Build Once, Profit Forever (The ACP Framework)

0:00what you're looking at here uh is my ex account uh in the last 12 months I've gotten 171 million impressions almost oh 900,000 bookmarks 100,000 shares uh it's driven millions of dollars a year to my businesses and it's also been a lot of fun uh in this episode I brought on J ice cream Jonathan Courtney uh where we talk about uh a framework that I use on how to build an Audi just like this I've never shared this document before uh it's how to build an audience in 2025 uh The four-step Playbook I know you'll enjoy this episode I can't wait for you to to go through this

0:43with me and Jonathan ask some great questions and give some good feedback I love this episode it was super fun uh it sounds basic how to build an audience in 2025 but this is actually the sauce for how to do it uh it took me 15 years to come up with this Playbook I'm sharing it with you for free I hope it's super valuable and enjoy the [Music] episode I have a document of how to build an audience in 2025 and how I would do it and it's a four-step Playbook should we go through it hell yes and also maybe link it in the it's going to be linked in the description Linked In

1:25the show notes okay so how to build an audience in 2025 and just pipe in with questions as as you come pipe in because I'm a plumber now plumber yeah right you're really in the whole a whole Plumbing thing taking over your life totally so uh I have this framework I've bet my entire career on this framework I built all my businesses around this it's called the ACP framework so uh audience PE you know a stands for audience people in your Niche who passionate about the topic and underserved in some way community C for Community which is your hardcore people and and p uh product it's what you sell to those people so um the this is the I just wanted to like preface it that you

2:17if you're going to build an audience think of it as ACP like start with the audience then build the community and then build the product I just want to double down and say you're I wish you could can you just like post this every single day on your X account because the product first approach works for some people but the audience first approach gives you so many options also gives you so much confidence when you release something and people actually use it like there's nothing more Soul destroying than launching something and zero people are using it and I don't and I understand that's also the thing that people will say in this in the comments like if you're a

2:58crazy super super funded startup with millions and millions and millions of dollars to spend okay maybe you can start with the product because you've years to burn and like you can figure out marketing later or whatever but for a bootstrap business starting with the audience just is the most like you just that that's what you have to do it doesn't make sense to do it the other way around exactly dig the well before you need the water whatever that's some saying I heard totally yeah I should I should add that to the document dig the water dig dig the water what is it [ __ ] it's dig the well dig the well before you need the water or something dig the well

3:41before you need it water the well before you dig the people I can't remember piss in the well yeah there it is yeah um okay and then so now that you understand the ACP framework you're going to want to start with identifying basically who you're creating for so uh the way I think about it is um like for me I I'm focusing on like people interested in startup ideas and and building it building their startup ideas using the ACP framework so I I basically exclusively post and and consume content from people who are in my ACP startup ideas world so that's identify who you're creating for then really important understand what they're not getting from others so what

4:33can you do to stand out not like not enough people it sounds so simple but not enough people actually take stock as to like what other creators are creating and then how you can be different and then can you can you elaborate on that for one second so understand what they're not getting from others can you tell me what you recognized that your audience was not getting from others that you were able to give sauce sauce so like for you sauce is like not holding anything back just here's exactly everything you know executions one of the hard Parts anyway so ideas you're just giving them for free you're not holding anything back is that what you mean by sauce or

5:17do you mean like ketchup uh I'll just give you an example I tweeted about how I think that there's this opportunity to to basically for Vibe coders to band together and to build free versions of uh very popular Legacy SAS companies like doy sign like figma like all the Adobe stack and I give a playbook for how I I would do it now this is something that I'm actively interested in so I'm giving away the sauce but it's not like I'm giving away the sauce because I'm like well you know here's an idea no one's going to execute on this like some people a a percent a percent maybe

5:59it's a you know a tenth of a percent but a tenth of that percent is going to go and execute against us and potentially compete with me on it but I'm okay with that I'm okay with it so um there are downside you do have there are you know downsides potentially of giving away the sauce but yeah my point is the the larger Point here is uh you want to stand out and and it's really competitive now so just try to you know and the way to stand out might might might be by you know making you know sharing a lot of videos sharing a lot of images giving away sauce writing long stories figuring

