The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - How to Get Everything You Want Out of Life⏐Ep. #144

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

I sat down with Jordan Mix, a partner working with Greg Isenberg at Late Checkout, to talk about permissionless projects. We discussed what they are, and Jordan shared the core ideas behind Ryan Holiday's canvas strategy and Jack Butcher's permissionless apprentice philosophy. He shared a few fascinating stories about how undertaking these projects, such as creating custom sneakers and responding creatively to social media posts, led to unexpected opportunities with big names. Jordan explained how this approach can create valuable connections and skills. Listen to this episode to learn how you can start your own permissionless projects!X.com: https://x.com/jrdnmix LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-mix1/Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Get a free 30 day trial of HL: https://www.gohighlevel.com/chris-koernerWatch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Introduction to Permissionless Projects05:45 The Canvas Strategy and Its Impact11:56 Real-Life Applications of Permissionless Projects18:06 Building Relationships Through Creative Projects24:12 The Art of Creating Without Permission25:09 Visualizing Business in 202326:36 The Birth of 'Do Within' and Permissionless Projects27:35 Building Community and Business at Late Checkout29:30 Finding Value in Collaboration31:54 The Power of Being a Number Two32:52 Learning from Experiments and Rejections34:49 The Compounding Effect of Opportunities36:07 Identifying Skills and Targeting Opportunities38:03 Creating Value Without Expectation40:54 The Asymmetric Bet of Permissionless Projects42:19 Rethinking Networking and Problem Solving44:10 Building a Portfolio of Experiences45:37 Chasing Rejections and Learning from Failure

I was like, I'm going to make these sneakers out of playoff towels that I went to growing up. So I just made them. I ended up spending the whole day with Mike Conley. An unpurchaseable experience. What is a permissionless project? Doing work without permission. I've literally changed my life and my career by doing permissionless project. Nameless account.

18 followers. I tweet this and we're on a FaceTime within 10 minutes. We work with big Fortune 500 companies on like defining what's next for them. We're adding like billions to the bottom line. Like, I think the biggest opportunity for people listening is like, Jordan, why don't you tell us who you are? What you do? Jordan Mix.

I'm a partner at late checkout. Many people might know late checkout from Greg Eisenberg. He's a prolific internet creator, but also entrepreneur and business person. And we've got a holding company. And we work on some of your favorite products. You know, you're probably using one of our products right now that we've worked on. And we've got a series of companies, LCA is our main innovation agency that designs futuristic interfaces for the AI age. So we work with like big Fortune 500 companies on like

defining what's next 18 to 24 months down the road for them. And then we've got the Start of Ideas podcast, which a lot of people might have seen. You might have seen Chris on an episode, you know, that triggered some beef a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, a little beef. And then we've got startup empire, our internet community where we basically teach people and help people run our very similar playbook using the audience community product framework, which is like find an internet audience, put them in a community, learn what they want, and then build products that they're begging for. So we've done that many times. And we did that to start an acquired boring marketer, which is our last holding.

Isn't late checkout? I know you guys sign like million dollar agreements with these Fortune 500 companies? Yeah, we try to do like average like lifetime value of a project. is, yeah, seven figures. So we sometimes start on a lower six figure sprint and then expand out. But, yeah, we're truly adding like billions to the bottom line, though. So it sounds like a lot. These are like big agencies, but, you know, we've got case studies that are out there that we can share. I don't want to put them on blast, but you can sift through them if you go to the website. But yeah, we added like literally like two billion in market share for a publicly traded company for work that we did.

And you're just helping them launch products? Yeah, it's everything. So it's like conceptualizing things that they can't see, like using their community to make products way more sticky, like thinking about interfaces in a way that they haven't been thought about before, borrowing from like consumer social and, you know, B2B SaaS product that gets like consumer socialized is just a delight for users. And it's just like it feels so fresh when they launch it. So like that's our whole pitch is like, forget about your.

12-month roadmap or building for 18 to 24. I would bet most people have never even heard of an agency like this. Is this even approachable to people starting an agency like this? How do you find a decision maker at a company like Microsoft, Slack, whatever? That's the hard part. And it's like a network game. And that's why we only work with like eight to 12 people a year. We cap it at that for a very specific reason because we can do the best work in those constraints.

And so, yeah, it's a it's a network. game for sure and really like it's it's kind of doing permissionless projects you know which we're we're going to talk about today is like just doing stuff and thinking about their business and ways that they've never thought about it before and reading between the lines is just the best way to stand out in today's like age is just like there's a bunch of noise but if you take just a little thought a little care you can intercept some people at the highest level like I we actually I just learned that from David Sinra, the founder's podcast guy. His network is crazy. How did he get to that point? Just because smart people started listening to him and respecting him, like he was building

trust at scale and then he just made connections with them? Yeah. I mean, like the TLDR is he read 175 biographies and has done three hour episodes monologued about those. And he has this weird parisocial relationship with a very high value audience that they, They think that he is like a dead person. Like they think that he is like Charlie Munger, you know? So now billionaires will call him and be like, what would Charlie Munger do with this problem? Right. And by parisocial, you mean it's kind of more of like a one-way relationship?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Parascial relationship like there, he's in a billionaire's ears for three, for three straight hours. Yeah. Like he doesn't know the billionaires, but they know him very well. Which is even more important. trust and affinity is like way higher with them and like I mean if you think about their hourly rate like they don't even have an hourly rate but like they're donating three hours of their their time to listen to

