The Exchanges

Q app around that and they have a whole community and a brand. So he was able to take that and turn that into a brand for a specific niche within meditation. That is this like skeptical, uh, group. So that's one that comes to mind as built completely from scratch in a growing space. Um, that's one. How about you? Do you have any Greg that you can think of?

A The one that comes top of mind is a friend of mine and friend of the pod. Her name's Natalie Ellis. She started, it started off as like basically a meme page called girl boss. I think it was called. Um, and she was sharing memes and quotes and stories around female entrepreneurship, women led businesses. Uh, And it grew to 6.4 or something million followers on Instagram. Big, you know, and once she had that, she was like, okay, what are the things that I could sell? Templates, uh, a membership, uh, you know, events. Uh, now she has one of the top podcasts, one of the top business podcasts. So, um, she went from a meme page to a millionaire basically quite quickly. And, uh, it started with the brand.

AI assessment note: “The one that comes top of mind is a friend of mine... Her name's Natalie Ellis.”

Q best quality that I can get? Uh, you know, for whatever the category is in, and then people come in and they basically will tell their story. So that's kind of the high level of what this, what this looks like. Are you in this or do you, do you kind of like, are you a part of this G or did you just find it and find it interesting?

A Um, I, I heard about it. I just started perusing it. I saw, you know, one of the posts, I think it might have been this post, went on the front page. I gave my dad this Batman wallet 10 years ago. I was like four or five years old, and I got it in preschool. He uses it to this day. So from this post, I think I, I, I started just perusing, and, um, then I just started going to Google Trends, Um, I use, uh, an app called Glimpse. I'm not associated with them or anything. I just think it's, it gives you like a better view on, on Google trends. Um, so I saw that and I was like, okay, is this a big movement or is the small movement? And it seems like it's literally, I mean, it's, it's, it's gaining a lot of steam, 69,000 searches in the past month. And it just got me thinking that there's an opportunity. Uh, yeah, there's an opportunity to build some businesses on, on top of this trend.

AI assessment note: “I heard about it. I just started perusing it.”

Q doing your follow through execution? Cause my problem is always like, I have the idea and I have the social funnel. Like I, I have similar audience to you and stuff. But I think you're doing a far better job of figuring out how to actually monetize it and track the funnel and stuff. Who's doing that for you? Are you doing that yourself or do you have a team?

A I have a business partner. His name is Jordan and Jordan is your quintessential funnel guy. So You know, you wake up in the morning and you're excited about ideas. He wakes up in the morning and he's excited about how do I, how do I squeeze this funnel? And I think that, uh, the, the old way of creating startups was, you know, technical founder and maybe, maybe a designer, maybe a business guy. Now I think today you kind of need idea gal or guy and a funnel. Guy or gal. So I basically come up with an idea, give it to Jordan. Um, you know, now I'm using, I don't know if you've used V zero, but I use Vercel V zero, which is basically a tool to use AI to wireframe out the ideas. So I wireframe out the ideas, um, and he, he really takes those ideas and then he dispatches it to a group of people. I will say ideas die unless they, unless they, you need an owner basically for an idea. Um, and so that's something I've learned is unless I have like one GM or one person on this idea, The idea loses steam despite the funnel, uh, funnel guy.

AI assessment note: “I have a business partner. His name is Jordan and Jordan is your quintessential funnel guy.”

Q want. And I think a lot of people need to change their mindset about that when they're saying, I can get a seven story house out in the middle of nowhere. It's like, yeah, you can. And you just need to understand the trade off. You can do that. And that's really cool. It's just about understanding these trade offs is important. Am I going down a bad rabbit hole?

A No, no, this is great. My take on, my take on this is that every person has a ignorance tax that they have to pay down. So no matter what your goals are, there's a price that you have to pay to learn and To get to your goals quicker. And by living in San Francisco, New York, some of these places, yes, it might be two times more expensive to live, but you will, just by osmosis, pay down your ignorance tax, ignorance debt, way, way, way faster. And the question for you is, or the person listening really is, You know, at this stage in your life, and with the amount of money that you have saved up, does, is it worth spending an extra 1500 dollars a month, or whatever it is, for the premium to potentially get an extra client a month, or learn about how VCs work, or, you know, XYZ? That's what it is.