6:40out what the format is which is something we'll talk about next I'm satisfied with that answer quick break in the Pod to tell you a little bit about startup Empire so startup Empire is my private membership where it's a bunch of people like me like you who want to build out their startup ideas now they're looking for content to help accelerate that they're looking for potential co-founders they're looking for uh tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them how do you do email marketing how do you build an audience how do you go viral on Twitter all these different things that's exactly what startup Empire is and it's for people who want to start a startup but

7:24are looking for ideas or it's for people who have a startup but just they're not seeing the traction uh that they need so you can check out the link to Startup empire.co in the description cool and then I just have here note if you aren't getting Engagement start one level broader than your Niche you need engagement for reach before you can specialize sometimes so sometimes people uh they'll start like an X account for for example and they'll they'll be like but I'm not getting any engagement well it's because you know you might have picked such a such a small Niche that you're just not getting fed to the for the foru page so sometimes you have to be a little more

8:06Broad and then you can go a bit more specialized I want to squirt in an exact example from my company here um we wanted to get known for being back in the day we wanted to people to know us about like we're doing design Sprints basically we wanted people to look to us for that topic back in 2016 it wasn't an interesting topic on the internet so we kept trying and trying and trying and no one would watch our YouTube videos eventually we kind of Drew this like I sat down with my team and I drew this funnel and like at the bottom of it I was like we want people to get to design

8:47Sprints here but like what are the things that are more interesting to people okay looks like design thinking is more popular than that but it's still not very popular what's like the thing above that and at the time we just said it's ux design like ux design is like the super broad super popular topic that we can funnel them down to the more specific thing later and so we started making ux videos on YouTube and the Annoying Thing is those ux videos on YouTube are still our most popular videos like one of our most popular videos ever is a figma tutorial even though that's nothing to do with what we do at our company just because it went so we needed to go so broad to bring them

9:31back to what we wanted to so that was a situation where we were hitting a wall with a topic that just was to Niche at the time and so we had to Broad in to ux which was broader is that sort of what you mean exactly that's exactly what I mean yeah that makes so much sense that's actually pretty important yeah it's really important and the other thing that's really important that no one talks about about how building an audience is just formats like build building that's step two in the four-step Playbook you have to figure out what your format is so um what is a format for

10:07first and foremost let's define what that means a format could be could be something like uh how nval does these like one line Banger tweets that are like very philosophical right you know he'll he'll say these philosophical tweets on line he's not doing like long long videos or long long form tweets or something like that he's being very concise he's being very clear and he's being very catchy uh and that's him now someone like me on my ex uh what you'll notice is I do a lot of like long long long form like I write really really long stuff but that's because I want to give

10:46the sauce and I can't give the sauce in one line realistically so what you need to do if you're trying to build an audience is to pick a pick one format for each business day and the goal here is you're you're basically you're going to land eventually on one format that's going to crush it for you that's the goal but sometimes it takes uh it's kind of like startup buildings you know sometimes um you have to try a bunch of different things in your startup to see what's going to work and then you double down on the thing that work so uh the way to come up with your format is

11:21to look for formats outside your Niche copying what's saturated in your space makes it harder to stand out right if you're just going to try to compete with naal and try to do on line bangers you're going to lose realistically you have zero followers and he's got millions of followers so the way to compete with nval is actually not to copy with what nval does but look for formats outside of what that nval Niche is and see if you can apply that to your Niche so for example maybe a format might be uh like philosophical memes something like that and then the last thing before I'm curious your thoughts the last thing here is you want to you want to consider actually there's

12:08a few more things you're like you just scrolled and realized you made way more things yeah yeah um well let me continue let me finish formats and then I I'd like to get your opinion on it so you want to consider what's working platform-wide so for example short form video in 2025 is working therefore it might make sense if nval was starting in 2025 maybe he would do short form video um because the algorithms are favoring short form video so consider what's working you got to be silly not to consider what's working focus on what feels natural and enjoyable to make sure you're you stay consistent I stayed consistent over almost 20 years of create you know creating