him talk and you know it's just traveled like word of mouth and he is he is like an encyclopedia like it is incredibly impactful like the way he can distill framework and like put this stuff out so think of all the overlap of skills that he has to have to be where he he is because on the surface it's like oh he's just reading books and talking about him big deal it's like well no like first of all he probably has a photographic memory second of all he has this infectious energy when he talks that most people just don't naturally have right third of all like he he genuinely loves diving in and learning these things it reminds me of was it ben wilson the how to take over the world podcast guy he told the story about this billionaire that wanted his advice and wanted to pay him a stupid amount of

money to just like teach him about history and it's the same thing just because he was listening to his podcast totally yeah it is it is a frame breaking experience to hear those guys talk about it because it is very real i wasn't like a huge fan of david to be honest and i mean i respected his craft but like after we spent that time with him at the beginning of this year i was just like oh my dude i i was sleeping on him like incredible incredible incredible I was like, I was like, I'm, I know, it's like the shack meme. It's like, I apologize. I wasn't familiar with your game. Okay. Well, let's start talking about permissionless, whatever, permissionless projects. I feel like this is just the perfect thing to talk about because I did a keynote last year on finding your white whale, how to land a white whale. And I define a white whale as being a business partner or a customer or a vendor or someone like that one connection, one relationship that could be worth more than every other relationship. in that business in your life. And I feel that pairs very nicely with what we're talking about here.

Yeah. I mean, like, I've literally changed my life and my career by doing permissionless projects. And, like, I didn't invent them. I didn't invent it by any means. How I got started, I was like, I was doing mechanical engineering in college. And I ended up in Asheville, North Carolina, working at this plant factory, like, as a design engineer where we were making like literal utility trucks. Okay.

And I was out there for seven months. And like at the end, I'd made friends with this country guy named Drew. You know, he was like dipping in the cubicles and like crazy guy. And he came into like my little like intern office and was like never leave college. Never leave college. Like you're, this is like the best time of your life. And that just like hollowed me out. And I was like, I can't have that happen.

Like I can't. I'm not going to do that. Like, now my engineering career is over. Like, corporate is over. What else am I going to do when I graduate in four months? That one offhand comment that he probably says to all kinds of people, it just like completely changed your brain. Yeah, because I just spent six months, like, while my friends were all still in college, like, going to football games and doing the whole thing. Like, I was working.

So it already didn't feel good. Like, I was two hours away. It already sucked. So, like, when he threw that icing on the cake, you know, at the, end of the seven month like co-op agreement or whatever like I was just like no dude this like I've got to find a better way to do it and I don't know what it is like I didn't grow up like very entrepreneurial at all but like that moment was like okay you've got to figure it out on make it on your own like how the effort are you going to do that were you at UT yeah was in Knoxville yeah Tennessee University Tennessee and you're almost done with school he says that comment and you're like I don't even know what entrepreneurship is but I need to look into this because I I love it. I love you're working a couple hours away. You're almost done with school. He says that comment and you're like I don't even know what entrepreneurship is but I need to look into this because I I love. I love you. I love. I. I love. I. I. I Drew, I don't want to be Drew. I don't want to ever say that about my life. I don't want to come into another guy's cubicle and tell him that. Exactly. Yeah. I don't want to, I don't want to be Drew. I love him. But yeah, exactly. So like that sent me down like the Tim Ferriss rabbit hole somehow.

Like I went down the four hour work week and then, you know, that whole, that whole thing with just like, how do you optimize your life? How do you make the life of your own? And I stumbled upon Ryan Holiday. Ryan Holiday is like canvas strategy. And this was like the, this is like the early, of like permissionless projects to me. And I'm actually gonna share my screen because I have like a little like presentation that I just think it would be like, this is amazing cool to walk through.

It's just like, for much as projects, I really think you can like change your life doing this. So what is a permissionless project? Like doing work without permission. Like it could be whatever. It can be literally like asking your partner's father if you can marry her or like, you know,

like getting a job or starting a business. So like the evolution. going back is like the canvas strategy with Ryan Holiday, this, this idea is basically like, instead of waiting for a path to, to be opened for you, create your own path by being a blank canvas that people hire up can paint on. So basically like do things that make other people look good and you in return will accidentally carve the path that you could never have seen for yourself in the first place. I mean, it's back to first principles. you're playing on their ego and their pride and their vanity in a good way, right?

Everyone's got it, dude. You know? Yep. Everyone's got it. So as soon as you realize that, you just, like, have to lean into it and just start seeing the world through this lens. Like, how can I, how can I be a canvas? And, like, that's what I hope, like, people listening to this take away today.

It's like, it doesn't matter if you're starting out or, like, 30 years into your career. Like, having this mindset truly has changed my life and just, like, how I look out, have an outlook on the world. What was Ryan Holiday's big story that got him to think along this way? Do you know? He's like a life, like a career canvas. Is he the stoicism guy? Yeah, now. He was Robert Green, the power law, 48 power laws, his like apprentice.

And I think it was like a cold, cold like knock on the door even. Like wasn't even like a DM. He like just like pulled up to his office. And then he was like the youngest chief marketing officer of American Apparel. And he took them from like 20. to hundreds of millions of dollars as a 22 year old. And then he started writing books. He became an author.

