to they're going to estimate like 3 to 5,000 that they're going to make per person whereas as online course creators you know we're like afraid to charge a couple hundred bucks that's right and with internet economics like it's not uncommon to acquire an email address for $1 to2

35:49dollar exactly exactly yeah so so it's kind of what we were saying before we have these huge audiences but the we're we're monetizing them so poorly in general right and then I'm going over to the B2B World which honestly feels like a different cult like a different culture it's like it's like flying to a different country and like you don't understand anything like the acronyms being used you know they're like what is it uh I can't remember the the acronyms right now but like the terminology they're using the assumptions that they make like for example in our world bigger email list is better right our the size of our email list is like our

36:23calling card in their world it's all about the quality of the lead they don't care how how many people they'd rather have one qualified lead than a thousand random people kicking the tires so I'm really having to like sort of compare and contrast these two different mindsets and learn how to operate in both of them but the the the purpose of the whole thing is just basically I mean what I really want is my ideas to become part of culture to become part of organizations become part of companies be part of schools be taught to kids that's just my my mission and there's no other way to do that

36:59besides you know entering the B2B markets and EO specifically so I never heard of EOS up until recently it's it stands for entrepreneurial operating system and it's basically I met with a friend for dinner and he was like I was like how was your 2023 and he goes well completely transformed thanks to EOS and I thought like he was talking about like a drug or something I was like what what is that is that like a is that like a sister drug to OIC or something like that uh and no he's like no I actually hired this uh facilitator uh who did this workshop and he works with our company to implement

37:42EOS which is um basically these it's like a framework for how to how to run a productive Organization for companies I think under 250 employees and he was saying that that there's like so there's a sort of a licensing play there as well so someone had created I don't I don't know the exact story but basically someone created this um this way of doing things they license it out to people who do consulting or run workshops and stuff like that so I think you're on to something around people are going to create IP more license it out to and and then focus on B2B I think

38:20that's a really astute point I think that's really interesting I have an idea that I want to run by you in the in the B2B space so I had lunch with a friend of mine who works for one of the largest banks in the world and he was telling me he just got this job and he was telling me I was like how's your first week he goes well you know I've been doing training all week oh what's training like you know I don't know if you've ever worked at a like big corporate job but it's like it's you know what happens is you know on day one

38:54or something they make you watch a lot of videos and like slides about a bunch of different topics like how do you be ethical and like oh you can't give like a contract to your buddy or something and it's like a video explaining it and there's sexual harassment things like that the problem with it is people just skip through the trainings they're actually not going through it so my idea is Apple Vision Pro training trainings M so you put on the Apple Vision Pro and we're not there yet it's not going to it's not ubiquitous Apple Vision Pro isn't ubiquitous but at some point it will be

39:34and and maybe what you can do is actually rent it to to employees or something like that but you basically say you join you know Wells Fargo like on your first day it's like okay hey like put on these glasses and oh my all of a sudden you're in this world where you know there's a real real ethical case and you actually have to play it out and it's almost like like a game and it's this real world immers immersion and you do it with other people too it's like the social thing so like let's say it's your first day too you're you're there what do you think of this

40:07reimagining training and and I'll end that with training is lowkey a multi-billion dollar industry oh yeah be yeah like especially like saf safety training and stuff like that oh my gosh the money these corporations spend on training on certification on upskilling on professional development it's staggering it's staggering um I think it's interesting uh I mean definitely every everything I've learned about existing training is that it is God awful it's like it's like a punishment it's like torture uh because it's not done it's just done to comply with some regulation or or policy or something it's not at all uh learner Centric right and people are used to learner Centric education

40:53now because that's the world of online content you know YouTube is education it's edutainment uh X is largely you know depending on who you follow of course edutainment and so people have gotten used to such a high standard of uh of even educational content that you put them in front of a you know hourlong boring slide presentation and they I think honestly struggle to even pay attention even if they they want to um the one thing I'll say that that will present an obstacle is from what I'm finding the B2B world is years behind the BC world it's like it's like at least five years like what is what is