12:52content in x uh because I found what was fun for me to do um if you don't like creating video content chances are you're going to churn you're you're going to stop creating video content so focus on what feels natural and enjoyable to stay consistent and then test for 90 days and let the data tell you uh what's working on if you know if you're going to build an audience let's say on X you have analytics there if you're going to build on YouTube they've even got even better analytics there all these platforms have analytics and you're you're silly if you don't look at the analytics and see what's working and let the data tell you um and then the last thing on format is

13:33remember that formats have life cycles so what I mean by that is a format might be really popular um and then it kind of like dies down and then people start ignoring it so you always have to constantly reinvent yourself now that you the a life cycle used to have two years uh now it's like sometimes it's almost like two weeks um but just just be aware that formats have life cycles so you always need to be looking at what other people are doing uh just so you have fresh insight into formats this is really great um can I like I have I have a couple of questions for what

14:20I'm imagining some people in in your audience are going to be wondering um maybe I'll start with a statement uh looking at this it really reminds me uh I recently listened to an episode of Tim Ferris podcast no one should listen to that you should just listen to this podcast but I was just you know doing some research for your podcast Greg I would never listen to anybody else's podcast uh Seth Goden was on there and he said he had this great statement which was you know so he'll sometimes talk to people who are just like they've just finished a book or they've just finished making a product or they have the idea and they've got everything

14:54ready and then they're just and then they're like oh yeah now I just have to Market it like everything's done now I just have to Market it and he said something along the lines of no that means you just started because that's actually the hard part getting people to actually pay attention to what you're doing is so much harder than often just doing the thing and making the thing because often that's like something you're passionate about so for me I think a lot of people listening to your podcast might not understand the seriousness of what saying here which is ACP is in order the a is first the audience is first from what I understand

15:37from this that's also your kind of uh thesis that the goal here is to start digging the well to start bringing together your people so when you do have something to share with them when you do have something you maybe want to sell or whatever it is they are there for you versus trying to claw that together when you have a product and it also takes a long time so it's not something that happens overnight building an audience is like I don't know doing index funds it builds the dividends build and compound over the years um and so yeah I think one thing that I'd love to hear from you

16:19is like what would you say to the people which there will be in the comments who say oh it if they if you build it they will come like Apple you know they you just build a great product and people will use it like what do you say to those types of people um it's not I'm not saying they're wrong of course there are edge cases where this happens but what do you think about that like if you were investing in a company and I was the CEO and I was like we're going to work on the product for two years um by the way you're our investor you have to pay us and in that time you

16:55know we'll just release the product and everyone will want to use it so okay well first of all we have to agree that if you build a product you need to sell that product and if you sell that product you need attention and there's two ways to get attention either you get it uh organically or not organically another way to say that is free or paid so if you're starting a startup especially if you're bootstrapping it of course it's better to not pay for it than pay for it and it's better for a few reasons the first reason is by going through this four-step Playbook you're

17:35going to be at one with your audience and community and that's going to allow you to make a way better product with a better remote and a more indispensable business if you figure if you go through this versus you just cheat so to so so to speak you rent the audience you pay for it um if you go through this four-step Playbook you'll be able to be be able to create better ads in the future right I'm not saying don't do ads I'm just saying that the best ads start by being organic first and then like you you know some of these formats you can just use and promote and

18:17and for example like I I'm sure I can write a uh a saucy startup idea um you know post and promote it via ads too and it would work as well I I just don't do that CU I don't particularly have a product I'm selling but I but I could you know and I think that's the best way to to think about it and with the free free versus paid it's not just like but would you view it as like a if someone was starting a business a bootstrap business or even an agency or a small business would you say it's not even an option like you actually have to do this like if you're not planning on running ads

18:59so you're not planning on doing paid I you kind of have to do this or else you just everything has to be just your small word of Mount Network I I I find it very difficult to make the case in 20125 to not be on social and not be going through this Playbook I I I just I really don't understand why you wouldn't because this is your unfair Advantage this is literally your unfair advantage absolutely I'm going to continue um I want to go to systems because the reason I included systems by the way is because some people would you know if I just did audience and formats like you know you you you