AI assessment note: “No, no, this is great. My take on, my take on this is”

Q What is learn to earn? So play to earn, we're going to dive into it, like, we'll talk about all the definitions and get into it. Learn to earn, I've never heard of. So what is that?

A Learn to earn, well, I'll explain it by the example, like rabbithole. So the way rabbithole works is you earn tokens from Uh, from decentralized applications by learning about them. So for example, Uniswap is one of the biggest protocols that exists, um, in decentralized finance, and they'll basically give, let's say, you know, 10 uni tokens if you go on a rabbit hole quest. And the rabbit hole quest is all about learning about how Uniswap works and how to actually You know, use some of their protocol. Um, so Uniswap is happy because they've just acquired this new customer, uh, who is vetted, right? They've actually learned how to use the protocol and they've actually, they've got, you know, quote unquote on chain reputation. So meaning you've learned, uh, How to use Uniswap, and it's almost minted to the blockchain. So it's like this, you know, Greg Eisenberg learned this. Um, and that's, that's really the concept of learn to earn.

AI assessment note: “you earn tokens from decentralized applications by learning about them”

Q kind of more like an optimizing for state thing. So yeah, I don't have a mission statement, but I, I kind of break it down into like the three things I want to focus on for the year. Um, but the mission statement thing is pretty interesting. Do you have any, is there any like thing I can watch or read about how to create a mission statement for myself?

A Yeah, there's like, uh, there's like a few frameworks for it. I think it's, there's one called the three question framework. So it's, what is more, what is most important to you? What are your goals? And what values guide your actions? So for example, the integral piece that you talked about, the, the value that you have is Integrity. So then, so you have pieces of it. That's one framework. There's also the purpose, values, goals framework. So it's, uh, purpose, what is your life about? Values, what do you stand for? And goals, what do you want to achieve? So I kind of like that one, because I do think that you need to have some number, you know, associated, like from a goal perspective. Because otherwise, it just becomes, like, so lofty. And then the last one, uh, that I've seen is the five-step plan. So it's, uh, what are your past successes? Identify themes from your past achievements. What are your core values? List, list and prioritize your most important values. Identify contributions, how you want to impact different areas of your life. Identify goals, short and long term goals. And then it's right mission and vision statements. So you're basically synthesizing all the above stuff in concise statements.

AI assessment note: “there's like a few frameworks for it. I think it's, there's one called”

Q we have this here? Let's go. The only downside is sometimes you get, uh, tripped up and you forget which agents are working on what. Here we go. Uh, looks like it fixed the error. Let's go back in, make sure we're not getting an error on the screen anymore. Is this like kind of percolating, uh, ideas for you, Greg, around Codex and things you can do with it?

A Yeah, totally. I also think, uh, first of all, I agree with the whole MCP complicated workflow to the errors. So I've tried using some of those tools and it's, Oh man, it's like, it just feels like I'm over engineering things. So I'm happy you said that. So that's, that was actually what I was thinking about. Um, the second thing is I was literally, I was thinking about this app and I, you know, one of the beauties about, uh, building an app instead of just like sketching it, uh, you know, on a notepad is it got me thinking that this in a mobile setting would actually probably rip. Um, You know, not that we're going to build an iOS app today, but, you know, maybe if people want in the future, we can.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, totally. I also think, uh, first of all, I agree”

Q No, that's great. I think maybe, what's a V, what's a V one? You know, how do I feel good enough about where I'm ready to sell something?

A Um, well, I think you can do a lot of the heavy lifting, uh, on the V one with looking at Manus, chat GPT, uh, idea browser of like, okay, here's a product that's going to work most likely. And it's not, I always think about it as like, what's, is there a one killer feature? So the V one is basically one killer feature. Plus there's just certain table stakes features that you're going to need to have for launch. So for example, uh, If you're launching with a marketplace, you might need to have, you know, user profiles or ratings. You know, these are things that you have to have. So, uh, that's what V one is. And then a V two is like, okay, you've got a thing that's working. You know, if it's a marketplace, you have supply and demand, you have people, you know, posting what they're selling and people buying the products. Um, you know, there's other, a V two might be like, oh, you know, Something, an adjacent killer feature, basically, adding to that.