And now he has like a really cool bookstore in places. But after the Canvas strategy, like I was just like already doing this stuff in my, in my daily life. But I stumbled upon visualized value Jack Butcher. And he has just a really interesting way of framing it. And he called it the permissionless apprentice. Do the thing before you get the thing. Do the job before you get the job.

Like just take action and good things. will come. And now we're like in this phase of the internet. It's like you can just do things. You know, it's like these all are the exact same thing and the exact same principle. And like you can you can just do things. I want to show some like results of me like doing this. So you're saying the canvas strategy, permissionless apprenticeship and you can just do things. Three different ways of saying the same thing. Just create your own future. But not in like a woo woo way like a Tony Robbins seminar, but in like a very specifically, here's how you do it. here is why you should do it and here is how approachable it actually is.

Yeah. And it's the same thing you said about like going after your white whale or finding your dream client or it's all the exact same. You know, like we run startup empire and everyone's all everyone asks me like how do you how do they go from like two clients to 10 clients, whether it's a service or a SaaS. And it's like it's doing this. You know, it's like literally find eight people on LinkedIn and like just do stuff that is on the bottom third of their to-do list and they will end up paying you and they will become a client. So like it proliferates through like every little piece of business and really just life in general.

Okay. So I'm going to look like what I've had like some stories, not to brag, but just like these are the Ws that I've taken by doing this over like literally 10 years. And then I'm going to say like, then we're going to break down like how anyone listening can do this. And like what we need to look for. How do you read between the lines? And then we can just jam on like a ways that I would do this in 2025.

Okay. Yep. Cool. So I grew up in Memphis. My favorite basketball player growing up was Mike Conley. And I knew how to make sneakers. He got traded away to the Utah Jazz. And he was going to come back on, you know, his homecoming game.

And I was like, I'm going to make these sneakers out of playoff towels that I went to growing up and make these sneakers out of the playoff runs that he put us through. And I'm going to meet him and we're going to like, we're going to hang out. And so I just made them. It took me like 40 hours to handmake these Jordan ones from scratch. How did you learn to make shoes at all? I just was very interested in it. And I went to this school in New York called the shoe surgeon. He, he's done work for like Justin Bieber and like LeBron and all these people. So he had like a four day class in New York that I went through because I was just like really curious and wanted to put my hands on what did that cost it was like three grand okay yeah it was like

it was awesome ever spent on like professional development or like personal yeah at the time like I was like what am I doing and I was like getting married in like three weeks before like it's funny because three grand is like half a semester at UT and we don't even bat an eye but when you pay three grand for something like this that it could end up changing your life it's like oh man what am I doing you know totally yeah I'm like how am I going to tell my mom that I pay three grand to go to New York and make sneakers. That sounds ridiculous. Anyway, like, the head of, like, the media division of the Grizzlies

ended up using me as a pawn to get him on, to get Mike Conley in his media day. So he reached out to me, Chris Vernon, this guy, like the color commentator of the Grizzlies. He was trying to get time with Mike Connolly while he was in town. And Chris Vernon saw these on Twitter, like, just going viral. Because I was like, yo, help me get these to Mike Conley? like we're going to make it happen like help me out memphis and so chris vernon used me as like hey i've got this guy who's trying to give you shoes if you want to piggyback you piggybacked we like collapsed yeah on it and like i ended up like spending the whole day with mike conley like an unpurchable

experience it was just coincidental that the commentator also wanted to get a hold of this guy at the same time you happen to be going viral so he piggybacked on you yeah like he reached out and said, yo, I'm trying to get him on the show. Like, let's make it happen. I'll help you out. But I learned later that he was like trying to get Mike on the show the whole time. But like this is a guy that should be able to like get a get get a guy like that. And he's not able to. And then you, some guy from nowhere who no one's ever heard of with one tweet and, you know, $3,000, 40 hours of work, a lot of passion, a lot of motivation, a lot of research. So I'm not discounting that. But it all distilled down to a tweet that got a lot of attention, right?

totally yeah you like i had you have to do the work and then you have to publish it and like i was completely fine taking an l on this because the whole point of doing this thing is not for the outcome like that's the number one thing for these permissionless projects is like you can kiss the outcome goodbye if you do it for the outcome you're already doing it for the wrong reasons i looked at this as like hey i'm gonna have a dope pair of shoes like hanging behind me in my in my office or I'm going to get to hang out with like a childhood hero of mine. That's what sounds like a double win to me. So like 40 hours well worth it. Let's rock. How many views did that tweak it?

Dude, it was like previews. This was like 2018, 2019. It got like 700 likes. And it got his attention. Did he DM you? No. I was DMing him like crazy. Like I was DMing all of his camp. Like I'd studied like his agent. I was like following his boys. I was falling on like his marketing guy. I was like hitting them from all cylinders. Like I was DMing his wife. Like it was crazy. Like so what was what was like the nail in the coffin that finally got you in touch with him? Chris Vernon was the guy. Oh Chris Vernon. He like intercepted it. It was like a parent trap moment basically like Chris Vernon had me in the studio and was like yo Mike I have a gift for you if you come to the studio like it was like a total like parent trap moment. And then yeah we did

You were like the honey pot. Yeah. And I was more than happy to be the honey pot. It was fun. Yeah. So then you ended up spending the day with him? Yeah. Like we just like, I went to shoot around and like just like was rolling with his posse. Like I was there for like and like mind you like 20 minutes before I'm sitting outside with a backpack with these shoes in my backpack. Like I might not, you know, give it to him. And like he actually rolled up and walked straight past me. And I could have either easily just like handed him to him right then. But I let him walk by because I was like hoping. I would get like linked up. Like I was hoping that I would make it into like the studio. You wanted to do it the right way. I want to do it the right way. Like because you could have just handed him off. He's like, cool, man.