19:46might just stop doing it basically and I want to I want you to have systems so that you actually do the ACP funnel and you actually go and build build an audience so um let's start from the top so uh build your creative faucet routine so find what gets your creative juices flowing so this could be starting a fresh account following 50 people in your Niche and you know it might be that but it also might be what what might get your creative juices flowing might be like going to inperson events it might be going for walks and listening to podcast like I don't know what it is but figure

20:22out what your creative faucet what turns on your creativity uh create you know build that routine and then uh have an ideas capture system so I use just Apple notes literally where I write out some idea that comes to me while the creative faucet is going and that might be when I'm on a walk and I might just like write down like this one idea for a potential tweet um or a video idea or a newsletter uh for Greg's letter my newsletter but have an ideas capture system why I use notes and not like a fancy Notes app is because it's everywhere it's simple and I'm just trying to make

21:02it simple uh set um set weekly time to turn your ideas into products uh content so what I mean by that is I I I think of my tweets you know podcasts newsletters almost as products like that I think I think of like I think of them was like minimal viable products um so you know every Friday for example sometimes I'll go in or actually not sometimes on Fridays what I do is I I I turn my ideas and I and some of them are bad some of them are good but I turn them into long form tweets maybe newsletters um and I'm not you know I don't work with postbridge decom but use you could use

21:50a scheduling tool like postbridge um or another scheduling tool um to so that you just like don't have to think about it and it's scheduled um and then the last thing is for the systems piece is be strategic with timing so match platform timing to audience behavior and mindset so what I mean by that is you're probably you probably shouldn't post on LinkedIn at 3: in the morning on Saturday night you know what I mean yeah um so post when also post when topics are relevant so like the why now now matters if you're going to go post about deep seek in March 10 like it's too late bro you

22:32know like that worked a month ago and that's not going to work as much now look for opportunities to join trending conversations so this is news jacking how can you Jack the news jacking yeah how do I that's something I do but I think it's kind of different to what you're talking about there yeah I think so too I think so too but can you tell about that news I thought I was the only one talk more about your newsjacking uh Behavior I thought I was the only one who news jacked okay we we we maybe we can we can move on from that um put out content when it has the

23:13highest likelihood of success that's the way to think about it this is the systems you need so that you can actually put stuff out in The Ether and do it with some level of consistency love that and this is amazing I love how I just came with a random topic and you're like oh I've already made an entire Google dock full of stuff for this and I haven't posted this publicly by the way oh great so it's secret it's secret secret only in this episode this was this is something I I I I I did a AMA in startup Empire and I just started writing this out but I haven't posted this

23:57publicly uh not because I've been gatekeeping or anything just because I it's in my um it's actually in my like I was gonna post this publicly basically I think you've been gatekeeping it to be honest he's gatekeeping it guys yeah I've been gatekeeping no I was I think it's important to like I have like a bunch of of things like this where it's like if I'm not feeling creative for whatever reason this is like Evergreen content that like how to build an audience like it's Evergreen and I can always just post it everyone always needs this information literally last thing on the four-step Playbook pick one primary goal now uh for example what

24:47are you trying to do are you trying to get to 100,000 followers in 12 months are you trying to get to a 25,000 email list uh you're trying to sell a million dollars uh through social uh just pick one thing uh a lot of people here pick like multiple things no just pick one thing um and then measure the effectiveness of your formats against this goal and you can do that on a every 30 days 60 days 90 days I think 90 days is is good enough but just make make sure you're tracking or else you're you're going to get a bit lost um and then just remember

25:19that attention is scarce build it as an asset treat your content like a product approach it with the same rigor you'd bring to a job you know you you you might look at an Nal tweet and be like he just came up with with this on the toilet but I bet you he didn't I bet you he used a system like this to actually two toilets yeah maybe multiple toilets he might have been on he's newsjacking on two different toilets he's never gonna come on this podcast now classic nval classic Naval uh optimize for your goal not vanity metrics I like that yeah yeah I think I think a lot of people want to get to followers for example but I think what's more