AI assessment note: “the V one is basically one killer feature. Plus there's just certain table stakes features”

Q What's your feelings towards like an off platform community? I've been toying with that idea of still producing weekly content on YouTube, but taking the live art hang to a zoom thing and maybe an email list.

A I think that, uh, You bring up a good point, which is, like, really, what's the goal, right? So I think, like, you know, the goal of what you're trying to do is to gain a, like you said in the beginning, gain a community of people interested in what you're doing. Uh, I actually think your goal is to build an audience first, and then build a community. Uh, I have this framework we talk a lot about in the pod called, you know, build an audience. Convert that audience to a community, or a portion of them, and then go and build a product. For that community. So you're, you're, you're, you're in the audience phase, right? You're, you're, you should be just focused on building top of the funnel, get interest, attract as many people who are interested into edutainment for art, creativity as possible. And then once you have that, then you can figure out off platform, Patreon, private communities like school, Facebook groups, whatever. And then from that you can create a product. And by the way, when I say product, that could be the service too. It could be event series or, or whatever, just something that monetizes that. But I think that the mistake a lot of people make is they're kind of trying to do ACP all at the same time, but it's really meant to do one at a time. So I think for you, I think about what is a realistic goal for YouTube if that's the platform. Um, and that's like, co…

AI assessment note: “I actually think your goal is to build an audience first, and then build a community.”

Q Are we talking like, are we just taking the concept of a dentist or just like any business?

A Any business. So like, um, you know, on one of my recent pods, I talked about this app called Granola, right? So it's like, wow, this is a really cool app. The AI notepad for people in back to back meetings. And It's like every, every product, every indie hacker, every founder is trying to add credibility here. So they all have this trusted at individuals at this. And I don't know about you, but I started to like gloss over these credibility slides. Now, if it said like top product of the year in an image over here, I might be more willing to try this because there's a thousand AI notepad apps. And I think that Granola would be willing to pay 200 dollars a year for some sticker over here, as well as a physical plaque that they can get similar to, like, the YouTube 100 plaque that they can go and create content and be like, Wow, we're so happy that, you know, we got the, you know, top startup of the year by, you know, Dalen Institute.

AI assessment note: “Any business. So like, um, you know, on one of my recent pods”

Q people. We were like main revenue sources, guru, you know, but what can I say? I'm, I'm a guru now, I guess. Uh, But how do you feel about this space? What do you think? What do you think I should do? I mean, we're, we're, we're like blowing up. I don't even know. We're still on a free Slack channel plan. We're still on free Slack. I don't know.

A Here's my take. So I'm, I'm a community guy. I, I love, I, I think there's a huge opportunity in communities, but I, I, I think of it as you're not selling community. You're actually selling transformation. So when you say, People come in and they're saying, here's what works and here's what doesn't. At the end of the day, the transformation that you're probably selling is, hey, come into this community and by, by being a part of this community and learning tips and tricks, you're going to come out of it here as like a 10 X better SEO person. And what does that mean? Ultimately, it means that you're doing 10,000 visits a month. You're going to get to a 100,000 visits a month. And That's what I think, you know, what people miss on the community thing is you're not just selling like, hey, get access to hang out with me. Like, I don't, you know, those communities end up dying because it's so hard to figure out the liquidity of like, uh, posts to comments and getting that all in there. I think, uh, if I were you, what I would do is think about How do I, like, I think about less about building a membership, sorry, less about building a community and building, and more about building a membership. So it's like, what is the de facto membership for these types of people? What are the things they want? What are the discounts that you can provide? What are the, um, What is the software y…

AI assessment note: “if I were you, what I would do is think about How do I”

Q action is worth studying. And I call that my got got swipe file. You can call it whatever you want, but I got inspired by Marshawn Lynch. He, he said, uh, uh, hilarious, funny, um, A thing. He's like, I'm gonna get got, but I'm gonna get mine before I get got though. And so, that's the got got swipe file. Do you use my mind or anything like this?