41:31peing and trending now in the BC world like today when you go on X let's let's say will begin to enter the corporate training Market in like 2029 2023 2030 that's interesting I mean yeah I think uh that's like really interesting because all you have to do is look at what was trending 5 years ago to be like how do I productize something for that Market exactly yeah so that's really interesting yeah that's a huge you kind of have to you have to consciously Retreat from the frontier of of innovation you know like like you you go on X I know we're both active there like like go look up what was trending

42:16on X I mean really like five years ago you know like 2019 to us that will feel ancient it'll feel so Obsolete and irrelevant and not cool and not interesting and if we started talking about it our internet friends would be like oh we that was that's so P but then go talk to your friend in the the cor you know the corporation I I I'm willing to bet they've never even heard of it yet yeah I feel that does that are you like does that Soul suck you a little bit are you okay with that you know I am I'm kind of that actually suits me you know

42:56like with with even digital notetaking stuff that's a that's a technology thing I really Advocate people not adopt any technology that is newer than five years anyway you know like I'm on Evernote there's nothing about Evernote that wasn't present in like 201 like 10 um and the reason is the reason for that is I don't think so there's a price to pay for being on the frontier of innovation you know especially when it comes to technology you got to deal with you're you're basically a beta tester you're a guinea pig so things are are buggy they're janky they don't work right they're really complicated and hard to

43:29learn um you know that's fine if if you want to experiment with an interesting new tool but for your core productivity tools the stuff that you rely on day in and day out those should be those should be mature tools I think is my my opinion is there any opportunity to be building new productivity software you know so many people have ideas for to-do list or go you know Google Calendar competitors or Rome compet editors is this too busy of a space now or is there still opportunity I think I'm the wrong person to ask because I like from my point of view I I can't there's nothing I'd less

44:09rather do than build software in this in that space maybe because I'm just I'm just so hyper aware of their limitations um and from everything I hear when I talk to people who are doing that it's it's brutally competitive you know there's almost a there's almost a maxim that productivity tools have no moat there's no moat there's nothing preventing every every year every few months there's a new hot productivity app you know in fact my theory is that not only is there no moat there's whatever you would call like the opposite of a moat there's actually an incentive for people to leave your product why because the

44:46favorite moment the favorite experience of people who use such apps is starting over with a brand new blank slate it feels good you know like like usually the longer someone has been using a no taking app or to-do list app the worse it is and and the more they hate it because it's just crued and so they love this is why there's so many productivity app switchers everywhere is moving to the new tool you get to be like Oh I'm leaving my old life behind and I'm a brand new person I heard through through the grape vine that Ali abdal productivity YouTuber is working on a productivity

45:21app I've heard that too what what advice would you give Ali I mean alie's different because uh I mean is he it's like it you know my push back is when you're building a startup when you're building a product you have to ask yourself am I building something that's New York or am I building something that's Fiji and Fiji is there's not a lot of competition this is something I I grabed you know this Fiji concept from Andrew Wilkinson from Tiny you know there's not a lot of competition sort of an island in its own world like you know you could you can be you know you can have your own little

46:02kingdom in Fiji now New York City you know if you can make it here you can make it anywhere those are very competitive spaces like consumer social apps productivity apps uh these are very difficult so Ali is about to enter that space yeah yeah I would say I would say he's definitely more Fiji you know he's I from what know of Ali we've become friends over over the past year or two I mean he's he's not trying to raise VC funding have software used by 100 million people and like you know like build it to a billion dollar company or exit or anything he's probably doing it like like most of his

46:42other projects which is basically it's a combination of because he's interested and following his curiosity uh and learning what he wants to learn which by the way he'll create all sorts of content on that will make it worth it even if it goes nowhere um and he'll do it because there is a there he has such a huge audience that is so bought into to what he does even even if only they start using the app and paying for it it's probably worth doing right yeah um but it's it's difficult for me to imagine him really putting the resources into it that would be needed to be like

47:14a a massive SAS platform one thing I asked myself when I started a new project is how do I win even if I lose yes totally so I think Ally could would definitely win even if he loses like losing could be like a thousand people are obsessed with this product and he creates some cool content around it exactly exactly online creators have that are the best example of that because even if we utterly fail well that that'll be a great piece of content about how we failed before we wrap there's two things I I want to cover one is you recently went on a desert retreat with your wife