26:03interesting is like for even for this podcast like one of my you know one of my metrics is comments and like positive basically positive comments um so I care less about subscribers and more about positive comments more the ones where people say we look like brothers yeah that's my number one metric the one that says we look like the brotherly comment yeah the positive brotherly comments I wish you're I wish you weren't trying to get people to listen to this podcast so you could just name it stupid [ __ ] like this because that would be the name of this episode positive brotherly comments yeah that'd be so good jacking Edition

26:45yeah uh just start don't get stuck on analysis paralysis be patient grow takes time I started Twitter on Twitter almost 20 years ago for it took me it took me until 2020 to get to 10,000 followers and I only really skyrocketed in 2020 but it's because I had I it took me 15 years basically to come up with this format and took me five years to execute a gainit and I can't think of anything more valuable than this document like if you just do it's amazing yeah if you just do this document like you will win and okay I your yeah I say like you can have this you can have a full-time job and do this on the side you can go if you want to go

27:35build a startup you can make this a part of your routine like it doesn't matter who you are but I I just can't think of anything more important than this it's really amazing and I think it's definitely something that would be cool if you're sharing it in the in the description here because it's super helpful what is like the so someone is like right now listening to us talk and they're a little bit like oh my God like this is so cool but I'm slightly overwhelmed if you were just to give someone one tactic or strategy to do on repeat let's say they choose a platform let's say

28:14they choose X or they choose LinkedIn whatever and their goal is to just grow Their audience so that they can grow their newsletter so that they can sell things whatever what would be the thing you'd say every day just do this thing to get to the first you know to start getting momentum would you say it is the replying tactic for like to get this I think sometimes people need a sense of momentum and confidence that there's actually a point to do this thing so that they get like this dopamine hit from it working and I'm wondering what would you say is like the perfect way to start something

28:52like this that doesn't feel overwhelming I think X is the best place to start because no matter what you're building because it'll allow you just to experiment basically with formats and X is the best place to be a reply guy basically so I would say if you need a little confidence boost and you need a little dopamine uh being a starting as your MVP and as a reply is probably what you should do for like 90 days to see if it's working and then tweak at 90 days well you you'll also be able to you're kind of like experimenting with formats through replies so it's going to give you ideas on

29:41which formats to to create through the replies um it's also way less daunting to reply than to post on your own profile um and that's because when you post on your own profile it's like Jonathan Courtney is posting this although you'll say this is my opinion this is my like I'm telling the world this thing you you're not you're not scared of that you know um For Better or For Worse scared I'm not scared I think a lot of people do and and I understand why they do they're they're kind of they're feeling they feel sometimes that they're being judged by the continent and that's another reason why I think X is a lot of better is a better place than for example in stagram posting

30:29on your personal Instagram where PE people who you know see you as this particular person all of a sudden you're talking about this like Niche topic business oriented topic they're going to be like I didn't follow you for your takes on AI for you know I followed you because like because you have great abs because you have great abs that's why people follow me on Instagram it's true can I I don't know how much time we have left but I I have a couple of like things related to the why of growing an audience why I think like do you have like 50 minutes left or is it done or where

31:08we at keep going all right well I think the the end result there there's like a I have a couple of different ways of looking at this because the beauty of this conversation between Greg and I is that Greg is currently putting Tons of love and effort into building an audience and it's working like crazy and I'm lazy on the other side I like six years ago I started building an audience I started building our YouTube channel our Instagram uh LinkedIn all of this kind of stuff and then I sort of just got a little tired of it and I turned down the no like I turned down the

31:44amount of effort I was putting in and the crazy thing about it is that the dividends that it still pays today to just have done that six years ago is unbelievable like it's your you're building some sort of like a a crazy um resource or like a what would you even call it like asset yeah it's an asset or it is like this well it's you're building something that you can keep taking from and keep uh you know getting benefit from even even if you eventually lose let's say the the mo your mojo for it so it's not one of those things that you have to like it's it's not like this threadmill that