A I don't. I'm actually one of those people that books marks things on X, and then it just gets completely buried, and I never go back to them. So I know a lot of other people are like me because I was actually looking at my X analytics this morning, and I noticed that in the last 28 days, I've gotten a 100,000 bookmarks on my content. So that means that probably a lot of people listening bookmark my content, um, and they are probably like me. They probably lose track of it. It's very, I mean, yes, there's folders on X, um, but it's, It's not designed really to capture inspiration. That's not why people, uh, it's not why the product managers, product designers at X, you know, they want to create engagement and, you know, it's not about inspiration. So, um, show me, show me my mind.

AI assessment note: “I don't. I'm actually one of those people that books marks things on X”

Q Hey, don't worry. I'm, I'm just going to make names. We'll, we'll, we'll keep going. I'm going to say Tim Ferriss and Mark Cuban for fun, whatever. Okay. So inside, what are some like conversations that have had, like, are they talking with you sometimes? It's like an office hours where they ask you questions and you answer.

A Sometimes it'll be with me, sometimes it'll be with my team, but it'll be, um, very tactical. So it'd be like, how to get from zero to a 100,000 followers with, uh, you know, Sean Pory. I'm just making an example. Um, but they're all, they're all like that. Um, so we'll take an expert and it'll all be really, uh, Around the tactics to get from point A to point B, like, give the secret sauce. And then we also run something called sprints, which is, um, you know, in the next 30 days, we're gonna go collectively get to a 100,000 followers. So everyone signs up to a sprint, and we provide, um, Like a lot of the curriculum, the trainings, the guest speakers, the accountability to help get, get you there, and then everyone kind of shares, um, what they're learning.

AI assessment note: “Sometimes it'll be with me, sometimes it'll be with my team, but it'll be, um, very tactical.”

Q So you would, cause you have a, you have a SEO agency, right? Like, is this something you could offer? Like, would you like, why wouldn't you do it yourself for your own content for your own?

A So we actually have been building a suite of, we've been building a lot of this stuff. And so you're talking about boringmarketing.com. So we've been quietly just like building a lot of these, uh, tools. So this is the direction we're going in. So yes, I mean, I'm a believer, you know, I've, I'm invested in it. And the beauty about this is once you, once you capture an entrepreneur who's, who's like, who wants to build one of these ideas, they need more than just SEO. They need, uh, a bunch of different services and you can build the, and tools. They need a bunch of tools and they need a bunch of services. So, um, it's a super high valued potential customer and, um, That's the way to think about it, right? It's like, you, you want to think about how do I build a business with a high value customer? And this is like one, one great way to do it.

AI assessment note: “we actually have been building a suite of, we've been building a lot of this”

Q It's iconic. But anyway, um, like I'm just imagining like that. That's something that I think when I, when I don't have to think about it, but I get the, the educational drip that I'm looking for. I think that's valuable to anybody, right? That's like competing at a high level. They want to know everything about everybody they're competing against or has competed in the same category before them.

A Yeah, and I also think that if it's, uh, influencer-based or creator-based, you just target people that, you know, if it's for me, let's say, yeah, people who follow me on, on X, just get those people. I'm sure you can get those emails for, like, pretty cheap. And then, and then just send them, like, I think they're, you know, businesses have levels, so, like, level one of this is just the free email with, like, Greg Eisenberg would recommend these two books this month, and here's some key insights from those books, and then, you know, the next level is join the book club, to your point. And it's like, you don't even have to, you know, for 99 dollars a month, we'll just send it to you right away. And then the next level is maybe a membership that, you know, uh, you know, synchronous events and digital stuff. That's the business.

AI assessment note: “businesses have levels, so, like, level one of this is just the free email”

Q just have so much going on. There's just too much. I just want to get rid of it all and go Sell it and live in a cabin in the woods in Canada. So I guess my first question before I even ask any other questions, because I want to learn some shit from you here, is do you get to those phases where you're just done with it all?