47:53and you did your you did a year end review and I want to hear about that and the last thing is I want you to leave people um with a book recommendation what's something they should be reading yeah yeah let's see um so year reviews are something I am extremely passionate about uh I've been doing them in some form since 2008 so about 15 years um starting in 2019 I started publishing them and sharing them on my blog uh and that same year I started teaching uh a a virtual work shop called the annual review where we take people through the process that I've that I've kind of

48:31halfway developed and halfway just borrowed from Al I mean there's so many people now online you know doing it in various forms uh I just think it's it's just it's so easy to let life pass you by and for the years to just pass by in a blur um I feel like it's this Sacred Space um that I can only do I can do it anytime but it's best to do at the turn of the year because there's a kind of like there's something in the air around that time where you can really kind of like step back you know you're not working as much you're spending a lot of

49:01time with family like you can really gain some perspective on what matters in life um and then I just have a series of prompts that I answer journaling you know introspective prompts um I like to collect my favorite things like my favorite books I read my favorite photos my favorite trips that I've taken and this year uh just a month ago was or less than a month ago was the first time that we we did a dedicated trip which I really recommend it's it's honestly hard to find the time to do something like this when especially if you have a family and stuff uh and so we just did

49:33it was like two days you know in the desert a couple hours from here out by Joshua tree and in two days you know when you when you have that dedicated time that Focus like we were saying you can do quite a lot and we both came away with such both appreciation and gratitude for everything that's happened over the past year um and like Lessons Learned and wisdom gained from things that didn't go so well um and then our goals and intentions which we could like align that was cool too is like doesn't really make much sense for my wife and I to have completely different goals and

50:05intentions that have nothing to do with each other since we're you know everything is is done as a family and so it just let us start the year off with such a level of intentionality like I don't think I've felt before A little birdie told me that you there was you know you've had some you know some psychedelics in in the last little bit where psychedelics involved in this trip and yeah yeah yeah no I'm I'm an open book so not that trip but about a month and a half earlier in October I did my first iasa ceremony uh and I have a I wrote a

50:41blog post on it as one does uh it's very detailed and like extensive I think it's like 8,000 words and that comes out in my newsletter on Tuesday cool I like that so I do it's it's way too much to get into here and it did it I did sort of recap some of those lessons they kind of fed into my yearend review but I sort of am publishing them in separate pieces I like it all right man and um how about uh yeah give us your book recommendation and I'm curious what what you're what you're recommending these days you know there's a book that I I picked up it's

51:15this one right here it's called signs mhm uh by it's called signs the secret language of the universe by Laura Lynn Jackson um it says it's a New York Times bestseller uh but I've never heard of it anywhere online or off uh I think it was I think my my wife had picked it up and it was just sitting on our bookshelf when I when I found it but it's basically uh about how to notice signs that the universe is trying to tell you and you know I love books that are highly left-brained and you know have a lot of evidence and logic and all those

51:51things but increasingly I find over time it's like that left side of my brain is quite welldeveloped like one more book about you know reason and logic is not really going to change my life what really does change my life or at least my thinking is more right right brain things things about intuition about the emotions about relationships about uh faith and spirituality and so like the the content of this book violates every single cognitive [Laughter] bias but as long as you kind of like I have found as long as I hold it lightly that these are sort of this is not the literal truth but it's it's just a one

52:31lens through which to look at your life uh it's quite quite interesting and Powerful I'll check it out I love it new thing I'm doing is whenever someone recommends a book I just basically go to Amazon Auto automatically buy it if it's someone I trust uh you can't have uh like I just love being surrounded by books it's such a fun feeling especially going back to the physical thing like having a a physical book and letting it being a reminder for you is just so good so yes absolutely thank you for that and uh where could folks learn more about Thiago and and get get more involved in

53:09your ecosystem yeah yeah um building a second brain.com is uh our website for everything related to second brain stuff uh elsewhere our main website is for labs.com f o r t l a yes and that has the blog the podcast and various other things I'd say those two those two are are kind of the portals I love it and I will say I will admit you have probably the best name of anyone who's come on to this podcast and we've done hundred plus episodes so Thiago Forte everyone I love it um thanks for coming on man yeah it's been a pleasure thank you

53:54Greg