Thank you really appreciate this and he's gone forever. It's all gone. Yeah. We wouldn't have the photo moment. We wouldn't have video. Like it would have just been like it would have been like a premature opportunity. And all the work kind of would have gone to weigh. So like picking the moment actually matters a ton too.

So when you were just hanging with him where people like, who is this Jordan guy? He's like, oh, he made me these shoes. Dude, I was literally like, just alone. Yeah. Like I was like, I wish I would have brought some friends. But like I just thought it was going to be like a quick like go rogue situation. His like group was taking like these photos and stuff. So it's just it was a surreal moment for sure. They say never meet your heroes. Was was that true in this case or was he awesome? Yeah. It was great. Like and like all like the three other players that were like the core four were also there. So like it was just an. unbelievable, like, moment to, for me to just, like, to, like, kick it with them. And, like,

and, you know, speaking of parosocial relationships again, I had a parissocial relationship with them. Yeah. You know what I could already jump into, like, a combo and not be like, you know, what they like and kind of like how they move. So it was like chill. And that's why I kind of got to roll it with for a little bit longer than just like the handoff. Let me ask you this. When you're, like, planning and scheming, are you just like a dreamer? Like, I don't know how else to put it. Are you a dreamer? Like, you're just hoping that these things and you're just kind of fantasizing and visualizing it. And then it actually happens sometimes.

Yeah. It's more like, it's more tactical than that because this was like just an idea that I had when he got traded and I wanted to make, I wanted to do creative project. And he was coming back around Thanksgiving and I knew I was going to be in Memphis with my wife's family at Thanksgiving. So it was just like, I was just like, all right, this is an opportunity. like let's let's start in October and just like crank and crank and try to make it happen. It's really like tactical. We'll get into the like tactics of how I see these opportunities. Did you realistically think you'd spend the day with them or did you just want to give

them the shoes? Was that like the perfect outcome and then that was exceeded in your mind? Yeah. Exceeded way beyond. Like I literally just wanted to hand him the shoes and like take and take like a picture like what you're seeing on screen. Yeah. Like that's like that was it.

It's like this is your white. whale it was just like this guy's awesome he's cool I want to give him these shoes it's not like i'm going to launch the next nike this is going to be my launch pad i'm going to monetize like you weren't trying to monetize anything you're just trying to do something cool totally and i think that's where a lot of people get this wrong too is like they are trying to go for the outcome they are trying to monetize they are trying to do it and i think it's very hard to stay in the game if you have that mindset of like this is a this is a scheme so video is cool but you know what's better long form audio via podcast and my newsletter tkopod.com go there to subscribe for free to my

newsletter it's one email a week very tactical and then go to my audio podcast three episodes a week stuff like this you're gonna love it all free no sleazy sales bitch tkopod dot com it rarely like works out in your favor like that so we try not to move like that like ever now you know even if it is like the dream is to like monetize it i mean there's a big brand like steagelman stable now they're a hat brand from New York. And he, he did this permissionless project stuff where he sent hats to the NBA bubble. He literally just like sent

hats to a bunch of people in the bubble, like without permission. And they spread like wildfire. Because all the NBA players were trapped in a bubble. They saw nothing new. They had a per diem. They started trading the hats. Like, just like crazy stuff like like that. He like, yeah, now he's like

monetized and done collabs with the Knicks and like NBA players and celebrities. But like he just sent packages. Well, dude, did you hear about the the true brand guy, hats guy? Have you seen those like upside down Dallas hats? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Like the dude perfect guys wear them. They're everywhere. That was just, you need to research that because that's basically what he did. He wasn't calling it that, but he made these hats that just said Dallas upside down, cool design. And he found like, I forget his name. It was like some fourth string backup quarterback

that no one's ever heard of, but he had just got like drafted to the cowboys. And he booked a hotel across the street from where he knew they had a meeting and like ran into him and gave him the hat for free he wore it in the locker room everyone asked him about it and then like then all the cowboys were wearing them and then forget about it like all the NFL was wearing him now the dude now it's like a huge eight figure brand ambition he just was just like doing something cool dude it's beautiful I love it I love stories like that so it's like so much I want to collect I want to collect as many as I should put them in a book man I am I'm going to one day okay I did the same thing for Jack Butcher again, like with the shoes.

Like I just was like, this guy's incredible. Like completely changed like how I view things. And so I was like, yeah, let's do let's do these shoes. Turns out he lived in my neighborhood. No way. Literally. You didn't even know. Didn't know.

No, I just like literally reached out. I was like took his courses. I was like, thank you. Change my business that I was running at the time. And like build once sell twice his course. It's now a dollar and permissionless apprentice, which is now a dollar, which everyone should take. Yeah.