A I don't. Like, I don't, yeah, I don't, I don't let it get to that point. You know, if I'm, if I'm ever, if I'm ever feeling like I'm overwhelmed, and too much stuff is going on, I just, I just take a step back. Like, instead of, you know, Here's one thing I'll say. I actually work every day. Like, seven days a week, I'm working some amount of time. And I know that's not what you're supposed to do, but I do it, because especially in the mornings for me, I notice that, like, I'm really, like, I get, like, one hour of work is, like, in the morning is, like, eight hours in the afternoon and night for me, so if I notice that I'm, like, getting close to being burnt out, like, maybe instead of working two hours, Every day, uh, or on a weekend type thing, I'll just, you know, I'll go to 30 minutes, so I'll just, or, or, or I'll go to zero, you know. Um, so I, I'm very conscious of, about the burnout, and I just don't get too close to the sun.

AI assessment note: “I don't. Like, I don't, yeah, I don't, I don't let it get to that point.”

Q going to be one newsletter in a topic, right? Like you go leave and start your own thing. Uh, so I think you have a lot of opportunities and obviously find the right person to work with, but I don't know. I feel like there's something cool there. What do you think? I feel like you would say, no, go start your own thing. Don't go work for someone else.

A I, I would say both. Like, go work for someone, because you can do things at scale, and test at scale, and there's, especially in social, specifically, social and product, you know, when you, when you launch a new feature to millions of people, or hundreds of thousands of people, you really pay attention to what that product is, and if it's dialed, versus you're just putting it To potentially no one or same with social, like you're tweeting to a million people versus just tweeting to a hundred people. Like you really, you really instinctively over time learn about how to connect with people and you can take that in the future and apply that to your own products. So I would say go work for someone, but at the same time, go also be testing what you're learning on the side.

AI assessment note: “I, I would say both. Like, go work for someone, because you can do things at scale”

Q They've been split testing this and doing all kinds of optimization of this over the course of years. So if they are sending four emails per day, after you give an email to them, that, that isn't by accident, right? That, that was all pre thought about and tested. So their data clearly showed that sending lots of emails to really get people to convert is the way to go.

A Yeah. So you bring up a good point. Something I've been thinking a lot about, which is, you know, recently a lot of, uh, a lot of founders that we know are obsessed with conversion rate optimization. So how do I get, you know, as much juice out of this lemon as possible? And I get it, right? If you're converting at eight percent and then you get that up to 12%, that could be the difference. That could be, that could, you know, like be hundreds of thousands of dollars, not millions of dollars, Uh, of profit for your business that year. So like it may, you know, I get why people optimize for conversion rate, but I think that people are making a mistake by just optimizing for conversion because it's not really long-term thinking. Um, you know, long-term, and this is like a half-baked thought. So workshop with this workshop, but with me, but it's this idea that like, yes, I could send four emails a day and I'll probably increase sales and. You know, that's great. But think about those people who unsubscribed and who are now going to tell their friends, oh, you know, or, or they're at a dinner table and someone brings up the Motley Fool and they're like, oh, I got so many annoying, annoying emails from them. I had to unsubscribe. So I think that there is a balance between conversion rate optimization and, um, no optimization. And I actually call it community rate optimization, CRO. …

AI assessment note: “I think that people are making a mistake by just optimizing for conversion”

Q a product that look, it might succeed or fail. Like when you say you're a hundred percent certain you should get after something. The way I read that is you're a hundred percent certain that it's going to be really, really interesting, right? Like it could be a really big word or it could be like a spectacular learning experience. You're a hundred percent certain of like a potent outcome.

A Exactly. And that was actually Theo's response. He started laughing and cause he knows how ridiculous it is to say something like that. And he was like, okay, so what you're really saying is how do we win even though we lose? Which I think was a really Interesting way of framing it. What do you, what do you, what he means by that is okay. Crazy founder, CEO guy. Uh, you know, I understand that you're have got a lot of conviction. Um, but this feels like a zero to one, a zero or one thing. Like it's either going to really be successful or it's going to fall flat. How do we make sure that we, if it falls flat, that we still learn because in the holding company model, And the product studio model learning is also helpful because you can basically say like, okay, I learned this, you know, how to do Twitter ads or whatever. And I can apply that to, even though we spent 50,000 dollars on Twitter ads and it went nowhere, we can actually apply that to another one of our businesses.

AI assessment note: “Exactly. And that was actually Theo's response.”