32:30you have to be obsessed with now for the next 80 years I really pushed hard for about four years and the this the results of this I'm still benefiting from today and just an example of that like I'm bringing it back to the beginning of the podcast this like product or whatever it is that I had I had a thought about this morning the cool thing about having an audience the cool thing about you know moving maybe some of those audience to an email list eventually or having them on on LinkedIn or whatever is that when the time comes and maybe some of you guys saw this

33:05in our in our circles over the last few weeks we were doing a big promotion for this clickbook we you and I were talking about it that's when I then decided to switch on my social media like and ask for something for the first time in a long time and the results of this are crazy and this is something that just doesn't work if you don't have an audience there's like nothing can come with it an audience is so unbelievably valuable and also like Greg your audience size is also extremely valuable to other people like if you ever wanted to to just say you know what

33:40I'm just going to do sponsors like I don't want to run my businesses anymore it's too stressful you could make crap tons of money just having your podcast or doing sponsored post or whatever it is not not saying that's your business thing but it gives you crap tons of options and I almost look at it it's it's like if you build the system that Greg is talking about we're not trying to sell you anything here by the way it's just like if you do the thing Greg talks about you almost get like this ability to switch on Revenue if you have an idea for a product and I love that I love

34:16the idea of just being like well in three years time if I'm if this company is not doing well or if I don't like this job then all I have to do to generate Revenue you is come up with an idea that this audience will enjoy or this audience will find valuable or this audience hasn't had yet and that makes life and business feel much less tense and also much more predictable it's so much more predictable like you know we were talking again before this podcast and and we just know like when we're looking at something like that it's like oh yeah that that would make

34:52this much money if you have no audience if we had no audience it would just be like this is a cool idea but like how the hell will we find anybody to to you know what I mean it's a completely different world you live in when you have an audience versus when you have no audience at all um and you know even the companies where you think oh these guys don't do any social media and they still are successful like I don't know maybe you look at a company like base camp and you're like oh they don't they stay away from all that stuff Jason freed and his co-founder wrote books

35:27that literally were New York Times bestsellers as a way to bring attention to their companies like they're they every person who makes things that are interesting uses a lot of or or does marketing either organic or paid and I think organic marketing is just one of these insanely powerful tools for you just getting more options for your life and your business so that you're also not stuck to having to do one thing like if there was a crazy recession tomorrow Greg and let's say all your companies just failed and all went bankrupt if you had no audience at all and you hadn't been doing this I guess you'd be a lot more worried than you would be if that actually happened

36:11today I think you'd be like that really sucks but also I also wanted to make this thing for a while so let's see if my audience likes that I mean I think the the number one reason why anyone should create an audience is to have something to fall back on period it's Insurance that's the word I was looking for it's like an insurance it's an insurance it's an insurance policy so it's it's like okay I'm going to dedicate four hours of time per week to this and what do I get out of it well for one I get clarity into my into into this Niche I care about which by the way

36:52that itself is huge like Clarity in the sense of like okay I understand what these people want why they want it their motivations their incentives that that whole thing um two is whenever I need something from this group of people at some point in the future I could tap into it just as if you tap into you know your retirement account this is your retirement account right if you need to build a business build a startup you can tap into these people as potential customers beta users uh that sort of thing if you want a job all of a sudden you have all these people who are in your Niche

37:36that have built in trust that you can message and be like hey it's a recession right now but you've been following me for the last four years you know I'm really competent at XYZ Can you hire me and I guarantee you that's going to work better than randomly applying on a LinkedIn post it's so so goddamn true it's it's a feeling it's like a feeling of something to fall back on a feeling of a bit of safety Al also financially I mean like it sounds ridiculous to even be sharing this but I'm going on a trip to Japan soon and it's going to be very expensive and I was kind of like there

38:14was something I wanted to book but it was very expensive right you actually recommended it to me and I was like this is really excessive but then I was like but all I have to do is just have another idea for this to not like to bump give the business a really big bump so that it doesn't feel as silly to do this and that also is something I'm just so grateful for that I can just be like oh let's just let's just do this thing because this is something our audience would appreciate this is something that people who follow me would find valuable and also it then mentally for me offsets