He was dude five. And it's a way. We walked to like a coffee shop and, and I handed these off. And like, we, we've become friends since. So for those that aren't watching, describe what you, what you made for him. Yeah. So Jack Butcher is visualized value. He's like iconic for these black and white, very simple images that have very minimalistic design, but say a lot with them. So basically created a Jordan one with his all black, with a black out with a white outline for the swoosh. And then some exchangeable tongue tags that were Velcro with some of his like juxtaposition so like the left shoe had one of them one of the visuals and the right right shoe had the other one so like you know

decades versus days you know or this is pointless isn't that one of them yeah this is pointless is like the one of his most famous ones I can't believe you made these shoes yeah yeah now they're like in his house and like I go to his birthday party and he's like dude I still like have these and you know and it's just like it's just like a piece of art like he's not wearing them but like now he's like an artist like and it's dope to like have have your art be in an artist house so have you ever sold your shoes to anyone i did a like during checks one of jack's projects i did raffle off a pair of custom dunks and that's the only pair i've ever sold but i sold those for like eight grand because i sold like nancy raffle tickets so

The NFT days. Yeah, the NFT days. Try to make it as functional as possible. But yeah, the coolest, most successful one by far is, like, what I'm doing with my full-time job with Greg right now is, like, it was a permissionless project. So, like, I saw Greg's tweet. I realized that he only did a lot of, like, visual. This first tweet here?

This first tweet here, yeah. So it was basically like a, like, he's trying to be visual with this, right? He's like, it says short form video plus newsletter, plus free community, plus paid community, plus product is how you build a business in 2023. So I'm reading this and like, it's got 1,000 likes. And I'm like, he's clearly trying to do something visual here. But I'm realizing that he probably doesn't have time to create a visual. So I was like, what if I just created this visual? And in 2020, I was like, I'm going to do dope things with dope people.

I started this little brand called Do Within. And I was burnt out running a med tech agency. And I was trying to sell it. Couldn't sell it because I was like the key man of it. And I was like, I'm literally trying to sell it so I can get out of here. And so I was like, I have to stop because I'm like mad burnt out. And I took a month off. And I was like, I'm just going to do dope things with dope people.

It was like my month of permissionless projects. And this was January 2nd of 2023 from a nameless account, 18 followers. I tweet this and we're on a FaceTime within 10 minutes. Okay. So do within. That was the brand new nameless account. You just went ahead and you converted his tweet into an infographic. Then you tweeted that as like a quote tweet.

And then what happens? Yeah. And then he says like he DMs me, love the image. Who are you? Like, because it was from a faceless account. And I sent him like my main account. And he was like, FaceTime me. And I said, we'll do.

And like, we just started. hanging out and like jamming on business and we're like he was like what are you going to do next and I was like I'm not sure here's a couple ideas of what I'm thinking and he was like what have you just came and built at late checkout and that's been like an absolute like game changing place for me to find my people and like build businesses like that I've like dreamed about building for a long time now built what like specifically what was the original goal for you and where did you end up yeah so I started on a project called you probably need a robot as like an entrepreneur in residence and that newsletter when I took it over it was at like 30,000 subscribers and we got it up to

like 80,000 and monetized it and did the whole like AI wave and then we merged that into startup empire, our membership community. And then I just joined as like an operating partner at late to check out the hold co level and just right hand manning to Greg a lot on a lot of different things like creative direction on the startup ideas podcast, M&A deals. deals, partnership deals, and then like growth and ops for the, for the businesses across the board. Amazing. Yeah.

And this was day two of your month of permissionless projects. Yeah, day two. Yeah, I didn't stop there. Like I did a bunch of other stuff too, but like this one just hit quick and like it was the most fruitful by far. Yeah. So he's putting out a bunch of visuals now, right? Are you behind that as well?

Yeah. Some of them like a lot of the sketching ones that we've done, like the hand sketched stuff is like, has all been from for me but yeah I saw an opportunity you know it's like how do you how do you do these permissionless projects is like you look at like what skills that you have like what you want to be doing the people that fire you up and like where that overlaps with your like passion and interests and you find the like keyhole of that and it's like what value can you provide to these people that get you amped with the skills that you have and areas that you want to do. And like those are how you see the opportunities.

It's like I wanted to collab with someone like Greg. And I was like, I can design kind of. I'm not a designer, but I can design. Like I can see like what he's trying to do here. So like what if I just did it for him? And that opened the door for me to have more strategic conversations to like actually add value to his business. Instead of it's like, you man would love to pick your brain like got some ideas for you how long did it take you to make

that image 10 minutes this is a weird question but what happens if he says face time you get on face time and you're boring and you're just lame talent in the world yeah you got to open you got it doesn't work right doesn't work no you got to bring like you got to be someone that he wants to hang out with you do you do but this is like the door so is the door opener so if i'm listening to this and i'm boring what do you do do boring people know they're boring. Yeah, I think they, I think they might. But I think you're interesting to someone. Like, what, the skills that you have, no matter what, it's like, you're interesting to some, like, I guarantee you can find this loophole. No matter if you're interesting or whatever, you just have to study, you just have to study up and like, be ready when your number does get called.

Is that like, what is that? Like, opportunity is like preparedness or luck is like preparedness meets opportunity or whatever that. A kitsy phrase. It's like that. It's just like being ready for when your number is called to be interesting. Just because of the fact that you liked Greg, you liked his content and his style and you reached out. Like that probably means call it 80% chance that he's not going to find you boring because even in a parissocial relationship, you guys are a lot of like. I see the same. Like I have a referral program in my newsletter.