Q be like, even more scared if a rogue robot is gonna tattoo me and I'm gonna move my arm and it doesn't register that I'm moving my arm. So it's gonna start to stab me or something. Such a wrong thing to think about. Cause there's probably a way less error prone for a robot to do those things, but I wonder man, would you let a robot tattoo you?

A I wouldn't let anyone tattoo me. Cause I don't want tattoos, but if I, If I was getting a tattoo, you know, if you're, uh, Richard Branson and you're like, Hey, come with me to the moon. I wouldn't come with you to the moon. I don't want to be the first person or one of the first people to do any of that stuff. I'm one of those people that kind of like, um, let me wait and see, to see like how the first. 20,000 tattoos have, have turned out and like do my due diligence. And then from there, Make a decision. I do think though, that the arrow of progress is towards machine driven tattoos. Like I think that's where it's going to go. What you're probably going to see is it's going to be crazy at first. Someone's going to do it. I can like picture the press release right now, or the New York times article, whatever, then it's going to be less crazy because more people are going to do it. And you're going to have humans supervising the machine. And then eventually There won't be humans supervising the machine. Most tattoos will be done by robots and a small percentage of them will be done by humans.

AI assessment note: “I wouldn't let anyone tattoo me. Cause I don't want tattoos”

Q right, like a ludite or whatever you want to call it in terms of understanding what the difference is going to be with Web three as it relates to community. And so help me understand it. Hopefully help some of the audience. Hopefully I'm not the only ludite out there. Um, just like, tell me a little bit more about what that means. Like why, why does Web three matter?

A I think what Web Three does is it just supercharges Web Two communities. So look at Facebook groups. Like there's over a billion active users on Facebook groups. Think of like, um, moms in Miami. Think about, you know, soccer team in, uh, in Brooklyn. There's just millions of these groups, and I think what's lacking in some of these groups is ownership. Like, the, these groups and these leadership groups and community organizers often Don't own the group. They're, uh, renting the group from Facebook. They're renting the group from discord. And I think what web three unlocks is just a supercharging of web two communities. We've seen, especially through the pandemic, how important communities and digital communities are and into, you know, people's lives. And I think what you're going to see over the next five, 10 years is when you Insert a token. If you insert, you know, a JPEG, a video, an NFT, and you allow people to share upside in the group and allow to, you know, and allow them to vote on where this group could go, that's when magic's really gonna happen.

AI assessment note: “I think what Web Three does is it just supercharges Web Two communities.”

Q Let's do this. Let's do this exercise. This is a great, I love that you went this direction. I hadn't thought of this. I was thinking like, you just go do the X games in a new way with this culture moment. Let's do the, what is web three X game? What is the web three future of the X games look like?

A Well, I think the first is to your point, you start with the, the athlete and you, uh, reward the top a thousand, uh, Fans of each athlete with an airdropped NFT or token, and that token gives you, you know, certain access and the, and you could vote on where this person could go or what they can do. You can go to different events. I think like, I love the idea of like, if there's 5000 athletes, um, on, on the X Games, like five, they should be throwing, there should be an event every single day that These athletes are throwing and that are bringing like local communities together. It shouldn't be that these athletes play just for one week in the, the summer and the winter, but that they're like, like musicians, they're touring, you know, two thirds of the year. And I think with your idea around content and creating content, which is just essentially excuses to talk about things and web three's ability to reward Fans and give them certain levels of access and, and voting, I think that, you know, that version of the X Games is, is, yeah, interesting.

AI assessment note: “reward the top a thousand, uh, Fans of each athlete with an airdropped NFT”

Q brain needs to differentiate something. So you can easily recognize all your different little teammates here versus like a grade, just like a gray thread in chat GPT or Claude. It's just, I find this tool saves you so much on switching costs and organization. Um, so right off the bat, we're saving time using this. Am I sounding crazy here talking about the design of the agents in GrokBot?