38:54some of the what I perceive to be too much lavish spending but it's something I want to do and so I think this is a this is the this is very difficult to do if you don't have some if you don't have an audience to present stuff to and I'm not saying every single thing you'll present to them will work but the fact that you have the fact that you can be like I'm interested in having this life experience and doing this thing and I to do this would like to have a like an increase of this much money and then you can just go okay I'm going to turn it on then I'm just

39:29going to switch that on because I have the energy because I have the creativity right now having an audience allows you to also use your creativity because you're not then trying to figure out how will I get people to actually see this so you can focus on making something interesting focus on making the coolest thing and then know that you can just sell it it's really I guess people are going to be like yeah I can imagine the first comment here is we get it build an audience yeah like try to really selling the idea but it's it's just so it's so important yeah what are you doing

40:04like what why are you listening to this podcast even at this point it's like now you know just do it it's like why not why wouldn't you do it you're looking at Greg and he has you know crazy crazy audience guys I have been very lazy on the social media front and I I want to give you an example I started a Blog two years a Blog two years ago because I was like okay old man yeah exactly I was like exactly so what is that hello children would you like to see my blog um I started a Blog uh and a podcast with which wasn't even on any sort of schedule it's unscheduled and I half ass ran that

40:57now for the last two or three years and it has a very small audience very very tiny but whenever I tap into it the first time I tapped into it was like a year and a half after I launched it and and I really it's it's like the after one year there was like 2,000 people reading it or something it's very tiny but even with that audience because my niche in that case was business owners who are making more than a million already I was able to run an event that brought in like 7,000 dollars from that tiny tiny amount of people who were reading my blog so it doesn't have to be

41:37that you become as successful or as prolific as Greg I think that would be a great Target to have because you know if you aim this far then you can only fall this far whatever definitely stars and then you land on the moon exactly definitely don't aim for the moon because guy is the you my lazy my laziness level is just because I am like kind of whatever I I built my businesses already and I'm I'm being way and I'm European whereas let's call it what it is let's call it what it is I don't I wish I had I wish I had Greg's like enthusiasm and energy but I want you guys to know that you know

42:20I I post on LinkedIn maybe two times per week I write my blog maybe once a month I post on X maybe once a week and that's way less useful and successful than the way Greg does it but it's still better than nothing it still has an outcome and I think the like the the barrier to entry to building an audience people are often like embarrassed about just not having anything to say not having anything to give because they're like there's already a billion people out there talking about the same thing well just start the way that Greg talked about start replying to people you'll find your angle you'll find your voice you'll find your format and then you'll

43:04find your specific way of talking and figuring things out last thing just because other people are talking about a topic that you are interested in let's say facilitation is one of the topics I talk about well the other people talking about facilitation don't look like me they don't sound like me and they don't act like me so even though I'm often saying the exact same because we're all pulling from the same pool of information around facilitation some people want to listen to me specifically talk about it because of the way I talk about things and some people are very repelled from the way I talk and so they want to talk about listen to the other people so I think

43:42that's another thing people think that there's no point in jumping into talking about startups Greg like there's plenty of people talking about what you talk about but you talk about it in your specific way even even down to like with your Vibe with your energy with who the amazing people you choose to bring into your inner circle and on your podcast like J ice cream uh it your your angle like your own personality will make what you do different just automatically by who you are so there's a there's a quote in this book from Derek civer hell yeah or no and he said like stop trying

44:23to be original sometimes just doing like bands that are successful often started out as cover bands and the more covers that they played the more like the more it became their own thing and it's like he said it's like an imperfect mirror so even if you try to copy someone you're going to do that in an imperfect way that makes your version special oh I love that it's really it's it's fascinating I think even the most successful products out there you know that you know fortnite the video game the most successful video game game of all time what's that what's fortnite okay you're joking but this is a essentially a clone of a game called pubg and it when it first came out