And so I hop on calls with people that refer X amount of subscribers. And almost every call is just a total. row that like I just bro down with immediately because it's like the the biggest distillation of people that like my stuff and therefore they're most like me they're usually like 30 something white dude we attend the same church we each have two to four kids and like we're just like the same person you know so it's like just by you don't even need to worry about that forget I even said that because whoever you're reaching out to and you're wanting to add value to they're probably going to like you because you like them and it usually goes both ways yeah 100% and

And you, like, you are someone who's creating content all the time. I would need an hour with your content, like, deeply studying it, to know where I could help you. You know what I mean? Like, just like reading through the lines, crossing over stuff, reading some newsletters, seeing some short form, doing all the stuff. Like, you put your brain into the world. It's very, it would be very obvious for me to pluck something that I could, like, help you with. if I wanted to get in your space. Like I think the biggest opportunity for people listening is like being a number two

to someone that has a lot of stuff going on. Like it was underrated opportunity of all time is like everyone wants to be a creator, be the face of something and be the da da da da da. It's like actually it's dope to be the number two. I would agree with that. Like you have a number two, don't you? Yeah. And he's awesome.

And he's always top of mind. And like we've talked about a bunch of business ideas. And it's like, well, I'm always default to like, why don't he do it? Do you want to start this? And he's like, well, I don't know. And like, I don't want him to because I'm competing with myself in a way. But like he's just so top of mind because we literally talk every single day. He's top of mind.

Totally. And it's like that's how I, that's how I would like, if I was someone that was trying to like create opportunity for myself, I would be trying to try to do that right now. What were some other experiments that month that didn't go well? Yeah. So I did like a go to market strategy. for kit convert kit at the time kit and I did like this whole like 30 minute like presentation loom thing and I like chapered it up and like a really like high quality like

production and it got viewed like 40 times yeah nothing happened from it like I know everybody at the company looked at it once you know or twice they didn't even say like hey appreciate this no just go 40 views on a loom is a lot yeah Yeah, I got passed around for sure. I was like, oh, something's working for sure. But yeah, no, it's like, and then the world like comes back around. It's like, then I'm getting invited to their private mastermind because like we're kit customers and like we've grown newsletters.

Oh, so it has. So it has come back around. Yeah, exactly. That's like I didn't use it for the desired outcome that I tried to do. Like I made, I wanted to work at kit maybe because I was like literally trying to figure out how I could not work in med tech at the time. I was like, where am I going to go next? And I was like, I want to do something in the like the B2B SaaS creator internet scalable. That kind of was like my like constraints. So I just started doing things for people in that in that space. And it did pay off. And like I also used the exact same go to market strategy on a pitch to Behive. Just switch the brands like you know, it's just like. Was it the same loom or did you record it twice? It was different. Yeah. And that was way of scaled down. Like I didn't do like. like a deep balloon for Beehive.

I just said like, yeah, I've got like, you know, this, this and this. This is where I would take Beehive. This is how I would turn Beehive into a billion dollar brand. Like, who doesn't like getting that? Nothing came from that either, but like now I know the team. And like we've used their newsletters, their newsletter product for a lot of stuff. And it's like that those two experience also helped me scale our newsletters that are like vital and lifebloods to our businesses now.

What's interesting to me is if the Greg experiment doesn't go well, then the kit experiment never goes well, even over the long run. People view it 40 times, but it never comes back around. But because of the fact that just one of them worked, eventually it came back around. Does that make sense? So it's like, this isn't something that you do once and like, ah, it didn't work. No, it's like you do it once and it doesn't matter if it worked and you learn. If you do it 20 times and it works three of the times, then over the next five years, 13 more of them might work as well because they can all kind of interconnect.

That's it. Shots on goal and it like it compounds, you know? Like you're building a portfolio of these things and they're assets and you become like the person that just shows up in people's DMs with actual value instead of a, hey, can I pick your brain? It's completely game changing. Even like when we're doing just like little partnership stuff, like doing a little just a little thing that's out of the norm, like kind of standouty.

It's not a huge project. It takes five minutes instead of one minute. It, like, you just get their attention. These are the four steps that I've kind of like talked to, but like, I'm happy to send this to anybody that wants it, but it's like, these are like what you need to do to start seeing like with X-ray vision opportunities for you to like execute these projects. So it's like analyzing what skills you have and like what do you like to do. first off. Like you might have a bunch of skills that you absolutely hate. Like I would not do

permissionless projects on stuff that you hate because then you'll be like getting yourself in a box where you don't want to be. Make a list of people you want to target that could be customers, people you want to work with, companies you want to work at businesses you want to start and you want to interview potential clients. Make a list you want to target. Find the gap like literally just like X-ray revision study them. Where are they missing things? What's on the bottom of their to do list that they're never getting to? Like I talked about and then like do the thing and send it to and like ask for nothing in return but be ready with when they do say like what did you do this for be ready with a specific like either more value to add to them or a specific ask all else equal

what kind of things do you think there are to do for these white whales what kind of tasks it really depends on like your skills and on what they do right yeah like where they have gaps and what your what your skills are is the thing that you should do for them. Yeah, I mean, like one that I'm doing right now, we'll see if it pays off, is something for David Sinra. After we had him on the podcast in Miami, he mentioned this book that he read

about the founder of Sequoia Capital, Don Valentino. And it's like an unpublished book. He was like, yeah, it was 70 pages, and it was a PDF, and I hated it. I hated reading it, but like, gosh, it was a good book. it was like so good and I learned so much from it. He just hated reading PDFs, but yeah. I mean, it's like literally it was a PDF of pictures of someone taking like of the book.