A Well, you're not. I think like, you know, a few weeks ago, the buzz was all around Jack Dorsey's buzz product, which I think was such an interesting product. But I think what, you know, I posted a video about it and a lot of people were just like, I don't, I don't know how to, how to get this started. You know, it was a lot of the technical people liked it, but what it feels like is, um, Grokbot is almost like a non-technical version, uh, of some of the features of Buzz. So if you're non-technical, and you want an agent team, and you want this almost like Slack-like experience, um, Grokbot is a good place to start. Now I think the big question that a lot of people have is, and this is what I want to get to by the end of this episode is, you know, it's not cheap. It's, you know, two, 300 dollars a month. Um, you know, if, Yeah. How can we, yeah. How can we, you have it right there. How can we make GrokBot pay for itself? Five X, 10 X, 20 X, 50 X. Um, where do we go?

AI assessment note: “Well, you're not. I think like, you know, a few weeks ago”

Q Oh, like, okay, a personalized homepage for me. Hmm. I guess I really haven't thought about that. I just pictured all homepages just kind of having a chat like experience, but that's, I like that though. Um, yeah, what, uh, can you explain that a little more to like what? Yeah.

A So My take is the ad market is extremely personalized. Um, and the reason why it became very personalized is just because it's like a trillion dollar industry. So Facebook invested and Google invested in, in taking your data, honestly, and making the experience really personalized. Um, I think a similar thing is going to happen, uh, With web and mobile apps where when I, and it's, it's, it's starting to already happen. Like when I open up, um, let's just say I go to, um, I'm trying to think of like the vacation, vacation is like a sunscreen company. Um, the products it sells me because I live in Miami, Florida. It can get that data should be different than the products. Uh, it might tell you, cause you're in, did you move to Austin?

AI assessment note: “I think a similar thing is going to happen, uh, With web and mobile apps”

Q big on this other platform and, you know, give you a half of it, but we'll keep half of it. Right. And so, um, there's so many people who want to expand their audiences across platforms. This, a service that did this could charge quite a bit of money or even co incubate or co own some of these media properties. Um, Is there something like this that exists yet?

A I mean, people are trying, right? Like, so, Smooth is trying, you're trying, we're trying, you know, we're all kind of, we all have our own angle, and I think what you're seeing is that, 20, 23, there was just, like, scratching the surface. 20, 24, I think, We're going to see like, oh, turns out that podcasting was the right angle or community was the right angle or email newsletter was, was the right angle. Um, so that's my prediction by the end of 20, 24, I think we'll have a pretty good understanding of like how creators and then specifically B to B creators. Cause I agree with you. B to B creators are, you know, are probably worth a hundred times more. Like, you know, if you have, if you have a 100,000 YouTube subscribers, you know, And as a B to B creator, that's like, you're basically the Mr. Beast of your world.

AI assessment note: “I mean, people are trying, right? Like, so, Smooth is trying, you're trying”

Q was like, dude, I don't know that many examples. Like, this is not a, a thing. I think that's why people like the concept because it's interesting. Most entrepreneurs are very creative. So I would just always, I was just curious about those two things. Like, how'd you land, you know, community? Have you ever thought about changing it and why not talk about your holding company a lot more?

A So I landed on community when I had some, you know, in 20, 20, 20, I guess I left. We work, uh, whereas the head of product strategy, uh, via an acquisition. And I had some time like you to think about what's next. And I looked at what is the common denominator of my entire career? And literally everything I had have done both professionally and personally at the core of it was community. I have never done anything that hasn't had community at its core. Um, and I had a list of theses and ideas in that space, and I was just like, okay, I'm gonna make a conscious effort in 2020 to put out more content related to community. And I am completely okay being known as the community guy. Why? Because It's a small enough niche that, you know, at the time no one was, not many people were, you know, focused on it. But it's a big enough niche that literally community is at the center of everything on the internet. Like if you're a creator communities at the center of it, if you're a web three product communities at the center of it, if you're a cult like brand communities at the center of it. So I think it's important for folks to pick something that is small enough that you can own, but large enough that you can kind of grow with it.

AI assessment note: “So I landed on community when I had some, you know, in 20, 20, 20”

Q is interesting. Click on it. And it was just like, oh, I kind of understand it, but I feel like you could be a lot more vocal about it because you are working on a lot of interesting things and you are doing a lot of interesting things and you could also be a great example for other entrepreneurs to follow. So why not talk about it a lot more?