45:10I remember being like Oh my God that is so like embarrassing like how much of a clone that is even the fact that they fly in and get dropped down and then it just became it's it's it's it's the same general idea now but has its own Vibe its own thing it became something completely different and then there was another game that came out which is like the it's called Apex Legends which is a clone of fortnite which also became successful and became its own thing and had its own it was like a clone of fortnite and OverWatch a little bit and so with your content originality is not the

45:45goal in the beginning you're going to accidentally become original by just being yourself and having your own life experiences drop the mic that's the point I was trying to make for the last boom okay I that was amazing I'm fired up uh before we before we end on on that video game note and on your TW X account note you tweeted this is your Tweet which by the way there was one like to the tweet I was the only person who liked it this is a perfect example I got one like that's guys all of you procrastinating on not posting I got one like and I'm fine with that

46:27what was it no never played a monster hunter before but I'm loving wild the loop is so simple and satisfying so I'm guessing monster hunter is a video game yeah and I don't know why the no is there that's not supposed to be there that's a mistake yeah this is an example of what not to do start the J ice cream format is just not copy my ex account it's so bad yeah just start it with a no okay so my question to you is what is Monster Hunter a good game should people play it I'm really enjoying Monster Hunter Wilds I'm playing it on PS5 and if any of you guys want

47:17to play it with me because it's an online game please put your uh like Monster Hunter code in the comments of this video and I will connect with you I'm desperate none of my friends play video games it's so annoying everyone's so serious everyone's like doing like real stuff and I'm like I also still want to play video games so Monster Hunter Wilds I've never played a monster hunter video game before super satisfying Loop by the way um relating to content a lot of my content on my more successful channels not X is inspired by uh video games as well so I'll often be playing a video game and I'll take take an angle from it and turn it into an article or

47:59a video so that's like something where one of my hobbies really influences the content that I create and that makes makes it different I talk about video games a lot you know cool I love it this has been great Jay ice cream Jonathan ice cream Jonathan Courtney jce cream you call him what he is what he isn't he's the best we're honored to have you we're honored to have you and this has been a lot of fun thank you for having me on thanks to the audience for always being so kind in the comments much appreciated and um please that are you priming the are you priming the

48:40audience to be kind positive positive comments and I would also appreciate positive comments about my hair I should have said this earlier because uh people I guess on YouTube don't always listen till the very end but you I would like some positive comments about my hair and also about my biceps okay maybe we'll do a little pull who is better looking oh no don't do that dude I'll get [ __ ] ruined I'll get destroyed no no no it's it's it's we're we're equal we're basically the same looking we're the same guy I think you're like a you look more vital I look more used up than you

49:19somehow I look like a very tired version of you you look like Jay ice cream looks like if Greg Eisenberg went to a prison in Berlin for like three months wait are we the same age or you don't want to say your age I don't know I'll say my age how old are you I'm I'm turning 37 next week oh wow yeah happy birthday I'm 36 okay so there's actually no excuse for me to look this tired [ __ ] I I was hoping you'd say 30 and I'm like ad that makes sense for real I I you know well well ask you a question do you uh do you have a nighttime skin routine I I'm

50:03lazy with it I do put on a moisturizer but I I the answer is no I put a moisturizer on like every so often and then I don't wash it off until I have a shower so the answer is no okay do you when I was 30 years old a friend of mine who I think at the time was 42 or something he his gift to me was uh the nighttime moisturizer basically and he he he told me he was like the reason I have I I I'm 42 but I look 28 is because I've been using this since I mean this is crazy he's he had been using

50:46it since he was 17 is it like what's the brand of it like is it like retinol and other stuff he was using Keels so he gave me KS I don't use kills now I use like a fancy one what is it I want to know I want to know how to look juicy it's called I think I heard uh Tim Ferris Kevin Rose people like that use use this cream this nice cream oh [ __ ] dude I have to I have to go I'm really sorry okay so on the next episode we will talk about our uh nighttime routine and what creams we use are yeah sorry dud I've been have a call right now later love you bye bye bye bye [Music]