Like it was like complete garbage. Like listening to him talk about that and then he mentioned like somewhere his favorite bookstore in Florida. I was like, dude, I'm going to OCR like take pictures of these book and like use AI and OCR it and get the transcript. I'm going to typeset it. I'm going to do a print on demand. And I'm going to ship this thing down there with a note that said, thanks for coming to the Startup Ideas podcast. And I'm going to ship it to the bookstore that he loves.

And it's going to sit behind the desk. I called the guy, like the book's about to come in actually this week. So we don't we have to send it yet. But I called the owner of the bookstore who he knows. I'm like, just keep it behind the desk. When he shows up next time, when he checks out, like just give it to him. Oh my gosh. Okay. So if I'm David, and I find out it's you somehow, what is the ask for David? I actually don't know. You just really like him. I don't have an ask for him, but I just know that if he remembers that like surprisingly delightful moment, he's going to owe me and us, really. Like he's going to owe the startup ideas podcast or he's going to want to help us do something. And,

I don't know what it's going to be. I don't care if it's nothing. I, like, actually just, like, really appreciated him, like, driving an hour and coming to do the pod, even though he wanted to. And, like, he was late to dinner with his wife. And, like, I just saw the opportunity to do it. And I can only speak from my experience. So, like, I feel like I'm just, like, talking about the stuff that I do. But I just, like, oh, like, this is a doable thing.

So why don't we just do it? I'm just getting so many ideas for myself. I hope that people listening are getting ideas. is like let's just take everything else out let's say like the hack the whole permissionless hack there's only one on the planet and that's to make a book for someone right what is the the physical cost 10 bucks to do this yeah it was like literally like nine dollars okay nine dollars let's say another 10 bucks for shipping 20 bucks how much of your time went into doing this uh like i did the screenshots on the flight back from miami so like i was just like listening to a pod probably

founders honestly um because i was like in the zone on him um and just screenshoted it and it was like i used clean shot my like screenshot tool that has oCR baked in and it like was perfect ran it through a i saw if there was any typos downloaded a typesetter on the internet for free used this thing called blurb and it made the book so two hours called the bookstore five minutes was the bookstore weirded out no okay i didn't weird it out okay so let's call it two hours and 20 bucks. Yeah. Like we,

I talk about asymmetric bets all the time. Like what an asymmetric bet. I'm over here thinking selfishly for myself. Like, how can I do that exact act as my permission list? Because there's no, like there's no end to permissionless. Like there's always a bunch of people above you and below you, right?

And whatever hierarchy you consider yourself within, right? So let's say that my, my white whale is to be on the Lex Friedman podcast for Joe Rogan. Right? Why wouldn't I just take like go to his YouTube channel sort by most view take his top 10 put it in like a nice leather bound book and mail it to him. What's stopping me? What's stopping anyone from doing that?

Nothing. It's just the idea and like just doing it. You know and like wanting to do it and like thinking it's worth the time to do it. It's like I love saying the phrase all the time. You either win or you learn, right? But I'm just going to edit it for a minute. You either win or you learn or you have a really good story or all the. above yeah it's so it's so fun dude like doing this stuff like i love hearing what other people would

do like just hearing that it's like because you learn a lot about people it's like who do you want to meet who do you want to hang out you know yeah what would you do what would you do for them like it's such it's such a good small talk question and so it's so much better than like what would you do or what do you you know right even though like people people hate when i ask that because it's like kind of like intrusive a little bit. And it's like, you're like, well, this guy's like going a little too deep and small talk. You're like skip the small talk. Yeah. Well, this is amazing. What else do we have on this presentation? Yeah. I think it's just like this mindset, the mindset shift here is like, like, rethinking about like how you see the, the world is like, how do I meet person X versus like how,

what problem can I solve for them? Like, how do I get a job? Like, who can I make look amazing? What's the application process? Like, how do I find a third door? I think like sales, I think about this a lot. It's like finding a third door in sales. I was talking about LCA at the beginning of this pod. We were doing a big third door outreach right now to people that we think are cool. And we like made a physical magazine that's like beautifully designed.

Chef's Kiss on the design took like multiple weeks to design it. And it's about like designing products and an air. AI age and like it looks so sick. I'm like I can't wait to get one on my desk, but we're going to be sending those out to like potential prospects. So that's so much better than a LinkedIn DM or that's so much better than a bump in shoulders at a conference like, hey, aren't you the CPO of Microsoft? It's like, yeah. I don't want to be like called that. Man, I wonder what all the best third doors are. That could be a good newsletter or a whole dedicated podcast, like a magazine, a book. I posted a job on Twitter once and like an hour later, crumble cookies showed up at my door

from a guy, right? Like, that's a third door. You know, finding someone on Strava, finding them on Venmo and sending them a dollar. I've never even heard the phrase of a third door. But there's a book called The Third Door. So I'm like, I didn't create that by any means. I think it's a made by a guy named Alex. Yeah, third door by Alex something.

So that would be a cool pod. I thought about that as a pod. That would rip as a newsletter too. Because it really just does get like the creative juices flow in. Yeah. All right. Portfolio effect. What was that?