A I wrote a post in 2020, which was why the future of startups are studios. Welcome to the golden age of product studios. And I talked about my decision to create a studio, but more, more importantly, a personal holding company, because I talk about You know, service businesses. And this is up on my sub stack for people to check out. You can just Google, Google that and it'll come out. And I talk about like why you shouldn't raise venture and why service businesses is actually a really good place to start and how to think about launching experiments and how to think about a thesis for your startup studio. I got some people excited about it, but then when I like compare that to like a post, a popular post, I did like The unbundling of Reddit, like that got a hundred times more or a thousand times more traffic than the studio stuff. So I should, the short answer is I should write more about personal holding companies because I'm learning about it in real time. And because there's not enough, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of information out there.

AI assessment note: “the short answer is I should write more about personal holding companies”

Q A lot of people do that, right? So you, so you converted it into ETH.

A Converted it into ETH, which I converted into USD, which I transferred to my account, and I went and bought something. So like, Liquid, and that, and you know, it happened, and it happened quickly, so I think, like, for me, it was like, Christmas came really early, or, you know, we're in mid-January. Um, so, so yeah, the first thing is, like, the, the fact that people are getting this, like, random check is, is honestly why I think a lot of people don't like people in crypto, or people who are doing these NFT things, is like, Sometimes it is really easy money. Um, and we can talk about like the perception of NFTs and the perception to crypto people after, but that's the first thing I wanted to make mention of how, like, how crazy that is. The second thing is airdrops in general are just fascinating, right? Because basically what you're doing is you're looking at public blockchain data. And you're rewarding loyalty. So because Sahil Bloom is a loyal OpenSea customer, someone else, another company or another product or another community is able to take that data and potentially grab the users from OpenSea because that's what they're trying to do, right? They're trying to bootstrap the, the network. And yeah, sorry, go ahead.

AI assessment note: “Converted it into ETH, which I converted into USD, which I transferred to my account”

Q time as I spend thinking about things that don't change, we talked about this earlier with Facebook and Zynga, That a lot of businesses and a lot of media companies are built on these short-term arbitrages that exist, right? Because other people realize, okay, Greg is using this sort of unorthodox strategy. You know, they're going to start trying to sponsor similar channels as well. And that arbitrage eventually closes.

A A lot of big businesses start via arbitrage opportunities. We don't give arbitrage as much credit as it deserves. Is it worth doing faceless YouTube if the moat is Isn't as big. You can build some really big faceless YouTube channels right now, like build up pretty big audiences, and then actually use those to drive traffic to maybe your own personal brand, a sub stack or some things. I saw, yeah, Asianometry, you know, they've got 600,000 YouTube subscribers, but they've got 20,000 email subscribers. So they were able to basically take their faceless YouTube channel, drive email subs, which is Pretty valuable, right? If you value each of at four or five dollars, like they've created almost a 100,000 dollars of value via their faceless YouTube channel. That's the other thing about arbitrage and marketing arbitrage is it's often a really good way to build something, uh, and then direct it to something.

AI assessment note: “A lot of big businesses start via arbitrage opportunities. We don't give arbitrage as much credit”

Q of execution tasks are now getting, and what, so, That's replacing, I guess, the first thing is replacing you digging around for hours on the internet to get ideas, right? Or having a researcher find stuff for you. So that's now, like, fully replaced by you being good at prompting the machine. And what, yeah, so then what sort of, like, practical execution tasks has it taken over for you?

A Well, then, you know, there's a, there's a great tutorial we did on how I write with AI with Nicholas Cole. Which is basically like, okay, how do I Let's just say I want to write a long tweet. It's like, how do I get the main points across now that I have, okay, these Reddit posts that, um, are giving me insight and are giving me ideas. I can go and like write an outline, like a human being can write an outline. And then how do I prompt chat GPT to actually like write the content and spit something back to me and then edit it. So that's like a whole thing that I do. But I think in general, uh, You know, I do a lot more writing than I do video stuff, but I actually think there's a huge opportunity to do like script writing and then, uh, like faceless video. We've done, we've actually like, we've talked about that a lot, but like, for example, Once, I mean, you can just take me, like I have thousands of ideas, thousands of pieces of content that I've posted on X. Um, why wouldn't I take that and just automatically create faceless video from that?

AI assessment note: “how do I prompt chat GPT to actually like write the content”