Yeah. So this is like why it works. Like why all this works in a very concise way. It's like you connect the dots and reverse and build a portfolio. You're learning and you have good stories. Getting in rooms you don't belong. You're building like transferable skills and value like that you can reuse. on projects and then you're building a network with no ask in return and just it works just like

the the reps reps matter and then i'm going to write a book one day on this i'm going to collect all these stories so if you're listening and you got a story shoot me a shoot me a dm i don't know the title yeah we can it's either like how i do on accident you should write a book not even knowing that this was the last slide yeah cold message hot coffee i would love for it to be like a coffee table book with like human of New York type like photography would be cool shoot your shot's super lame this is like the design of that's the principal future books yeah exactly i love it i'm like i wanted to record this to amp people up but i'm like my fingers are twitching to get like kamal on the phone to start talking about ideas of what we could do and like i know this stuff like i don't know all this stuff

you taught me most of what i just know but like i've been doing this stuff like bucky's john mackafee Like, I've been sending looms to randos, looms to randos for years. And I'm usually never here back. And that's okay. Like, I spent two years knocking doors in Eastern Europe. I got rejected 50,000 times. Like, I don't care. You got to get over that, too.

That's another thing is like, I heard the phrase maybe just yesterday. It was like, chase the nose. Chase some nose. You got to go get rejected. That's how you learn, you know? Yeah. Like, that's the only way to learn is like, get told no. And you're like, well, why didn't that work?

How do I get to a yes? Like it breeds innovation or like breeds iteration. I don't even know the hells I've taken, dude. Like you just forget about them, you know? Yeah, you do. Like, if they don't show back up at your door, it's like out of sight, out of mind. Clearly, you didn't matter. Yeah.

Yeah, I love doing this. Like, I do this a lot with like podcasters and like content that I want to see create. Like Riley Brown has like been AI creator. I don't know if you know, Riley Brown, he's been doing like AI. like basically like breakdowns on YouTube just like very very like detailed yeah he's he's he's he's really good and just like good energy guy but I was like dude I want to see Riley like literally for three hours use cursor as a non-developer and so I like tweeted what's the best way to learn cursor as a non-developer like going fishing for him and then like he he comments it on it and

like did a bunch of stuff whatever they comments on it and then I said like I I sent him a message and I was like that was a sub tweet. He was like videos coming Sunday. It's just like I just wanted him to do that. It's like and I like he got like 50,000 views from it. But like I wanted to see it. Yeah. It was like I basically like prompted the content.

I've done the same thing for other other people too that hasn't worked out. But maybe one day I will. Yeah. I mean you wanted to see him do that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And it worked. Yeah. I was like I want a three hour like movie of someone going soup to nuts on cursor because I'm tired of list of watching. of watching the one hours and like i've watched like 10 one hour of videos and i'm still not like dialed at it so like i need one person to walk through their whole process like so i can like learn makes me want to try that as well what would be fun to do the cursor thing like spend three hours on cursor hit record and just see if it's embarrassing i just won't publish but i probably yeah yeah i think

that that type of content is really interesting to me right now is like the behind the scenes like fly on the wall or over the shoulder and it's just damn easy to create just hit yeah it's so easy there's like no editing like your your operator video i thought that was cote sancho's oh oh no i'm sorry sorry i forgot i couldn't remember who copied who did attribute me by saying some guy so we're good yeah you look like some guy actually yeah yeah yeah i do yeah like that's some guy yeah but like that that didn't take you long to record no and it ripped No, no, he ripped. Yeah. And like, that's something that I do when I'm not recording. So it took no extra time. I might as well hit record, which is what you said in the beginning. Like, you might as well hit publish if you're doing cool things. Like if you're not doing cool things, you should. Okay. Now if you're doing cool things, why aren't you hitting publish on that? Yeah. And like do it in a format that's frictionless to create. You know, like don't be like you need like to upgrade your studio and blah. It's like, dude, no. No one cares. No one cares. Like be a little loom face in the bottom corner and like show. how the sausage is made.

And I guarantee you'll find some interesting people. Like it'll create a magnet. So it's really fun. It's a fun time. It's a fun time to be a builder, fun time to have ideas. And it's never been easier to like make stuff happen. A whole business is that you're like a lot of people listening to this.

70% are aspiring business owners. And they listen because they want ideas. Like what do I launch? When I launch, how do I find customers? Okay, well, here it is. Like don't try to find a thousand customers. like try to find one with these

permissionless methods. You don't need a lot of money. You don't even need a lot of time. 20 minutes plus 20 bucks. You could have a leather bound book in the hands of your greatest admirer. What are we doing? Yeah. Does your audience want to buy businesses? Some of them. That's another great way. It's another great way to buy a business. Like boomers are retiring or whatever. They're easy

to impress. Jordan, thank you. Where can everyone find you? If they want to buy this book one day or get in touch with you or be permissionless with you. Go full meta. X, J-R-D-N-M-I-X. You can find me on LinkedIn, Jordan Mix, too, but those are the main places. Yeah, I don't really want you to buy this book.

I want you to send me your cold DMs and success stories. So if you're listening to this and you have a success story, hit me up and let's collaborate and crowdsource this book and put it on coffee tables everywhere. All right. What do you think? Please share it with a friend, and we'll see you next time.

at Kerner office.